What to do in a time of uncertainty? (6.15.25)

John 16:12-15

A week ago, I had a conversation with one of the dads in the congregation. I followed up to make sure I could share. The conversation went something like this: “My kids asked me,” he said, “if both the Cubs and White Sox believe in God and they’re playing each other, who does God root for?”

“What’d you tell them? I asked, “the janitors?”

“The janitors!” he said, “and the ticket takers and the staff that have to put up with all the crazy people.  Then,” he went on “they asked me who Jesus would root for in the NBA finals.”

“And—?"

He shook his head and laughed. “In our house,” I offered, “the kids don’t ask who he would root for in the NBA finals, they just know.”  

“Man,” he said, “these are the easy questions: the ones about God and baseball. It’s the other ones that undo me.  I didn’t ask my dad the tough stuff until much later in my teens, but I feel like our kids are well ahead of that these days: national politics, geo-politics, Gaza and the hostages, bullies, Epstein and P. Diddy, vaccination boards, protests. All the questions. And, they want to know what I think.”

What do you tell them?” I asked him and he exhaled.  

“I tell them what I can--I try to tell them about right and wrong, and good and evil. I can’t say everything.  I don’t know—I’m trying to figure it all out myself.

*************

I’ve been thinking about what to do with this four verse gospel this last week and I thought of this conversation with this dad.  As I thought about it, something stuck out: In this story, Jesus comes to a point where it seems he doesn’t quite know what to say to his disciples gathered in the upper room that Passover night. Or at the very least, he stops himself. He holds back.

Up until this point, they’ve been eating together and he’s trying to explain everything, elaborating and talking and showing them by washing feet. Were they asking question of him? Maybe.  I think of him trying to answer when finally, he lands (or stumbles) at: “I still—I still have so many things to say to you--but you cannot bear them now,” and he pauses.

Apparently, we cannot bear them either because the stock image our software offered as a bulletin cover for us this weekend only says the part “I still have so many things to say to you…” They left off the part where Jesus said “--but you can’t bear it.” Apparently, they thought we couldn’t bear it either.  I guess, we have enough uncertainty in the world right now. Why leave us hanging with these obtuse references to all the things Jesus didn’t say to us? 

********

Uncertainty is unpleasant.  We prefer decisiveness. Plans.  Clarity. Knowledge. Facts.  Our brains are wired for predictability and patterns. It’s probably some safety thing.  All the advertising that comes at us capitalizes on our need for certainty: “if we buy this thing or make this choice, we will surely be:  secure, handsome, safe, successful, or ______fill-in-the-blank.”

Uncertainty doesn’t sell well. Everyone wants their doctor to say, “you’ve got a 91% chance of a good outcome on this path instead of, “Hmm. we’ve looked at your diagnosis and situation and, well, we’re not really sure what to do with your case, but we’ll give it our best shot.”

The fact is, life has a lot of uncertainty. We never know what will happen. Your kid transitions into a new life phase—9th grade or college, or maybe kindergarten—will they be okay? Or: you can’t get a handle on what’s going on with the market and your job is in limbo, or your IRA is in limbo...  How is this going to shake out? Or: maybe your life isn’t rolling out quite like you hoped, and there are really a lot of unknowns.  And it’s hard.  

Life is uncertain. No one knew that evening in the upper room with Jesus how the disciples would respond to everything he was telling them. There were a lot of unknowns. You never quite know what people are going to do when faced with uncertainty.

One of the last times things got really uncertain for the disciples when they were all out in the boat and there was that storm on the water. Everyone lost their minds and started freaking out and blaming Jesus who finally had the wherewithal to wake up and calm the storm, thank heavens!   We’re not always our best selves in moments of uncertainty.  

Sometimes, when we’re not sure of what’s coming down the pike and things are unsteady we blame people:

This wouldn’t be happening if so-and-so just stayed in their lane or followed through on their commitments or did what they’re supposed to!! And now we’re lost and confused and messed up because of this person or that group of people in society that we blame for everything—(like perhaps, a religious minority, a powerless workforce picking food in CA…)

In the book of Genesis, when Adam and Eve mess up and eat the apple, they both freeze when the Lord finds out:  How’s He going to react!? 

And when God asks, “What happened?,” Adam can’t stand it and immediately points the finger: 

“Eve made me do it!”

And then, Eve points the finger: “the snake made me do it!”

The world gets unsteady and just like that, blame starts flying. Classic. Human. Behavior.

Sometimes when things are uncertain, we catastrophize. I love the story from 1 Kings when the prophet Elijah gets a death threat from Queen Jezebel.  He completely loses it, and when he realizes he has no idea what going to happen, he spirals, runs to the desert, lays face down under a broom tree and wails, “it’s all over! This is the end! Take my life Lord!!”  God essentially sends him a plate of cookies and a mug of juice and an angel that will sit there next to him patting his leg as he gets a hold of himself.

You never quite know what people are going to do when faced with uncertainty.

Jesus lived in highly uncertain times:  Across the sea in Rome during Jesus’ time, the emperor Tiberius was erratic and tyrannical. He relied heavily on his corrupt advisor, Sejanus who purged political rivals and used false charges of treason to get rid of senators and other powerful people.  Back in the region where Jesus lived—Judea and Galilee—it was a political and religious pressure cooker with deep social tension and inequality.  Galilee was a poor region.  In it, there were a few wealthy elite who had a whole lot of power while ordinary folks like fishermen, widows, and farmers struggled with debt, taxes and poverty—remember the story about the wee little tax collector, Zacchaeus and the suggestion that the system was rigged to benefit the powerful?

Ancient people’s trust in institutions like even the temple and certainly the Roman government was fraying. They were highly uncertain times. And into that reality, Jesus continually cried out for all--but particularly poor folks--with a message of mercy, grace, compassion, forgiveness, humility and generosity.

************

People have had a history of turning to prophetic voices that speak out from the margins in uncertain times. Generations before Christ, it was Jeremiah who also spoke in a time of national crisis, corruption and collapse in ancient Israel. Whether Jeremiah or Jesus’ time, the issues are the same and they seem to resonate, no?

Theologian Walter Bruggeman put it this way: “the world we have trusted in is vanishing before our eyes and the world that is coming at us feels like a threat to us and we can’t quite see the shape of it.” ⁠

“There is so much I want to say,” Jesus said, “but you cannot bear it.” 

People listen for prophetic voices now, too: pundits, commentators, even public theologians, wise sages that will speak truth, anyone! I get it. We like that certain, assured voice.  Some of those voices that speak with moral clarity have a role. 

While these prophetic voices are powerful, Jesus offered another word of hope and guidance in this moment in our scripture passage today.

But to get there, let me remind you quickly about Thor.  I assisted as a backpacking guide in the Rockies one of the summers when I worked as a camp counselor.  The week I was scheduled to lead a group of highschoolers out on the trail, I was very nervous. My co-leader was a big guy named Thor, who carried what seemed like 50 extra pounds of group gear on his back.  Not only did Thor look the part of mountain-man, he was very smart about trail guiding.  I was nervous and uncertain, our camp director, Dave, pulled me aside and said something like, “Lindsay, Thor is a very experienced guide and you are in excellent hands. Just follow him and do what he says.” Dave was right.

Jesus tells his disciples in this uncertain moment that “the Spirit will guide you into the truth.”  In essence: “The Spirit is wise and good and trustworthy. Just follow her and do what she says. Let her guide you and form you.”

If Jesus is the truth, our pattern, our way that we walk in, then the Spirit—God’s mysterious living presence--will form us, shape us and guide us through the uncertainty around us.

This way of Jesus, that the Spirit mysteriously moves as, is our home base.  When in doubt, we live by her fruits: Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control (and more). When we live by these guideposts or bass notes, our inner lives are reshaped, even in the most uncertain and trepidatious situations. 

This subtle kind of change that is generated through how we live might not be as loud as a prophetic voice, but it’s just as powerful.  That has been a theme the last few weeks: God does these awesome things, and then we follow with our ordinary human effort.

Maybe it wasn’t the disciples’ capacity to handle all the things that Jesus couldn’t bear to tell them.  Maybe it is that Jesus knows that there is so much more to living this way than the disciples can make sense of at that moment.  There’s so much more to embodying God’s love on earth than they can wrap their arms around. Some things must be lived to be understood. 

Like the dad trying to field impossible questions from his kids—Jesus doesn’t dump all the answers at once. He walks alongside us. He gives us a Holy Spirit: a guide to find our way through.  

The truth that Jesus promises is not a download of certainty. It’s a Way, a presence, a pattern of living. It’s a mysterious Holy Spirit who walks with us. Who reminds us when we’re overwhelmed, that we’re not alone.  

It’s a practice of grace in the face of meanness and judgement; 
generosity instead of selfishness; 
peace in a culture that seems to be addicted to conflict; 
non-violence in a world bent on retribution; 
compassion when turning away towards comfort is easier.

That grace is still the center.  (Well, that grace and the truth that God is still rooting for the janitors.) 

The Spirit doesn’t just cushion us in the uncertain moments, She shapes us in them.  We don’t just survive the uncertainty—we can be formed in it. Even when we hate it and push against it and resent it and want to dominate it, God works on us in that mysterious space and it’s there that we imagine what is possible. It’s there that we become people of hope. It’s there that we muster the courage to step out (to step through) as loving people and as emissaries of transformation.

Arresting beauty and its' wake (4.6.25)

John 12:1-8

My mom’s family is from beautiful farm in northeastern Nebraska.  As a teenager, my mom and her sister, my Aunt Willa, worked the nightshift at a factory in a nearby at a plant that processed eggs. The yokes and whites were dehydrated into powder that could be used in cake mixes.  As a kid, I heard many stories about “the egg-plant.” Workers wore big plastic aprons, stood at an assembly line, and cracked the eggs that came down the belt.  If an egg were rotten, the worker dumped it (and there were many a rotten egg).  This was not exactly a dream summer job for a teenager…

My aunt now lives on the farm where she and my mom grew up and a few years ago she pointed to the top of the south hill and told me, that on their way home after the night shift at the egg-plant, tired as they were, they would park the car at the highest point with a view of the rolling farms hills where they would pause and enjoy the sunrise. Then, they’d head home to sleep. 

In 1910, a labor activist Helen Todd said in a speech, that we need “bread for all, and roses too.”  

On one hand, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  (I, personally, think a lilac bush in bloom smells beautiful. I also find beauty in an inspiring speech, a line of music, a familiar voice, and kids laughing.)  Beauty often seems to stir something in us.  Many times it makes us feel good. But is beauty actually a need? 

Our Lenten series is on different things we need: We need change and rest. We need people to be vulnerable and to advocate for one another.  But beauty…is that really something we need?  Here in the US, beauty is equated with luxury.  Money buys access to museums, concerts and nature—they’re a luxury.  In the city, wealthier neighborhoods have more green space and more trees.  When cash gets tight in school districts, one of the first things to be cut is music or art. They are seen as extras. In that vein, it seems that beauty isn’t a need after all.

While our culture says that beauty is a luxury, our faith heritage disagrees.  Our sacred spaces are beautiful, the acoustics are striking in our sanctuary.  Scripture speaks of beauty: descendants that will outnumber the stars of the Milky Way, hospitality shared with strangers, loaves and fish in the hands of a child, thunder on the mountain, the first light of resurrection morning.   Our reading from Isaiah tells of streams in the desert and a way in the wilderness.  And then, there is the jar of nard in today’s gospel story.  

In the story, Mary pours the ointment all over Jesus’ feet and as the perfume envelopes the room, beauty floods the space. Then, she bends over Jesus feet, and as she wipes them with her long hair, everyone falls quiet watching. That is, except Judas who takes this moment to get up on his high and mighty moral horse.  “Why,” he asks, “was this perfume not sold for 300 denarii and the money given to the poor?”  Who knows what was behind his question—Judas is not exactly our most noble character in the bible, but at face value, I admit, his question resonates:  Why waste money on this beautiful thing when there are so many people in need? 

********

In 1836, Ralph Waldo Emerson, wrote about simple visit to a beautiful forest. 

in the woods...

Standing on the bare ground,
--my head bathed by the blithe air 
and uplifted into infinite space, 
all mean egotism vanishes…

Egotism. It’s that thing where we talk and think and focus constantly on ourselves.  Egotism, (along with self-absorption and selfishenss) is a social ill that plagues us. There are a lot of reasons for it, but over the years, we’ve exaggerated the individual self. Do I have enough money? Does my body look the right way? Is my life right? We’ve become more narcissistic. (They can measure it.(1)) There’s a heightened sense of superiority, arrogance, and even entitlement. It’s a kind of sinfulness that causes us to curve in on ourselves while others’ concerns or pains or worries fade on the sidelines. There in the woods, Emerson realized, his self-absorption and "mean egoism" fades with the beauty around him.

Have you ever seen something beautiful—a big, wide open blue sky, or perhaps you’ve heard a beautiful speech or an extraordinary piece of music?  And, with this, you’re transported out of your head and your problems and issues fade a little in importance. There was a philosopher named Iris Murdoch who once explained that when you see something beautiful, such as a bird lifting off, it pulls you out of yourself.  Beauty, she said, “unselfs us.” (2)

A lot of our problems in our world might be connected to the sinfulness of too much self. Beauty is a way of, as she put it, non-selfing or getting out of ourselves: A little less “I” and a little more “we.” (It’s wild--neuroscientists have measured how this happens in our brains(3)). 

Part of me doubts that the disciples were as self-obsessed as we are today.  Martha, who was serving dinner that night (God bless her) wasn’t fine-tuning her personal brand of “Servant-Hearted Martha.”  The brothers, Peter and Andrew, were not subtly checking their phones to see how many likes they were getting on those updates about Jesus the raising Lazarus from the dead.  The disciple Peter, who I sometimes imagine as the impulsive resident stress ball of the group, wasn’t over in the corner biting his nails and trying to get a handle on his anxiety.  

While Mary’s gift of the lavish ointment that anointed Jesus was generous and admirable, I’m not sure that her act of moral beauty needed to pull them out of an individualized world-view the way beauty needs to pull us out of ours in this day and age.  

And, beauty can shake us out of our egoism. Beauty, art, nature, music, a sunset at the top of the hill—all of it--can pull us out of ourselves.  So, do we need beauty? Yes. We do.

But why? Let’s take one more turn with this idea because I wonder if beauty does something more in this bible reading and if it can do something more for us today. But I’m going to have to tell you another story first, to show you what I mean:

*******

In 1931, a young man named Charles Black Junior was headed to a dance in Austin, Texas, his hometown. He was 16 years old.  Charles was from an easy side of the city and attended the great school of Austin High.  As he walked down the street with his buddy, he was struck still by the sound of a trumpet player.  (I first heard this story in an interview with Sarah Lewis (4). Lewis is an art historian and professor. She’s Black. Charles, in this story, is White. Later, I searched for Lewis’ written version of the story.)

So Charles hears this musician there on the street. Lewis writes that, “The trumpet player, a jazz musician, performed largely with his eyes closed, sounding out notes, ideas, laments, sonnets that had never before existed…His music sounded like an utter transcendence.” Charles is listening there on the street with his buddy who was a “good ole’ boy” from Austin High. His friend also senses the power of this music and the way it “rumbled the ground underneath him,” as Lewis put it. His friend finally shakes his head, Lewis writes, “as if clearing it and as if prying himself out of a trance.”  The friend mutters a racial epithet and walks away.  Charles, meanwhile, continues listening and becomes certain that he was in the presence of a genius.  Indeed he was: The trumpet player was 30 year old Louis Armstrong. 

In that moment, the music cracks something in Charles’ mind or heart: As Lewis explained it, here you’ve got this teenage White kid who, up until this point, thinks the whole segregated world around him is set up correctly and he sees genius in this Black man on the street.  It is beyond words.  Sarah Lewis calls the music, and this beauty, an “asthetic force.” It completely blew Charles’ mind. It turned him upside down and changed his life trajectory. Some years later, after law school, he went on to work with Thurgood Marshall (the first Black supreme court justice) to write the winning brief in Brown vs. the Board of Education (which led to desegregation of schools.)  And, apparently, every year until he died, he hosted a Louis Armstrong listening night.

I don’t want to get too far away from our bible story, but, I can’t help but wonder if Mary pouring that nard out was as arresting of a moment as this one on the street corner in Austin.  

It turns out that beauty not only gets us out of ourselves, it can blow our minds and change us.  Sarah Lewis said that beauty “slips in the back door of our rational thought and gets us to see the world differently.” Just when we think we’ve got it all figured out, Beauty can zoom us out. We see a bigger world than our small minds. We see systems and connections. Beauty unselfs us.

In her book, The Unseen Truth (5),” Lewis wrote about the way James Baldwin had said that artistic photographs could change people.  People didn’t understand at the time.  But, it proved true: the “asthetic force” of photos changed people.  There were pictures of the civil rights movement, or of the war in Vietnam—often with their jarring, painful beauty--that were transformative. There was that gorgeous photo, “The Blue Green Marble” taken in 1972 of our planet earth hanging there in the darkness of space.  The beauty of that photo astonished, dazzled and shocked us. It blew our minds. It catalyzed movements.  

It is not so much what beauty is, but what it does to us. 

That evening, long ago in ancient Galilee, What did the beauty of the scent of nard, and the moral beauty of Mary’s gift of service, do to the people gathered there? What does it do to us?  

That moment there mattered—Jesus told Judas as much.  Did it crystalize the truth that Jesus’ message and life was bigger than the individual moment? That God’s goodness would liberate people—all people—from bondage? That even in the midst of selfish, horrific, greedy and sinful systems, that love would prevail? Did beauty convict them? Give them courage? As the events of the terrible next week would unfolded starting with Jesus magnificent ride through the waving palms and then, in the terror of his arrest and crucifixion, the scent of that gift of nard would linger on Jesus body and in Mary’s hair. Would the beauty continue to remind them all of God’s goodness, dream and aliveness even when all seemed lost?  Did beauty change them? give them courage? Commitment? Connection? I wonder.

“Give the people bread, but give them roses.”  Seek beauty out, let it soften your spirits and inspire your actions.  Fight for it. Open yourselves to it. Slow down for it. Search for it in the biggest and smallest places: in the sunsets, and the speeches, and the paintings, and the spring season that is coming back to life.  For beauty leads us to see ourselves and the world differently. More than that—it leads us to—live differently.

1. Awe, 2023, Dacher Keltner

2. I read about Iris Murdoch in Naomi Klein's book, Doppleganger, 2023.

3. Awe, 2023, Dacher Keltner

4. Sarah Lewis interviewed by Anna Deavere Smith. March 26, 2014. LIVE from the New York Public Library.

5. The Unseen Truth, 2024, Sarah Lewis, and https://timesensitive.fm/episode/sarah-lewis-on-aesthetic-force-as-a-path-toward-justice/ 

A shelter of grace (2.23.25)

Luke 6:27-38

Deep in Central Mexico in a mountainous state called Tlaxcala, there is a small Roman Catholic Parish called the Sagrada Familia. Sacred Heart.  The church is white stucco and situated right in the middle of an average neighborhood surrounded by white stucco homes with their walled in yards.  Behind the church is a giant paved courtyard. Part of the yard is covered by a corrugated tin roof as a shelter from the sun. (At that high altitude, with those bright blue skies, the sun can be fierce.)  There’s a chicken coop in the corner with rabbits and hens and a small office nearby with mostly things like acetaminophen, aloe vera, and Band-Aids.  There’s humble bunk room next to the kitchen with a few dozen bunks.  Though some nights there are far more people in the shelter than beds. On the bright orange wall of the courtyard, near the small soccer court, there is a painted phrase that reads,

“nada te turbe, 
nada te pase. 
Todo le pasa-- 
Dios no se muda. 
la paciencia todo lo alcanza, 
quiene a dios tiene, 
nada le falta. 
Solo dios basta.”

St. Theresa of Avila wrote these words in the 16th century, and later, the Taize community in Eastern France later made them into a song: 

Nothing can trouble, 
nothing can frighten, 
those who seek God shall never go wanting. 
Nothing can trouble, 
nothing can frighten. 
God alone fills us.

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This short little verse gives some context for how Jesus is speaking in our gospel reading today.  Last week we heard the words that came right before this where Jesus says “blessed are you who are hungry for you will be filled.” “Blessed are you who weep for you will laugh.”  Jesus offered all the folks there listening to him blessings. He wanted them to live lives of contentment, wholeness and even joy.  And in the case of his bedraggled followers, there with him, he taught them how they can hold onto peace and even joy, while the world around them is swirling with judgement, animosity, contempt and violence. 

When someone is cruel to you, oh, how it can feel good to be cruel back. When someone is judgmental, it can feel so good to put them in their place. When someone is hateful, compassion and mercy can be the farthest things from our minds. But Jesus is teaching those listening of a different path. 

This is not the first time Jesus has taught a way of living that goes against the grain.  A few weeks ago, we heard the story where he rooted back into the books of Isaiah and Leviticus to remind us that just when the world is quick to rank some people as worth more than others, we remember that is not true. All people are beloved to God, no one is more important than the other. Full stop.

This week, Jesus lays out another challenge to his followers: “if you love those who love you,” he says “what grace is that?”  It’s almost like he said, “Come on now, it’s easy to love people who love you back! It’s easy to lend money to someone you know will pay you back!”  You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours!  Quid pro quo.

That kind of love and lending is a transaction. It means that what you’re going to do is going dictate how I’m going to act.  Your behavior is going to have an outsized influence on mine: If you’re hateful, I’ll be hateful. If you’re judgmental, I’ll be judgmental. Now, if you’re grateful and humble, lovely! I’ll be kind to you. But if you are my enemy? …I’ll be yours.

The challenge is to love people who we don’t like. To love, even, our enemies.

*******

The cement courtyard in that church shelter butts right up against the train tracks where a freight train barrels through the Mexican countryside, it’s dozens of cars long. As it approaches at full speed, 
the ground trembles. It slows a little in this small town of Apizaco where the tracks turn and people hop off to spend a night in this shelter. The people who cling to the top of this train hitching a ride call it la bestia.  They ride that train up from Chiapas and come from many places: Tegucigalpa, San Pedro Sula, Caracas, Managua.  Once, I met a man and his son there who were from Iran.  But one thing holds true: 
they all need shelter and a safe place to spend the night.  

I’ve never been in need of that kind of physical shelter. My life has been uniquely easy, even profoundly easy in many ways. Yes, I’ve needed shelter from a rainstorm, but I’ve not experienced that kind of desperation where I’ve not been sure where I’ll sleep. 

That said, I have had moments in life where I’ve needed other types of shelter. I think we’ve all have.  Think of the shelter of a parent that nurtures his child, like a hen gathering you under her wings. Or, the the shelter of a friendship that protects you and listens to you when you feel misunderstood or lost or the shelter and relief of companionship when you’re alone. Think of the shelter of someone who helped you when things went off the rails in your lives or the shelter of forgiveness when we’ve made a mistake. 

Sometimes we need spiritual shelter.  Maybe you’ve read headlines that shout that pieces of your identity and who you love are unlovable. Maybe you’ve heard that how you were made was a mistake. Maybe you’ve heard a few too many messages that that the amount of melanin in your skin determines the amount of love and honor you deserve.  Maybe the barrage of hatred makes you feel like you’re not wanted in this country—or your own country--or anywhere; and you find a spiritual shelter in knowing that all of who you is fearfully and wonderfully made, wanted, honored and loved by God. 

We all need a shelter of grace.

But what about a shelter for someone you don’t like? Or that you despise?

When I zoom out, I can see that, our best shelter is the radical, steadfast, healing love, that Jesus speaks of here.  It is a forgiving love. It is a love that acknowledges one another’s humanity. It is a shelter of grace.
This kind of shelter is easiest to offer to someone we love or even like.  Offering this kind of gracious shelter to our enemies is very hard.

Shockingly, Jesus says, "God is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked." That's a tall order if we’re supposed to emulate that. This kind of love is a little maddening. It might even seem dumb or foolish because the world doesn’t exactly run on grace.  Returning hatred with vengeance or contempt is a lot more common and mainstream.   But as Theresa of Avila wrote, don’t let this hate trouble you, don’t let it frighten you, (don’t respond to it, let it shape your behavior), find your fullness in God.  

A shelter of grace. 

But a shelter of grace for our enemy?  Is that wise? 

There’s a lot of talk of ideological enemies these days or foes.  I’m not suggesting that we simply shrug and roll with an opinion that challenges your convictions.  I am not saying that you shouldn’t feel upset or angry about other’s differences or offer this forgiving shelter to someone who has shown exceptional personal evil to you, (in that case, someone else needs to take that baton instead of you).

Instead, I am saying, that we aren’t to participate in this conventional pattern of contempt and tit-for-tat. We’re to step out of the ring. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, once wrote that we are to be “to be God’s question mark against the conventional wisdom of the age.”  The large scale problems that we face as humanity will not be solved in isolation. We have to find a shelter of forgiveness where we find our fullness in God that pulls us out of this pattern where we slug each other.

Michael Curry, former national bishop of the Episcopal church once said that “trying to make meaningful progress when contempt controls the discussion…is like trying to grow a plant in radioactive soil.” 
In this shelter, we grow in our relationships and understanding. With hope, we will even grow towards solutions. So, the very act of refusing to return violence with violence or judgement with judgement is a method of resisting a world bent on vengeance, judgement and self-righteousness. 

******

Today, we will celebrate the baptism of little M. Baptism is many things: it is freedom and forgiveness in God. It is this physical expression of God’s grace, it is this sacrament where we learn and know that we are so beloved to God and sheltered in God’s keeping.  Baptism is also an on-ramp to a certain kind of lifestyle that is characterized by love, compassion, nonviolence, generosity and forgiveness.  As Christians, we do not anchor ourselves to vengeance, contempt or judgement, but to love. 

(Honestly, anyone who thinks that following Christ is an easy, tame project needs to read these words of Jesus again.)  Jesus commands us to love our enemies, this is not a friendly suggestion of his. This is our obligation as disciples. 

We do this, not so that God blesses us.  God doesn’t work that way. Of course God blesses us, but God blesses us because that’s who God is, not because we did the right thing and got a prize. 

To that end, when Jesus says, at the end of our reading that, “A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.”  This is the promise: that just when we’ve run dry, that just when the life will be drained out of us, just when we’ve been consumed by contempt God will find us, fill us, shelter us, heal us.

When Jesus had died on the cross, God could have destroyed everyone with vengeance. But God doesn’t respond that way. God responds with love. God responds and resists, and raises Jesus from the dead. 
And this is the pattern: grace upon grace a pattern, a movement, a way of God that draws us to shelter, that mends that which has ruptured that fills those who are emptied, that bring life from places we were convinced were dead. And we’re called to participate.

Little M., we are here to live this call with you, what a time to be baptized, what a gift to all of us to participate today.  God bless you on this occasion of your baptism and may God hold you close today and always.

Dial up the Light, Jesus' inaugural message (1.26.25)

Luke 4:14-20

1 Corinthians 12:12-31

 This season of Epiphany is the time of our church year that takes us from the birth of Jesus all the up to Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent.  Epiphany starts with the Magi who follow the star and then into the very early days of Jesus ministry where he changes water to wine, calls his disciples on the shores of the beach, and shares his very first words with his followers. 

Something about this season always seems to be in step  with lengthening of the winter days: Every day is just a little longer and there’s just a little more light.   Each gospel passage we hear dials up the light just a little brighter.  

Today, we hear these very first recorded words of Jesus in his ministry. This is his inaugural speech.  With these words, he sets a vision, clarifies his priorities, and explains the scope of what he has set out to do. 

We had a presidential inauguration last week.  Inaugural addresses are important.  Words matter because they have the power to shape the world around us. In the case of a presidential inauguration, the words that are shared set a vision for our country clarify our priorities. they influence action.

 160 years ago President Abraham Lincoln spoke in his second inauguration speech about the need to resolve both the civil war and it’s evil cause of slavery.  He spoke about how both sides of the North and South were to blame for that sin of slavery. He spoke to two sides that had been enmeshed in brutal violence and called for peace, self-reflection and forgiveness.  His speech was short--not more than seven minutes--but it set the tone for the direction the country would take. Inaugural speeches always set the tone and inspire action. But regardless of who the leader is, we as people of faith stay close to God’s word, God’s story and lock into the values born out of God’s goodness. 

In the case of Jesus’ inaugural words, he roots down into scripture and into his tradition to explain his extraordinary mission.  He reads from Isaiah which harkened back to the law from Leviticus 25 where God will look to bring about the well-being of the community, specifically economic well-being. These words that Jesus read from Isaiah click right into one of the overarching themes of the bible: That folks who aren’t highly esteemed that those folks who don’t have access to the levers of the economy, that the people who face social obstacles that prevent them from getting a leg up, that all of these folks (the poor, the oppressed, the brokenhearted) are given special status in the heart of God.  (1)

Often, very often, scripture refers to these folks as a trinity: Look after the widows, the orphans, and the foreigners the bible reminds us.(2) In the ancient world, these were the folks—widows, orphans and foreigners (or immigrants) who happened to face tremendous challenges to survive and much less get ahead. These were the folks on the very bottom rung. And, for some reason, these are the people that God holds especially close to the divine heart.  

In his inaugural address, Jesus starts here.  But this is not an easy place to start. 

300 years before Christ, Plato taught in Athens that people were inherently unequal.  Some people were just more valuable than others, he explained.  Some are good at leading, thinking, math, philosophizing, and, some are not. If you’re good at it, you should get your just due. If, Plato would have said, you’re taking care of children, or laboring in the field, or doing something else, then you should also get your just due.  

His philosophy went deeper: Some people, he explained, are more important than others: Some people, are men, some are…not.  Some are free, some are enslaved.  What was important, he taught, was to make sure that everyone got their just due. In fact, that was justice.

This view held for millennia. Google it. It undergirded feudalism (peasants were, of course, less important than lords and ladies.) It justified the slave trade and expansion into the Americas. This way of categorizing and ranking people held for generations. It worked its’ way into our psyche as humanity. Around 1700, when western thinkers began to question this, they appealed to an unexpected source: the bible.  (3) Turns out, some of the earliest critiques of Plato’s philosophy come from scripture.   In our reading from 1 Corinthians, St. Paul writes of the care and honor all the parts of the body merit. In Galatians, he writes that writes that there is neither "Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, all are one in Christ Jesus." 

Jesus challenges this view many places in scripture  saying that all those that are broken, heavy laden, burdened and oppressed are particularly held close in the heart of God. These barriers that categorized people and assigned different rank and value to folks, are vanquished in Christ. But that doesn’t mean the categories are gone. Some ways of thinking are hard to root out.  For some reason, we still hang onto this idea that some people are more valuable than others. It is our faith that pulls us back like a magnet to the truth that all people, and even and particularly the vulnerable and forgotten, are beloved to God.

This is our charge from Jesus inaugural words: We are to pour love into siblings in need.  We are to build what Jesus called the Kingdom of God or as MLK put it, “the beloved community.” We are to witness to the light of Jesus.   Sadly though, this call to radical love doesn’t always find room in our hearts. It can be crowded other things:

1. By selfishness—an unwillingness to share, or a hyper focus on ourselves and my success, my problems, my worries.  This blocks us from loving. Jesus read verses about economic justice which cut deep enough for some folks, that in the next bible scene, we read that some of the listeners were deeply offended and even furious. Sometimes, we convince ourselves that sharing will set us back.

2. Sometimes the barrier to following this call to radical love is cynicism:  we think that nothing we do is ever going to make a difference, so why bother?

3. Another thing  that can keep us from radical love is if we don’t like the people we’re supposed to love.  What if the people who suffer and are close to God’s heart voted for someone different that I did?  What if it’s a family member who is vulnerable, down on their luck, impoverished,  but is also just plain old mean and so hard to love?  Loving people even when they infuriate us and disappoint us and offend us—that is so hard. And there is no other answer than to disciple ourselves just do it. Thankfully, Jesus also announces in this reading that he is the fulfillment of this scripture. And we are not.

As I close I want to tell you a story from civil rights leader, Vincent Harding.  At some point Harding told a story about a conversation he had in a hard neighborhood in Boston with a young man named Darryl.  Darryl told Vincent that he felt like he was operating in a situation that, as he put it, was just “very, very dark.” He mentioned to Vincent that what he and his friends needed were, as he put it, some “sign posts to show them the way.” Some “lights shining out from other people’s lives” that would help them. Vincent was struck by the conversation and called these “live human signposts.” 

He said that these human signposts would actually, stand there in the darkness and not run away from those who were hurting. In these shadowy times, he said, “we have to open up lights in the darkness.   We have to be candles and signposts in the shadows” for each other, for those around us. 

Earlier this week, I was talking with some church leaders  about this moment in our society.  I have to admit that there have been moments in the last week when I have felt heartsick about the news.  

These church leaders and I talked about how it feels like things are breaking and that there are real human beings sitting there on the sharp edges of things as they splinter.  And those folks  are the vulnerable people that Jesus called us to: there are migrants. There are queer youth. 

God cares about the folks on the sharp edges. 

As I was talking with these LMC leaders, one ventured: “Maybe we could make a statement as a church about where we stand.” Maybe.  Maybe we will make a statement. But, in the meantime, the truth is that you all are the church’s greatest statement.  You are this statement through the way you interact with people, through the grace you show in your daily lives, through your insistence in getting out of yourselves to serve. The spirit of God moves among us and by God’s mysterious grace and prodding. You are the living signposts that go out into the world. You are the ones, with humility and integrity, to dial up the light. You are the ones to take Jesus  inaugural words to heart, to match his tone, to follow his lead, to act on his words that call us to bind up the brokenhearted, to free the captives, to bring Good news to the poor, to comfort the mourning. By the grace of God,  as it has been for ages with the church: you are the ones who are called to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with God.

Jesus ministry was that of radical, inclusive, restorative love for all people and that kind of love doesn’t mess around. it is hard. This same holy love is alive around us today calling us to be the body of Christ and extend our hands into the world.  I know that these are unusual times that we are living in but take heart and heed the call to reflect God’s light into the world and dial up the light. For love—love will show us the way.

(1) "Isaiah Westminster Bible Companion 44-66" Walter Bruggeman

(2) (A couple examples: Duet 10:14-19: Zech 17:10; Ex 22:21:24: Deut 26:12; Deut 27:19)

(3)  leaned on analysis by Scott Black

A message about quirky angles and being God's favorite

Luke 1:26-38

"Greetings, favored one, the Lord is with you" (v. 28)

Isaiah 43:1-7

"When you pass through the waters I will be with you, and throught he rivers, they shall not overwhelm you...because you are precious in my sight and honored and I love you." (v. 2, 4)

At the beginning of creation, according to the Genesis story, the cosmos was a dark, empty void until God began to put things to order.   First, there’s light, then seas, then earth, and plants and creatures, and at the end of each day, God took stock and nodded affirmatively: “this was good.”  Finally, a human was created and God stretched in delight and said, “Oh yes. This time, it’s not just good.  It’s really good.”

But then, God says, “wait!! Something is not good here.”

The ancient story explains that after unsuccessful attempts to befriend the animals, the first human had grown terribly lonely. Upon realizing this, God reflected and said, “ahh, this is not good. It’s not good for them to be alone.” 

And out of this first human, God disentangled a help-mate, carved out a partner, sussed out a friend and made two people.  The Hebrew language explains that this person is a counterpart to another and the one to stand opposite. They are the one who won’t turn away when others do. They are someone to challenge you, listen to you, and be with you.  

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There’s an old midrash that imagines that at the end of these humans’ first day in Eden, as the dusk crept in and then darkness began to fall, Adam (human #1) starts to grow alarmed. As the sunlight fades and shadows descend, he starts to panic and then cry in desperation. Eve (human #2) hears him and comes to him. They sit there together weeping through the night convinced it must be the end of the world.  As the endless hours creep by, they are astonished, finally, to see the horizon come into focus and then the dawn brighten as the light returns.  The ancient story says that they learn two things that night:

1. The natural rhythm of the world is that of darkness to light and to darkness to light, and around and around, and so on.

2. They learn to ask: “Who will sit with you and weep with you and worry with you in the night?  Who will challenge you and help you imagine? Who will be with you? (1)

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I want you to hold this story and these questions as we turn to our gospel story today which takes place in ancient Nazareth, with a young woman named Mary, and a visit from the angel, Gabriel.  

Any time an angel steps into a story you know that things are about to go a little outré and Gabriel does not disappoint. He skips straight into left field with his report that Mary shall bear a child and his name shall be Jesus.  (Honestly, this had to have been terrible news.  She’s an young, unwed, woman and this is about to get very complicated for both her and her fiancée, Joseph.)  As she takes it in, I imagine the sun beginning to set. As night descends around her, does she wonder:

Who will sit with her? 
who will weep with her? 
who will worry with her?  
Who will be with her?

Maybe Gabe stayed for hours with Mary trying to help her understand the details, the story doesn’t say. To his credit, Gabriel does entertain a couple of Mary’s questions which is more than I can say for his last earthly visit to the mortal, Zachariah, who he struck dumb for trying to clarify a few things. 

As Gabriel starts wrapping it up and preparing to leave, I imagine Mary standing there with her eyes wide. She wrings her hands as she watches him pack up his scrolls. He test-flaps his wings a few times, and glances over at her desperate face. 

“All right, look” he says adjusting his halo. “I know this news is tough. Crazy even.  I don’t write the storyline, I just deliver the messages.”

“But,” and he hops on the windowsill preparing to take off, “let me remind you of this:” He pulls a shining nugget out of his robe pocket and places it in Mary’s palm. 

“Remember, you are highly favored. (verse 28a). 

Remember God is with you (verse 28b). 
Remember, you’re highly favored (verse 31).”  

And with that he takes off.  As he swoops out into the night, he looks back, cups his hands around his mouth and shouts:  “Did I tell you you’re highly favored?! Blessed! Loved! Precious in God’s sight?! Don’t forget it!” His voice echos in the night as he swoops off like a Marvel character.

*********

If I were to write a job description for angels, or perhaps just Gabriel, it would be something like this:

1. Shock mortals with sensational news. Use whatever means necessary, burning bushes, choirs of heavenly hosts singing gloria in excelsis deo, rolling stones away, etc. Whatever it takes.
   
   
2.  Remind mortals not to be afraid. Expect them to constantly freak out and think the world is ending. Tell them: don’t be afraid, rinse and repeat, don’t be afraid…
   
   
3. Push mortals to get creative. Have fun with it!  (ie. how do you baptize an Ethiopian man in the desert with no water?) 
   
   
4. Throw mortals into the boxing ring when their ethics are questionable (ie, wrestle with Jacob until he cries uncle, admits to his sneaky ways, and agrees to meet with his twin brother Esau).
   
   
5. Force mortals to hang out with people who are not like minded because it’s good for them (ie. make the fancy-pants Cornelius, invite the blue collar Apostle Peter over for dinner).
   
   
6. Show mortals obvious things that help them out of binds (ie. when Hagar, is parched and withering out there in the desert, point out the well that she’s leaning against that is full of water
   
   
7. Finally, remind mortals they are favored, beloved, precious in God’s sight, etc. etc. Loop that as many times as necessary (like, a bazillion times).

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Angels remind people they are a blessing and that they matter. Their presence clears the air. Their words inspire strength. Their challenges force growth. Their message calls folks to imagine new things.

And here’s the thing: It’s not only are the angels who are imbued with these sacred purposes and callings. All of us are.  

I can stand up here and remind you that you’re a blessing.  You can hear how the angels did this in scripture.  And also, you can do this for each other.  For it is not good for us to be alone.

Gabriel effectively passed the baton to Mary’s cousin, Elizabeth, in this story.  After this news descends on Mary and the shadows lengthen, she seeks out an earthly angel to support her: her cousin Elizabeth who showers her with encouragement and support. Elizabeth takes one look at Mary after she comes running to visit and exclaims, “Blessed are you!” (Well done, Elizabeth.) Mary stays for three months and I’m pretty sure Elizabeth reminded her of this Good News every morning and especially every evening as the sun began to set. 

We are meant to be good to each other.   When shadows lengthen in the garden and darkness falls, we need each other. We are meant to sit with one another, weep together and worry with each other in the night. We are meant to channel our inner angels: To remind each other of our blessedness and to lift one another’s spirits. 

If you happen to be feeling pretty certain of your blessedness today, for heaven’s sake, go and find someone else who needs to hear of their own beloveness and tell them, because I promise you, someone needs to hear it. (This world is ruthless.) Let that person who needs to hear your words of blessing pull you out of the trap of thinking only of yourself and your problems and your issues. Go and sit with them in the garden as night falls. Tell them with words. Show them with listening. Tell them by bringing a casserole. Show them by hanging out with them, or checking up on them, or encouraging them, or donating blood for them in the basement after church today. Show them by supporting their housing costs to live here at church.  Remind them: you are a blessing.

And then, receive that Good News from someone.  For you, too, are a blessing. 

And then, remind the next person, 
and receive it from the next, 
and bless the one after, 
and receive from the next, 
and give it 
and receive it, 
and round and round, 
on and on, 
as the sun rises and sets, 
grace upon grace, 
Word made flesh.

(I) I first heard of this Mirash from Rabbi Sharon Braus

Holding on to Hope: A message for dear P. on this occasion of your baptism

Mark 13:1-8 

Our story today begins in the midst of desolation.  

In the year 70, the Romans torched the temple in Jerusalem. Really, it’s staggering how they pulled off such a level of destruction. Herod the great (father of Herod Antipas—the one who features in the Passion story) had started extensive renovations on the temple before Jesus was born. Herod envisioned that the temple would be both a house of prayer for folks from all over and also a tourist attraction. Mission accomplished as the temple was spectacular. The outside of it was covered in gold plates and it was said that at sunrise, the gleaming reflection was like the very sun itself.  

The temple was built of massive stone blocks that weighed many tons each.  The prophet Haggi recorded that stone upon stone the temple had once been rebuilt after the exiled Jews returned from Babylonia.  Generations later, Jesus prophesied that not a stone upon a stone would remain. By the time St. Mark would record Jesus’ words a lifetime later, the beautiful city, and temple with it, would be destroyed.  

The gospel of Mark was written after this destruction—or maybe even during it.  It may have been that Mark himself lived in Rome. Several decades after the death of Jesus, the emperor Nero had assumed the throne of the Roman empire. History remembers the Nero as a maniac and as a selfish and tyrannical ruler. Roman senators described him as greedy and debaucherous. Under his rule, chaos was rampant with massacrers, violence and destruction.

When the city of Jerusalem was overtaken by the Roman armies around the year 70, the temple was looted, ignited, and destroyed.  On the other side of the sea, Rome itself was on fire. The stench of death was in the air; and, in the middle of all of this, Christians recorded the story of Jesus in the gospel of Mark. 

When Mark wrote this gospel, it must have been as if the old, steady and trusted world was vanishing before everyone’s very eyes and as they squinted into the future, they couldn’t quite see the shape of what was coming at them. Whatever it was, seemed like a threat. (1)

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Have you ever felt like you can’t wrap your head around what is unfolding? It’s as though reality doesn’t match your expectations.  “Things,” you say to yourself, “were not supposed to be this way.“

Maybe it’s meta—like we see in the gospel of Mark—and as you watch the story of a people, a culture, and a nation unfolding, it makes you gasp for air.

Or, maybe it’s personal: How could your family struggle like this? Or, you weren’t supposed to feel so alone or blindsided. Or, how could you have been rejected like that or have failed before you even got your foot in the door? 

Things weren’t supposed to turn out this way. As you try to wrap your head around it all, it’s like you’re grasping at sand.

Six hundred years before Christ, the prophet Jeremiah wrote:

I looked on the earth, and it was complete chaos,
    and to the heavens, and they had no light.
I looked on the mountains, and they were quaking,
    and all the hills moved to and fro.
I looked, and there was no one at all,
    and all the birds of the air had fled.
I looked, and the fruitful land was a desert,
    and all its cities were laid in ruins before the Lord

The gospel of Mark feels these words of Jeremiah deep in its’ bones and takes us right into the unsteady middle of it. In Mark, we’re plopped right into the rubble and the pain where we find ourselves sitting with our head in our hands. The community that wrote this gospel story down tells it from the bleakest of places and we have to transport ourselves there and listen from a place of our own bleakness. Or, if we’re not desperate ourselves, we must listen to the story right alongside the one who is barely hanging on.

Listening carefully, we recognize that old story of Jesus. It is a spark that glows deep down in the fractures of our hearts, the watery shadows of our souls, and in the ripped social fabric around us.  

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I wish I knew more about those early Christian communities that recorded this gospel. What were those people like? You know, the ones that kindled that spark in the shadowiest of times? We have the letters that Paul wrote to some of them which offer some clues about the type lives they tried to lead. In one of those letters, Paul counseled them: “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you look to the interests of the others.

The letters and gospel stories of these very, very early Christians survive them. We know that these folks were tenacious people and imperfect. We know that they weren’t so powerful by worldly standards, but we know that they tried to walk in the way of love.

How did that spark burn, in such times of desolation?

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In June of 2020, a colleague of mine, Ingrid, who pastors a church in North Minneapolis told a story of a man named Brian Dragonfly.  Brian approached her in the days of unrest in North Minneapolis after the murder of George Floyd.  He was an employee of the indigenous organization MIGIZI that had a building across the alley from the church and the day he came to her, he carried a lantern that was lit with fire.  MIGIZI, had recently finished constructing their new building. Luckily, it survived the first night of unrest in North Minneapolis. But, the second night, in spite of so much goodwill and effort, no one could stop the fire from spreading to MIGIZI’s building and it burned. The structure--and much of what was inside--was destroyed.  

When Brian had arrived that morning at the site he found the fire still smoldering. Standing there, he told Pastor Ingrid, “I decided to capture the fire,” and he held up his flickering lantern.  He asked her if the congregation might help them tend the fire and keep it until they could rebuild.  He thought that the fire might bring some comfort to his community.  Ingrid dipped a candle into the lantern and later wrote of the conversation and hope they shared: that out of this ashy moment there might someday be an opportunity for new life. 

It was as if the old world, the one they trusted was vanishing before their very eyes. And they couldn’t quite see the shape of what was coming at them, It seemed like a threat. How could they hold out hope for new life?

“We will tend the fire with you,” Pastor Ingrid said.

The prophet Isaiah wrote:

“do not remember the former things 
nor consider the things of old. 
I am about to do a new thing; 
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” 

Then Jesus said,  
nation will rise against nation, 
and kingdom against kingdom; 
there will be earthquakes in various places; 
there will be famines. 
This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.”

Where there is loss, there is a promise of restoration. Where there is death, there are birth pangs, and the promise of new life. And as we walk towards life and salvation, we tend the flame that sparks in even the shadowiest corners; and somehow in that shadow, God is mysteriously with us. Tending the flame and holding on to hope, albeit with our laments and griefs and struggles on our lips, is part of who we are as people of faith.

***************

Ancient baptism, and baptism today, was the initiation into a community that proclaims the way (John 14:6), and the path to a better world. Something about this way seems unexpected and reversed. While it might seem like force or domination should win, in this way of Jesus, love has the final say.  It is a way that is characterized not by power over, but power alongside.

Hannah sang of reversal in her song we heard today when she proclaimed that the bows of the mighty might be broken to pieces, that those who have stumbled might be now strong. 

Mary riffed on Hannah’s song generations later and sang of this God who cast the mighty down from their thrones, who filled the bellies of the hungry with good things. 

Baptism brought folks and brings folks formally into a community that proclaims this Way characterized by mercy, generosity, companionship and love. The way can be tough and when the night seems endless, we keep our eyes set on the long view of God’s shalom.  We witness with hope to love that struggles to be born in our midst and, you better believe we hold the flame close.

To P., and all our youth that are gathered here around you on this very special day:  I wish I could promise you that everything in your life is going to be okay.  I wish I could tell you that the good and honorable people will always win, and that hatred and division will cease to be. I wish I could soften hardened hearts and eliminate all the bombs and machines of war and greed and selfishness with the snap of my fingers. I wish I could tell you that life with your family will always be easy and that our society will always work together to seek out the collective good.  I wish I could tell you that all of your friends, especially the nerd kids, the queer kids, the awkward kids, and the worried kids, that they’re all going to be okay. I wish I could snuff out anything that might cause you despair or hopelessness or anguish. I wish I could make sure your hearts will never break on this mysterious journey of life that we are on.  

But I can’t.  

The truth is that in this life, P., and all of you, there will be moments that unfold that make you feel unsteady. There will be times of profound disappointment. At times, you’ll feel afraid.  There will be durations where it feels like the world as you know it is vanishing  and the future before you is unclear. 

But just like the prophets before us, just like Jesus and the ancestors of our faith who wrestled for that blessing, we will hold onto that promise that God will make all things new and that God will wipe every tear from our eyes (Rev.21:4). That God will be with us, just as sure as the morning sun rises and just as true as God is here with us right now.

The path and the pattern of Jesus is never promised to be easy, but it is true. And as we walk—whether in the wilderness or the promised land--we will practice the way of generosity, forgiveness, compassion and love and we will reach for a world where all people are cherished—in fact, we will create it.

Our story begins in the midst of desolation.
Our story begins when we turn towards each other.
Our story begins as we step out together in God’s love.

(1) I have heard Walter Bruggeman speak about this idea. He also explores it in his book "The Prophetic Imagination."

Unsettling Tenderness

Acts 10

In my last pastor job before I came to Luther Memorial, I coordinated a young adult international service program through the Lutheran church that was based in Mexico City.  In this position, we lived in Mexico City and we placed young adults in social service agencies for a year of service. We were always on the lookout for new placement sites and over time, we formed relationships with a couple of great shelters for migrants where our volunteers served.  

Given the nature of things around 10-12 years ago, immigration was becoming an increasingly contentious and politicized issue.  The more our young adult volunteers learned about it, the more fired up they became; and their newsletters home to their sponsoring communities began to show it.  Not all the sponsoring congregations shared the same passion for immigration that these young people did.  In some cases, both sides dug their heels in.  

Each winter, Omar and I traveled with the young adults up from Mexico City to the US/Mexico border for a week long retreat.  We stayed in Tucson and spent time on both sides of the border learning about things.  We met with non-profits, churches, and public defenders.  We also met with the DEA and the Border Patrol.  Before meeting with a group we might be quite ideologically different from, and particularly when we went into the actual the border patrol station and detention facility, I would gather my group around me and say, “Look, you may walk into this place with strong opinions, but we are here to learn and we must be open-hearted and respectful.” And they were. (if you know me, you’ll know I was saying this as much to myself as to them).

On one hand, the border patrol agents were what our group expected: they supported the policies and procedures that our young people thought were oppressive.  But what always caught our group off guard was realizing that many of these folks were often profoundly compassionate and had saved more lives of people dying of dehydration than any of the rest of us and that they had all recovered countless bodies in the desert.  

What also caught our group off guard was that these agents were folks with families, making an honest living, coaching sports, going to PTA meetings. One year, I remember, we met with an agent who was single mom who told me, as we walked through the parking lot, that she had a teenage child who was struggling in high school.

Sure, we learned about border policies (and believe me, it was always eye-opining), but it was also a structured encounter with someone with a very different perspective and we would often leave with this unsettling tenderness for the person we had been with. 

Last week, I shared with you the story of the ancient pilgrimage ritual that people would participate in where they would climb the steps to the temple complex in Jerusalem and, after entering the doors, turn to the right and begin to process around the entire temple complex counterclockwise. 

After processing around, folks would then exit close to where they had entered.    Last week, I told you about the twist in the ancient writings: that if you happened to be a person who was suffering: a person who had experienced something awful, someone who was brokenhearted or in pain, you would walk through those same porticos, but instead of turning right with the masses, you would turn to the left and then process. As you walked against the current, people would meet you; and each person who passed would ask, “what happened?” And you would tell them of your worry or your pain and then receive their comfort and specifically, their blessing. 

There is another group mentioned in that text. Another group that must turn to the left with the broken and bereaved, the lost and the lonely, and walk against the current. That was the socially ostracized.  

Our world is so different to the world 2,000 ago.  At the time this Mishna was written, the “ostracized person” was considered to have endangered the community in word or action. They had to physically distance themselves from the rest of the community by 6 feet. Sharon Braus suggests that a contemporary analogy might be a person who is incarcerated here in our society today.

If you can let your imaginations zoom out a little to consider this gap between yourself and some other person who might be on the other side of The Breach: Some of us here in this room have experienced the cracking of our times. Maybe all of us have. we know folks who have different perspectives on science. People who have fractured with family members or friends.  In our congregation here, we have some level of ideological diversity and some occasional irritation with each other around a few things that are political, but we find our forward.  Sometimes, we even talk about it.  

But zooming out to folks who aren’t quite as homogenous we typically are, more and more, as we dig our heels in we see folks with different positions as not only impossible to understand but morally repugnant.

We do not want to bump into each other in the sacred circle.  Let alone bestow any unnecessary blessings…

First, we mark a boundary around how we’re different. Next, folks become ideological foes. Then, folks become existential threats. Rabbi Nachman of Breslov said, centuries ago, that “It's not hard work to distance yourself from another person. The real work is to draw him close and lift him up.”

In our bible reading from Acts today, you had two people, Peter and Cornelius, who were very different people. Peter was a Jew, from the working class, and observed certain customs and rituals that defined him.  He was a Jesus follower and had been in that room on the day of Pentecost when the Spirit had rushed in like a mighty wind and ignited tongues of fire on the heads of those gathered.

Cornelius was a gentile. He was a man of financial means, a military captain, and a man of great power and wealth. The two men were—by many measures—profoundly different.  

Peter has long standing boundaries that have been internalized since childhood. Yes, there are the dietary laws, customs, purity rituals, But there are also ideological differences.  Peter has experienced the ruling class to be oppressive.  Cornelius, however, has benefited from his status in society.  Though these two men are geographically close, in many ways, Peter and Cornelius are worlds apart and probably each comfortable in their group. On one hand, this isn’t a bad thing. We find meaning together and purpose, and a sense of belonging in our groups. But, the stronger those internal bonds are, the weaker the bonds can be to folks outside of our group.  

In the case of Peter and Cornelius, God steps in and orchestrates this meeting between them.  The bible story doesn’t detail their conversation but something in them certainly shifts and Peter famously realizes and then says that, “God shows no partiality.”  

As the story concludes, the Holy Spirit rushes in again and falls upon Cornelius and all the and the church begins to burst out into the world.  

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In that temple processional ritual, The ancients had a ritualized way of encountering one another that illustrated that we are bound up together.  All the folks entered into that holy temple. Everyone entered at the same gate.  Everyone circled.  And when people encountered each other, even those who ostracized or deemed to be a social hazard, people asked them, “what happened?” And all of them were blessed.

When I stood with my young adults in the parking lot out side of the border patrol station in the blazing Arizona sun, I said to them, “You can have your opinions. You can have your feelings. I’m not asking you to surrender them or even compromise. But we are here to learn. We are safe here and we are here to be curious.”

Many folks have said that curiosity is the birthplace of compassion. Research has shown that our stereotypes about people actually reinforce neural patterns in our brains.  We have these engrained neural paths in our thinking. When you are genuinely curious about a person you may hold a deep stereotype about that is like neurological off-roading in our brain because you are pushing off of those established pathways. Sharon Braus says that we “Need a spiritual rewiring that helps us see one another in our pain, fear, joy, yearning, humanity.”  

Thinking of that ancient pilgrimage circle, one rabbi reflected that “the hearts of the ostracized are blessed so that that he hearts of the community might open to them. So that the community might understand their anguish.”  So that everyone might understand.

This kind of vulnerable, open-hearted engagement is counter instinctual.  We are actually not wired this way. I’m not saying that each adversary is righteous.  But I am saying that we long for healed hearts and a healed world and that means there must be space for all of us. As St. Peter said there, face to face with his foe, Cornelius, “God shows no partiality.” God loves us all.

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Omar and I took groups back to that border station several times over the years we lived in Mexico.  By the time our last year rolled around and I reached out for a meeting for my group, I was told that they were no longer making appointments with community groups. And no, we were no longer welcome to visit the border patrol station.

It is not easy to find this kind of encounter. Maybe it’s easier for you than it is for me. Ideological bubbles are real, though we can challenge our stereotypes. We can also subtly train heart muscles, we can quietly fine-tune our ability to love, through small habits and practices that we repeat. We can train ourselves to see holiness in the random people we encounter in a day. In the grocery store, at the stoplight. We can open ourselves to curiosity and seek to learn about folks who are different from us. 

The rebuilding of our broken world—in fact, the redemption of creation--begins between you and me. Between you and the person bumping into you in the circle. It happens one relationship at a time. And, there is room for all of us.