When you lost more than you meant to

Luke 15:11b-32

One of the beauties of a story like the prodigal son is that there are notes that ring true across the generations.  We resonate. All of us have some awkwardness in our families—or a lot of it.  No family is without its’ drama. Many of us know what it is like to want to run away.  Some of us ran away as children (I marched off as far as the Sherman’s house next door before glancing behind me to see if my mother was watching.  She was). Some of us have run away quite happily and permanently as adults and we continue to keep our family distant. Or they keep us away.  

I’m guessing that all of us have had moments of serious annoyance with our parents—or anger?  I’m also guessing that many of us parents have faced moments where we truly have no idea what to do with our ridiculous children.

And then there are the siblings.  There is nothing quite like a sibling. If you don’t have one, it will take a person down the pew exactly 10 seconds to confirm that siblings are can be best and worst thing that can exist.  She may be your best friend. Or…your is she your arch enemy?

It’s kind of comforting to me that family dysfunction is a real theme in the bible.  Especially when the siblings get involved.  There’s the story where one of the famous biblical twins, Jacob, puts on a costume, fools dad who is half asleep and hornswoggles the inheritance out of him. His brother Esau is understandably enraged. 

There’s the bible story, where one brother, Joseph, gets a fancy new snazzy coat from his dad and the other siblings are so mad about it, they throw him in a pit. …I assume that’s the kind of thing that happens when you have eleven older brothers.  Martha, the sister of Mary, seethes in the kitchen washing dishes while her oblivious sister (who-never-picks-up-a-broom) is compared against her.

Interestingly, let’s just all take notice that the younger siblings sure get a lot of attention and extra TLC in these stories.  Moreover, not only are the younger kids the family favs, they’re also successful, handsome, smart, visionary, they have stunning portfolios, excellent business acumen and hundred dollar haircuts—these biblical babies are shining stars.  King David is the youngest of 7, King Solomon is the second son born to David and Bathsheba. Isaac, the beloved son of Sarah and Abraham, is younger than his brother Ishmael. No, I do not have a bone to pick with biblical birth order, I have a point to make. 

That when Jesus begins this oh-so-favorite parable with, “there was a man who had two sons…” that everyone in the audience around him comfortably settled into their seats because they knew their bible stories and they knew exactly how this story was going to turn out with the shining star youngest child.

Until the story went off the rails. 

When the younger son left home to see the world—which is, by the way, what young people do all the time these days, he had a lot of fun and then things went very bad. Burned the whole college fund, his whole inheritance, in riotous living. He’s greedy, and dumb and makes lots of bad choices.  Perhaps par for the course for many of us were also young and foolish when we first set out to conquer the world.

But while he may not have gained riches, he does seem to have gained wisdom—if we could call it that? (or sneakiness) and after he has lost it all, he returns home where dad, is overjoyed that his fav kid, the baby of the family, is home. All is forgiven. And his dad throws him an epic party. This is the part of the story where we point out that the older, workaholic brother is pouty and won’t forgive, and get over it, and come to the party.

*****

You know, Folks-stories grouped in trios have always been good at the plot twist.  Think of goldilocks and the three bears, the first two chairs were too big and too small, the first two bowls of porridge too hot and too cold. It’s always the third that is just right.  Same goes for the billy goats gruff, the three musketeers, the three three little pigs, Leave it to the third pig to build the house of of bricks, trick that wolf and get it right.  

In today’s story, told by Jesus in succession after 1. Lost sheep and 2. Lost coin, the rule of three does not disappoint. In the first of the 3 stories that we heard about last week, the shepherd goes out to look for his lost sheep and finds it.  In the second story, the woman turns the house over top to bottom looking for her lost coin. She finds it. In the third, the son that the dad goes looking for is not the merry prodigal son, who came home from his escapades with his tail between his legs.  The dad goes out to the field to search for the older son who he, scripture tells us, forgot to invite to the party.  (oops).

While I can affirm that there was something about the younger prodigal son that was most definitively lost, given the shape our world is in right now, the second half of the story has me thinking. 

You see, there is something very comfortable about having an enemy.  When we’re face to face with things stressing us out, it’s nice to know there’s someone to blame.  It’s a convenient to have a scapegoat.  It’s so nice, in fact that we are good at creating enemies. For example, there were a series of studies in the last few years that showed that when you tell folks in this country that technology and automation is taking jobs, people become more anti-immigrant.  Instead of directing their feelings of frustration towards the tech or the people who made the tech, people—across the political spectrum—direct their anger at a human scapegoat.  Because it’s nice to blame someone.

When the dad in this story leaves the prodigal party to look for his lost son in the field, he finds him, and his son lets loose. Years of resentment and family disfunction overflow. Before we jump to some kind of desire for everyone in this family to just hug it out, let’s acknowledge that no one in this room, right here today is a stranger to human dysfunction and even making enemies out of each other.  Whether it’s a parent that favors a certain child, or an inability to talk about why we are jealous or hurt or why we feel awkward or left out or scared, we all know that relationships can be a real mess.  And while sure, relationships can be bruised by misunderstandings, there’s also a lot of human sin like judgement, pride, and arrogance that can cut and wound them.

Here’s the thing that I could not stop thinking about this last week: the son (or both of the sons) are not the only thing that is lost in this story that Jesus tells. 

When we hurt each other, when we take advantage of each other, belittle one another, fail to appreciate one another or build each other up, when our ego is convinced of how blameless we are, we lose something. Something was lost in that field that day. We lose connection, trust, and accountability. We lose our sense of peace. 

Zoom out a little, and take a wider view of this dysfunction: when we get caught up in our money or our stuff, when we make each other the enemy, when we’re snide and disparaging, when we are judged by one another, addicted to cynicism, when we’re stingy and won’t share, when we are in need and there is nothing there for us, when we stop deeply caring about our neighbors, when the one who hurts is forgotten, something cracks. We lose something. Justice crumbles. We lose our vision of a world animated by God’s love.

If we are working to build this world that God calls us to, then we have got to take a look at what is getting in the way.   Sin isn’t some kind of rule that we break that we need to get punished for or get demerits for.  It’s something that robs us of the kingdom of God.  It closes our minds, it makes us not care, it hardens our hearts, it distracts us from what matters. And in the grip of dysfunction, we lose one another. We lose God.

Thankfully, the dad in today’s bible story had the foresight to realize that he had spaced on inviting his child to the party and he went to look for him. heaven only knows how long they stood there talking in that field, with the son, furious and spitting out the truth and his hurt. His dad tried. We got a little bit of the conversation. 

“Child!” the dad says to him. (It’s the same word that mother Mary cries out when she and Joseph finally find 12 year old Jesus who was lost in the temple. “Child!” She says to him, “we were so worried!”)

Faced with so much brokenness, we must wrestle back the tools that we need to get us to God.  We must wrestle back compassion, a desire to understand one another, a deep humility.  We must struggle to practice generosity and patience and forbearance. Even if we grit our teeth while we do it, we have to practice it like a muscle to make it stronger. We must wrestle back grace.  And you are the one that knows what this looks like in your own life. Because grace comes before change. And God has asked us to change this hurting world.

When we think about what kind of world we want to build—and we’re going to think more deeply about that as a congregation this fall—we know that we as humanity are not there yet.  

The poet Cleo Wade writes, 
we say to the world, ‘please change; we need change.’ 
But how do we show up to change in our own lives? 
How do we show up to change the lives of the people in our communities?

Something has been lost. There the dad and his son stand deep in conversation while the party music drifts down in to the field.  How do the two men resolve it? Well, Jesus doesn’t tell us. Given that you know this challenge as well as I, I guess I’ll say, How do we resolve it? What does that look like in your life? 

You tell me.  

The gift of friendship and a slice of cake

 John 14:15-21
I want you to take a moment and think about your friendships.  For some of you, you know exactly what I’m talking about with friends.  And you’re very jazzed to see them in school tomorrow! For others of you, these are the friends that live on the other side of your backyard fence, the people you sit next to at the little league game, the people in your water aerobics class. Maybe it’s a person you cross paths with weekly in a meeting.  There are also the people that you connect with once in a while for lunch, Or there are those friends who you’ve known for a long time that you don’t talk to often, but when you do, there is an ease that is almost supernatural. 

What is it that makes friendship so special? 

Journalist, Julie beck once wrote that, when people talk about their friends or with their friends, they are “their most generous, their funniest, and their most fascinating.” 

It seems like a lot of researchers focus on relationships we have with our parents or our romantic partners. Friendships get less attention.  But friendships, also shape and anchor our lives. 

There also aren’t a ton of places in scripture where we specifically hear of friendships.  Maybe they are implied: obviously Pricilla and Aquilla had to be friends if they were working together in the streets of Corinth. Tabitha most certainly had deep friendships with the women in the early church.  She has a whole posse of ladies in Antioch. Or the old stories of David and Johnathan—they were good friends.  Jesus is certainly deeply affected when Lazarus dies. One can only suppose that he was friends with Lazarus and his sisters, Mary and Martha. 

There’s another place in scripture that got me thinking about friendship. There’s this little section of the gospel of John that was read a moment ago. In this scene, Jesus is with his disciples and they’re all talking at the table.  He says to them, I’ve been here with you, but I’m not going to be with you in the same way going forward. The way I’ll be with you is to send you the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, according to the gospel of John, is the one who is called to be alongside us. You can see it right in the word that John uses to describe the Sprit. The first part of the word, para means “with” or “alongside,” the second part of the word is kaleo or “to call.” Para-clete. So, the holy spirit is the one who is called to be along side of us.  

I heard an interview with Dr. Vivek Murthee, the surgeon general, where he talked about friendship. He mentioned that when he was young man, he felt really fulfilled socially, but then, he said, he started to get more deeply involved in his work. He had two kids, life was busy and, with time, he stopped paying attention to his friendships. It was an insidious thing that didn’t happen overnight, but eventually at the pinnacle of his career, he found himself consumed with work, and isolated. He talked about how this seems to be a little more common for men than women. He said he was ironically surrounded by people, but that the quality of the connection with them was thin. Loneliness, he said, masquerades as depression, addiction, anger, violence, grumpiness.  Then, he said, he happened to be on a retreat, where he saw two old friends that he looks up to and respects. He hadn’t been in touch with them.  He said at one point at the retreat, the three of them took a walk and he told them he felt like he was struggling with a lack of connection and good friends.  The friends made a pact then to check in once a month and call and it has helped. 

Social scientists say that a lot of our close friends are friends of utility. They’re certainly real friends, but we’re friends with them because our paths cross consistently at work or in our kids’ lives. Sometime, these people become our very best friends, often they’re not.

If your friendship is utilitarian or connected because of work, for example, you might always be hanging onto a little bit of your professional demeanor and you don’t want to risk messing it up by sharing something personal or speaking up if something really matters to you.  Maybe you could say that there’s always a little bit of our guard that’s up? It can keep the quality of your connection with that friend thin.

But there’s another deeper kind of friendship. It was Aristotle who said that when friends share a love of something bigger than either of them that is outside of you both of them, you move to another level of friendship. These kind of friendships don’t depend on work or family or ambition.  You’re connected by something that is outside of you that you simply enjoy. Maybe you share a love of baseball or you love to make music together, or you share a common love in your… religion.  Over time, when we get to really know one another. These are the friends who come up along side of us (like that paraclete Jesus speaks of) not because we need them, but just because we love them.  They don’t need us, they just…love us. There is no useful purpose to the relationship other than knowing and loving each other. 

Or--is that the most transformative thing of all?…That there is no useful purpose other than knowing and loving each other?

Some studies say that being truly known is central to achieving change in psychotherapy.  I wonder if the same could be said about growth in our faith.

In the gospel of John, Jesus talks all the time about knowing God and being known by God, and abiding in God and abiding in one another. I wondered if that level of friendship is a kind of discipleship, and, in its’ own way, a way to follow Jesus.  Was that kind of closeness, and enjoyment of one another almost like a spiritual practice?  I have not yet landed on the answer to that one, but I’m thinking about it.

I’ve been thinking about friendship, in part because about a month ago, Liza mentioned at a staff meeting that her friendships and relationships were part of an experience here at this church that has had a deep impact on her.  

She shared in our worship service how these relationships impacted her and you can see some of her reflections here. 

How have you experienced being deeply known or a powerful friendship that has changed you? 

I want to take a moment to acknowledge that some people feel really known at church, and some people feel impossibly lonely in the church and like they don’t fit (maybe it’s useful to point out that: basically everyone over the age of 10 questions and frets about if they really belong at church at some point or another. Ironically, everyone finds common ground there)

**** 

For a variety of different reasons, over the years, many of us let the friendship muscle atrophy and we stop intentionally practicing friendship. There are any number of other reasons, we stop being intentional with our friends. Maybe, like, Dr. Murthee, we get caught up in work: professional success has become almost virtuous--it certainly seems more virtuous than hanging out with friends. maybe we have a family member with a health crisis that is consuming us and it’s hard to connect with friends.  Maybe… there’s a global pandemic and we all become a little socially awkward and unsure about how to connect with each other. Strange as it sounds, like other practices, Friendship is a skill that we have to cultivate and practice …or we get bad at it. 

Here at church, while there are certainly a lot of tasks we can get caught up in around here, one of the main things is relationships.  We could do this God thing on our own, some people do which is just fine, but there is also something about faith that is a team sport, a group project and we show up here with a group of people to practice it. there is no utilitarian function to the relationships or friendships you will make here at church. I mean, maybe you’ll network with someone, or find a play date for your kid, or find someone who can retile your bathroom, but that isn’t the point.This place is about relationships for the sheer sake of relationships.  That is how Christ is made known in this world. And we practice that together.

******

We are, of late, a little rusty at relationship here at church.  In the last couple of years, we’ve trimmed out a lot of the places where we used to cultivate those relationships and even practice friendships. Wednesday night meals or choir practice. It has been hard to get coffee hour going. It’s difficult to see each others’ faces with the masks. This fall, we’re going to get some things going where we’ll hopefully be able to connect more deeply with each other through some cottage meeting conversation groups, maybe an occasional men’s group bonfire, or music rehearsal on Wednesday night. We hope you’ll find space to connect. But in the meantime, right here, right now, we are going to pause our worship service for a ten minute moment of fika. 

During this short coffee break, your task is to turn around and make eye contact with folks and introduce yourself.  When the music starts you’ll know it’s time to continue with the communion liturgy.

A sermon about praising God when things are bad and lessons in carpentry

Psalm 33:12-20
Some years ago when I worked with the domestic violence organization, one of the clinicians and I led a therapeutic writing group for survivors of abuse.  One of the prompts that the groups would reflect on had to do with what home felt like.  We weren’t necessarily talking about what someone’s house or apartment was like but the idea of home or the feeling of home. Home was a place where they felt safe, empowered, capable, loved, that kind of thing.  Some folks in those writing groups reflected on feeling “at home” in their childhood home or in college.  Some mentioned certain friends that made them feel like home.  I can’t remember any specifics of what people wrote, but I remember words like: “comfortable, safe, peaceful” as words that described that feeling of home.  There is a word in Spanish that keeps coming to mind when I think of what home means: Plena. It means whole, complete, content, full hearted. 

What makes you feel like you’re at home?  (or who?)
Where are the spaces where you feel at home?

Early last week, I erased the psalm from the service. In my defense, we try to keep the services shorter in the summer and we do less readings.  But that wasn’t entirely my motivation.  I eliminated it because singing praise of God and dancing around with a lyre, tambourine and joyous shouts wasn’t totally vibing for me this week.  It felt tone deaf. The earth, the psalm says, is full of the steadfast love of the Lord.  I took a walk recently with one of our high-schoolers who specifically mentioned that it sure didn’t feel like the earth was full of God’s love.  I didn’t argue. 

I was not at home with the psalm and I quietly erased it from the service. 

You’ll notice, it’s back. 

In the writing group at the shelter, it was occasionally a process to realize that a person didn’t feel very “at home” in their house or apartment.  When you don’t feel at home, but you long for it, that can be called that homesick.  Think summer camp or even a sleepover as a kid.  Did you ever feel homesick? I did. 

Or, as an adult, I remember moving to a new house and staring at the ceiling my first night in my new room and not quite feeling at home. I would feel that homesickness deep in my belly. Even today, I’m occasionally struck with a twinge when I miss someone who is gone, like my mother, in a sense, homesick for her. But I also feel that same thing when I think of what I long for in the world that isn’t here yet.  

I long for that feeling of safety or security and love for my kids, for all of us.  And there are times when it’s clear that it’s not here. Sure, there are pockets of it, but when I look around at some of the wounds in our world or our city and our neighborhood, I know we are not there yet—and I long and I ache for something different. 

About 100 years ago, philosopher Ernst Bloch equated Heimweh (which could be translated as homesickness) with a feeling of hope.  Hope. He said it’s a feeling of home that is just out of reach. Hope is a longing for that feeling of home. It’s a kind of homesickness.

So back to that time earlier in the week when I erased the psalm.  Last week, as many of you know, we found those tiki torches outside the church on Sunday. It robbed some of us of a feeling of home and safety here at church or here in our neighborhood.  There have been unsettling events in the news and our neighborhood.  Some of you have personal strife that you’re working through:  diagnosis, anxiety, that kind of thing.  We long for that feeling of home. How, I wondered, could I pray those first joyful verses of the psalm with confidence?  

This psalm sings of a God that bottles up all of the deepest, shadow-iest dangers and carries them away.  But that image of God wasn’t squaring for me with real life. “Faith,” Hebrews says, “is the assurance of things hoped for. The conviction of things not seen.”  And perhaps, just in that, there was a side to this psalm that I not seeing.  I assumed that the psalmist saw God as so strong and so mighty so joyful, so oblivious to the frayed ends around us. Or, was there a side to God in the psalm that I was missing?

In vs. 15 of the psalm, we sing of a God who fashions the hearts of all people. That word for fashioned is the same word used in one of the ancient creation stories from Genesis where God fashioned and formed all of the different people and animals in the garden.  Rachel Wrenn commented that God is like an intimate potter, puttering around, with be-speckled glasses, divine lips quirking up in a smile with what is coming to shape before their eyes. That, she said, was an image of God fashioning us, molding us and shaping us day after day.

But, while God fashions and forms and molds us, the person who wrote this psalm acknowledged that in their daily ancient life, there was still actually famine, fear and pain.  The psalm says that God’s eye is upon us. God is watching us, God is with us, and will save us; but we, who sing this psalm are still waiting and hoping and longing for the Lord who is our help and our shield.  We are still homesick and aching for what is not yet here.  

How was it that these ancient people could praise God like this while they were in the midst of such famine and fear and distress? 

Many years ago, my youth group participated in one of these mission trips where we were sent to a small town with several hundred other high school youth. They split us into teams and then dispatched us to go do construction projects for a week.  On that very first trip, I think it was to West Virginia, I was set up with a crew and we worked on the roof of a woman who we called Granny. Our project was to patch a couple of rotted pieces of plywood in the roof above her front porch and then re-shingle it.  That is until one of my crewmates almost fell through the roof, and our crew leader determined that the we would have to do some additional structural work.  

The roof was sagging, but we would be able to save some of the support beams through what is known in carpentry as “sistering.”  When you sister a board or a joist, you put a healthy beam right alongside of the saggy one. You fasten the two together and it adds this extra support and strengthens the jenky beam.  

This is precisely what we did for granny’s roof.  We cut new pieces of wood and then scooched them right up next to the weak beams. They added support and they kept the roof up.  

This is what praise does for the longing, aching heart in this psalm.  It pulls in that strong beam of God’s goodness and it fastens itself to the original beam for support.  Praise sisters us to God, it comes along side of us, supports us. It reminds us of a God who provides for us, who is quietly at work in our lives.  Praise is a way to fasten our hearts to God.

And it sounds like this: “We praise you, God for another day.  From the moment our feet hit the floor in the morning, we thank you for this incredibly beautiful gift of being alive.” And we fasten God to our hearts.

“We praise you God for the beauty of creation around us: for the rain and the sky and the air we breathe.”And we fasten our hearts to God.

We give our thanks and praise
For our families
For our neighbors
For the mail carrier
For a perfect tomato at lunch
For the friend that sent the funny text
For the fan blowing hot air on me in the impossibly hot church
And God buttons into us.

We praise God, and we fasten our hearts to God.

And there are more things that sister us besides praise.  You all have sistered me as strong support that has come up along side of me in times of need. Sistering is holy work. And it’s not something that just the sisters do. I’ve been sistered by some incredible brothers this week. We are sistered by our neighborhood that responds to us with support and compassion after what happened last week.  We are sistered by each other.

What has sistered you?
What has been the support that comes up alongside of you?

For what do you give thanks and praise to God?

While it might seem like this psalm with its’ joyous praise is annoyingly tone deaf to the pain of real life, it turns out that praise is a practice (a spiritual practice) to draw close to God and to draw God precisely into those places of fear and famine and death. Praise opens a window into our hearts. In through that window comes God who sisters themselves right up along side of us.

****
It has been a week where my sense of home has been shaken.  Maybe yours has too, for any number of reasons. And THAT is the story of why I added the psalm back into the service.
***

I wrote to you earlier this week that we are living in extraordinary times.  These are times when it feels like the world is shifting under our very feet.  It is frightening, exhilarating, disorienting.  It is a time of homesickness for what was and hope for what will be.  What a time to be alive! Right now, by the grace of God, we have the opportunity to be a part of shaping this world into what we long for, for ourselves and our children. Despite every evidence to the contrary, in the face of famine and death, of racism and hatred, of homophobia and transphobia and evil, with all these things that make us homesick and full of longing, We will sing our praise and thanksgiving to God, and the Holy One will fasten themselves to us as we sing of  God’s endless steadfast love.

Truly, your eye is upon those who fear you, O LORD,
  upon those who wait for your steadfast love,
 to deliver their lives from death,
  and to keep them alive in time of famine. 
 Our innermost being waits for you, O LORD,
  our helper and our shield.
 Surely, our heart rejoices in you,
  for in your holy name we put our trust.
 Let your lovingkindness, O LORD, be upon us,
  even as we place our hope in you. 

The Cost of Healing

 Luke 8:26-39

This last week, I took a class for religious leaders at Northwestern downtown.  It was a great week. We were mostly pastors and rabbis with a few denominational leaders, chaplains and school principals in a room talking about our faith and our ministry.  A word that kept coming up over the course of the week was the word “transformation.” It’s not surprising. Yes, it’s a word that comes up all the time in our ancient scriptures and, clearly, it’s a word that describes things that are happening all over the place right now.  

Our churches and synagogues are in seasons of transformation. Our schools are. Our society is in so many ways.  Those of us gathered at this event last week talked about what it was like to look at change in the face and listen for what it is calling us towards. But, as we pastors and rabbis all discussed various times over the course of the week, transformation of all kinds--whether it’s in our own hearts or in our wider society--doesn’t come easily. 

Transformation asks us to take risks. It asks us to be courageous. It admits: something’s not right here, something needs to be changed. Transformation shines a light on things we’ve tried to hide.

While we like change and new directions, the piece that we sort of conveniently put to the side is that transformation comes with exposure to something we need to change.  It brings something out into the open for everyone to see. 

For example: “Here’s this family secret that we’ve been keeping quiet that’s pushing the everyone to the brink.” Or, “here’s this personal detail I’ve been keeping in the shadow that I need to work through.” When we bring that out into the light, the future before us shifts. if it’s a mind-bender for us to individually do this, it’s just as much of a mind-bender, and even a trip, when society does it.

In the story we heard of today, there’s a man who is possessed, naked, out of control, living with the dead; 

And then, by the healing power of Jesus, he is saved, clothed, sitting at Jesus’ feet and in his right mind. This. Is. Great. News. This tormented man is healed and free…and yet, he (and Jesus) are the only ones celebrating. Did you catch that?  The bible says that the community doesn’t find any joy in this story.  In fact, they are counting the cost associated with this healing and they are finding it to be just a little too high. 

Jesus heals for free. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t costs.

So. The costs.

1. At face value, there is the cost of loss.  While this healing was good news for the man, it wasn’t for the pigs. The pigs were lost when the mob of demons entered into them. They ran off a cliff. There is a deep economic loss for the owners of the herd, especially if they make a living selling the animals.  

When you consider the cost of change in society or in your self, what is the economic cost to you? 

2. For the man who’s healed, there is the cost of a new vocation in life.  Any of you who have ever changed jobs know what I’m talking about. What do you lose when you leave an old job or even vocation?  Maybe you’re the parent of a newly graduated child and your vocation as a parent is shifting. There’s some loss. Maybe you’ve changed careers and, either your salary changed, or your responsibilities. For this man, the change is obviously dramatic.  He is turned into a disciple. Jesus calls him to activism and tells him to go and proclaim what God has done. He is freed and sent to share the good news.  In your case, what would be the economic cost of healing to you? What would answering a call to activism cost you? 

3. And finally, there is the cost of uncertainty. There is the cost of change. Remember, this guy is changed but no one wants that change but him and Jesus. Everyone else seems to resent it or they’re completely terrified by the way his transformation messes with this neat little system they have in place. We try to control the things and people that scare us.  Out of sight out of mind.  And when they couldn’t keep him locked away up out there in the cemetery, when everything is brought into the light in this story, 

This cost is steep. 

Too steep, in fact. Did you catch the way The Message version of the bible translates the verses that describe the people’s reaction to what happened? “too much change too fast.” 

Scripture actually says that the people were fine in the storm.  They were fine with of having this man chained up outside of town. Yes, perhaps they acknowledged his awkward presence up there, but now, they’re afraid of the calm.  They had a deal worked out. They had a system worked out: They had some kind of logic that was twisted into “we chain him up and it keeps him safe and us safe. It keeps the peace (even if it’s uneasy peace).” Now, they feel this change and this dis-ease and they can’t handle it.  And they ask Jesus to leave.

There is a cost of transformation. 

In this story, there’s a lot that is brought out into the open.  This man isn’t well. He’s tormented. He’s naked. Being naked all kinds of vulnerable. It is all kinds of fear. What will people see? What will people think? What if we admit that our family is a little messed up right now? Or that we have something really tough that we’re working through? Or what if I bring out into the open the truth of some kind of systemic thing that I’m grappling with? Or something that I need to grapple with but don’t really want to? Do we take a chance? Or do we say, “there’s not really anything I can do. This is too big. Too much. Out of sight out of mind.” 

What do we need to see in order to be healed?
What is it in our lives in the life that needs healing?
What is it in our society that needs healing? 
Where am I practicing control because I am freaked out by the cost of what calm would bring?

In 2018, Kendrick Lamar released an album called “Damn.” Kendrick Lamar, is rapper, a songwriter and record producer. He’s the kind of artist that, when I listen to his album, makes me stop. And ask: “what?” and skip back in the song to see if I heard he right.  This album, “Damn.,” was the first non-classical, non-jazz album that was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for music. And in it, his poetry is about storm. “Where,”

he asks through the poetry of his lyrics, “can one find a sense of peace, a sense of safety, a sense of trust?” He is exploring a sense of humanity in these tracks. 

In his song “FEEL.,” he’s showing how this storm beats on the walls:

I feel like friends been overrated
I feel like the family been faking
I feel like the feelings are changing
Feel like my daughter compromised and jaded
Feel like you wanna scrutinize how I made it

He created this album before the pandemic but it puts words to the storms: the racial deaths, the war deaths,  the shootings. African American professor, Luke Powery says: the great resignation, the “great hater-a-tion,” pandemic—pandemonium. The storm. 

What do you need healing from?
What do we need healing from?

Because Jesus shows us: the calm is possible.

This isn’t a bible story that happened a long time ago and now, because of the resurrection, it’s all fixed and we don’t live like this any more.  We are right here between these words.  We see the things and the ones that we chain up. We need the healer’s presence in our midst. We still need liberation. 

But there is a cost to the calm.  Please leave, the people say to Jesus. The calm was too much to bear.  The chaos was familiar. The healer’s presence healed too deep.

Today is Juneteenth.    On June 19th, we celebrate the truth that the last enslaved African Americans learned they were freed in 1865. This is a day to celebrate freedom and African American achievement, art and education. It is a day to celebrate liberation in all of its’ beauty.  

It is a day to ask the dangerous question of what needs to be healed? To shine a light on the things we’ve tried to hide to consider the cost of freeing our hearts of freeing our world from the things that bind us. And to move forward despite the cost because our liberation depends on it. 

Transformation, growth, and an opening of our hearts are central to our faith.  So we’ve got to ask the difficult questions.

What needs to be healed that only the presence of Jesus can heal? 
Where are we as a society called to change? 
Where are you?

What do you imagine? (a message about queer politics, outrageous biblical characters and things we don't know)

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31

For many, many decades, even lifetimes, things had been predictable.  Maybe not perfect, but predictable. Folks had these familiar ways of interacting with each other. Everyone knew their place. Everyone was on the same page about what was okay in society and what was not okay, maybe even forbidden.  Religion was anchored by these age-old, steady principals that weren’t really questioned.  (Of course, this was the way God functioned in the world!). But then, things turned upside down. There were cataclysmic events that made folks question their religious anchors.  The people had to leave home and with it, leave all the old patterns and beliefs, …when they came back to life as they knew it, nothing was quite the same.  

The government was dissolving—(that was the monarchy in their case). Some of the infrastructure was changing or disappearing.   The old symbolism was eroding.  Those pillar truths that supported religion were being shaken.

It used to be predictable who held power in society (it was the elites: the king, the temple, the priesthood) and now, that was being challenged.  There was extraordinary social and even theological upheaval.  There was nostalgia for the way things had been back before it seemed like the world exploded (you know, nostalgia for the courts and the wise sages, the temple being the center of religion).  It had been a nation that knew what it was and that was clear and confident in who God was. And now? What a mess.

**********

There is something frightening about an open future where we can’t quite imagine how things will shake out. Like when a few too many support beams have been kicked out from under the house. Social philosopher, Judith Butler, wrote about this almost 2 decades ago in her book, Undoing Gender:  All these questions! All this change! All this uncertainty about how things are. And then, let’s not even get started on imagining what will be when everything feels a little out of control around us.

If this level of uncertainty doesn’t freak society out, it will at the very least, make it feel threatened. 

She really hit the nail on the head with how ancient Israel was grappling with change and instability around the time when the book of Proverbs came together.   The Israelites had been exiled in Babylon for 70 years. Now they were returning to Jerusalem, and things were different: their temple in Jerusalem which had been the center of religious life had been destroyed, there were all these working class Jews who had stayed behind who were now, different. Who was God? Where did they find God? Where were they headed? There weren’t clear or easy answers. 

Judith Butler wrote about how when we ask questions or poke holes in ideas that are tried and true, it stresses folks out because it makes the future feel unstable or cloudy.  People, she says, do one of several things when the future feels that unsteady. 

1. They can become frozen and they don’t want to rethink anything. It’s like they say: This is too much! I can’t process this! I will be here freaking out in the corner if you need me.

2. They become really nostalgic for the way things were:  Oh <<reflects wistfully>> remember when we were young how safe and predictable everything was?

3. Sometimes, she wrote, that regardless of our politics, we become so nostalgic that we even kick into a sort of cultural reverse-gear that uses moralism to pull us back to the way things were. We actively work to stop the change: "Reverse the currents! Stop the change! Back to tradition!"

Or, you could say, when everything around you is unraveling and you find yourself in a big open space full of piles of yarn, do you shout: fix grandpa’s sweater! Knit it back the way it was! Or Hmm, could we knit something new? Or could we throw away the knitting needles and weave a hammock instead? 

There is a fourth option when everything around us unraveling: Theologian, Elizabeth Stewart writes that it’s the job of queer politics to resist that tendency we have to run back to the tried and true when we’re stressed. 

And when I say politics, I don’t mean partisan, but politics in the sense of what do we want the world around us and the life we share to look like.” 

Just when we think something is concrete reality, queer politics pokes holes in it.  

It pokes holes in the ideas like: this is how women are supposed to behave. 
Or: This is how men are supposed to dress
Or: these are the two genders that exist. Period.
Or, this is the way we’ve always done it in the church.
This is who holds the power in society.
This is the way you _______ (fill in the blank)

Just when we think things are concrete, queer politics call us to the edge to think again. (To the edge of the dance floor? Or to the edge of the canvas? And then perhaps, while handing us a paintbrush, it asks us “what do you imagine?”)

The fourth option is stepping into that uncertain, scary space and courageously asking what can we be?

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

In the case of the book of proverbs, Woman Wisdom bursts into the scene and it is undeniably different from anything we’ve seen. ever. in Hebrew scriptures up until this point.  

Women have nothing like this kind of role in the Torah like you see here in proverbs.  Biblical mothers like Rachel, Rebecca, Leah, Jocabed, and Sarah get this teeny, tiny amount of air time as supportive actors. Not until this time period in ancient Israel’s history do you start getting people like woman wisdom or even Queens Vashti and Esther breaking into scripture like this and taking up chapters and chapters in the story.   

In today’s reading, Woman Wisdom breaks into the street. She is loud and shouting! Confident and even flashy! Eloquent and poetic! stamping her feet in the public square, clapping her hands, look at me!  

Again, this is exactly the time when Judaism is starting to pull away from practicing religion in the temple (remember, the temple had been destroyed) and instead it’s settling into local synagogues and even the home which had traditionally been women’s domain. 

Biblical scholar, Elizabeth Stewart, whites this whole thing about how we can actually see this tension between what Judiasm was and what it’s becoming getting worked out here in scripture.  

The whole book of Proverbs toggles between these different people who are working it out.  In one chapter you have the obedient son or student who’s looking for clear instruction or guidance.  There is no mystery there. There’s just a common sense patriarchal, family, living by the rules. In the next chapter we find one of a whole cast of interesting women characters called Woman Wisdom who is  non-conventional and shouting in the streets. 

If we preform our gender, (I learn and preform what it means to be a woman) and if we preform our humanity, (I learn and preform what it means to be human), Elizabeth Stewart says that lady wisdom is “performing [her] humanity subversively.” She is pushing the envelope as a woman character. On purpose.  Whether or not it was the intention, she is making us think again about something.  She’s undoing us. Unraveling us. 

And it sounds like this when we digest this scripture: 

“Wait. Wait a second. Is Lady Wisdom, …God? Or God’s wife? Or some previous iteration of the word made flesh?” What exactly going on here? Why is this woman behaving like this?”

And we start asking dangerous questions. 

Truth is, social transformation always depends on some brave people who are willing to risk kicking a leg out from under tradition. And that doesn’t happen unless we go right up to the edge of what we know.  

Change, growth and transformation in ancient Israel would depend on a daringness to risk, a willingness to imagine, and the courage to talk about or even live out what seemed like it was impossible.  

We get a window into that with the book of proverbs.

*****

In the gospel of John, not the piece we read today, a different piece, there’s this story about a Samaritan woman who goes to a well.  Jesus unexpectedly finds her there.  Because of her life story, this woman, you could say, lives on the edge and, as she talks, Jesus goes to the edge there with her.  (Hanging out on the edge with people is kind of one of Jesus’ signature moves).

He asks her dangerous questions. He blows her mind. He knocks down walls. They work something out in their conversation that’s recorded in the bible. She is undone by him. It’s like he says to her: “Imagine, what we will become!” 

She is transformed, runs back to her community and all these Samaritan people in her town start believing in the extraordinary expression of God in Jesus.  

*****

Can you think of someone who has blown your mind? 
So much so that some pillar in you has been undone? 

Or a time when God has said to you: “hey. here’s a nugget of scripture. Put this in conversation with your daily life and see what you get.”

You know, we look at our Christian tradition sometimes as if it weren’t this living thing but stagnant.  Like God revealed themselves to us thousands of years ago and now, well, we just have to learn those ancient lessons.  Nope. We Christians confess that, yes, God created the world, and then came to dwell in it, and then, as we celebrated it last week with Pentecost, continues to be alive in it right here, right now by the power of the Holy Spirit.  The life of faith is never about staying in one place.  The Holy Spirit is always coaxing us forward. The life of faith is always about growing.  

And this unsteady, uncertain place? This place that feels a little scary or even threatening? That is where the growth and the transformation happen. 

And you, queer family, are there, often at the edge of comfort, dancing with risk and ready to lend us your telescope so we can see what is out there that’s calling us forward.  

Last week, there was an interview with Aiyana Elizabeth Johnson that aired. She’s a marine biologist and climate activist.  She’s amazing for a million different reasons

You know climate change is tough to talk about and to think about right now.  She posed this question in her interview: "Instead of how bad will it be," she asks, "what if we get this right?"  What will the world look like in 50 years, 100 years, 500 years?

For example, The healed lung of our great forests grown back to health? Oceans that provide enough for coastal communities to live? Clean and healthy air for all of us to breathe? It’s mighty easy to critique, but to build something? that takes effort.  

So today, let’s let ourselves be drawn out into this creative space I ask you, what if we get it right? What will this world look like?  What do you see when you take a hold of that telescope and look out there?  

In this time of uncertainty, what do you see from your spot there on the edge? Do you see each one of us living as our beautifully created selves without fear of violence?  Do you an end to gun violence? A world without Parkinson's?  A magnificent redwood forest? What do you see? What do you imagine?

During a song later on in the service, we’ll sing a song that Jesse Lava wrote a few years ago about the Samaritan Woman who met Jesus at the well out on the edge. 

During that song or maybe another point in the service like communion, I’ll invite you to answer this question: In this time of cultural upheaval and change that we’re living through, in this time that feels so uncertain,“what if we get it right?”  (write that down) what will the world look like? When you're ready with your answer, come up and fasten your idea up here.

****

Out there on the edge is this creative space.  God bless you, queer ones for “making cultural trouble” (as Elizabeth Stewart wrote decades ago—John Lewis said a version of a few years ago). God bless you for cracking open these creative spaces where change happens.  Where would we be without the ways that you draw us out and bless us?  We love you.

Defiant Hope (a sermon about a world gone mad, mother eagles, and planting trees)

 Acts 2:1-21

A few weeks ago, my dad was over and helping us in our yard. He planted a whole row of pink Easter begonias in the front and then he and I went to work planting and weeding and mulching. At one point, he asked me about a pathetic little pine twig that I had half planted in a flowerpot.  

“Is this a plant?” he asked me.

Like many Chicago houses, our neighbor’s house is maybe 10-12 feet away from ours and between us we have a cement gangway. In the crack where the sidewalk meets their house, a little pine tree had sprouted. We don’t have any pine trees in our tiny yard, nor do our neighbors and my only guess is that it sprouted from our Christmas tree which I threw out the side door onto the patio in December. It is possible that the dead tree lay in the patio for an embarrassing number of weeks before I hauled it to the back alley.  I think, while it was there, it may have left a seed.  When I pulled on that little sprout, the entire root came out. I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it in that moment, so I stuffed it into a flower pot. Later that afternoon, my dad commented to me that he had re-planted the little seeding in a pot.  

“Maybe it will grow into something,” he said.  

That little pot with the tiny sapling has been sitting next to my door in the gangway for several weeks now and I look at it all the time. It has new green needles sprouting at the tips of it’s tiny two branches.

There is something that is hopeful about planting a tree.  I have no doubt that the years before us will bring both heartache and joy and I don’t know what that balance of the two will look like; but, I know that when we plant a tree, it is an act of hope for the future.

I’ve had to dig deep to find hope these last couple of weeks.  Not only are my family and I heartsick at the unexpected death of my mother-in-law, Mercedes, a week and a half ago, I am heartsick at what has unfolded these last weeks in Buffalo, Uvalde, Tulsa, and more places. I’ve volleyed between rage and numbness, between fear and disbelief.

On the surface of things, our lives appear normal in my family: the kids go to school, we make dinner, we walk the dog, wash the clothes, pay the bills. We go to graduation parties and birthday parties. We make plans. And yet, beneath that there is a river rushing that all is not right in this shattered world for so many reasons. Open the newspaper for five minutes and you see our broken humanity spilling out all over itself.  How do we hang onto hope when the heartbreak is this deep?  

I’m pretty sure this is not only part of my call as a person of faith to hold on to hope, but it’s part of my call as a pastor to you all. And I have shook my head all week looking for an answer to that question. I’m not sure if I found the right answer, but, God found me. 

*****

Most worship services here at LMC, we celebrate communion. Sometimes, communion is called “The Last Supper.” Have you ever noticed that? However, It’s actually not the last supper.  Jesus shows up many times after that meal after he has been resurrected: He has fish on the beach over a charcoal campfire with his disciples, he shows up for dinner in the town of Emmaus. In those 40 days after God raised Jesus, he shows up all over the place, eating and teaching and hanging out. He, in fact, eats many more meals after that so called Last Supper. The very worst, the unimaginable has happened—Jesus was crucified—but there he is with scars in his hands reminding folks to take heart to have courage.  

This, Pastor Mary Luti writes, “is the story of our lives, the story of the church: The worst things imaginable happen. Yet, somehow, by grace and grit, we’re still here, weary and scarred, but breathing, more or less upright,” she says. Instead of the “last supper of death and dread,” she wonders if we could call it a “new supper of relief and resilience”?  

After Jesus eats all those meals in towns and villages and in upper rooms and on beaches, he ascends, like a balloon, to be with God; and then, God’s mighty and Holy Spirit rushes into this world which is where our bible story from Acts picks up today.

As I wrestle with hopelessness and grief this week, I learned something about that mighty wind that rushed into the house that original day of Pentecost.  The wind is connected by an unusual word back to two other bible stories with rushing winds. First: the story of creation where God’s spirit hovers, rushes and abides over the waters of the deep right before the creation of the universe.  It’s the same uniquely rushing wind according to scripture (1).   Second: It’s also the same word for wind used in a story in Deuteronomy (2) where a mother eagle is powerfully hovering over the nest of her chicks. Just like you might fan or blow on the hot coals of a campfire to get them to spark, the mother eagle is fanning her strong wings protectively and energetically over her nest.  She is hovering over her chicks and taking up any possible room that could be used to endanger them. 

These stories tell me two things. 1.  I’m comforted by the image of God protectively spreading her wings out over us and refreshing us with this rushing, fanning air. 2. that wind that billows over the face of the deep in creation rushes in right before something is about to happen. Same goes for those those strong protective wings of the mother eagle, fanning the nest. She hovers there ready and waiting. In the story from Genesis, creation is born, (“let there be light!”). In the story from Deuteronomy, the Eagle, after hovering in flight, suddenly grabs her chicks and shoots straight up into the sky.  When that wind rushes into the house on the ancient day of Pentecost, it marked a moment full of potential. It infused the air with God’s electric presence. It fanned oxygen onto the coals, it lifted and refreshed that stagnant heavy air in the house, for something was about to happen. God’s Spirit, while it comforts us and protects us, is always drawing us towards more than we can imagine.

*** 

African American scholar Imani Perry wrote last week that we must do more than cower in the face of ugliness of the world.  We must, she said, [raise our kids,] even into adulthood, to believe in the possibility of a loving and just world and that they have a responsibility to work for it.”   (3)

We are not done yet.  We have not eaten the last supper.  We are not done blessing one another, giving thanks, singing and shouting out.  There are feet to be washed, there’s justice to be righted, jails to be emptied, bellies to be filled.   There is rest to be taken, tears to be shared, laughter to be gifted, hands to be held. There are hearts to be consoled, dreams to be dreamed, visions to be seen.  There are trees to be planted.

In 1968, Wendell Berry, a poet and Kentucky farmer wrote a poem titled “February 2, 1968.” That time of the late 60s was a time of political and cultural rifts, even scorn, a time of bitter division, questioning of authority, mistrust, social turmoil.  Into that moment, he wrote:

In the dark of the moon, in flying snow, in the dead of winter, 
war spreading, families dying, the world in danger,
I walk the rocky hillside sowing clover.

It’s “an earnest hope,” Kathryn Schifferdecker writes, “in a world gone mad…a defiant hope…In a world filled with so many reasons to despair.” Don’t I know it.

Wendell Berry plants clover.

In a cramped house, the early church breaks into a multitude of languages. 

In our own tattered world, we hope defiantly—even while heartbroken—for love is stronger than death.

1.  The word, merahefet from Genesis 1:2 means to hover or to move over.  An ancient translator translated this Hebrew word into Greek in an Ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures called the Septuagint. The translator used the same Greek work for Merahefet as they used to describe e rushing wind when they wrote the book of Acts

2.   Deut 32:11 

3.  “Unsettled Territory: How we must raise our children now,” for The Atlantic.  June 1, 2022

A baptism message about action packed justice, feeling worn and waterbeds

 Acts 16:6-15

Years ago, on a visit home to see my parents, my mom borrowed my car and when she saw me later she told me that that my steering wasn’t aligned. 

“Can’t you feel how the car wants to drift to the right?” She asked me.

I had noticed that the car had a tendency to want to veer to the side as I was driving it. I had to make an effort to pull the wheel back to the center in order to drive straight on the road. It was probably dangerous although I don’t remember that occurring to me at the time. It was something I needed to get fixed.

The book of Acts, which we’ve been hearing from the last few weeks tells us the story of the apostles and their travel around the Eastern Mediterranean sea.  In today’s bible story, the Holy Spirit has a clear course that she has set for Paul and the team.  The road is paved right there in front of them. But, the group wants to pull off course head up into Western Asia.  

The Spirit of Jesus, as the Holy Spirit is called in the book of Acts, apparently has other plans. The apostles listen and go to a city called Philippi.  Philippi sat on a 700 mile major Roman highway that ran along the Aegean sea called the Egnatian Way. It was a massive feat of engineering build of huge stone blocks. The city was in a great location and surrounded by excellent farmland.  It was a jeweled city for Rome. 

But, I can see why the apostles might not have been excited to go there. The city was very strategic. Rome worked hard to make everything in it as culturally Roman (and not as culturally Jewish) as possible.  While it wasn’t as snazzy as Rome, there was glitter and glamour. (All hail to the Holy Roman Emperor).

When Paul arrived in the city with his entourage, he found the place steeped in roman powers and values. And that’s when the showdown begins. 

You’ll hear next week the story of the enslaved girl that tells fortunes and makes a lot of money for her owners. Paul liberates her and then he’s thrown in jail for it. That is, until God thunders in and releases Paul and Silas from jail with a mighty earthquake.  

The story line will continually ask us: Who has more power? The mighty forces of Rome or the Holy Spirit of Jesus? 

Back and forth they go in the next few stories in Acts, throwing Paul and Silas in jail, freeing them, empowering leaders and infuriating them, challenging systems and shaking the solid Roman values that people stood on, upending plans and laying new track.  There’s arguing, there are riots, people are arrested, people are emboldened. There are shipwrecks and stormy seas. Trials and jail cells. The story actually says a little further on from today’s reading that they were “turning the world upside down.” 

While Acts records the exciting travel log, other books in our New Testament are letters that Paul wrote while the plot was unfolding. And in these letters, to the Philippians, the Galatians, the Romans and others Paul implores folks to radically love one another, to welcome one another, empty oneself in service to each other. 

The life of faith is challenging.  Perhaps it’s a not a wonder that Paul and his traveling companions attempted to veer off the course the Spirit had laid out before them. The life of faith then was challenging and it’s challenging today.  

The life of faith today asks us to hold a mirror up to ourselves and reflect on where we’re cracked and where we’re being called to level up and serve more graciously, forgive more deeply, love more fiercely, struggle for justice and open our hearts.  All across this world, There are people crucified by our current world order. Some people are valued more than others.  There were heart wrenching shootings last weekend, there is a senseless war grinding in the Ukraine, there are broken medical care systems around the world. Two years ago when covid descended on us we all rallied around this cry of “we’re all in this together” which has splintered into civil conflict and contempt for each other. We’re quick to anger, quick to judge and running low on steadfast love.  The holy spirit calls us to carry the light of Christ into this storm.  We’re not called to follow what is convenient, to veer off course, change the channel, or turn away. We’re called to follow Jesus, just like Paul and the apostles did. And this isn’t always easy.

******

In the spirit of real talk and honesty, I’m going to share that I have been feeling a little run down lately. It’s for a variety of reasons.  I read our sacred stories week after week and I think about what I’m going to share with you, and this week, I read and reread this story of Paul and the apostles who changed course and headed into the storm, and I marveled at their tenacity.

There are weeks and even seasons when I write my legislators. There are seasons where I dig into books that challenge me to grow. There are days when I seek out and check in on someone who I find disagreeable, or don’t particularly like, or I search for what feels like superhuman patience to confront a challenge in front of me. There are weeks when I make picket signs or meals for people, or when I am the world’s most thoughtful and patient sister or aunt or spouse. These are weeks and seasons when I feel unstoppable. And right now, I’m feeling a little worn out and like I can’t quite get my arms around everything.  

Several days ago, I mentioned this in a group of preacher friends.  I told them that I was annoyed with this action packed reading from acts and specifically, I told them, that I instead just wanted to float on one of those awesome waterbeds from the 80s, to feel weightless and just rest. 

One of my pastor friends--after saying some nice, pastory and encouraging things to me--told me to read the second half of today’s the bible story It’s the part of the story, she said, where Paul and his crew were tired and they found rest and respite with a friend named Lydia next to a river outside of the city. 

Turns out that while the Holy Spirit certainly sends Paul and Silas into difficult ministry situations that require deep love, patience and compassion, the road also leads them to rest and find respite while they prepare for continued ministry.  And this is the life of faith too.

In the book of Acts, people aren’t called “Christians” or “the church.” They’re called “People of the Way.” We, as “People of the way” all have a part to play in this story of God’s activity in the church.  And our part changes from time to time.  

1. Some of us are like Paul when he is pushing into these broken, human systems that need fixing.  Some of us are hard at work patiently loving the difficult people in our midst. Some among us are walking the truth like Mary of Nazareth proclaimed, that the mighty will be brought down and the lowly will be brought up. Hopefully we all find ourselves pushing into this challenging territory from time to time.  

2. Then, some of us are like Lydia.  She was a wealthy, independent woman who provides food, rest and welcome to the justice warriors. There’s a tradition of wealthy, independent women supporting prophets in the bible like the women who supported Jesus or the Widow from Zarephath who, though she was struggling with a famine, managed a household like Lydia and fed the prophet Elijah some loaves of bread. 

3. Some of us are like the apostles who need to rest by the river under the cool shade trees and recharge for the task before them. “Come to me,” Jesus says, all of you who are weary and burdened down and I will give you rest. 

Where do you find yourself right now?  Are you trailblazing like Paul? Are you persistently working for change? Or mending frayed edges?

Or, Like Lydia, are you the hopeful, strong presence actively supporting someone who needs you? Who are you encouraging, supporting or lifting up?  How are you using your resources to take care of folks in need? 

Or, like the apostles, are you pausing for rest? (or thinking about it) Where are your green pastures and still waters? Who is there to welcome you?

What is certain about all of these roles is that wherever we are in the mix, we are all quietly and persistently building a new world together. What is asked of us in each of these roles, as people of the way, whether we are resting or building, is not to check out and not to let ourselves veer mindlessly off course. We all toggle back and forth between these places as individuals and as a church. And together, we are whole.

Today, we will baptize Emilia Anne Dengle into the life of faith. In those baptismal promises, Emilia’s parents, Alex and Jennifer and her sponsors will promise to teach her about this life of faith which both calls us to fight for a new world and to rest. The waters of baptism and the love of Christ are both hard work and the buoyancy of a water bed in the midst of challenge.

When we gather in a while around the baptismal fount, we will renounce the powers of this world that would try to divide and demean us.  We will renounce powers that justify mass shootings and ideologies of supremacy and inferiority based on race. We will commit to living in a such a way that brings about this radical kingdom of God even when it feels like the world is on fire around us.

All of us in this congregation around little Mia today will remember these baptismal promises to share Jesus through the way we live and the things we say. These promises commit to working for justice and peace. And they commit us to taking care of the earth and taking care of each other. And through it all, they will remind us, as they did for those ancient people of the way who sat in the cool shade by the river, that we are each beloved to God. 

"Let me talk you into it" (A sermon about story slams, cherry pies and reluctant actors)

John 21:1-19

You may have heard of poetry slams or story slams.  These are live events where folks share a poem or a great story.  I tell stories for a living. I’m into story slams. 

Several years ago, the Moth hosted story slam and Auburn Sandstrom got up to share a story.  She talked about that night when she hit bottom.  She had grown up with a comfortable life: undergrad was paid for, she had music lessons, now had a masters degree. But through a series of events, she had become addicted; and that night, she lay on the floor, flooded with anxiety, folding and unfolding a small piece of paper with a telephone number on it that her mother had given her.  “This is the number for a Christian counselor,” her mother had told her.  

Auburn hadn’t been hanging with any particular religion at that point, but she was desperate, and she punched in the numbers. When the man answered, she said, “Hi, I got this number from my mother do you think you could maybe talk to me?”  She heard him shuffling to sit up in bed and he replied, “yes, yes, yes. What going on?” Amber began to pour her heart out to him: the truth about her troubled marriage, her addiction, her fears with her son. She told him everything.  For hours, he sat and patiently listened—and remarked, “tell me more…oh, that must hurt, oh.” 

Auburn made the call at 2 in the morning and he stayed up on the phone listening to her all night until the sun rose and her panic began to subside.  She said she didn’t care what his religion was, but as she began to get a hold of herself, she told him how much she appreciated him. Her mother had mentioned that he was a Christian counselor.  Did he want her to go read some bible verses or something? 

“Auburn,” he said, “please don’t hang up, I’ve been trying not to bring this up.” 

“What?” she asked him. 

“The number you called?” He said. “…wrong number.”

She didn’t hang up on him. 

But, she said, the next day, she experienced what she has heard called “the peace that passes all understanding.” It was this sense, as she put it, that there was random love in the universe, some of it was unconditional and some of it was for her. 

Thinking of this man and the role he played in Auburn’s life remind me that we never know exactly how the Holy Spirit will draw us into Jesus’ mission of love.  

In our story from Acts today we hear of the Holy Spirit drawing Saul into the work of the church.  Saul--also known as Paul depending on if he’s in a Greek-speaking city like Tarsus or an Aramaic speaking community in Jerusalem--had been terrible to early Christians: Vile and violent and it all comes to a head, when he stones Steven to death. It’s terrible. And then, on that Road to Damascus, the Holy Spirit knocks him off his feet and he falls to the ground.  

“Saul, Saul, what are you doing! Why are you persecuting people!” The voice of Jesus calls out.  

Saul loses his bearings there on the road and they have to carry him to someone’s house in town. It’s not until the church leader, Ananias, comes to Saul and reluctantly lays his hands on him that his sight is restored, his perspective is shifted, and he is transformed. Saul becomes not only an apostle of the Lord but a person who wrote all of these important parts of our New Testament and had a very central role in shaping what has today become Christianity.  It was unexpected! for Saul and for the people of the early church.

Most of us don’t get a random midnight call from a person in dire need of support.  Most of us don’t hit the ground in awe at the sound of Jesus’ voice crying out to us.  Many of us do, however, underestimate our own potential as people who have a part to play in the mission of Jesus.  

You know how, when I give announcements at the end of the service, you sometimes think that they’re for anyone else but you?  If I announce that I need 5 of you to bring a cherry pie to church next week, the majority of you are probably going to tell yourself, “well, that’s not for me…someone else will do that.” 

Some of you have heard me say this before but when I worked in Latin America, a Honduran pastor once mentioned to me: “Lindsay, the difference is that in your country, religion is a plaything that people can take or leave. Here, in Latin America it is the heart of what we have.” In one sense, I see where he is coming from.  We have so much control over our lives, we have so much comfort so much agency that it doesn’t always seem to matter if we participate. On occasion, when we lose that sense of control, it bring us to our knees, but often, we’re left asking: does it matter if I show up? Does it matter how I live my life? How I spend my money? How I treat people?

While I appreciate the truth of the fact that Jesus has no hands but ours, and no feet but ours, in the stories about the early church, like this one with Saul from the book of Acts, it is Jesus, himself, who is working along side of the people. Jesus is doing his own recruiting here in this story.  And Jesus is doing his own recruiting now, here today. For what it’s worth, it is really a mighty strange choice for Jesus to recruit Saul—don’t ask me why does Jesus choose this guy, of all people, to pull into a leadership role. 

All I can say is that involving the least likely candidates to build this kingdom of God is one of God’s signature moves. It’s a through line in our bible: we see it in the stories like the one of Jacob and Esau, or in God choosing to be born into a really unlikely family in Bethlehem, or even in the use of the Roman cross of crucifixion—a most unlikely  instrument--which God somehow turns into a tree of life.

Look at today’s story from the gospel: In this one, Jesus is putting a shepherd’s staff into the hands of Peter who is flustered and ashamed and telling him to take care of the sheep. This is the same Peter who denied Jesus three times near the foot of the cross and is doubting if he is qualified or capable of doing anything in this movement let alone lead the church.

It takes courage to work through that. Courage to participate in what Jesus is calling us to do. It takes courage to participate when you doubt if all of this actually matters, when you feel like you’re not good enough, or when we’re faced with our own shortcomings like Peter, who really doubted if he was qualified. It takes strength of soul to participate in this movement when you feel like your workspace is toxic and all consuming, or when you’re burdened down with a clenching grief.  It takes courage to participate when you’re eclipsed by the possibility of failure—and here, I will say that 15 months ago, I was terrified that I would fail at my role as a parent or a pastor.  Do you know how long it took me to upload sermons to youtube? …Hours! Do you know how bored I was personally attending preschool on line? to tears! And yet, it took courage to press on and do it. 

We’ve been practicing a certain kind of courage for 2 years at home. Two years ago, we didn’t know what this would all bring. There was a point in early of May of 2020 when it took courage to go into a pharmacy and buy Tylenol for my kid.   I needed courage to continue loving my husband who I adore but kind of wanted to kill when we were all locked in together.  I needed courage to reinvent my job.  And you?  You needed courage to do the same.  And courage when your loved ones were not okay.  And courage to keep going when you worried that the world would never get back to normal. 

Even in this last year, it has taken courage to claim the kind of life we desire for our families: to send our kids to school, to come back to church, to apply for new jobs, to reach out when we we’re lonely.  We have drawn on courage like never before these last 2 years. We know what courage is. 

And…we are a little out of practice employing it with people outside of our household or outside of our immediate circles. We are out of practice with engaging with a Spirit that can and will knock us to the ground.   When Jesus says to Peter, “tend my sheep,” Peter could have drifted back to his old, safe life in Galilee.  He could have retreated and returned to what he knew. It was a risk when Jesus looked him in the eye and held out that shepherd staff: “feed my sheep.” But there was power there on the beach in the promise of new life in the risen Jesus.  Dear ones, there is power today in the promise of new life in the risen Jesus today. 

We come here to church and we are fueled for the courageous life that Jesus calls us to. Here in this space of worship we practice how to live in the world. We confess our sin and work at forgiving each other.  We share the peace with each other. We eat at the table together with people who might think differently from us. And then we go from this space and we put it into practice. That practice and way we live our lives as people of th Way strengthens the fabric of this Kingdom of God around us.  It makes our world stronger, it strengthens the chords of love, justice, mercy and joy that run as deep undertones to who we are. It changes us ever so subtly and slowly into who God calls us to be.

Who, dear ones, is God calling you to towards? Where is God calling you to take a step forward?

When Auburn Sandstrom finished her story slam, she said that in the deepest night of despair and anxiety, it only took a pinhole of light for grace to flood in.

We, dear ones, have a part to play in the mission of Jesus.  You may feel unqualified or apathetic, you may wonder if it all actually matters. Sometimes, it calls for us to do things we have never imagined, and sometimes, it calls for us to make a simple pinhole of light for all of grace to come rushing in and the kingdom of God to flood the space around us. 

A letter to 2021 Confirmands (10/17/21)

Mark 8:27-38

Dear Confirmands, 

We have had quite the confirmation journey the last two years!  

If not sure if you were the determined ones or if it was your parents, but it has been a journey! One of my better memories from confirmation last year was that time a handful of us met, during the height of Covid, on that freezing night to walk around the neighborhood in the middle of January. We called people and prayed in front of their houses. It was dark and really cold but mostly, it was just kind of wonderful to see other people.  

I know there is a lot about life that has gotten back to some kind of normal and you all finally have more people to interact with than you did last January!

I suspect that, when you first meet people your own age, you interact a little differently than perhaps some of us adults do.  To a new person sitting next to you at school, you might break the ice, and offer them a piece of gum, or say “this class is so annoying or hard right now” or “this teacher is boring.” 

That is not exactly how we do small talk at church. We don’t always offer a piece of gum to the grandma sitting down the pew from us. We don’t usually pass the offering plate to the person down the row and say, “oh man, the melody of this song is so hard,” or “this pastor is so boring…”

We all get to know people in different ways.  As we get to know people, here at church, or school or wherever, it gets easier and eventually, we get to know the values of the other person: is this someone who I can trust? Is this someone who is kind? What does this person care about? And then maybe, the acquaintance turns into a friend. There are, however, limits as to how much we can know about another person and we can still be surprised by people we’ve known for a while. 

In today’s scripture reading, Mark tells us a story about a moment that took place after Jesus and the disciples had known each other for a while. At the point of this bible story, the disciples and Jesus had spent time together. They knew each other. They had healed people, and eaten meals together. The disciples had been soaking in Jesus’ teaching and, one day, while they are—again--road tripping together, Jesus asks them: What are people saying about me? Who do people say that I am? 

Peter, who is one of Jesus’ disciple-besties answers, “You are the Messiah,” and Jesus agrees.  (Jesus goes by a lot of names: Messiah, Christ, Lord, Savior, friend, teacher, prophet, role-model, Son of God, redeemer.) But then, Jesus says, yeah, I’m the Messiah, but don’t tell anyone. 

There may be multiple reasons that Jesus tells them not to tell anyone, but as the conversation unfolds, we start to get it.  It seems like Peter has the title of “messiah” right for Jesus but he doesn’t quite grasp the job description or the way Jesus is living out that role.  

In the ancient world, in a lot of Jewish circles, people waited for a Messiah who would be the person who would free them from the powerful Roman rule that was sucking them dry. This person was a great deliverer: “Christos:” the anointed one. This was a title given to a king and would mean that this messiah would come in glorious power as a king and a military conqueror.  This was a mighty warrior-messiah thundering in on the cavalry who was going to defeat the Roman imperial occupation and restore the throne to the line of King David.  It seems like, Peter, Jesus’ bestie-disciple, may have had this triumphant, violent image of messiah in mind when he answered Jesus. 

The conversation between Jesus and the disciples that day devolved into an argument, there on the road trip. Peter pulls Jesus aside to give him a piece of his mind. Jesus yells, “get behind me Satan!” Thing start to get a little crazy and that’s when Jesus essentially does the equivalent of pulling the bus over, unbuckling and turning around to set the record straight with everyone. 

You see, they were on the way to a city about 125 miles north of Jerusalem called Caesarea Philippi. It was an impressive major roman city that was built by Herod the great.  Herod happened to be a practicing Jew, and as governor of Judea, he had built this awesome temple in Caesarea Philippi which he dedicated to the Holy Roman emperor, Augustus. (The Roman emperor Augustus, mind you, was the guy who added the tag line “son of god” to his bio and then stamped his image and divine title on coins that circulated all over the place. The guy had--just a little bit of—an ego.)

So it’s on that roadtrip when Jesus, Son of God, and his crew are bumping up the road towards this city with this magnificent temple when the argument breaks out about what it means to be a messiah and Jesus pulls the bus over.  He looks at everyone.

“You got it backwards, man,” he says. “We’re not marching as military conquerors here. This isn’t a violent push or movement. The son of humanity must suffer and die and be rejected. And then, he will rise.”

Jesus totally flips this traditional warrior-Messiah idea on its’ head and by doing so, he proceeds to freak everyone out.  They had been hoping for a war-hero and Peter is beside himself. This is not what he signed up for! Everyone is stunned there on the bus with people craning to see in the windows and hear what’s going on. You could have heard a pin drop.  As the engine idles there on the side of the road, there’s the outline of that awesome temple in Caesarea Philippi way off in the hazy distance; and someone mumbles,  “I thought we were going to storm the gates and take it all down…”

Jesus goes on: “This isn’t some kind of violent campaign of domination. We are not going to thunder in on the cavalry and conquer the temple.  That isn’t the path I’m asking you to follow me on, he says.  I’m not headed there, he explains, but to Jerusalem, to a hill with a cross on it. Right here, right now,” Jesus explains gesturing at the temple, “we’re coming up to a crossroads. A decision point.”

Matthew Myer Boulton writes, it’s as if Jesus goes on to say to the crowds and disciples gathered there:

Let me tell you a great mystery: deep down in creation, there is a physics more profound than the surface of things, that superficial layer in which [everything] appears to be driven by might and violence and grasping. Underneath all of that is a deeper physics, [where] what’s truly important is actually driven by love and humility and generosity.

On the surface, things like love and generosity and service may seem sweet, maybe Pollyanna: as if they are simply good values to have in your pocket in the game of life.  At face value, it can seem like, service and love and generosity are just helpful supporting actors in the play; but when we honestly get down to it, they can seem a weak and fragile out there in the real world. 

But they’re not. 

They are some of the strongest things we know. 

Jesus and the disciples will walk into that city not with fists ready for battle, but with open hands.  

I would invite you to take a moment to open your hands on your lap.

This teaching. It is indeed a great mystery.  It might seem like, as Boulton puts it, that the world turns on the axis of power, might, and my whims, my agenda but there is a shared physics of love deep within us that everything hinges on. 

Jesus knows: it doesn’t make sense to say that the way of love and generosity is actually stronger than the path of self-interest. 

Jesus knows: it doesn’t make sense to say that the way of community is more powerful than the way of self. 

Jesus know: It doesn’t make sense to believe that the way of compassion and kindness and justice is stronger than the way of money and might.

It just doesn’t make sense.

But it is the hidden physics of creation, the physics of love embodied in Jesus, Son of God, that actually make our world turn.  And this is what you confirmands are standing up today to affirm.

In this scripture I read a minute ago, Jesus tells us that we will take up our cross and follow him.  We know that there will be suffering, because all movements of love and justice—from the civil rights movement, to gender equality movements, to our current environmental healing movement—they all involve some struggle and some suffering. But that is the cross that we take up to follow Jesus in this way.

Today, you confirmands will profess a decision that you have made to walk in this way of Jesus and to step into this collective space of faith in God, to take it as your own. And while that decision may seem really big and monumental today, the truth is, that we all, here in this room with you, face this decision every day. 

These temples, of Cesaria Philipi of self-centeredness and unbalanced power, of greed and apathy and selfishness, these temples are everywhere: in our work, in our extended families, in our purchasing habits, in our treatment of others, in our concern for the earth and all it’s creatures; and every day, all of us stand at that crossroads multiple times.  The question, as we stand there is: will we be bystanders even or even cash out on this God-thing, or will we do our best to live the lives we were called into in our baptisms?  

Today, you all will stand up, (we’re going to put a whole lot of ritual and tradition around it) and you will commit as confirmands--and we again as congregation--to live the baptism-shaped life that God calls us to. Through sinking our roots into our sacred stories, through the practice of faith with the people here we’ll commit to letting God shape us into fuller versions of ourselves that we didn’t realize we could be.  

Now I can’t promise you a lot of things about the church.  One thing I can most certainly promise you is that this church will disappoint you at some time or another in your life.  And yet, this church is a part of your journey and you a part of theirs. You, with your passion and clear-eyed vision for justice will strengthen this church and bring healing to this world.

We come together in this strange group of people, called the church with our different politics and unique life stories and particular perspectives and we say, “yes, let’s do this. Let’s live this life of faith together.” Faith is a practice that we will commit to doing together as a church, and the more we exercise it the stronger it becomes. I truly believe that through participation in this life of faith, as followers of Jesus, I truly believe that this way of love will strengthen the immune system of humanity. 

God bless you, dear confirmands in this beautiful, painful, mysterious life of faith.

You are loved.