Sunday, June 14, 2009
Third Sunday after Pentecost
The Rev. Tasha Brubaker Garrison
There is a story about the Buddha and mustard seeds. Kisa Gotami was a young, poor girl, who had an eye of spiritual knowledge that could see the real worth of things. She had only one son, and he died. In her grief she carried to dead child to all her neighbors, asking them for medicine. Finally, one man suggested that she go to a physician whose medicine could help. Kisa said,”Pray tell me, sir; who is it?” And the man replied: “Go to Sakyamuni, the Buddha.”
Kisa went to the Buddha and cried: “Lord and Master, give me the medicine that will cure my boy.” The Buddha answered, “I want a handful of mustard-seed.” When the girl in her joy promised to bring it, the Buddha added, “The mustard seed must be taken from a house where no one has lost a child, husband, parent, or friend.” Kisa went from house to house but every house had a beloved one who had died.
She became weary and hopeless, and sat down at the wayside, watching the lights of the city as they flickered up and were extinguished again. And she thought of the fate of humans and said to herself, “How selfish am I in my grief! Death is common to all; yet in this valley of desolation there is a path that leads him to immortality who has surrendered all selfishness.”
This littlest of seeds revealed a grand truth. Death is common to all; grief is common to all. The walk with the spiritual, the Holy One, is not about getting our way, but about cultivating a character that leads to love and peace. In this character and the world it brings forth, selfishness is ought not to be found. So it is too in the kingdom of God proclaimed by Jesus. It is about cracking us open to the movement of truth, the movement of God.
Mustard is a humble yet powerful plant. As Jesus says, it is a tiny seed. It’s common. Cultures all over the world have cultivated it and appreciated its gifts of nutrients and preservation. Mustard is simple to make yet depending on the recipe can bring tears to the toughest customer’s eyes. It can take over if it isn’t tended, running wild and unruly over the land.
The mustard seed can be a pest. Not quite as bad as Scotch Broom or kudzu, but when left to grow untended it can turn into a large shrub that is strong enough to crack concrete. I’ve never seen a mustard shrub of that caliber, but I do remember the mustard fields that were about a mile from my childhood home. They were actually quite lovely—acres of bright yellow flowers growing thick upon the ground. The air was spicy and warm, and the field seemed to radiate light.
Jesus’ listeners were probably a bit surprised that this everyday and modest plant was used as a symbol for God’s kingdom. A cedar tree seems more apt, not the lowly mustard. But it is a typical Jesus inversion. The strength of the cedar tree, its dominance, its loftiness and associations with worldly power are easily transposed onto the Holy One that is the cause of all. But our power is of a different nature than God’s, Jesus reminds us. God’s like a mustard seed that spreads and grows among creation and shelters it, intertwines with it. A shared and present power, not an isolated and domineering one. A present reality that can crack things open in new and surprising ways. As the parables show, the seeds of the kingdom grow by God's will and not our action, and yet also require our participation. It purpose is life and space for all within that life freely given.
Which brings to mind the ivy and the blackberry. We have both these vigorous plants on our property. The ivy spreads and covers and strangles. It's shelter is limited and it's life more parasitic. Our blackberries, while certainly able to take over, offer much more—shelter for animals and birds (and sometimes even humans who find a haven under their branches), delicious berries that feed and nourish us, a gathering place of community when the berries are ripe. It's a bit more mustard-seed like. But like the Body of Christ that is likened to a vine, it needs pruning just as we need pruning. The kingdom of God that are a part of is shaped by us and sometimes we direct the tree or the vine or the shrub in wrong directions. And once again we are to be cracked open by the surprising truths the kingdom of God invites us to learn again and again: generosity, humility, compassion, forgiveness, mercy, peace-making through being peaceful, honesty, kindness, the valuing of all life as equal to our own, and striving to make real in our daily lives and communities the charge to love each other out of these virtues. It is to allow ourselves to be that new creation of which Paul speaks because we get out of the way and let God get in our way.
And what happens when we allow God to get in our way, when the seeds are given space to grow? More than we can imagine. I think of the confirmation classes I taught in Virginia, on average 50 freshmen who mostly didn't want to be there. The seeds were planted, week after week, and so often it seemed that nothing was sinking in. Some faces were engaged, but many looked resigned. And then, unexpectedly, without warning, something would burst forth. We teachers often never knew what it was that caused the shift, but somehow in that space and time and persistence the new creation took root. Something grew and the grain ripened and suddenly, one more of them was eager, awake, wanting to learn more about this God thing. They had found a home on a branch.
Or what can happen when there are no resources and no structure to meet a need because people believe in the kingdom logic. The Egan shelter is a living example of that. Not only did it shelter people from the cold, but people met other people, stereotypes fell, those on the outside felt included and part of making something happen, the community confronted the stark evidence of its brokenness and responded with compassion. Nothing fancy, no towering cedars, but humble acts and simple care.
Health care debate and kingdom eyes, how it cracks us to see things from a different perspective.
What else???
Tie off??
Friday, June 19, 2009
Thursday, June 11, 2009
The Holy Trinity, June 7, 2009
The Holy Trinity, June 7, 2009
The Rev. Tasha Brubaker Garrison
Trinity Sunday! That most wonderful and wonderfully messy feast day. If you think I am going to be able to explain it to you in the next 5 minutes, prepare to be disappointed. But we can look at it conceptually using two lenses. The first is this God we worship that we call a Trinity. The other is to look at the trinities that permeate and shape our day-to-day reality as beings that are always relating and being related to. So here goes.
The Trinity is a most confusing concept—at least we are trained to believe it to be. All that mumbo jumbo about God being one yet three, three yet one. Are we monotheists or quasi-monotheists? How can it be that God is one yet somehow divided into three persons that are all equal, yet perhaps not quite equal? God is unity but also distinctive parts and on it goes.
Seminarians are used to getting the assignment to preach on this day. The Trinity has become this mysterious zone of theological inquiry that is beyond mere mortals. And most priests don’t want to touch it with a, you guessed it, three-foot pole. Let the seminarian do it; they don’t know any better. And so we hear lots of sermons on economic and immanent Trinity and walk away even more confused and imagining God as one big philosophical argument going on with itself. And in this state of confusion and maybe paralysis at trying to explain this we look for creative ways out. We use metaphors such as ice, vapor and water, which are helpful to a point, or, as one fellow seminarian I knew, stunts from the pulpit: in her case, juggling. I’m not sure how three balls flying in the air is supposed to make me understand the Trinity, but hey, I don’t have any brighter ideas myself.
And perhaps that is the heart of the difficulty. Not the Trinity per se, but our need to make sense of it in forensic terms. To squash it into a systematic, theoretical box. To make mystery make sense, as if it is something we can take apart like an engine, see how it works, and put it back together again. See, I think the Trinity is about experience, our experience of God. There is no limit to the ways we experience God, no way to pin it down or confine it. In our readings today there are three very distinct ways that God is encountered from the overwhelming awe of the transcendent in Isaiah's meeting to the face-to-face unsettling and life-changing experience of Nicodemus with Jesus. At most we can see common patterns of experience from which emerge the transforming action of God, ever new, ever uncontrollable. The Trinity is that spiritual space in which we discover the presence of the holy and are confronted with our response. It is that place where truths collide and we make decisions about whose we are.
Which reminds me of a classmate of mine in 5th and 6th grade. Her name was Michelle. There is a definite understanding of reality that operates in a classroom and among children of that age. They are one class (as opposed to the other teacher’s class), especially at recess or lunch time, but within they are sorted. Since we were all brainy kids in my class we didn’t sift by the nerd factor, but we did by others. Now what made one cool and what didn’t seemed to be a moving target with no apparent logic to it. Why did playing jump rope one week make you cool, but not the next? Why did having jeans that buttoned up versus zipping up make you hip? By whatever the criteria were for that week or so we were divided into those who were cool, those who were not and those who didn’t register (which was often the best group to be in). I remember this bizarre reality of my own internal life as it bumped up against the reality my classmates created and the world as defined by our teachers. Sound kinda Trinitarian?
I sorted of drifted between the not cool and the didn’t register camp. But Michelle was always and clearly in the not cool camp. She was one of those girls that looked at age 11 like she was 17; she was awkward physically; and she was shy. I often wonder how she found the strength to face us each day. Matters came to a head one day and moved from simply being uncool to center of attention. On this fateful day her pants split in the back. There was one trinity of experience operating for sure: by the rules this was uncool—definition; the response was to laugh and humiliate—the incarnation; the effect was to diminish and hurt a heart because they were of little consequence—the spirit. But that wasn’t the only Trinity. One or two of us didn’t laugh. We saw a different Trinity of definition, incarnation and spirit. The definition was compassion; the response was kindness and assistance; the spirit was dignity and respect. That was a day I did it right. I didn’t laugh, and I went with her to the office to get a safety pin. I said I would be in a certain and different kind of relationship with her in this complex experience of reality and reaction. And a new experience emerged out of all those pieces.
The Trinity is something like this. It is that multi-faceted way we experience God and have God revealed to us. It is in motion and dynamic, taking its place of meaning from the Good News of Jesus about how we are to live in this world. It is the interplay and interconnection of a holy reality as we experience it. One expression is as utterly transcendent and over-arching. Another expression is to experience that holy reality embodied in creation and humanity, the experience of God in other people and most clearly of all Jesus whose life was so fully imbued with the holy that we see the image of God. And yet another expression is to experience that sense deep within of the holy residing inside us and giving us life. God, Incarnated One, Spirit: all interwoven and all interconnecting and yet moving in such a way that we are free to respond and shape the nature of being. That holiness moves us towards truth and love and freedom. It is discovered by our experience, our action and reaction. We believe that this Trinity, this Godly Trinity, expressed in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus reveals the deepest truth about reality and about God and to this we anchor ourselves to live into the trinities of this world.
It is this Trinitarian reality that allows us to be born of the spirit, to be born again and again, to bring out of our relationships the kingdom of God. And it all starts here at this table where we gather, the bread and wine are shared, the spirit moves and we are once again turned into the living expression of God. Perhaps the Trinity is not so hard to understand after all.
The Rev. Tasha Brubaker Garrison
Trinity Sunday! That most wonderful and wonderfully messy feast day. If you think I am going to be able to explain it to you in the next 5 minutes, prepare to be disappointed. But we can look at it conceptually using two lenses. The first is this God we worship that we call a Trinity. The other is to look at the trinities that permeate and shape our day-to-day reality as beings that are always relating and being related to. So here goes.
The Trinity is a most confusing concept—at least we are trained to believe it to be. All that mumbo jumbo about God being one yet three, three yet one. Are we monotheists or quasi-monotheists? How can it be that God is one yet somehow divided into three persons that are all equal, yet perhaps not quite equal? God is unity but also distinctive parts and on it goes.
Seminarians are used to getting the assignment to preach on this day. The Trinity has become this mysterious zone of theological inquiry that is beyond mere mortals. And most priests don’t want to touch it with a, you guessed it, three-foot pole. Let the seminarian do it; they don’t know any better. And so we hear lots of sermons on economic and immanent Trinity and walk away even more confused and imagining God as one big philosophical argument going on with itself. And in this state of confusion and maybe paralysis at trying to explain this we look for creative ways out. We use metaphors such as ice, vapor and water, which are helpful to a point, or, as one fellow seminarian I knew, stunts from the pulpit: in her case, juggling. I’m not sure how three balls flying in the air is supposed to make me understand the Trinity, but hey, I don’t have any brighter ideas myself.
And perhaps that is the heart of the difficulty. Not the Trinity per se, but our need to make sense of it in forensic terms. To squash it into a systematic, theoretical box. To make mystery make sense, as if it is something we can take apart like an engine, see how it works, and put it back together again. See, I think the Trinity is about experience, our experience of God. There is no limit to the ways we experience God, no way to pin it down or confine it. In our readings today there are three very distinct ways that God is encountered from the overwhelming awe of the transcendent in Isaiah's meeting to the face-to-face unsettling and life-changing experience of Nicodemus with Jesus. At most we can see common patterns of experience from which emerge the transforming action of God, ever new, ever uncontrollable. The Trinity is that spiritual space in which we discover the presence of the holy and are confronted with our response. It is that place where truths collide and we make decisions about whose we are.
Which reminds me of a classmate of mine in 5th and 6th grade. Her name was Michelle. There is a definite understanding of reality that operates in a classroom and among children of that age. They are one class (as opposed to the other teacher’s class), especially at recess or lunch time, but within they are sorted. Since we were all brainy kids in my class we didn’t sift by the nerd factor, but we did by others. Now what made one cool and what didn’t seemed to be a moving target with no apparent logic to it. Why did playing jump rope one week make you cool, but not the next? Why did having jeans that buttoned up versus zipping up make you hip? By whatever the criteria were for that week or so we were divided into those who were cool, those who were not and those who didn’t register (which was often the best group to be in). I remember this bizarre reality of my own internal life as it bumped up against the reality my classmates created and the world as defined by our teachers. Sound kinda Trinitarian?
I sorted of drifted between the not cool and the didn’t register camp. But Michelle was always and clearly in the not cool camp. She was one of those girls that looked at age 11 like she was 17; she was awkward physically; and she was shy. I often wonder how she found the strength to face us each day. Matters came to a head one day and moved from simply being uncool to center of attention. On this fateful day her pants split in the back. There was one trinity of experience operating for sure: by the rules this was uncool—definition; the response was to laugh and humiliate—the incarnation; the effect was to diminish and hurt a heart because they were of little consequence—the spirit. But that wasn’t the only Trinity. One or two of us didn’t laugh. We saw a different Trinity of definition, incarnation and spirit. The definition was compassion; the response was kindness and assistance; the spirit was dignity and respect. That was a day I did it right. I didn’t laugh, and I went with her to the office to get a safety pin. I said I would be in a certain and different kind of relationship with her in this complex experience of reality and reaction. And a new experience emerged out of all those pieces.
The Trinity is something like this. It is that multi-faceted way we experience God and have God revealed to us. It is in motion and dynamic, taking its place of meaning from the Good News of Jesus about how we are to live in this world. It is the interplay and interconnection of a holy reality as we experience it. One expression is as utterly transcendent and over-arching. Another expression is to experience that holy reality embodied in creation and humanity, the experience of God in other people and most clearly of all Jesus whose life was so fully imbued with the holy that we see the image of God. And yet another expression is to experience that sense deep within of the holy residing inside us and giving us life. God, Incarnated One, Spirit: all interwoven and all interconnecting and yet moving in such a way that we are free to respond and shape the nature of being. That holiness moves us towards truth and love and freedom. It is discovered by our experience, our action and reaction. We believe that this Trinity, this Godly Trinity, expressed in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus reveals the deepest truth about reality and about God and to this we anchor ourselves to live into the trinities of this world.
It is this Trinitarian reality that allows us to be born of the spirit, to be born again and again, to bring out of our relationships the kingdom of God. And it all starts here at this table where we gather, the bread and wine are shared, the spirit moves and we are once again turned into the living expression of God. Perhaps the Trinity is not so hard to understand after all.
Monday, June 1, 2009
May 24, 2009, 7th Sunday of Easter
May 24, 2009
The Rev. Tasha Brubaker Garrison+
7th Sunday of Easter, Year B
Ascension has always been an odd theological dictum for me to grasp. The feast of the Ascension of Jesus is always the Thursday of the week before Pentecost, and, like most places, we didn’t pay it much mind. It's often glossed over, partly, I think, because the story strains credibility to our contemporary ears. But, we must spend a little time on the Ascension if today's readings are to help us move from there to the feast of Pentecost which we celebrate next Sunday.
The Ascension story is found only in Luke. It's a few scant lines: Luke 24: 50-51. “Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven.” In Mark, in the later addition to the Gospel that includes the resurrection appearances, we hear that Jesus was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God, though for reasons unclear to me this is not considered the Ascension in the same way as Luke's version. In Matthew the Gospel ends with risen Jesus commissioning the eleven disciples. In John, Jesus' Ascension is the cross. This is his lifting up to the Father.
So, what are we to make of all this? Quite a lot, in fact. First, though, we need to talk a bit about the actual story of Jesus ascending. The story as written in Luke easily leads to simplistic caricatures such as a human body just like mine suddenly being lifted up and drawn high up into the stratosphere like a released balloon. Images of Harry Potter on his Nimbus 2000 broom start coming into my head, and it's all magic and fantasy. I can't take it seriously, can you? And thus, the story gets pushed aside because we don't quite know what to do with it.
Such an image also leads us to put in that spatial separation. God is up there and we are down here and a huge gap remains between us. But maybe a different illustration will help. When my mother died I was responsible for settling her affairs. Two days after her death I went to her home, the home I had grown up in. I went into her bedroom and within a few minutes had this powerful sense of her presence. Not a ghost, nothing I could see, but a presence that took up space. There was a dense-ness to the air; I felt as if I was walking under water. It was unnerving and I simply had to leave the room. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was there. I went back the next day. When I entered the bedroom her presence was still there, but I was prepared. I looked around and noticed that the bed was unmade. Now, my mother was compulsively neat. There was no way she would ever leave her home for anything with something untidy—it was a point of honor. So, I went and made the bed, walking right into the heavy place of the room. And once that was done, she left. It was like smoke leaving a room through an open window. Things were as they should be and she could rest in peace. It is that kind of sensation that I imagine as the ascension of Jesus. Perhaps that helps you find ways to get at the metaphor and the experience this passage is expressing.
But that's only the first part. How it happened isn't nearly as important as what it is trying to tell us.
There is a motif at play here. We are in an in-between time right now, the space between Jesus' withdrawing and the coming of the Holy Spirit. On Holy Saturday we were in between the death of Jesus and the Resurrection joy of Easter. It is a gradual transition into being the Body of Christ here on earth without the presence of the earthly Jesus and with a new shape to our experiences of the Risen One.
It is like that process of say, learning to ride a bike. First we are pulled along by our parents to get the feel of riding. Then we have a tricycle, which gives the support of balance. Then we get a two-wheeler with training wheels and lots of time with mom or dad holding onto us lightly while we weave unsteadily all over the sidewalk. And then we are let go. For a while we are quite ungainly and take a few spills, but then one day it all clicks and we are off and riding, never to forget how to do it.
This whole time between the death of Jesus and the coming of the Holy Spirit is preparation for us to be the Church, the Body of Christ on earth in whom Jesus is present and alive. He has shown; he has led; he has reconciled; he has taught us who we are to be and now it is our task, our work, as this new creation of God. We are now the Body of Christ. For us to be who God wants us to be Jesus must make room for us. His drawing away is not an abandonment, but a gift of liberty, of possibility, of ability for us to live out our call as followers of his. It is a new creation that recapitulates the first Creation in which God could have been all, but chose instead to make room for other beings that have freedom and space to be their selves in relation to God. And we are waiting for that Spirit, that divine breath, to blow upon us and enliven us just as the wind moved over creation in the very beginning. The Holy Spirit that comes at Pentecost is to breathe the life of Christ into us so that this new creation is ready to boldly live out its life as a resurrected people shaped and defined by the Crucified and Risen One. Are we prepared for it? Are we ready to have the lot fall to us? And how are we to be this Body?
What Jesus gives us is a profound gift and joy and responsibility. It is risky, daring work, that can put us at odds with conventional wisdom, the values of our community or nation—as Jesus says, “being hated by the world”-- and even put us in conflict with stances that are understood to be “Christian”. What we hear today in the Gospel of John is a prayer of Jesus for the newly formed Church; it is a prayer asking for blessing and guidance for us. Jesus is interceding for us in this in-between time. He is offering his prayer for us as we come into being constantly and continually as the Body of Christ in the world. And in John's gospel the foundational sign of that is love.
That is the charge. We are the ones now empowered by Jesus and sustained by God to do this work. It is to be a visible symbol of God's love for all in this world by loving the bodies and souls of every other human being and seeing in them the face of Jesus. It is to have our lives understood in terms of the one whose glory came by living a life that led to being lifted up on a tool of execution to reveal God’s ultimate love—the same type of life we are to lead as individuals and as the Church.
Here's how I am hearing that charge this year. I have been invited to join a revitalized interfaith group to look at addressing hunger in our area. We are a people formed out of bread and wine, out of feeding and being fed, so the feeding of others is part and parcel of who we are. I do not know yet what my role will be in this work of advocacy, education and raising money and gifts of food, but I know this is what I must do as part of Christ's body. I hope to share this work with Resurrection and that there will be support here to take part in the larger, interfaith activities that comes out of the work of this group. We are always called to feed the Body of Christ and all people, but when the need is as acute as it is now that call becomes relentless. We are to trust in God's care for us that we can in these hard times do more not less, and that this is the response of faith. The need will grow as the jobs continue to be lost and as people begin to lose their unemployment benefits, which are not much to begin with being roughly ¼ of a person's former monthly pay. More and more people will experience hunger and a foundational way we can embody Jesus’ charge of love in this space he has left for us is to joyfully and generously work to make sure all are fed. It’s just one way among many. And its life is made possible not only through that space made for us to be the Body of Christ, but also by the sustaining presence and gift of the Holy Spirit that we await to renew next Sunday. Are we ready to be set on fire by God? Are we ready to live as the bush that burned but yet was not consumed? Audacious questions. To which I say: Yes, we are. Come, Holy Spirit, come. Amen.
The Rev. Tasha Brubaker Garrison+
7th Sunday of Easter, Year B
Ascension has always been an odd theological dictum for me to grasp. The feast of the Ascension of Jesus is always the Thursday of the week before Pentecost, and, like most places, we didn’t pay it much mind. It's often glossed over, partly, I think, because the story strains credibility to our contemporary ears. But, we must spend a little time on the Ascension if today's readings are to help us move from there to the feast of Pentecost which we celebrate next Sunday.
The Ascension story is found only in Luke. It's a few scant lines: Luke 24: 50-51. “Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven.” In Mark, in the later addition to the Gospel that includes the resurrection appearances, we hear that Jesus was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God, though for reasons unclear to me this is not considered the Ascension in the same way as Luke's version. In Matthew the Gospel ends with risen Jesus commissioning the eleven disciples. In John, Jesus' Ascension is the cross. This is his lifting up to the Father.
So, what are we to make of all this? Quite a lot, in fact. First, though, we need to talk a bit about the actual story of Jesus ascending. The story as written in Luke easily leads to simplistic caricatures such as a human body just like mine suddenly being lifted up and drawn high up into the stratosphere like a released balloon. Images of Harry Potter on his Nimbus 2000 broom start coming into my head, and it's all magic and fantasy. I can't take it seriously, can you? And thus, the story gets pushed aside because we don't quite know what to do with it.
Such an image also leads us to put in that spatial separation. God is up there and we are down here and a huge gap remains between us. But maybe a different illustration will help. When my mother died I was responsible for settling her affairs. Two days after her death I went to her home, the home I had grown up in. I went into her bedroom and within a few minutes had this powerful sense of her presence. Not a ghost, nothing I could see, but a presence that took up space. There was a dense-ness to the air; I felt as if I was walking under water. It was unnerving and I simply had to leave the room. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was there. I went back the next day. When I entered the bedroom her presence was still there, but I was prepared. I looked around and noticed that the bed was unmade. Now, my mother was compulsively neat. There was no way she would ever leave her home for anything with something untidy—it was a point of honor. So, I went and made the bed, walking right into the heavy place of the room. And once that was done, she left. It was like smoke leaving a room through an open window. Things were as they should be and she could rest in peace. It is that kind of sensation that I imagine as the ascension of Jesus. Perhaps that helps you find ways to get at the metaphor and the experience this passage is expressing.
But that's only the first part. How it happened isn't nearly as important as what it is trying to tell us.
There is a motif at play here. We are in an in-between time right now, the space between Jesus' withdrawing and the coming of the Holy Spirit. On Holy Saturday we were in between the death of Jesus and the Resurrection joy of Easter. It is a gradual transition into being the Body of Christ here on earth without the presence of the earthly Jesus and with a new shape to our experiences of the Risen One.
It is like that process of say, learning to ride a bike. First we are pulled along by our parents to get the feel of riding. Then we have a tricycle, which gives the support of balance. Then we get a two-wheeler with training wheels and lots of time with mom or dad holding onto us lightly while we weave unsteadily all over the sidewalk. And then we are let go. For a while we are quite ungainly and take a few spills, but then one day it all clicks and we are off and riding, never to forget how to do it.
This whole time between the death of Jesus and the coming of the Holy Spirit is preparation for us to be the Church, the Body of Christ on earth in whom Jesus is present and alive. He has shown; he has led; he has reconciled; he has taught us who we are to be and now it is our task, our work, as this new creation of God. We are now the Body of Christ. For us to be who God wants us to be Jesus must make room for us. His drawing away is not an abandonment, but a gift of liberty, of possibility, of ability for us to live out our call as followers of his. It is a new creation that recapitulates the first Creation in which God could have been all, but chose instead to make room for other beings that have freedom and space to be their selves in relation to God. And we are waiting for that Spirit, that divine breath, to blow upon us and enliven us just as the wind moved over creation in the very beginning. The Holy Spirit that comes at Pentecost is to breathe the life of Christ into us so that this new creation is ready to boldly live out its life as a resurrected people shaped and defined by the Crucified and Risen One. Are we prepared for it? Are we ready to have the lot fall to us? And how are we to be this Body?
What Jesus gives us is a profound gift and joy and responsibility. It is risky, daring work, that can put us at odds with conventional wisdom, the values of our community or nation—as Jesus says, “being hated by the world”-- and even put us in conflict with stances that are understood to be “Christian”. What we hear today in the Gospel of John is a prayer of Jesus for the newly formed Church; it is a prayer asking for blessing and guidance for us. Jesus is interceding for us in this in-between time. He is offering his prayer for us as we come into being constantly and continually as the Body of Christ in the world. And in John's gospel the foundational sign of that is love.
That is the charge. We are the ones now empowered by Jesus and sustained by God to do this work. It is to be a visible symbol of God's love for all in this world by loving the bodies and souls of every other human being and seeing in them the face of Jesus. It is to have our lives understood in terms of the one whose glory came by living a life that led to being lifted up on a tool of execution to reveal God’s ultimate love—the same type of life we are to lead as individuals and as the Church.
Here's how I am hearing that charge this year. I have been invited to join a revitalized interfaith group to look at addressing hunger in our area. We are a people formed out of bread and wine, out of feeding and being fed, so the feeding of others is part and parcel of who we are. I do not know yet what my role will be in this work of advocacy, education and raising money and gifts of food, but I know this is what I must do as part of Christ's body. I hope to share this work with Resurrection and that there will be support here to take part in the larger, interfaith activities that comes out of the work of this group. We are always called to feed the Body of Christ and all people, but when the need is as acute as it is now that call becomes relentless. We are to trust in God's care for us that we can in these hard times do more not less, and that this is the response of faith. The need will grow as the jobs continue to be lost and as people begin to lose their unemployment benefits, which are not much to begin with being roughly ¼ of a person's former monthly pay. More and more people will experience hunger and a foundational way we can embody Jesus’ charge of love in this space he has left for us is to joyfully and generously work to make sure all are fed. It’s just one way among many. And its life is made possible not only through that space made for us to be the Body of Christ, but also by the sustaining presence and gift of the Holy Spirit that we await to renew next Sunday. Are we ready to be set on fire by God? Are we ready to live as the bush that burned but yet was not consumed? Audacious questions. To which I say: Yes, we are. Come, Holy Spirit, come. Amen.
Easter Day, April 12, 2009
Alleluia! His is risen! (joyfully) Alleluia! He is risen. (questioning) Alleluia! He is risen. (awe, whispered, fright)
Imagine you are with these women. What incredible, unbelievable, astonishing news you have just been told. He who was dead is not there. Where his body lay there is only empty space. And this strange man is telling you the impossible. Jesus who was dead is no longer dead, not in the deepest, fullest meaning of that word. The earthly man is gone that is true, but Jesus, the Christ, is alive. He has been raised. God has raised him to new life, to a spiritual life, to a real life that is beyond our material senses but that yet can be grasped by them in some mysterious way. It is true. And it is unbelievable.
No wonder they were afraid. If we are honest, does not this day leave us dumbfounded? If we are honest, are not our hearts both rejoicing and quaking at the same time? The power of God has gotten into the middle of our life and death and done what only God can do through the medium of human, incarnated, flesh and blood and bone. We ought to be in awe. We ought to be shaken to our core. I imagine it to be a bit like those moments of sheer terror and utter joy that we experience simultaneously in our lives such as those first few moments after saying marriage vows or when our newborn child is placed in our arms for the first time.
And our hearts at the same time are lifting, lifting, lifting with joy and hope and peace that our God is alive. Our hearts are soaring on the wings of the Spirit that life is bigger than death, that love is greater than hate and fear, that weakness is stronger than the greatest dominance, that God's purposes work through our evil and our sin for love, for forgiveness, for transformation. Our lives are bound to Jesus' life and we will rise again and again. Our God will raise us up if we live for him and with him and in him. Our life is marked by the cycle of birth and death and rebirth, once physically, but many, many times spiritually. It is the journey to our true self and our true life and given meaning when understood as part of this great revelation and risen life of the crucified one.
Our world and our peoples lives our marked by this same truth. Though we grind each other into the dust, though we kill and rob, though we reject and oppress one group on another throughout our histories, God is there so that we may rise. For God and our risen life is what lies ahead. It is the future for which we dream and sacrifice and work. It is the future that frees the oppressed and the oppressor, the future the heals the broken life, the future that shows love made real out of all that is broken and injured. It is to glimpse heaven here on earth and to be a part of its being made real in the world. It is freedom and it is justice. It is healing and it is compassion. It is forgiveness that transforms. It is the very work of the living, risen one here and now calling us forward, calling us to Galilee where he goes ahead of us. Resurrection does not look back. It is not trapped in the past. It is rising now, rising always, rising through the heart of the world, rising through the beating love of God.
And it is to this understanding of life that we are bound together, you and I. It is to this understanding of life that we put our trust in as Christians. It is to this understanding that we submit and seek to live out in our lives. It is to this resurrection-shaped reality that we join when we are baptized. It is to this, Owen, that you are joining. As part of this Body of Christ, as one who is caught up in the resurrection-shaped life, as one who is part of a God that works in this way your life will always be pulled towards rising. Nothing, no one, can ever destroy this unbreakable bound between you and God. You are marked as his forever, loved forever, called forever into the dance of dying to live. Whatever befalls us, the crucified and risen one is there, holding us, calling us, enduring with us, transforming us, uniting us to God. It can be broken by nothing, not even death. This is the foundation of our undying joy as Christians and the well-spring of our hope. Not that life is easy or that there is no evil that will ever touch us, but that our God is risen, risen through the worst the world can do.
Alleluia! The Lord is risen. Alleluia! The Lord is risen. Alleluia! The Lord is risen. May our alleluias ring and rise throughout the world this day and always. Amen.
Imagine you are with these women. What incredible, unbelievable, astonishing news you have just been told. He who was dead is not there. Where his body lay there is only empty space. And this strange man is telling you the impossible. Jesus who was dead is no longer dead, not in the deepest, fullest meaning of that word. The earthly man is gone that is true, but Jesus, the Christ, is alive. He has been raised. God has raised him to new life, to a spiritual life, to a real life that is beyond our material senses but that yet can be grasped by them in some mysterious way. It is true. And it is unbelievable.
No wonder they were afraid. If we are honest, does not this day leave us dumbfounded? If we are honest, are not our hearts both rejoicing and quaking at the same time? The power of God has gotten into the middle of our life and death and done what only God can do through the medium of human, incarnated, flesh and blood and bone. We ought to be in awe. We ought to be shaken to our core. I imagine it to be a bit like those moments of sheer terror and utter joy that we experience simultaneously in our lives such as those first few moments after saying marriage vows or when our newborn child is placed in our arms for the first time.
And our hearts at the same time are lifting, lifting, lifting with joy and hope and peace that our God is alive. Our hearts are soaring on the wings of the Spirit that life is bigger than death, that love is greater than hate and fear, that weakness is stronger than the greatest dominance, that God's purposes work through our evil and our sin for love, for forgiveness, for transformation. Our lives are bound to Jesus' life and we will rise again and again. Our God will raise us up if we live for him and with him and in him. Our life is marked by the cycle of birth and death and rebirth, once physically, but many, many times spiritually. It is the journey to our true self and our true life and given meaning when understood as part of this great revelation and risen life of the crucified one.
Our world and our peoples lives our marked by this same truth. Though we grind each other into the dust, though we kill and rob, though we reject and oppress one group on another throughout our histories, God is there so that we may rise. For God and our risen life is what lies ahead. It is the future for which we dream and sacrifice and work. It is the future that frees the oppressed and the oppressor, the future the heals the broken life, the future that shows love made real out of all that is broken and injured. It is to glimpse heaven here on earth and to be a part of its being made real in the world. It is freedom and it is justice. It is healing and it is compassion. It is forgiveness that transforms. It is the very work of the living, risen one here and now calling us forward, calling us to Galilee where he goes ahead of us. Resurrection does not look back. It is not trapped in the past. It is rising now, rising always, rising through the heart of the world, rising through the beating love of God.
And it is to this understanding of life that we are bound together, you and I. It is to this understanding of life that we put our trust in as Christians. It is to this understanding that we submit and seek to live out in our lives. It is to this resurrection-shaped reality that we join when we are baptized. It is to this, Owen, that you are joining. As part of this Body of Christ, as one who is caught up in the resurrection-shaped life, as one who is part of a God that works in this way your life will always be pulled towards rising. Nothing, no one, can ever destroy this unbreakable bound between you and God. You are marked as his forever, loved forever, called forever into the dance of dying to live. Whatever befalls us, the crucified and risen one is there, holding us, calling us, enduring with us, transforming us, uniting us to God. It can be broken by nothing, not even death. This is the foundation of our undying joy as Christians and the well-spring of our hope. Not that life is easy or that there is no evil that will ever touch us, but that our God is risen, risen through the worst the world can do.
Alleluia! The Lord is risen. Alleluia! The Lord is risen. Alleluia! The Lord is risen. May our alleluias ring and rise throughout the world this day and always. Amen.
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