February 21, 2010, 1st Sunday in Lent
The Rev. Natasha Brubaker Garrison
Deuteronomy26:1-11, Ps. 91:1-2, 9-16, Romans 10:8b13, Luke 4:1-13
Lent 1, Year C
We gather on this first Sunday of Lent to start the journey to Holy Week, to the cross, and ultimately to the joy of Easter. But if the state of my soul is at all in synch with yours I come to this day with my attention divided and distracted. It has been a hard week for us here in this community. I suspect that like many if not all of you I have a heart that is bearing much sorrow. Death has been a main part of our life this week with the death of Bruce’s mother, Alice Sedgwick, and the death of Walter Close on Ash Wednesday late at night. While we grieve, we also trust in the words of the psalm we heard today: God’s angles have charge over us to keep us in all our ways, they will bear us up, we will be delivered because we are bound to God in love. These words live and hold true during our mortal life, during our death, and into our eternal life in God’s loving presence. It is a constant of God’s reality and a promise that is not broken. And while we ask our questions of why—because death is part of life—and think that it is not fair—no it is not—we cling deep down to a trust in the essential goodness of God and life. We hold fast to the trust that our lives through their great joys and deep sorrows are meant to aim towards God and be places where the kingdom and grace are found.
Which is not a bad way to view the weeks of Lent ahead. We are on a journey as we continue our growth in knowing God and following Jesus, of being persons shaped by a rich and active spiritual life. Much tempts us along the way to turn to other options: People who are skeptical of our faith and make us feel uncomfortable for having a belief in God; hurtful experiences at the hands of other Christians; hardships and sometimes overwhelming challenges in life; times of spiritual emptiness or despair; and so on. We can often find simpler or easier answers appealing and as givers of seeming security and certainty. Or, like Jesus, within our faith and life we can be tempted away from God.
One of the most overused words in our Church parlance at the moment is “discernment”. It’s a good word meaning thoughtful reflection and examination to do as best we can to discern, figure out, what is the godly, the good, path or decision to follow. At its heart it is creating the space to let God inform and direct us, even if the answer is surprising or still quite murky. God rarely sends telegrams or explicit instructions.
In the Gospel today we hear of Jesus’ discerning, discovering and reaffirming what God is calling him to do. He gets no direct instruction from God, no messages. He has to struggle and find his own way forward. He is tempted as we are to follow, using God as a justifying and legitimating factor, the desire for personal satisfaction and success, wealth, power, and the ability to meet others needs in sweeping fashion. All of this is done by appeal to God, to need, to talent, to control, to perhaps even serving good ends. Scripture is used to argue both sides…which is why we must read and pray so carefully with it. While our tests are not as dramatic as the ones Jesus experiences, at least not for most of us, we are still lured by the same things and have to untangle where our faith is truly calling us and where we are using our faith to support our own worldly desires, illusions, and at times sin.
I doubt that these temptations were as easy for Jesus to counteract as the story makes it sound. He spent forty days wrestling with them, and I think spent much time soul-searching, seeking and praying about what to do and how to do it. I doubt that the devil’s voice about turning stones into bread came as a rapid fire question to which he gave an immediate and fully formed answer, all within the space of a few moments. I think the process took some time, which is how truly discerning works.
What Jesus keeps coming back to as his touchstone, as his truest lifeline, is the foundational statement of faith and identity of the Jewish people, of his people. It is the Sh’ema. “Hear, O Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” The Sh’ema is found in Deuteronomy and Numbers. Two of Jesus’ replies are quotes from Deuteronomy that immediately follow the Sh’ema. Jesus is holding fast to the deepest and most essential command given by God to the Israelites. In turning always towards God he is able to follow his path in a way that serves God first rather than other ends.
There is an important distinction between his responses and the devil’s invitations. If you notice, the devil always frames things to be about Jesus. He uses the word “you” all the time, makes it about what Jesus can do or be, even in very beneficial ways. And it’s all framed as what God can do for you, Jesus. And Jesus in his answers puts things back in the right order by putting God first, what he can do for God or what he shouldn’t ask of God. This is first and most fundamental part of following God—keeping God God and us us, remembering that what we do is for God’s glory and in keeping with God’s hope for us.
Does this give us set answers to complicated social, theological, ethical and political issues? No. But it does give us a very firm place to start from as we struggle to make our lives instruments of the kingdom. Looking to God’s vision of justice, mercy, forgiveness, peacemaking, caring, curing we put our ideas and agendas and philosophies into conversation with that vision. We can ask a variety of reflective questions to help us untangle to a greater degree our own wants from the vision held forth by God. Does this hurt people or support and respect them? If it seems a trade-off between groups is there another path we haven’t seen yet that can meet the needs of all to some degree? What is the selfishness or the preconceived notion at play? Where might this be about greed or power or control? If I do this and never get recognized can I be at peace with that, find joy and satisfaction in it? Do I do this for respect, status, honor, or is it stemming from a deep compassion for others no matter what people think of me or ascribe to me? Am I willing to accept loss and struggle, maybe even significant sacrifice, but still keep on working?
These are just some of the questions that can help us as we face our own temptations and seek as best we can to serve God rather than ourselves, especially ourselves with a holy veneer attached! Like Jesus we need to pray, to take time to scrutinize things, be patient and not jump to easy or familiar answers, and to simply be quiet to let God work on us. If we listen long enough, it is God’s voice that we will hear; the devil’s voice is compelling, but if we tell it to wait it is also impatient and will tire.
At the end of the day, however, we are humble enough to realize that even doing our best to follow and serve God we don’t do it perfectly. There is always more to learn; there are always things that happen that we didn’t intend. And that’s okay. That’s why God is God and we are human, able to be shifted and moved by the divine energy. But the even better news is that if we listen to and face the temptations we can bring so much light and love and hope to the world. We can take up the vision, the hope, the life of Christ and bring it to a world and its people that hunger and thirst for these gifts to feed their souls.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Thursday, February 18, 2010
February 17, 2010, Ash Wednesday
February 17, 2010, Ash Wednesday
The Rev. Natasha Brubaker Garrison
Isaiah 58:1-12, Ps. 103, 2 Cor. 5:20b-6:10, Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
[Open with Guinness joke.]
I know that it is a bit unorthodox to begin an Ash Wednesday sermon with a joke, but the joke has a very serious point in it. It is the idea of loopholes. Lenten loopholes. Being able to stick to the letter of the season but not having to engage the spirit of it, not having to really pay it too much mind except for remember to not say Alleluia, not having it really hinder us or alter our day to day life.
Lent so easily becomes a caricature. It becomes about a personal matter of will power—giving up chocolate or not swearing. Now, this is not bad. Often there are habits we have slipped into or patterns of behavior that we know aren't really good for us or those around us. They hinder us. Sometimes the personal issue is truly profound such as confronting chronic lying, or making amends for a serious wrong, or addressing an addiction. Such things are sin in that they turn us away from God and the wholeness God longs for for us. Such things hurt and harm our relations with each other and in turning to a new path we very much are living into the meaning of repentance; that is, turning away from the forces of death and selfish ego and turning towards God and communion with one another.
Even deeper yet sin is a communal reality. It is a state we are in. We need only look at the world to see that. Even if we personally aren't oppressing a worker, or tipping social systems to our advantage at the expense of others, or misusing our power we are caught up in webs of relationships marked by so much domination, exploitation and misuse of other people's bodies and souls. It has always been so. If it wasn't, Isaiah would not have needed to write the words he did. Perhaps though the ramifications are more sweeping in the age of technology and global reach that we live in.
This theological idea that sin is a state we are in rather than just conscious or unconscious acts of individual volition is extremely important. Often this is what we Anglicans and Episcopalians mean by being marked by original sin. We are born into a world that preexists us, but that shapes us from before we are born. Babies born from mothers who lived in New York City during 9/11 and who suffered from PTSD have been found to be more agitated, anxious, with higher than normal stress hormone levels. All in response to the environment around them while still in utero. Sin, therefore, is a condition and reality that we must confront within ourselves and our world honestly and continually, seeking clarity on those things that draw us into sinful relationships without our effort, desire and sometimes even awareness.
Lent and the readings we hear today call us back to the eternal call to justice understood as the right way of ordering relationships and the distribution of the means of life—food, shelter, work, safety—in the way asked by God throughout the Hebrew Scriptures and in the life and teachings of Jesus. This is the prescription for breaking free, step by step, of the condition of sin. It is here that we find Good News. It is what God offers us with an open hand. There is certainly cross over between our individual sins and communal ones. And then there are areas that are primarily communal and in which we take part to a greater or lesser degree and ones that are very nearly internal and private. We are asked to look at the whole spectrum, but to always hold that our actions are tied up in and affect the whole; thus, the Biblical imperative to seek justice as described by the prophets such as Isaiah, Micah, Hosea, Amos and others. This is not just for the good of others, but for the our very own deep well-being.
The words of Isaiah pull no punches. We cannot simply focus on our own mistakes or approach Lent as a season of fasting from something we like or find pleasurable. He calls us to open our eyes wide and look at everything afresh. He calls us to question the official line, the accepted status quo, the economic and social schemas that hold sway and are portrayed as the right thing most especially by those who are in control of them. The questions he asks, the challenges he raises to his people and nation he raises to us. Are we a nation that practices righteousness? Do we forsake God's ordinances? Do we oppress our workers or those in other nations? And what are the justifications that we give for so doing? Are they valid? Are they honest? And whose voice is framing the response for us?
Since the image of feeding and hunger is so central in Isaiah I thought that it would be good to apply this to the world in which I leave, to put a specific to general ideas. What might be asked of us when hunger in the world is at its peak yet virtually ever country has a food surplus? What questions and new vision is being asked of a system of raising, buying and selling it bent on profits for a few that leaves so much of the world hungry in spite of the Green Revolution and years of aid, two things that ironically often contributed to the current problem both here and abroad. For instance, in the past two decades malnutrition and hunger have increased greatly in India (and other countries around the world), even with plenty of food on hand. 233 million people there do not have enough to eat and 46% of children under three do not get sufficient calories. India hides this by statistical sleights of hand that make the numbers look smaller by reducing what it officially considers the necessary daily caloric intake. The numbers look good, but the facts are going in the opposite direction and much is due to the increased use of land for exports crops for the West, reliance, often forced upon them, on seeds and pesticides from foreign companies such as Monsanto and Round Up, debt and lack of support for basic, domestic food crops. Small and mid-sized farmers here can not compete against subsidized agribusiness and hunger increases. Biodiversity shrinks. All of us, but the poor in particular have less and less healthy food available to them, especially in our urban areas. What does Isaiah's prophetic voice of God's vision to us mean today, here and now, in this place and time? What does it mean to share our bread with the hungry? To break the yoke of injustice? What is both the immediate and the wide-screen lens that we are asked to look through and respond to as people loving our neighbor as ourselves?
I don't have easy answers. I have lots of ideas, but no quick fixes. But I do know that the first step is raising the probing questions and looking for the deep truths underneath in these areas that are the very shape of our culture and our relationships, these areas that are about the bodies and souls of myself and my brothers and sisters made in God's image. I do know that we are meant to look at our relations with one another and see what they really mean in terms of flesh and blood men, women and children. I do know that we are to strive for the dignity of all, and that this affects both our small daily decisions and the way we engage the larger world. But we engage it starting from that vision of holy justice and righteousness drawn by Isaiah. We start by facing squarely the sin that infects the world and standing with Jesus to live into a different way of being with each other. It is about our faith being action of love for others not self-aggrandizing piety that is hollow and self-serving as Jesus so clearly says in the Gospel today.
So this Lent we are invited to look not only at ourselves and where our lives are affected in their interiority by where we have gone astray, but also how our lives intersect with the whole world, the web of creation that we are absolutely bound to and bound up in. We are asked to engage in sacrificial love for others that may lead us to hard places. But Jesus has gone already to the hardest place of all: the cross. In looking to his cross and the life that led to it we are given insight into how we are to live and to look at the world. Such living is what brings us close to God and God close to us. Such living is where we find eternal life and treasure beyond what the world of civilization can offer. It gives us hope, conviction, connection, love and courage. Truly gifts worth striving for; truly things worth living for.
The Rev. Natasha Brubaker Garrison
Isaiah 58:1-12, Ps. 103, 2 Cor. 5:20b-6:10, Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
[Open with Guinness joke.]
I know that it is a bit unorthodox to begin an Ash Wednesday sermon with a joke, but the joke has a very serious point in it. It is the idea of loopholes. Lenten loopholes. Being able to stick to the letter of the season but not having to engage the spirit of it, not having to really pay it too much mind except for remember to not say Alleluia, not having it really hinder us or alter our day to day life.
Lent so easily becomes a caricature. It becomes about a personal matter of will power—giving up chocolate or not swearing. Now, this is not bad. Often there are habits we have slipped into or patterns of behavior that we know aren't really good for us or those around us. They hinder us. Sometimes the personal issue is truly profound such as confronting chronic lying, or making amends for a serious wrong, or addressing an addiction. Such things are sin in that they turn us away from God and the wholeness God longs for for us. Such things hurt and harm our relations with each other and in turning to a new path we very much are living into the meaning of repentance; that is, turning away from the forces of death and selfish ego and turning towards God and communion with one another.
Even deeper yet sin is a communal reality. It is a state we are in. We need only look at the world to see that. Even if we personally aren't oppressing a worker, or tipping social systems to our advantage at the expense of others, or misusing our power we are caught up in webs of relationships marked by so much domination, exploitation and misuse of other people's bodies and souls. It has always been so. If it wasn't, Isaiah would not have needed to write the words he did. Perhaps though the ramifications are more sweeping in the age of technology and global reach that we live in.
This theological idea that sin is a state we are in rather than just conscious or unconscious acts of individual volition is extremely important. Often this is what we Anglicans and Episcopalians mean by being marked by original sin. We are born into a world that preexists us, but that shapes us from before we are born. Babies born from mothers who lived in New York City during 9/11 and who suffered from PTSD have been found to be more agitated, anxious, with higher than normal stress hormone levels. All in response to the environment around them while still in utero. Sin, therefore, is a condition and reality that we must confront within ourselves and our world honestly and continually, seeking clarity on those things that draw us into sinful relationships without our effort, desire and sometimes even awareness.
Lent and the readings we hear today call us back to the eternal call to justice understood as the right way of ordering relationships and the distribution of the means of life—food, shelter, work, safety—in the way asked by God throughout the Hebrew Scriptures and in the life and teachings of Jesus. This is the prescription for breaking free, step by step, of the condition of sin. It is here that we find Good News. It is what God offers us with an open hand. There is certainly cross over between our individual sins and communal ones. And then there are areas that are primarily communal and in which we take part to a greater or lesser degree and ones that are very nearly internal and private. We are asked to look at the whole spectrum, but to always hold that our actions are tied up in and affect the whole; thus, the Biblical imperative to seek justice as described by the prophets such as Isaiah, Micah, Hosea, Amos and others. This is not just for the good of others, but for the our very own deep well-being.
The words of Isaiah pull no punches. We cannot simply focus on our own mistakes or approach Lent as a season of fasting from something we like or find pleasurable. He calls us to open our eyes wide and look at everything afresh. He calls us to question the official line, the accepted status quo, the economic and social schemas that hold sway and are portrayed as the right thing most especially by those who are in control of them. The questions he asks, the challenges he raises to his people and nation he raises to us. Are we a nation that practices righteousness? Do we forsake God's ordinances? Do we oppress our workers or those in other nations? And what are the justifications that we give for so doing? Are they valid? Are they honest? And whose voice is framing the response for us?
Since the image of feeding and hunger is so central in Isaiah I thought that it would be good to apply this to the world in which I leave, to put a specific to general ideas. What might be asked of us when hunger in the world is at its peak yet virtually ever country has a food surplus? What questions and new vision is being asked of a system of raising, buying and selling it bent on profits for a few that leaves so much of the world hungry in spite of the Green Revolution and years of aid, two things that ironically often contributed to the current problem both here and abroad. For instance, in the past two decades malnutrition and hunger have increased greatly in India (and other countries around the world), even with plenty of food on hand. 233 million people there do not have enough to eat and 46% of children under three do not get sufficient calories. India hides this by statistical sleights of hand that make the numbers look smaller by reducing what it officially considers the necessary daily caloric intake. The numbers look good, but the facts are going in the opposite direction and much is due to the increased use of land for exports crops for the West, reliance, often forced upon them, on seeds and pesticides from foreign companies such as Monsanto and Round Up, debt and lack of support for basic, domestic food crops. Small and mid-sized farmers here can not compete against subsidized agribusiness and hunger increases. Biodiversity shrinks. All of us, but the poor in particular have less and less healthy food available to them, especially in our urban areas. What does Isaiah's prophetic voice of God's vision to us mean today, here and now, in this place and time? What does it mean to share our bread with the hungry? To break the yoke of injustice? What is both the immediate and the wide-screen lens that we are asked to look through and respond to as people loving our neighbor as ourselves?
I don't have easy answers. I have lots of ideas, but no quick fixes. But I do know that the first step is raising the probing questions and looking for the deep truths underneath in these areas that are the very shape of our culture and our relationships, these areas that are about the bodies and souls of myself and my brothers and sisters made in God's image. I do know that we are meant to look at our relations with one another and see what they really mean in terms of flesh and blood men, women and children. I do know that we are to strive for the dignity of all, and that this affects both our small daily decisions and the way we engage the larger world. But we engage it starting from that vision of holy justice and righteousness drawn by Isaiah. We start by facing squarely the sin that infects the world and standing with Jesus to live into a different way of being with each other. It is about our faith being action of love for others not self-aggrandizing piety that is hollow and self-serving as Jesus so clearly says in the Gospel today.
So this Lent we are invited to look not only at ourselves and where our lives are affected in their interiority by where we have gone astray, but also how our lives intersect with the whole world, the web of creation that we are absolutely bound to and bound up in. We are asked to engage in sacrificial love for others that may lead us to hard places. But Jesus has gone already to the hardest place of all: the cross. In looking to his cross and the life that led to it we are given insight into how we are to live and to look at the world. Such living is what brings us close to God and God close to us. Such living is where we find eternal life and treasure beyond what the world of civilization can offer. It gives us hope, conviction, connection, love and courage. Truly gifts worth striving for; truly things worth living for.
Monday, February 15, 2010
February 14, 2010, Last Sunday after Epiphany, Transfiguration of Our Lord
February 14, 2010
The Rev. Natasha Brubaker Garrison
Exodus 34:29-35, Ps 99, 2 Cor. 3:12-4:2, Luke 9:28-43a
This is one of those passages from Scripture where we encounter Luke as a master storyteller. In a few verses he draws on themes, images and ideas woven throughout his Gospel and even into the Book of Acts. He connects us to the entire span of Jesus’ ministry. And he leaves us with a powerful passage to ponder, one that is mysterious, transcendental, and not necessarily easily applicable to our daily lives.
In this passage we hear echoes of Jesus' baptism when the voice is heard from the cloud naming Jesus again as God's son. We are again aware of a period of silence and assimilation. After Jesus’ baptism he went into the desert for 40 days before beginning his ministry. Here they keep silent about what is said, probably because the disciples themselves still didn’t know what this all meant or where it was going. We are reminded again of the early followers of Jesus understanding him to be both a prophet and a giver and interpreter of the law as symbolized by his meeting with Moses, the foundational leader of the Hebrew people and the giver of the law, and Elijah, one of the greatest prophets of their past. Like Moses, Jesus encounters the holy on the top of a mountain and is transfigured by this event: their faces change, they shine as the stories say. And we are given hints of what is to come.
We hear hints of the end of Jesus’ life. As at Gethsemane, the disciples are sleepy and trying to stay awake while Jesus is occupied with prayer. They are in a more remote place, out in nature. We are told that Jesus is hearing of his coming departure from Elijah and Moses. It is critical to understand that the word for departure is the word we also translate as exodus. The exodus of the Hebrews from captivity in Egypt was their founding event as a people. Jesus is told he will taking his own exodus from Jerusalem, another unfolding of the work of God’s liberating action in the world. This exodus though is through his solitary death on a cross, an execution at the hands of power in the center of his homeland. It is a different view on the path through to freedom, and it will involve tremendous suffering and abandonment. It is a leaving and a breaking of the bondage of sin through sacrifice and transformative love; it is about the nature of liberation in the deepest ontological sense, that is, of our being. Yet somehow through this we will see and know God’s glory. It is the founding event of those who follow Jesus and form a community of faith based on his life.
What follows this passage of Luke is a story of healing, of casting out evil, which we heard today. The next eight verses include Jesus telling of his betrayal into human hands, in other words, his coming death. Luke is clear that those hearing it could not understand the meaning of his words—its meaning was concealed from them, which is a nice echo of the words of Paul to the Corinthians we heard. Until it is accomplished it is unintelligible. Then there is a fight among the disciples, something they seem to do a lot, over who is greatest and Jesus promptly puts them in their place by giving them a child as an example, a stark reminder that worldly power climbing and status have no place in the kingdom. Lastly, we hear Jesus give a radically inclusive definition of those who are his followers. John tells him that they had seen someone who wasn’t in their group casting out demons in Jesus’ name and that they tried to stop his unsanctioned behavior. Jesus replies that all who are not against them are for them. Period.
Then the pivotal moment of the Gospel arrives in Luke 9:51. The future revealed in the moment on the mountain is engaged. As the text says: When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. It is decided. The die has been cast. Jesus turns towards his exodus with resolve and goes towards it. There is no stopping; there is no sidetracking; there is no reversal. From now on the entire rest of Luke is aiming straight towards the cross.
What do we do with a passage like this? Luke is trying to tell us something about who and what Jesus is. The event that he describes whether we take it as a depiction of actual events or a divine vision that was true within Jesus’ inner life is something for him and him alone. You and I will not have a comparable experience as we are not the Son of God in the way we profess Jesus to be. Luke wants us I suspect to use this story as a point of prayer and reflection. What does this story reveal about Jesus and who he is for us, what his life accomplishes for us?
The idea came to me that this is really quite a suitable story to hear just days before Lent starts. Lent for us is meant to be a period of reflection and transfiguration. It is a time in which we delve into our hearts and souls with intention. We set our own faces towards Jerusalem and the events that are to take place. We are invited year after year to live into the story of Jesus’ life and death and what it reveals to us about the way God is in the world, indeed what the very nature of God is. As Christians we hold that in Jesus we encounter God deeply and surely. His life is revelatory of God’s life and nature. This is deep and rich soil to till. It is not subject to blithe and easy answers, though God knows many are out there. It invites us into complex thought and thoughtful contemplation of eternal and essential questions and realities. What understandings may open for us if we sit on the mountain and gaze on the transfigured Jesus? What transformation within in us might it bring to birth? For surely that is part of this story’s purpose. And if we let this story work upon us what changes will be wrought in us? How will it mark us forever even as the Risen Jesus bore the marks of his crucifixion?
And perhaps part of this is helping us grow to see the transfiguring work of God in our lives on a daily basis and how everyday events, people and situations can be places of transformation. Perhaps this is part of why we hear the story of the cure of the boy right after they come down from the mountain. It is a transfiguring event in the lives of the boy and his family. It is also that to his followers who Jesus accuses of have too little faith. Maybe they are still keeping God small, within too familiar bounds and hindering God’s ability to work through them. Here is a story I heard that may capture some of what I am getting at.
A young and successful executive was traveling down a neighborhood street, going a bit too fast in his new Jaguar. He was watching for kids darting out from between parked cars and slowed down when he thought he saw something. As his car passed, no children appeared. Instead, a brick smashed into the Jag’s side door. He slammed on the brakes and backed up to the spot where the brick had been thrown. The angry driver jumped out of the car, grabbed the nearest kid and pushed him up against a parked car shouting, “What was that all about and who are you? Just what the heck are you doing? That’s a new car and that brick you threw is going to cost a lot of money. Why did you do it?”
The young boy was apologetic. “Please, mister…please, I’m sorry but I didn’t know what else to do,” he pleaded. “I threw the brick because no one else would stop…” With tears rolling down his face he pointed to a spot just around a parked car. “It’s my brother,” he said. “He rolled off the curb and fell out of his wheelchair and I can’t lift him up.” Now sobbing, the boy asked the stunned executive, “Would you please help me get him back into his wheelchair? He’s hurt and he’s too heavy for me.”
The driver hurriedly lifted the boy back into his wheelchair, then took a handkerchief and dabbed at the fresh scrapes. A quick look told him everything was going to be okay.
“Thank you and may God bless you,” the grateful brother told the driver. Too shook up for words, the man simply watched the boy push his wheelchair-bound brother down the sidewalk toward their home. It was a long, slow walk back to the Jaguar. The damage was very noticeable, but the driver never bothered to repair the dented side door.”
For this man, the dented door was the mark of his transfiguration. He was not the same man after this encounter as he was before. His world was rearranged and his vantage point reordered. What was once more important became less so. I suspect some veils were lifted from his eyes and his way of seeing things was never the same again. In a simple way and in the day-to-day working of life he encountered God through these two brothers and was changed. It was a beginning. And while I don’t like to use sentimental, chicken-soupy-for-the-soul stories like this to make a point, this is one that seemed suitable. It seemed to be akin to the healing story and that moments in which we meet God mark us indelibly. They are meant to transfigure us. We need to discover how to be aware to the transfiguring work of God. We need to be attentive as Jesus was in prayer. We are asked to live into the meaning of Christ’s life and death so profoundly that it leaves marks on us, marks that remind us of what we are and what we are meant to be. Proclaiming Jesus as our Lord does not leave us unchanged. Rather, it ought to change us profoundly. It is not a fact we accept in our heads and then file away, going on with our lives as usual. It is an understanding and awareness that molds us in new ways and invites us into new paths.
So as we set our faces towards Jerusalem this Lent, we are also invited to ponder the transfigured Jesus on the mountain. We can use it as a point of prayer to help us enter into Lent in a deeper way. And in pondering his transfiguration we can begin to see where we are being asked to encounter God in the sphere of our own lives and how that meeting will mark and alter us forever.
The Rev. Natasha Brubaker Garrison
Exodus 34:29-35, Ps 99, 2 Cor. 3:12-4:2, Luke 9:28-43a
This is one of those passages from Scripture where we encounter Luke as a master storyteller. In a few verses he draws on themes, images and ideas woven throughout his Gospel and even into the Book of Acts. He connects us to the entire span of Jesus’ ministry. And he leaves us with a powerful passage to ponder, one that is mysterious, transcendental, and not necessarily easily applicable to our daily lives.
In this passage we hear echoes of Jesus' baptism when the voice is heard from the cloud naming Jesus again as God's son. We are again aware of a period of silence and assimilation. After Jesus’ baptism he went into the desert for 40 days before beginning his ministry. Here they keep silent about what is said, probably because the disciples themselves still didn’t know what this all meant or where it was going. We are reminded again of the early followers of Jesus understanding him to be both a prophet and a giver and interpreter of the law as symbolized by his meeting with Moses, the foundational leader of the Hebrew people and the giver of the law, and Elijah, one of the greatest prophets of their past. Like Moses, Jesus encounters the holy on the top of a mountain and is transfigured by this event: their faces change, they shine as the stories say. And we are given hints of what is to come.
We hear hints of the end of Jesus’ life. As at Gethsemane, the disciples are sleepy and trying to stay awake while Jesus is occupied with prayer. They are in a more remote place, out in nature. We are told that Jesus is hearing of his coming departure from Elijah and Moses. It is critical to understand that the word for departure is the word we also translate as exodus. The exodus of the Hebrews from captivity in Egypt was their founding event as a people. Jesus is told he will taking his own exodus from Jerusalem, another unfolding of the work of God’s liberating action in the world. This exodus though is through his solitary death on a cross, an execution at the hands of power in the center of his homeland. It is a different view on the path through to freedom, and it will involve tremendous suffering and abandonment. It is a leaving and a breaking of the bondage of sin through sacrifice and transformative love; it is about the nature of liberation in the deepest ontological sense, that is, of our being. Yet somehow through this we will see and know God’s glory. It is the founding event of those who follow Jesus and form a community of faith based on his life.
What follows this passage of Luke is a story of healing, of casting out evil, which we heard today. The next eight verses include Jesus telling of his betrayal into human hands, in other words, his coming death. Luke is clear that those hearing it could not understand the meaning of his words—its meaning was concealed from them, which is a nice echo of the words of Paul to the Corinthians we heard. Until it is accomplished it is unintelligible. Then there is a fight among the disciples, something they seem to do a lot, over who is greatest and Jesus promptly puts them in their place by giving them a child as an example, a stark reminder that worldly power climbing and status have no place in the kingdom. Lastly, we hear Jesus give a radically inclusive definition of those who are his followers. John tells him that they had seen someone who wasn’t in their group casting out demons in Jesus’ name and that they tried to stop his unsanctioned behavior. Jesus replies that all who are not against them are for them. Period.
Then the pivotal moment of the Gospel arrives in Luke 9:51. The future revealed in the moment on the mountain is engaged. As the text says: When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. It is decided. The die has been cast. Jesus turns towards his exodus with resolve and goes towards it. There is no stopping; there is no sidetracking; there is no reversal. From now on the entire rest of Luke is aiming straight towards the cross.
What do we do with a passage like this? Luke is trying to tell us something about who and what Jesus is. The event that he describes whether we take it as a depiction of actual events or a divine vision that was true within Jesus’ inner life is something for him and him alone. You and I will not have a comparable experience as we are not the Son of God in the way we profess Jesus to be. Luke wants us I suspect to use this story as a point of prayer and reflection. What does this story reveal about Jesus and who he is for us, what his life accomplishes for us?
The idea came to me that this is really quite a suitable story to hear just days before Lent starts. Lent for us is meant to be a period of reflection and transfiguration. It is a time in which we delve into our hearts and souls with intention. We set our own faces towards Jerusalem and the events that are to take place. We are invited year after year to live into the story of Jesus’ life and death and what it reveals to us about the way God is in the world, indeed what the very nature of God is. As Christians we hold that in Jesus we encounter God deeply and surely. His life is revelatory of God’s life and nature. This is deep and rich soil to till. It is not subject to blithe and easy answers, though God knows many are out there. It invites us into complex thought and thoughtful contemplation of eternal and essential questions and realities. What understandings may open for us if we sit on the mountain and gaze on the transfigured Jesus? What transformation within in us might it bring to birth? For surely that is part of this story’s purpose. And if we let this story work upon us what changes will be wrought in us? How will it mark us forever even as the Risen Jesus bore the marks of his crucifixion?
And perhaps part of this is helping us grow to see the transfiguring work of God in our lives on a daily basis and how everyday events, people and situations can be places of transformation. Perhaps this is part of why we hear the story of the cure of the boy right after they come down from the mountain. It is a transfiguring event in the lives of the boy and his family. It is also that to his followers who Jesus accuses of have too little faith. Maybe they are still keeping God small, within too familiar bounds and hindering God’s ability to work through them. Here is a story I heard that may capture some of what I am getting at.
A young and successful executive was traveling down a neighborhood street, going a bit too fast in his new Jaguar. He was watching for kids darting out from between parked cars and slowed down when he thought he saw something. As his car passed, no children appeared. Instead, a brick smashed into the Jag’s side door. He slammed on the brakes and backed up to the spot where the brick had been thrown. The angry driver jumped out of the car, grabbed the nearest kid and pushed him up against a parked car shouting, “What was that all about and who are you? Just what the heck are you doing? That’s a new car and that brick you threw is going to cost a lot of money. Why did you do it?”
The young boy was apologetic. “Please, mister…please, I’m sorry but I didn’t know what else to do,” he pleaded. “I threw the brick because no one else would stop…” With tears rolling down his face he pointed to a spot just around a parked car. “It’s my brother,” he said. “He rolled off the curb and fell out of his wheelchair and I can’t lift him up.” Now sobbing, the boy asked the stunned executive, “Would you please help me get him back into his wheelchair? He’s hurt and he’s too heavy for me.”
The driver hurriedly lifted the boy back into his wheelchair, then took a handkerchief and dabbed at the fresh scrapes. A quick look told him everything was going to be okay.
“Thank you and may God bless you,” the grateful brother told the driver. Too shook up for words, the man simply watched the boy push his wheelchair-bound brother down the sidewalk toward their home. It was a long, slow walk back to the Jaguar. The damage was very noticeable, but the driver never bothered to repair the dented side door.”
For this man, the dented door was the mark of his transfiguration. He was not the same man after this encounter as he was before. His world was rearranged and his vantage point reordered. What was once more important became less so. I suspect some veils were lifted from his eyes and his way of seeing things was never the same again. In a simple way and in the day-to-day working of life he encountered God through these two brothers and was changed. It was a beginning. And while I don’t like to use sentimental, chicken-soupy-for-the-soul stories like this to make a point, this is one that seemed suitable. It seemed to be akin to the healing story and that moments in which we meet God mark us indelibly. They are meant to transfigure us. We need to discover how to be aware to the transfiguring work of God. We need to be attentive as Jesus was in prayer. We are asked to live into the meaning of Christ’s life and death so profoundly that it leaves marks on us, marks that remind us of what we are and what we are meant to be. Proclaiming Jesus as our Lord does not leave us unchanged. Rather, it ought to change us profoundly. It is not a fact we accept in our heads and then file away, going on with our lives as usual. It is an understanding and awareness that molds us in new ways and invites us into new paths.
So as we set our faces towards Jerusalem this Lent, we are also invited to ponder the transfigured Jesus on the mountain. We can use it as a point of prayer to help us enter into Lent in a deeper way. And in pondering his transfiguration we can begin to see where we are being asked to encounter God in the sphere of our own lives and how that meeting will mark and alter us forever.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
February 7, 2010, 5th Sunday after Epiphany
February 7, 2010
The Rev. Natasha Brubaker Garrison
Isaiah 6:1-8, Ps 138, 1 Cor. 15:1-11, Luke 5:1-11
5th Sunday after the Epiphany, Year C
I was not someone who learned to swim easily. My mother was terrified of the water and I absorbed some of that fear. Even though my grandmother had a swimming pool and I liked splashing about in the shallows, I would go no further than where my foot could touch bottom. I spent a lot of time around the steps as you can imagine. It was a very small pool for me! But beyond that I couldn't go. It was deep down there and I had nothing to hold onto, nothing to make me secure with what I was comfortable with. If someone had tossed me in the deep end to teach me to swim I probably would have panicked and nearly drowned. It took many years for me to trust the deep water of a pool and that if I knew what to rely on I would not perish or sink.
The stories we hear today are about call. That is indeed clear. We hear of a call of a prophet inside a holy place; we hear of the call of the fisherman in the middle of their daily work. Both are calls to bring God's liberating word to people who are floundering, struggling, in need of freedom and hope, out there in the world. Both are shaped by a first critical step of leaving old patterns and expectations behind. If not, nothing will change. We will stay in the shallows and catch nothing, or we catch stuff that is useless or maybe even harmful. Small fish are in the shallows, not ones to live on. The sea tosses up the garbage and toxins onto the shores.
Quite often we hear sermons that talk about what call looks like and how to catch others. But perhaps we are jumping the gun a bit...maybe we are casting our fishing line with the wrong tie on it. Maybe our nets are a bit tangled. Before we can catch other people for Jesus and for God, and by catch I mean bring them into the joy of being liberated and freed and known as treasured of God, we have to be caught ourselves.
Have we been caught by Jesus? Have we let him guide us into the deep and unknown places of our hearts and lives? Have we trusted that he will be there to give us exactly what we need? Have we, like Peter, made the turn from calling him Boss to calling him Lord, or more precisely God? There is a world of difference between obeying a boss and following and surrendering to the holy.
Before we can bring others to Jesus or at least help point the way, we have to be caught up in him and by him. We are called to take the plunge into the deep of our souls and lives and trust that way down in the depths we will encounter God. We have to. For it is only there that we have stepped out of the shallows, let go of our certainties, and given up thinking we have the answers and solutions all sorted out. It is only there that we stop clinging to our rationales and justifications so that we can really listen, discover and face our truest selves and the possibilities that are out there. All we have left is God to rely on; there is nothing else. We give up expectation and control and strike out into a new world.
We see this in the response of Peter. Okay, boss, I'll do what you say, but you know we are fishing experts and know all about our trade. We've worked hard all night and come up with squat. Not sure what a carpenter knows about fishing, but hey, I'll do what you say because others seem to think your a big shot, but don't expect much. I certainly don't.
Peter gives just a wedge of opening to Jesus in his heart and Jesus comes in and breaks him wide open. The unexpected happens. Their needs are met and then some. And they don't sink, but rather Peter realizes that all his illusions have been tossed overboard. He is not obeying a boss; he is entering into partnership with God. God has come in and said if you trust in me you will have the riches of true life.
But even then, Peter wants to go back to the shallows. He clearly recognizes that he has just had a head-on collision with God, but he wants out. Leave me alone, he cries. I am sinful, I am not worthy. Go find someone else to fish with. I'm booked every morning from now until the end of the season---trout season, catfish season, salmon season, any season you can name—I'm busy! Jesus pays him no mind. He simply tells Peter he will be catching people. His life is changed and it didn't depend on any of the worldly status markers we use or even so called divine ones. He is a sinner. So what? Aren't we all? And God is reaching out for us all the same. God will reach us if we delve into our own deep places and draw us up into a new life, not perfect, but graced and freed to live anew. We see this too in the letter of Paul. A former persecutor of the Church, the least of the disciples, one who encouraged and presided over the stoning of Stephen, yet God called him and changd his life. We are picked as we are.
This is one of those great paradoxes of the life of the soul. When we allow ourselves to go into our deepest places and share them we often get the opposite of what we expect. We think if we really let it all hang out others will run screaming away. If others really were allowed to peek at our failings and fears and hurts they would find us weak, silly, not worth their time. But so often we find that such honesty is met with astonishing compassion, grace and forgiveness. We find that we pull up a net not broken but teeming with truly eternal life-giving gifts. Yes, such work can make us lose things in the world. We might lose a job for speaking our truth about justice or exploitation. We might lose a “friend” by sharing our pain. We might give up a way of relating to the world shaped by control and dominance, but we gain so much more. We gain integrity, we gain love, we gain the gift of true friends over false ones, we gain an ability to serve others first rather than striving to prove ourselves. And so it goes. And here is the truth of God: God never runs away. God says, yes, I know all that my dear heart, so let's get moving, OK? Where do you want to go from here? I have some ideas.
And where might this take us? Right out into the world we live in. If we are caught by Jesus, truly caught, we can see no other way than to want to feed the hungry, and care for the sick, and visit those in prisons of whatever kind, and work for peace, and if we have much to give it away and to let go of status for service. We begin to be open people, not hiding behind masks and personas. We are willing to be transparent and honest about our own struggles and need. We begin to build true communities. We start to really know what it means to be humble and non-judgmental of others.
When we can go into the deep and encounter Jesus, we are given the opportunity to truly let the image of God within us break free. Perhaps one way to think of this is in the words of Marianne Williamson made famous by Nelson Mandela:
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate, our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually who are you NOT to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't save the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear our presence automatically liberates others.
In short, we are ready to give up the securities of the world for the risk of being the living Gospel because no matter how much we give up in worldly terms we know God is holding us in his net and the life we are experiencing is one that no one and nothing can ever take away. We've been caught in the deeps by Jesus. And we begin to know we can go into the deep without fear of rejection. Jesus net is always open and his arms are always spread wide to say come in. Here you are always wanted and always loved, no matter who you think you are. Trust me on this one.
The Rev. Natasha Brubaker Garrison
Isaiah 6:1-8, Ps 138, 1 Cor. 15:1-11, Luke 5:1-11
5th Sunday after the Epiphany, Year C
I was not someone who learned to swim easily. My mother was terrified of the water and I absorbed some of that fear. Even though my grandmother had a swimming pool and I liked splashing about in the shallows, I would go no further than where my foot could touch bottom. I spent a lot of time around the steps as you can imagine. It was a very small pool for me! But beyond that I couldn't go. It was deep down there and I had nothing to hold onto, nothing to make me secure with what I was comfortable with. If someone had tossed me in the deep end to teach me to swim I probably would have panicked and nearly drowned. It took many years for me to trust the deep water of a pool and that if I knew what to rely on I would not perish or sink.
The stories we hear today are about call. That is indeed clear. We hear of a call of a prophet inside a holy place; we hear of the call of the fisherman in the middle of their daily work. Both are calls to bring God's liberating word to people who are floundering, struggling, in need of freedom and hope, out there in the world. Both are shaped by a first critical step of leaving old patterns and expectations behind. If not, nothing will change. We will stay in the shallows and catch nothing, or we catch stuff that is useless or maybe even harmful. Small fish are in the shallows, not ones to live on. The sea tosses up the garbage and toxins onto the shores.
Quite often we hear sermons that talk about what call looks like and how to catch others. But perhaps we are jumping the gun a bit...maybe we are casting our fishing line with the wrong tie on it. Maybe our nets are a bit tangled. Before we can catch other people for Jesus and for God, and by catch I mean bring them into the joy of being liberated and freed and known as treasured of God, we have to be caught ourselves.
Have we been caught by Jesus? Have we let him guide us into the deep and unknown places of our hearts and lives? Have we trusted that he will be there to give us exactly what we need? Have we, like Peter, made the turn from calling him Boss to calling him Lord, or more precisely God? There is a world of difference between obeying a boss and following and surrendering to the holy.
Before we can bring others to Jesus or at least help point the way, we have to be caught up in him and by him. We are called to take the plunge into the deep of our souls and lives and trust that way down in the depths we will encounter God. We have to. For it is only there that we have stepped out of the shallows, let go of our certainties, and given up thinking we have the answers and solutions all sorted out. It is only there that we stop clinging to our rationales and justifications so that we can really listen, discover and face our truest selves and the possibilities that are out there. All we have left is God to rely on; there is nothing else. We give up expectation and control and strike out into a new world.
We see this in the response of Peter. Okay, boss, I'll do what you say, but you know we are fishing experts and know all about our trade. We've worked hard all night and come up with squat. Not sure what a carpenter knows about fishing, but hey, I'll do what you say because others seem to think your a big shot, but don't expect much. I certainly don't.
Peter gives just a wedge of opening to Jesus in his heart and Jesus comes in and breaks him wide open. The unexpected happens. Their needs are met and then some. And they don't sink, but rather Peter realizes that all his illusions have been tossed overboard. He is not obeying a boss; he is entering into partnership with God. God has come in and said if you trust in me you will have the riches of true life.
But even then, Peter wants to go back to the shallows. He clearly recognizes that he has just had a head-on collision with God, but he wants out. Leave me alone, he cries. I am sinful, I am not worthy. Go find someone else to fish with. I'm booked every morning from now until the end of the season---trout season, catfish season, salmon season, any season you can name—I'm busy! Jesus pays him no mind. He simply tells Peter he will be catching people. His life is changed and it didn't depend on any of the worldly status markers we use or even so called divine ones. He is a sinner. So what? Aren't we all? And God is reaching out for us all the same. God will reach us if we delve into our own deep places and draw us up into a new life, not perfect, but graced and freed to live anew. We see this too in the letter of Paul. A former persecutor of the Church, the least of the disciples, one who encouraged and presided over the stoning of Stephen, yet God called him and changd his life. We are picked as we are.
This is one of those great paradoxes of the life of the soul. When we allow ourselves to go into our deepest places and share them we often get the opposite of what we expect. We think if we really let it all hang out others will run screaming away. If others really were allowed to peek at our failings and fears and hurts they would find us weak, silly, not worth their time. But so often we find that such honesty is met with astonishing compassion, grace and forgiveness. We find that we pull up a net not broken but teeming with truly eternal life-giving gifts. Yes, such work can make us lose things in the world. We might lose a job for speaking our truth about justice or exploitation. We might lose a “friend” by sharing our pain. We might give up a way of relating to the world shaped by control and dominance, but we gain so much more. We gain integrity, we gain love, we gain the gift of true friends over false ones, we gain an ability to serve others first rather than striving to prove ourselves. And so it goes. And here is the truth of God: God never runs away. God says, yes, I know all that my dear heart, so let's get moving, OK? Where do you want to go from here? I have some ideas.
And where might this take us? Right out into the world we live in. If we are caught by Jesus, truly caught, we can see no other way than to want to feed the hungry, and care for the sick, and visit those in prisons of whatever kind, and work for peace, and if we have much to give it away and to let go of status for service. We begin to be open people, not hiding behind masks and personas. We are willing to be transparent and honest about our own struggles and need. We begin to build true communities. We start to really know what it means to be humble and non-judgmental of others.
When we can go into the deep and encounter Jesus, we are given the opportunity to truly let the image of God within us break free. Perhaps one way to think of this is in the words of Marianne Williamson made famous by Nelson Mandela:
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate, our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually who are you NOT to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't save the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear our presence automatically liberates others.
In short, we are ready to give up the securities of the world for the risk of being the living Gospel because no matter how much we give up in worldly terms we know God is holding us in his net and the life we are experiencing is one that no one and nothing can ever take away. We've been caught in the deeps by Jesus. And we begin to know we can go into the deep without fear of rejection. Jesus net is always open and his arms are always spread wide to say come in. Here you are always wanted and always loved, no matter who you think you are. Trust me on this one.
Monday, February 1, 2010
January 31, 2010, 4th Sunday after Epiphany
January 31, 2010
The Rev. Natasha Brubaker Garrison
Jeremiah 1:4-10, Ps 71:1-6, 1 Corinthians 13:1-13, Luke 4:21-30
4th Sunday after Epiphany, Year C
In thinking about what to say today I had the notion that I could do a great State of the Parish address—a little parody, a little humor, a little seriousness. But while that would have been fun, the moment requires that we look with both joy and focus on where we are as a parish and where we hope to go, where God is calling us.
Our readings today are about transition, challenge and change in self-understanding. The Gospel is particularly hard. It is an extremely charged and violent text. The Romans weren’t the first people that wanted to get rid of Jesus, neither were the local leaders. It was his peers and kin. On another day we will delve into this story of mob violence, rivalry and envy that leads his hometown to move from admiration to trying to instigate a group murder within minutes. Hurling Jesus off the cliff and to his death was the idea. And part of what is circulating in this story is the challenge to change, to seeing things in a different way, of calling people to adjust their perspective by calling out the old way of doing things that are taken for granted. So it is with Jeremiah. Jeremiah appeals to God that he is not ready for this new task. Who is he? He is just a young one! How can he be asked to move in this new direction, a risky and very public direction? He is resistant and who can really blame him!
In a very real way, these stories of transition and the various ways we respond to it fit well with our life here as a parish. We are in a time of transition as a community for a variety of reasons. For some of us, we may have thought that now that the rector search is over, in fact a year and a half ago, we have mostly left transition time and we are mostly going through the changes of getting to know each other and the inevitable adjustments that come with that. This is true. But our parish is by definition in transition. In all those books on congregation size and life we fit into the category called “transitional”. By our membership numbers we fall squarely into that class. By our Sunday attendance we are almost approaching it. Transition parishes are either growing or shrinking. They are at the edge of needing and wanting more staff and more resources, yet still operating out of older systems and funding (that worked well for a smaller size) realities. It’s a risky time in many respects, but it also a time of great opportunity.
The vision articulated during the search process was one of looking to growth and moving forward through this transitional stage of life. One such major leap was made before: moving from mission to parish status. Part of making this next leap is adjusting systems and creating the space so that growth can fit in.
Here is part of how our leadership is doing that. We are moving into changing our structures around our common governance. Our finance team is codifying its processes and has created input mechanisms for ministries to tell of their hopes and needs. We have created a property committee that has taken on the task of long-term planning, prioritizing and shepherding of major projects to care for and improve our grounds and buildings. On the one hand, projects and ideas that have been out there for quite a while are getting done in a more focused and organized manner. On the other hand, it means ideas and implementation flow through a new process. Our stewardship and development teams are looking this year at establishing year-round programs. Our vestry is taking on the work of supporting our 5-year vision, creating stronger ties between vestry and our ministries, and living into mutual ministry reviews. The way of doing business is being shifted outward into groups and teams, which is what we need, I believe, at our size and moment of life. Part of this is widening the circle of those invited into leadership, both long-time members and people newer to our community. New ideas and new perspectives, but also change.
One large transition and change that happened to us was in our music ministry. In taking our time, discerning as a community, not rushing into a quick answer we have arrived at a new configuration. It is even more a team ministry; it has been a reconciling time. We are blessed beyond measure with our music leaders, CORAME, choir, choristers and other musicians. They are integrating the common themes and responses to our questionnaire gradually and wisely.
We have added new ministry groups and a new Sunday evening worship service. Our Sunday attendance is up and so are the numbers of members. Much good ministry is happening in and from this place. We have much to offer and offer it we do, but we also have the charge to invite people in and share all the good things that are happening here at Resurrection.
Here are some of our challenges. We need to discover as a community how we are going to support more fully our nursery and Sunday School. Our teachers are wonderful and dedicated, but they are small in number and to prevent them burning out and feeling overworked we do need to expand the number of folks participating in this ministry. It’s a great work, teaching and caring for our youngest members. We say we want to attract families, and this is one of the critical ways we make that possible.
We need to look at our long-term financial health both in terms of assets in reserve and our annual operating budget. There is a trend of roughly the last decade where our numbers are growing but our giving is declining. This is not a sustainable pattern in the long run. In order to support and have our ministries grow into the future we are asked to find how to increase our annual budget by about $15-20,000, which for a parish our size is not a huge increase. I am confident that we can do this because we love this place and we know how much comfort, community and witness to the Gospel flows from it.
We need to look at increasing our compensation for our music ministers and hopefully increasing our secretary’s hours (we could certainly use more) and therefore pay. And we are going to enter into a period of invitation around whether we are a parish that works bests with a part time or a full time rector. As of April, I will be going onto ¾ time as our finances do not support a full time position. Since my maternity leave will coincide with the beginning of this shift the effects of it will likely be most noticed come this fall. The most obvious change is that I will be here 3 Sundays mornings per month rather than four. However, during my maternity leave and beyond I intend to still celebrate the 5:30 p.m. vespers with Holy Communion each Sunday. We will also be further developing our lay pastoral ministry, and I am very excited about this.
One of the main tasks of our leadership this coming year is entering into conversation about the clergy model we want and desire. Either model, part or full time, can work well in vibrant, growing parishes. It is an opportune moment to see how we want to shape our ministries. So you see, there is much room for creative and innovative thinking as we decide how we want to shape our life for the future.
There is so much that we can rejoice in about our life here. As always there are there things to do and new directions to explore. But most importantly we continue to be blessed in so many ways by each other and to be a place that seeks with warm hearts and intention to live out the Gospel in our corner of the world. And live it out we do, of that we can be assured. Amen.
The Rev. Natasha Brubaker Garrison
Jeremiah 1:4-10, Ps 71:1-6, 1 Corinthians 13:1-13, Luke 4:21-30
4th Sunday after Epiphany, Year C
In thinking about what to say today I had the notion that I could do a great State of the Parish address—a little parody, a little humor, a little seriousness. But while that would have been fun, the moment requires that we look with both joy and focus on where we are as a parish and where we hope to go, where God is calling us.
Our readings today are about transition, challenge and change in self-understanding. The Gospel is particularly hard. It is an extremely charged and violent text. The Romans weren’t the first people that wanted to get rid of Jesus, neither were the local leaders. It was his peers and kin. On another day we will delve into this story of mob violence, rivalry and envy that leads his hometown to move from admiration to trying to instigate a group murder within minutes. Hurling Jesus off the cliff and to his death was the idea. And part of what is circulating in this story is the challenge to change, to seeing things in a different way, of calling people to adjust their perspective by calling out the old way of doing things that are taken for granted. So it is with Jeremiah. Jeremiah appeals to God that he is not ready for this new task. Who is he? He is just a young one! How can he be asked to move in this new direction, a risky and very public direction? He is resistant and who can really blame him!
In a very real way, these stories of transition and the various ways we respond to it fit well with our life here as a parish. We are in a time of transition as a community for a variety of reasons. For some of us, we may have thought that now that the rector search is over, in fact a year and a half ago, we have mostly left transition time and we are mostly going through the changes of getting to know each other and the inevitable adjustments that come with that. This is true. But our parish is by definition in transition. In all those books on congregation size and life we fit into the category called “transitional”. By our membership numbers we fall squarely into that class. By our Sunday attendance we are almost approaching it. Transition parishes are either growing or shrinking. They are at the edge of needing and wanting more staff and more resources, yet still operating out of older systems and funding (that worked well for a smaller size) realities. It’s a risky time in many respects, but it also a time of great opportunity.
The vision articulated during the search process was one of looking to growth and moving forward through this transitional stage of life. One such major leap was made before: moving from mission to parish status. Part of making this next leap is adjusting systems and creating the space so that growth can fit in.
Here is part of how our leadership is doing that. We are moving into changing our structures around our common governance. Our finance team is codifying its processes and has created input mechanisms for ministries to tell of their hopes and needs. We have created a property committee that has taken on the task of long-term planning, prioritizing and shepherding of major projects to care for and improve our grounds and buildings. On the one hand, projects and ideas that have been out there for quite a while are getting done in a more focused and organized manner. On the other hand, it means ideas and implementation flow through a new process. Our stewardship and development teams are looking this year at establishing year-round programs. Our vestry is taking on the work of supporting our 5-year vision, creating stronger ties between vestry and our ministries, and living into mutual ministry reviews. The way of doing business is being shifted outward into groups and teams, which is what we need, I believe, at our size and moment of life. Part of this is widening the circle of those invited into leadership, both long-time members and people newer to our community. New ideas and new perspectives, but also change.
One large transition and change that happened to us was in our music ministry. In taking our time, discerning as a community, not rushing into a quick answer we have arrived at a new configuration. It is even more a team ministry; it has been a reconciling time. We are blessed beyond measure with our music leaders, CORAME, choir, choristers and other musicians. They are integrating the common themes and responses to our questionnaire gradually and wisely.
We have added new ministry groups and a new Sunday evening worship service. Our Sunday attendance is up and so are the numbers of members. Much good ministry is happening in and from this place. We have much to offer and offer it we do, but we also have the charge to invite people in and share all the good things that are happening here at Resurrection.
Here are some of our challenges. We need to discover as a community how we are going to support more fully our nursery and Sunday School. Our teachers are wonderful and dedicated, but they are small in number and to prevent them burning out and feeling overworked we do need to expand the number of folks participating in this ministry. It’s a great work, teaching and caring for our youngest members. We say we want to attract families, and this is one of the critical ways we make that possible.
We need to look at our long-term financial health both in terms of assets in reserve and our annual operating budget. There is a trend of roughly the last decade where our numbers are growing but our giving is declining. This is not a sustainable pattern in the long run. In order to support and have our ministries grow into the future we are asked to find how to increase our annual budget by about $15-20,000, which for a parish our size is not a huge increase. I am confident that we can do this because we love this place and we know how much comfort, community and witness to the Gospel flows from it.
We need to look at increasing our compensation for our music ministers and hopefully increasing our secretary’s hours (we could certainly use more) and therefore pay. And we are going to enter into a period of invitation around whether we are a parish that works bests with a part time or a full time rector. As of April, I will be going onto ¾ time as our finances do not support a full time position. Since my maternity leave will coincide with the beginning of this shift the effects of it will likely be most noticed come this fall. The most obvious change is that I will be here 3 Sundays mornings per month rather than four. However, during my maternity leave and beyond I intend to still celebrate the 5:30 p.m. vespers with Holy Communion each Sunday. We will also be further developing our lay pastoral ministry, and I am very excited about this.
One of the main tasks of our leadership this coming year is entering into conversation about the clergy model we want and desire. Either model, part or full time, can work well in vibrant, growing parishes. It is an opportune moment to see how we want to shape our ministries. So you see, there is much room for creative and innovative thinking as we decide how we want to shape our life for the future.
There is so much that we can rejoice in about our life here. As always there are there things to do and new directions to explore. But most importantly we continue to be blessed in so many ways by each other and to be a place that seeks with warm hearts and intention to live out the Gospel in our corner of the world. And live it out we do, of that we can be assured. Amen.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
January 24, 2010, Third Sunday after Epiphany
January 24, 2010
The Rev. Natasha Brubaker Garrison
3rd Sunday after Epiphany, Year C
Nehemiah 8:1-3,5-6,8-10, Ps 19, 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a, Luke 4:14-21
There is a common thread woven throughout all our readings today. It is the idea of interpretation. Interpretation is central to our faith and how we understand our Holy Scripture. Every age and every person who reads the Bible engages in interpretation. Its meaning is neither static nor is there only one, unequivocal understanding. This has always been the case. We read it in the context of our personal lives; we read it in the context of our social setting. And this is a good thing, for if it didn’t continue to raise up questions for us it would be a dead text. It is a vehicle, a sacrament, I think, of God’s ongoing revelation and working in the world.
Of course, there is the need for an appropriate starting point and understanding about the texts in order to interpret them well. We see this in the reading of Nehemiah where all the people “who could understand” listened to the book of the law and this book was read to them “with interpretation”. Nehemiah was written after the return of the people from their exile in Babylon. They had been away for three hundred years and they were different. The law was reinterpreted to fit new times and places while holding to its essence. The law also helped people interpret the world and times around them. And it was interpreted by those believed to be wise enough and prayerful enough to give a sound rendering.
The wisdom spoken of in the Psalm is a variation of interpretation. Jesus engages in a bold and audacious act of interpretation by saying that this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing, meaning that he was the fulfillment. We take that as a given, but imagine if I or someone else here made that statement today. We’d be shocked and understandably skeptical. Jesus’ claim is vitally important to us, though. We as Christians believe he is correct in that daring speech. Jesus is the Word of God for us, and it is this Word that we worship, not the words of the Bible. Those words, beautiful, essential and utterly necessary, point to him and to God and to a path of understanding. A very real temptation and reality is that all too often we begin to worship the Bible and that is idolatry. It is Jesus who is our ultimate and primary interpretive lens on our faith and our world.
This theme of interpretation is not as visible in the letter to the Corinthians, but it is there. It is not so much an interpretation of the written word, but an existential interpretation, an interpretation of who we are and how we see and understand ourselves. The image Paul gives is powerful and profoundly important. We have heard it so much that it is almost a cliché, but we do ourselves a disservice by passing over it lightly. It deserves our time and willingness to stop and really examine what this image is meant to help us understand.
Paul grounds us in the point I made earlier: Jesus the Christ is our starting point, the place from which our understanding and interpretation flows. Without that as a starting point the inclusive picture he paints would not have emerged so clearly and so quickly—one body of Jews and Greeks, slaves and free. And therein is the second vital point: we are a body.
We are a body. We are described as part of Christ’s body and that body is clearly described and understood by analogy to a human body. Here are some of the implications of such an image. It is organic. It is unified, though diverse. It is utterly interdependent and mutually dependent in ways clearly seen and ways that we can’t even comprehend. Every part is essential, necessary. If part of the body is lost or injured it affects all the rest; it may compensate, but is not ever again quite the same. Though there are perceived hierarchies, they are completely interwoven with a basic horizontal equity. One cannot exist without the other. No part is expendable. No part can be exploited or used without damage and detriment to the rest. This is how God sees us…absolutely necessary and needed, indispensible. No matter what we hear out there or at times within our own hearts, we are seen by God as part of this body. We each matter profoundly. And that type of love and connection is indeed Good News.
It is a tremendously powerful image of community within which resides autonomy and independence. It is a collective understanding in which individuals live and from which they are shaped and formed. But they never leave it and they cannot exist without it.
This is a radically different understanding of self, I believe, than that of our culture and the institutions we have created. There, the individual is seen as completely discreet, independent, mostly unattached to others by nature or need. Hierarchies sort people into separate groups and obscure notions of commonality. We believe we are self-defined and able to act on the world around us as if our ties to it were voluntary, not intrinsic. It is a picture of isolation presented as freedom. It is individuality presented as true identity. It is disconnection presented as common reality. It severs ties and mutuality in their existential sense and creates ties that are artifice and construct, often without much commitment or sense of accountability. To me that is a lonely and bleak prospect.
Paul’s vision calls us into a truly interdependent life. His community exists based on Christ, nothing else and nothing less. Today community often means a group of people who share the same viewpoint or who like the same activity as us. But beyond that there is often not much that ties us together, requires us to stay with each other and bear with each other. We might join a line-dancing group and share good times, but when we are feeling blue or a difficult time arises are these people we feel we could call to be with us? Or Tom Friedman who writes that technology has made the world flat. Is that true? We may be able to connect with people all over the world in a second, but is a connection done through an impersonal medium where we can present (or recreate) ourselves as we want the same as face-to-face interaction? Is there the possibility for true understanding when we can’t meet and experience each other’s realities?
Our world may indeed be more immediate, but it is not intimate. Paul’s vision is one of profound intimacy and caring. It is a redefined freedom and identity, not one that negates our individual-ness and particular gifts, rather it rejoices in them, but one that puts them into a richer context and a deep understanding that we exist for each other first, even if that means that we can’t always do what we want or have all that we want. We discover that his image though gives us so much more of what we need and truly taps into who we are as created beings. Paul believes we find this by a deep recognition that our fullest life is found by understanding ourselves as part of Christ at all times and in all places. We are communal creatures defined and guided by his life. This is the community the Church aims to be at its best. It’s a grand and wonderful vision. It takes work and awareness and an openness to growth within us all.
I would suggest that this vision is not just valid for Christians. We aren’t the first people to have a similar idea of self and community. It exists in Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, native traditions and so on. Ours has its particular aspects that are unique and that we hold to be divinely revealed. All to the good. But if we believe our understanding has a divine source, it is not just for us, but also saying something about the whole world and its character. This vision of Paul’s has something to offer the secular world. We have something to offer it based from this understanding. We have something of value to say to a world where suddenly corporations, artificial constructs of the state, are defined as and given all the rights of people and citizens. Such entities are not people; rather, they are collections of people and legal arrangements and constructions defined on paper and in practices. The interface with them is through lawyers and boards and ultimately many persons and yet no one. The relationship is ephemeral. They can be created and they can be undone overnight. Function is confused with essence. Corporations are necessary and needed for many things, but I think this is a symptom of confused interpretation and understanding. It is so very different from the body image.
Fragmentation and disconnect are the force pulling in the other direction depending on how we see ourselves. I am reminded of the words of the “Grapes of Wrath” where the farmers who are struggling to survive in a natural calamity are being forced off their land, even though they have not been negligent or irresponsible. The refrain from the representatives is it’s not me it’s the bank. Impersonal, everywhere yet nowhere, not in connection to the men and women who grow the very food they eat.
There is much in the world that will be shaped based on our images of who we are: the situation in Haiti, the vote this week, the ideas being put forward around our economic activity and actors, our annual meeting next week, and surely our own private concerns and situations.
My invitation to us this week is to ponder and pray with Paul’s image. What does it mean to us? What does it invite us to? Where is it good news and where does it challenge us? What does it mean to how we understand ourselves? What does it mean to be Church, to be part of this community? What does it call us to do in how we look at the world outside these walls and take part in it? What hope can it offer in times that are so very hard and where the tension is very real between highly differing visions of society? Where is the Word, Jesus, present to us here and now?
The Rev. Natasha Brubaker Garrison
3rd Sunday after Epiphany, Year C
Nehemiah 8:1-3,5-6,8-10, Ps 19, 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a, Luke 4:14-21
There is a common thread woven throughout all our readings today. It is the idea of interpretation. Interpretation is central to our faith and how we understand our Holy Scripture. Every age and every person who reads the Bible engages in interpretation. Its meaning is neither static nor is there only one, unequivocal understanding. This has always been the case. We read it in the context of our personal lives; we read it in the context of our social setting. And this is a good thing, for if it didn’t continue to raise up questions for us it would be a dead text. It is a vehicle, a sacrament, I think, of God’s ongoing revelation and working in the world.
Of course, there is the need for an appropriate starting point and understanding about the texts in order to interpret them well. We see this in the reading of Nehemiah where all the people “who could understand” listened to the book of the law and this book was read to them “with interpretation”. Nehemiah was written after the return of the people from their exile in Babylon. They had been away for three hundred years and they were different. The law was reinterpreted to fit new times and places while holding to its essence. The law also helped people interpret the world and times around them. And it was interpreted by those believed to be wise enough and prayerful enough to give a sound rendering.
The wisdom spoken of in the Psalm is a variation of interpretation. Jesus engages in a bold and audacious act of interpretation by saying that this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing, meaning that he was the fulfillment. We take that as a given, but imagine if I or someone else here made that statement today. We’d be shocked and understandably skeptical. Jesus’ claim is vitally important to us, though. We as Christians believe he is correct in that daring speech. Jesus is the Word of God for us, and it is this Word that we worship, not the words of the Bible. Those words, beautiful, essential and utterly necessary, point to him and to God and to a path of understanding. A very real temptation and reality is that all too often we begin to worship the Bible and that is idolatry. It is Jesus who is our ultimate and primary interpretive lens on our faith and our world.
This theme of interpretation is not as visible in the letter to the Corinthians, but it is there. It is not so much an interpretation of the written word, but an existential interpretation, an interpretation of who we are and how we see and understand ourselves. The image Paul gives is powerful and profoundly important. We have heard it so much that it is almost a cliché, but we do ourselves a disservice by passing over it lightly. It deserves our time and willingness to stop and really examine what this image is meant to help us understand.
Paul grounds us in the point I made earlier: Jesus the Christ is our starting point, the place from which our understanding and interpretation flows. Without that as a starting point the inclusive picture he paints would not have emerged so clearly and so quickly—one body of Jews and Greeks, slaves and free. And therein is the second vital point: we are a body.
We are a body. We are described as part of Christ’s body and that body is clearly described and understood by analogy to a human body. Here are some of the implications of such an image. It is organic. It is unified, though diverse. It is utterly interdependent and mutually dependent in ways clearly seen and ways that we can’t even comprehend. Every part is essential, necessary. If part of the body is lost or injured it affects all the rest; it may compensate, but is not ever again quite the same. Though there are perceived hierarchies, they are completely interwoven with a basic horizontal equity. One cannot exist without the other. No part is expendable. No part can be exploited or used without damage and detriment to the rest. This is how God sees us…absolutely necessary and needed, indispensible. No matter what we hear out there or at times within our own hearts, we are seen by God as part of this body. We each matter profoundly. And that type of love and connection is indeed Good News.
It is a tremendously powerful image of community within which resides autonomy and independence. It is a collective understanding in which individuals live and from which they are shaped and formed. But they never leave it and they cannot exist without it.
This is a radically different understanding of self, I believe, than that of our culture and the institutions we have created. There, the individual is seen as completely discreet, independent, mostly unattached to others by nature or need. Hierarchies sort people into separate groups and obscure notions of commonality. We believe we are self-defined and able to act on the world around us as if our ties to it were voluntary, not intrinsic. It is a picture of isolation presented as freedom. It is individuality presented as true identity. It is disconnection presented as common reality. It severs ties and mutuality in their existential sense and creates ties that are artifice and construct, often without much commitment or sense of accountability. To me that is a lonely and bleak prospect.
Paul’s vision calls us into a truly interdependent life. His community exists based on Christ, nothing else and nothing less. Today community often means a group of people who share the same viewpoint or who like the same activity as us. But beyond that there is often not much that ties us together, requires us to stay with each other and bear with each other. We might join a line-dancing group and share good times, but when we are feeling blue or a difficult time arises are these people we feel we could call to be with us? Or Tom Friedman who writes that technology has made the world flat. Is that true? We may be able to connect with people all over the world in a second, but is a connection done through an impersonal medium where we can present (or recreate) ourselves as we want the same as face-to-face interaction? Is there the possibility for true understanding when we can’t meet and experience each other’s realities?
Our world may indeed be more immediate, but it is not intimate. Paul’s vision is one of profound intimacy and caring. It is a redefined freedom and identity, not one that negates our individual-ness and particular gifts, rather it rejoices in them, but one that puts them into a richer context and a deep understanding that we exist for each other first, even if that means that we can’t always do what we want or have all that we want. We discover that his image though gives us so much more of what we need and truly taps into who we are as created beings. Paul believes we find this by a deep recognition that our fullest life is found by understanding ourselves as part of Christ at all times and in all places. We are communal creatures defined and guided by his life. This is the community the Church aims to be at its best. It’s a grand and wonderful vision. It takes work and awareness and an openness to growth within us all.
I would suggest that this vision is not just valid for Christians. We aren’t the first people to have a similar idea of self and community. It exists in Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, native traditions and so on. Ours has its particular aspects that are unique and that we hold to be divinely revealed. All to the good. But if we believe our understanding has a divine source, it is not just for us, but also saying something about the whole world and its character. This vision of Paul’s has something to offer the secular world. We have something to offer it based from this understanding. We have something of value to say to a world where suddenly corporations, artificial constructs of the state, are defined as and given all the rights of people and citizens. Such entities are not people; rather, they are collections of people and legal arrangements and constructions defined on paper and in practices. The interface with them is through lawyers and boards and ultimately many persons and yet no one. The relationship is ephemeral. They can be created and they can be undone overnight. Function is confused with essence. Corporations are necessary and needed for many things, but I think this is a symptom of confused interpretation and understanding. It is so very different from the body image.
Fragmentation and disconnect are the force pulling in the other direction depending on how we see ourselves. I am reminded of the words of the “Grapes of Wrath” where the farmers who are struggling to survive in a natural calamity are being forced off their land, even though they have not been negligent or irresponsible. The refrain from the representatives is it’s not me it’s the bank. Impersonal, everywhere yet nowhere, not in connection to the men and women who grow the very food they eat.
There is much in the world that will be shaped based on our images of who we are: the situation in Haiti, the vote this week, the ideas being put forward around our economic activity and actors, our annual meeting next week, and surely our own private concerns and situations.
My invitation to us this week is to ponder and pray with Paul’s image. What does it mean to us? What does it invite us to? Where is it good news and where does it challenge us? What does it mean to how we understand ourselves? What does it mean to be Church, to be part of this community? What does it call us to do in how we look at the world outside these walls and take part in it? What hope can it offer in times that are so very hard and where the tension is very real between highly differing visions of society? Where is the Word, Jesus, present to us here and now?
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
January 17, 2010, Second Sunday after Ephiphany
January 17, 2010
The Rev. Natasha Brubaker Garrison
Isaiah 62:1-5, Ps 36:5-10, 1 Cor. 12:1-11, John 2:1-11
When I hear the words of the steward in this story, “everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk”, I always give a wry smile. In the midst of this amazing story of grace, overflowing grace, there is a moment of subtle humor…and within it the crucial point for us. The steward reminds me of those music clubs that entice one in with “select 10 free and only buy 5 more at regular club prices” type of deals. Reading through that list of options is a music-lovers’ dream. All these latest and greatest groups! And so one blithely signs up only to discover down the road that it seems like the future selections aren’t as good and neither are the prices. We are given categories and definitions that may or may not be very good or accurate. Or on a more serious note we see it in our social discourse that seems so stuck in old and tired, virtually meaningless clichés, such as choice, freedom, socialism, development, free market, the American Dream, that we end up not really having much of a discussion at all. We’ve been hearing words and definitions of the way things are for so long that even when reality is truly presenting a starkly different picture we struggle to adjust our view. It must fit the old category!
The steward gets all confused and lost in conventional categories. He thinks that the bridegroom has broken etiquette, that something got confused in the planning. He tries to explain this miracle of superabundant and superb quality wine by the usual rational means. Consequently, he misses the whole point. The disciples, in contrast, and this is the point, recognize that God has worked in an unexpected and transformative way through our world to shower us with abundant grace. It is a gift larger than we can explain in our limited capacities; it is running straight into God’s glory and accepting it.
This story of the miraculous is John’s first showing of who and what Jesus is and offers. After the lyrical prologue, after his baptism, and after his calling together his disciples, the first major act of Jesus in this Gospel is the story we hear today. It is a story that gives us a first definition of God who can and desires to transform our world into a place saturated with grace. It is God that offers us the very best wine, that can convert our lives into vessels of beauty and holiness, plenty and good. It is a God that meets our needs if we are open to give God the space to act in ways that are unexpected yet so truly meeting our needs and our places of brokenness.
This is the God the disciples meet in Jesus. It is the God we meet in Jesus: God with us to shower us with this grace. We meet God in the face of a fellow human who can take what we have and through his love and holiness turn it into the kingdom of God. We can’t do it without him, but with him we can do things, as Jesus says later in this Gospel, even greater than these. Jesus, we are told, is the well of life of which the psalmist speaks. Jesus is that good wine drawn from the jars. He is the wine we drink after we have drunk the wine of the world and realize it can only offer so much. Even the best wine from the finest vineyards in France is inferior, eventually gives out, when compared to the wine of Jesus, which he freely gives.
The community that gave us the Gospel of John experienced intensely this grace found in Jesus. It is why it is the first and foundational story of this Gospel. Through that grace they withstood being kicked out of the synagogue (this community was Jewish), they withstood rejection, and they flourished because they continued to draw on the love and grace of Christ. This was the Jesus they shared with the world. It invited them into living in this world but within new definitions, new categories, and the trust that through Jesus working in them they too could be the initiators of miracles as great as providing abundant wine to others—be it spiritual or material sustenance. What a glorious vision they held! And even in the face of their own losses and adjustments, they knew they had the better portion.
Which leads me to Martin Luther King, Jr. He is honored tomorrow in our calendar of saints, but our music today is in tribute to him and the movement that he represents is worthy of our attention, gratitude and continued allegiance. In preparing this sermon I spent time watching footage of his speeches and of the larger struggle of for civil rights. The images are arresting: thousands of people gathered, stirring speeches, vibrant, hope-filled faces, dogs, fire hoses, lynchings, beatings, the hate-twisted faces of other Americans yelling at men and women forcefully yet peacefully demonstrating their utter humanity and demand to be acknowledged as people of dignity and worth, equal in the eyes of God. What sustained them was not only the belief in the justice of their cause, not only great leaders, not only a desire that their children be given a better world, but a drawing on the wine of Jesus, a continual drawing on the grace and power of the crucified and risen one that enfolded them in a hope and a truth that was larger than the world.
They drank of the wine of that grace, relied on it, and trusted it would see them through years of struggle. In drinking that wine they lived into different categories—who they were and who they were to become; and how to reach the end for which they were aiming. If they had chosen violence to match the violence inflicted on them nothing would have been transformed. If they had chosen to adopt a belief of racial superiority over whites that would justify inverting the system nothing would have been transformed. If they had chosen to work within the established categories of media, lawsuits and so on, nothing would have changed or it would have been a continuation of the snail-like pace they already knew. They drank the wine and created new categories…categories founded on a justice rooted in love and reconciliation.
For us the invitation is to believe in the outpouring of God’s grace as revealed in Jesus Christ. He draws wine from the water jar and offers it to us if we can open our hearts to a larger world. He offers that wine so that our hearts will open for this is his desire for us. To drink of his wine is to live into a new category: living members of the Christ. Before all else, this is who we are. It can’t be put on a passport or seen in our language or ethnicity. It is a reality that can’t be made to fit into the world’s categories. But it is our reality, and we are reminded of it and nourished from it each time we receive Holy Communion, each time we look with Christ’s eyes on the world, each time we step out and offer our lives to be incarnations of the kingdom of God.
Such a reception of Jesus’ abundant grace may draw us into struggles just as intense and profound as that of the Civil Rights. God knows they are out there. It will help us be open to new categories in our perception. God knows they are needed. But first and always we must take our empty vessels to Jesus and ask that he fill them and transform them so that it is indeed his wine that we are drawing from and that it is his grace that is sustaining our lives. As members of the Body of Christ we are invited to live constantly into new categories or to challenge the categories of this world with the radical categories of Jesus. It is his concern and he will freely and lovingly fill us in ways expected and unexpected, known and unknown, for it is his very nature to lavish us with grace. And as his people it is our nature to lavish others from that same grace. May it be that we serve the good wine to this world. Amen.
The Rev. Natasha Brubaker Garrison
Isaiah 62:1-5, Ps 36:5-10, 1 Cor. 12:1-11, John 2:1-11
When I hear the words of the steward in this story, “everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk”, I always give a wry smile. In the midst of this amazing story of grace, overflowing grace, there is a moment of subtle humor…and within it the crucial point for us. The steward reminds me of those music clubs that entice one in with “select 10 free and only buy 5 more at regular club prices” type of deals. Reading through that list of options is a music-lovers’ dream. All these latest and greatest groups! And so one blithely signs up only to discover down the road that it seems like the future selections aren’t as good and neither are the prices. We are given categories and definitions that may or may not be very good or accurate. Or on a more serious note we see it in our social discourse that seems so stuck in old and tired, virtually meaningless clichés, such as choice, freedom, socialism, development, free market, the American Dream, that we end up not really having much of a discussion at all. We’ve been hearing words and definitions of the way things are for so long that even when reality is truly presenting a starkly different picture we struggle to adjust our view. It must fit the old category!
The steward gets all confused and lost in conventional categories. He thinks that the bridegroom has broken etiquette, that something got confused in the planning. He tries to explain this miracle of superabundant and superb quality wine by the usual rational means. Consequently, he misses the whole point. The disciples, in contrast, and this is the point, recognize that God has worked in an unexpected and transformative way through our world to shower us with abundant grace. It is a gift larger than we can explain in our limited capacities; it is running straight into God’s glory and accepting it.
This story of the miraculous is John’s first showing of who and what Jesus is and offers. After the lyrical prologue, after his baptism, and after his calling together his disciples, the first major act of Jesus in this Gospel is the story we hear today. It is a story that gives us a first definition of God who can and desires to transform our world into a place saturated with grace. It is God that offers us the very best wine, that can convert our lives into vessels of beauty and holiness, plenty and good. It is a God that meets our needs if we are open to give God the space to act in ways that are unexpected yet so truly meeting our needs and our places of brokenness.
This is the God the disciples meet in Jesus. It is the God we meet in Jesus: God with us to shower us with this grace. We meet God in the face of a fellow human who can take what we have and through his love and holiness turn it into the kingdom of God. We can’t do it without him, but with him we can do things, as Jesus says later in this Gospel, even greater than these. Jesus, we are told, is the well of life of which the psalmist speaks. Jesus is that good wine drawn from the jars. He is the wine we drink after we have drunk the wine of the world and realize it can only offer so much. Even the best wine from the finest vineyards in France is inferior, eventually gives out, when compared to the wine of Jesus, which he freely gives.
The community that gave us the Gospel of John experienced intensely this grace found in Jesus. It is why it is the first and foundational story of this Gospel. Through that grace they withstood being kicked out of the synagogue (this community was Jewish), they withstood rejection, and they flourished because they continued to draw on the love and grace of Christ. This was the Jesus they shared with the world. It invited them into living in this world but within new definitions, new categories, and the trust that through Jesus working in them they too could be the initiators of miracles as great as providing abundant wine to others—be it spiritual or material sustenance. What a glorious vision they held! And even in the face of their own losses and adjustments, they knew they had the better portion.
Which leads me to Martin Luther King, Jr. He is honored tomorrow in our calendar of saints, but our music today is in tribute to him and the movement that he represents is worthy of our attention, gratitude and continued allegiance. In preparing this sermon I spent time watching footage of his speeches and of the larger struggle of for civil rights. The images are arresting: thousands of people gathered, stirring speeches, vibrant, hope-filled faces, dogs, fire hoses, lynchings, beatings, the hate-twisted faces of other Americans yelling at men and women forcefully yet peacefully demonstrating their utter humanity and demand to be acknowledged as people of dignity and worth, equal in the eyes of God. What sustained them was not only the belief in the justice of their cause, not only great leaders, not only a desire that their children be given a better world, but a drawing on the wine of Jesus, a continual drawing on the grace and power of the crucified and risen one that enfolded them in a hope and a truth that was larger than the world.
They drank of the wine of that grace, relied on it, and trusted it would see them through years of struggle. In drinking that wine they lived into different categories—who they were and who they were to become; and how to reach the end for which they were aiming. If they had chosen violence to match the violence inflicted on them nothing would have been transformed. If they had chosen to adopt a belief of racial superiority over whites that would justify inverting the system nothing would have been transformed. If they had chosen to work within the established categories of media, lawsuits and so on, nothing would have changed or it would have been a continuation of the snail-like pace they already knew. They drank the wine and created new categories…categories founded on a justice rooted in love and reconciliation.
For us the invitation is to believe in the outpouring of God’s grace as revealed in Jesus Christ. He draws wine from the water jar and offers it to us if we can open our hearts to a larger world. He offers that wine so that our hearts will open for this is his desire for us. To drink of his wine is to live into a new category: living members of the Christ. Before all else, this is who we are. It can’t be put on a passport or seen in our language or ethnicity. It is a reality that can’t be made to fit into the world’s categories. But it is our reality, and we are reminded of it and nourished from it each time we receive Holy Communion, each time we look with Christ’s eyes on the world, each time we step out and offer our lives to be incarnations of the kingdom of God.
Such a reception of Jesus’ abundant grace may draw us into struggles just as intense and profound as that of the Civil Rights. God knows they are out there. It will help us be open to new categories in our perception. God knows they are needed. But first and always we must take our empty vessels to Jesus and ask that he fill them and transform them so that it is indeed his wine that we are drawing from and that it is his grace that is sustaining our lives. As members of the Body of Christ we are invited to live constantly into new categories or to challenge the categories of this world with the radical categories of Jesus. It is his concern and he will freely and lovingly fill us in ways expected and unexpected, known and unknown, for it is his very nature to lavish us with grace. And as his people it is our nature to lavish others from that same grace. May it be that we serve the good wine to this world. Amen.
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