March 21, 2010
The Rev. Natasha Brubaker Garrison
Isaiah 43:16-21, Ps 126, Philippians 3:4b-14, John 12:1-8
5th Sunday of Lent, Year C
I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead. These words of Paul are the expression of the purpose of his life. How many of us would frame our life’s purpose in this way? We want to follow Christ. We want to experience the presence of his love in our lives. We may say that we want to know Christ. But what does that mean, to know? For Paul it is clear, to share in his suffering and death so that we can know Jesus as the risen one, for without the former we cannot truly know that latter. To share in his suffering and death is not something most of us desire. We want to think on it, ponder it, claim its saving power for us, but to have it be what he does and did, not something that we too must do each in our own way. And to do this we must be clear on the nature of that suffering and death; it is love.
We hear this definition if we pay attention to the implications of the readings. Paul’s rejection of all that made his life meaningful in worldly terms is a way of saying love is at the center. The righteousness of which he speaks means forgiveness and mercy, both of which are impossible without love. We also see it clearly in the story from John’s gospel.
In John’s gospel, we hear the story of an early Christian community grounded in the act of loving service to one another. Today’s passage is a very clear example of that. As is often the case in John’s gospel and indeed the other gospels as well, it is women or an outsider, not one of the inner circle, who demonstrates the point first. When hearing this story of Mary anointing Jesus’ feet we are meant to think of the foot washing that Jesus does for his own disciples just days later. Her gift is one based on love for him and for God. She understands without being told how to respond to Jesus, to the love and ministry and life he embodies and points us to. As Gail O’Day writes: “In the anointing, she shows what it means to be one of Jesus’ own. She gives boldly of herself in love at this hour, just as Jesus will give boldly of himself in love at his hour.”
The hour in question is, naturally, the hour, the time of his crucifixion and death. All that is happening in this portion of John is prefiguring his coming Passion. He is under a death sentence that makes incarnate our human fear of divine love and selfless surrender to serving others and God. Mary keeps her heart open to the place where true life lies, even if the path leads through death. Surely she knows that Jesus’ human life is coming to its end, but that only draws her further into love of him, not abandonment or trying to avoid the path of life in God that includes both joy and suffering, a particular kind of suffering.
The community that wrote John’s gospel understood itself to be partaking here and now in the resurrected life, not in its entirety, but in a true and real way. Heaven, service, salvation and love are all words that are pointing towards the same truth, in this Gospel and in the others. They are all part and parcel of the same understanding and same call to a way of life. Jesus was clear, as most of our later theologians were not, that heaven and salvation were not places distanced from us that we got to later; they were meant to be revealed and known within and among us. And, incidentally, so was what we signify by the word hell.
Last week in the adult confirmation class we were talking about these ideas of heaven and hell. And one person shared a wonderful Chinese story about them. I did say that the story would probably appear in a sermon someday. Little did I know it would be a week later! When we are paying attention God gives us so often exactly what we need. The story goes like this. We are given a glimpse of hell. It is a banquet hall, full of tables mounded with wonderful food, and the guests are seated along both sides of them. The place is full. All these delicious dishes, mouth-watering smells, and abundance are there for the taking. But no one is eating. Each guest has a pair of chopsticks that are four feet long. Try as they might, contort their arms as they will, not one of them can manage to scoop up any food and get it into their mouths. The room is full of frustration and anger. We are then given a glimpse of heaven. It is the exact same set up: banquet tables full of food, guests lining them table, and even the four-feet long chopsticks! But this room is full of feasting, laughter, and happiness. How is this possible? Because each guest is taking his or her own chopsticks, picking up the food before the guest opposite and feeding it to them.
This story is, I feel, a profoundly powerful image of service, love, salvation and heaven all woven together. It is simple on the surface, but that is deceptive. There is a lot we can learn by contemplating it. In its own way, it is playing on the same ideas as the passage in the Gospel of Matthew where the sheep and the goats are sorted based on who gave food, water, clothing, compassion and companionship in this life to others and who did not. In today’s reading Mary reveals heaven; Judas reveals hell.
As we continue on our journey towards the cross, as we too set our faces towards Jerusalem, I offer you this story to contemplate this week. Rather than give examples of how I see this story lived out in the world, rather than offer more ideas about what it means, I will instead leave you with some questions or ideas on how to enter into it and allow its meaning to unfold for you. For the heart of faith is not having answers given to us. It is to come to our own understandings that are grounded in the story and life of Jesus as we seek to make them our own story.
So here are a few of them to prime the pump. What is the relationship between love and service? What does true service to and of others look like? What does it require of us? What is different in the heavenly banquet image other than creative problem solving? What changes in disposition and understanding does feeding one another involve? What characterizes it? What changes does it require of our own self-understanding? And of the nature of life with each other? And lastly, what does such loving service mean when the path it takes us on can lead to suffering? For this is the path Jesus is on and yet he keeps moving forward, not seeking death, but neither turning from such service to appease those who are threatened by it.
It is also the path that we are on if we, as Paul, want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection. It is not simply telling a story; it is discovering how we are to live it, constantly, knowing that Jesus is with us on the way, ready to go with us to the very ends of heaven and hell, ready always to love us.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Monday, March 15, 2010
March 14, 2010, the Fourth Sunday in Lent
March 14, 2010
The Rev. Natasha Brubaker Garrison
Joshua 5:9-12, Ps 32, 1 Corinthians 5:16-21, Luke 15:1-3.11b-32
4th Sunday of Lent, Year C
In Alice Walker’s beautiful and painful book “The Color Purple”, one of the many characters we meet is Shug Avery, a traveling blues singer. Shug has been estranged from her pastor father for years because of her decision to sing secular music. One morning, while she’s visiting her hometown, she decides that she feels like singing. She opens the local juke joint and begins singing her signature song. As a crowd gathers around the singer, the scene shifts to her father’s church. As he is preaching, sounds from the juke joint drift in through the open windows. Someone in the congregation prompts the choir to begin singing “God Might be Trying to Tell you Something”. As the choir gets louder, Shug hears and begins singing along. As the song progresses, she leads everyone from the juke joint (band and all) to the church. She walks up to her father and puts her arms around, whispering, “See, Daddy, even sinners have souls.” He returns her embrace as tears fill her eyes.
Shug Avery’s world is a long way away from that of the younger son we hear about today. Some parallels are obvious. Both children take paths that the world judges to be morally suspect. Both are distanced from their fathers, though we do not ever know how the father in the story in Luke felt about his younger son’s decision. He may not have had the hardness of heart that Shug’s did. Both children find a way to come home through the interaction of life and the involvement of other people, though the choir in Shug’s story is a far kinder opening than the younger brother’s working as an exploited field laborer. And both, upon meeting their father again, confess.
And it is on this aspect that I would like us to focus a bit more. So often we hear sermons on God’s unconditional grace and acceptance as embodied by the father. Which is true. Or we hear sermons on the older brother and how often we may indentify more with him than the prodigal, being prompted to not let our narrowness cut out God’s incomprehensible grace and realizing grace for one doesn’t diminish it’s presence for the other. Which is also true. Or we hear the invitation to come home to God if we find our lives seem to be more like that of the prodigal son’s and trust that we will be received. Again, true. All are certainly ways into this story and pointing to the many meanings therein.
To confess. To acknowledge. To, as the story says, come to oneself, to face oneself honestly. This is not a popular topic. Oh, don’t get me wrong. We love to divulge in our culture. Why else are the antics of our stars and shows like Jerry Springer so popular? But such divulgence of our behaviors, our wrongdoings, our shocking mistreatment of others is not truly confession. It is self-indulgent revelation meant to garner attention, fame, money and a sense of importance. Confession is none of those things. It is about self-honesty and repair. It’s about seeing where we have not acted as we ought to have; it is about claiming where we have misused our lives at the expense of ourselves and others. We don’t look to blame; we look to own and to amend. It is an intimate act done without ulterior motives of gain, except perhaps that of the peace and calm that come with acceptance and owning what we have done without excuse or justification.
Some cynical types take the prodigal son’s words as a calculated ploy to win his father’s affection and get back into to the good life. He doesn’t really mean it, they say; he’s just once again being the selfish young git trying to protect his own skin. Perhaps such a jaded reading is a symptom of our times. I may be naïve, but I take the young man’s words at face value. He could have simply tried this ruse when the famine hit rather than trying to eek out a living as a laborer. He could have gone home with his tail between his legs. But he doesn’t. He chooses to work in a dirty, bottom of the barrel job because he realizes he has gotten lost, that he has misused his father’s trust and love, that he has been selfishly living, focusing on his own pleasure at the expense of others’ souls and his own. He has a moment of clarity into his own nature. And he realizes that no one owes him anything; he has to find his own path back to wholeness and dignity. He can’t do it alone, but he also can’t expect that there aren’t bridges to mend and accounts to be reckoned. He faces the emptiness and inner darkness and finds the courage to say this is where I am and it is from here that I start. May God send me people to help me find my way back.
This is the first movement of grace, the whisper on the edges of our soul that reminds us we do not belong to ourselves, but to our family, our neighbors, our world and our God. We are part of something holy and beautiful and all too often we trample on it in search of self-centered gratification. But to step back and see our interdependence and our interconnection, our need for good relations with others and our own soul is the first step of the dynamic of grace. God implants this earning, this longing within us. We can muffle it well, but when we are ready for something new it sends forth a whisper of longing from deep within us.
The son prepares his speech. Note how he doesn’t cast blame or try to paint himself as a victim of circumstance. Rather, he comes clean and says basically, I messed up and I don’t expect you to take me back as before. I have to re-earn your trust; I have to grow and I have to make amends. And he goes through with this even when his father greets him with unconditional love and joy. The son could have not said his prepared speech; he could have chosen not to acknowledge his own realization and instead said, phew, dodged a bullet there, I don’t have to worry about saying sorry. Instead he still says the words, at least most of them, to his father even after this amazing reception. He does so, not to guarantee the continued good reaction of his father, but rather for the sake of his soul.
And this is the second dynamic of grace. It is always being held out for us, but we have to come to a place where we see our need for it. Only then can we truly receive it, experience it as grace. We have to acknowledge our utter dependence on God’s love and that even at our best we get lost. Our ability to experience God’s unconditional loving grace is directly related to our humility and willingness to always acknowledge that our lives and actions are always in need of scrutiny and the participation of God. This is the life of the soul, the soul that Shug speaks of, the soul given back to the son. For our souls to blossom, they need to bask in God’s grace, and God’s grace comes to us in direct proportion to our willingness to admit our dependence on God and each other. It comes as we keep our eyes always open with honest clarity on who we are and what we do, asking always for God to come in and make it truly good.
Even the older son needs to learn this. He has confused grace with reward for always doing the right thing. Grace is an earned thing. In his self-righteousness he is angry that grace is given to someone who hasn’t played by the rules. For him, it seems, grace is about fairness not love. He is the good guy, right, so why hasn’t he gotten special favors? In his own way, he is just as self-absorbed as his younger brother. In his own way, he too needs to recognize his need for grace, his need to confess his arrogance, his superiority, his feeling of entitlement, his belief in that it he himself who is the author his salvation.
God wants us back together with him and each other safe and sound. God wants us back together to celebrate, to move to a place beyond blame and retribution, into acknowledgement of our wrongs against each other that leads to healing not continued division. Confession is an act of profound liberation. It is freeing; it is a tonic to the soul. To confess is to strip away all that has accumulated on our souls and allow the light of God to shine in and continue to build us up. To confess is to remind ourselves of the deep truth that as long as we are human and part of this human enterprise, we will get out of alignment. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, but rather something essential to know about ourselves so that we can keep turning to the center to find God. It is not to make us focus on our faults and shortcomings and feel guilty, dirty and rotten about ourselves; rather, confession is about reminding ourselves that at our core we are holy people called to live a life of fulfilling love for others and in so doing find our souls to be enriched and blessed.
Confession done from this place, I believe, is at the heart of our growth as people, our ability to forgive and the possibility to live in new ways. It is also the soil from which social justice sprouts forth and why such work is so hard. It is more than saying we are sorry as a collective; it is to take the next step to make amends and restructure our world from a radically new place. That is why it is easy for governments decades later to issue formal apologies, such as ours did only last year for slavery, but nearly impossible for them to make monetary reparations or work to change systems of power without tremendous pressure from the people.
This Lent we are invited to revisit the meaning and the sacred power of confession and its intrinsic link to grace. We are invited to see ourselves as all the characters in this story because we are all the characters in it, and to live out the dynamic of grace in within ourselves and towards others. It is about seeing that we have souls and to see that soul in all others—the Christ within, the holy spark inside, the connection to the unifying reality of God. It is about a season of reunification that can only come when we see the breaks to be healed, the division to overcome. It is about believing that grace is God’s first gift and purpose for us and being willing to let ourselves be wrapped in those arms of divine acceptance and joy.
The Rev. Natasha Brubaker Garrison
Joshua 5:9-12, Ps 32, 1 Corinthians 5:16-21, Luke 15:1-3.11b-32
4th Sunday of Lent, Year C
In Alice Walker’s beautiful and painful book “The Color Purple”, one of the many characters we meet is Shug Avery, a traveling blues singer. Shug has been estranged from her pastor father for years because of her decision to sing secular music. One morning, while she’s visiting her hometown, she decides that she feels like singing. She opens the local juke joint and begins singing her signature song. As a crowd gathers around the singer, the scene shifts to her father’s church. As he is preaching, sounds from the juke joint drift in through the open windows. Someone in the congregation prompts the choir to begin singing “God Might be Trying to Tell you Something”. As the choir gets louder, Shug hears and begins singing along. As the song progresses, she leads everyone from the juke joint (band and all) to the church. She walks up to her father and puts her arms around, whispering, “See, Daddy, even sinners have souls.” He returns her embrace as tears fill her eyes.
Shug Avery’s world is a long way away from that of the younger son we hear about today. Some parallels are obvious. Both children take paths that the world judges to be morally suspect. Both are distanced from their fathers, though we do not ever know how the father in the story in Luke felt about his younger son’s decision. He may not have had the hardness of heart that Shug’s did. Both children find a way to come home through the interaction of life and the involvement of other people, though the choir in Shug’s story is a far kinder opening than the younger brother’s working as an exploited field laborer. And both, upon meeting their father again, confess.
And it is on this aspect that I would like us to focus a bit more. So often we hear sermons on God’s unconditional grace and acceptance as embodied by the father. Which is true. Or we hear sermons on the older brother and how often we may indentify more with him than the prodigal, being prompted to not let our narrowness cut out God’s incomprehensible grace and realizing grace for one doesn’t diminish it’s presence for the other. Which is also true. Or we hear the invitation to come home to God if we find our lives seem to be more like that of the prodigal son’s and trust that we will be received. Again, true. All are certainly ways into this story and pointing to the many meanings therein.
To confess. To acknowledge. To, as the story says, come to oneself, to face oneself honestly. This is not a popular topic. Oh, don’t get me wrong. We love to divulge in our culture. Why else are the antics of our stars and shows like Jerry Springer so popular? But such divulgence of our behaviors, our wrongdoings, our shocking mistreatment of others is not truly confession. It is self-indulgent revelation meant to garner attention, fame, money and a sense of importance. Confession is none of those things. It is about self-honesty and repair. It’s about seeing where we have not acted as we ought to have; it is about claiming where we have misused our lives at the expense of ourselves and others. We don’t look to blame; we look to own and to amend. It is an intimate act done without ulterior motives of gain, except perhaps that of the peace and calm that come with acceptance and owning what we have done without excuse or justification.
Some cynical types take the prodigal son’s words as a calculated ploy to win his father’s affection and get back into to the good life. He doesn’t really mean it, they say; he’s just once again being the selfish young git trying to protect his own skin. Perhaps such a jaded reading is a symptom of our times. I may be naïve, but I take the young man’s words at face value. He could have simply tried this ruse when the famine hit rather than trying to eek out a living as a laborer. He could have gone home with his tail between his legs. But he doesn’t. He chooses to work in a dirty, bottom of the barrel job because he realizes he has gotten lost, that he has misused his father’s trust and love, that he has been selfishly living, focusing on his own pleasure at the expense of others’ souls and his own. He has a moment of clarity into his own nature. And he realizes that no one owes him anything; he has to find his own path back to wholeness and dignity. He can’t do it alone, but he also can’t expect that there aren’t bridges to mend and accounts to be reckoned. He faces the emptiness and inner darkness and finds the courage to say this is where I am and it is from here that I start. May God send me people to help me find my way back.
This is the first movement of grace, the whisper on the edges of our soul that reminds us we do not belong to ourselves, but to our family, our neighbors, our world and our God. We are part of something holy and beautiful and all too often we trample on it in search of self-centered gratification. But to step back and see our interdependence and our interconnection, our need for good relations with others and our own soul is the first step of the dynamic of grace. God implants this earning, this longing within us. We can muffle it well, but when we are ready for something new it sends forth a whisper of longing from deep within us.
The son prepares his speech. Note how he doesn’t cast blame or try to paint himself as a victim of circumstance. Rather, he comes clean and says basically, I messed up and I don’t expect you to take me back as before. I have to re-earn your trust; I have to grow and I have to make amends. And he goes through with this even when his father greets him with unconditional love and joy. The son could have not said his prepared speech; he could have chosen not to acknowledge his own realization and instead said, phew, dodged a bullet there, I don’t have to worry about saying sorry. Instead he still says the words, at least most of them, to his father even after this amazing reception. He does so, not to guarantee the continued good reaction of his father, but rather for the sake of his soul.
And this is the second dynamic of grace. It is always being held out for us, but we have to come to a place where we see our need for it. Only then can we truly receive it, experience it as grace. We have to acknowledge our utter dependence on God’s love and that even at our best we get lost. Our ability to experience God’s unconditional loving grace is directly related to our humility and willingness to always acknowledge that our lives and actions are always in need of scrutiny and the participation of God. This is the life of the soul, the soul that Shug speaks of, the soul given back to the son. For our souls to blossom, they need to bask in God’s grace, and God’s grace comes to us in direct proportion to our willingness to admit our dependence on God and each other. It comes as we keep our eyes always open with honest clarity on who we are and what we do, asking always for God to come in and make it truly good.
Even the older son needs to learn this. He has confused grace with reward for always doing the right thing. Grace is an earned thing. In his self-righteousness he is angry that grace is given to someone who hasn’t played by the rules. For him, it seems, grace is about fairness not love. He is the good guy, right, so why hasn’t he gotten special favors? In his own way, he is just as self-absorbed as his younger brother. In his own way, he too needs to recognize his need for grace, his need to confess his arrogance, his superiority, his feeling of entitlement, his belief in that it he himself who is the author his salvation.
God wants us back together with him and each other safe and sound. God wants us back together to celebrate, to move to a place beyond blame and retribution, into acknowledgement of our wrongs against each other that leads to healing not continued division. Confession is an act of profound liberation. It is freeing; it is a tonic to the soul. To confess is to strip away all that has accumulated on our souls and allow the light of God to shine in and continue to build us up. To confess is to remind ourselves of the deep truth that as long as we are human and part of this human enterprise, we will get out of alignment. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, but rather something essential to know about ourselves so that we can keep turning to the center to find God. It is not to make us focus on our faults and shortcomings and feel guilty, dirty and rotten about ourselves; rather, confession is about reminding ourselves that at our core we are holy people called to live a life of fulfilling love for others and in so doing find our souls to be enriched and blessed.
Confession done from this place, I believe, is at the heart of our growth as people, our ability to forgive and the possibility to live in new ways. It is also the soil from which social justice sprouts forth and why such work is so hard. It is more than saying we are sorry as a collective; it is to take the next step to make amends and restructure our world from a radically new place. That is why it is easy for governments decades later to issue formal apologies, such as ours did only last year for slavery, but nearly impossible for them to make monetary reparations or work to change systems of power without tremendous pressure from the people.
This Lent we are invited to revisit the meaning and the sacred power of confession and its intrinsic link to grace. We are invited to see ourselves as all the characters in this story because we are all the characters in it, and to live out the dynamic of grace in within ourselves and towards others. It is about seeing that we have souls and to see that soul in all others—the Christ within, the holy spark inside, the connection to the unifying reality of God. It is about a season of reunification that can only come when we see the breaks to be healed, the division to overcome. It is about believing that grace is God’s first gift and purpose for us and being willing to let ourselves be wrapped in those arms of divine acceptance and joy.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Sundays, February 28 and March 7, 2010
The Rev. Garrison did not preach on these two Sundays. Guest preachers were Nancy Gallagher on February 28, and Dave Beuerman on March 7.
Monday, February 22, 2010
February 21, 2010, 1st Sunday in Lent
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.
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.
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.
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