"Identity Crisis"-- Romans 12:1-8, Matthew 16:13-20-- August 24, 2014

 

Identity theft is a real problem in these days of digital information exchange and storage. If someone with less than scrupulous intentions gets a hold of your social security number or credit card information, they can wreck all sorts of havoc on your life. If that’s ever happened to you, it’s hard to maintain perspective about your "identity"–it can feel like it’s a set of numbers, rather than anything much more resilient, much more complex, much more important.

"Who do people say that the Son of Man is?" Jesus asked his disciples, clearly not asking to be reminded of his social security number, and then the much more pointed question, "But who do you say that I am?" John Pilch, a scholar of the cultural world of Jesus, points out that "Americans are the most individualistic people who have ever lived on the face of this planet." (Pilch, The Cultural World of Jesus, Yr. A, p. 127) Each person is viewed as being distinct, unique–right?–We each have a number. We fashion our identities. We create profiles on Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace. We want to be special, unique.

The Mediterranean view of identity, on the other hand, the view in Jesus’ culture, was just the opposite. It was–and still is–what might be called "dyadic," that is, "paired," other-oriented. They have, says Pilch, "no sense of their individuality but depend rather on the opinions of others to help them know who they are." (Ibid.) They are so bound up in social and familial structures that define them that acting outside of that, as an individual, was viewed with suspicion.

Each of these views–individualistic and dyadic–have their own advantages and disadvantages. But they are different. We need to be reminded that ours isn’t the only way of looking at the world.

So, these questions of Jesus to the disciples were not a "theological quiz," Pilch contends, but rather "reflect a normal, Mediterranean curiosity by Jesus." Who do people say that I am? Who do you say that I am?

The normal cultural definitions of who he was weren’t working. When people identified him as "Jesus of Nazareth," it was supposed to tell them that he was like everyone else from Nazareth. "Can anything good come from Nazareth?"– Remember Nathaniel’s question to Philip in John’s gospel when he told him Jesus was from Nazareth? Where you came from was supposed to describe who you were. We still have a bit of that--Oh, you’re from Bennington? Or Pownal? Or Woodford? Or North Bennington? Or Manchester? We do form different pictures in our minds, don’t we, depending on the answer?

Who your parents were described you, and usually boys took on their fathers’ occupation. Which is why Jesus’ identity was a problem–"Where did this man get this wisdom and these deeds of power?" people asked. "Isn’t he the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all this?" (Mt. 13:55-57)

"Who are people saying the Son of Man is?" Jesus asked his disciples, as it seems that this is the one title Jesus may have claimed for himself–the Son of Man, the Fully Human One. "And they said, ‘Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’ He said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’"

Who do you say that I am? Who do you say that Jesus is? Jesus Is the Question is the title of a new book by Martin Copenhaver, the new president of Andover Newton Seminary. Jesus asks far more questions than he does give answers. And Jesus is himself the question, isn’t he? Who do you say that I am? And what difference does that make in your life?

How would you answer that? It’s a question worth spending some time with. I was thinking that maybe just as we shared with each other our take on "the gospel in 7 words or less," it might be fun to hear how we would answer, Who do you say that Jesus is? There’s a sheet of paper up on the bulletin board to the left as you go out Webster Hall on which you are welcome to write your answer, or answers, ...or maybe your questions...

He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?" Simon Peter answered, "You are the Messiah, the Christ, the Son of the living God!"

Scott Colglazier, senior pastor of the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles, has a wonderful image that really speaks to me. When Peter answered "the Christ," he wasn’t giving him a last name. "‘The Christ’ is not a person but an energy," Colglazier says, "the divine energy that was released into the world through the life of Jesus." [Day1.org, 8/24/14] It is an energy that is still changing people. "This is nothing less than the energy or presence of God," Colglazier says–expressed as compassion, unconditional love, inexhaustible grace, creative, transforming and inspiring goodness. He calls it a "Christ-burst" of energy, so that "sharing Christ" is not so much a telling as it is a sharing of an energy. "Every time we treat another person with dignity and respect and every time we bring compassion to another human being, especially a human being that is hurting and broken, and every time we offer love as a way of life, we bring Christ to others, and the great Christ-burst that started centuries ago continues in our time and in our place." [Ibid.]

"Who do you say that I am?"

Another pastor and preacher, Lutheran David Lose, writes that for him, Jesus is the one who reveals the heart of God, as he weeps over Jerusalem, for example. [Lose, inthemeantime. org, 8/24/14] Surely God is still weeping over Jerusalem, and Gaza, and Urbil, and Ferguson, and Kabul, and Bagdhad, and Washington, and Bennington, and the whole sad and hurting world. Jesus reveals the heart of God, as he has compassion for the hungry, the poor, the sick, the outcast. That’s who Jesus is–the revealer of the heart of God.

And Jesus reveals what is possible in a human being, whose life is open to God. That’s what Paul had in mind when he wrote, "I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship." Or, as Peterson imagines it, "So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life–your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life–and place it before God as an offering." Offer it up to God, so that God can transform it into just what is needed to make the world more just, more beautiful, more healing, as Jesus’ life was transformed.

"Don’t be conformed to this world," Paul wrote, "but be transformed by the renewing of your mind"–your whole perspective changed by this Christ lens through which you now view the world and your life. Who you are is unique–you are a unique product of experiences, gifts and graces, environment, family configuration and ancestors, time in history, DNA, place where you were born, dumb luck, choices you’ve made. But each of us is but one part of a greater body– "so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another," Paul said. We are each but one gem at the intersection of an infinite number of threads in a net of creation, as the Hindu myth of Indra’s net describes it. The African notion of ubuntu says "I am because you are." A person is a person through other people.

"Who do you say that I am?" It is not a catchism question. It is a life question. How do you live your life because I am? How do you live your life because Jesus was and Christ is? What energy pattern are you manifesting? Are you so drawn into your culture and the mold it prescribes for you that you are not open to being transformed by God’s energy, God’s compassion, God’s justice, God’s unconditional love? And what are you doing to open up the possibilities of that transformation–is there space in your life for silence and noticing the world around you, including how your thoughts jump around and chase each other? Do you take time to give thanks for any number of blessings? Do you put yourself in situations where you can be reminded of the connections you have with people you don’t think are "like you"? Do you take time to connect with nature and all the creatures of which you also are a part? Do you direct "Christ energy" toward people and situations in need of healing and justice and hope? "Who do you say that I am?"

"So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life–your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life–and place it before God as an offering." "By the mercies of God, present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God..." Share Christ-energy with everyone you meet and live with. Send it out to the whole world. So may you know who you are and Whose you are. Amen, and amen.

 

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

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“The Other”-- Matthew 15:21-28-- Aug. 17, 2014

 

If we are to look to Jesus as a model of what a fully alive human being looks like, then surely this story of his encounter with the Canaanite woman must be included. Contrary to what some commentators suggest, I don’t think Jesus was all-knowing, all-compassionate at every moment and so here he was merely testing this woman’s faith. That seems petty and manipulative to me, and for all the human things Jesus might have been, I don’t think he was either of those things. I think Jesus was a product of his time and place, just like the rest of us are, and at certain times, maybe especially when he was trying to get away for a break, as he was here, maybe even Jesus fell back on the definitions and parameters that his culture proscribed for him. “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” he says in response to this “foreign” woman’s plea for her daughter. But luckily she wouldn’t leave it at that.

The Canaanite woman was “the other” for Jesus. Not only was she outside the nation of Israel, she was a woman. Laws of purity and honor gave Jesus perfect permission to say what he did. “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel....It isn’t fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs...” It was what she said that ultimately got through to him and reminded him of a higher law.

Jan Richardson imagines this woman’s plea to Jesus as a “stubborn blessing”--

“Don’t tell me no.
I have seen you
feed the thousands,
seen miracles spill
from your hands
like water, like wine,
seen you with circles
and circles of crowds
pressed around you
and not one soul
turned away.

Don’t start with me.

I am saying
you can close the door
but I will keep knocking.
You can go silent
but I will keep shouting.
You can tighten the circle
but I will trace a bigger one
around you,
around the life of my child
who will tell you
no one surpasses a mother
for stubbornness.

I am saying
I know what you
can do with crumbs
and I am claiming mine,
every morsel and scrap
you have up your sleeve.
Unclench your hand,
your heart.
Let the scraps fall
like manna,
like mercy
for the life
of my child,
the life of
the world.

Don’t you tell me no. [Jan Richardson, Painted Prayerbook for Year A, Pent. + 10]

It is the cry of Michael Brown’s mother in Ferguson, MO, and mothers of African American boys throughout our country. It is the cry of Palestinian mothers and Israeli mothers, amidst the bombs and rockets. “Have mercy on us,” cry the Yazidis fleeing to the mountains in Iraq. “Unclench your hand, your heart,” cry the parents and partners and children and friends of those whose loved ones battle with depression. “I am not – we are not – the other. You and I, we are not so different. Deeply, truly, we are one.

People looking for adequate, decent housing in our community are not The Other. The children who need federally-funded lunches and families and individuals who cannot find decent housing without assistance are not The Other. The permitting process for the Shires Housing Project just up the road from us on Silver St. has revealed a real rift in our community. The “dirty little secret” is not about the number of children in our schools who qualify for subsidized meals–“The poor you will always have with you,” Jesus said a couple thousand years ago–that’s not a secret. The “secret” is that we’d rather not live near them. It’s not just that our schools are labeled “failing” because we have poor children in them–every school in Vermont except those who opted out of the “No Child Left Behind” standards was deemed “failing.” It is a failure of that program, of the system, not of the kids or teachers.

Nicholas Kristof, columnist for the New York Times, wrote an op-ed piece last Sunday entitled, “Is a Hard Life Inherited?” In it, he tells of returning to his hometown of Yamhill, OR.
“I love this little town, [he wrote] but the news is somber...A neighbor here just died of a heroin overdose; a friend was beaten up last night by her boyfriend; another friend got into a fistfight with his dad; a few more young men have disappeared into the maw of prison.” [NYT, 8/10/14] It sounds an awful lot like our town, doesn’t it? and a whole lot of other towns in Vermont.

One delusion common among America’s successful people [Kristof writes] is that they triumphed just because of hard work and intelligence. In fact, their big break came when they were conceived in middle-class American families who loved them, read them stories, and nurtured them with Little League sports, library cards, and music lessons...

...Too often wealthy people born on third base blithely criticize the poor for failing to make homeruns. The advantaged sometimes perceive empathy as a sign of muddle-headed weakness, rather than as a marker of civilization.

Too often “poverty” is not just an economic description it’s a moral judgment. Why can’t those people get their act together? We sometimes ask. Where are the parents? Why don’t they put more energy into looking for a job instead of looking for a hand-out?

“‘Almost a third of the 153.6 million Americans with a job at any time in 2012 made less than $15,000, averaging just $6,100,’ writes David Cay Johnston in Divided: The Perils of Our Growing Inequality.” Less than $15,000. Can you imagine feeding your family or finding a place to live for that? “Nearly all of the income growth in our economy has been in jobs paying more than $75,000 a year [cites another source]–about one in eight jobs.” [Julie Polter, “The Rich Get Richer,” Sojourners, Aug. 2014] There aren’t all that many jobs paying more than $75,000 in Bennington, are there?

“Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David,” she said. “My daughter is tormented by a demon.” Robin Williams’ death by suicide, due to depression, this week has echoed deeply into many people’s lives. Mental illness and addiction are equal opportunity employers, striking the poor and wealthy alike. There is no “other” to the demon of depression. Yet the resources for those battling mental illness, including depression, in our community are woefully inadequate.

“She came and knelt before him, saying, ‘Lord, help me.” He answered, ‘It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” She said, ‘Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.’ Then Jesus answered her, ‘Woman, great is your faith! [Greater than mine, at the moment apparently.(I imagine him realizing) Forgive me.] Let it be done for you as you wish.’ And her daughter was healed instantly.”

Police walking alongside protestors instead of confronting them in riot gear produced a very different result in Ferguson this week. That’s when the healing began, though it has a long way to go there and throughout our country.

“There are steps that could help [in the crisis of working-class America],” Nicholas Kristof wrote, “including a higher minimum wage, early childhood programs, and a focus on education as an escalator to opportunity. [I would argue that the better index of disadvantage for a child is not family income, but how often the child is read to, Kristof said earlier] But the essential starting point is empathy.”

“I am not the other,” the Canaanite woman said to Jesus, and the truth of that resonated in his soul. She is identified as the Syro-Phoenician woman in other gospels, but here Matthew says she is Canaanite. In fact, Matthew begins his gospel with a genealogy of Jesus that includes a number of Canaanite foremothers–Ruth, Tamar, Rahab. “I am not the other,” she said.

If we are to become fully human, as Jesus was, we too, like Jesus, must learn to let go of those definitions and stereotypes of “the other.” It is the final prejudice and it is fueled by fear. In her blog this week [8/15/14], sociologist Brene Brown writes about fear and courage–

When confronted with news of a stranger’s unimaginable pain – a suicide, an overdose, a protest for justice and basic dignity – we have two choices: We can choose to respond from fear or we can choose courage.

We can choose to believe that we are somehow insulated from the realities of these traumas and that our willpower or our strength of character makes us better than these displays of desperation and woundedness. When we seek shelter in the ‘better than – safer than – different than’ thinking, we are actually choosing fear and that requires us to self-protect and arm ourselves with judgment and self-righteousness.

Our only other option is to choose courage. Rather than deny our vulnerability, we lean into both the beauty and agony of our shared humanity. Choosing courage does not mean that we’re unafraid, it means that we are brave enough to love despite the fear and uncertainty. Courage is my friend Karen standing up and saying, “I am affected.”

The courageous choice also does not mean abandoning accountability – it simply means holding ourselves accountable first. If we are people of faith, we hold ourselves accountable for living that faith by practicing grace and bringing healing. If we consider ourselves to be smart and curious, it means seeking greater understanding. If we consider ourselves to be loving, it means acting with compassion.

It’s difficult to respond to the tragedies of strangers – even those we think we know – because we will never have access to the whole truth. In the absence of information, we make up stories, stories that often turn out to be our own biographies, not theirs.

Our choices have consequences: They make the world a more dangerous place or they cultivate peace. Fear and judgment deepen our collective wounds. That rare mix of courage and compassion is the balm that brings global healing.

We have two choices. Let’s choose courage. Let’s choose to love despite the fear.

“Woman, great is your faith!” Jesus finally said to the Canaanite woman.“Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly. May our faith be as courageous and as full of grace. So may the healing begin. Amen.

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

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"Come on in!"-- Matthew 14:22-33-- Aug. 10, 2014

 

Last week we heard the story of the feeding of over 5000 people, beginning with just five loaves of bread and two fish. The disciples had thought there was nothing there in that deserted place to feed all those people with, and they told Jesus to send the people away into the villages to buy something to eat. But Jesus said that wasn’t necessary. "You give them something to eat," he said. The disciples looked around and saw only scarcity. "There’s nothing here but these few loaves of bread and couple of fish," they said. So Jesus made everyone sit down on the grass and blessed the offering of food. "The place of abundance is here," he said. In your midst, when you stop to notice it, when you stop and give thanks, the place of abundance–the God of abundance– is here. Ultimately the disciples had to figure out what to do with all the leftovers–12 baskets full.

"We often confuse safety and stability with abundant life," one commentator suggests (David Lose, in the meantime, 8/4/14), and so we work hard to build a safe, stable, and secure life for ourselves and our loved ones. Which is not a bad thing. We know that children thrive in a stable environment, and surely human flourishing is what God intends for all of us. The problem is that we can get too settled, too satisfied, too smug, thinking that we’ve got it all under control and don’t really need anybody else, let alone God. We start defending our comfort zone.

But have you noticed that it’s when the going gets tough–really tough–that that’s when people start invoking either the first or second members of the Trinity– " O God!" or "Jesus Christ!" I think I might have been uttering one or the other if I had been in that boat on the Sea of Tiberius with the disciples that dark and stormy night. And I have no idea what I would have said had I seen Jesus walking across the waves toward us. "A ‘behold’ or ‘shazam!’ or something like it would be nice here," suggests one translator, "to signify that people (even Jesus) don’t come walking across water everyday." (Mark Davis, left behind..., 8/10/14)

"This is the most ‘useless’ miracle in all of the gospels," Mark Davis writes. Unlike feeding hungry people or healing someone’s sight or long-term physical condition, Davis wonders if Jesus walked upon the water just to prove he could do it, just to show who he was. (Ibid.) I’m guessing that the disciples, who, in Matthew’s gospel, had already experienced Jesus’ stilling the storm after they’d woken him up from sleeping in the stern, may have found it quite useful for Jesus to walk across the water to them.

But it’s not even Jesus’ walking across the water that grabs me so much in this story. After all, he’s spent all night praying and being filled up with God’s Spirit of power, which, by the way, is what the first hearers of this story would have thought–This man is more powerful than the wind and waves–more powerful than the other spirits or people who claim to have power. A human being who is utterly empty of his or her own agenda and who opens themselves up to be filled with God can do amazing things.

Which is what Peter did, and THAT’s the part of this story that strikes me. "What in THE world," as Mark Davis asks, "would compel someone in a boat in a storm in the sea to say to Jesus at this point, ‘Command me to come to you’?" And then when Jesus says, "Come on in," jumps out of the boat onto the waves! ...and walks! Now, see, that’s the miracle in this story for me. Not that Jesus could walk on the water, but that Peter could. He doesn’t do it on his own power–he knows that Jesus has to be in on this–but for those few seconds that he can keep focused on Jesus, he can do what Jesus can do. It’s when he loses that single-point focus, when he "doubts," or waivers, or "stands in 2 ways" that he begins to sink, and cries out, "Lord, save me!" Jesus doesn’t say to him, "Sink or swim, buddy–you got yourself into this" – but rather "Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him... And when they got into the boat, the wind ceased."

All four of the gospels tell the story of Jesus having power over the wind and the waves–either by walking on the water or calming the storm from the boat. It’s only Matthew’s gospel that includes this part about Peter walking – however briefly – upon the water as well. This Jesus is full of the power of God who has power over the wind and the waves, because, by the way, God created them; but for Matthew’s community, living probably some 50 years after the death of Jesus, it was important for them to know that this power that was in Jesus was beside them, in the storm of persecution and struggle with them, even inside them.

This story of Peter stepping out of the boat onto the waves was much more powerful than any theological statement about the power of God. "You can’t get to God through your head," says Seane Corne, yoga teacher and activist. "I’ve only been able to get to God through experience, through my heart, through surrender," she told Krista Tippett, host of the public radio show onBeing. In fact, as this morning’s guest on onBeing, neuroscientist Adele Diamond has found, we learn with our whole bodies. Our brains develop through movement, dance, music, doing, stepping out. We’re all "kinetic learners." When Peter started to rely on his head–like Wiley Coyote noticing the air below him after running off the cliff in pursuit of RoadRunner– when Peter looked down and noticed the waves beneath his feet, he immediately began to sink. The world told him walking on the water is impossible. The God embodied in Jesus told him to come on out. "Fear not," Jesus had told them. "I am–it is I." "I am"–the name of God–God is here.

This is not an advertisement for merely being impetuous, for abandoning your mind and intellect before acting; but it is a story about focus, about how to enter into the chaos of our lives, which, if you haven’t noticed, is all around us. Multi-tasking does not serve us well in these situations. What is needed is focus on the essential. Jesus was called "the One" –ihidaya--not only referring to his uniqueness but more importantly describing his ability to be at one, with himself, with God, to empty himself of distractions, of 2-sidedness, of duality, and to focus the power then available to him for healing, for multiplying, for bringing life and hope. Those verses tucked in the midst of these stories–"when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself..." ..."And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray"–these times apart in prayer and meditation allowed Jesus to be "the One"–Ihidaya. It takes practice in times of stillness and focus, so that in times of chaos, that ability is available.

That is a practice still available to us. Meditation has been shown to literally rewire the brain; we can work on strengthening our ability to focus, which in this incredibly distracting and over-stimulated world, is more and more important. Faith is less an act of will or intellectual assent than it is an opening, a physical, emotional, wholebeing practice. It is the whole-hearted living that social scientist Brene Brown talks about, the "daring greatly" by being in the arena or out on the waves, being one’s true self, knowing that we are worthy of being loved by this One who is beside us in calm and in chaos.

When Jesus and Peter got into the boat, the wind ceased. "And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, ‘Truly you are the Son of God." The thing is, though, there’s no definite article here in the Greek–it’s not, "Truly you are the Son of God," but a Son of God. Jesus was certainly a Son of God in a unique, Jesus-sort of way, but so was Peter a son of God, in a unique Peter-sort of way, and so are you a son or daughter of God, in a unique, you-sort of way. We may not all be called to walk on water, but we are all called to offer ourselves up to be filled and used by this power of Love and Healing and Compassion and Justice, stepping out though we may be afraid, yet focused on the One who calls us.

So as we head out into the storms of our lives, may this blessing over the waves by Jan Richardson go with us–

Blessing on the Waves

I cannot promise

that this blessing

will keep you afloat

as if by lashing these words

to your arms,

your ankles,

you could stop yourself

from going under.

The most this blessing

can do, perhaps,

is to stand beside you

in the boat,

place its hand

in the small of your back,

and push.

Be assured that

though this blessing

is eager to set you

in motion,

it will not

leave you forsaken,

will not compel you

to leap

where it has not already

stepped out.

These words

will go with you

across the waves.

These words

will accompany you

across the waters.

And if you

find yourself

flailing,

this blessing

will breathe itself

into you,

will breathe itself

through you

until you are

borne up

by the hands

that reach toward you,

the voice that

calls your name. (Jan Richardson, Painted Prayerbook, 2011)

May it be so. Amen, and amen.

 

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

 

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"Blessing and Breaking"-- Gen. 32:22-31, Mt. 14:13-21-- Aug. 3, 2014

 

A lot has happened since you and I were last together. While I was on vacation, a Malaysian air liner was shot down over Ukraine, most probably by Russian separatists. Israel and Hamas have been trading missiles and bombs over and into the Gaza strip, with hundreds of Palestinian deaths, largely civilians, and dozens of Israeli deaths, mainly soldiers. Ceasefires go up in smoke. Thousands of unaccompanied Central American children still stream through our borders and wait for adults to care for them. Congress...well, actually, not a lot has happened in Congress since you and I were last together.

Bruce and I were not so isolated or far away on vacation that this news didn’t find us...on our car radio as we traveled; in the newspapers we picked up to read over leisurely breakfasts (even leisurely Sunday breakfasts! What luxury!); or in our e-mail feeds when we checked them. The pain and sorrow and suffering of the world is no longer easy to escape, unless you really work on it. Even on vacation, even when you try to get away, the struggle goes on, our heart strings keep getting tugged at.

Our two readings for this morning–perhaps both fairly familiar–would seem to demonstrate the two poles of the religious life. On the one hand, the reading from Genesis tells the story of Jacob wrestling with, who? An angel? God? A river demon? Himself? Wrestling all night long until just before dawn Jacob’s hip is knocked out of joint and his opponent begs him to let him go. Jacob refuses unless the divine wrestler blesses him. "What is your name?" the "man" asks Jacob. And when he tells him, he says, "You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel [i.e. the one who strives with God], for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed." Then Jacob asked him, "Please tell me your name." But he said, "Why is it that you ask my name?" And there he blessed him.

So there’s the wrestling with, the struggling with, God, on the hand. Have you been there? Why did you let this happen, God? Where are you, God? Why does the world have to be this way, God? Why can’t it be easy, just this once? I don’t want to do this thing that You keep putting in front of me to do, God. Can’t you help me stop (fill in the blank...)drinking...taking pills...eating too much...worrying...whatever? Can’t you do something to bring peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians? Between the Sunnis and Shia? How can you let this beautiful, world you created burn up or get destroyed? All night long they wrestled, until daybreak.

And then there’s the sitting on the grass to be fed by God. That’s why we go on vacation. That’s why we come here, some of us anyway. Even Jesus, when he had heard about the death of John the Baptist, "withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself." I just need to get away. I just need to be by myself. "Do not disturb," please. Leave me alone. I know you’ve been there too. And if you think God is the reason for whatever has driven you to this place, it’s understandable that you’d want God to leave you alone. But maybe what you want is for God to hold you, or for God to feed you.

They do seem like opposite poles–wrestling with God on the one hand, maybe even getting your hip knocked out of joint, and on the other hand, sitting down on the grass where God offers you food and drink and rest–but each place is a place of blessing. If you only hang out at one pole–either relentlessly wrestling or endlessly sitting–the blessing fades, life is diminished. We know what relentless stress does to us and our bodies–it essentially fries us. But total, endless relaxation isn’t any better for us. You’ve heard of the phrase "Use it or lose it?" It turns out we need both stress and relaxation. Stress is only bad if there’s no let up. Creativity, new life, and strength all require labor, resistance, something to push against. That’s the wisdom in the rhythm of that first creation story–6 days of labor followed by a day of rest–the wisdom of keeping sabbath each week, the wisdom of taking time off, the wisdom of regular retreat or sabbatical time.

But the thing is, God was both in the wrestling and in the feeding. God is in the midst of our struggles for justice and peace and God calls us away to a deserted place. It’s not an either/or. It’s both/and.

We know that Jesus was not the only person in his day to be called "messiah" or even "son of God"–the Roman emperors claimed that name for themselves. He wasn’t the only healer or even miracle-worker. But from the very beginning of his gospel, Matthew calls Jesus "Emmanuel"–"God with us." The gospels are clear, as one commentator writes, that all of the miracles or wonders that Jesus performs are "signs of the character of the God whose presence Jesus bears." (David Lose, in the meantime, 7/28/14) The feeding of those five thousand plus people that day was one of those signs and wonders.

Jesus has gone away to a deserted place to re-group after he hears the news of John’s death. Gone away to grieve? To pray? To escape Herod? But the crowds also go away to that deserted place. Perhaps they too are overwhelmed at the news of yet another holy man being crushed by Rome. Perhaps they are looking for the next holy man to step up. We know many of them were in need of healing; all of them were hungry.

And when Jesus saw them, Matthew tells us, "he had compassion for them and healed their sick." He had "compassion"–it’s not just pity, one commentator says, it’s a "body-related" word–"gut-wrenching" is more like it. Compassion, grief, hunger, all these deep body experiences, none of them intellectual statements of faith. "He had compassion for them and cured their sick. When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, ‘This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.’" As if this crowd had money to buy food! "Jesus said to them, ‘They need not go away; you give them something to eat.’"

"The place of abundance is here," Jesus said to them. The disciples said, "We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish." Send them away to the places where they sell food, send them to the marketplaces that are full of food. "They need not go away," Jesus said; "you give them something to eat. The place of abundance is here."

Imagine if we said that as a mantra–"The place of abundance is here."[Mark Davis, Left Behind and Loving It, 7/28/14] Instead of waiting for "them" to do something about hunger, or war, or injustice, or pay for the new furnace or bring you fulfillment, what if we considered, "the place of abundance is here." "Bring them here to me," Jesus said of the 5 loaves and 2 fish. Which was really Plan B. Plan A was, "You give them something to eat." The disciples couldn’t believe that was a viable option. "Bring them to me. The place of abundance is here."

Frederick Buechner some thirty years ago drew a beautiful picture of what the "church" looks like at its best. "He was imagining people who come to church week after week – [from the wrestling to the resting]–what they looked like, what they were thinking, how they were changed. [2CC–changing lives since 1865]. Perhaps, on any given Sunday, Buechner mused, they weren’t changed much at all. He wrote:

Yet they kept on coming anyway, and beneath all the lesser reasons they had for doing so, so far beneath that they themselves were only half aware of it, I think there was a deep reason, and if I could give only one word to characterize that reason, the word I would give is hope.

They came here.. To get married and stood here with their hearts in their mouths and their knees knocking to mumble their wild and improbable vows in these very shadows. They came to christen their babies here–carried them in their long white dresses hoping they wouldn’t scream bloody murder when the minister took them in his arms and signed their foreheads with a watery cross. They came here to bury their dead, and brought in, along with the still finished bodies, all the most un-still, unfinished love, guilt, sadness, relief, that are part of what death always is for the living. In other words what they were doing essentially beneath this roof was offering up the most precious moments of their lives in the hope that there was a God to hallow them–a God to hear and seal their vows, to receive their children into [God’s] unimaginable kingdom, to raise up and cherish their dead. I see them sitting here, generations of them, a little uncomfortable in their Sunday best with their old faces closed like doors and their young faces blank as clapboard; but deep within those faces–farther down than their daydreams and boredom and way beyond any horizon of their wandering minds that they could describe–there was the hope that somewhere out of all the words and music and silences of this place, and out of a mystery even greater than the mystery of the cosmos itself, a voice that they would know from all other voices would speak their names and bless them. [from "A Room Called Remember," cited by Theodore J. Wardlaw in Journal for Preachers, Pentecost 2014, p. 10]

Out of the mystery, a voice they would know from all other voices that would speak their names and bless them. Jacob wrestled for that. The crowds were hungry for that. Even Jesus strained to hear the Voice above all other voices that named him as Beloved. Broken and blessed. All of us, broken and blessed. This bread, this cup, broken and blessed. The place of abundance is here. We take and eat, take and drink, and so blessed we go out to offer God’s love and abundance to a hungry and thirsty world. "You give them something to eat."

May it be so.

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

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“Who Are You?”-- Genesis 2:4b-9, Romans 8:14-19-- June 29, 2014

 

In this “not ordinary time” – this so-called “Ordinary” time between Pentecost and Advent in which the current condition of our planet begs us to stop and re-consider how we are living–in this “not ordinary time” there are some core questions we need to consider. If we are to survive and adapt to the inevitable changes that are now in motion, if we are to make conscious choices about what direction we want our world to head, if we are to leave the planet with a chance for our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren to enjoy even a portion of the beauty and abundance generations before us have known, then we’d better get clear about who we are and Whose we are.

Last week we considered the question, “Where do you come from?” and looked at a few origin stories–the origin story in Genesis 1, which tells us we are from a God who creates, who savors beauty, who moves in rhythms, who rests; and the origin story of the Big Bang, which tells us we are made of stardust, of the same elements as the stars and moons and planets and galaxies, the same elements as the dust of our earth and the other creatures of our earth.

Today we consider the question, “Who am I? Who are you?” It’s related to last week’s inquiry, “Where do you come from?” and the piece of the origin story in Genesis 2 that Barbara read for us this morning continues our search. This is the beginning of the second creation story in Genesis–different from the one in the first chapter–and the very first line that Barbara read for us should give us a clue to that–“In the day that the Lord God made the earth and heavens...”–just one day, not six. There are no plants or herbs yet, only a stream and a river bed, out of which God begins to fashion the creatures, beginning with adam, literally the earthling or earth creature, out of the adamah, the dust of the ground. Adam has no gender, or maybe both /all genders, and when God blows breath into the earthling, adam becomes a living being. It is then that God plants a garden in Eden, and puts Adam in it, “to till it and keep it.” That was our original role in creation--to serve the soil.

The story goes on, of course. “It is not good that the earthling should be alone,” God says. “I will make a partner, a helpmeet for adam.” After making all the other creatures of the earth–the birds and animals and every living thing, which Adam names, God still is not satisfied. And so putting the adam to sleep, God reshapes the earthling into two, now with genders, bone of one another’s bone, flesh of one another’s flesh. None of this is science or history, remember, but poetry, hymn, doxology, story, the mystery greater than facts and figures. We are made for relationship! the story sings, we are made for each other.

Who are you? Who am I? Our culture, our society, surrounds us with answers to those questions, from the lips of leaders and celebrities, in glossy advertisements and seductive commercials.

You are a consumer, we are told. You hold the key to our economy, to putting people back to work, to generating capital which makes the world go round. Your patriotic duty is to go shopping, to buy, to accumulate, to eat, to acquire. We need to consume food and water, of course, to stay alive, but the word “consumer” as a common term is relatively recent to the English vocabulary, less than 100 years old. Yet now it defines us. Even those who want to be conscientious ask, “How can I be a green consumer?”

You are an individual, our society says. Your primary obligation is to yourself and your family. It’s weak to depend on others. Take care of your own. Family first. Country first. Freedom is being able to do what you want.

You are nobody, our culture says, unless you’re famous, unless you’re wealthy, unless you’ve got power, unless you’re beautiful in the way the magazines define beauty, unless you win.

These stories that our culture tells us about ourselves are big on immediate gratification and profit, have no sense of obligation to future generations, and are leading us deeper and deeper into the ecological and political crisis we’re in.

The best of the Christian tradition tells us that we are beloved children of God. “For all who are led by the spirit of God are children of God,” Paul wrote to the church in Rome. It is what we affirm in baptism. You’ll recall the story of Fayette who was astounded and delighted to learn in her baptismal preparation class that when she was baptized, she would be “beloved, a precious child of God, beautiful to behold.” And when she came up sputtering and blinking from being immersed in the waters of baptism, she cried out, “And now I am?” “Beloved!” the congregation responded. “A precious child of God! Beautiful to behold!” “Oh yes!” Fayette affirmed. And even months later, when Fayette lay in the hospital, bruised and beaten after a savage attack, she could be heard saying to herself, “I am beloved... I am a precious child of God...and if you come back later, I’ll be beautiful to behold.” Who are you? A beloved child of God.

Who are you? You are meant for relationship, for community. The church is that community that affirms each one as beloved child of God, across geography and time. We are part of a great cloud of witnesses.

Who are you? You are a creature of the earth, your DNA only infinitesimally different from that of all other creatures, yet our origin stories tells us we were given the role of being stewards of all the creatures, caretakers of the earth. We are, in fact, co-creators, coming, as we do, from a creative God. We are makers of music, of art, of dance, or poetry. We are creators of homes and shelters, tenders of gardens, sewers of quilts and clothing, cabinet-makers, carvers of wood and stone.

Who are you? You are a disciple of Christ, a follower of the teachings and the Way of Jesus. Like Jesus, you have the potential to become fully human and fully divine, the glory of God being the human being fully alive.

The stories we tell about ourselves shape us. How we perceive ourselves affects how we act. Experiments in positive psychology have shown how self-perception changes actions. When we see ourselves doing even a small act of compassion or kindness, we begin to perceive ourselves as compassionate and kind; and we then act more compassionately and kindly. When we give something of ourselves to another or to a cause, we begin to see ourselves as generous and can build on that. Conversely, stories that tell us we are good for nothing, or only to consume, reinforce those self-perceptions and those pathways for acting.

Are we citizens of Empire or citizens of the Earth, author David Korten asks? (The Great Turning, cited on notordinarytimes.org) We must change our stories–or reclaim our stories–if we are to heal the earth and have something beautiful and liveable to pass on to future generations.
Humans from humus [writes Rev. Tom VandeSadt], ancient of lineage,

Extending back to savannahs, oceans,
Stardust, Creator.
Our blood, made red and salty by iron and oceans,
Iron formed by atoms flung into the cosmos by primordial explosions,
Salty from the waters in which our ancestors swam.
Our lungs, filled with oxygen,
Exhaled by light-drinking trees that inhale what we exhale.
Formed by stardust and water, earth dust and sunlight,
We are life among life, creature among creatures,
Kin to every fruit on life’s sacred vine.
Woven by creation’s threads, we are part of, not apart from...
(notordinarytimes.org)

“For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God,” Paul wrote. “...I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons and daughters of God...

And I am? You are? Beloved, precious children of God, beautiful to behold. All creation waits for us to reclaim and live into that identity. Amen, and amen.

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

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"Where do you come from?"-- Genesis 1:1-2:4a-- June 22, 2014

 

A couple weekends ago, Bruce and I went up to Middlebury for my 40^th college reunion. It was an exquisite June weekend in Vermont, blue skies and brilliant sunshine during the day, and deeper blue skies and brilliant moon and stars by night. Friday night the College observatory on top of the Science Center was opened, with 3 smaller telescopes out on the roof and the big, 23-inch telescope reaching up through the dome. One of the retired astronomers who was there to provide extra help remarked, "Wow, we probably get 4 nights a year like this in Vermont."

Through the smaller telescopes, we saw the surface of the moon, including the shadows in the craters; we saw Saturn and its rings; we saw Jupiter and 4 of its moons. I needed a step ladder to reach the lens of the big telescope in the tower, and that was trained on M... 137..or some such number, a globular cluster some 20,000 light years away. It was awesome, in the original sense of the word. At a moment like that, I was reminded of a question one woman posed, wondering whether "we still want to pester God about good weather for the family reunion or the new member drive at church?" (Barbara Brown Taylor, The Luminous Web, pp. 90-1)

20,000 light years away. That means the light from that cluster of pinpricks we were looking at through the lens began its journey to earth 20,000 years ago–that’s what that globular cluster looked like 20,000 years ago, when here on earth, human beings were at the end of the Stone Age. The oldest non-contested human remains are 200,000 years old, although a few years ago archaeologists in Israel found 8 teeth that are believed to be human from 400,000 years ago.

I told you last week that I sometimes read metaphysical texts when I need to burn away the cobwebs forming in my brain. Thinking about 200,000 years ago and light that began its journey to the retina in my eye 20,000 years ago has the same effect. I am lost in the mystery, or as one of my favorite hymns puts it, "lost in wonder, love, and praise."

And yet, "in 1611, the King James translation of the Bible was published with a note to readers that creation had occurred on the evening before the 23^rd of October in the year 4004 BC. In 1616, the Catholic church banned all books that suggested the earth moved at all." (BBT, op cit., p. 52) This calculation of the date of creation, I gather, was obtained by working back through the genealogies in the Bible from the time of Jesus. There are people today who still believe this, that the earth is 6,000 years old, and I struggle to understand how holding to such a belief gives glory to God and the evidence obtained through science doesn’t. The Dalai Lama, as you may know, has entered into collaboration with neuro-scientists at MIT who are interested in studying the brains of monks who have spent a lifetime meditating. The Dalai Lama has said that if science discovers something that shows an error in what Tibetan Buddhism had thought to be true, then, he says, we must change our belief. How different from the history of the Christian Church!

The opening chapter of Genesis which David read for us this morning is a story about origins. It is not history or science, but rather poetry, hymn, doxology, myth, not in the sense of something that is untrue, but rather a truth so big it can only be told in story. "If we in the post-modern world struggle to see truth in those art forms," as one writer puts it, "it is not because Scripture is lying. It is because our post-Enlightenment imaginations are impoverished." (Debie Thomas, Journey with Jesus, 6/9/14) Albert Einstein said, "Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind." And the American humorist Will Rogers quipped, "We’re all ignorant, just on different subjects." (Both cited by BBT, op cit.)

When the Hebrew priests and sages wrote down this creation story, they were most likely living in exile in Babylon. They knew that if there was any hope of retaining a sense of identity in the midst of this foreign land, their people would need to have a way of remembering who they were. The origin myth of their Babylonian captors said that the "cosmos had been made from the dismembered corpse of the goddess Tiamat, whose skull was split by her youngest son Marduk. By murdering his evil mother, Marduk brought order out of chaos with an act of redemptive violence." (BBT, op cit., p. 27)

The Hebrew story was very different, and what we have in Genesis 1 and then in Genesis 2 & 3 are two of the stories that the Hebrews told to their children about who they were and Whose they were. We are their children as well, and if we can allow our imaginations to speak in their own language of images and poetry and song, we too can find deep truths here about who we are and where we come from.

We come from "a God who pays delighted attention," as one wise woman observed. (Debie Thomas, op cit.) "A God who lingers over leaf and wing," every scale and hoof, stream and crystal. This is not merely an engineering, mechanistic, utilitarian God, but a creative, artistic God with a sense of humor. Have you seen an aardvark or a zebra?

This is a world that is, before anything else, essentially good, not evil. The first word before evil or sin or flaw is blessing, original blessing, not original sin. Marcus Borg observes that "Genesis is strikingly world-affirming," not world-denying, (Cited by Thomas, op cit.) focused on this world, not some other, "heavenly" place. If "good" rather than "evil" were our default setting for looking at the world, might we see the world differently, when we are overwhelmed by the violence, destruction, depravity, and greed that so often seem to be the only way to describe it? Rather than simply holding on until we can get to "that other place," might not our broken hearts and deep gratitude for the beauty of this place nourish and empower us to do all that we can to heal the world?

We come from a God who makes all things new. Out of void and chaos, God doesn’t split open a skull and dismember a corpse, but God’s Spirit moved over the waters and breathed light, spoke a world, created human beings, male and female, out of God’s own image. You think Apple keeps coming up with new things? They are nothing compared to what God can create. Every morning you wake up it is actually a brand new day, never before dawned. Your body is new, different, as is the body of the person or dog or cat waking up beside you. This new day, this present, is a present, a gift. We come from a God who makes new things.

"...And there was morning, and there was evening, the second, and the third, and the fourth day." We come from a Source with rhythms, morning and evening, work and rest. Our 24-7 lifestyles are literally killing us. We’ve forgotten who we are, where we come from.

God also created and named the light and the darkness. We must not be too quick to dismiss the gifts of the darkness, as Barbara Brown Taylor’s latest book, called Learning to Walk in the Dark, reminds us–gifts of insight, of quiet, of rejuvenation, of stillness. In fact, all our dualisms, opposites–light and dark, good and evil, black and white, up and down, in and out–are fraught with peril. There is territory in between. If we can accept and affirm only one half of the dualism and reject the other, we end up blinded by the light, with stiff necks from looking only up, afraid of "the other," with only striving and no release, only aggression and no submission. "To want a life with only half these things in it is to want half a life," one sage observed, "shutting the other half away where it will not interfere with one’s bright fantasies of the way things ought to be." (Debie Thomas, op cit.)

And finally, for now, this origin story tells us that we are made in the image of God. What does that possibly mean? Physically? Spiritually? Morally? Those are questions to be pondered and experienced throughout a lifetime. We are made in the image of God. But in Jesus of Nazareth, we do seem to get the beginning of an answer. This is what it means to be fully human in the image of God. This is the deep truth of who we are and Whose we are. This is the Fully Human One, what we are intended to be, what we all can be, if we open to, awaken in, the fullness of God that is our heritage and birthright. We are sons and daughters of God. That’s what the origin story in Genesis 1 is telling us. That’s what Jesus tells us.

That other current origin story–the story of the Big Bang–tells another truth about us. It says that from a "singularity," a primordial burst of energy spewed elements and fire, stars and galaxies, planets that cooled and tilted, like ours did, at 23 ½ degrees, and from that stardust, all life and all the features and creatures on earth were formed. "We are stardust," Joni Mitchell sang, "we are golden..." The 2^nd creation story in Genesis says the same thing in a different way– "And the Lord God formed the earth creature (adam) from the dust of the ground." How can we poison, use up, exploit the earth, without committing suicide? This is who we are!

"Mommy, where did I come from?" the little boy asked his mother. "Oh man, this is it," she moaned. Sweating, fretting, the mom did her best to describe the process where moms and dads come together, and there’s an egg and a sperm, and it grows inside the mommy’s tummy, and finally the baby comes out of his mother’s body. The little boy looked confused. "But where was I born?" he asked a different way. "In Utica," the mom replied. "Oh," he said, and went back to his Luke Skywalker action figure and its desert scooter.

Lots of different origin stories. Where do you come from? Utica? Blackwell, Oklahoma? Pownal? Switzerland? California? Mississippi? What is the question you’re asking really? If the question is deep enough, the first chapter in Genesis is a good place to start looking for some answers. "In the beginning, God...."

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

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"One, Two, Three...What?!"-- 2 Cor. 13:11-13, Matthew 28:16-20--June 15, 2014

 

Trinity Sunday is the only Sunday in the Christian year devoted to a doctrine; and yet the great 20^th century theologian Karl Rahner "claimed that if the Trinity were to quietly disappear out of Christian theology, never to be mentioned again, most of Christendom would not even notice its absence." (Cynthia Bourgeault, The Holy Trinity and the Law of Three, p. 1) As one Lutheran preacher put it, "a) I don’t fully understand the Trinity, b) I don’t expect to this side of the eschaton, and c) I tend not to trust those who say they do." (David Lose, WorkingPreacher. com, 6/9/14) Amen.

And yet, here we are on the Sunday after Pentecost, when we celebrated the gift of the Holy Spirit to the gathered and bewildered followers of Jesus after his death, adding to their experiences of the God whom Jesus taught about and the God whom they experienced, somehow, in him. When they tried to tell others about their experience of God, they soon found themselves defending their belief in one God. How is it, they were asked, that you say you believe in the God of Israel, creator of the universe, yet you also say that this Jesus is God and this Spirit that overwhelmed you and taught you to speak in tongues is also God? "God in three persons," we sang in our opening hymn. Only three? What about God as mother bear, or source of living water, or judge, or lamb–all Biblical images for the Holy One? Or the 99 names of God that Islam knows (the 100^th name of God is unknowable, they wisely teach)? God in 3 persons? "a) I don’t fully understand the Trinity, b) I don’t expect to this side of the eschaton, and c) I tend not to trust those who say they do."

There does seem to be something about the number 3 that has a completeness and unity and dynamism to it, that other numbers do not have. Emily Dickinson invoked the Bee, the Butterfly, and the Breeze. The ancient Celts called on a trinity of birds: Wren, Raven, and Wild Goose, known for different qualities of compassion, courage, and character. (Nancy Rockwell, The Bite in the Apple, 6/7/14) They invoked the female trinity of virgin, bride, and crone, each with powers for regeneration and fertility and called upon in blessings of fields, hearths, and marriage beds.

A common object lesson in teaching children about the Trinity is the apple, with its seeds, flesh, and skin. Three in one. God in three persons–Father, Son, and Holy Spirit–but it is this notion of "persons" that often distracts us from the original intent of this doctrine or teaching, which was less about who God is and more about how God is. The 4^th c. church fathers who articulated this doctrine of the Trinity actually described these three personae–less "persons" and more states of being, like steam, water, and ice–as engaged in a perpetual dance–perikoresis was the Greek word they used. Constantly flowing in and around and through one another. God as community. This is who and how God is. "The universe is not a collection of objects, but a communion of subjects," the late ecological theologian Thomas Berry wrote. The same could be said of God. Not a collection of persons but a communion of subjects.

St. Patrick, bringing the gospel to Ireland and into that ancient trinitarian Celtic culture, invoked the Trinity on his deathbed in the hymn written on his breastplate–

I bind unto myself today the strong name of the Trinity, by invocation of the same, the Three in One, the One in Three.

I bind unto myself today, the virtues of the starlit heaven, the glorious sun’s life-giving ray, the whiteness of the moon at even, the flashing of the lightning free, the whirling wind’s tempestuous shocks, the stable earth, the deep salt sea, around the old appointed rocks.

Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ in quiet, Christ in danger, Christ in hearts of all that love me, Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

It was a swirling, dancing, personal, earthy, moving portrait of God, capturing a sense of the how rather than the who of God. Our more traditional male trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (or Ghost, which is even scarier) has all too often become stagnant and familiar, instead of dynamic, mysterious, and strange.

But it is not just a matter of using different words, perhaps different genders, to retrieve and bring alive this description of God. In her book, The Holy Trinity and the Law of Three, Episcopal priest and wisdom teacher Cynthia Bourgeault writes that the Trinity "is primarily about process." (P. 15) She describes an up to now relatively unknown but ancient "Law of Three," perhaps with origins in the mystical traditions of the Eastern Orthodox Church, but also found in the Wisdom schools of Central Asia. I’ll conveniently spare you the wild and eccentric details of this metaphysical theory (convenient because I can barely follow the progression myself and only read this stuff when I want to burn away the cobwebs forming in my brain), but basically what the Law of Three says is that every new arising is the result of three forces–an affirming, a denying, and a reconciling force–coming together and acting upon one another. Another way of putting it is, "The interweaving of three produces a fourth in a new dimension." (P. 131)An example would be a seed (an affirming force), moist soil (a "denying" or steady force), and sunlight, bringing about the arising of a sprout–something new and in turn creative.

The Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Bourgeault writes, is in a progression of trinities, beginning with the very first, primordial coming into existence of the universe, out of the heart of God. The new arising that is produced from the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Bourgeault posits, is the kingdom of heaven, which Jesus taught so consistently about. And the so-called kingdom of heaven is, of course, not a place, but a way of being; in fact, a way of awakening and being in the Body of Christ, not as the institutional church, but literally, mystically, in the body of Christ.

Nearly a thousand years ago, [Bourgeault writes], an Orthodox monk by the name of Symeon the New Theologian (949-1022) ...came up with yet a third meaning for the Body of Christ [in addition to the Church and the Eucharist]. This strikingly bold and intimate poem sets us down firmly upon that inner ground of transfiguration:

We awaken in Christ’s body

as Christ awakens our bodies,

and my poor hand is Christ. He enters

my foot, and is infinitely me.

I move my hand, and wonderfully

my hand becomes Christ, becomes all of Him

(for God is indivisibly

whole, seamless in his Godhood).

I move my foot, and at once

he appears like a flash of lightning.

Do my words seem blasphemous?–Then

open your heart to Him.

And let yourself receive the one

who is opening to you so deeply.

For if we genuinely love Him,

we wake up inside Christ’s body

where all our body, all over

every most hidden part of it,

is realized in joy as Him,

and He makes us utterly real,

and everything that is hurt, everything

that seemed to us dark, harsh, shameful,

maimed, ugly, irreparably

damaged, is in Him transformed

And recognized as whole, as lovely,

and radiant in His light.

We awaken as the Beloved

in every part our body.

Talk about a "new arising"! And, just to make things more fun, this is not the final Trinity, Bourgeault suggests, although it has lasted some two thousand years. There is one more, with this awakened kingdom of heaven as one of the three forces, out of which the end point, the fullness of God, arises, and everything is folded into oneness.

Who needs drugs to venture into wild and mind-blowing territory?! Perhaps we have come full circle--"a) I don’t fully understand the Trinity, b) I don’t expect to this side of the eschaton, and c) I tend not to trust those who say they do." This is still an accurate description of how I regard at the Trinity, though I’m beginning to see it less as a dead doctrine and more of a living, moving mystery. David Lose, who wrote this a, b, and c, suggests that it might be more helpful to look at what he calls "Trinitarian congregations." "The short definition of a Trinitarian congregation [he writes] is one that sees itself as called and sent by the Holy Spirit to bear witness to the good news of Jesus Christ in word and deed for the sake of the world God created and loves so much." (Op cit.) To intentionally work on becoming a Trinitarian congregation is probably more useful than trying to understand the inner workings of Trinity, though I have to say that there are more possibilities and potential in this ancient, wild-eyed doctrine than I had ever thought before.

The aliveness and relevance of this dancing, creative, unfolding description of how God is–and we are made in God’s image, remember-- only makes sense if we are awake to its presence and possibilities. If we are "awake" in Christ’s body and Christ awakens in us, as Symeon the "New" Theologian of the 10^th c. wrote about, we become part of bringing about the new arising, the kingdom of heaven, and the more of us who are so awake, the more others may experience that utterly amazing healing, hope, and wholeness which God intends for the whole world.

Through it all, wherever and whatever this Trinity or the future unfolds for us, may we remember Jesus’ promise to his followers: "And lo, I am with you always, even to the close of the age." So may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you." Amen, and amen.

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

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"Coming Together/Still I Rise"-- Acts 1:6-14, John 17:1-11-- June 1, 2014

 

This past Thursday marked the 40^th day after Easter. There was a parking lot full of cars at Christ the King Church on Rt. 7 in Rutland when I drove past late Thursday afternoon on my way to a meeting at Grace Church. Our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters were at church for the Ascension Day liturgy.

"After [Jesus’] suffering, [we read in Acts], he presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God."

40 days (again)– as long as it took–to convince them that Death really had not destroyed him, had not ultimately separated him from them, 40 days to give them glimpses of resurrection life and how the power of God to give life was fundamentally different from the power of empire to inflict death.

"It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority [Jesus said to the gathered disciples]. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.

Gone again, but this time they seemed to have an assignment, a purpose for living. They were to receive the same power that Jesus had received from God, the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, and then they would be witnesses to that healing, life-giving power in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

The rising of Jesus occurs in 3 stages, one commentator points out [Nancy Rockwell, The Bite in the Apple, 5/25/14] beginning with his resurrection on Easter. We will celebrate the 3^rd stage next Sunday on Pentecost, when he rises into the life of the Spirit, but today we celebrate that 2^nd step–his ascension–into heaven, which is another way of saying, into fullness of the presence of God. "In my Father’s house are many dwelling places," Jesus had told his disciples in John’s gospel, trying to describe the indescribable fullness of the presence of God; the Great Feast was another image he used; the Great Cloud of Witnesses is yet another image used by the church. "He was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight."

It was a poignant time for those left behind without his physical presence. Yes, Jesus promised that they would not be left alone, that they would, indeed, be filled with the same power that he had received from God, but as it is with any of our loved ones, it is that physical presence, that earthen vessel in which we have known this person, that we ache for when they are gone from our sight. And so Jesus prays for them.

In this great, long prayer in John’s gospel, Jesus prays for his disciples who are staying in the world. "Keep them safe," he prays to God, "make them one, as you and I, Father, are one, I in them and you in me." Rather than the language of increasing separation, Jesus talks of ever-increasing union and communion. Just as Jesus had experienced God with and within him, so would the disciples–so would we–experience God with and within them, with us and within us.

The traditional image of Jesus’ ascending into heaven has him then seated at the right hand of God Almighty, "from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead," as the creed says. Over and above. Far off, but having sent a messenger, an intermediary, an intercessor. The Church set itself up in similar fashion–Christ as head, then the bishop or pope as earthly head, then cardinals, priests, ministers over "the people," the laity. It wasn’t all that different a management model than the Empire used for governance.

But listen to this alternative model or image that early 20^th century Jesuit priest and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin put forth–

Remain true to yourself, but move ever upward toward greater consciousness and greater love! At the summit you will find yourselves united with all those who, from every direction, have made the same ascent. For everything that rises must converge." [cited by Nancy Rockwell, op cit.]

Teilhard –this Jesuit priest who had studied the footprints of evolution--believed that God’s intention was in fact moving evolution toward an "Omega Point," an ultimate convergence in Christ. "For everything that rises must converge." We rise to communion, to greater union with God. Eternal life, as Jesus described in his prayer in John, is "to know God." The late Biblical scholar Walter Wink saw Jesus’ "ascension" as actually his "descent" into the collective unconsciousness of humanity, planting deep within us the archetype of the Fully Human One, which Jesus was. Let that rise from within you.

So what does any of this have to do with the price of beans or bread, as they say? What possible impact might this ancient, fairy-talelike story have on our lives? It has to do with how we imagine God at work in our lives and what we "give worth to," that is, what we worship. Do we literally spend our lives burrowing down in the ultimate pursuit of money, of power, of success, of some ideal physical form, that sets us apart from others? Maybe above others?

Or do we participate in this rising with Christ, where ultimately we are joined with others and with God? If that is our choice, we will find that we are raised with him from all kinds of death–not only our final death, but also all those "little deaths"–the death of relationships or of dreams, the loss of a job or the loss of our health. Death does not have the final word. Secondly we can leave time and space in our lives for the practices that open us up to the power and presence of God, so that we come together with Christ and with all who, remaining true to the selves whom God created them to be, "move ever upward into greater consciousness and greater love." Practices like prayer and meditation, worship, devotional reading, working together for justice and healing.

This view of how God works impacts how we view others and the world. As tributes poured in this week upon the death of the great poet Maya Angelou, I couldn’t help but smile at the association of one of her best loved poems with Ascension Day, just one day after her death. That poem is entitled, "Still I Rise"--

You may write me down in history

with your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I’ll rise. ..

Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops,

Weakened by my soulful cries? ...

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I’ll rise...

Out of the huts of history’s shame

I rise

Up from a past that’s rooted in pain

I rise

I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise. [From The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou, pp. 163-4]

Remain true to yourself, but move ever upward toward greater consciousness and greater love! At the summit you will find yourselves united with all those who, from every direction, have made the same ascent. For everything that rises must converge.

May we too rise and come together, sharing the bread and the cup, becoming, as we are, one body, of the same blood, converging into Christ, who is our life, our light, our love. Amen.

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

 

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"To an Unknown God"-- Acts 17:22-31-- May 25, 2014

 

It was a very impressive gallery. The wood floor glistened. The lighting was subtle but targeted directly to bring out the shape and shimmer of the objects– a glistening Oscar statue from the Academy of Arts and Sciences; an Emmy, a Tony, an Obie, a Grammy–all the highest awards given to stars of stage and screen and concert hall and internet downloads. There was a Heisman trophy, a Stanley cup, an Olympic gold medal, a Wimbledon cup, a green Master’s jacket–prized honors to athletes at the top of their game. There were framed magazine covers– Time’s Man and Woman of the Year, the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, People’s 50 Most Beautiful People, Forbes’ Richest Man, faces and bodies that represent the ideal human form and station in life. And then in one corner was a black and white photograph of a young woman with Afro-Eurasian features– a blend becoming more and more common. Her clothes hung off her body; her eyes were haunting. She was holding a young child in one arm and clutching a plastic garbage bag in the other, leaning wearily against a cement wall, on which had been spray-painted the words, "And the winner is....?"

It was not so unlike the marketplace through which the apostle Paul walked almost 2000 years ago in Athens. "Athenians," he said, standing on the steps of the Areopagus, "I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’"

Luke, the author of Acts, tells us that "all the Athenians and the foreigners living there would spend their time in nothing but telling or hearing something new." The philosophers debated with one another, and welcomed Paul into their debate, saying "May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? It sounds rather strange to us, so we would like to know what it means." This was a gathering of seekers, "engaged [as one commentator describes it] in intellectual conversation, searching questions, honest answers, lively debate, and real dialogue." (Rev Anne Howard, The Beatitudes Society, 5/20/14)

In the midst of various altars and idols, with the sound of hawkers and sellers and philosophers and chanters, there stood that one altar with the inscription, "To an unknown god." "Maybe it’s not enough," the altar seemed to say for the Athenians, "maybe it’s not enough that we worship the sun over our heads and the ground beneath our feet... Maybe between the altar to the Goddess of the harvest and the God of the sea we’ve missed something..." [Howard, op cit.] "To an unknown god."

That market place, that gallery I mentioned at the beginning, is what we walk through everyday. All around us, on airwaves and microwaves, in magazines and newspapers, on small screens and big screens, the altars of the gods our society worships are all around us. "I see how very religious you are," we might say, even though most people would protest and say, "Oh, I’m not religious, but I’m spiritual."

Paul’s speech--we might even call it a sermon– may be a good model for us as we try to engage in conversation with our "spiritual but not religious" friends and neighbors and family. Even though Luke tells us that Paul was "deeply distressed to see that the city was full of idols," he still looks for common ground. "I see how extremely religious you are," he says, ‘and I found among your idols and altars an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’" Paul meets the Athenians where they are and, at least as he begins, he does so without judgment.

"I see that you are seeking." Isn’t that a much better place for conversation than "You’ve got it all wrong" or "I know that I’m right"? "To an unknown god" is a much more honest ascription than a claim to The One and Only Truth, which, of course, Christians have done all too often. Too often we have taken Mystery out of that mysterious name for God–"I am"– and narrowed down the path that Jesus called "the way," shrunk the shimmering wisdom of his "truth," and cut off huge parts of "the life" he embodied–"I am the way, the truth, and the life." "To an unknown God." You must not speak the name of God, our Jewish forebears warned.

St. Augustine, who did quite a bit of seeking of his own in his youth, looking for love in all the wrong places, as they say, wrote, "Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee." Our strivings, our addictions, our obsessions, all the things that we make religions or gods of, are all, at their heart, at their deepest level, longings for God. Paul talked about this to the Athenians–

The God who made the world and everything in it, the one who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is that One served by human hands, as though needing anything, since God gives Godself to all mortals life and breath and all things. From one ancestor God made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for God and find God–though indeed God is not far from each one of us. For [Paul said, quoting one of the Greek philosophers] in him we live and move and have our being’; as even some your own poets have said, ‘For we too are God’s offspring.’

This is the human condition, Paul is saying, this longing for something deep and true and beautiful within us, and in our own experience, we know that to be true. We "know" all sorts of things–we are constantly "telling or hearing something new," like those who heard Paul–in biology, technology, psychology, geology, astronomy–so many discoveries and insights into the way we human beings, our world, our universe work, and yet, and yet... the more we know, many scientists will tell you, the more we discover what we don’t know. The Mystery continues to deepen.

And for all we "know," those of us who may be spiritual and religious,"we still don’t quite know how to name God,[as one writer put it,] or how to name ourselves in relationship with God, not to mention Jesus." And particularly for those of us who don’t want to appear dogmatic or pushy, maybe we have never even tried to figure out who God is or who we are in relationship to God–to figure that out for ourselves, let alone try to explain to somebody else. And so we kind of just settle, we let it go. "Let go and let God," we may rationalize, but really, what do we do with that restlessness that Augustine talked about, that longing and hunger for Home? What do we do with those questions that we had as teenagers? What do we do with those questions about our purpose in life that plagued our young adult career choices? What about those unanswered questions of our midlife crises? Where do we leave those questions raised when we lose a loved one, or a job, or a dream? How do we understand the inevitable failings of our bodies? What about that big, final question, about death? This Memorial Day weekend we remember and we acknowledge our losses. Where can we find a place where it’s safe to keep on asking those questions? Where can we find companions in that search? If not here, we have no business staying in business.

To settle for that "unknown god" Paul says in essence, is to settle for ‘a polite little god who asks little of us." (Howard, op cit.) For Paul that is not enough. God is knowable, he tells the Athenians, we have experienced the true God in the man whom God raised from the dead. This God is the God of all creation, indeed the One in whom we live and move and have our being. Like fish are in the sea, we are in God, and we cannot separate some people or parts of creation off from God. Have you tried doing that with the ocean? We know that this God whom we know in Christ Jesus is not the god of empires. Though he suffered and died, Jesus was raised from death by God to demonstrate that nothing–not even death–can separate us from this God, who is love and light and life, whose power paradoxically is manifest in weakness, who may indeed appear as a poor young Afro-Eurasian woman holding a child and a garbage bag.

The Way of Jesus, in whom we know this God, along with the truth and the life, appears less and less naive to me as I look at the world around us, at the problems of our community, our nation, and our world. It appears less and less naive and more and more wise. This Way must be presented in the marketplaces and galleries of ideas and actions in our 21^st c. world. It can stand up to and alongside some of the more dominant ones. Look where the way of empire and domination have gotten us and the planet on which we live. Look where the way of celebrity and riches have gotten people like LA Clippers owner Ronald Sterling, or Lindsay Lohan, or any number of casualties of the star-making cult. Look at the poisoned rivers and decimated mountaintops and black lungs which greed has produced. Look at the hopelessness and shame that our economic system has generated in our young people.

This "unknown" God whom we know in Christ Jesus offers us life-saving wisdom for the world and for our lives. We have got to find ways of living and sharing that good news with folks, with generations, for whom the language and norms of the church hold little meaning. It doesn’t mean that all those folks "out there" don’t long for God, by whatever name we call God. In a Pew Research survey, it was discovered that Millenials–those people between the ages of 18 and 33–pray with as much regularity as their grandparents. Just because they are not affiliated with faith communities doesn’t mean they are not seeking. The House for Sinners and Saints in Denver CO where the 6 foot tall, tattooed 30-something Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber is pastor, describes its norm as "low obligation/high commitment." They meet on Sunday afternoons and have no pews or flags, but they share a longing for God and community in which to experience God, a place to come to know this "unknown" God.

"I will not leave you orphaned," Jesus says to his disciples in our reading from John’s gospel. He was speaking to them before his death, before they would have to face the world without his physical presence, but he assured them that they would not face it alone. The God who was in Him would be with and in them. God’s Spirit would advocate for and empower them and their community. He was addressing that same longing that the Athenians and that all of us have–to know that we are not alone, and, more than that, that we are loved and worthy of love. This is not a polite little god who asks little of us. This great God of love and light asks of us everything–all that we have and all that we are–and at the same time, asks nothing at all– we are simply loved completely and forever.

May we seek and come to know this God and even, as the catechism says, to "enjoy God forever." Amen, and amen.

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

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"Abundant Life–really?"-- Acts 2:42-47, John 10:1-10-- May 11, 2014

 

Mother’s Day, for all the hearts and corsages, is a minefield. Absolutely we should acknowledge and express gratitude to our mothers who labored and nourished and nurtured us, who loved us and gave sacrificially of themselves, so that we might have life. Absolutely, although not just on one day of the year.

But sometimes the ones who did all that for us weren’t our biological mothers. Some-times, for a whole host of reasons, our biological mothers were unable to "mother" us, and so other people did, other women, even some men. Sometimes our mothers were so young, so wounded, so sick that our association with the word is very complicated. Some of us today are missing and grieving our mothers who are no longer physically with us. And that’s just looking in one direction, down the line of those who mothered us.

Then there’s the other direction, down the line of succession: those we have mothered–or didn’t. For some women, this day has painful associations–perhaps we’ve never been able to or chose not to give birth. Perhaps we’ve lost a child–or more than one. Perhaps we’ve given up a child, to adoption or foster care. Perhaps, like most of the women in the bible who were childless, we’ve been made to feel shame, or been pitied, because we weren’t "mothers."

So "Happy Mother’s Day" is a loaded expression. ...Which doesn’t mean you shouldn’t say it, just please think about it first. It may not be quite the sweet sound you assumed it to be.

"Good Shepherd Sunday," which this year is the same day as Mother’s Day, is another one of those days that sounds sweet and innocuous, especially if you’ve never known or been a shepherd, but, like other’s Day, Good shepherd Sunday has a bit more ‘bite" to it than it may seem. All the pictures and stained glass windows of Jesus as the Good Shepherd show him holding adorable lambs with happy sheep crowding around him. That probably wouldn’t have been the image that came to mind to the folks to whom Jesus told he was the Good Shepherd. Remember the Christmas story? The shepherds were keeping watch over their flocks by night, out in those fields, because nobody wanted them any closer. They were the unsavory, marginal characters whom no one else but God would think of entrusting good news to.

One commentator reminded me of another image–that of the shepherds in the movie "Brokeback Mountain." They were cowboys, she said, rugged, horse-riding, independent,[ and, of course in that movie, gay.] Nothing sweet or innocuous about them or about the nature of the business they were in.

In the 10^th chapter of the gospel of John, Jesus uses a couple of different sheep-related images–"I am the gate for the sheep," he says. "I am the good shepherd." And he talks about the dangers of thieves and imposters.

In what is sometimes called "The Shepherd’s Psalm," Psalm 23, the psalmist writes about having a table spread in the presence of enemies, and walking through the valley of the shadow of death.

And finally, in the reading from Acts, we hear about the early Christian community in a way that many people think is probably idealized. They all lived together, shared everything in common, spent their days praying and worshiping, adding loads of people to their numbers each day and held in high regard by everyone. Really? Some 40 or 50 years later, which is when Acts was written, that may have been how Luke imagined it, but chances are, like every other human community, things were not quite so perfect.

So, in addition to being a lot grittier than we have sometimes been led to believe, what else do these texts for Good Shepherd Sunday have in common? The notion of sufficiency. "The Lord is my shepherd. I have everything I need." "All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need." "I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come and go out and find pasture...I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly." One could even argue that the challenge of motherhood is the challenge of enoughness–how do we provide children with what they need–for health, for wholeness, for discovering their true identity–

without giving them too much.

Of course, our culture has certain ideas about sufficiency and "enoughness," and the main lesson is, You can never have too much. You can never be enough. You hardly ever hear about "enough." If a little is good, a lot must be better, right? Our food is engineered so that we crave more and more. "Bet you can’t eat just one," the Lay’s Potato Chip commercial used to say, and they’d have a pretty good bet–all that fat and salt that most of us have become addicted to? It’s impossible to stop at "just one." And, clothes, toys, gadgets, ...the one who dies with the most toys wins, right? Or maybe just dies.

Of course, it’s money that we’re sure will make us happier if we get more and more. But actually, unless you’re at a sufficiently low level of income that you still need money to take care of basic needs–food, shelter, clothing-- it has been shown that levels of happiness do not increase over the long term with more and more money. Ask folks who’ve won the lottery or Publisher’s Clearinghouse. Usually, if they were happy before they won, they’ll end up being about as happy. If they were unhappy before they won, they’ll end up being just as unhappy. Sometimes it’s a nightmare.

"The Lord is my shepherd. I have everything I need." "All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the pro-ceeds to all, as any had need." Every December we witness the seemingly endless amount of stuff that we as a community have accumulated. It’s called the Serendipity sale. And there’s nothing like moving to discover just how much stuff you have. We as Americans are being buried by our stuff, and our landfills and storage units grow literally into mountains. While the Serendipity Sale is a great way to recycle some of that stuff, might we also think about establishing a kind of sharing system where we could commonly own–or at least use–items and appliances that we don’t all need to have all the time? Rototillers, snowblowers, sewing machines, carpet shampooers, chainsaws, camping equipment, maybe trucks or cars? The Time Bank is another example of exchanging and sharing time and talents. Our loan fund, in which we could pool more of our resources, might become a resource for those who want to purchase energy-efficient appliances but need a little help with their extra upfront costs. And of course, thinking of our air, water, soil, our ecosystem as held commonly might be a start in making sure the generations who come after us will have enough–to breathe, to drink, to grow food, to live.

"The Lord is my shepherd. I have everything I need." Despite the pastoral setting, it sound pretty stark. Does living in the sufficiency of God have to be sparce, bare, bland, colorless? "I came that they might have life, and have it abundantly," Jesus said. Really? What kind of abundance is he talking about? Author Cynthia Bourgeault writes,

What seemed disconcerting to nearly everybody was the messy, freewheeling largeness of [Jesus’] spirit. Abundance and generosity bordering on extravagant seemed to be the signatures of his teaching and his personal style....[In many of his parables] the thing that sticks in people’s craws is in each case the display of a generosity so beyond comprehension that it can only be perceived as ‘unfair.’ But as we look further, that extravagance is everywhere...

...the feeding of the five thousand, with 12 baskets of leftovers...the seed that falls on good soil yields 30-fold, 60-fold, 100-fold...the jar of priceless nard, poured over Jesus’ head and feet.

"It was not love stored up," Bourgeault writes, "but love utterly poured out that opened the gates to the kingdom of heaven. Over and over, Jesus lays this path before us. There is nothing to be renounced or resisted. Everything can be embraced, but the catch is to cling to nothing." (Wisdom Jesus, pp. 69-70)

The secret to abundant life is simply letting go of everything, allowing yourself to be emptied. We might even say, allowing yourself to be "enough." Because we live in such an abundance of Love, when we trust in the Source of that Love and don’t cling to or grab anything, Love flows freely through us and we ourselves become sources of love and life. It’s that simple. Easy, it’s not...maybe even a bit like "asking elephants to fly," as Bourgeault points out, but she goes on to say, "It is not a matter of believing in flying elephants so much as of purifying the heart." (The Meaning of Mary Magdalene, p. 52)

The practice of self-emptying which Jesus embodied "is not a stoic stance against a pitiless reality," she writes; "rather it is a direct gateway into a divine reality that can be immediately experienced as both compassionate and infinitely generous. Abundance surrounds and sustains us like the air we breathe; it is only our habitual self-protectiveness that prevents us from perceiving it." (Ibid., p. 104)

"I came that you might have life," Jesus said, "and have it abundantly." Greed and grasping and hoarding only stop up the flow of Love. "I am the gate," Jesus said. "Whoever enters by me–by the way of self-emptying, embracing and letting go–will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture....The Lord is my shepherd, I have everything I need."

We know that there are any number of false shepherds luring us to what they say are greener pastures, but they are thieves and bandits, as Jesus said. We and our children are bombarded by calls to come over where the grass is greener. Buy this. Eat this. Be this. Don’t be a fool and believe all that God and Love stuff. Look where it got Jesus.

Where it got him is resurrected. It got his band of sorry, clueless followers filled with the Spirit of Love and Life and Power that changed their lives and countless generations after them, not, granted, with a flawless record, but the abundant life he offered them is still offered to us. "The Lord is my shepherd. I have everything I need." "I am the gate"–that gate is the way to life for us and ultimately for the whole world. The Good Shepherd, God our Mother, a community that cares for all who have need, all of them more complex, more challenging, but ultimately more life-giving than any Hallmark card could ever portray. "I am the gate," Jesus said. May we enter through that gate and find abundant life. Happy Good Shepherd’s Day!

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

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Church World Service Kits

As the sign reads, the wall of cartons are from 27 churches.  They weigh 3,092 pounds and contain 777 School Kits, 706 Hygiene Kits, 170 Baby Kits, 2 Flood Buckets, 25 Quilts, 1 Box of Rolled Bandages.  The estimated value is $24,150!!

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“On the Road Again, Still, Always...”-- Luke 24:13-35-- May 4, 2014

 

Once upon a time, two companions were walking on the road to a place called Emmaus. Now, Emmaus isn’t on any map, which, of course, hasn’t kept the archaeologists, the scholars, those who would “re-trace” His steps, from trying to find it. There are at least 4 places within that 7-mile radius from Jerusalem that have been identified as “Emmaus,” but I prefer to think of Emmaus, as Fred Buechner suggests, as “the place to run to when we have lost hope or don’t know what to do, the place of escape, of forgetting, of giving up, of deadening our senses and our minds and maybe our hearts, too.” [The Magnificent Defeat, cited by Kate Huey in Sermon Seeds, 5/4/14]

So, once upon a time, two companions were walking on the road to a place called Emmaus, when a stranger fell into step beside them, and asked them what they were talking about. They could hardly believe he hadn’t heard. The events of the past days seemed so all-consuming to them, in fact, seemed to be boulders all around and in front of them–Don’t you see them? Ooh, look out! You’d better be careful....

But he turned out to be their guide through the rock-strewn path, re-reading the guidebook that had led them up to this point, drawing them into his calm, assured narrative, so that when he appeared to be heading on after they had reached the inn, they invited him to join them for a meal. It was only then, when he sat at table with them, and blessed and broke the bread, that the vibrations of their own bodies caught up with his, and they recognized him. And then he was gone again.

“Emmaus never happened. Emmaus always happens,” writes biblical scholar John Dominic Crossan. [The Historical Jesus, p. xiii] In this one, exquisitely written story, the early Christian community described their life in those days and months and years after Jesus was crucified. It was in the encounter with strangers, with scripture, in the breaking of the bread as he had done, that they encountered the Risen Christ in their midst, over and over again. Traveling two by two, being invited into homes, sharing meals, telling the story, bringing healing and good news, they experienced His presence, saw His face, and then he vanished from their sight...only to turn up again as they were walking down the road, sitting at table, telling the story, again, still, always.

Once upon a time, two companions were walking on the road to a place called Emmaus... “but their eyes were kept from recognizing him.” It was their self-pity and nostalgia that kept them from recognizing him, Cynthia Bourgeault suggests. “Clearly they are stuck in their story, [she writes] and their stuckness is what makes them unable to see the person standing right before their faces.” [Wisdom Jesus, p. 129]

Are you stuck in a story that keeps you from recognizing the Risen Christ walking beside you? Maybe it’s a story about how the world “really” works–that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, that might makes right, and that the one who dies with the most toys wins, and you’re a fool if you think otherwise. You won’t find salvation in hanging out with homeless, powerless people. Is that the story you’re living? Or maybe like the two companions stuck in their story of self-pity and nostalgia, you can only see how much you’ve lost, how much better things used to be. Or maybe you’re just so busy you don’t even think you’ve got time for stories–you’ve got this meeting to go to, and this practice or lesson to get the kids to, or this doctor’s appointment or that deadline. Maybe there’s just so much noise and distraction and so many text messages and e-mails that whatever vibration the Risen Christ is on, you’re pretty sure you’re not on the same frequency.

Once upon a time, two companions were walking on the road to a place called Emmaus, that place we run to when we have lost hope or don’t know what to do, the place of escape, of forgetting, of giving up, or deadening our senses and our minds and maybe our hearts, too... Do you know that road?

Christ is risen. Christ is risen indeed. But the story of Emmaus tells us that resurrection is not enough. “You still need scripture and eucharist,” Dom Crossan writes, “tradition and table, community and justice; otherwise, divine presence remains unrecognized and human eyes remain unopened.” [The Birth of Christianity, p. xi.] The risen Christ doesn’t invite his companions on the road to share a meal. They invite him. It’s the same, still, always. He won’t barge in unwanted or uninvited. That’s not the kind of power God wields. But hospitality and openness make transformation possible. Our transformation. The world’s transformation.

Once upon a time, two companions were walking on the road to a place called Emmaus... and they invited the stranger who had joined them in to have dinner with them. “When he was at table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight.”

So may we invite friend and stranger – and the Risen Christ – to the table. Emmaus never happened. Emmaus always happens. “Lord Jesus, be our holy guest. Our morning joy, our evening rest. And with our daily bread impart Thy love and peace to every heart.”

May it be so. Amen.
Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

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