Sermon: Confession, Repentance and Commitment to End Racism Sunday September 6, 2015

In today’s gospel, Jesus does something that troubles me, but it’s probably not what you think.

Here’s the offending passage:

They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, "Ephphatha," that is, "Be opened." And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. 

Not what you thought, was it? Let me explain to you why this is a problematic passage for me.

My first career was in Deaf Education and I received my degree in Educational Interpreting from the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, NTID.  While there, I got to meet many people who identified as culturally Deaf, and who objected to the identification of deafness as a disability. They looked at developments such as cochlear implants as a way of pathologizing deafness, when many are in fact proud of their history, language, culture, and traditions.

So when I hit this reading, I instantly see it through that lens. And then, when you see it that way, there are other parts that make it problematic:

1. The deaf person doesn’t seem to have a say in what happens to him. He is brought by others.
2. Who is this “they”? Are they close friends who know what the person wants? Are they the disciples, in which case, why are they bringing him?
3. What is the motivation? Is it to bring healing and restoration? Is it to make the community more comfortable? And does this motivation matter, in light of what the deaf man actually wants?
4. “They” were astounded – but how did the formerly deaf man feel about it? Though the story says “he spoke plainly,” we never actually hear his words.

Then there’s the problem of suddenly being able to hear. When you grow up being able to hear, the sense of hearing has a powerful ability to filter out background noises. When I grew up in Alameda, I was under the flight path of the Oakland airport, but I never noticed the airplanes until someone was visiting and pointed out how loud they were. Similarly, one of the things that’s difficult for people who get fitted with hearing aids is suddenly they hear everything; they can’t filter out the background noises.

So when someone who has been deaf can suddenly hear, it’s not like sounds automatically make sense. 

For me,  the story ends on a false positive note, where we never actually hear the man say anything, and instead, this mysterious “they” announce that  Jesus “even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak,” rather than say, “he has helped us to be reconciled with our friend and brother.”

**

On Tuesday, the Presiding Bishop and the President of the House of Deputies issued a letter calling on Episcopal congregations to participate in "Confession, Repentance, and Commitment to End Racism Sunday" this Sunday.

On the plus side, this was requested by African American leadership of the AME church.  As AME Bishop Reginald T. Jackson writes, "Racism will not end with the passage of legislation alone; it will also require a change of heart and thinking. This is an effort which the faith community must lead, and be the conscience of the nation. We will call upon every church, temple, mosque and faith communion to make their worship service on this Sunday a time to confess and repent for the sin and evil of racism, this includes ignoring, tolerating and accepting racism, and to make a commitment to end racism by the example of our lives and actions." I am more than happy to honor this call.

On the other hand, if we are truly committed to ending racism, this cannot happen on 5 days notice, with a guest preacher, on a holiday weekend. 

It seems to me that for many of us, racism has become a background noise we’ve learned to filter out. One of the powerful changes in this past year is that many of us have finally heard the constant background noise of racism as we see videos of police brutality and learn the names of those who have died in police custudy.

As I looked at the liturgical material offered for this Sunday, I was struck by the first line of a “Litany for those who aren’t ready for healing,” from the ELCA: 

“Let us not rush to the language of healing, before understanding the fullness of the injury and the depth of the wound.” 

Understanding the fullness of the injury and the depth of the wound requires listening: re-training our hearing to hear the things we’ve learned to screen out.

It requires not presuming we know what the injury is: what we may presume to be pathology may instead be celebrated as culture, and what we presume to be health may instead be a coping mechanism.

It requires time and commitment: not just this sermon, this confession, this Sunday, but an ongoing commitment to understanding.

May those who have ears to hear, truly listen.

Lenten disciplines in a time of turmoil

Yesterday, I celebrated at a parish that's going through a rough patch. I was planning to preach on the Transfiguration and psychedelic drugs, but I ended up giving them this list of Lenten disciplines instead. I think they might be more generally useful, and so I'm sharing them here. Please know that this list is not in any way proscriptive. If it is helpful, then use it, and if not, not. These are just some thoughts I’ve had in the past couple of days that might be useful for groups or individuals, depending on what's going on for them. Take what you need and leave the rest.

5 things to give up 

1. Give up ascribing motives. I find that this is incredibly difficult because what we each want to know is why. Why did this happen? And that’s why it’s so tempting to try to figure out people’s motivations. It gives meaning to the story that we’re currently confused about. But for right now, all we can really determine is what did or did not happen, what was or was not done. Ascribing motives leads us to be suspect of the positive behaviors of those we disagree with (“I wonder what s/he’s really trying to get from me”), or to excuse the negative behaviors of those in our camp (“but s/he didn’t mean it”). 
2. Give up figuring out what you or anyone else should have done or could have done. It didn’t happen. For whatever reason, whatever it is you think should have happened didn’t happen. There is no use trying to go back because whatever it is that happened is in the past. Yes, we can learn from this. But now, in the midst of the crisis, is not the best time. Let it go. Forgive yourself and others. 
3. Give up the need to be right. Every single person is going to have a perspective on what is going on, based on personal experience, history, and the information s/he possesses. That perspective is neither more nor less right than your own. When we give up the need to be right, it helps us to listen, to recognize that this person’s perspective is valid without needing to answer, without needing to prove, without it being a springboard to our own response. 
4. Give up anticipating the future. We don’t know what the future will hold. We don’t know what new development may appear even as soon as tomorrow. When we anticipate the future, it closes us off to other possible futures that the Holy Spirit may want to lead us into – the possibility that God, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. 
5. Give up trying to fix or save. It’s such a temptation to leap in with grand gestures and solutions to everything. But at this point, fixing or saving is more about trying to reach an anticipated future or trying to correct the past. 

5 things to take on

That’s not to say that we should sit back and do nothing. There are things we can do, things we can take on for Lent. They may seem simple, but I believe they are the actions that will bring healing, trust, and community.

1. Take on small kindnesses. One thing I learned early on in my ministry was that there was a much better chance I could be there for people when they were in the middle of a crisis if I was there for people in all of the small, day to day things. One percent of the time, they needed me to show up when something went really wrong. Ninety-nine percent of the time, they just needed me to answer their friggin’ email. What are the small kindnesses we can do to care for one another? The accretion of these small gestures, day after day, are what is going to make the difference in the long run, building the foundation of trust, support, and hope as you work together. 
2. Take on time to pause and reflect. In the midst of temptation to do something to make things better, sometimes the best thing to do is to sit quietly, look around, and see where you are. And that may mean feeling a range of feelings: sorrow, anger, relief, grief, guilt, confusion... But I believe that it is in sitting there and feeling the feelings that the healing hand of God is allowed to enter. It’s when we show God our wounds that we are able to be healed. And that happens when we take time to actually find the parts that hurt. 
3. Take on smiling at each other. This sounds very small, but I think there’s something important that happens when we simply look at one another and smile. Please note that I’m not saying, “Keep on smilin’!” What I’m trying to get at here is staying connected with one another with hope. You don’t need to agree about anything to acknowledge another person’s humanity and connection to you. 
4. Take on breathing. It’s amazing how important this is and how much it helps. About a week ago, I got a “Wellness Newsletter” from our HR department. I was stressed and anxious about a ton of things I needed to do and said to myself, “I don’t have time for this ‘Wellness’ crap!” But I looked at it, and on the list of suggestions of things to do, it said, “Breathe 3 times.” Well, I figured I had time to do that. So I breathed 3 times. And then, because it felt so good, I breathed a fourth time. And I was thrown by how much difference this small thing made in how I felt about the day. So when the anxiety comes up, breathe three times. Maybe four. 
5. Take on the mantra, “All will be well.” Julian of Norwich was a 14th Century anchoress and mystic who lived through the plague that wiped out 1/3 of the population of Europe. In the midst of this and in the midst of her own suffering, she received this word: “All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things shall all be very well.” It may be helpful to remember that in the grand scheme of things, this is all small potatoes. As you breathe, remind yourself that all will be well, and all will be well, and all things will all be well. God loves you. God will always love you. God will always be with you, no matter what. And all manner of things shall all be very well.

An old Advent 2 sermon, complete and unabridged

For some reason, I have this sermon from Advent 2, 2001, in my first year out of seminary and still writing out the whole sermon each time I preached. I found it recently and it still speaks to me, despite the 2001 references, so I thought I'd pass it along.

As part of my own spiritual discipline as I try to discern what I think and feel about the current world situation after September 11, but even more after October 7, the day we first began bombing Afghanistan, I have been reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s “Letters and Papers from Prison.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor and theologian in Germany when Hitler came to power. For a time he taught in an underground seminary that supported the work of the “Confessing Church,” a network of churches not under the control of the Nazi regime. In 1939, he came to the United States for a lecture tour and was urged to stay rather than return to the rapidly worsening situation in Germany. But he refused and took one of the last ships back to Germany. Originally a pacifist, Bonhoeffer was involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler. He was arrested in April of 1943 and spent the first year and a half of his imprisonment in the military section of a Berlin prison. He was executed in April of 1945, but not before writing an extraordinarily thoughtful collection of letters that are still pertinent today.

I found myself recently reading his letters from Advent 1943. He writes, “Life in a prison cell may well be compared to Advent; one waits, hopes, and does this, that, or the other—things that are really of no consequence—the door is shut, and can be opened only from the outside.” I’ve been thinking about that quite a bit.

I’ve also been thinking about some of his comments in a letter from December 18, 1943. He says, “In my experience, nothing tortures us more than longing…Substitutes repel us; we simply have to wait and wait; we have to suffer unspeakably from the separation and feel the longing till it almost makes us ill…[T]here is nothing worse in such times than to try to find a substitute for the irreplaceable.”

We’re in the middle of Advent and we’re waiting. In our day to day lives, things seem to be hurrying toward the harrowing end of a semester, for some of us, or rushing us towards Christmas with all of the things we still have to do. All the extra things that our celebrations require of us. It keeps us busy. It keeps us distracted and occupied. But there’s something else going on underneath that. There’s a longing. There’s a longing for something we’re not even sure what it is and no real conclusion in sight. And if we stopped to think about it, it might be too difficult to bear.

And in the larger world, after that initial fraught time in September, things seems at least for me to have settled down into a steady normalcy of war. I read the headlines about Afghanistan, but I barely read the articles any more. I hear about military successes in various places I’ve never heard of and safe here in my corner of Ohio I don’t spend too much time thinking about what real peace might look like. And here we are, reading Isaiah.

There’s a future tense in the readings this morning. And with that future tense comes a longing. A longing for justice. A longing for peace. A longing for the one who will come. And images that are so dissonant with reality as we know it that all we can put it down to is hyperbole.

“The wolf shall live with the lamb? The leopard shall lie down with the kid? A little child shall lead them?” It’s the image of the peaceable kingdom that we may have seen hundreds of times in paintings, but can we imagine such a thing in reality? It’s an image of peace that is so extreme as to be completely unbelievable. Or, as I once heard one person say, if this scene were to take place, wouldn’t you rather be the lion?

We are so used to a simulacrum of peace that the image of peace that Isaiah gives us looks ludicrous. How could it possibly work? And I think it might scare us. It scares me. In this image of peace, there is little protection for the one who has always previously been the victim. What if things go wrong? Who will guarantee that the peace will last?

Advent is like being in a prison cell. And in your cell there’s a window above you where you can see the sky, but it is so different from the world you inhabit that it hardly seems to be a possibility.

There’s a longing in us for something meaningful and significant. There were crowds of people who went out to be baptized by John and he says there’s something more. There’s someone who is coming after him who will baptize them with the Holy Spirit and with fire. And we find ourselves in the land of hyperbole again.

Baptized with the Holy Spirit and with fire? What on earth does that mean? Will it hurt? What would it do to us? The baptism that John offers is at least clear. And yet this is the same person who says that’s not all. Could that be true? Could there be something bigger and better than this?

What if it’s true, something in us says. What if there really is something better than this? And another part works hard to squash that down, keep it quiet, to protect ourselves from disappointment. And then Advent comes along and exposes our hopes and expectations.

In Advent, we learn to live in the awareness of our own longing.

Living with longing is not easy. Bonhoeffer says to do so is to live with an almost unbearable tension. And the pressure upon us is to fill that void. The pressure upon us is internal because the longing can be so difficult and so painful that we would simply like it to stop. And the pressure can also come from outside because our longing can make us protest that we are not willing to settle, that this is not good enough. The longing can make us want to change our world and can unsettle those around us. It would be so much easier to find an acceptable substitute.

To uncover the longing is a bit like opening a Pandora’s box. It’s a dangerous activity. And inside the box we find not only the longing we first suspected was there, but all the longing that we have ruthlessly suppressed over the years. And having unleashed our longings, we can’t put them back in the box.

But we don’t need to put them back in the box. Advent invites us to look at them. Advent is a season of longing.

We demonstrate this by our own activity. We hurry around trying to find the perfect gifts for the people we love. But this is indicative of something larger. What would be the perfect gift for us, for our world? Would it be peace? Would it be a powerful, transforming baptism? Where can we go to get them? The answer is we have to wait. But they are coming.

What is it you long for? Let that be your work this Advent. To open up that stifled box of longing and show God what’s inside. Expose our hopes and expectations. Lying down with them like a lamb with a wolf. God loves us. God, too, is trying to find the perfect gift for us. We’re waiting for something, we’re not even sure what it is, and it’s hard work. Wait for it. Accept no substitutes. It’s coming.

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Sermon for Christ the King Sunday (abridged)

On Friday, we marked the 50th anniversary of the death of a man who has had a lasting impact on our world. That man, of course, was C.S. Lewis. Although he wrote a great many works about Christian faith and life, he is probably best well-known for the Chronicles of Narnia, seven children's books that center on the magical world of Narnia, guarded and guided by Aslan, the Great Lion, son of the Emperor-Over-the-Sea.

Aslan is the Christ-figure for Narnia, as Lewis himself explained in a letter he wrote in 1961:

The whole Narnian story is about Christ...Supposing there really was a world like Narnia...and supposing Christ wanted to go into that world to save it (as he did ours), what might have happened? The stories are my answer. Since Narnia is a world of talking beasts, I thought he would become a talking beast there as he became a man here. I pictured him becoming a lion there because a) the lion is supposed to be the king of beasts; b) Christ is called 'the Lion of Judah' in the Bible.

I thought I would be able to do a lot to draw parallels between today's gospel reading of the crucifixion and the parallel plot point of Aslan's death on the Stone Table in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, but I encountered an unexpected problem: It's very easy looking at Aslan to assume he is a king. He's majestic and powerful and gorgeous. When the White Witch binds him to the Stone Table, they make a point of mutilating and shearing Aslan to make him look less kingly. But one of the remarkable things about the kingly nature of Jesus is that he always looked ordinary. There was nothing in his appearance (so far as I know) to set him apart from anyone else. The only thing that sets Jesus apart from the two other men being crucified around him, the only thing that makes it easy to pick him out, is that there's a sign over his head, saying "This is the King of the Jews."

I started wondering, what if C.S. Lewis had chosen instead to make Aslan a very ordinary animal. A dog, say -- not pure-bred. Just a mutt. A lab-pitbull mix, is what I was thinking. How would that have changed things?

Aslan is a wonderful character, but you have to admit, he looks kingly and noble from the get-go, all the more so when you're voiced by Liam Neeson. I wonder if one of the reasons -- one of the many reasons -- Jesus stirred up such violent passions against him is that he didn't look the part. He didn't look like a Lion of Judah; he looked like your average, skinny street dog of Nazareth.

But even though he didn't look the part, he still sounded the part. If you look at the two things Jesus says while on the cross, they sound mighty kingly, almost noblesse oblige: "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing," and "Today you will be with me in paradise." There's even some arrogance in that. Here he is, powerless and nailed down, and he still speaks as though it is in his power to dispense forgiveness and welcome.

Both in Narnia and in our world, people felt the need to cut the Christ down to size. In Narnia, is was because they did see his kingship; in our world, because they didn't see it at all.

Sermon in which I get pretty shirty about tithing

This is more or less the sermon I preached yesterday because I actually wrote this sucker out. The poor 8:00'ers got a longer version that caused all of them to politely say, "Good to see you" at the end of the service, which is how I knew it totally bombed. The later services got something much more edited, off-book, and streamlined, and seemed to really like it. This, however, is the manuscript version with just a couple of tweaks. Because I am lazy.

This week, I attended a conference called SOCAP, which is a bit hard to explain. SOCAP stands for Social Capital Markets and the conference is (to quote the website) “dedicated to increasing the flow of capital towards social good.” To put it another way, we spent a lot of time talking about money.

I went as part of a specially invited “faith cohort” and I felt a bit out of place in the midst of a bunch of people talking about social impact investing, and entrepreneurship, and the global economy, and the double bottom line, and ROI (which was the only acronym I understood when the week started of the many, many acronyms bandied about).

But one of the reasons I wanted to go to this conference is because I hate the way we in the church talk about money. We are, if you will forgive my language, really half-assed about it. I get the sense that we’re not comfortable with it so we poke it with a stick at a distance, or try to keep it separate from the “real” things that we do.

It kind of reminds me about how I feel about electricity. I’m completely dependent upon it for everything that I do, but I don’t know how to handle it. I know it’s powerful and I’m afraid to get shocked. So I avoid it as best I can, let other people handle it when I can’t, and don’t even want to learn about it because it seems too complicated and too scary.

I think there’s a way in which we in the church – not everyone, but many of us – see money as the electrical system, with the added problem that the system has been given a moral overlay. So this week was like attending a conference of electricians, people who were comfortable with the power of money, and who also respected the danger it might pose. They didn’t see money as moral or immoral in itself, but only in how it was used. As one of the founders who herself is an Episcopal priest said at the opening plenary, “Using our capital to change the world for good is part of who we are.” And, coming from the world of the church where money so often seems to be viewed as a necessary evil, it was amazing to see how these people who felt at home around money operated.

One of those people was a woman from Mercy Housing named Sr. Lillian Murphy. Mercy Housing provides low income housing throughout the United States. As the CEO, Sr. Lillian oversees a budget of approximately 200 million dollars per year, with assets worth more than $1 billion. It was such a pleasure to hear her talk because she sounded like a person who knew very well how to handle electricity. She told us “Very little good can be accomplished or evil avoided without the use of money.” And then went on to recount exactly how many millions of dollars it took for Mercy Housing to accomplish their mission, absolutely at ease with the numbers she threw around.

Sitting next to her on the panel was a banker who had a much more philosophical approach to the topic of money. He told us two things: one, that “money is the store of your values and an agent of change”; and, two, “Do you know where your money spends the night?”

So I’ve been thinking about this idea of money being the store of our values. Because I suspect this is one of the things Jesus is getting at when he tells us to give up all of our possessions. But first, I have a little rant.

One of the ways in which the church has done us a great disservice regarding money is our emphasis on tithing. Because I've got to tell you, I think tithing is antithetical to the gospel.

Tithing is simply transactional. All it requires is a little math, and if you can make the numbers work, you’re done. It requires no thought beyond a little long division. But since when has the Christian life been about “making the numbers work”? Jesus was never interested in ensuring that his followers conformed to a simple external framework. Jesus was interested in seeing people’s lives transformed, and seeing them exhibit love for one another regardless of what the law or custom said. And that is far more challenging than dividing your income by 10 and writing a check.

Here’s another thing about tithing: it assumes that you are not the church. “Give 10 percent of your money to the church,” we’ve blithely announced in stewardship campaigns year after year, not recognizing that you as the church are representing the church in 100 percent of your money, no matter who you give it to. Is that clear? You are the church. The church is not some separate entity.You represent the church through the mission of this parish and your giving towards that. And you represent the church in the money you spend and save and share and invest every day. Because you are the church. You cannot help but represent the church with your money.

And I think that's what Jesus is getting at in the gospel for today. If you are a disciple, then you don't get to set apart some of your friends and family as holy and some as not; you don't get to choose some of your possessions as set apart for God and some not; and you don't get to say that 10 percent of your money goes to good works and the rest is yours to deal with.

Which brings me back to the banker. His words challenge me, and maybe you as well: If money is the store of our values and an agent of change, what values does our money represent? What do we want it to represent? What do we want it to change? Do you know where your money spends the night?

Tithing sounds easy in comparison, doesn’t it? But there is no better time than the present than to sit down and count the cost of true discipleship. May we do so, trusting in God’s everlasting grace and mercy and confident in God's neverfailing love. Amen.

Thomas Gallaudet

For a couple of hours, anyway, (depending on where you are) it is the feast of Thomas Gallaudet and Henry Winter Syle, and I really wanted to share something about Gallaudet while it's still his official feast day.

I've actually been doing some research on Gallaudet for...Lent Madness. Because apparently it's never too early for Lent Madness. (Actually, Forward Movement will be preparing a companion book for the 2014 bracket, so we have to get our bios in way early.)

I'm so pleased to have Gallaudet. As some of you know, my first jobs out of college were working with the Deaf, first as a notetaker, and then as a sign language interpreter. But even though I knew about the Gallaudet family and blogged about them both in 2008 and 2009, I didn't really know Thomas Gallaudet (the younger) until this past week.

The whole family is impressive, but when I said in the 2008 post that I think they picked the wrong Thomas Gallaudet to commemorate...well, I was wrong. And I feel very sheepish about that, because by all accounts he was not only a wonderful person, he was a faithful and effective advocate for Deaf people.

One thing that impresses me greatly about Gallaudet is that he continually stood by the weird and radical notion that signs were an actual language. This is something that was not accepted by much of anybody until a linguistic treatise was written about ASL in 1960, and even then most people didn't believe it for years. Gallaudet died in 1902, so he was way ahead of the curve when he preached at Syle's ordination, "my youthful impressions in relation to this language of motion have become so intensified and settled that I feel that I am a credible witness, when I give my testimony as to its being a clear and distinct language by itself.”

The other big thing -- huge -- is that he was less interested in helping the Deaf, as he was in letting them be the people they are. He absolutely and completely understood them to be his equal. I honestly don't think he sees them as "disabled," except in the loss of opportunity that Deafness conferred. Which explains why, not just Henry Syle, but at least 8 other Deaf men were accepted for Holy Orders -- again, at a time when the vast majority of people didn't believe Deaf people could even function in society.

As one person pointed out in a Memorial Tribute,

In the Church, nine deaf men have been ordained who have brought thousands of their fellows into pastoral relations. Their work ramifies into nearly every diocese. Others are preparing themselves for the ministry; and in the denominations several are doing well for the moral and spiritual uplifting of the class. In Ohio, the deaf have for some years maintained a Home for their Aged and Infirm; and those in Pennsylvania will soon open a similar one, in a building not easily duplicated among charitable institutions. Other enterprises of a like character are under way elsewhere, in all of which the deaf themselves are taking a leading part.

It's the "in all of which the deaf themselves are taking a leading part" that impresses me the most.

So, Thomas Gallaudet, I am proud to represent you. I hope I do you justice.

A somewhat incomplete sermon on sin

A very abbreviated and slightly altered version of the sermon I preached on Sunday.

I've been noticing a theme running through my recent sermons and blog posts: you can't tell by looking. You can't tell who's hungry by looking; you can't tell who's poor by looking; you can't tell who's suffering by looking. And now, a new variation on the theme: you can't tell who's sinned by looking.

So let's talk a little bit about sin today. Won't that be fun?

First of all, the readings today are fun because of the way that they talk to each other. When you hear the gospel and it talks about the "woman in the city, who was a sinner," I don't know about you, but my mind immediately goes there, and I think you know what I mean. But then when you look at the Old Testament reading about David, who has just been caught out after his affair with Bathsheba and having Bathsheba's husband killed, he doesn't say, "I am a sinner." He says "I have sinned." And the reading from Galatians really drives the point home that this isn't about sex when Paul writes, "We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners." So a sinner in this context is someone who does not live according to Jewish law.

But how very different it is to hear that someone is a sinner as opposed to someone has sinned. The first says sin is a person's identity, and the second that sin is an activity. And those sound very different.

So Simon the Pharisee has in his mind that sin is not his identity. But in this gospel story, Jesus turns identification upside down by pointing out to Simon what the woman did -- and what Simon neglected to do. Things done and left undone, as we say in the confession. Simon didn't do anything wrong; he didn't break any laws. But there is a lot he left undone, and Jesus points that out to him. Simon didn't offer water for Jesus' feet; he didn't greet him with a kiss; he didn't anoint Jesus' head. And the woman did all of those things. Simon thinks he's gotten it all right, and what Jesus points out to him is that he's missed the essential point of loving God and loving neighbor.

That's what Paul is trying to drive home in his letter to the Galatians: that it's not in following the Law exactly right that we're going to be free from sin. Instead, it's in what we do, what we offer, what we share, how we love.

And if and when we sin, Paul promises that grace abounds more. It's not in our own goodness and our carefulness not to break the rules that we are free from sin, but in God's forgiveness freely given. God's grace comes to us not because we have been good, but because God is good.

Maybe instead of worrying about what we have done wrong, we should be looking at those around us and asking, "What has been left undone?" How can we offer our love to others today?

Sermon - audio

I was back at Incarnation Santa Rosa last Sunday, and they record the sermons and post it on their website.

I'm really glad that the sermon from the second service is the one that got posted. At the first service, there was someone talking in the back of the church and I got really distracted at the end. This version turned out much better, I think.

Trinity Sermon tidbits, but no sharks

Mom is going to be very disappointed.

I posted this picture on Facebook yesterday, which was Trinity Sunday, as you may know since I've been talking about it endlessly, it seems. This sweet young thing is displaying her Sunday School drawing which has pink sharks, hearts, and cherries. I noted on Facebook there were three of everything and said, "You should have heard the sermon!" But there were no sharks in the Trinity Sunday sermon. Maybe next year.

Instead, I reacted to a completely different piece of art in my sermon: the famous icon of the Holy Trinity by Rublev. Because I realized, as I thought about it, that it captured something I find troubling about -- not the Trinity, but the way we talk about the Trinity: as a completely enmeshed and encapsulated system, God looking only at God's own self.

Because the God I encountered in the Scripture for last Sunday is far more interested in people than in God's own self. "What is man that you should be mindful of him? The son of man that you should seek him out?" says the Psalmist. And in the Gospel, it isn't the "I and the Father are one" that I might have expected, but instead lots of talk about stuff being given to you, the "you" being the disciples.

And as I thought about it, what I saw was a Trinity not lost in contemplation of its own Godliness, but a Trinity that attempts through every avenue possible to reach us humans, and who doesn't really seem to care what form that takes. My sense is that God really doesn't care if we understand God, because God knows we won't be able to, but that the attempt to build that relationship is all that matters.

So I talked about that a bit. Something like that. It was probably heretical. I'm certain I have that icon all wrong. But there you go. Next year, I'm swimming with the sharks. It will probably be safer.

Sermon -- Audio!

I preached at the Church of the Incarnation, Santa Rosa, yesterday, and my sermon was recorded and posted on their website. So if you want to hear me talking for 15 minutes almost exactly about the woman with a spirit of divination, well, here's your chance.

Being with people in the valley

This is a bloggified version of the sermon I gave on Good Shepherd Sunday.

There's a reason Psalm 23 is so popular, but I hadn't really realized it until I read it in the midst of the  rotten week we had last week.

Here's the verse that leapt out at me:

Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I shall fear no evil;
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

As I thought about it, one of the things that's hard about helping people who are in the valley is that it feels like you aren't doing anything. We want so much to do something that will make it better. But  in the Psalm, it doesn't say, "I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, and you take care of everything and make it go away." Accompanying someone through the valley isn't about zapping everything into perfection, but being with a person for the long haul to the other side. The Psalm captures that perfectly.

I thought it might be helpful to share what we can do to be with people when they are walking through the valley of the shadow of death -- and what we can hope for when we're going through it ourselves. And so here are three suggestions of what not to do, and three suggestions of what we can do to help those when they are walking through that valley.

What not to do:

1) Do not compare or rank suffering. When someone is having a hard time, it is not helpful to be told that other people have it much worse than they do. I saw that a lot with the bombings in Boston, with people saying, "Oh yeah? Well, think about Syria." There is no denying that other people are suffering, but if your object is to provide comfort, that will not help. It will, in fact, simply put up walls between you and the other person.

Another way we do this that seems encouraging but is simply another form of the same tactic is when we say to people "Cheer up! It could always be so much worse!" Again, this is not helpful. Comparing one person's suffering to another, or to an imaginary worse situation, denies or minimizes a person's situation. It sends the message that they should not feel the way they do. The fact is, they do feel the way they do. How anyone else feels or what anyone else is going through at that moment is irrelevant.

2) Do not give advice. The desire to give advice may come from the best of motives and the honest impulse to want to fix things. But the effect of giving advice often merely exacerbates the pain a person is going through.

I recently read a reflection from someone who talked about how giving advice to someone with chronic illness is, in fact, an isolating experience. For someone who has already tried everything and still feels stuck in the valley, advice is not only meaningless, it becomes a source of pain. It says to the person, "I'm healthy and you're not and if only you had X, Y, and Z, it wouldn't have happened to you. And if you only do 1, 2, and 3, you would get yourself out of it." Advice implies "I don't want to be here with you; I want you to come here with me." For someone in the valley, this is not helpful. The valley is not traversed by advice.

3) Do not make assumptions. Do not assume you know what's really going on. Do not assume you know what a person is feeling. Do not assume you know how things are going to turn out. Because the truth is, you do not know what people are experiencing. You cannot tell by looking. And even with what they tell you, dollars to donuts you are not getting the whole story.

Again, thinking of the bombing in Boston: You do not know who you know who might have been affected by this personally, so please be kind in your comments. I've never even been to Boston and yet I received an email this week from a friend who had worked with one of the people who was killed. What are the chances of that? Much higher than you might think.

What you can do:

1) Do reach out. You may worry that people won't want to be reminded if they're having a bad time. Believe me, they haven't forgotten. In fact, one thing that's hard for people who are in the middle of the valley is feeling like they are always the ones who have to reach out. Even if you don't have anything to say, just calling someone up and saying, "Hey, I just wanted you to know I was thinking about you" can mean a whole lot. The valley can be a long hard slog and the very people who seem to be handling it best because they "don't want to bug you" are the very ones for whom a simple word will mean the most.

2) Do ask what would help. Simply saying, "What can I do for you?" even if the answer is "nothing" is helpful. You can also ask some more specific questions, like "I'm going to the store/library/downtown; is there anything you need?"

3) Do listen. You don't need to have answers. Simply ask, "What's the latest? How are you? What's going on right now? How has your day been?" and let people tell you. Even when it's not what you want to hear. Even when it's discouraging. Even when you want to jump in with something to cheer them up. Just let them tell you. Just be there.

Sometimes the hardest thing to do is simply be in the valley with people. As I said earlier, it feels like we're not doing anything. But that's not true. We're being with people, where they are, when things are hardest, even when we can't do anything about it. That's not easy. In fact, that's really hard work.

I hope you've been able to find people to be with you in the valley, and I wish you strength and good courage to accompany others.

***
Here's another article that offered helpful suggestions on how to be with people who are suffering: For a Sick Friend: First Do No Harm

And this one (which I've referenced before) sums it up in the terrifically helpful mantra Comfort IN, Dump OUT. Always good to remember.

Easter sermon, close to how I remember giving it, abridged and without special effects

A long time ago I heard a sermon about how you can't keep God in a box. I'd heard dozens of "God in a box" sermons in my time and in my mind I was saying, "yeah, yeah, you can't keep God in a box blahblahblah" as the preacher held up a small white box to demonstrate.

Then the preacher came out of the pulpit. This was a little disturbing. It was all very well to talk about how you can't keep God in a box as long as everyone was staying in the right place, but when the preacher left the pulpit, I couldn't help feeling a little nervous.

She came to the center, holding up the box and talking about how you can't keep God in a box when all of a sudden, she threw the box to the floor and it shattered.

And my first, completely unbidden though was, "That was a nice box!"*

It hadn't occurred to me before that even the nicest box is still a box. And God doesn't fit in a box.

Let's think of this in terms of Jesus, who didn't fit into the nice boxes of law or purity or race and gender relations. He healed people on the Sabbath. He touched lepers. He and his disciples didn't practice ritual cleaning. He talked to women -- including a Samaritan woman and a Syro-Phoenician woman. He went to dinner with tax collectors. And he suggested God did all of those things too.

This kind of behavior was so disturbing that they literally nailed him down to keep him in his place. And then, once he was dead, they bound him up in cloths and put him in a tomb with a stone blocking the entrance. Talk about a box.

But the story of Easter is you cannot keep God in a box. God will break open the box no matter what you do.

There are two ways this applies to us today. First of all, we need to examine what kind of boxes we try to keep God in. They may be nice boxes, but they are boxes all the same. Author Anne Lamott quotes a friend who has a great way of summing this up: "You know you've made God in your own image when God hates all the same people you do."

The second is this: What kind of box are you in?

A few weeks ago, I got to hear Brene Brown talk to a group of church leaders and she said something I thought was very interesting. She asked us what we thought was the biggest barrier to belonging. After our guesses, she told us that her research indicates the biggest barrier to belonging is fitting in, that fitting in requires you to assess and adapt. It's all about being in the right box.

In contrast, what really leads to belonging is showing up and being seen, and isn't that what we hear today in the story of the Resurrection? Jesus shows up and is seen, after everyone's best effort to force him to fit in.

You don't need to fit in either. You already belong.

Easter is about the breaking of boxes. God does not fit in a box. Jesus will not stay in a box. And you are free from the boxes that hold you as well.**

*yes, I did in fact do all of these things during the sermon. My "box" was unfortunately very clearly a flower pot, but, you know, it got the point across. I had placed a piece of marble I'd found in the garden of the house where I was staying on the floor in the center aisle of the church and disguised it with Easter lilies. The altar guild member in me was upset when I realized I had placed most of the lilies with the sales tags facing out. After saying "That was a nice box!" I also added that the second thought that may be running through their minds was "Who is going to clean this up?" I told them I would. The Altar Guild still took care of most of the cleanup, but I did do the vacuuming at the end.

**I practiced the closing sentence over and over and over again, and still messed it up! This isn't it exactly either. I can't remember the exact words I'd prepared. But they were pretty good -- better than this version anyway. Too bad I couldn't remember them in the moment!

Triduum redux: more than you really wanted to know

Well, I've gotten the official Easter cold like I do every single year. This year, I can officially point fingers at my parents, who had colds, but unofficially, it's really not their fault. Holy Week simply wears a body out. Don't tell them that though. Let them stew.

This year, Holy Week and Easter moved away from words and texts and into visuals for me. And that translated into preaching as well. This year, perhaps for the first time, I saw the washing of feet as a parable, and in seeing it that way, I started seeing the rest of the events that happened almost as performance art as well (somewhat shocking to think that about the crucifixion, but that's where my mind went).

So here's what happened:

Maundy Thursday

St. Michael's didn't have a foot washing, which was fine by me. I've got to say, I don't understand why we encourage pedicures before ritual footwashing, when I believe part of meaning of the washing is "Come as you are, with dirt on your feet."

I wanted to do something that would disturb the congregation to illuminate what I sensed was the same sort of disturbance in seeing Jesus step out of his "proper" role. So a great deal of the sermon was in silence, as I stepped forward, took off the stole, took off the cincture, took off the alb, then went into the congregation and, one by one, brought each person forward to sit at chairs the lay minister and I had set up in the sanctuary around the altar. As I walked them forward to their seat, I talked to each person individually, thanking them for coming and making some small talk.

It really did make people nervous, which is what I wanted. I was amazingly nervous, too.

Oh for My sake, Peter!

I spoke for a couple of minutes after everyone was seated (as Jesus did after washing people's feet), explaining why I'd done what I'd done. I also said that this time, I thought that whole side story of Peter refusing to have his feet washed was hilarious. I imagined Jesus doing a facepalm and saying, "Just...go with it, Peter. OK? Just go with me, here."

The big problem with this service? I'd explained to the lay minister my whole plan, but hadn't spoken to the organist. So that was a bit of a train wreck. Ah well.

Good Friday

There wasn't a group of lectors to read the parts of the Passion Narrative, so I was going to reading the whole thing by myself. Whew! I figured that was a lot for listeners to concentrate on, so I hoped to be able to include visuals to help people see while I was reading. St. Michael's used to display all the bulletin material on a large flatscreen in the upper right of the building. So I put together a PowerPoint with art depicting various scenes from the Passion.

Unfortunately, the flatscreen has been disconnected. Ah well. But I, at least, had some pretty vivid images in my mind of what was happening.

What really struck me was the movement from dark to morning to midday to sunset as you read through the story. Unfortunately, that's about as far as that thinking got.

Sermon-wise, I thought I was going to pull from the Good Friday service I did the previous year, which I thought had worked out very well. It began "It was all perfectly legal," which I still think is a pretty kick-ass opener. But as the day went on, I realized I had something else to say. I just wasn't sure what it was.

As I read the text, I was struck by the reversal of roles, as Peter goes from faithful follower to scared denier, and Nicodemus goes from secret follower to openly burying Jesus. My point became "We are not stuck in one place forever." Unfortunately (again) it didn't really get fully developed.

Still...not a bad service overall. I had to do a whole lot of talking, though. No music at this service.

Easter Vigil

Someone else preached at the Easter Vigil -- yay! And she said something that I had been thinking: about how Holy Week is a river and you just catch little glimpses of things passing by.

I had picked five of the readings, but it turns out we only had three lectors. So, a few minutes before the service started, we settled on the three readings. And we hadn't exactly gone over the canticles or anything, so we didn't have any. We're just going with the flow here.

Luckily, the fire worked well because that afternoon I suddenly thought, "Hmmm...I wonder if anyone has got something for the new fire?" And lo! We went to the local Ace hardware and bought a little grill and some firestarter thingeys and tested them out and they worked great. So, yeah, fire.

And I got to sing the Exsultet. So that was fun. For me, anyway. I feel very clever: I photographed the Exsultet on my iPad so that I could have it backlit as I sang it in the dark. Isn't that clever? OK, I'll stop being smug about that now.

And I remembered to talk to the organist. So that's good.

That's more than enough for now. I'll cover Easter Sunday in another post.