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Baptized into Beloved Community

Did anyone bring your baptism certificate with you this morning? Do you want to share anything about it: when was it; where was it; how old were you; who were your sponsors/ godparents; who was the pastor that baptized you? Here’s mine. I was baptized on November 4, 1951; I was just over a year old. This was at Grace Lutheran Church in Pottstown, PA and my sponsors were my grandmother and my Aunt Helen. Edgar Brown, Jr. was the pastor, but he retired in 1955, so I really don’t have any memory of him. My baptism certificate is actually a little booklet with the whole baptism liturgy, but I’ve framed just the part about me. It doesn’t say what time the baptism was, but I know that back in the day baptisms were not usually held during the worship service the way they are today. And the baptism font was in a separate little room, called the baptistry.

The Sunday after Epiphany is the day we remember the baptism of Jesus, which signaled the beginning of his public ministry. Baptism is one of the two sacraments of the Lutheran Church, but through the ages there have been different ways that baptism has been understood – rightly and wrongly.

Story #1: In my first congregation long ago, I was visiting with a couple who wanted to have their baby baptized. Being the sort of person who likes to ask people what they think before I start in on the pastor spiel, I asked them why they wanted their child to be baptized, what it meant to them. The mother’s answer was: “You have to be baptized so you can go to heaven.”
I call this the “getting your admission ticket to heaven punched” view of baptism.

Story #2: In the same congregation, a couple tragically experienced the death of their infant son. The next Sunday in church, a member of the congregation made the unbelievably insensitive remark that “it’s too bad you didn’t have him baptized before he died,” implying that either he had not gone to heaven or was lingering in some kind of limbo. This is on the same order as #1, except baptism is seen as a ‘get out of limbo free’ card.

Story #3: At the second meeting with a new mom about having her son baptized, she informed me that after being pressured by her grandmother who was Catholic, she had agreed to have the baby baptized at grandmom’s church, but she also wanted him to be (as she said) baptized Lutheran. My explanation that the baptism at the Catholic church was valid, totally recognized by the Lutheran Church and there was no need for a re-baptism fell on deaf ears. As was an offer to have a ceremony of Affirmation of Baptism.

Story #4: On the other hand, there’s the story of my brother and sister-in-law who were re-baptized. That was because the church they had joined was in the Anabaptist tradition, which does not baptize infants and. Instead, believers’ baptism happens when a person is old enough to make a commitment of faith – which, of course an infant cannot do.

Story #5: A student from Japan, studying at the University of San Francisco, had been raised in a very conservative Christian church back home. She began attending church here and liked our more open way of looking at scripture and beliefs. At one point, she began to cautiously approach the subject of baptism. She had not wanted to be baptized in her home church, but now wondered if there was a different way of thinking about what baptism is and what it means to be a baptized Christian.

Story #6: And finally, from the father of a three-year-old, who says, “I was sitting in church one day, watching a baptism from the front pew with my three kids. The pastor was pouring water on the head of a tiny baby. My son was quite taken by this, and I could see that something profound was brewing. With a puzzled look on his face, he turned to me and asked: “Daddy, why is he brainwashing that baby?”

With all of these understandings and misunderstandings about baptism, how do we think about this sacred ritual that is so central to who we are as Christians? Certainly, as we’ve been more exposed to other religious traditions and have accepted their belovedness in God’s eyes, it’s hard to see baptism as a necessity.
In the book we’re reading in our book group, Wholehearted Faith, Rachel Held Evans writes from the perspective of evangelical Christianity, but her questions should resonate with us. She wrote:

“After high school, I attended a conservative Christian college that was supposed to answer all my lingering questions about Christian doctrine but instead propagated them. Chief among those questions was how a good and loving God could condemn to hell the majority of human beings who live on this planet, most for the misfortune of being born in the wrong place and at the wrong time. If only evangelical Christians went to heaven, I reasoned, this left out millions, even billions, of people who had never even heard the name Jesus. It left out whole continents and generations of men, women, and children raised in other faiths. It left out Anne Frank. We read Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl in middle school, and Mrs. Kelly told us that Anne and her sister had succumbed to Hitler via typhus. I prayed for weeks afterward that God might somehow work a posthumous miracle and pluck her from the eternal fire in which I was sure she was being unfairly tormented. I couldn’t accept that a good, loving, and gracious God would burn Anne Frank forever.”

So, what does it mean to be a baptized? And why do it? Many parents today, having given up belief in a punishing God who sends unbaptized infants to hell, don’t even pursue it – unless grandma and grandpa pressure them and they do it out of obligation. Which is not the best reason.

I’ve been thinking a lot this week about Martin Luther King, Jr. We celebrate his birthday tomorrow, but as the Senate prepares to begin debate on the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act, how can we not recall the 1963 March on Washington, DC for civil rights? On the 20^th anniversary of that historic march in 1983, a crowd of 200,000-400,000 people came back to Washington. I was one of them. I wish I could say that I remember the speakers and musicians. I read that Pete Seeger was there. Stevie Wonder led the crowd in singing happy birthday, in an appeal that the birthday of the late Dr. King be made a national holiday.

John Lewis was there, as he was in 1963. This is what he said, “We have a mandate from the martyrs who have given their lives in the struggle for human rights. We have a mandate from the masses who have worked together, prayed together, stood up together, sat in together, were beaten together and went to jail together. We have a mission to create a new agenda for America, to create a better world, to create the beloved community.”

The Beloved Community. MLK talked about it often. He wasn’t the first or only, but it was the essence of his dream: “Let us live together in peace and love in the Beloved Community.” So when we read in the gospel, “When Jesus was baptized, a voice from heaven said, “You are my own, my Beloved,” how can we not take notice? At this point in the story, there’s nothing about sin or death or judgement; it’s about being named Beloved. So it is at our baptism. We are named Beloved and incorporated into the Beloved Community. This way of thinking of baptism isn’t about creating an in group of the saved, those with a one-way ticket to heaven. No, the Beloved Community is now.

Not that the dream has been completely realized. In the way that Martin Luther talked about the kingdom of God as being both “now and not yet,” so it is with the Beloved Community. Here’s a little bit from a resource called Becoming Beloved Community Where You Are: A Resource for Individuals, Congregations, and Communities Seeking Racial Healing, Reconciliation and Justice:

“Walking the road toward Beloved Community is an adventure, fueled by the power of the Holy Spirit, and no Christian should ever expect to arrive at the destination. This is a spiritual practice, after all, and no one ever finishes with spiritual formation. We are always praying. We are always reading scripture. We are always seeking to love and serve our neighbors. And we are always learning and practicing Jesus’ way of love, especially as he calls us to cross racial, cultural and ethnic lines, to examine structures of oppression and their impact on our own and others’ lives, and ultimately to nurture Beloved Community.”

The juxtaposition of the Sunday we remember the baptism of Jesus and the birthday of MLK, helps us see the two-directional nature of baptism. As we affirm our own baptisms, we acknowledge that we have heard – and taken to heart – the fact that the God of all the universe loves us. This is an inward adventure, because there are many voices, including our own that try to convince us that we’re not good enough, not worthy, not lovable. Living into our baptismal covenant involves leaning into the vision that God has of us, believing it, and living out of it – which means that we live into the vision of the Beloved Community.

Because it’s not only a personal and inner endeavor. Baptism brings us into community. Not an exclusive community that keeps others out, but a community of people committed to living out the love of God. Church is meant to be that kind of community. And often is. In these days of COVID, though, it’s harder to define what our little corner of the Beloved Community looks like. How do we maintain our connections to one another? How do we maintain our connections with those we haven’t seen for almost two years? How do we envision our connections with our neighbors?

I don’t know if you’ve seen the article about the housing developments being planned for Burlingame. Part of Rollins Road is being rezoned to allow single-story warehouses to be replaced with six-story apartment buildings. I’m not sure about this, but I think we might be the closest church to these new homes. And I wonder, if we want to reach out to new residents with an invitation the Good Shepherd, how will describe the community we’re inviting them to?

In Wholehearted Faith, Rachel Held Evans says this: “Most of the openhearted wanderers I’ve encountered are looking not for a bulletproof belief system but for a community of friends, not for a spiritual encyclopedia that contains every answer but for a gathering of loved ones in which they can ask the hard questions.”

A community of friends, a gathering of loved ones, a beloved community . . . hmm, seems to be a theme here. How do we tend the precious kinship we already have here? And how do we extend it to others? Of course, there is risk in doing that. Rachel Held Evans also wrote: “I have come to believe that wholehearted faith, like all wholehearted living, requires taking risks, cultivating vulnerability, and embracing uncertainty – both in our individual lives and in our communal life together. It demands that we admit all that we cannot know, and it encourages us to pursue it nonetheless.”

In other words, the baptismal covenant is also outwardly directed – to our neighbors, to the earth, to the work of dismantling racism, patriarchy, and other systems of oppression. As Howard Thurman, one of MLK’s mentors, co-founder of The Church for The Fellowship of All Peoples in San Francisco in 1944, wrote in his poem The Work of Christmas:

When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among others,
To make music in the heart.

We are going to remember and reaffirm our baptisms in just a few minutes. If you have your baptism certificate, keep it nearby. Have some water ready. you will be invited to dip into it and anoint your forehead or your wrist – with a cross, if you wish – as a sign of remembrance. As you do, pay attention; listen closely. You just might hear the rustle of the wings of a dove as the Holy Spirit hovers over you and a voice from the heavens whispers in your ear, “You are my Own, my Beloved. And I love you!”

Amen

O God, we long to co-create with you the Beloved Community, which looks to the common good; privileges all equally and creates societal systems which celebrate the humanity and the gifts of all.

Help us to listen to your voice, to hear your call to be drum majors for justice, peace and righteousness.

When the work of peace and justice overwhelms us and building the Beloved Community seems impossible, renew our strength and resolve – and our awareness that we are bound together in an inescapable network of mutuality and tied to a single garment of destiny. Amen.

Creating the Beloved Community: Service Prayers for Martin Luther King, Jr., Weekend was written by the Rev. Dr. Cari Jackson, Founder and Director of the Center for Spiritual Light, New York City.

Copyright 2014 Local Church Ministries, Faith Formation Ministry Team, United Church of Christ, 700 Prospect Avenue, Cleveland, OH 44115-1100. Permission granted to reproduce or adapt this material for use in services of worship or church education. All publishing rights reserved.

Going Home By a Different Road (or Your Spiritual GPS Is Recalculating)

I think it was Yogi Berra who said, “If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.” It sounds like Yogi Berra, well known for his mangled, often-contradictory quotations. But on this one, I’m with Yogi. When I go on a trip, I need to have a good map, precise directions from Google Maps or an up-to-date GPS.

On Epiphany Sunday, however, that idea gets thrown out the window. The Magi, whom we are told were very wise, didn’t have any of these on their journey from Persia to Bethlehem. As Matthew tells it, all they had for their journey to find Jesus was a mysterious star. And so, with them, we find ourselves in the uncharted waters – or I should say skies – of Epiphany.

Now Epiphany is not just a ‘church’ word. We’re probably all familiar with the word as it’s used in an everyday sense. If you tell me you’ve had an epiphany, I’d assume that you’ve had an illuminating insight or discovery or realization, an “Aha!” moment. Psychology Today defines an epiphany as “a moment of sudden or great revelation that usually changes you in some way.”

For example, Oprah Winfrey talked once about learning she had a half-sister she never knew about because her mother had kept it secret for almost 50 years. She described leaving her mother’s home after talking with her about it and said several times with tears in her eyes that she’d had an epiphany: the realization that her mother carried so much shame about getting pregnant that she could never fully embrace the child she’d given up for adoption. Describing this profound, emotional moment of revelation about her mother, Oprah used the word “epiphany” because it’s the perfect word to describe such a powerful experience or life-changing awareness. Maybe you have your own story of this kind of revelation.

In church, when we use the word “Epiphany” (with a capital E), we’re talking about a day on the Church calendar, January 6, when we celebrate the coming of the Magi (sometimes called the Wise Men or Three Kings) who journeyed to a far-off place in order to bring gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the baby Jesus. And in so doing, they symbolized the revelation (showing) of God’s extravagant love for the whole world, born in Jesus.

And when we talk about the Epiphany season, we’re thinking about all the ways that Divine Presence and Divine Love is revealed to us. It’s about undertaking our own journeys of following a star, of being open to the mystery of Divine guidance in every aspect of our lives, of recognizing the “Aha” moment when it appears.

“But wait,” as the infomercials say, “there’s more.” The challenge of Epiphany is to also be the shining star that shows others the way. We also look for the “Aha” moments when we are able to share the extravagant love of God with others.

I think I’ve told you before that this is actually my favorite holy day in the entire church year, more than Christmas. Maybe that’s because it’s so counter-cultural, at least here in the US. Even though there are 12 days of Christmas, the season pretty much ends on New Year’s Day. The festivities are over. Stores have moved on to Valentines Day merchandise. In other parts of the world, though, it’s a different story. Many other countries have very vibrant traditions around Epiphany.

Here in California, we see a lot of the “Dia de los Reyes” tradition (Three Kings Day) celebrated in Latino communities in the US. This is the day when children get presents – from the Three Kings, not Santa Claus. At bedtime, they leave hay or dried grass and a bowl of water outside for the animals that the kings ride.

Another wonderful thing about Epiphany is its sense of mystery and wonder. Who were these visitors who were guided by stars and dreams? Some say they were astronomers or astrologers, some say Zoroastrian priests, others say learned scholars from the East. And who knows even if there were only three? Matthew doesn’t say, and his gospel is the only one that tells about the visit of the Magi. They are shrouded in mystery yet have enchanted us through the ages. Many people have tried to come up with possible answers to how a star could move through the sky to guide these travelers on their way.

We could get hung up trying to figure out how all this could have happened. But then we’d miss the point of the story. Matthew has created a story, a midrash, that on the surface is enchanting – plum parts in annual Christmas pageants. But there’s a lot of meaning packed into this tale.

The Magi remind us of the wisdom of allowing Divine Presence to work within us and to step out onto an unknown path. They inspire us to give up some of our tightly held handholds and trust that the path forward will be made clear – by being led into a way of light, by listening to our dreams, by receiving the gifts that wise men and women have to offer.

As I wrote this, I was reminded of a poem by Susan Ruach that I found years ago in A Guide to Prayer for Ministers and Other Servants and it has always meant a lot to me. It’s called “A New Way of Struggling” and it’s become even more meaningful in these days (years) of the pandemic.

To struggle used to be
  To grab with both hands
And shake
And twist
And turn
And push
And above all not give in,
  But wrest an answer from it all
  As Jacob did a blessing.

But there is another way
To struggle with an issue, a question.
Simply to jump
  Off
  Into the abyss
And find ourselves
  Floating
  Falling
  Tumbling
Being led
Slowly and gently
But surely
  To the answers God has for us
  To watch the answers unfold
  Before our eyes and still to be a part of the unfolding
But, oh! The trust
Necessary for this new way!
Not to be always reaching out
For the old hand-holds.

See, while the story of the Magi and the star might seem to be out there in a mysterious, celestial realm, it’s also very down-to-earth. It lives in the real world. Matthew created his story to illustrate what the life and death of Jesus meant to him. You might remember the song We Three Kings which describe their gifts. The verse about myrrh hints at darker days to come:

Myrrh is mine: Its bitter perfume
Breaths a life of gathering gloom Sorrow, sighing, bleeding, dying,
Sealed in a stone-cold tomb.

Not the most cheerful song. But Matthew wants us to know that Jesus was often going to be in opposition to the powers-that-be, cultural, religious, and political. It, of course, started right away with King Herod, who so obsequiously asked the Magi to come back and tell him about the child so he could go and pay homage, too. If this were a movie, we’d be shouting at the screen, “Don’t believe him!”

Angel’s Warning to the Three Wise Men, from **Art in the Christian Tradition**, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=29202
Copyright Permission: Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike – CC-BY-SA-3.0

Thankfully, they’re warned in a dream not to report back to Herod and they go home another way. As the Magi discovered, having one’s plans thwarted, changed, or even destroyed doesn’t mean it’s the end of the journey. It simply means (as my GPS often tells me) that we are “rerouting” and going a different way. I say simply, but it’s not usually that simple, is it?

We may not have a king fuming after us, but we all have situations in which the old handholds are no longer working. When you expect things to go a certain way, anticipate one outcome, but then have to let go of it and embrace a different path? Sometimes we get to choose another road, but other times not. All kinds of things can force us onto paths we would not have chosen: job loss, illness, accident, divorce, natural disaster, national upheaval, pandemic, Zoom church, hybrid church. We make our plans, but often have to go forward, not knowing where our new path will lead.

That doesn’t mean, though, that we are left with no guidance system. If the Epiphany story tells us anything, it tells us all about Divine guidance. A star in the sky leads the Magi to Jesus. A dream warns them to go home a different way. And when Joseph, too, is warned in a dream to flee to Egypt, he too, ensures that the Light will continue to shine on.

I think this is why I love Epiphany so much. It doesn’t allow the Christmas story to stop with a sweet scene in a stable on a silent night. It zooms the birth of Jesus out into the real world with a realism that we recognize all too well. Realism that doesn’t ignore the challenges that we and our world face. But a realism that also recognizes that realism (as we think we know it) isn’t the only reality there is. Angels, Magi, stars, and dreams are still part of our stories today – if we’re open to the mystery and wonder of Divine Presence.

So while many are weary from the holiday season, the fact is that the story still continues. I saw a resource from the ELCA that calls Epiphany “the Season of Aha!” I’ve often called it the season of “So what?” We’ve just come through Advent, a time of waiting for the birth of Jesus and Christmas, celebrating the birth of Jesus. Now, Epiphany asks us to ponder: so what did that all mean, what impact does it have on my life, here and now? In Advent, we asked ourselves: what is preparing to be born in us this Christmas? In Epiphany, we await the revelations, the revealing, the uncovering of that new birth in us and in our church.

That’s what this season of Epiphany is going to be: a season of revelations. We’ll hear stories from scripture of how the person, the message, the work of Jesus was revealed in his day. They will lead us into a journey of discovery of how the person, message, and work of Jesus is revealed to us today.

And of course, we don’t travel alone. The dazzling truth of Epiphany is that there is a star that guides us. Holy Wisdom, Divine Light beckons us both inwardly, into where our own heart of wisdom resides – and outwardly, into the world where we can walk unknown paths with un-rational confidence. We, too, are caught up in the wonder and mystery of it all- beyond the stories of the first Christmas as told by Matthew and Luke; beyond all the trappings that have come to surround this season – as we acknowledge our part in bringing to birth God’s extravagant love in the world.

Finally, another poem, this one by Katie Cook*:

Let us go in peace now;
For our eyes have seen God’s salvation.
We have stood, dumbstruck,
before the manger.
We have exchanged glances with the shepherds
and looked, sheepishly, out of the corners of our eyes at the wise men.
We have listened, with terror and delight,
to the messengers with their extraterrestrial song.
We, who have walked so often and so long in terrible darkness,
have been flooded with holy light.

Let us go in peace now;
We have brought our gifts to the manger-
and for some of us
it was merely our broken selves—but now, like the shepherds,
we must go back to our fields;
like the magi, we must go home another way.

Let us go in peace now;
May this Holy Child guide our steps
into the new year
And give us the courage
to give birth to God’s realm.

Amen.

*From Sacred Seasons, Seeds of Hope Publishers: 602 James; Waco, TX

Matthew 2:1-12

After the birth of Jesus—which happened in Bethlehem of Judea, during the reign of King Herod—magi from the East arrived in Jerusalem and asked, “Where is the newborn ruler of the Jews? We observed his star at its rising and have come to pay our respects.”

At this news Herod became greatly disturbed, as did all of Jerusalem. Summoning all the chief priests and religious scholars of the people, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born. They said,
“In Bethlehem of Judea. Here’s what was written by the prophet: ‘You, Bethlehem, land of Judah, are by no means least among the leaders of Judah, because from you will come a ruler to shepherd my people Israel.’”

Herod called the magi aside to find out the exact time of the star’s appearance. Then he sent them to Bethlehem, instructing them:
“Go and get detailed information about the child. When you have found him, report back to me—so that I may go and offer homage, too.”

After their audience with Herod, they set out. The star which they had observed at its rising went ahead of them until it came to a standstill over the place where the child lay. They were overjoyed at seeing the star and, upon entering the house, found Jesus with Mary, his mother. They knelt before him and paid homage. Then they opened their treasure chests and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Then, after being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they went back to their own country by another route.

Divorced on World Communion Sunday?!

You might be familiar with Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber. If not, Google her; you should know about her. She’s an author and speaker and is famous for her tattoos and outspoken views. She came out of very rough and tumble lifestyle, abandoning her conservative Christian upbringing, but finally finding her place in the Lutheran church. She founded the congregation House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver and in August was called to be pastor of public witness by the Rocky Mountain Synod. Her New York Times bestselling books include Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint, the memoir of her journey from alcoholic stand-up comic to Lutheran pastor. I’m telling you all this because I want to tell you the story that she tells in her newsletter. She writes:

House for All Sinners & Saints was only about a year old when I took a Sunday morning phone call from a young parishioner who had gone home to Grand Rapids for a weekend visit. I could tell right away that Rachel was crying.

“Take your time, baby.”

When she finally spoke, it was halting and in a whisper. “Nadia, I’m at my parent’s church and they’re serving communion and …. (her voice cracks) I’m not allowed to take it.”

Rachel hadn’t thought much about her childhood church’s “closed table” (the term for when a church only allows certain people to take communion) until now. But she had spent a year with HFASS, a community centered around the grace of an unapologetically open table, and without even noticing it had happened, she had been changed by it. Every Sunday she had seen a woman stand at the altar table (again, she had only ever heard a male voice from the front of the church, never one with a timbre more like her own), and had heard that woman say these words: “We have an open table at House, which means that during communion, everyone without exception is invited to come forward at communion and receive the bread and wine – which for us is the body and blood of Christ. If you choose not to commune, you can come forward with your arms crossed and receive a blessing instead.”

Jesus ate supper with more types of people than I myself would feel comfortable with. Sinners, tax collectors, soldiers, sex workers, fisherfolk, and even lawyers. And his LAST supper was the worst. He broke bread with his friends who were just about to abandon, deny and betray him. And yet, he took bread, blessed it, broke and gave it to these total screw-ups and said, “this is my body, given for you, whenever you eat of it, do this in remembrance of me.” He instituted the Eucharist by giving bread and wine to all the people who were just about to totally screw him over.

And then what does the church do in remembrance of him? – try and keep the “wrong people” from receiving the Lord’s Supper. Some would argue it is reckless to just feed all who hunger. That the Eucharist is too sacred to just hand it over to anyone. But maybe the Eucharist is too sacred to not just hand it over to anyone.

People of good faith disagree on this issue. I know that. There are those in my own tradition who say that only the baptized should receive and that there is a catechumenal path that can be taken for those who wish to commune. Baptism first, THEN communion. As if grace only happens in a certain order. Over the years there have been dozens and dozens of adult baptisms at HFASS – I’d guess more than at most Lutheran churches. But having experienced the unmerited and always available grace of an open table, these folks sought out the grace of the baptismal font.

Before hanging up with Rachel, I assured her she was loved and wanted in our community and then I said, “Would it be ok if I told some folks at church tonight about what happened?” and she said yes. As a small group of us stayed behind that night to stack chairs and put away paraments, I told them about Rachel’s devastation at having been denied communion at home. Without skipping a beat, Stuart (the church drag queen) said, “Well then we’ll just have to take her communion at the airport.”

So, at 10 pm on a Wednesday, eight of us showed up to Denver International airport with a cardboard chauffeur’s sign that said “Rachel P___” on one side, and “Child of God” on the other, and waited for her at the bottom of the escalator. We then made our way up to the interfaith prayer room, I spoke about how on the night Jesus was betrayed he gathered with his faltering friends for a meal that tasted of freedom, and then we handed her what had been withheld days before: the body and blood of Christ. If we are to be judged for having gotten this wrong, let it be that we sat more at the table than fewer. Because it’s not our table. It’s God’s.

Today is World Communion Sunday, a day promoted by the National Council of Churches to promote Christian unity. Begun in 1933, it’s an attempt to remind us how each congregation is interconnected one with another. In these days of divisiveness, it’s not a bad idea. But as Pastor Bolz-Weber’s story reminds us, there are still divisions, still gatekeepers whose job, they believe, is to say who is in and who is out.

I like to tell the story of the three sisters who were part of the trip to Germany I took many years ago. All three sisters were Lutheran, but they could never take Communion together, at least in two of the churches where they were members. One was in a Missouri Synod church, the other a Wisconsin Synod church. On Pentecost Sunday, in a little church in Germany, they came to the altar together. And it was a very big deal – for them and to all of us sharing in this joyful banquet.

Now, the gospel reading today might seem like an odd one for World Communion Sunday, especially the first part. On a day focused on unity, talking about divorce would seem to be quite incongruous. Better to go with the second part. Wouldn’t everybody agree on welcoming children? But hold on; let’s look at this more closely. When we read the teachings of Jesus, we always have to ask, “who was he talking to?” Certainly, his words have meaning for us today, but we have to wonder how people then would have heard them.

First of all, we have to recognize that the Pharisees were asking about divorce because they wanted to trip him up. Hmm, why a question about this law and not another? Could it be that the practice Jesus had of welcoming those who were outcast, those considered to be outside the bounds of society? The answer Jesus gives should remind us of the answer he gave about paying taxes. He answers them with a question. He’s not going to play their game.
He asked them, “What command did Moses give?”
They said, “Moses permitted a husband to write a decree of divorce and to put her away.”

That would seem to be the end of it. But wait, let’s see if there’s more to the story. And let’s first acknowledge that all of this is from a hetero-normative perspective. Same-sex marriage wasn’t on the horizon yet.

It’s crucially important to know that in Jesus’ day, marriage was a profoundly patriarchal institution in which women and children were considered to be the property of men. And when it came to divorce, the husband had all the power, as is made clear in as Deuteronomy 24:1-4.
Suppose a man enters into marriage with a woman, but she doesn’t please him because he finds something objectionable about her, so he writes a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house.

Now, fast forward to Jesus’ day when there was dispute about acceptable grounds for divorce. Some said only adultery was just cause, while others stuck with the all-inclusive “something objectionable about her.” We know from other Bible stories of how precarious life was for women who were not attached to a man. Women and their children depended on marriage for their wellbeing, which put them in an extremely vulnerable position. We know Jesus that always cared about the powerless and vulnerable, so we have to ask: who’s vulnerable in this picture? Women and children. Now comes the shocker, as later he expands on this teaching:
If a man divorces his wife and marries another, he commits adultery against her; and if a woman divorces her husband again and marries another, she commits adultery.

Wait a second. Did he just say “if a woman divorces her husband”? Yes, he did. The good news is that Jesus puts men and women in equal positions; each has agency in the marriage. The bad news is that Jesus is still critical of divorce.

But – Jesus also recognizes the reality of the human condition. In effect, he’s saying, What Moses says about divorce is well and good, but remember, it was an accommodation to human struggle.

When two people become one in a marriage covenant, that relationship shouldn’t be broken apart. That’s the ideal. Isn’t that what every couple intends when they make their vows? But sometimes the ideal cannot be achieved. Sometimes divorce is the best option. Considering that this is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, sometimes divorce is the necessary option. Jesus still wants divorce reserved as a last resort, when the marriage is doing more harm than good, not when, “she does not please him,” or “there’s something objectionable about her.”

Like so many other situations in which we might find ourselves, when there is no good resolution, when sin is unavoidable, we have to do the best we can and then rely on God’s grace for compassion and forgiveness. On World Communion Sunday, we can recognize that we are all united, both in our human condition, with all our frailties and failings and in our access to grace. We could all be members of House for All Sinners & Saints.

Then, there are the children. Again, remember that life for children in Jesus’ day wasn’t like it is today, at least it’s not supposed to be like it was then. Then, children had no power; they were property; they were expendable. The disciples wanted to shoo these nuisances away. But Jesus turns another societal norm on its head. Indignant, he orders them to let the children in and he blesses them. He even says that we’re all supposed to be as child-like and eager to see Jesus; “whoever doesn’t welcome the kin-dom of God as a little child won’t enter it.” We should be reminded of the status of so many vulnerable children today: immigrant children, foster kids, kids kicked out of homes for being lgbtq, kids who are neglected or abused – and remember Jesus’ example of welcoming them in.

In both of these incidents, Jesus breaks down barriers. Women find agency; children receive blessing. Everyone is welcome as far as Jesus is concerned – especially these vulnerable ones. Would Jesus refuse anyone Communion? I don’t think so. Everything he said and did was about bringing us all together. So often he fed people or joined them in a meal. Eating together was almost a sacred activity. Communion is a sacred activity, a sacrament. We call it a Meal. Who would invite guests to a dinner party and then serve only some?

I’m not criticizing churches who do not practice open Communion – well, just a little. That is their choice and they have their reasons. I just want to be very clear that here, at this table all are welcome – no exceptions. And if you ever find yourself left out of another Communion table, know that I and whoever wants to come with me will come to you – at the airport or wherever, with a sign with your name on it on one side and “Child of God” on the other. And we will share the most sacred meal of all together.

Amen

Mark 10: 1-16

Jesus left there and came to the districts of Judea and the other side of the Jordan. Once more the crowds gathered around and as usual Jesus began to teach them. Some Pharisees approached Jesus and, as a test, asked, “Is it permissible for husbands to divorce their wives?”

In reply Jesus asked, “What command did Moses give?” They answered, “Moses permitted a husband to write a decree of divorce and to put her away.”
But Jesus told them, “Moses wrote the commandment because of your hardness of heart. From the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female. This is why one person leaves home and cleaves to another, and the two become one flesh.’ They are no longer two, but one flesh. What God has united, therefore, let no one divide.” Back in the house again, the disciples questioned Jesus once more about this. He told them, “If a man divorces his wife and marries another, he commits adultery against her; and if a woman divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”

People were bringing their children to Jesus to have him touch them, but the disciples scolded them for this. When Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the children come to me; do not stop them. It is to just such as these that the kin-dom of God belongs. The truth is, whoever doesn’t welcome the kin-dom of God as a little child won’t enter it.”

And Jesus took the children in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands on them.

“Tammy Wynette 6488” by Nesster is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

JESUS MAFA
“Jesus welcomes the children”

You Are Not the Greatest: Jesus on White Supremacy

“I am not a racist!” That was my response when, many years ago, I was confronted by an African American man who had overheard something I had said. He wasn’t buying any of my impassioned denials. He also wasn’t buying the assurances of my two African American co-workers with whom I’d been having the conversation the man had overheard. I’ll never forget his dismissal of them: “some of us still wear the bandana” (meaning the bandana of slavery). He eventually stopped excoriating me and went on his way, but I was devastated. To this day, I remember the shame I felt that day and for a long time after.

Only in recent years have I understood how misguided my response was in that situation. First, I had to learn that it is nigh unto impossible for any human being to never make a mistake, be it a slip of the tongue, an unconscious faux pas, or even words said in jest or in the heat of an argument. We can – and do – certainly try to avoid these mistakes, but if we’re being completely honest, we must confess that at times we do fail – in all kinds of areas.

In 2015, I wrote a blog post called “I’m About to Offend Somebody” in response to the practice of calling out one another for our slip-ups. I wrote: “Let me just say from the start: I’m a white, Western, able-bodied, straight, cis-gender, Christian, middle-class person of privilege. So, in any expressions of thought or opinion, I’m bound to offend someone. Don’t get me wrong; I’m all for political correctness. But even in my most well-meaning attempts, I sometimes step on a land mine.

“Trouble is, a land mine to one person may not be one to another. Years ago, talking with a gay activist, I said that someone had “his head screwed on straight” and got roundly chastised. Years later, I was (half) jokingly telling some members of my congregation who are gay that I’d been worried about the scripture reading that day where St. Paul visits “a street called Straight.” They thought I was being pretty silly, so I told them the story of the “head on straight” debacle. They thought the activist’s reaction was silly, too. So – who’s right?”

Since then, it’s gotten even more complicated. Our political divide doesn’t help either. We snipe back and forth about “wokeness” and “cancel culture” and unfortunately the sniping isn’t limited to the political divide. It goes on within our own circles, in an oppression Olympics that privileges one’s own oppression over that of another. For example, in a discussion about racism, a friend who is lesbian chafed against being lumped into the category of “white privilege” without a recognition of her own history of marginalization. She’s not against accepting her place of white privilege but would like there to be a better way for us all to talk about these matters.

The second thing I’ve learned is what to do when I do mess up. Back on that day, I failed to admit that I had made an error in judgement. It didn’t matter that my heart was in the right place, or that friends came to my defense, or that I didn’t mean what the man thought I had meant. I have learned that my cry of “But I’m not a racist!” is the all-too-typical White defensive response to being called out for racist behavior, no matter how unintentional. I should have apologized. And not just the non-apology of “I’m sorry if something I said offended you,” but a true acknowledgement of my cluelessness and a heartfelt assurance to do better. Maybe that would have eased the man’s mind. Maybe not. But it would have been the right thing for me to do in any event – which is to learn from a mistake.

If you want to be first, you must be the last one of all and at the service of all

We hear a lot about racism and White privilege these days. We have anti-racism training in our synod, as well as in schools and workplaces. And yet, phrases like “Black Lives Matter,” “white fragility,” “systemic racism,” and “White privilege” continue to cause reactivity and resistance.

So, amidst all our national and personal angst over what some call America’s original sin, I came to our gospel text for this week. And for the first time read the words of Jesus as a word to those of us struggling with our legacy of privileging some groups over others – whether the discrimination against Irish immigrants in the 19^th century or Central American immigrants today. No oppression Olympics here. Jesus said, “”If any of you wants to be first, you must be the last one of all and at the service of all.” He said this because he had discovered the disciples arguing about who among them was the greatest.

And we can laugh at those clueless disciples who just didn’t get Jesus, until we start applying it to our own lives in our own time. I suspect that most of us don’t see ourselves as making claims of greatness, right? We’re the blessed ones in the Beatitudes: the meek, the pure in heart, the peacemakers. Having to recognize how and where we’re privileged puts us on the wrong side of the domination system – which explains our resistance to such language. But Jesus doesn’t let us off the hook. Following Jesus means becoming last. That means we have to search our selves to even recognize where we are first.

For example, no matter what your status is in this country, you are privileged. The current ethical dilemma is whether immunocompetent Americans should get booster shots against COVID, while in some places in the world, such as Ethiopia, the percentage of those vaccinated is under 1%. “If you want to be first, you must be last, and you must be at the service of all” says it pretty clearly. I am not advocating one way or another for getting booster shots; I have to admit that I’m torn myself. But it’s our responsibility to take the words of Jesus seriously and into account as we make our ethical decisions. And maybe taking it out to a global perspective in terms of our privilege as Americans, for example in our use of the world’s resources. According to the Sierra Club, “a child born in the United States will create 13 times as much ecological damage over the course of a lifetime than a child born in Brazil; the average American will drain as many resources as 35 natives of India and consume 53 times more goods and services than someone from China.” That’s privilege.

So, now we might be able to bring it closer to home and see the planks in our eyes when it comes to White privilege and then do something about it, starting from within ourselves. And in no way do I claim that this will be easy. I have been reading an incredibly wonderful book called Dear White Peacemaker: Dismantling Racism with Grit and Grace by Osheta Moore. Moore is an African American woman, pastor of Roots Covenant Church in St. Paul, MN. I love their website where they call themselves “Misfits on a Mission, Finding Identity in Jesus.” If I lived in St. Paul, I would definitely check it out.

What the heck am I supposed to do?
Pastor Moore gets me. I mean she gets White anxiety. She says, “This is not for the faint of heart, Beloved. And still, I believe in you. I know how you feel sometimes. The calls for action are varied and sometimes opposing:

Do your work, White people
Pray for unity, people of God
Defund the Police
Black Lives Matter
Blue Lives Matter
All Lives Matter to God
Show up
Stop centering yourself
Silence is complicity
Speaking up is exerting your privilege
Use this hashtag
Stop using that hash tag

“If there is one question I get with some regularity, it is, ‘What the heck am I supposed to do?'”

I don’t remember how I came across this book, but it’s been a game-changer for me. I confess that I’ve been pretty discouraged with the state of racial discourse, even within the Church. I’ve been reluctant to speak out in some places because I knew I’d be dismissed as a White woman, or worse, as a “Karen” and told to “check my privilege at the door.” And it breaks my heart because I truly have come a long way from that day when I didn’t get what “White privilege” means. But in Dear White Peacemaker, Osheta Moore picked me up, dusted me off, and set me back on the path. And I ‘ve been recommending the book to everybody, recently to a White colleague struggling with a board of directors tussling over racial issues, I commanded: Read this book – now!

Your Name Is Not Racist; It Is Beloved
I won’t read the book to you, although every page is brilliant. She doesn’t negate the pain of racism, nor her own times of anger. But the title of her second chapter tells us where she’s coming from: “Your Name Is Not Racist; It Is Beloved.” The basis of her thinking is the Sermon on the Mount, as she uses it to help us understand our anti-racism activism in light of two themes:
1) the ethics of the Beloved Community, beginning with Jesus’ proclamation of the upside-down social order in the Beatitudes; and 2) how those ethics help us actively dismantle White supremacy culture.

In other words, how we can turn ourselves upside-down, from being (no matter how much we think we’re not) greatest – into the last of all, at the service of all. In the midst of our struggles and strifes with one another, Jesus gives us everything we need to show us the way – together.

I’m listening to this book in the car on Audible, and when I came to her chapter “Confessions of a Judgmental Ally,” I almost had to pull over. Tears formed in my eyes as she read:
“I’ve made assumptions and perpetuated harm to other marginalized groups and individuals, and I’ve been lovingly corrected:

I’ve assumed my gay friends who just got married wanted kids.
I’ve called a person in their fifties a boomer.
I’ve talked about the joys of pregnancy in a room full of women, ignoring the reality that someone may be struggling with infertility.
I’ve asked my sons to help me move furniture and my daughter to clean the kitchen.
I’ve called a Puerto Rican man Mexican. I’ve called a Japanese woman Chinese.
I was surprised when a White-passing woman told me she identifies as Latina.
I’ve used the wrong pronouns when meeting a transgender person.
I’ve called my friend into environmentally safe cleaners, “crunchy.”
I’ve rolled my eyes when told we’re having dinner with vegetarian friends.
I’ve shared grammar memes just to prove I know how to use the word whom correctly.
I’ve celebrated when a prosperity pastor was found having a “moral failure.”

“I’ve been judgmental. I have biases I need to interrogate and undo. I want to be considered an ally to all these people, but I can’t see how their shalom has been violated with my own prejudices in the way.

“The first act of peacemaking is paying attention to my own privilege that often comes in the form of a plank in my eye. I cannot see the suffering of others well as long as it’s securely lodged in there. So I offer myself grace and receive forgiveness. I remember to accept help and guidance from people – even people I would judge, for they have insights and wisdom I will never have. I invite people in to hold me accountable, and I let the Holy Spirit check me when I am tempted to use my privilege to judge instead of seek justice.”

I’m telling you, I would gladly attend an anti-racism training led by this woman! I would say to her, “Challenge me as much as I need to be challenged. Don’t hold back.” I think of the program we tried back in my Buffalo days, when we got folks from white congregations in the suburbs to visit black churches in the city, not just for worship but also to sit down and talk with one another. At the start of the conversation time, a pastor of a suburban church shared his anxiety with me. He said he was afraid he was going to say something that would come out sounding racist.

Well, I would tell that colleague today to come to this anti-racism training because, even if (more like even when) he said something that could be taken as offensive, it would be alright – not that it would get swept under the rug, but that we’d deal with together as members of the Beloved Community. We would each become last in service to the other. And in that way, we would become first in saving our lives and healing our world.

I’m serious about the transformative power of Osheta Moore’s book. I don’t think I’ve ever told the story of my experience back in the day of being called a racist. Until this last week. Being called Beloved by a person of color who has been affected by White supremacy, being called out for things that until I read the book I hadn’t even thought about and being called in to partner in the kin-dom of God, was huge.

I am reminded of one of my favorite bible verses, when in John’s gospel Jesus says, “I am the Vine; you are the branches. Without me, you can do nothing.” The work we do in the world is hard, arguably harder than ever before, with the very life of our planet at stake. Sometimes it feels too overwhelming, and we get discouraged. And then someone comes along and leads us back to Jesus, with whom we can do everything with, as James calls it, wisdom from above: “Wisdom from above has purity as its essence. It shows humility; it works for peace; it’s kind and considerate. It’s full of compassion and shows itself by doing good. Nor is there any trace of partiality or hypocrisy in it. Peacemakers, when they work for peace, sow the seeds which will bear fruit in holiness.”

I found a YouTube video of an interview with Osheta Moore. I love that the interviewer started out by saying, “I’m trying to restrain myself from gushing about this book” and then proceeded to gush about it.

“I totally get it,” I whispered to her. “I totally get it.”

Amen

Mark 9:30-37

According to Jesus, the greatest among us are those committed to service and honoring the least of these. Greatness involves welcoming the children in our midst and giving hospitality to the “nuisances and nobodies” (John Dominic Crossan). It is written . . .

They left that district and began a journey through Galilee, but Jesus did not want anyone to know about it. He was teaching the disciples along these lines: “The Promised One is going to be delivered into the hands of others and will be put to death, but three days later will rise again.” Though they failed to understand these words, they were afraid to question him. They returned home to Capernaum. Once they were inside the house, Jesus began to ask them, “What were you discussing on the way home?”

At this they fell silent, for on the way they had been arguing about who among them was the greatest. So Jesus sat down and called the Twelve over and said, “If any of you wants to be first, you must be the last one of all and at the service of all.”

Then Jesus brought a little child into their midst and, putting his arm around the child, said to them, ”Whoever welcomes a child such as this for my sake welcomes me. And whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the One who sent me.”

A New Look at the Old Trinity

Trinity Sunday May 30, 2021

Back in 2015, I was a workshop presenter at the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Salt Lake City. It was called: What Does It Mean to Be a Christian in an Interfaith World? And it was based on the book I was writing. I was scheduled for Monday afternoon and on Sunday night I discovered – to my horror – that somehow my workshop had disappeared from the schedule. You see, there were hundreds of workshops and presentations throughout the five days of the Parliament, attended by almost 10,000 people from 73 countries. Schedule changes were constant, which is why there was an app that you needed just to keep up. So I knew how and why my workshop had gotten lost; I just didn’t know how to fix it.

The Parliament had offices in the convention center, so off I went to get help. Only problem: it was Sunday evening and no one was there (I think many people had gone offsite for a concert by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir). Thankfully, there were still some volunteers roaming around and one of them obviously saw my distress and asked if he could help. I explained the problem and he started making calls. Finally, he said that he’d left a message for someone who could help, but we needed to wait for a callback.

So we waited. The young man explained that most of the volunteers were local college students. He was a religion major, studying Christianity that semester. He himself was Hindu and said he welcomed the opportunity to ask about my religious tradition. “Sure,” I said, certain I could field any biblical or theological questions. Now – look at the name of this day on the church calendar. You can see it coming, can’t you? “Would you explain the Trinity to me?”

Troitsky,Cathedral,,Saint,Petersburg,,Russia-circa,July,,2016:,Holy,Icon — Troitsky Cathedral Saint Petersburg

Oh boy! The Trinity has become a bit of a conundrum for contemporary Christians who have been striving to place one’s relationship with the Divine above belief in doctrines and dogma. And Trinity Sunday is the only day of the entire church year that is dedicated to a doctrine – and one not even in the Bible. In fact, the eminent 20^th century theologian Karl Rahner claimed that if the Trinity were to quietly disappear from Christian theology, never to be mentioned again, most of Christendom wouldn’t even notice its absence.

I don’t know if that’s true, but I do know most churches have progressed far past the days when we’d read the Athanasian Creed on this day. You can find it at the end of this post. It’s a reminder of our history, of what was important to early Christians as they established the Church, and how they made sense of (or at least tried to make sense of the relationship of Jesus to God and how the Holy Spirit fit into the picture. The doctrine of God as three-in-one is how they explained it. It’s like St. Anselm of Canterbury’s famous motto: “faith seeking understanding,” which is what the early Christians were trying to do. They were asking: how can we understand our experience of Jesus the Christ; how can we comprehend our experience of the Holy Spirit?

Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria in the 4^th century, was the strongest defender of the doctrine of the Trinity. The creed attributed to him expands on the Nicene Creed, which had been developed (to put it in a positive way) as a statement that would unify the key beliefs of Christianity, and (to put it in a more critical light) to condemn as heretics all those who disagreed with it. You can see how seriously they took this by the last line of the Athanasian Creed: “One cannot be saved without believing this firmly and faithfully.”

Added to that, it’s the scholastic theology of the 11^th-13^th centuries that has dominated our approach to the Trinity. The goal of scholasticism was knowledge, understanding, rationality, and the demonstration of the reasonableness of Christian faith – hence doctrine.

But times have changed. Adherence to creeds and doctrines and dogma have become more of a source of division than of unity. Still, we are a trinitarian church. We use trinitarian language in our liturgies, hymns, and prayers. Some Christians who have given up on the Trinity have asked me why I have not. To answer that, let me tell you a story that was told to Cynthia Bourgeault, author of The Holy Trinity and the Law of Three by her friend, the Abkhazian Sufi elder Murat Yagan:

“In the years following World War II, Murat had spent time in a remote corner of eastern Turkey, where he became friends with an elderly couple, with whom he frequently shared a meal. Life had been good to them, but their one sadness was that they missed their only son, who had left some years before to seek work in Istanbul. And although he’d become a successful businessman, they had infrequent contact with him and missed him greatly. One day when Murat appeared on their doorstep, the old couple were bursting with pride to show him the new tea cupboard that their son had just sent them from Istanbul. It was indeed a handsome piece of furniture, and the woman had proudly arranged her best tea set on its upper shelf. Murat was polite but curious. Why would their son go to such expense to send them a tea cupboard? And why, for a piece of furniture whose ostensible purpose was storage, was there such a noticeable absence of drawers and cabinets? ‘Are you sure it’s a tea cupboard?’ Murat asked them. They were sure.

But the question continued to nag at Murat. Finally, just as he was taking his leave, he said, ‘Do you mind if I have a closer look at this tea cupboard?’ With their permission, he turned it around and unscrewed a couple of packing boards. A set of cabinet doors swung open to reveal inside a fully operative ham radio set. That ‘tea cupboard,’ of course, was intended to connect them to their son. But unaware of its real contents, they were simply using it to display their china.

Cynthia Bourgeault says: “To my mind, that is an apt analogy for how we Christians have been using the Holy Trinity. It’s our theological tea cupboard, upon which we display our finest doctrinal china, our prized assertion that Jesus, a human being, is fully divine. This is not necessarily a bad thing, just as it was not a bad thing for the woman to set forth her prettiest teacups on the new piece of furniture. But what if, unbeknownst to nearly everyone, inside it is concealed a powerful communications tool that could connect us to the rest of the worlds (visible and invisible), allow us to navigate our way through many of the doctrinal and ethical logjams of our time, and place the teachings of Jesus in a dynamic metaphysical framework that would truly unlock their power? It’s simply a matter of turning the tea cabinet around and learning how to look inside.”

I love this story! And I believe we are finally beginning to look inside our tea cabinet, where we discover there have been other ways of understanding Trinity all along. Like so many other Christian concepts and symbols there is something archetypal about it. As Carl Jung discovered:

Triads of gods appear very early, at the primitive level.
Arrangement in triads is an archetype in the history of religion,
which in all probability formed the basis of the Christian Trinity.

So while we’ve traditionally explained the development of the doctrine of the Trinity as the need to give divine status to Jesus and the Holy Spirit while remaining monotheistic, it’s likely that from a psychological perspective it’s the other way round. Our unconscious disposition was already trinitarian, which then required a theological explanation. Three is often considered to be the perfect number, the unifier of dualities. And it appears, not only in Christianity, but across cultures, religions, and time.

Franciscan Richard Rohr, author of The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See writes:

Trinitarian theology was almost made to order to humiliate the logical mind.
If actually encountered and meditated on,
God as trinity breaks down the binary system of the mind.
For a Christian who lives in a trinitarian spirituality,
it makes either-or thinking totally useless.
Perhaps, in addition to everything else, the trinity is blessing,
to make us patient before Mystery and to humble our dualistic minds.

Medieval mystics, such as Hildegard of Bingen, Meister Eckhart and Julian of Norwich got it. For them, understanding the Trinity was possible only through experience, not through reason. Hildegard, who’d had a vision of the Trinity, wrote,

No one can comprehend the extent of Its glory and the limits of Its power
as It shines with the immense sweetness and the brightness of Divinity.

But it’s Julian of Norwich who really delves into the 3-ness of it all. When Julian was 30 years old, she had several visions and then spent the next 20 years reflecting on these visions and writing down what she’d learned from them. She concluded,

For all our life consists of three: In the first we have our being,
and in the second we have our increasing,
and in the third we have our fulfillment.
The first is nature, the second is mercy and the third is grace.

But probably the most famous of Julian’s visions was this one. And from this comes the portrayal we often see of her holding a hazelnut. She wrote:

“In this he showed me a little thing, no bigger than a hazel nut, lying in the palm of my hand. And it was as round as any ball. I looked upon it with the eye of my understanding, and I thought, ‘What may this be?’ And it was answered generally thus, ‘It is all that is made.’ I marveled how it might last, for I thought it might suddenly have fallen to nothing for its littleness. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and ever shall, for God loves it. And so have all things their beginning by the love of God. In this little thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it. The second that God loves it. And the third, that God keeps it. But what is this to me? Truly, the Creator, the Keeper, the Lover. For until I am substantially “oned” to God, I may never have full rest nor true bliss. That is to say, until I be so fastened to God that there is nothing that is made between my God and me.”

So between Jung’s archetypes and Julian’s mystical experiences, we have an entry into a much bigger, much richer way of approaching the mystery of the Trinity. It makes sense that we’d use three to break our concepts of God into three parts to better understand this person, this being, this presence, this reality – this ‘this’ we call God – knowing that we’ll always be limited by the smallness of our imaginations and capacity for wonder, yet knowing also that there have been those who have seen the totality, the unity of the three. And have seen also our place within it. What the mystics have described is the communal nature of God, the inherent relationality of the Trinity. The Creator, the Keeper and the Lover are not self-contained, self-sufficient entities in a pantheon of gods. Rather, the Trinity is a dance of Love, with us dancing in the midst of the circle as well. It is a dance of communion and of community.

Not just in Xianity. Even in Judaism, there are those who see precursors in the mystical teachings of The Kabbalah, which says that the three original emanations from Ein Sof, the Kabbalistic concept of God as “The Endless One” or “All That Is,” are Nothingness, Wisdom and Understanding. These three emanations are the basis upon which all other existence upon the Tree of Life was formed and the essence of which followers were urged never to try to understand.

Elaine Pagels wrote in The Gnostic Gospels that early Christian concepts of the Trinity were molded from traditional Judaic terminology. Of course, Judaism – like Islam – rejects the Trinity based on their belief that giving Jesus divinity at all was blasphemous. Nonetheless, “three” is present in both and is perhaps a way through the interfaith roadblocks caused by the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.

Trinities appear in eastern traditions as well. The Tibetan Book of the Dead describes the “Three Bodies of Buddhahood” as three levels of existence: the ordinary body, which becomes the Emanation Body; speech, which is the Beatific Body; and the mind, which is the Truth Body. The three Buddha Bodies correlate with body, mind and spirit. There are also trinities in The Tao Te Ching in the “Three Jewels” or “Three Treasures,” which are the Buddha, the Dharma (teaching) and the Sangha (community). The Jains recognize the trinity of samyag-darsana (correct insight), samyag-jnana (correct knowledge), and samyag-caritra (correct conduct). In The Bhagavad-Gita, there is the threefold nature of the Self, as told to Arjuna by the Hindu God Krishna: “Threefold is the faith of the embodied, which is inherent in their nature: Sattvic (pure), Rajasic (passionate) and Tamasic (darkness).”

And Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh had no difficulty seeing the correlation between Western and Eastern concepts of the Trinity. After a meeting with Christian clergy, he said, “all of us have the seed of the Holy Spirit in us, the capacity of healing, transforming, and loving. When we touch that seed, we are able to touch God the Father and God the Son.” He presents Trinity as a process of direct knowing of the Divine that transcends all religious labels and names.

So, if we go back before all the controversies of early Christianity, the hurling of anathemas at theologians who disagreed with the winning side at the Council of Nicea . . . and back before epic battles, such as whether to say “We believe in the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father” or “ We believe in the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and the Son” – which was a huge deal back in the day and one of the reasons for the split between the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church . . . and back before our modern attempts at explaining the Trinity with shamrocks, triangles, interlocking rings, and science project displays of water, ice, and gas . . . we find that our ancient ancestors understood the triune nature of existence on the deepest level of the subconscious, which then translated into symbols and archetypes found in our origin stories, myths and fairy tales, like The Three Little Pigs and Goldilocks and the Three Bears and children’s songs like Three Blind Mice. And in religious texts.

As we move further into the Age of the Spirit (which I talked about last week), as we become more adept at using our right brains to re-imagine – as best we are even capable of doing – what God is like, we will see Trinity (this number three), not as a literal, limiting number, but as a process of union with the completeness and perfection of All That Is whether you call that: Father/Son/Holy Spirit, Creator/Redeemer/Sanctifier, Creator/Creating/Creation, or (as St. Augustine suggested) Lover/Beloved/Love Itself.

Trinity is the very nature of God, and this God is a circle dance, a centrifugal force flowing outward, and then drawing all things into the dance centripetally. If this God names himself/herself in creation and in reality then there must be a ‘family resemblance’ between everything else and the nature of the heart of God.

I personally appreciate the imagery of Trinity as the Divine Dance. As Richard Rohr has described:

Process, dance, circle, heart of God. This is not the Trinity of doctrine and dogma and creeds – although some do find meaning there. I would not exclude anyone’s preferred access to Divinity. As long as we don’t mistake a ham radio set for a tea cupboard.

Following from all of this, we, on this Trinity Sunday, might ask ourselves what it means to be a Trinitarian congregation. David Lose, former president of the Lutheran Seminary at Philadelphia, defines a Trinitarian congregation as 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. Not a bad mission statement at all! Therefore, may we remove the china cups and knickknacks from our spiritual shelves and discover the treasures that are inside. In the name of Lover, Beloved, and Love Itself. Amen

The Athanasian Creed

Whoever desires to be saved must, above all, hold the catholic* faith. Whoever does not keep it whole and undefiled will without doubt perish eternally. And the catholic* faith is this: that we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in unity, neither confusing the persons nor dividing the substance. For the Father is one person, the Son is another, and the Holy Spirit is another. But the Godhead of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit is one: the glory equal, the majesty coeternal. As the Father is, so is the Son, and so is the Holy Spirit: the Father uncreated, the Son uncreated, the Holy Spirit uncreated; the Father infinite, the Son infinite, the Holy Spirit infinite; the Father eternal, the Son eternal, the Holy Spirit eternal. And yet there are not three Eternals, but one Eternal, just as there are not three Uncreated or three Infinites, but one Uncreated and one Infinite. In the same way, the Father is almighty, the Son almighty, the Spirit almighty; and yet there are not three Almighties but one Almighty. So the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God; and yet there are not three Gods, but one God. So the Father is Lord, the Son is Lord, the Holy Spirit is Lord; and yet there are not three Lords, but one Lord. Just as we are compelled by the Christian truth to acknowledge each distinct person as God and Lord, so also are we prohibited by the catholic* religion to say that there are three Gods or Lords.

The Father is not made nor created nor begotten by anyone. The Son is neither made nor created, but begotten of the Father alone. The Holy Spirit is of the Father and of the Son, neither made nor created nor begotten but proceeding. Thus, there is one Father, not three Fathers; one Son, not three Sons; one Holy Spirit, not three Holy Spirits.

And in this Trinity none is before or after another; none is greater or less than another; but the whole three persons are coeternal with each other and coequal so that in all things, as has been stated above, the Trinity in Unity and Unity in Trinity is to be worshiped. Therefore, whoever desires to be saved must think thus about the Trinity.

But it is also necessary for everlasting salvation that one faithfully believe the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, it is the right faith that we believe and confess that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is at the same time both God and man. He is God, begotten from the substance of the Father before all ages; and He is man, born from the substance of His mother in this age: perfect God and perfect man, composed of a rational soul and human flesh; equal to the Father with respect to His divinity, less than the Father with respect to His humanity. Although He is God and man, He is not two, but one Christ: one, however, not by the conversion of the divinity into flesh but by the assumption of the humanity into God; one altogether, not by confusion of substance, but by unity of person. For as the rational soul and flesh is one man, so God and man is one Christ, who suffered for our salvation, descended into hell, rose again on the third day from the dead, ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father, from whence He will come to judge the living and the dead. At His coming all people will rise again with their bodies and give an account concerning their own deeds. And those who have done good will enter into eternal life, and those who have done evil into eternal fire.

This is the catholic* faith; whoever does not believe it faithfully and firmly cannot be saved.

* catholic = universal 11

Zooming into Pentecost – Again

john-stuart-6-hrs-stushie-art-peace-prayer-in-a-time-of-conflict-and-tragedy-we-need-to-pray-for-peace.-crayons-markers-and-some-digital.-feel-free-to-use.-god-comfort-and-guide-us-all. — John Stuart, used with permission

I’m glad to see that so many of you remembered to wear red today. I know it’s not as easy to remember as wearing green for St. Patrick’s Day or red and green for Christmas. Pentecost isn’t one of the big cultural holidays. But it wasn’t always so. In fact, from early times Christians have come up with some pretty wild ways to celebrate Pentecost and remind folks of the fiery tongues and mighty wind that we read about in Acts.

Most of these customs come from medieval Europe when church festivals were the dominant force in daily life. And Pentecost was one of the biggest days on the church’s calendar. So for instance, in some churches when the priest said, “Come, Holy Spirit,” the choir would make whooshing noises in imitation of the wind. Although, in some countries, like France, the effect was achieved by sounding trumpets. In Italy they scattered red rose petals from the ceiling of the church. In Finland there’s a saying that if you don’t have a sweetheart by Pentecost, you won’t have one during the whole summer. In England, there is the charming custom of cheese rolling associated with Pentecost. It’s not clear what the origin of that is, probably originally a Pagan rite, but since the 15^th century cheese has been rolled down hills, and people have competed to catch it.

1103042613_27550962e8_b — “St. Stephen’s Cathedral – ‘Holy Ghost’ Hole” by pennhoosier is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

The one I like best, though, is the Holy Ghost hole. It seems that many of the great cathedrals were actually built with Pentecost in mind. Hidden in the domed and vaulted ceilings were trap doors that were used just on Pentecost. During worship, some brave parishioners would climb up onto the roof and at the appropriate moment during the service, they would release live doves through the trap doors, through the painted skies and clouds of the cathedral ceiling. The doves would come swooping down on the congregation as living symbols of the presence of the Holy Spirit. At the same time, the choir would make whooshing and drumming sounds, like a holy windstorm. Then, finally, as the doves were swooping and the wind blowing, the trap doors would open again, and bushels of rose petals showered down upon the congregation, symbolizing tongues of flame.

Even smaller churches had these holes in their roofs. But instead of live doves, a large painted disk portraying a white dove surrounded by golden rays on a blue background was lowered by rope from the Holy Ghost hole as the choir hissed or whooshed or drummed. Then, as the disk hovered over the congregation, rose petals would rain down upon them. In some places lighted straw was tossed down instead of flowers. But, as you can imagine, the danger of setting the congregation on fire led to the eventual demise of this custom.

Sounds like a lot of fun, doesn’t it? That tricky Holy Spirit, so difficult to define and explain, inspired those medieval folks to come up with some pretty creative ways to do it. Today, many churches try to keep up the holy chaos by filling their sanctuaries with red balloons or red geraniums, using red paraments and vestments, and inviting members to wear red. If we were able to meet in person and share food together, we might have a Pentecost cake to celebrate the birthday of the church This church festival encourages us to break out of the usual routines, engage our creativity, push the boundaries and sail on the wind of an uncontained Spirit.

Pentecost on Zoom – again?
But here we are in our second Pentecost on Zoom (although Zoom does sound a little rushing-wind-like, doesn’t it?). Still, no balloons, no cake, no red flowers on the altar again this year. It might be hard to enter into the spirit of Pentecost. Although last year was more challenging. Pentecost Sunday came just six days after the murder of George Floyd. And we had the idea of the breath of the Spirit juxtaposed with a man gasping, “I can’t breathe.” This year, while many of our societal ills are as pressing as ever, we are beginning to see a light at the end of the long tunnel of our pandemic isolation. As restrictions are loosened, we might feel as if a fresh breath of air is blowing through our windows.

But we must admit that emerging from isolation is not completely anxiety-free. Even though the CDC announced that we could take off our masks if we’re fully vaccinated, there’s been a lot of confusion and hesitation among some. As we do move toward greater freedom, we must also acknowledge the traumatic time that the past fourteen months has been. And we need to be gentle with ourselves and with others as we all try to navigate the “new normal,” which could be different from one day to the next – at least for a while.

And what about church?
Last week I was part of a video seminar on planning for doing church post-pandemic. One of the best words of advice I heard was: make a plan, have a roadmap for going forward, but be ready at any time to change that plan. Being able to pivot quickly will be crucial. I thought about that advice as I re-read the letter that was supposed to go out to the congregation about our plans for reopening in September. Then the CDC announcement came and there was a flurry of excitement and confusion about what this could mean. Gov. Newsome has said that California will be fully open on June 15. But what does that mean for doing church? The letter we wrote needs to be updated; the plan to send it out was put on hold until we can get better clarification on what guidelines will still have to be followed.

I’ll be honest, it’s been frustrating. Promised updates have not come through. Some protocols are buried in long memos about other venues, businesses, schools, etc. Most of the guidelines are still from the time before most people have been vaccinated. I did get an email last week from the San Francisco Interfaith Council with an update from the SF Department of Public Health. Finally on page four, there was information for church’s about creating fully vaccinated sections. But still not much information about what this means in terms of singing, passing the peace, and receiving Holy Communion. All this is to say that we’re watching closely as the protocols develop. The health and safety of every person is the bottom line, so there will be no rush to return until we’re clear on how to best ensure that.

Hybrid Church???
In the meantime, other plans for our return to the church building are going forward. One of the things that I would say a majority of congregations have learned is that some form of online presence is here to stay. And just as we scrambled to learn how to do Zoom Church last year, our new challenge is to learn how to do hybrid church, that is a combination of both in-person and online opportunities for worship – and other church activities. At our book discussion group last week, I asked two questions (we’re reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book Life Together and the first section is all about the church community): how has Zoom Church made being in community better; how has Zoom Church made being in community more difficult? The answers weren’t really surprising, but I think that it will be good for us all to answer those questions for ourselves as we think about returning.

But returning to what? I have been realizing more and more how we are about to enter into a time of unknowing in the church such as we have never experienced. I don’t mean unknowing the beliefs of our faith. One of the speakers in the seminar told the story of talking once about the future of the church and changing the church and a man spoke up to say that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. And she said, “Yes, but not the church, you know, or maybe yours is, and maybe that’s why you’re losing members.” That is to say that indeed Jesus Christ is the same, but how we communicate that through the church must adapt.

Our dilemma right now is that we’re not yet completely clear on how we will need to adapt. So we’ll keep making a plan, and we’ll hold it lightly enough to modify or change it as needs arise. Michael and I will be attending a three-part seminar on “How to Do Hybrid Church” starting this week. The sessions (out of Luther Seminary, St. Paul) are at 7:00 am our time, so your prayers are definitely welcome. Thankfully we’ll have access to the recordings so we can go back over what I may have dozed off through.

The benefit of being there live is that we’ll meet and talk and share with other worship leaders who are working on these same issues. If there’s one big lesson I’ve learned from this past year it’s that none of us can go it alone, especially these days. So, hopefully we’ll gain a good support network of hybrid church developers.

I’ve learned a lot already. Two things, in particular. One: whenever we do go back into the church building, doing church will not be the same as it was before. It may never be the same as it was before. And two: hybrid worship is not simply setting up a laptop on the altar and logging into Zoom. There is a bigger concern. And that is: how will we be a community in the “new normal”? What will we need to do to maintain and nurture our congregation as a community of faith? How will we invite others into being part of this community?

Become disillusioned
In the Bonhoeffer book he talks about the need for us to become ‘disillusioned’ about what we think church is. That is, we have to let go of things that are not necessary for being a spiritual community. These might be things we treasure, that have had great meaning for us. But as we adapt and change, our treasures may have to be examined and maybe even relinquished. I can imagine how disconcerting this could be, especially if we have disagreements about what is needful and what is not.

I’ll give you an example of one of my disillusionments. When we first went into lockdown, I had a vision for when we would return to our building. We would have a big ‘Welcome Home’ celebration and invite members, former members, neighbors, community dignitaries to come. Maybe we’d even have my installation. It would be a grand way to begin getting back to normal. But now I’ve come to realize that that vision is not realistic. Our return will be different. I have had to relinquish my idea of what that day should be and be ready to plan accordingly when we know better what will be.

And I’ve come to realize that focusing on the protocols and guidelines is really not the most important thing before us. “When will we return to the building?” – even “How will we return to the building?” are the wrong questions. “Who are we going to be when we return?” is the overriding question.

That might sound intimidating. After all, it’s easier to make decisions about nuts and bolts issues, especially when we finally get good information. The existential questions are not so easy to nail down. But isn’t this just what Pentecost is about?

Matthew L. Skinner, who is a professor of New Testament at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, wrote this for Pentecost 2011. His words made sense then, but even more so today. He said: “Pentecost observances are more than a celebration of the past. They are not merely an end to Easter or a chance to launch summer programming. They are not opportunities for stoking nostalgia about the church’s supposed glory days. Who needs those? Pentecost is an invitation to dream. For when a community of faith quits dreaming dreams, it has little to offer either its members or the wider world. Like any good dream, these dreams involve adopting a new perspective on what’s possible, rousing our creativity to free us from conventional expectations. They help us see that maybe what we thought was outlandish actually lies within reach.”

There are those who say that the pandemic has forced the church to change in ways that it should have been doing all along. We were already in the midst of a decline. And while some saw that as an opportunity to try new things, others dug in their heels. Now we don’t have a choice. There’s no going back to normal. Now we really do have to rely on the Holy Spirit. And we have to rely on each other. In baptism we are sealed with the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ’s own. We are the community of saints – sinners, too. We’ll need to remember that as we work together to create the new presence of the Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd on the corner of Burlingame and Channing. Will we always agree? Nope. Will we always love and respect one another as beloved children of God. Oh, yes.

The Age of the Spirit
In 2014 the late Phyllis Tickle, who was a leading author and speaker in the progressive Christian movement, wrote a book entitled The Age of the Spirit. Her hypothesis was that we have had the Age of the Father, which was the Old Testament with its teachings, its ways of understanding God, and God’s ways of interacting with Creation. Then came the Age of the Son, marked by the birth of God in human form and the growth of the church. Emerging after that would be the Age of the Spirit, when humankind would relate primarily to the third member of the Trinity. This time would be marked by a decreased importance in church structures, sacraments, creeds, and clergy, when all people would begin to relate more directly to the Divine.

That doesn’t mean we just forget about God the Creator and Christ the Redeemer. But it may be time for the oft-neglected Spirit to come into her own.

We just might be there. Which means every day could be Pentecost. Every day could be an experience of the lively Spirit of God, blowing freely and wherever God wills, God’s gentle and occasionally wild presence, that transforms lives and communities, breaks down barriers, and gives life to weary and uncertain persons and communities. revives the dry bones.

Are we ready for a holy adventure? If so, strap on your seat belt, put on your helmet, and get ready. We just might be in for a wild and exciting ride. Happy Birthday, Church!

Amen

Acts 2:1-21
When the day of Pentecost arrived, the disciples all met in one room. Suddenly they heard what sounded like a violent, rushing wind from heaven; the noise filled the entire house in which they were sitting. Something appeared to them that seemed like tongues of fire; these separated and came to rest on the head of each one. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as she enabled them.

Now there were devout people living in Jerusalem from every nation under heaven, and at this sound they all assembled. But they were bewildered to hear their native languages being spoken. They were amazed and astonished: “Surely all of these people speaking are Galileans! How does it happen that each of us hears these words in our native tongue? We are Parthians, Medes and Elamites, people from Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya around Cyrene, as well as visitors from Rome – all Jews or converts to Judaism – Cretans and Arabs, too; we hear them preaching, each in our own language, about the marvels of God!” All were amazed and disturbed. They asked each other, “What does this mean?” But others said mockingly, “They’ve drunk too much new wine.”

Then Peter stood up with the Eleven and addressed the crowd: “People of Judea, and all you who live in Jerusalem! Listen to what I have to say! These people are not drunk as you think—it’s only nine o’clock in the morning! No, it is what the prophet Joel spoke of:

‘In the days to come – it is our God who speaks – I will pour out my spirit on all humankind. Your daughters and sons will prophesy, your young people will see visions, and your elders will dream dreams. Even on the most insignificant of my people, both women and men, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy. And I will display wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below: blood, fire and billowing smoke. The sun will be turned into darkness and the moon will become blood before the coming of the great and sublime day of our God. And all who call upon the name of our God will be saved.’”

Grace In-Between the Lines

Sermon for the Seventh Sunday of Easter

Grace-BLOG

Today I want to talk about grace in-between the lines. I’m sure we could all come up with stories about how grace – a full-out, unwarranted, undeserved, wonderful thing – happened in your life. The birth of a child, falling in love, being forgiven by a friend, getting an unexpected windfall at just the right time, feeling completely in tune with life and with God –are examples of the kind of grace we could name and celebrate. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the grace that’s there even when we don’t know it’s there, that is in-between the lines of the stories of our lives and we could easily miss it – or just as easily believe it isn’t even there at all.

Martin Luther wrote this in his commentary on the Book of Romans: “Faith is a living, daring confidence in God’s grace, so sure and certain that one could stake one’s life on it a thousand times.” Let that sink in for a moment.

“Faith is a living, daring confidence in God’s grace, so sure and certain that one could stake one’s life on it a thousand times.”

When I read that, I couldn’t help thinking about a man who got up and spoke at a seminar that was supposed to help religious leaders learn how to minister to returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan. Speakers had addressed the spiritual and moral wounds of war and the fact that most veterans were unlikely to enter our churches. There is a variety of reasons for that, but what this man had to say was the most heart-breaking. He was a therapist who counsels vets, and he described the inability of many veterans, in light of things they had seen and things they had done, to get back into ‘a state of grace.’ Imagine being in that dark and lonely place and hearing Luther’s words. Faith as “a living, daring confidence in God’s grace, so sure and certain that one could stake one’s life on it a thousand times” might seem like an impossible dream.

Another example is the man I used to visit in a skilled nursing facility. He would often reminisce in great detail things he had said in anger or mistakes he had made – over 50 years ago. He ruminated about these things all the time, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t let go and enjoy the living, daring confidence in God’s grace available to him.

b448faec-783b-4d0f-af28-32a4c8b03249 — “Per un grapat de monedes // For a Handful of Coins” by~Oryctes~ is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

And that brings me to Judas. Now- don’t get me wrong. I’m not going to compare veterans – or anyone else – to Judas as a betrayer. I know that as soon as we hear the name, we think of words like villainy and treachery. But that’s not where I’m going. So stay with me for a bit.

Let’s go back to today’s reading from Acts where the early Christian church was having its first organizational crisis. The disciples had to call a congregational meeting so they could hold an election to fill the vacancy left by Judas – because somewhere, somebody had decided there had to be twelve apostles to symbolize the twelve tribes of Israel. And now they were down one apostle. Verses 15-17 give the explanation for the vacancy; 21-26 explain the nomination and election process.

3998020102_44e3c775bf_b — “the death of judas” by andrevanb is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

But notice that there are some verses missing in the passage from the lectionary. Where are verses 18-21? What happened in between verses 18-21? Well, what happened was the death of Judas, the gorier of the two accounts of his death. In between the lines of the story is a desperate act of disbelief in God’s grace.

But wait a minute. Why should we care? Don’t we believe in the wickedness of Judas, his utter unredeemability? How could we think there could have been any grace available to him in between these lines? Aren’t we supposed to accept some version of the horrific picture painted by Dante of the ninth circle of Hell, where Satan gnaws on Judas for all eternity?

Maybe not. There are some other possibilities for thinking about Judas that not only see the historic Judas as redeemable, but also his name which for so long has been synonymous with traitor.

One of the most convincing arguments is that in the earliest writings of the church Judas is not a treacherous character at all. In the letters of Paul, the first one written around twenty years before the first gospel, there is nothing hostile about Judas, at least by name. Paul does write about “the night in which Jesus was betrayed,” but says nothing about it being by one of ‘the twelve.’ Also, when Paul described the experience of resurrection, he said that Jesus was seen by ‘the twelve’ – not the remaining eleven. So Judas is still among them, according to Paul.

Where Judas begins to take a hit is in the gospels. Starting with Mark, the first gospel written, you can see the image of Judas becoming increasingly negative. By the time John wrote, Christianity was breaking away from being a sect within Judaism, and we can read the hostility in John’s references to ‘the Jews’ – of whom he was one, but of a different church body (and we know how nasty church fights can be).

Continue reading Grace In-Between the Lines

Connected with Jesus on D’Vine

Sermon
for the
Fifth Sunday
of Easter

Remember this scene from last September? I certainly won’t ever forget waking up that morning to dark orange skies. Those of us who weren’t directly affected by the catastrophic wildfire season got an unnerving taste of the apocalyptic conditions not very far away. Of course those who live and work in burned over areas can tell us all about the devastation they experienced. One industry especially hard hit was winemaking. Vineyards are not only still recovering from the 2020 fires but are busy working with municipalities to put in place safeguards for the coming fire season.

Here in California we know that grapevines are precious commodities. Our hearts break at scenes like this one of burned over vineyards. We know that the loss of these vines has a profound effect on everyone – from vineyard owners, to local economies, to firefighters and first responders, hospitals, homeowners, the environment – and us, as we found out on that orange day in September when the clouds of destruction blew over us. It was a tragic time, and we pray that won’t see one like it again.

When I read the gospel text for today, I couldn’t help thinking about grapevines in a much more concrete way. Sure, “I am the vine” is a metaphor. We know Jesus wasn’t saying he was a literal vine; that would be silly. But just as the “I am the Good Shepherd” imagery resonates in a special way with a congregation called the Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd, our being so close to wine country gives us a special relationship to “the Vine.”

Of course, image of shepherd and vine would have been very familiar to the early followers of Jesus. We’re reminded how many of the ancient symbols of our faith are derived from nature and agriculture – and how they still work, even in our urban environment.

This is now the fifth of the seven weeks of Easter, and the second of four weeks that delve into what it means to live in intimacy with God. And I have to say that I feel some reluctance to even talk about it any further, that we should just sit quietly and actually practice getting in touch with that place within each of us that is intimately connected to the Divine. I’m reminded of a retreat I once attended on the theme of prayer. We learned about the history of prayer, about different kinds of prayer, about authors who wrote books about prayer. But we never actually prayed! Sounds ridiculous, right? So I don’t want to repeat that retreat leader’s mistake.

I would much rather create a space where something amazing could happen, something like what Thomas Merton experienced. Merton, the Trappist monk who died in 1968, wrote about a day in 1958, when he was running errands in downtown Louisville, Kentucky. He described it this way:

In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly over-whelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness… This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud… I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are.

And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun. Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts, where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time.

As far as I am concerned, that’s a perfect description of intimacy with the Vine! But just as Merton hadn’t done anything to plan or prepare for this revelation, so it often happens with us – as a wonderful surprise. Although I will offer something that might be helpful. Here’s a guided meditation on the “I am the Vine” saying and you might find it helpful in entering into a meditative space.

For now, a few words about what was going on back then for Jesus and the disciples and what the take-away might be for us. The larger context of this passage in John is that Jesus is in the midst of what’s sometimes called his “farewell discourse” to the disciples (John 14-17). It is a passage of consolation; Jesus is assuring his dismayed disciples that he’s not abandoning them. What’s coming will not be distance but rather a radical closeness. Remember that John is writing maybe sixty years after Jesus had died. But rather than being a made-up fiction about what Jesus said and did, it is a testimony to what these followers had experienced. I imagine it to be similar to what Thomas Merton described. John wrote of what he knew – deep in his soul – to be true. So as Jesus assures the disciples that they won’t be abandoned, he’s also assuring us.

The image of the vine and the branches is a word of solace. The connection between Jesus and the disciples will not be severed, even by death. That connection would be so organic that separation would be virtually unimaginable. Their very lives would be signs of that connection, just as the life and fruit of a branch are signs of its ongoing connection to its vine.

Unfortunately, there are some Christians who hear this passage as a threat, like “If you want to live, you’d better stay connected to me, or else.” The pruning part is especially worrisome. A colleague wrote this:

As a teenager this metaphor freaked me out. In my conservative Evangelical church being fruitful meant converting others to believe like us. The pressure was on: to avoid being pruned and burned we needed to go get converts (“bear fruit”)! BTW, we were not speaking about bringing people to faith for the first time. This was mostly about persuading Anglicans and Catholics to switch across to our little Evangelical sect, renounce their infant Baptism and their sacraments, and start all over again in the Christian life with us. All that made me very uncomfortable. It seemed my spiritual status in that group was on the line, and that God was always looming with pruning shears and matches.

That’s not what this is about. Rather it is about Jesus saying: “Take heart: I will be with you, and our companionship will be even closer than it is now. Today we walk side by side — but in the days to come I will live in you, and you in me. Today, you walk in my footsteps — but in the days to come you will walk, so to speak, ‘in my feet,’ and I will walk in yours. Indeed, you will be my hands and feet for a world that needs healing and good news. Friends, I’m not abandoning you! On the contrary, I will abide in you. You will abide in me. I will not leave you alone…” https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/lectionary-commentary-for-easter-5

That’s not a threat. Not that pruning isn’t part of our relationship with the Divine. We know that it is also a rich metaphor that can be understood by any gardener. Pruning means cutting away for the sake of new and greater growth, more fruit, more abundance, more life. Even I, with my less-than-green thumb know that! What’s harder is to recognize what needs to be pruned in ourselves and then do what is necessary for us to grow – in faith, in relationship with ourselves, with others, with the world. Thankfully, it’s clear that Jesus isn’t intent on banishment, but on helping each and every branch bear fruit. When he says, “apart from me you can do nothing,” it’s not a threat or sneering assessment of our hopelessness, it is a promise of help. “I will abide in you. You will abide in me. I will not leave you alone…”

Ripe grapes in fall. autumn harvest. — Ripe grapes close-up in fall. autumn harvest.

This idea of mutual indwelling runs throughout John’s gospel, and through the Bible as a whole. Genesis depicts human life itself as possible only with the divine breath. In Galatians, Paul says, “it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me” and in Acts, he preaches to the Athenians that God is the One “in whom we live, and move, and have our being.” And here in John, because Jesus’ “I am the vine” is the seventh and last of his “I am” statements in the gospel, it’s the culmination of his teachings about how God, Jesus, and human beings are related: Jesus abides in God, and we abide in Jesus, as deeply, closely, organically related as a branch is to its vine. As John tells it, the ultimate goal is not merely to follow Jesus or obey his instruction, but to live in Jesus as he lives in us. Obeying his instruction will then be a natural effect or consequence of that intimate companionship, since our lives and his life will be one.

So what does such mutual indwelling look like in practice? It would look like Jesus, and at the same time it would look like us — that is, it would look like us being the people God made us to be. In a word, it would look like love: incarnate, tangible, down-to earth, intertwining, intersecting, growing, fruitful, vibrant love.

It would look like reaching out to outsiders, the ones who are otherwise relegated to the margins of community. Take, for instance, the man in the Book of Acts known only as an Ethiopian eunuch (although in the Ethiopian Orthodox tradition, he is remembered as Bachos). Bachos asked Philip, “What is to prevent me from being baptized?” Actually there was quite a bit to prevent him. Eunuchs were sexual outcasts in Jewish religious society. According to Womanist biblical scholar Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney, in the Ancient Near East and North Africa, it was the custom for men who worked for monarchs to be surgically altered. This was to diminish the chances that they might attempt to establish a dynasty of their own. So there was a class of men who were highly educated, wealthy, and served in high-ranking positions, and who were, in an important way, different. Despite being a prestigious figure in a foreign royal court, Bachos is nonetheless an outsider.

He’s reading from Isaiah and we have to wonder if he had chosen that passage because of his own experience of rejection. He’s returning in his chariot from a visit to Jerusalem where he was worshipping at the temple, even though he could never participate fully in temple worship because of his status as a gender minority. Yet, he’s a spiritual man; he’s drawn to the texts of the Hebrew Bible. By coincidence (God’s incidents?), he meets up with Philip.

We might wonder why this powerful man in his fancy chariot would invite a perfect stranger to come up and read the scriptures with him. He must have known somehow, must have known that this was a holy moment, a divine opportunity. And after reading and discussing scripture together, he knew something else, deep in his soul. “What is to prevent me from being baptized?” he asked. Nothing. Nothing stood in the way between Bachos and the promise of God. And he knew it. He knew it in his bones. That even though he may not have been seen as ‘whole’ at the temple, he was whole. He was worthy. He claimed the promise that God offered him right there on the spot.

Bachos is the one God chooses to bring a message of belonging back to Ethiopia and “give birth” to the African Christian Church.

His story here reflects an expanding circle of inclusion that is all-too-often neglected in the church. In our current times, we should be asking ourselves: who are the outsiders, the disenfranchised, the excluded (whether we intend to exclude them or not) — and how can we reach out to them, build bridges with them, learn from them, create a new community with them?

It may take some pruning for us to truly answer that. However, if we live into our connectedness with the Vine, the answers will undoubtedly become clear. We may have our own experiences of ‘God incidences’ when – if our connection is strong – we’ll be able to respond to the needs of a stranger with authentic, holy love. But we shouldn’t only wait for them to come to us. The measure of our health as branches on the vine will be our willingness and ability to find ways of breaking down walls of division, of building up communities of inclusion. As the Spirit flows through the vine, into the branches, sprouting leaves, putting forth good fruit – the true Christian community will thrive. It’s not about numbers (although the more who are included, the better); it’s about the quality of life as branches on the vine.

We want to be a healthy, strong green vineyard . Jesus said, “Those who abide in me and I in them will bear abundant fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” We could turn that around and say, “Those who abide in Jesus will bear abundant fruit, for with Jesus you can do anything.”

So tend to your branches. Seek communion with the Divine Presence that abides in you. Know in your bones that in Christ you are whole and you are worthy. Claim the promise that God offers to you. And together are a community of love and inclusion – in the spirit of Bachos, and Philip, and of course Jesus, our True Vine.

Amen

Acts 8:26-40
An angel of God spoke to Philip saying, “Be ready to set out at noon along the road that goes to Gaza, the desert road.”
So Philip began his journey. It happened that an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury had come to Jerusalem on a pilgrimage and was returning home. He was sitting in his carriage and reading the prophet Isaiah.

The Spirit said to Philip, “Go up and meet that carriage.”
When Philip ran up, he heard the eunuch reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?”
The eunuch replied, “How can I unless someone explains it to me?”
With that, he invited Philip to get into the carriage with him.

This was the passage of scripture being read:
“You are like a sheep being led to slaughter;
you are like a lamb that is mute in front of its shearers:
like them, you never open your mouth.
You have been humiliated and have no one to defend you.
Who will ever talk about your descendants
since your life on earth has been cut short?”

The eunuch said to Philip, “Tell me, if you will, about whom the prophet is talking – himself or someone else?”
So Philip proceeded to explain the Good News about Jesus to him. Further along, they came to some water; and the eunuch said, “Look, there is water right there! Is there anything to keep me from being baptized?”
He ordered the carriage to stop; then Philip and the eunuch both went down into the water, and Philip baptized him. When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of God snatched Philip away; the eunuch did not see him any more and went on his way rejoicing. Philip found himself at Ashdod next, and he went about proclaiming the Good News in all the towns until he came to Caesarea.

John 15: 1-8
Jesus said:
I am the true vine, and my Abba is the vine grower who cuts off every branch in me that does not bear fruit, but prunes the fruitful ones to increase their yield. You have been pruned already thanks to the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit of itself apart from the vine, neither can you bear fruit apart from me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them will bear abundant fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. Those who do not abide in me are like withered, rejected branches, to be picked up and thrown on the fire and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you want, and it will be done for you. My Abba will be glorified if you bear much fruit and thus prove to be my disciples.

A picture containing grape, fruit

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Whose Good Shepherd?

The Good Shepherd - John 10:1-16 — JESUS MAFA. The good shepherd, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=48288

Well you learn something new every day. At least it seems I do. After 30-plus years in ministry and probably hundreds of times reading the Good Shepherd passages in John’s gospel, I learned something new. Maybe you already knew this, especially those of you who’ve been part of the Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd for a long time. The thing I learned was that the image of Jesus as a shepherd was one of the most popular images in the early Christian church. Oh sure, I knew about the fish symbol in the catacombs, so it’s not surprising that there would be other symbols as well. But when I read recently that the figure of the shepherd was much more prevalent than the cross in early Christian art, I was skeptical.

As were Rebecca Ann Parker and Rita Kashima Brock, authors of Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire. In response to their exploration of early Christian art, they wrote: “It took Jesus a thousand years to die. Images of his corpse did not appear in churches until the tenth century. Why not? This question set us off on a five-year pilgrimage that led to this book. Initially, we didn’t believe it could be true. Surely the art historians were wrong. The crucified Christ was too important to Western Christianity. How could it be that images of Jesus’s suffering and death were absent from early churches? We had to see for ourselves and consider what this might mean.

“In 2002, we traveled to the Mediterranean in search of the dead body of Jesus. We began in Rome, descending from the blaze of the summer sun into the catacombs where underground tunnels and tombs are carved into soft tufa rock. The earliest surviving Christian art is painted onto the plaster-lined walls of tombs or carved onto marble sarcophagi as memorials to the interred.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA — Good Shepherd Mosaic, c.425: Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, Ravenna, Italy

“In the cool, dimly lit caverns, we saw a variety of biblical images. Many of them suggested rescue from danger. Abraham and Isaac stood side by side in prayer with a ram bound next to them. Jonah, the recalcitrant prophet who was swallowed and coughed up by a sea monster, reclined peacefully beneath the shade of a vine. Daniel stood alive and well between two pacified lions. Other images suggested baptism and healing, such as the Samaritan woman drawing water from a well, John the Baptist dousing Jesus, depicted as a child, and Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. Jesus also appeared as a shepherd carrying a lamb on his shoulders like Orpheus. We could not find a dead Jesus, not even one. It was just as the angel had said to the women looking for Jesus at his tomb, ‘Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here.’”

So it seems that it’s true. And so, on this fourth Sunday in the Easter season, we’re switching gears. If you recall, the gospel readings for the first three weeks were resurrection appearance stories: Jesus in the locked room, on the road to Emmaus, at the lakeshore eating breakfast with the disciples. But now, in these next four weeks we’ll be leaning more into how Jesus teaches us to live in the Oneness of God, living into resurrection life.

Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd, Burlingame, CA

And so we have the Good Shepherd. People utterly unfamiliar with Christianity, with church symbolism might wonder ‘why a shepherd?’ They might ask (when they get to visit our church in person): “Why does your church have a stained glass window of a guy surrounded by sheep?” Of course, you’d know to direct them to John’s gospel and to all the places in the Old Testament referred to shepherds. But relating it to today? I mean, who here has ever even seen a shepherd?

I’m pretty sure that for most followers of Jesus the image still works. Even though we’re not sheep herders, we get the idea. We long for and pray for and give thanks for the care that we receive as the sheep of Jesus’ pasture.

Jesus the Good Shepherd is indeed a comforting figure. But perhaps we urbanized non-sheepherders need to be reminded that shepherding was (and I suppose still is) a dangerous job. The shadow of death (as the psalm puts it) hovers just beyond the frame of the pastoral scene in our beautiful window.

Or as Pr. Bill Wylie-Kellermann said: “If today’s gospel calls up for you images of a familiar stained-glass window, the good shepherd with a lamb cuddled over the shoulder, then it’s probably best to envision it with a brick being thrown through.” Yikes!

Koenig, Peter. True Shepherd and the Wolves, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=58510

“The tension of this reading is between the . . . the tenderness of love for the flock and the predatory violence of the beast. The stillness of waters and the rushing of the wolves.”

You know, the role of pastors is modeled on this shepherd. But the fact is that the job description according to Jesus is not only to love, nourish, comfort, stand by, and lead – but to be willing to die for the flock. That should give pause to many seminary applicants, although it’s not in any ordination or installation service I know of.

And I admit that this passage gave me pause this week. The combined effect of the revelation (at least to me) of the plethora of shepherd imagery in early Christian art, the mental picture of a brick crashing through the stained glass, and the enigmatic statement by Jesus about having other flocks caused me to look again at Jesus the Good Shepherd. And the question that kept popping into my mind during the week was: whose shepherd is this?

Of course, Jesus is my Good Shepherd. And of course yours. I imagine any Christian would make that claim. But then, as I recall the shepherd’s presence with those facing the threat of violence or death, I can’t help connecting it in recent weeks with the trial of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd. No matter how many times we see the video of those 9.29 minutes and hear the agonizing testimony of witnesses, there is no way to blunt its dreadfulness. And then, two weeks into the trial, 20-year-old Daunte Wright was fatally shot. And ten 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant. And then 13-year-old Adam Toledo. And on and on it goes. The shadow of death hovers not far from the frames of our communal life.

We know that the Jesus story entered history in a time of oppression, injustice, violence, and death. Jesus’ teachings tell us that those ways of being in the world are not God’s ways. The resurrection story tells us that those death-dealing ways do not have the last word. Today I see Jesus the Good Shepherd standing with George, Daunte, Ma’Khia, and Adam and all the others in their moments of crucifixion and welcoming them into the open arms of Paradise. I also see Derek Chauvin, Kimberly Potter, Nicholas Reardon, and Eric Stillman – all officers caught up in a death-dealing system and suffering the consequences. All of them, all of us sheep of one flock.

The image of the Good Shepherd as the gentle Jesus with a lamb cuddled over his shoulders is shattered as we see the one willing to lay down his life for the sheep, who identifies with the least and the lost, who suffers for their sake – and then who pushes us out of our comfort zones as we seek to be Christ now in the world, to overturn systems of oppression, to reform institutions, to advocate for the least of these. It can be overwhelming to even know where to begin.

I’m in a group that has been working on implementation of the ELCA social statement “Faith, Sexism, and Justice.” We’ve become more and more convinced of the intersecting issues of sexism and racism and all isms that privilege one group over another. Everyone in the group right now is white and there’s a lot of discussion about how to be good allies, how to recognize and get beyond our own prejudices, defensiveness, and just plain ignorance.

One thing we agreed to do, as a very tiny first step was to read a book together. We chose A Womanist Midrash by Wil Gafney. I’ve known about womanist theology for a long time. I knew it began as a corrective to feminist theology that has been criticized as addressing only the experience of white women, while womanist theology is grounded in the experience and perspectives of Black women, particularly African-American women. It’s a small step outside the comfort zone, but a needful one as we navigate these difficult times.

I’ve been doing some thinking about the name of our church. There is some confusion about whether we’re Good Shepherd Lutheran Church or the Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd. Does it matter, I wondered. Maybe not, except as a legal matter. But it seems to me that there is something about saying that we are the church of the Good Shepherd that conveys something important. We are the church that belongs to the Good Shepherd. We enjoy the benefits of comfort, compassion, and life-giving care. We are the sheep of his pasture.

We are also the church that carries on the work of the Good Shepherd. Now what does that mean? Remember that the job description according to Jesus is to love, nourish, comfort, stand by, lead – and be willing to give one’s life for the flock. I have to say that I am both comforted and challenged by Jesus’ statement, “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold.” Wait. Who are these other sheep? We know from the gospels that the Jewish messiah, would also embrace Gentiles. After the resurrection, Jesus says, “I will draw all people to myself.” And here he echoes the same theme: “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold.” These other sheep are is not specified; that’s the shepherd’s business, not ours. The practical effect of this inclusive statement is that we can trust that there is no one outside of the care, comfort, and compassion of Jesus.

The challenge is that no one is outside of our care, comfort, and compassion. As followers of Jesus and sheep of the Good Shepherd we have our work cut out for us. And as I’ve learned from being part of the social statement group, the labor is not just the external activities we do out in the world. There is a lot of internal work. In order to be truly comforting, compassionate, and caring we must know ourselves. No matter how progressive, liberal, open-minded you may think you are, you carry within you life experiences, family history, cultural identity, and learnings that may or may not be correct about another person or group of people. This isn’t an accusation or indictment against you or me; it’s just a fact about each and every one of us. And step one is acknowledging it.

Step two is listening to the stories of those who are different from you, truly listening even if you feel defensive, asking questions, being genuinely curious about someone’s experience of the world.

Step three is becoming an advocate. Become educated about others. Don’t make assumptions. Don’t expect them to do the work for you. Learn about micro-aggressions, what makes a joke racist, sexist, or homophobic. Be open to learning, even when you feel resistant. Don’t take it personally when you’re corrected.

Step five is being humble and courageous. I was once a facilitator for a church exchange program in which mostly white suburban congregations were paired up with mostly African-American ones. This was in Buffalo, NY, where most of the old mainline churches had long ago fled the inner city. As some of us gathered in front of the Black church where we would meet one another, the pastor of the suburban congregation pointed to the cornerstone of the old brick church: Emmaus Lutheran Church 1919. Already we had something in common. Later, a member of the suburban congregation expressed the fear that he’d had in agreeing to the gathering. He was afraid, he said, of unwittingly saying something offensive. I noted that it had taken courage to show up and humility to confess that we often don’t know what we don’t know, but we are open to learn.

It seems to me that being the Church of the Good Shepherd in this time is a call to break through an image that is only the comforting, personal Savior who cares passionately about each one of us – although that indeed is one very important aspect of that image. But when we break it open, we find that we have not subtracted any care for ourselves but have added all the other sheep of all the other flocks. Nothing can take away the love we have in Christ Jesus; that love can only be multiplied.

I wish we could be in our sanctuary today, with all this attention on the Good Shepherd. More than that, though, I long for the time when we can be together, when we can reach out in more tangible ways to our neighbors, to other communities, other churches, other traditions. I’m looking forward to finally being able to get to know the people of Good Shepherd Chinese Church. And while I’m sure the virtual interfaith iftar next week will be lovely, it can’t replace the relationship-building we can do in person.

But the time will come. We will gather back under the ever-watchful eye of our Good Shepherd. Perhaps we will come back with a new way of gazing at the beautiful colors and light streaming into our sanctuary. It will be glorious to bask in that light. It will also be a challenge – to ask ourselves: Whose shepherd is this? Who are the sheep that Jesus is calling us to tend to?

As we switch gears now, mid-Easter season, to a mode of going out into the world to bring hope and healing, what better icon to send us on our way, to guide us on our way, to comfort us in the hard times, to challenge us when we become complacent, to inspire us to love, to nourish, to comfort, to stand by, to lead – and to give the very life of this congregation for the sake of those Jesus loves.

Christ the Good Shepherd.

Amen

JOHN 10:11-18

Jesus said: “I am the good shepherd. A good shepherd would die for the sheep. The hired hand, who is neither shepherd nor owner of the sheep, catches sight of the wolf coming and runs away, leaving the sheep to be scattered or snatched by the wolf. That’s because the hired hand works only for pay and has no concern for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my sheep and my sheep know me. In the same way Abba God knows me and I know God—and for these sheep I will lay down my life. I have other sheep that don’t belong to this fold—I must lead them too, and they will hear my voice. And then there will be one flock, one shepherd. This is why Abba God loves me—because I lay down my life, only to take it up again. No one takes my life from me; I lay it down freely. I have the power to lay it down, and I have the power to take it up again. This command I received from my Abba.”

The Scariest Word In Church

Sermon for the Third Sunday of Easter

Warning: this is going to be one of the scariest sermons you’re ever going to hear.

I’m invoking the poet and author Annie Dillard, who said, It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares.

So you have been duly warned.

Now you might be thinking that I’m going to preach a fire and brimstone sermon about the wages of sin and the threat of eternity in the flames of hell. But you’d be wrong. Or you might think this is going to be one of those intimidating stewardship sermons, which will end with a plea to log into Vanco right now and give until it hurts. Nope, not that either.

Today, I am going to be talking about a word that makes Lutheran Christians shake in their shoes. I’m talking about witnessing. I’m sorry, I really am. It’s unavoidable. Jesus has the last word in today’s gospel reading: “You are witnesses of these things.”

Granted, we’re not the only Christians who quake at the idea of witnessing about our faith. But since Garrison Keillor made a living out of portraying Lutherans as shy, unassuming, self-effacing people, we have a reputation to live down. So, while I know that some people do find it easy to do, I’m going to make a wild guess that 99% of you would say that – even if we were not sheltering in a pandemic – you would not relish the idea of walking out your door and start talking to passers-by about your faith.

Well then, what are we to do with these words of Jesus? For starters, we could say that he wasn’t talking about us. He was talking to those eyewitnesses who had seen the post-resurrection appearances, had seen Jesus walk through doors, heard him ask for something to eat, met him and talked with him on the road, read the scriptures and broke bread with him. We’re not eyewitnesses to these things. Whew! We’re off the hook.

Except then we’ve forgotten the words from last week that Jesus spoke to Thomas, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

That makes us witnesses, too.

The gospel writers took great pains to convey the stories of eyewitnesses to appearances of Jesus after the resurrection. And as much as they can cause us to scratch our heads and wonder what exactly happened in these sightings, we can understand that they experienced a profound encounter with Divine Mystery.

What’s particularly touching about Luke’s description of this appearance is that, even though the disciples responded to this encounter with a mixture of joy and doubt and wonder, they were still called to be witnesses. Spiritual experience, rational questions, and conflicting emotions were all bundled together in those very-human disciples, just as they are in us. They discovered that a big part of being followers of Jesus now, post-resurrection, was to be witnesses, even with their doubts and fears. And if it was true for them, then we’re certainly not exempt. We’re called to be witnesses to what God has done – and is still doing

Now, I get that there’s a further reason for us to shy away from this ‘witnessing’ word. We’ve probably all been accosted by enthusiastic believers who want to testify to their version of the true faith. So let’s be clear: I’m not suggesting that we join the crowd that tries to shove their faith down people’s throats or threatens them with eternal damnation if they don’t believe as they do. I’m sure that’s not what Jesus had in mind.

So then the question is: if we’re called to get over our shyness and be witnesses – but not that kind of witness – how do we do it? What do we say? How do we do it without being offensive? How can we take the scariness out of witnessing?

First of all, let’s take it out of a religious context. If you’ve been keeping up with the news at all, you’ve heard what witnesses have had to say about the deaths of George Floyd and Daunte Wright. Maybe you saw the video of the witness who described the killing of eight people at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis on Thursday. Perhaps you have even been called upon to bear witness in court to something you saw. The point of telling your story is to hopefully contribute to the revelation of truth in the pursuit of justice.

I never had to testify in court but I did witness a bank robbery once. After the robber had run in, jumped over the counter, grabbed some cash and run out again, the doors were locked, and all the customers had to stay until the FBI could come and interview us. Once I told them what I had seen, I was allowed to leave. All I had to do was simply tell my truth.

That’s a dramatic example, but the fact is we do witness all the time. We talk about things that are important or of interest to us. We might tell someone (bear witness) to a great movie we’ve seen and think they’ll enjoy. Or a book we’ve read, a video game we’ve played, or a binge-worthy Netflex series.

We bear witness to the accomplishments (or failures) of our sports teams. We bear witness to important events in our family or work lives. It’s as simple as that. We bear witness to things that matter to us.

So let’s practice.

Think about something you often talk about, something you love – sports, work, family, school, tv, music, whatever. Think of something about that subject that’s happened recently. Don’t overthink it. Remember, we’re not talking about ‘witnessing’ in the church sense.

Does anyone have something they’d be willing to share? This is a relatively safe place. Just speak simply and conversationally about it. Don’t worry if you’re doing it right. You can’t go wrong when you’re sharing about something you love. Not too intimidating, right?

OK, now take a deep breath as we move into the church zone.

And let’s consider that witnessing is not all that different when it comes to your faith. Witnessing is simply saying where you sensed or experienced God in your life – at home or work, through a stranger or friend, a doctor or teacher or neighbor, something you read or heard, even through yourself. It could be through the work of the government or school or the church or through someone else’s life. Bearing witness is nothing more than saying where you think God is at work in your life and the world. We witness all the time; we’re just not used to thinking about doing it in terms of our faith. It doesn’t take any fancy church-y language. All it takes is a simple story of what you yourself experienced.

Here we are, almost in the middle of the Easter season. Easter Sunday was the high holy day of belief in the possibility that good can triumph over evil, beauty can overcome beastliness, that there can be hope for a way through whatever challenges confront us.

On one of the news shows the other night, in the midst of a difficult conversation on race relations in our country, Rev. Al Sharpton was surprisingly optimistic. He credited two things that give him hope. He said,

When I’ve lived long enough and fought in the civil rights movement long enough to see chiefs of police get on the stand against a policeman and Pat Robertson come out for police reform, I know there is a possibility that we can turn this country around.

He didn’t frame it as such, but that was a witness to resurrection. Another panelist on the show was less optimistic – for some very good reasons. Oftentimes, we proclaim resurrection while we’re still entombed in Holy Saturday. But I like to think that his witness sparked some small flicker of hope in her that can grow and sustain her. Sharpton isn’t naïve; he ended the quote “I know there is a possibility that we can turn this country around” with “if we don’t get weary in our well-doing.”

So, in these 50 days of Easter, I am encouraging you to be on the lookout for signs of resurrection life. Not just on Sunday morning, but in the news, with the family, at work, at school, at any and all places – even the ones most impossible to imagine such a thing.

Here’s another resurrection story. I recently read an article about 185 baby tortoises recovered from a smuggling attempt from the Galapagos Islands. In Googling around for more information, I learned that just six years ago ten baby tortoises were seen on the Galapagos Island of Pinzon. The ten new hatchlings were the first bred in the wild in more than a century. Recent surveys suggest that there are now more than 500 tortoises estimated to be now living on the island.

This is a resurrection story – good news to those of us who sometimes wonder if there is any hope for our planet. Now we could put this down to human activity, our conservation efforts. And we would be correct – to a point. However, I believe there is even more to it. The God of creation and redemption is never inactive. The story of the baby tortoises is a witness of God’s resurrection work in the world – working through us, through human repentance and commitment, as well as through the healing power of the earth that is part of the body of God – “if we don’t get weary in our well-doing.”

Now, if I were to tell these stories in a non-church setting, I might say something like: “you know my pastor is always encouraging us to look for signs of hope in the world, especially in places you wouldn’t expect to find it. I’m going to tell this one next time in church.”

Of course, that might open you up to further questions – especially if they didn’t know you were a religious person. So you have to be prepared to say more. But don’t be afraid. Because you know what, those first witnesses were afraid, too – which was the reason for the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus, the coming of the Holy Spirit then and now, and the on-going support of our church community. So take a deep breath of Holy Spirit and speak your truth.

So now that I’ve told you a couple of my witness stories, maybe you’ve had time to think of one of your own. What has God been up to in your life or in the world as you’ve observed it? Would you be willing to tell your story? Anybody want give it a try? If not today, that’s OK; we have another 35 days of Easter. And then it’s Pentecost, so who knows what might happen then! During Easter, we’re going to collect our resurrection stories. And we’re going to practice witnessing. Because like everything else, it gets easier with practice.

Maybe you could even find a trusted friend or family member who could be your witnessing partner. You could each make a commitment to remember these times of noticing and share them at some point each week. That way you can practice with somebody you trust until you feel more comfortable and willing to tell your story to whoever happens to be listening – in your own natural, unassuming, shy-Lutheran way.

Then, when it’s not so scary any longer, all you’ll have to worry about are the fire and brimstone sermons and multiple offering plates. And I really don’t think you need to be concerned about them here.

You are witnesses of these things: the all-encompassing love of God, the compassionate justice-seeking of Jesus, and the power of Divine Presence to bring new life out of the many death-dealing experiences we face.

We are witnesses of these things. Together we are a community of witnesses. And we will not be afraid.

Amen

Luke 24: 36b-48

While they were still talking about this, Jesus actually stood in their midst and said to them, “Peace be with you.”

In their panic and fright, they thought they were seeing a ghost. Jesus said to them, “Why are you disturbed? Why do such ideas cross your mind? Look at my hands and my feet; it is I, really. Touch me and see—a ghost doesn’t have flesh and bones as I do.” After saying this, Jesus showed them the wounds.

They were still incredulous for sheer joy and wonder, so Jesus said to them, “Do you have anything here to eat?” After being given a piece of cooked fish, the savior ate in their presence. Then Jesus said to them, “Remember the words I spoke when I was still with you: everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the psalms had to be fulfilled.”

Then Jesus opened their minds to the understanding of the scriptures, saying, “That is why the scriptures say that the Messiah must suffer and rise from the dead on the third day. In the Messiah’s name, repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.

“You are witnesses of these things.”