a sermon about armor, readiness, and Chuck Taylors

I wrote this in 2009, so it’s as old as my oldest child, but still relevant. Maybe read Ephesians 6:10-20 first.

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I feel very uncomfortable with this Ephesians passage. 

About as uncomfortable as when I read

the earlier parts of Joshua

where the Israelites destroy all the people in Canaan,

the Promised Land.

And about as uncomfortable as when I read

parts of Ezekiel

—the violent, explicit bits where God doesn’t come off so well.

It’s not like war or violence have no precedent in history or scripture

—it’s just that they seem so over-the-top

and so…predictable.

Jesus himself was prone to dramatic, violent gestures

—he overturned tables and screamed at vendors in the Temple,

maybe even whipped them, according to some;

he cursed a fig tree for not bearing fruit

when he knew full well that it wasn’t fig season.

Yet we all know Jesus’ words and life to be overflowing

with love and compassion,

at odds with his zeal.

So battle-ready images seem out of place, especially in church, am I right?

Let’s hold hands and sing “Seek Ye First”

and eat cookies and coffee instead.

Yet it is a struggle, this faith we claim.

For some more than others, but a struggle all the same.

Maybe we don’t like the language of war

or maybe we’re too comfortable with it,

but either way, it’s a constant in our lives. 

Instead of ignoring it, can we coopt it for our spiritual lives?

Become Prayer Warriors?

I think Jesus might have liked that term,

because at its base, it doesn’t make sense.

Instead of cherry-picking the parts of Scripture we like,

can we struggle with this passage for a moment,

dwell in that place of discomfort

to see if maybe God has something to say to us?

Consider what the writer of the letter to the Ephesians

says we’re going to face:

rulers, authorities, and powers of this present darkness,

spiritual forces of evil.

All called in theological shorthand “powers and principalities”

—what’s this about?

The text says

it’s the spiritual forces of evil that we fight,

not the flesh and blood ones

—which is odd, because I could have sworn that

war has a physical toll.

I would have thought Jesus’ words

about justice for the dispossessed and captives

meant some sort of call to earthly justice.

But Ephesians insists on the spiritual aspect of warfare,

the principalities and powers

which rule in our hearts instead of God.

What are these principalities and powers now?

I suppose one obvious answer might be

politicians and the political system

—massaging the message to mean what they need it to mean—

but it also might mean corporate greed or indifference.

Those who work for corporations

are often pushed to make the unethical choice

—aware or unaware of the choice before them

and those who buy the products

are encouraged not to think

about where those products come from.

Powers and principalities might be greed, or accumulation

—our houses cease being homes

and become receptacles to keep our stuff safe.

Or distance created by technologies meant to help

but which can create yet another barrier,

another shield.

Maybe it’s fear

—of being alone,

of having nothing to protect us,

of seeing ourselves clearly.

The powers and principalities you have to fight

will be different than mine and one another’s

—but seeing them clearly ought to be the first step—

what is taking the place of God in your heart?

Now, consider what we’re supposed to do about it:

put on the armor of God—what’s that?

When I go to work as a campus minister at University of Cincinnati,

I wear armor.

Not literally, of course, that’d be weird.

But I do wear the Converse All-Stars of Self-Expression,

the Laptop Bag of Welcome,

and the Clergy Shirt of Tradition.

It’s armor of a sort,

preparing me for the complex conversations I’ll have,

for the battles I fight each day.

With the phone company,

with traffic,

with student indifference or zeal,

with the culture which tells us

that our transformed Christianity

is impractical or unwanted

This passage is not about sitting passively

—armor is not for just sitting still on your horse in an empty field.

But neither is it about forcing conversions at the end of a sword.

Certainly God does the heavy lifting

—but we have to get ready.

I wonder if we’re talking less of war imagery

and more of preparedness,

of transformation.

At the time the letter was written,

much of the Near East was under the heel of Rome,

occupied by foreigners, invaded.

Those invaders were, for all intents and purposes, in control.

I wonder if the writer of Ephesians

chose the look of a Roman soldier,

not only because folk would recognize it,

but also as a subtle transformation

of who was in charge.

Their armor is just metal,

but ours is made of Justice,

Truth, Righteousness, and the Word of God!

Transformation from one thing to another

means not just living our normal, comfortable lives

with a little Jesus thrown in here and there

but a soul-deep understanding of God’s love

and our thanksgiving for it.

To truly change your heart and mind

away from an attitude of apathy or entitlement

and towards one of compassion and sacrifice

requires a huge change

—we must be transformed in our preparation for battle.

Consider what you wore to worship today, or how you dress for school or work:

the Tailored Suit of Action,

the Jeans of Standoffishness,

the Necktie of Willingness to Talk to Strangers about the Weather,

the Backpack of Compassion,

the iPod of Delight in Others’ Accomplishments,

the Earrings of Really Listening…

I mentioned my discomfort about this scripture passage in my Facebook status.

A friend commented

that the part of the passage that had always struck him

was the bit about putting on your feet

“whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace”. 

Whatever will make you ready…

What makes you ready to live the life you’re called to?

What makes you ready to take on

even a corner of the powers and principalities

of the world you live in?

What makes you ready to speak about your faith

or about the joy you find in this place?

In the end, it’s about trust

—trust in one another in community, trust in God—

the armor we put on is not about offense or defense

but about putting on God like a garment.

God, who loved the world so much that God gave us God’s only son

God, who wanted us so much that God created the world in the first place

God is already out on the field of your battle, waiting for you.

God is already in your math class and your 8am conference call

and your marriage and your next-door neighbor’s house.

God forged the iron of your Breastplate of Righteousness,

wove the poly-cotton blend of your Dress Shirt of Patience,

knitted your Socks of Humility.

So go out after our holy lunch here,

filled with the bread of life

prepared to share your story

ready to be transformed and to do battle

with the powers and principalities

knowing that you are not alone

knowing that God will be with you.

a sermon on Isaiah 35, liturgical colors, joy, and a little bit about Superman

Rejoice, it’s Gaudete Sunday! I know you have all been chomping at the bit, desperate all week to light the pink candle and to have a much-needed reprieve from the deep, dark, and daily conversations we’ve all been having about sin and misery during this penitential season of Advent. No?

So, way back in the day, we Christians didn’t celebrate Christmas until maybe the fourth century, which is wild if you think about it. Three hundred years or so it took for us to celebrate the birthday of our founder? We were busy doing other things like making the Bible and trying not to die as martyrs I suppose. Funny story, Jesus’ stories are a lot like Superman’s stories. If you look at the stories about Superman, he emerges onto the scene in 1938 basically fully-formed as an adult superhero, and it’s not til 7 years later that you get real stories about his infancy and childhood. The first stories about Jesus are only about his adult ministry and its not til at least 70 or 80 years later that we’ve got some written stories about Jesus’ birth. We just weren’t as concerned about birth narratives in the beginning. Anyway, eventually, we decided to celebrate the light of Christ coming into the world at the darkest time of year and included a season like Lent just before it—40 days of penitence and repentance as we await Jesus’ birth. In the churches of the time, it was common to see the altar and priests draped in black, a sign of mourning for our sinful nature. Festive, am I right?

Sometime in the 9th century, Advent was shortened to four weeks and purple or dark blue were introduced for Advent and Lent, not as a royal color as we assume, but as a mitigation of black. That is, the seasons were still meant for us to mourn our sins, but there was a recognition that there was a little joy as well, so the black was lightened to purple or dark blue. Feeling celebratory yet?

Then, at an undetermined date, we started having one special Sunday during Lent and one during Advent to lighten the mood yet again. Instead of black hangings we have purple or blue, and that one Sunday, we mitigate the purple to rose, a reminder that even in the midst of sadness and death, we are also beloved by God and that there is cause for celebration. It’s not a pink candle for Mary as many of us have assumed for years but rose for Gaudete, the first word of the Latin prayer meaning “rejoice.” So, rejoice, it’s Gaudete Sunday!

Now, I didn’t just bring this up because it’s neat and I love an educational sermon. Though those are both true. This Sunday in particular and Jesus’ incarnation in general are about bringing life and joy and I want to talk about joy. Henri Nouwen says the difference between happiness and joy is that, while happiness is dependent on external conditions, joy is "the experience of knowing that you are unconditionally loved and that nothing – sickness, failure, emotional distress, oppression, war, or even death - can take that love away.” Similar to Paul’s letter to the Romans that we heard at Doug Jauch’s funeral on Friday, where he says, “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” This is joy—that there is possibility in the midst of hard things, that there is an immutable connection within us to the divine. Sometimes we forget it or assume it doesn’t exist, or we cover it up. But we are already part of the divine life, every one of us was created with the divine breath in our lungs and God saying, “Indeed, it is very good.” Joy doesn’t fix what’s broken, joy doesn’t erase the pain, it’s not a zero-sum game. Joy exists side-by-side with pain. It’s already here and still coming.

Because we live much of our lives in the wilderness, wandering, thirsty and afraid. We hurt ourselves and others and we call that sin. Our sins give us a temporary sense of control or happiness, but it fades. And we are hurt by other people in their attempts to be in control or be happy. Nouwen and Isaiah and Paul and Jesus himself tell us, there’s another way. Imagine a world where we don’t have to only see death and destruction and fear.

Maybe the idea of Advent as penitential feels heavy-handed and ridiculous to you, maybe you need the joyful songs and the smell of cookies and the twinkling lights. Maybe you feel like your whole world is full of negativity and you come here on a Sunday to be uplifted. Fair enough. But maybe you also struggle with people telling you that things will get better or that your grief isn’t necessary. Maybe you look at your social media feed or the news and you ache with despair that this is where we are. Maybe you feel helpless in the face of addiction or under the weight of our inherited racism. The darkness is real. Black hangings might not be so out of place. What this Sunday in particular and Jesus’ incarnation in general are about is possibility. What looks inevitable isn’t. I don’t know if you’re watching the TV show The Good Place—if you’re not, I recommend it whole-heartedly. Without spoiling anything, in a recent episode the character Michael said: “What matters isn't if people are good or bad. What matters is if they're trying to be better today than they were yesterday. You asked me where my hope comes from. That's your answer.” I know this is a dumb sitcom on NBC, I know people have spilled buckets of ink over the centuries to talk about morality and hope and transformation. But this one line brings me hope. And brings me joy. It’s part of something I’ve been noodling that I’m calling a theology of mending. It reminds me of the nugget of belovedness that’s at the center of my being and at the center of yours, at the center of humanity. We are all able to try to be better tomorrow. Even if we fail. Even when we fail. What looks inevitable isn’t.

One of our beloved students at the Edge House graduates this weekend. At our traditional Godspeed Nosh a couple weeks ago, she shared a love letter she’d written to the community. Matthew and I were so moved by it we got her permission to share it, so you’ll be seeing it or parts of it in the near future. She speaks about the overwhelming anxiety she has experienced throughout her life and her dawning awareness that her anxiety has been based in not knowing what to trust, not knowing who to trust. To herself, about the Edge House she wrote, “You belong here. You can trust this.” Isaiah writes, “Here is your God.” What you need is here. Within you. Within this community and the community of all humanity. The joy you need and that you already have within you is also here. It exists despite the pressing dark.

The monks at the Taize Community say, “History will end differently than what the current situation seems to suggest.” The reading from Isaiah is written for a people returning from exile, whose lives have been turned upside down, who have found themselves to be empty and lost and fearful and almost dead. They are literally being liberated from captivity. Isaiah says that your fear will become safety, your emptiness to fullness, lost into found, death into life. The desert blooms around us, the deserted spaces filled with life and beauty. Sometimes we get a hint of what that looks like now, and sometimes the kingdom is so huge and real we crash to our knees. It’s a foretaste of the kingdom. Wherever people are oppressed or struggling, whoever they are, God desires freedom and life. This is the desert blooming. God redeeming and ransoming us—political words in context. On that highway in the desert of Isaiah, God redeems, ransoms, sets free, transforms, mends, restores, and draws near. God rejoices to see us. All of us.

Imagine a desert. Dry as dry can be. Hot. So hot your skin prickles and your throat gets dry thinking about it. Cacti. Tumbleweeds. No water to speak of. Snakes. Scorpions. Scary people who take your clothes and your money and what little water you have and abandon you. Imagine that you are blind in this place. Or you’ve got a broken leg. Or you’re nauseous or have the flu. Something that makes it that much harder to figure out what to do. No roads, no paths to lead you out, only barren, hot, dry, fearful land. It is so hard, and you are so weak. Imagine this.

And now imagine a trickle of cool water bumping against your toes that soon becomes an actual stream. Suddenly you can drink. And while you’re drinking, you feel just the slightest bit cooler, and when you look up there’s a tree you hadn’t seen before, casting a merciful shadow. Imagine that you can see again, that your pain is gone, that your cough and fever are suddenly absent. You are feverish, but not with illness, with the surprised delight of someone who’s been sick and is just now feeling well, eyes wide, disbelieving that things could be so good. Imagine the sudden absence of everything that threatens you. You are loved. Imagine that the barren desert, covered only in sand and scrub has burst into bloom. Imagine.

This is the kingdom. It’s coming and it’s already here.

We are welcome here. We can trust this.

Rejoice!

a sermon on Luke 8, jail, camps, and possibility

I’ve been going to the Hamilton County Jail on Thursday mornings for several months now. My friend and colleague Daniel Hughes invited me to come and see what God was doing in the jail and in the specific exit program he volunteers with. This small group of men in one part of the jail are part of a program to actually rehabilitate them rather than just punish them. They have regular access to advocates and 12-step programs and folks like Daniel and myself. He and I are offering a spiritual component—Daniel preaches good news, release, recovery, freedom, favor, I lead them in mindfulness practices like meditation and singing. These men, they’re bound behind heavy doors and guards, some of whom are compassionate, many of whom are really not, they’re bound by their mistakes, bound by finances, bound by addiction or family history, bound by mental illness. There are men in that room who got speeding tickets they couldn’t pay and men who’ve assaulted people. I talked to a guy this week who at first I thought was only struggling with anger, but it turns out he was abused as a child and, the more I talked to him, the more it was obvious, his anger is both completely understandable and entirely pathological. I don’t know that he can come back from what was done to him. They’re stuck, imprisoned physically and spiritually. We hide them away, keep them bound to make the rest of us feel safe.

In a way, they are the living dead, like the man in the gospel today—ostracized from society, locked away, treading water, living among the tombstones of our society. Even when they get out sometimes the stink of the jail and their imprisonment stays on them, because it’s not just a criminal record that holds them bound. It’s all that other stuff. Way back in the day, a theologian called Pelagius was convicted of being a heretic because he said that humans weren’t born sinful, we’re born beautiful, a delight in God’s eyes—heaven forbid, I guess—and that sin is like an occupying army in our souls, that we long for freedom. These men long for freedom, both from the jail itself and it’s insufferably cold air conditioning and terrible food and distance from their kids and brothers, and from their own demons.

They are not the only ones bound up. Children of immigrants are in camps—call them what you will, they’re being tortured and they’re dying. Literally dying. Literally small children caring for each other because the adults responsible for their care can’t or won’t.

They are the living dead. Separated, marking time, staring into space, living among the tombstones of our society, waiting. Waiting.

But y’all know this. You read the newspaper or social media, you have a grasp of history, you know these aren’t the only places we are destroying each other and God’s creation like occupying armies. You know humans are horrible to each other for all kinds of reasons that, in retrospect, make no sense at all. We look at this story of the Gerasene demoniac and we think, “Shoot, y’all, he was just mentally ill, why’d they do that to him?” Or we might even believe it was demons, but still be a bit horrified by the man’s condition—naked, chained, living in a graveyard—how could it come to this?

How could it come to this?

See, it’s true that the story is showing us Jesus’ miraculous ability to heal people, to take away their suffering, to help them let go of their pain, but Jesus is also showing us something deeper. He’s like that, you know. Jesus is showing the people this man’s humanity—whether or not he literally had demons, he was a human being, the word the Greek actually uses here. The human being comes and sits with Jesus, at his feet like Mary Magdalene or the beloved disciple. This human being is all the people who are bound or imprisoned. Every man languishing in a cell in a Chechnyan camp because he’s gay, every woman trafficked for her body. Every child at the border. And remembering that Jesus is always telling us like 7 different things with every word and action--this human being from the town of Gerasa is every one of us addicted to alcohol or sex or anger, every one of us held down by depression or racism or nationalism.

And even more, this Jesus doesn’t just heal this human being from Gerasa because he’s happened to run across him on the road. Jesus took a boat across the sea, away from the Jewish area of Galilee into a Gentile-heavy area, described in Greek even as the opposite of Galilee, geographically as well as sort of sociologically. He takes a boat far away from home, heals this guy, and then takes yet another boat all the way back. It is a long and seemingly unplanned and pointless journey. David Lose says, “There is absolutely nowhere God is not willing to go to reach and free and sustain and heal those who are broken and despairing.” And that’s it, isn’t it? God goes wherever any of us are broken and despairing, wherever any of us are imprisoned. God comes to find us. There is nowhere God is not willing to go. We may put up all kinds of barriers against our own healing, clinging to our demons because we have to be right, but God comes and finds us and loosens our fingers. We may build walls around the people we think are not in God’s image, people we think are threatening or gross, but God comes around with a sledge hammer and a picnic lunch to share with everyone.

Just a few chapters before today’s reading, Jesus reads from the Isaiah scroll in the temple:

‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’

THIS is the year of the Lord’s favor.

One of my students at the Edge House is starting her third year at UC and is, if you’ll pardon the cliché, truly blossoming. She has been throwing off the chains of her oppressive childhood and coming into her adult transwoman self—she’s more self-aware, more compassionate, and more able to ask for what she needs. The difference from two years ago is astonishing. And another student has been reading the mystic Meister Eckhart and came across the line, “nothing can interrupt God when he is having fun creating!” She looked at me with shining eyes and said, “God had fun making me.” Yes! Yes. Things are still hard, we need to respond to the atrocities we create. And also, child mortality the world over is continuing to fall significantly and teen pregnancies in America are less frequent, global income inequality is falling, the Great Barrier Reef is showing significant signs of recovery.

We do not have to be the living dead, we are the living, breathing in and out the breath of God.

We may be dying, we may be ill or resentful or addicted, but we are not dead. We may be groaning along with all creation, but new life is coming and is now here.

I want to teach you a song we’ve been singing at the Edge House, written by Andrew Petersen.

Do you feel the world is broken? We do.

Do you feel the shadows deepen? We do.

But do you know that all the dark won’t stop the light from getting through? We do.

Do you wish that you could see it all made new? We do.

Is all creation groaning? It is.

Is a new creation coming? It is.

Is the glory of the Lord to be the light within our midst? It is.

Is it good that we remind ourselves of this? It is.

we made the road by walking it

I took a group of 8 students to Spain to walk the English Way of el Camino de Santiago. It was, perhaps as you’d expect, both transformative and deeply exhausting. We’ve been talking for months about how the Camino (“way” or “road”) isn’t just a line on a map and there’s no right way to walk it. The way you walk it—aches and pains, joy and misery, connection with or absence of God—is the Camino. Each of us has our own Camino, just as we all have our own burdens and our own revelations. In the words of Brian McLaren, “we make the road by walking.” Wherever your feet fall as you walk, whatever you do in your daily life that creates your metaphorical road, that is the road you’re on. Neither good nor bad, necessarily, just your road.

Now, I struggle with traveling. A lifetime of motion-sickness on most forms of transportation plus being something of a homebody makes it difficult. I like being in a place far from home, but the transition to get there is rough. Mercifully the plane flights were uneventful; the worst of the first leg was jet lag and Reeve losing his glasses. Irritating, but not insurmountable.

We spent a couple days in Madrid eating paella and touring the Palace and the Prado museum. This was my first kairos moment along the Camino, even though we weren’t yet hiking. One of the Prado’s most prized pieces is Heironynous Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights. Go ahead and Google it if you don’t recognize the name. Weird, right? It’s one of my most favorite paintings and one Leighton and I have had on our wall and then in the Edge House library for two decades. I know what it looks like inside and out; I’ve spent literal hours of my life staring at it in wonder. I was not prepared for seeing it with my own eyes. It was all there, everything I expected, but the texture, the detail, the sheer presence of it was overwhelming. Reader, I wept there in the gallery. God was present to me as God has been present in places like Dachau and the Rocky Mountains.

Once we began hiking, we had five days of the presence of God. It wasn’t constant—much of the hike was prosaic thinking about blisters or rain or what song to sing next—but all of it was tinged with the Holy Spirit. We were vulnerable in the walk to share our innermost fears and ponderings. We couldn’t go on at times, but we must go on. We arrived at the halfway point on our journey to great celebration (singing Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer”—perfection). We ate ridiculously delicious rustic sandwiches of bread and meat. We shared each other’s literal weight when it got to be too much. We cared for each other and received the care of our Spanish hosts who found us towels and tomatoes.

And then we arrived in the square in front of the church in Santiago de Compostela, inexplicably accompanied by the sound of bagpipes. I wept again, this time in joy and relief. We had made it. All of us. Ankles and fear and hunger and exhaustion and rain had not held us back. We, all of us, made it. We collapsed on the ground with smiles on our faces. For a thousand years, pilgrims have been walking to this place which may or may not house St James’ bones. It almost doesn’t matter if they’re real, because it’s the road we walk to get there and God’s presence with us as we do that matters.

I could write so many more stories about this journey, but I will stop here. May you feel God’s presence as you walk through your life, both the ordinary and the extraordinary.

antisemitism, the gospel of John, and clean drinking water

We laid Brian Brady to rest yesterday. It was beautiful and emotional and I can’t help but appreciate the parallel with today’s gospel. The disciples had just buried their friend Jesus. He was dead before his time. Their hope was dead. Grief is necessary and healthy but thank God the story doesn’t end there. And I believe it doesn’t end here for Brian either. We are in the season of resurrection where all death is temporary and we are being invited to step out of the boat onto stormy seas.

We are also mourning, yet again, deaths brought about by a man armed both with an assault weapon and with white supremacy. I had already planned to speak a bit today about the church’s history of antisemitism, and here we are living it. There is good news waiting at the end of this little history lesson, there always, always is good news and possibility and God’s reckless, mysterious love, but we need to name our sins before we can be redeemed from them.

Did you notice just now and a couple times during Holy Week when I read from the Gospel of John and changed the words “the Jews” to “the religious authority” or “the people”? I do that because of our history with this book. Let’s go back to around 90 Common Era. Jesus of Nazareth had died and been resurrected something like 60 years before, and John the Beloved Disciple, like the others, had gone out into the world and told his story if this impossible man. A group of Jews from one Synagogue heard him, took him in, and came to love Jesus as he did. They wrote down John’s memories and their experiences of the living God. They wrote their understanding of the events of Jesus’ life as they saw them, through their own experience of grief and persecution. This one small group of Jews wrote one of the most cosmically beautiful and painfully physical stories in the Bible—it’s glorious. The problem was, belief in Jesus as the messiah was a heretical belief in first century Judaism. Because of their heresy, it seems likely, this little community was kicked out of their synagogue. And so now they, too, are grieving. They’ve lost their community, their livelihoods and relationships, even the trust and vulnerability they shared with the larger community. They wrote out the good news of Jesus Christ but they also wrote out the bad news of their frustration and anger and suspicion.

This might have remained as a familial dispute—people from the same family who, at bottom, love each other deeply, no matter how upset they are with each others’ politics—but Christianity took off. Followers of Jesus cropped up all over the place and John’s words were spread around like, well, like viral tweets, really. People were hungry for good news and for this Jesus and so they got the good news wrapped up with words that became weapons.

The Gospel of John is not the only thing to blame for centuries of antisemitism, but it’s a big part of it. That the Jews here voluntarily take all the blame for the death of Jesus, that the Jews are presented as people to be feared, people who lie and cheat and manipulate to destroy a good man, even the subtle “for fear of the Jews” at the beginning of this passage is enough to open the door to much more dangerous ideology. I understand if you don’t read it this way, if you think people are being too sensitive, only we have 2000 years of Christians writing out their justifications for blaming, shunning, disenfranchising, and killing Jews. Jesus says in the gospel today “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any they are retained.” We have, accidentally or on purpose, retained the sins of a few as the sins of a whole people and allowed them to be ground underfoot for generations.

I’m telling you all this because it needs to be said out loud. Because people are still going into synagogues with guns. And because we can change it, because this is what the good news is about: healing wounds by naming our sins. Pastor Alex always says Resurrection happens to dead things. Let’s look at all the death around us and name our part in it, let’s stand like Ezekiel at the valley of dry bones so we can bear witness to their coming back to life! Transformation is what God’s about, what we’re about.

Now listen. The story of “doubting Thomas” might seem to be a strange place to find some sort of new life to connect to antisemitism—it always seems to be about the question of doubt and belief, about choosing to have faith though you have no proof. As usual, it’s about so much more than that.

Thomas isn’t there that first night when Jesus shows up in the locked room with the disciples. I imagine they’ve all told the story over and over all week from each of their different perspectives, parsing out what happened, falling over themselves in their delight that he’s back and Thomas thinks it’s just an elaborate and cruel joke. And then Jesus shows up again, this time it seems, just for Thomas. He gives him what he needs—proof—and also a reproof, “Do not doubt but believe” which of course we have used as a weapon ever since.

This is the strange good news I want to offer after yesterday’s shooting and Brian’s funeral and whatever other bad news you’re strugging with yourselves. It’s a single word: pistos. It’s an odd grammatical moment that we don’t translate well, surprise surprise. It means believe and Jesus says it twice in the sentence, pistos and apistos. “Do not be faithless but be faithful” or “Do not be unbelieving but believing”—do you see? It’s the same word pistos, believe. You’ll note, it’s not really about doubt. The Latin form of pistos is credo from which we get creed. You’ve heard me say this before, but it’s about giving your heart to something, not agreeing with a checklist of statements.

Anyway, another more literal definition of this word Jesus uses to Thomas is so fascinating. It’s used elsewhere in scripture and literally means “potable”, like, water that is drinkable. I did say this was a strange way to find good news, but hear me out. Jesus wasn’t talking about Thomas as a tall drink of water, but he is known for his subtlety and complexity: he chose this particular word with care. Do not be brakish water, Thomas. Do not be the lead-poisoned water of Flint or the cholera-infested water of Haiti. Thomas, be clear, cool, refreshing, living water. Be the award-winning municipal water in Cincinnati. Be the water that comes from mountain streams of melted snowfall. Do not poison the well, Thomas, clean it so all can drink. Or even, do not be trash, be treasure, like these beautiful mosaics on our sanctuary walls.

This word pistos brings something new into a history of antisemitism, a history of human self-interest, a history of creating messes and not cleaning them up because it’s not our problem. Do not condemn our Jewish siblings for things they didn’t do, do not ascribe guilt and filthiness and blame where there is none. Instead, believe in the image of God present in all people, let the clean water of clarity and knowledge and compassion wash away the sludge of racism. Be drinkable, my friends! May your soul find movement away from brackishness into potability! Can we get that on a tshirt?

See it’s about movement—God moving us from feeling rejected and dejected to being welcomed and welcoming. It’s less about the extremes and more about moving slowly from one end to the other. God is about movement, living water not stagnant. God is about shifting our perspectives and about going deeper into the love we already have for each other.

And it doesn’t have to happen suddenly—online there’s a lot of posts on social media about body positivity, which I think is so wonderful. Our bodies are God’s creations, so we should work towards positivity. Lately I’ve seen folks offer up their posts about body neutrality—that is, they don’t feel good enough to say positive things, but they can say, “my body got me to class today, that’s good,” or “I don’t hate my body today.” It’s a transition, a process. The spirit is moving here and new life is happening!

At Brian’s funeral this morning, Pastor Pat said, “We have a God who stands with us” and described God’s love for us as stubborn. This is the good news of this story about Thomas: Jesus shows up for Thomas, the one lost sheep out of a hundred, the one who can’t dare to hope that his friend has returned. We have a God who stands with us, a God who shows up for us in unlikely places, who gives us what we need, who loves us—all of us—with a stubborn love. A God who washes us clean in baptism and then continuously pours that cool, clear water over us, soaking us to the skin, washing away our old assumptions, our wounds, our violence.

I will leave you with the words at the very beginning of the Episcopal rite for the burial of the dead, much of which you’ll recognize from scripture:

I am Resurrection and I am Life, says the Lord.

Whoever has faith in me shall have life,

even though he die.

And everyone who has life,

and has committed himself to me in faith,

shall not die for ever.

As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives

and that at the last he will stand upon the earth.

After my awaking, he will raise me up;

and in my body I shall see God.

I myself shall see, and my eyes behold him

who is my friend and not a stranger.

Good Friday 2019

I know I make a lot of jokes about spoilers this time of year—do we know what’s going to happen on Friday afternoon? Do we know what’s going to happen early Sunday morning? Shhhh…don’t tell anyone, let them be surprised! It’s silly because we all know. New life is coming, resurrection and alleluias and plants bursting into flower and gosh if we don’t need it. It’s dark in the corners of our lives, the fire and cruelty of the world is getting to us. And even with all the tree pollen, we want that beauty and possibility springing forth, of course we do. And it’s still here, even in the darkness of Gethsemane, even in Jesus’ own doubt that this is the next good thing, even in our senses of abandonment and betrayal—the light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.

But

It is Good Friday. It is the day of death and darkness and gloom and suffering. This is the day that you will hear sermons about how God needed and wanted Jesus’ suffering, about how the blood of the crucifixion somehow washes us clean. About how our sin makes God so very angry and it’s only Jesus, who is like God, who can stand between us and the wrath to come.

I know this is scripture. I know it’s in the book. But I’m not sure this is what God’s like. “It was God’s will to crush him with pain,” says Isaiah. Was it? or was he crushed with pain and our way of understanding it is to say God wanted it. And then if God wants it, if God needs sacrifice and blood, then it makes sense that we would keep doing it. As much as Jesus was sacrificing himself for others—selfless, beautifully tragic—it’s still a sacrifice, still about a bloodthirsty God. 

The reading from Isaiah is one of many readings which say flat out that God desires suffering. “It was the will of the Lord to crush him with pain,” and “Through him the will of the Lord shall prosper.” Now, I am troubled by this. Troubled doesn’t even cover it. Disgusted. Mostly because humans have used lines like this forever to justify the cruelties we inflict on each other and as excuses not to be compassionate. It’s God’s will. I’m not even talking about the platitudes we offer when someone’s in the hospital. Literally, the good Christian men who came from Europe to America in those early days saw it as a sign of divine favor and of God’s glory that the native peoples succumbed to disease so quickly and that the Europeans were able to kill the rest and take control of the land so quickly. I’m not making this up—we have countless primary sources in their own hands and with the blessing of the Church attesting to it. Pain and suffering were justified by a God who desires them.

This reading and the other Suffering Servant passages from Isaiah are part of the Christian story about Jesus the Christ—we say that they’re foreshadowing him. Obviously he is the lamb led to the slaughter, obviously it is by Jesus’ bruises we are healed. There are a year’s worth of sermons on the complexity of Isaiah, but let me just say this: it’s not necessarily bad that we see Jesus here, but it wasn’t written about him. It’s most likely the suffering servant is the people of Israel as a whole. Their history is one of suffering and crying out to God, Isaiah was writing to the people who were just returned from Exile in Babylon. The temple was destroyed, the exiles were returning, and the whole culture and landscape was in shambles. What to make of the last 75 years? Why, why had God allowed this? Why were their children and parents dead and the house of Adonai a rubble? Where was God?

Isaiah says, “We the people of Israel have not suffered pointlessly—there is meaning here. Our suffering will create new life. We will not suffer forever.” This is beautiful and this is necessary. We need meaning-making to survive and this is the job of religion. This is what Isaiah is doing for Israel and partly what we’re doing gathered here to bear witness to the death of an innocent man. We are trying to answer the question “why”: why did Jesus have to die? Why is this happening to us? Why is this happening to my son or my neighbor? Why?

Suffering…exists. Sometimes it’s because of one person’s actions, sometimes its institutionalized, sometimes it just is and seeing it is enough. It’s just…a part of existence.

But we are adept at not seeing suffering, of scrolling past, of justifying our own pain as not worth paying attention to or justifying another’s pain as their fault or they should have known better or they’re not as human as we are. This kind of scapegoating and even willful ignorance is not confined to the distant past, it’s not confined to Jesus’ sacrifice. 

It’s children in cages at the border, miserable, sick, and even dying literally of thirst. Their suffering is Jesus’ suffering. 

It’s young people bullied for their looks or gender or ability who can’t stand to face another day. Their suffering is Jesus’ suffering.

It’s a whole generation of gay men wiped out of existence because our politicians and indeed the whole country ignored the HIV epidemic. We even mocked them publicly, like those who mocked Jesus on the cross. Their suffering is Jesus’ suffering.

I’ve started going weekly to the Hamilton County Jail with my colleague Daniel Hughes. He’s pastor of Incline Missional Church in Price Hill. We’re part of a group working to help incarcerated men be less likely to reoffend, but more than that, we’re trying to help them thrive, to have life abundant. Some of these guys have done really hurtful things. Others have been dumb or have trusted the wrong people. Some just can’t pay a speeding ticket, but also can’t pay bail, so they’re in jail for months until their hearing. And some, some are there because the justice system has to have somebody. Daniel said that thing yesterday as we were talking about the Last Supper and the arrest of Jesus, he said it about Jesus, but he also said it about the guys in the room. The system needed a victim. All the guys in that room nodded sadly. They know. It’s not just Jesus, it wasn’t just that once.

Don’t get me wrong, It’s true that we have within us the power to destroy ourselves and each other and all of Creation, it’s true we need to turn from these ways. It’s even true that God gets angry. And there’s something powerful and transformative and unnameable that happened on Good Friday, and there is something powerful and transformative and unnameable about Jesus. But he didn’t stop suffering with his own. And I don’t think he meant to. He showed us what our self-interest does to people. He showed us how all our systems are built on violence, every one of them. He showed us what our lust and greed and sloth do to the whole of Creation—he was mirroring back to us the way we find someone to blame, someone to mock, someone to drive to despair so that we will see them as he does. All of them. In the crucifixion narratives, the crowd is asked what to do with this Jesus of Nazareth, and they shout back “crucify him, crucify him!” Friends, sometimes we are the crucified, punished by our sins or for no reason at all, but just as often, we are the ones doing the crucifying.

For now, the light is departing this world. Jesus, our brother, is betrayed into the hands of us poor sinners.

Footwashing: yay or nay?

All may, some should, none must.

We say this before NOSH every week at the Edge House as an invitation for the assembly to participate as is helpful to them. Everyone is invited to participate regardless of who they are and what they’re carrying. Some of us perhaps shouldengage with certain parts, but that awareness is up to the individual to be honest with yourself. And no one is required to participate. This invitation at NOSH applies equally to the traditional footwashing service on Maundy Thursday.

“Footwashing?” you might be saying to yourself. “Really? We don’t do that here, it’s too uncomfortable.” Or maybe some of you are saying to yourself, “Finally! I’m so excited!” Two of Good Shepherd’s pastors represent each end of this scale.

Footwashing makes Pastor Alex’s skin crawl: it’s far too intimate, it requires far too much vulnerability, and to be perfectly honest, it’s gross. When Jesus wrapped that towel around his waist and started washing his disciples’ feet at the Last Supper, they were weirded out, too. Peter, appalled by what Jesus was doing, said, “No, man, you can’t wash my feet!” As much as Alex can agree that vulnerability, intimacy, and getting to the real nitty-gritty of service is what Jesus had in mind for his disciples to help them grow in faith, he sides with Peter’s first reaction to this challenge. Even more than that, he would say, “No, absolutely not. Not only will you NOT wash my feet, I will make certain guarantees that if you touch my feet, we are never making eye contact again.” He hastens to add that he understands how helpful the practice is to others and he’s happy to be in the room.

Meanwhile, Pastor Alice loves everything about footwashing. The vulnerability, the spaciousness around waiting for the next person to approach, the gift both of having your own feet washed as well as of washing someone else’s, even the deep awkwardness of it. And don’t get us wrong, it isawkward. But that’s actually part of the point. It was awkward back then, it’s awkward now. When something’s awkward, it means there’s something real and vulnerable happening, and God is in the midst of it. As someone who thinks of herself as self-sufficient, Alice finds receiving care from someone else humbling and spiritually-filling. Like being in the woods or looking up to a startlingly-blue sky, she feels like she can breathe clearly again. 

Where are you on the scale of Pastor “absolutely not” Alex to Pastor “yes, please” Alice? Are you somewhere in the middle? Do you find yourself leaning towards the “none must” end of things or seeing within yourself a sense of “some should” and a need to try it out? Wherever you find yourself, please come to the Edge House’s Maundy Thursday observance on April 11 at 7:30pm including a light “Agape” dinner. All are invited to eat, to pray or meditate, to have your feet washed, or just to observe. Perhaps some of you should engage with it. And no one must.