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sermon on Maundy Thursday and leaving

Baruch attah adonai elohenu melech ha-olam. Blessed are you, Lord our God, ruler of eternity. Amen.
*    *    *
A very long time ago,
a man and his friends sat down at a table for dinner.
They had been through a lot together, these friends.
They had given up a lot to be together—more than they knew.
They ate together most nights
and because it was the celebration of the Passover,
of course they would meet again
—nothing was out of the ordinary.
Something was coming—they all felt it—
but they didn’t know what.
The men and women around the table talked and joked
with the comfort of brothers and sisters.
They ate slowly,
savoring the plates of lamb, eggs, bitter herbs,
and unleavened bread they passed.
They drank wine and delighted in one another’s company.

And at the same time, even longer ago,
the people called the Israelites sat down for dinner.
In Egypt, in slavery.
They had been through a lot together already, these people.
They had given up a lot
—and had had a lot taken from them to be together—
more than they knew.
They ate together most nights, but this night was special.
They ate with their shoes and hats on,
their walking sticks in their hands,
their luggage packed for a journey. 
They ate quickly,
pausing only to pray to God for mercy.
They barely tasted the bread and wine and bitter herbs.
And they ate in both fear and excitement.

And at the same time, far in the future,
a group of brothers and sisters sat down at a table for dinner.
They had been through a lot together, these brothers and sisters.
They had given up a lot to be together—more than they knew.
They didn’t eat together very often any more, not as a whole group
at least not in one another’s houses.
But they did meet every week
to pass a plate of bread and a cup of wine.
They loved one another deeply
and yet didn’t quite know what to do about it
in the vast and changed world.
They talked and joked with the intimacy of family
and remembered all the times they’d eaten together,
every meal for 2,000 years.
They knew something was coming,
they knew what it was
—had heard the story, too, for 2,000 years—
yet they didn’t understand it, didn’t really know their part.
They ate, loving one another, loving God,
loving what they thought they knew.

*    *    *

The man and his friends, a very long time ago,
were about to depart:
the man would depart this life and he grieved to think about it;
his friends would depart from each other and from him,
running away in fear and grief.
Only Judas would have the courage of his convictions
and only the women would return.
    The man knew that this departure, this ending
would also be a beginning
        And he knew that beginning would not make the end less painful
    His friends knew something was ending
        Maybe they thought the rule of the Roman oppressors was ending
        Maybe they thought their poverty and directionlessness were ending
        They didn’t know that this would be their last dinner together
            That this was the last meal of a condemned man
            That this last supper would feed them in the wilderness

And at the same time, that people called the Israelites, even longer ago,
    Were about to depart:
        They would depart from Egypt and the slavery they had endured
        They would depart from the life they had known,
oppressive as it had been
and embark on a long journey into the wilderness
        but before they left, they covered their doorposts with blood
marking their homes
so that the angel of death would pass over them
they killed the lamb, and ate it in fear and joy
    grieving the loss of their old life,
ready to leave for a new life
terrified by what was happening outside their doors
    this people had a leader, a man named Moses
        Moses knew that this departure, this ending
            Would also be a beginning
        And he knew he would not survive this new story
He knew this beginning would not make the ending less painful

And at the same time, far in the future,
    The brothers and sisters gathered here were about to depart
    They didn’t know it
        They thought their weekly meal was comfort and beauty and joy
            And it was
        But it was also the last supper before the storm
    They would eat hastily, knowing something was coming
        They would pray to God to pass them over
            Marking their foreheads with ash
            And their hearts with regret
    These brothers and sisters are the ekklesia, the church
the gathering of people
the people, literally, “called out” of our normal lives.
We are that beloved community
    we will depart from the empire,
from mammon,
from the way we’ve always done things
we are always on the move, always at an ending and a beginning
        our weekly supper of bread and wine
will be food for the journey
        our love for one another will sustain us in the wilderness

*    *    *

This [gesture to table] is the end, brothers and sisters.
    We will eat our meal together hastily,
our shoes on our feet and our walking sticks in our hands,
our luggage packed
    For we have been called to witness to the world
    We have been called to an ending
    We will depart from this place like the Apostles—the ones Jesus sent out
    We will leave the expectations of the world like the Israelites left Egypt
        We will travel in circles where our calling is foolish
            Where we will look ridiculous
for insisting on love and compassion
            Where we will be insulted and misunderstood
            Where we will be desperately hungry for more than bread
    Every time we eat this meal together,
        We remember every other time we have eaten together for 4,000 years
        And every time we eat this meal together,
            God is present with us
            Jesus returns
    God is with us on this journey
        We are not alone

Yet, for now, it seems God has abandoned us
    We cannot see or feel God
    We feel battered and bruised
        By the Story we enact this week
        By its contradictions and problems
    The light is departing this world
        Jesus, our brother,
            Is betrayed into the hands of us poor sinners.

sermon on Psalm 1, privilege, and racism

Psalm 1, has a lot of meat. It reads:
1 Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the seat of scoffers;
2 but their delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law they meditate day and night.
3 They are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither. In all that they do, they prosper.
4 The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away.
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous;
6 for the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.
On a first reading, it’s fairly innocuous.
Yes, we’re happier when we’re not terrible to each other.
We’re more fulfilled and connected to God
when we participate in what God is doing.
We are more fruitful when we pay attention to God’s desire for love.
I’m into it.
And wickedness—or sinfulness,
we often experience as that rootlessness,
that powerlessness over our wrongdoing
that the psalm describes as chaff that the wind blows away.
We get bandied about by our desires.
And we crave justice—“those wicked people need to be punished,”
maybe even “I’m so wicked I need punishment.”
We long for a just universe where good is rewarded and evil punished.
I’m still into it.
Maybe we just end the sermon here?
Maybe not.
There’s a thread in modern theology that says
this psalm and many other bits of scripture
are about something more concrete.
It’s about the haves and the have nots.
Certainly those who “have” God, as it were, and those who don’t.
But also about those who have prosperity and lots of stuff
and those who do not.
As though those things are entirely related to whether you have God.
The righteous have much, are blessed, succeed.
The wicked have little, are miserable, and fail.
So, it follows from this simple reading that
those who have little, are miserable, or fail must be wicked. And those who have much, are blessed, and succeed
are righteous.
No?
Don’t we say God helps those who help themselves?
Sure, it’s not in the Bible, but it’s true, right?
And look at statistics: look how closely crime and poverty line up.
But this reading is from a place of privilege.
Let me complexify this for us.
A number of years ago,
I took my diocese’s required Racism Awareness workshop.
There was a mix of folks from across the diocese there.
As a conversation-starter,
we were given an envelope with 26 notecards inside.
On each notecard was a question
and we were asked to put those cards into two piles:
“this does apply to me” and “this doesn’t apply to me.”
Let me share with you some of the statements on the cards.
Maybe you can keep a tally of where you’d put them:
“I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to the person in charge,
I will be facing a person of my race.”
“I can turn on the television or open the front page of the paper
and see people of my race widely-represented.”
“I am rarely asked to speak for all people of my racial group.”
“I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials
that testify to the existence and contributions of their race.”
“I can worry about racism without being seen
as self-interested or self-seeking.”
“I can choose blemish cover or bandages in “flesh” color
and have them more or less match my skin.”
“Whether I use checks, credit cards, or cash,
I can count on my skin color not to work against
the appearance of financial responsibility.”
“If a traffic cop pulls me over, or if the IRS audits my tax return,
I can be sure I haven’t been singled out because of my color.”
Hearing where each person put their notecards was
—and I cannot put this dramatically enough—
earth-shaking for me.
I had put 25 of the 26 cards in the “it does apply to me” pile.
And the white folks around me were similar.
All of the people of color in the workshop
had put a majority of the notecards
in the “it doesn’t apply to me” pile.
In this moment, I had a sudden, intense, clear vision
of the privilege that I enjoy as a white person.
Just recently I read an article in which the author spoke
of grocery-shopping with her half-sister at their regular store.
Both of them are of mixed-race, but the author “passes” for white,
that is, she has more Caucasian features,
whereas her sister looks clearly black.
The sisters were in line to check out with their groceries.
The author was first in line, wrote a check, was not asked for ID,
and began bagging her groceries
while her sister’s were being scanned.
The sister then began writing a check as well
and the cashier immediately asked for ID
and looked intently, the author says “suspiciously,”
between the ID and the check.
The author called attention to this behavior,
asking what she was looking for.
The cashier replied it was policy to ask for ID.
The author asked why she herself hadn’t been asked for ID
moments before.
The store manager was called. It became a bit of an issue.
I’m aware that this is an anecdote,
but one which our black brothers and sisters
would not find surprising.
What is going on here?
I want to be clear that there are all kinds of privilege,
not just this example of embedded racism.
In this country there’s the privilege of being comfortable or even wealthy,
of being male, of being straight, of being educated.
And being privileged in some way doesn’t mean things haven’t been hard.
Of course wealthy people have depression and anxiety
and difficult family situations,
but they know they’re going to eat for the foreseeable future
and they’re going to be respected.
And of course a poor white family will have significant struggles
just as a poor black family will,
but that poor black family will have other struggles as well.
And an educated white woman might enjoy many privileges
in her hometown
but be targeted by rape and death threats in some online communities
because she is a woman.
Privilege changes and overlaps with lack-of privilege
—we call this intersectionality.
Now, I suspect that by my bringing this up in church,
some folks out there are tensing up.
If it’s because you disagree with me, I understand, but please hear me out.
I think scripture has something to speak into our lives here
that’s both difficult and freeing.
If it’s because we don’t talk about this kind of stuff in church,
I have to ask why not?
Why wouldn’t we talk about the ways in which
we Christians act like Pharisees, whether we know it or not?
Why wouldn’t we open our eyes to systems of oppression
and do what we can to make folks’ lives better?
Isn’t that basically what the prophets and Jesus were doing?
My point is this:
It is very easy to fall into the belief that something is not a problem
because it’s not a problem to us personally.
It’s so difficult to identify with this idea of privilege
because by its very nature, it’s invisible if you’ve got it.
And my second point is that
privilege isn’t a bad thing per se,
it’s a question of what we do with it once we see it.
How do I respond, for example, when I get pulled over for speeding,
and the officer literally backs away from me and says
“I can’t give a priest a ticket!”
Rejoice at my good fortune? Insist he give me a ticket?
Give him a lecture about privilege?
Ask some other officers about policy and practice and begin dialogue?
Our scriptures are rife with folks getting away with things
because they’re in charge or favored or pretty.
And those stories portray privilege sometimes as violent and terrible
like David’s sending the husband of the woman he lusted after
to the frontline to be killed.
And sometimes as the only way to save thousands of lives,
like Esther’s ability to speak to the king her husband
to spare the lives of the Jews.
And they’re rife with stories of people on the other side of things,
seeing the imbalance of power,
experiencing the oppression of invading forces
or economic pressures.
They’re rife with stories of the outsider and the rejected
pushing back against power and privilege.
This is Ruth. This is Tamar.
This is Moses in Egypt. This is Mary Magdalene and Peter.
This is too many people to list.
Looking back at my first description of Psalm 1,
I think we’re being called to awareness and compassion.
I said, “we are happier when we’re not terrible to each other.”
Which means we need to notice when we’re being terrible.
And when someone else is being hurt by our privilege.
How do we use that awareness to show that person love?
We are more fulfilled and connected to God
when we participate in what God is doing.
Maybe we ask what God is already doing in our community
rather than plowing forward with what we know needs to be done?
We are more fruitful when we pay attention to God’s desire for love.
Not productive, mind you, that’s our consumer culture speaking.
No, we make the fruit we were meant to
when we’re paying attention to love and forgiveness
and understanding and creativity.
How do we educate ourselves about issues
that don’t affect us personally?
And how do we learn to forgive?
This is where Psalm 1 gives us some beautiful grace.
It doesn’t say that the Lord watches over the righteous
but the wicked will perish.
It says “the Lord watches over the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish.”
The way. The way in which we do things.
The path we walk. The way of seeing the world.
God watches over and fosters and delights
in the path of love that each of us walks.
I even imagine God,
with one of those brooms they use in curling,
shuffling backwards in front of us,
sweeping the broom back and forth,
smoothing out the path when it gets rough…
And God will allow/is allowing the path of sin and misery
that each of us walks to fall into disrepair.
Psalm 1 is maybe foreshadowing Psalm 30,
“weeping may linger the night, but joy comes in the morning.”
In other words, everything will be okay in the end.
If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.
And God invites us to participate in making things okay.
It will be uncomfortable for us to face how we are complacent
in the face of suffering.
It will be hard to begin dismantling our individual and corporate sin.
But we don’t do it alone.
God is walking that path with us,
nudging us towards the one that’s been cleared,
raising us up when we fall,
and celebrating with us when we succeed.
This is one message of the cross:
in Jesus’ death and resurrection that we celebrate this Easter season,
it is not that Jesus reminds an angry God that we are God’s beloved,
we are reminded that we are created in God’s image,
that we are God’s beloved, that we were made for love.
God’s been there all the time, maintaining the universe,
shining love on all of us.
We just forgot.
On the cross, Jesus showed us
where all our grasping and violence and moralizing lead us.
And in the empty tomb, Jesus shows us
all the possibilities of creation.
We can be and are like trees planted by streams of water,
which yield their fruit in its season,
and their leaves do not wither.
May it be so.


Good Friday meditation on Psalm 31 and bodies


Let’s talk about sex offenders for a moment.
If we can’t talk about them on Good Friday
when Jesus gave up his body for the sins of the world
—including not just we God’s faithful people
but also all the people we look down on or are disgusted by
—when can we?
I’ve been in a pastoral relationship
with someone on the Sex Offender Registry for several years now.
And I’ve been pondering for most of that time
why there are such extreme reactions to this person’s offense.
Over and above other kinds of offenses, that is
—it’s a different reaction than if you disclosed to me
that you’d stolen a watch
or even that you’d murdered someone.
It’s a powerful, visceral, angry reaction
which leads not only to creating the Registry in the first place
but also to everyday folks regularly checking out that Registry
for people in their neighborhood.
Because…why?
Registered sex offenders are the second least likely to reoffend…just behind murderers.
Why do we do this to ourselves? And to them?
It’s something to do with our essence, our being, our bodies.
A sex offense is…intimate and personal,
and an offense against our bodies
is somehow an offense against more than our bodies.
It’s like when you’re badly hurt with a broken leg, say,
or when you’re throwing up everything you ever ate,
the world condenses to this one primal, vulnerable space
where your body is.
All your being is concentrated on the misery of your body.
But somehow a sex offense magnifies that feeling.
Regardless of what the offense was
—and believe me, there is a wide spectrum
represented on the Registry—
knowing that a hurt was sexual in nature
brings up bone-deep revulsion
which seems to be the only truth.
To be clear, yes to all those feelings.
Violation of the body is deeply painful and emotional
and no one who perpetrates such violation should be given a pass.
If you’ve experienced such hurt, please tell someone
—don’t suffer alone.
It turns out, the violence of those encounters
leaves its scars on the perpetrators as well.
This person whom I know has struggled and been to jail
and to all the therapy and has transformed themself
in ways I frankly envy.
Even after all that, they fear reoffending
and even more the emptiness that comes
when a new friend finds them on the Registry.
Which happens all the time.
This person is outcast from social media, from employment,
and from more than one or two long-term friendships.
Perhaps you might justifiably say, “good.”
And perhaps you might also notice
the similarity between this person
and the people Jesus spent much of his time with.
Not because they were paragons of virtue
but because they were imprisoned by something
and wanted to be set free.
*       *       *
Let’s talk about close male friendships for a moment.
There was a time, as recently as the first World War,
when men who were friends
might be seen holding hands or hugging in public,
slinging their arms around each others waists, cuddling of a sort.
If you don’t believe me, just Google “male affection photo”
for an article called “Bosom Buddies.”
Human beings need touch—you know the studies
about babies who die because they’re not touched.
But more than that, we all need loving, gentle, consistent touch
for brain development and for spiritual development.
Our children are built for it,
demanding cuddling at wonderful and inopportune times.
But in the last 50 years, such touch between adult males has become rare.
Some folks wonder if societal homophobia
has robbed us of close male friendships.
My husband tells me his high school students
can’t even express the bare minimum of verbal friendship
without someone suggesting they might be gay.
Could we as a people be so concerned over the possibility of a come-on
that we’ve lost something precious?
“Boys imitate what they see.
If what they see is emotional distance, guardedness, and coldness
between men they will grow up to imitate that behavior…
What do boys learn when they do not see men
with close friendships, where there are no visible models
of intimacy in a man’s life beyond his spouse?”[1]

Women may be more able to show affection,
yet we participate in a culture of homophobia and touch-me-not.
We are made in the image of God and we are built for physical intimacy.
Perhaps you might justifiably say,
“But it can go so wrong so easily, even without assault.”
And perhaps you might also note that Jesus spent the Last Supper
reclining beside the beloved disciple John
whom our Celtic brothers and sisters say was so close
he heard the heartbeat of God.
No matter how enlightened we are,
we are imprisoned by our fear of closeness and we need to be set free.
*       *       *
Let’s talk about being unworthy for a moment.
I know students at UC who can’t fathom
that anyone would respect or love them.
They may seem happy or calm on the surface,
but it’s a cardboard cutout of themselves.
I know folks at UC who fill their days and nights with work
because they can’t trust themselves or others
to have their back and they fear failure.
I know friends who know deep in their hearts
that they’d never really be welcome in church
because they haven’t attended in years
or because they think God hates what they do with their bodies
or because they’re not good enough.
I know people who, because of their gender identity or homelessness
feel invisible.
And when they hear that God loves them,
they scoff or cry or get angry because how could God possibly love them. It’s patently ridiculous.
Peter at the Last Supper shows us a silly version
of this deeply-held self-revulsion.
When Jesus arrives at Peter’s feet, Peter says,
“wait, what? You can’t wash my feet! They’re gross.
And you’re…you know…God or something.”
And Jesus patiently explains it again and Peter says,
“Oh, right, I’m so filthy, I need you to wash my whole self!”
We don’t wash the feet of our dinner guests anymore.
But my friends Chris and Kevin once did something similar for me.
After my entire family had been sick simultaneously
with a stomach bug for several days,
my friends came to our house and cleaned up.
While we were still weak,
they swept and mopped and did dishes
and sanitized counters and doorknobs.
They didn’t hesitate to touch
where our disease had made things unclean.
How could I have been worthy of such a gift?
Perhaps you might justifiably say, “oh man, that’s me. I’m just the worst.”
And perhaps you might also recall
just how many times our scriptures record
the consistent and overwhelming love of God
for some really filthy people.
All of us are imprisoned by sin and we need to be set free.
*       *       *
Now, let’s talk about Jesus’ body.
We say that he was God made human
and centuries of theologians have written
about how he was REALLY HUMAN.
It’s not that he just looked like us but was actually smoke and mirrors.
He didn’t have a glowing God center with a crunchy human shell.
He was really, really, physically, emotionally a person.
Jesus is God becoming a vulnerable, squalling, pooing baby
and a vulnerable, squalling, pooing adult
—that’s his whole deal.
That’s the whole point.
Our God who created the universe,
who made this world in all its amazing variety,
who made us—
these complex, thinking bodies charging through space—
our God didn’t just watch from afar,
munching popcorn like we’re some kind of soap opera.
God got themselves a body and ate hummus
and snuggled with Mary and Joseph
and in the teen years refused to be touched
and walked the dirty roads of Jerusalem
and touched disgusting sick people
and touched unworthy prostitutes and office workers
and touched cruel sinners
and then died in extreme pain in front of his earthly parents,
watching them sob.
And then—spoiler warning—came back to life for real.
It’s all about God’s body.
Jesus body standing in for all the bodies in the world.
All of them.
Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection
is about our bodies being strong and resilient
and vulnerable and imprisoned and…worthy of being set free. And it’s about God loving us more than enough to do it.
That freedom is scary.
It’s a painful and fascinating transition.
But as the Psalmist says in the 31st Psalm,
“Be strong, and let your heart take courage, all you who wait for the Lord.”


[1] Kindlon and Thompson, Raising Cain

sermon on Luke 1, Mary the mother of Jesus, prophecy, and bad good news


A       Mary the mother of Jesus was a prophet.
Like Isaiah and Micah and Amos and Habakkuk.
Let’s dig into that for just a moment.
There in Luke is a great example of what we call an annunciation form—
basically, there are bits of scripture
that are very similar to each other,
things like the traditional form of a pastoral letter,
or love poems, or proverbs,
or the form of announcing a miraculous birth.
You remember Abraham and Sarah
and their miraculous, late-in-life birth, right?
Or Hannah mother of the prophet Samuel?
Their stories, when the angels or God visit
and tell them of their impending pregnancy,
generally follow a particular form.
Interestingly, while Mary’s story is indeed
a birth announcement and fits that form,
it actually fits a different form much more closely
—the prophetic call.
Like Moses, Gideon, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel before her,
Mary encounters an angel
who calls her to some sort of difficult action,
Mary objects to the call,
she is reassured and given a sign.

B       It turns out lots of early church writers saw this well before I did,
but it’s an image of Mary that we’ve lost over the years
—somehow we are left with a quiet, obedient Mother
 without the firebrand language of the Magnificat
she sings immediately afterwards.
She sings about God’s greatness and mercy
but she also sings this,
“He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.”
It’s reminiscent of the song of Moses
and of basically all of the Hebrew prophets.
God is indeed great and merciful
AND ALSO is about justice and significant change to the status quo.
If you’re poor or afflicted, you’re gonna get fed.
Also, if you’re comfortable or in power,
you’re gonna get taken down a peg or two.
Prophets, you see, are a bit difficult.
They’re not domesticated.
They speak from their own oppressed group.
They speak the languages of challenge and hope.
Prophets, Mary included, see clearly what is,
the patterns of human behavior
and how we consistently screw things up.
And prophets, Mary included, see what can be,
the potential for beauty and compassion and grace.
Prophets, Mary included, speak to their own oppressed people
and say, “This is terrible but it won’t last.
If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.”
It’s good news, but it might not seem like it.
C       Pastor Larry and I used to argue this point.
He’d say, “Good news is always good news.”
Being contrary, I’d say, “No it’s not.”
The word “Gospel” literally means “good news”
and I agree that it is in fact always good.
BUT it doesn’t always feel like it.
That the rich—spoiler warning, that’s us
—that the rich will be sent away empty sounds like a threat.
That the proud—spoiler warning, that’s also us
—will be scattered sounds like bad news.
This is the Gospel which says you lose your life to find it
and that’s damned hard. That’s miserable. I don’t want that.
The leveling of the playing field that Mary sings about
and that Isaiah writes about and that all the prophets
and law-givers and poets of our scriptures talk about
—that leveling means we might all lose something
and we will all gain something even better.
Past that loss of wealth or status or security,
         past Good Friday, past the pain of pregnancy and childbirth
is the New Thing that God is making.
Mary says to us,
“This is terrible but it won’t last. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.”
“When a person in a marginalized group is voicing their concern over something you’ve done, it’s a natural reaction to jump and try to defend yourself. Taking the time to listen and truly understand goes an incredibly long way to promoting the understanding that is so desperately needed...”[1]

As we continue in this Advent season,
as we wait for something new with increasing agitation,
when every one of us is pregnant with possibility,
I invite you to listen to Mary’s story retold.

D      Mary stands in her home, kneading bread for dinner
and looking absently out the window.
She sees her little son Jesus running around with the neighbor kids
playing chase and she corrects herself
—not little son, not any more, was he ever little,
seemed pretty big when he came out,
where has the time gone.
Mary watches as her son stops to help up one of the smaller children
who’s fallen in the dust,
then takes off like a shot around the corner of another house
and the Roman soldier keeping an eye on their neighborhood.
Mary presses down hard with the heel of her hand into the dough,
flips it over, presses again,
the repetitive motion part frustration and part meditation.
Her thoughts drift gently from her son’s momentary kindness
to his tantrum this morning about breakfast
to his sleeping face last night
to that same face, softer, rounder, more covered with snot,
lo, these many years ago.
Mary remembers swaddling her baby boy in that warm, dirty stable
and weeping with joy and terror at this new thing
—why didn’t anyone say, I can’t believe how amazing he is,
Joseph can you even…, how could I love someone this much.
And she remembers the day of the angel with the same joy and terror
—how can you be so beautiful and so frightening,
of course I’m afraid, you want me to do what,
from…Hashem, but…a baby?
Mary’s hands press down hard into the dough,
flipping it over, pressing it again.
Her hands covered in flour and callouses ache
as she remembers the early days of pregnancy
—the painful joints, the exhaustion,
the fluttering in her belly which she kept thinking was the baby
but which was only gas.
And later when the fluttering took her breath away
and she grabbed for Joseph’s hand to feel the tiny elbow pressing up
against her belly.
Once she remembers that elbow coming up and her pushing it back,
tapping it like a message. And the elbow tapping back.
She smiles as she flips the dough over to let it rest
and wipes her hands on the towel at her waist.
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Jesus and his friends
run helter-skelter back into sight.
She begins to hum as she takes out a knife to cut up garlic.
It’s a song she’d all but forgotten, but in the quiet of a rare moment alone,
she remembers.
“My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my savior.”
Ah, yes, she thinks, and sighs aloud.
How that song had welled up in her that day in cousin Elizabeth’s house.
They were both pregnant,
commiserating about aches and pains
and husbands who were attentive but in the wrong ways.
They talked of swaddling and breastfeeding
and the births they’d been present for.
They talked about how the world wasn’t good enough for their sons,
hands resting protectively on round bellies.
They talked about their awe
that they could be making people within themselves.
They talked about their awe that Hashem had given them this chance,
that maybe their boys would be the ones to change things.
And Mary began to sing her gratitude.
It was an old tune but the words came from deep within her,
from the knot of baby growing in her belly and in her heart.
She sang about her own unworthiness to be a mother
and how overwhelmingly giddy it made her.
She sang about Hashem’s attentiveness to the people with no power
and about Hashem’s power to remake the world.
She sang about justice and regime change and transformation.
She sang about her sadness
and she sang about her hope that all would see the face of Hashem
and know the truth of their sin and blessedness.
In the end, a breathless silence
and then cousin Elizabeth applauded
and called her Prophetess
and they laughed.
Mary begins chopping the cloves of peeled garlic
piled up like coins in front of her and hums.
This child will change everything, she sings.
This child has already changed everything.




[1] Jessica Lachenal, “Why the Batgirl #37 controversy is the conversation we need right now.” www.themarysue.com 12/15/14 6:30pm

sermon on Ezekiel 33:1-7



Friends, the internet is a jerk.
I mean, maybe it’s the people, but online is such an easy place to be rude—I’ve done it myself! It’s an easy place not to do research, to demand people take you seriously regardless of what you’re saying. It can be a deeply connecting place as well, a place to be educated, to be inspired, but for God’s sake, don’t read the comments. Like, ever. I made the mistake this past week of reading a few comments on news stories about Ferguson, Missouri. They were…disgusting.

And I don’t know of you’re aware of the stolen, nude photos of actress Jennifer Lawrence? Basically, Jennifer Lawrence had some nude photos of herself for her own purposes. Someone hacked into her accounts and stole them. Some guys on the website 4chan shared them but then a group of folks on another website Reddit spread the photos around far and wide. Jennifer Lawrence was embarrassed, people who saw it were embarrassed, and eventually the folks on Reddit were embarrassed. They had a change of heart—they took the photos down and then did a fundraiser for a cancer charity that Jennifer Lawerence had been associated with. When they sent the thousands of dollars they’d raised to the charity, their note said they were trying to make up for their lapses in judgment and included jokes about what had happened. The charity…said, “no.” Basically, “no, we’re not taking your money, you can’t pay for forgiveness.” Not to be deterred, the Reddit guys sent the money to a water charity with a similar note and with an addendum about how surely this charity would take the donation, they’d be fools not to. And the water charity…said, “no.” No, you don’t get to do something jerk-y and then do one nice thing and expect the scales to be balanced.

It’s not just the internet, though. The Bible is a jerk. Did you notice in that Ezekiel reading, “But if you warn the wicked to turn from their ways, and they do not turn from their ways, the wicked shall die in their iniquity, but you will have saved your life.” Basically, tell people how they’re sinning because otherwise you’ll burn with them. Somehow, we are saved because we have pointed out others’ sins. I’ve met well-meaning Christians who take this as license to insist on their understanding of good and evil and to try to convert me to that. Our scriptures have can be a deeply connecting place as well, a place to be educated, to be inspired, but for God’s sake, don’t read the comments. Or, well, take the centuries of commentary and contemporary, me-first theology together and with a healthy grain of salt.

The thing is, we are about law AND gospel. Yes, the Law says to be righteous and righteously judge your neighbor for their misdeeds. It also says NOT to judge your neighbor—that’s not just Jesus’ line.
No, the Law can be good because I certainly drive better when there’s a cop nearby, don’t you? It’s so easy to justify my own selfishness if I just let a law slide here and there. But the gospel is about something else. Gospel is literally “good news”—it’s a challenge or a comfort that enters into your place of bad news, of really shitty news and transforms it into something beautiful. This is not to say that believing in Jesus makes everything go right for us from finding a parking place to cancer remission. Good news is about hope.
And Ezekiel’s version of good news involves repentance. For him, repentance is about hope. Because we recognize the terrible things we do and say, because we commit to not doing them—even though we’ll fail many times—we have hope that things can be different, will be different. Instead of a cycle of violence that we see enacted in the world all the time, when we admit our failings, we participate in a cycle of forgiveness.
It’s true that the internet is a jerk—it’s a true fact, look it up. But it’s also true that the internet is a beacon of hope. I just recently discovered the vlogbrothers—I’m late to the party, I know—and their videos are the most perfect example of hope I can think of right now. In case you’re also running late for the party, here’s the executive summary: they’re brothers, one a novelist, one a scientist, who do short weekly videos to each other about all kinds of things and have developed a huge following and collaborative community around them. I don’t think they mention it much these days, but back in the day, John mentioned offhandedly that he’s a religious man and at several points Hank has mentioned that he is not. But the words of wonder at the universe and love of collaboration and delight in decreasing world suck—these all speak to me in my language of the creative presence of God constantly grinning like an idiot and saying, “Yes! And…?” Their videos suggest to me the theology of God the primal mover: God acts first, then we respond. John and Hank made videos and then tons of people responded, like a huge sigh of relief—we can make a difference! And for Christians, God loves us first, and when we see that, when we feel it beyond words on a page, suddenly the air is cleaner in our lungs and our eyesight clearer—we can make a difference.

So here are two undying truths from across generations of Christians and, indeed, across generations and faiths of human beings:
Don’t be a jerk.
and
God loves you even though you are a jerk.

Amen.
*   *   *
Here's a link to a great vlogbrothers video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc_XWlqURTg

sermon on Romans 12:9-21, conversation, and jerks on campus

This past week at UC has been crazy. A week and a half ago, the students returned to campus and the university put on a ton of events to welcome them, to help them make friends, to encourage them to join extracurriculars, to encourage them to do things other than drink themselves silly. It’s called Welcome Weekend and they say, if you’re not completely wiped out by the end of it, you’re not doing it right.

Check out some of the people who came to the-Edge-House-sponsored Board Game Extravaganza—I stopped counting at 200.

















And here’s a shot of our Giant-Sized Settlers of Catan—it’s a strategy board game from Germany, very fun. We just made it bigger fun.


















We took our espresso set-up onto campus to give out free iced lattes and we had some great conversations with some of the 150 folks who partook.

Earlier in the week I got to speak again to a roomful of technical theatre students at CCM about spiritual wellness. I don’t have a picture of that, I’m afraid, but it was all about how, just like a play needs actors and costumers and set-builders and stage managers and lighting designers and all the people to make it work, so do our lives. Don’t do it alone.

And so it goes. Days on end of deeply emotional and draining events. Ya’ll should come next year, it’s great!

One of my students has been working for a year on a collaboration between DAAP design students and both the Women’s Center and the UC counseling services called #consentculture. It’s in response to the statistic that 1 in 4 collegiate women are sexually assaulted in their college careers. And that first couple weeks of the school year is what they call the “red zone”—more of the assaults happen when folks are new and vulnerable. So my student Heather and others have created this amazing brand and set-up where people can come over and learn about it and pledge to support consent—verbal, ongoing consent. Beautiful. Wednesday, I went to sign the board. As I turned to speak to the woman staffing the table, a young man came up and said, “consent culture? I believe in consent to rape.” Yeah. I figured he was a freshman, didn’t know how offensive he was, so I said, “that’s not funny. Please don’t say that.” And he proceeded to spout a lot of garbage—and that’s the nicest way I can say it—garbage about men and women and our place and men’s right to receive something back. When I noticed aloud that his argument wasn’t logical, he insulted us by saying that lesser minds wouldn’t understand his argument nor his entitlement. Maybe you’re familiar with some of the rhetoric another young man in California spoke before he shot up a sorority house recently? It was like that. And. It was…alarming. And disgusting. And we who were there at the booth did an admirable job of not flying off the handle but I’m going to be honest with y’all: I was angry. I was furious that he and anyone else could believe that women were objects who owed him something. And I was furious that there is a culture that would teach him this. And, weirdly, of all the things in that moment, what was the most frustrating was his unwillingness to allow anyone else to speak. He approached alone, looking for a fight; he left alone, having gotten one.

I’m not offering a treatise on feminism today, nor a travelogue on the Edge House’s Welcome Weekend adventures. But I am going to insist that we talk to and listen to one another.

Paul’s words in his letter to the church in Rome have been bouncing around in my brain all week. Paul says a lot of things about how to live in Christian community—look back at that in your bulletin [on the screen]. “Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.”
This may seem to be a kind of grocery list of virtues that we want to do but know with that sinking feeling that we can’t hope to live up to. And we Lutherans—ahem, y’all Lutherans…—might even go so far as to get comfy with that. You might think that since there’s no way we can check off all that blessing and persevering and living peaceably with everyone, and since we are saved by God’s grace, let’s just not worry so much about it. Our everyday failures to be kind and forgiving aren’t such a big deal in the end.
Yes and no. I mean, yeah, it’s good not to be so nitpicky of ourselves and others—we don’t want to become micromanagers of other people’s lives—it’s exhausting for one thing. And we don’t want to end up hating ourselves for our failures. But. But.
What this is about is how much we need each other. How much we can’t do it alone. Paul is talking about being present, about showing up to our relationships and working to release our own self-interest. He’s talking about reflecting back grace and love and forgiveness rather than our normal, easily-justifiable rejection and annoyance. I won’t go so far as to say that we’re hateful people—seems like our day-to-day sin is annoyance, it’s eye-rolls and unwillingness to engage with the humanity of those around us. None of us here want to destroy the people we meet, but neither do we want others to disrupt our comfortable routine. And Paul’s all about disrupting that comfortable routine and requiring the believers to engage day-to-day kindness. He wants them, basically, to recognize that they need each other, like those theatre students need each other to produce a play and to, you know, live their lives well. Paul’s not saying, “go out there, team, and save the entire world!” He’s saying, “next time you meet that one lady you don’t care for so much, try to be a little gentler, know she’s struggling as well.” He’s saying, “next time you find yourself knowing you’re right, maybe allow for the possibility that you’re not, know that the other person has a story to tell.”

This storytelling and, maybe more importantly, story-listening, might be the thing that saves us. And really listening to someone else’s story is not easy. You might hear something that makes you uncomfortable or something you want to combat. You might hear something that resonates with your own deepest truth and it makes you weep. You might hear something ­­­­­­­­­­that opens your brain or heart to something unexpected and transforming.

For us to be able to do what Paul’s saying, to love with mutual affection, rejoice, be patient, persevere, extend hospitality, and live in harmony, we have to be vulnerable with each other. We have to be willing to actually talk to each other about more than the weather and the budget and our children and grandchildren. All good things, all good things. But we have to be willing to disagree about how to live out this divine love we’ve been given and still sit down to worship together.

So I want you to partner up. Turn to someone near you and if you need to add a third person because of where folks are sitting, great. Pulling from Paul’s letter to Rome, I invite you to share with your partners when was the last time you extended hospitality to a stranger? What difference did it make? I’ll give you 4 minutes to talk…

…friends, I invite you to turn your faces and hearts forward again.
Without sharing confidences, what was that like for you? What did you learn?

Now, that was only 4 minutes. Imagine if our lives were shaped by listening to each other and to looking for the ways in which we need each other?  Imagine if we weren’t so concerned with looking for big burning-bush signs and looked for the signs in each moment of God’s action? If a single smile from your mother suggested God’s toothy grin. If the bubbling laughter of a vacation reminded you of God’s playfulness in creating us in the first place. If a frown or a tear reminded us of God’s brokenheartedness at our self-centeredness. If doing the dishes reminded you of your baptism.
Friends, the church only functions because we have musicians and readers and ushers and offering counters and council members and Habitat for Humanity volunteers and students and teachers and prophets and apostles. It doesn’t function because we’ve all got it figured out. Just like how this place runs, so are our lives. Don’t do it alone. Know that no matter what things look like in any given moment, you are not alone. You are welcomed into the Kingdom. And the people who annoy you or you roll your eyes at or you avoid, they’re not alone either. Because they have you. We are a people of welcome. Let’s offer that welcome in the ordinary moments of our lives.