Pastor Oby Ballinger: Recent Episodes
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Sermon preached at Newport United Methodist Church and Community United Church of Christ in Newport, Minnesota.
Text: Jeremiah 1:4-10.
I have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to clergy stoles—so many beautiful and lovely fabrics to wear as symbols of God’s call to ministry! When I left parish ministry to begin full-time faith community organizing,
I hung them up in my closet and wondered when I would wear them again. So when Pastor Anne reached out to ask me to preach and share communion this morning, I’m just vain enough to start asking, “What should I wear??” In most Protestant churches, the Epiphany season of growth and wisdom is marked by the color green. So I went to the green and gold stole that a mentor gave me at my ordination, with the reminder that green is worn most often throughout the year. But I was also drawn to this other green one made by a pastor friend in Duluth, which includes the rainbow colors, fabric showing love, the spiral way of faith, and the Black Lives Matter salute that communicates resilient determination. Then again, anticipating seeing here some of the dear Community UCC members, who ordained me fifteen years ago last month in a sanctuary just down the road, made me reach for another stole that the church’s moderator there once gave me: “Blah, blah, blah”! (I think it was a joke?) Finally, Pastor Anne told me that the color for the day was every color—the rainbow! So I have opted for this stole of rainbow colors, made by a gay man in the congregation where I taught Sunday school while in seminary. You may not be able to see it from farther away, but this stole is made of hundreds of small colorful fabric squares, all stitched together by painstaking work into a colorful and diverse tapestry.
It’s not only vanity and nostalgia, though, that has me fixated on stoles. These simple or exquisite strips of cloth are a visible marker of a person’s service to the loving and just God of Jesus Christ. This is the God who addresses Jeremiah in today’s scripture, who calls him to step into prophetic leadership, and who through these words also addresses us as disciples who are known, called, and commissioned for bold, prophetic ministry now. The call story of Jeremiah, chapter one, follows a characteristic biblical shape: God calls, the prophet objects, and God reassures before commissioning to the work. That’s usually the way it goes with prophets in Scripture, and how it might go for us today.
God has the first word, proactively reaching out with a promise: “Before I shaped you in the womb, I knew all about you. Before you saw the light of day, I had holy plans for you.” How many of us need to hear, down to our bones, such words of divine affirmation? As we go through life, some of us beginning from childhood, we tend to pick up the negative judgments others have about us, and we can come to believe them ourselves. Many LGBTQ people have been told by family members, school bullies, social media, churches, and now this latest presidential administration that we are fundamentally wrong in who we are and how we love. Such negative messages can become a toxic stew that mars our self-image, until queer people come to believe this of ourselves. But no matter what humans might say in their false judgments, and whatever painful self-images we might carry within us (LGBTQ or not), the Creator promises that we are beautifully and wonderfully made, just as we are. Listen again to God, and let these words soak into your tender soul: “Before I shaped you in the womb, I knew all about you. Before you saw the light of day, I had holy plans for you.”
The prophet’s response, characteristically, comes from a place of humility and self-doubt. Jeremiah says back to God: “Hold it—look at me. I don’t know anything. I’m only a boy!” His words are deeply relatable to any of us who have ever faced daunting challenges and felt our own inadequacy. “There’s no way I can do anything about these great and terrible things in my life and in the world—I’m just one person.” Jeremiah’s fearful paralysis feels very close these days, as Americans of all kinds are buffeted by new executive orders that are being announced like royal decrees, with destructive consequences for our justice system, our economic safety net, and the lives of anyone who isn’t a white, wealthy, straight, cisgender male. The Trevor Project, a national effort to reduce LGBTQ youth self-harm, reports that in the 24 hours after Donald Trump’s reelection, calls to their crisis hotline went up seven hundred percent. Queer youth and adults—especially those who are transgender—recognize that the coming years of dominance by anti-LGBTQ forces threaten deadly marginalization and legal erasure. Amid the bewildering blizzard of this administration’s new beginning,
we’re feeling small and overwhelmed by design, as though we were only a child.
Yet God has the last word—to the boy Jeremiah and to us. God promises, “Don’t say, ‘I’m only a boy.’ I’ll tell you where to go and you’ll go there. I’ll tell you what to say and you’ll say it. Don’t be afraid of a soul. I’ll be right there, looking after you.” In other words, no matter what legislative and executive chicanery comes your way,
the God who knew and loved you before you were even born is not going anywhere. As it says elsewhere in Scripture, we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us.
God looks after Jeremiah—and Christ strengthens us—not just to survive the coming years but to transform for the better. Like the biblical prophets, we have received God’s word, a higher authority than any government or presidential office in the world. God charges Jeremiah to use his God-belovedness from before he was born, and the promise of divine ever-presence in this way: “I’ve given you a job to do among nations and governments—a red-letter day! Your job is to pull up and tear down, take apart and demolish, and then start over, building and planting.” The job description to Jeremiah is also what God’s people are commissioned for now, a gritty and comprehensive overturning of the powerful evil that is white Christian nationalism. This self-serving fanaticism uses the name of Christ and distorts biblical faith to suggest that God favors (and therefore humanity should give preferential treatment to) those who are male, white, straight, wealthy, cisgender, able-bodied and American. Followers of Christ and God’s people today are called alongside Jeremiah
to pull up and tear down, take apart and demolish such sinful idolatry. We are commissioned with Jeremiah instead to start over, building and planting for the world to which Christ gave his entire life, the realm of God where love is written on every heart, and written into the just laws of a compassionate society. We have been known and God-beloved just as we are since before our birth, we are called to serve as prophets even when we feel inadequate, and we are commissioned for the sacred and lifelong purpose of changing the world as it is into the world as it should be in God’s eyes.
In this moment, especially when we might feel dumbstruck or numb after the bullying domination we’ve seen from the federal government, our faith can pull us from helpless resignation to evil and push us forward with hope. Confronting threats and danger, there are at least five ways that humans respond. Our bodies are instinctively trained for fight, flight, or freeze. Another learned reaction is to fawn—seeking to disarm through flattery and approval. But the faithful response that we are commissioned for alongside Jeremiah is not to fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, but to build. We are here to build the realm of God on earth as in heaven, centering communities around care for those who are hungry, unhoused, imprisoned, and others like those whom Jesus called “the least of these” (Matthew 25). I have heard and responded to a call to build something new for our times, a network called Prism that partners with others and gathers community power in a multiracial, multifaith, statewide coalition for LGTBQ equality. What you are building in this community of faith is an essential part of that work, insofar as you have a Jeremiah-like boldness about building and planting a Christian witness of God’s love for every person, no exceptions, and this faith community’s full-hearted embrace of God’s rainbow people.
Which brings me back to where we started—a stole. Visible or invisible, every person here wears the stole of God-belovedness, with its corresponding commission to proclaim and build a world of belovedness in our words and our actions. We have received grace, and we give our lives to build the ways of grace however we can in words attributed to John Wesley, doing “all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.” Each of us does so individually—when we’re in this sanctuary or in the world—and each community of faith extends such grace in their own way, and each movement for justice brings forward its bright color for the tapestry. Be about this good and holy work, beloveds, in a persistent and daily way, for we are known, called and commissioned into God’s bold, prophetic service. None of us can or will do it all, but each of us can do some good. And by the powerful mystery of God, our colors, our community, and our nation too will be stitched together from pieces into a greater whole. Thanks be to God! Amen.
I learned this text for the first time this fall, as its been set to luscious music by Marques L. A. Garrett that we’re singing this weekend at the Saturday and Sunday concerts of Singers in Accord. What strikes me is the deeply humane and yet secular nature of these encouraging words. One needn’t be a person of faith to yearn for and hold tight to the promise that good can prevail over evil, and right over wrong. Consider these words, and how they sound as music for the soul (performed here by the Los Angeles Master Chorale).
My heart be brave, and do not falter so,
Nor utter more that deep, despairing wail.
Thy way is very dark and drear I know,
But do not let thy strength and courage fail;
For certain as the raven-winged night
Is followed by the bright and blushing morn,
Thy coming morrow will be clear and bright;
’Tis darkest when the night is furthest worn.
Look up, and out, beyond, surrounding clouds,
And do not in thine own gross darkness grope,
Rise up, and casting off thy hind’ring shrouds,
Cling thou to this, and ever inspiring hope:
Tho’ thick the battle and tho’ fierce the fight,
There is a power making for the right.
There are a thousand articles and social media posts from pundits and politicians trying to make sense of why the presidential election last week took the turn that it did, and positing the way forward. I’ve read a few of them, and no doubt will read more in the coming weeks. I’ve even written my own near-term reaction piece on Trump’s reelection. But I’ve found myself needing instead to first sit with grief that my neighbors in America have made such a bewildering choice, and to tend to the soul before attempting to diagnose society or chart a course to follow. Into this moment I’ve been grateful to discover this poem by the retired Methodist pastor Steve Garnaas-Holmes. I’m not certain that it was written in the last week with the election in mind–it serves for any time when the news is bad and we need reminders of how to respond with our full humanity.
Take seriously your grief.
It is love, stripped bare.
Let it flow through you.Trust that you are held.
We all are held by the Beloved,
the Broken-Hearted One,
the One who Suffers most Deeply.Know you are not alone.
Millions bear your sorrow.
Ancestors and even unborn generations
walk with you gratefully.Seek others who are tenderhearted.
Receive all the grace you can.
In the flesh is best, but even in spirit,
know we are here.Trust the Goodness.
God has not given up on us.
Through every disaster grace remains.
Refuse to despair.Choose courage over selfishness,
trust over fear, love over anger.
You do not know the end of grace.There is much you cannot change,
but bring healing where you can.
We are not promised to be given light,
but to shine with light.Don’t become an enemy of the world
and its brokenness. Stay tender.
Become a source of comfort and joy for others.
Let this purpose bear you through the darkness
and you yourself will become light.Take courage; trust grace;
stay connected; practice love.–Steve Garnaas-Holmes, unfoldinglight.net
Every year on Veteran’s Day I think of my brother Ezra, who served among the Marines in Iraq and thankfully carries no bodily wounds from that war. I look at smiling pictures from his time in uniform and wonder about the many unpictured moments that he and other veterans carry inside. We have a sense from news coverage of Ukraine and Gaza of the terrible, ungodly cost of war, but what we see is only a fraction of what is done. What wounding have American veterans caused and witnessed? What wounds do they carry—within and without—from their time of service? How can a country express lifelong caring mercy to veterans and their families, while also committing our whole selves to the causes of peace?
Today I happened upon this video from the Poetry Foundation, setting three poems into an animated, compelling story set in World War I. The visuals and soundscape help me immerse in the realities of war, and the inner wounds that veterans carry from what they’ve experienced. The poems are from a century ago, but they (especially as set in this new artwork) capture the raw experience of all war. If you do nothing else today to observe Veteran’s Day, consider watching this. The eight minutes will be well worth your while—they brought me to healing, cathartic tears.
This year on Veteran’s Day I’m recalling a new friend I made while volunteering this past month in Coon Rapids. Maria showed up looking for something meaningful to do in support of Democrats on the ballot and went doorknocking for the first time with us from Faith in Minnesota. I saw her gamely learn new technology, soon approach doors on her own, and initiate conversations about how best to serve the future of our communities. Her service as a veteran came up in our conversations and with neighbors at the doors, as she made common cause with other moderate veterans who couldn’t stomach how Donald Trump disparaged those who have served or died in uniform. The next time we went doorknocking, Maria was back with the team, this time befriending and coaching another new female volunteer. I hope and believe their connection may become a lasting friendship among kindred spirits in the north metro, thanks to their shared service.
I saw in Maria—and I know from Ezra—a spirit of willingness to do hard work for the sake of a greater goal. I won’t be enlisting in armed military service, but I will continue to enlist in the hard work of building a multiracial, multifaith movement for community, justice and joy. America’s veterans bear witness to the vast harms of war, yet they also put such experiences to work for serving community and family in other ways. Today especially, I’m grateful for their service and committed to keep making a world worthy of their sacrifices.
I woke up at 2:30am and rolled over, sensing that the space beside me was empty, and then saw that Javen’s bedstand light still on. Turning the other way, I reached for my phone and read the headline: Trump won Pennsylvania. I got out of bed and went downstairs to find Javen where I left him hours earlier—lying on the couch, checking election returns. I heard his rundown of the painful results and took some relief in the Minnesota outcomes, but kept going back in shock to the national trends. Republicans gaining ground almost everywhere, and Trump on track to victory even after everyone knows what he plans. I slumped to the floor, leaned on Javen, and said, “It feels really hard to love my neighbor.”
There will be more hard years ahead because of the triumph of white Christian nationalism, with life-changing pain for immigrants, queer folks, women, and other people I love. Trump will pursue his plans for migrant concentration camps, the hate unleashed against trans people won’t be bottled up again, and the Supreme Court with a conservative supermajority is one decision away from removing recognition of my marriage. I feel shock, betrayal, anger, and hurt. Can I continue to live in a country that so decisively opted to support Trump after all that he’s unleashed into our public life? Is the electoral system hopelessly rigged against good people finishing first? What more will it take to build a life-saving country that values the thriving of all its people, and contributes positively to the global community?
James Russell Lowell has a couple lines of poetry that came to mind. He laments the upside-down injustice that crucifies goodness and lauds evil: “Truth forever on the scaffold. Wrong forever on the throne.” I first heard those words in the speeches of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who quoted them for their clarity of describing how it feels when wrong (so often) prevails. But Dr. King followed them up with the rest of the poem. Even though truth seems “forever on the scaffold”, “yet that scaffold sways the future. Behind the dim unknown stands God, Within the shadow keeping watch above [God’s] own.” The poem in full proclaims faith in a hidden God to remain faithful, keeping watch and working to turn even the bad things good. I don’t believe in a deity who has all things scripted already, or who intervenes for some lives and not others. But I trust that there is still power in the ways of loving righteousness, and I want to dedicate my life (again) to pursuing its paths.
In addition to all the other feelings that wash over me, I feel clarity and determination. The nation and everyone in it have been waiting for the results of this election for months, and now we know. We know that truth is not always rewarded, we know that patriarchal white supremacy lingers with well-financed force, and we know that Christian nationalism has the power of the White House. We don’t yet know how the multiracial, multifaith movement for equality will respond, but I’m determined to be a part of it. We will need community, justice, and joy in abundance to carry each other through what’s ahead. I will be writing more to encourage such neighbor-centered care, will be organizing with even more focus on building all-inclusive communities, and will be seeking joyful renewal to sustain my (our) spirits. Keep the faith in whatever gives you the most hope, and join me in building powerful community that better realizes the prayer of Jesus, that God’s reign might truly manifest on earth as in heaven.
The public discourse (and discord) over tomorrow’s election results has reached a fever pitch. I have heard anxiety about what may or may not happen in most conversations over the past week. Even as I’ve been door-knocking and advocating for candidates in my personal capacity, I’m also feeling on tenterhooks about the future. Is anyone else finding it hard to plan for much of anything else beyond November 5th??
My friend and UCC colleague Rev. Dr. Elena Larssen has written about the vital importance of doing the work of compassionate, transformational service in times of political instability. She describes how a recent book by the sociologist Robert Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett highlights the pendulum swifts from individualism to community ethics over the last century. Faith-based movements like the Social Gospel a century ago have helped Christians participate in public movements for justice and service. “Remember that people are lonely,” she writes. “Service heals.”
Such service is what we are about in so many churches, including Morningside Hills UCC: restoring spirits, growing faith, and acting for justice. None of those are partisan acts, and by leaning fully into them, we can model a healing community that—by divine grace—will endure beyond any election results. Bring your anxieties (if you have them) to one of the many vigils happening this week, or light a candle to feel and see warmth in darkness. But also, sign up for service opportunities when they cross your path, that in the days to follow Tuesday’s election, we might continue extending grace, hope, compassion, and justice. To quote Elena again, we know that “a great community can bless your life with friendship, meaning, and even heal division. Let’s be sure to share the blessing of community this year – widely, selflessly, and with hope for the future.”
God of springtime emergence, these servants of Minnesota come together with tired eyes from late nights, but with hearts full of the urgent work you call forth in these final days of the session.
Plant in each one here the seed of possibility for healing, hopeful and upbuilding work on behalf of the millions for whom we serve. Water gently the ground of souls here which are hard-packed and weary from strife, that they might expand to take in new possibilities. Nurture impulses of collaboration, reconciliation, and compassion, that what is created together might blossom into greatness that evokes gratitude. Uproot every weedy temptation to pettiness and partisan grievance. Let the persistent wind and urgent breath of those who suffer never be far from ear, that intentions might strengthen into durable law, and that labor here might lead to results now, rather than weak resignation to “another time”.
And finally, God of all creation, when the sun has set on this springtime day, and on this session, and on our service, and on our very lives, may the fruits of this hard, joyful, and rewarding labor, be harvested in a Minnesota marked by dignity, care, generosity, abundance, and full inclusion. In your many names we pray. Amen.
Forty years ago, in the mid-1980s, an unusual disease began spreading throughout the United States and elsewhere in the world. Its characteristic symptoms included flu-like illness, skin lesions, anemia, and a gradual weakening until eventual death. Because of the communities where it was most often found in early years, the disease was described as a “gay plague”, and it became the source of even greater stigma. It took years, and tens of thousands of deaths that nearly wiped out a whole generation of gay men, before President Ronald Reagan would even call it by name, “HIV and AIDS”. It took longer still for governmental research to commence on treatments, and while things are greatly improved now, we still have no cure or vaccine for HIV.
The HIV/AIDS epidemic in the West illustrates a distinction between two interwoven but distinct terms, “disease” and “illness”. As one writer summarizes, “Disease refers to the malfunction or failure of part of the physical body, whereas illness refers to a person’s state of being; it is more a social breakdown in which someone loses their place and value within their group.”[1] In other words, HIV/AIDS was the disease, but the greater crippling illness was the stigma, shunning, and social isolation that accompanied it. Breaking down societal judgments has been an ongoing project to counter illness, even as research to combat the disease has progressed. Countering stigma happens when trusted people share association with the disease, like the basketball player Magic Johnson sharing his diagnosis, or Lady Diana, the Princess of Wales, shaking the hand of an HIV/AIDS patient in 1987. Such courage and risk help to heal the isolation and exclusion of illness, even when a cure for the disease is hard to find.
In today’s Gospel story (Mark 5:24-34), the woman who approaches Jesus gets her cure, but Jesus goes further to make sure that her isolating social exclusion is healed as well. In this story a woman approaches Jesus who has been suffering for twelve years from uncontrollable bleeding. According to religious law, that meant that she had been ritually impure for twelve years, and she was forced to remain on the fringes of Jewish society. It was bad enough just being a single woman in Jesus’ time; to have this illness meant that she was an outcast. She would have had to spend all her days in isolation, separated from others, lest her “uncleanness” contaminate others. The woman was penniless besides, having spent everything she had, chasing doctors for twelve years and getting nowhere. (At least one or two people here can sympathize with that.) So what courage and desperate audacity drove her to reach out a hand in the crowd of anonymity? She risked deeply offending Jesus and everyone with him by clinging to his garment; for this also would have made Jesus “unclean” in the eyes of the doctrine at that time. Yet her words of faith are remarkable: “If I but touch his cloak, I will be made well.”
When healing flows from Jesus and cures the woman’s disease, Jesus asks the crowd who touched him, and she comes before him in “fear and trembling.” She’s expecting the worst rebuke for crossing the boundary that excludes her, but instead, Jesus offers her recognition, mercy, and restoration. I like the way pastors Kari Lipke and Joanne Engquist put it: “Jesus isn’t content that she remain anonymous to him. He calls her out, not to chastise, but in order to hear her story, to validate her healing, and to name her ‘daughter.’” The consequence of this boundary-crossing interaction was healing, wholeness, and grace. I love how the Message Bible paraphrases what Jesus says here: “Daughter, you took a risk of faith, and now you’re healed and whole. Live well, live blessed! Be healed of your plague.” In the words of another, Jesus “declares shalom for her, that not only is she healed of her disease, but her illness is no longer either, she can become a full part of the community and the suffering of her ostracism is over.”[2]
Earlier this week I mentioned this text to Gwen Williams, one of our members who usually worships and volunteers with church online, due to a variety of overlapping health concerns. Gwen said, “Oh! That is my favorite Bible scripture passage!” When I asked why, Gwen said it’s because Jesus stops what he’s doing, sees this woman for who she is, and treats her as human. She’s not shunned in the ways that would have been her experience elsewhere. Gwen described seeing herself in this text, and receiving validation from it for encouragement in the struggle for physical and mental health. I sometimes want to apologize to Gwen and others with chronic illness that we don’t have a physical Jesus here to touch for miraculous cures, but it turns out that’s not the only thing that’s needed. Taking the time to stop and connect, to validate emotions and affirm belonging—these are what we seek to do today, still in the name of Christ. In the words of commentator Michael Lindvall, “beyond even physical healing, acceptance, intimacy, and touch, can make us whole and give us peace. We are, in fact, shaped and made human in relationship to other persons. Our relationships—in the church, in friendships, and in marriage—are not just something extra added on to life for distraction and entertainment, as if we would be complete human beings in individual isolation. Relationship, ‘touch’ if you will, makes us human and whole.”[3]
Last summer, we began a practice of community prayers which we continue still. In open sharing, in our own voices, we speak aloud heartfelt prayers of celebration, sorrow, grief, and requests for healing. Some of us choose to write our prayers, with our own hands and words, that are then read aloud on our behalf. I confess that as a worship leader it’s a little unnerving for me, and maybe for you too. We’re never sure what the community is going to share, if it’ll fit into the set amount of time that’s allotted to prayer, and if we’ll be able to faithfully respond as needs are named aloud. This is not a tidy, scripted, or predictable part of worship, but reliably each week we touch the Holy in ragged, vulnerable, authentic, community-carried prayer. We trust one another with our genuine selves, are encouraged and healed—even if not always in a “Jesus touched me” sort of way. We embody that verse of the Servant Song hymn: “I will hold the Christ light for you / In the night time of your fear / I will hold my hand out to you / Speak the peace you long to hear.”
And through such prayer, the church is moved to act. This part is never scripted either, but the personal shared in prayer becomes an opportunity for others in the community to respond. “Thinking of You” cards show up in the mail, folks ask for updates on how someone is doing, perhaps a meal or gift certificate arrives to get through a hard time, or a few dollars are anonymously passed to help another who is scraping by. These interpersonal acts happen when vulnerable prayer opens us into relationship. And the longer we live with the shortcomings of mental health care, adequate housing, senior supports, or other systemic needs, the more likely that loving our neighbors becomes advocating for a better world for all. Our commitment to health care reform and other forms of healing justice in Minnesota starts with our prayers, our relationships, our experience, and our trust in the ways of Christ the Healer. It’s what we mean when we pray “your kindom come on earth as in heaven”, as the church and broader society are renewed as an interwoven, salvific community of healing relationships.
I found out this week about a group called the Blood Sisters. It turns out that in the mid-1980s when there was so much stigma around both LGBTQ folks and those who had HIV/AIDS, that a group of lesbians formed the Blood Sisters in San Diego. Gay men who had AIDS and were experiencing the effects of anemia needed transfusions, but were too often inadequately treated out of fear for wasting or “polluting” the national blood supply. In response, the Blood Sisters began regular donations of blood so there would be no shortage. This continued for almost a decade, dozens of women gathering monthly to give their blood so that friends, neighbors, and strangers in the community would have what they needed. They addressed the physical illness and need, but with their solidary also helped heal the broader social disease of isolating stigma.
Like the Blood Sisters, like our prayers, and like Jesus himself, may we be led in vulnerable, healing relationships, so that, restored to wholeness ourselves, we might live out our calling as the body of Christ. Here too—in our own lives—may we discover more such resurrection stories and proclaim again that Christ is risen, Christ is risen indeed—alleluia!
[1] Spill the Beans, issue 17, pg. 80. © 2015 Spill the Beans Resource Team spillbeans.org.uk.
[2] Spill the Beans, 80.
[3] Michael L. Lindvall, “Mark 5:21-43: Pastoral Perspective,” in Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 3, eds. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2009).
Cover image: Wesley, Frank, 1923-2002. Woman with the Flow of Blood, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=59159 [retrieved April 29, 2024]. Original source: Estate of Frank Wesley, http://www.frankwesleyart.com/main_page.htm.
Not long ago, my husband Javen and I had the chance to see “The Color Purple”—a dramatic staging of Alice Walker’s classic novel at Theatre Latte Da. It follows the life of the main character, Celie, who suffers through a lifetime of forced servitude to abusive men. Celie takes at face value what they say about her, that she is ugly, powerless, and good for nothing but endless labor. We see her virtue in repeated acts of generosity and compassion, but Celie struggles to believe that her life is lovely or valuable. Musical numbers lead the audience along a journey of Celie’s self-discovery, gradually shifting to more hopeful melodies, until a climactic moment near the end. In a showstopping performance, Nubia Monks as Celie declares with operatic conviction, “I am beautiful!!” The audience would have been lifted from our seats by the swelling music, had we not already jumped to our feet, calling back to the stage, “YES!! You ARE, you ARE beautiful!!” I don’t know if every performance has the electricity of the preview night we attended, but it captures for me the affirmation and essence of Easter itself. You are beautiful.
What a gift such glimpses of brilliance are, because otherwise the tarnishing of the world takes hold. We can come to believe—like Celie at the start—that there’s no hope or no better way, that closed doors remain closed forever, and all there is in life are dead ends. Doubt, discouragement, and dreariness can become constant companions, and it’s difficult to recognize the Good News that we are not alone, and that we are not at the end of our stories.
That’s the battered and beaten-down place that the disciples of Jesus are at in the beginning of Easter morning, suffering under the conviction that death reigns. They have come through devastating experiences of the previous few days—Jesus’ betrayal by one of their own companions, the Messiah’s arrest and brutal torture, before being put on the cross to die in their sight. We can feel the shell-shocked despair that Mary and the other traumatized disciples must have been carrying as they approached the tomb on that Easter morning.
Bessel van der Kolk is one of the world’s leading trauma researchers, learning from veterans, those who have been incarcerated, and others who experience trauma. One of his books about trauma’s effects is called “The Body Keeps the Score”. He describes how folks who endure lasting trauma carry the symptoms afterward. Our bodies start producing unnecessary stress hormones, we feel chronically restless or disturbed, and we don’t feel at ease even in situations that are objectively safe. Trauma changes the brain, he has found, and it colors our perceptions of the world. Folks who live through trauma may feel stuck in the past, or have difficulty believing the bad situation won’t happen again.
The Bible doesn’t report any trauma specialists at the tomb that first Easter morning, but in Easter’s resurrection we see trauma transform into joy. The tomb of death is empty, angels are proclaiming a more-real reality of New Life, and the raised Christ himself is going on ahead to Galilee. When the disciples first go from the empty tomb “quickly with fear and great joy”, they do so towards a future unlocked by these new realities. Overcoming trauma, they run from a paralyzing past to a liberated and liberating future.
I’m not going to try and convince you one way or another about the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ two thousand years ago. But I’m here trying to believe alongside you that in our own lives, in the face of whatever trauma and death we may bear, resurrection still happens. The ultimate message of Easter is that no matter how dead you feel inside, or how dead your life dreams may feel, God is making a way for you! As Alice Walker has written, “Terrible things can happen to you in life… and you can still be happy. You can still find joy. You can still love, in spite of it all…” Easter frees us from paranoid hiding in the face of death, failure, trauma, or scorn. All these are in the rearview mirror, and ahead of us is the future’s quest of seeking, celebrating, and growing further into our beautiful lives.
By happy accident, this Easter Sunday is also the annual Trans Day of Visibility. Or maybe this is a divine alignment, because transgender liberation is a deep and affirming echo of Easter’s proclamation of life rather than death. My friend and seminary classmate delfin bautista describes this experience: “As people wrestling with different understandings and embodiments of gender, we stare into the tombs of our pasts, we come to recognize that who we were, who we were forced to be, who the world expected us to be is no longer there and perhaps was never there.” delfin continues, “… The Resurrection did not change Jesus into something new but simply affirmed who he always was. …We as trans people do the same—we affirm who we are, sometimes privately and sometimes publicly and sometimes both, coming out of the tombs of closets, binaries, and imposed expectations.” On several occasions, I’ve had the honor of leading a celebration service by which we bless a trans person’s chosen name, pronouns, and identity. These blessings take as their inspiration the baptismal ritual because this is a new birth, and the new name is proclaimed with divine celebration: “You are God’s beloved!” Trans folks refer to the name they were given growing up as a “dead name”, because it’s for a gender identity that is dead, giving way to a new name and new life ever after.
We live amid such resurrections, such Easter overturning of death into new life. Trans folks and other brave siblings can show what it means to overcome trauma, to pass through death and be raised up into joyful wholeness. We are an Easter people, inspired by the Easter Good News, committing ourselves to God’s transforming of trauma and pain into new life. The resurrection happens now. Christ is risen within each of us now, as we choose to live by his love and go in his ways. In the book “We Make the Road by Walking,” which we’re reading as part of Healing Faith, author Brian McLaren suggests that where the risen Christ “most wants to be seen is in our bodies, among us, in us” (pg. 170). He describes Easter as an uprising: “An uprising of hope, not hate. An uprising armed with love, not weapons. An uprising that shouts a joyful promise of life and peace, not angry threats of hostility and death. It’s an uprising of outstretched hands, not clenched fists. It’s the ‘someday’ we have always dreamed of, emerging in the present, rising up among us and within us.” (170)
This Easter uprising will continue in the world forever, by God’s grace, and within this congregation far beyond just this day. Because Easter is not just a Sunday, it is a “week of weeks”; there are seven more Sundays in the Easter season. Over the course of those weeks, we will be telling more Resurrection Stories about real people who face death-dealing circumstances and find new life. Just as we work to bring the kin-dom of heaven on earth, we can also expect that resurrection is possible within our own lives. We can be resurrected from despair over many things. It is not easy, for sure, but we are not alone, and we are not at the end of our stories, not until we can sing with Celie’s conviction, “I am beautiful!” Just like an architect puts down a vision of a skyscraper that hasn’t broken ground yet, Christ’s resurrection gives us a vision of God’s future, full of resurrection stories. It is up to us who receive that vision to live into it. Christ has been raised, and we are being raised, and we shall be raised forever. Alleluia!
Again and again when tempted to believe in the utter stupidity of someone else’s position, or buy 100% my own passionate convictions, I come back to the wisdom of this Sufi philosopher and poet from the 1200s. Rumi helps me leave enough cracks in the walls of certitude that the Other–the one with whom I disagree, even my sworn enemy–might have something of value for me to learn from. Let my actions and words strongly claim the truth as I know it, and yet hold open space for the humanity of someone on another other side, so that one day we might picnic together in the field of transcendent grace.
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
There is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
The world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
Doesn’t make any sense.Rumi
I first heard this perhaps twenty years ago in a sermon. I love how the speaker refuses to accept the definition of “outsider” that would be imposed by another. The poet doesn’t even seek to establish a counter-definition: “No, you’re the outsider!” Instead, this leads us from the usual paradigms of “us” and “them” to a place that Rumi called “beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing”, transcending such categories altogether by the power of Love.
He drew a circle that shut me out—
Heretic, a rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!Edwin Markham
In particular this Holy Week, I’m recalling how Jesus sat for his final meal with the betrayer Judas and all the deserting disciples, who would disavow knowing him just a few hours later. Nevertheless, the table of mercy and grace draws a circle that includes all, no matter what.
When I was in high school English class, I did a research project on Edna St. Vincent Millay. I don’t remember a lot about her now, other than that she was reclusive, didn’t care about fitting into social norms, and had a tragically short life. Her poetry is short and punchy, to the point. I memorized these verses, and they come to mind when I have said yes to too many worthy projects, but still find energy and purpose in them all.
My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
It gives a lovely light!Edna St. Vincent Millay
With the clocks turning ahead one hour overnight for Daylight Savings Time, I’ve been meditating a bit on time, and the brevity of our lives. Many of us can get bent out of shape with the removal of one hour for sleep (or sermon prep), and I expect to feel tomorrow morning the effects of losing that one hour. But isn’t every hour precious, and every moment a chance to make choices for greater grace, rest, joy and power? For years, I’ve carried in my imagination a few words by the Swiss moral philosopher Henri-Frédéric Amiel. I’ve occasionally heard it used as a benediction, and a friend used it as his email footer for a time. I’ve now got it taped on the wall in front of my desk at work. Take whatever inspiration you need now from these simple and clear words.
“Life is short. We don’t have much time to gladden the hearts of those who walk this way with us. So, be swift to love and make haste to be kind.”
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
A friend sent me this Mary Oliver meditation in their holiday letter and it’s journeyed with me in the months since, an encouragement to embrace joy even while there’s so much anguish in the world. I shared it yesterday with a women’s group at Edina Morningside and Linden Hills UCC, and post it here in case you seek permission or need the reminder: “Joy is not made to be a crumb.”
If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy,
don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty
of lives and whole towns destroyed or about
to be. We are not wise, and not very often
kind. And much can never be redeemed.
Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this
is its way of fighting back, that sometimes
something happens better than all the riches
or power in the world. It could be anything,
but very likely you notice it in the instant
when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case.
Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid
of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.Mary Oliver
This poem recalls my childhood on a farm in southeastern Minnesota. My body holds the still-fresh memories of thistle fields, milking machines, iodide dip, pipelines and the milk cooler. Even more vividly, the incident described here returns me to the sudden shock and lingering grief in our family after my brother’s suicide. I can’t tell whether the ending evokes death’s multitude, or points to life beyond death. It’s both for me, so this is a poem for the barren, incomplete hours of Good Friday, when the Christian tradition grieves death’s power, Christ’s burial, and not yet the resurrection.
thistles take the hillside
a purple glory of furred spears
a fierce army of spiky weeds
we climb through them
your mother, two of her daughters, and me
a late walk in the long June lightin the barn the heart throb
of the milking machine continues
as your father and brother change
the iodide-dipped tubes
from one udder to the next
and the milk courses through the pipeline
to the cooling vat where it swirls
like a lost sea in a silver boxwe are climbing to the grove of white birch trees
whose papery bark will shed
the heart-ringed initials of your sister
as the grief wears downthis farm bears milk and hay
and this mother woman walking beside us
has borne nine childrenand one magic one is dead:
riding her bike
she was a glare of light
on the windshield of the car
that killed hera year and a half has passed
and death is folded in among the dishtowels
hangs in the hall closet by the family photos
and like a ring of fine mist
above the dinner tablewe stand on a hill looking at birch bark
poking among hundred-year-old graves
that have fallen into the grass
rubbing the moss off and feeling for the names
that the stone sheds
we are absorbing death like nitrates
fertilizing our growththis can happen:
a glare of light
an empty place
wordlessly we finger her absence
already there are four grandchildren
the family grows thick as thistleAndrea Musher
Exhaust the little moment. Soon it dies.
And be it gash or gold it will not come
Again in this identical disguise.Gwendolyn Brooks
Michael Coffey’s poem “Art of Reformation” uses the metaphor of clay on a pottery wheel, describing how the original unformed block can be shaped “into a dove or a fish or a water bowl”. I’d not thought before about the choice that comes to the potter next—to
put it in the kiln and fire it
preserve its beauty in brittle perfectionor keep it supple and soft, wet and moving
so that when the times require creative reformation
you can give thanks for the dove, the bowl, the vasethen reimagine what this poetic mud can be
If God is a potter and we are clay (as the biblical metaphor goes), God has decided not to fire the clay at a given point of supposed perfection, not to freeze out the possibilities of change, movement, and growth. What a gift—that the church has freedom to keep changing, growing, and reimagining what it means to be mud in the Potter’s hands, serving God’s desires in new ways.
We experience the change-ability of church in the building this weekend at Edina Morningside and Linden Hills UCC. The sanctuary has been transformed into a set for Morningside Theatre Company’s intergenerational production of “Beauty and the Beast”, and worship with communion will take place on that set. This means disruption for those of us leading and participating in worship—where to stand, what microphones work, how to project, whether technology will come through to include folks on Zoom, etc. I can imagine (and have felt myself) occasional dismay that the things we church folk count on to stay the same are shifting instead, requiring extra energy to meet the changing moment. But I also know, trust, and have experienced that what “church” means in the 21st century must morph if we are still to serve God’s people, many of whom are not participating in our traditional forms. I’m proud of how we are practicing flexibility and change, working through discomfort to catch the wind of Spirit. We navigated tech challenges last week with gracious humor, then spent a sacred ninety minutes in the sanctuary afterward sharing our dreams for faith “within, among, and beyond” the church. This Sunday, we will set a communion table right there on the changeable sanctuary stage, a metaphor for all our life together.
I hope you’ll come to see the production that many in the church and community have worked hard on for months. Marvel with me at the gift that a “youth ministry” spirit from a summer theatre camp years ago has morphed into the present moment, where dozens of intergenerational actors and stagehands from the church and neighborhood sing, dance, and create joy for audiences of hundreds. Thank you for trusting the precious gift of this faith community to one another, to me, and to a future church on whose behalf we practice such divine endeavors. Above all, in the poet’s final lines, we trust the “animation of the potter Spirit keeping all things fluid… freeing our joints to be the art of God’s desire”.
Today and tomorrow as the country observes Veterans Day, my mind goes to my brother Ezra, members of the church I serve, and others I know who have given military service. It is a grave thing to be empowered with deadly force that one might be called on to use against other human lives. Even in situations where morality would justify limited violence to defend human rights, entering armed conflict means accepting spiritual jeopardy on behalf of civilians and the values of one’s country. Images from Gaza and Ukraine show us all the awfulness of war, especially its consequences to noncombatants and God’s creation. These scenes echo what many of America’s veterans have experienced or caused. The Americans we honor with this holiday carry such grievous memories within their souls. Often, their bodies and minds bear the scars of military service as well. I’m grateful for the service of military chaplains who accompany veterans in the lifelong burden-bearing that’s asked of them on the other side of military service.
War is evil. On occasion it may be a lesser evil, but even a just cause has a corrosive effect on the spirit. Every bomb dropped, every missile launched, and every gun fired in war is an admission that we have failed to resolve conflict with creative, faithful peacemaking, and have decided the only option left is to destroy the image of God in another human being. On this weekend of observance and throughout the year, I encourage those who are non-veterans to seek out merciful, listening conversations with those who have willingly gone into harm’s way. With our actions and listening spirits, let us surround all the victims of war with compassion. Let us also hold fast to the creative, nonviolent ways of the Prince of Peace, who treated his opponents with mercy, and commanded his followers to pray for enemies. We believe, live, and act from the conviction that in God’s kin-dom future, people “shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more” (Isaiah 2:4).
Cover photo: Evan Schneider/Creative Commons; accessed here.
When we see something that is not right, will we just roll along with it? Or will we stand ground in our own day—becoming the seed for another great oak tree in God’s growing grove of righteousness?
Reading: Matthew 14:22-31a
Around our third week of this “Re-Shaped” worship series on themes of change, one of our Bible study participants asked just what all this conversation about change was pointing toward. “What are you preparing us for?” he asked. “Are you going to announce that you’re dropping out of ministry, that you and Javen are moving to Milaca, to buy and run the Dairy Queen there or something??” I assured the room that I had no ulterior motive; I knew of no other surprise that was going to drop. Furthermore, I’d never sell enough Dairy Queen to turn a profit—I’d eat way too much.
No, the reasons for a series focused on change are the ones in plain sight. Over recent years, we’ve gone through countless experiences of personal, communal, national, and congregational change—some by chance or circumstance, and some by choice. The biggest new change in church that we’ve been preparing for is now at hand, a sabbatical that starts after worship today. Over the coming three months, I’ll be away from the office and trying to figure out who I am when I’m not serving as your pastor. You will be led by other brilliant staff and lay leaders, also discerning who you are when I’m not here as your pastor.
Like all kinds of other change, this one too elicits some anxiety and uncertainty. I fear that I’ll waste the precious gift of this renewal time by not using it well, that folks here will choose to “take the summer off” and miss out on the meaningful, memorable worship ahead, or that everything will surely go to pieces without my essential presence. Remembering that the church doesn’t need another Messiah is probably reason enough for these periodic sabbaticals, and my ego also fears that you’ll actually do just fine or improve things without me! Because the future is especially cloudy in times of change, we feel all sorts of ways about the unknown of what’s around the corner. But God’s presence in anxious times is a big part of what the Bible shows us among disciples who have been through changing times before.
Today’s Scripture takes us from the solid ground of Jesus feeding thousands out to a wave-tossed, wind-whipped boat in the middle of the night. The disciples were scared at the weather, then even more at the sight of a ghostly Jesus walking to them on the water. But using familiar phrases—“Courage, it’s me; don’t be afraid”—Jesus reassures them that this is truly him. He soothes their frayed nerves, and the disciple Peter even feels emboldened to join Jesus on the water. The fearsome wind and waves are not diminished, but because they have history with this savior already, Peter finds new footing and experiences Jesus’ rescuing hand. Reflecting on our theme and this scripture, Marcia McFee writes of the courage it takes to make changes and break out of longtime habits. “Just like Peter,” she writes, “if we are going to change, we have to take the first uncertain steps out of the boat onto the water and into the unknown. Luckily, we too have Jesus’ redeeming help and support, his hand reaching out to us, if we start to sink or lose our way.”[1]
This sent me thinking about all the other times that we’ve undertaken something new, and through fright or challenge we have experienced Jesus alongside us still. Consider: in just a few recent years, God led us through a supersized capitol campaign to fix a wall falling off the church; envisioning and realizing a new Gathering Space and Peace Garden; recruiting and equipping more volunteer and staff leaders than I can count; creating a new governance model, a new constitution, bylaws, and covenant; plus a mission trip to Kenya, and a global pandemic too! The Spirit of change led others here through the leadership shift from a beloved longtime minister to a beloved new one, facing the daunting prospect of a building unfit for ministry, sifting each thing in it to preserve and pass on physical legacy, renting office space, selling a building, and completing a church merger, all while being led by a beloved interim pastor. I’m tired just thinking of all these things, and yet we have done them as the church! Our presence here now is a fulfillment of what others only dreamed of or hoped for. Our existence is a testimony to God’s presence in every time of trial and rejoicing.
Jeff, Leah, and Deb, our newest members who join the church today, you come alongside us as the latest partners in a community whose inspiration is the disciple Peter, and whose experience is of Jesus beside us through it all. You have taken a first step in calling us to accompany you on this journey of faith. And though there was a script for this part of today’s service, there’s no script for what comes next. We don’t really know what this faith journey will involve in the coming months and years. We do know, though, that our inspiration is disciples who act like Peter. With him and the others in the boat, we might feel awe at the size of our fears, but also reassured by the words of Christ, promising “It’s me; don’t be afraid”. I hope like Peter we too have just enough chutzpah to attempt walking on water, experience the thrill of achieving what once seemed impossible, and know the immediate accompaniment of Jesus, reaching out to rescue, when fear of the wind and waves starts to rise again within us.
It’s no accident that Jesus’ first word to the fearful disciples is “Courage”. That’s the first step—have courage—and faith assures us that the rest will take care of itself in due time. Others translate Jesus’ words here as “take heart” instead of “courage”—both versions point to the presence of “heart” at the center. The English word “courage” comes from the French word “coeur”, meaning “heart”. Whatever tomorrow brings the church and myself, whatever umpteen steps of change lead through the new adventures that lie ahead, it begins here with courage in our hearts. Nobody needs to pretend we have courage at all times and in all situations, because God has called us together into congregations, extending courage and enacting God’s presence with one another. As Marcia McFee summarizes, “If we can have courage to take steps toward change and be encouragers of one another, this is the meaning of community.”
Then courage, beloveds—take heart. The future will be like the present and the past in at least one way: the presence of Jesus alongside us, in the face of neighbor, stranger and friend here. I’ll follow my faith and feet in the coming days, and you do the same with yours, until we come back together again to testify to where we have seen Jesus, right there with us in the wind and the waves of change. That is, if I can get through the door after all that ice cream….
Thanks be to God! Amen.
Cover image by Nicholas Demetriades from Pixabay
[1] Marcia McFee, “Sermon Fodder” in Re-Shaped (Worship Design Studio; 2023), http://www.worshipdesignstudio.com/reshaped.
Ordination of Nathan Roberts. Scripture passage: Matthew 6:25-34
I don’t usually remember my dreams, but this one was too vivid to forget. I was at home, minding my own business, when the doorbell chimed. When I went to the door, a grocery delivery person stood there. He held out to me a white paper bag of apples someone had sent, like the kind you would get at an orchard or grocery store. Except the bag was only half full.
Who in the world would send me a bag of apples, and only half full? While I was trying to figure this out, I looked inside the bag. There, tucked beneath one of the apples, was a slip of torn notebook paper. I reached into the bag and pulled it out. Unfolding the slip, I read the one line on it, written there in pencil. “Maybe this is all there will be.” At that moment, my alarm went off and I was startled awake. What?? A half bag of apples, and “maybe this is all there will be.”
I had that dream more than ten years ago, during the fall budget season at the first congregation that I served. It came when we were trying to imagine how we might address a five-figure deficit in the church’s budget for the next year. I was swimming in these numbers, a sense of scarcity, and worries about the viability of the church when I went to bed. I woke up to a half-full bag of apples and those words: “maybe this is all there will be.”
Is there anyone here, with any history of church whatsoever, who has any experience with such worries for the future?? I’m certain that you’ve been there many times before, Nathan. How many times in the co-founding and functioning of Daylight School in Kenya did you look at the income numbers against the salary needs for teachers and food? How often have you navigated worries about the future in the operations of First Lutheran’s after-school ministry with community youth? Perhaps in your learning about White privilege and intercultural connections, perhaps in your teaching and leadership with others by these values, everything has gone without worry and without concern. But I’m guessing there have been many times when you’ve had some sleepless nights, and perhaps your own fever dreams. Anyone who is part of the tenuous project of progressive Christian community in twenty-first century America knows how many occasions there are for wonder about the future.
And yet, here is Jesus, in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, speaking as though directly to our conditions and our worries. Okay, perhaps we’re not folks worried about our next meal, something to drink, or what to wear. In our best ministries (and following your lead, Nathan), we are in relationship with those who know these worries directly. But the ecclesial versions of such concerns are worries about offerings or expenses, about building repairs, community engagement, and “where are the young families at”? Jesus points to the birds of the air—see how God cares for such vast congregations, and they have no endowment funds! Consider the lilies and the grasses of the field, and how well they operate even without a functioning property committee! How much more, Jesus says, will God take care of our concerns if we release worry and entrust them to the One who knows our every need?
When we release worries over our churchy food, drink, clothing, and bodies, we have more energy then to do the work of Christ, to seek the kin-dom of God. I’m reminded of my friend Beth-Ann, who noticed something at her church’s Good Friday service earlier this month. She described to me how at the service, they carried in a giant heavy cross and in between prayers hammered three 9-inch nails part way into the cross. Then the congregation was invited to come to the cross one by one. Nearly the last of the 200+ people coming forward was a mom carrying a small boy. While they were close, this little boy tried to pull one of the big nails from the cross. Beth-Ann remarked how, “with so many people approaching the cross that little guy was the only one who tried to end the pain.” That’s what it looks like to seek the kin-dom of God, to try to end the pain when we encounter it in the world. That is the righteousness of God, and the loving justice we are called to in the church. In the worries I can imagine about the liturgy, the volunteers, and other worship concerns of that night, let us not forget to do what we can to pull out the crucifying nails.
Nathan, you have been called by God to such healing, compassionate ministry. You have been equipped for such service with training and experiences throughout your youth and adult years. Today you join colleagues and church worldwide, adopting the yoke of faithfulness to Christ and responsibility for this call. With us, you will continue to know the temptation to worry. So I commend to you the exhortation of Christ: “do not worry”, so that we can seek first the kin-dom of God and God’s righteousness. If it helps, when you reach the end of the day and are about to sleep, consider repeating what Pope John 23rd is reported to have prayed each night: “Dear God, I’ve done everything I can today. But it’s your Church, and I’m going to bed.”
There are still times in ministry when I’m more aware than ever that the bag of apples is only half full! And the slip of paper said, “Maybe this is all there will be”! But I am learning that there is another way to read that slip of paper. It begins by emphasizing the first word. Maybe this is all there will be. And maybe not. Because God is still speaking, still touching hearts, still moving us to believe in the hope of new life. Because the power of Christ is not dead in a grave, but risen from the tomb, and calling us to remove the nails as well. Because the Holy Spirit did not just blow in ancient times, but is among us in right-now times. Do not worry, Jesus tells us. Maybe this is all there will be. Or maybe this is just the beginning. I like them apples. Thanks be to God!
Today’s Scripture passage: Matthew 28:1-10
Reading this year through Matthew’s description of Jesus’ last week, I noticed for the first time how many references there are to earthquakes. As Jesus parades into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, we hear that “the whole city was in turmoil”. “Turmoil” is the Greek word seio and means to “shake, move, or quake”. It’s the root word for “seismic”—Jerusalem was quaking at the approach of Jesus. The week holds more tremors too. At the moment when Jesus dies on the cross, Matthew says, “the earth shook, and the rocks were split.” Now today, as Mary Magdalene and the other Mary approach the tomb of Christ, there is a “great earthquake”, another seismos. And finally, the guards “shook and became like dead men” in the presence of God’s angel—seio again.
Such earthshaking developments of the last week! It calls to mind devastating earthquakes like the February one in Turkey and Syria, which makes me wonder if this many earthquakes in one week is a good thing. Such life-changing cataclysms hold as much dread and foreboding as the possibility of joy. I get that we’re talking about resurrection here, but does Easter always need to be so…dramatic? I’m sympathetic to another pastor, who asks: “Why can’t the celebration be more ‘dinner party’ than ‘shock and awe’?
God doesn’t always show up with supernatural power, after all. Recall Elijah the prophet, who was promised he would see God, so he left his mountain hideout to keep watch. First he experiences a great windstorm, but God was not in the wind. “And after the wind an earthquake, but [God] was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but [God] was not in the fire.” (1 Kings 19:11-12) Remember where God was actually found? In a sound of sheer silence.
Perhaps its significant then that here at the tomb, Jesus is not found in the earthquake. The angel of God proclaims that he has been risen, but the women cannot see him. The earthquake only reveals the empty place where Jesus’ body once lay. The angel tells them where they will truly find Jesus: “he is going ahead of you to Galilee”. Only when they’re on their way to the disciples does Jesus meet the women, greet them, and repeat the exhortation to go to Galilee.
Galilee is the place where it all began: where Jesus was baptized, where he proclaimed the Good News, where he called and taught his disciples, where he proclaimed the message, and where he liberated people from sickness and demons. While the crucifixion and resurrection happen in Jerusalem, Galilee is
“the place from which the disciples and the women came: their home turf, the place of their daily routine.”[1] Jesus may be gone from the tomb, but he’s left a forwarding address: Galilee.
Where is your Galilee—a spiritual or physical homeland? Galilee is the everyday place or state of heart that you find yourself in. It might be where you live or where you work. Maybe it’s with people who mean the world to you and are far away, or it’s when you are all by yourself. Galilee is wherever you’re going next after church, where you will be this week, where you spend much of your time. And it is there that Jesus has gone before, promising to meet us there.
The poet Sophia Stid says of resurrection, “We hear so much about the healing, but I want to know about after the miracle, when everyone else has gone home.” She describes the everydayness by which women folded the blankets, prepared food, massaged flesh, cleaned dishes, and wove cloth. On this Easter of infinite possibilities, Stid reminds us that new creation comes from longtime practices. And after Easter, the common people who experienced astonishing victory over death will return to their same daily and essential tasks, infused with joy. Stid writes: “Behind every resurrection: dailiness.”
Easter joy more often exists not in a one-time spectacle, but in our steady commitment to love self, neighbor, stranger, and creation, as often as possible in a thousand everyday ways back in the Galilees of our lives. On Easter and every day, resurrection arrives again as you show tender compassion for your body in all its perfect imperfections. Soak in what goodness there is to find from animals, plants, and time outdoors. Greet strangers, share meals, risk forgiveness, express thanks, give freely, release regret, and cherish stillness. A day hemmed in by these practices is less likely to unravel. They are instead seeds of resurrection that blossom into new life for the world. Our everyday lives, at moments spectacular but mostly mundane, will be the cloth that cradles divinity, where resurrection is found on earth as in heaven.
Resurrection doesn’t require earthquakes, even if they were there on the first Easter. When we leave the church today, and return to what might be considered “ordinary life”, that’s the Galilee of everydayness where Christ will be with us. Christ has already gone ahead, and promises to meet us there!
So be with us, Jesus into the rest of our lives. Be with us in our homes and families, such as they are—
broken and mended, fighting and blended. Be with us in our places of work and leisure, transforming them from mindless activities into spaces to show holy love. Be with us in our classrooms and doctor’s offices and job interviews, accompanying us in the hope of what’s possible, and in the times of defeat as well. Be with us in our public life, in the bitterest headlines, healing the divides with a greater call to servanthood and humility. Yes, Jesus goes with us from the tomb and into Galilee. He will mend what continues to need mending in our Galilee places. He transforms the rocky roads we travel into paths where we see Christ in one another. Christ is risen; Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!
Cover image: Israel, Sea of Galilee. Image by Shlomaster from Pixabay.
[1] Lamar Williamson, Jr. Mark, in the Interpretation Bible commentary series (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1983), 285.
Today’s Scripture passage: Matthew 25:31-46
Decades ago, the mayor of Portland, Oregon—a man named Terry Schrunk—was being criticized for helping someone who was poor. He’d given money to a beggar on the side of the road, and another council member objected, saying: “How do you know that he’s not just going to spend that on booze?” To which the mayor replied, “How do you know that’s not Jesus Christ?”
The widespread notion in Christianity that Christ could be present in anyone around us—especially those who are poor, sick, or in need—comes from what Jesus says here in Matthew 25. He casts his imagination forward to a great judgment scene at the end of history. The virtue and vice of the sheep and goats, respectively, is revealed in their treatment of people who are hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison. Like the great reveal at the end of every episode of the TV show Undercover Boss, those before the judgment seat come to find out that what they did or didn’t do in their lives has been experienced by the one in charge of it all. “Just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” Actions and inactions have the consequence of sorting people into sheep and goats, those who experience eternal life and those who face eternal hardship. To avoid that pain, the moral of the story might be, ask yourself in such situations, “How do you know that’s not Jesus Christ?” and act accordingly. The sheep act with mutuality to the “members of my family”, while the goats presume estrangement and distance, not taking care of one another.
While these are described as individual actions or inactions, the same applies to groups. Communities can also live with mutuality or perish due to separation. I’ve heard an echo of these possibilities this week in conversation over two words, “kingdom” and “kin-dom”. Someone raised the point at our Pastoral Relations Committee meeting on Tuesday that we still occasionally sing hymns talking about God as a king with a kingdom, even though the metaphor doesn’t hold resonance for us in a modern democracy. In fact, what we know about kings and kingdoms throughout history—division into hierarchies, centralization of power, exploitation, and domination—isn’t the kind of God we know through Jesus Christ. That metaphor is used often in the Bible and even by Jesus himself, but in our own time there are better ways of understanding God’s realm among us.
On Thursday night at the Lenten Soup Supper and worship service, Pastor Barb Martin at Union Congregational UCC gave a better option. I’ve heard this before from others, but I really appreciate how she put it, and she said I could quote her to you. Pastor Barb said, “I like to use the word kin-dom for God’s realm because it sounds less like a bejeweled, crowned man overseeing his kingdom and more like a place where relationships between people – KIN – are really what life with God is all about.” To illustrate the point, she also quoted Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, who wrote that, “all [humanity] is tied together; all life is interrelated, and we are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of identity. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. … I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. …[T]his is the interrelated structure of reality.”
“Kin-dom” and “kingdom” sound very similar, but the differences in our behavior according to each metaphor can make or break a loving community. Likewise, sheep are not so different from goats, but what comes of their behavior in Jesus’ story makes all the difference. Those who are called “sheep” on the right hand live as kin with one another—tending to the needs of the other (even God unawares), and trusting that in a community of mutuality they will be cared for in return. The “goats” on the other hand have acted according to the morality of a kingdom, allowing hierarchy, division, and separation to suggest that the needs of the other don’t concern them. In failing to act for “the least of these”, they cut themselves off from God’s own self, and the kin-dom of mutuality which would have been their salvation in times of need. This week “the sheep and the goats” are in harmony with the distinction between kingdoms and the Kin-dom, both emphasizing the importance of mutual care.
One more voice jumped into the conversation this week too, writer Laura Yuen in a column for Friday’s Star Tribune newspaper. Against the idea of a solitary genius, Yuen suggests that the best kinds of creativity happen in community. She reminds us of Daniel Kwan’s speeches at the recent Academy Awards, where he took pains to highlight his immigrant parents, and the creative team with which he made the film Everything, Everywhere, All at Once. Kwan said at one point, “genius does not stem from individuals like us on stage, but rather genius emerges from the collective. We are all products of our context.” The point, Laura Yuen summarizes, is that “innovation may start with a solitary idea, but true creativity—the kind that is surprising and unpredictable—is more likely to emerge if more people are involved in the process, adding their own ideas to the pot”.
These threads have been braiding themselves together this week, as I’ve been thinking about this Gospel passage and our life as a church. I don’t think Jesus’ words about the sheep and the goats are only about feeding the hungry, visiting the imprisoned, housing the homeless, and caring for those in need, good though these things certainly are. Such practices are the fruits of an underlying conviction that we belong to each other, that we are part of an “inescapable network of mutuality”. The presence of such a “kindom” saves the sheep, and its absence condemns the goats.
Today in worship, and I hope increasingly in our life as a church, we’ll continue to practice acting with a communal identity, caring for neighbor and stranger alike as part of God’s family. Church is a time to emphasize our group commitment, our bond with one another and mutual service to the other. Together as the body of Christ, as we move from individual people and congregations into shared community, we’ll experience being among the sheep. We may be those whose needs are met, or those who serve another. We’ll probably be both, even at the same time. Through this interweaving of our lives into the great kin-dom of God, we journey with Christ and begin the life of salvation right here on earth. May God open our eyes to recognize our belonging to each other, humility to receive the care of another, and the compassionate strength to respond, bearing the burdens of another. Thanks be to God for this call, and for Christ’s example! Amen.
Cover image: “Works of Mercy” by Pieter Bruegel
Edina Morningside and Linden Hills UCC
| Today’s scripture reading: Matthew 7:1-12, 24-27 |
I remember one moment years ago here, when work was being done in 2018 to change the old narthex (wood paneling, no light, red carpet, and close quarters) into the well-lit, spacious, hospitable Gathering Space we have now. There was a very thick wall in the middle of that room, holding up the building’s weight. To remove the wall, we had to put a steel beam overhead to carry the weight, and connect it to other steel passing through the floor and walls downstairs. Below us, in the preschool classroom and nursery area, they jackhammered wide holes, and then dug by hand several feet down to the bedrock. (This was when one of our now-members came to worship for the first time, moving slowly with a cane past big open holes in the floor and up dusty stairwells, just trying to find the sanctuary through the plastic drapes.) It was quite a disruptive process, removing walls and going through floors, but they needed the strongest footings possible for the weight of this building, and only bedrock would do.
Jesus finishes out the Sermon on the Mount today with a building metaphor which recalled for me that experience from some years ago. He suggests that there are at least two choices in how to live. Individuals, communities, and societies can live either in houses built on sand, or in homes established on bedrock. As we gather in worship, then discern and vote on whether to merge our congregations, Jesus gives us these two possibilities for our future together.
To live in a house built on sand is to live, he says, according to judgment, hypocrisy, and self-righteousness. Making judgments by itself is simply a product of human experiences, and how we exist. “Most human brains are wired to put all the stimuli we receive into categories. It helps us process the overwhelming input we get. [We make snap judgments about things, and about people too.] The problem comes when we judge people based on size, race, gender, clothing, age, or behavior that we may not understand. In those cases, we are judging people not on their value as human beings, but on our own biases against people with similar sizes, races, genders, etc. We fail to see the person and instead only see the label we’ve placed on the person.”[1] We live in an age where such judgments are immediate and everywhere. Social media encourages hot takes and snap critique. Offline too, we judge not only the actions of others but their identities as well. This is a risk we run when our congregations speak in terms of “us” and “them”, or when we act on presumptions about places like Linden Hills and Edina. Perhaps the most familiar forms of condemnation, though, are the ways we stand in judgment over ourselves. Either thinking too lowly of ourselves or too lowly of others leads to a joyless life under the roof of perpetual critique and condemnation. Such a building has no foundation other than sand, Jesus says, so in the storms of life how great will be its fall! I should be careful talking about falling walls around here….
By contrast, living in an open-hearted way, without condemning judgment, is to build on bedrock. This stems from a reminder of reciprocity, or as Jesus says, “with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get.” The sort of energy we put out into the world is the energy we’ll receive back, and the field of energy within which we live. So if we live without judgment, our own failings will be received with mercy as well. We can live in communities that judge ourselves less harshly, and one another, and whoever we might be tempted to label “those people unlike us”. Setting aside judgment in our worshipping community might look like bearing with those who take longer in speaking announcements or offering prayers. It could mean celebrating attempts to do something new even when its imperfect, encouraging those who are risking vulnerability, or joining with new and longtime members in acts of love for God, neighbor, and self. This is to live according to the Great Commandment and the Golden Rule, when Jesus says “do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.” Incidentally, the Golden Rule assumes that everyone wants to be treated the same way, so I’ve also heard of the Platinum Rule: treat others as they wish to be treated. Communities like this are not constructed on sand, or even concrete. This is what it’s like to inhabit a home built on bedrock itself.
Kristopher Phan Coffman, a seminary professor, caught my attention this week when he pointed out that this parable isn’t a Three Little Pigs story. The focus is not on the materials of construction, because it makes little difference whether the walls are made of straw, wood, or stone. If you don’t have a solid foundation to start from, none of what goes on it really matters. So what will be the foundation of this new congregation, assuming we agree to merge? Will we base the whole thing on money, or the judgments we’re tempted to make there? Is our firm foundation to be found in traditions, precedent, or the way things once were? No, for such things are like sand that washes away; they cannot long support a vibrant spiritual home. Even if we use the best of such resources and community gifts to frame up this new church, our bedrock must be the same strong foundation that Jesus had in mind: the love and faithfulness of a God who relates to us with mercy rather than judgment. A wise community that builds on solid rock anchors itself in the teachings of Scripture, in the guidance of God’s living Spirit, and in Jesus’ powerful life, death, and resurrection. This is our bedrock, trusting in God as a reliable parent who gives when asked, opens the door when knocked, and rewards those who search. With prayer, worship, music, service, generosity, and courage, we dance freely because we are held securely in God’s care.
Therefore, the spiritual home we inhabit together will love people for who they are, setting aside condemnation and corrosive judgment, praying to be forgiven as we forgive others. With a glad reciprocity that responds to God’s gift of every good thing, we will work to fulfill what our neighbor needs, in the hope and expectation that they’ll do the same for us. On such a solid foundation, the building can change (as our building has); the people who pass through it can change (as our community has); but the bedrock of God’s loving justice known in Jesus remains sure and stable. There will still be tough times to weather—even the house built on rock goes through storms. Yet the rains may fall, the floods may come, the winds may beat and blow on this house, but it will not fall if it is founded on the bedrock of God’s other-centered, generous love. Amen.
[1] Dr. Kimberly Leetch, “Preaching Themes” in Narrative Lectionary Worship Resources (© 2022 Clergy Stuff, ClergyStuff.com).
O God of wisdom, your light blesses creation throughout this land of sky-tinted waters. As our elected representatives gather to conduct the people’s business of this day, bring to our imaginations every sacred part and person of this state—north to south, east to west, metro and greater Minnesota—all illumined by your light. Let the North Star of truth be revealed in the work of these leaders and their staff today.
As we seek your blessing, stir the conscience of our representatives with the weighty responsibility of their elected calling. Keep them humble when tempted to forsake their oath of service to all, and pursue personal or partisan ambitions instead. Grant them freedom from those concerns of campaigns and contributions that curve the mind to favor some and forsake others. Lay on their hearts the stories of those who are least able to lobby and most in need of just care. Lead them to imagine creative alternatives in situations where your servants feel they must settle for the least common denominator rather than rising to a greater good.
O Source of Light, when day fades to night send all your people to rest in the reassurance that hard work done well gladdens your Spirit and extends your compassion. Repair what imperfections remain at day’s end, until that daybreak when all your people and all this beautiful creation gathers in your everlasting Light. Amen.
Delivered to open the afternoon session of the Minnesota House of Representatives on Monday, January 23rd, 2023 (the thirteenth anniversary of my ordination).
"Whenever you vote, I ask you to choose faith over fear, and to remember Jesus’ call to love neighbors, strangers, and even enemies."
Edina Morningside Community Church Today’s scripture reading: John 20:1-18 Sermon audio: No matter how many times I’ve read and heard this gospel proclaimed, there are constantly new surprises to find. The line that catches me this year is, “Supposing him to be the gardener…” Why on earth would Mary Magdalene mistake her friend, teacher, and … Continue reading Seeds of Easter Faith
The most just and loving solutions lie in a renewed community ethic that we are better off together, and in practices that build up the common good with common wealth, given by God for the benefit of all.
Edina Morningside Community Church Today’s scripture reading: Genesis 21:1-3; 22:1-14 Sermon audio: Thanks be to God?? We often end Scripture readings with, “Hear what the Spirit is saying to the church. Thanks be to God.” But “thanks be to God”, for this?? Today’s scripture challenges that verse of Second Timothy which claims, “All scripture is … Continue reading Thanks Be to God?
Edina Morningside Community Church Today’s scripture reading: Genesis 1:1-2:4a Sermon audio: After an oxygen tank exploded aboard the Apollo 13 spaceship in 1970, three astronauts were stranded in a small lunar module only meant for one. All of those astronauts breathing the same air for days would lead to a deadly buildup of carbon dioxide … Continue reading Creative Creatures
Edina Morningside Community Church Today’s scripture reading: Luke 18:1-8 Sermon audio: Javen has wanted to renew our living room for years. The furniture in there was from a family member almost a decade ago. It’s a little too big for the space and doesn’t make the best use of a small room, but it works … Continue reading Persistence in Prayer and Action
"God’s people were always free in their divine creation, but sinful systems of slavery had denied that freedom for generations. Juneteenth marks a moment when human chains fell away to recognize what had always been true: God’s desire of freedom and fulfillment for every creature."
Edina Morningside Community Church Today’s scripture reading: Acts 4:14-30 When my husband Javen, who is also a pastor, was ordained, this is the Gospel passage chosen for his ordination service. It’s fitting for such an occasion, because this first sermon of Jesus lays out a mission statement for ministry and all who would be disciples … Continue reading Look Again
Edina Morningside Community Church Today’s scripture reading: Acts 15:1-18 I had a hard time keeping the attention of at least one member of Youth Group this week. He had our conversation pulled up on his screen at home, but also on a nearby screen he was watching something else at the same time. I don’t … Continue reading Drafted onto God’s Team
Edina Morningside Community Church Today’s scripture reading: Acts 8:26-39 One of the things I’ve noticed this year is a proliferation of bills in state legislatures that would criminalize various acts of hospitality to transgender people. In states across the country, it’s becoming more difficult or even illegal for trans youth to participate in school or … Continue reading Open and Relational Christianity
Tuesday’s verdict in the Derek Chauvin case was a momentous one, even though it was just one court decision in one case. As I said to Conie while we watched the verdict being read, the powerful validation I felt seemed strange, considering that the jury was affirming what seemed obvious to anyone who watched the … Continue reading On the Conviction of Derek Chauvin
Edina Morningside Community Church
| Today’s scripture reading: Acts 6:1-7 |
What a hard week, dear Church. Javen and I were away for vacation starting last Sunday, but it seemed like each day there was more inescapable and tragic news: from the police killing of Daunte Wright in Brooklyn Center, to days and nights of violence against those protesting for justice there, to the video released of another police murder of a child in Chicago, to the mass shooting news from Indianapolis. In the background is the ongoing trial of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd, with each day bringing more graphic video and legal arguments that re-traumatize the entire community, especially our Black neighbors. A pastor friend who is Black and lives here in the Cities told me recently that he wonders if he can remain in Minnesota—every time he sees images of George Floyd, he knows that could well be him. Even though there are many officers serving in communities with honor, excessive police violence continues to grow worse. One recent analysis found that an average of three people per day have died at the hands of police since the Chauvin trial began, and more than half of them have been Black or Latino.
Yes, this has been a devastating week, on top of a hard month, after a pandemic year. The times have laid bare so many things that need to change: police use of deadly force, racial segregation, white supremacy, gun violence, inadequate mental health care, and all the rest. It feels overwhelming—even paralyzing—to consider these overlapping urgent crises. And to be honest, I have wondered about the point of “church” in all of this. Are we “equipping the saints for ministry” throughout life in Jesus’ name, or has worship become a numbing escape from what God is up to around us? How does what we do on Sunday mornings connect with the cries on the street?
A cry went up in the earliest Christian community of Jerusalem—something was gravely wrong in how believers were treating each other. There was an ethnic split between the so-called “Hebrews” who spoke Aramaic, and the “Hellenists” who spoke Greek and practices more elements of Greek culture. All were Jewish Christians, but some who had more privilege were getting food, while the widows and those in need who didn’t speak the local language were being overlooked or ignored. Marilyn Salmon from United Seminary points out that “The Hellenists were most likely immigrants and a minority in this new community of believers. The distribution of food suggests divisions over social and cultural habits and customs.” When such new immigrants and cultural “outsiders” aren’t treated with equality, the injustice goes beyond a skipped meal, and it’s done despite the name of Christ. Another commentator writes that “when the Hebrew widows receive all the food, not only are the Hellenist widows still hungry, but now they also feel like they are not fully a part of their community. The church layers spiritual pain on top of physical distress.” That said, the Hebrew disciples complain that they can’t keep up with all the food needs, because they want to keep preaching and teaching about Jesus. The system is broken, tilted against some and depriving them unfairly, yet folks with privilege are stuck trying to fix its brokenness, despite meaning well.
A solution arises when the disciples call together the whole community, and show the humility that’s required in asking for help. The community nominates people to help them in this diligent feeding work, then commissions them with prayer and laying on of hands. According to Christian tradition, these seven men are the first deacons, called to service and recognized for their leadership among the people of God. Notice something about these deacons, found in the names themselves: Stephen, Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas and Nicolaus. Every single name comes from Greek—not Hebrew—origin. The deacons come from that part of the community whose widows have been neglected. Those who are most able to see the need for change are empowered to help make the entire community better. Joanna Harader writes that “the Hebrew leaders of the church, the people in power, addressed the injustice that was brought to their attention by welcoming Hellenists into new leadership roles in the church. …Those in church leadership do not just take steps to ensure that the food is distributed fairly, they work to more fairly distribute the power as well. If we truly want to address injustice, we have to pay attention to power.”
This little story from early in the Christian tradition gives me hope, because it shows that with grace, self-reflection, and the courage to ask for help, communities and systems can change to better care for all. Indeed, God is at work during their conflict and courageous protest, turning tension into the fodder for a new and better arrangement. The deacons who begin serving alongside the preaching and teaching disciples put their own energy, creativity, and sacrifice into supporting this community. More leaders emerge, the church continues to thrive, and we are still here! God helps us see from our church ancestors how to improve community practices by listening to and empowering the leadership of those who are left out.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that they all lived happily ever after—one of those first deacons (Stephen) becomes the first martyr of the church in another conflict in the next chapter. But this is one early example of how the church has cared so deeply about the love of God for all people—Hebrews and Hellenists alike—that we undergo radical reforms and do something new for the sake of better serving the gospel. The same thing has happened again and again over the centuries, transforming faith communities to better show God’s love and serve all people. Worship shifted away from Latin and Greek to use local languages instead. Married clergy, women clergy and queer clergy have all brought new vitality and mission to the church, often by persevering through conflict. Our buildings have been reformed to serve ministries better, and during the pandemic we’ve all shifted to doing church online, at least for a season. Each of these changes has been hard, involving major disruptive system shifts and the accompanying tension. But every single time, divine, gracious change overcomes institutional inertia, and the willing blindness of those served by the status quo. Again and again, throughout the Christian faith and in contemporary life, the sustained cries of God’s beloveds—like those first Hellenists—bring about reforms that better reflect God’s love and serve all the people of God.
The good news of Christ for our weary, heartbroken, and wounded communities today is that God’s love knows no limits, cannot be contained, and will ultimately transform every system that unfairly narrows the wealth of God’s bounty and blessings. We will find a way through the violence, tragedy and pain of these days, and new systems for public safety will arise through the willing leadership of those who had been overlooked and left out, like those Hellenist deacons. God promises to be faithful in such tumultuous, revolutionary times, and the church’s ongoing existence through change is testimony that God is reliable. This is not to say that the church has it all figured out—of course not. We must do our part by learning from those who have been dismissed as “outsiders”, joining the racial justice task force that’s forming now, or exploring in study groups what needs to change and how, while also continuing to join efforts for justice and healing around us. This very afternoon, you can join more than a dozen of us from EMC for a Senate-district meeting with legislators and others from this area to talk about the way forward in creating a society where all can fully thrive. These are but several of many ways we continue to learn from and amplify the voices of those who—like the Hellenists—have been left out of the goods enjoyed by others. This is deeply faithful work, because in the words of Christian theologian and activist Cornel West, “Justice is what love looks like in public.”
We need the church and it’s age-old testimony found in examples like the Hellenists and Hebrews of Jerusalem. In the same way as our ancestors have throughout time, we will continue advocating for urgent, healing transformations that are desperately needed in our society and in the church. We bring with us into that work the promise of a living faith patterned after Christ, that the enactment of justice is called forth and empowered by the God of all love. Because God is trustworthy to bring about a just future through vital changes now, there are two questions that remain: how long will we wait to see God’s realm come to pass on earth, and how will our full-hearted, faithful participation hasten that day for all the world? See you in that work, dear Church! Amen.
Cover image from ClergyStuff.com.
Rev. Dr. Emily C. Heath, a friend and colleague serving a UCC church in New England, posted on Twitter as the pandemic first began last year. Emily wrote: The first Easter didn’t happen at a church. It happened outside of an empty tomb, while all the disciples were sequestered in a home, grief-stricken and wondering what was going on. So, we’re all going to be keeping things pretty Biblical this #Easter. One year on, the pandemic is waning but it’s not over yet, and many of us carry similar feelings of anxiety, grief and loss. A biblical Easter, indeed.
The Gospel accounts of resurrection are more subtle and mysterious than our customary twenty-first century Easter-paloozas, overflowing as they usually are with crowds, lilies and brass instruments. In Luke’s gospel narrative, there’s not even a resurrected Christ who appears. There are dazzling messengers, hearsay reports, and some linen clothes, but we don’t see the resurrected body of Jesus anywhere. All we have is a stone rolled away, an empty tomb, and the women as witnesses, but they are not believed.
What is believed instead of resurrection—what is unmistakable then and now—is the evidence of cruel, arbitrary, and untimely death. You cannot live in the Cities right now without hearing the name of George Floyd, and remembering his awful, undeserved death at the hands of the state. The possibility of gun violence hides around every street corner, in grocery stores, and in other public spaces. The ever-increasing count of those who have died from Covid will not be forgotten even as vaccines gradually reduce our daily death counts. Heartsickness at death, and anxiety at the diseases that lead to it, put us in the same place as those grief-stricken women visiting the tomb.
The pastoral counselor Andrew Lester describes how grief is made worse by the loss of what he calls a “future story”. We go through life with some sense of what the future will hold: a child will graduate and one day get married, hard work at a job will lead to promotions, or that love—once found—will last for a lifetime. These future stories act as markers on the horizon, given assumptions that guide our thoughts and actions each day. But every so often these future stories cannot hold any longer—the future breaks. When a child comes out as queer, the future stories we’ve been imagining about their wedding day must change. When a fall and a broken hip mean we can’t live at home any more, our imagined future of family gatherings there will no longer come true. When a pandemic means we can no longer safely talk, hug, sing, or worship as we used to, we lose our assumption that church will always be like it has always been. And when the “savior of the world” dies on a cross, all the hoped-for scenes of his victory—over Caesar, over disease, poverty, violence and death—are apparently dead as well. Losing “future stories” leads to bewilderment and grief, in part because we have lost our bearings on the horizon and don’t know where to turn next. We ask ourselves, “now what”, and begin the hard work of envisioning a new future story that reflects the new facts and circumstances.
But human beings are resilient, and by God’s grace we do find new future stories. We see this in the women at the tomb, and the disciple Peter who comes later. When the crucifixion and then the empty tomb shatter expectations of life and death, the dazzling messengers who speak to the women help them start envisioning life with a risen Savor rather than a dead Messiah. Could it be that he is among the living and not the dead? “Remember?” they say. “Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.” That’s such a key word here—“remember”—and I love that it can be separated: “re-member”, which is the opposite of “dis-member”. “Re-member”, bring together again, create a new future story.
“Then [the women] remembered his words”, we read. He IS raised, just as he told them he would be—and an otherwise unbelievable new future story open up before them. The future story changes because an empty tomb and divine messengers call them to remember the words and actions of Christ: that healing comes to the blind and despairing, that the poor will be blessed, that those who grieve will be comforted, that love of God, neighbor and self has transformative power beyond any human imagining. Easter’s resurrection opens our eyes to see anew, to glimpse the life that once appeared impossible. Because Christ is alive, suffering and grief are not inevitable, nor is death the ultimate reality. Even when the threats of death hang over the world, Easter points to God at work right there in the face of death itself. As the poet Mary Oliver has written, “I don’t ask for the sights in front of me to change, only the depth of my seeing.”
What is the “future story” that has been broken in you, and what new futures are you working to see more deeply now? Can we recognize the living God at work with hidden transformations here and now? Can we see the birdsong and green shoots of spring for what they are, metaphors of God’s enduring, ever-living presence in even the harshest winter? Can we trust that the world is not bereft but beloved by God, who still holds this feverish world with loving arms and healing hands? Can we let our eyes pass through all the places of death, and see even there God’s power of resurrection and redemption?
This is Easter faith, the “future story” that God wants for us today. It’s not easy to believe, and nobody does it perfectly all the time. (Doubts and confusion are welcome too; they’re part of what it means to be human.) But with Easter we let the what-ifs of transformation and the “brave new world” sit alongside our doubts, and maybe, today, let them have the upper hand. We re-member our faith with the women at the tomb, with hope and trust that something new, something deeper, someone Beyond here, is at work amid all the ragged, terrible sorrows. Life—and not death—is the ultimate last word.
So whatever this Easter day, or Easter week, or Easter season bring to you, may you have moments where joy, possibility and resurrection catch you off guard and invite you into a more generous, hopeful and new future. May you discover the open-hearted magic of Lucille Clifton describes in her poem “Spring Song”:
the green of Jesus
is breaking the ground
and the sweet
smell of delicious Jesus
is opening the house and
the dance of Jesus music
has hold of the air and
the world is turning
in the body of Jesus and
the future is possible
Christ is risen! Alleluia, and amen.