Sunday’s Palms
On December 10, 1989, during the height of the AIDS epidemic, thousands of protesters gathered outside of St Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City to demand that the Catholic Church change the ways in which it was addressing the AIDS crisis. At the time, the archdiocese of New York was led by Cardinal O’Connor, who was an outspoken opponent of using prophylactics and comprehensive sex education as means of combatting the spread of HIV and AIDS. He was also firm in his understanding of homosexuality as sinful, which contributed to the demonization of members of the LGBTQ community and the perception of AIDS as a form of divine retribution. As he was such a powerful figure at the time, who was able to influence public policy in a number of areas, the AIDS activist organization ACT UP had begun directing its attention at Cardinal O’Connor. Their organizing efforts gained notoriety on that Sunday in December, when protesters gathered mostly outside of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. They carried signs critiquing Church dogma and urging the Church to see that the over 100,000 people who had died in the United States from HIV/AIDS were people of sacred worth. That morning, as the roughly 7,000 protesters gathered outside the Cathedral, a few dozen entered the church intending to stage a silent demonstration. It quickly turned into a not-so-silent demonstration, as members of ACT UP began to shout to Cardinal O’Connor to stop ignoring those dying from AIDS, to recognize that people were dying, and to do something about it. Mixed into the voices calling out Cardinal O’Connor’s bigotry were cries for help, for justice. As the demonstration continued, the activists inside the Cathedral began lying in the aisles, carrying out something called a “die-in” to bring attention to the lives being lost each day, their bodies laid out like coats and palm branches waiting to welcome freedom from death itself.
Many of those taking part in this demonstration were people living with AIDS, a disease that would most likely lead to the end of their lives. They knew that they were most likely dying, if not from AIDS-related causes than from the violence that disproportionately occupied the same spaces where AIDS was common. They saw death on the horizon, and rather than turning away, rather than keeping their heads low and trying not to draw attention to themselves, they faced that death head-on. They did as Christ did, when he rode head on into the very city that was home to the religious leaders he had spent his entire ministry pushing back against, challenging, questioning, prodding, and embarrassing, knowing full well that he had upset enough people with the means to end his life that that was a very real possibility—if not a guarantee. Even so, he rode on, not with the triumphant prestige of a warlord or an emperor, but as one who was willing to put his life on the line for those whose backs were against the wall. Jesus surely would have known what was waiting for him in Jerusalem. The reasonable thing for him to do would have been to stay as far away from the city as possible, to disband his group of followers, take up his father’s trade, and live a quiet life in the country. But instead, Jesus does the unreasonable thing. He puts his life, his body, in between those in power and those at the margins. He draws attention to the ways in which the people around him are suffering, and pushes back—not in the way that the zealous rebels of his time would have, but by acts of non-violent resistance. Because violence belongs to the powers of this world, and it has no place in the beloved community that Jesus was building among those who loved him. That non-violent spirit is the one Jesus carries with him over the coats and palms on his way to Jerusalem, not because he does not anticipate violence against him, but because he knows that the kin-dom is not born out of violence. Rather, it is born out of standing together, supporting one another, and being willing to put our own well-being at risk for others.
But it’s also important to recognize who the people were in the crowd, who it was that laid out their palms and coats. It wasn’t the people of Jerusalem. Remember, the passage says that the city was confused, that they were in turmoil trying to figure out who it was that was causing such a commotion. No, these were the people from outside the city, from small villages and other cities. These were pilgrims who had made their way to Jerusalem for the Passover remembrances. In a quite literal sense, they weren’t the insiders. They didn’t live in the holy place, they didn’t live in the religious, cultural, and economic capital of the province. They were pilgrims, many of whom travelled long distances, almost all of them by foot. They were tired, dirty, and far from home. They weren’t comfortable. And, contrary to what many would argue, these were not the same people who turned on Jesus at the end of the week. Classics scholar and translator Sarah Ruden points out that the original Greek in which the gospels were written uses two different words to describe these groups. These weren’t the people who brought accusations and testified against Jesus. Those were the insiders, the people closer to the center of political, economic, and religious power. Which makes sense, since those were the folks that Jesus said ought to give away all their possessions and all their authority and follow him into struggle. So, while there’s something kind of poetic about the Palm Sunday crowd being the ones to turn on Jesus on Good Friday, it makes much more sense and is more correct to say that these were two different crowds. One who welcomed Jesus, a fellow pilgrim along the way to a city rife with power and in need of change. One who could not comprehend the witness of a shepherd king who couldn’t seem to help himself when it came to rubbing those in power the wrong way. One who saw that the “the aftermath of non-violence is the creation of the beloved community,” and one who could not see that “the aftermath of violence is tragic bitterness,” as Dr. King put it.
After all, that is the example that Christ sets in this parade he puts on—that the beloved community is born not out of violence, not out of conquest, not out of cultural, racial, religious, and ideological homogeneity. But rather that it is built out of a concern for the outsider, a concern for those whose lives are regarded as sinful or worthless. It is built out of a concern for the sacred worth and the dignity of each part of Creation that bears the imago dei, the image of God, which is all of it. It is built when our love for one another overcomes the fear of death, and drives us to hear the cries of hosanna, ayudanos—help us, save us, stop letting us die—and we respond to these cries. It comes not only in the act of helping and responding to cries for help, but when we have the courage to cry out for ourselves, asking others for help. The beloved community, that sacred bond to which we are called in this place, becomes apparent when we become bearers and keepers of one another, so that none of us struggles alone. Not because it benefits us, not because of some animal instinct to band together in packs that compete with one another. But because it doesn’t make sense. The beloved community is not about self-preservation—that’s not one of our values. The beloved community is about offering all of ourselves for the sake of others, so that we might all experience the abundant, eternal, good life that Christ calls us towards. That comes not by turning away from death, not by turning away from the cries of our fellow pilgrims, not by ignoring the immigrant or the unhoused person or the people dying of AIDS or anyone whose back is against the wall in grand ways or simple. It comes by facing towards death and continuing our ministry in spite of it all. It comes from living as Easter people, as those who serve a death-defying God, and as those whose love for one another and all of Creation is greater than our fear. May this be our call, even as we walk this road to Calvary. Amen.
Can These Bones Live?
“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” What absolutely heart-wrenching words to hear, especially from one of your friends. Even when said to Jesus who, let’s face it, absolutely could have stopped Lazarus from dying. But instead, this man who we’re told loves Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, and who has already healed multiple other people, chooses to wait a few days so that his publicity stunt has a bit more of an impact. It feels like such a natural reaction to the death of a loved one, and it’s something I’ve heard over and over again during the last six months in my work as a chaplain intern at Strong Memorial. It’s part of why my chest fills with dread when I get a call to visit a family in the ICU, because I know that in making decisions about end of life care there will be those who blame themselves or the doctors and nurses or other members of their families. If we had gotten there sooner. If the doctors had diagnosed more quickly. If some miracle had taken place. It’s part of how we make sense of death and other crises in our lives. If only blank had happened, this person wouldn’t have died. If only Jesus hadn’t taken his sweet time, Mary says, Lazarus would still be alive. Perhaps the one thing that Mary thought she could count on was that Jesus would be there, that when she sent for him, he would come running. The fact that he showed up days late is enough to shake her faith, to question where the blame really lies. Putting this back on Jesus gives Mary back a little control. At least now she has someone to blame.
There’s nothing quite like death that makes us feel so powerless. Even when we find ways to blame ourselves, that blame still doesn’t hide the fact that death is a mystery, and that sometimes there just isn’t anything we can do to stop it. And this death that makes us feel powerless comes in many forms. It’s not just the literal, bodily death that sees us pulseless and breathless. There’s also what theologian Brian Blount refers to as living death. This is the death that is woven into our world, that tells us that we are competitors rather than beloved children of the divine. This is the death that comes from doing soul-crushing work, rather than the work that our souls must have. This is the death that comes from the violence that patriarchy and white supremacy and queerphobia do to both body and spirit. This living death makes lifeless creatures out of both victim and perpetrator, pulling each of us away from the fullness of life. It leaves us bound, sealed in the darkness of the tomb, waiting to hear the voice of one who speaks life to us. We continue to move through lives that don’t seem to resemble the fullness of life, in the midst of systems and institutions that bring about death on a daily basis. The death of being denied healthcare, because your health is not profitable. The death of having your children torn from your arms because they are citizens and you are not. The death of broken relationships that don’t seem to bear any hope for reconciliation. Living death follows us on a daily basis. And who is left to speak to us all and call us out of the tomb, when all of us are living in death together?
That’s the part of these passages that ought to be our guide, I think. That the bones don’t come back together because they decide to on a whim. That Lazarus doesn’t just wake up and decide to not be dead anymore. God tells Ezekiel to prophesy to the bones. That word that we often read as prophesy, in this case is a verb. God tells Ezekiel to take action, to call out to the dry bones of his people, to call out to the winds and the spirit, and to move with them from death into life. God does not abandon, even the dead. Rather, God moves through others among us to bring life to where life is lacking. God still calls to us, even when we get swept up in the systems that drain our life and the lives of others. God still calls us into the fullness of life, even when it is difficult, even when we won’t dare to dream about the possibility of what life could look like if we were to cast off the burden of death. Our task is to step out into the fullness of life, to recognize in ourselves and in one another the image of the divine, the face of God. The movement from death into life is one that seeks to feed the soul, to find belonging and place in the body. And it is an embodied experience. After all, God doesn’t tell Ezekiel to prophesy to the spirit alone, but to the bodies that God has knit back together. That search for wholeness, for the completeness that is the resurrection life, is a task that is both personal and communal—and it is a task that demands much from us.
Perhaps that’s why death is where we’ve become comfortable. The tomb, after all, is a pretty safe place to be. When Lazarus is in the tomb, he doesn’t have to worry about the Roman occupation or putting food on the table. He doesn’t have to worry about making sure that his sisters are cared for, or what people think of him for being a friend of Jesus. He gets to rest, no longer having to work and sweat for a living. Perhaps the death that found Lazarus wasn’t quite so bad. And hey, if you want to argue that this is the same Lazarus who was abused and neglected by the rich man, then he’s sitting beside Abraham having a grand old time. There are those who find comfort in living death, in systems and structures that drain life. There are those who find profit and privilege and literal killing and in the killing of spirits, of hopes, of identities and senses of belonging. And while there are those who delight in the dealings of death, there are also those who simply stay in the tomb because it’s what’s safe, what’s known. The tomb is the way that the world works. But we are called—by Christ, by the Spirit, and, God willing, by one another—to step out of the tomb. We are called to come out! To come out of the comfortable places where we reside, and to step into the work of calling ourselves and others to life. This is what it means to proclaim the resurrection. When Easter Sunday comes around and we all say “Christ is risen, Christ is risen indeed,” that is only one small part of what it means to proclaim the resurrection life. We proclaim it to one another, we proclaim it to ourselves. We proclaim it when we seek to live the fullness of life, and to make space for others to do the same.
Last Sunday I offered a prayer for a woman named Tanya who passed away. Tanya Linn Bennet was one of the deans of Drew Theological School where I went to seminary. She was a pastor, a mentor to generations of students and faith leaders, and a friend. About ten years ago she wrote the text of a song that Mark Miller wrote the music for. It goes “Come out! Come out of your comfortable places. Come meet Jesus in the difficult places. Have you not heard? Every valley’s exalted, mountains made low and the lowly exalted. Come out! Come out, of your well-to-do places. Come meet Jesus in the struggling spaces. Come out! The Kindom of God is upon us. Come out the wilderness and follow Jesus.” We are called, to meet Jesus in the difficult places. We are called, to come out of the tomb, out of the safe and comfortable places we know, and to meet death with the life and hope of the resurrection. We are called to live this life, live this hope, and to call others to do the same. This life is for all who live in death. This life is for us. May we come out. May these bones have life once again. May it be so. Amen.
All I Know
“I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” One of the things that I personally appreciate about Jesus is that he likes to argue. He argues with Pharisees, with the disciples, with strangers he meets while travelling. He even pushes back against God just before and during his crucifixion. And yet, when the disciples in this passage seem like they’re trying to start something by asking Jesus who sinned so that this man would be born blind, Jesus seems to brush them off. I, for one, might have had a hard time not engaging with this question, but mostly because I think it’s silly to ask if the blindness of the man who was born blind was caused by the man’s sins. They probably thought they were on to something when they asked that question, but it sets up a theological position that I find pretty troubling and that I think would be difficult to support with other parts of scripture. But Jesus once again resists temptation and chooses not to engage with this line of thinking. Instead, he says that this man’s blindness is not a punishment, but a way for God to be made known in the world. Jesus deliberately removes any mention of sin from the man’s status and disability, and replaces the idea of sin with a sense of obligation to the man. He doesn’t really get into the nitty gritty theology of the man’s disability, only that the man needs help, that the man’s existence demands that Jesus and the disciples do God’s work—the work of healing and restoration. He doesn’t get lost in the struggle to explain away struggle or hardship, but moves swiftly into the work that both God and this man require of him. He sees this man, who had been pushed to the margins of the community and forced to beg on the street, and does what he believes will restore him to the community.
Jesus stands in stark contrast to those at the center of the social and religious structure, who taught the disciples to ask the question that Jesus rejects. He doesn’t question if the man is worthy, doesn’t question that his socio-economic status is not him living into the fullness of life that God would have him live, doesn’t question that God’s concern for this man is at least as great as God’s concern for any other person. Jesus doesn’t wait for a study, doesn’t wait for permission, and doesn’t even wait to ask if what he’s doing is legal—which it wasn’t, according to the Pharisees. He sees one of God’s beloveds, one of the least among us, and recognizes the face of the divine in him. He sees one who has been pushed out of the community and left by the devoutly religious to the limited mercy of strangers, and when the disciples want to start talking about the man and passing judgement, Jesus responds by effectively saying “pipe down, all of you. We have work to do.” Jesus’ initial response, his reflex, is not to mess around wondering about whether the man is sinful or the product of sin or if he was worthy. He doesn’t respond to the disciples’ question with a question or try and coax the correct answer out of his followers. He sees a man in need of a neighbor, and he does what he can to help. We can leave the question of why this man was born blind to the medical experts. The question that each of us is called to ask in the moment is “what do you need?”
This isn’t to say that it’s not important to look at the root causes of suffering in our world and our communities. True justice can only come when we realize that the economic systems that feed on white supremacy, xenophobia, and exploitation cannot set us free. But while the work of building a truly just society is ongoing, there are people who are hungry. There are people who are sick. There are people who are rejected by their families, their communities, and society because they don’t fit the model of a typical, productive member of society. And while conversations about systems and structures that do violence are important, it’s also important to meet the immediate needs of those around us. Not to quibble about who is worthy of resources or who ought to experience God’s grace at work in their lives. But to give as freely as we have received. To welcome the stranger and the outcast, regardless of how they look, how they speak, or whether it is legal to do so. To show mercy to the unhoused, to those who are hungry and thirsty and naked. To embrace into loving community those who are alone, who have been rejected, and who have been made to think that there is anything that they can do to make God love them less. The work of justice is ours to do. But so is the work of mercy, the work of loving openly and honestly and courageously.
The lectionary has the reading continue past where I chose to end it. In the verses that follow, the man continues to try and defend himself, to justify why he should be permitted to remain in the community. He pleads with the leaders of the community, witnesses to the ways in which he has experienced mercy and grace and a recognition of his sacred worth as a child of God. But the insistence of his sinfulness, and of the sinfulness of the one who had shown him mercy, continues until he is driven out once again. The reading ends with an exchange between Jesus and the Pharisees, in which Jesus finally answers the question about where the sin lies in this story. The sin is not in the man born blind, or even in his parents. The sin is not in being blind, nor is it in breaking the Sabbath in order to perform works of mercy. Instead, the sin lies in the people and conditions that set this man apart from the community. The sin lies in seeing him as less than, as unworthy, as one whom God has rejected. The sin lies in not caring for the vulnerable in their midst—and in leading others to reject mercy for the sake of purity or strict obedience to a misreading of the law. Jesus is clear that there is sin present in this story. And that sin remains when we allow the vulnerable, those image-bearers of the divine in our midst, to be abused, neglected, and called sinful. That sin remains when we see our neighbors as the world sees them—as broken, worthless, unclean, or unworthy—instead of how God sees them.
Jesus performs two healing acts in this story—or, at least he attempts two healing acts in this story. The first is the sensational, the headline, the attention-grabber: Jesus Heals a Blind Man. The second act, the one that he attempts, is to restore the man to the community. The human tendency towards rejection, towards individualism, towards assigning blame to anyone but especially not ourselves proved more difficult to overcome than a simple lack of vision. If only Jesus could have rubbed some spit-mud on the gathered community and changed these inclinations. When we look at our neighbors, what do we see? Do we see their sins, however we define them? Do we look with eyes seeking reasons not to show mercy? Do we hope to find people who are unworthy, beyond our capacity to help, who are simply part of cycles that we couldn’t possibly disrupt? Do we seek out reasons, excuses, not to expand God’s grace and the joy of community? We are called to give all of what we have and all of who we are, to love with reckless abandon, and to center those who have been pushed out of community. We are called to walk together into the fullness of life, which is a gift from the death-defying God we follow. May love, may mercy, may the grace of God be so natural for us that we can’t help but share these with our neighbors. May this by our call. Amen.
Born Again
Poor Nicodemus. That was my first first thought when I read this text in preparation for today. Poor poor Nicodemus. This man took the time to seek out Jesus, calls him “rabbi,” and acknowledges that he must be sent by God because of all the incredible things he has done. He humbles himself by going to Jesus. As a Pharisee, Nicodemus could easily get away with claiming that he was a spiritual expert and that he has all the answers. But instead he goes to this homeless, itinerant preacher, and calls him “rabbi.” Isn’t this what Christ asks of us? To go to him, follow his ways? See him as our teacher? Jesus should have welcomed Nicodemus with open arms!
But what does he do instead? He starts uttering total nonsense! Here comes Nicodemus, Poor Nicodemus, who didn’t know what he was getting himself into, admitting that Jesus is of God and submitting himself to Christ’s teaching, and there goes Jesus, talking about being born from above like it’s completely clear what that means. And when Nicodemus comes back and says he doesn’t understand, asks Jesus to clarify what this means, Jesus spits out even more riddles, talking about “what’s flesh is flesh and what’s spirit is spirit,” and how those who are born of the spirit are like the wind which blows where it chooses. And when Nicodemus, Poor Nicodemus, still doesn’t understand, Jesus seems to snap back at him.
Suddenly, he goes from teaching Nicodemus in riddles to jabbing at him, talking about how he’s supposed to be a teacher of the people but he doesn’t understand the spiritual truths that Jesus is handing him, and that no matter how many times Jesus explains it, Nicodemus just won’t seem to get it. And then, just when you thought he might have had enough, Jesus starts right back up with more cryptic teachings, this time about having descended from heaven and needing to be lifted up and eternal life and on and on…
Perhaps I read it this way because I can certainly relate to Nicodemus. I read this and thought back to years of staying after school, desperately trying to understand not the way to eternal life, but the mysteries of algebra and geometry that elude me to this day. Years of asking for a better explanation and getting only repeated lines about angles and formulas to no avail. Years of teachers trying valiantly to remain patient and explain it just one more time. I read this passage knowing that not everyone learns the same, and giving Nicodemus the benefit of the doubt seemed the least I could do. Part of me wanted to believe that Nicodemus’s lack of understanding is due to Jesus just being a bad teacher who inundates his students with mystic sayings until they’re in over their heads and struggling to keep up. That would certainly make me feel better when I’m having a difficult time with a text.
While some of this may be true, I don't think that this explanation for why Nicodemus remains confused really holds up. In fact, I think that Nicodemus fully understands what Jesus is trying to tell him, and is really playing the fool. And I think Jesus knows it, too. Nicodemus is a Pharisee. We are told that he is a leader of his people, presumably with some power and influence in society. He was respected, a legal expert to whom people looked for guidance and discernment. He doesn’t strike me as the foolish type. So then why doesn’t he seem to understand what Jesus is trying to get across to him? The short answer is, because it’s hard.
We know that Nicodemus has been keeping an eye on Jesus for a little while at this point. He has heard Jesus referred to as the King of Israel, the Lamb of God, the one who takes away our sins. He has seen Jesus turn water into wine and drive the money changers out of the Temple with a whip of cords. He knew full well that he was talking to Jesus, who was said to baptize the world with fire and overturn the established political and economic order. Jesus, who called his disciples by name and asked them to leave behind their work and join his cause. Maybe Nicodemus resonated with this Jesus. Maybe he got excited and passionate and as soon as he heard Jesus was going to be around, he dropped everything to go meet him, even if it was the middle of the night.
Maybe he got all the way there before he realized — this was going to be a lot of work. He had allowed Jesus to carry him to the edge, but when it came time to hear Jesus’ call, to put into action all of the values that we uplift as the ethic of Jesus, suddenly it became too real. He thinks about losing his power, his influence, his livelihood. And so he clams up. He does nothing. “Your responsibility is to instruct Israel in matters of faith, but you do not comprehend the necessity of life in the Spirit?” Jesus asks incredulously. Jesus knows Nicodemus is no fool. And Nicodemus returns to life as normal.
How often do we fall into this same habit? Do we, like Nicodemus, encounter truths that bring us to the edge of something greater, that carry us up the mountain, only to stop short, frozen with dread at what might be waiting for us on the other side? Do we make conscious choices to ignore transformative truths because we don’t want to hear them? I think of the scientists employed by Exxon who knew as early as 1977 that climate change was real, and that it would have devastating effects on the future of the planet. For more than forty years, fossil fuel corporations have known that their business is killing the planet. They have been staring, eyes wide open at these truths, unwilling to take a step forward and risk precious profits for the sake of the planet. I think of lawmakers in Tennessee, Texas, Ohio, Kansas, Florida, and numerous other states who have passed laws banning transgender minors from accessing the healthcare they need in order to live healthily and authentically. Lawmakers who heard truths from doctors, parents, and transgender children crying out, bringing warnings about the incredible harm these bans cause to young people and families across the state. Lawmakers who took these cries in stride and voted to condemn children.
As followers of Christ, we are no strangers to being at the edge. We hear Jesus’ call into a new way of being. We hear Christ’s summons, beckoning us towards total dependence on God, towards a recognition of the interconnectedness of creation, towards the kingdom of God in which the poor are filled and the privileged are brought low. But it’s easy to get discouraged. We allow recessions, constant war, local and federal police violence, and fear mongering to shut us up. It can become difficult to see how any talk of change can lead to anything but disappointment when nothing seems to get better. It’s ok to struggle. It’s ok to wrestle. Lucky for us, we’re Methodists, which means we believe in Prevenient Grace, which means that God will keep guiding us towards the edge, even when it feels hopeless.
We have work to do. Exciting, awe-inspiring work that leads to a New City, a new way of existing in relationship with the rest of creation, an entire world restored. Work that calls us to act in ways that disrupt our lives, our communities, our institutions. Work that can certainly be intimidating. But it is this work that brings us hope, leads us into the light, and will bring about God’s reign on Earth. God leads us to the edge of something new, something life-giving, and leaves it to us to decide. Do we follow the call, or act like we never heard it in the first place? Amen.
Bread and Roses
For several years now, I’ve made it a point to watch the movie Pride at least once a year. For those of you who are unfamiliar, Pride is a movie about the events of the coal miners’ strike in the United Kingdom in 1984-1985. It centers on a group of young gay and lesbian activists based in London, who recognize that the oppression they endure at the hands of police, politicians, and the public is not so different from what the striking coal miners endure. It tells the story of how this group of activists became stalwart fundraisers and organizers on behalf of those on strike—collecting loose change in plastic buckets on street corners to send direct aid to the miners and their families. As part of living out this recognition of shared struggle, the gay and lesbian activists end up travelling from the City of London, where there is relative safety in the midst of a lively LGBT scene, to a tiny village in the South of Wales where everyone is directly impacted by the strike. I won’t spoil too much, because it really is a beautiful movie and I highly recommend it. But there is one scene that never fails to bring me to tears…ok, there are many scenes that never fail to bring me to tears, but one in particular that I want to lift up today. Once the activist group, named Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, has settled in a bit and built some strong relationships with folks in the village, there comes a time when everyone is sitting together in the union hall, drinking and talking together. After the leader of the activist group stands up to declare his intention to continue and amplify the group’s support for the miners, a young woman from the village stands up and begins to sing a well-known song in the labor movement. The scene goes on, and becomes more and more powerful as more voices from the crowd join in with each verse until everyone in the room is singing together.
The song that they sing in this scene is called “Bread and Roses.” While the origin of this pairing of bread and roses together is uncertain, its modern usage in organizing movements probably began around 1910, when a woman named Helen Todd used it while advocating for women’s suffrage and better conditions for working class women in Chicago and California. It was quickly picked up by women organizers across the country. The lyrics of the song that they sing in Pride come from a poem that was inspired by the work of the suffrage and labor movements, written by James Oppenheim. The words to the song go: “As we go marching, marching, in the beauty of the day/A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill-lofts gray/Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses/For the people hear us singing, "Bread and Roses, Bread and Roses." As we go marching, marching, we battle, too, for men/For they are women's children and we mother them again/Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes/Hearts starve as well as bodies: Give us Bread, but give us Roses. As we go marching, marching, unnumbered women dead/Go crying through our singing their ancient song of Bread/Small art and love and beauty their trudging spirits knew/Yes, it is Bread we fight for—but we fight for Roses, too.” Each line of this poem, each verse of this song, calls us back again and again to the stance, to the truth, that simply not starving is not the same as living into the fullness of life. That, as labor and women’s rights advocate Rose Schneiderman put it, living and existing are not the same thing. Each line, as it is sung, points us to the truth that is summarized by Jesus in this gospel passage, that “one does not live by bread alone.”
The season of Lent is a time of preparation, a time of orienting ourselves towards the resurrection life that dawns at Easter. Throughout this season, we ought to consider what the fullness of this resurrection life looks like. In our Thursday Lunch Group this past week (shameless plug), it was pointed out that the line in this passage that tells us how hungry Jesus was after not eating for several weeks, while it may seem obvious, is an important reminder of Jesus’ humanity. It is a reminder that Jesus needs to eat, although with all the eating Jesus does throughout the gospels, I’m not sure how we could really forget. It’s a reminder that Jesus has human needs and human desires and human pains. And, we can argue based on his response to the Tempter, he probably understood that the fullness of human life cannot be achieved simply by sustaining our bodies alone. He knows because of his humanity, that the fullness of life comes when our basic needs are met, but also when we are able to engage with the ways in which God speaks to us in our lives. Through visual arts and performing arts, through playing and listening to music, through making people laugh and being made to laugh. Through cooking and enjoying food, not only as sustenance, but as art. He knows that the fullness of life comes when we are enabled to listen to God, in Creation and in one another, as part of the Beloved Community. This is the food that nourishes us beyond just the point of filling our bellies, but to the satisfaction of our souls. It is the food that can indeed sustain us, even when bread is scarce, and bodies are starved.
This is the sustenance that was consumed by Jewish musicians in concentration camps, who wrote and performed music even as they were held captive in brutal violence. This is the sustenance that fed blues artists, that reverberates through jazz clubs and concert halls, that brings us to tears when we watch a performance or a movie, even when we’ve seen it a dozen times or more. This is the sustenance that feeds immigrant communities, through the music and dance and language that comes from home, which is passed down from generation to generation. This is the sustenance that feeds queer communities, by poems and symbols, by subversive music and norm-defying art. Our being fed, our living of life to the fullest, comes from more than simply satisfying our basic needs. One does not live by bread alone, but by bread and roses—by the myriad ways in which we encounter God, and the multitudes of ways in which God speaks to each of us. And so it becomes our responsibility, our summons as Easter People, to ensure that we not only find roses for ourselves, but that we offer others their roses as well. It is our call, as Easter People, to engage with the arts, whether that be fan art or the symphonies of Gustav Holst (speaking of art that makes me cry). Whether we speak the language or can hear the voice of God speaking to us or not. It is our call, as Easter People, to live into the fullness of life by bread and roses—and to ensure that others may have their bodies and spirits fed, as well. To ensure that each of us has the opportunity to practice the arts, to find passion and beauty and whimsy and rest and the voice of the divine speaking life into souls wearied by death.
Lent is a season of preparation and piety. It may seem like I am preaching indulgence in the midst of a season of fasting, but I promise I’m not. Bread and roses is not a call for excess, it’s not a call for us to gorge ourselves, to live to some hedonistic extreme. It’s not about some never-ending quest for more and more or some insatiable desire to have everything. Rather, it is a statement of humility, of acknowledging our human need for food, but also our human need for something more. Our preparation, this Lenten season, ought to point us towards that Easter morning, towards that triumph over the sting of death that each of us longs for. Part of that triumph is living into the fullness of life. That is the liberation that we experience here on Earth—liberation from the hunger that plagues our bodies and that which plagues our hearts. As we journey onward, may we listen for where God is speaking to us out in the world. May we seek out that which gives us life, that which feeds us until our hearts are satisfied. May we make it so that others may do the same. We cannot live by bread alone. Give us bread, but give us roses, too. Amen.
A Vision of the Holy
Transfiguration Sunday
When I preached here last August I began the message with a question:
Why do we bother with church?
I went on to suggest that the better question might be, “Why does God want us to bother with church?” Because we might have all kinds of extraneous reasons for showing up here.
So, why does God want us to bother with church?
Well, here’s what I said last summer:
To help us align our stories with God’s story.
God wants us to align our story with their story.
Our faith, our confidence, our trust, is that God’s story, the story that God is living out through all of creation, is directed toward the fulfillment of love. God’s story is directed toward the fulfillment of love. And our intention should be to be a part of that.
We are invited into the faith/confidence/trust that God is continually at work cajoling, seducing, nudging all that is – including us – toward a culmination of divine love. We are bothering with church to more closely live out our stories as a part of that larger story of how divine love plays out in our world.
Today is Transfiguration Sunday. The Sunday that each year immediately precedes our observance of Lent, which, of course, is the 40 days that lead up to Easter.
In the gospel lesson we read an account of that event in which Jesus went up on the mountain with Peter, James, and John.
Jesus was transformed.
Shone like the sun.
Moses and Elijah appeared with him.
They heard the very voice of God saying of Jesus: This is my dearly loved child, with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him.
Fell on their faces, filled with awe. This was a revelation about the true nature of Jesus that was absolutely stunning.
That mountaintop experience is, in part, a vision of hope that will carry us, Jesus, and the three disciples through Lent’s valley of Jesus’ humiliation, suffering, and death.
Then we arrive at Easter with a renewed understanding of Jesus’ glory, tempered by our realization that that glory is shot through and through with that same humiliation, suffering, and death.
Life, death, abundant life. That is the threefold pattern of God’s story into which we are aligning. The Transfiguration is a foreshadowing – or better fore-spotlighting – of the abundant life.
As we move to the lesson from the 2nd Letter of Peter, I’d like us to note that as Peter is recounting the event of the transfiguration, he is emphasizing that this is not him simply passing on something he was told about. It was something he experienced, not some cleverly designed myth.
And now shift to us. For us the Transfiguration is something we have been told about. It is not a cleverly designed myth. But it is not something we have experienced.
So, finally, here’s the question for this morning: are we to simply rely on Peter’s experience of the holy and Peter’s testimony about it, or are we here to help each other cultivate our own capacity to encounter the holy?
Here’s my answer:
We are invited to be awakened and to experience/encounter the holy in our midst. To be awakened and assured that we are being drawn into the alignment of our stories with God’s story.
How does our life together awaken us to the power and reality and shining of God’s presence in our midst? How are we awakened into the abundant life of being aligned with God’s story?
Perhaps the first and most important step is to take it as a given that the presence of God is already with us and all around us. The love and mystery of the cosmos is always in the midst of us. The secret is to open our hearts to it.
When we show up here, let’s take our very showing up as an acknowledgment of, and a commitment to, the reality of God’s presence. Not in a far-off heaven, or in the experience of biblical characters, but as a reality in our lives.
Perhaps it is easier in this setting to pay attention to doing it, but the larger truth is that it is always available.
James Finley, a psychologist and teacher at the Center for Action & Contemplation, writes:
Jesus taught that we are completely drenched through and through with God’s love. In the parable of the prodigal son, in his miracles of healing, in his love for everyone he encountered, Jesus’ message rang out to one and all: a divine benevolence gives itself to you whole and complete in and as your very life. Your incremental degrees of awareness of this mystery are stages of realizing what is from all eternity the brimming-over fullness of your true and everlasting life.
That reality is always everywhere. The gap, if there is one – is our attention. We are being invited in each moment to pay attention so that its reality will rise in our hearts. When that reality arises in our hearts we become aware that we are standing on holy ground. Holy people on holy ground.
One of the ways that our participation in church helps us align our stories with God’s story is the way of prayer. Prayer, of course, has many forms and many styles. There are many varieties of prayer. But what they all have in common is an opening of the heart to God. When we pray, we are opening our hearts to God and whenever we open our hearts to God, we are at prayer.
Whatever we do with our hearts open to God is prayer.
So let us cultivate our capacity to be able to have prayerful conversations, prayerful interactions, and prayerful postures toward one another: conversations, interactions, postures that take place with open hearts and an intentional awareness of God’s presence. These prayerful encounters hold the space, open the space, for the Spirit to flow freely. Listening, speaking, and doing with hearts open to the presence of God.
Let me boldly say and hear this boldly as well:
You are holy. You are God’s temple. God lives in you.
The truth of this is not a conditional statement that if we’re good enough we will be holy. We are holy, because we were created in the image of God. Our very being makes us a participant in God’s being and goodness. And that makes us holy. Like it or not.
This place – Fairport UMC – is a place to be conscious/aware of our own and one another’s holiness. That’s what we’re living into together.
And we, here, together, are being invited to recognize ourselves, this place, this community, as an embassy of God, a sanctuary, a safe place. Not safe from disagreement, not safe from offense even, but safe for the love and mercy of God to do what it needs to do among us and through us to weave reconciliation when relationships fray or when we go astray.
So this is not about perfection or purity. It is, instead, about becoming a place where we can open our hearts without fear. A space for the Spirit to nurture us into healing and wholeness and more fully and joyfully aligned with God’s story.
And we – in this time and place in this small corner of the world, become an instance and an entry point of the Spirit. A place where we can dare to open our hearts to encounter God and to help one another experience God, encounter God in one another.
Encounter God in one another. Encounter God in one another. How might we do that.
Don’t worry. I’m not going to ask you turn to the person next to you and look deeply into each other’s eyes. That would just be weird. Some of you might even decide that you needed to go out and see if you left your headlights on.
Instead, you might look somewhat surreptitiously, maybe even out of the corner of your eye. In some random moment here (or anywhere) glance at another person, but expectantly. Assume that there is a holy mystery in that person and see that person with reverence and compassion.
In his book, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, Thomas Merton tells of a revelation in downtown Louisville. As a monk living isolated in a monastery he had imagined a great gulf between himself and people living in the secular world. He writes of a day he was running errands for the monastery in Lousville,
“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness… This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud… I have the immense joy of being [human], a member of a race in which God [‘s own self] became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.”
Merton went on to write:
“…it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts, where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time.”
Now maybe it’s too great a leap for us to look at everyone that way. Maybe we could start small and close to home and begin to do that here with one another and with those we encounter in our daily lives. Perhaps that might be a worthwhile Lenten intention.
Let us help one another practice opening our hearts to experience God everywhere in every moment. To live in the awareness of God’s awesome presence in one another and in all the world.
Peter says in our Bible reading this morning:
We have a most reliable prophetic word, and you would do well to pay attention to it, just as you would to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.
The words and stories that we hear from the Bible are lamps to pay attention to – until the day dawns and the morning star rises in our own hearts. Until we become more practiced at recognizing the reality of God in ourselves and those around us.
So we are not about crafty myths. We are here to open our minds and hearts, Allow space. Hold space. Open space for the Spirit. Patience and gentleness and compassion are the important ingredients so that an atmosphere of trust emerges and we can have the courage to open our hearts to one another into ever closer alignment with God’s story.
Let us be a church that cultivates our capacity for prayerful conversations, prayerful interactions, and prayerful postures toward one another. These conversations, interactions, and postures hold the space, open the space, clear the space for the Spirit. And then the Spirit opens us to witness with our own eyes, the reality of God in each other and all the world.
Witness with our own eyes, the reality of God in the midst of us.
And then may we have confidence that God says to us, just as he said to Jesus in the hearing of Peter centuries ago:
This is – you are – my dearly beloved child, with whom I am well pleased.
Receive that word in trust, for it is in our trust of that word of blessing that holiness gains its fullness in us and in this place.
It is in that presence and vision of holiness that our stories are aligned with God’s story.
We are on holy ground. Here and everywhere. Whether we believe it or not. So we might as well believe it. And live it.
What Does the Lord Require of You?
When the Methodist Movement began in the mid-eighteenth century, it grew pretty quickly. I’ve mentioned before that the early Methodists didn’t start churches, but began by starting class meetings and societies. Small, local groups of Methodists would gather to pray, study, eat, fast, and perform works of mercy together. They were intentionally small, so that each person knew each person, and so that no one could fall through the cracks. When someone was absent from a class meeting, the class leader would follow up with them, making sure that nothing was wrong. Or, perhaps more accurately, making sure that something was wrong, as there was a limited number of unexcused absences that you could accrue before getting kicked out. Members met at least weekly, and would check in on one another throughout the week. It was at these meetings that the leader would get up and start by asking everyone “how is it with your soul today” and “what sins have you committed this week?” Not as a means of public shaming, but to hold one another accountable in love. It was a way of being the church that was built on trust, on intimacy, and on mutual accountability. It was a way of being the church that coupled personal spiritual growth with social action, and that stated unapologetically that one cannot walk as Christ walked if one is going to walk alone.
This way of being, this means of living out the faith which is a gift from God, was effective. These classes grew and grew and kept growing. The original model was for classes to split once they reached a certain size. If a class grew larger than about a dozen, it was supposed to break into two smaller groups. Methodist class members were still expected to attend worship in a Church of England parish, so that they could receive the sacraments and engage in worship and practice the liturgy. Over time, though, this whole splitting thing got less popular, and classes began to grow and grow until they had enough people and resources to buy or build a building and start their own “church,” in the sense that we would imagine a church. That’s why you can still find Methodist churches clustered together, so there’s one every five or ten miles in some rural areas, and at one point the bigger cities had a church in just about every neighborhood. This model of intimate accountability morphed into lively, top-down Sunday School systems with superintendents and professional teachers. Pastors, associate pastors, and lay ministers began to replace lay people as leaders of classes and communities. Public worship became the sole focus of many of these churches, and that intimate accountability, that lay-led operation, began to fade. It still exists, and don’t get me wrong, here at Fairport it can get difficult to keep track of how many small groups and classes we have going at any given time. But, by and large, we’ve become disconnected and less accountable.
We could get into all the reasons for that disconnection, both within the church and outside of it. I’m just waiting for a lectionary text to come up that would give me a good excuse to talk about the rise of car-centric infrastructure and the decline of Mainline Protestant denominations. It’s not just a COVID thing, it’s not just a social media thing or a smartphone thing. There has been a decline in our intentional means of organizing ourselves for the work to which God has called us, and is currently calling us. Did you know that that’s what liturgy means? It means the “work of the people.” Liturgy, the parts of the worship service that we participate in each week, that is the work of the people. I try to use plenty of liturgy so that you all have a lot of work to do. Each Sunday, we all get together and do work. All of us, not just those who get paid to be here. But this work ought not be confined to Sunday morning, and I know for many here, that work is not confined to Sunday morning. The work of gathering in community, the work of holding one another accountable in love, the work of practicing our faith in ways that are meaningful to us, the work of practicing mercy and building a more just world—that is our liturgy. That is the work of the people. Led not by me alone, nor by a few. Led by those in this community who hear God’s call to carry out that work, and to hold others accountable to sharing in that call, sharing in that labor.
This is the message issued by the prophet Micah. The prophet Micah, who we heard this morning pass along a summons—not to follow Jesus, but to show up to court. We see in this passage the prophet Micah challenging the people of Israel to present their case before God, so that God can argue Their case as well. God’s question for the people? Why aren’t you doing the work to which I have called you? Why aren’t you doing the things that I have asked you to do, the things that you know good and well that I expect from you, that you ought to be doing? And the response of the people? They ask God to repeat the assignment. And God does, phrasing it nice and simple so that no one can misunderstand: Do Justice, Love Kindness, Walk Humbly With God. This is the work of the people. Not only to do the things that we associate with worship in the traditional sense, but to carry out the work of the people. This is our call. This is God holding us accountable through the prophet. How will we respond? Will we do the work? Will we hold one another to it, in love? This is who we are, this is at the core of our DNA as a community of faith. We gather. We care for one another. We do the work, and we make sure that others join us on the way. Through our Sunday School, through our Beyond These Walls and Sunday Dinner Ministries, through Adult Forum and Amplify the Light and Tuesday Small Group and UWF and UMM. We are called to be a community that gathers, that cares for one another, that does the work and holds one another accountable in love. May we do so, this day and all days. Amen.
We Are Called
One of the things you get pretty good at when going through the ordination process in the United Methodist Church is talking about your call to ministry. I’m not yet ordained, but so far in the process I’ve had numerous committees and boards and District Superintendents and mentors ask me to tell the story of my call to ministry. What had happened to me or in my life that would make me want to walk this path on purpose? When I was first starting the process, I remember being very self-conscious about my story. There was no singular event, no dramatic moment when I heard a voice or felt a hand on my shoulder. Peers of mine, and colleagues, could point to a moment when they knew they were called. In my struggle to tell my own story at first, one of my mentors through the candidacy process gave me some language to describe how I had been called. She referred to it as a “journey of a thousand yeses.” It was saying “yes” when asked to teach Sunday School and classes for adults. It was saying “yes” when asked to read and then preach at various churches. It was saying “yes” again and again and again, until I realized that each question was a recognition of my call by someone else, and that each “yes” was me affirming that call for myself.
For the second week in a row now, we’re hearing an account of Jesus starting his ministry and calling the first of his disciples. It’s a funny quirk of the lectionary that we get basically the same story two weeks in a row. Two different versions of how the first disciples of Jesus came to start following him. Last week, we heard about the disciples who left John and began to follow Jesus, not waiting to be invited, but stepping out on their own to see if that call might lead them somewhere. This week, these disciples were asked, or rather, told to follow. They were told to leave behind the steady work that they knew, to abandon the family business and, really, the family as well. They were told to leave their homes, their houses, and to become homeless as they followed the itinerant preacher who had so far only preached one sermon: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” They were invited, and they said “yes.” This week, that call came from Christ. But last week, if we remember, it is John who tells his followers about Jesus, at which point they respond by following. And then it is those first disciples who go and call the next disciples, who say “yes.” When we are called, it’s not always the voice of Christ that does the calling. But it is the work that we share with Christ that draws us in—the work of healing, of sharing the Good News of God’s preference for the poor, of working for justice, of practicing love in community. For each of us who has responded to some sort of call, for those of us who are actively responding to that call, or who are discerning, it is important to remember that the voice of the one who ultimately calls to us can come from many places, and can speak through many people. And so we must listen.
One of the things I find most interesting about this version of the calling of the disciples is that it’s not just the story of Peter, Andrew, James, and John being called to ministry. It’s also the story of Jesus being called. This passage comes just after Jesus has spent his time in the wilderness being interviewed by the adversary. Maybe that’s his period of discernment, his probationary period. As he emerges from this time in the wilderness, he hears the news that John has been arrested, which we know is because of John’s ministry and his explicit preaching against the actions of those in power. We are told that this arrest is what prompted Jesus to go to Galilee, to leave his hometown of Nazareth and to start preaching and healing and building community. He heard God calling to him, not in spite of the news, not in spite of the terror that he had heard about or that he had surely witnessed. He heard God calling to him through the news, through the news of a prophet who had been arrested, and who would later be executed. Jesus’ call to ministry was a response not only to his gifts, not only to the things that might be done through him. It was a response to the times in which he was living. His call to the work of justice, the work of gathering and organizing his community so that they might be more resilient, so that they might care for one another through the wars and the killings and the oppression that raged on then, as it does now. He listened to the news of what had happened to his cousin, to the one who had baptized him and recognized the Spirit at work within him—and rather than retreating, Jesus embraced the work to which he was called. He embraced the work that, as the Rev. Dr. Katie Geneva Canon would say, his soul must have.
So, listen for where you are being called. Whether your call lies within the church or outside of it, whether you hear the voice of God ringing in your ears or simply the cries of those whose neighbors are being shot in the streets—listen. And listen not only for where you are being called, but see in one another the ways in which God is calling out to each of us. Ask, invite one another to do things that you wouldn’t normally do, that you’ve never done before, or that you haven’t done in a long time. Feed the hungry. Heal the sick. Build strong communities that truly care for one another. Raise your voice for the marginalized, the oppressed, the weak. Do not be deterred by what you see on the news, in the world, in your communities. Allow yourself to be moved by it. Allow your heart to be broken. Because the voice of the one who calls to us speaks through the crack in our breaking hearts. Hear that call. Say yes. And call others. The Kingdom of heaven has come near. In this place, in this time, we are called to reveal the kingdom in our midst. How will you say yes? How will we say yes together? It’s not a question of whether we will. We must. May it be so. Amen.
Laboring in Vain
I may have mentioned a few times now that I was born in Schenectady, and that I grew up around the Capital Region. The history of Methodism in that part of New York State is long and fascinating. There were Methodist preachers in the City of Albany about the same time that Methodists were starting to get organized in New York City, in the mid-1760s. The person leading that effort was a British army officer named Captain Thomas Webb, a lay preacher who was a devout Methodist and who preached many of the first Methodist sermons in the American colonies, from Upstate New York down to Delaware. While Methodism eventually took off to some extent out in the Albany area, it was slow-going. When Freeborn Garrettson, an early Methodist leader, first started to try and put together societies of Methodists in Albany, he was met with resistance and wrote in his journal that the people of Albany are rude and apathetic and don’t care much for religion. People still say that about Albany, and I just think that that adds to the charm. Eventually, though, Garrettson and a few others got things rolling, and by 1791 the First Methodist Society of Albany was officially organized—and they even had their own building. As the society continued to grow, other Methodist churches branched off of this First church, taking root in neighborhoods as the city grew both geographically and in population. The growth of these city churches continued, until just after World War II, when all the affluent and middle class white people moved out to the suburbs.
By the late 1940s, First Methodist was in quite a bind. Their neighborhood, once populated by middle-class, Protestant white families, was seeing a demographic shift as more Black families and more immigrant Catholic families moved in. So the trustees got together and decided two things: first, that it wouldn’t do them much good to try and do outreach with the catholics, and second, that they most certainly did not want to integrate their church. And so they decided to start a mission out of First Methodist, which would have its own pastor and building. They received funding to hire a pastor—a second career pastor who started out as an attorney and a social worker. Rev. Angelo Mongiore had a passion for working directly with the impoverished families in the church’s neighborhood, and especially with the youth. As uncomfortable as the leaders of First Methodist were getting with the shrinking distance between them and their neighbors, they kept the mission going. Then, in July of 1961, the Methodist appointment system kicked in and a new pastor was appointed to serve the mission: Rev. Randy Nugent, a 26-year-old African American pastor. For many at First Methodist, that was the last straw. Those who remained staunchly opposed to integration left the church. Despite the labors of Rev. Nugent, the members of First Methodist voted just two years later to merge with another Methodist Church in a more affluent neighborhood nearby. That church, Trinity United Methodist Church, was closed last Spring by a vote of the Annual Conference. In a sort of sad irony, the only Methodists left in the City of Albany are members of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, a predominantly Black denomination.
This story of how the United Methodist Church in Albany met its demise irritates me to no end. Here was a church that held its own bigotry at bay while it tried something new, something that could have been truly transformative and a real source of grace in its community, and they let it all fall apart in the end because they just couldn’t hold it back any longer. Here was a pastor who had responded to a call to step into a setting that was openly hostile towards him, so that he might make a positive impact in a community of people whose backs are against the wall. And all his labors seem to have been in vain, after all.
Most weeks, I have a pretty good sense of what the sermon is going to be early on. The manuscript comes together later in the week, but I almost always have a sense of what the message is. This week, though, I kept coming up short. My news feed was overflowing with stories of the heinous violence committed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, both in public and in detention facilities. With stories of the cuts to healthcare funding, of courts ruling on whether a handful of transgender women can participate in sports, of conquering yet another nation. It’s easy to get overwhelmed, to get swept away in the volume of evil in the world. Where do we begin? Why bother? I understand that feeling. I’ve been struggling to sift through the news this week and find signs of hope amidst it all. Even in the protests, even in the floods of people standing up against these terrible acts of violence, all their labor seems to be in vain. And even those who feel this divine call, who feel this unshakable urge to respond to the harm being carried out in the world can find it easy to do as Isaiah does and say “enough, God. Nothing’s working. I’m done.” But then there’s God, that pesky God, who doesn’t back down. God, who still puts that call on our hearts, even as we struggle to see the good it will do. The God who sees us through the eyes of Christ, who sees our hopes and longings for a transformed world, and who pulls us along.
Call it cliche, but I think I want to share a quote that came across my feed this week from Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Junior. It comes from a sermon he preached just a few months before he was murdered, and was shared by the Reverend Beth Quick, a colleague of mine and a PhD student at Drew Theological School. The quote goes “And I say to you this morning, that if you have never found something so dear and so precious to you that you will die for it, then you aren't fit to live. You may be 38 years old as I happen to be, and one day some great opportunity stands before you and calls upon you to stand up for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause—and you refuse to do it because you are afraid; you refuse to do it because you want to live longer; you're afraid that you will lose your job, or you're afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity or you're afraid that somebody will stab you or shoot at you or bomb your house, and so you refuse to take the stand. Well you may go on and live until you are 90, but you're just as dead at 38 as you would be at 90! And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit. You died when you refused to stand up for right, you died when you refused to stand up for truth, you died when you refused to stand up for justice.”
Even in the midst of the chaos, even in the midst of the lack of tangible progress, even when all our labors seem to be in vain, still God is calling us to cast aside that fear, that doubt. God is calling us to reject the sting of Death, to embrace the hope that we build together, as we seek to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves. As we seek to build that Beloved Community that Dr King preached about. The community where justice reigns, where the evils of poverty, racism, and militarism cease to exist. May we hold onto this call with all that we are, with all the resurrection hope that we can muster. May we continue to hear God calling out to us, dragging us back to the unfinished work, even when all we see is vanity. May we hold each other to this, in the love that seeks justice. May it be so. Amen.
Wade in the Water
In July of 2023, I went camping in the Adirondacks with my dad and my siblings. We went to a state camp ground near Tupper Lake, called Fish Creek. We left Albany on Sunday afternoon, and it was beautiful. Clear blue skies, not too much traffic. We stopped on the way up and got a Sunday New York Times to read once we got there. And we had the perfect site, too. It was right by the water, with a good spot to launch the canoes. It was windy, but other than that it was perfect weather to begin our couple nights camping. This wasn’t our first rodeo, so we knew to check the weather beforehand so that we could prepare. There was some rain in the forecast, but it didn’t seem like anything we couldn’t handle. So, we spent that Sunday afternoon just hanging out. My dad and siblings took the boats out while I stayed back and read the paper. It was a perfectly normal day camping in the Adirondacks. We set up our tents, tarps, and rain flys when it was still nice out, and when it started to sprinkle we retreated to our tents and called it a night. None of us knew just how much it was going to rain until the next morning. You never quite forget the feeling of waking up in a puddle of cold rainwater. Our sleeping bags and pillows were soaked through, our campsite was flooded. As it turned out, we had started our trip at the beginning of what would later be known as the Great Vermont Flood of 2023. While the rain and flooding certainly dampened the rest of our time at Fish Creek, what we experienced was nothing compared to other parts of New York and Vermont.
Eleven people died in the flooding. Over two billion dollars in damage was caused, as roads and bridges were swept away. Homes, churches, businesses, entire towns left flooded and wrecked. Our waterlogged tents paled in comparison to what the towns around us were experiencing. When disasters such as these occur, disasters that are still labeled by some as “natural,” it can be tempting to place the blame on the water for the death and destruction. After all, it was the water that swept over the roads, the water that fell from the sky and caused brooks and rivers to rise, the water that caused damage to buildings and created the conditions for human harm. But it is us humans that create the conditions that exacerbate these storms, and make them more and more common. We poison the waters that we drink, that we and all of Creation depend on for our very survival. We continue to use and abuse the non-human Creation that we have labelled as “resources” for our own gain, disregarding our own dependence on the rest of Creation—and disregarding the inherent dignity of our non-human kin. But what responsibility do we have to the non-human Creation? Is it simply self-serving to say that we ought to care for the rest of Creation or risk our own peril? Why is it so easy for us to forget that the witness of our ancestors of faith has long included non-human Creation?
From the flood and the birds who acted as messengers of new life, to the big fish that would not allow Jonah to run from where God was calling him. From the parting of the Red Sea as the Israelites stumbled towards liberation, to the life-restoring water that sprang forth even from rock. Rocks who, according to Christ, would continue to cry out for liberation, even if every human tongue was stilled. We humans love to center ourselves in the story of salvation, in the story of liberation. But we have never been the center. Even our messiah is a lamb, a mother hen, a vine with many branches.
Just a few weeks ago, on the fourth Sunday of Advent, I baptized a child for the first time. Afterwards, during the children’s message, I described baptism as a covenant made among the individual being baptized, God, and the Church. It is a covenant to grow together, to provide care, to teach, and to learn. It is a covenant to resist evil, and to live as God calls us to live, to walk as Christ walked before us. But we forget that this covenant also included the water. The liquid contained in the bowl and pitcher isn’t just a prop. This living water is a part of the covenant, to be bound by the same water, to reject the mindset of singularity and individualism, and to remember that we are all linked. Each of us, as people, but also the rest of Creation that can’t always speak for itself. The water is there not only to remind us of John’s practice of baptizing in the Jordan, not only as a reminder of the idea of baptism as a cleansing ritual, but also as a representative, an ecumenical witness from our non-human neighbors reminding us that God created them, too, that God speaks through them, too, and that we are to care for them, just as we are called to care for one another.
As we prepare this morning to remember the covenant that we made at our baptism, or that was made for us, or that we confirmed when we joined the church, may we embrace all of our covenant. May we embrace the call and the commitment we have made to one another, to be more than just an individual person. May we embrace the call to work together, to breathe together, to co-labor and con-spire as members of the body of Christ. And may we hold onto the precious water that seals this covenant, the water that nourishes our bodies, that flows through all of Creation. The water we must cherish now more than ever.
And so, siblings in Christ, remember that through the sacrament of baptism we are initiated into Christ’s body, the Church, we are incorporated into God’s mighty acts of salvation, and we are given new birth through water and the Spirit. All of this is God’s gift, offered to us without price. Through the reaffirmation of our faith, we renew the covenant declared at our baptism, acknowledge what God is doing for, with, and through us, and affirm our commitment to Christ’s holy Church.
We remember this gift of water that has woven its way through Creation since before we humans came into the picture. We remember this gift of life, the living waters that flow through our bodies, that nourish our food and craft the rocks and mountains. We give thanks for this life-sustaining source of renewal, the bearer of new life. From the River Jordan to the Rio Grande, from the shores of the Galilee to the coast of the Mediterranean, all those seeking new life, seeking safety, and seeking wholeness come to the water, longing to be made whole. Forgive us, oh God of the waters, and convict us. Guide us to live our solidarity with the waters you placed on this earth, to see them not as mere resources to be exploited, but as a part of who we are. Remind us that as the water flourishes, so, too, do we all. May we live out this gratitude, and allow it to move our hearts to action.
And now, on behalf of the whole Church, I ask you: Do you renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness, reject the evil powers of this world, and repent of your sin? (I do) Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves? (I do)Do you confess Jesus Christ as your Savior, put your whole trust in his grace, and promise to serve him as your Lord, in union with the Church which Christ has opened to people of all ages, nations, and races? (I do) According to the grace given to you, will you remain faithful members of Christ's holy Church and serve as Christ's representatives in the world? (I will) Let us remember our baptism.