SERMON 3.19.06

You can tell from our lessons that it is Lent. Those ten commandments— oooh, given by God for the people of the covenant. The people God has chosen. It is in the context of God’s faithfulness to them—that God gives them the commandments. And then there’s Jesus. Yesterday I was spending some time designing and printing tickets for us to sell to the Mozart Requiem here on Good Friday—just think of it--that’s what I was doing yesterday and I was wondering --if Jesus came here to Incarnation in the same mood as he was at the Temple—would I be the first one to be herded out with the whip cracking over my head? It gives you pause, you know. What was he up to anyhow? Gentle Jesus meek and mild. Jesus is a part of a long tradition of prophets and prophetic action. The Old Testament prophets did weird and dramatic things—they startled and scandalized people—to draw attention to God’s desires—God’s plans—God’s ideas—God’s power at work. Remember Elijah and his amazing contest against the prophets of Baal, or some of the acts of Jeremiah? This action of Jesus is one of those kinds of actions. Prophetic actions always are hopeful actions—they give expression to the hopes and yearnings of God and God’s people. Hope is seeing and proclaiming a different reading of reality than the “business as usual” reading. Now on behalf of the moneychangers (and ticket makers) I’d like to explain that the money being changed was the money needed to pay tithes and to purchase the animals needed to make the sacrifices in the Temple. The money had to be changed from Roman coins (with images of Caesar) to Jewish coins. Now the goal of all of this was to be in relationship with God—its important that you remember that. (The Mozart Requiem achieves the same thing). It is also true that the priests and rulers in the Temple made sure to make a big profit--off the poor especially--who didn’t have their own unblemished animals to sacrifice and had to buy them there. You can imagine how this worked—this system. And in truth the system had become a barrier to people’s relationship with God. It was a barrier and it was oppressive. And Jesus, whip in hand, and voice no doubt bellowing, is standing alongside the poor and oppressed—and acting out God’s dream by saying NO! STOP IT! He’s expressing the dream of God and the hope of the people that there should be no barriers between them. And, I suppose if Jesus were to pop in here sometime—say a Sunday morning—his concerns would be the same. What about us is a barrier to others in their search for God? Are we part of the oppression of others? Do we make it hard for poor people to get close to God here? … What about the tickets? The law and the prophets. God on the mountain. Jesus in the Temple. Each trying to bring the people closer to God. “Jews demand signs,” says Paul, “and Greeks want wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Greeks.” When the people ask Jesus for a sign he tells them “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” It is only after the resurrection that Jesus’ friends remember and understand. Jesus was speaking of himself. He was where God and humans came together. He was the place. God with us. The holy of holies, you might say. This sign was more than most folks could grasp. It still is a stumbling block for many and foolishness to others. That in this man Jesus we know God is with us. No more barriers. No more need for intermediaries. God with us in the flesh. And God’s power not thundering from the mountain top, but walking alongside, healing, teaching, praising, proclaiming the good news—praying, suffering, dying—. And then rising, Jesus God with us—no matter what—through highs and lows, ups and downs, joys and sorrows, victories and defeats, integration and devastation—God loves us. This is the Good News. And it flows from the same God who brought the people out of Egypt and bore them on eagle’s wings and brought them to God’s self. God’s very self. Desmond Tutu talks about the cross and how this bloody instrument of death has become the sign and symbol of good news—resurrection news for us. We can hardly comprehend what a scandal this it. Wearing a little electric chair on a silver chain around your neck or in your lapel might come close. But even that lacks the same public degradation and humiliation. The good news in it is of course that God has descended to those awful depths to be with us—and Jesus’ rising assures us of the resurrection power at work in our lives and in our world. This is all about relationship. The commandments, the Temple, the overturned tables, the cattle with the whip cracking above their heads… Jesus. Everything is grounded in God’s desire to be in relationship with us—with God’s creation. It’s about love and relationship. It’s about hope too: nothing could be further from the majority opinion about life in America than this. We can’t even find an anesthesiologist to go in an execution chamber because all of us know that is only about one thing: death. Who would guess that God has stooped to enter that place? That God might love the victims and the perpetrators is more than most people can take. What could be more foolish than that? As Paul put it: “God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.” This is indeed about the weakness of God who has dared to enter life to its depths. There is no place we can go where God is not. God’s faithful love has driven God to these extremes. And it is our experience of that love that transforms our lives. That cracks us open to transformation. It is relentless this love of God. It maybe starts with your learning that you are loved in your family of origin. Or, maybe you had a moment when suddenly you are washed in the light and love of God. Maybe in one of your darkest times a friend or partner stood with you—traveled with you. However it comes, when love comes what is does is it breaks you down. Love does that. It breaks you down and sets you free. Free to enter the darkness—your own and that of others. And it sends you out to others. Folks you wouldn’t have dreamed of—folks your own folks told you to be wary of. It sets you free to enter the darkest of places. One of my own personal prayers for God’s transforming freeing grace in the last months has been this. I took off the WEB the pictures of the four Christian Peacemakers who were captured last November. I have had those pictures by my table where I eat my meals. They are there with me morning, noon and night. I look at them (one of them Tom is dead now) and remember that the love of God binds them to me and me to them. I could have pictures of their captors too if they were available—those would be reminders. Or of some of our soldiers in Iraq, or of Iraqui civilians. Or I could use pictures of the people in Darfur, or maybe from some of the communities in Santa Rosa that I seldom visit. It wouldn’t matter. The truth is that God’s love encompasses us all. Whatever the barriers—this love of God will split them wide open. And there you’ll be. One last little story. A few weeks ago, I officiated at a memorial service here in this sanctuary. It was for a horse. A horse named Joe. We had a painting of Joe, his bridle, and the sharing of memories. We even had his ashes. It was a memorial service where we gave thanks for Joe’s life and grieved his loss. He belonged to one of the granddaughters of one of our faithful parishioners, a person you know well, most of you. This young woman in her late teens loved her horse dearly. She had survived a nearly fatal car accident not too long ago—and various surgeries. For awhile we weren’t sure she’d live or that she would walk. But, after long months of rehab, she was walking again and back at the stables, then her horse suddenly died one night. The people who came were her friends. Friends her age and older and younger friends. People who loved her and loved Joe too. People who had journeyed with her through the hard times. Some of them had gone to the abyss with her: I’d seen them at her bedside. They laughed and cried and gave thanks and said good-bye. This was a counter-cultural event. It celebrated God’s love that cannot tolerate barriers. God’s love that transforms and makes new. God’s love so tiny that it slithers in the cracks and crannies and down to the depths—God with us. Forgiving, Loving, Challenging, Transforming. God with us, foolishly and relentlessly, with us.

Sermon 2.26.2006

In our Tuesday morning study group some months ago we read a short essay by Annie Dillard; it is called “The Field of Silence.” In it she tells of a time she walked by a field in the country, a field she had walked by many times before-but this time suddenly it was transformed. In an instant, “Something had unhinged the world” and the usual boundaries between earth and sky collapsed, and the sounds of the farm quieted. There was silence. She was overwhelmed and frightened and could make no sense of it. She called it a “God-blasted, paralyzed day,” and mentioned it to no one until some months later when walking with a friend by the same field, she heard herself saying, “There are angels in those fields.” Even so, her thinking and reflecting on the experience does not bring her clarity about its meaning-other than she knows somehow she has seen some elemental truth about God and God's creation. A frightening visit to a wild holy place. Perhaps she still ponders its meaning. Jesus' friends who climb the mountain with him are equally terrified by what they see and hear. They don't know what to make of it. It is beyond them. Strange this story in the middle of Mark's gospel somewhere between the baptism and the crucifixion-looking back and forward at the same time-And, looking back even further really to Moses and Elijah-like the wonderful and amazing story we heard from Kings-when Elijah takes Elisha back thru history to Moses and the parting of the seas before he leaves him with his spiritual inheritance-and in a cloud of fiery horses and chariot and a whirlwind besides. Elisha tears his garments in grief at the departure of his mentor-his father in the spirit really. And stands silent. Jesus tells his friends to keep quiet until after the Son of Man has risen from the dead. Halfway between the baptism and the crucifixion they are told to keep silent about what they have seen and heard. Jesus the Beloved dressed in a martyrs robe bleached whiter than you can imagine, counseled by Moses and Elijah. For just a time, and then the voice telling them to “Listen,” and they look around and can see only Jesus. Only Jesus. They are terrified. And who wouldn't be? Maybe it was the sight of Moses and Elijah. Maybe it was the radiant Jesus dressed in white. Maybe it was the cloud, or the voice so distinct. This is my child, the Beloved. Listen to him. Maybe like Annie Dillard they just couldn't take the blurring of their boundaries, the outrage of their expectations shattered, the power and the glory suddenly upon them, shrinking them to size. Turning their worlds upside down and inside out. God is terrifying. Awesome does not do it. Even awe-struck falls lamely to the floor. The week they climb the mountain with Jesus is the same week Peter has identified him as the Messiah, the same week he has told them he will undergo great suffering, be rejected, killed, and after three days rise again. Peter has told him “No!” this is not the Messiah they are expecting. And he has rebuked Peter calling him Satan and he's shut up the others by telling them to pick up their cross and follow him. So, here they are. And what they experience is overwhelming and it scares them witless. They have no booths, or boxes to put this in. It makes no sense to them-at all. And what are we to make of it? When and where are we to catch a glimpse of the glory of God in this sorry world of ours? I pick up the paper and all I see is business as usual. Car wrecks, deaths, greed, graft, corruption, raging mobs. I am deeply disturbed by the persuasiveness of consumerism and the loss of community in our society. I have to confess to being humiliated when I read about Guantanamo. I get a feeling of despair when I think of the distance between what we say and how we act. Most days I can't imagine change. Everything seems fixed. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and democracy is great if people vote the way we want them to. And you may think this is just a political commentary-but it isn't. I'm talking about that deeper sense that we have that the world in which we live is a closed system. And its spinning in ways that at best leave us with a dis-ease. It makes me afraid. I can fall into despair. I get self-preoccupied. These are conditions that blur my vision, stop my ears and keep me from any perception of the glory of God. When I'm in this state I could be on the mountain and not notice a thing-cloud or no cloud, bright lights and voices from heaven. No way. This is what the Bible calls unbelief. Help my unbelief, O God. Help my unbelief. The reason that the glory of God is so terrifying really is that it shatters our world of business as usual. It makes play things of our dismal expectations. It blurs the boundaries between the land and the sky. It silences the noises of nature, and the clatter in my mind. It tells me just what I cannot bear to hear. Listen to him. Listen to his life. Listen to his death. listen to his resurrection. The glory is in it all. The life of giving, healing, truth-telling, the life of turning over the tables in the temple, of raising the dead, of preaching good news to the poor, giving sight to the blind. The glory is in the death. In the giving up and giving way-in the letting go-in the standing in silence in the truth of who he is before the Pilates of the world-the loneliness and abandonment-the death itself. the glory is there. In the depths to which the divine has sunk to be with us. And it is there in the resurrection. The new life that comes as a free gift. And, you want to know the real scandal. The thing that is even harder maybe than anything else to get around. The most terrifying thing of all. It's that you can't understand the glory-you can't really talk about it and know what you are talking about until after the resurrection. Because it's after the resurrection that you begin to be transformed yourselves. It's after the resurrection that you stop looking to Jesus and telling him to take care of it. It's after the resurrection that the empowering gift of the spirit comes like it did in a sense to Elisha. It's after Jesus has died-only then that the disciples can begin to comprehend that the glory of God is in the depths to which God has sunk and the heights to which God has risen in us. In us. In you and me. Like Elisha gazing up at Elijah-when that sweet chariot swung down low enough to pick him up-he saw he was gone-really gone. Only then did the Spirit come upon him empowering him for ministry. This is terrifying because it means that you and I may be called at any moment to let go of our despair, to let go of our comfortable fit in the world as it is, we may be called to journey into wild and holy places in our everyday lives. We may be called to let go of our confidence in the powers that be, and our conviction that nothing can change, in our world or in ourselves. This will probably hurt. You and I are somewhere between the baptism and the crucifixion-aren't we? The terror of transfiguration is that it gives us a glimpse of who we are--and who we are meant to be. It calls us out to expect to find glory in this very messy life we call our own. We are invited to let go and to be turned upside down. And, we can expect to be changed as we enter the depths and heights of our own lives. There are angels in these fields. There is nothing impossible with God-and no booth to contain God's glory. Psst, It's okay. You can tell the others!

SERMON 2.12.06

This story about Naaman is a story about reversals and surprises—and how hard it is to let God be God and let God act in the ways God will act—God being God—and not our expectations of God. Naaman is a big deal. He’s a general, he’s had great victories, he is someone the King of Syria has noticed. He’s important—and he’s wealthy to boot. One problem is that he has leprosy—he’s developed this skin disease that is the kind of thing that can leave you powerless, and unnoticed—even avoided. No matter what a big deal he is now—if this disease continues he’s doomed to a life waay outside the realms of power. No doubt by the time our story opens he’s tried everything—gone to every doctor Syria has to offer and even probably tried some alternative treatments. who knows? whatever… he actually notices when a Israelite slave girl speaks hopefully, wistfully kind of, about how he could be healed if only he were with the prophet in Samaria. “He would cure you of your leprosy.” So here we have it, powerless—slave—servant to his powerful wife—who speaks a word of hope out of her memory. She remembers—and she speaks a word that challenges the WAY THINGS ARE. And, the Big Man hears her—and although his rational self must have thought this was insane—his vulnerable sick self acted on the words of the outsider. He goes to his King—what else would he do? A BIG man has to go through the proper channels. And his king sends a note to the King in Samaria—who else would he send a note to—after All KINGS DEAL WITH KINGS. And Naaman being Naaman goes with the note and a retinue of men no doubt and piles of money to pay for his own medicare. So here’s the deal. The King in Samaria reads the note and thinks it’s a trap—a trick! After all this is how Kings are—suspicious—and when was the last time he heard from the King of Syria? He tears his clothes off in a show of total misery and depression—and says, “What do they think, am I God? (That gives you pause, doesn’t it?) I can’t heal anybody. I’m a King.” Elisha—the man of God—residing on the outskirts of power—somewhere on the edges, sends his own message to the King. Quietly stating the obvious. “Of course you can’t heal—you’re only a King. Send him to me so he’ll know there’s a prophet—a healing presence—a channel of Yahweh’s healing grace living here on the outskirts of power—ready to heal.” He does. And Naaman appears most probably in a Mercedes, or maybe a Hummer, don’t you think? with all his retinue in front of the rather unprepossessing place—like maybe a store front clinic I think. Elisha doesn’t even appear—he sends his nurse’s aide out with a message. Go dunk yourself in the Jordan 7 times and you’ll be healed and made clean (you’ll be able to return to your place in society). You have got to be kidding. Here’s where Naaman goes off the deep end you might say. The poor guy. He has such a sense of entitlement. He expects that because of his high status he will get the attention he deserves—and a rather spectacular healing too. He’s been thinking about how it might come—and surely at the very least it will involve MRIs, private suite in the hospital... How insulting—and from this nitwit Samarian too. We have better, bigger, cleaner rivers in Syria. To say that he is annoyed is an understatement. Once again there’s a reversal. Because Naaman who is sick and whose sense of his own privilege holds him captive—hears a word of truth from his servants—folks who in a sense are held captive and have few privileges. Oh, go try it. At this point, whadda you have to lose? He does—and the story says, according to the word of the man of God his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy and he was clean. He comes up out of the water that 7th time and proclaims, “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel.” Praise God. This little story from Mark’s gospel echoes the healing of Naaman. People would have heard it against that backdrop. Here the leper calls out to Jesus that if he chooses to he can make him clean. “I do choose,” says Jesus. That is my nature. That is who God is the One who will make you clean—restore you to your community. No one is outside the mercy of God. No one. Jesus sends him to the priests to seek their affirmation that he has been made clean. He in a sense perhaps wants to challenge their authority with this healing that has happened outside of expectations. But the man, overjoyed no doubt runs out instead to spread the word to others. It’s hard to contain joy. Joy, thanksgiving, praise. Our psalm is filled with them. And as people of faith we gather every Sunday (and here on weekdays as well) to do joy, give thanks and praise. And, I want to say to you that these are radical even subversive acts that we commit here every Sunday. For as the psalm tells us and these stories show us—we praise God because God has lifted us up, brought us up from the dead, restored us when restoration seemed impossible. Sing to the Lord you servants of God’s (like the little slave girl perhaps) Sing to the Lord in remembrance of his holiness. Don’t forget and when you remember sing! Praise! And, the psalm makes it clear that those who sing in praise and thanksgiving are those who have suffered—losers, outsiders, the hopeless, and destitute. Weeping has spent the night—maybe many nights—before joy comes in the morning. In a sense you must weep to know joy. I have to have reached the limits of my own ability to control my life—to make my own healing happen—to change the outcome of my own disastrous decision. When I’ve done that THEN I’ve been able to receive God’s healing grace—which has so often come to me from the small, the mundane, the little—and receiving the pure gift, unearned—when I am able to finally receive, then thanksgiving and praise flow out. I cannot contain them. I say these are subversive activities because when we give praise to God we are undercutting all the powers that be—all the structures, governments. kings, bureaucrats, who want to demand our devotion—who claim to have all the power—and really don’t. To come here in whatever shape we are in to thank God, praise God, to commit a little joy is to proclaim that God is real. We do this in a world that mostly denies God is real or just ignores God. We testify to a reality that is counter- cultural. Praise is also subversive because it is profoundly useless. What could be more subversive than to gather together to do something useless in a world that judges us by our achievements, our possessions, and our capabilities of making things happen. Finally praise and thanksgiving and joy join us together and to God. By their nature they open us up, reach out, draw in, involve others. Thanking someone in your head is not really thanking them. Joy is not something that stays contained. Praise is other-directed. All remind us that we are NOT self-sufficient. Our own world is full of fear. We see images of violence and are told everyday in countless ways that we are under threat. Riots and angry words, the burning of embassies, a meth epidemic, division into red and blue—lines are being drawn everywhere to separate us. In truth, the Kings of our day seem to have little capacity to make life secure. The world of the possible seems dark indeed. Our God is NOT a god of the possible. Our faith proclaims a different understanding: That in this very world—often in surprising ways, little ways, thru little people, ways and people beneath the radar of our inflated sense of entitlement, there is God’s grace. It moves in mysterious ways, and it transforms and brings life where there seems only death. Others may fail to see this or they may deny it. As followers of Christ, we are among those who choose to claim God as real; In a sense, we live into--we entrust ourselves to God’s radical life-changing movement. So we come here in joy (perhaps with tear-stained faces from the night just ended) week in and week out, to give thanks, and to praise God—the one who makes possible the impossible and turns our worlds of power upside down. To do so is useless, and subversive, and freeing and it opens us more and more to receive the very one we praise.