SERMON, March 30, 2008

2 Easter John 20:19-31

Our story begins the morning with the church—we might take the liberty of calling this gathered group of Jesus’ friends—the church—it begins with the church gathered in a state of disorientation, depression and defensiveness. (Some might describe the church today in similar terms—there is some evidence for this) The disciples are locked in a room and not only are they filled with fear about the possibility that they too might meet the same fate as Jesus—but we can only imagine that they are filled with guilt and remorse. Not only is Jesus dead—whatever hopes they’d pinned on him dead with him—but they, each of them, at least the so-called inner circle of his most intimate friends—had all abandoned him. When push came to shove, they’d all run away. Those in the room would have included some who had not run—the women, for example, who had stood watching from a distance as he died—but the combination of fear and remorse must have filled the room.

Years ago I spent some time in South Africa, just before the election when Nelson Mandela was elected President. It was a time of great fear—everyone was on edge because hardly anyone could believe that there wouldn’t be armed rebellion. Blacks and whites alike were almost exhausted from their anxiety. I can still feel that fear in my body—the fear that filled every space. You would walk into a room and it didn’t matter the color of the people there—fear was in the room. You could feel it. The air was thick with it.

It’s into this kind of situation that the resurrected Jesus appears—wounds still visible—hands, feet, side. I try to imagine their shock. And the feelings that ran through them—awe, incredulity, joy, and some fear I would think. Still some fear. After all, many of them were the ones who had abandoned him. Peter had denied him. The rest had disappeared—even the women had stood at a distance. It must have been a bit like meeting up with someone you loved who died before you could say you were sorry—someone you’d deeply hurt, and you’d never been able to make amends before they died. I knew a woman once whose grown son had died in an accident after they’d had a huge argument. Her last words to him had been words of judgment and anger. She had such grief, not only about his death, but about the way they’d parted, about her actions.

“Peace be with you,” says Jesus. You’ll remember perhaps that he’d promised them the gift of his peace. His shalom. That peace that passes understanding—where oneness, unity is the key. Not some false superficial, let bygones be bygones, kind of peace—or that kind of peace that exists just because you don’t talk about certain things, you pretend all is well when really everyone knows it isn’t. No, Jesus’ peace is the peace of true community—with one another and with God—with all of creation in fact.

“Peace be with you,” says Jesus. Imagine the relief that filled the room. Where they’d expected rejection, judgment, they’d received peace. Jesus had not abandoned them as they had abandoned him. The wounds were there—clear evidence of the horrors of his death, proof positive perhaps to them of their own choices to desert him. The grace with which he had judged the world was the grace they received that day in the closed-off shut-up space. They were forgiven. He’d talked, and taught, and lived forgiveness. He’d lived the life of God’s radical inclusive love—sitting down to eat with the lost and rejected—calling the powerful and the judgmental to remember their own need for forgiveness. He’d lived the forgiving grace of God among them—but now, in the place they’d least expected it, they knew they were forgiven and loved—as they never had before. Perhaps now they understood how much they needed forgiveness. Forgiveness risen from the grave. Joy fills the room, and begins to waft out the windows I suspect.

It doesn’t end there. In John’s gospel Pentecost and Easter are of a piece. John tells us that Jesus breathed on his disciples—breathed the living Spirit into them. This is such a shockingly intimate act—this breathing on the community gathered. This group of forgiven people. Echoing the breath of God that moved over the deep and brought all things into being, the breath of God breathed into the humans created out of the mud. The breath of God breathed into the dry bones of Ezekiel’s great vision—bringing them to new life. Jesus breathes on his friends and fills them with the Holy Spirit—gives them the gift of new life. They are transformed through forgiveness and Spirit. Their lives will never be the same as the Spirit continues its work within and among them.

And, then the commissioning: “I send you out as I have been sent,” he says. Continue my work—God’s work, as you have experienced it in me. The work of forgiveness—the work of judgment by mercy. Binding and loosing of sin. One of the most puzzling of statements—mulled over and disputed throughout church history—used and abused. It is related perhaps to the admonition in Leviticus to forgive and to bring out into the open the truth of hurts between neighbors. But in the context of John’s gospel sin is not moral laxity or bad behavior—sin is blindness to the revelation of God in Jesus. In John’s gospel Jesus brings people to judgment—to a moment of choice—by his revealing work and life in the world. Jesus’ revelation of God’s love for all, God’s forgiveness offered before there is repentance, God’s lifting up of the oppressed, and healing of the sick; it is rejection of Jesus as revelation of God that is sin.

He calls his friends out into the world—in the power of the Spirit—to live as he has lived—to be their own little revelations of God at work in the world. That is the commissioning. They are to do as he did—to bring their world to its own moments of decision and choice—by presenting it with God at work in their midst.

This is heavy stuff. It requires a living ever more deeply into the truth of our own forgiveness. The church is in fact a community of the forgiven. A community of people inspired (breathed into) by the Spirit—brought to new life. Called to live more and more deeply as God’s beloved in the world.

We are never fully there. We are always in need of forgiveness. Always able to learn more and more about what it might mean to live as representatives of God’s love in the world. God’s forgiveness. Imagine you and I offering others a chance to make a choice to give themselves over to that love—to be made new by forgiveness. Imagine you and I letting go of our own habits and ways that distance, that judge, that reject, that separate—the patterns of our lives that disrupt the possibility of peace—of shalom. Imagine you and I inviting others into God’s peace.

Kierkegard I think it was who said that we suffer from shut-upness. And I would have to agree. We have all in one way or another shut ourselves up and off—in our despair, grief, hopelessness, in times of great frustration or fear we have closed the doors, shut the windows, drawn the drapes and hunkered down. And in a sense too, if you are like me, you often wander the streets, carry on your lives in shut-upness. Living as though there were no resurrection. I find myself trapped in a seemingly endless capacity to judge others, to distance myself from them, to draw back from those who are different. I forget that the forgiveness that arose from the grave is forgiveness for all. The love that came to Mary, Thomas and the others with wounds is love of all. No one excluded. I forget my calling to be a follower of Christ offering others a glimpse—albeit oh so imperfect—of the great love that is God’s. I have so much to unlearn in order to grow up into Christ—into maturity of faith.(1)

Just the other day I was in a little Mexican restaurant and a woman I recognized was in front of me placing her order. She is a homeless woman, and she often listens to voices in her head, and sometimes behaves quite differently. I know her and have talked with her. On this occasion after she ordered her food and paid, she took the tray with the chips and salsa on it, and held it high above her head on the tips of her fingers and sashayed toward her table, singing. The woman taking orders smiled at me and I at her as we enjoyed her childlike exuberance. But here’s where I strayed. I didn’t say hello, and I didn’t ask if I could join her for lunch. I sat by myself in the other room. My habits of a lifetime took over and I failed to live into the resurrection. Who knows how the Spirit might have blessed me or her, had I asked to be seated with her. Who knows what that little offering of presence might have meant to either of us? I will never know. I stand everyday in need of forgiveness, of transformation, of being set free to live more deeply as a Christian.

Each of us has our own choices to make everyday. Whether to draw near to others—to enter their personal space as Christ did when he breathed on his friends or to distance ourselves—whether physically, or by judging, or rejecting, or dismissing or simply not taking note of. Whether to remain in our shut-upness or to open ourselves to the movement of the Spirit. We face these moments of resurrection possibility in our families, at home, at work, in the market, at church, wherever we are.

The wounds of the risen Christ remind us—not only of God’s presence with us in our own woundedness—but of his call to us to go out to others who are wounded—to those who do not know about the love of Christ or the forgiveness of God. We are called to draw near to those who are stuck in their own shut-upness.

We have been forgiven and given the gift of the Spirit, and we have been commissioned. We are a new people. The resurrection is all about new life—it’s about a whole new world right here and now beckoning us to draw near and to know God’s peace. The peace of our oneness with each other, with God and with all creation. May that vision of peace be always before us nudging us --calling us to step out into newness.

Amen. May it be so.

------- 1 I’m grateful for this notion of our call to unlearning so eloquently described in L. Gregory Jones’ Embodying Forgiveness: A Theological Analysis (Eeerdmans: Grand Rapids, MI), 1995.

SERMON, March 23, 2008 EASTER SUNDAY

MATTHEW 28:1-10

“He has been raised from the dead and indeed is going before you….” Happy, happy Easter!

St. Matthew is the man of the earthquakes. The great earthquake that came over the land at Jesus’ death—when the earth shook, the rocks were split and the tombs were opened. The cataclysmic event of the crucifixion felt even in the earth itself. Jesus who came to judge us by his forgiveness, by his wild and radical inclusion of everyone—everyone is loved by God—you are forgiven get up and walk!—Jesus judged by the powers that be of his day, judged and sentenced and then killed on the cross. The One who came among us to show us the boundarylessness of God’s love—so threatening was he to the powers that be—that they had to condemn him to death. God among us subjecting Godself to our judgment and rejection. The earth shook when it happened. Nothing was ever the same.

And now we read of the Easter morning quake. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to the tomb to see—Matthew tells us. To see the place where he was laid. To keep vigil as they had at his death—from a distance. They came to see and ….. there was a great earthquake. And, I love this image of the terrifying sight of an angel coming down from the heights, rolling back the stone and simply sitting down on it. No, sweet cherub this one, baby-faced, wings aflutter. No this one sits before them bristling with lightening—clothes white as snow. Refined no doubt by the refiner’s fire. It was enough to set the guards shaking and then to grasp them so by fear as to render them useless. Mute, stone still.

Maybe you’ve lived through an earthquake. Many of us who live in California have. But the biggest earthquake I ever experienced was in southern Chile many years ago. It was in the 6+ range, and the buildings shook—and kept on shaking. It seemed to go on and on—I could hardly keep standing: I reached for the wall but that wasn’t comforting, it was moving. There was nothing I could rely on. My utter fragility was so very clear. I was afraid. The place where I lived was a place still full of the evidence of a huge earthquake that had struck maybe ten years earlier—it had demolished whole towns, and its tidal waves had brought boats miles and miles up rivers depositing them willy-nilly on the land. The people in the town where I lived were very much attuned to the slightest tremors—they’d learned the hard way. At the first hint of movement beneath their feet, and they were out of there! To the streets—they rightly enough didn’t trust their buildings to survive. An earthquake makes it crystal clear that we are not in charge—not the greatest power on earth.

It’s so hard to talk about Easter—the mystery and the promise of Easter. In our country today we celebrate Easter with bunny rabbits, spring flowers and eggs. Valid symbols of new life all right—but they mislead us I think. They suggest that Easter is about the regenerative powers of nature. The way that winter moves into spring. Seeds buried deep begin—even this early—to pop up out of the ground and we see that good old reliable new life before us.

Matthew says that that is not what Easter is really about, at all. He does so with these images of earthquakes—the shaking of our lives to their foundations—the shaking loose of our long-held beliefs, our business-as-usual ways of living. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, the dead are dead, the one with the most guns wins. You know these ways. I know these ways. Easter summed up as a bunny or a chocolate egg is a passing fancy. Life goes on. Nothing really has changed.

I don’t really have to go into the details—they are ingrained in our minds. So much talk of our need for security—as a nation, as families, as individuals. How we need to be safe, to play it safe, to protect ourselves, to be insured, to have money in the bank, to live in gated communities, to distrust the person who is different—because you never know. Underlying all this emphasis on security is fear. You and I are reminded in countless ways to live lives based on fear, lives under threat. The threats seem infinite in number –you name it: cancer, terrorism, foreclosure, loss of jobs, schools closing, collapse of our medical system, aliens, the heartbreak of psoriasis…. whatever!

And you know, for all the talk of security and strength and winning—these days as we hear more and more about our state’s financial crisis, the recession, the cost of the war, corruption in high and low places—we begin to wonder—just how secure are we? How safe? Are the signs we see just the usual—business as usual—or are they signs of a deeper malaise? Are our systems beginning to collapse around us?

In the midst of this bad news world comes the resurrection. The earthquake—the angelic host—with earth-shattering, business-as-usual/shattering, hum-drum/shattering, there’s-nothing-we-can-do/shattering, this is how-it-is-and-always-has-been/shattering news. News about God. who God is. how God acts. What God is up to in this world of ours.

This is not about the resuscitation of a body. It is not about friends of Jesus missing him so much they imagine he is still with them. It is not about a fairy tale. It is not about spring. It is about God and God’s action.

And it’s about earth quake. About turning our low expectations on their heads. About our lives so often lived in near-despair or in “let’s pretend it isn’t so”—about those very lives being opened to the truth—God’s truth. As the crucifixion revealed that God had entered the very depths of life unto death. God had come among us judging our judgment by forgiving us. The resurrection reveals that death does not have the last word. Death is not the last word. Judgment, rejection and killing are not the last words. Vengeance is not the last word. Nor is security. Nor is fear.

Do not be afraid. It’s hard to let go of business as usual. It’s hard not to just come here on Easter Sunday and then go home or go back to work or wherever and expect nothing to be different. It’s hard. Hard not to just shrug it off as a nice myth. We are so accustomed to business as usual. To our low expectations. To pretending to trust the systems we have come to distrust. To letting the powers that be tell us what is truth. We get so stuck in how its always been.

“Do not be afraid. Jesus has been raised. He goes before you. You will see him. Tell my brothers. They will see me.”

In spite of the angel’s admonition, the women are afraid. They leave the opened tomb with fear… and great joy! But, their fear is not like ours--the fear of a bomb on an airplane or of having my house burglarized. It is the fear of amazement. Their fear is the fear of God who has come and turned them inside out and upside down—set their sorrowing hearts aflame. God who makes a way when there is no way. God who comes to those who had abandoned him. God who forgives those who had rejected him. This is what we’d call awe. And, it’s coupled with joy. Transcendent joy.

Jesus goes ahead of us, showing us the way. Inviting us into the truth that lies beneath the surface of our everyday lives. Easter is God’s great laugh I suppose. Not sarcastic. A genuine belly laugh. All that Jesus kept saying, kept teaching, kept living, kept praying: “God is love. Turn around, let go of business as usual, don’t pin your hopes on the powers that be. Food for the hungry. Wine and water for the thirsty. Hands reaching out to heal that bear the scars. You are forgiven. You are made for one another. You are God’s beloved. Nothing can separate you from the love of God.” Nothing. Not even death.

What would our lives look like if we began once again to give ourselves to the Jesus who lives? If we opened ourselves to receive the gift of Easter? This truth of God. This resurrection God. Could we step out trusting the forgiveness that rose from the grave to make us into more forgiving people? Could we step out trusting the God who has drawn near to us to free us to draw near to others? even to those who are different? or to those who have hurt or abandoned us? Can we let our own wounds become sources of healing for others? In this world of so much longing for the pure gift of love can we embody in our own lives the resurrected life?

“The earth is quaking. (It’s the BIG ONE!) Do not be afraid. Jesus has been raised. He goes before you. You will see him.“ Alleluia. Alleluia.

SERMON, March 15, 2008

Palm Sunday Matthew 20:29-21:11

Last summer when I was contemplating my retirement from parish ministry a friend who had retired some years earlier told me that she had set ten goals for herself for her first year of retirement. This had helped her give some structure to her days—and furthermore, she told me, she had accomplished them all! I actually tried to do this. But the truth is that I couldn’t come up with ten goals. My list was a lot shorter. Topping the list is something I am still working on and praying for: the gift of open eyes. I am trying to learn how to see—more clearly and in new ways. This—in spite of the fact that I know that physically speaking my eyes aren’t what they used to be—in fact I’m going in for a check-up soon. “Lord, let my eyes be opened.”

“Let our eyes be opened,” the words of the blind men Jesus encounters on his way out of Jericho as he sets his face toward Jerusalem. The two men cry out to Jesus for mercy. He asks them what they want—I love the way Jesus does that so often—not presuming to fix them, but asking them what they want. “Lord, let our eyes be opened.” After their healing with their eyes newly opened they follow him on the way—to Jerusalem—the donkey—the abandonment--betrayal—arrest—the trial—ridicule—the cross—death. With their eyes open they follow him.

In most Episcopal churches today the story of the entry on the donkey is read, and then the passion story itself is read. After the ride on the donkey comes the lifting up on the cross. This custom of reading the whole story began I think when church leaders realized that so few people get to church on Good Friday—so few actually hear the whole story. It better be read when they are there. So that people don’t get the impression that Jesus entered the city to acclaim and then rose from the dead—the next Sunday! Best not to skip over the suffering and death—the cost.

The truth is that the entry itself gives us plenty to think about—in important ways it foreshadows what is to come. It gives us clues about the cost. And, it is so provocative. We’ve lost that I think—how provocative an act it was. (And how hard to see for those whose eyes are not opened).

If you are one of those who thinks that faith and politics should not be mixed together—should not be discussed—then this is one of those Jesus moments you need to skip over. For there were two processions into Jerusalem that week. The one we read about this morning—and another one—much easier to see and to understand. The Roman governor of Judea made it his habit to come to the city for Jewish festivals. Not to affirm them or participate in them—but to make sure there were no uprisings. Pilate entered the city from the West—from Caesarea Maritima on the coast where he lived. His procession was one well-known and understood by the people. He came mounted on a war-horse, accompanied by the cavalry and long lines of foot soldiers—armored, helmets shining, weapons on display--metal and gold—the clatter and sound of marching—the show of military might. A procession proclaiming the kingdom of Rome—the Roman empire. You can imagine the streets lined with silence—people with their eyes wide open. Here before them was real power—the power of Rome and, to the Roman way of thinking, also the power of God—the governor was the emperor’s man—and the emperor was the son of God.

Jesus’ entry from the East—the passion story starts and ends on the Mount of Olives—his entry is radically different. A single man—not on a war horse—no weapons—no clatter of metal—stamping of feet. The clip clop of the hooves of a donkey and its colt according to Matthew—and that softened by the cloaks and palm branches strewn before him. His followers shouting out “Hosanna!” “God save us!” and passers-by who took note—who had the eyes to see—not comprehending—asked “Who is this?” “Who is this?” “The prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.” An outsider to the powers that be—this one—a prophet.

Matthew quotes words from the prophet Zechariah when he tells this story. These are words that would have affected Matthew’s community deeply. Kind of the way if I quoted to you just a few words, say “Fourscore and seven years ago…” you would think of Abraham Lincoln, of the Emancipation Proclamation, of the Civil War—of the whole history. Just a few words would set your minds going—recovering the larger story.

When Matthew quotes the prophet “Look your king is coming, humble and mounted on a donkey…” This little snippet would have triggered in his people the context of those words and the lines that followed. Lines that describe how Yahweh will cut off the war-horse and the battle bow, and command peace to the nations. They would have remembered that Zechariah was a visionary—a man who described how Yahweh was going to do a new thing—setting the people free from the oppression of others.

Jesus on the donkey and the words of Zechariah would have set them thinking about the new thing God was going to do—a new thing that wasn’t like the old—wasn’t like the other procession. Matthew, you see, edits out a line of Zechariah’s prophecy—a line that describes the king as coming “triumphant and victorious” on the donkey. People would have noticed that missing line. They would have wondered about that. About the humility that stands alone. The humility that rides into the city. About perhaps God’s new thing in humility. The power of God processing in humility.

When I was a child I grew up in Latin America—in Venezuela for a number of years where we lived through various coups and changes in government—all brought on by military action. I can remember standing on the curb watching military parades go by—to me they seemed most impressive—tanks, and armored cars, foot soldiers, guns everywhere. This didn’t have any overt religious meaning—but it was clear to me even as a child that this was all about who had the power and what kind of power.

The people in Jesus’ day and Matthew’s day knew about the two processions. And you and I do too. For whether we’ve seen a military procession like the one I described or not—we live enmeshed in a culture of power—power built not on humility but on the power to coerce. And I’m not talking here just about the military power of the United States—but the power to coerce behavior. It runs deep in all our systems of governance, even in our schools and social services, and often in our families as well. The power to make things happen. The power to make others do what we want.

Have my eyes been opened? Who do I see coming into town? Coming into my life? Who do you see and follow? Which procession are we in? I mean which one are we in most of each of our days? Jesus who came riding into town on a donkey—stood up before the powers of his day—and spoke hardly a word. He stood before them in his truth—the truth of God’s radical inclusive love—coming in humility—not to force or coerce—but to invite. He suffered the consequences—the powers that be don’t get it—but they do understand that this kind of power in lowliness threatens their ways. Coercive power has its effects of course--we know that. You can make most people obedient—you can shrink them sometimes—change their behaviors by making them fearful—you can breed violence with violence—but you can’t coerce them to become more loving, more truthful, more generous, more welcoming, more forgiving, more joyful. Only love can transform us into the people we are meant to be. And love is humble and risky. It invites.

It is not always easy to accept the invitation. But, there are choices to be made. Always. We are invited this morning to live with open eyes. We need them to see beneath the hype and the surface of things: to see the one who comes in humility. We need to see him to dare to accept his invitation to follow. To join in the procession of the faithful—the one with the donkey. To let the love of God transform us and make us new. God is doing a provocative new thing—right now in the midst of the old thing that so pervades our days. Right now. Right here.

------ Note: Marcus Borg and John Dominick Crossan in The Last Week (HarperSanFrancsco: 2006) offer their interpretation of the meaning of the two processions.

SERMON, February 24, 2008

Exodus 17:1-7; John 4:5-42 “Is the Lord among us, or not?”

I once visited Egypt with some friends. The highlight of the trip for me was when we went to the Sinai and spent some time on the desert. A friend and I rode camels across the desert in the middle of the day, and we hiked with a guide through an incredibly beautiful white canyon. It was stark, very stark—almost no vegetation as far as we could see. When we came out of the canyon suddenly there before us was the lush green of an oasis. Now, all my life I’ve seen pictures of oases in deserts: green palm trees in the midst of barrenness. But this was far more than I had imagined. This I could see with my own eyes, and feel in my own body. The shock of the lushness of the area around the pool of water-the well- is hard to describe. Of course, it would not be something you would notice here in the middle of the rainy season when our hills are green. But in that place filled with dark bare mountains, sand beneath our feet for miles and miles, and no vegetation—the palm trees and other greenery were incredibly beautiful. And, a sign of hope: because the green meant one thing for sure: water.

Moses’ people cry out for water as they stagger across the desert. They feel like they can’t go on. They remember with bitterness the relative comfort of their years of slavery in Egypt. Looking back they wonder why on earth they ever thought it was a good idea to leave. They quarrel and complain.

From our perspective with the rains still falling, it’s easy perhaps to distance ourselves from these people with their complaints. But if you have ever been hungry, or really thirsty—or maybe you’ve been sick—not yourself—you know how easy it is to complain, and to quarrel, and to find fault, and to begin to blame. . . It’s hard to be your best self when you are in need of the basics. The people cry out, “Is the Lord among us, or not?”

One of my commentaries translates this as, “Is the Eternal One among us or not?”(1) “Is the Eternal One among us or not?” and I suppose this is, really, a cry that echoes deeply within each of us. We, like the Israelites, are a people of faith, and yet when the going gets hard—when the losses we suffer seem unbearable, when we cannot find rhyme or reason for what befalls us, when the pain is great and our own resources seem inadequate, we, too, cry out, “Is the Eternal One among us or not?” Even in times of my own comfort I ask this question. I pick up the paper, or listen to the news on the radio, or hear stories of violence and desperation in my own community. I wonder, “Is the Eternal One among us or not?”

And, these stories make me think about water today. About the places where it’s flooding, and the places where there isn’t enough water; places where wars are being fought over water. I think of the polluted waters—creeks, rivers, oceans. The single greatest determiner of health in the world—is not medical science, not hospitals, not immunizations, none of those things: it is clean drinking water. Clean water to drink is something we all need. We are one in that need.

“Is the Eternal One among us or not?” Jesus comes to Jacob’s well in need of clean water to drink. Jesus in need. That is where this wonderful story begins. His need takes him to the well at mid-day where he asks a Samaritan woman for a drink. What follows is the longest conversation Jesus has with anyone in the gospels: longer by far than any conversation with his family, with his followers, or with those who challenge him and test him. It gives you pause to think about Jesus in need—that Jesus might come to us in need. But that’s where it begins. “I thirst,” he says, as he will say again later.

She is shocked by his request because she knows enough to know that he is Jewish and that he will break the law if he even sips from her bucket. Their conversation goes on though—and moves from his need to her need. “Sir, give me this water.” They are there at the well united in their common need.

And, then he asks her to bring her husband, and surprisingly I think, she blurts out her truth: she has no husband. He does not judge. He does not withdraw. In fact, he seems to draw closer as he reveals that he knows that, and a lot more. She has no husband, and has had a whole line of husbands, and is now living with someone who is not her husband. Perhaps this is why she is even at the well at mid-day—a time when no other women would be there to draw water—it being too hot and too late for that. Perhaps her story, known by all in her village causes her to come when she would not encounter others at the well. We don’t know.

But her truth—her willingness to share her truth—his acceptance of her in the truth of who she is—leads to his own sharing of his truth. For this is the first time in John’s gospel that Jesus identifies himself as the Messiah. He tells his own truth to a woman, a foreigner, one with a checkered past and present. His need and her need, her truth and his truth. In the broad daylight they stand revealed for who they are: it is a holy moment. Whoever the Messiah is, he is one before whom she knows the truth of herself and the truth that she is respected, and dare I say, loved.

The truth shall set you free—and indeed it does. The woman is really the first evangelist. For she leaves her jug and runs back into town proclaiming that she has met someone who knows everything about her. Can he really be the Messiah? she wonders to them. They, perhaps knowing much of her truth themselves, come charging out to see this phenomenon! In the end they recognize Jesus as Savior, not for what she has said, but because of what they have seen and heard from themselves. Jesus stays with them then for several days.

Such a story this one. About the boundaryless love of God. About the radical inclusivity of the good news—that asserts God’s presence with us—no matter what. No longer contained on one mountain or another, in one building or another, God is among us to be worshiped in Spirit and in truth. Spirit: the breath of God, the wind of God, the very breath we take in and out that inspirits our bodies. The word once meant “hope” as well—to despair is to have lost spirit. Wherever there is spirit wherever there is truth we know that the Eternal One is among us.

You and I know how this works—this kind of encounter. We have known how when we dare to risk telling of our need we can meet one another in mutuality. When we dare to speak our truth, we know our common humanity. We are brought together by spirit and truth. The Eternal One is present in the meeting.

I have experienced this time and again in my own life—and seen it in the lives of others. Particularly when they are on the edges of life—like the poor thirsty Israelites—when people know their fragility they can sometimes be freed from their pretenses of ordinary living to speak their need and their truth and to know God’s presence.

Once when riding a bus in Wales I couldn’t help but overhear a conversation between two matrons (folks who look a good deal like me) who sat right behind me. They’d been shopping and chatted for a while about shopping—it’s pleasures and burdens. Very light conversation it was. But, then we passed a mortuary, and after a pause, one of the women began to talk about how her niece, a beautiful young woman in her thirties, had recently died of cancer. She talked just a bit about how awful that was. The other woman confessed to her friend that her own son had died suddenly several years back. He was 37 and had an aneurism. They’d given his organs to unknown others, which was something of a comfort. But, nothing really assuaged her grief. He’d been so healthy one day and dead the next. There was a silence. There was breath—spirit—there was truth—where there had been distance, there was relationship. The Eternal One was in our midst right there on that little bus.

Our thirst is deep: we long to be fully known and fully loved. “Is the Eternal One among us or not?” Oh, yes. In spirit and in truth. The encounter can begin in need --when we dare to speak with one another—of our need and of our truth. When we risk listening deeply to one another—no matter our differences. When we dare to breathe in and out the precious breath of God and let the spirit take us where it will: the boundaryless love of God will set us free and make us new. Always. (1) The Torah: A Modern Commentary, Revised Edition, W. Gunther Plaut & David E. S. Stein, editors, Union for Reform Judaism, New York:2005.

SERMON, February 3, 2008

The Transfiguration

Matthew 17:1-9

Some years ago a woman came into my office and in the course of our conversation——she told me in a hushed voice about a mystical experience she had had sometime past. It had happened in the ordinary course of a day—and had caught her by surprise. She had been bathed in the shattering light of Christ, and knew in her body that she was deeply loved. In a way that she had never known before. She had not spoken of this to anyone for several years, but had pondered it. The experience had worked on her though; it had changed her, she lived more and more deeply into its truth. It set her free. As a priest I have been privileged to hear more of these stories than you might think. Our culture does not support the sharing of these kinds of experiences ones not easily explained by science, technology, psychology. We are raised to analyze and dissect, to doubt. Sometimes a person analyzes their own experience to death. Sometimes they dismiss their experience and try to live their lives as though they never had it. They turn their backs on mystical encounter.On the other hand, perhaps you’ve heard people running on and on about unusual spiritual experiences they’ve had. They have a dream, or a vision and they rush right out to tell the world. They testify to whomever they encounter. They talk and talk and talk about it. And perhaps they squelch the power of the experience by blathering about it before they’ve had a chance to ponder—to let it work its way in their lives. They have a good story to tell, but their lives go on unchanged by their experience.

There are choices to be made in the face of mystery. In today’s gospel reading, Jesus tells this friends to be quiet about their vision of his transfiguration. They are not to speak of the vision. . . until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead. Hush. Do not speak. This is too much to be described in words—or preserved in dwellings—there is no container for this—and you won’t begin to live into it until later—after the death and resurrection. Hush.

Even today I hesitate to speak about this. Over two thousand years later, after the crucifixion, and after the Son of Man was raised, it is a mystery. This glimpse of the great truth of God in Christ that came to these men cannot really be contained by any words—certainly not words of mine. The word overshadowed—“the cloud overshadowed them” is only used one other time in Scripture: when the angel Gabriel tells Mary that the power of the Most High will overshadow her and she will conceive the child, Jesus. In our post-modern world, it’s hard not to dismiss these stories as mere tales—so foreign are they to our ears. And yet there they are: challenging us to enter and let ourselves imagine what they might have to say to us about God and God’s ways, about us and our lives.

What comes next in both stories are the words, “Be not afraid.” Perhaps we need to hear them as well. For both stories invite us to open our own selves, our own lives, as hosts to the holy one— they dare us to let ourselves be transformed—to become part of God’s work of transformation in the world.

If the Transfiguration on the mountaintop is a glimpse of the radical love of God—the truth of who Jesus is and in some sense who we are meant to become. If it is about the glory of God, which in the Hebrew understanding is not just some Hollywoodish bright light startling us in the darkened theater, but is the weight, the enormity, the massiveness of God—then Jesus’ friends are in the right position when they fall to the ground. This IS too much. But then Jesus touches his friends lying on the ground in their fear. God-with-us reaches out and touches them and tells them to get up. “Get up and do not be afraid.” This experience is not an end in itself. The love you have known here is a love that must go down the mountain. It is a downward spiraling love, a suffering love. “Listen to him.” Listen to him when he says he will suffer and die and be raised from the dead. “Listen to him.” when he says to hold your tongue and let the truth work in you transforming you—making you new. “Listen to him.” when he tells you to get up and take who you are now and journey with him down the mountain. “Listen to him.” when he takes love to the people who haven’t known love, to the places where love hasn’t been. Listen to his words. Listen to his life. Listening is at the heart of love. Isn’t it? Jesus lived a listening life. Asking people what they wanted, what they needed. Listening to the words and lives of those around him. The voice from the cloud reminds us of our calling to listen. Be present to. Open to. To God and to each other. I read a little story(1) about a young man who had a mountaintop experience and then went down the mountain and learned to listen. He’d had a conversion experience—had fallen in love with Jesus you might say. In his early 20’s a white college student. He went to a big gathering of students to hear the evangelist Tony Campolo speak. After an hour or so of singing gospel songs, Tony preached the good news for nearly an hour. The crowd was on fire—and on fire to share the gospel. Tony invited them all to ride in buses to the central city where they could share their faith, “Tell about Jesus.” They piled into the buses filled with love and enthusiasm. But, as the bus came into the central city and its darkness, the poverty, the bleakness of the place touched them, a quiet came over the group. When the buses stopped and the young people were let off to tell the world about Jesus, this young man despaired. He was scared and he didn’t know what to do. Finally he timidly went into a building, up the dank hall and knocked on a door. “Who’s there, and what do you want?” “I’m here to tell you about Jesus.” The door opened and an enraged woman, cigarette hanging on her lips, stood there, a naked baby in her arms, and she cursed him and told him to get out and never come back. He ran down the hallway and out the door—shattered. After awhile he noticed a little corner store with shuttered windows. He went in and thought to himself about what he had seen. He bought a box of diapers and a pack of cigarettes. He crewed up his courage and went back into the tenement. Knocked on the door. When the voice demanded to know what he wanted, he said nothing. The door opened, and he handed his gifts to the woman. In surprise, she stood aside and told him to come in. He sat on a chair. He diapered the baby. He listened. And, finally when she asked him why he’d come, he told her about Jesus. She asked him to pray for her and her child. He did. “Get up and do not be afraid.” There is so much to fear in life these days—we are barraged by messages of fear. Told we must live in fear. Whatever the Transfiguration is about—it is about the glimpse of God’s unbearable love and grace come among us. It is about Jesus, God-with-us, beside us reaching out to touch us. It’s about love that seeks to go where love is a stranger—seeks to stand with those who are hurting—is present when the unspeakable happens. Years ago I knew a mother whose son in his early 30s was dying an excruciating death from AIDS. His doctor had refused him morphine, saying that he might become addicted. So every night as he cried out in pain from his bed, she would go into his room, climb into his bed and cradle him through the night. She did that until he died—holding him as she had when he was a baby. You and I may not have seen the transfiguration of Christ, but each of us has caught a glimpse of God’s persevering love. It is more than a good story to tell. Sometimes there is really nothing that can be said about it, but the truth is that we have been touched by it. We are called to let the truth of God’s unbearable grace work in us transforming us so that we too, participate in this redeeming work of love. “Get up and do not be afraid.” (1) William Willimon, The Intrusive Word, 1994: Eerdmans, pps 74-77.

SERMON, January 13, 2008

The Epiphany Matthew 2:1-12 Perhaps you have learned in your own life how dislocation can lead to revelation. The disrupting of your ordinary patterns, routines, even your ordinary ways of thinking can be a good thing. That turning inside-out of what has always seemed to be “the way things are” can be a moment of great insight and learning. When things are unsettled, when we’ve become what my grandmother used to call discombobulated—then is when we suddenly have eyes to see. This is why you may hear people who have had cancer say that in some ways they are thankful for their cancer. This is why when I recently met with some homeless women they told me that they had learned so much from being homeless. They were thankful for what had been revealed to them by their homelessness.

The Bible is full of stories of how God is revealed when ordinary patterns are disrupted. I think of the great stories like the one where David—the least and last of the sons is the chosen one—only this kind of story can assure us that in God’s eyes people aren’t valued as they are in human eyes; Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son and his prodigal father—only when our expectations are overthrown can we begin to grasp the incomprehensible enormity of God’s forgiveness and love; Jacob, the liar and cheat becoming Israel after wrestling with the angel—how else could we begin to comprehend that none of us, no matter how imperfect, is exempt from God’s call.

This little story in Matthew’s gospel—greatly embellished with its missing details filled out in church tradition and hymnody—is one of the great stories illustrating how disruption can lead to life-changing revelation. Wise men (Matthew doesn’t say how many) come from the East, having seen a star—the star of the child born King of the Jews. Foreigners—that’s for sure. Men who paid attention to the stars, and followed one seeking a child-King. Their journey took them way out of their ordinary routines. Whatever those were. These folks let their eyes lead them into newness. Let their eyes take them to the Other.

The word Epiphany comes from a Greek word meaning manifestation, appearing, showing. It is used in the Bible to refer to the manifestation of God’s face—in the story of the wise men it is used to describe the appearing of the star—and we understand it to be also and maybe most importantly about the manifestation of God in Jesus. This is a story about looking—about seeing. About seeing the star, and about seeing Jesus—and recognizing each for what they were. I love the fact that the wise men paid attention to the stars—they noticed the star. They somehow had their eyes fixed on the heavens—and on the stars. Every Epiphany we get this reminder of God as creator of heaven and earth—and of the oneness of creation. The discoveries and theories of cosmologists of our day play so beautifully with this story. For this story in which men from another place—strangers—come to the child King following a star is certainly a story that reminds us of the boundarylessness of God and it is a story of our oneness with each other.

The universe as we know it today is “one” in ways we’d never imagined before. You and I are made of the same stuff as the stars—we have cells in our bodies that are like living fossils of the quantum dust from which the stars arose.

And, this universe does not operate as Newton thought it did (and as I was schooled to believe)—it is not made up of discrete parts—but instead scientists have learned that the universe is more like what Barbara Brown Taylor calls a luminous web—there are no individual parts apart from their relationship.(1) Every interaction brings changes to the whole. There is nothing so small that it doesn’t matter! And, in the subatomic world of particles: once two particles have interacted with each other they remain related regardless of how far they may roam from one another. Think of that.

Why bring science into this discussion at all? We live in an exciting time for the sciences of the universe. I love a little dialogue between the Biblical story and contemporary science. Many scientists would not approve—nor, I guess, would some faith leaders—viewing science and religion as two separate universes. But, cosmology studies the origins of the universe and attempts to explain how we came into being. The stories of the Bible are told and re-told to remind us who we are and where we’ve come from. You and I know who we are because of stories like this one about the wise men. The stories point to truth that we can’t really find the words to describe. Words can’t really hold the realities of new science either. This story is about how some men looked. They looked and allowed their lives to be disrupted so that they might learn something new—might find revelation. They weren’t like me in that they didn’t wait for their lives to be ripped apart by illness or loss or catastrophe—they chose disruption—as a spiritual path. They journeyed out to find the Other—the One unknown to them. They crossed boundaries and distances to get there. They were vulnerable. You don’t journey into the unknown without being vulnerable. Being vulnerable is one way that we open ourselves to revelation.

They looked up and saw a star and to their eyes it was the star of the child-King. They left home and followed it. When it came to rest over the place where the child was, they were overwhelmed with joy! Just think of it! Joy. What can we say about joy? How fragile and wonderful it is? How it may come after some accomplishment on our part, but when it does we know that what has been accomplished is not solely our own doing? How it leaves us humble—aware you might say--of our creatureliness? How it cracks us wide-open and leaves us vulnerable like children? How it makes us one with others and with God? Think of joy in your own life. Consider joy …..

If the wise men were like us at all perhaps their joy was like ours. Their joy overflowed into the giving of gifts. They looked upon him and saw a child-King. Their very looking gave him the gift of the news of who he was. Their gaze perhaps told Mary something she was still wondering about. Perhaps as the baby struggled to focus his eyes, his gaze told them the good news of who they were. . . . Their journey into the Other-- into disruption gave them eyes to see something they’d perhaps never imagined. They were humbled. They paid homage—they showed great respect for this infant—and there was joy.

The text tells us that they left for their own country by another road. The wise men realized the fragility of the child—and the true intent of Herod, who was threatened by any hint of rivals to his power. [Herod is a man who killed his own sons when he considered them a threat.] So the story is not only about Jesus manifested to all—even to foreigners—but it is about the threat that he presents to the powers that be—who are far more interested in keeping control over their borders and their people—no matter the cost than in opening their eyes to the revelation of the boundarylessness of God.

It is no surprise really that the wise men took a new route home. They were not the same men—they had encountered the One whom they sought, and they would never be the same again. They went home all right. But they were not the same. What they had seen—who they had seen—gave them a different perspective—different lenses through which to see the world. Like particles—they would never dance alone again. No matter how far the distance they were in a relationship now that would keep on transforming them.

Such a story. About journeying, yes, but more perhaps about what I would call the dance of life. About relationship and how it changes us and binds us and makes us new. About willingness to risk and be vulnerable—about choosing to cross boundaries in expectation of finding. About daring to encounter the One deemed other.

One example of how the spirit of this story is echoing in our own day is that of the 138 Muslim Imams from all over the world who last Fall sent a letter to the Pope and other Christian leaders, “A Common Word between Us and You.” It recalled the foundational principles of both religions: Love of One God and love of neighbor and called for followers of both faiths to find common ground and not just polite ecumenical dialogue between certain religious leaders. Over 300 Christian leaders in this country including our own bishop, took out a full page ad in the NYT responding and pledging to work for relations that will reshape the 2 communities to genuinely reflect our common love for God and for one another. Such transformation will require openness, risk-taking and a willingness to look on one another as God looks on us. The wise men are about looking—not just to the heavens that remind us of our oneness with each other and the cosmos itself—but also about looking at one another—seeking the One who comes in our daily lives. Gazing at one another in ways that affirm how precious each one is. About opening our eyes to see the world in a different way—not as separated, different and frightening—but as caught in a luminous web—as one. You and I are not much different chemically from a star, a rock, or a lizard. We were created out of the same dust to be in relationship with one another and with God—made to celebrate our oneness—to look on one another with love and humility—and to know the joy of revelation.

(1) Taylor, Barbara Brown, The Luminous Web: Essays on Science and Religion, Cowley:2000.

SERMON, January 6, 2008

Jesus' Baptism Matthew 3:13-17 I spent some time this week looking at the way artists have depicted the Jesus’ baptism. There are many artistic renderings of that event. Many of them seem to put me as the viewer off at some distance from the scene—removed—and often there is a little herd of angels fluttering about. But one image I saw on the web really struck home. It from the baptismal tapestry that hangs in the Cathedral of All Angels in Los Angeles. By John Nava, the tapestry hangs by the baptismal font which is large and through which water is always flowing. It’s the kind of font that allows for “big deal” baptisms by immersion. The tapestry is over 47 feet high and 7 feet wide. The central images are just Jesus and John in the water. As you look at them, your perspective is of a person standing there with them. No angels in sight. No halos. John standing in the water, pouring water over Jesus’ head. Jesus with his back to us, with just a cloth around his mid-drift, mostly naked and exposed, kneeling—on his haunches really bowed over in submission to John. The water pouring down. A mystery, really, of grace. Jesus the beloved child of God bent in submission before John.

Apparently in the early church people had a hard time understanding why Jesus was baptized. Jesus, the man without sin, had gone to John who preached and offered a baptism of repentance from sin. A “cleansing—start-over” baptism. Why would Jesus need such a baptism? Matthew tells us that John knew he was unworthy to baptize Jesus—it should have been the other way around. He protests. But, Jesus says, “Let it be so now, for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” God’s work is going to be done in this.

Righteouesness, baptism, and submission . . . In Jesus’ day and in the Hebrew Scriptures a righteous person was one who lived and worked to upbuild the community—to care for the poor and needy. One who contributed to the health of the community. One who lived in relationship with God and with others. Ps 112 says of the righteous that “Their hearts are firm, secure in the Lord.” That security is what impels them to righteous living—to generosity in serving the least and the lost. It is important to know who you are.

You can’t help noticing in this story of submission—the mostly naked Jesus bowing low before John to receive the waters of baptism—you can’t help thinking a bit about the infant Jesus in the manger. Fragile and vulnerable. The paradox of the presence of the divine in the small and humble—the unnoticed. Nava’s figure of Jesus whose face we cannot see is a reminder perhaps of the unnoticed presence of God in life—in our lives. And, surely there is a hint of other submissions yet to come. I think of Jesus kneeling to wash his friends’ feet. That time he served them on his knees—this time he is being served. And, the final submission when he gives himself over to the powers that be who will choose to baptize him with death. These early stories of birth, epiphany, and baptism do more than hint at the cost—the threat—to the vulnerable One among us.

In a way, Jesus’ baptism—and ours—are like any person who looks love in the eyes and gives him or herself over to it. You may have experienced this in your own life. It can come in a glance, a moment of shared silence, the touch of a hand. It can be the love of a partner, a spouse, a child, a parent—it can catch you off guard--suddenly you know you are loved. And, you give yourself over to that love.

God is the initiator—God the first actor—God loves first—and we submit to that love. There is something very special about an adult baptism—when a mature person comes to be baptized—making their own choice to believe—to join the community of faith. An infant has no choice in the matter. But there is an important truth in infant baptism: God loves us even before we choose to give ourselves over to that love.

Jesus comes up out of the water and sees the Spirit and hears the voice of God, “This is my Son, my child, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” He knows who he is—“his heart is firm, secure in the Lord.” We echo this moment in our own baptismal services when we anoint the newly baptized and proclaim them as “marked a Christ’s own forever.” In a sense, we brand them on the forehead with their true identity. The beloved of God—no matter what.

This is powerful stuff. And it has to be really, because if fulfilling righteousness is achieved through submission—we need to be infused with God’s spirit and love to be able to do that. The implications of the simple birth in the manger and the baptism as an adult seem to be more than we can bear really. That God is among us in the vulnerable, the unseen, the unnoticed, and the undefended. That God in Jesus gave himself over to us—gave himself over to the waters of baptism and plunged himself into the depths of what it is to be human. That is so hard to fathom. Harder yet is the call you and I have to follow him on that path. The path of righteousness. The path NOT of earning but of giving way—giving ourselves over to.

How do we live into our baptisms? How do we open ourselves to transformation through submission? There could be nothing further from the American Way than submission. Well, I guess if you come from certain evangelical traditions and are a wife or a child you would be admonished to submit—but by and large we are a proud people who rarely see any benefit at all in submission. To submit is to admit that you are not in control—not in charge. There is someone or something larger than you at work. There is something more important than my wishes and desires. This is the anti-thesis of our culture’s way of living, where we are raised to control our own destinies—to do our own thing.

But of course anyone who has ever loved or been loved knows that receiving and giving love require opening and giving way. This is risky business. To love another is to put yourself at great risk—for love can be rejected. Jesus filled with God’s love came among us to love us. He did so by giving himself over to us. There is no other way.

Baptism affirms that we are God’s --precious in God’s sight. Letting our hearts be firm and secure in the Lord is how we dare to live into the new life we were made for. In my own life I find I cannot give way to another—cannot even really listen to another—be present to another—when I have lost touch with who I am. And, of course, knowing who I am helps me to know who the other person is too. A beloved child of God. No matter what. Then and only then am I able to submit to another—to find what new life may come from that encounter.

It’s a mystery how this works out, isn’t it? I think of all the Eucharistic visitors and friendly visitors I’ve worked with who give up their personal agendas for a bit to submit themselves to the realities of another person—a person in a hospital, alone at home, or in a nursing home. Time and time again, they return from their visits to say, “I always receive far more than I give.” That’s how it is when we submit—when we present ourselves to the other to receive. It is always a risk—but it is the way of love—it is the way to transformation. There is dying and there is resurrection. “See, new things I now declare before they spring forth,” says the Lord. Amen. Amen.

SERMON September 2, 2007

Jeremiah 2:4-13, Psalm 81; Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16; Luke 14:1, 7-14

I've been in Wales for the last month, and one of the privileges of my stay in Wales was traveling by public transportation. I had no car, so I relied on buses and occasionally the train—and I walked. My life slowed down so much that I could enjoy waiting for the bus—just being. Letting go of the freedom to go when and exactly where I wanted to I enjoyed a different kind of liberty and an opportunity to be present.

I had my experiences waiting for buses and trains. One train I waited for never did show up. But the best waiting story I heard there was from my friend Lynell. One very cold and rainy day she was waiting for a bus in a little Welsh town—and wasn’t really sure if she was at the right place. There was a woman standing there—in her eighties—most of her teeth missing, the ones she still had were chattering—it was cold and very windy. Lynell said to her, “Are you waiting for bus #23?” “Ahh, no, luv, . . . Me, I’m waitin’ for global warmin’.”

Kind of like waiting for God. I mean there you are—you have no control really. You are at the mercy of the one you wait for. And, you aren’t entirely sure if the One you wait for is real. And you’ve heard that however it comes, it will take you places, change your life; it may warm you up, which on a cold day may seem like a good thing, but it may be more than you can bear. Global warmin’ that is. Or maybe …God?

Maybe you’ve picked up the latest edition of Time magazine.⁽¹⁾ It’s got a cover story about Mother Teresa and the new book of her letters to her spiritual directors that’s just been published: Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light. Her letters reveal that for almost all of her life—some fifty years—after she began her ministry to the poor and dying in Calcutta—she lived without sensing the presence of God. Beneath her public persona—and the person known to even her Sisters of Charity—was a person often in pain and anguish really because of the absence of Jesus—the One who had appeared to her in visions and so vividly in prayer during her early years. At one point she wrote, “Lord, my God, who am I that You should forsake me? The Child of your Love—and now become as the most hated one—the one—You have thrown away as unwanted—unloved. I call, I cling, I want—there is no One to answer—no One to whom I can cling—no, No One. –Alone. . . Where is my Faith—even deep down right in there is nothing, but emptiness and darkness—My God—how painful is this unknown pain—I have no faith…”

Time describes Mother Teresa’s work among the poor and her public statements about the love of Jesus being everywhere: “Christ in our hearts, Christ in the poor we meet, Christ in the smile we give and in the smile that we receive.” with what was her private experience of nothing—of the absence of God. The article quotes critics of religion have been quick to claim that Teresa lived a lie—she realized her faith was just fabrication, but that she lacked the courage to say so publicly. Others have already begun to psycho-analyze her.

Whatever we might make of Mother Teresa’s mental and emotional life, in her lengthy and painful living with the absence of God—even in her praying and in the Eucharist—she stands in the long line of faithful Christian experience. that, in a sense, echoes Christ’s cry from the cross “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me.” Just as Jesus accomplished his work he felt that utter aloneness—that awful solitariness. That moment of agony which perhaps called into question all that he’d understood to be God’s call to him. So, too, this 50-year season of solitariness came upon Teresa once she began her ministry to the dying in Calcutta. Teresa who had longed more than anything to know Christ’s passion perhaps came to know it in the way she’d least imagined. The woman who committed her life to living among the poor experienced the painful isolation of poverty even in her interior life.

Last month I was reminded that early Celtic Christianity in Wales, Ireland and Scotland had deep connections to the early Christian desert fathers and mothers of Africa and the Middle East. That seems surprising, but Celtic saints shared with them that same going out into the wilderness to seek God, that willingness to let the Spirit lead you to the edges of life where all your normal strengths and protections are stripped away. Their geographic landscapes differed, but in many ways their interior landscapes were the same. The God present in all things, in every aspect of life. God to be found at the thin places, where the boundaries between heaven and earth were permeable—wells, and mountaintops, and ocean beaches, rocky places—God in the end was unfathomable.

The God we wait for, the God we seek is not like us—as Job discovered, and countless others before and since have realized. There is a strange paradox here, summed up by Andrew Harvey when he says of desert pilgrimage, “We are saved in the end by the things that ignore us.” “We are saved in the end by the things that ignore us.”

I take that to mean that when you go backpacking to the top of the mountain, or sit by the crashing waves on the rocks at the beach, or dare to walk into the desert wasteland what you discover is that these places are not there for you. They ignore you. When we get ahold of that, then comes silence, and a letting go of our self—of our accomplishments, our self-focus, our self-importance, our desire to have a feel good spiritual experience, our need for self-fulfillment. God is other and the landscape can remind us of that.

So can life itself. Waiting with a loved one who is dying can teach you that. I have known that in my own life. There is something here that is beyond my control—beyond me. It ignores my desires, my plans, my needs. It simply is. Poverty, death, the crises of loss we experience can bring us to that place where we are saved by the things that ignore us.

It is really a gift to us: this learning of Mother Teresa’s yearning for God’s presence, her longing, her doubts about the existence even of God—all the while she was carrying out her ministry for Christ. Who among us hasn’t wondered, hasn’t doubted, hasn’t been ready to give up, or hasn’t actually given up—given up this faith—this quest for relationship with the One who is experienced so often as absence. I think of the disciples in their little boat, Jesus sleeping on the pillow in the back when the winds are rising and water begins to pour in. Teresa of Avila lying in a river after her cart overturned on her way to do God’s work, telling God that from the way he treats his friends it’s no wonder he has so few of them. John of the Cross and his dark night of the soul. The list goes on and on. It includes many lesser saints—people like me and many of you.

It’s even more complicated than that. Juxtapose Teresa’s writings with this morning’s snippet from Jeremiah: Here, God cries out in longing: The people have forsaken the One who brought them out of oppression, through the desert and the land of drought and deep darkness and into a plentiful land. There in that land of plenty the people no longer show up at the bus stop—they have forsaken their God—the fountain of living water, and they have dug out for themselves cracked cisterns that can hold no water. God cannot seem to believe it. There is pain here, pathos here. The One who longs for relationship with the people has been ignored, rejected. “Be appalled o heavens, at this, be shocked, be utterly desolate.” says the Holy One.

“I am told God loves me—and yet the reality of darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul. Did I make a mistake in surrendering blindly to the Call of the Sacred Heart?” says Mother Teresa. A Christian steeped in the practices of our faith, one who longs for relationship has been ignored; she feels rejected, utterly desolate.

Jeremiah reminds us that God’s longing for us is as deep as our own for God. We forget that at our peril.

The bedrock of our faith is God’s love and grace— God’s promise “I will never leave you or forsake you.” The evidence often seems dim—paradox and uncertainty are hard to live into. Some people of faith do experience moments of mystical unity with God, but those are rare. The truth is that all of us are invited into relationship with one who may attract us more by absence than presence—more by mystery than concrete evidence—more by hints than direct contact. There is an ebb and flow.

For a brief period in her 50 years of longing, Jesus did come to Mother Teresa as she waited. And later, when the darkness returned, she finally came to embrace the darkness—to find in her longing itself a sign of God’s hidden presence. In this perhaps she has given us a greater gift even than her Nobel Peace prize-winning charity. Love involves more than good feelings. It is always risky business. It is beyond words. There are long waits at the bus stop. God’s grace will carry us to love’s greatest depths and heights—and its absences and presences. My friends, that is the great good news.

(1) Time Magazine, International edition, Vol 170, No 9, 2007

SERMON July 15, 2007

Luke 10:38-42 and words about our prayers for the dead

Jesus told them a parable: One morning early in Santa Rosa near a church on Mendocino Avenue, a man was lying to the side of the sidewalk. He had blood on his face, and he looked half-dead. A woman came along on her way to church for the early morning service. She was a member of the altar guild, and when she saw the man lying by the side of the walkway, she was afraid. She took a step back, and quickly went the other way to get into the church from the other entrance. She said a little prayer for the man as she went. Not long after another person came rushing up toward the gate near where the man still lay, This fellow had a clergy collar on, and he was glancing at his watch and muttering under his breath, “I’m late, I’m late, I’m late.” He didn’t even see the man, until he almost tripped over him. He glanced down quickly and realized that if he stopped the Mass would not be offered on time. So he thought perhaps he’d come back later. And he went on into the church. Sometime later another man came along, he too was dressed in black, and kept looking at the time on his cell phone. He didn’t have a collar around his neck, but there were some tattoos showing. He’d come to the courtyard by the church in hopes of making a sale, a deal—but the person he was expecting hadn’t been at the curb as he’d supposed. He looked down and saw the man, and went over and bent down and said, “Hey, buddy, you all right?” The man didn’t answer. So he wiped the blood off his face with his shirttail and saw that his wounds were pretty severe. He lifted his head and gave him a few sips of water, he tried to pick the man up, but realized he couldn’t support him alone. He took out his cell phone and called his friend who was waiting in a car just down the block. When he came they picked the man up, put him n the backseat and drove him to Sutter (it was still open at that time). The man in black got out and told the nurse to bring a stretcher. When the ER staff had finally come, the man and his friend drove away.

Wha-a-t? you say. It could never happen. No way. The Good Drug dealer?

You’ve gotta be kidding.

And, I am playing with the story a bit here. And please know that I just picked this person, this caricature of a drug dealer to try and bring the story out of its humdrum I heard this one a million times-ness. If you’re a person who has dealt drugs maybe you know the stigma attached to the way of life—at least in some circles. I wanted to invite you to experience a bit of the shock, disbelief and surprise that Jesus’ listeners felt when they heard his version of the story. The mercy shown to the half-dead man was mercy every good Jew would have expected to give—that it was shown by a Samaritan was almost incomprehensible. Samaritans were considered less than by Jews of Jesus’ day——outsiders, despised even. The last group you’d go to for help. The last person you’d imagine showing mercy.

I love Jesus’ parables. They are so open-ended and they invite us to enter in so many ways. With whom do you identify in the story? The altar guild member—have you ever been too afraid to get involved? I have.

The priest—have you ever been too preoccupied with your own stuff to even notice? Too busy to have time for another? I have.

The drug dealer?—have you ever reached out in mercy to another when it made no sense to do so?

Or how about the man lying half-dead on the side?—have you ever been hurt, wounded, exhausted, helpless to help yourself? Have you ever been vulnerable in your weakness? Maybe even unable to protect yourself?

The way Jesus told the story made it hard for folks in his day to identify with anyone but the victim really. His listeners knew they were called to show mercy to the stranger. They probably expected the Levite and the priest (the woman and the priest) to have compassion on the man, and maybe they would have judged them—but perhaps they would have understood their motives. If they were like me they might have anticipated being like the third man, the one who helped. It’s so easy to fall into feeling self-righteous, isn’t it? I’d do better than those two! But imagining myself as a Samaritan—or a drug dealer is more than I can handle. So, maybe the one I would most identify with is the man on the side of the road.

From whom will I accept help? Could I accept it from such a despised person? What if I had no choice? the parable asks these questions of me. (they make me uncomfortable).

A good friend of mine once told me about a time he offered to help someone in distress—but because of who he was his offer was rejected. Jerry was a very large (like over 300 lbs) man—an African American man. One night after hours at the university he came down a corridor and a young woman was trying to get her key out of the lock in her office. He came down the hall toward her and said, “Can I help?” She leapt back against the wall and screamed, “Leave me alone. Leave me alone. If you come any nearer I’ll have you arrested.” He drew back in fear, and quickly left the building. Perhaps God had come to her Jerry, but she declined the offer.

That’s how St Augustine read this parable. You and me, that’s us by the side of the road. And, he said God is coming to us in this shocking way—help from the least expected source. God coming in surprise.

I think when Jesus first told this story he was about giving his listeners a taste of the kingdom of God. The shocking way it comes—crossing all boundaries, all our neat arrangements. That feeling of disjuncture—that’s a God feeling. The mercy of God drawing near to us when we’re most in need—how our weakness opens us to the surprising gift of mercy from someone we’d never consider speaking to really. Never consider.

The Good Samaritan or drug dealer as the case may be is disturbing because he breaks up our neat constructions. The ways we categorize people. Deep down we know, you and I, that those categories never hold up. Life is just NOT that neat and tidy: it isn’t good vs bad, the decent and the evil, the worthy and the unworthy. But we live so much of our lives pretending that our judgments are truth. From God’s perspective these are pretty much baloney. Oh, there is evil and there is good, there is righteousness and there is sin. But each of us is a mixture—and we are God’s own.

Maybe the Good Samaritan is a plumb line. God has dropped him into our midst, and like the words of Amos the prophet—the land cannot bear it. We can hardly bear it. God is love all right. No doubt about it. But love is sometimes hard to take—especially from people we’ve judged incapable of love—or not worthy to love me. Samaritans, drug dealers, you name them… Maybe the plumb line of the Good Samaritan is about measuring our willingness to be open to receiving love from the one we despise. Can we let God be God? God can and does come to us in the most surprising ways.

That’s the hard news and the Good News. God comes to us. Very Good News indeed.

I wanted to say a few words about our prayers for the dead in Iraq. Some in our congregation wonder about our motives, wonder if we are making some “political” statement, and others wonder why we are not praying for all of those who have given their lives for our country.

I should have spoken to you earlier about this reading of the names.

The reading of the names was my idea. It came to me after I read about the young men from our County who have died in Iraq. It came to me after a young man I prepared for confirmation when he was 12 was sent back for his third tour of duty. It came to me because I believe that our faith is worth nothing if it isn’t for our lives today. I thought, “this is the world in which we are living today—right now. This is part of our truth and we should dare to speak of it.”

We should have a chance to grieve. War is costly.

And I thought about all the dead in this war. Christ tells us to pray for our enemies. I’m not very faithful about that and I mostly don’t know their names. But I think a lot about the thousands of civilians, men women and children dying and living in fear. I don’t know their names either.

But these names of our American dead I do know, and so I thought to say them out loud here in this place. To pray for them so that we might respect their lives and grieve their loss, and let their names stand for those whose names we do not know.

By saying their names I never thought to dismiss or denigrate other soldiers—those who have gone before—or for that matter any of the others—the countless others we might name here on a Sunday.

The ones lying by the side of the road—here in our own cities and in countless other places. The people too afraid to reach out—the ones too preoccupied to notice—too filled with their own agendas—the ones who are our enemies—the ones we see as other. I never thought to name them all—but to let these names remind of the others. Let these names turn our thoughts to a reality that is painful.

My intent was never to make a “political” statement. I have my political opinions as do you. But this naming was for me more about a faith statement about the value of life. And it is a grief statement about the reality of life.

After all these years of reading the gospels and preaching them, I stand here and tell you honestly that Jesus’ way is the way of the Good Samaritan. It is the way less traveled—the way of love that overturns our divisions and categories, our “us and thems,” is cuts across the deep divides and seeks to offer mercy in surprising and shocking ways. It is demanding and it is life—the fullness of life. Part of the grief I feel when I read the names is grief at my own refusals to choose that path—it’s over our own refusals to choose Christ’s path. The hope I have rests in God—who I know and trust to be at work on the road and along the sides of the road.

You may use the reading of the names for prayers that seem best to you. And, I will be here after the service if you wish to speak to me about this.

Semon June 17, 2007

1 Kings 21:1-10, 15-21a, Psalm 51:1-8, Galatians 2:15-21, Luke 7:36-8:3

“Do you see this woman?” Jesus asks his host. “Do you see this woman?”

I spoke with my daughter-in-law, last week—she and my son and their 18 month-old daughter had returned from a ten-day sojourn with a Christian Peacemaker Team along our border with Mexico. You may remember the Christian Peacemakers—they are an ecumenical group that works in war-torn areas of the world. A CPT volunteer Tom Fox was killed last year in Iraq. This was a delegation closer to home—and it was more of an informative venture than anything else. The thing that most deeply affected Carin was her meeting a mother who had been caught crossing the border in the middle of the Arizona desert. She’d traveled with a group including her children—and one of her little ones had been separated from her when the Border Patrol came upon them. She didn’t know if he was still out on the desert, if he’d been picked up, or if he’d stayed with his grandmother and made it to safety. She was beside herself with fear and grief.

“Do you see this woman?” “Do you see this woman?”

And, of course, we could ask this question about so many people, real people who are part of the "issue" of "immigration". The men and women who live along the border and find their land being trespassed across day in and out, a border patrol agent, wondering if the people he is trying to stop are armed drug smugglers or unarmed men and women seeking work, an employer searching for field workers, a couple staying at a motel and leaving a tip for the woman who cleans the room, a US citizen who is looking for work and doesn’t want to work for the wages being offered to roofers. Do you see this man? “Do you see this woman?”

Jesus’ host sees the woman as a sinner. And he judges Jesus—he thinks that if Jesus really were a prophet he would know that this woman at his feet is a sinner. “Do you see this woman?” Simon sees her as one word: sinner. And, he sees his guest as a man who doesn’t have the sensitivities of a prophet—the ESP perhaps. He judges Jesus to be a less-than prophet. Because if he knew this woman for the sinner she is, he wouldn’t let her touch him.

“Do you see this woman?” When the story is read, whom do you see? A 30 year-old sexy type? A woman of the streets? A jezebel? (her!) Do you imagine this story as a sensual, sexualized tale? A woman of the streets invading the propriety of Pharisee’s dining room, letting her hair down, sashaying toward Jesus, washing his feet with her tears and wiping them with her hair. Oh, my!

Of course maybe she was 65 with gray hair and a bit of a belly. Maybe she was a middle-aged mother, whose 16 year old had driven her to this place; maybe she was someone who’d embezzled money. . . Who knows? The text doesn’t give us these details. What we do know is that she came into the room and that she was weeping, that she cried on Jesus feet, and let down her hair and wiped his feet, she kissed his feet and then she anointed them with oil.

“Do you see this woman?” Much has been made about her letting her hair down. Women in Jesus’ culture usually wore their hair long, but up. They did however let it down in public when they were grieving—the widow we heard about last week—the widow of Nain most probably had her hair down as she walked along in her son’s burial procession. Women also let their hair down in the Roman culture that Luke lived in when they went to give thanks at a temple of a goddess, or when they went in supplication. It was a sign perhaps of their unadorned offering of themselves. Women in the early church were baptized with their hair down. People at the dinner that night would have certainly wondered about the woman—why was she weeping? Why show her grief like this? What kind of supplication might she have been making? Or was her action one of devotion? Unbound hair on a weeping woman would have been associated with grief, or with supplication, or perhaps with gratitude.

Jesus accepts her actions—and he interprets them—as love. He tells his little parable to Simon, he holds her up as a model of hospitality—and then he sums it all up by telling Simon that her sins, which were many, were forgiven—hence her great love. Her act of love flowed from her acceptance of God’s forgiveness. Living as a forgiven person she lived as a loving person. There is a connection. Maybe it’s related to our prayer when we pray Jesus’ own prayer—forgive us our sins as we forgive others. Maybe there is some kind of channel in us that channels love and forgiveness—and when we accept the fact that we are forgiven we open up the channel inside and are able to forgive others. And maybe our faltering efforts to forgive others open the channel inside so that we accept more and more of God’s forgiveness. I don’t know—but clearly there is no earning it. It just is. Free gift freely given—and the woman --her tears and her let down hair tell us that she knew how much she needed forgiveness. She turned to Jesus and opened herself to him. Maybe you’ve had occasion in your own life to want to do the same. . .

Simon seems to have been unaware that he might have needed forgiveness. He is locked in judgment and really unable to see the woman as anything but a sinner—and God knows we know that place, don’t we?— Mexican, Black, white trash, ex-con, druggie, jock, rich, poor, Republican, Democrat, fundamentalist, liberal, conservativegay, straight, right, wrong, ….. on and on, the labels go. Our lives are filled with labels. We go through life categorizing people and we judge groups of people, forgetting the question Jesus asks: “Do you see this woman?”

Do you dare allow your guard down to enter her truth? Do you dare to blur your straight lined convictions? See the person behind the label?— Do you dare to acknowledge God’s incredible amazing forgiveness at work in even the most ridiculous—the most hopeless of persons?

A few weeks ago I was privileged to participate in a restorative justice training—it was sponsored by the Insight Prison Project that works in San Quentin, (a place filled with people we rarely see at all—rarely think about) and by the Bay Area Women Against Rape an organization that works with women who are the victims of rape and with perpetrators. Both organizations run groups in prisons. The offenders in their programs are men who have committed violent crimes—in these groups, they spend weeks and weeks speaking the truth about their crimes, the truth about what led up to their choices to commit those crimes, the truth about their need to forgive others and to forgive themselves, and about the consequences of their crimes on the survivors of those crimes. All this is to prepare these men to meet face-to-face with a panel of victims/survivors of violent crimes.

These survivors go into a prison and tell their stories—they tell how violent crime entered and affected their lives—they give the details of their experiences—their losses, their grief, their fear, their struggle to go on with life, their depression and anger, the effect on their children. . . It is powerful stuff. They let down their hair, they grieve. They weep- maybe. For the offenders—this may be the first time they have faced the truth of what actions like the ones they took themselves cost the survivors. It is hard to describe what happens in that room.

But it is not over yet. The next time they meet, the offenders tell their stories. They describe their actions, tell why they made the choices they made, tell about their families of origin, their pain and grief, They take responsibility for their crimes. Sometimes they tell about how they wish they could be forgiven—how they wish they could forgive themselves. They are like the woman—they let down their hair and weep –the men grieve the enormity of their sins and for the truth of their longing to be forgiven.

“Do you see this woman?” this man? Do you see these human persons we label survivors? Do you see these human persons we label offenders? “Do you?”

These are people who have dared to cross one of the most indelible boundaries in our society to dive deeply below the surface of our categories. They have done the hard and risky work of letting their hair down—they have wept and wailed. They know their need for love and for forgiveness—they know that—whether they are able to give it or receive it yet or not. They know that their capacity to love is somehow tied up with their capacity to accept forgiveness and give it. They understand that. And, so do we.

We followers of Christ are called to accept the forgiveness so freely given. We are called to live into forgiveness—to be transformed by it. We are meant to be loving persons, to find the courage to see the woman. To see one another. To see those we have judged to be “other,” to remember those in prison, and those still struggling to survive. This is who we are. Forgiveness is the great gift—it is ours to accept and live into. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Sermon June 10, 2007

I Kings 17:17-24, Luke 7:11-17

This week I officiated at two burials here—each of a young man who died too early . . Earlier this week when I went into his office to tell Fr. Matt that a parishioner had learned that cancer had returned, he threw his body back in his chair and groaned. We are a people challenged to live with cancer more and more every day. . . . In the middle of the week, a woman in our community talked with me about a her neighbors, both very elderly, one with Alzheimer’s—the other trying to take care of him, and beginning to be physically unable to do so—what to do that would be helpful? . . . Then, on Friday, as has become my custom, I spent time on the computer downloading the names of the American soldiers killed in Iraq during the past week. Young men, and sometimes women, in their late teens, twenties and thirties—dead. I pray as I go with that list, and I think of the unnamed who have died by violence there and elsewhere—even those on the streets of our cities. Death is all about us—and within us. I stand with the grieving widow. I weep.

In this morning’s gospel Jesus comes up on a burial procession. And, when I hear of his raising the young man from the dead I can’t help but wish that he’d been here to raise those two young men whose lives we celebrated here. And all the dead in Iraq. I can’t help but wonder if that power of bringing life from death is still with us. I can’t help longing for death to be undone—here right now, in this place at this time. I get stuck there. In my grief about the state of our world and in my longing for new life. This is a faithful place tobe.

Because this story is about God’s power for new life turning up in just that moment of grief and longing--in the most surprising places—and it’s about the compassion of God. I suspect Luke tells the story more to tell us about Jesus’ compassion than about anything else. And it gives us a taste of what is to come in Jesus’ own living and dying and rising to new life, too.

The widow is weeping. Tears of grief, no doubt for her son—his life seemingly cut short—weeping for all the things he never would get to do—weeping for the person he would never have a chance to become—and truth be told she was probably weeping for herself as well. For as a widow with no son, she finds herself in desperate circumstance—no source of support. Her future is bleak. She grieves her losses. She protests.

And Jesus, had compassion for her. He felt her pain deep inside himself. In his guts, really—to the depths of his heart. The word for compassion has its roots in the word “womb.” Inside he feels her pain. And that feeling of compassion drives him to act—to bring new life. And he does this you’ll see with no direct request from her really, no sign of faith on her part. I take comfort in this. He kind of just inserts himself into the scene—tells her “do not keep on weeping. And he crosses a purity boundary by reaching out to touch the bier—telling the young man to rise—(and then, our text harkens back to the story of Elijah)—Jesus gives the son to his mother.

Elijah too had crossed boundaries. Just before this morning’s portion of the story, he’d gone to this foreign widow for food. God had told him to do this, and he went—and the widow having only a handful of meal for herself and her son had shared that with him—and that handful of meal had fed them all for weeks and weeks. A strange little story, stretching our understanding of who our neighbor is—a foreigner who turns out to be the channel of God's provision. And, then later, we read how Elijah’s own compassion moves him to act—he prays to God from the same feelings the widow expresses in her grief—and then he gives her dead son back to her alive. It’s when he does that that she tells him she finally knows he is a man of God—his words match his actions. The word of new life—the word of the Lord in his mouth is the word of truth.

The thing about compassion is that it brings us together. It’s that simple. You can’t have compassion for someone without drawing close to them. Think about it. Compassion opens our hearts to another—it carries us across the boundaries that separate us. It involves us in knowing another—knowing the other. When I am compassionate I stand with. I am present to. My insides are touched. I am no longer detached, analytical, remote. The other person is real. I listen. I receive. You know about this in your own life.

I’ve been carried by compassion into many wonderful relationships. Last year on the retreat for the women of the living room—those of us providing leadership spent hours really at meals listening, sharing, getting to know—our hearts were opened to one another—all of us women, telling our stories, sharing our truth, knowing our compassion for one another. There was new life where there had been none before.

Last Sunday a woman greeted me at the door at the end of the service with tears in her eyes. She told me she weeps every time we read the names of the dead in Iraq. One of the reasons we read the names of the dead soldiers in Iraq is so that we might open our hearts to them—to the reality of all the dead in Iraq—and else where. Perhaps your compassion for them and for their families began when young men from our county began dying there. Maybe from that start, you’ve found your heart gradually opening more and more to the truth of the cost of this war—to the cost of war period. If you are my age, you have perhaps lost loved ones to other wars in our history. Wars cost lives and lives matter. It is right to grieve.

The widow’s grief is so very important. It’s a powerful statement that something is wrong. Things are not as they should be. And crying and being heard are at the heart of our faith. God heard the cry of the people in slavery in Egypt. Their hearts were breaking and so was God’s. Sometimes we are called to stand with the one who cries and accept the gift of their tears—which may be the only gift they have to give. And, what a gift it is. For the gift of new life flows through the tears—the weeping is a protest—death should not have the final say. Our lives so burdened with the fear of death—the threat of death—are meant for more. Our tears open us to receive the gift of new life.

The powers that be prefer that we not have compassion. Prefer that we are detached from the pain of life. Prefer that we live only in young beautiful, usually thin, bodies. Prefer that we live as voyeurs—watching others lives—but not getting involved. Prefer that we are numb to reality. Think of how numb we have become. “Business as usual” prefers that we avoid the reality of death but that we remember always the threat of death—that we live our lives out under a kind of cloud of fear. You know about this—threat of terrorism, threat of gang violence, threat of child predators, threats, threats, threats…. all involving people who are other—different from us.

Grief and compassion undermine this deathly order of life. Grief protests that there is more to life than this—grief expresses God’s own broken heart. Compassion opens us to one another—joins us together in unlikely ways—frees us to cross boundaries and to enter the darkness together. Compassion energizes us to dare to risk the unknown—to make friends with the enemy—to live in the truth of our oneness. This happens in places like our own families, neighborhoods, communities, everywhere we find ourselves.

Jesus’ compassion led him to interrupt what was business as usual—just another man dead, just another woman left alone—to respond to the widow’s tears, reach out and touch the bier, proclaim the word of God—the word of life.

Jesus—God with us—God the compassionate one. Compassion is “to be with.” God’s compassion assures us that we are never alone. We may not know young men raised from the dead in quite this way, but we are a people who need not live in fear of death. It does not have the final word. The gift of new life is always with us—coming to us as we grieve the present reality, as we long for new life. Part of our calling as Christians is to grieve and weep—let our hearts be broken—so that we are made one with others and with God.

Jesus died for us—not I think so much to pay for our sins, but to take death into his own person. His compassion took him across even that boundary. God embraces the death that you and I must die and in so doing frees us from the realm of death. By standing with us Jesus enables us to stand with each other. No matter what. That is the great good news. It is the word of life.

**I am informed in my thinking by the work of Walter Brueggeman who has written about the importance of grief and of the numbness to which the prophets speak . I commend his writings to you.