This Is The Day

Today's sermon was preached twice - this morning at Parkwood UMC, and this afternoon in a slightly different version at the Springmoor Retirement Village Health Center.

You can see a video of the Parkwood UMC version here. The sermon starts about 33 minutes into the video.

There is a voice-only recording of the Retirement Village version here. If you have problems listening to it please let me know... I'm a newbie at this part.

In the meantime, I have included the script of the Retirement Village version because the UMC version included a sizable section that was addressing a particular issue that was facing the congregation and on which they were voting today. Since that was so specific to that one congregation in that one place, I've opted to leave it out. If you are United Methodist and want to see the script, let me know and I'll send it on!

The lectionary texts for the day are:
Acts 5:27-32 

Psalm 118:14-29  (The Call to Worship at Parkwood UMC)

Psalm 150  (Read at Springmoor)

Revelation 1:4-8 

John 20:19-3

CHRIST IS RISEN!

<Alleluia!>

It’s still Easter! We are Easter people and in the church year, Easter lasts all the way to Pentecost, on June 9. For Christians, Easter is not a day in the spring when there is candy and bunnies and planting, Easter is fifty days of reveling in what Jesus did for all humanity.

CHRIST IS RISEN!

<Alleluia!>

Today’s lesson from Acts is one of my all-time favorites. I love Peter’s boldness, his declaration to the authorities that they had, indeed, killed Jesus, but Jesus had not stayed dead. It’s as if Peter is saying… So who’s more powerful now?

But it’s even bigger than that! The context for today’s reading from Acts is that the apostles were no longer huddling behind closed doors, afraid of what would happen next.

Jesus had appeared to them, had assured Thomas that he was indeed risen, had maybe even made a special trip back to see Thomas. 

It seems that seeing Jesus in person had empowered the apostles, because like Jesus, they had gotten under the skin of the religious leaders and the religious leaders had been desperate to get them to shut up. The leaders could have chosen to believe, chosen to join the apostles in this new way of living and loving and recognizing who Jesus was, but instead they decided to lock up the apostles.

The Holy Spirit was having none of THAT, though… the price had already been paid by Jesus, so an angel released them from prison. The doors all stayed locked, but instead of staying behind those locked doors, Peter and the other apostles were taken out and told to go to the Temple and tell the people that Jesus had had the unmitigated gall to not. stay. dead.

Which brings us to today’s text. The religious leaders don’t come across as angry so much as gutless:  more worried about looking bad, about being blamed for killing Jesus, then rejoicing in the Resurrection. They were unable to hear the new song that God was singing.

And now the Peter who had denied Jesus three times at almost the worst moment in Jesus’ life… the Peter who spoke when silence might have been better and clammed up when there was something to tell… 

THAT is the Peter who openly and bluntly tells them:

30 The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus,

whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree.

You tried to kill him, Peter says… and it didn’t stick. Why should I worry about you when EVEN DEATH cannot stop Jesus?

So who would you follow? If you were there, would you be amazed and energized by this new world, this place where even death could not stop Jesus loving ways? Would that make an impression on you? Or would you be worried about looking bad? 

In the end… despite all his earlier missteps… Peter followed his call from God. It took him awhile, but he got there, and God made him a powerful witness.

It was not easy, though! A passionate guy like that felt his mistakes keenly. That’s why the opportunity to declare his love for Jesus – 

      three times even! 

                 Once for each time he had earlier denied Jesus! – 

      

was such a tremendous grace. As hard as it was, Peter and all the apostles were in the Temple yard living their faith and belief boldly.

They were transformed. Everything had changed. Because despite our anxieties, God’s change always makes us

more of who we were born to be.

So here we stand today, celebrating that same Resurrection that transformed Peter and the other apostles.

The “religious leaders” of our time – all of them, everyone – have put up rules and guidance and policies that do not always line up with God’s calling to follow Jesus. Despite the leaders’ faithful intent, we all get it wrong sometimes and the organizations that result do not always end up the way they were intended. It’s hard when that happens.

And in those moments, I get flashes of Peter. Living into his transformed self. An ordinary very flawed human being who decided that since Jesus was Resurrected, he must follow Jesus and not the religious and political rules of the day.

During the season of Lent that just ended, the weekly lessons emphasized over and over again about what Jesus did… much of which was jaw-droppingly radical for his time (and also for our time):

* He defended women, including Mary who washed his feet with her hair and used super-expensive burial anointing oils to do so

* He had dinner with Judas, knowing that Judas was about to betray him in literally the worst possible way

* He cried out for forgiveness for his killers from the cross

* He promised paradise to a person who was quite open about deserving execution

* He appeared first to women after the Resurrection, but did not reject the men who didn’t believe it had happened

* And in today’s gospel – he showed immense grace to Thomas

All that on top of three years of ministry that started with turning water into wine and proceeded through healing – not rejecting – the demon-possessed, talking to a Samaritan woman at the well, and forgiving a woman caught in adultery by calling out the men who somehow knew what she was doing.

We live in a time when “law and order” has become a reason to do all sorts of things. And I am all in favor of a safe and orderly society for all people! But sometimes I wonder… should laws and the civil order put together by a bunch of human beings have the last word? 

Or is there another bigger question, namely:

What is the best way to answer whatever call God has placed on each of us?

God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – has always insisted on coming to me and to each of us. Not on our own timetables but on God’s own timetable. And as a result, 

THIS IS THE DAY.

This is the day when we consider what and who we believe about how much God loves us.

This is the day when we each get to decide how we will declare the works of the Lord.

This is the day when we each decide whether we want to stick with what looks like safety in the political and religious structures of our day, or whether we want to step into the loving arms of God’s will for each of us.

This may even be the day when we are being invited to take what may seem a scary step, because we are constantly being transformed and it is not always easy to know if that scary step is, in fact, into the arms of Jesus.

But ON THIS DAY…

Please know that regardless of what you decide to do, or be, or think, God’s love for you will remain unchanged: perfect, complete, infinite.

That the love Jesus demonstrated in his life in our broken world is available to you… is longing for you.

That you are among the people Jesus would have gathered together on his walk towards crucifixion.

That in his Resurrection on the first Easter, Jesus proved that his life is the life that conquers death, that in fulfilling the law he has freed us for exactly one thing: to love each other.

Yes, this is the day.

You are beloved. 

You will always be beloved no matter what.

May that grace and favor transform your heart, fill you with love, and keep you in eternal peace.

Amen.

Jazzercise and Jesus: the Art of Making Neighbors

I preached this message at the April 10, 2019 midweek Lenten service at St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Durham, NC. It's the last midweek service for this Lenten season and the familiar story of the text is part of the reason I struggled to find the right note. When I did finally hear the Holy Spirit, I was (not surprisingly) really surprised at how it came out. But here we are.

The text for the service is Luke 10:29-37. In the service I read from The Inclusive Bible which is not available online, so the link above is to the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible.

Come Holy Spirit. Warm our hearts to lavish your love and make neighbors everywhere we go. Amen.

Tonight I want to talk to you tonight about Jazzercise. Have you heard of it? Jazzercise has been around for 50 years. It’s a great workout!

But there’s something else about Jazzercise, at least Jazzercise in RTP and in Chapel Hill. It’s not only about the smooth moves. Jazzercise of RTP and Chapel Hill is a community with a particular culture.

When I first started Jazzercising some years ago – maybe a decade? – I would joke that if they would only serve communion and do a little Scripture it would be the best church ever.

We laughed about that a lot, but it turns out that the architect of the local Jazzercise culture is a woman named Ann. Ann’s daddy was a Presbyterian pastor and somehow she had internalized two things:
* everyone wants to be called by their own name, and
* you do not have to have an “out” group to define who is included in the community.
It is, in fact, possible for a community to be open and welcoming to everyone.

Ann knew how to make neighbors.



I think my experience with Jazzercise is a modern little picture of what Jesus was telling the lawyer about in tonight’s text.

The lawyer wanted there to be rules, and I suppose it is true that community works better when there are ground rules. But the Samaritan – who had no position, and who was part of a group that the “good” Jews couldn’t stand because they did not do worship correctly – just paid attention to the person at hand.

The priest and the Levite knew all about the Scripture but they didn’t live it. The Samaritan, who did not do any of the worship stuff “right” saved the traveler’s life.


So tonight I am here to ask you: who are you?

Do you get caught up in procedures and justification and accountability and all the other reasons we use to avoid people in need?

Do you respond to the person in need, because they have need? Do you believe people when they cry out in pain, or are you the lawyer trying to find a loophole?

If we are honest, I think we would all say that we are all a complicated mix.
* We want to help, but we worry about being hurt ourselves.
* We want good schools for all children, but we struggle when sending our own children to struggling neighborhood schools.
* We are thrilled to live in diverse neighborhoods but would really prefer that diversity come to us and bear the discomfort of being different rather than us being uncomfortable in neighborhoods where most of the people do not look like us.

It’s also hard to know. Is the person standing on the corner really in need, or is he trying to scam us? Does that woman with the runny nose and dirty hair really want a bus ticket or is she going to buy liquor?

We want to call people by name but so often it's easier to protect ourselves by putting up fences to keep out all that scary uncertainty.

The thing is… Jesus did not mention anything about the traveler the Samaritan helped. We do not know why the traveler was out on the road alone. We do not know the circumstances that led to the traveler being attacked.

But we do learn something about being neighbors:

I believe that Jesus is telling us that the answer to that question is: ITS UP TO YOU.

Being neighbors is not about the other person. Being a neighbor is about what we do.

So if you smile and say WELCOME! and mean it…

If you greet people you don’t know as warmly as you greet the people you do know…

If you show mercy and compassion to people who are hurting without asking about the how or why of that pain…

If you treat everyone as if we are all IN together...

Then you are being a neighbor.



I know… I know… there are dishonest people. There are people who will try to take advantage of us. There are people whose poor choices have led to their current troubles. Doesn’t Jesus care about that?

Well… YES.

As a matter of fact, Jesus cares so much that he brought his God-self to earth, lived in this broken and pain-riddled world, and loved everyone without doing background checks. Jesus loved the priests and the Levites, the Samaritans and the demon-possessed. And then Jesus died.

And THEN… as we will celebrate in such a short time… Jesus was Resurrected.

Jesus fulfilled the law so we no longer have to worry about who we should avoid.

Jesus fulfilled the law and lavished infinite love on us.

So much love, in fact, that we can spread it in Jazzercise, in the grocery store, at work…

We can even share love in church.

So go… find someone and make then your neighbor. All you have to do is pay attention.

Amen.

What's new?

It was hard writing this week. Spring is here, except some of the days were cold and rainy. The pollen is covering everything with it's Mountain-Dew-yellow powder and eyes and noses and throats are paying the price. But other things have been moving along, and I suppose that means life was happening just as it does. The same old thing.

The lectionary texts this week are not about the same old thing, though. They are about a NEW thing! A new thing that God promises and that only God can deliver.

The texts for the week are:
Isaiah 43:16-21
Psalm 126
Philippians 3:4b-14
John 12:1-8

Note: I particularly like the word cloud this week, with the new thing that is Jesus coming out of the bell of a shape reminiscent of a trumpet.

Come Holy Spirit. Show us who we are in the light of the new thing you bring to us. Amen.

WHAT’S NEW!

What’s new?

No seriously… what is “new”?

In Ecclesiastes, the Teacher says nothing… nothing new under the sun.

But in Isaiah, God says there will be a new thing.

In Philippians, Paul talks about BEING new… that all his reasons for boasting are meaningless in the face of what Christ has done for us. So much so that all the things that gave him all kinds of status, that made him a really important guy, are now rubbish.

And then in John, Mary did a new thing, much as she had been doing a new thing all along. Instead of working with her sister Martha to feed the crowd of men who had come to listen to Jesus, she sat at the feet of Jesus and listened right along – and received Jesus favor for it.

When her brother was dead Mary confronted Jesus “WHY WEREN’T YOU HERE?” and it broke his heart so that Jesus wept.

And now, that same Mary brings out a whole pound of nard – expensive, special, not just everyday anointing oil. Judas says they could sell it for 300 denarii – nearly a year’s salary! Think about that! She uses something worth a YEAR’S SALARY to wash the feet of Jesus, and then dries his feet with her hair – which clearly (at least by the standards of the day) should never have been let down in the presence of all those men!

But is Mary’s behavior really the new thing here? Or once again do we seem a woman being evangelistic, and Jesus being open to whatever her behavior is because it points to who Jesus is?

It sure made the men uncomfortable! And it really irritated the moneykeeper Judas, who did not understand at ALL that Jesus was a new thing, worthy of anointing with the finest of oils. Judas used the poor as an excuse… and according to John’s words, he just wanted to steal that year’s salary money for his own personal gain.

Mary worried about Jesus. Judas worried about himself.

Mary could see a new thing, because in her culture she was (relatively) powerless. But as an insider in the patriarchal system, Judas could not.

It’s easy to tsk tsk tsk about Judas, and feel a little superior because women do not have as many taboos about hair today, but are we really that different now?

We say we want a new thing… but when the discomfort sets in we think “OH HEY NOW WAIT A MINUTE! Maybe things weren’t actually that bad…”

We say we want a new thing, but we don’t want to give up the things that maybe aren’t that bad, that we have adjusted to or learned to work around.

We say we want a new thing, but we most definitely do not want to admit that the old things of our own making might be at the center of the problem.



But here’s the thing:  nowhere in the text does God say anything about the new thing depending on us.

Our structures – monetary, political, governmental, social – are all broken in ways that benefit some people more than others. The brokenness always leads to inequity. We try really hard to pretend that things are (or can be) even, or fair. But they aren’t. They just aren’t. They cannot be if they are human-made, in a world so very broken.

Even the church, put on earth to be the means of spreading the message of redemption in Jesus, has settled into a pattern of brokenness that gives some people favor and power and leaves other people out.

I’m not even talking about prosperity gospel here. Even “community discernment” is not the same as “God’s will.” Community discernment is as broken as any other human system. But who wants to admit that the favor and power comes from an unfair system and that it is not actually a sign of God’s favor and empowerment? Certainly not the people with the influence. Certainly not the people who may be out of a job if the system changes to be more equitable.

Certainly not the people who have adjusted so thoroughly to the system that they cannot imagine it any other way.

The only thing we can do this side of eternity is create another system that is broken in a way that favors someone else (or maybe even favors the same people in some new or different way.) In her book The Power Naomi Alderman makes a compelling case for the idea that power has its own silky voice and does not care who it seduces. We are all susceptible, and will always use power to benefit ourselves inequitably.



So when God says that there will be a new thing, I have to believe that God has something in mind that goes way beyond merely switching out who holds the power – because inequitable distribution power simply is not new.

It is not an idea that I like to think about. In many ways I do not benefit from the current power imbalance in the church and the world but there are others who benefit much much much less than I do and that breaks my heart.

The reality is that in our world, including the church, anyone who is not white and male and (as a bonus) wearing a beard pretty much gets leftovers. Women and people of color and children are relegated to lesser status –if they are given access to the systems of power at all - and then condemned for not being grateful enough for the leftovers that they do get. Not everywhere, not all the time, but often enough to be statistically significant.

Often enough that the #metoo movement is a real thing. Often enough that it takes an average of six years for an African-American woman to receive her first call in the ELCA, but no white male has to wait any significant time at all.

Those are realities of our time. The inequity is built into the system. I WANT to say… take power from the white men! Give power to everyone else! And maybe that would be a lovely thing. It is how Creation was to work.

But I am ALSO utterly convinced that any other arrangement will also leave out someone.

As refreshing as it might be to see my white male (bonus if bearded) colleagues experiencing what they have not had to experience very much before, it really WOULD NOT BE a new thing, I think.

It would not be God’s new thing.

It would just be different, as human beings understand difference.



BUT!

WHAT IF God’s NEW has little or no relationship to human ideas of different?

WHAT IF God’s NEW has been among us all along, since the Creation?

WHAT IF NEW can only come from God?

What if new is something within us rather than for us, or by us? A transformation that God works across time, space, and human hearts?

Now that would be something truly new, not just a different form of inequity and brokenness!

We cannot possibly do that on our own but we do have access to that new thing, that transformation.



Let’s go back to our story for a moment – to Mary anointing Jesus.

Mary knew!

Mary had broken all the taboos!
* Touching Jesus
* Letting her hair down in the presence of all those men
* Using expensive oil to anoint someone very much alive

Did Mary understand that Jesus was about to die? I don’t know. But even if she did not, well, nobody else did either.

So the baby born of a Mary who acted faithfully in what that were completely apart from cultural norms (not to mention human physical processes) became the man who was anointed by another Mary who acted just as far outside of the norms of the day. Two Marys, bookends of a life that show us just what a new thing Jesus is.

Maybe God was telling us something.

Maybe God was saying “this new thing… it’s not from you or about you… it is the thing I do” because shortly after being anointed by this second Mary, Jesus died, and then he was Resurrected.



This Jesus is the one through whom all of Creation was created, so he is also the oldest, what with being present before the beginning of time. And yet, in his divinity, Jesus showed us something new:  How to live a life of loving each other.

Jesus did not flip the power structures of the day, something his disciples expected and the kind of “different” we think of when we try to change things on our own.

It is the Jesus who was here as fully human and fully divine
The Jesus who brought a new way of living
The Jesus who lived, died, and was Resurrected who is

THE ACTUAL NEW THING

Redemption.

Freedom from a system of inescapably inequitable power.

The Law fulfilled so we can BE… so we can live in free pursuit of the life we were created to live, in community, and in God. Trusting that God will overcome all the old things somehow, in ways we cannot imagine. Literally are incapable of imagining.

The new thing is here, as it has always been here. And in Jesus we can live it out with abandon.

Amen.