The gift of the future (follow your star)

The tale of the wise men has always fascinated me. In my youth, I was in a handful of Christmas pageants and I was always cast as one of the wise men. I never really knew why. Maybe it was because I had the right amount of charm or because I seem to exude wisdom. Or maybe it was because shepherds look sillier in glasses than wise men. Whatever the case, being the wise man in the church or school Christmas pageant was my destiny from year to year. So I have a kinship with this story. I have a connection to the wise men and I hope after today you will too.

The first aspect that is remarkable about the wise men is their journey. We rarely ever see the wise men mid-expedition. We usually focus on the payoff, them surrounding the Christ child. But let us not forget that it was a long path in getting there. Imagine it. You and a bunch of your astronomer buddies decide to take off for a foreign land following a star. Now of course back then you could just not charter a flight and head over to Jerusalem. This journey would take much planning. You would have to stock up on provisions. Strap up your camels. Bring everything that you needed on your backs and in your caravan, and begin. Begin the long slow journey westward. This is what the wise men faced. Not knowing what they would find, they traveled through desert, darkness, cold and rain. The were likely tired, perhaps frustrated and certainly unsure of what they would find. Maybe that is why most of the images of the journey are taken from afar like the one on the cover of the bulletin today. This is a familiar image. The three camels silhouetted against the evening sky. You don’t see them close up because maybe if you did you would see the struggle on their faces. The frustration that can only come from days and days of travel. If any of you have ever been stuck in an airport overnight, you can sympathize.

Like the wise men, we also are on a journey, a journey of life. And it is not so different from the wise men’s. It is sometimes dark, sometimes unsure, Treacherous. Confusing. Frustrating. At times, we wander through life not really sure where we are going or what we are supposed to be doing. From a distance we may seem fine, a silhouette that appears calm cool and collected, but when the camera gets close, it shows the lines on our faces, the weariness that the journey has caused. What can we do to ease this struggle?

If we look to the story of the wise men, one of the lessons that we can learn is that we do not have to go it alone. There was not a wise man, but rather wise men. Partners, compatriots. Now there is some question as to how many wise men there really were. If you look closely at the text, it never actually gives a number. We have a tradition of three because of the three gifts, but we really do not know. There could have been a dozen or more. A whole crew. Partners, friends helping each other out through their journey across the harsh lands.

Who are your traveling companions? Maybe it is a spouse that you have grown to love and committed to be with through thick and thin. Maybe it is a close friend, someone with whom you can share your deepest secrets and problems. Perhaps it is your children or your parents that have become your kin in the truest sense of the word. Maybe it is this church. I believe that church should be one of your closest traveling companions through life. It should be here to support and help you as you move from place to place. If you do not feel like this is the case, let me know. I want to talk to you about it.

Just as the wise men traveled together, all of your traveling companions are with you as well. They are there to share with you in all of your greatest accomplishments. They are there to keep you moving when the times get tough and you want to give up. They are there to support you and be supported by you.

With the help and companionship of each other the wise men reached Jerusalem, and that is where they found help in one of the most unlikely of places. This brings us to our second lesson to be learned from the wise men: seeking help from the stranger. If you will permit me a little dramatic license, I see the wise men arriving at Jerusalem tired and frustrated. After the long and wearisome journey they have still not found what they have been seeking. Their impatience is evident in the way that they talk to Herod. “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.” Herod, though with his own agenda, calls in all of the priests and the scribes to find out where the Messiah is supposed to be born. The wise men had the when, given to them by the observance of the star, but not there where. Conversely, the priests and the scribes had the where, Bethlehem, but not the when. Together they give a wonderful example of cross-cultural religious collaboration. The wise men’s knowledge was made complete because they sought help from others. Even though Herod’s people were strangers, they became great help to the wise men telling them where to go. Help can come in unlikely places.

Up until now the wise men might seem like another group of traveling wanderers that we find in the Bible, that of the Hebrews leaving Egypt. It took them forty years to get where they were going, but they were missing one very important element that the wise men had, the star! Though their journey is long, the wise men are not aimlessly wandering. They have a guide, a light that directs them. A star in the West. Okay so when we last left them they were about to leave Herod’s. From the priests and scribes they gain a newly acquired drive and purpose and set forth toward Bethlehem. And as they do, day begins to turn into night. Darkness creeps up over the horizon and with it, their guiding star. It continues to move, the texts says, leading them all the way to their final destination, the baby Jesus.

Finding a guide is the third lesson that the wise men have to teach us this morning. Their guide, their star, meant a great deal to them. It was what initially prompted them to leave their country and begin their journey. It was for them a sign of change. The old would pass away and something new would be born. A new king. A new era. It is then appropriate that we would be hearing this story at the beginning of the New Year. This is a time for us to spark hope of something new. Something that will allow us to leave the old and start fresh.

So the question that I have for you is this: “What is your star?” The wise men found their king because they had a guide, a God-given sign in the sky. It gave them hope. It gave them direction. It forged them onward. So what is your star? What is going to guide you this year? Perhaps your life is generally troubled. You do not have a clear heading, you are wandering around without a course to direct you. Spinning and spiraling downward. Or maybe you are coasting. Just getting by. Whatever the case, perhaps what you need is a light to guide you, a star to shine the way. Something to give your life focus and direction.

So what is your star? What is leading you this new year? Where do you want to go? Who do you want to be? Where are you going to seek God’s presence in your life? Perhaps you have a relationship in your life that has become broken. Perhaps there is someone with whom you need to make amends. Let reconciliation be your star. Perhaps it is something that is troubling you. A broken promise. A mistake that you cannot put behind you. Let forgiveness be your star. Some of you may have struggled with addiction, or are struggling now and a star of recovery is what is sitting on your horizon. Remember to keep it there and follow it. Others of you may be committed to social justice. Put a star of peace and of equality up so that you can see it and follow it to your destination.

We will have more of a moment to reflect on this in our time of prayer today, but I want to make clear that I am not talking about a simple New Year’s resolution. Those usually take the form of one minor change or decision that you want to make, try for a while, and then give up on. I am talking about a God-given guiding force in your life. Something that will put you on a journey of transformation. What that will be is only something that you can decide for yourself with the help and guidance of a God that loves you and wants to see you grow.

Remember from the wise men that it may not be an easy journey. Likely, it won’t be, but you must forge ahead. And also remember that you are not alone. There are all of your traveling companions. And there is whole community here that can help and support you. And finally remember when the times are the hardest is when we forget to look up, to see our star and to remember that God is with us.

When the wise men finally arrived at the house and gazed upon the baby Jesus, they were struck with his majesty. All of the toil and journey was worth it. They knew that they had reached their destination and they were filled with such reverence that they began to worship. In a tiny baby they saw all of the hope and love for a new era. They were filled with the presence of God. By staying focused, by following their star, they had come to a future that was more radiant and beautiful than they could have imagined. What is your star?

This is where their journey ended but it is where ours begins. God gives us so much opportunity for love and hope in the world. We only need to seek it out. So pack your bags. Find some companions, maybe some strangers. And follow your star. Seek God’s hope for you and for the world. For just as the wise men found hope and renewal in the eyes of a child, so will we find it at the end of our journeys. May God bless us as we continue onward. Amen.

Spring Cleaning for the Soul

A Sermon by Rev. Angela Yarber | First Sunday in Lent | February 21, 2010

Scripture: Luke 4:1-13

4Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, 2where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished. 3The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” 4Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’” 5Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. 6And the devil said to him, “To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. 7If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.” 8Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’” 9Then the devil took him to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, 10for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,’ 11and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’” 12Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” 13When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.

As you have heard and seen, our Lenten theme this year is “The Many Faces of Jesus.” For forty days and forty nights, we journey along side of Jesus into the wilderness to experience the myriad ways we can see Jesus’ face in our world: in our own reflection, in the eyes of our community, in the beauty of our aching planet, and in the faces of a fragile humanity. Here there is no limit to the multiplicity of Jesus’ faces: healer, friend, parent, lover, prophet, activist, peace-maker, teacher. I’m sure that it’s all of our hope that Pastor Greg is experiencing the healing face of Jesus as he seeks to recover from being so sick.

For the next thirty some odd days and nights, let us journey together throughout this wilderness land and challenge one another to see Jesus differently. Let’s revel in the familiar and the uncomfortable, the challenging and the soothing. Most importantly, let us not journey into the wilderness lightly, but with the intention of returning transformed, renewed, ready to bring about resurrection in our broken world. For such transformations are the stuff of wilderness journeys.

I’m sure that many of you know that this is not only the first Sunday of Lent, but it’s also the second weekend of the winter Olympics. While I haven’t heard of any Olympians fasting for forty days and forty nights or being tempting to turn stones into bread, I have heard many stories of journeys into the wilderness.

The American short track speed skater Apolo Ohno comes to mind. Some of you may be familiar with his story. He’s won seven Olympic medals and after these Olympics could become the most decorated winter Olympian in history. His wilderness journey occurred at age 15. Apolo was raised by his Japanese father, Yuki, who drove him to and from practices and races throughout Washington state and British Columbia. In 1998 he tried out for the Olympics and choked, finishing in dead last. His father was disappointed, not because his son lost and didn’t make the Olympic team, but because he did not remain true to who he was and what he was capable of doing; he gave up and didn’t try his best. So, on their way home from the trials, Yuki dropped off his 15 year old son at a secluded cabin in Washington state. He told him, “you are at the threshold and you have a decision to make. This can be your life and who you are or you can choose to let it go.” For eight days the teenager pondered his life in the wilderness. Will I be an Olympian? Is this what I’m made for? Or will I be an “ordinary” teenager. Seven medals later, Apolo has answered his father’s question and made an unequivocal decision. This is who I am and I will give everything in my being toward achieving this goal.

While we certainly can’t compare being the son of God to being the most decorated winter Olympian in history, I think the pressure, soul-searching, and wilderness journey of Apolo Ohno rings true as we stand on this first Sunday in our wilderness journey. Hard work, dedication, pressure, soul-searching are not for the faint of heart. We do not tread into this desert journey lightly, but with intentionality.

This intentionality and soul-searching was the precise purpose of the early church when creating the season of Lent. The concept of Lent cannot be found in our bibles, nor can any proscriptions for fasting or feasting or abstaining from particular foods—like meats, chocolate, junk food, soda, or anything else you’ve chosen to give up for Lent. All we have is the story of Jesus journeying into the wilderness for forty days and forty nights. No food. No drink. A lot of pressure and soul-searching.

Jesus has a rich history of forty days of soul-searching upon which to base his wilderness journey. Israel spent 40 years in the wilderness learning to trust the God. Elijah spent 40 days there before hearing the sound of sheer silence that was God’s voice on the same mountain where Moses spent 40 days listening to God give the law.

Given these stories of wilderness journeys, and especially Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, the early church announced a season of Lent, from the old English word lenten, meaning "spring" -- not only a reference to the season before Easter, but also an invitation to a springtime for the soul. Forty days of spring cleaning. Brushing away the cobwebs of bitterness. Sweeping out the dust of regret. Opening up the freshly cleaned windows to let in the fresh spring air of acceptance, hope, compassion, and love.

Lent isn’t a dark, brooding season in the church year. Rather, it’s a season of spring cleaning, wilderness journey, contemplation for the body and soul. It’s not about giving up chocolate or taking on a morning devotional. It’s bigger than Hershey’s bars and devotional books; Lent is less about giving up or taking on things that may seem trivial to others, but are a big deal to us. It’s about digging in and cleaning out. Lent isn’t about beating ourselves up or feeling unworthy and stained. It’s about polishing our hearts, reevaluating our souls, examining our motives so that we can walk out of the wilderness more loving, compassionate, and caring.

Lent is a time when we have the luxury of abiding in the messy, confusing, overwhelming wilderness of our inner beings. We don’t have to physically hike there; we don’t need a backpack. Rather, amidst the end of the winter Olympics, the start of spring, the every day-in-and-day-out of life, we can simultaneously journey inward and sweep out the cobwebs of our souls. In some ways, it might be easier to retreat for forty days. No distractions, or at least no cell phones, internet, work, or people to please. Just soul searching. But what kind of challenge would that be?

What are the challenges that tempt the spring cleaning of your soul? What questions pull at your heart this Lenten season? Jesus was faced with turning stones into bread. When you journey into the wilderness of your soul, will you ask yourself, “Is my job fulfilling my calling? Am I a good parent? Is this marriage working? Who am I now that I’ve retired? What does it mean for my parents to be ageing? Am I healthy physically, emotionally, and spiritually?

I know one thing that clutters up the spring cleaning of my soul this Lenten season. Many of you know that just before Lent began, I completed my dissertation. Of course I am very happy. But many scholars refer to the time after the dissertation as post-dissertation depression. It’s a wilderness time of asking, “So what? Who cares? What does this matter?” In my heart and mind, I continue to grapple with the vast disparity between what I’m doing, where I’ve come from, and who I want to be. What does it mean for me to finish a dissertation and PhD, to be less than one month away from being Rev. Dr. Ang when most of my family didn’t finish high school? What does it mean for me to have the luxury of contemplating esoteric theories about dance and women’s empowerment in world religions when many of the women I write about are never afforded the “luxury” of education, who are hungry and oppressed and would be quite satisfied if only Jesus would turn those stones into bread. What does this make me and what will I do with it?

My luxurious Lenten existential crisis forces me to contend with the fact that many of us choose to enter into the wilderness for soul searching and spring cleaning. It is our choice; it is our luxury. Like Jesus, we are led into the wilderness by the spirit and we have the hope of exiting the wilderness on the other side—the side of resurrection, famished, but resurrected nonetheless. And these luxuries are good for the soul, necessary for this Lenten season of spring cleaning and seeking the many faces of Jesus in our world.

But I cannot help but think about all those people who are not guided into the wilderness by choice or with the Spirit protectively holding their eager hands. Rather, so many are forced into the wilderness, often times for much longer than a mere forty days and forty nights. Forced into the wilderness of poverty, oppression, racism, homophobia, depression, addiction, trafficking. I cannot help but think of the weary souls that will journey to our sanctuary in the coming weeks for Winter Nights, living in the constant wilderness of homelessness.

Our Lenten season of soul searching is for not if it does not gird us forward to see the face of Jesus in the eyes of those myriad people groping in the wilderness for glimpses of hope, for a helping hand, for resurrected bodies. And merely seeing Jesus’ face is for not, if we do not do something about it.

So, perhaps this question should guide our Lenten journey of soul searching: what are we going to do about it? And perhaps the “it” is as ambiguous and open-ended as our Lenten theme is. You interpret what it means to see the many faces of Jesus. You interpret what the it is that you’re going to do something about. We commit to creating a world where all of humanity can look into the mirror filled with the confidence and vitality to see the face of Jesus staring back at them.

Journeys into the wilderness may not be easy, but we certainly don’t have to brave them alone.

Redeem Our Flesh and Guide Our Feet into the Way of Peace

A Sermon by The Rev. Angela Yarber | December 6, 2009 | Second Sunday in Advent

Scriptures: Luke 1:68-79 and 3:1-6

Luke provides us with two stories that are perfect portrayals of the season of Advent. They’re all about preparation, preparing the way. In chapter one, Zechariah is filled with holy and fatherly joy as he witnesses the birth of his son, John, and his excitement cannot be contained so he burst forth into prophetic song. The “Canticle of Zachariah”, as it’s called, describes the way his son, John, will prepare the way for Jesus. This proud daddy knows that his child is someone special: a future sackcloth wearing, locust eating, wilderness roaming, repentance demanding, baptizing prophet of peace. This baby boy, his daddy believed, would give light to those who sit in shadows and guide our feet to the way of peace. This little baby would grow up to be the preparer of the way of peace, the one who cleared the path so that Jesus could walk, the one who guided our feet to the way of peace, the way of Christ.

In fact, many theologians speak of the need for Christians to actually be imitators of John. John is the one who prepares the way for peace, who points to the Christ child, who guides our feet to the ways of peace. Isn’t that we should be doing this season of Advent: preparing the way for peace? Waiting, preparing, yearning for the birth of peace in our world? But not just in theory or in abstract, but in reality, with feet marching for justice, dancing for peace, standing for what is good and right and true. Guiding our feet to the way of peace.

But Luke’s story doesn’t end there, not according to the lectionary and not according to anyone who reads the Gospel. Rather, after Zachariah’s song of joy over the birth of baby John we discover the birth narrative of Jesus. But not yet! Not this week! It’s only the second week of Advent. We’re still waiting and preparing the way, like John, so I’m not going to read Luke’s account of Jesus’ birth. Rather, we skip to chapter 3 and find another brooding text of preparation.

Now baby John is all grown up and his father’s prophetic song of joy is coming to fruition. He is, indeed, preparing the way. John is guiding our feet to the way of peace. And as the now grown-up John roams the wilderness preparing the way, he quotes a prophet of the Hebrew bible, Isaiah, “Prepare the way of the Lord, make God’s paths plumb. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made direct, and rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”

All flesh shall see the salvation of God. Not all hearts shall see the salvation of God. Not all minds. All flesh. And this is an interesting choice of words for a variety of reasons. First, John is preparing the way for God to be made flesh, for incarnation. All flesh shall see the salvation of God. Not in abstract, not in theory, but actually see a fleshly living God born as a humble and needy baby just like you and me with flesh and bones and tears and aches and pains and skin, flesh, hands, feet, a face…just like us.

And it’s interesting that John proclaims that all flesh shall see the salvation of God as he prepares the way for God in flesh, but also because of what this word means: flesh.
In Greek, flesh, here is σαρξ , which literally means “flesh, physical body; human nature, earthly descent.” Those things, those parts of you that you thought you had to overcome, your bodily realities will see the salvation of God. Not just your heart. Not just your mind. Not just the squeaky clean parts of you. Your flesh, all flesh, all physical bodies, all human nature—even the parts that you don’t like—shall see the salvation of God.

I must say that when I read this text I automatically hear it through the lens of Handle’s Messiah “And all fle-e-esh sha-all see-ee it toge-ether.” And I think that Handle and John and the Gospel writer are onto something here. All flesh shall see the salvation of God. All flesh. All physical bodies. All human nature. All earthly descent. All flesh shall see the salvation of God.
Let’s be honest here, the “flesh” doesn’t really have the best reputation in Christianity, does it?

The church has told us—primarily celibate men in power, I might add—that the flesh is secondary. The spirit is most important and the flesh is something to be overcome, negated, denied. This is why many Christians throughout the ages have denied their bodies, starved themselves, lacerated their flesh, impaled their bodies in order to identify spiritually with the suffering of Christ. But John isn’t talking about suffering here. He’s talking about our fleshly God. Our baby Jesus. Burping, crying, humble, needy baby Jesus whose flesh does the same things yours and my flesh do. Flesh gets dry and flakey, itchy, sweaty, it has rashes and bumps and bruises and scabs and cuts and scrapes. Flesh ages and stretches and grows and sags and has places that are undeniably beautiful and sensual and undeniably ugly and must be covered. All that flesh shall see the salvation of God.

So, as I thought about these fleshly realities and what it means for them to see salvation, I racked my brain for memories of flesh: the silly, the sensual, the sad. And I remembered three fleshly realities that I think are somewhat universal experiences, all in need of salvation.
The first, of course, is the silly. I’m sure we could spend hours of trading stories of silly, humorous, and likely rather inappropriate flesh moments. Don’t worry. I’ll keep it clean from the pulpit. This funny fleshly story comes from a friend.

My friend was in his senior year of high school and his best friend was a pastor’s kid. And not just any pastor’s kid, but the only child of an Independent Missionary Baptist pastor in northeast Alabama. Women can’t wear pants, no one drinks alcohol, no one dances, and you don’t watch R-rated movies—no matter how old you are! So, my friend and the pastor’s kid got a great idea. They decided that they should have a graduation party and that it should be held at the pastor’s house because said pastor had a pool. It would be the best pool party of their lives. The two boys planned every detail: BBQ, volleyball, music, invitations. One small glitch: pastor’s kid needed to ask his dad for permission. Surely it wouldn’t be a problem, he thought, because this could be his graduation gift. He was old enough and responsible enough to plan a fun pool party for his graduating class.

Said senior asked his father, his pastor, about the pool party and his father replied with a thick and authoritative Southern accent, “No way. Boys and girls swimming together!? That will never happen in my swimming pool. I don’t want any of you boys lustin’ after the flesh.”
Lusting after the flesh. Need I say more? Such phrases from conservative Baptist preachers are typical throughout the history of the church. We can’t see woman. We can’t see bodies. Because all that will do is make us sin. No mixed swimming. Because we can’t have anyone lusting after the flesh.

And I don’t mean to poke too much fun. There is a time and a place for that kind of flesh and I think it is responsible and morally aware to guard hearts and bodies against wanton debauchery and lustful extravagance. But such would likely have not been the case for a Scottsboro High School graduation pool party.

And that would naturally lead me to another fleshly story, a sensual story. Now, again, don’t worry, it’s sensual, not to be confused with scandalous. I’m not talking about Brittany’s Spear’s bellybutton or any other seemingly scandalous escapades that fill our culture and media. Although, I would say that those fleshly realities shall see the salvation of God, too. Rather, I’m thinking about seeing real flesh, real bodies doing something extraordinary, skilled, beautiful.
The story occurs in New York City, 55th Street and 9th Avenue, to be exact. It’s January of 2007 and I’m in New York doing Art and Religion research. Between Broadway shows and museums—all in the name of research, of course—I stumble upon the Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre. It’s cold and snowing outside and the Ailey studio’s full glass wall windows are radiating with light. Much to my delight, I see that it’s not simply an adult drop-in class, Horton technique, or a children’s class, but the actual company is rehearsing. Sculpted, lithe, sinuous, beautiful, sweating, strong bodies dance, leaving their all on the studio floor. I stand there mesmerized and watch.

Now, I’ve watched my share of Alvin Ailey videos. I’ve read about Ailey. I’ve even seen the company perform their world renowned Revelations, the most spiritual dance performance to ever grace the stage, bridging poignantly the plight of African Americans in the civil rights movement with the deep soulful spirit of the black church—all embodied in three movements that sweep and leap and soar from being buked to being baptized to being the body of Christ—all on “secular” stages, I might add. So, I’d seen Revelations. I’d seen them on stage, from my seat many rows back under the theatre lights with stage make-up and costuming and precision. But that couldn’t compare to what my eyes witnessed at 55th and 9th on that cold January evening. I stood still, breathless, for over an hour without even realizing it as the snow fluttered from the sky on this Southerner who despises cold weather. They danced, soared, fell, lifted, embraced, gasped, each muscle and every movement skilled, filled with breath and urgency and yearning and beauty and pain. I had the Stendall syndrome. Unable to move my own flesh I watched as the most beautiful flesh I’d ever seen rehearsed in a New York studio.

This is the kind of story that causes me to stand in awe—literally—of the flesh, of what the body can do. For all the things we may not like about our bodies, about our fleshly realities, we must stand in awe of what they are capable of. Flesh can run marathons and birth babies and build houses. My own battered and tired flesh amazed me as I finished my first triathlon a couple months ago. Our bodies, our flesh are magnificent creations capable of great beauty and great horror.

And this leads me to my final fleshly story. The sad. Although, sad doesn’t quite capture the horror, brutality, and treachery that the flesh can do. It’s a story I’ve shared with some of you in the past, the story of a time when I witnessed the brutality of the flesh broken, wounded, and forsaken.

The scene is a south Alabama project complex where I spent part of my adolescent years. My family had no money and we were surrounded by others in poverty and the violence poverty often creates. Amidst the pain and suffering of our complex, the children gathered together to play. Every night the poor kids in the complex would gather together to play hide and go seek. We always knew that the green, graffiti generator was base and by smacking that base and screaming, “Olly olly oxenfree!” you were untagable. Only I never knew that feeling, the feeling of shouting “Olly olly oxenfree!” and thus being liberated from all that binds me, from the confines of welfare cheese, and the bars across our living room windows, and the roaches that didn’t pay rent, but lived in our home anyway. I didn’t know that feeling because Davy Boyette always got there first. “Olly olly oxenfree!” Davy perpetually shouted. He was the fasted kid in the fourth grade, the fasted kid in the complex. Until one evening…when I made it to the graffiti generator first. I was on the other side of a long field and I knew that my dancing feet were bound for glory. So, as my hand-me-down Chuck Taylor’s pounded across the dry grass and my permed hair blew in the wind, I ran to that generator, “Olly olly oxenfree!” “Olly olly oxenfree, Davy!” I shouted.

And I couldn’t wait to find Davy Boyette and rub it in his face that I was the fastest kid in the complex. So, I ran around the complex screaming “Davy” until I rounded a corner to an ally way and saw Davy Boyette, no longer the fastest kid in the complex, but a crumpled mass of flesh sprawled out across the pavement. An older kid in baggy jeans stood above him with the crowbar he’d just pulled out of his pants. “Olly olly oxenfree!”

I turned and ran away as fast as I knew how and I began to vomit. And I haven’t stopped vomiting since.

Only weeks later, three teenage boys broke into our home while I was at vacation bible school with a friend and tried to slit my six year-old brother’s throat. His flesh forever tormented by the violence of growing up poor, still in search of redemption.

Flesh can be silly and sensuous and, in many cases, flesh can be scary and gut-wrenching. When I look back and think about how incredibly fortunate I am and my family is to still be standing—thriving—I am both humbled and moved to action on behalf of our countless brothers and sisters whose flesh is slain by the hands of injustice.

And all that flesh—the silly, the sensuous, the sad, and even the scandalous—is redeemed by the incarnation that we prepare for this Advent season. All flesh shall see the salvation of God. The pastor of the Independent Missionary Baptist Church in Northeast Alabama, the beautiful dancers at Alvin Ailey, Davy Boyette and my brother and all those children whose flesh is rent by violence, and yes, even Brittany Spear’s bellybutton…all their flesh shall see the salvation of God.
So, let’s prepare the way so that our feet may walk in the ways of peace. All flesh shall see the salvation of God—the parts we love and the parts we hate—are all redeemed by our fleshly God upon whom we wait in hope.

And it is this fleshly God that we remember when we gather around this table. It is a fleshly body that was broken so that all flesh can see salvation. Let us remember our broken and fleshly God as we share this meal with our own flesh, our own bodies.

Amen.

Proclaiming the "Good News" ...Good News for Whom?

A Sermon by The Rev. Angela Yarber | October 18, 2009 | Worship & Preaching

Scriptures: Isaiah 61:1-6 and Luke 4:16-21


Most of you know J. and E. For those of you who are newer here with us, J. and E. are the younger siblings of LB, who works in the nursery but is currently away celebrating her 21st birthday, and the grandchildren of B. They are a beloved part of our community and earlier this year, after J. was baptized here on Easter Sunday, they had to move out of state. If we miss them this much, I can only imagine how much LB and B miss them. So, I’d like to tell a story about the role of preaching in worship in their honor.

One Sunday a few years ago, J. helped lead worship. To be honest, I cannot remember what exactly he did in worship, but I think he’d read scripture. After worship, I made my way over to J. to let him know that he did a good job and to thank him for helping lead us in worship. E. hid behind her older brother. You may recall that E. went through a phase around age 5 or 6 when she didn’t really talk to grown-ups. So, I chatted with J. while E. stood behind him, her face tucked behind her hair. She peeked around her older brother’s shoulder and I said, “Hello E.,” though I didn’t expect her to say anything back. I am a grown up, after all. B walked up as J. began to tell me that E. was embarrassed to talk to me.

“Why on earth would she be embarrassed to talk to me?” I asked J. and B.

E. dropped her chin to her chest and hid her face in her hands as if to say, “Oh no! They’re going to rat me out!” for whatever it was she was embarrassed about.

B then informed me that E. liked to dress up as Rev. Angela at home. She would dance around the house, waving a scarf in Isadora Duncan fashion, as she pretended to be her pastor dancing during worship.

“Then,” J. informed me, “she wraps the scarf around her shoulders like that,” he said pointing to my stole, “and pretends it’s one of those things while she preaches sermons.” E.’s face was bright red, clearly embarrassed that a grown-up was talking in her presence and even more embarrassed that her brother and grandma told about her dress-up playing antics.

I squatted down so that my eyes could meet E.’s and said, “You keep dancing, E., because you can be anything you want to be.”

And of course this story meant a lot to me. To say the least I was quite flattered that a little girl would dress up and pretend to me by dancing and preaching at home. But mere flattery does not capture the essence of E.’s emulation. This story means so much to me because E. wasn’t even 8 years old yet and, in her mind, what it means to be a preacher is a woman, and a dancing woman at that. For E., her vision of what it means to be a dancer isn’t an emaciated sylph being pranced around a ballet stage, but that of a healthy woman with a strong body dancing in church. Perhaps, when E. grows up and someone tells her, “Women can’t be preachers,” E. will respond, “I don’t know what you’re talking about because I’ve seen women preaching my whole life.”

Such is the case for the children of Shell Ridge who will grow up knowing that any person called of God can preach the good news: no matter their gender, race, age, sexual orientation, nationality, educational level, economic status, or background. Imagine what it would be like if, from your most formative years, you saw and heard just as many women in pulpit as you did men. Just as many gay people as straight people. Just as many younger adults as older adults.

Jesus said, “God has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. God has sent me to preach release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to preach the year of the Lord’s favor.” I’ve got good news, E.; I’ve got good news, children of Shell Ridge; you can be anything you want to be.

What’s interesting about E.’s imitation is that it wasn’t based on the words that came from the pulpit. Her dressing up as Rev. Angela had little to do with the words of a sermon. Because, as you know, our children typically leave for Sunday School before the sermon. They only remain in the sanctuary during the sermon on communion Sundays. And while I’m sure that every sermon I preach or Greg preaches makes everyone in the room—especially little children—hang on to every single word, sitting on the edge of their seats, waiting for that next nugget of truth, I would surmise that E. didn’t dress up as her pastor because of my sermons. Rather, E. deduced that she was valuable and worthy and that women can be preachers and dancers, not because of what we SAY during worship, but because of what we DO.

It’s interesting that I would minimize the importance of what we SAY from the pulpit on a Sunday when the emphasis in worship is on the role of preaching. Preaching is, indeed, what is said, isn’t it? While Saint Francis did proclaim, “Preach the gospel; use words if necessary,” when we typically think of preaching, we think of words. Words carefully crafted, stitched together with intentionality, words from scripture, words from the history of the church, theological words, prophetic words. A sermon is made up of words, right? My all-time favorite preacher, Barbara Brown Taylor, is described as a “word smith,” winner of one of the twelve “most effective preachers in the English language.” One the world’s all-time best preachers, Fred Craddock, describes Taylor as having the rare ability of “writing to be heard as well as read.” The word smith is one of the world’s best preachers, so the words must be an important part of a sermon, right?

While I’m sure we all agree that the content of what we say, the words that make up the sentences that make up the paragraphs that make up what is being preached are important. Words are monumentally important and have the power to hurt or heal in a way that is universal; we’ve all experienced the power of words, both positively and negatively. But I think Saint Francis was on to something when he minimized the importance of our words.

In fact, even the word that Jesus uses to describe what God has called him to do in his so-called “first sermon” that we read from Luke this morning, doesn’t mention anything about words. Rather, Jesus uses the Greek word ευαγγελισασθαι − ευαγγελιζω. This word literally means “bring good news, preach the good news, preach the good news to, preach, proclaim.” And while inference and common sense reminds us that words, speech, talking is a part of preaching and proclaiming, sometimes we elevate the words at the expense of the actions. Jesus quotes Isaiah 61, which calls us to “preach good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to preach liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to preach the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Preaching the good news to the oppressed could involve words, but it also involves action: walking at the CROP walk, volunteering at the Food Bank, writing letters and calling congress people to insist on the importance of health care for those who are oppressed. In the instance of preaching the good news to the oppressed, words mean very little if they are not accompanied by action.
In the same way, binding up the brokenhearted and preaching liberty to the captives could involve words, but the words mean very little if they are not accompanied by action: hugging, calling, sending cards and food to the person who has lost a loved one or a job, feeding the hungry, standing against human trafficking.
And when Jesus quoted Isaiah as saying God calls us to preach release to the prisoners, I’m sure words weren’t the only thing he had in mind. Because what I say from the pulpit has little impact on the 75% of minorities on death row who wrongly accused. The words we say and sing and pray mean little to the countless people who are held captive, prisoners because of an unjust legal system that systematically penalizes the poor.

So, when Jesus preached his first sermon in Luke 2, I’m not too sure he was thinking of the same things we think of when we hear the word “preach.” A pulpit, a platform, a stole, clerical garb to separate you from the congregation, the laity. A finely crafted 2500 word essay exegeting the text for the day. Words—big ones—that only the most educated and pious can understand.

Here me say clearly: what we say is important. The content of our words is formative in worship and faith formation. But words aren’t the be-all-end-all. And words aren’t all that constitutes the ευαγγελιζω, the “good news” Jesus spoke of.

What else is important in preaching? In addition to the words, the explicit spoken theological messages, what are the implicit theological messages? Well, there’s the obvious, the things a preacher is taught about in a preaching class: oration, dictation, delivery, stage presence. In addition to content, a preacher must be heard, clear. Do you want to listen to a preacher who preaches in a boring monotone voice? Or a thunderously loud voice that hurts your ears? Or a Southern accent so thick that you can’t understand a word? Or with arms crossed over the chest and eyes diverted so that the voice says one thing and the body says something completely different. Delivery is obviously important. And for many preachers, standing in front of a group of people is their biggest fear: public speaking. Fortunately, a life time in the performing arts and musical theatre has made me not-so-nervous when entering the pulpit.
So, there’s the obvious: words and the way you deliver your words. So, now we can all pack up our stuff and go home because we know why preaching is important in worship: words and delivery. The obvious.

But what of those implicit theological messages? The not so obvious? Perhaps the ones Saint Francis had in mind when he said, “Preach the gospel; use words if necessary”? Let’s talk about some of those. Well, E.’s story points to one important implicit message in preaching. And that is the person doing the preaching. If the only person who preaches every Sunday is an old, white man with a grey beard, and no one else is ever in the pulpit, then the message you’re sending to the congregation is that what it means to be a preacher is to be an old white man with a grey beard. The same could be said about any “type” of person. If there is only one gender, or age, or sexual identity, or educational background, or race preaching in the pulpit, then no matter what the preacher says about inclusion or embrace, the message that is preached is that only one type of person is allowed to preach. You can only be a preacher if you look this way. Uh uh, you don’t have to look a certain way to preach the good news.

And while we’re on the subject of looks, let’s talk about fashion: what the preacher wears. And I don’t mean Dulce and Gabbana or Loui Votton, though a preacher who wears these expensive designers may need to read the text from last week about a camel fitting through the eye of a needle before a rich person can go into heaven. I digress. What about what the preacher wears? Should the preacher wear something that clearly indicates that he or she is THE PREACHER, set apart, holy, different from the rest of the congregation: a stole, clerical collar, a robe? And, while you may be thinking, what’s the big deal? Who cares what the preacher wears?! Let us think of the theological message this “set apart” clothing communicates. If the preacher and only the preacher gets a special outfit, stole, robe, collar then no matter what is preached about how we’re all ministers, how every believer is a priest before God, how we can all proclaim the good news, the message the preacher’s outfit is proclaiming is that only some of us special, holy folk are good enough to wear God’s garments and proclaim God’s good news. Uh uh, you don’t have to have special outfit to preach the good news.

And what about where you preach? Behind a big pulpit so that if you’re not above 5 feet tall you need a special stool for people to see you? On a raised platform so that if you’re in a wheelchair you have no way of accessing the pulpit? Can only tall adults preach? Are people in wheelchairs not allowed to preach the good news? While I say some of these things with an air of sarcasm in my voice, I hope that my words bear an element of truth. Because when a preacher stands behind a big pulpit on a raised platform or sits in special chair that looks more like a throne or has an altar rail separating the clergy from the laity, that preaches something theological. The words that make up our sermons mean very little if they don’t match what the location, or outfit, or personality of the preacher is saying.

In contemporary media and culture we know enough of the hypocrisy of preachers. It seems that rarely a day goes by when we don’t hear about a preacher whose words pointed to the ten commandments—do not covet another person’s wife, do not steal—and that same preacher has an affair with the secretary or steals from the church’s budget. We are well-versed in the division between what preachers say and what preachers do.

So, preach the gospel. Use words if necessary. Think about the message we’re preaching with our actions and inactions. For as Isaiah tells us “you shall be called priests of the Lord, you shall be named ministers of our God.” I’m not the only preacher in the room today. And I’m not simply referring to all of our other ordained ministers like Willis and Terry and Micky. I’m referring to all of you. You don’t need a special outfit to preach the good news to the oppressed. You don’t need to stand behind a pulpit to bind up the broken hearted. You don’t have to be a man, white, straight, making $80,000/year with a Masters degree to preach liberty to the captives.

YOU are God’s preachers. YOU are the priests and ministers of our God. YOU are called and empowered to preach release to the prisoners. NOW is the year of the Lord’s favor. I’ve got good news, Shell Ridge. You can be anything you want to be. Now go preach that good news to the world!
Amen.

Open to Change

A Sermon by Greg Ledbetter |September 6, 2009 | 14th Sunday after Pentecost

Scripture: Mark 7:24-37

So I’m thinking of getting one of those “WWJD” bracelets … you know, “What Would Jesus Do?”. The phrase and the resulting wearable accessories came out of the evangelical corner of the church … probably some 25 years ago. The phrase was most popular, I would guess, in the 80’s and 90’s. WWJD was meant to keep the believer mindful of Jesus in ticklish moments of moral decision-making where their own baser instincts might lead them astray. I guess it was sort of like a portable cold-shower or nagging parent. Angela, did you ever wear any WWJD paraphernalia? [Ed. note – Angela responded that while in high school she handed out WWJD bracelets in the Walmart parking lot. Hmm.]

If WWJD was made popular by so-called evangelicals, I think things got interesting when more progressive and liberal Christians noticed the phrase, and, surprisingly, liked the phrase, and started asking: “Yeah, what WOULD Jesus do?” As bombs began dropping in the first and then the second gulf war, bumper stickers started showing up on beat-up Volvos which is the obvious car of choice for left-leaning Christians. The bumper stickers played off of the WWJD question and asked, rather provocatively: “Who would Jesus bomb?” As I saw more and more bumper stickers that asked those kinds of difficult questions, it seems that I saw fewer and fewer bumper stickers and bracelets that asked the original question.

You see, I think it can be very dangerous to ask “What would Jesus do?” Because asking the question will lead to some uncomfortable answers. Let’s take today’s passage, for example … today’s scripture reading from Mark’s gospel.

Now we know from our own reading and from classes and sermons in this place that a fair piece of Jesus’ ministry was done among folk that “good and proper” folk seemed to avoid. That is to say that much of Jesus’ ministry was among the marginal and the broken and the dispossessed. In a culture with some pretty rigid boundaries that determined who was in and who was out, there were a lot of marginal, broken and dispossessed folk in the time of Jesus.

If you think about it, Jesus must have been sending off some pretty strong vibes that said to the marginal, broken and dispossessed folk: ‘I have good news and real hope for the likes of you.’ Otherwise, why would these folk in their need, so long and so effectively put off by the religious establishment, come flocking to Jesus, ferreting him out even when he did his best to hide away for the sake of his own need for rest?

So if, when bombs are dropping, it’s fair to ask: “Who would Jesus bomb?” … then when mud is being slung on and around Capitol hill during the healthcare debates, then—with this morning’s reading fresh in our minds, I think it’s fair to ask: “Who would Jesus heal?” What WOULD Jesus do?

This morning’s gospel reading depicts Jesus doing just the kind of thing we have come to expect from him. Jesus is moving and ministering outside of the comfort zones of most others—including his own disciples. He’s always slipping off the main road out to ditches and cardboard shacks where the “dogs of society howl”—a little Elton John reference, but it’s not a bad one. Most of Jesus’ ministry runs counter to the grain and counter to the well-worn grooves of the faith of his upbringing. And today’s reading is no different. It seems that even Jesus’ travel itinerary is meant to symbolize his unconventional understanding of just who it is God’s love and mercy and healing is meant for.

Jesus spent most of his life and ministry in Galilee—what you might think of as “northern Israel”. But occasionally, as in Mark’s gospel this morning, Jesus left Galilee for the gentile regions. Jesus travels to the region of Tyre which is northwest of Galilee on the Mediterranean coast. It’s possible that Jesus’ notoriety was such that the crowds made it hard to move about and get any rest. It is there that he enters a home and Mark makes it very clear that Jesus is trying to get away from the public eye. This may be Mark’s way of demonstrating the humanity of Jesus and the effects of endlessly giving without pausing to replenish one’s energy. Jesus tries to slip into the home unnoticed … incognito … but before he knows it, a gentile woman is before him begging him to rid her daughter of an unclean spirit.

Jesus surely had many healing encounters in his travels, but Mark preserves this one because of the peculiar exchange Jesus has with the woman and what it implies for his ministry … and, of course, what it implies for Mark’s community.

Let’s remember the exchange: The gentile woman asks for healing for her daughter, and Jesus, knowing she was a Syrophoenician gentile, replies: “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

Many people, upon reading that, are shocked by Jesus’ response … its harshness and seeming callousness. What happened to “gentle Jesus, meek and mild”? Commentators are all over the place on interpreting this text. But in general, let’s understand that Jesus’ words simply echo a strong sentiment that his primary ministry should be focused on the people of his own faith, the children of Israel … the Jews. This sentiment would be especially true for Jewish Christians. It’s a matter of not throwing the pearls of Jesus before the swine of the gentiles. It’s not just a matter of to whom Jesus essentially came to minister, but it is also a matter of whether non-Jews were even worthy of his ministry.

It seems to be a question of whether or not God’s gracious mercy is only wide enough for the original family members, or if it is, in fact, wider than that … wide enough to encompass those beyond the original family. This essential conflict of perspective and understanding has perpetuated itself endlessly from Jesus’ time to our own … and if we had the time, we could name some of those ways.

As I see it, as portrayed by Mark, Jesus is merely, and with some calculation, repeating the Jewish-Christian party line to the gentile woman—but with a twinkle in his eye and just a trace of sarcasm in his voice. “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

The gentile woman understands that Jesus is not necessarily committing himself to the party line, but giving lip-service to it as a bit of a goad to see how she will respond. It’s a bit of a theological fencing match … parry, and now thrust.

“Oh yeah?” she says, in essence. “Even if your ghastly portrayal of your mission—and your representation of God—is correct … and, just for the sake of argument, let’s say that it is … that the “dogs” shouldn’t get any of your “bread” … even in that depiction the stray dogs under the table will yet find scraps and crumbs that will feed their hunger and supply their need.

“In other words,” and I imagine this as a finger-wagging lecture of a now broadly smiling Jesus, “In other words, you know good and well that the gospel you have been proclaiming and the gospel you have been working out in your ministry of healing demonstrates a God whose goodness cannot be contained or limited in any way. God’s love poured into you cannot help but overflow from you into any life that will seek and accept that love, even a Syrophoenician gentile woman like me. Now … heal my daughter (dammit)!”

For me, that is the only tenable way to understand this encounter … this exchange … the only way to understand Jesus’ crass and cruel words to the woman … as a bit of a gauntlet thrown down to demonstrate the woman’s determination and … to demonstrate the extraordinary wideness of God’s mercy.

By the time Mark’s gospel was written, the mission to the gentiles was a rather large bone of contention and likely there were, in Mark’s community, Mark’s church, those who considered gentiles unworthy of their attention, unworthy of God’s mercy and unworthy of membership in the community of Christ. “Dogs” is the derisive term that might be spat from their mouths, which, from the perspective of Jan’s and my canine companions, might seem like pretty high praise.

Let’s remember that every time we read the Gospels, we need to keep two very particular contexts in mind. There is the context the writer seeks to portray of the actual life and ministry of Jesus in Jesus’ own time. And there is the context of the writer and the writer’s community and their particular challenges and needs and perspectives.

In Jesus’ time there was, one might say, a simple prejudice against non-Jews … against gentiles. And, of course, we know what a good Jewish man like Jesus would have thought about women. So Mark’s story viewed from the perspective of Jesus’ time is a fairly simple one of Jesus, as Jesus so often did, simply crossing the old boundaries like a river of mercy overflowing its banks.

But viewed from the perspective of Mark’s time, the church is beginning to be established and its mission and priorities worked out. There is the natural question in any church of where its best energies should be expended and, less nobly, who is in and who is out. Did Jesus come to save only the Jews? Or did Jesus come to cast a wide net of Shalom over all people? This is a question that is very much on the minds of Mark’s community.

And today’s healing story may very well be Mark’s way of using a turning point in Jesus’ own ministry to preach at his people of a turning point needed in their ministry.

A door that once was closed seems to have been opened and once that kind of door has been opened, it’s nearly impossible to close it back. Once people “get” these hints about the wideness of God’s mercy that go all the way back to Isaiah and even further, then there’s no telling who might be worthy of the full gospel of Jesus and the healing and the grace and the goodness he has to offer.

And this “opening” that begins with the brassy Syrophoenician woman continues and becomes explicit with the healing of the deaf, mute man. Remember that the word Jesus speaks to the man is “Ephphatha” … an Aramaic word that means “be opened”. And if it is a word that Jesus intends for this suffering man, it is ESPECIALLY a word Mark intends for his deaf/mute community with their stunted understanding of Jesus’ mission and mercy.

Take note that in the instance of the deaf and mute man, Jesus orders the man and his friends to be silent—which is quite a bit like trying to put a fire out by pouring gas on it. Good news of this magnitude cannot be squelched … cannot be muted. The man is graciously and miraculously given back his powers of speech and now you think he’s going to be silent about it? I don’t think so. As witness to the goodness of God, even the STONES will shout, Jesus said.

“Be opened!” Mark says to his community. Stop trying to control the flow of God’s love … stop trying to erect dikes and damns against the river of God’s healing mercy. Allow that healing mercy to flow through YOU … through the church … through your proclamations … through your prophetic words and actions.

On this Labor Day Sunday, we do a serious injustice to Jesus and to Mark and to these healing stories if we don’t step back and allow them to get into a marquis wrestling match with some of the painful realities of our own time and place. High unemployment. Healthcare for the lucky ones who can afford it. The working poor. Labor Day is a “holiday” of painful irony for those who have no job to take a holiday from … or those who have jobs that underpay them and offer them no benefits … or those whose lack of health insurance deprives them from the medical attention they need or, if they pursue it, can easily bankrupt them.

Dan Clendenin is a minister and writer who tells about a heart-rending movie by independent film maker Kelly Reichardt:

“Reichardt’s movie, Wendy and Lucy, explores the people in America who are one sickness or accident away from personal catastrophe. Wendy and her dog Lucy are stranded in a depressing mill town in Oregon after leaving Indiana for a better life in Alaska. Wendy is frugal and resourceful. She records her expenditures in a spiral notebook. She sleeps in her car, collects cans and bottles for spare change, and freshens up in gas station bathrooms.

“After fruitless attempts to find work, Wendy observes to a security guard who's befriended her that you can't get a job without an address or a phone number. She has neither, of course. "Heck," he replies, "you can't get an address without an address, or a job without a job. It's all rigged." Minor infractions with rule-keeping bureaucrats reap major consequences for Wendy. When her twenty-year old car needs a $2,000 repair, we find her in the last scene hopping a train. Where will she go, and what will happen to her?”

Pulitzer Prize winning writer, David Shipler, shows how for people like Wendy poverty can be both a cause of problems and the result of problems. In his book, The Working Poor, Invisible in America (2004), Shipler says: “A run-down apartment can exacerbate a child’s asthma, which leads to a call for an ambulance, which generates a medical bill that cannot be paid, which ruins a credit record, which hikes the interest rate on an auto loan, which forces the purchase of an unreliable used car, which jeopardizes a mother’s punctuality at work, which limits her promotions and earning capacity, which confines her to poor housing, which exacerbates a child’s asthma, which …."

It’s a nauseating downward spiral that is horrifically real to so many people today.

This morning’s scripture depicts a turning point—an opening up—in Mark’s community … turning from guarding and restricting the generous mercy of God to a new openness to sharing the generous mercy of God. It is in that turning and opening and sharing that Mark’s community receives back its own life and the full generous mercy of God for themselves.

Our own lives, our own church, our own communities, our own nation needs to hear, on this Labor Day Sunday, that Word afresh … with renewed power: that we will receive the blessings of life and the blessings of God most fully when we cease to guard and restrict our wealth and our power … lest the unwashed and unworthy poor get what was mostly gift and unearned blessing for so many of us anyway.

When we are opened to the full humanity and worthiness of all … and when, in our opening, the generous and healing mercy of God is channeled through us… it is then, and perhaps only then some might say, that we are opened to the abiding and saving presence of the God of all people. Close God’s generous grace to others and by our act we close God’s grace to ourselves. Open God’s grace to others and God will richly abide in us as God seeks to richly abide in all.

What would Jesus do?

No … it’s not quite the right question. What IS Jesus doing through you and through me … here … now.

Amen.

Do-ers of the Word

A Sermon by Greg Ledbetter |August 30, 2009 | 13th Sunday after Pentecost

Scriptures: Song of Solomon 2:8-13 ; James 1:17-27; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Those of us who are more or less of our ilk can often find ourselves suspended between two human ideals ... ideals that are familiar to our faith.

One ideal concerns the “centered life” ... the fulfilment of our human potential ... the deepening of our inner wells ... the artful creation of a life within ... the hallowing of one’s spirit and soul ... the sacredness of simply “being”.

The other ideal concerns the “engaged” life ... re-enacting the puritan work ethic ... the desire to be of use and the fear of being useless ... embracing frenetic activity and loathing the sedentary life characterized by the phrase: “I’d rather burn out than rust out.” ... the simple imperative of “doing”.

Philosophers and theologians have played a kind of mental teeter-totter on the two seats and sides of this seeming paradox between the quietly centered life and the energetically engaged life. We all have our favourite thinkers on matters and conundrums like these.

One of my favorite philosophers is named “Earl”. Just Earl. He might have a last name, but I don’t know it. Nearly every day I go to where I know I can find Earl. Whenever I go there, Earl’s always there. Earl’s retired and there doesn’t seem there’s any place he’s particularly interested in going except where I find him—which is either at home or sitting on a park bench with his buddy. Earl is not a vaunted philosopher ... he hasn’t written any books—though he’s been featured in books ... he’s probably never given a speech. In particular he’s fond of aphorisms ... little pithy sayings usually made famous by better known philosophers.

Now like many of us, Earl struggles with discerning the right balance between being centered and being engaged ... between being and doing. In my time with Earl, it seems clear that “being” has a clear advantage over “doing” in his daily life.

Just the other day Earl was in his advanced thinking position which, to the uninformed eye, might look like simply laying on the couch. Earl’s wife Opal happens by and pauses in silence very likely wondering if Earl is thinking ... sleeping ... or simply dead. Earl ends the suspense by saying: “Just because I’m lying here on the sofa doesn’t mean I’m wasting time.” Earl goes on to say: “Someone once said, ‘The time you enjoy wasting isn’t wasted time.’” Opal reflects on this and then says, as only the spouse of a philosopher can, “Then you’re probably the happiest man alive.”

While those of us who are Earl’s acquaintances might think the struggle between being and doing is quite settled for our retired and thoroughly relaxed philosopher friend, there are times when the impetus to do and act and engage nearly moves him to do these things. A recent day found Earl sitting on his front steps gripping the top stair looking quite focused and determined. Opal approaches and Earl turns and asks: “You want to know what I’m doing?” “O .... kay ...” Opal says. Sometimes Opal is content to leave Earl be and not ask too many questions. “I’m forcing myself NOT to be a grumpy old man. No one likes them. So ... I’m changing my ways. See?” he says pointing toward the street, “Those teenagers are cutting across our lawn and I’m not yelling or saying a word. I’m adopting a Buddhist approach: “Don’t just do something; sit there.” With that, he closes his eyes, fiercely grips the top step and begins to wobble and vibrate with the forced effort. After a moment of watching his best efforts at practicing the Zen mind, Opal says: “I think you’d better do SOMETHING, Earl. Your face is turning purple and smoke is coming out of your ears.”

Oh, by the way, if you’d like to meet Earl and Opal, you’re welcome to join me some morning as I gather with them between the pages of the morning comics under the title of their particular strip which simply reads: “Pickles”.

So this is the “pickle” that we sometimes find ourselves in and it’s the same pickle facing James’ community in this morning’s epistle reading: the seemingly opposite pull between centering and engaging ... between being and doing.

Within our lives as modern Christians we can feel the pull in each of these directions. There is the pull of the quiet place ... the moments of prayer ... meditation and solitude ... orienting the inner strands of your being much as a Zen priest rakes the sand in his garden. Those of us who have found the warmth and light of God’s presence and being in these times and practices can’t be faulted for wishing to dwell in that place ... to return again and again to that sacred presence. And those who are deeply rooted in these ways in the ground of God’s being are an enormous blessing to those others of us who distract easily and who sit still only with great effort. [They are a blessing because they are ... ]

For these others, there’s the rush of engagement ... the job to do and to do well ... the call and response with our lives and energies ... the lavish spending of oneself in the service of high ideals amidst the nitty-gritty details of life ... to echo with one’s life the credo of the writer, Jack London who said: I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time. Those of us who prefer to engage our hands in prayer yet know that our world has been deeply blessed by the engagers and responders and do-ers.

And so seemingly, we’re back to the mental teeter-totter ... the two seats and sides of this seeming paradox between the quietly centered life and the energetically engaged life ... the seemingly opposite pull between being and doing ... between faith and works.

Now I’ve framed these polarities in this last way—“faith and works”—because a cursory reading of the New Testament might lead one to think that faith and works are somehow mutually exclusive ... that they cannot co-exist within one person ... that there’s a choice one has to make between them ... or that one is somehow superior to the other.

You’ll probably remember that Paul, the Apostle, placed a great deal of emphasis on becoming “right” with God through faith alone. “Justification by faith through grace” is of Paul’s theology in his letters to the Romans and Galatians ... and powerfully echoed by Martin Luther 1500 years later. Paul was rejecting the belief that one’s efforts, one’s “works” were in any way sufficient for “salvation” ... for being in a right and eternal relationship with God. But it was not “good works” per se that were at stake for Paul. Paul was not advocating against living out one’s life in the manner of Jesus. He was simply saying that the intricate, demanding religious practices centered around the minutiae of the Law might very well lead the practitioner away from understanding the pure, unearned GRACE of God that was present in Jesus.

There are those who think they read between the lines of the New Testament a conflict between the theologies of James and Paul. But I’m not so sure.

The Letter of James isn’t really a “letter” per se. It is more a kind of New Testament wisdom writing. The author is writing in the spirit and name of James, the brother of Jesus and an early church leader. The author is a Christian teacher or preacher seeking to offer guidance to Christians on “everyday faithfulness”. In particular, the author of James emphasized the “works of faith” and “the law of love in action”. Faith WITHOUT works—without corresponding acts of compassion and kindness and mercy—faith without those kinds of works was really no faith at all ... that kind of faith is a sham ... a phony ... a mockery of TRUE faith.

Emphasis on “works” made Martin Luther nervous and he wasn’t even sure that James was a “Christian” writing and not sure that it should’ve been included in the New Testament. But I don’t think Martin Luther was at odds at all with the concept of “faith at work” or “love in action”. Luther wrote a whole treatise on “Good Works”.

And James, the letter, is not at all at odds with Paul or Martin Luther and the idea of the all-sufficiency of God’s grace. James is grounded in the assumption of God’s great love and grace as the soil out of which the fruits of our faithfulness grow. James simply asks the question of his community and every Christian community since: “If you don’t bear fruit befitting the great love and mercy of God, then the soil in which you’re planted may be sterile and dead.”

To say it even more pointedly: “If the good words we speak and affirm don’t find a corresponding commitment and activity in our lives ... then the faith we claim is in danger of being no faith at all.”

It strikes me that this nation is a nation of “good words” ... in the past we’ve been referred to in high places as a “city on a hill”—an echo of Isaiah’s reference to Israel as a “light to the nations”. Even if as a nation we do not have a common creed ... a common faith, we have high ideals that are well summarized by Emma Lazarus’ poem that interprets that intention of the Statue of Liberty. Here is one way of depicting the “good words and ideals” of this nation:

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

We are in the middle of an ugly, knock-down, drag-out battle over national health care. The battle is the new locus of the highly partisan war for the heart of this nation and its voters. In regard to the question of national health care, I know where I stand and many of us stand. Many of us are confident we know where God privately and perhaps not-so-privately stands in this battle. But without invoking God’s name, we can yet put Lady Liberty’s compassionate vision as the appropriate backdrop against which all of our conversations about the welfare of the most vulnerable of our nation’s people should be held. Use the vision as a bit of a litmus test, if we will, of whether or not we, as a nation, really do live up to the words of compassion and mercy and justice that are etched in brass in a New York harbour.

As I think about Lady Liberty’s grand vision—a vision that is deeply consistent with any so-called Christian ethic ... and as I think about the tens of millions of American without health insurance who are being bandied about like pawns in this healthcare debate, I can’t help but be reminded of Jesus’ words from this morning’s reading from Mark where he castigates the hypocrisy of those whose faith is without works:

‘This people honors me with their lips,

but their hearts are far from me;

Will we choose faith or works? Will we choose grand, eloquent words and high-minded ideals? Or will we choose to act in mercy and compassion and justice?

Let’s be VERY clear that any of us who feel that we need to choose between faith and action are facing a false dilemma. It may help to return to the image of the teeter-totter which does not suggest disconnected realities, but profoundly connected and interdependent matters of our lives of faith.

As someone has suggested:"Faith" and "works" are not opposed; they're not even disconnected. The truly wise, truly faithful individual is known not by what they say they believe, but in how they live what they believe. After all, according to Eugene Peterson, "Wisdom is not primarily knowing the truth, although it certainly includes that; it is skill in living. For what good is a truth if we don't know how to live it? What good is an intention if we can't sustain it?"

One of the great pains in this time of recession is the spectre of unemployment. California is at the highest recorded level of unemployment since modern measures of joblessness began. Unemployment is tragic at several levels, but not the least of which is that the energies and ideas and the “usefulness” of an extraordinary number of our employable neighbors are not being utilized.

James’ concern is that the Word of God—the heart, mind, spirit and intentions of God’s own being were under-employed, under-utilized, largely un-realized in the lives of too many who made great professions of faith. James urges his listeners, then and now, to take rich and living faith we have embraced and internalized ... to the next step. To plant that faith and to allow it to flourish in rich and compassionate acts and decisions. Loving action rooted in deep faith. That’s the call of James to us and it’s a call that can be heard and heeded by any person of good faith and good conscience whose professed ideals are underemployed and underutilized.

We are human “beings” ... spiritual souls capable of great depth. Let us also hear the call to be human “doings”—hearing within the truthful depths of our souls the call to employ the just and merciful ideals of God’s own heart ... and the life and ministry of Jesus the Christ.

Faith at work. Love in action. Hearers AND Doers of God’s word of grace, mercy and peace.

Amen.

At Home in the Shalom of God

^{A Sermon by The Rev. Greg Ledbetter | August 23, 2009 | 12th Sunday After Pentecost}

^{Scripture: Psalm 84}

^{Do you love a good adventure? A time of excitement and challenge?}

^{For me a good adventure often centers around camping in the “great outdoors” ... hunkering down among the sparks and cinders of a campfire, slapping at a few friendly flying critters, bathing daily in SPF 70 sunscreen as Jan insists should be my custom, staggering up and down mountain trails while the dogs chase varmints. THAT is really living.}

^{Now I know, there are among us gentle souls who find that stepping from the shower onto the bare tile of a strange motel room to be wild and woolly enough for their refined sensibilities. If they’ll allow me to show them REAL living, I’ll drag them along to Mexico sometime where we stand barefoot (and often in the “all together”) on uneven and muddy concrete floors and luxuriate under one and a half gallons of drizzling, luke-warm water ... SUCH LUXURY! When I come home after such an experience and realize—after the fact—that I’ve just used ten gallons of water to rinse my hair ... well.}

^{Showers were few and far between in our campgrounds this summer, but Jan and I were amused by one camper’s determination to not altogether forsake the comforts of home. This tent camper, camping in a rustic high altitude campground, brought along his satellite TV dish, a television and a portable generator for powering up the whole mess. We walked around the campground one evening and while everyone else sat around their campfires talking and roasting marshmallows, this camper sat in front of his bear box where he’d placed his TV and watched the evening news.}

^{For those of us for whom camping is appealing and meaningful, we might well puzzle, as I have this summer, over this rather odd enjoyment we get out of choosing to live for a time as nomads ... as those without permanent homes ... to live lightly and with fewer possessions and attachments ... to live, as so many do all around us, as though we were ... homeless.}

^{I think for many, the simplicity of life lived out of a tent and over a Coleman stove is such a refreshing contrast to their work-a-day lives burdened with cramped schedules, multiple obligations and all of the “stuff” that we accumulate so easily in this acquisitive age. When Jan and I travelled to Vermont four summers ago to share in our old church’s bicentennial celebration, we travelled with two small suitcases. In one suitcase we took a few clothes and our toiletries. In the other suitcase we carried a small tent, an inflatable mattress and a few blankets. And except for food, we needed nothing else. We continue to look back on that time of paring things back to ONLY the essentials as a kind of golden time ... a time remarkably special in ways we still have trouble explaining.}

^{And by contrast, for those of us who are blessed to have homes—and we know that’s not all of us ... but for those who are, do we not know of times when, in spite of a roof over our heads, we felt strangely “away from home”, without belonging, rootless and placeless ... ? Could it be that our “homes” and all that go with them can keep us from understanding what it means to “be at home”?}

^{What does “home” mean for us? What does it mean to “be at home”? Is “home” a matter of “bricks and mortar”, a roof over the head? Or will we consider that “home” is a far deeper matter than that?}

^{Be sure that this is not a modern matter, a modern anxiety, these questions and concerns about “home”. Even in the Hebrew scriptures there appears to be consternation and differing opinions about where and how one is most at home ... and even the questions of God’s home ... God’s dwelling ... God’s abiding place.}

^{Today’s text, Psalm 84, is understood to be a song of pilgrims making their way to Jerusalem and the Temple where God’s presence is thought to have dwelled. We have sung the song with the pilgrims already, but let me read the opening phrases once again:}

^{How lovely is your dwelling place,}

^{O God of hosts!}

^{My soul longs, indeed it faints}

^{for the courts of God;}

^{my heart and my flesh}

^{sing for joy to the living God.}

^{Even the sparrow finds a home,}

^{and the swallow a nest for herself,}

^{where she may lay her young, at your altars,}

^{O God of hosts, my Ruler and my God.}

^{Happy are those who live in your house,}

^{ever singing your praise.}

^{The Temple as God’s home.}

^{I saw a tiny clip the other night of Jay Leno doing an embarrassing interview with a young woman. Jay asked the woman “Who lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?” She puzzles for a moment and then says: “I have NO idea.” Jay then asks: “Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?” On the woman’s face is immediate recognition and she cries out: “Sponge Bob!” Yikes.}

^{No pilgrim in the time of the Psalmist would have been stumped by the question: “Where does God live?” Of COURSE God lives in the Temple. The Temple is God’s home ... the Temple is God’s throne from which God rules God’s people. The psalm reflects the belief that of all the places in the world that God could choose to dwell, God chooses to live in the Temple and there to be served and worshipped and adored by God’s chosen people.}

^{And God’s dwelling place, as depicted in this psalm, is a place of great and gentle welcome. Even the tiny feathered beings of creation can nest and find rest in the precincts of God. Even strangers and foreigners who reach out to God’s presence, as the psalm goes on to say, even they will find a gracious and hospitable place and a gracious and hospitable God.}

^{It’s too bad that this ancient sense of the hospitality of God and God’s dwelling place doesn’t receive the same rigorous attention as, say, the Ten Commandments. If those who think of themselves as “Judeo-Christian” believed that any place God dwelt should be a place of gracious hospitality and kindly welcome, what a different world this would be. What a WONDERFUL world this would be.}

^{This psalm of pilgrimage contains echoes of one of this summer’s themes from Peace Camp. Our resident theologian, Rita Nakashima Brock, reminded us that for the first thousand years of the church’s existence, “paradise” was not so much a place beyond sight or a place beyond time, but an earthly dream that sought embodiment in the here and now. The Temple for the Hebrew pilgrim in the time of the psalmist was a kind of earthly paradise ... a place where one’s whole being could co-mingle with the heart and being and goodness of the Creator of the Universe. Imagine joining with that pilgrimage toward Jerusalem, toward the Temple, toward paradise ... and imagine feeling that yearning to simply be in the presence of God where prayers and songs flowed as naturally from the center of your soul as breath did from your lungs. To be at home in God’s home: PARADISE. And to know that in God’s presence, in God’s home, you are fully welcome, fully safe, fully embraced: PARADISE.}

^{It is as St. Augustine said in his “Confessions” many years later: “Our souls know no rest until they find their rest in thee.”}

^{Do we not come to this place of worship each Sunday with some of that happy yearning still within us? The yearning of the pilgrim who leaves home to find her or his truest home?}

^{Standing alongside the psalmist’s worshipful certainty that the Temple was God’s true and permanent home are notes of concern and caution ... concern and caution about being overly confident that one could know exactly God’s whereabouts ... concern and caution about whether one could build a home for God and then “keep” God there ... concern and caution that there were even deeper matters than the worship of God that should not be neglected—matters of justice and mercy.}

^{You may remember that earlier this summer one of the texts of the day concerned Nathan the prophet having to puncture King David’s ardent dream of building a home for God—building the Temple. Until the time of David, God had been more or less ... homeless ... God was a vagrant God ... wandering from place to place as the people of Israel wandered toward a home, but not yet in possession of a home. But within the wisdom of the Hebrew scriptures there is an awareness that that was not all bad. There was a proximity to God that was rich and altogether different than if God were to be “ensconced” in a temple made of hewn stone.}

^{It’s sort of like the families we saw this summer gathered around campfires, their faces glowing in the flicker of the flames and glowing with the joy of simply being together. When they leave the sacred simplicity of the mountains, will they still come together as they did while camping? Or ... will they return to the many things that continuously draw them apart?}

^{In pilgrimage and with God having no home other than the “tent of meeting”, God was especially close and real. Within the wisdom of the Hebrew scriptures there is a legitimate fear of too closely identifying God with any one place ... and a fear that once a “permanent” home has been built for God, God’s people will begin to believe they have captured God ... the majestic wildness of God now somehow contained and channelled and controlled to serve the people who claim to be serving God.}

^{In today’s other lectionary text from the Hebrew scriptures, which I did not read, King Solomon—King David’s son—is offering a prayer of dedication for the newly constructed temple he has been allowed to build. He asks in this prayer: "But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built!"}

^{The Temple may serve as a large and semi-permanent “tent of meeting” where God meets those who call upon God. But let us not think that somehow any temple or any cathedral or any church or any faith or any denomination or any single soul can somehow contain the allness and the fullness of the God of all creation.}

^{That kind of thinking, the “God in a box” kind of thinking, is what provokes the wrath of the prophets who alone, sometimes, seem to understand the “wild, holy and free” nature of the God who will not contained ... or constrained. To imagine that one has boxed up God or imprisoned God with one’s religious edifice is fail to hear God’s cry that the truest worship of God and the fullest experience of dwelling in the presence of God is when justice and righteousness are the ground upon which the worshippers kneel when they pray to God.}

^{Amos the prophet was a simple shepherd from Tekoa. And sometimes it takes the simple ones to see the truth that those who are brighter and wealthier choose to ignore. Amos is looking at the nation of Israel long after the Temple had been built. The walls and ceilings of the Temple were stained dark with the smoke of the fires of sacrifice that the priests were sure that God desired above anything. The people were quite confident that God’s permanent presence in the Temple—and permanent blessing on the people was a given, no matter how far they strayed from the ideals of God’s heart. But Amos, dwelling outside the inner circle of privilege saw the results of a people who went through the motions of the faith, but no longer understood the heart of the faith. And so he declares judgment upon the people of Israel with these words:}

^{because you trample on the poor}

^{and take from them levies of grain,}

^{you have built houses of hewn stone,}

^{but you shall not live in them;}

^{you have planted pleasant vineyards,}

^{but you shall not drink their wine.}

^{For I know how many are your transgressions,}

^{and how great are your sins—}

^{you who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe,}

^{and push aside the needy in the gate.}

^{Seek good and not evil,}

^{that you may live;}

^{and so the Lord, the God of hosts, will be with you,}

^{just as you have said.}

^{Hate evil and love good,}

^{and establish justice in the gate;}

^{it may be that the Lord, the God of hosts,}

^{will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph.}

^{I hate, I despise your festivals,}

^{and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.}

^{Even though you offer me your burnt-offerings and grain-offerings,}

^{I will not accept them;}

^{and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals}

^{I will not look upon.}

^{Take away from me the noise of your songs;}

^{I will not listen to the melody of your harps.}

^{But let justice roll down like waters,}

^{and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.}

^{You know with a little counselling and cognitive therapy, Amos could have turned those grim thoughts into happy thoughts.}

^{Where does God live? Where does God dwell? Where can we find the “courts of God”? The Temple in Jerusalem is long gone ... and long gone, I think, is that God is to be too closely identified with any one place ... or any one religious practice or people. The lingering message of Amos is that God is to be found where justice and righteousness are made manifest. The building blocks of this Temple that cannot be built with human hands are: acts of mercy and kindness ... the struggle for fairness ... the work to end oppression and injustice ... the lifelong labor for the fulfilment of the vision of Shalom. And the building blocks are human beings of all places and inclinations who choose every day and in ever thought and action to “seek good and not evil.”}

^{Amos says: “Seek good and not evil, that you may live; and so the Lord, the God of hosts, will be with you.”}

^{There’s an ad on TV you may have seen. A camera follows a little boy as he wanders around his neighbourhood in some far off, foreign land. You can see that he’s wandering around with a little tape recorder recording all of the familiar sounds of home. And then you see him playing these sounds over the phone to his homesick sister who is in college in a far off place.}

^{Echoes of home ... echoes of our true home. Our true home is in the heart of God’s being and the sounds and the sights and the tastes and feel that are the essence of the heart of God’s being are the sounds and sights, tastes and feel of Shalom—peace with justice, righteousness mingled with mercy.}

^{We are each, in our own way, pilgrims on a journey from where we are to a place beyond our sight. Not beyond our sight because it is hidden in some heavenly cloud, but because it is a peaceful dream that is yet beyond our reach. And still we journey on, as pilgrims do, journeying toward God, journeying with God, sharing the joy of the dream of Shalom as we travel and sing. And I think it would be a fair revision of today’s psalm to exchange the vision of an earthly Temple for the vision of a temple of justice and righteousness, where all have a place and a purpose, where all may find and make a home in peace:}

^{How lovely is your Shalom,}

^{O God of hosts!}

^{My soul longs, indeed it faints}

^{for the Shalom of God;}

^{my heart and my flesh}

^{sing for joy to the living God.}

^{Even the sparrow finds a home,}

^{and the swallow a nest for herself,}

^{where she may lay her young, within your Shalom,}

^{O God of hosts, my Ruler and my God.}

^{Happy are those who live in your Shalom,}

^{ever singing your praise.}

^Amen.