[Advent 1: Hope]

Last night I read the d'var Torah that Velveteen Rabbi offered that morning at her shul on this week's parsha, "Vayishlach."

She talks about Jacob wrestling with the angel and says:

Having received a new name, Jacob bestows a new name: he names that place, that bend in the river, Peni'el, literally "the face of God," saying, "For I have seen God face-to-face, yet my life has been spared."

(which is really interesting in and of itself, given the multi-vocality of Scripture on seeing the face of God -- e.g., God to Moses in Exodus 33:20 "you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live.") and then talks about Jacob's encounter with Esau, where he says:

No, please, if I have truly found favor in your sight, take the offering from my hand; for to see your face is like seeing the face of God.

She closes with the bit from the Talmud about each individual human being being created in the image of God but each of us are unique -- unlike identical imperial coins each stamped with the mark of the secular leader.

This all seemed quite a lovely connection to Molly's "Light Gets In" Advent theme. But then she closes the post with her 70 Faces Torah poem on this parsha, which ends with such a downer:

For one impossible moment Jacob reached out.
To see your face, he said, is like seeing
the face of God: brother, it is so good!

But when Esau replied, let us journey together
from this day forward as we have never done
and I will proceed at your pace, Jacob demurred.

The children are frail, and the flocks:
you go on ahead, he said, and I will follow
but he did not follow.

Once Esau headed out toward Seir
Jacob went the other way, to Shechem, where
his sons would slaughter an entire village.

And again the possibility
of inhabiting a different kind of story
vanished into the unforgiving air.

***

The theme for this year’s Advent is Light Gets In. No matter what walls we throw up, what boxes we climb in or that circumstances put us in—Light gets in. Light will have its way.

This Sunday in worship, I’ll be preaching on the walls humans throw up that block out Christ’s light. We’ll begin building an actual wall in the sanctuary, that will grow each week up until Christmas Eve, when the Light will get in. Will you bring cardboard boxes to church anytime you show up, and leave them on the chancel, and help us duct-tape them together to build our Babel-wall up toward heaven and obscure the cross?

-Molly in This Week at First Church

To my mind, Advent is about the light slowly breaking in (we light first one candle and then a second, and so on), so I don't love this theme.

+

Pre-service lectio divina happened in the Parlor, and as a result we could hear the pre-service choir rehearsal. I heard "Emmanuel, Expected Jesus," and fell into Advent.

...

We did Luke 1:5-25, and I was struck by Gabriel's statement, "I stand in the presence of God."

+

Before service, I picked up a hardcopy of Molly's Advent calendar.

December 2
First Sunday in Advent: Put on your sparkle cream. Glow.

+

Unison Prayer of Confession

Light-Bringer,

We offer you our repentance.
We replace holy days with holidays.
We hurry past opportunities to give the gifts of kindness and honesty.
We do not listen to angels in our dreams, forgive those dearest to us,
Or welcome into hearts and homes, the poor and the stranger.
If all sin is separation, forgive us for all the walls we throw up, and let your Light in.

-Maren Tirabassi, adapted

+

Jamie facilitated an Advent Devotional Workshop, which I attended.

I was starting to investigate the art supplies when the horde of kids who had been playing war or something all came in and decided to do art (well, Simon was like, "Guys, can't we go back to what we were doing before?" and got ignored by all the kids wrapped up in doing art, so he compromised by making pictures of e.g. ninjas) so I stepped back from the chaos and worked on poetry.

Sue D., to her husband, later: "I was looking for the kids, and I found a craft fair, so I sat down."

I think I definitely want to go back to Art Night.

***

I really liked the Call to Worship we used at CWM tonight:

[One] How shall we prepare God's house for the coming of the Promised One?
[Many] With fragrant branches of cedar, the tree of excellence and strength.
[One] How shall we prepare God's house for the Christ child?
[Many] With a stable and a manger where in the weeks to come, the mystery of the Advent story will be revealed and where the entire creation will welcome the Promised One.
[One] How shall we prepare God's house for Emmanuel, God with us?
[Many] With garlands of pine and fir, whose leaves are ever living, ever green -- symbols of our faith in the living God.
[One] How shall we prepare God's house for the prophet of Galilee?
[Many] With sprigs of holly and ivy, telling of Jesus' faithfulness, even unto death and resurrection.
[One] How shall we prepare our hearts for this revelation of God?
[Many] By hearing again the words of the prophets, the stories of the ancestors of Jesus, and the promises of God.
[One] For in the story of Jesus we see revealed the transforming power of God, and we are reminded anew of God's vision of wholeness, justice, and peace for all creation.
[Many] Thanks be to God!

...

Marla preached on Isaiah 11:1-9 and 1 Samuel 16:1-13. I was mostly meh, but she closed with talking about the fact that we ignore the parts of the Biblical stories that don't seem "proper" or "dignified" and inviting us to think about, if Jesus were to come as a baby a second time, what unexpected places that baby might show up in -- and her shocker suggestion was: born to a Wall Street executive (I thought of the Buddha).

[31] Hagar and Ishmael (CWM)

This year, CWM is doing a (mostly off-lectionary) "Advent sermon series on rethinking texts that seem unjust...asking how there might be a re-thinking of the text in a way that provides a justice alternative to the solution that is offered." [read more here]

For the Sunday that Pastor Lisa would be away, I agreed to preach on the story of Hagar and Ishmael -- translation largely thanks to Phyllis Trible.

Genesis 12:1-3, 16:1-14, 21:9-21

(Gen. 12:1-3) God said to Abram, "Go forth from your native land and from your people and from your parents' house, to a land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation. And I will bless you and make your name so great that it will be used in blessings. I will bless those who bless you, and the one despising you I will curse. And all the families of the earth will bless themselves through you."

Fast forward, through stories including Abram, out of fear for his own safety while they are in Egypt, passing his wife Sarai off as his sister and letting the Pharaoh take her as a spouse.

(Gen. 16:1-14) For ten years, Sarai and Abram lived in the land of Canaan and remained childless. Sarai had an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar and one day, Sarai said to Abram, "Behold, God has made me childless. Go, then, to my maid. Perhaps I will be built up from her." So Abram did.

And after Hagar became pregnant, Sarai became slight in her eyes. So Sarai said to Abram, "May the wrong done to me be upon you. I gave my maid to your embrace, but when I saw that she had conceived, then I was slight in her eyes. May God judge between you and me."

But Abram said to Sarai, "Behold, your maid is in your hand. Do to her the good in your eyes." [i.e., "Do to her what you deem right."]

And Sarai afflicted her. So Hagar fled from her. The messenger of God found Hagar in the desert near a spring on the road to Shur. The messenger said, "Hagar, maidservant of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?"

Hagar answered, "From the face of my mistress Sarai I am fleeing."

The messenger said to her, "Return to your mistress and suffer affliction under her hand. I will so greatly multiply your descendants that they cannot be numbered for multitude." Then the messenger continued, "Truly you are pregnant and will bear a son. You will call his name Ishmael ("God hears"), for God has paid heed to your affliction. He will be a wild ass of a man, his hand against everyone and everyone's hand against him. And against the face of all his brothers he will dwell."

Hagar called the name of God who has spoken to her, saying, "You are El-Roi -- God of seeing. Have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing God?" That is why the well is called Beerlahi-roi -- "Well of the Living One Who Sees Me."

Fast forward even more -- God renames Abram and Sarai Abraham and Sarah and makes them the parents of the covenant, through their son Isaac, the son of their old age.

(Gen. 21:9-21) Now Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian playing. Sarah demanded of Abraham, "Cast out this slave woman and her son, for the son of this slave woman will not inherit with my son, with Isaac."

This was very distressing in the eyes of Abraham on account of his son, Ishmael.

But God said to Abraham, "Do not be distressed in your eyes on account of the lad on account of your slave woman. Everything that Sarah says to you, heed her voice. For in Isaac will be named to you descendants. As for the son of the slave woman, I will make a nation of him as well, since he is also your descendant. "

So Abraham rose early in the morning, and took bread and a skin of water and gave it to Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, along with the child. He sent her away, and she wandered off into the desert of Beersheeba.

When the water in the skin was gone, she laid the child under one of the bushes as if in a deathbed. Then she went and sat by herself in front of him, about a bowshot away.

As Hagar sat in front of him, she lifted up her voice and wept, "Let me not see the death of my child."

God heard the voice of the lad and said, "What troubles, you Hagar? Do not be afraid, for God has heard the voice of the lad where he is. Arise, lift up the lad and hold him by your hand, for I shall make him into a great nation."

Then God revealed to Hagar a well of water and she went to it and filled the skin with water and gave the lad a drink.

And God was with the lad; and he grew up and lived in the wilderness and became an expert with the bow. He lived in the wilderness of Paran, and his mother took for him a wife from the land of Egypt.

Hear what the Spirit might be saying to the church.

In the Gospels we encounter Jesus saying to the other Jews of the day, "Do not say to each other, 'We are safe, for we are descendants of Abraham and Sarah.' That means nothing, for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham and Sarah." (Matthew 3:9, Luke 3:8)

Being descendants of Abraham and Sarah, inheritors of the promise, is a big deal. But in reading Genesis, I can't say that I'm too eager to claim Abraham and Sarah as my spiritual ancestors.

My friend Eda introduced me to the writings of Pauli Murray -- an African-American lawyer and activist, active from the 1940s, and in 1977, at the age of 66, the first African-American woman ordained in the Episcopal Church.

Pauli Murray grew up in North Carolina, and her maternal great-grandmother was a Cherokee Indian slave who was raped by a white man in the household in which she was a servant.

Murray says, "It was my destiny to be the descendant of slave owners as well as slaves, to be of mixed ancestry, to be biologically and psychologically integrated in a world where the separation of the races was upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States as the fundamental law of our Southland." (p. 87, Pauli Murray: Selected Sermons and Writings)

Pauli Murray talks about the USA as an Ishmaelite nation -- all of us closer kin than we like to imagine with whomever the "Other" is, be it slave or slave owner.

She quotes from the diary of a white woman of the antebellum South, Mary Boykin Chestnut: "God help us, but ours is a monstrous system....Like the patriarchs of old, our men live all in one house with their wives; and concubines; and the mulattoes one sees in every family partly resemble the white children." (p. 56, Pauli Murray: Selected Sermons and Writings)

Just as I don't really want to claim Abraham and Sarah as my spiritual ancestors, I don't want to claim slave-ownership as part of my history. But regardless of whether any of that is literally in my family tree, it is part of the history I have inherited as a citizen of this nation -- just as Abraham and Sarah are part of the history I have inherited as a Christian, whether I like it or not.

When Eda was telling me about Pauli Murray's thoughts on the USA as an Ishmaelite nation, I said, "That's really interesting, but Pastor Lisa's idea for this sermon series was finding justice-oriented alternatives to the unjust solutions offered in the text." I didn't really know what to do with all these interesting ideas, because they seemed to just be adding to the bad news of the text, expanding its scope.

Eda said that Pauli Murray's takeaway from the fact of the USA as an Ishmaelite nation is that we are all closer kin than we like to think that we are -- and that if we acknowledged that, not just acknowledged the trauma and injustice that are a part of our history (necessary though that acknowledgment is), but acknowledged our kinship with those we think of as "Other," recognized our shared kinship rather than segregating ourselves into falsely dichotomous identities, really radical transformation could occur.

Kate Bornstein Tweeted the other day: "[I] spoke last night about #radical #welcoming & #inclusion as an #activism leading to a #politic of #compassion."

Radical welcoming and inclusion as an activism leading to a politic of compassion.

Delores Williams says that "Hagar's predicament involved slavery, poverty, ethnicity, sexual and economic exploitation, surrogacy, domestic violence, homelessness, single parenting, and radical encounters with God." These issues are still very real and present today.

Do we recognize the Hagar in our midst? Do we recognize our kinship with those whose issues are not "our" issues?

Or do we instead perpetuate these systems of oppression?

Sarai took God’s promise of abundance and took it upon herself to bring that promise to fulfillment when God seemed to be dawdling – and took it upon herself to do so by exploiting a woman who was under her care. Once the promise was fulfilled in a way she liked better, she wanted to get rid of the second-rate version – nevermind that these were real human beings.

How often do we look at other people as expendable, existing only to serve our purposes?

Can we take from the story of Hagar and Ishmael a reminder of how intertwined our families are?

Today's assigned reading in Isaiah opens: "Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from God's hand double for all her sins."

Can we embody that message? A word of grace that enables us to forgive ourselves and others for the past and to move forward in love?

According to Gordon Lathrop, Advent and Christmas are "ways of speaking the word of God into the solstice festivals being celebrated today." (11) The solstice festivals -- celebrating light in the midst of darkness -- frequently have an element of upside-down-ness, of "midwinter protests" (7). Perhaps we can embrace some of this midwinter protest, to live into the world not as it is but as it should be, embodying the kindom which is both now and not yet.

Lathrop writes, "Advent in the church is intended as a time to feel the current reality of waiting in the world. Such waiting provides its own language for fully speaking the gospel of Christ, and it provides a realism and honesty that the human heart longs to hear." (12)

May we be bearers of the gospel -- preachers of realism and honesty and also of hope, of light against the darkness.

Amen.

[30] What are we asking for? [Pentecost +6(A), CWM]

[This is the text I preached off of. The actual delivery was more colloquial.]

Proper 12A/Ordinary 17A/Pentecost +6
July 24, 2011

Genesis 29:15-28
Psalm 105:1-11, 45b
Romans 8:26-39
Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

What are we asking for?

In between two really great Jacob stories -- the ladder last week and wrestling with the angel next week -- we have the purchasing of Leah and Rachel.

Not really my favorite story, even leaving aside the women’s total lack of agency. Jacob loves Rachel, agrees to work for SEVEN YEARS to marry her -- that’s like a doctoral degree (provided you’re not Scott, who got his in 2 years) -- and then gets bait-and-switched into marrying the older daughter. He still gets to marry the younger daughter, TOO, don’t worry. And yeah, I could say a lot about Biblical models of marriage here, but I won’t.

The triumph of the younger is a big theme in the Bible -- subverting the status quo, the triumph of the underdog. Jacob himself is a younger sibling -- who’s already used trickery to subvert the status quo. At least in today’s story, Jacob is more sinned against than sinning -- unlike in some of the Jacob stories.

Two weeks ago, the 4th Sunday after Pentecost, a friend told me about her pastor’s sermon on the story of Jacob buying Esau’s birthright. The sermon was basically, “This is one of the stories of our faith, so you should know this story. Also, what does this story tell us about God?” I said, “It tells us that God is a dick.” Because Jacob, who is kind of a heel, is the one who triumphs, is the one who becomes the father of the people Israel. Yes, we are an Abrahamic people, but it is Jacob who is renamed “Israel” -- struggling with God. At least in that story Jacob is upfront with Esau about what he’s doing -- the lectionary skips the story where Jacob uses outright trickery to steal the paternal blessing intended for Esau. But the point still stands that Jacob is not exactly someone I would be proud to say, “Yes, that is where I come from.”

I’m uncomfortable making grand pronouncements about the Good News this story tells us about God -- even though that’s my default response to Scripture, to wrestle good news out of it.

Perhaps it is the influence of Rachel Barenblat’s Torah poems. I have an unfinished sermon about the akedah (the binding of Isaac, second Sunday after Pentecost) which is heavily informed by her poems.

In the last of her 10-poem cycle on the akedah -- a "sermon in poetry" on the second morning of Rosh Hashanah last year -- Barenblat writes:

In this season of turning        and returning
we long for heroes    we want to be able to say
I take after my parents        with uncomplicated pride

But that’s not how it goes    our forebears had
marriages & children    relationships & arguments
sometimes they missed    even the widest of marks

All we can do        is tell their stories
around our campfire        around our festival table
with the polished kiddush cup    and challah round as the moon

all we can do is pray          for a year as sweet
as mother’s milk, a year    when we don’t make
the same mistakes    for the millionth time

or, when we do,    resolve not to wait
until next Rosh Hashanah    to seek forgiveness
All we can do        is remember

This story isn’t about God. It’s about us. It’s about us, about where and who we come from. Yes, these stories tell us about God, because everything tells us about God. But the main point of these stories isn’t necessarily to tell us about God.

But in rereading today’s Genesis passage on Tuesday, I was struck by this portion:

Jacob finishes his term of labor and asks for his agreed-upon reward.

29:22 So Laban gathered together all the people of the place, and made a feast.

29:23 But in the evening Laban took his daughter Leah and brought her to Jacob [... 29:25b] And Jacob said to Laban, "What is this you have done to me? Did I not serve with you for Rachel? Why then have you deceived me?"

Maybe it’s just because I finally read Rob Bell’s Love Wins recently (my Sunday morning church is doing a sermon series), but I thought of the wedding feast and then the, “But I worked so hard! Why am I not getting what I thought was coming to me?” Rob Bell talks about the prodigal son’s older brother -- about the party that is right there and the free will we have to keep ourselves away. Bell says:

Your deepest, darkest sins and your shameful secrets are simply irrelevant when it comes to the counterintuitive ecstatic announcement of the gospel.

So are your goodness, your righteousness, your church attendance, and all of the wise, moral, mature decisions you have made and actions you have taken.

(p. 187, “The Good News Is Better Than That”)

Now, I don’t want to say that Laban is a stand-in for God here, that being tricked into marrying someone is what the Kindom of God is like. Laban in fact directly represents a counter to God’s plan of lifting up the lowly and bringing down the mighty -- Laban says, "This is not done in our country--giving the younger before the firstborn,“ but in God’s country this happens all the time.

But I do think this disruptive moment is interesting.

Rest and re/New, my Wednesday evening church, is this month doing a series on “Winning, Losing, and Things in Between.” Our text this Wednesday was the story of the people freed from slavery in Egypt, complaining that they don’t have anything to eat and it would have been better if they’d just stayed in Egypt. Keith commented that sometimes after we get what we ask for, we’re not so sure it’s what we want after all.

What is it that we’re asking for?

Today’s complementary Old Testament reading is from 1 Kings, in which God asks Solomon, “What shall I give you?” and is pleased that Solomon asks, “Give me the skills to be a good leader of your people,” rather than, “I would like to live forever, have my enemies dead, and be really wealthy,” which suggests that one of the themes for today is asking for the right things -- aligning our will with God’s will. After all, the Gospel passage talks about the angels coming at the end of the age to separate the evil from the righteous.

So what is that we are asking for? Today’s Psalm reminds us that God will not forget God’s promises to us, and specifically invokes God’s promise to Abraham and Jacob -- "To you I will give the land of Canaan as your portion for an inheritance."

Yeah, that’s kind of problematic, huh? How much blood continues to be shed as people fight over land they insist was promised to them?

While I’m not well-versed enough in the Torah to speak to the question of whether those people Moses led out of Egypt asked for a land of their own, per se, but the Exodus story is certainly full of, “Is that really what you wanted?”

The promise God made, however, was not just about land. Last week we heard:

the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring; and your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring. (Genesis 28:13c-28:14)

All the peoples of the earth will be blessed in you and in your descendants. “A light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel,” we might say -- as Simeon does in Luke 2:32.

The land of Canaan, mentioned in today’s Psalm, frequently makes me think of the Indigo Girls song:

I'm not your promised land
I'm not your promised one
I'm not the land of Canaan

Do we go looking for our promised land in all the wrong places? Having been freed from slavery in Egypt, do we seek new bondage that is just as unhealthy -- not trusting God’s plans for us, or perhaps confusing the Will of others (ourselves included) for the Will of God?

When Jesus said, “I am the Way and the Truth and the Light, and no one comes to the Divine Parent except through me,” I think one of the things Jesus might have meant is that while God works all things toward the good, as we heard in today’s Psalm, the way to God is through Love Incarnate. And also that in order to fully access God, one is going to have to give up false dichotomies -- like Divine vs. human, like mine vs. yours.

So back to the Promised Land. The biblical land of Canaan already had people living in it when our spiritual ancestors showed up to claim it. That’s not necessarily the model I want for a land God has promised to me and to my family.

Where do we find our Promised Land?

Today’s reading from Romans is pretty awesome. Nothing shall separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. That love is a place we can find a home -- now and always.

Again, might not be what we had in mind when we asked -- Paul is aware that, "For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered" -- but we are assured that there is no one who can bring any charges against us, who can condemn us, who can separate us from the love of God.

And this isn’t just about some post-death absolution. Paul tells us that, “the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.”

Paul was very familiar with the conflict between what we say we want and what we act as if we want. In the previous chapter of this letter to the Romans, Paul says, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. [...] For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.” (Romans 7:15, 19)

But the Holy Spirit whom Jesus sent after the Ascension -- the Paraclete, the Advocate, the Helper -- this Sophia Wisdom and Love is always with us, always drawing us into closer relationship with God.

Now, speaking of relationship with God, I want to wrap with talking about the Kindom of God.

The Gospel tells a lot of parables about what the Kindom of God is like. Near the end of today’s Gospel reading, Jesus asks the disciples, "Have you understood all this?" and they answer, "Yes," at which I can only laugh, because, REALLY?

Rev. Russell at TheHardestQuestion.org suggested that the disciples had sort of tuned out during this litany of parables -- “Have you understood all this?” / “Yeah, totally, of course I get it.” [mime: “Totally didn’t get it. Did you get it?”]

My biggest problem is that Jesus does not seem troubled by unclear antecedents. Anyway. Let’s recap.

We start out well. "The realm of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in their field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches." Great. The kindom of God is something that starts out so tiny and small but grows into the greatest of things and many creatures make their home in it.

Next: "The realm of heaven is like yeast that someone took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened." Great. The kindom of God is something that mixes in with our lives, lifts us up, grows us.

Third: "The realm of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in hir joy ze goes and sells all that ze has and buys that field.” Okay, a hidden treasure, which one is willing to sell all one has in order to obtain. We’re likely familiar with that imagery. Though in reading one bloogger’s sermon notes for today, I noticed that all we are told this person wants is the treasure, and yet the person buys the whole field. God is incredibly wasteful and extravagant in Hir love for us. This isn’t a marketplace transaction where the buyer tries to get the goods for the lowest possible price, this is God saying, “I want you and all that contains you, all that surrounds you.”

I’m reminded of Lee Harrington’s keynote at the Transcending Boundaries Conference last November. Harrington talked about the book The Omnivore’s Dilemma -- which I must admit I haven’t read. Harrintgon shared the story of Joel Salatin -- who raises cows and chickens but who describes himself as a grass farmer -- explaining that all 550 acres of land he has are important, refusing to let Michael Pollan privilege the 100 acres that happen to be “active farmland.”

We do not exist in isolation. Our relationship with God does not exist in isolation. Harrington says, “I live in a complex ecosystem of the heart."

The fourth parable sounds similar: "The realm of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, ze went and sold all that ze had and bought it.” Usually when we tell this story, the kindom of God is the pearl -- something that we are to sacrifice everything for -- but Jesus actually says the kindom of God is like the merchant. Does that make us the pearl of great value, whom God sells all that He has in order to ransom? Each and every one of us is a fine specimen, is of great value, is dearly beloved by God.

Fifth and last: “The realm of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad.” This gets followed up with the angels at the end of the age, coming and and separating the evil from the righteous. But Jesus doesn’t say the reign of God is like the fishers or even like the angels; Jesus says the reign of God is like the net. Which was thrown into the sea and caught fish of EVERY kind.

God always desires to be in relationship with us -- regardless of what we ask for or of what we think we want, God is still seeking us. And we can trust that at the end of the age, all wickedness will be purged and we and the whole of Creation will be restored.

Amen.

I have ALL of the excitement about this! \o/

From: Marla
To: Samuel; Pr. Lisa; Elizabeth
Sent: Thu, February 10, 2011 10:33:11 AM
Subject: FYI: Disability Committee (NEUMC)

This went out in the weekly e-news from the Conference:

News from the Disabilities Committee

Stories Wanted!
We at Annual Conference are always looking to hear about how our conference is working to help reach out to more people as we Open Doors and Open Hearts in order to Open Minds. One way we do this is by making ourselves more open to the disabled populations and their families and caregivers. Recently, I heard on The Light (A Christian Radio Station in Vermont) on Jonnie and Friends that many disabled people do not attend church due to their disability.

Yet, churches are doing more to make themselves more open all the time and we don't hear about it because we tend not to advertise ourselves. Not this year! We are looking to hear from you about what you have done over the past two years in overcoming barriers to the disabled. We would like to hear from you about your story. If you have pictures, please include them. You may mail stories to Michael McShane at [email address redacted] or Bonnie Marden at [email address redacted]


Help Needed!
Do you have a background that can help people with disabilities? Would you like to be a resource the Disability Committee can use? We are looking for people not only to help with helping churches adapt to the physical structure but also think of what people with disabilities need. We are not looking at membership unless you have an interest in it. We are looking for the occassional helping hand. If you are willing to do so please contact Michael McShane at [email address redacted]. Thank you very much for your interest.

Submitted by: Michael McShane

"In filling a role that is part pastor, scholar and community organizer..."

Seen on facebook:

"Hendricks Chapel's first female dean is committed to social justice"

Jeremy: "Yea for T.L.!!"

Jeremy: "And wow...the comments are RIDICULOUS on that article."

Jeremy: "Oh man. Comment of the day RE: Cambridge Welcoming Ministries : "this group appears to be an informal front group for various labor unions and environmental groups." LOL!!!!"

Sean: "This is one of the best thing anyone has ever said about my church!"

***

I told my housemate, who literally went \o/ and said, "Yeah! You're a socialist front!" and told me I needed to blog this :)

[catchup sermon (12)] Advent 4C

Advent 4C - December 20, 2009

Micah 5:2-5a
Psalm 80:1-7
Hebrews 10:5-10
Luke 1:39-55

We Light the Candle of Love Today

"But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah, who are one of the little clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to rule in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days."  I love this -- "one of the little clans of Judah."

Later on [Luke 3:23-38], Luke will list Jesus' pedigree for us, and it's pretty impressive -- son of David, son of Adam, son of God.  But there is a consistent tradition (in both the Old and New Testaments) of God choosing the underdog, the unlikely, the marginalized.  And that is the aspect of Jesus' pedigree which I find most resonant.  Besides, we are all Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve -- many-gendered children in ways elided by C. S. Lewis, created in the very image and likeness of God.

Mary's hymn of praise says God "has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; God has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty."  These are physical things -- the place in which you dwell, whether your stomachs are full or empty.  I'm reading Borg and Crossan's The Last Week: A Day-by-Day Account of Jesus's Final Week in Jerusalem, and the authors talk about how Herod ruled from Jerusalem, and about the opulence of his palace.

    Herod ruled from Jerusalem, and the city became magnificent during his reign.  Above all, he rebuilt the temple.  Beginning in the 20s of the first century BCE, Herod "remodeled" the modest postexilic temple, but in effect built a new temple surrounded by spacious courts and elegant colonnades, with sumptuous use of marble and gold.  To do so, he had first to construct an enormous platform, about 1,550 feet by 1,000 feet---almost 40 acres.  (p. 13)

And so now when I hear about the powerful on their thrones, I have this image of the huge platform of the Temple.  A throne isn't just a fancy chair -- it's a symbol of an entire system.

And this system will be overturned.  In fact, has been overturned.  "God has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.  God has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; God has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty."

And this redemption and overturn happens through bodies.

Regardless of how exactly "the Holy Spirit came upon her, and the power of the Most High overshadowed her," Mary was with child in a very physical way.

The Nicene Creed affirms that Jesus was "Very God of Very God," but Yeshua was also very flesh of very flesh.

Upon being presented with Eve, Adam exclaims, "Bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh!" (Genesis 2:23).  The child who gestates in your womb is similarly bone of your bone and flesh of your flesh, regardless of its lineage.

We are an incarnate people.

God doesn't say, "Oh, I will rescue your spirits for all eternity while your bodies rot here;" God comes and dwells among us, to redeem us here on Earth.

At Cambridge Welcoming, we concluded this reading not with verse 55 but with verse 56 -- "And Mary remained with her about three months and then returned to her home."  I'm really intrigued by this idea that Mary stayed with Elizabeth for three months before going home.

We talked about how the Magnificat comes after Mary has gone to see Elizabeth and after Elizabeth has rejoiced and affirmed her.  We talked about the possibility that Mary hadn't really accepted it until she talked to Elizabeth, and I suggested that maybe she went to this hill country town to abort the baby (maybe she had just been placating the angel ... how does one know if an angel is truly from God anyway?) and changed her mind after seeing Elizabeth.

At the end of our conversation, Tiffany asked us what we would take with us from this for the coming week, and I said for me I would take with me that reminder that within the beloved community we can find love and joy even in the midst of events that are so scary and confusing.

I invite you to hear again the story told in the first chapter of the Gospel of Luke.

In the days of King Herod of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, and his wife Elizabeth, who was a descendant of Aaron -- the first High Priest of the Israelites.  So these are two people who are deeply steeped in the priestly tradition -- the tradition of those who are specially called to mediate between the people and the Holy of Holies.  These two people are getting on in years, and they have no children.

One day, Zechariah is in the sanctuary of the Temple and an angel of the Lord, Gabriel, appears.  Zechariah is terrified, but Gabriel says, "Do not be afraid, Zechariah."  So Zechariah stops and takes a deep breath maybe.  Possibly tries to look less absolutely terrified.  Gabriel goes on to say, in what I like to imagine are tones of comfort, "Your prayer has been heard.  Your wife Elizabeth will bear a child, and you will name this child John."  And here I like to imagine Gabriel getting excited -- so filled with expectant celebration at the great things God is doing.  "Many will rejoice at this birth of this child.  Even before birth, John will be filled with the Holy Spirit, and will make the people ready for the Lord."  Zechariah thinks this is highly unlikely since he and his wife are both quite old.  Gabriel does not take back the gift in the face of this skepticism but says, "Because you did not believe my words, you will become mute until what I have told you comes to pass."  And so indeed Zechariah is rendered unable to speak.  But after he goes home, his wife does conceive.  "And for five months she remained in seclusion" -- which I think is interesting.

And when Elizabeth is six months along in her pregnancy, Gabriel again appears, this time in a town called Nazareth, to a young woman named Mary -- betrothed, which is as good as married, to a man named Joseph.  Gabriel says, "Greetings, favored one!  The Lord is with you."  Mary isn't sure what to make of this greeting.  Perhaps she's outside somewhere.  Young women for millennia have been putting up with uninvited approaches from strangers.  So maybe she just stands there silently, perhaps a little awkwardly, hoping this stranger will leave her alone.

Gabriel continues: "Do not be afraid, Mary.  You have found favor with God.  You will conceive in your womb and bear a child, and you will name this child Jesus.  This child will be called the Child of the Most High and will reign forever over a kingdom that has no end."

Like Zechariah, Mary questions the physical impossibility of this prophecy.  Gabriel does not respond in the same way ze did to Zechariah, though.  Instead of punishing Mary for her skepticism, Gabriel patiently explains: "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy and will be called Child of God."  Gabriel continues, still tenderly, as if to convince Mary of the reality and possibility of this proclamation, "And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a child; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren.  For nothing will be impossible with God."

Mary says, "Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word."  Satisfied, Gabriel departs.

And this is where we rejoin today's lectionary.

"In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country."

I can imagine Mary having wanted to placate this stranger but feeling unsure.  Maybe this stranger really is a messenger from God.  And if so, she is bound to accept this seemingly impossible future for herself.  And if the stranger wasn't from God, what was she doing pledging herself to a commitment to these strange words?  Has she sinned against God in making this vow to someone who does not come from God?

And so she goes to see her relative Elizabeth.  If the impossible news this stranger told her of her aged relative is true, then perhaps the prophecy of her own future is true as well -- and who better to help her prepare for such a future than another woman facing an unlikely child bearing.

And she goes with haste.  Maybe the Holy Spirit has already come upon her and she can feel that there is something different, something new, in her body -- can feel that something has changed.  Maybe she is frightened.

Mary shows up at the house and greets Elizabeth, and upon hearing this, Elizabeth's unborn baby leaps in the womb.

It is in this encounter that Elizabeth (and, as prophesied, her unborn baby) is filled with the Holy Spirit.  Hear that again.  It is in this encounter with Mary that Elizabeth, and her unborn baby, are filled with the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit comes upon Elizabeth and John, not in isolation but in community.

Elizabeth proclaims blessings upon Mary and upon her child yet to be born.  She questions yet exults that the mother of her Lord has come to her.  And she seems to indicate that she knows Mary is the mother of her Lord because upon hearing Mary's greeting, her unborn child leapt for joy -- even before being born, John is teaching others to recognize the coming of the One.  And lastly, she blesses Mary for having believed that what the Lord spoke to her would be fulfilled.  If Mary had any doubts as to the stranger's message, perhaps she feels a bit abashed in this moment.

And perhaps Mary feels relieved.  Here is this wise old woman, a relative she has known all her life, affirming for her the news the angel gave her -- affirming not just in the sense of reiterating that it is true, but responding to it with joy.  Here is her aged relative Elizabeth, incongruously swelled with the curves of a six-month-along gestating baby, a baby who is quickening in her womb, who responds to the very sound of Mary's voice.

Mary responds by blessing God her Savior.  This is the first time in this story that God is referred to as Savior rather than as Lord -- at least in the NRSV.  God wishes to be Lord of our lives, but not in the domineering way that so many seek to have lordship over our lives.  God does not seek to control us, to extort our resources.  Rather, God wishes to save us from that which destroys us.  In Jesus' day, to proclaim that Christ is Lord was to proclaim that Caesar is not.  To proclaim God as Lord is to reject the lordship of all else in our lives -- to reject the claims the world makes on us.  To say that we are not enslaved to the hamster wheel pursuit of jobs with higher and higher salaries, of positions with impressive titles, of the next product that will make us thin and beautiful and acceptable.  To proclaim that the unnamed God of Judaism and Islam and Christianity is Lord of our lives is to accept the radical notion that we are beloved just as we are, that we are created in the very image and likeness of God, and that we are called to the radical work of proclaiming to each and every person we meet that they too are beloved, and to welcome them into the Beloved Community where Christ has opened up a table of abundant life for all.

Mary blesses God because God has looked with favor on her, a lowly servant of God.  She was lowly, but from now on all generations will call her blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for her.  Not through her, but for her.  This child is a gift -- not just to the world in some abstract way, but to her in a very particular and concrete way.

Mary goes on to proclaim that God's mercy is for those who fear God -- those who recognize that it is God rather than the powers of this world toward whom we should orient our lives.  God has scattered the proud and brought down the powerful -- lifted up the lowly and filled the hungry with good things, sending the rich away empty.  Those who seem to triumph in the systems of this world will not always be triumphant.

God remembers a promise made so many generations ago to Abraham and all Abraham's descendants -- descendants who are as numberless as the stars (Genesis 15:5).  God proclaimed to Abraham that, "all peoples on earth will be blessed through you" (Genesis 12:3), and it is this promise that God and Mary are recalling.

This is the Sunday of Love.

"For God so loved the world that God gave God's only Child that whosoever believeth in Hir should not perish but have eternal life."  So says my best friend.  (And also the Gospel of John.)

The Psalmist cries out:

O LORD God of hosts, how long will you be angry with your people's prayers?
You have fed them with the bread of tears, and given them tears to drink in full measure.
You make us the scorn of our neighbors; our enemies laugh among themselves.
Restore us, O God of hosts; let your face shine, that we may be saved.
    (Psalm 80:4-7)

I'm so struck by that line, "You have fed them with the bread of tears, and given them tears to drink in full measure."

God provides us food and drink -- food and drink which is sometimes painful.  Sometimes our mouths are full of our weeping.

And sometimes it is the radiant face of God shining before us that jolts us out of that weeping, that startles us into slack-jawed amazement that the tears may fall out of our mouths and God may feed us something new.  The Bread of Life and the Cup of Blessing that we share together every week at Christ's Table -- the Eucharist (from the Greek, meaning "thanksgiving").

Paul tell us, "Consequently, when Christ came into the world, she said, 'Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me; in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure' " (Hebrews 10:5-6).

This is a major theme throughout this Epistle -- that our focus should not be on sacrifices in the Temple but rather on Christ's bodily sacrifice which is so world-shaking and salvific.  Mary, too, offers up her own body as a sacrifice to God -- not in a martyrdom way, but saying, "Here, God, let it be with me according to your will."  Mary gives up lordship over her own life, gives that lordship over to God, saying, "God, I trust you.  I trust your will for my life.  I commit myself to follow your Way, to let myself be led to surprising and sometimes frightening places."

It is not the fact of Jesus' death but rather Jesus' faithfulness even unto death that we are called to imitate.

Again and again in the passage from Hebrews, Jesus says to God, "I have come to do Your will" -- not, "I have come to die," but "I have come to do Your will."  And so we are all called to follow in the Way of Jesus, always seeking the will of God.

So go now, in the assurance of the everlasting and ever-faithful love of God, emboldened to proclaim that all are beloved of God, and to work to open up Christ's abundant table for all.

[critique] Celebrating the Coming Epiphany

On Sunday, Gusti posted a facebook note (a sermon, essentially) entitled "The Wisdom of the Star." Excerpt:

We have to pass through Herod to get to Jesus, I’m afraid. We have to look straight into the fear that grips our hearts.

But if I am wise—if you are wise—if any of us are wise—we know exactly where this Star of fear and doubt is heading, and we don’t want any part of it. Not in this new year. Not in this new decade.

The great 20th century theologian Karl Barth urged Christians to approach the world with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. And I agree. The wisdom of our time sheds light on the biblical tradition, and the wisdom of the biblical tradition sheds light on our time.

But here’s the thing. The wise ones don’t stop with Herod or the Arizona Daily Star or the intimidation or the name-calling, not even in the name of the prophetic tradition that is so important to us at St. Mark’s.

The wise ones don’t stop with fear. They keep going. Because they are following the star of Christ, and they won’t stop until the star does. And this star rises on a baby who is not afraid to be born in a manger to an unwed mother far away from home. And this star rises on a baby who is not afraid to tell the truth in the temple as a teenager while his parents search for him frantically. And this star rises on a baby who is not afraid to denounce the devil in the desert as a disciple . . . or touch the most tragically ill as a teacher . . . or cry out in the agony of crucifixion as a Christ . . . or rise up through resurrection as a Redeemer.

Because this star that we follow is about light and hope, not darkness and despair, and this wisdom we cling to transcends violence and destruction and fear and intolerance . . . and we may not have any idea where the star will lead us in the end . . . but we must follow it at all costs if we have any hope for salvation.

The wise men brought what they had. They followed a star. And they never, ever followed Herod’s star again.

So we bring our treasure to this place of hope, as the wise men do, whatever treasure we have, even if we can’t imagine how God will use it. Gold. Frankincense. Myrrh. What can a baby do with these things, we might ask?

But God can take anything we have to offer and use it in ways we never imagined. There’s that first century college education fund to start that we didn’t know existed. Maybe Jesus can go to rabbinical school now. There’s that flight into Egypt that has to get paid for somehow. There’s an adult Jesus ministry that needs to get seed money from somewhere. Who knows? Maybe that gold, frankincense and myrrh really were good baby gifts. Maybe they have gone on giving, even up to today.

So bring your gifts to God on this Epiphany Sunday—and every Sunday—following that star of hope and light and wisdom and grace. Keep praying toward the light on this Epiphany Sunday—and every Sunday—keep looking all around . . . at the wise women and men from every part of the world, right here in this sanctuary, right here on this journey to Bethlehem together, bringing every treasure we possess . . . to share with a baby, who will share it with the world.

And God will use our gifts in ways we never imagined possible. In this new year. And every year. Amen.

I was really struck by that line that opens the excerpt. Because when I was debriefing morning church with my housemate and her guest on Sunday, I commented that I don't really understand why the magi stop at Jerusalem and ask Herod for directions if they have a star that they're following, so I was really struck by "We have to pass through Herod to get to Jesus, I’m afraid. We have to look straight into the fear that grips our hearts."

I was telling Ari last night about Tiffany's Epiphany Sunday sermon and about how Tiffany really grooves on being a prophet of woe -- by which we mean talking at length about how the world sucks -- and how despite my constant critique (and even cynicism) I am always asking, "But what is the Good News, Tiffany?"

I was reminded of how the first episode I saw of House (1.07 "Fidelity") I said it was too cynical for me ("Everybody lies") and I couldn't watch it.

Ari and I talked about how there's a difference between dwelling in how much the world is a broken mess versus critiquing individuals/institutions.

I said critiquing is what I do -- or, at least, pointing people to critiques other people have made (e.g., James Cameron's Avatar).

Ari said, "You're a vessel for critique."

I laughed and thought of Mary (bearer of the Christ Child) except of course this is more like being the bearer of John the Baptist and oh yeah.

I think that part of it is that critique is an active, creative, enterprise. I say that I'm much better at critique than I am at constructive suggestions for how to improve things, but even targeted critique gives you a place to start. Bemoaning the state of the world leaves you without any agency -- the Powers are corrupt, the world's a mess, it's all so overwhelming and beyond our control. But if you tell me that language I use is hurtful or that media I'm enjoying perpetuate harmful ideas or that I'm marginalizing people in what I claim is an inclusive community ... I can do something about that. Not only is it a learning process (and I think learning is inherently exciting) but it's something I can actively be a part of -- even if that just means pointing out to someone the flaws in a movie they're talking about.

"But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be."

Tiffany's weekly email Saturday night included:

This week at CWM we will hold a quiet meditative service focusing on the Magnificat, Mary's song of joy.

Please stay safe during the impending storm. While we will have services at CWM, we encourage you to stay warm and safe.

There were ultimately 7 of us gathered (including the pastor).

We did a group conversation Reflection like we've been doing in Advent Bible Study.  The Scripture was Luke 1:26-56.

We talked about the issue of whether Mary consents.  We talked about how even if it was a rape (either the Divine acting without Mary's consent or Mary being raped and inventing this story as a cover), something so redemptive comes out of that (which doesn't deny the horror of that, but also speaks to the transformative power of love).  I said that I am so invested in my idea of a benevolent God that I have to see her as having consented -- that if she had said no, Gabriel would have chosen someone else, and that I see in Mary a modeling of radical openness to God, an affirmation that even when things seem so strange and frightening we can trust God.

We talked about how Mary is really prophetic in the Magnificat and how that subverts the traditional ideas of her as meek and submissive.  We talked about how in opposition to the Fall narrative which blames Eve, all of this redemption starts with women (Elizabeth, Mary).  Carolyn cited the "he abhors not the Virgin's womb" line (from "O Come, All Ye Faithful") and talked about how that really resonated for her about pushing back against the idea that women's bodies are bad and cause people to sin and etc.; Marla countered that it feels to her like setting apart virgin!Mary as special and different from all other women (thus reifying the trope that female bodies are bad/sinful).  We talked about the question of whether people believed Mary's story (Carolyn said, "I bet her best friend believed her," and Marla said, "I'm not sure I would believe my best friend if she told me that story").  We talked about how Mary stays three months at Elizabeth's and so she comes home great with child and doesn't that make her story look even more discreditable and why does Joseph believe her -- I said, "Matthew sends him an angel," but of course we were in the Luke story.

We talked about how the Magnificat comes after Mary has gone to see Elizabeth and after Elizabeth has rejoiced and affirmed her.  (At the end, Tiffany asked us what we would take with us from this for the coming week, and I said for me I would take that with me, that reminder that within the beloved community we can find love and joy even in the midst of events that are so scary and confusing.)  We talked about the possibility that Mary hadn't really accepted it until she talked to Elizabeth, and my tellings-and-retellings self suggested that maybe she went to this hill country town to abort the baby (maybe she had just been placating the angel ... how does one know if an angel is truly from God anyway?) and changed her mind after seeing Elizabeth.

their eyes are all asking: "are you in or are you out?"

In a (locked) post on a community today, someone talked about considering joining her faith community in a more formal capacity and spoke of her resistance to joining things, to putting her name on membership lists, and solicited thoughts on formal and informal membership.

Having put together my reply, I thought it might be of interest to regular readers of this blog as well.

my autobiography is probably not a helpful comment (but here it is)

I grew up with Honesty and Intentionality and Consistency being hugely valued, so I often have a really difficult time labeling myself as a member of a group. (See also the fact that I tend to feel sympathy/connection to a variety of, if not mutually exclusive then at least not wholly overlapping groups, so I feel not only more at home on the borderlands but also feel that is a truer statement of my identity.)

I grew up in a nondenominational Protestant church, and at some point during my teen years the pastor asked me if I wanted to get confirmed. I said no, because I didn't know what I believed, nor did I know what I was supposed to believe in order to become a member of this church. (My mother brought me and my brother to church every Sunday of our childhood, and I continued to attend until I left town for college -- but the pastor's sermons put me to sleep, so I usually helped with childcare rather than staying through the service; I never felt like I wasn't a part of that church family, though.)

The church I attended almost every Sunday my sophomore through senior years of college (two hours away from the town I grew up in) I was never invited to officially join as a member, and I would have said no if asked.

The year after college I lived with my parents and church-hopped some (though I spent most of my Sundays at the Congregational church), knowing I would be leaving town soon, so I saw it as more denomination-shopping than congregation-shopping.

Some months after I moved out of my parents' house (and moved a half hour closer in to Boston) I started church-hopping again and began accumulating church communities. Two and a half years later, it's almost a stubborn point of pride that I attend regularly (read: weekly) at a number of different churches (two Sunday worship services, one Wednesday night worship service, one Sunday discussion group) but am not officially a member of any church.

I've been referring to Cambridge Welcoming Ministries as my "primary" or home" church for probably close to a year now and Tiffany (the pastor) sometimes invites me to officially join the church (this year I'm on Finance Committee, so I'm not uninvolved), but that means claiming not only CWM but also the United Methodist Church. In looking at lay speaker certification recently I actually felt a willingness to officially join the church/Church -- though I'm still not ready to do it (yet).

In writing this up, it also occurs to me that because I'm involved in so many church communities, to claim one "official" membership feels problematically exclusive -- even though in some ways it shouldn't since I'm very clear that CWM is the church I feel most at home in, the church that most teaches me how to be church, the church that best embodies how I think church should be, the church that most nurtures my gifts and graces and challenges me (in a growing way rather than a frustrating way -- it does the latter, too, but less so than some of my other church communities), the church I prioritize and privilege over all others.

In a true community we will not choose our companions, for our choices are so often limited by self-serving motives. Instead, our companions will be given to us by grace. Often they will be persons who will upset our settled view of self and world. In fact, we might define true community as the place where the person you least want to live with always lives! -- Parker J Palmer, 1977, Quaker Faith & Practice, 10.19

The Parker Palmer quote [from the OP] definitely resonates with me as often my resistance to claiming a group identity label is very much connected to my resistance to being officially linked with certain other members of that group (political affiliation, church denomination, etc.).

[unpreached sermon #4] All Saints Day 2009 (Our God is a God of Life)

[Yes, I wrote this as if I were preaching it on November 1, despite not finishing it until the next week.]

All Saints Day 2009 (Our God is a God of Life)

Pentecost 22 (Year B) - November 1, 2009

Ruth 1:1-18
Psalm 146
Hebrews 9:11-14
Mark 12:28-34

Our Old Testament reading is from the Book of Ruth.  Is *the* passage from the Book of Ruth.  Bringing heathens to the one true God through the power of queerness.  On this Sunday when Cambridge Welcoming Ministries celebrates and honors contemporary saints who have worked for the full inclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender persons at all levels of the United Methodist Church.

And then we get to the Epistle to the Hebrews, which makes explicit that blood atonement theology that so many of us find so problematic and even hurtful.

But when Christ came as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation), she entered once for all into the Holy Place, not with the blood of goats and calves, but with her own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption.  For if the blood of goats and bulls, with the sprinkling of the ashes of a heifer, sanctifies those who have been defiled so that their flesh is purified, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered herself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to worship the living God!

For this reason she is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, because a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions under the first covenant.

The more time I spend at Cambridge Welcoming, the more uncomfortable I become with the body and blood language in Communion.  My mother was one of the people who pushed back on me about this.  She said:

I still think that the fact that Jesus was literally broken for us is core to the Christian faith. [...] And I thought that your birth required that I be cut open. It strikes me that the greatest treasures require sacrifice of some kind. Some are harsher than others.

It reminded me of the poem I wrote when George was born. Somehow it is important to me to remember that Jesus suffered for us. His pain was real because he was really human. And if we don't acknowledge his brokenness, somehow we are disrespecting his sacrifice.

My brother George and I were both born through caesarian section (yay modern medicine -- my mom would have died twice over otherwise).  The poem she refers to is about the experience of receiving Communion in the hospital after having given birth to him.  In it she says:

In my hand I hold the bread;
Cradling, blessing, my baby's head.
Rememb'ring when I was torn
That this new life might be born.

[...]

As I drink His holy wine,
My baby partakes of mine.
He takes his life from my breast,
His tender self in quiet rest.

Reenacted holy communion
With every birth, at each nursing breast.
Mother and child in holy union.

What strikes me in this is the LIFE imagery.  It's not about glorifying the pain and suffering that were a part of the journey to this moment; instead it's celebrating the life that has come out of this.

Hear again the Gospel:

One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that Jesus answered them well, the scribe asked Jesus, "Which commandment is the first of all?"
    Jesus answered, "The first is, 'Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.'  The second is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'  There is no other commandment greater than these."
    Then the scribe said to Jesus, "You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that 'God is one, and besides God there is no other;' and 'to love God with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,' and 'to love one's neighbor as oneself,' — this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices."
    When Jesus saw that the scribe answered wisely, Jesus said to the scribe, "You are not far from the kingdom of God."  After that no one dared to ask Jesus any question.

I admit, the first time I read this lectionary passage this week, I only kind of skimmed it -- having heard this basic story so many times before. But when I went back to edit the gendered language, I noticed something I hadn't caught the first time: "this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices."  This -- to love God with all that one has and to love one's neighbor as oneself.

This reminds me of Jesus saying elsewhere in the Gospels (Matthew 9:9-13), "I desire mercy, not sacrifice."  He's quoting the prophet Hosea (Hosea 6:4-6, NIV):

"What can I do with you, Ephraim?
    What can I do with you, Judah?
    Your love is like the morning mist,
    like the early dew that disappears.
Therefore I cut you in pieces with my prophets,
    I killed you with the words of my mouth;
    my judgments flashed like lightning upon you.
For I desire mercy, not sacrifice,
    and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings."

What is most striking to me in reading that Hosea passage is, "Your love is like the morning mist, like the early dew that disappears."  That's a harsh critique -- that our devotion evaporates under the slightest heat.  The verse that follows says, "Like the first human (or like humanity) they have broken the covenant — they were unfaithful to me there."  We don't offer burnt offerings these days, but there are many other ways in which we make as if to give to God without offering our hearts.  How many times have we failed to live into the covenant with God?

We call ourselves Christians -- at least most of us gathered here do -- and yet we are so very much "of the world."  We go on "diets," not because we want to honor the body we have which is created in God's image by feeding it food full of justice and nutrients and love, but because we believe the voices of the world that there is some magic number at which we are acceptable.  We mutter curses at those traveling the road with us rather than joining our hearts with theirs and praying for peace, patience, and safety.  We shake our heads at those we pass on the street who are begging for spare change rather than inviting them to sit with us in a coffee shop, to buy them something to warm their hands and fill their bellies.  Over and over we turn away from that Emmaus encounter, when the risen Christ was revealed to the mourning disciples in the breaking of bread -- the breaking of bread with an apparent STRANGER they encountered on the road.  Tiffany exhorts us to "look around," to see that "Christ is present" in the gathered congregation.  Far more challenging is a practice Anne Lamott writes about in one of her books -- to see each person she encounters when she is out walking her dog as if that person were Christ.  Because that person is Christ.  We can all recite Matthew 25 -- "whatever you did to the least of these, you did to me"... feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, caring for the sick, visiting the imprisoned.  And we are ALL "the least of these."  Everyone is hungry for something, sick from something, imprisoned by something.  And we are called to be God's hands and feet and voices and shoulders in the world -- to be the BODY of Christ in the world, ministering to this embodied world.

We are, to quote from Ann B. Day's liturgy in Shaping Sanctuary (p. 97, based on I Corinthians 12:14-31), "The hand clapping, toe tapping, heart pumping, mouth tasting, arms embracing, justice seeking, hymn singing, love making, bread breaking, risk taking, Body of Christ."

To return to the passage from Ruth... Ruth gives up EVERYTHING.  "Where you go, I will go; Where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.  Where you die, I will die — there will I be buried."

That is some radical fidelity.

I'm less interested in wrestling with Paul and making peace with atonement theology than I am in challenging us to live in to this Call -- this Call to walk with God, to make God's ways our ways, to love God and our neighbor and ourselves all with our whole being.  Yes, I believe that just as we are called to love God with heart, mind, strength, and soul, so too are we called to love our neighbors -- for we are called to love our neighbors as ourselves, and how can we love ourselves except with all of our selves -- our heart, our mind, our strength, and our soul.

So why should we want to walk with this God?  This God who calls us to give up the walks, the lodgings, the people, and the gods of our former lives?  This God who births us into the world but exhorts us to not be "of" this world?

In the daily lectionary readings leading up to this Sunday, Tuesday's readings are Ezekiel 18:1-32 and Acts 9:32-35.  From Ezekiel:

Cast away from you all the transgressions that you have committed against me, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit!  Why will you die, O house of Israel?  For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, says the Sovereign Lord God.  Turn, then, and live.  (Ezekiel 18:31-32, NRSV)

And from Acts:

As Peter traveled about the country, he went to visit the saints in Lydda.  There he found a man named Aeneas, a paralytic who had been bedridden for eight years.  "Aeneas," Peter said, "Jesus Christ heals you. Get up and take care of your mat."  Immediately Aeneas got up.  All those who lived in Lydda and Sharon saw Aeneas and turned to the Lord.  (Acts 9:32-35, NIV)

Our God is a God of life.

God calls us to cast off that which keeps us from relationship with God and to repent, to turn back to God.  God lifts us out of our paralysis, calls us out of our beds, invites us to be a living sacrament pointing to the Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer of all that is.

Every week at Wednesday night service I say, "This is the Bread of Life, that you might have life abundant."  I might also say, recalling my best friend's threefold reflections on the Bread of Life lectionary arc: "This is the Bread of Life, that you might have life, and have it abundantly, and have life everlasting."

Our God is a God of life.

"I desire mercy, not sacrifice."

The letter to the Hebrews speaks of the high priest Christ who entered into the Holy Place with her own blood.  But Ruth needed no blood to join with Naomi, she merely pledged her life to hers.  We have had enough of death when this story opens.  Naomi's husband Elimelech "died" we are told, and her two sons -- Mahlon and Kilion, the husbands of Orpah and Ruth -- "were killed."  Famine drove Naomi and her family from Judah to Moab, and famine (in some sense no less literal a famine, as she has no male kindred to provide for her in Moab) drives her back to Judah.  "So Naomi returned from Moab accompanied by Ruth the Moabitess, her daughter-in-law, arriving in Bethlehem as the barley harvest was beginning."  [Ruth 1:22, NIV, from Thursday's daily lectionary]  The famine in Judah is over, and Naomi is returning to her people, just as the harvest is beginning.

Our God is a God of life.  Of abundance and renewal, of welcome and family.

Hear again the Psalm:

Praise the Lord our God! Praise the Lord, O my soul!
I will praise you as long as I live; I will sing praises to my God all my life long.
Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help.
When their breath departs, they return to the earth; on that very day their plans perish.
Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God,
who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them; who keeps faith forever;
who executes justice for the oppressed; who gives food to the hungry. God, you set the prisoners free;
you open the eyes of the blind. You lift up those who are bowed down; you love the righteous.
You watch over the strangers; you uphold the orphan and the widow, but the way of the wicked you bring to ruin.
The Lord will reign forever, your God, O Zion, for all generations. Alleluia!

I struggled with the lectionary texts this week, and also with how to preach a sermon on All Saints Day, particularly in light of the sudden losses suffered by some of my friends.

I finished reading Emil Fackenheim's What Is Judaism? this Saturday.  In a section titled "The World to Come and the Holocaust," Fackenheim writes, "Only if we share in the anguish of the victims dare we affirm their resurrection.  Only then dare we affirm the resurrection of anyone.  For if the world to come does not exist for them, it does not exist at all." (p. 274)

And yet we are a resurrection people.  A people who affirm that Weeping may come in the night, but joy will come with the dawn.

In our brokenness, our barrenness, and even in our bitterness, we are over and over again welcomed back to Bethlehem, just as the harvest is beginning.  We are called to work the fields and welcome the stranger, called to embrace long-lost family members and those they bring with them.

On this All Saints Day, I invite us all to help share in the long birthing process toward new life and renewal.

[atonement theology] still working it out

I've internalized a lot of CWM's discomfort with atonement theology (how much I have internalized so much of CWM's theology was made particularly clear to me at the RMN Convocation this year), and various (non-CWM) friends (plus my mother) have pushed back about this, so I've been thinking a lot about it, trying to figure out better what exactly it is that I believe.

I think it is True that Christ allowed Christself to be executed, that Christ shed blood and tears, that Christ was willing to suffer all this for the disciples who didn't understand and for all humanity. I think this willing sacrifice is really powerful. What I'm really uncomfortable with is the idea (which I think is perpetuated in a lot of the ways that the story is told) that God REQUIRED this sacrifice in order to reconcile Creation to Godself. What does it say that the spilling of innocent blood is necessary to bridge that gap between Creator and Creation?

***

I recently came across a blogpost titled "Vampires & crosses." An excerpt:

Vampire stories tell us, for example, than any of us can have great power if only we are willing to prey on others. Feed off the blood of others and great power will be yours. This is demonstrably true. It's how the pyramids were built. And Standard Oil.

The stories also tell us that there's a downside to this predatory choice. You become a creature of the night, unable to stand in the light of day.

And crosses will confound you.

Some mistakenly think that this is because the cross is a holy symbol, imbued with religious power. But this is wrong. The symbol, like the thing itself, is powerless. And that's the point. That is why vampires can't tolerate it.

Most vampires don't believe in the cross, but that hardly matters. It's the idea of the thing that gives them fits. The cross confronts vampires with their opposite -- with the rejection of power and its single-minded pursuit. It suggests that no one is to be treated as prey -- not even an enemy. The idea of the cross, in other words, suggests that vampires have it wrong, that they have it backwards, in fact, and that those others they regard as prey are actually, somehow, winning.

This notion is incomprehensible for vampires. The one thing they're certain of, the thing that drives them and tells them who they are and how the world works and that they've got it all figured out is that the key to immortality is in choosing to be the predator rather than the prey. The idea that this might be wrong is so befuddling, so contradictory to everything they have chosen to be that it forces them to recoil. They can't get past it.

This is somewhat reminiscent of part of a post I saw on the "when love comes to town" blog about what happened after the September 11th attacks:

• And that is precisely what [Renee] Girrard describes in his work regarding scapegoats: pinning all of our hatred and fear on the scapegoat always unifies a society - but only for a season - and then more violence is needed to bind people together. Further, societies rarely consider the consequences of scapegoating - history is never told from the perspective of our victims - so we rarely feel remorse or act in repentance.
• Which is why the story and reality of Jesus is unique: for the first time, Girrard suggests, history is told from the perspective of the innocent scapegoat. For the first time we can see the horrible consequences of our violence. Indeed, what makes the passion of Christ so important in NOT the horrible violence a la Mel Gibson. That, sadly, is all to ordinary. No, what makes the passion life changing is the awareness that Christ died to expose this horrible sin and invite us - with God's grace - to stop it.

[Pedantic me would like to point out that blogpost to the contrary, the correct spelling is René Girard.]

***

After Convo, I've been paying more attention to Communion liturgies, and below is an email I wrote to Laura Ruth (hyperlinks not in original) after Rest and Bread this week:

I really like using the traditional Words of Institution (or a close approximation thereto), and it sometimes makes me uncomfortable when we rewrite them so wholesale at CWM (though it feels organic and appropriate to CWM, so even when it does bother me, it bothers me less than it would in other contexts). But I want more. If all we say is, "This is my blood, the blood of the new covenant, poured out for many, for the forgiveness of sins," then I'm left saying, "So God requires innocent blood in order to forgive? And what is this new covenant anyway?"

I went to Sunday morning service at Somerville Community Baptist this past Sunday, and in their Communion liturgy they used the phrase, "Proclaim Christ's death until He comes again," and in thinking about it today, I thought, "But Jesus says "Remember ME," not "I'm going to die soon, and you should remember THAT." " (Okay, okay, when I actually Googled "Words of Institution," it's all "do this in remembrance of me," which sounds very much like a memorial... which just doesn't sit right with me, since WE ARE A RESURRECTION PEOPLE *cough* I have perhaps internalized Tiffany's Easter sermon ... anyway, the relevant chapter in Mark Allan Powell's book Loving Jesus has given me a lot to think about re: the idea of expectantly waiting for Christ's return, but I still incline more toward a focus on "Christ is with us now" than "Christ will come again" -- when we sing "Christ has died, Christ is ris'n..." that's CWM's alternative for the third phrase.)

In my various churches, I hear a lot of talk about coming to the Table to be nourished -- both spiritually and physically. I've never actually experienced this at Communion, because it's a bite of bread and a sip of juice/wine (not an actual meal) and the story doesn't tell me how it is that I am spiritually nourished/fed (or reconciled) through this experience -- I who grew up very low church Protestant where God is ALWAYS accessible to you. And I'm not asking for Communion to become a meaningful powerful experience for me. I have a Bible full of texts to wrestle with, and I live in a world full of grace and full of pain. (Earlier today I came across a quotation I'd forgotten -- "If the world was merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. That makes it hard to plan the day." –E.B. White) I have so so much.

But I so want church to be accessible to and meaningful for people, and I think, "What stories are we telling people? What stories are we embodying? How are we helping people to touch the face of God?" (Did I ever tell you that my best friend's pastor once said, "we go to church every week because we touch the face of God"?)

And so I think, What if after we recited the words from the Bible (the Words of Institution), we said, "And Jesus said: Whenever you do this, remember me. And so we do remember. We remember Jesus' ministry of sitting down at table and sharing a meal with the outcasts and the religious elite. We remember Jesus' body being broken by the authorities, and we remember the tomb being broken open. We remember the suffering and the resurrection. And in this meal, the fruits of the earth broken open for us, we remember and we are nourished for the journey that lies ahead."

Um, I'm not sure when I turned into someone who actually writes liturgy?

doing the work of the church

I've been reading Shaping Sanctuary (Tiffany recommended it during Reconciling lunch at this year's New England Annual Conference), and on page 134 there are two prayers from the Reconciling Congregation Program.

From Luke 9:28-36:

Radiant God, source of light,
as you surrounded Jesus with your glory,
so you come to us in a penetrating brightness.

You catch us off guard and expose our weakness.

We choose the limelight while you call us to explore the shadows
and brighten the darkness.

We seek the spectacular while you bind up the broken in
countless acts of mercy.

We seek to stay on the mountain or in a comfortable pew while
you walk to the valleys of need.

Radiant God,
fill us with light and courage to carry good news into all the
corners of the world and to bring back the joy of your presence.

Amen.

From Matthew 15:21-28:

O God, you are Hospitality. You are Welcome. You are the Invitation, the Table, the Feast. By your spirit may we learn to receive and offer grace, to share from the sustenance of our lives and not simply the crumbs. Embolden us as we serve as the voice of those who continue to ask the church for justice and bread. In Christ we pray, amen.

***

My best friend and I have recently been discussing how to embody welcoming, inclusive, accessible church, and reading the second of these prayers in particular I was thinking about the demands that places on us the members who make up the Body of Christ that is the Church. And not only am I lazy, but I also mostly don't like people, so I am doubly disinclined to help do the actual do the work of welcoming people.

The line "to share from the sustenance of our lives and not simply the crumbs" from the second prayer really struck me. My best friend loves her church and wants to give her best to her church. I am, rather less devoted to CWM. It surprises no one, I expect, that I'm much more inclined to critique worship services etc. than I am to put in real work to help fix things. I think it's also tied to my unwillingness to claim group identity labels (like church/denominational membership).

CWM is my church home. Were I to pursue ordained ministry (WHICH I AM NOT DOING -- despite various people telling me I should), I would do it within the context of that community. It's the church I am most glad to return to when I have been out of town. I say it's my home church. But I'm really uncomfortable fundraising, for example -- uncomfortable with telling people this is a wonderful thing they should give their money to.

Though maybe I'm selling myself short.

I show up at Rest and Bread service and help set up chairs and put the inserts in the bulletins and photocopy more bulletins if we're running low. I've helped lead worship in any capacity as asked, and have sometimes volunteered when I know one of the usual leaders will be absent. I've bought firesticks [like this, only different] 'cause the ones in the chapel kept vanishing.

I help set up because I'm there early anyway and it's easy, and everything else is because I Want Things Done Right (well except for helping with the service itself, which is more because I'm capable and comfortable and willing when asked).

I think basically it's that I don't want to do anything that feels like work -- in the sense of not wanting to do anything that doesn't come naturally/easily to me. Which isn't necessarily inherently a bad thing. We're all given different gifts and graces (the Body needs many different parts) and yes we are called to grow, but...

I volunteer to lay read at any church I attend regularly -- because it's something I enjoy doing, and very selfishly it means there are bad lay readers less often.

Providing food for fellowship, for example, is one thing I really don't want to do -- though I'll sometimes help wash dishes at CWM (usually helping dry, because given the setup we have I'm not a huge fan of washing dishes there, even though in general it's a household "chore" I don't mind).

[kidney donation] "Open hearts. Open minds. Open doors."

Monday morning of last week, an email came through on the listserv of the local UCC church I attend about writing letters to Legal Seafoods and The Cheesecake Factory. (The email says, in part, "Legal Seafoods and The Cheesecake Factory restaurants in Greater Boston subcontracted with local companies that hired these workers to clean their restaurants. The cleaning companies then refused to pay the workers for both regular and overtime hours, cheating them out of weeks of hard-earned pay. Our mission and justice partner Centro Presente is leading a campaign seeking fair treatment for the workers.")

It occurred to me that probably plenty of CWM folk would be interested in workers' rights issues, and I continue to feel frustrated at the lack of information-sharing between congregations.

What I've been hearing about these past however many weeks at CWM (my primary church) is the trans-inclusive Massachusetts ENDA [and hate crimes bill] and environmental stuff.

At midweek service at aforementioned UCC church last week, the pastor had flyers for the Hearty Meals outreach at the American Baptist church down the street.

Then later I was thinking about how it probably makes sense for individual congregations to only focus on a few mission outreaches

***

Later that day, I read an article in The Atlantic about kidney donation (which I didn't realize until I hit the end was by Virginia Postrel). Excerpt:

Living with a single kidney is almost exactly like living with two; the remaining kidney expands to take up the slack. (When kidneys fail, they generally fail together; barring trauma or cancer, there’s not much advantage to a backup.) The main risk to the donor is the risk of any surgery. The kidney can now be removed laparoscopically, using tiny incisions and a fiber-optic camera to guide the surgeon, thus avoiding the huge abdominal slice and lengthy recovery time that used to be standard. Kidney donors don’t have to be close relatives of recipients, but they do need to have the right blood type. And kidneys from living donors tend to last many years longer than kidneys from deceased donors.

Since the current transplant system extols altruism, one way to end the list would be to find more altruists. With, say, 50,000 new living donors, deceased donation could easily pick up the slack. Again, the numbers aren’t that big. The Southern Baptist Convention includes 42,000 member churches; the United Methodist Church, whose Web site earlier this year featured the quote, “As United Methodists, we’re life savers,” counts more than 34,000 U.S. congregations. If each congregation produced just one new living donor, the waiting list would disappear. But kidney donation is a more visceral mission than mainstream religious groups want to contemplate. The only sect to adopt kidney donation as a formal cause is a tiny Australia-based group called Jesus Christians; instead of lauding them, critics point to their donations as evidence that they’re a cult.

I still refuse to officially join any church/denomination, but my home church is "wicked Methodist" (TM me), and in recent months I've noticed myself having "you are of my people" reactions to people mentioning having grown up United Methodist, so I was particularly kicked by the mention of the UMC.

[Firefly] on Incarnation, atonement theology, etc.

Some local folks have been watching Firefly every other Friday night, and in watching "Safe" (for literally the sixth time) a couple weeks ago, I was really struck by the resonance of one exchange (text c&p'ed from script here), thinking about God reaching out to us.

RIVER: You gave up everything you had to find me. And you found me broken. (beat) It's hard for you. You gave up everything you had.
SIMON: Mei mei ["little sister"]... Everything I have is right here.

I think God is always reaching out to us, and that's one of the ways I think of the Incarnation -- not just that we weren't understanding God's Will for us and needed shepherding back to the path (The Way), but also that God reaches out and touches us, sits down at table and shares bread and drink with us.

And our brokenness grieves God, and God is right there with us through it all.

Christ descended from the Right Hand of the Father to come to earth, born of a human woman and suffering as humans do, but at some levels it wasn't a sacrifice because God's home is with us, our home is with God. (And now I'm thinking of the Children's Moment and Reflection from my evening church this past Sunday.)

***

I tagged this entry "mother is the name of god," mostly because the fanfic I learned that quotation from takes place during this episode, but it also got me thinking.

Our interim lay speaker began his time with us (Fifth Sunday After Pentecost) preaching on family (specifically 2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10 ... on how David is covenantally anointed a leader of family -- "All the tribes of Israel came to David at Hebron and said, 'We are your own flesh and blood.'")