My new reflection

Sometimes after a shower or before bed, I'll stand in front of the mirror and take in my new (and daily-changing) reflection, marveling at what I'm seeing.

All my life I have longed to see my belly swollen with child. When I see it, I smile, without fail. I admit I try to catch glimpses of my pregnant self in mirrors and windows whenever possible.

But I never expected to be seeing this particular reflection looking back at me:

A round belly, full of child (full of Grace!), and above it, two breast-like mounds marked with massive diagonal scars, fully healed but still discolored. I can still see the marks of other scars - biopsies, and the places where drains once protruded through my skin - and the slight unevenness that is inevitable when man tries to make a boob as well as God does.

I do not see breasts that will feed my child. I do not see the full effects of pregnancy on a female body. I do not see what I expected to see when I dreamed about this time as a woman in my late teens and early 20s.

Now and then I give myself a moment to stand in front of the mirror and take it all in, and to figure out how I feel about all this.

And to my surprise, I feel pretty good.

No, I don't see what I expected, but what I do see is life, and lots of it. What I do see is strength, the strength of a fighter. What I do see is love, a love I already know yet cannot anticipate - that moment when I meet this little one, and get to know her.

What I do see is beauty. It is the beauty that comes from that life, from that fight, from that strength, from that love. Even, from the sadness of that loss.

I wish I could have seen the reflection that I dreamed and imagined as a very young woman. But if I'm being completely honest... I might prefer this one.

This one, this one belongs to a woman who is ready to teach her daughter about how real beauty looks.

Sermon: Telling the story of responsibility (June 7, 2015)

Pentecost 2B

June 7, 2014

Genesis 3:8-15

Mark 3:20-35

            This morning, our opening hymn is one that many of you probably have sung countless times, an old favorite: “I love to tell the story, ‘twill be my theme in glory, to tell the old, old story of Jesus and his love.” It’s sort of ironic though, really, that this hymn is so loved by Lutherans, because Lutherans are historically and statistically not very good at telling the story, at least outside of the safe circle of the church (and even there it can be a struggle). Evangelism has, shall we say, not always been our strong suit as Lutherans. Which is precisely why “telling the story” became the theme of our synod assembly last weekend: “God’s story, our voices.” In various capacities, we

talked and learned about how we tell the story, how we hear the story, how we see the story, how we live the story. We were inspired even as we were convicted that indeed we are not very good at this… yet.

            Part of the reason we are not so good at this, I suppose, is that biblical literacy is no longer a given like it was 50 years ago. As a result, many people don’t face a life situation and immediately think of a Bible passage that speaks to it. Even I am in this boat, after so many Bible classes and so much study, simply because biblical literacy is not ingrained as a cultural norm like it once was. And yet, the Bible is full of stories that are terrifically relevant to our lives. So, one of my jobs as your pastor is to help you develop this skill.

            And today’s Old Testament reading is a great place to start, because this story about Adam and Eve and the serpent is one that speaks so perfectly to the human condition. In fact, that was its purpose all along. This is one of those stories in the Bible that is written not to be taken as fact, but rather to portray a truth. It’s an etiology of sorts, that is, a story describing a way of life we know to be true, and after the fact, coming up with a reason for it – in this case, the origins of good and evil, of original sin, of pride. An etiology is by its very nature, a literary form that people can relate to. It is a story that sheds light on something about ourselves. We have all wanted to know more than we

Adam and Eve by Ralph Milton

should (like Adam and Eve), we have all tried to cover or hide from our mistakes (like Adam and Eve), we have all blamed someone else when really we know deep down that we are just as much at fault – and so we can all relate to and learn from this story, because it serves as a mirror into our hearts.

            This is especially easy to see in our personal relationships. Just think: who here has ever had an argument with someone? (Let’s see those hands!) Try to remember a specific disagreement you had. Now, I’m no psychic, but… my guess is that the disagreement arose because both parties believed they were right. Am I correct? Or perhaps more accurately, it arose because no one wanted to admit they were wrong. In my experience, I find that while being right is very nice, the bigger concern is that I don’t want to be wrong – because being wrong, and especially having to admit we are wrong, is one of the hardest things we have to do. In your experience, why is that? What makes admitting you are wrong so difficult? [wait for answers] It is hard because admitting you are wrong requires relinquishing some control in the situation. As long as you are right, you have the upper hand, but letting go of that control means you risk getting hurt, being ashamed, and losing your dignity and self-respect. And so blaming someone else becomes a shield, a protection, a way of keeping control and eliminating that risk of being hurt and ashamed.

            It’s exactly what Adam and Eve do. They both knew they were wrong – that is why they hide! They are exposed – both their hearts and even, they realize, their bodies – and so they try to hide themselves. But of course God finds them (God always does), and realizes right away that they have done something wrong. “Adam, did you do the very thing I told you not to do?” Well, Adam is not about to take the blame for this (even though if he’s being honest, he knows that he could very easily have made his own decisions and declined the fruit Eve offered). He is already standing naked before God, feeling about as exposed and unprotected as he possibly can. The only way out is to shift the blame. “I only did it because Eve made me,” he says. Sigh, relief. God’s attention turns to Eve. “Eve, what have you got to say for yourself?” Stammering and scrambling to somehow shirk the

responsibility and escape from this horrific insecurity and regain her sense of control and self-respect, she too shifts the blame: “It was the serpent. He said it was the right thing to do, and I believed him.” Phew. Saved. They can’t undo the damage, but at least they can escape this awkward encounter with a shred of their former dignity.

            Sound at all familiar? I can think of several fights I’ve had that have followed this pattern. But the real conviction happens when we broaden our scope to think not only about our personal relationships, but about our role in the larger issues the world faces, about our public responsibilities that we slough off on someone else. For example: none of us are the reason there is no rain in California, but does that mean we bear no responsibility for our neighbors out west? After all, here in NY we still buy almonds, an incredibly thirsty crop, 80% of which are grown in California, and we buy bottled water that uses water from drought-ridden California,[1] and we buy a host of produce products grown in California. You see, it is easy to remove ourselves from this drought 3000 miles away as we grab another case of water and pick out the choicest oranges, and take no responsibility for that tragedy. That’s what Adam and Eve

Evidence of drought in CA

did: “It was Eve!” “It was the snake!” “I didn’t have any other option, and this is definitely not my fault!”

            Is that what Jesus would have us do? Look around at the various tragedies of the world – whether they are natural disasters, or deeply ingrained systemic issues like racism, or more specific injustices like the high rate of incarceration in this country, or the possibility that a 15-year-old known by all as a “good kid” can get stabbed to death on the streets of Rochester, or all-pervasive worldwide issues like hunger and poverty… Would Jesus have us look at these issues and others and shake our heads sadly and say, “That’s a shame, but it’s not my fault. I’ll give some food to the local pantry to try and help, but ultimately, I can’t fix this, because I didn’t cause it. Fixing it long-term is someone else’s job, not mine.”

            Is that what Jesus would have us do? Or would Jesus have us do something more like what we see in today’s Gospel lesson, in which Jesus goes from town to town healing and teaching and doing so in such a manner that people actually think he is possessed! But he will not sit idle while the world

needs to know the love of God, even if that means people judge him, and that he has to redefine his family, and that people discredit his work because they think he is crazy for even trying.

            “I love to tell the story, ‘twill be my theme in glory,” we sang with such gusto this morning. And do we? Do we love to tell that story in such a way that we may put ourselves at the same risk that Jesus did of being judged and ostracized and declared crazy and eventually put to death? Do we love to tell the story with our dramatic works to make this world more like God intended? Do we love to tell the story by sharing with others that although it may seem we are acting all crazy and irrationally in our efforts to serve God and neighbor, we are actually doing it because we are baptized, and the Holy Spirit is in us and upon us, and this is what it looks like to be faithful Christians – even if it means inconveniencing ourselves, or upsetting the apple cart like Jesus did?

            Sisters and brothers in Christ, let us tell that story. Let us learn a lesson from Adam and Eve, and instead of always placing blame elsewhere, let’s recognize what role we have played in injustice, and then use that awareness to play a role in bringing about the kingdom of God on earth. Let us tell the old, old story of Jesus and his love, in whatever way it takes to get the word out.

            And let us begin with prayer… Holy Spirit, you came upon us in our baptism and empowered us for ministry in this world. Help us not to turn a blind eye to the needs of the world, dismissing them as “not our problem.” Help us take responsibility, and guide us toward the paths that will best serve the world, and that will share the old, old story of Jesus and his love. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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[1] “Some Brands are Still Bottling Water in Drought-Stricken Regions,” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/10/bottled-water-drought-california_n_7028058.html 

Put on your dancin' shoes! (Trinity, 2015)

Holy Trinity Sunday

May 31, 2015 (SMLC confirmation)
Romans 8:12–17

Grace to you and peace from the one who was and who is and who is to come. Amen.

            As many of you know, my dad is also a pastor. He tells a story about the second parish he served, where someone was complaining about the preaching of his predecessor. My dad asked her what was wrong with this pastor’s preaching, and she answered, rolling her eyes, “He preached 52 sermons a year on looooove.”

            Well, love is a very nice topic to preach on, but I can see how focusing on only that every single week might get be a bit tiresome and redundant. On the other hand, I can also see why that preacher might have always been drawn to that particular message, being that it’s a pretty central piece of our understanding of God and faith. And so today, I think I will do it – preach on love, I

mean – because I think this Sunday, on which we celebrate the Holy Trinity, is one of the best on which to talk about, as my dad’s parishioner so eloquently called it, “looooove.”

            Perhaps this is a surprise to you because, well, the doctrine of the Trinity is not known as one of the most accessible doctrines of the church, and doesn’t usually bring love to mind. It’s very heady, even as it is impossible to adequately describe or understand. It’s one of those topics that, try as you might to help someone understand how it is that we worship one God, but it’s also three, but it’s still one… you will inevitably end up in some heretical trap at some point. After 2000 years of conversations, debates, and a few burnings-at-the-stake of outright heretics, scholars and clergy have a much easier time saying what the Trinity isn’t than what it is. It isn’t three different masks worn by

Heretics being burned at the stake

the same one God. It isn’t three different jobs done by one God. It isn’t that God the Father created the Son, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. (It really isn’t that one – that was a huge heresy in the early Church, and is why today we say in our creed that Jesus was “begotten, not created.”) If you want, you can go to the Wikipedia page on Christian heresies and read for yourself all the ways that we are not supposed to understand the Trinity.

            So why, then, would I saw that this Sunday on which we celebrate this hard-to-define doctrine is the perfect Sunday to talk about God’s love? For starters: because when we talk about God as Trinity, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we can see that ours is a God who at the core is relational. In other words, ours is a God who does not want to be alone, but rather reaches out again and again in love: In love, God created the heavens and the earth and all its creatures, including you and me. In love, God went to great lengths to show the Israelites how to love God and one another. In love, God saw that the world remained a broken place and so sent to us Jesus, who was God incarnate (made human), who modeled love of neighbor and ultimately showed us that the love of God is so strong that He wanted to actually be among us, to know us, and to allow us to know God. In love, God recognized that, because death is the ultimate sacrifice, that Jesus must die for all of us, to show us God would do anything, anything to prove His love for us. And in love, God sent the Holy Spirit, the continuing divine presence on earth, to guide us, comfort us, encourage us into service, strengthen us, empower us, pray for us, inspire us.

            Do you see? Every way that God has acted throughout history, and every attempt that God has made to know us and be known by us, has been out of a deep and divine love. When we understand God as one-in-three and three-in-one, we understand God as one who is so interested in relationship, that God’s very self is a relationship.

            Maybe by now I’m completely blowing your mind, or maybe your brain already short-circuited and shut down and you’ve completely tuned me out. (Either way, welcome to my first year in seminary, patristic theology!) Wherever you are, come back to me now, and let me talk about this in a different way. In honor of this year being the 50^th anniversary of my favorite movie, The Sound of Music, let’s talk about this by singing a song. Our hymn of the day today is a helpful image for me in trying to understand how the Trinity expresses love. The first verse goes like this: “Come join the dance of Trinity before all worlds begun – the interweaving of the Three, the Father, Spirit, Son. The

universe of space and time did not arise by chance, but as the Three, in love and hope, made room within their dance.”

First of all, notice the hymn describes the Trinity not as people or things, but as an action, a dance, into which the whole universe is brought. Now, a dance is necessarily relational. I remember taking dance lessons with my college boyfriend. He was a good lead, but I of course always wanted to have a little more say in what we were doing on the dance floor. Well it turns out that when you’re dancing and there are two people trying to lead, it looks a lot less like dancing and a lot more like…uh… wrestling, toe stomping, crashing, and tripping. Lesson learned: a dance is a relationship, in which we act and respond to one another, not try to plow one another over. So when we think about the Trinity as a dance, maybe as a circle dance, we think about it as flowing, joyful, mutual, cooperation. And in love, God the Holy Trinity invites us into that dance, invites us into that cooperation, that joy, that love.

            And that invitation is extended to us in our baptism. In baptism, we come to the font professing our faith (or in the case of infants, the parents’ faith) in God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We remember the ways that God has made God’s love known to us throughout history. We vow to live a life that expresses our trust in God’s promises. And then we are baptized – in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit: the Trinity. And in this moment, we are welcomed and brought into that divine dance. We are enveloped in that love, joy and mutuality. We are, in the words of Paul in the letter we heard from Romans this morning, adopted by God, made children of God. We belong to God, to the Holy Trinity, and we become a part of that divine circle dance.

Today seven young people at St. Martin will affirm their participation in that dance as they affirm their baptism, otherwise known as confirmation. It is a time when they, having attended worship and Sunday school and two years of class with me on Bible and catechism, have a chance to stand before the congregation and say, “I believe that what we say happens in baptism really happened to me, and this matters for me and my life. I believe that God has brought me into His divine life and dance, and claimed me as a child of God, and that I am therefore a participant in God’s mission here.” That’s a lot that these young people are claiming today!

So the question here, for our confirmands and for all of us, is: does all this really matter for your life? When we witness something like a baptism or a confirmation, we have the opportunity to reflect on those events in our own lives. We hear again the promises made, hear again the saving

works of God, hear again those powerful words that indicate that we belong to Christ. And when we do – do we believe them? Do we care?

My prayer – for all of us and especially for those being confirmed today – is that they do matter, today and every day hereafter, that a day won’t go by when you won’t realize with joy that God’s love for you extends beyond your wildest dreams, that indeed God has done and will do anything to show you that love, whether that be by coming to earth to be among us, sending a Holy Spirit to lead, guide, push, and empower us, surrounding us with people who can show us the loving ways that God works in the world today, or even helping us be the people that show that love to others. I pray that the knowledge of this unconditional love will give you freedom when you feel trapped, hope when you feel hopeless, peace when you feel anxious, and strength when you feel weak. And I pray that every step you take will be a step that adds something beautiful to the dance of Trinity, of which, thanks be to God, we are all a part.

Within the dance of Trinity, before all worlds begun, we sing the praises of the Three, the Father, Spirit, Son. Let voices rise and interweave, by love and hope set free, to shape in song this joy, this life: the dance of Trinity. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sermon: I Wanna Hold Your Hand, but That's Not All! (Pentecost, May 24, 2015)

Day of Pentecost (B)

May 24, 2015 (BLC confirmation, SMLC baptisms)

Acts 2:1–21

Romans 8:22–27

John 15:26–27; 16:4b–15

            I have been reading a wonderful and fascinating book called The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace. It is about a kid who grows up in a bad part of Newark, but ends up going to Yale for college. His mom works extremely hard through his life to give him every possible opportunity, though she can barely afford to feed him. His dad is a drug dealer, but a very loving and present father, who is well-loved in the neighborhood. When Rob is 7, his dad is arrested for a murder he probably didn’t commit. His mom responds by working even harder, and finding a way to send Rob to private school, where he meets wonderful friends who are his kindred spirits. As Rob grows up, he is quietly tormented by his reality, even as he continues to excel in everything he tries, and win the hearts of teachers, drug dealers, and big time CEOs alike. I haven’t finished the book yet, so I don’t know how it ends, but so far it is clear that Rob is able to thrive as he does because he has so many

different people from so many different walks of life surrounding him and walking alongside him. And while many of these advocates and helpers are a comfort to him, what really makes them worthy companions for this brilliant, thoughtful boy is their ability to push him to step beyond what his background might indicate is possible, and to be the best that he can be.

            I’ve been thinking about the story of Robert Peace this week as I have been reflecting on the role of the Holy Spirit, especially as one who advocates for and helps us. As you may have figured out, today is the day in the church year we call Pentecost. It is sort of the birthday of the Church, or you could say, the baptism of the Church – the day the Holy Spirit swept into the lives of Jesus’ followers in dramatic fashion, with wind and fire and many languages spoken and understood and prophecy.  To hear Luke tell it in Acts, we get the impression that this day and this Spirit was unlike anything they had experienced before, and would push them to new and exciting places.

            The image we see of the Holy Spirit in this story from Acts portrays the Holy Spirit as empowering, enabling, dramatic, exciting, perplexing, giver of prophecy – all very strong and active images. But Acts isn’t the only description we get of the Holy Spirit today. In the Psalm, the Spirit is creative and renewing, calling things into existence. In Romans, we hear of a Spirit who is here to pray on our behalf, to intercede for us when we find we don’t have the words, and to pray “with sighs too deep for words.” Here, the Spirit is a Helper, a Comforter, a Companion for us in our weakness. And then finally in John we hear about the Holy Spirit as an Advocate, one who speaks on our behalf. Here she is one who once again gives us the words, but now it is words to proclaim Christ Jesus, to be witnesses. The Spirit is there to comfort and encourage, to walk alongside us.

            So many different roles of the Spirit in these four texts, and even more if we were to look beyond today’s assigned texts. Is there one name we can use to help us understand the many facets of the Holy Spirit? In fact there is: Paraclete. No, not parakeet, and not “pair o’ cleats” (though you can be sure my divinity school’s soccer team took full advantage of this too-good-to-pass-up pun when

we named the soccer team the “Paracleats”). But no, puns aside, “Paraclete” is a compound Greek word that literally means, “to come alongside another.” So when we call the Holy Spirit the Paraclete, we are calling her, “one who comes alongside us.” Perhaps that coming alongside is to comfort, perhaps it is to help, perhaps to advocate, to encourage, to empower, to sustain, to pray for… all of these roles of the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, involve some sort of coming alongside.

            And yet, as comforting as it may be to think about God coming alongside us in all we do, we mustn’t get too comfortable in this image. Professor David Lose, who currently serves as the president of Philadelphia Seminary and will be the keynote speaker at our Synod Assembly this weekend, takes issue with thinking about the Paraclete as one whose primary role is to comfort. He complains that though we may prefer to think of the Spirit as Comforter, that’s not quite the whole of it. “I think we’ve misnamed the Holy Spirit,” he writes. “The Holy Spirit is as much agitator as advocate, as much provocateur as comforter… [We mustn’t] reduce the work of the Holy Spirit to making us feel better… [The] one who comes alongside might also do so to strengthen you for work, or to muster your courage, or to prompt or even provoke you to action.” In other words, the Paraclete may take you by the hand, but then pull you somewhere you wouldn’t have gone, or drag you into something you don’t think you can do!

            So this of course can get scary and dangerous for us in a hurry! To be comforted, to have our hand held, to be helped by the Holy Spirit all sounds very nice, but it also gives the impression that things are just fine the way they are, and I don’t need to do anything differently. But sometimes our best advocates and helpers are that precisely because they don’t just hold our hand. I think back to the story about Robert Peace with which I started this sermon. He could have just sat back and given in to the life of so many other young black boys who grew up in the 80s in Newark, whose dads were in prison and moms could barely scrape by on their own. But instead he was pushed and encouraged and empowered and advocated for and inspired to apply to an Ivy League college, to see just what he might be capable of, to try to give back to the world some of the gifts he had clearly been given. His most important companions came alongside him, but did not merely hold his hand.

            The Holy Spirit as Agitator, as Mover and Shaker, as Won’t-Let-You-Sit-Back-On-Your-Heels-and-Watch-er… yes, this is a challenging image indeed, but it is one I think is especially helpful and important on this day, when we not only celebrate Pentecost, but also celebrate the Confirmations of two young men at Bethlehem, and two children’s Baptisms at St. Martin. Baptism is certainly an occasion upon which we talk about the Holy Spirit coming upon us and into us, and Confirmation is an affirmation of that moment, a time when young people say, “Yes, I believe that

the Holy Spirit did come upon me at my baptism, to empower and inspire and counsel and sustain, and I believe that this actually matters for my life!” So how might it look like for these four young members – two confirmands and two being baptized, and next week seven more being confirmed at St. Martin – what might it look like for these young people to have the Holy Spirit “come alongside” them?

            My prayer for them is that it will look like a life of gutsy and courageous service, looking at the needs of the world and at their particular God-given skills and interests, and seeing how those gifts might be used to serve those needs. I pray it will look like a continuing knowledge of and trust in a God who would never lead them into something that cannot be accomplished through Christ who strengthens us. I pray it will look like courage – courage to be agents of change where it is needed, to be healers where no one else will dare venture, to be bold in faith when everyone else seems to have given up. And most of all, I pray it will look like an abiding trust in a God who promises to be present with us in so many and various ways, as our Advocate, our Encourager, our Savior, our Creator, our Paraclete, and in all things, our Sustainer of Life. Praise and thanks be to this God, and may we all be empowered by the gifts God brings to us by the Spirit.

            In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.