Sermon: Sticks and stones break more than bones (May 14, 2017)

Easter 5A

May 14, 2017

Acts 7:55-60

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

            Bringing food to hungry widows hardly seems like a job that would get someone killed. Surely the twelve apostles had a far more dangerous job – they were preaching the Word of God, the good news of Jesus Christ, into a world and culture that rejected this message. Their preaching was an affront to the government, offensive to the powers that be, and often placed them in very scary, vulnerable positions. Christian preaching was a high-risk job in those days! But apparently not as risky as the job that Stephen would take on.

            How did Stephen end up with such a dangerous job? Well, the fledgling Christian Church was outgrowing its structures – a good problem to have, right? Though they were dedicated to caring for one another, feeding one another, sharing goods, generally loving one another as Jesus had taught them – as disciples of The Way increased, some of the needy were falling through the cracks; in particular, some of the widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food. As problems often do, this presented them with a new ministry opportunity! So the leaders of the new church considered the gifts of their members, and how they could best fill the need presented to them, and came up with a plan: they would start a deacon ministry. Seven were chosen to serve in this new ministry, and their job would be to bring food to the hungry widows. Among them was Stephen, who was described by his friends as “a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit.” With this new deacon ministry in place, the Twelve would be able to devote themselves to the preaching of the Word and prayer, and the seven deacons would be empowered to carry out the ministry of service. The Twelve did a laying on of hands, and they sent out the deacons.

            Stephen proved to be well-suited to this new ministry, and he jumped in with both feet. To him, waiting on tables was not just a job, not just a duty that filled his days. No, for Stephen, it was a calling – an opportunity for him to share his faith and his wisdom with people who really needed it. To those he served and worked with, he became the light of Christ. He was truly “a man full of God’s grace and power.” Stephen had found his niche – he was loving it!

            It sounds great, doesn’t it? What a beautiful example Stephen was! How great it would be if we all could bring God’s love and light into our workplaces – whether that is waiting on tables like Stephen, or working in an office cubicle, or teaching, or nursing, or even being a stay-at-home parent – what if we could all shed God’s light in our workplaces in the way that we serve one another and share our faith.

But, it wasn’t long before the opposition felt threatened by Stephen’s

wisdom. He was too good. He made the opposition feel uncomfortable, and their discomfort made them feel angry. They looked for ways to bring him down; yet whenever they tried to argue with him, “they could not stand up to his wisdom or the Spirit by whom he spoke.” And so they asserted their power: they seized Stephen, accused him of blasphemy, they “stirred up the people and elders and teachers of the law.” “They produced false witnesses” to make him look bad. Some who watched were caught up in the excitement of it all. Stephen gave an impassioned speech, standing firm in his faith, and people got even more upset. Before long, the crowd was stoning Stephen to death.

Things can escalate quickly when people feel threatened, can’t they? For us, too; when we feel threatened or scared – even if just for a time, we can assuage our own insecurities and fears and focus on taking down the thing or person who made us feel insecure or fearful. Attacking someone else helps us to ignore our own dark spots, our own sins, our own shortcomings, our own mistakes. It helps us avoid the dark truth in our hearts.

            I shared a story a few weeks ago from Brene Brown’s recent book; here’s another one. Brene encountered a woman at a speaking engagement who really bugged her, named Pamela. Pamela was pushy, self-congratulatory, and had nothing but complaints about her boss and the people she worked with. Some weeks later, Pamela wrote to Brene, inviting her to speak at a conference – and included in the email a correction on how Brene had pronounced someone’s name in her talk. It hit one of Brene’s triggers – she was filled with shame over the mistake, and lashed out at Pamela in response. She crafted an email back that would take Pamela down in every possible subversive way, including copying the woman’s boss on the email and mentioning the horrible things Pamela had said about her. Oh, Brene was proud of the email, but did not send it. She asked her therapist about it. Her therapist gently asked her the golden question: “How do you hope this will make her feel?” Brene thought for a moment, then said, “I hope she feels small and ashamed.” Then, in horror, she realized why she wanted that: because that was how Pamela had made her feel. She wanted to take that shame stone Pamela had thrown at her, and hurl it right back, with much greater force.

            So it goes when we feel threatened or ashamed, and so it went with Stephen. Some people felt threatened by Stephen – by his faith, by his eloquent and courageous living and articulating of that faith, by his wisdom. His work made them feel uncomfortable, and their discomfort made them feel angry. And so they cast stones – cast enough stones and with enough vitriol and strength, that they

killed him. And so Stephen became the first martyr, the first to die for the sake of the Christian faith.

            Now, of course, in America we don’t experience stonings like this anymore. But such figurative stonings as what Brene Brown described are all too familiar. They happen in our workplaces, in our homes, even in our churches. So that made me wonder: As we read Stephen’s story today, both the ending we just heard and the story leading up to it, with whom do we identify at any given point in our own story?

Do we identify with the ones casting stones – who lash out against something that makes us feel threatened and uncomfortable and vulnerable, that is against our sensibilities? Would we rather just get rid of the thing that challenges us rather than actually facing it, taking the time to learn about it, maybe even learn from it, and risk it revealing something dark in ourselves?

Do we identify more with Saul? Did you notice he is a part of this story? Saul, of course, will later become Paul, St. Paul, who penned most of the latter half of the New Testament and was instrumental in the spread of Christianity. But at this point, he is still one of the biggest persecutors of the Christian church. He is standing by, watching this happen, holding people’s coats, and nodding his approval. Do we, too, stand by and let evil go on, quietly approving it?

Or what about the other bystanders – the ones who didn’t approve of what was happening to this great man of faith, but said and did nothing? The ones who were merely complicit, letting evil persist, because it was too risky to get involved? Do we ever find ourselves in that place?

Of course, we all find ourselves in every part of this story at some point – but the place where our faith calls us to identify is with Stephen, because Stephen is living out the life to which Christ calls him. He serves God’s people, bringing Christ’s light and life to all he does. In the face of persecution, he holds fast to his faith, never wavering. Even in the moment of his death, he declares the promise of God’s everlasting life, and asks forgiveness for those who persecute him. And in the end, Luke tells us, “He fell asleep” – a euphemism that means he died, but is stated in a way that brings to mind an entry into eternal rest.

“I am the Way,” Jesus tells his disciples in our Gospel lesson today. And sometimes this statement brings us great comfort. Other times, following The Way that is Jesus leads to persecution, pain, and in the case of Stephen and many others, even death. Will we follow that Way? Will we do what is right even when it is risky, even when it upsets people?

Praise be to God for the witness of people like Stephen, and so many other saints and martyrs who have come before us, for they have shown us not only the cost of true and faithful discipleship, but also the great reward: to be, as Jesus says, in and with the Father, in relationship with God, to know the love of God here and now, and finally, to live forever in God’s glory. Thanks be to God!

Let us pray… Faithful God, the path you lay out for us is as challenging as it is full of love and grace. Guide us to be faithful disciples, slow to cast stones and quick to love and forgive. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sermon: The doorway through the wall (May 7, 2017)

Easter 4A

May 7, 2017

John 10:1-10, Psalm 23

Alleluia! Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia! Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen.

            Many of us have been watching the news regarding the impact of all this rain we’ve been having, especially on those who live on the lake. Flooding is a real problem this year – and not just in Rochester! In fact, people all around the country are experiencing flooding. This week I heard a woman from Illinois interviewed. She was scared for herself and her mom. “I don’t care about my shoes and my clothes,” she said, then, as she held back tears, “But if the water gets up to our second floor, I don’t know where my mom and I will go. There’s just no one we can count on, you know?”

            It was a stark reminder of how, when it really comes down to it, our things don’t matter nearly so much as our relationships.

            Perhaps this is why it is such a comfort each year, when we come to this Good Shepherd Sunday to hear about how Jesus is our good shepherd. He knows us, and loves us, and leads us, and keeps us safe. He desires a relationship with us, and this relationship provides us with all that we could ever desire, much more than any of our stuff ever could. Pair that promise up with the 23^rd Psalm, and there is plenty by which to be comforted. Truly Jesus, more than any thing on earth, provides us with abundant life. Our cup runneth over!

            But Jesus as shepherd isn’t the only image we hear today. In fact, in the part of John 10 we just heard, Jesus never says, “I am the good shepherd.” Instead, he says, “I am the gate.” So let’s think together for a minute about what that image, “the gate,” might mean for us and our call as Christians.

            So first of all, a gate for… what? … Yeah, it’s for getting through a fence or a wall. You don’t usually just see a gate standing out in the open unless it is a garden ornament or something. So it gets you through a barrier. Ok, so why would we have a fence or a wall? … Sometimes, again, it is for decoration. But usually it is either for keeping someone or something in, or keeping someone or something else out. In doing so, a wall necessarily divides: us from them. Wanted from unwanted. Safety from danger.

            Up to now we’ve probably all been imagining physical walls, but these aren’t the only sorts of walls we build. We build plenty of figurative walls, as well – and in fact, often for the same reasons we build physical ones. We put up walls when we have been hurt, and want to keep ourselves safe. We put up walls when we perceive danger, and seek security from that danger. We put up walls when we want protection from that which is unknown. And just as much as physical walls, these emotional walls we put up, though they may serve the purpose we intend for them, also serve to keep us divided, to keep us from relationship.

            A gate, though – a gate makes it possible to overcome that division. It holds the potential to bring “us” and “them” together, even, to bring “us” and “them” into a relationship.

            “I am the gate,” Jesus says. Suddenly, that which would have divided us no longer has that power. What would have been used to keep someone out of someplace has become porous. And with that, walking into abundant life – life centered around relationship – becomes a possibility.

            Previously, the Pharisees had seen themselves as the gate-keepers. They got to decide who is in and who is out. They made sure people were following God’s law. Indeed, it was a noble profession they took very seriously! They were upholding God’s law, after all, and someone needed to keep order around here! But then Jesus comes along and upsets everything – not by saying that he is the gatekeeper, but that he is the gate itself! He – and not their rigid law-keeping – is the one who makes it possible to get through the gate and into new and abundant life.

            But with Jesus, the gate is not one-way. As with most doors, Jesus the gate is for coming in and for going out. It is for coming in to experience abundant life, and then for going back out to bring that knowledge of what is truly abundant life back into the world. It is for coming in to be assured of the love and comfort of Jesus, and for going back out to build relationships, and to bring the assurance of God’s love into those relationships.

            In other words, Jesus-the-gate is not one who brings the sheep into the safety of a walled off area, safe from the harms of the world, safe from anything that will hurt or challenge, and shuts behind them, holding them there forever. Rather, he’s the sort of door that brings them in, and equips them to go back out.

            You know, I wonder if maybe Jesus isn’t just a vertical door. Let me explain: My aunt and uncle just moved into a new house last year, and one of the first things my uncle worked on was his office, where he would be able to work on his photo editing and printing. He needed a lot of desk space – so he purchased three large doors, turned them sideways, and used them as tabletops. Instead of serving

Door turned table (Pinterest)

as something to shut things out, those doors became a place where work is done, where flaws get addressed and fixed, where beauty is created.

            That, I think, is the sort of gate or door Jesus is. He is the door that is turned around and becomes a table. Indeed, he is that table the 23^rd Psalm refers to, a table that is set before us in the presence of our enemies – people we struggle with, people who have hurt us, people whom we need to forgive or seek forgiveness. He is a table where our cup overflows with the opportunity for relationship to be created and nurtured and healed.

Of course we have a very special sort of table in our Christian faith where that very thing happens: the altar table. And yes, Christ is also that table, as one communion prayer states, “Christ, our Table and our Food,” inviting us, in all our brokenness and all our flaws, into relationship with him and with one another, to be nourished and forgiven and strengthened to go back out into the world to serve, to seek healing, to reach out to those in need of community, with the good word of God’s love. Jesus, the gate-turned-table, turns back into the gate, sending us out – to go to that family displaced by a flood with no one they can count on, to the woman who is worried her family will be deported, to the man who lost his job and doesn’t know if he can feed his family, to the friend with whom you had a falling out but still feel the pain of the separation – to go to all of those with the promise of God’s renewing and enlivening spirit and love, and to seek with them the relationship that is so characteristic of the abundant life Christ promises.

            Christ our good shepherd. Christ our gate into abundant life. Christ our table and our food. And Christ once again our gate into the world. Each image offers us comfort even as it challenges us. As sheep of God’s pasture, let us listen to the voice of our shepherd, calling us to the hard work of relationship-building, service, and love of the world in need.

            Let us pray… Jesus, you are the gate. Help us to listen to your voice, calling us in and sending us out, and make us feel secure enough in you that we would embark on the tough work of loving your children as you have loved us. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sermon: Story-telling heals (April 30, 2017)

Easter 3A

April 30, 2017

Luke 24:13-35

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Risen Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

            This week on NPR I heard about a new program here in Rochester called “ROCovery Fitness.” They describe themselves this way: “ROCovery Fitness is a supportive community of physically active individuals brought together by sober living, committed to creating an environment of healing recovery. Members, friends, and families are empowered to discover their inner strength and confidence through adventure, fun, and camaraderie.” Pretty cool approach to recovery from substance abuse. Tomorrow is their ribbon-cutting ceremony. The part of the show I caught, as I drove from one appointment to another, was the part where the two people describing and pitching the program were sharing their own recovery stories. They talked about how, while the physical activity is certainly a part of the healing process, perhaps the larger part of the healing is that these activities take place among a community that allows the space to share their stories with one another. Telling and claiming your story, they said, is in fact an essential component on the road to recovery.

            This shouldn’t be news to us – after all, that is the premise of such familiar groups as AA, as well. The healing and recovery process of that program, too, is based on sharing and claiming stories. Once you have claimed a story – especially the most difficult stories of our lives, those stories you may rather just stuff, deep into a hole and never face again – once you’ve claimed it, it no longer has a grip on you.

            Addiction/recovery stories are certainly like this. But lots of other experiences are that way, as well: in particular, our grief stories. Grief can come into our lives in any number of ways, even beyond the death of a loved one. The loss of a job – even a positive loss like retirement – could mean a part of your identity is gone, or at least that it is expressed differently. The loss of a faculty such as sight or hearing or other physical capabilities means you function in the world differently, and maybe miss out on things you used to love. The loss of your driver’s license means the loss of your independence. The loss of a meaningful relationship – to divorce, or relocation, or just a different direction in life – means the loss of companionship. Really, any sort of change can result in grief, because any time something changes, you have lost something, even something that was important to you.

            One of the most frequently occurring sorts of grief comes in the form of unmet expectations. You have every hope and expectation that something will go a certain way and then WOOP – the rug is pulled out from under you, and everything you thought you knew is no longer the case. This sort of grief is well captured in those words of the disciples on the road to Emmaus: “we had hoped.” I have heard people say that these are the three saddest words in the Bible. “We had hoped…” but our hopes were shattered. We had hoped Jesus would be the one to redeem Israel. We had hoped our prayers would be answered. We had hoped our waiting was over. It might as well also be, “We had hoped our son would come home.” “We had hoped the doctors could save her.” “We had hoped the new job would work out.” “We had hoped we could save our marriage.” We had hoped. True sorrow. True grief – so great, in fact, that, just like Mary Magdalene in the garden earlier that morning, they don’t even recognize their dear friend and teacher when he comes to walk beside them.

            This is where the healing power of story-telling comes in. How straightforward it would have been for Jesus to say, “Ta-da! Guys, I’m Jesus! You thought I was dead, and I’m not! Fooled you!” But while this would have effectively communicated the truth, it would not have addressed their pain and grief, and would not have brought healing. So instead, Jesus invites them to share their story: “What things?” he asks. What is it that has made you so sad? What is troubling you? And Cleopas and his friend tell their story – about their heartache over Jesus’ death, and their dashed hopes about who Jesus would be for Israel, and for them, and their confusion about the women’s story from that morning.

And in naming and claiming their grief, the healing can begin.

Christ and his disciples on the road to Emmaus, Jan Wildens
http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55031

           Theirs isn’t the only story told in this text, of course. In response to their story, Jesus also shares his – that is, the story of salvation history – as he talks to them on the road and he opens to them the scriptures. And finally, he reenacts the story that would reveal to them exactly who he is, as he takes bread, gives thanks, breaks it, and gives it to them to eat. As they recall the last time this happened – on the night in which he was betrayed, when he took bread, broke it, and told them, “This is my body, given for you,” – they realize that what they had dubbed an “idle tale” from the women at the tomb was actually the truth: Jesus was alive. He was alive, and he was still their companion, still healing them, still opening to them the scriptures, still warming their hearts with his divine wisdom, still giving himself for them.

            They had not seen him when they still walked in their grief. All that way, he walked with them to Emmaus, and they had not recognized him. They were too absorbed in their own sense of loss. That’s how it is, isn’t it, when we are grieving – we cannot see the forest for the trees, we cannot notice things right before us, we can only see our pain. Even when God is right there beside us, as a companion offering us a safe space for telling our story and finding healing, we are kept from recognizing him because of our grief.

            And yet, God is there. As difficult as it can be in the moment of heartbreaking loss, even as impossible as it may be to find God within those devastating words, “We had hoped…” – God is there, drawing us out, healing us, asking us, “What things… are on your heart? What things… are troubling you? What things… are holding you back from enjoying the new life I have promised, indeed that I have given?”

            God is there, a companion on whatever journey we face. God is made known to us along our way in the reading and study of Scripture. God is made known to us in the breaking of bread, when we come forward to receive this sacrament and hear once again the story of salvation, and those words, “Given for you.”

And God is continually made known to us whenever we share our story, and whenever we look back over that story to see where and how God acted within it. As we share our stories, may we also learn to see how God used that experience to guide us out of our grief and toward transformation and new life.

Let us pray… Companion God, when we are lost in our grief, we don’t always recognize you walking beside us. As you draw us out to share our stories and open our aching hearts, open also our eyes to recognize you in the Word, in the breaking of bread, and all along our way. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.