Sermon Series Title: Air - Lent: A Spring Season

A Tomb and a Womb

Well, friends, tomorrow is Patriot’s Day. I love this holiday. We remember the shot heard round the world just over in Lexington. There is always a daytime Red Sox game that lets thousands of fans out at the end just in time to cheer for the runners of the Boston Marathon as they struggle through their final mile. I love this city, and that marathon. I am a three-time Boston Marathon alum, and though I cannot run it anymore, I still try to have at least one runner that I can root for. 

This year, that runner is Ben Burgess. Ben’s story is extraordinary. The Globe did a piece about Ben and his mom Lisa who’s also running. See when Ben was just 8 years old, his father put his hands on his shoulders, told him,

“You’re the man of the house now,”

and left home for good. Eight years old. Two years ago Ben was also diagnosed with a significant mental health disorder, one he believes has genetic roots that run back through his father, who was an alcoholic, and his grandmother who suffered trauma in a Canadian boarding school for indigenous children. Ben and his sister were on a panel about indigenous runners this weekend. And Ben and his mother are raising awareness about grief and mental health and wellness. And tomorrow, I will be rooting for them with bells on. I don’t even know Ben personally, only through mutual acquaintances in the local running community, but I am so proud of that young man.

I love Patriot’s Day, and I love Easter too. Today we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And it is traditional for churches to proclaim the life of Christ, and the great hope of our faith, with a three-fold proclamation of the mystery of Easter – to say Christ is risen, Christ is risen indeed. 

So as I proclaim the hope, the mystery of Easter – Christ is risen, please respond after me if you will – Christ is risen indeed.

Christ is risen – Christ is risen indeed

Christ is risen – Christ is risen indeed

Christ is risen – Christ is risen indeed

I’m going to read the final chapter of the first of the Bible’s four memoirs of the life of Jesus, the good news according to Matthew. It’s very dramatic. As you listen, I want to ask you:

see if you can hear at least one thing you like, and one thing you don’t like.

You ready?

Matthew 28 (Common English Bible)

28 After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to look at the tomb.

2 Look, there was a great earthquake, for an angel from the Lord came down from heaven. Coming to the stone, he rolled it away and sat on it.

3 Now his face was like lightning and his clothes as white as snow.

4 The guards were so terrified of him that they shook with fear and became like dead men.

5 But the angel said to the women, “Don’t be afraid. I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified.

6 He isn’t here, because he’s been raised from the dead, just as he said. Come, see the place where they laid him.

7 Now hurry, go and tell his disciples, ‘He’s been raised from the dead. He’s going on ahead of you to Galilee. You will see him there.’ I’ve given the message to you.”

8 With great fear and excitement, they hurried away from the tomb and ran to tell his disciples.

9 But Jesus met them and greeted them. They came and grabbed his feet and worshipped him.

10 Then Jesus said to them, “Don’t be afraid. Go and tell my brothers that I am going into Galilee. They will see me there.”

11 Now as the women were on their way, some of the guards came into the city and told the chief priests everything that had happened.

12 They met with the elders and decided to give a large sum of money to the soldiers.

13 They told them, “Say that Jesus’ disciples came at night and stole his body while you were sleeping.

14 And if the governor hears about this, we will take care of it with him so you will have nothing to worry about.”

15 So the soldiers took the money and did as they were told. And this report has spread throughout all Judea to this very day.

16 Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus told them to go.

17 When they saw him, they worshipped him, but some doubted.

18 Jesus came near and spoke to them, “I’ve received all authority in heaven and on earth.

19 Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,

20 teaching them to obey everything that I’ve commanded you. Look, I myself will be with you every day until the end of this present age.”

One thing I like: we have this daring, feminist touch here with the women who are tending to the grave. In a time and place where women’s testimony was not legitimized, they become the first witnesses to the good news of Easter. Angels in Jerusalem tell them: go to Galilee to see Jesus. And then later that day, Jesus can’t help himself, he shows up in Jerusalem too, like:

Surprise! I’m here!

And then when they’re grabbing his feet and trying to worship him – whoosh! He’s off to Galilee again, and the male disciples who haven’t yet seen Jesus are supposed to trust the word of these women, and journey 90 miles north on foot – that’s like four marathons away – to go see Jesus up on that mountain in Galilee. And they do.

There’s a word here, brothers: trust the women. Trust the women. Bible says so. I like that.

What I’ve never liked though is the whole argument about the empty tomb. Over the first century, team Jesus says the tomb’s empty because Jesus is resurrected. And the guards and all the Romans who don’t believe and all the people of Jesus’ own culture who don’t believe – team not Jesus have this whole conspiracy argument about a stolen body that they use, Matthew says.

And this argument kind of annoys me. One, I just don’t like it when people argue, I guess. And two, this argument gets weaponized. In the first century, it’s weaponized by team not Jesus. The colonizers and the persecutors of the Way of Jesus try to mock and dis-validate the faith of the early Christians. And then later, when the Christians have power, this argument is used anti-Semitically to mock and dis-validate and hurt the Jewish faith and culture. So this whole empty tomb argument has never been my favorite Bible moment. 

But, friends, this year the Tomb is speaking to me.

Because it tells me that two things can be true at once – that the tomb can be a tomb, and that the tomb can also be a womb. A tomb is a tomb, but on Easter, the mystery is that the tomb can also be the birthplace of new life: a tomb becomes a womb.

I gave a talk at our church retreat in March about how two things can be true at once, and I used the ancient spiritual imagery of the mandorla to show this.

Mandorla is Italian for an almond. Can you say “mandorla”? So google the word “mandorla” and you’ll find recipes for almond cookies and other delicious things. But you’ll also find images like this.

SLIDE #2: Mandorla Jesus- see image on YouTube video

This is a stylized picture of Jesus surrounded by four creatures that are animals and angels and symbols for the Bible’s four gospels all at once. It’s a weird and creepy image in its own way. And I love it and could say a lot about it, but today I just want to highlight the shape Jesus is in. It’s a glowing orb of light in the shape of an almond. A mandorla. 

And in pre-Renaissance European art, you get these mandorlas of light around Jesus and other holy people, representing how special they are. 

This mandorla shape symbolized a lot of things – God, light, holiness, also the mothers’ wombs out of which we were all born. Because at the end of the birth canal, we all enter the world through our mother’s mandorlas, so to speak. 

This mandorla symbol persists in architecture as the almond-shaped sliver at the intersection of two circles. Like so:

SLIDE #3: Mandorla Two Things- see YouTube video for image

And here, it can represent something else. The mandora can remind us that two things which seem different have a space where parts of both of them can be true. 

This weekend can be Patriot’s Day and Easter, two very different holidays. But here in Massachusetts, we can have Patriot’s Day Easter. Two things true at once. 

You can dearly love your mother, father, son, daughter, best friend, roommate, boss, whoever but on the wrong day, you can also kind of hate that person you love. Two things can be true at once. 

And Matthew’s resurrection story gives us a lot of mandorla paradoxes, two things that can at the same time be true.

Because we know that life can be very lonely sometimes. Maybe your beloved parent or spouse has died. Or maybe you’ve grown apart from an old best friend. Or maybe you’ve moved back home and your friends are moving on with other things, and you feel stuck. Or maybe you’re 8 years old and your father puts his hands on your shoulders and says: you’re the man of the house now, and doesn’t return. And these are hard, hard things to go through. Life can be very lonely. But then here comes risen Jesus who says:

I will be with you every day. Every day. My spirit is with you, until the very end of this age.

And so I pray these words for my mother in law, every time I see her where she lives now, in a bed, in a nursing home, because I think they are among the truest words of all the words, that we are never alone. That God is always with us. 

Two things can be true at once. That we can be lonely, and yet also never alone. 

Or the big commission at the end of Matthew. These disciples are meant to go out into all the world, and to teach people the ways of Jesus. I don’t think Matthew or Jesus ever meant for them to be the arrogant colonizers some of their Christian descendants became. Jesus never told them they have ALL the answers, or ALL the truth. He just said

teach ‘em what I gave you, and – for the people who want – baptize them, welcome them to the faith.

He didn’t say to enslave anyone, or steal their land, or steal their gold, or fly their country’s flags. Because two things can be true at once. You can know you have a great gift to give and offer that gift, without assuming you have ALL the gifts in the world or without imposing your gifts on people that don’t want them.

These mandorla lessons that two things can be true at once are all over the gospel of Matthew and its final chapter, like a tomb can be a tomb, but a tomb can also be a womb. 

No matter what resurrection is, it is not resuscitation, like going back to what was before. The disciples, be it at the graveside, or in Jerusalem, or up on that mountain in Galilee, get to see Jesus again in the flesh. They do. But it’s fleeting. The days of literally following Jesus around as he taught and healed and broke bread with us have passed. To experience the risen Christ through the Spirit of God, to see the risen Christ in the eyes and the love and courage of God’s people, to touch and taste the risen Christ in the bread and the wine of communion takes faith. It’s not always easy. The death of Jesus was real. 

But in Jesus’ resurrection, this tomb also becomes a womb. It is the site of Jesus’ resurrection. It is a new beginning of a great age of the Spirit of God, where all of God is present to all of us, if we will believe and receive.

I’ve had some tastes of this, friends, for instance at this site of resurrection right there in my tiny little yard. 

SLIDE #4: The Azuma Tree – see image on YouTube video

This is a picture of a little ornamental tree in our family’s tiny little urban yard. It was taken just this week, so there are no flowers or leaves yet, just little buds. But it’s a beautiful little tree, ready to flash with all the green of life again any day now. Life that was also born out of a gravesite, another tomb becomes a womb.

My family had for 10 years a sweet, troubled cat named Azuma. He was problematic in some ways, but I still loved him, and when he died in 2020, it was one more horrible, sad, no good loss in a year that was full of losses. But after we buried his body together, my wife Grace planted this beautiful little tree, so that this gravesite could become a place of new life. 

And as it blossoms again each spring, I touch the leaves, which when they’re just unfolding, as they are today, look like a 100 tiny little birds in flight. And I think, my God, you’ve done it again, Life born out of all that’s dying. Another sign of resurrection power. A tomb becomes a womb. 

Friends, while the resurrection of Christ may have taken place in Jerusalem, nearly 2,000 years ago, echoes of resurrection abound throughout this earth. Life out of death, resurrection, is the miracle that can’t stop giving. 

The dissolution of a family unit, mental health crises, generational trauma from American schools that were tools of genocide, a breakdown and a bipolar diagnosis, these things in the life of the Burgess family are tragedies, they are tombs. They are not the work or the gifts of our good and loving God. And yet, by God’s grace, this tomb of the Burgess family is now the site of stories of love and resilience and courage that will have our city cheering and raising to support grieving children. This tomb is the site of new life. Resurrection power.  

And so it is with us. 

When we look around our lives and we see our dead and dying dreams, our struggling children, our failing nation, the stories of flagging finances and fragile bodies and frustratingly struggling mental wellness, we often see a landscape of the tombs of all that has failed and come undone. 

But the witnesses to the risen Christ dare us to believe that death need not have the final word. That all our tombs can one day be places where the spirit of Jesus says: surprise! In the form of redemption and newness of life. 

Think for a minute about a tomb in your life – a place of loss, death, or disappointment. 

What if it’s not just a place of death but of new life waiting to be born?

If that was so, what prayer would you pray? What tree would you plant? What race would you run? 

The forces of death and evil win when we yield to them like they’ve got the last word. 

But the risen Christ dares us to believe that we too can go where Christ has gone. The tomb become a womb is not just for Christ, but for us all. Jesus, the faith tells us, is just the firstfruits of so much newness of life waiting to be born. 

And so a tomb is a tomb – that’s real. But friends, a tomb can also be a womb. 

And if that’s hard for you to believe today, that’s OK. Because even when we don’t believe in God, God doesn’t stop believing in us. Even when we don’t believe in life out of death, God’s still vying for it. 

Because fear and doubt do not need to be the enemy of faith. You can have faith and fear together, and you can have doubt and faith together too. 

After all, the disciples do. Did you hear it? Matthew says:

When they saw him they worshipped him, but some doubted. 

And some of us too. Faith comes hard for some of us. Faith has disappointed some of us in the past. There are terrible things that masquerade as the Way of Jesus and as Christian love and truth these days. 

So our doubt, our fear, our skepticism, that’s fair. Maybe we’ve earned it. 

But what if God’s OK with that? What if right there in your doubt, you can begin to hope to see the life of God made real in this Easter season. 

And what if right here in our fears, we can remember that all authority has been given to no human. Our lives end. One way or another, justice comes. And for even the most braggadocious of tyrants and bullies, their power isn’t as deep or wide as they pretend it is. 

After all, 250 years ago, right up the road from here, a ragtag band of upstart colonists began their fight against the most powerful empire on earth, and they won. Here we are.

And where our cat Azuma died, a beautiful little tree is blooming again in spring. 

And where death in so many forms has tried to destroy the Burgess family of Framingham, they’re running with resilience and life tomorrow.

In just a couple of minutes, I’m going to dunk Naomi Gramling under the water back there, representing the dying of the old self. But less than a second later, she’ll emerge again, soaking wet – the waters representing the life and the Spirit of God, with her now and forever. And she will arise to newness of life!

Friends, baptized or not, some of us are living in that in between moment, under the water, holding our breath, feeling like the tomb of our loss, or our loved one’s loss, or our nation’s loss is the end of the story. 

And with resurrection faith, I want us to say NO to that.

Friends, get up!

For real, literally, stand if you are able. 

Breathe! We are alive.

God has not stopped believing in you!

And our God is not done with resurrection!

Christ is risen.

Christ is risen.

Christ is risen!

Us too. Us too. Watch for it. Wait for it. Work for it. It’s coming. Amen?

Why I Love Jesus

Today I’ll start by reading a couple of scriptures that will anchor our time. 

The first is from the old Hebrew prophet Zechariah. He lived in the 6th and 5th centuries BC. His people, ancient Judah, the leftover part of Israel after their Civil War, they had gone through decline and war and loss of temple, loss of homeland, loss of life – so many devastating losses. But then in Zechariah’s lifetime, the exiles were given permission under Persian rule to return home to Jerusalem and rebuild their lives and their community. And here’s one of the things Zechariah was inspired to say and to write down. 

Zechariah 9:9-11 (Common English Bible)

Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion.

        Sing aloud, Daughter Jerusalem.

Look, your king will come to you.

        He is righteous and victorious.

        He is humble and riding on an ass,

            on a colt, the offspring of a donkey.

10 He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim

        and the warhorse from Jerusalem.

The bow used in battle will be cut off;

        he will speak peace to the nations.

His rule will stretch from sea to sea,

        and from the river to the ends of the earth.

11 Moreover, by the blood of your covenant,

    I will release your prisoners from the waterless pit.

The second scripture is two bits from the 26th chapter of Matthew’s memoirs of the life of Jesus. These two little stories are both in the final week of our guide to this Lenten season called “Air.” So if you like this sermon, or even if you don’t, I’d encourage you to take a look at the guide this week. It’s on reservoirchurch.org, and we’re entering the 6th and final week in it. Here is how Jesus spent two of his last nights before his arrest and crucifixion. 

Matthew 26:6-13, 26-30 (Common English Bible)

6 When Jesus was at Bethany visiting the house of Simon, who had a skin disease,

7 a woman came to him with a vase made of alabaster containing very expensive perfume. She poured it on Jesus’ head while he was sitting at dinner.

8 Now when the disciples saw it they were angry and said, “Why this waste?

9 This perfume could have been sold for a lot of money and given to the poor.”

10 But Jesus knew what they were thinking. He said, “Why do you make trouble for the woman? She’s done a good thing for me.

11 You always have the poor with you, but you won’t always have me.

12 By pouring this perfume over my body she’s prepared me to be buried.

13 I tell you the truth that wherever in the whole world this good news is announced, what she’s done will also be told in memory of her.”

26 While they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, “Take and eat. This is my body.”

27 He took a cup, gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, “Drink from this, all of you.

28 This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many so that their sins may be forgiven.

29 I tell you, I won’t drink wine again until that day when I drink it in a new way with you in my Father’s kingdom.”

30 Then, after singing songs of praise, they went to the Mount of Olives.

A few years ago I gave a sermon called Why I love Jesus. It’s one of my favorite sermons I’ve ever given. I’m not going to give the same sermon I gave four years ago. But I’m going to give another “Why I Love Jesus” sermon because I tried on some other ideas this week, but this is what my heart’s calling me to say. 

So why do I love Jesus?

I love Jesus because he loved the Bible in a way that was good news for the people around him, and for all of history. 

Plenty of people say they love the Bible but they do weird things with it, or things I at least don’t understand, or they say they love the Bible but they don’t even read it, or they use it as a weapon.

But Jesus, well, there are a lot of things we don’t know about Jesus. We don’t know how tall he was, although he was probably very short. We don’t know what his laugh sounded like, how high or low his voice was when he sang. We don’t know his birthday, or his favorite color or lucky number. We don’t know the names of all his brothers and sisters, although we know there were a lot of them. But we know that Jesus loved the Bible. Like he knew it really well. It helped him find his way again and again. And it led to better things around him too, radically better. 

So when it was time to walk into Jerusalem for the final time, Jesus thought of these lines from Zechariah and thought – this is how we do it. I need a donkey. And he told his friends to go to the nearest village and steal him one. “Borrow it,” I guess. But I love that Jesus stole the donkey. And he climbed onto that donkey and rode into Jerusalem on the biggest weekend holiday of the year, when there’d be tons of people to see. 

Sidenote: like 15 years ago, at the high school I went to as a kid, a guy rode a horse to school. It was around Halloween, and his family owned a freaking horse, and why own a horse if you’re not going to use it? So he dressed up as a knight and rode the horse to school, and he managed to do one full lap around the school parking lot, before the assistant principal ran out there, and told him to get off the horse and go home. He was actually suspended for two days for “causing danger on school grounds,” which is ridiculous, but that kid is taking that story to the grave with him with a smile, which I love. 

Anyway, here’s Jesus, on the stolen donkey, and he thinks:

this is my time, I’m going to act out this scene from Zechariah and ride this animal into Jerusalem like I’m the king of this place.

He thinks:

I’ll look like the shabbiest, weirdest king ever, and my big platform for my kingdom will be to defund and destroy the entire military apparatus and empty out all the prisons and proclaim an eternal age of peace on earth and freedom for all peoples. 

I love that Jesus wants all the weapons destroyed. I want that too. I’m so tired of the billions of dollars we spend on bomb-making, bombs that these days are killing kids in Gaza. I love Jesus for daring to take a principled stand against war.

And the people love it too. They can’t stop cheering!

I love that the Bible gave Jesus the most delightfully weird vision for his life, and I love that it shows me the way, that this big old set of books is a way the Spirit speaks to us still, pushes us to plant gardens, and love enemies, and bless the children, and honor our elders, and to disrespect the fools and tyrants, and stand up for the little people and turn over tables and be fearless and hopeful in face of our fears and despair. 

And I love Jesus because he threw the best protest.

I don’t really like protests and marches very much. The crowds bother me and the noise and the wondering if they’re doing any good, but protests are part of what we need to show each other that the way things are is not OK. And I love that Jesus staged the funniest, boldest, most raucous of protests. 

Because the Roman governor was marching into Jerusalem with his war horses and armies, his boots and swords and bows and arrows and chariots and shields, and horns were blown and the war cry shouted the big lies: the glory of Rome! The peace of Rome! Good news for all people! 

And the crowds were supposed to give fake cheers or at least their very real fearful attention and respect to their masters who would rule them and tax them and control them as they wished. 

And Jesus didn’t go to that march. It bored him, maybe it even disgusted him, we don’t know. So he threw his own march. A braying donkey his friends stole in place of a horse, a rag tag collection of rabbinic students in place of an army, an old prophecy of broken and banished weapons in place of the tools of war – nothing to intimidate, just boldness and vision and love that drew the crowds and then their cheers, as they thought: this is what good news looks like, this is what glory looks like. 

Jesus was funny and creative and knew what he stood for and stoked a vision for a truer, more peaceful, more beautiful world, and I love him for it. 

And I love Jesus because he loved it when the crowds sang Hosanna, Hosanna!

We’re told that the authorities said to Jesus – get the people in line. Quiet it down. Make them shut up. They’d be suspended folks for a couple of days if they could. And Jesus was like – no, no, no, don’t bother, because even if they stop cheering, the rocks beneath their feet will cry out. We could use some laughs and we could use some full-throated cheers for a change. Hosanna, hosanna – this old Hebrew word which was a shout of praise!

Hosanna Shouts

People called out:

Hosanna to the son of David – that’s a line for royalty, they’re like, we’ll take this donkey-riding, peace loving rabbi for our king. 

Now that word Hosanna – it’s a cry of praise. But what it literally means is:

Save us.

Save us. People who cry “Hosanna” aren’t just playing dress up and yelling. They’re saying:

help. Save us.

People who cry “Hosanna” have their backs up against the wall. We say “hosanna” when we’re sick and when we’re dying and when we’re scared. We say “hosanna” when our neighbors have gotten scooped up by ICE and taken away. We say hosanna when we’ve lost our jobs or lost our rights or when we fear for our country. 

And so “hosanna” is a sad song and it’s a hopeful song all at once, and I love Jesus for listening, and I love him for all the ways he hears us and helps and shows us the way in our times of trouble. 

HOSANNA singing

I love Jesus because he cares more about people than principles. 

If you have no principles, you’re a fool or a coward. But if you care about principles more than people you’re dangerous, and not in a good way. 

And look at Jesus with this woman who pours all this perfume over Jesus’ head because she loves him, and his disciples have their principles about what to do with money and how much it costs and what’s prudent, but they’re missing the moment. 

And I wonder sometimes, how many moments do we miss when we’re dug in on our principles, or our fears, or distractions, and I love Jesus for paying attention and not missing the moments, like this one where someone had so much goodness, so much love to give. 

I love Jesus because he told the truth and he loved it when other people told the truth. I say this with my therapist a lot, some other people too, I guess, like why bother doing this if we’re not going to tell the truth.

And Jesus knew he was going to die. A lot of people knew that if they were paying attention. Jesus had been telling his friends he was going to die. He’d made a lot of enemies amongst his own people. And he’d been busy pissing off the Roman establishment who’d come into town on their war horses. But everyone’s pretending things are normal, except Jesus, and except this woman. 

And Jesus says:

leave her alone because look at this beautiful thing she’s done, anointing my head, preparing me for burial. 

We have such a hard time telling the truth. In our politics, in our public life, of course, most people don’t care very much about the truth anymore. We’re such suckers for con men and conspiracy theories and outsized fears and stupid arguments. 

But I think we struggle with the truth in private too. And I love Jesus because he says the truth will set you free. 

The truth about the things we don’t want to accept will set us free. 

And the truths we stuff down and can’t talk about will set us free. 

Yesterday, we had a memorial in this space for Marianne Snekvik, and there were two or three hundred people here remembering and honoring a beautiful life we miss already. And one of Marianne’s grandkids stood up here where I stand, talking about how good of a grandma Marianna was, and at one point he was trying to say just how much he misses her already, and he started crying, and he couldn’t speak and just kept crying for a minute, while his cousin stepped up and put his hand on his back and gave him love and gave him time. And after a while he finished.

And I know the cousin, but I don’t know the teenage boy who stood there crying and saying he missed his grandma already, but I know that I was so proud of him for standing there and feeling the truth and telling the truth, and I hope he remembers that moment for the rest of his life, that there is room for all his feelings, and there is room for things that are worth saying that are hard to say, and that when you need it, someone will wait with you and put their hand on your back to steady you. And even when they don’t, Jesus will, because Jesus loves the truth – all the truth – and he loves it when we tell the truth, about everything we can. 

And I love it that beautiful things can happen when we tell the truth, like letting out our grief, and preparing someone for their death, and getting free. 

I love Jesus because he was safe. A woman could touch his head and pour perfume on it, and not worry that he’d think she was coming on to him, not worry that he’d touch her back, or try to make some kind of play when no one was around, because Jesus knew the difference between a sister and a friend and a lover, and he had control of his body and his sexuality so you could trust him to be safe.

And I love all the safe people in the world, and all the people that helped me do the work to be safe too. 

I love Jesus because he gave his friends wine and said it was blood and it sealed a new covenant.

This is such weird and intense language and to leave behind a ritual that would get your followers accused of weirdo love feasts and cannibalism and all kinds of other bizarro stuff is a bold move, Jesus, and I love that. 

I love the language of covenant too – the language of a sacred promise, a sacred deal. I guess I love Jesus for having one for us. 

And I think this covenant language, and this meal of bread and wine, and blood and body, is Jesus’ answer to all our Hosanna cries and songs, all our spoken and unspoken prayers of “Save us.” 

Because we think we want Jesus on a big old horse, rolling into town with all his armies of angels, and opening up a can of whoop-ass on God’s enemies, or at least on our enemies. Find their enemy, and destroy them. 

But Jesus said that is not the way of his kingdom. Not doing it. God’s all about destroying the weapons, not destroying the enemies. And so Jesus rolls in on a donkey and tells the truth over and over, and sits at tables where people are broken and poured out in love, for the healing of the world. 

Jesus wants all of us to know all of God – all the truth, all the encouragement, all the love, all the abundance. Jesus wants us to know all the forgiveness, because our lives are so full of crappy things we’ve done and crappy things that have been done to us, and Jesus wants these things to be beginnings and not ends. 

And Jesus did this for his friend Judas who was about to sell him out and betray him. And Jesus gave the wine of the promise to his other friend Peter who’d be so scared he’d deny he ever knew him. And I love that Jesus gives me this wine every week, again and again, no matter what people have done to me, no matter what I’ve done, no matter how many good things I could have done that I sat on and did nothing about. I love Jesus for still knocking at my door and saying:

want to eat again? Want to try again? Want to live again? If you do, I’m here for you. I’ve got your back.

We’ll never reach the end of God’s love for us all. And our bread sharing, wine pouring, crucified and risen Jesus will never stop loving us all and never stop calling us to this kind of love that saves and heals all things. All things. 

Friends, you, me, our friends, our enemies, we are all called to this table of Christ with all our love, all our hurt, all our shouted and crackly whispered prayers of “Hosanna” to be seen, to be told the truth, to be loved, and to be part of the body of Christ that is died and risen, that is broken and poured out for the healing of the world, and the renewal of all things.

The Kin-dom of God is like….

We are four weeks into Lent, a season observed by many Christian traditions and rooted in  Jesus’ time in the wilderness. This season invites us to reflect on our own spiritual journeys, as much as it does Jesus’ experience of fasting and facing temptation. The wilderness was a period marked by chaos, uncertainty and also growth. Jesus was tempted by a vision of a kingdom built on power, wealth, and authority—values that contrasted the way of Jesus –and the kin-dom of God that he was trying to unfold. Instead of giving in to these temptations, Jesus drew close to God, to the wind, the Spirit, and the air— invisible forces that surrounded him in the wilderness and sustained him in desolate times. 

 This Lent, our theme has been Air—an ever-present force that shapes and sustains life in all its complexities. Just as air is essential for our breath, the Spirit, too, is essential for our spiritual well-being — wherever we might be at — and however we might be feeling. I love that Lent doesn’t shy away from the realities – the wildness– of our days. In fact, its boldness invites us to sit right in the gap—the “in-between” space—between the “now” of our lived experience here on this earth and the “not yet” of God’s dreams and our shared hopes for a world transformed by God’s Kin-dom.

Lent, in its stripped-down, unassuming bareness, invites us to pay attention to and carry the smallest of things —  hope, wonder, awe, compassion —  as much as we carry grief and fear.   

Today, I want to invite us to not only get curious about where God is at work among us, but also to ask where we can get to work with God, who IS ALREADY among us. And I want to ask not just what our best chances at ‘heaven on earth’ are, but how we can leave nothing to chance and actively participate in shaping heaven on earth—here and now. Even when the air feels still, when change seems impossible, when it feels like the Spirit has gone silent. 

In desolate times, how can we remember the truth that the Kin-dom is never far? How can we remember that it is around us, within us  — never separate, always close? 

I’ll invite you to hold these questions as we turn to the words of Romans 8 as a prayer this morning: 

35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?

36 As it is written:

“For your sake we face death all day long;
    we are considered/treated as sheep to be slaughtered.”

37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers,

39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8:35-39 (New International Version)

Amen.

This week I read Suleika Jaouad’s memoir (soo-lay-ka jew-wad), her husband is Jon Batiste. The title of her book is, “Between 2 Kingdoms — a Memoir of a Life Interrupted.” She reflects on living between the worlds of health and illness, navigating the emotional landscapes of two “kingdoms.” One kingdom is defined by normalcy, vibrancy, and health, while the other is shaped by survival, trauma, and the constant presence of sickness.

Throughout the memoir, Jaouad reflects on her experience and the tension she feels between these two worlds— In the midst of this, a friend shared a perspective that stuck with her, actually about travel, he said:

“When we travel, we actually take three trips. There’s the first trip of preparation and anticipation, packing and daydreaming. There’s the trip you’re actually on. And then, there’s the trip you remember.  The key is to be present wherever you are right now.”  

“Present to ‘what is’— It is a beautiful sentiment and also a challenging posture, especially when we hold within us the promise of heaven on Earth, but find ourselves in a reality that often feels and looks a lot more like hell.

As many of you know, cancer is part of my family’s and my story now as well. My husband, Scott, was recently diagnosed, but let me say the

“prognosis is good — the treatment plan is in action and after just 2 treatments, Scott’s feeling better than he has in years!” 

There are likely lots of public speaking courses that would advise me to not talk about something so live, so raw, specific and personal like a cancer journey — but maybe it’s obvious — I haven’t taken any public speaking classes.
And the reality is – is that illness, in whatever form we encounter it—whether personal illness, the illness of a nation, or global—is a deeply universal experience. 

A writer I admire, Susan Sontag, says,

‘Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship—in the kingdom of the well and the kingdom of the sick.’

Though we all prefer to carry the ‘good passport,’ sooner or later, we all find ourselves identifying with the other place. And now, with months of treatment ahead, Scott and I find ourselves holding that dual citizenship.

Throughout Lent we have been guided by a single line from a prayer written for times of great rupture and uncertainty:

“Be still and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10)

At community group a couple of weeks ago — we talked about ‘stillness’ —

“what is stillness to you? When have you been Still — what did it feel like? What did you encounter?”

I thought about those questions, and my experience in the cancer infusion clinic — discovering in part what stillness is not:  

Stillness is not necessarily sitting, or achieving silence or free of discomfort.
Stillness is being present to what is — in between two kingdoms — perhaps even OPENING to the fullness of the tension that exists there.

And Stillness is in part about cultivating space within, space where even the smallest things can take root and create change. FOR ME, change comes in the tiniest shifts of perspective – enough so, to pivot away from the temptation of cynicism and despair,  enough to not let heartbreak hijack my entire scope… small, small, shifts.  Sure I’d love a BIG , efficient fix — half the time in the clinic, half the treatments — or how about no cancer at all… !

But the reality is — is that this is not our “now” —
Our “now” holds infusions of a chemo drug that in medical speak is called “the red devil” — AND it also holds an oven-like contraption that is full of stacks and stacks of warm blankets to use at our whim, views of Costco from the clinic window (which is literally Scott’s version of heaven on earth), fig newtons at the bottomless nurses snack station — perfect little ice cubes…   is saturated with the littlest sparks of the presence and work of God. 

I’ve had times where I thought “I should be still” —  I was on a retreat in the Fall and I couldn’t quiet my racing heart. By day #2 my heart rate had actually climbed like waaayyy higher than it should be… And I was like,

“come on — you know how to do this retreat thing, this STILLNESS thing — CALM DOWN, just Breathe. . . just breathe.” 

And yet my body didn’t respond in form — because my body was actually messaging something important to me — that the season of  life leading up to that retreat was furious, fast  and hard — and rather than “shushing” it into stillness — what my body actually needed was for me to give credence to where it was at. Health practitioners in that moment and since, have said the best thing to do is get in a cold shower,  or do a plank for 1 minute. Your body needs to have the intensity be “seen and heard and met — acknowledged,”  and then it can downshift a little bit. Meeting yourself in that tension—of longing to be in the serene/wellness/the kin-dom of God —  while feeling the hard stuff—that too is stillness.  

Sitting in a chemo room for 11 hours — isn’t a space to pretend “all is well.” It is an invitation to turn and face “what is.”   Not turn away from it. To sit squarely in the ‘inbetween’ — “I wish this wasn’t what this is..” and also “I’m not alone — there are many, many people picking fig newtons from that snack bar too — and yes these seats are uncomfortable, but there is life and dignity here — and it’s there I can find and “know that God is God,” giving air to my own spirit — keeping me breathing in the GAP between the “now” and the “not yet.”

SCRIPTURE

Thankfully Jesus had a lot more to say about life on Earth than he did about theology. Rather than talking about loft ideas — which totally would have missed where most people were at — he talked about everyday things. There is hardly a divine truth that doesn’t take some shape on Earth. And most of us, I think, get what it is to live this real life on Earth. 

Jesus’ parables reflect real life – and speak on multiple levels to multiple groups with the same words. Religious leaders, ordinary people, farmers, disciples — through them he invited people to begin imagining what the Kin-dom of Heaven could look like in their everyday lives – through the simple, the familiar, the tangible.

In the telling of parables Jesus says the Kin-dom of God is like a whole lot of things — wheat & weeds, yeast in dough, a hidden pearl, a seed — and seems to suggest that it is about right relationship, creating a community where all are seen as kin and kith. It’s a KIN-dom (rather than a KING-dom), growing from the smallest, least likely things into something inclusive and expansive.

Take, for example, the parable of the mustard seed: 

Matthew 13:31-32
He told another parable to them: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and planted in his field.  It’s the smallest of all seeds. But when it’s grown, it’s the largest of all vegetable plants. It becomes a tree so that the birds in the sky come and nest in its branches.”

Maybe there’s not a whole lot new to say here — it’s pretty straightforward — something tiny can become something big. Big outcomes, transformation, big goals accomplished, big growth — a big KINGDOM …

And I think, while it’s tempting to focus on that lesson of the parable specifically, perhaps the deeper invitation is to recognize the growth and evolution that happens in the “gap” between. The cultivation and partnership — and the hardship — that happens before it becomes something big. This isn’t just about size; it’s about the life and flourishing that emerge through those small steps, the unseen process, and the shared work that occurs from many actors along the way. The Kin-dom of God isn’t simply about the end result but about the ongoing unfolding of love and life and relationships in our midst. 

 Ezekiel

We can see this same theme echoed in the Hebrew Scriptures, long before Jesus spoke his parables. In Ezekiel we see God’s kindom described not as the towering, imposing force many would expect, but as a tender shoot growing into something that offers shelter and life to many, something life-giving:

Ezekiel 17:22-24 (New International Version):

God says: I myself will take a shoot from the very top of a cedar and plant it; I will break off a tender sprig from its topmost shoots and plant it on a high and lofty mountain. On the mountain heights of Israel I will plant it; it will produce branches and bear fruit and become a splendid cedar. Birds of every kind will rest in the shade of its branches. All the trees of the forest will know that I the Lord bring down the tall tree and make the low tree grow tall. I dry up the green tree and make the dry tree flourish. 

The Israelites here were in exile, far from the land of promise. Jerusalem and the Temple had been destroyed, leaving the people disillusioned and in grief. And the hope nestled in these verses details a dramatic reversal of the natural order: God brings down the mighty, proud kingdoms and causes the lowly to rise. Subverting and disrupting oppressive structures that appear unshakable and dominant, challenging the power dynamics that the world clings to.

God’s promise wasn’t for an earthly kingdom of power, ego, and success— but a kin-dom where new life could emerge from what seemed broken, bringing flourishing not just to Israel, but to all people. This is the kin-dom that Jesus came to proclaim: a kin-dom that grows even in the midst of hardship and pain.

The virtue for living in these “in-between” times is what Jesus calls “faith.” It’s about having the grace and freedom to live God’s dream for the world now, while not turning away from the world as it is. The secret of this Kin-dom life is learning to live in both worlds simultaneously.
(Richard Rohr 2020).

In light of this, I’m grateful for how Jesus gives us these simple, ordinary pictures of the kin-dom—seeds, trees, birds, and shoots –things the world often overlooks in favor of big goals and measurable success. Yet in the kin-dom, growth isn’t about mass or numbers — but about furthering life. Creating life, hosting life, holding life. For even just one bird, the tree becomes a source of hospitality, home, and sanctuary. This is what the kin-dom is like.

It can be hard for us to value that which depends on others for life and growth, and that which is not about controlling or dominating. But this is the kin-dom that Jesus invites us to help shape. It’s not something we’ll experience only someday, if we work hard enough and the evils of this day are overcome….It’s here in the middle of our ordinary lives — connected to other ordinary lives. A resource I love called “Enfleshed,” puts it this way, “The kin-dom is better thought of as the meal that feeds the weeping in the midst of grief”, rather than in an entirely different world. Jesus’ ordinary examples offer us hope now — for such a time as this.   

Part of this Lent guide is meant to bring the ordinary to your experience as well. The accompanying imagery chosen of birds and feathers wasn’t just done so on a whim. I curated this guide sitting in MGH waiting rooms (I’m not trying to be a martyr here — they are called waiting rooms for a reason). But I sat with the words that Steve wrote in this guide, and the theme of AIR — and the reality of being in a hospital waiting room — we’ve all been there, right? Listening to snippets of stories, and diagnosis, and witnessing frustrations, and parking garage validations, phone calls to loved ones, and tender hand holding, and tears being blinked away — all of life, trying to unfold in that in-between space — Floating perhaps to transform, as Emily Dickinson said into “Hope” – the thing with feathers – that perches in our soul.

Birds — those who fly freely between the worlds — the heavens and this earth —  remind us that the kind-om isn’t out of reach. Our vision is often limited by life’s harshness, tempting us, like Jesus in the wilderness, to seek control and quick fixes. But the bird’s-eye view offers a freer, broader perspective (John O’Donohue). These ordinary creatures remind us that the kin-dom is like a seed in our hand—its potential, right at our fingertips.

Emergent strategy

As we continue the work of creating and growing the kin-dom of God, it’s clear that SIGNIFICANT change is needed here and now. Adrienne Maree Brown’s work on Emergent Strategy (and her book by the same name), has been so helpful to me. While big movements and systemic changes are vital, what stands out in emergent strategy is the recognition that the powerful shifts we hope to see are made up of small, intentional, strategic actions that deviate from the dominant patterns of our times. Brown emphasizes that meaningful change doesn’t solely come from grand gestures or monumental shifts. It begins with small, deliberate acts—practices that align with our values and yet radically challenge and veer from the systems that govern us. The culture of emergent strategy critiques the capitalist, colonial legacies of our world.

Brown insists that we must begin to “shape change” rather than seeing ourselves as victims of change. Just this week we heard Senator Cory Booker say,

“I’m not going to allow my inability to do everything undermine my ability to do something.”

and then he fasted and spoke for 25 hours — (ok, maybe that’s not the best example of a small thing — because that’s pretty impressive), but just think of all the “small somethings” we can do together.

Amidst the challenges, there is a profound truth: the smallest sparks of hope can grow exponentially—planting seeds that inspire us to take action. We — you and me –“WE” — are very small actors in a world rife with COLOSSAL problems, spinning within a vast galaxy. But We the People carry the seeds for change and transformation. In this very moment, We the People are called to bring the Kin-dom of God to earth, nurturing a more perfect union, establishing justice, and promoting the general welfare, right where we are.

Brown says this

“is the central work of each generation: to SEED and expand the fields of possibility for those to come, weaving together the best practices and lessons from the generations that came before. In the face of narrowing options for human survival, it is our purpose to create more possibilities. Many of which will come from an evolution of how we are in relationship with each other and from an evolution of spirit.

Octavia Butler said,

“kindness eases change,”

OUR kindness to others in the gap of the “now” and the “not yet”, creates more possibilities for us to move forward together.

Jesus showed us how to live in that gap, over and over again. He embodied healing, sat with and spoke truth to, and lived among hurting people, broken cities, and oppressive systems—and STILL He saw the possibility for wholeness. What a wonder, what compassion.

To allow our astonishment, our wonder, and our compassion to fade is a privilege we cannot afford. (For many of us), it is a privilege to give in to despair, to abandon hope, to resign ourselves to the idea that the kin-dom of God will come—someday—when it is ours to shape today. The kindom of God’s love is here — around us, within us, between us – just waiting for our participation. Again, as

Romans 8 reminds us: 

35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?

37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers,

39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.



Prayer:
May the Spirit of God, like the air we breathe, continue to move us forward, helping us to live in the “now” and the “not yet”—toward a kin-dom that is already here and still to come.

 

Resources: 

enfleshed.com 

July 2020

 

Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds  

by adrienne maree brown

 

Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

by Suleika Jaouad  | Mar 1, 2022

Knowing God, But Not All by Ourselves

Friends, if you’re willing, close your eyes for just a moment, and hear the words of God that anchor us this week.

Be still and know that I am.

Be still and know that I am.

Be still and know that I am.

Last weekend in our Saturday morning community group, we were talking about our spiritual lives.

  • Like what does it mean to be close to God?
  • To keep the faith?
  • To be grounded in inner strength and love no matter what happens? 

And that got me thinking about singing. 

Singing is important to me. It was how I found my confidence, my voice as a teenager. And ever since then, it’s been one of my favorite things. And I’m alright at it. I know what I’m doing. 

But there are very few people on this earth who would want to listen to just me sing for an hour. Probably my mom, my dog, maybe a couple other people. And I don’t blame them. I don’t think I’d listen to myself sing for an hour either. 

But I’m in this chorus where we practice singing together for a couple hours every week. There are only 14 of us. Small chorus. And by ourselves, we’re each all right. We all have some skills, we all have a lot of musical experience. But together, we sound beautiful. I mean, it’s Renaissance choral music, very niche, so it’s not like all that many people come to our concerts, they don’t. But together, we sound really good. I would absolutely listen to us for an hour. 

And in our group, I wondered: what if this is what a life of faith looks like? 

By ourselves, we are meant to know that God is with us. That God has room for us, smiles for us, as God’s beloved children. And it is meaningful and good to have a relationship with our Creator. 

But it was never meant to be complete or sufficient. We may sing “me” and “I” in our songs, and that’s all good. We may have been taught how to pray by ourselves, and that’s good too. This church has actually spent a lot of energy over the years helping us develop personal relationships with God. And we’ll keep doing that.

But maybe that’s never been the main point. 

Just like singing with other people is better than singing alone, things happen in a life of faith when it’s shared with others that could never happen by ourselves. 

That’s why our community group was talking about our church’s Lent guide yesterday and the Saturday before that, and that’s why we were reading the scriptures in it and talking about how it is that we notice the presence and the activity of God’s Spirit, and how it’s easier, and richer, and better when we do that together. 

This year, friends, in our six-week season of Lent, which we are right in the middle of, we are asking God to renew our faith, and restore our hope, and revitalize our love, to make us resilient people. And we have this guide here in my hand and online at reservoirchurch.org that we know people will mostly read for 10 or 15 minutes a day or maybe an hour a week, if at all. But we gather here on Sunday and we meet in groups and talk about these things together in friendships because we were never meant to have strong faith and deep hope and resilience by ourselves. 

We were meant to do it together. 

And so today, I want to give you a preview of what’s in this week’s guide, Week 4, where we look at two great moments of spiritual revelation and closeness to God in the life of Moses, and how it is that we can stop for a moment, be still, and know that God is. 

(And while I do encourage you to read the guide this week – you don’t have to go back and catch up on the first three weeks if you missed them. Skip it. Jump in on Week 4.)

But I want to be clear today that we don’t live the words of this guide by ourselves. Moses who we’ll meet again this week is one of the great spiritual leaders, the great prophets in all of human history. The gospel of Matthew, as a compliment to Jesus, speaks of him as a new kind of Moses figure. 

And just like I’m not going to be one of the world’s great singers, drawing crowds just to listen to me sing, you and I are not going to be Jesus or Moses, the mystic who all by ourselves achieves total unity with God in this life. 

But just like we can make stunning music in my little choir together, so we can think about how in connection to other people, we can experience the same things in God that Moses did. 

And so that’s today’s message. Three of the truest things about God that Moses discovers and we also can know very deeply when we don’t do it by ourselves. 

There are two big stories from the life of Moses in the guide this week. I’m going to read just a short excerpt from each of them and share about these three ways we can deepen our faith and our resilience together.

Exodus 34:5-7 (Common English Bible)

5 The Lord came down in the cloud and stood there with him, and proclaimed the name, “The Lord.”

6 The Lord passed in front of him and proclaimed:

    “The Lord! The Lord!
    a God who is compassionate and merciful,
        very patient,
        full of great loyalty and faithfulness,
7         showing great loyalty to a thousand generations,
        forgiving every kind of sin and rebellion,
        yet by no means clearing the guilty,
        punishing for their parents’ sins
        their children and their grandchildren,
        as well as the third and the fourth generation.”

Exodus 3:7-10 (Common English Bible)

7 Then the Lord said, “I’ve clearly seen my people oppressed in Egypt. I’ve heard their cry of injustice because of their slave masters. I know about their pain.

8 I’ve come down to rescue them from the Egyptians in order to take them out of that land and bring them to a good and broad land, a land that’s full of milk and honey, a place where the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites all live.

9 Now the Israelites’ cries of injustice have reached me. I’ve seen just how much the Egyptians have oppressed them.

10 So get going. I’m sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.”

  1. The first thing we can know about God is God’s compassion and mercy.

I wrote most of the words in this Lenten guide in a lakeside house in rural Pennsylvania that one of you let me use for a week. Thank you so very much for that. I was visiting my daughter who’s finishing up college not too far from there and taking a mini-writing retreat to turn my notes into paragraphs. 

And the first night I got to this little town, it was a cold and dark Tuesday evening in February, back when it got cold and dark really early still. I stopped in the town to buy a few groceries to last me for three or four days. But I was tired and hungry and didn’t want to cook anything that evening, so I stopped in a little pizza shop to buy a couple of slices as well, to tide me over for the evening.

And after the owner of the shop put the slices in the oven to warm them up, he turned to the register and said: that’ll be $7. And I pulled out my wallet, grabbed my charge card, and while I looked for the card reader, he pointed to a sign I hadn’t seen that said: cash only. 

I looked in my wallet and only had a $5 bill and I thought: shoot and told him, I guess I’ll just take one slice. And he said: how much do you have? And I said: just $5. And he took the five, passed me my two slices, and said don’t worry about it. Here you go. Pay it forward if you want.

I said thank you, but the words came a little slow because I was really surprised, a little choked up, to be honest. 

Because well, I guess it was just an extra slice of pizza, it was a difference of $2. But I feel like not many people do stuff like this for strangers. And as I went back to the car, and drove to the lake house, and as I got out and ate my two slices, I thought – that man’s words and hands, and these slices going into my belly – this is the goodness of God. 

Because when Moses said:

God, show me what you’re really like,

God started singing:

the compassionate, the merciful.

And so every time we experience or even witness compassion and mercy, we experience and witness God. And every time we ourselves embody compassion and mercy, we give flesh to the goodness of God. 

We are not living in compassionate and merciful times. We live in times when a pastor asks the president of our country to be merciful, he can’t decide if it’s a joke to insult or an affront to him to complain about. There are churches and Christian leaders in this country trying to convince people that empathy is a sin because they view the life of faith as some kind of war against their enemies.

But Moses learned that the one of the truest things about God, maybe the truest thing about God is God’s compassion and mercy.

And this doesn’t just need to be an abstract belief or hope. No, every time we witness compassion and kindness and mercy, we can remember that ultimately, this comes from God. And that in that moment, God is here.

One of the beginnings of my own more personal relationship with God was the forgiveness offered to me so gently by someone I’d hurt very much when I was young. It was one of my early windows into the truth of God’s goodness. And everytime someone puts forgiveness, compassion, mercy, kindness into the world – even through a slice of pizza to a weary soul who’s out of cash – the glory of God is there if we’ll see it. 

We know God through every act of compassion.

2. II) The second thing that is most true about God is God’s loyalty and faithfulness across the generations.

I’ve got a couple friends who are having a baby soon and we were talking the other day about how some friends or family have looked at her very pregnant belly and said to this couple –

hey, look at what you made.

And this couple, they look at the ultrasound pictures of the child about to be born, they feel it moving, and they’re like:

I don’t feel like we exactly made this. I mean we did something, but we couldn’t make anything like this. That doesn’t make sense. 

It’s too complex, too miraculous, they’re like:

sure, I guess it was us. But God too, right?  

I get it.

Most of life’s best gifts are not made by us or any one we know. We didn’t build our roads or buildings or any of the other infrastructure we depend upon. Others who came before us did. And we didn’t have the sun that warms our bodies and grows our plants that make our oxygen any more than we could claim credit for inventing the genes or the science and all the miracles that make our babies. 

All the biggest and best gifts of life come to us across the generations through long stories of loyalty, love, and faithfulness.

God tells Moses that one of the truths of the God is that when people screw up, it tends to do harm across three or four generations. That’s real, right? Our lives, our nation, our planet is haunted by choices made by the generations above us. It’s our responsibility, but it’s not our fault. And our kids and grandkids and their kids might say the same about us. This is real, that actions have consequences.

But God says it’s even truer that love and faithfulness create blessings for a thousand generations. 

A thousand generations is a long time ago. Even Moses is recent history compared to that, some 200 generations before us. And we’re still grateful for his vision of the truth of God’s nature.

What were humans up to, what was God up to 20,000 years ago that blesses us still? I looked it up. 

The first humans to come to this continent may have come around 20,000 years ago. Thank you, ancestors, and the God who inspired them, because I love living in this part of the earth. Gift that keeps on giving. 

You all like fishing, or just eating fish? 

A thousand generations ago, humans were learning to make fish hooks. 

Thank you, God, and thank you ancestors for that. 

How about art, religion? Humans were making art and exploring the meaning of life and who and what were behind it all 20,000 years ago, so if you treasure singing or the drawings your kid made in preschool, or this church – hey, thank God and thank you to the ancestors.

You don’t need to be so literal about the 1,000 generations to play this game.

The point is that our lives are full of gifts, just overflowingly chock full of them, that are the result of the love and faithfulness of God a long time ago, that if you’re a person of faith, you believe helped inspire our ancestors to think and do marvelous new things.

Fire, coffee, chocolate ice cream, the notion of a day off of work, the words “I love you,” schools for learning and play being more common that child labor, modern medicine – all the gifts of our ancestors to us, and all reflective of the loving faithfulness of God behind showing up in the abundance of creation, and the inspiration and creativity of God’s children.

Friends, no matter how tired or angry or sad we are, we get hard and die inside and curse ourselves and our children and our societies if we give up on gratitude. Because God has been loving and faithful across the generations, and when we remember to say thank you together, we know the goodness of God.

Lastly, the third thing that Moses finds is the truest truth about God is God’s attention to pain, and God’s passion for justice. 

Moses first learns about God when he realizes that he may have run away from Egypt and its violent oppression of Moses’s people, the Hebrews. But God had not run away. God was listening still to every cry of pain. Every prayer of “Help” and “How long?” And God was determined to do something about it.

But as we heard, God could not do that by Godself. God could get Moses’ attention, and God could inspire Moses to realize he needed to work with some folks to help. 

Friends, we know God in the compassion we witness, in the gratitude we cultivate together, and we know God in our struggle for Liberation.

There’s a great deal that is wrong in the world right now. A great, great deal. Enough to overwhelm and drive you to despair.

None of us can fix it all. We can’t even hold it all. So here’s an invitation for us together. An invitation to human-sized liberation and human sized-faith in a God who sees. 

When you hear pain, say to yourself: I believe that God hears. I believe that God is there, at the site of that pain. And I believe God wants to inspire somebody to help.

So when my doctor friend tells me that he and some colleagues are searching for HIV medicine that they can get to an organization in East Africa that lost their US AID funding, so that patients are about to start getting AIDS and dying, my first thought is to again be so pissed off at my government’s short-sighted stupid cuts, to try to save billions by cutting all that health aid at the same time they announced a program to spend billions of dollars on a new bomber plane that can reach the other side of the world. And all this is true, but my anger doesn’t change this, and right now, there doesn’t seem like there’s anything more I can do about this besides another call to my congresspeople that I already made.

So I can also say, the fear of those HIV patients, the desperation of those clinic workers – God hears, and God is there, and thank God that God is inspiring my friend and others to do what they can to help. God, strengthen them.

And then I watch the video this week showing Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts grad student on a Fulbright, being scooped up in Somerville this week by masked ICE agents with no explanation, sent down to a cell in Louisiana against direct orders from a judge, and held presumably because she spoke up about the Palestine on campus last year. I can be angry and sad and afraid and appalled, and I am , as is most of our broader community. And I can also say:

God is with her. And ask God to raise up a helper for her deliverance. 

It doesn’t save the world. None of us can do that. But this belief that our cries of injustice and the pain of the world are holy sites of God’s presence, and this request that God raise up a helper, these are alternatives to apathy or despair. They keep us connected, and once in a while, when we pray: raise up a helper, we find that we are that helper and there is something we can do.

And that too is the gift of God. It happened to me last week, maybe a small thing, but it gave me life and encouragement. I know it will for you too.

Friends, none of us can have robust faith all by ourselves. We weren’t made for that. But when we encounter compassion in our human relationships, we can know the compassion of God. When we remember to say thank you to God and to the people who came before us in our social and public dealings, we can remember that God has been faithful and is still here. And when we don’t turn away or despair of all the suffering of this moment, but say to God: I believe you are there, and I pray you’ll raise up a helper, we sew into a spiritual imagination of hope and love and sometimes, once in a while, of action. And this too is the glory of God among us.

Let’s pray.

Be Still and Know: Stop and Do a Gut Check

My daughter was on a “would you rather?” questioning mode one night. She asked,

  • “Would you rather sit and read a book or hug your kiddos?”
  • “Would you rather give me 5 apples or 10 candies?”
  • “Would you rather hug me or kiss me?”

and went on and on the whole bath. At first I answered quickly with obvious answers, “hug my kiddo of course!” “apples of course!” But after a while the questions started getting complicated in my mind. Well I might need some alone time at some point so sitting down and reading sounds really nice. I didn’t tell her that.

I started thinking too hard about these questions and all that is parenting where every decision feels like it’ll ruin her for years of therapy, that I say,

“well if you had apples everyday for the last 5 days, I think I could offer you a candy, but if you had lots of candy already, then I’d give you an apple, so it all depends. Everything depends. There’s not always a clear answer about good or bad. Apples aren’t always good and candy isn’t always bad.”

And finally I said,

“right foot, get your right foot in the pants and stop asking me questions!” 

Wisdom. The wisdom to know the difference. Because there really isn’t always a good answer for things everytime. It depends on the person, the situation, the context. 

So how do we know if we have wisdom? It’s a hard thing to pin down. Just like air and wind. And just like the Spirit. How does the Spirit of God work? How do we know if we’re moving in the spirit of God or if we’re totally going the other way? 

We’re talking about the metaphor of Spirit as Air in this season of Lent. Today we anchor on a scripture text from one of the Pauline letters, 1 Corinthians 2:6-16. Paul talked about the spirit a lot. The work of the Holy Spirit in the early church, with charismatic experiences and entrepreneurial spirit of starting something totally new, under a new understanding, a new covenant, Paul relied on the power of the spirit to talk about their ministry and understand his own calling. Here’s a clip of his letter to the Corinthians that talks about the wisdom of God. I pray that it’ll enlighten and anchor us to discover more the love of Jesus that is present right here within us today. 

1 Corinthians 2:6-16 (Common English Bible)

Definition of wisdom

6 What we say is wisdom to people who are mature. It isn’t a wisdom that comes from the present day or from today’s leaders who are being reduced to nothing.

7 We talk about God’s wisdom, which has been hidden as a secret. God determined this wisdom in advance, before time began, for our glory.

8 It is a wisdom that none of the present-day rulers have understood, because if they did understand it, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory!

9 But this is precisely what is written: God has prepared things for those who love him that no eye has seen, or ear has heard, or that haven’t crossed the mind of any human being.[a]

10 God has revealed these things to us through the Spirit. The Spirit searches everything, including the depths of God.

11 Who knows a person’s depths except their own spirit that lives in them? In the same way, no one has known the depths of God except God’s Spirit.

12 We haven’t received the world’s spirit but God’s Spirit so that we can know the things given to us by God.

13 These are the things we are talking about—not with words taught by human wisdom but with words taught by the Spirit—we are interpreting spiritual things to spiritual people.

14 But people who are unspiritual don’t accept the things from God’s Spirit. They are foolishness to them and can’t be understood, because they can only be comprehended in a spiritual way.

15 Spiritual people comprehend everything, but they themselves aren’t understood by anyone.

16 Who has known the mind of the Lord, who will advise him?[b] But we have the mind of Christ.

We are a mystery, even hidden to ourselves, even hidden to our closest loved ones or partner. I mean, how well do you really know the person that’s sitting next to you, really? 

“In the same way, no one has known the depths of God except God’s Spirit.”

And Paul is saying that, that huge mystery of God, that abundant, expansive love and heart of God, is revealed to us through the spirit.

  • But do we even have the space to see it or hear it?
  • Are we listening for this burst of truth?
  • How can we, when our lives are so filled with so many surfaces of half little truths that we keep ourselves so busy with?
  • How can we truly feel God’s belovedness and know our beauty and worth when we’re so busy fixing ourselves up with worldly standards of beauty?

We try so hard to architect our lives, plan ahead, busying ourselves to optimize our days, save money, make life efficient, more efficient, ooooh if we can work so hard to just make it a little more efficient, then, THEN we could sit down and rest. Only THEN we think we’ll actually feel beautiful and loved. 

In my early 30’s I had a panic mode season.  I was just going through a big breakup. I wasn’t ordained yet, living in a small basement like in-law unit that I entered through the small side door next to the garage of my upstairs landlord that took me down a long dark corridor to where the trash cans were stored, next to it my place. Apparently my biological clock was ticking, living in the city as a single woman didn’t feel as cool as Sex in the City made it out to be. I was often lonely and just down on myself. So I kept myself busy. That year, I picked up running, biking, and skiing all in one year. I was obsessed with tracking on my Strava app and determined. I was hell bent on getting clipped onto the bike, because I had signed up for a mere 40 mile bike ride, I know that’s cute to some of you but I was never athletic growing up. I did choir, piano, and theater. I didn’t play sports growing up. I used that long corridor to clip my shoes into the bike and fall, and clip and fall and clip and fall again and again, it was very dramatic. 

I was also on another app, called Coffee Meet Bagel, it’s a dating app. Yes, when you don’t know what to do with your life and who you are, just download a bunch of apps. I was hell bent on finding someone, as if you could orchestrate that sort of thing, they sure make you feel like you can by giving you a Bagel, a match, at noon every day. I would set up dates for the weekend. One Saturday, because I had nothing else better to do between my run and bike ride, I set up a morning coffee date, a lunch date, and a dinner date, yes all three meals with Bagels. By the 3rd date, I was sharing stories about myself that I wasn’t sure if I’d already told that person or another person. 

The story does go that, that Lent, I decided to fast from dating (and yes I did end up meet my husband “when I wasn’t looking”) when I joined an Enneagram group for self discovery and growth that April, but the moral of the story isn’t that when you stop trying God will bring you the one, okay? That is NOT my point! Though it doesn’t hurt my point of the need to slow down and make space to hear God…

We’re going through this Lenten season centered on the words, “Be Still and Know that I Am God.” from Psalm 46. Because Lent is an invitation to just stop. The fasting during lent tradition is for that reason, to just stop busying ourselves so much with our own wit and knowledge and knowhow and apps and all, but just stop. 

And last week Steve mentioned that the Jewish translation doesn’t just say, “be still” but it’s more like “desist.” I was curious about it because I always found the words “Be still and know” SO DREADFUL. Like, just, relax, and be still, sit, and be calm, and all wisdom and power will just come to you out of thin air. It makes me feel woozy. Like I’m supposed to be this super elevated spiritual person who talks real slow. I’m sorry I don’t get that kind of luxury. 

Cole Arthur Riley, the author of Black Liturgies said,

“To suggest a form of faith that tells me to sit down alone and be quiet? It does not rest easy on the bones. It is a shadow of true contemplative life, and it would do violence to my black-woman soul.”

I followed up with Steve about that word, “Desist.” The verse right before “Be Still and Know That I AM God” says,

“To the ends of the earth he makes wars cease– he breaks the bow, snaps the spear, burns the shield in the fire.” God is putting a stop to wars by breaking, and snapping, and burning the bow, the spear, and the shield so that we can stop our violence, injustice, and sin. And then, instead of “Be Still and Know” it says, “Desist, and learn that I am God, supreme over the nations, supreme over the earth.””

 Do you see the slight difference in attitude and posture? It’s not, I think “therefore I am” kind of confidence and entitlement. It’s

“stop what you are doing and get humbled to LEARN that I am God.”

It’s less a gentle anointing to the man but in your face standing against all that you are doing to ruin and sabotage yourself, you human, realize that I know you, I know the nation, I know the earth. God is sending a Cease and Desist letter. It isn’t an invitation to sit down and sing Kumbaya, it’s showing God’s power to end it all. God is saying, Back down. Full stop. 

Be still and know I am God wasn’t what I had always imagined at all, of sitting in peace and tranquility, no shade to meditation cause I love meditation practices for real though, but AND, it’s more abrupt and powerful INTERRUPTION and a CALLING OUT to CEASE and DESIST of all the busying and worrying and scheming and cheating and lying and hiding and covering up. STOP!!!!! FOCUS!!!! LISTEN!!!  It’s more like the HipHop artist Grammy winner West coast rapper Kendrick Lemar’s song Humble, Sit down. Be Humble. Sit down. Be Humble. Sit down. Be Humble. 

Stop and Learn.

That’s why Paul is saying, spiritual people will get this but unspiritual people won’t get it. They won’t get it because they’re busy buying into the lie. To the trend of the day, whether it’s “everyone’s on Instagram. You have to be on it if you’re going to have any social connection”, or “you have to be skinny to be beautiful. Oh and by the way, you should hide your aging at all costs if you want to be beautiful.” or “you have to go to an elite college or college at all if you want to have any success in life.” or whatever the latest “common” knowledge is, eat more protein, work out, but don’t do high intensity training cause your cortisol will spike up, or whatever hashtag is in. Or we’re too busy listening to our shadow selves, our ego. Instead of the spirit that is in communion with God, the one that hides in the dark, ashamed and covered in lies. 

To stop listening to the trends of the world or the ego can feel at first disruptive. Like a car going a million miles an hour to just come to a complete stop, you have to face gravity and velocity or whatever physics that happens, which can feel abrupt. That’s why the work of the Spirit is described as Wind, which sometimes, oftentimes, isn’t just a nice breeze but can SNAP branches, BREAK roofs, BEND you car, and TAKE down your internet, and you are forced to stop everything without internet. The spirit work is unpredictable like the wind and it might upend things first before it settles anything down to something that resembles peace. When you STOP suddenly, you might feel vertigo. You might feel the detox in your body. You might find it very frustrating. 

I find Lent very frustrating. I don’t like all the grief. It’s too messy. Oh the snot and tears of grief, I hate it. I don’t like crying out of nowhere in my car in my driveway, you? I mean, you know this too. That to learn, there is discomfort. First there is confusion and misunderstanding. 

And so we’re left here again. Okay, wisdom, spirit, wind. Unpredictable and elusive. So how do we do this thing, this awkward unwieldy thing we’re supposed to work with? 

To level the playing field is to turn it upside down. Paul brings down the modern-day rulers to nothing. Paul nullifies powers and authorities. How? How does he do that?

He points to the lowest thing to the highest thing.

He points to the cross.

He points to the tool of its day for execution and humiliation–the crucifixion. 

The Message, a kind of a causal translation of the Bible by Eugene Peterson, a biblical scholar, has verse 16 from our text today,

“16 Who has known the mind of the Lord, who will advise him?[b] But we have the mind of Christ.”

To this:

Isaiah’s question,

“Is there anyone around who knows God’s Spirit, anyone who knows what he is doing?”

has been answered: Christ knows, and we have Christ’s Spirit.

And I think this is the brilliance of Christianity at its core. What we didn’t know. God, the divine, the mystery, the hidden secret has been revealed to us as a person. Jesus Christ. What is God like? How does the Spirit guide us? We have the answer. It’s Jesus.  Follow the spirit of Jesus that has been gifted to reside in you and with you. The one who the world rejected, misunderstood, one who was weak and killed. For God lifts up the lowly and despised, and places them at the center. 

The Spirit is at work when a person’s spirit defies the world’s gravitational force of hierarchy. When the high becomes low, and the low becomes high. That is beautiful and spiritual. When valleys are filled and the mountains are brought down low and we can all sit together and see each other, soul to soul, spirit to spirit as equals. 

I love seeing that in our church. I see the spirit at work when I witness the worldly status and power of a tall grown man’s lap being stomped on recklessly by a 5 year old in Kids Church. I see the spirit at work when we put the young queer person front and center to lead us in worship and song, teaching us how to sing,

“I love you, Lord.”

I see the spirit at work when I see Faith Into Action bring together young white folks and old black grandmas to lock arms together to fight for justice. I see the spirit at work when immigrants in our church rise to have power and influence on the board. That’s the kind of the spirit power Paul saw in his early church and admonished the church in Corinth to desperately hang onto the guiding of Christ’s spirit because that’s the only thing that could make sense. 

Whenever we uplift the lowly, we are doing the spirit’s work. Whenever we center the de-centered, we are doing Christ’s work, who put toddlers in the middle of the crowd and said, be like them. As one Pauline scholar says, we are to

“embrace the logic of the cross, as a community to accept weakness and humility as marks of God’s favor.” (Bassler) 

  • Where can you do that in your lives today, this week?
  • How can you apply the logic of the cross to yourself?
  • Where can you accept weakness and humility as marks of God’s favor?

I just warn you, when you begin to do this, it might not feel good. Look what happened to Jesus. That’s the invitation of Lent. You see why I don’t like Lent? New life and Easter comes later. It’s promised, but first, death, grief, and discomfort. 

And that’s the end of my sermon, because it’s Lent. Let me pray for us. 

Slow Down for a Minute (or 6 weeks)

Today I’d like to begin with a reading of a few words Jesus said to a tired, discouraged community. He said:

Matthew 11:28-30 (Common English Bible)

28 “Come to me, all you who are struggling hard and carrying heavy loads, and I will give you rest.

29 Put on my yoke, and learn from me. I’m gentle and humble. And you will find rest for yourselves.

30 My yoke is easy to bear, and my burden is light.”

Pray with me, if you will.

Burden-bearer, load-sharing God who carries us all, spirit of gentle and humble Jesus, please encourage us this day through your words. And in this season of Lent, could you help us slow down? And in this season of Lent we enter, could you renew our faith, deepen our hope, increase our love, and strengthen us in resilience, we pray. Amen.

For like three or four days of this week, my family of five is all under the same roof together, and I can’t tell you how happy that makes me. You all are cool, but my wife Grace, our three children, are the great joys of my life. And I smile bigger and breathe deeper when we’re together. Family is not always like that – I know that well. So it’s a grace of my life that I’m part of one that is to me. 

One of the things we’ve done as a family a lot over the years is get out into the woods together and do some hiking. We’ve all done this in different combinations. My daughter Julianna and I have especially taken to this, though. When she was a child, we hiked all of New Hampshire’s 4,000 foot peaks together. There are a lot of them. When we finished the last peak a few years ago, when she was 16, we got special certificates to commemorate our journey and I keep mine in one of the matching photo books I had made for us. 

I can’t speak for my daughter, but on my end, I did this for two reasons. 

  1. I love this girl – now this woman – more than words can say. And I wanted to start a habit with when she was crazy about spending time with me that we’d keep, even when she grew up and I wasn’t the bee’s knees to her anymore.
  2. And two, I love walking in the mountains and the woods. Moving your body at walking speed, breathing the fresh air, smelling pine scent carried on the wind, getting away from daily responsibilities and strong cell phone reception, you slow down. And in slowing down, the pace of breath and pulse slow a bit, the conversation deepens, sometimes burdens don’t feel so heavy, and I find I have a chance and receiving again the depth and truth of Jesus’ words – that we were not made for uninterrupted stress and fear. We were not made for harried, hassled, distracted lives. We were not made to bear burdens alone. We were made for sustainable, right-sized lives. A yoke is a harness oxen wear while they plow. It constrains and directs them so they do their job, and the goal is for it to be the right size, to fit well, so the labor is suitable, even easy, for the animal. In Jesus’ Jewish faith and culture, a yoke was a metaphor for God’s guidance and direction and leadership, given through the Law, and now Jesus says, given through him. God’s leadership in our lives is suitable for us, it is a light burden – purpose and direction, a Way of life that is good for us and good for others, and gives rest to our souls.

In one of my favorite essays, the late theologian Kosuke Koyama asks,

“What is the speed of God?”

We know the speed of light, but what is the speed of God? Well, Koyama says God was incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ, and so God’s speed is the speed of human walking. God is, Koyama says, the three-mile-per-hour God. God who moves at walking speed, at our speed, not at the speed of panic or rush or hurry, but at the speed of love. 

We begin the holy season of Lent today with an invitation to slow down for a minute and move at a suitable speed again. Slow down and be found by our three-mile-per-hour-God who walks with us. Slow down and move with God at the speed of love.

This metaphorical minute to which I invite you to slow down is actually six weeks long. Lent is the English word for the six week period before Easter that traditionally begins this past Wednesday and that we formally begin today. It’s a season for the renewing of our faith, the deepening of our hope, the increasing of our love, and the strengthening of our inner selves in resilience. 

You can mark this season by fasting – removing certain distractions like social media from your life if you feel led, or consuming differently. Skipping a meal once a week, skipping desserts, skipping shopping, skipping anything really. It’s not about being stoic or holy, it’s certainly not an endorsement of dieting, it’s an invitation to break our rhythms in some way, to lessen our distraction, and to slow down for a minute.

We also at Reservoir always invite us to a season of prayer – guided by the sacred texts of our scriptures and sometimes by other voices and prayers and art. This year’s guide to the season completes a four year Earth, Wind, and Fire, Last Avatar-like holy jam through the elements of Water, Earth, Fire, and Air. 

Use your paper copy of the guide or the digital version at our website at least once a week, preferably a little bit each day, and please make sure whether it’s a community group you’re in or a friend or family member you ask to look at it as well, that you share with someone else how you’re reacting to this season. 

The guide is anchored by a single verse from a single poem in the Bible’s prayer book called the Psalms. 

That verse is a blessing spoken from God to us that we will lengthen each week, as a blessing said over us:

Be still and know that I am God.

Be still and know that I am God. 

And this first week we start today is just the first word: Be. 

Just be.

Let me read the whole psalm, and share a few more comments of invitation to this season. 

Psalm 46 (New Revised Standard Version)

To the leader. Of the Korahites. According to Alamoth. A Song.

1 God is our refuge and strength,
    a very present help in trouble.

2 Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change,
    though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea,

3 though its waters roar and foam,
    though the mountains tremble with its tumult. Selah

4 There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
    the holy habitation of the Most High.

5 God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved;
    God will help it when the morning dawns.

6 The nations are in an uproar; the kingdoms totter;
    he utters his voice; the earth melts.

7 The Lord of hosts is with us;
    the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah

8 Come, behold the works of the Lord;
    see what desolations he has brought on the earth.

9 He makes wars cease to the end of the earth;
    he breaks the bow and shatters the spear;
    he burns the shields with fire.

10 “Be still, and know that I am God!
    I am exalted among the nations;
    I am exalted in the earth.”

11 The Lord of hosts is with us;
    the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah

Our God – large and mighty and far away as the most distant and enormous starts. And our God who is as near as the air between us, as close as our breath, speaks: Be still to us. 

In the midst of nations in uproar, kingdoms tottering, the earth as we know it melting, God says:

Be still and know that I am God.

In Hebrew, this phrase: Be still is a little less gentle. Referring to human propensity to war and violence in the previous verse, God’s like:

knock it off. Desist! Cut it out. Take a break from your scheming, your plotting, your getting and taking and grabbing. Desist.

Be still.

Be. 

I read this slowing down, this stillness as connected to four things in this Psalm. Let me name them briefly and then extend today’s invitation and pray for us again. 

Breaking rhythm, being still, practicing Lent is connected to resilience. God knows that we are weak, but God also wants us to be renewed in inner strength. 

We get this in verse four, where the psalmist says there is a river whose streams make glad the city of God. Now metaphorically, this means God is the provider of water – life, nourishment, cleansing. And spiritually, God is the provider of life, nourishment, all that we need for inner strength. But literally, that stream in Jerusalem that inspires the psalmist is not a mighty river like the Mississippi, or even a mid-sized stream like our Charles River. It’s actually an intermittent spring called the Gihon. Sometimes it looks dry and seems like there won’t be water for the city again. But like the season of spring, it does reliably return.

This happens with our experience of God. Sometimes God seems distant or absent to us. Our faith can shrink smaller than our doubts, smaller than our struggles. So it helps to at least one season a year, slow down and look for the river again. To mix water metaphors a little, dip our bucket into the well, and see what God has for us. 

Daily or weekly, prayerful reading of the guide is a way to dip back into the spring, to seek God’s nearness, refreshment and encouragement again. 

So lent is for resilience and two, lent is for recommitting to the way of non-violence. This psalm starts to paint God in classic ancient imagery of unbridled power – see what desolations God brings. But then it says God turns God’s power against power against war-making and bows and spears and shields and drones and stealth bomber planes and all. To be is also to desist! To stop our raging aggression and violence. 

Lent starts formally with Ash Wednesday. The ashes some of us had placed on our head last week are a reminder of our mortality and eventual death, for sure. They are an ancient image of grief, to welcome God with us in our sorrows for sure, as well. But they are also an image of repentance. Of acknowledging where we have lost the way of love, and making an effort to return to God, to return to the face of our neighbor, and to return to our right selves as well. 

Lent is always an invitation to repent from our violent ways. And in our world, we need that more than ever. We see Russia’s years long war of violent aggression in Ukraine and spirit of God would say:

desist!

We see Hamas’ violence done to Israel, and then Israel’s far disproportionate violence they have done and are doing to the Palestinian people, in Gaza and also in the West Bank, and spirit of God would say:

desist!

And we look home here to this country, and see the five trillion dollars spent on 20 years of post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. And we could ask:

what has been gained? What has been lost?

Or we can look at the trillion dollars in annual US spending on our military, more than three times more than any other nation, and ask:

how can we return to God and return to our right minds and repent? 

Personally too, Lent is an invitation to repentance, to slow down enough to notice any ways our lives are going off the rails, any ways our lives are falling short of love and tell the truth about that and return to God. 

Friends, our weekly communion in worship here is always a great moment to tell the truth to God about your life and make an intention to return to God, return to the way of love. If you ever need a more focused way to do that, a pastor is always available to hear a confession, to assure you of God’s forgiveness, and to pray you’ll have the strength to return home to your best self. It’s a holy honor to receive a moment like this. We’re here for that if you need it. 

So, Lent is for resilience, and for repentance. And three, Lent is for resistance. The psalms like to call God the Lord of hosts. Literally, that’s like

“God of the armies.”

In the imagery of this psalm, God is both a shelter and a general. 

God is our refuge, a place of hiding and comfort and retreat when things get too hard. And God is our general, because who are God’ people God can mobilize to do justice and mercy and good work in the world if it’s not humans who would listen to God’s call, receive Jesus’ yoke of leadership upon us, and do what we can to be light in this world, to be God’s hands and feet. 

I’m not going to say a lot about this because we just spent the winter called to Radical Hospitality, which as I preached one last time last week, is a powerful resistance to the cruelty and inhospitality of the present age. And friends, I trust that as we slow down in this season, as we shift gears a little, as we turn to God, there will be ways for us to be people of love and truth and mercy in a world that too often drifts toward cruelty and lies and hate. When the moment comes, be ready. Be people of mercy and truth and love, my friends. 

So lent is for resilience and repentance and resistance. And lastly, Lent is for the renewing of faith, the deepening of hope, and the increase of love in our lives. 

In the first week of our Lenten guide, I tell the story of when in 2003, I suffered a traumatic break to my larynx and underwent emergency surgical repair. I’ve still got a scar from it. The doctor told me if the injury had happened an inch lower, I could have died. Had I not had access to such great medical care, I could have lost my voice for good. 

I think about all that it took to repair the injury and I’m reminded about the public trauma we have all suffered in recent years. We’ve lived through a global pandemic. We’ve witnessed devastatingly violent wars. We’ve watched videos of horrifying police brutality – moments where lives were violently cut down, pleading for air, as with Eric Garner’s last words,

“I can’t breathe.”

We still endure toxic and polarizing politics. We’ve been disillusioned by our country. 

Some of us have lost sleep. Some of us have lost family or friends. Or we’ve seen our children suffer. Some of us have been shunned by family, shunned by faith communities. Many of us know people who have lost their lies. It’s all been a lot. It’s been enough to question our faith, to lose our hope, to turn inward and away from love. 

It’s all been enough to knock the wind right out of us. 

Lent is a balm for such a season. It’s an opportunity to hold our hands open to God together, and even if our hands are empty, to hold them before God and say: here is my little faith, here is my shaky hope, here is me with whatever love I have left in me. And to walk with our three-mile-per-hour God, to trust the slow work of God in renewing our faith, deepening our hope, increasing our resilience and love. Can we pray in this Spirit now? 

First, Teihlard de Chardin’s prayer called Patient Trust and then we open our hands together:

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.

And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through some stages of instability—
and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.

Open your hands if you will.

Here we are God, in the anxiety of our incompletion, we of little faith, of shaky hope, of faltering love. 

Be our steady and good God. We commit ourselves to you in this season. 

Renew our faith, restore our hope, revitalize our love, we pray. Amen.

Beautiful Vision and Fears into Action

This winter Grace and I have been re-watching an old favorite TV show, Friday Night Lights. This time with our twenty-year old son. Which is fun because a lot of this show is about people that age. 

One of them is Tyra. She’s got a hundred things stacked against her, comes from generations of poverty and addiction, and against all odds, she’s trying to go to college. But she’s written this horrible, cliche-ridden yawner of an essay which she’s reading to her friend for feedback when he hints at how awful it is. 

So she blows up. She says: 

What should I write about? My trashy family, about the fact that my sister’s a stripper, or my mom is a high school dropout who drinks boxes of wine like it’s water, the fact that my papa wasn’t around? Oh, I know. I could write about how up until two years ago I had enough hate in my heart to start a freaking car.

And after a long pause, her friend’s like –

that’s it. Tell me about what changed two years ago when you had all that hate in your heart. 

And after they talk, Tyra ends her new essay like this:

“Two years ago, I was afraid of wanting anything. I figured wanting would lead to trying and trying would lead to failure. But now I find I can’t stop wanting. I want to fly somewhere first class. I want to travel to Europe on a business trip. I want to get invited to the White House. I want to learn about the world. I want to surprise myself. I want to be important. I want to be the best person I can be. I want to define myself instead of having others define me. I want to win and have people be happy for me. I want to lose and get over it. I want to not be afraid of the unknown. I want to grow up and be generous and big hearted, the way people have been with me. I want an interesting and surprising life. It’s not that I think I’m going to get all these things, I just want the possibility of getting them. College represents possibility. The possibility that things are going to change. I can’t wait.”

In many ways, the good news of Jesus to people who’ve been given permission to want everything is that God is here, and so it’s not all about us. And the good news of Jesus to people who’ve not had permission to want much of anything is that God is here, and their time can come. The first shall be last, and the last shall be first. Jesus’ beautiful vision of the future. 

And Tyra is finding it. Wherever fictional characters go when they grow up, I’m rooting for her still. 

One good news resilience story. 

What about ours? 

When things go wrong and you feel stuck, how do we find resilience?

I was talking to some other clergy about this recently, and the wisdom of one of our younger colleagues, the Rev. Katie Cole, was shining. She shared that this winter, she’s been working a couple of the tools she’s learned from community organizing in her own life and in the life of the church she pastors.

The first thing she said is that when things are hard, we need a beautiful vision of the future. In organizing, we call this the world as it could be. Jesus calls it the Kingdom of God. 

This is what Tyra is finding – a beautiful vision of what her life could be. 

And Katie said that the second thing we need is a way to turn our fears into actions. Because when we’re scared, we feel more and more powerless. Tyrants, bullies, anyone who’s ever out to do harm to others wants people to feel powerless because then they get their way. 

But when we don’t hole up alone in our fears but keep connecting instead, we feel more powerful. And when we realize that for at least some of our fears, we can do some things about them, that helps us get more powerful too. 

When she’s paralyzed, Tyra finds a way to turn her fears into actions too. You’ll have to watch Friday Night Lights if you want to find out how. 

Friends, this idea of recovering and maintaining a beautiful vision of the future, and this turning our fears into action, this is the spirit in which I want to invite you to participate in the season of Lent this year. And this is what I want us to explore today.

Last month I read a chapter of the gospel of Matthew every day – 28 chapters of good news for the 28 days of February. And there was a chapter that spoke to me about these things. It’s chapter 14 Here’s the beginning:

Matthew 14:1-12 (Common English Bible)

At that time Herod the ruler heard the news about Jesus.

2 He said to his servants, “This is John the Baptist. He’s been raised from the dead. This is why these miraculous powers are at work through him.”

3 Herod had arrested John, bound him, and put him in prison because of Herodias, the wife of Herod’s brother Philip.

4 That’s because John told Herod, “It’s against the law for you to marry her.”

5 Although Herod wanted to kill him, he feared the crowd because they thought John was a prophet.

6 But at Herod’s birthday party Herodias’ daughter danced in front of the guests and thrilled Herod.

7 Then he swore to give her anything she asked.

8 At her mother’s urging, the girl said, “Give me the head of John the Baptist here on a plate.”

9 Although the king was upset, because of his solemn pledge and his guests he commanded that they give it to her.

10 Then he had John beheaded in prison.

11 They brought his head on a plate and gave it to the young woman, and she brought it to her mother.

12 But John’s disciples came and took his body and buried it. Then they went and told Jesus what had happened.

This is just horrible. John the Baptist was a humble, courageous person of integrity. He’s inspiring moral and spiritual renewal. He’s speaking truth to power, in this case criticizing Herod for his sketchy sexual conquests, and that power kills him for it. 

And the Herods, this little dynasty who was ruling over these lands, I don’t have the words for them. They are suck ups to the few people in the world who have more wealth and influence than he does. They work for the first century equivalent of the tyrant and billionaire class. They do all these building projects to try to curry favor with ordinary people, like they’re on some kind of Make Jerusalem Great Again Campaign. But people were smarter back then, it didn’t work. 

The people hated them. They had secret police that spied on the people. They shut down protests. They were violent and corrupt, killing some relatives, marrying others. We are not the first country to have fools with no moral compass running the show, serving their own interests. 

For Jesus, though, this wasn’t only nationally enraging, it was personal. John was Jesus’ relative. He had been a spiritual inspiration to him too, he baptized Jesus. And Jesus is kind of in John’s line of work. Herod gets the two guys confused, which doesn’t bode well for Jesus’ future.

Some of us have lost livelihoods due to politics. We have heard it in this space. John faced the same, and on top of that, he was jailed and killed. Jesus wonders if he’s going to be next. 

What do you do in this kind of situation? How do you find resilience?

Let’s keep reading. 

Matthew 14:13-20 (Common English Bible)

When Jesus heard about John, he withdrew in a boat to a deserted place by himself. When the crowds learned this, they followed him on foot from the cities.

14 When Jesus arrived and saw a large crowd, he had compassion for them and healed those who were sick.

15 That evening his disciples came and said to him, “This is an isolated place and it’s getting late. Send the crowds away so they can go into the villages and buy food for themselves.”

16 But Jesus said to them, “There’s no need to send them away. You give them something to eat.”

17 They replied, “We have nothing here except five loaves of bread and two fish.”

18 He said, “Bring them here to me.”

19 He ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. He took the five loaves of bread and the two fish, looked up to heaven, blessed them and broke the loaves apart and gave them to his disciples. Then the disciples gave them to the crowds.

20 Everyone ate until they were full, and they filled twelve baskets with the leftovers.

21 About five thousand men plus women and children had eaten.

Jesus and his disciples first plan was to get away. Head off to the countryside, just take a break, a retreat there for a while. 

But the problem is a lot of people follow them there. 

I relate to the disciples. They’re like Jesus, remember the whole deserted place, retreat plan. Here we are, send everybody else away. 

I felt like this a lot this past month. February was so cold, so cold, I’d go out in the morning with my dog, and I’d still be freezing inside at lunchtime. The news was depressing, sometimes scary. I would have loved to join Jesus and his disciples in a boat going somewhere else.

But Jesus has a different idea than escape. This deserted place, these thousands of people who show up, their hunger. He’s like:

What if we had a feast! Let’s feed them. 

Jesus catches a beautiful vision of the future. 

Every bit of their economy was taxed and controlled by the Herodians and the Romans behind them. The fishing industry of Galilee was a local cash cow for the government. And large gatherings were suspect, mostly forbidden. 

The average person spent a lot of time hungry too. 

And Jesus wonders:

What if we can pull off a feast that the government can’t touch, a little taste of freedom, a taste of the good life. Wouldn’t that be a great day! 

It was like last year, when in this very space, we supported one of our members Derrick Duplessy in throwing a feast and a party and a resource fair for Haitian migrants who are new to this city. 

Like what if seeing these folks as burdens, we could welcome them and celebrate their presence. What if there’s enough space, enough food, enough clothing to go around for us all?

And it happened.

It happened for Jesus too. 

There are, by the way, two interpretations of what happened with this feeding of the 5,000, if you believe it really did happen. 

One interpretation is that it was a supernatural miracle. Pow, pow. and those five loaves and two fish become hundreds.

The other interpretation is that it was a miracle of mobilizing and of an abundance mindset. Jesus blessed this meal for twelve, told his disciples to start passing it out, and everyone else there who had food started sharing as well. 

Which was it? I don’t know. The passage doesn’t say. It says the disciples started passing out food and then everyone ate until they were full. It doesn’t say now. And honestly, I don’t really care very much. Either way this is an awesome story, either way it is beautiful. I actually like the naturalistic interpretation more because it involves the disciples and it involves the crowd in faith and hope and love, not just Jesus. 

Friends, what’s our vision of a beautiful future? 

Some of this is personalized. We all could use a reminder now and then that no matter what is happening in our nation, no matter what is happening in our jobs or lack thereof, in our families, and all the rest of our circumstances, there is still good that is possible. Even if we need the help of God and friends to see what that is.

But what about together, as a church or even as a society?

Last month, for Black History month, I started reading the collected writings of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. There’s a lot there. The editors didn’t even include all the speeches and essays and stuff that other people mostly wrote. They just collected the word that mostly represents King’s voice, and it’s fat. That man spoke more and wrote more in his 20s and 30s than I can fathom.

And you read his voice, and it’s still so fresh and so full of beautiful visions of the future. I’m not just talking about famous stuff like the dream and being judged by the content of our character rather than the color of our skin. Although that would still be nice.

Nah, King was killed just five years before I was born, so not that long ago. But today in America, he’s mostly got a holiday with his name on it, and most people remember like two things he ever said and did and they’ve twisted at that, acting like King was some kind of enemy of diversity, equity, and inclusion work, or like all King did was sit around and dream and give one speech about it. 

Nah, the real Rev. Dr. King was harassed his entire adult life. He and his family were subjected to innumerable death threats. He was imprisoned 29 times. Our government surveilled him. While we had a president with known ties to organized crime, the government instead surveilled him, labelled him a communist, acted like he was an enemy of the state. And he was widely hated. In a large American poll in 1968, the year he was killed, 75% of American adults disapproved of him. 3 out of 4 people, saying I don’t like that man.  The best known leader of the Black Freedom movement. 

And yet King kept turning to a beautiful vision of the future, for himself, for his people, and for our nation. 

After his first assassination attempt, which he barely survived, instead of just spending a year hiding out at home, he’s like: oh, I finally have time to go to India. And off he and his wife a few others go to study the legacy of Gandhi’s non-violence resistance in that country. Turning crisis into opportunity, turning tragedy into hope, wrenching good out of evil. That is just how he lived.

And for all of us too. King told the truth about America. He called this country colonizers – thieves of the lives and land of indigenous Americans, thieves of the lives and prosperity of Africans and their descendants, chronic discriminators addicted to fantasies of white supremacy. But he dared imagine that we could become true to the best parts of our founding documents – all people created equal.

And King called our capitalism sick, he called our militarism death-dealing. He said this country was built on the triple evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism. And yet, and yet while America went to war in Vietnam, he dared imagine that this country could commit to a religiously inclusive version of Jesus’ beautiful vision of the Kingdom of God, a vision Dr. King called the beloved community. A vision of a society absent of poverty, hunger, and hate, a society full of opportunity. A vision as our friend Dr. Drew Hart puts it, everyone belongs, everyone matters, and everyone can thrive. 

Listen, we don’t need to be heroes like Dr. King, but we do need to recover and sustain beautiful visions of the future. In our season of Lent, I’d ask you to be here on Sundays and to read our guide along with others, and to pray that through this season, God can give us beautiful visions for our future again. 

And friends, at the same time we seek faith and hope for the future, let’s be encouraged in the faith and love we need to turn our fears into actions. 

Jesus must have been terrified by cousin John’s execution. And he made a short-term plan – flee for a while. Fair enough.

But while away, he mobilizes his students, and crowds beyond them toward the faith and love they need to have a great big feast together. After this point, Jesus starts to travel more outside of his adopted hometown area of Galilee. He expands his ministry not just to Jews but to Gentiles. And he gets clearer, more focused on his purpose. Like King, he turns crisis into opportunity, tragedy into hope, wrenching good out of evil.

It’s a great activity, to name the 1 or 2 or 3 things you’re most afraid of right now – not for others, but things that impact you. And then to ask, with the help of God and friends, or with a little bit of faith, hope, or love, what power do I still have? What can I do? 

We’ve tried to think and pray this way for our church in this season.

  • I’m afraid of a country where people are increasingly turned against one another.
  • I’m afraid of a country that scapegoats some of its residents to distract people from other things it’s doing.
  • I’m afraid of a country who has hostility toward diversity, equity, and inclusion, and I’m afraid of a country who is hostile to immigrants and the lands they come from.

Maybe you are too. 

Radical hospitality doesn’t make these things go away. But it’s an antidote to not get infected by them. To stay as open as possible to relationship with others keeps you more open to difference, to seeing the image of God where you hadn’t seen it before. And to welcome people into your prayers, your heart, your home is to learn to see the world as first a place of beauty and blessing and possibility and not a source of threats and disgust. 

I’m so proud of how our church has responded to this series. We have a number of households exploring welcoming others into their spare rooms or spare apartments and more of us who are eager to support and help them. Thus Rev. Tina’s presence today and our interest meeting.

And I’m proud of us for being as welcoming a church as we can in other ways, doing that three minute rule after service where you talk with someone new for a while. Doing these prayers for your 6 that we talk about now and then, where you pray blessing for a few people every day. I’m proud of ways you are so generous, Reservoir with your time and your money and your gifts – seeing all that not just as a private possession but as gifts from God for us and for the common good. 

Because when we’re afraid, and maybe for good reason, the best protective factor for ourselves and others is community. Let me say that again – the best protective factor when we are afraid is not saving up money, adding locks and bars, avoiding strangers, the best protective factor for our well-being is being part of strong community, having other people in our lives who will help us in our time of need and who we’ll want to help as well. 

And when we’re afraid, we’re also more resilient when we don’t magnify the power of what causes our fear. Our economy matters – real impacts on our lives. Our government, our politics matter – real impact on our lives. But they don’t touch everything. Within the range of our powers, we can still be the people we are called to be. And this is an important time to lean into our values, and to do what we can to grow in faith, hope, and love.

This is what Lent is for friends. This season before Easter is like the dedicated time of the year for increase in faith, hope, and love. We’ll formally start this journey next Sunday and talk more about it then. Some people fast in this season – you can if you like. But we are focused this year on a season of growing our resilience, of cultivating community, faith, hope, and love together in this season. 

Friends, I encourage you to be part of it. 

To rediscover a beautiful vision for your future. To turn fears into action. To lean into this community. And to see just how powerful faith, hope, and love can be among us.