Sermon Series Title: We Are Reservoir

The Local Church and the Body of Christ

Years ago, when we started this annual We Are Reservoir series, I really wanted to call it “This is Us.” I was obsessed with that TV show at the time,  but I think it was Ivy who identified how corny that would be and helped us pivot to “We Are Reservoir.” 

But that show still has a big place in my heart and my imagination.

If you haven’t seen it, This is Us is a three-generation family drama, with three siblings – Kevin, Kate, and Randall – at the heart of it. There are two fraternal twins and one transracially adopted kid who all share the same date of birth, and each season begins at a different birthday in their lives. 

From the beginning, you know this family has troubles. Kevin, Kate, and Randall have lives that are going off the rails in their thirties. And you learn that part of the reason might be that their larger than life, heroic dad died in a house fire when they were teens. The show’s animated and haunted by this dad in the early seasons, as if every good thing and every bad thing in this family’s universe is connected to his rise and fall. 

But over time, you realize that like every family, they are more complicated than their simplest stories. This is a family that’s working out issues with addiction and trauma and racial identity formation and parenting and cancer and old griefs and wounds that have never healed.

And you realize as time goes on that This is Us is also a kind of parable for American life as well, that we the people of the United States have been mashed together in our own imperfect union, facing our innumerable challenges and conflicts and traumas and wounds, both old and new. Descendants of conquerors and conquered, human traffickers and bodies trafficked in slavery, descendants of immigrants and xenophobes alike, there is still an “us” about us as Americans. But in our age of rising corruption and declining democracy, of rising fascism and declining rule of law and civility, we’re spinning apart. We’re sputtering and struggling as a nation. And it’s painful, it’s alarming.

Grace and I had a joke about my obsession with this TV show. It was my cry-it-out time, an experience I shared with a lot of Americans. One because this show is emotionally manipulative. I think they had a little committee on set who studied the perfect ways to get men crying. It’s an art, or a science. I don’t know.

For me, the tears were mostly because this family that couldn’t help spinning away from each other again and again just kept coming back for each other. Deciding that their family was worth the work, that their us-ness was worth the conflict and the forgiveness it took to keep it, that their common union was worth the love it took to keep it growing. 

I come from a family that’s not so good at all of this, and live with you all in a nation that’s really not so good at all of this. 

And friends, even our churches are not so good at this. When I was a new pastor here in 2013, our church was several years deep into some conflicts and divisions about our church’s future. We were asking questions like:

  • How do we read the Bible?
  • And what will life in this church look like for our queer selves and our queer siblings?
  • And will we stay in our evangelical church denomination or go?
  • And what will leadership in our community look like?
  • And how will we right our financial ship when we’re losing money? 

We were spinning apart, like so many churches have pretty much as long as churches have been around. Those were hard times for us. 

And so, as I cried my way through This is Us for six years, I thought of my family and I thought of my nation and I thought of our church’s past, and I would wonder:

  • What can keep us coming back to each other?
  • What can keep us an us?
  • What does it mean to keep the faith, and strengthen hope, and double down on love, when faith, hope, and love all look like they’re failing? 

And the truth is that I don’t know. I’m sad and scared for our country right now, and like you I’m sad for other relationships and other communities where people’s problems have spun people apart from each other and they’ve stopped trying to come back to each other. 

So I don’t know.

But one thing I do know. I know that when Jesus walked the earth 2,000 years ago, after he taught and healed people, and after he was crucified and resurrected, his first followers had a picture of what could keep us coming back to each other. 

And they called this picture, and this truth that is stood for, the Body of Christ. Friends, kids, grownups of all ages, you, we are the Body of Christ. We’re a part of it at least. You, we, I are the Body of Christ. We are the church. Which is what we’re talking about and celebrating today. 

Let me read a place in the Bible that this language comes from.

I Corinthians 12:12-21 (Common English Bible)

12 Christ is just like the human body—a body is a unit and has many parts; and all the parts of the body are one body, even though there are many.

13 We were all baptized by one Spirit into one body, whether Jew or Greek, or slave or free, and we all were given one Spirit to drink.

14 Certainly the body isn’t one part but many.

15 If the foot says, “I’m not part of the body because I’m not a hand,” does that mean it’s not part of the body?

16 If the ear says, “I’m not part of the body because I’m not an eye,” does that mean it’s not part of the body?

17 If the whole body were an eye, what would happen to the hearing? And if the whole body were an ear, what would happen to the sense of smell?

18 But as it is, God has placed each one of the parts in the body just like he wanted.

19 If all were one and the same body part, what would happen to the body?

20 But as it is, there are many parts but one body.

21 So the eye can’t say to the hand, “I don’t need you,” or in turn, the head can’t say to the feet, “I don’t need you.” 

 These radical words were written by the church planter Paul of Tarsus to a little collection of house churches in Greece that kept losing their way and spinning apart. And Paul says to them:

you are the church.

He has his own “This is Us” moment with them. 

He says:

Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, the one who shows us the way, that Jesus Christ still has a body, with many parts. 

Jesus has a really big body.

And then he says:

we are a part of that body.

The apostle Paul, the dysfunctional little first century Corinthian church, and you, me, and everyone in this room and all kinds of other people, we’re part of Jesus Christ’s body too. That’s strange.

And he says:

here’s what that means. It means we’re all important, just like God is important.

It means: we all matter. 

People of the Way of Jesus, we are part of God’s body. 

And that means we belong to ourselves, as all creatures do.

And we belong to each other. 

We belong to Christ. 

And our call is always to faith, hope, and especially love. 

Here’s one more famous bit from this three chapter teaching on the Body of Christ. It was written not to a couple but to a church. 

I Corinthians 13:4-8a, 13 (Common English Bible)

4 Love is patient, love is kind, it isn’t jealous, it doesn’t brag, it isn’t arrogant,

5 it isn’t rude, it doesn’t seek its own advantage, it isn’t irritable, it doesn’t keep a record of complaints,

6 it isn’t happy with injustice, but it is happy with the truth.

7 Love puts up with all things, trusts in all things, hopes for all things, endures all things.

8 Love never fails. 

13 Now faith, hope, and love remain—these three things—and the greatest of these is love.

The church and the body of Christ are called to love and be loved and are told: this is what love looks like. 

Friends, I don’t know about you, but this is a lot of why I go to church at all. When Grace and I came to this church 20 years ago, we were looking for a place where we and our kids could keep discovering the beautiful good news of the love of God for us all. But we were also looking for people who were real and honest and kind, where we could make friends. And we were looking for a diverse community, where our multiracial family would feel at home. 

And like it has for so many of you, it’s been true here. We’ve felt at home, we’ve made friends, and we continue to discover the love of God in this place. 

We’re so grateful.

But I want to acknowledge today that the journey of this happening in the Body of Christ is really complicated. For many reasons, but here are two.

One, what is the Body of Christ after all? How big is it?

A surface reading of this whole section might tell you that the Body of Christ all baptized believers in Christ on earth. Which in Paul’s lifetime was not that many people. But today is like two billion people. And you may have noticed that we don’t all get on very well!

I have a friend who is very committed to the well-being of all kinds of Christian churches. Like me, she is an ordained minister of the gospel and is married to a woman. Unlike me, she is a she.

And she will wonder out loud: what do I do with my call to love those who don’t recognize my ordination and don’t honor my marriage? 

It’s hard.

Other parts of the Bible think the Body of Christ is even bigger, like it’s all humans, everywhere. Parts of the Bible talk about Christ reconciling all things to himself, and so maybe the Body of Christ isn’t just people either, but all things, like all things on earth and even everywhere in the Universe!

How do we belong to something so big? 

Sometimes, though, the Body of Christ sounds like it’s smaller too, like it can be our local church, so that we at Reservoir are the Body of Christ. Or there are other passages in the Bible that say even smaller things can be like the Body of Christ, like a marriage between two people or even one of us, a single human body.

  • But what do we do with everything that is wrong with all these little bodies?
  • How do we love our church when there is conflict or when we disagree with things?
  • How do we love and belong to our spouse or even our own darn self when there are things there that seem unlovable? 

It’s complicated.

It’s also complicated to know what to do when the ideals of all this don’t work out. Like how wide is our circle of obligation?

If the body of Christ is the whole universe, or all the people on Earth, or even all the baptized believers in Christ, can I really love all that? Can I really belong to so many? Probably not.

And even with smaller definitions, like my local church, it’s hard to do it even there.  

I’ve never gone to a church where I don’t bump into some people I don’t like or don’t like me. And we can say we belong to each other in our local church, but that belonging has all kinds of limits. Most of us don’t see each other all that often, most of us in a church aren’t deep friends with each other, and none of us gets a vote when someone decides, for whatever reason, that they don’t want to be here any more. People come and go. The metaphor of the body breaks down.

  • So what do we still meaningfully do with this image of the Body of Christ?
  • This call to belong to ourselves and belong to one another and belong to God?
  • This image of love and respect across difference?

I’ll close with three things I think are true, which are also three invitations.

One is to always honor the dignity of others – certainly in your church, but really anyone and anything, everywhere. If God says we’re all part of God’s body, this is the least we can do. I’ve heard Dr. Cornell West talk about this. He’s had interactions with white supremacist Christians where he calls them “brother” and says to them:

you are my enemy, but you are also my brother.

And that’s possible, for someone to be your enemy for a while, but to hope they won’t be your enemy forever and to affirm that at some deeper level, you still belong to each other, or at least you still both belong to God.

Two is to communicate to everyone – including yourself – how much everyone matters. Don’t ever treat someone like they don’t matter. Nothing and no one is unimportant. 

Back in that time our church was going through some really hard times, I met as a pastor with a group of people who had left the church. And it was a little awkward, like what do I say? What do I do? I’m not their pastor anymore. But as we talked, and I heard some stories of church, I felt led to pray for them and asked if I could, and the main thing I prayed was to bless each of them, saying:

the Body of Christ still has need of you. And if our church made you feel otherwise, I’m so sorry. You are still needed. You still belong. You may not belong at the church you used to go to and that I pastor now – you’ve decided to – but you still belong. 

Friends, I know that in June, the way our leadership team shared church budget news and budget cuts we were working on felt really surprising and disruptive to some of you. And I have heard from some of you that for different reasons, you experienced that we communicated that your voice, and your opinion doesn’t matter here. I want you to know that I’m so sorry for that. There’s no way for us to have personnel conversations in public, but we want as much as possible of the business of this church to be clear and transparent to all our members who are interested. Since we belong to each other, and this church belongs to all our members. And ultimately, all of us and all of this church belongs to God. 

For any ways that felt undermined, we as a leadership team are so sorry and we’re working hard for that to not continue to happen. 

And the last thing I want to say about the body of Christ is that every place in the body that bears crucifixion can also experience resurrection. After all, when it comes to the literal body of Jesus, this is what his body is most famous for – that he suffered and died, and that later, he was risen. And so if we are all part of the body of Christ, the one thing we can expect is that we too will suffer. We will, again and again, sometimes for no reason and sometimes even at the hands of someone who loves us. But if we’re part of the body of Christ, we can also trust that God will raise us in glory – that the very sites of our pain and losses will become in time sights of healing and new life and glory. This is after all the nature and pattern of the Body of Christ.

So whether we’re crying my way through reruns of This is Us, or thinking about the deplorable state of this nation, or talking with a friend about the unresolved drama in the families we come from, or showing up on Sunday at a church that we love but also has reminders of disappointments and pain, in all those places, we can practice hope that what we see today isn’t the end of the story. We can believe that keeping the faith and working for redemption are worth our time and energy, since that’s what God does and calls us to do. And we can keep on searching for what love looks like, because the scriptures, and the Body of Christ, and even the best of our own history tells us again and again, that love never fails. 

We are the Body of Christ, so we matter, and we belong to each other, and we all belong to our loving God, who holds us still.

The Gift of Community

My husband and I have slowly been watching the series, The Bear — which if you aren’t familiar — is a whopper of a show!

The premise: a gifted fine dining chef, Carmy Berzatto, returns home to Chicago to take over his late brother, Michael’s struggling sandwich shop called The Beef. As Carmy tries to transform The Beef into a more elite restaurant called “THE BEAR” – we are also rooting for Carmy’s own transformation. We are invited to see the story lines of grief, family dysfunction, and the pressures of perfection, implications of unhealed hurt — and we see how they show up in his relationships, his work place, in his own self.

Part of what makes this show so compelling is its frenetic intensity — the way it pulls you right to the precipice — adrenaline coursing through your body. The camera work, the pacing play into all of this. But the universal aspects of the real stories and the stakes of those stories –is what heightens my nervous system and ushers in the feeling that everything could implode in a flash.   

And yet, woven into that chaos are moments of beauty and heart — glimpses of what it means to create something meaningful in the midst of the mess.

My husband used to be a professional chef and watching him watch this show is its own drama. I can see him taking in  — the creativity, the skill, the chaos, the combustibility, the deliciousness, the crunch of time and paralysis of perfection — he’s taking it in through his body, viscerally through his past experiences.  

And I watch this from a relational/emotional perspective. ALL of the personalities — all these people intersecting in life in real time — with thousands of threads of love, and grief, and missteps and joy, and care and pain running right alongside and through them — and I think

“how can this go well? How do we do this thing called being human on a daily basis?”  

And so Scott and I, we both watch this show — sideways. We need to take big breaks after each episode.

It’s not just about food or running a restaurant. The show digs into what it means to be human — to belong, to be seen, to hold and to be held by others. To bear witness to one another’s lives — in times when the service runs as smoooooth as expected/planned and when life is in chaos.

Being human is never a solo act. Times of weeping and times of joy — these inevitable ingredients of life offer us an unexpected gift: that we don’t have to navigate any of it alone.

And that, in itself, might be the greatest gift: that there is always a table, there are always people, in our midst all the time — this gift of community.

The catch — if you can call it that — is that we can’t really curate community — the gift encompasses all of it, everything, everyone. Even the people you might never willingly invite or WANT in your life. (*sparing of course violent/abusive boundary necessary people).

I want to share with you a clip from the recent season that I think gives us a potent picture of this. It’s at a wedding reception where we see a young girl hiding under a table — she is the daughter of the bride. She’s scared of dancing with her now-new-step-dad… and what unfolds under that little reception table becomes a window into what real community can look like.

Before we unpack this scene a bit — I wanted to remind us that we are in a short series called “We Are Reservoir,” where we are breaking open our mission statement that we say at the top of every service… that we invite people to discover the love of God, the gift of community and the joy of living.

I love this mission statement. I mean I want to be a part of a community of people of faith that embodies this statement. It gives me comfort to know this encircles Reservoir. And I also know that a mission statement isn’t just words for us to recite. It’s meant to empower us for the work of LIVING in this big, messy community of humanity — the whole wide swath of it. That’s why our mission is rooted in our guiding values — connection, humility, action, freedom, and everyone.

In the scene we just watched unfold you see this range of people — straight up enemies, people that are meeting for the first time, exes (romantic and friends), “plus-1’s”, biological family, work relationships, chosen-family, and a kid, all crammed together in an improbable space.

A multitude.

“Some theologies say it is not an individual but a collective people who bear the image of God. Suggesting that we need a diversity of people to reflect God more fully. Anything less and the image of God becomes pixelated and grainy, still beautiful but lacking clarity. If God really is three parts in one, it means that God’s wholeness is in a multitude.” — Cole Arthur Riley.

Not just our chosen multitude.

 But rarely do we embrace the multitude fully. Because it’s hard. Community is not for the faint of heart. It is not a sweet sentimental slogan — it’s the work of making room. It requires an unfathomably large table. One that we couldn’t quite imagine – one that could in some ways only supernaturally stretch. I wonder if that’s what God offers us in the gift of community — that our hearts actually stretch beyond where we want sometimes.

In this scene 16 people fit fully sitting upright under this little table. Just before this moment, the camera shows the table as only big enough for one frightened little girl to hide beneath. Then her dad joins her, so cramped that his legs stick out from under the tablecloth. And yet, somehow, the table stretches…

How could the table be this big? How does it not feel too crowded, or like anyone is being lost in the shuffle?

Maybe it’s because at the center of that table is something more than space — it’s something living , active — it’s care. It’s love. It’s God, making room.

What begins as care for this little girl, unfolds into a whole community sharing the moment together — not fixing her fear, but bearing witness to it. And in that act of witness, they discover a common thread: the simple truth that we all know and have fear, and that God’s image is revealed not in our perfection, but in our presence with one another. One theologian even suggests we call this

not just bearing witness but bearing ‘WITHness’ (Christena Cleveland)

— a reminder that in true community we are not distant observers of one another’s lives. We are with each other, alongside, companions on the same journey.

And that’s where I want us to pause, and to practice. To join the multitude, not just in theory — we could talk about community forever, but I want to invite us into the real sharing of our own lives. So could you circle up with some folks near you — five or six folks — and share out of this same question,  “What is it you are afraid of?”

And two things before we share: 

— Freedom.

— Listen.

Freedom — share from where you feel comfortable. Trust that whatever you offer is to be cherished as a gift. “Spiders, failure, the collapse of democracy, math” — it’s all part of the multitude. — you don’t need to expound.

Listen — your job is not to fix. To offer feedback.

The communal response after each sharing is:
Amen. You are not alone.

Sharing:
What is it that you fear?

Communal response:

Amen. You are not alone.


SCRIPTURE 

Thank you for being willing to share. Fear is something we all carry — and Jesus knew this too. In fact, when he told stories about creating God’s kin-dom, he often named the fears that keep us from the table. Let’s hear one of those stories now from the Gospel of Luke.

Luke 14:15-24 (Common English Bible)

15 When one of the dinner guests heard Jesus’ remarks, he said to Jesus, “Happy are those who will feast in God’s kingdom.”

16 Jesus replied, “A certain man hosted a large dinner and invited many people.

17  When it was time for the dinner to begin, he sent his servant to tell the invited guests, ‘Come! The dinner is now ready.’

18 One by one, they all began to make excuses. The first one told him, ‘I bought a farm and must go and see it. Please excuse me.’

19 Another said, ‘I bought five teams of oxen, and I’m going to check on them. Please excuse me.’

20 Another said, ‘I just got married, so I can’t come.’

21  When he returned, the servant reported these excuses to his master. The master of the house became angry and said to his servant, ‘Go quickly to the city’s streets, the busy ones and the side streets, and bring the poor, crippled, blind, and lame.’

22 The servant said, ‘Master, your instructions have been followed and there is still room.’

23 The master said to the servant, ‘Go to the highways and back alleys and urge people to come in so that my house will be filled.

24 I tell you, not one of those who were invited will taste my dinner.’”

Often, when we read this scripture, we imagine two groups.

First, there are the guests on the original invite list — the more privileged ones. The ones who own land and animals — are partnered, have status. People who, in some fashion, might be afraid of disruption, of losing comfort, of known routine, afraid of losing status.

Then, there are those society disregards — the people society leaves in the bushes, the ones pushed aside, not considered worthy of a seat at the table.

And there is so much good in reading it that way. It helps us see God’s expanse of radical welcome at work in community.

But this morning, I want to press us a little further. Because maybe it’s not that there are only two groups here —  but maybe the ‘poor, the blind, the lame’ represent parts of ourselves. The parts we are afraid to let be seen. The parts we think are unworthy, too much, wounded, ashamed, that we want to keep hidden.  

Audre Lorde (a Black, queer, poet, and activist) once said,

“Without community there is no liberation.”

There is no promised land without the multitude — even the multitudes you contain. In some way these original guests think  they can create the kin-dom of God on their own, maybe on their own terms — and maybe (according to themselves), they do. …. But what will become of the promise when it is collapsed by loneliness? Who is going to drink all the milk and honey with them? (adapted from Cole Arthur Riley).  

As the host says in this scripture/parable,

“not one of them will taste my dinner.”

And maybe that’s the caution embedded here — thinking we can feast alone — but discovering that the gift of the kin-dom of God only comes with our wholeselves present, and in community.

And isn’t that what we saw in The Bear? This scared little girl hiding under the table —  unsure if she belonged in this new expression of family before her…and yet she didn’t have to climb out on her own. Others chose to join her, to bear witness, to sit with her. And because of that, she was able to taste the goodness of love surrounding her — enough to rejoin the party.

That’s the gift of community. That’s the liberation Audre Lorde names. Not fixing, not striving, not going it alone — and not as she expands,

“shedding our differences, nor the pathetic pretense that these differences do not exist,”

but practicing the kind of belonging that makes us more whole, and helps us co-create the kin-dom of God, even in the midst of mess.

 So let me ask you this last time to turn to share in your groups (or in the chat on-line) Where is God in relation to your fear?

And when someone shares, our communal response will be: Amen. You are not alone.

Again let ‘freedom and listening’ be your guides.

PRACTICE

Thanks for sharing again — that’s the last time for today! I want to say as we close though, that community doesn’t just happen. We have to practice it.

  • We practice showing up when it’s easier to stay home.
  • We practice listening when we’d rather speak.
  • We practice bearing witness instead of rushing to fix.
  • And we practice it not just with the people we like, or agree with, but with the whole swath of humanity.

And the beauty is — as we practice, God actually transforms us a bit — shapes us into people who reflect God’s love more clearly.

Our community groups are a way of  “practicing community” — not just — responding to a prompt/or answering a question. We are practicing what it means to belong to one another. We are practicing trust. We are practicing love.

It takes practice to trust that our own stories — even the parts we’re afraid of, or the things we are afraid of  in others — can not only be held, but can become the essential ingredients that expand our view of God — beyond what we could have scope for.

What a gift to be part of a place where you can share exactly where you are at, each time. Community Groups don’t force intimacy, they invite us into it. They give us space to learn how to cherish vulnerability — our own, and one another’s — as a gift.

We need more places to be human.

Held by care and love that is unending. The love of God. A love that is uncontrolling, non-judgemental, not rushing to fix.

We all need help. We are all afraid. 

We need more options than dysregulation and escapism.

We need beloved community, more than ever. 

Because these truths don’t become real in isolation — they only take flesh when they are shared. 

 Connection can only affirm itself in another person.

Humility can only affirm itself in another person.

Action can only affirm itself in another person.

Freedom can only affirm itself in another person.

And everyone — everyone — carries a piece of God’s image, and only together, in community, do we see it whole.

  And this is the gift of community.

Prayer: The holy prayers have already been spoken in this room. And for those that remain unspoken I say, “Amen. You are not alone.” 

Discovering the Joy of Living

Roman 12: 9-12

9 Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.

10 Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves.

11 Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord.

12 Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. 

Good and Gracious God, 

We give you thanks for the day you have given to us today. Each of us have granted your image, imprinted your love and likeness in us. We thank you that we carry that with us through all the various parts of our lives. And we come here, to church, to reconnect with you and with one another, to be reminded of your love, joy, and gift that is life. Help us to find strength here. To find refuge in you. To find a fresh word, that your love may break through any hardened hearts, mend broken ones, and resuscitate our numbness to find the beat of your love we pray, even now, Amen. 

Last year for Thanksgiving we didn’t have much planned. Our extended family lives in California and Hong Kong, and some of these “family” holidays sometimes feel “meh” to me sometimes. Our little family of four went to the movies for the first time at a theater together. We watched Moana 2. In the series of previews before the movie, at least 10 previews, (the kids were confused at each one, “is this what we’re watching”?) There was a movie called “The Unbreakable Boy” where in the preview the Dad says this great line,

“I wish I could enjoy anything as much as my son enjoys everything.”

and it pans to the boy with his family at a simple dinner saying,

“This is the best day of my life!”

I turned to my boy immediately and smiled, because he totally says that when we go to a playground on a regular Saturday,

“This is the best day ever!” 

Ah, to enjoy life. The joys that kids get to have. Unlike grumpy adults and grown ups who have to work and have responsibilities and worry about stuff. I think this is one of the reasons why Jesus said in Mark 10:15,

“Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.”

One of many wisdoms that a little child holds is that pure delight and joy for life. You are meant to play and that life is a gift to be enjoyed. 

But… that can feel hard for some of us. It might almost feel too simple. Especially when life feels so complicated with so much other stuff going on. Like if I ever say something like, “Enjoy!” for some reason it kind of sounds sarcastic, even if I wasn’t being sarcastic at all. Cause like, I can’t hide that I been through some stuff. Unless you’re my daughter who pronounces it, “Endoy!” 

Call us cheesy or too simple, I don’t care, but our church Reservoir doubles down on the fact that what we’re here to do– to

“invite everyone to discover the love of God, joy of living, and the gift of community.”

That is our tagline. And in this new ministry year, new school year, we begin the season by going back to our roots, in a series called, We Are Reservoir.

  • This is who we are.
  • This is what we’re here to do.
  • To love.
  • To be joyful.
  • To be in community.

And we invite everyone, without exception to discover the Love of God, the Joy of Living, and the Gift of Community. I’m touching up on Joy today, and I love it because Joy has been my medicine. 

What does it mean to embrace the Joy of Living? 

First, what it’s not. 

Joy does not mean, no matter what’s happening, just be happy. It’s not, let’s hide your feelings about grief, anger, or sadness and just smile. I, and maybe some of you, might even have experienced this kind of expectation from our parents, or culture in our world, or even the church. You see, I have, sometimes, the difficult time of getting a first pass in receiving good news from the Bible, because I have to sift through some of the ways that I’ve heard that very same Bible verse through a toxic lens that only reinforced my elder’s fears or their way of controlling my body. Mine, the theology and pastoral advice I sometimes got from church was mixed in with a chip on our shoulder as Korean American immigrants. 

We used verses like this to tell ourselves, don’t speak up. Don’t complain. Sit down, work hard, be grateful. Which might be why all that played into the “Model Minority” myth, that immigrants are supposed to just shut up and work. In fact, theology was used to self hate and disconnect ourselves from our own identity and worship the white American way.

“Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.”

meant, worship at a nice Presbyterian church, seated in the pews, with intellectual Bible Studies. And reject the ancestral ritual that’s been in Korean tradition for hundreds of years that brings us to our literal knees for prayer while beating our hearts and screaming in agony, because that would be heresy. Sometimes it even felt like being Korean was “evil” and being more white integrated into the American way was “the good.”  

Of course it was never meant to be that way. I do honestly believe that missionaries to South Korea had good intentions. I just think sometimes we got carried away with our beliefs, and didn’t listen to the Holy Spirit at work, not just in our creeds and not even just in our Bible words, but in our bodies. Our hearts. Our traditions. Sometimes we forgot the next verse that said,

“Honor one another above yourselves.”

and thought that we had all the answers that we needed to share and convert and control how it gets played out at all cost. 

And at the same time, those same Bible verses were how immigrants got through tough times, through Korean immigrant churches, that created a space where you found in the gospel, the strength and the power to keep going and persevere, by being joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. 

One story might say that Asian Americans didn’t speak up and just blended in as “model minorities.” There are also other stories that highlight, hope shaping their activism, and faithful prayers that turned into action, through names like Yuri Kochiyama, who joined Malcom X’s movement, and Grace Lee Boggs who fought for Civil Rights and Maggie Kang, the creator and director of the Kpop Demon Hunters. 

You see, the Bible saying, “Be Joyful” does not mean sit down and sweep the painful things under the rug as if they don’t exist. Paul saying

“be patient in affliction”

was more about endurance and survival, rather than just be quiet and deal with it. Being faithful in prayer means that prayer changes us and we don’t just pray good thoughts, but those thoughts move us into action toward change that can only be driven by a solid grounding in audacious hope and joy.

Embracing the joy of living does not mean let’s just all be happy. That’s how you turn into the Joker from Batman. Joker said

“My mother always tells me to smile and put on a happy face.”

Have you heard Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker laugh? That’s now what we’re doing here. 

Neuroscience has now taught us that pain and pleasure are co-located in the same part of the brain. I’m not a neurologist, I know at least there’s one of you out there, who actually knows this stuff but latest science affirms what our ancestors already knew that pain and pleasure, grief and gratitude, joy and suffering are actually closer to one another than we think. The brain uses overlapping limbic circuits for both pleasure and pain, with the opioid and dopamine systems playing crucial roles in modulating both sensations. In fact, they are so in close relationship with one another, it’s described as like a scale balancing each other, when there’s pain you need pleasure to reach a balance, when there’s lots of pleasure, your body responds with the equal and opposite effect to try to reach homeostasis, a base level. Like experiencing a deep deep low after a high, like cocaine or alcohol.

I often talk about my first few Sundays at Reservoir to get at an angle of trying to describe who Reservoir is. What’s Reservoir church? What’s it like? I’ve seen Reservoir hold services about patriarchy, #metoo, and Pride Sunday. In those services, we grieve systems of oppression like patriarchy that have hurt women, and we celebrate women by having ordained women pastors preach. It calls out the harm and the hurt sexual abuse have cause in our society and culture for generations by naming and centering the #metoo movement and uplifting women voices.

We’ve heard stories of LGBTQIA folks who have been hurt by the church and celebrate LGBTQIA experiences of finding community and solace by singing songs like Pink Pony Club on stage even though it’s not a “Christian” song but to say, “Yaaaas” to safe spaces where boys and girls can be queens. We do both. We grieve and we celebrate. And sometimes in order for us to find the joy in this sometimes what feels like a God-foresaken world with famine, genocide, war, violence, abductions, bullying, abuse, guns, and so much more that many of us hear on the news and feel in our bones daily– we dare to show up on a Sunday and sing songs together. We hug and smile, and ask each other who we’re doing. We laugh and put our hands up in worship in release. We cry together and we dance together. 

That’s what we’re going for when we say we’re inviting everyone to discover the love of God, the joy of living and the gift of community. And you know what Reservoir, I think we can use even more joy, especially at a week like this. Not to act like public execution by gun violence didn’t happen, because apparently that’s what America is doing these days. Not to act like we’re not bothered and trigger and angry and just sad and trying to survive but in ORDER to survive.

Joy is our medicine. It’s our Antidote to our grief, pain and suffering. We’re trying to reach homeostasis so bad and all we keep getting are just rocks on our pain balance scale when we watch the news. We need to intentionally tip the scale by adding gratitude, joy, grace, appreciation, jokes, silliness, laughter, beauty onto the other side of the scale. All the more, right now. 

I named Maggie Kang, the creator of Kpop Demon Hunters among fighters for social justice and human rights because sometimes cute animation and banger pop songs are the anthem we need to fight on. In the movie, the three girls who make Huntrix, a kpop group that sing and dance, are also actually the protectors of the land from demons. And they do this by singing. When they sing and dance their best, they apparently strengthen and seal this thing they call Honmoon. Hon means “spirit” or “soul” and Moon, “gate.” Honmoon, if it is weak and there are holes in them, the people are more likely to hear demon’s voices inside of them. 

My favorite line in one of the songs, called “This is What it Sounds Like” is when it says,

“I should’ve let the jagged edges meet the light instead.”

You know what happens when you get jagged edges to meet the light? GLITTER. It shines. It’s beautiful.

“Show me what’s underneath. I’ll find your harmony.”

Show me the things that you are hiding. The things that are not the easy fun stuff of life but the hard stuff. And we’ll find each other’s harmony to sing it through. We HAVE to get creative and find our beauty and harmony together through it. 

This is how generations after generations have survived. I saw a commentary of Kpop Demon Hunters panning on the scene where the Huntrix girls are in Moodang outfits, a Moodang is an ancient spirit worker in Korea that often performed rituals through dance and music to fight off evil spirits. The dramatic performance was a spiritual meaning-making through somatic movements that meant to heal people. 

I want to remind us that our ancestors did not give up on joy, through traditions like Moodang and even Kpop. And the Christian tradition has relied again and again on the hope and joy of the resurrection, through music, through ecstatic worship, through speaking in tongues, so many traditions and cultures that celebrate the life that God has given us. Our biggest holidays are Christmas and Easter and yo, the church we go all out for the stuff. I mean, Christmas songs, they are just the best you know? And the death and resurrection of Jesus is the great drama and crux of the gospel, set before us to say, death our greatest enemy is not the final word. That in new life, we find our joy and delight in our God, through whom we find mercies that are new every morning. 

Jesus juxtaposed this pain and pleasure, grief and joy in his sermon on the mount, doing this balance act to reach homeostasis, which is what our biological bodies long and desire, and perhaps also our hearts and our spirit as well. 

Matthew 5:3-12

Jesus said:

3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit,

    for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

4 Blessed are those who mourn,

    for they will be comforted.

5 Blessed are the meek,

    for they will inherit the earth.

6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,

    for they will be filled.

7 Blessed are the merciful,

    for they will be shown mercy.

8 Blessed are the pure in heart,

    for they will see God.

9 Blessed are the peacemakers,

    for they will be called children of God.

10 Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,

    for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

11 “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.

12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

 

When we are poor, we are gifted a kingdom, when we grieve, comforted, those who are weak, will have power, those who hunger, be satisfied, those who need more mercy, mercy given, those who are pure, they see God, peacemakers are descendants of God he says, those who suffer inherit kingdom of heaven. Blessed he says, I bless you when you are struggling, not shame you or blame you, but I bless you even more. And he says, rejoice and be glad. 

Rejoice and be glad. 

What are some ways your ancestors held onto joy? Think of them. Think of your parents, your grandparents. How did they hold on to joy, even in the midst of so much they might have had to endure? 

And could you share those with us, with this community more? Reservoir wants to, needs to celebrate more joy, especially now. 

In a season when I was going through deep depression, my mom said to me, look in the mirror and clap your hands. Just clap your hands and applaud yourself. It kind of sounds like Joker’s mom but I don’t know, it helped me. Again my ancestors knew their own tricks we nowadays call EFT Tapping, or regulating our nervous system, or little tricks that help us get out of the anxiety loop through cognitive behavioral therapy skills. 

Let us embrace the foolishness of this world called joy and hope. The hope that we have in the resurrected power of Jesus. The joy we have in being made in the image of God who loves us and forgives us. And this, the gift to do it together with one another.

We are Reservoir and we embrace joy. No matter what. Without exception. And especially now, we better. May that be so for us. Let me pray for us. 

Discovering the Love of God

One of my favorite things on the internet this summer has been the animation of an artist named Christian Watson. He’s got an Instagram account that features his animations of skeletons with short musings on the meaning of life. And one of the recent ones shows a full sized skeleton reaching into the back seat of a car at night, scooping up a much smaller skeleton, and carrying it into a bed inside. 

The words say: 

I hope death feels like

Being picked up from the backseat

And carried to my bed half asleep

Where, tucked in and eyes closed,

I can hear those who love me talking through a cracked door.

I’ve watched this little animation dozens of times, many of them through tears, enough that I’ve been thinking about why it gets to me so much. 

Some of it is being the father of kids who have grown up too fast. They were all home for a few weeks this summer, and one of them remembered out loud one day about the times he’d pretend to be asleep in the back seat when we got home, so that I’d scoop him up and carry him inside at night. I can’t scoop him up like that anymore, and he doesn’t fake sleep around me anymore either, but sometimes I wish I could get those days back you know.

Some of it is that things can be hard with my parents, but I have my own memories of my dad scooping me out of the back seat of the car like this, and I think: I want to hold on to that memory, because that was what love felt like.

And I think some of it is what Christian Watson had to say, about hoping death is like this. I’m a follower of Jesus and a Christian pastor, and I have my hopes and my faith in resurrection and life in the age to come and all, but I still find death pretty scary and sad sometimes. And I guess I hope death is like being scooped up in the arms of love and tucked in somewhere safe and warm too. 

And some of what keeps me coming back to this image of the tender and watchful and strong arms of a parent scooping you up and bringing you somewhere safe, is that it gives me another image of what I think God must be like. An image that’s been helping me as I stay with it, and what I’d like to share more about with you today.

We’re starting our church year this fall as we usually do, with a little season we call We Are Reservoir, where we reflect a little bit about what it means to be part of this church together. Who we are and what we stand for, what it means to be a member here, and some of the opportunities and responsibilities we can embrace to make this the best church we can be. 

Over the next three weeks, Pastors Lydia and Ivy and I are going to preach here about the three parts of our mission statement we say every week here on Sundays. And on the last Sunday of this month, we’ll worship all ages together to celebrate what belonging and contributing to this community can do for us all. 

We start today with the first part of our mission, that says: We are here to inspire people to discover the love of God, or the love of Jesus. We say it both ways. 

Let’s read a little, quirky love poem from the old Hebrew scriptures in the Bible, one that the prophet Isaiah puts in the mouth of God. 

It goes like this:

Isaiah 46:1-7 (Common English Bible)

46 Bel crouches down; Nebo cowers.

    Their idols sit on animals, on beasts.

The objects you once carried about

    are now borne as burdens by the weary animals.

2 They crouch down and cower together.

They aren’t able to rescue the burden,

    but they themselves go into captivity.

3 Listen to me, house of Jacob,

    all that remains from the house of Israel

    who have been borne by me since pregnancy,

    whom I carried from the womb

4  until you grow old. I am the one,

    and until you turn gray I will support you.

I have done it, and I will continue to bear it;

    I will support and I will rescue.

5 To whom will you liken me and count me equal

    and compare me so that we are alike?

6 Those who pour out gold from a bag

    and weigh silver with a balance

    hire a metalworker; then he makes a god.

They bow down; they worship;

7     they carry the idol on their shoulders and support it;

    they set it down, and it stands still,

    unable to move from its place.

If one cries out to it, it doesn’t answer.

    It can’t save people from their distress.

There are more straightforward words of divine love in the Bible, like where Jeremiah has God saying:

I have loved you with an everlasting love.

Or when in the gospel of John, Jesus says:

As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Love each other as I have loved you. 

But sometimes I like the weirder parts of the Bible, like this love poem that talks about ancient gods named Bel and Nebo and heavy idols, borne by weary pack animals. 

These texts that read as odd to us, they help us remember that we’re guests in this story. Most of us are not from the Middle East, these lands where Africa, Asia, and Europe intersect and where all of the Bible is set. These texts deal with cultures not our own.

And none of us are ancient peoples. These texts come from times not our own.

We are participating in a faith that didn’t start with us, and I think that’s a healthy and humbling thing to remember. 

Short version of what’s going on here is that Isaiah is imagining God gently mocking the bad habits these folks have picked up from their neighbors. 

Bel and Nebo are Babylonian gods, the gods of the people who have until recently been oppressing the Jews who received this text. And it seems like in assimilating to the dominant culture, some of them have picked up a devotion to these gods, or at least to their idols. 

Idols were always an offense to the ancient faith, which taught you couldn’t reduce Creator God to a statue or an image. But also that the only image bearers of God in creation aren’t statues, but us. Human beings, made in the image of God – God’s sacred, divine representatives on earth.

So the beef with idol worship was always that it’s an affront both to the glory of God and the glory of humans. 

Isaiah takes the mocking here to another level, when he also adds that these idols do no good for you. You carry around these hunks of metal or wood, but they can’t speak to you and can’t help you. You just tired yourself and your animals out as you lug them around.

Again, for most of us, this probably seems like a very ancient and cross-cultural conversation, but I think about objects of devotion that my friends and I have invested myself in – wealth, success, people’s approval, an image of myself I’ve wanted to maintain, somebody else’s vision for what our life should be. And these too feel like objects of devotion that only wear us out. 

Here the voice of God is to invite us to get free of these burdens, lay them down, and remember that God isn’t with us as a burden to be borne but as a burden-bearer. God invites us to remember, to imagine, that we are carried by God. 

From our momma’s pregnancy to our gray-haired final days, God will support us, hold us, carry us. Like a parent who scoops their kid up from the backseat when sleeping or not, fake or real, we are just too tired to walk back home. God will bear us up again, help us find somewhere safe to lay our head again. 

This is what God is like. 

Here at church, we had our first fall staff meeting this past week. It’s always a long one. And we always start the day with some spiritual grounding and a chance to catch up with each other after the summer, when we’ve been together less often. 

This year, a friend of mine, and a friend of this church, Keri Ladoceour, the executive director of the Post-Evangelical Collective, was in town, and I asked her if she’d lead this portion of our meeting. 

And Keri just asked this question that our own pastor Ivy loves to ask as well:

How is your heart? 

And she led us through some reflections on grief, gratitude, and growth.

It was intense, because there’s a lot to be grateful for in our lives, but there’s a lot to grieve as well. Which was sort of the point of the exercise, I suppose, that grief and gratitude together are the crucible of growth, because after all, grief and gratitude are a lot of what we’ve got in these lives.

And at one point, Keri shared that she used to imagine what the posture of God was like to her in grief, in hard places and hard things. Imagining that at some level, she believed God was loving and compassionate, but if she were to imagine a physical posture of God, it would be like this…

Folded arms, foot tapping. Frowning face. Waiting. Waiting for her to get it together. Waiting for her to get up and get moving. To be tough, independent, stronger. 

I resonate with this. Maybe lots of us do. At least those of us who learned to be stoic and stuff our feelings down and carry on. 

But what if that just isn’t true? 

Most of our objects of devotion can’t help us in hard times. You might love your work, but your work will never love you back. Success won’t love you, 

Money and security won’t answer you back. Someone else’s approval, someone else’s vision for your life can’t bear your burdens. 

But the living God, creator of all things, father and mother to us all, will always love us. This God wants to support us through every season of life. And so Isaiah gives us this image of the God who will scoop us up and carry us, as a helpless baby, and as a gray-haired elder who can’t make the walk alone. God will carry us. 

It’s not a physical, literal reality, it’s an image. If I lose myself in bed rot, just don’t get out of my bed for days, the Spirit of God is not going to physically levitate me to the kitchen to eat breakfast and then out of the house to go to work or go see a friend. I’ll need to do those things eventually. 

But the gentle, inspiring posture of the Spirit of God is not going to be standing there, arms crossed, judging frown upon the face, criticizing me until I get myself together. 

No, the Spirit of God is going to be more like my childhood memory, stirred by that skeleton on the internet, of a parent scooping up the tired kid out of the backseat, and helping him find his way back home. 

A really pragmatic person might wonder why this even matters. If faith in God won’t literally, physically rescue us from all our problems and carry us away into a grief-free life of constant bliss, how is it different than any other object of our devotion?

Well, I think it matters in a lot of ways, but one of them is that it changes us. It changes the center of our world. 

When my posture of God is mostly the impatient, frowning, disapproving parent, the center of my life is feeling kind of crappy about myself. Like I’m just unsuccessfully trying to fend off failure at every turn.

Years ago, I noticed that when I wanted to talk to God, I’d most often start off by saying sorry. Oh, sorry, God, that once again I … fill in the blank … whatever stupid mistakes or habits or failures I hated myself for. 

And maybe that’s a particularly dysfunctional religious posture that a lot of us developed, but I look around our times, and well outside the world of religion, I feel like we struggle with healthy centers of ourselves. 

The chronic and persistent anxiety and depression and meaninglessness that so many of us, and so many of our younger people in particular, are experiencing these days speaks to a lot of things, but in part it speaks to the struggle to grow into a strong, supportive, resilient center to ourselves. 

Like at our center, we are sad or pointless or just not good enough. 

But what if our center could grow into what it was made to be – sacred image of God, beloved child of God that God is so glad to carry?

To know that by myself I was never meant to be all that I need, but with the help of God and friends, I can be. Because that is the truest truth of my life. That I am loved. It was the first thing that was true about me before anything else, that I was loved. And it will stay true my whole life, all of my days, until I’m old and gray, that I am loved. And it will stay true long after this life passes away. I will always be loved.

That’s a strong center. That’s a center that can grow in this grief and gratitude-filled lives of ours. 

My friend Mariama, also another friend of this church, said recently this really wise thing. She said:

we’re learning how almost all our resources run out. We can’t just keep mining and drilling and consuming our way forward. But there are two things that can grow endlessly, that can continue to grow without any limit. And those are love, and fear. 

There’s almost no limit to how big fear and love can grow. They are both powerful forces that change our inner life, and that change everyone and everything around us. So true. Both unchecked fear and unguarded love bring new worlds into being. But only one of them is good. 

And just as perfect love can cast out fear, sometimes perfect fear can also cast out love. 

Sadly, this world gives us lots of reasons to be afraid. 

So what’s going to give us reasons to love? 

Having a center that knows I was loved first is going to help. Having a center that knows the first and truest thing about us all is we are loved is going to help. 

Friends, I leave you today with two encouragements.

  • One is to imaginative prayer.
  • The other is a lens to try to see other people through this week.

Imaginative prayer is reading the images of the Bible the way I’ve tried to for us today. Like when it says:

Listen to me …. who have been borne by me since pregnancy,

    whom I carried from the womb

4  until you grow old. I am the one,

    and until you turn gray I will support you.

I have done it, and I will continue to bear it;

    I will support and I will rescue.

And to imagine it’s so. Imagine at various moments of your life, past and present, that God is working to carry, support, and rescue you.

  • How has God done that?
  • How might God do it again?

For me, this image of a parent scooping the kid out of the backseat is an image that takes me there, that like my dad was for me in these moments, and like I was for my kids, God is there for me with strength and tender support when I’m out of energy and out of moves and just can’t find my way back home. 

And this image of being carried helps take me to that truth. 

That particular image might not work for all of you. So find another one that does. Thankfully, the Bible, and our artists, and even memes on the internet are full of beautiful and true images that show us what love is like. Set your imagination on that. Think about these things. 

And secondly, I encourage you to try an experiment for a day or for a week, or however long you can sustain it. Try to namaste yourself through a week, or even a day. 

I don’t mean you literally have to go around greeting everyone, Namaste. I think it’s kind of weird when people who aren’t South Asian or aren’t in a yoga studio go around doing that. 

But that word “Namaste” literally in Sanskrit means: I bow to you.

And over the years, a spirituality has developed around that says: The sacred in me honors the sacred in you. So I bow to you. And yeah, this spirituality is first a Hindu one, but it’s a profoundly Jesus sentiment as well. So for the many Christians in the room, it is a spiritual posture we can happily adopt as well. 

To think of us all as divine image-bearers. Ourselves, our family, our friends, our strangers, even our enemies – all beloved, all made in the image of God. So that our posture toward one another is to think: the image of God in me greets the image of God in you. 

Try relating to the people of the world for a while, and see what that does for you.

Where We Come From and Where We Are Going

On July 21st this year, the First Baptist Church of Mt. Vernon, Illinois, held its last service. Random, but I know about this because its pastor Ryan Burge is a researcher and writer that I follow, so I read his article called, “My Church is Closing, and I don’t know what comes next – for me or America.”

It ends:

“I walked out those doors into the blinding heat of a summer day in southern Illinois and stepped into a future where I don’t know where I will go to church next Sunday, or even if I want to go. Frankly, I don’t know if my own faith will survive, and I’m not sure if the church in America will be there for the next generation like it was for me. And I’m terrified because for the first time in my spiritual life, I don’t know what’s next.”  

Something like 5,000 churches closed last year in America. That’s 5,000 centers of community life, 5,000 groups of people eating together and praying together that aren’t any more. And 5,000 pastors, and tens of thousands more people not knowing if the church in America will be there for the next generation like it was for them, and a little terrified in their spiritual lives, not knowing what’s next. 

Friends, there are a lot of reasons that churches are closing, and some of them are right good reasons. I’m a pretty big critic of most of what passes for Christian faith and practice in America. And Reservoir, we’re a reformist church. We’re trying to do some new things in new ways in how we do church too. 

So I have mixed feelings about this decline of churchgoing and decline of organized religion in America. Sometimes I’m like: good riddance! Let it die. Let’s make room for something new.

But sometimes it makes me sad. Sometimes even terrified. Because churches at our best are powerful communities. And without churches at our best, there are some really good things that would happen a lot less if at all for the generations that are coming after us.

Friends, don’t get me wrong, our church, Reservoir, is not in distress or on the edge of closing or anything like that. Between our in person and online programming, we’re reaching about the same number of people every Sunday we did before the pandemic. That’s unusual. And over the course of a year, we’re probably touching more people than we did then. And as a pastor, I’m lucky to see and hear a lot of the stories of people who have more friends or more faith or more hope in their lives because we are all here. And that’s so good.

Still, none of this happens on auto-pilot. Which is why every fall we return to this theme: We Are Reservoir. We try to remember why we’re here and that we are the church. We ask again what takes from all of us to make this the church we want it to be, and that our community needs us to be. 

And the way I want to help us to do that today is to think about where we come from and where we are going. 

I’ve got the tiniest of Bible texts to read, just one verse.

John 13:3 (Common English Bible)

Jesus knew the Father had given everything into his hands and that he had come from God and was returning to God. 

Jesus is having a bad day. The biggest of storms is coming in his life. His opponents are closing in. He’s close to arrest, death by crucifixion. It’s a moment where the only natural thing is to be sad, terrified. 

But John gives us this window into Jesus’ inner life and says, Jesus thought about where he came from and where he’s going. 

It says he came from God. That’s a big place. His hometown, his parents, the embarrassing nose-picking moments of his childhood, Jesus believes his whole life comes from God, and that he has particular gifts to offer and purposes to fulfill still. And for him, white worst, most violent day isn’t the end either. Jesus knows that even death can’t end him. He’s going back to God too. 

I think this powerful awareness of where he came from and where he was going made Jesus the most secure person who ever lived, maybe the most present person who ever lived. Always now, here. And security and presence – those are some mighty superpowers. 

They help Jesus in this moment not be mostly sad or terrified, but alive, curious, full of potential energy. Here I am, in this moment, God’s given me everything I need. What will I do?

And per unusual, he goes and does something really beautiful, really powerful. Story for another day.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot in my own life.

  • Where do I come from?
  • And where am I going?
  • And how can I lean into more beauty and more power each day I’ve got?

I’m 50 years old, somewhere in the middle of my life, I hope. Our kids are all adults now, they’re coming and going. I’ve got a lot of tread on the tires of my body. But I’ve got a lot of experience too and God willing, a lot of years and a lot of adventures ahead. And I find mid-life can be an interesting time – because you can collapse into anxiety – being kind of sad and terrified – or you can embrace the adventure of it all. And wonder what this next great season’s going to be about.

I saw this little reel on Instagram that was encouraging us to ask, what would make the eight year old version and the 80 year old version of you proud of yourself today? What would make an eight-year old proud of you today? Friends, my life is so small and flawed in many ways, but I tell you, eight year old me was entering a sad and lonely season of life, and eight year old me is pretty damn proud of who I am now. And that gives me encouragement. That helps me feel good about my life. 

And then I wonder what would make 80-year old me proud of me today? And sometimes that helps me make better choices than I usually do. I mean, sometimes it doesn’t. We’re all human. But sometimes it does.

Where do you come from? And where are you going?

I think these are helpful questions for our church. Your executive pastor Trecia Reavis, has been encouraging me and her to do some strategic analysis of our church, and she’s got me asking where we come from, and where are we going? We’re just starting to invite other people into this conversation. And I’m finding this helpful to ground and focus our church too. 

When it comes to thinking about where we come from, the late poet Maya Angelou has this great line. She said:

“I have great respect for the past. If you don’t know where you’ve come from, you don’t know where you’re going. I have respect for the past, but I’m a person of the moment. I’m here, and I do my best to be completely centered at the place I’m at, then I go forward to the next place.”

Maya Angelou

If you don’t know where you’ve come from, you don’t know where you’re going.

We spent a lot of time last year celebrating where Reservoir comes from. We recorded 25 great stories from our 25 years as a church about what this community has meant to so many of us. 

We talked about how our church is still up to the same best things we cared about when we began in the 1990’s but also how we’re different now too. 

Earlier this month, our staff team went back to last year a little again, as we took some time to reflect on these same questions, for us and for the church. Where do we come from, and where are we going? 

I had us write some poetry. When I was a writing teacher with teenagers, I often started the school year with this “where I come from” poetry exercise. I’d ask kids to generate a list of places and smells and sounds and objects from their childhood and make a list poem out of that. It was a way of starting the year of English class seeing that we could write something really cool and interesting, kind of fast. 

It was also a way of showing the students that what matters in the class isn’t just the literature or the lessons that I would bring to the table. What matters first actually is them – the lives and history, the beautiful, important selves that they bring to the table. 

So our team had some fun writing our own awesome “where we come from” poems, and then we generated a list of words and memories of where Reservoir comes from too. We didn’t get time to turn those into a poem so I thought I’d do it quick for you. Here’s what I’ve got.

 

We come from flower children and intellectuals, 

Inter-Varsity and Vineyard.

We come from prophecy and prayer and Holy Spirit miracles.

 

We made baseball diamonds and soccer fields,

Knit quilts, stacked chairs and more chairs,

Daring to be different, saying “if it works for you.”

 

We come from “spiritual, practical, fun”

“Pastoring secular America,” 

Empowering impossibly great lives,

And trying fast, failing fast, always trying again so fast….

 

We come from the time

Of absurdly generous, hospitable, later burned-out leaders.

From so much welcome, too much hierarchy.

Big dreams and big mistakes

From seeking and Jesus and endless innovation,

 

From the hopes of dead founders and 

The hands of the long gone dreamers, 

From prayers that have filled this reservoir 

With hope and faith and love. 

 

For the old-timers among us, maybe some nuggets and some memories. 

Friends, you’re in a church that has always swung big. 

The founders of this church had big hopes to be the kind of church that could welcome people into this faith for the first time and welcome back thousands of people who’d left the faith as well. And with the help of God and friends, we’ve done that, we keep doing that. 

In the first five or six years, this church grew faster, more explosively than almost any church in the history of New England. Five, six years into its life, hundreds of 20 and 30-somethings were raising millions of dollars to buy this city block we’re in today. 

We stand on the shoulders of leaders before us with extraordinary love and energy. I was reminiscing with one of you about one of our former members who was learning to make quilts. But she didn’t just make a few quilts for her mom or her kids, she gathered dozens of people to make quilts, and they made quilts that knit the word beloved into them, and those quilts found their way to dozens of people unhoused on the streets and in recovery homes around the world to warm their bodies and speak the truth of their beloved beauty to their souls. One of those quilts hangs on the wall in the sanctuary. 

There are dozens and dozens of stories like this. 

Now there were some things in the first 25 years of this church we weren’t proud of, that we had to learn from, mistakes made, people hurt, courses that needed to be corrected, and we talk about those sometimes too. But Reservoir, I also want us as a church to know that we come from big hearts and big dreams that have always yearned for as many people as possible to get deep tastes and beautiful pictures of the love of God, the gift of community, and the joy of living. 

So what does that mean for where we’re going?

Well, none of us know of course, but will you dream with me for just a minute?

One of my mentors in the Way of Jesus, the indigenous teacher Randy Woodley, reminds us of the wisdom of how his people think about time, looking back and forward across the generations. 

He often quotes from the Great Law of the Iroquois Confederacy, a foundation for American democracy, where it was said: 

“In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations.”

(The Great Law of the Iroquois Confederacy) 

What might the world need from us in seven generations, what might God want from this church in seven generations? These questions focus me differently. 

It’s not easy to think seven generations forward if you’re not used to it, though, so in starting some strategic analysis, Trecia and I have been wondering what does God want, what does our community need from us in 25 more years, in one generation. In 2050, what will our generation’s children and grandchildren need from Reservoir Church? 

I wonder what comes to mind for you.

What will America need from its churches in 2050? 

What will the two generations that follow us – our children and our grandchildren – need from churches like Reservoir? 

When I ask this question, I think: my God, I’m grateful for the We Are Reservoir sermons that Ivy and Lydia gave the past couple of weeks.

Ivy talked about community, how loneliness and polarization destroy people and communities, but how connection saves us. And I was like yes, yes, yes. 

And I think in Ivy’s sermon, she gave vision for the two types of connection that save us, what Robert Putnam, our great local scholar of community in public life, calls bonding social capital and bridging social capital. 

Bonding social capital is when we do life together. These are the people who do chores together, the people who call each other when they have great news or bad news to share. They are our ride or die partners in the big road trip of our lives. 

Bonding social capital is good. We need more of this. We have epidemics of loneliness and addiction and social alienation in our times that would all be better with deeper, warmer bonding social capital. So hug your friends or spouse or kid or mom or whoever you’ve got. And if you don’t have people like this in your life, you need at least one or two. We all do. And Reservoir is an awesome place to find a little more of this. Start with a beloved table, or a community group. 

No bonding social capital and we die of loneliness. But only bonding social capital, and we die of polarization and prejudice and powerlessness. See, Robert Putnam tells us about another form of community called bridging social capital. 

Bridging social capital is connections of trust between people who are different from one another, sometimes really different. It’s when people who wouldn’t naturally be family and friends discover some shared interests, some reasons to relate to another and do something together. And friends, as much as America is sick from a lack of bonding social capital, we are even sicker from a lack of bridging social capital. 

Where in 25 years will Americans of different races, different sexual orientations, people of different class and convictions, be getting to know and appreciate and respect each other more?

Where will people of very different ages and hobbies and day to day concerns be finding common hope, common loves, common care for one another to make for a healthier society, for the possibility of our big dreams we share with Jesus – words like commonwealth, and family of God, and beloved community?

If this doesn’t happen in diverse churches like Reservoir, there aren’t enough other spaces where it can happen. So friends, I think the next generation needs us to be an even stronger, deeper, more diverse community of connection, love, and respect. 

And then Lydia’s sermon too, where she talked about our commitment to everyone accessing the good news of Jesus – everyone, however they receive it. 

And again, I think yes, yes, yes! Thousands of churches like that one in Mt. Vernon, Illinois are closing for a lot of reasons. But one of the reasons churches are closing is that Christianity’s message hasn’t been good news. It’s been about conformity and control, and no healthy person is looking to be controlled or told how they need to conform to be acceptable to God or the church – however well meaning those efforts at command and control may or may not be.

And churches are closing too because they haven’t been for everyone. They’ve been for the men leaders only, or they’ve only been for the old or the straight people or the republicans or the liberals or the well-behaved and well-spoken.

And so, if churches like ours are going to offer a gift to the next generation, let alone the next seven generations, we’ve got to keep discovering how the good news of Jesus is really good news to us and our generation. How this faith helps us love and be loved, how it helps us be people who find resilience and flourish in hard times, how it produces more joy and justice around us. 

Because those are things we could use a lot more of. 

We’re going to keep asking what this church needs to be over the next 25 years friends, and how we can get there, but this is my best sense of it today. Powerful bonding and bridging community that heals saves lives and communities, and good news of Jesus that is really good news, for everyone. 

This is why we are, Reservoir. 

And if we can be here, secure, present, knowing in this moment, God has given us everything that we need, I wonder:

  • what will we do?
  • What’s possible together? 

At minimum, friends, I hope you’ll take a couple steps with me this fall. Your life, your story, your engagement is needed to make our dreams come true? Can you find one or two more simple ways to get involved? 

Volunteer once a month if you’re not. Become an official member. Start giving some money. Join a community group. And especially, make a new friend here. Tell yourself, I’d love to make a new friend at church this year, and try to do that. 

And then keep exploring with us the way of Jesus, the good news of Jesus, in stressful, chaotic times. We’ll be doing that on Sundays right on through Thanksgiving. 

Next Sunday, my friend and a friend of ours, the Rev. Dr. David Gushee will be with us. Here on Sunday, he’ll preach on the good news of the moral teachings of Jesus, and on Saturday night, in the chapel, he’ll be here for a public talk on defending democracy from its Christian enemies. I hope you’ll join us for both of those. David’s books will be on sale at a discount too. I think he’ll give us a lot to talk about. 

Friends, if you have any part in this church, you come from big, bold, beautiful dreams of all that we can experience and do together. And with your help, and the help of God and friends, we’ve got some amazing adventures and stories to come. I can’t wait to see just what those will be. Please be part of it. 

Join in, if you will, to pray. 

God give you the curiosity to wonder what would make the eight-year old version of you proud of you. And God give you the courage to ask what would make the 80-year old or even older version of you proud of you as well.

God gift you with security and presence, to be now, here, for this day that God has made.

And God give you, and me, and all of us under the sound of my voice the gift of being part of beautiful and powerful stories together, transmitting deep community and the good news of Jesus to the generation to come.

Connection Might Save Us

We are in our Fall Series called “We Are Reservoir.”  It’s a fun season — jumpstarting, reminding us of the beauty and presence of God in this community. Jesus at the center of all we do — all we dream and envision  — and even more than what we can imagine. We draw close to us (as best we can) the values of an open, inclusive, beloved community that Jesus calls us to create and grow. Staying open, eager, connected to the Spirit of God by which we move and breathe and have our being.

This series “We Are Reservoir,” while in some ways is a taste and a teaching of Reservoir’s expression of how and why we think about faith and God the way we do (I think is mostly an invitation to live a connected life. To live a vibrant life — with a vibrant faith — with a vibrant God right at your hip. It’s an invitation to continue your journey of faith, cultivated “yes” (in part) by your individual moments with this wondrous God) but mostly it’s a journey lived out with all the beautiful, complicated, messy, people…image-bearers of God among and around you.  

In some ways, “We Are Reservoir” isn’t really about Reservoir at all — it’s always been about what is beyond Reservoir. It’s the belief that God’s imprint is held and living in everyone. And perhaps our most vibrant faith — our most vibrant view of God will take shape as we seek to discover just that. As we live our lives tethered to a dynamic Spirit that promises to enrich our story as we uncover the stories of God exactly where our feet are.

I’d love to spend some time with you and the Spirit of God this morning — wondering together about why connection, why community is so vital to a healthy faith, a healthy life.  We’ll learn from the stories of the widows in the New Testament and we’ll ask ourselves potent questions,

“Am I lonely? Am I connected? Where am I finding community?”

Prayer: This morning, may we turn to each other – as we turn to you, God. Today we ask of you what is simple — but seems to take lifetimes — help us love one another, unto a community of saints and widows and students and tradesman and high-level professionals and all of us — help us to resurrect one another where parts of us might feel absent of life…help us to continue to see you the life-giving, resurrected one in our midst.  

YES DINNERS

Well back in 2016 (after a notable election) we started what we called  “yes dinners.” It’s the same design as the Beloved Tables that we are running right now. . .. our version of community dinners that allow you to gather around a table, meet some folks in this community and feel (hopefully) a little more connected — a little more known. 

And we completely stole this idea from a small grassroots organization called the People’s Supper. Who, in the wake of the rupture of the election and rippling division, vowed to hold 100 Suppers in 100 Days — hoping people would lean in and opt to connect around a table rather than hunker down in silos. This organization set out to equip communities with the tools they would need to build trust across lines of difference —

“realizing that social change moves at the speed of relationships, and that relationships move at the speed of trust.” (www.thepeoplessupper.org)  

Over the years I think this movement has grown a lot — realizing areas in which they needed to adapt and change — and realizing that these meals weren’t a panacea.

“They don’t inoculate against grief, or polarization, or futility. But still holding close to the belief that those moments in which we truly connect with each other matter. They move us from isolation to connection, and toward a shared humanity. And the absence of such connection actually diminishes us.” (www.thepeoplessupper.org)

There are ways that big national events –like elections and a global event like a pandemic spike our awareness of how disconnected we are. We are suddenly all paying attention all at once — to what has laid beneath the surface for a long time.

We are a lonely bunch.

We really are.

There are just tons of data to support this. I mean our social connection has just plummeted since the early 2000’s — so much so that Vivek Murthy our Surgeon General (the doctor of our nation) last year put out a Surgeon General’s Advisory report declaring that  we are enduring an epidemic of loneliness and isolation — one that has profound negative effects on not only our individual health but also societal health.

Loneliness is associated with a greater risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia, stroke, depression, anxiety, and premature death. The mortality impact of being socially disconnected is similar to that caused by smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day. Vivek says we will pay an ever-increasing price in the form of our individual and collective health and well-being if we don’t figure out how to build more connected lives and a more connected society.  

Social connection is our deepest fundamental human need, as essential to survival as food, water, and shelter.

“Just as hunger and thirst tell us that we need to eat and drink — loneliness is our natural signal that reminds us when we need to connect with other people.”  (Together, Vivek Murthy)

If left “untreated” Vivek believes we will continue to splinter and divide until we can no longer stand as a community or a country. Instead of coming together to take on the great challenges before us, we will further retreat to our corners—angry, sick, and alone.

Throughout history, our ability to rely on one another has been crucial to survival — in fact our ancestor’s default setting was “togetherness”! (hunter-gatherers and such). We human beings are biologically wired for social connection — we are made as relational beings. 

God embedded in the very design of the universe the energy of love and relationship….  Many scientists have pointed out that love is

“the very physical structure of the Universe.” That gravity, atomic bonding, planets, orbits, cycles, photosynthesis, ecosystems, force fields, electromagnetic fields, and evolution all reveal an energy that is attracting all things and beings to one another, in a movement toward ever greater complexity and diversity—and yet ironically also toward unification at ever deeper levels. (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin) This relational energy is quite simply love under many different forms.” (Rohr)

You see the energy is not IN the planets, or IN the atomic particles – the energy is found in the relationship between them. 

It’s so beautiful — this ‘love force’ surrounding us at every turn — suggesting the very nature of our beings should just ooze with connection and good relationships — healthy communities. And yet it’s the hardest of things to do … we are often pretty bad at being relational beings. 

Vivek Murthy spent the first part of his term as the nation’s doctor embarking on a “listening tour” around the country. Listening to stories, of what people were going through on the health front, what their lives were like — and what he uncovered was that the most prevailing ailment that held many chronic illness in common was loneliness. 

Stories have always helped us feel connected and promote a sense of belonging. Storytelling helps us relay our values, purpose and identity and helps us bond emotionally.

“Ever since the first cave drawing we’ve been encoding our experiences in stories through words, pictures, music and rituals that are passed down generation to generation.”

Stories help us feel connected to one another. If I’m not sharing knowledge and emotions — bringing my true authentic self – my complex, diverse self – to a relationship — then I feel lonely. 

Connection Value

It’s why here at Reservoir “connection” is one of our core values. We value

“life-giving connections and are committed to pursuing God’s wholeness, love, and leading in every moment of our lives, transcending distinctions between sacred and secular.”

What feels especially Reservoir-y about this to me — is that we don’t define what those “life-giving connections” look like — or where  you’ll encounter them!  

As we move into the scripture this morning in Acts, I invite you to hold all these parts of connection and community — its complexity, its importance, the stories, the barriers and the ways in which you feel connected or not.

Let’s read this story in the early part of Acts

Acts 6:1-7

1 In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the Hellenistic Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food.

2 So the Twelve gathered all the disciples together and said, “It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables.

3 Brothers and sisters, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them

4 and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word.”

5 This proposal pleased the whole group. They chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit; also Philip, Procorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolas from Antioch, a convert to Judaism.

6 They presented these men to the apostles, who prayed and laid their hands on them.

7 So the word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith.

Here we have the early developing church in Jerusalem. A rapidly growing community of people that have come together with all their complexities and diversity, right? The 12 disciples themselves come from different social backgrounds, and opposing philosophical and political viewpoints. 

Matthew, the tax collector was seen as regarded as a collaborator with the Roman occupiers.  Simon the Zealot, was a member of a group that sought the expulsion of the Romans and the regaining of Jewish independence. . . and yet this early church community as it’s taking shape in Acts, is characterized by extraordinary unity and generosity. In Acts 4 it says,

“all the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had.”

However, in the midst of all the ‘love force’ and relational capital — we have some internal division brewing among the community.

  • The “Hellenists” are presumably Greek-speaking Jews, which means that they originated outside of Palestine.  
  • The “Hebrews”  are also Jews, of course. But they are Palestinian Jews, whose first language is Hebrew or during this time Aramaic.
  • The “Hellenists” feel that, because of language and cultural differences, their widows — are being neglected by the predominantly “Hebrew” members of the community as well as the entirely “Hebrew”  leadership of the Twelve – the apostles.
  • They are being excluded from the daily distribution of food, from a meal, from a seat at the table.

Now this passage is often regarded as offering a quick, good response to a practical problem in the community — with the appointment of the first deacons to address it (and Greek speaking ones to boot). 

And as I read these verses I can acknowledge this — the apostles responded efficiently. “Check!” I mean it’s better than letting tension fester — or continuing to neglect an already under-resourced and excluded group of women.

However, I can’t help but wince at a couple of points as I read these verses as well. And rather than bypass them unto the happy ending in verse seven where we see

“the word of God spreading and the number of disciples and priests increasing in number…”

I want to press into those points that give me pause and see what we might be able to learn about connection and community.

If I may, I’d like to rewind a tiny bit to the Gospel of Luke — where we see a sequence of “widow” stories and Jesus’ interactions with them. That may help us with this story in Acts. Luke (also the author of Acts) spends a lot of time in his own Gospel talking about widows (and women in general), more than the other gospels. Noticeable enough that some scholars wonder if he himself was raised by a widow. Let’s consider four of these widow stories really quickly in the gospel of Luke:
(Much of this learning from F. Scott Spencer)

  1. Anna the Prophetess – we learn that she is an esteemed elderly widow who stays at the temple day in and day out — fasting and praying and worshiping. She is faithful, she praises God and speaks about Jesus to everyone as the Messiah. And while it might seem like the temple is her primary resource, the gospel of Luke paints the picture of the temple as an exploitative establishment, a

“den of robbers”

and likely not a great support to Anna.

2. In Luke we also have the story of the widow of Nain. – Jesus finds the widow of Nain at a funeral procession for her deceased son. And Jesus rises her only son back to life– and gives him back to her — which gives her back her social standing and her livelihood AND social connection.  He restores her primary means of surviving materially as well as emotionally. Jesus raises her from the death of loneliness. In the midst of pallbearers, and townspeople, and a large crowd — Jesus is the one to show compassion and make a “life-giving” connection.

3. We then read the parable of The Persistent Widow. Where for the first time in Luke’s Gospel, a widow is given her own voice.  She pleads for justice in front of a

“judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people”

and the widow is granted her request.  She makes a new way, receiving justice from an unjust system — expanding her story of what a relationship with a just and loving God could be.

4. Lastly we have the story of the Poor Widow who gives all she has — two coins to the temple treasury. And we see again Jesus 

“pitted against the temple authorities”

Jesus not only caring for the widow’s story but pointing out how the Sadducees used widows as subjects of debate and how the scribes used them as objects of exploitation. Jesus says,

“Truly I tell you, all of them have contributed out of abundance, but this poor widow out of her poverty has put in all she had to give.”

Jesus calls her worth and dignity to the surface — and at the same time criticizes the corrupt temple system which took all of her resources and offered nothing in return. No connection, no community.

This little rewind confirms that we shouldn’t be that surprised that resources and networks for basic economic, practical and social support are lacking for these Hellenistic  widows — But we might be surprised that the neglect we witness – here in Acts –  comes from the budding and growing community of Jesus’ followers.  *wince*

The apostles have holy reasons and holy words for this — they say,

“it is not right that we should neglect the word of God in order to wait on tables.” 

But in light of the stories we just read in Luke their exclusionary explanation seems to place them in the

“unholy alliance of unjust judges, hypocritical scribes and an exploitative temple system.” (Spencer) 

This distinction of “the Ministry of the word of God” verses the “service or ministry of the table” makes me wince because notice that what is “not right” is not as much the widows’ predicament as it is the prospect that the 12 have to curtail their teaching ministry in order to help the widows. (Spencer)  Talking about what might be “right” or “wrong” feels ill-placed when the basic human rights and need for love and dignity is not on the table.

“In effect the apostles co-opt the widows’ ordeal: they suppose that their right to proclaim the word is as much in jeopardy as the widows’ right to receive food. While they proceed to map out an effective plan for meeting the needs, the Twelve still punctuate their proposal reiterating that , “We, for our part, will devote ourselves to prayer and to serving the word”. (adapted Spencer)

And there’s a way to wonder — well, what’s the big deal? Everyone seems happy here — the widows are fed, the 12 get to keep doing their apostle-thing — all is good.

BUT — Luke’s Gospel repeatedly exposes the 12’s proclivity to promote the ministry of teaching and preaching at the expense of the service of food at table, in contrast to Jesus’ pattern of transcending any distinction between the “sacred” and the “secular.” What is deemed to be “sacred” on the surface — Prayer and teaching and preaching is not interconnected with Jesus’ presence, listening and liberating these widows from material and physical oppression.  

And the cost is that no life-giving connection is experienced — by either the apostles or the widows.  The widows plead here, in Acts, for recognition as much as for food. And the apostle’s recognition of the sacred in human form is missed.

As a scholar of this story says,

“The Twelve lay their hands on the seven men to be appointed to the “charity ministry of widows”– but keep their distance from the widows — they don’t lift a hand in that regard.” (Spencer).

WIDOWS

Quick action is taken — a solution is crafted and put in place (a fix!) — but in such quick action it seems apparent that there is

“a posture of trivializing not only the needs – but the personhood of the widows”

their voice, their complaints, their concerns — their full multidimensional selves. It doesn’t seem that the apostles get that curious about these widows, their stories — their lives.

The apostles lumped the widows into a stereotype — telling a story that had already been written for them. A lowly, destitute group. A group that was “needy” — that could belong kind of in an annex to the Christian community they were growing. Missing of course the need that would bind them all — the need of human connection.  

The widows were surrounded by people, by crowds, by whole people groups, by judges and court personnel, by the religious and the sacred — but personal and human encounter and connection didn’t happen. Their stories weren’t listened to — new stories weren’t possible.  They were lonely.

Can you imagine if the apostles had just given the widows a safe space to grieve and eat? Can you imagine the “word of God” that would have spread from these widows mouths — what a ministry that would have been. I mean not as much a “teaching ministry” — but a “living ministry” – I guess.


Vivek Murthy says that

“loneliness  is the subjective feeling that you’re lacking the social connections you need. It can feel like being stranded, abandoned, or cut off from the people with whom you belong — even if you’re surrounded by other people!* What’s missing when you’re lonely is the feeling of closeness, trust, and the affection of genuine friends, loved ones, and COMMUNITY.” (8 Murthy).

And there are three dimensions of loneliness

  • Intimate loneliness — where there is a lack of a close confidante or intimate partner —  
  • Relational loneliness — where there is a lack of quality friendships and social companionship and support
  • Collective loneliness — a hunger for a network/community of people who share your sense of purpose/interests.

*This explains why you could have a very close, supportive partnership – a great marriage — and still feel lonely for friends/community. (8 Murthy)

It’s why loneliness is considered a health crisis — it’s why the Surgeon General has laid out a strategy and commitment to taking actions to establish connection with others as a core value of this nation. 

It’s so important because

“such a world, where we can recognize that relationships are just as essential to our well-being as the air we breathe and the food we eat, is a world where everyone is healthier, physically and mentally. It is a world where we look out for one another, and where we create opportunities to uplift one another. A world where our highs are higher because we celebrate them together; where our lows are more manageable because we respond to them together; and where our recovery is faster because we grieve and rebuild together.” – (Murthy)

In 2016 after the election — The People’s Supper (org I mentioned at the start), visioned these very same things as they set out to hold those 100 dinners in 100 days post election. Yet in a nation whose relational social fabric was already so splintered — coming to the table was the hardest barrier to crack.

They underestimated the vulnerability, the trust and the time that it takes to come back to a table- a nation – a social fabric that had in many eyes failed them. Yet they keep trying. Their recent initiative called “breaking bread and building bonds” is a partnership with the mayor of NY holding 1,000 meals citywide — to these same ends — believing that social connection can mend and heal. Very much an on-going work in progress.

This is the holy work — cultivating relationships — inside and outside of a church building.

At Reservoir we are invested in continuing to grow and create the Beloved Community we are called to be — one where

“loneliness and nihilism are replaced with connection, sacred purpose, and respect for human dignity, where we recognize that our own wholeness and flourishing is tied to the flourishing of others” (Russell 231- 232). 

Where we not only welcome everyone without exception but we try our best to create environments of belonging. And learn with humility from the missteps we make. 

As you heard we are running Beloved Tables — meals for connection. I have been referring to them as the “warm up thing” that gets us ready for the “real thing” — for saying “yes” to community. But I think they actually are “the thing.” They are the tables where being seen, heard, and known is what’s being served. It is believing that every person and voice matters and embracing our diverse stories — held by the binding force and energy of God’s love that keeps our universe moving, where rich connection and constant curiosity exist.

COMMUNITY GROUPS

You’ll have a chance today to learn more about our community groups by visiting this link. And my goodness I wish I could tell you all the amazing stories I’ve been in the presence of in community groups — how much embrace, how much stretching and connection has occurred — but they aren’t my stories to tell. But I CAN tell you they’ve influenced my story, they’ve broadened and expanded my view of God in ways that far exceed only the traditional “sacred” ways of knowing God — stories of musicians, and cancer-survivors and artists and rejection and heartache and parenting and single-hood and aging… it’s all there. The story of life. That we get to write together, with Jesus right in the center guiding us along.

Connection, my friends — it’s how we’ll thrive — it is what will save us unto the Kin-dom of God here and now.   

Prayer…

God we pray with trust and trouble and hope in our hearts. Help us oh God to find one another above the noise, and the distractions — help our fractured and sensitive hearts — Hearts that are made to love and scared to love too…bring us into your deep embrace and sustain us with meals, and mercy, laughter and learning, forgiveness and freedom — unto a community of beautiful people – who are still learning what it is to follow you today.

Help us today, God.  Amen.

Resources

Book: Together | The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World, Vivek Murthy

“Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation”, 2023 | The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory on the  Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community

Article:  “Neglected Widows in Acts 6:1-7”, F. Scott Spencer 

The Catholic Biblical Quarterly , Vol. 56, No. 4 (October, 1994), pp. 715-733 

 

 

We Are Reservoir: Values Everyone

I moved to Boston for this job here at Reservoir Church from San Francisco about seven years ago. At that time, I knew only a few things about Reservoir Church.

  • 1. That it was a church that affirms LGBTQIA folks.
  • 2. That they were specifically seeking out a person of color to join the pastoral leadership team.

And honestly, that’s all I needed to know at that point in my life. A church that likes the gays also usually affirms and respects women. Because there are plenty of churches that blatantly say women or gays are not allowed to be in leadership (and plenty more that’ll never say it explicitly but string you along to do all the service, work, help but never leadership or vision or teaching), so this was critical to know for me. 

We’re in a new school year, also in church world a new ministry year…as a time of starting things anew, a new school, new program, maybe for some of you, new city, new church. But, also for the old timers and those who have been here a few months to a year or so, it’s a good time for us share with one another who we are – Reservoir Church, what we are doing here, and why we do ’em like that. So we’re in a brief short sermon series called “We Are Reservoir.” And, as Steve said to our staff earlier this week, this series is less about the “sermon series” but it’s more about everything we do, what we do, that makes us who we are.

To display who we are, today I’ll focus on one of our values: Everyone. 

Everyone is one of our core values that you’ll find on our website under Vision and Values. FYI, our Vision statement is: 

We find Jesus utterly compelling and believe that a life connected to him simply has more—joy, hope, wholeness, and vitality. We envision a day when many in North Cambridge and Greater Boston (and I think the world since we’ve started online worship) are connecting with Jesus and our church in deep ways and absolutely thriving as a result.  We also seek to be a physically, emotionally and spiritually safe place. (I love that last sentence)

Our Core Values include Connection, Everyone, Action, Freedom, and Humility. Like I said, we’re not going to go through all of them in our sermon series but Steve, Ivy, and myself are going to touch on aspects of them. For me today, mainly Everyone. You can read more about the rest on our website. 

For Everyone, it says:

We seek to welcome people in all their diversity, without condition or exception, to embrace a life connected to Jesus and others.

The key word here is all. And the language is “seek to welcome.” It’s not forced, there’s no prerequisite, it’s not the end all be all or else, it’s a longing and an invitation. It’s not passive but it’s not aggressive either. Seek to welcome.

Here’s a practical way it shows up in our worship. 

Have you guys noticed the words that we say when we’re doing communion? It’s kind of casual, and no strict liturgical wording that’s set but we always say something along the lines of, “everyone’s welcome to the table.” This really messed with my Presbyterian upbringing, that was strict about “crossing the line of faith” or “baptized into the family.” Because what did that really mean?

What about the folks that didn’t “cross the line” or not baptized, then are they not family? And that might be one of the “craziest” things about Reservoir in my opinion. For membership, we say, “You belong before you believe.” I have no idea where that line is from. But it’s doubling down on the Everyone value. Baptism is not a prerequisite to membership, an invitation maybe but not a must. And I’ll tell you, many many churches would lose their shoes over this. 

Because the thing is, I remember having this question when I was young, a teenager. If they are not believers of Christ, if they are not baptized, all those people, are they going to hell? 

Back in 2011 a book by Rob Bell came out that did some sifting of our core theologies in the church circles. It’s called Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived. It caused some kind of ruckus. Because essentially the book concluded in one sense, that there is no hell. To which many many people got offended and really caught up on. Now I’m not going to fully get into it. It’ll become a really boring sermon.

I’m pretty sure there’s a Reservoir blog post about this somewhere, and if you’ve been around long enough, you might know the gist of how we approach the theology around hell and brimstone. If you’re new, and right now offended or confused, that’s okay, you’re gonna be okay, let’s give it time and talk it through. I won’t answer all your questions in one sermon. (Sermons often never do but relationships and meals and coffee and texting actually does, in a real meaningful way!!!) I think the sermon’s job is to jab. I’m just poking you guys. And then you guys need to work it out in  your community, perhaps at a table. A Beloved Table possibly? 

Look. There are biblical textual interpretations that point to our modern day concept of heaven and hell being wildly different from the biblical ancient near east’s understanding of it. But furthermore I think it is shocking to some of us to hear things like,

“maybe our understanding of hell is not exactly what it is”

because for so long, many church and Christian books and theology pounded this hell notion into us. And lastly, I think it touches upon our real sense of justice- that there is right and wrong, and good and bad, and heaven and hell. Although I think it might be a surface level or the first step towards recognizing justice. 

Our world is shifting to get at the sophistication of this concept too. I remember back in the day superhero stories or children stories were more black and white. The hero saves and the evil is defeated. And I read more modern day superhero books or watch the shows and they curve the story of the “evil villain” towards a moment of learning and/or our understanding of their motives nowadays.

Spidey defeats the evil Green Goblin! And Green Goblin was just trying to steal the books from the library so he could learn more. Or like the musical Wicked, we get the back story, the compassionate story of the struggle of the evil Wicked Witch of the West. I love me a back story of a witch. Because it turns out, hurt people hurt people. 

And yet it’s easier, simpler, to villainize them and say, they are bad. They need to be punished. But that is not the way of Jesus. 

In all the stories of Jesus interacting with people, they all had somewhat tainted reputations. They all failed in some way. They all were not enough or lacked something. They were sinners. Or rich rulers that took advantage of their people. They were Pharisees or from a foreign land like Ethiopia. But the Bible shows that again and again, every one of them is claimed and loved. We know that right? That God’s love is big and grand. But I do think it’s harder in practice. Because your initial child-like sense of justice screams when you see bad people getting away with it, we cry like a child, “It’s not fair!” 

This was especially hard for me when I began to be awakened to racial injustice, sexual violence, gender discrimination, and economical inequality. Things that are not just “issues” but actually touched my life personally and the people closest to me. And in the beginning of such an awakening journey, you start finding someone to blame. The perpetrator, the system, your parents, really anything to blame. I remember in my own healing journey from sexual abuse, I journeyed alongside a book called The Wounded Heart, which is such such such a good book. If you’ve experienced sexual abuse, please check out this book by Dan Allender, The Wounded Heart.

I’m not going to say this lightly, please understand, it’s not an easy journey, it’s definitely not forgive and forget. But there was a moment in my healing journey that I (out of my own volition, not because anyone told me to, because if they did, that would be insensitive and triggering), I imagined my abuser standing in church, holding the communion plate, and wondering what it would feel like for me to go up and receive communion from this man. This sick, horrible man that really really hurt me. That God loves him, and even welcomes him. Does that make God a sick God? 

If we really try to understand the expansiveness of God’s love, it should offend us.

  • Even him?
  • Even them?
  • Do you know what they’ve done?
  • Do you know the damage they’ve caused?

God does. And God loves all. It knocks on our knee jerk justice, but God’s justice is greater than our justice. Yes, even those people. 

I’m going to make a hard pivot to Universalism. Cause I don’t have a lot of time left. 

Christian universalism is a Christian theological school that believes all people will be saved and restored to a relationship with God. This doctrine is based on the belief that a loving God would not condemn some people to eternal punishment.

And sometimes universalism is super annoying. Cause it’s like. Oh everyone, everything, whatever, anything! It feels wishy washy. It doesn’t feel like it has any grip on anything and can even sometimes feel extremely naive. 

My parents came to visit me a few years ago. They are strict Presbyterians. And we have a pretty good relationship these days. They love talking to me about church and ministry. But we also know that we have some differences. They asked me to pray for one of our family meals. I prayed and then at the end, I simply said,

“Thanks God. Amen!”

And we all ate. On the last day of their trip my mom said,

“I need to talk to you about something. When you prayed, you didn’t say ‘In Jesus Name.’”

Now my parents are more traditional and I know that. I was annoyed as their daughter that this is the last thing they want to talk to me about, calling me out on wording in prayer. I was offended but I’ve done some maturing in how to engage conversations like this. I said my piece,

“Yeah, I do believe that Jesus connects us to God, but I also am not strict on the magic words, so sometimes I say it, sometimes I don’t. I think God always hears us.”

It was a healthy discussion.

You see, when universalism goes too far, it can feel like the words are just going to fall flat on their faces, just as my parents felt that fear. But what I really think universalism is doing is fighting against the strict particularity and the confidence in that if we do it this way, if we only do it this particular way, we’re doing it right. Because it’s been frankly abusive and presumptuous, we have to say these words, with these people, at this time, in this manner, for this reason.

It lacks the freedom and humility (the other values we have), and it lacks creativity too! And yes, it is harder. It is easier to say, it has to be done this way, for all people, at all times. Yes it’s harder to journey with, what, you’re dating someone who practices Buddhism, what you’re reading about tarot cards, what you love Oprah, oh no they are on slippery slopes! They’re falling away from the faith, NOOOOO!!!

To embrace a life connected to Jesus and others, we don’t say in fear, don’t listen to non-Christian music. And don’t read any other books from other religions. Because we’re not possessive. God is not possessive. This jealous God thing, it’s like kind of cute when a boyfriend is jealous, but it’s not cute when your husband is jealous.

Jealous God is not a thing. God is not petty. God loves. God trusts. God cares. And no matter what you do, God will always pursue you in every way possible. And many of us, a lot of us at this church believe that Jesus is that persuasive and compelling and beautiful way and that Holy Spirit is accessible and powerful to you now. 

But do we know for sure that it’s the only way? We honestly don’t and we never will and that’s just being human. And people get bent up on text like, but Jesus said,

“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

Look, it only says this in John. Not Matthew, not Luke, or Mark. And John was the most poetic guy ever!

“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God.”

It’s not meant to be taken literally. Again, I won’t go into it, ooooh why do I feel so pressed for time today? But there’s debate whether or not Jesus really said this, or if it’s a mistranslation, or that it might be impossible to translate idioms. Maybe it was a hyperbole. I’m not trying to debunk the statement I’m just injecting humility into us, but really, catapulting us to the expansive love of God. 

I saw this awesome post on Instagram by Bri Rivera, our youth group director, she’s amazing. It was a quote by Richard Rohr that says,

“A mature Christian sees Christ in everything and everyone else. That is a definition that will never fail you, always demand more of you, and give you no reasons to fight, exclude, or reject anyone.” 

Everything and everyone. Even non-Christians! Non-believers! 

Wider is God’s love than the ocean. Small are our minds, even our greatest minds. Wider is God’s grace and mercy that covers all. 

Cause when you really begin to do that, do you know what happens? When you come to a place when you feel like you did the worst thing, you made a huge mistake, you feel unworthy, you will know and be familiar with the concept of unconditional love and grace for them, and for you, yes even you. 

When I really let that person down.

When I feel extremely depressed that I can’t do anything or function, I’m useless and I don’t know what’s wrong with me.

When I can’t keep a job.

Or find the right person.

When I keep pushing people away and no one chases after me.

When I feel so alone, please know that Everyone, includes you. 

Paul said this in

1 Timothy 1: 12-17

12 I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has given me strength, that he considered me trustworthy, appointing me to his service.

13 Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief.

14 The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.

15 Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst.

16 But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his immense patience as an example for those who would believe in him and receive eternal life.

17 Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen.

He calls himself the worst. Do you ever feel that way? You don’t have it all right? Maybe you’re not the best Christian, you go in and out of faith you say, an on and off church goer. Doesn’t matter, I’m sorry, God is always with you no matter where you go, even in the depth, 

Where can I flee from your presence?

If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.

Psalms 139:7-10 

If you know this, then let’s practice it in our community. Everyone. Really practice that everyone Richard Rohr was talking about. That might mean going to your edge. Someone who’s not like you, who you don’t understand, who you can probably assume that your lives are so different that you speak different languages. Go to them and engage in Christ love. Invite them to your community group. Invite them to an awkward relationship with you because you’re awkward and you don’t know how to talk to people that’s wildly different from you.

Go to your edge and take action (another value! It’s like Reservoir values bingo today!), take the action of including, affirming, loving, and caring. And point them to Jesus, not forcefully, affirm who they are, their culture, their diversity, their uniqueness, what they are going through, who they are, and say, yes and, check this out. Look at this shiny thing I’ve found, I love it, wanna hear about it? If it works for you. No pressure. 

You’re welcome and invited, just as you are, in all your complexity, without condition or exception, to embrace a life connected to Jesus and others. That’s what we seek to do here at Reservoir church. And if you want to, you’re invited to membership to do the thing with us as an invested, committed, taking ownership, like a co-op. You don’t have to if you don’t want to. But also let’s do this together intentionally and strategically.

That’s what We Are Reservoir is saying. So yeah if you want to join as a member, just talk to one of the pastors, reach out. I’m thrilled about what we do here. Look, it’s hard out there, to find a church, but really there’s a really good thing going on here, not the most right way or the only way, but I’m just telling you, you might love it. I do. We’re really lucky to have this community and one another. Thank you guys, for being a wonderful church to be a pastor at. You are Reservoir and I love it. Okay I’m done. Let me pray for us. 

Action

The Scripture reading today comes from 

John 5:1-9

5 Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals.

2 Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda[a] and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades.

3 Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed.

[4] [b] 5 One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years.

6 When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”

7 “Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”

8 Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.”

9 At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.

Let me pray for us.

A few months back my husband came to me, almost panicked, showing me his phone. It was his Health App that showed his steps. He scrolled through showing that he averaged 3,000 steps a day. He hadn’t really used the app so this was news to him. Now, my husband runs every day, in the morning, rain or shine or snow almost. But he works from home. I laughed at him going, “Yeah you need to be more active,” assuming that I’d probably be definitely over, because I often work outside of home for meetings and things. And then we checked my app and it was just sad. I averaged even worse than him, about 2000 steps. And no I do not run every day. 

It turns out, according to Washington Post’s clickbait headline: “Sitting all day can cause health problems, even if you exercise” to which I gladly clicked.

Did you work out for 30 minutes today? Did you spend the rest of the day staring at your computer screen and then settle in front of the television at night? If you answered yes to both questions, then you meet the definition of what scientists call, “an active couch potato.” 

Are you an active couch potato? Apparently it’s bad for your health. 

We’ve been doing a deep dive into Reservoir Church’s Core Values, Connection, Freedom, Everyone, Humility, and last but not least today’s is Action. Our website says:

  • Action: Love for Jesus compels us to act—to seek justice, show compassion, work for reconciliation, and hope for transformation in joyful engagement with the world.

Right off the bat I’d like to say, it’s not

“Look busy, Jesus is coming.”

I’m not going to nag for you to do more. It’s actually, Action is first and foremost based on Love. It says that Love for Jesus compels us to act. So I’ll say a bit more about that later. But yes, it is an invitation to get up and walk and take action, because many of us can feel at times, like we’ve been paralyzed. 

So I’ll start with first, the paralyzing state that we might find ourselves in, second, the healing that it takes to compel us to get up and walk, and lastly, the love that Jesus has for us and this very world that we live in. 

So first the paralyzing state. 

I remember in the middle of the pandemic when we made pastoral phone calls to the members of our church, a short 20 minute check in during the height of a weird time in our world. I remember talking with Don, one of our members, about the simple desire to just go outside and get some fresh air. It was during that time when literally everything except the grocery store was shut down. When we didn’t go anywhere without a mask on. Don and I chatted encouragingly,

Let’s, even if it’s at least stepping just outside of our front doors, standing there with nowhere to go, stretch, breath, feel the sun on our face. 

And I do feel like many of us are coming out of this dormant time, of keeping safe, of taking care, saying no to many things. Some of you have been feeling the effects of being isolated more, working from home, while pretty awesome in many ways, also has proved to be tricky in “getting back out there” for some of us. 

I think the world can be a paralyzing place. The pandemic, the racial violence, political upheaval, the changing climate, the recession. It is no wonder that so many of us are struggling with anxiety and preoccupied with how we’re to do daily tasks in the face of great worries of our generation. 

Sometimes I feel this way about racism. Like it’s a thing that’s been going on for a long time, years, decades, centuries, nations, people groups have been at it a while and what am I to do about it, if anything at all? It sure does make me feel like it’s been in this condition for a long time. 

I’m intrigued by the way Jesus engages this man who’s been paralyzed for 38 years. It says,

“When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?””

Jesus’ first question isn’t, so what have you been trying to do? What have you done? The man answers as though, as if others have asked, but have you tried going to the pool that heals during the time when it’s stirring? I mean others have, and they’ve been healed. What’s wrong with you? He answers with excuses, defenses,

“no one’s helping me. And when I try, others get in front of me.”

Understandably so. 

Because of this core value of Action, Reservoir is deeply involved with an organization called the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization. It’s a 60+ institution coming together to organize power to make a public change for good. It’s given me very specific ways to act even in the midst of feeling paralyzed at the face of systemic problems like the healthcare system and housing crisis. One story I want to share with you. 

One of the recent issues we were working on was housing. GBIO’s method for big change starts with what they call 1 on 1’s. Two people sharing their heart, passion, their concern, their reason for why they want to see change. And from those 1 on 1’s, we began to meet people who lived in the Mildred C Hailey, a city owned apartment complex in Jamaica Plain, who were living under horrible conditions like rats and asbestos.

Now at the time the Boston Mayoral race was going on and GBIO was ready to ask the candidates for some commitments, if they were elected. During a big action Zoom call with close to a 1,000 people from GBIO, about 60 of you Reservoir Faith Into Action folks, we shared the stories and showed videos of the conditions and got a commitment from then mayor hopeful Wu. The end result, as of now, GBIO has secured $50 million with Mayor Wu for maintenance for the Mildred C Hailey Housing. 

You see the residents city-owned spots like this are often ignored and so discouraged to speak up. No one seemed to help them and others got the money before they could get to it. They’ve spoken up before and got no answer. It seemed as though they were paralyzed. But someone turned to them and initiated a conversation, do you want these conditions to change? Do you want to be well? 

I want to quickly touch up on the fact that many Christian traditions often guilted people into taking action and doing good deeds. Scriptures like this for example were used, from James 2:14-17

14 My brothers and sisters, what good is it if people say they have faith but do nothing to show it? Claiming to have faith can’t save anyone, can it?

15 Imagine a brother or sister who is naked and never has enough food to eat.

16 What if one of you said, “Go in peace! Stay warm! Have a nice meal!”? What good is it if you don’t actually give them what their body needs?

17 In the same way, faith is dead when it doesn’t result in faithful activity.

So with that, so many of us got busy. Served. Led. Sacrificed. Which of course, this text is important, talking about the REAL needs of the people. 

I remember a youth group retreat where the theme was, “In the World, But Not of It.” It was drilled into us that the world was evil, bad, and anything of the world was no good. And you should only think of your spiritual being. Prayer, scripture reading, that was important. And everything else, especially our earthly bodies, oh that was really bad. You should fast and of course abstain from anything that gives us pleasure, at all cost. I remember we never talked about the goodness of the earth, the goodness of our bodies, the sacredness of the environment or the earth that we live in. 

Action, that we’re talking about at Reservoir isn’t “do good.” Read on, it says that LOVE compels us. So before action, we need to understand love. Before we walk, we need to be healed. Before we do good, we need to receive and be loved, and it’s that miracle and healing that will change your life and those around you. 

Let me offer you another text, not to replace some possible toxic ways of thinking about our faith and our works, but to be in conversation. That’s how we should be reading the Bible. Not letting one verse dictate how and what you do at all times, but there is a season for everything.

The Bible instructs us in accordance with the Holy Spirit and the conviction of our heart from Jesus and in conversation in community. The  Bible is meant to be a conversation partner not an instruction manual. So here’s another one, 

Titus 3:4-7

But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we have done, but according to this mercy, through the water of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.

This Spirit he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

I shared this with my Community Group this past week and my friend Rachel said, it sounds like God’s not really worried about our performance review. Exactly. 

“Do you want to get well?” Is the question for us today. Not, “So what are you going to DO?” This is the conversation we want to be having. Are you compelled by the love of Jesus? That’s our tagline right? Reservoir Church exists to invite everyone, without exception to discover the love of Jesus, joy of living, and gift of community. It all begins and ends with the love of Jesus. 

Love compels us to ask questions and start conversations about how we can help each other live in better conditions amidst the housing crisis. Love compels us to listen to the voice of Jesus and engage in a conversation about how to be well when we’re feeling paralyzed. Love compels us to be freed from anxiety and worry to lean into shared interest of making a public change toward public good with other churches and even other faiths. Love compels us to seek justice, show compassion, work for reconciliation, and hope for transformation in joyful engagement with the world.

Because God so loved the world, yes this world. Not thoughts and prayers but this material physical world with rats, asbestos, rising oceans, guns, violence, racism, mental health crisis. I think the loudest thing God was saying through Jesus was, I care about the human body and the human condition. I care about your thirst, hunger, and your pain.

God loves and care about you, and your issues and concerns and your problems, because God cares about you, not your productivity, your effectiveness, your efficiency, your list of accomplishments, but about you at the core that  may produce productivity effective, your gifts sure may come in the form of action that help you and help others, but that was always meant to be a response, not the starting point. 

Not because of any works of righteousness that we have done, but according to this mercy, through the water of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit. You know what birth is right? You did nothing to be born. Like the waters of baptism today, you were blessed, while we knew nothing of it. 

My favorite part about this Titus text is the word heir. You know what I think about when I think of an heir. Paris Hilton. I’m dating myself to a guilty-pleasure reality tv show about her, a rich heiress of the Hilton Hotels, being tasked to do things like farming. Or another show I’m thinking of is Undercover Millionaire.

Can you tell that I am indeed a very active couch potato and the genre of choice is brainless reality shows? But think about it, how would your actions change if you found out that you were an heir to the riches you can’t even imagine? Everything you do would change. You would have nothing to lose. Well, this text is saying you are, you are an heir. You are the sons, and daughters, the children, the offspring of God. I don’t think we believe that, most of us, we sure don’t act like it. Why not? 

Have you encountered the love of Jesus? If not, don’t get into action. Find that love first. Be healed first. But if any of you have tasted or seen the goodness of God, the riches of his mercy, get up, pick up your mat, and walk proudly and boldly. Let the love of Jesus overflow out of you, like a cup that overflows. If you have, you can’t help but get into action, you’d be compelled to action that you wouldn’t need a preacher telling you to do anything. What is God compelling you to do? 

I want to end our time with some space for reflection. For you to start asking those questions, where am I with this? Am I paralyzed? Am I in need of healing? What is God compelling me to do? 

In this age of anxiety, I’m one of those who’ve been drawn to mindfulness practices, especially in the face of trauma, when I experience racism, when I see injustice, I get angry, I grieve, I get paralyzed and I can’t fix anything. Self care for those in activism is a big one. And you know it’s just another language for prayer. For a quiet time of stillness to hear the loving kind voice of God within you. Let me end with that invitation and I’ll close us in prayer. 

Feel free to close your eyes to get a little intimate with your heart, body, and mind. Take a few deep breaths to center you. Try to relax some tension that brings anxiety or worry, thoughts of things to do, try to let go of those, or like shelve them for a minute, you can always pick them back up later. Try to relax and give yourself a sacred safe space. How have you experienced the love of God? Or where do you need the healing loving presence of God now? Stay there. Is there some physical image, or a word, or a feeling? Hold that and stay there. Feel free to place a hand on your heart to kind of seal that in with the warm touch. I’ll pray for us. 

God, I pray for the healing power of Jesus right now. You know where each of us are. What each of us needs. What each of us are capable of. Heal us. Lead us. Guide us. Call us, we pray. Call our anxious, worried, often fearful generation to get up. Call us to your love. To your home. And there, in the safety of your house, may we come to see the world with your eyes, with your grace, with your mercy, just as it’s been poured upon us, we pray all these things in the precious holy name of Jesus Christ, The great Healer, Amen. 

Humility-The Gifts of Imperfection

So I’m walking into Boston’s Prudential mall the other day, and I see this art on the staircase beneath my feet. All the bright colors and the phrases: You are strong. You are capable. You are enough. 

You are strong. You are capable. You are enough.

How do you react to those phrases? How do you react to them as artwork at the entrance to a high-end shopping destination?

I asked about this on social media this week and got kinda the same range of reactions I had. 

On the one hand, I cringed. Honestly, I thought: this is corny. And I wondered what the intent is here for customers walking into a mall. Like it’s trying to amp us up to think, I am awesome, I am enough, and I deserve it. So we can smile while dropping eight hundred bucks for a new phone while sipping eight dollar cups of coffee. Some of my fellow cynic friends on social media felt the same way.

But on the other hand, I was like maybe this is just great. And to be honest, this was the reaction of more of my friends, to say:

Hey, don’t we all need encouragement? I mean, life can just beat us down. And if a little stairway art can lift our spirits, isn’t that a good thing?

I grew up in a family, myself included, that could tend toward critical, and so even though I was pretty strong and capable when I launched out into my adult life, it wasn’t always easy for me to own that.

And this phrase “you are enough” is one I’ve wrestled with over the years. The Christian faith I came into in my youth did so much good for me, but it also mostly encouraged me to feel the opposite of this.

I am not enough. I am unworthy, I was taught, just riddled with sin that merits my guilt and shame. But thanks be to God, I have been loved by God in Christ, so if I confess all my not enough-ness, I am accepted, forgiven, adopted as a beloved child.

And I actually believe exactly what I just said, word for word. But the way I received this faith seemed to often leave me still feeling less of the acceptance and connection and beloved-ness of adoption and more of the guilt and shame of never enough. Still not enough.

So I’ve come to appreciate this phrase: you are enough. Maybe by myself I am, maybe I’m not. Depends on the situation. But with the love of God and the help of friends, I am. Maybe not enough for some weird idea of perfection or sufficiency I got in my head. But with the love of God and the help of friends, enough to be good. Good enough. Every time. 

Today, we’re talking about Reservoir Church’s core value of humility. It’s the second to last week of a month we do each year called We Are Reservoir, inviting our community to consider who and what this church is and is still becoming, and inviting everyone who’s interested to a joyful belonging as members of the community.

I think this value of humility is one of our most important. I think it’s a critical value for the future of the Christian faith too, and as a personal way of being, it also helps us live fuller, more joyful lives.

So this matters a lot to me.

If you’ve been around for a bit, and I say a couple things that sound familiar, I’m recapping parts of one of my favorite sermons, a talk I gave in 2019 about four phrases for wholehearted living, those phrases being…

  • I don’t know but I’m learning
  • I’m sorry
  • I’m beloved
  • I am enough

We’ll get back to these phrases in a bit.

But first we’ll look at a bit of scripture together and why humility is central to following Jesus and central to the future of the Christian faith, if that future is going to get any better than it looks these days. 

Our passage is from this little letter called Philippians. We’ll read a few verses from the second chapter. 

Philippians 2:5-8  (Common English Bible)

5 Adopt the attitude that was in Christ Jesus:

6 Though he was in the form of God,

        he did not consider being equal with God something to exploit.

7 But he emptied himself

        by taking the form of a slave

        and by becoming like human beings.

When he found himself in the form of a human,

8         he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death,

        even death on a cross.

So like a good Marvel superhero story, the writer of Philippians gives us a Jesus backstory, told here in a poem. 

It says that once upon a time, his spirit, his essence was God himself. But he emptied himself. He became one of us. He humbled himself. Even to the point of a brutal, undignified death.

There are different ways to read this.

One is that the whole “form of God” thing is an exaggeration, that Jesus was a pretty great person but not really divine. The early churches rejected this view as unworthy of how Jesus embodied and revealed God to us.

Two is the idea that Jesus was indeed son of God but was kind of faking it as a human, sort of like the Greek gods in their temporary earthly visitations or like Clark Kent just hiding his Superman superpowers. The early churches also rejected this view because it was clear to them that while Jesus was a special human being, he was still very much a human. 

In fact, Jesus is the kind of human we aspire to be and who with the help of God, we can indeed become.

Calm, curious, clear, compassionate, confident, courageous, creative, and connected. 

Those eight C’s are actually the image of human goodness, the fully present, fully developed self. They’re not a bad description of Jesus either. 

The good human life isn’t superhuman. It’s not a Marvel superhero-like striving after god-like powers. Unlimited wealth, power, skill, opportunity – that’s not a good human life, it’s a myth, a sham, a chasing after the wind. Jesus’ biographers tells us that at a key moment in his young adult years, someone or something called the satan, the accuser, tempted Jesus to strive for this kind of superhuman perfection. And Jesus said:

no way.

Or as Philippians puts it, Jesus didn’t try to exploit divinity. He didn’t strive to be more than he was as a human. He accepted the path of humility.

This meant serving others, not using others to suit his own needs for sure. The passage focuses on that.

But it also meant experiencing a beautiful, humble, human life. 

Growing and learning throughout his life as we do. Asking lots of questions all the time, so many questions, because asking questions, being curious, is a great way to grow and deepen relationships, but also because Jesus didn’t know everything. 

Jesus did know where he came from – he never doubted how valuable, how beloved he was. But Jesus also had limits, he suffered, he could not do and chose not to do everything he wanted and still knew that within all those human limits, he was enough.

This is what it means to be humble. It’s to not try to play the status game of curating our image to impress for sure. 

But at a more basic level, it’s also just being who we are, no less and no more. It’s growing, learning, and making joyful peace with our limits, that we are beloved and more than enough not as gods but as humans, not as cocky and certain and arrogant, but as calmly confident even with our doubts and limits.

That’s Jesus, and with the help of his Spirit, it can be us too. 

You’ve got to wonder, though, if Jesus is so humble, why can’t the church founded in his honor be as well? 

Christians, and the Christian religion, are not known – either historically or in our own times – as humble. 

Reservoir chose humility as a core value of the church because it says something important about how we do faith community, but also because it’s a little surprising for a Christian church. 

Christians have had a thing with power and control, getting aligned with empires and colonizers and political parties to advance their influence and get what they want in the world. 

And sometimes a hangup about perfection too, like we need to hide our faults and pretend we’re perfect, or like God sees how imperfect we are, then God will be angry or disappointed. 

I don’t think this is the way of Jesus, though, who let God shine in his true humanity. Jesus, the humble one. Jesus, the one who said:

Blessed are the meek, the humble, for they’re the ones who will inherit the earth.

What if Jesus’ followers didn’t strive to be perfect or in control but to, like Jesus, be of maximum service to the well-being and flourishing of others?

And what if Jesus’ followers didn’t worry about perfection of faith – being always certain, or free from doubt or error? And what if instead they, or we, accepted doubt and error as a no-big-deal part of confident faith? 

This past week, I had the chance to speak with Brian McLaren for the first time. Brian is one of the elder statespeople of a healthy, evolving Christian faith. He visited this church in our early days in the late 90s, and remembers us fondly. He’s published loads of books since then, including his latest I’m reading now: Do I Stay Christian? It’s really good.

To the students in my theology doctoral program, McLaren was talking about the difference between goodness and perfection.

He said that

perfection is sterile and stagnant, but goodness is growing and fertile. And so goodness is so much better than perfection.

This idea of perfection wasn’t part of the earliest Christian faith, born in the humble, earthy thinking and experience of Middle Eastern Jews. It came in through the Greek philosophers, who had a notion of perfection they associated with the divine – never changing, never feeling. And so the idea of a perfect human and a perfect society would be the same – unemotional, unchanging, always powerful, always in control.

McLaren was like: not only is that not achievable, it’s not desirable. It’s stagnant, static, sterile. He reminded me of Christena Cleveland’s comments years ago to another group I was in, that perfection is a figment of the colonial imagination. 

People who are so insecure they always need to be right, people who are so power-hungry they always need to be dominant, they’re into perfection, and whatever illusions, whatever control, whatever dominance of conformity it takes to get there.

People who are secure, who know they are beloved, don’t need to chase some illusory idol of perfection – we know that’s pointless, it’s vapor. We can grow into greater goodness instead, growing, humble, but fertile. 

This is at the heart of Reservoir’s experience of Christian church, or Jesus-centered faith community. One of our values is humility, defined like this:

 Humility

We are wholeheartedly committed to pursuing the truth of Jesus through multiple sources, including the Bible, reason, culture, and experience, and we take the posture of learners, recognizing that our understanding of God’s truth continues to unfold.

I promise that this church will never pretend to know everything or have all the answers. We’ll keep on our steady, humble pursuit of God and pursuit of truth, trusting it will keep unfolding for us over time. And we hope you’ll have the freedom of doing the same, not striving after status or certainty, and not worrying about your imperfection, but seeking God, seeking truth wherever you find it, and letting a good life unfold within your imperfections. 

Reservoir’s not a perfect church. But I think we’re a good church. 

And neither you nor I are ever going to have a perfect life. But we can have a good life. 

I think this humility thing isn’t just a value of our faith but a pretty big part of the good life, a joyful and fulfilled human life.

This past week or two I’ve had the opportunity to spend time with quite a number of people from this community who are in their 60s, 70s, and 80s. And I didn’t tell them this, but I was keeping an eye out for the ways they are aging well, continuing to live a good life as the years march on.

And I noticed that in their own way, they’d all been leaning into these four phrases the sociologist Brene Brown associates with what she calls the gifts of imperfection, these four phrases I’m connecting with Jesus’ way of true humanity through deep humility.

  • I don’t know but I’m learning
  • I’m sorry
  • I’m beloved
  • I am enough

One of them shared with me about how after the attacks at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh a few years ago, he realized he had never really explored the Jewish roots of his Christian faith, or thought about how as an anti-racist person of color, he could also stand against anti-Semitism.

So he visited a synagogue that week, and he kept going back, visiting every week for a full year, eventually becoming a member of that community as both a participant and an ally, even while remaining Christian.

He did something similar after a prominent hate crime against Asian Americans, visiting a series of Buddhist temples and saying:

I’m learning regarding the cultures and experiences of East Asian Americans.

I’m learning for him led to I’m sorry too, as it often does, as he started to reckon with what he called his “ignorance, implicit bias, and complicity” regarding Asian Americans. 

What a beautiful thing, as a community leader in his own right, to now be in his 60s and to be able to say:

I’m not finished. I’ve not arrived. I’m still growing. I’m still learning. That’s humility.

And that’s part of a good life, in my book.

I met with another person in this same phase of life whose: I’m not done. I’m still learning, was taking other forms. This person was talking with me about their faith journey, which for them is a healing journey. She was sharing how at last, deep into middle age, she finally started to learn that God really loved her.

She was like:

I would have said that earlier, but mostly I was just saying that. My faith was really just skimming the surface of my life.

And she talked about the insights and help that eventually let her see she didn’t need to be anyone that she wasn’t to be enough, to be fully loved. 

Her journey had a lot of connections with mine, which I shared, and we talked some about how to help others reach a deeper, quiet confidence in their beloved-ness.

I spent time with an older couple last week too and got them talking about their history as a couple and what was bringing them joy or challenge these days as well.

Mostly, it was joy. They shared their stories of how life was going, including the things they were still learning after many decades of life on this earth. But the most striking thing to me was the ease with which they talked about some hard patches in their lives – painful memories from their working lives, regrets in parenting, rougher patches in their marriage. 

Their lives have been imperfect, and are imperfect still. But in the midst of those imperfections, they had an ease with saying I’m sorry and I’m still learning. And they had gratitude for how good their lives have been and how good they are still becoming.

One of them even used the word humility to capture this. They weren’t complimenting themselves, saying look how humble I am, that famous oxymoron of non-character development. No, they were saying:

my life is humble – it’s small in its own way, it’s imperfect. I still need God and friends. But I’m beloved, and my life is so good, and that is enough.

How beautiful. 

I’m only on the verge of 50, but I hope to move through the decades to come like my friends – not chasing certainty, control, security, the sterile figment of the colonial imagination that is perfection.

I want to be able to keep saying

I’m learning, I’m sorry, and I’m so beloved. So this good, good life of mine is enough.

Everyone

Good morning, everyone!

We are already in our third week of a series called, “We Are Reservoir” which hopefully is giving you a taste of how and why we think about faith the way we do – and we’ve anchored these weeks to our  five core values: connection, humility, action, freedom and everyone. These values guide our pursuit of a vibrant, inclusive, healthy faith.

Steve spoke on connection and freedom the last two weeks. And today I’ll talk about the value of ‘everyone.’  It’s an interesting one – because it’s not just a descriptor of who we hope the recipients of these values will be – but it points to a relationship.

Between us and everyone  – and us and God.  It’s the beginning point of why any of our hearts are  positioned to embody these values of connection, action, humility, freedom –  it is for everyone.  Not just those we are inspired by, or where there’s ease or obvious common denominators – we are called to love our neighbor, before our ‘neighbor’ is defined. Everyone.  

Here’s how we describe this value of everyone here at Reservoir:

“We seek to welcome people in all their diversity, without condition or exception, to embrace a life connected to Jesus and others.”

The only texture I would add is that our engagement with everyone enhances our own connection to, and knowing of, Jesus – and the possibility of that exists everywhere. Not only inside these walls in a Sanctuary, but everywhere we are… and everywhere, everyone is.  There’s a mutuality that is essential to our faith and without ‘everyone’ at the center of it – these other values can run the risk of falling flat.

Sounds lovely.

But it is hard.

And yet it is the heart of the gospel.

It is the only way the good news – is truly good news.

PRAYER
What a wonder it is to be a part of this journey of faith with you, God. As best we can this morning, we listen and seek for your presence.  One that comforts us where we need to know we are not alone – one that slows us , as we need rest… one that inspires us , as we long for more in the city and world around us. . . Oh God, be our good and  life-giving companion this morning, as was true yesterday – and will be true tomorrow… Amen.

For those of you who might not know, I’ve been on sabbatical these last few weeks. At the beginning of that time, I went on a walk with a wise-mentor-y friend.  And she shared as we walked that when she retired  everyone was quickly asking,

“well what are you doing? How’s it going? What are you spending your days doing?”

 

And she said the only thing she could think in reply was,

“well today I filled my car with gas. I pumped gas. And I didn’t think about my running to-do lists, or whatever thousands of spokes of thought –  I just pumped the gas. I was present at that moment.”

And it struck me – because the thing about being on sabbatical with three mostly unscheduled teenagers at home – is that the word “sabbatical” just means to them that you are more available than ever – for whatever they might want to do.  (*which of course is still a gift*)

But I thought within whatever expression this sabbatical is going to take, I do want to be present to whatever/WHOEVER is in front of me… so “just pump the gas” became my sabbatical mantra. 

 I’m going to share a couple of small stories throughout this sermon of moments where I was really present to who was in front of me and what unfolds.

Vignette #1
The first of which occurred the day after the walk with my friend.  I was in the car stopped at this big intersection in Hyde Park – where a large parkway and a side road intersect.

And I noticed this older woman – likely 70yr+ jogging toward the intersection. She was noticeable mainly because she had this huge smile on her face  – which became only bigger the closer she got to the light pole at the intersection. As she reached this pole, she erupted in self-congratulatory cheers, pumping her fists in the air – laughing – so full of joy. And she continued across the intersection pumping her fists – and I thought, “Wow, this ‘just pump the gas mantra-thing”’ is amazing!  I feel so connected to joy, and to gratitude – and to God!

And yet – obviously – this is not ALWAYS the experience as we make our way through our days. In fact the impact of this moment and it’s surprise, and joy – suggests that most of what I feel on any given day is chafing at best. That the division, the hatred, the cancel culture, the fracture, the ‘avoidance’ of one another is the tenor I pick up on – and  how I navigate most days. 

And when we think about this value of “everyone” -it is really challenging. The good news says,

“God loves everyone.”

And we are called to do the same – to remind people that they are designed for love and to give love. Which is more than a-just-sit- behind-a-closed-window- witnessing-beautiful- moments- posture. It is to be engaged and present – fully to who is in our view. 

Today, I wanted to look at a story in the gospel of John that I think invites us to consider this value of “everyone.” It’s a story of an interaction Jesus has with just one person.  It’s curious to choose this story – because there are so many stories of Jesus where the “everyone” value is on proud display… big banquets and tables full of people who couldn’t/ shouldn’t/ wouldn’t get along, and yet Jesus gathers them. Meals where bread is broken and offered to the least of these… ’everyone,’ ‘everyone’ is the centerpiece.

Today’s story though, centers just one conversation – with Jesus and one woman.  But one that somehow opens up unto everyone in the surrounding city. . . and unto us still today.

So here’s the story of the Samaritan woman at the well.  

John 4: 4-30, 39 (Common English Bible)

4 Jesus had to go through Samaria.

5 He came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, which was near the land Jacob had given to his son Joseph.

6 Jacob’s well was there. Jesus was tired from his journey, so he sat down at the well. It was about noon.

7 A Samaritan woman came to the well to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me some water to drink.”

8 His disciples had gone into the city to buy him some food.

9 The Samaritan woman asked, “Why do you, a Jewish man, ask for something to drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” (Jews and Samaritans didn’t associate with each other.)

10 Jesus responded, “If you recognized God’s gift and who is saying to you, ‘Give me some water to drink,’ you would be asking him and he would give you living water.”

11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you don’t have a bucket and the well is deep. Where would you get this living water?

12 You aren’t greater than our father Jacob, are you? He gave this well to us, and he drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.”

13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again,

14 but whoever drinks from the water that I will give will never be thirsty again. The water that I give will become in those who drink it a spring of water that bubbles up into eternal life.”

15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will never be thirsty and will never need to come here to draw water!”

16 Jesus said to her, “Go, get your husband, and come back here.”

17 The woman replied, “I don’t have a husband.”

“You are right to say, ‘I don’t have a husband,’” Jesus answered.

18 “You’ve had five husbands, and the man you are with now isn’t your husband. You’ve spoken the truth.”

19 The woman said, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet.

20 Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you and your people say that it is necessary to worship in Jerusalem.”

21 Jesus said to her, “Believe me, woman, the time is coming when you and your people will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.

22 You and your people worship what you don’t know; we worship what we know because salvation is from the Jews.

23 But the time is coming—and is here!—when true worshippers will worship in spirit and truth. The Father looks for those who worship him this way.

24 God is spirit, and it is necessary to worship God in spirit and truth.”

25 The woman said, “I know that the Messiah is coming, the one who is called the Christ. When he comes, he will teach everything to us.”

26 Jesus said to her, “I Am—the one who speaks with you.”

27 Just then, Jesus’ disciples arrived and were shocked that he was talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?”

28 The woman put down her water jar and went into the city. She said to the people,

29 “Come and see a man who has told me everything I’ve done! Could this man be the Christ?”

30 They left the city and were on their way to see Jesus.

39 Many Samaritans in that city believed in Jesus because of the woman’s word when she testified, “He told me everything I’ve ever done.” 

Okay, this is the longest conversation with Jesus of any character in the book of John – and there is a lot to be discovered. There are many threads of thought around this scripture  – many parts I won’t touch on – and it might leave you with some questions. I hope that’s ok, and I hope those questions lead you into deeper reflection and conversation of your own. And as we break open this scripture a bit – I want to start with a couple contextual thoughts:

Jesus & the Samaritan Woman

As you might have picked up from this Samaritan woman’s first words, 

“Why do you, a Jewish man, ask for something to drink from me, a Samaritan woman?”

There is in fact deep division between Samaritans and Jews… that goes back for centuries.  The brief historical sketch is this:

  • The Samaritans were thought to be a

“part of a remnant of Jews left behind after the initial conquest of the ten northern tribes of Israel by Assyrians… those who were left behind intermarried with other peoples.  Their Jewish practices became mixed with other religious practices – and while it maintained many of the aspects of Judaism, was distinct enough to cause significant tension between the two belongings.” (What Were You Arguing About Along The Way?: Gospel Reflections for Advent By Pádraig Ó Tuama, Pat Bennett)

    • Such as where they would worship – which temple? On what hill? Which one was the holiest of places to worship  God?
    • In short they were social, religious and political enemies.

Interpretations | Woman

  • It should also be noted that there are diverse interpretations of this scripture – that have been offered upon this Samaritan woman’s life. All kinds of sins have been projected onto her. And I think for far too long this story has been told to us as a sexual morality tale based on an interpretation of the woman as a sinner because she had five husbands. That lens, *“reduces women to their sexuality and reduces their sexuality to immorality.”* Her many marriages are often attributed to her own wrong-doing rather than the more likely reality of gender oppression, death and male-initiated divorce which was highly likely in her context.  

*Sandra M. Schneiders,  Written That You May Believe.

  • So I will not be interpreting scripture through this narrow lens today – because it sadly serves patriarchy more than scripture, and more than this story  – a story which is meant to serve us today. 

However, it can be said that in the meeting of Jesus and this woman there is a web of otherness, histories, gender dynamics, religious divisions – and also social and physical vulnerabilities.  

Jesus is thirsty, it’s been a long trip, and it’s high noon. 

And this woman appears at the well with the necessary tools with which to help Jesus.

Jesus sets this scene with a value on relationship and vulnerability. He does not name what should separate them from one another. He offers this woman who arrives alone – connection, as deep as this well – their shared humanity and their need of one another. 

He does so with the integrity of love, treating her as an individual, not a member of a big “other” group, nor re-enacting the hatred of the ancient stories between these two peoples.

He starts by talking about  “living water”  and then the conversation goes to her personal life, and her five husbands.

It can seem like quite a pivot of conversation – but I think it’s a continuation of this human mutuality that Jesus is trying to ignite in her – for so long she has been accustomed to being alone, silenced, unwelcomed. 

We don’t know the full stories of why five husbands? *and Jesus doesn’t ask either* But we can imagine that having five husbands under an oppressive gender economy ties her worth and survival to her marital status, and this is a lot.  She’s existed on the edges  – of society, her household, herself – regarded as irrelevant, despised.

She has suffered so much.

And she has survived so much.

 It is wild that Jesus takes the conversation right to her five husbands, but as Reverend Ingrid Rasmussen points out

“rather than hearing Jesus pronounce an indictment, as most interpreters would have us do, we hear Jesus simply uncovering and naming the hard realities of this woman’s life. She has had five husbands; and, now, most likely for the sake of survival, she is forced to live outside of social and religious boundaries with a man who is not her husband. But Jesus does not speak words of condemnation or offer easy answers. He simply chooses to validate her words and her experience, saying two times, “you are right”, ‘What you have said is true.’”

There isn’t a condemnation or even an invitation to do differently. He just meets her there. So much has not been in her control. So many decisions made about her, for her, against her. Jesus knows.”  (Rasmussen, enfleshed.com)

Jesus is trying to draw out her own worth and dignity throughout this conversation – as much as he is trying to draw water.

My guess is that everyone of us – when in moments of pain, hardship, grief, stress – appreciate those in our lives who can affirm the truth of what we are feeling – versus rushing to “fix” or “rescue” or “judge” us.

“Jesus sees this woman in the fullness of her experience as if he knows “everything that has ever happened to her. Not just the divorces and/or deaths – but the reasons they aren’t worthy of condemnation, the ways these things have been out of her control, the suffering she has endured by way of systems and people void of kindness. 

Jesus knows all of it.” (Rasmussen, enfleshed.com)

Jesus knows that she is thirsty to experience and remember herself in a new way.

He knows it’s been hard for her to break free of how people treat her – or how hard even today it would be for her to break free of how people translate her story/her life. 

And so Jesus greets that deep thirst to belong – as he says,

“what you say is true.” “What you say is true.”

No, no, there’s no moral code to follow here…

As Reverend Rasmussen notes, this is why the text says she came to believe in the gospel. It’s no small thing to be met in that way. It’s an embodiment of the good news – to bring out into the light that which too often is swallowed by the shadows within us. When vulnerability unveils the things that are so difficult to share, love affirms truth. Spirit joins across barriers.  

And this is how we worship  – Jesus advises – with no moral code to dictate our worth. Nothing but spirit and truth to invite everyone into a sense of belonging. 

And belonging really is the heart of this dialogue – from verse 4 all the way through – this conversation is one consecutive story – a fleshing out of how essential belonging is in the story of God,  for everyone.

Most of our stories are not separate from a larger framework, there’s always other voices/systems/circumstances/influences that come in to break the truth that,

“we are loved  unconditionally and without exception by God.”

How many people in this woman’s community do you think saw her, advocated for her? How many religious leaders spoke to her circumstances? Organized for change on her behalf?

Likely, none.

This messes with the fundamental, deep well –  our given worth and dignity, our spiritual identity that we are beloved children of God, that we all hold traces of the Divine within us.

So for me this is not a disjointment conversation that Jesus and this woman have – bouncing from the subject of water, to husbands and places of worship – it’s all one conversation  – a spiritual one – about belonging in all of the stretches of life.   

And the astuteness of this woman – is to clarify with Jesus,

“wait, are you saying what I think you are saying?  That I could belong in my household, in this city, in this religion you speak of – “a despised Samaritan woman enemy” – without barriers to these waters – of life… here and now… ?”

“Because if that is what you are saying – if you are saying I can belong in the kin-dom/the community of God – then this must/has to be true for everyone…”

And the woman presses still to ask,

“so where then is the proper location for the Jewish temple?”

A question which had caused deep divisions for hundreds of years.  Jesus’ answer to her as a Samaritan is just as surprising to her , as it would be to the Jews – he says, location is not important.  

Reflecting back to this woman,

“Were we not in a temple, you and I, just now at this well? Was that not holy/sacred ground?”

God requires his people to worship

“in the Spirit and in truth.”

It’s not either/or – it’s not Mt. Gerizim-centered or Mt. Zion-centered – it’s Jesus/ Spirit-centered… there’s no location, no coordinates – except where you find yourself in the holy presence of another’s full humanity…their story, exactly where they are at. 

This is how we find ourselves worshiping at the feet of one another. Filling places of regret, shame, pain of oppression – with waters of life and light – the places where we are too often left to dwell alone. 

 Vignette #2:

The other story from my sabbatical and trying to stay in this “just pump the gas” zone.. is less mountaintop-y.  It takes place in a post office, where I witnessed an employee treat every customer in line with such disdain… that by the time I got to the counter, I was nervous and hit the wrong button when it asks whether you have something ‘liquid, perishable or hazardous…’ and the employee said, “I told you to hit the red button – why did you hit the green button?”  

And then as the day went on I took an impromptu trip to Falmouth with my family.  I popped into a gift shop with my son… and there was only one other customer in the store (who I don’t think noticed when we entered).  I soon realized he was relentlessly harassing the cashier. Just bullying her, trying to negotiate a cheaper price for a shirt, and he wouldn’t relent – he just kept coming at her with increasing aggression…

And I wondered, what does “just pump the gas”  look like here? To be fully present to the person in front of you when it’s incredibly hard?  When the deep well of the love of God and others – drains right out of you? 

This is a question that courses through our days. Our days are full of whiplash –  moments of ease – where I can say “hi God!” and moments where I ask a series of questions including,

“just WHERE is it again I’m supposed to find you, worship you, God?”

With the postal employee – I guess I stayed in the moment – because I didn’t storm away. And he noticed I was sending the package to an address with “College Ave.”  I said, “yah my daughter forgot her calculator!” – and he said

“oh I have a kid that just left too – he’s always asking me to send him things.”

and that was it. 

In the gift shop, I went up to the man with harassing behavior and said,

“you need to stop harassing this woman, there’s no negotiating here.”

Period.  He left and the cashier said,

“thank you for saying that… I didn’t want to call the authorities, but I was alone.”

I don’t know what to do in all of these moments – I don’t always have the time to imagine or learn what a person’s story is… and locate that within the story of Jesus.

But I do rely on the integrity of love to guide me…  rather than my own limited understanding. And maybe all the moments – and interactions feel totally random and disjointed – but maybe they aren’t… and maybe everyone – gets somehow a taste of what Jesus said to this woman…

“it’s true, it’s true what you are feeling.” 

 EVERYONE

And here’s the thing about this value, “Everyone” – it’s not merely about inclusion. It’s unto something greater… this Samaritan woman is not worthy of mere inclusion. She invites us into learning and change (true for the disciples, for the town-folk, maybe even for Jesus). It’s more than a nice/generous posture that we make sure to welcome “everyone” – it is because it is the essential way by which we hope to continue to build and create beloved community – it’s where the change and the (un)learning we all will benefit from, occurs. And how we keep dreaming for a just world. 

 LIGHT

This scripture starts with one woman’s conversation with Jesus… and ends with an entire town’s conversation with Jesus. This Samaritan woman, the one who was rejected, marginalized, shamed, an enemy became the first person in John’s gospel to communicate the very good news.  

She is greatly loved. 

To this day, she is loved in all Christianities – in the Eastern traditions – both Catholic and Orthodox – and she is named – her name “Photine” means the light-filled, or luminescent one. In Southern Mexico, during Lent- they make agua frescas in all flavors – to commemorate her gift of water to Jesus. In Russian her name means “equal to the apostles.”

Like the apostles who left nets, boats, parents, their work –  the Samaritan woman leaves her water jar at the well and goes off to embrace her city.  To embody – to be the very vessel of love and goodness and light – that drew her own spirit out, and to bubble over with those life giving waters to everyone around her… even those that despised her.

Her story, unveiled in the full light of day, allows Jesus to instruct us that religious and cultural systems that try to engage moral approval as the basis for acceptance, belonging or unity in the spirit –  actually only keep people in the shadows. 

We are not called to give, demand or receive moral approval from another. But we are called to love one another – everyone.  

For God so loves this world – that God has placed traces of God-self, God’s light in each and everyone of us – Teaching us, inviting us, at every turn how to love this world and everyone within it – just as much as God does.  

ENDING

Dear friends,

“let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.” 

I John 4:7