Third - Reservoir Church

On The Law of Retaliation

Matthew 5:38-42

38 “You have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

39 But I say to you that you must not oppose those who want to hurt you. If people slap you on your right cheek, you must turn the left cheek to them as well.

40 When they wish to haul you to court and take your shirt, let them have your coat too.

41 When they force you to go one mile, go with them two.

42 Give to those who ask, and don’t refuse those who wish to borrow from you.

Good and Gracious God, you have woken us up, given us breath and life and called us here today. We thank you for this day. We thank you for the rain. We thank you that you are a God who loves us no matter what we might be going through in our lives. Help us now, no matter what morning or what kind of week we had this past week, whether it was full and joyful or just busy and distracted, bring us to this space now with reverence and centeredness, on what our body needs, what our spirit needs, and there we pray that you will meet us with overwhelming abundant love. Help us to believe that as we open our selves up to your word now, we pray in your precious and holy name, Amen.

Hey, Love Your Enemies is the series we’re on these days here at Reservoir and to preach on this feels like, (shaking head no violently) “I don’t want to!!!!!”

My unholy human ego reacted strongly to this preaching prompt with, what I would like to spend some time on today, an understandable resistance to this teaching. I want to spend some time on it because I don’t want to jump to the moral teaching conclusion. I mean, you know the ending already, so now go, love your neighbors. Love your enemies. Cause Jesus said so. So you better.

Because for so long, I have seen and heard the beautiful teachings of Jesus wrapped in as a command, for us to obey. It’s a shorter and easier way to spread the teaching, when you begin with, God said so. But I refuse the misused tactics of shame and guilt to do this, one because I believe that God is not a tyrant. God is not just a rule enforcer. I want us to go slow, go easy, gently toward this message, because at least in Matthew, before Jesus gave us teachings, advice, wisdom, and guidelines, he first did the miracles of healing the sick.

And so I believe that in order to love your enemies, first we need to do the miracles of healing. because without it, first of all you can’t do it. Loving your enemy while you’re still really hurting – it’s impossible. But if you have experienced the miracles of healing, well then we can start talking.

And maybe I know that because I know that firsthand. When you have been hurt, when you’ve been truly wronged, when you actually really have an enemy that’s done you wrong, and you haven’t had the practice of healing and loving poured into you, you don’t have the faculties to forgive and love yourself, definitely not others. And so I want to make space for that. Because to preach to a hurting person with the command to “love your enemy” is not only ineffective, I believe is abusive.

You know how you teach someone to love their enemy? You love on them. And to love someone is to make space for their pain and not try to erase it by telling you,

just love your enemy because that’s what God wants you to do.

So I want to unpack first of all, the ways in which we have misused and misunderstood the teaching “love your enemies”, especially in and through church and Christian traditions that have been unhelpful and even harmful.

The reality is that people, people from places of power and through the power of the church have used teachings like “love your enemies” to further shame and oppress and keep people in their place. And that’s a real pain point, a triggering point for some of us.

Sometimes I hate taking a few texts out of the Bible and shining on the screen because it takes it out of context. If we actually take out the whole book, the text in its context, today’s is in Matthew 5 verse 38, but you look up just a few verse, earlier in the chapter, verse 23 says this, for example:

“23 Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you,

24 leave your gift at the altar and go. First make things right with your brother or sister and then come back and offer your gift.”

Now I clearly see the good wisdom and intention of these verses.

But in my years of growing up in church, I’ve seen it used to shame and prevent people from coming to the altar, serving in church, from coming closer to God. I mean, it was taken literally and applied blanketly.

Again, I can understand why one would like to make this good practice into a law. But, We picked and chose which “sins” were allowed or not allowed, like greed and hoarding weren’t checked with your small group leader but if you drank, if you went to a party or listened to secular music, then you felt like you couldn’t come to church at all.

Like we forgot that we’re ALL sinners, but some sin prevented you from taking communion, like premarital sex, while other sin, like owning a company that underpaid and abused workers were totally fine. We turned the wisdom into a convenient social rule that we wanted to enforce. I keep saying we because Christians are bound to one another and what churches have done in the name of Christ, we have to be at least aware if not account for that in our faith journey talks.

Here’s another one, a few verses down in verse 31:

On the Law of divorce

31 “It was said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife must give her a divorce certificate.’

32 But I say to you that whoever divorces his wife except for sexual unfaithfulness forces her to commit adultery. And whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

Okay, first of all, this teaching is directed at men only. The “Whoever” is not really “whoever” but it’s “men.”

Jesus is not talking to me in this text. I am not even in the room. I cannot simply and literally apply everything he said to me and us all, because he would not do that, no relationship is like that. Audience matters. So who was Jesus talking to at this moment? At the top of the chapter it tells you, chapter 5:1

“Now when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down, His disciples came to him and he began to teach them saying,”

He was talking to his disciples.

We have used this to those who are divorced to shame them. You see some churches are still wrestling with LGBTQIA affirmation (whether they can marry or not) or women’s ordination (whether they can preach or not) and not long ago churches wrestled with divorce (whether they can do that or not and still be a member of a church).

Can we just admit that we have misused, and continue to misuse so much of the Bible? It’s been weaponized against people where the divorced are outcasted from the community. No wonder people are leaving the church. We’re kicking them out with shame!

The thing is today’s text has been used by colonizers and murderers, upon victims who are converted through force and then taught to love their enemies after they’ve pummeled through their land and their communities. Love your enemies they said, as they pressed their heels to their heads. THAT IS NOT THE TEACHING OF JESUS here.

Let’s not shove “Love your Enemies” down the throat of those who are victimized and oppressed from a place of privilege and power to those who are suffering.

Okay, so there’s been bad and toxic interpretations of the text. Then what is the good interpretation here? We gotta dig.

Cause I mean, when you just read texts like this at first glance:

But I say to you that you must not oppose those who want to hurt you. Or another translation says. [Do not resist one who is evil]

WHAT!? Um, is Jesus being complacent with evil or co-conspiring with evil?!

The natural response is, what? You just want me to hurt again? You want me to go another mile at this rate?

And now, welcome to the part of the sermon when we’re preaching from the Bible: Consider the cultural location and historical context of the text.

Why did Matthew write this?

This is why we have the four gospels because from Matthew we get an angle. And we can get a better sense of Matthew’s angle and purpose for his writing by comparing it to others. In order for us to better understand Matthew’s text we have to try to understand Matthew’s overarching message that it’s trying to convey, because every text is wrapped in that motif.

The book of Matthew is uniquely Jewish Christian, meaning it is particularly interested in laying out the stories of Jesus in close relationship and in connection or in comparison to the Jewish laws. Our today’s text is specifically in regard to the Law of Retaliation, found in Exodus 21, Leviticus 24, and Deuteronomy 19. It was directly trying to address these specific questions at hand.

In Matthew 5:17 Jesus says,

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”

This is a central motif and the driving force of the booking of Matthew. To distinguish, juxtapose, and specifically compare Jesus in close relationship to the Jewish Laws was the purpose of Matthew’s writing.

That’s important because the awareness of the specificity of the audience humbles us in our understanding and application. It is not to say, oh it doesn’t apply to us, but the point is, we have to take into account that it in fact was not written for us, 21st century American, women for example. The takeaway for us in realizing this is, Matthew shows us the pastoral, contextual, and cultural interpretation and application of Jesus’ teaching to his people and his traditions, inspired by the holy spirit, to the best of his ability.

We must do the same. And it must be lived and alive, a conversation and not a heavy handed law but a live rendering of what is convicted in our hearts to the actions of our day. That’s exactly what the writer of Matthew was trying to do, to not simply accept the Jewish Laws, but reinterpret it to fit their time and their social location, their hunger, their need.

Similarly, Jesus,

“interprets the law within its proper horizon and according to its proper use, a task that at times involves criticism even, especially of particular features and interpretation of the sacred text itself” (p. 383)

by saying,

“you have heard it said, but I say….”

he is critiquing their holy scriptures, and contextualizing it, a model for us to do the same.

In this way, it shows us that we must rely on one another, one another’s voice and story and another’s social location, to testify what the spirit, what Jesus has convicted them of, and we take it all at face value and with a grain of salt. That is what it means to live the faith, which is to do it in community. That’s why we have Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And Mark and John don’t have the sermon on the mount really. Whatttt! Yeah.

And even with Jesus, you can have a conversation with Jesus from your cultural context and location (take the story of woman at the table)

Matthew 15: 21-28

21 Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon.

22 A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly.”

23 Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.”

24 He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”

25 The woman came and knelt before him. “Lord, help me!” she said.

26 He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”

27 “Yes it is, Lord,” she said. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”

28 Then Jesus said to her, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed at that moment.

This story tells us that yes, even Jesus had a certain perspective, or to put it more provocatively, an agenda, which was only for the lost sheep of Israel. So, could it be that his message was only for the sheep of Israel? Maybe?! But again, taking Matthew’s motif into account, his whole message of the Gospel of Matthew is a thrust of pushing on the outer edges of affirmation of the Jewish Laws and then above and beyond the Jewish laws to go to the end of the earth, as it concludes in Matthews chapter 28. And so this story begs the question for me, then what would the crumbs of the “loving your enemies” be?

Because our text today makes a few assumptions. It assumes that when they take you to court for your shirt, that you have a coat even to give to them. It assumes that you even have enough things for someone to even want to borrow from you. From the pedagogy of the poor, the biblical criticism of this text from the perspective of the oppressed is that the call to follow the law of retaliation might have been spoken to a certain audience that had some power and privilege. And maybe just maybe, I wonder what kind of example Jesus would’ve given to those who are marginalized and oppressed and broken, as a model of loving your enemy.

Maybe it looks like being slapped across your face but not letting the abuser take your hope away. Because I in my pastoral context could not tell a domestic violence victim to simply turn her cheek to her perpetrator. And if I thought the gospel was telling me to do that, I would not be here. I do not believe so. My faith, just like this woman at the table, demands of the Lord to throw us the crumbs of this provocative wisdom, to ask God, then SHOW me this world you speak of where enemies are loved!

What do the crumbs of your picture of “loving your enemy” look like? From the place of an outsider? If the message of “love your enemies” was only for the lost sheep of Israel, and this woman fought for even a crumb of that wisdom in her social location, as a dog as Jesus calls her, what would that be? And her faith was that that would be enough. I think so, I think what you can muster up, what you deem as the wisdom of loving your enemies may look like in your specific case, that would be enough. We’re not meant to follow the rules literally but receive the whole kingdom of Heaven, as Matthew calls it, as a whole ethos, and move in the spirit of love here and now.

I remember in 2015 *uh trigger warning I’m going to talk about gun violence*. Please feel free to step out if this is not for you. I remember seeing the clip of the white shooter brought into court to face the survivors of the nine dead at the black Emanuel AME church in Charleston. And the family member saying to him,

“I forgive you”

It made me so angry, to see such foolish mercy, like throwing pearls to the swine, and of course and yet, touched, distraught by the shooting and that pain being disrupted by love. The confusion of such radical forgiveness. Why would anyone do that? How could anyone do that? To forgive someone who has shot your mother dead?

You know who? One who has Received this kind of love from God first. One who knows deeply the love and grace and mercy of God no matter what befalls them. I’ve heard it said, an eye for an eye and everyone will go blind. To love your enemy is to usher in a total new way, to break out of the system, a new way forward. A liberation from the same old cycles and systems of hurt, retaliation, and more hurt. One of grace and mercy that snatches us out of that loop. By loving your enemies, you show them a new game, you usher in a whole new rules of engagement (although they might still respond with old ways of engagement).

A biblical commentary said this,

“Upon closer inspection this stance is actually rooted in a profound resistance, an unexpected refusal to play the opponent’s adversarial game. By voluntarily going a second mile, for example the first mile is likewise refigured from something “forced” into something chosen; so what might superficially seem to be docility is actually at a deeper level a form of non adversarial defiance.” (p.383)

They called it moral jiu jitsu, which I learned is a form of martial arts that’s not of violence but redirecting violence. The word literal translation meaning, gentle art.

Matthew’s big point was trying to marry Jesus’ way to the known laws of the day. He was trying to show the Jesus’ way in and through and above and beyond the laws that were so important and dear and highly respected. But in doing so, I believe that it can be misunderstood that here’s a new law to follow, and that is what its intent was, but that new law is not a rule but a person. Loving your enemies is not just a new law to follow but realize that this is the kind of world that Jesus invites you to.

Jesus loves your enemies. Jesus loves his enemies. Jesus loves you in this way, even when we were God’s enemy. While we were still sinners. Even when you feel like you’re the furthest from God, by way of distraction of work and life, by way of deep dark void-like depression, by way of apathy or indifference, even there God does not oppose you but moves toward you. God turns the other cheek for you. God would give you God’s shirt and their coat to you. God goes the extra mile for you. God doesn’t refuse you but greets you with open arms with radical love and grace and endless mercy.

May the crumbs of God’s love towards even enemies fall on us and heal us. That we may receive it, may it cover us and embrace us. That it might shape not what we do but who we are, no longer enemies but God’s beloveds. May we drive that deep into our hearts today.

Let me pray for us.

Reflections of the Earth

Guest Preacher Randy Woodly shared reflections this past Sunday.

Puhpowee | Life Force

Today I would like to honor and acknowledge the land upon which we worship. The ancestral lands of the Massachusett people – the original inhabitants who still regard this land as sacred and shot through with the force of life.

Good morning everyone!

We are in a series called, SEVEN BIG WORDS. Where Lydia, Steve and I get to talk about any word we are inclined to talk about. This series will run us right up until the season of Lent – so another month – where very broadly speaking we will be centering Lent around the theme of Earth.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading and research in advance of Lent for a couple of projects that I’m involved in. And so I wanted to offer a word that has surfaced for me as I’ve been reading a book by Robin Wall Kimmerer. It’s a book titled, “Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teaching of Plants.” This book was published 10 years ago – and I’m just getting to it now – for such a time as this, I guess!

It’s a stunning book – and it speaks to the lessons we can gather from First Nations people. Robin is a Native American, a mother, scientist, professor and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. Her experience at the intersection of science and indigenous wisdom is incredibly rich and spiritual. It’s been an honor to be in the process of learning and (un)learning from her in so many ways.

Her book tells the history of her people and their forced displacement from their lands – which was originally in the southern tip of the Lake Michigan area. In the span of a single generation her ancestors were “removed” three times, by European settlers, and US federal Indian removal policies. Removing and stealing their names, their land, their knowledge, their children, their people and their language.

Robin has been trying to learn and revive the language of her people. Language that holds – not just words – but language that is the heart of their culture, their thoughts, their way of seeing the world. Language that was washed out of the mouths of Indian children in government boarding schools and by missionaries. And she’s been trying to learn from only nine (!) fluent elders left in the whole world – who speak the Potawatomi language.

As an adult she stumbled across a word as she was researching traditional uses of fungi by her people – and the Potawatomi word is, “Puhpowee.” It’s a word that describes the force that causes mushrooms to push up and appear overnight. It speaks to the

“unseen energies, the unseen spirit that animates everything, all of life.”

As a biologist herself, Robin was stunned that such a word existed.

“In all its technical vocabulary, Western science has no such term – no words to hold this mystery. You’d think that biologists, of all people, would have words for life. But in scientific language terminology is used to define the boundaries of knowing. What lies beyond scientists’ grasp remains unnamed.” (49)

This morning I’d love to continue to engage and learn from this Potawatomi word, “Puhpowee,” and to honor it. We’ll also take a look at the story of Mary Magdalene and the resurrected Jesus, as they meet in a garden.

For six years before I became a pastor here – I was a teacher in an outdoor classroom at a local elementary school. I had started a small non-profit called the Planting More Project. Its vision was to build Outdoor Classrooms in schools, and to actively grow food that would benefit the school community and it’s families. As well as to seek partnerships with like minded entities in the town to provide fresh food to say local food pantries, and join forces with nearby farms to up the awareness of community supported agriculture.

The first year – I was so ready. I had every ounce of our class time detailed, the perfect growing plan to maximize how many plants we could get in the ground – when we’d start seeds inside, and when we’d rotate and put new stuff in the ground – to ultimately feed the most people…

My students were initially kindergarteners and first graders – which meant that within minutes….. 99% of my best laid plans were absolute trash. Our classroom was situated in between two playgrounds which meant the allure of running off and seeing how many of your classmates would follow you – became the foremost activity.

I did discover however that “watering” the gardens was a highlight for kids. And I could send a team of kids to one raised bed to water, and be teaching and planting in another simultaneously.

EXCEPT I couldn’t.

That plan actually meant that all the garden beds became flood scenes.

Where newly planted seedlings soon were floated on the top of water.

Tiny radish, beet, and lettuce seeds – no longer in their rows. Not even in the boxes anymore.

Every.single.kid covered in soil which was super fun for a second – but quickly led to them crying and wanting to go inside.

These gardens meant to promote growth, fruit, life – went sideways in the strong stream of a hose – and appeared to be swamps of mud and tears.

The image of life as a garden is a rich one. One that we often align with verdant flora and fauna. Working in the patterns and behaviors that promote harmony and flourishing. . . a natural way of being… with our partnership and tending and attention and cultivation.. And how true it can be.

And we also know that our lives are often side-swept – by pandemics, violence, tragedy, where all the best of our “tending” couldn’t have changed or prevented the course.

It’s why this word ‘Puhpowee’ gives me hope. Not hope that just floats above the harsh realities of our days, but hope that is grounded in the histories of people that have endured being in the mud and grit – and still hold onto the mysteries of our faith, of the Divine – of that force of life that will not give up even in our darkest, dankest, moldy places.

It points me to the life force that Scripture starts with… that life starts with…

LIFE FORCE

In the first garden of scripture, in Genesis 2:7 it says that,

“YHWH God formed an earth creature out of the clay of the earth, and breathed into [their] nostrils the breath of life; and the earth creature became a living being.” (The First Egalitarian Translation).

Some scholars think that this first human breath of life – was more like a “gasp” as this life force filled its lungs. A sudden appearance of the unseen – now felt and living within skin.

I can tell you that the experience of returning to that outdoor classroom the following week (after the great flood) and finding that indeed some seedlings had found their roots in the soil again and uprighted themselves – and that some seeds were already sprouting and offering their first leaves to the sun… was *gasp-like* Not only to see such life emerge – but to remember, to return to a knowing that there is a life-force that continues to work on our behalf – even when we can’t.

The Old Testament shows the Spirit—this life-giving Spirit of God—as the divine power that creates, sustains, and renews life

(Genesis 1:2).

“This power of the Spirit is found in the prophetic books of Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Joel. Where God brings breath to dry bones – showing the power of the Spirit to give life, always. Even in situations of death, sorrow, despair, and hopelessness, the Spirit can move – and move us”

…it can come in the night and show up in the morning, it can bring back to life what was dead…Korean-American theologian Grace Ji-Sun Kim

The image of life as a garden of course holds the pattern of life and death and life and death and life and death again. But in the seasons of life that are so fallow – rife with hard, frozen ground – where there isn’t even the tiniest mushroom of hope – they are real and hard and long seasons.

It’s in part why I want to look at the story of Mary Magdalene and Jesus meeting in the garden after his death, here it is in John 20.

John 20:11 – 17

11 Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb

12 and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.

13 They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”

“They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.”
14 At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.

15 He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?”

Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”

16 Jesus said to her, “Mary.”

She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”).

17 Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”

*And she went on to tell the disciples – as he asked – that she had seen “the Lord!”

Among the many striking things about this passage – is that Mary doesn’t go anywhere else to tend to her grief.

The tending she needs – somehow intuitively she knows – is going to be found in the garden – where her friend, Jesus is supposed to be.

Grief is one of those “big words” – that holds a world within itself. A word that none of us ever wants to encounter fully – because when it becomes part of our story – we know there’s little we can do but let the flood come, and give way to it.

Grief can feel like a world ending without our permission. For the disciples and Mary – the world had died in the night as they knew it… As Jesus was crucified.

For the Potawatomi people – their world as they knew it died as they marched by gunpoint along the Trail of Death – losing half of their people on that journey.

Grief doesn’t wait for us to be ready to receive its weight. It floods our familiar paths. It ambushes, it takes over, it bullies its way into our thoughts, our bodies, our hearts.

And grief is unwieldy, it’s not picky… It hovers over the space where we’ve lost what’s precious to us or where what is good and right in us has been trespassed… And it attempts to take root right in that most tender spot. It has the ability to disorient and disrupt our way of living.

Grief is a force of its own.

An invasive one.

And Mary walks into this garden draped in strips of grief.

And yet, finds a tomb of grief draped in linens that pointed to life.

And as she turns from the empty tomb toward the garden she sees the gardener.

*I imagine her gasping here – as the earth creature in the first garden did…*

That gasp that holds a zing of life, of hope – of deep knowing – that has been covered for a bit… but now pushes through – puhpowee.

An awareness of the unseen spirit of God that animates the world around us, our breath, the wind.. The mist in a garden at dawn.

“There’s my friend Jesus, the gardener – the one who planted the whole garden since the beginning of time.”

Mary is often regarded as making a mistake here – mis-identifying Jesus as a gardener…

But I don’t think it was a mistake – I think in her turn and gasp – she has listened to the spirit, the breath, the wind of God. .. and knows he is indeed a gardener, as well as Jesus.

Robin Kimmerer says that in the Potawatomi language there are very few letters in their alphabet…so the clusters of consonants that come together sound like wind in the pines and water over rocks – sounds that her ears may have been more delicately attuned to in the past, but no longer. And as she began to invest time in learning again she said,

“you really have to listen.” (53)

Our words try to name and describe what we see. It’s why science terminology polishes the way of seeing. But it falls short of fully capturing the way of listening that also allows us to detect life, to perceive the Spirit – that runs so invisibly – yet so thunderously through all things.

I was constantly correcting kids of their perceived mistakes in the outdoor classroom. Plant here, use this much dirt, space so many inches between plants. At one point I saw a kid ripping up all the radishes that were primed for delivery to the pantry in a couple days… and trying to plant little sunflower seedlings they had started inside … I literally picked him up under the armpits and relocated him away from that raised bed. No no no this is a mistake…

And the teacher was like, “…um… you can’t move kids.”

And the truth is, this child wasn’t making a mistake, he had actually been listening all along – NOT TO ME – but to the source of all life – he had noticed that the soil was most sun-soaked in that particular edge of the garden.. A place prime for sunflowers to stretch. . . . And a not so great place for radishes that appreciated cooler temps.

It’s so natural whether in times of grief, or determined vision, or exhaustion to shrink our words down for safety… to limit – define God to a realm of knowing.

What we lose though as we do this is space to listen – space to gasp – the sense that the word puhpowee points us toward… to life, to movement, to growth… to dirt, to mystery, to miracles, to mess…. It’s hard for so many of us, we like to have the right name – terms for things. We don’t like to rip stuff up out of our lives even if we know it’s been waiting for a long time.

4-LETTER WORDS OF JESUS

I had joked with Steve & Lydia when we were considering what this series about words would look like – and I suggested,

“how about we do a series on the 4-letter words of Jesus?”

You know like – hope, love, gift, rest, LIFE.

That conversation happened over email – so I couldn’t really read the tone in the replies – but needless to say it was a no-go.

But it is these words that root our faith – hope, love, life – which are in jeopardy, if we don’t let them breathe – they are shot through with this life force – alive.… if we continue to let them be free… to let them be lived, embodied. That’s what makes them BIG, right? It’s how we engage with all of creation – the natural world around us – without worrying that we are comprising Jesus or God in any way – but hold our hands open to the sacredness of it all.

We can know how, where, when, who to love – but we can’t always fully understand how the force of love, the spirit of love – continues to keep our hearts beating – for one another… in disagreement, hurt, distress, or grief.

We can grasp and try out practices that help ground us and offer us hope. Meditation, prayer, gratitude – but we don’t quite fully understand why an early morning bird’s song, like the Carolina wren’s – or why the burst of green from a pine tree in winter, or why the owl’s call at night makes us gasp and fill our lungs with hope.

We can know that a nap, or a refusal to hustle or a good night’s sleep is the rest we need… but not fully understand how such rest can return so many of you to your ancestors – can heal your aching bones and spirit – that have been crying out for centuries.

Love, hope, rest are not only concepts -they are of spirit. And that spirit – as evident in nature, as evident in us – will not relent. Will keep pushing up – as this word, puhpowee offers us – seemingly overnight, and in the places that will demand us to perceive with greater listening the freedom and expanse – the space it requires.

Robin talks about the English language – how it is a noun-based language – somewhat appropriate to a culture that seems to be obsessed with “things”. (53)

Only 30 percent of the English words are verbs, but in Potawatomi the proportion is 70 percent – which means that 70 percent of words have to be conjugated and have different tenses and cases…making it an incredibly hard language to learn.

European languages assign gender to nouns – but Potawatomi does not divide the world into masculine and feminine.

As Robin was learning the Potawatomi language she was frustrated finding it so complex, cumbersome, the distinctions between words for a beginner so subtle – And because it is such a verb heavy language – nouns used in English become animated, often with the verb, “to be.” So something regarded as a person, a place, a thing – suddenly takes on movement….

“To be a bay, to be a Saturday, to be a hill, to be red.” (53, 54)

“To speak is those possessed with life and spirit in Potawatomi one must say, yawe. To be. Isn’t that interesting – Yahweh the unspoken name for God of the Old Testament and yawe of the New World both fall from the mouths of the reverent.” (56)

To be.

To have breath of life within.

To be the offspring of Creation.

The use of so many verbs gives credence to a culture that believes everything is alive.

The life that pulses through all things – that animates all things.

That allows rocks to be animated, mountains, trees, birds, etc..

And it is the same life force that frees/ liberates us from the demons of being “right,” or having to dominate, of being trapped, of being dead in spirit.

It is the same force as Luke tells us that freed Mary Magdalene when Jesus cast out seven demons from her. Mary walks into the garden knowing what it is to be imprisoned in a tomb…and yet she also knew what it was to be called to life again. The *hope* the *love* the *faith* that called her back to life – was not of her own doing. The heart of this word, Puhpowee, is what called her name even before Jesus did.

It’s what tended to her grief in a dark garden alone … the spirit … even before the gardener came into view.

The spirit ….. maybe it’s meant to keep us connected to life – by all means possible. In surprising, undefined, “un-termed” ways..

Maybe it’s how we see angels – in a room soaked in death.

Maybe it’s how we find Jesus in the morning -after a night of insomnia.

Maybe it’s how we hear our name – in the silence we find at the end of our ropes.

Maybe it’s how we find a new idea for a project after a conversation with a neighbor.

Maybe it’s how we find peace in leaving a job that defies all logical choice.

Maybe it’s how we find the courage to say sorry.

Maybe it’s how we find the courage to not say sorry.

Maybe it’s how we find freedom from all that tries to trap us.

*Maybe it’s how we keep living when it seems like the world is full of only dank, dark, mildewy tombs at every turn…

*Puhpowee* – the life force that is in all of creation – that frees us to encounter Jesus – by whatever name we might call him.

God breathed into Mary, God breathes into the little kid in my outdoor classroom, God’s life force is in those sunflowers that still fill the school garden bed, God is breathing in me and in you – so that we can breathe the life of God back to the world…this is the pattern of life and growth –

“Do not hold on to me,”

Jesus says to Mary [go breathe – go gasp]

“go tell my siblings.”

Nobody thinks that one small kindness is going to change a life – but it might change a moment, and in that moment something small can grow – and can even grow overnight.

It could be the smallest movement, the calling someone by name across a parking lot, an extra 2 minutes after service to intentionally say “hi,” and learn someone’s name, a small text, a “thank you”… Robin’s language teacher – gives her small class of 10 people –

“thank you’s” to everyone for breathing LIFE into the language, even if it’s only a single word they speak.”

A single word.

This is the life we have to offer one another – by the Spirit – a single word, a single moment, a single action – it holds the life force of the Divine – it’s how we can show up, appear to one another with creation in our hands and breath.

GOD IN CHRIST | Everywhere & In Everyone

Good morning friends! It’s so good to be with you – I’m Ivy, a pastor here. And this Sunday is our 3rd Sunday of Advent. This season that invites us to prepare/anticipate Jesus’ birth. This Advent we’ve been inviting you to pay attention to where you might perceive the love of God with you – and around you. I hope your week held a little bit of wonder, something good, true and beautiful.

This week my NEW laptop stopped working. Actually just the screen stopped working – which you know, functionally means I can’t really do a lot of work. There wasn’t a flicker of life on that screen. No trick, no long reboot – no nothing seemed to bring light back to the screen.

A streak of fear shot through my body, as I thought about my week ahead.

Not because I couldn’t imagine a backup plan – you know there are libraries and friends and my phone that I could use to get work done.

But it was my “tabs.” Allllllll the many, many hundreds of tabs that beautifully run along the top of my screen.

Tabs that are inspiration for projects I have lined up in the new year. Tabs that have articles up that I want to return to for research. Tabs that have scripture, and design files, and shopping carts, and Tabs from like 2018 where I found something inspirational that didn’t quite have an outlet then – but I’m sure any day will…

These tabs are little lights that mark my days. Keep me on track – let me know what I should be thinking about, remembering what I shouldn’t forget – and guiding where I should be going.

And now it was just dark… a completely blank screen. Nothingness.

And this is how I feel this time of year in some ways – the sun will set today at 4:11pm.

Darkness and coldness encroaches and closes in.

The markers of warmth and light and summer days, and beautiful Fall colors, and sounds of kids splashing in sprinkler parks and sticky/drippy ice cream cones wane.

To me, the landscape around me is just emptiness. Emptiness abounds. Hibernation seems like an incredibly smart option.

And this is really the invitation of Advent – not hibernation! *But the invitation to close all our tabs.

Yes – likely the real ones on your computer screens. But also the tabs we’ve have lined up in our hearts and minds about what and how you know God.

Advent is a disruption of knowing – and it is an invitation into darkness.
And to regard darkness as a new way to know.

Advent embraces darkness, and asks us to not just endure it, or to wait it out until it passes – but to mine the dark. To see, to look, to perceive God with NEWNESS. To ACTIVELY engage the dark as the setting by which we rediscover the expanse of God in Christ.

A darkness that is sacred, that is freedom. A darkness that has always EXISTED since the beginning of time (maybe before time)… A darkness that is the original language of God and the birthplace of everything and everyone – even before the birth of Jesus.

This Advent Series that we are in is simply called, “WITH US.” And it’s an exploration of the self-giving love of God… “in Creation” as Steve talked about the first week – and “in Jesus”, as Lydia talked about last week.

And, “In Christ” – as I’ll be talking about this week.

We’ll spend this time together wondering just what we mean when we say “Christ?”

How is Christ different from Jesus? Does it matter? Does it expand our awareness of God?

And how does Advent invite us to celebrate the coming of God incarnate in the birth of Jesus, AND illuminate the reality of a what-has-always-been a Christ-soaked world?

Advent – while a beautiful, rich time of waiting and anticipation – is also a challenging and active time. One that asks us to close all the tabs that have helped us know God and lean into the darkness – a returning of sorts to the beginning – to the darkness of the womb.

Advent is a season that is as much about our own coming and becoming and arrival…to the ongoing story of God…as it is about Jesus’ birth. It’s a time where the belief grows in us – the belief that we can continue to discover God afresh in ways we hadn’t ever imagined or seen… in the places and people where we already declared “all is lost” – “there’s nothing there…”

And the reminder that God “WITH US” is as much a promise as it is an invitation. An invitation that God needs our partnership to create/form new ways of justice/ birth new wonders, fresh perspectives. God wants to do this WITH US.

It’s how our own unfolding and spiritual growth happens – valuing the darkness as the rich birthing ground it is.

We’ll take a look at a couple scripture,

A couple of stories from me,

Some wisdom from Father Richard Rohr,

And a whole lot of the Spirit of God – that thankfully communicates to us FAR MORE than a sermon could ever outline.

Prayer

God of wonder and hope and light and darkness,

God that is with us at our first breath, our last, and in our every breath in between.

Help us today to orient to you – whatever you have for us – to become sensitive to your wonder of us, your love for us – in a way that promises to mark our days with a fresh openness and freedom – to perceive you in the many places we have yet to unturn. *amen*

Kids Church Story

If you ever want to listen to a phenomenal sermon you should volunteer in kids church. The stories of God told and the responses kids have to these stories… never-ever-disappoints.

For years I volunteered in the zebras room, which is the 3-year old room. Each class involved among free time, and snack time – story-telling time. And the story telling uses a curriculum called Godly Play. It highlights wondering questions – as a way to know God – versus “teaching a set of “known beliefs” about God (who God is).

So at the end of each story-telling session – which involves simple, tangible wooden and felt components – I would ask one or two of these wondering questions:

“I wonder where you noticed God in this story?”
“I wonder where you are in this story?”

And often there’d be a great pause – and there would be an array of responses…like this:

“God smells like my mom’s perfume.”
Or “my grandmother died.”

Or one response, that had a long standing run with one particular class was, “It’s my birthday”- every other kid chimes in, “It’s my birthday too!”
…and naturally we end our story time by singing “happy birthday”… to everyone (and kind of to no one) :).

One of the reasons I stayed volunteering long after my kid moved out of that class was because I took those responses of these 3-year olds seriously. I mean I laughed and sometimes thought, “really? wow that’s wild!”…
But I took their responses in as scripture.

I had to close every tab in my brain that had previously suggested what scripture should be – and sit with these verses and chapters of the Bible – that were spoken out of the mouth of babes…

But oh how it perplexed and stretched my knowing & awareness of God.

Kids know how to engage the expanse of God (beyond form, name, or words) – when to us it looks like they have nothing to work with…

“Wait – you haven’t memorized scripture. You haven’t understood yet the historical context of this story of Jesus, or studied kenotic theology or the mystics…”

Kids are like hold on, let me just reach into my real life here…

“Here you go, my mom’s perfume (love it, and love her), my grandmother who died (that was sad, and I loved her), and my birthday (love that!) – and btw mark it on your calendar – because it happens every week!”

And somehow in these exquisite responses they perceive and name the pattern of life and God…. which involves life and love, death & love, and life and love again. Such great, great love – and such suffering. Seems like even a thoughtful, generous question of “I wonder where God is in this story?”

Is too small a question for the Christ that these kids point us to. They seem to get that

“Christ isn’t just Jesus’ last name – but is a name for the immense spaciousness of all true Love (5)”?

God in Christ

It’s true – God in Christ is the indwelling presence in everyone and everything since the beginning of time as we know it. That’s big. . . like cosmic big.

And Christ competes with and excludes no one, *excludes no response – no description or name for God* – but includes everyone and everything.

In fact the only thing that Christ excludes is exclusion itself.

In Colossians 1:15-17 we read:

Christ is the image of the unseen God

And the firstborn of all creation

for in Christ were created

All things in heaven and on earth

Everything visible and invisible,

Thrones, Dominations, sovereignties, powers all things were created through Christ and for Christ.

Before anything was created, Christ existed,

and all things are held together in Christ.

The refrain here,…all things, all things, all things, all things in heaven and on earth – all things are held together in Christ – before anything was created.

It’s so beautiful and poetic.. but..really all things? I use to get nerve-y around this idea of God being so limitless. The faith context that I grew up in talked about God as love – but it was digestible …. a fairly definable God, and a fairly controlling LOVE – and THAT God and THAT love were for a pretty limited amount of people. Not one of mystery and discovery and ongoing becoming.

But back at the beginning in Genesis where it says,

“And God said, “let there be light” and there was light… (Genesis 1:3)…it seems that here, God joined in unity with the physical universe and became the light inside of everything (Rohr)…

And this is helpful because Christ is the light that allows ALL OF US to see things in their fullness – to perceive Christ everywhere and in everyone – and as Father Richard Rohr puts it,

“when we consider the world around us as both the hiding place and the revelation of God, we can no longer make a significant distinction between the natural and the supernatural, between the holy and the profane.”

There are no lines.

And we can look at the arc of history – and see how the mystery of God was engaged.

It’s how the Jewish people historically experienced God’s nature through light. They saw the glory of God known as the Shechinah, which means “dwelling of God.” Moses saw God’s light in the bush; the Jewish people were led by light in a pillar of fire that guided them in the desert. The Light also appeared in the tabernacle and the temple.

It is the light that shone round about the angels as they said to the shepherds,

“Don’t be afraid! Look! I bring good news to you—wonderful, joyous news for ALL PEOPLE. Your savior is born today in David’s city. He is Christ the Lord.”

Christ is the light of God’s glory and the imprint of God’s being – one that existed at the beginning – sustains the universe and is good NEWS FOR ALL PEOPLE NOW, today.

It is the universal light – steady throughout time.

Now Jesus (God in flesh) – as Lydia spoke about last week – brings the message home in a personal way over thirteen billion years later! In Jesus, God’s presence became more obvious and believable in the world. Jesus – as Lydia said is God’s love language embodied. The formless took on form in someone we could

“hear, see, and touch” (1 John 1:1), making God easier to love. (Rohr)

And so as we put together Jesus and Christ it gives us a God who is both personal and universal. A healthy expression – whereas a

“merely personal God can become tribal and sentimental – held captive and limited by culture, nationalism and by Christianity’s own cultural captivity to a white and Eurocentric worldview. And whereas a merely universal God never leaves the realm of abstract theory and philosophical principles.” (adapted 19)

But it is also how we remember with humility, when we try to shrink Christ – that Christ is always larger than any one era, culture, empire or religion. Always surprising – growing in the margins where we least expect, exemplified in the most barren, seemingly desolate, looked over areas.

How much of Jesus Christ is a mystery, and how much of our lives are messy and hard and require a God that does not give up on us. A God that is big enough and personal enough both to find us and hold us when we hurt.

“All things are held together in Christ.”

We need such great love – to hold us in such great suffering.

A God who is outpouring and self-giving in love – holding us – holding all things – in this flow – even as life threatens at times to sweep us away.

We read in Romans the extent of this promise:

Romans 8:35 – 36
35 Who will separate us from Christ’s love? Will we be separated by trouble, or distress, or harassment, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?

36 As it is written,

We are being put to death all day long for your sake.

We are treated like sheep for slaughter.

Now before we continue with the last 3 verses – I want to pause here because this last verse I read is referencing a different scripture – Psalm 44.

Where God’s people are having a real moment with God. That resonates strongly with me.

Where God’s people are saying –

“Guess who will feel separated from Christ’s love in times of trouble and distress? US! Guess who feels like we are dying as danger and sword come our way??? US!!!! We feel separated from your love.

Where are you God? We haven’t forgotten you – or broken your covenant? Or turned our hearts away! Yet you are not here.

Psalm 44

It says in verse 23 and onward,

23 Wake up! Why are you sleeping, Lord?

    Get up! Don’t reject us forever!

24 Why are you hiding your face,

    forgetting our suffering and oppression?

25 Look: we’re going down to the dust;

    our stomachs are flat on the ground!

26 Stand up! Help us!

    Save us for the sake of your faithful love.

WAKE UP! STAND UP! GET UP! HELP US! SAVE US!

If this world is truly Christ-soaked then where are you?

I don’t know about you – but I definitely feel like this when I’m getting no indication that God is with me… when God feels literally light years away – when I am just looking at a blank screen.

Is it true God that you can really be for us? When life seems SOOOO against us?

Help us God! Could you just be a beacon of light? Not leave us fumbling in the void.

It’s interesting because in the preceding verses in Psalm 44 – the people remember that God had been kind to their ancestors…

“planted their ancestors – given them roots…”

Set their ancestors free – and it was the light of Christ’s face that saved them.

It is hard, hard, hard to imagine that there is anything but nothingness around us when we are struggling. Why can’t God just show God’s face when we need it most?

I don’t know.

But I do know that wherever and whenever and in whomever we have felt goodness, experienced love in those times – help, comfort, reprieve, rest, a snack… whatever is good and true and beautiful, that too is Christ.

Even if we have never ascribed the name God to it before.

A quick story to this point, and then I’ll close:

Right around the time my son started in the Kids programming across the way – he also started preschool in our town. And two afternoons a week, I’d go to pick him up at preschool and he would come running to me – yelling

“mommy, mommy you’re here!”

That winter though, a little boy in his class also started running to me at pick-up and calling me “Mommy….”

It was a heart-wrenching move – because his mom had died a few weeks earlier while out for a jog.

Something about me – held the likeness of his own mom in his eyes.

*And I’d close all the tabs that said:

“I don’t know if this is the best thing for this little guy – … psychologically – for the process of grief – for attachment issues in the long run….?”

I would just let him wrap his arms around my knees, and rub his little back a few times.

And then he’d toddle off to the playground.

Of course, no one corrected him – not the director of the preschool, or the teacher, or me, or my kid. No one said,

“that’s not your mommy!”

Because somehow in those moments we know – we can’t define or limit God by a word/or even a name. From the beginning YHWH (Yahweh) let the Jewish people know that no right word would ever contain God’s infinite mystery.

Any kind of real experience of God will usually feel like love.

It will connect you – at new depths and heights and dimensions – Richard Rohr says,

“In God you do not include less and less; you always see/perceive and love more and more. Anything that draws you out of yourself in a positive way – for all practical purposes – is operating as God for you at that moment – goodness, truth, beauty.” (52)

Your mom’s perfume, your grandmother’s death, your own birthday… is as much God – as the God we hope to encounter in church. And God celebrates this – God is not threatened, because God is free, not a God of control.

And in the moments that feel darkest to us – absent of God… God stands up, gets up, – wakes US up and nudges our hearts, our bodies, our minds, unto greater attention. It’s like it is to fumble in the dark – until our eyes eventually adjust … so too, can our spirits adjust to the love of God that is the very essence of our DNA and in the very matter upon which we live.

“Scientists have discovered that what looks like darkness to the human eye is actually filled with tiny particles called “neutrinos” slivers of light that pass through the entire universe. Apparently there is no such thing as total darkness anywhere, even though the human eye thinks there is. Knowing that the inner light of things cannot be eliminated or destroyed is deeply hopeful.” (Rohr)

*And so if my knees were a flicker of light for this little boy who lost his mom – or to his Dad who was always standing nearby at pick-up, so be it.

I’m not saying I was CHRIST in this scenario – not at all.

“I’m saying that Christ is everywhere; and that in Christ every kind of life has a meaning and has an influence on every other kind of life.” (3)

And this is as constant as the light that fills the universe.

The last 3 verses of the Romans passage I started say: (Romans 8: 37-39)

But in all these things we win a sweeping victory through the one who loved us. I’m convinced that nothing can separate us from God’s love in Christ Jesus our Lord: not death or life, not angels nor rulers, not present things or future things, not powers or height or depth, or any other thing that is created.

BECAUSE THE height and the depth and the width of Christ’s love adds galaxy-sized-dimensions that we can’t ever fully describe, measure or define it….

All we can do is live it. In this messy, incarnate, mysterious life.

And pay attention as the Advent Guide invites us to – to perceive the love of God with us and around us.

In a world where empire, intense political and militaristic landscapes and the killings of innocents are rampant… Jesus is born. A birth story that involves a sky, a star, AND astrologers that read the sky for God’s divine presence, and sheep and cows, and a donkey – all of creation – every creature somehow a part of the Good news, the ADVENT of love. . . And Jesus Christ is still being born – a love and a light that still compels us to discover God in new, stretching ways – today.

I don’t know what kind of space you are in today, friends… Maybe you are in grief, or maybe your voice is hoarse from shouting

“Stand up God!”

WAKE UP GOD!… or maybe this waiting of Advent, stirs in you a deep tiredness and weariness from waiting for so many things, for far too long … But maybe you are finding comfort and joy in a new shirt, or a lit candle at the end of a long day, or a stranger, or a poem or a bird or a tree at the end of your street…. – may you trust that it is the love of God – the

“illuminating light that enlightens all things…. “

Remembering that when Christ calls God’s self the

“Light of the World” (John 8:12),”

God is not telling us to look only to God – but to look out at ALL of LIFE. And see that the same love and glory of Christ that shone round ‘about the shepherds, that visited Mary in a quiet room, the light that spoke to Zechariah, that laced the very matter of creation since the beginning of time…

Is here too.

And is still coming.

Is still unfolding… in us and WITH US.

And is waiting to be seen everywhere else too.

Prayer to end:
Ephesians 3:14-19

Christ our Savior – today I ask that you strengthen our inner selves with the riches of your glory through the Spirit. 17 I ask that you live in our hearts through faith – and through doubt – and through suffering and through joy…. Strengthen our roots in love, the roots you planted our ancestors with – and give us the power that it takes to grasp love’s width and length, height and depth.. And help us to know the love of you – that is beyond knowledge so that we can be filled with your self-giving love – filled entirely with the fullness and light of God.

Resource:

The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For, and Believe

Book by Richard Rohr

BENEDICTION

It was so good to be with you today!

My friends – Jesus Christ awaits your partnership.

May you be surprisingly renewed in the days of coming darkness.

May you find new depths, new heights, new widths of Gods’ love…

In your wondering, in your desires, in your doubts, and in your joy…

As much as you do in the people nearby.

Enjoy your day

And

Enjoy what unknowns are awaiting your arrival.

May you be blessed,

Amen.

I look forward to being with you next week,

Same time, Same place.

Be well.

Place

Genesis 28:10-22

Jacob’s dream at Bethel

10 Jacob left Beer-sheba and set out for Haran.

11 He reached a certain place and spent the night there. When the sun had set, he took one of the stones at that place and put it near his head. Then he lay down there.

12 He dreamed and saw a raised staircase, its foundation on earth and its top touching the sky, and God’s messengers were ascending and descending on it.

13 Suddenly the Lord was standing on it[a] and saying, “I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying.

14 Your descendants will become like the dust of the earth; you will spread out to the west, east, north, and south. Every family of earth will be blessed because of you and your descendants.

15 I am with you now, I will protect you everywhere you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done everything that I have promised you.”

16 When Jacob woke from his sleep, he thought to himself, The Lord is definitely in this place, but I didn’t know it.

17 He was terrified and thought, This sacred place is awesome. It’s none other than God’s house and the entrance to heaven.

18 After Jacob got up early in the morning, he took the stone that he had put near his head, set it up as a sacred pillar, and poured oil on the top of it.

19 He named that sacred place Bethel,[b] though Luz was the city’s original name.

20 Jacob made a solemn promise: “If God is with me and protects me on this trip I’m taking, and gives me bread to eat and clothes to wear,

21 and I return safely to my father’s household, then the Lord will be my God.

22 This stone that I’ve set up as a sacred pillar will be God’s house, and of everything you give me I will give a tenth back to you.”

“But the most important thing about “place” is that we’re always in one. The underlying irony of calling God “HaMakom/ The Place” is that there isn’t just one place to encounter godliness–that can happen in any place. “Place” is here in this moment, right where we are. The metaphor of God as Place invites us to open ourselves to the potential godliness of any and every moment, in any place that we might find ourselves.” (81)

Fearful, difficult place

Do you have a relationship with a place? A certain place that you treasure, maybe a place you go back to again and again when you need a respite from whatever challenges you’re facing in life. Maybe it’s not the same place, but a kind of place, a place with trees and some natural water. Or even a favorite cafe or the Museum of Fine Art, where you can just immerse yourself in art and it does something to your soul, your spirit. Or maybe it’s a nook in your house, a little corner where you can hold a cup of tea and just look around and be still and present.

I did. When I was really little, in Korea. We lived in this really strange place. It was in this kind of a commercial building. The first floor was a bar. The second floor was a church. The third floor a business office of some sort. And the fourth floor was our house, the penthouse. It was a huge place. It had this long layout that was from the entrance, bathroom, huge living room, kitchen and dining and then two rooms. And because the apartment was so big, it was kind of a scary place. But I had this spot. It was right at the corner of a sectional couch at the far end of the living room. When you sat there you could see the whole place and nothing, no monsters or scary things could be behind you.

A place that makes you feel a certain way. A place that you interact with, where you experience things. A place that beholds you, envelopes you, that even when you think of it, you can smell or feel what you felt when you were there.

We’re in this series called God is Here , inspired by a book called God is Here: Reimagining the Divine by Rabbi Toba Spitzer and today’s metaphor is God as a Place. The series is full of these non-human or inanimate objects as God, God as Cloud, Rock, as Voice.

I love that our Christian church is in dialogue with other religions, in the pluralistic world we live today. If you were here during our Fall series where we went over our church’s core values, you know that humility is one of them. We listen and learn and are in conversation with other faith traditions and so it was of course a delight to engage with a notable female Jewish scholarship.

And while I’m working on this sermon, I’m hearing some ridiculous things on the news this week about Kanye West, a big hip hop artist, saying anti Semetic things. Let me just get this out of the way. As a Christian, when Kanye first came out with the song Jesus Walks With Me years ago that got played on the radio, I’ll be honest, it was cool. Hey I even like hearing that Justin Beiber goes to church. They’re talented musicians and a slice of American Christianity that we need to reckon with.

I know this might feel a bit off topic from God as a place, but this is important. Christian history holds so much pain and atrocities, that is a part of our faith tradition and history, that is not pretty and we don’t get to just not talk about it.

I remember in seminary my New Testament professor Eugene Park going on about how the road to Damascus, where St. Paul, the guy who wrote Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, and so forth, has traditionally been called Paul the convert or the moment of conversion when he heard the voice of Jesus. Professor Park was adamant about correction to this, went on and on, and I was like what’s the big deal.

He pressed that it was in fact not a conversion but a call to ministry. Because at the time, there was no Christianity and Christ followers were considered a SECT of Judaism. Christianity was a sect, an extension of Judaism. We’re cousins! We’re all one family! The notion of antisemitism came from Christian theology and even the way some read the Bible saying that the Jews killed Jesus. You guys, Jesus WAS Jewish! The modern day Christians and the Christian church need to clarify, you, me, us, Reservoir Church, needs to clarify not only ideologies and sentiments but theologically and biblically that antisemitism is wrong and that as Christians we need to denounce antisemitism.

The Jewish scholarship and Rabbanic teachings have so much to teach and inform Christian theology. They’ve been studying some of these texts in the Old Testament much longer than Christian biblical scholars have. We’re inextricably connected in our stories. Without an open, humble, receptive, teachable spirited dialogue with Judaism in Christian faith endeavor, is like trying to understand my mom with talking only to me and not my sister. She would be livid and frankly it would be inaccurate.

Can we celebrate a YES AND faith, where it’s not this or that, but a yes and. Christians believed that Jesus revealed something really unique about God through the person of Jesus. Yes and, the first and third person of the trinity, God the Creator and the Holy Spirit has so much offer that we have been missing out on cause we’re so bent on high Christology that we’ve actually discriminated against two other persons of the trinity, leaving us with a not as full a picture of God as we could have if we would only be more open to the mysteries of a grand and expansive picture of God that includes diversity of perspectives. Let’s stop just focusing only on one revelation and being adamant, this is it! I’ve found it! Great! So have they, and him, and her. Ask them about their experiences. It will only enlighten you, even frustrate you, which is a path for spiritual growth. If that’s what you want.

So, God as a place. Let’s try a minute, and set aside personifications of God, for which we have had many interactions with, Jesus being one, and seeing God as a Father, Lord, etc. Which of course produced many beautiful revelations about who God is, but I’m thinking of Jesus saying in so many parts of the New Testament scriptures, Jesus is like, I’m right here explaining things so plainly and you still don’t understand? If you have seen Jesus, you have seen God, yes and there is so much mystery and hiddenness still yet. So let us suspend God as a person like figure for a moment and consider this metaphor of God as a place.

In this Genesis text, Jacob has an encounter with God in this place. It’s a moment in his life actually, where it’s not like he went to a church to worship or on some kind of silent retreat at a Zen center. He was on the run. The section before this story in the Bible is subtitled, “Jacob Escapes Esau’s Fury.” His brother was actually trying to kill him to be exact. Jacob stops at this spot at night, just so he can get some rest, grabs a rock for a pillow. And it is there, in the midst of drama, fear for his life, probably in a panic, he has a dream.

It says,

“He was terrified and thought, This sacred place is awesome.”

Spitzer says,

“in the space of just nine verses, the word for “place,” makom–is repeated six times. This is a clue that this word is very important.”

She goes on to say,

“And while Jacob understands “the place” to be a gateway to the heavens, the word describing his dream points repeatedly to the earth, to the rocks and the dirt on which he is lying. This profound experience of God’s presence doesn’t happen up at the top of the ladder but down here on the ground.”

This profound experience of God’s presence doesn’t happen up at the top of the ladder but down here on the ground.

I resonate with this, kind of temperamentally, or rather probably more culturally, I don’t know but it’s something deeply rooted in me.

When I worship, I hardly hardly raise my hands. My body just does not do this. When I’m really connecting with God, it’s hardly a feeling of elation or even joy. Maybe I’m a bit melancholic. Maybe you find that hard to believe cause I’m always so smiley with y’all on Sunday mornings. What I love to do when I pray, or even “praise” I don’t know even the word praise is like weird, when I sing about God, what I really want to do is this: get into a fetal position, hurl over and rock back and forth.

This was the position of my mother in prayer in early morning prayers that they went to at 6am every single day of their working ministry (my father was a pastor, but mother was a plus one) of their life. It’s actually a Buddhist tradition, the early morning prayer, that Korean adapted when missionaries came to Korea. Early morning prayers were always so full of wailing, crying, moaning, and beating of their chests and ground.

Spitzer kind of talks about this too, saying,

“I find that people associate “spiritual” with “pleasant.” They assume that all spiritual experiences share a positive vibe, consisting either of ecstatic joy or blissful serenity….”

and goes on to say that

“Jacob is in quite a difficult emotional place when he has his dream. He is vulnerable and alone, and he doesn’t seem entirely reassured even after he receives God’s wonderful promises. Upon waking from his dream, Jacob is still fearful and mistrustful. Yet he realizes that he is in the presence of Something godly and powerful. He learns that there is godliness even in places where we wish we didn’t have to be.”

Have you ever found yourself in places where you wish you didn’t have to be? Are you in a place now where you wish you weren’t at? Maybe a difficult work environment. A home that is falling apart that you can’t afford to fix or change the situation. Or wherever you find yourself, you find yourself there stressed, longing to be elsewhere?

Rabbi Spitzer says,

“the most important thing about “place” is that we’re always in one.”

It’s like, wherever you go, there you are. When work is stressful, and family life is difficult, and friendships are tricky–it’s not the place, or the situation, the common denominator is you! Just kidding…. Spitzer says, well,

“that’s the underlying irony of calling God, “HaMakom/ The Place” is that there isn’t just one place–that can be any place.”

Wherever you are, there is The Place. God is there.

I also like how HaMakom, kind of sounds like, Ah My Home. That’s just cause I like play on words. And speaking of play on words, Spitzer says,

“Jewish tradition associates the divine name Hamakom with comfort and compassion. This may be because the Hebrew word for compassion comes from the root for womb, which is the first “place” we all find ourselves in.”

Womb. Home. The Place.

In the Jewish tradition, they would often use the divine name, HaMakom as a blessing,

“May Hamakom comfort you among all the mourners of Zion.”, “May HaMakom / The Place have compassion upon you and all who are sick.”

It reminds me of the times, when I felt like places, institutions, systems, organizations, even churches and family have failed me, and the promise of capitalism, vocation, this modern day social environment that I was supposed to thrive in, I was failing. When I was graduating college with no job lined up, my university failed me. When I was alone with no community around, my college campus group and the Korean church had failed me.

When I felt useless, having trouble finding even motivation to do simple tasks like get up in the morning to wash my face, I felt like my parents failed me to prepare me for this hard cruel world. All I had was the ground I was sitting on. Everyone let me down. The only thing that was catching my tears was the carpet in my room. So there I cuddled with the wet rug, crying out to God, where are you?

I love the invitation in yoga at the end, the Shavasana. The teacher usually says something like, there’s nothing for you to do, except to feel the ground that’s holding you up. Grateful that without any effort it’s supporting you. All you have to do is trust it and release. And I’m like, just puddy after a great work out, just so grateful for the ground. I get it Jacob, this place is awesome.

No matter what you’re going through, wherever you are, May HaMakom, the Place behold you, support you, catch your tears, cuddle you when you feel alone. May that kind of God be real to you. May the Place that is always there remind you, that God is here just as real as the ground we’re sitting and standing on right now.

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

Salvation and Liberation: A Juneteenth Sermon

The other day, I was meeting with some rising leaders from throughout the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization (GBIO). Reservoir’s one of dozens of communities that work together in GBIO to promote healthy interfaith relationships and secure social justice together. GBIO is also one of the organizations our church funds through our shared financial giving as a community. Every $10 you give to Reservoir, a dollar goes straight back into the community through GBIO and other means. Anyway, right now one of the things we’re working on in GBIO is better treatment and services for returning citizens, residents of Massachusetts who have done jail time and are returning to civilian life.

I had a chance to speak with one of these returning citizens last week and there were two things going on in his life that he was excited about.

One was that he was moving. Which, I don’t know, when I talk with folks moving into a new rental around here, they’re not always thrilled. Because, one moving is a pain, and two, these days when we move, our rent is often more than we can afford. But he was happy because he had found a landlord willing to let him sign a lease on an apartment. Landlords, you may or may not know, can run criminal background checks on potential tenants. Private landlords, government housing, apartment complexes, they can all legally deny rentals to someone with a criminal history, regardless of the nature of the crime or the punishment. So my new acquaintance was happy he had found a place to live, any place.

The second thing he was telling me about was the committee he was co-leading at his church. It was an important planning committee, it involved a ton of volunteer time and responsibility, and he was just thrilled to be doing this work for his church.

And I’m thinking to myself: who’s thrilled about spending more time in a church committee meeting. One of you has literally told me: Steve, I’ll do anything for the church as long as it doesn’t involve going to any meetings. But then it struck me, oh, what these two stories have in common is that in both situations, the lease and the church committee, what’s going on is this man is being treated like a person.

He’s not the sum of his worst mistakes anymore. He’s not a failed CORI check. He’s able to move freely and choose where he wants to live, to whom he wants to pay rent. He’s able to lend his voice and talents and body to his church community and have that be valued and respected.

He’s being treated like a person.

This is what he hoped getting free again would be like for him, even if it’s not the case in many areas of his life.

Let me put this in Christian theological terms for just a second. What is salvation for fellow GBIO leaders? Is it being forgiven for his past sins? Well, yes, sometimes, in part. But he’s paid dearly for his past already. At this point, a lot of salvation for him isn’t just about forgiveness, it’s about healing and it’s about liberation.

It’s after being diminished and dehumanized again and again, finding the treasure of being recognized as a person.

This week and next, partly inspired by Juneteenth, I’m going to speak about the struggle to become persons, the struggle to treat others as persons, and the important struggle to just be a person ourselves. Today, we look at how this word that is so important in the Christian story, salvation, has taken on too narrow of a meaning. Salvation is not merely the forgiveness of sins. Salvation is also liberation and healing. It’s getting free and getting well. And salvation is God’s work, and our work in partnership with God, of treating one another as free persons who deserve the chance to be well.

We see this range of salvation in the framing of the four gospels.

Take Matthew, for instance. In the first chapter, Mother Mary has the dream about Jesus, who is to be a savior, and it says

he will save people from their sins.

But then in Matthew 2, Baby Jesus is cast as the new Moses, Moses being the great leader of the past who led people out of slavery in Egypt into the promised land.

And the gospel of Matthew sticks with this theme of Jesus as the new Moses persistently, for many chapters. So we see that the salvation God is working through Jesus, the being saved from sins is more than just forgiveness, it’s a work of freedom and a work of healing, both personally and for a community or a collective as well.

The gospel of Luke is even more specific.

Luke doesn’t frame Jesus as a new Moses, if anything he paints him as a kind of new Caesar, a better, more just leader than the head of the Roman empire.

And in Luke, when Jesus announces his mission to his hometown, he quotes – and edits as he does so – lines from the prophet Isaiah about freedom, healing, and justice. From the fourth chapter, Jesus says:

Luke 4:18-21 (Common English Bible)

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

    because the Lord has anointed me.

He has sent me to preach good news to the poor,

    to proclaim release to the prisoners

    and recovery of sight to the blind,

    to liberate the oppressed,

19     and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

20 He rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the synagogue assistant, and sat down. Every eye in the synagogue was fixed on him.

21 He began to explain to them, “Today, this scripture has been fulfilled just as you heard it.”

Jesus says:

This freedom and healing, this experiencing of God’s favor, is what I’m here for, what God has given me power to do.

And for a hot second, the hometown crowd is kind of pleased – healing, freedom, this year of liberation, sounds good, bring it on. Until Jesus says he’s going to start with their enemies, until he tells them it’s not just for them, but for the whole Roman Empire, their enemies and oppressors included, and then they drive him out of town, because they don’t like that so much.

That’s alright with Jesus, though, as in the next several chapters of Luke, we see him steadily going about this work, first to his fellow Jews, and then to the Gentile outsiders, Romans included.

He starts the work of freeing, healing, liberating those the world has diminished and held captive.

He offers working class folks struggling with their jobs, laboring under immense tax burdens a more fulfilling vocation.

He meets with someone who is estranged from community because of a disease that carries stigma, and he heals the disease and restores him back to community as well.

Jesus meets a person whose disability isn’t accomodated in his time and place and treats the person not just as disabled but as a whole person, with a complex set of spiritual and emotional and physical needs, and he tends to them all, empowering a fuller life in community for this person.

And then he attends a dinner party of social and spiritual outcasts, helping reshape their lives, showing them they matter to him and they matter to God.

That’s Chapter 5 of Luke.

In Chapter 6, Jesus reteaches the customs and law of his culture so they’ll be transformative for freedom, life, and justice, rather than a burden to bear or tools for self-righteousness.

And then in Chapter 7, he meets with the messengers of his enemy, a Roman military leader – the kind of person who had the power to harm and harass Jesus, the kind of person who would eventually arrest and execute Jesus, and he too Jesus treats like a person in need of freedom and healing. He sees him not only as an enemy but as a helpless, grieving father, and he restores hope and life to this man’s family.

And on it goes, for several chapters, Jesus working a mission of healing and freedom throughout his hometown region, until in Chapter 9, he decides to travel to the big city of Jerusalem, to do this work on a larger scale.

Let me some up what I’m saying theologically and then close with a few implications.

What I’m saying about God is that God loves to forgive sins, and God also loves to set people and communities free. God loves to help people and communities heal and become well.

Here’s how a theologian whose work I study, Andrew Sung Park, puts it. The gospel of Jesus, the good news of Jesus is repentance and forgiveness for the sinner. People and communities that harm, hurt, and oppress are told by God they can be forgiven. And free from the burden of guilt, with the help of God and friends, they can choose better, more righteous and just ways forward for their lives, their communities, their culture, their country.

So the message of Jesus for a tax collector who is ripping off his own people is to tell him,

You too are a child of God. You are seen and valued.

And that tax collector rejoices in his forgiveness and acceptance and also makes amends – he either quits his job or learns to do it more justly and he restores the wealth that has been taken, not just by him but by others too. He does reparations. I preached on this earlier this spring. Forgiveness and amends is part of the gospel for people and communities.

But then Andrew Sung Park says, the gospel of Jesus, the good news of Jesus, is not just repentance and forgiveness for the sinner. It is also healing and freedom for the sinned against. People and communities that have been harmed, hurt, and oppressed are told by God that they deserve better. They are empowered with the help of God and friends to seek healing and freedom.

Let’s play this out for the returning citizen I told you about at the top.

The gospel of Jesus is for him forgiveness of sins. I’m not getting into the details today, but he did something wrong, like most of us, he probably has done a lot of wrong in life, a lot of harm. But for one set of these wrongs, he also broke the law. He was caught, arrested, tried, and convicted and did jail time. Some attempts at amends and restoration were made as well by the system.

He also is forgiven by God in Christ. God doesn’t hold his sins against him anymore, he is released from his guilt and encouraged to do right in the world in the ways he did wrong before.

But as a person who was diminished and demeaned by the criminal justice system, and who again and again as a returning citizen, is treated like a blemish on society, not a person, he is also invited with the help of God and friends to seeking healing and wellness, belonging and meaning, to have a good and whole life restored to him, and to have the cooperation of his community in doing so.

Forgiveness and repentance for sinners and oppressors, healing and freedom foro the sinned against and oppressed, all part of the good news of Jesus.

Let me dial into three implications of this holistic gospel for a moment, how this teaches us how to read, how it gives us a compass, and how it answers our prayers.

One, this holistic gospel teaches us how to read history.

This gospel tells us that the least Christian parts of history have nothing to do with the rise and fall of the church. They have to do with where people and communities don’t cooperate with, but actively resist, God’s longing for people’s healing and freedom.

This seriously reframes the founding of the United States, for instance. Many of its Chrisitan founders told the story of America as pilgrims of God seeking prosperity and freedom in the promised land that God had destined for them to control.

But when we know that they went about settling here and achieving that prosperity by spreading disease and death to the first peoples of the land, through trading and enslaving descendants of Africa and working them to the death without pay or rights, and through trying to block non-Christians (Asians in particular) from living in this land, the story starts to sound more anti-Christ than Christian.

So the gospel tells us that the most Christian parts of history also don’t necessarily have to do with the rise and fall of the church. They have to do with where people and communities cooperate with God’s longing for healing and freedom, enacting God’s vision for liberation into the Beloved Community of God.

On these terms, the most Christian holiday in our calendar certainly isn’t Independence Day, the 4th of July. It just might be Juneteenth! Celebrating the beginning of freedom in this country for the descendants of Africa becomes a holy thing.

It’s the stuff of Jesus in Luke 4 – proclaiming release to the prisoners, setting captives free, and proclaiming the year of God’s favor for those who only knew heartbreak, injustice, and suffering. It’s celebrating, and moving forward,. God’s favor to again honor the personhood of people – the personhood that was always there but that others failed to recognize.

So celebrate Juneteenth, my friends, today or tomorrow on the actual day. And celebrate remembering that the good will of God is more Juneteenth in our country. It’s restoring personhood and justice, healing and freedom, to those who have it honored least.

Two, reading history, but also a compass for the work of God.

God’s work God wants to be doing in the world is forgiveness and repentance and freedom and healing, making people and communities well.

I think this inites us on Juneteenth to a quick inventory of the journey of healing and freedom in our lives.

Is there anywhere that you are complicit in others’ lack of flourishing? Any ways that as a parent, a spouse, a friend, a manager, a citizen that your actions lead to less healing, less wellness, and less freedom for others? If so, God longs to lead you into change for the healing and freedom of the people and communities in your life.

This kind of reflection for me, for instance, means that when I recognize that as a dad, my words or actions mean less wellness for one of my kids, I’ve got to apologize and try to change my ways as quickly as possible.

It means for me as a pastor and resident of Greater Boston too that it’s critical for me to engage parts of my time in speaking and action for a healthier, more just Chrisitian faith in this country, and for healthier and more just communities.

And the flip side of this is our compass for the work of God in our lives too. Is there anywhere that others are complicit in your lack of flourishing? Any ways that as a child, a spouse, a friend, an employee, a resident of this country that other people’s actions lead to less healing, less wellness, and less freedom for you? If so, God longs to empower you, with the help of God and friends, to find more healing and freedom in your life.

That stubborn work of therapy to get free from childhood wounds – that is the holy work of God.

That setting up clarity and protection for yourself when you work under an abusive manager, as some of my friends do, and that time you spend looking for another job – that is the holy work of God.

I talked about Jesus in Matthew as a new Moses, inaugurating a new journey of healing and freedom. Well, it’s said about the Exodus, Moses’ deliverance of Israel, that it took 40 days to lead the people out of slavery, but 40 years to get the slavery out of the people. Think about our country, a war of four years to free African Americans from slavery, but 157 years ago, and we’re still trying to get the oppressive ways of American toward the descendants of Africa out of the this country.

40 days to secure the birth of healing and freedom, but 40 years to have that healing and freedom really become a way of being in the world.

That’s true for every good work of God for healing and freedom. It takes time and process, but it’s worth it. Because the promised land is on the other side!

Lastly, this gospel of healing and freedom is an answer to our prayers regarding the will of God.

God’s will for our lives is forgiveness and repentance toward goodness and life, and it is freedom and wellness for us and our communities. It’s the work of justice, the honoring of personhood.

Let me close reading how the letter of James puts this.

James 2:14-18 (Common English Bible)

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.

18 Someone might claim, “You have faith and I have action.” But how can I see your faith apart from your actions? Instead, I’ll show you my faith by putting it into practice in faithful action.

Faith means justice. Faith means action. Good news faith means joining God in seeing all God’s children as bearing the image of God. Doing this, day after day, year after year, getting more whole and more free together, is always the will of God for each of us and all our communities, every day.

We’ll pick this up next week, as we talk about this on a more personal level, getting free, getting just, living into our humble, beautiful lives in the struggle to live like persons.

Let’s pray.

The Good News Opportunity of Reparations

The other day I was at my kids’ high school and I went into the office of a program director where I saw some calligraphy on the wall that was made by my old mentor, Bak Fun Wong. It was a reminder of what an influential educator he was locally, certainly very influential to me. I see signs of him everywhere.

Bak Fun was my boss for nine years. He gave me the opportunity to teach and helped shape a really unique, beautiful school in which to learn that craft and to learn about leadership too.

A few years into my work with Bak Fun, when I was taking on some new responsibilities in the school and starting my path toward becoming a principal, I took a road trip with him and a couple other members of our team to a school in New York City we were observing and learning from.

And on the ride home, as we cruised along the highway, I asked Bak Fun:

You’ve had a profound influence on so many people. What is your leadership secret?

Bak Fun thought for a moment, and then he said-

Sure. I can tell you. Leaders don’t make a mess. That’s level one leadership. And level two is that leaders clean up the mess they make.

And then he stopped.

And I thought: That’s it? Don’t make a mess. Clean up your mess. There’s some tension there. And it sounds like etiquette in the lunchroom, not leadership wisdom. When it comes to talking, I’m kind of a maximalist. I’m trying to learn how to preach like 20 minute sermons rather than half hour ones or more, for instance, and it’s not easy for me.

Bak Fun, though, was more of a minimalist. He’d choose his words carefully, but say things you’d keep thinking and wondering about later, not unlike Jesus actually.

So I was used to these moments like this, but still, I asked:

Is that all?

And after a minute, Bak Fun said,

No, there’s a level three leadership too, which is that leaders clean up other people’s messes.

And he turned away. That was it.

Don’t make a mess.

Clean up your mess.

And clean up other people’s messes.

That’s leadership. Or maybe that’s responsible moral living in the world. Or maybe that’s part of the point of being a spiritual or religious person in the world.

The faith tradition that Reservoir is part of, the Christian tradition, is known for a lot of other things. When people have been polled in recent years about what comes to mind when they think of Christians, they often answer: judgemental, and hypocritical.

And I get it. A lot of Christians have tried to take what they see as the moral high ground on a few issues, without any curiosity about how other people, even other Christians, might have good reason to see things differently. And this happens without backing up that aggressive moralism with loving, kind action that makes communities better, that cleans up messes rather than making them.

Well, we at Reservoir and others are trying to center the very opposite approach. To grow lives of faith in inclusive, diverse communities where we are humble and open about our dogma, but where we are deeply committed to healing and repair in the world.

Part of Reservoir’s beloved community vision is to empower wholeness, love, and justice in our lives and in the communities where we live and work, so that our expression of the Christian faith will be beautiful, and so that it will promote genuine flourishing.

We want to be people that try not to make messes, and that clean up our own mess when we make them. And maybe we can even go level three and try to clean up other people’s messes a little too.

One of the words in our cultural and political discourse for this cleaning up of messes is the word reparations.

And that’s the topic of today’s sermon: the good news opportunity of reparations.

We’re going to read a gospel text from the life of Jesus through the lens of reparations.

And then we’re going to try to paint a picture of reparations on a personal, an institutional, and a national level. Then we’ll close with a couple really practical ways we can live the teaching, if we’re so compelled.

Here’s the text. It’s called the story of the rich young ruler, from the gospel of Luke. It goes like this:

Luke 18:18-27 (Common English Bible)

18 A certain ruler asked Jesus, “Good Teacher, what must I do to obtain eternal life?”

19 Jesus replied, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except the one God.

20 You know the commandments: Don’t commit adultery. Don’t murder. Don’t steal. Don’t give false testimony. Honor your father and mother.”

21 Then the ruler said, “I’ve kept all of these things since I was a boy.”

22 When Jesus heard this, he said, “There’s one more thing. Sell everything you own and distribute the money to the poor. Then you will have treasure in heaven. And come, follow me.”

23 When he heard these words, the man became sad because he was extremely rich.

24 When Jesus saw this, he said, “It’s very hard for the wealthy to enter God’s kingdom!

25 It’s easier for a camel to squeeze through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter God’s kingdom.”

26 Those who heard this said, “Then who can be saved?”

27 Jesus replied, “What is impossible for humans is possible for God.”

I’ve struggled with this passage over the years. One person I used to study the Bible with in my 20s talked about the wiggle room we all try to create with Jesus. Because Jesus says and does so many provocative things, and it’s easy to try to wiggle out of our discomfort with him.

Like here. Jesus asks this potential student if he’s been living God’s commands because to do what God says is to have life. It’s good to say yes to God. And this young adult is like, yes, since I was a kid, I have been doing all these things. And Jesus doesn’t dispute that. That’s interesting.

But Jesus had been very specific with his words. He quoted the second half of the 10 commandments, the ones that in other places he summed up by saying:

God’s command is to love your neighbor as yourself.

And he left out the first half entirely, the first half which he summarized:

Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

So, if you’re following me here, when Jesus is like, you still lack one thing, he’s saying:

You may love your neighbor, but your path to loving God is to sell all your stuff and give it to those who are poor.

And you can see what the guy is like: Seriously? What kind of rabbi, pastor, imam whatever is like: I’ll know you really love God when you sell all your stuff.

Maybe a cult leader?

It’s hard to hear from Jesus.

So we wiggle.

The most common interpretation of this passage I’ve heard is that:

Oh, well, if you love your money, if you put too much trust in your own wealth and resources so that you can’t trust God, then God’s going to want you to let go of your stuff so you can love God. And Jesus must have known that this young executive, or bureaucrat, or whoever he was, was one of these people.

Which is ridiculous.

Because one, what wealthy person – and by wealthy I mean me and most of us in this room who live in America at nowhere near the poverty line – how many of us hear this story and are like:

Fine, Jesus, you’ve got me, I’m the greedy, money-loving, too-attached-to-my-possessions person you’re speaking to. I’ll sell it all. You’ve got me.

With some beautiful exceptions, people don’t do that. We wiggle. We’re like, whoever Jesus is talking to, it’s not me. He’s talking about the millionaires, or if you’re a millionaire, which many people are these days, you think, oh, he’s talking about the billionaires, or if you’re a billionaire, you think Jesus is just talking to the greedy, obnoxious, godless ones who are out trying to be Twitter.

Also, Jesus generalizes with his disciples right after the guy walks away. Jesus looks at his students and he’s like:

I get it, it’s next to impossible for the wealthy to follow me. Wealthy people have a hard time living in the beloved community, like as hard as getting a camel through the eye of a needle.

I’ve heard some weirdo wiggle room theories about Jesus couldn’t have possibly meant what he said here too. But he said it. Elsewhere he said

You cannot love God and money.

Spoiler alert. I can’t tell you exactly what Jesus meant, either here or anywhere else. Not my place. After all, Jesus said he wasn’t trying to be understood so much as followed. Jesus wasn’t looking for anyone to fully get him, he wants to get under our skin, to delight and intrigue and to spook and to woo and to compel us out of our slumber into connection with a living God and out of our death into abundant life!

So when Jesus seems hard to you, don’t make up some easy way to close the book. Sit with the discomfort, trust that a loving God has life for you in Jesus’ words, hang in and don’t just walk away.

Alright back to this teaching. This winter, I heard the best teaching I ever heard on this passage, so simple and obvious and true to my mind that I can’t believe I’d never heard it before.

It was a reflection by Chris Hoklotubbe, who’s a professor of religion and who is also a Chocktaw. And Hoklotubbe, reading this passage through Native American eyes, is like: Oh, this is a passage about land and about reparations. He points out that all wealth comes from land, but that this was especially direct in the ancient world.

In Jesus’ culture, if you were rich – especially if you were young and rich like this person – then you were either an emperor or something, or you’d inherited a bunch of land. And with that land, you could collect rents, and trade olive oil, and stuff like that. And the way people collected a bunch of land was usually that people with capital would make high interest loans to poor farmers, and when they couldn’t pay back their loans, you’d take their land.

So Jesus, and everyone around him, would look at this young guy, rich in land, and know that he’d inherited land that was gotten at other’s expense.

It’s not his fault, he’s young, he didn’t do it, his daddy did, or his grandparents, or the generation before them, but Jesus looks at him and says:

You can love God by making things whole.

It’s not just about this one person’s heart, it’s about a whole community in disrepair, a community where most people don’t own land and resources, and this one owns a lot, and the injustice of previous generations made that possible.

And Jesus doesn’t blame him, but he invites him into love. Jesus doesn’t say it’s his fault, but he does invite him to consider his responsibility to do justice. Jesus says: love God, by making things whole.

And on that day, it’s too much for him. He walks away.

How do we not walk away, friends, when Jesus comes calling for us to walk in the ways of love and justice? How do we be people who know that it’s right to clean up the messes we’ve made, and it’s loving and just and right to clean up other people’s messes, especially when we’ve inherited them?

Or hey, let’s say the mess has been made on us and our ancestors. How do we be people who know that we deserve repair, that we are worthy of being made whole?

How can we all embrace reparations as part of the good news of Jesus?

I’ve read experts on this, I’ve talked to experts on this. But I am not an expert.We also don’t have a lot of time, so I can’t answer the question entirely, but let me share a couple bits of what I’m learning.

Personally.

Years ago, when I was a principal, I started looking at the data at the time on the risks and hardships some LGBTQ youth were experiencing – rates of depression and bullying and other harm. And I was sobered and sad, but not shocked because I remembered my own youth and how brutal we all were about sometimes about difference, and how unsafe it was to be different in your sexual identity or orientation. And I thought, along with members of our faculty and student leaders and other administrators, we have got to make our school safer, less homophobic, a better place for the flourishing of our LGBTQ youth.

And it was clear to me that this was a must and that if anyone objected, we were just going to say your personal viewpoints are not what is at stake here, but the health and welfare of our youth.

And this was probably especially important to me because of the time and place I grew up in, where we called all kinds of people and things gay, and we were all utterly homophobic. The only childhood friends I knew who came out did so after they had grown up and moved on, because there was no way that environment, the one I was part of, was safe for that.

And in my early years as a Christian following Jesus, in my teens through my 20s, the form of the faith I knew taught that you could love LGBTQ folks like anyone else, but the expectation was they would keep that locked up inside, because the expression of their love and sexuality was disordered, not God’s best, all that. Now I’ve moved beyond those ways of thinking, those ways of reading the scriptures. But I was once part of them, and they’ve been dominant in the past, and in many places still in the present. So it may not be my fault, but I have a responsibility.

So for me, being part of work to make a school safer and more welcoming for LGBTQ people, or being part of work to make the church safer and more affirming for the experiences of LGBTQ people isn’t some special kindness, it’s a form of reparations, of cleaning up of messes made.

Which effects how you do things, by the way.

At my school, for instance, it was suggested that a particular organization, led by LGBTQ people, conduct training for our faculty and workshops for our students. And to be honest, I didn’t agree with all of the views or tactics of this organization, but I’ve been taught that when you’re making reparations, part of what is required is giving up control. You don’t get to call the shots anymore for the person or group that has been harmed and deserving of repair. It’s their hour of agency.

This has continued in my life in this area, in looking at where our family giving goes, at how we make our church a better place, and in other areas, and for me, healing and repair in my relationships and the church’s relationship to LGBTQ people has consistently meant listening to and learning from the voices of LGBTQ people and seeking to make a holy yes to using my life to try to do make repair, to love God by making things a little more whole.

OK, that’s very personal. And I focused on this for a reason, because most of the repair we do is personal. It’s about making amends and repairing when we’ve hurt someone, and about doing things in our finances and jobs and communities to see legacies and dynamics that are broken, and to act to make things whole.

But when it comes to reparations, this isn’t mostly what we talk about. Reparations mostly comes up because of growing movements in our times to ask how it is our country can repair the damage done by centuries of race-based discrimination and violence, particularly toward Black Americans.

And to be honest, I used to think – like most Americans – this was impossible. I’m a citizen of a nation built on injustice, built with the hands and bodies of unpaid Black Americans, built literally on top of the blood of Native Americans.

How could any of this ever be made whole? How can there ever be repair? Maybe it’s best to forget and move on.

But one, that’s a super-white thing to say and two, didn’t Jesus say what is impossible for humans is possible for God.

Why bother worshiping God, why bother following Jesus if we’re not going to invest our time and hope and love in impossible things.

You know, swing big with God or go home.

What is impossible for humans is possible with God.

And there are some exciting things going on in the arena or reparations and repair.

There was just the release of the big Harvard report, about their wealth and their ties to slavery and to centuries of discrimination, and about what they’re going to do about it. And sure, the $100 million involved might not be nearly enough, but it’s a $100 million dollars more than yesterday, right? It’s a move forward.

And there are some exciting national conversations going on about what reparations can look like for the centuries of violence and inequities toward Black Americans in our country. Inch by inch, we’re getting closer to serious proposals being considered. And those conversations are happening locally too. Looking at Boston’s present day segregation and wealth inequities, and how we got here, and what we’re going to do about it.

A good friend of mine has been working for King Boston, who’s been taking the lead on local conversations about reparations and becoming a more racially just and inclusive, and equitable city. There’s a great series of conversations and events happening next month on this front called Embrace Ideas Festival.

I don’t know how we’ll be made whole in this country, friends. The violence and the wrong are all so old and deep and persistent. But what’s impossible with humans is possible with God. We live in hope. So it’s worth our time to invest in hope too.

So what do we do?

Well, first the institutional. Leaders don’t walk away from messes. They clean them up, whether they personally made them or not. And followers of Jesus, when we here talk about reparations, ought to lead with love and curiosity, not defensiveness or dismissiveness.

So whether it be in national politics or with a company or institution you’re part of, when reparations come up, or questions about discrimination or inequity, past or presnet, and how to make things right, I strongly encourage you to not start with questions like “who deserves what?” and “what will it cost?” Those are common questions people start with, and common ways of zero sum thinking where we assume that if one person wins, someone else has got to lose, and why should I lose if it’s not my fault?

And maybe that’s where the rich young ruler started too – like why should I have to give up my wealth based off something my ancestors did? Doesn’t Jesus know how hard I’ve worked in my life to treat people right?

But when it comes to communities that are in disrepair, who deserves what? And what will it cost? Are bad starting questions. Better starting questions would be:

How do I enter the kingdom of God?

What does love look like?

What will bring about beloved community?

What will make us whole?

We may or may not be at fault for the inequities – many of the race-based – in our country, but we all bear a responsibility, and if we’re part of historically privileged, and historically oppressing communities, we bear extra responsibility, just as if we’re part of historically underprivileged and historically oppressed communities, we deserve repair. We deserve amends.

And personally, when we realize we’ve done wrong, whenever we have occasion to say sorry, let’s do two other things, every time.

Let’s tell the truth about what happened. Because without the truth, it’s hard for us to be set free – either the person who hurt or the person who was hurt. So tell the truth.
And two, when you say sorry, offer a way to make things right, to make amends. Or if you really can’t think of any way at all, ask the other person if there is anything you can do to make things better because they deserve that and that is the least you can do.

When we do that, we don’t need to hang our heads and go away sad anymore. We can be made whole with our neighbors, and we can know that Jesus is proud of the love he sees in our hearts as well.

The Ordinary Waters

Hi everyone – so good to be with you all! I’m Ivy, a Pastor here.

I’m really enjoying this time of Lent that we are in, there’s something about the water imagery, Water of Life, that is centering our season – and the combination of our lengthening days of light, and warmer temps that are making me feel a little more alive in the day-to-day, this ordinary life. Which, I can’t say has been holistically true over the stretch of the last two years. I hope in part – some of that could feel true to you too.

Each week of Lent we are focusing on a particular theme related to water. The first week were waters of baptism, last week Steve talked about the waters of overwhelm. And today – as we enter our third week of Lent – we’ll talk about ordinary waters. What about the ordinary? The day in and day out aspects of life? How do we find ourselves nourished, ALIVE – rejuvenated and renewed by God? How do we find the sacred in the ordinary?

Over the last two years perhaps our version of “the ordinary” has taken on a new sheen. So often we loop the “ordinary” into our regular routines, patterns – often mundane ones that don’t stand out as particularly special moments. The walk to the bus stop, the laundromat, the dishes, the finding the other sock, the washing the hands, the doing the things that have always been done the way things have been done.

And so much of this was disrupted during the pandemic (and still). Our “normal” ways of doing things were disrupted.

But I want to make a subtle distinction and say that actually our “ordinary” wasn’t disrupted.

You see the ordinary has always held all the components of life – the “normal” ways of routines, the “overwhelming” stress and threats that Steve talked about last week, the joy and the tears, and the smiles and the grief and the fear and the “meh.” All of it.

But the pandemics have revealed that our “ordinary” lives weren’t really “normal” all along.

The “ordinary” is not only rich, and layered and vital to our spiritual life…it is where our spiritual life takes place. And it’s helpful to see and embrace all of it. Because it’s where all new possibility exists – at our fingertips, under our feet – in the very air we breathe. The potential for something new, different, transformational.

And yet when we equate ordinary with normal and keep seeking for the normal to return, to be re-established – the way things were… we often find ourselves coming up empty. Dry. And we become thirsty for something extraordinary… something separate from what our ordinary lives seemingly don’t offer us.

It’s like me searching for a new yoga class that will give me that full stretch that it once did – when I was 10 years younger.

Or a new friendship that can fulfill you the way that old friend did.

Or a new spiritual practice that gives me that full sensory experience of God – that immediate connection to God – as it used to.

This is what we will press into a bit today – through our sermon – but also throughout the week in the Lenten guide.

We’ll consider how it is that God invites us into the ordinariness of our lives to reveal the extraordinary? Inviting us to imbibe, drink in a living source. A God that hopes we fall in love with our ordinary lives and find that the ordinary is sacred.

And that the sacred is indeed in the ordinary.

And most often – all of it – is not normal.

Prayer

Thank you God for waking us up today.
Thank you for this space that offers us respite and comfort right now.

Thank you for the folks online in this space who we love and know – and thanks for the folks in this room who we have yet to meet.

Thank you God that you are with us, in us, between us and for us – each and every moment – the ordinary ones and the extraordinary ones. Refresh us this morning – hydrate our souls with your presence and love… amen.

Many, many, many years ago I was at a Christian conference of sorts that had a variety of speakers – but of course the main attraction was the keynote speaker. And it was clear that people were there for this one personality, this sort of charismatic man who’s preaching many, many people followed, were enraptured by and helped by.

I was in an interesting space with God and my faith journey. I was starting to explore some of the “teachings” of my upbringing that weren’t bringing me a lot of life in those days. And yet still really hanging on to some of the more ingrained ways of “staying in the faith” hoping that that would really reveal to me the values of why I really fell in love with God. Which evidently meant I traveled to conferences…. mainly to study, be taught by particular (more scholarly, more expert) voices (not all that bad of a plan, actually).

After this guy got done preaching. There was sort of a bottle neck of people flocking around him, and I was trying to figure out how to get to the refreshment table – which was on the side of this guy.

As I tried to skirt around the masses I ran right into this guy. And I remember looking up at him, and knew that I had to say something about his talk. So I said, “thank you for your sermon.” And he replied, “Oh, tell me what you are taking away from it.”

And all I could think was, “I really want that cupcake,” and “I have no idea what you said.” BUT of course instead I offered, “you know…I’m just really taken aback – it was spectacular … really extraordinary.”

And the truth is – it was extraordinary. It was exactly extra – ordinary… because the amount of hours and study and history and the sitting with scripture and referencing commentary and placing words just “so” by this speaker was phenomenal. . . it was really interesting. But I couldn’t translate it into my life. I couldn’t map over the practical elements that would open my everyday life a little more.

And I remember being mortified by that moment – because I couldn’t say to this man – or more importantly to myself – that it didn’t land for me. It didn’t work for me. Not just the sermon, but this way of faith that never touched my lived experience, my ordinary life.

Now Jesus’ first miracle or sign has to do with ordinary water. It’s interestingly only mentioned in the Gospel of John that we’ll read from together this morning

John 2:1-9
On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there, and Jesus and his disciples were also invited to the celebration. When the wine ran out, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They don’t have any wine.”

Jesus replied, “Woman,(Mother) what does that have to do with me? My time hasn’t come yet.”

His mother told the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” Nearby were six stone water jars used for the Jewish cleansing ritual, each able to hold about twenty or thirty gallons.

Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water,” and they filled them to the brim. Then he told them, “Now draw some from them and take it to the headwaiter,” and they did. The headwaiter tasted the water that had become wine. He didn’t know where it came from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew.

Now there are a lot of points of interest that can be drawn out from these few verses. Here, in the account of John is Jesus’ first act of public ministry – turning water into wine.

And some of this story as it unfolds reveals essential characteristics of Jesus and lays out elements that are important for his ministry to come, as well as ways that are different from the way things have always been done in the religious structure … and some of this story reveals how our participation with Jesus – in our ordinary life is essential, sacred, and inseparable.

Weddings in Jesus’ day usually lasted for a week with people coming and going. Eating, drinking, singing, laughing. Families would have started saving for this event when their child was born…often the whole village would partake in the celebration.

Jesus, his mother, and the disciples were invited to this wedding and it takes place in a little nondescript town called Cana. This town is only mentioned one another time in the New Testament- it’s just an ordinary town that has this recorded moment and then fades again into anonymity.

Now families would have spent years making enough wine for this occasion – and running out of wine would be a source of humiliation/shame for the couple.

So as this very thing happens – we see Jesus take ordinary water and turn it into wine. A LOT of Wine (some sources say equivalent to 1,000 bottles) and as the verses detail if we had kept reading – really, really good wine.

And we see that God through Jesus is a God who wants to continue to shower people with lavishness and abundance. God has been a God throughout time that has been generous with provision – in the fruitfulness of creation, in manna in the wilderness, a land of milk and honey, and a return from exile.

God is one who has provided in the ordinary realm of life.

JESUS, doubles down on that generosity of provision in the ordinary – abundantly. AND YET ALSO communicates that his very PRESENCE will also be available to anyone in the ordinary – ABUNDANTLY.

Not just in this instance – but throughout scripture we see that Jesus is often found in the most ordinary of places (at a table, in fields, pastures, markets, fishing, walking in neighborhoods) talking to people in his ordinary life (tax collectors, siblings, children, servants, lepers) all the while communicating – I’m here, and I’m here… And I’m here…

And we see this stage set for him in the previous chapter of John – as John the Baptist is baptized in the wilderness. He has been known as the forerunner of Jesus-

“the voice crying out in the wilderness, making pathways to the Lord clear…”

All the while shifting the mindset and expectation that you could only encounter God in a sacred temple – to expanding that reality – and to imagine that people could meet God in the ordinary as well.

What’s tricky though about a system of religion is that as it becomes more reliant on rules and rituals to uphold it (rather than a living source) the source actually becomes petrified and frozen – stagnant. And rules start to infiltrate and impinge on our ordinary life, but never account for our ordinary life. And we can start to feel like we are slowly dehydrating because we are trying and striving to “do” faith “right” – rather than coming to a well of abundant love – being replenished by a living God.

Jesus, as he meets with people in the ordinary, always seems to not follow the “normal” way … he doesn’t seem to do it right either. He often says the wrong things, eats the wrong food, doesn’t practice the right rituals, invites the wrong people. Messaging in his actions – as he does in this instance at the wedding – that when you pay attention and embrace the moment you stand in as sacred and the people in front of you as holy – there is no “right” or “normal” way to pour out the love of God.

**You just might have to be ok with breaking open systems that try to measure your faith by merit, cleanliness, worthiness or require your oppression to exist.

Ritual cleanliness and purification requirements were not limited to the bounds of the Temple but spread through the Jewish community, in Jesus’ day. These jars that are mentioned in this scripture were required for the purification before a meal – to cleanse hands, feet, cups and more. And they had to be stone – they couldn’t be ceramic or glass vessels which were subject to impurity. And so these laws affected ordinary people, in their ordinary lives.

And the water held in these stone jars was not regarded as ordinary water. It was holy, reserved specifically for these purification rituals.

And likewise God, was a God within the temple- who wasn’t regarded as ordinary – but separate, extraordinary, holy, and reserved for those who could prove themselves worthy of such holiness.

At this wedding, Mary is actually the one who says,

“it’s time.”

It’s time for you to break in here, Jesus.

Everything is empty .

The stone jars are empty of water.

The cups are empty of wine.

And the people are thirsty.

It’s not working.

Mary says,

“This is not working anymore.”

And this is exactly what I couldn’t say to the sermon -guy at the conference.

“Hey if being part of this faith, of loving Jesus – is in some way supposed to be like a party – where I encounter the depth of love that’s present at a wedding. Where there’s an overflow of that love that saturates everything in my everyday life and that is supposed to MEAN something in my life…THEN it’s not working.”

That would have been my most truthful response if I could have imagined running straight for Jesus like Mary did. But I had for so long stayed in the grooves – the separate grooves of learning and studying God stuff over here – in this container. And engaging with the ordinary stuff of life over here….hoping that neither would run out of its meaning. But the work of keeping the holy and the ordinary separate is what will run us dry. It’s too much work, and it’s not normal.

But it’s easy to love the extraordinary. It is easy to pursue a spiritual path that is about the intense, immediate encounter of the extraordinary. It is easy to fall in love with spiritual practices that lead us to a “high”, a transcendent experience of God’s love, But maybe Mary is nudging us all here – that only this way of encountering Jesus will soon run its course.

I mean Jesus is amazing, beyond our realm in so many ways – but Jesus likes being where we are. Jesus likes our passenger seats, our walks to the T, our tables, what we wrestle with….

Jesus might have decided to listen to Mary and do something about the lack of wine at this wedding – because he wanted to keep being at a party. He wanted to be among people, and communicate that when you are aware and attuned to a real Jesus in your real life – it’s as good as the finest wine.

I realized at this conference that I had become really good at forgery. I had been signing off on things as if they were…

“Extraordinary… when they weren’t.”

Swallowing wine that tasted like vinegar – because if God wasn’t in the ordinary – where was God?

POISON
Water courses through each and every one of us, water sustains the world around us-and life itself. And yet we often don’t consider our relationship to water – until we are dehydrated, or find the water to be contaminated.

Much of our available fresh water supply in the United States is in jeopardy and/or contaminated. I went with my dad to a natural spring for many years of my youth, to fill milk jugs with water because our water source in Maine wasn’t safe.

Flint, Michigan is another known example – that made headlines in 2015 when a change in its water supply exposed thousands of children to high levels of lead…And we are realizing how historic agricultural and manufacturing practices – are leaving a present day toxic legacy across the nation – with “ forever chemicals” in soil and water that won’t breakdown. Droughts in California are predicted to triple by 2050 – and in much of the developing world, clean water is either hard to come by or a commodity that requires laborious work or significant currency to obtain.

Free, safe, accessible water is not to be taken for granted.

Likewise, it takes active attention and action to make sure the components of our faith (love and goodness and a living, flowing source of that) doesn’t sit stagnant in a container… whether that’s a book, or a sermon, or a podcast, or someone else’s expectations or translation.

Because it will become bad water. Harmful to those who drink of it.

The religious system in Jesus’ day had become all about ritual, and had become a way to separate people into the clean and the unclean – and furthermore establishing rigid tiers of hierarchy, patriarchy and oligarchy.

Available only to a few, safe for no one.

The flow that keeps the love of God pure, and good – a source of all life… has to be for everyone.

Jesus turns the water into wine – and it is soooo much wine! Far more than just the guests who would attend this wedding. The bounty signals that the overflow of this love, this abundance is for everyone… a legacy of love (for generation after generation) that will saturate the soil, the air, the water – everything that makes up the ordinary world around us.

JESUS

Jesus comes to fulfill the law, fulfill the promises of God by establishing a way of relating to God and others so we never have to forge anything. We don’t have to fake our way into “holiness” or scrub ourselves clean – because that’s actually what contaminates and dries up the well.

Jesus situates himself immediately in the ordinary – to remind us that the ordinary holds the potential of all things – including keeping us humble, real and refreshed – which is altogether a miracle and holy.

Mary invites us to consider that faith without Jesus’ abundant love at the center of our ordinary lives doesn’t work – it is akin to:

A world without water,

Or a wedding without wine…

It’s unimaginable.

And this is the beauty of what Mary breaks open – the elemental and fundamental nature of GOD… and water…

I love the words of Japanese poet Hiroshi Osada who says in his book about water,

“It has no color, but can be any color.

It has no shape but can take any shape.

You can touch it, but you cannot hold it.

Even if you slice into it, it won’t be cut.

It can slip through your fingers,

Like it’s nothing at all.

But life would be unthinkable without it.”
Almost Nothing, Yet Everything: A Book About Water.

Faith, Jesus, love, water are not meant to be contained…

Jesus took these jars that were now empty of their purification water – and filled them with ordinary water. Ordinary water that in its purest state actually is free, shapeless, uncontained – flowing its way into the thirstiest depths of our bodies.

Just as God took a system of religion that had been full – but now had only empty stone jar vessels, and filled them with the purist vessel of all – Jesus. Who in his most natural form, pours all of who he is into us – and our thirsty souls.

This is when we get the good stuff of faith and the ordinary together – when we can embody it. It seems that we can’t get the good stuff – the abundance of God – we can’t taste the best wine – if we prevent the natural flow of the ordinary and the sacred.

The faith Jesus wants us to embody and make accessible for so many others – isn’t one that asks,

“what bullet point from my sermon were you convicted by?”

It’s not that a sermon is bad or a cleansing ritual is wrong – it’s not that at all so long as that sermon, that ritual activates something more – mobilizes your heart, body and soul. So long as it takes into account who you are (a human) walking this earth. Having hard days, and good days, and the same ole, same ole, same days.

Faith is to be lived, embodied, an experiential faith… A faith that is multiplied, takes on new forms- as it is poured out like water and one that says,

“look at your week – what you encountered – look at the riveting and sacred sermon of your life.”

Our ordinary life is so miraculous, so sacred… and it is also so hard.

This past week I had a hard morning with someone. The kind of hard that breaks your heart into a lot of different pieces and you feel the flow of all hope and life – leave you.

After it was clear that I would need to shift meetings and reschedule some appointments, I sat on the couch to give myself and the pieces of my heart a moment to re-collect. Wondering what I could do – nothing seemed to be really touching this situation in a helpful way, not a lot was working.

And my phone dinged and I got a text from someone who – we maybe text once every two months or so.

And she was saying “thanks” for something – and then at the end she said oh, and p.s. Here are the first spring flowers I have seen in our neighborhood…

And she sent a picture of these little ordinary snowdrops – these flowers that of their own accord push their way up through the debris of ordinary seasons – dead leaves and sticks, often snow – and just multiply and get more dense with each passing year.

And I saw that picture – and thought

“Jesus, you are here.”

And I wrote back,

“oh thank you for this picture – it’s been a rough morning.”

And she said,

“I feel my eyes welling up as I think of your rough morning, may you know you are loved.”

An ordinary morning, an ordinary text, an ordinary plant.

And an extraordinary, life-giving, sense of Jesus’ presence and love.

Let us love the ordinary. Let us cherish the everyday, the every breath, every celebration, every tear. Let us love the closeness of God and the sacred, here and now. ((Omid Safi))

Let us not poison the water, let us keep feasting on our very life…and once and awhile ask,

“is this working?”

This keeps the waters of life fresh.

What makes anything sacred, it seems is not its separateness, or its pure holiness. It’s as Steve mentioned last week in this trifecta of things to know in moments of overwhelm. That God is a God that is with you… in the ordinary, in the leaves of life, in the middle of the brightest moments like a wedding – there’s no splicing and dicing of where God is or isn’t. The nature of God’s love is to flow, to saturate everything and for us to drink of it, to be nourished by this water of life wherever we are at. Steve said what we can know are these three things:

God is here.
You matter to God.
There is always a way forward.

And I want to add my own trio of things that helps us remember the sacredness of this life – I learned it from Rabbi Abraham Heschel who says that all we need to know that a moment is sacred are these three things:

“1)God

2) A Soul.

3) And A moment.

And these three are always here”.

Ordinary moment…after ordinary moment…after ordinary moment…

May this be so. As we walk our days here on this Earth.

End

As we close, I want to invite you into a spiritual practice that you are invited to try, daily this week through the Lenten Guide, called the Examen.
It’s a way to review your day – and nurture the spirituality of the ordinary – and attune yourselves to the everyday movement of God in your life.

It’s a way to name what’s working for you and not working for you.

Let’s try that now for a moment.

We’ll hear a bit of the music Matt has written for the season, and I invite you to close your eyes, take a deep breath:

THE EXAMEN:

Where are you dry these days? Where are you replenished?
And what do you have to say to God about that?

Amen, thanks be to God.

Love Is Listening

Good morning everyone!

I’m Ivy, a Pastor here and we are in a winter sermon series called, “Love is…”
And I want to talk this morning about how “Love is… listening.”

And maybe some of you are thinking,

“Oh, great! Another anemic word, ‘listening’.”

And I get it, “love” and “listening” are words that in many cases have been emptied of their meaning – whether it’s because of overuse or abuse.

However, I want to talk this morning about how we can revive a way of “deep listening” – regard it as one of our oldest, known technologies (technology if we think of it as a way to connect with one another) and one that is still relevant and holds the potential to not only connect us (to ourselves, God and others) but that can heal us, and the world around us.

If we are hopeful to live more full, free and loving lives with Jesus – we will need to not only aspire, but to actively cultivate this deep way of listening. Listening is the first step in communication – the very bones of how we relate to one another/community/society/our world. And if we give up on deep listening, if we think,

“aah, what does it matter anyway? It doesn’t change anything…”

Then how we communicate and the language we use to do so – will be stunted, defensive and anemic as well.

But, if we can take our lead from Jesus and see how “love is .. listening.” That listening is indistinguishable from love – and if love is knowing and being known (as Steve shared two weeks ago) and if love can help us all be some parts humble, gentle, patient (as Lydia invited us last week) … then seeking to listen, with and to, the Spirit of God – as we engage with one another, can prove to be an impactful, provocative, and subversive way of being in the world – whoever we are with, and wherever we are.

And may this way of listening be helpful for our own personal flourishing – as well as helpful for the common good.

So join me this morning in listening – not just to my words – but to the Spirit of God, the voice within you, and to scripture. I’m hopeful that we can see that listening can be a great expression of loving one another, of clarifying what we are “for” (not just against), and how listening is really the nexus for action & transformation that creates new ways forward in our public life – and Beloved Community.

Let’s take a moment now of quiet – in prayer – to “listen.” Listen to what might be stirring in you – to what you need most right now – listen for what God would love for you to know… just take a moment to prayerfully listen. Amen.

I’ve talked with so many of you over the last 20 months who are health professionals. Who have donned your stethoscopes and put them close to patient’s chests and backs in hopes of amplifying the internal movement and sounds of organs.

You’ve listened through the sounds of coughing babies and adults – you’ve listened through shallow breath, crackles and wheezes – in hopes of finding the sounds that can’t be detected from the outside of the body. The internal sound of a steady heartbeat, the small sound of a breezy breath moving through a clear lung – you’ve listened for the sound of life.

The thing about this way of ‘listening’ that I’m talking about this morning is that it helps us detect the love and presence of God – when it isn’t always apparent, isn’t always right there – on the surface of our everyday lives. It helps us press through all of the external “noise,” and find that the source of all life, all goodness, all joy (all possibility) – is still beating within us and around us.

I find that ‘listening’ is sort of God’s stethoscope. An instrument that God drapes around us, that allows us to orient to the internal sounds and movement – of God, the sound of the genuine within us – even as we are tugged and pulled by the commotion of the news, family, work you name it.

In the scripture, Mark 5 – we encounter the story of a bleeding woman and Jesus. And we witness what listening looks like in practice… And I want to invite you to notice what sounds and movement you detect as we make our way through…

Mark 5:25-34 (Common English Bible)

25 A woman was there who had been bleeding for twelve years.

26 She had suffered a lot under the care of many doctors, and had spent everything she had without getting any better. In fact, she had gotten worse.

27 Because she had heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his clothes.

28 She was thinking, If I can just touch his clothes, I’ll be healed.

29 Her bleeding stopped immediately, and she sensed in her body that her illness had been healed.

30 At that very moment, Jesus recognized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and said, “Who touched my clothes?”

31 His disciples said to him, “Don’t you see the crowd pressing against you? Yet you ask, ‘Who touched me?’”

32 But Jesus looked around carefully to see who had done it.

33 The woman, full of fear and trembling, came forward. Knowing what had happened to her, she fell down in front of Jesus and told him the whole truth.

34 He responded, “Daughter, your faith has healed you; go in peace, healed from your disease.”

Now, we can piece together a little bit about this woman’s reality, given the context of time and history. As a woman, with a physical, chronic affliction – she would have been pretty diminished in this society.

If not completely invisible.

There are a multitude of barriers that come against her full existence.

Her identity as a woman.With no connection to a man… no husband/brothers/father to give her some inroad/access to resources is a barrier.
The purity standards that were dictated under the religious system – would have deemed her impure because of her bleeding.
The cultural norms would have seen her unfit to live within city limits.
Her intense pain means her mental/physical/emotional state is likely depleted.

She’s nameless and voiceless.

She had never really been listened to.

The cacophony of external voices that say she doesn’t belong, she’s to be excluded, she is unworthy – are all consuming.

And as you can imagine the sound of these voices sink beneath the surface of her skin and reverberate inside of her – shaking her own sense of worth, her dignity, her value.

So she is left without a gridwork for belonging. To what? Where? To whom does she belong?

And at the heart of those questions – is a pretty universal/human one – that we might ask ourselves at any given point:

“WHO AM I?”

For this woman IT IS REALLY HARD to listen to the sound of God, the sound of love within when the context of a world around her is constantly shouting

“you don’t matter, you are not loved.”

A mentoring voice to me, the late theologian Howard Thurman says

“there is but one step from being despised to despising oneself.” (33).

Like this woman, for those who are oppressed and marginalized…it is hard to not become deaf to the true voice that calls out who you really are. He says, THIS is why it is critical to listen and to cultivate this deep interior space – to anchor to the “sound of the genuine within.”

Now the sound of the genuine is our truest selves in connection and belonging to the love of God. Thurman says there is so much traffic going on in our minds, so many different kinds of sounds and signals that float through our bodies – that in the midst of all of this – he says,

“you have got to find out what your name is. Who are you? How does the sound of the genuine come through to you… because that is the only true guide that you will ever have, and if you don’t have that – all of your life you will spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls.”

But it’s so hard for this woman to detect the sound of the genuine. And maybe you have felt this in your own life too? Moments where you’ve wondered if you are just being pulled around by someone else’s expectations – or someone’s loud, authoritative voice? Maybe your voice has been interrupted endlessly – not listened to – to the point where you wonder

“WHO AM I?”

If your thoughts, dreams, way of seeing the world even matter.

I think this is why it takes intentionality to cultivate ‘listening’ as a way of being in the world. And what’s at stake if we don’t – is that we not only lose this grounding, within ourselves. But with that, we lose any possibility of listening to the sound of the genuine in another.…and this is the loss of connection to the source of all love and life.

*I’ve been in a three-year long “conversation.” And this conversation came to be after a moment of disruption in our relationship, where we deeply disagreed on something that had occurred.

*Part of what I’ve realized after coming back to this conversation again and again is that I for a long time, *(and maybe this is obvious)*

a) I wasn’t really deeply listening to the other person and
b) I wasn’t listening to this person, because I was not listening to the ‘sound of the genuine’ within me.

*I could feel that love had gotten broken in this deep part of me, I was hurt.. But I didn’t really know how to pick up that stethoscope and listen to my own heart – and listen to God say,

“I am here. Love is here, all of what you feel matters.”

And it left me feeling really unmoored.

Part of the work of picking up that stethoscope and placing it right square on your heart is that it requires “quiet.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve “shushed” my kids – who were always the loudest right when the nurse or doctor put that stethoscope up to their body…

But to really listen, is to invite quiet.

I tend to not want to embrace too much quiet. In this 3-year long conversation I did not want to embrace internal or external quiet – I was mad and angry. And to be “quiet” in either space felt like inaction to me. .. navel-gazing – a waste of time. (There’s too much at stake – too much to solve, fix).

But I’ve been reading this book called, “The Sovereignty of Quiet: Beyond Resistance in Black Culture,” by Kevin Quashie that suggests how vital “quiet” is for listening to the sound of the genuine and also for moving out in our public life. He points to how FULL of movement “quiet” is – he says,

“quiet is often interchanged with the words silence or stillness – but the notion of quiet is neither motionless nor without sound. Quiet, instead, is a metaphor for the full range of one’s inner life – one’s desires, ambitions, hungers, vulnerabilities and fears.” (6)

Quiet, some might say in our inner life, is the busiest intersection- where we get to encounter the love of God, recognize the movement of the Spirit, our own voice and others.

So much of what we do, how we interact, and how we act is shaped by this interior space.

We see Jesus with this bleeding woman move and act from this “quiet” space. It says in the scripture we just read that he

“continues to look carefully”

in the bustle and noise of the crowd, (and that’s after he’s already turned to the crowd and said, “who touched me?”). He continues to “look carefully” and “listen”. And it’s this internal hush – where Jesus detects that God was present and recognizes that someone who was longing for God’s presence – had touched his clothes. He listens to this internal space of quiet within to guide him to this woman…which ultimately guides this woman to healing. But there’s a bit of a journey in there…

We can’t too quickly link that the “quiet within” can fix all the unjust systems that this woman represents. If we do, we miss the very components that make any potential for public change possible. . . which is relationship, presence, connection.

It’s why these 1:1 Relational meetings we are encouraging are so powerful and why our community groups are so valued. Because we know, we feel, something moves within us – when we can just be listened to, not approached as a subject or a project – just as a human being, (with the divine inside).

Jesus walks across the social, cultural, and religious boundaries here. And it is a notable public expression of pushing against the dominant culture – but Jesus crosses those lines to connect with this woman, to be present to this woman and to listen not to address her as if she is a problem to be solved, or fixed.

Part of the reason – I think – that my three- year long conversation has lasted so long, is that neither of us would settle for “quick fixes,” because we realized that it didn’t heal in the long run. There’s a way that a too quick, “I’m sorry” or a “pat logical explanation” to a hurt reaches and communicates more a goal of equilibrium, to resolve and smooth a way forward … rather than listen, and to see what is opened up in that. And that’s not really “listening” – it doesn’t change, heal. It doesn’t allow my humanity – feelings, concerns, emotions to be in full view. And here there is no movement, except more distance and disconnection.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer would say this is akin to listening with half an ear – listening that presumes you already know what the other person has to say, you already know their position, and you already know the solution.

But this, he says,

“is an impatient, inattentive listening, that . . . is only waiting for a chance to speak, or to put your agenda forward.” AND here is where we forget that the person in front of us is always a mystery, holds the image of the Divine within them, and that that’s always worth listening to…when we don’t we start to label (the process or the person), and in that labeling … we limit.”

“Poor listening diminishes another person, but deep listening invites them to exist and matter.”

The society around this bleeding woman labeled her ‘unclean’, ‘disabled’, ‘poor,’ etc…diminished her to the brink of invisibility.

But Jesus brings this woman back into her full existence. He didn’t lecture her, try to fix her, but instead he listened. He made space for her to tell her “whole truth,” Her STORY! From her own lens, not society’s, or some external authority – but her own thoughts, her own desires and longings…unfiltered/vulnerable without a threat of judgment or a rush to “fix”. And this invited her back to herself – to detect the sound of the genuine within her.

Thurman would say that at some fundamental human level – this is what we all desire – that we could

“feel that we are so thoroughly and completely understood – listened to, that we could take our guard down and look around us, and not feel that we would be destroyed. To be able to feel completely vulnerable, completely exposed and absolutely secure – to run the risk of radical exposure and know that the (person listening), the eye that beholds our vulnerability would not step on us.” (Spellman address).

A doctor I listened to, Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen, backs this. She says that to be in pain is so vulnerable, and over and over again as she trains medical students she helps them understand what it is to “TREAT” those who are suffering and scared.

She says to her students

“Fixing is too small a strategy to deal with pain and suffering”

but “THE POWER of your PRESENCE” of simply being present and listening – of letting that pain/suffering/wrestling matter … time and time again is the wisdom that is needed to help heal.

It’s why in studies I’ve been reading about stethoscopes – that they are argued to still be so vital in exams. Even while we have ultrasounds and echocardiograms – because it allows the presence of the patient doctor relationship to exist… and it is to value the medicine of connection.

CONNECTION HEALS

Jesus turned to this woman and said,

“Daughter….”

Her identity, dignity, sense of worth – that sound of the genuine is revived, as Jesus calls her by name. He’s saying,

“THIS IS WHO YOU ARE, a child of God,”

and this gives her a pulse again.

Now the society around her is still fractured and stacked against her. Injustices are everywhere. But to be listened to – is to be loved.

And the internal movement that occurs for her holds the potential to disrupt and shake unjust systems. She moves from the absolute fringes of society to the very fringe of Jesus’ cloak. To the source of life and love.

What’s cultivated here is a sense of belonging. That God is with her in all of life.

This heals where love has been broken…and as Thurman says,

“this restoration – stabilizes our sense of self – with new courage, fearlessness, and power.”

This woman is seen, known and loved. This is the sound of the genuine.
This is the sound of healing.

I stayed in this three-year conversation in part because I needed to learn what listening really was – IF IT MATTERED – for myself, as well as with the other person.

I realize many of you might not have 3 years to hang with a conversation and/ – for many of you the listening you’ve done has suggested that boundaries are the best way to heal – given the dominant culture dynamics you’ve endured. I want to honor that, but maybe you find yourself in the same “types” of conversations that always feel the same and never really seem to go anywhere..

This is tiring – and it’s tiring to care and to listen when there’s no identifiable change. In a moment of overwhelm I said to this person,

“tell me the whole story again. Can you start from the beginning?”

(and this was 2.5 years in) It was a weird thing to say, I was there at the beginning of this story – I knew how it went.

But as I listened and heard the familiar recounting, I also heard something new. I heard what and why I was LISTENING. Unattached to the other person, or to the outcome. I heard the sound of my own belief in myself. In love, in the power of connection, of goodness, of humility, of patience…the belief in “possibility” …

I heard what I was “for” – not just what I was against. And that didn’t change much instantaneously – but it did fuel me to stay in it. To keep moving toward healing… and to listen for the sound of the genuine in this other person.

As this woman who Jesus calls “daughter” knew – and we know too – there is a lot to oppose in our days. So much that grieves us, harms us, so much we want to act to change, so much injustice to right. So much so, that our way of being can become primarily against, or “anti-” something. *for good reason*

But listening, cultivating this sound of the genuine – allows us to also keep ‘love’ at the forefront – to remember what we are “FOR” as well. To remember that love endures in us, and with God. And to balance our protests in the public sphere – with our inner, vulnerable life as well.

To remember as Kevin Quashie says, that

“the inner life is not apolitical or without social value, but neither is it determined entirely by publicness.” (Quashie, 6)

There is a richness to our life, that holds beauty and rest – and resistance and protest – and they are born from the same spot. Where the love of God, and our true selves connect – the foundation of listening and love – it’s how we impact all the places where we work, live and play.

As Jesus says to this woman,

”go in peace”

Go! Go change the world. Go act. go love – and may you listen to the sound of the genuine as you do – keeping your own humanity and the humanity of another on full display. May it be so -for us as well.

And still, you may have questions of – how do I actually cultivate this way of listening? We’ve been offering these Listening workshops first Sunday of every month. Next up – Feb. 6, 1 pm – 2:30 pm on Zoom.

Link to RSVP is above so check it out if you’d like.