Kristin White Sermon - Easter Day

A Sermon Preached

Kristin White

The Feast of the Resurrection - April 20, 2014

St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church – Wilmette, Illinois

Do you know that God exists?  Do you know that the Resurrection is true?

Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury[1], offers two ways of responding to these questions, both problematic.  The first, that apologetic shuffling of feet, along with the disclaimer: ‘I don’t really know, this is just what I think; it’s entirely possible that I’m completely wrong.’  And the second, with confidence (or arrogance?) prepared to prove it all with evidence and arguments, refined and sophisticated and certain.

Both, as Williams says, are problematic.  The first, because it shrinks faith into something small, reduces its scale and scope to our own comprehensible dimensions and peculiarities.  The second, because it keeps everything so safely at arm’s length, so very impersonal.  Neither offers much that might compel us. Neither offers something to fall in love with.

--

The women come to the tomb on that Easter morning, expecting to keep vigil.  They expect the stone to be where it was when they left, rolled in front of the entrance.  They expect to have this time of shared sorrow.  Maybe they even expect the guards there standing watch over Christ’s tomb, making sure the disciples don’t get out of line in their grief.

The women show up – not because they expect what happens.  How could they?  They just want to be near where he is, or was, in the same way people return to grave sites, or the places we make into memorials at the side of the road or a street corner or, too often, at the fence of a school yard.

The Bishop of Colorado has said that “the greatest spiritual practice isn’t yoga or praying the hours or living in intentional poverty, although these are all beautiful in their own way.  The greatest spiritual practice is just showing up.”[2]

It seems to me that these Marys, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, might well be the patron saints of that greatest spiritual practice.  Because they show up – not because they know the right thing to say, or the right thing to do, or because they’re more virtuous, or more intuitive than the others.  They show up because they love him.  And he’s gone.  And they are devastated.

They show up; and everything changes.  The earth shakes.  An angel of the Lord descends, with a face like lightning and clothes the brightest white.  He rolls away the stone and uses it for a seat, and suddenly those guards who were supposed to frighten away the disciples are themselves scared into a deathly stupor.  Mary Magdalene and the other Mary show up – and nothing will ever be the same.

“Do not be afraid,” the angel says.  “Come and see.” And they do.  And then they go to tell the others.  Jesus meets them along the way, says to them again: “Do not be afraid.  Go and tell the others.”

“Do not be afraid. Come.”

“Do not be afraid.  Go.”

And they do. 

--

For us to say something of Christ’s resurrection is for us to say something essential about who we are.  It’s more than an historical claim, more than a mathematical proof.  Resurrection begins, not with an argument, or an idea, but with the whisper of a promise that takes hold in us.  Something changes.  Something compels us…toward…what? Toward life, toward hope, toward relationship, toward something and Someone greater than our minds can contrive into simple arguments or proofs.

Maybe the only way to say that is to live it, and maybe the only way to live it is to show up, again and again, like those patron saints of that greatest spiritual practice. 

Yes, preachers can preach – and I do, and I will – about the needs of this beautiful, broken world.  I will preach about hospitality and reconciling love and freedom and trust and forgiveness and care.  But what will persuade you?  When somebody shows up after you have hurt them, and offers a kind word you may well not deserve, and then walks alongside you through a space without answers?  What will persuade you?  When someone notices your child, alone, outside the circle, and takes him by the hand, and walks him into the midst of the group, walks him right in there with everybody else?  What will persuade you?  When somebody asks if you are hungry, shows up at your doorstep with a loaf of bread?

In the early life of the church, scholars arguing for the truth of the Christian faith used all kinds of sophisticated logic.  And they also said this: “Here.  Look at us.  We make sure everybody gets fed.  We take care of the widows and the orphans and the sick.  We try to treat people with equity and respect, man or woman, child or adult, slave or free.  We try to forgive each other.  We don’t exact vengeance.  We show up and we stand with one another, and we show up and we stand with people on the margins.  We show up.”

That is Good News, because the God we worship is the same God who rolls the stone away and seeks to ease our fear.  This is the God who recognizes that we might be afraid, and promises that we will never be alone.  We worship a God who shows up…who in these last three days has gone to the depths of hell and said, “Even here.  Even here.  Even here, I will not be without you.”[3]

And that is Good News, because here on this first day of the week, the tomb is empty, the stone is rolled away, and you – all of you – have shown up.  Together with Mary Magdalene and that other Mary and the sometimes-confused and sometimes-doubtful band of disciples, you are here as witnesses to the miracle.

Do I know that God exists?  Do I know the Resurrection is true?

Yes.  Yes, dear friends, I am persuaded.  I am persuaded, because of you – because you are here.  I am persuaded because you care for those who are sick.  I am persuaded because you welcome the stranger.  I am persuaded because you mourn our dead. I am persuaded because you shelter the homeless, you feed the hungry, you keep vigil in waiting rooms, you seek to forgive, you strive after justice and peace, you pray for our enemies.

Yes.  I am persuaded that God exists, that Christ is risen, because You Show Up.  I am persuaded that the miracle is true because in big ways and small ways you show it to be true every day.  More than any evidence, more than any proof we might crave after, I see it in you. 

Right there with Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, in the midst of confusion sometimes, and grief, and fear, you show up.  Together with those Marys, you are bearers of the resurrection.  A miracle, indeed.

[1] http://rowanwilliams.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/1071/archbishops-easter-sermon-2009-proof-of-the-resurrection-has-to-be-lived-not-argued#Sermon.  Thanks go to the Archbishop for much of the thought framing this sermon.

[2] http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nadiabolzweber/2012/07/sermon-about-mary-magdalen-the-masacre-in-our-town-and-defiant-alleluias/

[3] http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nadiabolzweber/2012/07/sermon-about-mary-magdalen-the-masacre-in-our-town-and-defiant-alleluias/

Bryan Cones Sermon - Great Vigil

Bryan Cones

Easter Vigil 2014

Where is Lukas Knuth?

Hello, Lukas, my name is Bryan, and in about 20 minutes

you and I are going to be siblings.

Actually, you are about to get a lot of new siblings all at once,

so I hope you’ve enjoyed your brief stint as an only child.

Your mom and dad have asked that you be baptized tonight,

which is how all of the rest of us entered this family.

The rest of our family has asked me to tell you a little bit about us,

in case you might want to change your mind.

I feel very lucky to get to tell you this,

so I promise I’ll try to do my best.

So the first thing:

What makes us all a family is not that we have the same parents;

what makes us a family is that we share the same story,

actually a lot of stories, about God and about us too.

Tonight we have been reading some of those stories.

So maybe I’ll start with them.

The first story is about how we got here.

It’s a story about how God made everything—

the sun and moon, and light and dark, and plants and animals—

and said that everything God made was good, because God is good.

And then God made people, and God said they were very good.

And you are part of that story, too,

because God has made you very good—

in fact God broke the mold with you.

You are very good in your own unique way.

Now it’s not going to take too long for you to realize

that creation doesn’t seem very good all the time.

Sometimes God’s very good people do bad things to each other

and to the earth and the animals.

And sometimes the earth itself is a scary place,

with storms and earthquakes and avalanches.

And so some people say that creation is not good,

and human beings are not good,

and even that God is not good, or doesn’t exist at all.

And sometimes they make good points.

But our story tells us that God and what God has made are good.

So, Lukas, if you ever get confused or wonder if people are bad,

or creation is bad, just come back here to your family,

and we will tell this story and again,

and together we will remember that God is good,

and creation is good, even if sometimes we can’t see it.

The second story is kind of a scary story:

It’s a story about how God went to war.

A powerful king called Pharaoh had made God’s people into slaves

because they were from a different country and looked different.

Being a slave means you have to work for no money

and other people tell you what you can do.

But God doesn’t like people to be slaves,

so God went to war with Pharaoh to free them,

and tonight we heard the story of the last battle when God won

and made the slaves free.

Now that is a very old story,

and you would think that by now people

wouldn’t make some people slaves anymore.

Lukas, I’m very sorry to say that’s not true.

The country you were born in used to allow some people

to make other people slaves

because they came from a different place

and because their skin was dark brown instead of light brown,

and they were treated very badly,

even by members of our Christian family.

But those slaves used to tell this story to help them stay strong

and to remind them that they weren’t really slaves,

that they were God’s people, too,

and eventually they became free.

But still sometimes people treat each other in mean ways

because their skin is a certain color,

or because they come from another country,

or speak a different language.

But our family has all kinds of people in it,

and they are all equally beautiful to God,

so if anyone tries to tell you that some people

should be treated differently or badly

because of what they look like or where they come from,

come back here to your family, and we’ll tell this story again,

and together we’ll remember that our God

wants freedom and justice for all people.

The other two stories are about how God’s people

sometimes make mistakes.

The first one came from a prophet,

someone who brings messages from God.

In the time of the prophet Isaiah,

some of God’s people were saying that they were so special

that God only loved them.

And so through the prophet Isaiah,

God reminded them that God loves all people,

and wants everyone to share water and food and life.

So if anyone tries to convince you

that God only loves certain people and not all people,

come back here to your family, and we’ll tell this story again,

and we’ll remember together that God wants life for everyone

and that all people are God’s people.

And the last reading came from another time,

when God’s people had wandered far, far away from God,

far away from the country where they lived with God.

So God stood on the road as a wise woman,

and called back to them, to help show them the way to come home.

So, Lukas, if you ever wander off and feel far away from God—

and you probably will—don’t worry, we all wander off sometimes.

Just come back here to your family, and we’ll tell this story again,

and we’ll remember that God always gives us a way to come home.

Now there is one more story that you haven’t heard yet,

but we’ve been telling it all night.

It’s a story about a man named Jesus.

He was baptized, too, and when he was baptized

God called him the Son, the Beloved,

and God gave Jesus a mission to show God’s people how to live.

And so Jesus taught people, and he healed people,

and he loved people, especially children like you.

But there were some people who didn’t like what he said and did,

and eventually they made a plan to catch Jesus, and they did,

and then Jesus died.

And all of his friends were very, very sad.

But what nobody knew is that God had already decided

to do something new with Jesus, God’s Son.

And so God raised Jesus from the dead and gave him a new life.

That’s the life we are celebrating tonight,

the life our family shares now, and the life that you will also share.

So if at times in your life, Lukas, you get very scared,

or very sick, or don’t know what to do, or are about to give up,

come back here to your family,

and we will tell the story of Jesus again,

and we will remember together that there is nothing in heaven

or on earth or under the earth, no power, no person,

nothing, not even death,

that can separate us from the love God has for us in Jesus,

and the life God has given us in Jesus.

So that’s our story, or part of it anyway.

I hope you still want to join it,

and I hope you will come to love it as much as we do

as you get older.

If you ever have any questions, though,

just come back here to your family,

and we will tell the story again,

as many times as you want.

Kristin White Sermon - Good Friday

A Sermon Preached

Kristin White

Good Friday - April 18, 2014

St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church – Wilmette, Illinois

In his book Night, Elie Wiesel describes the gruesome execution of a boy in the concentration camp.  He talks about other prisoners being forced to watch him hang in prolonged suffering and eventual death on those gallows, about another prisoner asking the question any one of us might ask: Where is God?

Indeed.  Where is God, in moments like that?

It’s a question I am asked often, in my life in ministry.  Sometimes it’s hurled at me, sometimes it’s angry – as in: “If you believe in a loving God who created and ordered the universe:”

-                   Where is God, when a ferry filled with people, with school children, goes down in the sea and no one can stop it, or rescue them?

-                   Where is God, when a gunman opens fire on innocents at a Jewish Community Center on the day before Passover?

-                   Where is God, when someone plants a bomb at Mile 26?

-                   Where is God, when the United Nations releases a report that details the ways we are destroying the same Creation that God entrusted to our care?

-                   Where is God, when the United Nations releases another report with evidence of the ways God’s people are destroying God’s people in North Korea?

-                   Where is God, when the news every day depicts the ways that God’s people are destroying God’s people in Syria, in Crimea, in Ukraine, in Chicago?

And where is God, in the geography of our day-to-day lives, as we see:

-                   …our children suffer and struggle?

-                   Where is God, when we see the signs of someone we love succumbing again to the force of her addiction?

-                   Where is God, when we hear the diagnosis from which we will not recover?

In fact, on this day of all days, as we remember Jesus flogged and spit upon, as he falls under the weight of the cross they force him to carry, as the people ridicule him and the nails go into his hands and his feet, as he hangs there struggling to breathe and hears people argue about accuracy on the signage of the Cross, it’s a fair question: Where is God?

--

The mystic, Julian of Norwich, suffered through the plague in the spring of 1373; along with that disease came serious fever.  She recovered slowly, went on to write the first book in English ever authored by a woman.  Julian titled that book Sixteen Revelations of Divine Love; in it, she included the visions she saw during her fever while fighting her way through the plague.

In the Eighth Revelation, on the Cross and Passion, Julian asks: “Is there any pain like this?  Here I saw a great ONE-ing between Christ and us (a great connectedness): for when he was in pain, we were in pain…all creatures that suffer pain, suffer with Him…and the firmament, the earth, failed in sorrow.”  In preaching about Dame Julian, the writer Diana Butler Bass claims “the cosmic circle of grief, emanating from Jesus’ passion, reveals that Jesus not only suffered for us; but he suffered with us – his death occurred for the sake of kinship and love with all that was, and is, and will be.”[1]

--

We hear a lot on Good Fridays, and in the theology that bleeds out of them, about Jesus suffering for us, about Jesus dying for us.  As a former writing teacher, I have to say that it’s worth paying attention to our prepositions here: for versus with.  Listen to the meaning there, because: “‘for’ is a contract…’for’ always separates the actor and recipient, distancing a sacrificial Jesus from those for whom he died.  At the Cross, Jesus is the subject; we are objects.”[2]

With stands in contrast to for. With implies proximity, relationship, connection, shared participation, working together toward the same goal. 

So which is it, this Good Friday?  For, or with?  Contract, or relationship?  Separate, or together? Distant, or close?

For gives us something to make sense of.  We understand contracts.  We’ve all negotiated trades of some kind or another.  God dies for us, so we trade Hell for Heaven.  We recognize the logic and proportion, even though it might make us feel guilty.  Maybe that’s the price we pay for the contractual obligation.

But with is messy.  It asks something more of us that the contract outlines.  It dares to ask: have we suffered with others?  Have we sat with friends or strangers through a space without answers?  Have we walked with others through the valley of death?  Do we know something, together with Julian, about the ONE-ing – the great connectedness – with God?

Choosing with offers an entirely different perspective on the question: Where is God?  Right here with us.  Right there with those who suffer.  God with us in the Emergency Room or the courtroom, or the Intake Center.  God with the people shot last Sunday in Overland Park, and with those shot on the streets of Chicago throughout the weekend, and even with those so lost that they chose to pull the trigger.  God with the runners and with the cheering and then with the screaming crowds at Mile 26 a year ago Tuesday.  God with creation as the ozone layer eats and the people of Korea starve and drown and the Syrians and Ukranians and Chicagoans suffer.  God suffers with them, with us – not in separation, but in kinship that knows no stopping point.  Because that is what Emmanuel means: God With Us.  That is what God is for – to be with us.

What if Wiesel is right, as he looks at a young Jewish boy hanging in his agony, hears another prisoner ask: “Where is God?”  “There,” Wiesel points, at the one who suffers and dies. 

“There.  Here. Right here. With us.”

[1] http://www.patheos.com/blogs/dianabutlerbass/2012/04/good-friday-being-with-jesus-at-the-cross/

[2] ibid

Bryan Cones Sermon - Maundy Thursday

Bryan Cones

Maundy Thursday

John 13:1-17, 31b-35

Did anyone's mom tell them not to put their elbows on the table? Or to chew with your mouth closed? Or not to talk when you eat? So many rules for the table!

What about at school? No talking loud. No throwing food. Then there are the unspoken rules of the table. This group doesn't eat w that group. Sporty kids stick with sporty kids. Slackers with slackers. The theater kids eat over there, the Spanish-speakers at that table.

Even in the world of work and business, who eats with whom matters. Who sits next to the CEO at the company dinner? The intern it ain't.

So many table rules--manners that are about more than eating. Watch any episode of Downton Abbey and you will be able to see all those manners about who belongs and who doesn’t on full display.

It was true in Jesus' time too--perhaps more so. We are familiar with the saying, "you are what you eat." In the time of Jesus, and maybe now, the saying should be, "you are with whom you eat."

And Jesus kept breaking all those rules, all the time. He kept eating with people he wasn't supposed to eat with: people of every sort, especially people no one else would eat with. And he kept breaking the other rules of the table too. He let the youngest disciple sit next to him at the Last Supper--even though the youngest is supposed to sit at the end, the kid table. He kept letting people who are supposed to be last be first, to the people who were least important, he gave the best seat in the house.

And now we come to this last meal--and it gets even worse! First Jesus takes off his outer garment--so basically he's standing there in his underwear. Then he starts to do work reserved for the lowest member of the household: a servant, a child, the lowest ranking woman, doing the work they do and washing his students feet. Bad enough that Jesus has been eating with the wrong people--now he's acting like the people nobody wants to be!

We like to make fun of Peter's reaction. Good old stupid Peter: he never gets it right. Except I think that Peter is the smartest of all of them. He gets it exactly right--and he is embarrassed for his half naked teacher, kneeling down there doing work no one wants to do. And he knows if he lets Jesus wash his feet, he's going to have to do it too.

"Do you know what I have done for you? If I have washed your feet, so you must do, as I have done for you." The good news is: Jesus has declared open season on all those table manners that govern who is important and who is not. The table of Jesus is an open table--no reserved seating. These are the table manners of the kingdom of God: the last are made first, the lowest are brought high and the mighty are cast down.

The bad news is: Jesus has declared open season on all those table manners, and if we eat at his table, we are promising to do as he did: to act like servants, to cross borders, to behave in ways that some people might find embarrassing, to sit at the wrong table.

So if we want to eat at Jesus’ table, it is time to take off our shoes and socks, and start practicing.

Bryan Cones Sermon - Palm Sunday

Bryan Cones

Palm Sunday, Year A

Matthew 21:1-11

We call today “Palm Sunday”

in honor of the palms that waved Jesus into the city,

            or sometimes we call this passage from the gospel

            the “triumphal entry into Jerusalem.”

And when it is portrayed in dramas of the Passion,

            or in movies such as Jesus of Nazareth

or The Passion of the Christ,

it is a joyous occasion.

For me it is perhaps portrayed best in Broadway adaptations

such as Godspell or Jesus Christ Superstar.

A friend from Spain said that when he was growing up

            they sang Andrew Lloyd Weber’s song that accompanied

this scene in Superstar:

“Hosanna, hey sanna, sanna, sanna, ho!”

It has the feel of a festival, maybe even a Mardi Gras carnival,

            or a St. Patrick’s Day Parade,

or some kind of Jewish Pride Parade.

Then again, Hollywood or Broadway or even the liturgy

            might not quite capture what was going on in Jerusalem

            all those years ago.

As I’ve been reflecting on this event,

I’ve found myself wanting to call it, “The Battle for Jerusalem.”

You see, there was another “triumphal procession” going on

on the same day, at the same time, as Jesus and his merry band.

Pontius Pilate was also on his way into the city for Passover,

            coming from the Roman garrison town

not far from Jerusalem,

like Jesus, on his way to Jerusalem, but for another purpose.

Passover, after all, was and is Jewish independence day,

            the celebration in ritual of God’s liberation

of the Hebrew slaves

            from another emperor, the Pharaoh in Egypt,

and it was Pontius Pilate’s job not to let the Jews of Jesus’ time

            get any similar ideas into their head.

And so he marched down into the Jewish capital,

            not on a donkey or a colt, but on a warhorse

and not with a crowd carry branches

and throwing cloaks on the streets,

but with hardened soldiers armed to the teeth,

            men whose job it was to keep people in check,

            men whose job it was to crucify,

to make sure that Jerusalem and ancient Israel

stayed firmly in Caesar’s grasp.

And there were crowds, too,

shouting “Hosanna” to Pontius Pilate:

            there better be, or there would be hell to pay,

            and it was the job of the Jerusalem elite

            to make sure Pilate was properly applauded.

The Battle for Jerusalem, a battle between two armies,

            each going to its own castle:

Pilate to the Antonia fortress that overlooked the Temple,

and Jesus, in the very next verse after this gospel,

            to the Temple itself, where he famously drove out

            all those involved in the “business” of the Temple,

his attack on the cozy relationship

between the Temple collaborators

and the Romans who were bleeding the people dry.

A battle between two armies:

Pilate versus Jesus, God versus Caesar.

God takes a side, the side of the losers, the side of the poor,

but unfortunately his general

            has brought a palm frond to a swordfight.

God’s warrior is a man of peace, a suffering servant,

             a man who would rather die than kill,

            and a man who will indeed be dead by Friday.

With God there is fullness of mercy,

but with Caesar, there is none.

Which leaves us in the unfortunate position:

Not 20 minutes ago we pledged our allegiance once again

            to Jesus’ peaceful army, waving our palm fronds and singing Hosanna.

In ritual we made a public commitment to the losing side,

            the side that keeps getting crushed

by whatever Caesar is in power

            which is also the side that God keeps choosing.

We are part of the procession that ends,

or at least pauses very painfully, at Golgotha.

I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to say

that we live in a world in which the battle for Jerusalem

is still going on;

the Caesars and Pilates and Pharoahs of the world

            are still leaving their boot prints,

their tank tracks and bullet holes

and foreclosed houses and abandoned neighborhoods,

and polluted rivers and mounds of hazardous waste,

all over the place.

And they are still keeping “the losers” in line:

the victims of street violence, the undocumented,

the long-term unemployed, the sweatshop workers,

the hungry and homeless and poor.

God’s poor are still crying out: “Hosanna”—

which means, “save us.”

And God is still choosing their side, the losing side:

Are we ready to join Jesus’ merry band,

            all the way to Golgotha?

How will we know we are in the right parade?

Kristin White Sermon - Lent V

A Sermon Preached

Kristin White

The Fifth Sunday of Lent  April 6, 2014

St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church – Wilmette, Illinois

You all know Call and Response, right?  I’d like to ask you to practice it with me now.  Please open up your bulletins to the Offertory Anthem, which comes just after the Peace.  As you remain seated, the choir is going to sing the refrain of “Dry Bones,” and then we will sing it back…

…So the thing that makes that work is that we sing back, right?  It’s only Call and Response if we sing it back.

--

Couldn’t the God who created something out of nothing…couldn’t that God have raised those bones without the help of a reluctant prophet?  And couldn’t the same Savior who would soon die on a cross and after three days be raised, couldn’t that Savior have unhitched the shroud from his friend Lazarus’ face?

--

Too often I think we forget that today’s passage in the book of the prophet Ezekiel is not the whole of the book of that prophet.  We miss the violence of that book, the history of what exile meant to the people.  And instead, since today’s passage is the primary thing we read from it, we reduce it to this otherworldly and strange story.

If that is all we see, what do we miss?  We miss the fact that Ezekiel and the People Israel had to leave the holy city of Jerusalem, the Temple that they believed to be the place where God lived on earth.  We miss the fact that their departure from the land also meant the departure from their identity.  We miss the fact that Ezekiel and his Hebrew companions didn’t have to be locked up in prisons or refugee camps to be controlled by their captors, because the exile was enough.  It was enough to deaden their eyes and their hearts.  It was enough to deaden their hope, as they chose not to “sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land.”

We come to this singular passage in its strangeness, which seems so far away, so unreal.  Or perhaps not so far away.

The theologian David Garber says, “The miracle of this vision does not simply lie in its theatricality.  The true miracle is that it occurs after the community has faced such devastating loss.”[1] I would assert that the second part of the miracle is this: “So I prophesied,” Ezekiel says.  Those bones rattle and come together with sinew and flesh and skin, after Ezekiel – that prophet who has been driven from his home and lost his wife and seen his holy temple destroyed – that same prophet still finds a way to preach to a valley filled with death.  The miracle happens, not with a divine flick of the divine hand, but with a holy Call: “Mortal, shall these bones live? Prophesy.  Prophesy to these bones.” – and then a human Response: “So I prophesied.”

--

By the time Jesus gets to Bethany and the home of Mary and Martha, Lazarus has been dead in the tomb for four days.  The sisters had sent word to Jesus that his friend was sick, and Jesus didn’t come in time. Mary and Martha know that Lazarus’ death is real, and they mourn with the people who did gather at their home in time.  The disciples are terrified about this return to Judea, wondering if it will mean their death, along with Lazarus, along with Jesus.  Martha accuses.  Mary accuses.  The people criticize him for his delay.  Jesus weeps.

Could Jesus have rolled that stone away by himself?  Could he have gone into the tomb and brought Lazarus out?  He does neither of those things.  Instead, he asks people for help.  He prays to God the Father.  And then he calls Lazarus out of his death.

The people could have declined to respond to his call for help.  Lazarus could have stayed comfortably asleep.

But he doesn’t.  The final part of this miracle is that Lazarus comes out, but his face is still covered with a cloth, his hands and his feet are still tied with strips of linen.  The marks of death still cling to him.  The miracle is incomplete.  But Jesus does not finish it himself.  Instead, he calls for the response of the people – that hurting and heartbroken group of people.  “Unbind him,” Jesus says.  “Unbind him, and let him go.”

--

Dwight Hopkins teaches liberation theology at the University of Chicago. In his book Down, Up, and Over, he talks about God’s invitation to us as co-creators, about continuing as participants in the sacred work that God has begun.  It’s like singing back in Call and Response in the tradition of African-American spirituals, but with this exchange stretching between heaven and earth – between God and humanity.

--

We know something of these texts.  We know something of a valley filled with dry bones, because we’ve seen it.  We see that valley with a returned soldier who loses himself in Fort Hood.  We see it as a plane disappears in the Indian Ocean. We read about it as a woman is shot on Pulaski Road in Humbolt Park.  We know something of being far from home, far from who we are.  We know something of the otherworldly fear of this story as it plays itself out in the valleys of our own lives. We know something of those bones; because they’re our mothers’ bones, our fathers’ bones. They’re yours. They’re mine.

And we know something of sending out a plea for help and having help not come quite in time.  We know something of the tension, the accusation in our voice: “If you had been here…” because it’s our brother behind that stone, there in the tomb.  It’s our beloved.  And he has been there four days.

--

But the God who created something from nothing does not preach to the bones.  God calls us to do that.  And the Christ who will die and be raised does not lift the shroud from his friend’s face.  Christ calls us to do that. 

In a heaven-meets earth version of Call and Response, God invites us to answer the question: “Mortal, shall these bones live?”  Says to us: “Prophesy.  Prophesy to these bones.”  Christ invites us to “Unbind him and let him go.” 

God welcomes us to respond as co-creators, even in our own pain and anger and accusation and fear, even in our own times of displacement and loss.  God welcomes us to complete the miracles already begun.

It’s only Call and Response if we sing back.

[1] http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=893

Bryan Cones Sermon - Lent IV

Bryan Cones

Fourth Sunday of Lent, Year A, March 30, 2014

John 9:1-41

"Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents,

that he was born blind?"

No matter how many times I have read today’s gospel,

I just can’t get past that first question:

            Who sinned?

Who is to blame?

Who bears the shame?

Every time I read that question, I think:

            What a loaded question!

            What an unkind question!

            What an unhelpful question!

            What a hurtful question!

There are so many presuppositions preloaded into the question:

For example that having impaired vision,

is somehow morally “bad”

            and if you are a person who is blind,

there must be something wrong with you.

Or that blindness is the result of “sin,”

the consequence of violating God’s law,

            and so God, being the great punisher in the sky,

is doling out impairments for sin:

blindness, deafness, being unable to walk.

Or that there is a norm against which to judge a person

or a person’s difference from other people:

            In this case, the norm is being a “sighted” person,

            and the violation of the norm is being a person who is blind.

In short, if you are not “normal” by whatever standard,

you or maybe your parents, must have sinned.

It might be easy to dismiss all the presuppositions in the question

            as artifacts of the ancient world,

remnants of the “olden days” when people were superstitious.

But I think this kind of question has shown remarkable durability.

It seems like there are many “conditions” still

for which assigning blame

seems somehow warranted or necessary.

In the not-too-distant past,

we might have heard a question like:

Who sinned, this person or his partner, that he has HIV?

Who sinned, this person or his spouse, that he has lung cancer?

Or maybe:

Who sinned, this person, or her family, that she is an alcoholic?

Who sinned, this young person or his neighbors,

that he is in jail at 15?

Who sinned, this child, or her mother,

that she is homeless and poor?

There are probably many others,

some too tender to risk asking out loud.

A way to capture them all may be to ask simply:

            What did they do to deserve this?

            What did you do to deserve this?

Maybe in the fearful silence of our hearts, we might also ask:

            What did I do to deserve this?

What loaded questions these are!

What unkind questions!

What unhelpful questions!

What hurtful questions!

When I asked Claudia Joehl, a member of our parish who is blind,

about this gospel passage and its question, “Who sinned?”

            she answered almost exactly as Jesus did:

“I don’t think that anyone sinned in the story,” she said,

“because being born blind just happens.”

Nobody sinned. These things just happen.

Indeed a lot of life really does just happen to us.

What a helpful answer,

what a comforting answer,

what an encouraging answer,

what a powerful theological answer.

With Jesus, no one is being punished,

            no one “deserves” it,

and as a consequence

shame and blame have no place in the body that bears his name.

May I propose that for Lent this year

we “give up” these kinds of blaming questions?

May I propose even that we give them up for life?

It may be true that some of the problems

we have or other people have,

are made worse by the choices we make,

or by our bad habits, or those of our society.

And when a CTA train crashes into an escalator,

            or a plane goes awry and is scattered across an ocean,

            it is important to know how it happened.

But these other questions that look to blame,

            that try to identify the sins of others,

            that seek to assign a divine source of punishment,

these questions more often than not succeed

only in creating scapegoats,

            more shame, more division, more “crucifixions,”

            more ways to separate God’s people from one another.

I think in the Christian community

a far better kind of question might simply be:

How can we be helpful?

Maybe it could inspire other, deeper questions:

How can we lift from ourselves and others

the burdens of blame and shame?

How can we recognize each person

as a unique and beloved child of God,

            rather than as a problem,

            or as a difference that unsettles or provokes discomfort?

How can we disrupt the tyranny of “normal”

—normal children, normal lifestyles,

normal marriages, normal whatever—

the categories that so easily pit some against others?

How can we make being different in whatever way

            less of a burden,

more of an opportunity to flourish in a unique way before God?

Imagine the community shaped by these kinds of questions:

a community of helpers,

a gathering where the only “normal” is that there isn’t one,

a body of Christ in which all the bodies in Christ,

bodies with blindness or deafness, bodies in pain,

            bodies of many colors, of many mental abilities,

            bodies that roll on wheels or lean on canes,

and bodies that run all around the church,

            old bodies and young bodies, and all the bodies in between,

all of them, all of us, have our proper place.

That would be a body truly free to reveal the many works of God

through all the human differences God has made.

Kristin White Sermon - Lent III

A Sermon Preached

Kristin White

The Third Sunday of Lent  March 23, 2014

St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church – Wilmette, Illinois

She is nothing, if not practical.  The woman, whose name we do not know, goes to Jacob’s well in the light and the heat of the day, jar in hand.  She has been left before – five times, by five different husbands.  We don’t know if the cause is death or scandal or the simple matter of a husband saying to her, out loud: “I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce you.”  We don’t know.  But, whatever.  Whatever the combination of circumstances, they have happened to her.  Five times.  And now she lives with a man who is not her husband.

So she goes to the well in the heat of the day, when everybody else will be home eating lunch, keeping cool.  It’s easier that way, less awkward – fewer eyes avoiding contact with her.  It’s easier for her to be inconspicuous…maybe even intentionally invisible…that way.  It’s all very practical.

She didn’t expect anyone to be there, least of all Jesus.  And she certainly didn’t expect him to ask her for a drink of water – which is entirely impractical – she is a woman, he is a man; she is a Samaritan, he is a Jew.  But it happens.  He sees her.  He sees her there, and he asks her for a drink.

When she protests his breaking of the rules, he says something about living water.  And she responds, ever practical: “You have no bucket, and the well is deep.”

“You have no bucket, and the well is deep."

“I will give you water that will make you never thirst again,” he answers.  “I will give you water that gushes up to eternal life.”

Her practical nature persists: “Give me this water, so I don’t have to be thirsty.  Give me this water, so that I don’t have to keep coming back here to draw from the well.”

He sees her.  And he knows who she is.  He knows about the five husbands, and the one she lives with now, who is not her husband.  And still, he sees her.  He doesn’t decline contact.  He doesn’t shame or embarrass her, as the ones who abandoned her, as the ones who avoid her. 

His seeing her allows her to see him – first as a prophet drawing her away from practical rules of Mountain versus Temple, speaking instead about worshiping in Spirit and truth.  And again she sees him, now more fully as who he is, now as Messiah: “I am,” he tells her.  “I am he.”

Now it’s the disciples who find themselves all caught up in issues of practicality.  They have come back with the food they went into the city to buy, and here he is…talking to a woman?...and not just a woman, but a Samaritan woman?! (Can you not hear the slapping of foreheads and murmuring as they try to hold themselves back from the questions they really want to ask him?  Can we not leave you here at Jacob’s Well for just a little while, to go buy lunch, without something like this happening?!)

But she is not there to hear it.  She has gone, this Samaritan woman, abandoned five times, whose name we do not know.  She has gone into the city, knocking on the doors that probably would have been closed to her, a day before, an hour before then.  She tells people who would have avoided her about what she has found, about the one who has found her.  “Come and see!” she says.  “He saw me, and he knew me, and – is it possible?  Is it possible that he could be the One?”

A practical person would have taken the jar with her.  After all, the well is deep.  It wouldn’t have been too heavy, had she carried it empty with her, brought it back later to get the water she had originally gone to the well for in the first place.  A practical person would have brought it along to keep it from being lost, or stolen – after all, a woman abandoned five times and now dependent on a man who is not her husband, probably doesn’t have many possessions to spare.  And this one is important, right?  Her water jar is the thing that allows her to get what she needs.

Still, she goes without it.  She leaves her water jar there, at Jacob’s well.  She hurries into the city to tell the others, ignores her fear of awkwardness (does she even feel it now?), ignores the need she used to have to pass people by inconspicuously, ignores whatever those feelings are that might have caused her to hesitate a day before, an hour before now.  Because he saw her, and he knew her, and…is it possible he could be the One?

Whatever might have prevented them, now doesn’t.  They leave the city, on the word of the woman whose name we do not know, and they go to him.  And they believe him, those Samaritans.  They believe him, and they ask him to stay, and he does.  He stays for two more days.

And now those people who would have ignored her, instead, they talk to her.  (Would that have happened before she saw him at the well?)  They say to her: “We came because of what you said.  And now, we have heard and know for ourselves that this is true.”

What would it take?  What would it take for you to leave fear and practicality behind? 

What would it take to leave your own water jar there at the well?