Sunday, April 22, 2018, The Fourth Sunday of Easter and Welcome Sunday

Kristin White

The Fourth Sunday of Easter | April 22, 2018

John 10:11-18

There’s a certain beauty to be found, I believe, in those things we know by heart…those things that are so familiar that they come to us seemingly unbidden, and in coming to us, they return us to ourselves.

The smell of a baby’s head.

The cadence of your feet striking pavement as you hit your stride.

The words of a song you have sung for so long that you can’t remember learning it.

The crack of a baseball bat hit well on opening day.

The feel of your beloved’s hand as it holds your own.

The recipe that someone who loved you took the time to teach you.

What are the pieces of your familiar? What happens, for you, when you return to those pieces of yourself? And when do you find yourself yearning for them?

One of the blessings and privileges of this life as a priest is the opportunity I often have to spend time with people…at the beginnings of their lives, and at the ends of their lives. At both junctures, in those special and excruciating moments, people tend to be surrounded by the things they know by heart, or will, one day…beloved members of their families; photos; blankets or shawls that cover them in love and prayer and memories; shoes that their feet have worn a hole into in that one peculiar spot, or socks to keep little toes warm.

People at the ends of their lives often seem beyond the point of recognition or speech; but sometimes a piece of their familiar will find words that are still in their mouths: like with the Lord’s Prayer. Or today’s psalm.

Do you know the old version? Pray it with me, if you do:

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want;

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures;

he leadeth me beside the still waters

He restoreth my soul;

he leadeth me in paths of righteousnss for his name’s sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

I will fear no evil.

For thou art with me;

thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies;

thou anointest my head with oil;

my cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life

and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

There’s something in the knowing of that – a consolation that people find they have the vocabulary for, because they know it by heart. Even at the ends of their lives, they can find the words of a promise that they shall not want…the image of walking in the shadow of death and knowing that they are not alone in it – the movement from “he” to “thou” as the psalmist faces God directly. You are with me, we pray in that 23rd psalm. You comfort me. You prepare a table for me. You anoint me. Goodness and mercy shall follow, and I will dwell at home.

—

Every year on the fourth Sunday of Easter season, our gospel and psalm and prayers and music are marked by images of Jesus as the Good Shepherd. We pray this most familiar psalm. We hear Jesus talking about knowing his own, about his own knowing him.

My guess, you have heard your share of sermons about what it means for Jesus to be the Good Shepherd. You have heard about the dangers of those hired hands that run away at the first scare. You have heard, no doubt, about the sketchier qualities of sheep…and, my hope, you’ve heard some defense of sheep as well.

I know this, because I have preached all of those things, and I have heard them, too.

It’s difficult to get a real sense of this passage, and easy to get all wrapped up in the talk of sheep and shepherds and who represents which, because we just get this little slice of the story. And, well, the imagery certainly lends itself. But as cute and fluffy as sheep can be, and as great a villain as we have in the hired hand who doesn’t protect them, this lesson Jesus teaches is not finally just about sheep. But we have to step back, in order to find the context for it.

—

A chapter before today’s lesson takes place in the gospel of John, Jesus encounters a man who was born blind. That condition in that place at that time separates the man from the community. It prevents him from doing work, requires that he must sit in public and beg for anything he gets in life. As Jesus and the disciples pass by this man, one of the disciples asks Jesus what the man has done wrong, or what mistake his parents must have made, for him to deserve this separation – as though it’s his fault. Jesus responds: “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be made manifest in him.”

The work of God at that moment, then, is for Jesus to make mud out of dirt and spit and rub it on the man’s eyes, and then tell him to go wash in a nearby pool of water. There, his sight is given to him, for the first time in his life. So now the man can take part as a participant in the community. It is possible for him to be returned to a familiar that has never been available to him before now.

But not so fast. Because the Pharisees are on the scene, and they’ve got some questions and concerns. The Pharisees, remember, are the enforcers of Jewish order and rules. They find their power in the fact that they know how things are supposed to work, and they keep track and try to make it so.

So first, the Pharisees debate whether the man who now sees really ever was the man born blind who used to have to beg. Next, they ask the man himself about the healing, especially taking issue with the fact that it happened on the Sabbath, which, by law and custom, would be sinful. Then, they check references by bringing in the man’s terrified parents for questioning. And finally, they bring back the man whose sight has been given to him…along with some healthy wits…the man who finally gets fed up with this repeat interrogation and says to those Pharisees: “I told you this already, and you didn’t listen. Why do you need for me to tell you again? Do you want to be his disciples too?!”

It is only after all of this that Jesus tells the story of the Good Shepherd, the one who enters the sheepfold with trust, the one whose sheep know his voice by heart, who comes that they might have life abundant. Only then – still in earshot of the Pharisees – does Jesus say the words of today’s gospel lesson: “I know my own and my own know me…and I lay down my life for the sheep.” Only then does he tell those who listen: “I have other sheep, not of this fold; I must bring them also. So there shall be one flock, one shepherd.” Dare I add: for everybody, everybody, everybody.

In speaking those familiar words, Jesus seeks to reconcile and restore – to restore the people to themselves, to reconcile them to one another in their community, and to join them together to their God. I wonder if there might be something for us, in that lesson underneath and inside of the story of the Good Shepherd today.

Today is also Welcome Sunday here at St. Augustine’s, a day we set aside to introduce and bless and give thanks for new members of this church. You all have come to us for reasons as different as each one of you, all seeking a new familiar, here. I pray that you will find and share pieces of yourselves, in the life of faith you begin and continue and embody here. I pray that as you join in worship and fellowship, in learning and service, this community will become one that you know by heart – a place where, again and again, you find that the words of God’s promise are in your own mouths, as again and again, you are restored to yourselves.

And so welcome, you who choose newly to be part of this congregation today. And welcome, you who have chosen this church and chosen this church and chosen this church again, through years and decades, you who already know St. A’s by heart, and now make room for others to join us.

We belong to each other. And together, we belong to the One who gives us the familiar pieces of ourselves, that, together, by heart, will help us to find our way home.

Sunday, April 14, 2018, The Marriage of Barbara Kutis and Jason Brandt

Kristin White

Welcome, all of you, to the joy of this day. Thank you, Barbara, and Jason, for entrusting it to us to share.

This is a part of the reading you chose for today, a reading that is a song: “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away. Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm; for love is strong as death, passion fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, a raging flame. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it.”

And this is a part of the blessing I will pray over you in a little while: “Let their love for each other be a seal upon their hearts, a mantle about their shoulders, and a crown upon their foreheads. Bless them in their work and in their companionship; in their sleeping and in their waking; in their joys and in their sorrows; in their life and in their death.”

I hold these two pieces together and offer them to you, as you begin your married life together today. I invite you to remember what you are saying about what love is: a seal upon your hearts, something that is uniquely emblazoned on you. And it is powerful: strong, and fierce, and unquenchable.

Your lives are testimony to that power, to that determination. You are strong people, and clear.

I first met you just three months ago. You had moved to Wilmette on a Tuesday, your moving truck arrived on Wednesday. Barbara, you emailed me about church on Friday, and I met you both for the first time that Sunday. It was a delight to welcome you, as you were in the process of moving to a new place, as Jason began this new job as fire chief, and as the two of you prepare to become parents of these twins that our whole congregation so looks forward to meeting.

It’s a lot, though – which I know that you know – and it is good, also, to know that you are strong and clear people. When I said something off-hand in one of our first conversations about how amazed I was that you managed to do all this and still make it to church your first Sunday here, Jason, you said something like this: “You know, I saw one of those motivational posters once about people saying they don’t have time to go to the gym. And it said ‘Don’t say you don’t have time…just acknowledge that you’re choosing not to do that.’ We have decided that it matters to us to be here, and so we are.”

Well, Jason and Barbara, it matters that you are here; we are glad and grateful for your presence here at St. Augustine’s Church. And I tell you that this community will surround you over these next months, and years, and be ready to support you as you welcome your babies into the world, as you continue in your life as a family.

You have chosen each other. And today you choose each other again, before God and these people as witnesses, with our love and support. And the work of a lifetime will be found in your choosing each other and choosing other and choosing each other again.

So let that choice of love be the seal on your heart and your arm, on your shoulders and foreheads. And know that I am not talking about love in the way that the world would sell it – romantic and fleeting and fickle. I am talking about the kind of love that calls you to persevere through the bleary-eyed weeks of not so much sleep that will be the early days of your babies’ lives. The kind of love that calls you to find grace and kindness for each other when it would be easier to snap back with a sharp word.

Choose each other and choose each other and choose each other again, and be blessed. “Bless them in their work and in their companionship,” we will pray in just a little while. I love that you met doing something you love, training for a triathlon, and that your relationship began from a place of friendship. I love that the picture you chose for the front of your bulletin today is a tandem bicycle. I don’t know if you actually have one of those, and I’m imagining whether it would work to attach a baby bicycle trailer to the back of it, which is just kind of a fun thing to think about. Whatever the case though, remember that companionship is part of the blessing we will offer you today. Nurture that with each other in these coming days, even when you’re tired, even when it seems you don’t have enough time. Whether it’s bike rides with trailers or walks with the babies in front packs or a sitter with them at home so the two of you can have a night out and enough time to complete your sentences, nurture your care for each other as sacred – because it is.

Barbara and Jason, I wish you the love that God gives us to share in this life you begin today – love that is strong and fierce and unquenchable, love that finds grace and forgiveness and hope and humor. Let that love be a seal upon your hearts, a mantle upon your shoulders, and a crown upon your foreheads. And be blessed in your work and in your companionship; know that you are blessed as you sleep and as you wake; be blessed in times of joy and in times of sadness, and in all the times that fall between; know yourselves blessed and beloved of God and of one another, in your lives, throughout the rest of your lives, and forever. Amen.

Sunday, April 1, 2018, Easter Day

Kristin White

The Feast of the Resurrection

John 20:1-18

Shortly before the time that the March for our Lives event officially began in Washington DC eight days ago, students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School walked in a line through the crowd on their way to the platform. They passed very near to where our group stood, near enough that we could see them, near enough that if I had stretched, I could have reached them.

As they walked, they held up the student identification cards of their friends who had been killed in that short and horrible six minutes and twenty seconds at the end of school on Ash Wednesday. They held up those badges that bore the names and images of their friends: Alyssa Alhadeff, Martin Anguiano, Nicholas Dworet, Jaime Guttenberg, Luke Hoyer, Cara Loughran, Gina Montalto, Joaquin Oliver, Alaina Petty, Meadow Pollack, Helena Ramsay, Alex Schachter, Carmen Schentrup, Peter Wang. They carried with them the names of the adults who died that day trying to protect their students: Scott Biegel, Aaron Feiss, Chris Hixon.

In the substance of that act and many others before and since, I found a defiance of inertia, an unwillingness to accept that this is the way it all has to go. Instead, I saw – I see – this nation’s young people insisting upon hope. I see this nation’s young people demanding resurrection.

—

This day we celebrate right now began so many years ago in the dark. Mary Magdalene, the one who is too often held wrongly in suspicion, the one from whom Jesus cast out seven demons, the one with means enough to finance Jesus’ and the disciples’ ministry…Mary walked to the tomb before the sun had risen. I wonder: had she slept in those three days since she saw Jesus nailed to the wood of the cross? Did the darkness and her own bleary-eyed grief add to her to her confusion? Whatever the case, what she found when she got there was not the thing she had expected. The stone had been rolled away from his grave. He wasn’t there.

So she ran back and told the disciple Jesus loved, together with Peter: “They have taken our Lord from the grave, and I don’t know where.” So Peter ran. And the beloved disciple ran. And somehow it was important enough to someone along the way to record the fact that Peter came in second in that race to the tomb.

The confusion did not belong only to Mary, though, as that beloved disciple and Peter looked into Jesus’ grave. Peter looked in, and the beloved disciple looked in, and the scripture tells us that the beloved disciple saw and believed (what exactly he believed we do not know)…but that neither of them understood, and so…they left.

Mary Magdalene stayed, though. She refused to accept whatever it was that compelled the others to go. She stayed and she wept as she spoke to the angels who she didn’t seem to know were angels. She stayed and she wept as she spoke to the gardener…who, as it turns out, wasn’t the gardener after all.

“Mary.” he said. And she knew.

He named her, and she knew him.[1] She saw him, and suddenly the confusion and the fear and the way that all of this had seemed to go…it was all turned upside down, by the God who loves her, the God who loves you, the God who loves us all enough to split heaven and earth to be with us.

Mary stayed, and she wept. And she was witness to resurrection.

—

This feast that we celebrate today, which lies at the very heart of our faith, makes no intellectual sense. We cannot think our way into an understanding of a person – fully human, scripture promises – being resurrected to new life. We cannot comprehend it. And yet the story of our faith insists that this is so.

So we pray our creeds. Maybe some folks leave out those parts you can’t assent to, and I think that’s alright. And maybe some work it into a part of a narrative that you can live with, and I think that’s alright too.

We are reasonable people, after all, aren’t we? We go to work, we raise our kids, we pay our taxes, we try to be kind, we talk to our neighbors, we walk the dog, we try to take care of ourselves, we try to take care of each other.

So what does it say, that the heart of our faith rests on this completely unreasonable event? And especially the way John’s gospel tells it: with the running, and the who-got-there-first, and the who-went-in-and-saw-the-linen-wrappings…when you think about who wrote down the words of this gospel in the first place, and then the generations upon generations of scribes who copied and copied and copied them…those details have to have merit to have made it through, right? But who decided which pieces mattered so much?

The beloved disciple saw and believed, but neither he nor Peter understood. And so they, in their not-understanding-ness, went home.

But Mary stood. And she wept.

None of it makes sense, really. Ours is not a reasonable faith. It’s mysterious. It asks us to follow those disciples running in the dark to an empty grave. It asks us to notice and to care about who got there first, about the linen wrappings that covered him, and the fact that the one from his head is lying in a separate space. It asks us to care about a woman who wasn’t believed…even by her friends, who had to go see it for themselves, and even then, well…it asks us to care about a woman who, people at the time, and in the thousands of years since, have sought to discredit and dismiss. Ours is a faith that asks us to care about that woman, the one who stood weeping, the one who would be the first witness to the resurrection.

That’s a lot to ask of reasonable people.

And yet, here we are.

And yet, we reasonable people now find ourselves in the midst of a world that does not make sense.

We live right now in a world where our children have become experts in the differences between a soft lockdown and a hard one – terms that did not exist when I was in the classroom as a student, or, more recently, as a teacher.

We live in a world in which a friend of mine recently overheard her eleven-year-old child talking about which classroom he hopes he’s in if there is ever a shooting at his school, because he knows where the best places are to hide.

We live in a world where a teenager who was a literal target in his high school on Ash Wednesday has earned enough traction in his effort to be heard on this matter that he has become a threat, enough of a threat to have been targeted by a pundit…who would mock him.

We live in a world, on this Feast of the Resurrection, that through some act of poetic strangeness also happens to be April Fools’ Day, in which a generation of young people sees the violence of mass shootings and the gun violence found every day, every hour, every minute…and says to the powers that be: this world you have created is in fact entirely unreasonable. And we insist on changing it.

—

A child shall lead them.

That’s what Jesus does, isn’t it? He goes first, through the crowd. He goes first, naming the outrageousness, upsetting the order that isn’t really order after all.

He goes first, to the cross.

First, to the tomb.

We prepare the way for him, so that he can make a way for us to march for our very lives.[2]

He shows us that anticipating the new life of resurrection is the one sane choice in the midst of a crazy system that can expect only death and the grave.

He teaches us to demand resurrection, at the very moment it would seem that death has won. And then he invites us to step into that resurrection and keep going, because resurrection alone was never the end of the story anyway.

—

Those high school kids whose names and pictures were carried through the crowd last Saturday had lives to live – lives cut short on the first of this 40 days’ journey we have been privileged to share. The young people who carried them have lives now shaped forever by what they witnessed.

They are asking for the freedom to live their lives.

They are insisting upon hope.

They are demanding resurrection.

[1] http://www.davidlose.net/2018/03/easter-b-2018-truly-known/

[2] http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?m=4377&post=5121: Thanks to Karoline Lewis for this commentary, pieces of which are threaded throughout this sermon.

Sunday, March 25, 2018 - Palm Sunday

Texts: Mark 11:1-11 (Processional Gospel); Mark 14:1-15:47 (Passion)

This has been a weekend of rallies and marches across the country. Hundreds of thousands gathered in “Marches for Our Lives” in Washington, DC, Chicago, and other cities. Led by our nation’s youth people came together in response to the latest school mass shooting in Parkland, Florida to demand changes in our gun laws as well as other changes in our political and social culture.  The youthful leaders saw these gatherings as the beginning of a movement for a better future for this nation. Chicago area Episcopalians who gathered with Bishop Jeffery Lee ahead of joining the Chicago march heard our bishop say that the march yesterday was the beginning of our Palm Sunday procession, and some carried and waved palm branches.

Indeed, I think there are some similarities between the marchers for our lives, who chanted concerning politicians held captive by the National Rifle Association, “Vote them out, vote them out,” and the marchers who accompanied Jesus into Jerusalem chanting “Hosanna!”

Jesus had been making his way from Galilee through Judea, teaching and healing and casting out demons and collecting followers, and was about to enter the holy city at Passover time.  Arrangements had been made for a parade to call attention to his entrance. Those arrangements included securing a colt on which Jesus could ride and cutting leafy branches in the fields. Jesus’ followers spread their cloaks on the road to make a kind of royal carpet. And waving their branches some went in front of him and some followed him shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming Kingdom of our ancestor David!”

This was not a surge of people coming out of the city to greet Jesus. How would they even know who he was or that he was arriving? This was a demonstration by Jesus’ many followers to announce his arrival. It was a political demonstration because they were hailing Jesus as the one who would restore the Davidic kingdom. You can be sure that this caught the attention of the authorities in the city, particularly the Temple authorities---the priests and scribes. They lived in a delicate balance with the occupying Roman administration. Rome was always respectful of local cults and cultures; that was one of the reasons for their governing success. In return for religious freedom the Romans expected priestly support of the imperial administration. Jesus’ entrance into the city upset the status quo. In fact, upon entering the city he went straight to the Temple and assaulted it by overturning the tables of the money changers and driving out the sellers of sacrificial victims. He made claims about replacing that Temple with himself, with his body. “Tear it down and in three days I will raise it up.”

The priestly and scribal authorities needed to get rid of him. But there had been that demonstration by his followers. How many followers did he have mingling among the many pilgrims and visitors in the city for the National Passover? Given this uncertainty, the priests had to make arrangements to grab Jesus under the cover of darkness and have a quick trial and execution. A traitor in Jesus’ inner circle conveniently played into their hands. Jesus was arrested outside in the garden after the Passover Seder, given a trial of sorts in the middle of the night, and delivered to the Roman governor early in the morning.

Here we meet a second demonstration. Some locals turned out at the residence of the Roman governor to ask him to honor of the custom of releasing a prisoner at Passover time.  Pontius Pilate, perhaps sensing an easy way to get Jesus released (since he didn’t find him to be a threat), presented Jesus to the crowd, along with a known insurrectionist named Barabbas. If the crowd gathered before the procurator had included Jesus’ followers who accompanied him into the city the previous Sunday, they surely would have shouted for Jesus to be released. But this was a different crowd and the priests stirred them up to ask for Barabbas.

Why would they choose Barabbas over Jesus? Probably because Barabbas was a troublemaker they knew rather than a troublemaker they didn’t know. Yes, Barabbas had murdered a man, but Jesus had assaulted the holy Temple---the primary shrine of their nation. So when Pilate presented Jesus, they cried out “Crucify him, crucify him.” They were insistent on it and Pilate finally gave in and had Jesus flogged in preparation for his crucifixion.

Where were Jesus’ followers when this dirty deed was being done---all those people who had marched in with him shouting “Hosanna”? We know that Simon Peter had followed Jesus when he was taken away from the garden. He was hanging around the fire in the courtyard of the high priest’s house. Upon questioning by a servant girl, “Weren’t you with that man from Galilee?,” he denied knowing him, and hurriedly left the scene.

Since Jesus was on the cross by nine in the morning, his followers either didn’t know what was going on or, if Peter had spread the word, they were purposely lying low. But according to the evangelist Mark, none of Jesus’ disciples were there. At the cross only a Roman centurion was astute enough to recognize what was going on. “Truly this man was the Son of God.” This is the only statement about Jesus in the entire Gospel of Mark that the evangelist left unchallenged.

We proclaim both the Palm Gospel and the Passion Gospel on this Sunday because we need to see ourselves at both ends of the week. We need to ask: where are we in this story? Are we with the supporters of Jesus who hailed him as king and thought they had a movement going to renew their nation, but weren’t around when they might have made a difference? Or are we among those who felt a need to support the established order by asking for Jesus to be crucified? Will we who marched for the lives of our youth yesterday continue to do what it takes to support their aspirations? Or will we return to our daily affairs and leave the status quo unchallenged and unchanged. Or…are we like the soldier who had a glimmer of understanding about what was really taking place---that the world’s mess is so intractable that God needs to be involved, even unto death on a cross?

This is a story we need to follow throughout this week because it’s important that we know which group we identify with. And if we’re with the group that calls for the affirmation of life rather than the group that accepts death as the price for maintaining the status quo, then we need to gather at the font at the end of this week to renew our baptismal covenant and commit ourselves anew to the kind of Kingdom Jesus ushered in by his death and resurrection. Amen. 

Pastor Frank Senn