June 28, Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

The Second Sunday after Pentecost – June 28, 2015

Mark 5:21-43

It’s the hands that I notice.

There are so many pieces to the story inside of a story that is today’s gospel. It takes place on Jesus’ second return from the other side of the Sea of Galilee, showing that he spends time with both Jews and Gentiles. The story draws our attention to Jairus, a leader of some stature in the synagogue who comes to find Jesus in the midst of his entourage, falls down before him, begging Jesus to come and heal his daughter before she dies. Jesus goes, and the crowd follows, and he knows – he knows when the woman reaches out her hand to touch the hem of his garment, he feels the power she claims from him. After acknowledging her before everybody, he goes on to Jairus’ house, together with his friends, together with her parents. The people say she is dead, but suddenly she is not. He takes her by the hand, says, “Little girl, get up,” and she does. “Give her something to eat,” he tells the girls’ parents.

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It matters, that Jesus spends time on both sides of the Sea, blessing Gentiles and Jews alike. It matters that Jesus goes, when he is asked – when he is begged – by a frantic father who gives up any assumption of status for the hope of his child. It matters that both people healed in this passage are female, and as such are themselves without status in that world at that time. And it matters, as well, that both are ritually unclean – the adult woman because she is hemmoraging, the girl because she is dead; that matters, because under normal circumstance, ritual law means that people should not touch them, that they should not touch anyone else. It matters that the number twelve factors in on both counts – the woman has bled for twelve years, the child is twelve years old (think of twelve tribes of Israel, think of twelve disciples of Jesus…). It matters, that both are called “daughter.” And again – those hands matter. Because it is that act of touch, forbidden according to laws and traditions – it is that hand, reaching out, that heals and raises them.

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One of the great privileges of my work is your invitation into moments in the midst of illness we do not understand, into moments at the brink of life and death. I have been with you, hands folded in prayer, hands held together, my hands anointing, your hands clutching a shawl knit for you by the hands of another, one who prayed for you while she made it.

This piece of scripture raises difficult questions: Why was the woman cured, but I am not? Why was that child raised, but mine was not? What is prayer for? Am I doing it right? Am I faithful enough?

I don’t know any more about the people in today’s story than what this text tells us. By that account, these were pretty normal people – whatever that means. Jairus was a leader in the local synagogue, and his daughter was a not-quite-teenage kid. The woman who reached out had been sick for more than a decade and had blown all her money on health care that had not only not worked, but now she was even worse than she had been.

My guess, there were plenty of other ordinary people, other normal people – whatever that means – while Jesus sailed between both sides of the Sea of Galilee, people who were not cured of their diseases, whose loved ones he did not raise from the dead. Were their hands not folded tightly enough in prayer? Did they not reach out insistently enough from within that crowd of people to touch his garment?

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Does healing only mean the cure of disease? Does resurrection have to mean not dying?

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One of the writers I read in recent days talked about a friend of his, diagnosed as a relatively young man with a disease that would kill him by inches.[1] On his diagnosis, the man and his wife grasped their hands together and prayed that he would be healed. Now, two decades later, that man is in the final stages of his disease. And he describes himself as healed – not of the illness itself, but of his fear of it.

Dabney Smith is the Bishop of Southwest Florida and was a candidate for Presiding Bishop in yesterday’s election. He is also a longtime friend of the Lee family. Bishop Lee preached the funeral of Bishop Smith’s wife three years ago. During the candidate interviews at General Convention this week, when he was asked about his view of resurrection, Bishop Smith said this: “I am a lifelong Episcopalian. I know the creeds. I know what the church teaches. But when my late wife became ill and died in six months, I was confronted with finding what I really believe. She was buried during Holy Week. The scriptures during Eastertide became very real for me. I am absolutely convinced that the resurrection is the truth. That Jesus is alive. That we are honored to be here as leaders in his name. He sends us into the world to tell people that they don’t need to be afraid of anything, because God loves them and wants to show them that in this life.”

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And she came up behind him and touched his cloak, for she said, “If I but touch his clothes, I will be well.”

And he took her by the hand, and said, “Little girl, get up.”

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These past days, the face of our nation has seen healing that didn’t look like cure. We have caught a glimpse of resurrection, though too many – too, too many – have not been spared by death.

We saw hands raised in healing joy that hands might be joined, in the words of justice: “No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were…. (The petitioners) ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right. It is so ordered,”[2] justice says.

We saw hands grasped together, in defiant commitment to the miracle of resurrection, as a people with every right not to, showed again that forgiveness is not something that faithful people feel, but something that they do. Even while their throats were filled with tears.[3] And hands pulled down a symbol over a statehouse that too long served as the reminder of a tradition that enslaved and divided. And a people, who together are more than the sum of their parts when they are alone, raised their hands, and stood on their feet, to sing about God’s Amazing Grace.

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And she came up behind him and touched his cloak, for she said, “If I but touch his clothes, I will be well.”

 And he took her by the hand, and said, “Little girl, get up.”

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Sometimes healing doesn’t look like cure. And sometimes we catch glimpses of resurrection, though too, too many die, though our throats are filled with tears.

Does prayer work? This is what I believe: as we grasp our hands together, we become something greater than we were, when we were alone. And as we ask something of God, we grow into nearer relationship with God. We bind ourselves, reaching our hands toward the God who is always reaching out toward us: the God of healing, the God of resurrection.

[1] Michael Lindvall. “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary Year B, Volume 3. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009. 188-190.

[2] Obergefell v. Hodges, 2015

[3] Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal, June 25, 2015

June 21, Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

Job 38:1-11, Mark 4:35-41

Bryan Cones

When you picture the scene in today’s gospel, how do you see it? What does the boat look like? Does it have sails? Is it covered, with a cabin? Does it have oars? Is it just big enough for all the disciples? Is it crowded? Can you feel the wind? What about the water—is it already in the boat? Are you wondering if it is about to sink?

How about the scene of Job in the whirlwind? By this time in the story Job has now lost everything: all his possessions are gone, his children are all dead, his wife and his friends have abandoned him, even his body is covered with sores. What does God’s voice sound like? Is it deep, or maybe high? Is it loud—or just a whisper? What does it feel like to be Job in the whirlwind? What does this encounter with God feel like? Are you comforted? Frightened? Angry?

Both passages today describe crisis, and by entering into these stories, perhaps we can feel what it’s like to experience or remember crisis: They are both existential in a way. Job has asked that most basic of questions about life: Why me? What have I done to deserve this calamity? It is the kind of question one might ask when we get a dreaded diagnosis, or we lose our jobs, or have some other tragedy befall us, such as when a person filled with hate and racism enters our church and shoots nine people at a Bible study. Why them?

 The gospel story seems even more immediate, a matter of life and death, and so maybe harder to relate to: The disciples are wondering if they are going to survive, and not at all sure if they will. Maybe this is a bit harder to imagine, at least it is for me, but when I have looked at pictures of migrants crossing from Africa or the Middle East to Europe, in rubber rafts bursting with people and about to sink, I think I see at least an illustration of what it might feel like.

Our readings today have different endings: Job ends in the middle of God’s speech, while the gospel story resolves with a demonstration of Jesus’ power. Later in Job, God restores to the main character everything that he lost.

But I’m not sure we should be so quick to move to some resolution, given the events of this week and what has been happening in the world, as if the Bible provides easy or pat answers to the storms and whirlwinds of life. The world seems to me more in crisis, and I wonder what Christian faith has to say about living in crisis, and the feeling of being in crisis, whether they are more personal like Job’s, or more immediate like those migrants in the boat. And I’m not sure that our stories in this case are necessarily very comforting. But I do think they suggest some things to think about.

One thing I think stories suggest is simply that we can’t escape the crisis: There is no getting out of the boat— or at least if you do, you aren’t going to make it. Sometimes being faithful means standing in the whirlwind, listening for the holy questions God may ask us. I think God may have questions for us about Charleston, questions about why we continue to tolerate this kind of violence in our culture, and what we might do to stop it, or God may have questions for those of us who are white, about why we continue to tolerate racist attitudes among white people that continue to victimize people of color, and most especially African American people. I think God may be asking us the kinds of questions that may take a while to answer.

Another thing I think these stories suggest is that faith and safety don’t necessarily go together. When I imagine that boat in the gospel, it is open to the elements, open to the storm. To be Christian is to be open to the world, and sometimes that let’s someone dangerous in, as our siblings in Charleston found out. One element that makes the case of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church so frightening is that its members were practicing the kind of welcome we preach, which made possible the intimacy of that violent act. I’ve heard people suggest that churches need to beef up security, by which I presume that means keeping some people out of the boat. I’m not sure we can do that and remain true to ourselves.

The last thing these stories suggest to me about faith in crisis is that we can’t do it on our own. Part of Job’s misery was that his friends and his wife had failed him; and if you’ll notice in the gospel story before the storm there were “other boats” with Jesus: Where did they go? It takes all those other boats, and all those other people, to pass through the storm to the peace Jesus promises. We are all in this together, and surviving is not something anyone can do alone.

So what’s the good news? Beyond our Bible stories, today, there is one more story that might give us something to be hopeful about: As I drove up to Wilmette this morning, I had to avoid all those runners, doing the Race Against Hate, a memorial for an African American man killed by a white supremacist right in our own backyard. That race hasn’t yet brought Ricky Byrdsong back to life, and it certainly hasn’t done away with the hate and racism that just claimed nine more lives in Charleston, but it is maybe a port in the storm, an image of what we might accomplish together in crisis, and, I hope, a sign of fairer weather ahead.

June 14, Third Sunday after Pentecost

Ezekiel 17:22-24, Mark 4:26-34

Bryan Cones

When I went on retreat at the end of April, I deliberately chose a place in Georgia, north of Atlanta, knowing that no matter what “spring” was doing in Chicago, they would already have the real thing down there—which we in June just barely seem to have now! And I wasn’t disappointed: all the flowers were in bloom, all the trees were leafed out, and I had even already missed the early flowers, which were just beginning to sprout up here.

 Of all that life, though, what captured my imagination were the oaks: twice as tall as they ever grow here, not nearly as big around, but with huge canopies that filtered the light and the air. Even the smallest breath of wind made a rustling. The trees were so grand that beneath them it seemed they held up the sky; and truly they were holding the ground, with deep roots that held soil on the steep hills. They were for me living signs of the faithfulness of God.

I was thinking of those oaks as I heard today’s first reading, asking myself why the prophet Ezekiel needed to preach to trees: “All the trees of the field shall know that I am the LORD,” says the prophet, as if they need reminding. In his own time, Ezekiel isn’t talking about trees, of course, but about how God was going restore Israel. And yet, couldn’t God’s word come to the trees? Why wouldn’t God address the trees? They too are God’s creatures, though unlike people, they don’t need to be reminded to be faithful.

I was thinking something similar about the parables in today’s gospel: The first seems straightforward enough: The kingdom of God is something like a rich harvest that grows from a scattering of seeds. That sounds great—plenty of food for people to eat. But that second parable about the mustard seed: Who would want a giant bushy weed, no matter how small the seed? Then again if we look closely at the parable, we see that the mustard bush isn’t really for people at all; it’s for the birds of the air to nest in. In this story, the kingdom of God is literally “for the birds.”

These parables, one about trees, another about plants and birds, have got me wondering about just whom the kingdom of God is for: It might be tempting to allow these just to be analogies, which they are, of course, stories to point us to a lesson for human beings.

But if the kingdom of God is about something bigger than us, if it is about all of creation, then perhaps these stories are really for my oaks, and for the birds. The reign of God is not just about human flourishing, but about the flourishing of all creation, including the trees and the birds, and Lake Michigan, and the Chicago River, and all the other lakes and rivers, and other birds and trees, wherever they are.

It would be tempting now to start moralizing about the environment and about climate change and pollution, all of which are a terrible danger not only to humans but to my oaks in Georgia, which will never survive the heat, and to the birds and other species who are losing habitat, and to the countless living things that will become extinct if we human beings don’t change our ways. And I hope we all agree that Christian faith obliges us to do something about those things.

But before we get there, I wonder how we might first allow these stories to shape our imaginations in ways that might make it clear why we why care so much about creation. I wonder how these stories might help us to be curious about, or to be struck with awe by a vision of the reign of God that is ever so much broader than any human hope or need, so broad that it encompasses the entire Earth and every living thing, the whole creation, all the stars and planets and galaxies, and not because they are useful to us, but because God values them all for their own sake, and they, too, are coming along to the fullness of redemption.

Our privilege as those made in our own particular image of God, is to know in our beings that in every tree, in every bud about to bloom, in every garden, in every bee whose work brings forth fruit, in every wave along the lake, and the fish within it, in every sunrise and star twinkle, God is doing the work of bringing forth kingdom, in hidden ways we cannot know or see, and the fullness of which we can’t really anticipate. It’s going to be a surprise, and not only for us, but for everything God has made and called very good.

June 7, Second Sunday after Pentecost

Kristin White

Second Sunday after Pentecost

Genesis 3:8-15

I have a question I hope you will wonder about, together with me. What does God sound like? Really. If you were to say that you were listening for God, what are the sounds you would be listening for, or to? And how would you know? And what do you think you might do, if you heard those sounds?

The first reading today from the book of Genesis says this: “The man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze.” Can you imagine what that would be like? Great big giant stomping foot prints, or just the rustling of leaves, or one regular old person walking barefoot on the grass, and whistling along the way?

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I wonder, also, what it means that God’s very first direct question to those very first people is the one we hear God ask in this passage: “Where are you?”

The faithful response, the one we will hear later through many stories of the bible, from prophets like Samuel and Isaiah, is this: “Here I am, Lord.” That is the call and response. That is the whole. But that is not what humanity sounds like for God today. That is not what Adam says.

“I heard the sound, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and so I hid,” he says to God instead.

Sometimes, things fall apart. And now, all is not as it should be in that Original Garden. With this very first question, this first address, God shows people’s useless effort to hide, while they run away from the consequences of their own actions.[1]

So much is present in this question and response, in this moment: the blame of man to woman and woman to snake; the question of fear versus trust; and those twin factors of sin and shame.

To say it plainly, in the wisdom and words of the Godly Play lesson for this passage, sometimes things fall apart. Adam and Eve are created by God and live in this place of perfection where they have everything they need or want, almost, where God comes and walks around with them every night in the cool of the evening breeze…and there’s just one little caveat. One minor little rule. “This tree here, the one of the knowledge of good and evil? Leave its fruit alone,” God says. “Everything else is yours, just don’t touch this one. Don’t eat this particular fruit.”

Well. I don’t know about you. But when somebody tells me I can do anything I want, except for that one… tiny… little… thing… well, that one thing becomes the thing I very much want to do. In fact, that one little thing might actually become the only thing I want to do, or maybe even to think about.

So in the part of the story that comes before the reading we heard today, Eve looks at the fruit on that tree. She sees that it is beautiful, and she hears from that crafty (and hairless… which also means rather - ahem - naked…) snake, that it will help her know more than she knows right now. She hears that sneaky snake say that she will not die from eating it. So…she picks a piece of the fruit. And she eats it. And Adam does the same thing. And the snake is right: they do not die. And the snake is right about something else: they know something that they didn’t know before they picked and ate that fruit. Adam and Eve know that they are naked.

And things fall apart. God walks in the Garden. They hear God walking there, whatever that sounds like. And they hide. God calls to them: “Where are you?” And Adam and Eve don’t know what to say.

What had been perfect is not perfect anymore. What had been whole is broken. Things are not as they had been, and they never can be that way again.

It would be easy to build a sermon on sin and blame and guilt and shame. It would be easy to use the scriptures today to assign responsibility to gender and species. It’s been done. Whole theologies have been constructed on this particular moment in the biblical story. And honestly, though I don’t buy the whole thing, there are pieces that fit. Our actions have consequences. Once you know something, you can’t not-know it. Once you do something, you can’t not-have-done it. Adam and Eve know now they are naked. And God knows that they acted in ways that broke the sacred trust.  

But what about this? What if Eve had ignored the snake? What if she had followed that one rule, exactly? What if she left that fruit hanging on the tree, obedient and satisfied by all the other fancy fruit hanging on all those other trees God planted for the people, by the sweat of God’s own brow? What if Adam and Eve had behaved themselves, naked and content, walking together with God in the Garden each night, in the cool of the evening breeze?

“Everything hinges on this…and (this) text…deals with the chaos that comes from…her act of courage (or defiance).”[2]

After all, is a perfect place perfect, really? Can it be? In this Original Garden, there are “no differences, no opposites, no innovation, no creativity, no diversity, no rebellion, no need for grace or redemption.”[3]

And so this moment in our story, a story maybe less about our first ancestors and more of what happens to each one of us[4], serves as the hinge. Idyllic versus chaotic, whole versus broken. Eve sees that the fruit is beautiful. She hears that it will bring wisdom. And call it courage or call it defiance, she eats it. And so does Adam, her husband. (That one…tiny…thing…that you’re not supposed to do…)

There is no way to not-know what we know, there is no way to not-do what we have done. So God’s first people learn, as they quiver in the bushes, listening to God in that Original Garden, hearing God’s call to them, “Where are you?”

There is no way to go back to the unbroken and the perfect. All they can do now is go forward, trade their scratchy leaf-clothes for the better ones God will make for their protection and comfort, and walk themselves out into a world they do not know, but will.

And maybe, in all this, they trade what was perfect for what is real. Instead of the idyllic, they will face into chaos and struggle and loss and pain…and with that, moments of real joy and solace and peace borne through it all. They will learn something of hunger and perseverance, because they have to. And they will encounter things they never would have known in that perfect Original Garden: things like difference and opposite and innovation and creativity and diversity and rebellion. They will know their need of grace; they will yearn after redemption.

And since they won’t hear the divine footsteps every night in the Garden at the time of the evening breeze, the people will have to learn to listen for God. They will have to practice recognizing what God sounds like. So that way, when they hear God call to them, “Where are you?” - instead of hiding away to cover themselves, God’s people can respond, together with the faithful of every generation, “Here I am.”

[1] John Rollefson. Feasting on the Word: Year B, Volume 3, Pentecost and the Season after Pentecost 1. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009. “Proper 5, Genesis 3:8-15, Pastoral.” 102.

[2] Bert Marshall. Feasting on the Word: Year B, Volume 3, Pentecost and the Season after Pentecost 1. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009. “Proper 5, Genesis 3:8-15, Homiletical.” 101.

[3] Ibid, 103.

[4] Ibid, 103.

May 31, Holy Trinity

Isaiah 6:1-8; Romans 8:12-17; John 3:1-17

Bryan Cones

Ah, Holy Trinity—I’m sure it’s everyone’s favorite feast, better than Christmas and Easter put together! We will have a Holy Trinity shamrock hunt for the kids after church, and then we will all decorate triangles, God’s favorite shape. No?

Kristin and I were joking that today is the only feast of a “doctrine” in the Episcopal Church, a church not know for being exceedingly doctrinal— what we call an “idea feast.” An “idea feast” sounds terrible, doesn’t it— like celebrating the Feast of the theory of relativity. How can you make church even more boring? Celebrate an “idea feast”! While we are at it, let’s have a Feast of the Nicene Creed— I’m sure it would be very popular.

Now you might think, that, sometimes being a heady crowd, we Episcopalians might like a good “idea feast.” The Trinity is like a theological brainteaser: 3 = 1, 1 = 3 I have a feeling our Zen Buddhist friends would encourage us to meditate on the Trinity as a koan, a paradox or riddle meant to break our categories, and lead us to enlightenment, to help us see that the Trinity is not something meant to be “understood” at all. Our brains may not be very helpful here.

Even the scriptures today seem to invite us to get out of our heads. Isaiah’s vision isn’t rational at all: He responds with absolute terror to his vision of a cartoonishly large God, so big the hem of the holy robe fills the temple. And I don’t think anyone in their right mind would put those creepy six-winged angels on a greeting card.

John’s ever-cryptic Jesus confounds Nicodemus, “a teacher of Israel” who can’t seem to understand that you have to be “born again” to receive Jesus’ wisdom. Nicodemus tries to understand it, literally, and so he misses the point, completely.

Paul, too, when he describes life in the Spirit isn’t talking about something intellectual: The ecstatic cry of “Abba! Father!” is the biblical equivalent of O-M-G—a mind-blowing moment of grace.

All of which suggests to me that on this “idea feast” it would be a good idea to turn off our brains for a minute, to remember that we can experience God not only in our heads, but, even more profoundly in our spirits, our bodies, our guts.

So let’s take a moment to remember your own foundational experiences of God: those experiences of “something more” the ones that keep you coming to church, no matter what you think about the Trinity or the creed.

Maybe it was the first time you felt your child move within you, or that first intake of breath of a newborn followed by that first exhale and cry of life. Maybe it was the last breath of a loved one, when you could almost see their Spirit return from whence it came. How about the time someone told you they loved you, and you believed it, or you told someone else that you loved them, and meant it completely. Or that first time you felt it in their body and in yours, if you know what I mean. Or maybe it was the time you really were “born again” in that evangelical sense— overwhelmed by the saving love of God in Jesus, and yes, even Episcopalians have had that experience.

Or perhaps your experiences of God are more everyday: the wonder of beholding your garden begin to bloom, or the excitement of seeing that first tomato start to form. Maybe you see God every morning in the children you work with at school, or in your own children, or the times you notice the unshakeable faithfulness of your best friend or closest family member. Maybe it’s the sense of pride you feel in knowing that you helped or healed someone today, or that by your work made the world a fairer or safer place. Perhaps there was a moment when you realized that by singing, or playing music, or repairing something, or making something beautiful, or cooking a meal, or serving it, or giving a gift to someone who asked, that you participated in the repair of God’s creation, that you were God’s partner today in bringing forth the reign of God.

Now let’s turn our brains back on: I wonder if you notice what I am noticing about my own experience of God: that my feeling of “something more” that I call “God” involved another person, or another living thing, or some other part of what God has created. My experiences of God have always involved discovering myself  in a relationship of love or joy or wonder or kindness or beauty or peace or justice or freedom, with something or someone else. How about you?

I wonder if that is why our Christian tradition has always insisted that our primary way of talking about God is not as some lone deity ruling over everything, but as a relationship, never one person without the other, and in the biblical tradition, never really God without creation. Even Isaiah’s giant, terrifying God needs a prophet.

Perhaps that is why we Christians at our best are so concerned about those relational values, about love, which the very nature of God, about justice, which is love acting from a distance, about peace, which is the foundation of love and justice, about freedom, which makes possible relationships of love and justice and peace.

We are concerned about those things, not because God from on high has ordered them, but because for us God is that pattern of loving, just, peaceful, free relationships, into which we, the offspring of the Holy Trinity, are invited to take part, so that those divine patterns might be revealed more fully in the world God so loves.