June 19, Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

Sermon for the 5. Sunday after Pentecost

June 19, 2016

Deacon Sue Nebel

            It has been a long week.  Seven days, since we first heard the news of the mass shootings in Orlando. Accounts of death and injuries.  The pain of grief and loss.  The stories of the people who died and the ones who survived.   A targeted attack against a specific group, motivated by anger and hate and a fierce desire to lash out and destroy.  The news of the shootings was like a rock dropped into a body of water.  Circles rippling out, growing bigger and bigger.  A nightclub, the city of Orlando, the state of Florida, our whole country, the world.  A wound to the human family. 

When something like this happens to us, something that overwhelms us and is too much to comprehend, we search for something to grab onto.  Something firm, something solid to steady us in the midst of upheaval.  Last Sunday, I heard about the shootings in Orlando after the beach service.  Shocked and saddened, I carried the knowledge of the event deep inside me during the 9:30 service.  As I moved to the back of the church during the closing hymn, I began to anticipate giving the Dismissal. Thinking about the kind of world we would be going out into. The final hymn last Sunday was “God is Love.”  By the time I reached the back of the church, we were on the second verse.   These are the words that we sang:  

                        God is Love: and love enfolds us, all the world in one embrace:

                        with unfailing grasp God holds us, every child of every race.

                        And when human hearts are breaking under sorrow’s iron rod,

                        then we find that self-same aching deep within the heart of God. 

“. . .aching deep within the heart of God.”  That is what struck me. That is what I grabbed and held onto.  By the time I headed home later to turn on the TV and hear the details of the horror in Orlando, that line from the hymn had become a simple phrase: “the aching heart of God.” A sense that the pain that so many people shared was embraced and held in God.  A God whose love is strong enough to bear all that pain. God in us.  God with us. Something to hold onto.

            As the hours of last Sunday wore on and the new week started, the leaders of the Church began to speak out.  In the Episcopal Church we turn to our bishops, the shepherds of the flock and guardians of the faith.  We want and expect them to step forward and offer guidance to us.  And they did.  One after another, our bishops urged us to pray for those harmed by the violence.  To widen the embrace of our love to include people who are targets of judgment and hate because their sexual orientation or gender identity.  To translate our Christian commitment into action.

            As people of faith, we turn not just to the leaders of the Church.  We also turn to our greatest leader and teacher of all: Jesus. To find out what he can teach us in this moment.  In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus has moved out of Galilee, familiar territory for him, to the other side of the Sea of Galilee. To the land of the Gerasenes.  There he meets a man who, the story tells us, has demons.  This man has a strange history.  He wears no clothes and lives among the tombs, rather than in a house. When people have tried to restrain him, he has broken free of the chains and shackles and taken off into the wilds.  Now we need to understand that in Jesus’ time, demons were seen as evil spirits, drawing people away from God.  It is not hard to imagine, given the description of the man’s behavior, that being possessed by demons could be an explanation for some form of mental illness.  In last Sunday’s Gospel lesson, we were told that some of Jesus’ followers were “women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities.” Among them, Mary Magdalene “from whom seven demons had gone out.” 

This man has a lot more than seven demons.  It is hard to tell in this story when the man is speaking and when the demons are talking, but it is clear that Jesus has the upper hand. It is a dramatic story of healing.  Jesus commands the demons to come out of the man. Then, responding to their pleas not to be banished into the abyss, he lets them enter a nearby herd of pigs. The pigs then rush down the bank into the water and drown. There, done with, gone.  When we see the man again, he is sitting at the feet of Jesus.  Restored to wholeness, he is now wearing clothes and is calm. As Jesus prepares to leave, the man begs to be allowed to go with him.  Jesus refuses.  He tells the man to return home and tell people what God has done for him.  He does just that.  Having experienced the power of Jesus, the power of love, the man moves into action.  In the last glimpse we have of him, he is proclaiming what the power of Jesus has done.

Jesus and the Gerasene. A confrontation with demons.  Jesus wins.  Love wins. That is what this story tells us.  Love is stronger than the demons of prejudice and hate, the evil powers in the world that draw us away from God. As we move forward from the tragic events of this past week, what are we to do? The demons that controlled the mind of the shooter in Orland and the damage that his actions inflicted seem overwhelming.   Any action on our part seems so small, so ineffective.  Some of us will join in efforts to control access to guns.  Some will march in Pride parades.  But for most of us, the question is: what can we do each day, in our own lives?.  Last Sunday, a friend of mine, overwhelmed by her grief and feelings of helplessness in the face of evil forces in the world, wrote this:

And then this came to mind: any act of kindness, any act of resistance

            is worth doing. It doesn't matter how small. Small is good. Small is great.

Small multiplied by a few billion acts every single day becomes something big.

What can we do?  Embraced and held in the aching heart of God, grounded in the deep core of love, we can move forward, one step at a time.  With a faith that has been made wider, fiercer by the events of last week, we can o be a force of love in the world.  To stand with those who are hurting.  To reach out in acts of kindness to everyone we meet, whether friend or stranger.  To treat everyone with respect.  To help build something big.  We can do this.  And we will.

Proper 7; Year C

1 Kings19:1-4,8-15; Psalm 42; Luke 8:26-39

June 12, Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

Luke 7:36-8:3

Kristin White

June 12, 2016

One of my preaching professors used to say that when a difficult passage of scripture is read in church, you can take a pass on it once in a while. But if, when a difficult texts are read in church, you preach on something else every time, he said, your congregation will know you’re chicken. Your congregation will know, on some level, that you are not willing to talk about difficult things. And if you can’t talk in your preaching about difficult things that happen in scripture, he asked us, how can your people trust that you will be willing to talk about the difficult and important things that happen in life?

It’s a necessary question for a preacher to ask herself.

This week particularly, I wish I had kept in better touch with that preaching professor, because I would like to know what advice he has about preaching, when two of the passages of scripture read aloud in church are difficult texts.

All of that is to say, there are problems that need addressing in the story from the First Book of Kings, about Jezebel and Ahab, about Naboth and the field that is his inheritance. And there are problems that need addressing in the gospel lesson about Jesus and the Pharisee and the woman with the alabaster jar.

As I’m preaching one sermon today, rather than two (my preaching professor would likely have something to say about that as well), I ask your forbearance about the fact that I’m going to take a pass this go-round on Jezebel, in order to take on the Pharisee who encounters an unanticipated guest at his dinner party. 

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“If this man (Jesus) were a prophet,” that Pharisee thinks to himself, “he would have known what kind of a woman this is who is touching him – that she is a sinner. 

The Pharisee has invited Jesus to eat with him. So Jesus goes, and takes his place at the table, and this unnamed woman – who, we’re clear, is a sinner…the writer of this text goes to the trouble of telling us that now a couple of times – she comes to Jesus, crying enough tears that she can wash his feet with them, using her hair to dry his feet afterwards, kissing those now-washed-and-dried feet, and finally anointing him with costly and beautiful oil.

I can only imagine the discomfort of witnessing such a demonstrative and intimate act. It seems like too much, like the kind of thing where people’s eyes widen a little as they notice it taking place, then breaking eye contact, perhaps with a nervous chuckle that says “well, this is surely not what I expected at a Pharisee’s dinner party…”, the studied concentration on a glass of water, or the grapes that guests eat as they recline at the table, or a crack in the floor, or any single thing except for that thing that they can’t not look at, this moment that is unfolding before them. It seems like too much. And it is, for that Pharisee (“Does he even know what kind of a woman this is?” he grumbles to himself. “Is he really even a prophet? Because if he were, he would know…”).

Well.

Exactly what kind of a woman is this?

She is a sinner, we hear twice. We know that her sins are many, even, because Jesus says so when he schools that Pharisee in his judgment.

And let’s be real here. When a woman in the Bible gets called a sinner, that quality tends to be interpreted in a particular kind of way. Like Mary Magdalene, this nameless woman with her alabaster jar is most frequently portrayed in word and image as a prostitute, as a woman of moral failure, and certainly as somebody who shouldn’t be anywhere near a prophet of proper standing at a Pharisee’s dinner party.

In fact, though, this is not what the actual language of the actual text actually says – not about Mary Magdalene, and not about this unnamed woman. In fact, the very same Greek word for sinner that is used to describe this unnamed woman, is also used by the author of very same gospel to describe…the apostle Peter, at the time Jesus calls him to become one of the first disciples.[1]

Now, I hear Peter described as a number of things: impetuous, unthinking, occasionally rude, and even, through his three denials of Jesus, as disloyal. But I can tell you that I have never heard the apostle Peter described as a prostitute.

So exactly what kind of a woman is this woman who has entered the Pharisee’s house?

“What kind of a woman?” indeed. That’s the sort of question that has been blasted across social media in recent days, thanks to a difficult and important text of its own, written by a woman with the courage to expose that question for what it is. “What kind of a woman?” is the sort of question that lays bare the sin that it is, to blame a woman attacked while at the same time protecting her attacker for the sake of his supposed potential. It’s the kind of diminishing question that causes women to blame themselves for wearing the wrong thing or being in the wrong place or having the wrong number of drinks or dancing with the wrong person or saying hello in the wrong way.

“What kind of a woman?” is the sort of question we ask, when we look for something that enables us to hold a person – a person – at arm’s length…like the Pharisee must want to do, when that woman, with her tears, and her hair, and her alabaster jar, shows up and makes people uncomfortable at his party.

“What kind of a woman?” is the sort of question we ask, when we seek to discount a person as something less of a person than a commodity, a consumable…a disturbance.

“Simon,” Jesus asks that Pharisee: “Do you see this woman?”

Do you? Do I?

And what kind of a woman is she?

Well. Here’s what this difficult text actually tells us: She is the kind of woman who bathes a person’s feet after those feet have gotten dirty and tired from a long day of walking. She is the kind of woman who brings oil that is costly and beautiful to anoint a savior. She is the kind of woman who shows great love. She is the kind of woman who has been saved, by faith.

And I don’t know if that Pharisee ever does manage to see the woman with the alabaster jar. But I’d stake my faith on the fact that Jesus does. Just like he sees Mary Magdalene, and Joanna, and Susanna. Just like he sees a woman who has been attacked after going to a party. Just like he sees you. Just like he sees me.

What kind of a woman is she?

She’s the kind of woman who follows Jesus.

[1] Verlee A. Copeland. “Proper 6, Luke 7:36-8:3, Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word: Year C, Volume 3. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010. 143,145.

June 5, Third Sunday after Pentecost

1 Kings 17:8-24, Luke 7:11-17

Kristin White

One of my favorite books, a novel written by Zadie Smith called White Teeth, includes the story of an immigrant family in London. The mother and father were born in Bangladesh, which used to be East Pakistan, which used to be India, which used to be Bengal. These parents choose to raise their family in London out of a desire for stable opportunity, theoretically anyway, coming as they do from a place where tragedy happens even more frequently than the battles that cause their country’s name to change so often. They choose London, instead of that land of “random disaster, of flood and cyclone, or hurricane and mudslide…”[1] where in the first 14 years of my own lifetime, Smith writes: “more people died than in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Dresden combined. A million people lost lives they had learned to hold lightly in the first place.”[2]

My own experience is that we are not a people who hold our lives lightly – not our own lives, not the lives of those we hold most dear. Given the accidents of our birth and talents and upbringing, we get to be…here. And we tend to live with certain assumptions about how the world works: that it is benevolent (bad things aren’t supposed to happen), and meaningful (things are supposed to make sense) and that people are worthy (the stuff of our lives is supposed to correlate with some logic to the good or the bad that we do).[3]

And yet.

Who among us has not cried out to God for some kind of a miracle?

Who among us has not railed against God – or wanted to, at least – with the charge that a compassionate God would not make us suffer?

Who among us has not lived in some kind of fury or devastation when we realized those lives we cherish and hold most dear, are lives that we must also learn to hold lightly?

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The first reading and the gospel passage that are today’s lessons are beautiful stories about generosity and hospitality and compassion and care.

In the first, from the first book of Kings, a starving widow hosts Elijah in her home, she feeds the prophet from the little she has left for herself and her son. God rewards her for her generosity, as the little that she has does not run out – she does not starve, her son does not starve, thanks to God’s provision. Later, when her son becomes sick to the point of death, Elijah intercedes with God on their behalf. God restores the son’s life and breath to him.

In the second story, from Luke’s gospel, a widow grieves the death of her only son as his body is carried away. She mourns with the particular grief of a parent who has lost her child. She is particularly vulnerable herself, now, as a widow with no one left to care for her. The passage tells us that Jesus sees her and has compassion for her. Jesus restores the widow’s son to life. Then Jesus gives that only son back to his mother.

These are beautiful stories of generosity and hospitality, of God’s compassion and care. And they are excruciating stories, too. Because not every child’s life is restored, in the same way that these sons’ lives have been.

Who among us has not cried out to God for a miracle?

And what do we do, when the miracle that comes is not the one we have asked for?

Most of the time, for many of us, those deep and fixed understandings about how the world is, tend to work. Education really does make a difference in our own lives and in the community. The vaccines our children receive mean they don’t contract deadly diseases. The plane touches down safely in spite of some turbulence. We see the person walking in our rearview mirror before we back up the car.

Most of the time, it all works. But what about those times when it doesn’t? If we live with the understanding that this world is benevolent and meaningful, if we live with the assumption that the events of our lives correlate to the things we’ve done or left undone, then what happens when the ground shifts and it all goes sideways? What are we to do, when the surgery doesn’t go as the doctor expected, or the cancer is too much, or the addiction is too powerful, or the accident too swift?

Where is Elijah’s intercession then? Where is the Lord’s compassion?

We cry out for miracles when we know our need of God, when we realize that the lives we hold most dear, we must also learn to hold lightly. We cry out for miracles as signs in the hope that God’s compassion will realign things, and make the world right again.[4]

Sometimes it happens. Sometimes, the great miracle we hope for unfolds as we have asked. More often, it doesn’t. And we find ourselves in chaos, in a place we don’t understand.

I’ve been thinking a lot, lately, about our need to talk to each other. I’ve been thinking about God Sightings, about the actual vocabulary we have, and dare to speak, for what is holy and real in our lives. And I wonder if an important part of what we need in this journey of faith with each other is the chance to talk together about the miracles that surprise us in our everyday lives. Because I believe they are there. And I also believe that they are usually not what we expect, to the point that often we can’t see those miracles on our own.

We need each other, in this journey of faith as people following the way of Christ. We need people we trust who can tell us the truth that they have found, people who will listen to our truth even as we continue to sort it out. And we need words that fit with who we really are – not ornate, churchy language with lots of syllables that only a few people understand…but words that are hopeful and honest and gritty, sometimes, and sad.

Those crowds around Jesus at the time he raises the widow’s son are not immediately thrilled with the miracle that Jesus has done in their midst. First, they are terrified. Then they’re amazed. Finally, they start to talk about it. And only then does word of Jesus’ miracle spreads “throughout Judea and all the surrounding country.”[5]

I wonder about the miracles of our own lives that surprise and even scare us just a little – maybe more than a little. I wonder where God calls us to stand in amazement. And I wonder how we can find language to tell about what we’ve seen. Perhaps the most important part is to hold it all lightly, to look for surprising moments of God’s compassion in ways we never expected, and to begin that holy conversation.

[1] Zadie Smith. White Teeth. London: Random House, 2000. 176.

[2] ibid

[3] M. Jan Holton. “Proper 5, Luke 7:11-17, Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word: Year C, Volume 3. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010. 118.

[4] Holton, 120.

[5] Luke 7:11