April 14, Good Friday

Deacon Sue Nebel

It has grown so quiet.  It all seems so long ago, the noise and commotion of the morning.  The drama of the confrontation between Jesus and Pilate. The arguments and backpedaling of Pilate and the Jewish leaders. Both sides trying to rid themselves of responsibility for condemning Jesus to death.  The shouts of the chief priests and guards, demanding that he be crucifed.  Later, cruel taunts hurled at Jesus as he hangs on the Cross.  Now it is over.  Jesus and the two criminals who were crucified alongside him are dead.  The crowds have dispersed, rushing off to reach home before sundown.  The women and the Beloved Disciple waited until the bodies were lowered to the ground, so that Mary could hold her son one last time.  Surrounding the grieving woman, the others then led her away.  The soldiers too have left, carrying the bodies of the two other men, probably to a common grave.

In the fading light, two figures. Joseph of Arimathea, a Jew of high enough standing that Pilate has granted his request to be given the body of Jesus.  And Nicodemus, who has become a follower of Jesus.  The two men move quickly with their burden, because the body must be buried before sundown.  In a nearby garden, they wrap Jesus’ body in spices and cloth and place it in a new, unused tomb.  The women will come later, after the Sabbath, to complete the preparation for burial. Their work done, the two men depart. Darkness settles over the garden.  

Darkness, despair, grief.  With the death of Jesus, all hope seems lost.  What now?  His followers promised to be faithful, to journey with him and then did, all the way to the Cross.  What do they do now?  They do what people have done for ages in the face of unexpected change or loss that upends their lives.  In need of a sense of order and structure in the midst of confusion and chaos, they turn to the rituals of their traditions.  They engage in actions that enable them to conclude one part of a story and take the first awkward steps forward into an uncertain future.   

 Like the early followers of Jesus, we too have promised to follow Jesus.  We made a promise in our baptism, a promise that we renew from time to time.  We pledged to accept Jesus as our Lord. To be loyal, faithful to him.  To follow him.  To journey with him on a path that will lead to the final days of his life.  It is where we find ourselves now.  Last night, we entered the Triduum, the Great Three Days.  The long liturgy of our Christian tradition that frames the events of these days.  Last night we remembered Jesus’ last night with his disciples.  We became part of the story.  We shared a meal. We heard Jesus’ words as he shared bread and wine with those at the table with him.  Words familiar to us in the ritual of the Eucharist.  We washed one another’s feet, following the command that he gave to the disciples.  Today, on Good Friday, we follow Jesus through the next part of the journey—the path to the Cross. Crucifixion and death, the rock-bottom part of the story. 

Like the early followers of Jesus, in the sadness and upheaval of this day, we too turn to ritual.  Some of it familiar, some of it unique to this day.  In few minutes, Kristin will bring a wood cross forward and place it here at the foot of the steps.  We will then have the opportunity to come forward and pause for a moment at that cross.  To honor it.  To affirm it as the central symbol of our Christian faith.  To embrace the Cross and its story as part of ourselves.  

Then we will turn to other, more familiar rituals: prayer and communion. Actions that are part of another baptismal promise: to continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers.  It is what we do each time we gather for worship.  Listen to the stories of Scripture, offer prayer, and share the Eucharistic meal.  Today, opening our hearts and minds to the wider Church and the vast world of which we are part, we will pray the Solemn Collects.  A collection of biddings and responses modeled on ancient prayers of the Church. They are used only on Good Friday. Then, finally, we will share communion, but not in the usual way.  No bringing forward of gifts.  No Eucharistic Prayer.  No consecrating of elements.  Instead, simple prayers and then a sharing of bread and wine saved from last night’s liturgy.

With some sense of order restored, we will depart in silence. To continue the journey and move forward. To the next part of the story.

Good Friday

Isaiah 52:13-53:12; Psalm 22; Hebrews 4:14-16, 5:7-9; John 18:1-19:42

April 13, Maundy Thursday

Pastor Frank Senn

Exodus 12:1-4, 11-14; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; John 13:1-17, 31b-35

We returned to our homes last Sunday after our Palm Sunday/Passion Sunday services and were horrified to learn about the explosions at two Coptic Orthodox churches in Egypt. Two suicide bombers detonated explosives that killed 45 and injured more than a hundred worshipers. ISIS claimed responsibility and threatened more attacks on Christians. This has happened before in Egypt, and elsewhere. One of the explosions was set off at the patriarchal church of St. Mark in Alexandria with the Coptic Pope Tawadros II  inside celebrating the Divine Liturgy.

One positive note is that Grand Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb, head of Egypt’s Al-Azhar — the leading center of learning in Sunni Islam — condemned the attacks, calling them a “despicable terrorist bombing that targeted the lives of innocents.” There has been some mutual support between Christians and Muslims in Eygpt. Coptic Christians formed a protective ring around Muslim protesters in Tahrir Square in Cairo as they prayed during protests several years ago. Then, following threats against Christian churches by Islamists, Muslims guarded the Coptic Christian Church of St. George in Cairo during the liturgy.

These events remind us that gathering for worship can be a dangerous act. Jewish and Christian liturgies originated during nights of great danger. We heard read the story of the first Passover when Jews gathered in houses whose doorposts had been smeared with the blood of a lamb. This was their protection when the angel of death passed over Egypt killing the first born of every family and of every flock. Jews who were gathered for their Seder must have heard the cries of those who lost sons and daughters, husbands and wives, mothers and fathers.

Passover Seders have not been safe for the Jews either. Down through the centuries they became times of persecution. In Europe during the Middle Ages Jews were accused of eating Christian children at their Seders. The riskiest Seders occurred in the Warsaw ghetto during the Nazi occupation of Poland. These nights of terror are also a part of the Passover tradition and I believe it is sacrilegious for Christians to think they can celebrate Jewish liturgies and ignore this history.

But the night on which our Lord Jesus celebrated a supper with his disciples was also a night of terror. Jesus apparently had his suspicions that Judas was arranging to have him arrested. When we recite the text of the Words of Institution, it usually begins: “On the night in which he was betrayed, Jesus took bread…” A disciple’s betrayal is built into our Eucharistic memory.

The synoptic gospels say that Jesus held a Passover Seder with his disciples; the fourth gospel disagrees. John says this last supper was before the Passover. In the chronology of this evangelist Jesus was hanging on the cross, the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, at the hour when the lambs for the Passover were being slaughtered in the Temple. Christ’s own Passover from death to life occurred as the Jewish Passover was being celebrated.

We hear the narrative of the institution of the Lord’s Supper from St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. He brings the tradition of the institution to bear on the disordered Lord’s Supper celebrated by the Corinthian congregation. For them the sacrament of unity had become an occasion for disunity between different classes of people in the congregation, who weren’t even served the same menus. And the slaves who arrived late at the meal liturgy got nothing. Paul ominously warned those who failed to “discern the Lord’s body” that they “eat and drink judgment against themselves.  For this reason some of you are weak and ill, and some have died” (1 Cor. 11:29-30). The zone of holiness around this Table can be violated.

Some have thought that these social issues were the reason the sacramental meal of bread and wine, received as the body and blood of Christ, were separated out from the agape meal. But that’s not likely the case. It is more likely that the gathering of Christians for their evening meal in the home of a member or in an inn rented for the occasion fell under an imperial ban on all supper clubs in the early second century. Apparently the Roman government felt that subversive discussions could take place at the meal symposiums. And Christians were at least as subversive in Roman eyes as Greek philosophers or Roman politicians. So Christians began celebrating their Eucharist in the morning with just the bread and wine. It was too dangerous for them to meet in the evening, except in the cemeteries, since Romans respected burial and cemetery customs.

Gathering for worship is risky business. It may not seem so for north shore congregations. But here’s a piece of liturgy that is risky for us: the foot washing that gives this Thursday its name—Maundy, an old English corruption of the Latin “Mandatum,” “command.” “I give you a new commandment,” Jesus said to his disciples, “that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

As this ancient rite has been revived in recent years, some worshipers have found it awkward, even distasteful. Some have substituted hand washing in place of foot washing—although some worshipers might recall during Holy Week that Pontius Pilate washed his hands to show that he bore no responsibility for the execution of Jesus. No hand washing. We are invited to wash one another’s feet. And I’ll tell you, it can feel real good. Many of us have been on our feet all day, feet bound in shoes. How good to feels to take those shoes off and put our feet in warm water and have someone wipe them, maybe with a bit of massage thrown in.

Let me tell about a church that does this every week. Central Lutheran Church is a huge neo-gothic stone structure in downtown Minneapolis and every Monday members serve a hot meal to street people. In the Restoration Center they also provide some basic health services. And some of the guests who have been out walking all day long get their feet washed. Church people get down on their knees in front of street people and wash their feet, enacting what it means to be a servant church.

Maundy Thursday gives us the freedom and grace to become the kind of community Jesus envisioned: not one centered on liturgy that remembers things done in the past, but one centered on liturgy that leads us to act in the present—even to risk getting out of our comfort zone. As we contemplate the way Jesus showed his love for us on the cross (which we might do while keeping watch later tonight), we might also be prompted by the Spirit to leave behind things that bind us: fear of the unknown, distrust of those who are unlike ourselves, maybe even our own feelings of inadequacy.

When we are called by the new commandment of Jesus to love one another, we are given liberation from those fears and the strength to respond. Whatever we do because of the experiences of this night will transform someone else’s life as well as our own. Whatever action we take to love another person in Christ may move that person closer to redemption. Whatever we risk of our own comfort and tranquility will be used by God to restore others who are lost and broken. When we’re talking about love, it’s not about us; it’s about those who need to be loved.

Yes, gathering for liturgy can be a dangerous thing. And no liturgy is more dangerous to the status quo than the one we participate in tonight. Amen.

April 9, Palm Sunday

Deacon Sue Nebel

Palm Sunday.  The beginning of Holy Week.  A marker event in the life of the Church.  We do things differently on this day.  Today, instead of coming into the building through various doors to gather for worship in this space, we went to Puhlman Hall.  A place where we usually gather after the Sunday liturgy, not before.  A large crowd of us gathered there.  Noisy conversation, excited children—a sense of anticipation of what was to come.  After the palms were blessed and distributed, we headed out the door, parading along the sidewalk.  Singing “All Glory, Laud and Honor” and waving our palms.  We must have been quite a sight. People walking or driving along Wilmette Avenue couldn’t help but notice us.  Those familiar with Christian tradition probably nodded their heads, saying to themselves, ‘It must be Palm Sunday.’  Others may have simply wondered, ‘What in the world are those people doing?’

Good question.  What in the world are we doing?  We are remembering. We are remembering the story in the Gospel lesson that we just heard.  Jesus entering Jerusalem, riding on a colt.  Hailed by his followers as a king.  To remember something is to recall it, to relive it. To remember is to re-member, to become part of it.  We do it again and again in our lives.  Remembering, reliving events. Experiencing them again in all their detail. This desire to remember propels us to go on pilgrimagesto religious or historical sites.  To visit significant places in our family history.  We want to be in those places. be part of them, if only for a short time.  Claim their part in our own story. 

As we come to Palm Sunday and look ahead to Holy Week, we begin a process of re-membering.  Becoming part of the story of the last days of Jesus’ life.   We remembered Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem with our own parade and rejoicing. We will do it again later in this service when we hear the Passion Gospel.  We will hear it read by several people, taking the roles of people in the story.  We will have our own active part. At the beginning of the service, we joined in in acclaiming Jesus as king.  In the Passion Gospel, we will be part of the crowd demanding that Jesus be crucified.  As we move forward through Holy Week, we will continue to re-member. A meal together. Foot-washing. Standing at the foot of the Cross

The entry of Jesus into Jerusalem is a joyous, seemingly triumphant event.  And yet, in the version from Luke that we heard this morning, there is an ominous note.  In the crowd are some Pharisees, members of the group that Jesus has confronted time and time again in his ministry.  Responding to their criticism, their arguments, their warnings.  Here in the midst this celebration of Jesus as king, they call out to him, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.”  I think this is more than the usual objection raised by these leaders who want to preserve Jewish laws.  Maintain the status quo. I think the Pharisees are warning Jesus, “You are doing something dangerous.”  It is highly unlikely that this jublilant crowd, proclaiming Jesus as king has gone unnoticed by the Roman authorities.  The Gospel writer focuses on Jesus and his followers.  But is not hard to imagine soldiers or other officials of the ruling government lurking around the edges of this scene.  Taking note of the crowd, the words.  The potential threat to their power.

Our Palm Sunday parade this morning was a kind of public  event. We moved outside  of our building and processed to the church in demonstration of our faith.  We didn’t have to worry if the Wilmette police were hanging around to monitor our activity.  We were claiming a set of priorities, different from much of the world.  But we were hardly posing a threat to civic order.  Yet, this day has its own kind of ominous, dark tone to it.  The events in the world around us, especially those of this past week.  The use of chemical weapons in Syria.  The military action taken by the United States in response.  Heightened tension in the Mideast. A sense of uncertainty, even fear, about what might happen permeates the festive mood.  In the past few days, as I anticipated what we would do here this morning, I wondered to myself, ‘How can we participate in this joyful event in an atmosphere of concern and worry?’ Then I realized that people have been doing this for years, for generations.  Remembering. Being part of.  Entering into the story of Jesus, the stories of Holy Week.  The entry into Jerusalem. The last meal with the disciples.  Betrayal. Arrest and trial. Death.  People have done this in times of peace and prosperity. They have done it in the face of upheaval and conflict in the world. They have done it in spite of sadness, loss, or pain in their lives.  They have been faithful.  Journeying in solidarity with Jesus, as he moves through the final days of his life to the Cross. 

Today, we join with the long line of Christians who have made this journey throughout the years. Today, we—the faithful in this time and in this place--carry the tradition forward.  Holy Week is here.  Let the journey begin.

Palm Sunday; Year A

Isaiah 50:4-9a; Psalm 31:9-16; Philippians 2:5-11;  Luke 19:28-40

Passion Gospel: Matthew 26:14-27:66

April 2, the Fifth Sunday in Lent

Meghan Murphy-Gill

John 11:1-45

On Wednesday night this week, Andrew, Albie, and I got back from New Orleans, where we’d spent about eight days with our friends and their daughter. Over the course of our vacation, we’d wandered the streets of the Bywater neighborhood, taken streetcars to the gorgeous Garden District, and eaten a lot of 50-cent oysters.

We’ve known our friends for almost a decade and a half. I befriended them shortly after moving to Chicago. My friend was with me the night I met Andrew.

Our friends are atheists. They have been their whole lives. And when we first met, our faith intrigued them. They had lots of questions, asked through a sort of side-eye. Later on in our friendship, it threatened them. I know that because last year, my friend told me so.

She is one of my closest and oldest friends--and yet, with her, I explicitly avoid talking about faith, because I don’t want her to think I’m judging her. That’s what had threatened her in the past, and it caused a rift in our friendship. We didn’t talk for several years. But somehow, now God always comes up. That’s usually thanks to her.

For her, faith is totally nuts. So she has a lot of questions about how Andrew and I, who have so much in common with her and Tim, could have such fundamentally different belief systems. But she is into the idea that Jesus was someone who preached justice. She has hippie roots and and so enjoys the idea of Jesus as a sort of radical hero of the people. She recently confessed to me, because she knows how important this community has become to our family, that she wishes she had something similar--a group that regularly practices rituals that celebrate community and justice--just without the whole God part of it. “That’s fair,” I’ve told her. “But you’d probably be welcomed anyway into an Episcopal community if you really want all those things.”

The problem is not just that she doesn’t believe in God; she thinks central Christian beliefs are weird, if not potentially dangerous--particularly our belief in the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. She worries that Christians are not concerned enough about this life we all share in. I think that to an extent, she’s right.

Freda and I found ourselves in another conversation about faith last week. We were soaking in a hot tub while our kids slept. The night air was cool. The oleander blossoms occasionally unmoored from their branches and fell softly from the tree arched above us. (It was seriously amazing.) We were sipping the Sazeracs I’d made everyone--probably how we ended up in such deep, theological conversation. As usual, we disagreed about a few things: I believe in God. God does not factor into her beliefs about the world. I believe that Jesus was more than a nice guy who lived about 2000 years ago. She’s not convinced.

But we agreed on most things, and especially this idea: This world is important. Our friendship is real. The richness of life matters. And it’s crucial that we share it together.

One of my favorite theologians, Edward Schillebeeckx once told a gathering of theologians: Extra mundum, nulla salus.  There is no salvation outside of the world. It’s a sort of retort to the conviction, “There is no salvation outside of the church,” a sentiment of breathtaking exclusivism once commonly held by the Roman Catholic Church that just doesn’t go very far in today’s modern world.

Schillebeeckx’s expression captures what one scholar calls his “grace-optimism.” He believed that it’s in creation and human life, where we encounter God.

When we love one another--through friendship--we embody God’s love. Friendship is then a sacrament of divine love. It offers us a glimpse into God’s love for the world.

Mary Catherine Hilkert wrote in America magazine after Schillebeeckx’s death that “These human ‘fragments of salvation,’ as [Schillebeeckx] called them, are a share in the final triumph of God’s grace, which was promised in a definitive way in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ. Christians are called to participate in the living story of Jesus by ‘writing a fifth Gospel with their lives.’”

In other words: This world is important. Our friendship is real. The richness of life matters. And it’s crucial that we share it together.

I wonder if this is why Jesus weeps for his friend Lazarus in today’s gospel. He knows this to be true. When Jesus dined with Lazarus and his two sisters, Mary had anointed Jesus with fine oil and her own hair. There is no question that Jesus enjoyed the richness of life, that his friendships were real.

Perhaps Jesus weeps because he knows his own death is imminent, that the day when he no longer eats and drinks with his friends in this life is coming. He was fully human, so it stands to reason that he was afraid, worried, and lonely in those fears. What confusing times those must have been for him leading up to his arrival in Jerusalem.

John tells us that Jesus was “greatly disturbed” when he arrives at the tomb. What specifically do you think was disturbing him at that moment? I’m not convinced he knew for sure he’d be performing any miracles that day. I think there was a lot of hemming and hawing on his part. But that when he came face to face with the reality that his friend was dead, in a tomb, he was moved.

And then he brought Lazarus, dead four days, back to life.

It’s an astonishing miracle. It’s so supernatural that it seemingly flies in the face a professed sacramental imagination.

But Jesus didn’t call Lazarus’ ghost or spirit out from the tomb.

He called out to Lazarus himself who walks out of the tomb smelling of the very death he has experienced and risen from. It is Lazarus in body and spirit. “Unbind him, and let him go,” Jesus commands.

This world is important. Our friendship is real. The richness of life matters. And it’s crucial that we share it together.

This is a profound, sacramental moment in the life of Jesus. He is revealing who he is. A grieving friend. A human person. And also God who is the source of life. This moment is sacramental because it offers us a glimpse into God’s love for the world.

“Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” Jesus says to Martha.

Now, the friendship I share with my friend is not the same as seeing a someone raised from the dead. And to be honest, I’m a little wary of experiencing such a thing. But I believe. And in my friendship, I see the glory of God, not just in spite of our differences, but probably because of them.

March 26, the Fourth Sunday in Lent

Kristin White

The Fourth Sunday in Lent – March 26, 2017

John 9:1-42

Don’t think of an elephant.

Okay, what are you thinking about right now?

That’s actually the title of a book I find pretty compelling, written some years ago by a linguist named George Lakoff. He writes about the way our minds create patterns of understanding, which he refers to as frames. Once that frame is set, all you need is one word or prompt to evoke whatever that frame is. So, my guess, you all have looked at a photo, or read a book, or visited the zoo, or gone on safari, and seen an elephant. Maybe you have even ridden one! When I was growing up, we had Packy the Pachyderm, our beloved elephant at the Oregon Zoo. Packy was born there in 1962, and we celebrated his birthday every year with a peanut butter-flavored birthday cake for everybody who came to the zoo. Whatever your own elephant story, you are very likely to already have a pattern, or a frame, which helps you to understand what that creature is. And that frame is probably so clearly set for you that even as I tell you not to think about an elephant, you’re thinking about one. Aren’t you?

Well, that’s the author’s point. And another of his points is that once you have that pattern of understanding set, it’s very, very difficult to change it. If someone tells you that elephants are tiny, or that they have fins and exists only under the water, or that they are carnivorous…you’re likely to dismiss that information. The more outrageous the statement, the more inconsistent with our version of reality, the more likely that each of us is not just to dismiss the information, but also, potentially, to dismiss the person who shares it with us.

And the more dear that a frame is to you – the more it says something important about who you are, or what is true about your family or the community you have chosen, or about the nature of the God you worship, or the way you live your life – the more likely, the author says, that you are to protect your frame. The more likely you are, and I am, to shut down the person or the thing that might disrupt what we believe to be true.

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The frame of understanding that the disciples have in today’s gospel is that blindness is a kind of sacred punishment. Somebody has to be at fault, someone must be to blame, for this person to exist in this state of being. It makes things more logical, right? Because if someone has done something wrong, then their actions must carry some kind of divinely proportionate response. So, it follows, that if you don’t do something wrong, then you won’t face into that sort of consequence. Right? And so the chaos is managed. Right?

Well, no, actually. The disciples ask, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

Jesus responds, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”

Then he goes about the messy work of restoring the man’s sight, with spit and dirt and a pool called Sent. And as the man begins to see, the disciples lose sight of their frame – because the one that would call him a sinner no longer holds.

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The neighbors and other folks in the community have only known this man as blind. They understand him as a blind man who begs. And that frame is so firmly set that they don’t even recognize the man who has received his sight – even when he tells them who he is.

“Isn’t this the man who used to beg?” they ask.

And some say yes, and others say, “No, it is someone like him.”

He says, “I am the man.” He says it again. He says it again.

The people ask, “How were your eyes opened?” And he tells them.

“Where is the man who did this?” they ask.

Without having Jesus there, without seeing the miracle for themselves, will they risk this scandal of trust? Will they trade their old frame for a new one?

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The Pharisees love the law. They believe it to be a gift from God, and they claim Moses’ authority as they interpret those 613 commandments, the commandments that have been handed down from generation to generation. These are the frame that God has given the people Israel, the Pharisees believe, these are a guide and an explanation of how to live righteous and faithful lives.

It turns out that the day that Jesus spread mud made from dirt and his own spit on the man’s eyes, was actually the Sabbath. And one of the most important of those 613 commandments, in fact one of the very special 10 commandments, is the one that calls people to set aside one day every week for rest and worship and study.

But not, apparently, for the doing of miracles.

When the neighbors and those who have seen the man born blind as a beggar bring him to the Pharisees, the Pharisees ask the same questions of the man that his neighbors have already asked. But instead of asking where the miracle-working man is, the Pharisees cast doubt: “This man is not from God, for he does not observe the Sabbath.” Others ask: “How can a man who is a sinner do such things?”

Holy people follow the rules. Sinners are the ones who break them.

The frame is set, and so the chaos is managed. Right?

To preserve their understanding, the Pharisees need Jesus to be the villain of this story – they need for him to be the problem, the rule-breaker, the sinner…and never, never the hero.[1]

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Even the man’s own parents distance themselves from this miracle that defies understanding. When the authorities call them forward, they claim their son, at least, but not the transformation that now makes him dangerous.

The parents are afraid. They live in a community governed by a frame that says the Pharisees’ authority holds, that living according to the rules of Torah reflects righteousness. They recognize that anyone who calls Jesus the savior will be cast out of the life that they know. So when it comes down to it, they “put their own safety ahead of his welfare.”[2]

“We know that he is our son, and we know that he was born blind; but we do not know how it is that he can see now, and we do not know who made it possible. Ask him!” they say.

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Almost everyone fails the man born blind, from the disciples who want to blame him as a sinner, to the community that doesn’t recognize him because he is no longer dependent, to the religious leaders who want to condemn Jesus for transforming in a way that doesn’t square with their practice, to his own parents who abandon him even as they seek to protect their own well-being.[3]

The only two figures who remain steadfast in this story are Jesus, and the man whose sight has been restored. He tells the truth and he tells the truth and he tells the truth again.

“You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?” the authorities ask. And they drive him out of the synagogue.

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Chaos is a scary thing. And our frames of understanding become dear to us indeed.

In the end, Jesus learns what has happened. He goes to find the man whose eyes he smeared on the Sabbath, and asks, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”

The man whose sight has been restored answers, “Tell me who he is, so that I can believe in him.” Jesus responds, “You have seen him, and the one speaking to you is he.”

“Lord, I believe,” the man says.

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Jesus never promises us that we will not face chaos. Boats find their way into storms, people we love get sick and die, temptation confronts us in spaces of wilderness. There is never a divine promise that we get to avoid the scary stuff of this life; stuff that shows us time and again that we are vulnerable, that we are, in fact, not immortal.

I think that in this story Jesus destroys the frames people have set because, finally, our frames will not protect us from the chaos, either.

But God so loves the world that he comes into it. In the person of Jesus, God comes into the chaos. In this story, he spits into dirt and uses the mud he has made to help a person see. In another, he promises living water. Soon, he will raise the dead.

And soon again, he will pick up his cross.

[1] Deborah Kapp. “Pastoral Reflection,” Feasting on the Word: Year A, Volume 2. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press. 2010: 118.

[2] ibid, 120

[3] ibid, 120

March 19, the Third Sunday in Lent

Kristin White

The Third Sunday in Lent – March 19, 2017

St. Augustine’s Church

John 4:5-42

They’re not supposed to talk to each other.

That rule might be more regularly observed today, right now, even, in this political and religious climate, than it is by Jesus, back in the day that finds him headed to Galilee from Judea, by way of Samaria.

This conversation takes place in the middle of the day, in broad daylight, at a public place. It stands in contrast with the exchange Jesus has in last week’s gospel, which takes place at night, in private. And this time, instead of a respected Pharisee named Nicodemus, Jesus talks with a woman, a Samaritan woman whose name we don’t know.

Conversations change us; or they can, anyway. They have the power to change what we believe – to change our minds, to change our hearts, to build connection. “In John’s gospel, (believing) is synonymous with relationship.”[1] You can’t have one without the other. And conversations pave the pathway to that taking place.

So it’s the middle of the day, and Jesus is tired out from the walk, so he sits down at the well as his disciples go to try to find some food.

The unnamed Samaritan woman comes to draw water. Jesus asks her – commands her, really – to give him a drink.

The text tells us that Jews and Samaritans do not share things in common. So she asks him a question, her own equivalent of Nicodemus’ “How can this be?” from last week. Jesus responds with a statement as confounding as what he said to Nicodemus. His answer draws her farther into a conversation that I can’t imagine she expected to have, when she left home earlier that day with her empty water jar.

He tells her to call her husband. She responds that she doesn’t have one. He answers already knowing that, knowing what she has not shared – that actually she has had five husbands, that she is not married to the man she is with now.

She calls him a prophet, and she asks about worshiping in Jerusalem instead of on the mountain that her people, the Samaritans, hold sacred. He calls her to worship in spirit and in truth.

She mentions the Messiah. “I am he,” Jesus says.

Just then, the disciples return. And they are astonished.

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Look at where this conversation begins: “from a place of reciprocal vulnerability.”[2] Jesus is tired and alone. He needs a drink of water, but doesn’t have a cup or a bucket. The woman whose name we don’t know has been left alone five times. She longs for the water that Jesus promises, water that means she’ll never be thirsty again.

Look at the questions she asks. These are not questions with foregone conclusions. These questions reveal a curious mind and an open heart on the part of the woman who asks them. She is willing to ask without knowing. Her questions invite Jesus farther into the conversation. Her questions lead Jesus to reveal his identity to her.

And look at the time they take. Some conversations never even get started, because the rules of convention or engagement or personal protection prevent them from happening. And there is so much evidence to prove that this would have been – maybe should have been – a conversation that never took place. “Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans,” the gospel passage tells us. “How is it that you, a Jew, ask of me, a Samaritan?” the woman challenges. The whole thing is as confounding as looking down into the depths of that well. But they take the time it takes. And the scandal of that fact is something we see revealed in the disciples’ reaction on their return. They are astonished, the text tells us. They want to know why he is speaking to her, the text tells us…but the disciples apparently don’t want to know enough to actually ask, because they don’t. That's the conversation that doesn’t get off the ground here.

Finally, look for surprise. The first time that Jesus reveals his identity as Messiah in all of John’s gospel is not to his disciples, or to the high priests, or to the crowds he teaches, or to his family, or to his closest, most faithful friends. The first time in the Gospel of John when Jesus reveals his identity as Messiah is to a woman considered so insignificant by whoever first told this version of the story that they didn’t even bother to find out her name; and not just a woman, but a Samaritan woman; and not just a Samaritan woman, but one who has been married and left and married and left, five times. Jesus shares the good news of who he is, with her. For God so loves the world.

---

Think of the conversations that have changed your own heart and your mind, that have created the foundations from which new relationships have grown in your life. What were the ways you found yourself willing to be vulnerable, to hold that space with the other person or other people who were willing to do the same? What questions did you ask, or respond to, without forced or assumed answers? What kind of time did you take? The best conversations can feel like time outside of time, in my experience. Is that how you’ve experienced them too? What surprised you? How were you changed?

It seems to me that we could do with more of these kinds of conversations in our lives and in our shared life, right now. It seems to me that we would be blessed by spaces of reciprocal vulnerability, by questions we really do want to know the answers to, by the gift of time together, by the kind of surprise that we can hold as sacred. It seems to me that there’s not enough of any of those things in our lives and in our shared life right now.

---

They’re not supposed to talk to each other, Jesus and the Samaritan woman. But they do, scandalized disciples notwithstanding. And the Samaritan woman is changed, because of it. And it’s not just her – the Samaritan woman’s whole community is changed, because of it.

She leaves her water jar at the well and goes back into the city, where she says to the people, “Come and see. Come and see the man who told me everything I have ever done. Can he be the Messiah?” And they do come and see. They believe in him, because of what she says. They ask him to stay, and he does. And as they come and see and hear what he says, more people believe. “We have heard for ourselves,” they say, “and we know that this is the Savior.”

They’re not supposed to talk to each other.

And she is changed; they are changed; we are changed, because they do.

[1] http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=4839 Thanks to Karoline Lewis for the frame she set in her column this week, which informed the structure and content of this sermon.

[2] ibid

March 12, the Second Sunday in Lent

Kristin White

Genesis 12:1-4a; John 3:1-17

This past Tuesday morning, I was supposed to be in the city for a meeting at the Diocesan Center.

But I couldn’t get there. Not the way I thought I would, anyway.

When I tried to turn onto Sheridan Road from Evanston, it was blocked. So I turned another way, couldn’t get through to the main roads by that route, either. There were police officers everywhere, it seemed, and helicopters pulsed the air overhead. Every place in Edgewater was jammed up. I tried to keep going and turning where I could, gave thanks for the fact that Siri has a better sense of direction than I do. I wondered and wondered again what was going on.

Eventually, I learned, as you likely know, that it was a bomb threat. It was a bomb threat against children at the Jewish Day School…a bomb threat against the teachers and staff who serve there…a threat against everybody in that neighborhood and in this city who expected to be able to go about their everyday lives on a Tuesday morning.

---

We don’t know much about Abram in the time before God calls to him in today’s first lesson. The twelfth chapter in the book of Genesis picks up after a long genealogy that includes explanations of who lived where and for how long, who their children were, and so on, all the way down to Abram. So we know Abram has family, and we know he lives in a place called Haran, which, it turns out means “crossroads.”

And we know that God tells Abram to leave all that.

“Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you,” God says.

To the land that I will show you?!

“I will bless you…so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the ones who curse you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

“So,” the text tells us, “Abram went.”

---

Nicodemus goes to Jesus at night, in today’s gospel reading. The time of day matters, in John’s gospel. Maybe it’s because Nicodemus is a Pharisee, and so he approaches Jesus on the sly in the hope that no one will see him go. Maybe it’s about the symbolic confusion of darkness, as opposed to the clarity of light. Or maybe it’s as simple as the fact that evening is the traditional time to study Torah. Whatever the reason, Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night. And what follows is a conversation that involves Nicodemus – who is clearly a smart guy – basically saying, “I don’t understand what you’re talking about. How can this be?” …And it involves Jesus says a series of things in response that are perhaps not super-helpful in moving Nicodemus toward that understanding he seeks.

After that comes this well-known and frequently-memorized verse, John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.” That verse is followed by another, not-so-well-known or well-memorized verse: “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

So we have the first reading, in which God calls an unknown and imperfect man named Abram, standing at a crossroads, who will be known as Abraham and celebrated as the father of faith. God calls him to give up what he knows in favor of the blessing that God promises.[1]

And we have a gospel story between a smart Pharisee and the Savior, in which Nicodemus asks: “What are you about?” and Jesus responds: “Love. God’s insistent love for you and for the whole world.”

Even though John 3:16 can get used to generalize, or as a litmus test about who’s in and who’s out, God’s story of love is always particular. “For God so loved the world…” happens person by person by person. God loves Adam when he breathes the first breath into him. And God loves Eve and Adam, offering them clothes as protection when they have to leave the Garden. God loves Noah, and his family, and all those animals as they board the boat. God loves David, the youngest son out taking care of the sheep, who will become a great king. God loves Mary, who says Yes. And God loves Martha, who fusses over dinner. God loves the disciples as they come, one by one, to follow Jesus. God loves the paralyzed man by the pool with nobody to help him in. And God loves the woman who anoints Jesus’ feet with her tears and dries them with her hair. God loves Peter, even as he swears an oath and says for the third time before dawn: “I do not know the man.” And God loves Mary Magdalene, who stands confused at the tomb, until she hears Jesus say her name.

God loves them all. God blesses them as a blessing.

And so I hold these passages, and the lessons that they have for us. I claim their authority for a world that needs to know right know that God’s repetitive and insistent message is not condemnation, but love…that God’s pervading promise is blessing and salvation.

I hold these passages in trust that God’s story of love is every bit as particular right now as it is throughout the stories of the Bible.[2] Because if it is, then “For God so loved the world…” means that God loves the refugee dad doing everything he knows how to do, to help his family survive as strangers in a new life. It means that God loves the lesbian student who is living into her identity. It means God loves the woman who was shamed by a judge in court. It means God loves the man who used to get by doing construction work, and can’t anymore. It means God loves the Lakota Sioux chief who chants today, right now, even, in front of the Washington Monument.

“For God so loved the world…” has to mean, this week, that God loves every single child who had to leave their classroom at the Jewish Day School in Edgewater on Tuesday morning, and that God loves every single officer who ensured their safe return.

“I will bless those who bless you,” God says. “And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

People of St. Augustine’s Church, I call you to live as the theologians you are.

I call you to look for the God Sightings in your lives that show forth divine and insistent actions of blessing and love.

I call you to claim those moments, and witness them to a world that knows too much of condemnation and terror and isolation and sneering cynicism.

In your words and in your actions, I call you to proclaim release from those things we know too much, from all that would separate us from one another and from God. I call you to insist on God’s promise, with us and for us.

Because God so loves the world. Because in you all the earth will be blessed.

[1] Donald P. Olson “Genesis: Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary, Year A, Volume 2. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010. 52.

[2] Thanks to Karoline Lewis for her column this week that framed the idea for much of this sermon: http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?m=4377&post=4835

March 5, The First Sunday in Lent

Deacon Sue Nebel

The first Sunday in Lent.  A new season in the Church year.  New colors.  New patterns in the liturgy. The changes in Lent are particularly striking.  Not only do we change colors—from the bright, bold green of the Epiphany Season to the plainer, simpler beige and oxblood.  We strip the worship space down.  Everything is simpler.  o altar hangings.  No flowers.  Less music. For communion, glass chalices instead of silver.  And, of course, we put the joyful Alleluias away.  We will not hear them again until Easter.  Most of the seasons in our Church year begin with the celebration of a significant event in the life of Jesus and the life of the Church: Christmas, Epiphany, Easter, Pentecost.  The seasons then continue for several weeks, or in the case of Pentecost, a long stretch of months.  Not so with Lent.  Lent begins in the middle of the week.  Quietly, without fanfare and celebration. Ash Wednesday. A simple service.  The mark of ashes on our foreheads.  A stark, gritty reminder of our beginning and our end: dust. With that, we enter into this season of forty days—actually more than forty, when you add in the Sundays.

In the Ash Wednesday liturgy, the priest invites us into the observance of a holy Lent. A time to focus on ourselves.  Ourselves in the core relationship of our lives: our relationship to God. It is a relationship marked by movement.  Closeness and distance.  Drawing near and pulling away. Lent is a time when we acknowledge the things that draw us away from God.  We make intentional efforts to turn away from them.  We try to simplify our lives.  Perhaps moving at a slower pace, maintaining a simpler diet.  Making an effort to get rid of unneeded things, clutter.  Resolving to spend less time on the Internet or social media. Lent is a time when are intentional about drawing closer to God. Strengthening and deepening our faith.  Carving out periods of quiet time and space in our daily lives.  Trying a new spiritual discipline..  Engaging in study and reading.  

On this first Sunday in Lent, we are a starting point, the beginning of a new part of our journeyOur readings for this day give us stories of other beginnings, other starting points in the human story. The first reading takes us back to Genesis, to Creation.  God has created the first human beings, man and woman, and placed them  in the Garden of Eden.  There, God tells them, they may eat from any of the trees, except one: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  It starts out so well.  These new beings, in harmony with God, surrounded by abundance and goodness.  Then the serpent intervenes. He convinces the woman that, if she eats the fruit from the forbidden tree, she will become like God.  Heeding that voice, she eats and then shares the fruit with the man.  In that moment, they see themselves with new eyes, as naked.  They feel shame and cover themselves. The close and harmonious relationship with God has been broken. They listened to a voice that was not God. A power working against the purposes of God.   

We hear the voice of temptation again in the Gospel lesson. This time it is the voice of the devil himself.  This encounter takes place in the wilderness, a place where Jesus has gone immediately after his baptism.  After forty days of fasting, he is famished.  The devil appear, ready to test Jesus and, no doubt, stop him before he can begin his ministry.  He begins by hurling challenges at Jesus.  First, appealing to his weakened, famished state, the devil commands Jesus to turn stones into bread.  When that doesn’t work, the devil dares Jesus to throw himself down from the high pinnacle of the Temple and trust that God will send angels to rescue him.  No, Jesus responds, he will not test God. Finally, the devil takes Jesus to a high mountain where he can see the kingdoms of the world.  Worship me, the devil tells him, and all this is yours.  Once again, Jesus refuses.  He will not listen to this voice.  He will remain faithful.  He will serve only God. 

What we get in this Gospel reading is a bare bones account of this dramatic confrontation.  We are told that Jesus has been in the wilderness for forty days, but we hear nothing about what those days were like for him, except that he fasted.  Three temptations from the devil. Each time Jesus responds with a line from Hebrew Scripture.  The writers of the Gospels are really good at reporting. They are not so great at fleshing out the details.

 The name Anne Rice may be familiar to some of you.  She is probably best known for her novels about vampires.  What is not so well known is that she wrote two historical novels about Jesus’ early life.  Based on solid study of Scripture and scholarship, she approaches Jesus’ struggle to come to terms with who and what he is with the eyes of a story- teller. In Christ Jesus: The Road to Cana, Rice devotes an entire chapter to the encounter between Jesus and the devil.  I want to share a few highlights with you.  .

Rice describes Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness in detail.  It is a bleak, difficult time.  Jesus struggles with physical hardship: cold and wind He sleeps in dark, damp caves.  He is besieged by many voices in his head, all competing for his attention. When the time in the wilderness nears its end, Jesus is bedraggled.  His clothes are rags, his sandals falling apart. But Rice makes it clear that, at his point, Jesus knows clearly, and affirms, that he is God.  The voice he must listen to is the voice of God within him.  When the devil dares him to turn stones to bread, Jesus imagines steaming, freshly-baked bread.  He can smell it.  He can taste it.  He nearly faints, but still resists the temptation to give into his hunger.  In Rice’s novel, Jesus’ responses to the devils’ challenges go way beyond quotes from Scripture.  In fact, the devil mocks him when he uses the words of others.  What the devil gets is engagement in full-blown theological arguments with Jesus.  I will not go into detail. They are quite long.  But I will tell you that the verbal sparring provides a strong sense of what is at stake for the devil. How much he has to lose in this confrontation with Jesus.

What was most striking to me in Rice’s treatment of the encounter in the wilderness is the devil himself.  I had always thought of this story taking place in a sort of semi-darkness.  The devil a dark, shadowy figure at the edges.  Not so in the novel.  The sun is shining.  The devil is a young, handsome man.  Here is what Jesus sees:

He was about my height, and beautifully garbed. . .like the figure of the King.

He wore a linen tunic, embroidered with a border of green leaves and red

flowers, each little floret glistening with gold thread. The border of his white

mantle was even thicker, richer, woven as the mantles of the Priests are woven,

and hung even with tiny gold bells.  His sandals were covered with gleaming

buckles.  And around his waist he wore a thick leather girdle studded with

bronze points, as a soldier might wear. Indeed a sword in a jeweled scabbard

hung at his side.  His hair was long and lustrous, a deep rich brown.  And so were

his soft eyes. [p. 185]

This is a disguise, part of the devil’s strategy.  He comes to Jesus, appearing as Jesus would look as a man at the height of worldly power and riches.  This, he tells Jesus, is what you could be.  The idea of being God is a delusion.  Abandon that.  Jesus, as we know from the Gospel, will not fall for this.  He is solidly grounded in the knowledge of who is: the Son of God. Steadfast and faithful, he is ready to leave the wilderness and begin his journey of ministry.  

As we begin our Lenten journey, individually and in community, I invite you to take these stories with you.  Hold onto them.  Make them part of you.  Embrace yourselves as children of God. Desiring to be in close relationship with God.  Yet prone to desires and actions that draw you away from God.  Claim yourselves as followers of Jesus.  Affirm the belief that God is at the center, the core of each of us.  God at work in the world through us is the strongest power of all.  Let us acknowledge that the life we have chosen, the life of discipleship is challenging.  But we will keep at it.  Step by step.  Day by day. 

And so, this day, as we move forward together into a new season, I wish you a holy Lent.

Lent 1; Year A

Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7; Psalm 32; Romans 5:12-19; Matthew 4:1-11