God messes with our binaries: 23rd after pentecost a

The other reading I reference is 1 Corinthians 1:18-31.

El santo evangelio según San Mateo (25:1-13)

[Jesus said to the disciples:]

¹“Then the dominion of heaven will be likened to this:

      Ten bridesmaids took their lamps

      and went to meet the bridegroom.

            ²Five of them were foolish,

            and five were wise.

                  ³When the foolish took their lamps,

                        they took no oil with them;

                              ⁴but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps.

            ⁵As the bridegroom was delayed,

                  all of them became drowsy and slept.

                        ⁶But at midnight there was a shout,

                              ‘Look! Here is the bridegroom!

                              Come out to meet him.’

                  ⁷Then all those bridesmaids got up

                  and trimmed their lamps.

                        ⁸The foolish said to the wise,

                              ‘Give us some of your oil,

                                    for our lamps are going out.’

                        ⁹But the wise replied,

                              ‘No! there will not be enough for you and for us;

                                    you had better go to the dealers

                                    and buy some for yourselves.’

                  ¹⁰And while they went to buy it,

                        the bridegroom came,

                        and those who were ready went with him into the wedding banquet;

                        and the door was shut.

                              ¹¹Later the other bridesmaids came also, saying,

                                    ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’

                              ¹²But he replied,

                                    ‘Truly I tell you, I do not know you.’

                                          ¹³Keep awake therefore,

                                                for you know neither the day nor the hour.”

El evangelio del Señor.

-----

As I was rereading the gospel throughout this week, 1 Corinthians 1 kept popping into my head.  What does it mean for us to call some bridesmaids wise and others foolish when God messes with our understandings of what is wise and what is foolish?

Is it wise to hoard the oil?  Is it foolish to not bring extra just in case?  Is it wise or foolish to leave to buy more?  To leave the lamps lit while they wait?  To show up late to your own wedding celebration?  To arrive so much earlier than the bridegroom?  To go inside and lock people out?  To pretend not to know someone?

Paul writes, “But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.”

God comes to mess with the good/bad binaries that we create.

We are so disposed to sorting the world into categories, especially binaries.  Good or bad, dark or light, women or men.  But the reality is that, as Sirius tells Harry Potter in the Order of the Phoenix, “The world is not split into good people and death eaters.”  It’s just not that simple.

Throughout the bible and throughout our lives of faith, God calls us deeper into the complexities of the world.  As our faith deepens and we come to understand that "when we recognize that noteverything is black and white, the next step is recognizing that it's not justshades of gray either, but instead that life is a rainbow of shades,highlights, colors, and tones."

The binaries we create do not serve God.  Instead they limit our understanding of God and the world around us.  If everyone has to be either wise or foolish, then what about those who are funny or sad or joyful?

Perhaps today’s parable is really about being prepared or receiving permission not to share, but as likely as not, it’s about wondering how else the story could play out.

What secret option c’s are out there that dance between and beyond the categories of wise and foolish?

Today is an easy day for us to find ourselves in the midst of binaries—good-byes and not hellos, endings, and yet beginnings.  Yesterday was Veteran’s Day and who better knows the value of peace, the danger and pain of war, and the ways it is not nearly that simple than veterans?  We’re even approaching the end of the church year and preparing for Advent, which itself breaks the binary as we live in the space of yearning for God’s reign on earth even as it has already begun in Jesus’ death and resurrection.

This Sunday is my last Sunday with you all and as we say good-bye, we are ending this pastoral relationship that we’ve had.  I won’t keep in touch, so that as you discern your leadership and pastoral needs, you can more fully embrace whoever comes to serve as pastoral leadership.  This is very much an ending.  

But it is also a beginning.  It’s a beginning for me as I move to Des Moines and it’s a beginning for you all as you begin to identify essentials for your community of faith—what is at the heart of your mission and ministry, the heart of your worship.

But even that is work we have already been doing together.  It is the ongoing work that we are always doing as people of faith in an ever-changing world.

You as a community embody a resistance to the binaries we humans like to create.  You are both ELCA and PCUSA in your worship together.  You have a building and yet next Sunday you will worship in a different building and for Thanksgiving you will worship in yet another building.  You care for each other and you also care for the community and the world.

The way you all engage in ministry is creative and visionary.  Investing your time and energy in relationships resists either being patronizing charity givers who keep others at an arms’ length or ignoring those who are different from you.

You are loved by God and you extend that love outward to care about this community and to care about this world instead of holding it in and keeping it just within yourselves.  You are witnesses to God’s transforming love and grace in your commitment to even what is not always popular or comfortable.  You are capable of wrestling with the hard questions of faith.

You wrestle with immigration policies that don’t honor the holiness of humans who immigrate to this country.  You can wrestle with what it means when thoughts and prayers aren’t stopping gun violence.  You can wrestle with what it means to live beyond and between the gender binary.  You wrestle with racism and white privilege and your place in it all.

You have enormous capacity as a community of faith to dwell in the in between.  You can question the text without losing your faith.  To ask if Jesus might not be the bridegroom, but instead a foolish bridesmaid, locked out of our religious celebrations.  You can ask what would have happened if the foolish bridesmaids didn’t leave or if the wise ones insisted on waiting just a little while longer until they returned before they went inside.

You, dear people of God, are vital to the body of Christ throughout the world.  The ministry God does through you in and with this community is vibrant and in whatever form it may take in the coming months and years, I trust that God will continue to work through you.

And even at this ending, I will continue to carry you in my heart.

Thanks be to God.

jesus prays for us: easter 7a

The holy gospel according to John (17:1-11)

¹After Jesus had spoken these words to his disciples,

      he looked up to heaven and said,

            “Father, the hour has come;

                  glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you,

                        ²since you have given him authority over all people,

                              to give everlasting life to all whom you have given him.

                                             ³And this is everlasting life,

                                    that they may know you, the only true God,

                                    and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

            ⁴I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do.

                  ⁵So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence

                        with the glory that I had in your presence

                              before the world existed.
 

⁶“I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world.

      They were yours,

            and you gave them to me,

                  and they have kept your word.

            ⁷Now they know that everything you have given me is from you;

                  ⁸for the words that you gave to me

                        I have given to them,

                        and they have received them

                        and know in truth that I came from you;

                        and they have believed that you sent me.

      ⁹I am asking on their behalf;

            I am not asking on behalf of the world,

                  but on behalf of those whom you gave me,

                        because they are yours.

                              ¹⁰All mine are yours,

                                    and yours are mine;

                                          and I have been glorified in them.

            ¹¹And now I am no longer in the world,

                  but they are in the world,

                        and I am coming to you.

                        Holy Father, protect them in your name

                              that you have given me,

                                    so that they may be one, as we are one.”

The gospel of the Lord.

-----

Today, as Jesus brings his time with his disciples to a close, he prays for them.  This prayer is one of the last prayers they will hear before Jesus’ death and so he really packs it in.

Jesus’ prayer is not only a prayer for his disciples in 1^st century Palestine, but for us as well.  It is a prayer for us as individual followers of Christ and as a community of faith.

In my second year of college, one of my high school friends died in a car accident.  Before I went home for spring break and the memorial service, my roommate made me a small survival package to go with me.  Included were several colorful note cards with bible passages on them to provide comfort in my grieving.  These note cards have traveled with me each time I move to a new place or face a new challenge.

One of the bible passages my roommate included was Jesus’ prayer in the 17^th chapter of John, only instead of all of the “they”s referring to the whole group of disciples, she put my name, so that Jesus was praying specifically for me.

So, for the next part of the sermon, I’m going to pass out today’s gospel, with an additional part, as the prayer actually continues for the whole 17^th chapter.  There will be blanks instead of “they”s and I changed the verbs, so they should match a singular person.  Please find one other person and take turns sharing Jesus’ prayer for each other, by adding their name in the blank.  Some people go by nicknames and full names, so please check with the other person to know what name they want you to use.

Jesus prayed:

⁶“I have made your name known to _________ whom you gave me from the world. _________ was yours, and you gave _________ to me, and _________ has kept your word. ⁷Now _________ knows that everything you have given me is from you; ⁸for the words that you gave to me I have given to _________, and _________ has received them and knows in truth that I came from you; and _________ has believed that you sent me. ⁹I am asking on _________‘s behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of _________ whom you gave me, because _________ is yours. ¹⁰All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in _________. ¹¹And now I am no longer in the world, but _________ is in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect _________ in your name that you have given me, so that _________ may be one, as we are one.”

¹⁷Sanctify _________ in the truth; your word is truth. ¹⁸As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent _________ into the world. ¹⁹And for _________’s sakes I sanctify myself, so that _________ also may be sanctified in truth.

²⁰”I ask not only on behalf of _________, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through _________’s word, ²¹that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may _________ also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. ²²The glory that you have given me I have given _________, so that _________ may be one, as we are one, ²³I in _________ and you in me, that _________ may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved _________ even as you have loved me.

Because faith and discipleship are so rooted in community, it’s important that even as we are praying for each other individually and lifting up Jesus’ prayer for each of us individually, we also pray within the context of this larger community of faith.  And it is precisely for this larger context of a community of followers of Christ that Jesus is praying.  So, now, hear this prayer from Jesus:

Jesus prayed:

⁶“I have made your name known to Trinity and First whom you gave me from the world. First and Trinity were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. ⁷Now Trinity and First know that everything you have given me is from you; ⁸for the words that you gave to me I have given to First and Trinity, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and Trinity and First have believed that you sent me. ⁹I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because First and Trinity are yours. ¹⁰All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in Trinity and First. ¹¹And now I am no longer in the world, but First and Trinity are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect Trinity and First in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.”

¹⁷Sanctify First and Trinity in the truth; your word is truth. ¹⁸As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent Trinity and First into the world. ¹⁹And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that First and Trinity also may be sanctified in truth.

²⁰”I ask not only on behalf of Trinity and First, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, ²¹that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may First and Trinity also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. ²²The glory that you have given me I have given Trinity and First, so that they may be one, as we are one, ²³I in First and Trinity and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

Amen.

Infinite Worth: Holy Innocents

The holy gospel according to Matthew (2:13-23).

¹³Now after the magi had left,

       an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said,

              “Get up, take the child and his mother,

              and flee to Egypt,

                     and remain there until I tell you;

                            for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” 

¹⁴Then Joseph got up,

       took the child and his mother by night,

              and went to Egypt, 

              ¹⁵and remained there until the death of Herod.

                     This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord 

                            through the prophet,

                                  “Out of Egypt I have called my son.”

¹⁶When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the magi,

       he was infuriated,

              and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem

                     who were two years old or under,

                            according to the time that he had learned from the magi. 

              ¹⁷Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah:

                     ¹⁸“A voice was heard in Ramah,

                            wailing and loud lamentation,

                                  Rachel weeping for her children;

                                          she refused to be consoled,

                                                 because they are no more.”

¹⁹When Herod died,

       an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared in a dream

              to Joseph in Egypt and said, 

                     ²⁰“Get up,

                            take the child and his mother,

                            and go to the land of Israel,

                                  for those who were seeking the child’s life are dead.” 

       ²¹Then Joseph got up,

              took the child and his mother,

              and went to the land of Israel. 

                     ²²But when he heard that Archelaus was ruling over Judea

                            in place of his father Herod,

                                  he was afraid to go there.

                     And after being warned in a dream,

                            he went away to the district of Galilee. 

       ²³There he made his home in a town called Nazareth,

              so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled,

                     “He will be called a Nazorean.”

The gospel of the Lord.

-----

Today’s gospel is not the gospel I want for Christmas—really, I don’t ever want it.

Growing up, when I thought about Christmas, I rarely thought about today’s gospel.  The shepherds and angels from Luke’s gospel would quickly come to mind, the poetic Word made flesh of the incarnation in John and even the magi with the star to follow in Matthew’s gospel would all dance about in my imagination, with Santa and elves and stockings and sleigh rides, but not the flight to Egypt, not King Herod killing all the children.

It wasn’t until I started seminary and consistent worship planning that I realized this story and the commemoration of the Slaughter of the Holy Innocents is in our lectionary each year, sometimes as a feast day, the third day of Christmas, and sometimes as a Sunday of Christmas, like this year.  It doesn’t always make its way into a Sunday morning because we celebrate Epiphany on Sundays a lot of the time, like we did last week, but it is part of the Christmas story—the part we don’t want.

We don’t want a ruler so insecure that he is threatened by a baby.  We don’t want a ruler who has no qualms about slaughtering the children in an entire town.  We don’t want a ruler with power he so easily abuses.

We don’t want parents to have to struggle with pain because they do not have the power to save their children.  We don’t want children’s futures to be beyond our control.  We don’t want to be unable to protect these most vulnerable—to be unable to keep them alive and whole and safe.

We don’t want difficult conversations with children about death and evil.  We don’t want to think about the conversation these parents will have with their child when they return from Egypt and the child looks around and asks why there aren’t any kids his age to play with.  We don’t want to break the child’s heart.

We don’t want this Christmas story.  But this is the Christmas story, because just as God is coming to be with us—just as God is deciding to show God’s immense love for the whole world, humans included, by becoming human, humanity—or one human in particular with several lackeys—is deciding that these smallest and youngest humans are disposable.  They are not only a threat to the one in power, but they are also disposable—worth little enough that getting rid of them is an easy spur of the moment decision.

I was talking to a friend this week and she mentioned theology professor Jeremy Posadas’[1] insight that so many people in this country feel, and are treated as if, they are disposable.  The culture we live in puts our value in what we can contribute to the economy, and even then someone could easily replace us—jobs could be shipped overseas, big farms could replace our family farms, downsizing and machines could take over. 

And if we’re not working, we’re disposable, too. Never mind that we might be caring for children or parents or grandchildren, we might have just retired after decades of work, we might have disabilities that keep us from some jobs, or we might do work on the farm and the garden, but those don’t provide pay checks, or maybe we just can’t find work.  The violence we have seen this last year—against people of color, against lgbtq+ people, against police—and the violent and demeaning rhetoric we have heard just feed into this feeling of disposability.

The message is clear: we are disposable, just like the things in our life are disposable.  There’s always something new or better for sale on TV and in stores and it’s easier to replace a broken toy or appliance than try to fix it. 

So much in life declares everything to be disposable, but whenever I think of things being disposable, an image pops into my head of women spread out at separate tables downstairs, each with her own sewing machine.

These women, as you know, have collected t-shirts—from Grace Place, from people, from the whole community—and these t-shirts that people do not want to wear and that could easily be disposable become diapers for families in crisis.  And then what’s left of the scraps from the diapers becomes quilt squares.  And what’s left from the scraps from the quilt squares become rags to clean with. And what’s left from the rags to clean with goes back to Grace Place to be sent in to be repurposed and the money they receive then helps support the ministries of Grace Place.   

Nothing about that t-shirt is disposable.

And that is where God is.  In the basement of this church building, yes, but more than that—in the families and children that will have diapers and quilts, in the ministry of Grace Place, in the rags and people who clean up and care for shared spaces, and in a landfill that is just a bit emptier because of the hundreds, or perhaps thousands of t-shirts that are not in it.

You all know the worth of things—t-shirts, jars that can be reused for canning and freezing food, plants and animals.  And you know the worth of humans of all ages—from the youngest to the oldest.

We read of King Herod’s heinous acts and we wonder where God is. 

How could God let those children suffer? 

And there are no easy answers to these questions that we ask from 2000 years ago and the questions that we still ask today—from our lives and our place in history. 

Two of the most striking images from this place in history

last year are of a young boy washed up on shore because the boat carrying him and many other refugees didn’t make it safely to the shore, and the image of a three-year-old boy covered in dust and blood, sitting in an ambulance in Aleppo.  And we ask how God could let these children suffer? 

And it’s not just the children halfway across the world.  We know the children suffering in our own community of faith and connected to our own community of faith, and we ask again and again how could God let the children we love who are sick suffer?

Where is God when human lives feel disposable?

As we hear from Jeremiah, echoed in our gospel today, God is “A voice …heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.”   

God is weeping over a humanity that is of infinite worth.  

God is weeping over the violence that tears again and again through this world that God came here to love.   

God is Rachel weeping, the mother who has lost her children.   

God is naming your value and mine because even in the weeping and lament, even in our grief and our pain, God is with us.   

Our questions remain, and yet Jesus is Emmanuel. 

Jesus comes as God-with-us, not to give easy answers to our questions, not to solve all the problems in one foul swoop.  God comes to us because you are of infinite worth.  Because you are God’s beloved.

Thanks be to God.

---

[1] Dr. Jeremy Posadas is a professor of theology at Austin College and co-led the fight for LGBTQ equality in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America for several years.

God holds us in thin places: All Saints Sunday

The first reading was Job 19:23-27a.

 

The holy gospel according to Luke

²⁷Some Sadducees,

       those who say there is no resurrection,

              came to Jesus ²⁸and asked him a question,

                     “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies,

                            leaving a wife but no children,

                                   the man shall marry the widow

                                          and raise up children for his brother.

                     ²⁹Now there were seven brothers;

                            the first married, and died childless;

                            ³⁰then the second

                            ³¹and the third married her,

                            and so in the same way all seven died childless.

                            ³²Finally the woman also died.

                                   ³³In the resurrection, therefore,

                                          whose wife will the woman be?

                                                 For the seven had married her.”

³⁴Jesus said to them,

       “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage;

              ³⁵but those who are considered worthy

                     of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead

                     neither marry nor are given in marriage.

                            ³⁶Indeed they cannot die anymore,

                                   because they are like angels and are children of God,

                                          being children of the resurrection.

                     ³⁷And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed,

                            in the story about the bush,

                                   where he speaks of the Sovereign

                                          as the God of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar,

                                          the God of Rebecca and Isaac,

                                          and the God of Jacob, Leah, and Rachel.

                            ³⁸Now God is God not of the dead,

                                   but of the living;

                                          for to God all of them are alive.”

The gospel of the Lord.

-----

It is profoundly ironic that in our readings for today it is precisely those who do not believe in the resurrection who prompt our deeper thinking and experience of the resurrection. Job, as was typical of his time, doesn’t actually believe in the resurrection or everlasting life the way we might today. 

For Job, when you died, you died and the way you lived on was through your descendants and the name, or reputation, you made for yourself.  And yet, today we find new meaning in Job’s words, “I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last will stand upon the earth; ²⁶and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God, ^27awhom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not another.”

Much of our understandings and lives are built on others’—on the lives and understandings of those who’ve come before us.  In this way, we hear Job’s words and we are able to find new and different meaning, even as the old understandings may remain, fade, or change.  We hear in Job’s word a promise of everlasting life—a promise of new life in the resurrection.

Jesus’ encounter with the Sadducees also turns things around. You see, the Sadducees try to trap Jesus with complicated questions about the Resurrection—which they don’t even believe in!

So it comes as no surprise that Jesus uses their question as more of a jumping off point than as a question in need of a clear answer. With their resurrection question in his metaphorical pocket, Jesus dives into the nature of God. 

After all, the resurrection only matters insofar as our God is beyond death.

Jesus alludes to Moses’ encounter with God at the burning bush, where the name Godgives Moses is “I AM or I will be.”  God is an active God.  God is a present God.  God is God even into the future.  Jesus says, “God is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to God all of them are alive.”

God’s presence with us is a forever thing and there is nothing we can do to screw it up so badly that that will not be true—for us or for anyone else.  God is God of the living and yet even when we die, God is still with us.

Too often in our culture, we avoid death like the plague and then when people die we give a set amount of time for grief and then expect people to be back to their old selves again.  But that is not how grief works and that is not how love works.  When people we love die, the work of grief is figuring out our new relationship with them—one built less from physical presence and more from heart, feelings, and memories.  Loved ones who have died still remain a part of our lives, just in a different way.

In fact, there are times throughout the year and places where peoples across cultures recognize the delicate difference between the living and the dead. In Celtic tradition, they referred to it as “thin places,”—in thin places and thin times, the boundary between those of us who are alive and those who are dead is thinner and we are more able to sense their presence.

In Mexico, the Day of the Dead—el Día de muertos—is a time spent with those who have died—making altars at home or decorating graves.  Last night we celebrated together—remembering friends, family, and community members who have died, and we built the altar that is in the back, decorating it and adding our own pictures, mementos, food and drink from loved ones.

This time of year, when the earth grows cold, when the harvest finishes, is the time when we are all closer to death.  It used to be that some wouldn’t make it through the winter and so these celebrations of life were what carried people through to the next one.

It is also fitting that today is a communion Sunday because communion is one of those places where “we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses.”  Communion is many things—it is a communal meal in which we participate in God’s alternative economy where all are fed—all receive our daily needs.  Communion is a renewing of God’s covenant of love with us. 

And Communion is also our participation in and our glimpse of the feast to come.  In this, we don’t just practice, but we taste the feast, we participate with the great cloud of witnesses.  When we receive the bread and wine that is Jesus, we are in line with our parents, spouses, friends, and even children who have completed their baptismal journey. We join with our ancestors in the faith throughout the ages to celebrate the power of life that comes from God.

Today especially as a community of faith, we gather to celebrate and remember those we love who have died.  As we do, we also feel their presence and the ways they continue to impact our lives.

For some of us their presence will always be tangible and for others it will fade and morph with time.  For some of us, our grief at the death of a loved one or even a stranger will overwhelm us, for others it will settle in as numbness or come back at unexpected times.

Each of us grieve and process death differently and on All Saints’ Day and special anniversaries, we experience again the presence of those who have died.  Those thin places invite them into our lives again in a different way. We eat their favorite foods, reminisce about memories and over pictures.  We go to bed, wrapped in their arms, only to find that it is our God who is holding us close, remembering with us, and bringing us again to each new day, each new feast, each new life.

Thanks be to God.