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.

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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.

the Indwelling Heavenly Mother makes us living stones: easter 5a

The first reading is Acts 7:55-60.

The second reading is 1 Peter 2:2-10.

Today's gospel reminds us that the Bible was written in a particular patriarchal context.

Without language as free or all-encompassing of gender as God's own self is, the writers of the bible chose language for God that frequently tended toward the masculine. So, today of all days, I invite you into the gospel with openness and curiosity about God our Heavenly Mother.

The holy gospel according to John (14:1-14)

Jesus said:

¹“Do not let your hearts be troubled.

      Believe in God,

            believe also in me.

²In my Mother’s house there are many dwelling places.

      If it were not so,

            would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?

            ³And if I go and prepare a place for you,

                  I will come again and will take you to myself,

                        so that where I am,

                              there you may be also.

                              ⁴And you know the way to the place where I am going.”

⁵Thomas said to Jesus,

      “Lord, we do not know where you are going.

            How can we know the way?”

⁶Jesus said to Thomas,

      “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.

            No one comes to the Mother except through me.

                  ⁷If you know me,

                        you will know my Mother also.

                              From now on you do know and have seen my Mother.”

⁸Philip said to Jesus,

      “Lord, show us the Mother,

            and we will be satisfied.”

⁹Jesus said to Philip,

      “Have I been with you all this time, Philip,

            and you still do not know me?

            Whoever has seen me has seen the Mother.

                  How can you say, ‘Show us the Mother’?

                        ¹⁰Do you not believe that I am in the Mother

                              and the Mother is in me?

                        The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own;

                              but it is the Mother who dwells in me who does these works.

            ¹¹Believe me that I am in the Mother and the Mother is in me;

                  but if you do not,

                        then believe me because of the works themselves.

¹²Very truly, I tell you,

      the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do

            and, in fact, will do greater works than these,

                  because I am going to the Mother.

                        ¹³I will do whatever you ask in my name,

                              so that the Mother may be glorified in the Child.

                              ¹⁴If in my name you ask me for anything,

                                    I will do it.”

The gospel of the Lord.

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[For the children's sermon, I read the story of Stone Soup]

When I was in middle school, my least favorite unit in science class—a class I generally enjoyed—was geology: the study of stones.  We learned about igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks; how they were created and how to tell the difference between them.  I did not appreciate my teacher’s wisdom or enthusiasm about the rocks.  I do know that we did not learn about any rocks that were alive—fossils that were imprints of formerly living creatures, sure.  But living stones?  Definitely not.

And yet, this week, I found myself diving deep into the study of rocks—biblically at least.  As I read Acts and then 1 Peter, I wasn’t sure what exactly a “living stone” might be, since we never studied it.  The good news is that while the Bible doesn’t go into any detail about the various types of stones out there in the world, stones do come up in a variety of other ways.

These different “stone” appearances pop up in several contexts throughout the New Testament.

As we might anticipate, stones are connected to buildings.  In the gospels, the disciples admire the stones and magnificent decorations of the Temple—remodeled by Herod to “give honor to God”—and, even more so, to give honor to Herod, as the ruler, a recent convert to Judaism, who constructed it.  This reaction by the disciples is exactly the reaction Herod was going for. 

Jesus, however, has another perspective.  His response to the disciples’ awe in the 24^th chapter of Matthew is, “You see all these, do you not?  Truly I tell you, not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.” (Matthew 24:2)

These Temple stones, used to hold a building, to impose power and intimidation on those who visit, are counter to Jesus’ mission in the world.  The glory Jesus seeks is a different kind of glory, one not found in any building, but instead found in other “stones.”

The Stone Jesus does lift up, is one of the stones lifted up in 1 Peter as well, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the very head of the corner.”  This quote from Psalm 118 points us toward the rejection Jesus will face. 

The religious and political institutions that have been constructed,

      symbolized in the grandiosity of the Temple,

            have built injustice into the foundation and the walls, yet these structures built up with injustice will crumble, they will be torn down.  Jesus, the Stone that didn’t fit their plan, the One that they rejected, will become the key to a renewed way of being in the world—a way of being whose foundation is justice, whose foundation is radical love for each person and the entirety of creation.

This is our foundation, our cornerstone, and our first clue as to what it means to be living stones—living stones that align with this Chief Cornerstone.  The stones we encounter at both Jesus’ and Lazarus’ tombs further this shift from stones that hold in death, destruction, and heartache, like the stones of the Temple, to stones that reveal resurrection and abundant life of the kind that seek justice and love.  The stones of the tomb begin as stones of death, yet God transforms them into living stones, opening to the resurrection.

These living stones are also the stones from which Jesus says God is able “to raise up children to Abraham” and it is these stones that Jesus says would shout out even if he were to silence the crowds gathering on Palm Sunday.  These stones, faithful to Jesus, raising their voices for a different, more just way of being in the world are living stones, called into being by our God who has abundant hopes and dreams for her creation.

1 Peter calls us, as followers of Christ, to be living stones.  To be justice-seeking, loving stones, participants in a world turned on its head.  This call contrasts starkly with the stones used in our story from Acts.  The stones that show up there are stones of destruction and violence—stones used to kill Stephen.  These stones continue their evil work in our world today.  They kill as bullets fired throughout the world and as fists harming intimate partners.

The choice is not always as clear as today’s readings.  We do not always see death or resurrected life as the consequences of our choices.  We cannot always see the soup that will come from a stone placed in boiling water.

This is where our gospel account calls us in.  Jesus is talking to his disciples at the Last Supper, preparing them for the stones of death and the tomb, and calling them and us into a deeper dwelling with the God who loves them and who dwells in Jesus and in each of us.

This indwelling presence of our God who is the Heavenly Mother, the Holy Parent, transforms us into living stones, as 1 Peter proclaims, “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of the one who called you out of darkness into the marvelous light of God.  ¹⁰Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”

This indwelling Holy Mother is also a source for this holiday.  Julia Ward Howe, the poet who wrote the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” wrote, in 1870, the Mother’s Peace DayProclamation, beginning what has become the Mother’s Day we celebrate now.  So, living stones, listen to the call of our Heavenly Mother in Julia Ward Howe’s words:

Arise, all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or of tears! Say firmly: “We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.

“Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says, “Disarm, disarm! The sword is not the balance of justice.” Blood does not wipe out dishonor nor violence indicate possession.

As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each learning after [their] own time, the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.

In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.

That is the root of Mothers’ Day, the heart of our Heavenly Mother for every person and all of Creation.  May the indwelling Mother, God of us all, make us into living stones, that we may embody nurture and concern for each person as workers of justice and seekers of peace here in our own community and in the world.

Thanks be to God.