Couples Communication Class

Hurricanes, Tsunamis & Earthquakes Class

Read Isaiah 55:1-13

You are walking down a grocery store aisle, filling your basket with things that are good for you, high in nutrition, fiber, taste. You go through the line, waving at the clerk as he smiles back at you as he says, “Bye! Have a nice day!” You walk out without paying because this grocery store is free! Wee!

That’s what this looks like in Isaiah 55.

Listen, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters;

And you that have no money, come, buy and eat.

Come buy wine and milk without money and without price.

Who is Isaiah talking to? It’s to a dull, depressed, worn-out, resentful group of ancient Hebrews. They’ve been in exile for years. The first Babylonian captivity was in 597 BC, and the second, tons worse than the first was in 587 with destruction of the homeland, and the dispersion of the leaders and professionals far away from home.

What on earth is Isaiah saying to these people, here in the late 6^th century? Free food? Rich, good-for-you food?

Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,

And your labor for that which does not satisfy?

Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good,

And delight yourselves in rich food.

Incline your ear, and come to me;

Listen, so that you may live.

I will make with you an everlasting covenant,

my steadfast, sure love for David.

“David? David who? He was years ago. What is the monarchy to us now in captivity? They let us down. Look where we are now. In Babylon!

“You talk about covenant, Isaiah. We don’t believe you,” the Israelites say. “You tell us WE will call nations and they will run to us? We are nobodies. We’re left behind with other leaders that we don’t understand and who don’t understand us. You call us glorified? In these rags?

Have you seen people like that? Of course you have. The forgotten. The pushed-away. The ignored. The voiceless. Yes. How can they believe that God has something good in store for them? What can be done?

Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near.

Let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts;

Let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them

And to God, for God will abundantly pardon.

I think that’s why I come to church. It’s not because I’m paid to come to church! I find God here in what we do. If I didn’t, I’d find another church or another place to be on Sunday morning. La Madeleine has pretty nice croissants.

I have experienced God here. As I have drawn near to God, God has drawn near to me. I have promised again and again in this place to do what Isaiah says: to forsake my wicked ways. To get rid of negative words and blaming thoughts.

I need a God to have mercy on me and to forgive me. And I need a God who will do the very same thing for you. For everyone.

• I’m concerned about the plight of endless poverty
• About homelessness literally right here on our doorstep. People using our porch for a hotel and a bathroom.
• I’m troubled about what happens to lives and families and churches in earthquakes
• About a cruel and broken system of health care here in the U.S.
• I’m distressed about the illegal immigrants who come to our clinic with enormous sores on their feet, desperate to try to find help.

I want hope for all God’s people.

I want them to experience the God of Isaiah who tells them that they have a future.

And I wonder why these bad things happen.

Then in verse 8 it says:

For my thoughts are not your thoughts,

Nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.

Hmmm. What does this mean to someone who’s in trouble?

“My thoughts are not your thoughts.”

For some it means that you’ll never figure out why some people have it good and some people have it bad, so let’s just wash our hands from helping others because it’s “God’s will that this has happened to them. God helps those who help themselves.”

Nonsense! Do we believe that here at Grace? I don’t think so. God help us if we do. Last week we gathered  $733 at the communion rail to send our representative, Christina Cavener, to Haiti on Friday.

We care about people here at Grace. No matter who they are. We care about ALL people. So for us, this sentence from God’s mouth isn’t about ignoring others.

“My thoughts are not your thoughts.”

This sentence is about a mystery.

It’s a mystery to understand what exactly God is up to.

And now we are at Lent. What IS God up to?

Let’s look at the mystery of Good Friday and Easter: God, as a human, dies a gruesome human death at the hands of other humans, and rises. That’s mysterious.

I know some of you have heard more sermons than you can count about these windows. But how blessed are we to have this beauty! Most churches can’t afford this splendor anymore. This isn’t some 1950’s church with plastic windows and fake beams. This is incredible.

OK back to the Mystery of God becoming human and rising.

What do you see Jesus doing in these windows?

First, what’s he doing with all those sheep?

Next, what’s he doing, kneeling by a rock and looking up?

Those are two very human things that we could do. They are earthly things. We almost need no mystery to know about a human being caring for animals and for kneeling and asking that you can quit your job. “Take this cup from me,” Jesus says.

But the third window?

Where is Jesus?

He’s gone. The tomb is empty.

The Mystery. Where is he? What is he doing? If he isn’t doing anything, should we stay at the tomb? Where should we be? How will we know?

We live in this Mystery now. There is no human Jesus walking among us, but…

• We have his stories, and his admonitions to follow him, to do what he did for others.
• Like washing dirty feet.
• Like touching very sick, infected people.
• Like treating prostitutes with respect.
• Like loving people everyone else loves to hate. Like tax collectors.

These two windows are the human, realistic, logical, provable part of Jesus. But there is this Mystery thing. The empty tomb. Emptiness. Loneliness. Beaten up. Forgotten. Like the ancient Israelites in Babylonian captivity.

And Isaiah tells them not to give up hope.

This is called faith. This hope. This Mystery. The only way I know how to stay in touch with that Mystery is to draw near to God and listen. To start each day by getting up earlier to spend 30 minutes, listening. To come to worship on Sundays and sing. To kneel and remember. To hear the ancient words.

I don’t understand the Mystery, and by God, I’ve tried.

I don’t know what prayer is all about.

I don’t know how God always acts.

I don’t know what God always wants from me.

If I did understand, I guess it wouldn’t be a Mystery.

Karen Armstrong teaches us about Mystery in her book, The Case for God: What Religion Really Means.

We’re simply too limited to be able to understand God. “God is not good, divine, powerful or intelligent in any way that we can understand. We could not even say that God ‘exists’, because our concept of existence is too limited.”

Behind everything we humans do is Mystery. We can only see through a glass dimly now. We only see from the corner of our eye. In shadows. In glimmers and glimpses.

I want us to guard this Mystery at Grace. Not to get stuck on thinking that we can explain God’s actions. We can’t. The closest thing we can do is what Isaiah tells us:

1. Move toward God – put your stuff out there for God to examine
2. Try to wrap your mind around what it means that God is making an everlasting covenant with us – that God will never, ever forsake us

I’ll tell you why this is important at Grace.

We have to know why we’re doing what we’re doing at Grace.

We have to look at our motives:

• “Will it benefit Grace or just make me look good?”
• Is what we’re doing — in our missions, our education, our fellowship, our staff, our use of money — a way of drawing nearer to God?
• Is how I think of others filled with grace – giving each person at Grace the benefit of the doubt?
• Am I praying for everyone here, especially the ones I get irritated with?
• Am I talking things through, to find a common ground, and to get to know a person, not just my perception of a person?

We have to draw near to this Mystery, even if we never understand it.

We have to become more prayerful about our decisions – in every movement we make here. Whether it be when we wait for communion or when we exchange ideas in a meeting or how we judge our church leaders.

“My thoughts are not your thoughts.”

God is beyond comprehension, but God is full of hope for God’s people.

I want us to imagine that everyone has a grocery cart here.

We’re not bumping into each other, miraculously.

Each person is getting what they need.

Sometimes, the packages of good, healthy food fall out of the baskets.

Look! Ted is helping you put it back in yours.

Look! Dale just opened the door and found an empty basket to fill with hope for the homeless man outside.

Look! Jean and Francine have found an extra coat to put in somebody’s basket.

And Mary brought some of her patients to get well here. Others are dropping into their baskets the medicines they need.

Look! Everyone is helping to make sure that every basket is filled.

This is what our Mysterious God can do at Grace.

Without seeing you, we love you;

Without touching you, we embrace;

Without knowing you, we follow;

Without seeing you, we believe.

Read Luke 13:31-36

High in the foothills of the Mount of Olives is a little, white chapel, shaped like a teardrop and built in the 1950’s over Byzantine ruins. The sky was bright blue when we made our way on down the steep, dusty slope with a small group of religious journalists and pastors from across the United States.

We walked in and went straight to the window. Please join us. Looking through the wrought iron screen, with its center point being a chalice with a wafer of bread just above it, your eyes immediately go past it to focus on the Temple Mount, across the Kidron Valley of Death, and up the mountain of white stones to the immense, golden dome – the 7^th century Dome of the Rock.

The walls of this distant mosque are covered in deep, blue mosaic. They’re lovely. Inside is a massive stone: one of the holiest sites for Islam, for they believe that it is where Muhammad took his last step before ascending into heaven. And for the Jews, along with the Wailing Wall, this is also a holy site, where Abraham was purported to have been willing to sacrifice his son Isaac. Christians, Jews, and Muslims come to the Temple Mount to remember their heritage and to stand in reverence there.

Jerusalem, the Holy City. Holy for three major religions of the world. The dome is still standing.

And today you’re seeing it, as you stand in the little chapel. Between you and the dome is the Kidron Valley that holds the ancient, Jewish cemetery next to the Golden Gate where Jesus rode his donkey into Jerusalem on what we call Palm Sunday. When your eyes get their fill of the temple mount, you turn and look at your surroundings in this chapel.

Why is this chapel shaped like a teardrop? Why is the view of the Old City so prominent from within the chapel?

If you step back a couple of paces from the window and look down, you will find a stone altar. On it is a mosaic. As your eyes adjust from the brilliant sun on the Temple Mount to the darkness inside the chapel, you make out the subject of the mosaic. It is a chicken! What? A chicken on the side of an altar? There are so many questions here.

In Latin this chapel is called Dominus Flevit – “Jesus wept.”

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!

We had come during Advent 1999 to hear from Israelis and Palestinians about the growing conflict. It was a serious pilgrimage to the Holy Lands, not based on a walk through history only. Our journey was more of a trudge through modern day, religious politics. That morning we had heard from a Palestinian Christian as she sat on a panel discussion with a rabbi and a Palestinian Muslim. She told us that her son had wanted to come home for Christmas the year before, but it was impossible for a Palestinian with a work permit in Jerusalem to procure a pass to travel to his hometown of Bethlehem. Christmas Eve day arrived. No son, of course. The mother looked around that evening. “Where is my daughter?” she cried. Nerves have been on edge for decades. Nervous beyond belief, she searched everywhere and found nothing. That Christmas morning, her daughter walked in, bedraggled and disheveled. Accompanying her was her brother. She had walked the hills to Jerusalem to get him, and they had sneaked back at night to be together as a family. For their Christmas in Bethlehem.

You know the stories. The heartache and the fury.

Our group had witnessed some of this heartache and fury. We had traveled to Hebron the day before, barely getting in because it has been the epicenter of violence in the West Bank and it was closed to tourism. Our small bus passed dozens of Israeli soldiers carrying Uzis. But we came to see the tombs of Abraham and Sarah, and, thankfully, we were allowed to carry on. We entered the town square. A few, skinny merchants moved with their wares toward our bus. For months, no commerce had taken place in this cordoned off part of Palestine. We bought as much as we could carry, to offer our support to them.

We had come to see the Tombs of the Patriarchs, a huge, holy site for Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. All three of our monotheist religions of the world see Abraham as our ancestor. It stood like a big natatorium, the focal point of the entire city.

The building has been severely partitioned. We entered the Jewish side, and we were enthralled by the men with yarmulkes. Each one wore a tallith (or tallit) – a prayer shawl, often in black and white – like the tallith I’m wearing today in gold and white. They leaned over the Torah, rocking as they studied, rocking as Jewish scholars have been praying over the ancient texts for century upon century.

We set foot in the tiny room with the enormous tombs of Abraham and Sarah. We stood in awe of the antiquity. When we moved to the Muslim side, we had to go through a metal detector, of course. The room looked very different from the Jewish side. It was minimalist, almost barren. With only beautiful, oriental rugs on the floor. A man was on his knees in prayer, bowing down to the east. We stood in silence.

Slowly we walked out the door, entered the waiting bus, and sat down. Glancing out the windows as we began to move away from Hebron, we saw a jeep with soldiers speeding through the town, honking at the neat line of children following their teacher into their school. The children scattered in fear of the careening jeep. We closed our eyes and wept.

This has been a difficult sermon to think through and research. As I found the pictures online of the Chapel Where Jesus Wept, the Dominum Flevit, and the Tombs of the Patriarchs in Hebron, my heart was hurting, as it always does when I think about our Holy Lands and the unholy war there.

Rev. Linda Roby, from First Methodist, returned from a trip to Jerusalem just last year. She saw the destruction. She brought home several pieces of arts on consignment since making a living is now so very hard. One was this nativity set, made by a third-generation, Palestinian Christian woodcarver.

I saw it for the first time in her kitchen last week and asked to borrow it. It is made in Bethlehem, of olive wood. Here are Mary, Joseph, the baby, the shepherds. And here is a wall. Very, very tall. The wise men are trying to get to Bethlehem but they can’t. It is THE wall.

The Israeli wall is built on the Palestinian side of “the green line,” the border between Israeli and Palestinian territory agreed on in 1967. The wall winds across Palestinian farmland, which is excavated as the wall is built. Construction started in 2003. On 9 July 2004, it was declared by the International Court of Justice to be in breach of international standards, but that has not prevented construction continuing. When the wall is completed it will be 670 km long. 400 miles, in a country that is smaller than the state of New Jersey. The wall was built as an attempt to bring peace. It is bringing anger. And more fear. The Wall separates many farmers from their farmland and water sources. Is it like the Berlin Wall? The Iron Curtain?

What is going on here? Is this the way to solve problems? Is this what Jesus guides Jerusalem to do?

When the Pharisees came to Jesus, they told him to get out of there because Herod wanted to kill him. Jesus answered by calling Herod a “fox.”

You know what a fox is like: wily, sly, crafty. A fox in a henhouse is death for the hens. But what about the hen in a fox-house?

Jerusalem, Jerusalem… How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings!

A hen in a fox house?! Wow! That turns the world upside down. It sounds completely loony. Who would think that a hen could prevail over a fox? Or a slain lamb over a beast? Or a crucified man over death?

Jesus wants to gather all of the warring factions under his mother-hen wings. He does not want us to return evil for evil. He understands that the capital city – like most capital cities – trashes many dreams of justice for its people. “Jerusalem who kills the prophets.”

He doesn’t want us to use power-over but to move in humility and repentance, working for justice for all. Jesus doesn’t even want to save his life but to give it up for us and for the world.

This is not a sweet, little faith that Jesus is talking about. This is radical and counter-cultural and profound.

So how do we respond?

This I know: we are humans, and we are often looking out for ourselves, blaming and scape-goating and categorizing and mistrusting and finally, fighting.

This I also know: at the heart of these religions, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity are humility, love, repentance, justice, and mercy. These qualities have been eclipsed in all three religions through the ages by wave after wave of human-centered motivations.

Last week I received an email from my dear friend, Hind, who wants our dialogue group to help sponsor a Dallas stop for the touring of “Jerusalem Women Speak,” in which a Jewish Israeli, a Muslim Palestinian, and a Christian Palestinian come together to speak with others who want peace in the Middle East. They have already been to 32 states and now they are planning a swing through Texas, going to Rice, Baylor, and Midwestern State in Wichita Falls. We may want to help get them here.

We have to make it easier for everyone to be diverse. We have to make it easier for moderates to be moderates.

This kind of work is the work of Jesus. This kind of crazy, humble, repenting work of making peace. Of not killing the prophets. It’s making a stand for non-violence. Not launching grenades or building walls or tormenting people with the constant fear of being attacked by a suicide bomber. No. By speaking to each other. Collaborating. Cooperating.

When we see this kind of work through our Christian lens, we see: this is the Mother Hen Christ at work.

But many of us are too stubborn. Too afraid. It reminds me of family relationships.  We’re too afraid we can’t trust, so we snipe at one another with our caustic words and disdaining looks. We protect our turf. We want to be right. And in the end, what do we have? What are you left with when you’ve convinced everyone that you’re right? You’re left alone. How important is it to be right for heaven’s sake? Isn’t it more important to listen and learn? To say the four hardest words humans can say to one another, “You may be right”?

On April 24, from 9-noon and on the following Monday night, I will be leading a class on couples communication. We will be using as one of our textbooks Non-Violent Communication, by Marshall Rosenberg, who has taught endless hours of this kind of peace-making with Palestinians and Israelis, with Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland, with gangs in the United States and even with couples. We’ve got to find a better way to communicate. We’ve got to do better than to kill the prophets. To kill each other.

How do we respond?

Are we too stubborn to find shelter under a mother hen’s wings?

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!

Read Deuteronomy 26:1-11

Last Wednesday…

It was the beginning of Lent. We had a very dramatic choral reading with an organ background to make your hair stand on end. Rev. Mark Buchanan offered us a word that Lent is a set-aside time, when we don’t so much “do” for others as “be” for God. In the service, we remembered and wrote down the things that keep us from being with God and burned them up in a beautiful caldron. From the ashes of broken promises, shame, and disappointment, we received the cross on our foreheads as a sign of belonging to the one who gave himself up for us.

And thus, we began our Lenten journey. If you weren’t able to come, I invite you to take some time this morning, perhaps during the offertory or during the communion, to listen for what you can give up, in order to make room for God’s peace as we travel this road to Jerusalem.

Wednesday was also a day that some of us had dreaded. Our District Superintendent and her consultant came, ostensibly to tell us about our future: deciding for us if we need to work a little harder and be a “transforming church,” or if we needed to merge with another church, or if we needed to close our doors. Yikes! Sixteen people showed up in the middle of a workday. Many more of you were praying for us. None of us knew what to expect.

We gathered in the office and headed right downstairs to walk through the clinic (in full operation), past the preschool (just let out for the day), into the parlor, and on into the lovely sanctuary where we seated ourselves for the next 1 ½ hours in pews and cold, metal, folding chairs at the front of the sanctuary. Light streamed through the windows, but my teeth were chattering out of the cold and nervousness.

Let me tell you why I was nervous. Ever since our DS called me into her office in late November, with five other clergy from East Dallas United Methodist Churches, I felt a little fight brewing inside of me. I didn’t know for these months what it meant. But on Wednesday? On that cold, sunny afternoon, I realized: I didn’t want anyone but God defining what Grace United Methodist Church was or would be.

OK, so I’m protective of what I love. A little like a she-bear with her cubs. Don’t mess with me. But I realize that I’m also at the mercy of my bishop and the cabinet of six district superintendents. At any moment they could move me from here. That made me nervous. What if I didn’t make the grade? What if we didn’t “make the grade” here?

Primarily, though, I was nervous that they would insist that we be something that we’re not. There are glitzy churches out there that look like Starbucks. But we’re not glitzy here. Our sheen comes from hope, not hype. There are some fancy churches out there. But Grace has beauty, not gaudiness.

Furthermore, we people of Grace don’t fit into a mold that someone else makes. Our mold comes from allowing God to melt us, mold us, fill us, use us. We have an identity here. We are a niche church; we fill certain functions for some people, not necessarily all people. Were they going to try to make us into a cafeteria instead of this lovely international bazaar? Yes, I was nervous. And so were several of you who came.

Very politely our Grace representatives “explained Grace” to our guests. We told what was going on now, and we remembered what had gone on in the past. We had people in our group who had been members for a few months and one who had been singing in the choir for over 50 years.

Were you around at some of these times that were recounted?

• Maybe you helped unscrew each pew and move it out of the sanctuary to get refinished while the sanctuary was being refurbished.
• Perhaps you witnessed the dingy, soot-covered windows begin to buckle from the disintegration of the window frames and the weight of the building.
• Do you remember the pastor’s office being where Bryan Chapel is? The acoustic tiles hiding the tin ceiling and chandelier in the parlor? Putting up the marker to make this an historical site?
• Do you remember when Sunday school classes met in the tower?
• Do you remember Rev. Bill Bryan’s imagination and faith, as he began to move towards making this into a missional church?
• Do you remember Joe Todd and Carl McCleskey, Fleta Stalworth and Nuffie Eidt?
• Did you ride your horse here and tie it to the hitch that used to be just outside the front door, on the sidewalk?
• Were you part of the experiment to see if Grace could sustain communion every Sunday so that the Cambodians, who knew very little English, could at least participate?
• Were you in one of many small groups that worked together on a square for the AIDS quilt? And later, did you become a part of the vote to announce to the world that this was a United Methodist Reconciling Congregation? Do you remember Rev. Chuck Cox’s courage to make that a possibility?
• Did you help start the Open Door Preschool 38 years ago? The Agape Clinic 27 years ago? Did you welcome the Refugee Services of Texas in our old parsonage, the Center for Survivors of Torture in our duplex, the Legal Clinic in our fellowship hall? And did you offer your services in these ministries through board work, painting and repairing, sorting files, praying with those who came?
• Did you befriend refugees, not only helping them find household goods but also to help them find jobs, a way to get to church, and friendship?
• Did you used to ride a trolley to get here, or a DART bus this last Wednesday in order to tell our DS that this is an inclusive church, not a church with tokenism, but one that truly accepts and welcomes and cherishes all people?

These are some of the things that were said, and I’ve added some myself.

I watched the 14 people tell their stories, and my heart swelled with joy to witness such love and care for the present and the future of Grace. But, as you see, it was also about the past. We didn’t mention just the good things; we remembered some of the harsh times when, in the mid-1980s, a pastor was sent here to close the church, and Nuffie took all the photographs off the walls and hid them under her bed in order to protect them. We remembered when one of the pastors decided the dark wood was old-fashioned, and began to paint everything white. Do you remember when, in the 1930s, one of our dear members was 17 years old and taught a class of Mexican children? She loved their upturned faces – children who wanted to learn about Jesus – and in walked one of the leaders of the church who chastised her and the children, saying that Grace Methodist Church would not have any Mexicans in it, so please stop teaching. Yes, there have been tough times at Grace.

It is our heritage. Why is it so important to remember our past?

Deuteronomy tells us. Let’s take a look.

If you are an ancient Israelite, when the first harvest of the year arrives, you cut a portion and tie it in a ribbon like you would for a County Fair! You bring it to the altar. Moses tells you exactly how to say thank you. It’s not just a Doxology you sing after collecting the offering. In fact, it doesn’t even begin with, “Praise God from whom all blessings flow.” It begins with remembering where you came from.

You walk to the priest, the first fruits in your hands, and you recite these words, “A wandering Aramaean was my father.”

Why would Moses want you to say this litany, at every harvest time? Why not just ask the priest to pray that you’ll have good crops all year?

Nope. You start out with, “A wandering Aramaean was my father.” This is one of my favorite lines from the Bible. I love the visual of this wandering soul. I also just like the sound of the words.  “A wandering Aramaean was my father.”

It wasn’t until I began studying for this sermon that I found out the word “wandering” doesn’t really hit the mark. The proper translation is “perishing” or “destitute.”

“A homeless person was my father,” you are supposed to say as you hand over your first harvest of the year to God. “My forebears wandered, semi-nomadic, living in upper Mesopotamia. Their life was destitute. They were homeless. And that is where I come from.”

On Wednesday I asked my Bible study group about their ancestry. I believe everyone had a family tie to destitution or near homelessness.

When we remember that our forefathers and mothers were destitute… When we remember that our religious heritage comes from ones who have wandered… We begin to understand, like the ancient Israelites, how important it is that we have a place to settle into.

We begin to understand how important it is for us – and others – to have a place like Grace, where we belong, where we can put down roots. God has rescued us from wandering and settled us in the Land of Milk and Honey. We’re stable, where bees and goats can live. Where we can raise crops. We have a place for abundance and promise.

But that isn’t the end. This liturgy of the first harvest tells us to welcome the alien, those who are homeless, physically, emotionally, spiritually. And that’s why I love Grace so very much.

We don’t just say our doors are open, they really are. It doesn’t matter how much money we make or even if we don’t have a job. God gathers us in, to help us belong, and to help us be a blessing to everyone we encounter. We are blessed with our “harvest” here and in our work places so that we can be a blessing. We’re not blessed so that we can ignore our neighbors who have hard labor imposed on them. We’re not blessed in order to stay in our own circle of intimates. We’re blessed so that we can welcome strangers and help make a home for them.

UMC Hymnal Supplement 2246

We remember that one time we were strangers too, and because of that, we welcome all here. But we don’t just welcome. We celebrate.

See in verse 11? “Then you, together with the Levites (the priests) and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord your God has given to you and to your house.”

Why do you think our Missions Committee this year is on fire? It’s because of what God has already done here – for years! – to welcome the alien, the stranger, the sick, the lost, the rich, the ones with other gods before them. It’s a celebration to be here in this church.

When our District Superintendent and consultant left at 3:00 Wednesday afternoon, those left behind gathered for a debriefing. One of our members commented, with a disappointed look on his face, “I just wish they had come to see what happens in worship!”

“Yes!” we all agreed.

But I’ll tell you: there was worshipping and celebrating going on as the stories poured out. In between the lines of every memory told was a Doxology: “Praise God from whom all blessings flow.” This is a good place. This is a place where God has led us through the Red Sea. This is a place where the destitute find a home. This is where we can offer our first fruits, our very best. This is where the bounty is offered to us each and every Sunday morning at the communion table. This is where we belong.

Transfiguration Sunday

Read Luke 9:28-36

Hanging above my desk in my study at home is a photograph of an ancient church in Ravenna, Italy. My eyes travel down the long nave, stop for a minute on the front pew, and then move upward to see the apse, the rounded part at the front of an ancient church.

The Church of Saint Apollinare in Classe is in a dusty, ancient city that used to be on the shore of the Adriatic Sea. Over the centuries, silt has filled in four miles of land, keeping this Byzantine ghost-town seaport protected.

I saw it in 1993. My family had met my dear college roommate and her husband at high noon on the steps of the Duomo in Florence on August 13 before we moved in two weeks to England. When Sunday came, and our teenage children couldn’t bear to be with us one more minute, I asked Deborah if she would like to travel to this ancient city. There was something I had to see there.

“What? What do you have to see?!”

I explained that the year before, while I was in seminary, I had taken a class in Early Christian art with Professors Bill Babcock and Annemarie Carr. Each student was given one or two pieces of art from the first 5 centuries of Christianity and told to give a one-hour lecture on it to seminary and Master of Art students. I remember getting close to tears in my professor’s office, saying this kind of art lecturing was way beyond me. Bill Babcock, who is now a dear friend, assured me I could do this. “But I’ve never lectured on art! To Master of Art students?! I’m studying to be a theologian; I have no idea how to do this!”

I set myself to the assigned task of comparing and explaining two Transfiguration apse mosaics. One was from the Monastery of St. Catherine in Egypt and the other was from Ravenna. Over the months, I struggled with what I read and what I saw, trying to pull together a dignified lecture.

I wish we had a projector. I would love for you to see these images. Instead, I will explain what I saw in Ravenna. Saint Apollinare is at the base of the apse, with the sheep – the twelve disciples – turned towards him. His hands are in the ancient prayer posture of orans. I pray like this when I pray with you with my eyes open. The human and the sheepish disciples are standing in a peaceful countryside, with trees, bushes, and grass that look like what is now outside the church.

Two sheep are on the right, further up the hill. They are James and John. One sheep is on the left. It is Peter. Standing in the clouds above are Moses and Elijah.

Directly in the middle, the center point of all the attention, is a huge circle filled with blue, with tiny stars set into the blue. In the center is a golden cross, radiating its brilliance into this holy, ancient space.

I lived with this art. I worked diligently on the lecture, and two weeks before I stood in front of the class, my mother had a massive stroke that took her speech away and paralyzed most of her body. Still I worked – it was the only grade for my class – knowing that I would travel up to Kansas to be with her immediately after I finished the lecture. The day for the lecture came. I was nervous. It was good. The ancient art spoke for itself, and my faith shone through it, even in the prescribed intellectual sobriety of art lecturing that I had seen my peers offer in their lectures.

It was over. I drove to Kansas. I began to attend to my mother.

It was a little over a year later, that Deborah and her John, and I and my John got into our little rental car and sped through the hills of northern Italy. We had found out that the church closed its doors on Sundays at 12 noon. No exceptions! I drove like a bat out of hell and a dove toward heaven. We screeched to a dusty stop right in front of this ancient church.

The priest was just closing the door.

“Please!” I begged him. “Please, let us in. We’ve come all the way from America to see this!” I could see the look on his face, “Sure, sure,” it seemed to say, “Everybody says that.” But he let us in. “Ten minutes. Only ten minutes!” I could tell he was ready for his lasagna.

We walked in. Actually I don’t remember anyone in there. Ahead of me was the friend I had come to see. The friend I had battled with and rejoiced over. The work that reminded me of the beauty of art, the exhaustion of effort, and the nearly terminal sickness of my mother.

Here he was. Christ. In glory. Filling the sky of the apse mosaic.

I sat on the front pew, tears streaming, involuntarily, down my face. I felt an arm around me. Deborah knew so little about the meanings I saw, but she knew and loved me. She said, “I just want to be close to you.” It was welcome company, but I really wasn’t aware of her, so amazed was I at the sight. This was glory. Time stood still.

I wanted to sit there for hours, to soak it in. To luxuriate in this awe-struck, dazzling moment. But the priest was yelling something in Italian. “Prego, prego. Partire. Partire!” It was time to leave. I couldn’t bear it! So soon? I wanted to stay and do something there. I didn’t know what.

And now I understand Peter in this passage. He wanted to build booths, to help honor, to do anything to make this last. But it was a mountain top experience, and it was time to leave.

They came down the mountain, and Jesus returned to his normal self.

What was Jesus doing up there on the mountain? Why the glowing, dazzling white? With Moses and Elijah appearing in the clouds with him?

I believe he was preparing the disciples to know two things:

One: that there is more to Jesus than what humans normally see. He was human and he was divine. They saw his divinity, dazzling, blinding them.

Two: that Elijah and Moses were actually talking to Jesus about his exodos, which is Greek for departure – his departure to Jerusalem. His death.

I love this story. It is the perfect story to tell right before we begin Lent. Before we walk this lonesome valley with Jesus as he heads to his death in Jerusalem.

I love this story because he gives the disciples and us this glimpse of immortality. The picture that is beyond our everyday lives and our comprehension. Jesus takes us up the mountaintop and shows us that there is more to come. There is more than just this earthly life in a broken world that causes the just and the merciful to suffer. There is something dazzling, breathless, brilliant. And he does this before the agony and the death that is to come. It’s like he’s saying to these three – to Peter and James and John – “Hold on. You don’t know the whole story yet. Here’s just a little foretaste of glory divine. Now let’s get back to work. Let’s get back into the healing business. Follow me.”

After we left the church, we stopped at the gift shop (it’s always open!) where I bought a photograph of my beloved Transfiguration apse mosaic. I carefully rolled it up, and we four walked to a dusty, outside café to have a drink. I couldn’t talk. I was transfixed. I had been to the mountain.

When we finished, we piled in the car and drove back to Florence. My photograph was lying on the ground, neatly rolled up, left behind. There was no time to go back. I was in tears. I couldn’t stay but 10 minutes at this beloved, holy site, and now I had left behind the memento that could give me a connection with my art?! That night I begged our hotel concierge to phone the next day to ask the priest to send me a photograph. I described it exactly. I sent gobs of money. And it arrived many months later, bent up as you see it here today.

But it is beautiful and lovely to me. When Michael Manes saw this picture in my office earlier this week, he asked, “When were you in Ravenna?” I answered, and he added, “I stood there and wept. Just wept.”

My eyes walk the nave and stare up at the apse. I am in Christ’s glory. Even now. Even now.

Read Luke 5:1-11

The fishermen are washing their nets. A long day. No fish. Jesus commandeers one of the boats because people are pressing on him and he needs to get some distance. He teaches from the boat to the shoreline a short distance away.

Then he looks at Peter. Doesn’t he see how tired and disappointed he is?  “Go out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.”

Peter has only known this man for a short time, but he knows Jesus is no fisherman. Peter says, “We’ve worked all night long and haven’t caught anything!”

But Peter agrees to head out. They travel toward the deep water, away from the crowds. They put their nets in. They catch so many fish, their nets are beginning to break.

They frantically wave at their friends in the other boat to come help. But there are too many fish even for the two boats, and the boats begin to sink.

When Simon Peter sees this, his eyes glaze over – in fear, in awe. He falls down at Jesus’ knees and said, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.”

James and John, partners with Peter, are there, too. The fishermen on the boats are amazed at the huge catch.

Jesus says to Simon, “Don’t be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.

When they bring their boats to shore, they leave everything and follow Jesus.

They leave EVERYTHING?? The biggest haul they’d ever made and they walk away from it??

What do you do with this story?

Is it a story about a miracle? Or about being called? Is it a foreshadowing of the resurrection, as this story is in the Gospel of John, when Jesus comes back from the dead to the disciples — again on the Sea of Galilee — and cooks them breakfast?

It’s all those things. And it’s about how Jesus calls them to be disciples. “I danced for the fishermen, for James and John, they came to me and the dance went on.”

Jesus was dancing for them. “Dancing” simply means “doing what Jesus does: being himself  – his mysterious, miraculous, powerful, teaching, self-emptying self.” It means “listening for God and responding.”

He called them that day. And this is how it happened:

• He was doing the most ordinary thing: trying to escape the crush of a crowd.
• In the most ordinary of settings: a lakeshore, a boat.
• He came to them at the end of an ordinary, tiring, disappointing workday.
• And he asked them to get back to work.

Peter was ready to finish his day, go home for some dinner, and be with his family. And Jesus said to him, “Go fish!”

Does that seem mean to you? Heartless? If Jesus came up to us at the end of the day and said, “Here, work just a little harder, just a little longer,” what would we do?

Fatigue.  Exuberance.  Fear: the boats are sinking under the weight of all those fish.

Simon Peter sinks to his knees as the boats sink. It’s too much for him to take-in. Too many fish. Too extraordinary. What is happening? Why all this grace, this abundance, when his day had been so ordinary and the fish so scarce? This change is scary to Peter.

In fear, he cries, “Get away from me. I’m afraid of what you are doing. I am a sinful man. I don’t deserve this, I didn’t plan for this,  I can’t make sense of this. Please, go away and leave me to my ordinary life!”

Now I want to stop the story and get to our story. We don’t have Jesus in bodily form here at the end of our ordinary, tiring, disappointing workdays. We don’t hear his voice directing us what to do. We are different from Peter. Therefore we don’t need to obey because there’s nothing asked of us, and Jesus is dead and gone.

Everyone who believes what I just said, stand on their head.

Yes, Jesus is here. Jesus comes in before us each Sunday morning, getting this place ready for us.

His Spirit moves through the aisles where you walk and the pews where you sit. He is in your history that brought you here, and he is also present in the words and music, the silence and the learning.  Even the fellowship time at Grace Gathering.

He is here as you rise from your pews in silence and move forward to receive his body and his blood. He is here as you listen carefully and take seriously the admonition to pray for each person that comes down for communion.  Jesus is here.

Congratulations that you didn’t sleep in today. You might have missed him! Congratulations that you turned off your cell phones when you entered into this sanctuary. Congratulations that you stopped talking when worship began. Congratulations that for one hour each week, you do something different than you do anywhere else.

We set this time aside – yes, to be with our church family. But is that all there is? If it is, why not join a club together?

We set this time aside in our ordinary lives, to be here for Jesus.

It’s not always so obvious what Jesus is doing these days. Maybe not as obvious as it was for Peter. We have to wake up to the power here because it doesn’t usually come to us in a boatload of fish.

This power comes mostly in subtle, spiritual ways. And if you’re not awake, you will miss it! But once you wake up, you may end up saying what Peter did, “Jesus! Go away from me! I am a sinner!” because it is so AMAZING what Jesus can do in our lives once we follow him. We are working with dynamite here. We are nearly sinking with boatloads of fish!

Annie Dillard, author of the fabulous Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, wrote:

Why do people in churches seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute?

On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of the conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake some day and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.” (Teaching a Stone to Talk, Harper & Row, 1982)

In fear, Peter cries, “Get away from me, Jesus. I’m afraid of what you are doing. You overwhelm me with this miracle, this abundance! I am a sinful man. I don’t deserve this, I didn’t plan for this, and I can’t make sense of this. Please, go away and leave me to my ordinary life!”

And Jesus said to Peter what he says to all of us when he enters our lives and we are brought to our knees, “Don’t be afraid.”

He called Peter, and James, and John, just like he calls us today, to move out of the ordinary.  To put on our crash helmets and hold on for dear life.

“Don’t be afraid. From now on you will be catching people.”

Instead of catching something dead, catch something that can come alive. Catch people!

That’s what happens when we tap into this power. First it brings us to our knees, and then in gratitude we want to tell everyone about this place.

So the disciples brought their boats to shore and left everything they had, and they followed him.

You may need to leave your occupation. Or you may need to leave your limited understanding of what Jesus can do in your life.  You may need more than anything to turn off your cell phone and your email more often during the day and certainly during church. You may need to stop talking and do more listening. You may need to follow this Christ, leave behind your allegiance to everything else. You may need to go and follow him.

These are not some crazy people leading us. These are sane, logical, powerful disciples. And Jesus says, “Don’t be afraid. I will make you catchers of people!”

by Pastor Diana Holbert

Read Jeremiah 1:4-10

I begin with a prayer for all of us by the English poet, Kate Compston

The book of Jeremiah is about being empty, unsure, and uncomfortable. It is about seeing beyond the expected. It is about hardship, strangeness, doubt. It is about survival. How do you survive when the pieces of your community life are destroyed, taken away, and no longer working?

Babylon had invaded Judah (the southern part of what we know now as Palestine or Israel) three times. Judah was splintered into factions. The ruling class was pro-Egyptian. Jeremiah and his followers were pro-Babylon. By the time Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians in 587, thousands of people were killed, and the infrastructure of the city had collapsed.

What do you do as a believer? You ask questions. Had God forgotten the people and the covenant at Mount Sinai with Moses? Was God powerless? Was there a future?

He remains unmarried and bears no children – a biblical symbol of the end of life in the Promised Land. He’s imprisoned and left to die. But he lives. Most of the time, no one listens to him.

It is a political book, as much of the Bible is. It tells us the truth about sin: about what we humans often construct with impure motives. We construct systems that destroy instead of build up.

The book puts the blame for this national tragedy on human sin, not God’s impotence or capriciousness.

Now let’s turn to our scripture.

Verse 4:

Now before the word of the Lord came to me… (we know it’s divine, not made up by Jeremiah)… saying, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you.

Even before Jeremiah showed any merit, and good actions, any worth, God had consecrated him for doing this.

I appointed you a prophet to the nations.

Jeremiah’s not a self-appointed messenger. It wasn’t some internal “feeling” to do good. It was to speak God’s word to the nations – The United States, Mexico, Canada, Iraq, the US, China, North Korea, Haiti, Wall Street, multi-nationals, government, Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians.

Then Jeremiah rolled his eyes and gulped and tried to do what everyone does when they’re asked to do something that seems costly or unpopular: he said, “Wait a minute, God! I’m just a kid! I don’t know how to speak in public. Please! You don’t understand! Choose someone else!”

It’s like Moses saying to the Burning Bush, “I stutter. Ask my brother Aaron to do this job. But throw ME in the briar patch!”

But the Lord said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am only a boy’; for you shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you.”

God isn’t patting him on the hand and saying, “There, there. Just be a good little boy.” No, God interrupts him, saying, “I give you prophetic authority. You’ll have the corner office! This isn’t some small-potatoes kind of deal; this is my message and my mission that I’m calling you to.”

Then God sees the look on Jeremiah’s face – the look is like Mary’s with the Angel Gabriel – and God says, “Oh! Don’t be afraid. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you, to deliver you.”

Then God put out the divine hand and touched Jeremiah’s mouth and said, “I have put my words in your mouth. Today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms.”

“I appoint you to pluck up and to pull down; to destroy and to overthrow.”

To pluck up, pull down, destroy, and overthrow? But wasn’t there already enough destruction in Judah?? WHY MORE?

I am troubled by this passage in these ways:

1. This kid is on his way to becoming a circus performer or a bank president and God interrupts his plans and tells him to listen up! “May I have your attention for a public service announcement?!”
2. And the announcement is that Jeremiah has been called to speak for God and to do so by creating more doom and gloom.

I’m having a hard time of this as a Christian and as a preacher!  I want folks to believe we all have been called to make things grow and live and flourish – not called to tear apart and destroy.

But God sees something we don’t see in Jeremiah’s world – and perhaps our world, too. God sees that some things have to be destroyed because they are so evil, so annihilating.

Several years ago, in one of those pastor-moments, I was wondering what on earth I was doing, sitting at my desk and reading job descriptions and résumés, going to 2-hour staff meetings three mornings a week, and hustling people in and out of worship so the next service could begin without any major traffic problems. I took time for an overnight with John.

I remember being angry and disappointed at my life and my vocation. What made me the angriest was that I didn’t feel like I could speak what God was saying to me.

I remember ranting, “I want to talk about the horrible things that we humans are doing to each other, and all I can safely say in this congregation is how we need to be nice to each other!

I want to talk about war, and greed. I want to talk about the destruction of our environment. I want to talk about our epidemic of lying!”

• The Greed that keeps people in poverty
• The Lying that erodes trust in relationships of intimacy to relationships of diplomacy
• The urgent need to attend to our Environment by changing our lifestyles
• The hard work to end War of every kind.

And so, as we were driving home from the overnight, having identified these four words from the Lord, I put them into an acrostic: GLEW. I wanted this glew to hold me to God and speak God’s word. G-L-E-W. Greed. Lying. Environment. War.

I made a covenant with God be to make sure over the next several months that every sermon I preached and every class I taught (and there weren’t many of either of those) would address at least one of those human sins. No more mister nice girl.

I believe now that over that weekend of holy anger, God disquieted my spirit within me because I had participated in the prevailing culture of “being nice.”

This is when I knew that I needed God’s holy interruption in my life. I knew that I needed to speak up whenever I could, even though people would think I was not being nice.

I also knew that I needed to move on to a place like Grace where people are encouraged to speak up, to talk things through, to try to wrestle with ideas about what God is asking us to change in the world. YES! To be political, without being partisan.

Jeremiah encourages me to interrupt the downward spiral of being nice.

I wonder about you. I wonder what God is interrupting you to do on behalf of this world, this church, this city.

I wonder about all those idealistic dreams you had as a child – the ones that God was using to tell you to interrupt the status quo.

Youth, I wonder about you and your dreams for making the world a better place. I wonder if you need more of our support so that your voice can speak God’s word – a word that we might not want to hear!

Do we let God interrupt us? Question us?

I wonder about our reaction to that God.

I wonder about our Interrupting God.

Or does our fear of change and sacrifice keep us mute and frozen?

Where is God right now in this sanctuary?

Who is God speaking to?

Someone needs to hear this today – the voice of God is calling to interrupt your way of living, your way of doing things, your way of thinking, your heart.

It took holy anger to interrupt my life of trying to be the nice girl. The sweet little clergywoman. I know that such anger came straight from God, interrupting me to be God’s voice of GLEW in the world. To speak to:

I’m not Jeremiah, but I know I’ve been called.

You have been, too.

God is calling your name now.

Are you going to pass the buck?

Turn your head?

Shrug your shoulders?

Close your eyes?

Then the Lord put out his hand touched my mouth and the Lord said to me,

Now I have put my words in your mouth.

See, today, I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms.

To pluck up and to pull down,

To destroy and to overthrow,

To build and to plant.

They will fight against you; but they shall not prevail against you, for I am with you, says the Lord, to deliver you.

Let us keep silence

Read Isaiah 43:1-7

I want you to try something. Turn to a neighbor and talk about how you feel about your name. You’ve got about 30 seconds each, so get to it!

Names. They are given to us. They become who we are – our essence.

Even if you don’t like the name you were given, oftentimes, hearing your name gives you a little thrill. Do you know the feeling of walking into a room of strangers and hearing your name called by someone who likes you? It’s great.

Names are important. One of our newest members told me recently that when she heard me call her by name at the communion rail, she said to her partner, “She remembered my name!!!”

I try to call each of your names as I offer you the bread of life. I want you to hear your name in church, in worship, in communion. I want you to hear, “You belong here. You are part of the body of Christ.” By the way, it’s easier for me to remember your name if you join the church!

Calling by name.

I remember when I was a beginning preacher, in my first appointment after internship. I was serving four British Methodist chapels in Cheshire. Weddings there are a bit different than here. Primarily, we take time near the end of the ritual for the bride and groom to go to the vestry, a side room off the sanctuary.

For hundreds of years, couples have gone into vestries to use a special, non-fading ink to sign their names onto an ancient, moldy book kept in the safe. Names upon names are in that book, showing how old the congregation is. Each name is important.

At the rehearsal, Michelle and Paul told me her little 2-year old nephew was sick but would be at the wedding.

The wedding was on a rare, sunny day in northwest England. We got to the Declaration of Intent and I said, “Michelle, please repeat after me. I, Michelle, take you Paul to be my husband…” And she answered forcefully, “I, Michelle, take you PETER to be my husband…”

I was so embarrassed. All along I’d been calling him by the wrong name! I finished that section, red as a beet and moved quickly to the scripture, saying, “And as PAUL wrote, who was a very good friend of PETER’S, in 1 Corinthians 13…”

I was recovering a bit when it came time to move into the vestry. The congregation was left alone, waiting quietly for us to return from the signing of the names. Unfortunately, in the blur of beginner’s bad luck I had forgotten to turn my lapel mike off, and said, “How’s little Michael? How’s his diarrhea??”

Names. The correct names are important. Being called by name is important.

In our Isaiah passage, God is speaking about names. God speaks through the prophet.

Would you open your Bibles and take a look?

Who is God speaking to? Jacob. Israel. One in the same.

This is particularly important at this moment in Israel’s history. “Second Isaiah” tells about the Babylonian destruction of Judah and Jerusalem. Destruction of the very places that had given the people their identity. It would be like having Grace and our White House and our homes destroyed. A horrific time.

The Babylonians had dragged them out of their beloved homeland, deporting them far away to the east and the west, the north and the south. How could you possibly believe that God remembered you when you were in such a Diaspora? So scattered.

And Isaiah rises up, as the mouthpiece of God and says,

Church, this is important. If you already know that God is calling you by name, then this message today is for you to give to someone else who doesn’t know that. So listen, please, for yourself or others.

God is saying to Israel,

God knows our names.

After our prayer time today, we’ll have the installation of our church leaders, and it will say, “You have been called by God.”

God calls your name. Your identity comes from the honor and love God gives to you.

It makes us able to pass through water and not be overwhelmed. To walk through fire and not be burned.

How is that possible?? Well… we have to ask ourselves the question: What is it that cannot be burned or drowned? It is our essence, our soul, our very being, our name. We are precious in God’s sight.

With this, we can withstand any fear that comes our way!

Six years ago I opted to have screws put in my back. I had been in pain for 18 years, and saw countless doctors who told me not to have surgery because I might not be able to walk again and certainly wouldn’t be able to dance. Not DANCE??? But dance was my middle NAME! So I tried to rise above the pain by ignoring it. By exercising.

Finally, when I was on my way to teach liturgical dance in Alaska, and had to be wheeled off the plane in wheelchair because I couldn’t stand up, I thought, “Maybe I should have brain surgery. What am I doing, trying to fight this??”

I scheduled the surgery. They cautioned me, “Don’t do this. Don’t do that. You could sheer the screws off if you move too fast or twist after surgery. It is important that you be very, very careful.”

I was wheeled away, remembering that before John Wesley died, he sang a hymn. And I prayed, “You know, Lord, if I die, I want to die singing a hymn like John Wesley did.” So I sang, “Bless the Lord, my soul, and bless God’s holy name. Bless the Lord, my soul, who leads me into life.”

All those years of church attendance, Sunday school, Bible studies, talks with wise Christians – all of it had given me an identity. I knew I was in God’s hands no matter what happened. I knew that God knew my name.

But then… I awoke from the anesthetic. I was paralyzed with fear that I would break all those rules they’d give me.

Fear came in huge waves, and I was caught in the undertow. My pain was high and my fear made it worse. I pleaded with John, “Please, please find scripture about fear. Read it aloud to me!”

And sitting in the chair next to me, this man began searching.

Yea though I walk through the valley of death, I will fear no evil for thou art with me. (Psalm 23)

You will not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day. (Psalm 91)

When Jesus heard this he said, “Do not fear.”

For hours on end, John read passages about fear as I pulled the bouquet of flowers so close to me that I became part of them. I pulled the picture of my children close; they were in the room.

Nothing else mattered to me. My world became exquisitely small. Flowers. My children. John’s voice, reading scripture.

Eventually I narrowed down the choices of passages to this very text from Isaiah. And in the reading, my fear began subsiding. I knew from this scripture who I was. My name came back to me.

You may be in a situation of fear or pain or loneliness. If you are not, please give thanks and turn your mind to someone who is afraid.

I want to try something. I am going to read the scripture again. I want you to put your name or the name of the one you want to pray for in the place where it says Jacob and where it says Israel.

I will say, “He who created you, O…” And you will say your name there instead of Jacob. Out loud. And again, when I say, “He who formed you, O…” say your name instead of Israel.

Read Acts 10: 9-28 and Acts 10: 34-48

I would like to share a blessing that one of our members sent me on Tuesday, which is my sermon-writing day. As I read it today, let it be for all of us:

Blessed one…

My prayers are with you as you prepare your sermon.  May God’s word open hearts and minds, removing bricks from walls of hatred and stones from the hands of prejudice and fear.  May you find peace in standing with the Holy One; strong in Him and one with His divine words.  Amen.

You are welcome here in God’s house. There may be a few people from the news media here. If you are asked for an interview, you may want to refer them to the front steps where several who are prepared to talk will be standing. You are free to join us on the steps, but there’s no need to stay. Enjoy yourselves and each other in our Grace Gathering and let God lead you with grace into this new week.

–

When the marquee outside First Baptist Church on November 8, 2008 displayed the sermon title, “Why Gay Is Not OK” I knew that I wanted to respond. I had no wish to argue or even defend. Instead, I resolved to champion biblical teachings that offer the opposite message, e.g. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”  (Galatians 3:28)

OK. Now for a few points about what this sermon is not. This is not a bully pulpit. I want to hear from you. In person or on the phone, please. Not by email if it is negative.

Also, this is not a class. We won’t have time to delve into pertinent issues, especially including biblical study. We will save that for the fall when I hope to be able to get my hands on a brand new study to be published by the UM publishing house to help churches read, discuss, and pray about this topic. It will be great because my husband is writing part of it!

The Bible has often been used to attack gay and lesbian persons. Let’s put a stop to that. Let’s take time this morning to consider our scripture for today from Acts 10 to show how the Bible actually gives us a positive claim about how we relate ourselves to one another and what it means to be accepted by God.

OK so here it is:

1. Cornelius has a vision to send for Peter
2. Peter is preaching. The Holy Spirit interrupts and Peter has a vision about what’s clean to eat that is repeated twice more, a vision that questions the tradition he has known, loved, and followed about “unclean” dietary restrictions. Peter is puzzled.
3. Three “unclean” (Gentile) men come to Peter’s door, interrupting him further. They have been sent by Cornelius. The Spirit sends Peter to answer the door and to offer lodging and food to them. Big deal in the ancient Middle East. I think Peter is beginning to understand that the mission of the church is to offer hospitality to strangers.
4. Peter leaves Joppa to go north along the coast to Caesarea where Cornelius lives. Cornelius has gathered friends and family around to hear him. Peter begins preaching, “God has shown me not to call anyone profane or unclean.”
5. The Holy Spirit is making it clear to Peter that salvation isn’t only for the Christian Jews, but for everyone. Even people who are “different” from him: the Gentiles. Gentiles don’t have to become Jews to be accepted. They can be who they are.
6. He ends by asking, “Can anyone withhold water from baptizing?” And the answer is apparent, “God’s actions have priority.” Of course you can’t withhold water, love, acceptance. Even when things appear unclean, or were taught that they were unclean, the church must not participate in labeling it such. God teaches differently.

–

If you had to make a map of Cornelius, the Gentile centurion, and Peter, the disciple who was given the keys of the kingdom, it would be one of coming closer and closer to each other. I like that map. It doesn’t mean it was easy. It means that when the Holy Spirit intercedes, our lives get interrupted, our thoughts get interrupted, our words get interrupted, and we began to move towards each other, not away. The way becomes clearer. We don’t go down blind alleys and dead ends. That is the interrupting work of the Holy Spirit: when “out of many” God moves us toward each other and makes us one.

God often moves beyond our boundaries, guiding us to accept and to include those on the margins. We see Jesus doing that over and over with the company he kept, especially as he shared a meal, caught in the act of radical hospitality with the discards of society.

God doesn’t discard or discriminate. “The Holy Spirit is no respecter of persons,” I often heard at Hamilton Park. “If you’re not careful, the Holy Spirit might just jump on you!” It’s a scary thing, this Holy Spirit that interrupts. Scary until you realize that the Spirit is motivated 100% by love, sent by a trustworthy God to a people who think they have all the answers. I like the interruptions of this Spirit that draws us in its tether.

–

OK so back to the issue that was raised last November.

Right now, in the beginning of the 21^st c our country seems to find this issue of homosexuality urgent and historic. Rev. Adam Hamilton has found that people between the ages of 15-28 are leaving the church because of its view on gay rights. That makes me sit up and take notice.

My question is this: how can we possibly be so stuck on this issue of using the Bible to condemn gay and lesbian persons? We quickly give up, readily give up our allegiance to all the other abominations in Leviticus, like not eating shellfish or not stoning sassy children to death. This “issue” doesn’t even make the Top Ten! If we’re so stuck on sexual behavior, why don’t we look at the commandment about adultery? There’s plenty of that going on in this country, but it surely doesn’t get the press that this issue does.

And what about the word itself getting caught in biblical interpretation? The word “homosexuality” never occurs once in either Testament. It would appear that this issue is a tempest in this teapot.

What’s at stake here?

Are we afraid of The Other? Of what seems “unnatural”? Are we afraid of our own sexual appetites? I don’t particularly want to go down that road with you in this sermon, but it is an important question to ask: What is at stake here with this condemnation?

If we’re going to be afraid, why don’t we focus on being afraid instead of the Holy Spirit and how it grabs us and interrupts our lives? Why not be afraid of the way God can transform even us? Maybe that’s at the root of this fear. That those like Peter among us who speak God’s truth will question our fear of the other by demanding, “Can anyone withhold water for this baptism? Can anyone deny equal rights, equal respect, or the belief that all manner of people can be faithful Christians?”

Some have come today who have family members and friends you love dearly and want to protect from Hate Crimes, perhaps especially the Hate Crimes of the Church.

Some have come today wearing scar tissue inside your heads and hearts and souls. You have tried to live another life, and you may have been mercilessly scorned and ostracized. I can’t think of anyone who would choose such disrespect and pain, so what is this about thinking that being gay is a choice? Who would choose all this scar tissue??

Some of you have come because it’s a God thing and your religious belief will not tolerate condemnation. “For God so loved the world, that God gave the only begotten son that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but shall have eternal life. Jesus came into the world not to condemn the world but that the world might be saved through him…” (John 3:16-17) Some of you cannot tolerate this condemning any more.

Some of you have come as United Methodists, wanting the Church to widen the Lord’s table – that table where Jesus sits and offers his body and blood and blessing to everyone. To challenge the received tradition.

These sound like decent challenges and questions to me. Not knee jerk reactions, but carefully thought out responses. So back to my question: what is at stake here with those who call this an abomination? What is the Holy Spirit trying to interrupt in this world? I think it is how we have used the Bible to promote an agenda of partiality.

I look at our congregation, filled with decent men and women who give their time and intellect to our church, freely. Who take classes on prayer and the Bible, who struggle with finances so they can decrease their debt and begin to approach a 10% tithe. Folks who are working to speak the truth in love and be fruitful in their connection to Jesus, the vine.

Am I talking only about heterosexuals and the celibate in our congregation? Heavens no!

I look at Penny, who is so filled with joy at being with our old folks at the nursing home, that as Mickey and I talked with Marie a few weeks ago, Penny slyly went into Marie’s bathroom to clean the bathtub because Marie had totally worn herself out trying. Do I condemn Penny to a burning, fiery hell for being whom God created her to be – a gay Christian?

What is the issue here?? What is at stake??

The verses in the Bible that are thrown my way to say that Jesus condemns gays don’t carry any credibility with me. Jesus never once speaks on the issue, so why don’t we talk about money instead, since he does talk about that  — a lot?

I’m concerned with how we use the Bible to support our cultural agenda. Many people have used the Bible as a club to attack. For years the Bible supported slavery. For years it was used to keep women silent. It has been used and abused to justify systems that enslave and oppress and judge – so that those in power can justify their power-over. So that they can keep others from seeing the sin we all carry within us – the sin of bigotry and idolatry. Believing that someone else is less than we are. That somehow they are unnatural. It is the sin of scape-goating someone who is different from me and mine. We’ll gang up together, pin the sins of the world on him, and propel him outside the walls of the community.

What is the issue here?

I’ve read what people want me to read about Paul’s ideas in the Book of Romans concerning same-sex relationship. Can we please notice that it comes in a list of behaviors that include envy, murder, deceit and gossip? When anti-gay groups will give as much energy, scrutiny, power, words, campaigns, writing, and grief to the destructive power of gossip, the character assassination of bearing false witness, then I might pay more attention.

But for me now, this is a non-issue because Paul is not talking about what we refer to today as homosexuality. Paul knew nothing about that; he knew about the Three P’s, and he would have found these reprehensible:

They are:

• Pedophilia
• Pederasty
• Promiscuity

Those have their idolatry wrapped around them like moth-eaten blankets, leading them down a dead end street to cold death. I believe those are sins – actions that separate us from God and each other – actions that destroy community and damage souls forever. I am against the Three P’s.

But that’s not what I’m talking about here. I am instead talking about long lasting, loving relationship that are the building blocks of any healthy society.  Not what Paul was talking about in Romans. He had no concept for long lasting, same-sex relationships that can be building blocks of any healthy society. He’s talking about people being out of control. Being idolatrous.  Instead, let’s look at a world where old divisions like Jew and Gentile, male and female, straight and gay dissolve like Alka-Seltzer in water.

In our Acts passage we see Peter being staunch in his white-knuckled adherence to what he was taught: that some food is unfit to eat because it is called “unclean” in ancient Judaism. He was also taught that people were unfit to tolerate. We see it clearly in verse 28. But the Holy Spirit comes and says, “Uh, excuse me. Let’s interrupt this for a second. Let’s widen up our understanding. Ummm. It looks to me like there is no room for partiality here, Peter.”

Peter is puzzled. He’s dumbfounded because he hears from God – the heavens open! – and he knows it’s God, but God is saying things that differ from what he was taught.

But watch Peter allowing himself to be interrupted: He allows the Spirit to interrupt him and lead him down a new street. Not a dead end street, but an avenue that glorifies God. He doesn’t need to make sense of it yet. He just needs to let go and let God guide him.

Friends, I was sent here to preach a message of reconciliation, transformation, and love. I am sent to be with you to tell the truth in love. In your daily meditations, I pray that you will join me in asking to have confidence in yourself and confidence in God to interrupt your life and guide you on this spiritual path.

How can we help people create a connection with God, not inhibit it? If we preach hate, what are we doing to the people whom we hate? We aren’t creating a connection; we’re building a wall.

I often wonder why First Baptists and others give this issue of condemnation so much play. I wonder why reporters are interested. I wonder why we give this so much energy.

Why not focus instead on folks who have been tortured and show up at the Center of Survivors of Torture across our parking lot? Why not focus on health care as Big Business? Or focus on catastrophic greed that has occurred recently in trusting, economic relationships? Why not focus on the killing of little children through bombings in the Gaza strip or through Internet porn?

Why are we spending energy and time on this issue when Jesus says to us, “Be about your Father’s business!”

Why would we sever our ties with a loving, giving church over this issue?

I hope that we all will find a way to let go of our grip on what we have learned from others that builds walls of hatred, prejudice and fear. I pray that we can move off this non-issue and begin to enjoy those interruptions by the Spirit that lead us down the avenue of glory. I’m saying let’s honor and glorify God by our love that doesn’t call people unclean but calls them children of God. Just like you. Just like me.

“The voice said to him again, a second time, ‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane.’”

Blessed ones…

My prayers are with you as you prepare your own sermons.  May God’s word open hearts and minds, removing bricks from walls of hatred and stones from the hands of prejudice and fear.  May you find peace in standing with the Holy One; strong in — and one with — Him and His divine words.

Let us keep silence…

Holy and merciful God, for the times when we think we know all the answers, thank you for interrupting us. For the times when we have justified our idolatry, thank you for interrupting us. For the times we have built walls and thrown stones, thank you for interrupting us. For the times when we have crumbled in depression or hidden in fear, thank you for interrupting us. O God of love and God of power, unite us by your grace. We ask this in the name of the One who came to make us his body, praying: Our Father and Mother who art in heaven…