Hungry Hermit Thrushes

May 8, 2022 - Luke 24: 28-43

There has been a Hermit Thrush sighting in my backyard this year. And several Yellow Rumped Warblers have been around for a couple weeks. If you’ve never heard of a Hermit Thrush or a Yellow Rumped Warbler, you’re not alone. Until I spotted these new-to-me backyard visitors this spring, I had never heard of them either, despite my growing interest in birds and birding.  I don’t know what my neighbors think I’m doing with my binoculars eagerly trained out my back window, but I hope to be able at some point to reassure them all that what has my attention so rapt are the wild, feathered visitors.

Over the past few years I’ve started to expand my backyard feeders and to work in more native plants, all in hopes of attracting increased numbers and diversity of feathered friends. And my attempts have yielded some limited success, pulling in more woodpeckers, goldfinches, and even an occasional Blue Jay. But several mornings this past month, I have been delighted to see birds out my window who I had never met before and who I needed help to identify.

It could have something to do with the cold, wet spring. That could be driving these hungry Hermit Thrushes into my vicinity. But I want to hope that it also has something to do with my humble efforts to respect and tend to the needs of my wild friends.

In the middle of today’s text Jesus appears to a whole group of disciples who believe him to be a ghost. There’s this lovely partial sentence in that part of the story that begins “While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering…” It’s not exactly the risen Christ I’m looking at out my back window. But I feel in my joy a disbelief, and a persistent wondering about how faithful people may tend to a planet in peril. 

When it comes to the environmental crises we’re facing, I can feel incredibly disheartened about the inertia on the part of big governments and big corporations to face this monumental challenge. I also feel the limits of my little spoonfuls of action to move this mountain to the sea.

So, where I find the most hope and possibility these days is in places where ordinary people meet to amplify and organize around helpful action–in churches, community groups, local governments, and more. When we talk to each other and hear each other’s concerns, I think that’s when we can find a new way forward together.

In response to their joy, disbelief, and wondering if he is a ghost, the risen Christ looks at the disciples and asks, “Do you have anything to eat?” Apparently resurrection is hard work because the risen Christ is hungry.

Now, this kind of story is a rich place for our imaginations to dance around the question of bodily resurrection. If the risen Christ is hungry and has physical needs, then when we, too, rise from the dead will our bodies take a similar corporal form? And if so, ought we to preserve our bodies as well as possible even after we take our last breath?

I have current friends and relatives as well as many predecessors who certainly think and thought so. For me, I am humbled by the mystery of life after death. I choose to trust that however it works, God’s love and grace will find me and carry me on. When I imagine bodily resurrection, it’s easier for my science-interested mind to focus on the holiness of these atoms I now call me going back to the eternal process of life, death, and resurrection that are part of the DNA of all creation.

Me, I’d rather my ashes be scattered or become part of a new growing tree. But perhaps what my well-preserved ancestors and I can agree on is that stories like this one speak to the preciousness of bodies to God. I think they also speak to the preciousness of that which sustains our bodies, including food and the source of all that food: this Earth that we call home.

Last year a group called the Wild Ones of Northern Kane County and the Gail Borden Public Library District hosted a community read and various events around the Doug Tallamy book titled Nature’s Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation That Starts in Your Yard. In the book, Tallamy suggests ordinary people have the power to create a new national park that will re-wild and sustain the natural life around us, if together we work to restore native habitats in our local parks and the very yards that surround our houses, condos, businesses, churches, municipal lots, and apartment buildings. This restoration aids both the carbon capture that we so dearly need, if we are going to evade the worst of a warming planet, and, it restores food sources and breeding grounds for native wildlife, making our neighborhoods more lively and healthy naturehoods for all of the inhabitants–including us humans.

These ideas are included in the “Gardens and Garbage” Sunday School lessons our church’s young people are discussing this month with the help of our Green Team. And more ideas are in the works for how the faithful people of this church may together tend to the body of this planet which God has given us to sustain these bodies and to call home. Who knows how the Holy Spirit may yet lead us to join in this resurrection work.

On the road to Emmaus, two disciples meet the risen Christ, but they don’t know it. They ask him, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?” This was the man they thought to be dead. This was the man the women told them had risen from the dead. But they had trouble believing. They did not recognize the risen Christ on the road because they were, understandably, not expecting him.

There are times when I, too, am so focused on the reality of suffering and death that I have a hard time seeing the ways new life is already on the way. I do want to be the kind of person who takes time to lament and grieve. At the same time, I know that life is not only about pain. Life is also good, beautiful, and surprising.

It’s overwhelming at times to carry a both/and approach to life—to be aware of the pain and the joy at the same time. But if we don’t, I’m afraid we might miss the depth of beauty all around us.

In her talk about climate anxiety, Stanford University’s Dr. Nicole Ardoin cites a 2021 report from the Pew Research Center that “suggests 80% of people are willing to make changes to how they live and work to reduce the effects of global climate change.” 80% of people is a lot! Imagine what 80% of people could do. Imagine what they are already doing! Imagine how the new life possibilities we need are already underway.

As we journey together, share our joy and pain together, and break bread together, may we, too, keep our eyes open for the ways the risen Christ is among us even now, showing us the way to new life and hopeful possibilities.

                                                                                           May it be so. Amen.

Wilding Our Faith

May 1, 2022 - Matthew 17: 20-21

Just before the few scripture verses we read today, the disciples fail to cure a boy with a demon who Jesus dispatches with quickly. When the disciples ask why they could not do what Jesus did, Jesus answers, “Because of your little faith.”

How many of us have not faced a challenge or wrong that seemed so big and insurmountable that our faith –either in ourselves or even in God–faltered? Though in the story it disgusts Jesus, it seems to me a perfectly understandable part of being human.

For me, the environmental crisis facing our planet is an example of just such a seemingly insurmountable trouble in the face of which I struggle to maintain faith, and that’s when I even have the courage to think of it at all. In this experience, it is very clear that I am not alone.

Dr. Nicole Ardoin is the Director of the Social Ecology Lab at Stanford University, where they study people’s relationship to the environment and where one of their areas of study has been something she calls “climate anxiety.” “Climate anxiety,” she says, “is very real, and people all over the world are feeling it–like this heavy umbrella hanging over everything... And until we name it,” Dr. Ardoin counsels, “we don’t know how to take action on it.”

It’s understandable to feel doom and gloom about news headlines on the environmental crises we face. Around the world we’re facing immense climate-related challenges, including intensifying weather events, devastating wildfires, freshwater scarcity, and ecosystem degradation, just to name a few. But Ardoin shares “what we know from decades of psychology is that catastrophizing rarely leads to productive, action-oriented outcomes…and that by shifting our perspective even just a little bit, we can start to empower ourselves by feeling more capable and ready to take action.”

Ardoin shares that no matter the challenge we face, we can get up every day with a “fresh start” mentality, ready to try again despite the reality of the obstacles before us. We can celebrate the gains we have made toward our goals whatever they may be. And, we can look for positive actions we can take now both individually and collectively.

When they fail to cure the boy with the demon, Jesus tells the disciples. “If you only had faith the size of a mustard seed” you would be able to move mountains. “Nothing would be impossible for you.”

Now, I think it is a harmful idea to espouse that people who are unwell, who struggle, or who fail in their health, wealth, or any other matter simply don’t have enough faith. I think that idea is akin to the harmful prosperity gospel that keeps the rich rich and the poor poor by assigning a morality and supposed blessing to wealth accumulation that the Jesus I find in the gospels would have considered upside down and evil. That’s not an interpretation of this text I could share as good news.

No, rather, I think the good news is even a little bit of faith and hope can indeed have a powerful impact on our lives and the world around us. When it comes to learning something new or doing something difficult, for example, if we believe it is impossible we are unlikely to accomplish our goals. But if even a little part of us believes we can do it, we are much more likely to get where we want to go.

I read a research study once that claimed one of the best indicators for whether a child will grow into an adult who is happy and healthy is if there is at least one person outside their family who supports and believes in them. I have never forgotten that claim, because I have seen how precious it is to have even one person in our lives who helps us develop faith in ourselves and a trust that good things can happen in the future.

Another education-based research track that has long held my attention is the philosophy of expeditionary learning. Outward Bound is an organization that leads young people on various adventure-based learning experiences. On those adventures, one of the chief philosophies they impart to their students is that there are no passengers here. Everyone is part of the crew. If there’s something that needs fixed, done, or cleaned, and you can do it, then you do it. You’re part of the crew. There are no passengers here.

What is within our power individually and collectively? How can we claim and utilize even our little mustard seed-sized faith that what we do can make a positive difference?

My favorite Midwest-centered environmental comeback story is that of the Sandhill Cranes. These tall, lanky creatures that make a rattling call as they migrate in large numbers high above the Fox River Valley were once threatened and endangered. “In the 1930s, only two dozen breeding pairs of Sandhill Cranes lived in Wisconsin. Today, researchers estimate, the population in the upper Midwest is between 65,000 and 95,000.”[1]

What aided their comeback? Scientists believe the biggest boost for the Sandhill Cranes’ re-emergence across the Midwest has been the conservation and restoration of wetlands, marshes, and prairies, since these places are the birds’ preferred habitats for nesting and breeding. Individual and collective human efforts helped to bring this species of bird that dates back to the Pleistocene era back from the brink of extinction.

We could tell similar stories about the Bald Eagle across the U.S. and about the wolves in Yosemite. What’s more is that protecting the natural resources for these species to survive and thrive also serves the survival and thriving of the human species–of our own yet to be born descendants.

Whenever I see the Sandhill Cranes or rather, whenever I hear them, since that usually happens first, I am reminded of the hopeful story of their comeback. That hope makes it seem a little more possible to me that together we may well yet avoid the worst of the forecasted environmental crises of the coming decades.

In Matthew, when the resurrected Christ meets the women after they have been to the tomb that first Easter morning, he tells them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to meet me in Galilee.” We serve a God who deals in resurrection promises and impossible possibilities, who meets us in every place we make our homes and in whom we may bravely put our faith.

With such a God leading us on and calling all creation good, what do we really believe may be possible?  Do we really believe we can move the mountain to the ocean?

That’s a tall order isn’t it? But aren’t there times when the challenges of our lives and our world really do seem so immovable and insurmountable as a mountain?

As a woman who names coal miners among her immigrant ancestors, I know that humans can indeed move mountains. I also know the generations-long environmental perils of trying to move a mountain all at once. That wisdom of my ancestors matches up with the unique wisdom of a teacher who once told me “real change is more like erosion than explosion.” With those words ringing in my ears, whenever I meet a metaphorical mountain that needs moved to the sea I find my hope and faith buoyed by imagining it being done by many hands one spoonful at a time. With steady, hopeful perseverance, and the grace of the God of resurrection possibilities, I believe we can face any challenge before us–be it global, local, or personal–with a sturdy, strong, and despite its size, mustard-seed-like faith.

 May it be so. Amen.

[1] https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-met-sandhill-cranes-20171115-story.html

Do Not Be Afraid

Does it feel like Christmas to you? I know it’s not Christmas yet, technically. In church time it’s still Advent. And perhaps there’s something not wholly religiously-sanctioned about it, but that’s what I start asking myself this time of year.

Does it feel like Christmas yet? Do you know what I mean? Maybe you define it a little differently. Maybe you have a special tradition that allows you to summon the “Christmas” feeling on demand. But for me, I’m talking about a moment of deep wonder that sweeps me up and reminds me of my smallness in the vastness of creation. It’s an awe-filled reminder that despite my smallness, I’m connected to all that eternal infiniteness by an unbreakable love.

It’s a strange warming of the heart that usually catches me unaware and plunges me to the depths of what I understand Christmas to be about – holy, eternal, infinite God, made vulnerable infant flesh and come right down here to where we are then, now, and forever.

I’ve met that moment while lighting candles and singing Silent Night. I’ve met that moment while staying up too late and breaking too many rules with dear siblings with whom I may quarrel but who I’d also protect with my life. I’ve met it while rocking a sleepless child. I’ve met it while rocking my sleepless grief.

It’s not an assurance that nothing is wrong. It’s the realization that while things are very wrong in very many places, that holy, eternal love and my mercifully sweet connection to it prevails.

It doesn’t always show up when I’d like. But it usually shows. It doesn’t always look like a picture perfect Christmas card. In fact, it usually looks a lot more like a haphazard band of shepherds who’ve been watching their flocks by night for so long that they’ve started to look and smell a lot like the sheep they’re tending. That’s when the wonder shows up. That’s when the angels light the sky.

To simple, wild, lowly places, God still sends God’s messengers to fill us with wonder and awe. Those angels tell us, “Do not be afraid,” which I hope you can see from the children’s story is both an utterly necessary and an utterly ridiculous thing for them to say.

Angels are truly scary. In the Bible they don’t usually show up to deliver fast food or to tell you about their favorite new Netflix show. They usually show up to let you know everything is different now and you are about to be asked to be very, very brave. To Sara, Isaiah, Zechariah, Mary, and the shepherds the angels bring good news of great joy, comfort, and the admonition to believe them and to take courage for the road ahead. “Do not be afraid,” they say.

But maybe it helps to know they probably mean, “I know you’re really afraid. That’s okay. Be afraid for a while, if you need. But I’m asking you not to let your fear control the decisions you make. I’m asking you to be brave.”

We can’t exactly see the future but we’re about to experience another surge of COVID19 in the US. Scientists are telling us it could be bad. It could overwhelm hospitals again in scary ways. It’s a good idea to be careful–to do what you feel you need to do to protect yourself, to slow spread, and to help others. And it’s important to be brave. To remember what’s really important to you--what and who you love--and to give yourself merciful permission to bravely act on that love in your heart.

Is it time to forgive someone? Is it time to apologize? Is it time to make amends? Is it time to do something new? Is it time to quit something else? Is it time to let yourself experience mercy and grace?

If this pandemic has anything to teach us, maybe one of those things is that we may not have as much time as we think we do and that things may not be as set in stone as we thought they were. Therefore, more than ever, the time is now to be brave.

Fear makes us close down, tighten up, and keep everything to ourselves. Overcoming our fear, we can open, dream, forgive, and share. Those sound so soft and fluffy but in my experience, those are the very things that take real bravery.

The good news of great joy the angels bring the shepherds is that a savior has been born. It is a reassurance that their people are not forgotten. God is in their midst and cares deeply for each one. Despite the harshness and suffering of their world, God is with them.

And we, too, are not alone. Knowing that doesn’t solve all our problems. But it can make it possible for us to find the courage we need in the face of trouble. It’s why a simple card, phone call, or little text message of support can mean so much. It’s why a meal shared can seem like holy manna. It’s why it matters to address the systems–not just the symptoms–of suffering in our world.

It may not house all the children, clothe all the naked, and feed all the hungry at once. But every time someone reaches out to us and we reach out to another we join in that holy work of being with each other. And as Mary who treasured and pondered all these things in her heart knows, it changes things. The shepherds knew it, too. They left praising God and sharing the good news. We are not alone. God is with us. And because of that we need not be controlled by our fears.

I don’t know if they looked or smelled like sheep. But I hear that there’s a story behind the excessively decorated house on Monroe Street that goes back to a time when the owner suffered a devastating injury. It’s said his friends knew how much he loved Christmas lights and wanted him so much to feel not alone in his suffering that they did the lights for him and hung those big balls of lights in the tree so that he would know they were there, they were rooting for him, and it was okay to be brave. Every year the tree gains another of those big balls of light, celebrating one more year from that anniversary and one more year that he can return the favor to the rest of us in the neighborhood in lights that are as loud as shepherds shouting in the night.

We are not alone. We need not be ruled by our fear. We are held in love forever. Thanks be to God.

May the wonder, awe, and mercy of that Christmas feeling find you this season wherever you may be.

May it be so. Amen.

Making Room

“Navigation is the art and science of determining the position of a ship, plane or other vehicle, and guiding it to a specific destination.”1

(Footnote 1: National Geographic Resource Library, “Navigation,” accessed November 9, 2021, https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/navigation/.)

Early seafarers and other travelers had no GPS to count on. They depended on landmarks, their own sense of direction, whatever maps they may have had, and constellations in the sky. The North Star or Polaris makes a very small circle above the planet’s northern pole. So, for millennia, travelers have used it to help them identify true north in order to understand where they were and how to get to where they wanted to go.

Personally, I’m pretty poor at that kind of orientation. I’ve spent less of my life wandering the wilderness and more of my life with my nose in books and my heart at prayer, wondering about the ways we metaphorically orient ourselves as we navigate life’s journey.

Luke 2 tells us, “In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. 2 This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. 3All went to their own towns to be registered.” In that time and place we are to understand that in the eyes of the Roman world Caesar was in charge, and Caesar’s citizens were to respond to demands for census and taxation, lest they face the wrath of Rome.2 Yet, in the far-from-Roman-power town of Bethlehem, another kind of ruler was born and placed in a lowly manger. Over and over again, the gospels overturn our conventional human ideas about what true power really is and ask us to consider to what kind of power we pledge our allegiance.

(Footnote 2: Joel Green, “Luke 2: 1-7,” New Interpreter’s Study Bible Commentary, (Pub. info). Biblical scholar Joel Green shares that this “census symbolized Augustus’s sovereignty over what was understood by the Romans as the civilized world.)

How do we orient ourselves? What is our true north in our thoughts, actions, and decision-making? Is it the laws of the land? Is it the conventions of our culture? Is it the expectations of others? Or is it the merciful life, teaching, and resurrection of the one we know as God made flesh? It’s not always easy to figure out if we’re navigating by that North Star as well as we’d like.

But it is a mercy and joy that we need not be ruled, ultimately, by the Caesars of this world, by unjust laws and systems, by fear and violence, or by unhealthy expectations and obligations. Rather, we can point ourselves in the direction of the one who mercifully invites us to hope, peace, joy, and love.

I wonder if it was by constellations that Joseph navigated. Or did he simply have that journey home to Bethlehem memorized? Gospel storyteller Luke doesn’t say. For Luke, Jesus’ earthly father Joseph mostly figures in the story as a link to the deep and beautiful tradition of ancient Judaism. Joseph is from the line of David evidenced as he returns to his ancestral hometown of Bethlehem for the census. Jesus’ earthly lineage descends from honored ancient earthly rulers. Yet, he also came to renew, revive, and reimagine all that was known about life and faith. I would argue he did so then and he continues to do so now.

Our families, our community, and our traditions can be a tremendous support as we seek to orient ourselves and navigate by that star. Paradoxically, they can also hold us back from aligning ourselves as fully and easily as we might. In the places where our traditions lay stale and unexamined, they can breed unhealthy assumptions and even violence. In places where our traditions have been mined for their treasure, they can grant a mercifully deep connection to the past that can lend compassion for our present and wisdom for our future.

We live in a time when much is being renegotiated, including how we do church, how we do community, what makes a family, what is respectful, what is safe, and how we address injustice. Especially given these conditions, conflicts will inevitably arise. Many of us may have these conflicts in mind as we discern if and how to gather with family or friends with whom we do not see eye-to-eye on pandemic precautions, political perspectives, or simply personal practices for respectful interaction. In these places of conflict, how do our traditional assumptions get in the way of understanding and caring for each other? How do the best of our traditions lead us to new ways forward?

Singer songwriter Carrie Newcomer writes a poem story in which she and another woman break down on a rural Indiana highway. They find themselves coasting Carrie’s liberal-leaning bumper sticker-laden Prius into a garage designed to serve much larger industrial trucks. Everything about the place tells them they should be unwelcome from the political signs to the cultural markers. The big, burly mechanic grunts at them but agrees to fix their car. Waiting in the office the women wonder if they have made a mistake and if at the very least they are about to be very highly overcharged. The mechanic, though, reappears in a jiffy. Their car is fixed, and he won’t take a dime. “Never assume,” they remind each other.

Her story reminds me, too, of the tradition of hospitality that runs deep in the parts of rural America in which I was born and raised. At its best, that hospitality is extended beyond our own kin and reminds us that indeed, in the eyes of Christ, we are all kin to each other.

Danusha Lameris writes a poem titled “Small Kindnesses” in which she names some of those traditional habits of extending such non-assumptive care even to strangers. She writes,

“I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you” when someone sneezes, a leftover from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying. And sometimes, when you spill lemons from your grocery bag, someone else will help you pick them up... We have so little of each other, now. So far from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange. What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here, have my seat,” “Go ahead — you first,” “I like your hat.”3

(Footnote 3: Danura Laneris, “Small Kindness”, accessed December 11, 2021, https://womensvoicesforchange.org/small-kindnesses-by-danusha-lameris.htm.)

What such fleeting temples have we known? What such fleeting temples have we made? Of the hospitality the holy family received in Bethlehem we are told, “while they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. 7And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.”

I don’t know about you, but these lines have often been interpreted to me in terms of a stingy hotel manager charging exorbitant prices and mercilessly turning a visibly pregnant couple away so that they have no recourse but to seek shelter with the filthy stable animals. A lot of that interpretation relies on the word “inn” (i-n-n) in today’s story: “There was no place for them in the inn.” Yet, the scholarship I’ve been reading the past few years suggests a better translation of that word would be “guest room.”4 As in, “there was no place for them in the guest room.”

(Footnote 4: Joel Green, “Luke 2: 1-7,” New Interpreter’s Study Bible Commentary, (Pub. info).)

Like an extended family returning for Christmas, everybody had come home for the census and the guest room was already full. Maybe Aunt Ida and Uncle Eli were already bunking next to Grandpa David and Grandma Esther on the straw-covered floor of the family’s upper room. What happens then? Well, in lots of families I’ve known folks who can get creative. Rather than turn away their loved ones in need, they bring a space heater out to the garage and borrow an inflatable mattress from a friend.

In this time period, it sounds like there was some kind of accommodation nearby for the animals. Perhaps surrounded by the donkey’s body heat and the goat’s gentle calls, the holy family found some merciful rest and respite. It was no Ritz-Carlton but perhaps it was creative and kind hospitality.

About the birth of Jesus there are so many details Luke leaves out. Was there a midwife available in the census-crowded town? Who provided the swaddling clothes? Did other couples who had been through births surround Mary and Joseph with wisdom and love? Did the extended relatives provide unsolicited advice for baby names or birthing techniques? Did the whole gathered family rejoice to hear mother and baby were doing just fine?

We don’t know. All we know is that someone made room. Someone, likely guided by a deep sense of mercy, made room for this sweet family. And that’s just where the Christ child was born.

At its best this church is pretty good at making that kind of room. I was reminded of that this week when I learned that a home for Afghan refugees is now ready in nearby Schaumburg because of our partnership with the Mennonite Church there. They had the vision--the Mennonites. Without a pastor right now, they decided they could use their parsonage to house refugees. Thanks to the connections, initiative, and good work of a number of you, our church offered funds, materials, and skills that helped get the parsonage in order and ready to be a home once again. We worked together to make room.

May we each and all be guided to experience mercy as we make room for the birth of the Christ child in the inns of our world, the inns of our families, and the inns of our hearts this Advent season.

May it be so. Amen.

Tender Mercy

One of the first characters the audience meets in the Netflix original show Pose is a 17-year-old Black young man who has been thrown out of his parents’ home for being a dancer and for being gay. Now homeless and destitute, the young man flees to New York City with the distant hope of pursuing his dreams of a career in dance.

In late 1980s New York City he meets Blanca, a Black transgender woman and the mother of a house of young queer people of color who make a chosen family for themselves and who participate in the ballroom community and competitions where they create a name, culture, and status for themselves that the outside world flatly denies all those who won’t fit into its hierarchical notions of honor and shame.

For that young gay black man thrown from his home, meeting Blanca meant the difference between life and death. It was a merciful relief and source of hope for the future.

Although some things have changed, for those of us who defy familial or societal expectations--especially those of us who are part of the queer community--those chosen families still mean the difference between life and death. At its best church could be that kind of chosen family for each other. We could be a community not where we come to prove how worthy and respectable we are, but rather where we remind each other we are loved and worthy just as we are--in the fullness of all God has made us to be. No societal expectations can strip us from God’s blessing. Indeed, God has a special concern for anyone the world has ever told that we are not enough, too much, or unworthy of love and respect.

Zechariah and Elizabeth from today’s scripture story may have enjoyed some status in the eyes of their society. He was a priest after all, even if he was only a priest who served at the Temple once in a while. The biggest shame to their name though in the eyes of their society was the fact that they had no children. Did they know the pain of miscarriage? Did they long for a child to hold in their arms? Had they married late in life? What trauma and tragedy were theirs? We don’t really know. The story has little to say on those points.

What the narrator of the gospel of Luke is most concerned about is the shame they experienced in not checking one of the boxes of being a good member of their place, time, and culture. The thinking of the majority of their neighbors seemed to be, if they didn’t have a child, then something must be wrong with them. They must not be as loved, worthy, or blessed by God as those who did. How cruel. How painful. How terribly unjust.

When I learn about ancient cultures of honor and shame, I am often saddened and disgusted by the unmerciful cruelty humans used to inflict on each other back then. When I learn about ancient cultures of honor and shame, I am often saddened and convicted by the ways this unmerciful cruelty sounds all too familiar to so much of the prevailing culture today.

Enter into the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth a messenger from God. The angel Gabriel appears to Zechariah on his rare chance to serve in the Temple in Jerusalem. The angel proclaims the unbelievable: “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, the angel declares, “for your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will name him John.” This couple who are supposedly missing out on the blessing of God are now to be favored.

Because American Christianity has been so overrun by the idea that might makes right and that God’s blessings are known through earthly prosperity, we may forget the truth that this story happens over and over throughout the Bible. The outcast slave becomes the mother of a nation. A murderer who was once a child fleeing violence by floating along the Nile in a basket becomes a leader who frees his people from a merciless tyrant. A woman from a despised people becomes the queen who risks her life to successfully save her entire nation. The youngest, most flamboyant, wildest dreaming brother overcomes being sold into slavery by his own kin to secure the literal physical salvation of his people in a time of famine.

Over and over again, the Bible teaches us of God’s great concern for those of us that everyone seems to despise, deprive, and discount. Over and over again, the Bible teaches us that these are the very people who can lead us all into a greater experience of a mercifully beloved community-- the ones who know what it’s like to be outside of the warm boundaries of a community’s respect--the ones who know that the conviction that each one of us are worthy of love and dignity is not just a nice idea but a matter of life and death.

Those are the people with whom the Gospel of Luke begins its tale: with a barren couple, a young, pregnant unmarried woman, a disgraced betrothed husband, and a group of lowly shepherds. These are the ones to whom the angels of God are sent. These are the ones through whom God’s mercy will be birthed.

Zechariah from our scripture story finds this truth about God difficult to believe. He asks, “How will I know that this is so? For I am an old man, and my wife is getting on in years.” The angel replies, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news. 20But now, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time, you will become mute, unable to speak, until the day these things occur.”

Now, please resist any temptation to understand this passage as linking disability and divine punishment. The limitations of our bodies are in no way a sign that God does not love us or that we have done anything wrong. That is the opposite of the meaning of today’s story. Rather, do understand from today’s story that God is not messing around about God’s promises.

Since the pandemic and proliferation of Zoom meetings, the use of a mute button has become a much more prevalent image in my life. There’s a certain power in being able to mute myself or to mute others. Indeed, I’ve started to fantasize about a mute button for real life when I have had enough of what someone is saying, or even, when I have had enough of the voices of criticism, doubt, and disbelief that come from myself.

In fact, the charming, recently released Disney movie Luca, set on the Italian Riviera, suggested a powerful practice for muting those overly cautious or critical internal voices. Young, fun-loving and risk-welcoming Alberto invites his more timid young friend Luca to quiet his concerned inner voices with the words “Silencio, Bruno!” Throughout the movie Luca does indeed gather his courage, take on adventures, stand up for himself, and even save the day relying on those very words “Silencio, Bruno!”

I believe it’s a compelling movie theme because so many of us do doubt that our dreams, visions, and creativity can really take flight. But I have not found God to be in the disbelief--far from it. I have found God is usually to be found fanning the flames of our wildest, most impossible-seeming dreams.

Perhaps we could see that silencing of our inner critic as a means of repentance. Perhaps it is a way of turning away from all that holds us back and instead, daring to believe in God’s miraculous, merciful possibilities.

I have a friend who tells a story of what God’s mercy is like. She was a young woman then, driving her dad’s car home late one night. She was out past curfew. Although she had sometimes been given permission to take the car, this night she had swiped the keys without asking, knowing that her strict father would never approve of her driving to the places she wanted to go. She planned to have the car home before he ever noticed, and to slip into her room without incurring his harsh wrath.

But something went wrong. The weather was bad. She was driving too fast for the conditions. Her mind was filled with the stress and adrenaline of breaking the rules. She put the car in a ditch. Totaled it. Before the days of cell phones, a kind stranger came by and a tow truck showed up. Someone found her dad.

Standing by the side of the road in the rain, she watched him get out of a neighbor’s vehicle. Her whole body shook and tears sprang to her eyes. She had surely disappointed him terribly. Would he punish her? Could she ever replace the car with her meager part-time job? How would her dad even get to work in the morning? Just how angry would he be? She walked toward him trying to choke out, “I’m sorry. I--” “Don’t say nothin’,” he told her and scooped her into his bear hug arms. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”

That was the end of it. And her relief that night, and for the rest of her life whenever she thought about that night, felt like a rain shower falling down on parched earth. It was a mercy she could never repay. It was more than anything she had earned. It was life-changing to know without a shadow of a doubt that she was still loved and cherished no matter what she had or hadn’t done.

When Zechariah’s mouth is finally opened in today’s scripture story, he sings of a God of forgiveness AND justice who will set things right, who saves us from enemies, who will teach us what true safety, salvation, and wholeness really is, and by whose “tender mercy”...“the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

As we learn through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God is a God of mercy, whose never ending love has the power to free us from the shame of our mistakes, from the weight of other people’s expectations, and from the trauma of violence to lead us into the miraculous possibilities that spring forth from the belief that we are loved and so is everyone else.

Mercy is compassion. Mercy is relief. Mercy is possibility and hope beyond what we can imagine.

How can we be more open to God’s mercy? How can we share more of God’s mercy with each other? How can we extend more of God’s mercy to ourselves?

Psalm 23 tells us of the way God walks with us through even the most difficult seasons of life, sets a table before us in the presence of our enemies, and fills our cups to overflowing. “Surely,” the Psalm proclaims, “Goodness and mercy shall follow [us] all the days of our [lives].”

This is a difficult season we have been through, and the truth is more difficulty lies ahead. At the same time, God still promises to walk with us, to love us, and to make way for us to be gathered up in overwhelmingly tender goodness and mercy.

Do you know what I have found to be the most merciful and most helpful in opening myself to God’s miraculous possibilities? It’s not just telling my inner critic to shut up. It’s listening to the pain or fear that voice has to share and then letting that voice rest in a quiet back seat while I try to drive the car of my life from a place of wisdom, compassion, and trust.

Do not be afraid, dear ones, to keep your hearts open, your life open, and your mind open to the tender mercy God is yet bringing.

May it be so. Amen.

The Water We Imagine

Main character Rina in Ken Liu’s short story, State Change, maintains multiple freezers in her small apartment, not because she is stockpiling food but rather because she lives in a world where we are each born with unique objects in which our souls are literally held. In this world, the somber English poet T.S. Eliot’s soul was a tin of coffee, Joan of Arc’s soul was a beech branch, and the great orator Cicero was born with pebble for a soul, which he put in his mouth to learn to enunciate and project past it.

Rina’s soul, the reader slowly learns, is a cube of ice. Since everyone must stay close to their soul object to remain alive in this world, Rina spends her life avoiding sunny beaches, amassing coolers for when she must travel, and hustling from one freezer to the next. Her demeanor too is closed, rigid, and icy. At her work, place where a freezer hums under her desk, other office workers barely notice her, or, if they do, they usually hustle to leave her presence as quickly as possible.

Rina believes this to be her sad fate: to live a life of reserve and protection lest she lose her few precious soul drops to the horrors of melting. But the strangest thing happens that causes her to change the way she understands the way the story of her life is to be written. Reading this piece of fiction helped me to wonder anew about the stories we tell about our own lives and the communities of which we are a part.

Whether we know it or not, stories are everywhere. Whether those stories include the family legends of triumph or trial we pass down, the stories sold to us by marketing companies, the stories shared in church and in the Bible, or the stories we consume in our politics, current events, sports, history, movies, TV, YouTube, Twitter, or TikTok, stories shape our thoughts. And those thoughts shape our actions.

In his book, Tales of the End, biblical scholar David Barr invites us to read the book of Revelation as a story about Jesus.1 Barr reminds readers that the Bible is full of different genres of books. There are myths, parables, biography, poetry, genealogy, and law books. There are also four books in the Bible we call Gospels, which are books about the good news of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Gospel is also a word that means, very simply, good news. While Revelation is not a Gospel in the same sense of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, it is gospel as in good news. But it is good news portrayed in a strange story full of vision and symbol. To put it in terms of stories with which we may be more familiar, it is more Marvel superhero movie than it is straightforward documentary.

(1 David Barr. Tales of the End: A Narrative Commentary on the Book of Revelation, second edition. (Salem, Oregon: Polebridge Press, 2012).

Revelation, is a story filled with symbols and visions of angels, dragons, sword-clad horse riders, rivers of blood, and women in childbirth. It may not be real and true to us in the sense that these are scenes we too may expect to see when we open our front doors, but it very much can be real and true to us in the sense that highly symbolized and imaginative stories can tell us deep truths and awaken in us deep and holy healing.

In Ken Liu’s short story collection, The Paper Menagerie, there is another short story titled The Chinese God of War. In it, the fictional character Lao Guan finds himself and his compatriots in a historically accurate situation from the late 1800s. After surviving the perilous voyage from China to the US to seek their fortunes, the men find they have been swindled into inescapable, brutally violent, indentured servitude, chiseling out mountains for ravenous railroad barons. Gripping the grim reality of their plight, Lao Guan seeks to convince a number of the other men to flee their encampment and start over in another Western state, perhaps forming their own gold mining crew. But no one wants to leave. What if it's worse out there? What if they catch us and make us an example? What about the dishonor of not repaying this debt they claim we owe?

So, Lao Guan calls upon the stories they all hold dear. He reminds them of Jie You, the Han Princess whose name meant ‘Dissolver of Sorrows” and who made peace by making her way in a foreign land. He reminds them of Lord Guan Yu, the Chinese God of War, who teaches that the gods smile upon those who take fate into their own hands. And he tells them their own story of surviving an ocean together with little more than stories and laughter to keep them going.

“I don’t know what will happen to us out there,” Lao Guan tells them finally. “All life is an experiment. But at the end of our lives we’d know that no man could do with our lives as he pleased except ourselves, and our triumphs and mistakes alike were our own.”2 These stories and sentiments strengthen the men’s resolve and give them the courage to build a new life in a new land together. This is the power of story. This is the power of collective imagination.

(2 Ken Liu. The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories. (New York: Saga Press, 2016), 334.)

John of Patmos gives his audience three highly imaginative stories, all of which David Barr invites us to understand as essentially three ways of telling the same story: the triumph of Jesus over the powers of evil. All of these stories are laden with symbols and symbolic numbers that speak in shorthand to an ancient audience the way that different logos, slogans, road signs, and certain art pieces might speak to us now.

This Revelation, perhaps refined over a lifetime of spiritual experience and passed down orally for decades before being written down is meant to stir the imagination of its audience. It’s meant to bolster their confidence and resolve to continue doing this new, strange thing of building communities of Jesus followers who care for each other and the neighbors around them despite the struggles and sorrows they may face.

In the passage we read today, we are told of a tree of life, with twelve kinds of fruit. For John, twelve was a number to represent God’s people. As we read on, we find there is always a fruit in season on this tree and that “the leaves of the trees are for the healing of the nations.”

Sometimes, American Christians are tempted to think of our spiritual life as something we only do alone. The Church of the Brethren, though, has a penchant for remembering that the spiritual life flourishes in healthy, imaginative community. As groups of people, we have more stories to tell. As groups of people, we can spark each other’s imaginations. As groups of people, we can provide mutual benefit and care. As groups of people, we can remember to whom we belong. As a community, we can remember who Jesus is and how holy love as known in Christ triumphs over the powers of violence and evil. As a community, we can remember who we are called to be, and how together, with the help of God, we can indeed bear fruit to bring healing to the nations.

Our way of being church together has been stretched and strained in this global pandemic, and it's not over yet. When we more fully emerge from this time how we are church together will be different. We may understand ourselves differently. We may understand God differently. We may understand church differently. And yet, we will still have the story of Jesus, the Alpha and the Omega, the one who makes all things new, and who cannot be stopped even by violent death.

We will still have this true and powerful story to stir our imaginations. And I believe in the power of imagination to write new stories and to bring healing. For our spiritual ancestors imagined a new church with a renewed sense of baptism, community, and familiarity with the Bible in their own language. Our spiritual ancestors imagined a program to bring livestock to wartorn countries that went on to feed families across the globe. Our spiritual ancestors imagined a volunteer program that would give people young and old a chance to share their gifts, learn more about their faith, and explore their world. Our spiritual ancestors imagined a Soup Kettle program that has fed hungry neighbors in Elgin, IL every night of the week, every week of the year for more than 30 years.

With God’s help, what might we imagine together yet? Solar panels on the roof of the sanctuary? A playground surrounded by native grasses? A worship or fellowship time where both English and Spanish can be heard being spoken? A center for peace and justice on the first floor of our building? A return to potlucks and protests and parades in which we laugh and sing and make the world around us more alive, just, and joy-filled?

What story would you like to tell? We need everyone’s gifts large and small to make this church as healthy and as faithful as it can be. Gifts do come in the form of money. And they also come in the form of time, energy, love, and imagination. When we share all those precious gifts together in co-creation with the God who triumphs over evil, who can tell what this church might yet do?

Yes, we may be dried up now. Yes, the pandemic still weighs heavy upon us. Yes, the future is in many ways uncertain. Yes, this is a time for rest and for not doing as much as possible. But the day is surely coming and is even trickling in now when we will know the rich water of life, possibility, and imagination flowing among us.

Revelation reminds us, as it reminded its original hearers, that we serve a God who overcomes all suffering, sin, and even death, who makes all things new, and whose renewing water of life we share with each other in life-changing ways, when we gather to share the truest story ever told.

At the end of that Ken Liu State Change short story, Rina finds a love worth risking her precious icy soul. She is tired of keeping herself locked up in a frigid existence. Even if these are the last moments of her life, she wagers it will all be worth it to feel some warmth. When she realizes so much time has passed that her little ice cube soul must surely be melted by now and yet she still, miraculously, breathes, she examines the glass in which she has kept her cube and it dawns upon her that all her life, she could have chosen to flow like water.

How will we gather around the flowing river of God’s living water, renew our imaginations, and learn to float on the holy possibilities? In the words of Revelation, “Come. And let everyone who hears say, come. And let everyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.”

May it be so. Amen.

Living Water

It’s harvest season. A time when we as a church… generosity...

I don’t know about you, but I am sometimes feeling a little out of juice these days. I am sometimes feeling parched, thirsting for water like Jesus on a long walk through dry terrain. And, I consider myself one of the lucky ones, who has a roof over my head, healthy family members, and good food to eat. Still, there are waves of dryness to this pandemic to which I am not immune. And I know I am not alone in feeling that we stand collectively in a valley of dry, dry bones not unlike Ezekiel did in his vision. Not unlike the people of ancient Israel, we are not entirely sure of how God is going to put the flesh of our communities back together on these dry, dry bones.

I know I am not alone in this because I know that when I visit with you all, there are many of you who share that you feel it too. Whether we are in a caregiving situation, a tough financial situation, a difficult leadership role, a life change we don’t want or didn’t expect, or wherever our dry, desert places may be, we have our own reasons for feeling low, lost, and sad before we layer on the collective grief of a pandemic.

Jesus isn’t necessarily feeling full of juice either when he comes upon the Samaritan woman at the well. The Pharisees have just pulled a neat trick. In tallying up who’s winning between Jesus and John, they’ve pulled a move folks still use to great advantage today: trying to pit folks against each other who are actually on the same side. Between that and the long walk, Jesus is ready for a cup of cold water.

But the woman is taken aback when Jesus addresses her. He’s flaunting social norms, and she’s not so sure she can trust him. They banter back and forth awhile--she is employing her hard-won wisdom of life and he is showing himself to be the insightful, compassionate, yet demanding Messiah that he is. He sees her and her story in a way that catches her attention. Then he tells her that the truth is Samaritans and Jews are on the same side. They’re all just looking for a cup of that eternal living water, and they all know that God’s got the well that never runs dry.

Jesus tells her not that she’s got to be perfect or fit the expectations of somebody who’s powerful to get a cup of that water. No, he tells her, God’s seeking out folks to bring their whole selves to worship. That’s the way to fill your cup. Dare to be honest with the Holy Source of all water and that jug of yours will be filled up every time it runs dry.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen some dry cups in the wells I’ve been stopping by. I’ve seen people snapping at each other everywhere there are people. Cashiers, waitstaff, and nurses are taking the brunt of folks’ crabbiness and anxiety. But all of us who deal with people in one way or another are running into it. Maybe, it wouldn’t even be too much to say that all of us who talk to other people are at one time or another perpetrating it, too. Because I know there are times, I’ve wagged my head at crabby folks in traffic or at the grocery store. And I’ll tell you there are also times I have found myself to be the crabby one lately, too. My husband and children can attest to it but it’s other places, too.

Just this week, I was lost, trying to find my way to a new care facility I’ve never visited before. I found a nurse outside and asked curtly for directions then scoffed in frustration when she told me I’d have to move my car. I got about five steps away and realized I was doing it. I was making my crabbiness this other person’s problem when all either of us wanted was to help people and to get home safe. I stopped. I said sorry. Thank you. I said, this looks like a really nice place. I’ve just never been here before. And, I wished her a good day. I wish I would always be able to do that. Because the truth is so many of us are sad, hurting, frustrated, and crabby as all get out. Whether consciously or unconsciously, it's mighty tempting to find someone to take it all out on. But even crabs who live in the dry, dry sand depend on the water for life. And if I have any choice about it, I’d much rather sip from that oasis well of living water that Jesus offers, than let myself die from thirst in the dry desert of my own grumpiness and despair.

The scripture tells us Jesus has walked through those dry desert valleys. He’s walked through actual geographical deserts, and he’s walked through the deserts of despair, self-doubt, violent opposition, and of belonging to a people from whom the ruling empire has stolen all freedom, wealth, and autonomy. Jesus knows what it’s like to walk through those dry desert valleys. Jesus also knows where the well is that never runs dry.

That living water he’s talking about with the woman at the well is the water of eternal life that flows from God, the Holy Source. God is the one who has been, who is, and who will be. God is the one in whom we can find all our souls need to make this life worth living. God is the one from whose river of life our souls are born, and God is the one to whose eternal river we will return. God walks with us through the desert valleys we face, and God brings the healing waters down to replenish the barren land. God is the one who shows us and shows up in the beauty of life that persists even in the desert.

This year we are having a wet fall after a dry spring. I am reminded of God’s resurrection promise in the water that has come, if later than we would like. And I am always reminded this time of year, as I look out over the rainbows of brown prairie grass, of the beauty that persists even amidst struggle.

Some days it’s hard to remember that beauty. On those days I rely on the help of my circle of support which includes my family, my therapist, my acupuncturist, my mentor, my bicycle, my prayer life, my penchant for birding, and my friends. Some of those friends have been passing around an article this week that unleashed not only healing tears but insight and possibilities for me. It was written by Susan Beaumont and is titled “Overwhelm is not a problem to be solved.”1

(1 Susan Beaumont. “Overwhelm: Not a Problem to be Solved.” https://susanbeaumont.com/2021/10/12/overwhelm-not-aproblem-to-be-solved/accessed October 15, 2021.)

Susan writes that our conventional understanding of leadership is someone who sees a problem and sets out to find a solution. That’s a very satisfying mode of being a leader and of being led. It’s nice to be someone who gets things done. It’s nice to have someone who will help you or your organization fix things. It’s nice to meet those conventional expectations and to have them met.

Susan Beaumont doesn’t believe that’s the leadership this moment calls for though. Beaumont thinks right now it’s not only ineffective and exhausting, it's actually counterproductive to try to solve all the big problems and fix all the things right now. Rather, she insists now is the time to let some things fall apart. “Much of our overwhelm,” writes Beaumont, “comes from trying to preserve or adapt things that are meant to fail.” There are always shifts we can make. There are always people we can help. Right now, though, Beaumont suggests the best shift we can make is a shift in our perspective. The best help we can give is to let things fall apart. Because what’s happening right now is a great undoing. It’s time for our old water vessels to crack and break open.

I know I’d like more than anything to run out and buy the latest vessels for holding the water that’s coming as part of the new normal of our changing lives. But the thing is we don’t even know what those are yet. Beaumont says, if you’re feeling overwhelmed, feel it. Don’t hide. Don’t fix. Just be. Just pay attention. Because it could be you’re tuned in to what it is that needs to break. And instead of your rushing to fix, your paying attention and inviting others to pay attention might be just the leadership your family, your church, your workplace, and your community so dearly needs.

The woman at the well knows something isn’t working. She knows too that these old ways we have for carrying water are about to break in the presence of the Messiah who has unleashed the flood gates of that holy living water. She doesn’t rush to fix anything though. What she does is leave her old water jug behind. What she does is go to get the rest of her people to let them know something new is on the way. What she does is start to trust that God is the Source of Living Water, and sometimes all we need to do is get out of the way.

The book of Revelation chapter 21 promises a time when God will wipe away every tear from every eye and all things will be made new. I believe we can be part of the healing work God is doing. But I do not believe the cataclysmic work of resurrection depends on us alone. No, it is a power far greater than our human actions can bring. Sometimes the best we can do is not to work against that power. Sometimes the best we can do to be faithful stewards is to open our hands, our hearts, and our hope to let flow the new life God is bringing, even if we do not yet know what will emerge when the flood waters recede. Sometimes the best we can do with the life, energy, and gifts we have been given is to set down our old water jars, share what kindness, cups of cold water, and fresh apple dumplings we have to share, and pause to notice all the ways God is making all things new.

May it be so in your life, in my life, and in our world. Amen.

Welcome Home

What feels like a lifetime ago, before we had children and before we became bicycle commuting fanatics, my husband, Parker and I moved to a new town in the Midwest without a car. We were broke seminary students who walked to class and to get groceries. When we decided we wanted to go to the Church of the Brethren in our new town, we set out walking without knowing exactly where we were going or how long it would take us to get there.

Mostly we walked along a main drag through the center of town and were passed by many cars, but one car in particular caught our attention as it slowed way down and both the driver and passenger stared at us out the window before continuing on. About that time we also started getting nervous that we had gone too far and missed the church building, so we turned off onto a side-street, picking up the pace. We were surprised and a little startled when that same car from before pulled up alongside us.

From the driver’s seat, a stranger I would later learn to call Bob Hunter called out, “Are you looking for the Church of the Brethren?” “Um, yes,” we answered. The woman in the passenger seat whose name I would learn was Rae, said that’s where they were going to and asked if we’d like a ride. They said they just had a feeling when they saw us walking down the street, but I have always been impressed that they stopped and took the chance.

That became the first church where we celebrated love feast. It was the first church where I ever preached. It was a church where I made cherished friendships, starting with Bob and Rae, who were willing to pick up two strangers on their way in.

In today’s scripture Jesus and his followers were on a long walk, too. Throughout the gospels they travel through rural areas often arriving in towns or stopping by wells where they are total strangers. Sometimes they find a warm welcome and a hardy meal. Other times they are greeted with suspicion and questions like “can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

Besides time and geography, one of the main differences between our dusty walk down the road and Jesus and his disciples’ walk is that Jesus came from an occupied people living in an occupied land. While my husband and I are part of a privileged social group in a privileged country, Jesus was a member of a country who lived under the threat of further violence from the Empire of Rome.

Howard Thurman, the great mystic, scholar, and pastor of the last century, described Jesus’ situation like that of Thurman’s own to be a member of those he called the “disinherited” or one of “those who stand, at a moment in human history, with their backs against the wall.” While scholars have argued endlessly over the reasons for Jesus warning his disciples in Mark against sharing his identity as the messiah as he does in today’s passage, Jesus’ knowledge of that very real threat of his untimely death at the hands of Rome and the religious leaders who meant to pacify the empire is more than reason enough for me. (1 Howard Thurman. Jesus and the Disinherited)

Indeed, he tells them in today’s passage that he will be betrayed, killed, and in three days rise again. “But,” the passage says, “they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.” Who can blame them? Death is scary. Resurrection? Strange and maybe scarier, yet.

It’s something I believe followers of Jesus can trust in--the promise of resurrection-- that because of Jesus we can trust that God’s love and grace will carry us through every loss and death that comes our way, including finding ourselves to be strangers in a strange land. I believe that’s true for the life that is to come beyond this one. And, I believe that’s true in the here and now while we yet breathe.

Sometimes, like the disciples, we fail to understand this death and resurrection thing. Sometimes, like the disciples, we find ourselves afraid of not only the losses we face but of the unfamiliar new life that comes after. Yet, Jesus welcomes us back to that resurrection promise every time we gather courage enough to face it. I, for one, am grateful for the opportunity to let parts of myself die and grow anew.

A colleague told a story recently that I was ashamed to find myself in. She told a group how at Bethany Theological Seminary where we had both been students, she had once attended a workshop on racial justice with her husband, both of whom emigrated to the U.S. from India. As other seminary students filed in she told her husband, watch this, I bet none of these white students will sit with us. Her husband didn’t believe her but as each student filed in one after another, they proved her to be correct. All of the white students sat with each other on the other side of the room. I don’t recall the incident with great clarity but I am fairly certain I must have been in that room, too, sitting on the other side.

When my colleague found the opportunity during the workshop to point out this dynamic, all the white students denied that race had anything to do with their seating arrangement. We told her she was wrong and that she shouldn’t believe what she was seeing with her own eyes. That, she said, was what hurt the worst. Even those of us who like to think of ourselves as good, moral people can find we are shamefully, painfully still far away from the people we want to be.

I am still learning how to apologize, make amends as best I can, and thank the person who set me straight, when I find out that I have messed up, hurt or disappointed someone. I think the disciples were still learning those things, too. Maybe that’s why the disciples were ashamed when Jesus asked them what they were arguing about on the road on the way to Capernaum. Maybe they knew he’d be disappointed that they were arguing about who was the greatest among them. Maybe they knew he’d be disappointed to hear they were still caught up in earning honor in order to make themselves feel more worthy or more loveable. But he set them straight right away, telling them “whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”

Mark scholar Mary Tolbert does not believe passages like these legitimize hurting ourselves or others for the sake of gaining holy status. Rather, she argues any sacrifices followers of Jesus make must have limits and be chosen for the sake of the reign of God and the hope of our future liberation. Sometimes we Christians confuse Jesus’ sacrifice with something done so that he would be loved, when in truth it was something he did because he was already loved. (Mary Tolbert. New Interpreter’s Study Bible notes, 1825.)

When followers of Jesus seek to serve others, I heard a wise woman say this week, we too would do well to remember that we do not seek to serve so that we may be loved. That would be too much like those disciples who argued over their greatness. Rather, we serve others and give generously of the gifts we have been given because we know that we already are loved and so is everyone else.

To make it clear to the disciples exactly what he meant, Jesus “took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not only me but the one who sent me.”

Children do not typically keep house by themselves. They usually cannot reciprocate invitations to dinner without some help from an adult. And in Jesus' time, children were entirely without honor. To welcome a child into your home wouldn’t gain you any points with the neighbors. But to welcome a rich or famous adult into your home, well, that would win you a whole lot of clout and perhaps tangibly increase your power in a community.

That’s not the kind of calculus Jesus wants to his followers to make when we’re deciding who to welcome into our midst. Rather than search a room for who we already know or who might turn out to be a beneficial connection, Jesus would encourage us to look for the ones who are wondering if they belong--who need the welcome the most.

I have probably attended about ten Annual Conferences, those would be the yearly nation-wide gatherings of this denomination, the Church of the Brethren. There are many interactions I look forward to at those gatherings, but one of the social interactions I look forward to the least there is the inevitable question of who my parents are. I don’t mind that question so much. I understand they’re trying to figure out if we are distant cousins. But what hurts is the quick dissolution of interest in me that follows after they find out we’re not blood kin.

When I realized how ridiculous it was to still feel like an outsider after so many years and so much involvement in this denomination, I realized I couldn’t be the only one who felt that way. So, before the pandemic, I made it my job at the last few conferences anyway to find new people and make them feel welcome. I have not been disappointed yet by those connections I have made.

Have you ever been the person in need of a welcome? Are there people in your life in need of welcome now?

When I read about the fall of Afghanistan after the withdrawal of the US military, I felt so much grief for everyone involved. The reality of what has been happening in Afghanistan for decades, the grief of the Afghanistan people, as well as the grief of those who served in the US military there who had hoped for a much different outcome all related to me an overwhelming pain and anguish.

One hopeful piece of the story that caught my focus though was the number of Afghanistan refugee families set to find a new home in the Chicago area. About 100 have already settled or plan to be settled in the suburbs with the help of World Relief Chicago -- a local nonprofit now seeking volunteers, funds, and other donations.

I wondered, when they find themselves strangers in this strange land, will someone pick them up and take them where they need to go? Will strangers smile at them, be willing to make new friends, and to learn from each other? Maybe, I thought, one of those welcoming strangers could be me.

I don’t know what it’s like to flee a home in fear of violence, but I do know what it’s like to seek a welcome in a new place. I know what it’s like to be miraculously welcomed, and I know what it's like to be painfully dismissed. I know I have failed to extend my welcome before but I am doing my best to practice again and again.

Jesus calls his followers to an expansive welcome. He calls his followers to a home in the expansive love of God that knows no borders of age, honor, status, wealth, language, geography, or war. He teaches, all who welcomes someone who needs it, “welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not only me but the one who sent me.” I believe that means whenever we are the child, the stranger, or the one in need of welcome, we travel in holy company--with the one in whose love we find our true home and from which we can never be far away.

I believe that means whenever we have the opportunity to do the welcoming, if we do it not so that we will be loved but from the sure knowledge that we are loved, we will indeed find it a joyful opportunity. I believe that whenever we need a sense of that presence all we need do is call out to the one who is always welcoming us home. Whenever sorrows or sea billows roll, the loving presence of the holy one allows us to say, we are welcomed, welcomed home.

And yes, it is well. It is well with my soul. May it be so. Amen.

Pain and Patience

Highland Avenue Church of the Brethren

Pastor Katie Shaw Thompson – May 2, 2021

Pain and Patience

When I first started to practice yoga, I had to learn the difference between the discomfort of muscles stretching and the pain of muscles tearing. My yoga teacher would talk about finding what he called “your edge” or the space where the healthy discomfort becomes unhelpful pain. After over ten years of yoga practice, finding my edge is still elusive. It changes by the day and requires careful attunement. The results over ten years are not only the ability to perform odd yoga postures that make for fun party tricks but, more helpfully to me, a trusty practice of healing the stresses and traumas of life. Over ten years, I have learned to welcome the healthy discomfort that I know will lead toward a greater feeling of health and ease. 

In today’s letter from the Apostle Paul to the ancient church in Rome, he writes of a different kind of pain that brings new life--the pain of labor. He writes that Creation was led to this pain by the very Creator, “in hope that the creation itself will be set free.”

I think here we walk on dangerous interpretative territory. For I know of too many stories throughout history and up to the present day in which unjust leaders have used the Bible and the authority invested in them by the church to justify others’ suffering and even demand the exploitation of those they deemed less worthy than themselves for their own benefit and prosperity. The genocide of the native peoples of this continent, American chattel slavery, and the holocaust all being prime examples. In no way can I believe that is the kind of pain God ordains for creation. 

Rather, I have found that healing, like childbirth, often travels through valleys of pain. And, I can believe that God accompanies us and invites us to paths of healing that are not by any means easy. Even childbirth of course is dangerous, and the pain that brings life has often tipped over into pain that brings damage and loss. It can be hard to tell the difference.

In his New York Times bestselling book, My Grandmother’s Hands,[1] Resmaa Menakem invites readers to a deeper understanding of racialized trauma and what he calls a pathway to mending our hearts and bodies. Menakem argues that work for racial justice will be ineffective without attention to the healing of trauma that is different but just as vital in Black bodies, white bodies, and law enforcement bodies. 

In his therapy office, he tells clients “there are two kinds of pain: clean pain and dirty pain. Clean pain is pain that mends and can build your capacity for growth. It’s the pain you experience when you know, exactly, what you need to say or do; when you really, really don’t want to say or do it; and when you do it anyway. It’s also the pain you experience when you have no idea what to do; when you’re scared or worried about what might happen; and when you step forward into the unknown anyway, with honesty and vulnerability.”[2]

“Dirty pain is the pain of avoidance, blame, and denial. When people respond from their most wounded parts, become cruel or violent, or physically or emotionally run away, they experience dirty pain. They also create more of it for themselves and others.”[3] A part of us may seek some healing through hurting others but the sad truth is hurting others only causes us more deep-seated pain.

Allowing ourselves to become “settled, anchored, and present” within our clean pain, allows us to metabolize our trauma, digest it, move through it, and beyond it. We do this work so that we can experience greater health for ourselves and we do this work so that we can stop trying to heal our hurt by hurting others.

Menakem points back to deep European ancestral trauma in violence enacted on other Europeans as the seed for the historic and ongoing trauma of what he calls “white body supremacy” in America. As I understand it, the key to becoming a country that is a safer place for Black and Brown bodies, he believes, is working through each of our own pieces of that racialized trauma.

The Apostle Paul was no stranger to trauma. In his life as Saul, he violently persecuted Christians and effected trauma on others. After his conversion, he stood with the persecuted and followed a leader who was crucified despite the real hardships that came his way.

It’s also true that Paul was a Roman citizen who could write and read. He certainly experienced some elements of privilege as well. Still, I believe when Paul writes “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us,” he is not oblivious or trying to dismiss real suffering and pain. Rather, he is that hopeful that despite the realities of pain and suffering, God can lead us on paths of great and glorious healing in this life and in the next.  

Paul is offering a word of encouragement to the church in Rome and, by extension, to all of us as well, when he invites us toward healing and toward saving hope. For, hope allows us to glimpse beyond our current pain and to open the possibility of healing and wholeness ahead. We can hope and trust in the promises of God, who accompanies us through valleys of pain, as we seek healing, wholeness and justice.

 That hope allows us to have patience for the long haul that sustains us

 in the work of overturning unjust systems and structures,

 in the healing of broken bones,

 in enduring as a caregiver,

 in finding freedom in forgiveness,

 in navigating deep grief,

 and in mending our families and communities.

Patience helps us to tell the difference between healing pain and harmful pain. Patience humbles us and reminds us that we are not called to do all the healing work ourselves or to get it all done today. Getting swept up in hopeful urgency without that patience will only lead us to more dirty pain. Rather, with help from God we can hold hope and patience in balance as we seek to live in a world where Jubilee is brought to fruition, where all of us are free, where all of us are treated fairly, and where all of us can come home to a place of love, safety, and rest.

I work and pray and hope to see that vision come to fruition in the relationships and communities around me. I also trust that even if I never see a world in which everything is set right, with God’s help, I can find a place of Jubilee in my own heart and soul that will sustain me through the trials of this life and carry me through the next.

As we come to what seems like a transition season in this global pandemic, at least in the Midwestern US, I pray we will find hope for the future and deep wells of patience. I trust that God will accompany us through this transition and any pain that meets us as we adjust our lives once again to the changing health conditions.  

You know what will feel like a Jubilee day to me? It will feel like Jubilee to me when we can gather back together in the sanctuary and sing together safely as one congregation. I still think we’ve got some time to go until that day, and even hoping for it allows me to experience it a little bit in my heart.

Until that day, I pray for God’s comfort, courage, and patience. I pray for God’s comfort, courage, hope, and patience to accompany you through any pain you face. I pray you will find your own ways to experience even a little bit of Jubilee that will leave you both hopefully and patiently waiting for its fullness to break open, in God’s time, like the dawning of a new and glorious day. For as Paul writes, “Hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”

                                                                                          May it be so. Amen.

[1] Resmaa Menakem. My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies. (Las Vegas: Central Recovery Press, 2017). Resmaa is a renowned mental health professional who has studied and trained at Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing Trauma Institute, as well as with Dr. David Schnarch and Bessel van der Kolk, MD, who are both known for their bestselling books on relationships and trauma respectively. Resmaa lives and works in Minneapolis.

[2] Menakem, 19. He credits the popularization of these terms to his mentor Dr. David Schnarch.

[3] Menakem, 20.

Claiming Our Call

Highland Avenue Church of the Brethren

Pastor Katie Shaw Thompson – May 30, 2021

Claiming Our Call – Luke 4: 14-21

This is a message for the young, the young at heart, as well as all those who are long in years or in heart today. It begins with this question: What kind of calls have you had lately? What kind of c-a-l-l-s have you had lately?

Phone calls have been keeping a lot of us together in this pandemic. Many of us learned the word Zoom sometime in the past year. And I know I’ve appreciated Zooming with so many of you and with family and friends around the world this last year.

But there’s another kind of call I wanted to talk to you about today. It’s not necessarily one that will show up in a text message, phone call, or video chat--although it might! It’s sometimes a very quick, clear message received in words. But sometimes it’s a murky, unclear, wordless inkling, moving us over time in subtle ways, acting maybe more like the pull of the moon on ocean tides than anything else.

That call is about how our particular gifts, challenges, and opportunities match up with the gifts, challenges, and opportunities of the world around us. I’ve heard some people talk about it in terms of being on assignment or getting an assignment from God—as if they are students researching a project or journalists writing a story.

The Bible is full of stories about calls from God. Among others, we hear God calling Noah to build a big boat, calling Moses to lead his people to freedom, and in the New Testament, calling Mary to carry Jesus into the world. Even Jesus, who is God made flesh, was on assignment here among us on Earth as he made clear to all those who heard the scripture he read among them from today’s story. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,” he read from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, “because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’” And that is just what Jesus did in his life, death, and resurrection. He proclaimed that none of us need be bound to the lies that tell us we are unworthy or unlovable. He comforted the afflicted and afflicted the comfortable. He proclaimed each one free. He broke every yoke. He followed this call even though it was difficult and ultimately, for him, lethal. None of us are called to be Jesus. But as followers of Jesus, we are called to be ourselves and to use our gifts as the Holy Spirit leads in the service of making the world a better place for each and every one born.

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I want to ask you another question: What are some of the gifts of the humans you know? Who does something particularly well, and you appreciate it? It doesn’t have to be someone famous. and it doesn’t have to be anything complicated. My husband, among other things, washes the dishes every night. It’s a gift he can give. He’s happy to do it—most nights. And it leaves my children and me free to enjoy abundant read-a-loud time together before sleep. What are some of the gifts the humans you know share? Someone famous whose gift is very unique and uses it to help others feel more freedom, I think, is Simone Biles. Simone Biles is the undisputed greatest gymnast of all time. She has more medals than any other female or male gymnast ever. There are three moves that are just named “The Biles” because she invented them. At 24, which is ancient in gymnast years, she is still perfectly performing moves in competition that few other athletes can even attempt in practice. Currently there’s a controversy because judges are scoring a dangerous move that she does lower than the score it really deserves. They’re doing it, so that no one else tries it, because they think it's that dangerous. Biles redefines her sport and seemingly the laws of gravity. She also does it with confidence and poise, overcoming adversity after adversity and by doing so, I think, helping us all to learn how to be a little more free. She has survived the grueling spotlight of a world stage and racist, sexist trolls online and in the media, who have attacked her from every angle, including constant denigration of her physical appearance. When she was born, her mother struggled with addiction and her father was out of the picture, landing Simone and her three siblings in foster care and eventual adoption by her grandfather. Her home life has not always been easy. And after suffering sexual abuse at the hands of then Olympic coach Larry Nassar, she found the strength to speak publicly about it and to stand with all the other victims to help bring accountability not only to Nassar but to the entire structure of USA Gymnastics which had aided and abetted him. Now, after a postponed Olympics postponed her retirement from the sport and her carefully laid training plans for a year, she is set to make more history. And I will be one of millions cheering her on every step of the way, because she gives me hope that no matter what adversity lies in our way, we too can find ways of using our unique gifts to help each experience more of the freedom God yearns for each and every one of us to experience. We don’t have to be Jesus and we don’t have to be Simone Biles. We named gifts we already see being shared around us that help make the world a better place. Ever since the Holy Spirit blew into the room the disciples were in with wind and fire, the church

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has been a place where we share our gifts with each other and where we combine our gifts to share with the world in order to share the good news of God’s love and to work for a world in which we all can feel more free. In the Church of the Brethren, “we believe that baptism is a response to God’s saving act through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ,” that “baptism is an act of obedience to the teachings and example of Jesus,” that “baptism is a symbol of cleansing and new life,” that “baptism is a public witness of the covenant relationship with God,” that “baptism is an initiation rite into the church, the body of Christ,” that “baptism is a beginning” rather than an ending of a faith journey, and finally, that “baptism is an ordination into ministry.” In our youth Sunday School, we spent some time talking about that last one. What does it mean that baptism is an ordination into ministry? It doesn’t mean we all have to become pastors. It doesn’t mean we’ll never make mistakes again. It doesn’t mean life will always be easy. It means we have accepted the call to use our gifts for the glory of God and our neighbors’ good. I told the Sunday School class and I’ll tell you today that all of the young people in that class are already doing just that. They are sharing their great questions about life and faith, their fun senses of humor, their creativity, their concerns, and their great big hearts with our church and with the world around them. It has been a delight for me, particularly with Leah and Jenna, to see them grow into wise and capable young women and to share their gifts with the church in the years I have been here. As they and the rest of our church’s young people continue to emerge into adulthood, I look forward to seeing all their gifts continue to emerge, and I trust that simply in being true to who God has called them to be they will use those gifts in ways that make the world a more loving, just, and free place to live. I am honored to be part of this moment of baptism today for Jenna and Leah. I will continue to pray for and cheer for them, as I know this entire church will join me in doing. As we welcome these young women officially into the church today, as we bless their calls to be true to who they are in ways that make us all more free, may we too listen for the call that the Holy Spirit puts on each of our hearts. For each of us is uniquely gifted and each of us has our own unique opportunities to share those gifts for the glory of God and our neighbors’ good. One chapter before the scripture we read from Luke today, Jesus arises from his own waters of baptism to a voice from heaven calling him God’s Beloved child, “in whom

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[God] is well pleased.” As we bless this baptism with our prayers and presence today, may we be reminded of the love God has for each and every one of us. May we be nudged to listen closely to the call God puts on each of our hearts, and may we step forward to accept that call to our own form of ministry. May it be so. Amen.

The Strength of Softness

The Strength of Softness

Highland Avenue Church of the Brethren

Pastor Katie Shaw Thompson – May 16, 2021

The Strength of Softness – Isaiah 40: 21-31

I don’t know about you but I’ve been feeling pretty soft lately. At least that’s the way I’ve been describing my biking muscles. In the pandemic, working from home and doing most visits by phone, my usual opportunities to go places in town by bike have dried up. Now vaccinated, I’m biking to more places, and I’ve found my sore muscles telling the story of a rather sedentary year.

We humans build physical muscle strength by resistance training. By using them over and over soft muscles become denser, harder. When it comes to our physical wellness, those dense, hard muscles are related to strength; however, when it comes to our emotional and spiritual wellness, many doctors, therapists, researchers, and spiritual leaders agree, softness is our strength.

In Isaiah 40, the second prophet who wrote under the name Isaiah tells the ancient Israelites in Babylonian exile about the strength of God. Isaiah 40 compares God’s strength to the strength of the gold idol gods of Babylon. Their hard cast figures, the prophet proclaims, are no match for the strength of the God who created everything in existence, “who stretches out the heavens like a curtain and spreads them like a tent to live in.” Those brittle ideas of holy power that their overlords hold cannot compare to the one who in Genesis bore creation into being from the murky softness of God’s own body with an utterance of holy word and breath.

I think there are plenty of ways I personally have made an idol of hardness, thinking it was the only way to be strong. There are plenty of stories out there that tell us that hardness is strength. That to show emotion, kindness, or love is soft and weak. What’s strong is to suppress our feelings, especially uncomfortable ones like anger, shame, or fear. There are plenty of stories that tell us it’s strong to never admit our weaknesses or our mistakes. We’re often told strength equals perfection. It means always having as shiny and flawless a sheen as an idol cast in gold.

Sometimes, it’s the softest things that are the strongest. It was the soft, wet water of the Colorado River that carved the Grand Canyon.

Massively tall skyscrapers are strong because they’re flexible and can bend in the wind.

This spring I have been enjoying backyard birdfeeder visits from a pair of red-bellied woodpeckers. In my backyard they enjoy the fruit and nuts from the feeder without needing to use their massive bills. But I have also seen them tapping at tree bark looking for yummy bugs. I learned one time that scientists are still learning about woodpeckers and how they can do such intense hammering with their beaks without damaging their brains. One theory is that the

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birds have extra space inside their skulls where they can coil up their long tongues that serve as cushions for their brains.

When I see the woodpeckers now, I often think about softening up my life. How can I find a cushion in the schedule of my days, so that the intensity of my life won’t lead me to damage? How can I bring softness to my internal story about myself? How can I soften the lens with which I view people around me?

Isaiah 40: 21 asks hearers and readers, “Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?”

This whole chapter of Isaiah is meant to be a balm. It is meant to remind the people that the comfort we find in God goes deep. It goes to the foundations of the earth. The presence of the Creator is in the DNA of creation.

We can find the courage to soften. We can find the cushion to absorb intensity. We can survive and thrive even through hard blows, because we are held up by the one whose presence goes to the foundations of the earth, moves through the molecules of every creeping creature, and extends far beyond the stars we can see in the sky.

When our hearts are hard and brittle toward each other, everything is an offense. Everything is a threat. When we soften, we can forgive ourselves and others. We don’t need to be doormats. Nor do we need to lash out in violence. Softness gives us the space to be flexible, to grow, and to love others while they grow too, despite any flaws or shortcomings.

When we can be soft, we can be generous. We can be the kind of strong that doesn’t feel the need to return missile fire with more missile fire. When we lean into the gift of softness, we can find ways to de-escalate conflict and stand up for justice by standing strong in our own inherent worth and in the inherent worth of every single one of us.

The strength of God in Isaiah 40 comes from God’s infinite ability to endure long after earthly rulers have passed away and from God’s ability to number the heavenly host. God calls each and every one by name and because of God’s great strength “not one is missing.” If God can number and name and find not one missing in the infinite, sparkling sky, how much more named, numbered, and found are each one of us on earth? That care for each one does not diminish God’s power. On the contrary, that tenderness is the very evidence of God’s strength.

“Comfort, O comfort my people,” this chapter of Isaiah begins. It is the voice of God calling out to the prophet. They have been lost. They have been far from home, exiled from the land they love.

Many of us have been stuck at home or separated from people we love. As we emerge into a new way of being, we might find moments of tension, discomfort, anger, shame, or fear. We don’t have to get it right right away. We don’t have to harden ourselves or pretend things aren’t

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squishy and uncertain. We can lean into the strength of softness and accepting our limitations as they are. There is reason to believe that good things lie ahead for each one of us as the pandemic eases here and we transition to whatever comes next.

The pandemic still rages though in many parts of the world. Violence is still a reality the world over, tragedy happens all the time, and many of the problems that persisted before the pandemic have only been further revealed since it began. Trusting in God will not save us from heartache or trouble. It can however, help us to weather difficulty and to find a soul-deep peace that helps us stay soft, strong, and loving, no matter what comes our way. I think that’s what the prophet means by those oft quoted words, “but they who wait upon the Lord will renew their strength, they will mount up with wings like eagles, they will run and not be weary, they will walk and not faint.”

Waiting upon the Lord or trusting in God who loves each one of us does not mean we will be perfect or limitless or without suffering. It means we can find a safety beyond suffering that allows us to do hard things and to find hope, healing, and wholeness even still.

Many of you will know the story of the hymn we sing next. Horatio Spafford wrote the words to this song after losing his four year old son in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 along with his Chicago-based financial prospects. He wrote the words to this song after he put his wife and four surviving daughters on a boat to England ahead of him while he stayed behind to sort the further fall of his business ventures in the economic downturn of 1873. The boat the women of his family were on collided with another while crossing the Atlantic Ocean. Only his wife survived. All four daughters were lost at sea. The story goes that Spafford was inspired to write the words to this hymn while crossing the Atlantic Ocean to meet his grieving wife. He wrote the words, “It is well with my soul” not because he did not grieve but because even in his grief he found comfort in the soft, loving strength of God that goes to the foundations of the earth and lifts us up on eagles wings.

Whatever you are going through. Whatever sorrow or joy comes your way. Whatever the past year has brought for you in trial or silver lining, may you find yourself upheld in the soft strength of holy eagles’ wings.

May it be so. Amen.

The Air We Breathe

A sermon by Pastor Katie Shaw Thompson from October 3, 2020 based on Matthew 21: 33-46

In Matthew 26, just a few chapters after the parable Josh read for us today, we find Jesus setting out the practice of communion for his followers. The actions are the same as I use when offering the words of institution when we have taken communion here together in this church two millenia later. The scripture tells us Jesus took the bread, blessed it, broke it and shared it with his disciples, telling them, “Take. Eat. This is my body.” 

In our tradition, this practice is considered an ordinance, which is to say we find it layed out in scripture and we physically enact it still today as a means of patterning our lives in the way of Jesus. We believe something special and sacred may well happen during the moments we enact this practice,and also, we believe something special and sacred may well happen in any other moment in which we draw breath. 

Drawing breath has been something most of us have been able to take for granted most of our lives.If our respiratory system is functioning typically, breathing is an involuntary and instinctual act. As we live through a respiratory-virus-caused global pandemic though, the act of breathing has become a topic of heightened attention. 

I was telling some friends recently how this pandemic has made it clear to me just how disgusting humans are. It’s been impressed upon me in new ways how we’re all walking around with a bubble of germs and getting them all over each other. In this case, we’ve spread these germs all over the globe! 

Both of my friends responded in a way that struck me as such wisdom. What had been impressed upon them during this time was the undeniable nature of our connection with each other. From our next door neighbors to our global neighbors, what effects one of us effects us all. The way this virus has spread had made even more clear to them that we are all connected through the very air we breathe. 

That struck me as a profound experience of communion--to consider how we humans, each and every one of us, are connected through this essential act of breathing within this shared bubble of earth’s atmosphere. Through that act we are connected to all those who have breathed on this planet before us and all who will breathe on this planet after us. Through that act, I believe, we are connected to the Holy Spirit, who moved over the waters in the breath that spoke life into being in the Genesis story, and who swept into the room in new and inspiring ways in the Pentecost moment experienced by the early church. 

We are not able to meet in-person together today to break bread on this World Communion Sunday. So, instead, I invite us, in this way, to view the very act of breathing as a holy communion of air. 

As we don masks, keep our distance from each other, and change our habits in response to the pandemic, many of us have been carefully considering where, how, and with whom we spend our breath. As news stories of people of color experiencing violence at the hands of police forces across the country have heightened public awareness of how far we are as a society from ensuring each and every person’s right to breathe, many of us have been carefully considering where, how, and with whom we spend our breath.  For many of us, this pandemic time has brought us a new invitation to re-think what really matters and how to bring forth the lives and communities we want to share.

I hear Jesus’ words in today’s scripture speaking into this moment when he quotes the Psalms to describe the way the powers that be will fail to hold his life and breath as sacred, and how despite their violent disregard his life and message will live on and on. After another challenging vineyard parable, he tells his listeners, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.”

What parts of ourselves and parts of our world that have also been rejected are now too rising up to lead us into a brand new day? 

I think every time we refuse to cooperate with conditions that hurt whole groups of people in our world, we are keeping the central things central. I think every time we refuse to cooperate with conditions that hurt the parts of our own minds, bodies, and souls that don’t fit into some preconceived mold, we are keeping the central things central. 

I think keeping the central things central means keeping a healthy connection between the ways we live out the truth of God’s love for us and the ways we live out the truth of God’s love for everyone else. Because for me, the love of God that Jesus embodied is central. It is the cornerstone on which I seek to build my own life and on which I seek to build the sacred web of connections of which I am a part. I believe that when we keep that love central we will bear the fruits of the kin-dom so tragically missing in the lives of the vineyard tenants from today’s story. 

When asked to share the fruits of the harvest they responded with violence. They kept for themselves something that was never theirs in the first place. Jesus used this story to illustrate the violence that was to befall him, comparing the murderous tenants to the chief priests and Pharisees so nakedly even they couldn’t help but see the resemblance. 

What about us? Do we see the resemblance? 

Just because we are beloved by God doesn’t mean we don’t mess up. We too are capable of rejecting, neglecting, and denying all that makes us uncomfortable, aren’t we? 

Very often though I have found that which we reject, neglect, and deny has a way of popping up from the sidelines and making itself central whether that be uncomfortable secrets, grudges we quietly keep, a neglected personal health concern, staggering income inequality in our communities, or any other problem we would rather not deal with. Sooner or later these pieces of our lives and our communities that have been ignored or suppressed will demand to be dealt with.

Because of that, I appreciate every time I find an example of another way of living that shares the best parts of this life with more justice and more joy centered. I found one again just last night on a bike ride with Elgin Community Bikes. 

The bike world is known for being made for the fittest and the fastest. That’s why the rides of this little group tend to surprise people for encouraging riders of a wide range of abilities to participate. There’s always a leader at the front  and one at the back to make sure no one gets left behind.  In fact, last night the leader at the back peeled off and stayed behind with someone whose health condition was presenting a problem and a different leader stepped up to care for the new back of the ride. 

It’s just a small way of imagining it, but I think that’s justice: when we all get a little more of what we need, whether what we need is attention, kindness, or care. 

I think that brings joy when we understand that we will be cared for and valued even if we aren’t the fittest, fastest, or most convenient to deal with on any given day.

In this time and every time, followers of Jesus are called to spend our breath on sharing the fruits of the kin-dom. If the world can be seen as an abundant harvest table, we are called to spread the fruits of the kin-dom wide across it, working for the good of each and every neighbor on this planet beside whom we draw breath.

  For the fruits of that holy kin-dom surely includeGod’s delightful justice and joy which we are invited to help create.

May we join in doing so. Amen. 

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