Running the Race Set Before Her: Funeral Sermon for my Grandmother

My grandmother died last week, and the pastor of her church graciously invited me to preach at her funeral. This sermon may not be of interest to my regular blog readers, but I'm posting it here mostly because it's an easy way for my family and my grandmother's friends to access it.

On Wednesday, I joined some family members in Simsbury to be with my grandfather and start making arrangements for my grandmother’s funeral. In the midst of the shock and grief, we found ourselves recounting stories about my grandmother. My mom and my aunt both remembered something that my grandmother had said: that when she died, she wanted the “Theme from Rocky” playing – that instrumental piece that opens with victorious fanfares, and evokes the story of Sylvester Stallone becoming an unlikely boxing champion. They both remembered it, and I think they even mentioned it to Pastor Chung, which was probably a new one for him. With apologies to my grandmother, we’re not going to play the Theme from Rocky today. But I loved hearing this story because it told me that my grandmother thought of death as a victorious event, the culmination of a great feat of strength and skill.

The book of Hebrews speaks of some of the great heroes and everyday people of the Old Testament, men and women of faith who have died: Abel and Moses and Rahab and on and on. The author names all of these people, and then says this: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.” This scripture imagines life as a race, a great athletic feat in which we are cheered on by those who have gone before us. Life as a race, which is sometimes exhilarating, and sometimes exhausting. Life as a race, a race which ends in triumph and glory.

My grandmother ran quite a race. Married fifty-five years, mother to five children and grandmother to thirteen grandchildren, she loved her family fiercely and with great affection. She thought of us as her team, and it was us against the world. When one of us was struggling, she was totally on our side, rooting for us, and booing the other team, whether it was an employer or an ex-boyfriend, diabetes or the Red Sox. When one of us was winning, she was proud, but not surprised. We were her team, after all… and she was sure we were the best team.

She valued learning, and she worked to keep expanding her mind throughout her whole life. She read avidly; she once shared with me a list of the hundred greatest books of the century, with little check marks beside each one she had read, and she planned to read them all. When she became a senior citizen, she qualified to take courses at the University of Hartford; she took a series of courses in classical music and aced every test. Some people take up bridge in their retirement; my grandmother not only took up bridge, but took bridge lessons. She loved learning about her faith: she came to visit me at seminary in 2008; we talked about the year-long Bible study course she was taking at this very church, and when she visited my New Testament class, I was struck by her detailed note-taking and thoughtful questions.

She had a generous heart, and she loved to give people things she had made. ¬Once, it was braided rugs which she made with my grandfather. More recently, she would knit prayer shawls for this church’s prayer shawl ministry. Our homes are full of things she made for us, from the prayer shawl she knit me when I was in seminary to the Christmas stocking she made my cousin when he was a baby. And then there was her baking: pecan pies and Russian tea cakes, homemade cookies and English muffin bread. She knew that gathering at the dinner table nourished not only healthy bodies, but healthy souls and healthy families, and many of the fond memories that we’ve shared in the last few days have been memories of things that happened at the dinner table.

The dinner table, appropriately enough, is one of the images that scripture and tradition offer to us to help us envision what God has waiting for us on the other side of death. But it is not the only image. Scripture offers us images of a place where there is singing and rejoicing, a place where there is healing and wholeness and the end of pain, a place where God’s will is done. Jesus speaks of his Father’s house, where he has gone to prepare a place for us. We speak of death as crossing a river, entering the holy city, going home. In Jesus Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection, we hear a resounding promise that death does not have the final word: as Saint Paul writes, death has been swallowed up in victory.

We have a lot of different images for the world to come, and I suspect that there is something true enough about all of them, and that what lies on the other side of death is beyond anything we can quite capture in words or grasp with human minds. Those shimmering, ephemeral images can seem awfully insubstantial as waves of grief wash over us. We want something solid to grasp: we want to know where she is, and exactly what it is like, and whether she can see us. It is desperately hard to say goodbye, and harder still to rest in the assurance of things not seen. But for my grandmother, who has run her race and taken her place in the great cloud of witnesses, those questions have been answered.

Today we’re gathered in grief, to remember the time we had with her and say goodbye; today we hunker down in our own sorrow about having to live without her, looking to God and to each other for comfort and consolation. My family knows that I cry easily and frequently, which always bothered my grandmother… whenever anyone started to tear up, she would say, “Oh, honey, don’t cry. Don't cry, honey.” That never stopped me, and it is not stopping us today. Today we gather with our sorrow and our loneliness, to hear words of comfort like the 23rd Psalm, and songs of consolation like “There is a Balm in Gilead.” But when the waves of grief subside, I hope we’ll remember that, for Grandma, it’s the Theme from Rocky all the way.

Good Mrs. Murphy

A Sermon on Psalm 23

Last summer I went to the doctor for a physical, and found out that they needed to draw blood for some routine tests. I hate needles and I hate blood and I hate having blood drawn. In fact, just thinking about the whole thing right now is making me a little queasy. But there was no choice, so I went into the lab, and I did what I always do: I rolled up my sleeve, I looked away, and I began to recite the twenty-third Psalm to myself. “The Lord is my shepherd.” Breathe in. “I shall not want.” Breathe out. It calms me down, and it passes the time. Usually they’re putting on the band-aid before I get to “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.” So they filled up their two little tubes of blood, and before I could say “your rod and your staff they comfort me,” they sent me on my way. 

A week or so later, I got a call saying that one of the test results was a little unusual, and I needed to go get a work-up from a hematologist. (Don’t worry, by the way, everything turned out fine.) So off I go to the hematologist, roll up my sleeve, look away, breathe in, breathe out, recite the twenty-third Psalm. On I go through the green pastures and still waters, the rod and the staff, the cup that runneth over. I reach the word “amen,” and… no band-aid! So I take a deep breath and look over at my left arm, and to my great shock and horror, the technician has fourteen little vials to fill, and she has finished half of them. So I started over from the beginning. 

All this is to say that for many of us who grew up in church – and some of us who did not – the 23rd Psalm is written on the tablets of our hearts. Memorized in Sunday school or learned through osmosis, it has become a dear old friend. Perhaps we say it in times of stress and anxiety, or as a prayer of thanksgiving, or when we need a moment of peace and tranquility. We recite it in funerals. We remember it when we sit in hospital waiting rooms. It passes the time while I get blood drawn. And once every three years, our liturgical calendar brings us to Good Shepherd Sunday, when we pair the 23rd Psalm with Jesus’ words from John: “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” 

Our Bible is full of shepherding images, which is not surprising given the culture it comes from – in an agrarian society, there were plenty of shepherds. Texts about shepherds like the twenty-third Psalm, Jesus’ teaching about the Good Shepherd in the Gospel of John, and the parable of the shepherd leaving the ninety-nine sheep in the Gospel of Luke, invoked an image that would have been very familiar to their original listeners, who would likely have seen shepherds on a regular basis. There are plenty of non-metaphorical shepherds in the Bible as well, from King David to the shepherds who visit the Christ-child. But we live in a different sort of world, and shepherds are nowhere near as common now as they were then. Most of us have not seen a shepherd this week, and some of us may not have ever seen a shepherd in our lives, which makes me ask, what is it about this image of God as our Shepherd, or Jesus as the Good Shepherd, which continues to appeal to us? 

There is probably more than one reason. It may have something to do with images of the presence of God in the midst of difficult situations: Just as the shepherd stays with the sheep in the dark hours and the dangerous places, God stays with us in the valley of the shadow of death. Perhaps it has to do with the shepherd as an image of power which is loving and tender; in contrast with images of dangerous power, this is a God whose power is used to guide, nurture, and protect. 

But commentator Russell Rathbun raises questions about whether this image might also appeal to a more selfish side of us. He writes, “This psalm is so weirdly narcissistic. “The Lord is my shepherd.” Why not, the Lord is our shepherd?” He continues, “I have this crazy image of a Sunday school filmstrip that plays every time I read this psalm. The Lord is walking beside a little blonde haired kid with short pants and a cap. Then he gestures to the green grass and the kid lays down on it for a nap. The kid gets up and the shepherd takes him down by the still waters, he has his rod and his staff to protect the kid. . . . The image of this personal Lord following an individual around, attending to their needs—a place to sleep, food, water, protection—seems more like a dog than God. More like a servant than a shepherd.” Could it be that perhaps some of the appeal of the shepherd metaphor comes from the image of a God whose primary goal is to fulfill our every wish, to make us as comfortable as possible with green pastures and still waters? 

The Reverend Paul Sundberg, in response to this uncomfortable question, wrote a humorous adaptation of Psalm 23, which begins: 

The Lord is my personal-shopper; I will have many fashionable choices 
He makes me lie down on high thread count Egyptian cotton; he brings me still water not sparkling 
He restores my credit scores. He turns traffic lights green to prove he’s with me. 
Even though my commute is horrible, I don’t fear texting drivers; for you are with me; 
your management of traffic lights and parking spaces – they comfort me. 

Hopefully none of us have quite such a narcissistic theology as the one Reverend Sundberg spoofs here, but I think he does call me out on some of my own selfishness and self-centeredness. God is, of course, present with us and available to us in moments of joy and sorrow, stress and peace, whether those moments are big or small; God is present with me when I get blood drawn. But Reverend Sundberg’s Psalm calls on us to put our own needs in perspective, to know that God is bigger and wider than that. 

A pastor I know told a story from his own childhood, of hearing this Psalm recited in church, and misunderstanding the words. At the end of the Psalm, what he thought he heard was this: “Surely good Mrs. Murphy shall follow me all the days of my life.” The words there, of course, are “goodness and mercy,” but he heard “Good Mrs. Murphy.” And although those are not the words in scripture, I think they certainly do suggest a wonderful way of understanding God. What he pictured was a kindly older Irish woman – I envision my own great-great-great-grandmother, whose name was Margaret Murphy. She was a seamstress, and had nine children. In the words “Surely Good Mrs. Murphy,” I see an image of no-nonsense maternal love, of love marked, for a seamstress in the late nineteenth century, by aching hands and tired eyes. I see an image of a love which is constantly present in our times of need, and a love which cares about us too much to let us take our own micro-crises too seriously. When I start wincing about having blood drawn, good Mrs. Murphy rolls her eyes. This is an image of a God who is present with us but does not cater to us, a God who loves us enough to challenge us, and trusts us enough to rely on us. 

What I think we sometimes forget, when we hear this metaphor of God as shepherd, is that a sheep is not a pet. There are similarities between contemporary pet-ownership and ancient shepherding: both relationships are marked by love and care. In the Gospel lesson today, Jesus says, “I know my own, and they know me,” alluding to the fact that sheep learn to recognize the voice of their own shepherd, and shepherds learn the different appearances, personalities, and bleats of the members of their own flock. Shepherds did and do put themselves in physical danger to protect their flock. Shepherds did and do go to great lengths to meet the flock’s need for food, water, rest, and safety. The shepherd does provide for the sheep’s needs, the relationship is one of love and care. 

But the sheep are more than pets; they have a role beyond being waited on by the shepherd. Sheep were common in the ancient world, and it’s not because they were fluffy: it’s because they were necessary. The flock would have been a vital source of the shepherd’s livelihood, and they were relied on to meet the basic needs of the people in the region. They produced wool and milk, as well as providing meat. They were, in fact, essential to the well-being of the wider community, which relied on the goods that came from the flocks the shepherds tended. The flock was necessary to feed hungry bellies, to provide clothing to keep people warm. 

And so when we picture God as our shepherd, we need to remember that that image has more than one side. If God is our shepherd, then God does indeed care for us, love us, walk beside us in times of difficulty, meet our needs. But if God is our shepherd, then God also has work for us to do: like the shepherd’s sheep, we are asked to give of ourselves to care for God’s children and God’s world. When we say “The Lord is my shepherd,” we acknowledge our deep reliance on God’s grace to meet our every need. But we also remember that God has entrusted us with the work of caring for our neighbors. We do that in a very different way than sheep do: we do it by giving of time and talent and treasure, rather than of wool or milk or meat. We do it by feeding people who are hungry, sitting with people who are lonely, caring for people who are sick. We do it by working for justice and peace in this world. And in all of this, we are called to remember that God, our shepherd, is at work within and beside and around us. God is at work in this world and in our lives, nurturing us and caring for us, loving us beyond measure. The God who makes us lie down in green pastures and leads us beside still waters, who walks with us through the valley of the shadow of death, nurtures and strengthens us so that we may do the work that has been entrusted to us. Thanks be to God. Amen.

The World Is Watching

“The world is watching.” That’s the slogan of the blockbuster movie The Hunger Games. Based on an excellent trilogy of young adult novels, The Hunger Games imagines a post-apocalyptic North America, in which an opulent city called The Capitol controls twelve districts. The districts produce all the goods to supply the Capitol’s needs, from agriculture to technology to energy. The Capitol devours all of those goods in their consumer culture of ever-changing high fashion, posh homes, and lavish parties. The people in the districts are desperately poor, sometimes to the point of starvation; they are kept in line with the constant threat of military force and with the display of power that is the annual Hunger Games. In this event, two children are randomly selected from each district, and the twenty-four children are put into a massive wilderness arena full of hidden cameras to fight the elements and one another in a televised competition, until twenty-three are dead and one is victorious.

At first, the premise sounds like simply a fanciful excuse for gratuitous violence, a fiendishly bizarre fantasy about a perversely violent world. But as I read the books, I realized there was a lot more going on. After all, we live in a world where children die every day. In my congregation, every week, we read the names of the American soldiers who died in Iraq and Afghanistan – many of them not much older than the hunger games competitors – and we remember along with them the Iraqi and Afghan people, whose names we do not know, young and old, military and civilian, who have died because of those wars.

One of the inspirations for The Hunger Games series, according to its author Suzanne Collins, was the juxtaposition of coverage of the Iraq war and reality television. Collins says that as she flipped back and forth from reality T.V. to the actual reality of the news, it registered in a whole new way how popular culture desensitizes us to the real violence and suffering of the world. Reality television shows often appeal to our basest voyeuristic instincts (and I am chief among sinners, on this topic); we watch with judgment or horror or schadenfreude, appalled at Snooki’s latest exploits, or the shameless behavior of the contestants on The Bachelor, or the filth-encrusted, pest-infested homes on Hoarders. The entertainment value of reality television often comes from watching the emotionally painful experiences of others. But when that is what we do to entertain ourselves, our capacity to empathize with suffering halfway around the world is often dulled. Out of that observation came the horrifying premise of the first novel of the series. So certainly, The Hunger Games has some cultural commentary for a world like ours.

But there are also resonances between the world of The Hunger Games and the world of Jesus, resonances that are especially strong today, as we celebrate Palm Sunday and remember the story of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem.

In the book The Last Week, Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan note that in the days leading up to the Jewish festival of Passover, there would likely have been another procession into Jerusalem: the procession of Roman imperial officials into the city to keep the peace and prevent uprisings. Borg and Crossan write: “[I]t was the standard practice of the Roman governors of Judea to be in Jerusalem for the major Jewish festivals. They did so not out of empathetic reverence for the religious devotion of their Jewish subjects, but to be in the city in case there was trouble. There often was, especially at Passover, a festival that celebrated the Jewish people’s liberation from an earlier empire.”

“Imagine the imperial procession’s arrival in the city,” Borg and Crossan continue, “A visual panoply of imperial power: cavalry on horses, foot soldiers, leather armor, helmets, weapons, banners, golden eagles mounted on poles, sun glinting on metal and gold. Sounds: the marching of feet, the creaking of leather, the clinking of bridles, the beating of drums. The swirling of dust. The eyes of the silent onlookers, some curious, some awed, some resentful.”

This is the context into which Jesus rides in today’s Gospel story. It’s a wonderful coincidence this year that Palm Sunday falls on April Fool’s Day, because there is an element of satire in Jesus’ parade into Jerusalem. Just imagine the contrast between the imperial parade on one hand, with its displays of power and status and veiled threat of violence, and this parade on the other hand.

No weapons, no armor, no displays of wealth. Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a young colt – as a victorious king would if he were bringing an offer of peace; as the prophet Zechariah says the Messiah will ride into Jerusalem. Jesus’ ride into Jerusalem on a colt is a declaration of his identity; it is also an outrageous claim of victory, a gesture that extends an olive branch as if he were the political equal of Jerusalem’s authorities. But that does not mean, riding on this colt, that he didn't look silly; it doesn't mean that his feet didn’t drag on the ground – they very well may have. And as Jesus rides in, an itinerant preacher from a rural backwater claiming the status of king, he is followed by a ragtag band of mostly poor folks, some of them very disreputable indeed: fishermen and tax collectors, beggars and women. Not much of a victory parade, to the eyes of most people at the time.

Jesus is even lampooning Roman imperial practices in the drawn-out story of sending his disciples to commandeer the colt. Did you hear what they were supposed to say to the colt’s owners? “The Lord has need of it.” In a conquered, colonized land, where it was not uncommon to have a Roman soldier or official demand your cloak, force you to walk a mile, or slap you across the face (as Jesus’ teachings imply, when he teaches the disciples to walk the second mile and turn the other cheek), in a land where every imperial subject was expected to be ready and willing to declare, “Caesar is Lord!”, Jesus sends his disciples to commandeer a colt with the words, “The Lord has need of it.” Any bystander would have assumed that the “lord” in question would have been a Roman official of some sort. The “Lord” needs an unbroken colt? For what?! He’ll send it back tonight? Sure, I bet.

It is an unusual sort of parade, and it declares that the ways of the kingdom of God are fundamentally different from the ways of the kingdoms of this world. Jesus’ procession into Jerusalem opposes the force of empire not with more force and violence, but with a cuttingly satirical, boldly subversive, foolishly peaceable vision. A vision of a Way where humility and compassion conquer violence and subjugation. A vision of a Way in which social barriers are broken down, and those people who are scorned, rejected and ignored by polite company are the very heart of the community. A vision of a savior who saves not through violent power and military might, but through compassion, grace, and mercy. This is not your typical parade.

But it does have one thing in common with the Roman imperial processions: it is a spectacle. And the crowd loves it. They gather on the roadsides, throwing down their cloaks, waving their palms, crying out “Hosanna! Hosanna!” – which means, “save us! Save us!” Their cries of praise and acclamation are both an act of participation in the Kingdom of God, and an act of rebellion against the ways of the Roman empire.

If you know to look for it, the power of the Roman empire resonates throughout The Hunger Games. The structure of the society – with desperately poor districts supporting the excesses of the Capitol under the threat of violence – is the same as Roman imperial society in Jesus’ day. Citizens of the Capitol have names like Portia, Octavia, Cato, Seneca, and Caesar. The games themselves are a riff on the Roman Games, where slaves and criminals fought to the death or were torn apart by wild animals for the amusement of the crowd. And most tellingly, the entire country is named “Panem,” a reference to the phrase “panem et circenses,” or “bread and circuses,” the Roman empire’s tools for keeping the populace from rebelling.

Like the world of The Hunger Games, and like the world of Jesus, our world, too, is full of the forces of empire. Forces that ignore, rationalize, and excuse the shooting of an unarmed child wearing a hoodie. Forces that use undocumented immigrants to do our society’s most-despised, lowest-paid work, and then lock these same immigrants up, and then claim that ensuring basic human rights in detention facilities, such as safety from assault and access to health care, would be too expensive. Forces that make a scandal out of Sandra Fluke alluding to having consensual premarital sex, when what we should be scandalized by is the epidemic rate of sexual violence in this nation and around the world. This isn’t The Hunger Games – there is no single villain pulling the strings, no calculated plot, but that does not make the violence of this world any less insidious, or any more acceptable.

And like the world of The Hunger Games, this broken world tries to encourage us to sit back and watch, to be passive spectators of the twenty-four hour news cycle, ignoring or observing the misery of the world, rather than changing it.

But today, on Palm Sunday, as we remember Jesus’ procession into Jerusalem, and the cheering spectators who so quickly turn against him, we are confronted with a question: are we going to be spectators, or are we going to be participants?

I won’t give away the end of The Hunger Games, but I will say that throughout the film, we see subversive gestures that challenge the imperial power of the Capitol. To me, one of the most powerful happens in the arena, when a beloved character dies, and the grief-struck protagonist takes the time to adorn the body of her friend with flowers, and say a final goodbye. It is a small gesture, turning aside for a moment from the violence of the arena and the demands of survival to honor the life of this person, to insist on their humanity, and to mourn their death. It is a small gesture, but often, small gestures are the best way we have to stand up to the powers of hate, oppression, and violence. Small gestures like visiting an undocumented person in a detention facility. Small gestures like wearing a hoodie in remembrance of Trayvon Martin. Small gestures like speaking up when we hear a joke based on sexism or racism or homophobia. Small gestures like gathering around a table where all are welcome and all share equally. Small gestures like choosing which parade we will show up for.

As Jesus rides into Jerusalem, the crowd surrounds him crying out “Hosanna! Hosanna!” “Save us! Save us!” They have caught a glimpse of a new way, the way of the kingdom of God. We know this story, friends. The crowd is about to turn; the powers of the empire are too frightening and the risk is too great, and it is too hard to believe that salvation lies in the ways of peace, justice, and compassion taught and lived by this man, riding unarmed on a colt into the trap that awaits. Time and again, throughout history and today, the crowd has turned, and will turn, from the ways of the kingdom of God back to the ways of the kingdoms of this world. But the good news is that those small gestures, those gestures that reject the powers that be and the kingdoms of this world, when we bear witness to the kingdom of God, raising our voices in loud hosannas, those moments matter immensely. In those moments, friends, in those small gestures, the Spirit is at work in the world. In those gestures, for a moment, God’s vision of justice and peace becomes a reality, and we declare which king we will serve, and which parade we will be part of. We know what choice the crowd will make in the days to come. But today we remember the day when, in a seemingly small gesture, a crowd of people in Jerusalem gathered by the road to welcome the prince of peace, and the kingdom of God, and the world was watching. May we have the courage to do the same.
Amen.

Collect for International Women's Day

Holy One, in this week of International Women’s Day, we give thanks for your daughters who have raised their voices for justice, from Esther and Deborah to Wangari Maathai and Aung San Suu Kyi. We pray for the end of gender discrimination and gender violence, and we look with hope toward the day when all of your children are free to use the gifts you have given them to do your work in the world. Amen.

God is Not a Boy's Name

This is not all there is to say (or all I have to say) about inclusive language... but this is what I'm saying to my congregation in a newsletter article this month.

While I was in seminary, I heard this true story: a woman went to the Sunday school classroom after church one day to pick up her daughter. That day, the children had drawn “images of God.” One child had drawn Jesus, another a beautiful butterfly, another a shining sun. The daughter had drawn a very old man with a beard, sitting on a cloud. “That is beautiful!” said the mother. “I like his big beard. He looks so wise. Why did you decide to show God as a man?” “Because we were supposed to draw God,” the daughter replied. “Do you think you could draw God as a woman someday?” the mother asked. “Don’t be silly, mom,” the daughter laughed, “God is a boy’s name.”

For many centuries, the Christian tradition used exclusively male language for God. Most theologians would have acknowledged that God is neither male nor female. But churches referred to God as male, consistently, exclusively, and daily, and one of the unintentional results is that many girls and women could not see themselves as created in God’s own image (Gen. 1:27) because they had been taught – albeit unintentionally – that “God is a boy’s name.” Perhaps some of us grew up thinking that God was, at least a little bit, a boy’s name.

In the past several decades, the church has been led to do a new thing: to change the ways we talk about God and people. The Eleventh UCC General Synod in 1973 called upon churches to use “inclusive language” when talking about people, using words like “humanity” instead of “mankind,” and making other linguistic changes to reflect our wide diversity of age, race, ability, ethnicity, and more. They also called on churches to use “expansive language” for God – using a wide variety of images, God not just as “father,” but as “mother bear,” “light,” “Word,” “potter,” “eagle,” “midwife,” and the many other beautiful images of God from our scripture and tradition.

The congregation I serve is committed both to inclusive/expansive language and to honoring the tradition of our “great cloud of witnesses.” We try to balance beautiful new God-language (ending every benediction with the declaration that the trinity is “one God, mother of us all”) with the richness of the traditions of the historic church (a rollicking Gloria in the style of spirituals including the words “Lord God, heavenly King, almighty God and Father, we worship you.”) We try to preserve the poetic integrity of texts, while updating the language when possible, and also to strike out into new territory, with bold new hymns that lift up lesser-known images of God.

But I admit that in my own sermons, prayers, and classes, I too often choose between male images and gender-neutral images, male pronouns and no pronouns. Too often, I shy away from feminine God-language because it might be too edgy, too awkward, too distracting. This Lent, I am recommitting myself to exploring new ways to use inclusive and expansive language, delving into the rich imagery of scripture, leaning into the strangeness of choosing feminine pronouns at least as often as I choose masculine ones. I hope it will challenge me – and all of us – to expand our images of God, and to remember the vast, unlimited mystery of God’s being.

The inclusive/expansive language movement is young yet, and we are certainly seeing its growing pains. Some revisions of dear old hymns sound clumsy or clunky to our ears; often it is hard to know how to talk about God without relying on the traditional pronouns of “he,” “him,” and “his,” let alone masculine images like “Lord,” “King,” and “Father.” Like every new thing the church has ever done, we are feeling our way along, through unfamiliar territory and awkward pronoun situations. But with the help of God, we are being led toward a world where little girls like [names of girls in my congregation] – and little boys like [names of boys in my congregation] –grow up knowing that God is not exclusively a boy’s name.

Notes from the Capernaum Synagogue

Sermon on Mark 1:21-28

They went to Capernaum; and when the sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught. They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, and he cried out, ‘What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.’ But Jesus rebuked him, saying, ‘Be silent, and come out of him!’ And the unclean spirit, throwing him into convulsions and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, ‘What is this? A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.’ At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.

I'm trying something a little bit different this week. The more I studied this gospel passage, the more I wondered about the man with an unclean spirit. I wondered what his life was like before that day when Jesus taught and healed in the Capernaum synagogue, and what his life was like after. I wondered what he might say to us, if he could. So the rest of this sermon is my imagination of how this man might tell us his own story.

We didn’t have air conditioning back then. We didn’t have electric fans. Those wouldn’t come for almost two thousand years, and the heat in summer in Capernaum was relentless. It was so much cooler in the Capernaum synagogue – the thick stone walls retained the cool night air, and the wooden roof let any heat rise out. I could usually stay there for a long time before they made me leave.

I don’t know what you call people like me now. You’ve sorted us all out into categories – schizophrenia, Tourette’s syndrome, bipolar. But then, we were all called demoniacs. Or they might say that we were en pneumati akatharto – with an unclean spirit. There are different names for it these days, and there are pills and things, but in a lot of ways it isn’t so different. There are still people like me wandering out on the streets with nowhere to go. People still act the same way around us, looking at the ground and hoping we’ll go away soon, no matter whether you call us schizophrenic or possessed. Whatever you call it, I was different. I was unpredictable. I heard things that other people couldn’t hear, and sometimes I would just know something was true but people didn’t believe me. I heard voices sometimes, and they told me to do things and I knew something bad would happen if I didn’t do what they said. I was usually pretty jumpy, because the centurions were always watching me and following me, although my brother said I was just imagining it, and that they had better things to do with their time. I shouted a lot, sometimes to tell the centurions I was onto them, or sometimes because the voices said to. I didn’t want to be like this, I didn’t want the voices and the thoughts in my head, but I couldn’t stop them no matter what I did. Prayer, fasting, healers… nothing changed it.

I lived with my brother and his wife, but they didn’t like me hanging around the house all day. I heard my sister-in-law say she didn’t like me home with just her and the children. Sometimes I would try to help my brother with his work – he was a fisherman – but I couldn’t always do that. A lot of days, he said he just couldn’t deal with me, out there on that boat.

I liked the synagogue, though, because it was cool, and quiet but not too quiet. It was calming, sometimes, to sit and think while the people would study or pray or talk. I liked the music, too – when they sang the psalms.

I was sitting in the synagogue one Sabbath– that’s Saturday for you – when a man I’d never met before came. He had some guys with him, and I recognized a couple of them – they were Zebedee’s boys. He walked up to read something from the Torah. Then he sat down, and began to talk about the passage he had just read. That raised some eyebrows. Everyday people don't really do that, that's more for the scribes and educated people, and who knows who this guy was, wandering around with a bunch of fishermen. But after a few words, he had everyone’s attention. He told these stories and none of us quite understood what they meant, but you just wanted to keep thinking about them. He said that God loves and blesses poor people, and people who are hungry. I wondered if he would tell what God thought about me.

That's when I started to get excited. When I get excited, that can be a bad thing – when my mind gets busier, often there are more voices, more shouting and acting strange.

First I started to get a little bit jumpy, and then I stood up and started pacing back and forth. And I just felt like I had to shout. I knew the guys at the synagogue wouldn’t like it so I tried to hold it in, but I kept hearing these words, so I shouted them: "What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? We know who you are! The Holy One of God!"

Joel who helps run the synagogue rolled his eyes and sighed. He's usually the one who has to tell me to leave.

Jesus looked frightened for a second. People usually are when I shout. Then his face softened and he asked, "How did you know my name?" I don't know how I knew his name. That was just what I had to shout.

I had to keep shouting. I knew I had to, or something bad would happen. So I shouted more. "What have you to do with us?" He came towards me, and he put his hands on my shoulders, looking very stern. "Please stop shouting," he said. But I kept shouting. Then he was shouting, too: "Be silent, and come out of him! Be silent, and come out of him!"

I get angry at myself when I shout, because I try to stop it and I get so frustrated when I do it anyway. Sometimes people get angry and shout back at me. It’s not fair that people get so angry at me for something I can’t help. But Jesus wasn’t angry at me, I could tell. He was angry at the voices that were making me shout, and he wanted them to stop as much as I wanted them to stop. He was angry at them, not angry at me, and he was shouting for them to be silent, shouting for them to go away, to leave me forever. “Be silent, and come out of him! Be silent, and come out of him!”

I kept shouting and he kept shouting, and I kept shouting, and he kept shouting. No one had ever acted like that when I was shouting, like they weren't afraid of me. Like they knew that I was still there, that I was still me, a me separate from all of the shouting and voices and strange things I said and did. Like they actually saw me. I started to weep, and I was shaking, and I wasn't shouting anymore, and I kind of wanted to just run away and get out of there as fast as I could, but I wanted to stay near Jesus, too.

All the other men were glaring, glaring at me, and Jesus still had a hand on my shoulder and he looked right back at them. It was like he really knew and saw them, too, imperfections and all. It was like he knew that Joel got really irritated about tiny little things in the synagogue being exactly perfect, and that Samuel was always trying to be the center of attention, and he talked so much all the time and never wanted to listen. And Levi and Joshua just never stopped bickering with each other over things that didn’t even matter at all.

Jesus just looked at them all glaring at me, like "Well? You think he's the only who struggles?" And then Joel said "Jesus, why don't you sit down and tell us more about the guy on the Jericho road." So that’s what Jesus did.

I think people read my story these days and they assume that I was normal from then on. They figure that whatever was wrong with me, Jesus fixed it and that was that.

Well, yes and no.

I was definitely better. Maybe a lot better. I think that after that day with Jesus I shouted less, and I didn’t worry as much about the centurions. Sometimes when things were getting bad I would remember Jesus and it would calm me down and bring me back.

But something else happened, too.

Joel and Samuel and everyone who was there treated me differently after that day. They weren't so afraid of me, and when I was yelling or muttering or pacing, sometimes they would just talk to me.

I think that when Jesus and I shouted at each other in the synagogue that day, he changed the way we all thought about each other, and ourselves. Because all those other guys, they’re not perfect; we all have things about ourselves that we would change if we could. We all have ways that we’re broken. Mine is right on the surface for everyone to see. Everyone saw it that day, but Jesus said in every way he knew how that I mattered and belonged anyway. He said in every way he could that God loved me and that those people in the synagogue should love me too. God goes and finds the lost sheep, he said. God loves all those people on the edges. And God loves the people whose brokenness is hidden, like the priests who walked past the beaten-up guy on the road, or the responsible brother who got ticked off when his dad threw a party for the irresponsible brother who came home alive. Jesus told us every way he knew how, with his words, and then with his actions, and then with words again. And the miracle is, I think all of us heard him.

Things are different around the synagogue now. Sometimes I get to read from the Torah, even -- I learned how when I was a kid. When I have a bad day, if I shout too much or say something horrible or mean, Joel still tells me I have to leave. “No blasphemy in the synagogue,” he says, or “You can’t be so loud here, you need to leave for now.” But other times, Joel comes and sits by me and talks to me, even if I’m having a little bit of a hard day, he just talks to me and I talk to him. The other guys are nicer to me, too, and sometimes they call me over to sit with them while they study. It’s like everyone can see me now, like when Jesus sent away my voices that make me shout, he sent away everyone else’s voices, too… the voices that make people hate me and fear me and ignore me. I think we’re starting to be friends, maybe. I think that’s how Jesus wanted it to be.

I think that is how Jesus wanted it to be.

God of the lost sheep, send away the voices that whisper fear and hate. Help us to see one another as you see us. Amen.

Fearfully and Wonderfully

Sermon on 1 Corinthians 6:12-20

Smog.

Spork.

Turducken.

Brangelina.

Those words are all portmanteaux, words that blend the sounds and meanings of two words into one. Portmanteau words are fun, and funny, but they also help us to name things that are two-or-more-in-one.

My spouse and I have a portmanteau we’ve made up. This word describes the state of being so hungry that you’re likely to act cranky, or get angry for no good reason. We call this combination of hungry, cranky, and angry, “hrankgry,” H-R-A-N-K-G-R-Y as in, “I forgot to have lunch before church, so I got hrankgry during the sermon.”

I was struggling a bit to write this sermon earlier this week – I had the worst writer’s block. When I told my spouse about it, he said, “Did you eat a good breakfast? You always get writer’s block when you’re hrankgry.”

The next morning, after I ate a good breakfast, the ideas finally started to come together. As I wrote, I marveled at my own foolishness. I had forgotten that my mind and body are connected, even as I studied Paul’s words about the connections between body and soul.

Today’s epistle reading from First Corinthians is famous among biblical scholars for being confusing and obscure.

“All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are beneficial. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything. “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food,” and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is meant not for fornication but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Should I therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! Do you not know that whoever is united to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For it is said, “The two shall be one flesh.” But anyone united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Shun fornication! Every sin that a person commits is outside the body; but the fornicator sins against the body itself. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.

That is pretty confusing.

Not only confusing, but a little troubling, especially the part about prostitutes. Paul sounds horrified and disgusted by prostitutes, revolted at the idea of connecting a prostitute to the body of Christ. It’s hard to imagine Jesus sharing that revulsion – Jesus, who ate with sinners and tax collectors; Jesus, whose feet were washed with the tears of a sinful woman, and dried with her hair. I have no doubt that every child of God can be welcomed joyfully into the body of Christ. But there is something important here, nonetheless.

When we study epistles, it’s important to remember that we are reading someone else’s mail. In the early days of the church, people like Paul and Peter traveled the known world, spreading the good news and starting Christian communities. They would form close relationships with these people, but eventually they’d move on, and so they would keep in touch by correspondence. Many of these letters were kept, copied, and shared, and those letters are the epistles in our bible today. One reason this passage is confusing is that we have walked into the middle of a conversation, and we’re only hearing one side of that conversation – a letter from Paul that responds to questions and concerns in a letter from the Corinthians.

We can tell from Paul’s letter that he has just read a lot of bad news about how the Corinthian Christians have been behaving. Paul opens the letter by sternly chastising the Corinthian church for their infighting, divisions, and factions. Soon after that, he is scolding them for sexual immorality. He rounds out the letter by yelling at them for the way they’re conducting communion: some people are coming early, getting drunk, and eating all the food.

For all of this bad behavior, these are the saints of Corinth. Corinth was a port city in Greece, and it was famous for its rowdy nightlife. So famous, that in the Roman Empire, getting drunk and acting lewd was known as “Corinthianizing.”

The Corinthians, living in this city famous for its licentiousness, hear the gospel of a God of grace, and eventually, some of them start to think to themselves, “Hey, we’re all set! Our God is a God of grace, and our sins have been redeemed, and that means that we can behave however we like! Party time!” This passage is Paul’s answer.

First, he quotes back what they wrote to him: “Everything is lawful.” Then he responds, “But not everything is beneficial.” He quotes it again: “Everything is lawful.” And he responds again: “But I will not be dominated by anything.” That is, nothing but God should have power over me. Again, he quotes the Corinthians: “Food is meant for the stomach, and the stomach for food.” The Corinthians are advocating satisfying the appetites of the body: only souls matter, they think, so why not do what feels good for our bodies? But Paul says no. The body is not meant for fornication, he says. The word there is porneia, the word from which we get the word pornography. It’s not clear what Paul meant by porneia. In popular usage, it meant some kind of sexual immorality, but we don’t know whether it was general or specific. Is it prostitution? Is it adultery? Or, since Paul grew up Jewish, schooled in the Old Testament, is he using the word metaphorically, like the prophets who described the Israelites’ unfaithfulness and idolatry in terms of adultery and prostitution? Scholars have spilled gallons of ink trying to argue it out, most of them trying to push one agenda or another. I can’t tell you what it means for sure. But I think we’re actually better moving on to what Paul says next: the body is for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.

Part of the Corinthians’ mistake is that they imagine that the soul and the body are entirely separate things – they can do what they want with the body, they think, because it is merely a vehicle for the soul. That idea was prevalent in Greek philosophy – Platonist philosophy in particular, tended to believe that the soul was eternal, good, and unchangeable, while the body was temporary, changeable, and basically bad. In The Republic, Plato wrote that we are at our purest and most virtuous when we are least connected to our bodies. Platonist philosophy saw bodies as little more than gross, stinky houses made out of meat in which our souls were unfortunately imprisoned.

But Paul says a resounding “no” to the idea that bodies are an inconvenient, irrelevant coincidence. “The body is for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body.” God created bodies, God came to us in a body, and the crucified Christ was resurrected in a body. Bodies matter to God, Paul declares. They are not just temporary houses for our eternal souls.

Today’s Psalm points us towards a more faithful way of thinking about human bodies: it speaks of a God who knows us, body and soul, “knitting us together in the womb.” It proclaims that we are “fearfully and wonderfully made.” This is the tradition from which Paul speaks when he declares to the Corinthians that how we use our bodies matters profoundly.

This weekend we remember the legacy of the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. While he was in prison for his work, Dr. King wrote one of his greatest works, the Letter from a Birmingham Jail. In this letter, King spoke out against complacent churches which, he writes, “commit themselves to a completely other worldly religion which makes a strange, un-Biblical distinction between body and soul, between the sacred and the secular.” The legacy of Martin Luther King reminds us that injustice perpetrated against bodies has deep effects on the souls of the oppressed and the oppressor alike.

Because we are fearfully and wonderfully made, there are intricate links between our physical bodies and our internal states, links that we feel in big ways and in small. When our minds our troubled, we feel it in our bodies – in headaches or sore backs. Hunger can make us cranky. A time of prayer can relax our shoulders. A brisk walk can lift our spirits. An hour of yoga can help us feel a deep sense of spiritual peace.

We shape our relationships through physical touch, from handshakes and hugs during the passing of the peace, to lovers embracing. As a mother and infant fall asleep together, their heart rates synchronize. The body is more than a place where the soul lives; our inner and outer selves are deeply connected. It’s how we are made. And so what we do with our bodies, honoring or harming them, using them to honor or to harm, does matter.

It is true, Paul acknowledges, that everything is lawful. That is to say, our God is a God of grace who comes to us despite every sin, flaw, or shortcoming. There is no rulebook we have to play by in order to earn God’s love. God’s love is not quid pro quo; it is freely given to us, no matter what. Paul urges the Corinthians to see this surpassing grace not as an excuse for doing harm, but as an encouragement toward deeper faithfulness. He urges us to glorify God by honoring God’s creation, our bodies – and, I would add, not only our own bodies, but also the bodies of others.

Paul’s words to the Corinthians focus on sexual intimacy as a way that we can either glorify God or do harm. I don’t know what Paul means by porneia, but I do believe that God delights in expressions of sexuality that are loving, honest, mutual and respectful, and I believe that God does not delight in expressions of sexuality that harm, oppress, or objectify. But the words “everything is lawful, but not everything is beneficial” have implications far beyond sexuality. What would it mean to try to delight God through how we eat? How we use our time? How we spend our money?

The Iona Community is a community of Christians in Scotland. Members of that community commit to being accountable to one another for how they spend their money. Not just pledging – what percent, before or after tax, blah blah blah. No, how they spend all of their money. Periodically, the community gathers with their checkbooks and bank statements to discuss whether their financial decisions are reflections of their Christian faith. Are they spending more on luxuries or on feeding the hungry? Does their use of money reflect their commitment to caring for the earth? Do they avoid supporting corporations that use slave labor? Would God take delight in the ways they spend money? God will love us if we squander every cent of our money on fancy gadgets and expensive clothing – everything is lawful. But not everything is beneficial – thoughtful, faithful use of the blessings we have from God will deepen our faith and delight God’s heart.

We are not just souls housed inside of bodies, Paul says. We are portmanteau people; our souls and bodies are blended and bound up and knitted together. When our souls are well, we can feel it in our bodies; honoring bodies can buoy up souls. Our God is a God of grace – there is nothing we can do, body or soul, that will separate us from the love of God. But Paul invites us to go deeper than that: to remember that bodies matter. To remember that we are created by God, fearfully and wonderfully made. We are invited to respond to God’s love with everything we have: with our hands and feet and minds and heart and voices. With our time and money and skills and words and actions. We won’t live perfectly today, and probably not tomorrow either. And that is fine, because nothing can separate us from the love of God, who came to us in Christ, and who loves us beyond our wildest dreams, and who created us fearfully and wonderfully.
Thanks be to God.