Sermon for Pentecost 2015: The Advocate, the Accuser, and the Puffy Face: Towards a Practical Pentecostalism

"The Advocate, the Accuser and the Puffy Face: Towards a Practical Pentecostalism"

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Transcript of Extemporaneous Sermon 

Preached at: South Wedge Mission and Trinity Episcopal Church

Rochester, New York

24 May 2015

Day Texts: Acts 2.1-21

John 15.26-27, 16.4-15

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An audio recording from Trinity Episcopal in Greece, NY can be heard here

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Synopsis: While being "Pentecostal" can feel foreign and even intimidating, according to Jesus it's actually pretty practical; it involves learning to hear and discern the voice of the Advocate in the midst of the world of the Accuser, and becoming advocates on behalf of what God is bringing to life in the gifts and possibilities of others.  

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We pastors love Pentecost.  Because the liturgical color for the feast is red.  Which means we get to wear our red stoles.  Usually, the stoles we received at our ordinations.  And if there’s anything pastors love more than preening about in their favorite vestments, its preening with an added injection of nostalgia.

I’m no different with my red stole.  And I especially love this image, the picture of the Wild Goose.  See, for the Celtic Christians, the Wild Goose was a perfect symbol for the Holy Spirit, that mysterious, often elusive third member of the Trinity.  The Wild Goose was, well, wild.  Free.  Uncontrollable.  In John 3, Jesus compares her to the wind, blowing in unpredictable, untamable directions.  The Wild Goose of the Holy Spirit refuses to be boxed in or defined.

Which is maybe why I personally also need a slightly more concrete avian concept to help me understand the oft-perplexing Holy Firebird.  Which is why I turn to that other love of my life - my chickens.  

As those of you who know me know, I love my chickens - even more than my ordination stole.  There’s Stripey - because she’s striped.  Red, because she’s red.  Shrieker, because she shrieks…and, well you get the picture.  But first among this noble brood of hens is my personal favorite: Puffy Face.  Because she has feathers all over her face.  Like a beard.  Like me.  

She also burned the top of her head this winter on the heat lamp.  Not unlike the monks of old who cut their hair in a tonsure, Friar-Tuck style, to symbolize that, like the disciples on Pentecost, they too had been specially visited by the Holy Spirit, Puffy is slightly bald on top, and mostly burned in the brain.  

And like the Holy Spirit, Puffy has one sole purpose: escaping to freedom.  Every morning I go to check the eggs.  Every morning, Puffy is casually crouched in the tulips, chowing away.  Puffy is put back in the pen.  I go inside with the eggs.  I look out the window.  Puffy is once more out and about, this time heading for the strawberries or the vegetables.  No matter how many times I staple shut the gaps in the fence or secure the loose door, no matter how short we clip her wings or how often we thwart her, Puffy finds a way.  She defies confinement.  She seeks freedom.  And often, tries to lead her sisters to liberation as well.

And while all of this talk of wild geese and chickens and tongues of fire may seem birdbrained in themselves, when it comes to the Holy Spirit, they’re often the best we have to go on.  Particularly for those of us from more “introverted” Christian traditions, the Spirit is talked about often, encountered seldom.  Certainly, she shows up when we bother to recite the creed; we invoke her over the waters of baptism and ask God to pour her out over the Eucharistic elements.  We even call upon her as a kind of stamp of approval at the culmination of churchy procedures like committee meetings and ordinations, often paying her lip service - “it seems pleasing to the Holy Spirit that measure X should be enacted.”  Because, after all, the Holy Spirit would never desire for us to go back to committee.  Not even Satan would encourage that line of torture.  

But in general, if you’re like me, you often wonder why we bother at all to play at the whole “Holy Spirit” thing.  Certainly, other churches seem to have the market cornered as far as being Pentecostal and Charismatic goes.  They speak in tongues.  They display a fiery level of exuberance and passion that makes us Lutherans and Episcopalians blush and edge our chairs away uncomfortably.  It’s not that I doubt for a second the reality of their experience - it’s just, I’d prefer them to experience the Spirit a little further away from me and my quiet, solitary contemplation of my prayer book.

And yet, if I’m honest, my real discomfort might also stem from a bit of jealously.  Those churches seem to have a spark of life I often find lacking in my own faith practice.  And, what’s more, it’s just plain confusing.  After all, in my baptism, I was told that God anointed me with the gift of the Holy Spirit.  Every week, during the blessing of the Eucharist, we ask God to “pour out your Spirit upon us; make us holy.”  And yet, it’s kind of a let down to leave Sunday evening and head into the regular week of life and work and feel so…not-spiritual.  Uninspired.  Unempowered.

Generally, if you ask someone if they’re racist, they’ll always say “no,” when almost always, the truth is, “yes.”  In the same way, if you ask someone if they’re “spiritual,” the general reply will be “yes,” when the reality is, “I’m not really sure.”

If you’re like me, perhaps you wish you could get a little bit of that Wild Goose power in you.  After all, who doesn’t want a little extra power and exuberance in their everyday lives and practice?  I don’t need to speak in tongues.  But I’d like to know that the Holy Spirit is a practical promise for my life and not merely an imaginary number to balance the doctrinal equation of Trinity.  

Luckily, in today’s Gospel lesson from St. John, Jesus Himself offers what I think is a really helpful starting point for embracing a more practical Pentecostalism in our lives.  

As part of His farewell prayer to His disciples, Jesus promises not to leave the disciples abandoned upon his departure.  Even though He’s going away (see: Feast of the Ascension - last Sunday), reinforcements are on the way.  Help will arrive in the form of the Holy Spirit, who Jesus here refers to as “the Advocate.”  And the Advocate will help, He continues, by leading them into all truth; by proving the world wrong “about sin and righteousness and judgement.”  

Notice here that Jesus doesn’t mention speaking in tongues or anything externally supernatural.  Instead, the words Jesus uses here sound much more to me like the language of discernment.  As if to say, “there’s a certain way that the world thinks about these really important things - sin, righteousness, judgment - and it’s not the whole truth.  The Spirit will help you see rightly.  I’m sending you the Spirit so you can learn to see grace and mercy and love rightly in the midst of a world of lies and half-truths.”  

And why exactly do we need such a vision, these “Gospel goggles?”  Jesus drops another hint when he makes the powerful pronouncement: “about judgement, because the ruler of this world has been condemned.”  The ruler of this world, in scripture, is none other than Satan.  And in ancient Hebrew, the word Satan actually means “the Accuser.”  

So track with me here: Jesus has just drawn up a mini metaphor of the state of reality.  It’s like a courtroom, and we are the defendants.  One the one side stands the Prosecuting Attorney, the Accuser, the one who makes the rules of this world.  On the other side, fighting for our freedom, is the Advocate, the Holy Spirit.

Something about living a practical Pentecostalism means grasping this dichotomy between the Accuser and the Advocate.  

And it’s a matter of life and death that we do.  Because if we’re honest with ourselves, we know what the world according to the Accuser looks like.  It’s the world we live in when we leave church and head back to the workplace.  The world where we operate on principles of fear and scarcity.  Where things are valued according to success and failure.  Where we have to compete with one another for approval, coerce one another for control, and persecute one another for power.

The world that the Accuser shapes in his twisted image is one in which there is no freedom, only the chains of calculation and measurement.  It’s a world where some human beings are deemed more valuable because of their paycheck or their assets, while others are condemned to poverty and prison because of their race or their neighborhood or their orientation.  

In the Accuser’s world, we don’t get a second-chance at marriage because that first divorce means we lost our chance at happiness.  In the Accuser’s world, you are worthy of notice depending on how many Facebook friends and likes you have received, and anonymity and rejection are hells reserved for the unpopular the unbeautiful.  In the Accuser’s world, you are judged righteous because of your accomplishments, and you are a sinner if you fail to play the game of blame, shame, slander and guilt that you’ve been rigged into since the day you started breathing.

We’ve all felt the lash of an Accuser’s scorn.  And, if we’re honest, we’ve also benefitted from serving as the Accuser’s informants and co-conspirators.  In the Accuser’s world, grace and freedom and love are beautiful ideals to aspire to on a Sunday afternoon - but are left behind as mere sentiment and weakness when we enter into the real world. 

The Accuser’s world is not the world God intended.  It is the world Christ came to destroy so that the world God loves can be reborn.  And that is the promise when Jesus declares that the “ruler of this world has been condemned.”  The Accuser is a liar.  The Cross of Christ says that the Accuser is a liar.  The Advocate is given to us so that we can remember who we are and whose we are.

No truth has made a bigger difference in my own spiritual life than the discovery that the Advocate is not the Accuser.  A little over two years ago, I was brought to the point of having to make some major changes in my life before my decisions destroyed me.  The very next day after finally surrendering, I heard this same Gospel lesson preached.  I heard the Holy Spirit called “the Advocate.”  And I suddenly realized: that voice of accusation I’d hear my whole life - it wasn’t God’s.  The voice of shame, that told me I was finished because of my failures; that I would never be good enough for grace; that I was defined by my doubts and my destructive choices - this voice was not God’s, and was never God’s.  It was the Accuser’s.  And it was a lie.

Which meant that I had never actually really heard or listened to God’s actual voice.  Tears of relief and amazement rushed over me as a I realized that God’s Spirit is an Advocate - that God wanted the best for me, wanted the encourage and inspire me to let go of the chains in my life, not to condemn me, but to set me free.  That God loved me and had always loved me and was always in my corner, fighting for me and speaking words of kindness and forgiveness on my behalf.  

The voice of truth and the truth of the Spirit is one of Advocacy, not Accusation.  

And we live, not in the Accuser’s world, but the world of the Advocate.  Just as, at the creation of the world, God took the dust and the darkness and formed it into a world, and breathed the Holy Spirit into that dust and gave it life, so, in the Advocate’s world, God is taking our dead ends and our failures and our brokenness and our shame and gathered them into this body, this community, this new creation, this church, and breathing the Spirit of Life into them.  

In the Advocate’s world, shame does not exist, only second-chances and fresh improvisations.  There is no condemnation, but possibility, and potential, and a new world about to dawn.  In the Advocate’s world, we can live, not as if tonight might be our last night on earth, but as if tomorrow might be the first day of the rest of our lives.  In the Advocate’s world, each of you, you and you, and me, has a gift and a contribution to make, and God’s Spirit is swirling about like the wind, waiting to inspire you and breathe the glory of your beauty into the midst of the darkness of the Accuser’s lies and declare a more splendorous truth.

The Holy Spirit is our Advocate, and this means that, truly, God is FOR US, on our side, and desires to see the world flourish and become wild and free, as God first made it to be.  If you’ve ever had an advocate in your life - a coach, a teacher, a friend, or someone else - then you know what it feels like to suddenly come alive when someone believes in you.  Well, even if you’ve never heard such a voice before, consider yourself informed this day: God believes in you.  God has a plan for you.  God has a gift to give the world for you.  And God will advocate for you and through you, in order to bless the world with the goodness with which God created you.

Because, see, in the Advocate’s world, there is no competition or scarcity, only communion and abundance.  Which means we are freed from having to play the game of life as if grace for you means scraps for me.  God’s body, the Church, is called to be a community that Advocates.  Believing God’s promise of abundance to be true, we no longer fear using our words, our actions and our lives to advocate for and encourage others.  We are free to live in the real world - God’s world - no matter what the Accuser’s lies may say.

And believe me, while it’s a far cry from speaking in tongues, when we speak with the grammar of gift and grace, it’s going to sound like we’re drunk at nine in the morning like those first disciples.  It’s a language of poetry and possibility that makes no sense to the cold computational calculus of the Accuser’s logic.  In a world where some believe that black voices forfeit their right to be heard because of their rage, the Church advocates: listen to them, because therein, you might just hear the voice of God calling us to repentance.  

In a world that predicts prison bed counts based on the failed test scores of third graders and consigns struggling children to lives of crime and poverty, it will sound like a rushing wind to suggest that perhaps our corporations would do well to invest in these same lives, because maybe, just maybe, their resilience, creativity and experience of oppression might be more valuable to a company and a world than another good boy in a suit and tie.

The Gospel of the Advocate will sound strange to a world addicted to the syrupy sound of the Accuser’s lies.  And yet, it is precisely this Gospel, and this Spirit of Advocacy, that is the Church’s calling.  It’s our mission, and it’s for each one of us.  

And you don’t need to prophecy before the masses to embrace your anointing for Practical Pentecostalism.  This week, maybe it starts with something simple.  Take this practice suggested by my good friend Rev. Keith Anderson, the Lutheran church’s social media guru.  What if, say, for every one facebook post or tweet about ourselves, we used our bandwidth to then offer ten posts highlighting the gifts and contributions of others?  What if the Church stopped worrying about winning the Accuser’s measurement game - and simply lived the freedom of getting to live a life of encouraging and discovering and midwifing the beauty being born in our fellow children of God all around us?

Practical Pentecostalism is, in that sense, deceptively simple.  And not a little bit challenging.  It means, like Puffy Face the chicken, never accepting the chains and the locked gates of the coop as the final word.  It means constantly inviting ourselves to self-awareness: am I acting out of trust in the Accuser’s promises right now, or out of a conviction of the Gospel of the Advocate?  Are my words and actions and my life helping to lock doors and box in God’s children - or to break locks, magnify possibility, and unleash the potential freedom in the world and the people that God loves?

This week, courageously try playing the Advocate game.  Ask God: who has been an advocate in my life?  How did that person advocate for me, and how did that make me feel?  Where am I calling to advocate on someone else’s behalf this week?  And then, ask for the grace and the faith and the wild inspiration of the Holy Spirit to help love their life into being.  

Like Puffy face, we are called to let no chains constrain us.  We are children of God.  We are made free by the Cross which has condemned the condemnation of the Accuser, and opened the doors to a world in which grace and peace are the way things really are.  This is Practical Pentecostalism.  Go out, in whatever language necessary, and proclaim it to the world.  Live it into the world.  Live.  In Jesus Name.    Amen.  

The Tao of Lent

"The Tao of Lent"

Rowan Williams: "The baptized person is not only in the middle of human suffering and muddle, but in the middle of the love and delight of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  That surely is one of the most extraordinary mysteries of being Christian.  We are in the middle of two things that seem quite contradictory: in the middle of the heart of God, the ecstatic joy of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit; and in the middle of a world of threat, suffering, sin and pain.  And because Jesus has taken his stand right in the middle of those two realities, that is where we take ours.  As he says, 'Where I am, there will my servant be also (John 12.26).'"

(from Being Christian: Baptism, Bible, Eucharist, Prayer - p7)

Transfiguring Lent: Resources for Preparing in the Snow

Transfiguring Lent: Resources for Preparing in the Snow

Feast of the Transfiguration

15 February 2015

Gospel: Mark 9.2-9

This weekend, Rochester was visited by Winter Storm Neptune, causing many to cancel services.  This post includes a homily and two original songs based in the Feast of the Transfiguration, and with an orientation towards preparing for Lent.  If you or folks from your community missed church today,  I humbly offer these as a possible way to connect with God today.  

Unsure if South Wedge Mission would share their fate, my friend Matt Townsend of the Episcopal Diocese of Rochester and I went out to nearby Highland Park to record a short homily about snow, beauty, disruption, and the ways that Transfiguration makes Lent into a time to "inhale, and be rejuvenated by the grace of God as we seek more life."  

Also, please enjoy samples of SWM's two latest worship songs.  Inspired by Hindu kirtan music and by the Taize community, I take a simple word or phrase from scripture, tradition, or literature, and then we sing it repeatedly.  The goal is not content-focused, but communion-oriented - we hope that by sinking deeply into the repetitions and the words, the music creates a space for us to enjoy our intention of being in community with God and with one another.

The first piece, "St. Iraneus Song," is based on the church father's famous quotation that "the glory of God is a human being fully alive."  The full text: 

The Glory of God

is God's children

fully alive

and full of life

We will sing of the beauty

and the duty of delight

We will dance in the light 

The second, "Eagles' Wings," was written for last week's text from Isaiah 40.21-31, but also speaks about the process of Lent - one, as the 12-step groups note, is about "progress, not perfection." Full text:

Arise Beloved Child
and run and not grow faint
Shine like the rising sun
and fly on eagles' wings



Grace, peace and more life unto you!

"Fred Phelps IS Your Cousin, By the Way:" Thoughts in Response to the President's National Prayer Breakfast Remarks

I acknowledge, own, lament, and despise the violence inherent in my Christian family's history. Within the half-century, Christians have lynched Black bodies and then taken pictures they shared as postcards, driven GLBTQ youth to suicide, to be tortured and murdered with hate speech from the pulpit, and generally, been prime examples of everything wrong with mis-used religion. I am a part of this family, and this tradition. There is no escaping that. Fred Phelps and the Grand Wizard of the KKK and MLK Jr are all part of my family. We're all part of the best and worst that humanity has offered.  To deny this is to already miss the point of the cross.  

Which is why the (mostly) liberal celebration of President Obama's brief comments at the National Prayer Breakfast calling Christians to remember their own history of violence has been hard for me to stomach. Not the President's comments - they seemed appropriately fitting, and came AFTER a round condemnation of the current violence perpetrated by ISIS. No issues there.  

Here's where I'm feeling torn:

1) When we condemn Christian violence, is it to imply a distance between we "enlightened modern liberal" Christians and either the barbarians of the past or the conservative rubes of the present? Ie are we somehow, tongue-in-cheek, implying that "of course WE know better?" Which is, I think, to miss the point of the presidents' address. Those who have suffered and are suffering don't need us to chide, moralize, or simply crown ourselves with a different brand of triumphalism. They need us to stop seeking crowns int he first place. 

2) ISIS is committing mass torture and murder against not only Christians, but also fellow Muslims, Zoroastrians, and seculars who refuse to submit to forced conversion (sometimes pre-emptive of that). I think the President's timing was great in waiting until after he had condemned said violence before turning introspective. At the same, time, brutal mass murder is being perpetrated, with media and political impunity. I often feel that there's a kind of "she deserved to get raped" mentality from people who think that Christianity's failures in the past mean that we somehow have to ignore the violence done against children, women, and men in the present. Not saying that this is people's intent. But the inescapable level of indifference and even apathy in the media, in government, and in the churches about what is going on is horrible - and it feels like people are using Obama's speech as justification to continue this. I repeat - Christian, Muslim, Zoroastrian, and secular CHILDREN are being raped, tortured, crucified, sold into slavery, abused, and murdered. And a simple google-search will show you the extent of the world's ability to give-a-shit. 

3) President Obama is one of those Christians who has and IS continuing to commit mass violence - using drones, the military, torture, etc - in the name of religion - the ideology of the religion of America. He is not a prophet - he's like any of us - a sinner-saint who gets it right sometimes, fails miserable in others, and most of the time, I think, is just trying to do his best to do some good amidst all of the impossible decisions he has to make. I'm less concerned with the President specifically here - and more concerned at how quickly Christians are jumping on his words as if somehow he's revealing something we don't all already know - and willingly participate in on a daily basis thorough our consumer choices, our taxes rendered, and our allegiance pledged.  There is no Christian hand unstained by the blood of innocents.  We are ALL still part of the problem - not just those conservatives/liberals/anyone-different-than-us. It's why, ostensibly, we need Christ in the first place.

I think we as Christians need to repent each and every single day of the violence of our family. But it is OUR family's violence - we don't get to pick and choose who our relatives are. And that should humble us, as well as keep us from self-righteousness, or from the kind of self-flagellating guilt that keeps us from acknowledging that many of our children - and the children of other faiths or lack-thereof- still need us to work together for their sake.

Imagine if we used all of the Facebook posts, all of the vitriol and outrage, all of the inspiration and all of the hope inspired by the President's speech, as an actual call to conversion, rather than condemnation; as a call to action rather than avoidance; as a call to active non-violence and love, rather than name-calling and lecturing.  I'm not sure religious people would not still be shitty to others.  I do think it's what Jesus would have wanted in His Name.    

Sermon: "Listen," or, "On the Sound of the Tearing Heavens"

"Listen" or "On the Sound of the Tearing Heavens"

Photo by Matt Townsend

I preach extemporaneously - 
this is an edited/remembered transcript of homilies proclaimed at:

South Wedge Mission, Rochester, New York
St. Paul's Lutheran Church, Pittsford, New York

30 November 2014
First Sunday of Advent
Day Text: Isaiah 64.1-9

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I’d like to invite you to hear and once more consider the words of the prophet Isaiah this day.

Do not listen to them with the cold detachment of a scholar, or the savy of a media-saturated millenial, or a cynicism of a skeptical critic.

Try to hear them from within.  From within the broken hearts of people lamenting the loss of justice for their dead son.  From within the war-torn streets wracked by looting and rioting, by destruction and despair.  From within a community whose parents could tell them stories of broken dreams, burning crosses, and lynching trees.

(At the SWM service, we also took time to listen to a recording by the Rev. Timothy Flemming, Sr. of the Old-Meter hymn, I Been ‘Buked and I Been Scorn” - hear a recording in the same style by Mahalia Jackson here.  Thanks to the Rev. Julien Pridgen for sharing his heritage with me here.)

Listen.

1 O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, 
so that the mountains would quake at your presence-- 

2 as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil-- 
to make your name known to your adversaries, 
so that the nations might tremble at your presence! 

3 When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect, 
you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence. 

4 From ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived, 
no eye has seen any God besides you, who works for those who wait for him. 

5 You meet those who gladly do right, those who remember you in your ways. 
But you were angry, and we sinned; because you hid yourself we transgressed. 

6 We have all become like one who is unclean, 
and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. 
We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. 

7 There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; 
for you have hidden your face from us, 
and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity. 

8 Yet, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; 
we are all the work of your hand. 

9 Do not be exceedingly angry, O Lord, and do not remember iniquity forever. 
Now consider, we are all your people.

Advent is not really about waiting for sweet baby Jesus.  He’s already been born.  Done that.  The manger is emptied of its precious cargo.  

He took that body to the cross, and the cross is empty too.  Christ has come.  Christ has died.  Christ is risen.  

But the lynching tree is not empty.

Christ will come again.    

That’s what Advent is about.  Christ.  Coming again.  We desperately need Christ to come again.  And we should be terrified.    

“OH that you would tear the heavens apart!”  cries the prophet.  What if he’s not just referring to some Percy Jackson-era conception of cosmology?  What if he’s talking about our heavens?  The ones that we have built out of our own efforts.  The ones we turn to for protection.  The ones that surround and salute and sanctify the privileges we enjoy.  The ones we look to for justification.  

What if the heavens that need tearing open, this Advent and every Advent, are our own shoddy approximations of the real thing?  The pearly gated communities and cocoons we weave around ourselves?  The heavens that are being torn apart by looters and rioters and the cries of outrage and the calls for justice - because they are the ones we have refused to tear down ourselves?  

Listen.  This is not a word in response to Ferguson.  It’s a word demanded by the proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  Who was born into the manger, homeless, living under occupation, exposed, dripping with the fluids and blood of his teenage mother, mixed with the blood of the innocents massacred by a tyrant terrified of change.  It’s demanded by the cross, the first lynching tree in a long and tattered history in which it would be used more often by Christians than against them.  It’s demanded by St. Paul, who in 2 Corinthians lays down our orders to “practice the ministry of reconciliation.”  

It’s not a new calling.  Just an old and very much neglected one.  

Advent should terrify us.  Because in it, we await the day when Christ will come again.  To set right not only what we could not set right ourselves.  But to set right what we refused to set right ourselves.  Because that’s the irony in all this: even in an age when we congratulate ourselves on our liberalism, our progressivism, or our conservatism - when poll after poll celebrates the desires of young adults to “get involved and help others” - when it seems like it’s enough for us to just “be good people and not hurt others” - history finds ways to insult us with our utterly inability to do any better than the Roman soldiers 2000 years ago.  

Because less than half a century ago, across this country, Christian men and women still gathered around lamp posts and flag poles on which hung the “strange fruit” of Black bodies.  Children were paraded before it like a demonic Eucharistic adoration.  Photographs were taken, and postcards were sent: “look what we did last Sunday, hugs and kisses.”  

Because today, despite calls for the removal of the Common Core, more parents are removing their students to the sanctuary of the suburban schools, lamenting their own lack of resolve, while silently thanking whatever power they pray to that their child won’t be exposed to the “failure of the city schools” - code to mean, “at least they’ll be harassed by other white children with iPhones instead of students of color with Eubonics.”  

Because today, we’d rather post hash-tags and well-meaning Facebook posts and selfies of us pretending to be assaulted by the police, instead of taking our bodies to the pews of Black churches and other places of worship and gathering to simply listen - to listen to the voices of lament, the pleas for recognition, the wild re-incarnation of the prophet Isaiah, who cry before a deaf world: “oh, that you would tear open the heavens and come down!”

 The world is not right.  The rules are not fair.  We know it should be different.  We have utterly failed to cash in on the promises of our best intentions and deepest sentiments.  All our best efforts at being nice, good people who want to make help others?  Nothing, in the end, but "filthy rags."

It is not my intention to make you feel guilted today into taking action.  It is not my intention to somehow imply that I am any less racist or more engaged than my colleagues who choose not to preach on this today.  It’s not my intention to promote an agenda of hatred towards the police, most of whom work with honor and integrity at a thankless job filled with life-and-death no-win decisions.

It is not my intention to say that looting and pillaging is justified.  But let me be clear, and please hear me say this: it is absolutely my intention that, today, and whenever possible, we must make it a priority to hear the cry of the Lord Jesus Christ rising from the modern day cross, demanding us to listen as it laments: “my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

We cannot afford not to hear this call this Advent.  We cannot afford to justify ourselves because of our hard work, or our respectability, or our commitment to law and order.  As Isaiah makes very clear to us, no one is justified before God.  God is the potter; we are the clay.  The Gospel we have fallen short of makes plain and clear the fault lines and cracks in our delusions of generosity and justice.  

But we can also ill afford to avoid this call this Advent because without it, we cannot truly hear the Gospel as the Good News we so desperately need.  We need our heavens torn apart - our false heavens where “fairness” is a set of rules devised by the winners to the exclusion of the losers.  False heavens where we have the luxury to change the channel from am impassioned speech to the fourth re-run of our favorite zombie show.  False heavens where we can afford to make commitments to justice we break as soon as something better comes along, while leaving our neighbors with the second-rate hand-me-downs of yesterday’s sentimentality.

Because it is a blessing, brothers and sisters - it is a gift, the gift, that we are being prepared to receive in Advent - to have our idols smashed.  It is such a profound and powerful present for God to reveal to us that the heaven we thought we had achieved is actually a luxury suite in hell.  It is the very grace of God to be shown that, beyond our fears and our excuses and our avoidances, there is a bigger heaven, a new earth, a better kingdom, one in which the prophets’ words are not prediction but pronouncement: “we are all your children.”

This is not something to vote on.  Or to hashtag.  Or to consider.  It is not even something that has to be accomplished.  It is a fact of creation that each and every single human being is the unrepeatable expression of God’s creative love.  Each and every single human person has been blessed with the mission that follows from the manger - to be agents of reconciliation, and prophets of the new creation, in which all live by the politics of peace and the economy of grace.  If our communities do not reflect this yet, it’s not because we haven’t “progressed” that far yet - it’s that we haven’t kept up with the speed of God’s love.  

The Good News is that God loves us, loves this world, far too much to leave us as we are - prisoners, all of us, to the pseudo-paradises we have built.  Using our communities, our voices, our privilege to be the amplifiers of the voices crying out in the wilderness is not a zero-sum game.  The more the Gospel is proclaimed, the more we all can receive and live from our truest selves.  It might not make us comfortable or happy.  But it will make us more free.  All of us.  More free.

And I think it starts with simply being willing to listen.  To admit that Christ's coming again means we cannot do this all on our own.  To consider that maybe the voice of God calling us to repentance and conversion might be coming from the same place it's always been found - the cross.  And the lynching tree.

So here’s my Advent challenge to you: during this season, each morning when you rise, make it a point to ask God: help me hear a voice I’ve ignored today.  Maybe it’s reading an article from an opposing view.  Maybe it’s going to a protest, or worshipping at a Black church, and doing so without judgement or evaluation.  Try to hear; try to listen.  

And it’s not limited merely to race.  We can all afford to Tevo that favorite show to make time to have dinner with people close to us whose stories we barely know.  Maybe you have an employee at work who’s always excluded, and could use a listening ear.  Maybe it’s spending time hearing stories with the guys under the bridge, or going to view the hauntingly beautiful AIDS memorial quilts at Equal Grounds.  Start where you're at.  Just don't stay there.    

I want to close with an experience I had just a few days ago.  As some of you know, I’ve been trying to do my best to post about happenings in Ferguson.  I had sat down to write our weekly email, with a special “pastoral letter” about things.  As I was just finishing, my Pages program crashed.  No lie.  It’s never happened before.  I couldn’t believe it.  Surely, some racist demon had shut down my prophetic portal in an attempt to personally silence me!

After some very un-prophetic choice four letter words, I walked to Equal Grounds to cool off and re-write the letter.  As I entered the shop, who should I encounter but Deacon and Paulette and Kelly, the current leaders of Unity Fellowship Church.  You know, the Black church that shares our building with us.  The Black church that, in all of this and over the past year or so, we’ve barely engaged with at all.  At the coffee shop.  Right then.

UFC is not only a Black church.  It’s a Black GLBTQ community of liberation.  They’ve drawn a double ticket of oppression within their home context.  They’ve been without a pastor since Spring, and have seen the community dwindle to the point where they aren’t regularly worshipping at SWM.  But, as we sat and talked and shared coffee, Kelly and Paulette shared their burning desire to still “do church.”  They shared their idea to start a fourth-Sunday meal for single parents in the neighborhood.  Would we be willing to let them use our kitchen for that?

Now my four-letter words were in amazement.  We’ve been praying and discerning recently how SWM might be called to engage our neglected neighbors more.  We also happen to do a Supper liturgy every third Sunday.  Except ours is usually only us.  Just like that, from one little accidental conversation, we found ourselves agreeing to pray together about the possibility of SWM and UFC regularly using fourth Sundays as joint outreach-service ministries together.  

Maybe that spirit that crashed my email wasn’t so demonic after all.  Maybe it was the Holy Spirit, saying, “Matthew, shut up, and go listen to what I have to say.”

Listen.  It's the sound of the heavens tearing.  And its terrifying.  But it's also the sound of the Gospel.  Proclaiming freedom.  Proclaiming a new creation.  Proclaiming "we are all Your children."  It is the sound of the spirituals and the blues.  The sound of riots and of revelation.  It is the sound of the prophets and of the poor.  It is calling us out.  And calling us into freedom.

Christ has died.  Christ is risen.  Christ is coming again.

Listen!

Sermon: Happy Hen Party Mix

"Happy Hen Party Mix"


Edited transcript of sermon preached at South Wedge Mission
Rochester, New York
11 May 2014
Fourth Sunday of Easter

~

Day Text: Acts 2.42-47

42 They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. 43 Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. 44 All who believed were together and had all things in common; 45 they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. 46 Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, 47 praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.

~

We’re taking a slight detour on our journey through First Peter during the Season of Easter to look at one of the most remarkable texts in the New Testament.  In times when the church is struggling, its fashionable to say, “if only we could be as radical as the ‘early church,’ before it got so institutionalized.”  I agree it’s radical - and I’d love for us to look closely at the snippet today, to see what it has to teach us about our Easter exploration of “practicing resurrection.”    

Generally, when I hear people talk about the early church, I’ve found they’re referring, somewhat romantically, to verses 44 and 45, how they basically started history’s first soviet commune, “holding all things in common,” and selling their possessions to meet each others’ needs.  It’s the kind of hippie nirvana that, St. Francis aside, has seldom materialized in the sad history of God’s church.  But it’s awe-inspiring to imagine: what if we too could simplify?  What if we too could be that radical in our giving and our sharing?

What I’m also interested in, though, is not just that they gave, or what they gave, or whether it was “the first 10% of their income” or whether they were promised tenfold prosperity in return.  What I found beautiful is the community in whose story this radical generosity is practiced.  Such powerful gratitude is possible, Luke seems to say, because of who they understood themselves to be - whose they are, and who they were to one another.

Look at the text with me.  We start off with some standard churchy stuff in verse 42, where they’re learning at the feet of Jesus’ original disciples, praying together, doing the communion thing - all that good “Word and Sacrament” Lutheran-y worship stuff that generally makes church church.  We’re told in verse 43 that some of them were even doing miracles, which helped their PR.  But what’s vital here is that their community is centered around a certain story of who they are together.  Worshipping the God revealed in the Eucharist and in the story of Scripture - hearing stories from those who knew Jesus personally, and passing them on to newer members of the family.  Communities rally around all sorts of stories; this community is practiced at reminding one another who God is, and who they are in God.

Then in verse 46, we are told they take this worship public.  They are in the temple together, every single day, and that they are also starting to meet for meals in their homes.  Maybe they stick around to watch Game of Thrones afterwards, or play Dominion or whatever.  Point is, they don’t just keep it to themselves.  What starts as worship becomes a way of life.  It permeates and permutates who they are in all aspects of life.  Public as well as private.

Which is no small thing at the time.  Because about the only thing to be gained by worshipping a crucified revolutionary as Lord in the midst of an Empire whose leader proclaimed himself the only legit heir to that title…was to paint a bigger target on yourself.  To gather publicly in the temple was basically telling the Romans, “here’s an extra-large bag of lion food for the area, gift wrapped and easy to find!”  To worship in your house, and not in the secret safety of the catacombs, was to say, in effect, “we don’t care if you find us, because we believe our household, and our public lives, revolve around a different Lord - which means that Caesar is not.”

So it’s this community, centered on living out an alternative Gospel, in worship and in every day life - and living it out together, regardless of consequences or even of death - it’s this church that is able to share their possessions, and also, to sell what they have when need arises.

You have to be pretty committed to your Gospel - and to your fellow Gospel-ers - to  give up so much.  So much time.  So much safety.  So much capital.  So much of everything.  

See, that’s what I think is so radical about the early church, particularly against the backdrop of our commitment-phobic age.  Maybe some of you have seen that ATT commerical, where various young adult-ish folks share with almost a prideful glee that “commitment is not for me,” before, strangely, committing to ATT’s no-commitment plan.  We don’t know where we’re going to live, who we’re going to love, or what we’re going to believe even in a few weeks.  So commitment is a pretty dirty, difficult word.

And here are a group of people, so willing to commit to each other - on the basis of God’s story of how beloved people are - that they are willing to sacrifice ownership of goods.  Willing to worship publicly in life-or-death circumstances.  Willing to give extravagantly - and as verse 46 tells us, “with glad and generous hearts.”  They delight in each other.  They have joy in one another.  And that’s what people noticed.

People were willing to give generously of themselves, their time and their possessions, because they delighted in one another, committed to one another, and basically, went all-in on each other.  And that makes it slightly easier for me to be able to talk about hard things like “money and church” and “where we spend our time” and “what kind of commitment do we make to each other” with you today.  Because at the end of the day, its not promises of prosperity or moral arguments about what we should or should not do or whatever that compel us to give.  

Giving, sharing, and supporting happen naturally - in fact, they are done willing, just natural overflowing of our relationships - when we are committed deeply to each other, and learn to delight and dwell richly in one another’s lives.  We give freely to what we most care about, what we treasure, where our hearts are.

Take this (holds up bag): “Happy Hen Treats.”  I was at Tractor Supply yesterday, and of course, my chickens really needed a special treat.  And it’s not just bird seed.  It’s corn and mealworms!  No, really, there are actual meal worms in there!  Because, you know, it says on the bag “PARTY MIX!”  My chickens deserve a party mix.  

Now, you laugh and nod, because if you’ve ever been a pet owner, then chances are, you have purchased something even more ridiculous and more expensive for your beloved creature!  AND, if you are a mother, or a father, or an aunt or uncle or certainly a grandparent, then you’ve also probably spoiled the children in your life, “just because.”  Right?  We do extravagant, ridiculous things for those we love. 

Because we want the best for them, right?  I want my little chicken ladies to enjoy a little party mix in their lives.  I want my kids to go to college if they like and graduate without as much debt.  Because I love them dearly.  I invest in them every day.  I am committed to them.  They delight me.

And I think its a similar dynamic when it comes to stewardship, and the practice of gratitude and generosity, in a radical Christian community.  We want to give to those we love.  And when we invest our time in deep relationships with one another, giving is not really even a question.  Its not an option.  Its a no-brainer.  

But of course, our brains often get in the way.  Along with our desires, and our addictions, our libidos and our egos.  Because even though I love my wife, and my kids, and my dog, and my chickens, and my church more than anything else, I also love myself more than anything else.  I’d love to give freely and generously to loved ones - but I also have lots of things I want for me too.  

And giving means I have to become vulnerable.  Not just that my money or my my time might be spent in ways that I can’t control.  It also means that I might not get what I really want.  If I sacrifice for my kids, I might never have the time to go out and find people with whom to start a band.  If I spend more time at church, I might not get to see every single episode of Game of Thrones as it happens.  If I share my heart with strangers, they might stomp on it, and betray it, and stomp it to shreds.

And see, that’s the rub.  Investing our time, and our gifts, and practicing gratitude and generosity, its a risk.  That’s why its called an “offering,” a “sacrifice.”  Because we don’t get to control the outcome.  We don’t really get to control the in-come either.  Because in church, we don’t just get to be in community with the selected few that we would choose.  We don’t get to set our weekly and monthly and yearly schedule to our own rhythms. We don’g get to pursue only our own interests and desires anymore.  Because we don’t get to choose our own story anymore.

But.  I wonder if that’s why the disciples of the early church seem so damn joyful.  Because I can’t help but imagine that, if they spent that much time together, in circumstances of life and death, that in some ways, the returns they received, the blessings that came back to them, were precisely those deepened relationships which made life worth living and sacrificing.  

I wonder if, in sharing each other’s vulnerabilities and failures, they also received the blessing of discovering how failure and betrayal are not the last words.  How conflict could be a rich source of continued returns in terms of wisdom, and deeper friendships.

I wonder if, in refusing to worship Caesar or their own desires, and instead, clinging to the story of the Gospel of the New Creation, they found that the time and the status they clung to so fervently, evaporated, leaving behind so much free time and free energy and fresh imagination to spend in coming up with creative, life-giving, radical displays of love for one another.

I wonder if, hearing the story week in and week out of a God who sold all God’s possessions, leaving glory and power and eternity behind and giving the proceeds, his flesh and blood, to the poor and needy sinners desperate for love - I wonder if hearing this story, and realizing that they were the ones who were receiving God’s generosity and grace day in and day out - I wonder if knowing themselves as loved and worthy of love and capable of sharing love - I wonder if this is what gave them the patience, the joy, and the generosity, to commit to one another in this life, and to settle for nothing less than a beloved community where all needs were met.

See, that’s the thing.  We don’t “invest” our valuables and possessions in order to collect interest on them later.  We give them away because in doing so, we open up even more space for even more life.  Not just life for ourselves.  But life together.  With the actual people we have actually been given.  The ones who are here.  The ones with whom we get to image and participate in the very life of our relational, Triune God.

We delight in each other because we realize that this kind of life together is truly LIFE together.  It is to be alive.  It is to be living in the pocket of reality’s rhythms.  

It becomes a kind of party mix.  Corn, mealworms, chickens and all.  All of us.  Our darkness and our light.  Our possessions and our poverty.  It becomes a mix of friends and foes, good and bad, life and death, pain and prosperity.  

If we as a church - and if the church in general - would commit to just loving, and discovering, and delighting, and being faithful to the people who are already here - the people God is gathering - rather than worrying about who is not here, or how little money we have, or other aspects of an economy of scarcity - and if we as a church started letting funding follow faithfulness - started to live full of gratitude and delight because we are given a family, a fellowship, a story, and a song to commit to - than I imagine that the rest will follow of its own.  

Just look at the passage from Acts.  We are told “they had the favor of all the people.”  Not because they were hip, or because they were rich, or because they had a compelling demographic marketing strategy.  It was because of how they worshipped.  And how they loved each other in a committed, generous, extravagant way.  

When we give, and when we commit ourselves to joy, delight, and to one another, the rest will truly follow.  And the returns will too.  Our needs will be provided for.  And the gifts we will receive…will be those who come to us, longing to join the dance, and with their own mealworms and corn kernels to add to the party mix.

So practice resurrection.  Love someone who does not deserve it, as the Poet tells us.  And give freely.  Of your stuff.  But also, of your self.  Amen.   

Postlude: Those who stayed to view Brother Sun, Sister Moon after service observed that, as striking as the Franciscans commitment to poverty and simplicity was, even more so was how much they sang together, and supported one another, and cared for those who were in need.  Funding follows freedom and faithfulness.  

Sermon: This Story is True, or, "Westeros Withers, and the Bronies Fall..."

"This Story is True, or, 'Westeros May Wither and the Bronies Fall...'"

Preached at South Wedge Mission

Rochester, New York

4 May 2014

Third Sunday of Easter

~

Text: 1 Peter 1.22-2.3

(second sermon of a season-long series and study of 1 Peter)

22 Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart. 23 You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God. 

24 For
“All flesh is like grass
and all its glory like the flower of grass.
The grass withers,
and the flower falls, 
25 but the word of the Lord endures forever.” 
That word is the good news that was announced to you.


2:1 Rid yourselves, therefore, of all malice, and all guile, insincerity, envy, and all slander. 2 Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation— 3 if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.

~

Grace Mercy and Peace is yours from the Triune God.  Amen.

There’s plenty of good stuff to chew on in this week’s passage from 1 Peter.  I love verse 22’s invitation - command, really - to “love one another deeply from the heart.”  Eugene Peterson translates it in the Message thus: “love each other as if your life depended on it.”  We could spend a few decades trying to tease out just what that means for ourselves, our community here, and in our lives in the world.

But what also caught my eye this week was the next verse, 23: “you have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring Word of God.”  It’s followed by that beautiful poetry about the grass withering and the flower falling, and the Word of the Lord enduring forever - familiar especially if you grew up Baptist or Methodist, where it’s often used as a prayer before reading the Gospel or the sermon.  Gorgeous imagery.

Now, a caveat: St. Peter is not talking about the Bible here.  He’s not telling us that we just need to believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, or that the whole thing is literal, or that if you just read your Bible for fifteen minutes a day, then you’re “really” born again.  That’s not “the Word.”

Rather, the Word Peter is extolling with poetry and joy is the Gospel.  The Good News (see verse 25b).  First and foremost, the Word is nothing and no one other than the person, Jesus Christ.  Incarnate and accompanying.  Crucified and resurrected.  When we celebrate the Word that makes us new, we’re not talking about your theory of the inspiration of Scripture.  If you are, worship that theory.  We are talking about the King of the Universe who makes things new.

The Word is also the story that we tell about this King.  It’s the proclamation.  It’s the Gospel.  See, back in the day, a Gospel proclamation was an announcement.  Usually, it was imperial.  The Romans would conquer your kingdom, and then a herald would roll into town, set up in the public square, and say, “Good News!  You are all now part of the most glorious empire that has ever existed!  We have graciously allowed you to be a part of it - so pay your taxes and don’t rebel or we will crush you like worms.  Have a nice day, welcome to the club!”  Essentially, you’ve got a new story.  You’re now part of a new history.  Rome’s history.  You have been assimilated.

Which makes Peter’s utter commitment to the Word, the Gospel, of Jesus, all the more striking.  Because it’s not just theology or theory or a call to Bible Study.  It’s a radical political statement.  It’s a different Gospel than what the Empire proclaims.  It’s a revolution.    

Because our stories tell us who we are.  When someone asks you about yourself, you generally tell a story.  "I'm Tim, and I'm from Gates, and I've lived here my whole life," or, “I am Ser Jamie Lannister, called Kingslayer, of House Lannister, son of Tywin, etc.”  When Rome proclaims a Gospel over you, they are telling you who you are.  You belong to Rome.  Your life is about Rome.  Your value is created by Rome.  Your future is Roman.  

So when Peter says, “you have been born anew through the living and enduring Word of God,” he’s making a similar proclamation.  He’s serving as a herald - a witness - to the Kingdom of God.  He is essentially telling the people of the early church that everything they have been told about reality is a lie.  That Jesus, the crucified Lamb is King.  Which means that Caesar is not.  Which means that nothing else, and no one else, gets to tell them who they are.  Except for the God of grace and mercy and love and peace revealed in the resurrection of the Christ.

It’s such a mind-blowing declaration that even the Matrix movies are tame in comparison.  Because it means that we are called to radically reimagine everything we ever knew about ourselves.  Or thought we knew.  It means, truly, that everything old has passed away.  That everything is a new creation.  That this story, this Gospel, this “Word of God,” is either insanely, beautifully true - that all of humanity, all of creation, is most certainly and irrevocably GOOD…or else, the way of the Empire continues.  

Now, we are a generation that loves stories.  Not all of us may be convinced that the Empire is such a threat anymore.  After all, the story we often tell of ourselves, whether we admit it or not, is that because we have been born between a certain latitude and longitude in the Western hemisphere in a certain union of states at the turn of the century with paler hued skin and a modicum of wealth, that we are entitled to freedom and are exceptional in the history of humanity.  Which is, of course, another way of saying that we are in fact the Empire.  “American” just sounds nicer.

But we have other stories to.o.  We believe other Gospels that help give shape to our lives, and offer us hope.  Some of you saw an article I posted this week about “Bronies.”  That’s a short-hand for “Bros” and “Ponies,” as in, a geek community of young adult males who are communally obsessed with My Little Pony - a cartoon about pastel-colored talking ponies (sometimes with wings).  Grown men who build motorcycles, fix your computer, and manage your finances, who also put on rainbow wigs and cardboard wings and make Trekkie conventions look tame.  True story.

What’s striking about the Bronies, though, is not the wigs.  Bronies get together because the stories that they share and love help create for them…a community.  Something about telling those stories, dressing up and acting those stories out, living into those stories, and communing around those stories, creates for them a sense of belonging.  Of escaping loneliness.  Of having a common bond and goal to live for.  In short, it creates for them a sense of identity.  My Little Pony is, for this group, a powerful Gospel, and an attractive alternative to Empire.  

Now I actually really admire the Bronies.  Just before coming to church today I was at the park on Culver Road flying kites with my kids, and to our great delight, across the lake, we saw LARPers, Live Action Role Players, dressed in armor and actually SWORD FIGHTING!  I don’t know who was more thrilled - Tai Tai or me!  AND, when we went over to talk to them, they actually invited us to come see them at Highland Park…and told me they always have extra armor and weaponry if I ever wanted to join them and give it a try!  Sold.

Because whether you are into knights, or you’re a Trekkie, or a Whovian, or you watch Breaking Bad, or whether you are a member of the Democrat or Republican parties, or part of a Christian denomination, then to an extent, you’re no different than a Brony!  We get together with friends to binge on television shows, or to insult our political opponents, or to dress up in robes and call it “church” because our stories tell us who we are, and who we are together.  Our stories are alternatives to the dregs and downfalls of living in the Empire.  Also, of being the Empire.  

We are tired of living in an age where we are measured by what we accomplish and by what we can produce.  Tired of living in a society where we some people are told that because their story includes having ancestors who were once enslaved by our ancestors, they do not deserve access to decent schools or a minimum standard of living.  Tired of living stories where, because we drank too much at that party and dressed too nicely, of course we deserved to be assaulted.  Tired of being told that unbridled greed and competition and destruction of the world could possibly be called profit.  Tired of the story in which this is all there is, and modern scientific people simply cannot reasonably believe in magic or mystery - let alone a Creator or a cause.  

We are tired of living these stories.  And so we choose new ones.

Maybe some of these stories are your stories.  Maybe you’ve been told that you are defined by the ways you have failed to live up to the Empire’s standards - or to your parents’, or your school’s, or your partner’s, or God’s, or your own.  Maybe you’ve participated in stories where people and societies are arranged around irony and sarcasm and envy and slander, instead of “loving one another as if our lives depended on it.”  Maybe you too are tired of being told this is who you are.  And so maybe, you’re a Brony, or a Whovian, or an Alcoholic, or just plain lost.  

But there is a difference between these stories and the Word of the Lord that Peter tells us is the very foundation of our identity and our reality.  Because unlike all these other stories, this one is true.  

This one is true.  This story says that you, and every single human being who ever existed, were created by a Loving God, as an utterly unique, irreparable act of utter devotion and delight, and that nothing can change that.  That when people refused to believe that they were made good and delighted in and beloved by the Creator, and continued to make up other stories for themselves, and even started living these stories by killing off and hurting and enslaving people with different stories, that God intervened, again, and again, and again.  That God came in God’s own person, putting on our story, sharing it with us, LARPing as one of us, even allowing Godself to be killed by us, because God would rather be with us and tell us we are good, than kill us back or destroy us with His sword of fire.  

And that this God turned that fiery sword, not on us in vengeance, but upon Death itself, and on the forces of injustice, and of sin, and of selfishness, and of Empire, and said, “it is finished.”  That this God rose again.  And this God has proclaimed, “behold, a new creation!  I declare it Good!  My Gospel is my risen body, my Gospel is my Word, and my Word is Love, and that is the final, the only, and the truest Word that will ever be spoken!”  This God declares to you today, in the sacrament of God’s body and blood, this simple, life-changing story: you are Mine.  Nothing can ever change that.  And no one else gets to tell you who you are.

I’d like to think that Doctor Who could do that for me.  I’d love it if playing Magic the Gathering could resurrect me into a new creation.  I’d be delighted if being a part of a political party could ultimately change the world and me.  But they can’t.  They are simply not true in the same way that this Gospel is true.  Dressing up in a cloak, or a robe, or a suit and tie, does not make that story any more able to redeem the world than if we showed up in a t-shirt and jeans.  Because the grass withers, the flowers fade, and all flesh, all stories, all the glory we try to create…it will fade away and fall.  

But the love of God we have in Christ Jesus; the reign of God which proclaims “love one another as if your life depended on it!”; the kingdom of love where every single human being is valued totally and solely on the basis of the fact that they are God’s beloved children for whom Christ died and resurrected; this is not one story among many.  It is the story.  The story by which all other stories are true.  It is the story by which we know the truth about ourselves.  And the truth about all of reality.   Not because we have to believe anything about God.  But because God has continued to believe in us, and has acted on our behalf, and has loved us with an everlasting love.  Whether we like it or not. 

And brothers and sisters, I share this with you tonight, at the outsert of a season of focus on “practicing resurrection,” because, ultimately, before we know what it means to love one another deeply from the heart, we must first hear how God loves us deeply, from God’s heart.  You can be a Trekkie and be a very good person, and probably do a lot of justice in the world.  Or even a Democrat or a Republican for that matter.  But its not about what we do. 

As witnesses, as heralds, as minstrels of this story, this Gospel, this Word, we are called to proclaim this news.  We are called, to an extent, to remind the world of who we truly are.  We belong to God.  We live in the Kingdom of God.  Each human being is a citizen of this kingdom.  Which means we don’t get to kill other citizens of this kingdom.  Or segregate some of these citizens into ghettos or suburbs.  Or slander them.  Or envy them.  Or exclude them.  Or exclude ourselves.  That’s not who God is.  Which means, that’s not how reality really is either.  

One final story in closing.  This past Friday, I was honored to preside over my first funeral service, for one June Kelly.  June died on Tuesday.  She was a member of Peace Lutheran, the church who gave us this building for our mission.  For the last decade of her life, she lived in various care homes, struggling with dementia.  I’d never met her.  I tried calling other Peace members to find out about her.  I was struck that almost no one from Peace had ever met her either.  She had moved to Canandaigua long before they arrived.  

BUT.  Every single member of Peace knew her name.  They knew who June Kelly was.  Because, almost to a T, every single one of them said, “yeah, I know June.  We said her name, every single week in the prayers, as we asked for her healing.”  Grace was loved, and known, and upheld by people she’d never met.  She was part of the family of God.  That’s her story.  I didn’t need to know about any of the good things, or the bad things, that she had done in life.  I knew enough to celebrate her.  Because she is one of us, and we are one of her’s too.  Because she belonged to a story in which, week after week, she was named, and remembered, and prayer for.  She is part of a story in which we are remembered, and named, and prayed for, and beloved.  

This is a story of retirement homes, and solitude.  A story of moldy smelling funeral homes and the lifeless body of an old woman.  A story of complete strangers awkwardly standing around a grave in Mt. Hope Cemetery, trying to think of things to say.  It’s not a magical story like My Little Pony or Doctor Who or the United States of America.  But at her grave, we poured sand upon her casket in the shape of a cross.  We prayed.  We remembered her.  We told her story, and our story.  We told the story.  A story, that for June, continues on.  Because we knew whose June was.  And is.  And will always be.  

We are not called to be “good people.”  We are called to be “God’s people.”  Which means, simply, to love one another as if our lives depended on it.  Which means no one and nothing else gets to tell us who we are.

The grass withers and the flower falls, but the story of the King of Love endures forever.   Because this story is true.  

Amen.