I'm catching up on posting sermons from the Advocate. Here's one from May 2013:
Years ago, the border between the United States and Mexico in
southern California was marked by rope, a single rope strung between
wooden piers. In the late ‘60s, the rope was replaced by a single strand
of barbed wire. In the ‘70s, the barbed wire was replaced by a chain
link fence. In 2009, the single chain link fence was replaced by two
walls framing a no-mans’-land, and in the last three years, in the
middle of that no-mans’-land, a new third wall rises some twenty feet
into the air and stretches out into the sea. It garishly separates
countries, yes, but peoples and people, too. It mars creation and stains
our humanity. And lest there is any confusion: war has done this. The
war on drugs built the fence, and the war on terror built the walls.
Just to be clear, this is not a sermon about immigration policy,
though the subject deserves our zealous witness, and there are many in
this congregation who can tutor all of us on the issues involved. This
is not that sermon. This is not a sermon to remind us that every day we
go without reasonable immigration policy another person will die of
exposure trying to cross the southern border to be rejoined with family
or to begin a new life —- nor is this is a sermon about the hubris of
the vigilantes who patrol the border seeking to kill those trying to
cross over. This is not a sermon about the economic divide that the
border represents, about the masses living in poverty on the south side
of the border with so much prosperity in view but always just beyond
reach. This is not that sermon.
This is a sermon about walls, about the walls, literal and
metaphorical, that divide us from one another. This is a sermon about
the way that we are taught to keep each other at arm’s length and the
ways that we barricade our lives from one another. This is a sermon
acknowledging that there are times when the rope that divides us becomes
barbed wire and barbed wire becomes a fence and a fence becomes a wall
and one wall becomes three. Lest there be any confusion: sin does that.
Sin builds fences; sin builds walls. Sin builds impermeable borders
when all that was needed were good boundaries. This is a sermon about
walls, about isolation, about retrenchment and retreat. And this is a
sermon about God’s very different dream for us.
+++
The seventeenth chapter of John’s Gospel is largely made up of a
prayer of Jesus just hours before his arrest, trial and death. Some
scholars call it part of the “Farewell Discourses,” but that’s a little
unfair because it really isn’t a speech to his first disciples so much
as it is a prayer on their behalf – and our behalf. This is pure
intercession. For us to read it today is a bit like eavesdropping. It is
like listening to the heartbeat of the Messiah. This is Jesus speaking
from the core of who he is about who he hopes we would be, about how he
hopes we would be in the world and how we would carry ourselves in it.
This is Jesus articulating as clearly as possible what it means for us
to be His followers.
And did you hear what he prayed? In the midst of the logic game that
is Jesus at prayer in John 17, there is a simple six word petition that
beautifully encapsulates all the rest: I pray they will be one.
Moments before his arrest, hours before his death, this is what is on
the heart of Jesus – that we might be one, that we might be done with
fences and walls, that we might bear a united witness to the world of
the very dream of God.
In every sermon I have ever heard Bishop Michael Curry [Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina] give, sooner or later,
he says something like sounds like this: “it’s not enough to be the
human race; we are called to be and become the human family of God.”[1]
Have you heard him say this? Well, recently, I was re-watching his
sermon from General Convention last year (that’s what church geeks like
me do for fun!), and I noticed that, on the website, there were all of
these comments about the sermon. Most of them were affirming, but one of
the comments said something like this: “This human family of God stuff
is just typical namby-pamby liberal garbage. Go back, bishop, and read
your Bible.” You know, I think he got that just backwards.
From beginning to end, from Genesis to Revelation, the Scriptures
show us that God has a single dream for all creation —- that we might be
bound together in and through our common humanity in and through the
Spirit’s work that we might know each other as brothers and sisters, as
beloved children of a single heavenly parent. God’s dream is of a world
that knows and lives shalom, that beautiful vision of creation at peace
with itself and reconciled to God.
But, from beginning to end, the Scriptures also show us how we build walls. The story of Adam and Eve reminds us how we build barriers of blame. The story of Cain and Abel reminds us how we erect walls of jealousy. The story of Jacob and Esau shows how we build walls with ambition and self-promotion, even as early as the womb. The story of Joseph and his brothers reminds us how we build walls of pride and self-indulgence and how such walls inevitably lead to violence. The story of David and Bathsheba reminds us that power and possession damn others and barricade us. The story of Jonah teaches us that our own prejudice and self-importance builds borders that are hard to cross. In our passage from Acts, we are reminded that greed builds a wall and denies others their humanity.
From beginning to end, the two things seem caught in intractable
conflict: God’s dream for all of us to be one and our seemingly endless
ability to segregate and separate ourselves from each other. It is no
wonder then that Jesus prays that the Church might be different. Jesus
prays that we will get it right, that we might be one. And at our best,
we are. At our best, we are a sign … we are a symbol … we are a
foretaste of the coming unity of all humanity. We are meant to prefigure
God’s dream of shalom. At our best, we are united beyond whatever walls
we might know outside of this place. When we walk through those doors,
Jesus’ prayer is answered when we find ourselves entering a place where
each woman is a sister to us and each man is a brother to us, where we
find a unity that is deep and rich and full.
A pastor of a church in Colorado every week starts her sermons with these words:[2]
Partnered, divorced or single here, it’s one family that mingles here.
Conservative or liberal here, we all give a little here.
Big or small here, there’s room for us all here.
Doubt or believe here, we all can receive here.
LGBTQ or straight here, there’s no hate here
Poor or rich here, find your niche here.
Woman or man here, everyone can here.
Whatever your race here, for all of us grace here.
In imitation of the ridiculous love God has
for each of us and all of us,
we choose to live in love.
Every week that she says this, she takes a sledgehammer to the walls
that divide the rest of the week. She proclaims that the church is a
different kind of place.
+++
Eight hours a week, at the wall that divides the United
States and Mexico, border agents open no mans’ land, and loved ones on
both sides of the border pour through the two outer walls and gather
next to the giant wall. Through the crisscrossed rebar, families can
glimpse each other, exchange a few words, and touch fingers. You cannot
pass anything through the wall without being detained for questioning.
And every week, right as we gather here for our 5 o’clock liturgy, a
pastor comes to the US side of the wall, and a pastor comes to the
Mexican side of the wall, and together, they lead a bilingual worship
service. They sing, they read Scripture and testify. And when all the
testifying has happened, they pray the Great Thanksgiving. And they take a broken loaf and share it on each side of the wall.
I pray they will be one, says Jesus. And for a few moments, we are, and a wall comes down. Amen.
Monday, May 5, 2014
The Opening of Eyes
A sermon preached at the Episcopal Church of the Advocate
Easter III (May 4, 2014)
"Life is no passing memory of what has been
nor the remaining pages in a great book
waiting to be read.
[Life] is the opening of eyes long closed.
It is the vision of far off things
seen for the silence they hold.
It is the heart after years
of secret conversing,
speaking out loud in the clear air."
Life is the opening of eyes long closed.
these two travelers heading to Emmaus,
they are confused, bewildered, despairing.
One tradition says that the two are husband and wife --
leaving Jerusalem, defeated by the shadow of a cross,
heading home to Emmaus to see if there, there was a life beyond the shadow.
And as they walk, they talk.
It was only a seven-mile journey between Jerusalem and Emmaus,
but somewhere within those seven miles,
the couple are joined in their walk by a seeming stranger,
a rather chatty and inquisitive fellow who seems to know nothing of current events.
"What are you talking about?" he asks. (The way we read that begins to interpret the entire story.)
Cleopas -- the one of the two travelers who in Luke's account has his name recorded -- answers:
"Are you the only one in Jerusalem who doesn't know what's happened? The things that have happened in these last days?"
"What things?" the stranger inquires.
"The things about Jesus of Nazareth."
You can almost hear the weariness in his voice;
it is the fatigue of the grieving --
that hollow echo in a voice
that doesn't want to tell it again.
But they do.
They tell him of the itinerant Galileean that they loved,
a preacher, mighty in word and deed,
a prophet, loved by God and by people,
put to death by Rome, crucified no less.
They had so much hope for Him.
They had so much hope because of Him.
And they tell him that the women of their group
today astounded them with a fantastical tale of an empty tomb --
a story that they quickly and carefully verified,
and it was as the women said.
Body gone. Linens left. What it means -- they're not sure.
But we know what they've decided; we know because they're on the road.
They are heading home to do what grieving people do:
pick up the pieces,
figure out if there is life after,
begin again again.
They had thought He was the One to save Israel.
The stranger --
the same guy who just moments before
had seemed innocent or incompetent,
or at the very least a little uninformed --
begins to teach.
He's not the most charitable instructor -- you probably noticed that in the reading --
"you foolish people with your dull minds and slow hearts" --
it's not the way any teacher of mine started a class.
But what He lacks in charm, He makes up for in comprehensiveness --
Starting with Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy
and going all the way to the end of the Hebrew Scriptures,
the stranger explains why Jesus died and why Jesus lives.
It was a crash course in the Hebrew Bible
that took the better part of the seven-mile walk to Emmaus.
When they make it to town, the stranger acted like He was going to keep going,
but instead, Cleopas and the one without name, invite Him to stay the night.
And He goes home with them, and there, at dinner,
the stranger in their midst does something so familiar,
something so readily recognizable,
that they knew at once who He was:
He took bread. Blessed it. Broke it. Gave it.
It was so familiar.
They had seen it before.
On hillsides and by lakeshores
where thousands had been fed.
They had seen it before.
At the dinner tables of the humble and the haughty
who had invited Him home.
They had seen it before.
At celebrations and feasts,
sprawling and intimate.
And they had heard that just a few days ago
at the Passover feast
that He had done it again.
That He had taken bread. Blessed, broke and gave it to them.
But that this time He had called it His Body,
and said it would be broken for them,
and that they should eat it in remembrance of Him.
They had seen it before.
They had heard it before.
And when they saw it again in Emmaus,
their eyes were opened, and they knew.
The fears of despairing days disappeared.
They had thought He was the One who would redeem, and He is.
They had thought that the preacher, the prophet was going to change everything, and He did.
The stranger is no stranger but a Savior.
"Life is no passing memory of what has been
nor the remaining pages in a great book
waiting to be read.
[Life] is the opening of eyes long closed."
It still happens, you know?
Not always, but sometimes.
Sometimes gathered here, our eyes are opened and we glimpse Him.
Sometimes in the words of Thomas Merton:
"in the breaking of the Bread [we see]
the Stranger who was our companion yesterday and the day before."
Sometimes, in the taking, blessing, breaking and giving,
We see something so familiar, so readily recognizable,
That we know the Host. That we see Him in our midst.
Here at the Advocate,
We say that one of our core values is transformation,
which if anything is about the opening of eyes.
It's about seeing what is and what is really real.
It is about seeing The Risen Christ with us.
And when it happens,
Our fears give way to faith.
Despair gives way to hope.
Grief gives way to grace.
Our shame and sorrow recede, and
Our Savior is in our midst.
Sometimes, gathered around this table,
Our eyes are opened, and
When it happens, it feels like life.
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