July 15, 2012 Proper 10 Year B

For Readings click here

            I suspect this is a biblical story that we are familiar with without really knowing too much about it, we might know the name Salome, of have some notion of scarves, and the platter is a memorable object, and a vivid reminder of the brutality in this story. As we hear it this morning you may have noticed the platter and the violence was defiantly in the text, but the scarves and the implicit sexuality are perhaps less present. The aspects of this story that are well known culturally are important to sort out from what is actually in the Gospel. This is also a Gospel story where Jesus is not the main focus. Of course there are connections to Jesus and maybe even foreshadowing—but this is not a story about Jesus. This is one of those biblical texts that is oddly familiar, but as we read it and hear it, I suspect it is also a little strange. The narrative order is strange, the depiction of the reluctant leader Herod is strange, the roles of women are strange, and the dinner party that ends in a beheading is strange. I want to take a moment to explore those different strange things in order to better understand this familiar text and to try to figure out what is the Gospel message for us amidst all the strangeness and beheading.

            One of the ways in which it is strange is that it begins with the ending. Perhaps in an effort to connect this story to Jesus, Mark begins with people telling Herod that Jesus might be the risen again John the Baptist. The mention that John is dead is the first we have heard of it. Previously we read in Mark that John had been imprisoned. So it is an opportunity for Mark to tell the story. The fact that this story begins with us knowing what happened, and knowing the connection that Herod (and Mark) understand between John and Jesus gives us some kind of clue about how we are supposed to understand it. I think it indicates that we are supposed to see the end result, the beheading as an escalation in the level of violence that might come for Jesus. It is a foreshadowing of what we also already know happened. It also foreshadows the idea of resurrection. Herod thinks that Jesus is the resurrected John. This is of course a very limited understanding of resurrection, and knowing as we know the type of resurrection that Jesus eventually has, this one is a very base, or earthly idea of resurrection. For Herod, one trouble maker has become another trouble maker. One political enemy has become another political enemy. Though it may be odd for us to hear this story with the end at the beginning, and though Mark offers no spoiler alerts, I think the strangeness of this aspect is just an attempt by Mark to connect it to the larger story. The real strangeness it is trying to smooth out is that this is a story that has implications for Jesus’ story, but is not directly about Jesus.

            Of course this passage has many other ways of being strange. Herod’s role in this story is strange. He seems to have a lot of fear in this story. He initially imprisons John after John goes around telling people that Herod’s marriage is not lawful. Herod married his older half-brother’s wife. Scholars think that the legal problem that John had with this marriage was not that it was his brother’s ex-wife, but that Herod and Herodias had had an affair before they were married. When she was still married to his half-brother. Political sex scandals are nothing new. And this seems pretty tame compared to the scandals we have these days. John’s threat to Herod is as a political leader. John’s criticism of Herod is along Jewish law lines, but seen more broadly it spoke to the morally corrupt political leaders of the time, and called them out for it. The gospel explains to us that “Herod feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man, and he protected him. When Herod head him, he was greatly perplexed; and yet he liked to listen to him.” The portrait of Herod that Mark paints is rather complex. Herod obviously doesn’t understand John’s preaching or he objections to Herod’s rule, but he is still fascinated by him. There is a way in which this description of Herod does not sound unlike some of our political leaders. There is something familiar to me in the fascination and in the not being able to understand what the big deal is with their moral failing. Mark paints a picture of Herod where even though he is ultimately responsible for what happens to John, he also resisted all along the way. Historians who were accounting Jewish history at that time disagree with this reluctant killer Herod and instead explain that Herod feared John’s threat to his power. So Mark either has some inside knowledge that historians missed, or he wants to portray the political leaders of the day as bad guys, but also as bad guys who recognize the righteousness and holiness of John and Jesus.

            Herod’s odd role as the not-so-bad-guy who has to honor his oaths is indeed strange, but so too is the role of the women in this story. The women are angry, vengeful, manipulative and blood thirsty in this story. All of these worst attributes of humanity are ascribed to women. Herodias and her un-named daughter do not seem to have the same fear and respect of John that Herod does. Herodias has a grudge and wants to kill him—but she is prevented from doing this because of Herod’s fear. We understand that women of this time, even the wives of political leaders were oppressed. And as an oppressed group they don't have a lot of agency. Herodias cannot kill John. She cannot even convince her husband to do so to defend her honor. But she can use the system as best she can to get what she wants. The idea that the daughter's dance was sexual is something we might know culturally, but is not something that is in the text. I can see how people, in trying to understand how and why Herod was so charmed by the dance that he would have been willing to give up half his kingdom might assume that it had something to do with a very sensual dance. But one clue we have in Mark that this is not what he means is that the word he uses for girl refers to a very young girl. The other time Mark uses this word for girl it is to refer to a six year old. And though we have an over sexualized culture, I think Herod was just really proud and impressed with the dancing. Not because it was sexual, but because it was a little kid in front of a large crowd. It probably didn't hurt that he had been drinking. The roles of women are strange, and it is strange that Mark wants to pin so much of the blame on them. They are certainly the scapegoats in this story.

            Perhaps the strangest thing in this story and the thing most important to talk about is the dinner itself. The dinner is a banquet that Herod gives himself in honor of his birthday. Herod invites those most loyal to him, his courtiers, his officers and the high ranking leaders of Galilee. These people are the powerful elite, the corrupt leaders. His banquet had fine food, fancy wine, and dancing. But it culminates in something dark, creepy and strange. It culminates with John's head on a platter. The meal language makes this especially dark. It is interesting to see this meal in the context of what else is going on in the Gospel of Mark. Preceding this story is the one we heard last week, Jesus is rejected in his hometown, he says prophets are never honored in their hometown, and he sends his disciples out. THe story immediately following this one is where Jesus feed 5,000 people in the wilderness with only five loaves and two fish. The context illustrates two clear things: first of all the rejection that Jesus faced in his hometown has been taken up a notch. This story shows the followers of Jesus that they will face a very violent world if they choose to go out and preach to people about Jesus. The danger they will put themselves in is real. And part of this is because the power that they will be talking about will be very threatening to the established political leaders. And the second thing we learn from this context is that this encounter should be seen as a meal. At Herod's meal the corrupt members of his courts are present. At Jesus' feeding of the 5,000 there is a great crowd. They have been listening to Jesus' teaching and now it is late and they are hungry. At Herod's meal there was plenty of food to show his wealth and power. At Jesus' meal there was very little food, but every one had enough. At the end of Herod's meal they have John the Baptist’s head on a platter. At the end of Jesus' there is more than enough scraps and broken pieces of bread and fish to fill twelve baskets.

            There is another meal here that we are invited to consider too. It is our Eucharistic meal which we are about to share. Our meal will indeed have Body and Blood in it, but the Body and Blood we share are not the spoils of victory. The do not show us the defeat of a political enemy. Rather they show us that Jesus lives on through and with us. It binds us together as the Body of Christ. Our body and blood remind us of Jesus' last meal with his friends. It reminds us of our new life as a community. It does remind us of Jesus' death, but we are also assured of his resurrection and ascension. Though we are not fed very much, we are filled with God's love for us, Jesus' life given for us and the spirit's persistent presence pushing us every so slightly towards the good. That's the good news that we are filled with in the Eucharist. God is with us. God's presence with us can feel quiet until we look around for the space and realize that we should fill it. Our God is a God who opens up doors to us, but it is we (with God's help) who have to see the thing and walk through.

            This is the part of the Body of Christ that is a challenge to us every week. We are transformed, but as such we are (as a group) given the challenge to go out and do that work God gives us to do. As the deacon, I get the special role of dismissing God's people, and sending us out into the world.  If we have done our job right here, we have worshiped and praised God, and we have given everyone some sense of God's quiet presence in their life, offering them some open doors. As the deacon this week, and thinking particularly about the role of the deacon as bridging the church to the rest of the world, I am interested in how this week's general convention (where our priest in charge was for a few days this week) how the issues of the church relate to the issues in our larger society. At General Convention there were steps to re-think the Episcopal Church Center at a time when the church is much smaller than it once was, and much more economically compromised, and there is the new liturgy to affirm life long commitments, which will be used starting in Advent of this year to affirm gay relationships even in states where there is not yet gay marriage if the bishop of that diocese approves. The Episcopal Church is dealing with the economy and gay marriage, we are a church that is related to the issues of the day. As a church we have seen the open doors available to us, and with God's abiding love, have decided to take some steps into the world.  

Early Church, July 15, 2012 Proper 10 Year B

For Early Church I couldn't figure out a kid-friendly head on a platter interpretation. But I took the opportunity to talk about the psalms. We began with singing the psalm of the day, 85: 8-13.

Last week during church I talked about a part of the bible that has letters in it written to communities. Today I wanted to talk about another type of writing that we have in the Bible. I want to tell you a little bit about something called the psalms. First of all--it is a really confusing world. It is spelled p-s-a-l-m. When I was I kid I could never understand how it could be spelled that way and pronounced psalm. There are 150 psalms in the Bible. But what are they! They are songs or poems that are written to God to tell God about how people felt. Some of them tell God about how we think of God, others ask God for things, some of them are angry and God and ask how God could forget to take care of all of God's people. People used to use the psalms to worship God. They would sing the psalms. We still do this in our churches today. The song we sang at the beginning of church today was a psalm. There are 149 other of them.

People used to think that one of the kings of Israel, King David, wrote the psalms. You might know King David from the bible stories about David when he was a young shepherd, the youngest kid in the whole family, and there was a big battle of the people of Israel against another people called Philistines. The Philistines had a big and powerful fighter on their side named Goliath. David was just a little boy, not really much older than  you guys, and his Dad asked him to bring some food and water to his seven older brothers who were fighting in the war against Goliath and the Philistines. David was just supposed to be bringing some food and water, but he saw that all of the fighters from Israel were scared of Goliath. But David was not scared. He threw a stone at Goliath's head and knocked him down. He was the youngest child, and the smallest fighter but he was able to do something people much bigger, older and stronger were scared to do. He was brave when no one else could be brave. David's strength did not end there; he went on to become the King of all of Israel.

           

Because David always knew that God had showed him that with a little help from God even the smallest person can do amazing things, they would write some songs and poems about God, imagining that they were David.

(Then I asked the 5 kids to each read a line from the psalms that I had printed out. After they read it, I asked them if they could imagine what kind of mood the writer was in when they wrote it)

·      his lightning lights up the world, and the earth trembled. God is more majestic than the thunders of the water, more majestic than the waves of the sea.

·      Make a joyful noise to the lord, sing joyous songs, play the lyre and the sound of the melody, with trumpets and the sound of a horn

·      Sing a happy song to God (for the 3 year old)

·      O LORD you god of anger, you god of anger come out!"

·      You have put me in the depths of a pit, in places that are dark and deep, you caused my friends to be mad at me. Every day I call out to you? Don't you hear me?

·      If you make the lord God your house, nothing bad will happen to you, no disease will come near your house

The psalms have all sorts of moods and there is one for each of our own moods. They are nice to read and to sing because they remind us that we can feel lots of different ways about God, and that is okay. We know that God loves us, and God knows that we love God. But it is okay when we feel not so sure or even angry at god.

July 8, 2012 Proper 9, Year B

For Readings:

http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Pentecost/BProp9_RCL.html

If any of you read your newsletter carefully in June you might have noticed that at seminary I wrote my master’s thesis about Paul. But I just wanted to take a moment to state publicly that it doesn’t mean I find his letters any easier to understand. The main thing I took away from an extensive study on the Pauline letters is just that, they are hard to understand. This is not a particularly helpful, nor a particularly hopeful sort of sentiment. The other thing about them is that they are especially hard to glean much from in the small little segments that are doled out to us in the lectionary. Context is important for Paul’s letters. The context of our segment to the larger letter, and the context of the communities that Paul was writing to. What we all need to know about Paul and his communities in order to begin to understand what is going on here is that Paul has gone around and planted some communities. Allow me a few minutes to make my theological education worthwhile. Paul’s communities are radical places: in them he imagines that Jews and non-Jews, or in his courser language, the circumcised and the uncircumcised maintain their identities, but also take on a new identity through their relationship with Jesus. His communities tend not to understand this. And we, as we look back on history think of these communities as early Christians. They and we are all confused by the idea that these communities were supposed to exist as one unit, but made up of distinct groups. They did not need to go through a sign (like circumcision) to become one. Rather it is by accepting the unity of the life of Christ that the community becomes one. The outward signs and symbols that had previously kept these people apart and fighting one another are trumped by their new inward unity in God.

          It’s no wonder than that these communities had so much trouble remembering their inward unity. And Paul is not necessarily the most reachable of group leaders. He starts a community and then goes off to start some more. When the communities ran into trouble they wrote him letters. And what we read as Holy Scripture are his replies. Oh course, we understand that Paul was not the only traveling apostle setting up churches all around. And we know that many of the letters that we have in the Bible are letters that are credited to Paul, but are really written by other people. His name ended up carrying a lot of authority. This particular part of the letter to the Corinthian community is a response about another group of religious authorities who came by and offered them some teachings that were contrary to Paul. So they then write to Paul and ask him what should they do. Paul mockingly calls these other apostles “hyper apostles” or maybe it is better translated as “super apostles.” They are apostles who tell stories of their strength in order to demonstrate their closeness to God. They do deeds of power in order to show both their power and God’s power.

          Paul begins the part of the letter we heard this morning with a very thinly veiled story about his own power. He is doing that thing that I vaguely remember from Junior high school, where a person says something like “my friend likes you” but really they mean that they do. Anyway, we get Paul telling us a story about “a person” who is totally Paul who was caught up into paradise—he sort of goes on to say that he won’t boast about this, which is silly of course because even bringing this up is really boasting about it.

          Paul wants to say that even though he has this experience that he could boast about—he tries not to because he knows there is strength in weakness. This is the primary difference between Paul and the super apostles. For the super apostles there is strength in showing their (and God’s) strength, for Paul there is strength in showing his own weakness.

          Paul is not just talking about spiritual or emotional weakness, he is also talking about a real physical injury. Paul not only reminds us of his humanity and physicality by talking about his physical problems but also of Jesus’ physical self.  As we read this letter today, I wonder about how we understand our strengths and weaknesses in a self-esteem culture. And as members of a capitalist society how does our understanding of rich and poor align with weakness and strength. And I wonder about who the super apostles might be for us today? What might be the message we take forth from this passage about the value of our weaknesses?

          In seminary they taught us to asses our ministry strengths and our ministry “growing edges.” I remember really disliking that sort of terminology. I have weaknesses after all. When Billy and I had our premarital counseling we learned about our relationship strengths and growing edges. But in the physical world, when I had shoulder surgery it was because of weakness and instability. After surgery I had to spend months on end in painful physical therapy in order to re-gain my strength. Right away, I have set up an unfair dichotomy between the physical and something like the psycho-social, spiritual. I think though that Paul is talking about both kinds of weakness. The sort of weakness in our physical selves that both reminds us of our limitations and reminds us of our mortality, along side the weakness we feel in our personal lives, or our spiritual lives that might remind us of our dependence on one another and on God.

          This admission that we are weak feels so very contrary to the sort of morals and maxims in our society. The sayings about positive thinking and the importance of a healthy sense of self, and a vision of us being able to accomplish anything you want. I don’t want to at all say that positive thinking and self worth are a bad thing. They are both totally ingrained in our society and have real value. Plenty of scientific studies show the benefits of positive thinking. There are a few counter-cultural examples holding up the importance of weakness, I think that AA and other similar recovery type programs often emphasize the weakness of the individual as a way of understanding addiction. The very fact of our weakness is necessary to understand in order to get to a point where one can admit that one is powerless, except by calling upon ones higher power. There does seem to be a real connection between weakness and dependence.

          On Wednesday, we celebrated our nations independence. As a city we celebrated with countless beach trips, barbecues and splashy fireworks. Our independence is not celebrated with our some recognition of changing identity in the world. We are certainly a world leader, but the double whammy of our personal, national and global economic slowdown along with the ambiguous wars that we did not win in Afghanistan and Iraq, has caused us as a nation to reflect a little on our weakness. Not much, of course, and probably not to the world. But it is at least a conversation we might be having internally. Our strength has largely been both military and economic. We certainly spend more money on our military than any other country. Our weakness are pretty clear though, when reports about education come out, they make it evident that smaller, poorer and developing countries are doing a better job educating their young people than we are. When we turn to health care, we learn that though we spend far more than anyone else the quality of care is not the best. But I suspect our greatest weakness might lie in the fact that we have a very hard time talking about weakness with out somehow betraying our country or our patriotism. Our weakness is that we want to seem strong in everything that we do.

          I think as a country we are on the precipice of something new though. Something that maybe is a result of the growing economic power of China, but maybe is a growing self awareness of our dependence. We are perhaps in a place where we can see the ways in which we are economically connected to other countries around the world. Globalization along with the world-wide economic downturn has us able to see that what happens in our jobs reports, and the greek debt are related. And global warming too shows us our physical connections to each other. How we each as individuals, and how we as a society treat the planet has profound implications for people on the other side of the globe. We are seeing that our country is both dependent and interdependent. It might be a while before we can see the strength in our weakness, but at least we know that we can’t, and frankly don’t, go it alone.

          In the gospel today we see Jesus’ strengths and weaknesses, and we see him recognizing the strengths and weaknesses in humanity. We see that as Jesus begins his public ministry there will be opposition, and it will not always be from the people we might expect. We see the inability of humanity and more specifically his neighbors and friends to see this new side of Jesus, not as a carpenter or as the boy they may have known but as messiah and king. Their imagination does not seem to be able to handle this change. But Jesus too sees the strength in humanity, and seems to realize in his rejection that he is going to need his disciples to take on some more roles. He asks his disciples to go out, in pairs, and proclaim that all should repent, cast out demons and anoint the sick with oils. As I think about what the repentance we are called to do today might be, in light of our dependence and independence in light of the strength in our weakness, we are called to repent for our boasting of our strength. We are called to see that even when we are most vulnerable and weak, we have Christ--the son of God--on a cross. Christ's utter weakness in that moment both assures us that he is with us when we feel weak, but also that there is something transformative that can come out of weakness. Out of Christ's perceived weakness on the cross, soon there is the triumph over death. But more locally--the repentance we are called to and are called to bring others towards as well is one where we might be more honest about some of the difficulties we might be having in our personal life, whether they are financial, interpersonal, or if we just don't quite feel like ourselves. We are called to understand what we might perceive as weakness has strength, and that by talking about our weakness with others we might be able to help us all see the strength of our community. Our weakness reveals the way we depend on one another, and that, friends, is a good thing. That dependence on one another and on God is what brings us here together.    And our potential strength as a community exists because we recognize our mutual dependence.

Early Church July 8, 2012 Proper 9, Year B

For Readings:

http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Pentecost/BProp9_RCL.html

Paul, a man who loved Jesus, started a lot of churches. This was in the time right after Jesus died. He was one of the first people to go around and try to start churches. Since this was such a new thing, people weren't too sure what it meant to be a part of a church or what it meant to be a christian. He would start one church and then he would go off and start another one. Since this was a long time ago, when his churches had problems they couldn't call him, or email him or send him a text message. How do you think Paul's churches tried to talk to him when he wasn't there? That's right Paul's churches wrote letters to ask about the rules of being a church.

A lot of the troubles that the churches had were about how to get along with each other. Church is a little different than most other types of communities you are in. We are in all in school communities because kids have to go to school, we might have a neighborhood that we live in and we are a part of that community because we live there. But the church community has people who live in lots of different neighborhoods, and who might go to lots of different schools. The thing that makes us a community is that we have some kind of faith in God and that we think the best way to show our faith and give thanks to God is by going to church.

When you are a kid, it is usually your parents or grandparents that decide that going to church is what your family does. But kids are a very special part of the church community.

Back to Paul: Paul started a church in a place called Corinth. But the church in Corinth had a lot of problems. The letters that Paul wrote to the church in Corinth are filled with his answers about how to get a long with each other and how to make the church community. In today's letter we hear some rules that Paul is telling the church: He tells them Don't brag, boast or show off about how strong you are. When Paul is talking about strength he isn't just talking about muscles and our bodies: I think he means other sorts of ways of being strong too: some examples of being strong might be bragging about having the best of a toy or a game or a book. It might be bragging about being the best student at math in your class. This rule makes a lot of sense for a community, right? If some people are bragging too much they would think that they are better than other people and it is very hard to get along when some people think they are better than other people.

This part of the rule is sort of easy to understand, but then Paul keeps writing his letter, and he tells the church community that there is more to it than just not bragging and showing off--he says: If you feel like showing off remember that it is when you are weak that you are strong.

That is a very confusing thing to say! When you are weak, you are strong. I have been thinking about this a long time, and I think I know what Paul means. When you are feeling weak, you have to depend on your mom, or your dad, your brother or sister, your friends or cousins, your teachers and babysitters. When you are feeling weak you have to reach out to other people to feel better. That reaching out to other people is what Paul wanted the people in the church to do. When they reach out they are showing their love for their family members, and that love is like the love that God has for each of us. I think the other reason that Paul says that when we are weak we are strong is because when we feel most like we are not able to do something, we can call on God to help us out. When we feel weak like we don't know if we can do something, or maybe it is weak like having trouble making new friends, or just feeling a little down--that's when we can call on God and ask for God's help and then we will be strong.

When we are weak, we are strong because we reach out to people in our lives, and we reach out to God. We are reminded of God's love for us.

June 24, 2012 Proper 7, Year B

For Readings:


http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Pentecost/BProp7_RCL.html

            When I was a little kid, about 4 or 5 my grandparents rented a house in southern Vermont during the summers. There was a deck that overlooked an overgrown field. I remember climbing up on the railing of the deck and watching the wind blow through the weeds and hay. The field was sort of impassable for a kid. The weeds generally grew taller than I was. My grandfather would create some trails during the summer so that we could get through it to the woods for dog walks. From my perch on the deck, I remember feeling like I could control the wind. Maybe, as a New York City kid, I was sort of unaccustomed to having so much outdoors in front of me. Maybe it was the perspective of the overgrown field, ending in dark woods. I am not sure what it was, but I used to sit up on the railing and yell, “Stop Wind!” and “Stay Still!” The brief moments when the wind seemed to die down after one of my commands, the moments where it felt like I controlled the wind, just gave me a big rush. The elation was real even if the control was not.

            It’s always interesting to me to analyze why certain moments of childhood get turned into important memories while so much else seems to disappear. I suppose that the disciples could be right, it is just an extraordinary thing to control the wind. Or perhaps it’s the many idioms about our inability to control the wind or weather, reminding us of our limitations, that whenever I heard them reminded me of my wind control antics. Part of memory making and memory keeping is surly about how many other times you have the opportunity to re-remember it. I also wonder if it might be that I remember it because it was a feeling so very different from much of childhood. I felt like I was defying nature, and had some semblance of control over my surroundings. It is not the sort of thing one generally feels as a four year old, or on bad days of the week, it can be something I don’t feel as an adult. I often find that I remember things that I have told the story of many times. But then, I am probably not remembering the original event, but rather the telling of it, the turning it into a story. Why this one? I really don’t know. I don’t think I told many people about this wind desire ever. In fact, even as I was thinking about this sermon and telling my friend and husband about this over dinner, both of them seemed to think I was a little strange.  I wonder too if this memory is etched in my mind because of this Gospel passage--every few years when I encountered it during the church year it would remind me of my childhood wind stopping desires. I suppose it is possible too that this story had been read to me in church, Sunday School or even by my parents. I think it could be possible that I only even imagined being able to stop the wind having heard that is was something that Jesus had done.

    Though I could get very stuck in a reverie about childhood memories (which I suspect I am particularly susceptible to right now as I have recently been sorting out which of my childhood objects I want my parents to keep, which I want in my own home, and which are destined for the trash), I think there is also some larger things here. And the first larger thing is our collective memory. I often wonder about how we as groups of people decide how and what to remember. In our small collectives like families, what are the stories that are always told, what at the pictures that are saved in the albums. As a society too, we tell family stories. George Washington looms pretty large in our collective understanding as Americans. Martin Luther King Jr. and his "I have a dream" speech are definitely a part of the American story. In more recent times as a society we decided that we would not forget 9/11 (even if it were possible)--and so many reminders on uniforms or posters urge us to "never forget." The 9/11 moment was one that we as a community, as a society decided to consciously make into a memory. We have plenty of milestones and occasions to think of Washington, King of 9/11. Anniversaries and memorials remind us of our closeness and our distance to these parts of our collective memory.

    As a church then, there are lots of ways in which we construct our memories. This church and this congregation have particular histories and stories that help to explain who we are today. Likewise of course, how we tell those stories, and which stories we tell reflects who we think we are today. But bigger than St. Ann and the Holy Trinity, our most communal memory as Christians are our sacred texts. These are the stories we tell year after year, season after season. They take on new layers of meaning as we get older, or as they strike us on some particular Sunday in a way they never have before.  The Gospel stays the same as we get older and encounter it in a new way. The Gospel is reliably available to revel God's love through the life of Jesus. Of course, the nature of the the way we read the Bible together, in a 3 year repeating circle, allows the stories to become memories by the time we encounter them again, 3, 6, and 9 years later. We get a chance to re-remember the stories and make them a part of our personal memory and our communal one. Perhaps one of the best arguments for thinking about scripture as collective memory is the fact that we have not one but four Gospels, all ostensibly, telling the same story. It's not that any one of the Gospels is more true than the other, rather they are four different communities understandings of the memories of Jesus.

   

    Today's Gospel story offers us a good example of the Gospel's function as communal memory. When we compare this passage in Mark to the same story in Matthew some interesting differences arise. Biblical scholarship indicates that the Gospeler who wrote Matthew had the Gospel of Mark as a resource. Mark is the basis for both Matthew and Luke. So this person is stilling down and thinking, like a preacher does, about what these sacred words in Mark will mean to his community–and how he can best show his community the revelation of God in Christ Jesus. In our Gospel from Mark this morning we hear the disciples calling out to Jesus in the storm, “Teacher don’t you care that we are perishing?!”The disciples are incredulous that Jesus could sleep through this storm and are somewhere between wining or being angry at Jesus for his apparent lack of concern. When we contrast this to Matthew’s version of events the disciples cry out to Jesus saying “Lord! Save us we are perishing!” It’s a slight difference, but in Matthew’s Gospel the disciples are asking Jesus to take action, and in ours this morning they are sort of just asking Jesus to care. In some ways Matthew’s version of the disciples seem to understand who Jesus is a little better. They know to ask him for salvation. In our Gospel there is a real desire to be cared about–which is a feeling I suspect we are all familiar with. I think the interesting thing about these two stories is that neither one of them is more true than the other, but they do reflect some very real human feelings. Sometimes in the midst of storms at sea we call out “save us” and other times we call out “don’t you know that I am here?!”For the community that Mark was a part of, perhaps there was despair in the time following Jesus’ death and resurrection, and the despair of the disciples was a way of echoing that fear that the community had. Being with out Jesus on earth, the community might not have felt like Jesus cared about them. Mark reminds his community, as he reminds all of us today that even when we most feel like we are perishing–and even when we don’t realize God’s presence with us–God is with us.

    I think it is pretty safe to say that we are at sea as a society today, and that the storms seem rough. The water is coming in over the sides of our boats. The underwater mortgages that so many Americans are trapped in seems perhaps emblematic of this, but we have other sorts of waves too. This image of being in a stormy sea also conjures up the perilous state of our planet. This recent heat wave certainly reminds us of our relationship to the natural world, and perhaps gets us thinking about the role we all play in the health of our planet. Since this is Gay Pride weekend, we might also be thinking about how gay teens feel like they might be alone on a sinking boat, especially in a culture filled with bullying, inequality and hate. And with our immigration forum this afternoon along with President Obama’s actions this week, I have also been thinking about the way undocumented immigrants and their families live in fear of deportation, separation, and detention. These individuals and communities likely feel out to sea in the midst of a storm. I think given the state of the world, the state of some of our families and friends, the state some of us find ourselves ing, this boat in a storm--these waves pounding in over the sides--it starts to feel a bit much. These are moments when we find ourselves calling out to God, "Don't you care?" and "Save us!"

            Both the response of Mark's disciple "don't you care that we are perishing?!" And Matthew's "Save us!" present a relationship between God and humanity that has elements of parent and child dynamic. And this is certainly one of the ways in which we understand our relationship to God. The "Our Father" prayer, and calling God Father, Son and Holy Spirit show us ways of seeing God. But the richness of God goes beyond God being the one to call upon when we are in peril, or God acting like a parent. Calling out amidst the storm to God is certainly appropriate. That is the time to reach for God. And the image of God as a mother or father can help us to see the sort of love that God has for us: unconditional. But as we are gathered here we are enacting another vision of God too, we are gathered as the Body of Christ we are also echoing God's abiding presence with the disciples in the boat. Not only did Jesus abide with the disciples on the boat, he showed them he cared, and then he saved them in a way they had no idea they could be saved. Gathered here, as we share in the Eucharistic meal, God is of course abiding with us--but we are also abiding in God, acting as God, and abiding in one another. When we are here--we are God abiding in this community.  When we have our moments of calling out "Don't you care?" and "Save us" we do so in the context of the church community where we are forgiven, fed and blessed each week. We do so knowing that even in our big city and in our modern world, we are a part of a loving community that treats its members with the love that God showed to all of us in the giving of his son, Jesus. 

AMEN.

Early Church June 24, 2012 Proper 7 Year B

For Readings:
http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Pentecost/BProp7_RCL.html

   Today we heard a story about Jesus and his friends on a boat. Jesus wanted to go to the other side of the sea, so he asked his friends to take him in a boat. Jesus was really tired, so he decided to lie down and sleep while his friends were steering the boat. As he was sleeping the sea suddenly became very scary. There were huge waves, crashing all around them. The wind was blowing and howling. There was probably heavy rain, loud thunder and spooky lightning. The waves were splashing and crashing so much that some of the water even started pouring into their little boat. All of Jesus’ friends got really scared. The were scared of the big storm. When you are in a boat during a storm it can be really scary. They were worried that the boat would get full of water, or that the boat might tip over in all the wind. Jesus’ friends were scared for their lives.

But what about Jesus? What was he doing while his friends were so scared? Jesus was sleeping. Have you ever slept through something important? I know that sometimes when I take a nap I worry that I will miss out on something good. But while Jesus was sleeping there were huge waves, loud winds, and I bet some of his friends were yelling or crying. But Jesus stayed asleep. He must be a very heavy sleeper.

Jesus’ friends are so scared that they decide to wake Jesus up. They are kind of mad at Jesus. They are at least annoyed at Jesus. How can you sleep through this!? They want to know. Don’t you care that we might fall in the water and get very hurt?

Jesus loves his friends. But he is not worried. In this part of the story, Jesus reminds me a little bit of the character Madeline, who to the big tiger in the zoo, Madeline says “poo-poo”—right? Jesus is not scared of the things his friends are scared of. But Jesus loves his friends and wants to help them out. So he turns to the wind and says “Peace. Be still.”

The wind stops. The storm dies down. The water stops flooding into their boat. Everyone stops worrying.

There are a lot of stories in the bible about worrying. There are a lot of times when Jesus comes to visit new people, and the first thing he tells them is “Do not be afraid.” When Jesus’ mother Mary is visited by the Angel Gabriel before she has a baby, the angel says to her “Do not be afraid.”

I think there are a lot of Bible stories about being afraid because God know that there are a lot of things in our lives that can make us nervous, scared, anxious and afraid. When I was a little girl I was really, really scared that my dog, Jesse would die. My best friend was really really scared of black holes in space. Being a kid can be a little scary because there aren’t many things you are in charge of, so that can make you nervous.

I don’t think any of us have the power to say “Peace. Be still” to the wind—it probably won’t listen to us. But we can say “Peace. Be still” to ourselves when we start to worry. Even if the wind doesn’t listen to us, our own bodies will. When we are nervous about making friends in summer camp we can say to ourselves “Peace. Be still. ” You  can take a deep breath and think “Peace. Be still” before trying to ride a bike with out training wheels. When you are getting a little too wild and worked up you can say to your self “Peace. Be still.” The reason this  can work is that God loves each of us. God will protect all of us. And God thinks that we are doing just fine.

May 27, 2012 The Day of Pentecost

For readings:
http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Pentecost/BPentDay_RCL.html

​Pentecost 2012

Sarah J. Kooperkamp

           

            I always get a little nervous when I see a magazine cover with some sort of image of Jesus or declaring something about Christians these days. And as much as I am nervous, I try to have a look and actually read the article. I have a tendency to assume that the article will describe Christians and Jesus in ways that make me feel like I have never encountered either. So I think you might understand how I felt when I saw a Newsweek magazine in my therapist’s office with Forget the Church, Follow Jesus in huge letters on the cover. Below it: Christianity in Crisis. Ugh. The words weren’t helped by the image of Jesus, a white man with longish hair, wearing a jean jacket and a flannel shirt, seemingly standing in Times Square. This did not seem like something I wanted to read.  I was uncharacteristically early, about 10 minutes early for my appointment and I was able to read most of the article before my therapist called me into her office. By the time I sat down in the office, I had forgotten all of the personal things I wanted to talk to her about, and all I could do was explain to her (over and over again) how wrong this article had gotten it.

​            Now, I don’t want to be unfair to Andrew Sullivan, the author of the article. He does point out a lot of ways in which the Church as an institution has either failed or gotten in the way of the message of radical love we find in the Gospel. He points to the sex abuse scandals in the Catholic Church, the overly politicized religious right, and the Biblical fundamentalism of some Christians in America that somehow ignores a century and a half of Biblical scholarship. And there is no denying that mainline protestant Christianity and the Catholic Church in America have seen tremendous declines in attendance and support over the last 70 years. I suppose this congregation and this church building are both a recognition of this reality and a refutation of it. We have weathered many storms here, and there certainly have been declines, but we seem to be experiencing growth as a community. The troubled state of our building represents the physical effects on the decline of the mainline churches. For us that decline is very personal.

​And so, Sullivan concludes that Christianity is in crisis. We too might declare here that the state of the church building, and the amount of funds needed to repair and restore it might mean that we here at St. Ann and the Holy Trinity are in crisis.

​            Sometimes it can be a good thing to recognize that we are in a crisis. A crisis can kind of go in one of two ways, the fear is, of course, that things will just fall a part, but the alternative is that something new is done. In Sullivan’s article, he is arguing for something new to be done, his new thing is “forget the church, follow Jesus”—and yes, this indeed reduces his argument somewhat, but he sees the church as so broken at the moment that the truth of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection is not the central message that is preached from the Gospel each week. If we turn to our scripture reading today we see crisis—in Acts, the disciples are all living in a house in Jerusalem. They aren’t too sure what to do after Jesus’ death. In the 40 days of Easter after the resurrection Jesus has visited with them often. And then there is Jesus’ ascension. Now what? They wonder. What do they do now that Jesus is both dead and ascended? Who is with them now? How do they tell that story? What are they supposed to do with it? God sees this crisis among these early followers of Jesus, and God does something new.

​            The new thing that God does is to fill them with the Holy Spirit and send them out to preach about God’s deeds of power. In some ways this matches up to Sullivan’s image of Jesus as a figure we can all as individuals follow. If we each, speaking our own languages go out into the world, living as Jesus lived, preaching as Jesus preached, filled with the Spirit surely we will make the world a better place. Surely we will be helping to bring about the kingdom of God that Jesus tells us about in the Lord's Prayer.

But I think there is more to God's new thing than individuals receiving the power of the Holy Spirit. First of all it is significant that the thing these disciples receive is language. We know the importance of the word in John's Gospel from the prologue which begins "in the beginning there was the Word. And the Word was with God. And the Word was God. " And the word was God-- what a powerful reminder of how language and words relate to God. When we hear those words that begin John’s Gospel “in the beginning” we are of course reminded of Genesis. Our biblical memories pull that text forward and there too we see the importance of language. Creation happens when God speaks. "Let there be light" and there was. God’s words bring something out of nothing. So now that our biblical memories are bringing forth all these texts about words and beginnings I think we might be in a better place to understand the new thing that God is doing. Language is the way we come into existence. It is the way that God interacts with the world.  Language is necessarily relational. We have speakers and listeners. The Word begins with God, but then it is sent out. The Word comes down to interact with humanity. The gift of languages from the Holy Spirit is so that the disciples can go out and forge relationships. So it's not just a miracle- this power from the Holy Spirit. The miracle is not just the ability to speak a language that was unknown to the disciples a moment earlier--It's also something quite ordinary.  The gift given by the Holy Spirit is gift that compels the disciples out into the world to be with others. The opportunity to be a part of new communities and new conversations is the gift that is granted to them.

John's gospel today sort of lays out this plan for relationships- there is a trickle down aspect to them. There is God's relationship to Jesus, Jesus' relationship to the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit's relation to us. And then the gift that the holy spirit brings to the disciples is the ability to have new relationships with people all over the world. Our relationships with one another- when they are loving generous and kind echo God's love to us. When we share our self with other people we are in the presence of the Holy Spirit. Not to step on the toes of our preacher for next week at trinity Sunday- but the three in one nature of the trinity emphasizes God's relationality. The Holy Spirit’s part of the trinity is one I think a lot of us have a hard time defining. For some of us, I think God as creator and God as Jesus are clearer to us. The Holy Spirit might seem a little mystical to us, or maybe its just a little strange. And yet, the Holy Spirit, the advocate in John’s language, is the part of God that is most with us. John’s describes the Holy Spirit as the part of God that guides us into the truth. So following John we can demystify the Holy Spirit a bit: it’s the feeling inside urging us towards generosity, compassion, love, justice, and doing the right thing. It is the feeling that helps us to consider others. It’s the desire to help someone carry a stroller up the subway stairs. It’s the impetus to give to charitable causes. The Holy Spirit is the thing that brings us together here. It helps us to get to church in the mornings, and be a part of the community. When we share the Eucharist in a few moments—it will be with the help of the Holy Spirit that the bread and wine are transformed in to the body and blood, and it will be with the Holy Spirit’s help that we are transformed from a group of people in the same room into the Body of Christ.

And that’s what Pentecost is all about: The Holy Spirit’s transformation of individual follower’s of Jesus into the Body of Christ. We think of Pentecost as the church’s birthday because it is only with the power of the Holy Spirit that we are able to come together and become the Church.  The gift of speaking languages was so that the church could be open and available to all. But the Spirit’s gift to all of us, regardless of our language skills, is the Church.

            So what then of Andrew Sullivan? I think that ultimately what is wrong with his article is that with out the church, he is denying the power of the Holy Spirit to do a new thing. There is no doubt that there is trouble in Christianity in America, but we need the church more than ever to be guided into the truth by the Holy Spirit. We need the community of the church to gather together every week, remembering Jesus’ life, death and resurrection to give the Holy Spirit an opportunity to be present with us, to guide us towards the truth, the truth of loving relationships, the truth of justice, the truth of equal opportunities, the truth of God’s greatness, the truth of the importance of God’s creation, and the ability to do something about all this. If we forgot the church and followed Jesus, we would do plenty of good, but we wouldn’t be open to the role of the Holy Spirit to guide us towards that goodness.

             And what then of our crisis? It is perhaps a reminder for us to attune our ears and prepare our selves for the new thing that God might do among us. It is a chance to really feel for and be open to the ways in which the Holy Spirit might be guiding us towards the truth. As a church we know that there is a lot of work to be done here. We understand that, and we know that the Holy Spirit is going to have to play a role in helping us out, but Pentecost is an opportunity to take some time and listen for the Holy Spirit. We will listen by talking to one another, knowing that that Holy Spirit is in our relationships with one another, and in our language as we speak. We will listen by gathering together every Sunday and worshiping. And we will listen by going out into the world, as the disciples are asked to do, and forging new relationships. We will do it by the power of the Holy Spirit.

AMEN.