Alleluia, Christ is Risen!

Isa. 65:17-25

John 20:1-18

04/17/22

Easter morning begins with a community in despair.  Those who had believed in Jesus, believed in his kingship had hoped, no, had assumed that Jesus would free them from Roman tyranny and rule.  The messiah-ship for most of the Israelites meant that God’s chosen people would no longer be oppressed.  They would come to fullness, own their own land, have their own place, be the honored, the privileged, the wealthy and full-lived people God had meant for them to be.  Instead, Jesus had not changed the political structure.  Instead, he had called the people to change themselves. Jesus had called them to stop raising themselves up as “chosen” above all other people. Jesus had called them to stop their oppression of those they would judge within their own community: Samaritans, widows, prostitutes, adulterers, tax collectors.  They had been hopeful when they heard of Jesus’ power and strength; they had been hopeful of a new life for themselves. Instead they had been called to make life better for those around them. And they had become angry. So angry that they killed him. Jesus died because of our sins, because of our sinful nature that could not stop hoping for better things for ourselves, that did not instead help

and love those less fortunate around us.

But as with all revenge, his death did not bring healing, it did not bring comfort.  They were still left without the things they had wanted.  They were still left stuck in a life that was hard and unfair.  And now they had guilt added to their disappointment and fear; guilt that they had killed this man who preached nothing but radical and all powerful love.

For those who still believed in Jesus, for those who still loved Jesus, the emptiness was even more profound.  For those in the community who had been outcasts, Jesus had brought a new way of living life, of seeing life.  Jesus had brought life for the least accepted in the community.  And for them, his death was just unfair.

Easter morning begins with this sense of despair.  And in the gospel of John, Mary Magdalene alone went to the tomb before the sun had even begun to rise.  Not a safe thing for a woman to do, even in those times.  But in her love, in her grief, in her need, she went to the tomb to do the rituals which were part of grieving in their society.  She went to remember, she went to mourn, she went to care for the body of the Lord she still loved.  But when she arrived, she found that the body was gone!  For her in that moment, the despair was deepened to a new level.  Even the body was gone.  There was nothing left for her, and nothing for her to do with her grief. 

For us too we experience these times of grief and despair when it seems like nothing could get any worse.  It is in that deepest place of sorrow that we begin Easter.

As I set about writing this sermon, I thought about how all of us here in this place have experience resurrection moments.  I don’t know a single person who has not experienced deep loss, tragedy, pain, death.  Starting from when we are young, we all go through times of loss, times of grief and tragedy, and even times of deep despair.  I was reading an article recently that said that 1/5 of every child in the United States experiences bullying in high school.  My guess is that it is a larger percentage earlier on.  The world is full of bullies.  The world is full of people who would crucify you if given the chance.  And so most of us have experienced persecution at one time or another, or loss, or just pain.  We have experienced death.  The death of our dreams, the death of our hopes, the death of our loved ones, the death of our beliefs or understandings about the world.  And I would add that most of us, then, have also experienced despair.  There have been times for all of us, I believe, when getting up in the morning to face a new day is hard, when any beauty in the world is elusive. 

And yet you persist.  You go on.  You face each day until Easter comes.  For most of us, I believe that Easter does not come suddenly like it did for Mary, for the disciples, for those who loved Jesus.  For them, Easter came a day and a half after his crucifixion.  He was killed on Friday night, and raised by Sunday morning.  For them, his resurrection was full, miraculous, amazing, and, also, overwhelming. 

For many of us, perhaps for most of us, the resurrections in our life do not happen like this.  They are a slow recovery.  They are a walk through grief that you only recognize as a resurrection when you awaken one day without the same heaviness, or when you look back and see how far you have come. 

They may come slowly, but they do come.  The message of the resurrection for us is a promise.  It is a promise that whatever we are feeling, experiencing, living through that is despair, that is an end, that is death; that there is life that will follow. It is a promise of resurrection that says no death, no death is to be feared for no death is the end.  Death does not have the last word.  As an Indian saying says, “All will be well in the end.  And if it is not well, it is not the end.”  That is the promise of the resurrection. 

The resurrection is also an invitation.  It is an invitation to hold on to hope, to hold on to that promise, no matter what you are living through at the moment.  No matter what you see that is terrible and tragic and deadly in the world, those things are not the end, that are not all there is.  God is the God of new life and it comes after every death.  That is the promise and that is the invitation to hope for all of us.

We are in a year of “hope” this year.  And so there are two things I would like us to do.  The first is that I want you to turn to your neighbor and share a resurrection story of your own.  Again, we all have them.  Share a story of a relationship that you thought was over that was resurrected and healed.  Or a divorce that ended with a new and better marriage.  Or a time of deep despair that broke into new life, into hope.  Share your own stories of resurrection, for those are the stories of hope that keep all of us going, that keep all of us remembering the truth of the resurrection.  I invite you do that now.

As Mary was weeping outside the tomb, angels appeared to her.  But she was lost in her sorrow, and could not recognize them as angels. And so Jesus himself came to her, “Why are you weeping?  Whom are you looking for?”  Still, in her grief, in the darkness of the early morning, in her despair, she did not, could not recognize him.  “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” 

He responded by calling her name.  “Mary!”  Was all he said.  By calling her name, by seeing her, by loving her, he gave her the strength, the love, the courage to see and recognize him.  And in that moment, all of her despair became joy.

That promise of new life, that promise of joy, is there for us as well.  For us too, God is alive anew around us.  And when we cannot see it, when we are blinded by our grief, when we are overwhelmed with despair, when we are trapped in Good Friday; God calls us by name, loves us, and gives us the strength to look, to see, to believe in the unbelievable, and find ultimate joy in the very midst of our deepest despair.  As the passage in Isaiah tells us, those promises are huge.  “I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind....no more shall the sound of weeping be heard.  No more shall there be in it a baby who lives only a few days or an old person who does not live out their whole life.... before they call I will answer.  The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox.”  All things will be new: this promise is for you.

And so, the second thing I want to do is to pass out stones of hope.  These are rocks that I want you to carry with you during Easter-tide to remind you, weekly and daily that death is not the end, that resurrection is the promise and that it is a promise for each of us. 

And finally, I want to end with a poem that I found written by Annie Johnson Flint:

Some of us stay at the cross,

some of us wait at the tomb,

Quickened and raised with Christ

yet lingering still in the gloom.

Some of us 'bide at the Passover feast

with Pentecost all unknown,

The triumphs of grace in the heavenly place

that our Lord has made His own.

If the Christ who died had stopped at the cross,

His work had been incomplete.

If the Christ who was buried had stayed in the tomb,

He had only known defeat,

But the way of the cross never stops at the cross

and the way of the tomb leads on

To victorious grace in the heavenly place

where the risen Lord has gone.

 

Don’t stay at the cross.  And don’t stay at the tomb.  Instead, step into the grace, and the promise of new life.  It is the promise of resurrection, here for each of us.  Thanks be to God!  Christ is Risen!  (He is Risen indeed!)  Amen.

Changed in a Moment

 

Acts 9:1-19a

5/1/22

 

Today we heard about Saul/Paul’s conversion, and his being filled with the Spirit rather than persecuting those who would follow Jesus.  We have all heard this story before: it is a very familiar story.  It is so familiar that when people talk about great changes in their lives they sometimes refer to them as “Damascus Road experiences”.  But what I want to focus on today is that, while we in the extremely individualistic United States always hear this story as being a story about Saul and Saul alone, that Christianity is, in actuality, a very communal faith.  Our scriptures are not speaking to us as individuals, they speak to us as communities.  This story about Saul is no exception.  This is a story to a community of people, and the change that Paul experienced was a change that affected a great number of people.  But also, Paul did not experience this in isolation.  There were other players in this story who had very important roles to play.  We are told he was traveling with a group who also heard the voice.  We are told that he stayed with the disciples.  We are told that Ananias was the one who laid hands on him and healed him in Jesus’ name and then baptized him.  These are communal events.  And after all of this takes place, his call, and what he does from this point out, is to build communities of believers, entering synagogues, talking about Jesus, building up communities, groups of followers.  He is not about converting individuals, he is about building communities of believers. 

Christianity is very, very communal.  A commitment to the faith is a commitment to spend time in Christian community, caring for and serving God’s people, also in community.  I realize this is a foreign concept to many people.  Perhaps this is especially true of our younger generations at this point in time.  There is a myth at large, for example, among many young adults that religion is a private thing and does not require being in a community of faith.  But if you read the scriptures with intentionality, it becomes very clear that they have something very, very different to say.  Jesus, himself, was never a “lone ranger” but a person with a community not only of disciples but of many others as well, including women who were not counted among the twelve.  In Matthew 18:20 Jesus tells us, “For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.”  This is a strong statement, a strong, strong statement that it is not just that God stands beside us when we are alone and praying, but that Jesus is actually tangibly present, here in this place, in this room, when we are gathered in his name.  We do not experience Christ, God-among-us, Emmanuel, when we are alone.  It is an impossibility to do so.  Christ is to be found in community.  God might be experienced alone, but CHRIST, God with us cannot be.  We, together, are the body of Christ – but not alone, not in our own individual practices.  We are the body of Christ as a community of faith. 

It goes even deeper than that.  In today’s passage from Acts, when Jesus speaks to Saul, he does not say, “Why are you persecuting my people?”  I want you to think about that for a minute.  Those were not the words that Saul heard.  Remember that according the book of Acts, Saul was hunting down people who were followers of Christ.  As the passage we just read put it, “Meanwhile, Saul was still spewing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples. He went to the high priest, seeking letters to the synagogues in Damascus. If he found persons who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, these letters would authorize him to take them as prisoners to Jerusalem.”   But Jesus, speaking to Saul does not say, “Why are you persecuting my people?”  Instead he says, “Why are you persecuting ME?”  When we injure God’s people, we are injuring God, God-self.  This, of course, mirrors Matthew 25: “Whatever you do to the least of these you do to me.”

This story here, and Jesus’ words to Saul: these were not the exception.  This was the whole point.  We are deeply interconnected.  And when we try to separate ourselves from one another, walling off parts of our beings as “private” and “personal”, especially something as big as our faith, the people we harm are ourselves.  Our connections to others are our deepest connections to God.  Our faith conversations led us to a deeper understanding and therefore a deeper connection with God.  The sharing of our faith experiences also rounds out our vision and understanding of God.

When we are worshiping together, God is with us.  When we are feeding God’s sheep, God is with us.  When we are serving God’s people, God is with us.  When we connect with others in kindness, in care, in grace, God is with us.  And when we fail to connect with love and kindness towards others, we are failing to connect with God in those moments.  I think that part of the reason why meanness, why tearing, why estrangement and disconnection from others is so very painful for us is that it is not just a disconnecting from someone else.  It is a disconnecting from our very selves and a severing, in those moments, from God. 

               I think about when Pope Benedict made his decision to resign from his job as Pope.  That had not happened since 1294.  It was unheard of by many, and others saw it as unacceptable.  He made a very brave decision to do what he believed was best not only for himself, but for the church, since he could no longer serve as well due to failing health conditions.  In many, many ways he put the needs of the church and of the world above himself.  It was a brave and compassionate decision that recognized our deep interconnections and the need for wholeness and strength in leadership roles. 

               There is a story about a hospital volunteer who shared about a little girl named Liz who was suffering from a rare & serious disease.  Her only chance of recovery appeared to be a blood transfusion from her 5-year old brother, who had miraculously survived the same disease and had developed the antibodies needed to combat the illness.  The doctor explained the situation to the girl’s little brother, and asked the little boy if he would be willing to give his blood to his sister. The hospital volunteer share that she saw him hesitate for only a moment before taking a deep breath and saying, "Yes I'll do it if it will save her."  As the transfusion progressed, he lay in bed next to his sister and smiled, as we all did, seeing the color returning to her cheek. Then his face grew pale and his smile faded. He looked up at the doctor and asked with a trembling voice, "Will I start to die right away?" Being young, the little boy had misunderstood the doctor; he thought he was going to have to give his sister all of his blood in order to save her.  But the point is: he did it anyway.

               Another story shares about a professor who gave a pop quiz.  The student wrote, “I was a conscientious student and had breezed through the questions until I read the last one: "What is the first name of the woman who cleans the school?" Surely this was some kind of joke. I had seen the cleaning woman several times. She was tall, dark-haired and in her 50's, but how would I know her name? I handed in my paper, leaving the last question blank. Just before class ended, one student asked if the last question would count toward our quiz grade. "Absolutely, " said the professor.  "In your careers, you will meet many people.  All are significant. They deserve your attention and care, even if all you do Is smile and say "hello.." I learned that her name was Dorothy.”

               These are stories that remember our connection.  These are stories that remind us of the importance of each person but more, the importance of our relationships with those we encounter.  Those connections are vital in every day life, but even more vital for those of us who believe in God, who believe that God is the connection between all of us, is the love that we share between one another.  The more that we can love, the more that we can connect, the deeper our relationships with God.

A member of a certain church, who previously had been attending services regularly, stopped going.  After a few weeks, the pastor decided to visit him.  It was a chilly evening. The pastor found the man at home alone, sitting before a blazing fire. Guessing the reason for his pastor's visit, the man welcomed him, led him to a comfortable chair near the fireplace and waited.  The pastor made himself at home but said nothing.  In the grave silence, he contemplated the dance of the flames around the burning logs.  After some minutes, the pastor took the fire tongs, carefully picked up a brightly burning ember and placed it to one side of the hearth all alone then he sat back in his chair, still silent. The host watched all this in quiet contemplation.  As the one lone ember's flame flickered and diminished, there was a momentary glow and then its fire was no more.  Soon it was cold and dead. Not a word had been spoken since the initial greeting.  The pastor glanced at his watch and realized it was time to leave.  He slowly stood up, picked up the cold, dead ember and placed it back in the middle of the fire.  Immediately it began to glow, once more with the light and warmth of the burning coals around it. As the pastor reached the door to leave, his host said with a tear running down his cheek, 'Thank you so much for your visit and especially for the firey sermon. I will be back in church next  Sunday'.

               It is essential that we remember this.  That when people are dying in wars, that we are lessened, that when people are hungry, we are hungry.  When people are angry and vengeful, we are suffering too.  If we want to be the people of Christ, we have to remember our connections, our unity, that we need each other and are deeply connected to one another.  Paul’s conversion did not happen to just one person. It affected all who interacted with him.  Those who traveled with him when it happened, those who were with him with Ananias came to heal him, and all the rest of those with whom he interacted afterwards.  Similarly, everything we do, everything we choose, the words we use, the attitudes we have: all of these have an affect.  It’s the butterfly affect, it’s the quasar affect: everything we do interacts with everything else.  It all matters.  Let us, in all things, remember our deep connections and choose actions therefore that reflect love, grace, and caring for one another.  Amen.

Those Challenging Moments - sermon

 

Luke 6:18-19, 22-23

Acts 16:16-40

5/8/22 

               In Sunday sermons we mostly focus on the gospels, but last week, this week and next week, we instead are focusing on the book of Acts.  The truth is that well over half of our New Testament is written by or in the name of Paul.  His story, and the messages he brings to us have had a huge impact on the Church, and on Christianity as a whole.  The book of Acts, in many ways, is a book about the beginnings of the church, of Christianity, but it, too, in large part focuses on the story of Paul.  So spending some time on his story and his messages has value for us, if only to understand better the history of the church, where we have been, where we have moved to, and where we are heading forward.            

               In today’s passage from Acts, then, we hear of the imprisonment of Paul and Silas.  What struck you as odd about this story?  We tend to read these stories with great seriousness, but the truth is I find this to be a particularly amusing story at many points.

1.        Paul became really annoyed with this woman who was, frankly, helping him spread the word.  We don’t know why he became annoyed, but he was irritated with her presence.  He was so annoyed that he “took her gift” away: calling the spirit of divination out of her so she could no longer be a fortune teller.  Is that a gracious way to behave?  Here is a disciple who is extremely human acting in an extremely human way: responding to his own emotions in a way that could not possibly be helpful.

2.       The “owners” of this slave girl had been cashing in on her gift.  So when Paul called it out of her, they were notably upset.  They then responded by throwing Paul into prison on trumped up charges.  Okay, we know this happens.  Still, what a funny, or odd, part of this story.  Paul’s behavior in reacting out of annoyance led him into prison.  Wasn’t very thought out action on his part, was it? 

3.       Those in the prison are set free and yet they don’t leave.  Now what on earth is that about? 

4.       The guard asks to be “rescued” – and I assume he is talking about escaping the wrath of the Romans who would have had his head for letting the prisoners go free.  But Paul doesn’t tell him how to be rescued.  He tells him, instead, how he can be “saved”. 

5.       The legal people learn that Paul is a Roman citizen, so now they are embarrassed by the way they treated him and have to apologize for it all.

6.       In their embarrassment, then, they beg Paul to leave the area.

All in all, it’s a very weird story.  Don’t you agree? 

As with all biblical passages, then, we are called to go deeper.  What is this story trying to tell us?  Is there a message here for us, something for us to learn and deepen from?  And if so, what is the message here for us? 

There are several things I want to point out about this story.

First, the “crime” that actually sends Paul to prison here is an economic one.  Yes, the owners of the slave girl turn it around and accuse Paul of an uproar in the city center.  But his actual “crime” was cheating these owners of their ability to use the slave girl for economic gain in this way.  Paul and Silas are attacked, beaten and imprisoned because of the greed of these “owners” of the slave girl.  This is true of today, too.  In many ways what looks like politics really comes down to economics.  Those who have don’t like it when they are faced with the possibility of less financial gain and they will still, to this day, come up with other excuses, even make up stuff, in order to act out their fear, their anger of losing what they have.  They too tend not to be gracious or compassionate but go for the jugular, attacking, killing, imprisoning and harming others. This is true at an individual level and it is true in a communal or corporate level.  Greed and the fear of loss do huge amounts of damage in our world.  In this way the story is cautionary for all of us.  Do we, too, out of our economic fears, harm others?  Do we, too, out of our economic fears, weave stories that appear to be about other things than what is really at the heart of the situation so that we can seek revenge or enact “justice” on those who would take from us moneys that we may not have earned in moral ways in the first place?  What causes us the most fear and anger?  And how do we deal with that when it does come?  Do we attack and harm out of our fear and anger?  Or are we able to step back?  To self-reflect and to act with love and grace towards the world around us? 

Another point that I gain from this story: Paul acts in a way that, at some level, frees the girl.  She can no longer be used and taken advantage of anymore because of this gift that she has.  Her “gift” has been cast out.  But he doesn’t do it out of compassion.  He does it because he is annoyed.  And for me this story then calls me to look and consider the times when God is able to use even our flaws, our impatience, our annoyance, to accomplish good things in the world, to bring life out of death, to bring freedom out of captivity, to bring release out of imprisonment. 

The girl relates to Paul.  She is a slave to an owner.  She accuses Paul of being a slave of God.  But she does see the difference: Paul’s “slavery” frees him, while her slavery imprisons her.  It is interesting to me that Paul does get annoyed with this.  After all, she is giving him free advertising.  The passage says this goes on for “many days”.  Maybe he just became tired of hearing her voice.  Whatever, the reason, he “frees” her from what her owners see as a gift, and what to her must have felt like a burden.  But the truth is that we never learn what happens to the girl after this event.  We don’t know if the owners then acted out in anger towards her for no longer being a source of income for them.  We simply don’t know.  Even the author of the book of Acts does not really see some people except as characters in his story.  He, too, overlooks the life of this small one, this “slave girl” in order to focus on his hero.  Jesus would have done differently, I am sure.  But this is a story about the early church and not about Jesus.  And as such, it behooves us, while we can marvel at the good that can come out of bad at times, to still do our best by other people: to have long-sight, long-vision into what our reactive behaviors can do to others.

Finally, the jailer asks to be rescued.  He knows he needs to be rescued.  He understands that because the prisoners have gotten out, that he is in danger and he needs help.  It will be assumed that he has let the prisoners go and he will lose everything as a result.  So, he is asking to be rescued.  But I would say the difference between him and us is that he recognizes his need for rescue.  Do we know we, too, need to be rescued?  And if so, what is it that you need to be rescued from?  What enslaves you?  What holds you captive?  What keeps you from true freedom?  What things imprison us?  Is it a list of “shoulds?”  I SHOULD do this, I SHOULD do that.  Is it a list of societal expectations?  We are expected to do this, expected to do that.  Is it work that is difficult?  Is it our bodies’ limitations?  Is it a worldview of scarcity?  Of fear? 

I think that if this story has anything at all to teach us, it is to, once again, look at things differently.  Would you be able to sing God’s praises and pray with joy if you were unfairly beaten with rods and thrown into prison?  Probably not.  But why not?  Why do we not see our challenges as opportunities for growth and deepening?  And how do we learn to reframe our lives, our challenges? 

There are studies that show that laughter changes us.  I think the saying, “well, I could laugh or I could cry” is an accurate representation of some of the choices that we have about how we see, interpret and understand what happens in our lives.  Can we learn to laugh at things when we feel like crying?  There have also been studies that show that when we smile, it actually improves our mood.  That while we usually think we smile when we are first happy, it can work just as well in the other direction: smile first and then feel happy.  Singing is also shown to create the endorphins in our bodies that lead to feeling well. 

But I think it goes deeper than that.  I think that our culture teaches us to connect through complaining, through our hardships rather than through our joys, and that trains us to see the bad, even in situations that are mostly good.  I will use myself as an example here.  As I’m writing this it is a glorious day outside.  The sun is shining, I can hear birds singing, trees are blooming with flowers.  I worked on this in March, so this week is my birthday, my daughter’s birthday, my mom’s birthday is next week.  I’m siting here thinking about my kids: all of whom are doing really well.  Middle is starting his very exciting internship this week, Eldest is about to graduate and has been accepted into their first choice of grad school, Youngest is looking at colleges, got to go to San Diego with a choir tour, is finishing her junior year.  I have a wonderful husband who is kind, loving and generous.  I have work that is fulfilling and has so much variety in it.  Things are good.  But what did I talk about today with Kristi and Sandy in the office?  I complained about something my son said rather than focusing on the fact that he reached out to me.  I complained about the pollen from the trees making me sneezy rather than delighting in the flowers.  I complained about the scam email I received from someone claiming to be in need of help (though giving me an address that wasn’t real, a “lease” form that had clearly electronically created signatures, a phone number that was marked by google as “scammers”, and asking me to MAIL the check because she wasn’t able to come in), instead of focusing on the reality that I always have more than I need which is why they ask me for help.

Youngest told me the week that on one of the fields at her school, they put out fake coyotes on the lawn.  The intention behind the fake coyotes is to scare off the geese who are so prolific in their droppings that they create a huge mess of the field when they land there.  She then told me that even though the coyotes are extremely realistic looking, the geese eventually figured out that they weren’t real, so the school has had to start moving them around on the field in order for the geese to continue to be scared off. 

Sometimes I think that we get confused by all the fake coyotes in our own lives.  Is this thing over here really a coyote?  Dangerous?  Threatening?  Damaging?  Or does it just appear that way when we are looking for the bad in our lives?

I want to be clear.  I am not saying that we shouldn’t ever get upset.  Really bad things do happen, to us as individuals and to us as communities and to the world.  The war in the Ukraine is one of those really bad things and it should upset us and call us into action.  Terrible things happen in our lives that need addressing.  And depression is a real and formidable force that cannot just be dismissed by “smile”, “Laugh” or “sing”.  What I am saying though, is what I pray almost every week: we can be empowered to do the work of the world, to confront the issues, to face the demons, as it were, by also recognizing the good, by remembering with joy the many, many blessings that come our way each and every day. 

If Paul can sing from prison, we can find delight in things every single day.  We are still in the Easter season and the Easter season calls us, in contrast to lent, to look for the resurrections all around us, every single day.

Don’t let the Coyotes, those beacons of death and danger, fool you: they are fake coyotes after all.  The birds, on the other hand, with their beauty and with their scat: they are very real.  So delight in the green grass, celebrate the life of the geese, and be empowered to remove the “stuff” left behind.  Amen.

Restorative Justice at the College Level

           For my youngest child's spring break we went and looked at colleges that had interested her.  Without naming names, I want to talk about one of those colleges very briefly.  Most of what this college had to say for itself was very positive and seemed like a good match for Youngest.  They talked about being inclusive and aware, though aparently one of their professors had made an inappropriate comment in a fit of anger that was caught on video and was being shown all over the place.  

           This college also talked about using a restorative model for justice on campus rather than a retributive model.  I've written about this before, but to explain again: In a retributive model for justice, misdeeds, mistakes, errors are dealt with by punishing the person who made the error.  Those who use this method seek revenge on the person, often an escalated revenge of what was done in the first place.  This model has many problems with it, beginning with the fact that punishment simply does not work to effectively change behavior.  In fact, the extremely high rate of recidivism in the United States prisons, for example, shows that the punishment we exact on our prisoners ends up cementing their identity as criminals most of the time.  They then have extremely little chance of changing, doing better, or choosing a different way of life.  We also make it almost impossible for those who've been incarcerated to find housing, jobs, or a way of getting out of that system.  We make them into criminals, even if they weren't actually criminals before.  It is also estimated that at least 10% of those who end up incarcerated are not actually guilty of the crimes they were incarcerated for.  Additionally, our retributive system does not provide healing for the victims either.  In our legal system, in fact, our retributive justice system usually ends up revictimizing the victims as they must tell their story in a court of law and have that story attacked and dismantled by lawyers seeking to defend the accused.  

        In contrast to the restributive justice system, a restorative model seeks to understand and provide healing for both victims and those who have done wrong.  There are still consequences for the offenders.  But the consequences tend of be logical or natural consequences: ways for the offenders to correct their mistakes, fix them, look at their own issues that caused the offenders to behave badly in the first place, and invites them to choose to start on a different path.  

       Many of our native tribes (throughout the world!  New Zealand has a wonderful restorative justic program based on the methods of the Maori) have used a restorative model rather than a retributive model with great success.  It sees everyone involved as people not "bad guys" and "good guys" but human beings, all in need of growth and healing.

       Our child development strategies are tending more and more towards a restorative model as we learn that children act out when there is something that needs healing, something that needs training, something that needs help.  It has moved from identifying kids as simply "bad" or "good" into recognizing that all of us are mixes of bad and good and are all on a path of growth.  Many of our schools are also learning and moving more towards a restorative rather than a retributive model.  For example, rather than expelling a child who has done wrong, many schools now work with the child, their family, the victims, and the school system to try to understand what wrong has happened and to do the work to make sure the offenders are not continuing in their behavior.  They are also working more to help the victims obtain healing help.  Expulsion, for many kids, was not only an uneffective punishment, but sometimes was experienced by kids to be a kind of backwards reward.  It encouraged further "bad" behavior rather than correcting what was wrong, teaching more fully about empathy, and helping everyone involved in these situations to heal, grow and do better.  

         So, this college we visited prided itself on teaching and using a restorative model of justice.  It proclaimed that when something happened that was "wrong" that it was explored, analyzed, and addressed individually, working with those who made the mistakes to correct them, to learn from them, and to fix the mistakes rather than to simply be punished, expelled or thrown out as "bad".  

        That's awesome.  I believe deeply in restorative justice and was very excited to find a school that declared its commitment to that system at the outset.

        HOWEVER, many students at the school were protesting, demanding for the firing of the above mentioned professor.  The firing of a teacher follows a retributive model of justice.  It does nothing to correct the problem or even address it.  It does nothing towards healing the victims.  It also simply dismisses the professor, leaving him and his family without income or without a way to correct the problems.  It responds to an error (or even a series of errors) by adding to the list of what is harmful, destructive and angry, rather than offering a way forward that teaches, heals and restores relationships.  It stops conversation, rather than exploring, learning together and working together to truly address the issues in productive and constructive ways.  It also entrenches the professor in a place of simply defending his comments rather than inviting him to do the self-reflection a more restorative process would encourage.  

       I continue to be amazed at the lack of compassion that humans show to one another.  I continue to be deeply saddened by the ease with which people choose to label, categorize and "other" those around them.  This professor stopped being a person to these students.  He is just a "bad guy" now to throw out, another person to be "gotten rid of,"  to punish, to condemn.  It was obvious that for all the rhetoric at the school claiming to follow and teach a restorative justice model that they have not been able to actually instill that value into the student body.  We have a long way to go.

What Is Right Vs. What Is Expedient

 

Psalm 146

John 19:1-16a

               In today’s scriptures we hear a very difficult passage which is usually only read on Good Friday, if it is read at all, because it is so very hard to hear.  It is hard to hear because it is graphic, violent, and tragic towards Jesus, of all people, who did nothing but love those around him, heal and help those around him, and encourage us to do the same.  It is also hard because we hear Pilate’s struggle, and may recognize in it some of our own.  When the pressure is high to act in one way, it can be very difficult, even when you know it to be wrong, to choose to behave differently. 

               I have a friend who joined Noom.  Noom is the newest, latest, supposedly most effective, weight loss program out there.  One of its gifts is that it teaches a lot of psychology to people who are struggling to change their patterns and habits, and to find a healthier way of life.  My friend was sharing with me that a couple NOOM sessions were discussing the fact that our eating is greatly influenced by those around us.  Part of human psychology is to match the behaviors of the people around you, even with things as simple and easy as food.  So, if the person sitting with you at the restaurant orders an appetizer, you are much more likely to also order an appetizer.  If the person next to you is ordering a dessert, or a drink, you are also much more likely to do the same.  Even the main meal itself can be greatly influenced by the choices of those around you.  When you read the menu you may have one item in mind to order, but if everyone else orders first, their choices often affect our own: “ooo, that sounds good!” we say, “I’ll have the same!” 

               This behavior, of copying, mirroring or matching the behaviors of those around us extends far beyond food choices, though.  Sometimes this happens in healthy ways, and sometimes not.  If those around you exercise, you are much more likely to also exercise (a good, healthy thing).  If those around you relax by sitting in front of the TV and mindlessly eating, you are much more likely to do that (obviously not such a healthy thing).  Whatever it is: if the folk around you play games, or read, or do puzzles.  If they pray, go to church, vote: all of these affect and influence our choices.

               NOOM’s suggestion, then, when it comes to our physical health, is to be the first to order, or the one to set the trends of exercising more or moving more.  Be the one to help those around you make healthier choices.  The NOOM staff also suggest planning ahead: go into the restaurant with some idea in your head before-hand of what you plan to eat and be intentional about reminding yourself that you do not have to do what those around you do.

               But what happens when you can’t plan ahead?  What happens when something unexpected happens?  And what happens when the pressure is HIGH to do something specific, to behave in a very specific way?  We have a really hard time saying no.  For lots of reasons.  We want to be liked.  We don’t want to lose our influence or connections.  We want to be respected and trusted.  And it is just part of our human DNA to do so.

I’m not talking here so much about facing normal temptations.  Normally we are tempted by things we want.  But that’s not what this sermon or today’s scripture is about.  Pilate here is not being asked to do something he enjoys or wants to do, so this isn’t a normal temptation.  This is simply pressure from the community to do something he doesn’t want to do, and that he feels is wrong.  Even in his high position, even as the ruler and leader of the people, he cannot escape the pressure and he caves in to it.  Think about how much more strongly that pressure effects us when it is our boss, or people we love and care about, or a community of people who are of greater or equal influence on us? 

In my pastor circles we talk about the pressure to preach sermons that won’t upset or even challenge people too much.  We have pressure to not alienate or scare people.  Even when scripture points out to us important things that we should be saying, the pressure to “make nice” or avoid ruffling feathers can be difficult to resist.  And like Pilate, we justify it in many ways: I can’t speak on this because it will split the church.  I can’t say it this way because people will leave.  But again, is that what we are truly, deeply called to do?  Is it what Pilate was truly, deeply called to do - to ignore his inner voices telling him this was wrong?  We often react with what is expedient over what is right.  It is very, very tempting to act in the ways others want us to act.  It is much harder to stick to our beliefs and to act with integrity in the face of the pressure to do otherwise. 

The prophets struggled with this too.  Jeremiah didn’t want to do what was right, he knew it would cause him to be unpopular so he said he was too young.  Moses didn’t want to do it, so he said he couldn’t speak, Jonah didn’t want to do it so he ran away.  Even Peter was impacted by those around him when he denied Jesus three times.  He knew acknowledging his connection to Jesus could get him killed, so he denied him. 

Our stories of heroes tend to be those who stuck to what they knew was right and chose to act despite their subsequent unpopularity.  And we know what happens to those folk.  MLK ended up murdered, Ghandi ended up murdered. Jesus ended up murdered.  People who stand up against what the masses want end up dead.  And Pilate?  We don’t know what would have happened if he had refused to do what the crowds demanded.  But my guess is he was afraid, maybe mortally afraid, of the consequences if he ignored the pressure from the crowds.  Is it any wonder that he resisted?  Is it any wonder when we resist?  That we are so easily influenced by those who demand we behave in a certain way, even when we know they are wrong? 

I invite you to think for a minute about a time you may have been pressured to do what you knew (or strongly believed) to be wrong by those around you.  How did you react?  What did you do?  Did you cave in?  And if you did, how did it feel?  If you didn’t, what happened then? 

Ronald Richardson in his book, Creating a Healthier Church, (p 59) wrote, “In Germany in the 1930’s there was a very high level of anxiety.  The primary source of this anxiety, but not the only one, related to the chaotic economic conditions.  The Germans are an intelligent and well-educated people.  But as their anxiety went up, they were increasingly attracted to the simplistic ideas of the Nazi party and Adolf Hitler, who offered, as the cause of Germany’s problems, Jews, communitists, [LGBTQ persons], and others whom he saw as social misfits who diluted the quality of what he called the “pure Aryan race.  In the midst of so much anxiety, the majority of the people lost their ability to think clearly, put aside their own deep spiritual beliefs and values and participated in a social/political movement that heped them to fell better and more confident about themselves.  They gave up many of their beliefs to go along with the ‘party line’.  Dictators thrive in situations where people are anxious, and so the Nazi party was voted into power.”

Pilate, even as he stood in power, was experiencing a great deal of anxiety when faced with the pressure to kill Jesus.  And so he did it.  He could not resist that pressure even in the face of his own convictions about Jesus’ innocence.  He could not choose what was right over what was expedient, simple, and the path of least resistance. 

Few of us are the heroes who choose integrity and what we believe to be right in the face of those loud voices and strong peer pressure to choose something different.  And sometimes the issue is that we honestly don’t know what is best.  We know what we believe to be right, we know it doesn’t feel good to be pushed to act contrary to what we think is right.  But, if you are like me, in the face of high pressure we can doubt our own sense of the world, our own convictions.   When we really don’t know for sure and when the pressure is high to behave in a way contrary to our own inner voices, what do we do in those moments? 

James Baldwin said, “Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.”  When we are struggling to know what to do, we should always fall back to doing what is most loving.  What is most kind.  What is most compassionate. 

               But there will be times when we can’t.  And then?  The Good News in this is always God’s abundant forgiveness and continuing call on our lives.  Just as Jesus forgave Peter for his denials, God forgives us.  Just as Jesus, from the cross, begged forgiveness for those who had killed him (which included Pilate), God forgives us.  But God also doesn’t leave us there.  We are asked again to do what is right.  We are called to try again to act with integrity despite the pressures around us to behave differently. 

               That may not feel like good news.  But it is.  God is not calling us to do what is “right” just for the world’s sake, though that is part of it.  God calls us to do what is right for our own wholeness, our own well-being.  So even when we mess up, God gives us another chance, and another, to try again.  Again, we have to remember that even Jesus understood this.  “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do,” he said.  And I believe he said that with all conviction. 

               Our invitation is to trust our inner voices.  Our invitation is to always choose love.  Our invitation is also to forgive ourselves for the past mistakes we’ve made and to move into the future with the determination to do better next time.  God has loved you into being and God will love you into the next opportunity to walk towards wholeness.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

        

What Is Truth?

John 18:28-40

Psalm 145:10-13

3/27/22

 

Truth.  What is truth?  Today we are swamped with extreme stories in our news on both ends of the spectrum.  The tales become more and more wild, and what is real becomes harder and harder to determine.  As a result, people don’t know what to believe anymore.  We don’t know what is true, we don’t know what is TRUTH.  And it feels important, desperately important to know what is real, what is FACTUAL, what is historical, what is TRUE. 

As people try to navigate what is real, what is true, we are impacted by many who are actively trying to hide truth, thinking that truth will be damaging.  I think about what happened in our own Presbytery at Cameron house in San Francisco.  When the stories started to come out that the pastor who had led Cameron house for forty years had been molesting the boys he worked with the entire time he was there, the first response of the Presbytery was to hide it, to shut it down, believing that the truth would create more damage, would divide the church, would effectively stop important programs.  Of course, the opposite was true.  In trying to hide the truth, instead, they did much greater damage to those who had been harmed.  And this led to greater damage to the church because the stories did come out, despite the attempts at hiding them. The appearance of duplicity, the attempts to hide the stories are what made the church look bad and what drove people from it.  Truth matters, and the facts matter.  Telling the truth matters. 

But still, in a world where everyone sees things differently, what is truth?  What is it really? 

The “truths” that we are told, and our determinations of what is real, what is not, who to believe, who not to believe: these are tearing us apart as a country, as a people, as a nation.  And I would say that this is because under all the historical truths, under the facts, under the histories, we have forgotten the deeper meaning of what is really TRUE.  We have gotten so caught up in what is factual, what is historical, that we have forgotten what is true with a capital T. 

I realize that may sound complicated and confusing.  We come to know our world by what we believe to be true.  It determines our actions, it determines our friendships, it determines our lives.  But we also know that there is always more than one way to see any and every event.  Depending on where you stand, what preconceived understandings you already come with, and your core beliefs, you will see each event differently.  There are very few “facts” when it comes down to it.  Let me give you an example.  In front of you right now you see me, a solid.  You see me standing here as a solid person.  But when you dig a little deeper you find that we are all made of atoms and atoms are mostly space.  What you are seeing is not a solid, but mostly space at a core molecular level. 

Let me give you another example.  We see color all around us, but what is color?  To quote scientific Britannica: “color is simply the range of visible light that humans can see. Different colors, such as red and orange, and other invisible spectrums such as infrared light, move around in waves of electromagnetic energy. The human eye is capable of seeing only light with wavelengths between 380 and 750 nanometers. For example, the visible spectrum begins with the wavelengths that we call violet, between 380 and 450 nm, then moves on to blue, green, yellow, and orange, and ends with what we call red, between 590 and 750 nm. When you look at someone’s red shirt, for instance, that shirt will be absorbing or scattering wavelengths of light lower than 590 nm, so those waves will not reach your eyes. But a red shirt will be reflecting some wavelength between 590 and 750 nm, which your eyes process as red.” 

These two examples are just scientific examples.  But I could easily give you human examples too.  When we see other people’s behavior, we ascribe to each person motivations, “agendas” and feelings.  But if you ever think about why someone does something and then ask them why they did it, you will find that our ideas about people’s behaviors and their ideas about their own behaviors do not match.  And to be fair, people don’t see everything about themselves, let alone about other people.  Our motivations for every behavior are complex and are made up of our histories, our perceptions, and our values.  Each action builds on past actions, and our motivations for any one behavior will never be completely determined.

Even at a more basic level, interpreting what we hear and see others DO can be difficult.  I shared in a blog about a church where I had worked as organist/choir director during seminary.  After I graduated, the church hired another young woman to take my place.  One week that new young woman called me extremely upset and said that the pastor’s wife (who sang in the choir) was mean to her and didn’t like her at all.  I found this very hard to believe since the woman had been so kind and sweet to me.  But I listened and tried to encourage her to talk directly to the pastor’s wife.  A week later the pastor’s wife called me, explaining that she didn’t know what to do about the new choir director who misinterpreted everything she said.  She tried to joke with her and the director heard it as attacking.  She tried to offer care and the choir director heard it as telling her what to do.  Neither of them heard each other.  And neither of them could understand very well what was going on.

I remember watching a TV episode on sight.  They ran a bunch of tests on people on their sight, but it was also on their understandings.  One of the tests they ran was to have a group of 100 people watch a small video clip and then each of them wrote about what they saw.  None of what they wrote matched.  After sharing with the group each person’s memory of what had happened, they then had the same group rewatch the video.  And then had them once again write down what they saw.  And while each person’s vision of what had happened had changed a bit, each person had, at some level, incorporated what they heard the others had also seen into their descriptions, none the less, the descriptions still did not match.  What was fact here?  What was historical?  If all of this added up into what was “truth”, “truth” itself was more confusing and unclear than ever. 

In faith matters this becomes even more complex.  I can guarantee that if we were to spell out each one of our beliefs in this room, no two of us would agree 100%.  We are all worshiping in the same church, in the same denomination, in the same town and same building.  And yet even here, no two of us would be 100% in agreement in terms of faith beliefs.   If we define “truth” then in this way, we will find that no two of us can agree on what is true, what is real, or even what is factual. 

Bishop Michael Curry said it in his book, Love is the Way: page 221: “If you are only getting stories from people who look like you, you aren’t getting the truth.” And since Sunday is the most segregated hour of the week, our reach for “truth” needs some help.  When I talk to my brothers, sisters and siblings of color, for example, most of them have a depth of faith, an experience of God, that we can only imagine, that we can only hope to attain, hope to reach for.  And that should tell us something.  We, with our intellectualism and our cynicism and our skepticism are missing out on some very deep truths about God’s presence, God’s actions, and God’s movements.

Paul Kalanithi in his book, When Breath Becomes Air, said it this way, “In the end, it cannot be doubted that each of us can see only a part of the picture.  The doctor sees one, the patient another, the engineer a third, the economist a fourth, the pearl diver a fifth, the alcoholic a sixth, the cable guy a seventh, the sheep farmer an eighth, the Indian beggar a ninth, the pastor a tenth.  Human knowledge is never contained in one person.  It grows from the relationships we create between each other and the world, and still it is never complete.  And Truth comes somewhere above all of them…”

But still, what is Truth?  One of my favorite movies is Second Hand Lions.  And there is a wonderful scene towards the end of the movie that I want to share with you.  The main character is a kid who has come to stay with his uncles over the summer.  His mother is horrible and has basically abandoned him to two old men she really doesn’t even know.  But these men tell the boy these huge, fantastic tales of their time as young men.  Truly the tales are outrageous, but at the same time, possibly true.  And at one point, the boy confronts one of the men with these words, “Those stories about Africa, about you, they are true aren’t they?”  The old uncle responds, “It doesn’t matter.” 

The boy continues, “It does too!  Around my mom all I hear is lies.  I don’t know what to believe.”

The man responds, “Son, if you want to believe in something, believe in it.  Just because something isn’t true, that’s no reason you can’t believe in it.  …  Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things that a [person] needs to believe in the most.  That people are basically good.  That honor, courage and virtue are everything, that money and power are nothing.  That good always triumphs over evil and that love, and I want you to remember this, that true love never dies.  I want you to remember that, boy.  Remember that.  It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not.  You see, a [person] should believe in those things because those are the things worth believing in.”  C.S. Lewis in his Narnia series similarly said that it is better to believe in a lie that is wonderful than a “real” world that is hell.

William Faulkner has been quoted as saying, “Facts and Truth really don’t have much to do with each other.”

So what am I saying?  That “facts” don’t matter?  No.  What I’m saying is that we are part of creating what is real, and what is true.  And part of that start with our beliefs, with our visions and with our understandings of the world.  What is true is impacted by our faith.  A belief, for example, in love means that you will behave in ways that are loving, that you will trust your love and that will make a difference to all those you encounter.

Today we come to the story of Jesus’ trial before Pilate.  I wonder, when you think about Jesus, what you think his primary purpose here was?  We can think of many purposes.  A mirror into God, a model for how to live as faithful people, an example of what Love really looks like.  Many of our fundamentalist, evangelical, and even mainstream brothers and sisters would say Jesus’ purpose is death, or resurrection, or salvation from sins.  But this is not what Jesus himself says.  He doesn’t tell us his purpose is any of the theological reasons we might suppose.  No, instead, in this discussion with Pilate, he states very clearly and very simply that his purpose in coming is to testify to the truth.   Pilate then ends today’s readings with the simple question, “What is truth?”

And as we know, this “simple” question is anything but simple.

Frederick Buechner says this about Truth in his book Wishful Thinking: a theological ABC: “When Jesus says that he has come to bear witness to the truth, Pilate asks, ‘What is truth?’  Contrary to the traditional view that his question is cynical, it is possible that he asks it with a lump in his throat.  Instead of Truth, Pilate has only expedience.  His decision to throw Jesus to the wolves is expedient.  Pilate views [humanity] as alone in the universe with nothing but [our] own courage and ingenuity to see [us] through.  It is enough to choke up anybody.  Pilate asks What is truth?  And for years there have been politicians, scientists, theologians, philosophers, poets, and so on to tell him.  The sound they make is like the sound of empty pails falling down the cellar stairs.  Jesus doesn’t answer Pilate’s question.  He just stands there.  Stands, and stands there.”

Jesus stands there.  The one who has declared over and over “I am” stands there.  “I am” stands there.  And that is the truth that he presents.  His truth is that he is.  The truth to which he testifies is that God IS.

God is present in the heavens, and God is present in this person.  God is present in the very air we breathe, and, dare I say, God is present in YOU.  That is the truth that stands there.  That is the truth that Jesus presents by his very body, by his very being.  That is Truth.  And it is on that that we can base our faith, our determination, our lives.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.