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Foundry is an historic, progressive United Methodist Church that welcomes all, worships passionately, challenges the status quo, & seeks to transform the world.
Episodes
Thursday Apr 02, 2015
Thursday Apr 02, 2015
A homily preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry UMC, April 2, 2015, Maundy Thursday.
Texts: 1 Corinthians 11:23-26, John 13:12-17, 31-35
Do a quick Google search and you will find an impressive amount of research on what we call the “selfie.” With the rise of social media, this practice of self-generated self-portraits has exploded and has given psychologists and sociologists all sorts of new fodder for exploring human personality, relationality, and communication. Why do people take them? Why do people post them? Theories abound. It’s a fascinating topic. But for purposes of reflection tonight, I simply want to point out that the fact that we collectively take so many self-portraits means that we are looking at ourselves a lot. And then we are putting our image out into the world. But what is the “self” we see? What is the “self” that is getting shared? The season of Lent is a time for us to really look at ourselves, to take stock of our lives and of our choices, to acknowledge what we have done and what we have failed to do. One might call the whole Lenten enterprise a real “selfie check.” Look at yourself, truly and deeply. Take stock of what you are putting “out there” and why…
I’ll admit that I usually don’t share my true selfies—that is, the photos I take of myself alone. I’ve got plenty stored on my camera roll. But generally speaking, I look awful in them. My face is lopsided and all the wrinkles show. The bags under my eyes and everything that I so carefully try to disguise in my day-to-day life appear with a vengeance. I don’t want people to see that stuff. It’s hard for me to look at it myself. And yet it is my true selfie, my true self, that Jesus sees. It is your true self that Jesus sees. Jesus sees all the blemishes and the scars, the laugh lines and tear stains… Jesus knows all about your accomplishments and also about your struggles and failures, about your deepest fears and your greatest hopes. Jesus knows how you have hurt others and yourself and about the ways that you have shown care and generosity and love. Jesus knows, Jesus sees…you.
And Jesus saw those with whom he gathered around the table so long ago. He knew them and all that they had been through. He knew what they had given up and what they had accomplished. And he knew what they had done and what they would do. // I try to picture what image Jesus would post of himself on this night…and I imagine that it would be one of those selfies that communicates a deep loneliness. Because Jesus was alone even in the midst of his closest friends; he alone knew what was going on. He alone saw the shadows that fell across the table, shadows in the form of betrayal, denial, death on a cross.
Bearing the burden of this insight, Jesus stepped away from the table and began to give himself away. Kneeling at the feet of the ones who would deny and betray him, he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant. He who came from the very glory of God, stooped to wash the feet of his friends and the feet of his betrayer. //
And he acknowledges that they don't know what he is doing. And then he makes it plain. “I have just given you an image, a picture of myself, a real picture of what it means to be truly human.”… “I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.” And what is the picture? What has he done? He has humbled himself and served humanity in the most basic and menial way, washing their feet, handling the calluses and dust, the unsightly and the aches—all those things we so desperately want to hide—with his own hands. Jesus, who humbly received this same gift from Mary who anointed his feet and wiped them with her hair, doesn’t ask the disciples to do anything that he hasn’t been willing to do himself. …Jesus gives the disciples a picture of what love looks like, what true humanity looks like. It is not filtered or overly protected, it isn’t self-serving or fearful or prideful. Jesus reveals that to be truly and fully human is to risk everything for the sake of love, to serve others, to humbly receive care, to give oneself away.
And this night we find ourselves gathered around the table with Jesus. While, like me, you may not want to see or to share your true selfie, in the presence of the perfect love of God in Christ, all our imperfections are painfully visible. Our true self is exposed. And Jesus sees…Jesus knows, knows what you are capable of…the very worst and the very best. Jesus sees all of you and loves you still. Jesus sees the self that you are hiding and the self you are putting “out there” and the self that you can be. And Jesus’ love reaches through all time and space to offer you and me not just an idea or an image, but real and intimate presence, God’s totally open heart, true love. There’s nothing ironic or photo shopped or filtered about this loving presence of Christ. It is flesh and blood, up close and personal, stripped bare. //
Jesus Christ has invited you and ushered you into this place, kneels before you to hold your vulnerability and your shame and to forgive and heal you. In the body and blood, blessed, broken, and given, Jesus feeds us with the very life and love of God, we take it into ourselves and become part of God’s life…and that means that we are part of one another’s lives. As we gather around the table to receive the grace offered us through the broken body of Jesus, hear the words spoken to you, “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” We are called to hold the callused and the dirty, the unsightly and the aching of the world in our own hands. It means that we are to offer ourselves to others—unsightly, scarred, and lopsided as we may be . It means that even when you know the risks, even when you know what others are capable of, that you kneel and wash their feet anyway.
Sunday Mar 29, 2015
Sunday Mar 29, 2015
A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry UMC March 29, 2015, Palm Sunday.
Text: Mark 11:1-19
“Do we preach Christ crucified?” (that is) “Do you believe in a Jesus who is dangerous enough to be arrested and killed by the state?” That question, presented by South African Methodist pastor Alan Storey at an MFSA event here at Foundry last fall, is the question of the day. In how many places today will people walk into churches and find a Jesus who is presented—probably unintentionally—as the Grand Marshall of the Big Parade, making his “triumphal entry” in line with the marching band and the corporate-sponsored floats and the children on daddy’s shoulders waving those tiny American flags? In how many places today will people find Jesus doing nothing more than offering an opportunity to have a party and a cute procession with children whacking each other with palms? In how many places today will people find a celebration of Jesus as the one who is so familiar, so accessible, that he almost blends into the crowd, tacitly blessing the status quo? Lord knows I have been part of such celebrations in my life. But Jesus the Grand Marshall, the party guy, the bland, Everyman, is not dangerous enough to be arrested and killed by the state. And that is the story we begin to tell and to hear today: “they kept looking for a way to kill him, for they were afraid of him…” (Mk 11:18)
The procession into Jerusalem is no accident or whim or flash mob for the sake of fun. It is a carefully planned demonstration, orchestrated by Jesus for maximum effect (Mk 11:2-3). By its method, the make-up of participants, and its content, this march puts those in power on notice that business as usual is unacceptable. The procession calls upon symbolism from the prophet Zechariah who speaks of a king who will come into Jerusalem “humble and riding on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” The prophecy goes on to say that the king “will cut off…the war horse,” “shall command peace to the nations,” and prisoners will be set free. (Zechariah 9:9-11) Jesus organizes and leads a non-violent freedom march in solidarity with the poor and oppressed… Can you imagine any scenario in which that would lead to conflict, violent retaliation, and death threats?
In our day, a “404 Error” is a familiar computer message—one that appears when something you’re looking for can’t be found. This error message doesn’t necessarily mean that what you’re looking for doesn’t exist, it’s just that there is a broken link somewhere, or something in the system isn’t configured to find what you’re after. Jesus knows that the system he encounters in Rome-occupied Jerusalem—the political, socio-economic, and religious system—is not configured such that he will find what he is looking for. The link between reality and God’s vision is broken.
Jerusalem at the time of Jesus had already served as the “center of the sacred geography of the Jewish people for a millennium.”[i] It was a city associated with all their best hopes and aspirations for justice and peace. But it was also a city that had been captured and ruled by one foreign power after another for centuries. Under Roman rule beginning in 63 BCE, the religious Temple became used as the center of economic and political activity and control by the Roman Empire. Temple leaders were likely hand-picked by Roman rulers and came from high-ranking priestly families and from wealthy lay families. The system—what Walter Brueggemann calls the “imperial reality” and Marcus Borg refers to as a “domination system”—was marked by oppressive “rule by a few, economic exploitation, and religious legitimation.”[ii] In other words, there was a small percent of the population whose power was fueled by a large percent of the wealth and the God they worshiped was a God who was interested in maintaining this system and ensuring his own place with the “in” crowd in the palace. One might think that such a state of affairs would make the masses rise up in protest. But the reality is that this kind of system—a very common system, by the way—often has just the opposite effect. In the face of such overwhelming power differentials, a “numbed consciousness of denial”[iii] sets in. Brueggemann says, “Imperial economics is designed to keep people satiated so that they do not notice. Its politics is intended to block out the cries of the denied ones. Its religion is to be an opiate so that no one discerns misery alive in the heart of God.”[iv]
In this “domination system” everyone is caught in the web of injustice. The poor are caught in dehumanizing systems and become exhausted by the obstacles they face… The oppressed who try to speak up are silenced and treated as selfish or crazy or traitors… Those in “middle management” often live with a complex mixture of guilt and envy… The powerful and rich are bound and blinded by their own privilege… Daily work and entertainments and bones thrown out here and there keep most people distracted… and everyone becomes lulled into believing the fiction that this is simply the way things are, that there are no real alternatives, and therefore life becomes a matter of just getting by. Do you ever catch yourself feeling like this-is-just-the-way-things-are-and-nothing-will-ever-change-so-why-bother? Do you ever realize that you have become numb to the reality of suffering all around? Do you ever find yourself thinking there is no future that will be different than the present?
Today, Jesus rides into that thinking and challenges it. Jesus rides in to town as an embodiment of a true alternative and as the One who can restore the link between the broken present and God’s future wholeness. He comes with humility to stand up to power players and the Roman military industrial complex, to stand in solidarity with the poor, to speak out for the marginalized and oppressed, to call people back to the connection between prayer and justice. Jesus rides in to Jerusalem embodying God’s freedom in the face of those who thought God could be tamed, co-opted, and manipulated to serve the war machine, Wall Street, and the status quo.
And when Jesus entered the Temple and “looked around.” 404 Error: Not Found. Justice was not found. Care for the alien, orphan and widow were not found. What Jesus found was reason to quote the prophet Jeremiah who said, “Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal…and then come and stand before me…Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your sight?” (Jer 7:9-11) Jesus entered his nation’s capitol and through public, peaceful protests and teaching named the hypocrisy and injustice of a system that had lost a life-giving connection to its God, a God of justice, mercy, and self-giving love. He rides in and proclaims God’s hope-filled future if only people will repent and turn back to God’s Way. And then people decided they should kill him.
If Jesus marched into our nation’s capitol today and looked around, what would he find? What would he overturn, who would he drive out, what would he not allow to be carried through the sanctuary? Be careful as you consider your answer. If Jesus doesn’t make you yourself uncomfortable, then something is likely missing. Our tendency is to try to make God in our image instead of the other way around. And my guess is that if we met Jesus today he would be more conservative than some of us would like, and more liberal than others would prefer. But the thing that is simply too clear and consistent in the scriptures to ignore is that Jesus—like all of God’s prophets—takes the side of the poor, the vulnerable, the powerless, the losers, the oppressed. This is not because God doesn’t love everyone, but because God DOES. God won’t rest until all God’s children are safe and cherished and cared for. We may disagree on how to accomplish the goal, but the goal itself is clear.
So if Jesus came into Washington, DC today, this nation of such high hopes and aspirations, this nation that claims “liberty and justice for all,” would he find immigration policies that treat persons with dignity, would he find care for the most vulnerable in our society including the thousands of mentally ill and addicted folks who live on our streets, would he find protection for transgender, gay and lesbian persons? Would Jesus find economic justice for the poor, environmental justice for the animals and ecosystems, racial justice for sisters and brothers of color? Would Jesus find a commitment to feed and educate every child and to assure that people who work will have enough to live and that an affordable home will be available? Would Jesus find a commitment to peace and non-violence, healthy work policies that support healthy family systems? Would Jesus find people who understand that they cannot save themselves and that God is more than a benign idea or a list of “thou shalt nots?” Error 404: Not Found. What Jesus would find is a growing number of so-called “Religious Freedom Restoration Acts” finding support among our states that make it legal to discriminate against LGBTQ folks and to use Jesus’ own name as the justification. Jesus would find a nation whose economy is dependent upon our military industrial complex, whose value system places money and power at the very top and has made violence a cash crop, whose commitment is to the bottom line at the cost of the planet, healthy relationships, and long-established communities. Jesus would find entrenched systems of racially motivated violence and injustice and a society in which “The poorer you are, the more things cost. More in money, time, hassle, exhaustion, menace.”[v] I could add to this list and, Lord knows, so could you. Just think of what Jesus would add that you and I don’t have the eyes to see… And I don’t claim to have answers for how to address the deep and wide disconnect in our society between the vision of God’s Kin-dom and our current reality.
But what I will claim today is that if we allow Jesus the freedom to be dangerous—dangerous enough that our own small perceptions and projections get stretched and shifted, dangerous enough that our own government officials and religious leaders might be so threatened that they would conspire to kill him—and US for standing with him—then there is hope for us yet. The danger Jesus brings comes in an unlikely form—a laughable form for those committed to the dominant culture. Jesus is dangerous precisely through his love and compassion. Brueggemann writes, “Quite clearly, the one thing the dominant culture cannot tolerate or co-opt is compassion, the ability to stand in solidarity with the victims of the present order. It can manage charity and good intentions, but it has no way to resist solidarity with pain or grief…The imperial consciousness lives by its capacity to still the groans and to go on with business as usual as though none were hurting and there were no groans. If the groans become audible, if they can be heard in the streets and markets and courts, then the consciousness of domination is already jeopardized… Newness comes precisely from expressed pain. Suffering made audible and visible produces hope, articulated grief is the gate of newness, and the history of Jesus is the history of entering into the pain and giving it voice.”[vi]
Today, Jesus enters the gates of Jerusalem, enters the gates of Washington, enters the pain of those who suffer and gives that pain a voice. Since Christ has no body now on earth but ours, it is our bodies that must march, our hands that must be extended in care, our voices that must rise, our lives that must be lived in solidarity and in peace. Compassion is dangerous and even deadly. But Jesus shows us through the events of this Holy Week how to proceed—with courage, with trust in God, with self-giving love, and with abiding hope in the new life that surely awaits.
God and neighbor. In fact, the Lenten season beckons followers to a new and resurrected life made possible by a victory of love and justice. It is an invitation to let go of fear, to all that separates us from God and from each other that we might truly be free--free to be, free to love, and free to work for the well-being of the whole human family. Anything less is captivity, not freedom. God and neighbor. In fact, the Lenten season beckons followers to a new and resurrected life made possible by a victory of love and justice. It is an invitation to let go of fear, to all that separates us from God and from each other that we might truly be free--free to be, free to love, and free to work for the well-being of the whole human family. Anything less is captivity, not freedom.Moreover, Christian freedom has always been defined by an enlargement of the heart, an increase of compassion, and a commitment to loving God and neighbor. In fact, the Lenten season beckons followers to a new and resurrected life made possible by a victory of love and justice. It is an invitation to let go of fear, to all that separates us from God and from each other that we might truly be free--free to be, free to love, and free to work for the well-being of the whole human family. Anything less is captivity, not freedom.Moreover, Christian freedom has always been defined by an enlargement of the heart, an increase of compassion, and a commitment to loving God and neighbor. In fact, the Lenten season beckons followers to a new and resurrected life made possible by a victory of love and justice. It is an invitation to let go of fear, to all that separates us from God and from each other that we might truly be free--free to be, free to love, and free to work for the well-being of the whole human family. Anything less is captivity, not freedom.Moreover, Christian freedom has always been defined by an enlargement of the heart, an increase of compassion, and a commitment to loving God and neighbor. In fact, the Lenten season beckons followers to a new and resurrected life made possible by a victory of love and justice. It is an invitation to let go of fear, to all that separates us from God and from each other that we might truly be free--free to be, free to love, and free to work for the well-being of the whole human family. Anything less is captivity, not freedom.
[i] Marcus J. Borg & John Dominic Crossan, The Last Week: A Day-by-Day Account of Jesus’s Final Week in Jerusalem, HarperSanFrancisco, 2006, p. 5.
[ii] Ibid., pp. 13-15.
[iii] Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, Second Edition, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001, p. 81.
[iv] Ibid., p. 35.
[v] DeNeen L. Brown, “The High Cost of Poverty: Why the Poor Pay More,” accessed on 3/28/15 at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/17/AR2009051702053.html/
[vi] Brueggemann, p. 91.
Sunday Mar 22, 2015
Sunday Mar 22, 2015
A sermon preached by Rev. Theresa S. Thames at Foundry UMC, March 22, 2015, the fifth Sunday in Lent.
Text: Jonah 1:1-17; 2:1, 10
It’s October 2002, to be more exact, it’s Halloween and I’m standing in the middle of Harvard Square. I’m at Harvard because I’m doing the divinity school tour. This week Harvard; in two weeks Duke. I have a big decision to make, but at this moment I’m waiting on a really important phone call. Mind you, this is 2002 when a cell phone only did one thing - make phone calls. There were no texts, no music, no pictures, and definitely no video. It’s October in Boston and I’m freezing, but I’m outside because every time I enter a building, I get spotty reception. The voice on the other end sounds muddled, static begins, and then the call drops.
A “dropped call” is the common term for a wireless mobile phone call that is terminated unexpectedly before the speaking parties have finished their conversation and before one of them have hung up. There are several reasons given for having a dropped call:
- Moving out of range into what is known as a “dead zone”
- When wireless signals are unavailable, interrupted, jammed, too much traffic
- Faulty transceiver inside the phone its self
- Phone simply loses battery power
All of us have experienced dropped calls. When we have moved out of range and have entered situations and seasons in life that have felt like “dead zones.” Those places when our very souls feel empty. The dropped calls of life are when we are not able to connect. When we are unavailable to those we love, to God, and even ourselves. Those moments when we have been told that we are the problem, that the very essence of who we are is damaged, broken, faulty, no good. Dropped calls. Or when we have simply loss power - the power to hope, to dream, to get up and try again. Like I said, we have all experienced dropped calls.
The Jonah story is one that is very familiar in
Christian circles and even in secular children books. Jonah is a faithful
prophet of the Lord, until the Lord decides to send Jonah to the worst place
imaginable, Nineveh. Now, Jonah gets a lot of flak, but what few people realize
is that Jonah is the only prophet that is actually sent to the place that he is
prophesying against. All the other prophets sent messages and warnings via
letters, but not Jonah. And since Jonah ain’t no fool, when God sends him to
Nineveh and he finds the next ship smoking headed in the exact opposite
direction, Tarshish.
Many of us know the story, but Jonah gets on the ship headed to Tarshish, again the opposite direction from Nineveh, and they are sailing along, Jonah is so thankful to skip town that he falls asleep in the bottom of the ship, but then a storm begins. The captain and the crew figure out that Jonah is the problem, they throw him overboard, the sea calms and Jonah is swallowed by a big fish and camps out in the belly of the fish for 3 days.
It’s easy to make fun of and judge Jonah for his foolishness in thinking that he can escape God’s plan, but we are a lot like Jonah. We have each found ourselves in situations in life facing what seems like the impossible. We each have encountered something or someone that has made us run in the opposite direction of our truth, our calling, our purpose, our higher selves.
It is not that Jonah didn’t have faith. Jonah had a relationship with God, knew God and spoke of God’s power with certainty. When asked by the captain and crew who he was, he didn’t lie nor hide. He said, “I am a Hebrew. I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.”[1] Like us, Jonah knew and could proclaim and even believed for others, but in this moment in life, he could not believe and proclaim for himself. It was all so muddled, unclear. He was living in the tension of faithfully following God and the fear of the unknown.
In his book “The Promise of Paradox” in the chapter
entitled “The Belly of Paradox” Parker Palmer writes,
There is a way beyond choosing either this pole or that. Let us call it “living the contradictions.” Here we refuse to flee from tension but allow that tension to occupy the center of our lives. And why would anyone walk this difficult path? Because by doing so we may receive one of the greatest gifts of the spiritual life- the transformation of contradiction into paradox. The poles of either/or, the choices we thought we had to make, may become signs of a larger truth than we had even dreamed. And in that truth, our lives may become larger than we had even imagined possible![2]
Many people consider the big fish to be a punishment from God, but I see this fish as God’s grace. The grace of God that comes in the midst of our storms and saves us from ourselves. This grace that gives us shelter, a time-out, some space for clarity. Being in the belly of a big fish for 3 days and 3 nights gave Jonah a chance to connect with the God in which we each live, move, and have our being. Being in belly separated Jonah from all other distractions so that he could connect to his primary connection.
After a day of lectures, meetings, and campus tours at Harvard I’m tired and anxious. I’m still waiting on that phone call. It is now a little after 2am and I’m standing outside in the freezing cold, the call has come. My mama is on the other end in tears and I can hear my sister Portia. There are a lot of voices, a few muffled sounds, a big gasp, and then I hear the sound of a baby crying. He has arrived. The moment felt like an AT&T commercial. I was over 1000 miles away, yet I was able to connect to the birth of a child that would change my life.
It’s now November 2011 and it’s 4:30AM and my cellphone is ringing. It’s my birthday, so an early morning call from a friend to wish me a happy year would not be a surprise, but I knew that this call would be different. See, the months leading up to this moment had been hard. I had been living in the midst of a difficult divorce which felt like a horrible storm. In the midst of that storm came the unexpected storm of my sister’s battle with meningitis. I knew in my gut that this call was not a happy birthday greeting, and I was right. The call was to let me know that my sister was gone.
My new favorite singing group is Johnnyswim. In their song, “Take the World” they sing a beautiful bridge that simply says, “Ain’t it just like love to find us. Ain’t it just like love.”[3]
Facing the hard stuff, hard decisions, living in the tensions of life is like living in the belly of a big fish. I know that place. Oh do I know that place far too well. The places in our lives that is jumbled, when things are unclear and the signal is weak. The place of loss, grief, sadness, depression, despair, the place of lost connections and dropped calls.
Yet, my Sisters and Brothers have hope! If you find
yourself in the midst of a Dead Zone and with a bad connection and experiencing
dropped calls, know that God is faithful. When I was in the midst of my storm I
could not imagine that I would come through whole and with joy. I could not
imagine the love that would enter my life and fill my soul. I tell you that
God’s faithfulness is true.
Just when all seems lost, God’s grace sweeps in and swallows us whole and spits us out on the other side whole. Hold on. “Oh, ain’t it just like love to find us. Ain’t it just like love.” Ain’t it just like God’s love, grace, and faithfulness to find us. Ain’t it just like love.
Sunday Mar 15, 2015
Sunday Mar 15, 2015
A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry UMC, March 15, 2015, the fourth Sunday in Lent.
Text: Mark 3:31-35
The photograph haunts me. It’s a recent picture, taken by my mother, of my dad awkwardly reclining on the sofa and me leaning over to embrace him. If you didn’t know any better, it would look like nothing more than a not terribly flattering shot of me and my dad in an otherwise pleasant moment. But that picture breaks my heart. Because the moment captured in the photo was at the end of several days when me and my siblings were faced with the reality of what dad’s Parkinson’s disease—and its attending dementia—has done to him. In that moment as I leaned in for a hug, I don’t know if he knew I was there. Perhaps you have photos like that in your family albums, in and among the other pictures, pictures of birthday parties and graduations, summer cookouts and Christmas gatherings and all kinds of other occasions for connection. For the lucky ones among us, there are pictures that capture moments of joy, love, and support. There are images of family members—a grandparent or a sister or brother or uncle—who inspire us and whose picture makes us laugh or cry with love. There are pictures that point to a story—remember that time when…? And scattered throughout, perhaps there are pictures like that one of me and my dad… Every family has its challenges and griefs, and even the most healthy and functional of families have their dysfunction.
As I was thinking about family dynamics, the 2006 film, “Little Miss Sunshine” came to mind. The family depicted in the movie is complicated and messy—including a foul-mouthed drug-snorting grandpa, a nihilistic teenaged son who’s taken a vow of silence, a suicidal gay uncle, a dad who’s trying to sell his motivational success program (with no success), and a mother who’s just trying to hold the family together. They end up in a broken down VW bus on a road trip to California to get the youngest family member, Olive, to the “Little Miss Sunshine” beauty pageant. At one point on their journey, sirens and lights approach and the dad says to the family, “Oh my God, I’m getting pulled over. Everyone, just…pretend to be normal.”
Pretend… How often do we pretend that everything is OK when the reality is that we are struggling to just get through the day? Just pretend to be normal. Smile for the camera. How many of our family photos reflect us trying to be “normal”—whatever that is? What is hidden behind the family portrait in the LifeTouch church directory?
No photograph can capture the disconnection and brokenness in and between members of a family. No photograph can capture the lost hope in a couple’s struggle with infertility, or the deep loneliness and isolation that invade a family dealing with mental illness, or the heartbreak of seeing a parent or child suffer. No picture can show the scarring effects of addiction, abuse, neglect, resentment, and rage. No photograph will reveal the weight of guilt that steals freedom and hope. A photo won’t show the confusion and self-destructive thinking and behavior of a daughter or son or parent who is coming to terms with their sexual orientation. A snapshot won’t show the broken trust and broken heart that results from infidelity or the ulcers and anxiety caused by another’s controlling expectations. No picture will capture a child’s desperate striving for attention or approval, the painful longing of a child for a mother or father who is never home because of work or incarceration. An image will never reveal the nagging insecurity and defensiveness that result from being abandoned or rejected.
Pain and love, struggle and support, anger and laughter, are the complicated, interwoven background to all our pictures, the very light and shadow that give texture to any image and to our lives. And it is within this complex reality of family that we learn to connect. Sometimes, we learn to connect in healthy ways and sometimes, because of circumstance, we learn pretty unhealthy ways. For most of us, it’s a mixed bag. But learning to connect is critical; it is central to what it means to be human. Author Johann Hari suggests that we are in a crisis of connection, linking the loneliness and disconnection of our culture with the rise of addiction in all its forms. He writes, “The wisest sentence of the twentieth century was E.M. Forster's—‘only connect.’ But we have created an environment and a culture that cut us off from connection, or offer only the parody of it offered by the Internet. The rise of addiction is a symptom of a deeper sickness in the way we live—constantly directing our gaze towards the next shiny object we should buy, rather than the human beings all around us.” He goes on to share that “human beings have a deep need to bond and form connections. It's how we get our satisfaction. If we can't connect with each other, we will connect with anything we can find—the whirr of a roulette wheel or the prick of a syringe.”[i]
With whom or what do you connect? Who is in your family plan? The answers to these questions are critical to your health and wholeness. We are bonding animals, craving connection and touch and intimacy and friendship. We long to be known and to share life with others in ways that are mutually affirming and life-giving. For many of us there is disconnection, lost connection, broken connection within our families, with our partner, with those persons who hold the most primal places in our lives. And in our loneliness, we may connect with things or with people that do more harm or cause even further isolation. We can, however, choose to connect with people who offer us opportunities to receive and to give and to learn what we need most of all. Often, these people become our “chosen” family. // Richard Rohr says that “All spiritual growth takes place in the context of the healing, the restoring and the recreating of the family relationships in their original ideal sense.”[ii] This work is the work of a lifetime—the work of healing, restoring, recreating ways to connect to other people in healthy, life-giving ways. It is the work of becoming truly human and being truly human depends upon cultivating life-affirming “family plan” connections.
The “family plan” was much more intense and rigid in Jesus’ time. Clans and tribes—the social and political structures of society—were all based on blood ties and family connections. In light of this, Jesus’ words in our Gospel today are revolutionary. Jesus is not rejecting his mother and siblings here; rather, he is expanding the notion of what family truly is. He is drawing the circle much wider, allowing those who had been outcast or rejected or denied by the rules and regulations of the tribe or by accidents of fate, the opportunity to take their place in the family of God. To make room for those whose family and life experience was painful, complicated, or socially questionable is not just an abstract concept for Jesus but something he embodied himself. Just look at his family history: Jesus’ ancestors were slaves, he is the son of an unwed mother, spent his young life as a refugee and most of his adult life homeless and wanted by the authorities for breaking the law; Jesus’ father had high expectations for his son—no less than to save the whole world, and when Jesus came out and revealed his true identity he was rejected by his church (Luke 4:28-29) and despised and misunderstood by almost everyone else. Jesus, in what would have been a startling moment for those present, announces that true family is not based on blood or history or social expectations and rules, but rather on love. He says that “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” (vs. 35) And the will of God is for us to love God and love one another. (Mt. 22:36-40) Family is about love.
Again I’m reminded of “Little Miss Sunshine.” Having reached the pageant, young Olive takes the stage to perform the dance number choreographed by her grandpa. As the music to “Super Freak”—the highly inappropriate and sexually provocative song by Rick James—begins to play, Olive proceeds to do a dance equally inappropriate for a child her age. But she does it with absolute innocence, with such joy and determination. The pageant crowd is stunned and appalled. Then, one by one—in a show of support and love—the members of Olive’s family take the stage and begin to dance with her. The dad who had been working so hard to pretend, to hide his despair and failure, is the first to put himself out there. And this complicated, super freaky mess of a family has a moment of healing love and joy. // While this scene is of a blood-kin family unit, it is a scene in which the family members are breaking all the rules of expectation, of propriety, and of their own cynical, desperate habits to join the dance; and they do it out of love for Olive. I have often thought of that scene as a vision of God’s Kin-dom…an inbreaking of love and joy and hope into what is otherwise a dull, aching, painful despair.
Today, as people of Christian faith, let’s not pretend. Let’s acknowledge that there are lost connections within our families. Let’s acknowledge that our family plans may not be as life-giving as they could be. Let’s acknowledge that we are all on the journey toward healing, restoring, or recreating healthy human connections. Let’s acknowledge that we all stand in need of the grace extended by Jesus in our Gospel today, the grace that draws a circle wide enough to include even you and even me in the family of God; to embrace us even in all our messiness and woundedness. Friends, the grace extended by Jesus Christ announces that you are not limited by your family of origin or by the relationships or connections that may have defined you in the past. The grace extended by Jesus Christ announces that it is not cultural norms but love that makes a family. And we learn the quality and nature of that love through God’s love for us in Jesus. Jesus’ love affirms that no matter what your relationship with your earthly parents, you have a heavenly parent who loves you and longs for closer relationship. No matter the distance between you and your family, you are connected in the love of God across miles and moments. No matter what you have done to fracture relationships with loved ones, you are offered mercy and a chance to seek reconciliation through repentance and forgiveness. No matter how deep the hurt you have received at the hands of people in your life, God’s healing power reaches even deeper to nurture and restore you. No matter the weight of sadness and grief and loneliness that you bear, God’s love is strong enough to lift and hold you. No matter the seeming hopelessness of the situation you face, the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ reminds you that there is nothing—not even death itself—that is more powerful than God’s life-renewing power at work in you (Eph. 1:19-21).
We are all desperate for connection and for the blessing of true family. If you glance around today, you see members of God’s family plan. You and I are part of that family. All that is asked of us is to love each other. Support each other. Forgive each other. Find ways to connect with each other. Even dance and make a fool of ourselves with each other for the sake of love. Because when you do, God’s Kin-dom comes on earth as in heaven and you take your place in the picture of healing grace.
[i] Johann Hari, “The Likely Cause of Addiction Has Been Discovered and It Is Not What You Think,” found at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/the-real-cause-of-addicti_b_6506936.html, accessed 3/14/2015.
[ii] Richard Rohr, Radical Grace: Daily Meditations, Franciscan Media: Cincinnati, 1995, p. 54.
Sunday Mar 01, 2015
Sunday Mar 01, 2015
A sermon preached at Foundry UMC on March 1, 2015, by guest preacher Rev. James Harnish.