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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.
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Sunday Dec 21, 2014
Sunday Dec 21, 2014
Incarnation!
A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry UMC, December 21, 2014, the fourth Sunday of Advent.
Luke 1:26-38
Former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, says, “For God to come near us is for God to risk God’s own integrity, in the sense that God puts himself into our hands to be appallingly misunderstood…”[i]
The story we hear today is an extraordinary one that provides all sorts of opportunities to misunderstand. This is one of those stories that folks point to as one of the reasons they could never be Christian since it doesn’t make rational sense. How many folks do you know who think that the primary thing required to be Christian is to assent to or to “believe” unbelievable things—that is, in a simply intellectual way? Today, Mary receives a message that, at first, leaves her confused since it doesn’t make rational sense, it is unbelievable.
But what is required of Mary is not a simple rational assent, but instead an openness to what God desires to accomplish in and through her. For Mary to assent in this moment is not to claim intellectual clarity, but rather to do something: namely to trust not only God, but also herself—to trust that she is capable of doing what God believes she can do. Richard Rohr, Franciscan Priest, spiritual teacher, and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation, writes, “The only way that we become convinced of our own sense of empowerment and the power of the Spirit and the truth of the Gospel is by crossing a line—a line of decision, testing, risking, doing and owning the consequences. It has a certain degree of non-sensical-ness, of unprovability, to it: That’s why we call it faith.”[ii] This story is about Mary who crossed the line from doubt to faith, who didn’t understand, who quite likely didn’t believe she was capable, but trusted God enough to say “yes.” Her life and the life of the world were never the same.
Believing unbelievable things is not the goal of Christian life. Rather, it is to be like Mary, open—even in the smallest way—to trust God’s love for us, God’s vision of us, and as a result, to take a step, faltering as it may be, toward greater wholeness, awareness, and the peace that comes from knowing we are at least trying to live the life we are made for; it is to say “yes” to God’s affirmation of us, to believe in God’s believing in us, in our capacity for participation in the Kin-dom. It’s not ultimately about intellectual belief—though there is much to ponder and explore intellectually in our faith tradition. At the heart of our Christian faith is this story we hear today: God draws near to us out of love and compassion and wants to be incarnate in and through us. Mary is the icon of human receptivity and courage—the one who shows us what can happen when we are open, when we trust. Mary experienced suffering as a result of her “yes.” She surely experienced the scorn of those who judged her for being pregnant before marriage, the anxiety of giving birth in less than favorable conditions, the trials of being mother to so precocious a child, and the deep suffering of having her son persecuted, unjustly convicted, and killed by the state. But she also knew the humbling love and loyalty of Joseph, the wonder and joy of giving birth, visitations by wise strangers, the delights of being mother to so precocious a child, and the awareness—conscious or not—that she was participating in God’s mighty acts of salvation, that her son was the Christ, the savior, the fulfillment of a promise for all the world.
When we open ourselves to receive Christ, we carry a great responsibility—it is up to us to try our best not to “appallingly misunderstand” this wonderful gift. Christ did not come into the world to provide the twelve handy habits of highly effective people. If our faith were just about philosophies and ideas or—God help us—rules, then we could hold faith at arm’s length and engage in endless debates, assign winners and losers, and maintain the illusion of control. But the story we tell isn’t of an idea, it’s the story of a personal God whose love was embodied in a particular, historical, human person named Jesus, a person who had a mother. For many of us, that may the big line to cross—the whole claim that God is and that God loves—YOU. But that is the story we tell… The gift we are given is not primarily a manual for how to be a happy, good, “highly effective” person. What we are given is Emmanuel, God’s presence, God’s love, God’s life—and not just to study or to stare at, to dissect and try to control—but to know. Mary wasn’t given ideas about God or rules to follow or promises of happiness—but an intimate relationship with God and the opportunity to hold God’s life in her own flesh and to bear it into the world. That is what is offered to us: an intimate relationship with God and the chance to have Christ live in us and be brought into the world through us. And that means that things will be messy and painful and beautiful and will change; that’s what relationships are like; that’s what birth is like. And that’s what we’re talking about.
Jesus the Christ doesn’t come into our lives to make us comfortable, to allow us to remain deaf, dumb, and blind, to bless the status quo, to make us rich, or to give us permission to exclude or judge others. As you open yourself to receive Christ, you will be made uncomfortable, you will be challenged to hear, speak, and see new things that challenge you, your life will change and will be increasingly aware of the need for surrender and sacrifice and of the call to include and forgive and love more and more. One of the blessings of my pastoral vocation is that I have had the chance to walk with women and men as they have discovered Christ moving, changing, and challenging them to see things in a new way or to do a new thing or to let go of something or to take on or create a new ministry. The impetus for the change comes in a variety of forms—a situation in the world that calls forth a response, a book, a conversation, a comment someone made, a dream, an elusive, consistent feeling that something needs to happen. God’s messengers—angels—arrive in all sorts of guises.
The result is that folks’ lives change—really change because of their growing relationship with Christ. I have seen grandmothers get seminary degrees; I’ve seen people at the top of their game give up money and prestige to serve the poor; I’ve seen broken relationships healed through forgiveness, I have seen countless men and women discover and reclaim their sacred worth, I have witnessed people overcome their fears—of public speaking or leadership or sharing their ideas or their gifts—in order to serve others; I have watched as folks find a sense of direction and purpose, take on a new job or vocation, move more fully into their passion and their truth. There is always confusion, some level of fear, uncertainty, and often surprise at what is emerging in their lives. But even in the midst of all that, there is greater love, meaning, and peace…
God enters the world and is made known through a lowly handmaid and a barren woman, through those whom society deems weak and silent and worthless—but whom God knows are powerful and able and worthy. As tempting as it is to make the story of the annunciation of Mary a tidy portrait of a beautiful, safe idea, that would be to misunderstand and to miss the point. Mary was a flesh and blood woman whose courage and sacrifice and trust and love made room for Christ to be born through her into the world. We, like Mary, are entrusted by God to give birth to Christ—God’s perfect love—in our lives. We are called to be bearers of God’s new life in the world. I don’t know what this might mean for each of you. But I trust that God’s messengers will visit you to help you figure it out. And then it’s up to you to choose how to respond.
Sunday Dec 07, 2014
Sunday Dec 07, 2014
ADVENT SERIES: IN THE FLESH
The God Option
A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry UMC December 7, 2014, the second Sunday of Advent.
Texts: Isaiah 40:1-11, Mark 1:1-8
The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is in the wilderness. For Mark, there are no angels, no star, no stable, no Mary and Joseph, no temptation dangled before us to hold the baby Jesus in a perpetual state of innocuous cuteness. Mark’s drama is less Hallmark Channel and more independent film. The scene opens in the wilderness with an intensely odd character named John standing at the river, crying out for things to change, for hearts to change, for lives to change, and baptizing people who come to confess.
This is not our familiar Christmas scene, this wilderness place with a wild-eyed prophet “screaming purple-faced at us about our sins.”[i] But for what is widely believed to be the oldest telling of the story of Jesus—the Gospel of Mark—this is the beginning. This is where we start. We start in the wilderness. We start in our sinfulness. We start in our brokenness. We start by being confronted by the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, one who doesn’t mince words, who names names, who won’t back down even when his life is in danger, who very quickly gets arrested and ultimately killed for naming the unlawful abuses of power by the King (Mark 1:14, 6:17 ff.).
We don’t want to hear any of this, I’d wager. Not during this season…or ever, if we’re honest. We’d prefer to change the channel. It is painful to be confronted with our sins, but it is only when we allow ourselves to really look with eyes wide open that we begin to acknowledge that something might need to change. And when we drop the distractions of our daily lives that keep us inert and numb to the truth, we begin to see the beautiful and terrible paradox of our human condition, the reality that we are, each and every one, a complex mixture of light and darkness, of brokenness and strength, of generosity and selfishness, of courage and fear, of grief and joy, of the capacity for great evil and also for extraordinary good. At every moment, we must choose how to be, what to do, when to respond, even the perspective from which we will try to experience life.
Last Sunday evening, my weekly covenant group read “The Grand Inquisitor” from Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov. Among the provocative ideas proffered by Ivan the atheist brother in the novel who writes the story of the Inquisitor, is the claim that Jesus was wrong to believe that human beings were capable of using their free will for good. In essence, Ivan suggests that we can’t handle the responsibility of being truly free and that human beings are infinitely “weak, vicious, worthless, and rebellious”[ii]—that we are incapable of truly following Jesus or becoming more like Christ. It isn’t difficult to see how some might be so persuaded. I imagine that many in our world would agree that Jesus had too high an opinion of our kind. And they would base their position—as Ivan does—on the evidence. Wars and violence, greed and corruption, objectification and abuse are prevalent. Human freedom—this great and terrible gift from God—allows for so much suffering. And I must admit that in my praying with Isaiah 40 this week, I kept coming back to the line in verse four that says “uneven ground will become level” and I wasn’t hearing it in its context of hope. I kept thinking that the only level playing field we human beings have managed to create is sin—our capacity for doing harm and for suffering. We are equal-opportunity sinners. We do violence to one another and to ourselves in all sorts of creative ways. We’ve got it all: homophobia, xenophobia, religious intolerance, sexism, ageism, elitism, and on it goes… We human beings kill one another across every racial line and within every family and tribe from generation to generation.
And today we dwell in the capital city of a nation whose eyes are turned toward or averted from violence of a particular kind. The violent deaths of Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and Eric Garner at the hands of white police officers—and much that has happened in the aftermath—highlight the deep brokenness of humanity and the long history and reality of racial oppression and tension in our land. In the days and weeks just passed, so many powerful words have been written and spoken and sung—words of conviction and pain, words of outrage, words of lament, words of weariness, words being cried out in the wilderness calling for repentance, for change, for justice. And then there are the other words…words that focus on the “criminality” of young black men and how whatever happens must always be their fault. I fail to see how anyone will suggest that 12 year old Tamir Rice was at fault. Though I’m on FaceBook…I’m sad to say I will see such a suggestion eventually. And there are words of hate and demonization. In the midst of so much brokenness, it may be emotionally satisfying to resort to easy labels, but it is emotionally and spiritually devastating—to all involved. Hate speech directed toward any group—protestors, black people, white people, police officers—is violence. And, as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. famously said, “Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence… Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”[iii]
What I observe is that many well-meaning and thoughtful white Americans look at the deaths and trials as single incidents, in which the central issue is whether the white police officer was illicit in his behavior or not. There is much talk about the evidence and the process and the system. The analysis of these questions are then used to determine whether the events are worthy of public outcry or are simply a personal tragedy among so many others. On the other hand, it seems to me that black Americans see these events “as part of a larger pattern of violence in which young black men in America are caught, a pattern that has not changed since the days of Jim Crow. And so the issue for them has not been focused on ‘what did Officer [So and So] do and why did he do it’, but [on the deep injustice of the event and the question]‘why does this event keep on recurring and how do we change this pattern?’”[iv] These different perspectives between the black and white communities are based on the fact that, as one black member of Foundry said to me, “we live in the same world, but different universes.” We see things differently based upon the experiences we have. Of course this is true for all people, but it is certainly true in our experiences of race and culture. It’s like the proverb that teaches that fish don’t know they’re in water. If you tried to explain it, they'd say, “Water? What's water?” They're so surrounded by it, that it's impossible to see. They can't see it until they get outside of it. But this is where the tragedies and outcry of these past weeks may be able to help: perhaps all that is happening will stir the “water” of white privilege in such a way that those previously oblivious to the other universes around them may begin to see or feel that there are, after all, different experiences that matter and other voices that need to be heard. But this will only happen if, instead of immediately lashing out, people—even some listening today—try to acknowledge and just sit with the defensive feelings and anger and frustrations that arise within, and listen for what the Spirit might be saying… Comedian Chris Rock has pointed out—in his inimitable style—that some data shows significant “white progress” in racial attitudes over the past forty years.[v] But when twenty percent of white Americans still believe they are more intelligent than blacks—just as one example—it is clear there is still a long way to go before the uneven ground becomes level.
In the weeks following Michael Brown’s shooting and death, I participated in a panel at the National Cathedral to discuss “racism, violence, and the church’s response.” Gary Hall, Dean of the Cathedral, shared that following the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, he was confronted by an African-American colleague about his silence on the event and forced to come to terms with the ways that he and many white clergy and churches choose to “opt out” of engaging issues of racial injustice. That statement hit me at my core. Because, while I have a long-standing and passionate desire for racial justice, I have been silent on Sundays when my voice should have been raised and have surely missed opportunities to engage in concrete acts of solidarity. The truth is that part of the “privilege” of being white is that white folks can choose to “opt out,” we can say we are tired of talking about race or of people making things about race. And we can do those things because when we wake up in the morning, we generally don’t look in the mirror and think “I’m white.” We can “opt out” because we don’t have to deal with the daily subtle and not-so-subtle indignities of racial bias. Our sisters and brothers of color don’t have the option.
So how can you “opt in?” First, ask God to give you the courage to be honest about your own attitudes and practices and then repent of anything that is not grounded in love and compassion. And to repent means not only to say something, but to do something. To repent is to change. You can also “opt in” by coming together with others who feel a call to address issues of racial injustice. There are two opportunities I want to highlight. This Thursday, we will meet here at Foundry to share, to pray, and to begin a conversation about how we can be advocates and allies in the work of racial justice in our city. And on Tuesday, December 16th, at Capitol Hill UMC there will be a district-wide conversation and strategy session, facilitated by our District Superintendent, the Rev. Dr. Joe Daniels. These are just a few ways that you can choose to “opt in.”
Today, I stand before you and simply say: black lives matter. The racial oppression happening in so many communities across our country is wrong. Racial bias is real and infects our culture like a cancer. It is not a “black problem.” It is a human problem. Racial justice is not a “leftist” or “progressive issue.” It is a Christian issue and an issue of conscience for all people of good will. Racism’s insidious power affects us all. We are broken. We stand in need. We are in the wilderness.
And this is where the good news of Jesus Christ begins. And a voice cries out: In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord. Because God is coming. Help is coming! God is coming into the places that are broken beyond our own capacity to repair, into the tangles too tight for us to liberate ourselves or others, into the dry and dusty ground of our own need. When we go into the wilderness, God will meet us there. God doesn’t “opt out.” God comes in the flesh and gets all up in our business, unwilling to settle for a long-distance relationship or to put up with just being polite or to settle for the uneven ground remaining uneven. God knows that we struggle to build that lofty runway in the desert and so chooses to make a crash landing right in the middle of it all to help us get the job done. God, in Jesus Christ, comes into the open wound of the broken places of our lives and of our nation and of our world and dwells with us there. And why? Because our God is a fool for love. Because, contrary to the Ivans of the world, our God believes that we CAN use the gift of our freedom for good, that we can be and become more like Jesus the Christ. God believes we can be better, do better, love better than we do today. God looks at our world today and sees the young people in Ferguson who are not in the news but who are prophetically preparing the way of the Lord through their non-violent vision and leadership. Our God sees the ones who have been tirelessly toiling for years in schools and non-profits and governments and grass-roots organizations in order to level the playing field for all God’s children. Our foolish, love-sick God looks upon the human condition and sees our light, strength, generosity, courage, and love. And because God loves us so much, Jesus came into the wilderness place and faced the demons we all face and lifted his voice and opened his heart and gathered his flock and cradled the little lambs and gently cared for the mother sheep and stretched out his arms and allowed the wound of the world to wound him, even unto death. And his dying act was love. And his dying breath: forgive.
[i] Scott Hoezee, http://cep.calvinseminary.edu/thisWeek/index.php
[ii] Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, Part II, Chapter V.
[iii] http://www.drmartinlutherkingjr.com/mlkquotes.htm
[iv] Nancy Rockwell, http://biteintheapple.com/voices-in-the-wilderness/
[v] http://arts.nationalpost.com/2014/12/01/comedian-chris-rock-nicer-white-people-are-americas-real-racial-progress-not-obama-becoming-president/
Sunday Nov 30, 2014
Sunday Nov 30, 2014
ADVENT SERIES: IN THE FLESH
Shifted Longings
A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry UMC November 30, 2014, the first Sunday of Advent.
Texts: Isaiah 64:1-9, Mark 13:24-37
And just like that, the journey begins again… This first Sunday in Advent marks the beginning of a whole new Christian year. The word “advent” means “coming” or “beginning.” It is a new start, our Christian version of “New Year’s Eve,” a chance to try again, to set new goals, to strive for our lives to look more like that vision that may not be fully consciously formed, but that somewhere deep within gently aches to be realized. And so with the beginning of Advent each year, we may find ourselves thinking that THIS is the year things will be different. THIS Christmas we will get our act together, we will get the cards out on time, the cookies baked without burning half of them or allowing the dog to pull the bowl off the counter and eat all the cookie dough; this year we won’t go over budget (which means that we will have a budget!); this year those Martha Stewart decorating ideas will actually look as good in our home as they do in the pictures; THIS year when we get out our boxes from storage, the lights won’t be tangled into one, large knot and they will all light up when they get plugged in; this year the Real Simple magazine gift ideas—or the organic, fair-trade, socially conscious alternative gift ideas—will actually materialize, with all the gifts perfectly and artfully wrapped; the Advent Wreath that we have set up in a prominent place will get lit with appropriate, meaningful prayers each week; THIS year we will enjoy what actually happens instead of being disappointed at what we’re missing or what didn’t go as planned; THIS year the stress of the season won’t lead to arguments or unhealthy overindulgence; THIS year we will figure out a way to keep from feeling so lonely; this Advent we will truly sense God’s presence, be mindful of what it’s really all about; THIS Advent and Christmas will be happy, peaceful, perfect—or at least better than before…
My guess is that many of us here today have long since realized that some of these expectations are long-shots. But as one United Methodist author and pastor says, Advent “is a dangerous season.” Its dangers lie in our longing and expectation for things to get wrapped up in our lives with beauty and order and peace…I think it may be a hold-over from childhood for many of us—or from our projections of what the season is supposed to bring…this sense that at Christmastime, things should be magical and peaceful and perfect. But this longing for peace is challenged by everything around us that tempts us to stress and excess—excess in spending, planning, social engaging, and eating. The irony in the season of Advent is that we are asked to wait and watch (slow down?) and stay awake to look for the coming of Christ, to open ourselves to receive this perfect beautiful gift—and the culture around us crams our bodies and senses so full that there’s little room left for the holy family to dwell—no room in our calendars, no room in our minds, no room in our budgets, no room in our bodies. How often do you suppose that we metaphorically turn Mary and Joseph away because there’s “no room” in us for them to give birth to the Christ?
On the first Sunday of Advent our longings for peace and light almost immediately get destroyed, because instead of “happy, happy, joy, joy” the tradition gives us words of lament and dark warnings. But the words of the prophet in Isaiah 64 always hit me in such a visceral way: “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down…” I imagine the Deus ex machina moment—the moment when God comes and sorts out all the stress and brokenness and foolishness and discord and violence and worry…Isn’t this what we want in some way? For God to show up (especially when it seems God had abandoned us) and relieve us from suffering, from pain, from confusion, from living through another year of disappointment? It is an ancient hope, this desire for God to swoop down from on high and tidy up the messes we make, to console our grief and to heal our brokenness—or the woundedness of a loved one or of a world at war. We see that ancient hope reflected in both the passage from Isaiah and Mark this morning. The communities involved in these passages were in desperate situations. Isaiah’s people had been exiled for generations and were lost and confused. Mark’s community was being persecuted because of their Christian faith. And yet, though cloaked in language of earthquake, fire, filthy cloth, and darkened sun, the prophetic word spoken among both groups is the word of hope—hope that God will come; hope that God will be God; hope that God will save; hope that God will restore.
The spiritual masters of our tradition are all of one mind when it comes to hope. Hope is not just wishful thinking—though that is the charge levied against Christianity so often. Christian hope is what wells up right in the midst of difficulty and frustration and disappointment. G.K. Chesterton once said that “Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all...As long as matters are really hopeful, hope is mere flattery or platitude; it is only when everything is hopeless that hope begins to be a strength.”[i] The truth of these words is illustrated by one man’s experience at a little league baseball game. As the man approached the field, he asked a boy in the dugout what the score was. The boy responded, “Eighteen to nothing. We’re behind.” “Boy,” said the man, “I’ll bet you’re discouraged.” “Why should I be discouraged?” replied the little boy. “We haven’t even gotten up to bat yet!” That is real hope: hoping when things are hopeless.
Some things in life do seem hopeless—what feels hopeless might be as simple as how to wrestle our schedule into a rhythm that feels truly sustainable or as complex as the reality of deep-seated racism within our culture—a reality that we have seen so painfully played out in Ferguson these past days and weeks. What feels hopeless might be the increasingly shattered possibility for civil public discourse or the ongoing challenges with healthcare and immigration in America or the deep distrust that bars any true peace in the Middle East. What feels hopeless might be overcoming a life- or relationship-threatening addiction or finding a way to manage chronic pain or mental illness in such a way that it doesn’t steal your life. Situations both personal and global threaten to steal our hope. And yet it is just these kinds of situations that give us the opportunity to experience the miracle of hope—that miracle of believing that things can be different, better than they are today—even when all seems lost.
The content of our hope from a Christian perspective is that in Jesus we have received the perfect gift of God’s love in flesh. God has drawn as near as our own heartbeat and, through the Incarnation, has come right into the midst of all the pain and brokenness and despair of the world to show us that in life, in death, in life beyond death, we are not alone. God is Emmanuel, God is with us. And God (through the power of the Holy Spirit) is always moving in, around, and through us to heal, to help, to save. Charles Wesley wrote that our “long-expected Jesus” is the “hope of all the earth,” the “dear desire of every nation,” and the “joy of every longing heart.”[ii] The promise confirmed for us in the coming of Jesus to the world is that God will ultimately transform all strife and stress and brokenness and fear and violence, bringing every heart, every nation, all creation into perfect harmony and peace. Christian hope is not just wishful thinking; it is not shallow or simple. Christian hope is a longing for God—not to tidy up or to take over so as to enslave our freedom—but to dwell so closely with us that we can finally trust that we are, after all, held in God’s love just as a mother cradles a child. That kind of trust in God’s loving presence gives us courage to live the life we are made for, to make meaning of life even in the midst of suffering, to make a difference in life, to remain hopeful in spite of the facts.
It’s not easy to let go of our wishful thinking, our longing for God to just come and fix it, to make all the bits of life that are painful just go away—or at least all our plans go off without a hitch. As much as we might wish for things in life to be simple and orderly and predictable, what we are given is a life that is rich in its complexity, a life in which some of the most profound beauty emerges from the most difficult situations, a life in which we learn abiding faith, hope, and love in the messiness and even pain of human relationship and community. The same author who said that Advent is dangerous also says that Advent is a creative time. “Somewhere, gestating in the gathering storm, something new is preparing for birth. Nurtured on the vision of a God-filled world, sustained by the knowledge of God’s past faithfulness, and consumed by the fire of God’s love for the earth, a new incarnation is coming to this old world. It promises to come to remake us as well.”[iii] It won’t happen on our schedule. We can’t control the how or the when and we likely will not witness the full manifestation of God’s Kin-dom on earth in our lifetime. But what we CAN do is try to keep awake to the promise, to look for signs of God at work in the flesh, in our lives and in the world. We can try to slow down and open up and make space for Christ to abide with us. We can offer ourselves to the transforming, potter God as clay that longs to be molded into a more integrated, peaceful, loving shape.
I once read about a flight attendant who misspoke in giving the standard directions for de-planing. She said, “Be careful as you open the overhead bins, as your longings may have shifted during the flight.” Journeys do tend to shift things, and the journey we begin today invites us to shift our longings—to direct those longings toward God and the promises for transformation extended to us—even in the midst of desperation, stress, failure, or fear. We are invited to shift our longings and expectations from “perfection” in a Martha Stewart way to the perfect love that is offered in and through Jesus. We are invited to shift from wishful thinking to Christian hope—which is magical in a miracle kind of way.
[i] G.K. Chesterton, quoted in Signs of the Times, April 1993, p. 6.
[ii] “Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus,” United Methodist Hymnal, p. 196.
[iii] Alex Joyner, Call Him God’s Son: An Advent Study Based on the Revised Common Lectionary, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2011, p. 7.
Sunday Nov 23, 2014
Sunday Nov 23, 2014
Invisible Christ
A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry UMC November 23, 2014, Reign of Christ and Consecration Sunday.
Text: Matthew 25:31-46
Last week’s Revised Common Lectionary passage ended with the unfaithful servant being thrown into the darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. (Mt. 25.30) And today, the Lectionary gives us the parable immediately following, a scene of judgment including eternal fire and punishment for the hapless goats. This parable is the culmination of the last long speech attributed to Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew. And I find it instructive to note that these words are being uttered by Matthew’s Jesus in the early days of his last week. Jesus so-called “triumphal entry” to Jerusalem occurs back in chapter 21 and by the time we get to the end of our chapter (25), things have gotten weird—and pretty intense. Jesus has turned the tables on the money changers in the temple, cursed a fig tree, artfully dodged challenges from the temple leaders, cried about the state of Jerusalem, and spoken truth (in no uncertain terms) to the powers that would persist in their hypocrisy and injustice against the vulnerable and those in their care; the parables that conclude Jesus’ last speech are all about keeping eyes open and remaining faithful while the “master” is away. The parables, like the words Jesus has for the corrupt leaders of the day, are not trying to “make nice.” The point is that there are behaviors absolutely inconsistent with the Kin-dom of heaven and those things need to change. Jesus has spent his public life teaching, through his words and actions, the ways of God’s mercy, compassion, and love—the ways of the Kin-dom. But at this point in the story, Jesus knows that his death is near. And so the Matthew tradition draws our attention to a very clear point with these parables. There is a sense of pleading urgency, a fearful foreboding that presses for a decision, for action. Keep in mind that this gospel was written for a community more than 80 years removed from the flesh and blood person of Jesus. Instilling a sense of urgency to act, shaking the community to remember the ethics of the Kin-dom and whom they are called to serve is part of Matthew’s rhetorical point.
Notice that in our parable today that Jesus isn’t pressing us to judge other people; he is telling us to love and to care for them—especially the poor and vulnerable. That is the urgency. That is the thing that needs more attention. But we humans are so good at giving attention to the assignment of “goatness”—to others and to ourselves. Anyone been told they're gonna join me in the goat pen? I don't mean to be flip, but this is one of those places where I laugh to keep from crying. Instead of hearing Jesus' words in a way that awakes human conscience and leads to greater acts of care, mercy, and justice, how often these words have been used, instead, to do harm. And for those of us who do hear the call to care, we may be confused and distressed by the weeping and gnashing of teeth, the throwing into outer darkness, and casting into eternal fire and punishment that we find here. How can we read this parable in a way that allows us to maintain both its urgent call to accountability and action and our belief in a loving and merciful God? In other words, is there a way to read this story of Christ on the throne as a story of a benevolent ruler? Or not?
Based on my reading of the whole of Judeo-Christian salvation history—through the lens of the crucified and risen Christ—I understand our lives as a journey, a journey that continues even into the next life. The choices we make have consequences for our own lives and for the lives of others. Some choices lead to greater love, peace, and justice. Some human choices result in weeping and angry regret (gnashing of teeth); some human choices lead to a hellish place that has the potential to destroy and disfigure OR to purify. My conviction is that the violence in the parables is more descriptive than prescriptive—that the stories are trying to tell us what we are doing to ourselves and to whole communities if we persist in making life-threatening, destructive, choices. Grounding all of this is the belief that God does not leave nor forsake us. (Mt. 28.20) Ever. God is with us in this world and into the next. Grace is always extended. But we must choose whether to open our eyes, our ears, our hearts, to receive that which is given. If we turn to God, we will live.
I know there are good debates to be had on this theological reading of the punishments we read about in the Gospels. But when I think of my own life and the places that destructive, unloving
choices have led me, when I think of the consequences of unjust, discriminatory, and greedy laws and policies upon whole groups of people and upon our planet, when I think of the choices so many make to turn to violence and revenge and of the devastation wrought as a result, when I think of the ways that whole societies can get lured into blindly supporting a socio-economic or political system that is literally killing other people, only to realize after the fact the guilt and hellish consequences of their cheerful ignorance, I cannot help but conclude that weeping, gnashing of teeth, darkness and fire are simply what follow in the wake of human sin—not because God is punishing us, but because human beings have not heeded God’s call to wake up, to pay attention, to care, to forgive, to love. It is this call that I hear in our parable today, a call to shake off the distractions that keep us from seeing the needs of others, the injustice of our systems, the destruction of our choices.
Failure to see is the thing the sheep and the goats have in common. Christ was invisible to them all. And it may make us uneasy to consider that we likely pass by Christ in so many guises on any given day. I have spoken before of our need for new eyes, for our need to submit to the painful process of having our consciousness raised, of coming face to face with our complicity and our failures and then to do something different with the insight we gain. Today’s parable calls us right back to that need for the scales to fall from our eyes like Paul on the road to Damascus, so that we might see the harm we are doing or the good we have failed to do—and then to repent and live and love more freely and sacrificially.
But that isn't the end of the story. The parable also encourages us by highlighting the ways that we likely serve Christ without ever even knowing it! Today we are reminded that even with all our chronic vision problems we can act in love and compassion. Dorothy Day, who knew something about putting her faith into action on behalf of the poor, talked about the ways that it is impossible for anyone who has real charity in their heart NOT to serve Christ. She talks about the fact that even some who don’t know Christ or who have forgotten him will find themselves well loved. She recognizes that even some who think they hate Christ are serving him, disguised as Jesus is in suffering humanity.[i] Perhaps, since we have been tipped off to the fact that Christ will often be invisible to us—or perhaps simply because it is the right thing to do—we might consider doing our best to be kind to, to care for, to even serve everyone we encounter.
I don’t have to convince this congregation of the multiple opportunities to serve a broken and hurting world. My sense is that our collective awareness of need can lead us into the temptation to try to hold and address too many burdens ourselves and to live with a weight of guilt that we don’t do more. It makes me think of that episode in Buffy the Vampire Slayer when Buffy finds herself cursed with the ability to hear what other people are thinking. The pain, fear, despair, and confusion are so pervasive and overwhelming that holding it all threatens Buffy's own sanity. A beautiful response to this from the Jewish Talmud, says, “Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.” In other words, you don't have to save the whole world (good thing since none of us can anyway). But, as those who pray for God’s Kin-dom to come, we can't abandon our responsibility to live and to give according to its ways. We simply need to do what we can each moment, to the best of our ability. And the truth is that the smallest act of kindness can make all the difference in a life. I was reminded of this so powerfully as I listened to the stories of the five recipients of the Beat the Odds scholarship award presented by the Children’s Defense Fund last Tuesday. In addition to opening my eyes anew to a host of painful realities and obstacles that our young people face right here in our nation’s capital—realities like poverty, incest, violence, depression, and having parents who are ill, unemployed, or incarcerated—I was also deeply inspired. I was particularly struck by one youth, Diamond, who said one of her teachers “saw I was bright.” Through all her challenges, Diamond has thrived at school. A teacher saw her, saw she was bright, encouraged her, and made a profound difference in her life.
The teachers who support Diamond and other students like her, have the benefit of seeing at least some of the impact that they make in the world. But sometimes—and perhaps most of the time—we don’t see the results of our acts of love, mercy, kindness, and justice. You and I cannot begin to know of all the hearts opened, the bodies fed, the spirits enriched, the lives changed through the ministries, missions, and relationships made possible through the financial gifts that we consecrate today here at Foundry. We cannot always see the ways that a note of support, a courageous witness, a smile or embrace can change everything for someone else. You might not even see the person upon whom you have had an impact; you may not know that you have done anything of consequence. But today, we are reminded that even when you don’t see, God does. The invisible Christ is there in the heart of the one whose life you have touched. And God honors every act of care, every gentle word, every honest attempt to be human in a world that tempts us to the opposite.
It is rather easy to get preoccupied with the heady stuff of heaven and hell in the scripture and to miss the urgent call to love and justice. For most people in the world, the daily question is not what life will be like on the other side of death, but whether there is hope for a better life on this side of death. That is the thing that Jesus seems to want us to attend to—sharing in word and deed the hope, healing, mercy, and love that characterize life in God’s Kin-dom with and on behalf of those who need it most. If we do that, trusting in God's grace to help us see and respond, then we don't need to worry about what happens later.
On this last Sunday of the Christian year, traditionally celebrated as “Reign of Christ” Sunday, I give thanks that the One who will hold us accountable finally is the same One who loves us most fully. I give thanks that the One on the throne is also the One who draws near to us in poverty and vulnerability. I give thanks for the opportunities to serve the invisible Christ , opportunities that keep us connected to our humanity, humility, and dignity as beloved children of God. And I give thanks for the Kin-dom of God and for the One who won’t let us forget it is where we truly belong. It is to the work of God’s Kin-dom that we consecrate our gifts today, our church, and our lives, trusting in the grace of our Sovereign Christ.
Sunday Nov 16, 2014
Sunday Nov 16, 2014
Make, Save, Give
A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry UMC November 16, 2014, the twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost.
Matthew 25:14-30
At the center of the beautiful covenant prayer written by United Methodism’s founder, John Wesley, are these words, “Let me be full, let me be empty. Let me have all things, let me have nothing. I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal.”[i] This is simply Wesley’s version of the ancient Christian call: to offer all that we are and all that we have to the service of God. This call is grounded in the Judeo-Christian claim that God is the creator of all that is—including you and me—and that all that exists is God’s own possession.
A year ago, Anthony and I were blessed by the generosity of some friends who lent the use of their cabin on the Chesapeake Bay for retreat and renewal—they even let us bring our dog, Harvey! Everything in the place was available for our use and enjoyment, including the vegetables in their garden. The owners lent it to us, trusting that we would use and enjoy the place, that we would care for and honor it, and then would return the keys to the rightful owner. We were stewards for a little while of something that belonged to someone else. Wesley says the same thing about our lives and all that we have. All things belong to God and we are simply stewards for a little while.
The servants in our parable today are given stewardship of the possessions of their master. The “talent” is an unusually large amount of money with which two of the three servants trade in order to double the money entrusted to them. The third servant is chastised for failing to do anything but hoard and hide his money—and being asked why he didn’t at least put it in the bank where it could earn some interest. Other than the idea of a savings account actually yielding any interest, we can relate to the activity of trading and banking. We might also relate to the fear and anxiety that the third servant feels with regard to stewardship of the money that he is given. Pastor Theresa, in her stewardship reflection found on our website, highlights the ways that fear can hinder our faithful stewardship and our letting go to greater trust in God. Our parable today invites us to think about what it looks like to be trusting and trustworthy stewards of our financial resources such that we might “enter into the joy of our master.” (Mt. 25.21, 23)
Here I will draw heavily from a very helpful little book written by Rev. James Harnish, recently retired Senior Pastor of Hyde Park UMC in Tampa, Florida. The book is entitled Simple Rules for Money: John Wesley on Earning, Saving, & Giving. I commend this book to you for your personal reflection as well as for use with your Bible study or small groups. The book is an explication of John Wesley’s sermon called “The Use of Money” in which Wesley says, “An excellent branch of Christian wisdom is…namely, the right use of money—a subject largely spoken of by [people] of the world; but not sufficiently considered by those whom God hath chosen out of the world…Neither do they understand how to employ it to the greatest advantage.”[ii] Among the reasons that people in the church perhaps have insufficiently considered the use of money is that we generally don’t want to talk about money in church!
And this is in large part due to the extremes presented so often within Christian communities. The first extreme is the “prosperity gospel” preachers who say that God wants people to be rich, who make the “abundant life” Jesus offers equal to an abundant bank account. The other extreme is the “preachers who approach the subject of money as if they were afraid of being infected with a fatal disease. Reacting against the abuses of the ‘prosperity’ preachers and in response to people who (sometimes for good reason) complain that all the church wants is their money, they act as if the gospel has nothing to say on the subject, in spite of the fact that Jesus talked more about money and possessions than any other subject except the [Kin-dom] of God.”[iii] From Jesus to John Wesley and right up until this moment, wise Christian leaders understand that we all wrestle with money matters day in and day out. Money and possessions are among the main causes of stress in life and in relationships. John Wesley knew that our faith has something to say—beyond the extremes. Wesley’s practical spirituality offers “three plain rules” for the wise use of money: Make all you can. Save all you can. Give all you can.
While there are those who are called to voluntary poverty as an expression of their faith, most of us are (or seek to be) gainfully employed. Wesley’s first rule on the wise use of money is to make it! “Gain all you can by honest industry. Use all possible diligence in your calling.”[iv] It is safe to say that Wesley supported the so-called “Protestant work ethic!” And he believed that the more money you have, the more good you can do! But he also wrote “We ought to gain all we can …without paying more for it than it is worth.”[v] Wesley understood that there was a “dark side” to accumulation of wealth. In addition to the temptation to greed, it is also possible to “pay more” for our salaries than those salaries are worth. Some guidelines for making all you can without crossing over to the dark side include:
· “Gain all you can without hurting your health. That’s a good word in a culture where too many of us are working ourselves to death for money.
· “Gain all you can without hurting your mind. Wesley warned against any business that would involve cheating, lying, or engaging in behavior that is not consistent with a good conscience…
· “Gain all you can without hurting your neighbor. Loving others as we love ourselves requires that we consider the way our economic practices will impact others.”[vi] This becomes more challenging as we consider that it applies not just to our neighbors next door, but also our neighbors around the world. And remember that your neighbor includes your spouse and your children…
With careful cautions in place, Wesley was very clear that we should work hard, seek always to improve our work, and to “make the best of all that is in your hands.” Make all you can. Rule number one.
Wesley says, “Having gained all you can, by honest wisdom and unwearied diligence, the second rule of Christian prudence is, ‘Save all you can.’ Do not throw it away in idle expenses, which is just the same as throwing it into the sea.”[vii] Anyone here remember Stanley Johnson? “He was the humorous character in a television commercial for a lending agency. With a self-satisfied smile, Stanley introduced himself and his family, complete with two children and a dog. He showed us his four-bedroom home in a great neighborhood, his swimming pool, and his new car. With obvious pride he let us know that he was a member of the local golf club. Grinning into the camera while he turned steaks on the backyard grill he asked, ‘How do I do it?’ Still wearing a silly grin, he confided in the audience as he answered his own question: ‘I’m in debt up to my eyeballs. I can barely pay my finance charges.’ At the end of the commercial he pleaded, ‘Somebody help me.’”[viii]
Clearly, Stanley Johnson was spending money he didn’t have—and I’m sure we could all name reasons that he (and so many Americans!) would do this. When John Wesley preached that Christians should save all that they could, he wasn’t suggesting that we act like the third servant in our parable today and fearfully hoard our money. He was talking about being the anti-Stanley Johnson, about being “frugal.” To be frugal is not to be stingy or cheap, but to be temperate, to live without waste. “Wesley told his followers not to waste their money on superfluous, overly expensive, or needless purchases…He warned them about what we would call ‘compulsive’ shopping—an addiction that pervades our culture today.”[ix] In other words, Wesley’s call to “save all you can” is spending money only on what you really NEED. It’s not that you can never splurge, but the more you live within your means, prioritize your spending, and learn to forego the temptation to “keep up with the Joneses,” the more you may discover the contentment that can’t be purchased.
Finally, Wesley says, “All this is nothing, if… [a person] does not point all this at a farther end. Nor, indeed, can [someone] properly be said to save anything, if he only lays it up. You may as well …bury it in the earth…Not to use, is effectually to throw it away. Therefore…add the third rule… Having, first, gained all you can, and secondly saved all you can, then ‘give all you can.’”[x] This principle is reflected in the Broadway show Hello, Dolly! when the lead character says, “Money is like manure; it’s not worth a thing unless it’s spread around encouraging things to grow.”[xi] Give all you can. In reflecting on Wesley’s “third rule,” James Harnish admits that he was surprised, expecting to hear about giving to the church, about tithing, and so on. But Wesley begins with our own needs! Wesley teaches to “provide things needful for yourself; food to eat, raiment to put on, whatever nature moderately requires for preserving the body in health and strength.” And then he says to provide these things for your family. And then he says to give to “them that are of the household of faith.” And finally he says, “If there be an overplus still, ‘as you have opportunity, do good unto all’...” Wesley modeled this in his own life, determining the amount of money that he needed to live and then, literally, giving the rest away. He continued to live on the same amount even as his income increased, so that by the end of his life he was giving away most of his income. But Wesley doesn’t suggest that we should starve ourselves or deny our family’s needs or go into debt to support the church or other charities. Through working hard so that we make as much as we can and then spending carefully and modestly on those things that are needful for ourselves and our families, we may find that we have some money to give away. Wesley believed this was how to give all you can--and even all you have, “For all that is laid out in this manner is really given to God.”[xii]
And that brings us back to the lines of the covenant prayer in which we offer the whole of our lives to God’s “pleasure and disposal.” There is much more that could be said on these matters, of course. But the point of the three simple rules to make, save, and give all we can is for our lives to more fully resemble the extravagant generosity of our God. After all, the God whom we know is not a tyrant or a hoarder—the third servant got it wrong! God has given us everything—our lives and relationships, our talents and skills, and the desire to lovingly employ all for the good of the Kin-dom.
When we use our money in ways consistent with Biblical wisdom, it too becomes “an excellent gift of God, answering the noblest ends.” I will close by sharing one final quote from John Wesley: “In the hands of [God’s] children, [money] is food for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, raiment for the naked…By it we may be a defence for the oppressed, a means of health to the sick, of ease to them that are in pain. It may be as eyes to the blind, as feet to the lame; yea, a lifter up from the gates of death!”[xiii] Today the invitation is to “yield all things to [God’s] pleasure and disposal,” including your use of money. Doing so might mean lifting someone up from the gates of death! It might even be YOU who is lifted.
[i] The United Methodist Hymnal, p. 607.
[ii] James A. Harnish, Simple Rules for Money: John Wesley on Earning, Saving, & Giving, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2009, p. 7.
[iii] Ibid., p. 9.
[iv] Ibid., p. 22.
[v] Ibid., p. 21.
[vi] James A. Harnish, A Disciple’s Path: Deepening Your Relationship with Christ and the Church, Companion Reader, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2012, p. 49.
[vii] James A. Harnish, Simple Rules for Money: John Wesley on Earning, Saving, & Giving, p. 37.
[viii] Ibid.
[ix] James A. Harnish, A Disciple’s Path: Deepening Your Relationship with Christ and the Church, Companion Reader,p. 50.
[x] James A. Harnish, Simple Rules for Money: John Wesley on Earning, Saving, & Giving, p. 54-55.
[xi] Ibid., p. 66.
[xii] Ibid., p. 63.
[xiii] Ibid., p. 13.