Foundry UMC DC: Sunday Sermons

So That You May Have Life - April 11th, 2021

So That You May Have Life

John 20:19-31

Will Ed Green—Sunday, April 11th, 2021—Foundry United Methodist Church

Good morning, friends. My name is Will Ed Green, and I serve as one of Foundry’s Associate Pastors and our Director of Discipleship. As we move into a time of reflecting on Scripture together we are so glad you’re with us. For those of you who are just tuning in, you’ll find links for fully engaging in our service in our Facebook and YouTube comments or on our website www.foundryumc.org. If you are in need ASL interpretation, we invite you to join us at www.foundryumc.org/asl.

So I want to begin this morning by talking about the “Apophthegmata Patrum,”—no, that wasn’t a sneeze, I said “apophtegmata patrum.” They are the recorded sayings of a group of monks and nuns known as the Desert Mothers and Fathers. They lived in caves, mud huts, and even holes they dug in the ground in the deserts of Egypt, Syria, and Palestine; sometimes in small communities but, more often than not, alone. There, in the desert, with the busyness of life and the clutter of consumption cleared away, they embarked upon a bold endeavor: through prayer and contemplation, to live more humanely, to become—in modeling their life after Jesus—more human, and thus to become truly alive in the love of God.

The “Apophthegmata”are snippets of stories and parables—preserved from the their own self-reflection, or offered to their disciples and visitors, that often begin with the question: “Amma, Abba, give me a word.”

Their responses are not theological treatises or Christian self-help one-liners. They are plain and practical; unconcerned with right belief or theology and focused on matters of the heart. This simple wisdom cleaves performative spirituality and self-righteous theology from the practical matters of daily discipleship.  And because of this, they force us to address the ways what we profess is actually transforming our hearts and lives. Something John Wesley might have called “personal holiness” or “sanctification.”

During these Great 50 Days—or the 50 days between Easter and Pentecost—our new sermon series invites us, like the Desert Mothers and Fathers, to focus our attention on the work of being and becoming alive. To receive in the fullness of its power the hope of the resurrection we proclaim. To embody, not just in right belief, but in the daily rhythms of our lives the freedom and abundance of life available when we live as those who believe that Jesus IS risen.

So now, as we turn to the words of the Living Word, Jesus, and ask of them as those who traveled to the desert so long ago: “Give us a word” let us pray:

Order our lives in your Word, O God, that everything we do may bear witness to your resurrection life.  Order our words in YOUR word, O God, that everything we say may bring life into a worry-weary world desperately in need of hope. Breathe the anointing of your Holy Spirit upon all those in the sound of my voice, that in this sacred space we now share together we might be transformed by your Living Word, and in that transformation might take our place in kin-dom work to which you’ve called us. And now may the words of this preacher, faulty and fleeting though they may be, fade into the background of the Word which you would have us receive this day. Amen.

I want to begin this morning by acknowledging  that is a sermon about Jesus’ body and our bodies and the way they experience and express trauma. There may be moments when previous experiences of your own trauma rise to conscious awareness, so pay attention to your body. If you find yourself feeling anxious step away or pause and take a break, please know that’s ok.

Today’s reading begins with the disciples in the throes of collective trauma. Their doors are barred in fear of what terror may yet occur. Just days before they witnessed their rabbi ruthlessly murdered, were denied by the disappearance of his body the familiar rhythms and rituals of mourning, and are certainly still trying to make sense of his promised resurrection in light of all these things.

Suddenly, a surprisingly fleshy Jesus—given the doors to this kiki are locked tight—appears in the midst of their uncertainty, fear, and doubt. Showing his wounds. Speaking of peace. Breathing upon them. And it’s the revelation of his resurrected and scarred body—the text tells us—through which they see and know him for who he is, finally able to rejoice.

But Thomas isn’t there to see the wounds and recognize the resurrection. And when told of what happened he insists that his belief will come only when he’s able to touch the wounds, feel the scars, and grasp hold of this body which held the trauma they’d all shared.

When Thomas arrives, we’re not told whether or not he actually digs his hand into Jesus’ wounds, but it’s clear he’s given the chance to. And in this moment of direct confrontation with embodied sorrow and suffering—not just Jesus’ own, but that of the community who loved him— Thomas proclaims, “My Lord and My God,” finally able to see through those wounds the full promise of God’s resurrection power.

John’s Gospel is the only one that makes the wounds of the resurrected Jesus central to the story, mixing the past pain and trauma of the crucifixion with the present rejoicing in and hope for resurrection. I find it fascinating that these encounters are precipitated by recognition of Jesus’ wounds. It’s not his miraculous appearance among them, not his face or voice, but his wounds that confirm his identity.  John’s Jesus isn’t a face-tuned, blemish-less, social media ready Savior fresh off a few days of rejuvenating rest in the tomb, but one who bears the marks of the cross and yet lives.

Over the centuries we’ve conveniently made this a story about Thomas’s doubt. We love the image of one who must root around in the wounds of Jesus to achieve satisfaction—perhaps because we feel the need to excuse our own doubt or to satisfy ourselves with the thought that at least we’ve got more faith than THAT. But this reading also provides a convenient way to ignore the confronting an uncomfortable truth: resurrection doesn’t guarantee instantaneous healing. When the story is more about Thomas’ spiritual faults than wounds he insists on touching, we get to ignore that that resurrected Jesus still bears the marks of the tomb. The life he offers isn’t one in which our past trauma and sorrow is expunged. Instead, John’s resurrection body forces us to confront how they inform and are part of life. Healing cannot be separated from suffering. Resurrection cannot be separated from death.

Let me pause and be clear here: this is not a sermon about redemptive suffering. As a pastor I wholeheartedly reject the idea that suffering is a somehow necessary part of the way we grow in faith or love of God and one another. This is bad theology—no tea, no shade, Paul…but maybe a little. And it’s the root of so many excuses for the continued mass incarceration, torture, and violence perpetuated against our black and brown siblings, too often one which traps women in cycles of abuse and neglect in the name of  “faithfulness,” and is regularly used against my queer siblings as they are subjected to theologies of self-loathing and the horrors of conversion therapy.

But willingness to erase Jesus’ wounds and focus solely on Thomas’s doubt is dangerous. The wounds, and the pain they embody, can’t be overlooked. Far too many people are taught a theology of comparative suffering, where ‘good Christians’ are taught to minimize their suffering—or the suffering of others— because clearly other people have it worse than “you.” We are taught that our doubt, disbelief, heartache and hurt are an expression of faithlessness in God, that these don’t get to exist in tandem with life in a post-Easter world.

Recent developments in psychobiology have given us a deeper understanding of how trauma impacts our brains and bodies. By trauma, I mean any experience which causes acute anxiety, fear, rage, or grief and that activates our desire to “fight or flee”. When this happens, a part of our brain, sometimes called the “lizard brain.” kicks into gear.  This ancient, built-in defense mechanism is tied directly our primary life systems, and can activate them before we consciously pick up on a threat. All of us, I’m sure, can remember moments of acute distress when our heart was pounding out of our chest, our breathing shallow, our palms sweaty, or our stomachs churning.

Evolutionarily, these responses are meant to keep us alive until we can escape and process our experience. But what happens, when like the disciples, we encounter grief we can’t process or explain. A tomb left empty, holding more questions than answers. Night after night spent with the door tightly barred with no end to the threat in sight?

Significant or repeated experiences of trauma, as author Bessel van der Kolk writes in “The Body Keeps the Score,” alter our perception of reality. We get stuck in the lizard brains, constantly reacting to something which our conscious brain might otherwise recognize as innocuous or inane.  Phrases like “Per my previous email” or “Can we talk?” can send us into fits of rage.  News notifications or unexpected phone calls can leave us panicked and breathless.

Left unchecked, these trauma wounds impact nearly every aspect of our lives. We become stuck in cycles of self-sabotage; often in trying to prevent the threat of future trauma, inadvertently causing the very thing we fear.  In real moments of panic or danger, we become unable to distinguish those who want to help from those trying to cause harm, leaving us isolated and suspicious.

These repeated trauma reactions build a new kind of knowledge in our bodies, changing the way we exist in and share space with others. Toxic anxiety—or prolonged periods of unabated anxiety—can kill us. Over time, our lizard brain’s over activation of our bodily systems can cause us to gain weight, makes hearts and arteries age abnormally, or our immune systems fail. We brains become so accustomed to our anxiety or the threat of trauma that we unconsciously create a world in which we constantly feel or create it because it’s the only way we know how to live.  One study comparing patients with untreated or significant past trauma to those without it, found that the brains of persons with PTSD literally shut down areas which control and help us define our sense of self in proximity to others. In an effort to erase their experience of trauma, our brains adapt, shutting off the parts of our brain that help us know perceive the world around us and know ourselves outside of our anxiety or fear of future pain or grief.

          It’s no wonder it took Jesus miraculously appearing in their midst and revealing his wounds, rather than the words of Mary who encountered him just before, to recognize him. And that was just three days later. Thomas spent another week—another week!—living in that terror and fear. Jesus wasn’t the only one wounded in the story. He was just the only one who’s wounds we see.

If you’ve ever read J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, you might remember that goblins are sneaky, burrowing creatures who are terrified of light. Under the cover of darkness however, they leave their caves to wreak havoc and violence on unsuspecting victims, pillaging and plundering everything they can take. I have this image of our unnamed, un-healed trauma operating a little like these goblins. Our trauma goblins burrow just beneath the surface of our conscious awarenness and, hidden by our fear and shame about facing them, co-opt and corrupt our ability to distinguish between despair and hope, life and death, friend and foe. Left unchecked, they impact everyone around us. They change our ability to listen and respond to others. Our capacity to trust and show up authentically, to love and take worthwhile risks. They pillage the wealth of our relationships, our good intentions, and giftedness and in their wake often cause lasting harm to those we love..

But much  like Tolkein’s goblins are terrified of light, of being seen, our trauma goblins lose their agency over us when exposed to the light of conscious awareness. Trauma therapists now understand that the long-term trauma can only be dealt with in our bodies. Employing a variety of mind-body techniques like deep breathing, massage, yoga, and meditation allows survivors of long-term trauma and toxic anxiety to begin to understand how their trauma impacts their bodies, and through their bodies to begin learning what it means to regain control of their lives. By addressing the often-unconscious ways our anxiety and trauma is manifested in our bodies, we’re able to break its control over us.

Perhaps this is why it took the wounded AND resurrected body of Christ to break the the coopting cycle of the disciples’ anxiety, fear, and self-doubt. Breathing new life and strength into bodies weary from trauma that never seems to end. Showing the wounds in all their pain and the promise that that there was yet life beyond them. And when that trauma misshaped and Mal-informed Thomas’s perception of himself and others, Jesus extended his hands, wounds and all, without reproach or shame, allowing Thomas to touch the source of his pain so that he might be free to live beyond its control.

In her book Resurrecting Wounds, Shelley Rambo writes:

“The truth of the resurrection conveyed through the symbols of [Jesus’] scars is that these textures (grief and joy, pain and pleasure) will always be present in life, often simultaneously. Interlaced with joy and pain, a life can be marked as holy even in all this ambiguity.”

Jesus shows us how gentle acknowledgment and awareness of our trauma helps us recognize that God is present both in suffering and healing, in doubt and belief; liberating us from the lie that our past trauma and present wounded-ness is all there is to our story. The wounded and resurrected savior bears witness to the real resurrection promise: not that we will always be ok, or skate past suffering in life through slights of hand like comparative suffering, not some glorified, resurrected future free of all our past trauma and grief, but the freedom to see written in our marks our past trauma leaves that while life guarantees suffering and loss, God guarantees life despite of and beyond it.

Social worker and author Resmaa Menakem notes in his book on racial trauma in America “My Grandmother’s Hands” that, “…we tend to think of healing as something binary: either we’re broken or we’re healed from that brokenness…but healing from trauma occurs [over a long time and] on a continuum.” If Thomas teaches us nothing else, he shows us that we do not need to be embarrassed or controlled our past traumas. His reach teaches us how to reject the temptations of comparative suffering, and gives us permission to be okay not being ok. To doubt. To be a hot mess express. His recognition and acclamation of the resurrection shows us that by naming our wounds they lose the power to define our experience of others and the world. In honoring our wounds,  in refusing to defer or delay our recognition of trauma, we bring into focus a reality too often denied by binary models of healing: that we can be both hurt and healing, broken and being made whole, in the tomb and yet returning to life.In that way, his demand to confront the wounds, to run his fingers over the still-fresh scars of the cruxifixion isn’t an act of doubt. But an experience of his own resurrection. And while Thomas may, in fact, offer us a lesson on doubt, he’s also showing us what it means, in light of the resurrection, to be and become alive.

On my hands is a roadmap of my past only I can read. Here a deep scar, left when a frantic dash out the door pulled artwork off the wall that bit back. There an almost invisible pockmark from chicken pox long healed. Joints left crooked after broken bones, callouses left from picking up heavy things. They may not be pretty, but all those marks and scars on my hands remind me—in all their beauty and brokenness—despite it all I am still alive.

Pentecost will mark the 19th anniversary of the first time I ever preached and publicly acknowledged my call to ministry. It will also mark the beginning of a profound and painful internal struggle with my God-given identity as a gay man and the ordination process of a church which actively told me that identity was incompatible with Christian teaching. There’ve been plenty of wounds along the way. Having to leave my home and family behind in order to be ordained in the church I felt called to. Living in fear of what would happen if a picture of my partner and I got posted on the wrong account or parishioners encountered me holding hands on a first date. Hiding my identity from my colleagues for fear it might be used against me in a court of…well, church law.

Much like looking at my hands reminds me I'm still alive, every day I choose to name them, acknowledge, touch and know them reminds me that it’s ok that  I am healed and still healing. I am broken and almost being made whole. And that I am, in the words of that old Charles Wesley hymn, despite it all, yet alive.  The Abbas and Ammas of the desert often remark on the way has a funny way of entering in through the wounds we bear and slowly, imperceptibly, beginning the work of healing. And though I’m not sure I’ll ever stop fighting those old trauma goblins, God’s grace—new each day—gives me fresh hope that they don’t have to define what comes next.

I know I don’t need to enumerate for you all the ways that we are these days, individually and collectively holding and bearing witness to trauma. But I do know that it’s okay to hold doubt in one hand and hope in the other. That in the light of the resurrection your scars and wounds aren’t proof of your failure or lack of capacity or worthlessness. No, they are proof you’re a badass. You can do and survive hard things. You already survived the worst moments of your lives. No one else has ever done that. No one else could.

Best of all, I know that in the midst of all the trauma past, and all the trauma to come, we are accompanied by a Savior who’s love allows us the grace and space to know that—no matter how broken or wounded we may be—we are loved. And meets us in moments when they in all their death-dealing power threaten to overwhelm or overcome us with open arms, proclaiming peace and promising though our scars may remind us of where we’ve been, and what we’ve been through, they may inform but don’t have to dictate what comes next. I think that may be what it means to become in alive in God’s love. And, for now, at least for me, that’s resurrection enough.

https://foundryumc.org/

Sing a New Song - Easter Sunday April 4th, 2021

Sing a New Song

A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli with Foundry UMC, April 4, 2021, Easter Sunday, “Learning to Sing the Blues” series.

                Text: Mark 16:1-8

Early yesterday morning, as I climbed the stair to my writing chair, the light of a waning moon shining brightly, a single, solitary bird’s voice sang: sing it out, sing it out, sing it out, will you? The melody is familiar, though one I’ve missed. It hibernates, or migrates—I don’t know birdsongs well enough to know which bird was belting out her bright song in the dark—but it appears this time of year, a herald of spring in its fullness, announcing a new moment, a passage from one season to another.

This image reflects my experience through this year of pandemic, singing my song in a defiant, determined commitment to hope in a new moment, new life—all the while, surrounded by the night and shadows, within and without. It may come as a surprise to some, but my cynicism can be as sharp as any. I call my cynicism Shirley (not referencing anyone except the play on words: as in, “surely, you don’t believe that.”) And with each new reflection gone viral on the interwebs early in the pandemic about how we were going to come out of this thing renewed, changed, chastened, wiser and better, I found myself in a near-constant dialogue with Shirley. She really is a broken record of “don’t get your hopes up” ditties. On days when I’m caught between my hope-filled, prophetic self and my Shirley self, I simply flip on autopilot, put up buffers and compartmentalization systems for grief, uncertainty, and trauma, and try to just get through this thing unscathed and doing as little damage as possible.

With each new challenge, each new loss, assault, tragic headline, new number of cases, deaths, shootings, each new instance of injustice over the past year…with each new revelation of how truly broken things are in our lives and relationships and churches and institutions and nations and world, whether I’m in “God’s up to something good,” “we’re doomed,” or “put your head down and get through it” mode I still root about trying to discover what Spirit wants to share. It’s kind of a habit. This past year, a consistent theme is summed up in John Wesley’s last words: “Best of all is, God is with us.”

Some may roll their eyes at so simple a statement, because, after all, what difference does it make for God to be with us when things continue to be so jacked up? Shirley asks that question on the regular, joining the chorus of the Israelites in the desert who complained saying, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?” (Numbers 21:5) Shirley sings alto in the chorus of the disciples who woke Jesus from his sleep on the boat in the storm yelling, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” (Mk 4:38) And she would have wondered the same thing as the Marys and Salome that early morning in the cemetery—“Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” (we’re probably on our own!)

Of course, in each of those jacked up moments of wilderness, storm, and the heaviness of death, God was there, leading out of slavery, providing manna and wellspring waters from a rock, soothing the storm with a word, and rolling the stone away so that life might emerge. That’s the story we tell, anyway. Are you buying it? 

Casey Gerald, in his beautiful, painful, artful memoir, There Will Be No Miracles Here (a book I read at some unidentifiable moment in the haze of the COVID pandemic) shares this:

It’s hard enough to get used to a crappy life. But once you do, you see that even crap can be cozy and the coziness becomes important to you. And even the slightest change—in the name of progress or healing or uplift—feels like a threat to your existence, so you ignore it as long as you can…The story has to change, you see, and that’s not only a great deal of work to undertake, but also a real risk, as the new story might not be as marvelous as the old sad one. But the greatest risk [is] hope.” 

It’s not just whether we will believe the stories of God in scripture, but whether we will believe God is anywhere at all. Gerald confesses that his journey led him not to hopelessness, but to “anti-hope.” He writes:

This anti-hope seems to be in vogue, mind you, especially amongst those who consider themselves too brilliant or too secular to believe in silly things like unicorns and hope and God. They say that anti-hope is the natural order of things, that the most obvious stance for the man and woman of reason is the stance of Cool Customer, leaning against the wall of the world while the moral arc of the universe bends down to crush them, as it must.

In any moment of life, we have choices to make about how we will receive and be in the moment, what we will believe about the moment. The oppressive powers of the world want us to believe that every moment is dog-eat-dog, want us to think that hope is for the weak, that crushing others or being crushed by life is inevitable. That the old story is all there is. That people will never learn and that we ourselves are forever stuck. These are the powers of death and control and fear. Choosing to acquiesce will have predictable consequences.

The alternative is to choose even the tiniest bit of openness to the assertion of “God with us,” openness to Spirit’s movement deep down in all things, through all things, under and within our own skin—even when all things appear despairingly broken. 

You may find it ironic that I would focus on “God with us” when, in the Easter story from Mark we received today, Jesus is nowhere to be found. No appearance, no comforting word from the risen Christ. And even the commissioning of the women by the mystery man in white doesn’t lead to the first announcement of Jesus’ resurrection. There is only alarm, terror, amazement, and fear.

Most scholars agree that this is where the original text of Mark ended—fleeing in fear without any assurance that the message given the women was true. And, as much as I love getting to make an Easter quip about women being the first preachers, I also really appreciate this version of the story that leaves all of us standing together at the edge of life and death and new life with nothing but a promise of an unseen Christ beckoning us to follow into uncertainty, daring us to carry on without easy and quick comfort, calling us to grapple with our own fear of something that is truly new and unexpected, encouraging us to come to terms with whether or not we will believe that something so wonderful as resurrection is possible, and whether we will welcome it when it happens.

Casey Gerald tells this story:

[There’s] a village that I heard of not too long ago. The village, somewhere in France, sometime in the seventeenth century, became the site of frequent miracles, according to the peasants there, who were so struck by symptoms of the supernatural that they put down their plows. This, of course, [ticked] off the local officials. They tried to reason with the peasants, to quell the mass hysteria, to no avail. At last, the officials sought an intervention from the highest power in the land, who sent them back with a sign. An actual sign, which was erected in the village square for all to see. It read:

THERE WILL BE NO MIRACLES HERE

BY ORDER OF THE KING

Isn’t this the way things go since forever? The proverbial “kings” of the world pass orders and laws, write books and reviews, create budgets, make rulings, and build structures, all the while thinking that they have the power and authority to control the people of God, the movement of God, the freedom of God: “NO MIRACLES HERE!” And, more often than most of us care to admit, they get away with it. Because, after all, human desire, overwhelmingly, is to leave things exactly the way they are. 

We can all talk a big game about hope and new life, but as soon as something really new, a bona fide change gets underway, people race out to buy their yard signs in support of the king: “No miracles here!” The body isn’t where it’s supposed to be! Who voted on movement of the body? Who said that the mystery man could be in the empty tomb? Did Jesus sign off on that before he died? Who ordered a resurrection anyway? There’s no protocol for this and we don’t know what to do. This new situation is not the way we do things around here! So let’s bring the dead body back stat and restore things to the way they’re supposed to be.

Oh, it is tempting to want to stay in the old, familiar ways… We love a new thing as long as it has a perceivable, measurable, reasonable explanation and doesn’t make us uncomfortable. We long for a new life as long as no sacrifice is required of us. We advocate for justice as long as it doesn’t mean that we have to foot the bill. Familiar death is so often more preferable to us than disruptive, costly newness.

And yet that’s not all that is within and among us. If it was, Amanda Gorman’s words wouldn’t have emanated from the podium with such soul-stirring electricity:

Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true,
that even as we grieved, we grew,
that even as we hurt, we hoped,
that even as we tired, we tried,
that we’ll forever be tied together, victorious.
Not because we will never again know defeat,
but because we will never again sow division.
Scripture tells us to envision
that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree
and no one shall make them afraid.
If we’re to live up to our own time,
then victory won’t lie in the blade.
But in all the bridges we’ve made…

In truth, these words are simply a powerful, of-the-now remix of the old vision, the dream of Rev. Dr. King assassinated this day 53 years ago, the dream of Micah and Isaiah, the dream of Mary and her son Jesus, our resurrected Lord. 

Will we continue to defer the dream? My inner Shirley is only so sharp and persistent because she’s trying to help me keep from being hurt and disappointed, she knows that some people in the world have no interest in new things, they want to keep the old, broken, hurtful, hateful things—want to keep ALL the fig trees and vines for themselves and pay less than living wages for others to tend them. Shirley also knows the small and wishful thinking that I sometimes try to pass off as faith and hope to myself.

But as much as I may falter and as much as the powers that be may try, no one gets to forbid miracles, no one gets to control new life, no one gets to kill the dream, no one gets to cancel Easter—not with a sign, not with a virus, not with a cynical eye-roll or self-satisfied smirk or fearful, hateful policy or a noose or a gun or a cross. Today we praise God because Jesus has been set free, let loose, is out in the world, risen, shiny, new—bearing the scars and having sung the laments of this life—but alive and with us—all day long and the whole night through. And where Christ is, miracles happen. Anything is possible…We will get through this. Things can be different and better. We can be different and better. The dream doesn’t have to be deferred forever.

And we stand together at the edge of life, death, and new life and have to choose. Gerald says, “I have a radio. It picks up only two stations: Life and Death. I turn the death off, now that I know the sound.”

What station will you play? What song will you sing even when it is still night and difficult to see? Why not sing together the new song already, eternally begun, the dream of poets and prophets from the beginning, recently sung in Amanda’s key? 

…our people diverse and beautiful will emerge,
battered and beautiful.
When day comes we step out of the shade,
aflame and unafraid,
the new dawn blooms as we free it.
For there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it.
If only we’re brave enough to be it.

Sing it out, sing it out, sing it out! Will you? Alleluia!

https://foundryumc.org/

Lonely Lament - Palm Sunday March 28th, 2021

Lonely Lament 

A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli with Foundry UMC, March 28, 2021, Palm Sunday, “Learning to Sing the Blues” series.

              Text: Mark 11:1-19

Oh, we do love a parade! We do love a rally! And even those who dislike crowds can be stirred to join the throng by the right cause or person as the draw! Give me something to wave, teach me the chant, “hey hey ho ho-sanna!” and let’s march! And when we gather for the annual Palm Sunday parade, we are traditionally given delightful images of children—in various states of confusion, disarray, or glee—being shepherded into sanctuaries with palms; and even in this virtual space, there’s a sense of playfulness and hope and anticipation as Jesus enters Jerusalem, as we ourselves enter Holy Week. 

The original parade on this day, best we can tell, is what advocates call a public action. And our story begins by detailing preparation for the event, including securing Jesus’ ride and marking the parade route with cloaks and leafy branches. The chant was taken from an old favorite, the victory song we call Psalm 118: “Hosanna—Save us! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!” The parade was carefully planned, the allusions to Zechariah’s prophecy of a new king riding a donkey, humbly bringing peace in a time of war were deliberate and provocative. Its route led to the temple, the power center of Israel’s religious and political life. And all this energy culminates with Jesus entering the temple and then…“when he had looked around at everything” he left. (?? Wah Wah…) And, according to the lectionary, the story for today ends right there. 

But the so-called “Triumphal Entry” into Jerusalem wasn’t just that day. The point of the palm Sunday public action wasn’t just to have a parade and “look around” as if on a fact finding mission. Though evidently what Jesus perceived in church policies and behavior, in congress and state legislatures and courts and precincts, triggered a nasty mood. Because on the way back to Jerusalem for day two of the action, Jesus takes out his frustration on an unsuspecting fig tree that had the audacity to not have figs available in the off season. Jesus returns to the temple and this time it’s about more than taking a look. 

Jesus comes in hot to disrupt the system, overturn the status quo, dismantle tools of injustice, reveal how things are chatá, Hebrew for missing the mark. Jesus speaks words of scripture, runs people off who aid and abet an unjust system, and flips the money tables—all to challenge and reveal codified systems that benefit the few and marginalize and disenfranchise the many and the most vulnerable. (e.g. Mk 12:38-40) Jesus’ palm Sunday action was not a fact finding mission but a life-saving mission. And its procession route led him to reveal in no uncertain terms how religion was missing the mark, how politics was missing the mark, how economics was missing the mark. Because all of these things were failing to produce the fruits that sustain life for ALL in and out of season. And that is what they are supposed to do. No excuses. //

Our tendency in the American Church is generally to jump from Christmas to New Years Eve to Super Bowl to Palm Sunday to Easter (a few of those are not officially in the liturgical cycle, FYI). We jump from celebration to celebration, big day to big day. And it makes sense, of course. Life is hard—and we all need things to look forward to. 

But here’s the thing: the things we look forward to can become nothing more than distractions and props for the status quo if we fail to attend to what happens in-between. For example, if we’re not careful, Christmas can become about how to pile more money on the tables of the rich while making the poor feel guilty that they can’t do more for their children—and this for a story about a child who came into the world to turn those tables (and more!) upside down and to bring relief to the poor. If we take a short cut on the Holy Week parade route we might be lulled into believing that Jesus wants no more than adulation one day and brightly colored hard-boiled eggs and bottomless mimosas the next. That kind of Jesus doesn’t challenge us or anyone. Isn’t that handy?

Our tendency to jump from celebration to celebration misses the lamentation. It glosses over, denies, tries to avoid the suffering. The palm procession didn’t end with adulation. It didn’t end with a triumphant Jesus dismantling injustice with one prophetic sign-act and public witness. If we jump off the route at that point, allowing our palm procession to take a different course, we can move the party to another venue, feeling good about how we showed up to support the big event, but really just leaving Jesus to go it alone.

Of course, Jesus knew that’s what would happen. He knew he was alone—or would be—he knew this even as, early on the parade route, the crowds hailed him as their hope. Jesus alone knew where the palm procession would end, knew what was coming, knew that the path to liberation is not through short cuts or distractions, party favors or pills. Jesus knew as he rode in on his donkey that he would travel the lonely road of prophets before and since—to speak truth for the sake of justice; to put himself in harm’s way to advocate for those denied place or provision in the community; to break unjust human laws in order to reveal the higher law of God’s love and compassion; to unveil the hypocrisy and cruelty of the status quo. 

Where does your palm procession take you? 

Today Jesus enters the gates of Jerusalem and invites us to follow his lead. Jesus shows us how to step into the pain, to stay on the route that leads to newness. Jesus can show us because Jesus knows what it’s like to feel alone and unseen in a crowd; Jesus knows what it’s like to be targeted and misunderstood; Jesus knows what it’s like to look around at the way things are in the world and feel grief and rage; Jesus knows what it’s like to grieve the death of a loved one; Jesus knows what it’s like to be given an impossible task, the weight of it, crushing; Jesus knows what it’s like to be betrayed and hurt by those closest to him, to be ignored and denied by those who once looked to him for guidance and care. Jesus knows what it’s like to experience physical pain; Jesus knows what it’s like to cry out to God asking for things to be different, railing against feeling abandoned. Jesus knows and so is with you in your lament. You need not be lonely there.

Will you accept Jesus’ invitation to bypass the detours and stay on route with him? Jesus’s Palm Sunday parade doesn’t end with shallow celebration or the emotional satisfaction of one table flipping action. Jesus’ Palm Sunday parade leads through deep, soul and universe-shaking lament. It leads all the way to Calvary. Some things end there at the cross. Life doesn’t. But that’s a story for another day. Promise.https://foundryumc.org/

Lament as Prophecy - March 21st, 2021

Lament as Prophecy

A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli with Foundry UMC, March 21, 2021, Lent 5, “Learning to Sing the Blues” series.

                  Text: Psalm 10

Why, O Lord, do you stand far off, allowing the proliferation of hate, hate speech, hate crimes, champions of hate spouting hate and violence, spewing bigotry and hatred through airwaves that flow into living rooms, limousines and dive bars, the hateful rhetoric seeping into minds that move bodies to do more violence? 

Why, O Lord, do you stand far off, allowing the proliferation of legislation and legislators that do harm, that redline and manipulate, that pander to profit margins and power brokers, that ignore what makes for peace and instead rally around the worship of weapons, that make it possible to buy a gun and use it for murder that same day, but impossible to register and vote on the same day?

Why, O Lord, do you stand far off, allowing your beloved, vulnerable children to be objectified, terrorized, marginalized, demonized, stalked, targeted, assaulted, and killed? 

Why, O Lord, do you stand far off?
    Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?

In arrogance the wicked persecute the poor—…

Their mouths are filled with cursing and deceit and oppression;
    under their tongues are mischief and iniquity.
They sit in ambush in the villages;
    in hiding places they murder the innocent.

Their eyes stealthily watch for the helpless;
    they lurk in secret like a lion in its covert;
they lurk that they may seize the poor;
    they seize the poor and drag them off in their net. (Ps 10: 1-2a, 7-9)

Our human capacity for oppression and violence knows no boundaries; it exists in multiple forms and falls upon persons of every kind and color. Each country, culture, or community will have its own flavor or nuance of oppression based on all sorts of factors—from Myanmar to Israel to Zimbabwe to the U.S.—from kitchen table to board room table. But some common threads, clearly identified in our scriptures, appear wherever humans are found: those upon whom violence falls are consistently the vulnerable, those on the margins of mainstream, white-bread, fit-in-a-box society, the poor, the outsider, the person who looks, sounds, or acts outside of any culturally, socially constructed “norm.” Oh—and also women and children. Basic rule of thumb for oppression: if the person can be used, abused, or taken advantage of, they’re fair game.

 

Our own country and culture continues to be exposed for the tapestry of human cruelty, neglect, and injustice that mark both our history and our present moment. This past week we’ve been reminded, through deadly attack, of the anti-Asian bigotry that is part of that tapestry. The ongoing push in so many states across the country for legislation that suppresses voter access is part of that tapestry. The litany of strands that make up the blanket of injustices covering our land could stretch from the mountains, to the prairies, to the oceans, white with foam. 

Injustice is not all of who we are, but it is part of who we are. Denial of this doesn’t make anything better. It makes things worse. And so prophets through the ages cry out in lament, naming the pain and injustice in their context in order to wake people up. And we need prophets because from age to age those crying out from the margins or gasping for breath under the boot of the oppressor are ignored, devalued, or dismissed as the noises of ingrates, traitors, whiners, weaklings, slackers, or criminals.

We know how easy it is to ignore or make up excuses to dismiss injustice when we’re not directly taking the blows. And the whole system in which we live is designed to help us do just that. Walter Brueggemann’s scripture-based definition of empire describes our context in the U.S.: “rule by a few, economic exploitation, and religious legitimation.” This reality leads to a “numbed consciousness of denial.” Even if we don’t mean to, everything around us trains us to ignore the cries of the oppressed and focus only on our own, daily rounds. 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.” In other words, the imperial reality distracts, rationalizes, and drugs the populace so that the awareness of suffering and human pain won’t get in the way of business as usual and a healthy bottom line for those in the top 1%. //

We have explored lament as naming our own pain, suffering, and guilt. Today, Psalm 10 provides an example of a lament that names the pain of injustice against the poor and vulnerable. The complaint and charge is hurled against God, “Why do you stand far off when wickedness, deceit, oppression, and iniquity run roughshod over your children?” In verse 11, the Psalmist says of the wicked, “They think in their heart, “God has forgotten, / he has hidden his face, he will never see it.” Then, as in other lament prayers, there is a turn. In verse 14 we hear: 

But you do see! Indeed you note trouble and grief,
    that you may take it into your hands;
the helpless commit themselves to you;
    you have been the helper of the orphan.

The prophetic voice cries out in lament not only to name the pain and wake people up, but also to shake loose memory of God’s liberating, new-life giving presence and power. Again, Brueggemann writes, “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.”

Prophet Howard Thurman calls out the perversion of Christianity by the powerful and dominant who make it an “instrument of oppression.” Thurman clarifies “that Christianity as it was born in the mind of the Jewish teacher and thinker [Jesus] appears as a technique of survival for the oppressed…Wherever [Jesus’] spirit appears, the oppressed gather fresh courage; for he announced the good news that fear, hypocrisy, and hatred, the three hounds of hell that track the trail of the disinherited, need have no dominion over them.”

Prophetic lament is a way people of faith follow Jesus, enter into pain, and cry out against the injustice in our lives, communities, church, nation, and world. We lament not because we are seeking attention, or because we enjoy complaining, or because we seek anyone’s destruction—but rather because members of our human family are hurting and, instead of allowing ourselves and others to remain in a “numbed consciousness of denial,” we are determined to wake up and do something about it. Perhaps in our lament we’ll begin to hear God asking us, “Why do you stand so far off?” 

We lament not to stay in sorrow or bitterness, but to claim the good news of Jesus, to hold fast to hope, to remember the liberating power of God’s steadfast love, to participate in the new thing that God is always doing, to live our lives committed to a future where no more backs are against the wall. 

Let us pray:

Merciful God, we confess that we have not loved you with our whole heart. We have failed to be an obedient church. We have not done your will, we have broken your law, we have rebelled against your love, we have not loved our neighbors, and we have not heard the cry of the needy. Forgive us, we pray. Free us for joyful obedience, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

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Lament as Release - March 14th, 2021

Lament as Release

A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli with Foundry UMC, March 14, 2021, Lent 4, “Learning to Sing the Blues” series.

                  Text: Psalm 22

Many things look different today than they did this time last year. One of those things is our basement. In the midst of a major overhaul and repurposing of the space, I’ve learned more about BTUs and the need for outside air than I ever cared to know. Evidently, for someone to safely sleep down there, we need to install an air vent valve. If this isn’t cared for, toxic fumes can build up and do damage to human bodies!

This came to mind as I thought about the spiritual practice of lament as “release.” It’s common these days to hear someone say, “I just need to vent!” There are times when we need to get energy or feelings or frustrations out so they don’t do damage to our bodies and spirits! A good “vent” session is appropriately shared with someone trustworthy who understands you need to get something out of your system. And venting is not an edited essay, but rather flows unfiltered right from the place of pain. 

Psalm 22 and all Psalms of lament are like that; sharing with God what we need to get out of our system—when something is not right, when there is pain, grief, injustice, fear, persecution. And, as we’ve been learning, the practice of lament invites us to speak freely to God, literally to liberate ourselves from any pretending. 

When we speak freely with God, not controlling everything in an attempt to feel, sound, or appear “together,” then our words are no longer held hostage and can begin to name things that shift our trajectory. Perhaps you have experienced something like this; when you let go of your politeness with God and allow your words to flow unhindered, sometimes new insight or forgotten wisdom emerges and you catch at least a glimpse of hope or new life.

Some of you may remember a couple of weeks ago when we discovered in Jeremiah 20 one verse of “praise chorus” (verse 13) sandwiched between two absolutely brutal laments of complaint. I suggested that in giving voice to our pain without trying to clean it up, our speech might turn from complaint to praise. And biblical scholars say this is not at all unusual. The lament prayers in scripture consistently make such a turn. Most Psalms of lament include not only complaint and pleas for help but also words of trust and praise. 

Psalm 22 may be one of the best-known Psalms of lament, because it’s quoted by Jesus from the cross (Mt 27:46, Mk 15:34): “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The opening complaint in the Psalm is followed in verses 3-5 with words of trust. This pattern of complaint then trust repeats in verses 6-10. In verse 11 we receive a petition for help: “Do not be far from me.” Then back into complaint (verses 12-18) followed by another petition “But you, O Lord, do not be far away!...Deliver my soul…my life…Save me!” (19-21a)

Then there is a final turn in the prayer. Beginning in verse 21b, the psalmist breaks into a song of praise that carries the prayer to its ending. Notice that the praise is not because all things have been made well. Most of the language is future oriented—things that “will” happen. And a key word is “remember.” People will remember God’s mighty acts of salvation and “future generations will be told about the Lord, and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, saying that he has done it.” (Ps 22:30b-31)

Memory and hope are intertwined here. Some of you have heard me say before, “in the present we can hope for the future because we know what God has done in the past.” This memory of God’s activity liberates us in the present moment. It keeps us from being bound by despair, from becoming stuck in pain and resentment. 

But sometimes we may need to rattle our cage in order to shake loose memory that’s been crusted over with pain, humiliation, or rage. The Psalms of lament show us how. They illustrate that to get free requires the release of what we think we have to keep bottled up. Hiding or holding on to our pain can lead to deep resentment and bitterness in our hearts and spirits. And resentment and bitterness are poison for relationships, for joy, for any hope of newness. There are two options: some kind of release that is intentional and healthy or a blow-up that causes lasting damage.

A couple of weeks ago, I was sharing with my friend Randy some of the grief I’ve been feeling—the stacked-up griefs of the past number of years, this last year of pandemics, and the most recent grief over the death of my friend and colleague, Junius. Randy shared with me the story of a woman he came to know when she was his child’s pre-K Montessori teacher. As with most practitioners of the Montessori approach, she is a peaceful presence, careful with her words, patient, and beloved by the little ones she teaches.

One day Randy went to visit her at her home. She was going through a painful divorce and was caring for her two children. At one point he went into the backyard and saw a large stack of assorted, brightly colored plates. When he asked one of the kids about them, he was told, “Oh, those are my mom’s plates.” “What are they for?” “Look…” And there, where the fence formed the corner of the back yard, was a pile of shattered shards of brightly colored plates. Randy asked his friend later, “What’s up with the plates?” She said, “Whenever I need to let something go, I come out here, close the door, and throw plates.” She then demonstrated; she really hurled them…really let it rip. Randy said her countenance changed, the act allowed her to access her fire, her pain, her anger and to release it. When he probed further, he learned that she had learned to do this from her mother back in Puerto Rico where she had been raised. 

What beauty and power there is in this practice. This woman knows how to identify when her energy is getting toxic and needs some outside air, how to direct and release her difficult and painful emotions in a visceral way that isn’t aimed at others. “Sometimes,” Randy told me, “she will gather shards from the pile and create mosaic art for her yard, making something beautiful from the broken pieces.”

For most of my life I struggled with the thought of Jesus being “forsaken” on the cross. In the moment he cried out, quoting Psalm 22, he was indeed experiencing the fullness of human suffering—physical, relational, vocational; he gave voice to that deep pain through lament. But some years ago, I remembered that Jesus knew all the words to the Psalms…he knew that verse 1 isn’t the whole prayer. He knew the movement from despair to hope in Psalm 22. Jesus models for us the importance of crying out to God in our suffering, of naming what is real without trying to pretend the wounds of pain and injustice haven’t landed on our bodies and in our spirits. Jesus, on the brink of death, hurls his voice against the heavens like brightly colored plates hurled against a fence, releasing his words even as he releases his spirit, all the while clinging to the promise that God will yet make of his broken body something beautiful and new.

This is the promise from God for all our brokenness and pain. Lament is one way to shake loose that promise in our memory. And so we are invited to pray with Jesus:

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
    Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer;
    and by night, but find no rest.

Yet you are holy,
    …In you our ancestors trusted;
    they trusted, and you delivered them.
To you they cried, and were saved…

All the ends of the earth shall remember
    and turn to the Lord;…

  …and I shall live for him. 

(Ps 22:1-5, 29)

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