Foundry UMC DC: Sunday Sermons

Locked In

Locked In

A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger Gaines-Cirelli for Foundry UMC April 19, 2020, the second Sunday of Easter.

Text:  John 20:19-31

There’s long been a tendency to think of church as a place to go.  And perhaps to think that the work of the church is to go “there” and to get other people to go there… If our understanding of what the church is and is for has to do with a building, a place to gather, then it is easy to think that to be a Christian—a disciple of Jesus—is primarily about going to that place and getting other people to go to that place. This, of course, is overly simplified and few if any would actually say this way of thinking is what it means to be the church. But I think this imbalanced view of what the church is and what the church is for is fairly common—if not intentionally, then at least in practice. 

But on this first Sunday after Easter, not only is the tomb empty, but so are our church buildings. We’re not able to safely “go” to church in our buildings. Out of care for one another, we are staying home and practicing social distancing. But in this moment, the church is newly alive in so many profound ways. We’re being reminded of what the simple song many of us learned as children teaches, “The church is not a building, the church is not a steeple, the church is not a resting place, the church is a people.” The people who are the church—Foundry Church and countless others all around the world—are finding creative ways to connect, to care, to serve. And in conversation after conversation with colleagues, the trend is clear: new people are being reached and encouraged and supported and inspired by the love of God extended in and through the people and work of our congregations. Generous giving to support direct service and the sustained ministries of our churches is happening. Worship attendance is strong and some folks are describing a sense of feeling closer to our pastors as we “talk” with folks from our homes to yours. New ways of connecting—like our Virtual Coffee Hour—are providing folks an opportunity to meet people and form relationships they’d never have engaged in person. 

Even though we might never admit it, it’s easy to make our spiritual lives about a place. And we at Foundry have a pretty spectacular place so it’s especially tempting. Our place and what it helps facilitate are beautiful gifts, never to be underestimated or devalued. Most of us have been grieving not being able to be in our places of worship and gathered with our friends at church. That is understandable and a sign of the beautiful ways God has been at work in our lives in those places. 

And also, we are being offered a chance to experience what church is and can be when we move outside the walls, we’re given a chance right now to experience all sorts of newness. So often in our congregations, we get locked in to certain ways of doing things. It can be very easy to end up contained, in a holding pattern, even with locked doors, somewhat afraid of going outside our familiar, protective spaces. 

Today we see Jesus come into that place where the disciples have gathered in a locked room out of fear. Mary Magdalene has told them of the empty tomb and her encounter with Jesus, but the rest of the disciples haven’t seen him yet. I’ve often wondered if they weren’t only hiding out because they were afraid of meeting the same fate as Jesus, but also on the off-chance Mary was telling the truth…after all, what would Jesus do to those who’d fallen asleep, denied, and abandoned him when things got real?  In any case, Jesus appears not with words of judgment, but with peace, embodying the forgiveness he commissions the disciples to practice. And he says to them, in essence: “Get out of this locked room!”  “As the Father has sent me, so I send you…” And as he sends them out of the building, Jesus breathes Spirit into them—the same Spirit who brings life and order out of chaos at creation.

God sent Jesus into the world out of love to share the gift of life in God, the gift of hope, the gift of peace and forgiveness—these gifts of God that mend, that save, that bring new life. And Jesus sends his disciples—sends us—in the same way. As disciples of Jesus Christ, we are a people who are not only gathered into the family of God, but we are also, inherently, a people sent. God breathes into us Spirit, enlivening us to participate in God’s mending and life-giving work in the world. // We often talk about the church having a mission—but as we claim our call to be a “sent people” we will understand that it’s not so much that we, the church, have a mission, but that God’s mission has a church. 

To participate in God’s mission—God’s mending, life-giving work in the world—is at the heart of what it means to practice sacred resistance. As I’ve defined it, Sacred resistance is anything—any word, deed, or stance—that actively counters the forces of hatred, cruelty, selfishness, greed, dehumanization, desolation, and disintegration in God’s beloved world. Today, I want to focus a few moments on the work of mending creation. This Wednesday, April 22nd is the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. On that day in 1970, 20 million Americans — at the time, 10% of the total population of the United States —demonstrated for a healthy, sustainable environment in massive coast-to-coast rallies. 

Groups that had been fighting individually against oil spills, polluting factories and power plants, raw sewage, toxic dumps, pesticides, freeways, the loss of wilderness and the extinction of wildlife united on Earth Day around these shared common values. Earth Day 1970 achieved a rare political alignment, enlisting support from Republicans and Democrats, rich and poor, urban dwellers and farmers, business and labor leaders. By the end of 1970, the first Earth Day led to the creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the passage of the Clean Air Act. Two years later Congress passed the Clean Water Act. A year after that, Congress passed the Endangered Species Act.

Fifty years have passed and even with the efforts of many, the planet, its resources, habitats, and creatures continue to be deeply wounded by human action. The most tender creatures and plants are quietly disappearing. The less obvious effects of climate change are taking their toll. Just because you and I can’t see the shrinking ice caps and the warming of the oceans doesn’t mean these things aren’t happening. Just because our windshields aren’t as splattered with bugs as they once were doesn’t mean this is a good thing. We know the webs and cycles of interconnection on our planet. Things in the web are disrupted and everything is adversely affected. 

Sacred resistance calls us to do something in the face of the disintegration of our planet. Our Judeo-Christian faith specifically calls us to be caretakers of the world and to remember that we are, ourselves, part of the creation. We are creatures, the human animal, made in the image of God.  We are, ourselves, woven into the fabric of this beautiful, broken world. And we are “sent” as the church, sent by God to mend, to care, to nurture, to tend, to protect, to share. I’m always amazed at the tenacity of creation. Even with all we’ve done and continue to do, life is stubborn and continues to find a way to flourish, to flower, to bear fruit. 

As I reflected on this and pondered the Gospel reading for today, I noticed that, like the wounded earth that continues to offer itself to us with visions of renewal and life season after season, Jesus offers his risen, wounded body to Thomas, an invitation to a renewed relationship of mutuality.  The power of life, the power of God, is stubborn, refusing to be destroyed even when we do our worst.  But there, in Jesus’ wounds, we see that there are lasting consequences to our thoughtless, selfish, destructive actions.  We are invited to enter into those wounds, to reach out and touch the brokenness of our created world, brokenness for which we, in part, are responsible.  What does that mean?  It means choosing to do something about it—because it’s simply a cop-out to say that the problem is too big to do anything about.  We can make choices that make a difference. Right now we are seeing what happens when human activity shifts away from practices that do harm. Even after a relatively short time, earth begins to renew itself.  

On Friday Pastor Ben interviewed Rev. Jenny Phillips whose ministry at the General Board of Global Ministries is focused on environmental justice and climate care. Pastor Ben asked Jenny to help us think about what we are seeing and learning about climate care in this moment and what we can do right now in this time of quarantine. She invited us to ponder the ways that shifting to more local economies affects the planet, to notice how shifts in modes of transportation make a difference, and to pay attention to energy and product use in our homes and all our buildings. She emphasized the critical importance of government policies and the need to encourage and hold our legislators accountable for common sense legislation that supports industry and jobs in ways that are sustainable for the planet. And in this moment, even as most of us are at home most of the time, there are things we can do! We can buy less stuff, use what we already have, repurpose what we have, make do with less, and make things at home. It’s a great time to establish new practices for creation care at home… What a gift to realize that in this time when we may feel so helpless to heal the suffering of many, we can do things to bring healing to the earth!

Today we’re reminded that the church is the people of God gathered in God’s love and sent to participate in God’s mending work in the world. To say we are a sent people is to recognize it’s not just about “going to church” only to save or nurture ourselves, but rather that we are to “breathe in” the gifts and grace and love and mercy of God as we are gathered so that we can be breathed out, sent into the world to live our whole life in a way that participates in God’s mission of saving love and mercy in the world.  Rather than just going to church, it’s about being the church all the time and in all the places that we find ourselves.  That means participating in God’s mending work and care for this beautiful, broken world.  

In these days of quarantine, we may feel a bit locked in. But I want to encourage all of us to realize that we are the church no matter where or how we’re gathered. God’s Spirit breathes into us and inspires our response. And though we can’t be “sent” into as many places as we might normally go, through these 50 days of Easter we can care for creation and maybe even participate in the evolution of a new creation—of ourselves, the church, the world… Wouldn’t it be just like God to show up and do a new thing just when we feel most locked in?

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Raising Expectations

Raising Expectations

A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger Gaines-Cirelli for Foundry UMC April 12, 2020, Easter Sunday.

Text: John 20:1-18

I don’t know what I expected. It was my first trip to the Holy Land and I’d seen pictures and heard others share some of what had been most powerful for them, but I didn’t really know what things would be like. Over the years, I’ve seen all sorts of artistic renditions of the holy places, the Jordan River, Jacob’s Well, the Mount of Olives, the garden of Gethsemane, the Sea of Galilee, Calvary, and Jesus’ tomb—so I had all sorts of ideas floating around in my interior image files. 

But somehow it never occurred to me that most of these places are no longer really as they once were. Even though I surely knew better, I think some part of me still imagined that pilgrimage to the place where the first Easter happened would mean walking into an ancient Jewish cemetery to a traditional cave tomb in a garden space outside the walls of Jerusalem. But what you will find instead is that the stone slab where, according to archaeologists and historians, it is highly likely Jesus’ body was laid is now incased in several layers of marble, which is in the highly decorated original cave tomb over which is built an intricate shrine called an “Edicule,” which is encased in the ginormous Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which is found within the walls of the expanded city of Jerusalem. Something that was so basic and simple and small is now something ornate and big and complicated. 

I understand some of why this is so. Precious moments and places are important to return to, to remember, to celebrate, to adorn. We humans raise our Ebenezers, our monuments, and remembrance stones at all sorts of places that mark thin places in our experience, turning points, and spaces where we crossed over into new life. What we should know by now is how easy it is to make idols of our monuments, how easy it is to get to wrapped up with guarding the thing or the place or the memory as we picture it to the point that we believe we are in control of all of it, that we know how things should be and be done. Something that began as beautiful and life-giving can so easily sprout division and judgment and exclusion and hatred. 

The place where Jesus laid in the tomb for three days, the place where Jesus and Mary had their Easter encounter, is now guarded by a certain brotherhood of Greek Orthodox priests and the church that surrounds it tenuously “controlled” by three major Christian denominations whose shared history has its high points but has been marked by conflict and division.

And what else would we expect to find? That is our history. That is our world. That is the way things are. 

But can we not—should we not—expect something different? What would we want to find at the place where Easter happens? “Whom are you looking for?” Perhaps we yearn to find someone or something that will mend the torn fabric of human mutuality and cooperation in our world, release our hearts and communities from the bonds of fear and greed and prejudice, restore our capacity for trust and deep commitment to a common good instead of a good that always favors the privileged and wealthy. Perhaps we yearn to receive the capacity to believe that things in the world can really change, that the much-lauded arc of the moral universe will at some point really bend toward justice. Perhaps we yearn to discover at the place of Easter one who offers what we need to fill the empty places within our own souls and what we need to be able to dwell in the empty rooms we inhabit these days without sliding into unhealthy ways, that will give us courage to cling to hope right now when the challenges and bad news and suffering exponentially grow; someone who can assure and console, guide and renew, who will shine a light into this present moment of darkness. Perhaps we yearn for these things… but can we expect them? Do we really expect them?

Mary Magdalene certainly didn’t. “While it was still dark,” the scriptures say, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb grieving, having lost the one person who, according to tradition, had given her life back to her in more ways than one. She had journeyed with Jesus who embodied and offered a truly different way of life marked by love and liberation, compassion and justice. And then she had witnessed the powers of fear and jealousy and control and greed destroy him. If Jesus, so full of love and life and power and hope, Jesus, so wise and brave and strong, Jesus whose intimacy with God granted him extraordinary life-giving power couldn’t overcome the death-dealing ways of the world, then all hope is gone. Mary Magdalene comes to the garden with this expectation: The bullies will always win. Injustice will remain our daily bread. Death and fear of death will continue to paralyze and terrorize and devour. Mary comes expecting death, expecting to find the tomb firmly sealed, as it was when she’d left, because that’s the way things work. 

So when all seems hopeless, with no expectation for anything but death, Mary, alone, simply shows up in the garden with her love and faithfulness and care for Jesus. But things do not meet her expectations on this morning. On this morning, Jesus, alive, shows up with his love and faithfulness and care for her, calling her by name and commissioning her to go and share what has happened. It is just the two of them in this moment…a pretty quiet, simple, intimate encounter…a pretty unexpected Easter.

But simple, intimate, unexpected Easters can change everything. 

Mary Magdalene had watched the Lord of Life humbly buckle, break and fall under the weight of the world’s brutality, humiliation, and injustice. And now sees the Lord Jesus rise, alive…scarred, but standing. What had been dashed hopes and shattered expectations for her life and for the life of the world are raised right along with Jesus. She now knows that even in the midst of the worst the world can do, God has the power to bring unexpected, unimaginable newness and life. Mary comes to the garden expecting to find the dull familiarity of death and is met by a whole new life, a whole new world, a world where Christ is alive.

Even now, even when we forget, can’t believe it, don’t expect it, we live in this world where the living Christ wanders through the grocery aisles and loading docks in the middle of the night checking on the stockers and delivery drivers breathing encouragement, where Jesus moves among the frantic field hospitals and overrun ICUs to touch nurses and doctors and anesthesiologists and all medics with grace, among all those on the front lines of public safety and public care infusing them with courage, into the alleys and entryways where unhoused folk sleep to cover them with presence and to shield their social workers with protection, to all the places where vulnerability and fear and exhaustion and the weight of responsibility cry out for God…at every bedside of those close to death, where a family member is not able in this time to dwell, the living Christ shows up, scarred and standing, to proclaim that we are never alone and not even death gets to have the last word.

Of course we know that powers and principalities continue to rage and roar. We know that empires and those seduced by the power of worldly idols regroup and reassert themselves with a vengeance at any sign of a loosening of their stranglehold of comfort and control. They use all the considerable resources at their disposal to lower our expectations, to convince us that we are powerless, that the best we can do is muddle through and put up with things as they are, to believe that infighting and manipulation and unnecessary violence and injustice are inevitable, and that Easter is a great excuse for a party but doesn’t matter in the big picture, that there is no evidence for hope, that expecting the worst is the wisest option. //  

I’m choosing to side with Mary Magdalene on this one—gonna believe her— because all that other garbage is literally no way to live. Lord knows I struggle to really believe that things in this world will be different, I struggle to expect that we will allow this present moment of suffering and all the things it is revealing to motivate real change in our ways of living together. But, y’all, Jesus has gone through hell to show us the life that is possible—the life that is possible for us and the life that is possible for the world. And today Jesus meets us in all the simple spaces we are with love, faithfulness, and care, calls us by name, and promises that we, like him, can endure the pains of this world and emerge… scarred, but standing. Jesus meets us in all the places we are to raise our expectations for a world that is more gentle and just. And then commissions us to do our part to make it so. 

By the power of God loving us to life in this present moment, we may, from the relative smallness of our spaces, be given a big new vision for how things can and should be. By the power of God loving us to life right now, the better angels of our nature can rise up and reassert our common humanity, the dignity, reciprocity, justice, mercy, and compassion our shared vulnerability requires to survive; can not only show us who and what are essential, but how to reorder values accordingly; can give us the courage to work with instead of against one another; can concretely show us the healing that happens when we walk more gently upon the planet. By the power of God loving us to life, we may learn just how strong we are—and how much stronger we are when we are together. 

These Easter promises have been the same forever. Though it seems that for a very long time thousands upon thousands make their familiar, annual pilgrimages to the holy places to gather for the grand rites of Easter… and then go to their brunches and dinners with no expectation that anything is, can, or should be different in the world or in their lives. It’s almost like what began as a small, intimate, life-changing, purpose-giving, world-shaking, encounter with the living Christ has gotten overshadowed by the monuments we have built around it. 

If that is at all the case, then this is the moment of all moments to shake ourselves loose of anything unessential, to clear away anything that keeps our feet from standing directly on the solid rock of the living Christ, the one through whom and in whom and by whom we are given strength to stand and serve, scarred, but shining, sent into the world to raise expectations and, by the power of God, to meet them.

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Who Is This?

Who Is This?

A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger Gaines-Cirelli for Foundry UMC April 5, 2020, Palm Sunday. “How Can You Believe This?” series.

Text: Matthew 21:1-11

Just as Jesus passed through a gate into the walled city of ancient Jerusalem, we pass through this day to enter the experience we call Holy Week. Jesus entered a place full of danger and tension. And this day holds the tensions of the week ahead in stark relief. We celebrate along with the many people who on that day long ago, hailed Jesus as the one bringing liberation, justice, and healing. We wave our branches (of all kinds!) as we join the throng through the ages who’ve been drawn to Jesus of Nazareth out of deep hope for things to be different in their lives and communities. And it is tempting to stop there, to shout hosanna and give thanks for the one who comes in the name of the Lord. But we know the story doesn’t stop there. Even in these opening moments, the story pivots quickly from “Hosanna!” to “turmoil.”

“When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil.” (Mt 21:10) …the whole city was in turmoil…That line hits a nerve. Because there’s turmoil in the whole city, the whole nation, the whole world… There’s turmoil as a microscopic virus upends life as we have known it, as this global pandemic shines a light on all the fault lines and fissures of human relationships, values, and systems at every level. There’s turmoil not just on a day more than 2000 years ago in the city of Jerusalem. Not just in that place and time where religion and government were in bed together to protect the status quo, to support the power brokers, and the privileged, not just then, when masters of war and industry played their games in palaces and shadowed halls and alleys, not just there, where tribes, cultures, religions, and races mingled and clashed, but also in this place and time where the story is the same, where the context is the same—and not just in this moment of our history, but from the very beginning. There is turmoil…

Was the whole city of Jerusalem in turmoil because Jesus entered on a donkey with “Hosannas” rising? In the old city of Jerusalem, someone entering one of its many gates—even with some flourish—would easily go unnoticed except by those who happened to be there at the time. Though from the walls and rooftops, I imagine things were monitored and word could spread pretty quickly. Jesus came to Jerusalem when pilgrims were gathering for the Feast of the Passover, a time when, according to scholars, “it was the standard practice of the Roman governors of Judea to be in Jerusalem... They did so not out of empathetic reverence for the religious devotion of their Jewish subjects, but to be in the city in case there was trouble. There often was, especially at Passover, a festival that celebrated the Jewish people’s liberation from an earlier empire.” Tension and turmoil would already be stirred at this time, you see. And then here comes Jesus, riding a donkey—not a small detail. It signals fulfillment of well-known prophecy, and the crowds who’d heard he was one to watch hail him as the promised one, the Son of David, a hearkening back to Israel’s beloved King. In that “game of thrones” world (as in this one), agents of the empire would have been watching closely for anything or anyone they might deem a problem to their continued ascendency. Jesus and his ride fit the profile.

In the midst of the turmoil the question arises: “Who is this?” And that is the real question both then and now. 

Between the moment he rides in and the moment of his arrest, Jesus makes clear what he’s about. Jesus turns over tables to challenge the system that takes the money of the poor to prop up a community who values money and power more than prayer or people (21:12-13). He takes the Temple leaders to task for their hypocrisy (23:13-36). Jesus calls out those in power for tying “up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay[ing] them on the shoulders of others” but not being willing to “lift a finger” themselves to help (Mt 23:4). Jesus zeroes in on the way those with money and power throw their weight around to get special treatment at all the trendy spots and ignore matters of justice and mercy and faith. (Mt 23:6-7, 23)  These represent “the way things are,” the status quo. And Jesus is having none of this system in which every transaction is to the benefit of those with wealth and power and to the detriment of the poor and suffering.  That is what Jesus comes to confront—the injustice of the whole system. 

And in the midst of his critique, Jesus continues to practice and preach what inspired the crowds to cry “hosanna” in the first place: Jesus brings healing (21:14), proclaims that the greatest commandment is to love God and love neighbor as self (22:39), teaches and models that the greatest are not the ones who lord over others and throw their weight around but the ones who serve (23:11), and paints a picture of God’s vision for human community: whoever is hungry is fed, whoever thirsty is given a drink, the stranger is welcomed, the naked clothed, the sick and imprisoned visited and cared for (25:31-46).  //

“Who is this Jesus?” The answer is clear through Jesus’ actions and words: Jesus is a prophetic critic of systems and agents of injustice. Jesus is a prophetic companion with impoverished, oppressed, sick, suffering ones. Jesus is a prophetic visionary of a world in which relationships are set right, the idolatries of empire are toppled, and value is placed on things that matter most of all. Jesus is a prophet. And that got Jesus hung on a tree.

What seems true through the ages is that we love our prophets once we’ve killed them. When they’re dead we no longer have to deal with the ways they put before us things we don’t want to perceive or try to change—because those things are too painful, complicated, or beneficial toward our own interests. When the prophets are dead we are free to tidy them up, to manipulate their image, actions, and words so that they can be made to support our positions, so that they no longer really ask anything of us or challenge our pettiness, greed, selfishness, sloth, and all the other things that, in ways large and small, lure us away from the Kin-dom and into the numbed consciousness and habits of empire.

This manipulation of dead prophets allows us to make Jesus only interested in saving souls but not bodies or in saving only bodies and not souls. This allows us to twist the words of Jesus into a crown of thorns we make others wear as we sit in judgment of them. Jesus, the dead prophet, becomes the mouthpiece for pithy quotes that get made into feel-good memes instead of the disruptive and transforming words of the living God. A memory or story of Jesus, the dead prophet, may still occasionally prick our conscience with an awareness of our hypocrisy, but it is no longer that difficult to simply move on with business as usual. Jesus, the dead prophet, can be manipulated so that we don’t have to be moved by his words and actions any more than those who got swept up in the movement to crucify him.

But the good news is that Jesus is more than a prophet. The words proclaimed as he rode into Jerusalem were appropriate not just as acclamation of praise. The “Hosannas” were not just “You go, Jesus!” not just, “Yay, JC!” These are cries of joy because hope is riding into town. One who has proved his worth and power, who has spent years in humble solidarity with people from all walks of life to bring love and justice and healing and renewal and restoration and LIFE—this one is coming—is putting himself at great risk—to take on the things, the powers, the people of this world that do such harm. “Hosanna! (as Pastor K.C. taught us means) Save, please! Deliver us! Save us, we pray!” These cries and prayers for salvation are directed toward the one who has power to save. 

More than once over the years when I’ve taught Confirmation class I’ve done a simple exercise in which I ask the students the question, “Do we need a savior?” We take some time to think about that. And then I lay out magazines and newspapers and ask them to cut out words, images, and phrases that might explain why we need a savior. The collages are always heartbreaking.

Lord knows we need a savior. Think of the collage we could make on this day of all the things so deeply broken in our world, some of which might be mended by human generosity and cooperation, though those are so often in short supply. It is true that the Kin-dom vision is always one in which humans participate in the mending work of God in the world. We have our part to play. But we simply cannot do it alone. We need one another and we need God.

We need a savior to save us from our small-mindedness, our obsession with violence, our tribalism and factionalism that shreds the beautiful fabric of truly human bonds, bonds of friendship, tenderness, compassion, patience, compromise, creativity, and love. We need a savior to restore our vision to perceive what is truly of value, to restore our hearing so that we listen with compassion for understanding, to restore our minds so that we are able to hold ideas in tension as we work together toward solutions, to restore our bodies from centuries of inhumane work demands and stress, to restore our spirits so that we might know lightness and play, to restore our hearts so that we finally see every human as family, to restore our capacity for wonder so that we might not miss the beauty of the world even now. 

We don’t need a dead prophet re-fashioned in our own image. We need a living savior who is able to restore in us God’s image. And we have one—one who doesn’t peddle in manipulation or shame, in violence or fear, but who simply shows us what we need to see and gives us grace to do something about it. And when we falter and fail as we inevitably do (because this stuff is hard), our savior is compassionate and merciful and helps us try again. In the turmoil of our lives, our city, our nation, our world, Jesus the living Christ enters in to move in ways both simple and profound that we might do our part to prepare the way for the fullness of the Lord’s Kin-dom to be manifest on earth as it is in heaven.

Perhaps we can join our voices again and yet again: “Hosanna! Save, please!” And then forever add, “Thanks be to God.”

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Where Is God In Suffering and Death?

Where Is God In Suffering and Death?

A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry UMC March 29, 2020, fifth Sunday of Lent. “How Can You Believe This?” series.

Text: John 11:1-45

Today’s Gospel is about a funeral, something we all know something about.  A beloved brother and friend has died and the family and community has gathered for the rituals of grief…in the midst of the casseroles and crying and storytelling and remembering, there hangs the question that so often lurks at funerals—where was God?  Where is God? Both Martha and Mary give voice to this deeply human response to death:  “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”  Those gathered also mutter under their breaths, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” Alongside these words, so often left unspoken, there are also words of hope and faith. At funerals we hear words of God’s loving presence, of hope in the life to come. And in our story Martha says:  “I know that Lazarus will rise again…” But Mary, unlike Martha, can’t muster any words.  She just cries.

Suffering and death are THE human mystery, the place before which all our best efforts and all our striving reach their ultimate limit. It’s one of the most persistent questions begging for an answer: How can you believe your God is “loving” when that God allows suffering and death? Lord knows, I can’t tidy that up in a handful of words today, of all days…

Right now, as ever, there are people grieving. There are those facing the end of their earthly life, there are people waiting and watching as loved ones travel the final stretch of their journey. We also know that in this present moment there are people experiencing PTSD. There are people fighting temptations to fall back into the bonds of addictions and other destructive ways of thinking and living. There are people who are sinking into depression, dissociation, and anxiety. There are folks walking on eggshells, just waiting for the stress and tension of lost wages and hunger or simply broken relationships to make their partner or parent snap into rage and violence. And all of this—and more—as a result of forced isolation and the layers of disruption and loss that mark these days. Where is God in all this?

Our story today isn’t straightforward in addressing the question. At the beginning, we learn that Jesus knew his friend Lazarus was gravely ill but purposely stayed where he was for two more days, so that by the time he arrived in Bethany, Lazarus had been dead four days.  Tradition of the time taught that the soul lingered near the body for three days, after which there was no hope of life returning. Jesus waited to arrive until the fourth day, until things were truly hopeless, when the full impact of God’s power might be displayed. This feels not only frustrating, but cruel—like a confirmation that God is playing with us, messing with us, for God’s own self-glorification. 

Last week, I reminded us that in John’s version of the Jesus story, there is a clear symbolic, theological frame for the whole book. Part of that frame is this: “What has come to being in [Jesus] is life, and the life is the light of all people.” (Jn 1:4) The writer of John is determined to help us understand that God desires that we experience life in all its fullness. John 3:16 says that God loved the world so much that Jesus came that we might have eternal life. And in John 10:10 Jesus is recorded as saying, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” A couple of weeks ago, we were led to living water at Jacob’s well. Last week we were led to liberating light that shines in the darkness. And today, our spiritual path leads us to a tomb where Jesus arrives late on purpose in order reveal the life-giving power of God’s compassion, mercy, and love. This extraordinary promise—not divine callousness or ego—is what the writer of John is trying to convey.

In the story, the disciples remind us that Jesus’ return to Bethany puts both his life and theirs in danger. In our current context, I feel this on a whole new level. I’m mindful of so many who are putting their own lives in danger to be present in places where illness, suffering, and death are lurking everywhere. And yet they, with courage and purpose, keep stepping into those places to bring care, comfort, and healing. And Jesus does the same—even when those around him want him to stay at a distance. Jesus draws near and, upon seeing the deep grief of his beloved friend Mary and of those who mourn with her, Jesus reveals one of the most important things we will ever know about the heart of God.  Jesus wept. As Jesus cries, we learn that the God whom Jesus reveals shares our pain, weeps with us, and is deeply grieved by anything that threatens human wholeness and flourishing.

But Jesus’ coming into this situation isn’t only to reveal the compassion of God for our human grief and suffering—though that’s certainly a word we need to hear.  If that were the only message from Jesus, it would mean that God ostensibly could remain far off, sad for us, but incapable of doing anything to affect human life. Jesus’ purpose was to reveal even more than the great compassion of God.

Jesus comes into a place of death, a hopeless moment, the point of despair and deep grief and he speaks words of faith in the power of God’s love to call forth life that is full and free even in the midst of death.  

If we pay attention to the story, we’ll see the many obstacles Jesus had to navigate to get there. There were those who—out of fear—tried to keep Jesus from showing up at all. There were all the emotions and reactions to the death of Lazarus that needed to be cared for before Jesus could get to the tomb. There was cynicism from some on the sidelines. There was the deterrent of physical discomfort that would ensue—things were going to smell. And then there was a stone in the way. And when he had gently worked his way through the obstacle course, Jesus speaks and Lazarus, alive, steps into the light to have the final obstacle to life removed: “Unbind him, and let him go.” 

The Gospel writer is determined—as is Jesus in the story—to show that God will overcome every obstacle to bring liberating love and new life to us. And there are so many obstacles in our lives: fear, emotions, reactivity, cynicism, defense against discomfort, heavy things of all kinds that others have used to keep us trapped in places where we are not able to be fully alive, and the old clothes and uniforms that bind us to old identities and ways of being. There is the reality of suffering and death itself and all our reactions and defenses in the face of it all.

My own struggle with all this has been ongoing. A kind of breakthrough happened years ago on retreat when God and I wrestled over the reality of suffering—my father’s long debilitating illness, loved ones’ deep pain, and the reality of suffering everywhere. On a morning walk, I saw a baby rabbit, alone, out in the open, and nibbling on tender grasses still slightly dewy from the night. It didn’t run away at the sight of me. // Baby animals are one of my most favorite things. But it wasn’t delight I felt at the sight, but panic. I regularly saw hawks circling and swooping in those fields. I was so aware of the bunny’s vulnerability. And I started to cry. Why did God make a world like this, a world where this precious baby rabbit could so easily become food? 

That year, in the monastery bookstore, the volume that fell into my hands is the classic text written by Rabbi Harold Kushner, When Bad Things Happen to Good People. There’s a reason the book is a classic. The thing I have remembered most clearly is this: “Is there an answer to the question of why bad things happen to good people?...The response would be…to forgive the world for not being perfect, to forgive God for not making a better world…” Imagine that. Imagine forgiving God for allowing suffering, for making a vulnerable creation, for trusting human creatures so much when we’re so likely to screw things up. For me, this was a revelation and a gift. It helps me remember that I get to have my feelings and my griefs about the way things are, that I am in a relationship with God and that God can take responsibility for God’s own stuff, and that, if I’m willing to forgive God, I might receive liberation from my anger and my despair—both of which keep me stuck in the question “why” instead of being free to move forward and experience the fullness of life. Kushner says that having forgiven God, we can “reach out to the people around us, and to go on living despite it all…no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it has happened.” 

What I discovered is that acknowledging how sad and angry I felt—about my dad, the bunny, the world—all eventually brought me around to realize that it’s only because there is so much beauty and possibility in life that its vulnerability is so upsetting. That is to say, it may be a broken world, but it’s a beautiful world and this beautiful world and the life we have is all pure grace. And though we may never fully come to terms with the mystery of suffering and death, we can come to terms with how we will respond to it. We can have all the feelings, we can be angry at God, and we can forgive God. We can acknowledge the obstacles that get in the way of stepping out of stuckness and into a life that is more free. If we don’t, we can live our whole lives bound and in the dark, allowing blame, resentment, and the specter of death to keep us fearful and defensive. In the midst of this moment of suffering and death, how will you respond? 

Whatever feelings and thoughts you’re having today, the Gospel teaches us that God can take it… and that, even though Jesus wasn’t there when and how others wanted, even though Lazarus died, God was there and ready to bring about a miracle of life restored. God was there. God is here. Jesus shows us that God will let nothing stand in the way of drawing near, to love us into life, to liberate us into love for others, to hold us gently even when all we can do is cry. 

Responding the Word: 

Earlier in our worship service you were invited to find an object which represented an obstacle in your life which kept you from stepping into the fullness of God’s love through Jesus Christ, much like the stone placed in front of Lazarus’ tomb kept him bound in death. Today, we’ve heard again of the power and promise of Christ’s love, which meets us in the midst of grief, fear, anxiety and heartbreak, offers us compassion and care, and through grace liberates us from their power over us so that we may step into new life. 

I invite you now to take the object that you’ve found. Hold it in your hand for a moment. Think about the power that obstacle, whatever it is has over you. How does it define your relationships with other people? How does it constrain the way you share God’s love and grace with the world?

Now, I invite you to place that object within the worshipful space you’ve created in your homes. And, as you do, release it to God who is even now at work so that you might step past it and into new life. 

Let us pray…

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When Healing Causes Vertigo

When Healing Causes Vertigo

A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry UMC March 22, 2020, fourth Sunday of Lent. “How Can You Believe This?” series.

Text: John 9:1-41

Did God make this happen?  Is God doing this to us to teach us a lesson? Or to punish us? These kinds of questions often emerge in moments of disaster, tragedy or plague. Sometimes the plague is proclaimed as God’s judgment against a particular group by someone with nothing but their hateful prejudice backing them up. Other times, the questions are whispered in the corners of human hearts, uncertain and perhaps embarrassed to even acknowledge that the question has arisen: Is God punishing me? I’ve heard variations on these themes floating around over the past couple of weeks. It’s not a new idea. This theology shows up in various strains within the books of the Old Testament. And variations of the theme occur across cultures and religions through the ages. That theme includes ideas like these: If something bad happens it is punishment for some sin. Sinners get punished by a vengeful God. Sin is connected to anyone who is outside of whatever norm has been socially constructed. It is punishment to be created differently from “the norm.” God made things this way and God works this way… This kind of thinking is one of those places many people get stuck, one of the places folk may wonder how in the world we could believe this, wondering why in the world we would say God is a God of love if God punishes people by sending some disaster or if God values some bodies over other bodies or if God makes bad things happen to good people in order to make a point. I wish I could say that all biblical examples that might support such ideas are attributed to God only before Jesus comes on the scene. 

But we have this text from John today that not only uses a person born with a body outside the norm as an object lesson to be “fixed” without ever being given any agency in the matter (beyond washing mud and spit off his face), but also a text that seems to reinforce what I believe is bad theology. The disciples ask the question that would be typical in their time, place, and culture: was it the man or his parents who sinned and made the man blind? Jesus comes through like a champ saying that it’s neither! Sounds promising… But then we hear: “he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.” Ugh. Really? 

Here’s where a shallow reading of the text can get us into serious trouble. The Gospel of John was the last of the four Gospel accounts to be written, composed for a very particular late 1st  century Christian community in the midst of painful separation and persecution from leaders of the Jewish community they’d been part of before. The Gospel is rooted in that historical context, but is widely understood to be more theological than historical literature. That is to say, the images and stories in John are deeply symbolic, always holding subtle layers of meaning. In the opening lines of the book we are given the overarching symbolic frame for John’s version of the Jesus story: Jesus is the word of God and the light of the world. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness will not overcome it. Jesus came to the world—to his “own”—and they didn’t recognize him. (Jn 1:1-5, 10-11) In addition to this context in the book of John, it’s helpful for interpretation of today’s story to understand that, in the cultural idiom of biblical texts, the “eye” is the “lamp of the body” (Mt 6:22) and the “eyes of the heart or mind” can be enlightened or opened (Eph 1:18).

We can still have feelings and critique the story as it comes to us—and it’s important to do so in order to counter years of harmful biblical interpretation. But understood within its literary, theological, and cultural context, it is clear that the writer wants to convey not that God punishes, devalues, dehumanizes, manipulates, or uses people. The writer is saying something about the power of God to bring light out of darkness, to open minds and hearts, to help people perceive in a new way—and Jesus, the light of the world—is the one who facilitates and embodies this power. The conflict throughout the story is found in the struggle to perceive what God is doing, to perceive in a new way, to allow God’s light to illuminate our understanding and perspective in ways that help us move forward, free of things that have gotten in the way of deeper faith, hope, and love.

Some of you may have seen the 2004 film, Finding Neverland.  The movie is about author James Barrie and the widow and her four young sons who inspired the story of “Peter Pan.”  Early in the film, Mr. Barrie, playfully and imaginatively describes to the boys how he is going to perform a daring and frightening thing:  he, the circus ringmaster, will dance with a magnificent bear who has large, scary teeth.  The stand-in for the bear is Barrie’s dog. Well, one of the sons—Peter—is having none of it, saying,  “That’s silly.  That’s just a dog.”  To this, Mr. Barrie comes close to the young, skeptical boy and says:  “With eyes like that, you’ll never see.”  

In our scriptures today, we hear basically the same thing.  With eyes like that, you’ll never see… When the man who had formerly been blind is brought to the leaders of the religious establishment, the response is stunning:  there is no rejoicing or awe at this wonder that’s taken place. Instead, the leadership puts their focus on a church rule that’s gotten broken: the healing had been done on the Sabbath. Another response is to discount the man’s own experience and to accuse him of lying—he must not have once been blind. Finally, it becomes clear that the focus of the proceedings is to figure out who is a sinner—and the ultimate verdict is that both the man who now sees AND Jesus are sinners. The result? The man whose life has been changed, whose darkness has been turned to light, who stands as a testimony to the power of God to bring light into darkness is driven out of the community. It seems ludicrous really, when we stop and look at what happens in this story. And it’s tempting to think that we would never react as the Pharisees do. But if we’re honest, perhaps we will admit how difficult it is to even acknowledge—much less address—things that dwell in the shadows of our soul that might easily lead us to line up with the likes of the Pharisees. We all have proverbial “blind spots”—places of ignorance, prejudice, confusion, judgmental attitudes, rigidity, fear—that keep us from fully perceiving, much less appreciating, the new things that God may be doing right in front of us. 

This story in John offers the promising news that when we encounter Jesus, the Light of the World can cut through our darkness—whatever that darkness might be—and give us “eyes to see”…not just what we want to see, but to see things as they are, to see the truth. As with the Pharisees, we may not want this—at least not at first. We know, don’t we, that the truth will set you free but first it will likely make you miserable. Perceiving the way things are can make us depressed and overwhelmed. Waking up to realities that had once been buried in denial can be disorienting. As priest and theologian Rowan Williams says, when Jesus’ light cuts through our darkness it “is not a comfortable clearing up of problems and smoothing out of our difficulties and upsets. On the contrary, it brings on a kind of vertigo; it may make me a stranger to myself, to everything I have ever taken for granted…In short, when God’s light breaks on my darkness, the first thing I know is that I don’t know, and never did.”  

The Pharisees struggled to let go of what they knew, of what they took for granted—the church rules, the cultural norms, their cozy power and prejudice, “the way things have always been.”  And, in that struggle, remained in darkness, unable to see the beautiful truth of what had happened right in front of them—and what was offered to them if only they would receive it. This happens in our own lives—our own preconceived notions and expectations and desires can keep us from seeing what is being offered, what is happening, what is possible. Because someone doesn’t do things the way we think they should be done, we grumble about the means and may miss the beautiful ends!  Because we don’t like the person involved, we may miss seeing the good they are accomplishing. Because our comfort is disrupted and our irritation flares, we may miss seeing the opportunity to learn something new. Because we are so habituated to seeing things one way, we may miss amazing new visions that God presents to us in any given moment.

Last week, our spiritual path led us in the wilderness to a well. And today, in the midst of this moment when “vertigo” may be an apt description of our experience, when we are all ever more aware that everything about our day to day lives is upended, when we feel off balance and like the world is spinning off its axis, when we don’t know the timetable or how the pandemic will play out, when we begin to have an inkling that things will never ever be the same, when we are living on the razor edge in so many ways, when the days outside are generally lighter, but so much of the world seems veiled in darkness…on this day our spiritual path leads us to an encounter with Light that shines in the darkness. 

The paradox is that the light of Christ will shatter all the prideful and fearful darkness in order to bring us to a deeper darkness, a place of vertigo, being off balance—that place of humble acknowledgement that we are not God, that our way of seeing is not God’s way of seeing, that we don’t know everything and can’t control everything, that God is at work for good in the world even when all seems lost. This is to see the truth, to see things and ourselves more realistically; it may be painful sometimes, but with God at the center of things, light will always be shining…always the darkness will not overcome it—all we need is for Christ to give us the eyes to see.  With these new, humbled eyes, we are able to look at our lives, at the lives of others, at the state of the world differently.  So that in the face of fear we can look with the eyes of trust; in the face of prejudice or judgment, we can look with the eyes of mercy and compassion; in the face of change, we can look with the eyes of hope; in the face of confusion, we can look with the eyes of wonder; in the face of suffering, we look with the eyes of solidarity and tenderness; in the face of a seemingly impossible mess, we can look with the eyes of creativity; and in the face of even this present moment, we can look with the eyes of life-giving beauty and love.

With eyes like that, just imagine what you will see! 

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