Foundry UMC DC: Sunday Sermons

First Movement

 

A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry UMC, January 21, 2018, the third Sunday after the Epiphany. “Grace Notes” sermon series.

Texts: 1 John 4:7-12, 16b-21, Mark 1:14-20

 

If God
Invited you to a party
And said,

‘Everyone
In the ballroom tonight
Will be my special
Guest...’

How would you then treat them
When you
Arrived?

Indeed, indeed!

 

And [I know]
There is no one in this world

Who
Is not upon
[God’s] Jeweled Dance
Floor.[i]

 

These are words of 14^th century Sufi mystic poet, Hafiz who captures in a few imaginative lines a core belief of our Wesleyan spiritual tradition. Namely, everyone in the world “dances” in God’s presence.  Or perhaps better stated, God is the ground of our being, without whom we could not stand, much less dance.  St. Paul once described this reality to the Athenians, using the words of their own poets, saying “in God we live, move, and have our being.” (Acts 17:28)

 

We believe this is true even if you’re too young or infirm to mentally understand it, even you’ve never heard the word “God” or the name Jesus, even if you’ve actively rejected the name Jesus, even if you’ve done selfish, hurtful things. No matter what, we believe that the loving presence of God saturates all creation and is with every person. We can ignore or reject God’s loving presence, but “There is no one in this world/Who/Is not upon/God’s Jeweled Dance/Floor.”  We dwell in God, surrounded by God’s grace.

 

United Methodists are not alone in this belief, sharing it with many other Christian “tribes,” but it is a particular emphasis in our understanding of the way God’s grace works.  John Wesley, the spiritual architect of Methodism, described the experience of God’s grace in three movements—kind of like the “movements” of a formal musical composition—distinct, but related to one another, beautiful as individual pieces, but only complete when taken together.  The first movement is what we call “prevenient grace,” literally the grace that comes before—before we know to desire it, before we know we need it, before we realize we’ve received it. It is God’s presence awakening us to the reality of a “more” in life, to a need to shift course, nudging us in the direction of greater love and compassion, drawing us toward the beauty of God’s wisdom and way.  Wesley understood prevenient grace as the beginning of God’s saving work, “the beginning of a deliverance from a blind, unfeeling heart ...”[ii]

 

As I prepared for today, I was delighted to discover one of my predecessor’s sermons on this topic online.  Rev. Dean Snyder reminded me that John Wesley’s favorite verse when he preached about prevenient grace was John 1:9:  “The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.”  The true light enlightens everyone.  “Every [one] has a greater or less measure of this,” Wesley said. Christian and non-Christian alike, he said.[iii]  “There is no [one],” he said, “except [those] who have quenched the Spirit, [who] is wholly void of the grace of God.”[iv]

Today’s Gospel is a Christian “classic,” a familiar story for those who’ve been knocking around church for a while. It is Mark’s telling of Jesus calling his first disciples.  I have often heard this story used as an evangelism story, picking up on Jesus saying, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.”  Fishing for people can sound pretty unappealing to our ears these days.  After all, hooks can do damage and nets don’t set people free. And who among us wants to get wounded or “caught”?  I don’t doubt that part of the call of the disciples is to share the good news of God love with others. But the idea that this story primarily teaches that followers of Jesus are supposed to go get those people who aren’t in church and haul them “in” misses what I believe to be the beauty at the heart of the text.

 

In this story, we see Jesus draw near to folks who never would have imagined that they would be invited to step into a new way of life.  The way things worked in those days is that if you were a boy with the brains and skill, you’d get to be a disciple of one of the rabbis, following and learning from them.  The fact that Simon, Andrew, James, and John were all busy fishing means their scores hadn’t qualified them for the honor of apprenticeship to a rabbi.  They’d been sent home to spend the rest of their lives in the fishing business.  That was their lot. The fishing vocation wasn’t without honor or meaning, but they certainly weren’t looking for a rabbi.  Jesus found them. 

 

I often hear people talk about how they’ve “found” God or “found” Jesus.  Our understanding of prevenient grace means that this is never the way it works.  Just as Jesus is the one who draws near to the disciples before they knew such a relationship was possible, God’s grace makes the first move in our awakening to God’s love. As it is written in 1 John 4:19, “We love because God first loved us.” Hymn number 341 in our United Methodist Hymnal describes this beautifully.

I sought the Lord, and afterward I knew
He moved my soul to seek Him, seeking me.
It was not I that found, O Savior true;
No, I was found of Thee.

I find, I walk, I love, but oh, the whole
Of love is but my answer, Lord, to Thee!
For Thou were long beforehand with my soul,
Always Thou lovest me.[v]

 

// It seems to me that Jesus talks about “fishing for people” not because it is the perfect metaphor to describe the job description of Jesus’ disciples across all time, but because he was, in that moment, talking to fisherfolk.  Here, Jesus reveals the way God comes to us right where we are, in whatever circumstance we are in, and speaks our language to try to make a connection, to relate to us in a way that helps us receive the message. This is grace at work, connecting, drawing us more deeply toward God—not to trick us or limit our freedom or life, but to set us free to live more fully.

 

Jesus beckons the first disciples to join him on a journey, a journey in which they would spend their time not primarily with fish, but with people.  They were called not only to participate in the local economy as part of their family business, but to share in the work of God’s saving love.  They were drawn away from mending fishing nets, and into the mending of all creation that Jesus came to initiate. 

 

It’s not that Simon, Andrew, James, and John didn’t know God, it’s that God wanted to know them more and in a new way.  There’s a difference between knowing that there is a God and knowing God.  Prevenient grace is at work when someone who’s been just going through the motions of faith or of life suddenly wakes up and desires more.  Prevenient grace is at work when someone is on a destructive path and begins to make a turn toward healing.  Prevenient grace is at work when a vision of beauty or compassion sparks someone unfamiliar or hostile to faith to wonder about God.  And what we see in this story is that God draws near even when we’re not looking for God; God wants to share life and ministry not only with those who are deemed the smartest or most accomplished, but with folks from all walks of life—wherever they are on the journey. The good news is that all have a place in God’s Kin-dom, all have the opportunity to live in the freedom of God’s love, mercy, and justice and to share that with others, all have purpose and gifts to contribute to the work of mending and new creation.

 

I see our Gospel story as a beautiful illustration of God’s prevenient grace, a story of the way God appears, calls, reaches out, and shines the light of God’s love in order to help people step more fully into their lives.  Sometimes that grace will be at work in the lives of those who are already aware of God; other times, it will move to awaken persons to divine love for the very first time.  God’s prevenient grace won’t always prompt leaving home and family.  It may not result in an “immediate” response in every life.  But when you become aware of God’s loving presence, you will begin to sense there’s a choice to be made.  God always makes the first move toward us and invites some response—whether through the beauty of the world or its pain and brutality, through a still, small voice, or the booming voice of a prophet, through the familiar rhythms of home or the call of the wild blue yonder, through the pangs of guilt or the experience of reconciliation—God always beckons us, wants (as I say every week) an ever deeper relationship with us. And the more we respond to God’s drawing near, the more we respond to God’s love toward us, as we take even a small step toward God and God’s invitation to a new vision of the world and of ourselves, our lives will change one way or another.

 

This past week, I spent two full days with the Baltimore-Washington Conference Board of Ordained Ministry as we examined new candidates for ordained ministry.  Listening to candidates’ stories, I was again struck by the varieties of ways that God’s grace works in persons’ lives to wake them up to the call to greater life, service, love, and justice.  And I was reminded of the twists and turns on the journey, of how God’s grace attends us all along the way, moving with us as we travel. Prevenient grace is the first movement in God’s love song, it is what draws us onto the path or redirects and reenergizes our walk. God’s prevenient grace makes the first move toward us, inviting us to look around and see that we are already standing in God’s light, that we are God’s beloved, special guests, standing upon God’s jeweled dance floor.  Everyone is there with you.  Everyone.  So why not take the hand of a neighbor and begin dancing?

 

 

 

 

 

[i] Hafiz, The Gift, Trans. Daniel Ladinsky, Penguin Compass, 1999, p. 47.

[ii] Albert C. Outler and Richard P. Heitzenrater, Editors, John Wesley's Sermons: An Anthology, Abingdon Press, p. 488.

[iii] 3. Kenneth J. Collins, The Scripture Way of Salvation: The Heart of John Wesley’s Theology, Abingdon Press, p. 39.

[iv] Collins, p. 39.

[v] “I Sought the Lord,” Anon., United Methodist Hymnal, The United Methodist Publishing House, 1989, p. 341.

Woke Faith: To God Be The Glory

A sermon preached by Rev. Frederick Davie on Sunday, January 14, 2018 at Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington DC. 

Scriptures: 1 Samuel 3:1-20, John 1:43-51

 

I want to thank your pastor Ginger Gaines-Cerelli for the invitation to speak at this historic church.  I thank her for her leadership and this church for your faithful witness to an inclusive and compassionate world -- leadership and witness needed now more than ever.  I also owe a debt of gratitude to Rev. Dawn Hand, your executive minister, who so warmly welcomed me this morning, and whose family I have known my entire life. I also bring you greetings from Union Seminary and our President Dr. Serene Jones, who introduced me to your senior minister.  And even though Ginger, Serene and I are graduates of Yale Divinity School, I want to encourage anyone here who is considering seminary, to come to Union in New York City.  Thank you for this opportunity. Let us pray.

 

On the morning of Doug Jones’s victory over Roy Moore in the recent Alabama US Senate race, I listened to NPR, as I do most mornings.  In one story about that election, a reporter visited a gathering of young African American voters celebrating Jones’s victory. The first speaker of that group started her remarks with “giving honor to God...” And following a few more remarks from the speaker, the group started to chant “Woke Vote…Woke Vote…” It seems that woke vote had been the rallying cry in some quarters in Alabama as canvassers and organizers rallied their fellow Alabamians, especially black Alabamians, to go to the polls and vote.

 

To be woke, in modern vernacular, as many of you know, is to be conscious.  Conscious of the world around, conscious of your place in it, and conscious of all you bring, especially your internal stuff -- that spiritual, psychological and emotional stuff we bring to the worlds, micro and macro, in which we find ourselves.  To be woke is to understand at many levels the dynamics that swirl around us, to be able to respond in ways where we don’t shut down ourselves, growing sullen, quiet and offended; nor should we shut down others. To be woke is to understand the complexities beyond our particular milieu, to see and experience life and the world beyond our particular station and status with empathetic eyes and compassionate souls.

 

As I listened to those young people on that news report giving honor to God as their source of inspiration that sustained them during their days of organizing and advocacy in the public square, I had my own epiphany – a recognition of something divinely inspired.  I had my own encounter of being woke.  The insight was and remains this: it is faith in an eternal and loving God that is, for those of us who are believers, just about the only thing that will keep us woke and see us through dark and troubled times.  Let me say it again, for those of us who believe, faith in an eternal and loving God is just about the only thing that will keep us woke and see us through dark and troubled times.

 

Think about woke faith represented in the scripture lessons for this epiphany Sunday: the call of Samuel in the Old Testament reading and the call of the disciples, at least some of them, in the reading from the gospel of John.  This is the time of the liturgical year where we celebrate and commemorate the manifestation of God in our midst, highlighted in many Christian traditions with the magi or Wise Men who visit the baby believed to be God made manifest in human form. A mystery so divine, so loving that it requires a response from those who had heard and experienced it.  Epiphany is a time of Woke faith, when we are intensely aware that something extraordinary has occurred in our midst, something otherworldly that requires something of us.  The season of Epiphany.  A time of intense woke faith.  “Speak, Lord, your servant hears” is what Samuel said after being instructed by Eli. Woke faith.  Come and follow me is Jesus’ message to the disciples and their message to others.  Men declaring their allegiance to one they believed to be the Son of God, perhaps even God in every sense, declaring it so, picking up  where they are, turning around, waking up, and following this man called Jesus.  In the Book of Samuel, we hear the story of this little boy Samuel answering the call of God to become a prophet of God, a prophet sprung from Divine Love; a prophet to his people. Woke faith.

 

As I continued to listen to that report about those young African American organizers in Alabama, and their praise of God and chants of “woke vote,” I thought about the faith of the folks who had preceded them.  I thought of my enslaved ancestors, who had every right to be woke and to give up on God.  Theirs was a heavy burden.  You know of the horrors.  We have read of the horrors of slavery in books; seen them depicted in movies, on stage, mini-series on TV.  When slaves could have simply turned their backs and lost faith in everything, they did not fold, because surrender for them was not an option, as the late Derrick Bell wrote in his book “Faces at the Bottom of the Well.”   Even though my slave ancestors labored in anguish under the cutting lash of the whip and the merciless weight of oppression, surrender was not their final answer; faith in an everlasting God was their answer to the horrors of oppression.  In the midst of their often unimaginable and unspeakable circumstance, they remained woke.   You can hear it in the words of Harriet Tubman, who risked her life to free more than three hundred of her enslaved sisters and brothers.  Tubman said: "I always tole God," she said, "'I'm gwine [going] to hole stiddy on you, an' you've got to see me through.'" Theirs was a faith in a God of deliverance, a God of love and a God of justice.  Theirs was a woke faith.

 

It was this same faith that gripped the man we remember and commemorate this weekend: Martin Luther King Jr.  Dr. King was a very young man when he stepped out to lead the Montgomery bus boycott, barely 26 years old.  He was 28 when he because the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; a position he held until he was assassinated 11 years later. For all of his humanness, Dr. King had a consciousness of God we rarely see in our midst, a woke-ness if you will, so woke, that his faith and his response to God compelled him to make the ultimate sacrifice of his life so that I and many others might live a bit more freely.  This type of faith is a challenge to all of us, not just this weekend, but for every day we take a breath on this earth.

 

I see the emergence of this faith in the students who come to Union never having opened a bible or as much as sung a hymn.  We have many students who come as spiritual but not religious.   They come because after all their advocacy and protests, something stirs within them.  Something woke them up and something woke up within them.  I have heard them say they are looking to be grounded in this world but not of it.  They’ve had their epiphany---their faith awakened within them.  After occupying Wall Street and insisting that black lives really do matter, through marching, lying down in the middle of major highways, or sitting in at statehouses and on Capitol Hill, spending nights in jails, these students come to us. They were woke. Many of these students come to us looking for the faith and sustenance that carried Martin Luther King through the trials and struggles of trying to make a dream real.  Woke faith.

 

And I dare say we need woke faith in this age as much as we have ever needed it before.  I came of age in the civil rights movement.  I came of age when there was much hope in my young heart for continued racial, economic and social progress even in this midst of strife.  There were elections along the way and circumstances that befell from time to time to test that hope, but there was always a sense of progress.  Always a sense we were moving forward.  And clearly we have.  The work of Martin King and the thousands who have heard a similar call to action has not been in vain.  The success of people of color in the US is remarkable given where we started.  We still have deep and seemingly intractable issues:  the overrepresentation of black and brown people in prison; underfunded and poorly staffed schools; limited access to healthcare, particularly in many southern states, with little to know access for new medicines to retard and treat the spread of HIV infections.  The killing of unarmed black men by law enforcement, even while we had the nation’s first black president, destabilized the nation.  But the progress of black and brown people in America is real.  I feel like I embody this progress.

 

Yet, something is desperately wrong in these United States of America today.  Not just for black or brown folks, folks from those (expletive) nations like Haiti, El Salvador and of the continent of Africa, but for everybody.  If there was ever a people who needed to be woke and hear afresh the message of the Almighty it is many of those who live and labor blocks from here.  From 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue right up to Capitol Hill, something is wrong.  Too many folks over there ain’t woke.  Scripture says the people who lived in darkness have seen a great light.  Way too many leaders from the Hill to the White House don’t seem to have seen any light at all.  Everyday some new revelation has the feel of plunging us deeper into darkness.  Trampling on the basic standards of fundamental human decency.  Shredding of environmental regulations, gratuitously destroying healthcare for the weak and vulnerable while grotesquely shifting massive amounts of money to corporations and people who have many times more than they will ever need.  Tweeting transphobic and homophobic changes in military policy with little regard for military commanders and even less regard for disrupting the lives of loyal Americans serving in our armed forces. Mysogyny unfettered. Erecting obstacles at every turn to keep people from participating in the democratic process.  That so-called and now defunct voter fraud commission defined fraudulence by its very mission. It all makes implicit bias and microaggressions seem down right civilized.

No. Not woke.  But demonic, diabolical, deliberate walking in darkness, destroying God’s creation and God’s creatures while popping corks of celebratory champagne, clinking bottles of beer in fits of glee, and shamelessly smiling before the cameras.  Something is desperately wrong.

In his final speech 50 years ago this year, the night before he died, Dr King said:  The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land. Confusion all around. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period…in a way that men, in some strange way, are responding--something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising up…the cry is always the same--"We want to be free."

Yes, in this darkness some are woke enough to see the stars. I have a sense that we are here this morning because we have a notion that whatever is wrong out there, or within us, or perhaps out there and within us, there might be a few woke answers in this place, some enlightened direction, a word from the Lord, even a call from God asking us to follow.  Søren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher, puts it like this:  "Can there be something in life that has power over us which little by little causes us to forget all that is good? And can this ever happen to anyone who has heard the call of eternity quite clearly and strongly? If this can ever be, then one must look for a cure against it. Praise be to God that such a cure exists – that is, to quietly make a decision. A decision that joins us to the eternal. It brings what is eternal into this time. A decision that raises us with a shock from the slumber of monotony. A decision that breaks the magic spell of custom.  A decision that disrupts the long row of weary thoughts. A decision that pronounces its blessing upon even the weakest beginning, as long as it is a real beginning.  A decision that is the awakening to the eternal." 

 

So what is our decision this morning? This is always the question of people of woke faith.  What will be our experience of walking with God? Will we wake up our spirits, minds, souls and psyches?  Will we wake from the slumber of paralyzing monotony and the enslaving spell of custom?  Will we authentically, profoundly, consistently stay woke? Will we hear anew the words of Dr. King as he quoted the prophet Amos when he said “let justice roll down like rushing water and righteous like an ever-flowing stream”?

 

Fifty years ago, on the last night of his life, Dr. King preached his final sermon.  He said: “Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land! And so I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!!”

 Woke faith…to God be the Glory. Amen

Gifts on the Journey

A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry UMC, January 7, 2018, observation of Epiphany.

Texts: Isaiah 60:1-6, Matthew 2:1-12

 

Today I unabashedly draw inspiration from a new book I received for Christmas, a book entitled, “Joy.” The book is a collection of 100 poems and editor Christian Wiman’s introductory essay is, for me at least, worth whatever price Anthony paid to put the book in my hands.  The opening lines read, “Paul Tillich once said of the word ‘faith’ that ‘it belongs to those terms which need healing before they can be used for the healing of [people.]’ The word ‘joy’ may not be quite so wounded, though I have noticed…that it does provoke some conflicting responses.”[i]  Words can be “wounded”—that is, twisted and misused, abused and made lifeless—and religious words, perhaps, most of all are prone to such wounding. But “grace,” the topic of this new “Grace Notes” sermon series, as a religious word, seems oddly immune to serious damage.  Spiritual writer Frederick Buechner comments on this saying, “After centuries of handling and mishandling, most religious words have become so shopworn nobody’s much interested anymore. Not so with grace, for some reason. Mysteriously, even derivatives like gracious and graceful still have some of the bloom left.”[ii]  Grace is a relational word connected to prayer, blessing, thanksgiving, mercy, compassion, forgiveness, harmonious movement, and beauty.  Theologically speaking, grace can be defined as God’s abiding presence, love, and mercy—always offered as a pure gift, no strings attached.  I love the fact that, in music, the little notes that add emphasis and interest to a melody are called “grace notes.” These notes are “gifts” to the music, accenting the experience of the song.

 

But, I imagine, even with all this loveliness, the critique may arise: how can you speak of grace or be inspired by joy when Dreamers are under threat, when the loss of the Children’s Health Insurance Program leaves so many children vulnerable, when the planet continues to be polluted and destroyed, when juvenile boasts are made by the leader of the free world about the size of nuclear “buttons” as though the lives of all who inhabit earth are no more than blips in a video game? Shakespeare asked the question this way: “How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea?”[iii]

 

Grace—and the beauty and joy that often emerge in its wake—are like the star in our Gospel today.  They shine and shimmer in the darkness and provide focus and encouragement for the ongoing journey of life and spiritual seeking.  Wiman says that “Joy is the only inoculation against the despair to which any sane person is prone, the only antidote to the nihilism that wafts through our intellectual atmosphere like sarin gas.”[iv]  //

 

Today we observe the Feast of the Epiphany.  The word “Epiphany” literally means manifestation or appearance—and this feast celebrates the manifestation of God’s Word made flesh to all nations and peoples. Epiphany is the culmination of the Christmas Cycle that began with the first Sunday of Advent. And the story at the center of this feast is of the Magi (an ancient, Latin-derived term for Persian astrologers and professors of all things esoteric) who follow the star to Jerusalem and then, upon hearing the prophecy from Micah, on to Bethlehem. The story is a powerful illustration of light shining even amidst the encroaching darkness. It is a story of a journey, a quest for a benevolent ruler whose appearance on earth was written in the stars. It’s a journey to find the One who is God’s love and mercy in human form, One who is, in a word, grace.  It seems a fitting place to begin these weeks when we will focus on grace and ways that grace attends us all along our spiritual journey—through the twists and turns, valleys and mountaintops.

The journey of the Magi—and of the holy family they visit—illustrates ever-present grace in a powerful way if we guard against any de-politicized, sterilized version of the story.  All it takes to do that is to read the whole thing.  Reading Matthew beginning at chapter 1 verse 18 through the end of chapter 2, you see that Joseph, before having a change of heart, was planning to abandon his pregnant-but-not-by-him fiancé Mary (but “quietly”).  Herod, described by my colleague Jim Harnish, (referencing the Anchor Bible Dictionary) as “a pathologically insecure narcissist who was obsessively driven by his fear of any threat to his position and power,” schemes and lies to the Magi in order to do the child Jesus harm.  After the Magi find Jesus and heed an intuitive warning NOT to return to tell Herod of his whereabouts, the King goes on a rampage and has all the children in and around Bethlehem who were 2 years of age and younger killed in hopes of ridding the world of any threat to his power.  Having been warned of this heinous plot in a dream, Joseph and Mary take their child Jesus and flee into Egypt as refugees, only later returning to Israel and seeking a safe haven from ongoing political unrest in a town called Nazareth in the Galilee.

 

This is not a saccharine tale.  It’s a nightmare.  The journey of the Magi was fraught with danger.  The holy family’s safety and survival was at risk from the very beginning.  But notice the grace notes that appear throughout…  Joseph’s heart and mind change, thereby providing support for Mary already full of grace; the Magi have one another as companions on the path, the star to guide them, and the skill to follow that light; dreams and intuitions of danger not only arise but are heeded, thereby allowing escape from harm; and even the duplicitous word of Herod provides necessary guidance pointing toward Bethlehem and the child, Jesus.  In the midst of so much risk and vulnerability, with powerplays and violence lurking in every quarter, with a horrific ruler on a rampage, innocents trampled, and countless lives lost, even in the midst of all that (the Gospel reminds us) there were journeys punctuated with grace, with manifestations and appearances of love and mercy and guidance.  Hatred and cruelty tried to snuff out grace—the love and mercy of God.  But that plot failed. The light of Christ shines and the darkness did not, will not, overcome it.

 

At this time of year, I’m acutely aware that many of us struggle—the cold, long nights, the emotions and memories stirred by the holidays, the turn of the year highlighting where we are—or aren’t—in our lives, and the pressure to get things “resolved”…  All of this and more can trigger depression, anxiety, and relapse into the false comfort of addictions.  For many, this part of the annual journey is always especially fraught.  And even if we manage these days with relative equanimity, at this or any time of year, it is easy to get caught up in all that is wrong in our lives and in the world.  One of the reasons I’m glad our story for today often calls the Magi “wise” is that they were smart enough to travel with a buddy—to not go it alone.  I imagine that helped when, tempted to shut down in the face of the real dangers and scheming around them, they don’t focus on those things or allow themselves to get thrown off-course by them.   They stay together, know what they seek, keep their eyes focused on the light, and continue to walk together toward their destination.  That kind of focus and perspective reeks of wisdom.  And “When they saw where the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy.”

 

On life’s journey, on the spiritual path, on the Jesus-seeking path, there is so much pain, confusion, struggle, disappointment, and injustice along the way.  Those realities have the capacity to draw all our focus, to steal our energy, and keep us from apprehending the grace notes that dance in and among the shadows offering points of light.  On the journey, it is an act of sacred resistance to notice, welcome, and savor moments of joy, to acknowledge, as Christian Wiman writes, “how in the midst of great grief some fugitive and inexplicable joy might like one tiny flower in a land of ash, bloom.”[v]

 

One poet puts it this way:

If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,

we lessen the importance of their deprivation.

We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,

but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have

the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless

furnace of this world. To make injustice the only

measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.[vi]

 

We are called to praise the Christ child not the Devil.  And today we are given the grace of this ancient story of the Magi and the holy family, a story that reminds us that in a world like the one we know right now—even when illness or circumstance keeps us from apprehending it—light shines.  The story teaches us to seek out companions on the journey and, together, to focus our attention on the places where light shines, where grace is enfleshed.  The fact that we can choose where to focus our attention is itself grace.

 

Where will you focus your attention in 2018?  How might you attune yourself to the grace notes on the journey?  Perhaps taking a few minutes to reflect on the gifts of each day with gratitude…perhaps a commitment to pause and take in moments of wonder…perhaps an intention to actively appreciate the grace of traveling companions on life’s journey…Seek light.  Seek love and mercy incarnate.  Stay focused on delight and beauty, courage and generosity, tenderness and care.  As you journey with such focus, the primary threat may be that you become overwhelmed…with joy.

 

 

 

 

 

[i] Christian Wiman, “Still Wilderness,” Joy: 100 Poems, Yale University Press: New Haven, 2017, p. xi.

[ii] Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC, HarperSanFrancisco, 1993, p. 38.

[iii] Wiman, p. xi.

[iv] Ibid., p. xxiv.

[v] Ibid., p. xii.

[vi] Jack Gilbert, “A Brief for the Defense,” excerpt, quoted in Joy: 100 Poems, p. xxiii.

Guided By Which Star

A sermon preached by T.C. Morrow, Ben Roberts and Will Green at Foundry Unithed Methodist Church in Washington, D.C. on Sunday, December 31, 2017. 

Opening Night

A homily preached by Rev. Ginger Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry UMC December 24, 2017, Christmas Eve.

Note: The homily begins at 51:00 in the mp3 file.  

Text:  Luke 2:1-20

 

Imagine that you are a composer who has gained a faithful audience over the years. Though some haven’t heard or don’t pay attention of your work, the harmony and rhythms, the tension and resolution in your music are loved by many. But you are determined to reach different audiences, to bring people together around your music.  So you break out of the normal mode, you use different instruments, perhaps, or play with old melodic themes in new ways and create a whole new kind of sound and music.  It’s a risk to do something unexpected.  Will people get what you’re trying to do? What you’re trying to communicate? //  Then it comes time for the new work’s big debut.  Opening night.  Your creative vision and passion have been poured into what you will share.  It’s your heart behind the curtain.  And it is pounding…anticipating…hopeful…  And when the curtain rises, what you have conceived in your heart is out there in the world to be received or rejected.  To be taken in and cherished or ignored and forgotten. 

 

Tonight, we commemorate an extraordinary opening night, we remember when the curtain rose on our creator, composer God’s most ambitious performance ever.  A whole new movement of love.  It’s an inspiring risk.  This opening night is God’s heart laid bare, vulnerable and breathing in the world—and not some ideal world, but this world, the same world we inhabit tonight.  This offering is a profound act of hope…God’s hope that we will receive and nurture the gift, that we will shield it and help it grow, that we will share its beauty and power with others.  The curtain rises tonight on the birth of Jesus, the light of the world, the perfect love of God in flesh, the hope of God for the world…the hope of the world for God… //

 

The ones first invited to this premiere were out in the fields, shepherds minding their own business when, all of a sudden, the world is invaded with messengers and messages from God. They hear news—good news—about a child who has been born, a child who will be a Savior.  They’re told where to go to find this child.

 

The shepherds have a choice at this point.  They can either believe the mysterious and wonderful news that they have just received and accept the invitation to go or they can talk themselves out of it…. “after all it was probably just my eyes playing tricks, my ears imagining music, my heart yearning so much for some good news that I made the whole thing up, and why would I be invited to witness such a thing?”….  But instead of allowing mere rationality or cynicism to rule, those shepherds let hope win.  I once read that what happens next is that the shepherds “rush off in pursuit of hopefulness.”

 

And, as the story goes, they weren’t disappointed.  They found everything just as the angels had said.  In that humble place were Mary and Joseph and a baby boy.  The spot of starlight fell upon the scene. And from the manger, in that new life, there radiated love and truth and hope and grace, the very heart of God on the world’s stage. //

 

And here we are, responding to the invitation to come and watch the curtain rise once again on this simple and glorious scene, this movement of God’s love for us, the act of God’s yearning and God’s hope.  Why do we come again and again?  I imagine that, like the shepherds, we are in pursuit of hopefulness. 

 

We want to hope.  We need to hope.  And we live in a world overrun with realities that inspire anything but hopefulness.  Every year we travel the long road from Bethlehem to Bethlehem, those twisting and turning 12 months that separate this night from the next Christmas Eve.  And in the course of that yearly journey, the hope that supposedly “springs eternal in the human breast,” gets battered and bruised and chipped away and used up so that by the time we wander into a sanctuary on Christmas, we need to be filled, we need our hope to be born again so that it can carry us through the journey of another year—or even another day.

 

The shepherds set out in pursuit of hopefulness with the promise of the angels still ringing in their ears.  They would be given a sign that they had found the source of their hope:  the sign was that baby of Bethlehem lying in a manger.  And they found their sign.  They got to see him, maybe even hold him.  Their pursuit of hopefulness was not a vain search.  Hope came to life in that baby.

 

Where is our sign?  What will be our sign that our hope-thirsty souls have found what they seek?  On this night, I hear the angel chorus speaking to all of us gathered here saying, “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people”…for tonight in Washington, DC and in towns and suburbs and villages and hillsides around the world, people are singing God’s song, are gathering to worship God, to pray for peace, to be filled with grace through Jesus Christ.  And this will be a sign for you:  you will find yourselves in the midst of this world-wide congregation, maybe not even certain of why you are there.

 

In a world where fear and anger and distrust and greed and brokenness often seem to be the dominant powers; in a world that often seems bent on its own destruction, it is no small thing to pursue hopefulness.  And yet tonight and tomorrow millions of people will gather to sing, to tell the story, and to be filled with the hope that is born in and through Jesus.  This is our sign, our flesh and blood reality that confirms that our own pursuit of hopefulness is not in vain.  Because when people in drought-stricken, AIDS and Malaria-stricken Africa gather in hope; when people in the Middle East gather in hope; when people in South and North Korea gather in hope; when people standing in the rubble left behind from fires and hurricanes and floods sing the songs of Christmas; when people who are standing on the brink of disaster and despair and deportation gather together and light candles and drink from the well of Christian hope even in the face of every other kind of hunger and thirst, then it’s hard not to see at least a glimmer of hope ourselves.  Christian hope does not deny the circumstances of the present, and hope doesn’t help us get out of our difficulties.  But hope does give us the vision for God’s future, a future we can pursue, a song we can sing together.  In the book of the prophet Jeremiah, God speaks to the people when they had lost everything—their homes, their faith, their traditions, everything.  God speaks to them saying, “I know the plans I have for you says the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” (Jer. 29:11)

 

A future and a hope.  That is the promise.  And the claim we make however insufficiently or awkwardly, is that God did not abandon that promise.  God does not abandon hope in the world.  Not then.  Not now.  Instead God entrusts to the world God’s own tender son.  God has enough hope in the world to share the most precious life with us.  And because of that gift, the world has never been the same; because of the transforming power of the love that beats in that baby’s heart, the world has the possibility of hope forever.  Because of the love of God in Jesus Christ, we walk through even the darkest, longest night, across the most uncertain, frightening terrain, clinging to our hope in the God who clings to us.  Don’t give up on hope.  God hasn’t given up hope in us.

 

All around the world tonight the curtain has risen again, starlight shines, and the movement of love and grace and justice moves out into the world afresh.  Will you receive this most precious offering from our God? Will you, with God’s help, sing God’s song of love not just tonight but throughout the coming year?  O beloved ones, sing…sing and be the sign that others seek.

 

Let us pray: Loving, composer God, may we have the courage to hope, to receive your outpouring of love, to cradle and shelter the Holy One, to sing your song, and be worthy of your astonishing hope in us. Amen.