Trinity Sunday 
June 11, 2017

Genesis 1:1-2:4a

¹⁶Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. ¹⁷When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. ¹⁸And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. ¹⁹Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” – Matthew 28:16-20

This is how Robert Farrar Capon describes creation:

“One afternoon, before anything was made, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost sat around in the unity of their Godhead discussing one of the Father’s fixations. From all eternity, it seems he had this thing about being. He would keep thinking up all kind of unnecessary things – new ways of being and new kinds of beings to be. And as they talked the Son suddenly said, ‘Really, this is absolutely great stuff. Why don’t I go out and mix us up a batch?’ And God the Holy Ghost said, ‘Terrific, I’ll help you.’ So they all pitched in, and after supper that night, the Son and the Holy Ghost put on this tremendous show of being for the Father.

“It was full of water and light and frogs; pine cones kept dropping all over the place and crazy fish swam around in the wineglasses. There were mushrooms and grapes, horseradishes and tigers – and men and women everywhere to taste them, to juggle them, to join them and to love them. And God the Father looked at the whole wild party and he said, ‘Wonderful! Just what I had in mind! Tov! Tov! Tov!’ [Good! Good! Good!] And all God the Son and God the Holy Ghost could think of to say was the same thing…So they shouted together, ‘Tov meod!’ [Very Good!]. And they laughed for ages and ages, saying things like how great it was for beings to be, and how clever of the Father to think of the idea, and how kind of the Son to go to all that trouble putting it together, and how considerate of the Spirit to spend so much time directing and choreographing. And forever and ever they told old jokes, and the Father and the Son drank their wine in [the unity of the Holy Ghost] and they threw ripe olives and pickled mushrooms at each other [world without end.]

“It is, I grant you,” he continues, “a crass analogy; but crass analogies are the safest. Everybody knows that God is not three old [friends] throwing olives at each other. [Yet,] I give you the central truth that creation is the result of a Trinitarian bash, and leave the details of the analogy to sort themselves out the best they can.”

We too often forget the playfulness of God. We get caught up in the seriousness of the world. We get caught up in taking ourselves too seriously. We get caught up in trying to nail down faith in words and explain a God who defies naming and numbering. We divide ourselves up by how we talk about God. We tell the story of creation as one in which chaos is tamed into order and one in which humans come to dominate the others. We tell the creation story as one in which this happened before that and seek out some scientific connections in the poetry. We too rarely hear the profound refrain – And God saw that it was good.

Perhaps we figure as we look at everything crumbling around us that the world God saw to be very good is no longer, that somehow we’ve managed to mess it up beyond repair. That leads us to point fingers at others or turn in on ourselves in despair. But this raucous banquet, this poem of creation is not a story about what happened long, long ago before anyone remembers, before anyone even came to be as if it was good and is no longer. It’s a story about what’s happening now, today. It’s a story about God’s reveling in all creation as it unfolds day by day by day. A story about God over and over again overtop our chaos proclaiming, “And it is good.”

None of this is to negate that God also deeply grieves with us at the losses we experience and that God, in Christ, joins us in our deepest suffering. It does not mean that God condones all we do or ceases to worry about the injustice that exists. But it means that insofar as God looks at you there is cause for celebration because you are, you exist. You in all your particularities and quirks, with all your gifts and skills. And that celebration is all the more for God’s being somehow more than just one.

Capon continues his analogy a bit further to shed light on this idea:

“What happens is not that the Trinity manufactures the first duck and then the ducks take over the duck business as a kind of cottage industry. It is that every duck, down at the roots of its being, at the level where what is needed is not the ability to fertilize duck eggs, but the moxie to stand outside of nothing – to be when there is not necessity of being – every duck, at that level, is a response to the creative act of God. In terms of the analogy, it means that God the Father thinks up duck #47307 for the month of May, 1970 [C.E.], that God the Spirit rushes over to the edge of the formless void and, with unutterable groanings, broods duck #47307, and that over his brooding God the Son, the eternal word, triumphantly shouts, ‘Duck #47307!’ And presto! You have a duck. Not one, you will note, tossed off in response to some mindless decree that there may as well be ducks as alligators, but one neatly fielded up in a game of delight…The world is not God’s surplus inventory of artifacts; it is a whole barrelful of the apples of [God’s] eye, constantly juggled, relished, and exchanged by the persons of the Trinity.”

Of course there are biological processes. Of course there are all kinds of ways that the parts of creation interplay with one another generating and creating themselves. But in that place that makes the difference between being and not being, God creates each of you – the inspired idea of you, the rush of creating you from nothing, the naming you “You” and calling you beloved – very good.

And in the midst of this joyous celebration of being and existing and creating we hear the call of Jesus: Go. Go make disciples of all nations. Go invite all creation into an awareness of the creator’s great joy. And splash with them in the waters of baptism. Go remind them of their belovedness. The call of Jesus to the disciples isn’t meant to be an onerous task, or a command to coerce and drag people kicking and screaming to church. It’s a joyful invitation: Come! Celebrate! Come eat at this incredible table of creation where God rejoices in you.

Today we welcome another set of new members to join us in the little piece of the celebration that happens at Immanuel. The little corner of God’s table that is in Amherst, Massachusetts. They get to share with us the awareness they have of God’s joyful celebration in other places. We get to learn about their gifts and skills, the things that make them who they are. Together we all get to discover new things that God is creating among us.

Together we get to eat at this table, taking part in the great feast of creation, tasting a tiny bit of the joy our creative and creating God has in us. The very flesh of God offered for you – you who are not a mere number or simply the result of generations multiplying, you who are held up with joy and named beloved through the waters of baptism. You who are held up and admired and loved from the heart of God in the midst of God’s grand creation dinner. And full of God’s joy we hear the invitation to go and invite others until every last person knows the love and delight of God, and all the time the echo of God’s proclamation over us: Tov! Tov! Tov! Good! Good! Good! Tov meod! Very good! Amen.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

 

Pentecost Sunday 
June 4, 2017

Listen to today’s gospel reading and sermon here:

¹When the day of Pentecost had come, [the apostles] were all together in one place. ²And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. ³Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. ⁴All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
  ⁵Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. ⁶And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. ⁷Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? ⁸And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? ⁹Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, ¹⁰Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, ¹¹Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” ¹²All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” ¹³But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”
  ¹⁴But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. ¹⁵Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. ¹⁶No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:
 ¹⁷‘In the last days it will be, God declares,
 that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
  and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
 and your young men shall see visions,
  and your old men shall dream dreams.
 ¹⁸Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
  in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
   and they shall prophesy.
 ¹⁹And I will show portents in the heaven above
  and signs on the earth below,
   blood, and fire, and smoky mist.
 ²⁰The sun shall be turned to darkness
  and the moon to blood,
   before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.
 ²¹Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’ ” – Acts 2:1-21

¹⁹When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” ²⁰After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. ²¹Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” ²²When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. ²³If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” – John 20:19-23

The coming of the Holy Spirit is a lot like skydiving. Now, I speak from limited experience here – one time jumping out of a plane several years was really enough for me. And you may be thinking that the comparison I’m about to make has something to do with the opening of the parachute and the safety and comfort of knowing things are going to be ok. And, well, there’s that aspect, too, I suppose. But the part that makes me think about the Holy Spirit is the part where they push you out of the plane.

I had always wanted to try skydiving, and it seemed like such a grand idea until I was strapped to someone who was strapped to a parachute and the plane took off. Then I was literally shaking with fear, filled with nausea, and clamping my jaw down tight. When they opened the door I watched several others head out first. Then the instructor I was tied to scooted us toward the door. I was sitting on the edge, feet dangling thousands of feet above the earth, and I actually saw the plane quickly fading away into the distance before I realized I had been pushed out. Then before I had time to think about it, the instructor flipped us over and I was hurtling face down into a cold, low-oxygen, wind, gasping for breath.

That’s how the Pentecost story starts in Acts, with a wind, or at least the sound of a rushing wind. Not so much a refreshing breeze that makes you take a nice, deep, stop-and-smell-the-flowers kind of breath, but the kind of wind that leaves you literally gasping for air. Even in John’s version when Jesus breathes the Spirit into the disciples, I wonder that it isn’t so much a soft, minty-fresh breath that wafts through the room so much as it is the kind of forceful breath that someone performing CPR gives, trying to force life back into dying lungs.

As much as we often think of the Holy Spirit as disembodied, she has a way of making herself known in rather physical kinds of ways. For me the communication of the Holy Spirit comes in the form of an excited wave of nausea, not unlike the feeling of those first few seconds of hurtling toward the earth filled simultaneously with the thoughts “This is so incredibly amazing!” and “Oh dear God, I’m going to die.” I’ve felt that Sprit-filled nausea before. I felt it when I decided to go to seminary, when I first starting coming out to family and friends, on seminary first-call assignment day when against all previous plans I suddenly was overcome with the sense that I was being called to go to New England, and more recently when we sat in the social worker’s office to set in motion the process that would lead to our adopting a child and in a matter of a few minutes I had thrown out my months of weighing pros and cons of various routes to adoption and with that overwhelming feeling of excited nausea, knew that the foster-to-adopt route, filled as it can be with uncertainty, was the one we were being called to. It was never that the Spirit pushed me into something I didn’t want to do per se, so much as threw me into something I was too afraid to try, like that skydiving instructor who pushed me out of a plane.

Churches face that same kind of shove of the Spirit, too. There’s more than one story of a congregation with declining membership and dwindling finances who, rather than drifting into non-existence, sold off their building and with it so many things that held memories, and they either launched some new building-less ministry or boldly shared what they had left to grant other new ministries, often ones not anything like their own, often ones they didn’t really understand at first. Sometimes here in this congregation, in the midst of ongoing thriving ministry with one another, I sense the pushing of the Spirit launching us into things that we may not feel ready for, things that may stretch us and ask us to risk what is comfortable and known for the sake of the gospel. And we go, hurtling forward, uncertain, excited, and a little afraid, trusting the one pushing us out of the plane.

And more and more we find ourselves in situations that ask us to stand up and speak up for the sake of others. I can’t help but think about times that I’ve had that same nauseous feeling, knowing that something needed to be said to stand up against all manner of bullying. We didn’t need the news story of the men who were killed in Portland when they stood up against Islamophobic hate speech to tell us that standing up for what is right is risky business. This week more peril for the environment, more terrorism in London too quickly blamed on an entire religion, more calls, more opportunities to stand up and speak up for justice. We all, I suspect, have moments we’ve had that push from Spirit but managed to stifle it even though we knew better as well as moments when the Spirit pushed hard enough that we stood up to say what needed to be said. Sometimes the Spirit sends us hurtling into arguments, or worse. That discomfort the Spirit stirs up in us leaves us never comfortable with the ongoing existence of unjust systems.

This is the state of the church on Pentecost. In either John’s version or the more familiar version from Acts, the disciples of Jesus are waiting, locked away, closed off. They are in prayer, they aren’t doing anything wrong, they aren’t headed down some terrible path. They are, at least for the time being, safe and comfortable, if a little troubled by all they had seen and heard in the previous weeks. And the Spirit comes not to surround them with warmth and comfort but to toss them out into the world.

If this Pentecost is the birth of the church it’s not a neat and tidy affair that starts with denominational structures or even a single, clear leader. It’s much more like a real birth: messy, painful, and resulting in a mostly helpless young being trying to catch its first breath in what must seem like a mighty rush of air all around. It throws the disciples stumbling out of the house into a crowd of people from every nation on earth, who all surely have different opinions about what is going on, some of whom are angry and sneering. The Spirit seems to land on them, too, creating the kind of chaos that the Spirit loves – joyful, noisy, full of diversity of every kind. The Spirit pushes them out to hurtle toward a life of being unsettled, of being challenged, of being uncertain about how they will land.

Yet it’s the same rush of wind that takes your breath away that then fills the parachute, carrying us down for a landing. We, filled with the wild wind of the Spirit at baptism, live in that often terrifying and wonderful freefall, filled with excitement, fear, and a little nausea, engaging all that the Spirit calls us to, to proclaim Christ through word and deed, and striving for justice and peace in all the earth. So we are bold pray, come, Holy Spirit. Come and launch us out of our comfortable places. Launch us into bold new endeavors, Come, blow us beyond our complacency. Come, lift us up and carry us home again.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

7th Sunday of Easter
May 28, 2017

⁶When [the apostles] had come together, they asked [Jesus], “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” ⁷He replied, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. ⁸But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” ⁹When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. ¹⁰While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. ¹¹They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”
  ¹²Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a sabbath day’s journey away. ¹³When they had entered the city, they went to the room upstairs where they were staying, Peter, and John, and James, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. ¹⁴All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers.- Acts 1:6-14

Alleluia! Christ is risen!
Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!

“You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

Right before the resurrected Jesus floats away from the disciples, he gives them this statement. You will be my witnesses. It’s not really a suggestion or even a command, but more a statement of fact. You will be my witnesses. And then Jesus is gone. Witnesses of what? How?

In one sense they will be witnesses to all that Jesus said and did. They go and tell the accounts of all the things Jesus has done. They have seen and heard much in the previous years and they go to share it with others. Jesus was a great healer of the sick and injured. Jesus fed the hungry. Jesus proclaimed forgiveness to those weighed down by guilt and shame. Jesus welcomed the stranger. Jesus taught with authority and wisdom, always rooted in the scriptures of Israel. Jesus even raised the dead. They saw one concrete action after another, heard one wise story after another. Surely much was beyond their understanding, but these were things they could report to the ends of the earth.

They were also about to be witnesses to the latest piece of the profound mystery of Christ’s resurrection. They are still in amazement, awe, and disbelief at the events around Jesus’ death and resurrection, now he is about to float away into the clouds. Some of them have witnessed the transfiguration of Jesus. They have seen miracles they can’t explain. They have witnessed things that defy the natural order and upend a purely rational approach to the world. So they go as witnesses to things they have seen but cannot understand.

And even though they didn’t know it yet, they will be witnesses to God’s continued work among them. The logic-defying miracles are not yet done. They will become Christ’s body in the world, the foundation of a church that lasts for thousands of years, eyewitnesses to lives transformed and resurrected. Witnesses to things far beyond their human understanding as the Holy Spirit stirs up the world around them.

But what does it mean for us to be Jesus’ witnesses to the ends of the earth? We, too have seen healing, welcome, and transformation. We have all heard transformative teaching. Many of us can describe experiences that go beyond our usually rational and logical approach to the world. We might, in our braver moments, share with others what we have seen and heard. But I think the idea that we are witnesses is something with a great deal more power than we sometimes realize.

Witnesses are a main part of the strategy for the New Sanctuary Movement in support of immigrants. They are training people to be witnesses in the immigration courts and in local communities when the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents lead raids. The witnesses are not there to intervene, to save the day or get all tangled up in things. The witnesses are there because the presence of witnesses tends to encourage the following of due process and humane treatment of fellow human beings.

Sometimes what vulnerable people in our world need the most is to be seen and heard and valued. We as the church and as individual followers of Jesus can become witnesses to the presence of Christ in one another and especially in those who are too often ignored. We are called to see and listen and to name and tell what we see happening in the world around us. We are called to witness the ongoing peril of the earth and its inhabitants, to witness the ongoing rejection and discrimination of people whose skin color is darker than others. We are called to be witnesses of the ongoing problem of gender-based violence in our communities. We are called to see and hear and name the neighbors, literal across the street neighbors who are going hungry.

I think we are sometimes afraid of this calling to live with open eyes and open ears, afraid because being witnesses in the world is sometimes painful and overwhelming. We want to be able to fix all that we see. We want to be able to proclaim not just the reality of suffering and injustice, but the reality of transformation, healing, hope, and resurrection. With Jesus gone from our eyes, we are sometimes like the disciples still staring upwards expecting Jesus to float down from outside our world to subdue all the prowling devils and every manifestation of evil and pain. But we are met there with a message to turn our eyes back to earth, to see Christ living in the midst of all we witness, Christ bearing the pain and distress, Christ transforming the world before our eyes.

Because we are not called to be judge or jury, prosecution or defense. It is not our calling to include or exclude, to lift up or tear down. It is not our calling to condemn others or to live in fear of our own condemnation. It is simply our calling to witness in every sense of the word – to see and hear God at work in the great and terrible events of our lives and of our world, and also to be witnesses in the sense of telling what we have seen – naming and proclaiming the injustice and also the signs of hope. We don’t even have to understand it all. We are witnesses to the concrete and tangible and also to the mysterious and intangible. We are witnesses to the broken body of Christ in the world and the resurrected Jesus rising from the dead and even the ascending Jesus filling all things.

And we are witnesses not because we are really great at the job – sometimes we fail miserably to notice God among us. We fail to be willing and accurate describers of God’s transformation in our own personal lives and in the life of the world. But we are witnesses because Christ himself has made it so. “You will be my witnesses to the ends of the earth.” A definitive statement because the ascension of Christ frees us to understand the incredible broadness of God’s work in every corner of the cosmos. No matter where you are or where you go from here, God is at work doing something new, healing what is broken, finding what is lost, resurrecting what is dead. And whether you are aware of it or not, you have already been and will continue to be witnesses to that work of God for the sake of the world.

Alleluia! Christ is risen!
Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!

 

 

Sixth Sunday of Easter
May 21, 2017

Listen to today’s sermon here:

²²Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. ²³For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. ²⁴The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, ²⁵nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. ²⁶From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, ²⁷so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. ²⁸For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said,
 ‘For we too are his offspring.’
²⁹Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. ³⁰While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, ³¹because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.” – Acts 17:22-31

[Jesus said to the disciples:] ¹⁵“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. ¹⁶And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. ¹⁷This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.
  ¹⁸“I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. ¹⁹In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. ²⁰On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. ²¹They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”- John 14:15-21

Everyone needs a good pep talk now and then. Something to get you psyched up for the big performance or the big game. Something to give you the courage to stand up and do what you need to do. Someone to give you a pat on the back, or even shout in your ear, “You got this!” Sometimes there are mornings when we could use a pep talk just to face the day.

The church could use a pep talk these days. I saw another round of stories this week about mainline church decline, positing all the same old stories about changing culture and grieving the way church was decades ago. I buy into that narrative less and less, but we are, as people of faith, living in a very different cultural context than we were several decades ago, some of that’s good, some of it doesn’t seem as good. It’s not easy necessarily to talk about our Sunday mornings with people in the rest of our lives, many of whom are rightly cautious about religious-types. The church as a whole needs some encouragement to keep on getting out there.

And all of us can use a pep talk when it comes to the hard work of serving our neighbor. It’s a world filled with need and it’s hard to know where to start, where to share our financial resources, what the best route to changing the world really is – in local community agencies? In local or national government? Through the church? Is it a focus on refugees, hunger, income inequality, racism, housing? Are you feeling tired yet? Looking for some energetic words to get you going again?

Thankfully Jesus is ready with some words for us and for the disciples. These words of Jesus come from his long speech preparing the disciples for what is about to come – his own death, resurrection, and subsequent leaving them again. The disciples, I imagine, are starting to get a little uncomfortable with all the reassuring Jesus is doing and the vague way he’s referring to the trials ahead. This is one of Jesus’ last chances to give them some words to get them through, words they can come back to later for support and courage, words that will inspire them to carry on the work of Jesus in the world.

So, what does Jesus say to them? He doesn’t say: “Come on everyone, you got this! You just go out there and be the best you can be, and I know you’ll do great. Work as a team and together you can do anything. Go out there and get ‘em!”

Actually he says, or at least strongly implies, the opposite. You can’t do this without help. Let that sink in for a minute. Jesus says, in this critical moment, you definitely can’t do this alone, not even together as a team of disciples personally handpicked by Jesus himself, you’re not going to have everything it takes to handle this.

What he does say is that as he leaves them God is sending another to work alongside them. You can’t do this alone, but the good news is that you won’t be alone. God is with you, God’s advocate is with you. The world cannot see it, but it’s true.

And here we are, desperately in need of words that will give us the courage to charge forward, and what we get is a Spirit we cannot see, hear, or touch, one whom the world doesn’t even know about. Some pep talk.

But then maybe it’s the pep talk we need. When Paul is trying to explain to the Athenians a God who is more than we can know he tells them that we, human beings that is, have been created to search for God, to grope for God, and perhaps to find God. In one sense that’s troubling to me. Created for a search for this unseen and too often unknown God. Created for a task that we cannot complete – to know this God who comes alongside us.

And yet, as much as I want this God who comes alongside to give me everything I need to work things out myself, what I get, what we get, is a God who has more in store for us that we have yet imagined. A God who has created much more in the universe than we can know. A God who is ever near yet never able to be fully known. And an invitation, not to desperate and unfulfilled searching, but the kind of searching which always discovers more questions with every answer. A God so deep and wide, so full of wonder and mystery, that we cannot ever fully understand the God who comes along side us.

That’s the pep talk the disciples get. Go, love God and love your neighbor. And when your efforts are not enough, when you yourselves are not enough, when the world tells you you are not enough, the God who is bigger than you have yet imagined, who is more than the incarnation of God in the person of Jesus, is already alongside you transforming you and your work into something holy.

It’s simply not very concrete in terms of help. It’s something more than can be grasped and held and even known. But you have been chosen and called in baptism for this work. You have been created for love of God and neighbor, created to be loved into that wonder and mystery. Like ordinary bread and wine transformed into a meal that sustains and heals us, forgives and renews us, forms us into the body of Christ, the ordinary offering of our daily lives becomes what God fills with breath and life, what God uses to feed the hungry and welcome the stranger, what God uses to bring the dead back to life.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

 

Sunday, May 14, 2017
Fifth Sunday of Easter

²Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation—³if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.
  ⁴Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and ⁵like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. ⁶For it stands in scripture:
 “See, I am laying in Zion a stone,
  a cornerstone chosen and precious;
 and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”
⁷To you then who believe, he is precious; but for those who do not believe,
 “The stone that the builders rejected
  has become the very head of the corner,”
⁸and
 “A stone that makes them stumble,
  and a rock that makes them fall.”
They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.
  ⁹But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
 ¹⁰Once you were not a people,
  but now you are God’s people;
 once you had not received mercy,
  but now you have received mercy. – 1 Peter 2:2-10

[Jesus said to the disciples:] ¹“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. ²In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? ³And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. ⁴And you know the way to the place where I am going.” ⁵Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” ⁶Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. ⁷If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”
  ⁸Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” ⁹Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? ¹⁰Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works. ¹¹Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves. ¹²Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. ¹³I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. ¹⁴If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it. – John 14:1-14

I suspect we’d all from time-to-time like to have God communicate a little more clearly about where we’re supposed to be going in life. A billboard would be nice for major life decisions, but I’d settle for text message, email, or postcard for the day-to-day questions about how to handle decisions. This is where you’re supposed to be heading, and here’s how you get there.

I imagine the graduates in our community including the ones we bless at the end of the service today would appreciate something so clear and direct. You’ve all managed to answer the question about what you’re doing next in your life for a two-line announcement in the bulletin and e-letter. But if your experience is anything like my own, I imagine that even if there are some certainties, there is a lot that makes taking the next steps a little intimidating, many unknowns, questions unanswered.

I thought there might be a time when discerning next steps came a little more easily. Maybe there will be a time like that, but I haven’t found one yet. It seems there’s always something that needs discerning – family, work, personal goals, time management, long-range planning at home or work. We face moral conundrums all the time – questions in which a clear right and wrong answer do not emerge. Times when so many possibilities exist that we cannot evaluate them all. Times when all the possible options for action or inaction do harm to someone or something. How do we live out our Christian calling in a complicated 21^st century global economy and a complicated and challenging political landscape? What’s next? Where are we headed? How do we get there?

We even ask the question of people who are grieving. After what is an absurdly short period of time we start subtly asking those whose loved ones have died: What comes next? Where are you headed? Still foggy with grief they try to satisfy us with an answer.

It’s the fundamental question that Thomas asks of Jesus as Jesus prepares to leave the disciples. Where are you going? If you just tell us, we’ll plug it into our GPS and follow you there. If we just knew where you wanted us to end up we would gladly work on solving whatever logistical problems stand in the way. Getting to a known destination is a solvable problem, even if it’s complicated. But getting to an unknown destination is nearly impossible.

Fundamentally that’s how a lot of us approach questions of discernment. We attempt to figure out the right destination so that we can plan a way forward. Discernment becomes a sort of holy guessing game about what God wants us to do. And the reward set before us is the heavenly mansion with many rooms. God has a plan, and God has gone ahead of you to prepare a place for you, and God is sitting there waiting for you to show up. Sure you’ve received some helpful guidance along the way, so you should be able to figure it out: Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. Unfortunately, Jesus is rarely the right answer on the SAT, in a job interview, at the voting booth, or when deciding which house to buy or what career path to follow.

It can sound a little absurd when we try to name it, but I think we all identify with Thomas’s question. How can we follow you if we do not know where you are going?! How are we supposed to know what to do? How are we supposed to follow Jesus?

This is where I think this passage offers us an interesting alternative way to understand discernment. Here the sixteenth century mystic Theresa of Avila is helpful. Though I cannot say I have read the entirety of her best known work, The Interior Castle, the premise is that God’s mansion of many rooms, the dwelling place of God, is within each one of us. Without negating the promise of a place of rest at the end with God, Theresa’s vision opens up the possibility that Jesus’ invitation is to become more attune with the work of God already within us. The invitation is not to go from a place of godlessness through a personal journey to the place where God dwells, thumbs twiddling waiting for us to show up, but to embark on a lifelong journey of discerning God’s presence dwelling already within us, working in us even when we are not aware. Discernment then is no longer a holy guessing game, trying to choose the right path that will lead to life and truth, but instead about the ongoing work of understanding God doing something with us whatever our choices, for good or for ill.

That journey is not an easy one. It is one fraught with distractions, obstacles, and outright enemies that would try to convince us that God does not dwell with us. But the other gift of Jesus’ words is to remind the disciples and remind us that God’s presence has always been among us in ways we haven’t always understood. Jesus can come off a little harsh in his response today, but his point, I think, is a gentle reminder that they need not be looking for something else. The presence of God has been with them already and will be with them still in a different way after Jesus leaves them.

So also is God present with us. God’s self has come down to us to make of us a heavenly mansion. The way that is made is not a path we must forge but the path God has already traveled to us, with truth and life offered to us. Like the disciples we are often blind to God’s having already found us in our lostness. While we are still asking the questions about where to go next and what God’s call is asking of us, we have the presence of God already having made a way to meet us.

We have God’s promise to be present among us when we gather, to be present in bread and wine, to be present in the reading of scripture. It is there and in so many other ways that God makes a way to us with truth and life in abundance. And so in the confusion and doubt we experience in our discernment, in the overwhelming number of decisions that must be made in our lives, we have in this an abundance of opportunities to discern the way God is already making within us to bring truth and life to the world.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

4th Sunday of Easter
May 7, 2017

[Jesus said:] ¹“Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. ²The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. ³The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. ⁴When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. ⁵They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.” ⁶Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.
  ⁷So again Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. ⁸All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. ⁹I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. ¹⁰The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” – John 10:1-10 

See also Acts 2:42-47.

Listen to today’s sermon here:

I don’t know about you, but I want to be in Jesus’ sheep pen. Whether Jesus is the shepherd, the gatekeeper, the gate itself, or the whole sheepherding operation, I want to be in that flock. Surrounded by something to keep me safe, let out to pasture when and where it’s safe, provided with green pastures and quiet waters.

I want to be in Jesus’ church, too. The one described in the Acts reading. You know, sharing everything. Devoted to teaching, fellowship, and prayer. Breaking bread with glad and generous hearts. Praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. Just perfect all the time. I’m not sure that church ever existed for longer than about three minutes, but I want to be there.

After a week that drew our attentions to the killing of Jordan Edwards and renewed attention to the killing of Alton Sterling, I want to live in a world where young men don’t get killed for the color of their skin. Where the people who shoot them don’t just get away with it, but also a world where the people who shoot them don’t get thrown away and forgotten about either.

I want to live in a world where people no longer fear the loss of essential healthcare, where people don’t have to choose between food and medicine and rent. A world where class and wealth no longer determine the quality and accessibility of medical services and healthy food.

I want to live in a world where demons of self-doubt are revealed for what they really are. A world where depression and anxiety, emptiness and confusion, fear and failure are long forgotten.

I want to live in a world where the Great Thief, death itself, does not climb in and steal away the people I love. A world where sickness and death and grieving and pain are no more.

The thing is that I’m a person with a lot of privilege, which means that some days I can choose to forget that I don’t yet live in that world. Some days I can imagine nice pastoral scenes of happy sheep grazing with their docile shepherd. Some days the good shepherd means to me that I get nice things and a comfortable life and all is well. That’s a privilege many people in our world simply don’t have.

So it’s a good thing that isn’t what the good shepherd image is all about. Because Jesus came that we may have life and have it abundantly. And it simply isn’t abundant life until it’s abundant for everyone. The flock is not full until everyone’s in it. The church is not done reforming until everyone is actually welcome and gladness and generosity abound. Abundant life means there’s so much of it that it overflows one to another to another. And we don’t yet live in that world, even those who can sometimes pretend we do.

Which is why I actually kind of like today’s part of the good shepherd reading, which doesn’t actually use the phrase “good shepherd.” Come back next year on the Fourth Sunday of Easter to hear that part. But in today’s reading Jesus mixes his metaphor a little. He implies he might be the shepherd or the gatekeeper, then he says outright that he’s the gate. In one sense or another he’s responsible for the security and sustenance of the sheep.

And a good shepherd is not always docile. There are bandits and thieves about, wolves and coyotes, not to mention sheep prone to wandering. The Jesus of this reading is one who calls over and over again gathering and leading the sometimes obstinate sheep. The Jesus of this reading is one who fights off all manner of ferocious beasts and ill-intentioned intruders. The Jesus of this reading is a strong and sturdy gate that keeps out the forces that harm and destroy. The Jesus of this reading is an impossibly wide gateway that allows the sheep room to find safety and go out again for sustenance without pushing others away. The Jesus of this reading is one who isn’t afraid to push and prod and yank and pull us into the way of life, abundant life. That’s a good shepherd.

This shepherd is one who will rip open our carefully constructed worlds in order to make room for the people whose voices we have silenced in pursuit of selfishly abundant life. This shepherd is one who will slice through the barriers we put up to loving ourselves and loving others. This shepherd will literally move heaven and earth to find safe pasture that is open to everyone. This shepherd will yank us back when we forget the voice that calls us by name. This shepherd will kick us out when we ourselves become the bandits stealing life from others, and make us come in through the gate as sheep again. This shepherd will fight the Great Thief all the way to our graves, to hell itself, and back again to bring abundant life. That’s a good shepherd.

Some weeks it’s enough to imagine the traditional gentle shepherd, but a lot of weeks I need something stronger. Because I’m still longing for that world I described. And because I’m still making decisions that don’t match up with the world I want to live in. Because sometimes there are simply forces beyond my control that require a God who breaks through the worst there is to breathe abundant life into us.

Today in this season of resurrection, we look to the font and the table. The green pasture and still water to which our strong and gracious shepherd leads us. There we find not just a promise of what is to come but the actual experience of that world we long for if only for a moment. There we are refreshed and renewed. But eat and drink knowing that in that meal we are also yanked and pulled, pushed and prodded, such that by God’s fierce shepherding we are led to the life we long for in such a way that abundant life is made possible for all creation.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Resurrection of Our Lord
April 16, 2017

1After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. 2And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. 3His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. 4For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men. 5But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. 6He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. 7Then go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.’ This is my message for you.” 8So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. 9Suddenly Jesus met them and said, “Greetings!” And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him. 10Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.” – Matthew 28:1-10

Alleluia! Christ is risen! Christ is risen, indeed! Alleluia!

As the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. I wonder what they did when they arrived. In other accounts the women who approach the tomb to bring spices for anointing, but in Matthew’s gospel they simply come to see. And when they arrive the stone covering up the tomb is still in place.

I wonder what those first moments at the closed up tomb were like. Did they reach out and lay a hand on the cold stone, touching it and feeling both its coldness and at the same time some warmth of connection with the one they loved who is gone, just as we might at the gravestone of a loved one today? Was there silence, or nervous chatter, or quiet words spoken to Jesus, whom they missed so much? Was their interaction with the guards keeping watch at the tomb tense with the political and cultural divides of their time and the horror of the last few days, or was it an interaction shaped by the camaraderie of those who are up earlier than they want to be, each in their own way doing a task they rather they didn’t have to do? Whatever it was like, when they arrived at the tomb, they saw exactly what they expected to see – death all closed up and sealed away.

And if you had time to stop and reflect in the midst of this busy holiday morning, perhaps to read the news or ponder the losses in your own life, you might, too have seen death all closed up and sealed away. It’s Easter, but I didn’t hear of any graves opening today. It’s Easter and nations are still and war and terrorists still at work. It’s Easter and racism and xenophobia are still alive and well, with refugees and immigrants shut out and unwelcomed in too many places. It’s Easter and despite an abundance of food here this morning, people are still hungry in our community and around the world. It’s Easter and as this first day of the week was dawning, we rose to see death still here among us, our own tombs of grief and pain closed up and sealed away.

What the women and even the soldiers who had been keeping watch could not see, could not imagine, was that behind the large stone was an empty grave. It looked to them like all was still death and gloom. But in this quiet moment of grief for this loss – for all the loss in their lives – the already-accomplished resurrection suddenly bursts in on them with a literally earth-shaking revelation. One moment it’s just a quiet and reflective early morning before trudging on with the daily tasks of life, the next moment an earthquake, an angel appearing like a flash of lightening and white as snow, an empty tomb, and a message that changes not only their lives but the life of the world:

“Do not be afraid. I know you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. I know you came to visit the dead. But he is not here; for he has been raised as he said. Come and see not death, but life.”

Just as it was for the women at the tomb, the first witnesses of the resurrection, Easter for us is about something that has already happened while we are still seeing death. Our shouts of Alleluia this morning do not bring back the dead. They do not end all war. They do not even always convince us of the reality of God’s promise of resurrection. Because the death we see before us is powerful, and the earth-shaking, tomb-opening blast of resurrection does not always come to us when we yearn for it the most. But that does not change that God’s victory over death is won for us. It does not change that God is already at work in the depths of our world, rising again and again in us.

It is hard for many of us to believe most days that resurrection really is already happening while we are still staring death in the face. But I suspect even after the earthquake and the angel and the empty tomb that the women that first Easter morning were probably still a little unsure what to make of it all. Nowhere in the gospel reading does it insist that they believe. There is simply the angel’s invitation to see and an invitation to tell. And so they do. They look into the place of death and see the possibility of resurrection and they run, still afraid but now also joyful. And it is as they run, still in a world that looks like death, still in awe and joy and fear at what they have seen, they run to tell the incredible story. And it is there that they encounter the risen one. There they get to touch and feel his risen feet. Feet that still bear the marks of the cross, feet that still bear the oil of anointing, feet already bearing the dust of the death-filled places where Jesus has been busy bringing resurrection joy. The presence of Christ for them before they believe, before they understand, before they’ve had a chance to tell.

And so you this morning are invited also to see and to tell. To look into a world of death and see in one another, in all creation, the possibility of resurrection. And if the sight of death all around is too much for us to believe in life, still the invitation: go and tell. Greet one another today in the peace of the Risen Christ, sing and shout the alleluias this morning. And here as we tell one another the good news, the news so good we can hardly believe it, we come, as the women did, face-to-face with Jesus meeting us on the way. Meeting us here in our celebration in bread and wine, where we touch and taste the risen Christ, filling us with resurrection life and making us witnesses to his risen life already bursting forth in our death-filled world.

Alleluia! Christ is risen! Christ is risen, indeed! Alleluia!

-Pastor Steven Wilco

 

Easter Vigil 2017
April 15, 2017

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

Christ is risen, indeed! Alleluia!

Where is Christ’s body?! It’s the central question of our gospel reading. Dead bodies do not just get up and walk away. And each of the disciples handles it differently. Peter sees the empty tomb and the grave clothes and doesn’t seem to know what to make of it. John sees the same thing and believes. And Mary, distressed and distraught, thinks someone has taken off with the body. “Where have they put it?” she wonders in her grief and confusion. But none of them yet know the answer to that question.

“Where is Christ’s body?!” is also a central question for the people of God who bear Christ’s name in all the centuries since. Not just as a historical question, not just to explain his no longer being on earth with us, but with a real sense of desperate hope, an actual longing for the presence of God to touch and know in response to our deepest fears troubles.

“Where is Christ’s body?!” is a question the world is asking of the church, the body of Christ, in response to the ongoing strife. Where is the one who embodies peace? Where is the one who loves unconditionally without control or abuse? Where is the one who promises reconciliation? Is the church, the body of Christ, present in the struggles for justice and peace, for welcome and love? Where can we find personal hope and joy in the face of death?

Where is Christ’s body?!

The answer this night gives to that question is rooted in the ancient stories we gathered to tell to one another: Christ’s body was swirling in the watery chaos of the forming earth. Christ’s body was among the Israelites running fearful from an encroaching army and Christ’s body was drowning with all of Pharoah’s army, chariots and horses and all. Christ’s body was in the hungry and thirsty longing for water and food at no price. Christ’s body was in the valley of dry bones long before they began to rattle back together at Ezekiel’s prophesy. Christ’s body was bound and oppressed, imprisoned and sick, longing for freedom. Christ’s body was in the middle of the fiery furnace.

And these last holy days have offered us more answers to the question the disciples asked at the tomb: Christ’s body is kneeling down to wash dirty feet, sharing a meal with friends, putting himself in the hands of those who betray, sitting among the unjustly accused, dying among the criminals, lying dead in someone else’s tomb.

And now as we proclaim the Easter good news of the empty tomb, still ourselves wondering where Christ’s body is in our world, we have to assume the risen Christ is now doing what Christ has always done, taking on flesh in our mixed up human life. The empty tomb causes us to open our eyes to the ongoing possibility that God is busy again bringing something else to life. It causes us to look again at the world with new, Easter eyes to see not only the presence of Christ where it has always been with the forsaken and the dying, but now, too in the places where the forsaken are restored and the dying brought to life again.

And so propelled by the question of the empty tomb, we turn searching with Mary and find the barely recognizable body of Christ right there for us, too. We turn and hear our name spoken and we have the opportunity to reach out and touch. Even tonight to taste the body of Christ offered to us at the table. For while we are still searching, still making sense of the Easter reality, still wondering, “Where is Christ’s body?” it is in the midst of questions and doubts and fears and hopes all mixed up together that Jesus comes to meet us unexpectedly on our journey.

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

Christ is risen, indeed! Alleluia!

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Good Friday
April 14, 2017

Tonight’s gospel reading is the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ according to John (ch. 18-19).

Because this story of Jesus’ passion takes place in some ways at the centers of power – at least the local and regional centers of power – it’s easy to sweep right over the surprising number lesser characters in the narrative, many of whom remain unnamed: some untold number of soldiers and temple guards, at least two slaves of the high priest – one named Malchus, the woman who guarded the gate and those warming themselves by the fire, the nameless, faceless crowd of locals, Barrabbas the bandit, two unnamed and in John’s gospel voiceless criminals crucified by Jesus, nameless people who see the sign above Jesus on the cross as they pass by going from here to there, a few of the women and men who have been disciples of Jesus who stand together witnessing the crucifixion to the bitter end.

Why does it matter that Jesus’ story of suffering and death includes these mostly unnamed and powerless people? It matters because the cross of Jesus will not allow us to forget the powerless ones, the ones whose lives and livelihoods have been stripped away, whose grief and pain is more than human beings should endure. The passion of our Lord Jesus Christ does not let us forget the millions who died in the Holocaust, justified by anti-Semitism based often on the passage we’ve just read. The passion of our Lord Jesus Christ does not let us forget the millions of refugees who long for safety and welcome or immigrants who work in unsafe conditions for unfair wages. The passion of our Lord Jesus Christ does not allow us to forget the 9 people condemned to die at the hands of the state next week in our own country. The passion of our Lord Jesus Christ does not allow us to forget the people who work three jobs and still cannot pay rent and buy food and pay for healthcare for themselves and their children. The passion of our Lord Jesus Christ will not let us forget the soldiers who fight at much risk to themselves and their families for low wages, many of whom do so because it is the only path toward employment and education. The passion of our Lord Jesus Christ will not let us forget the grieving parents and grieving spouses and grieving friends whose lives are searching for peace again. The passion of our Lord Jesus Christ will not allow us to forget that we, who so often feel nameless and powerless in the face of injustices great and small are both innocent bystanders and complicit participants in the injustices that take place around us.

Like the suffering servant of our Isaiah reading, Jesus bears the pain of violence, oppression, and loss shared across our human communities. This story of salvation of the world weaves in the lost, the lonely, the grieving, those who have no hope, those who do not hold power in the world, and those who misuse even the little power they possess against their own self-interest. Like the rest of the story of Jesus, the passion is not about being the kind of king the world is seeking or about using the kind of power the world rewards. It is about an inclusive vision of love that triumphs over hate, and life that triumphs over death – a vision that those who hold positions of earthly power in the story fail to comprehend.

So we stand tonight as witnesses to this magnificent and heart-breaking story. And it brings us to our knees at the foot of the cross both in contrition and in awe. And there at the foot of the cross we pray an ancient prayer we call the bidding prayer. A prayer that seeks, always imperfectly, to include the broadest possible list of people and needs, so that here tonight, all those in power and all those whose names will be forgotten to history are gathered together at this cross, just as they were at the cross of Jesus.

And it is here at this cross with all the world that we recognize the victory already won. Won before the resurrection is discovered, before the joyful Easter shouts, the victory already won as Jesus breathes his last. A victory won by the God who rejects traditional forms of power found in money, violence, and greed, even if it means death on a cross. A victory won for the nameless and voiceless, and also for the people in power who silence and put to death, and also for us, who long for the coming reign of God for all creation.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Maundy Thursday
April 13, 2017

¹Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. ²The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him. And during supper ³Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, ⁴got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. ⁵Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him. ⁶He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” ⁷Jesus answered, “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” ⁸Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” ⁹Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” ¹⁰Jesus said to him, “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you.” ¹¹For he knew who was to betray him; for this reason he said, “Not all of you are clean.”
  ¹²After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? ¹³You call me Teacher and Lord—and you are right, for that is what I am. ¹⁴So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. ¹⁵For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. ¹⁶Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. ¹⁷If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.”
  ^31b“Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. ³²If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. ³³Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’ ³⁴I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. ³⁵By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” – John 13:1-17, 31b-35

What begins tonight cannot be undone. As Jesus washes the disciples’ feet, the plan to betray Jesus is already underway. Jesus is now propelled toward the cross. The Great Three Days have begun, and we know where they are going. Beyond the washing of feet and the Passover meal shared is the cross, the tomb, and, yes, resurrection. What begins tonight cannot be undone.

We know about things that cannot be undone. We know that people can heal, objects can be repaired, but we recognize that nothing can undo harm that has already been done. Words we wish we could pull back into our mouths. Bombs we wish we could unexplode. Boundaries we wish we could uncross. Knowledge we wish we could unknow. Perhaps most of all we know that our bodies cannot become young again. The path we are on towards dying and death cannot go in reverse.

But that is why we need this night that cannot be undone. That is why we need the laying on of hands, the washing of feet, the bread and wine offered again. Because, dear friends, these things also cannot be undone.

It is perhaps clearest in the washing of feet. Hear this poem by Jan Richardson about the blessing in the washing of feet:

As if you could
stop this blessing
from washing
over you.

As if you could
turn it back,
could return it
from your body
to the bowl,
from the bowl
to the pitcher,
from the pitcher
to the hand
that set this blessing
on its way.

As if you could
change the course
by which this blessing
flows.

As if you could
control how it
pours over you –
unbidden,
unsought,
unasked,

Yet startling
in the way
it matches the need
you did not know
you had.

As if you could
become undrenched.

As if you could resist
gathering it up
in your two hands
and letting your body
follow the arc
this blessing makes.*

Water, once poured, cannot be gathered back into the pitcher. It could, I suppose, be mostly captured and poured back and the remaining drops soaked up, but once poured on our feet – our imperfect, dirty, worn-out, achy feet – that washing cannot be undone. Yes, they will become dirty again, but the blessing that comes with the water, the blessing of this sacrament of love and care for one another – that cannot be gathered back up or returned. People who wash one another’s feet will still be broken people who have the potential to mess up and hurt one another, but that expression of care and love is one that opens our hearts in new ways to one another. The washing cannot be undone.

The forgiveness, too. Oh, friends, we will sin again. We will break our best of intentions. We will again fail to trust in God. We will, despite the commandment, fail to treat our neighbor with love and respect in thought, word, and deed. We will continue to be complicit in injustice, violence, and prejudice. But tonight’s forgiveness – the words and the laying on of hands – is done and complete and irreversible. Forgiveness from God, once poured out, cannot be gathered up again. What is past is gone. Consequences may remain in our broken world, but that forgiveness cannot be removed. Those sins are gone as far as the east is from the west.

So forgiven and washed, we come to the table, where we eat and drink. Into our broken and dying bodies we take in the body and blood of Christ. And in doing so, the living one becomes a part of our bodies – forever a part of us. And once the life of the world is within us it cannot be undone. Even though we die, we will carry always the life of Jesus in us.

So these great Three Days begin, in the midst of our regret-filled and broken lives, with blessings that cannot be taken back. As we journey this now inevitable journey to the cross, these blessings wash over us. They fall like warm water on tired feet, a soothing balm on tired lives. They envelop us in comfort and grace. They wash over us sometimes when we are least aware and least expecting it. They wash over us through the hours of darkness. They wash over us in our living and in our dying. They create us anew into people who look forward to resurrection. They wash us to Jesus, whose victory over death cannot be undone, and whose life lives in us tonight, tomorrow, and forever.

*”Blessing You Cannot Turn Back: For Holy Thursday” by Jan Richardson, Circle of Grace, (Wanton Gospeller Press: Orlando, 2015), p. 131-132.