3rd Sunday after Pentecost
June 25, 2017

Listen to today’s gospel reading and sermon here:

⁸The child [Isaac] grew, and was weaned; and Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned. ⁹But Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, playing with her son Isaac. ¹⁰So she said to Abraham, “Cast out this slave woman with her son; for the son of this slave woman shall not inherit along with my son Isaac.” ¹¹The matter was very distressing to Abraham on account of his son. ¹²But God said to Abraham, “Do not be distressed because of the boy and because of your slave woman; whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for it is through Isaac that offspring shall be named for you. ¹³As for the son of the slave woman, I will make a nation of him also, because he is your offspring.” ¹⁴So Abraham rose early in the morning, and took bread and a skin of water, and gave it to Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, along with the child, and sent her away. And she departed, and wandered about in the wilderness of Beer-sheba.
  ¹⁵When the water in the skin was gone, she cast the child under one of the bushes. ¹⁶Then she went and sat down opposite him a good way off, about the distance of a bowshot; for she said, “Do not let me look on the death of the child.” And as she sat opposite him, she lifted up her voice and wept. ¹⁷And God heard the voice of the boy; and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven, and said to her, “What troubles you, Hagar? Do not be afraid; for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is. ¹⁸Come, lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand, for I will make a great nation of him.” ¹⁹Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. She went, and filled the skin with water, and gave the boy a drink.
  ²⁰God was with the boy, and he grew up; he lived in the wilderness, and became an expert with the bow. ²¹He lived in the wilderness of Paran; and his mother got a wife for him from the land of Egypt. – Genesis 21:8-21

  ³⁴“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword…³⁹Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”- Matthew 10:34,39 (from the Gospel Reading Matthew 10:24-39)

Sarah just wanted peace in her house. She caught the anxious stares from Hagar. She caught the subtle insubordination from the woman whose child claimed the rights of the first son over her own newly-born miracle child. People with small children who wake up at all hours of the night are not always the most rational in reacting to stress. Sarah just didn’t want to put up with it anymore. She just wanted Hagar out of her house.

You see Sarah and Abraham had waited and waited for the child God promised them. They got so tired of waiting for God that they – together mind you – decided that Abraham should have a son with Hagar, a servant in their household. And so Hagar’s son, Ishmael, was Abraham’s firstborn and with that came an elevated place for the servant-woman who bore him. This was after all, God’s promised child. Or so they thought until Sarah had a son, Isaac. That’s when the trouble started.

And like so many others, Hagar was considered disposable. She was a servant. Her role was to make their life manageable without being too much of a presence in that life. Like the people who clean the public spaces we go in and out of every day, the people who construct our homes and our streets. She was disposable like the people we lock away in prisons or who we imprison with hunger and lack of housing. She was disposable like the people who pick our produce or who make our clothing in far away places. She was disposable like the ones caught up in today’s industry of global trafficking. These are people who make our quasi-peaceful lives possible, and in many cases we can’t or don’t get to know them too well lest we let their stories shatter our sense of well-being. They are disposable not because we would be willing to do the work ourselves, in most instances, but because there are others who will take their place – other nameless, faceless people who will help our lives move smoothly along.

And so Abraham and Sarah together throw Hagar, along with young Ishmael, out into the desert. To die. Abraham is upset, but not upset enough to stand up for what is right, to stand up for this girl and her boy they are sentencing to death. In trying to save his life, he loses the very life he wants to save. But he has to admit they have a certain kind of peace back in their house again. They can go back to living the life they dreamed about. But we who get to see the whole story know that it is not real peace, because it is not peace for Hagar and Ishmael, who are thirsty and distraught, alone and afraid.

Perhaps that is what Jesus is talking about: “Do not think that I came to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” Jesus does not come to make life easy and nice, because easy and nice is not peace. The God who counts the hairs of your head and who minds the sparrow grieves at every pain and distress present in creation. This is a God who weeps over the tiniest of creatures lost, and therefore a God who does not willingly send Hagar and Ishmael out to die. A God who refuses to grant peace unless it is peace for everyone. Jesus comes not bearing niceties but bearing the power of God to transform our disposing of people, our satisfaction with easy answers and unjust peace.

And for the moments when all we want is peace for our own aching and distressed hearts, this story of Hagar and this harsh-sounding message from Jesus sound like anything but Good News. This Jesus who comes not bringing peace, this story of people disposed of for the sake of convenience, they make us uncomfortable, they shatter the world we construct for ourselves to make it through the day. The story of Hagar reminds us that we sometimes treat other people as disposable.

Which, to be honest, we do in part because we fail to honor the fullness of humanity in ourselves. We fail to consider ourselves worthy of love. We fail to consider our gifts as valuable. We fail to acknowledge the power that we have within us, thinking of ourselves as too small to make a difference, too small to matter. We carry our own wounds of having been made to feel small or unimportant, times that we have been cast aside and left empty and alone.

But the God who counts the hairs of your head and who cares for the smallest of sparrows does not leave you alone. In the wilderness, in the moment of despair, the voice of God’s messenger: “Do not be afraid. You matter to God. You who have been rejected by your own family, who are considered disposable by others – you matter to God.” And with the message of love, water appears where there was none before. And with it life and hope and possibility and a promise. God had promised to make of Abraham a great nation. Now from this disaster and despair, from our human brokenness, our failure to treat one another as valued human beings, a new promise emerges to make of Abraham not one nation, but two. Out of human selfishness God finds an opportunity to double what has been promised.

We do not get to hear the end of the story. We hear only the darkest part of Hagar’s journey and just the beginning of what is to come for them in the future before the story returns to Sarah and Abraham. But thankfully, in that brief moment we see the God who hears the cries of children dying in the desert, the cries of refugees without a home, the cries of people forgotten and disposed of, the cries of the earth longing for relief, the cries of the tiny sparrows, the God who hears your cries and mine. And God responds to those cries with a peace that heals not only our own wounds but the wounds we have inflicted on others. Not only the peace I so desperately long for but the peace my neighbor so desperately longs for as well.

In the moment when we think that all is lost, or in the moments when we come to the realization that we have inflicted that loss on someone else, we find there God coming to us not with peace but with the power to transform our driest, darkest, most despairing places into springs of water that wash us to new life. That is the baptismal promise in which we live. The promise of God to comfort and to make uncomfortable until every last sparrow and every last one of us is part of God’s flourishing reign of peace.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

2nd Sunday after Pentecost
June 18, 2017

¹The Lord appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day. ²He looked up and saw three men standing near him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent entrance to meet them, and bowed down to the ground. ³He said, “My lord, if I find favor with you, do not pass by your servant. ⁴Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree. ⁵Let me bring a little bread, that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on—since you have come to your servant.” So they said, “Do as you have said.” ⁶And Abraham hastened into the tent to Sarah, and said, “Make ready quickly three measures of choice flour, knead it, and make cakes.” ⁷Abraham ran to the herd, and took a calf, tender and good, and gave it to the servant, who hastened to prepare it. ⁸Then he took curds and milk and the calf that he had prepared, and set it before them; and he stood by them under the tree while they ate.
  ⁹They said to him, “Where is your wife Sarah?” And he said, “There, in the tent.” ¹⁰Then one said, “I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah shall have a son.” And Sarah was listening at the tent entrance behind him. ¹¹Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in age; it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women. ¹²So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, “After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?” ¹³The Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh, and say, ‘Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?’ ¹⁴Is anything too wonderful for the Lord? At the set time I will return to you, in due season, and Sarah shall have a son.” ¹⁵But Sarah denied, saying, “I did not laugh”; for she was afraid. He said, “Oh yes, you did laugh.” ¹The Lord dealt with Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah as he had promised. ²Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the time of which God had spoken to him. ³Abraham gave the name Isaac to his son whom Sarah bore him. ⁴And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was eight days old, as God had commanded him. ⁵Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him. ⁶Now Sarah said, “God has brought laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me.” ⁷And she said, “Who would ever have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age.” – Genesis 18:1-15, 21:1-7

³⁵Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness. ³⁶When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. ³⁷Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; ³⁸therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”
 ^10:1Then Jesus summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness. ²These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon, also known as Peter, and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee, and his brother John; ³Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; ⁴Simon the Cananaean, and Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed him.
  ⁵These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, ⁶but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. ⁷As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ ⁸Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment. -Matthew 9-10, selected verses

When the pastor of my church when I was in middle school first suggested I think about becoming a pastor, I laughed. I probably was too polite and/or intimidated to laugh right there in his face, but I definitely laughed. “Real people don’t become pastors!” I thought. In my defense, this sentiment is periodically reinforced when I hear poorly reported statistics from church events about there having been, say, a total attendance of 200 – 80 clergy and 120 people. But those words from my pastor were spoken with the knowledge of something I couldn’t yet fully see or understand, so I laughed a kind of nervous, dismissive laughter of one who thinks he knows better.

Sarah, one of the great matriarchs of faith, laughed, too, when three strangers showed up at their tent and sat talking to Abraham. This couple had years before picked up their lives at the call of God to wander to a new land. They tried their best to trust in God’s promise to make of them a great nation which would bless the world. They even kind of believed that there could be descendants, which they now thought would come only from Ishmael, Abraham’s son with Hagar. But in her very old age, these visitors said, Sarah would bear a son, too. Ha! What do they know about anything! So they laughed, too – a different kind of laughter that communicated something more like, “You just wait and see.”

She can’t be blamed for having a realistic picture of the world. She knows 100-year-old women don’t have babies. Just as well as she knows that not every sick person gets well again. And just like she knows that true peace between people and between nations is always short-lived. And just like she knows that the system is always a bit rigged against some group of people. She could have told you that there would almost never be legal consequences for shooting black men at traffic stops. Because she knows how the world works. It’s laughable to think otherwise.

And I have to imagine that Jesus’ disciples laughed, too, when Jesus sent them out into the world. Because they know as well as Sarah what the world is really like. They know justice doesn’t come to everyone. They know there are plenty of inhospitable people who won’t give them the time of day. They know there is simply more need out there than they can meet. And into that world, Jesus sends them with these words: “Cure the sick. Raise the dead. Cleanse the lepers. Cast out demons.” Ha! With what are they supposed to do that? Maybe between them they know something about healing ointments, something about the power of prayer, something about compassion for the outcast and sick. But they know that stuff doesn’t always work. And none of it will raise the dead. So what else is there to do but to laugh right along with sickness, death, demons, and fear at Jesus’ crazy instructions, if not right to his face, then surely as they started down the road. The difference between God’s promise and our day-to-day reality is so large that the proposal we just go out and fix it is more laughable than 100-year-old woman giving birth.

Let me just say this is its own kind of holy laughter. Because it’s laughter born out of the truth of our human experience. It’s the release of the tension we feel between the promise and the reality. It’s a prayer in itself, even the scoffing, derisive laughter that speaks disbelief and lack of hope is a prayer of recognizing what is and what could be.

And in response to our laughter God enters. God makes reality for Sarah what no one thought possible – a son born to her, the fulfillment of the long ago promise, the answer to her laughter and tears. And Jesus gives the disciples the power and authority to do the impossible task that is asked of them, which in and of itself is worth a pause to notice – a God who shares power with us– the power to heal and to welcome the lost and banish evil and even raise the dead.

And we know it does not happen every time at least as far as we can see – not every illness, every death, every demon, every separation is healed. Not everyone longing for a child bears one into the world. But it happens often enough that we recognize in Sarah and Abraham the sound of a different kind of laughter by the end of the story. The kind of laughter that comes when we see before our eyes the miraculous, when we see before us what we thought impossible and we just can’t believe what we’re seeing. We recognize the laughter of relief from years of longing and hoping and wanting and praying. We recognize the laughter because we, too, have seen it. Maybe only glimpses, maybe only in our old stories, but we have seen the transformation of laughter and with it the transformation of lives.

Did you notice the naming of the long awaited son? Abraham and Sarah who laughed off God’s promises name their child Isaac, that is, “the laughing one.” They memorialize their own laughter – their laughter of skepticism and their laughter of relief, their doubt and their hope, their pain and their joy in the name of their long-awaited child. Perhaps to remind themselves in moments of fear and doubt that laughter can be transformed into the awaited promise.

Go forth then with Jesus’ call to you: cure the sick, raise the dead, cast out demons, cleanse the lepers. It sounds like an absurd command. It sounds like setting us up to be laughed out of town. But it’s the baptismal call – to go forth healing and raising and casting and cleansing, to go forth proclaiming justice for people whose skin color or immigration status or religion makes them vulnerable to violence and hate, to go forth proclaiming that new life is possible from our broken lives.

And in the presence of our skeptical laughter, God comes as God did to Abraham and Sarah, to be present at our table and there in bread and wine remind us of what is yet to be, to remind us of the coming reign of peace and justice, of wholeness and life. To remind us that God’s vision and also God’s present reality, if not yet ours, is that all life might sit together at that table laughing with relief and joy at the promise fulfilled. Amen.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

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