Palm Sunday / Sunday of the Passion
April 9, 2017

Reflection:

Here we are again, about to enter the holiest week of the year, caught again in its impossible tensions. We have waved our palms and shouted Hosanna as if we did not know what was coming. In a moment we will take again the part of the condemning crowd in the narrative that leads to Jesus’ death on a cross as if we never participated in such a parade crying out to him to save us.

It is our nature to want to resolve those tensions to pick one or the other. And yet our reality is a world of tensions. We are both children of God and people who commit sin in thought, word, and deed. We proclaim power and might, turning around to misuse that power against the vulnerable. We host a protest march as part of worship, challenging the political, military, economic and religious establishments, then we become participants in maintaining those structures. We live washed in the waters of baptism and we fail to live out the promises we make in response to Gods unfailing promise. We are people who cry out for salvation and who reject the salvation that is offered us. We are already resurrection people who are yet on the way to death.

Today we shout and wave – first “Hosanna! Save us!” then “Crucify! Crucify!” We get swept up by the crowd and yet somehow at the same time swept into the story of God’s salvation. We get swept up this whole week into Jesus’ story, because it the story of God coming into the midst of those tensions. It’s the story of God coming into the lives of stumbling disciples, and awe-struck soldiers, and overly-pious religious authorities, and unthinking crowds, the story of God emerging from our impossible tensions. And what happens there is sometimes gruesome, sometimes hard to imagine. It sometimes makes us painfully aware of our own failure. But we tell even the brutal parts of the story because it is there, to our depths, that Jesus comes. And it is Jesus’ presence there in the depths – in our depths – which breaks the violence, the brutality, breaks even death itself, into life for the world.

Let us now enter into contemplation of the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ and meditate on the salvation of the world through his sufferings, death, burial, and resurrection.

 

Fifth Sunday in Lent
April 2, 2017

¹The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. ²He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. ³He said to me, “Mortal, can these bones live?” I answered, “O Lord God, you know.” ⁴Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. ⁵Thus says the Lord God to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. ⁶I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the Lord.”
  ⁷So I prophesied as I had been commanded; and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. ⁸I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them. ⁹Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.” ¹⁰I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.
  ¹¹Then he said to me, “Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.’ ¹²Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. ¹³And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. ¹⁴I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act, says the Lord.” – Ezekiel 37:1-14

God asks, “Can these bones live?” At what point do we look around, no longer with a sense of wonder and possibility, at our own valley of dry bones and simply say in response, “No. These bones cannot live.”? At what point do we give up hope?

At some point I stopped praying for a miraculous cure for my father’s Parkinson’s disease or for a quick medical breakthrough and just started praying for the grace to handle what came next. It took a few years, but eventually I gave up expecting something to change.

When we pray for an end to war and violence and injustice, sometimes, they feel like empty words, because I know that words like them have been prayed for millennia and the transformation has not come. Breaking through all the other news of the day I’ve been noticing the deaths, soldier and civilian, that are piling up in Syria, a result of our own nation’s attacks. Can these now-dead bones live? No, I do not expect them to come back to life.

When we work so hard for so long for something, holding out hope until the bitter end. Then the end comes, the decision is made, and we know there is no changing it, the options are exhausted and now we must live with what has been decided. Can that dried up hope live again?

When our loved ones die, we may have moments when we forget and expect them to walk around the corner or to be waiting for us at home, but in the moments when we remember, we do not actually expect them to come back from the grave.

“Jesus said to Martha, “Your brother will rise again.” And Martha said to him [thinking that she was supposed to pull it together and affirm her belief in God’s power] “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” She trusts in God’s promise of life, but she has stopped hoping, stopped expecting the miracle that she had hoped Jesus would do before he died. The finality and irreversibility of Lazarus’s death has made her resigned to the facts as they stand. He is dead and there is no going back.

Now at this point in the story, Jesus hasn’t exactly been on his A-game. He dawdled a bit while his friend was sick, then shows up several days too late to even say goodbye, and the best he can muster in comforting the grieving is a theological statement. This is pastoral care 101 – while we boldly and unapologetically proclaim resurrection at funerals, it’s rarely the first thing said when meeting with the grieving. In the moment, it almost sounds like Jesus is saying the churchy equivalent to, “There, there. Everything will be alright in the end.” Which though true does very little to relieve the sadness and loss that we experience when we grieve a loved one. The resurrection on the last day is one kind of comfort but it doesn’t put our loved ones back in our arms. When we are staring down our own valley of dry bones, our own losses and grief, and wondering if these bones can live, an assurance that has to do with some long and distant place and time, isn’t always comforting.

But of course, that’s not what Jesus is getting at with Martha. He continues, “No, no, Martha. That’s all well and good about the resurrection on the last day, but I am the resurrection and the life, and I’m standing right in front of you, here, now.” And she can’t possibly yet know what he means by that, though she’s about to find out.

And in this story it means at least three things. First, and in some ways the most striking, Jesus goes and stands at the tomb to weep. It means that the enfleshment of resurrection and life can feel and express the sadness of death. The one who lives both in our time and connected to the eternal, experiences with us the depth of the pain we feel. The God of life knows what it is to look out on a valley of dry bones and feel the impossibility of transformation the impossibility of something new and living emerging.

Second, it means that Jesus can do the impossible right in front of us without waiting for the last day. It doesn’t mean that that every loss we’ve ever experienced is suddenly going to reverse itself before our very eyes. But it does mean that on this side of the grave and the next that resurrection is possible. There is room for renewed life to emerge that is entirely unexpected – to emerge from death and loss and pain and sadness and grief. It means that we can’t always be certain what God is up to but that we can be certain God is going to do the unexpected for the sake of life.

It means that when we say “This is the body of Christ given for you,” that it’s like we are saying the feast of resurrection isn’t in the future, but right now, here, for you. We can touch and taste the one who is resurrection and life. And when that’s true nothing is off the table. The dead can rise, the bones can live, and our grief can be transformed. And at this table we feast our way into resurrection along with all those who have died.

And then, finally, what it means to have the resurrection and the life present here and now is an invitation to participate. You’ll notice in our texts today that in neither the first reading nor the gospel is the work complete without our participation. The vision of dry bones does not require Ezekiel’s knowing whether or not the bones can live, but it does require Ezekiel’s speaking God’s word of life to them. And Lazarus is called out of the grave not walking and talking and celebrating, but still wrapped in the shrouds of death. And so Jesus’ words to the crowd and to us: “Unbind him, and let him go.”

Friends, neither you nor I can raise the dead. None of us can even know fully what it means to do so. None of can fully know what God has in store for our dry and dusty bones. But God invites our participation in resurrection anyway. God gives us the words to speak life to one another. God hands us resurrected bodies to unbind and set free. God gives us the opportunity to participate in the renewal of all things. We are invited to be God’s mouth and God’s hands, to speak life and unbind death in this world where we cannot even always maintain hope.

Can these bones live? Only God knows. But as we stare down death and loss, the resurrection and life weeps with us, brings forth the unexpected, and invites us to participate in the miraculous transformation of death into life. Let us set the table and welcome again the one who is the resurrection and life, present with us now in our valley of dry bones.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

4th Sunday in Lent
March 26, 2017

1The Lord said to Samuel, “How long will you grieve over Saul? I have rejected him from being king over Israel. Fill your horn with oil and set out; I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a king among his sons.” 2Samuel said, “How can I go? If Saul hears of it, he will kill me.” And the Lord said, “Take a heifer with you, and say, ‘I have come to sacrifice to the Lord.’ 3Invite Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will show you what you shall do; and you shall anoint for me the one whom I name to you.” 4Samuel did what the Lord commanded, and came to Bethlehem. The elders of the city came to meet him trembling, and said, “Do you come peaceably?” 5He said, “Peaceably; I have come to sacrifice to the Lord; sanctify yourselves and come with me to the sacrifice.” And he sanctified Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice.
  6When they came, he looked on Eliab and thought, “Surely the Lord’s anointed is now before the Lord.” 7But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” 8Then Jesse called Abinadab, and made him pass before Samuel. He said, “Neither has the Lord chosen this one.” 9Then Jesse made Shammah pass by. And he said, “Neither has the Lord chosen this one.” 10Jesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel, and Samuel said to Jesse, “The Lord has not chosen any of these.” 11Samuel said to Jesse, “Are all your sons here?” And he said, “There remains yet the youngest, but he is keeping the sheep.” And Samuel said to Jesse, “Send and bring him; for we will not sit down until he comes here.” 12He sent and brought him in. Now he was ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome. The Lordsaid, “Rise and anoint him; for this is the one.” 13Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the presence of his brothers; and the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward. Samuel then set out and went to Ramah. – ! Samuel 16:1-13

Sunday, March 19, 2017
3rd Sunday in Lent

Jesus came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.6Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.
  7A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8(His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) 9The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) 10Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” 11The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” 13Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” 15The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”
  16Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” 17The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; 18for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” 19The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. 20Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” 21Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. 24God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” 26Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”
  27Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?” 28Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, 29“Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” 30They left the city and were on their way to him.
  31Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” 32But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” 33So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?” 34Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. 35Do you not say, ‘Four months more, then comes the harvest’? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. 36The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. 37For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ 38I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”
  39Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” 40So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. 41And many more believed because of his word. 42They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.” – John 4:5-42

Listen to today’s sermon here:

“Well-behaved women seldom make history.” That’s a quote by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich who much to her surprise saw that line from a scholarly article leap into popular culture to be printed on t-shirts, bumper stickers, and just about anything else you can think of. Intrigued, she later wrote a book with that title, chronicling history makers like Rosa Parks, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Harriet Tubman, women who broke the rules for the sake of justice.

The power of the quote is that it doesn’t really challenge the behavior of women so much as it challenges the ways that status-quo societies respond to those who push boundaries, particularly when that boundary pushing is a fight for equal rights. It says that as a culture we tend to stigmatize those who push us outside our comfort zones, pushing them to the edges to maintain our level of comfort and labeling them as badly behaved. It says that we too often value fitting in at the expense of important messages we need to hear.

So we come to the history-making woman at the well. Like so many other women and other marginalized people in history, her name was not recorded. (Though, fun fact: the Orthodox tradition named her Photini, meaning “enlightened one,” because she recognized and shared God’s light with her whole village.) For centuries she has been shamed as sexually promiscuous even though that is only one of many possible explanations for her having had multiple husbands and currently living with someone who is not her husband. It would be a lot, but not unheard of in that time for her to have been widowed that many times and finally to have been taken under the protection of someone else.

Or what about this: one of the things she does with this stranger she meets at the well is to question the standing religious and political separation between Samaritans and the Judeans, who both worship the same God but refuse to acknowledge one another. She strikes me as the kind of person who is willing to challenge the status quo, question long-standing assumptions. Is that perhaps what has left her isolated, alone, and shut-off from her community like so many others who have stood out ahead of their time to demand justice and question the assumptions we all make? Maybe this prophet of God was shunned and shut out and left on her own because she pushed the boundaries, questioned her assigned position in her world. Maybe that’s why she’s at the well in the heat of the midday sun, because she’s tired of the quiet whispers, the unspoken judgments, the harassing epithets that are thrown at the people who speak out for something different, for something new.

And along comes Jesus. The woman at the well is cautious at first, having come to expect, perhaps, that she won’t be treated well or fairly. Instead she is not just tolerated by Jesus, but invited to share what she has to offer and invited into conversation about serious matters. And then, inspired by this encounter with God, she goes back to her village. And here is the real miracle of this story, something is different, something is changed because someone at least, starts to listen. When she comes to tell them she has seen the messiah, it’s a claim just outrageous enough that have to check it out, even coming from her.

And that’s the part of the story I’m wondering about most this week. Because as much as we like to think of ourselves as people who know what’s right and what we are supposed to do and how to act for justice, we are, all of us, also at one time or another people who stand for the status quo and people who choose not to live out of the encounters we have with God. I for one, don’t always like being pushed out of that comfort zone, even when I know it’s what I need.

And the church broadly speaking and this congregation as part of that larger church, for all the times we may have spoken up for justice, for transformation, for something new, have also at times been the keepers of the status quo. We, too, are sometimes the ones who whisper, who silently judge, even who come right out and say things that shut people out. I don’t think in the end any of us come out 100% in the right. The church, like the community around it, sets up insiders and outsiders, right and wrong.

Some clearly experience being marginalized more than others. There are still many places like the Samaritan village which lack easy access to clean, safe water, a burden that still today falls more to women than to men. There are people in our own community who still do not have enough food, or access to housing. There are people everywhere who experience subtle and overt racism, sexism, and homophobia. And yet all of us can connect with moments of our own experience feeling marginalized such that all of us can begin to connect that to the experience of others and confess the ways we have marginalized and shamed others.

The promise for us in all this is that God comes to and for everyone in this village. Everyone. In the way that God so often does, Jesus goes first to places others will not go, to the shunned woman, to the well in the midday sun. Whether she is, in fact, marginalized because she speaks up for change, or whether some combination of choices made by and for her have resulted in her being labeled unworthy or unclean, God comes first to her. God comes first to the poor, the stranger, the outcast, the immigrant, the sick, the imprisoned. And through them God speaks words of life. Words that bring living water to thirsty souls. For all of us long for a transformed and renewed world. Whether our circumstance or choices place us in the in group or the out group, God is working in our broken communities to transform us.

It’s the classic way God works: showing up in the outsider and using that outsider to bring good news of liberation and justice and grace to the insiders. That’s essentially the story of Jesus, who over and over again finds himself on the margins, from a birth in a stable to a death on a cross, beginning to end thirsty for living water, not just for himself but for everyone. He asks this woman for a drink, because he sees in her, in the outcast one, another way into our broken world. And she is moved by his invitation and ultimately by his deep knowledge without judgment or shaming, to go and tell.

So we are called to open our ears. To open our ears to the voices among us who are too often silenced. To open our ears to the ways God is asking us for a drink and giving us the strength to proclaim God’s good news from and to the places of the outcast and stranger. To open our ears to the voice of God inviting us to this feast, where there is no longer room for blame or shame but room for all of us to gather at the table to receive the life-giving feast which fills our hungering hearts and assuages our thirsty souls.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

 

Second Sunday in Lent
March 12, 2017

1Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. 2He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” 3Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” 4Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” 5Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. 6What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ 8The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” 9Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” 10Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?
  11“Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. 12If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? 13No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. 14And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
  16“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
  17“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” – John 3:1-17

Listen to today’s sermon here:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that whoever believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” – John 3:16

That’s the verse we remember of course. Not just because it’s one way of encapsulating Jesus’ work in a single short and potent sentence, but also because we like a nice ending to the story. But this definitive and memorable statement by Jesus, tends to make us forget that Jesus’ encounter with Nicodemus doesn’t end with some kind of conversion moment where Nicodemus falls on his knees professing his complete understanding and undying faith in Jesus. Rather, Nicodemus’s last line in the whole thing is “How can these things be?” All the rest is more of Jesus speaking in, frankly, incoherent metaphors and symbolic speech. And the whole thing just trails off unresolved a few verses after our reading ends, the gospel in a nutshell verse notwithstanding.

Nicodemus appears only twice more in the whole story. Once to advocate for due process for Jesus in front of the somewhat upset religious authorities, and again to help at the burial of Jesus. Neither appearance indicates faith or lack of faith, intellectual understanding or a genuine change of heart, but simply someone who became part of Jesus’ story, someone who brought doubt and genuine questions.

Which is maybe a better, or at least more realistic, summation of a life of faith than John 3:16. A life of questions, occasional, cautious engagement with Jesus, a life that asks over and over again, “How can these things be?”

I worry sometimes that we as the church too often rest in John 3:16 language, by which I mean language that has become so familiar to insiders as to no longer challenge and unsettle us and at the same time so confusing to outsiders as to cause them to walk away shaking their heads. One of the most commonly questioned of those statements is the creed, which centers around a key word that is also at the heart of our gospel reading: “To believe.” In our 21^st century North American context, to believe frequently means “give intellectual assent to.” It means to accept facts, to understand in our minds that something is real. But for the writers of scripture, the writer of John’s gospel in particular, believing wasn’t so much about intellectual understanding at all. It was something much more relational. Something akin to trust. Something more like a willingness to be in relationship. Something felt more deeply and much more abstractly than our brains can manage.

So what if we examined our fundamental statement of belief, as Nicodemus might, with deep questions of “How can these things be?”

We confess, “I believe in God the father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.” Yet we stand also as people who understand scientific evidence about the big bang and about evolution. How can these things be?

One simple – and I think true – answer is to assign to God’s agency the beautifully complex and awe-inspiring scientific truths of the evolving universe. But this affirmation is much more than that. Because we are people who baptize. People who practice with word and water the reality of God’s re-creation of us. People who can no more than Nicodemus explain with our words and understand with our minds what it means to be born again by the spirit, but who again and again bring ourselves and our loved ones to the water. We who every week renew those promises of baptism in confession and forgiveness. Whether we can understand it with our minds or not, our baptism, God’s repeated expressions of forgiveness, our experience of God’s re-creation of us weaves us into God’s story.

We confess, “I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried; he descended to the dead. On the third day he rose again; he ascended into heaven, he is seated at the right hand of the Father, and he will come to judge the living and the dead.”

And here is where many of us get caught up in trying to understand with our minds. Human and God at the same time? Virgin birth? Resurrection? Where is heaven exactly? If you don’t ask from time to time, “How can these things be?” then you may want to read more carefully. And yet, here we are, week after week, listening to scripture and one another as the embodied word of God in our midst. We together take bread and wine, eating and drinking together with one another and with Jesus, which makes as much sense as anything Jesus says to Nicodemus when we try to explain it with our minds and with limitations of our words. And yet it draws us here and draws us together and draws us to God and sends us out again. We pray a Eucharistic prayer that recalls highlights of others woven into God’s story until we come to Jesus. And through that prayer Jesus’ story arrives in our present and weaves us into God’s story with that meal.

And finally we confess, “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.” And if anything it’s the hardest one of the three to get our rational, intellectual heads around.

But it is here, too, that we believe with the most basic of human actions – our breathing in and breathing out. The spirit, the wind, the breath that Jesus names to Nicodemus isn’t altogether distinct from the breath that fills our lungs. We believe and trust that each breath will keep us alive, will keep us connected to one another and to creation. Not because our minds think our breath into every cell that needs it, but because our bodies simply know what to do with the breath and we’ve done it every moment since we’ve been born, breath by breath being woven into God’s cosmic story.

Ultimately, I think that’s what Jesus is trying to get across to Nicodemus. While making room for his very understandable, very reasonable, very human questions and doubts about things that are beyond his control and understanding, Jesus invites him to live instead from the Spirit that breathes in and out of him, blowing him where it will, calling him to a fresh start over and over again every morning, every breath.

And Jesus ends with what is, for me, an even better verse that John 3:16, the verse that talks not about belief, even the kind of belief that is about trust and relationship, but John 3:17, the verse about the salvation of not just the world, as in the English translation, but the salvation of all that exists – the cosmos, in the original language: “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn it, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” I still can’t wrap my head around it, but in water and word, bread and wine, in the very breath we breath, that promise envelops you and me and Nicodemus with all our questions and doubts into the infinite love of God.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

 

Listen to this sermon here:

 

Several years ago in seminary I was completing my required summer internship as a hospital chaplain, I was wrestling with a case that I couldn’t let go of, or rather it wouldn’t let go of me. I was feeling consumed by sadness and anger about a death I had been present to. I never even met the girl who died, only her family, and only for a brief hour. So it was, in retrospect, grief at a new awakening to a world where young people can die and families can be torn apart. But it was starting to eat at me, and I wanted it gone. I wanted to run away from it, hide from it.

I was sharing all this with my very skillful supervisor, and after he listened for a while he paused and then cautiously at first (he later confessed he had never before actually invited someone to do this) he asked me to talk to my feelings. Now, I might be slightly more touchy-feely than the average person, but talking – especially talking aloud – to my feelings was not in the realm of things I ever intended to do in my life. Talk to my feelings? Really? But in the spirit of learning I sat back, took a few deep breaths, and gave it a try. And what emerged, much to my surprise, was gratitude. Gratitude that in a summer spent being present to pain, suffering, and death, that I still cared, that I hadn’t become numb, that I hadn’t turned off that part of myself. I had spent the last several days trying to fight off the grieving, to make it go away. But in that moment, in naming it, talking to it, inviting it to say something to me, I made room for it, not giving everything over to it, but making room for it exist in me. As long as I had tried to fight it off, it had tried to consume me, but in making space for it to be, I found it had something to teach me.

Now, grief and sadness aren’t exactly the same as what we usually think of as temptation. But they are similar in the ways that we sometimes try to fight them off and they ways they try to consume us. They are part of what we might refer to using biblical language, demons that live within us. Sadness or grief that threatens to overtake us. Desire for power over others rather than power together with others. The anger that threatens to become more than useful and productive. The desire to satisfy our own personal wants at any cost. You can probably name a few of your own demons. Underlying them all, though, is the voice that whispers doubt into our ears about the promises that God has made to us, the voice that questions, “Are you really a child of God?”

That’s what the story of Adam and the Eve in the garden is all about isn’t it? A story that tells the truth about those demons that lurk within the human life? I don’t usually hear it from serpents, but I know the voice that questions, “Does God really have your best interests in mind?” The voice that prompts you to finish the sentence, “If God really loved you…” The voice that invites you to satisfy your desires when you know that isn’t best. And then when we give in, when we follow that voice and find ourselves alone and afraid, our instinct is to run away, deny the voice, pretend we don’t know anything about it. Running even from the God we know offers life and forgiveness. Because that’s how we tend to respond to the demons that lurk in us.

But if the story of Adam and Eve gives us one truth about ourselves in terms of messing it all up – the story of sin and death come through one human being, Paul tells us today in the second reading. Then, Paul reminds us, Jesus offers us the other story – the story of life come through one human being. And centuries of theologians have spun that out and talked about Jesus making up for all human sinfulness by his perfection. But what if Paul has the story of Jesus in the wilderness? What if instead of being about eliminating the temptations within us altogether, the story of new life in the face of death is, in part, about facing those demons head on, letting them speak, and inviting them into the conversation?

You see, if Jesus isn’t actually tempted by the voice that speaks to him, then this is some silly demonstration of God’s power over a less than skillful devil. But if we’re going to call what Jesus experiences in the wilderness temptation, and the story itself names it so, then we have to consider the possibility that there is something in Jesus that does in fact have impulses, temptations to veer off course. The offer is bread in the face of extreme hunger – innocent enough. But underneath is the acknowledgement that Jesus is full of personal, physical desires that might tempt him to fulfill them at the cost of the other. There’s an offer to put God’s provision and protection to the test. Something in Jesus that questions, perhaps, whether that protection will really be there. And there’s an offer of power over the kingdoms of the world. Something in Jesus desires that power, something there wants to give in. And every one of the temptations begins, as so many of ours do, “If you are the Son of God…” Is there something in Jesus that is tempted to forget, to wonder, to doubt his place as beloved child of God, even in this moment just after the words are spoken to him in baptism?

What if Jesus telling a new story about humanity isn’t about sinfulness vs perfection, but about making room for those demons in our lives. In the old story, we run with Adam and Eve as soon as we start to give in to temptation, we do whatever we can to distance ourselves from the demons within us, hiding not just from ourselves but from one another and from God.

The problem is that it doesn’t work. Refusing to acknowledge it. Trying to push it away only gives it more power over us. Not making space for it, only causes us to expend more energy fighting it. I had a brief conversation with a student on campus this week who responded to the question I posed “What do you want to let go of?” She had set a goal for herself of letting go of anger, but had been struggling with doing so. She wrote her answer, stood back, then said, “You know, I think writing it down helped.” I wondered if naming it in a public if anonymous way allowed gave it a place to reside instead of simply pushing it away.

Or think about it in terms of racism. Most anti-racism trainings will encourage participants to name and acknowledge that all of us carry bias, that all of us are shaped by a racist social structure. Denying that only gives that bias power to come out in other ways. Naming it allows us to begin to disarm the power it has over us.

In the new story that Jesus tells about what it means to be human, we are invited into the wilderness with Jesus to talk to our demons. To see what they have to tell us. In the new story, we are invited to make room for them to live in us. Not permission to run rampant, but permission for them to be a part of our human story, permission to name and engage them. I’m not suggesting we feed the demons, but inviting them to chat begins to open up a possibility for healing that running, hiding and denying simply doesn’t offer us.

It doesn’t solve everything. It doesn’t answer the question of how to mend our world when those temptations do get out of hand as they always do. It doesn’t answer the question of just what strategies to use, what words to say when we step into the wilderness to have those conversations with our demons. Jesus’ strategy of quoting scripture only goes so far, at least for me. But this story of Jesus living out a new way of being human, gives me hope that in facing my demons Jesus is standing with me. That God indeed understands what it means to live with demons. It gives me confidence that God can hold the worst that lies within me and the worst I encounter around me. And it opens my imagination to God’s cradling all of us and all the demons that haunt us, in loving care until all things are restored and resurrected.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

 

Ash Wednesday
March 1, 2017

[Jesus said to the disciples:] 1“Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.
  2“So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 3But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
  5“And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 6But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
  16“And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 17But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, 18so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
  19“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; 20but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”- Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

If you have worshipped at Cathedral in the Night, our ecumenical mission partner church that worships outdoors in Northampton, you might remember that they introduce their time of offering something like this: “Here at Cathedral we do the offering a little differently than you might be used to. Many places ask you for your money, but we ask you for something far greater. We ask for a part of yourself.” They go on to invite those present to take a small token that is provided and leave it at the cross as a sign of something of yourself that you want to offer to God that week. Sobriety, patience, friendship, hospitality, forgiveness, grace, gratitude. Though I don’t doubt the frequent confusion of self worth with net worth in our society, nor the difficulty with which we sometimes part with our money, these are things that, for many of us, are harder than giving money.

Perhaps it’s so difficult because we recognize all too well what Jesus reminds us in the gospel reading – that our earthly treasures rust and crumble. Even our less tangible offerings are subject to our mortal limitations. And our human reaction to that is so often to grab hold of every last bit that we can before it all falls apart. It’s hard to trust our treasures and with them our hearts to an unseen reality where rust and moth do not destroy and thieves do not break in and steal. As long as there is still some pretense that we can cling to what is ours, it’s hard for us to let go of it, to place a part of our heart with someone or something else.

But that is what is being asked of us at the beginning of Lent. In one sense, Lent asks us to renew spiritual disciplines, to fast, give alms, pray. Lent invites us to action and mindfulness. Lent invites us to give of ourselves in service of God and neighbor. And there is room tonight for that kind of offering. You can offer financial resources or ponder what else you metaphorically put into the basket as it is passed. The choir will at that time continue their offering of the beautiful setting of Psalm 51 that began tonight’s service. All of us might consider what we have to offer this season, this year, in this time and place. Well and good. But there is more to what is asked of us tonight.

Because tonight you are literally invited to offer your whole self. You are invited forward to receive ashes in the form of a cross marked on your brow. You are invited to come and be told that you will die: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” You are invited to carry your whole self forward in this holy space and offer it to be marked for death, to present your mortal flesh as an offering.

As challenging as it is for us, we might also pause to wonder what God wants with such an offering. Because before we come forward to offer ourselves we pause not to name what a good offering we are, but to name the places we have failed: our pride, envy, hypocrisy, and apathy; our self-indulgence; our negligence in prayer; our neglect of human need and suffering; our waste and pollution of creation. We have already heard Jesus’ reminder to all of us that we even turn spiritual disciplines like prayer, the giving of alms, and fasting into opportunities for self-promotion and pride. We name that we cannot save ourselves, that our human limitation prevents us from saving the world in all its terribleness and prevents us from enjoying the world in all its splendor. The very action of offering ourselves for the imposition of ashes names that we, like our treasures on earth, are frail and ephemeral.

And yet God welcomes such an offering. And whether we want to or not, whether we come forward tonight for ashes or not, all of us sooner or later are forced to make such an offering, to commend our whole selves back to God, presenting our whole lives as an offering to the one who formed us from the dust in the first place.

But this is not an offering to be divided up and given away but rather tonight this offer of yourself to be marked with ashes is a commending of our broken bodies and hearts to the only one who has the power to heal them. A commending of our whole beings to the great healer in a recognition that we cannot, at the deepest most fundamental level, heal ourselves or one another. So God gathers us up, imperfect offerings that we are, and forms us anew into resurrected dust and makes us into the glorious kingdom of God.

As you come forward tonight to hear what are so often challenging and difficult words, as you feel the grittiness of mortality rub against your brow, may you also recognize the power of God’s having put divine and holy treasure in the dust of the earth, of God’s having poured the blessing and life of the Spirit into your mortal body. And with it God places God’s very heart in you. So come, offer your treasure to the one who shapes those ashes into something more than death, into the shape of the cross, the paradoxical sign of a resurrection life to come. And know in the power of tonights truth-telling about sin and death, that having our whole broken, mortal selves claimed by God in such a way, we are finally, truly set free to be fully alive.

 

Transfiguration of Our Lord 
Sunday, February 26, 2017

Today’s sermon is by guest preacher Lorraine Peterson, a local chaplain:

Sunday, February 19
7th Sunday after Epiphany

Listen to today’s sermon:

[Jesus said to the disciples:] 38“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ 39But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; 40and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; 41and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. 42Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.
  43“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. 46For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? 47And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? 48Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” – Matthew 5:38-48

See also the first reading: Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18

Today I’m going to offer you some very bad advice.

You have heard it said, pick up a few of the most requested items for the food pantry when you do your weekly grocery shopping. But I say to you, give away the food you were planning to eat for dinner tonight.

You have heard it said, if you can’t say anything nice don’t say anything at all. But I say to you, put your reputation and safety at risk to stand up to those who tear down with lies and hate and prejudice.

You have heard it said, welcome the carefully vetted refugees in reasonable numbers who are likely to work hard and contribute to the economy. Prioritize for deportation only the criminals. But I say to you, risk your political, economic, and physical safety by throwing open your door to everyone – everyone – who knocks.

You have heard it said, give criminals reasonable sentences for their crimes. But I say to you, practice radical forgiveness and set them free.

You have heard it said, don’t discriminate based on race or gender or any other ism. But I say to you, give up your place of power and hand over your privilege to the one who has not been given it in society.

You have heard it said, it’s ok to hate the people who stand for injustice, prejudice and hatred. But I say to you, love those people, too. Make yourself vulnerable to them. Open your heart to them.

You have heard it said, just do right and be good, but I say to you, give yourself up for the kingdom of God. This is terrible advice.

Our first reading and the other elements of Mosaic and cultural teaching that Jesus references in today’s gospel all point to how to live in a just society. Leave a little extra so the poor can get by. Don’t swear falsely, lie, cheat, steal, et cetera. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth? That’s the law’s way of saying don’t escalate the violence. Don’t take a life for an eye, or a life for tooth. Don’t give in to your desire for disproportionate revenge. And love your neighbor broadly speaking.

If you follow the law and its vision of a society of mutual aid and support you’ll get along just fine. Take what you need, give what you can. Do simple kindnesses for one another. Avoid violence, physical and verbal. If we could do that much at least, if everyone did that we’d be so far ahead of where we are right now I can’t even imagine it.

Now I don’t know if Jesus missed the memo or what, but we haven’t managed to do that much successfully as of yet. So I’m not sure where he gets the idea that we are ready for going beyond it. The law limits disproportionate responses and asks us to share our excess. We haven’t yet mastered that, but Jesus is asking us now us to dole out not just what is fair but to share more than what is reasonable, more than we have to give, to show disproportionate mercy.

This is Christian discipleship in a nutshell, according to Jesus, give yourself away until there is nothing left. Someone wants your coat? Give them the rest of your outfit, too. Someone wants to strike you on one side of your face? Line up the other side for a punch, as well. An enemy wants to destroy you? Love them – real love – become vulnerable, open your heart to them and wait to see if they tear it to pieces.

Let me say this again: this is terrible advice. If your therapist gives you this kind of advice, get a new one. If your politicians campaign on this, don’t vote for them. If your businesses run this way, don’t bother investing your money in stocks. If your pastor gives you this kind of advice…well…I’m afraid to finish that sentence.

Because when you follow this advice, you have nothing left. No house, no food, no clothes. No church building or budget or program. No part of your body left unbruised. If you have that much trust in God, that you can give every last shred of yourself away, you have more faith than I do.

Now, I always have to pause with this text because it has been used to justify and prolong abuse and oppression. Jesus isn’t asking us to put up with control, abuse, or pain. This is not a justification from Jesus for the ones doing the hitting, the ones doing the stealing, or the ones doing the controlling. For those who are oppressed and abused, the giving away of your whole self might look like you mustering every last ounce of courage to get to a safe place. Loving your enemy might look like naming publicly their oppression, prejudice, and violence for what it is, bringing them and their evils to the light. Or turning the other cheek simply might mean surviving each day one after another, in the face of what you cannot in the moment escape.

But oh what power those things have in the face of evil. Goodness is stronger than evil, love stronger than hate, light stronger than darkness, life stronger than death. Unquestioning mercy, unquestioning generosity, unquestioning welcome: these have a power beyond what is human. The kind of everything-in discipleship that Jesus demands holds a strange and frightening power over the evil within us and the evil around us. But don’t be fooled, nonviolent resistance, self-protection, survival – that also demands every last bit of yourself. Confronting the powers within and around us – the power of hunger, pain, poverty, disease, racism, xenophobia, the power of greed, anger, and the status quo – confronting that demands everything we have.

We are called to give it all away, to live in such utter trust in God that we are willing to let everything go. Called to find ourselves in that place where we have nothing left to do but fall into God’s loving embrace for us and all creation. Jesus is not offering nice Christianity, but inviting us to follow the way of Jesus to the cross and tomb, where everything is stripped away and we have nothing left. And it is there in the emptiness that we find Jesus. When we reach our limit, when we are unable or unwilling to give any more of ourselves away, it is there that we find Jesus living up to his own words. When we reach the limit of our generosity, when we cannot bear to turn the other cheek, when we cannot muster any more love for the enemy, when we simply fail to give away ourselves, our time, and our possessions, we find there Jesus walking our way, welcoming us not with proportional justice, not with an eye for an eye, not with what is right and fair, but with the very same disproportionate mercy that has been asked of us. When we turn back from our self-destruction and violence or when we confess our failure, we find not an angry enemy, but words of gracious and unconditional pardon. When we have given away our food that others may eat and when we have failed to feed the hungry ones, we find on God’s table not the remnants left from an abundant harvest, but the finest bread and wine, the flesh of God given up for us.

We fail to trust that we will be ok when we have nothing left to give, yet we live cradled by a God who trusts that it’s ok for God to give everything for us. We rest in a God who gives up God’s very self for us. We rest in a God who loves past our hate, who stands firm beyond our violence, who gives abundance beyond our deserving.

You have heard it said that God loves and cares for you, and that would be more than enough to get us through this life if we could manage to put our trust fully in that reality. But I say to you that God literally gives up heaven and earth for your sake, and that, dear sisters and brothers in Christ, is enough to raise us from the dead.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Sunday, February 12, 2017
6th Sunday after Epiphany

A note about today’s text: We use texts from the ecumenical Revised Common Lectionary, assigned for each Sunday. Sometimes those texts seem particularly challenging to wrestle with. Today’s assigned gospel reading tackles some tough topics – violence, anger, adultery, divorce, etc – and comes to us in the 21st century in 1st century language. These texts are part of our scriptures, and as such we are called to wrestle with their gift and challenge, we try our best to do so in the larger context of God’s grace and welcome for all people and in light of a God who forgives and renews no matter what brokenness enters our lives.

Listen to audio of today’s gospel reading and sermon:

[Jesus said to the disciples:] 21“You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ 22But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire. 23So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, 24leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift. 25Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are on the way to court with him, or your accuser may hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. 26Truly I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.
  27“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ 28But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 29If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. 30And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into hell.
  31“It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ 32But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.
  33“Again, you have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to the Lord.’ 34But I say to you, Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, 35or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. 36And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. 37Let your word be ‘Yes, Yes’ or ‘No, No’; anything more than this comes from the evil one.” – Matthew 5:21-37

One of the most annoying things in the world has to be getting caught in an unseen spider web. Out for a nice early morning walk in the woods, you know you’re the first one out when you find yourself every few hundred yards violently swatting at the invisible sticky strands of spider silk, appearing to anyone else as someone ineffectively fighting an imaginary attacker. Tangled in a trap you weren’t expecting, one you didn’t think was even meant for you but one that seems to stick with you longer than it should. A trap that won’t seem to let go of you…not unlike our gospel reading this morning.

For those of us who are figuratively out for a lovely morning stroll in the woods, content that we more or less mostly avoiding the major pitfalls of the ten commandments – no murder, no adultery, no swearing falsely, Jesus quickly manages to catch each of us in a trap. I think this reading tends to bother us so much, not because it names sins that have a particular stigma but because it casts the net so wide that not one of us walks away without getting a reprimand, without getting reminded that we regularly fail to live up to Jesus’ standards. Anger, resentment, lust, broken relationships, and subtle lies and deceptions. It’s as if Jesus is describing here what it means to be human. And we don’t like it. The accusations stick with us, get under our skin, bother us, because we know we’re trapped. We just want to get rid of the accusations that stick to us. Jesus isn’t talking about the other people, the bad people, them. Jesus is talking about us. Telling us to cut out an eye or cut off a hand. Throwing us in prison. Telling us that hell awaits.

And Jesus is right. Eternal destiny aside, we live in a hellish prison of our own making where our daily actions threaten our own lives and those of our neighbors. We are stuck together in a complicated web of relationships, and none of them is perfect. We are stuck together, with other imperfect people sometimes fighting those ties, frustrated at our own and others’ imperfections. We are people in the midst of an extremely polarized political situation, who perhaps come today refusing to consider any kind of reconciliation with our neighbors who are different. We are people who, in the words of the first reading, fail to choose life for ourselves and for others. We who thought we were doing a pretty good job of following Jesus.

Preacher Karoline Lewis says this so clearly, that I want to quote her at length here: “In this section of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus insists that life is threatened when anger and judgment and insult reign. Life is threatened when women are objectified, merely fulfillment of sexual desire or the carrying on the family name. Women, Jesus insists, are not culture’s for the taking. Life is threatened when women are consistently reduced, even discarded, based on their capacity to satisfy privileged and patriarchal needs and their capacity to bear children. Life is threatened when you do not follow through with oaths you make.

“In other words, Jesus is saying that interpreting the law is far more complex than you make it out to be. And if your interpretations lead to death — the silence of voices, the discounting of the personhood of the other, the disrespect and demeaning of entire groups of people, the labeling (which is a nice way to say calling names) thereby putting people in their place — then you have to think long and hard about what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.”

That’s the essence of this trap. That it makes us think long and hard about what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. What does it mean to engage the tangled web of relationships in such a way that every last person is honored not only in action but in thought, too? Is that even possible? It’s a high calling from a God who deeply values our human relationships with one another. We who tend to think of ourselves as managing pretty well, are caught just as much as anyone else in this mess.

But trapping us isn’t what Jesus is ultimately about. Nor is the Jesus who has just in the previous paragraphs named us blessed and beloved, salt and light for the world, actually asking us to cut limbs and gouge out eyes today. But Jesus is acknowledging that we are trapped in a web of imperfect relationships with imperfect people where we end up angry, lusting, harboring resentment, lying to get our way. Acknowledging, it needs to be said, that divorce is painful even when it is the best or only option available, and that all parties should be cared for when that is the case.

It seems to me that God could try to disentangle us from the web, in a sense dismantling our community. Or that God could sweep the whole web out of existence. But instead Jesus chooses a third option to join us on our walk, to get tangled up in that crazy complicated web of relationships with us. We confess this every week in our creed – that God becomes flesh for us. Jesus enters our human sphere to become a recipient of our misdirected love, our anger turned to violence, our false accusations, all the way to the cross and back again. This same Jesus who warns of the terrible mess we make of things, who warns of hell itself, descends, we confess in that same creed, to our hell and death to raise it up, to name us holy and beloved in the midst of our hellishly violent world. The trap he lays out for us is one he knowingly enters himself to get our messy web of anger, lust, and lies stuck on him.

That’s what makes our understanding of community different in the church. As we gather today after worship in our annual meeting to celebrate our ministry together and to make decisions together about moving forward, we gather as an imperfect community. We don’t always agree, we don’t always live up to our best selves, we don’t always get it right, but we believe that Christ is somehow tangled up in this imperfect community, and that begins to transform our imperfect efforts into a church that proclaims good news and the promise of hope and resurrection, transforms our work into God’s work for the sake of a broken and hurting world.

And so we approach this table, not always fully repentant, not always having resolved our differences with one another, not always seeing the vision that God has in mind, but seeking God’s offer of life for us here, an offer of life that sticks with us despite our occasional efforts to fight it off. So come and be nourished, you who are stuck in a complicated and broken world, that you may know God’s sticking with you and God’s work of making you whole again.

-Pastor Steven Wilco