World Communion Sunday

Call to the Table

God of our grandmothers and mothers,

of Eve and Sarah, Miriam and Hanna,

Mary and Martha, Mother Mary and Mary

of Magdala, of Lois and Eunice

we come to your table today,

World Communion Sunday

in this season of repentance

   of leaves turning colors

  of pomegranates bursting with seeds

to celebrate your love poured out for us

our trust rekindled

You call us to stand

at your watchtowers

to wait for Your vision

You call us to put on our aprons

and serve You first

Lord of the open and expanding table

we come to give up

    our appetites for power

    our thirst for revenge

    our addictions to despair

    our shame about suffering

we come empty handed

hands out to receive You

Lord of the open and expanding table

we come to partake

of your body broken

your spirit living

   in this bread.

We come to drink

from the cup of blessing

your blood, your love

given for us

Lord of the Feast

we remember today

our ancestors in faith

our Jewish and Christian

grandfathers and fathers

our Jewish and Christian

grandmothers and mothers

we come to celebrate our heritage

the ties that bind us

  generation to generation

  one to each other

Lord of today and tomorrow

we live between memory and hope

for your kin-dom come

here on earth as it is in heaven

  feed us

  rekindle Your light in us

  to be your faithful servants

  your seeds of transformation

Wounds and All: Out of the Rubble Pile We Are Called

Isaiah 58: 9b-14; Luke 13:10-17

Saint Andrews Scotts Memorial Church

Jerusalem

August 21, 2016

All who reverence and honor the Beloved,

are nourished and held by Love.

For you, O Healer, invite us to

wholeness, to be

co-creators along Love’s Way

Psalm 102 translated by Nan Merrill

 I have a confession. I am the Bent Woman. Literally. In 1999 I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and spent the year bent over in pain. When I wasn’t confined to my bed contemplating what had happened or measuring my energy in teaspoons, I was railing against God for the betrayal of my own body.

     In desperation one day I went to a psychic who told me two things. The first was that she saw me as some kind of minister or healer. I laughed. I was in exquisite pain. How could this be? Also I was not a religious person. I had issues with organized religion and liked to sit in the back so I could escape if I needed to. A minister? Really?

     Now the second thing seemed more helpful, practical. She suggested I have energy work done. She suggested I go and see a friend of hers who was a Reiki Master.

     I left thinking I wasted my money but that I would follow up on the suggestion to see the energy healer. This seemed useful. I went and immediately found relief from the pain and a warm sense of calm and tranquility. I could move again and I could think of other things other than being a sick person.

     I went back a few times and then discovered I could take a class and learn how to heal myself and others. So for about a year I attended the weekly healing circle. I came in the door bent over hardly able to look people in the eye and left walking tall and pain free. I eventually became Mary’s apprentice and within a year a Reiki Master myself. People in the church heard about my “hot hands” and asked if I would sit with them and lay my hands on them.

     Then I started to be asked to work on people who were dying or in hospice care. The church recognized I was being called by God to do healing work. I resisted. I was an intellectual----a word person. How could I do something that used no words, only touch and wasn’t I still unwell myself?

     These questions persisted right up to my visit to Andover Newton Theological School for a weekend for perspective students.  With pennies in my pocket I traveled from North Carolina to Massachusetts to check out first Harvard and then Andover Newton. One of the professors at Harvard said, “You are smart enough to get in here but I don’t think you would be happy here. You see we study people like you. We are interested in knowing about the healing process that you are doing.”

     Yes, I was doing it and I was well most of the time too. So when I went to visit Andover Newton I wrestled with God about whether this indeed was where I should be; was I really called to be a minister after all like the psychic said?  Then two things happened. First I found they had a Reiki ministry complete with a massage table in a quiet tranquil room in the Center for Faith, Health and Spirituality. I saw the table and lay down on it like I had done many times before and said to the One who had pushed me there, “Ok. You win. Take me. But you are going to have to do some things to make this happen beginning with money; I don’t have en0ugh to attend four years of school. If you want me to be your instrument of healing, you are going to have to make this happen.

     I was pretty convinced that my wager, my deal, was not going to work even though I well aware that God was capable of great things like saving the Israelites at the Red Sea. I still wasn’t convinced God needed me however until I went to the chapel on the last day and we sang the hymn, Here I am Lord, broke into tears; a combination of tears of joy and terror actually. Later that evening I found out my Aunt had died and left my siblings and me a pile of money. God had come through on his end of the bargain and now I had to come through on my mine, be Christ’s healing hands.

     So this is how I was healed and saved and how I was called into ministry. It’s an ancient story. She was healed and went out and told everyone.

     The story of The Bent Woman then is my Call story. I am not a fisherman. I didn’t drop my nets but rather got healed and rose up and became a wounded healer. I learned a thing or two however like she did looking at the ground all those years. I learned how awful it is to be dependent on others for the most basic things. I learned how to ask for help and most importantly I learned how to receive help and healing touch. I learned how to live “on a slant” so I could appreciate what it means to stand tall. I learned how to be compassionate first with my own human frail self. I learned that we are all wounded and that when you give energy to another that same energy will heal you---to give is to receive. I learned how to be a wounded healer.

     At first I understood the call to be about physical healing so I set out to be a hospital chaplain, in particular a hospice chaplain.

     So I went to Andover to follow my call to become a chaplain however I started school on September 11^th. God tricked me. My call wasn’t just to heal broken bodies but a broken world. I was called like you are to Tikum Olam, the repair and mending of the world.

    At the end of my Masters in Divinity study at a meeting with my advisor and other professors I was asked about my ministry plans. I explained I felt pulled in two directions---the pastoral and the prophetic. The my wise advisor quoted this passage from Isaiah 58 to me and said, “You are being called to walk in the gap between the two, to bring them back together. You are being called to be a repairer of the breach.”

    So as you can see I do not consider it a coincidence that these two lectionary passages have come up today for me to preach on.  They speak directly to my life story and I suspect maybe yours. The repair and mending of the world, beginning with ourselves, is everyone’s calling. How it plays out in your life is unique.

     Towards helping you think deeper about how this might be, let me offer you some questions for reflection beginning with our Gospel story. I invite you to reflect on your own bent life.

     What are the things that are bending you over? Is it grief or loss? Worry or anxiety? Doubt or fear? Loneliness or over stretched?

     The Bent woman does not ask for healing but she does step forward. I invite you to step forward today and present to God all those things that are making you live your life on a slant; all those things that are keeping you from meeting people eye to eye or rising to your full dignity.

     When were you so bent over that God had to reach out to you, lay hands on you for healing? Where were you? Who were you with? How did you celebrate the event? What promises or commitments did you make?

     Sometimes we stay in our ruts, our routines, with our known pains and struggles because to move forward might bring risks or even conflicts. Jesus had to go against the Sabbath laws to heal. What laws or constrictions are holding you down or back?

     “God’s creation healed” is what theologian Hans Kung calls God’s kin-dom.  And if this is be a reality here on earth as it is in heaven then God needs us to be co-creators. And one of the tasks of co-creation is to be repairers of the breach. We are all called to rebuild, mend, restore, and repair not just our cities but our moral infrastructures or values too. With this understanding, I invite you then to reflect on these questions:

     What are the breaches in your life that need repair? In the Message the translation reads, “You’ll use the old rubble of past lives to build anew, rebuild the foundations from out of your past.” What is in your rubble pile that you can use to repair the breaches in your personal life or community? Like the wounded healer what past hurts or pains can become tools of restoration?

     What infrastructures or morals are you working on? Where is your spiritual support coming from?

     When we are no longer bent over by the pain of our lives, we will rise. But do not forget the lessons learned from looking at that small piece of ground---the kindness of others who bent down to meet you and greet you eye to eye. Do not forget the wisdom in your wounds. Remember that He rose with wounds and all.

     When we have returned from exile, forced or self imposed, we are commanded to repair and mend the world, God’s world, to participate in the reconstruction process. Do not forget that you have the materials in the rubble of your own past. Remember that you are not the Master builder but one of the workers. Do not expect to finish or complete the work but find joy in the process and companionship along the way.

    And finally remember that God saves and heals us daily, sometimes hourly because God loves us. God wants us whole, to stand tall and live lives in harmony with all of creation. 

     This is the call, dear ones, let us go forth with humility and strength knowing this is our collective task to repair and mend the world. Amen.

Rich Towards God: Bless, Break, and Give Away

Luke 12:13-21

Holy Redeemer Lutheran Church

Jerusalem

July 31, 2016

     The Bible starts with a liturgy of abundance says theologian Walter Brueggermann. Genesis 1 is a song of praise for God’s generosity. God blesses and endows. All is good. All is good. Even in the desert God’s love comes down as manna, a gift of heaven, a miracle feeding. Everyone had enough until some started to hoard. Later in the Gospel story about loaves and fishes, Jesus too performed a miracle feeding; he blessed, broke, and gave the bread away. 5,000 were fed and 12 baskets left over. More than enough. All was good. Jesus that “brown-skinned Palestinian Jew”, as Rev. Barber referred to him the other night at the Democratic National Convention, came for the hungry, the poor, the sick, the widow, the orphan, and all unacceptable or marginalized others. He came to remind us of about our origins and original blessing of goodness and abundance. That first Eucharist of loaves and fishes is the model we are called to participate in as receivers and as givers: bless, break, and give away. This is sacramental living; for all is God’s and all is to be shared.

     Brueggermann believes that the central problem in our lives is that we are torn apart by the conflict between our attraction to God’s abundance and the power of our belief in scarcity and that this belief makes us anxious, greedy, mean, and un-neighborly. He says we spend our lives trying to sort out this ambiguity. Or we don’t.

     Many of us live into this myth of scarcity and claim it as our Gospel like that billionaire John D. Rockefeller who believed we are born to consume. “We are not enough if we don’t produce, consume, and store a surplus of money and stuff. The more you have, the better your life will be. You can’t have too much.” Sounds like our Rich Fool does it not church?

     But this is not what Jesus believes, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” Or as it is translated in the Message, “Life is not defined by what you have, even when you have a lot.”

     To illustrate his point to or to make sure his disciples understood he told them a story about a farmer who produced a big crop, so big he didn’t know what to do with his surplus. After talking to himself he decided that he would build a bigger barn to store his excess a harvest.

     Now I wish to pause here in the story and talk about excess and greed. And I would to illustrate this point by doing a small demonstration with my Pythagoras cup that I bought in Crete a few years ago. As you can see it looks like any other clay cup from the outside but inside it has a column that has a special function. Let me demonstrate. I am going to pour the water up to the line and then past that line.   

     When you go past the line all the water comes out. When we go past our limit of what is necessary or just we lose it all. So this farmer, so absorbed in himself, so self-satisfied with his own accomplishments he decided to go past this line, “I will build bigger barns.” Then God stepped in to remind him of that final line, death. Yes God, who rarely speaks in the Gospel stories says, “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be? So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God” or “That’s what happens when you fill your barn with self and are not rich towards God.”

     Last year at the beginning of August a Turkish couple spent their wedding day feeding 4,000 Syrian refugees. They decided that instead of feeding their well fed family and friends they would feed the victims of the civil war next door. Is this not a modern enactment of the loaves and fishes? Is this not being rich towards God?

     Pastor Steve Craig says the Rich Fool was impoverished, not rich, on a variety of levels. The first is a poverty of gratitude to God for the success he has in his life. The second is a poverty of relationships because he doesn’t seem to have a community to discuss this important decision around what to do with his surplus. Third is a poverty of vision because he doesn’t know how to see beyond himself into the future. And lastly, he has a poverty of generosity because he doesn’t know how to share. This Rich Fool has bought into the scarcity myth. He must also be Rockefeller’s inspiration.

     Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. also preached on this parable and like Pastor Craig sees that this Rich Fool is not just greedy but also lacking in judgment. “He allowed the means by which he lived to out distance the ends for which he lived.” King believes each of us has two realms--- within and without. The within realm is our spiritual nature expressed in art, literature, religion, and morals. The without realm is our physical reality expressed by our house, our clothes, our money.  This man was “a fool because he maximized the minimum and minimized the maximum.” He became so involved with the means by which he lived he couldn’t extend himself beyond that world. He had lost touch with his within realm. I think Pastor Craig might categorize this under his poverty of vision.

     And because King believed we are tied together in a interconnected universe or garment of destiny this man is a fool because he failed to realize his dependence on others; he lost the capacity to say “we” and “our” and could only say “I” and “my.” He forgot that his wealth is the result of the commonwealth. And finally, he failed to realize his dependence on God and acted like he was the creator of his good fortune.

     I find both of these frameworks illuminating in helping us move beyond a story about the dangers of greed. But these frameworks don’t leave me with a place to go with the story because I don’t really identify with the Rich Man. I don’t see myself having enough to save or hoard and like you I try to share what I do have.

     However I do see people building bigger and bigger barns by destroying our natural living systems to get quick energy fixes instead of sharing resources or developing cleaner more green friendly systems. I see my country consumed by moneyed interests and scandals, which are corrupting our democracy. And I see there and here an escalation in the use of violence, whole barns full of new missiles, surveillance equipment, and “crowd control” weapons. And sadly I see water resources stolen and contaminated here and there, not shared. And I see barns full of new settlements and displaced families standing in rubble heaps which used to be their homes. I see religion used as a silo for those within the flock and the expulsion of others. I see barns full of materials for building walls instead of bridges. I see barns full of keys for the wealthy 1% and trunks full of keys for refugees who are still waiting to return.

     What kind of barns do you see church? And to get personal for a moment, what is in your barn that you have been saving or not sharing? Do you really believe there is and will be enough?

     How are you living rich toward God? What songs of praise do you sing and when? What threads of interdependence are part of your garment of destiny? And when you act foolishly, as we all do, how do you bring yourself back to the center so that you can find that line again or stop building more barns?

     And finally, where and with whom are you blessing and breaking bread? Who are you feeding with your one special life?

“

You a Banquet

                

For Colette

Fetal cells cross the placenta

      both ways       

   

My cells and his created

 the unique person

you are

     have always been

                                     more than the sum of both of us.

And now we know

your cells swim

     in my blood     my kidneys        my liver

     in my freckled skin

Just as you have my smile

I have you deep

in my marrow

we share life

           

So on this Mother’s Day

I celebrate you

    My beautiful baby    

    My smart girl     

    Accomplished woman

          and soon bride to be

I celebrate you

     my banquet

                   of joy

                              that feeds me now

                                                        

Refrigerators in Trees

  For BBS

You are finally inside my ring of fire

where my Juan de Fuca plate is

heating up. It is stuck on

your oceanic plate. You are

sliding deep beneath

     making me melt.

You have felt me quake

several times, noted how I made

everything move, lose its bearings,

         even your heart stuck

             on the past

                    glued back together by rage and pills.

So come

dear one, read and touch

      my seafloor.

Count the number and size

of deposits since the last big one.

        Are you seismically prepared?

Do you have early your warning

system in tact? Listen for

the dogs barking a slow

rhythmic howl, feel the surface waves

move us up and

   down, side to side, shaking and

            shattering everything including

                  your bandaged up heart.

Six minutes after the barking

the shaking will subside, everything

     will be upended but

not finished. Then

the wave will come.

       Get yourself to high ground

No time for flashlights even

a kiss on the cheek, follow

the evacuation route

      if you have one.

The tsunami will rise up

from the surface of my sea,

    a deluge of water

drowning or lifting

      everything

will be found in a new location

like refrigerators in trees.

So become bidirectional,

dear one, look deep

    into your past,

count the rings on the trees

of your own ghost forest,

plan for the future

     where we get stuck

on each other. Secure yourself

with something stronger than

glue, medicine, or even anger.

Escape or weather it out

moored to me.