Day 1: "It is what it is"

I left snowy Seattle for cloudy and rainy San Diego on February 9th. Over this same weekend 50 Haitian refugees including one new mother and her day year old child were removed from the detention center and dropped into the streets of downtown San Diego with no money yet all knew where they could find shelter, a temporary home, Safe Harbors in the North Park neighborhood. Some I was told come with the address printed on their arms.

Haitians in San Diego? How did this happen? Why are they coming through Tijuana? In 2016 over 5,000 Haitians entered the US legally through the San Ysidro--Tijuana border crossing between Mexico and San Diego after making a 7,000 mile trek from Brazil.

Their journey began shorting after the horrific 2010 earthquake that displaced over 1.5 million people and claiming more than 200,000 lives. The story goes that Brazil had low unemployment and needed laborers to build stadiums for the Olympics so brought or enticed Haitians to go to Brazil and work as construction workers. The workers were allowed to stay and work for a few years until a new more conservative government came to power and employment rates went up. Without work they migrated from Brazil to the border where they sought to enter the US legally with "humanitarian visas" which would allow them to enter and stay with Temporary Protected Status.

The Haitian community all knew the famous Gospel musician Rev. Jean Elise Durandisse who had sought asylum for political persecution and was welcomed by Pastor Bill as part of Christ's family.  Rev. Jean now has a small but vibrant church at Christ Ministry Center where Safe Harbors is located. Thus, the Haitian community knew that they would be welcome no matter what time of day or night.

Rev. Jean Elise Durandisse

The well known but not publicized policy is that the detention centers try to release women and children because they know there is a network who will take care of them. So they dump them in the streets and trust everyone will fend for themselves or find the church doors open. Imagine, however, the magical thinking that a Border Patrol Agent must use to think that it is morally OK  to abandon a mother who just gave birth.  A few days ago I was told by a woman whose husband is a Border Patrol agent that they believe because California is a Sanctuary State that they must take care of these asylum seekers and refugees. Another said without sarcasm, "They can join the homeless in the streets" as if that was normal.

For those of you who don't know international humanitarian law, refugees and asylum seekers are supposed to be housed or released to homes where they have family until their cases come up. The back load is about 2 years. In other words the Federal Government has a responsibility to take care of these people. In this current anti-immigrant climate they know no one will go after them for breaking the law and equally important they know the churches and their network will take care of them and they do.

The emergency staff meeting began with a quick debriefing of who was doing what to care for the new guests. The second agenda item was an emergency of another kind. The Fire Marshall came and wrote a report with many violations which must be taken care of immediately or else they would close the building. The rest of the meeting was figuring out who was going to do what. Nobody wants the church to close including the Fire Marshall.

This meeting was followed by a strategy meeting with a PR group who have been contracted to help Safe Harbors bring in more funds to do the important work they are doing and pay for these structural changes so the building is safe and sustainable.

The day ended with a meeting of an Immigrant Rights Coalition to report on the work each group is doing and then to elect new members to their Board. I was impressed by the energy and dedication and by the diversity in the room which included women and young people in leadership positions.

It was a full day. I realized as I went to sleep in my own temporary shelter that I was glad I had chaplaincy training for how to operate in an emergency and that I had a lot to learn from those living and working in these borderlands. My sleepy whispered prayer was that God would find a way to use my  experience and gifts to strengthen and extend this important work.

Prayer for Refugees

Creator God,
open our eyes so we can see you in the eyes of our refugee

sisters and brothers, eyes downcast
for having lived so long

in the shadows of violence and dank detention cells,
eyes lifted looking for
    the Christ light in us.

Refugee God,
whose family fled to Egypt to escape Herod's genocide
unclench our fisted hearts
so we may extend our arms

    to give your welcome.

Compassionate God,
who has come to dwell among us,
open our ears to hear the cries of your children,

being pulled from their parents,
led to tent cities, 

caged
or sold into adoption
    move us beyond tears.

God of Justice,
who crosses all boundaries,
give us courage to resist,

to say NO 

to all that legislates injustice

breaks international laws

robs people of their dignity

drops them on a city side walk without

   food or family.

Give us the strength to stand 

for your inclusive love,
which knows no boundaries.
Strengthen our faith to believe,
another world is necessary
    and possible and begins with us.

Fall In, or Let Go of the Nets

Jonah 3:10; Mark 1:14-20

Saint Andrews on the Galilee 

January 21,2018

“If you become a fish in a trout stream, said his mother,

I will become a fisherman and I will fish for you.”

     This is my call story plain and simple. It is also one of the stories in Margaret Wise Brown’s children’s book, The Runaway Bunny which I read to my daughter Colette, religiously alternating with Brown’s other book, Good Night Moon. Both books allow for imaginative add- ons like “ Good night dust under my bed”, and “If you become a mouse, I will become a piece of cheese so I can live inside you.” These are the ones I can remember.

     God’s call is like this, both inescapable and strangely comforting. Our lectionary readings this evening are good illustrations of God’s insistent and persistent call for us. After all we have been named already as God’s Beloveds. However, I am not sure comforting is the word either Jonah or the fishermen would use to describe this call to become part of God’s redemptive plans.

     This is especially true for that reluctant prophet Jonah. In the Book of Jonah, the shortest book in the Bible, Jonah’s choice is to redeem a reviled people or drown. Jonah is remarkable among the prophets because his resistance to proclaiming the word of Lord comes from not wanting to let go of his righteous anger at the people of Nineveh because they were his enemies; they had destroyed his people He was worried that if he went to preach repentance that God might indeed forgive them. He feared he would succeed and his enemies would be saved.

    So because he thought he could escape God (like the runaway bunny) he ran to Joppa (Jaffa) and bought a ticket on a boat to Tarshish ( a city in Spain), as far away as possible from Nineveh (modern day Mosul in Iraq). He thought God was limited to his tribe, his land, and wouldn’t find him.

     Once on board the ship, a big storm blew up frightening all the passengers. They believed that it came because the gods were punishing them for someone’s sin. Jonah confessed he was the one running from his God so he told them to dump him into the violent sea.

    Once in the sea God swallowed him in the guise of a big fish which now most think of as a whale. Jonah was inside the whale for three days until he finally faced the fact there was no escape from God; then he began to sing to God. Three days in the belly of the beast makes Jonah an archetype for Jesus which is one of the reasons Christians love the story of Jonah; this plus the fact that he willingly sacrificed himself by throwing himself overboard.

      Once Jonah repented for running away, the great fish (God?) spit him out. Then God called him a second time to go and preach repentance---our lesson today. This time Jonah obeyed God’s orders and wandered around the evil city of Nineveh repeating, “In 40 days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” And to Jonah’s surprise and dismay, the people listened and turned toward God. They put on sackcloth and fasted, and most importantly had a change of heart.

     Instead of rejoicing, Jonah clung to his fear, to his anger and bitterness, to his prophetic indignity, to his hatred of his enemies. From the beginning to the end, he still couldn’t let go. He didn’t seem to have learned anything from his drowning in the sea nor his three days in the tomb of the whale’s belly.

     Thus far in our story, it is Nineveh, the imperial capital of Assyria, who exercises the freedom of repentance. As theologian Bill Wylie-Kellermann says, “They match the solidarity of sin in violence with the solidarity of freedom in repentance. Here is an ironic tale bigger than the whale. Of course the final freedom is God’s---who also repents of anger in judgment.” We have a God who can repent.

     I would like to interject here an interesting fact, a piece of good news. This year in Nineveh, Mosul, Iraq, Muslims and Christians celebrated Christmas at St. Paul’s Church because IS had finally been driven out. The Muslims helped the Christians rebuild their church in time for the Christmas holidays.

They celebrated their liberation and freedom to worship again by doing it together. Is this not the true sign of Jonah’s blessing? God’s inclusive love made manifest in God’s restored community?

     Back to the story.  Jonah struggled with his call to participate in God’s call for mercy and forgiveness. He struggled to accept a God that lives beyond borders and the land of his tribe; one who chooses to forgive and love even the enemies of his chosen people. Jonah is dumped in the sea to learn a lesson about the nature of God’s universal love and the eternal back and forth relationship between repentance, forgiveness, and love.

    It’s easy to make fun of this reluctant prophet who holds onto his anger like a lifejacket. But are we any different?

     Most of us are prepared to denounce governments who pass laws that protect the rich and rob the poor but are we ready to sacrifice our financial privileges to help create a more equitable economic or social system?

     We might be prepared to denounce companies who profit from other people’s oppression, who are breaking international laws, but are we willing to do without their products? Are we willing to sacrifice? Be banned for our beliefs?

     It’s easy to point out the inhumanity of building a wall that separates families and farmers from their vineyards, and which allows others to steal land that doesn’t belong to them, but are we willing to build bridges between people so all can live together? Like Jonah, are we ready to let go of our indignation and allow repentance and change to really happen?

     I love the story of the Runaway Bunny and Jonah because I think we are all a little afraid of God’s call. And I think we are also strangely comforted that no matter what happens to us including drowning, God will shape shift to find us and hold us even in the belly of a whale. And most importantly, God will give us a second chance.

    This story of Call is so different on the surface from the call of the disciples on the Sea of Galilee, not far from here in Capernaum. In Mark’s Gospel story, the fishermen immediately drop their nets and follow Jesus without a moment’s hesitation. Unlike Jonah holding onto his righteous anger, these exploited fishermen from Capernaum have nothing to lose and everything to gain by joining a movement of resistance. Yes, resistance. This is what Jesus was calling them to do when he says I will make you fish for people. It doesn’t mean to save souls. Jesus knew the prophetic literature of his day and sought to employ it anew. He was summoning these marginalized workers to join him in “Catching some big fish” to restore God’s kin-dom. The fishermen had to drop all their nets---business as usual and the debt systems that enslaved them. They had to cut off everything that tied them to life under Roman Occupation. Letting go was their repentance.

    The call to discipleship, like the prophetic call, demands immediacy. It demands we stop and turn around, lose everything and risk going in a new direction. This is the scandalous freedom of answering the call.

     I invite you this evening in this lovely restored chapel on the Sea of Galilee to ponder for a moment what new direction God might be calling you to follow? I invite you to reflect on what forces might be holding you back from moving forward? What righteous attitudes do you need to let go of in order to participate in God’s economy of grace?

    Just like your baptism, I invite you to fall into the waters of life whether you know how to swim or not. I invite you to allow yourself to drown in God’s all encompassing  turbulent love, to even allow yourself to be swallowed up. I invite you to let go of all those tangled nets and say yes to God’s redemptive plan. Answering this call will cost you everything.

     I leave you with Jonah’s Blessing from Jan L. Richardson:

It comes as a small surprise

that you would turn your back

on this blessing

that you would run

far from the direction

in which it calls.

That you would try

to put an ocean

between yourself

and what it asks.

Something in you knows

this blessing could

swallow you whole

no matter which way

you turn.

Hard to believe, then,

that every line of this blessing

swims in grace----

grace that in the end,

even you

will find hard to fathom

so swiftly does it come

and with such completeness

encompassing all

it finds.

Go Get Soaked

Mark 1:4-11

Saint Andrews Scots Memorial Church

Jerusalem

January 7,2018

 Don’t mind the mud

A certain drowning is required as Breath

From above is delivered on the wings of a dove.

The Baptizer’s bargain is this:

There’s no getting right with God.

There’s only getting soaked.

From Ken Sehested, The Baptizer’s Bargain

     It’s the first Sunday in Epiphany, the manifestation of the light.  In the Orthodox tradition this manifestation is the birth of Jesus. They are celebrating Christmas today for this reason. In our tradition we have two celebrations. One is the arrival of the Wise Ones from the East who followed a star and then took another way home to avoid the violence of Herod. And the other celebration is the baptism of Jesus on the banks of the Jordan River. In addition, Epiphany is also the anniversary of my ordination, 14 years in ministry.

     All of these events are manifestations of God’s light, God’s first gift. They are manifestations of God’s love for us as God seeks to be with us, lead us, and guide us.

            The story of John the Baptist turns up in our lectionary at least three times a year: first in Advent, as the one preparing the way; second in Epiphany, as the one Jesus will apprentice himself with; and third in Lent, as the one who prepares Jesus for his desert time.

    Wildman John, Elizabeth’s child who recognized Jesus while still in the womb lives outside the Temples of Jerusalem preaching the need for radical change as the first step in liberating oneself from the chains of oppression---personal and political. Locust eating John with honey dripping from his beard is similar to the Green man that appears as an ornament on ecclesiastical buildings as a symbol of rebirth with leaves covering his hair and spewing vegetation from his mouth. Both John and later the Green Man remind us of our primal connections to the earth lest we think sacredness is not of and part of the natural world too.

    However, John is also part of that prophetic genealogy. He belongs with the truth tellers like Isaiah and Elijah who came to challenge imperial dominant powers and principalities. He is executed by Antipas for calling people to radically change the power structures of the world not just themselves.

For this he was beheaded. We are reminded that Jesus came to John also to pick up this prophetic mantle.

   Far away from Jerusalem’s temples, John’s call for repentance takes place on the muddy shores of the Jordan River. It takes place in water because Water is the basis of life. The earth is made up of 70% water and we are made up of 60% water. A ritual immersion in water then is both an act of cleansing or purification and the conference of a new identity. John baptizes with water as a sign of regeneration and transformation.

        Hundreds gathered by the river to be recharged and renewed by this prophet crying in the wilderness, preparing the way for our Lord.  How ironic then that Jesus comes to him to prepare for his public ministry. Jesus, who has been who knows where for almost three decades, discerning and preparing, needs something to get him going.  He is ready to begin the work that awaits him but he is not quite ready. He needs something. He needs a river, a ritual. He needs to be recognized. He needs to be called by his true name:

“You are my Son, My Beloved, he hears as the sky tears open and he comes up from the waters, drenched with the Jordan; with you I am well pleased.

     My Beloved. Is there anything sweeter than this? Baptism is an act of inclusion as well as grace. We don’t earn it. We receive it. For some it means we are saved from purgatory in case of death, which is why I performed so many emergency baptisms in the hospital when I was a chaplain. For others, it is a religious rite of inclusion into the faith community, which is why the pastor often carries the baby around the sanctuary so all can offer their blessings of welcome. For others it is the renouncement of sin or the promise to not participate in acts of evil. I once heard an Episcopal priest say to a group of young people contemplating conscientious objection that he was proud to welcome them to his church because it gave him the opportunity to act on his baptism vow, to stand up for the right not to commit murder, to resist evil. His witness to his baptism vow inspired many on that cold February night not to enlist.

     I come to this year’s baptism story of Jesus with all these understandings but also with the awareness this year that this act of immersion into the waters is also a small death, a dying to who we were or what we believed so we can be reborn and become something new. So as we renew our baptism vows today I invite you to spend a few moments in prayer letting go of ideas, beliefs that no longer serve you or which hold you back from being your highest self. Let it go. I also want you to let the word, “You are my beloved daughter or son” echo in your ears and heart. I want you to pay attention to how easy or difficult it is believe you are indeed beloved by God. When you have done this I want to invite you to look around the church today and with your eyes welcome all you see as also God’s beloved ones. I invite you to bring into your circle all those who you struggle with to see their belovedness.

Lastly, I invite you to think about what kind of river you need to dive into to set your beloved self free? 

    And finally as we stand on the hinge of this New Year, I want you to remember that we manifest the light in our own lives when we accept that we are God’s beloveds. I want you also to remember that this love demands that we stand against anyone or anything that denies the belovedness of others. This was Jesus’ mission. The sky was torn apart for God’s voice to be heard. Expect the same. Go get soaked in love.

    

I'll Save You a Seat

Holy Redeemer Lutheran Church
 October 15, 2017
 Matthew 22:1-14

The nurse said he wanted to see me before he was sent home to hospice care. She said he wanted me to come and pray. When I entered the room the morning sun was bathing him and he looked radiant. Smiling, he asked me to pull up a chair like usual. He said, “ We don’t have much time before my wife gets back from the cafeteria. I want you to read Psalm 23; you know the one about the shepherd, the still waters, and the table. I sat down basking in this glow of morning light and a man coming to terms with his own mortality with such grace. After I said, “Amen”, he closed his eyes and said, “ I will save you a seat.”

A bit dumbfounded and not sure what he was referring to I cocked my head and looked at him quizzically. He continued, “ I will save you a seat at that table because I will get there before you. That’s what I wanted to tell you. I appreciate all that you have done for m my wife and me. I am going home today to die soon. “ His eyes were smiling but moist. I teared up in response. I am not only a wounded healer but also a weeper. I cry easily when someone else cries.

We sat there for a while, me holding his wrinkled hand free of the pulled tubes picturing this big table with all kinds of wonderful dishes, trying to see all the people I have known. Who was there? Who wasn’t?

I must have prayed Psalm 23 a few times a day with patients almost as much as the Lord’s Prayer but never had I took it to heart, literally, never had I imagined that I would be invited to sit at that banquet table.

I have thought about the table and feast metaphorically, an open table where everyone is invited just like Jesus’ radical hospitality on earth where all the outcasts were welcomed-- -sinners and saints alike. I have thought about how African Americans sing with such longing about the Welcome Table where they will finally gonna get a seat and how they are gonna tell God how they were treated, how “All of God’s children are gonna sit together, one of these days.”

Like Rabbi Brant Rosen from Chicago I have also thought about my life as a feast, “You set my life before me as a sumptuous banquet.”

I have not, however, been successful in thinking about why my enemies need to be invited. Am I supposed to share my feast with them?

Finally, like the African American Welcome Table where everyone is accepted, I understand the importance of inviting the poor, the disenfranchised. Black Lives Matter and so do the poor at the table of faith. Listen to these lyrics from the Salvadoran hymn, Vamos Todas Al Banquete.

God invites all the poor, 

to this common table by faith, 

where there are no greedy hoarders, 

and no one lacks anything.

God commands us to make this world, 

a table of fraternity, 

working and struggling together,

sharing all the goods and property.

I have always loved the idea of a heavenly banquette which even has good wine according to Isaiah 25:6 but I never quite imagined myself as an invited guest by a man dying of pancreatic cancer.

A few weeks later in the ICU where I was the primary chaplain I went to have a final meeting with a man who had ALS, Lou Gerik’s Disease. His muscles for speaking had deteriorated so he spoke by spelling out words on a cardboard card with a hand written alphabet.

Every time I visited he would spell out, “Can I have some orange juice, please?” He was diabetic and the nurses would not give him OJ. I think he thought I didn’t know that or was a soft touch or both.

On this, our final visit, I talked about moving to Minnesota and that this would be our last time together. I had hoped I said to follow him all the way to the end. I was sorry I couldn’t do this now. He spelled out, “I am crying.” He had lost the muscles to cry.

I told him about how some have found comfort in Psalm 23. He asked me to read the prayer. Afterwards I told him about my visit with the patient dying of cancer who invited me to the table. He spelled out on his worn card, “Can I sit on the other side?” And just as I started to tear up again he spelled out, “And can I finally I get some damn Orange Juice?” And then his eyes blinked for the first time and I laughed out loud, “Yes, you can drink as much damn orange juice as you want.” So now I had two dinner invitations and all the wine and orange juice anyone could ever want.

It is from this perspective that I come to our Gospel text this morning about how the kindom of God is like a wedding banquet. On first reading I don’t know what to make of the violence in the parable. What didn’t make sense to me was the interpretation that God was like this awful violent King or that we should all dress properly so we can be chosen. This didn’t square with my idea of who either Jesus was or what God’s essential character was. He is not a violent tyrant.

Then I discovered Nadia Boltz Weber’s sermon, The Worst Parable Ever. Nadia is a well known Lutheran pastor in the United States. She pastors a church called Saints and Sinners and has written many books based on her inclusive and often hilarious theology and sermons. Nadia’s interpretation of what happens in this parable helped me understand what Jesus was trying to say about what the kin-dom of God was like and also most importantly what it was not like.

Listen to her paraphrase or summary and tell me if this helps you:

A king throws a wedding banquet and invites the other rich, slave-owning powerful people. Seemingly unimpressed by the promised veal cutlet at the wedding feast, the elite invitees laugh at the invitation and proceed to abuse and then kill the slaves of the king. Well then the king kills them back. But he doesn't stop there, not to be outdone, he burns down the city… and it is there amidst the burning carnage of the newly destroyed city he sends more slaves to go find whoever they can to fill the seats. After all…the food is ready and he has all these fancy robes for the guests. All he cares about is having every seat filled at his big party. But who is left? He burned the city. The rich and powerful have been murdered so it's the regular folks wandering the streets looking for their dead, picking apart the charred debris of their burned city who are then told that they have no choice but to go to the party of the guy responsible. And it's already been established that he doesn't respond well if you turn him down. So the terrified masses show up and pretend that this capricious tyrant didn't just lay waste to their city. Out of fear they all dutifully put on their wedding robes given them at the door and they pretend. Slipping on a gorgeous garment was what you did for a king's wedding feast. And the guests got to keep the outfits, just a little souvenir of the king's generosity - and a reminder to keep in line. You don't get anything from the empire without it costing you a bit of your life. Well, our story ends with these well-dressed survivors looking on as the King spots the one guy at the banquet who isn't wearing a wedding robe. And when the innocent man has nothing to say for himself the king has this scapegoat hogtied and thrown into the outer darkness. Many are called but few are chosen he says.

What Nadia’s interpretation does is to invite us to think more deeply about the guy who refuses to wear the king’s wedding robe. What if the kin-dom of God is all about that guy who says no to imperial authority? What if the kin-dom of God is about a guy who gets scape- goated and hog tied because he doesn’t conform? What if the kin-dom of God is about a man who ends up wearing a loincloth on a cross?

God clothes us with Christ’s own self as we learn in Galatians 3 or in Julian of Norwich’s Book of Divine Revelations, “Our good Lord is our clothing that, for love, wraps us and winds us about, embracing us, all beclosing us, and hanging about us for tender love.”

Dear Ones, how are you stripping off the wedding robes of empire? In what outer darkness are we willing to be cast into so we can be changed?

God is not an imperial king, therefore God’s kin-dom will not look like it does here where you must be an elite to get on the A list or come and conform if you are on the B list. However, it is true if you refuse to submit to imperial authority you may indeed be cast into the darkness because of your refused to wear empire’s finest finery.

You can, however, chose to wear the sun like Mary, the queen of heaven, or you can don a long white robe with a golden sash like the Son of Man. You can put on the armor of God or simply allowed yourself to ‘beclosed’ in Jesus’s tender love.

Dear ones, this is the good and bad news. God will garb you but it will cost you. There will indeed be a heavenly banquet, a feast where everyone is invited. There will be strained wine and enough orange juice for all including your enemies.

I invite you then to allow yourself to be invited, to be open to who asks you to sit with them. I invite you to disrobe, to lose empire’s straightjacket of dos and donts and garb yourself in the One who has always loved you, accepted you just the way you are. And finally, don’t just refuse to be enemies with your enemies invite them also.

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