Sermons

Text:

"... This is a story about a house and a journey.

I’ve been thinking about houses a lot lately and the journeys they represent. Perhaps it’s because the house my parents lived in for more than 20 years – directly across the street from the other house they lived in for the previous 20 years -- goes up for sale this week.

I’m imagining the “For Sale” sign in the front yard on main street and the ripple effect that is likely to have in my little hometown. And I’ve been thinking about the lessons I learned about life in the 40 years of those houses and what it is that I take with me on my own journey.

We lived in those houses but, in a way, they were my father’s house. They were parsonages and my dad was the pastor so the house came with his job.

And my father was very clear that our house was an extension of the church so it was important to take care of it because how it was cared for said something about what we thought about our community and what we thought about ourselves and – even – what we thought about God.

But, no matter how much we cared for it, we knew that the house didn’t belong to us. It was important to make it our home. But we knew that if Dad moved on from that church, we would leave that house behind.

That taught me about being entrusted with something and the stewardship of that which does not ultimately belong to us but for which we have the responsibility to care. Being entrusted with the care of something that doesn’t belong to us is a lesson that goes with me on the journey of my life.

Perhaps you have heard the old line that “a man’s home is his castle.” That never really made sense to me. It seems to make this connection between masculinity and property and sovereignty. “Castle” seems to indicate that a house is a kind of fortress where those rights and privileges are preserved and defended.

I’m not sure if it is any sign of greater enlightenment that now we talk about our houses needing to have a “man cave.”

Cave or castle, it seems like there might be other ways – more creative ways -- to think about our home in the world.

It has been interesting to see the kinds of shifts that have developed as women’s voices become more a part of the conversation about evolving theological understandings. We seem to be moving away from the castle mentality toward a journey mentality – from a preoccupation with exclusive property and the privilege of authority toward the values of community and (I like this word) perspicuity – about the ability to see clearly who we are in relation to the world ..."

Text: Romans 5:1-5

Text: ACTS 2:1-18

"... As many of you in the congregation know, in 1995, at the age of 18, I was working in the Dominican Republic with Haitian refugee sugar farmers. Most of my time was spent at a construction site, where a hospital was being built for these farmers and their families. While I was there, I lived with the pastor of the church, his family, and their housekeeper, a sixty-something-year-old Haitian firecracker named, Marlene.

Marlene only spoke Haitian Creole – which is primarily French, peppered with Spanish, and some native American and West African languages, as well. I… did not speak Haitian Creole, but the pastor’s children, who were learning English in school, taught me how to say ‘good afternoon’ and ask, “How are you?” in Creole so that Marlene and I could at least exchange pleasantries every day.

Every evening I would arrive home from the hospital work site, and call out, “Bonsoir, Marlene!” She would respond, “Bonsoir, Ned!” For months, this was the extent of our conversation… until one afternoon when I accidently put pants that were covered in concrete dust into the family’s washing machine, which caused it’s complete demise.

Marlene yelled for two days; she yelled at anyone who would listen; she even yelled at the large picture of Jesus that hung over the spice rack in the kitchen. The pastor’s children – while careful to steer clear of Marlene, roared with laughter when they were in my presence. “She’s praying for your soul,” they told me, “Because you have done this very bad thing in her home.”

On the third day following the… washing machine… incident… I arrived home from the hospital site and found Marlene standing at the door waiting for me.

“Bonsoir, Marlene…” I ventured.

She raised her hands. In one was a large bar of soap. In the other, a washboard. I received them both with all due penitence as she pointed to a large blue plastic tub outside. For eight weeks I washed my clothes by hand in the driveway while Marlene prayed – what I assume were petitions for protection – over her new washing machine.

For eight weeks – two full months – we did this… until I got sick. At first the doctors thought it was just a bacterial infection – normal for travel in this area of the Caribbean. But then days passed and I still couldn’t keep any food down. Eventually, the doctors learned that I had fallen victim to a parasite. In just a few weeks I lost almost forty pounds, my eyes sank into my head, and I found that just the act of getting out of bed was so exhausting, I needed a nap afterwards.

It was customary for the family to eat together, even if one of us was sick, and so I would come out for meals and Marlene would drop the bowl of rice in front of me so that I could take my helping first. Instead, I would push it on to the next person; she would put the vegetables in front of me, and I would push those on, too. Eventually, Marlene started yelling at me, much like she yelled at the picture of Jesus.

“Oh crap,” I thought, “Eventually she’s going to make me eat outside, too.”

As the meals passed with the days, her yelling became more and more animated. She would point at her fist and say a few sentences, and then she would hold up her pinky and say a few more. She would make a dismissive gesture with her hand, and then she would say over and over again in Haitian Creole, “Manje! Manje! Manje li tout!” while clapping her hands together. Eat! Eat! Eat it all!

I thought I was offending her. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t eat. ..."

"... We have been loved since the foundation of the world. It is so important that we know this, But it is not always easy to come to know and fully trust What the world obscures…

In her song, “Mirrors,” Ysaye Barnwell of Sweet Honey in the Rock brings to voice the experience of a young black girl, Growing up poor, in a society whose images of beauty filled TV and advertising with pictures of pretty white women that looked nothing like her. Her Grandmother understood that for this child to know her beauty and the beauty of life…she needed something more than what the world of media and popular culture would show her.
Here are the words of the song:

“There were no mirrors in my Nana’s house, no mirrors in my Nana’s house.
And the beauty that I saw in everything was in her eyes (like the rising of the sun).
The world outside was a magical place.
I only knew love.
I never knew hate,
and the beauty in everything
was in her eyes (like the rising of the sun).
…was in her eyes.”

Ysaye Barnwell’s song reminds me That for many of us, it was our mothers or grandmothers who first taught us to know our value, who cherished our beauty, and taught us to see the beauty of the world even when other forces around us might have treated us with abuse or disrespect.  “You have a right to the tree of life!” the black grandmothers And poets taught their children; preaching John the Revealers message.
We all need this holy affirmation:
You, and I, like Christ—
Have been loved since the foundation of the world.

Macrina, a 4th Century Christian woman, wrote:
“The soul should know herself accurately and should behold the Original Beauty reflected in the mirror and figure of her own beauty. For truly herein consists the real assimilation to the divine—making our own life in some degree an image of the Supreme Being.”

The Genesis creation story gives us a picture of humanity Sculpted from the clay of the earth in the image of God and infused with the breath of the Holy Spirit:
This is our primordial beauty:
which like seed planted in the soil, watered by the river of life from which we are all invited to drink,  gives each of us the potential to grow and flower into a life that manifests the beauty of God:
a life of love, justice and compassion.

When I was a small child, it was my grandmother  who first taught me to see the beauty of the world through her eyes, and my beauty as well. ..."
 

Text: John 21:1-19

"... At a time when Christians argue over what sharing the Good News of the gospel looks like, sounds like, I hear these words from Jesus as they are offered to Peter and wonder: Out of our own lack of understanding, do we risk force-feeding a Gospel message? And what does a force-fed Gospel look like? When Judie, the administrative assistant in the church office read my sermon title, she said: “You’re preaching about a force-fed gospel? You better be careful, Ned, that’s the gospel that you choke on.” Amen. The gospel that you choke on. How many of us have been force-fed these words – told we must believe, or else?

Joe Biden, Vice President of the United States and Catholic, recently said, “If one more conservative tells me my faith is wrong, I’m going to stuff my rosary down their throat.” That’s a force-fed gospel of another kind, I suppose.

Jesus asked, “Do you love me?” Our answer to that question is in part our presence here, if we didn’t, we wouldn’t be sitting in these pews. But when he says, “Feed my sheep; tend my sheep,” what is it we offer in the form of nourishment?

Will you pray with me?

Creator God, what do you ask of us but to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with you…? What do you ask of us but to feed your flock out of and because of our love for you? We ask for the strength and the sustenance that we ourselves need in order to do so. Forgive us when we fall short, when we leave some to hunger and allow others to over-indulge. Give us the wisdom and compassion to speak your truth in love and to offer our neighbor what sustenance they require. In Jesus name I pray. Amen.

“Hunger cries along a city street,” the choir sang a moment ago. What street might they be singing about in our own city? On which lonely street do you hear the cry of hunger in Seattle? Maybe on Aurora, just north of the bridge, where mothers emerge with their children each morning from those pay by the hour hotels? “Hunger cries on a city street.” Maybe closer – maybe right here down on the corner of Pike and Harvard in front of the QFC?

“Hunger cries on a city street.” How about down on Summit Avenue at the PSKS office – Peace for the Streets by Kids from the Streets – where our city’s homeless kids hunger for access to education?
“Hunger cries on a lonely city street.” Maybe hunger cries on your street… somewhere here in Seattle between 1st and 145th, and beyond – Hunger cries on a city street.
Jesus says to Peter and through Peter to us: feed them.

The question is: feed them what? ..."

Text: Luke 24:28-32

"... Roads. Americans love roads, build roads. Pave millions of miles of pristine country to get from here to there and back again. Some plan for months to select just which roads to follow into the country, how to avoid freeways and find…country roads.…Country roads, take me home. We can’t wait to get On the road again…Just can't wait to get on the road again.

Good things take place on roads. Traffic and accidents aside, road trips beckon to us, don’t they? Willie Nelson sang the life he loves is on the road making music with his friends. I doubt the two travelers on the road to Emmaus could say that. They were probably too numb even to grieve. The worst was horrible, and they can’t escape it. They leave the great city of Jerusalem the same Sunday morning they hear some women say they’d seen angels. Others saw the tomb and found it empty. What better thing to do but head out on the road to mull it over?

Cleopas and his companion talked quietly as they walked.

Later, one said, I was exhausted, disoriented. When Cleopas suggested we head out of town, I dragged myself upright and followed, a wretched excuse of a person. I couldn’t NOT dwell on Jesus praying in the olive grove with that last scene, his body being taken from the cross after dark, carried a short distance to a stone tomb.

We walked as if we too, were dead. We walked because we didn’t know what else to do. Jesus NOT in the tomb?! Scandalous. The women had seen an angel, they said. Cleopas and I were too numb to think. The steady pace helped. After a bit a stranger caught up with us and matched our stride. And in a few yards, he asked what we were talking about.

“What?! How could you have been in the City and not known what happened?” Cleopas exclaimed. The stranger said, “What happened?” ..."
 

Text: Luke 19:28-40

"... I have friends who carry assumptions about what my church must be like because we’re Baptist. Well, I have friends who carry assumptions about a lot of things; perhaps you do, too. There are times I get tired of my friends on facebook bullying me when they find out “just what kind of Baptist” I actually am. I post something about cherishing my Welcoming and Affirming church with a link to a new AWAB article about GLBTQ kids seeking acceptance. I get this string of positive responses and then someone inevitably interrupts the flow of positive energy. Someone will write something like, “Why do you take the easy way out of the Gospel, Ned? The Gospel is supposed to challenge you, and just saying that you love everyone means that you don’t face the real challenges posed by God’s inspired Word – you don’t talk about the ‘HARD STUFF’…”

Eventually these often spiraling conversations reach a point where I say, “Now, hold on. Let me stop you right there – let me interrupt the direction that I know this is going, because I reject the premise… I reject the premise that judgment is more difficult than love.”

Loving everyone is the EASY way out? Really? I’ll be the first to say that there are some folks – there are some individuals and definitely some groups that I’m pretty sure I don’t yet know how to love but – to use YOUR words – I am truly ‘CHALLENGED BY THE GOSPEL’ to do just that. When you ask yourself ‘What would Jesus do?’ if your first answer isn’t ‘love,’ than I think you might need to revisit your theology.
Radical love – truly radical love – the love that Jesus taught, can be an uneasy love because it interrupts our understanding of who our neighbor is, who our brothers and sisters are, who the poor are, who the meek are, who the kings and queens are, who the blessed are…

God says, “Let me stop you right there.” Divine interruption…

You know we have a new Pope? Well, not ‘we’ Baptists – could you imagine? As the crowd celebrated the announcement of his papacy and his arrival, he interrupted that celebration with a request for silence – sacred silence. Did any of you see this? And, then instead of beginning by using his new office to pray for the gathered and global Catholic community, he instead asked for their prayers – all of our prayers, really – prayers for his work, and clarity, and discernment. It was a dramatic move, and an interruption in assumed expectation. May his work be blessed and his love know no bounds.

Many – perhaps some of you – have celebrated the fact that he’s from the Jesuit tradition. The Jesuits would never have existed without dramatic interruption in one man’s life. Ignatius of Loyola – St. Ignatius – was just a man trying to work his way up the social hierarchy of Spanish society when, during a military skirmish at the castle where he was staying, a cannonball careened into his legs, shattering them. His ascent up the social rungs was interrupted by extended convalescence over months and months from the medical procedures performed on his broken body. Finding himself in solitude and unable to rise from his bed, he sought companionship in books – one a book of poetic prayers, and the other a life of Christ. He read the books in tandem and eventually, this experience led to two things, the first is what we call Ignatian Spirituality – a series of exercises inspired by Ignatius’ own experience of transformation during convalescence – and the other: the Jesuit order, which was instigated by Ignatius’ realization that Jesus worked with people on the ground, in the muck and daily toil of their lives. ..."
 

Text: John 12:1-8

"... I have had three revelations this week. One is that, if you want the full attention of the medical establishment, you have to use two magic words in the same sentence: “chest” and “pain.”

After several days of not feeling well and this lingering “pain in my chest,” I finally called my doctor to make an appointment. When I told the receptionist what my symptoms were, she said, “Oh no, you need to talk to the consulting nurse.” And the nurse sent me to urgent care. And urgent care sent me to Virginia Mason hospital where, after my first ever ambulance ride and several tests, they discovered that everything was just fine – except, of course, what it was that caused the “discomfort” in my chest in the first place.

Given the epidemic of heart disease in our country, I don’t take my doctor’s caution for granted.

I do wonder how this situation might be different if I were poor and without health insurance. What kind of attention would I get then?

And this little episode does, in fact, recommend changes in my life – heart condition or not.

That was the first revelation.

The second was that I don’t want to die – not that I was in any immediate danger; not that I want to be overly dramatic or that I will have any choice in the matter when the time comes; not that there might not be a time when death might come as a relief that I will want to die with as much dignity as possible.

But not right now.

Natalie Goldberg tells the story about Zen Master Suzuki Roshi’s dying:
He died of cancer in 1971. When Zen masters die [she says] we like to think they will say something very inspiring as they are about to bite the Big Emptiness, something like “Hi-ho Silver!” or “Remember to wake up” or “Life is everlasting.” Right before Suzuki Roshi’s death … an old friend, visited him [and] stood by the bedside; Suzuki looked up and said, “I don’t want to die.” That simple. He was who he was and said plainly what he felt in the moment.

The problem with death as a reference point for the pilgrimage of the soul is that, like a lot of things in the spiritual life, we think we should be something other than what we are. That spirituality is built on dishonesty with ourselves or others about life and death; about something that makes us super-human and “super-excited about croaking.”

When Joseph Sharp, the hospital chaplain, relates this story about the Zen Master, he writes:
And there it is. That simple. Self-honesty. It takes great effort to be self-honest in our dying. But we must, or we’ll be off on the wheel of denial and false excitement. We must learn to make the room within ourselves where we can realize the utter simplicity of saying what we feel – “I don’t want to die” – even as we die. We touch that honesty not in self-pity or anger, but in an open acceptance of the truth of who we are in that living moment.

Or, as May Sarton says in her reflections on turning 60:
I am not ready to die,
But I am learning to trust death
As I have trusted life.

Sometimes I think we tell the stories of Lent and Holy Week as if Jesus wanted to get himself killed – as if the enlightened spiritual path is some kind of death-wish. ..."

Text: Luke 15:11-32

"... Friends… Have you been sufficiently oriented on this Lenten journey? I ask because I know what the bulletin says, but… neither Patrick nor Cathy are me. And let’s be real clear: I am no Tim Phillips. Our prayers are with him this morning. Today, if we’re following our bulletins, perhaps we are experiencing some disorientation on this pilgrimage that we’re on together through this sacred season.

The irony is that since Lent began, we’ve been considering reference points – spiritual reference points – and today’s is ‘home.’ Home is our reference point. So, I admit, in the midst of my own disorientation, I have one question: Who brought the ruby slippers? We might need them by the end… the flying monkeys might be on their way…

Say it with me: There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home…

Dorothy’s journey through Oz was a pilgrimage of sorts, wasn’t it? Her journey – like any good pilgrimage – was not about the destination, even though her sights were always set on Emerald city. Instead the journey was really about the journey; her geographical reference point was the yellow brick road, yes, but the transformative experiences were housed in the relationships she developed along the way. The Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion were her companions and reference points of their own kind – as she certainly was for them, as well.

Life is full of yellow brick roads along which we have destinations in mind, and yet, we ourselves are changed in profound ways – in ways we least expect – and many times changed by the very people who travel with us. Am I right?

As I’ve mentioned a few times over the past month or so, my dad recently finished walking a five hundred mile trek across northern Spain, El Camino de Santiago, or simply: The Way.
He wrote a short reflection on the experience called “How did it go?” which he shared with the church that he attends in Maine, and I offer to you now. ..."