It was written, printed and ready to go -- this sermon for Lent 4/2024 -- but it turns out I wasn't. Ready to go.
Still managing symptoms from a virus picked up traveling a week ago, I opted to pass the 10am pulpit baton to the 7:30am preacher and keep my possibly germy self home for rest and hydration. But ... with deep bows of gratitude to the brilliant Deon Johnson ... here's what I would have said:
No
Accident We | Lent 4_2024
Remember that you are dust,
the substance of the stars,
animated with the breath of life.
Uniquely formed in the image and likeness
Of Divine Love,
authored in hope, forged in joy,
very good of very good.
No accident we.
This beloved quickened dust
Knit to love and be loved.
Remember that you are dust. Amen.
“Remember that you are dust” … words that have launched the holy season of Lent
down through the centuries … words that showed up for me reframed and reformed this
Ash Wednesday in this prayer posted by friend and colleague Bishop Deon
Johnson.
It is a prayer
that I have returned to daily during this Lenten Journey
and one I
believe has a word for us … not only as we gather
on this Fourth
Sunday in Lent in the year of our Lord 2024
on this Annual
Meeting Sunday in a Centennial Year for All Saints Church …
but as we look
ahead to the word we need to sustain us
for the journey
in the days, weeks and months ahead …
the word we
need to continue the struggle
of living out lives aligned with love, justice and compassion
in a world
being torn apart by violence, polarization and division ...
the word we
need as we strive to offer
an antidote to
the toxic theology of Christian Nationalism
and the clash
between two worldviews in our body politic and civic discourse.
It is not a new struggle.
But it does remind me of an old story.
It was 2007 and
then rector Ed Bacon invited me to join him for his annual retreat.
It was an eight-day silent retreat
with the Handmaids of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Haverford, Pennsylvania —
and it is an experience I will always remember
and have absolutely no plan to replicate.
It will not be
a surprise to most of you
that eight days of silence and I
turned out not to be a match
made in heaven
and …
there were some wonderful things about the experience
I still hold with gratitude and which continue to inform my journey.
One of them was
the homily I heard from Father Sullivan —
one of the Roman priests who came to preside in the convent chapel.
He talked about his early days in ministry,
doing missionary work in Guatemala
and the deep friendship he developed with his Evangelical roommate.
He said they had MUCH in common
as they worked among the most vulnerable in the city
and they had lots of great conversations about theology, mission and ministry.
The one chasm
they couldn’t bridge, however,
was the one between their different views on the nature of humanity.
His roommate,
the priest recounted,
was convinced humans are inherently evil beings
who can only accomplish good by being bathed in the Blood of the Lamb.
The priest, on the other hand,
was convinced that humans are inherently good
and that our baptism into the Body of Christ
is what enables, equips and empowers us to resist the evil present in the world
in order to participate with God in making that world a better place.
These two
schools of thought create two very different world views because who we think we are turns out to have a lot to do with who we think
God is: and how we understand who we were created to be turns out to have a
lot to do with how we understand who the Creator is.
Are human
beings inherently evil or essentially good?
Is God a punitive male authority figure
with an anger management problem
ready to cast us into outer darkness
for coloring outside of the lines of any of the house rules
or a loving creator
yearning to realize the dream
of gathering all creation around the table
to be fed by the holy food of love, justice and compassion?
And how we
answer those questions for ourselves
turns out to influence not only how we live out our faith in the world,
but how we put our faith into action through the values we embrace,
and as we struggle to be the change we want to see in the world.
And it turns
out, my sisters, brothers and gender fluid siblings,
that this
struggle did not start with a particular election cycle or party platform
or the rise of
a particular autocrat or economic system.
It is the same
struggle we hear about week after week, year after year in the ancient scriptural
story of our spiritual ancestors who struggled against the same powers and
principalities they faced in their time as we do in ours.
In our
scriptural story we hear about the times they succeeded – and about the times
they failed.
But more
importantly, we hear about the God who never gave up on them; whose quality is
always to have mercy; who is always with us in the struggle against systemic
evil.
Walter Wink —
the 20th century biblical scholar and theologian
of “Engaging the Powers” fame —
brilliantly summarized what it is we’re up against
in this 1999 summary of what he called “the myth of redemptive violence:”
“The myth of redemptive violence is, in short,
nationalism become absolute.
This myth speaks for God;
it does not listen for God to speak.
It invokes the sovereignty of God as its own;
it does not entertain the prophetic possibility of radical judgment by God.
It misappropriates the language, symbols, and scriptures of Christianity.
It does not seek God in order to change;
it embraces God in order to prevent change.
Its God is not the impartial ruler of all nations
but a tribal god worshiped as an idol.
Its metaphor is not the journey but the fortress.
Its symbol is not the cross but the crosshairs of a gun.
Its offer is not forgiveness but victory.
Its good news is not the unconditional love of enemies
but their final elimination.
Its salvation is not a new heart but a successful foreign policy.
It is blasphemous. It is idolatrous.”
The bad news is
that is what we’re up against.
The worse news is the Christian Nationalism
Walter Wink wrote about in 1999 is on steroids in 2024.
But good news is that we’re not up against it alone.
Lent is the
season we reprogram our spiritual GPS.
It is the time we commit ourselves to realigning ourselves
with the grain of the universe which is love
in order to share what we know,
what we value,
and to spin a force of the Spirit
that reaches back to a tomorrow
we cannot yet imagine;
a tomorrow where the myth of redemptive
is banished
and the reign of God’s love, justice and compassion
has come on earth as it is in heaven.
To reverse our
amnesia about who we are,
from where we
come
and ultimately
to where we will go when our time in the realm is over.
Of Divine Love,
authored in hope, forged in joy,
very good of very good.
No accident we.
This beloved quickened dust
Knit to love and be loved.
It was that glimpse of humanity as we were created to be –
of what the
world could be –
made manifest
smack dab in the middle of the world
as the worst it
had become --
that drew
people to Jesus in 1st century Palestine
and continues
to draw people to him in 21st century Pasadena.
The thousands
who flocked to him in this morning’s reading from Mark is one of the most
famous in all of scripture – the miracle of the loaves and fishes where Jesus
pulled off abundance in the face of scarcity while the disciples cluelessly flunked
the story problem at the end causing him to ask – one more time – “do you not
understand?”
A glimpse of
Beloved Community where all are included, nobody leaves hungry and even if you
don’t “get it” you’re still welcome.
It seems that Jesus had as many parables and stories as there were people who
came seeking him – seeking that other world he came to show us was not only
possible, but was here – but was now.
·
“The
kingdom of God is like …”
But of all the
stories in scripture of those who come seeking Jesus, the one on my heart this
Fourth Sunday in Lent is not the one appointed for today by the lectionary
lottery – it is the one we hear every year on Tuesday
in Holy Week:
Now
among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. They came
to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we wish to
see Jesus.” Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told
Jesus. Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be
glorified.
Very
truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it
remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who
love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep
it for eternal life.
And one of the questions I have every time I hear this one is:
“But what about the Greeks?”
Every time I hear it read in church
and we say
“The word of the Lord/Thanks be to God,“
I’m left wondering
what happened to these
Greeks who showed up
at the beginning of
the gospel saying
"Sir, we wish to
see Jesus"
and set off the from
Philip to Andrew to Jesus chain of events
that ended up with
Jesus going into
the poetic and
prophetic musing
on what it means to be
glorified
and "indicating
the kind of death he was to die."
We never find out
what happened to those Greeks.
A brief historical “contextual” note:
when John says
"some Greeks",
he doesn't mean folks
who hang out in Athens and are related to Zorba.
To the 1st century
hearers of the Gospel "Greeks" meant "non-Jews" -
foreigners - Gentiles.
No wonder Philip had
to go check with Andrew first ...
did you notice that in
the text?
"They came to
Philip -- who went and told Andrew;
then Andrew and Philip
went and told Jesus."
As one of the
commentaries I consulted noted:
"... evidently
being dubious how they might be received."
No automatic welcome
for these guys:
these Greeks who
wanted to see Jesus.
So we’re all left
wondering:
Did they get to see
Jesus?
Were they in crowd
when Jesus offered this long explanation
of what his death was
going to be about ...
and if so did they
"get it" ...
or did they leave
wondering what the deal was ...
feeling as if they
came in late in the second act
and were not sure what
the plot line was all about?
Let’s hope not.
Let’s hope they encountered a 1st century version of our 21st
century Welcome Table with someone like Nancy Naecker there to greet them and
make sure they got a welcome bag and met some folks to help them find their
way.
For
at the end of the day,
what
we are called to be about each and every time
we
gather here in this sacred space
is
to be the Body of Christ …
to
do the ministry of Jesus on earth –
offering
that
glimpse of humanity as we were created to be –
a window into the
world as it could be –
made manifest
smack dab in the middle of a world
that sometimes
seems to be working overtime to be the worst can be.
Yes, it’s an aspirational goal.
Yes, we
frequently fall dramatically short of living into the full stature of who we
are called to be.
Nevertheless –
we persist.
We persist in
being the
change we want to see in the world;
We persist in offering loving liberation
as an alternative to the myth of redemptive
violence
And we persist in living lives in alignment
with the love lures us toward hope –
as followers of the
one who yearns to draw all people to himself:
the Jesus who spoke,
in the last days before his crucifixion,
to those Greeks who
came to him –
not sure if they'd be
welcome.
It is an old, old
story still begging to be fulfilled –
and we are the Body of
Christ
who have been charged
with fulfilling it in our generation.
In the words of Deon Johnson:
No accident we.
And so, in this March Women’s History Month:
May we claim the charge of our sister Esther who “for just such as time as
this” was called to speak to truth power; to risk for the hope of liberation;
to trust in the God who created her from the substance of the stars.
May we remember
Phyllis Tickle of blessed memory who taught us
that doctrine and liturgy
are important
because they represent
the paper trail
of our historic
experience of God
but those coming
toward us
don’t want just a
paper trail …
they want their own
experience:
Just lik the Greeks
who came to Philip and
Andrew
they want to see
Jesus.
And we are the ones who have been called to show him to them.
Three weeks ago Gary Hall launched us into Lent reminding us of
our call to be a prophetic church with these words: “Prophets show
things how they really are – and the church’s prophetic voice shows the world
what it really is – reverses its amnesia about what it was created to be …
calls us to remember who we are created to be.”
And so, beloved
… if you remember nothing else:
Remember that you are dust,
the substance of the stars,
animated with the breath of life.
Uniquely formed in the image and likeness
Of Divine Love,
authored in hope, forged in joy,
very good of very good.
No accident we.
This beloved quickened dust
Knit to love and be loved.
Remember that you are dust. Amen.
