The Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday-Year A

Palm Sunday 2023 April 2, 2023 I encountered a poem last week that offers an interesting window into Palm Sunday and Holy Week, and invitation to examine our expectations and to enter into a new way of walking through these holiest days of our year. It was written by Benjamin Cremer and is untitled. Here’s how it goes. We want the war horse. Jesus rides a donkey. We want the bird of prey. The Holy Spirit descends as a dove. We want the militia. Jesus calls fishermen, tax collectors, women, and children. We want the courtroom. Jesus sets a table. We want the gavel. Jesus washes feet. We want to take up swords. Jesus takes up a cross. We want the empire. Jesus brings the Kingdom of God. We want the nation. Jesus calls the church. We want the roaring lion. God comes as a slaughtered lamb. We keep trying to arm God. God keeps trying to disarm us. Your invitation this week is let yourself be open to be disarmed by God, to be open to let God shift your expectations of how God works, how God save, how God continues to act in this world.

The Fifth Sunday in Lent-Year A

Lent 5A March 26, 2023 “The core theme of [today’s gospel]—even more than Jesus’ love, compassion, and vulnerability—is the defiance of death. Jesus does not just raise Lazarus from the grave; he mocks the grave in his almost blasé attitude toward the last enemy. He…waits two days before setting out for Bethany, refusing to let death set his agenda.” i. I read these words in one of my lectionary commentaries early in the week, and all week, I’ve been pondering that one phrase---how Jesus refuses to let death set the agenda. It’s not surprising, considering this is John’s gospel. John gives us a Jesus who is “large and in charge.” John makes no bones about the fact that Jesus is God incarnate, and it is the gospel that most emphasizes Jesus’s divinity. Throughout John, Jesus offers 6 or 7 signs (depending on which biblical scholar you talk to), which are stories of Jesus’s miracles that follow a predictable pattern, and the purpose of these signs is to reveal God’s glory and to testify to Jesus’ identity as the Son of God. Our story for today, the raising of Lazarus from the dead, is the last of the signs in John’s gospel, and it leads to a pivot toward Jesus’ death on the cross. Over and over again, the gospel of John emphasizes that God has a plan that Jesus is working to fulfill, at a particular time, and the Jesus in John’s gospel is completely unflappable (even into his death). So, of course, John’s Jesus doesn’t let death set the agenda. But I’ve been thinking about that all week. What does it mean to not let death set the agenda? Are we being called to be like Jesus in this, as his followers and his disciples? Are we, too, being encouraged to not let death set our agendas? What does that mean and what would it even look like? Of course, we see that Jesus doesn’t rush to Lazarus’s death bed to try to prevent his literal death. And we all know that when it comes to Death (with a capital D), none of us is really in control. Capital D death will always set the agenda for us in terms of how many days, months, years, we have in this life. And yet….While we have no control over when or how we die, there are ways that we can still live without letting death set the agenda. And there are also so many millions of the little d-deaths that we experience in our lives: the endings, the changes, the failure of our plans or our health, the unexpected twists and turns of our lives, the outcomes that, no matter hard we work, we cannot control. What would it mean for us to live our lives not letting those little-d deaths set the agenda for how we react or how we live? Our patron saint, Thomas, may have something to teach us about this. In today’s gospel, we get one of the rare glimpses of Thomas. As Jesus tells the disciples that it’s time to return to Bethany, a town that is very close to Jerusalem, the chorus of disciples reminds Jesus that they were just in Jerusalem, and the people there were actively threatening to stone Jesus. Thomas replies, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” Um, ok, Thomas! What are we supposed to do with that? Perhaps, Thomas, the eternal pragmatist, grasps something that the rest of the disciples don’t grasp. Perhaps, even as he responds out of his intrinsic loyalty and faithfulness to Jesus (and thus, making himself Jesus’s ultimate “ride or die”), he realizes in that moment that this isn’t just about the death of Lazarus but it is also, in fact, about the death of Jesus and those who follow him. And he embraces that. It’s a weird sort of paradox that in embracing death, he, too, isn’t letting death set the agenda. And that rings true with our experience, doesn’t it? When we can learn to embrace big D death as a companion who actually walks by our side through our whole life, not something to be feared, then we are no longer spending so much energy fighting or fending off death. When we learn to use our energy rolling along with all those little-d deaths rather than fighting to control or bend them to our will, then in some mysterious, paradoxical way, we aren’t letting death set the agenda. So, the gospel reading for today shows us that Jesus refuses to let death set the agenda, but then there’s one more twist. In John’s gospel, Jesus is fully equated with God. And all throughout scriptures, we’ve seen God express a variety of emotions. God gets angry; God changes God’s mind; God expresses regret. But it isn’t until Jesus is invited to come and see the grave of his friend Lazarus that we see a God who weeps. This large and in charge Jesus, who knows that he can and will raise his friend from the dead still weeps at the death of his friend. What does that mean? What does it mean for us that we follow a God who weeps? Later this week, on April 1, my husband’s full time job will be cut to a quarter time job because his church has run out of money to pay him and they have exhausted all other options that were available to them. This is very much a looming, little-d death for him, for me, for our family. I’ve spent the last couple of weeks obsessively looking at jobs, occasionally mildly harassing him to update his resume. Last week, I thought I’d found the perfect job for his skill set that would support him being able to continue to care for his church on Sundays. And after I finally got him to get everything together to apply (over a week of increasingly more forceful nudges), he went to do it only to find the job posting had been taken down. As I’ve continued to ponder this, to try to deal with my own disappointment without taking it out on him, I’ve begun to see how I’ve been letting death (with a little d) set the agenda for me. My expectations and demands and attempt to shape reality into what I think is best have not been life-giving for our relationship and they haven’t been so great in my relationship with God, either. I certainly don’t have it figured out yet, but I’m still wrestling with what it means for me to live into the call of Jesus’s disciple to not let death set the agenda in this particular area of my life and in these relationships. So, your invitation this week is to join me in pondering either one or both of these questions, looking at where this gospel may intersect with your life and your faith journey in this moment. What does it mean for you to follow a God who weeps? And/or what are the ways that you are letting death set the agenda in your life right now, and how might Jesus be calling you to change in that? i. Haverkamp, Heid, ed. Everyday Connections: Reflections and Practices for Year A.WJK: Louisville, 2022. quote by Michael L. Lindvall, p 351.

The Fourth Sunday in Lent-Year A

The 4th Sunday in Lent Year A March 19, 2023 “Why did this happen?” The disciples see a man who was born blind and this is the question they ask Jesus. “Why did this happen?” which really is a cloak for the question, “Who’s to blame?” And “how can I avoid it happening to me?” And we get it, don’t we? We, of all people, live in a culture of blame, where we are quick to point fingers, to misdirect, to criticize. It has become our default position, these days; the muscles we most often use in public discourse. And blaming is contagious. We see its contagion in our gospel reading for today. Jesus offers sight to a man who was born blind, and there are questions swirling around the event. And most of the questions are blaming questions: “Is this really the man who was born blind?” “How did he receive his sight?” “How did Jesus do this?” “Where is he?” This series of anxiously blaming questions ultimately result in the man who was born blind being driven out of the synagogue, so the one who received the miraculous healing was scapegoated. But then Jesus comes and finds him and asks him another question: “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” He answered, “And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.” In these questions, the man born blind deepens in his relationship and his understanding with Jesus and in and through these questions, he becomes a disciple of Jesus. When I teach conflict transformation skills with a colleague here in the diocese, we spend a whole section on listening skills and how to ask better questions. We start by teaching people to ask more neutral, open-ended questions, questions that can’t be simply answered with a yes or no, questions that require greater depth and complexity. We teach people not to ask questions in potential conflict situations that start with “why” (unless they are asked in very neutral ways), because “why” questions often generate justifications and blame, and instead we encourage people to ask questions that start with “what” or “how”. By changing the way we ask questions, we’ve learned that we can shape the conversation in different, more life-giving ways. We can shift from questions that blame to questions that invite and explore. Our parishioner Jane Gilchrist serves on the Diocesan Council, which is like the vestry of the diocese, and Jane was talking to me about their most recent meeting, how they started with one question: “What does faithfulness to Jesus look like in this moment in our churches?” and then they had a lightening round of four minutes where they didn’t generate answers to that question. But instead, they generated more and different questions. From that original question-- “What does faithfulness to Jesus look like in this moment?” came other questions: “Are we more concerned with parish self-interest and survival or the gospel mandate?” “What is non-negotiable [in our church]?” “What does the church look like?” “What do we need to prioritize?” Who are we to empower to lead?” “Who needs to be invited to the table?” “How can worship look different than in the past?” “How do we want to relate to each other?” The list goes on and on. So, what does that mean to shift from questions of blame toward questions that explore—for us as individuals and for us as a church? I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if the religious leaders in our gospel story (and even the disciples) could have asked different questions? What sorts of conversations might have opened up if they had asked, “How is the glory of God being revealed in this person/situation?” “How am I or how are we being called to share in God’s presence in this?” “How am I being invited by Jesus to come alongside this suffering and what gifts of comfort or joy am I being invited to give or to share?” “Who is being ignored or forced out because they don’t fit into our understanding of who we are and what our call is?” What might our own spiritual lives look like if we start asking more exploratory (and fewer blaming) questions? How might our church become transformed? In what ways might our community be influenced? What would happen if we sought out the places of the unexpected presence of God in and among us and allowed those encounters to transform us? I’ve been immersed this week in beginning the search for a new associate rector for us. That has meant working with our HR task force on a position description, talking to the vestry about funding, and creating an interview process. I’ve also begun to have conversations with interested individuals. As I’ve been doing this work, I’ve been asking myself new questions. What new gifts (or old, unused gifts) am I being invited to draw upon in this present moment? What new lenses can I look through to see new and different possibilities? How am I being invited into God’s holy imagining in this moment? Where is the Spirit already moving in me and around me? What are the exploring questions that you need to be asking in your relationship with Jesus in this season of your life and your faith? I’ve also been thinking about the questions that we need to ask as a church. We’ve seen a rising of anxiety around our young families, and we have tended to slip into blaming-types of questions—“Why haven’t they come back in pre-pandemic attendance patterns?” “What’s going to happen to our church?” “How do we have a Sunday school program when only two kids show up for a class once a month?” I’m inviting us all to start imagining new, exploring questions. “What’s going on right now in the lives of our young families, and how might we support them where they are in this present moment?” “What are the unique gifts that we as a congregation have to offer them right now?” “How can we seek and find the presence of God in each other and in those we don’t expect?” “Who are we leaving out right now, and what might we learn from them?”

The Second Sunday in Lent-Year A

The Second Sunday in Lent-Year A March 5, 2023 He’s 75 years old. And God tells him to leave everything behind—this place where he’s grown up and made his life and all its trappings; this place where he’s been successful, where he knows what to expect. He’s 75 years old, and God tells him to leave behind this place where everyone knows him and who his daddy was, this place where his parents and brother are buried. God tells Abram to take his wife Sarai, to leave everything behind, and journey to the land that God will show them. In that leaving and journeying, in that new beginning and in that trusting, God will bless them and all who come into contact with them. God will do a new thing in and through them. It’s a huge risk, a staggering invitation to trust God, but we know how the story turns out. They do it. Abram and Sarai leave their home, with Abram’s nephew Lot in tow, and they journey to Canaan, the promised land that God offers them. In that move, they accept God’s offer to be God’s chosen people, and the history of Israel (and the Jewish and Christian people) truly begins with this one, first step. I was talking to a friend who’s my age and she was telling me that she has just started to learn to play tennis. She spoke about how it meant stepping out of her comfort zone and that she realized that she hadn’t really done that since childhood. She talked about what it means to risk, to open oneself up to something new—how it’s exciting because it involves an opening to new possibility and it also involves an opening for failure. After this conversation, I pondered the last time that I felt like I truly stepped out in faith, taking a first step into something new and where God was in that. And I’ve been thinking about how Lent is an invitation to all of us to do just that, to take a step into a new way of being in relationship with God. God invites, and God leaves it up to us to take that first step. As we talked about this in our Wednesday healing service, the folks there shared stories of when they made the choice to take a risk, to take that first step forward into a new life. They spoke about how hard it is to leave behind old identities, old ways of being and the predictability of familiar places and routines. And they reflected on how God always showed up for them, blessing those new ventures, those new places, those new endeavors once they made the decision to take that first step forward on the journey. We see all this at work in the gospel for today as well. Nicodemus, a Pharisee and leader of the Jews, takes the first step into a new life and new way of being as he visits Jesus under cover of night. While Nicodemus clearly doesn’t understand what Jesus is trying to teach him about “being born from above,” later in John’s gospel we see him working with Joseph of Arimathea to provide Jesus with a proper burial after his crucifixion. This night time visit to Jesus is clearly the first step, a risk and a chance for Nicodemus to trust God and to embark upon a new course, a new journey. One of my other friends, who is older than I am, has talked about how she has started taking a poetry class. She went into it thinking that she was going to be learning about poetry, and then she discovered, in the first class, that she was going to be writing poetry and sharing it with everyone in the class, week after week. She spoke about her initial dismay over this confusion, but she has rolled with it, and she’s learning to write poetry and to enjoy it. She talked about how it has been a helpful reminder for her that our identities are not fixed and unchanging, just because we are adults, and this experience has inspired her to take on yet another new thing in her life and her vocation. This Lent, I’ve been using our Lenten devotion Bless the Lent We Actually Have which is the companion to the book The Lives We Actually Have: 100 Blessings for Imperfect Days by Kate Bowler and Jessica Richie. The devotion for this past Tuesday was a companion to the blessing for beginning and endings. I have appreciated this prayer or meditation on first steps into new risks and new adventures, how we are called to trust God who invites us forward on our journeys and who promises to be with us to bless us and those whom we encounter on the way. I’ll share it with you in closing. For Beginnings and Endings i. This life is made up of so many beginnings and so many endings. We start new jobs and leave old ones. We move to new cities and leave our childhood hobbies in our parents’ basement. (Sorry, Mom) We become new people slowly (hopefully kinder and funnier?) Friends and relationships come and go. Dreams blossom and then they wither. And we find ourselves here once again at the precipice of change. Afraid to let go, and afraid of what will happen if we don’t. Might this be a place of blessing, too? Blessed are we standing in the hallway between closed doors and ones still to come, between the old and the new, between the worn-in and the doesn’t-quite-yet-fit, between who we were and who we might become. God, make it remotely possible to grow and change, become open to new adventures, and untethered to routine or to the same-old. Because the anxiety rising in my shoulders and filling my throat tells me I am unlikely, unwilling, to step forward. Blessed are we who take a minute to look over our shoulder at all we learned from what was, the people we became, the people who loved us into becoming. The peace that came with familiarity. Blessed are we who trust this timing, and who open our hearts anew to change, to new friends, to hope. Nervous, maybe heavy-hearted, but brimming with gratitude for a life so beautiful that it hurts to say goodbye. Blessed are we, turning our eyes ahead toward a new path not yet mapped. God, give us courage to take this next step, and enough for the one after that, too. Remind us that you have gone before, and behind, and around, and are with us now. In our leaving, in our arriving, in our changes, expected or shocking, surprise us with who we might become. i. Bowler, Kate and Jessica Richie. The Lives We Actually Have: 100 Blessing for Imperfect Days. Convergent: New York, 2023, pp182-183.