Community Congregational Church of Chula Vista UCC (276 F St)

“When Fears Loom”

A Meditation Based on Luke 24:36-48

April 15, 2018

Community Congregational Church of Chula Vista

Dr. Sharon R. Graff

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(Give credit to the UCC website, “Sermon Seeds,” written by Rev. Kathryn Matthews)

                   Here we are…two weeks after Easter Sunday…2,000 years down the Christian road from those first disciples.  Yet here we are, plagued by some of the same fear and bewilderment they had, asking some of those same questions they asked, wondering, as did they, could this possibly be true?

                   Let’s start where they did…with our fears.  Every week, in this sacred space, we speak our prayers out loud.  With our outside voices, we name those for whom we are praying.  So let me ask you to do the same here and now: what do you fear?  [name those fears…]  Now imagine the living breathing resurrected Jesus standing here, in the middle of your fears.  Close your eyes, if you need to, in order to imagine such a thing.  Imagine Jesus here—the living breathing resurrected Jesus—right here, in the middle of your fears.  How does that change the tone of those fears?  What thoughts meander through your brain?  What emotions arise for you?  What questions does his presence engender?  I’m not looking for Sunday School answers here!  But honest ones.  Truly, if Jesus—the living breathing resurrected Jesus—appeared here with Community Congregational Church, and sat down right in the middle of all these fears, how might that holy presence change your fear?  As the Christian mystics say, let’s sit with that for just a moment…  And, hopefully, as we sit quietly, as we breathe gently, our fears will themselves diminish. 

                   We are so much like those earliest disciples, aren’t we?  We wonder about the things we’ve heard about this Risen Jesus.  We wrestle with the question, “What does all of this mean?”  Deep in your hearts, and maybe even deeper in your minds, you wonder, what could resurrection mean in your life?  Is this just a story from long ago, or could the presence of the living breathing resurrected Jesus profoundly change your life, the life of this congregation, as it did theirs?

                   The picture Luke paints of those earliest disciples is one of fear and confusion, framed by questions.  Maybe they weren’t burdened, as we are, by modern-day doubts or 21^st-century fears, but they had fears enough of their own to confront.  Their heads and their hearts both needed help.  Perhaps like us, they were caught between head and heart—trying to explain resurrection while also experiencing resurrection.  No one then and no one now really knows how to “explain” the Resurrection, so the disciples long ago—and we, in our own day—can only try to describe a personal experience of it.  We can apply head and heart to this endeavor.  We read the story of the two disciples whose eyes kept them from recognizing the resurrected Jesus on the road to Emmaus (even though their hearts were mysteriously burning as he spoke).   

                   This week’s passage follows closely, and speaks of an offer of peace, a request for food, a blessing and a commissioning—all from the living breathing resurrected Jesus.  And, apparently, this Jesus was not like anything they had ever seen before!  Not like Lazarus, a resuscitated corpse, and not even like Jesus was before the crucifixion.  On the one hand, locked doors didn’t keep him out, but on the other hand, he could still eat solid food, just like them, which is interesting.  In the face of this new reality, the disciples, (as one author notes rather humorously) the disciples now must embark on a steep spiritual learning curve…yeah, I’ll bet!

                   Encountering the risen Jesus is a powerful experience, and yet, in this story, once he’s done the very human, earthy thing of eating the fish, he does the same thing he did with the disciples on the road to Emmaus: he leads them in a Bible study.  The signs of breaking bread and eating fish (remember the feeding of the multitude?) combine with the study of the Word of God to help the disciples (and us) to make some sense of “all of this.”

                   I doubt that Jesus was proof-texting in that Bible study—you know, tripping through scripture and finding passages that would justify his place.  Rather, don’t you imagine the ever-imaginative Teacher Jesus drawing their attention back to Moses and the prophets, and revealing for them how rejection and suffering are part of the journey with God…an affirmation that God will be with you, always.  The Gospel tells us, the combination of seeing Jesus, of being with him, and the sharing of the Word together, opened the disciples’ hearts and minds.  It moved them beyond fear.  Then, as now. 

                   Many years ago, a book was written about the power of fear to put roadblocks in our way.  I read it, cover to cover, and then realized, with a laugh, that I could have saved myself a lot of time…for the title was the best part of the whole thing!  “Feel the Fear…And Do it Anyway…”  That was it!  The Gospel of the Living Breathing Resurrected Jesus in seven short words.  Feel the fear…and do it anyway. 

                   And what exactly is that “it” that we are to do?  I believe the many, many stories of the living breathing resurrected Jesus affirm that the “it” is not about believing something about corpses reanimating or trying to explain with our brilliant minds only, how in the world that garden tomb was empty.  After years of my own struggles with this living breathing resurrected Jesus, I know that the “it” is far more than an affirmation of faith.  The “it” into which you are each invited is an experience—ongoing and episodic—an openness of your hearts and our minds to see and hear and touch and use all those amazing God-given senses to experience the living breathing resurrected Jesus in your own life.  And the greatest news of all, I think, is that there is no one right way to have this experience.  Each of us will experience resurrected life in ways that make sense for our lives.  And those experiences shift and change over time, again, for each of us.  My experience need not be yours, nor yours mine.  And yet, miraculously, God meets each one of us through the actions of this living breathing resurrected One, whose breath enters your nostrils and whose heart beats through your own and whose passion for justice and righteousness marches on through your feet and your arms and your hands and despite your many fears. 

                   For you see, the experience of those early disciples who touched Jesus, put their hands in his wounds and heard his voice, fed his hunger, received his blessing, is the same experience of Christians today who feed the hungry, break bread together, hunger for God’s blessing, and respond to the call to turn our lives toward God once again.  Because of the Resurrection, then, everything is different for Christians, and not just on Easter Sunday. But for fifty-one more Sundays and all the weekdays in between.  As another author has noted, “new life never slips in the back door quietly or painlessly.”  It drives in every single day, and, if we are open to it, resurrected life challenges any tired old scripts in any tomb in which we might reside. 

                   What if, the physicality of this resurrected Jesus—even for a short time—the fact that he walked and talked and cooked and ate a piece of fish—all those physical parts of being human—what if Jesus was transferring those to his disciples?  And by extension, to us?  Jesus drew their attention to his hands and his feet, and can’t you just imagine how the disciples in that moment recalled the many ways the hands and feet of Jesus had been important in his ministry—healing people, breaking bread, traveling around with the good news.  Now, wounded and bruised, those same hands and feet were proof to the disciples that he had gone through the danger and not around it.  He had gone through the fear and not avoided it.  He had gone through the trauma and become stronger from it. 

                   Barbara Brown Taylor—one of my favorite Christian authors writing today—talks about this very aspect of the living breathing resurrected Jesus.  She invites us to see that we, his followers, bear hope for the world because we are the Body, and the Image, of the Risen Christ in the world today: “Not our pretty faces and not our sincere eyes but our hands and feet—what we have done with them and where we have gone with them.”

                   When I think about transformation, about eyes and hearts opened to understanding things that formerly we were closed to, I’m reminded of the powerful experience of watching the YouTube video of a Scottish woman, humble but hopeful, on a talent show several years ago.  Susan Boyle stunned a disbelieving crowd that had already judged her undeserving of their affirmation, because of worldly standards that determine how a “star” should look and speak.  Three notes into her song, however, there was a mass transformation of the crowd, their hearts moved by her exceptional voice, completely unexpected. The goodness of her gifts, given by God, made her radiantly beautiful in the eyes of those who watched and listened.  But the transformation was of their hearts and minds, not of her, for she left the stage the same beautiful woman who had walked onto it, claiming her dream of being a great musical star.

                   You see, in resurrected life, not only our fears are left in the dust.  Our preconceptions are, as well.  In resurrected life, we quickly learn that our safe categories simply do not work anymore.  Our labels and our judgments, in the light of resurrected life, are rendered obsolete.  The Apostle Paul says it so well, having his own pronounced experience of the living breathing resurrected Jesus on that dusty Damascus Road.  He later writes these words, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female…” and we could add a few categories of our own—there is no longer old or young, Asian or Anglo, gay or straight, short or tall—for, as Paul concludes, “all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”  Friends, that is resurrected life.  This is resurrected life, right here, within Community Congregational Church.  Despite your fears, regardless the categories that might have worked for you in the past, you know in your core (because you live it here) the living breathing resurrected life that exploded out of that garden tomb and now permeates all of life, is new, unrecognizable, addressing fear by moving you through it and way beyond it. 

                   So where are you, two weeks after Easter?  The power of experiencing the risen Jesus enabled the early Christians to endure persecution and trials, and it enables you to name your fears and to step through them.  I’ve noticed a tentativeness around here.  Sometimes it seems borne of fears of the past reappearing somehow.  Fears that a leader might disappoint you, or worse.  Fears that people might leave, or worse.  Fears that your best days are behind you and not ahead.  Those fears loom.  At other times, however, your tentativeness seems borne of a kindness and a gentleness that wants not to hurt another, and so waits for the other to speak, to act, to move, to decide.  That gentleness, sisters and brothers, is like that permeating light emanating from that long ago garden tomb.  The light of the living breathing resurrected Jesus.  Walk into that light—the light of gentleness, the light of kindness—and you, too, will breathe in all the resurrected energy you need to banish any fear.

 

Amen and Blessed Be

“When Doors Are Locked”

A meditation based on John 20:19-31

April 8, 2018

Community Congregational Church of Chula Vista

Dr. Sharon R. Graff

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                   Ordinarily, what happens behind locked doors, stays behind locked doors, at least, in polite company!  But the Risen Jesus doesn’t seem to follow that etiquette!  Resurrection Day isn’t even over.  It is the evening of that same day when the tomb was discovered to be unoccupied.  The disciples have sequestered themselves behind locked doors, behind locked fears, behind locked doubts, behind locked despair, behind locked confusion.  Behind those locked doors of spirit, body and mind, they are safe, or so they think.  Their fears and concerns are safely contained in that locked room; safe from the authorities who killed their Teacher.  Safe from daring to believe what Mary Magdalene and the other women told them.  Safe from The Teacher himself and all that he taught them.  There, behind those locked doors, the disciples can regroup, breathe for a moment, then resolve to get back to their formerly safe lives. 

                   The Risen Jesus, however, has other ideas…ideas not to be curtailed by fears…ideas of a vibrant future lived way beyond locked doors!  Life pushes through what appears to be dead, and the Risen Jesus does so, too.  Scripture says, “he appeared though the doors were locked.”  Rarely a slave to formalities, Jesus shows up, upsetting their illusion of safety.  Yeah, Jesus has a maddening habit of doing that, doesn’t he?!  Showing up, despite our best efforts to lock him and his teachings safely out of our way.  We are in a season, seven weeks in length, called Easter; it is one of my favorites in the Christian year for just that reason.  Jesus keeps showing up. Behind locked doors.  On the seashore.  Over a cookfire, making breakfast.  On a road between here and there.  Jesus shows up. 

                   Several years ago, a biblical theologian looked at that factor in the post-resurrection stories—the factor of Jesus showing up—and she concluded that resurrection was not a “one and done” experience.  Resurrection wasn’t limited to the early morning tomb.  Resurrection—the life experience of Jesus alive again, and yet in very different form—resurrection was and is an ongoing reality, for those first disciples…and for us. 

                   And isn’t it also interesting to notice in today’s story: when Jesus shows up, he isn’t recognized.  That’s worth pondering.  How could the very people who had spent years of life walking and talking with him, listening and watching Jesus work, how could they fail to see him when he showed up?  I’ve heard preachers perform all sorts of theological gymnastics trying to explain that conundrum.  What has come to make the most sense to me—as I live through various seasons of life, death, and life again—is that resurrected life looks quite different.  Resurrected life is unrecognizable, at least on the surface.  When one looks more deeply, however, at the actions and the verbs, then the Resurrected Jesus becomes apparent. 

                   In this story today, the noun is Jesus.  He came and stood among them.  They apparently didn’t recognize him until the verb, the action…“he showed them his hands and his side.”  Then they rejoiced when they saw the Lord.  Their seeing Jesus depended on his doing something familiar.  The other resurrection stories we’ll explore in the coming weeks are very similar.  Jesus shows up.  The disciples don’t recognize him.  Jesus does something familiar, and in the familiar action, they are able to see him for who he is now.  Resurrected.  Changed.  Unrecognizable, except through verbs. 

                   And that, friends, is where the story of Thomas takes on special interest.  Thomas fascinates me.  He is a man of action who sees first, then believes.  In this passage, Thomas goes where we know the other disciples want to go, but dare not.  He says what they are aching to say, but fear to speak the words.  He touches what they itch to touch.  Doubting Thomas, he has been called.  A bad translation from the Greek has brought us that word, “doubt.”  Truth be told, the Greek word for “doubt” occurs nowhere in this story.  Rather, the word, which is wrongly translated as “doubt,” literally means “unbelieving”… which significantly changes Jesus’ words to Thomas:  “put your finger here and see my hands.  Reach out your hand and put it in my side.  Do not be unbelieving, but believing.”

                   Keep in mind that this conversation originated a week before, behind those locked doors, when the disciples, sans Thomas see the risen Christ.  We are not told why Thomas was absent from that resurrection appearance…only that he was not there.  The other disciples, no doubt, tell Thomas about having seen and heard Jesus with them, and if you were in Thomas’ shoes, you can imagine how you might feel and react.  A week passes.  Still, for Thomas, there is no Jesus.  Thomas’ lack of sight is not due to his lack of clarity or his lack of faith.  He has made his needs very clear.  He must see the nail marks and feel the hole in Jesus’ side in order to believe.  While Thomas’ demands might make many of us cringe, or at least secretly judge Thomas as being overtly suspicious, the text doesn’t even hint at such judgment.  The demands of Thomas’ faith are just that—neither gruesome nor unusual—they are simply understood as what Thomas needs in order to believe.

                   Centuries later, developmental theorist Jean Piaget would describe concrete thinkers, and his description fits Thomas.  Thomas needs data, objects and specific events in order to resolve the puzzle of the resurrection.  The other disciples had had new life breathed into them on resurrection night.  Thomas had missed out.  He needs the breath of new life as well.  And so Jesus meets him on his own terms.  And when met, Thomas responds with one of scripture’s most impressive confessions of faith: “My Lord and My God!” he exclaims!  No, this dialogue between Jesus and Thomas is not about doubt and faith.  Initially, it is about believing and not believing.  Ultimately, it is about living in community. 

                   Living in community means acceptance for wherever you are on the journey of believing and not believing.  It means not being judged for your questions.  It means that questions about belief are not ends in themselves…rather these profound questions lead to a stronger and more cohesive community.  That is their purpose, and Jesus makes all of that very clear in this story.

                   The question Jesus asks of Thomas, “Have you believed because you have seen me?” and the follow up statements applauding those who believe without seeing, have been unfortunately interpreted as a divine put down.  It may be the easy answer to assume that Jesus is ridiculing Thomas for his lack of faith, but I think it sells short both Jesus and Thomas. 

Jesus does not appear to be interested in shaming Thomas, nor by extension, any of us who ask for a little proof from time to time.  Jesus, like the God he represents, offers himself in the form and with language the petitioner can understand. 

                   As one commentary writer has noted, “It is not touching Jesus that leads Thomas to his confession of faith, but [what brings about Thomas’ declaration of faith is] Jesus’ gracious offer of himself.”  Jesus, like God, gives Thomas and us what is needed for faith, and he gives it directly, simply, without rancor or judgment.  Why, we may ask?  I imagine so that he and we can move beyond “faith matters” to what really matters in the community of faith.  Think about how the original community would have or could have been distracted by faith matters… questions such as: Did Jesus really rise up from the dead?  Was the Holy Spirit given at Pentecost—50 days after the resurrection—or on resurrection evening as John’s gospel suggests?  Did Jesus ascend to heaven before, after, or during this prolonged stay on earth? How many angels can really fit in the tomb?  We are no different than those early disciples.  We can become distracted if not obsessed with matters and questions of faith.  And in so doing, we may never really get to what matters in the community of faith. 

                   This story concludes with the words, “There are many things that Jesus did…these are written that you may believe…and that, through believing, you may have life…”  Ultimately, this story is about life!  Not about a list of beliefs or a series of unbeliefs.  This story is about moving beyond locked doors of belief and unbelief, and through locked doors of questions of faith, so that your eyes are opened to see resurrected life—new life—right here within the verbs of community. 

                   Bruce Epperly, a process theologian, author, and pastor, speaks of Thomas, not as a doubter, but as a hero.  To paraphrase Epperly’s comments, even though Thomas does not experience resurrection day, Thomas stays with the other disciples…  When he was hearing wild and amazing stories of the Risen Jesus, Thomas could have left for home and abandoned the group altogether, but he stayed!  And that is the point precisely…Thomas’ faith reminds us that living in community in spite of our questions, remaining in community through seasons of believing and not believing, is a strong and sure way of finding truth that will sustain us.  For in community, we do not have to have all the truth ourselves.  In community, we do not carry the load alone.  In community, we can lean on the faith of others when ours is not as strong, for in community, God’s love depends neither on our orthodoxy or our certainty, nor will God’s love be diminished by our doubts or our questions.  For in community love takes root and nurtures.  Behind locked doors.  Despite and because of courageously asked questions.  Through accepting and being accepted on the journey of faith, no matter your current location.  In community—the kind of community Jesus was breathing into existence so long ago—Jesus breathed a way of peace, a way that invites us to move from fear, to move from confusion, to move through unbelief and belief; to move today into life…resurrected life… unrecognizable except for the verbs.  For that we say, “Thank you, Thomas, for persisting beyond your own locked doors—le chaim—to life!”

 

Amen and Blessed Be!

“What Next?”

A meditation based on Mark 16:1-8 and John 20:1-18

Easter Sunday, 1 April 2018

Community Congregational Church of Chula Vista

Dr. Sharon R. Graff

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                   What next?  After the Amens?  After the Alleluias?  After the glory and the majesty and the enthronement of the Risen One?  What next?  The good news is, once the music stops, we have options!  There is no one right path leading away from the empty tomb and toward the rest of our lives.  There are many paths. 

                   The gospel stories we heard today describe with stark realism two very different paths.  One, the path of fear.  The other, the path of love.  Mark’s resurrection story is barely good news at all.  Jesus figures in the passage, only by his absence.  And the women, who go to the tomb, are met by a young man in a white robe who tells them the obvious about Jesus, “He is not here.  He has been raised.  Go tell the others that he’ll meet you in Galilee, just as he told you.”  What next for those disciples?  The earliest versions of the Gospel of Mark state, “So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”  Fear.  That’s what was next for them…at least for awhile. 

                   I’m reminded of a long ago trip to Disneyland with our pretendsy granddaughter, Samantha.  For those of you who may not know, Samantha Hope Appleton-Sackett is our dear friend.  Since her birth almost 18 years ago, we have been her Auntie Sharon and Uncle John.  With her red hair, she is often mistaken as our grandchild, and it is a mistake with which we can happily live!  Now a teenager and on track to become a professional ice skater, at the time, she was about 5 or 6 years old.  She had looked forward to this trip with her doting Auntie Sharon and Uncle John because she wanted to try out Splash Mountain for the very first time.  You know, that’s the ride that twists and turns through a watery path as you ride in a log boat, and at the end, dumps you down a very high hill into a rather deep pool of water.  It was a dicey ride for Samantha, and all the way home that night, she repeated, as if shocked at her own courage, “It was a little bit scary and a lot fun; it was a lot scary and a little bit fun; it was a little bit scary and a little bit fun; it was a lot of fun and a lot scary!”  Over and over, for the hour and half ride back to her house, Samantha’s litany of the day was all about fun and scary and scary and fun! 

                   That’s also how Mark’s account of the resurrection sounds.  For those first disciples, the whole resurrection experience seemed equal parts fear and amazement.  And instead of going out to tell the world, they were, as the scripture says, “seized” by fear.  They told no one anything.  That’s some kind of gripping fear, isn’t it?  Paralyzing fear.  Fear that distracts us, limits us, immobilizes us.  And such fear as we see in Mark’s account is one pathway we can follow after the alleluias of today have faded away. 

                   John’s gospel, written some 40 or 50 years after Mark’s account, offers a very different response to the same question, “what next?”  In John’s account of the resurrection, the pathway that takes the disciples from the tomb to the rest of their lives is a path paved with love.  John’s story of the resurrection is filed with love.  In love, Mary stands weeping outside the empty tomb.  In love, Mary seeks answers from the only person she sees in the garden… “Please sir, if you’ve carried him away, tell me where you’ve laid him, and I’ll take him now…”  Through love, we can hear the passion in her voice.  In love, Mary hears the loving voice of her Master calling her gently by name.  “Mary!”  To which she turns, in love, and responds, “Teacher!”  So much love in that scene, in that glance, in that brief exchange, that Jesus has to warn her off of grasping him just then…  Instead, he sends her out on a mission of love, to tell the others, which she boldly does.  “I have seen the Lord,” she declares, and at least some of them actually believe her!  This path from the tomb to the rest of their lives is a path paved with love and lined by love and guided by the memories and stories of love.  This, too, is a choice we have as we sing the alleluias today and wake up tomorrow.

                   So what next, Community Congregational Church?  What path will you take from the empty tomb of today into the rest of your life?  You have just as many choices as did those earliest disciples of Jesus.  In the face of resurrection, you can run and hide and tell no one.  With the possibility of new life, you can shrink in fear or rise in amazement.  As you ponder your future and make peace with your past, you can see the path ahead as scary or fun or some combo of the two.  As you turn to look for the Risen One, you can tune your ears and focus your eyes and fix your spirits on love.  You can, if you want, sing those alleluias to chase away any fear.  These many pathways are before you, today and every day. 

                   What next?  Will it be fear or will it be love?  No fooling—the choice is always yours!

 

Amen and Blessed Be

“This Jesus Parade!”

A meditation based on Mark 11:1-11

Palm Sunday, 25 March 2018

Community Congregational Church of Chula Vista

Dr. Sharon R. Graff

* * * * *

                   You know the story well.  Jesus asks a couple of the disciples to go to a specific place, where they will find a colt tied up; they are to untie it, tell its human that Jesus needs it, and then bring it to him.  You know the story well.  Jesus rides that borrowed donkey into Jerusalem in a parade of palms and hosannas that has come to outshine the second parade over on the other side of town. 

                   You know that story well, too…I’ve shared it with you the past two years on Palm Sunday.  It’s the story of Caesar’s parade, a military-style parade with all the pomp and pageantry of France’s Bastille Day.  Tanks, flyovers, banners, bands—or the 1^st century version of that at least—Caesar’s parade was carefully designed and intended to strike fear and obedience into the hearts and minds of the masses. 

                   When a parade like that goes by, we know who’s in charge.  We know what’s expected.  More significantly, when a parade, such as Caesar’s, marches by, we sense a place deep within us being awakened, and that place is fear.  Yes, we all know that story all too well.

                   But, Sharon, you say, this is Palm Sunday, not Caesar Sunday.  Our parade has palm fronds and hosannas and loud boisterous singing and even a choir that is just a bit enthusiastically chaotic!  Today is a day of celebration!  A day of joy!  This is the day when Jesus rides into the capital city, with throngs of folk cheering him on.  The energy of Palm Sunday is the sort of energy we need in order to get through this week called “holy.”  And it is true. 

                   Seen by itself, the Jesus parade is a joyful, boisterous display of support for this preacher healer teacher from Nazareth.  But seen in its larger context, seen in contrast to the Caesar parade on the other side of Jerusalem, which is happening at the very same time, this Jesus parade becomes counter-cultural.  Not a simple parade at all…but a deeply political demonstration.  While Caesar and his adherents are proudly parading their might and power, while they seek to engender fear and obedience, Jesus and the children and their peasant parents are parading a much different power.  It is the power of simplicity, the power of a plain beast of burden, the power of joy and generosity and, yes, the power of resistance.  These peasants could have been jailed for their parade, going against the Romans as they were.  Yet so seemingly insignificant was their resistance that the Romans of Jesus’ day barely even noticed them out there waving their palm branches and calling this fellow peasant the Christ.  Isn’t that just the way God often works?  God sneaks up on the power brokers—with grace, with joy, with a surprisingly different idea of what just might work—and God empowers the least of these to change their world.

                   We’ve been seeing this dynamic at work here in this country for the past six weeks.  Teenagers from nearly every state in the union walked out of their schools two weeks ago in protest of the gun insanity that has gripped this nation for far too long.  Yesterday, thousands of these young people—not even old enough to vote—made considerable effort to travel to our nation’s capital, as did Jesus in his day, and to capitals and cities across this nation.  They traveled and marched to demonstrate against what the dominant culture has been parading.  To say, as did Jesus, there is a better way.  A way without violence.  A way without fear.  A way without intimidation or forced obedience or domination.  Friends, we know this way…you know this way…it is the way of the Jesus Parade.  And it stands in stark contrast to the way of domination, of coercion and of fear. 

                   The way of fear clashes profoundly with the passionate love of Jesus.  Some of you may recall a very popular movie that was produced many years ago around Holy Week.  It was called “The Passion of the Christ” and with gruesome images, it detailed the final hours of Jesus’ life.  We need not be opposed to looking at suffering, least of all the suffering of Jesus, but what if, additionally, we saw the passion of the Christ as a passion for healing and a passion for teaching and a passion for the poor and the marginalized and a passion for equality and justice and peace?  What if the passion of the Christ was understood and lived by this church to be a passion so deep and so compelling that others would be drawn into the orbit of God through the passion of the living Christ, not the passion of the dying Jesus?  What would that passion look like in your lives? 

                   You already have a glimpse.  That passion of the Living Christ, as it is lived in you, Community Congregational Church, looks like this…[show slides…]  The passion of the Living Christ looks like joy and humor and plenty of food to go around.  The passion of the Living Christ, lived here by you, looks like kindness and inclusivity and friendship and humans truly caring for one another.  The passion of the Living Christ, embodied and emboldened by you, looks like beauty and wonder and making a place for the youngest and the eldest and all in between to love and be loved here on this sacred piece of real estate.  That’s what the Passion of the Living Christ looks like as you live it, as you let it live in and through you. 

                   You see, the Jesus Parade of Jerusalem—with the palms and the hosannas—it was fueled by the passion of the Living Christ, who lived so fully the way of love and was killed precisely because he resisted so fully the way of fear.  Living with you for two years now, has shown me a similar sort of Jesus Parade right here.  With your kindness and your gentleness and your resistance of fear, your Jesus Parade is fueled by the love of the Living Christ, present here at this table. 

                   On the ancient Isle of Iona, off the northwest coast of Scotland, live the descendents of a strain of early Christianity that, like you, saw the Living Christ in all life.  When this community now gathers for communion, they share these words:

“And as the bread and wine

which we now eat and drink

are changed into us,

may we be changed again into you,

bone of your bone,

flesh of your flesh,

loving and caring in the world.”

My sisters and brothers, the essence of your Jesus Parade is also one of alchemy…of changing and being changed by…of changing from fear to love…of changing from disappointment to hope…of being changed by new thoughts and new possibilities and new people and new leaders.  The essence of your Jesus Parade is kindness and patience and a deep knowing that all is well and all will be well.  Follow this parade, and you will live.

 

Amen and Blessed Be

 

 

“Praying When Wrong”

A meditation based on Psalm 51:1-12

March 18, 2018

Community Congregational Church of Chula Vista

Dr. Sharon R. Graff

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                   Today we turn our attention to how we can pray when we’re in the wrong.  And it’s probably best to begin with a joke.  This old joke about making mistakes was credited to Charles M. Schulz.  Remember he gave us that wonderful Peanuts comic strip for so many years.  Mr. Schulz once said, “I never made a mistake in my life.  I thought I did once, but I was wrong.”

                   The truth of the matter is we each make mistakes.  And spoiler alert: God is not at all surprised when we do…and has a path already paved and prepared for us when we goof up.  Now lest we get too daring or cavalier about those mistakes, remember what the Apostle Paul once wrote: don’t just keep sinning so that God’s grace may abound!  No!  However, when we do make mistakes—the large public ones and the small often unnoticed—today’s psalm offers us a healthy way forward.  Let’s look at it a bit more closely.

                   Eugene Peterson’s modern-language translation of the Bible entitled, The Message, translates the Psalm reading for today in the following way:

Generous in love—God, give grace!  Huge in mercy—wipe out my bad record.

Scrub away my guilt, soak out my sins in your laundry.

I know how bad I’ve been; my sins are staring me down.

You’re the One I’ve violated, and you’ve seen it all, seen the full extent of my evil.

You have all the facts before you; whatever you decide about me is fair.

I’ve been out of step with you for a long time, in the wrong since before I was born.

What you’re after is truth from the inside out.  Enter me, then; conceive a new, true life.

Soak me in your laundry and I’ll come out clean, scrub me and I’ll have a snow-white life.

Tune me in to foot-tapping songs, set these once-broken bones to dancing.

Don’t look too close for blemishes, give me a clean bill of health.

God, make a fresh start in me, shape a Genesis week from the chaos of my life.

                   The phrase “a Genesis week” leapt off the page when I first read this particular translation.  What is “a Genesis week” and what might it teach us about praying when we’ve sinned?  I imagine that the translator was thinking of the first two chapters of Genesis, when order is brought out of chaos, where breathtaking beauty springs up with just a word or two from the divine voice, when God looks around on a daily basis, and says with pride, “It is good…It is very good…!” 

                   Yes, this is the kind of Genesis week we want and need.  A week of decluttering the messes, a week of bringing order out of chaos, a week when all that is planned actually goes as planned, a week with no shocks, no unexpected challenges, a week of unparalleled beauty.  As the comics often say, “I’d like to live on that planet!”  That kind of Genesis week, as we well know, is simply unattainable and unrealistic.  To expect it is to set ourselves up for failure and disappointment.  For we know that, as when Jacob wrestled with those angels, out of struggle comes certainty.  Wrestling with ideas and dreams and plans and, yes, even wrestling with people, can result in a blessing or two…a new direction perhaps, or a new way of thinking about life.  In Jacob’s case, his struggling netted him a brand new name: Israel, “the one who strives with God.”

                   Several years ago, the Christian Century magazine reported that a church youth group was discussing how 9/11 affected their prayer life.  One young man said he’s not been able to pray since that event, for he assumes that many of the people in those planes and buildings were praying that God would spare them, and their prayers were not answered.  Another fellow

said he cannot pray either, but for a different reason: he assumes that the terrorists were praying to their God for courage to follow through on their plans, and their prayers were answered.  Then a young woman quietly admitted that she is still praying.  She is an artist, and she went on to say that, as an artist, she tends to pray with images.  In her images, the victims and the perpetrators of 9/11 are sitting around a table in heaven, trying to figure out together what happened on that day.  What an incredible image!  What an amazing gift from the heart and mind of an artist!  Centered in the beauty of God, this young woman holds out for us a powerful model of prayer.

                   If the essence of God is beauty and love—not power or authority or dominance or anger or vengeance or any of the other traditional characteristics often ascribed to the divine—if the essence of God is beauty and love, then friends, the essence of our praying, even and especially when we are wrong, is prayer that is steeped in the assurance that God loves us dearly.

                   In this Psalm we read together this morning, God’s love takes the form of forgiveness,

and it’s a pretty healthy dose of forgiveness at that!  By my count, David had broken five of the Ten Commandments including murdering the husband of his mistress, yet none of that kept him from experiencing God’s love full force.  Three profound Hebrew words are used

by the psalmist to describe God’s grace: they are ?anan, ?esed, and ra?amim.  The first translates to “be gracious;” the second “steadfast love;” and the third “compassion” or more accurately, “motherly compassion.” 

                   These three words for God’s grace are found throughout the Hebrew scriptures, as God repeatedly welcomes back those who have strayed and tirelessly seeks out those who are lost.  As one commentary writer has forcefully stated, “…the reality of God’s steadfast love

is more fundamental than the reality of human sinfulness…In short, God forgives sinners.”

                   God’s heart is very large, large enough to accommodate all, even when all have sinned.  As the Apostle Paul so eloquently wrote, “there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God…”  Nothing can stop God from loving us…not even your worst sin on your most challenging day of life.  Given the unmistakable reality of God’s ?anan—gracious character,

of God’s ?esed—steadfast love, and of God’s ra?amim—compassion, it follows that we are to extend that same graciousness, that same motherly compassion, that same forgiveness to all. 

                   If we see God this way, as the force of love in the world, then when we act contrary to love, we are acting against God.  Hence the psalmist prays honestly, and in a spirit of confession:

1. God, I messed up
2. God, I am in need of your mercy
3. God, I am in need of cleansing in your love
4. My wrongs are against you, for you only act in love…I did not…please forget that and help me move on with your love as my cover
5. And then those beautifully familiar hopeful words: Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me.  Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit.

Or, as The Message Bible translates this last thought: “God, make a fresh start in me,

shape a Genesis week from the chaos of my life.”

                   Imagine how your life would be different if, the next time you really mess up, instead of beating yourself for what you did, imagine how it would feel to say those words instead… “God, make a fresh start in me, shape a Genesis week from the chaos of my life.”

Short.  Simple.  Honest.  Confessing.  Admitting. 

Not trying to hide, yet also recognizing that God’s love is greater than your sin. 

                   God’s love is bigger than any wrong you can even imagine committing.  God’s love is a cover that cloaks you and protects you and forgives you and releases you so that you can live in that love of God and reflect that love of God better tomorrow than you did today.  Beating yourself for your wrongs does nobody any good, least of all you.  Beating yourself for messing up doesn’t please God, nor is it required by God as a step toward God’s forgiveness of us.  What the psalmist today offers is a path much more profound and healthy.  It is a path that says, simply, directly, and with hope more than despair, “God, make a fresh start in me,

shape a Genesis week from the chaos of my life.”  And as we pray in this way, may we hear also God’s loving Genesis voice assure us, “You are good…you are very good…”  For from love, and love only, we move forward in more healthy ways.

 

Amen and Blessed Be