Everything is Eternal & Temporary: A Reflection from Emily Rutledge

I am a sucker for the ordinary, for routine, for normalcy.

Taco Tuesdays.
Laundry on Sundays.
Unloading the dishwasher after one cup of coffee in bed.
Goodnight routines with little humans.

These things give me great joy.  The knowing.  Yet, once something difficult arises, even if it becomes ordinary or routine, I am anxious for it to go.  As a child when something hard was happening my mom would always reassure me that...

This, too, shall pass

I clung to that knowledge fiercely, that the bad stuff would eventually end.  I clung to it so hard, in fact, that I overlooked the universality of that truth.  This was not just the hard stuff, this was also the good stuff, the comfortable stuff, the things and people I loved.

As we walk through Holy Week we are reminded of the pain that Jesus endured, not just on the cross, but in betrayal and disappointment and wishing things could be different.  While enduring the unimaginable, Christ continues to hold lightly to things.  His understanding of eternity is such that he is able to experience the heart-wrenching end of his earthly life as a temporary experience in the vastness of eternity.  He is able to extend forgiveness in the midst of pain and extend grace when none is given to Him.

In today's reading from Hebrews it's written,

"Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God."

Life changes when we live as Christ did.  Life changes when we stop holding so tightly to the good and working so hard to avoid the bad.  When we stop holding on we are freed to experience all the parts of this life that are temporary, teaching and molding us, moving us closer to that, 'joy that is set before' us.

I am not sure what eternity looks like or feels like but I know that when we allow ourselves to live in it, to let the truth of it settle in our bones, we enter a stream of existence, with the great cloud of witnesses, where love and grace abound no matter the temporary experience.

When we live life as both eternal and temporary, 'this, too, shall pass' becomes not a placate for suffering but rather a mantra for how we experience life.  Enjoying the times of joy with the knowledge they will not last forever and moving and growing through the times of struggle knowing that they, too, will not last.

This Holy Week, no matter where you are in your life, I pray that the God of love and grace fill you with joy and peace.

Confronting Violence with Love 3/25/18 The Rev. David M. Stoddart

Mark 14:1-15:47

Palm Sunday

You remember the story in Genesis about Abraham and his son Isaac? Abraham believes the LORD is calling him to kill his son and offer him as a sacrifice. It’s a terrible story, and the common interpretation is that God is testing Abraham to see if he really has faith. I think there is a test going on in that story, but it is not whether Abraham has faith: the test is whether he or we believe in a God who would demand such a thing. In the end, God won’t let him kill his son, but provides a ram to offer as a sacrifice instead. But it's a close call and a haunting story, especially on a day like today, and it reminds me of a Wilfred Owen poem. Owen was a British soldier and poet who served in the trenches during World War I. Before he himself was killed, he wrote some devastating poems about the horrors of that war. One of them — famously set to music in Benjamin Britten’s great War Requiem — retells the story of Abraham and Isaac, but with a different ending:

When lo! An angel called him out of heaven,

Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,

Neither do anything to him. Behold,

A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;

Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.

But the old man would not do so, but slew his son,

And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

It is not God who likes violence: we do.

And it is crucial to remember that as we hear the terrible story we just heard. The Passion is filled with violence of every kind: the emotional violence of betrayal and abandonment, the verbal violence of mockery and abuse, the physical violence of torture and agonizing death. And it is set in the framework of a capricious crowd that violently turns on Jesus, going from shouting “Hosanna!” to screaming “Crucify him!” in a matter of days. We’ve heard this narrative before many times, and so we can have the numbed callousness that familiarity breeds, but if we hear this story with any shred of human empathy, it’s horrible.

And the violence is painstakingly laid out for us to see. We go through it event by event, line by line. But that is not because God takes some kind of sadistic pleasure in the suffering of his son. There are some strains of Christian thought, and some churches, that seem to emphasize that. The thinking goes that we are all such horrendous sinners that we deserve the worst punishment, and God needs to punish. So he punishes Jesus instead of us, laying the pain on thick. And we’re forced to listen to it, to remind ourselves of how miserable we truly are. And then, the thinking goes, we’re supposed to rejoice because God is so loving: loves us so much that he caused Jesus, an innocent man, to be tortured, broken, and slowly asphyxiated to death instead of us. Do we worship that kind of God? I don’t.

It is not God who likes violence: we do.

The point of reading through the Passion and listening to that story is not to savor the violence in any way, but to see how Jesus responds to it. And he responds without a trace of violence. He does not fight back, he does not return curse for curse, he does not meet spite with spite. Even when people around him are willing to fight, like that man who takes out a sword and strikes the slave of the high priest, Jesus will have none of it. He speaks the truth simply, and otherwise remains silent and peaceful.

But it is not the silence of passivity or the peace of avoidance. More than perhaps any other Gospel, Mark presents Jesus as the Anointed One who drives out demons and overcomes the forces of evil. And in the Passion narrative, that is what Jesus is doing. When we read through it, we are reminded of how much cruelty and violence we humans are capable of, but we are also reminded of how much love and power God is capable of. By refusing to respond to violence and hatred with yet more violence and hatred, Jesus does what God does. The cross is the ultimate expression of divine strength, the ability to encounter the worst human nature can dish out and meet it with love and transforming power. It is unworldly power, but there is no mistaking its might. It is no accident that the final word goes to a centurion, by definition a hardened Roman soldier: Truly, this man was God’s Son! God wins, love triumphs over violence, and that victory is made clear on Easter morning.

But before we jump to the Resurrection, we can spend this week in the trenches with Jesus, which means more than just remembering what he did. We are in Christ, after all, one with him in the Spirit, which means his struggle against the forces of evil is our struggle. If we are going to walk with him this week or any week, the question looms: how can we join him in confronting violence with love? Violence is all around us, and it can feel overwhelming. And it is within us.  All the cruelty displayed in the Passion narrative and all the cruelty we witness and read about on a daily basis begins in the human heart, and we’re all capable of it. We can too easily stew in resentments and think hateful thoughts that spell out of us as hurtful words and harmful actions. What if, this week, as our spiritual offering during Holy Week, we truly followed Jesus in our personal lives by practicing non-violence in thought, word, and deed?

That can involve something as dramatic as marching for societal change, as many people did yesterday, or as simple as being kind to someone who has not been kind to us instead of lashing out at them. But in all cases it means acknowledging the violence within us and asking Christ, letting Christ, with whom we are one, transform our own violent thoughts and feelings with love. We are not capable of doing that on our own, but Christ can do it in us and for us. That’s why we call him Savior. If we can allow his love to even begin to change our violent tendencies, to let his Spirit even begin to show us a better way, then the narration we just heard is no longer a terrible story from ancient history but a redemptive story that changes lives now. And being changed is the only reason to listen to such a story.

Just as I Am?

Jesus, looking at him, loved him . . .

(Mark 10:21)

I vividly remember the first time I did a sacramental confession with a priest. I was a freshman in college, just coming back into faith after a long hiatus and new to the Episcopal Church. I felt excited, and sensed an abundance of spiritual energy within me. But I was also terrified: I carried baggage with me that felt too heavy, things I had done and said and thought during my teenage years that I felt very ashamed of. And I genuinely feared they would exclude me not only from the church but from the realm of God's love. So with fear and trembling I decided to put it all on the line: I set up an appointment with a priest to hear my confession. I was so nervous I could barely sleep the night before. I imagined him looking horrified and telling me that I had no place in God's church, let alone God's heart. And my terror increased when I entered the room and realized I would go through the rite face to face with him: no confessional booth, no anonymity, no place to hide. But I did it: I said out loud things I thought I would never say to anyone ever. He looked at me kindly the whole time, and at the end did not seem the least bit shocked. He assured me of God's love and forgiveness, but what blew me away was his love and acceptance. He was Christ to me in that moment: he saw me exactly as I was, and he loved me. It is no exaggeration to say that my life changed dramatically that day. I no longer had to believe in God's love as an abstraction: I had experienced it directly through another person.

That is what Jesus does in the story of the rich man who asks him what he should do to inherit eternal life: Jesus sees him for who he is, and he loves him. And, in fact, that is what he does throughout the Gospels: he looks into the hearts of everyone, grasping the reality of each person he meets, and loving what he sees. He takes people as they are. His power to transform lives begins with his radical and loving acceptance of every human being.

Not long ago, a man came to see me in my office. A lifelong and faithful Episcopalian, he was feeling disconnected from his church because he felt like his particular political views were not acceptable in the church. I could feel his pain and see it in his eyes. And I thought of Jesus looking at him and loving him. And I thought of that priest looking at me and loving me. And I knew that I just wanted to understand this man and love him as he was in that moment. And I was reminded for the umpteenth time in my ministry that we must be Christ to each other because we need Christ — and Christ needs us to convey his acceptance and unconditional love.

One of the greatest gifts we can give other people is to see them as they truly are and love them as they truly are. Especially in the polarized world we live in, those of us in Christ have a special calling to practice the radical acceptance of Jesus. We do not have to agree with everyone; we do have to love them. Of course this is not always easy, but that's why we have the Holy Spirit: so that we can love others as they are, the way Christ loves us as we are. And for me, that means remembering everyday that my first job when I encounter someone is not to change them or to judge them: my first job is to actually see them and try to understand them. Without that, I cannot hope to love them. As St, Francis prayed: Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. Yes. Amen.

Looking at the cross. March 11, 2018 The Rev. David M. Stoddart

Numbers 21:4-9; John 3: 14-21

I enjoy Gary Larson’s take on “intensive exposure therapy,” and I included his cartoon about dealing with the fear of heights, snakes, and the dark in your bulletin. It does not appear to be working, but it’s an intriguing idea and it offers us an entrée into this strange and disturbing reading from the Book of Numbers. The Israelites are wandering in the wilderness and they are complaining, which is not unusual. And they are unreasonable in their complaining, which is also not unusual: “We have no food, and the food we don’t have tastes terrible!” But after that, the story gets weirder. It tells us that the LORD sent poisonous snakes among the people, and they bit the people. What’s that about? It doesn’t say that God did it to punish people for complaining; we could infer that, except that we know better: Jesus tells us on numerous occasions that God does not do such things. Or it could just be that the Israelites at that point believed that anything which happened, good or bad, must be caused by God: if there are snakes, God must have sent them. That is a primitive theology, but it is present in parts of the Old Testament. But what is most bizarre is what happens when Moses intercedes for the people. The LORD tells him to make this bronze serpent and set it up on a pole for people to look at in order to cure their snake bites, which of course we know doesn’t work. Right?

But beneath all the strangeness there may be a deep wisdom embedded in this passage. You will notice that when Moses prays, God doesn’t make the snakes go away: they’re still there, and they still bite people. Instead he makes people look at an image of a snake, and doing that heals them. Put in basic terms, the LORD does not make their problem go away: he literally makes them look at it and confront it head on. It may not be “intensive exposure therapy,” but there’s something significant going on here.

And John’s Gospel gets it. And doesn’t just get it, but connects it with the work of Christ and the truth of God’s love: And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life (12:32) .  In John, the moment Christ is lifted up on the cross is the critical moment. In chapter twelve, Jesus says, And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw the whole world to myself.  And right after Jesus dies on the cross, John quotes the book of Zechariah: They will look on the one they have pierced (Zech. 12:10). The Israelites have to look at that snake on a pole, and it heals them. The Gospel tells us that we have to look at Christ on the cross, and it saves us. In the Greek, the word for salvation is the same word for healing. Eternal life doesn’t just happen after we die: it begins now, as we look at Christ and allow him to heal us and make us whole.

Why? Jesus is an icon of us: we look at him on the cross, and see the full effects of our selfishness, our greed, our violence, our indifference to others. And the cross does not just reflect our individual brokenness but the pain of our whole world: the systemic racism that afflicts our country, millions of people without health insurance, the abuse of our natural environment, and the huge and unjust disparities between the rich and the poor. They’re all there. When we see the body of Jesus hanging on the cross, we truly are seeing ourselves: our flawed, broken, and hurting selves — not being judged, but being embraced by the unconditional love of God.

For God so loved the world . . . The Gospel, the Good News, is absolutely clear: God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. When we confess our sins, we do not so in order t0 feel guilt or shame: we do so in order to be healed.

But how does that actually work? How will that actually change our lives? Well, we can see a great example of that in 12 Step programs, which are inherently spiritual and reflect Gospel truth even when the participants are not Christians. The first step: “We admitted that we are powerless over alcohol or drugs or gambling or food or whatever it is that we are addicted to, that our lives have become unmanageable.” And the second step: “We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity.” The rest of the steps simply outline a way of looking directly at the problem and seeing it within the light of God’s healing power. A snake on a pole. Christ on the cross.

And if you’ve never tried this, then Lent is an excellent time to start. Think of one of your besetting sins, a behavior or habit that hurts you and hurts others. Say, for example, you have lots of resentments. You don’t let go of anger easily but instead resent people and think badly of them, so much so that it eats away at you. I know a lot of people struggle with this. You could just say, “I’m so terrible. I really stink.” Or you could look at Christ on the cross, and see him embracing you with all your anger and resentment, and loving you. That would allow you to lay guilt and shame aside and look more closely. Why do you get angry so much? Why do you hold onto resentment? What old hurts do you carry? What insecurities cripple you? When can’t you forgive? How can God help you and heal you? Remember, Christ crucified is God loving us as we are so that we can be set free. Jesus died to save us. The goal of looking at the cross and seeing ourselves in the light of the cross is not condemnation: it is transformation.

I don’t know why God made a world where snakes can hurt people. I don’t know why God made a world where people can hurt people. We can speculate all we want, but God never gives us an answer to that question. Having faith does not mean explaining away the snakes: having faith means letting God heal the snake bites. Our salvation may not be fully realized until the Kingdom of God is fully realized, but it begins now. It begins the moment we look to Christ and say yes to his love, his forgiveness, and the healing he offers. For God so loved the world.

Where is God? March 5, 2018 The Rev. Kathleen M. Sturges

 John 2:13-22

With college basketball’s March Madness starting soon it makes me think about all that goes into making a game happen.  Not only do you need players, coaches, and refs, but countless other things like lights, buzzers, scoreboards, cameras, and video streams, to name a few.  But imagine with me if someone came into a game with a giant pair of hedge trimmers and cut all the electrical cords - the lights would go out, the scoreboard go black, the cameras stop filming.  If something like that happened we wouldn’t say that the person who did it was “cleansing” the basketball arena.  We’d say that he had stopped the game. 

In the same way that you need electricity in a basketball stadium, you need cattle and sheep, doves and money changers for people to worship in the Jewish temple.  And it is into this arena, the temple in Jerusalem, that Jesus enters with his own type of hedge trimmers - a handmade whip, in this case - to cut the cord and stop the temple game.  The gospel of John tells us that, “Making a whip of cords, [Jesus] drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.” 

What’s going on here?  Well, the gospel of Matthew, Mark, and Luke tells us that Jesus is cleansing God’s temple from corruption, accusing the sellers of turning this holy place into a “den of robbers.”  But the gospel of John has a slightly different take on what’s going on.  Jesus isn’t quibbling about shady business practices, but calling for a dismantling of the entire system of sacrifice.  The big issue here is  -  where is God actually located? 

Now back in Jesus’ day good and faithful Jews would answer that God is in the temple.  That the divine literally dwelt within the walls made of brick and mortar.  The temple was kind of like God’s house, but it seems that he had a terrible case of agoraphobia because he never left.  People had to come to him in the temple.  But you couldn’t show up empty handed.  The Jewish law required that all worshippers come with some type of sacrificial offering.   That’s why all those animals and money changers were in the temple in the first place.  They provided what was necessary to be in God’s presence.

   

So when Jesus stops all of that everyone was shocked, not only by his actions but by his words.  "Destroy this temple,” he says, “and in three days I will raise it up."  No one knew what he meant by that.  It didn’t make any sense. Only with hindsight did the disciples realize that the temple Jesus was talking about was his own body.  That Jesus was giving a new answer to the question, where is God?  No longer was God in a temple made of brick and mortar, but a temple of flesh and blood.  In Jesus’ was where God was most present. 

But even that didn’t turn out to be the final answer.  For at the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry in the gospel of John he prays for something more, “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they (all my followers) also be in us...I in them and you in me.”  Now it’s hard to keep track of who is in whom, but what it’s all about is a mystical, mysterious being in one another - God in us and we in God.  And after Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension that prayer is answered by the Holy Spirit.  God is now everywhere...and in particular in each one of us.  The temple of God, where God is most present, is truly made of flesh and blood, our flesh and blood for the temple of God is found in you.  And in every other person - no exceptions. 

I pray we already know that.  Yet sometimes it’s hard to remember.  Certain circumstances may prompt us to ask, “Where is God?”  But know this any where, any time, any place provides a chance to encounter the God of grace that loves us beyond all measure.   When you share food with someone who is hungry, that’s the flesh and blood temple of God.   When you are in the hospital with someone you love, that’s the flesh and blood temple of God.  When you work for justice and peace, when you keep watch with the dying, when you forgive someone who’s hurt you - all those times and so many more are when the divine is present in the flesh and blood temple of God.  Now if we’re lucky we are aware of it in the moment, but other times, maybe even most of the time, we recognize those holy encounters only with hindsight - just like the disciples did in our story today.  They didn’t get what Jesus was doing or saying as he made a mess of the temple.  It was on the other side of the resurrection that they were able look back and see what had been true all along - that God had been with them in the flesh and blood temple of Jesus.

And here’s something else you probably already know.  That is that you don’t have to be in church to find God.  But before you rush out those doors and I never see you again - and then I’ll terribly miss you - let me say that I believe coming together on a regular basis to worship the God of love helps us to more fully be the flesh and blood temple of God out in the world.  For when we come together in church as members of the Body of Christ it is a special time where we pray for each other, encourage one another, and sometimes even challenge each other.  When we go it alone in our relationship with God, it’s remarkable how often God starts thinking exactly as we do.  Being part of a community guards against our tendency towards narcissism.   It’s been said that finding God in nature all by yourself, well, that’s easy.   The real miracle is finding God in the company of people who are just as annoying as you are, and as I am.  But here at church we get to practice all that, practice looking for and learning to do the work of God so that we are better at it when we go out in the world during the rest of our week.   For the world keeps asking the question, “Where is God?”  And we are called to answer in both what we do and what we say that God is with us, always, in flesh and blood. 

Eager: A Reflection from Emily Rutledge

My baby just turned four.  He has a wild heart.  He is deeply compassionate and wide open.  Church is as much a part of him as bath time and preschool. He views it as such, another thing he does where he can be his true self, no need to hold back. 

Lately, he has been approaching the communion rail in a way that would make you believe they are handing out cupcakes and not wafers and wine.  While I'm happy he is eager for communion I often hope he will refrain from commentary.  My hopes are always squashed. 

Me: Dip your wafer in just a little big.

(dips entire wafer into chalice till his fingers are almost submerged)

Him: YES!  I got SO MUCH.

(happily nibble wafer all the way back to pew)

I wonder what communion would feel like for me if I laid it all out with commentary when receiving it, not as a 4 year old does but as my 33 year old self does.

(taking my normal sip from the chalice)

Me: YES!  Forgiveness for another week where I feel short in almost all aspects of my life but still get another chance and am still so loved!

(gleefully skip down the aisle)

I have a feeling I may be running to the alter, too.  Eager.  Always wanting more.  

I find that instead of running to Christ to tell me that I am enough, I am instead running for validation from others to tell me what I should or could already know.  That no level of success or progress is going to make me anymore loved and wonderful than I already am.  

I invite you this week to receive Christ at the rail the way my son does, so excited for the gift of Christ and so sure of it's goodness and truth that commentary is needed.