To seek and serve Christ in all persons. June 24, 2018 The Rev. David M. Stoddart

The great Swiss theologian Karl Barth said that you should preach the Gospel with a Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other. God cares about the whole world, after all, and the Gospel of Jesus Christ is for the whole world. Well, the newspapers and their digital equivalents have recently been filled with a world of pain. As we all know, for a number of weeks our government has been forcibly separating children from their parents when those parents have tried to enter our country illegally. The images and stories have been heartbreaking, and have included young children, even toddlers and infants, being physically taken from their mothers’ arms; parents hearing the cries of their children and not being allowed to go to them or touch them or comfort them; children being warehoused in detention centers and camps, some of which are disturbingly cage-like; authorities refusing to tell parents where their children are and when or if they will see them again; and some of those authorities, federal workers at the border, breaking down in tears and being overwhelmed by the awfulness of what they are being asked to do. After a huge uproar, an executive order was issued this week, stopping this practice from continuing, at least for now. But there are still some 2,ooo to 3,000 children separated from their parents, with no certainty about when or if they will be reunited with their families. The human pain in all of this is immeasurable.

And the Church of Jesus Christ cannot be silent. As a preacher in that Church, I will not be silent. I hope what I’m about to say is glaringly obvious: systematically separating children from their parents to deter and/or punish people trying to enter the United States is cruel, inhumane, and morally abhorrent. This is an issue that transcends partisan politics, and people of both political parties and all political persuasions have rightly expressed their outrage and horror.

You don’t need a Bible to know this is wrong: just a working heart. But in case it is not abundantly clear, it is incumbent upon me as the Rector of this parish to remind all of us of the compelling and consistent message of Scripture concerning the treatment of aliens and foreigners, a message which runs from the beginning to the end of the Bible. The Law addresses it directly, multiple times, in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy: When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God (Lev. 19:33-34).  And then the Law goes on in numerous passages to flesh that out, saying for example that the Israelites should not gather the gleanings from their harvests but leave them for the aliens among them (e.g., Lev. 23:22; Deut. 24: 19-22). And towards the very end of the Torah, in one of the last things that Moses does before he dies, he sums up the law and says, “Cursed be anyone who deprives the alien, the orphan, and the widow of justice.” All the people shall say, “Amen.” (Deut. 27:19)

And this theme runs throughout the rest of Scripture. The Psalmist affirms it, as in Psalm 146: The LORD watches over the strangers; he upholds the orphan and the widow (v. 9). And the prophets drive the same message home, over and over again: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Malachi — there is no avoiding it. As the prophet Zechariah writes, Thus says the LORD of hosts: Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another; do not oppress the widow, the orphan, the alien, or the poor; and do not devise evil in your hearts against one another (Zech. 7: 9-10).

And there is no mistaking Jesus’s teaching here. Matthew records that Jesus himself was a refugee as a child, when his family fled to Egypt for safety. And throughout the Gospels Jesus shows mercy to Romans, Samaritans, and Gentiles all the time. And in the parable of the sheep and the goats, Jesus insists that the only criterion for judgment is whether people see him in the poor and the needy: For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me . . . Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me” (Matt. 25: 35, 40).

I could go on, but the point is beyond dispute. This is not a minor side note in the Bible; we’re not talking about a few obscure verses we can easily overlook. Dozens of passages strongly state that God cares about how we treat strangers and foreigners. And that message is embedded in our Baptismal Covenant, which we affirm every time we baptize someone and which we will affirm again today. In that covenant, we promise “to seek and serve Christ in all persons” — not some persons, not many persons, all persons — “loving your neighbor as yourself.” And we promise “to strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being” — not some human beings, not many human beings, every human being. This is true regardless of whether we are conservatives or liberals, it is true regardless of what our particular views on immigration policy may be. The people who cross our borders are human beings, many of them desperately seeking a better life for their families. God loves them; Jesus identifies with them; he is on their side. They must be treated humanely, with decency, respect, and charity. Anything less than that is clearly unacceptable to God, and should be unacceptable to us.

In light of that, I have two admonitions for you today, one specific and one general. The specific one: if you have not already done so, please join me in contacting our elected officials. I have called the offices of Congressman Garrett and Senators Warner and Kaine to express my strong feelings on this matter and to urge them to work in a bipartisan way to reunite children with their families as quickly as possible and to fix our immigration system so that such a horrible thing cannot happen again.

But on a more general level, I urge you to keep the faith. We cannot give into cynicism, hatred, or despair. The problems in our world can feel overwhelming: it would be all too easy to hunker down in our various factions and hurl insults at each other; it would be all too easy to give up hope and give up trying. But that is not an option for us. We follow the Crucified and Risen Lord, who met the pain and violence of a broken world with the saving and invincible love of God. We are his Body in the world, and his mission is our mission. So pray fervently and act bravely and love generously — and trust that God’s Holy Spirit, who never grows weary and never gets discouraged, will move through us, even us. Believe it and live it. God knows the world needs it.

More than we can see. June 17, 2018 The Rev. Kathleen M. Sturges

Mark 4:26-36, 2 Corinthians 6-10, 14-17

Have you ever had this happen...you arrive at home and realize that you don’t really remember the drive that got you there?  So many times throughout our days there’s a temptation to switch into autopilot because we think we’ve seen it all - that we already know all there is to know about a certain situation.  This is particularly true for me when driving the same streets over and over again, which made me curious so I googled “accidents close to home.”  Turns out that 52% of car accidents occur within a 5 mile radius of home.  So I’m not the only one who tends to zone out.  All to say that a few weeks ago as I was driving home in a quasi-autopilot state I made the usual right turn into my neighborhood and gasped.  Right in front of me was a rainbow.  Now this wasn’t my first rainbow nor was it the prettiest I’d ever seen.  Rather what made the biggest impression on me was how it broke through my state of inattention.  It was an unexpected wonder which ended up completely distracting me on the rest of my drive home.  But did you know that there’s more to a rainbow than meets the eye?  At least the human eye, that is.   

Harken back with me to biology class.  When it comes to color perception the human eye has three types of cones that register particular colors in a certain spectrum.  So we see a rainbow that has seven colors - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.  But that’s not all there is.  If we were blessed with a literal bird’s-eye view - most birds having four different color cones in their eyes rather than three - then we’d really be in for a treat.  We’d see rainbows that would blow our minds with a whole range of colors we had no idea even existed.  But before we feel too sorry for ourselves for missing all of that, let us take into consideration the lot of the humble dog whose eye possess only two types of color cones which means they see rainbows as a dull swath of muted blues, grays, and yellows.  Nothing to get too excited about.  Which makes me wonder...what does a rainbow - or anything else for that matter- really looks like?  Who gets to  say?  Are human beings the best interpreter and arbitrator of what really is?  Is it wise to trust in our own abilities to see is all there is in this world?     

No.  That’s the short and simple answer that our faith gives over and over again.  Relying solely on our vision or our understanding of things does not provide a full enough picture of what’s really going on.   That’s made clear in our reading from I Samuel.  Israel’s first king, Saul, has turned into a disaster, so God instructs the prophet Samuel to go and anoint a successor from the house of Jesse.  Now Jesse has a passel of sons and when Samuel meets them he see seven strapping young men - all who appear to be viable candidates to fill the role of king.  Yet to Samuel’s surprise, God does not choose any of them.  It turns out that the youngest son, David, the one out doing the grunt work of tending the sheep, the one who no one gave a thought to, is the one.  And it’s during this anointing process that God declares to Samuel that, “the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart."  

Clearly human-seeing and God-seeing are on two totally different levels.  Our capabilities to perceive things are limited, not just by the number of color cone receptors we have in our eyes, but by the finite nature of being.  Sure, we are able pick up on the outward and visible appearances of things, but even that skill set is far from perfect.   While the view God has is all-encompassing, taking in not only what we see, but a deeper, fuller, and inner reality that we are unable to know or even imagine.

Jesus drives this point home in our reading from the gospel of Mark when he likens the Kingdom of God to seed sown on the ground.  Days come and days go.  Time passes.  And for all the sower can see NOTHING is happening.  Until one day, without any fanfare, a sprout breaks through the earth and comes into view.  All that time even though it was out of view of the sower something was going on.  Then again, Jesus says, the Kingdom of God is also like a mustard seed which we all know is a very tiny seed.  It’s especially hard to see when scattered on the ground.  Yet that tiny, seemingly insignificant seed takes root without notice and has the power in it to grow into something significant and life-giving. 

It would seem that rainbows are not the only thing in this world that we can’t see in all of its glory.  We humans are simply ill equipped to grasp all there is of God’s life, presence, and power in the world.  That being so, Jesus again and again tries to reassure us that there is always something more going on than what we see.   It’s kind of like if a bird was talking to a dog saying, “Trust me there’s more to this rainbow than what meets your eye.  You may not see it, but I can and it’s really there.”  Jesus proclaims the Good News that the Kingdom of God is really here in this world.  It’s already planted in creation.  And just like seeds in the ground, God is always at work in our lives and in the world even when it appears that nothing is happening.   That means that no act of love, no offer of forgiveness, no word of grace is ever wasted.  No one is ever a lost cause.  And no situation is ever truly hopeless.   With our surface view of things it’s easy to miss but even so there is always more going on than meets the human eye. That more is the light, the love, the life of the kingdom of God taking root in the world. 

Set free to love and be whole. June 10, 2018 The Rev. David M. Stoddart

Mark 3:20-35

Today’s Gospel passage comes from just the third chapter of Mark’s Gospel, but a lot has already happened. Let me give you a brief recap: Jesus has driven an unclean spirit out of a man and cured a woman’s fever, which led to him healing many people in Capernaum and casting out many demons. He has cleansed a leper and made a paralyzed man walk after forgiving him his sins. He has restored a man’s withered arm. He has gathered around him close disciples. He has taught with authority and power. He has proclaimed the Good News of God’s Kingdom, and has drawn large crowds to himself, so much so that it is hard for him to to find time and space even to eat. He is changing many lives for the better. So there is much rejoicing, right? Wrong. The Pharisees hate him; the Herodians are already plotting to destroy him. In today’s passage, his family comes to restrain him because they think he has lost his mind. Scribes from Jerusalem also arrive: they don’t just think he’s crazy — they think he’s demonic, possessed by Satan.

I need all of us to pause for a moment and let this percolate in our brains. How can anyone who does so much good possibly be accused of being so messed up and so evil? At stake here is more than just the tragedy of Jesus’ own life: this gets at a tragic feature of all human life, one which the Gospel seeks to expose and to change.

As Mark presents it, the people who despise Jesus are the people with power. It’s their job to enforce the rules, and Jesus breaks the rules by doing things like healing on the Sabbath. They are the people with authority, but Jesus speaks and acts with an authority that does not come from them but with a divine authority, as when he forgives people. They are the people who control access to God, a control which they use to try to limit such access as much as they can, but Jesus makes God fully accessible to everyone, even eating and drinking with tax collectors, traitors, and all sorts of sinners. They are deeply threatened by everything he does, and when they try to call him on it, he always gets the best of them. So in the Gospel today, when they say he must be acting with demonic power when he drives out demons, Jesus easily refutes that by pointing out the obvious: the devil is not going to fight against himself. And then he says something that is crucial: No one can enter a strong man’s house without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered. The strong man in that metaphor is Satan, and Jesus is the one who has come to tie Satan up and plunder Satan’s house, which is the world under demonic oppression. Jesus, in short, has come to set people free from the power of evil.

Some commentators over the years have noted that “binding the strong man” may be the best possible tagline for Mark’s Gospel. All the Gospels show Jesus casting out demons, but Mark especially emphasizes all the ways Jesus has come to free people from demonic oppression. And that means more than just exorcising some individuals who are demon-possessed. It means changing the whole way we are in this world, a world in which, unfortunately, so many people have become so used to oppression of all types, so inured to it,  that they often fail to even see it.

So here’s the crux of the matter: Jesus comes to set people free from all that oppresses them. When they’re sick, he heals them. When they’re hungry, he feeds them. When they are ignorant, he teaches them. When they are demon-possessed, he delivers them. This, Jesus shows, is what God is doing in the world. And when things get in the way of that, including religious rules, he ditches them. The only thing that matters is the love of God setting people free to love and be whole. But the so-called authorities, the people with power, are so invested in an oppressive system that tries to control and subjugate people that they can’t even recognize God anymore. They commit the only unforgivable sin, which is to witness the Holy Spirit at work and call it evil. It’s not that God won’t forgive them: they’ve placed themselves beyond the reach of divine grace, because when God comes to them with forgiveness or anything else, they completely miss him by mistaking God for Satan. It doesn’t get any worse than that. It doesn’t get worse than believing that God’s love, mercy, and compassion are demonic and evil.

We don’t ever want to go there. We are the Body of Christ, and we are still in the business of setting people free. And so we want to further the liberating work of Christ and not obstruct it. We want to be like the crowds who welcome Jesus and not like the people in power who reject him. And that demands that we keep asking the question, “How is Jesus working to set people free?” On one level, that’s a personal question: “What is oppressing me in my life?” That could be an addiction, depression, an abusive relationship, a bad job, hurtful habits, destructive patterns of thought,  or any number of things. We’ll find Jesus in the energy and drive that is working for freedom and healing in our individual lives. But it is also a social question: “What is oppressing people in our world?” Poverty, racism, bigotry, lack of access to health care, and other factors all contribute to binding people. Christians may certainly disagree on the best way to tackle those problems, but we can agree that they are problems. There are forces at work in our world that oppress people and keep them down. And Jesus is always, always going to work against those forces and set people free.

We will, of course, struggle at times to discern and embrace the liberating work of Christ. Sometimes we may even resist it. But we never want to become like the religious authorities in the Gospel today: we don’t want to become so hardened, so calcified, that we don’t even recognize the oppression in our own lives and in the world around us, and then can’t even see God at work to deliver people and let them go. What we heard today is meant to keep as awake and aware. Jesus has come to bind the strong man and unbind us. We never want to be satisfied with the oppression of anyone, we never want to mistake being shackled in any way for the will of God. We want to be with Jesus and for Jesus, rejoicing in and cooperating with his liberating work until, as the Apostle Paul writes in Romans, all creation obtains the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

What They Don't Tell You: A Reflection from Emily Rutledge

It's graduation season.

Last night I watched the last of our parish's seniors walk across a stage to receive a diploma and be launched off into the great beyond.  In the past nine years I have heard thousands of names read, listened to countless principals speak, and handed out over one hundred lei to Church of Our Saviour students moving from high school to something else.

Graduation does an amazing job at making someone feel like they have completed the hard stuff and are moving on to greener pastures.  Last night, as one of the adult speakers noted the great achievement that the graduates would 'never have to take another SOL test again' my teacher heart sank at the state of our education system and standardized testing and my minister heart broke open with the knowledge that an SOL test would be a welcome challenge to what lies ahead.

We have somehow convinced ourselves and our children that when we complete 'the thing' or win 'the prize' that we've reached a new level and life will be better/easier/different/more meaningful.  There are two flaws in this logic:

1.  Lots of people who don't complete 'the thing' or win 'the prize' do just fine.  They live full and meaningful lives.  This is for another post another day but I can't not say it.  Some kiddos will never graduate from high school because... LIFE.  Sometimes, barely making it is more of a success than finishing in the top of your class.  If you've ever barely made it, then you know exactly what I'm talking about.  

2.  We never get to a place where the boxes are checked and the road is easy.  While we come to places of transition that are rich with possibilities, each hold their own set of struggles and disappointments.  I remind students this when they are looking at their post-high school options.  There is no right or wrong choice... every choice can be both... it is what you do once you arrive in your choice that matters.

What I really want our graduating/finishing/getting their GED/waiting-to-hear-if-they-made-it seniors to know that no one tells them at graduation is...

No one cares what grades you got.  Sure, if you are my surgeon I'm pretty invested in your success in residency.  If you are my mechanic (who I see far more than my surgeon) I am not really concerned about your 11th grade biology grade.  I have never had someone ask about my high school GPA since high school.  What seems like the biggest thing will someday be a distant memory.

Subsequently, no one cares what you look like.  You may think they do because you hear them commenting on the appearance of others (note: sadly, this never changes) but in reality it is only as a marker of their feelings about their own bodies and their own appearance and not a reflection of how they feel about you.  Taking a flawless senior picture in a wildflower field can not save you from a diagnosis or a layoff.  Finding the ways that you see worth and beauty in yourself when you wake up each morning can change everything.

Things will fall apart. You will fail.  You will let people down.  Someone you love fiercely will die.  The way you thought things would be on some basic and fundamental level will be shattered.  Also, something amazing and surprising will happen that seems to fall out of the sky.  The sheer reality of age and time means that more of life happens.  Your capacity for love and loss grows and the stakes do as well.  It's the difference between failing an SOL and failing to pay the rent.

And each of these things... every single one of them... they are universal.  No diploma or cord will protect you.  You and I have been fed a lie that if we achieve more then we are spared.

Sweet babies, none of us are spared.

Life is hard and cruel and wonderful and amazing to each and every one of us.  For years you have been put into lists.  Ranked.  Chosen.  Not chosen.  Now you are stepping into a space where the units you have been measured by no longer exist.  It's scary and disorienting.  It's also liberating and empowering.  As followers of Christ we know that the Spirit of God is alive in each of us, giving us different and wonderful gifts,

There is one body, but it has many parts. But all its many parts make up one body. It is the same with Christ. We were all baptized by one Holy Spirit. And so we are formed into one body. It didn’t matter whether we were Jews or Gentiles, slaves or free people. We were all given the same Spirit to drink. So the body is not made up of just one part. It has many parts." -1 Corinthians 12:12-14

You are no longer asked to pass the same test, you are invited to be whatever it is that makes the Spirit come alive and flow through you.  There is no finish line or trophy but there is joy in community and connection in the pain and a loving God who appears in Her people everywhere you look.

The best and the worst are yet to come.

Failure is part of the plan. June 3, 2018 The Rev. David M. Stoddart

2 Corinthians 4:5-12.

According to an old church legend, after Jesus ascended into heaven, the first one to greet him was the great Archangel Michael, a glorious prince among angels and captain of the heavenly host. He said, “Lord, you have accomplished marvelous things. What will you do now? What will happen next?” Jesus replied, “I have entrusted my mission to my friends and followers. They will be my Body in the world and carry on my work of salvation.” But when he said this, a shadow passed over Michael’s face and he looked troubled. He thought of Judas betraying Jesus, and Peter denying him. He thought of that fragile community of weak and fallible human beings. And he asked, “But, Lord, what if they fail?” And Jesus said, “I have no other plan.”

I don’t mean to sound insulting or anything, but you might think that the Lord of the Universe could come up with a better plan than us. I mean, seriously. For centuries before the birth of Jesus, the ancient Israelites failed over and over again to live as God called them to live, and for the past two thousand years, the Christian Church hasn’t done much better. All too often in our history, the Church has supported slavery, violence, and discrimination. All too often, the Church has favored the wealthy over the poor, and made peace with oppression. Christian voices are all too often associated with judgment, condemnation and exclusion, rather than love, mercy, and inclusiveness. And even apart from the big issues, individual churches are composed of very imperfect people who can be difficult and uninspired. So we could be pardoned for thinking that maybe this is not the best plan to save the world.

Except, apparently, it is — at least in God’s eyes. Jesus actually demands that we rethink all of our notions of success and failure. He himself was born poor, spent lots of time with the outcasts and losers of his society, was hated by the establishment, and eventually executed as a criminal, dying a horrible and humiliating death on the cross. This is not the way we define success, and yet every week we gather under that cross and celebrate the fact that Jesus’ failure saves the world. And although it takes a different form, his Body the Church constantly lives with failure as well. No one understands this better than the Apostle Paul, the one who aided and abetted the murder of Christians before he literally saw the light. Paul is a flawed man, and the Corinthians he writes to are flawed people, and God uses them anyway. In his first letter to them, he teaches them that God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom. And in his second letter to them, which we read from today, a letter which wrestles painfully with Paul’s limitations and their limitations and all the ways they exasperate each other, Paul reminds them that we have this treasure in clay jars. We are imperfect vessels of grace. But that is not because we have failed to follow the plan: failure is part of the plan. And until we really know that, we cannot fully experience the Good News of Jesus Christ.

The life and death of Jesus, the letters of Paul, the witness of the saints all point us to the same shocking conclusion: we only experience God’s love in the midst of our flaws and failures, not in spite of them. And that is the way God wants it to be! Too many religious people think the opposite: they think if they can just get everything right, then they’ll get God. If we are successful in our careers, have our 2.3 above average children, live in our beautifully kept homes, give money to worthy charities, attend church every week, and don’t commit any serious sins, THEN the heavens will open and God will smile and rain down blessings upon us. Not so, says the Crucified Lord. Not so, says the sinner Paul. Grace is only amazing because it comes to us when we are limited and imperfect, because the only perfection that matters is the love of God at work in our world, embracing all of us as we are: But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power comes from God and does not come from us. As flawed as Paul and those Corinthian Christians were, God did amazing things with them and through them. So rather than make futile attempts to be perfect and thus earn God’s love, we are encouraged to receive God’s love as we are — and then let that love do whatever it’s going to do in our lives, trusting that it will do marvelous things.

Thomas Keating, a Trappist monk and teacher of prayer, puts it this way: “God seems to want to find out what it is like to live human life in us, and each of us is the only person who can ever give him that joy. Hence our dignity is incomparable. We are invited to give God the chance to experience God in our humanity, in our difficulties, in our weaknesses, in our addictions, in our sins. Jesus chose to be part of everyone’s life experience, whatever that is, and to raise everyone up to divine union.”

So we can’t hide behind our unworthiness. Yeah, we may have fought with our spouse, yelled at our kids, or treated our co-workers poorly. We neglected people who were hurting and we overlooked injustice. Each one of us has messed up this week in one way or another, probably many ways, maybe badly. And yet the love of God is still seeking to be incarnate in each one of us, still seeking to bless us and bless others through us. Forgiveness is the heart of the Gospel, and transforming love is the power of the Gospel. If that were not the case, I couldn’t get up and preach today or any Sunday. So the question is not “Am I worthy?” or “How can I earn this?” The question is rather “Will I accept this? Will I say yes?” Will we say yes to the love of God moving within each one of us right now? The only real failure would be to say no, because if we say yes, we cannot ultimately fail, no matter how many times we stumble and fall. The love of God that Jesus reveals will be made manifest in this world through us because God wills it. It may be crazy, it may take forever, but that is the plan. And there is no other plan.