Family Ties. June 25,2023. Emily Rutledge

Proper 7

God of truth uncovered
You trace the sparrow’s flight,
And plumb the secret places of the heart:
Bring our fear and conflict
Into the light of your presence;
Help us to lose our hollow life
And find our way to you;
Through Jesus Christ, the master and the servant.
Amen.

---

 Months ago David and Kathleen knew that they would both be gone this last week and asked me to preach today. I enthusiastically said yes.

Then on Monday I opened the lectionary.

And I realized, they had pulled the oldest trick in the liturgical book… give the seminarian the reading that says “one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.” Little did they know that I spent an entire semester with the Old Testament reading from today and wrote my final paper on it so, jokes on them!

No matter what reading we focus on today it is clear that God understands the complexity of families.

●        Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city. -George Burns

●        I think a dysfunctional family is any family with more than one person in it. -Mary Karr

●        The other night I ate at a real nice family restaurant. Every table had an argument going. -George Carlin

●        Obviously, if I was serious about having a relationship with someone long-term, the last people I would introduce him to would be my family. -Chelsea Handler

●        Family love is messy, clinging, and of an annoying and repetitive pattern… like bad wallpaper. -Friedrich Nietzsche

When I was teaching middle school language arts in Hawaii one of our units was Greek Mythology. For our final project I had the students create a family tree of the Gods & Goddesses as well as one for their own family. I drew my family tree on the board as an example and as I added my father’s third wife a student raised his hand and said, “So Ms, it was like your dad ran a marry-a-thon” which was both true, topical, and hilarious.

Our families are the stuff that makes up our lives.

Both those we came from and those we have chosen.

You might not be familiar with the story of Sarah and Hagar. What you may know is that Sarah is the mother of all of Israel, God promised her and her husband Abraham that their descendants would be as innumerable as the stars. When Sarah was told this, she laughed at God, she was ninety, which feels like a very good reason to laugh at God. Sarah then had a son, Isaac.

Sarah had been barren and before God blessed her with Isaac, she had her maidservant Hagar bear a child for Abraham. That child’s name was Ishmael. In our reading today older brother Ishmael is playing with his little half brother Isaac. Ishmael laughed with Isaac as they celebrated Isaac’s weaning and it made Sarah so angry- maybe because Ishmael was Abraham’s first born or maybe because she mis-read the situation- but either way, Sarah was so angry she had Hagar and Ishmael cast out into the wilderness.

The same Hebrew word is used in both stories for this laugh- Sarah to God and Ishmael to Isaac. God responded with grace and a miracle and Sarah responded by sending Hagar and Ishmael into the desert to die. 

But- plot twist, they did not die. God created a nation from Ishmael, a nation that our Muslim brothers and sisters trace their origins to.

God can do quite a lot with our brokenness. And families have been, since the beginning of time, complicated. Recently Scot Jonte said in a staff meeting that her mother used to tell them, save your best behavior for the people at home because they love you the most. My family most certainly did not follow that rule. There were times growing up that I lost my door because I slammed it so often in arguments with my mom.

If there is one thing I have learned in my almost thirteen years of ministry is that no family is perfect. Many of us feel alone in that, that we are the only ones. The only ones who can’t make the relationship work. The only ones that have to draw clear boundaries around holidays and who we see at them. The only ones who don’t have a close relationship with their sibling, or parent, or child. And I can tell you that you are absolutely wrong. You are not the only one.

Families are, universally, complicated. Hard. Exhausting.

And God’s mercy is always bending towards reconciliation. 

God makes nations out of outcasts and nations out of outcasters. We are all within God’s reach, no matter how far we have strayed or been cast out. I spent a lot of time as a child of divorce feeling like my family was broken in a way that some others were not. If I just had two parents at home, if I had just not been raised by my grandmother, if I had just lived with my half brother longer… insert some magical belief about the perfect life I would have had. But God is a God of redemption not a God of perfection.

I wish I could stand here and give you a three point plan to create the family you imagine in your head or the one you think others have when you look at their Christmas Cards– but I can assure you, if you were to just scratch the surface, you would see that it’s all an illusion.

The old and the new testament are full of stories of families being families; people selling their brother off into servanthood, tricking a man into marrying his fiance's sister instead of her, siblings bickering about who does the work and who sits around enjoying the work that is done… the Bible is full of families just like ours. Messy, frustrating, and full of imperfections.

And thankfully, God is the same. God doesn’t pick sides, God picks love. God picks justice, inclusion, and compassion. Jesus tells us in the Gospel today that, “he has not come to bring peace but a sword.” He reminds us that it is not our job to stand on the side of our families but to stand on the side of Jesus, on the side of the hurting, the devalued, the marginalized, and the oppressed. No matter what else is going on, when we stand THERE, we stand in God’s light and mercy.

Amen.

 

Get In Touch With Your Inner Tax Collector. June 11, 2023. The Reverend David M. Stoddart

Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

There are a lot of things we don’t know about Jesus. We don’t know what he looked like. We don’t know what games he played growing up. We don’t know what his favorite food was, though I’m guessing it probably was not small one-inch wafers. And we don’t know what he was like at dinner parties. We have that one story about the woman washing his feet during a meal but, but generally speaking, we can only imagine what it was like to have Jesus sitting at one’s dinner table. Did he preach to the other guests? Did he recite psalms? Or did he just gaze at people with his penetrating eyes? We don’t know for sure, but we’re not completely in the dark. We have some hints. For one thing, he was popular: he was invited to lots of parties. That would tend to indicate that people liked being around him, that he was enjoyable to be with. And apparently he liked to have a good time: at one point in the Gospels he is even accused of being a glutton and a drunkard. So while we may have some cloying images in our minds of Jesus just sitting there looking pious, we actually have good reason to believe that he was the kind of guest any of us might like to have come to dinner: thoughtful, fun, a good conversationalist, and an attentive listener.

I say all this because in our Gospel today, Jesus is having dinner with a bunch of “tax collectors and sinners.” Tax collectors, of course, were roundly despised by most Jews because they collaborated with Roman authorities and were often dishonest, defrauding people and siphoning off lots of money for themselves. Incredibly, Jesus calls one of them, Matthew, to be his disciple. And then he hangs out with Matthew’s friends. The Pharisees are aghast, but we’re told that many tax collectors came to this dinner: they wanted to be there, wanted to be with Jesus. What can we conclude from this? It seems pretty clear that Jesus did not use this meal as an opportunity to berate those sinners and demand that they change their ways. In the story, he offers no condemnation of them at all. Maybe he talked some about the kingdom of God, but he no doubt did what people do in such social gatherings: he shared, he listened, he joked around. And he loved them. He loved them as they are.

I think we should take a moment and allow ourselves to be shocked by this. Jesus loves sinful people. He enjoys being around wrongdoers, even egregious wrongdoers. In fact, his harshest words are always directed at super religious people who are convinced of their own righteousness. He will call them out on their hypocrisy, but for run of the mill sinners, for thieves, prostitutes, adulterers, rebels, tax collectors ─ he is invariably merciful and forgiving. He says it directly today: Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, "I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.

There’s something here for us. So for a few moments let’s get in touch with our inner tax collector and think about all our mistakes and failures. Consider all the wrong we have done, all the people we have hurt. Call to mind all the brokenness and messiness we have caused, and then imagine Jesus walking into the house of our life with a big smile on his face, saying “I’m so glad to be here! What’s for dinner?” Is he just indifferent to our behavior? No, he sees all the pain we’ve inflicted on ourselves and others. And he sees what lies beneath it all: the fears and insecurities, the addictions and compulsions that so often drive us to do what we do. And he forgives every last bit of it. All that Jesus feels for us is love and compassion. It’s not that he doesn’t want us to grow in goodness – of course he does. It’s just that he knows the way of the Pharisees, the way of rigid adherence to an external set of laws, only gets us so far. Too many religious people are outwardly righteous while their hearts teem with hatred, malice, jealousy, and all manner of dark thoughts, and are able to do so much damage while technically obeying the letter of the law. And that just won’t work; it won’t get us where we ultimately want to be. So Jesus chooses instead to love us into the Kingdom of God.

He will literally keep on loving us and forgiving us until our hearts are enlarged enough, our spirits are expanded enough, that we can love and forgive like he does. This is his Gospel, the Good News that he proclaims. And it actually works. We see it in the Bible: it worked for Matthew. It worked dramatically for another tax collector named Zacchaeus, who is so moved that Jesus is kind enough to have dinner with him that he gives away half of his possessions to the poor and pays back everyone he has defrauded four times over. But we don’t have to go to Scripture for proof: I imagine many of us here have experienced or at least have begun to experience this ourselves.

I know I have. I have long since come to see that the perfectionism project of my youth led nowhere. I could put up a good front, but it was just that: a front. Inside I was still a mess. I still felt like I had to somehow earn God’s love and approval. What has made such a huge difference for me and countless others has been letting Christ into my actual life, letting him see me and love me as I really am. Imagine being completely honest and transparent, hiding nothing, and I mean hiding nothing, and letting the light of God’s love and forgiveness wash over you. I truly believe that is where the transformative work of Christ in our lives really begins. I don’t think it is quick and easy: it can be quite painful seeing ourselves for who we really are; we can resist accepting God’s unconditional love for us. But the power of such love is beyond measure. The Holy Spirit certainly has a lot more work to do with me, but I know that allowing God to love me as I am over the years has made me kinder and gentler, more patient and more compassionate with myself and with others than I would ever have been otherwise. Ultimately, the source of our greatest joy and deepest peace will be to love like Jesus. Someday, in the fullness of time, we will know that joy and peace. But the journey towards that begins by letting Jesus love us right now, exactly as we are.

A New Awareness of the Trinity. June 4, 2023. The Reverend Kathleen M. Sturges

Genesis 1:1-2:4a, 2 Corinthians 13:11-13, Matthew 28:16-20

Several years ago, Paul “Bear” Vasquez saw something in the back of his Yosemite home. It was a double rainbow and it was amazing. So amazing that he starting videoing it on his phone in hopes of capturing the experience. Although later he said it didn’t really do justice to the vibrancy of the color and the actual feeling of the light. Nonetheless, the video went viral not so much because of the image of the rainbow but Paul Bear’s reaction to it. So here’s a 30 second audio clip of Paul Bear. (Full version found at www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQSNhk5ICTI) 

As you can hear, the man is overwhelmed to the point of tears. So why did I play that clip for you? Isn’t it obvious? It’s because today is Trinity Sunday. Make sense? Well maybe not, but hopefully it will. It’s understandable if you aren’t making the connection yet because typically Trinity Sunday ranks as one of the most boring Sundays of the year. And I’ll let you in on a dirty little secret. Most preachers dread this Sunday. They dread it because who wants to preach on, let alone listen to, a lecture on church doctrine. The doctrine which, in a nutshell, is the belief in one God who exists as three equally divine persons, often referred to as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. One God, three persons. There you have it, the doctrine of the Trinity.

And that doctrine is essential to the Christian faith, however, it’s noteworthy that the doctrine itself wasn’t actually nailed down until roughly 300 years after Jesus’ death when a whole bunch of bishops got together for a council at Nicaea and came up with the Nicene Creed - you know, the creed that we recite every Sunday after the sermon. But before those guys got together the Trinity existed, not as a dry doctrine but as a rich experience. A mysterious experience of God being both three and one. Our scripture bears witness to this - how the disciples’ experience of Jesus somehow felt like a direct encounter with God. And for those who believed after Jesus’ time on earth, they too had a similar feeling when encountering the Spirit in their lives. There was a sense that in some hard-to-explain way God was clearly one but also three. The apostle Paul attempts to put this into words in our reading from 2 Corinthians as he speaks about the [one] God of love but also the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit. There’s both a threeness and a oneness at the same time. (cf. 1 Cor. 8:6)

Have you fallen asleep on me yet? If you have, I don’t blame you because talking about the Trinity is so flat compared to experiencing the Trinity. At its best the doctrine of the Trinity, instead of putting us to sleep, should wake us up and excite us because it points to the reality of our God who is dynamic, living, and active in our lives right now. The three-in-one God who is absolutely relational to the core and, therefore, who is always seeking relationship with us. Because true religion is not primarily about doctrine or ritual or behavior. True religion, the heart of faith, is rooted in experience: the experience of God’s love, the experience of the risen Christ, the experience of the Holy Spirit dwelling within us. Experiencing God who is Trinity is what it means to be Christian, but not only that experiencing God who is Trinity is at the core of what it means to be human.

Which brings me back to where I began, with Paul Bear and the double rainbow. Whether he named it as such or not, what was overwhelming him was that he was experiencing God. In the glory of that double rainbow was the living presence of the Triune God who created heaven and earth. Now maybe some of us have had similar experiences, but most of us haven’t. Nonetheless I bet that everyone here has felt “it” at one time or another. And by “it” I mean a sense of presence, of beauty, of goodness that resonates deep in the soul. An experience of feeling connected and loved at the deepest level. A sensation of a peace, a calm, a joy that is beyond words. “It” doesn’t have to be something so remarkable, so amazing to be an experience of God. In fact, if we think we have to have our socks blown off every time we experience God then we will miss so much.

Because God experiences are actually very common - sometimes our socks are blown off, but most of the time the socks stay on. That’s because our Trinity God shows up all the time in the  ordinariness of our daily lives. In fact that seems to be God’s specialty. We miss it because all too often there is a disconnect. We don’t recognize God because we are tuned out or too busy or just misunderstand how simple divine presence can be.

But if you’re curious and want to experience more of God in daily life the good news is that it’s not about doing more - it’s not about adding one more thing to your to-do list. Rather keep doing what you are doing, but do it in a new way with a new awareness, a new expectation. Whether you’re making your bed or doing the laundry or looking after a neighbor or even sitting here in church - wherever you are, whatever you are doing, take a breath, pay attention, expect God to reveal himself to you. Maybe it will be in the kindness of a stranger or in the beauty of nature or in the forgiveness of another. Truth is, there are an infinite number of ways that we can and do experience God in our lives and in this world. All we need to do is remember to be open to it. Just like Jesus tells us in our reading from Matthew, “Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

But how do we really know if it’s God who is with us or if we are just fooling ourselves? It’s really rather simple. The answer is by its fruit. In both the gospel of Matthew (7:15-20) and Luke (6:43-45), Jesus talks about judging a tree by its fruit. We can know that we are experiencing God when the fruit is love. Anything that fills us with love and moves us to love more is from God - who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Instead of Trinity Sunday, what we celebrate today is Trinity lives. So here’s my charge to you: Go forth, be open to the Trinity, and experience God!