Sanctuary

John 10:22-30; Psalm 23

April 21, 2013

God I am tired of preaching these sermons! We gather again in the aftermath of a spasm of senseless violence and terror, hearts that have been broken so often in these years of fearfulness it sometimes feels like they were never whole to begin with.

Broken hearts keep beating but they don’t seem to beat to rhythms of healing and wholeness.

We weary of weeping with the victims, and our capacity for mercy has been taxed far too much.

We cry rivers at the pictures of children’s broken bodies until we can’t cry another tear.

Prayers for healing, prayers for hope, prayers for comfort, prayers for strength, prayers for forgiveness … I am tired even of the praying well before I can begin to imagine what Jesus instructed: prayers for those who hate and spitefully use us, prayers for those whom we call enemies, prayers for whoever perpetrated such violence at what is, for many of us, sacred space.

“The Lord is my shepherd … and makes me to lie down in green pastures.”

Running down the final slope across a grassy field into the finish area of the half marathon I ran last Sunday morning I was struck by two vivid images and thoughts: what a beautiful celebratory pastoral scene spread out on the green grass … and how cool is it that this clearly elderly man is running past me? It’s true: I was passed by a 900-year-old guy in the last quarter mile.

Lots of us in this room run or bike or take part in triathlons. Many others have joined in the cheering crowds of well wishers who line the routes simply to encourage, to do a small thing to lift the spirits of strangers, to participate, at whatever level, in a simple and almost universal human act: putting one foot in front of the other until you come to the end of your race.

To violate that is to violate sacred space, to violate a sanctuary.

It’s ironic that we should gather in sanctuaries to seek solace, comfort, reassurance, wisdom, strength for the next step in the face of the violation of sanctuary.

We come seeking asylum, sanctuary from violence that threatens sacred space.

We understand the valley of the shadow of death. It feels often as if we have pitched our tents and live always in that valley. We long for green pastures and still waters to restore our souls.

The words of psalmist insist that we are, in fact, created for such – for shalom – and when that intention is violated we cry out. Such cries attempt to express the inexpressible longing of the creature to the inexpressibly other Creator – to the God beyond all names.

Sometimes cries are all we have.

God Beyond All Names

From the depths of the valley of the shadow of death we cry out! But then what?

God calls in response and beckons us through the valley.

The key line in the midst of the comfort of Psalm 23 lies, I believe, in the challenge of imbedded in the shift in the middle of the poem from third-person reference to God to a second person, from God as the perhaps distant Creator to the friend on the journey, from “he maketh me” to “you are with me.”

The challenge comes in the midst of that turning when the psalmist says, “even though I walk through this valley I will fear no evil.” Why? What is the source of this fearlessness? Does the psalmist have the biggest weapon system in the valley? Does the poet have the largest portfolio?

No! Be not afraid! Why? Because you are with me. Because you are with me. Because you are with me.

When we offered up our prayers a few minutes ago, lighting candles to symbolize our longings and to hold one another in light, we gave life to that phrase: you are with me! We are with one another. The Christ in you is present for me, and the Christ in me is present for you.

The gospel reading from John this morning contains the beginning of John’s rather mystical riff on incarnation: “The Father and I are one.” John goes on later to include the people, the faithful children of God, in this mystical relationship. We are all bound together and that binding is the source of faithfulness and fearlessness.

It’s what empowers us to put one foot in front of the other, to run with perseverance the race that is before us.

What is the nature of that race? What is it for?

I saw a column last week that began with the assertion that “a marathon is 26 miles of … outrunning death.” That may or may not be the case – I’ve only run half marathons, so I can’t say. But the journey of life – that putting one foot in front of the other even when the journey takes us through the valley of the shadow of death – is not about outrunning death.

At least the journey is not about that when we take the journey in the company of Christ. In that company the journey is about living each step as fully, faithfully and unafraid as we possibly can.

In that company we are part of the called, the commissioned, the church: sent into the world to follow the way of Jesus in it. To go, as the end of Matthew’s gospel puts it, “into all the world teaching them what Jesus commanded.” Remembering that Jesus only issued one “command”: love one another as I have loved you!

That is what we are called for and sent to do. That is the nature of the race we run. It is not a race against death; it is a race for life.

Indeed, just prior to the passage from John that we’ve read this morning Jesus insists on this: “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

What does that look like?

In a few minutes we’ll have one opportunity to practice abundant living in the simple act of planting some seeds and seedlings. Call is a garden of hope for a harvest of abundant life. It’s one simple way of faithful, fearless living.

What are some other ways that you practice such living?

This is not a denial of death or of suffering, but it is an invitation to live fully each moment we are given. Nor is it a denial of evil, but rather an invitation to live full and faithful and abundant lives that resist evil, seek justice, and insist that the essential goodness of creation shall, indeed, follow us all the days of our lives, and that we shall dwell in the house of the Lord our whole lives long.

May we find the courage and faithfulness to live these days in that manner. Amen.

Opening Day Surprise

March 31, 2013

Isaiah 65:17-25

Once every few years the opening day of the baseball season happens to fall on Easter, as it has today, and “opening day” is just too good an image for Easter morning to resist. Easter Sunday and opening day have a lot in common, actually. They’re both all about hope for things to come. They both presage seasons of long, often difficult work. And they both play to full houses.

As Doris Kearns Goodwin put it in her foreword to a recent book on God and baseball, “seasonal ceremonies of rebirth and renewal figure largely in both realms, as do rituals, traditions and superstitions.”

For the Nats fans in the area – and I know there are several of you here this morning – since a little piece of your heart died last October, I’m sure you are ready for a bit of rebirth that comes with the promise of opening day.

Folks come out to both Easter services and opening day with certain expectations that things will unfold as they have in the past, that there will be a comfortably familiar litany, and we’ll sing comfortably familiar music. “Take Me Out to the Ballgame … alleluia!”

There’s nothing wrong with any of that, and I do love baseball.

Easter, on the other hand, should shock the hell out of us.

Seriously. It turns everything upside down and inside out.

Even 2,000 years on, the notion that life does not end in death runs utterly against the grain of everything we think we know. Whether you take the resurrection of Jesus literally or metaphorically, this story of God’s great “yes” in the face of the world’s insistence on “no” flies in the face of history itself.

It would be easy enough to recite a litany of the triumphs of “no” in our time. We all know them, on global and on very personal scales, we know when and where and how death triumphs even if we don’t always know why.

Nevertheless, the shocking news that the women shared on that first Easter morning still rings out and it remind us of who we are, and to whom we belong.

We are an Easter people, a resurrection people. In life and in death we belong to God.

If, as NYU President John Sexton suggests in his recent book, baseball is a road to God, here’s where the road of the church of baseball diverges from the road of the church of Jesus Christ. Baseball is about finding home, but the way of Jesus is about finding hope. Not only finding hope, but also trusting faith and living love.

The liberation movement in South Africa produced a wonderful definition of hope: hope is believing in spite of the evidence and then watching the evidence change. I don’t think that’s quite right, though, at least not if the hope is resurrection hope, the hope of the people of the way of Jesus. For hope appropriate to Christian life is not so passive as merely witnessing the evidence change. Hope, for us, means living love as we participate in the changing of the evidence – as we participate in the new thing that God is doing in our midst.

You see, that’s what the women at the tomb did. God raised this Jesus – surely a new thing in God’s world – but the women told the story, they were the witnesses, and in sharing this great good news they participated in changing the evidence.

They didn’t have to say a thing. After all, who would believe them? They could have continued right on living out their days believing that “no” had triumphed despite what their own eyes had seen. Heck, we do that all the time. Given the choice of living resurrection or choosing death, we’ll take the death that we know over the risks of resurrection.

As Parker Palmer posted last week on Facebook:

“Sometimes we choose death-in-life (as in compulsive overactivity, unhealthy relationships, non-stop judgmentalism aimed at self or others, work that compromises our integrity, substance abuse, pervasive cynicism, etc.), because we’re afraid of the challenges that might come if we embraced resurrection-in-life.”

But the evidence only changes when we embrace resurrection-in-life, when we allow ourselves to be transformed by an opening day surprise.

So, on this Easter morning, consider your own hopes, consider the evidence aligned against those hopes, and then consider how you are being called to participate in the changing of the evidence.

Here’s what I hope:

I hope that the seeds and plants that we’re nurturing will help feed a hungry world. I hope that the work we’ll do at the end of the month will help house a neighbor in need. I hope that the nurturing of our children will help them live faithful and compassionate lives in a suffering and broken world. I hope that we who worshipped and witnessed for marriage equality at the Supreme Court last week were heard.

That’s a little bit of what I hope; here’s what I know.

I know that God is faithful still. I know that in responding to God’s call to change the evidence we’ve done a lot of loving work together participating in the new things that God is doing.

I know that we raised 150 pounds of fresh produce for our hungry neighbors last year to change the evidence. I know that we’ve helped rebuild houses for the past five years to help change the evidence. I know that we’ve completely redesigned the way we do ministry here, including with our kids, to change the evidence.

Here’s what I know about hope: we have seen the evidence change dramatically over the past decade. I can remember the anger in this room after the Marshall-Newman amendment codified hate and exclusion in the Virginia Constitution. I can remember members leaving this congregation after our denomination dithered and delayed on ordaining gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Presbyterians.

I know that God has been faithful throughout, and I can remember the work that we have done, inspired by God, called by God, responding to God’s call to change the evidence.

And the evidence is changing as we participate in the work of love that God is doing.

This is the pattern of resurrection life: giving voice to our hopes; trusting God’s faithfulness; living love as we participate in the new thing that God is doing and then watching the evidence change.

God is about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what God is creating; for God is about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight.

Friends, it’s opening day! Arise! Shine, for your light is come! We are a people of hope! Amen.