Easter 7C Ascension Sunday, May 12, 2013

Empty Spaces Filled By Love

John 17:20-26

²⁰”I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, ²¹that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. ²²The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, ²³I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

²⁴Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. ²⁵“Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. ²⁶I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

I took a picture of David with my phone when he and I were at the Pirates game last Sunday afternoon to send to his cousin Allison.  Over the course of the baseball game, Allison kept sending gloating text messages to us from her perch in Northern Va. because her team, the Washington Nationals, was pretty much clobbering the Pirates.  So I sent her the picture of David, who had a big grin on his face despite the fact that the Bucs were losing badly.  I didn’t really think too much of it.  I have like 8 million pictures of David wearing his Pirates gear at PNC Park.

Later, when were home, I took a second look at the picture of David on my phone and thought, oh-my-goodness… 

Then I took another, closer look at my smiling boy and realized: “That’s my dad.” 

My brother and I both have a couple black and white photos taken of my dad when he was young, so I have a pretty good idea of what he looked like when he was around David’s age.  But more than the photos, there’s another kid in our family who really, really does bear a strong resemblance to my father and has ever since she was a baby. That would be "Little Miss Smarty-Pants the Nats are Winning" Allison.  For years, everyone in my family has agreed that my kids take after my husband’s side of the family, and my brother’s younger daughter, Erin, takes after her mother.  But Allison has always been the only one of us who resembles my father.

Until last Sunday, when I spent a long time staring at that photo of David, taken in one small moment in time.  Neither my brother nor I have any clear memories of my father as he died when we were very young.  But we have this enduring reminder of him…in Allison and David.  Though the empty space my father left remains, my brother and I are still somehow connected to him by heart in these children we love.

We have another story of departure and empty spaces and family resemblances in today’s text from John.   I’m going to begin by admitting that it is so easy to get bogged down in John’s language.  So much of it is metaphor -- and repetitive metaphor at that.  Of all the gospels, John’s is the most thickly theological.  There are fewer stories and parables because John tends to pack Jesus’ teachings into long discourses.

So where are we in John’s gospel today?  Well, we are near the end of a long farewell speech that Jesus gives to his disciples right after he washes their feet at the last dinner they have together on Maundy Thursday.  Judas has gone scampering out of the room to do what he has to do, and Jesus begins to speak like a man who knows that his time on earth is limited and thus feels compelled to offer final words of wisdom to his beloved friends.  So Jesus begins to talk; for three whole chapters he goes on and on.  The language Jesus uses is repetitive in the sort of way we are repetitive with our children when we leave them alone at home for the very first time.  “Do you know our phone number?  Do you know what number to dial if there’s a fire?  We’ll be home by 9 o’clock, do you know where the phone is?  Do you know our phone number?  Do you want me to write down our phone number?” 

In his final discourse, Jesus speaks to the disciples out of the knowledge that he’s going to be leaving them on their own for an unknown or at least undisclosed period of time, and Jesus wants to be certain they’ll be ready to carry out the work he has begun when he is no longer with them.

After three chapters of instruction directed to the disciples, Jesus turns his attention to God. Then Jesus begins to pray.  First for himself, then for the disciples in the room with him, and then – Jesus prays for us.  You and me.   The text we’ve read today in verses 20 – 26 is Jesus’ prayer for all the believers to come into the future.

And what is Jesus’ instruction and desire for us?  Jesus prays that we may all be one so that the world may see God’s claim on our lives and God’s love for us – a love as powerful as God’s love for Jesus, powerful enough to fill the empty space left by him and bind us to one another.   A love that characterizes God’s relationship with the Son.   A love so deeply woven into our lives that the world will be able to recognize Jesus in us.  That is Jesus’ final earthly prayer for us – that his future believers may become completely one so the world will recognize Christ when they look at us. 

Jesus prays for unity on a night in which things are going to quickly fall apart for the disciples.  Jesus prays for oneness in the shadowed hours of a violent, wrenching separation in which the disciples will be scattered like dust by terror and remorse.  It is this tragic loss that will to lead to denials, doubt, and the overpowering fear the disciples experience in Jesus’ absence. 

Forty days after Easter, there is another loss to come for the disciples with Christ’s ascension when the disciples truly will no longer see the risen Lord as they have seen him.  The ascension of Jesus is more peaceful than the violent disruption of a state execution, but it is no less sorrowful and no less of a loss for the friends who watch.  In the text from Acts that describes Christ’s ascension, the disciples are not nearly ready to see him go; they want him to restore Israel and do not understand how he can be leaving them so soon with things in the world still such a mess (Acts 1:1-11).

Today is the Sunday between the disappearance of Jesus into the clouds and the roaring arrival of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost.  It is an in-between, liminal time, but it is in this space that we may listen closely to Jesus’ final prayer for us, and remember what he prayed for on our behalf -- that we may be held together by the oneness of love, that we may be bonded to each other by a crazy, superglue kind of love that can not and never will leave us alone.

To be Christ’s follower is to be part of a greater whole.  We do not do this on our own.  According to Jesus there are to be no solitary Christians.  We are one in Christ whether we agree with each other or not.  We are one in Christ whether we like one another or not.  To be a part of this body of Christ is to be a part of a community, a part of the whole and we are stuck with one another, whether we like it or not.   Paul makes this ideal of oneness clear in I Corinthians 12 when he writes:

²⁰…there are many members, yet one body. ²¹The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” ²²On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, ²³and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; ²⁴whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, ²⁵that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. ²⁶If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it. (I Cor. 12:20-26)

In a world that is torn apart by bitterness and division, we as God’s people are to be so connected by love that we cannot be mistaken for anything else but the Body of Christ. 

Naomi Shihab Nye, an American poet born of an American mother and a Palestinian father, writes about how love fills in empty spaces, in a story from Albuquerque airport:

“Wandering around the Albuquerque Airport Terminal, after learning my flight had been delayed for four hours, I heard an announcement:  ‘If anyone in the vicinity of Gate A-4 understands any Arabic, please come to the gate immediately.’  Gate A-4 was my own gate. I went there.  An older woman in full traditional Palestinian embroidered dress, just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly.

‘Help,’ said the flight service person. ‘Talk to her. What is her problem? We told her the flight was going to be late and she did this.’
 I stooped to put my arm around the woman and spoke to her haltingly.  The minute she heard any words she knew, however poorly used, she stopped crying. She thought the flight had been cancelled entirely. She needed to be in El Paso for major medical treatment the next day. I said, ‘No, we’re fine, you’ll get there, just later, who is picking you up? Let’s call him.’ We called her son and I spoke with him in English. I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane and would ride next to her. She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it. Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and found out of course they had ten shared friends. Then I thought just for the heck of it, why not call some Palestinian poets I know and let them chat with her?

This all took up about two hours. She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her life, patting my knee, answering questions. She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies–little powdered sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts–out of her bag–and was offering them to all the women at the gate.  To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the mom from California, the lovely woman from Laredo–we were all covered with the same powdered sugar. And smiling. There is no better cookie.
 This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.”[1]

The empty space left by crucifixion is filled by the glory of resurrection.  The empty space left by ascension is filled by the love of the Holy Spirit.  This emptying and filling happened in the Albuquerque airport just as it happens in our lives – almost always by surprise; in varying dimensions of pain; when we open ourselves to one another and find out that we the love is far stronger than anything that can possibly divide us.

Nearly 80 years ago, a little girl named Betty Jane Robertson became a member of this congregation by professing her faith in Jesus Christ.   According to her beautifully typed resume that her cousin gave me on Friday, BJ joined this church in 1934.  I have been trying to wrap my mind around that – I wasn’t born in 1934.  Even my mother wasn’t born in 1934.  For more than 90 years, BJ was a part of this community.  And now she isn’t.  Her spirit and her love will be with us for a very long time, I am certain of that.  But her death leaves with another empty space.  An empty pew.  An empty seat in the choir. 

I understand how hard it is to look around you every Sunday and see all of these empty spaces where your friends and your family used to be in this sanctuary.  And when you leave here today, you may have more empty spaces.  You may be dealing with the empty space of where something else used to be – a job, good health, a spouse, a friend.  The very fact that it’s Mother’s Day may remind you of an empty space of where your mother used to be or where a child used to be or still isn't.  All of these losses open up and leave great gaping holes in our lives.

But what will always rush in to fill the gaps is the power and love of our oneness in Christ and our unity with one another – in grief, in disagreement, in despair and even in great joy.  Our oneness comes on the wings of the Holy Spirit of Pentecost which stitches us together.  Our oneness in Christ reaches across these empty spaces, anointing us with powdered sugar, with laughter, with love, and even with one another’s tears.

This morning, I’m going to invite you all to come down front together, into these front pews.  Let us leave no empty space between us, not on this day.  Please bring a hymnal with you.

Let us have a moment of silence to remember those we miss.  Mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, friends and family.  And BJ.

Let us pray for our oneness as a congregation.

Let us pray for the church everywhere that we may be united in Christ and in our unity show the love of Christ.

And now let us sing together, “Blest Be The Tie That Binds.”

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

---

[1] Naomi Shihab Nye, “Gate A-4” from Honeybee.   

"I come to the end -- I am still with you" Psalm 139:1-18

Late last night, long time member, Betty Jane Robertson, died at St. Barnabas Nursing Home in Gibsonia.  As you may know, B.J. fell in her home a few months ago and has been struggling in her recovery.

Arrangements are not yet made, but will include a memorial service at Emsworth U.P. Church.   Please keep B.J.'s family in your prayers.

Yesterday, Tom Smart and I visited with B.J. and shared the Lord's Supper with her.  Before we prayed together, I read Psalm 23, not imagining it would be our last visit together.

But this morning I am reading Psalm 139, remembering B.J.'s goodness, generosity and faithfulness.  We have all been blessed by knowing this fearfully and wonderfully made child of God, and she will be well-remembered by this congregation and community for years to come.

With love,
Pastor Susan

Psalm 139: 1-18

To the leader. Of David. A Psalm.
O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
   you discern my thoughts from far away.
You search out my path and my lying down,
   and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
   O Lord, you know it completely.
You hem me in, behind and before,
   and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
   it is so high that I cannot attain it. 

Where can I go from your spirit?
   Or where can I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
   if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
If I take the wings of the morning
   and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
   and your right hand shall hold me fast.
If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me,
   and the light around me become night’,
even the darkness is not dark to you;
   the night is as bright as the day,
   for darkness is as light to you. 

For it was you who formed my inward parts;
   you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
   Wonderful are your works;
that I know very well.
   My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
   intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In your book were written
   all the days that were formed for me,
   when none of them as yet existed.
How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!
   How vast is the sum of them!
I try to count them—they are more than the sand;
   I come to the end—I am still with you. 

Easter 6C , May 5, 2013

“Healing or Heresy?”

John 5:1-9

After this there was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. ²Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. ³In these lay many invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. ⁵One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. ⁶When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” ⁷The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.” ⁸Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.” ⁹At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk. Now that day was a sabbath.

     An essay by C.S. Lewis begins with the question, “What are we to make of Jesus Christ?”  In typical, provocative C.S. Lewis style, he says that people have a lot of trouble wrapping their minds around Jesus in the gospels.  We often do not know what to make of Jesus.

      On the one hand, you have Jesus’ moral teaching and hardly anyone can argue with the content of what Jesus said.  Oh, we can quibble about loving our enemies or turning the other cheek, but even the most feverish atheist will grudgingly admit that the teachings of Jesus – those core values of love, generosity, forgiveness, reconciliation, peace – all of that is pretty non-controversial stuff.   I think most people long for the kind of peaceful, lovely world that Jesus describes as the kingdom of God, even if they don’t believe in God or Jesus.  Now a lot of atheists and even some believers will say they have a lot of problems with Christ’s followers since Jesus, but hardly anyone will argue against the notion that Jesus’ basic moral message contains deep wisdom and sanity. (1)

     But in addition to Jesus’ universally acceptable moral teachings, the gospel is filled with Jesus’ more questionable actions of bumping up against and frequently knocking over established religious rules.  He does it all the time.  And nothing about Jesus’ actions appears to be coincidental or accidental. Everything Jesus does seem calculated to elicit a response.  

      As Lewis observes, Jesus’ actions most often produce three responses throughout the gospels – adoration, fear or hatred.  And by the end of his life on earth, the public emotions swirling around Jesus were mainly that last two.  Jesus had managed to alienate pretty much everyone around him, save for the very few who stuck around long enough to see him die on the cross. 

      What are we to make of this Jesus who intentionally does and says things that run absolutely counter to people’s expectations of a proper Messiah? He comes from Galilee, where no prophet comes from.  He talks with a Samaritan woman, which no decent male Jew would do.  He eats with tax collectors and sinners.  He is accused of being a glutton and a drunkard and possessed by the devil.  And the amazing thing is that none of the negativity buzzing around him everywhere he goes seem to deter Jesus one bit.  Jesus just continues on, crossing boundaries that no self-respecting Jewish messiah should cross. 

      As we touched upon last week when we talked about Peter and Cornelius, first century Jewish identity defined community identity by three practices:  circumcision, food laws and Sabbath observance.  These practices were central to life in Jesus’ religious community and in Peter’s.  These were set boundaries and a challenge to any of them meant a challenge to the very core of membership in the community.  Peter bumped up against the practices of circumcision and food laws when he associated with the gentile Cornelius and his household in the book of Acts.  As you recall, Peter was called to account for his actions before the authorities in Jerusalem.   And Peter’s testimony about the Spirit’s power begins the important process of freeing the early church to imagine that God may very well be calling people from beyond the traditional boundaries of Jewish practice.

      And here we have Jesus at it again.  Jesus is attending a festival in Jerusalem and goes to a pool called Bethesda and sees a man lying there who has been ill for 38 years.  Actually, there are a lot of sick people lying by the pool.  The belief was that every so often the pool would be stirred up by an angel, and whoever could get to the pool first would be healed of their sickness.  So there are a lot of people there, staring at the pool, waiting for their opportunity to be first in the pool.  But for some reason, among all of these sick people, Jesus seeks out this one particular guy, someone who has been lying there for a very long time.

      Jesus sees him and asks the man if he wants to be made well.  And the man doesn’t say yes or no, but just keeps looking at that bubbling pool.  And the man tells Jesus that the competition for healing is fierce.  Nobody offers to help the man.  Every time he tries to get up, someone else gets ahead of him. The man in our text obviously has no family.  No friends.  This is a guy who has been waiting for something good to happen to him for 38 years. 

      Jesus hears and sees the man, and in that moment, Jesus has a decision to make. 

      Because, you see, it is the Sabbath.  And this man has been ill for 38 years.  It is not an emergency situation.  Jesus could sit with man until the sun goes down and use that time to counsel the man about his situation at the pool.  Jesus could preach to everyone around that pool and command them to do the right thing and let the man have a turn. Jesus could pray with the invalid and teach him the scriptures so he would have the faith he needs to be healed of his condition.  Jesus could require that the man accept him as messiah before Jesus lifts a finger to help him.

      At the very least, Jesus could WAIT to do what he’s going to do.  Jesus could at least wait until the Sabbath is over, thereby setting the scene for a healing that would be seen by everyone as perfectly acceptable and unquestionably good.  If Jesus waits until after sundown, this wonderful miracle would make everyone happy and support their expectations of a victorious messiah who had arrived to take on all the enemies of God’s people. 

      But Jesus doesn’t do any of that.  Jesus doesn’t wait until the right time to heal the man. Jesus doesn’t command the attention of the crowd.  Jesus simply tells the man to stand up, take up his mat, and walk.  And thus a major controversy is set in motion by Jesus’ action -- one that seems intentionally offensive and disruptive.

      What are we to make of Jesus Christ?

      The other people at the pool don’t know what to make of Jesus.  In fact, they don’t say a thing.  Not one of them looks up from the water.  There is no mass conversion or praise.  Nothing at all has changed as a result of this miraculous healing taking place right in front of their faces.

      The man who has been healed doesn’t know what to make of Jesus. The man is not made well because he first knows who Jesus is and believes. From the text, it is not even clear that the man wanted to be made well! He doesn’t say thank you.  He doesn’t experience a sudden faith in Jesus after his dealing.  The man doesn’t praise God or become a follower.  Later on, when the Judean leaders ask the man why he is breaking Sabbath law by carrying a mat around, the man blames it on someone else.  “Not my fault.  Some guy I don’t know told me to do it.  Don’t blame me, blame him.”   

      What are we to make of Jesus Christ?

      The Judean leaders do not know what to make of Jesus.  Well, they think they know what Jesus doing.  We need to remember that these religious leaders are not heartless as we might imagine.  The Judeans are reasonable people.  If the man by the pool had been trapped in a burning house or drowning in the pool, the religious leaders would have allowed an exception to the law.  Even on a Sabbath, it would be okay to pull someone out of a burning building. 

      But that’s not what Jesus did.  The man by the pool in Bethesda was in no immediate danger. The leaders probably knew that man and how long he’d been lying with the other beggars. 

      The Judean leaders do not know what to make of Jesus, but one thing they do know is that Jesus deliberately crossed an uncrossable boundary when he healed the man on the Sabbath.  The Judeans are not unreasonable and they aren’t stupid.  They can see exactly what Jesus is up to. 

      Or can they?  What are we to make of Jesus Christ?              

      We know how the religious and civil authorities interpreted Jesus’ actions.  They saw Jesus’ healing as a heresy.  We know what happens to Jesus as a result of this and other things he did that crossed the sacred line of the law.  Things didn't look so good for Jesus from there on.  We know exactly where this defiant behavior got him

     So here we are, many years later, and we find ourselves as Christians in a tricky position.  Yes, our life together needs to be orderly. We are people who live by the rule of law.  And we are also Presbyterians, which means we also deal with a Book of Order and a Book of Confessions that regulate our life as a church.  And we need rules and boundaries to keep our community healthy and functioning well.  No one, least of all me, is calling for anarchy.

     But Jesus embodied a radical – yes, radical -- kingdom where God is always calling us to a higher place. Given what happens to Jesus, and what has happened to so many other saints who have dared to step outside the boundaries of acceptable behavior for the sake of the gospel, we should step carefully every time we go to church or admit we are Christians and have the audacity to act like it.  Living as a Christian is tricky business, but no more tricky than it has been since the beginning with Peter and the apostles.  Our ways of being in the world are always subject to second-guessing by those who have an interest in keeping status quo protected.

     When Jesus is rejected by the authorities, it is a rejection of new and unprecedented ways of knowing God.  And we are invited in this text to examine when it is that we reject the Jesus because he is too challenging to our systems and structures.  When do our structures and rules in the church help to keep people “sick” or “stuck in their condition” rather than offering transformation like that experienced by the man at the pool? 

     Our gospel reading today has been called “the strangest miracle” and it is really is very strange.   The man at the pool wasn’t much interested in Jesus or what Jesus had to offer.  But Jesus went ahead and healed him anyway.

     What this strange miracle tells us is that God’s healing power isn’t contingent on our goodness or worthiness.  God’s love transforms us whether we ask for it or not.  And God’s transformation will come in God’s time, which is always the right time whether we realize it or not. 

     There’s a lot of good news for us in this story of this unworthy man lying helplessly by the pool in Bethesda.  It’s not comforting news, because what it tells is that only Jesus is the source of our healing, and we cannot do it for ourselves.  It’s not easy news, because it shows us that Jesus heals in a way that is often not convenient or proper or conventional. 

     But this story is good news for us because it demonstrates, yet again, who God is in Jesus.  A God who will heal when we ask, and even when we don’t.   A God who reaches out to those who are worthy, and even to those who are not.  A God who will respond when we are bubbling over with hope, and even when 38 long painful years have passed and we are so blinded by our hopelessness that we cannot see Jesus standing right there in front of us.   A God who loves across conventions, across boundaries, across our own stubborn resistance have things our way. 

     Sometimes, I just don’t know what to make of Jesus Christ.  But I invite you to live with me in breathless anticipation of what Jesus will make of us.

Thanks be to God.  Amen. 

[1]Lewis, C.S. The Joyful Christian.  Macmillian Publishing Company: New York, 1977.  72-73.

Easter 5C, April 28, 2013

“Birds of a Feather”

Acts 11:1-18

Now the apostles and the believers who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also accepted the word of God. ²So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him, ³saying, “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” ⁴Then Peter began to explain it to them, step by step, saying, ⁵“I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision. There was something like a large sheet coming down from heaven, being lowered by its four corners; and it came close to me. ⁶As I looked at it closely I saw four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air. ⁷I also heard a voice saying to me, ‘Get up, Peter; kill and eat.’ ⁸But I replied, ‘By no means, Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’ ⁹But a second time the voice answered from heaven, ‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane.’ ¹⁰This happened three times; then everything was pulled up again to heaven. ¹¹At that very moment three men, sent to me from Caesarea, arrived at the house where we were. ¹²The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us. These six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the man’s house. ¹³He told us how he had seen the angel standing in his house and saying, ‘Send to Joppa and bring Simon, who is called Peter; ¹⁴he will give you a message by which you and your entire household will be saved.’ ¹⁵And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning. ¹⁶And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ ¹⁷If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” ¹⁸When they heard this, they were silenced. And they praised God, saying, “Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.”

I grew up near Pittsburgh, but not in Pittsburgh.  So when we moved here, I was quite surprised to discover the natives’ distaste for ever, ever, ever crossing a river.  And since we have not one but three rivers to deal with in da burg, this stubborn reluctance creates an atmosphere of not very well hidden parochialism that is evident on an almost daily basis.  I don’t know if people are afraid that they’ll never find their way back home from yonder shore, or whether they’re simply afraid of falling into the Monongahela.

It didn’t take long for us to realize that there are seemingly impenetrable boundaries pretty much everywhere you turn here.  Many of these barriers are, indeed, created by Pittsburgh’s charming, yet challenging topography of hills, rivers, and bridges.  Worst of all, perhaps, is the seasonal annoyance of road construction and those charming little orange traffic cones that pop up as insistently as dandelions every spring. 

But some boundaries are not geographical, yet are as tenacious and toxic as weeds.  Some boundaries are deeply rooted in our brains and express themselves in ways that usually escape our notice.  We are only vaguely aware of many persistent and sometimes poisonous boundaries in how we organize ourselves in our neighborhoods, our workplaces, our families and even our churches. 

This isn’t only a burg thing.  There is a compelling human drive to sort out and separate ourselves by nation, tribe, age, language, race, religion, political affiliation, class, you name it.  And you know it’s true.  Everywhere, you will birds of a feather flocking together because we feel more comfortable and secure when we are hanging out with birds who reflect who we are or who we imagine ourselves to be. 

All kinds of laws have been enacted throughout history to overcome our most damaging and unjust urges toward keeping other people out – desegregation of schools, busing of school students, affirmative action, equal housing laws, elimination of red lining certain communities in lending, etc.  These laws help overcome some of our most powerful prejudices.  But the urge to stay within a carefully drawn boundary is a powerful one, particularly when we feel threatened, fearful or anxious.  When the chips are down, and our stranger danger radar goes into full red alert mode, we shut down bridges, seal the borders and dust off the blueprints for our favorite kind of neighbor – a non-offensive fence to protect us from “those” people, whoever they are.

Robert Frost famously wrote: “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.”   Frost never does reveal what or who it is who doesn’t love a wall, but we can be pretty certain it isn’t a human being.  Because there is nothing humans love more than walls.  There is very little we hate more than crossing boundaries.  Because crossing a boundary makes us vulnerable.  Crossing a boundary means we may have to give up something that makes us feel good.  Crossing a boundary entails a grave risk to our own self-understanding and our own comfort.  Something doesn’t love a wall, but it sure ain’t us.  We are crazy about them.

After reading from the book of Acts today, I suspect the “something” that loves to tear down walls may be none other than the Holy Spirit. Because that unbounded and unafraid spirit of God is certainly up to some serious boundry-breaking in this story about Peter and his foray into Gentile territory. 

The winds of swift and certain change are blowing through this text, indeed through the entire book of Acts.  God seems to be randomly pouring out the spirit of God upon people who live way outside the margins of acceptable society.  Last week we saw this crazy outpouring of God’s healing in Peter’s raising up of Tabitha, a poor widow barely scraping by as a seamstress in a small church of poor widows in Joppa.  Tabitha is lifted up from the pages of Acts as somebody important to God – a woman described as a disciple of Jesus simply because she takes care of the other poor nobodies in her little nowhere church in Joppa.

But today, Peter has crossed another kind of boundary and that crossing threatens to disrupt the very core of the early church.  Peter is called before the church leaders in Jerusalem and called on the carpet for breaking the dietary and purity laws that have shaped the lives of God’s people since the time of Moses.  Peter was not only eating with the uncircumcised, but also presumably eating the kind of food that would be considered unacceptable by the leaders in Jerusalem.  You may recall that this was exactly the kind of rule-breaking that was constantly landing Jesus in a heap of trouble among the hierarchy in the synagogue.  In fact, Jesus had a habit of crossing well-established boundaries of purity --- touching and being touched by unclean people, healing on the Sabbath, and eating and drinking with the wrong kind of crowd. 

So Peter wasn’t blazing new territory in hanging out with Cornelius and his friends, but the shift in the unfolding story of the early Christian church is perceptible and Peter is the pivotal figure in this drama. 

Peter is beginning to see with the eyes of the prophets like Isaiah and John the Baptist and with the eyes of Jesus.  Which is to say, Peter is seeing through the eyes of God.  These are wide open eyes that see the non –Jews and Gentiles not as unclean and impure, but as beloved children of God.  And this expanding and inclusive vision for the church is brought into being by the Holy Spirit – the power Jesus promised to Peter and all of the apostles when he ascends to heaven in chapter 1.  Jesus says to them:   “...you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

This vision from God declares that it only God who decides what is clean and unclean and it is that vision which frees Peter to minister in a new way.  Peter is released from his fears about what is pure and what is profane so he can cross over a seemingly uncrossable boundary.  Peter can move outside the church of circumcised believers in Judea to the uncircumcised Gentiles in Cornelius’ house in Caesarea.  And Peter makes the insiders in Jerusalem very, very uncomfortable.  As far as they are concerned, the ends of the earth doesn’t necessarily include unclean, uncircumcised people like Cornelius.  So they call in Peter to explain himself. 

One of the things I have found to be reliably true is what changes people’s minds is not church doctrine or theological arguments or even carefully constructed logical rationales.  Stories, not arguments, open minds.  You cannot argue someone into faith. What moves people to a new way of being and thinking isn’t tirades, but honest and open testimony.  Over time, bit by bit, testimony about God’s love and grace and mercy have always had an incredible power to open up minds and hearts.  The process of “show and tell” is powerful beyond the kindergarten classroom.  It is in our deep and honest conversations with one another that we learn to see and trust the transformation God has already done in us. 

Peter is called in to the council in Jerusalem.  But he doesn’t attack his accusers. Instead Peter tells them a story about this vision that came to him while he was staying with another outsider – Simon the tanner -- whose very profession would render him unclean and unacceptable company for any observant Jew. Peter carefully tells the story of  how God spoke to him in a vision and told Peter that God’s love extends beyond all the boundaries that Peter has spent a lifetime observing.   The identity of God’s people is created by God’s love for them.  It is God’s love that connects us to one another and makes us clean.  It is God’s love that shapes who we are as God’s people, not our adherence to a set of purity laws.     

Peter tells the story to his brothers in Jerusalem and in doing so he opens up for them the same forgiving, loving, accepting space revealed to Peter by the power of the Holy Spirit.  Peter says, “If God gave these outsiders the same gift he has given to us, who are we to reject them?  Who are we to say no to their gifts?  Who are we to keep them out?”

I do not know why it is that we are constantly flummoxed by the idea that the same God who gives so much to us is just as generous with everyone else.  I don’t know why we have such a hard time believing that the same God who works among us is also working in places that we do not recognize as holy.   I do not understand why it is we think we have cornered the market on all the goodness of God when that well of goodness is an everlasting stream of mercy.  The Holy Spirit moves like melting snow flowing exactly where and when and how it wants to go.  That flowing river of grace breaches ancient barriers that have existed for so long that nobody can remember why we built them in the first place.  The Spirit’s fire flares up, melting the hardness of human hearts, setting the waters of God’s justice lose upon a world dried up and gasping for breath. 

Peter says, who are we to hinder God? 

I met a man named Joe this week who is a deeply faithful, rock solid Christian man with a beautiful voice and a powerful testimony.  To hear him pray and speak about how God has worked in his life, and to listen to his reading of scripture is a genuine joy.  When I met him the other night, I noticed that Joe was wearing surgical scrubs and after the meeting, I asked him if he worked in a local hospital.  Turns out that he is a nursing assistant at AGH, working on the orthopedic floor.  Joe has worked for AGH for more than a decade, so he is well known by the staff and doctors on the orthopedic floor. 

In fact, Joe said, “They love me at AGH.  They love me so much that the doctors invited me to go out to dinner with them at Jerome Bettis’ restaurant on the North Shore a couple of months ago.” 

My husband and I know a few orthopedic surgeons at AGH, so I asked Joe if the doctors we knew were the same ones who invited him to dinner.  Turns out, one of our very good friends was the doctor who invited Joe to have dinner with him and some other folks from the orthopedic floor.  I asked Joe how the dinner went.  And he said, “Oh no.  I didn’t go.  I wouldn’t go to a dinner like that.”  I was surprised by this and asked Joe why he didn’t go?  He said, “All those doctors.  I wouldn’t fit in.  They were eating steak.  Drinking wine.  I wouldn’t fit in there.  Not with all those fancy doctors.  I don’t belong there.” 

A couple of people who were talking with us started giving Joe a hard time – what?  You skipped a free steak dinner at Jerome Bettis’?  Man, you are crazy.

After everyone left, I told Joe that the doctor who invited him to dinner was, in fact, one of the nicest people I know.  He doesn’t drink at all.  In fact, he is an extremely modest, humble person, very close to his family, very faithful to their church.  Although he certainly earns more money as a surgeon than Joe does as a nursing assistant, he’s an extremely hardworking and frugal guy.  In others words, he is probably not all that different from Joe.  In fact, I’m pretty sure this doctor invited Joe because Joe is someone he values and admires as a co-worker and he probably thought Joe might enjoy a nice dinner.

I didn’t have time to dig more deeply into Joe’s rejection of the dinner invitation, but I’ve been thinking about the many boundaries that he imagines might exist between him and the surgeon.  Class.  Race.  Neighborhoods.  Life experiences.  Fear.  All of the above?  Maybe more.  And I can understand his reluctance to go somewhere where he may feel awkward.  Out of control.  Not in charge.  Not in the “know.”  Yet if Joe had opened himself up to an encounter with this “other,” who knows what he may have experienced? 

How often do we reject God’s invitation to cross a boundary? I think we do it a lot. True for me.  True for you.  The Holy Spirit must be black and blue from all the times I have pushed back against its holy urging.  All you have to do is look at how divided our church, our city, our nation, our world has become to know that we spend too much of our time burning bridges instead of building them.  We are birds of a feather who would rather clip our own wings instead of stretching them out to catch the breeze of God’s spirit just waiting to lift us up.

In our baptism, we are reborn not to stay anchored where we are.  We are born to fly.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

What's Happening? -- Late April/May

            Special thank you to Dawn Bowman for spending last Wednesday evening with us showing her slides of her mission trip to Cuba earlier this year.  Midweeks are scheduled to return to our standard format April 17 through the end of May.  We gather at 6 p.m. for dinner, followed at 6:30 by lectionary-based bible study led by Pastor Susan.  

We have signed a 5-year agreement to lease a new copier (at a lower rate) from Precision Copy Products, which is a local women-owned small business.  Come and check it out!

Session will meet on May 4 from 9:00am -12:00pm in the Fellowship Hall.  

We are pleased to formally welcome Heather Fisher to our congregation upon affirmation of faith on Easter Sunday.  Take time to stop by and welcome Heather and her sons, Alex and Max. 

We are planning a church clean-up day on May 18 from 9:00 -11:00 am. Come enjoy donuts while we “pitch-in to pitch-it-out.”  This recent article from Christian Century explores the link between a church's spiritual health and its building condition.  Check it out and be inspired to come out and clean up on May 18th!

 http://www.christiancentury.org/article/2013-02/clutter-buster

The Deacons are collecting toiletries for the Men’s Shelter during the spring and summer.  Place your items in the bin in the Narthex.

The Church and World team is exploring new ways of participating in God’s work in local and global missions in ways that express our congregation’s true mission heart.  We would like your suggestions for ways we can offer and support programs and organizations that are close to our hearts.  Please put any suggestions you may have in the offering plate in the upcoming weeks or speak directly to any of the team’s members –Greg, Rebecca, or Bez.  You may also email thoughts to – bstellfox@ccac.edu.

The prayer chain has had a slight revision.  To start the prayer chain, you may call Pat Chasey or Tom Smart.   

Easter 4C, April 21, 2013

"The Wrong Question"

Acts 9:36-43

Now in Joppa there was a disciple whose name was Tabitha, which in Greek is Dorcas. She was devoted to good works and acts of charity. At that time she became ill and died. When they had washed her, they laid her in a room upstairs. Since Lydda was near Joppa, the disciples, who heard that Peter was there, sent two men to him with the request, “Please come to us without delay.” So Peter got up and went with them; and when he arrived, they took him to the room upstairs. All the widows stood beside him, weeping and showing tunics and other clothing that Dorcas had made while she was with them. Peter put all of them outside, and then he knelt down and prayed. He turned to the body and said, “Tabitha, get up.” Then she opened her eyes, and seeing Peter, she sat up. He gave her his hand and helped her up. Then calling the saints and widows, he showed her to be alive. This became known throughout Joppa, and many believed in the Lord. Meanwhile he stayed in Joppa for some time with a certain Simon, a tanner.

Resurrection is the theme of the fifty days of Eastertide.  But historically the month of April has been filled with particularly horrific events.  Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr. were both assassinated in April.  Waco, Oklahoma City, Columbine, Virginia Tech, and the Immigration Center murders in New York – all of these tragic events happened in April.

The poet T.S. Elliott famously stated that “April is the cruelest month” in his poem, The Waste Land,” written in 1922.  The first stanza continues:

April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

Winter kept us warm, covering

Earth in forgetful snow, feeding

A little life with dried tubers.

And this year, April continues its cruel trend, as we think of the bombs that exploded in Boston on Monday, killing three people and wounding more than 100.  Like may of you, I spent Friday distracted by the footage of police attempting to find the second suspect in the bombing, his brother having been killed in a horrifying shootout.  More death.  More terror.  More brutality. 

In April, the temptation is strong to shut down and shut out such horrifying images.  The scenes of mayhem do not fit our spring mood.  Such images are entirely incongruent with the blooming beauty of the season.  April contains the season of Easter and resurrection, but for too many April will be forever marked by death.

What then shall we say as people of the resurrection in the face of violent death that so often marks the season of Easter? 

First, I think, we need to resist the temptation to be glib. I am more than willing to admit that pretty much all the horrible things that happen in the world are beyond my understanding.  And it is beyond yours as well.  I cannot give a reasonable explanation for why people lost their lives and limbs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, or why small children were gunned down in a first grade classroom or why a fertilizer factory in Texas blew up and killed dozens of people .  Any person of faith who rushes to tell you why bad things happen to good people, or bad people, or any people is simply being dishonest.  We can argue until we are blue in the face about gun laws and immigration policy and safety inspections.  These are important conversations to have and public policies really do matter.  Yet we also know that terrible things happen in the world that we cannot control or understand.   Cain is still killing Abel.  Human beings are a dangerous species, destructive, and so vulnerable. The psalmist says humans are made both wonderfully and, truth be told, fearfully.

Yet we are people of faith who are called to be salt and light and Christ in the world.  We are called to speak God’s healing word to a hurting world.  What then shall we say about these things?

Well, maybe this morning, after a week like the one we’ve had, maybe we can only talk about Tabitha.

Let’s talk about Tabitha and her little church in Joppa near the Mediterranean Sea.  Tabitha -- the first and only named female disciple in the Bible.  Yes, we know that other women walked with Jesus and ministered with Jesus.  We know that other women played an important role in the early church.  But only Tabitha is depicted in scripture as a female disciple with a capital D.  So today, let us talk about Tabitha and her story in the Book of Acts.

When we talk about Tabitha, we need to remember that she was born into and lived in a Roman-occupied world that can only be described as very grim.  Tabitha’s world was one in which wealth was concentrated into the hands of a very, very small percentage of people.  Only a few people – and all of them were male, by the way --  held all the power and privilege in the 1^st century.  Most of the population was grindingly poor beyond our imagining.  

And widows were among the most vulnerable citizens of all.  Because women could neither own nor inherit property, a woman was entirely dependent upon her father and then, after she was married, on her husband.  If her husband died, the widow’s only hope was that there would be a male relative such as her husband’s brother to support her.  And if there was no man willing or able to help her, a widow was truly on her own, dependent upon the charity and pity of her community.

Such social and nutritional insecurity takes its toll.  In fact, Tabitha was born into an age when life expectancy for women like her was around 40 years old.  The widow’s life was marked by poverty, malnutrition and illness.  In fact, it is fair to say that death as described here in Acts was not a natural one, not really.   Her death was likely caused by political and religious systems that relegated widows to a life of scrapping and scraping to get by the best they could.   Widows as much as any victim of Roman execution, were victims of a corrupt and brutal system.  As quoted famously in Hobbes’ Leviathan, their lives were, “…solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."  Power belonged to men, to the wealthy, to the emperor and to death. 

But this little church in Joppa, an early Christian community, existed as a different sort of system standing against the prevailing structures. And I’m not sure we truly appreciate how utterly strange these Christians must have appeared in the 1^st century. In this little church in Joppa, the community made it their priority to make sure widows and other vulnerable people like children would be cared for and not starve if they could possibly help it.  This little church stood as a shimmering light of hope in an otherwise dark world.

And remarkably, this little church in Joppa had a woman named Tabitha among its leaders.  Acts tells us that Tabitha, despite her own precarious social position, was entirely devoted to good works and acts of charity.  Far from being a victim, Tabitha was something like an entrepreneur, earning a living as a seamstress and sharing the fruits of her labors with the community of widows in Joppa.  She was, as one commentator notes, a one-woman faith-based initiative. She made garments not only to sell, but also to keep the widows in the community clothed. 

And that is a very big deal in Tabitha’s society.  Making clothing was an incredibly labor-intensive project in the first century.  A single tunic could take many days to produce, and most people had a modest wardrobe of only one or two.  But somehow, Tabitha kept the widows warm, clothed and protected in a hostile world.  Tabitha’s existence was as bare bones as the others, but she devoted her life to taking care of the marginal people who made up this tiny church in Joppa.

No wonder they were devastated when she died.  No wonder the women were weeping when Peter comes to Joppa. 

It is remarkable that Peter shows up, isn’t it?  It is.  This is a bunch of non-entities living an impoverished community.  Yet Peter comes in the name of Jesus Christ and that changes everything. 

Peter heals Tabitha, all alone, evoking the image and language Jesus himself used when he cared about and cured another nobody – Jairus’ daughter, remember her?  Another woman, a young woman, with no name.  By the time Jesus got to her, she was dead just like Tabitha.   Jesus dismisses most of the crowd and heals her privately and quietly, just as Peter does in our text.  And Jesus speaks Jairus’ daughter back into life – “Child, get up.”  And Jesus takes her by the hand and her life is restored.  And Peter has that same power to heal Tabitha.  The power of the Holy Spirit that blows like crazy throughout the book of Acts. 

What struck me most this week about the events in Boston and in Texas, for that matter, were the images and stories of people who risked everything and rushed into horrific situations to assist those who had been injured.  The people who acted quickly to help were not only firefighters, police or EMS staff, but also ordinary people

At the memorial service on Thursday, President Obama said:  “Scripture teaches us, ‘God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline.’”  That’s from the first chapter of 2 Timothy.  The president went on to say:

“And that’s the spirit you’ve displayed in recent days. When doctors and nurses, police and firefighters and EMTs and Guardsmen run towards explosions to treat the wounded -- that’s discipline. When exhausted runners, including our troops and veterans -- who never expected to see such carnage on the streets back home -- become first responders themselves, tending to the injured -- that’s real power.

When Bostonians carry victims in their arms, deliver water and blankets, line up to give blood, open their homes to total strangers, give them rides back to reunite with their families -- that’s love.”

I am convinced the same Holy Spirit who sent Peter rushing to this group of destitute widows who had lost their one slender thread of hope of surviving in a world in which the odds were hideously stacked against them – it is the same reckless Holy Spirit that sent people into the mayhem at the finish line in Boston on Monday afternoon and into the fiery furnace in Texas this week.  The first responders in Boston and Texas didn’t stop to ask if those in need were worthy of their assistance.  They simply rushed in to bring life out of death, many of them at great risk to their own lives.  And on Friday, I thought of the doctors at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston who, after a long week of caring for those injured in Monday’s blast, gave their same best efforts to care for the 19 year old man who had planted the bomb and nearly bled to death in a boat while the entire city was shut down.

In this season of resurrection, God’s church is called to say no to the power of death that permeates this sin sick world, and say yes to the life that is ours in Jesus Christ.  And we do this by being like Tabitha – open and generous and willing to share what we have even when it’s hard…harder than we ever imagined.  To stand in the space of grief and lift up our voices in weeping.  And to do those things that bring about peace.  One tunic at a time.  In doing small, generous acts for one another we break death’s ability to sever our connections with one another.  Which is really what resurrection is about.

We may not have the same worries and concerns of the widows in that little church in Joppa.  Most of us do not have to struggle to survive, but we do struggle to hear that word of life that Peter brought to Tabitha, and need to experience that extraordinary surge of the Holy Spirit’s power.  Not every church can summon an apostle with the power to raise the dead, but what we can do is follow the example of that little church in Joppa and refuse to be silent in the face of suffering.  We can be like Peter, filled with the power of the Spirit and rushing in to lift up the marginalized, the lost, the lonely --  reminding them that their gifts and their lives matter deeply.  To tell them that they are loved.  And bear witness to the resurrection so it is a real and present power in the life of this church and in our lives.

The story of Tabitha suggests that maybe we are asking the wrong question this week in particular, or any week.  Maybe the serious question that must be central to our lives is not why bad things happen or why evil persists in the world.  Maybe the question we need to be asking is this – why does goodness persist even in the face of enormous forces against it?  Maybe the question we should ask is where is love and mercy persisting in the world and how can we -- you and me, the church -- rush in like Peter to get in on that action?  Where is resurrection life threatening to burst out and take over at any moment?

I don’t know about you, but that’s where I want to be.  And I am convinced that is where the Holy Spirit is calling us to be.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.