reallifepastor

Elijah was a prophet of God…and a thorn in the flesh of the King Ahab and Queen Jezebel.  The conflict culminated in a contest between Elijah and Ahab and Jezebel’s prophets of Baal to see whose God was the true God.  Elijah won…which enraged the king and queen.  They were so enraged, in fact, they put a hit on Elijah.

The besieged prophet ran and ran and ran into the wilderness.  Finally, he collapsed under a broom tree and asked to die.  “It is enough; now, O God.  Take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.”  As soon as he spoke the words, Elijah promptly fell asleep.

Hopelessness is exhausting, isn’t it?  When you try to live a good life, when you try to do right by your parents, children, partners and friends, when you do everything right and the world still falls apart, hopelessness is tempting.  Sometimes the easiest thing to do is to pull the covers over your head, go to sleep, and forget it all.

That’s what Elijah does.  He goes to sleep.  When he wakens, an angel is there with food and water.  “Get up and eat,” the angel says.  Elijah does, then… immediately falls back asleep.  When he wakes up the second time, the angel is there again with food and water.  “Get up and eat,” the angel says again, “otherwise the journey will be too much for you.”

It’s easy when our world falls apart to neglect the things that nourish us.  We forget to eat.  We stop praying.  We avoid the faith community that nurtures us.

The angel reminds Elijah that even when life goes off the rails, it is vital that we continue doing the things that feed us—physically and spiritually.  If we don’t…if we don’t get the rest we need, if we don’t eat good food at regular intervals, if we neglect nurturing our spiritual selves, then the journey to a better, more hopeful place will be too much for us.

After a couple of good long naps and some nourishing food and drink, Elijah sets out.  “He goes in the strength of that food for 40 days and 40 nights to the mount of God.”  Then what does he do?  He finds a cave…and falls asleep again.

When he wakes up, God asks Elijah:  “What are you doing here, Elijah?”  Elijah responds:  “I have been very zealous for God; the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets.  I alone am left and they want to kill me, too.”  Even after fleeing from those who wanted to kill him, getting some rest and nourishment, and journeying to the mount of God, Elijah still feels hopeless.  At least now he wants to live; that’s progress, I guess.  But he’s still in pity party mode.

What are you doing here today?  Are you here because this is just what you do on Sunday mornings?  Are you here because somebody made you come?  Are you here because you truly want more ideas about how to act the world into wellbeing, because goodness knows that’s what the world needs?  Are you here because, like Elijah, you’re just hanging on by a thread and desperately NEED to experience some glimmer of hope?

So, Elijah is asked what he’s doing at the mount of God, he does his whiny, hopeless thing, then Spirit tells him to wait for God, who’s about to pass by.

“There was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces, but God was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but God was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but God was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave.”

Then–you’re going to love this part–God’s Spirit asks again, ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’  You’d think after experiencing the wind, earthquake, fire, and sheer silence, Elijah would have been moved to respond differently.  He isn’t.  his response is exactly the same:  “I alone am left of the Prophets of God…and they’re trying to kill me.”

So…a terrified Elijah runs from Ahab and Jezebel, collapses under a broom tree, sleeps, is tended to by messengers of God, who make sure he gets food and water and more sleep.  Then he journeys 40 more days, sleeps some more…and THEN has this revelation of God in a moment of sheer silence.  All that happens, and Elijah’s mood hasn’t changed one iota.  His pity party is still going strong.

After all this work with Elijah–which seems to have accomplished nothing–what does God’s Spirit do?  The last verse of the story. “Then God said to him, “Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus; when you arrive, you shall anoint Hazael as king over Aram.”

Despite his whininess, despite his loneliness, despite his despondence….despite everything that had happened, God uses Elijah anyway.  Elijah responds the same way at the end of the story as he does at the beginning of the story….and God uses him anyway.

This summer, we’re exploring the resources we have to act the world into wellbeing.  By acting the world into wellbeing, I mean, actively sharing God’s love in the world.  Kind of like Martin Luther King said, “Justice is what love looks like in public.”  That’s our calling as followers of Jesus–to share God’s love in public, to act the world into wellbeing.

So, this summer, we’re reflecting on the resources we have here at First Congregational actively to share God’s love in the world.  Our friend Elijah reminds us of a key resource each and every one of us has–our humanity…not our humanity as we want it to be, but our humanity as it is.  Whether we’re fearful or exhausted or despondent–we still have something to contribute to the work of acting the world into wellbeing.

Here’s a thought.  I wonder if God didn’t use Elijah despite his human flaws, but in light of them?  Maybe Elijah’s fearfulness, loneliness, and despondence actually helped him do the work to which God was calling him.

In a book titled Lincoln’s Melancholy:  How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness, author Joshua Wolf Shenk reflects on Abraham Lincoln’s struggle with depression, then suggests that it was Lincoln’s depression that gave him the insight he needed to lead a country at war with itself.

Lincoln seems to have struggled with depression most of his life, from major depressive episodes in his 20s and 30s, including two breakdowns, to chronic depression later in life.  Shenk’s thesis is that from his depression, Lincoln learned that true happiness always would elude him.  Not waiting for an elusive happier day to come freed Lincoln up to see reality as it was…which is exactly what a country in the midst of a civil war needed.  War is no time for rose-colored glasses.

Shenk also suggests that Lincoln’s personal acquaintance with deep suffering gave him insight as he guided a country also plunged into deep suffering.

Often, when we name resources–including our personal resources–for acting the world into wellbeing, we focus on our strengths, the material resources we have, the knowledge and skills and personal attributes we have.  All the things we might put on a resume.

The stories of Abraham Lincoln and the prophet Elijah remind us that our strengths aren’t the only resources we have to act the world into wellbeing.  The parts of us that feel less strong also can be tremendous resources as we seek to follow Jesus in acting the world into wellbeing.

When the Voices of Hope choir from the Swannanoa prison choir came to sing for us a couple of months ago, a woman named Taylor told us her story.  Taylor’s undiagnosed mental health challenges shaped and guided her life…and caused great suffering for Taylor and for many others.  They’re also what led to her incarceration.  Now that she has received the medication and other help she’s needed, she’s able to share her story with others.

As a pastor, hearing Taylor’s story was a wake-up call to me to be as vigilant as I can be to guide people who are struggling with mental health challenges to the resources they need.  I’ve been committed to talking about mental health challenges in church for a long time.  But Taylor’s story showed me just how much suffering can come from people not getting the resources they need to deal with mental illness.  By telling a very painful part of her story, Taylor is acting the world into wellbeing.

What are the painful parts of your story?  A struggle with depression?  A chronic illness that saps your energy?  A phobia that keeps you isolated from others?  Deep wounds from physical, emotional, or religious abuse?  Addiction?  Age?  Rage?  Grief?  What are the painful parts of your story?  What things don’t feel strengths for you?  What things prevent you from doing more to act the world into wellbeing?

What if those things that don’t feel strong might be the very resources that will help you act the world into wellbeing?  What if the parts of yourself you hide from others—perhaps, especially at church—are the very things God wants to use in sharing God’s love in the world?  What if God wants to use ALL of who you are, like, ALL of who you are to act others into wellbeing?

And what if you did?  What if you did use all of who you are to act the world into wellbeing?  What might happen?  What might happen to you?  What might happen to this church?  What might happen in the world?

In the name of our God, who creates us, redeems us, sustains us, and hopes for our wholeness.  Amen.

Kimberleigh Buchanan ©2019

(Play, “The Truth,” by Precious Bryant.)  Remember the truth?  Back when I was a child, it was common for people—I know this sounds crazy!–but back in the day, people told the truth.  Crazy times.  These days, when videos are altered, when a national newspaper has a fact-checker column with Pinocchio noses (the more lies told by politicians, the more Pinocchio noses are colored in) and keeps track of our president’s falsehoods (We’re closing in on 11,000 since he took office.)… These days, it’s a challenge to know what’s true and what isn’t.  These days, Pilate’s question to Jesus feels exceedingly relevant:  “What is truth?”

Today’s Scripture comes from Jesus’ last words to his disciples the night before his death.  Jesus, sensing that his death is imminent, says everything he’d been meaning to teach his disciples before departing the scene.  Kind of like a professor who comes to the last day of class with half of the syllabus yet to teach.

Among the points Jesus makes… We should love one another as he has loved us.  Through him, all his followers are connected–as a vine has many branches.  Later, Jesus will offer the prayer that our own UCC has adopted as its motto:  “That they may all be one.”

In today’s verses, Jesus acknowledges that everything he’s telling the disciples isn’t going to sink in.  That’s when he promises the “Spirit of Truth.”

“I have much more to tell you,” he says, “but you can’t bear to hear it now.  When the Spirit of truth comes, she will guide you into all truth.”

Doesn’t that sound great?  “When the Spirit of truth comes, she will guide us into all truth.”  Cool.  That means we’ll always have access to the truth, right?  We’ll know at any given moment the right thing to do and the best way to respond, right?  Of course!  That’s why followers of Jesus around the globe agree on everything and live their faith in the same ways!

Yeah.  That’s a lie.

So, if the Spirit of truth has come, why aren’t we–at least we followers of Jesus–if the Spirit of truth has come, why aren’t we on the same page more of the time?  If the Spirit is there, guiding us into all truth, why is the world such a mess?

Maybe it’s because, unlike Precious Bryant, we don’t really like the truth.  Or maybe, per Jack Nicholson’s character in A Few Good Men, WE CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!

Like, oh, the truth at our country’s southern border?  There’s currently an art installation in New York City.  It represents a child covered in one of those shiny blankets inside a chain link fence.  A recording of actual children at the border crying out plays constantly.  Five Guatemalan children have died after crossing the border in the last 6 months.  That’s the truth.  Hard to handle.

What about the truth about racism?  At a workshop on Racial Equity at the Southern Conference Annual meeting this week, the presenter took us through statistics from every sector of society—incarceration rates, healthcare, education, nonprofits (which includes churches), business, and government.  In every area, African Americans fared worse than every other population in our country.  The gap between blacks and whites was the widest.

When I first learned about “the talk” African American parents have with their children, …the talk that tells them what to do if they are pulled over…and how to talk with and behave around white people… When I learned about “the talk,” and how African American parents have the talk with their children, literally, to save their lives…That was when the lightbulb came on for me.  That’s when I realized just how white I am.  That’s when I recognized the privilege I have simply because of the color of my skin.  That’s the truth.  Hard to handle.

What about the truth of sexism?  Our U.S. women’s soccer team–which is tearing it up at the World Cup–makes much less money than players on the U.S. men’s soccer team.  Still.  We just celebrated the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th amendment.  Great.  But Equal Rights still aren’t the law of the land.  That’s the truth.  Hard to handle.

What about the truth of climate change?  This might be the hardest truth of all.  Ecological devastation is snowballing…an ironic metaphor considering how rapidly the polar ice caps are melting. Species are going extinct at an accelerated pace.  Water levels are rising.  The intensity of storms keeps racheting up.  These are the truths of climate change.  Hard to handle.

It’s great that Jesus gave us the Spirit to guide us into all truth…but maybe the truth isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.  Maybe the truth is too hard to handle. Maybe we can re-gift it. If only…

Here’s another hard truth:  as followers of Jesus, we don’t have that option.  As followers of Jesus, as people who seek to act the world into wellbeing, we don’t have the option of discarding or glossing over the truth.  We might not want to handle the truth, but as followers of Jesus we are called to face it.

We’re called to face the truth in our own lives—truth about our spirits, truth about our relationships, truth about our health.  Mostly, though, we’re called to face the truth in the world, particularly the truth of the lives of the least of these, the lives of those who suffer.

How do we learn the truth about the lives of those who suffer? We listen to them. We open our minds and our hearts to them. Then we use what we have to act them into wellbeing.

An early scene in the movie The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel shows an elderly woman (played by Maggie Smith) on a stretcher in the hallway of a British emergency room.  Obviously unhappy, the woman begs a nurse passing by to get her a doctor.  The nurse reminds the woman that several doctors have come to see her, but the woman has refused to let any doctor who is not white examine her.

Much to her dismay, the woman, Muriel, learns that the best and quickest treatment she can receive is hip replacement surgery at a hospital in India.  Reluctantly, she goes.  The quirky hotel in which Muriel and several other retirees from England stay, employs a young woman to cook and clean.  Anokhi works efficiently, but, of a lower caste, she keeps her eyes down and rarely speaks.

After her surgery, Muriel begins to soften.  Slightly.  She looks at Anokhi.  She sees her.  She makes eye contact.

On an outing one day, Muriel’s guide pushes her wheelchair into a small, crowded family home.  Anokhi, surrounded by her large family, welcomes Muriel and offers her food. Muriel is horrified.  “Why have you brought me here?” she demands.  The guide tells her that because of Muriel’s kindness, the young woman wanted to introduce her family to Muriel.  “But I haven’t been kind!” Muriel insists.  “You are the only one who acknowledges her,” the guide says.  When some of the children begin playing with her wheelchair in the front yard, Muriel snaps and yells at them.  The young woman’s face falls.

A few days later, Muriel asks her guide to take her back to Anokhi’s house.  Anokhi  recoils when she see Muriel…but this time, Muriel tells the woman her own story…How she cared for a family in England, managed the books, cooked, cleaned, cared for the children as if they were her own.  But when she got too old in their eyes, they replaced her with someone younger.  “All I was to them was a servant,” she said.  Just before leaving, Muriel gives Anokhi a pack of her favorite biscuits.  Hobnobs.

In the midst of her own struggles and her own prejudice, Muriel got a glimpse of the truth of Anokhi’s hard life, a life, it turns out, Muriel knew well.

Here’s the thing, though.  The hard truths weren’t the only truths Muriel encountered.  Muriel also allowed herself to be guided into a truth about herself—the truth that she was kind and compassionate and still very capable of helping others with the struggles of their lives.

This summer, we’re looking at the resources within our community we might use to act the world into wellbeing.  Today’s Scripture reminds us of one of those resources—the gift of the Spirit… It’s true that Spirit guides us into seeing the hard truths of the world.  But Spirit also guides us into this truth:  we are kinder, more compassionate, wiser, and more powerful than we know.   Looking at the hard truths about the world, it’s easy to become overwhelmed… What might happen if, instead of letting ourselves get overwhelmed, we allowed Spirit to guide us into the truth of our wildly compassionate hearts?  What if we allowed Spirit to guide us into the truth of all the wisdom that lives inside us and inside this community?  What if we allowed Spirit to guide us into our own depths and to hear the beautiful truth of the message of our soul?  (Asher Leigh sings, “Message of Soul”)

I spent Easter night with some friends.  Of course, the big news that day was the pastor tilting the Christ candle during Children’s Time and a little oil oozing out.  At which point, I made the joke that if the candle lit like usual, we’d have Easter.  If the oil caught on fire, then Pentecost would come a little early this year.

One of my friends, who didn’t grow up in the Christian tradition, said, “I don’t get it.  What is Pentecost?”  So, I explained it…the people gathering 50 days after Jesus’ resurrection.  God’s spirit blowing in.  Little flames of fire alighting on each person’s head….  The more I explained, the more fantastic it sounded.  Finally, I said, “So…fire is a symbol of Pentecost.”  “Ahh,” he said.  I don’t think he’ll be converting any time soon.  🙂

It is a fantastic story, isn’t it?  No wonder when the wind and fire came, when everyone could understand each other despite speaking different languages…no wonder when all those things happened, even the faithful asked:  “What does this mean?”

What does Pentecost mean?  What does this old story of Pentecost mean to us followers of Jesus nearly 2,000 years later?  You saw what happened with even the threat of fire on Easter.  People gasped, the pastor said, um, an un-pastorly word…  And what about that day when a strong gust of wind came up and shook our windows?  More gasping, right?

Unexpected wind and fire can be disconcerting.  They also can be energizing.  On Easter, I set that candle upright right quick!  And I think we got a few more donations for the repair of the windows the day the wind blew.  🙂  (Donations are still be received!)

Wind and fire.  What do they mean?  And why has the church seized on these elements to represent its birth…and re-birth?

Perhaps it’s about power.  We’ve seen the catastrophic damage done by tornadoes this Spring…and from hurricanes in the past couple of years.  It will take some communities generations to recover, if they ever recover at all.  And the wildfires in California–and wildfires here a few years ago–remind us of the devastation of uncontrolled burns.

Wind and fire are powerful.  Unchecked, they can over-power.  Harnessed, they can do tremendous good…like controlled burns in forests that create space for new life.

Or like what happened in the early 2000s in Malawi.  Severe flooding, followed by an even more severe dry season, and exacerbated by unrestrained logging led to near-famine conditions.  Farmers despaired when crops couldn’t grow, or—when they did grow—were underpriced or stolen.  The Kamkwamba family worked their farm hard.  Proceeds from their farming had put their daughter through school.  They were proud to send their 13 year old son, William, to school, as well.

But the rains, then the drought, the low prices, and the theft–reduced the family to subsistence living.  In one poignant scene in the movie that tells the story, “The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind,” the father tells the family they must now eat only one meal a day.  He asks each member which meal it should be.

Even after he is expelled from school because his family is unable to pay tuition, William finds a way to continue visiting the school’s library.  He keeps going to the library because he’s had an idea.  Seeing that the light on his teacher’s bike shines when the bike is pedaled, he asks his teacher how it works.  His teacher tells him it’s a dynamo, a device that uses magnets and electricity.  William’s idea is this–to create a dynamo that will supply electricity to his village.

In the library, he finds a book that details the process for making windmills, devices that harness wind to create electricity.  From drawings and explanations in the book, William’s plan begins to form.

His first stop is the junkyard.  He collects old PVC pipes, motors, and electrical wires.  He finds an old fan.  He obtains the dynamo from his teacher’s bike light.  The last item he needs is his father’s bike, the family’s only means of transportation.  His father resists sacrificing his precious bike, even when William assures him that he can build a windmill that will run the water pump that will make it possible to plant crops year ‘round, even in the dry season.  Eventually, William’s father relinquishes his bike.

The whole village works to build the windmill, cutting down trees, creating an irrigation system.  Once the windmill is completed and the fan begins to turn, the villagers leave the machine to do its work charging the battery that eventually will power the pump.

When the villagers gather again, they stare expectantly at the water hose.  When the pumped water begins sluicing down the waterway, their joy explodes.  The crops grow, the village is saved.  William goes back to school and eventually graduates from Dartmouth College with a degree in engineering.

On the face of it, this might not be the most obvious of Pentecost stories.  But then again, “harnessing the wind” is pretty much what Pentecost is all about, isn’t it?  God’s Spirit blows in unexpectedly, which is wonderful and energizing…but if we don’t “harness” that wind energy, if we don’t convert that spirit energy into a usable form, it won’t be able to sustain us.

If the church is to grow and thrive, it’s got to have a steady source of energy.  And we have to have a means of accessing that energy on a consistent basis.  So, how will we harness the wind of Pentecost here at FCUCC?

Let’s look again at how William harnessed the wind in his village.  First, he was deeply immersed in the life circumstances of his family and the rest of his village.  He saw how hard everyone worked and how little they received from that work.  He watched and worried as his loved ones slowly starved.

William also knew how his mind worked.  He understood machines and electricity.  He knew how to fix things.  He had confidence in his engineering mind, even when those around him lacked that confidence.

William also knew how to assemble found objects into workable machines.  Hence, his frequent trips to the junkyard.  William could see the dire circumstances facing his family and village, he trusted his ideas about how to solve their problems, and he knew how to use the objects at hand to build the machine that would solve their problems.

What I’m trying to say is, William used what he had to act those in his world into wellbeing.  And he did it by harnessing the wind.

Our summer theme officially begins today.  “Using what we have to act the world into wellbeing.”  The question for us is similar to the question that guided William’s work with the windmill.  “What resources do we have?  How might we use those resources to act the world into wellbeing?”  How might we use the gifts of the Spirit in this community for the common good?

There’s a brief scene in “The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind.”  William has just collected several items from the junkyard for his windmill project.  You can almost see his mind working as he surveys the items arrayed in front of him, imagining how each part might fit into the overall project…imagining how a windmill will improve drastically the lives of his family and fellow villagers.

That’s the scene we’ll be living this summer.  As we discern where God is leading us as a church, as we imagine together how we might use the gifts of the Spirit to this community for the common good, the first step will be to assess what those gifts are.

Each week, we’ll look at a different set of resources to help us in our work of acting the world into wellbeing.  You’ve got a copy of the resources we’ll be looking at each week.  Of course, this list isn’t exhaustive…but it will at least give us a place to start as we seek to identify the gifts and resources within our community.

When I came here 16 months ago, I was a bit giddy.  Such euphoria over being called to serve with this vibrant congregation!  Sixteen months in?  I confess that I’m even giddier (if that’s a word).  Y’all!  This is an amazing congregation!  Seeing new life around the place the past couple of weeks–landscaping out front and the window work….Have you seen the window work?  Now you can tell from the outside that our church has stained glass windows!  With the plastic covering the windows before, you couldn’t tell.

Somehow, the facelift our building is getting is reminding me of just how strong and beautiful this community is.  There are still so many ways–new ways, exciting ways, creative ways…there are still so many ways to act the world into wellbeing!  All we have to do is harness the winds of Pentecost.

So, Church.  How will we do that?  How will we harness the winds of Pentecost?  How will we use what we have to act the world into wellbeing now?

In the name of our God, who creates us, redeems us, sustains us, and hopes for our wholeness.  Amen.

Kimberleigh Buchanan  © 2019

(Sing: “Paul and Silas bound in jail…”)  Today’s story from Acts served as a template for many freedom workers during the Civil Rights Movement.  A young woman, possessed by an unclean spirit—what today, we’d probably call mental illness–chases after Paul, Silas, and the others.  As with many people who struggle with mental health issues, she could see deep down into the truth of things.  She called it out:  “These men are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.”

Paul likely saw the young woman’s suffering and that she was being exploited by those who assumed they owned her.  But Paul also was annoyed.  He stopped, faced the young woman, and, in the name of Jesus, called the demons possessing her to come out.  They did.

Paul had done a good thing, right?  Even in his less-than-patient mood, Paul acted that young woman into wellbeing.  That should have been the end of the story, right?  But—of course—it wasn’t…because healing those who are hurting, taking action that leads to people becoming more whole…healing the wounded often infuriates those who exploit those wounds…

And so, for their healing work, Paul, Silas, and the others are rewarded with jail.

The healing work of civil rights workers also often landed them in jail.  Acting African Americans in the Jim Crow south into wellbeing, challenging laws that institutionalized the dehumanization of black citizens…yeah.  That infuriated the powers-that-be.  And so those powers-that-be used their most potent resource–the legal system– to silence their critics…

Except….it didn’t work.  You put a group of justice workers in a jail cell together and don’t give them anything else to do, they’re going to figure out something to do.  And without paper, pen, books, tools, or tasks, the only thing that was left for them to do was to sing.

That’s what Paul and Silas did in the jail in Philippi.  They sang.  And as they sang, an earthquake shook the jail and it came crumbling down.  The prisoners’ singing freed them.

It was less literal than stone walls crumbling, but the singing of jailed civil rights workers freed them, too.

One of the leading teachers of nonviolent resistance was Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth.  Some of our folks met Rev. Shuttlesworth’s daughter last summer when we visited the memorial in Montgomery.  In a pre-demonstration session in Birmingham in 1963, here’s what Rev. Shuttlesworth said to the young people gathered:  ‘It’s to be a silent demonstration.  No songs, no slogans, no replies to obscenities.’  Everyone nodded.  ‘However,’ the reverend added, ‘when you’re arrested, sing your hearts out.’

“So, all the young people filed out of church, solemn as deacons, quiet as mice.  Then a cop came along and shouted, ‘You’re all under arrest!’  That was the cue.  Suddenly, they sang:

Ain’t a-scared of your jail ‘cause I want my freedom, I want my freedom, I want my freedom…

In a recent interview, Civil Rights worker and singer Bettie Mae Fikes–sometimes called “The Voice of Selma”–talked about the role singing played when she was in jail.  “In jail,” she said, “that’s all I had was the music. We were so crowded we couldn’t lay down. So we just crumbled together. Singing, singing, singing, singing, all day, all night. All day, all night. And all of a sudden you’d hear somebody say, all day, all night, ‘The angels keep watching over us.’  The jailers used to tell us, “If you don’t shut up, we’re gonna rape you all and take tar paper and put it all around the windows.”  But we kept singing, “Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me around.”

(Sing:  Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me ‘Round)

Last Fall, we started living into a new music vision here at FCUCC.  It’s led to a new model for leadership of our music ministry with two people to lead.  We got a terrific visual and aural picture of their ministry last week when Joanna, Marika, and Cara sang “Down in the River to Pray” together.

That’s the most concrete change since beginning to live into this new music vision.  Other shifts are starting to happen, as well, especially as we begin making more musical connections outside our FCUCC community.  Both Marika and Joanna have lots of connections to musicians outside our congregation.  We’ll hear from more of those folks this summer in worship.  It’s getting to where now when we have guests at worship or when I meet people around town, they give me one of their CDs.  Some folks are very interested in bringing their music into a faith community.  I’m not yet sure how all of that will work out.  Joanna, Marika and I are starting to explore some of the possibilities.

One of the things that’s gob-smacked me with the music vision thing is the large number of opportunities that are just popping up unbidden.  It’s like, you come up with a vision and BOOM!  Things just start happening.  One of those discoveries for me is Traditional Song Week at the Swannanoa Gathering at Warren Wilson College this summer.  Do you know about Swannanoa?  If you want to know how–as we say in our Music Vision Statement–to become known as a “destination for community singing,” THE workshop to attend for that is Trad Song week at Swannanoa.  And it’s just nine miles down the road!  How cool is that?  So…I’m going to Trad Song Week this year to learn how to lead community singing events…which, as I’ve learned, isn’t a new thing here at FCUCC.  We’ve done community sings in the past.

Mark your calendars.  On Saturday, July 13th, we’re going to host a concert and community sing with someone who has devoted his life to it, Matt Watroba.  He’ll join us in worship the next day, too.  Matt teaches a class at Swannanoa that I’ll be taking.  Also during the week Matt and I will be planning for his time with us on July 13th and 14th.

So…why all this focus on music…particularly on singing?  Because I believe today’s Scripture story; I believe the experiences of Civil Rights freedom workers; I believe that singing frees us—literally, figuratively, all ways.  Things happen with singing that don’t happen in any other way…because it’s almost impossible to sing with someone when you’re angry with them.  Because the distance between creating literal harmony and relational harmony is a short one.  Because few things engage us with all of who we are—minds, bodies, spirits—like singing.

Civil rights worker Ruby Sales summarizes well the crucial role singing has played for African Americans.  She reminds us that:

“During enslavement, it was a capital punishment for African Americans to read.  We could be put to death for reading.  It was against the law to write.  It was against the law to engage in public discourse.  The only thing we had left was culture and, out of that culture, we created songs.  And so songs became a way in which black people expressed ourselves in a society that tried to reduce us to property and said we weren’t significant enough to speak.

“It was our inner selves.  It was the essence of who we are as a people.  It was a repository of our hopes, the repository of our dreams, the repository of our victories, and the repository of our defeats.  It was the essence of a people who were not meant to survive.

“It told the world how we had survived enslavement.  It told the world how important it was to love everybody.  It told the world that we’ve got a right to the tree of democracy.  It told the world that everybody — I’ve got shoes, you got shoes. All God’s children got shoes.

“When you start off singing a song,” Ms. Sales says, “something changes inside of you and you’re not who you were when you first started singing.  So I think songs are very important.  Without songs, we couldn’t have had a movement.  We could not have had a movement because the songs represented. . . .  It was where we embodied our courage.”

Most social justice movements these days don’t have songs.  There are marches, there are signs, there are speeches, there are letters written to legislators…but where are the songs?  How often in our everyday lives do we sing together?  I love my iPod, but I do wonder if the extreme personalization of music set lists is harming our sense of civic community.

I also wonder what might happen if we started singing together?  We do that, for the most part, here every week.  But what might happen if we started singing together out there?  With our neighbors?  With people in the park?  With people in the grocery store?  What might happen?  Would something inside of us change?  Would we be someone different by the end of our songs?  Would the walls that separate us come tumbling down?  Would we find new strength in our joined voices?  Would the harmony we create empower us?  Would the melodies we sing together drive away all that seeks to divide us?

Wayman has been encouraging me for several weeks to attend the drumming circle down at Pritchard Park some Friday evening.  We went this past Friday.  Oh.  My.  Goodness.  What an experience!  All kinds of people drumming…people dancing…children running around… people of all skin tones, abilities, ages…I knew very few people gathered Friday night…but there was a strong sense of oneness, community, even of intimacy…as we all found the group’s “groove” and went with it…it was holy.  And whole-making.  And hopeful.

I suspect we’ll find a similar holy, whole-making, and hopeful experience when we sing together, too.  Things get more complicated when you add words and melody and harmony, but perhaps the extra work will be worth it.  It was worth it for Paul and Silas.  It was worth it for Bettie Mae Fikes and Ruby Sales.  Perhaps it will be worth for us, too.  And perhaps—as it did for Paul, Silas, Bettie Mae, and Ruby—perhaps our singing also will transform the world.

Sing Hold On…

Have you ever felt stuck?  Maybe you had this great period of productivity, full of energy and excitement, then it kind of died down, and you weren’t quite sure of which way to go next?

That seems to be where the Jesus movement was by the time of today’s Scripture story.  After an explosion of new churches through Asia Minor, things had gotten more complicated…. so complicated that they’d had to have a big old business meeting in Jerusalem.  With so many churches, so many believers, disagreements among them were bubbling up.  Best to talk those things through.  See?  The church from the beginning has been congregational.

After working things out in Jerusalem, Paul and his partner in ministry, Barnabas, regroup and come up with a plan—they’ll go back around to all the churches they started and check in to see how they’re doing.  Barnabas wants to take a young disciple named John Mark with them; Paul disagrees…so “sharply,” Luke tells us, that Paul and Barnabas part company.  Conflicts often arise when a group is trying to figure out where to go next.

Reading through Paul and his new companion Silas’ itinerary, it’s curious to see that some of the places they’d planned to go, God’s Spirit directed them elsewhere.  “They went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia.  When they had come opposite Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them.”  You get the sense that the Jesus movement had lost its way.  It’s like Paul and Silas are having to guess at what to do next.  They seem to be at a crossroads.

I’m wondering if that might be where we are here at FCUCC.  I came as your pastor 16 months ago.  In that time, we’ve gone through a lot of transitions–of staff, of membership, of ministries.  Often when a new pastor comes on board, the sense is, “Oh!  Now that we have a pastor, we’ll get back to where we were five years ago.”

And yet…we aren’t the same church we were five years ago.  The needs of the FCUCC community are different.  The needs of the wider Asheville community are different.  The needs of the world are different.  Five years ago, our country had a different president.  Five years ago, the earth was healthier.  Five years ago, marriage equality wasn’t yet the law of the land.

If we were to go back and try to reclaim where we were five years ago, it might make us feel good for a tiny bit, but then what?  The world has changed enough since then—our FCUCC church community has changed enough since then—that we wouldn’t be prepared adequately to address what was going on.  How do we act today’s world into wellbeing if we’re trying to use the tools and resources of the past?

Perhaps the trickiest part of doing church is figuring out what traditions to keep and cling to and which traditions we need to let go.  It’s not like we work and work and work at church then just sit back and do church like we’ve always done it.  Doing church effectively in the world requires us to be in a constant state of prayer and discernment.  The question always before us is, “How can we share God’s love today?  How can we act the world into wellbeing today?”

So, what happened with the Apostle Paul?  How did he and his companions find their way forward?  In the midst of their wanderings, they make a stop in Troas.  During the night, Paul has a dream.  A man of Macedonia pleads with Paul to come to Macedonia to help them.

And that is the moment when everything changes.  To this point, Jesus’ followers had been spreading the Gospel like wildfire, but only within the area of Judea or what’s called Asia Minor.  Ancient day Macedonia is current day Greece…which means the call to Macedonia was a call to take the Gospel to another continent.  Today we hear the story of how the Jesus movement was introduced to Europe.  This was huge.

So, Paul and his companions leave Troas and head to the region of Macedonia. Macedonia is a large area.  Unfortunately, the man in Paul’s dream didn’t offer any specifics.  So, Paul and his companions wander around some more.

Finally, settle in Philippi.  It was Paul’s custom the first Sabbath in a city to go to the synagogue for prayers.  Not sure why on his first Sabbath in Philippi he doesn’t go to the synagogue.  Instead he goes outside the city limits, down to the river, where he suspects he’ll find people praying…which he does.  He finds a group of women.

Are you getting a sense for how many boundaries Paul has crossed in the story thus far?  I’m not talking about crossing boundaries inappropriately.  I’m talking about crossing the boundaries of what’s expected…the boundaries of “doing what we’ve always done.”  Paul has  crossed the boundary between Asia Minor and Europe.  He’s crossed the city limit of Philippi, as well as the boundary of his usual M.O. of visiting a synagogue his first Sabbath in town.   And now he’s crossed another boundary–he sits down to teach a group of women.

Often when church starts feeling routine, when the going-like-gangbusters settles into a lull, the only way to shake things up is to venture into new territory.  I wonder what we’ve-never-done-it-that-way boundaries here at FCUCC God’s Spirit might be inviting us to cross?

Does that feel a little scary, thinking about doing things we’ve never done before, going places we’ve never gone before?  Let’s see what happens when Paul crosses the boundaries of what the Jesus movement of his time had always done.

Among the women gathered that morning is Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth.  The only people in that society who were able to buy purple cloth were the wealthy.  So, if Lydia dealt in purple cloth, she spent all her days interacting with the wealthy people in her region.  No doubt, she was a woman of significant means.  And with no man mentioned in the text—a husband, father, or son—it appears that Lydia had come to her success independently…another significant accomplishment for a woman in that culture.

Despite her great success and independence, Lydia was searching for something more… which is why she went regularly to the river to pray.  Having reached a lull in her spiritual life, she also was looking for something new.  Lydia also was looking to cross into new territory, but she needed guidance.  And so…she listened.  That’s what Luke tells us, “Lydia listened.”

Our summer theme begins two weeks from today, which will be Pentecost Sunday.  Pentecost—50 days after Easter—is when we celebrate the birth of the church.  Each summer, the invitation is to reflect on how we might grow deeper as a community of faith.  As we hear stories about the growth of the early church, we’ll be invited to reflect on what growth will mean for our FCUCC community.

Are you ready to hear the theme?  Here goes!  “Using What We Have to Act the World into Wellbeing.”  Often when doing a gifts assessment in congregations, a Time and Talent Survey is distributed, people fill it out, then folks are assigned to committees or ministry teams.

This year, we’re going to do that a little differently.  This year we’ll focus on the gifts of our FCUCC community AS a community.  We looked at one of those gifts last summer—the gift of radical hospitality.  This year, we’ll look at several more gifts of the community.

The theme officially begins on Pentecost Sunday—the birthday of the church.  But the most important resource we have for engaging the theme comes from Lydia today.  The most important resource we have for discerning our way forward as a church, the most important resource we have for figuring out how to act the world into wellbeing is listening.

When Lydia listened, her life was transformed.  She came to believe.

What might happen if we honed our listening skills and began listening more intently?  How might our lives be transformed?  How might our church be transformed?  And how might our listening contribute to the transformation of the world?

When I first encountered Benedictine spirituality 11 years ago, I felt a little like Lydia might have felt down by the river that Sabbath morning.  After decades of searching for spiritual practices that would help me grow, I’d finally found a set of spiritual practices that would go deep enough.  Eleven years in, following the Rule is still life-giving for me.

At the heart of the Rule is one word–Listen.  Benedict wrote:  “Listen carefully, my child, to the teacher’s instructions, and attend to them with the ear of your heart.”

“Listen with the ear of your heart.”  Listen down to the depths of your being.  Listen to hear what the other person is saying.  Listen to everything—listen to God, listen to the Jesus of the Gospels, listen to each other, listen to those who are suffering, listen to the world, listen to the planet, listen to what’s going on inside your own joyful, hurting heart.  Listen, not to analyze or criticize…listen, not to complain or campaign…listen, not to refute or compute…listen, simply to hear…listen, to learn something about someone or something else…listen, so that when it comes time to act someone else into wellbeing, you’ll have a clue what it will take.

Have you ever felt heard?  Has someone ever listened to you and really heard what you were saying?  Without judgment?  Without an agenda?  Without trying to make your story about them?  Have you ever felt listened to with the ear of another person’s heart?  How did that feel?  What did being heard so deeply do to your own heart?

This summer, we’ll explore lots of ways to act the world the world into wellbeing…but none of those ways will make sense if we haven’t listened to the world with the ear of our hearts.  And so the invitation as we begin our summer journey is simply this—Listen.  Listen.  Listen.

In the name of our God, who creates us, redeems us, sustains us, and hopes for our wholeness.  Amen.

Kimberleigh Buchanan  ©2019

“Now, in Asheville, there was a disciple named Paul.  He was devoted to good works and acts of charity.  At that time, he became ill and died.”

How interesting that this is the story that appears in the scheduled reading for today, two days after the celebration of life service for our Paul Gillespie.  Paul and Tabitha seem to have played similar roles in the lives of their faith communities, the role of spiritual mentor.  While the women grieving for Tabitha weep and display “tunics and other clothing that Tabitha had made while she was with them,” through our tears we tell stories about Paul, we talk about the ways he challenged us to live our faith with integrity, we talk about the times he gave us constructive feedback then told us he loved us.

Yes, today’s lesson from Acts speaks precisely to where our community is just two weeks after losing Paul–sitting here together, grieving.

If you didn’t know Paul, you certainly have known someone–in a faith community, in your family–who exemplified what it means to be a follower of Jesus, someone who lived their faith with absolute integrity and challenged you to do the same.  Tabitha was that kind of person.  As was Paul.  All of us have in our memories people who mentored us in faith…people who died before we were ready for them to go…people we have trouble imagining living without…

…so, now I’m starting to wonder if this really is the best Scripture text for us today.  Like Mary and Martha, sisters of Lazarus, in the Gospel of John, the women’s grief at Tabitha’s house is interrupted by her coming back to life.  Like Mary and Martha, Tabitha’s grieving friends don’t have to imagine living without Tabitha.  Peter raises her and gives her back to her community, just like Lazarus was restored to his community.

But that’s not going to happen for us with Paul.  It’s not going to happen with any of our loved ones who’ve died.  It’s great for Mary and Martha and all those people grieving for Tabitha.  Their loved ones were resurrected.  Yay, for them.

But what does resurrection mean for those of us whose loved ones don’t come back to life?  What does resurrection mean for those of us whose grief is not interrupted?   What does resurrection mean when death is so present?

What does resurrection mean when our country, our culture, our people seem so mired in death?  I know.  You’re probably thinking, “Here she goes again with all that death business.”  But if you’re alive today, you can’t help but face the fact of death.  Death is all around us.  You can’t turn on your computer without seeing some representation of a funeral procession.

–One million species driven to the brink of extinction by profligate consumption by people and governments in the developed world.

–The school shooting in Colorado.  I actually missed that when it happened…so common have mass shootings become that it’s hard–even for the conscientious among us–to attend to every one.  Why isn’t our government doing something about gun control?  New Zealand did it within days of the mosque shootings.

–Healthcare.  How many of you know someone who, lacking insurance, didn’t go to the doctor and ended up getting very sick–or perhaps even died?

–At a rally this week, when the president asked what should happen to people who cross the border seeking asylum, someone in the crowd actually shouted, “Shoot them!”

I know in this season of resurrection I keep talking about death…but death is all around us.  If there is to be any hope in the world, if we are to live out our calling as followers of Jesus to announce and live that hope in the world, we have to take pain and suffering in the real world seriously.  That’s what Jesus did in his brief ministry on Earth.  It’s what our faith calls us to do, too.  We cannot flinch in the face of violence, incivility, and death in our world.  For way too long, that’s exactly what the Christian church has done.  The church has been offering sweet platitudes to a world starving for real hope.  Is it no wonder the church has become irrelevant to so many?

I confess that I, too, am desperate for, starving for hope.  Aren’t you?  Aren’t we all?  Isn’t the whole world starving for hope?

In a book titled, The Power to Speak, theologian Rebecca Chopp sums up the church’s work as “denouncing sin and announcing grace.”  That feels right.  Naming the sin around us…

…oops.  Guess I’d better define what I mean by sin.  Too many of us too many times have been on the receiving end of inaccurate definitions of sin, right?

One year, our church in Georgia was peopling a booth at Pride.  I was stunned to hear one of our members describe our church by saying that, “At our church, we don’t talk about sin.”

I didn’t say anything at the time, but the sermon title for the following Sunday was, “Sin.”  The next week’s sermon title?  “Sin.  The Sequel.”

Here’s my completely accurate definition of sin.  Sin is anything that prevents one of God’s beloved children from becoming who they are created to be.  Certainly, there are things we do to prevent ourselves from becoming who we are created to be.  That’s personal sin.

The more I look at what’s going on in the world, though, I see sin much more systemically …sins like racism…classism…heterosexism… sexism…ageism…and obscene consumption practices…

Those are the sins, especially, the church is called to name and, yes, as Rebecca Chopp suggests, to denounce.  I think it’s safe to say that, as a church of protesters, we like denouncing sin.  If there’s a march for justice, sign us up!  If we need to stick it to the man, sign us up!  Denouncing sin…Oh, yes.  We’re good at that.

But announcing grace?  Proclaiming hope?  That’s harder, isn’t it?  Especially when so much is broken in our world, when so many are sick, when so many are dying.

On the face of it, the story of Tabitha’s resurrection is annoying for those of us whose loved ones aren’t coming back to life.  A second reading, though, reveals a process that might help us as we seek to announce grace to world that’s hungry for it.  Back to the story…

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 Tabitha had made while she was with them.

The first thing Peter did was to listen to those who were grieving.  He didn’t say anything to them, he simply listened while they wept and showed him all the things their friend had made.

We, too, must listen to those who grieve the dying in our world…the dying of species… those who are grieving for students murdered in school shootings…those grieving the loss of loved ones to inadequate health coverage…those grieving the loss of civility in our world…

Then Peter put all of them outside, knelt down and prayed. He turned to the body and said, ‘Tabitha, get up.’

As a next step, Peter turns from the grieving to the one who has died.  To use Bryan Stevenson’s phrase, Peter gets “proximate” to suffering and death.

It’s when Peter gets proximate to death, when he kneels down and prays, when he invites her to come back to life, that Tabitha experiences resurrection.

How might we invite the dying and dead back to life in our world, which is so mired in death?  Might it mean going to a site of ecological devastation, kneeling down and praying, then taking action that would invite that dead and lifeless place to come back to life?

Might it mean visiting a school and listening to stories from teachers and administrators about what the constant threat of violence is doing to our children?  What would an invitation to resurrection in the face of gun violence look like?  Might it look like what happened in New Zealand?

Might inviting others to resurrection mean sitting with the loved ones of those who have died from inadequate healthcare coverage and listening to their grief?  Or sitting with those who are suffering the effects of inadequate healthcare coverage and listening to them?  What kinds of actions on our part would invite those who are suffering to resurrection?

How might we invite to resurrection those who have squandered their own dignity by diminishing the dignity of others?  What actions might we take that would invite them back into their full humanity?

The words of my friend and colleague at a recent gathering in Atlanta continue to ring in my mind and heart:  “The church doesn’t even believe in resurrection!  If the church believed in resurrection, it could do some good in the world!”

Y’all.  Here’s what I’m trying to say.  We don’t have the luxury of trying to decide whether or not we believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus…or Lazarus…or Tabitha.  The world needs us—us here in this room—the world needs us right now to denounce the sin we see…the world needs us to be present to and listen to those who suffer…the world needs us to kneel down and to pray with those whose lives are slipping away… the world needs us to announce grace…the starving world needs us to set the table and serve up a heaping helping of hope!  The hurting, dying world needs us to believe in resurrection…even when it’s not popular…even when it doesn’t feel rational…even when death feels so much more real…  The world needs us to believe in resurrection.

So, what say we give it try?

In the name of our God, who creates us, redeems us, sustains us, and hopes for our wholeness.  Amen.

Kimberleigh Buchanan  ©2019

So, about that Easter sermon…the one that asked, not if we believed in resurrection, but whether we want to believe in resurrection?  I got some interesting feedback on that sermon.  One person asked:  “Do know what resurrection is?”  Another person said, “Well, you could have mentioned death a few more times.”

Okay.  So, it wasn’t the most joyful Easter sermon ever.  But, as they used to say back home, it’s what God laid on my heart. So, if you have any complaints, take them up with God. 🙂

The point of the sermon–and yes, I understand it’s not the sign of a good sermon if you have to explain that sermon in the next sermon you preach…but this is where we are. 🙂  The point of the sermon was that, if we are to take resurrection seriously, we have to take death seriously, as well.  And if we are to experience resurrection, we have to want to experience resurrection…which means we have to be willing to change.  The sermon ended with a line about the world needing followers of Jesus to believe in resurrection.

Did anyone find that sermon depressing?  If you did, I wish you could have joined me for a gathering I attended in Atlanta last week.  Talk about depressing!

Twelve of us gathered with Chuck Foster.  Chuck served as the doctoral advisor for all of us.  We had gathered to celebrate Chuck’s life work.  It ended up being a precious time of remembering and reconnecting.  Unlike most doctoral advisers, Chuck intentionally formed us–a group of doctoral students–into a community.  We all were struck by what a rare gift that is.

Only three of us are pastors.  Everyone else teaches in a seminary.  All of us are religious educators intensely interested in what’s happening in churches, concerned about the steep decline in mainline church-going.

The focus of the work of one of my colleagues is environmental theology.  He confessed that he’s pretty much given up on the ability of Christianity to address the current ecological crisis.  He finds hope in neither the rituals nor the texts of the Christian faith.  I was stunned by what he was saying, but sat quietly.

Over the course of several presentations, it became clear that confidence in the church’s ability to address ongoing concerns in the world today has waned significantly.  Everyone is wrestling with what to do in response to significant changes happening in the Christian church.

What do you think?  Has the church lost its ability seriously to address what’s happening in our world?  Ecological devastation?  Rapidly accelerating gun violence, which is getting closer and closer to home?  Surging hate speech and with it hate crimes?  As theologian Karl Barth once said, preachers should have the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.  I read the paper and watch the news as much as I can.  Sermons need to be grounded in the real world.  But last week on vacation, I gave myself a break from watching the news.  That might have been the most restful part of the vacation.

But following Jesus isn’t something we do in a bubble.  Following Jesus is about engaging the real world we’re living in…and not just engaging it, but engaging it with good news.  It is our role as followers of Jesus to wade into the painful, struggling places in the world and bring hope–yes, hope–to those places.

Through most of the presentations at the gathering in Atlanta, I sat quietly.  It was more of an academic thing and I’m not in the academy.  On the last day, though, when my environmental theologian friend said, “Christians don’t even believe in resurrection anymore!  If Christians believed in resurrection, we could do something about ecological devastation.  But they just won’t do it,” I’d had enough.  I raised my hand.  And preached.

“I need to tell you,” I said.  “Y’all are sending me home very depressed.”  They’d been talking about all the things churches aren’t doing.  I talked about all the things churches are doing and the vast potential for so much more that they might do.

Then I told my friend Tim about the Easter sermon…that I asked the question, Do we followers of Jesus want to believe in resurrection?…and saying, basically, what he’d just said:  The world needs followers of Jesus to believe in resurrection.

When I got done, everyone just stared at me.  Not sure what that was about.  I’m hopeful it got them thinking.  After the session, Tim said, “Kim, you give me hope for the church.”  Another friend emailed the next day, “Thank you for standing up for the church.”

I think they all want to believe in the church’s ability to live out resurrection in addressing the world’s needs.  They’re just recognizing that the way we’ve done church in the past isn’t sufficient for dealing with the needs of the present.  They are looking–as are we all–for a way, through the context of our Christian faith, to address what’s happening in the world.

Today’s story about Jesus’ resurrection appearance to the eleven seems an apt metaphor for where the church is today.

In the wake of a devastating event–the death of their beloved teacher–the disciples were at a loss.  Not knowing what to do, they reverted back to what they’d always done:  they went fishing.  It’s human nature to respond to a crisis with familiar activities.

When Jesus shows up, though, even the most familiar rituals are transformed.  Practices that have become flat and lifeless suddenly fill with new life, with abundance.  Was anyone surprised to hear that Peter is the one who hauled the bursting nets to shore all on his own?

Wading into the world’s hard and harsh places to bring to those places good news, hope, resurrection…it takes work… It takes the work of reimagining old rituals so that they become sources of new life and abundance.  Resurrection also takes another kind of work…the kind of work Peter does at the end of today’s story.

Joyous at the large haul of fish and another session with their beloved teacher, the eleven bask in the glow of their togetherness and a good meal shared.  A bit later, Jesus and Peter have a conversation.

A reminder of the backstory.  When Jesus was arrested, Peter had followed Jesus and the guards to the high priest’s residence.  He joined others who were sitting around a fire outside Caiaphas’ quarters.  Three times he was asked if he was a disciple of Jesus.  Three times, Peter denied that he knew Jesus.  When the cock crowed–as Jesus had predicted–Peter realized what he had done.  In another Gospel’s telling of the story, it says that Peter “wept bitterly” when he realized what he had done.

So, in their conversation on the beach, Jesus asks Peter three times, “Do you love me?”  Three times Peter says, “Yes, Rabbi.  You know I love you.”  Three times, Peter confesses– professes– his love for, his deep connection with, Jesus…just as before Jesus’ death, he’d denied even knowing Jesus.

And maybe that’s where the real work of resurrection begins—in confession.  Perhaps we can believe in resurrection only when we’re able to confess—profess—our love for Jesus.

I received the text about Paul Gillespie’s death last Saturday morning, just before the final session of the gathering in Atlanta.  For that session, we met in a different room—the Grant Shockley Room.

Grant Shockley was an African American religious educator with whom Chuck and a couple of others present had worked.  He also served as a mentor to James Cone.  Dr. Shockley was the first African American faculty member at Duke Divinity School, Garret-Evangelical Divinity School, and Candler School of Theology.  In the 60s, 70s, and 80s, no one did more for the cause of African American Religious education.  He and Chuck did a lot of work together on racial justice, both believing that the best means of working toward racial justice is through the practices of religious education.

Having just gotten the text about Paul, he was very much on my mind and heart during that final session.  I was sad.  Then, as I listened to stories about Dr. Shockley, as Chuck talked about working with Dr. Shockley in the work of racial justice, I realized that Paul would have loved to have been there last Saturday morning.  I have no doubt that he would have joined the conversation.  He would have told stories about his own work for racial justice.  He too would have advocated for education as a key means of working toward racial justice.

Paul believed in the church.  Paul believed in the good news of the gospel.  Paul believed in the church’s ability to address injustice in the world, especially the injustice to which he gave his life’s work, the injustice of racism.  Paul believed in the power of confession and in the importance of love.  Paul believed in the power of resurrection and in the world’s desperate need for followers of Jesus to believe in and live out of that power.

Today’s Gospel story is a call to all of us to follow Jesus.  The world needs us to follow Jesus.  The world needs us to love Jesus and do the work of resurrection.  The world needs us to counter every bit of bad news we hear with the good news of God’s love and justice, which is what love looks like in public.  The world needs us to act it into wellbeing in Jesus’ name.

Just like our beloved Paul did his entire life.  As those of us who knew Paul try to figure out how live in the world without him, we will come closest to Paul when we engage in the same work in which he engaged—the work of resurrection, the work of justice, the work of love.

By giving ourselves to the work of resurrection, we’ll be honoring Paul, we’ll be following Jesus, and we’ll be creating the world of which God dreams.

In the name of our God, who creates us, redeems us, sustains us, and hopes for our wholeness.  Amen.

Kimberleigh Buchanan  ©2019

I’ve been preaching Easter sermons for a while now.  Easter sermons are…tricky.  The biggest day of the church year, usually the highest-attended service of the year…and yet, it’s the hardest part of the story to explain, especially to us scientifically-minded 21st century folk.

Over the years, I’ve talked about resurrection literally, metaphorically, and literarily.  I’ve focused on Mary, the disciple Jesus loved, and the two angels. I was relieved the year I read Barbara Brown Taylor’s insistence that an actual bodily resurrection isn’t really the point of the story.  It might have happened, but it’s not the point.

In the past, I’ve talked a lot about what it means to believe in resurrection.  I’ve seen it as my job on Easter to make the story as believable as I can.

But now I wonder if I’ve been coming at it all wrong.  I’ve been so focused on helping us wrestle with the question of whether or not we believe in Jesus’ resurrection, I’ve blown right past the more important question:  Do we want to believe in resurrection?

Do we?  Do you want to believe in resurrection?

Resurrection probably wasn’t on the minds of the women who came to the tomb that first Easter morning.  After a tumultuous and traumatizing week, the women were doing what women often do after crisis events–they tended to the rituals that would help get them grounded again.  They collected the death spices and, just as the sun was creeping over the horizon, they made their way to Jesus’ tomb, intending to prepare his body for death.

A friend recently traveled to Japan for the funeral of a loved one.  The funeral was a day-long event, with breaks for meals and reflection.  The family had asked my friend to speak.  As a pastor, she prepared the eulogy as she normally did–a word to the living.  In the service, she soon realized that eulogies in this tradition were spoken, not to those gathered, but to the deceased.  Third-person suddenly became first-person.  My friend was deeply moved by the experience of speaking directly to her close friend in the presence of those gathered.

Another moving part of the burial ritual happened after the funeral.  In Buddhist tradition, after the funeral, the body is cremated.  “The coffin is placed on a tray in the crematorium.  The family witnesses the sliding of the body into the cremation chamber, then the family leaves and returns at the appointed time.”  Upon their return, “the relatives pick the bones out of the ashes and transfer them to the urn using large chopsticks or metal picks, two relatives sometimes holding the same bone at the same time.”  (www.thefuneralsource.org)

When my friend told me about picking bones out of the ashes with chopsticks, I thought, “Say what?”  As she talked, though, I realized just how intimate, how loving the ritual was.

That’s what the women were doing at the tomb so early that Sunday morning.  They were preparing Jesus’ body in this intimate, loving way so they could say goodbye.  Resurrection wasn’t on their minds; death was.  And they were fully prepared to engage it head-on.

But when they arrived at the tomb, death wasn’t there.  Jesus wasn’t there.  The body wasn’t there.  One cartoonist has one of the women saying to the other, “I hope you kept the receipt for those spices.”  Resurrection had happened; no death spices needed.

Which, 2,000 years later sounds like a good thing, right?  Yay!  Hallelujah!  But on the day in question, the emptiness of the tomb perplexed the women.  What?  Who?  Where is he?

They had death on their minds, not resurrection.

What’s on your mind today?  Resurrection?  Or death?

Watching the news kind of feels like witnessing one long funeral procession, doesn’t it?  Feeling the weight of all the pastoral concerns of our community of late, I was talking about it with someone this week.  She responded with deep concern:  “And what about the people in Venezuela?”  Agh!  I had forgotten about the people in Venezuela…and Nicarauga…and people walking hundreds of miles to escape political oppression and poverty in their home countries… I had forgotten about people in Mozambique and Zimbabwe and Malawi who might never recover from Cyclone Idai a month ago…I had forgotten about how quickly icebergs are melting, how fast seas are rising, and how the refugee crises we’re facing now have only begun to scratch the surface of what’s to come …I had forgotten about how people seem to have forgotten how to speak to each other with kindness…

Amid the crises facing us here at home, I had forgotten about the crises facing the world. In that moment, my heart fell.  A picture of all of us submerged in death flashed in my mind.

You’re probably thinking:  What kind of Easter sermon is this?  It’s the kind of Easter sermon where we’re wrestling with the reality of resurrection…and the irony of wrestling with the reality of resurrection is that you can’t do it without facing the reality of death.  And, I don’t know.  It just seems like everyone across the globe is focused on death these days.  We’ve grown so cynical as a species, so focused on ourselves, so unconcerned about others…

The response to the fire at Notre Dame in Paris symbolizes perfectly where the world seems to be these days…an 800 year old building burns and within a week, $2 billion is donated.  The tally spiked as billionaires one-upped each other.  Compare that to the $773 million in damage Cyclone Idai did in Mozambique.  Thus far, $252 million has been raised.  Don’t get me wrong.  Restoration of iconic, historical buildings is important.  But why aren’t billionaires one-upping each other in lifting up people?

It’s because we’re so focused on death.  It’s because we’ve forgotten about resurrection.  Or maybe we haven’t forgotten about resurrection.  Maybe we’ve actively chosen not to believe in it.  Maybe we like hanging out at tombs.

Why choose the tomb?  Because resurrection requires transformation.  And, if we’re honest, we don’t want to be transformed.  We don’t want to change.  If we had wanted to resurrect Earth, we could have made changes to lifestyles and governmental policies decades ago…but we didn’t do it.  Why?  Because we didn’t want to change.  If we wanted to resurrect the lives of the hungry and impoverished, we could do that easily…but, as individuals and as a country, we don’t want to change.  We could resurrect civility and kindness…but that, too, would require us to change.  And we don’t want to change.

And so, we hang out at tombs, we remain steeped in death because, in truth, we really don’t want to believe in resurrection.

But here’s the thing.  The world needs us to believe in resurrection.  People of other faiths, people of no faith, they have their unique gifts to offer in healing the world.  The unique gift Christians have to offer is our belief in resurrection.  Our calling as followers of Jesus is to believe that death is not the end of the story.  Our calling as followers of Jesus is to live as if God is alive and dwelling among us.  Our calling as followers of Jesus is to quit hanging out at tombs.

Our calling as followers of Jesus is to open our minds and our hearts to being transformed… because transformed people is what the world needs…people who aren’t afraid to change…people who live God’s love boldly and creatively…people who are kind and generous and imaginative…

The world needs followers of Jesus to believe in resurrection because the world is suffering.  Earth is suffering.  People are suffering.  Christians aren’t the only people who can heal the world, but we have a responsibility–an opportunity–to contribute what we have to act the world into wellbeing:  our belief in resurrection.

So.  What’s on your mind today?  Resurrection?  Or death?

If you find it easier to believe in death today than resurrection, here’s the good news:  the first step of believing in resurrection is believing in death.  If, like me, you look around and see all of us immersed in death, Good news!  You have begun the journey to resurrection.

So, how do we get from death to resurrection?  It’s a process.  The women came to the tomb that morning focused only on death, prepared to get up close and personal with it.  When they found the tomb empty, their focus on death blurred.  They began to wonder.  Once reminded of what Jesus had said about being resurrected, that’s when their minds and hearts began to be transformed.  That’s when they began to believe in resurrection.  But their journey to resurrection began with their willingness to face the reality of death.

Maybe that’s why the disciples found it difficult to believe in resurrection when the women told them about it.  Maybe if the disciples, too, had been willing to get up close and personal with death, they too would have come to believe more quickly in resurrection.

When my friend told me about the funeral she’d experienced in Japan, I asked how long the ritual lasted.  Ten hours.  Ten hours of confronting death squarely, intimately.  Literally, gathering their ancestor’s bones.  Placing the bones in the urn.  Sealing the urn.  By the time the family had completed the death ritual, they were ready to begin the next phase of life.

Do you believe in resurrection today?  Do you want to?  Begin the journey where you are—whether you’re focused on death, perplexed by it all, or moving toward believing the reports you’ve heard from those who do believe.  Begin the journey toward believing in resurrection.  Because that is what the world most needs from us followers of Jesus today—a belief that the death that surrounds us is not the last word, a belief that God is alive and living among us, a belief that opening our hearts to each other is the best means, the only means of transforming the world.

In the name of our God, who creates us, redeems us, sustains us, and hopes for our wholeness.  Amen.

Kimberleigh Buchanan ©2019

If you looked at your calendar this morning, it probably said today is Palm Sunday.  It is.  Big liturgical day, is Palm Sunday.  It marks Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem just days before his crucifixion.  In the strains of “Hosanna!”, one hears the echoes of “Crucify!”

In the best-known version of the story, the people litter Jesus’ path with palm fronds as a way to mark their adoration.  In our Christian faith, we love tactile symbols like that.  Palm fronds!  We hand them out on Palm Sunday.  We make crosses out of them.  The really industrious among us burn the palms and create ashes for the following year’s Ash Wednesday.  Oh, we do love a symbol we can touch!

I’m going to make a confession here.  I like symbolism as much as the next person, but as a worship leader, I’ve never known what to do with the palms.  People pick one up on the way into worship.  Then we wave the slender fronds during the first hymn…or maybe we process forward and drop the fronds in front of the chancel area then go back to our seats…and wonder what in the world THAT was all about.

As the years have progressed, I’ve come to feel a little guilty for even offering palm fronds.  It’s like, “Here!  Let’s be awkward together for a moment!”  I was looking for a youtube video of the hymn “All Glory, Laud, and Honor” to send to the Dance Circle for today.  I saw one from the National Cathedral.  I thought, Great!  The National Cathedral!  I watched it.  In that clip, I saw just what I’ve been doing to congregants for decades.  People limply waving their palm fronds, looking around to make sure other people were doing it, too.  Awkward.

Today’s good news is that we have no palm fronds!  Woohoo!  Hosanna!  Whatever!  The version of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem we get today comes from the Gospel of Luke. In Luke, there are no palms.  I love Luke.  In Luke, instead of palms, the people throw down their cloaks for the donkey on which Jesus is riding to walk.

It begins when Jesus and his disciples approach Bethany–at the Mount of Olives.  The Mount of Olives is just a couple miles from Jerusalem.  It’s on a rise that quickly descends into a valley, then back up again into the entrance to the city.  From atop the Mount of Olives, the whole city of Jerusalem is visible.

So, there on the brow of the hill near Bethany, I imagine Jesus gazing into the city, perhaps wondering what would happen there…perhaps knowing what was going to happen there… And he sends two of his disciples into the city to procure a “colt that has never been ridden.”  They do.

They bring it back to Jesus there on the brow of the hill overlooking Jerusalem.  And here’s where the first cloak appears.  Before setting Jesus on the donkey, the disciples throw a cloak over the donkey’s back.

Then the procession begins.  Jesus–the one whom some wanted to coronate king–riding down the long hill into the valley, then back up again into the city.

The image–even in that day–would have been striking.  Kings rode horses, not donkeys.  Here was Jesus, playing the role of a king…and, at the same time, seemingly, poking fun at it.

Or was he?  A key part of his teaching from the beginning had been the kingdom or realm of God.  All the parables, all the gestures, all the eating with people he wasn’t supposed to eat with and healing all the people the religious authorities didn’t want healed…all of it was a way to show a different kind of realm, a different kind of kingdom…indeed, not a kingdom at all, but a kindom.  Not a kingdom defined by hierarchy, but a kindom defined by equality, community.

What better way to embody everything he’d been teaching than to play the role of a king of this new realm he’d been inviting people to imagine?  A king?  Riding on a donkey?  Sitting on a borrowed cloak?

The people respond….by lifting up loud praises to their king…and throwing the cloaks off their backs, their protection from hot sun during the day and chill breezes at night, they throw one of their most prized possessions down on the ground to ease the donkey’s journey, to pave the way for the king of their choosing.

For a long time, I thought those people were just caught up in some kind of mob mentality, that none of them had a mind of their own, they were just doing what everyone around them was doing.  Then–in my suspicious-of-everything phase–I imagined the religious authorities, threatened by Jesus’ popularity, themselves stirring the people up to call Jesus King of the Jews so that the civil authorities could execute him as a traitor.  Maybe.

What I wonder now, though, is if the people spreading their cloaks that day knew precisely what they were doing.  If they’d listened to Jesus teach about God’s love, about how God chooses to dwell with the least of these, about how everyone is welcome to the table, about how humility is the coin of God’s realm.

Now, I wonder if the people knew exactly what Jesus was doing–proposing that they start a revolution, create a new kindom where everyone has what they need, where there are no people on the margins because all are equally loved and welcomed.  I wonder if, when the people saw their beloved teacher on a donkey that day, sitting on a borrowed cloak, I wonder if everything clicked for them.  I wonder in that moment if they got that the realm of which Jesus had been speaking was actually possible.  Right here.  Right now.  And—and this was key—that they were the means by which it was going to happen.

As I’ve sat with it, that’s really the only thing that makes sense.  Palm fronds?  Easily picked up, easily discarded.  One’s cloak?  That’s giving something vital, something you really need.  Giving one’s cloak–means giving oneself, all of oneself, to the movement, to this new vision of how to live our lives.  The new realm Jesus represents requires all of us.  And because the people saw that and understood that, that’s exactly what they gave.

On a trip to Israel in 2006, the group I was with walked the road from the Mount of Olives into the city of Jerusalem.  We stood, gazing into the city, then set out.  As we descended into the valley, a fellow traveler settled his gait to mine and we walked in silence for a bit.  Then he started speaking.

My new friend was a Catholic priest.  He told me he was gay.  He wanted to come out and was thinking about leaving the Catholic church.  He wanted to know more about the UCC.

Once we reached the bottom of the valley, then ascended into the city, we went our separate ways.

I was struck by the conversation.  Still am.  Walking the road down Jesus had traveled, our feet traversing ground that might well have held the cloaks of the faithful so long ago…And my friend throwing down his own cloak, this vital part of who he was, the cloak behind which he’d been hiding.  My friend was saying that he wanted to follow Jesus with all of who he was, now, not just the tiny fraction of himself he had, to that point, been allowing the world to see.

Are you hiding behind a cloak today?  Is there some part of you you’re holding back from the work of establishing God’s realm on earth, of acting the world into wellbeing?  Are you ready to give all of yourself to the movement, to the revolution?

What I’m trying to say is, Are you ready to throw your cloak down?

In the name of our God, who creates us, redeems us, sustains us, and hopes for our wholeness.  Amen.

Kimberleigh Buchanan  © 2019

Why did I do it?  I’m not sure.  All I know is that when our friend Jesus entered the house, an image of a bottle of nard instantly popped into my mind…then lodged in my heart.  From that moment I could think of nothing else:  I had to buy that bottle of nard.

I said my hellos, then gathered some money, slipped out the door, and walked to the market.  If the shopkeeper wondered at the expensive purchase, he didn’t let on.  Perhaps for him it was just another transaction, one that would make for a very good day at the shop.

I handed him the money; he handed me the nard.  I’m sure I only imagined this, but it felt warm, almost hot to the touch….like concentrated power waiting to spew out of the bottle…like concentrated love impatient to be diffused.

As I walked back home, warmth emanating from the bottle into my hands, I thought of our last encounter with Jesus.  A few weeks before, my brother Lazarus had taken ill.  Very ill.  The look in his eyes as he lay on his mat was the same look I had seen in the eyes of each of our parents as they were dying–the look of death.

Martha and I talked.  We agreed that we had to call on our friend Jesus to come.  Jesus had raised people from the dead before.  Surely, he could stop our brother’s dying.

We sent word to Jesus, but he tarried.  It broke our hearts when he didn’t come.

When Lazarus died, we followed the same rituals we had used for each of our parents.  We washed his body and laid it out in our house.  We called the mourners.  Then after the appointed time, some of Lazarus’ friends gently lifted our brother’s body, carried him to the tomb, and laid his body down.  We said our final prayers. The tomb was closed.

At that point, our grieving began in earnest–our grief for our brother, and our grief for a man we thought had been our close friend.  Why hadn’t he come?  We grieved the loss of Jesus.

Then, he appeared.  I can’t say I’m proud of what I thought or said when Jesus showed up.  Martha, who had greeted Jesus out beyond the house when he arrived, told me Jesus was there and wanted to talk to me.  I ran out and, weeping, fell at Jesus’ feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”  He also started crying.

He asked where Lazarus had been laid. The whole grieving crowd walked to the tomb—one large mass of mourning.  Once the stone had been removed, Jesus commanded Lazarus to come out of the tomb.  We all gasped when my brother appeared, his body draped in death clothes.  And, yes, as Martha had feared, there was a bit of an…aroma.

I confess, learning to live with a resurrected person has been…awkward.  I mean, he’s still Lazarus and everything…AND he’s someone else.  Someone more.  Once you’ve visited heaven, I think, it clings a bit.

When I got back to the house with the nard, I walked in and surveyed the room…there was Lazarus, my resurrected brother, eating more slowly than he used to.  One of the changes we’d all noticed–since dying and coming back to life, Lazarus seemed to savor things more.

Next to Lazarus was Jesus, then the 12, including Judas.  I confess I’d never clicked with Judas.  He always seemed to be plotting something, looking for an edge, an advantage.  When I talked with Judas, I wasn’t sure I was talking to Judas, you know?  Martha—of course—wasn’t seated… As always, she was frantically tending her hostessing duties.

So, I entered the house, took in the scene, then did what the warm vial in my hands compelled me to do.

I walked to Jesus.  I knelt at his feet.  I poured the nard onto his feet–all of it.  And I’m not sure why I did this–there certainly was a lot of talk about it later–but I wiped his feet with my hair.  The house filled with the aroma of the nard.  The tension I had felt since the nard had first appeared in my mind relented.  My spirit was calm.  I had given Jesus the gift I felt compelled to give.  At the time I didn’t know all the reasons I was giving it…all I knew then, all I know now, is that I couldn’t NOT give that gift.  And so I did.

It was a holy moment.

Then Judas spoke up.  “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?”  Had he really missed the point of what we’d just experienced?  Could he really not see why only the most expensive nard would have been extravagant enough for the moment we were creating together?  Did he see in the nard only dollars and cents?

And, I must ask, did he really want the money for the poor?  Or–there had been rumors– did Judas want that money for himself?

Jesus said to Judas: “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”

When he said that—The day of his burial—it hit me… Yes!  It was the same nard we’d bought for Lazarus’ burial!  I’d totally forgotten about that!  With all the unrest around the city, especially about Jesus, maybe I sensed what was going to happen.  Maybe what compelled me to anoint Jesus was an innate understanding that he was about to die.  And that, like my brother Lazarus, he would live again.  Maybe.  Maybe.

Since that remarkable day, I’ve thought a lot about the last thing Jesus said to Judas.  “You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”  I’m still not sure what he meant by that.  Was he being cynical?  Had he given up on us–his followers—living the life to which he calls us, a life of solidarity with the poor, a life where everyone has what they need to live a fulfilling life?

Or maybe Jesus knew Judas’ intentions had nothing to do with poor people.  Maybe when Jesus told Judas we’d always have the poor, he wasn’t talking about impoverished people.  Maybe Jesus was saying we’d always have an excuse–any excuse–to avoid seeing the God who is in our midst, right in front of our eyes.  Maybe the poor were simply the excuse Judas came up with that day not to see the holiness of what was happening in the room.

It’s easy to do, isn’t it?  To excuse ourselves from seeing the holy all around us?  Sometimes the poor are our excuse.  Other times its work or family or protests or marches …anything to keep us from opening our hearts to all the ways God is present in every situation, in every person.

Maybe what Jesus was trying to say to Judas–to all of us–is that the point of everything he’d done from the beginning of his ministry was to help us see God everywhere, to see God in everyone.  Maybe Jesus was saying that the life of faith isn’t so much about what we do or how much money we give, but about who we see when do what we do, when we give what we give.

In all of it—Do.  We.  See.  God?

Since everything that happened–Lazarus’ death and resurrection, Jesus’ death and resurrection, since the nard warmed my hands, and my hair wiped his feet, since Jesus met Judas where he was with his questions, this question has lodged in my heart:  What if I saw God in everything?  In everyone?  What if I saw God in the poor?  What if I saw God in Judas?

If I practiced seeing God in everything and everyone, would I understand better what Jesus was trying to teach us?  Would I grasp the depth and breadth and joy of God’s kindom?  Would I buy more bottles of nard and pour their contents willy nilly over everyone I met?

Would you?

In the name of our God, who creates us, redeems us, sustains us, and hopes for our wholeness.  Amen.

Kimberleigh Buchanan  © 2019