Last weekend I was at a friend’s wedding.  And, as befits the occasion, couples were telling their stories of how they met.  One woman I spoke with had quite a story.  It went something like this: She, Ann, was a young sociology professor, excited about her field, proud to be on tenure track at her university.  Ann came into the university about the same time as a few other young professors, including Laura, in accounting and finance.  Ann held an immediate distaste for Laura.  Every time Laura opened her mouth at a faculty meeting, Ann and her colleagues held their breath.  They never knew what was about to come out of her mouth, but they were pretty sure they would rail about it in the office the next day.  Laura had no vision, no sense of progressive ideals that might move the faculty forward. But, she seemed respected by here peers and so it was that Ann and Laura found themselves serving on a working group together.  Ann, upon learning who was in her group, almost asked her department chair to reassign her.  She went to the meetings with low expectations.

Over the course of the next semester Ann was surprised by how much she and Laura had in common and the two young women began to share snippets of their personal lives: Ann in her search for true love and Laura trying to start a career and raise two children with a husband who’s job was less than stable.  One morning, Ann opened her email to find a note from Laura.  “My apologies if I am intruding,” it began…Ann took a deep breath, “but I have a cousin who is like a brother to me.  I love him very much.  I saw him at a family event over the weekend and he spoke of being in a place where he wants to settle down with the right person.  I thought of you and I wonder if I might give him your number?” Speechless, Ann was overcome.  Laura’s gesture overwhelmed her with love and grace.  Once Ann was able to get over her own shame at the way she had once looked at Laura, she hit reply and wrote, “I’d be honored…”  The rest, as they say, is history.

So let us look at our own story– our shared history.

The main characters, Jesus and a Roman centurion, have an interesting exchange.  The centurion never speaks for himself, did you notice?  He sends Jewish leaders to ask Jesus to come and heal his servant.  Then he sends friends to speak his faithful message: speak the word and he will be healed.  Jesus never meets the centurion, but Christ is amazed at his faith.

As distasteful as it might seem to be celebrating a person who owned slaves, let us not forget that the centurion was reaching out to Jesus on behalf of someone who had no voice in society at all.[i]  In numerous ways this Roman oppressor exhibits faithful living as a compassionate leader of his household and his community. He expresses affection and care to people who, by right and by law, he owes nothing.

For this, he is know by Jewish leaders, and his friends as someone worthy and loving.  Jewish leaders approach Jesus to aid the centurion. They know it is an odd request—please come help out a powerful Roman soldier. Yes, that Rome.  Yes, the one that rules by fear.  Yes, a soldier.  Yes, a wealthy soldier.

In their pleading with Jesus, we learn about the centurion’s character. Jesus has already given his “love your enemies” speech, and it seems as if he’s being put to the test.

Why help him?  The Jewish leaders respond, “for he loves”—as was evidenced when Jewish leaders approached Jesus on the centurion’s behalf.  Why would they do such a thing? That is not a verb one typically associates with ones enemy.  But, they have already witnessed God in the centurion’s actions. For he loves the Jewish people enough to help them build a synagogue.  For he loves, when he took compassion for a dying servant.

For he loves, and his compassion for his servant trumps his desire to maintain his social position in regards to a peasant rabbi.

The centurion demonstrates in numerous ways through his actions and those taken on his behalf where his loyalties and trust lie.

Centurion recognizes that among the many earthly powers he may be able to access, imperial power is not enough to heal his servant. In the midst of his sorrow, he reaches out to someone who he believes has the power and authority to do what no other person can. Via his friends, the Centurion calls Jesus, Lord, a title with social and spiritual ramifications. “Lord, … I am not worthy to have you come under my roof.”

With one word, the centurion reverses the power dynamic between them.  The ranking soldier defers to the carpenter’s son. Jesus, correctly and honorably, acknowledges this convention-breaking tribute: “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.” [ii]

Jesus is amazed—one of the only times we hear of this in regard to Jesus. Jesus is amazed by the centurion’s faith.

Jesus’ power turns the world upside down and inside out. That a centurion would recognize this power is the very essence of faith; faith is seeing the world with God’s eyes, to see the possibilities of a world renewed by God’s love and God’s grace.[iii]

This has happened before, this turning the world upside down.  Even loving one’s enemy and love coming from an enemy seem to happen frequently around Jesus.  God will not be restrained or contained by boundaries we draw around each other. God will surprise us. God may even enrage us when grace extends to those we deem unworthy. This has happened before. It will happen again.”[iv]

Maybe we should not be surprised by the unlikely places that faith shows up in our own world.[v]

There’s a fabulous book called Tattoos on the Heart by Father Gregory Boyle.  Father G, as he is known, is a Roman Catholic priest who works in the midst of gang-filled neighborhoods in L.A.  Father G helped establish Homeboy Industries, a non-profit that helps gang-bangers find work, learn trades, remove tattoos, and discover their inherent dignity and self worth along the way.  One story stands out to me regarding new recruit:

A young man who goes by the name, Clever, seemed eager to change his life and begin his new job at Homeboy Silkscreen.   He moves with ease with Father G through the facility, shaking hands with his new co-workers: all former gang members and potential enemies before today. They round a corner and Clever stops, eyes narrow, as he recognizes a true enemy from his neighborhood, Travieso.  Obviously the two share a negative history. Father G says, “Look, if you can’t hang working together-please let me know now.  I gotta ton of others who would love to have this job.”  They say nothing, so that’s that.  Some six months later Travieso was jumped in an alley—two days later he died in a hospital bed.  Father G received a late night phone call.  It’s Clever.  “Hey,” he begins awkwardly, “that’s messed up…’bout what … happened to Travieso.”

“Yeah, it is,”

“Is there anything I can do?” Clever asks, with oddly high energy, “Can I give him my blood?”

Father G recounts that, this last offer sucks the breathable air out of the atmosphere for both of us.  We can each feel the other tremble in silence.  Clever takes the lead and punctures the quiet, with great resolve and unprotected tears.

“He…was..not…my…enemy.  He was my friend. We…worked together.”[vi]

We worked together.  Words of love.  In the midst of sorrow, the recognition of a bridge built between two former gang members.

The new Catholic pope, Pope Francis continues to make headlines because he’s rocking the boat. This week’s outrage came from a discussion about salvation and works. The pope described the center of faith as doing good.  He was not suggesting that good works are what leads to God’s love or a get into heaven free card. Rather, he suggested that good works are a neutral, meeting place for all God’s people-regardless of creed, religion, belief system, or any other stumbling block.[vii]

The centurion’s faith-filled remarks are a taste of what is to come in the gospel of Luke.  In Luke Jesus’ love extends to all people, beyond the boundaries of one faith tradition or one regional area, beyond the margins of his community and includes the people who by definition are considered enemy.

Enemy: we use the word for a reason.  And, so it adds to the amazement when we meet faithful centurions, and when faithful, generous actions and words come from people we’d least expect.  When we find ourselves in just such a place-where good works and love abound, may we, like Jesus, recognize God’s fingerprints.  May we realize with amazement and give thanks to God.

Whether we are called to serve as students, teachers, deacons, elders or none of the above for now, we are invited to view the world as Jesus might: with an open invitation to respond to God’s love in the world. Perhaps we might be like the centurion and surprise a few folks, too!  May we meet people where they are, do good works together, and delight in the ways God shines through.

I first must start off by saying that I am completely biased when it comes to seasons.  Because when it comes to seasons, I by far show favoritism to the season of summer.  Now granted, this is the favorite season for a lot of people, particularly children. Maybe it’s the thought of playing outside in beautiful weather and not being behind a desk in a classroom for three months what excites them.  After all, where do you think that song, “School’s Out For Summer,” came from?  And yes, for a lot of people like myself who grew up in the Northeast part of the United States, its the time of year you don’t have to shovel your sidewalk so you can get out of your house or use a credit card with the most amount of debt to scrape ice off your windshield before going to work.

But for me growing up, the summer season was more than a particular time during the year.  To me, the summer season was a time of joyful beginnings.   To this day, I can recall my fond memories of the summer season with my sister as a child.  A season of when we would swim in a small, over chlorinated swimming pool until our eyes would got red, a season of going to our town fair and eating massive amounts of carnival food and then riding rides which would test our ability to hold that food down, or a season where we would have going camping in Canada with our grandparents.  And when I got older and began working in the summer, I still considered summer my favorite season.  Even if it was a season of my father teaching me how to mow the lawn as a child with his brand new land mower and me ending up running over gardening tools and breaking the new lawn mower the same day.  Or spending a summer working at a rental car wash and accidentally forgetting I was in a brand new convertible with the top down as I went through a car wash.

Our scripture today is all about seasons.  And while they can refer to seasons of warm weather or cold weather, they are also seasons we not only experience around us, but also seasons we experience in our lives.

The third chapter of Ecclesiastes is often not only one of the most recognized chapters in scripture, it can be one of the most difficult books to understand.

When considered in the larger context of the Old Testament, Ecclesiastes stands out as an unusual book in relation to mainstream biblical tradition.  There is nothing in Ecclesiastes of Abraham, Issac, or Jacob.  There is no mention of The Great Exodus, or Gods special relationship with the Israelites or the Great Promise Land.

And for many centuries, it was assumed that Ecclesiastes was written by whom is speaking in the book, a person named Koheleth who claims to be the son of David.  While many have assumed this Koheleth character was King Solomon who ruled over Israel in the tenth century BC, biblical scholars today don’t believe this is the case.  After all, if Ecclesiastes was written by King Solmon, why doesn’t he refer to his reign in the book of Ecclesiastes?  And if Kohleth was a son of David (and not that of his brother King Solmon) was is there no record of his mentioning in biblical history?

Much like the many other questions about scripture the truth is–we simply do not know.  But what we do know is this:  the author of Ecclesiastes seems to be opening up the book (prior to our chapter three) with having a grim view of life finding it to be pointless and meaningless.

In fact, Chapter One of Ecclesiastes reads:

“Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.”  All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again. All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, “Look! This is something new”? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time. No one remembers the former generations, and even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them.  For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief.

Even though we don’t know who the author may be in the first chapter of Ecclesiastes, we can be assured of this, he or she, doesn’t view the glass on the table half full.  Maybe they don’t even view the glass as being full at all.  But why does this author feel this way, why does he feel life to be meaningless and pointless?  Is he naturally a pessimistic person?  Or is this author experiencing a season in his life of great sorrow and great pain.  What season is this author in when we read these first two chapters?

Recently, a few classmates of mine introduced me to the animated movie, “Up.”  If you haven’t seen this movie before, it’s a Pixar animated movie that stars a older man named Carl and a young boy named Russell.  The first ten minutes of the movie basically sets up the background story for the rest of the movie.  It opens up with us seeing Carl in the 1930s who was a young boy himself.  During this time, he meets a girl named Ellie.  Falling madly in love, Carl and Ellie eventually get married in a restored house where he works as a toy balloon vendor and she is a  zookeeper, Unable to have children, they repeatedly pool their savings for a trip to Paradise Falls a unknown place they as adventurists want to discover, but they always end up spending it on more pressing needs. But as we see in the first ten minutes of the movie, an elderly Carl finally arranges for the trip, but Ellie suddenly becomes ill and dies, leaving him alone.  (The first ten minutes of this movie I was sobbing.  It took me a moment to wonder why I was crying during the beginning of a Disney movie as a 29-year-old man.)

After this backstory, the movie itself begins in present day.  Carl still lives in the house, now surrounded by urban development. Carl has refused to sell the house to the developers. He injures a construction worker over damage to his mailbox, and a court orders him to move to a retirement home. However, Carl comes up with a scheme to keep his promise to Ellie: he turns his house into a makeshift airship, using thousands of helium balloons to lift it off its foundation. But right before it takes off, a young Wilderness Explorer (a fictional scouting organization), becomes an accidental passenger in his effort to earn his final merit badge for assisting the elderly.

As the movie begins to take place, Carl is much like the author of Ecclesiastes in the first two chapters.  He seems grumpy, miserable, and all he does is complain to Russell, this chubby, over-eager young boy who is excited to be on this venture together.

While the character Carl’s grumpiness provides much laughs in this movie as he is stuck with young Russell and later a talking dog, there is a sense of sadness we see in Carl.  Sadness for a man who while may be grumpy that he is stuck in a flying house with a Wilderness Explorer, but sadness that Carl is in a difficult season in his life.  A season where Ellie, the woman whom he adored and loved, is now gone and he is now living in a world where he feels so out of place, so out of touch, and so alone.

When watching this movie, it’s also natural to have empathy for Carl, it’s also natural for us to know the season Carl was in at this point in his life. Seasons where we find ourselves experiencing change in our life or wrestling with feelings of loneliness and heartache.  Seasons where we are morning the loss of loved ones, grieving the end of a relationship, losing a job which we had for years, seeing changes in our health, experiencing difficulties in our finances, or just witnessing the pain in world.  These are seasons which cause us to pause, lament, and reflect.

Yesterday, I along with many of my classmates, graduated from San Francisco Theological Seminary as we earned our Masters in Divinity degrees.  While yesterday and this weekend has been a time of celebration of being done with tests, papers, and professors, its also a season of change.  For now, not only are all of us ending a four year relationship being close in each others lives, but we are going in separate directions.  And we are doing so while entering a field of a lot of uncertainties as churches are getting smaller, finding full time ministry jobs are even harder, and the transition from the place which not only has been our community to a new place where we must re-define who we are is a daunting task. For us, in a way, we are entering not only a season of celebration, but a season of lamenting and uncertainty.

While Ecclesiastes paints for us a picture of an author who is lamenting in a dark season in their life for the first two chapters, what is different about chapter three is how different it is than the previous two chapters.  Because in chapter three, the author seems to be more reflective upon life–recognizing that everything we experience, the good, the bad, the times of joy, the times of sorrow, the times of beginnings, and the times of endings, are together, seasons we experience in life.  It’s almost as if he wrote the first two chapters as a journal entry during his darkest time and in chapter three, is writing as if he recognizes how it difficult his life was in those first two chapters but now knows that all seasons are a part of life an the difficult season is never the last season of his life.

While we do not know what it caused the author of Ecclesiastes to echo pain in the first two chapters then to see life more reflectively in chapter three, we can see for us how this scripture speaks to us not only when we are going through transitional or difficult season our lives.  But more so how this scripture reminds us that despite having seasons of weeping and mourning, its the seasons of healing, embracing, peace, and even laughter which will always follow.

 While I not tell you the end of the movie Up for you in case you haven’t seen it and want to see it, I will tell you this about our friend Carl:  He ends up leaving a season of darkness, loneliness, anger, and despair, and through an adventure through on a hot air balloon, he finds friendship, companionship, purpose, and love in a place he never expected it.

 While seeing all of my classmates as we stood in line and prepared for our processional, I could not help but feel a sense of sadness knowing that the lives we have spent together the past four years will becoming to an end.  However, as all of us are seeing a season of lament and change which will come to our lives next fall when we don’t return for classes, there is hope that not only will we each find new seasons and new adventures as we begin new chapters of uncertainty in our lives.  But there is hope that we will be able to still nurture each other through phone calls, Skypes, and Facebook messages and hope that God will guide us and support us through the seasons of change while having faith that spring will be around the corner.

And you know, hope is what our Christian faith is all about.  Our faith is not only having hope that not only God comforts us through the seasons we experience in our lives.  But hope reminds us that God has a season of spring for us just around the corner.  A season of planting, building, mending, and embracing.

Reformed Theologian Daniel Miglore Writes:

“Hope is the steadfast love of God that raises the dead and brings a transformed heaven and earth filled with righteousness, freedom, and peace.  The hope for the coming of God’s glory for the final healings of all nations, for the realization of God’s reign of justice and peace throughout all creation and for the end of all crying and death.  Hope is the fulfillment of life beyond all that we deserve and imagine.”

My friends, our lives are much like the changing of our seasons:  There are times we find ourselves experiencing blossom and beauty, but there are also seasons where we are experiencing fall and darkness and lament. Yet despite these more difficult seasons, what we do see in the difficult seasons is that God is still present for us and seasons of fall and winter don’t have the last word.  After all, this scripture ends with the words ‘birth’ and ‘peace.’

For those who find themselves mourning the lost of a loved ones, its this message that reminds us their will be a season of healing.  For those who are are grieving the end of a relationship, its this message of hope which reminds us of a new season of re-building, for those who are experiencing changes in their jobs, its this message of hope which reminds us of new seasons of planting will begin.  Above all, its this message of hope, a message that reminds us that despite our brokenness, despite our pain, hurt, doubts, and insecurities, its through Jesus Christ, a God of unconditional love and unconditional acceptance, that no matter how long the road may be, how dark and cold that winter may seem, there will be just around the corner, a new season of life once again.

May it be so for you and also for me.  Amen.

In addition…we need vases! Sunday’s flowers are hand-delivered to members and friends who need a little cheering up. Clean out your cabinets and bring unused vases to church on Sunday…look for the box in the narthex marked “Vases for Flower Guild.”

Flowers grace our sanctuary each Sunday, and bring joy to people’s lives. Seeing colorful arrangements, with each flower uniquely displaying God’s immense creative power, contributes to our spiritual experience in church. Visual elements, together with music and the spoken word, ensure we have a spiritual feast each Sunday.

Flowers are purchased and arranged each Sunday morning by Flower Guild members Erika Hagopian, Inger Hewitt, Joanne Jones, and Maureen Kalbus. You can support this important ministry by dedicating flowers in memory of someone, or to commemorate a birthday, anniversary, celebration. Or consider dedicating flower in simple thankfulness, for all to enjoy.

When you dedicate flowers, your name and dedication will be printed in the church bulletin (or not, if you prefer). To make a flower donation, please fill in a Flower Request form, put it and a check in an envelope, and drop it in the offering plate. You can also send it to the Church Office, attention Maureen Kalbus. Maureen will contact you to confirm and discuss preferences in flowers and colors. Checks should be made payable to First Presbyterian Church of San Anselmo and “Flower Guild” written on the memo line. You can also download a form to print on your computer by clicking here.

After each service, the flowers are arranged in vases and taken to members of the congregation who are sick or homebound. Your beautiful flower arrangements are part of an important church ministry and appreciated by by many, both in church and at home.

I am not a conspiracy theorist. I believe that Lee Harvey Oswald probably acted alone.  I believe that Neil Armstrong actually walked on the moon.  I believe – without needing to see a birth certificate – that our President is, in fact, an American citizen.

I am not a conspiracy theorist.

But.

I do believe that – as we look over the centuries of the interpretation of Scripture – we find a concerted effort (1) to silence the voices of women, and (2) to obscure the important leadership role that women had in the Early Christian Church.

It’s pretty obvious that the ancient world of the Bible was patriarchal.  The tribal world of the Hebrew Scriptures centered around fathers and patriarchs and kings, with privilege passed down through the firstborn son, and with women basically treated as property.   Marriage in the Hebrew Scriptures was essentially a property transaction.  The Greco-Roman world of the New Testament wasn’t much better with its imperial, male-centered hierarchy.  The point is that this was not a woman-friendly world. The women of Scripture lived their lives within a patriarchal culture, with little official status or privilege in the dominant hierarchy of power.

We see that in the second story that we read this morning.  This story of the unnamed slave woman.  The Apostle Paul has arrived in Philippi, and as he is criss-crossing the city, he encounters this young slave woman who is owned by two profiteering charlatans.  The text says that she has a spirit or a demon that lets her see the future.  (In more modern terms, we might think of this as mental illness, or maybe her owners have drugged her.)  Her owners have her out on the streets – in the marketplace.  She tells people their future, and her owners pocket the profit.

So Paul is in the marketplace too, and every time that this woman sees the Apostle Paul, she shouts him down.  She shouts at him, saying, “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved.”  Every day, every time she sees Paul, she shouts him down.  And this annoys Paul, and so he turns to her and says to the spirit, “In the name of Jesus Christ, I command you to come out of her.”  And the text says that the spirit leaves her.  She is healed.  And the text says that, after that, she is not of much use to her owners.  And that’s the last we hear of her.

In this story, this woman is about as far down in the power structure as one can be. She is a woman.  She is a slave.  She is possessed by a spirit.   And her owners are exploiting her mental illness to make a profit for themselves.  She is oppressed and possessed in just about every way imaginable.

And the story itself is pretty unsatisfying – the story itself doesn’t treat her with much respect.  It doesn’t even give her a name.  Paul does cast out the spirit and heals her, but the story says that he does this because he is annoyed at her shouting, not because he sees her humanity.  The story doesn’t tell us anything about what happens to her after that.  It’s as if she doesn’t matter to the story.  What matters is that she is no longer profitable property for her owners.  They take Paul to court, and he ends up in jail.  And who knows what happens to this woman.  She’s not the point of the story.  In fact, we don’t hear her story.

•  The story of how she was once afflicted, but now is healed.
•  The story of how she was once owned, but now is set free.
•  The story of what it meant to her to experience the healing power of the Risen Christ.

Her story is lost in the silence of the centuries.

What we do hear and see in this story is an ancient world that actively denies the full dignity and humanity of women.

But even as we read these stories that clearly reflect the hard world of Scripture in which women lived, in the book of Acts – and in the whole of the New Testament – we also get glimpses of an alternative narrative – an alternative history — in which women are full and equal leaders in the church.[1]  Even out of that patriarchal culture, we see evidence that in the days and months after Resurrection something else – something new is going on.

The first story we read today gives us a glimpse of that – this story of Lydia.  As the Apostle Paul arrives in Philippi, he wanders outside the city gate, down by the river, and he stumbles upon a community of women praying.  Paul is looking for a place to pray, and he finds a place of prayer peopled entirely by women.  And there, he meets Lydia.  Lydia is no slave.  She is a dealer in purple cloth.  Purple cloth is a luxury item, and she is a merchant who trades in it.  There’s no mention of a husband.  Lydia is the head of a household.  And she is a worshipper of God — a Gentile drawn to Jewish tradition – a woman making up her own mind, and free enough to act on it.  Lydia listens to the gospel, and is baptized – and her whole household with her – and then the text says that Lydia prevails upon Paul to come and stay at her house.  (Lydia must be pretty impressive, because if you’ve read any of Paul’s letters you know that it is not easy to prevail upon him.)  And, later, after Paul is imprisoned for freeing the slave girl, and after he is freed from prison – he goes back to Lydia’s house where she has already started – in her home – the church at Philippi.

In stories like this, we see the evidence – even out of a patriarchal world – of the important leadership role that women had in the Jesus movement.  And it starts in the Gospels – Mary and Martha – the Samaritan woman – Mary Magdalene.  As crucifixion draws near, the male disciples run for their lives, but the women persist and accompany Jesus to the cross.  As Dr. J. Alfred Smith of Allen Temple in Oakland says, “The women were the last at the cross, and the first at the tomb.”  Women are the first to experience the resurrection, the first to tell the story.

And then in the stories that flow out of Resurrection – women experience the Risen Christ too.  In the Book of Acts, and in the epistles, Lydia and other women emerge as important financial backers of the emerging church.  Even more than that, from Paul’s descriptions of their work, and his expressions of thanks in his letters, we see that they are full and equal partners in ministry.  There are women disciples (Tabitha), and women deacons (Phoebe), and even one woman who, along with her husband, is called an “apostle” – one who is sent into the world as ambassador of the Risen Christ.  And perhaps most importantly, women found or help to found house-churches – the building blocks of the early church – in Philippi, and Corinth, and Ephesus, and Rome.

It’s not surprising that in the stories of Scripture we find a patriarchal world that silences and oppresses women.  That’s not a surprise.  What is surprising is that out of that patriarchal context – these women leaders rise up off the page.   Lydia and Tabitha and Prisca and Mary.  Their stories have not been silenced.  In these stories, something is being let loose, set free. In Resurrection, the Risen Christ brings to life voices long-silenced.  Women and men share the experience of the Risen Christ.  The movement that becomes Christianity is birthed and nurtured in house-churches founded by women.  Women serve as missionaries, and disciples, and deacons, and apostles.  The Spirit that is let loose at Pentecost empowers both women and men to speak and to prophecy and to preach.  And if we listen closely to these texts, we can hear their voices:  Voices long-silenced proclaiming the good news of God’s love for us in the Risen Christ.

I want to tell you about something that has transformed the seminary community over the past three years.  Three years ago, a group of women students got together and they decided that they wanted to put on a production of the Vagina Monologues.  Some of them had experienced the power of this particular play, and they wanted to share that in relationship to our shared life of faith.  The Vagina Monologues is a collection of monologues put together by Eve Ensler out of interviews and conversations with women about women’s lives and bodies, about relationships, about sexuality, and about violence against women.  The monologues tell stories out of the lives and out of the bodies of women – they are incredibly empowering in large part because they are stories that break open historic silence.

So three years ago, this group of women students went to the seminary and let the administration know that they would be presenting the Vagina Monologues.  As you might imagine – just from the name of the play – there was no small amount of angst.  The students didn’t exactly ask for permission.  But they did ask for a space to produce the Monologues.  A couple of professors backed the project, and the Interim President’s wife declared that she would be doing one of the Monologues.  And, after conversation, the administration responded by saying that the student production could go forward on campus, but they asked that the student-group not use the seminary’s name in connection with the production.  (We all make mistakes.)

And so on a night in March 2011, in the SFTS student lounge, these students presented the Vagina Monologues.  As the production began, the women entered carrying candles, singing a song called, “No More Silence.”  “No more silence.  No more silence. We will shout it out.  No more silence.”  And the stories that emerged in that evening transformed the room.  We wept as we heard stories of violence against women.  We laughed as we heard words spoken out loud that one does not usually hear on a seminary campus.  Stories of love, and hurt, and joy, and pain, and discovery, and freedom.  The stories let loose something powerful and empowering.  Hearing these stories, made folks want to tell their stories.

So the second year, the students came to the administration, and asked if the second year – they could use the full name of their group – the SFTS Feminist Perspectives Committee.  And the administration said:  Of course!!!  Why not!!!

And this year, as they prepared for the third annual production, this group of students had an inspired idea:  They said, “What if we gathered folks together to write our own monologues?”  Women and men.  So the students organized writing workshops, and invited folks to write about their experience of sexuality and the sacred.  And people gathered, and people wrote.

Over the past three years, this experience of the Vagina Monologues has transformed our community. These stories, spoken out of silence, have birthed more stories.  And what has resulted is a conversation.  As this community of learning prepares for and shares in ministry, we find ourselves asking, whose voices are we not hearing? What story do we and they have to tell?  And what I see from my place in the institution are emerging leaders for the church who are bold for the gospel of Jesus Christ, and who are advocates and pastors for the full dignity and the full humanity of all people.

This is an important part of the work of Resurrection – this bringing to life voices long silenced.  In Resurrection, the Risen Christ brings us from Death to Life.  AND, in Resurrection, the Risen Christ brings to life voices long-silenced.  The authorities put Jesus to death to silence him – to silence the good and empowering news of God’s love for us stronger than any power that oppresses and keeps us down.  They tried to silence him, and it didn’t work.

On the third day, Jesus was let loose from the tomb, and what follows in Scripture is this cascade of stories of how people experienced the risen Christ – the women at the tomb, Mary, Peter, Thomas, Jesus’ friends gathered in a locked room, the community at Pentecost, Saul of Tarsus on the Damascus Road, an Ethiopian Eunuch, an unnamed slave woman, Lydia and a community of women praying by the river. These stories call forth speech.

They call us to speak.  Where have we been silenced?  How have we been silenced by power?  How have we been silenced by others – maybe by the world, maybe within our own family – who have told us that we are not good enough or important enough to have something to say?  How have we been silenced by our own internal critical voice?  “Don’t say that. What will people think?”  How have we silenced others?  These Resurrection stories let something loose, they call forth speech, they invite us to speak, and to listen for voices long-silenced.

So I keep coming back to the silence of this unnamed slave woman – as her owners argue because her healing means that they can no longer make money off of her.  And I wonder how the world might be different if we had her story.  Imagine what her story would be. But first we need to find her name – because it is just not OK for her to be nameless.  I consulted yesterday with my friend and Greek teacher Polly Coote, and we decided that it would be fitting to honor her with the name Eleutheria, which means “freedom.”

There Eleutheria stands.  In the marketplace, just after Paul heals her in the name of the Risen Christ.  And for the first time in a long time, she has clarity.  She can see clearly.  She can hear clearly.  She can think clearly.  And there are the men who claim to own her – yelling at this diminutive man named Paul.  They have forgotten all about her.  She’s no longer of any use to them.  In fact, no one in the crowd even notices her.  They are watching the men argue.

And Eleutheria looks around.  And she walks away.  One step.  And then another.  Head held high.  She moves through the crowd.  And the crowd parts as she walks away into freedom.  She walks and she walks – through the city streets – out the city gate – all the way down to the river.

And there she comes upon this community of women.  Praying by the river.  They see her, and they invite her to sit.  They can tell that she has had a rough time, so they bathe her in the river, and they tend to some cuts and bruises, and they dress her in purple cloth.  One of the women is named Lydia, and as she sits and brushes Eleutheria’s hair, Eleutheria tells them her story.  About being held captive as a slave – years in a gray fog of captivity – and then of being healed and let loose in the name of someone named Christ.  She tells them her story, and these women tell her their stories.  Praying and talking by the river.

And as evening falls, Lydia prevails upon Eleutheria to stay with her while she gets on her feet.  Eleutheria starts to work with Lydia – making the purple cloth that Lydia sells on the market.  And in the evenings, she helps Lydia host a gathering of folks who follow this new movement called “The Way” – they pray, and sing, and tell stories about Jesus and about life, and they share a meal.  Eleutheria becomes an important leader – a deacon – within that community.

And one day, they get this letter from a friend named Paul.  He’s in prison, but he writes to his friends in Philippi – the Philippians.  And as is their custom at their evening meeting, they gather to read the letter.  Lydia looks to Eleutheria and says, “You know this Paul.  Why don’t you read it to us?”  The room grows quiet.  And Eleutheria rises up, and she unrolls the letter, and she speaks:

Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi,: ² Grace to you and peace from God our Creator and the Lord Jesus Christ. ³  I thank my God every time I remember you, ⁴ constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you, ⁵ because of your sharing in the gospel from the first day until now. ⁶ I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion in Jesus Christ.

And she continues to read.

And the community listens.  As Eleutheria speaks.

These Resurrection stories let something loose.  They call forth speech.  They invite us to speak, and to listen for voices long-silenced.

Lessons: John 13:31-35

   Every once in a while, I’m brought up short – put in my place, even – by an encounter with an informed, intelligent person who nevertheless has no clue whatsoever what I do – what a pastor of a church does.  I had such an encounter last week, over pizza with a bunch of Little League parents.  Generally when people find out I’m a pastor, they start watching their language and act a little bit artificial, which makes me sad.  In this case, when it finally came up in the normal course of conversation that I’m a pastor, one person asked, “Do you work any other day besides Sundays?”  Let me be quick to say I’m not making fun of this person – how would someone outside the church know what a week in the life of a congregation looks like?  But you see, that was the rude awakening, because it put in stark relief the extent to which being an active, practicing Christian in Marin County – the type of person who would know what a pastor’s schedule looks like – is to live on the margins of the culture, in a way.  People in Marin County do not necessarily know what it is to be a Christian – beyond an inkling of what we do on Sunday mornings.

   Now, they might think they know.  An article I ran across linked to a video called, “What Are Christians Known For?” [Video: “What Are Christians Known For?” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hsojeajooI]

   I am grateful – deeply grateful – that at least some of the people interviewed echoed Jesus.  This morning’s passage in John’s gospel is shortly before Jesus’ arrest.  It follows the foot washing in which Jesus teaches the disciples about servanthood, hospitality and love.  Then Jesus announces that one among them will betray him, and Jesus tells Judas to go quickly and get it over with.  After Judas leaves, Jesus speaks the words in today’s lesson.

   Jesus tells the disciples what he wants them to remember most, remember best.  “Little children,” he says, “I am only with you a little longer.”[1]  And then, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”[2]

   The call to love each other isn’t new, of course.  Jesus took “Love your neighbor as yourself” straight out of the Old Testament.[3]  But here the disciples are commanded to love as Jesus loved.  They have a model.  And they’ve just been shown graphically what that looks like in the footwashing.  It is a powerful request, isn’t it?  He is asking them to care for each other as he has cared for them. 

   This command to love starts with the community of the disciples.  That’s what Jesus is talking about here.  Love each other.  Love each other.  It doesn’t end there and I’ll get to that but it does start there and that is hard enough.  John wrote his gospel in the context of the early church, which experienced conflict from without and within.  In order to bring the good news of Christ to the nations, the followers of Christ needed to take care of one another.  The survival of the church required it in a world that was not friendly to Christianity.[4]

   Once again we find ourselves in a world that, in many ways, is not friendly to Christianity.  This is made more complicated by the fact that Christianity is still split by conflicts over how to interpret scripture, separation of church and state, who has an inside line on salvation, and so on.  Jesus’ advice to set aside our differences and love each other is as important as it ever was, and as difficult, when our differences make it all too easy to end up treating other Christians with contempt, instead of understanding that they, too, are striving to be faithful.  Instead of loving them.   

   But, at the same time, to stop here, applying Jesus’ new command to love each other only to ourselves – to our church or other Christians, would be to miss the point.

   “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

   As the video shows, people are watching us.  They may not be watching closely enough to know that being a pastor is a full time job, or closely enough to know the difference between a Baptist and a Presbyterian.  They may not be watching closely enough to know whether it’s OK to use swear words around us. But they are watching to see how we act.  

   And among those people who are watching are our kids.  Kids who are surrounded by a culture that proclaims loudly that religion in general but Christianity in particular is a bunch of hooey because it’s not scientifically provable, the one measure our culture thinks it believes is valid.  That culture is louder than almost anything we can say.

   But it is not louder than what we can show them.

   “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

   Note what Jesus doesn’t say.  Jesus doesn’t say: “You will know them by their exacting adherence to correct doctrine.”  He doesn’t say, “You will know them by the extent to which they take the Bible stories literally,” or “You will know them by who it is they condemn as sinners.”  And Jesus doesn’t say, “You will know them by their freedom from doubts or questions.”

   “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”    

   Frederick Buechner tells a story about a Christmas pageant at his friend’s church, an Episcopal rector.  The manger was down in front at the chancel steps.  Mary was there in a blue mantle and Joseph in a cotton beard.  The wise men were there with a handful of shepherds, and of course in the midst of them all the Christ child was there, lying in the straw.  The nativity story was read aloud by the rector with carols sung at the appropriate places.  It all went like clockwork until it came time for the arrival of the angels of the heavenly host as represented by the children of the congregation, who were robed in white and scattered throughout the pews with their parents, as we do here.

   At the right moment they were supposed to come forward and gather around the manger saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will to all,” and that is just what they did.  Except there were so many of them that there was a fair amount of crowding and jockeying for position, with the result that one particular angel, a girl who was smaller than most of them, ended up so far out on the fringes of things that not even by craning her neck and standing on tiptoe could she see what was going on.  “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, good will to all,” they all sang on cue, and then in the momentary pause that followed, the small girl electrified the entire church by crying out in a voice shrill with irritation and frustration and enormous sadness at having her view blocked, “Let Jesus show!”

   There was a lot of the service still to go, but the rector said that one of the best things he ever did in his life was to end everything precisely there.  “Let Jesus show!” the child cried out, and while the congregation was still sitting in stunned silence, he pronounced the benediction, and everybody filed out of the church with those unforgettable words ringing in their ears.[5]

   Let Jesus show.  Let Jesus’ love show, not just in the community of faith but in the wider world of all God’s children.    

   Today, after worship, we have an opportunity to let Jesus show.  Last year we became a Bread for the World Covenant Church.  Bread for the World is a collective Christian voice urging our nation’s leaders to end hunger at home and abroad.  It is Christians fighting hunger.  We tackle hunger in our congregation in many ways: We bring food for the Food Bank Barrel.  We contribute spare change to Centsability on the last Sunday of the month – today.  Last Sunday we took part in the Marin CROP Walk.  These contributions send food to hungry people.  Bread for the World goes upstream – it works at changing policies. 

   Bread for the World made an amazing movie called, “A Place at the Table,” which we’ll try to get for a Sunday Seminar next fall.  We have a video clip from the film that helps explain why we need advocacy as well as donations. [Video: “Barbie’s Story: http://www.bread.org/ol/2013/videos/]

   Of course, hunger advocacy isn’t the only way we can let Jesus’ self-giving love show in a world that misunderstands him, and misinterprets us.  And it certainly isn’t all we do here.  There are thousands of ways we love one another here within the congregation, and the cover of your bulletins this morning shows just a few ways First Presbyterian Church lets Jesus’ love show out in the world.  Clockwise, that’s a hurricane rebuilding trip to the Gulf Coast – that happens to be a youth trip; Libby and Walt planting olive trees in Palestine; Asma helping to build bridges across cultures on a tree-planting trip to Afghanistan; the table covered with scarves and caps knit for our guests at the homeless shelter and then Duncan Hall, set out for bed time at the shelter; and finally, the day our Presbytery voted not to sanction the Rev. Janie Spahr for performing same-gender weddings.  And I look forward to exploring this huge and wonderful topic of letting Jesus show with you in depth when I return from my sabbatical.  But this is the opportunity we have today.  Today, we are asking you to stand up as Christians and let Jesus show by writing letters to Congress.  Royce will say some more about the details in the Moment for Mission.

   People are watching.  Our kids are watching.  “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

   May it be so, for you, and for me.  Amen.   

 © Joanne Whitt 2013

Lessons: Acts 9:36-43; Psalm 23

   Back when I decided to preach on Psalm 23, our lectionary psalm for today, I was planning to point out that although this psalm is far and away the most commonly selected scripture passage for memorial services and funerals, it isn’t limited to times of death and tragedy – to times we need comfort.  It is in fact a good psalm for all the days of our lives.  It reminds us that God is our shepherd, the one who gives us life and all we need.  The one who leads us to be restored in the beauty and peace of nature, and who beckons us to live a life shaped by an awareness that we and the whole world belong to God – that the earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, as the psalmist says in Psalm 24, the very next psalm in the Old Testament and our call to worship this morning.  All this fit nicely with the fact that tomorrow is Earth Day. 

   What a difference a day makes.  Or a week.  First the news of the senseless bombings in Boston on Monday, and then the news of the explosion of a fertilizer plant in a small town in Texas on Wednesday night.  One incident involves malevolence and intention, what we might call evil, while the other is a tragic accident.  Both rattle us, reminding us that one moment you can think everything is just fine, and the next moment, that sense of security and safety are gone like a puff of smoke.

   It’s always been interesting to me how circumstances can break open a scripture passage for me in ways that hadn’t occurred to me before.  A Greek philosopher once said no one enters the same stream twice.[1]  Had he been a preacher he could’ve said the same thing about scripture. 

   For starters, what do we do with, “I will fear no evil, for you are with me” this week?

   The psalmist doesn’t deny the existence of evil, or its capacity to wreak havoc.  More disturbing, perhaps, he doesn’t say that God will prevent it.  Nor is he saying, “I will fear no evil because evil only happens to people who deserve it.”  We know that bad things happen to good people.  The psalmist isn’t using God as a magic amulet to ward off the dark side of life.  The gift to us in this is that when you acknowledge that evil and pain and tragedy are real, then you don’t have to pretend there is something redemptive in them or that somehow everything will work out for the best.  You can simply mourn; you can grieve the real loss.  This morning our hearts are breaking for the people most directly impacted by last week’s events.

   More challenging, perhaps, is the psalmist’s stance in the face of real evil: No fear.  Not because the FBI was already on the scene.  Not because enhanced surveillance methods allowed the CIA to identify the perpetrators more quickly and effectively.  Not because our military has new tools to exact vengeance expeditiously so that these people will never hurt anyone again.  But rather because “Thou art with me” – because God is with us.[2]

   It is hard not to be afraid, isn’t it?  Even when we hear the wisdom of Walter Brueggemann, who writes, “It is God’s companionship that transforms every situation.”  I suspect most of us know someone who would answer Brueggemann with, “What good does God’s companionship do us at the finish line of the Boston Marathon?  Or in the five- or six-block area surrounding the West Fertilizer Company?”  These are the folks who might say, or at least think, something like, “You can keep your God; give me an assault rifle.  Or an M-1 Abrams tank.  Or a drone.”  But then, is that standing up to evil?  Or is it capitulating to it?

   Rabbi Kushner, who wrote the book When Bad Things Happen to Good People,[3] writes, “The twenty-third Psalm is the answer to the question, ‘How do you live in a dangerous, unpredictable, frightening world?’”[4]  Oh, my.  That’s asking a lot from a psalm.  Certainly, the psalm’s familiarity, and the psalmist’s confidence and trust are comforting – in a tranquilizing sort of way.  But there is something else here.  Besides addressing fear, the psalm talks about revenge.  If our first impulse in the face of evil is fear, our second impulse is vengeance.  “You spread a table before me in the presence of my enemies.  You anoint my head with oil.  My cup overflows,” writes the psalmist.  The psalmist doesn’t ignore the cold hard fact that there are people in the world who mean him harm.  But as soon as the psalmist mentions his enemies, and confesses his frankly petty desire to make them jealous by eating a sumptuous feast right in front of them, while they look on with their mouths watering, he moves into a more important confession.  He confesses the goodness of God and the bounty with which he has been blessed.[5]  The movement in the psalmist’s thinking goes like this: “I have enemies.  Man, I would really love to rub their noses in the fact that God has blessed me.  Wow, God has blessed me!”  And it’s that last thought that carries the day.  His impulse to take revenge is short-circuited by the deep awareness of grace.  The energy he would have spent on retribution is transformed into joyful thanksgiving.[6] 

   It’s a different way of approaching a threat, isn’t it?  Pausing to reflect on God’s grace before reacting in fear and revenge?  It opens up the possibility of transformation, which might even include the enemy.

   After this week of media saturation, of terrifying images of mayhem, of tanks in the streets of Boston, of learning that the daughter of a church member was just one lagging-behind running companion away from the finish line at the time the bombs exploded, I have two thoughts.  First, I’m not going to stand up here and pretend I have the solution for dealing with terrorism.  But I will say that we can see, looking backwards, that our reaction to terror over the last twelve years has been a disaster.  The hard-hitting “shock-and-awe” response that was widely thought to be the tonic for getting us over our fear and punishing our enemies did not work.  And not only are we not any safer, it is possible that we’ve actually made things worse.

   And second, once again, I find myself agreeing with Mr. Rogers.  At the time of the Sandyhook shootings, a quotation from his book, The Mister Rogers Parenting Book, went viral, and people found it very comforting.  This past week it resurfaced.  Fred Rogers said, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’”

   The helpers among us, as noted by a number of sources this week, are those who run toward a disaster scene while the rest run away.  The story in Acts that we read this morning reminds us that as Jesus’ disciples, we are called and empowered to be those helpers and healers, the ones who don’t run away.  The Book of Acts chronicles the ministry of the apostles after Jesus’ death and resurrection.  Jesus the healer is gone, and in today’s passage[7] it appears that all is lost for Tabitha, called Dorcas in Greek.  She’s dead.  What possible healing could there be?  And yet Peter doesn’t run in the other direction.  He goes towards the crisis.  He travels to Joppa, goes into the room where the body lies, and performs a healing miracle, just like Jesus would have done.  Peter picked up Jesus’ healing ministry where Jesus left off.  And now it is our ministry.

   When I say we are called to run toward the disaster, I don’t mean all of us are supposed to function as first responders in an emergency.  That takes special training and it is a very particular calling, and I am very, very grateful for the courage and skill of the men and women who answer that call.

   But every one of us is called to run or at least walk toward helping, toward healing the problems in this world.  I’m thinking of the healing that recognizes that when Anglo-Americans commit even heinous crimes, they don’t have to demonstrate they’re not inherently evil. And the healing that recognizes we should not treat Muslims or Arabs or Chechens or people that are mistaken for any of the above any differently.  I’m thinking of the healing that realizes that focusing our military and police might on terrorism means diverting our resources from the world’s daily and preventable tragedies, which kill many, many more people.  Like hunger or lack of access to clean water. Like the no-longer-slow heating up of the only planet any of us can call home.  I’m thinking of the healing that allows us to accept that there are some things we can prevent and some things that we can’t – not without giving up more freedom than we want to give up, or becoming people we don’t want to become.

   The day or so after the Boston bombings, someone interviewed the folks planning the London Marathon, which is this weekend.  Someone charged with security said that because Margaret Thatcher’s funeral was last Wednesday, there was already loads of extra security in place.  They would just continue that security, moving it over to the marathon, and everyone would be perfectly safe.  A different person, someone with more expertise in terrorism, said there is no such thing as perfectly safe.  He said, “We could have the runners run the marathon around and around the track in Wembley stadium, and lock all the doors and not allow anyone to watch.  But then the only ones who would win would be the terrorists.” 

   Frederick Buechner wrote, “Here is the world.  Beautiful and terrible things will happen.  Don’t be afraid.”  Maybe that’s too much to expect at the drop of a hat.  But it can be a goal – something we lean toward, and help each other with. 

   I got some help from a friend this week, a Presbyterian minister and writer who’s an ex-pat in Germany because of her husband’s work, and who wrote this on Facebook a couple of days ago: “Dear America.  I love you.  I am you.  I’ve been glued to my computer and Facebook and NPR feed, and um… it’s time to stand down.  Take a big breath.  Tanks in the middle of a city is, um, PTSD.  Breathe.  Please.  Just, breathe.  Also – all the preachers trying to figure out how to do Sunday?  Breathe.  The world still belongs to God.  Just say that.  You don’t have to explain theodicy, you just have to be love.  God’s love.  God’s eternal presence in this and the thirty year war in Europe and …well, that list is going to get very long.  Things have been messed up for a long time and still, somehow, it is for us to proclaim to the exiles in Babylon, this moment is not the whole story.  God is still at work.  Seriously, it’s going to be okay.  Hugs.”[8]

   So, my friends – I end where we began: The world still belongs to God.  God is still at work.  The Lord is our shepherd.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

© Joanne Whitt 2013

Lesson: Acts 9:1-22

  Last Wednesday our staff went on our annual staff outing, a chance to get to know each other better and celebrate all the hard work that goes into Lent and Easter.  We went to the Giants’ game and it was a perfect day – warm and sunny, and the Giants trounced the Rockies.  We all had a good time, even those among our group who aren’t avid baseball fans.  Our staff run the gamut, from the folks who’d never heard of the seventh inning stretch to the person who knows all the arcane baseball jargon, like can of corn and chin music.  But even that person commented that every year, every year, something happens during the baseball season that causes him to say, “I never saw that happen before.”  I had a friend who used to quip, “So you think you know baseball,” quoting the title of an old Saturday Evening Post column on baseball, because even avid fans find themselves surprised by baseball’s quirky plays and rules.[1] 

   The story of the conversion of Paul is so familiar that people think they know it.  Saul, the brutal persecutor of Christians, is stopped on the road to Damascus by a blinding flash of light and told by a vision of the risen Jesus to get up and go on into the city to get his new marching orders: He is to become the apostle Paul, God’s chosen instrument to spread the good news.  It’s described not once but three times in the book of Acts.[2]

   So it’s easy to think you know the story of the conversion of Paul.  In much of our thinking about this story, there’s a tinge of wistfulness, if not jealousy.  Saul’s encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus was so definite, after all.  So sure.  It would be nice to have definitive proof that God does exist and that God cares enough about our lives and how we spend them to stop us in our tracks.[3]

   But as with baseball, there are details we might miss if we think we know the story and don’t look deeper – if we just focus on the special effects in the road instead of on the content.  The way Paul was transformed is neither as important nor as startling as what he was transformed from, and transformed into.  Paul never uses the word conversion to describe this event.  He uses the word metanoia, the Greek word that means transformation.  Rather than a mere conversion from one religion to another, Saul was changed from the inside out into Paul.

   Saul is introduced to us in chapter 7 of Acts as the young man who took care of the coats of the people who stoned Stephen, the apostle considered to be the first Christian martyr.[4]  The narrator notes that Saul approved of the mob execution,[5] and in the flurry of persecutions that follow, Saul is described as “ravaging the church,” dragging men and women believers from their homes and off to prison.[6]  In Saul’s way of thinking, if there is a threat to your way of seeing things, you eliminate it, in the most literal of senses.

   So Saul is characterized as a man of violence even before we hear in today’s passage that he’s “breathing threats and murder.” He gets permission to search in Damascus for more of Jesus’ followers to eliminate.  And then he’s stopped on the road, and it is Saul’s violence that Jesus addresses when he speaks out of the light.  Saul hears a voice, and the double address of “Saul, Saul,” which tells us that something worth paying attention to is coming next.  “Why do you persecute me?” Jesus asks.  Saul doesn’t recognize the voice and when Jesus identifies himself he addresses the issue of violence again, this time in a statement rather than a question: “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.”

   Jesus sends the temporarily blinded and certainly disoriented Saul to Damascus, and then he sends Ananias, a disciple there, to heal him.  At first, Ananias resists.  He’s heard of Saul, and he’s afraid.  He knows that just being in his presence could be a death sentence.  But the Lord reveals the whole plan to Ananias, and he overcomes his fears. 

   And so Saul, who has made it his goal to destroy as many followers of Jesus as possible, is forgiven and accepted and even cared for by Ananias, who calls him “Brother Saul.”[7]  Brother Saul.  This is Paul’s metanoia – his conversion: Saul, the dangerous enemy of the followers of Jesus, traded violence, retaliation and the rule of force for a way – a life, a faith – that says not only to love and forgive your enemies from a distance but to welcome them, and heal them, and send them out as your representative.

   Brian Zahnd, author of a book entitled Unconditional?: The Call of Jesus to Radical Forgiveness reports that when he asks non-Christians what Jesus taught, nearly without exception they will mention that Jesus taught us to love our enemies.  Yet when he asks Christians the same question, they very rarely bring up this commandment.  He suspects that we who are followers of Christ tend to forget this commandment because it is so very hard to do.  And yet, he writes, it is the very kind of Christianity that can change not only Paul but the world.  Zahnd writes: “The Christlike love that absorbs the blow and responds with forgiveness is the only real hope this world has for real change.  To respond to hate with hate enshrines the status quo and only guarantees that hate will win – it’s what keeps the world as it is. …”  Paul’s encounter with Jesus on the road and then with Ananias in Damascus show us once again that followers of Jesus Christ have something better to offer the world.  We are called to believe in the radical proposition that love is more powerful than hate.[8]

   The typical argument against this teaching is that it is unrealistic – that it doesn’t work.  Well, just in time for baseball season, a baseball movie opened Friday, called “42.”  42 was the number Jackie Robinson wore on his jersey when he broke the color barrier by being the first African American to play in major league baseball.  The movie is rated PG-13 because it does not sugar coat the hatred directed at Robinson or the vile language that hatred produced.  I confess I haven’t seen the film yet but I plan to. 

   The movie trailer shows a pivotal conversation between Robinson and Brooklyn Dodgers’ general manager Branch Rickey, played by a shockingly un-sexy Harrison Ford.  This meeting actually took place, in real life, in Branch’s office in 1945; it’s described in several biographies about Branch and Robinson.  Branch grilled the 26-year-old Robinson for 3 hours to determine whether to play him on the Montreal team with an eye toward an eventual switch over to the Dodgers.  Rickey pressed Robinson: Did he have the guts to play the game no matter what happened?  The opposition would shout insults, come in spikes first, throw the ball at his head.

   “Mr. Rickey,” Robinson said, “they’ve been throwing at my head for a long time.”

   Rickey challenged Robinson: What if a player collides with him at second base and gets up yelling racial epithets? 

   “Mr. Rickey,” Robinson murmured, “do you want a ballplayer who’s afraid to fight back?”

   “I want a ballplayer with guts enough not to fight back!” Rickey shouted.  Now, this is the part of the conversation that isn’t in the movie: Rickey opened up a book by Giovanni Papini entitled Life of Christ, published in the 1920’s, and read Jesus’ words from the Sermon on the Mount: “But whoever shall smite thee on the cheek, turn to him the other also.”[9]  And Rickey posed another scenario: “Now I’m playing against you in a World Series!  I’m a hotheaded player.  I want to win that game, so I go into you spikes first, but you don’t give ground. You stand there and you jab the ball into my ribs and the umpire yells, ‘Out!’  I flare up – all I see is your face – that black face right on top of me.”  Rickey’s bespectacled face, glistening with sweat, was inches from Robinson’s at this point.  “So I haul off and punch you right in the cheek!”

   An oversized fist swung through the air and barely missed Robinson’s face.  He blinked, but his head didn’t move.  “What do you do?” Rickey roared. 

   “Mr. Rickey,” he whispered, “I’ve got two cheeks. That it?”[10]

   Apparently the movie doesn’t discuss where Rickey and Robinson got this crazy idea not to fight back, or the fact that Rickey chose Robinson because of the young man’s faith and moral character.  Both Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson were devout Christians.  Rickey is described as a bible-thumping Methodist who wouldn’t go to ball games on Sundays[11] and Robinson was rescued from the streets of Pasadena and mentored by a Methodist pastor named Karl Downs.[12]  There were many other Negro League ballplayers Rickey could have chosen, but Rickey knew integrating the racist world of professional sports would take more than athletic ability.  The attacks would be ugly, and the press would fuel the fire.  If the player chosen were goaded into retaliating, the grand experiment would be set back a decade or more.

   But together, Rickey and Robinson changed not only major league baseball and professional sports but the world, bringing people of color one step closer to access to civil rights. 

   Easter was two weeks ago but we are still in the Easter season.  The message of the cross is that God might surprise us, the way God surprised Paul, but God will not retaliate; God does not answer violence with violence, or hate with hate.  God answered the violence of crucifixion with resurrected life.  We, Jesus’ followers today, are both Saul and Ananias in today’s story.  We are the ones needing metanoia and the ones who bring it to the world.  We will not all be stopped in the road by a brilliant light.  We will not all hear a voice calling us by name out of that light, nor have a vision in which the Lord instructs us to go to a specific street and find a specific person and perform a specific ritual.  But we can be transformed in the ways Saul was transformed.[13]  Relinquishing the violence that seems so natural in people and in our culture, trusting the Christian community to help us do that, is not easy but it is what Jesus, calling to us from his solidarity with the oppressed and persecuted, is asking.  Answering that call will transform us.  And then, along with Ananias – and Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson – that is how we are to change the world.

   May it be so for you, and for me.  Amen.

© Joanne Whitt 2013

It’s been a quiet week in our hometown of San Anselmo, nestled against the edge of the Marin hills.  That’s why people move to Marin County – because they want a quiet week.  When folks are young and single or childless they live in City.  In the City, instead of paying a mortgage, you eat out.  The urban grit feels cosmopolitan and sophisticated, and you can’t picture yourself living somewhere it’s easier to find a parking place than a good restaurant.  San Francisco’s urban is manageable compared to say, Manhattan, where believe it or not rent is even higher, and L.A., where you have to drive for hours to get anywhere.

That’s the first thing Kim noticed when her family moved from the City to Marin after their second baby was born.  In Marin you have to get in the car every time you want to go somewhere.  It was a big adjustment from walking or taking the bus everywhere.  Marin was a big adjustment.  First the kids, then the suburbs and a golden retriever named Alphie, and then to add insult to injury, a minivan with a car seat.  That she spent way too much time in.

But that was years ago.  Her kids had gone all the way through the San Anselmo public schools – her son Ben had graduated from Drake and her daughter Hannah had one more year to go.  Kim felt practically like a native.  She couldn’t drive past San Quentin without wondering how they could waste all that great real estate; she considered it natural to keep your gym clothes on all day after your morning boot camp class; and she saw no contradiction in being a vegan, yoga-loving, spiritually attuned corporate takeover artist.

But Kim was different from most folks in Marin in this way: She went to church.  In a county where about 3 percent of the people attend religious services,[1] she went to a pretty normal, pretty traditional Christian church.  A church with organ music and a choir; with pews – not chairs – where people sing hymns from a hymnal, not a giant flat screen TV.

Now, getting her kids to go to church – that’s another story.  “Want to go to church?” was usually met with rolled eyes.

Rolled eyes seemed to be her daughter Hannah’s primary means of communication these days.  To an adolescent, there is nothing in the world more embarrassing than a parent.[2]  I know, I know, we all thought we would be hip forever.  Especially we baby boomers.  But even using the word “hip” has its dangers because slang is basically a shorthand way to let other people know how old you are.[3]  It goes without saying that anyone over 30 but especially anyone with adolescent kids must avoid using words and phrases like sick, epic fail and dope, although that had never been a danger for Kim because when her kids used slang she insisted that they translate into English, which, of course, they found unbearably embarrassing.

Among other things, Hannah thought her mother’s clothes were embarrassing.  Hannah tried to get Kim to shop at Urban Outfitters in Town Center, but Kim said she refused to shop someplace that used a poster of Benjamin Franklin to advertise their Presidents’ Day sale.  Then Hannah took her to Anthropologie at the Village but Kim said everything looked like something you could pick up at the Goodwill, except it cost $190 instead of $5.  Besides, the models in their catalog always look like they got dressed in the dark.

“Mom, clothes aren’t supposed to match anymore,” Hannah told her mother.

“Which takes more time and effort,” Kim retorted.  “Matching things, or coming up with combinations that don’t match but in a way that’s fashionable and not just clueless?” Hannah rolled her eyes.  And for the first time it occurred to Kim that sometimes when Hannah rolled her eyes, it really meant Kim had made her point.

Kim commiserated with her pal, Terry, who also had a daughter in high school.  “I’m not allowed to sing, dance, laugh or wear short skirts,” nodded Terry.  “Having a teenage daughter is like living with the Taliban.[4]  Someone once said insanity is hereditary: you get it from your kids.”[5]

“Oh, I don’t know.  I got plenty of insanity from my parents,” said Kim.  “Did I tell you what my dad did last month?  He emailed the kids after Alphie died:  ‘Sorry to hear your dog died.  LOL, Grandpa.’  He thought LOL meant ‘lots of love,’ not ‘laugh out loud.’  I had to explain to the kids that his heart was in the right place.  You know those ads you see for Gerber life insurance – start saving now while your child’s a baby?  There ought to be a Gerber plan for psychotherapy.  Start saving now because shrinks will be over $200 an hour by the time your kids need one, and they will need one.”

Church seemed to be just one more reason for Kim’s kids to be embarrassed about her.  However, they did go to church with her and her husband on Easter.  Ben was home from college, Hannah wore a skirt long enough that Kim wasn’t embarrassed and they all trundled off to church.  We shouldn’t be too hasty about doing away with guilt entirely.

The Monday after Easter, Kim asked Hannah what she’d thought about the Easter service.  Hannah rolled her eyes.  “No, I mean it,” said Kim.

Hannah took a breath.  As if she’d been saving something up; as if she’d been waiting to say this for a long time.  Hannah said that she thought that some of the music was fine but that Christianity was a man-made religion filled with ridiculous man-made stories that couldn’t be proven scientifically.  And that most Christians were close-minded and judgmental and hypocritical, caring more about whether they get into heaven than about what’s happening to real, live people in the real world.  And on top of that, they’re arrogant, thinking they have the one true religion.  And she finished: “I know church means a lot to you and all but I don’t know how you can stand it.”

“Sometimes,” Kim began slowly, “I think that instead of a cross on a necklace I should wear a sign that says, ‘I’m not that kind of Christian.’”  Then Kim paused.  “Would it surprise you to know that I thought exactly the same thing about church when I was your age?”  And then Kim told Hannah how she hadn’t gone to church from the time she was 17 until she was in her early thirties, when Ben was born.  “I can recall two things about my childhood faith,” Kim said.  “One is that I couldn’t bring myself to believe all those miraculous stories they told me, and the other thing is that I couldn’t wait to grow up so that I wouldn’t have to go to church anymore.”[6]

“But if you go to church next Sunday – and I’m not trying to pressure you, honest – you’ll hear the story about Thomas.  Thomas wasn’t there when Jesus first appeared to the disciples.  He didn’t see Jesus alive again so he needed proof.  I think we’re all like Thomas.  We want reassurance that we’re not being foolish in believing in something that can’t be proven – something ridiculous, I think is how you put it?  Thomas’ story is my story.  It’s about faith and doubt woven together.  It’s about me, struggling to believe what I can’t see.”

Hannah frowned.  “But why even bother, Mom?”

“Because when I come to church, I can see.  Church changes the way I see things.  When you and Ben were little, I’d sit there, my arms aching from holding onto a squirmy little kid; my teeth clenched because that morning, again, neither of you had eaten a decent breakfast so you started whining halfway through the service.  I was sure the people behind me were making a mental note not to sit behind us again. But you know what?  They didn’t avoid us the next week.  In fact, almost every week, someone sitting nearby said something like, ‘I love seeing your son’s smile,’ or even, ‘Your kids are the best part of my Sunday.’

“And I realized if they could see my kids as gifts – not as loud, fidgeting distractions – then I could, too.  And I could see other people as gifts as well, even the young mom one pew over, the one with the perfect hairdo and the perfectly behaved children.  Or that family that’s always the first to drop their kids at Sunday school and the last to pick them up, but who never, ever volunteer to help in any way.  Over time I could see that that mom with the perfect hair felt a little lost.  I could see how that the family that never helps with Sunday school was just overwhelmed, and what they needed most was to be welcomed in a place where no one expected anything of them.”

“That’s a really good story, Mom.”  Kim knew Hannah meant it because there was no eye-rolling going on.  “But – what does it have to do with me?”

“Wow.  Well.  Hannah, here’s what I know for sure – what I don’t doubt: I had to reach all this in my own way.  Thomas didn’t get it until he saw for himself.  He was in a community that helped him, but he had to see for himself.  I think that’s everyone’s story.  Grandma and Grandpa couldn’t make me see any more than I can make you see.  I remember the time my parents took great pains to try to persuade me that the Rolling Stones couldn’t hold a candle to the greats like Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole.  You can imagine how well that conversation went.  Now that I think of it, I need to tell Grandpa about the Stones’ ‘Fifty and Counting’ tour.”

“That’s perfect, Mom.  Because expecting me to like church is like expecting me to like the Rolling Stones.  Which I don’t, by the way.  What’s Mick Jagger, anyway?  A hundred?  Ew!!”

“OK.  Fair enough.”  Kim thought to herself that the thing about doubts is they keep you from being smug.  “So – what do you think church should be like?”

“Now we’re talking,” said Hannah.

Kim didn’t need a translation to know that Hannah really meant, “Now you’re listening.”  And so that is what she did.

And that’s all the news from San Anselmo, where everyone is spiritual, a few people are religious, and the Presbyterians strive to be holy.

© Joanne Whitt 2013

Deadline to register is June 7, 2013.

   Some events happen, and then they’re over.  Then no matter how significant the event was, how big of an impact it had on us, it becomes a part of our past.  High school, for example.  You may have loved high school.  You may have disliked it so much you finished early, like I did.  But that’s OK because it’s in the past now.  You might decide to go to a reunion, to remember the good old times – or the bad old times.  If Hollywood is any measure, apparently plenty of people fantasize about going back and doing high school over but doing it right this time.[1]  But we can’t.  High school is just a memory.

Other events, on the other hand, become not so much a part of our past as a part of our life.  Like marriage.  Even though most couples put much more time and effort, not to mention cash, into preparing for the wedding than into preparing for the marriage, as long as a couple stays married, the wedding becomes history but the marriage becomes their past, present and future.  And as anyone who has been married a while will tell you, marriage changes.  It evolves.  What was important at one stage of marriage seems trivial at another stage.  It evolves because living people and life situations inevitably change, which means the relationship changes.  If someone asks a long-married couple what their marriage is like, an honest answer would be, “Do you mean, what’s it like this year?”

This morning we are here to celebrate the resurrection.  In some ways, the resurrection is like high school.  It was an event experienced by the disciples in space and time and then it was over.  It had a huge impact: it changed them dramatically.  They got up and they got going so that Luke wrote volume two to his gospel, the Book of Acts, a whole book with the apostles as its main characters.

But to be fair, it didn’t start that way.  Not on the first Easter morning.  Luke says the women at the tomb are terrified, and when they bring their report back to the men, they’re met with derision.  Apparently, just hearing about that empty tomb isn’t going to clear things up, not for the disciples, and not for us.  I find it comforting that in Luke’s story, the discovery of the empty tomb doesn’t lead to an easy change of perspective.  It brings confusion, not clarity.  The disciples’ first reaction to the women’s story is that it’s “an idle tale.”  That’s actually a fairly generous translation of the Greek word leros.  Leros is the root of our word “delirious.”  In other words, they think the women are nuts.[2]

One thing this story tells us is that Easter isn’t about perfect faith.  Luke and the other biblical authors believed that doubt, questions, even downright skepticism – that these aren’t the opposite of faith; they are a part of faith.  Faith, after all, isn’t knowledge.  As the author to the Letter to the Hebrews reminds us, faith “is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”[3]  The disciples came to faith slowly.  That first morning, perhaps even they would have had their fingers crossed when they repeated, “Christ is risen!”

In Luke’s gospel, the big turnaround happens that evening after two disciples run into a stranger on the road to Emmaus.  They invite him to join them for dinner, and when he breaks the bread as he did at the last supper, they recognize him as the risen Christ.   Eventually Jesus appears to all of them.[4]  And after this firsthand encounter, these frightened, discouraged, grieving men and women are transformed into brave, hopeful, loving bearers of good news.  They live out the rest of their days in the full confidence that there is no darkness so dark, no threat so dire, no death so deadly to stop them from telling the world, showing the world, that love has conquered death.

Looking at it one way, we’re more like the men and women before the Emmaus Road encounter: we don’t get the man himself at the dinner table.  We get the report.  We get the story in the Bible; we get … a sermon.  But like the women, we also have the words of the angels: “Why do you look for the living among the dead?”   “If you want to find the risen Lord, don’t look in a cemetery; look among the living.”

And here is what happens if we look among the living: Anything living changes, grows, evolves, requires relationship, and so we, like the disciples, discover that resurrection is not a once-in-a-lifetime event.  Resurrection is less like high school and more like marriage.  It is a relationship with the living God, and the living God is always doing new things.  Relationships with the living are never certainties, and resurrection begins by challenging our certainties.  Experience teaches that death wins and that even the strongest succumb to it, right?  Experience teaches that life is what you make it, so get what you can while you can because it will be over soon enough.  And the Easter message says, “Really? How can you be so sure?”

Really?  How can you be so sure?  Easter is confrontational that way.  And resurrection is dangerous, because it means God is on the loose in the here and now – in the world, in my life and in yours, rattling cages, changing game plans and shaking things up.  The power of God in Jesus Christ, the power to forgive, the power to save, the power to transform and sanctify is loose in the world and always new, always renewing the world.  You think you know how the world works, how things have to go, what is possible?  Really?  How can you be so sure?

This means it is always appropriate for us to ask, “What does Easter mean this year?”  What new thing is God doing in our lives and world?  What is it, now, that needs the dangerous, confrontational, radical love of God that says yes to life and no to the powers of death and destruction, powers that can just as easily be found in the musty halls of order and tradition and so-called safety as from someone pointing a weapon at us.

What does Easter mean this year?  Does it mean letting go of the certainty that what’s good for our economy is good for the world?  Or the even flimsier assumption that we could know with any certainty what is good for us?[5]

Might it mean looking for an understanding of religion that won’t set us against other people who believe differently, or who do not believe at all?

This year, does Easter mean letting go of the certainty that a God-blessed family is restricted to one narrow definition?

Could it mean rising up against whatever it is that would have us just accept that an average of 268 people will be shot every day in our country?[6]

And what’s going on in your own life that needs Easter?  Does Easter mean letting go of the certainty that forgiveness is just not possible – either the forgiveness you need, or that someone else needs from you?  Does it mean coming face to face with whatever is not working in your life and understanding you cannot tackle it alone – that no one can be truly human alone?

No one can be human alone.  Earlier this month, a Pakistani woman named Perween Rahman, an architect and activist, was shot and killed in Karachi by a gunman on a motorcycle.  She worked with the desperately poor in Karachi, exposing exploitation and striving to change it.  Her death reminds us that standing between the poor and those who would take advantage of them to make a buck is still dangerous, just as it was for Jesus.  In an interview before her death, she said that early in her career she had designed skyscrapers, but they had become for her arrogant symbols of individualism and wealth.  Rahman said we need to “rise horizontally” – rise together, rise as a community, not vertically – not like the skyscrapers.[7]

And closer to home, last week we lost one of our dear saints of San Anselmo.  In the Presbyterian tradition, a saint is not someone who has done miracles and died.  A saint is someone who makes God more believable, someone who may not be all good all the time but who enjoys the goodness of God.  That was Valda Whitman – she enjoyed the goodness of God.  She was raised in a family of atheists, but as time went on she knew there was some mystery larger than herself, larger than the world, and she found her way here, full of doubts and questions but ready to listen and ready to be a part of a community.  She was baptized in her fifties, and she became a connecter.  She built community with her hospitality and love and curiosity.  A couple of days before she died she talked about her hope that she would heal but also having moved beyond the fear of death.  I told her the way the Scriptures talk about that: That nothing in life or in death can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.[8]  And she talked to me about her family, her church, her friends, her quilting, her community, and the love and wisdom she found there that gave her strength.  Valda lived fully, until she died.

Valda’s story isn’t dramatic.  Or is it?  The power which on the first Easter Day shattered death is now given to us to live – even in the very face of death.  That is dramatic.  The same power that rolled away the stone that day is the power available for us for living as well as for dying.

What does Easter mean for you this year?  Does it mean rising horizontally to stand against the powers of death and destruction?  Does it mean living fully until you die?  Whatever it means for you this year, there is one thing that does not change.  Easter is not just a memory of the past but a reality now and forever, to be celebrated with joy, with trumpets and the Hallelujah Chorus today, and with whatever the equivalents are in the unforeseeable future, because love is the victor.  Death is not the end.  The end is life.  Christ’s life, and our lives through him.[9]

I don’t think I can summarize this better than Harvard Chaplain Peter Gomes, who used to conclude his Easter sermons with three nuggets he called “the good news of Easter … in three short, easy things to remember over lunch.”

1)    Easter is not just about Jesus; it is about you. It is about us.  Jesus has already claimed his new life; now is our chance to claim ours.

2)    Easter is not just about death; it is about life, and not just life after death – that’s the easy part – but real life before death, right now. You do not have to die to live.

3)    Easter is not just about the past, way back then and long ago; it is all about the future. Literally, I say to you, your best days are ahead of you. “Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”[10]

All things are become new.  Alleluia, and amen.

© Joanne Whitt 2013