Green Lake United Methodist Church

Scripture: Isaiah 25:6-9
John 20:1-18
The gym floor was covered with names.

Names of men, names of women, names of children. Each name was surrounded by beauty– poems the person loved, pictures of stuffed animals, scraps of fabric, family photos. Each name was roughly three feet wide by six feet long, roughly the size of a human grave. Each name was a person, a person who had died of AIDS.

The NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt was started in 1987. Twenty-five years ago, when someone died of AIDS, they often received no funeral. Fear had seized people’s hearts so tightly that family members stopped visiting bedsides and funeral homes refused to care for the bodies of the dead. The AIDS quilt became a way of remembering, a way of grieving, a way of protesting. Each panel of the quilt, each name, was lovingly stitched as a memorial to a person who had been loved and lost. Now thousands of panels have been stitched together, covering football fields worth of space. It is impossible to display the quilt in its entirety but wherever and whenever the quilt is displayed, the names on each panel are read.

Names are powerful. They can control, they can personalize, they can remind us of who we are, they can get our attention from across a crowded room, they can identify, they can tell the truth about who we are and where we come from.

The floor of the tomb, too, was covered with cloth, in the gospel story. Only this cloth was a winding sheet, a shroud — the remnants of Jesus’ burial. When Simon Peter and the beloved disciple saw it, they were confused, unsure what to make of it, and after taking a good look, they went back home.

Mary Magdalene, however, stuck around. After telling the others that the stone had been rolled away from the entrance of the tomb, after letting them take a good long look inside, she did not go back home but she stayed. Weeping. And where the others saw cloths, winding sheets, shrouds, Mary saw angels — one at the head, one at the foot of where Jesus’ body lay, in a space probably around three feet by six feet. They ask why she is weeping — she asks them what they have done with Jesus.

And then. . . .

Jesus says Mary’s name.

And she knows.

She calls him by his name, too, or at least she calls him by the name that meant the most to her — Rabbouni, Teacher.

Names are powerful.

Names are part of what make us who we are — when we are called by name, we are made more real. When we weep, when we are able like Mary Magdalene to stay with our tears and not to run away from them, we can hear our name being called more clearly. Truth be told, it is often when our eyesight is blurred by tears that we are able to see the risen Christ most clearly.

There is so much in our hearts, in our lives, in our world that calls forth our tears — or it ought to, anyway, if we allow our hearts to stay tender. There is so much in our hearts, in our lives, in our world that makes us ask “Why?”

The resurrection is God’s Yes to our Why. Resurrection reminds us that that God’s love is strong as death, that God’s hope will outlast our despair, that God calls us by name as beloved children — and that God never forgets our name, no matter what.

And as God says yes to us, even in the midst of our tears, even as we are reduced to wordless silence, to wondering “why” — as God says yes to us, over and over again, we can say yes to God as well. We can affirm, with our words and our actions and our lives, that love wins, that hope is real, that forgiveness and compassion are indeed powerful enough to swallow up death forever.

Author Brian McLaren reminds us that life is filled with possibilities for resurrection, for saying yes, and that not every opportunity is as dramatic as overcoming a crucifixion. He writes,

“The reaffirmations that count the most come up unexpectedly. A friend in need on a busy day, a stranger in need alongside the road, an enemy or antagonist in need in the middle of conflict — these ‘incoveniences’ become opportunities to put our own agendas and comfort aside and say . . . yes’ to joining God in compassion, ‘yes’ to being God’s hands and feet, eyes and ears. (Brian McLaren, Naked Spirituality: A Life With God In 12 Simple Words, 218).

If we keep our eyes open and our hearts tender, life is filled with opportunities to be God’s hands and feet in this world, to wipe away the tears of God’s people. Life is filled with opportunities to practice resurrection.

Resurrection makes no sense. Hope is ridiculous. Love is wasteful. And, like many nonsensical and ridiculous and wasteful things in this world, it is absolutely essential to who we are.

There is a poem by Wendell Berry that captures a bit of this ridiculous wastefulness. It even has a ridiculous title — “The Mad Farmer’s Liberation Front.” The poem says:

“Friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it. . . .

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest. . . .

As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.”

Jesus calls us to practice living, keeping awake, not running away, even if that means sitting by a graveside weeping.

Jesus calls us to practice dying, to practice giving away our lives daily in order to find more life.

And Jesus calls us to practice resurrection — to do iit, not just talk about it.

This is crazy. It is ridiculous. But it is essential.

It is how we say ‘yes’ to a world of ‘why?’

It is how we help God to wipe away every tear from every eye.

It is how, at the end of all our practicing, we are able to gather up all the shrouds and the winding sheets, the linen wrappings that have bound up what is dead, and transform them into a beautiful, beautiful quilt, a quilt that covers the whole world in the warmth of its love, a quilt of hope and love and transformation on which is inscribed every one of our names. Amen.

Naked Spirituality: Here and Thanks

One of my favorite TV shows growing up was The Muppet Show. On this show, in addition to the more famous Muppets like Miss Piggy or Kermit the Frog, there is a character named Sam the Eagle. As an eagle, Sam is keenly aware of what he stands for: patriotism, truth, America — and he takes his responsibility to maintain a properly patriotic front very, very seriously. On one episode, Sam the Eagle makes a public service announcement about an issue he finds deeply disturbing: nudity. He tells the audience:
Did you know that underneath their clothing, the entire population of the world is walking around completely naked? Hmm? Is that disgusting? And it’s not just people, although, goodness knows, that’s bad enough, but animals too. Even cute little doggies and pussycats can’t be trusted. Underneath their fur, absolutely naked! . . . . Birds too. Yeah! Beneath those fine feathers, birds wear nothing. Nothing at all! Abs…
[realizes and walks off, covering himself] (The Muppet Show, Episode 2.6, 1977)

As pompous as he is, Sam is right. Underneath our clothes, we are all walking around completely naked. We like to pretend it’s not true — particularly if we’re worried about how we look in a bathing suit — but we are naked.  No matter how we try to cover ourselves up, no matter how we decorate the surfaces with fur or feathers or fancy clothes, when you come right down to it, we are all flesh and bone naked people.

Being naked makes us vulnerable. It means we’re not protected. It means we can’t hide the parts of ourselves we don’t like. It means we have to trust the people who see us not to judge us, not to hurt us, not to laugh at us.

Over the next few weeks, we’re going to get naked at church.

Now, as far as I know, nobody will actually be taking off their clothes in the sanctuary. We will be talking about what it means to get spiritually naked.  One theologian, Richard Rohr, writes, “The goal of all spirituality is to lead the ‘naked person’ to stand trustfully before the naked God. . . . All we can offer to God is who we really are, which to all of us never seems like enough. I am sure this is the way trust lovers feel too” (cited in Brian Mclaren, Naked Spirituality, 3).

All we can offer to God is who we really are.  Easier said than done!

In order to offer to God who we really are, we have to know who we really are. Many of us spend years trying to figure that out — trying on identities like clothes for a job interview, experimenting with which ones send the message we’re trying to convey.

In the book we’re studying for Lent, Naked Spirituality, author Brian McLaren suggests another way of figuring out who we really are. He notes that, in lots and lots of places in the Bible, God calls someone by name and the person responds, “Here I am” (40). Some people, he notes, are lucky enough to have extraordinary experiences in which they really do hear a voice from God, telling them who God is, who they are, and what God expects them to do next. In our Scripture today, for example, Jesus comes up out of the water from his baptism, sees the Spirit descend, and hears a voice proclaiming, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased” (Mark 1:11, NRSV).

Jesus shows up — he is fully here with John to be baptized in a river — and to Jesus’  “Here I am,” God responds with a “Yes, and this is who you are.”

Sometimes, God answers us in extraordinary ways. More often, however, God shows up in gentler, more ordinary ways, when we say, “Here am I.”  We don’t all get voices from heaven. But we can all show up, say “here am I” to God and see what happens.

Brian McLaren offers a simple prayer based around this idea of showing up, around the word ‘here.” He writes:

On those restless nights when I am struggling with insomnia, I decide to stop spinning in my hamster wheels of worry and inquietude. I climb off the wheel and awaken myself to God’s presence by using [this prayer]:  Here I am, Lord. Here you are, Lord. Here we are together. (Pause.) Who am I, Lord? Who are you, Lord? Who are we together?. . . From that quiet simple beginning, see what happens. See what unfolds. That is the beginning of naked spirituality” (McLaren, 47-48).

For us, as for Jesus, this process of praying, of questioning, of answering, of living into the answers, is not a one-shot deal, but a lifelong cycle, a relationship that is always evolving. Immediately after he hears a voice from heaven telling him that he is a deeply beloved child of God, Jesus finds himself driven into the wilderness by the Spirit. In this version of the story, we don’t get a lot of detail about what that wilderness place looks like for Jesus — Mark tells us only “he was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted. . . .and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him” (Mark 1:13, NRSV).

Sometimes, getting naked before God, getting real in asking who we are, who God is and who we are together, means going to wild and lonely places, looking at the parts of ourselves that we would rather avoid, facing temptations head-on rather than pretending they do not exist. What is called for in these wilderness spots?

Much.

In the midst of questions and darkness and uncertainty about how long these times will last, “thanks” is called for.  Scripture tells us that we should give thanks in all things, not necessarily for all things. As McLaren puts it, “For this breath, thanks. For this tear, thanks. For this memory of something I used to enjoy but now have lost, thanks. For this ability not simply to rage over what has been taken, but to celebrate what once was given, thanks” (McLaren, 60).

I have no idea if Jesus thanked God during his time in the wilderness; I do know he thanked God plenty of other times during his life and reminded others to do the same. And I know that, upon emerging from the wilderness, from all the temptations and struggles that go with it, Jesus’ response was to proclaim the goodness of God, telling the people around him, “Now is the time! Here comes God’s kingdom! Change your hearts and lives, and trust this good news!” (Mark 1:15, CEB)

Jesus uses simple words, too — now! here! change! trust! — to capture the relationship of our hearts to God’s heart. He tells people that the good news of God, which seems so overwhelmingly big, is as small as right now, as present as right here, as motion-filled as change, and as still as trust.

“The goal of all spirituality is to lead the ‘naked person’ to stand trustfully before the naked God.” In the form of Jesus, God gets naked. God becomes a person, a person just like us, who can shows us how to love by being here, by giving thanks, by proclaiming that changing is possible and trusting is worth it.

Be here. Give thanks. Get naked! Amen.

Lent is beginning, and I’m all mixed up.

Crocuses are peeking out of the grass, but the weather report predicts snow flurries. Birth announcements and invitations to funerals both flood my inbox. Easter is coming with new life, but not until after the darkness of Good Friday.
Everything seems to be happening all at once, and none of it is on my calendar.

The Spirit’s work in the world is messy. It does not fit into neat little boxes, and sometimes, the Spirit is doing more than one thing at the same time.

I struggle with this idea. I suspect I am not alone. As we enter election season, our nation seems to be in the midst of a conversation about whether it is possible for someone to be more than one thing. Can a person be both liberal and Christian? How about gay and married? Can a candidate sometimes vote with the Democrats and other times with the Republicans? Can someone who sees God differently than I do still be faithful?

The ancient church struggled with these same questions when they looked at Jesus. Was he God? Or just some guy? In a move that seems centuries ahead of its time, the church decided that he was both: fully God, fully human, all in the same person.

If Jesus can be more than one thing at the same time, so can we. Maybe, so should we.

Maybe allowing ourselves to be complex people is part of our call this Lent. We are people who make horrible mistakes and who commit acts of great grace, sometimes within the very same hour.

Our congregation is more than one thing at the same time as well. We are young and old, rich and poor, men and women, and sometimes, this diversity leads to great complexity. How do we live as community, knowing that we are not all alike? How do we acknowledge both the parts of our church that are dying as well as the parts that are being reborn?

There’s a song we Methodists sing, both at Easter and at memorial services, by Natalie Sleeth called “Hymn of Promise.” It is filled with images of new life – tulip bulbs, apple seeds, cocoons, the first light of dawn. In the last verse, the hymn reminds us of the deep and beautiful contradictions of our faith:

In our end is our beginning; in our time, infinity;
In our doubt there is believing; in our life, eternity.
In our death, a resurrection; at the last, a victory,
Unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.

Where is God in your mixed-up-ness? What do you think God sees in you that remains unrevealed?

Matthew 25:31-46

Out of all the Disney movies I have seen, my favorite far-and-away is “Beauty and the Beast.” There are many things I love about this movie — the music, the animation, the characterization of a Disney princess who actually likes to read — but I think what grabs me most is the story. You remember the fairy tale — an enchanted prince, the Beast,meets a beautiful girl named Belle, they fall in love, there is a lot of singing and dancing, he regains his handsome appearance, and everyone lives happily ever after.

But before the love story, before the singing and the dancing, before the happily ever after, the prince is offered a choice. The prologue puts it like this:

Once upon a time, in a faraway land,
A young Prince lived in a shining castle.
Although he had everything his heart desired,
The Prince was spoiled, selfish, and unkind.

But then, one winter’s night,
An old beggar woman came to the castle
And offered him a single Rose
In return for shelter from the bitter cold.
Repulsed by her haggard appearance,
The Prince sneered at the gift,
And turned the old woman away.. .

The old woman’s ugliness melted away
To reveal a beautiful Enchantress.

The Prince tried to apologize, but it was too late,
For she had seen that there was no love in his heart.
And as punishment,
She transformed him into a hideous beast. . . .

The Rose she had offered,
Was truly an enchanted rose,
Which would bloom for many years.
If he could learn to love another,
And earn her love in return
By the time the last petal fell,
Then the spell would be broken. (Howard Ashman, “Prologue,” Disney Beauty and the Beast, 1991).

When the prince meets the enchantress, she does two things: she asks for help, and she offers him a gift. The prince says no to both the request and to the gift — how could someone who looked like this, one of ‘those people,’ have anything to offer him? The prince’s chance for redemption — a chance to love then enchantress and to accept love from her — came in a surprisingly ugly package and so, he was unable to see the power she truly offered.

Today’s Scripture describes a similar moment of redemption in ugly packaging. At the end of time, Jesus says, he will give the kingdom to the ones who have fed him, given him water, welcomed him as a stranger, provided him clothing, cared for him when he was sick and visited him when he was in prison. His listeners are confused — did all these personal encounters with Jesus Christ somehow manage to slip their mind? They ask, “Lord, when? When did we see you hungry and give you food, thirsty and give you drink? When did we see you a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and take care of you?”

His response is simple. “Truly, I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these, who are members of my family, you did it to me.”

Now, all of the things listed here are good things to do — they are what the church has historically referred to as “works of mercy.” When we catch someone doing one of these things — feeding the hungry, welcoming a stranger — we say, “You know, it’s a good deed you’re doing.”

And we’re right — these are good, good things to do, and the world would be a better place if we did more of these things for one another.

But what Jesus is saying here is far more radical than, “Be excellent to each other.” “Every time you do these things,” he says, “when you meet somebody hungry or thirsty or naked or strange or ill or incarcerated — that’s me. You’ve just met me, Jesus Christ, in one of my many disguises. Now act accordingly.”

Just as you do to the least of these, the least important, the least powerful, the least societally palatable — that is how you are treating me, Jesus Christ, the anointed one, God with skin on.

Wow.

For the past two months, our country has been experiencing a series of protests against economic inequality. The Occupy Wall Street movement, which began two months ago in New York City, has generated a series of similar protests in cities around the world, including our own. For the past few weeks, I have been privileged to serve as one of the volunteer chaplains for Occupy Seattle, currently on the campus of Seattle Central Community College. Occupy Seattle has a sanctuary tent, which serves as an interfaith chapel for prayer and meditation.

On a march this past week, my colleague Rich Lang of University Temple United Methodist Church was pepper-sprayed by six Seattle police officers as he attempted to separate protesters from police. There have been significant conversations this week about police brutality, freedom of assembly as well as economic inequality. At the very least, the Occupy movement has us talking.

During my service as a chaplain, I have not been pepper sprayed. Mostly, I have listened to people. I have mediated conflicts. I have had deep conversations about Jesus. And on Thursday, I marched with the occupiers to the University Bridge, praying all the while for peace and bearing a banner from the sanctuary tent, a white cloth emblazoned with a heart. I thought of the verse from Song of Songs: “He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love.”

I listened. I marched. I prayed for peace. I was present. But mostly, in my time at Occupy, I met Jesus Christ, the incarnate God, over and over and over again. A few examples:

A nineteen-year-old pregnant woman sits next to me and scarfs down a bowl of Cocoa Puffs. She has been discharged from the hospital after being pepper-sprayed by police; the Cocoa Puffs will serve as lunch and dinner.

for I was hungry and you gave me food,

A young journalist tells me that he loves Pentecostal churches for their energy and their passion, but he feels sure they would not accept him because he is gay. He asks me, “How does the Methodist Church feel about people like me?”

I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink,

An African immigrant tells me he came here for the American dream, but somewhere along the way, it turned into the American nightmare.

I was a stranger and you welcomed me,

Two young men stop by, looking for directions to the nearest auto parts store. They want to create a warming tent where occupiers can come in during the day to get out of the cold.

I was naked and you gave me clothing,

A woman tells me she needs to leave the march early. She is the sole caregiver for her mother-in-law, who is suffering from a terminal illness. She would love to get more help, but she is unemployed and there simply isn’t the money.

I was sick and you took care of me,

A woman tells me she has chosen not to go on one of the protest marches; she is transgendered, and she worries what might happen to her if she is arrested.

I was in prison and you visited me

All of these people, all of them, are the least of these, those Jesus considers members of his family. And when we feed these folks, quench their thirst, welcome them into our homes, visit them in the lonely and dark places of their lives — we are doing these things to Jesus Christ himself.

Many of the folks I met were hungry, thirsty, sick — many could probably use some new clothes. The thing is, they hunger and thirst not just for food and for water — the people I encounter at Occupy Seattle are hungry for justice. They are thirsty for a better way, for a different world, a world in which the radical inequality we have come, as a country, to accept simply as “the way things are” is challenged for what it is: a slap in the face for the lost, the least, the lonely — the ones who Jesus claims as family, the ones who Jesus claims speak on his behalf.

According to the New York Times, income and wealth in the United States are disproportionately concentrated in the hands of the top one percent of earners. This top one percent of the country, one article claims, get about 20% of the total income generated in the United States, and they hold about 33% of the country’s wealth. (http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/10/about-that-99-percent/)

One percent of the people have 20% of the income and 33% of the wealth.

And we think this is normal?

A few years ago, there was a popular bumper sticker which read, “God is not a Republican. . . or a Democrat,” and, given the current state of the United States Congress, I am very, very thankful for this. The God I know is not a Republican, or a Democrat. But the God I know does care passionately about mercy and justice and care for the widow, the orphan, and the most vulnerable among us, and to pretend otherwise is to serve a different god.

If we take Jesus seriously that the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the prisoner, the sick and the naked are his family, are so close to his heart that they are almost indistinguishable from him, how, then, are we to respond? As followers of Jesus, if we meet him among the poor, among the 99%, what are we supposed to do?

We are supposed to love him.

We are supposed to welcome him, this Jesus, who began his life in a feeding trough because his mother was told, “There is no more room for you all here.”

We are supposed to listen to him, to be amazed at his teachings, even when they don’t seem to make sense the first time we encounter them, remembering the beautiful illogic of the wisdom of God.

We are supposed to follow him, to follow him into physical and spiritual places where we would rather not go, because we know that, in the economics of God’s love, the payoff is always, always worth the price.

We are supposed to stay with him, not to abandon him when he cries out from the place of suffering, “Why has God forsaken me?”

And we are supposed to go into the world in ministry alongside him, even when he shows up hungry or naked or thirsty or having just been arrested.

In an effort to remind this country of its proud history of free speech and free assembly, Occupy protesters will chant, “Show me what democracy looks like! This is what democracy looks like.” My friends, you ask me to show you what Jesus Christ looks like; this is what Jesus Christ looks like. My prayer is that whenever we encounter Jesus Christ among us, whether as a haggard old woman knocking on our door for shelter or in the shouting voice of a protester, that we love him, that we listen to him, that we follow him, that we stay with him, that we go out into the dark places of our world alongside him, sure in our hope that another world is possible.

Although it seems like summer just returned to Seattle, autumn has undeniably begun. Children are back in school, blackberries have long-since ripened and fermented, and college football is in full swing. The air seems crisper and sharper. The laziness of August has been replaced by the busy, for some of us frantic, pace of school lunches and meetings and full calendars.

Autumn is actually my favorite time of year. Maybe it’s having spent so many years in school, but for me, autumn always carries with it a sense of expectancy, like the season is holding its breath, waiting to see what will happen next. Even as the greens of summer fade into dull brown, the brisk air keeps me awake and alert, ready to receive whatever might be headed my way.

This past weekend, nineteen GLUMC folks gathered on a Saturday morning for the first (annual?) all-church retreat. Children contemplated what God might be like; they drew pictures of their image of God, read Bible verses describing God’s compassion and collected autumn leaves from the park as artifacts of God’s creation. Adults contemplated how God was calling them to use the gift of time; they shared their dreams and heartbreaks with one another, they imagined how “sabbath time” as well as activity might deepen their relationship with the Holy One.

Autumn is a season in which we feel how finite we are; it is a season which reminds us that our time does not go on forever. It breaks our hearts, this limitation, but it also pricks our conscience to honor the time we have been given as a precious, God-given gift.

As part of the all-church retreat, we read a passage from Exodus, describing God’s unexpected gift of manna to the hungry Israelites wandering in the wilderness. In this retelling of the story, though, words like “manna” or “bread” or “food” have been replaced with words having to do with time. I invite you to read the passage this way, reflecting on how God is at work in your daily hours, in your time:

“The Lord spoke to Moses and said, “At twilight you shall eat with plenty of time, and in the morning you shall have your fill of time stretching out before you; then you shall know that I am the Lord your God.‟ In the evening, time came up and covered the camp, and in the morning, there was a layer of time upon the camp. When the Israelites saw it, they said to one another,”What is it?‟ Moses said to them, „It is the time that the Lord has give you. This is what the Lord has commanded: “Take as much time as you need for the day.” . . The house of Israel called it ‘time’; it was a new gift every day. (adapted from Exodus 16:4-31 by Dorothy Bass)

How will you celebrate God’s gift of time this day?