Sermon – John 2.13-22, Exodus 20.1-17, L3, YB, March 4, 2018

Tags

beautiful, bless, body, flesh, God, good, honor, incarnation, Jesus, Lent, ministry, repentance, righteous anger, sacred, Sermon, sinful, temple

Today’s gospel lesson is one of those lessons in Scripture that is so vivid we find looking away difficult.  All four of the gospels have this story, and three of the gospels use this story to convey Jesus’ righteous anger about how the practice around temple worship and obligatory sacrifice has led to monetary abuses.  Matthew and Luke even have Jesus calling the whole enterprise a den of robbers.  The story evokes images of Jesus flipping tables, or in today’s version, swinging around a whip like Indiana Jones.  We often recall this text when looking for evidence of Jesus’ righteous anger at injustice.  We are so familiar with this text we can almost hear the sermon about a call to justice in our heads.

But this week, the gospel has been speaking a different sermon to me.  You see, John’s version of this story is a bit different from the other three gospels.  First, John places this story in a very different place in his narrative.[i]  Unlike the other gospels who place this story toward the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry, John places this incident in the second chapter, right after the miracle in Cana.  And in John’s version, Jesus does not lay into the moneychangers in quite the same way.  Instead of financial injustice, Jesus seems more concerned that those gathered have missed something critical – in the obligatory administering of sacrifices at the physical temple, they have missed the fact that God is no longer tied to the location of the temple – and instead is found in the temple of Jesus’ body.  For John, the incarnation, the word becoming flesh and dwelling among us, is central to the entirety of the good news and in this story specifically.

I realized this week that when I think about the Incarnation, I immediately think of the baby Jesus.  Somehow, like a child you do not see for a few years, my image of Jesus incarnate gets stuck in the manger.  And because the adult Jesus sometimes feels so superhuman, I forget about the earthy, gritty flesh of his body – the body that touches to heal, stoops down to wash feet, eats and drinks with others, cries wet tears, and breathes a last breath of the cross.  In coming to know the Messiah who heals, teaches, brings about justice, and is transfigured before the disciples, I forget the enfleshed Jesus – the human body in which God dwells – the only temple we need to draw nearer to our God.

We are in a season of flesh.  Lent is that season when we experience Jesus in deeply enfleshed ways.  What our disciplines or our practices do for us in Lent is help us remember that we are a people of flesh and our God was willing to take on that flesh to transform our lives.  We do not often talk about the profound reality of an enfleshed God, but I stumbled on a hymn this week that opened up the reality.  Brian Wren’s hymn Good is the Flesh says, “Good is the flesh that the Word has become, good is the birthing, the milk in the breast, good is the feeding, caressing and rest, good is the body for knowing the world, Good is the flesh that the Word has become.”  The hymn goes on to say, “Good is the body, from cradle to grave, growing and aging, arousing, impaired, happy in clothing, or lovingly bared, good is the pleasure of God in our flesh, Good is the flesh that the Word has become.”[ii]  Now I do not know about your own spiritual journey, but I do not think I have ever heard Jesus’ flesh being described so vividly.  The closest I have come has been in imagining the vulnerability of that enfleshed body in the cradle.  But capturing what being enfleshed means for all of life – from cradle to grave – somehow opened up John’s words about the temple of Jesus’ body.  God takes something we often associate with sinfulness – and transforms that flesh into something good.  “Good is the pleasure of God in our flesh,” are powerful words that shift how we experience the fullness of Christ’s humanity.

Once we reconnect with the goodness of God’s flesh – the incarnation of Christ – then we begin to see all of Jesus’ ministry not stuck in a manger but immersed in the flesh of life.  Karoline Lewis reminds us Jesus’ fleshy life was important, “Because a woman at a well, whose body was rejected for the barren body it was, experiences the truth of neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem; because a man ill for 38 years, his entire life to be exact, whose body has only known life on the ground, is now able to imagine his ascended life; because a man born blind, is then able to see, and to see himself as a sheep of Jesus’ own fold; because Lazarus, whose body was dead and starting to decay, found himself reclining on Jesus, eating and drinking, and with his sisters, sharing a meal once again.”[iii]  Not only is Jesus’ incarnation good, making flesh good, Jesus’ ministry is about blessing, healing, and restoring physical bodies.

Once we connect with the goodness of God’s flesh, and the power of Jesus’ fleshy ministry, we are forced to see something we do not always feel comfortable with – the goodness of our own flesh.  Now I do not know about you, but my experience in church has not been one in which the church tells me how good my body is.  In fact, today’s inclusion of the ten commandments usually reminds me of the opposite – of the myriad ways my body is sinful:  from the words that come out of my mouth, to the ways in which I hurt others and take things with my body, to the ways in which I covet things and other bodies.  And those sins do not even touch the ways in which I learn the message that my body is imperfect – how my body is not the right height or shape or gender, how my body is not fit or strong enough, how my skin color, hair, or nails are not quite the ideal.  But if God takes on flesh and says, “Good is the flesh,” and if that enfleshed God engages in a ministry of blessing flesh, then surely part of what we remember today is how good and blessed our own flesh is – how God made our flesh for good.

Now, here comes the tricky part.  Once we realize “Good is the flesh,” that ministered to the flesh, that our flesh is beautiful and revered, then we are forced to make yet another leap – that the flesh of others is also beautiful.  Those bodies we would like to subjugate, regulate, and decimate are no longer able to be separated from the goodness of God’s flesh or our own flesh.  Barbara Brown Taylor argues in An Altar in the World, “‘One of the truer things about bodies is that it is just about impossible to increase the reverence I show mine without also increasing the reverence I show yours.’  In other words, once I value my own body as God’s temple, as a site of God’s pleasure, delight, and grace, how can I stand by while other bodies suffer exploitation, poverty, discrimination, or abuse?”[iv]

This week, we enter that kind of work.  As we welcome guests through the Winter Shelter, we affirm the goodness of all flesh – of God’s flesh, of our flesh, and especially the flesh of those who have no shelter, who work hard all day but cannot secure housing, who live lives of uncertainty, of insecurity, of scarcity.  Once we recall the incarnation of Christ, the dignity of our own incarnation, our work immediately becomes to honor the incarnation of others.  We certainly accomplish the work of honoring flesh this week through the Winter Shelter.  But as we keep walking our Lenten journey, we will struggle with our bodies.  Even our collect today says, “we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves: Keep us both outwardly in our bodies and inwardly in our souls, that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body, and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul.”  But our invitation this Lent is to also struggle with claiming our body as good – and using the goodness of the flesh to bless other flesh.  Our repentance this week is not just of the sinfulness of the flesh, but we repent this week of the ways in which we do not honor how “Good is the flesh that the Word has become.”  Amen.

 

[i] Joseph D. Small, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 92.

[ii] I found this hymn in the commentary by Debie Thomas, “The Temple of His Body” February 28, 2018, https://www.journeywithjesus.net/lectionary-essays/current-essay?id=1675 as found on March 1, 2018.

[iii] Karoline Lewis, “Body Zeal,” February 26, 2018, http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=5071 as found on March 1, 2018.

[iv] Thomas.

On hope…

Tags

baby, emotion, Epiphany, God, hope, incarnation, infant, Jesus

One of the things I had forgotten about having babies is how incredibly transformative they can be.  People totally change around babies.  They ooh and ahh around babies.  Their faces light up and they seem uncontrollably drawn toward infants.  Their whole demeanor shifts at the sight of a baby.  I have even brought my infant to meetings before, and I am amazed about how the whole mood of the room changes.  Work still gets done, but not without laughter, smiles, and joy.  Even a crying child makes people sympathetic and tender.

Courtesy of http://danielleshroyer.com/2014/12/01/moltmann-monday-hope-poor-advent-hope/

For a long time, I wondered what it was about babies that could turn even the sternest person to mush.  Then I realized what it was:  hope.  Because babies have little control or ability to assert their own (often contradictory) will, there is hope for all that the baby can be.  Their innocence and simplicity are a refreshing break from the complicated nature of life.  They truly are a gift to families, communities, and even strangers who sometimes have truly lost what it means to be a people of hope.

When our little one played baby Jesus in the Epiphany Pageant this year, I was not surprised at all then that the adult playing Mary teared up during the pageant.  I have not spoken to her about what was going on that made her teary, but watching the emotion bubble up in her was something that I knew only an infant could do.  Her emotional response made me see and hear the entire pageant differently – seeing the children in a different way, hearing the words of scripture in a different way, and singing the familiar Christmas songs in a different way.

In that moment of emotion, something else also became clear to me in a totally different way.  The human reality of Jesus as a baby became much more tangible in that moment.  It suddenly made sense to me how angels, shepherd, and wise men could reverence a child.  It made sense to me how Mary and Joseph were completely perplexed, but also completely hopeful about this new thing that was happening through their child.  It made sense to me the tremendous gift and miracle of God taking on flesh for us truly was.

Those moments of utter clarity are a bit rare in my life.  I know the biblical stories and our liturgies so well that sometimes they become rote.  I believe them all; I just do not always feel them.  That morning, I felt it.  I felt the wonder.  I felt the overwhelming gratitude.  I felt the hope.  My guess is that opportunities for those feelings are more present than we ever recognize.  Our challenge is honing the skill of perceiving when God is breaking into our routines and giving us hope.

Holy chaos…

Tags

chaos, children, Christ Child, Christmas, church, Epiphany, holy, incarnation, Jesus, life, liturgy, messy, pageant

Courtesy of http://saintansgar.blogspot.com/2010/11/joint-childrens-christmas-pageant-and.html

This past Sunday, our church held its annual Epiphany Pageant.  Since the pageant involves using Scripture and hymns to retell the entirety of Jesus’ birth narratives, the pageant replaces most of the Liturgy of the Word (the part of the service when we traditionally read/chant the four lessons and then hear a sermon).  Though part of what we love about the pageant is the kids’ presence, we also love being invited into the familiar – rehearing the story of the Christ’s birth and incarnation and singing the hymns that we look forward to all year.

Inevitably, the pageant is a bit messy and chaotic – children forget where to go, costumes do not quite fit, or attention spans are just not long enough.  Situating the pageant within the context of worship also means that the entire worship experience that morning is loud and a bit difficult to stay fully engaged in – especially if you are looking for a quiet, contemplative reflection on the incarnation.

But to be honest, that is what I love about the pageant – the holy chaos of it all.  We often think about the birth of the Christ Child as a clean story, much like many of the two-dimensional artistic renderings we see of what looks like quiet adoration at a manger.  But the whole concept of the incarnation is messy:  from Jesus’ scandalous conception, to what had to have been an unsanitary birth among hay and animals, to stinky visitors like the shepherds, to the visit of three foreign men who act strangely and probably raise more suspicion than excitement.  The birth of Jesus is a bit of a holy mess, not to mention the rest of Jesus’ incarnate life, which involves hanging with those of ill-repute, with smelly fishermen, and with the seriously infected and ill.  Nothing about Jesus’ birth or life is sanitary, controlled, or predictable.

Later on Sunday morning in worship, as I distributed communion, I gave the body of Christ to the young girl who had just played Mary in the pageant.  In that moment, the chaos of the day disappeared, and the miracle of the incarnation became much more real to me.  Mary, the mother of Jesus, was just a woman, trying to live faithfully, caught in the holy chaos of life.  I found myself wondering what receiving the body of Christ, the body of her son, would have been like, especially once he was gone.  And just like Mary was just a woman, each one of us in church – the young girl, the middle-aged man, the aging woman – are all just people, caught in the holy chaos of life, trying to make sense of it all, but also eternally grateful for a God who takes on human flesh for us.  That is why Church is so incredible to me.  In the midst of contemplative prayer, and even in the midst of what feels like a loud, crazy liturgy, God can break through and speak truth to us.  I am grateful to our children for reminding me that God is incarnate in the midst of all of life – in the beautiful and quiet, but especially in the messy, loud, chaos of life.

Sermon – John 1.1-14, CD, YA, December 25, 2013

Tags

Christmas, darkness, death, God, incarnation, Jesus, John, light, prologue, resurrection

I must admit that I have always been a little wary of John’s prologue at Christmas time.  I tend to prefer the earthy stories of Jesus in a manger, of dramatic angelic appearances, of messy shepherds, and of a baffled holy family.  I like that I can picture the events in my mind and ponder their meaning.  I like that I could imagine myself there and even wonder what the events mean to me two thousand years later.  My love of these stories is only accentuated by the songs we sing on Christmas Eve, and the nostalgia the music brings to me.

But today, on Christmas Day, we get none of that.  We sing no songs, we hear no romantic, familiar stories, and we do not get lost in the ancient narrative.  Instead, on this busy, often loud day, we come into a totally different space – a place of quiet reverence – and we hear a totally different text.  John does not go back to the beginning of Jesus’ story – he goes back to the beginning of all our stories.  “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”  Our minds drift not back to a stable, but to the beginning of creation, when the earth was a formless void – tohu wavohu.  Whereas our synoptic gospels try to tell us about who Jesus is by giving a story about his birth narrative, John’s gospel takes an even wider lens to try to explain who Jesus is.

In some ways the contrast between Christmas Eve’s stories about the stable and Christmas Day’s quiet reflection on the beginning of time is quite appropriate.  On Christmas Eve we are full of giddiness and excitement.  We break the long anticipation of Advent with a festive celebration of Jesus’ birth.  We share in jubilation, as if we are a crowd of people gathered at the maternity ward, sharing cigars and bear hugs.  But today, like a crew that has come in to clean up after a late-night party, we gather in these pews with a bit more sobriety, deeply pondering what all this incarnation stuff means.  For that kind of work, John’s gospel is the perfect gift.  John almost seems to say, “Yes, all those stories you know and love about Jesus are true and are to be celebrated.  But do not get swept away in the excitement and forget what this really means.”

For John, he begins his gospel starting not with details of the event of the incarnation, but with details about the significance of the incarnation.  For John, he is not interested in the sentimentality of a cute baby.  John is interested in the astounding fact that God became incarnate – took on flesh, lived among us, took on our dirty, gritty lives, and faced rejection and suffering – all so that we might live.  The God of creation – that same creative God we know from Genesis – is the same God who comes among us.  The Word has always been, and yet the Word also enters into human history to give life and light to the people.  When we talk about this kind of momentous significance, it is no wonder that we gather here in quiet awe of our God, soberly realizing the tremendous, salvific gift of the Word made flesh coming to dwell among us.

In some ways, the contrast between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are hitting home a little more vividly this year.  On the one hand, I have a four-year old, who really gets Christmas this year, who is excited beyond belief about baby Jesus, St. Nicholas, presents, and visiting family.  Her enthusiasm is infectious, and I want to cultivate that joy.  I am reminded of that collect from compline that asks God to “shield the joyous.”  But on the other hand, death has been heavy around me these last few days.  A dear friend from Delaware died this weekend, St. Margaret’s Cemetery helped a young couple from a neighboring church bury an 8-month stillborn child on Monday, and just two days ago, a St. Margaret’s parishioner lost his mother.  In light of the grief of those around me, I am grateful for a sober reminder of the awesomeness of our God, the salvation and promise of resurrection that is only made possible through the incarnation – that Word made flesh who lived among us, and who is full of grace and truth.  In the end, there is hope on both sides – hope for the happily joyous this season and hope for the soberly mournful this season.  I thank God for a Church who tends to both sets of needs, but mostly I thank God for taking on our earthly flesh, for giving us the Word who knew both joy and sorrow, and for promising us that the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it.  Amen.

As a child…

Tags

children, Christmas, Epiphany, God, incarnation, Jesus, reverance

I never really spent time around young children growing up.  I was never a babysitter.  As I became older, my friends often speculated lightheartedly that I would never survive as a mother, since when kids were around I was either like a deer in headlights or was a bit disdainful with the mess, noise, and general chaos.  Even when my own child was born, I had never changed a diaper.  So when Jesus says, “Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it,” I have often worried how serious he really was about that.

But this Christmas and Epiphany, I slowly began to see the wisdom in Jesus words.  My own daughter really opened up the incarnation for me this year in a fresh way.  Over the holidays, we made our way to St. Mary the Virgin Episcopal Church in Times Square.  After Eucharist, while looking at the many side altars, my daughter found a crèche.  She immediately ran up to the small crèche, and knelt on her knees to look at the figures.  I was shocked at the peaceful calm that came over her as she knelt at Jesus’ manger, and was immediately reminded of the way the magi too were brought to their knees in the presence of Jesus.  Her small body kneeling at the feet of Jesus gave me a small window into Jesus’ words about how children guide us into the kingdom.

But my daughter was not the only child who opened up the incarnation for me this year.  Our confirmation class of six teens got word from a parishioner of families in a local hospital who would not be able to afford Christmas gifts this year.  So, the class agreed to take up their December class time (adding in another class sometime this spring as a make-up) to go together and shop for gifts, using their own money.  The pile of gifts the next day blew me away.  Without even thinking, our confirmands demonstrated Christ’s love incarnate in a season that can typically be very self-centered.

Finally, this past Sunday, our young people offered an Epiphany Pageant in the context of worship.  Because they were helping lead worship that day, I asked the children and youth to pray with me the same prayer that I pray with our choir and acolytes before we lead worship.  And although we had the typical smiles and photo ops, the children seemed to really get it – they were leading worship.  And as the pageant closed, with all the kings, shepherds, angels, Mary and Joseph kneeling at the feet of the Christ Child, the incarnation came alive once again.  I could feel the reverence of our children, and they drew me out of my smiles about their “cuteness” and reminded me of my own need for a posture of reverence at our Lord’s feet.

So today I am grateful for the tremendous life and witness of our children.  They are teaching me everyday new and deeply meaningful ways to enter the kingdom of God.  Thank you for your witness to me and to the people of faith.

Advent transition…

Tags

Advent, Christmas, grief, incarnation, liturgy, Newtown

This Advent has been a bit of an emotional rollercoaster.  Here in Plainview, at the beginning of Advent we were just getting back into a “normal” rhythm post-Hurricane Sandy.  One of my parishioners even noted that he realized I was “back in the game” when he got a flurry of church emails from me.  On Second Advent, we had our Annual Meeting, and we were all pleasantly surprised that an Annual Meeting could actually be quite fun and reinvigorating.  We were all heading toward the Christmas apex when the shooting in Newtown last Friday threw us for a loop.  Advent Three was one of the most mournful Sundays we have had in a while.  Many parishioners shared with me that they wanted to be in Church because they needed it.  We shared sadness, fears, and tears.  We lingered a little longer at Coffee Hour, needing the community of faith to help us process the event.  We all seem to be struggling to hold on to the “Christmas spirit.”

In the midst of this emotional rollercoaster, St. Margaret’s heads into a four-day series of liturgies that leads us to the manger.  I would be a little more anxious about how I was going to revive my own “Christmas spirit,” if the liturgies were not laid out as they are.  I am relieved to start our four days with our Cemetery Memorial services.  Every year we invite parishioners and family members who have loved ones buried in our cemetery to come for one of two memorial services.  We pray the burial office, listen to a necrology, and sing Christmas hymns.  The service is not simply for those whose names will be read.  This service really is becoming a “Blue Christmas” service – a service to recognize that Christmas is not always the happy version of perfection that commercials would have us believe.  Christmas is rife with baggage from our past, strife within families, feelings of loneliness or grief, and a general desire to pull inward during a season that tries to shove us outward.  In the wake of the shooting in Newtown, I am especially grateful for these liturgies.

After we get through these services, we move into Advent Lessons and Carols the next day.  On this last Sunday in Advent, we get the chance to really ease our way out of Advent and into Christmas by lingering in Advent through scripture and songs.  I am grateful for the gentle transition and pray that it will allow me the space to turn my thoughts and emotions to the blessing of Christ’s incarnation.

Perhaps after these liturgies I will be ready for our family service on Christmas Eve.  I am looking forward to the revamped service, in which our children and families will play an active leadership role in worship.  In a time when we have been mourning the loss of God’s beloved children, I cannot think of a better way to embrace Jesus’ command to, “Let the little children come to me.”  Perhaps by then I will be relieved to join the choir in singing those long-awaited Christmas hymns and to enter into the Holy Night of Christmas Midnight Mass.

Of course, if all of that does not do the trick, certainly the spoken service on Christmas Day might.  The quiet of that service is a nice place to recenter in the midst of a crazy time.  Sure, opening presents will be fun, especially with my more aware three-year old, but the quiet of church may be the safe haven we all need to ground the day in Christ Jesus.  It is at times like this that I am grateful for the ways in which the Episcopal Church is a church rooted in rich liturgies.  Come join us!