Just Enough – 10th Sunday After Pentecost, Year A

First Reading – Isaiah 55:1-5

Psalm 145: 8-9, 14-21

Second Reading – Romans 9:1-5

Gospel – Matthew 14:13-21

Grace and peace to you from God who provides Manna in the desert, from Christ who feeds the crowds, and from the Holy Spirit who satisfies hungry hearts, Amen

          In the past few months, there’ve been several Sundays where, near the end of Communion, we’re cutting things a bit close. Where either wafers placed in hands, or cups in trays begin to dwindle, and I find myself beginning to do what you might call… “the silent count”. (Muttering) Okay… Let’s see. 1-2-3-4-5… (looks down) 1-2-3-4… 5. *Phew* There’s enough. On two or three different occasions, we’ve ended up with exactly enough wafers or cups. And honestly, if I needed to go grab a few more, or fill a couple glasses, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. But I admit, each of these occasions has felt like a little Feeding the 5,000 moment. A miracle in miniature. Just enough…

          This Gospel is one most of us have heard many times, and because of this, our memories tend to spoil the ending of the story, so that it’s easy to miss the wonder of this occasion. If we revisit these verses more closely, I find the most familiar words to us can end up providing the best surprises. In our Bibles, the first line in verse 13, reads “Now when Jesus had heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself.” In our bulletins, the lectionary has helpfully filled in the “this” with its wider context. Because just before this passage, King Herod, at the end of a grand banquet celebrating his birthday, cruelly executes John the Baptist. Jesus has just received the news his death; the death of a friend, a mentor, a relative. At the beginning of this text, we probably find a Jesus in deep grief. A Jesus perhaps wondering if his own head is literally next on the chopping block. And so this most famous and joyful of miracles, begins with sadness, and loss, and fear.

          As verse thirteen says, our Lord retreats into the wilderness, hoping to escape the masses and perhaps Herod’s soldiers, and sets out alone by boat across the sea of Galilee, only to find that a crowd of the sick and needy has pursued him and is already awaiting his arrival. *chuckle* How is it that it’s always when you’re at your most tired and worn down – desperately ready for some alone time or a cold drink, when the phone rings, or there’s a knock at the door, or you hear someone call out “Oh, hey, I was wondering…” Yet we find that Jesus, upon seeing these thousands approach, feels not frustration, but compassion. In fact the literal translation here, is that compassion seizes Jesus in his gut. And greeting the crowd, he begins to heal them.

          It’s here, we then arrive at the miracle, as the disciples at last come onto the scene, encouraging Jesus to send all these people on their way. It’s for a sensible reason – the sun is setting, this is the wilderness. There’s nothing for the crowds to eat. But it does beg the question – if these some twelve-thousand of the sick and poor descend upon the surrounding towns at dusk, how might they be received – and even more urgently, would they even have the money to purchase their meal. Most likely would have just gone hungry. But all that’s irrelevant, because Jesus has something else in mind, and tells his disciples, “You give them something to eat.” I can only imagine the looks on the disciples’ faces. Shock. Confusion. Panic! “L-Lord…” one of them manages to stammer out. “We have only five loaves of bread, and couple fish.” Five loaves and two fish, for over ten-thousand mouths. There is no way. Absurd doesn’t even begin to describe the situation. It’s not enough.

          Not enough.

Not enough is a universal fear every human being shares. The fear of scarcity is as old as humankind itself. Of the winter in the ancient wilderness without enough wood to sustain the fire. Of dwindling food in pantries, of retirement accounts shrinking rather than growing, of the needle on the gauge dropping from F slowly slowly down to the E. And the understandable response to our fear of scarcity is to save, reserve, hold onto. To build up, to plan, to prevent not enough from ever coming to bear. But as we well know, not enough is the reality for many, really, it’s the reality for the vast majority of humanity. And understandably, perhaps more than anything else, the fear of not enough, is particularly tied to food.

Now I love to cook, and as I’ve learned more about cooking, I’ve been surprised to find how often “not enough” ends up being the root of different cuisines. As the saying goes “necessity is the mother of invention” – if you’ve only got a few ingredients, especially if you’re cooking them day after day, you try to find new and inventive ways to use them. And so in cooking, acknowledging “not enough” inspires imagination, inspires creativity, and sometimes leads to seemingly impossible solutions. Probably more than any other kind, I love Italian food. I love it for lots of reasons, but one of the biggest is its simplicity. The history of Italian cooking isn’t in the fancy restaurants or expensive vacations that we often connect it to today. The real origins of Italian cooking are often in what they’d call la cucina povera: “the kitchen of the poor”. I recently learned about a dish from southern Italy, that amazed me. It’s called spaghetti alle vongole fujute, which translates roughly to “spaghetti with runaway clams”. This dish came out of the hardest of hard times, when all that a family might have on hand is some pasta, maybe a few small tomatoes, a clove of garlic, and a sprig or two of parsley. In a giant pan, you sauté the garlic, tomatoes, and herbs together, before adding some water. But then comes the secret and magical ingredient. Any guesses?

Rocks.

But not just any ordinary rocks. Rocks taken directly from the sea, covered in vibrant green algae. And into the pot they go. To simmer away, and once you’ve rolled them around and let the ocean flavor fill the sauce, you add in the pasta and cook till it’s just done. What you’re left with is a dish that tastes like spaghetti with clams, but the clams, have run away. La cucina povera. The kitchen of the poor. Where creativity means that even rocks can fill hungry bellies.

          In our Gospel, the last time Jesus was in this wilderness place, the devil invited him to turn stone into bread. Jesus denied him. But this morning, as we again find ourselves in the wilderness, when faced with the staggering hunger of the poor, Jesus does far more than that. The Messiah transforms scarcity into miraculous abundance. And echoing the very language he will use on the night in which he is betrayed and like his cousin John will be executed, our Lord takes bread and fish, blesses and breaks them. And from that small and simple meal, all are fed. And fed until they are filled. I can only imagine, as the disciples began to share from the baskets, the way the terror of scarcity would gripped them in their gut. The fear that each time their hand went into that basket, it would grasp at emptiness. That the eager eyes of each man, woman, and child desperate for sustenance would be met with nothing to offer. And the shock they must have felt – again, again, again – to find yet more bread, more fish, for each open hand. How that fear of scarcity, that fear of “not enough” began to transform into wonder, as one, two, five, ten thousand began to feast around them. Not a banquet for the rich ending in death, but a banquet for the poor ending in compassion and life.

          Dear people of God, we live at a time where the fear of not enough is heavy on the heart of the church. Heavy on the heart of its people. To do the same costs more than it did ten years ago. We look down to our small plate full of nothing more than five loaves and two fish and wonder – how can we be fed. But Christ invites us – bring them here to me, and see the abundance God can provide. Share in the food of a table where a single bite and a single sip restore our very souls. Where week by week, and wafer by wafer, we find that in our hands there is just enough.

Always enough.

Amen

Shaking – Easter 2026

First Reading – Jeremiah 31:1-6

Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24

Second Reading – Acts 10:34-43

Gospel: Matthew 28:1-10

Alleluia, Christ is risen! Grace and peace to you from our Risen Lord Jesus Christ, from God, and from the Holy Spirit, Amen

“Sometimes, it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.”

Good Friday ended with our singing these words. As Jesus’ passion comes to close, the story finds his friends and followers scattered, hiding, and in fear of those who had put their Lord to death. The story ends as an armed guard seals the entrance to the tomb. We then rejoin Matthew’s Gospel three days later, as these two Marys, perhaps using the cover of twilight to approach the tomb without alerting the guards, near the sealed stone.

Growing up in Kansas, it was ingrained in me from a very young age what to do in case of a tornado. I’ve mentioned to many of you, how the sirens here in Preston – that sound three times a day during the work week – they caught me very off guard when we first moved, and occasionally still do, especially on these stormy spring days.

          But one night, back when I was in high-school, I was sitting upstairs at the computer in my childhood home, and got this funny feeling, as I heard a strange sound. I looked around uneasy, for what I did to bump my desk, but it wasn’t just the desk – the pictures on wall were rattling too. There was a deep rumble, almost too deep to hear, but the whole house was creaking, moving, shifting, like when a loud crack of thunder or gust of wind strains against its walls. I stood up, and my legs, they were unsteady. I grabbed the railing of our upstairs landing beside me – confused and still trying to understand what was going on. I shouted down the stairs, “Uh. Mom! …” My mind was running a hundred miles a minute trying to think about what could be happening – it’s not raining so not a storm, there’s no way it could’ve been a big truck driving by, and I didn’t hear an airplane overhead. And then it hit me, as maybe some of you have already figured out – it was an earthquake. In Wichita, Kansas, we were having – an earthquake! After about twenty seconds or so, the creaking quieted as the ground settled back into place.

          And even though we were never in any real danger, after this experience I found myself pretty, no pun intended, shaken-up over the whole deal. It was a very different feeling than the sort of anxiety and excitement I get during the tornado warnings with which I was much more familiar. I mean – in a tornado, at least you can go down underground for some sort of shelter, right? But where do you go, what do you do, when it’s the ground beneath you that’s shaking?

For Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, on that first day of the week – their vision, accustomed to the early morning darkness, is suddenly overwhelmed by blinding light from the heavens. And not only are they blinded, but at that very moment, so too does the earth begin to shake tremendously beneath them – it was shaking just as it had three days earlier when their Lord tookhis final breath upon the cross. As they try to steady themselves and their eyes begin to adjust, they discern a brilliant figure single-handedly shove aside the tremendous stone sealing Jesus’ tomb, and leap up to sit atop it. We can perhaps understand why the illuminated silhouettes of the military guard collapse, overcome with terror, shaking like the earth beneath them, as this dazzling figure then speaks to the two women before them,

“Do not be afraid”.

          Those four words are at the heart of Matthew’s account of the resurrection. “Do not be afraid.” At the beginning of this Easter story, nothing is certain or steady, not even the ground beneath the disciples’ feet. Despite the dazzling messenger’s words of comfort, we read that the Marys still bring this news to the others with “fear as well as joy”. The news of the resurrection comes with uncertainty. “Could we dare to believe that it could be true? The angel said, “He is not here. He has been raised from the dead.”

          As I’ve gotten older and heard others share testimonies to their faith, I’ve encountered more and more people who speak with real confidence and sureness about their belief in God and trust in Christ. I’ve always admired that, because for me, and for many other folks I’ve encountered over the years – there are many of us who aren’t near so confident, who aren’t near as sure. I’ve always been a Christian with a lot of questions. I’ve been a Christian who struggles with doubt and uncertainty. I’ve been a Christian who has wrestled with fear – could the miracles and promises be true? Yet, this morning we find that the news of the resurrection comes first to those who are unsure and afraid. As the Marys run from the tomb towards Jerusalem, in their fear and their joy – perhaps just beginning to dare to hope again, Jesus appears and greets them. And as they fall to the ground, grasping his feet and the truth of this miracle with their own hands, the risen Lord again offers the angel’s word of comfort, “Do not be afraid.”

          This past Thursday – as the tornado moved through town, about a dozen of us were gathered, sheltering together in the church basement. As the wind groaned around us, I remember one of the kids expressing out loud the fear I suspect we all were feeling, and almost immediately one of the parents there in the room echoed Jesus words, “Don’t be scared.”

          As soon as the storm passed, our attention rapidly turned to what damage it might have left behind. There was great uncertainty. But I was humbled by how quickly people came together. One person took over watching the kids, while another began calling relatives. Friends and neighbors hurriedly began checking on homes, livestock, and one another. And all over Preston a great gathering began, pulling back together what the wind had scattered across streets, yards, and fields. It can be so very hard to look out at our world’s brokenness and believe that something like Christ’s resurrection could be possible. Even as we hear the angel’s news, we might begin to think to ourselves – “this isn’t happening in the way I expected.” We so long for God to come among us and magically fix what is broken in us and in this world. But the miracle of the resurrection arrives amid the tragedy – out of the middle of a fractured, quaking world. Even in Jesus, God does not rise restored in a flawless body. As we’ll read next week, his hands are still torn. His side is pierced. Even in Jesus, God doesn’t “fix” the pieces – he just gives Christ’s bones the strength to stand and to draw breath again in that same pierced and battered body.

          The miracle of Easter is that God’s life has overcome the damage, even though his body and our world are not yet restored to perfection. In the crucifixion and the storm, we were scattered and scurrying for shelter, but this morning, in the light of the resurrection dawn, the story continues with God’s gathering together that scattered body, the disciples in Galilee and us together in this space. Amid the shaking. Amid life’s storms. And somehow we find ourselves part of this miraculous story: of death into life. Of fearful terror into fearful joy. As we, like the Marys, fall at the feet of He who was pierced, and yet somehow walks. As our Lord greets us once again with his words of comfort. “Rejoice – do not be afraid. Go”. Share the good news!

Alleluia and Amen

Pharaoh, Pharaoh

First Reading – Deuteronomy 5:12-15

Psalm 81:1-10

Second Reading – 2 Corinthians 4:5-12

Gospel: Mark 2:23-3:6

Two weeks ago, while Katie and I were visiting Chicago to celebrate our graduation from seminary, I routinely kept an eye on the ground. As you might be able to guess, I was hoping for just one glimpse of a cicada, as it emerged from its long wait beneath the earth. If you happen to be trying to think back to 2007, when the seventeen-year-cicada last appeared in the Midwest, many of us were about to hear the word iPhone for the first time… This year’s dual-emergence of both the thirteen and seventeen year cicada is a particularly rare coincidence – the last time these two species sang together was back in 1803.

But alas, my wish did not come true. It was still just a bit too early to see cicadas in the city… Oh well… at least for my next chance I only have to wait until 2245.

I’d like to pause for a moment here and reflect on something together. I want you to try and think back to the last time you felt a true sense of rest. A moment where the tension in your body eased completely and your mind was at peace – perhaps not empty, but at ease.

Dear church, I don’t know about you, but moments like those feel rarer and rarer for me these days. Perhaps they do for you too. Sabbath is a strange little word – one that likely brings to mind images of stone tablets or days spent in worship and prayer. Maybe it feels like something more relevant to our siblings at Temple Beth Israel than here at First Lutheran. But literally the word Sabbath, in Hebrew shabbat,means to cease, to desist, to rest. It is a word dense with history and meaning. And in a world that with each passing day seems only to move faster, I think our readings this morning are calling us to refocus our attention on the idea of sabbath. On sustainable patterns of work and of rest. Our passage from Deuteronomy is the sabbath excerpt from one of several places in the Bible where we find the Ten Commandments. We read Moses words to the tribes of Israel, “Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; [on it] you shall not do any work.” For much of history, we’ve understood this to mean we should work six days and then rest one – in fact, these words were what inspired Martin Luther to advocate for the creation of the weekend. But biblically the numbers six and seven have deeper meanings, beyond that of their literal numeric value. The number six carries with it a sense of lack, of incompleteness and insufficiency. While the number seven implies fullness, wholeness, and abundance. I’d argue that the emphasis of this commandment is not just a reward from the “big man in the sky” of one day of rest for six days of work. But rather that it’s saying our work is not complete without a period of rest to restore us.

The second half of the reading further emphasizes this idea. You’ll notice that the focus of the commandment is not precisely how we are to practice sabbath, but that we are to do it. Something about rest is so important that it must be an intrinsic part of our lives. This was something revolutionary. Nowhere else in the ancient world do we find this idea. In this way the sabbath was the institution of a radical new system that honored the rest and wellbeing of its people first, and their work second. Particularly strange was that this rest was to be for all the people in this society, regardless of age or of social status. And it’s not just for people we read, but for animals, too. And not just for animals, but elsewhere we can read it’s to be extended to the very land itself. Even the soil of the earth is to be given time for restoration and peace. For ancient Israel, the sabbath was not the end of the week, but its center. To understand the why in all of this, we need to finish the last part of the text. “Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt,” we read. And there’s a temptation here, to take that word “remember”, and twist it into the word “because”.

It doesn’t say because you were a slave in Egypt, you should receive this rest. Pharaoh’s Egypt was built on the labor of slaves. Pharaoh’s Egypt was built on the premise that some are condemned only to work. It says “remember”, because the response of our God to that system of labor was to tear it down. We remember that “the Lord God brought Israel out from there”, so that a new way of life could be made; a way of life where all – might – know – rest.

But here we arrive at the great challenge, because as every one of us knows, the reality of our world is corrosive to this concept. We don’t live within a social or economic system that recognizes the inherent right to rest, but instead we too often offer insufficient rest as meager reward – and that’s only if you can afford it. And it’s here that Jesus enters the picture. Because when the sabbath is earned instead of gifted, or worse still when sabbath becomes obligation, the system breaks down. In our Gospel reading today the sabbath had become an obstacle to the starved being fed, to the ill and oppressed receiving care. And in our world today, I think the sabbath has nearly ceased to be. “The sabbath was made for humankind, not humankind for the sabbath.” “The system is broken!”, Jesus is saying. And to emphasize this point to those around him, Jesus heals the withered hand of the man. But we read that the powers-at-be mistake this action of justice and love for something evil. Cries for justice against systems of oppression rarely look like maintaining the status-quo. Instead, these reminders are often disruptive to our normal way of life.

This print was made by my friend Sadie, in honor of the emergence.

And it’s here that I draw yet further inspiration from the emergence of the cicadas. As I said in the children’s sermon, their seventeen years of rest is a lesson all on its own. But then comes that seventeenth year. Once a generation, something in the air, the soil, triggers a marvelous change, and a mysterious urge fills the cicadas. Perhaps realizing the world is again ready to hear their cry, they release their grip on the root of the tree which has nourished their strength and life. And following this mysterious urge, they begin to climb. They enter our hard and unforgiving world, with bodies soft and vulnerable, wings blossoming from their backs, and then… finally… one by one they begin their call. It sounds like a word, a word which serves as a reminder of how our God reacts to systems that deprive us of our inherent right to sabbath rest. People say who hear their call say that it sounds something like this:

“Phaaaaa-raoh” . . . “Phaaaaa-roah” . . . “Phaaaaa-raoh” . . .

This distinctive sound when heard on its own has inspired the common name for these insects. And in larger, and larger, and larger numbers, the cry of the seventeen-year-locust, sometimes called the Pharoah Cicada, grows into a great chorus. In quantities like these, to those of us on the surface who are not used to their voices, the music sounds like cacophony – conflict – discord, a roaring ocean of sound. The wave of cicadas causes discomfort in us and fear, even inspiring the use of that biblical word “plague”, that we might be moved to crush and stamp out this unfamiliar life. But I want to remind you, dear church, what these cicadas have emerged to do. Because what may at first appear to be a roar of dissident chaos, is in truth the sound of love. The cicadas are singing a mating song to one another – to all of creation. Again and again, generation upon generation, while our world repeatedly insists upon power and self-sufficiency, God floods it with the cicadas’ vulnerability and love. Love so loud that it literally becomes deafening. Love that for weeks with its loud shouting fills the earth and sky over whole cities, counties, states of this divided nation.

And then, slowly, the roar of the cicadas will begin to subside, as the short and fragile life of the adults comes to an end, as the eggs of the next generation hatch and retreat to the ground for their long sabbath rest, to wait until the mysterious call comes upon them. But the world has been changed by their song, and even the soil itself has been enriched by the quantity of their life and death upon it. And as the subtle sound of the final few cicadas again becomes synonymous with warm, lazy summer evenings, I pray that their message serves as a reminder of God’s ancient and eternal promise: not death but restoration, not slavery but sabbath, not work but rest.

Amen

This sermon was given 2 June 2024 at First Evangelical Lutheran Church of Waltham, MA.

“The Shadows of the Past” // Easter Vigil 2024

Long ago and far away, in the land of Middle Earth, the grey wizard Gandalf, his face solemn, spoke of the ancient evil to Frodo saying, “‘That name even you hobbits have heard of, like a shadow on the borders of old stories. Always after a defeat and a respite, the Shadow takes another shape and grows again.’

          ‘I wish it need not have happened in my time,’ said Frodo.

          ‘So do I,’ said Gandalf, ‘and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.’”

I’ve been rereading the first part of the Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien, and this quote near the beginning of the book, is one of my favorites. Frodo’s sadness and uncertainty – Gandalf’s hopefulness, despite his worry – there’s something real in their words that has, more than once, given me strength amidst the chaos of these past few years. Tolkien himself was always hesitant to admit any connection between the Lord of the Rings and the events of the real world. So perhaps, like any good story, it’s just hard not to imagine comparisons between his writing and the ongoing conflicts in our world.

As one reads, you get the sense that to talk about evil things is to give them power. Elves refuse to speak of the “Enemy” while in the wilderness. Another character says, “Some things are ill to hear when the world’s in shadow.” And even while the characters are in a place of refuge and safety, at one point Gandalf says, ‘Evil things do not come into this valley; but all the same we should not name them.” There is an evil “master”, “whose power is again stretching out over the world! We are sitting in a fortress. [But outside] it is getting dark.”

Tomorrow, in the bright sunlight of morning, it feels so natural to shout joyful Alleluias in praise. But right now, during these nighttime hours, I feel a hesitance, almost a discomfort saying those same words. Could the good news be true? And this is why I so treasure the Easter Vigil, because the fearful uncertainty of this night, the fearful uncertainty of the disciples, I think so closely mirrors our own fear and uncertainty. We have all seen the horror of the cross. We are taught to fear evil’s many names in our world, because like in the Lord of the Rings, we are told if you speak the true nature and name of evil, it will seek you out and destroy you. We are taught not to name the evil of greed. The evil of war. The evil of homophobia. The evil of racism. The evil of addiction. The evil of isolation. The evil of sickness. And above all, we are taught to fear the names of these evils because we have been taught to fear their companion – our most ancient Enemy – death.

But this . . . is why . . . each year . . . on this night, we gather to tell stories. Story after story of God’s deliverance to the oppressed, to the downtrodden, to the broken, and to the poor in body and spirit. We hold vigil together on this night, and in those stories name the evils of this world, because “early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark” . . . the ancient evil died. Not with a clap of thunder or even a whimper. But in silence. The Spirit of life quietly entered again into the wounded body lying in the tomb. With that first breath, the smell of spices and perfume that had anointed the body probably filled his nose. Christ opened his eyes in the darkness and quiet of the early morning. First untangling the wrappings from his arms and legs, he removed the cloth from his head and, rolling it up, set it beside him. And he who had been crucified, died, and was buried… Got. Up. “Could it be true?” I asked. “Could it really be true?” asked Peter and John. And it was perhaps not in the bright sun of morning, but the deep purple of night that Mary gave her witness, “I have seen the Lord.”

Watercolor painting of Frodo & Gandalf by Alan Lee

Alleluia, He is Risen! – He is Risen indeed, Alleluia!

Amen

Amen & Amen

Over the past few months – though really for a good while longer – my thoughts have often returned to this day: International Non-Binary People’s Day. And in those thoughts the biggest obstacle with which I have wrestled was not so much whether I wanted to write today (looking around at our current social climate I am not wanting for inspiration), but precisely what I wanted to write.

Many times I’ve started this piece.

Sometimes, I’ve started by listing the extensive scientific and biological evidence that shows there are not two sexes, nor are there two genders. I’ve written long sentences engaging subtle differences in hormones, chromosomes and genetic makeup, formation of genitalia, puberty, and sexuality. I have written and learned about how common sexual and gender variations are in other animals and plants around the world…

But that’s not what I want to write today.

Other times I have started off digging into my Christian faith. I’ve studied the parsing of the Hebrew and Greek Biblical texts, and listed the words whose meanings we have mistranslated or missed altogether. I have written pages upon pages excitedly gushing over the Jewish theologies in the Pentateuch and our Hebrew Bible about Genesis – beginnings. I have whispered in awe to my friends and family about the subtleties of different Greco-Roman sociocultural frameworks of sex and gender, and how they affected the Biblical writers and early Jesus-followers. I have taken so – many – notes – on the ways history and faith have not, cannot be copied and pasted across time and culture…

But that’s not what I want to write today either.

Still other times I have begun writing by sharing my lived experience. I’ve looked back on how even at a young age I loved to paint my nails and dwell deeply within my emotions. I’ve listed endless childhood encouragements to “bulk up” and endless jeers from classmates at my weight and build, when the issues with my body have really never been my own. I’ve written with a smile about how liberating it was for my self-image to not be forced towards some absurd notion of masculinity that I never really cared for anyway…

Yet, this third idea wasn’t what I wanted to write today either. None of these approaches have ever felt right, and I think I understand why:

Today is not about asking for validation.

What makes me excited about the science of sex, gender identity, and sexuality isn’t writing prooftexts, it’s seeing the deeper ways in which we are intertwined with our planet and the life that exists across its land, skies, and seas. What makes me excited about pondering Scripture is the way that it celebrates the fullness of life, not the ways we use the Bible to restrict and diminish it. It’s the joy of knowing that God works continually to help us live into the fullness of ourselves from our first breath to our last- in the face of humanity’s incredible potential to harm ourselves and Creation – this is what makes me excited about my faith and a life of ministry.

This is what today is about: living into the fullness of ourselves.

It’s learning to paint your nails or put on a crisp wing of eyeliner in your mid-twenties. It’s to laugh, awestruck, as a word which has been used to break and chain bodies becomes a key to their liberation. It’s planning a different kind of wedding for a marriage that continually challenges you to love more deeply and genuinely. And it’s so that I can serve faithfully in the ministry of the Lutheran church, knowing that God has called me to be a pastor – not in spite of my non-binary gender identity, but with that gender identity as a part of that call.

This is a fearful time for so many of us who are gender nonconforming. The principalities and powers humanity has designed continually seek to stamp out that which has always been:

“God looked at the whole of what God had made and indeed it was very good . . . And so the heavens and the earth and all that was in them were completed.”

You know, in spite of its common use as such, the word “amen” is not a meant to be the punctuation mark on a sentence. “Amen” is an affirmation – a vocal professed affirmative “truly”.

Today is not about asking for validation, because validation is inherent to our very being. What I am is very good. What you are is very good.

Amen and amen

From the Bottom Up

First Reading // Jeremiah 23:1-6

Psalm 46:1-11

Second Reading // Colossians 1:11-20

Gospel // Luke 23:33-43

Today marks our yearly celebration of Christ the King Sunday . . . And what a king he must be. So great that we declare him to be king of kings and lord of lords. In our scripture from the prophecies of Jeremiah this morning, God says, “I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.” These words almost paint a picture for us of Jesus’ power, of his majesty, of him seated on a grand throne at the very right hand of God. 

Then with the Psalmist we declare together, “God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be shaken; God shall help it at the break of day. The nations rage, and the kingdoms shake; God speaks, and the earth melts away . . . The Lord of hosts . . . is with us” . . . I get goosebumps. The halls of power? The very earth itself? Shaking and melting from nothing more than the voice of the Creator? What a fantastic and powerful God ours must be!  

Then we read in Colossians words from perhaps the most ancient of Christian hymns, that: “[Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; [that] in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” How impressive, how beautiful, how awe-some must it be to witness the Christ, the Messiah, whose very being binds us together, who causes the cosmos itself to cohere.  

And so we turn at last to our Gospel! To our Savior! Here he is! We get to see him in the written word before us! And so in Luke we read, “When they came to the place that is called The Skull they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his*” Wait, hold on . . . (shuffles pages) something must be wrong, because there’s no way that guy is the king we’ve been hearing about, regardless of the wooden sign hanging over him. No way they just nailed the Messiah to a tree and killed him. That’s completely absurd . . . disgusting . . .  outrageous. That’s not the truth. I refuse to believe that’s the truth. 

I wonder what the disciples were thinking as they stood around Jesus that morning. When the events of the past few days had left their world seemingly wrecked. When it seemed every one of their hopes had been utterly dashed. I wonder how sad they must have been. How confused. Angry. Frightened. When the Messiah they expected would begin a revolution against the greatest empire the world had ever known, when that supposed-Messiah was brutally murdered on a cross . . . a manner so vicious, the empire wouldn’t even do it to their own citizens. Everything about this Gospel experience feels wrong when we see it alongside the texts glorifying and testifying to what our Messiah, our Savior should be. This Gospel is supposed to be “good news”, but feels like just the opposite. Yes, Jesus does say to one of the criminals crucified with him, “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” But that’s big talk after a day of being brutalized by the powers of the state, while you’re hanging on a tree, slowly dying. 

So . . . Christ the King Sunday, huh? This isn’t the kingly face we recognize. This isn’t the kingly face we expected. What does it mean, that when the Messiah came to humankind in the person of Jesus, this is how the Son of God chose to present his power? What does it mean for us, as followers of that God, and of that Jesus? What kind of quote-unquote “rule” are we talking about? What kind of king? 

Just about three months ago, I helped lead orientation for the ELCA’s Young Adults in Global Mission program, often shortened to the lovely acronym “YAGM”. The 10-month experience sends young adult volunteers into communities all over the world to live and dwell with the people there. For two years the program has been on hiatus, since COVID cut short the 2020 year of service. But to get to see the program resume, to get to see the joy and excitement on the faces of twenty-four incredible young people, about to begin a year unlike anything they can imagine, in service to the global church . . . Few experiences in my life have been so fulfilling to witness. But I do admit I’m biased, I served in the program myself back in 2018 and 2019, in a suburb of Buenos Aires, Argentina. If you’ve gone on a mission trip or service trip, even if it was much closer to home, you might remember the feeling of anticipation before the journey. Even though you know that no matter how you imagine it, it will still surprise you or defy your expectations, you can’t help but think about what it will be like.  

I wonder if this isn’t unlike what the disciples were thinking, before the terrible events of Jesus’ passion. Remember that just five days earlier, they had watched Jesus ride triumphantly into Jerusalem. The donkey-steed was a strange touch, they thought, but the people still cheered, waving palm fronds and even laying their very cloaks on the road before him. Jesus had uttered phrases like “I shall tear down and rebuild [the great] temple in three days.” He had performed miracles that were exceedingly rare – opening the eyes of the blind and even raising the dead back to life. These were all things that their holy texts had said the Messiah was supposed to be able to do. The Psalms, the great prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah, and the books of the law all said this is what is supposed to happen when the King of Kings comes to fulfill God’s covenant with Jerusalem. People received Jesus like a king, because many of them expected he was the one who would change everything to be just the way they had prayed for and hoped. The one who would teach them how to live. And then instead of that, he ended up getting arrested, horribly beaten, and killed. The head they looked upon was not crowned with gold, but instead with woven thorns. The face they looked upon was not bright and gleaming with oil, but instead was dark and bloodied. He was not seated on a throne, but instead hung from a tree. A cursed way to die. It was all opposite. All wrong.

When I think about conversations with YAGM volunteers from years past and present, it doesn’t matter where we were – in rural Madagascar, in the bustling Soweto township of Johannesburg, South Africa, or in downtown Mexico City. None of us, in the beginning, expected to find Christ in the faces where he most plainly appeared. One of my dear friends saw him in the face of a missing migrant-man, who was traveling by means of La Bestia, the Beast. An infamous train-track that runs north towards the U.S. border, and whose name comes from the many pieces of infrastructure that seek to break the bodies of those who would try to jump the train. Another of my friends saw Christ in many quiet conversations with his host family’s house-keeper, when there was no one else to talk to, and only in a language his tongue labored to speak. I myself found it in the bent body and wrinkled face of Osvaldo, whose disability a year earlier might have meant I dismissed him out-of-hand. However, never have I seen “the joy and love of Christ” expressed more plainly than in Osvaldo’s denture-d smile. 

So often, when we think of Christ as a ruler, we might be inclined to think about how the “rule” of this world often works. But it was Jesus himself who said, “my kingdom” or kin-dom, as I often phrase it, “is not of this world”. So often we expect power to come from the top down. From our government. From our pulpits. From our teachers. From our parents. But we learn today in Colossians that ours is not a “from-the-top-down” kind of God. Ours is a “from-the-bottom-up” kind of God, and in that God and Christ, all things come into being. It’s difficult to see when simply reading this, but when we share in these words from Colossians, we join them in singing one of the oldest Christian hymns in existence: we sing about a Messiah, who in the image of an ordinary human being, the fullness of God was pleased to reside. A God who suffered death and was buried. Only to rise on the third day. 

 Ours is not a “top-down” kind of God. In Jesus, God took “from-the-top-down” power, put it to death, and when the tomb cracked open showed us a different way. A from-the-bottom-up kind of way. For some, this might seem like weakness, but if we begin to doubt God’s incredible power, I urge us to remember what we have already declared with the ancient Hebrews in our Psalm: the power of the Creator is such that simple speech brings matter into being and causes it to melt away. But Jesus shows us how God chooses to use that power. To revive. To reconcile – which is a fancy way of saying “to bring all things back into the fullness of my love”. 

Christ the King Sunday is an opportunity to celebrate a different kind of power. To celebrate new growth from the bottom-up, even as the top-down way of this world seeks to gray and wither us. It is such a vibrant way to be, to live in a bottom-up world, if we can learn to accept its truth. A world that brings all of creation back into the fold through the divine embrace. A way of life that encourages us to be the very arms reaching out to those whom others attempt to cast out. And it is in this world that we are called to live, to break bread, and above all else to share with one another the joy and love that is Christ’s peace. Ours is a world where, even when it seems that death is all that surrounds us, we can look to the cross and hear Christ say, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” Amen

If you would like to view a recording of the sermon, it can be accessed at United in Faith Lutheran Church’s YouTube page here, timestamped at 33’54”:

In peace,

Eric

A Full Answer

First Reading // Psalm 17:1-9

Gospel // Luke 20:27-38

Grace and peace to you all, in the name of Jesus Christ, our Liberator and our Redeemer, Amen

Sometimes… In fact, a lot of the time, I think ministry can feel like Jesus’ experience at the temple in our Gospel text today. Here come the legal experts, your candidacy commit*, I mean… the Sadducees. And they politely but intensely ask you, “In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.” Now, if I were to translate the Sadducees’ question into one that contemporary religious experts might ask, I could phrase it… I don’t know, something like… And this is just off the top of my head here, but… “In the church, therefore, will you be Word and Service or Word and Sacrament? For you can’t possibly be married to both.” That being just one random hypothetical example. 

I digress… As we have heard over the past few weeks, this section in the gospel of Luke tells us a number of stories about different scribes and experts in the law posing various legal and rhetorical questions to Jesus, to test him. Unsurprisingly then, some parts of today’s text are familiar terrain. For example, we’ve heard a good deal already about caring for the widow, the sick, and the poor. However, something unique in today’s Gospel are the people offering the question to Jesus. This reading is the only time the Sadducees are specifically mentioned by name in Luke, and the writer immediately qualifies them as *quote* “those who say there is no resurrection” *unquote*. As you may have noticed, resurrection is a key theme in both their question and in Jesus’ answer, but this resurrection focus should probably be more ascribed to the motivations of the gospel-writer. We should be cautious in over-emphasizing any one aspect of the Sadducees’ thinking, lest we read too deeply into our limited knowledge of this ancient Jewish sect. 

That said, I have spent a lot of time sitting with the Sadducees in this Gospel text over the past few weeks. Their clever legal test is quite the conundrum. In some ways, it reminds me of philosophy’s classic “trolley problem”. In case you haven’t heard it, I’ll pose it quickly. You see that a trolley is traveling downhill at high speed, and then realize with horror that there are three people tied to the tracks in front of the trolley. The brakes are out, and the trolley can’t be slowed before it hits them. However, within reach you notice a rail-switch – a lever – that would move the trolley onto a second track just before it hits the people. You have enough time to pull the switch and save the three who are trapped, but then you realize the second track also has a person tied to the rails. The classic question is: Do you pull the switch? Do you let the trolley hit the three, or pull the lever and save them, even though it would mean taking responsibility for hitting the person on the other track? . . . My answer to this question is usually an irritated groan. Yeah yeah, it’s a clever philosophical test, but ultimately someone’s getting crushed. It feels like an impossible question to answer. And there is central issue of the Gospel today. What do we do with impossible questions? Why do people ask them and what is the real question here? Do we take the Sadducees’ test at face value? Or is the real meaning hidden behind their question? 

First, let’s consider the scene. Jesus is teaching at the temple in these readings. For the people of the time, the temple was a place where authority and right-ness of teaching were consistently brought into question by experts in the law. The fact that Jesus is teaching there, being questioned by those very experts, and that he has garnered quite a crowd of listeners is noteworthy. It’s noteworthy because it means Jesus has begun to get a reputation for his thinking and his wisdom. But this wisdom is a subversive one, an unconventional one. Now, we should also pay attention to the kind of questions being asked of Jesus – problem after problem, all of them about authority and power. And all of them with frustrating twists. There’s something we can identify with, pastors, professors, and seminarians alike; boy do people like to ask back-handed questions . . . Oftentimes, like many of those posed to Jesus here in Luke, these questions are designed specifically to be legal and moral traps. Their goal is to catch you out, to get you to say the wrong thing, to admit your guilt or insufficient wisdom. Surely no one in the room can relate to that. 

However, people usually ask these frustrating questions because they care about something. Very often because they care deeply about something. So if our goal is to get to the motivation behind the question, we should seek to understand what care or concern inspired the words. Sometimes, the care behind our questions comes from a place of selfishness – out of greed or the goal of self-preservation. We can see this in the instance of those who grumbled against Jesus’ meal with Zacchaeus in our reading last week, or in the “but why?” that so often comes up in conversations about expansive inclusion. We tend to prioritize the preservation of our own comfort and power, rather than share it with others . . . In other times, though, the care that motivates a frustrating question can come from a place of genuine concern – for loved ones, or for a community. And in still other times, in fact this may be the most common case, there is a mixture of both – selfishness and genuine concern in the questions we ask. With this in mind, let’s look again at the question of the Sadducees. 

The almost-impossible scenario posed here to Jesus is working on a couple of different levels. The clearest and topmost layer has to do with what life will be like in the resurrection. At this point in history – and honestly maybe nowadays too – it was expected by many people that the resurrection would involve a continuation of life as they knew it. And that helps explain the second layer of the Sadducee’s question, this subject of marriage. The marriage referred to here, of a widow to her widower’s brothers, is called levirate marriage. It was a method for preserving the family-line, life, property, and wealth of the widow in case of a tragic loss. Even though the notion of levirate marriage is not necessarily a method of binding women, it is of course a partial result. It would be wise for us to pause for a moment and recognize, even if it was not by design, the way this system easily erases the autonomy and agency of women. Moreover, if we find ourselves tempted down lines thought that would disparage the culture and laws of our Jewish siblings, past and present, I would encourage us to first examine closely the ways our own laws bind and oppress human beings . . . Back to the question of the Sadducees; it becomes clearer in this context, even it’s if not easier to answer. 

So, we might understand the question, but now comes the harder part: to discern our response to it. Firstly, and most importantly, sometimes no response is owed. When the sanctity of ourselves or our lives is being questioned, we are never obligated to bare our trauma or pain to those who only ask questions designed to harm us. However, if we do see a genuine care within the frustrating question, and if we choose to respond, what do we say? Here we turn to Christ’s answer to the Sadducees. As much as their question might have been posed with hooks designed to catch and snag, the question behind the question seems to be concerned with security. “Alright, teacher” the Sadducees seem to be asking. “How exactly is this whole resurrection thing going work? Who takes care of this woman? Who protects the family property and inheritance?” Jesus’ response respectfully tells them, “You are askin’ the wrong question.” It’s not we who are gonna to be doin’ the defending and securing. The resurrection-life Jesus is talking about, is a different kind of life. God will do the protecting. God will do the securing. And in more than just the essentials. “The day-to-day struggle isn’t going to be an issue anymore,” Jesus says. No, God is doing this in a way that guarantees fullness of life for all involved. In the case of the woman widowed seven times over, the patriarchal bonds of her earthly life are broken. In the kin-dom of God, her well-being is guaranteed; “there is no longer any need for us to marry, protect, and secure one another,” Jesus says. He goes on to say, later in this same chapter, that the only reason widows even need securing in the first place, is because you men have built a world that eagerly seeks to consume and devour her when she is alone. The Gospel says, “No longer.” The divine mother has guaranteed safety and bodily autonomy to her daughters for eternity. 

Our call in this text, as ministers, as Lutherans, and as human beings is to discern the root of challenging questions, and to offer whatever answer heralds the fullness of life which God has promised. And siblings in Christ, if sometimes you feel like you don’t have all the answers to the questions and uncertainties pouring into your mind, rest in the fact that Jesus left questions unanswered too. There’s so much he didn’t say to the Sadducees about what the resurrection world will be like. But in our scripture today, it doesn’t just say that this is the God of our future. No, this is the God of our present. It says our God is of the living. Both those who have lived in the past. And those who are living, right here, right now. Our calling as Christians is the forward movement of the already-and-not-yet. This does not exempt us from working to break the chains of this life that continue to bind and oppress, but rather demands that we begin that justice-work at once. From the pulpit, at the polls, and in the public meeting place. As a response to the fullness gifted to us by God. God’s fullness of life will be for all in the resurrection, yes, but through Christ and the Spirit God’s fullness has already broken into creation. And ours are the hands prying wider the cracks out of which pours the wellspring of God’s righteous and liberating grace. This is a grace that seeps into broken things. A grace that seeps into bones, broken by police brutality . . . A grace that seeps into glass storefronts shattered by hatred . . . A grace that seeps into a broken earth whose skies choke with ash and whose ground holds the memory of so many innocent lives lost . . . And that grace declares, “They are not dead, for to God all of them are alive.”

If you would like to view a recording of the sermon, it can be accessed at LSTC’s YouTube page here:

In peace,

Eric

The Mantle of the Women // Easter 4

First Reading // Acts 9:36-43
Psalm 23
Second Reading // Revelation 7:9-17
Gospel // John 10:22-30

The 1960s were a time of great upheaval in the world; social movements came to a head as advocates denounced the discrimination of systemic racism under Jim Crow. This was happening as rockets carried the first human beings to our planet’s moon, and we were able to look back upon our world and see it for what it was – a small blue marble, floating in the ocean of space. At the same time war raged in Vietnam, another war was raging, one hidden away in laboratories and offices scattered around the world. But this too was a global conflict, one that shook the very foundations of our civilization on this planet. A few scientists were arguing that the planet’s surface was moving. Until this point, most experts thought that the continents and oceans had always been as they were, locked into place, but new evidence was beginning to convince them that they were very wrong. It turned out, that the earth’s crust – what we had known as the thick and solid bedrock of humanity – was not so thick and solid, but in fact was floating. Not on an ocean of water, but an ocean of gooey, plastic rock. 

Maybe you’ve made a crock-pot of nacho cheese before. And if you let it set there, a kind of skin will form over the surface of the cheese, but then if you turn the heat back on, that skin starts to crack and break apart, getting pulled back down into the warm-gooey-goodness and remelts. That’s what scientists were saying happens to, not just mountains and valleys, but whole continents and oceans! This announcement flew in the face of centuries of scientific research. How could you possibly know that from a few cracks and holes in the Earth’s surface, people asked? Some said it flew in the face of God! But by the 70s, nearly all the scientists of the world agreed, the theory was right. The continents moved because of complex forces down in the mantle, the layer below the Earth’s crust. If one of those Apollo astronauts, as they floated out in space, had been able to reach out and pick up our planet when it was the size of a basketball, the crust of our Earth at that size, which seems so strong and thick, is actually thinner than the skin of an apple. Our understanding of the world had just been changed forever, and even today we know very little about the mantle of the Earth, and how exactly it keeps the continents rolling. 

Oftentimes, when we look at the Bible, we don’t realize that we’re viewing it from a height of thirty thousand feet. We see a small piece of a landscape, and in truth it often offers a marvelous view, but we fail to realize that the Bible, its history, its formation and its figures are a whole planet, a world complex and solid, with depth far beyond the flat pages we’re reading. The world of Scripture is one that we know, frankly, about as well as we do our own world and its geology. But today we get a glimpse into its depths, into a story that comes up only once every three years in our lectionary, this year on Mother’s Day. It tends to be that the further you travel from the center of our Christian tradition, the more women appear in our history and narratives. Their stories appear routinely on the edges, partially lost, often cast out and hidden, which has often caused men to believe the women were never there. But like the glowing cracks of rock on the edges of our continents, hidden beneath the seas, one can look closely and see their stories. We find inscriptions on tombs and graves with names and titles, like one that reads “Ammion – presbytera”, the feminine word for priest. Rarer still is the evidence in the Bible itself, holes in a narrative written almost exclusively by men. Of course there are the “Marys”, and in Romans 16:7 we can read, “Junia, outstanding among the apostles”, and then today in Acts we read, “a disciple whose name was Tabitha.” The story of the only woman given the title of “disciple” in the entire New Testament, whose name in the Aramaic is Tabitha, and in the Greek, Dorcas. We still don’t know much about who Dorcas was, but we do know what she did. The devotion expressed by the community of widows shows their intense love and care for Dorcas. The goods and wares these widows display for Peter point to Dorcas as a woman of means and skill in artisanry. And what of these widows? In the ancient world, widows with wealth and property might retain them, but only a tiny group of the population lived with any real disposable income. For the rest, especially widows, separated from the men which were the primary means towards power and any financial security, life was tenuous. There is a reason that widows are often pointed out as requiring special care and attention in Scripture. 

We read that Dorcas “was devoted to good works and charity”, but the Greek implies this was not occasional, but a continuous action of good works and charity to her community. In writing on the text this week, Professor Raj Nadella notes that whereas other benefactors in the New Testament are stingy with their giving, as in the case of Ananias and Sapphira, or in the case of men assigned the title of deacon elsewhere in Acts, we hear little of their actual ministry. Dorcas, evidently without the same formal title, is doing the work of a deacon in her community, and is doing it in abundance. Mother’s Day is a holiday fraught with challenges, especially for a preacher presenting masculinity, okay in spite of my red nails… Not everyone has a relationship with their mother worth celebrating. Motherhood carries with it twisted expectations of women’s bodies, and their role in our world. Not all bodies are blessed with the ability to give birth. Not all women want to give birth. But, if I may offer this, Dorcas’ ministry and role as a ministerial leader breaks the mold. By acting as sister and mother to these widows, she takes on a non-traditional motherly role; Mother’s Day is a day for celebrating the incredible women who care for us, yes those who birth us, but those who accompany us and lead us in all the different aspects of our lives. This is a congregation who has called multiple female pastors, has many women active in leading and teaching this church. I myself would not be here without the women of this congregation and the women pastors of my home congregation who affirmed my call. Dorcas’ ministry is a forge of heat and energy for a community in need, even if those visible on the surface, those sent to tell Peter to heal her, were two men. 

The driving heat of earth’s mantle gives rise to worldly motion. The crust is lighter and so floats, so it retains visibility, but it is the mass and heat of the mantle which drives the motion and life of the overlying plates. We so often scorn the visible effects of the mantle, spewing ash and molten rock onto the surface, but the motion of the plates makes the evolution of life possible, and the effects of volcanic activity produce the very soil which provides lush grapes and good wine. The crust of masculinity above the mantle of the early church continually tries to cover over it, to smother it, to quench its head and hide, bury its presence. But the churning power of the mantle does not draw its energy from above and outside, but from within. From the churning heart and core of our mother Earth. You know, the scientific words for the earth’s layers, like the Bible, comes from the Greek. The crust is called the Lithosphere, from the Greek “lithos” meaning “rock”. The mantle, though, is called the Asthenosphere. And do you know what its given name “asthenos” means? It means “without strength”. “Without strength”, is what they decided to name the force that changes the face of the earth and remakes it. No, today instead we read, “Tabitha, get up.” Amen

In grace and peace on this Mother’s Day,

Eric

Green From Ash // Lent 1

First Reading // Deuteronomy 26:1-11
Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16
Second Reading // Romans 10:8b-13
Gospel // Luke 4:1-13


At the end of January, I returned from a journey in the wilderness, though it wasn’t forty days – more like fourteen. And the subtitle for the beginning of my 2022 wasn’t so much “Eric, full of the Holy Spirit, was led into the wilderness”, as it was “uh oh… if Eric has to spend another Chicago January on Zoom, we might need to give them a psych-evaluation”. So amidst the raging omicron variant, I journeyed with a professor and some of my peers to a snow-buried village, pressed against the valley walls of the Glacier Peak wilderness in northern Washington – a place whose name some of you may know by the Evening Prayer written for it in the winter of 1986: Holden Village. The story of how the Lutheran Church acquired Holden is a sermon all its own, but it was given to the church as a run-down copper mine from the World Wars. The primary mission of Holden is to heal the landscape from the mine’s damage – a process that, even with the combined efforts of the Village and the mining company, will take centuries. 

Village though it may be, Holden is far removed from the outside world. It took two planes, a bus, and a two-hour ferry – sixty miles up Lake Chelan – just to get to Holden’s dock at the mouth of the valley. After all that, there was still one final hourlong bus-ride up a winding mountain road, through no less than eighteen active avalanche-chutes. Needless to say, it’s not a place you want to break a leg. To be at Holden is to always be keenly aware of your own vulnerability. And our readings today show us several windows into God’s protecting presence over God’s chosen people. The journey of those people is long. It involves surmounting incredible odds: refugees fleeing famine, who are enslaved and forced into the labor of an empire, freed only to become migrants – walking the wilderness in search of a faraway promised land. The wilderness – true wilderness – is not a hospitable place. You can do a lot to prepare, but it has a way of reminding you where human power ends, and God’s begins. 

As hard as it was for us to believe with six feet of snow on the ground, the dry seasons at Holden are long and intense. Wildfire risk is a part of life there. So when in 2015, a lightning strike sparked a blaze near Wolverine creek down-lake, there wasn’t immediate cause for panic amongst the villagers living in the dense green forest at Holden. As the fire grew, there was concern it might block access to the village road, and so they evacuated nonessential personnel as a precaution, but the blaze was staying close to the lake, and burning relatively slowly. And then the weather changed. In a couple of days the fire exploded in size, and jumped the road that should have been a fire-break. The village was now in need of serious protection. As the Wolverine Fire clawed its way up the valley, fire crews prepared for its arrival. Holden’s buildings were covered like giant presents in fire-resistant wrapping paper, sprinklers were set up on porches, and smaller fires were even intentionally set to burn the fuel around the village so that when the fire arrived, it would hopefully burn around Holden, rather than through it. And the village had one other trick up its sleeve – the Rain Birds. Think about a garden sprinkler, you know, the *chu – chu – chu – ch-ch-ch-ch-ch*. Each of the Rain Birds is like one of those, but with a firehose feeding it, instead of the hose in your garden. The massive amount of water they spray literally changes the air, creating a dome of humidity and dropping the temperature by dozens of degrees. And so, after three terrifying weeks, through some combination of the skill of the fire-crews and a measure God’s grace, the shield held. The lush valley walls had been reduced to a terrain of blackened spires, but Holden Village had been spared, a green jewel set into a landscape of ashes. 

Before the fire, you might not have been able to tell that the mountainsides carpeted with dense green trees and brush were sick. But they were. For the centuries since the indigenous peoples were purged from the landscape, it had not been allowed to burn, so that, rather than a patchwork-quilt of meadow, grassland, and different types of forest, the land had grown up tree upon tree – tightly packed, each fighting for light against its encroaching neighbors. So then, when the fire did happen, it couldn’t be stopped – starved for so long, it ate everything and left the land bare. The world, which we have pretended for so long to be under our control, has begun to push back against our power. The combination of longer dry seasons from a warming climate and overgrown landscapes are resulting in more and more megafires. The fear of losing control over what we believe belongs to us – our land, resources, and borders – is feeding the rise of authoritarianism across the globe and has again sparked war in Europe. I always said growing up that Lent was my favorite church season, but man, Lent is supposed to be forty days, not three years… Yet, here we are again, looking out over the wilderness. 

Now I can’t turn stone to bread, but when given the choice between trusting that God can fix this mess, and staking out whatever claim I can to make my bit of wilderness a bit cozier… it’s a lot easier to take and hoard than it is to trust and have faith. Yet, it’s precisely in moments like these where my thoughts return to Holden – a community of people, of whom many have difficult relationships with God and the church, who have come to live together in Christian community. Who have come together to listen to and care for the land and one another. The view of the landscape at Holden is dominated by three enormous hills called “the Tailings”, piles of toxic mining waste hundreds of feet high. These scars on the land are a daily reminder of the work yet to be done, a reminder that Holden only exists because of people who tore into the mountain for no other reason than to take. Yet it was the commitment of Holden to restore the landscape, that meant people were out there to save that bit of forest when the Wolverine Fire came through. That surviving jewel of green is a place now for the forest to begin growing outward again, and indeed it has begun to grow out and up the mountain slopes. New patches of green emerge each year, and the first trees have even begun to take root into the toxic piles of the Tailings themselves – reaching down into the earth to heal and give new life.  

The example of Holden reminds us that the way we build resiliency is by leaning on one another, trusting that God will work in and through us to restore and bring new life. Many times throughout the journey of God’s people, we find them presented with a choice – a choice that Jesus too was given by the devil in the Gospel – a choice between trying to take power for ourselves, or choosing to trust in God’s power. Alone, the choice is hard. But we aren’t meant to make the choice on our own. Even Jesus, the Son of God was not one, but is always three – God, Christ, and Spirit together in the wilderness. We aren’t meant to do this alone, but in community. We can do a great deal through God, amidst seemingly impossible odds – that’s the whole message of Lent – looking to the impossible gift of life brought by a cross which should only have brought death. Like the community at Holden, this Christian body is able to bring life to a landscape and people in need of renewal and care, not apart from the world, but a part of the world. Lent is a reminder that the wilderness is not just a place of isolation, but a place for coming together in eager and resolute anticipation of new life from the ashes. Amen 

Peace be with you, as we journey the wilderness,


Eric

A Eulogy In-Between // All Saint’s Sunday

First Reading: Isaiah 25:6-9

Second Reading: Revelation 21:1-6a

Gospel Reading: John 11:32-44

Greetings in Christ to you, dear people of God, on this especially humbling All Saint’s Sunday,

 . . . This week I found myself thinking back to a day a couple of years ago, when I was a live-in assistant at a community for dis-abled adults in Argentina called El Arca. The oldest member of our family was a seventy-two-year-old man named Osvaldo, Osvi for short. One part of our daily routine at the home was a period of rest after lunch, followed by afternoon tea. So each day, after a very welcome nap, we assistants would get everyone up for the meal. 

Many afternoons when I went to wake Osvi, he would already be out of bed, singing, laughing, or working at his desk, in a bedroom which was covered entirely with the blue and gold of his favorite futbol club. On this day though, he wasn’t up yet, so I knocked on his door and asked the customary “Permisso?” before entering.. I moved into the dark room, the shade still drawn over the window, and heard no response as I said, “Osvi.. Boquito mio.. Es tiempo para levantarse.. – Buddy.. It’s time to wake up..” Still hearing nothing, I clicked on the light to reveal that familiar room of blue and gold. Even the bedsheets and quilt bore the colors. Now, Osvi could be a hard sleeper sometimes, and I repeated the wake-up call as I moved closer to his bed. No response. As I got up next to him now, I furrowed my brow, and felt my stomach sink a little bit. Like I said, Osvi could be a hard sleeper, but man.. He was out today. On top of that, he has a very thin frame, and while sleeping he doesn’t have his dentures in, so his gaunt face looks even more so. What’s even worse is that his eyes don’t quite close when he sleeps, so he’s got these little slits of white for eyes, and now I panic for a moment. I can’t see any movement of his chest. I shake his shoulder a bit, saying, “Osvaldo?? Osvi, Che – es tiempo para levantar – Bud. It’s time to get up.” I shake him again, a little harder now, definitely panicking and suddenly feeling really sweaty. And just as I am about to call out to one of the other assistants in full panic, I hear an “Ahhhhhhhhhhh..” as Osvi lets out a sigh and rolls over, sluggishly waking to the world. “Ay, por DIOS – good GOD”, I remember saying, and storming out of the room to laugh off my remaining fear to one of the other assistants. 

Now, Osvi’s little Lazarus moment ultimately gave us all a good laugh that afternoon, and another chuckle to me as I thought back on it this week. However, in our readings for today, it’s not laughing, but tears.. that we find again and again throughout the scriptures. . . . Yet, they’re also mixed with words like “rejoice” and “be glad.” What a strange day isn’t it? All Saint’s Day? This mix of life and death, sadness and joy. I suppose that’s what you get when you add in a reading from the book of Revelation though, huh? You know, a funny thing about Revelation is that in Spanish bibles it’s known by another name: “apocalipsis”. Love that. Nothing says “Good News” like ending the Bible with the apocalypse. But that word, “apocalypse”, which seems to come up all too often in news and conversation nowadays has a very different meaning in the biblical sense. It comes from a Greek word which means to peel back a layer, to reveal what lies beneath. It’s partly from that “reveal” that we get our English name for the book – “revelation”. Now don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of language throughout apocalyptic literature on the end of the world, that’s true, but it’s much more about revealing a new way of seeing things. About showing a deeper meaning hidden within what we thought we understood. It can be a comforting thing, right? To hear a deeper meaning in the midst of a world that on the surface is often so full of fear and pain. A world which right now groans against the burden of climate change. Against this continued pandemic. Against another year of losing those dear to us. Apocalyptic literature like we read in Isaiah and Revelation was intended to be a comfort for ancient peoples, and for us too – stories of a God working beneath and within all that to bring about our salvation. To “destroy . . . the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; [that God] will swallow up death forever.” That’s the whole thing behind the Messiah right? That our God would save us, God’s own people, from the unbelievable brokenness of our own messiness.  

The question often on my mind for the last eighteen months then, is so what the heck happened? We’re supposed to be the people of God founded in this community in Christ, right? Where new life has broken into the old world. And maybe like some of you, after the first year of the pandemic had passed, and as the vaccine rollout began, I was starting to feel like maybe this was possible; that our rescue and salvation were close at hand – my aging family members were finally fully vaccinated, and my own first dose was on the calendar. 

Then, on the week of my birthday last April.. even as my own arm was still sore from the shot, I received a WhatsApp message from Flor, one of the Argentinian assistants at El Arca. A number of folx in the community – despite an abundance of care, had finally tested positive. Osvi was one of them. Even before I got to the part of the message saying he had been hospitalized, I knew that the outlook wouldn’t be good. For someone as old and weak as Osvi was, the best practice was prevention, not treatment. As is often the case when hardship arrives, I prayed more that week than I had in months. Monday came and went with a blur of emotions amidst my normal classes. On Tuesday we got another text from Flor – Osvi’s condition had worsened. I remember praying that he would see his own birthday on that Wednesday. His was that same week, only two days before my own. The day came and went. And then Thursday morning on the 15th of April, the news came. Though with the help of a ventilator, Osvi had made it to seventy-three, and then passed in the early hours of the next morning. . . . 

“‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’” 

. . . Or so we are told Mary said. “Where is the God of Isaiah now?”, I imagine she wondered. Where is the, quote “LORD for whom we have waited”, unquote? I imagine many of us have felt that. Over the last two years, or in some other part of our lives. God knows . . . that I felt it that week this past April, and many times since . . . We’re told that when Jesus heard and saw this grieving for Lazarus, that he was “greatly disturbed”. But a truer translation might be that he felt anger. Some scholars have said that it was an anger at those around him for their lack of faith, but one of my professors this week offered a different understanding. What if Jesus was angry at death? At disease and sickness and the unfairness of it all? . . . Now, the “four days” mentioned in the Gospel text are important – Jews believed the soul of a person remained around the body for three days before leaving to the heavenly realms. It was on the day when the miracle should have no longer been possible, the fourth, that Lazarus was resurrected. And as miraculous as it is, it wasn’t exactly the be-all-end-all, was it? Lazarus wasn’t raised immortal – we can’t find him in some market in Jerusalem today to ask him how it happened. He had to die again. Jesus’s “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” was offered to Mary not just as a promise of the now, but also of the future. The Apostle Paul says that we Christians are an “already, and not yet” people. And I wish with all my might that I could make sense of this “already and not yet” sort of day, but I can’t. Except to point us again towards the Christ, both above us and within our midst. 

If I had to point to one person in my life who best exemplified Jesus’s joy, it would undoubtedly be Osvi. Never have I known a person to live in such genuine gladness – and the hundreds of other people who have met him would say exactly the same. Christ’s own face shone in the grin of that bent and fragile man – who, at the sight of a friend or neighbor, would often smile so broadly that his dentures popped right out of his mouth. Since Osvi’s death, I have found myself more than once struck with the thought of him setting his eyes on Jesus for the first time. I’ve said more than once now, that while I don’t imagine there are dentures in heaven, I’d give a lot just to see how far they’d fly as he rushed to embrace the Messiah.  That is the bitter-sweetness of All Saint’s, dear people of God – knowing those we love are both present and apart from us, until the kin-dom of God comes crashing back into Creation. In the midst of the evil in this strange between-time, we are to look not just at, but for the Christ present in our neighbor, however hidden that Christ may seem, even as we cling to the promise of how the story will end. . . “God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away . . . ‘It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.’”

Amen and Amen

Photo Credit: Flor Carabajal

In peace to you and to all whom we remember on this day,

Eric