Sunday, May 27, 2012

"The Breath of Life"


My niece Olivia when she was born.

May 27, 2012 (Day of Pentecost)

Old Testament Reading: Ezekiel 37:1-14
1The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. 2He led me all round them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. 3He said to me, “Mortal, can these bones live?” I answered, “O Lord God, you know.”
4Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. 5Thus says the Lord God to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. 6I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the Lord.“
7So I prophesied as I had been commanded; and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. 8I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them.
9Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.” 10I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.
11Then he said to me, “Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.’ 12Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. 13And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. 14I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act, says the Lord.”

SERMON: “The Breath of Life”

There are moments in a person’s life when you feel most alive, when your every breath and movement are put into slow-motion perspective.  These moments are burned into your memory forever.  Mine was in a remote mountain village in the tiny country of Lesotho, nestled in the heart of South Africa.  I was horseback riding (I am from Texas after all) on the bumpy, rocky plain at the top of a mountain.  I could hear the distant hammered bells of goats as they were herded along by skilled shepherds.  I felt the warm breeze swirling around me and the gritty red dust in my eyes and mouth.  I saw the yawning valley below me and all around the brilliant blue hazy Drakensburg Mountains, seeming to go on forever.  I never felt more alive than that moment. 

And then I found out that HIV/AIDS had visited that remote village, and never left.  Nearly 90% of people there were HIV positive.  Having just felt completely alive, I was suddenly surrounded by the reality of death.

“Mortal, can these bones live?”

While in seminary in Atlanta, I spent a summer as a Chaplain Intern at Grady Hospital, a trauma hospital in the heart of the struggling inner-city.  My first on-call night, I was paged to the ER to sit with a “multiple GSW victim”: a young teenager who had been shot while walking home from the store with his cousin.  Tragically his cousin had died in the shooting and his family had erupted with grief, leaving him all alone as nurses removed shrapnel from his legs.  I sat with him, overwhelmed by such a responsibility, and listened as he told me that, unlike many he knew, he was not involved in gangs.  But that didn’t protect him from their violence of such a desperately poor neighborhood.  The fifteen-year-old then looked at me and, with the solemnity of a soldier, said “Well, I guess I need to get a gun and carry it with me always.”

“Mortal, can these bones live?”
My last Christmas supper with my Granddaddy was bittersweet.  Cancer had taken his strong farmer’s body and turned it frail and tired.  Only his eyes still shone with the strength he once had.  All of my family was gathered that Christmas, the air heavy with the awareness that he would not be here for the next one.  At one point, he spoke quietly with my Father and my Father hugged him tightly.  I asked my dad what they talked about and with a weary sigh, choking back tears, he told me that my Granddaddy had given him his old beat up Ford farm truck.  It was a priceless treasure, and a concrete sign that he would soon leave this life for the next.

“Mortal, can these bones live?”

What a familiar question.  We ask it in hospital waiting rooms and in the silence remaining when family or friends have left after a visit.  We ask it when the violent actions of a few destroy the lives of so many in Syria or when the bills pile up with no hope of enough income.   We are not the first to ask this question. 

 At the time of the prophet Ezekiel, the people of Israel were slaves in Babylon.  Jerusalem had fallen to this occupying force.  No longer the great nation they once were, they cry out ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.’   The Spirit who would later come at Pentecost and stir up diverse life in the early Church, the same Spirit who hovered over the waters of creation, leads Ezekiel to a valley full of dry bones.  Perhaps it looked something like an oil spill site.  Or ground zero after 9/11.  Or the line for food at the Sandhills Coalition.  Or the moment after saying goodbye to someone we love as they leave this life.  It is a place where the body and soul feel desolate, dried up, deserted.

And this is where the Spirit chose to take Ezekiel!  Some vacation, that. 

He is asked this question, perhaps the first time it was ever uttered: ‘Mortal, can these bones live?”  Ezekiel essentially answers, “You’re God, right?  You tell me.”  God calls upon him to answer this existential question, leading him to prophesy to those brittle bones, promising that God will breathe life into them.  Life not just for some, but for their whole battered nation.

In true dramatic fashion, the prophesy takes shape as bones rattle together like a heavy summer rainstorm and the decay of death happens in reverse: bones join together with sinews and flesh grows and then skin covers it all.  But this re-creation is not yet complete.  After all, the Spirit was not after some sort of Frankenstein experiment: true life is what the Spirit was after.    

Again the prophet is called to prophesy (showing the role of us mere mortals in the midst of God’s divine work) and gather the same breath found in the icy northern wind and the warm southern breeze.  It turns out that the Spirit is in that creative, ordinary air and this cut off, hopeless people are alive again.  With that life comes the assurance that God’s Spirit has been put in them, that they will be placed on a land of their own and that the God who speaks also acts for their welfare.

Having read Ezekiel, the notion that the Spirit is only found in a “still, small voice” is somewhat limited, isn’t it?  Here we see that the Spirit is found in the winds of creation – even that evening breeze that comes in your window.  The Spirit is the breath of life within us that refuses to be stilled no matter what valley of desolation we may be in.  The Spirit is as close to us as the private moments when our breath is knocked out with grief, when we gulp for air and hope.  The Spirit is as imbedded in our lives as the sigh of relief after being tossed about by worry.  The Spirit is as loud as the laughter of a movie theater full of people and as quiet as the whisper of a baby’s sleeping breath…

“Mortal, can these bones live?”

With each breath we take we answer this question.  With each act of compassion and healing we bring to someone suffering with illness, with each prayer for our friends and enemies, with each tiny triumph of clinging to life by putting one foot in front of the other, we say – with the breath of the Spirit within us – a resounding yes!  These bones can live, even if we die, because we are never in a place completely cut off from God or one another.  We are never without hope. 

And so in the face of death and fear, in the face of illness and isolation, we must prophesy with our every breath that God has not abandoned us, and we must not abandon one another.  Enlivened by the Spirit, we join with the God who not only speaks like a swirling wind and calming breeze, but who acts: rushing into those places that seem most desolate and choosing to dwell there until all know the breath of life.  Amen.

Sunday, May 20, 2012

"Completely Sent"


(A Sermon for our Senior Recognition Sunday)

GOSPEL READING: JOHN 17:6-19
6“I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. 7Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; 8for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me.

9I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. 10All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. 11And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one. 12While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that the scripture might be fulfilled.

13But now I am coming to you, and I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves. 14 I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. 15I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. 16They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. 17Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. 18As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. 19And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.”

SERMON: “Completely Sent”
My high school graduation was memorable for one reason.  It was not because of all the family and friends gathered there.  It was not memorable because of the hideously unattractive geometric hats we all had to wear.  It was not memorable because I managed to walk across the stage without tripping or sneezing.  It was memorable because of the Salutatorian’s speech.  After reminding us that we were young and so should “make as many mistakes as possible”, she proudly announced to her Father that she had recently had her belly button pierced.    No one remembered the Valedictorian’s speech after that. 

Now, I’m not sure what little pearls of wisdom Natalie and Taylor will receive at their graduation ceremonies, but just in case it veers in the direction of a candid confession that makes a whole crowd of people fidget uncomfortably, I’d like to take time this morning to say a few words to them myself as we explore this other Lord’s prayer found in John.

Jesus, preparing to leave this earth, did not gather a huge crowd around him and confess his deepest, darkest secrets to them and then disappear into heaven in a puff of smoke.  He had a small dinner with his buddies and then he prayed this prayer.

Walter Wink, that great theologian and activist who sadly passed away last week, paraphrases this prayer well, speaking from Jesus’ perspective as he prays for his followers (including us).  He says,

“All mine are yours, and yours are mine. They are yours, I am yours, you are ours. As I have humanized your divinity, so you are divinizing our humanity. The qualitative distinction between you and us dissolves.  Enfold them in your very being. You cannot surround them with a perfect providence that prevents their suffering the normal outrages of physical illness or rejection and persecution by the Powers. You certainly haven't done that for me! But in that enfolding you can make them one with you and with me and with each other.  You can give them the peace that passes understanding.

But now I am coming to you, and I speak these things so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves. They do not yet understand that my leaving them will complete their joy. Right now they are content with theophanies, disclosures of divine love and power, signs and wonders. But the thing they lack is completion in themselves. Like a catalyst I have opened them to their utmost possibilities, but they have persisted in identifying them with me. In my absence they will be thrown on your power within them. When they discover that power, their joy will be boundless.

I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. God, deliver them from misunderstanding me as preaching heaven when they die! Theirs is not a flight to the world beyond, but the creation of a new world in the shell of the old.

This rendering of John 17 opens us up to hear what this prayer is really saying.  “In the world but not of it” – it does not really say this.  Understanding that the Greek word for “world” used here means more systems and powers, it says instead that we in the church are in the world, but not defined by it.  In the world…but not belonging to the destructive powers within it. 

Belonging instead to the creative power of God.  Belonging to one another so completely that we become “one” and God and Jesus are one, and that we are sent into the world just as Jesus was sent.  Belonging to ourselves to such an extent that we know that, no matter what we face, we are complete just as we are, and discovering deep joy in our own skin.

And so this prayer of Jesus is for each of us, but this morning, Taylor and Natalie, it is for you.

You already know what it is to be confronted with systems that try to define you as someone you’re not: who want to label you in one fixed category and who fail to see all of the dimensions of your identity.  You already know how overwhelming the pressure to conform can be and how resisting that pressure can often bring pain and judgment.  You already know the demands of making your place in the world, studying what makes you feel most alive and preparing to part from some of your closest friends as you go off to college.  As you leave the familiar and bravely go where God is calling you next, those voices and pressures will only get louder: telling you that you are only “complete” when you have this technology or that relationship, when you are at this party or get that grade. 

As your church family, as your pastor, as the place where you can always come “home” again, I want to tell you this:
You are already complete.

All of the strength to cope with the changes this year will bring, all of the proof of God guiding you, all of the courage to continue being your own person, lies within you.  You are in this world in creative, talented, giving ways.  You are already bringing compassion, acceptance and joy where the systems of this world insist on competition, judgment and fear.  But while being in this world, you are not defined by it.  The God who flung the stars into the heavens and made your dog’s ears so furry breathes through you, making you out of that same divine stuff.  You belong to the God who made you just exactly as you are (and who did a pretty good job of it, I might add).

And so my prayer for both of you, echoing this ancient prayer of Jesus,  is that you would never forget how complete you are.  Never allow those worldly voices of status and criticism to become louder than the voice of God within you.  Never allow a new environment or new people around you to keep you from being the vibrant, joyful young women that you are.  Never allow the labels placed on you or others keep you from reaching out to everyone, as Jesus did.

God is sending you out from this place and has already filled you with all you need for that journey.  You will impact this world in beautiful, extraordinary ways.  God will use your words, Natalie, and your art, Taylor, to build a new world of hope and light.  All of this means change. And if ever all that change becomes too overwhelming, or if you just need to remember who you are, we are always here for you.  We will keep praying for you, as Jesus did, that you will discover the power of God we already see within you and that your joy will be boundless.  We love you!  Amen.

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

"The New and Ancient Song"


May 13, 2012

PSALM 98:1-9
1   O sing to the LORD a new song, 
          
for he has done marvelous things. 
     
His right hand and his holy arm 
          
have gained him victory. 

2   The LORD has made known his victory; 
          
he has revealed his vindication in the sight of the nations. 

3   He has remembered his steadfast love and faithfulness 
to the house of Israel. 

 All the ends of the earth have seen 
the victory of our God.
4   Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth; 
          
break forth into joyous song and sing praises.

5   Sing praises to the LORD with the lyre, 
          
with the lyre and the sound of melody.
 
6   With trumpets and the sound of the horn 
          
make a joyful noise before the King, the LORD.
7   Let the sea roar, and all that fills it; 
         
 the world and those who live in it. 

8   Let the floods clap their hands; 
          
let the hills sing together for joy 

9   at the presence of the LORD, for he is coming to judge the earth. 
     
He will judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with equity.


SERMON:

His name is Henry.  He lives in Cobble Hill Center, a nursing home in Brooklyn.  Henry’s been there for ten years, since his seizures required more care than his wife could give him at home.  His days, weeks and years are spent hunched over in his wheelchair, arms crossed, unable to recognize his own daughter
and unable to even speak beyond a few grunts.  A therapist describes him as inert, unresponsive and “almost unalive.” 

But one day, Henry wakes up.  It is not a picture, his family or coffee that wakes Henry up.  It is music: all his favorite spirituals and old songs coursing through the headphones of the ipod a therapist gave him.  The effect is immediate.

The man who was “almost unalive” sat upright, opened his eyes wide and began to sing along with the music, swaying to its rhythms.  Henry was caught up in the rapture of those familiar sounds, and his body involuntarily responded, shaking off the cobwebs of dementia and depression.  And even after the headphones were removed, Henry remained more lucid than before, able to answer questions and carry on a conversation, continuing to sing his favorite songs.  He remembered who he was and became Henry once more.  Music reaches us at the depths of our souls, waking us up, freeing our emotions, stirring memories within us.

Perhaps this is why Psalm 98 makes fifteen references to music in only nine verses.  With quickening poetry, it urges us to sing a song to the God who has done marvelous things.  Like those spirituals seeping through Henry’s headphones, it resonates through our entire being:  Make a joyful noise to the Lord all the earth! 

It calls us to not only remember who we are, but promises us that, in this joyful song of praise, God remembers who God is, too.  That memory is of One who brings steadfast love and faithfulness to the ends of the earth.  We are called to praise what God has done in the past, while at the same time singing a new song of God’s saving work among us today.    All of creation joins in this song: the sea roars with undulating waves, the floods clap their watery hands, the grassy hills sing together in joy in the presence of God, the only one who judges this world fairly.   Praise is offered to our Creator by all of creation.

“Praise” is one of those parts of the Christian vocabulary that has in many ways lost its impact and meaning.  Thomas Merton captured this well, when he wrote:

Praise is cheap, today. Everything is praised. Soap, beer, toothpaste, clothing, mouthwash, movie stars, all the latest gadgets which are supposed to make life more comfortable -- everything is constantly being "praised". Praise is now so overdone that everybody is sick of it, and since everything is "praised" . . . nothing is praised. Praise has become empty . . . Are there any superlatives left for God?

If there are any superlatives left for God, any words of true praise, we are going to have to re-learn them from those who began this song of praise from the first moment that God made them and called them good: from nature.  We will learn this ancient song from the sound of wind through trees, showing us that loudness and importance are not one and the same.  This ancient song of praise is sung in moonlight that stubbornly illumines the darkness, refusing to let it have the last word.  Its cadences echo in the taste of sun-warmed, sweet strawberries this time of year.  It is sung in the wonder of children chasing butterflies, in the strength of mothers whether they care for children of their own or treat the entire world as their family. 
It is sung in the persistent grass that pushes up through concrete, reaching toward the sky. 

Can you hear it?  It is the song of community, where our survival is dependent on one another.  It is the song of healing, where the cold dark of winter promises the gift of spring’s sunshine.  It is the song of hope that night will not last forever, but that day will always come.  It is the song of stewardship, reminding us that abusing the gifts of God’s creation will only leave this earth in ruin and our souls in the wilderness of never being satisfied. 

Creation praises God with spontaneity, not with well-rehearsed words but with the glory of being fully alive.  And it is only when we open our ears and hearts to hear this ancient song bursting forth all around us that we can begin to sing a new song to our Creator.

But how can we possibly sing a new song of praise?  How can we sing when all around us anger and fear seep into any crack in our identities?  What joyful noise can there be in the face of illness, the loss of loved ones and a world consumed with war and greed?  How are we supposed to sing when we find it hard to pray, when our own voice seems as foreign as God’s?  Make a joyful noise to the Lord all the earth.  Perhaps, like Henry before his music, we can squeak out an unintelligible noise in the midst of AIDS, car accidents and cancer.  But a joyful noise?   At best it feels forced and at worst a lie. 

And yet Psalm 98 invites us – compels us – to join this song of joy.  We join this song by sitting in the shade of a tree, by growing food and sharing it with others, by taking a moment to look above all of our worries and fears to the brilliant blue sky.  We join this song by silencing the television and being quiet and still long enough to hear birds singing.  By turning off the icy air-conditioner (that makes us put on a sweater) and instead flinging open the windows to let the breeze in.   By building friendships not just on facebook but in actual conversation in grocery store lines and post office parking lots.  By using only what we need instead of contributing to a culture where everything is disposable.

When we allow ourselves to hear this song of creation, we will also begin to hear the voice of our Creator.  Like Henry, our souls will awake from the paralysis of doubt or distraction and we will sway to those naturally divine rhythms, finding our voices once again, joining in the joyful new and ancient song of praise. 

When you hear that song of praise sung, in the simplest of things, it echoes in your head forever.  I heard it from a Romanian child while serving as a mission worker in Northern Ireland.  A few of us from the church I served decided to take a family of Roma children we’d been working with on a little day trip to the beach.  They were from a very poor village in Romania, and now lived in a dingy, crowded flat and told us that they had never seen the ocean.  So to the beach we went! 

Once we got out of the car, we got all bundled up (it was an Irish beach, after all) and walked along the boardwalk to the water.  As soon as one of the boys saw it, he began running and, shoes and all, plunged his feet into that icy water.  He stared and pointed as the waves rushed over his shoes, smiling and giggling (until the frigid water seeped into his socks).  I will never forget the look of joyful wonder on his face.  His song of praise and delight was contagious.

Our Creator constantly invites us to lives of wonder and delight, if only we will run with wild abandon – abandoning our limitations and fears – to explore all God has made.  Earth is full of the stuff of heaven: we have only to open our eyes to see God’s handiwork all around us, open our mouths in gratitude to the One who creates still, and open our hearts to nurture and care for this good earth.

O sing to the LORD a new song, 
          
for God has done – and is doing -- marvelous things.
Alleluia!  Amen.