Kein Wiedersehen

Silence, distance, space
Choke, alienate
Alone.
Missing everyone.
Life passes by.

Nicht genug.

"Reverse the Curse:" God Calls Us Beyond Ourselves

This is a new sermon, the basis of which will be preached to a congregation of young families at Townline Lutheran Church in Alden, NY, a suburb of Buffalo.  I will be guest preaching there next Sunday, March 16, 2014 for an LTSP seminary trip.  There will most likely be variations, using more references to the immediate area (I am a native of Rochester, NY) and less about Philadelphia, as well as my perspective of what it's like to be a second-career seminary student.

I hope to convey that God is able to call each and every one of us to places we could never think of or imagine on our own, and that He will be with us throughout the process even though visibility might be less than zero.

Texts:  Genesis 12:1-4a; John 3:1-17 (Lent 2, Year A)

Those of us who know the Philadelphia sports scene know better than to wear a hat like this.  For me, this is unprecedented for a number of reasons.  For starters, I'm not too sports savvy, but I was always impressed by preachers that were.  Ordinarily I would insist there be a piano nearby that I could run behind for cover if the need arose, so that we could all just break into "Shine, Jesus Shine" in a pinch, but today we're talking about going into uncharted territory without a map, so why not bring baseball into it for the first time?

I should have done my homework and worn this cap out in public last week in an effort to crowd source and gather some reactions, but I'll admit I didn't have the courage.  Philly sports fans can be ruthless.  They have become more notorious for their senseless behavior than for their major sports accomplishments.  Besides not having experienced a sports championship since the 2008 World Series, Philadelphia sports fan have become known for their bad behavior.  A day after the Phillies saw their first fan tasered for running on to the field, another fan jumped the fence and ran around the outfield, led out in handcuffs.

It's not like the Phillies are really alone when it comes to long waits for championships. Take the Boston Red Sox.  I took pity on them one summer in New Hampshire, when a pink hat similar to this one caught my eye at a convenience store, of all places. What attracted me to this specific hat were the words embroidered on the side saying, "Reverse the Curse."

Some of you may be aware of this story, known as "the Curse of the Bambino."  

In 1918 the Red Sox won their 5th World Series, the most by any club at that time. One of the stars of the Boston franchise was a young pitcher by the name of George Herman Ruth, aka The Babe or The Bambino.  The Red Sox had been one of the most successful professional baseball franchises.   

In 1920, however, Red Sox owner Harry Frazee needed money to finance his girlfriend's play, so he sold Babe Ruth's contract to the New York Yankees for $100,000. After the sale they went without a title for decades, as the Yankees became one of the most successful teams in professional sports.  The curse became a focal point of the Yankees–Red Sox rivalry over the years.  For 86 years,  the Sox had not won a single world series, until they managed to face the St. Louis Cardinals -- in 2004 and, finally winning at home this past year in 2013.

Needless to say, by the time I bought this in '07, the Curse had already been removed three years earlier, so I could truly say this was "old hat."  But in some strange way, when wearing it, I felt like I at least temporarily "belonged" to this summer community in New Hampshire.  It gave me a sense of solidarity.

Be it the Red Sox Nation, the Nation of Israel, or our world today, nations are often called to a place beyond themselves without necessarily knowing where they are going.  It happens all the time, throughout the Bible, when people are called  to "hope against hope" at times when the end is far from sight, if it can be seen at all.  Abram was certainly no exception.  God simply told him, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to find the land that I will show you.  I will make of you a great nation."  Contrary to our contemporary story, here Abraham has a blessing rather than a curse hanging over him.  Abraham, Sarah, and their offspring actually serve as God's last hope for the world.  If the blessing fails to work -- the alternatives are unthinkable, even for -- and especially for -- God.  Things fell apart at Eden.  This is the chance to reverse that curse.

Though all kinds of things seem to be in store for him,  we really don't know all that much about Abraham.  We know nothing of his pedigree, his credentials.  Was he a righteous man?  The text is silent, but we do know…because of the ways God works through our experiences today.  We also know that Abram was obedient, both to God's command to "Go," and later, when he was asked to sacrifice his son, Isaac.  We know that later, God changed his name to Abraham and his wife's to Sarah, reflecting His promise toward them and the fact that God has called them as His own.

But let's go back to where we were a minute ago.  God just told Abram that he would become the father of nations.  Mind you, he was 100 years old at the time.  We all know the scenario, we all remember how Sarah laughed.  Whether in ancient times or today, for a person to be 100 years old and have a child is OLD.  

My 6-year-old son just had to dress that way for his one hundredth day of school and with all the walkers, canes, plaid pants, grey hair and glasses that day these youngsters had transformed their classroom into a veritable retirement home.  

100 is old.  Having babies at that age just doesn't compute.  But Abram and Sarai trusted God, and it came to pass.(It was unprecedented).  God "blessed them to be a blessing."  He already destined them for good, to bring forth nations that numbered as many as the stars in the heavens.  

This continued on to Moses, whom God meets in Deuteronomy and declares, "See, I have set before you blessings and curses…"  Here we go again.  The nation of Israel was established, along with an extensive set of laws and regulations designed not only to protect their society, but to get as close as possible to restoring that close relationship with God that had originally existed in the Garden of Eden.  Even though it was a fractured relationship, God AND the people took great pains to hold on to that relationship, though many times, they were unable to hold up their end of the bargain because of  their failing human natures.  In order to atone for their sins, a system of sacrifice was set up --  from the time of Abraham and Isaac and on through the rituals of the Levites -- so much so that the Law was firmly established.  God's people felt safe.  He was on their side in times of war, IF they kept His Commandments.  It was a strong safety net for the people.  But it became so strong that it was inflexible.  So strong, that they couldn't see what was coming.  After all, the way they lived their daily lives was their way of reversing the Curse.  All good -- but THEY were doing it, not God.  All the while, playing into the Enemy's clever plan to convince  humanity they are destined to fail unless THEY do the work to better themselves.

The time was right, the stage was set.  The stars literally aligned themselves -- and the Son of God was born.  Soon after, people were called outside of themselves, into the unknown - Mary, Joseph, John the Baptist, the twelve disciples, the saints throughout the ages, right up to you and me.  

In his famous prayer, the late Archbishop Oscar Romero wrote, "The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision."  This does not deter us from responding to our call.

In today's Gospel we come to the Nick at Night story.  Since he was a temple official, he must have found it difficult to seek Jesus in the light of day.  He didn't want to be seen with another hat on, consulting Jesus, so he goes to Him by night.  He calls upon the Teacher, he wants to know how he can be saved, how to reverse the curse upon  his life.  Jesus responds, telling him he must be born again. Interesting, how Jesus doesn't take things literally.  Nicodemus had a similar problem to Abraham's.  Maybe he didn't laugh, but he asked, incredulously, "How can a man re-enter his mother's womb?" just as Abram and Sarai laughed at the fact that they were too old to bear children.  With God, all things are possible.

But we live in a broken world.  A lot of times we struggle because we think we can't "see" God in our daily lives.  Yes, we can see evidence in Creation, in the small and large miracles we witness.  But these tend to become hypothetical in the face of other things, like accidents, planes disappearing over Vietnam, families breaking up, cancer, heart attacks, unexpected deaths, or expected ones through disease, unrest in the Ukraine, misappropriations of justice.  There is pain, there is agony that feels all too real.  We can't do it on our own.

And then we come to John 3:16.  That verse we often see as posters in the stands of baseball and football stadiums.  God, out of infinite love for His creation, sent His only begotten Son to us that we might have new life -- and in that sense, yes, we are born again, if you take the term for what it is and not the many things it has become over the years.  This life comes freely to us when - not if, but when -- we believe. We can rest and rejoice in that love - the same love that brought Jesus down to us in human form, clothed him in flesh, healed the sick and brought sight to the blind -- is the same love that is with us each and every day, guiding us in blessing and loving us through life and death, because of what He did through Jesus' death on the cross.  

God is  not sitting up there somewhere, waiting for us to stumble and fall over the next obstacle heading our way.  As the Creative Source, he is not about to destroy something He made with His own hands.  He is our advocate, and moves throughout the earth today as the Holy Spirit, who guides and comforts us and reassures us of this great blessing that has been with us since the time of Abraham.  

So it is during quiet time, perhaps in worship on Sunday mornings, or time spent relaxing with friends, sharing our stories, that we feel God breaking through.  Many times this is all we have to find the clarity we need to move beyond ourselves. Time to reflect during the quiet and the praise, time to consider the nearness of our Lord when we celebrate Holy Communion…that indeed Jesus' very body and are blood shared with the entire world…over and over reminds us that we ARE one body, the Bride of Christ.  

Suddenly it's no longer a small matter.  Suddenly we're no longer small, and we do matter.  We are loved -- that much.  The stakes are high -- high enough to meet the curse of the accidents, death, and disease.  The Curse has met its match, and we CAN "hope against hope," and GO  -- "blessed to be a blessing" -- into areas of uncertainty knowing we are called by God  "into ventures of which we cannot see the ending" because our Lord has promised to be with us, bringing us abundant life through the Holy Spirit each and every day, for you and for all.  Amen.

I Dropped the Ball Today

Sometimes we make unconventional choices, ones that do not seem to make much sense in terms of our welfare in the world.

Today is one of those days. I had a chance to redeem myself of a rather abysmal grade on an Old Testament exegetical paper. I decided to drop the ball. Not only had I run out of time, but my resources were unavailable to me. These factors alone made it very difficult to follow through, but at the core of this conundrum lay that pesky thing called "will."  You just couldn’t drag it out of me.

Unfortunately, there will likely be a very ugly grade on my transcript now. I can’t call my professor merciless. Ultimately, she was extremely fair and gracious in offering me the opportunity for a do-over. But the real point remains: I didn’t get it, and I didn’t want to. Don’t get me wrong. It was arguably the most engaging, fantastic course of the year. But in all honesty, I remain just as bored by the Old Testament as I was sitting in mother’s third grade Sunday School class some 44 years ago.

Maybe something’s wrong with me. When reading historical accounts, I like my fare to be as accurate and close to reality as possible. I love verismo opera, for instance. I do NOT like " maybe" in history OR in life, and find conjecture a wholesale waste of time. So what possible good would it do for me to speculate what Hosea really meant by his marriage metaphor in Chapter 2 when, more than likely, it wasn’t even written by Hosea himself? I’d rather be analyzing Verdi's "La Forza del Destino" because I know for sure that it exists. I’m 52 years old. "Maybe" doesn’t cut it anymore. Even creativity needs to be concrete.

I could guilt myself into having chosen the wrong priority (lying in a hammock on a beach in the Caribbean) or not prioritizing altogether, but what I really boiled down to was the will. It wasn’t there. So should I feel badly, or suffer? I made this unconventional choice, and choose to live with it.  Not a report you want to hear from a second-year seminarian, but there it is.

On to dog walks, garden work, rehearsals, gigging, organ lessons, Field Ed reports, entrance essays, and CPE applications. It's a new day! 

The Road to Emmaus: From Broken Hopes to Burning Hearts

Easter doesn't always happen in three days. 

We may hear all the signs, sing all the songs..but for some of us, it may feel like someone else's story, not our own -- not the least of us, those who work or study in the church.  It can be a very stressful time even three weeks after Easter, especially as finals week looms ahead.

            

Even though it may be cold outside, rainy, with little sign of Spring, each Easter Sunday, as though on cue, we gravitate toward the hothouse tulips, lilies, hyacinths, bright colors, trumpets and chocolate bunnies, not entirely convinced we're really there yet, but the calendar tells us so.

            

Yet our hearts are unresolved.  We want desperately to believe the resurrection story.  Some of us, like Thomas the disciple last week, insist on seeing the bold evidence -- the empty tomb, the very nail prints in Jesus' hands and feet.

            

When we can't see the signs and just hear the story, the words may sound hollow and empty; because -- let's face it -- that job interview last week that looked so promising fell through,  that relationship is still broken, the cancer we thought was in remission has returned.  Planes don't just fall out of the sky these days.  In some cases, they just plain disappear without a trace, to the point that no one can be found even months later.  There is no closure.

            

People around the world and in our own back yards are still hungry.  Violence escalates on a daily basis. We are still alone.  What should we do when we have reached our wit's end, when what we once thought was worth our lives has left us washed up?

            

Easter may also sound like someone else's story because of all the noise, all the hope infused into the end of the three days.  It's almost like a timer gets switched on at Good Friday and the seconds start ticking away until the Sunrise Service.  "It's Friday, but Sunday's coming!" shouts Tony Campolo, who happens to be one of my favorite preachers.  I don't mean to sound cyncial here.  I really want to believe it, but is that your story today?   If so, how did you get there?

            

Three days, three weeks, three months, years, or a lifetime….Easter can be a journey.  Whenever our own stories don't jibe with "The Big Picture," they become our own personal journeys.  We find ourselves on our own particular "road," away from the big city where everyone else is.  We seek to escape.  We take long walks. To ponder.  To get ourselves into that space where perhaps we can look back with a better perspective, confront ourselves in the here and now, and if we're lucky, meet someone along the way, share a meal, and come away with a better vision of the future.

            

And so it was with Christ's followers on the Road to Emmaus.  It is midday of the same morning Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to the tomb, just three days after Jesus was crucified.  They arrived, only to find a pair of guards lying on the ground, struck down as good as dead -- ironic, when you consider that the man who was supposed to be dead was missing from the very tomb he had been buried in, two days earlier.  As if that weren't enough, the stone covering the tomb had been rolled away with what I picture as this sassy angel sitting right on top of it, giving Mary explicit instructions to go to Galilee, find Jesus' followers and bring them the news that He is risen, and that is precisely what she did.  So these disciples heard the story, but despaired and became confused.  

So Cleopas and another one of Jesus' followers (some scholars think it may have been a woman, "Mrs. Cleopas," as Jay introduced her earlier!) set out to take a long walk to Emmaus, a town about 7 miles west of Jerusalem.  Not a trek, maybe not even a journey per se, but a hike nonetheless.

I'm not a runner or even a hiker, but I am one of those people that benefits greatly from taking long walks -- time spent away from the hectic stresses of life as a student and parent.  It helps me process things.  I become energized by the fresh air and the perpetual forward momentum I generate.  It usually helps me get past the mental hurdles and get "un-stuck."

            

The disciples must have sought this kind of respite, especially since they had just spent a bit of an irregular week, what with the celebrating Passover and especially having undergone all the tumult of the past three days. Their words and their hearts are heavier than any of the supplies they are carrying home from their annual pilgrimage to their holy city Jerusalem, now a city of horrors.  They have heard that it is "Easter" from the women at the tomb, but as of yet they do not know it in their very guts or souls.  Walking, getting back to a routine -- this, they hope, will eventually bring them some sense of comfort. 

So they keep walking, "talking and discussing." Perhaps they were debating Mary's story about the tomb earlier that morning.  Was it true or just "idle chatter?"  Whatever the subject, it was clear that they were in despair over the past three days' events.

On this road of broken dreams, they meet a stranger.  It was Jesus, but they had no clue.  Why couldn't they recognize Jesus?  Maybe he looked different.  Maybe they looked at him differently and didn't expect to know him because he presented himself as a stranger.  Maybe they were so caught up in their own grief, despair and frustration they they didn't really bother to look closely.  Yet the very embodiment of their freedom was right next to them!

And we do know a little bit more.  We read that "their eyes were kept from recognizing him."  It was one of those God-orchestrated things -- like the time Jesus tells his mother at the Wedding at Cana - "Woman, my hour has not yet come," or in today's second reading from 1 Peter:  "He was destined before the foundation of the world, but was revealed at the end of the ages for your sake."  God temporarily shut their eyes until the time was right to reveal Jesus' identity.

            

"What are you discussing with each other while walking on the road?" asked Jesus.  

 They ended up standing still.  At the crossroads.  

Suddenly it was no longer about the miles before them, but the moment at hand and Cleopas answers, "Where have you been?  Have you been living under a rock (Well, indeed, He kinda did!)? You must be the only stranger in Jerusalem that does not know the things that have taken place in the past few days."

"What 'things'?'" asks Jesus.  And Cleopas goes on about the prophet Jesus of Nazareth, how the chief leaders and priests handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him.  "But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel…"

"We had HOPED."  At the crossroads between life and death, dreams and reality, hope and despair.

The stranger retells the story.  Jesus talks about how the Messiah should suffer these things and enter into his glory, and goes on to interpret all the things about himself in the scriptures, beginning with Moses.

They were approaching the village.  Jesus walked ahead as if he were going on.  But they urged him, "STAY WITH US, because the day is almost over."  He went in to stay with them,  they broke bread, and their eyes were opened.  Once they recognized him, he vanished from their sight.

They turned to each other and marveled at their own transformation - "Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?"    Their burning hearts illuminated their blindness.  We all have our own experiences of how the Spirit has revealed itself to us.  My grandma helped me find it long ago by explaining that warmth in my heart, or how I would feel a faint tug that almost made me cry, and to this day I know without a doubt that this is my perception of the Holy Spirit's presence.  It's different for everyone, but in this case the disciples felt their hearts burning.

They became so energized that they returned to Jerusalem that same day, their burning hearts giving them a sense of mission, going back to tell their fellow disciples what had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

Despair.  A walk.  A stranger breaks in.  Conversation.  Hospitality.  Sharing a meal.  Recognition.  From broken hopes to burning hearts.

Sounds somewhat familiar - Despair. Gathering. The Word.  Breaking Bread.  From broken hope to burning hearts.  Our worship.

When we are in despair on the road to nowhere in particular, can we see who walks with us?  When has God's Word interrupted our own idle conversation and called a halt to our own frantic forward momentum?  When was the last time God's hospitality energized you? 

Easter doesn't always come in three days.  Stones are rolled away, but sometimes we stay in the tomb.  Stones sealing the tombs of our hearts can be rolled back, too.   Hopes entombed can be illuminated.  We CAN leave our graveclothes behind.  Sometimes it means letting go of our own dreams and expectations. Sometimes it means inviting in a stranger that we have known all along, and this very act of invitation, of hospitality, opens us up to God's infinite promise of grace…the promise for you and for me.   

The fire of recognition and the light of clear sight spurs us on.  We become Easter people, and the Easter story becomes our own.

Stay with us, Lord Jesus.  AMEN.