Seeds, June 14, 2015, the Rev'd Dr Richard Smith

Two very different parables about seeds in today’s gospel. Each parable reveals a very different facet of this disruptive and uncontrollable thing we call the kingdom of God.

The first parable urges us to trust a natural growth process that happens when a seed is planted.

There is the story of the man who sowed seed in his field, and every day dug up the soil to see how the seed was doing. He wanted to catch each moment in the interaction between seed and soil and intervene in their natural lovemaking. He did not trust the seed and soil to grow without his ongoing tweaking. Needless to say, nothing ever grew.

The parable of Jesus in today’s gospel offers a different strategy. Once contact is made between seed and soil, between the word of God and the human heart, a process of development begins. This process is more mysterious than we know and we should not interfere with it, not try to tweak it. It’s a matter of paying attention to that process, of trusting it, cooperating with it. Paying attention.

Pay attention to where God at work in the world around you.
Where is love breaking out, justice being pursued, freedom being won, human dignity being insisted on and restored?

Pay attention to where God at work in your own heart.

• Where do you find beauty?
• When does your heart melt?
• When do you get goosebumps?
• When does your heart begin to race from a new sense of purpose? 
• When do you feel outrage at injustice, and find hope in an otherwise dark moment? 

All of these are signs of God’s presence, and it’s a matter of being actively attentive to them both within and around us, trusting them.

And then, when the harvest arrives, cooperating with that process, going into the field with our sickles to bring in the crop.

But most of the time, it’s a matter of waiting patiently, with trust.

Sometimes finding our deepest joy and purpose in life is less a matter of some dramatic action, some heroic decision made in haste, perhaps out of fear of never finding it, than it is of simply going about the rhythms of our days, “sleep and rise night and day”, trusting that God is at work in our lives, leading us step-by-step to a fuller and richer life; the seed is slowly germinating and growing into the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head, then the abundant harvest, then the bread.

Our task most of the time is simply to pay attention to what is God is doing, often very subtly, hidden and underground, both within and around us.

The writer Nikos Kazantzakis tells us that once when he was a boy he noticed a cocoon stuck to a tree; a butterfly was about to emerge. He waited a while, but it was taking too long, so he decided to warm the cocoon with his breath. The butterfly finally emerged but its wings were still stuck together and it died soon afterwards.

Kazantzakis says, “I just couldn’t wait for the sun to complete the necessary process of patient maturation. That small corpse is until this very day one of the heaviest burdens on my conscience. But that’s what made me understand what a true mortal sin is: trying to force the great laws of the universe. We have to have patience, wait for the right time and then follow confidently the rhythm that God has chosen for our lives.”

The second parable about the mustard seed reveals a very different facet of this uncontrollable kingdom: This kingdom is very disruptive.

I’ve always liked this story of the mustard seed, found comfort in it. The mustard seed is so small, but grows into a huge shrub. Like my faith, so small and fragile, that can, with God’s grace, do great things. I still find a much-needed comfort in this understanding of this story--an encouraging, hopeful word.

But did you know there’s another side to the mustard seed? The shrub it grows into is a nuisance that will, if you let it, destroy your whole carefully planned garden. This is not like the beautiful, powerful Cedars of Lebanon we sing about in the psalms. This is a bitter-smelling shrub, about 3-4 feet tall, that shoots out uncontrollably in all directions. It can overrun your whole garden.

And that, Jesus says, is what the kingdom of God is like. Watch out!

Every Sunday around this table we pray, “Your kingdom come.” But be careful what you pray for! You have been warned! Like a mustard seed disrupts your awesome garden, the kingdom of God will disrupt your life.

It’s like falling in love, or deciding to raise a kid. Perhaps a carefully planned career path gets tossed aside. You spend your time and money differently. You discover new joys and delights, and you sacrifice some things you thought you could never live without. The kingdom is disruptive like that, like love.

That kingdom drove Martin Luther King to Selma, Rosa Parks to the front of the bus, many of the Freedom Fighters to have their legs broken, Cesar Chavez to Delano. It is, I suspect, what draws many of us to this part of the city, to worship here--in a tragic and beautiful neighborhood like this, a crazy community like ours--when, if we had more sense, we’d be reading the New York Times in some trendy coffee shop, or doing brunch.

And into your carefully planned garden, the mustard shrub attracts birds--birds that are unwelcome because they will eat whatever other seeds or fruit you may be trying so hard to grow.

As the word of Jesus takes root in your heart, you’ll begin to notice people starting to cross your path seeking shelter from their storms. Don’t say you were not warned. They will find you.

They might come, like many come here to St. John’s, after a night on the streets asking for coffee and a few bucks for a Big Mac, or on a Saturday morning for a bag of groceries.
Sometimes they might be like the family we met-- Ricardo and Amelie and Nicole--who needed our help to keep their family from being torn apart, from Ricardo being unjustly deported to Guatemala where his life would be in danger.
Or they might be like the young ex-gangbanger who was trying to start a new life, who needed a few odd jobs to earn some money, and later some help to bury his girlfriend after she was tragically shot and killed.
Or, in another way, it might be one of the struggling non-profits in the neighborhood who can’t afford today’s high rents for meeting space and who asks to use our church.

The kingdom will completely disrupt our carefully planned worlds. And just as the birds of the air find shelter in the branches of the mustard tree, so people will seek us out for shelter.

So the kingdom is beyond our control. And it is, like a mustard shrub, disruptive, a nuisance.

And yet...and here’s where it gets a little weird...it’s also our hearts’ deepest desire, something we rightly pray for week after week: Your kingdom come. Go figure.

Pentecost; May 24, 2015; The Rev'd Richard Smith, Ph.D.

Here’ a story by theologian Diana Butler Bass:

As the end of Lent 2011 neared, I went to my local bank to deposit some checks. Three tellers were working that morning, all women. One woman wore a pale ivory hijab as a head covering; the second woman's forehead bore the dark red mark known as a bindi; the third woman had a small crucifix hanging around her neck.
I walked up and laughed. "You all look like the United Nations of banking!"
They exchanged glances and smiled.
"You are so right," said the Hindu woman. "You should meet our customers! But we cover a lot of languages between the three of us."
It was a quiet morning. They wanted to talk. I said something about being a vegetarian for Lent. The Hindu woman wanted to give me some family recipes; the Muslim woman wanted to know more about Christian fasting practices.
I shared how we had dedicated Lent that year to eating simply and exploring vegetarian foods from different parts of the world. "When we eat Indian food," I explained, "we try to talk about the church in India or pray for people in India. The same for African and Asian and Latin American countries."
"What a wonderful idea!" the Muslim woman said. "We need to love our traditions and be faithful to our God; but we teach the beauty and goodness of the other religions too."
Her Hindu colleague chimed in, "That is the only way to peace ­­ to be ourselves and to create understanding between all people."
... I glanced at my watch. I needed to get to an appointment. I thanked them for their insights.
"I would wish you a Happy Easter," I said hoping they would hear the sincerity in my voice, "but, instead, I wish you both peace."
I started to walk away when the Muslim teller said to me, "Peace of Jesus the Prophet. And a very happy Easter to you."
And the Hindu woman called out, "Happy Easter!"
When I reached my car, I realized that I was crying. I had only rarely felt the power of the resurrected Jesus so completely in my soul.

What she describes, what brought tears to her eyes, was a Pentecost moment. It was the experience of the early disciples in the first reading when people of different languages and ethnicities and parts of the world connected. A Pentecost moment. It’s what we sometimes find here at St. John’s where Berkeley professors and physicians become friends with­­ -- and stand around this table with­­ -- people for whom simple day­-to-­day survival is often a struggle.

Gathering what has been dispersed. Connecting what is normally fractured.

This is the work of the Spirit. It is what Jesus, a Jew, called Tikkun Olam. The ancient Jewish story is that at the dawn of Creation, when light was created, something happened to shatter that light. It exploded into small shards that scattered throughout the world. And the task of every Jew, a task that Jesus took upon himself as a Jew, was to gather the divine spark found in every human being, from every corner of the world, back into one great light, gathering back into one what had been shattered. Tikkun Olam. Repairing the world. It is the work of the Spirit at Pentecost.

What gets in the way of this gathering, this great healing work? Jesus speaks about this in today’s gospel passage. Drawing from his own Jewish mythology, he has a word for it: Satan.

I know the word Satan can conjure images of the church lady from Saturday Night Live and red devilish figures, but in biblical mythology, Satan is the prosecuting attorney in a huge courtroom, “the accuser of our brothers and sisters” as he would later be called, and, still later, “the enemy of our human nature” whose goal is to crush and destroy the human spirit. Jesus says he is “the ruler of this world”.

The work of Satan is to divide us into “us” and “them”. He does this by “a scapegoating process where the majority can see itself as righteous by accusing a minority or one person of sin and then carrying out a judgment against them.”[1]  It was by this scapegoating that Jesus himself was killed.
Satan is the father of lies who judges, condemns, kills not only Jesus but also all those with whom Jesus identifies: the poor, the vulnerable, and the outcast.

If you are a person of color, or a woman, or LGBT, or someone who is aging, or someone with little or no money, chances are you’ve been on the receiving end of the work of this figure of Satan. We’re aware of it today:

● In Palestine, Syria, Myanmar
● In our own country and neighborhood, where police kill unarmed civilians with impunity, without ever even going to trial, all under the guise of keeping the peace, serving and protecting.
● In our neighborhood and all across our country, where immigrants desperately trying to care for their families, are torn from those same families and sent to detention centers, deported to countries where they often face torture and death.

In our own day, this is the work of what our ancestors would call Satan. And in a few moments, when Oziah is baptized, each of us will be asked point­-blank: “Do you renounce Satan...?” This is what we’re being asked to renounce.

All so that we can enter this great feast of Pentecost, make room for the Spirit, the Advocate, the Defender of the Accused who takes our side, pleads ferociously on our behalf, overturns the condemnation of Satan. No more separation into righteous and unrighteous, pure and impure. Today, the ruler of this world is overthrown. The shards of light are being gathered now; what has been shattered is now reconnecting. This is the work of the Spirit, not only in the larger world but in each of our own hearts where we can sometimes become divided, lose touch with who we are, who God has called us to be. This is the work of the Spirit, reconnecting what has been shattered.

One last thing... I know the usual symbol for this Spirit is a dove, but I prefer the one from Celtic Christianity: the wild goose that represents purity, strength, grace, and a deep and ferocious nurturing of her young. She is caring and protective, but also strong and beyond human control, hard to catch. She is not a tamed creature. Unlike the cooing of the dove, she is loud, noisy, and unrestrained.

This is the Spirit: strong, defiant, a bit disturbing, harsh, and exciting. She takes up our cause, she fights for us. She overturns the condemnation once laid on Jesus and on so many of our brothers and sisters, and perhaps us as well. This Spirit, the Advocate, frees us from the lies and chains of Satan, so we and our brothers and sisters can live and breathe and move -- and do it together.

It is this Spirit we welcome into our midst once again as we celebrate Pentecost. It is this Spirit in which we hope to drench ourselves as we stir once again the waters of baptism -- both for Oziah’s sake and for our own.

Nico's Funeral, May 16, 2015, The Rev'd. Richard Smith, Ph.D.

In a few moments, I’ll invite Nico’s niece Carola, and his friends Christopher and Robert to share some of their own reflections about Nico. Then, after the service, over some light food, we’ll all have a chance to share our own reflections.

For now, I want to say a word about the big house, the mansion mentioned in this gospel reading.

Notice there’s no mention in this text of heaven. It's not about a mansion in the sky. Jesus is not speaking about what happens after you die, but rather about this world becoming transformed into the dwelling place of God, a magnificent temple of great beauty, a sacred space. Or to use the image in this passage, all creation being being transformed into a huge mansion in which God dwells, and--follow me with this metaphor--you and me being transformed into rooms in this great mansion, each of us a dwelling place of God, a part of a temple magnificent and beautiful and sacred.

Transformation, a metamorphosis: like winter into spring, like a caterpillar into a magnificent butterfly. This is what this gospel text is about.

This great transformation is taking place all around us at every moment. And when it is finished, well, here is how our spiritual ancestors described what it will be like: "Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

This great transformation, a sight to behold, doesn't come easy, doesn’t come without  struggle and tears and darkness and pain. Sometimes we can become so overwhelmed by the darkness that we lose sight of the magnificent creatures we are and the great transformation going on all around us and within us. This is why we rely on the scriptures and teachings of our spiritual ancestors to remind us--so we don't forget, so we don't lose faith. This is why God gives us each other, to help each other on our way home.

And this is why God sometimes gives us someone like Nico, a more than usually colorful reminder of this great work, this metamorphosis happening all around us, happening inside each of us.

Nico knew all about transformation into a new creation, about metamorphosis.
I’m not just referring to the metamorphosis that came each day with his donning of bling and, during Lent, the purple-sequined blouse he like to wear to church. These are, to be sure, wonderful reminders of this greater story of transformation. But there was more.

Nico used to laugh when he'd tell us that, when he and his siblings were little and their mother was introducing them to strangers, when she came to Nico she’d sometimes say, “...and this is my son Nico...and, well, this one’s a little different.”

Nico knew from early on that he was different, and it was his willingness to step into that difference, with all its fabulousness and bling, that transformed what might have been a caterpillar into a magnificent butterfly.

Later there was a still more profound transformation in Nico. After dark years of losing everything to alcohol, of being ashamed and disappointed in himself, forgetting the butterfly he was--after those dark years came another transformation, finding himself again, remembering who he was, transforming yet again, this time far more beautifully and profoundly than ever before.

Becoming sober, and, in the process, not forgetting what he’d been through and learned along the way in those hard years on the streets. Becoming this time a man of compassion and great wisdom.

He was still Nico, of course--with all the rings and bracelets, the same sense of irony and sarcasm, the same dirty mind, the same mischievous sparkle in his eyes. But all of that was now part of a larger fabric: a spiritual depth, a compassionate and generous spirit, a genuine kindness and concern. We’ve all experienced this from him in a variety of ways, and I hope we’ll share these and other stories of Nico later this afternoon.

But for now, let me invite you to quietly pause for a few moments. If Jesus has it right, then you and I, along with God, are caught up in a vast and wonderful story about transforming all creation and ourselves into dwelling places of God, temples beautiful, magnificent, sacred.

But in this moment, may we pause to savor this one particular, remarkable episode in that greater story, resting for a moment in sheer amazement not just that our beloved Nico has been so fabulous, but that he has also been for us, what we are each called to become for each other: nothing less than the very dwelling place of God.

Pruning, Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year B, The Rev'd. Dr. Richard Smith

Today’s gospel is about being pruned. Perfect for a week like this. The news has been bleak:

• Police in Baltimore apparently breaking the spine and killing Freddie Gray. This and the many other revelations of racism and violence in our law enforcement and judicial systems have provoked tears and outrage around the country.
• In our own neighborhood, we recently got the horrifying revelation that Amilcar Perez Lopez, the young Guatemalan immigrant killed by police, was killed not in self-defense as the police department had claimed. Rather, they fired six shots to his back as he was fleeing unarmed, running for his life.
• A terrible earthquake in Nepal, 7000 dead.
• And we just passed the one-year anniversary of the kidnapping of all those school girls in Nigeria by Boko Haram.
• And Nico, even under 24/7 hospital care still falls down at the least expected moment, leaving him black and blue and in pain.
• And I have friends who are going through some pretty hard things in their families and relationships and work.

And that’s the thing. At any given moment, even when things are going relatively well, there are still so many difficult things life throws at us and it often feels like we’re being pruned.

Or maybe it doesn’t. Maybe, as theologian David Lose suggests, it just feels like being cut, cut down by life’s tragedies great or small, cut down by disappointment or despair, cut down by illness or job loss or divorce or other circumstances beyond our control, and left to wither and die.

If you've ever seen pruned bushes, you know how they can look so ravaged that it's hard to believe it will ever bear fruit or flower again. It’s only with time that the new shoots and buds and blossoms can start to appear.

The question isn't, finally, whether you'll experience some difficulty, some heartbreak, some cutting. The question is whether that cutting will be just the beginning of more withering, or will be toward new growth.

A word about the context of today’s gospel passage.

As David Lose notes, Jesus is speaking to the disciples on the eve of his crucifixion. He is about to be cut down, and they are about to be cut down by his crucifixion and death, and he is assuring them that it will not be mere, senseless cutting, but that they will survive, even flourish, bear abundant fruit.

The second context is that of John’s own community for whom he is writing these words. By the time they hear these words, they will have already been scattered, likely thrown out of their synagogue and their families, and have had plenty of reason to feel like they’ve been abandoned, been cut down and thrown aside, withering. But John writes to assure them that while they have indeed been cut, it is the pruning for more abundant fruit and life.

No doubt that was hard to believe. To the disciples on the night before the crucifixion or to John’s scattered and outcast community, it definitely felt like they were being cut down, abandoned, left to wither. And it’s like that for us as well; so much of life simply tears at us with no evidence that it is toward some fuller, more fruitful future.

But amid this uncertainty and distress, Jesus still invites us – actually, not just invites but promises us – that he will not abandon us but rather will cling to us like a vine clings to a tree so that we endure, persevere, and even flourish, not in spite of, but in and through all these difficulties.

This is the mystery we immerse ourselves in during these Easter days: the promise that these hardships will not have the last word. Whenever our hearts get broken, this promise of Easter opens a way out of the darkness.

Because heartbreak and the pain of being cut away are an inevitable part of life, and the way we understand and deal with it can determine whether we are being cut to wither and die or pruned to flourish and grow.

Writing on the topic of violence, Parker Palmer suggests that violence is what happens when we don’t understand our own pain, when we don’t know what to do with it.

The violence can take many forms, some overt, others more subtle. “Sometimes we try to numb the pain of suffering in ways that dishonor our souls. We turn to noise and frenzy, nonstop work, or substance abuse as anesthetics that only deepen our suffering.

“Sometimes we visit violence upon others, as if causing them pain would mitigate our own. Racism, sexism, homophobia, and contempt for the poor are among the cruel outcomes of this demented strategy.”

Sometimes this violence is inflicted by individuals, other times by systems as we’ve seen in the established policies and practices of local law enforcement in Ferguson, Baltimore, and here in our neighborhood.

Nations sometimes don’t know what to do with their pain either, and so they become violent, inflicting pain on others through torture and warfare.

Palmer writes: “On September 11, 2001, more than three thousand Americans died from acts of terrorism. America needed to respond and plans for war were laid. Few were troubled by the fact that the country we eventually attacked had little or nothing to do with the terrorists who attacked us. We had suffered; we needed to do violence to someone, somewhere; and so we went to war, at tragic cost. A million Iraqis lost their lives, and another four million were driven into exile. Forty-five hundred Americans died in Iraq, and so many came home with grave wounds to body and mind that several thousand more have been victims of war via suicide.”

Violence is what happens when we don’t know what to do with our pain.

But there’s another way of handling our pain, one that actually leads to abundant fruit. “We all know people who’ve suffered the loss of the most important person in their lives, or suddenly found themselves unemployed or with a serious disability. At first, they disappear into grief, certain that life will never again be worth living. But, through some sort of spiritual alchemy, they eventually emerge to find that their hearts have grown larger and more compassionate. They have developed a greater capacity to take in others’ sorrows and joys, not in spite of their loss but because of it.”

This is the kind of suffering that Jesus is speaking of in today’s gospel: It is not simply a cutting away, but rather a pruning, and it leads not to abandonment or violence or death; but rather to more life and love, more compassion and justice, abundant fruit.

What about you? Is God doing some pruning in your life right now? Some loss or disappointment or pain? Can you allow yourself to acknowledge the very real pain of that moment? At the same time, can you see it not as a cutting that leads to withering and death, but as a pruning, as a step toward a more abundant life, abundant fruit? Perhaps even now you can see some of the new shoots and buds and blossoms already emerging, the first signs of more abundant fruit.

Perhaps in our country at this moment, the exposure of racist practices that have for centuries destroyed the lives of so many people of color will lead to a pruning that in turn will yield abundant fruit. Already it seems to be galvanizing the hope and determination of people of color to speak their word, tell their stories, demand justice. Perhaps it will also lead the rest of us to listen, honor their stories of oppression, join them in the struggle for a new day. Perhaps this time of painful revelation and outrage in our country can be a pruning that yields abundant fruit.

In the parish email of a couple of weeks ago, I included a poem by Mary Oliver. Let me close this sermon by reading that poem once again.

Lead
by Mary Oliver

Here is a story
to break your heart.
Are you willing?
This winter
the loons came to our harbor
and died, one by one,
of nothing we could see.
A friend told me
of one on the shore
that lifted its head and opened
the elegant beak and cried out
in the long, sweet savoring of its life
which, if you have heard it,
you know is a sacred thing,
and for which, if you have not heard it,
you had better hurry to where
they still sing.
And, believe me, tell no one
just where that is.
The next morning
this loon, speckled
and iridescent and with a plan
to fly home
to some hidden lake,
was dead on the shore.
I tell you this
to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again.

to the rest of the world.

Good Friday, 2015, Dr. Rebecca Gordon

It’s often said that every preacher really has only one sermon in her; she just finds different ways of giving that one sermon over and over. I think that’s probably true of me. (In fact, I’ll even admit to more than a little actual recycling in this one.) My one sermon is about the sacrament – the thing that has been made holy— which we enact in the Eucharist, and about the pain and death at the center of that sacrament, and about how we recognize the Body of Christ there.

The Eucharist is the center of my week, like the narrow neck of an hourglass. In the best times, my daily life leads up to and flows out of the Eucharist. I think this is probably true for many people at Saint John’s, and indeed for many Christians engaged in sacramental forms of worship. If the Eucharist is the center of our worship and our week, then the cross lies at the center of the Eucharist. Everything we do in our worship flows into and out of the cross. Tonight I invite you to consider the idea that it could be the same with everything we do as Christians in the world.

We often speak of the cross on which Jesus was executed as “holy.” In Spanish, it’s called “Santa Cruz,” like Santa Cruz, the name of our neighboring city about 60 miles south of here. Episcopalians even observe a Feast of the Holy Cross. The very name of this feast day raises a question: How can we call the cross — the instrument on which Jesus was tortured and murdered — holy? It’s like calling a CIA interrogation site holy; like calling the torture cells at Guantánamo Bay or in Chicago, Illinois holy; like calling a gallows, a guillotine, a gas chamber holy. How can we do that? To answer this question is to enter into a place that is beyond words, to enter into a mystery. Words can only lead us to the threshold; we each have to choose to step across it. So tonight, this Good Friday, I will try to use my poor words to invite you into a wordless mystery.

What kind of mystery is this? To begin with, it is the mystery of a living God who is willing always and eternally to know what it is “to live and die as one of us.” It is the mystery of a Creator who knows what it is to be a creature – to wake on a soft spring morning and smell the new plants pushing through the earth; to feel the pleasure of clean clothes on a clean body, to take that first sip of coffee, that first bite of toast, and feel the sweet and salty mix of jam and butter run down your chin, to look across the table and see other creatures whom you love, perhaps to remember last night’s sweaty crush of desire and satisfaction in the arms of some other creature. It is the mystery of a God who knows what it is to stand at night in stunned awe beneath an endless expanse of stars, galaxy upon galaxy, universe upon universe. It is the mystery of a God who falls in love with ordinary life – and who, like any living creature – wants desperately to hold onto it. The God who cries out, “Abba, Father, let this cup pass from me…”

But there is more to creaturehood than pleasure and ecstatic joy. Tonight we have chanted the whole of that great psalm, number 22, whose first line we are told in the gospel of Mathew Jesus himself cried out from the cross, “Eli, eli, lama sabachthani? – My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The mystery of the holy cross is also the mystery of the God who knows what suffering is, who knows what it is to be abandoned, to be left alone with the torturer, the God who has cried out with the psalmist: “I am poured out like water; all my bones are out of joint; my heart within my breast is melting wax.”

Good Friday is one part of the mystery of incarnation. Each year during Holy Week, we celebrate two parts of that mystery, Christ’s crucifixion and Christ’s resurrection, Good Friday and Easter. I’ll come to Easter in a moment. For now though, let us stay in Good Friday.

In the practice of many poor Christian communities around the world, Good Friday, not Easter, is the most important day of Holy Week. Folks in these communities recognize the Body of Christ in the One who accompanies them in their struggles. In San Antonio, Texas, for example, the Latino community re-enacts Jesus’ passion, with far more truth than any television special.

Who are these Good Friday people? They are the Black communities of this country, who have seen too many of their young men shot by a police force that so often feels more like an occupying army.  Who cry out to us and to God that Black Lives Matter. They are the 2.3 million men and women living for decades in our jails and prisons, tens of thousands of them in solitary confinement, sacrificed to a “War on Drugs” that kills so many in Mexico, in Honduras, on our own streets. They are the families of the 43 education students of Ayotzinapa, murdered in Guerrero, Mexico, som of whom will be with us this Sunday to welcome the resurrected Jesus.

They are the immigrant men who gather on street corners hoping for work. They are the nannies who must leave their own children to take care of the children of other people. They are the family of Amilcar Perez-López, a Guatemalan immigrant shot a month ago by the San Francisco Police. And they are the people of St. John’s, Nico at the ICU in St. Mary’s, Bonita, waiting for a new hip, and Jackie, living the tragic miracle of receiving a young man’s kidney. We are all Good Friday people, those of us who lie awake in that awful time between 2:00 and 4:00 a.m., when physical pain or gnawing fear are often at their worst, and sleep just won’t come. When will it stop hurting? Will it ever stop? Will I lose my job? My home? My lover? My children? My mother? My life?
To enter into the mystery of the cross is to know somehow that God asks these questions with us, that God also knows what it is to be tortured, what it is to find oneself in that place where all of time and space shrink down to the an eternal now of speechless pain and separation. Many of you know that I have spent some years now working on the problem of literal torture, particularly institutionalized state torture. One thing I have learned is that torture has almost nothing to do with gathering what its proponents like to call “actionable intelligence.” Torture is about destroying social bodies by attacking the minds and bodies of the people who make up those bodies. This is what the Roman state and its upper class collaborators tried to do to Jesus and the people with him. This is what our own state continues to do to this day, in secret places around the world, and in our own prisons. When we celebrate Good Friday, we remember the God who is there in every prison cell.

Good Friday commemorates that time – 2000 years ago and yet always now -- when the God who loved life as much as we do experienced – and continues to experience – what it is for a creature to suffer and die. Good Friday is that eternal time when we recognize the God who shares our pain. Recognizing the Christ in our own pain does not take the pain away. The mystery is that sometimes this recognition transforms our experience of that pain, so that somehow we are not alone with it.
In a few minutes, we will have the opportunity to venerate – to honor – a model of Jesus’s cross, to testify to its holy nature. I want to be very clear here: what is holy about the cross is not fear, pain, and torture. There is nothing good or holy about human beings tormenting one another, or about a state that makes such torment an institution, an organized practice. What is holy is the body of Christ that suffers. What is holy is our ability to recognize that body in our own suffering and the suffering of others. When you touch that wood, I invite you to recognize the body of Christ – which is us.
In a sense, every Sunday liturgy has a little “Good Friday” inside it, and a little Easter. Our Anglican liturgical form helps us to experience the central reality of the cross with our minds, hearts and bodies, as each Sunday we retell our story. “On the night before he was handed over to suffering and death…” runs the prayer of consecration. There at the center of the story stands the holy cross, the sign of the One who died in pain and loneliness – tortured to death for choosing the side of the poor and the unwanted, the crazy ones, the drunks and the drug addicts. It is God’s choosing God’s self-offering, that takes the cross, an instrument of torture, and makes it something holy – makes it the symbol with which we Christians are marked, as we were marked almost 40 days ago, on Ash Wednesday.

Then, in the midst of the prayer of consecration, we “confess the mystery of faith: Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again.”

Which brings us finally to Easter. Tonight, through the Eucharist we participate in death, but we also participate in resurrection and in the promise of the reign of God, which is both with us now and still to come. When we recognize ourselves as the Body of Christ we create solidarity with each other, with all humanity, with all creation, which is the only context in which death and suffering can have any meaning, can be redeemed. We participate in a physical way—eating and drinking with our own bodies—in the Body of Christ, both crucified and resurrected. But we truly become the resurrected body only when we make the Eucharist real beyond the altar table, in the world. That is why one of our Eucharistic prayers says, “Deliver us from the presumption of coming to this Table for solace only, and not for strength; for pardon only, and not for renewal.” A truly great preacher, St. Augustine, said it this way: “You are the Body of Christ: that is to say, in you and through you the method and work of the incarnation must go forward. You are to be taken, you are to be consecrated, broken and distributed, that you may become the means of grace and vehicles of eternal love.”
And that is why on most days our liturgy ends with a dismissal. It is the shortest part of the service, but in some ways the most important. For here we ask God  “send us out to do the work you have given us to do, to love and serve you as faithful witnesses of Christ our Lord.”

Tonight, we are not dismissed; until Easter, we remain caught between death and resurrection. But we leave tonight secure in the knowledge that Easter does come; that, in the words of another psalm, “weeping endures for a night, but joy comes in the morning.” So tonight, as you leave this place, remember that you leave it as a faithful witness to the mystery in which we ourselves become the body of Christ, “consecrated, broken, and distributed,” that we ourselves are called to become “the means of grace and vehicles of eternal love.”

Amen

Easter and the Families of the Disappeared, Easter 2015, The Rev'd. Dr. Richard Smith

Photo by Sarah Lawton

(Note: This year for Easter, our parish welcomed members of the families of the 43 disappeared students from Ayotzinapa, Mexico. They have been touring the US, hoping to develop friendships and share their stories. We were honored to have them for the holiest day of our year.)


It begins in darkness, at a tomb, a place of death. It ends with the dawn.

It begins with Magdalene in tears, frightened and outraged and grieving. It ends in a garden teeming with life and Jesus speaking her name.

It begins in darkness, at a place of death. “Early on the first day of the week,” John writes, “while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb.”

We know what it is like to move about in darkness, to be in a place of death.

The families of the 43 students of Ayotzinapa know that darkness, that place of death. Their sons were disappeared by their government and they are desperately searching for answers. Why must it be so hard to find out what happened to their sons? Any parent would want to know. Why is the path to justice so hard?

Darkness. Tears. Fear. Outrage, Grieving.  These families know these things.

Here in our town, Elvira and Refugio know that darkness, that place of death. They are the parents of Alex Nieto, the young man gunned down and killed by San Francisco Police on Bernal heights just over a year ago while he was eating a burrito on his way to work. Like any parents, Elvira and Refugio simply want to know what happened in the last moments of their son’s life. Why must it be so hard to find the truth? Why is the path to justice so hard? Darkness. Tears. Grieving. Outrage.

Yesterday here at St. John’s we celebrated the memorial for Amilcar Perez Lopez, a young immigrant in our neighborhood. He came here to work so he could send money to his family living in poverty in Guatemala. Like Alex, he too was gunned down and killed by San Francisco Police.

Now that the autopsy is complete, we know that in the version of events given by Police to the media and to the community, they were lying. The Police are lying! I'm sorry to say this: They're lying.

Why must it be so hard to simply learn what happened? Darkness. Tears. Grieving. Anger.

And, God knows, our own community of St. John’s has known our own forms of darkness this past year; we, too have been in a place of death: worries about ever finding a new kidney for Jackie, Gary now in a fight with cancer, a seemingly interminable physical rehab process for Brother Tikhon.

And our beloved Nico has now learned that doctors have done all they can for him. He is now dying.

The story begins in darkness, in the place of death. We know this darkness and the place of death all too well.

There is an ancient litany of the church to Mary, the mother of Jesus. It goes, “Holy Mary, who kept faith on Holy Saturday, pray for us.”

Holy Saturday, the day between Good Friday and Easter, was for this woman, a day of darkness, tears, grieving, outrage. Like the parents of the 43 students, the parents of Alex Nieto, the parents of Amilcar, Mary had lost her son at the hands of the state. She had no clue what might come next. No signs of hope. Nothing but unbearable pain.

Yet even in that moment, she kept faith, kept trusting that out of a moment even as dark as this, light would surely come; out of this place of death, new life would surely emerge. She kept faith.

She couldn’t see how or when it would come, or what it would look like. She only knew it would come, that death and tears and grieving and anger would not have the final say; that her darkest moment would be redeemed.

Despite all evidence to the contrary, love and joy, justice and truth, will win. Life will win. Mary knew this. “Holy Mary, who kept faith on Holy Saturday, pray for us”--so that we, in our Holy Saturdays, can also keep faith.

St. Paul once wrote to his community, “Sisters and brothers, we would not have you grieve as people who have no hope.” I take that to mean that we are to grieve as people who do have hope, who know that death and tears and fear and grief will not have the final say.

For many of us, it  still seems very early in the morning, still dark. But it is, after all, the morning of Easter, and so we know how our story, like that of Jesus, will end.

What began in tears and darkness in the place of death will end with a broken tomb, a garden teeming with life, and Jesus, with a smile on his lips and a sparkle in his eye, speaking our names. The triumph of life and love and laughter.

And although it is still dark, it is time for you and me to practice some resurrection, anticipate the life, the love, the justice that we, like Mary, know will come. We don’t know when or how or what it might look like, but we are Easter people, and we know how the story ends. If, at this moment, we find ourselves in tears, it’s because the story isn’t over yet.

And so we practice resurrection--speaking out about what happened to the 43 students, to Alex, to Amilcar. Not remaining silent. Resisting all the lies the authorities throw at us. Carrying our picket signs, filing complaints, writing letters, speaking up at community meetings. Not giving up. Like Mary, keeping faith.

Practicing resurrection: It’s why we celebrate this day with great food and extra hugs, bring back the Alleluias into our songs in church, share a few favorite jokes, have an Easter egg hunt for our kids. We’re just practicing resurrection.

Practicing resurrection: Perhaps we do it by hanging out with our brother Nico over coffee or a hot chocolate in the final days and weeks of his life.

Practicing resurrection: Perhaps we do it by becoming organ donors, so that people like Jackie with kidney failure won’t have such an ordeal finding a new kidney to stay alive.

Practicing resurrection, anticipating and bringing to birth the life and the love, the justice, the joy and laughter that we know with all our hearts will have the final say at the end of our own Easter stories.

Judgement. The Rev'd. Dr. Richard Smith

“Judgement” is a loaded word for us. It conjures images of self-righteous preachers and repressed religious types wagging their fingers and tongues, an image of an angry God, an old guy in the sky with a long white beard, lashing out to punish us for our misdeeds.

Many of us have been on the receiving end of this kind of judgement, told we would burn in hell for loving whom we love in the ways we love. For good reason, “judgement” has become a loaded word for many of us.

But for John in today’s gospel, judgement is something very different. It begins with Jesus, after we’ve completely abandoned him, being lifted onto the cross, completely crushed by the violence and hatred we see all around us and in which we ourselves are complicit.

And in that moment, when he’s lost everyone and everything, when he hangs there tortured, barely able to lift his head, gasping for air, something amazing happens: He keeps loving us, and he doesn’t take it back. No finger-pointing, no condemnation. He just keeps loving us.

And when we encounter this kind of love, when we look on someone we have hurt and who still loves us, it is very unsettling.

There’s a story of a little boy whose dad was putting him to bed earlier than he wanted. The little boy, Benjamin, said, “Daddy, I hate you.” Benjamin’s father, exercising the kind of parental wisdom can only I hope for, replied, “Ben, I’m sorry you feel that way, but I love you.” Benjamin’s response to such gracious words surprised his dad: “Don’t say that!” “I’m sorry Benjamin, but it’s true. I love you.” “Don’t,” his son protested, “Don’t say that again!” At which point Ben’s father said, “Benjamin, I love you…like it or not!”

Love like this is out of our control. We can’t get rid of it, much as we might like to at times.

And sometimes we would like to get rid of it, because it triggers one of those uncomfortable person-in-the-mirror moments. It elicits what some call good guilt--a sadness and shame for the hurt we’ve caused, the evil we’ve done and in which we have been complicit.

I had this kind of experience last Sunday when we took some of our young people to see Selma. The film shows the struggle of the African-American marchers for justice, wanting only to be given the most basic decency and respect. The film also shows the brutal and violent opposition they encountered from larger white society. And it shows how, even as they continued to speak and insist on justice, and even despite the violence inflicted on them, they refused to strike back, refused to return evil for evil.

Seeing that film was a moment of judgement for me: I had to confront my own complicity in the racism of our culture, the ways I have silently contributed to the violence and injustice against them, forgotten that black and brown lives matter.

Notice, there’s no finger-pointing in this dynamic. Jesus and Dr. King issue no threats of hellfire, no condemnations. This kind of judgement just doesn’t do that.

I saw a posting on Facebook the other day about singer Joan Baez. Just before a recent concert, some people showed up with signs protesting her anti-war and pro-choice positions. They were veterans of the Viet Nam war she had opposed, and they were also strongly anti-abortion. They accused her of killing babies and encouraging the shooting of American soldiers--things that were simply not true. Some of their signs said “Joan Baez, soldiers don’t kill babies. Liberals do,” and “JOAN BAEZ GAVE COMFORT & AID TO OUR ENEMY IN VIETNAM & ENCOURAGED THEM TO KILL AMERICANS!"

Before the concert, Joan went out to talk with them. She listened to their stories, and quietly tried to clarify her own positions. She told them that, despite her opposition to that war, she had stood by them from the beginning and that she stood by them now.

Joan's continuing acceptance of their stories and her willingness to hear them out began to melt their anger. In a twist that seems hard to fathom, they then asked her to SIGN THEIR POSTERS!  She replied that she would not sign the front of "those horrible things", but she would sign the back. She wrote "All the very best to you, Joan Baez." Then she gave them copies of her book, and offered tickets to the show, which they did not accept.

During the concert, Joan dedicated a song to the protesters and said "You know, they just wanted to be heard.  Everyone wants to be heard. I feel like I made four new friends tonight."

It’s as though people like Jesus and Dr. King and Joan Baez have a freedom that we often lack: They don’t feel the need to prove themselves right, or to have the upper hand, or to even the score, or repay evil with evil. They live by a different logic. So different from the logic we’ve grown accustomed to, that we take to be business as usual, as just the way things are.

John says that, after gazing upon the man we have betrayed and tortured and lifted up on the cross--the one who kept on loving us through all of that--we are confronted with our own darkness. The judgement lies not in someone pointing a finger at us and condemning us, but rather in our own coming to see that we have not lived up to what we can be, that we’ve blown it, gotten things seriously wrong.

This creates the conditions for a decision, a choice we must make either to return to the darkness, back to business as usual, or to turn a new way, living as free people who are not condemned and therefore do not condemn, living the compassionate life of sinners who know they are forgiven.

That’s the choice we have before us this Lenten morning, and we have all the grace we need to make it.