The Pool of Bethesda

Sixth Sunday of Easter
John 5:1-9

The Rev'd Dr Richard Smith

The man has sat by that pool at Bethesda for thirty-eight years. Bethesda means “house of mercy” but it has been not so merciful to him.

When the healing angel stirs the waters, he has no way to get into the pool because of all the crowds rushing in ahead of him. After 38 years it’s safe to say he’s gotten used to it, that he could not imagine the future being any different. He’s resigned himself to a diminished life, given up on his own dreams and his own heart. He can no longer even imagine what it would be like to stand up, feel his full weight on his feet, take one step and then another, gain his stride, pick up the pace, maybe even--imagine!--begin to run. No. After 38 long years, such dreams have long since faded.

He lies there, face down in a half inch of life and drowning.

This is not what God intended for him or for any of us, this diminished life, this despair, this resignation.

Along comes Jesus, a prophet who knows that the only God there is the the one who works 24/7 so we can thrive, live abundantly. And Jesus, who is close to the heart of God, sees a very different future, one full of possibility and hope.

So he says to the man, “Do you want to be made well?” He’s trying to reawaken the man’s own deepest desire. “Do you want to be made well?” Over all those years, the man has lost touch with that deep desire, and Jesus now calls him back to it. The vague outline of new possibilities, a new future is beginning to emerge.

At first the man doesn’t get it. He can’t imagine anything other than his own dismal present experience. He doesn’t answer the question; instead, he simply laments his own helplessness before a cruel fate. "There is no one to put me into the pool."

But Jesus brushes his lament aside and simply says, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.”

Now comes the hard part, the crux of the story, the decisive moment. Will he or won’t he? Will this man give in to those voices of resignation that tell him it’s better to stay put, not take the risk. “You might fall, get hurt, humiliated.” Or will he resist those voices, believe the vision, stand up, pick up the mat, put one foot in front of the other and slowly, perhaps hesitantly at first but then with greater and greater confidence, learn to walk again?

This brief story has a happy ending. John says, “At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk.” It’s a triumphant moment of courage and defiance and determination. He breaks through all the resignation and despair that had overtaken him through the years. Now he is a new creation.

This story is echoed down through the ages. People find the spiritual resources to resist the voices that diminish them. Addicts begin the journey of recovery. People after years of abuse regain a sense of their own dignity and beauty. Married couples working through some hard times find each other again.

It happens on other levels. Women break out of the shackles tradition has imposed on them to flourish as individuals and great artists and thinkers and leaders. Gay people burst out of the closet. Elders refuse to simply sit back and watch TV when there’s still so much wrong with the world, so much left to fight for. People of color keep putting one foot in front of the other in that long journey to freedom and equality. Today is International Workers Day and we remember the stories of workers refusing to be exploited, demanding a fair wage and safe working conditions.

Just a few blocks from here, five hunger strikers called the Frisco5 are resisting the loud and powerful voices telling them and their families to simply move on to make room for the one percent, to simply resign themselves to being harassed by the police and and shot down in the street. Despite how dismal things have gotten for so many of us in this City, these strikers have not resigned themselves, have not lost their capacity to dream. They can still imagine a new creation where there’s room for everyone including their families and the elderly and the Alex Nietos, Amilcars, Marios, and Luises.

San Francisco poet Tony Robles talks about the impact the strike has had on him, how it has re-ignited his own imagination and given him a burst of hope.

It took a hunger strike to make me feel alive in a city that feels dead. I'm sorry but I'm new to the snow. I grew up with colors sprouting from my skin and the color of poetry stained on my tongue. It took a hunger strike to fill my belly with feelings of Frisco, songs of Frisco, the Frisco that is soaked in my bones and blood. It took a hunger strike to bring back that down home feeling and black laughter and fire and tears that flow so deep. It took a hunger strike to clear my veins of digital cholesterol. It took a hunger strike to show we can be tender without legal tender. It took a hunger strike to bring back my city on one piece, one corner of city block. It took a hunger strike to see the Frisco I know--again.

Some theologians say there are a couple of ways to break the human spirit. One involves blatantly visiting poverty and violence on people, the other involves seducing them.

The first strategy can be seen in poor countries run by dictators--like Honduras, and Syria--but also in neighborhoods like ours where many families and elders are forced out of their homes, and police imprison and kill people who are black and brown, and sweep unhoused people from the only shelters they have left. Such relentless assaults can over time break people’s spirits and cause them to lose hope.

The second strategy operates by manipulation and seduction. It first afflicts you with anxiety, convincing you there’s something wrong with the way God made you. You’re too old or too young, too skinny or too fat, the wrong color, the wrong gender or sexual orientation. Then it tries to sell you the cure. And somewhere in the desperate effort to assuage that contrived anxiety, somewhere in the frantic pursuit of skin creams that promise to remove those aging wrinkles, spa treatments to calm your nerves and give you the perfect body, the latest technological gadgets, and cars that put you in control, somewhere along this treadmill you lose your way, lose passion and purpose, your zest for life. A consumer society has disconnected you from your own heart and your own deepest desires and dreams.

Both strategies crush the human spirit. The first does it by violence and brute force and economic exploitation, the second by manipulation and seduction. Both deaden our passion for life. Both leave us in despair, depriving us of the ability to imagine that things could be different, that something new could emerge, that we could be whole.

To thrive as God would want us to do, we have first to consciously resist the voices, however powerful and intimidating they can seem at times, in order to give our imaginations room to envision something new and beautiful and powerful.

I believe Mary Oliver may have been thinking of this when she wrote this poem that I will now close with.

The Journey
by Mary Oliver
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice – – –
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
‘Mend my life!’
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations – – –
though their melancholy
was terrible. It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice,
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do – – – determined to save
the only life you could save.

"...if you have love for one another"

THE FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER

April 24, 2016   Year C

The Rev. Dr. Jack Eastwood

"I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another."

Two weeks ago Richard began his sermon on the theme of love in this way: It takes years and years to marry a man, years and years to marry a woman. Sometimes love comes easy, other times it’s damn hard. For most of us mortals, real, genuine love doesn’t happen overnight; it’s a matter of years, a matter of a lifetime. For many of us married folks, no matter how long we’ve been married, we’re always beginners.

I remember this not just because today’s lessons present us with the same theme, the commandment to love one another, but also because those words echoed in me on a deep level where I know that love is hard work, and indeed takes a lifetime.

With that said I want to offer this story. Bruce Larsen, a Presbyterian minister, tells the story of a young woman who joined his congregation in America having moved from Angola in West Africa. Her name was Maria, and Larsen says, "she was always laughing." She sparkled with her faith. Love leapt from her to others. One day she went to a meeting on evangelism that the presbytery was sponsoring. All kinds of pamphlets, mission strategies, campaigns, and statistics were distributed to the participants. Lots of furrowed brows put lots of brain power into figuring out the best way to get the unchurched churched.

At one point, toward the end of the day, someone turned to Maria and asked her what they did in her church in Angola to evangelize the unchurched. Knowing how rapidly Christianity had grown in her country, they were curious to know more of the African "methodology". Maria, slightly intimidated by the spotlight, stood up, and, after a moment's thought, said, "We don't give pamphlets to people or have missions. We just send one or two Christian families to live in a village. And when people see what Christians are like, then they want to be Christians themselves."

For me, this story poses a very important question. What is the special character of Christian love that can be so compelling or so attractive? What does it look like? How does it feel?

When we think about what Jesus said and the context in which he said it in today’s gospel ­ we know that his love for us was a sacrificial kind, and the love that we should have for each other, too, in some sense is also sacrificial. He tells us to lay down our lives for each other. And that is a great challenge. It seems an impossible command! But I'd like to wrestle with that this morning because I wonder if it is, after all, that impossible.

I remember being at an inter­faith conference on civil rights and hearing a rabbi tell this story about the meaning of love. He said, "One day the son of a rabbi came to his father and said, "My father, I love you." "Oh?" the old rabbi said and he said nothing more.

The next day the son came again to his father and he said more loudly, "My father, I love you." "Oh?" he said, and nothing more.

On the third day, the son came again to his father and said in the loudest voice, "I love you". "My son," the old rabbi began, "do you know what hurts me?" "No, I don't", the boy said quietly. "I am too young to know what hurts you." His father replied, "when you know what hurts me, then you will know how to love me."

The night was murky with darkness looming not only in Jesus’ life but also the lives of his disciples. Issues of status and power, envy and resentment, jealousy and fear filled the atmosphere. Chief among these barrier­-creating emotions was betrayal. Jesus was “troubled in spirit” the text says; “one of you will betray me.” They are set to wondering and asking who is this traitor? Here John, unlike the other gospel writers, presents us with an important picture about God and God’s table fellowship. Jesus responds to the question of identity by dipping bread into the dish in the middle of the table and giving it to Judas. Separation from God’s love will never come from God’s side.

The message of inclusion is given eternally, even under the threat of darkness and betrayal. Loving all in washing their feet, including all in table fellowship, Jesus is the beginning of what makes new the commandment of love. Jesus is glorified in his giving himself away. Love is glorified when it is given away. It is the new meaning of what is fair.

Yesterday I heard a mother, her name is Mary, tell her story of her son’s loving. Several weeks ago he went into a coma and was in the hospital. He had tried to commit suicide by hanging. He had struggled too much of his young life with alcohol and drugs. Mary and her family had gathered at the hospital to be with her son at his bedside during his final hours of life support. A nurse came into the room and asked Mary to step outside to speak to someone. Puzzled and distressed at being pulled away, Mary went to the hall. A representative of the organ donor program was waiting outside the room. She had come to inform Mary that her son had registered as an organ donor. Mary respected her son’s wishes. She now lives not only with the loss of her son in the way he died, but in the way he gave himself for others.

And so it is for folks like you and me, who gather around the Lord’s table, living with our Lord’s death in the way he died, and gives himself to us so that we may give ourselves to others. AMEN

“Do you love me?”

John 21:1-19

The Rev'd Richard Smith, Ph.D.

Married couples can testify. People like Leah and Cecil, Jan and Rebecca, Jack and Judy, Darryl and Stoner, Robert and Ann know this: It takes years and years to marry a man, years and years to marry a woman. Sometimes love comes easy, other times it’s damn hard. For most of us mortals, real, genuine love doesn’t happen overnight; it’s a matter of years, a matter of a lifetime. For many of us married folks, no matter how long we’ve been married, we’re always beginners.

Which brings us to the charcoal fire in today’s gospel from John. It’s on a beach, and Jesus is cooking breakfast for his disciples.

There’s only one other time John mentions a charcoal fire. It’s after Jesus’ arrest. That charcoal fire had burned in the courtyard outside where Jesus was being tried and tortured. In front of that fire stood Peter. It was night and it was cold and he was warming himself. It was there, over that fire, that Peter denied ever knowing Jesus, denied him three times.

Fast forward to today’s gospel and this other charcoal fire, the one on the beach. It is no longer dark; the dawn has finally broken. Over this fire stands Jesus cooking breakfast for his disciples.  

After he serves them breakfast, he says to Peter, “Do you love me?" and Peter says he does. Then Jesus asks him the same question a second time and then once again, and each time Peter says he loves him--three times in all, to make up for the other three times.

But watch what’s happening under the surface here.

As he tells this simple and beautiful story, John is using two different Greek words for love. The words are agape and phileo. 

Agape is the kind of love Jesus has for us. It is love to the end. Often it comes with joy, a sense of peace, deep satisfaction, but it can also require great sacrifice, even the laying down of one’s life. Agape.

By contrast, Phileo is more like bromance. It is the affection between good friends who like the camaraderie of hanging out with each other, swapping stories and favorite jokes, sharing common interests, enjoying meals together. Phileo.

When Jesus first asks Peter, “Do you love me?” the word he uses is agape, as if to say, “Peter do you love me with the same love I have for you, to the end?” But Peter, in a rare moment of humility and honesty, responds by using the word phileo, saying to Jesus in effect, “Well, I can’t honestly say I’d lay down my life for you. But you are my friend. I love you with brotherly love.” Peter is dodging the question here.

Jesus then asks a second time, again using agape, and Peter answers again using phileo, as if to say, “You’re my great buddy,” or as some of our neighbors like to say, “You’re my homey.” 

A third time Jesus asks him, “Do you love me?” but this time it is Jesus who uses the word phileo--in other words he comes to Peter’s level and says, in effect, “OK, Peter, then you do at least love me with brotherly love, the love good friends have?”

And this makes Peter sad. He realizes Jesus is on to him and his evasions. So he now becomes more emphatic and says, “Lord, You know everything; You know what kind of a man I am. You know I denied you three times. You know that at this point in my life I can’t honestly say I love you as you love me. But I do love you as a brother and a friend. That much I can say. And for now, that’s the best I can do.”

Jesus then goes on to tell Peter that one day he will grow in love, one day laying down his life as Jesus had done. “When you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.” Almost as if to say, “Peter I do understand that you love me now with only a brotherly love. But the day will come when you will finally be willing to die for me and you will give over your life. Then you will be able to say that you love me with agape love.”

Then Jesus says simply, “Follow me.” And Peter does.

And so the story continues, from that conversation by the fire on the beach to a life lived over many years, one day at a time, each day learning to love a bit more. Sometimes it’s two steps forward and one step back, there are bound to be misunderstandings and struggles. Perhaps among all the joy and satisfactions there will be more denials, temper tantrums, words spoken in haste, moments of cowardice, or moments when Peter’s own ego would get in the way. 

This is how love works for most of us. It’s a journey with lots of ups and downs, with many joys and satisfactions. What is true in a marriage is also true in following Jesus: We don’t learn how to love overnight; it’s a matter of years, a matter of a lifetime.

It’s important that in all the ups and downs--when we don’t see the results we’d like from our hard work, or when tensions arise within the community, or when prayer feels tedious and hard, or when we betray our own deepest values--the important thing is that we not get discouraged but rather stay on the path of love. This is Peter’s story: over the years, each time he fails, he gets up again: a sinner in need of healing, resolved to follow the one who forgave him and who had called him that day on the beach, the one he came to love more and more fully to the end. 

In all the ups and downs, all our failures and disappointments the important thing is to stay on the path. The important and necessary thing is to keep on loving.

Easter 2016: Practicing Resurrection

John 20:1-18

The Rev'd Dr Richard Smith

Today's Easter gospel begins in darkness, at a tomb, a place of death. It ends with the dawn. 

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

But it begins in darkness. 

A couple of weeks ago I was sitting in a packed courtroom when the medical examiner took the stand. A young man had been brutally shot and killed. The medical examiner had to explain how he was killed. As she spoke, she projected onto a large screen the first of several graphic photos of the young man’s bullet-riddled body. The bullets had pierced his face, his torso, his legs. They had destroyed him.

Seated in the front row were the young man’s mom and dad. At the very first photo, they both gasped.  They had not seen these photos before. His mom, with tears welling up in her eyes, slumped forward, her face in her hands. 

It was too much. They couldn’t bear to watch this. We got up and left the courtroom, went out to the hall to catch our breath. There we sat for the next two hours while inside the courtroom the medical examiner continued with the photos and completed her testimony. 

As we waited in that windowless hallway, the young man’s mom asked me what any mom in such a moment would ask a priest, the question no priest or theologian or guru has ever been able to answer: “Why did God let my son get killed in this way?” 

Last Sunday at the beginning of Holy Week, we remembered of how Jesus once entered Jerusalem on a donkey, bringing with him into that majestic city a crowd of scruffy peasants from backwater Galilee--a motley crew of poor folks and outcasts, the broken people, the ones the world regards as children and madmen and fools. 

And as Luke tells the story, as soon as Jesus caught sight of the city, he wept. I wonder what was going through his mind in that moment. 

I wonder if it was not just for Jerusalem that Jesus wept, but for the whole world. I wonder if he had in mind that young man’s mother in the courthouse hallway, and all the others like her in this crazy world of ours:

• A world where the bodies of young men of color get riddled with police bullets
• Where immigrants and Muslims are vilified, doors slammed in the faces of their terror-stricken and impoverished families
• Where people like us have grieved the loss of good friends and family members over this past year
• Where some of us struggle with our own health, our own natural aging
• And where, as our city changes so quickly around us, we fear we ourselves could be displaced like so many others. 

The tragedy of the human condition, which is to live and struggle in a world where again and again God is not present, at least not in the way we need him. 

And I wonder if Jesus’ tears that first Palm Sunday anticipated the words he himself would soon utter, words of abandonment very similar to those of that mother at the courthouse, words maybe you’ve heard yourself say in one way or another: “My God, why have you forsaken me?”-- a  cry so dark that only two of the four evangelists have the stomach to record it as the last word Jesus spoke while he still had a human mouth to speak with. 

Jesus wept, that young man’s mom and dad wept, we all weep, because even when a person is good, even when that person is Jesus, God makes himself scarce for reasons that no priest or theologian or guru has ever fathomed.

Because for Jesus and for us, Good Friday is inevitable. Given our vulnerability, and our sinfulness as human beings, and the pitiless storm of the world, tragedy is a fact of our lives.

But here’s the thing: If Good Friday is inevitable, then Easter is an unforeseen bolt out of the blue, a surprising and wonderful punchline. Easter is as much a part of our reality as Good Friday. It’s what one writer calls the comedy of grace, not unlike an old Charlie Chaplin movie. “How can Charlie Chaplin in his baggy pants and derby hat foresee that though he is stood up by the girl and clobbered over the head by the policeman and hit in the kisser with a custard pie, he will emerge dapper and gallant to the end, twirling his invincible cane and twitching his invincible mustache?” [Frederick Beuchner, Telling the Truth; The Gospel as Comedy]

It is this unforeseen and surprising punchline we celebrate today. The comedy of grace. In the neck and neck struggle between life and death, life and love and laughter will win. Even when tragedy strikes, as it inevitably will, still, grace will have the final say. 

This good news bursts onto a world where the news has been so bad for so long that when it is good nobody hears it much except for a few. And who are the few that hear it? 

They are the last people you might expect, because they themselves are the bad jokes and stooges and scarecrows of the world, the tax collectors and whores and misfits. They are the ones who are willing to believe in miracles because they know it will take a  miracle to fill the empty place inside them, that it will take a miracle for the world to finally recognize them as brothers and sisters and welcome them home.

The comedy of grace. It’s the miraculous punchline Magdelene stumbles onto when the one she takes to be the gardener turns out to be the one who once exalted in her perfume, who knew the extravagance of her hair, and who now asks her: “Why are you weeping?”

If this morning we still find ourselves in tears, it’s because the story isn’t over yet. We know how the story ends, we know the story has a surprising punchline: The triumph of life and love and laughter. 

We don’t know when or how or what it might look like, but we stake our lives on that punchline.

What began in darkness in the place of death will end with a broken tomb, a garden teeming with life, and a gardener with a smile on his lips as he speaks your name.

So even now, perhaps with tears still in our eyes, we practice resurrection, anticipating the life and the love, the justice, the joy and laughter that we know will have the final say: 

• It’s why we in this parish stand with those young people of color gunned down by violence, and with immigrants, and people who are homeless, and people who need food, and people in Nicaragua who need clean water. We’re just practicing resurrection.
• It’s why we fight the political and economic forces in this city that have driven so many of our neighbors from their homes and threaten to displace us and many others as well. When we do this, we’re just practicing resurrection.
• And it’s why, on this Easter morning, we celebrate with family and friends and great food, bring back the Alleluias, put on an Easter egg hunt for our kids, and the braver among us so proudly don our homemade and slightly tacky Easter bonnets.

Because today and everyday, we’re caught up in this comedy of grace, we remember how the story ends, we know the punchline, and so today we’re just practicing resurrection.

Palm Sunday 2016

The Rev'd Richard Smith, Ph.D.

March 20, 2016

You may remember the powerful scene in the movie Gandhi. The Hindus and the Muslims have been locked in violent combat. To persuade them to stop the fighting, Gandhi begins a fast. Several days go by, the violence continues, he is pale and emaciated. Into his room comes a distraught young Hindu man. He says to Gandhi, “I'm going to Hell! I killed a child! I smashed his head against a wall.” Gandhi asks “Why?” The man says “Because they killed my son! The Muslims killed my son!” (Raises his hand to show the height of his young son)

Gandhi says, “I know a way out of Hell. Find a child, a child about the same age and height as your son, a child whose mother and father were killed, and raise him as your own.

“Only be sure that he is a Muslim and that you raise him as one.”

It’s a powerful moment that speaks to the difficult choices we must make in a violent world, whether to render and eye for an eye, or to follow a different path. What Gandhi counsels in that film, and what Jesus counsels in Luke’s telling of the Passion are the same: To meet violence head on with love.

Not so easy in the real world. In 2015 there were 53,030 gun violence incidents, including 330 mass shootings. Twelve hundred people were killed by police last year. Our country has killed many innocent civilians through drone strikes alone. Just a few steps from our front door, young men like Richard Sprague, Bennie Martinez, Hector Salvador, and Jose Escobar were violently murdered. Donald Trump continues to exhort violence not only against protesters at his rallies but also against people around the world, hinting at riots should he lose the nomination.

All this violence makes us very sober as we enter into the Passion story this year. We are not disinterested bystanders in this story.

Toward the beginning of the story, in the Mount of Olives, Jesus tells the disciples, “Pray that you may not come into the time of trial.” This is the very  same prayer we make in the Lord’s Prayer: “Save us from the time of trial.” (The King James version has it “Lead us not into temptation.”)
Question: What is “the time of trial” he wants the disciples and us to be saved from? What is the temptation he does not want us to be led into?

Some scripture scholars believe Luke has a very specific kind of trial in mind here. It is a temptation that was very real for the early disciples: the temptation to resort to violence in defending Jesus when he was violently attacked by the Romans. “Pray that when they come for me,” Jesus is telling them, “you will not defend me by resorting to violence.”

To flip this around, Jesus is telling them that if they do not pray, they will be tempted to give in to violence.

When we pray, we are connecting with our own deepest selves, with who we most fully are, creatures made in God’s image with an infinite beauty and dignity. When we pray, we are connecting to our very centers where we are deeply united to God. And when we speak and act out of that space of prayer, our words and actions reflect God’s mercy and compassion and love.

There, in the garden with Jesus, the disciples do not pray. They fall asleep, they become numb to life with all its joy and pain, they lose touch with their deepest selves where God speaks. And so, when they awake and see the aggressive, armed crowd coming toward them led by Judas, when they see all that is headed their way, fear and anger overtake them, and they immediately ask, “Lord, shall we strike with the sword?” And before Jesus can even answer, one of them grabs a sword and lashes out, cutting off the ear of the high priest’s slave.

“No more of this!” Jesus replies.

Jesus, who did pray all night in the garden, who entered deeply into his own heart where he is closest to God, this Jesus lives and speaks and acts in accord with his deepest identity. “No more violence,” he tells them. He reaches out to heal the wounded slave, because that’s what Jesus, the man of prayer, does. When he is beaten and falsely accused, he does not strike back or lash out bitterly. When he hangs from the cross, he forgives his executioners. That’s what he does. Because he prays.

And today on Palm Sunday, with all the violence around us, we have to choose how we want to proceed from here--whether to let fear and anger and depression govern our hearts and our actions, or to become, like Jesus, people of prayer.

Our tradition offers many forms of prayer--some with music and dance; some with a candle before an icon or a crucifix; some with the Jesus Prayer whispered in sync with our breath, or rosary beads; some with the Daily Office; some with entering the stories of scripture through the imagination.

But, for us Christians, our most profound prayer is the simple meal we share each week at this table. It’s here that all the movements and mysteries of this week are gathered to a peak, where bread, like the body of Jesus this week, is blessed, broken, and given. It’s here that Jesus says, “This is my body given for you, my blood poured out for you.”

This meal is more than a ritualized re-enactment of a two-thousand-year-old event. When Jesus tells us,  “do this in memory of me,” he’s asking for much more than a ritual. He’s asking us to give our bodies to be broken as he did, our blood to be poured out as his was.

Do you know what you’re saying when you share this meal? When we celebrate this liturgy, each of us is saying to each other and to the world, “This is my body given for you, my blood poured out for you.” You, as a follower of Jesus, are re-committing yourself to do, in your own way, precisely what Jesus has done before you: giving your body to be blessed, broken, and given so that others can live.

This is what we, people of prayer, do once again this Palm Sunday, the first day of Holy Week.

Fragility

Luke 13: 1-9

The Rev'd Richard Smith, Ph.D.

February 28, 2016

We human beings are actually quite fragile. This fragility, the thought that our lives can come unraveled very quickly, can make us anxious, and so we go into denial, try to shore up the illusion that we are immune from the tragedies that others face.

We do this in various ways. More toys, more money, more honors and distinctions, more frenzied activity can calm our anxiety, give an illusion of security. For a moment.

And we can find ways to distance ourselves from those people who remind us of our own fragility. Keep immigrants who are fleeing the violence and poverty of their countries from crossing our borders. Keep the frail elderly and the handicapped in institutions, out of sight. Lock up black and brown people in prison and immigration detention centers. Keep the homeless out of our neighborhoods.

Because such people remind us of how fragile our lot as human beings really is. We’d rather not see them or listen to them or have to think about them.

We tell ourselves things like, “I’ll never be homeless. I’m not like those folks in the encampments down on Division Street. I work hard to keep my job and my health. Heck, I’ve even got a college degree. I’m not like them. Their fate will never be mine.” This self-talk calms our anxiety. For a moment. 

At least until we realize that the majority of those same homeless people once had homes like like the rest of us, some have Ph.D.’s, some were once physicians and attorneys, professional people whose lives suddenly whirled out of control through no fault of their own. Suddenly it dawns on us: We’re not as different from them as we thought. It might not be as obvious, but all of our lives, like theirs, are fragile.

It’s hard to accept our own fragility, to remember, as we said on the first day of Lent, that we are dust and unto dust we shall return. We’d like to hide from that fact, go into denial.

There's a religious version of this way of thinking, as seen in today's gospel, a way of shielding ourselves from our inherent vulnerability. 

A crowd tells Jesus about an incident of state terror that Pilate, the Roman Governor, had inflicted on a group of Galilean Jews. They had come to the temple to offer sacrifice. These sacrifices involved the killing of animals. Pilate sent in troops and murdered the Galileans, mingling their blood with the blood of the sacrificed animals. 

If the sacrificed animals were part of a ritual for the atonement of sins, the Galileans were murdered as they were repenting. This makes the crowd think that perhaps their sins were so great that it had something to do with their being slaughtered. They must have been the worst of sinners. God would not accept their sacrifice, but through the agency of Pilate sacrificed them instead. In the background of this tragedy lies a God who seeks out and punishes sinners.

It’s a common logic, almost hard-wired into the human mind: Step out of line, and you will be punished. 

This logic is also an attempt of shielding ourselves from tragedy. “This could never happen to me. I’m a good person. God would not punish me like he did them.” This way of thinking distances us from tragedy and our own fragility, from thinking, “That could have been me.”

Jesus resists this talk of a punishing God, this effort to run from our own fragility, but before he does this, he extends it. “What about physical evil, the accidents that happen? You’ve heard about the tower that fell in Jerusalem that killed eighteen people. Was the hand of God in this, the hand of a God who sees sinners and punishes them?”

To this theology of a punishing God, Jesus gives an adamant “No”. He doesn’t elaborate, nor does he try to make a case for why bad things happen to good people. He just seems to say, “Stop that way of thinking right now!”

And then he goes on to say that if they do not repent, they will likewise perish. Suddenly the focus shifts from tragic victims in the external world, to their own fate. And their own fate doesn’t depend on the caprice of Pilate of the poor mortaring of bricklayers. Their fate is in their own hands, in their own hearts. 

They have to repent, change their mind, or they will perish. It’s suddenly no longer a matter of abstract theology, but of personal decision, a choice not to waste “the one wild and precious life” you’ve been blessed with.

Speculating about why bad things happen is a misplaced emphasis, a waste of time. Focus instead, Jesus seems to be saying, on what God is inviting you to do now, how God is calling you to live fully, to do God’s will on earth. Shift your focus. Change your mind. Repent.

But to do this means embracing our own fragility, not fleeing from it. It means no longer shielding ourselves from those “others” who remind us of life’s inherent fragility, the very ones Jesus sought out and loved to hang out with. This is why one theologian refers to Jesus as “the Compassion of God”.

In fact, the whole story of Jesus is about embracing human fragility. The early Christians wrote a song about this, words we’ll hear on Good Friday. Let me slightly paraphrase that ancient song:

His state was divine,
yet he did not cling to his equality with God
but emptied himself
to assume the condition of a slave,
and became [fragile] as we are;
and being as we are,
he was humbler yet,
even to accepting death,
death on a cross.

For us, who sometimes do everything we can to flee our own fragility and that of others, it’s hard to grasp that we are liberated by someone who became powerless, that we are being strengthened by someone who became fragile and weak, that we find new hope in someone who divested himself of all honors and distinctions, that we find a leader in someone who became a slave, that we receive life from someone who experienced the most horrifying form of death, death on a cross. Hard to grasp that following Jesus means entering into human fragility, not fleeing from it.

Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk, stumbled across this realization one day. He writes:

In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness… This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud… I have the immense joy of being human, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate.

Lent is a time that we, as followers of Jesus, come, like Jesus, like Merton, to embrace our own fragility and that of others.

These are days to cherish these fragile and precious lives we’ve been given. Precisely because they are fragile, we can’t take them for granted, must cherish every moment -- the food we eat, the people we love, the beauty of the earth, the work we do. 

And this recognition that we will not always be in this life as we are now, leads us to stop sweating the small stuff, leads us back to what really matters. 

Often, when a person is approaching that most fragile moment in their life, the moment of death, they are blessed with a profound clarity about what is most important. As the common wisdom goes, in that final moment no one regrets that they didn’t spend more time at the office. The recognition of our own fragility leads us back to what matters most, the people, the work, the values we cherish most.

And finally, this recognition deepens our compassion. Rather than shielding ourselves from those whose brokenness and fragility is most apparent, we begin to see them as truly our brothers and sisters, kin, let their stories touch us, maybe even become friends. Their fragility may, for the moment, be more apparent than ours, but we’re not as different from them as we’d like to pretend.

Taking the Side of the Victims

Luke 4:14-21

The Rev'd Richard Smith, Ph.D.

January 24, 2016

Wait! I thought God loved everyone, that Jesus came for everyone! But in today’s gospel, he says he was sent to the poor, the prisoners, the blind and oppressed. Really? What about everybody else -- the rest of us who, relatively speaking, aren’t poor, or in prison, or blind, or oppressed? What about us?

The problem parallels this past year’s arguments over the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Opponents of that movement have insisted that all lives matter, not just black lives. Why the focus on black lives to the exclusion of everyone else?

Of course, that’s not what the movement is saying. Rather, it’s calling out the fact that in our present world and culture, black lives don’t matter, at least not as much as white ones do. When the day comes that black lives really do matter, then we'll be able to truly say that all lives matter.

As one African-American pastor put it: “When you see a house on fire and direct the firefighters to that house, you’re not saying that all the other houses in the neighborhood don’t matter; you’re saying this one especially matters because it’s on fire. Right now,” he says, “our house [the house of African Americans] is on fire.”

Jesus is doing something similar. He has just been baptized by John the Baptist and spent a long retreat in the wilderness. Filled by the power of the Holy Spirit, he’s ready to begin his ministry. He returns to his hometown synagogue for his inaugural address. They hand him the Book of the prophet Isaiah. Out of the tens of thousands of words in that book, he deliberately selects the ones we just heard, focusing his entire new ministry on the poor and the imprisoned, the blind and the oppressed --  the people the world overlooks, doesn’t want, discards.

In other words, Jesus takes the side of the victims. He is like the mother who loves all her children -- of course! -- but runs to defend her younger one when her older one is picking on him. Today, Jesus takes the side of the exploited immigrant worker receiving less than the minimum wage, but also takes the side of his wife if he should return home and abuse her.

Whoever takes advantage of the vulnerable will answer to God for it. To announce the good news of God’s reign today is to say that God comes to offer all of us a new way to live: as brothers and sisters in a new creation. 

As one central American poet put it, “A religion that doesn’t have the courage to speak out for human beings doesn’t have the right to speak out for God.” That is the price of credible ministry today.

And this is the work Jesus today, ministering through the only body he now has, what Paul calls the Body of Christ. And on this day of our annual meeting, Paul reminds us that we are each members of that Body, each with our own unique role. Many years after Paul wrote those words, St. Therese echoed them, and I’ll close with her familiar words:

Christ has no body but yours,

No hands, no feet on earth but yours.

Yours are the eyes with which he looks with compassion on this world.

Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good.

Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.

Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,

Yours are the eyes, you are his body.