I Will not Leave You Orphans

For many people in today’s world, this gospel won’t make sense. Because Jesus, as he himself puts it, is speaking about something the world cannot receive, a truth that is outside the world’s comprehension.

The world sees only with physical eyes, and if you see only with physical eyes--if, as for many folks in the West, you regard as real and true only that which can be scientifically verified in the lab or presented as evidence in a court of law, then, for you, this gospel reading will make no sense.

But if you think it’s possible that poets and musicians and artists and lovers may also have something to say, that shamans and sages and many non-Western peoples down through the centuries may also have a shot at the truth--even though it’s a different kind of truth--then these words of Jesus may speak to you.

His words may teach you something about how to die and about the connections we have with loved ones who have gone before us.

He is speaking these words to his disciples at a very difficult moment. An excruciating death is about to take him from them. They are about to have their hearts and all their dreams broken.

He’s trying to help them make some sense of what will happen to them, what his going away from them really means.  A few verses earlier, he told them “It is better for you that I go.” He wants his death to be a blessing for them and not a curse.

Over the years, I have met people for whom a loved one’s death had been a curse. The dying person said some hurtful things, or did not say the words of forgiveness or reassurance that were so desperately needed. This can leave a deep wound the person left behind must carry for the rest of their lives.

There is a tradition among many Christians to pray for a holy death. The idea is that, in addition to preparing a will, getting finances in order, and delegating power of attorney, some soul-work is also required. Maybe some forgiveness needs to be given to someone, or some words of reassurance need to be said.

It’s an important question for all of us no matter our age: How do we, like Jesus, make our dying a blessing and not a curse to those around us?

To his own loved ones who would feel abandoned, orphaned, and hopelessly devastated by his death, Jesus speaks strong words of reassurance: “I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you.”

He’s going to leave them in one way but remain with them in another way. His death leads not to loss and abandonment, but rather to a deeper way for him to be present.

It’s in his going away that he can fully enter their hearts, get into the marrow of their bones, be with them in a way far more intimate than simple physical presence allows. By his going away, he becomes, as St. Augustine would say many years later, more intimate to us than we are to ourselves.

This is not something we can discern with our physical eyes. It takes spiritual eyes to see this.

Lovers know how this works. True, the marriage vows say “...until death do us part,” but I think many of us suspect that something more is going on in our loves, that our relationships transcend death.

It’s this “something more” that many poets and artists and indigenous peoples know. It’s a conviction of the heart that when a parent or a lover or a spouse or a friend die, they do not go away from us, but rather, despite all physical evidence to the contrary, their spiritual union with us deepens. Barriers that might have stood in the way are overcome. Our intimacy with them becomes deeper than their physical presence could allow.

"I will not leave you orphaned," Jesus tells us. "I am coming to you."

And then he takes this one step further. He says that in his going away from us, in his death, we will know that he is in his Father and we are in him, and he in us.

The image is one of a Creator continuously present in the creatures she has made, at every moment keeping them in existence, breathing life into them.

The Greeks used a simple but beautiful word to describe what's going on here. Perichoresis. Dancing around. God is like three persons caught up in one big joyful dance. Their life and work are bound together. Perichoresis. A joyful dance.

In Jesus, the second person of that Trinity, you and I are brought into the dance, into the relationship. Perichoresis. It says as much about us as it does about Ultimate Reality. It says that your life and mine--seemingly so small and insignificant in the scheme of things, with all our joys and delights, our bodily pleasures and pains, our triumphs and disappointments, our loves and our fears--our lives are precious because they are swept up in something so vast and magnificent.

This is what the mystery of the Trinity is getting at: that, like the One in whose image we are made, we are caught up in a joyful cosmic dance, a dance not for divine persons only, but for us as well. Because of Jesus, all of our lives are now part of this vast and beautiful cosmic dance.

This dance is going on right now, just beyond what our physical eyes can see. Music is playing just beyond what our earthly ears can hear. This is the love and life Jesus wants to leave with his disciples as he says farewell.

As we listen to a gospel passage like this, our consciousness expands a little. It’s time to lace up our dancing shoes.

Jesus the Gate, 4th Sunday of Easter, Year A, The Rev'd. Dr. Richard Smith

Twice each month, members of our community join people from other faith communities in Nightwalks. We walk through our neighborhood stopping now and then to pray for an end to the violence that has caused great pain to many moms and families here in the Mission. Before we head out on our walks, we run through a few ground rules about the logistics and about how to remain safe during the course of the walk.

We’re not naive. In a neighborhood like ours, things can happen very quickly. A purse can be snatched, a fight can break out, someone can fall sick and need a hand. Things can happen. So one of the ground rules in our Nightwalks is very realistic: When we stop to pray, we pray with our eyes open.

Today’s gospel passage is part of a larger story in which Jesus has just given sight to a man who had been blind from birth. The man himself and the religious leaders are standing around wondering what had just happened, and Jesus in this passage is trying to help them understand it.

So to get the full impact of these words, let’s refresh our memory about that story of that blind man Jesus has just healed.

In the culture of the time, because of his blindness, he was considered ritually impure, barred from fully participating in the rituals devout Jews would use to be in right relation with God. Only people who were physically impeccable were permitted to serve God's cult. A son of Aaron, for example, a member of the priestly caste, could not officiate at worship if he had a physical impairment.

This ritual impurity carried a moral connotation, a stigma. The logic was that someone must have done something really bad for him to be both blind and excluded from the community in this way. “Master, who sinned,” the disciples had just asked Jesus. “Was it he himself who sinned or his parents that he was born blind?”

So not only is this man blind, but he also carries the shame and disgrace of a moral stigma.

This is a very common logic, and we find it all around us: it's called blaming the victim. If someone is raped, he or she must have done something to provoke it; if black people or Latinos are poor or incarcerated at high rates or disenfranchised, it must be because they are more stupid or lazy or criminal than others; if someone has HIV, it must be a punishment from God for some form of deviant behavior.

So in addition to living with a significant physical impairment, this blind man was stigmatized, shamed and disgraced. His story is one of exclusion, not only from being able to physically see, but also from fully participating in the life of his own people Israel.

In the face of this, Jesus carries out an act of inclusion. First he spits on the earth, and from the clay he makes a paste and anoints the blind man's eyes. Buried in the Greek text here is a Hebrew pun. The Hebrew word for clay is adamah, and in the story of creation in Genesis, adamah is what God used to make "Adam," humankind.

So, in this moment of healing Jesus is finishing creation. The man born blind had palpably not been brought to the fullness of creation, and so Jesus finishes the process by adding the missing clay.

But with that healing of his eyes, the man receives something else. Call it gumption. He begins to stand on his own two feet, to tell his story, even to talk back--especially to those religious leaders who had shamed and stigmatized him and left him without hope. And because he talks back, they of course throw him out of the synagogue, excommunicate him.

Jesus hears that they threw him out, so he goes looking for him, and when he finds him, they talk. In this conversation, the formerly blind comes to see Jesus, not only with his now-healed physical eyes, but also with his heart. He comes to trust him. “Lord, I believe,” he says to Jesus.

Some religious leaders overhear the man say this. They don’t get it, so Jesus tries to talk to them. He reverses their logic. “You who say that you can see, you are the ones who are blind here. This man who you say is steeped in sin, in this situation he is the one without sin. If there is sin in this situation, it lies not with him but with you who excluded and stigmatized and shamed him.”

That’s where today’s gospel about shepherds and thieves and robbers comes in. The shepherd is the symbol for teachers and leaders. The way they relate to people shows whether they are true shepherds or thieves and robbers.

What Jesus is doing here is walking us through a kind of discernment about how to tell good religious leaders from bad ones, shepherds from thieves and robbers.

In John’s words, thieves steal, kill, and destroy. They leave people less than when they found them. The laws and moral codes meant to form us into people who love and live more deeply--these are used as hammers by these thieves and robbers to crush people’s spirits, to shame and exclude them. “Woe to you,” Jesus once said to the Pharisees. “You lay heavy burdens on people’s shoulders but will not move a finger to lift them.”

True shepherds are the opposite. They leave people more than when they found them. They do not have the voice of a stranger. They know the human heart, they call people by name. What they say resonates with the inner world of people. They walk ahead of them, bringing them to pastures where they can find food to nourish them.

Teachers and leaders who are true shepherds are artists who make us more human, more alive, they awaken joy and zest and passion and purpose. “I have come that they may have life,” Jesus says, “and have it abundantly.” Like good mothers, good shepherds lead us to life, life in abundance.

This is good to know. Sometimes people ask “Is religion good or bad?” The fact is, in itself, religion is neutral. It’s like art. There is good art and bad art.

There is bad art that puts down people who are different, shuts down our hearts, makes us frightened of life, stirs up violence, misogyny, homophobia. Think of the novels of Ayn Rand that influenced much of the recent greed on Wall Street and in Washington; the misogynist and homophobic lyrics of many rap songs on the radio. Bad art.

There is good art, too: art that opens your heart, connects you with life, deepens your ability to feel and to love. Think of Georgia O’Keefe’s painting of a flower, or Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, a movie like Babette’s Feast. This is good art.

Art can be good or bad.

Like art, religion can be either good or bad.

The philosopher Hegel said you can recognize bad religion because it alienates you from yourself and from the world.

Bad religion is what the man born blind--living under shame and stigma and without hope--had experienced growing up.

It’s what many LGBT people of my generation also grew up with. We were told that if we followed the promptings of our own hearts and our bodies that we would burn in hell for all eternity. Bad religion. It alienates us from ourselves and from people we love. It is manifest today in an alarmingly high suicide rate among gay teens and elders, and the recent effort to pass a Kill the Gays bill in Uganda. It does not lead to the abundant life that Jesus talks about in today’s gospel.

Over the years I’ve heard many Native Americans talk about their experiences in the mission boarding schools where they were not allowed to return home for their native pow wows and rituals, were beaten if they even spoke their own native languages. Bad religion. It alienates people from themselves, their cultures and communities. It does not lead to the abundant life that Jesus talks about in today’s gospel.

There is also good religion. Not only does it connect you with God, the source of life, but it also:
Connects you with your own heart, with the lines and curves of your own body, its desires and pleasures as well as its pains;
Good religion connects you with other people, nourishes friendships, gathers communities like this one.
Good religion connects you with the earth, with all it’s species of flora and fauna, increases your sheer delight when you’re on a hike in nature.

Good religion is seen in true shepherds like Gandhi, Sojourner Truth, Martin Luther King, Chief Seattle, Harriet Tubman, Rabbi Abraham Heschel, the Dalai Lama, Oscar Romero--true shepherds who lead people to freedom, to greater justice, to building the beloved community, to realizing life in abundance.

In today’s gospel, Jesus is walking us through a discernment. When we pray, he wants us to keep our eyes open, to pray with discerning hearts. We have to evaluate the religious and spiritual teachings we are hearing--including those that came from Christian teachers.

What criteria do we use as we make this evaluation? In this passage, Jesus uses the metaphor of the gate to the sheepfold. He says that he is that gate. Religious teachers who are trustworthy, shepherds who are good, pass through that gate that is Jesus. Whether they are explicitly Christian or not, their teachings bring us closer to what he has taught us, make us more loving, more compassionate, more hopeful about the future, more joyful in just being ourselves. Those teachings, in other words, lead us to life in abundance. Ultimately, Jesus says, this is how you know if a religious teaching is good.

But if those teachings lead us to a sense of hopelessness, if they cause us to lose our zest and passion for life, our joy in being the wonderful beings God has made us to be, if those teachings to exclude people and close our hearts to their needs, if they cause us to abuse this fragile and exquisite planet, then these teachings are, in Jesus’ words, the work of thieves and robbers. They are not the work of God. They crush us. They do not lead to life in abundance.

As in the day of Jesus, so also in our own day, there are many religious and spiritual teachings swirling around us. As it was for the man who received his sight and for the early disciples, so it is for us: We need discerning hearts; we need to pray with our eyes open.

Significance of a Stranger, Third Sunday of Easter, May 4, 2014, Luke 24:13-35, Cathlena Plummer

God give us clear minds, open spirits, and loving hearts. Amen.

The significance of a stranger, do we ever ponder that? Do either

one of you take the time to make conversation with a person on the

street, or on the BART, or any other place that is not familiar to you?

Today I want to share this story with everyone….

on one sunny, hot, June afternoon in Utah, my Uncle , cousins, and

I were sitting around telling jokes, after cleaning up the church after

having our convocation that particular weekend.

All of a sudden we felt this gush of wind and dirt pick up in front of us

and turned itself into a devil twister and travelled to the paved highway

that runs along the entrance to the mission grounds. What was most

strange about that gust of wind was that we all chose to notice it and

look at it at the same time.

We couldn’t even tell a good joke, or pay attention to a good joke being

told but, right there in that instant we all chose to watch that gust

of wind turn itself into a devil twister. If you don’t know what a devil

twister is…. come talk to me later and I will explain further…

So we followed the devil twister’s path toward the highway and out of

nowhere a man in a white sheet or garment with black combat boots

appeared. His hair was long and dark brown, his skin was very dark,

remember we’re looking at this figure from a distance….we all sort

of looked at each other bewildered, and we all kind of accepted the

presence of this man to match those that we often think of when we

picture Jesus.

Although we were not talking we knew immediately what the other

was thinking….

The person paid us no mind or could not hear us….but he kept walking

finally over the hill and out of view….then finally we came out of our

trance, it really was like a strange trance, for 5 min? 6 min? I’m not

really sure on that. But none of us ever questioned if that could have

been Jesus? For some reason it felt right that whoever that person was

we seemed to all agree that it was Jesus.

That day that hot sunny afternoon, always pops into my head whenever

I hear the phrase, “What if that homeless person was Jesus? Or, what if

that person talking to himself incoherently was Jesus?”

It never fails to enter my thoughts especially living here in the Bay Area

and seeing all these children living on the streets, some with animals,

that they cannot afford to feed, so they beg day after day, they barely

move away from their regular sleeping spots.

The point is …. What if that was Jesus? How would you know what

Jesus looked like? You will know it in your heart, is what I always hear

when I hear myself question it….your heart begins to beat… that is what

I feel every time I see a teenager lying in the street, or sitting with his

beastly friend.

The question is am I willing to talk to him or her? Am I willing to talk to

Jesus in the flesh?

Most of the time the answer is “No, I have to hurry or I’ll miss the next

train.”

 But, when I do have the time the conversation, has always been

meaningful, the person is in dire straits and is just trying to make it to

the next day, you not only learn about the person in front of you, you

also learn that this could easily be yourself if you allowed it.

Now let us ponder the words in the gospel….

The Gospel tells us, the band of Jesus’ followers was now leaderless

and was falling apart, with two of them already on their way home. The

reports that Christ’s tomb was empty did nothing to alter their thinking;

it only confused them. Their entire world had come apart. The two

despondent disciples summed up the situation very neatly, "we had

hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel."

Human hope is a fragile thing, and when it withers it’s difficult to

revive. Hopelessness as a disease of the human spirit is desperately

hard to cure. When you see someone you love and care for overtaken

by illness, which goes on, and on, despair sets in. It almost becomes

impossible to hope for recovery, to be even afraid to hope because of

not being able to cope with another letdown.

The Emmaus Two had erected a wall of hopelessness around them,

and they were trapped in their misery. "We had hoped ..." What they

were saying is "We don’t expect it now, but once we did. We had it, this

thing called hope, but now it’s gone." I wonder if this is something that

we can identify with? Has something or someone come between our

relationship with God? If so, listen to the Emmaus story because the

heart-breaking experience is only its beginning!

As the travellers made their weary way to Emmaus a stranger fell

alongside them. It was going to be one of the most wonderful walks in

history! We know, of course, that it was the risen Jesus, but somehow

they didn’t recognize him. In fact Luke tells us "they were kept from

recognizing him." It wasn’t an accident that they didn’t notice who he

is or that they were too preoccupied to look at him in the eye. No, they

weren’t allowed to recognize Jesus for a purpose. It was so that they

might be in the same position as ourselves some 2,000 years later.

Visual appearances of Jesus ceased at his Ascension. They are not

granted to us. Like the two on the road we have to make do with other

people’s testimony that Jesus has risen from the dead. Like them we

don’t know quite know what to make of it. Did it really happen? What

precisely happened? How could it have happened? We have to make

up our minds as to what we believe.

On that hot sunny June afternoon we chose to believe that it was

Jesus and with that acceptance….. Jesus disappeared over the hill,

because "In his infinite courtesy, Jesus remembered the frailty of over-
strained nerves and bewildered minds and came, not too suddenly

or overwhelming upon them, but in a way which He alone could do,

revealed Himself as the Risen Christ."

This is what Jesus had shown to Cleopas and the other follower on that

day, and they did not recognize him until he broke bread with them.

They saw his hands - they were different from when he had broken

bread at the Feeding of the Five Thousand, and at the Last Supper. They

were the nail-pierced hands of Jesus. In an instant they knew him. And

in an instant, he’s gone.

Why did Jesus have to disappear? Couldn’t he have stayed longer? He

could, but he didn’t because it’s all part of the education of his last 40

days on Earth - how to manage without his bodily presence from now

on; exactly the same as we have to do some 2,000 years on. But he

is with us still by his Spirit; he is with us as we fellowship with him in

worship and, in obedience to his command, as we remember him in

the "breaking of bread" service.

I can imagine Cleopas and his friend standing in amazement; perhaps

embracing in great joy, asking each other, "Were not our hearts burning

within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures

to us?" Their world had come together again. That heart-burning

experience is something that we all need. We need it in a conversion

experience when the Spirit of God makes us realize that we need Jesus

as our Savior and Lord. We need it as we allow the Holy Spirit to apply

the truths of Scripture in our daily walk with Jesus.

Well, where are we in our experience? Are we still heart-breaking

because we need to meet the risen Christ? Perhaps we’re still in a

heart-searching process - if so, let it continue as it will surely lead to the

heart-burning experience we all need.

God deeply longs for each one of us to walk with Him in close

fellowship so He can fulfill His plans for our lives. The Emmaus Two no

doubt had walked this way many times before. Yet this day would be

different, for it was the time for a life-changing encounter with their

Lord. He can draw near to us at any time.

The ways of God aren’t always obvious so we must be open to allow

him to enlighten our understanding, to take us into a new level in our

spiritual experience. Life will never be the same again! Christ is risen

from the dead! Christ is the Savior! Christ is the hope of the world!

Amen