Remember Linda

I was dressed in jeans and a stained black hoodie. But the man’s clergy radar was working fine. “Excuse me, pastor…” These conversations in our church parking lot usually lead up to money. But not today.

“Pastor, I’d like to have a, you know, a little memorial for Linda. She died this week. You remember Linda.”

I did not remember Linda. Our church sees many Lindas. We’re perched on Portland’s 82nd Avenue, a nondescript borderland of a road that everyone uses but no one really wants. “Decent” people drive through quickly, their gaze on the road or slipping quick as distracted thought past the street’s residents. Homeless, sex workers, dealers or consumers of drugs, sometimes more than one of these in the same person—that’s whose feet get blistered on the eternal pavement of 82nd, in between the car lots and the random array of small businesses clinging to life.

A person has a name. A name means you matter to someone, that someone somewhere thought your existence matters. At the meal that we cook and serve for all comers, we try to call people by their names. But there are so many. They come, they go. They age, they get found sick in alleys and are taken to hospitals. They go to detox. They go to jail. They get out of detox and jail. They die. Usually they just disappear, for weeks or months or years. Sometimes when they come back, if they come back, they ask with a look of weary hope, “Remember me?”

Today I did not lie. “No, I am afraid I do not remember Linda.”

The man, gentle, almost courtly, inclined his head respectfully and smiled. The gaps in his teeth did not detract from his dignity. “That’s OK, pastor. She hadn’t been coming here for long. She was real nice, though. She got real sick, cancer in the liver.” He gestured with one hand that, only then, did I notice was holding the strings of several helium balloons, the foil kind you buy in supermarkets. “It’s OK if we have a little gathering, a little memorial, you know? And would you say a few words?”

I smiled, a little wearily, and said “Of course.”

Our volunteer team was occupied with serving breakfast to a roomful of over 25 people. They looked up, registered what was happening, and without a word looked at me.

None of us needed to be concerned. Linda’s mourners had things well in hand.

“Hey ya’ll, Linda died. You all know Linda?”

Weary, wary heads were raised. A moment of silence, and then a murmur of recognition from some. “Oh yeah. Harsh.” “Shit, man.” “That’s too bad.” “Poor baby.” From others, no recognition, but respectful looks and softly spoken words, the human words that we all try to say when we wish to speak to pain, with death, with grief.

“We’re just gonna have a little gathering in here,” the man said, gesturing to the inner hall. “Everyone’s welcome.”

Young women, their faces battered with what the street deals out equal-opportunity to young and old, came in with more balloons, with flowers, with a collage of photos adorned with hearts and glitter.

A very distraught woman, wild-eyed yet somehow gentle in her body posture, fixed me with her gaze. “She was my best friend. She was so sweet. I don’t know what I am going to do. She went so quick.” She showed me a photo.

A young woman, soft brown complexion, smiling shyly at the camera. Someone’s daughter, someone’s friend. Around the shy eyes, hints of dark circles. Puffiness to the cheeks and face—some edemia, water retention, common to heavy drinkers. An awkward set to her stance and tilt to her hips—untreated injury. Sometimes I so wish I did not know what I know.

I smiled at the distraught young woman. “She looks so sweet.”

The woman looked down and, with a sob, said, “She was. She so was.”

Those who finished eating gathered in a loose, uneven circle, gently and respectfully. One man talked to himself the whole time, which no one heeded—he always talks to himself, all the time. The gentle man and the distraught young woman passed around a poster to sign, as well as shiny helium balloons to sign and to take home, if people wanted.

When that intangible moment of readiness arrived, they all looked up at me.

The Episcopal Prayer Book works great to frame human moments like this. But the art of ministry consists in getting out of the way, gracefully.

I left lots of space for people to share. These are the voiceless, or if they speak, people walk away. Not here, not today.

“She was so sweet.”

“Linda was my love and my friend.”

“She tried so hard, she was walking that good road, she had been clean for awhile now.”

“I totally respect how she was trying to get her life together. It’s such a shame.”

“I didn’t know her, but she sounds awesome.”

“I’ll always remember her smile.”

Everyone had voice. The thoughts, the tears, the words rose and fell like an east breeze off the hard street.

All eyes raised to me once more.

“Rest eternal grant to her O Lord/And let light perpetual shine upon her…”

A life is long, yet over in a moment. A funeral is even shorter.

“Take some balloons, y’all. Thank you. And there’s a gathering at my place, a little food, maybe a few beers, if you come by later.”

It was not long before the hall was empty, empty except for three shiny balloons gently wafting at the end of their strings.

These days, churches are composed of layers, like an onion. One layer is this human gathering on Saturday mornings—volunteers and guests, raw human reality battered by the beast of a street that lays like a great sleeping serpent outside the church’s door. Food, kindness, connection—that’s church. It’s far from Sunday morning, but that’s church.

And the human thing still happens. One life, one almost-silent life, came to an end. The promise of a long life was broken by disease, the disease of addiction then the disease whose name is printed on the certificate. But before the world moved on, some people gathered, a few photos were shared. People spoke from their own pain and struggle to one young woman’s struggle. The pastor “said a few words.” And someone blew up a bunch of shiny balloons.

Someone remembered Linda.

Come to the Light

4 Lent A 2014
http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Lent/ALent4_RCL.html


We did not know how blind we were before the light came on.

We had been in the wild Missouri cave for over an hour already, the middle school youth group and I. Our guide, a grizzled professional spelunker, had led us through tight holes and a base camp down through tunnels, some high enough to stand in, others barely able to accommodate one frantically wiggling kid. Our lights were cast down, carefully trying to illuminate the ground on which we were to plant the next step.

A breath of different air caressed our faces, a sense of space. “Turn your lights off” commanded our guide. With some hesitation we obeyed. The darkness enwrapped up like a tangible thing, like a blanket covering our eyes. The darkness smothered our chattering and, without another word spoken, silence reigned. Our guide allowed the power of the darkness to seep into our skin for a few moments. Then, “Shine your lights up and all around.”

We did so, and were at once dazzled and awed. We stood in a vaulted ceiling, high as this church. Glorious stalactites descended, glittering with mineral flecks and small semi-precious gemstones in the raw. We either gaped in wonder or simply continued in silence, gazing, not wanting the moment to end.

There are these moments when we are called from darkness into light. At such times we realize how much we did not see.

Ancient Christians called Baptism “photimsos”, “coming to the light”. One ancient text says that baptismal candidates were actually led from a pool of immersion kept in a dark space, dried and anointed in the darkness, dressed in a white robe, and then brought into a room that was filled with light. There they were greeted by the gathered congregation with affection and joy. There they celebrated the Eucharist, an experience that the candidates had never seen or been told of.

Knowing this, the New Testament comes alive with tales of darkness and light, of blindness and seeing. “Awake, o sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you” says Ephesians with a note of ecstasy. And in today’s Gospel, a man born blind, no fault of his own nor his parents, is brought to the light.

And there his troubles begin.

What’s stunning about this Gospel is that the actual “photismos”, the “coming to the light”, does not take much time at all. Jesus gets that done rather quickly. A healer’s spit was commonly thought to be a means of healing, so this spitting and making mud is not as bizarre as it would seem today. Jesus briefly remarks on light and darkness and that he is “the light of the world”, and the deed is done.

But coming to the light means our healed man runs head-on into other forms of darkness.

This darkness is shaped by custom, social order, and religious expectation. This new healer Jesus was already an upsetting figure to the status quo. Perhaps these good, devout people were half-expecting this so-called prophet to come and make trouble one of those days, breaking some laws, getting everyone confused. Maybe that is why they organize rather quickly, launching their own version of an Inquisition, gathering information, interrogating witnesses. Our blind man turned healed man simply tells the story over and over again, and finally defies the authorities, who cast him out.

Isn’t it interesting that Jesus only appears to the man again after he has been cast out? Maybe one needs to be on the margins of authority and established religious practice in order to run into Jesus.

Jesus ends the story with a remark implying that those who felt they saw just fine were actually caught up in blindness, and that they were choosing to stay there.

The early community of John told this story about their own lives at the fringe of tradition and established religion. They told this story because it was their own story of “photismos”, of coming to the light. They were in this story, the blind man chosen for no good reason other than the fact that Jesus chose him, healed beyond his wildest hope, now seeing the light. They were in this story, realizing that the Light who had come into the world meant they had to endure pressure and rejection, be kicked out of the place where decent religious people gathered to pray, even have some family trouble, because they now could see.

How about us?

Isn’t it funny that in our time we’ve assumed that “coming to the light” will make our lives more socially acceptable? We’ve assumed that coming to Christ will fix up most of our problems with our families and make us one of the decent people, those who tend to disapprove of people on the margins?

If we find ourselves at ease with the acceptable people, with the predictable people, with the people at the center who try to avoid the people on the margins, maybe we’re developing a case of spiritual macular degeneration. In other words, maybe we’re spiritually aging into eventual blindness, forgetting the light.

Lent is a good time to raise our eyes from our feet. Today the Gospel calls us to stand and let the Light show us the wonder of who we truly are, where we truly are, who we are called to be. Today we see the true Light, the Christ who comes to give us light.

Hit the rock

3 Lent A 2014
http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Lent/ALent3_RCL.html


You’ve heard of a rock and a hard place. Today Moses is right there.

He’s stuck between some dry, silent rock in the wilderness and the rocks about to come whistling through the air right at his head. Moses has taken a gamble on God, and the people have taken a gamble on Moses. All that gambling, that long-odds game, has led them to some patch of dry sand and a stupid rock thrusting up from the ground.

Today we would say blandly, “It’s time for people to give voice to their concerns.”

That they had made it that far was amazing. See, some religious leaders have successful careers by staying right where they know there is food and water and shade. They keep their people happy by promising that the food and water will never run out, that the shade will never wither, if they just stay where they are. Then they take retirement, right before the shade does wither and the water and food run out.

But then there’s Moses’ kind of leader, who leads people into the desert, betting on God.

It’s not easy out there. If Moses had been an Episcopal rector, his Vestry would have asked for his resignation, talking about things like good judgment and prudence and talking in the parking lot about the good old days back in Egypt. When the people are at the end of whatever faith they had and come at Moses, Moses loses whatever faith he had in God’s appointing him. In the desert, it’s not easy being stuck between a big rock and small flying rocks.

So God says, come out a little further, and hit that dry rock baking in the sun with your staff.

Strange thing is, although Moses did what God said, and the water gushed out, tradition says that God was pretty irritated with Moses. Some say that Moses hit that rock twice because he wanted to make sure.

Faith is utterly easy, even cheap, when there is shade and food and no real worries. Maybe that’s not faith at all. Faith gets real when you’re in the desert, between a rock and more rocks. Anyone here ever been there?

But the desert is where faith gets real. We’ve all been there. This congregation is there now. It’s tough. But it’s where faith gets real.

Faith gets real in the hot sun when a full-blooded woman meets a stranger by a well in the Gospel. Some say that our Samaritan woman may have been an outcast among her own people because of her many loves. That’s why she was at the well alone in the heat of the day—usually the women would go as a group in the cool of the morning. I can’t help but love this lady—she’s very for-real, no illusions. In the Bible men and women meet and court at wells, and it feels like she is both mocking and flirting with Jesus at the same time. She’s taken her chances with life, she has few illusions, she’s taken her lumps, she’s nobody’s plastic saint.

And in her personal desert of choices and love and pain and loss and rejection, in the presence of a man who should despise her, she finds her own rock in the wilderness.

She strikes that rock with her words. And living water gushes out. The word can be translated “leaping water” like a fountain. She forgets her bucket and her errand. This stranger knows her, and still speaks with her as if she is the only person in the world. In an act of intimacy he reveals his heart and his purpose to her, and he invites her to drink.

Only in the desert truth of our lives, when we take a gamble on God, can living water be revealed.

We are these people, thirsty wanderers in the desert, real people and not just prettied up for Sundays, trying to look like someone we are not. In the desert we lose all those illusions about ourselves. But we’ve come to the desert to strike the rock, to engage the Christ, to take a gamble on God. If we feel the dry wind and we find ourselves standing before the rock of stone-cold reality, then we’ve come to the right place. We’ve come where we can have our faith become real, where rocks can become fountains, where the Stranger-who-is-Christ before us can hold all mystery and all hope.

Strike the rock, ask the question, take a gamble on God. See what happens. See what happens, congregation.

The wind and the water

http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Lent/ALent2_RCL.html

We have all heard at one time or another, that term “Born Again”. I used to see, quite frequently, a bumper sticker that said “Born Alright the First Time”. Does anyone else remember those? Certainly, this phrase gets thrown around a lot within the Christian world, and there’s usually some assumption that if you know what it means, you’ll know if you can claim it. Our tradition doesn’t usually describe ourselves this way, and perhaps there’s a reason for that.

Allow me to call your attention to a few things from today’s Gospel reading that might help us understand things a little bit better. As is usual in the Gospels, there’s a lot going on that you might miss unless you’re paying attention:

First, we have Nicodemus, who at least some scholars identify as Nicodemus Ben Gurion, who is mentioned in the Talmud as a wealthy and popular holy man who had miraculous powers. The Gospel of John has him as a Pharisee, those who believed strict adherence to the Law was the path to salvation, and who thus were concerned with holy and proper behavior. John also has him as a member of the Sanhedrin, the ruling council of Jerusalem. So here we have a well known, wealthy, holy and by all accounts quite spiritually gifted and politically powerful man, coming to see Jesus at night.

At night. This is not, as it turns out, the usual time for going to see religious teachers. I can’t help but think that Nicodemus is sneaking out to see Jesus, and doesn’t want anyone to see him doing it.

As it turns out, Nicodemus shows up two other times in John, once to stand up for him when he was arrested, and finally to help Joseph of Arimathea prepare the body of Jesus after the Crucifixion. Does that perhaps change the way that we see Nicodemus? A well respected man, who is willing to help, and is sympathetic to Jesus and his teaching, but is not quite ready to fully commit himself.

That sounds like many people I know. That sounds like me, quite honestly, much of the time.

Nicodemus, a man who is probably quite secure in his position in society, but who is curious, and willing to engage with this strange preacher from a small town in the middle of nowhere, and who isn’t one of the great and powerful. Nicodemus comes to Jesus and shows him a great deal of respect. He acknowledges Jesus’ position – that he comes from God. This seems to me to be very heartfelt.

Jesus – quite typically for John – doesn’t cut him any slack. He immediately gives him a rather disquieting statement, that no one who is not “born from above” can see the kingdom of god.

Now, to Nicodemus, this is probably quite shocking. He was born right the first time. The only time, in fact. He knows, deep down, that there are laws and that if you follow them, and do the right thing, you will be good with God. He is, in fact, “astonished”. Not only that, but Jesus (in John’s Greek) uses a term that is easily misunderstood, for the word used here for “born from above” – anagegennemenoy – can be understood to mean both “born from above” and “born again”. Jesus is clearly not making things easy for Nicodemus.

And of course, Nicodemus doesn’t get it. “Can one enter a second time into the mother's womb and be born?”

I think this is Jesus saying that what he is preaching is something new, something different. It is beyond the categories that Nicodemus is familiar with. That what Jesus is teaching is beyond the comprehension of the world. And moreover, what Jesus teaches, not the teachings themselves, but the way of life that he’s implying, is the way to salvation.

A hard message, to be sure, for a man in Nicodemus’ position to hear.

And, in that sense, I continue to feel sympathy for Nicodemus. Because it is hard to hear what Jesus is saying, and harder still for those of us who are comfortable with our lives, or well thought of in our communities to hear it. Hard to see how radical the message of Jesus actually is.

So this is the message we hear during Lent, a time when we are encouraged to change some aspects of our lives, rejecting things like having enough food to eat, or giving up the things we think we perhaps deserve; when we are extolled to pray and fast. And why are we asked to do these things?

One reason is so that we might get a glimpse of what Jesus was talking about. This new teaching, and new world that he was preaching about. Because, if we don’t change a few things about our lives, we will be blind to it, like Nicodemus was. We too will find ourselves astonished, regardless of how righteous or holy or good we are by the lights of our community, or society, or ourselves.

It’s a hard thing to hear. But ultimately, it is perhaps what we need to hear, now and again, if we are to continue on this path we have chosen.

Jesus’ teaching is something new. And not new once, but constantly new. Constantly shifting, at least from the perspective of the world, like water or wind. It’s interesting, I think, to note that the two metaphors that Jesus uses are water and wind. Both of these things are some of the few physical objects that are, by their nature, constantly shifting, formless, hard to pin down. Always new, always different.

It is very easy for us to become like Nicodemus, in that the way we have always done things, ways that at least some of us find comfortable, find reassuring, hold such a draw for us that we might want to ignore the call to change, ignore the ever shifting wind. But we are called to see that, and embrace it, if we are able. New people come into our lives. New missions and needs arise in our communities. If we ignore them, ignore the fact that our lives are constantly changing day to day, we will miss our chance to see the kingdom of heaven.

Can we be more willing to perceive it? Can we, like Nicodemus, come to see a little bit of it, enough to stand up for what is right, as he does later in the Gospel? Can we become willing to participate, even if we don’t know what these changes mean? I think we can. It will be hard, challenging, but also, I think, rewarding.

Where will the wind lead us? Perhaps, together, we can find out.


Malcom Heath
homily for 2 Lent A 2014

The fight

1 Lent A 2014
http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Lent/ALent1_RCL.html


A monk named John, a very enthusiastic young man, wanted to be perfect. So he prayed to God to take all temptation away from him. God granted his request.

So John went proudly to some of the older monks and said, “You see before you a man without temptations.”

An old monk said, “That’s not good for you. Pray to God that you will have plenty of temptations so your life will be worth something.”

John was stunned, but he did what the old monk said. He prayed and God gave him back temptations. In fact God gave John more temptations than he had before. From then on, when he was tempted John did not pray “Take this temptation away from me.” Instead he prayed “Lord, give me strength for the fight.”

Each year this first Sunday in Lent could easily be named “Temptation Sunday.” It’s a hard day for those of us who were raised in traditions that taught a strong sense of shame about our humanity, about our desires and emotions and attractions. It’s as if we were to somehow be embarrassed by our very complex and unresolved human nature. For Christmas this past year my youngest daughter gave me a hip summary of the Bible entitled “God Is Disappointed In You.” On a day like this I found myself feeling kind of glum, because once again my human weakness was pointed out to me and once again I did not measure up. Part of me wanted to be like young John the monk, and just have God take all temptation away from me forever. The other part of me secretly thought that life would be bland and pointless without passion and thrill and even some naughtiness, so I never tried making John’s prayer.

It’s good that I never tried.

The old monk is right—we are complex and unresolved creatures, and that is the mystery of the human person. Our old familiar story in Genesis today assures us that there are always serpents and invitations and attractions. The Garden story is the tale of how we became human, with self-awareness and self-reflection and a more mature sense of who we are in the world. And with that came shame and pain and alienation. It is a story of the glory and tragedy of human nature, and poses a question—who are we truly called to be?

We’re not supposed to go back to the Garden. It is no accident that all of the experiments in creating Utopias, making perfect places on earth, end with frustration and even tragedy. Think Jonestown. We are not meant to go back to the Garden where everything is perfect and all we need do is breathe and play and pet the animals.

We are meant to be more. In just six weeks at the Easter Vigil Deacon Tracy will sing “O happy fault, that such a sin should bring so great a Savior.”

We are meant to walk with one another in our human truth. We are meant to think and to feel. We are meant to know the glory, the ambiguity, the pain and struggle of what it is to be human and to be aware. We are meant to taste and touch and feel and desire and question and to long for fulfillment, and even to know frustration and loss. We are meant to “order our loves”, as one saint said, so that our longing and our desiring and our celebrating and our grieving reflect what is best in us and respect what is best in others. We are meant to struggle for a more just world even when our efforts seem futile. I like the Spanish version of that Baptismal promise—literally it reads “Will you struggle for justice and peace, and respect the dignity of every human being?”

All this would be in the end a noble recipe for despair, except that it is God who calls us and Christ who walks with us, who struggles and feels every tug and every temptation to self-destruction, to harm of others, to delusion, to despair.

Jesus Christ is in the desert of temptation because we are in that desert. Like Jesus we have been given a message of infinite love and infinite worth in our own Baptisms. Like Jesus we do not get to sit besides the Baptismal font playing in the water, happy and safe, every question answered and all pain taken away.

Like Jesus, we are driven into the desert of vulnerability before God and before the world. Like Jesus, we feel hunger and fear never having enough. We feel afraid, and want perfect security and control. We feel our mortality and smallness, and want to live forever with fame and acknowledgment. “Command these stones to be bread…”Throw yourself down and angels will catch you…All these kingdoms I will give you…”

There is ultimate hope, not because God will place us back in the Garden to play and forget, but because Jesus walks every step we do, feels every draw to be less than we most truly are, hears every invitation to be what our fear and our longing for power and control and immortality says we can be.

In the desert, and in the desert of our lives, Jesus chooses a different path, a path of liberation. He takes a chance that we are called to be something more, people more free, people whose destiny is more mysterious. We’re called to be people whose very lives reflect the ecstasy and the vulnerability and the delight and the grief and the mystery of God.

Some say that there in the desert we were set free.

No ancient warrior went into battle alone if they could help it. There was always a companion, a shield-bearer, a chariot-driver to come with us, to have our back.

We have one another. And we have the veteran himself. Look into the vulnerable eyes of Christ and see there the light of a human spirit set alight with joy amidst sorrow. See at the same time the endless light of the divine.

Lord, give me strength for the fight.

God's delight

(another Ash Wednesday homily, this one from Nadia Boltz-Weber. With thanks to Larry Hansen)

People who think Ash Wednesday is depressing totally don’t get it. I mean, I understand why confessing our sins, marking ourselves with ashes and reminding each other that we are all going to die isn’t exactly Disney on Ice, but it’s not depressing. If anything it’s refreshing.

It’s refreshing in a way that only the truth can be… because we know deep down that we live in a death-denying culture which tries to tell us that we can live forever with the right combination of exercise, yoga, vacations and elective surgery. With enough money you can stretch, inject, massage and vacuum out enough skin and fat –as to appear that you have not actually lived each day of your life consecutively since your birth. And it’s all very tempting – especially to me as a middle aged woman, Yet we all know that after buying into all the anti-aging solutions society has to offer – you won’t actually be younger and you won’t actually look younger you’ll just look kinda shiny and misshapen. Which all feels like a metaphor for all our pathetic attempts at immortality.

So it’s a refreshing thing we and Christians all over the world do today. We gather to remind each other of the truth. To remind each other of our mortality. We tell each other the inescapable truth that we are dust and to dust we shall return. It’s downright audacious that amidst our societal anxiety about impermanence we just blurt out the truth as if it’s not offensive. But the thing about blurting out this kind of truth about ourselves…is that after you do it ..you can finally exhale. It’s like the moment when you stop having to spiritually hold your stomach in.

Because all the while we are denying the truth, God is delighting in it.

This is what we hear in Psalm 51:
Indeed, you delight in truth | deep within me
and would have me know wisdom | deep within.

And the thing is, this truth we speak tonight about our mortality is only offensive if it’s heard as an insult and not a promise. It’s only offensive when it’s heard as being the last word. And it’s not. It’s not the last word.

The same is true about confessing our sins. I’ve said it before but it bears repeating: People who think I’m some crazy liberal are always so shocked about how much I love to talk about sin. I think liberals tend to think admitting we are sinful is the same as having low self-esteem. And then conservatives equate sin with immorality. So one end of the church tells us that sin is an antiquated notion that only makes us feel bad about ourselves so we should avoid mentioning it at all. While the other end of the church tells us that sin is the same as immorality and totally avoidable if you can just be a good squeaky-clean Christian. Yet when sin is boiled down to low self-esteem or immorality then it becomes something we can control or limit in some way rather than something we are simply in bondage to. The reality is that I cannot free myself from the bondage of self. I cannot by my own understanding or effort disentangle myself from self interest – and when I think that I can …I’m basically trying to do what is only God’s to do.
So, to me, there is actually great hope in Ash Wednesday, a great hope in admitting my mortality and my brokenness because then I finally lay aside my sin management program long enough to allow God to be God for me. Which is all any of us really need when it comes down to it.

And this God of which I speak is nothing if not a God of hope and promise. Here’s the image I have of Ash Wednesday: If our lives were a long piece of fabric with our baptism on one end and our funeral on another, and us not knowing what the distance is between the two, well then Ash Wednesday is a time when that fabric is pinched in the middle and then held up so that our baptism in the past and our funeral in the future meet. With these ashes it is as though the water and words from our baptism plus the earth and words from our funerals have come from the future to meet us here today. And in that meeting we are reminded of the promises of God. Promises which outlast our piety, outlast our efforts in self-improvement, outlast our earthly bodies and the limits of time.

No week in recent history has this been as real to me as now. Yesterday I stood in a small restaurant on 6th ave and preached at the funeral of a 29 year old who took his own life. A man I’d never met. I don’t generally agree to do weddings and funerals of those who are not a part of this church. But Billy was queer and an artist and suffered from bi-polar and addiction so it felt like he could have belonged to us. So I stood and spoke of love and Jesus. And I looked his mother in the eyes and said that God is always present in love and in suffering. And that God was present both the moment Billy entered this world and the moment Billy left this world.

We are dust and to dust we return.

I did not know yesterday that today, 19 hours after standing in a funeral of one child I would stand in the birth room of another. Less than a day after preaching about love and suffering and Jesus I held Duffy and Charlie’s baby Willa in my arms and thanked God for brand new life.

Then her parents asked for ashes. For them and for Zane and baby Willa too. I pressed ever so gently into her brow, onto this brand new skin that had only been exposed to air for a few precious hours, and said that even she, full of beauty and hope and just hours from her mother’s womb, even she will return– return to dust and the very heart of God.

And then I knew. I knew more than any other Ash Wednesday in my life, that the promises of baptism and funerals, the promises of birth and death are so totally wrapped up together. For we come from God and to God we shall go. And that Oh my Gosh is there so much that gets in the way of that simple truth. And it is times like funerals when all the other BS just doesn’t matter anymore.

So Lent isn’t about punishing ourselves for being human – the practice of Lent is about peeling away layers of insulation and anesthesia which keep us from the truth of God’s promises. Lent is about looking at our lives in as bright a light as possible, the light of Christ. It is during this time of self-reflection and sacrificial giving and prayer that we make our way through the over grown and tangled mess of our lives. We trudge through the lies of our death-denying culture to seek the simple weighty truth of who we really are. Lent is about hacking through self-delusion and false promises. We let go of all the pretenses and the destructive independence from God. We let go of defending ourselves. We let go of our indulgent self-loathing. Then, like the prodigal son we begin to see a God running with abandon to welcome us home. But we can’t begin to see this God until we hack through our arrogance and certainty and cynicism and ambivalence. The Psalmist says that God delights in the truth that is deep in us. The truth. Therefore there’s no shame in the truth of who we are; the broken and blessed beloved of God. There’s no shame in the truth that our lives on earth will all end and that we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves. It’s not depressing. What’s depressing is the desperation of trying to pretend otherwise. What’s depressing is to insist that I can free myself I just haven’t managed to pull it off yet.

What is so wonderful about Ash Wednesday and Lent is that through being marked with the cross and reminded of our own mortality we are free. Reminded that the God of your salvation, the same God who created you from the very earth to which you will return – the very God of Moses and Sarah and Abraham is also God for you. This God delights in the truth that you are God’s very own redeemed sinner beloved in all your broken beauty. So as you receive these ashes and hear the promise that you are dust and to dust you shall return, know that it is the truth and that the truth will set you free in a way that nothing else ever can.


Rev. Nadia Boltz-Weber, House for Saints and Sinners

Remnant of fire

ASH WEDNESDAY - 12 Noon - March 5, 2014 Ss. Peter & Paul


The parish I grew up in introduced ashes on this day, long before our present Prayer Book came into being. The Mass was at 6:30 in the morning, before school, and I was bleary-eyed and yearned to be back in bed. But I remember being fascinated by this day: the priest would sign us with the cross of ashes and say, "Remember, O man, that thou art dust and to dust shalt thou return."

Of course, mortality and sin were beyond my comprehension! The solemnity of this day was what really got to me, though I could never say why. But as I've grown older, I've learned more about ashes than I ever wanted to know ... and was too afraid to ask. The cremated remains of a young boy who was killed in a tractor accident on his farm became a few ounces of silent dust in a small box that I carried in my arms to his grave when I was a young Transitional Deacon, serving alone in my first parish. And some of the ashes got stuck in my prayer book and lingered there for years. The "cremains" of my Dad, as we scattered them on the old football field at his university, while the campus cops looked on! (The old stadium had become an intramural field and hq for the cops!) My Mom clutching the cremains of my brother Dan, who had taken his own life, before we placed it in the columbarium at their church. And, nine years later, placing Mom's cremains in the same niche. I have learned that ashes are the end of human life.

They are also an emblem of futility and despair, a visible sign of all we do to mess up our lives, spoil our dreams, and make us quiet murderers of ourselves and others. We were made to love, but our lust makes ashes of love. We were made to give; and instead we steal, though time will make ashes of all we've stolen. We were made as a living, thinking prayer to God, and instead, we build temples to ourselves on foundations of dust. We become used to our own sin, so much that we think almost nothing of it, believing that we really are good people.

Ashes are a witness that everything we desire that is not God's will, like our bodies, sooner or later will be burned and plowed under; and no plan of action or system of thought can change that. The ashes remain.

We might ask: what possible purpose is served by keeping a season in which all of this is rubbed in our faces? The answer lies in the ashes, for ashes are the visible memory of fire. The Hebrew Scriptures tell us again and again of a God whose glory is so magnificent, whose beauty and majesty are of such brilliance that to behold them is to die. God is a consuming fire, says Deuteronomy. God called the people of Israel forth in fire on the mountaintop and led them with fire through the wilderness. This is a God of infinite intensity and awe, sovereign, beautiful. To look on the Lord is to indulge in an overdose of glory. No wonder Israel trembles at the foot of Sinai: when what is glorious meets what is human, the result is ashes. Yet, ashes are at least the memorial of fire, and though we can't look on the face of God's glory, we can look into the ashes as into some dark mirror, and try to dream of what is so beautiful.

Israel took the risk of being consumed, of being turned to ashes, because they realized God had something to offer them that they needed: deliverance, a plan, a road map, a way out of the ash heap of their own sin - in short, the Law. It was to be made part of them, taken into their very being, for the God of absolute power was a God of utter love. This God would meet them half-way and go with them down the mountain. Though they could not look on the face of the almighty, they would see God's reflection in the Law. More than the ashes in the spot where God's fire had passed, now they would know the way of God's knowledge and love.


There is another fire: the Lord also gave the Holy Spirit into our hearts, a Spirit of fire to
burn away everything that would turn us to ashes. Lent is a season of learning to live in that fire, and living there is possible as long as we acknowledge two things at the beginning: First, that God is sovereign, and we are not; and second, the road through this fire will look like the road Jesus has walked.

The ashes of Lent are the sign of our mortal bodies and the reminder that God has turned death to ashes. The ashes are the memorial of our sin and the proof that Christ has beaten down Satan under his feet. The ashes are the evidence of our dying and the hope of our rising and living with and in Christ. In this holy season, confess your sins and stand in the fire of Christ's glory. Let his majesty rule you, his Spirit purge you, and the fire of his love make you his own forever.

[adapted from a homily given on this day, February 21, 1996, Trinity Church, Marshall, MI]


Entre la nube/through the cloud

Last Epiphany/Ultima Epifania 2014
http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Epiphany/AEpiLast_RCL.html

Today we remember that the Christian path is all about change. Todavia nos recordamos que el camino Cristiano es un camino del cambio.

Moses climbed the sacred mountain. There he waited for God to speak. Moises subio al monte sagrado, y alla el se esperaba a la palabra de Dios viviente.

For God does not speak right when you want him to. El Dios no se habla cuando queremos. But God does speak. Pero el Dios nos habla.

The glory of God did appear. La Gloria del Dios viviente se aparecio.
And Moses entered the cloud. Y Moises se entro a la nube.

Years later Jesus and three friends also climbed a mountain. Despues de muchos anos Jesus y tres amigos tambien les subieron una monte.

The glory of God appeared in the face of Jesus. La Gloria de Dios se aparecio en la faz de Jesucristo. And as Moses did before, the three disciples entered the cloud. Como Moises en antes, los discipulos les entraron a la nube.

In a cloud one cannot see what is behind and in front. Cuando estamos en una nube, no podamos a ver el que esta delante o tambien atras.

In the cloud, we need faith. Cuando estamos en una nube, necesitamos confianza y fe.

Most of our lives are lived in a cloud. El major parte de nuestras vidas estamos en una nube. The past is a memory. The future is unknown. La pasada es una memoria. No lo conocemos el futuro.

And so here we need faith and trust. Aqui necesitamos confianza y fe.

This congregation is in that same cloud. Nuestra congregation esta en la misma nube. The past is a memory. La pasada es una memoria. The future is unknown. No lo conocemos el futuro.

And so we need faith and trust. Entonces necesitamos fe y confianza.

Because in the cloud Moses received the Torah. Porque en la nube Moises se recibio la Ley Santa. And in the cloud the disciples heard the new Torah, that Jesus is the Beloved. Y en la nube los discipulos les oyeron La Ley Nueva, que el Senor Jesucristo es el Amado de Dios.

But no one gets to stay in the cloud. Pero nadie puede quedar en la nube.

The people of Israel received the Law and continued their journey. El pueblo de Israel recibieron la Ley y sigieron en su viaje. The disciples looked and saw only Jesus and left with him down the mountain. Los discipulos se miraron a Jesus solo y con el les bajaron desde el monte.

And on the journey, the people of Israel and the disciples were changed, from surprising glory to glory. Y durante el viaje, el pueblo de Israel y los discipulos tambien estaban cambiado, desde Gloria a Gloria sorprendente.

That is our journey too. Este es nuestro viaje tambien.

We are trying a new road. Estamos tratando un nuevo camino. We are trying to become a new congregation. Tratamos a ser una nueva congregacion. We do not know how it will end. No conocemos como se terminara.

But if we walk in faith we shall be changed from glory to glory. Pero si caminaremos en fe seamos cambiado de Gloria a Gloria.

For as the poet said, “Traveler, there is no path. The path is made by walking.” Como el poeta dice, “Caminante, no hay camino / se hace camino al andar...”