Stop Saying the Church is Dying (a sermon from the Sarcastic Lutheran) 10MAI14

FOR those who worry the Church is dead, and for those who smugly say God is dead, here is a sermon from Rev Nadia Bolz-Weber reenforcing our faith and affirming the Church (and GOD) is alive and well. This was preached at the Rocky Mountain Synod of the ELCA meeting, but it applies to all denominations who are true to the teachings of Jesus Christ.

Stop Saying the Church is Dying (a sermon for the Rocky Mountain Synod Assembly)

May 10, 2014 By Nadia Bolz Weber 

Inside a cave church in Cappadocia with Sara Miles.

A week ago I was fortunate enough to be standing near a cliff in Cappadocia, Turkey taking in the view of hundreds of caves carved from volcanic rock in an alien looking valley. My friend Sara asked what I was thinking about. When I confessed that I was worrying about preaching at my Synod’s assembly next week, Sara didn’t hesitate to remind me sarcastically,  “Oh, you mean that little text on how Jesus tells us not to worry?”
So, yeah, nothing like worrying about preaching a sermon on how Jesus says we should not worry to make ya feel like a schmuck.
As today got closer and closer I would tell myself  “don’t worry, just come up with a plan”. I’d read the text, call my preacher friends, pray, repeat. And I am here to say that I did not, by worrying, add a single sentence to my sermon. Not one.
But I did become curious about what worry really is. And I began to realize that, on some level, worry is nothing more than fear.  Fear that either I will not get something I want or fear that something I have will be taken away.  And both of those fears seem to be centered on finitude. The fact that nothing lasts forever.  That everything comes to an end. And Jesus says who by worrying can escape this reality? But also, worry is kind of all about scarcity…. because I don’t know about you, but I have never once worried that I would have more money than I need next month.  I have never once worried that I might be happy and healthy and live a long life.
And we come by this fear honestly in a society in which a perceived state of scarcity is what drives the free market economy.  But I think Jesus points here to a bigger reality than that.  A reality he calls the kingdom of God. A reality he always seems to describe as being like things around us that are common, and small and insignificant and unimpressive.
Which is as good a time as any to talk about the Lutheran church. It’s no news to anyone here that there is a lot of hand-wringing these days about the longevity of the Lutheran church.  And yeah – to be sure, we used to be bigger, more significant and more impressive.  Sure, we used to own more property, have more members, bring in more cash and leverage more power than we do today. It’s hard to argue with numbers. But the thing is, buildings,  numbers, money, power – and other aspects of worldly success may indeed be signs of A kingdom, but brothers and sisters, they are not necessarily signs of THE Kingdom.. I mean, were this denomination of ours a company, then for sure, investors would be scurrying for cover. But, people of God, maybe now is the time for us to take a hard look at the ways in which the church has tended to judge our success on a set of values that perhaps we had no business buying into in the first place.  Namely our society’s free-market corporate American values of what success looks like.
If that is the case, then I repeat – we came by it honestly. Swept up as we were into having banked so much cultural currency in America.  But those days have gone.  They’ve gone.
And so, what are we left with if we are no longer the Lutheran church of 1964?
We in the year of our Lord 2014 have moved our bishop’s office from a fancy office space surrounded by PR firms and media companies in the seat of Denver’s power grid and into a slightly run-down church building in an unimpressive part of town. To some this may a sign that the “church is dying” but to others it is a sign that the church is living. Perhaps our definition of success can shift more toward what is foolishness to the world and yet life to those in Christ. Buildings and budgets and social currency will fall away. But what stands is the kingdom of God. Which Jesus tells us is the Father’s good pleasure to give to us.
Society will still have the Fortune 500 for profits, and non profits for service and day care centers for children and the ELKS Club for socializing and Starbucks for overpriced coffee and many other things we may not ever be. But we should never judge ourselves as the church according to these things because you know what the culture around us will NEVER do? Preach the Gospel, administer the sacraments and proclaim forgiveness of sins. You know why? That’s OUR job.  That’s our main job and while we are free as the church, to participate in any number of other activities in the world that seem bigger and more impressive let’s remember:  We are those who have been, and continue to be, entrusted with nothing less than the Gospel.  And what I’m about to say is a shamelessly prideful (and being shamelessly prideful is, I have been told, “not Lutheran”) but in a world where people are constantly being fed spoonfuls of nonsense and told it is Jesus …we have a better Gospel.
So given what we’ve been entrusted with, we cannot be distracted any longer by a corporate American Empire version of success.
So let me be the first to say, if in your congregation, regardless of size, prestige or property, if the Word is preached and the Eucharist shared and water poured and forgiveness of sins received, then congratulations, your congregation is a success. So when the numbers crunchers and church consultants say the church is dying…may I suggest that we only say this when we forget what the definition of church is.
And when we forgot whose the church is.
Because as the prophet Isaiah said, the Word will do that for which God purposes it and people, regardless of what happens to institutions, and trends and property and budgets…even when the president of the United States stops inviting us to the White House Prayer breakfast – Even if there is never any such things as a White House Prayer breakfast and old church building are more often condos than centers for worship, God will be praised.  God will continue to send for the Word which God has always sent forth.  So let us step back from the worry of how the church is dying, because long after we have gone, the WORD will remain.  Long after the ELCA is gone, even when my beloved House for All Sinners and Saints is gone, the church will not be dead because people will continue to gather in the name of the Triune God, hold up bread, say it is Jesus and that it is for the forgiveness of sins. Just as we will do here tonight so will it forever be done until the time in which we gather around the throne of the Lamb.
But let’s remember this, people of the Rocky Mountain Synod, that the Gospel is not just entrusted to you for you to proclaim, it is, to be sure, also intended for you to hear. So since we Christians are a forgetful people – and need to be reminded of that for which the church was even created in the first place – so…
People of God, do not worry because we have this Word-
That there is a God who created us and all that is, this same God spoke through prophets and poets, claimed a people to be God’s own and freed them from the shackles of slavery. This same God led those people through the wilderness to a land of milk and honey, and told them to always welcome the stranger and protect the foreigner so that they could remember where they came from and what God had done for them. Then in the fullness of time, and to draw ALL people to himself, God came and broke our hearts like only a baby could do and made God’s home in the womb of a fierce young woman as though God was saying, from now on this is how I want to be known. And as Jesus, God the Son kissed lepers and befriended prostitutes and baffled authority. Jesus ate with all the wrong people and on the night before he died, he gathered with his faltering friends for a meal that tasted of freedom. He held up bread and told us to do the same thing and he promised us so much: that he would be with us, that forgiveness is real, that we are God’s, that people matter and that death is done for and that after a tough resurrection, grilled fish makes an awesome breakfast.
Which is to say, God chose to enter the finitude we fear– enter into the uncertainty and danger of mortal human existence in order to point to something bigger.  Bigger than what is fleeting and finite.  In the incarnation God has given us nothing less than a small measure of eternity through the birth, life, death and resurrection of Christ.  And made us an Easter people – not people who vapidly pretend that everything’s ok – but people who live in the Christ reality of death and resurrection. People who live in the reality of a God who brings live things out of dead things.
I say this as someone who a week ago was hiking in those desolate valleys of Cappadocia, a land that for 1,000 years was populated with Christians and now is not. That is to say, we are not the first group of Christians to worry about the decline of Christianity.
Sara and I would climb up into caves and look around at ceilings filled with Byzantine Christian iconography. A thousand years of Christianity and now only ruins left. Yes, the big, impressive, successful Byzantine Empire fell, and yet the church of Jesus Christ did not die, if it had, how could 2 middle aged women stand in old cave church 600 years later and sing Christos Aneste? Christ is risen. A song that no matter what, will continue to be sung, because worry not, the tomb is empty, and God will be praised. Amen.

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Sermon for All Saints Sunday: Small Acts of Love 3NOV13

A few weeks ago, on a warm Friday evening I was with friends on their deck after sharing supper with them. We were enjoying each other, wine, their chiminea. We were discussing anything and everything and as the lone Protestant in the group I asked about the Catholic practice of Communion. I learned a lot as they may have from me. We discussed differences, but without superiority and condemnation. This is why I love this group of friends, because we really do love each other. This sermon from the Sarcastic Lutheran reminded me of them, and of all the Saints I have known in my lifetime, a good lifetime because of them and the family and friends still with me. Do yourself a favor and listen to this sermon....

November 4, 2013 By Nadia Bolz Weber 

Click here to listen along——-> 2013-11-3 NBW Sermon hfass 2-1
A stanza From the great hymn For All The Saints:
O blest communion, fellowship divine!
We feebly struggle, but they in glory shine;
Yet all are one in Thee, for all are Thine.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

So, I’m a sucker for a good saint and many of you might not know this but when this church was starting I had a stack of saint card – saint cards are like trading card for Catholic saints, their picture on the front, and their stats and like, spiritual powers listed on the back…well I had a stack of these but they were all of the same saint – St Dymphna who’s my favorite. Not exactly the most famous of the saints but there you go.  Saint Dymphna was the daughter of a pagan Irish king and his Christian wife in the 7th century. Sadly, she was murdered by her father. But before her death she is said to of founded a home for the ill and many crazy people reportedly became a lot less crazy around her.
That’s right…St. Dymphna is officially the patron saint of the nervous, the patron saint of the emotionally disturbed, the patron saint of the mentally ill, and the patron saint of those with neurological disorders.
That is to say, she just really seemed like our kind of saint.
Today is a day set aside in the church year to remember the saints.  But not just the ones who have trading cards since it is technically All Saints Sunday and not just Some Saints Sunday. To be clear, this isn’t like a cult of saints or anything…we don’t need special saints to intercede for us because God listens to them more since they were just basically better Christians than we are.  What we celebrate when we celebrate All Saints is not the superhuman faith and power of a select few but is God’s ability to use flawed people to do divine things. We celebrate all on whom God has acted in baptism, sealing them, as Ephesians says, with the mark of the promised Holy Spirit. We celebrate the fact that God creates faith in God’s people, and those people through ordinary acts of love, bring the Kingdom of Heaven closer to Earth. We celebrate that we have, in all who’ve gone before us, what St Paul calls such a great cloud of witnesses and that the faithful departed are as much the body of Christ as we are.
It is quite a thing, really.  That we are connected to so many. Connected to so much faith. So many stories. So much divine love. Especially in this day and age of alienation and trying to find community and belonging in smaller and smaller ways. I mean, I may think that the basis of me being connected to other people is in having theology or political beliefs or denominational affiliation or neighborhood or musical taste or Facebook groups in common.  But none of that is what connects me to the Body of Christ. What connects me to the body of Christ is not my piety or good works or theological beliefs.  It’s God. A God who gathers up all of God’s children into the church eternal.
So, today let us remember all the deeply faithful and deeply flawed saints of God’s church through whom the glory of God has been revealed is being revealed and will be revealed.  Let us remember Mary Magdalena and Peter the fisherman and the glorious disciples.  Let us remember St Frances and Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King Jr. Let us remember Lindsey’s mom, and Moose’s brother and my friend Suzanne who took me in when I was messed up kid trying to get sober. Today let us thank God for gathering so many into the church eternal, some of whom still light our own paths.
O blest communion, fellowship divine!
We feebly struggle, but they in glory shine;
Yet all are one in Thee, for all are Thine.
Alleluia, Alleluia!
Many of you have come here today to honor someone you have loved who has died. Your hearts are heavy with the loss of someone dear. Many of us have our own beloved dead to remember this day. People who we’d frankly rather still have here in this room as a living person and not as a photo on a white table at church the first Sunday of November. We’d rather be standing behind them in line for communion than adding them to the litany of saints.
Some of you know that this last May Julie asked us to pray for friends of hers who had lost their son Drake to suicide. Drake was 12. He was an animated child who was different from other boys.  He was on the state championship cheerleading squad and loved weaving, knitting or crocheting scarves for his friends.  And for all of this and more he was bullied mercilessly. Drake, a baptized, beloved and beautiful child of God is gone but here, today we will speak his name. We will speak his name with the names of others who have departed this world since the last All Saints – expectedly, unexpectedly, peacefully, violently. And all of them now taken into the embrace of the God from whom they came in the first place.
When I met Julie for coffee a few weeks ago and she spoke of how much she’s understandably struggling to make sense of Drake’s death, I told her as I have so many of you, that I don’t have any easy answers. And that there is seldom an answer to the question of why there is such senseless suffering.  But there is meaning to be found in it.  And for me that meaning is connected to being part of this mystic body of Christ because it means that death is never the final word because in both life and death we, like Drake are very much connected to God and to one another. The letter to the Ephesians we heard earlier calls this the inheritance of the saints, That God somehow gathers us all up into the divine love of Christ and makes us a body both now and in the life to come. That even those whose names are eventually forgotten are always and forever held in the light of God in glory. Because while death is a wrenching painful reality to us, it’s meaningless to God.
Not that God is impervious to the pain of death, mind you – after all,
Jesus had real friends who died, and he stood outside the tomb of Lazarus and wept. And then, of course, he raised Lazarus from the grave – as though before Jesus was to defeat death for good he needed to just gave it a really good slap in the face first.   God in Jesus was so moved by compassion and love for those who others rejected, those like young Drake, that his hand was ever extended to them, a God who, in Jesus was so full of grace that he went to a cross we built for him, a God who in Jesus descended to the dead as though to say to us “even here I will find you and not let go” because death has no sting – death is rendered meaningless to a God of resurrection.  And lest we forget, it is a God of resurrection who we worship.
At that coffee with Julie I said I didn’t have answers but I did know that All Saints Sunday was coming up and we could have a little shrine for Drake…. Yet one more Saint that has gone before us with whom we are still inextricably, united in the body of Christ.
So what can we do but also give thanks for this table we are about to gather around – a foretaste of the heavenly banquet around which the saints are already gathered.  We give thanks that around this table we are tied to the whole communion of saints – united with all who have ever received bread and wine and told it was Jesus and it was for them.  We are joined here with angels and arch angels cherubim and seraphim  – we are joined with the church on earth and the church in heaven and all who have called on the name of God. And we are connected to God.
I saw Julie again a couple days ago and in her bag was a picture of Drake and also a scarf he had woven for her. She asked if I could wear it as my stole when we gather around the table today and remind each other of the night before Jesus defeated death. Yes, of course I will and it will be my honor.
So for this we are also giving thanks, that saintly acts are always just really simple acts of love. And that we give thanks for all those who have come before us handing on the faith and being used by God for simple acts of love. Building homes where the crazy can be less crazy, giving food to those who hunger, taking in a kid trying to get sober, changing a child’s diaper, weaving a scarf for someone you love.
O blest communion, fellowship divine!
We feebly struggle, but they in glory shine;
Yet all are one in Thee, for all are Thine.
Alleluia, Alleluia! Amen.

Drake’s scarf.

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 http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nadiabolzweber/2013/11/778/

A Mother's Love 10MAY13

A mother's love, thoughts, beliefs, faith and prayer at the internment of her daughter. It is just wrong that a parent should have to bury their child, and we will never understand why until the end of time. 
Yesterday Kay Stewart shared this at the cemetery as we laid to rest the ashes of her first-born daughter Katherine (“Katie”).

Katie and Kay, photo courtesy Kay and Gordon Stewart

For Christ to have gone before us,
To have kept us from ultimate sadness,
To be our brother, our advocate,
The One who ushers in the Kingdom,
Here
And the One to come,

Does not keep us from our digging today.
We still gather here and throw the dirt on our sacred dust,
We take the shovel like all those gone before us
And surrender to the Unknowable—
The place where
Love and Beauty and Kindness grow wild.
Where sorrow has no needs,
Where there is all beginning and
Nothing ends.

I know this Love of hers lives on. I feel it.
I watch it in many streams of synchronicity,
Where my heart leaps from memory’s knowing,
Where I share a breath from her beyond.

And then I cry in secret,
Begging that she return

On my terms.

But if my begging is selfish,
The answer to it is not.
If I but knew the splendor of that Place where Love lives,
I would marvel in her good fortune
And ponder her grace inside a timeless waiting for us,
A begging for our good fortune
To come on her terms.

We live our lives in time.
She lives all time as Splendor.
We are bound between this stalemate
And the mystery that is our promise.

Until then we have no other luxury than
To shout her precious memories to the sky
In loud thanksgiving that Love herself lived with us awhile.

Then, because we live with fuller hearts
From knowing more than before our loss,
We turn our shovels over
As those with little other choice for now.
For now we dig.
And shed our tears
With greater Trust.

Thy Kingdom come,
Thy will be done,
On earth as it is
In heaven.

- Kay Stewart, Chaska, Minn., May 9, 2013,
the third anniversary of loss and fuller hearts.

Kay Stewart is a licensed alcohol and chemical addiction counselor with the Addiction Medicine Clinic of Hennepin County Medical Center in downtown Minneapolis.  She is a graduate of the University of Nebraska and Austin Theological Seminary (Austin, Texas), and writes for www.rawgrief.com. She lives in Chaska, Minn.

http://sojo.net/blogs/2013/05/10/mothers-love?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sojourners%2Fgods-politics+%28Sojourners+God%27s+Politics+Blog%29

Getting Jesus to Do Whatever You Ask of Him (and other ways you can’t avoid death and resurrection) 21OKT12

A great sermon on how God answers our prayers from Rev Nadia Bolz-Weber.....

10-21-12 NBW Sermon <—–click here to listen to the sermon (that’s what makes it “preaching”)
This might seem weird to you, but I don’t always get what I want. And a year and a half ago, as many of you know, I wanted something really particular. For the 1^st 3 years of this church, we were using a hundred year old church building in an edgy hispster neighborhood.  It had hardwood floors and stained glass and no pews and it wasn’t perfect but it was really close and I was certain I mean, I was really certain that we had to stay there. The vitality and life of this community depended on it.  But my attachment to us staying in that building caused me a lot of suffering. And looking back on it I’m sure it caused those of you who were around at that time some suffering too (not the least of which was the fact that there was basically no heat in that building and liturgy during the Winter was like a sub-arctic adventure) but I thought it was worth it because that was nothing compared to the suffering and death the community would face were we not in that “perfect” church building.  I wanted to avoid that, so I kept asking God to help us out.
I mention this because 18 months ago were I in the place of James and John, the disciples in our gospel text who kind of slime up to Jesus on the road to Jerusalem and say Hey Jesus we want you to do whatever we ask…were I in their place and Jesus said what do you want I would have said we have to be able to stay in that cold little church building.  I would have said this because I thought that outcome is what would help us avoid something bad.
And I imagine Jesus would have said to me what he said to James and John and what we might try and hear him say to us pretty much every single day and that’s You do not know what you are asking.
To get a little perspective, we might go back a few verses because our reading last week ends with the rich man going away saddened and Jesus saying the first will be last and the last first and between that and today’s reading there’s a pretty important 3 verses and in defiance of the lectionary Gods I am going to read those to you.

They were on the road, going up to Jerusalem (just a side note here…that’s where he’s going to suffer and die) , and Jesus was walking ahead of them; they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid. He took the twelve aside again and began to tell them what was to happen to him,  (another side note…this is now the 3^rd time he says this to them) ³³saying, ‘See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles; ³⁴they will mock him, and spit upon him, and flog him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise again.’
35 James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to him and said to him, ‘Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.’ ³⁶And he said to them, ‘What is it you want me to do for you?’ ³⁷And they said to him, ‘Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.’ ³⁸But Jesus said to them, ‘You do not know what you are asking.

Sounds a little different in context doesn’t it?
I’m not sure exactly what was behind James and John’s request, but I’m thinking it had something to do with wanting to avoid suffering or death of some kind because, as the text said they were going to Jerusalem and they were afraid and who can blame them?
See, I think that sometimes I want God to do something for me because if I get that thing or that situation comes true then the promise is that I will avoid some kind of suffering.  If God will just let me win the lottery then I would avoid the suffering of not having a Mercedes.  If God can just let that one particular boy fall in love with me then I can avoid the suffering of loneliness.  If God can help us not lose our church building then we can avoid the suffering of being a homeless church who might, God forbid, move into a beautiful historic neighborhood instead. I think that’s what we do.  Our desire to have God do something for us is rooted in our desire to avoid suffering which is, on an existential level, our desire to avoid death. And to all of this Jesus says “you do not know what you are asking”.
Nobody avoids suffering. Nobody avoids death.
Don’t mistake me.  There is nothing wrong with asking things of God. Indeed, part of being a people of faith is to lift our hearts to God in both praise and petition. And if nothing else, this is indeed a praying church. Of course we take the desires of our hearts to God as well we should. We just shouldn’t be overly sure that us getting what we want means that we will be happy and it surely doesn’t mean we get a pass on the hard stuff.
Because when in their fear the disciples say they want him to do whatever they ask he doesn’t shame them for their request. He just starts talking about the ordeal he’s about to go through.  He speaks of us sharing in his cup and his baptism – as if he’s wrapping sacramental language around what awaits him in Jerusalem –
He said the cup I drink is not an avoidance of suffering program and to be clear, it’s not a glorifying of suffering program.  The cup and the baptism that awaited Jesus in Jerusalem, was simply death and resurrection.  And if anything THIS is what the Christian life is about.
To our personal requests of God, to all of our desires that we bring to Jesus saying hey Jesus we want you to do for us whatever we ask Jesus just smiles and says “it doesn’t work like that”  It doesn’t work like that but I did come to bring you life and life abundant and the real truth of that is never found in the avoidance of pain or the manipulation of God or transcending the human experience it always comes from death and resurrection.  Truth and life and all the things God wants to reveal to us in Jesus Christ come from descent into death before rising to new life and we might fight that or think that we have found a work around for it but that road to Jerusalem is where we stay.
It was weird a year and a half ago when we got the eviction letter late in Lent and it said we had to be out by the first Sunday in Easter.  It was our road to Jerusalem and on it I kept making my requests to God and God kept saying “you do not know what you are asking” and in the end nothing could keep my self and this community on so many levels from going through death and resurrection during that Holy Week. And in the end, the resurrection story of us of finding St Thomas and having our community grow and thrive in a way we simply never could have imagined was slightly more than metaphorical.
And that’s what this thing is about.  Which is why this week I starting thinking about how undeterred Jesus was even when his people didn’t know what they were asking.  Because despite that and despite the fact that his disciples never understand anything he says, Jesus still stays on message and knowing what is before him he stays on the road to Jerusalem and with all of it tearing at him he stays on the cross but brothers and sisters he does not stay in the grave. Death, the thing that ultimately we think we are avoiding by getting what we want is destroyed by a God who didn’t avoid it but dived right into it and then kicked it’s ass.
So, by all means faithful people, raise your hearts to God in praise and petition, just know that you do not really know what you are asking and that is a good thing.   Because you will be brought to the empty tomb only through the cross and sometimes no is simply the vehicle for a deeper yes and a newer life and the thing you never saw coming. Amen.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nadiabolzweber/2012/10/getting-jesus-to-do-whatever-you-ask-of-him-and-other-ways-you-cant-avoid-death-and-resurrection/ 

Sermon about Mary Magdalen, the massacre in our town, and defiant alleluias 22JUL12

THIS is the most sincere response to the horror of last Friday's (20JUL12) mass murder in Aurora, Colorado I have heard or read. Don't miss the real feeling and meaning of the message by just reading it, take the time to listen to it, to hear the emotion, the tears of Rev Bolz-Weber and the voices of the congregation, and if so moved, share this with others. You may also want to see my post on the reaction of the Amish community of Nickel Mines, PA to a mass shooting of children and how they were able to forgive the killer at AURORA, CO & NICKEL MINES, PA MASS SHOOTINGS AND FORGIVENESS 26JUL12 http://bucknacktssordidtawdryblog.blogspot.com/2012/07/aurora-co-nickel-mines-pa-mass.html
From The House For All Sinners And Saints' Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber....

by Brother Robert Lentz

But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look^* into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping?’ She said to them, ‘They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.’ When she had said this, she turned round and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping? For whom are you looking?’ Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!’ She turned and said to him in Hebrew,^*‘Rabbouni!’ (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, ‘Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” ’ Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord’; and she told them that he had said these things to her. -John 20

NBW Sermon 7-22-2012<—–click here to listen (i sing, and cry…seriously)
As a woman preacher, I can’t help but love St Mary Magdalen.  She was the first witness to the resurrection.  When I first discerned my call to be a preacher I got a tattoo of her on my forearm – it’s from a rare depiction in ancient Christian art – of her proclaiming the resurrection to the apostles.  I felt that when I needed to I could borrow her strength. And since today, July 22^nd is her feast day we decided weeks ago to ditch the normal Sunday readings and celebrate her as an important saint to us.
But then Friday happened.  I was still in New Orleans when I saw the news of the shooting.  After praying that you were all safe I soon thought “we can’t really hold a celebration of a saint today…it just wouldn’t make any sense”
I had gone to New Orleans with an idea for a sermon on Mary Magdalen – a sermon about who gets to speak in the Bible and who gets to be named and blah blah blah.
And just as I was about to ditch it all and go with the regularly assigned reading for today I went back and again read this story of Mary Magdalen at the tomb and realized, given the violence and terror thrust upon our community this week, that maybe Mary had more to say about it than I could.  I decided again to borrow strength and voice from her.  So were I a pastor who titled her sermons this one would be WWMMP – What Would Mary Magdalen Preach?
I think Mary would not shy away from naming the darkness and despair of an event like Friday’s massacre.  She was familiar with darkness after all– Luke tells us that it is from Mary Magdalen that Jesus cast out 7 demons.  Then having been freed from her demons she followed Jesus and as the text tells us, even supported the ministry from her own pocketbook. And at the end it was Mary Magdalen who did not deny Jesus nor betray Jesus nor high tale it out when things got rough but she with just a couple other faithful women stood at the cross.  And after Jesus died, it was Mary who came to his tomb, as we are told, while it was still dark.
My Bishop Allan Bjornberg once said that the Greatest spiritual practice isn’t yoga or praying the hours or living in intentional poverty although these are all beautiful in their own way.  The greatest spiritual practice is just showing up.
And in some ways Mary Magdalen is like, the patron saint of just showing up.
Because showing up means being present to what is real, what is actually happening.  She didn’t necessarily know what to say or what to do or even what to think….but none of that is nearly as important as the fact that she just showed up.  She showed up at the cross where her teacher Jesus became a victim of our violence and terror.  She looked on as the man who had set her free from her own darkness bore the evil and violence of the whole world upon himself and yet still she showed up.
I think St Mary Magdalen, were she your preacher, would be braver that I.  She would not shy away from the dark reality of innocent people slaughtered while it was still night.  She would show up and name the events of 2 days ago exactly what they were: horrific, evil, senseless violence without a shred of anything redemptive about it.
And I think that were Mary Magdalen here she would have very little tolerance for the platitudes and vapid optimism of so much overly-churched Christianity.  Those are simply luxuries of people who’ve never had demons.  But equally would she abohor nihilism or the idea that there is no real meaning in life – ideas present in so much of post-modernity…that too, is a luxury but it is one of those who have never been freed from demons.
I think she would show up and tell us that despite it all despite the violence and fear that it’s still always worth it to love God and to love people and always, always it is worth it to sing alleluia.  For surely the devil hates the sound of it.
Speaking of which, I thought for a moment of cancelling Beer & Hymns on Friday night.  We have so much fun at that event and I though that perhaps it wasn’t the right thing to do that night. Thankfully that thought only lasted a moment.  Then I posted on Facebook that that night we would still gather to sing praises to God, for, as the funeral mass says even as we go to the grave still we make our song alleluia.
And then after Beer & Hymns we sat in a noisy Denver bar and sang Vespers together, we sang our prayer to God, and in our singing I heard a defiant tone.  The sound of a people who simply will not believe that violence wins, a people who know that the sound of the risen Christ speaking each of our names drowns out all other voices.
It drowns out the sound of the political posturing, the sound of cries for vengeance, the sound of our own fears and anxieties and the deafening uncertainty – because all of it is no match for the shimmering sound of the resurrected Christ calling our name. Because in baptism we are a people marked by the cross of Christ.  Upon our foreheads is the mark of violence and death but this violence and death has been overcome by the love of a God who in the 3 days between Good Friday and Easter reached into the very bowels of hell and said even here I will not be without you.  //This is the God to whom we sing.  A God who didn’t say we would never be afraid but that we would never be alone. A God who shows up.  In the violence of the cross, in the darkness of a garden before dawn, in the gardener, in a movie theater, in the basement of a bar.
In 2010, on that first evening after the earthquake in Haiti, news reports came in that said that when night fell on the streets of Port AU Prince people were singing hymns and psalms. Blessed be God, they sang.  People were singing praises to God amidst their entire world destroyed.
It’s important to note that to sing praises to God amongst destruction and violence is not the same thing as saying Hey God we think you’re awesome for allowing these horrible things to happen.  To sing praise to God amidst destruction and violence is to simply put evil in it’s place.  It’s to draw a line and say here and no further.  For the devil surely hates the sound of alleluia.
This is why here at House on the evening of Good Friday we took the purple tulips that we had laid at the cross during the liturgy and we drove to where a teenage boy had shot and killed another teenage boy the week before. We laid those holy flowers at the site of the murder and we sang Holy God Holy and Mighty Holy and Immortal have mercy upon us.
Singing in the midst of evil is what it means to be disciples like Mary Magdalen.
Because to be disciples like Mary Magdalen is to show up.  It is to be a people who stand – who stand at the cross and stand in the midst of evil and violence and even if we are uncertain we are still unafraid to be present to all of it.   We are unafraid to name the dark demons of evil and to call a thing what it is. And to be disciples like Mary Magdalen is also to be a people who weep. A people who show up to the tombs and weep.  Weep for ourselves and weep for each other and weep for our city and weep for dead 6 year old girls.  And to be disciples like Mary Magdalen is to be a people who listen and turn at the sound of our names.  Amongst the sounds of sirens and fear and isolation and uncertainty and loss we hear a sound that muffles all the rest: that still, small voice of Christ speaking our names.  And finally, the very reason we can do these things is not because we happen to be the people with the best set of skills for this work.  Trust me, we are not.  But the reason we can be disciples like Mary Magdalen – the reason we can stand and we can weep and we can listen is because finally we, like Mary are bearers of resurrection.  We know that on the 3^rd day he rose again.  We do not need to be afraid. Because to sing to God amidst all of this is to defiantly proclaim like Mary Magdalen did to the apostles, that death is simply not the final word. To defiantly say that a light shines in the darkness and the darkness can not will not shall not overcome it.  And so, evil be damned, because even as we go to the grave, still we make our song Alleluia. Alleluia. Alleluia.
Amen.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nadiabolzweber/2012/07/sermon-about-mary-magdalen-the-masacre-in-our-town-and-defiant-alleluias/ 

A Sermon on Snacking and the Stupid Things People Say 2MAI12

AMEN Rev Bolz-Webber, and thank you....

sermon on Snacking <——-Click here to listen along. Sermons are a spoken art form!

^36b“Peace be with you.” ³⁷They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. ³⁸He said to them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? ³⁹Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” ⁴⁰And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet.⁴¹While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” ⁴²They gave him a piece of broiled fish, ⁴³and he took it and ate in their presence.
-Luke 24

Easter lasts for 50 days for Christians.  Most of the culture thinks it’s over when we’ve managed the vacuum up the last of the long thin ribbons of green plastic Easter grass off the carpets and the children have come down from their sugar highs.  But long after the White Sales at Macy’s have ended, the church is still celebrating Easter.
And you’ll notice that for a holiday that is supposed to be about new life and resurrection and the Glory of God and for some reason bunnies, we really get very little of that in the resurrection accounts.  But what we do get in the stories of Jesus appearing to his disciples after the resurrection is a great deal of fear and doubt and wounds and bread.  There aren’t a whole lot of answers in these texts, but for some reason there is a lot of broiled fish.
Our reading for today finds the disciples gathered together 3 days after Jesus died. All they knew was that their friend and teacher and Lord was dead and in the face of loss and everything they knew changing they were scared and they were doubting. And this is understandable. And it was here that Jesus suddenly stood among them.  And in their fear and disbelief he doesn’t judge them, he doesn’t rebuke them, he doesn’t try and convince them of the truth…he just offers himself.  See my hands…touch my feet. I am here. Don’t be afraid. Let’s eat some broiled fish.
The truth is that Jesus is scary, because, as he makes clear to the disciples, you can’t know him at a distance, on your own private terms. You cannot think your way to knowing Jesus through the answers you find in your own private Bible study, or through spiritualizing him as an otherworldly symbol.
You can’t know Jesus by spiritualizing him.  Not the guy we read about today who turns to his completely freaked out friends who have no idea what this all can mean and asks them the really crucial and deeply spiritual question of; “so do you have any snacks?” I wonder if what this text is saying to us is that if you get all transcendent and spiritual floating above the disappointingly broken physical world, you may just miss Jesus all together because that’s him over there at the snack table. Which is an embarrassing place to have the Lord hanging out.  But despite all our attempts to spiritualize, cleanse and middle-class up Jesus he just stands there eating broiled fish with his bare hands, holes and all.
Reading this story this week and about how the disciples were scared and doubting and really wanting some answers and getting nothing but broiled fish I was taken back to when I was a student chaplain at a hospital.
And how terrifying it was to think that I would be the person people expected to come up with a satisfying answer to why their husband is in a coma.
I’ll never forget my first experience in the trauma room.
A motionless man in his 50s was on a table and they started doing things to him not meant for my eyes and sorely misrepresented on TV shows.
One nurse was cutting his clothes off, and another was hooking up things while a Doctor was putting on gloves and I lean over to the nurse closest to me and was like,  – everyone seems to know what their job is but what am I doing here? She looks at my badge and says You’re job is to be aware of God’s presence in the room while we do our jobs.
It just didn’t seem like enough.
Then later in the little white room with just enough space for four love seats and as many boxes of tissue I’d sit with people in their loss. I would stand by and witness the disfiguring emotional process we politely call grief and I had no answers.  I’d bring them water, make some calls for them, keep bugging the doctors to give us more information, but words of wisdom I had none.
People wanted answers, or maybe it was just me who wanted answers, but I soon learned that and all I had to offer was my presence, a glass of water and cliff bar.  Only later did I realize: that’s just what Christianity is.
As many of you know, Travis, a young man in this congregation was baptized at the Easter Vigil and then the very next day he ended up on a plane home to see his father who had mysteriously ended up in the ICU.  Many of us have been praying for Travis and his family for 2 weeks and were saddened to find out that his father died on Thursday. His father’s death was sudden, and unexpected. Travis and his family have simply been robbed.
While talking to Travis on the phone Thursday I found I just didn’t have much to say.  And honestly I had to fight the urge to say something even if it was stupid just so I could feel like I had said something at all. But that never helps.  You hear a lot of nonsense in hospitals and funeral homes.  God had a plan, we just don’t know what it is. Maybe God took your daughter because he needs another angel in heaven. But when I’ve experienced loss and am feeling so much pain that it’s like nothing else ever existed the last thing I need is a well-meaning but vapid person to say when God closes a door he opens a window because that then makes me want to ask where exactly that window is so I can push them the Hell out of it.
This is the nonsense spawned from bad religion.  And usually when you are grieving and someone says something so vapidly optimistic to you, it’s about them.  It’s about the fact that they simply cannot allow themselves to entertain the finality and pain of death so instead they turn it into a Precious Moments greeting card.
This isn’t exactly uncommon.  In moments of grief and loss we are afraid and doubting and we want answers just like the disciples did 3 days after Jesus died.  But all anyone can really do is be with us and make some casseroles. And when that’s all we have to offer it can feel like not enough but the truth is that is Christianity. Presence and stories and meals and defiantly believing that death is simply not the last word. An episcopal priest once said that Christianity isn’t spiritual, is material.  You can’t even get started without a loaf of bread some wine and a river.
Jesus comes to his followers, then and now, in our grief and loss and doesn’t give answers.  In our fear and disbelief he doesn’t judge, he doesn’t rebuke, he doesn’t try and convince us of the truth…he just offers himself.  See my hands…touch my feet. I am here. Don’t be afraid. Let’s eat.  And as the Body of Christ this is what you do for each other as well and for the world God loves so madly. Your tweets and Facebook messages and texts and emails to Travis while he is grieving in Iowa are a witness.  It is a witness to a God who promises to be with us and in those prayers for our grieving brother we don’t offer any answers, we just claim the promise as our own. What’s been so hard is not being able to also bring him food.  But we can get to that when he gets back here.
We might think that knowing Jesus means not being fearful and not having doubt but you can’t know Jesus by spiritualizing him.  He is made known when we gather and tell the story and share food at his table.  It’s common.  It’s simple.  and it really, really is enough.http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nadiabolzweber/2012/05/a-sermon-on-snacking-and-the-stupid-things-people-say/

Some Other Resurrections 23APR11

FOR Easter, and the celebration of the resurrection of Christ....
It’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything, mostly due to life difficulties and a sense that Tikkun was not really the venue for the things I felt called to write. I’m sorry about that. I’ve missed all of you.
In any case, I certainly can’t let Easter go by without posting something. So here is a liturgical reading for the day that I just wrote; think of it as a responsive reading:
Some Other Resurrections
Despair is sapping our spirits, damaging our souls, hurting our hearts.
We need to be resurrected into hope, faith, and trust.
Today, may we be resurrected.
Violence is shortening our lives and robbing us of our joy.
We need to be resurrected into peace and its many blessings.
Today, may we be resurrected.
Selfishness is tearing our social fabric, hiding us from one another, turning us inward.
We need to be resurrected into generosity, compassion, and open-heartedness.
Today, may we be resurrected.
Fear is pitting us against each other, stripping our delight, poisoning our relationships.
We need to be resurrected into courage and connection.
Today, may we be resurrected.
Injustice is devaluing and dehumanizing us all, punishing some terribly, frightening others deeply.
We need to be resurrected into justice and healing.
Today, may we be resurrected.
Hatred is breeding despair, violence, selfishness, fear, and injustice among us and among our children.
We need to be resurrected into love.
Today, may we be resurrected.
Amen.
Peace, grace, shalom, tikkun olam, Amanda