Homily for Memorial Service for Alex M - Isaiah 61:1-3

The prophet Isaiah did his work during a time of transition and trial for the people of Israel. They fell into captivity by the Babylonians. The nation of Israel was split apart, with some staying in Israel, some being sent in dispersion to other parts of the Babylonian empire. As a result, in many parts of the book of the prophet Isaiah, we hear of the great sadness of the people, dispersed, unable to follow the old ways, forced by their captors to entertain them, to work for them, to accept new ways and foods and rules that felt so very alien to them.

But this brief passage near the end of Isaiah’s recounting is a song of rejoicing. It is when the captive Israelites have returned home to their native land, and it is a time of joy. They are returned to their land and their God, and they are ecstatic.

Isaiah cries “By God’s spirit, I bring good news to the oppressed, I bind up the brokenhearted, I proclaim liberty and release! It is the year of the Lord’s favor, and of comfort for those who mourn. We will replace the ashes with garlands of flowers. We will replace the anointing oil of death and grief with that of joy.”

Could there not be a better passage from Scripture for us to ponder as we remember or brother in Christ, Alex M? Our beloved Alex, who is returned to his God with his broken heart mended, a garland on his head, anointed with the oil of gladness?

His life paralleled what Isaiah spoke of. Certainly he knew sadness. This past year, he lost his partner in life and love, his beloved Nadine. He had lost his brother and sister-in-law. His dear son David died tragically of brain cancer a decade ago. Sadness upon sadness, grief upon grief…layers of brokenheartedness.

Much as those children of Israel, dispersed across an alien empire did, so many centuries ago.

He knew about being a stranger in a strange land. He was born here – barely – his mother was pregnant with him when she arrived in this country from Lebanon. Although he was American by birth, he was Lebanese by blood, and by family, and the family relished and continues to relish its roots. And yet it could not have been easy to be a child from the Middle East in West Virginia. To always balance the competing requirements of being like all the American kids – though he was an American kid himself – and of honoring the beautiful culture and land that the family had left. A part of America, and yet like so many immigrants, not completely a part. A sense of difference, of expectations that might press down on him sometimes.

Much as those children of Israel did as they struggled in Babylon to find their way back to their own culture, their own place.

Alex could have chosen to focus on the tension between the two worlds he inhabited. He could have wept at the loss of homeland, as I suspect his own mother sometimes did. He could have thought too hard about those who thought he didn’t look American enough, or that he ate foods that were different.

Much as the children of Israel sometimes did, and complained bitterly about, during their time of trial.

But the bitter oil of mourning was not his flavor. He chose the oil of gladness.

He embraced his country, and it truly was his country. He served in the Armed Forces.

He kept true to the great beauty of his culture, relishing a good kibbeh or a delicious mamoul even this past weekend. He would argue as to the right proportion of lemon juice and garlic in the tabbouleh, and laugh while he was doing it.

He loved his work, and was good at it, whether at Dillard’s or at other retail establishments. He loved people, and his customers knew it. His was the adornment of the garland of fresh and beautiful flowers. No ashes of discontent or sadness for him.

He knew, in the way that only those who have had deep challenges in their lives do, that we do not travel this earth alone. We do it in companionship with others, who have their own deep challenges, who help each other, and with the help of the God who restores our joy over and over again.

He grieved, but he knew that grief, although deep, is transitory. He understood that God surrounds us with divine love and with the love of our families and friends, and it is that which binds up our wounded hearts.

We do grieve today. Alex was a delight. He never complained (except to Sandy and Sherry, but just to keep them on their toes). He was always supremely hospitable. I spent some time alone with him the day before I died. After we had shared prayers and Holy Communion and anointing, I said, “Just rest, Alex. I’ll sit here quietly and read and keep you company.” But he couldn’t rest. He felt the obligation to engage in conversation if I was in the room – I finally left so the dear man could actually fall asleep in peace. He didn’t want to put people out – he drove himself to WalMart frequently rather than waiting for one of the girls to take him, and was beloved of the clerks there, who delighted in conversing with him as he scootered around the store. How could we not grieve the loss of such a man?

But we know, as he knew, that he is now wearing that garland of flowers. He is anointed with the oil of gladness. He is with his dear ones, especially Nadine and David, who have the TV tuned to “Dancing with the Stars” and a plate of hummus and kibbeh and tabbouleh on the table. For Alex, and for all of us who love him, it is indeed the year of the Lord’s favor. It is good news. He is where he was intended to be, in the place where there is no oxygen tank necessary, no Lasix required. He is listening to the music and is watching people dancing, and perhaps even dancing a bit himself.

Alex M was an oak of righteousness, and he is rooted in heaven now, and we are graced by the gentle shade he has cast on all of us.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Sermon for Sunday, May 8, 2011 Acts 2:14a, 36-41, Luke 24:13-25 “The End of the World As We Know It”

In 1987, the musical group REM put out a song called "It's the End of the World As we Know It."

It was full of apocalyptic references – plagues of birds, earthquakes, planes oddly presaging those which flew into the World Trade Center…the singer spoke of all these end-time things, all that echoed in the world in that time, and ended up with the surprising phrase “It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.” Strange words. We think the end of the world will not be something about which we feel fine. We think it might be terrifying. How could anyone feel fine?

There have been a lot of news stories recently about the end of the world. A few folks believe that they have absolutely positively calculated the date when the rapture will occur. Hang in there – it’s not too far away – only two weeks to go. May 21st. Fasten your seat belts, folks – Judgment Day is upon us…or so say a few people who spend their days calculating God’s celestial date book.

On one of the websites that promote 5/21 as the big day, they also claim that God created the world in 11013 BC, and that the flood occurred in 4990 BC. What? God wouldn’t do big things in years that are round numbers? Or might it be, that God’s time, as Scripture reminds us, is not humanity’s time?

…and if that’s the case, all this business of calculating end time dates is nothing but foolishness. Jesus told us “…you do not know the day or the hour.” (Matt 25)

But trying to make sense of that which is unknowable is the constant preoccupation of us human creatures. We struggle with incomprehensible things. We want to fit them into our frame of reference, things that make sense to us. For some folks it’s playing with words to calculate when something will happen. For others, it is trying to rebuild after chaotic things change our world.

For us, at various points in our lives, “It’s the end of the world as we know it,” but we don’t feel fine. We feel disoriented, confused, troubled.

And that is just where Jesus’ followers were after Jesus had been crucified. It was the end of the world as they knew it. They felt awful, frightened, didn’t know what to do next. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to end. Jesus was supposed to be the King who saved them from the way the Roman empire pressed down on them like a strangling iron bar on their necks.

But he didn’t save them, or so they thought in those early days. He simply…died. His life was ended. His teachings, what did they mean now? They were grieving the man, and they were grieving the loss of hope.

How do you rebuild hope when hope is gone?

In the Gospel, we hear the story of how Jesus came back to them, to comfort and encourage them. To remind them that he was not dead, that he had risen. Those strange and subtle sentences he had shared with them, the promises that he would reign over a sovereignty that was not of this world, that he would die and rise again, those thoughts were floating around the outer reaches of their memory, but they could not put together what it all meant. Even with the stories of the women who had visited the tomb and found it empty, they still could not understand. For them, they truly feared that their world had ended when Jesus’ life was extinguished.

Two of those disciples were walking together to Emmaus. They were talking about everything that had happened – in modern terms, they were “processing” the trauma that they all had undergone in the week that preceded. Trying to make sense of it, trying to figure out the calculus of a dead rabbi who had preached a new understanding of relationship with God.

And then it starts out like an old joke: “Two disciples walk down the road…” but then they had a surprise. They met someone on the road who seemed strangely unaware of the happenings that had rocked them to their very core. They shared the chronicle with the stranger. Was the stranger another rabbi, another teacher? Surely he must be, because he calmed them, comforted them, explained the words that had been floating in their memories. He accompanied them to the place where the disciples were staying, and enjoyed a meal with them, a simple one. Bread. Wine. He blessed it, and broke it, just the same way as they had experienced just a few days earlier. And then they realized with whom they had been dining…it was indeed Jesus, risen from the dead. No sooner had they realized, than he vanished from their sight, evanescent as a flicker of a flame…just enough to keep them going. Just enough to rebuild their hope.

They were struggling, because the world as they knew it was indeed over. A new one had begun. They were amazed that they hadn’t recognized him at first, when they were talking to him on the road – “Weren’t our hearts burning when he taught us on the road?” –but they were strengthened by that brief visit, that confirmation that what Jesus had taught them was true. He was not dead. He was risen and again. A new beginning, and a shot of fortitude for those poor confused and frightened people.

An end, but also a beginning. Dramatic, right?

But what did it look like after that conversation? How did the church form itself in those first days? We’re practical people and we like practical how-to guides, don’t we? How do you start a church amid the ashes of what had gone before?

We find an answer in our first reading this morning, from the Acts of the Apostles.

In this passage, Peter is the prime rebuilder.

Now Peter was an unlikely person to be the rebuilder-in-chief. Remember, he was the one who denied Christ, not once, not twice, but three times. He regularly misunderstood what Jesus taught – remember the time he got so off-base that Jesus said “Get behind me, Satan?” Peter was the big, ungainly not-altogether-bright guy who sometimes had a bit of a temper. Think of the character Norm from the old sit-com “Cheers,” or the older brother Rob from “Everybody Loves Raymond.” Not a natural leader, something of a coward when things get tough. Rebulder of hope? Hard to imagine.

And yet Peter does it. God uses even the most unlikely people to carry out the divine mission.

Peter stands up and says to the others, “we’re starting the work again. Yes, the Lord is gone, but he was truly the Messiah. And we all were responsible for his death, each of us in our own way. But we have work to do, the work he taught us to do.” Peter challenges those with him. They say “How do we make up for the fact that we were part of the reason for Jesus’ death?”

And he lays it out in very simple terms. Repent your sins, whatever they are. Get baptized – confess your belief in Jesus as the Christ. Accept the Holy Spirit which will come into you and guide you to a right life.

Rebuild one brick at a time. Repent for the things you’ve done before. Commit yourself to God through baptism. Have a meal, a simple one. Bread. Wine. That’s all it takes. Do the things that rebuild hope.

Some 3000 people became disciples that day. The hunger for hope, for a new world built on the remnants of the old one, is powerful and deep. At the end of the world, we must find a way to help fashion a new one. They did it. So can we.

In ways both individual and corporate, we may have had those Good Friday moments. It may have been the end of the world as we know it, but with God’s help we build a new one, and it will be fine. Good Friday is past. Eastertide is here.

And, by the way, on May 22^nd, I expect we will all be here, worshipping the one whom we love above all others. Hopeful, growing stronger, feeling the Spirit in us in new ways. I feel fine!

Amen.

Busy Week

Random dots of the week that was:

• great Book Group on Monday - I so enjoy this group and their wise and witty conversations!
• spent two and a half days up at ShrineMont for the Bishop's clergy conference. Interesting presentations (Frank Wade was particularly awesome), beautiful weather, Southern cooking, worship at the Shrine. Plus my husband was with me, celebrating his birthday in secret!
• good visits and conversation with a bunch of dear folks. I do love my work.
  
• one of my parishioners was named the county's "Teacher of the Year." She deserves it and then some! Go GW!
  
• a clean house, because we had some friends over for dinner last night. Menu was grilled pizza, green salad, French potato salad, grilled spice-rubbed flank steak, and a Texas cake (in the shape of Texas, not the flavor of Texas). It's a long story, involving a Groom's Cake to be made in the not-too-distant future. Yes, Hannah, the cake did release from the pan very nicely. Last night's version was white chocolate ganache frosting, almond cake, raspberry Bavarian filling.
  
• a trip to NoVA this evening for a retirement party. A long trip but this friend is worth it. There are frozen gougeres (cheese puffs) in the freezer that will go with us for the festivities.
• the sermon is written, the Adult Forum (first in a series about different faith traditions - tomorrow is Judaism) is done, and the house is still reasonably clean, even after last night's dinner party.
• StrongOpinions has only two more exams to go. Graduating from Columbia May 18th. TBTG!

Remembering my mother, a deeply complex and wonderful person. We loved each other fiercely. We occasionally clashed, also fiercely. She is as missed today as she was in 1997, when she passed. She was a hard-core Republican, and there has been some speculation that she timed her passing so that her friends wouldn't be able to watch Bill Clinton's 2nd Inaugural on television. Personally, I think she was just tired of winter cold and wanted to decamp to somewhere more temperate, and Heaven was less expensive than Boca Raton.

Sermon for Sunday, May 1, 2011 John 20:19-31 “The Right Question”

I happen to love the apostle Thomas. He reminds me of most children I know. He asks the question everyone is thinking, but would never dare to say aloud.

“Mommy, why is that woman so fat?”

“Why does that kid look weird?”

“Daddy, how come we can’t have ice cream but Uncle Joe gives his kids ice cream AND soda?”

Invariably, the parent of such a child, a child with no filter between brain and mouth , turns beet red in embarrassment and then shushes their offspring. “Johnny, that’s not a nice thing to say!”

And equally predictably, the child has a follow-up at the ready, “But it’s TRUUUUUUUE!”

At which point the parent either hisses, “I’ll explain it to you about it later,” or says “Sorry” to the victim of the drive-by question, or hauls the kid off to a corner for a little chat about being rude.

And so it goes. Our social conditioning trains us to avoid the questions that are troublesome, but our children, not yet fully socially conditioned, jump right in and ask uncomfortable questions. Honest questions, yes, but uncomfortable. Oh, how we hate those questions!

The irony, of course, is that we ourselves are usually thinking those questions just as our child is piping up with them. Not that we would ever admit it, of course…we’re so much more polite than that. A teensy bit dishonest, but avoiding being rude is better than a little white lie, right?

Well, Thomas the disciple seems to have missed that lesson. He must have been an interesting child to raise, don’t you think?

He asks the obvious question when Jesus, raised from the dead, stands among the disciples in that locked room. Everyone’s nerves are on edge, of course. Who knows whom the authorities will come after next? But Jesus is suddenly there, and they may be excused for being shocked. After all that stress, a trick of the eyes, perhaps….how could it be? Jesus had predicted his resurrection, but to see him again…

But the disciples are too polite to say out loud “Is this for real?” because they are equally afraid that the answer is yes, in which case they are in the presence of the most extraordinary of miracles, or the answer is no, in which case they are all losing their minds.

But Thomas? Thomas is that one with no filter between brain and mouth. He says out loud what the others may, in the darkest recesses of their hearts, be thinking: “This is too bizarre. Unreal, even. Unless I actually touch him, touch the wounds, I’m not buying it.”

Thomas gets a bad rap…Doubting Thomas, they call him. But being a seeker, wanting to know what is really going on, challenging and trying to understand, isn’t that what we all try to do?

His level of understanding of all he had learned from Jesus is pretty basic, because he missed the opportunity to ask the more meaningful question: “This is bizarre. What am I supposed to understand from this experience?”

Ah, that’s a question! Not one we’d expect from one of our children, who go to the most basic issues.

Thomas, childlike, is looking for a physical answer to a spiritual phenomenon. He wants to get some physical evidence of what seems to be a miracle. What he should be seeking is a spiritual answer to a physical phenomenon. Here is the risen Jesus Christ in front of him, in the flesh. How does his understanding of Jesus as God change as a result of this?

It’s exactly what Jesus then tries to lead him to.

"Come over here, put your hands into these wounds. Do you believe it now? Have you believed because you now have the physical evidence? Okay, you’ve got what you wanted, but blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe."

Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe. They start from faith, from the assumption that God is capable of anything, is more beautifully complex than we can comprehend, and then remarkably they begin to recognize God’s work around them and in them. They believe and then they see…

St Anselm of Canterbury, one of the great fathers of the church, put it this way: “I believe in order that I might understand.”

Miracles abound. We don’t see them unless we have a context for them. We believe, and then the unimaginable makes sense. The barren woman who conceives a child in old age. The first peony blooming in the garden in springtime. The cancer that was inoperable that has shrunk. A double rainbow. Tadpoles turning into frogs. The child who survives a horrific crash.

None of these things make sense in a merely scientific world, in a world where we seek physical evidence, our hands in the wounds, a world we try to make as small as our human minds can fathom.

But believe, then see how the Divine breath blows through this world in strange and wonderful ways.

Believe, and feel the rush of that breath in the garden, in the Risen Christ, in your hearts. Be blessed, and see.

If we believe, then the things that don’t make sense slowly begin to unfold. We no longer struggle to fit them into our human constructs, we see them for the expression of divine love and creativity that they are.

We are all Thomases, trying to treat Christ’s resurrection as if it were a mystery to be unraveled on an episode of CSI. Perhaps it is time to believe, and treat that Resurrection as if it were an exquisite work of art, a Michelangelo, a Picasso, to touch our hearts and open our minds to the depth and breadth and height of Divine gift.

Believe. What you will see if you try will amaze you.

Amen.

Sermon for Easter Sunday, April 24, 2011 “Noli Me Tangere”

So you want to hear the story, eh? You want to hear it from this old woman, this old crone who was in that garden that day?

I’ve told it so many times over these decades since it happened. I am tired…but no.. I will tell it to you again, because I see the hunger in your eyes. You want to know what happened? Sit down there, by the door, where you can feel a breeze on this hot afternoon, and I will tell you.

It was a strange day, after an even stranger week. We started out thinking we would be sharing our Passover dinner together, in Jerusalem, a blessed time. There are others who say differently, that we had that Passover dinner, but this is my story…we dined, and the Teacher blessed that dinner, but it was no Seder…it was something else. But we hardly understood how different this meal, those days would be.

They killed him, you know. It was ugly. The chief priests had made a devil’s deal with Pilate; they had aroused the passions of the crowd. Pilate didn’t really want to do it, but shrewd politician that he was, he did the deed without taking any of the blame for his acts.

They killed him. It was vile and ugly, as crucifixions always are, but this one was even uglier, because this was a gentlest, most loving Teacher. He had done nothing wrong.

Jealousy.

Pigheadedness. Odd to accuse those righteous priests and scribes of a quality of an unclean animal, but there it is. They refused to hear what he was teaching. They simply saw him as a threat to their established order. So they used the power of the Roman Empire to dispose of someone they hated, not because they thought his teachings were wrong or sinful, but because they thought he would take their power away.

Men! Consumed with themselves, with power, with control.

We women know better…only God has power. Only God has control.

Where was I? Yes….he died. Miserable pain. Only a little sour wine at the end to ease his agony. He died, and Pilate did the one gracious thing in his power…he let Joseph, that rich man , Arimathean, take the body of our poor dead teacher.

Good man, that Joseph. He put the Teacher’s body in his very own tomb. A nice tomb it was, freshly hewn, no animals in there, just a stone slab on which to lay him down. A hard bed, but at least a clean one. Nicodemus came, too…he brought the spices, the myrrh, the aloes. We buried him properly, wrapped in fine linen, with the spices in the folds of the cloth, as was our custom in those days. And Joseph and Nicodemus and four of Joseph’s servants heaved a great stone across the opening. None could get in to disturb dear Teacher in his resting place.

And so we left. Our eyes were dry. There were no tears left to weep. The beloved one, with his arm around Mary, Jesus’ mother…they were both beyond words. The rest of us, too, feeling nothing but the hard cold emptiness of our loss.

I could not sleep. No surprise…my mind always raced ahead at breakneck speed, trying to understand the Teacher’s beautiful words. But now there would be no more words…I wanted to repeat them, over and over, so I would never forget. But it was not enough.

And so I got up, before the sun’s rays warmed the air, and went back.

Back to the tomb, back to the Teacher. The words were not enough. I wanted…no, I needed, to be near him.

I wandered down path, tripping over stones in the darkness, hearing the cries of animals around me. I was frightened. Darkness is a harsh world. You imagine much evil that you cannot see in the dark. And evil had been all around me these past days.

When I got to the cave where we had buried him, I stopped. I thought it was a trick of the light, as the sun crept over the horizon…no…it was true…the stone was rolled away. There could be only one reason – some evil ones had rolled away that stone and taken the Teacher’s body.

I had been frightened walking in the dark…now I was even more frightened, and angry, too. Who had done this? Where had they taken him? It was more than I could bear…first they killed him, then they took him. Why? To what purpose?

So I turned and I ran. I ran faster than I had ever run before, most certainly much faster than these old legs could carry me now. I found Peter and the beloved one, and told them…He’s gone. Someone has taken him from the tomb. I don’t know where he is.

And now they were running, the two of them, running even faster than I had, and the beloved one – oh how he loved the Teacher! – he got there first, but when he looked in and saw, he would not go in. But Peter, he did go in, and it was a strange thing he found there…

The linens cloths, neatly folded. The head wrapping rolled up separately on the slab. But no Teacher. And the beloved one went in, too, and saw it…they did not know what to make of it, I tell you, nor did I. They said not a word to me, but their faces were greatly troubled…they simply left. Walked back home.

But I could not leave. This was the final insult to my dear teacher, to have him taken from us by death and now by…what? Who? I did not know. So I sat on the ground and wept.

I had thought my tears were spent. I was wrong. I cried, and I looked into the tomb.

You know, it is foolishness to look once and see nothing, then look again as if something might magically be there. And perhaps I was a fool to look, but I did, as if I could once again imagine his body there as we had left it.

This fool looked, and saw something beyond belief…two angels. Perhaps I was mad with grief, but I tell you now, they were real. There were two of them sitting on that cold hard slab of rock, one at the head, one at the foot. They saw me weeping there, and asked me why I wept.

Why did I weep? Why should I not weep? The pain..first, to see the Teacher killed, then to have his body removed from the tomb? Such ridiculous questions…I turned away again in my anger.

And there was a man standing there. I thought he was the gardener at first…his face was in shadow, my eyes were blinded by my tears. And he asked the same question “Why are you weeping? Whom do you seek?”

I thought he might have been the one to take the Teacher away, so I asked him where he had put him…

My eyes were blinded by my tears, but my ears were not. I should have recognized that voice, shouldn’t I? But it was only when he said my name, “Mary” that I knew. It was my teacher. He was alive…I reached for him

Dear Teacher, let me touch you and hold you! Let me embrace you!

But he said no.

I could not touch him. He would not let me.

But the tomb was empty! He was alive! He had conquered death!

I wanted to embrace him.

But he had something else in mind… to tell the others what I had seen, and that he was ascending to the father in heaven.

I wanted to hold on to the old Teacher, the man I had known, had anointed with nard, had dined with. But this Teacher was something new and wondrous. He was no longer someone for human embrace…all I could say to the others was the truth “I have seen the Lord.”

So that, my young friend, is the story. The years have taught me what I did not understand then. The human embrace would never have been enough. It was when I embraced this risen Teacher by living as he taught me, by teaching others as he so often did, by loving my brothers and sisters with the depth of the oceans and by loving my God more than anything or anyone….that was the true embrace. The miracle of that moment in the garden was the release from clinging to the man so that I could reach out with those same hungry arms to hold on to the world that he came to save.

And I am tired now. Even now, decades later, the story still has the power to undo me. I have tried to be faithful to the Teacher, and I suppose the best way I know to do that is to pass on the story to the young ones, like you. So will you go and do the same? I would like that, and I know that the Teacher would, too.

Amen.

An MP3 audio file of this sermon may be found here.