Easter V B Connections

We are more connected physically than we ever knew. While there are differences in skin color and other visible features between whites and blacks, we are finding that these differences are only superficial.  In 2008, researchers found that people of African descent differed in only 383 out of the 9,156 human genes they examined.  That’s only a 4% difference.  We are finding that race is mostly a cultural concept with little basis in real physical difference between us.

This is shown in an astounding way in a public television program about finding your roots.  The sociologist Louis Gates Jr, traces the lineage of famous people, including actors, college presidents, and public figures.  When he traced the heritage of 3 African-Americans last week, he found some amazing things. All three had European ancestry, but some were a lot less from Africa than they were from other heritages.

He found that the former secretary of state Condoleeza Rice was 49% European and 51% African.  The president of Brown University was found to be nearly purely of American Indian descent.  This astonished both these women, who both grew up in the segregated south in the 1940s and 50s, and who each had overcome racial barriers to reach the top of their fields in academia and in public service.  In three instances, Gates has introduced his famous black guests to their white cousins.  The actor Samuel L. Jackson’s white relatives served in the Revolutionary War and he is eligible therefore to become a Son of the Revolution.

The exploitation of black slaves by white overseers has been whispered about and tacitly accepted, but to actually meet relatives of another race makes the notion of who we are racially very suspect. 

The tv program on finding your roots found some other surprising things.  Jewish heritage can be determined by DNA as well, and when Gates looked at the DNA of three people of Eastern European Jewish descent, including Barbara Walters, Gates found that they all were distant cousins who came from the same great-great-great grandparent.  All were related to Barbara Walters.

This sounds a little like a parlor trick, but the science is very clear.  All humans come from the same ancestor in the dawn of the appearance of human beings as a species. We are all from the same foundation, the same genetic structure, and differ very little from each other, despite the benefits we claim due to our unique family heritage and our being different from each other. 

Jesus makes this connection clear today in a spiritual way, with his claim in being our spiritual ancestor, the vine, and us being the branches of the family of God.  In Christ, we do have our start as Christians, and our very spiritual fruit relies on this being rooted in Christ.

Our spiritual DNA all comes from this root of Jesse.  We say we are brothers and sisters in Christ, but what does this mean to us?

Our brotherhood and sisterhood in Christ signifies that our spiritual life may be uniquely ours, but must take its very existence in the teachings, healing, and work of Christ.  Everything we are and do as Christians looks to Jesus of Nazareth’s life on earth, but also the Christ’s life in our spirits as well.  We look to scripture to find the sayings and doings of this Jesus, and we look to our prayer life to find the living Christ and the guidance of the Holy Spirit.  Both these sources are crucial for our sisterhood and brotherhood in Christ.

Christ points to God, our spiritual parent, who gave us life, created us as thinking, feeling beings with individual talents and gifts, and gives us peace in the face of the challenges of life.  Christ’s rootedness in God’s justice and peace makes us rooted in the same work of God to redeem the entire world.  And we find the courage and love of God in our brothers and sisters in Christ.  In our Christian friends, our spiritual friends, we are given examples of working for justice and peace, for being Christ’s hands and hearts in the world.

One set of examples comes to us from the holy people we have known and those known to us only through history.  You may know that the pope is appointing a cardinal to oversee American Catholic nuns, whom he has criticized for being too focused on poverty and justice. Many people are coming to the defense of these women religious, many of whom live in poverty themselves, in ghettos, doing work, not for the poor, but with them, helping them help themselves, not giving them a handout.  They are teachers, nurses, social workers. Some of the first women doctors and administrators of health systems were Catholic nuns.  They often go into dangerous conditions of violence in Central America and Africa, confronting terrorism, war lords and drug lords, oppressive governments, and they have sometime been killed for their protest and action against violence and injustice.  I would say, if we want examples of the branches of Christ, look to people like nuns.  Nuns acknowledge in their work in the world that we are all connected, that one person’s life affects every other person’s life.

Our connectedness as people of God cannot be denied.  We must act as if we are all one, as if all people are one people, if God’s justice is ever to reign in the world. It is said that a soldier cannot fight a war with a person he has gotten to know, which is why each side in a conflict often demonizes the other as the villain, as evil.  When we get to know each other, we cannot deny that we all are of one blood, one vine.

Just as our DNA proves our relatedness to surprising people, who may not look like us but who share a common parent, so our relatedness in Christ puts in connection with the entirety of humanity as one people in God.  In a world where we know we are connected, we cannot hate someone who looks different from us.  In a world of connectedness, we are not separate from each other, but are one together. May we each live in this connectedness so that future of our world may be one of justice and peace.

Easter IV B We Like Sheep Go Astray

I’ve always had a little problem with being called a sheep.  For one thing, I don’t go along with all the others, even when they wander off.  I am not one to get lost easily, or so I think.  I don’t just follow my nose while chewing on the grass and wander away, so when Jesus tells us he’s the good shepherd, I wonder, why am I supposedly one of the sheep?

In Handel’s Messiah, there is a wonderful aria that says, We like sheep have gone astray.  It tells of the wandering we do away from God, away from the path of righteousness, peace and justice, away from the narrow way of discipline in Christ.

Aha, so yes, I am a pretty good sheep if that’s the type of wandering Christ hopes to shepherd.

For I make lots of mistakes.  Mistakes of patience—not being patient enough, mostly with myself, which makes me rush to judgment about myself and make me feel bad about who I am. Mistakes of forgiveness—not being able to see what others have done or what I have done and forgive and then go on with my life. I sometimes hold on to what was said or done to me.  Or, more often, I hold onto those things I did or said, should have done or said, and especially those things that spread the love of God for myself and others. 

I make other mistakes, too numerous to count in a short sermon, but I’m sure some of you could come up with a good list without too much trouble.  In short, I expect a lot of myself and mostly fall short.  I don’t think I am alone today.

We all fall short of the love of God, we stray from being loving towards ourselves and others; and in this way, we are like those sheep who chew on the grass and keep wandering where the grass leads, not looking around perhaps until it’s too late to see how far away we’ve wandered.

What does having Christ as our shepherd mean at these times?

The Good Shepherd leads us to forgiveness, first of ourselves, so that in finding our own forgiveness, we are able to pass this forgiveness on to those around us, both those we love and especially the ones we don’t.  Christ’s love for us fills us with the sense that we like are tended so that we have a leader, a loving presence to guide us when we look up from our grass.

Being led is not forgetting that we have been given free will as God’s creation.  We do not put on blinders or put our intellect on the shelf. Our minds are given to us for thinking, for reasoning out the decisions we make every day, and are God’s gift of creativity to us.  Being led by our Good Shepherd is putting that intellect in God’s path, allowing our decisions to be influenced by the Holy Spirit and the love of Christ. It’s keeping in mind our inheritance as God’s people and our baptism into the peace and justice the world craves so much.

When we know we are like sheep, we can allow ourselves to be forgiven, to accept the love of a God who brings a tender shepherd to look out for us.  Psalm 23, so beloved a piece of Hebrew poetry, makes it known that we are not alone, but always under the loving guidance of the shepherd sent to be our touchstone to our loving God.

When we accept that we are like sheep who mindlessly go wherever we want, who disregard the presence of God in our lives, then we can accept that the means for turning around is to notice where the Shepherd is giving us a path to follow. We can notice where the Shepherd is present in times of challenge, times of celebration, times of change in our lives.  The presence of the Shepherd to tend us with his presence comforts us, brings us a sense of how loved we are, how much God wants to have a relationship with us and be near us.

Being like a sheep then becomes a special way we can let ourselves be cared for. It becomes a special way we can acknowledge God’s presence leading us closer in love.  When we know we are not totally in charge of the world, or even our own life, we can relax and let the love of God lead us.  We can give up our anxiety about getting it right, getting it all done, getting our way, getting the prize we thought was so important, and we can rest in the path the Shepherd is giving us.

Being a sheep for Christ is relaxing in God’s loving and tender care.  Can you be a sheep today? Can you be led into love?

Easter III B Incarnation

I don’t know what happened to Christianity that we have such a wrong attitude about our bodies.  For centuries, Christians have looked at the body as something to be ignored at best, or seen as dirty and disgusting, at worst—and if we read the works of St. Paul in a certain interpretation, all the evils of sin come from the desires of our bodies that lead us astray.

I believe this is even more the case for women than men. Women in Jewish and other cultures were considered contaminated and unclean.  Is it any wonder that women have such negative feelings about their bodies? Back in the 1980s, the era of Jane Fonda workouts, a survey found that 75 percent of women surveyed felt they were too fat, and more than 60 percent said they were dissatisfied with or ashamed of their stomach, hips and thighs. Taking such negative information, many groups have worked to change women’s attitudes, and today, there seems to be a healthier confidence about and acceptance of our bodies just the way they are.  But we still spend millions a year on cosmetics, lotions and crèmes, clothes, and a growing number of cosmetic surgeries.

If you have ever been to a foreign country, you will also see that Americans seem more ashamed of their bodies than do most Europeans.  There are more strictures here than there that I think has been influenced by our Puritan heritage.  Some American Christians believe that alcohol itself is evil, for instance.  A trip to most European countries without enjoying the local wine or ale with the residents would be unthinkable to the rest of us. 

So we seem to have a push-pull attitude about our bodies and what’s good about them.

But this is not what God intended.  First with creation, God pronounced all that was made Very Good.  Jesus fought the attitudes of the chief priests and scribes that his disciples didn’t ritually wash before eating, that he ate and drank, and did not abstain from enjoying these gifts of God.  And God made sure that the Messiah given to us was embodied in every way. Like the rest of us, He enjoyed quiet time, got tired of the crowds, played with children who came to him, prayed, he was sometimes sad and angry, and he mourned the death of his friend Lazarus. Finally, He was cruelly executed, not forgoing the pain of death on a cross.  In every way, Jesus felt our humanity as we do, with friends to help him along, and with friends who abandoned him in his hour of need.

Even after his death, the Son of God does something new that is also very embodied.  He rose from the dead, not as a ghost, but as a fully fleshed-out being.  He comes to his disciples to show them this risen body, a real thing they could touch and see, as real as their own bodies.  God made the body of Jesus live again, made its flesh alive, made this Messiah one who conquered the death of the body.

That God would choose this particular embodied way of bringing about new life makes us know that God has a very high opinion of our bodies. The human body is worth bringing new life to. The human body carried the Messiah into the world in the woman Mary. The human body gave a home to the Son of God, not as an angel, not as a spirit of God, but as a flesh and blood man.  That man Jesus lived as a human being, fully in the world of people, celebrating, ministering, having all the emotions and experiences of his friends.

As Christians, we should embrace our bodies as parts of the creation that God called good, that God saw fit to bring back to new life.  Just as Jesus embodies the grace of God for us, we too can bring that grace to others.  Jesus lived his life showing us that food and drink are given to nourish us, that you can live a life in the body that glorifies God, and that you can be close to God even in the throes of bodily ills and even death.

Jesus taught the disciples that it wasn’t what went into the body that defiled it, but what came out of it—hatefulness, spite, envy, and negative thoughts about others and ourselves.  Those are the evils Jesus asked his disciples to curb when they asked who would be first in heaven. Those are the evils he called his followers to give up, when they could not imagine their messiah being persecuted and brought to death on a cross. 

Constantly Jesus calls those he healed to be part of their healing—“Do you want to be healed?” he asked and he asks us now, by showing his own feet and hands and side.  Do you see where he underwent death? And if so, can you now participate in his resurrection?

Jesus eats some broiled fish with his disciples, again being centered in his body, being human in new life.  Jesus totally accepts his body, but his body does not forget the evil done to it, as it continues to carry the scars.  Our bodies carry the wear and tear of our lives too, as we age.  God does not ask us to forget where we have been, but to remember, and then to go on.

Can you accept your body as part of God’s creation, loving it as God loves it?  Can you bring the love of Christ to your body, as Christ loved his own body?  Can you be resurrected in your body to a life of new creation?

Easter II B "A little doubt will do ya"

“If all the kids were jumping off a cliff would you join them?”  This was the response from my either of my parents whenever I wanted to do something all the other kids were doing, a cynical answer to be sure. They wanted to be sure we kids weren’t just following the crowd trying to keep up with the latest fad, a lesson I think I learned pretty well, since I don’t consider myself particularly a follower of fads.  In fact, at the University of Kentucky, one colleague thought he was being disparaging when he called me a contrarian.  I thought a minute about his comment, then decided I kind of liked not going along with the crowd.

I think the disciple Thomas the twin could perhaps be called a contrarian too. He didn’t go along with the other disciples, who were telling wild stories about their rabbi, who had been crucified in front of the entire town of Jerusalem.  He didn’t believe tales of a risen Christ, something nearly impossible to grasp.  He didn’t swallow any of it, hadn’t been there, and couldn’t be convinced without seeing it himself.  He wasn’t one to go along with the crowd, even if they were his close buddies with whom he had spent nearly three years’ traveling with, being close to this rabbi Jesus of Nazareth.

To top it off, this Jesus had been cruelly and shamefully executed on the orders of the Jewish chief priests, who were jealous of the great throng of followers Jesus had attracted, even as he talked against what hypocrites the temple authorities were.  Thomas, perhaps expecting a different rabbi, an altogether more positive outcome from this man whom some called the messiah, could not believe the claims of rising from the dead, without seeing for himself.  Thomas’s faith was one of hard facts, of sensate touching, seeing, hearing, for himself, just as he touched, saw and heard Jesus when he was alive.  Thomas’s personality does not allow for unsubstantiated belief.  Thomas doesn’t want a faith that he can’t support by truth, and to him, truth is bound up in experience.

Many of us have the same personalities that require experience. We don’t just follow the crowd, go for the latest fad, we want our life to be uniquely ours.  In fact, this individualism characterizes much of American life. While we follow the fads, we also want to do it our way, in our own time, by the rules we find most fair and equal. 

This individualism also spills over into our faith lives in America.  People pick and choose what they want to do with their spirituality nowadays.  They rarely pick a church because it is the denomination they grew up in, if they grew up in any faith tradition at all. They may find just as much to meet their needs outside of church or not in any faith walk at all, in a kind of proud claim to being “spiritual but not religious,” where they don’t ever enter a church building, except perhaps to attend a concert. They don’t read scripture, but may read self-help books claiming a kind of spirituality, and follow web sites of gurus giving spiritual platitudes.

The devolvement of our spiritual life into this amorphous walk sounds a lot like doubting Thomas.  Experience takes over from blind faith. We know from the letter to the Hebrews that ”faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” We are far from this kind of faith, as was Thomas the twin.

Is this to be applauded or lamented?  Is blind faith without experience the best kind of faith?

I believe that each of us in our individual personality has needs for faith that meet our particular way of seeing the world. Some of us are skeptics like Thomas who believe only in those ideas that can be proved and experienced.  We would be the ones in the locked room with the disciples, afraid that we were about to be persecuted for being followers of a man who was executed as a political criminal.  Without our doubt, we could have no faith, could not enter into believing an incredulous thing.  Thomas had this personality, and so did the apostle Paul, who actively persecuted the followers of Jesus of Nazareth, until he too had a face to face encounter with the risen Christ.

Then there are those among us who can take our minds and souls beyond our senses, to places that might exist, to ideas that resonate with us on a level beyond the world at our fingertips. These people believe that Christ rose from the dead, even when they don’t have evidence. They believe because they seek God everywhere perhaps, or perhaps they need the reassurance of God’s presence in a rabbi who rose from the dead. They believe in the miracle because they also believe in God’s abiding love for humanity, and God’s promise to make all things new.

Then there are those of us who fall somewhere in between these two types, who may believe, without evidence, some days but not others, depending on our mood, our needs and wants, or what’s happening  in our life. 

One thing I know for sure, is that, whatever your basic way of dealing with the world, whether you are one to follow the crowd, or one to doubt everything you hear, or one who needs evidence, or one whose belief system encompasses many things you can’t touch or see with your senses—God can reach you. God can make all things new with you, meeting you wherever you are in your faith journey, using your own basic world view to find you. 

God doesn’t ask us to mold our way of thinking into one way to believe, only one path to faith.  Just like God found Thomas in his doubts, God finds each of us in our unique faith.  Trust God’s ways of meeting you on your path.