​28 March 2021
Pastor Joe Britton
St. Michael’s Church
Palm Sunday
 
Based on Ernesto Cardenal, The Gospel in Solentiname (Orbis, 2010)
 
On this Palm Sunday, let’s listen in on a Bible study for Holy Week led by Padre Ernesto Cardenal among the campesinos of the Solentiname Islands in Nicaragua. Seated in a circle inside the village church, in the blistering heat of the Nicaraguan dry season, they are discussing Jesus’ trial before the Sanhedrin, or Jewish Supreme Court:
 
Bosco says: “This looks like the Military Court that’s operating in Managua.”
 
Padre Ernesto: “They probably first asked Jesus his name, age, profession or trade. That’s the way they begin questioning in the Military Court. Maybe he answered, ‘Profession: Revolutionary.’”
 
Mayra: “Not only here in Nicaragua, but in many other countries of Latin America the same thing goes on now. Those who are struggling for freedom are taken before courts. Not to judge them and hear their defense but to condemn them. And as they can’t accuse them of wanting the freedom of humankind, they seek false charges instead.”
 
Felipe: “At that time Christ was all alone. Now there are many Christs being sentenced in many places.”
 
Padre Ernesto: “Jesus has said so many subversive things, how is it that they couldn’t find any evidence?”
 
Felipe: “It’s just that everything Jesus said was the truth. Even though he was against them, it was the truth, wasn’t it? So they couldn’t accuse him.”
 
Padre Ernesto: “So they accuse him on account of the temple. He had just taken over the temple. He went in there in a commando action, and they’re probably referring to that in the trial.”
 
Oscar: “I think they misunderstood. With his death and resurrection …  the world was going to change. That’s the way I understand it.”
 
The next day, Good Friday, the Bible study continues with the story of Jesus before Pilate:
 
Olivia: “It seems to me that when Pilate heard ‘kingdom,’ all he thought of was a kingdom of injustice like their own kingdom, but Jesus is telling him that his kingdom is a kingdom of love. But that doesn’t suit Pilate either, the kingdom of love, because love is against injustice; and that’s why the powerful still go on being against this kingdom of love, this revolution of love. For them, the kingdom of love is subversion.”
 
Raul: “Christ’s mission was to bring truth to the earth. He says to Pilate, ‘I am a king, and my political order is to put an end to lying and exploitation; my followers are all those who struggle for the transformation of the world.”
 
Moving ahead, the group begins to talk about Jesus making his way to Golgotha.
 
Francisco: “They forced Simon to pick up the cross. He was just coming in from the fields, coming from work, going home to lunch. But it was because they saw he was lower class. If he’d been Mr. High and Mighty they wouldn’t have called him; they’d call someone else, someone as screwed as the one they were taking away. That’s why they screwed Simon.”
 
Padre Ernesto: “And then there were the women, who were real revolutionaries.  And among them was his mother, the most revolutionary of them all. It was she who had said during her pregnancy, ‘The powerful will be toppled from their thrones and the rich will be left without a thing.’ Those ideas she had received from the prophets of the Bible. And those ideas Jesus sucked in with her milk. She shaped him, she influenced him, she contributed greatly to his being what he was.”
 
Mariita: “Well, those women were people who understood him. They understood his sacrifice, and that afterwards they also had to be ready to suffer. Lots of people in Holy Week think only about the sufferings of Jesus, and they don’t think about the sufferings of so many Christs, of the millions of Christs that exist everywhere.”
 
Padre Ernesto: “Jesus made the start so we could continue the work. ‘Redeem’ is a word from antiquity that means to ransom a captive by means of a price. It has often been said that Christ’s death redeemed us, but it’s not true; no death redeems anyone from anything. It was his message that redeemed or liberated us, and his death made his message have an impact on the world. With his death he tried to give strength and bravery to the poor. He teaches us to fight for that same liberation that he died for as a man, as a brave man (for he didn’t die a coward).”
 
Maria: “I realize that Christ didn’t give himself a Holy Week of devotions and processions and religious ceremonies or any of that stuff. He died beaten and tortured, giving a message of liberation to the poor. Although they imprisoned him and they sentenced him and they killed him and they did everything to him, they really didn’t do anything. He triumphed over death.”
 
Padre Ernesto: “It was to love that Jesus delivered up the life he received from the Father; he is one with love itself. One day the whole life of the earth is going to die, like these fields that are dry. The earth will be a dead planet in space, and in it will be buried our bones. But all that part of humanity that, like Jesus, delivered up its life to love will be alive in the universe. Christ is only the first-born of a resurrected humanity.”
 
There is a prolonged silence, broken only by the lowing of the cows in the hot, dry fields.
 
Padre Ernesto: “Hasn’t anyone anything else to say?”
 
In his little book, The Sign and the Sacrifice, Rowan Williams describes the cross as “the sign of the transcendent freedom of the love of God.” God, in other words, is shown to be a god who is absolutely free to be who God is: always ready to love and to forgive, never exhausted by what we human beings do. God is always there, always capable of remaking the relationship we break again and again. On the cross, Jesus shows himself to be free from the vicious circle of retaliation by which we ordinarily live. And it is that dynamic of freedom that reveals him to be at the same time both all-powerful and completely vulnerable.
Love is like that. Love can risk everything, because in the end it can’t be defeated. Love is therefore the source of freedom. Love means not having to acquiesce to the world as it is, but to be emboldened to struggle for its—our—conversion. That is the message for today.
As Padre Ernesto concludes his Bible studies with his little flock, “The Gospel ends with a final word, Amen, which means a very strong ‘Yes,’ the assent of a community to Jesus’ invitation to love. That is our response to his word, to the one who, as John said at the beginning of his gospel, is the Word that has existed from the beginning.”
Jesus said, “I give you a new command: that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you must love one another.”
Amen. Yes!

21 March 2021
Pastor Joe Britton
 St. Michael’s Church
V Lent
 
“It is for this reason that I have come to this hour.” (John 12)
 
            “Vocation is the residue that is left when all the games of self-deception have ceased.”
            Vocation is a word that gets thrown around a lot in church, but like a lot of words that get frequent use, we don’t know much about what we mean by it. We associate it with some idea of being “called” (it’s Latin root, vocare, does mean to call), but exactly how we are to know by whom and for what is a bit unclear.
            And so, like a lot of words whose meaning we casually take for granted, it is Rowan Williams who takes the idea of vocation and opens the true complexity within. During the Wednesday evening Lenten contemplative service, we have been reading excerpts from his essay, “Vocation,” and it is there that one finds those haunting words with which I began: “Vocation is the residue that is left when all the games of self-deception have ceased.”
            Throughout this season, we have had as our theme “In the Looking Glass: Knowing Ourselves to Understand Others.” What we have been focused on is the idea that if we are to bridge any of the chasms that separate us from one another, we must first be able to see ourselves clearly—to recognize our prejudices, to know our motivations (both good and bad), to name our deepest fears. And Williams would have it that this need for such a brutal self-honesty lies at the heart of finding our own sense of calling, or purpose, in the world.
            The trouble, he suggests, is that we all tend to have a rather dramatic idea of being what it means to be called—a bit like a theatrical casting, where God has a very big script (and a rather good one at that), but is rather arbitrarily assigning each of us our part in it. Yet the role we get, is often not much to our liking. We may be quite sure that we would make an excellent Hamlet, if only we were not trapped in the obscurity of Second Gravedigger—or we may be cast in a very large role for which we feel ill-prepared, and long for the relative anonymity of a small walk-on role. Either way, we have a sense that God hasn’t got it quite right, and that it all feels a bit capricious.
            And so we feel the weight of having to try to be some one that deep down, we truly aren’t. And that is a heavy burden to carry—the weight of having to pretend to be something that is more—or less—than our true selves.
            It reminds me of time when I was a graduate student, working during vacations for a temp agency in New York City. One assignment was to a fledgling investment banking firm, that in fact had only two employees. They had rented a very beautiful office in the Chase Manhattan building overlooking the harbor, but in fact it was just the two of them, and me (the secretary). When it came time for important conference calls, they would ask me to get on the call and act like I was part of the professional team, to make the firm seem bigger than it was. But that was always tremendously awkward, since I didn’t talk the lingo, and didn’t really know anything about what they were up to. Trying to be someone you aren’t, isn’t easy.
            And so, the challenge is to do the hard work of becoming radically honest with ourselves, unmasking the external social structures and interior emotional needs that cast us into parts we are uncomfortable playing.
            It is, says Williams, all about learning to hear our own true name spoken amidst the cacophony of other voices that call out to us. God, you see, in the act of creating is also naming—giving to each of us an identity that is uniquely ours. And so in the first instance, our vocation is simply to exist, to respond to the call to be. But in the second instance, our vocation is to exist as ourselves, as who we uniquely are.
            And so, we are born into a web of social identities, from among which we try on a variety of possible roles. Like an adolescent teenager, we try out various ways of being our own person, looking for the one that fits.
             But what we too often fail to keep in mind, is that these roles are ultimately not just ways of being me, but also of responding to God’s call to mirror back to God the same love and joy and mercy and compassion with which God looks upon us. Vocation, in other words, is finding the particular way in which I myself am best able to reflect back the divine light that shines upon me.
            Which implies making a certain kind of commitment. If I am to live in the divine light as a musician, for instance, then I must be committed to a certain rhythm of study and practice. Or if I am to live as a spouse or a parent, then I am committed to a certain pattern of care and concern. Not that such life-long commitments claim to predict the future of who I will be—but they become the path along which I am continually moving, learning to be me.
            Think back to today’s gospel—over the last few weeks, we have seen Jesus struggling to come to terms with his own sense of identity. The question for him, as it is for us, is how to reflect back God’s presence in himself (or to “glorify God’s name,” as John puts it). In what we read today, Jesus clearly has come to some kind of realization of what that means, and of what is to come, and willing takes it upon himself, for as he says, “it is for this reason that I have come to this hour.” There is a clarity in his sense of purpose, a “residue” (if you will) of all that his search in the wilderness for his true self has revealed, that now marks his vocation.
            We human beings have an extraordinary power for self-deception. Somehow, we can easily look reality in the face, and then without any compunction simply deny it, if it suits our need. We can likewise look at ourselves, and refuse to see the structures of privilege or bias that cast us in roles we are not suited to play, not if we are to be truly our self. This Lent has asked each of us to look at what we reflect back to God through the manner of our own life, and to unravel the games of self-deception that we play at others’ expense—to find the residue that is our own truest self. For it is only when those games of self-deception have ceased, that we will for the first time truly hear God calling our own true name, and be able to respond, “Here I am.” Amen.  
             

14 March 2021
Rev. Susan Allison-Hatch
St. Michael’s Church
4 Lent


In the name of God:  Earth Maker, Pain Bearer, Life Giver, Mother and Father of us all. 
 
We're beginning somewhere else today--we're beginning where the gospel of John starts.  But listen carefully.  You might just hear it slant.
 
In the beginning.  In the beginning was Love, and Love was with God, and Love was God.  Love was in the beginning with God.  All things--all things--came into being with Love, and without Love not one thing came into being.  What has come into being in Love was life, and the life was the light of all people.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. 
 
In the beginning was Love.  And with the Love light.
 
Oh, there was darkness.  Plenty of darkness.  No denying that.  Brother raising hand against brother.  Foremother enslaving and then pimping foremother.  Fratricide. Genocide.  Enslavement.   Flagrant abuse of power. People turning against their God.  People turning against one another. 
 
But still there was Love.  Still there was light.  Still there was God.
 
Remember--God so loved the world she made, the world she birthed, the world she gave to the future, she gave her Begotten One--Love made flesh--so that everyone who believes------
 
Believes?  What has belief to do with all of this?  That word makes no sense to me.  At least not in this context.  This story is  about Love--God's love. Love enfleshed in human form.  Love made visible.  Love made tangible.  A noun become a verb and a verb become enfleshed. 
 
What if we heard that verse--John 3: 16--a verse folks know so well--with just a little different slant?  What if we heard it like this: 
 
            God so loved the world she birthed, she gave her Begotten One, her        
            Beloved--Love made flesh--so that all who loved with God and with Love  
            made flesh would live as one with God; as one with Love; as one with one another.
 
What a wake-up call to a world of division, a world of violence, a world of death, a world enshrouded in darkness.    A Hail Mary pass from God.  Not God's first Hail Mary pass.  Not by any means.  God has tossed more Hail Mary passes that even Aaron Rodgers.  But this one is different.  This one really is a game changer.  A living, breathing, dying lesson in loving as God loves.  An invitation to come and see Love at work in the world.  An invitation to come and be a part of that work, a part of that love.
 
Not long ago, three black women--all Episcopal priests--launched a Hail Mary pass to the Episcopal Church when they wrote and spoke "Speaking of Freedom:  A Letter to the Church on Breaking Free of White Supremacy."  In a letter rich with uncomfortable truths and hard challenges, Kelly Brown Douglas, Stephanie Spellers, and Winnie Varghese offer a vision of church-- a vision of community that calls on those who would join in the work of love "to be...a beloved community marked by compassion, love and justice--one in which followers of Jesus proclaim good news to the poor, free the prisoners, help the blind regain their sight, and set the oppressed free."  That's living as one with God, one with Love, one with one another. 
 
The thing about Hail Mary passes is that they require at least three elements--excluding of course the ball:  an urgency to the moment, someone to throw the pass, someone to catch it and then run it into the endzone for a game changing touchdown. 
 
There is an urgency to the moment in which we now live:  400 plus years of enslavement and its aftermath; 500 plus years of genocide and oppression; a toxic white supremacy that ensnares us all; and the emerging consequences of a reckless disregard for all the species who share life on this planet.  We live in an era crying out for Hail Mary passes from God and from what Howard Thurman calls the Angelos of God--the human hands that do God's work of Love in this world. 
 
Sometimes our work is to toss a pass ourselves; sometimes our work is catch that pass, cradle the ball in our arms, and run like the dickens to the end zone.  Always our work is to keep our eyes open to the conditions on the field and to the passes that might come our way and the passes we might throw ourselves.
 
In her most recent book Caste, Isabel Wilkerson tells the story of one such pass.  The story comes at the end of the book.  In the very last chapter.  A chapter entitled "The Heart is the Last Frontier."  Wilkerson closes her book with a story about an incident that happened to her just weeks after her mother died, a few months after Trump was elected, and a little over a year after her husband died.  You can imagine how fragile she was.
 
Then her basement flooded.  So she did what any of us would do if we lived in a land with basements that flooded--she called a plumber.  And therein lies the rub.  For the plumber that came to Wilkerson's door came wearing a Maga hat.  After establishing that Wilkerson was indeed the owner of the house (an insult black and brown women frequently experience), that plumber, sporting his MAGA hat grunted, "Where's the basement?"  Things went down hill from there until Wilkerson, nodding at her mother's wheelchair said, "My mother just died last week."  Then, in a last ditch effort to change things up, Wilkerson tossed that MAGA hatted plumber a Hail Mary pass.  "Is your mother still alive?"  To which the plumber replied in a very different voice, "No.  She died when I was young."  It was their shared experience of loss that finally bridged the gap between them and sent that plumber scurrying to find the source of the leak.  What changed things up?  Wilkerson's Hail Mary pass to that plumber's most human heart.  And that plumber's outstretched hands.
 
In the beginning.  In the beginning was Love, and Love was with God, and Love was God.  Love was in the beginning with God.  All things--all things--came into being with Love, and without Love not one thing came into being.  What has come into being in Love is life, and the life is the light of all people.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it. 
 
In the beginning is Love.