By Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist
Ephesians 4: 1-16
John 6: 1-15
Did you know that most Olympic-level endurance athletes burn through calories so quickly that they resort to consuming massive quantities of junk food just to make sure they have enough fuel in their system to power through the main event?
No kidding. It’s really true.
According to Dr. Michael Joyner, who studies the super-metabolism of super-athletes at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, the Olympians we will be cheering on in the next two and a half weeks can burn through 20 calories in a single minute. A single day’s workout can burn up to six thousand calories! Meaning that our beloved American swimming champion Michael Phelps, for example, must regularly eat three fried-egg sandwiches, a five-egg omelet, a bowl of grits, three slices of French toast, and three pancakes with chocolate chips . . . for breakfast! . . . just to keep his body energized. How’s that for some loaves and fishes!
(Okay so maybe after yesterday’s performance, he should cut back on a pancake or two . . .)
Most of us are not Olympic athletes . . . but the incentive to eat massive quantities of junk food . . . or to look good in a Speedo . . . might inspire us to start some body building in the next few days. Am I right? Which of course would go the same direction as New Year’s Resolutions once we realize Olympic athletes train upward of six hours per day . . . for twelve years of their lives. Most of us can’t even carve out the recommended thirty minutes of exercise per day! What are we to do?
Well there is good news, my friends. Recent research by Dr. Glenn Gaesser, who directs the Healthy Lifestyles Research Center at Arizona State University, has concluded that just ten minutes of exercise per day . . . repeated three times a day . . . can have the same benefit as one thirty minute session per day. Which means the point about building up the body is that we “just do it” . . . one small step at a time . . . over and over and over again.
Which leads me to the apostle Paul in our Ephesians text this morning, turned-personal-fitness-instructor, “building up the body of Christ” in 1st century Ephesus.
Of course the kind of body building Paul is more about a metaphor than it is about athletics . . . maybe . . . And the kind of body building Paul is talking about is actually a team sport, not an individual one. And the kind of body building he is talking about focuses on a community of faith, and not a nice set of abs. But does it not take just as much discipline to build a community of faith as it does to compete in the Olympics? Paul thinks so. At least when it comes to the Ephesians.
Most of the Ephesians are non-Jewish Gentiles newly converted to the faith, unfamiliar with the rich heritage of the Jewish tradition so central to the life of Jesus and his earliest followers. They may not understand the legacy they are joining . . . at least not as much as others in the community who are very familiar with Jewish law. Those long-time members want to keep the familiar structure, and they expect the newcomers to follow more of the tradition they have inherited. And of course the newcomers have bold new ideas and can’t understand why it takes so long to implement them. And they have to keep practicing the building of one body together . . . over and over again, as time passes and new members come and go. Because new members come and go and come and go over and over and over again. How can they get this hodge podge mix of believers to be one body, one spirit? How can they equip the saints to build this new body together, with Christ as its head—joined together in peace, living up to the life to which God had called them?
One option for Paul the personal fitness trainer would be to channel the first century version of Jillian Michaels . . . you know, the rock hard, tough love, no complaints task-master who used to work with The Biggest Loser reality TV show? She got right in their face, didn't she? Keep running, keep sweating, don't even think about quitting, we have a goal to reach! Maturity into the likeness of Christ! Hurry up, Ephesians! Get to work! Go, go, go!!!
That’s one option for building of the body.
But I think Paul is a bit more like Bob Harper, the quieter, kinder, compassionate personal trainer, nudging his parishioners to do the thing they have already said they want to do. I mean, Paul does tell the Ephesians to be “humble, gentle, and patient, accepting each other in love,” right?
He uses the sort of do-it-for-me-if-you-really-love-me approach: I'd be so proud of you, friends in Ephesus, if you would just pull out your running shoes once or twice a week, do what you can, eat one less brownie . . . even a little bit of exercise is better than nothing, I know you can do it. I'll be right here with you . . . just don't give up when it's hard . . .
In case you haven’t noticed, your Pastor Gusti has been vacillating between these two approaches in this past year of transition at Madison Square. Because are we not also our own hodge podge of believers uniting together as one body, one spirit, “making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace”? What we have been doing together is a little bit like training for a distance relay race. The kind where we’re all on the same team and we just run for the love of running . . . passing the baton to our fellow worshipers . . . speaking the truth in love about what brings us to this race . . . and what keeps us on the field through thick and thin.
There are those among us who joined the team back in the days of Bill Lytle . . . running our hearts out in response to his call to mission and his commitment to serving “the least of these” in San Antonio. And there are those among us who came running alongside the ministry of Ilene Dunn in her clarion call for lgbt justice and her love of the life of the mind. And how many of our children and youth grabbed hold of the baton from the witness of Kenny Davis . . . and loved the creativity of Linda Charlton whose legacy of liturgical art is with us to this day.
And then there are the brand new members who have come in just this past year . . . yearning for a place that will receive all of who they are . . . and trusting that someway, somehow, this place really means it when it says “welcome home.” This is the wonderful mix of saints at Madison Square . . . coming into the unity of one body . . . speaking the truth in love to one another . . . building itself up in love . . . (and not just in brownies!)
Surely we are equipping the saints at Madison Square for some body building in this Olympic summer! But you know, it's an interesting word in Greek, the one we translate into English as “equip.” katartismos It's the same word you would use to describe setting a bone after it has been broken.
And isn’t that also what the ministry of God at Madison Square has been about all along? Don’t we bring our broken bones and our broken hearts to this place of healing and hope . . . trusting God will heal us even stronger than we were to begin with? That, too, is what it means to build up the body. Yes, it’s about adopting a new exercise plan as a community of faith, growing together in maturity, and spiritual discipline . . . adjusting, healing, trusting each part of the body to do its own work to make the whole body grow and be strong with love. But it’s also about sharing the broken parts of ourselves with one another . . . and trusting God to set things right. It is something we choose to do; it requires effort; but as each of us makes that choice and effort, as each of us grows into the likeness of Christ, we are joined and knit together by every ligament, and the entire body grows together.
It is still an organic, dynamic, prophetic body of Christ into which we have been called here at Madison Square Presbyterian Church. And each of us has been given grace upon grace according to the measure of Christ's gift for building up the body, whether we want to hold on to the best the Madison Square tradition has to offer, or whether we are new to the tradition but inspired to live it out in new and fresh ways. Whether we are ready to run the race with fresh new sneakers . . . or whether we have some broken bones we need to offer for healing. Some of us are apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, but all of us—every single one of us—is a minister of the gospel, building up our part of the body in service to the whole.
So, my friends, it's time for us to recommit to some body building here at Madison Square, as we gear up for the next phase of this team sport we call the church. We have a brand new body to build together, with Christ as our head, trusting Christ to knit us together in love to serve one another and, indeed, the world.
May it be so for each one of us, and for all of us together. Amen.
Sunday, July 29, 2012
Sunday, July 22, 2012
The Humanity of the Nations
By Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist
Psalm 9:9-20 A Prayer for the Triumph of Justice
Ephesians 2:11-22
The Holy One of our ancestors who were oppressed and enslaved in Egypt lifts up those who are oppressed today into a safe and secure retreat
A safe and secure place in times of distress
Those who know your name, Holy One, will trust in you
Because you have not—and will not ever—abandon those who seek you
Sing to the Holy One of our ancestors, whose eternal dwelling place is a safe and secure retreat in a city of peace!
Proclaim the deeds of our liberating God among all people everywhere!
Because the One who avenges the blood of those who have been victimized remembers them;
Our God does not forget the crying out of those who are afflicted
Have mercy on me, Holy One. See my many sufferings at the hands of my enemies. You are the One who lifts me up from the gates of death!
If I am instead at the gates of your safe and secure place . . . if I am instead at the gates of your city of peace,
I can rejoice in your deliverance and recount your praises in song!
The nations around me have sunk into a pit they have made;
Their own foot has been caught in the net they hid for others
The Holy One of our oppressed ancestors has made himself known; she has executed judgment.
In their own handiwork, those who do wicked things are ensnared.
Those who do evil—the nations around me who forget their divine mandate for justice—will return to Sheol:
a graveyard of their own—completely separate from God.
Because the person in need will not always be forgotten!
The person who is poor will not lose hope forever!
Rise up, God! Thou shalt not let humankind prevail!
Let the nations around me be judged in your presence!
Put them in terror, Holy One of our ancestors.
Let the nations around me know that they are, indeed, only human.
The thing about the Psalms is that they a real. They are human. They speak the truth of what we really feel when we really feel it.
Like how many of us feel this weekend after watching yet another community ripped apart tragically by the deep underpinning of violence that dehumanizes our nation in ways we can no longer choose to ignore. Surely our very humanity is at stake. Surely we can understand in this moment what kind of wrenching anguish that would cause the psalmist from our Scripture reading today to cry out in desperation for a “safe and secure place” where God’s justice and peace will prevail for all time. For those who have been victimized to be avenged by a God who will not ever forget their name. And, in the end, for God’s great mercy to prevail among us all.
In a prayer that speaks the truth of the experience of any human being who has suffered at the hand of another—of any human being who has suffered the inhumanity of the nations—the psalmist prays for vindication, for the triumph of justice, for deliverance from the gates of death that surround him on all sides.
You are a God who avenges the blood of those who have been victimized, the psalmist insists, even as we cringe at the violence of these words. You are a God who can put terror in the hearts of my enemies, the psalmist says, of the ones who do not even see me as human. You are a God who will rise up and judge the nations who have forgotten their divine mandate to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with you. You are a God who will remind the nations that they, too—that we, too, are only human.
I first came across the power of this psalm when I was serving a church in Tucson and faced the reality of our nation’s immigration crisis on a daily. It occurred to me that this must also be the prayer of the migrant who does not make it. The one who dies in the desert between the United States and Mexico. Or the one who returns to Mexico with bleeding feet, or worse. Or the one who builds a home directly across from the border wall—from the gate of death we have built as a deterrent to anyone who would dare pursue a dream of life abundant. A wall whose explicitly stated purpose at its creation was to drive the migrant into the most dangerous parts of the desert. Where every one of them is dehydrated. Traumatized. And if you are female, most likely raped.
Surely this was the prayer of Jose Mario Ocampo Rivera when he migrated from Mexico at 41 years of age. Surely he cried out for a safe and secure place where God’s justice and peace will prevail for all time as he, too, perished senselessly. Discovered in the desert on January 9, 2012. Cause of death: exposure to the elements . . .
Surely this was the prayer of Maria Martha Luna Sanchez . . . age unknown . . . discovered in the desert on February 13, 2012 . . . cause of death: organ failure . . .
Surely this was the prayer of Juan Cruz Garcia . . . age unknown . . . discovered in the desert on February 27, 2012 . . . cause of death: blunt force injuries to the head.
Surely this was the prayer of every migrant who has died crossing the desert from Mexico to the United States, beginning from the time the wall of hostility that lines the U.S. border with Mexico began to scar the landscape between Douglas, Arizona, U.S.A. and Agua Prieta, Sonora, Mexico, and continuing until that day when we can reclaim the humanity of the nations. And break down the walls that divide us, both literal and metaphorical. And proclaim finally and forever that God has made peace for those who are far off and for those who are near, as the writer of our Scripture lesson from Ephesians begs the early church to proclaim.
The names of migrants who have died crossing the desert have been called out in a vigil of prayer every Tuesday of every week of every year since the border wall was constructed. One of the sponsors of the prayer vigil is an organization called Frontera de Cristo, which is one of six official Presbyterian ministries along the U.S.-Mexico border. And just in case you didn’t know, the national coordinator for Presbyterian Border Ministries is our own Micaela Reznicek, and her office is right here at Madison Square.
I joined this prayer vigil one Tuesday several years ago with a mission group on behalf of the church I served in Tucson. We began our prayers at a street corner a quarter mile from the border wall, each one of us picking up a plain white cross with the name of a migrant who had died. We spoke out that person’s name, if we knew it. If we did not we named them, “Desconocido/a.” And then we shouted with all our might, “presente!” So that they might somehow hear from the great beyond that they are “no longer strangers and aliens but citizens with the saints . . . and members of the household of God.”
The words of judgment from the psalmist were fresh on my mind as we crossed back into Agua Prieta after our prayer vigil in Douglas. We drove along a road ironically named the “International Highway,” because it travels along the official border between Mexico and the United States. But there was no United States to be seen. All we could see was that gate of death to our left, for miles ahead, all the way up the hill to the horizon and through the rear view mirror all the way back to the horizon behind of us. Half of us were already sick with a stomach ailment. All of us were tired and full of despair. All of us felt helpless to do anything but lament our common inhumanity. And lamenting our inhumanity is, I would argue, an act of faith with deep integrity.
But it is not the end of the story. The psalmist continues: The Holy One of our oppressed ancestors lifts up those who are oppressed today! God has provided and will continue to provide a safe and secure retreat in times of distress! The nations may forget the cries of the afflicted, we may disregard the names of those who die in the desert, but God does not! God remembers!
As we drove along that border fence—still in an attitude of prayer from our vigil in Douglas—we just happened to look up through the windshield and a miracle from God appeared before our eyes just ahead: a double rainbow had formed, beginning on the U.S. side of the border wall, crossing high above, high into the heavens, leading into Mexico, where it merged into the clouds. God’s covenant promise for all the nations available to us, who are only human. All we have to do is open our eyes and capture the vision.
“This wall is coming down!” one of our group declared boldly, as we prayed through the power of that moment. “The Berlin Wall came down in Germany and Nelson Mandela came out of prison in South Africa, and this wall is going to come down!” God has willed it to be so. All we have to do is catch the vision and make it real. This is the Word of God to us today!!!
Desmond Tutu often says that the prayers of the women were the deciding factor in the end of apartheid in South Africa. That their trust in a liberating God, that their honesty with God and one another about their suffering and anger, that their hope in the midst of despair kept the movement alive in its most difficult days. And it can continue to be true today. I, for one, believe in the power of prayer to change the world. And to change you. And to change me. And maybe even to change our broken immigration system along the way . . .
And so I ask every one of us to join again in the prayers of that vigil along the U.S.-Mexico border that takes place every Tuesday. And to turn our prayers into action by joining our adult education conversation about immigration in the next five weeks. And to trust that God will always welcome us home to the joyful work of restoring the humanity of the nations. And join all of our prayers together into one beautiful cadence from one family, built together in the Spirit into a beautiful dwelling place for our God, proclaiming peace to those who are far off and to those who are near, no longer strangers and aliens, but every one of us citizens with the saints and members of the one household of God.
I pray it may be so.
Amen.
Psalm 9:9-20 A Prayer for the Triumph of Justice
Ephesians 2:11-22
The Holy One of our ancestors who were oppressed and enslaved in Egypt lifts up those who are oppressed today into a safe and secure retreat
A safe and secure place in times of distress
Those who know your name, Holy One, will trust in you
Because you have not—and will not ever—abandon those who seek you
Sing to the Holy One of our ancestors, whose eternal dwelling place is a safe and secure retreat in a city of peace!
Proclaim the deeds of our liberating God among all people everywhere!
Because the One who avenges the blood of those who have been victimized remembers them;
Our God does not forget the crying out of those who are afflicted
Have mercy on me, Holy One. See my many sufferings at the hands of my enemies. You are the One who lifts me up from the gates of death!
If I am instead at the gates of your safe and secure place . . . if I am instead at the gates of your city of peace,
I can rejoice in your deliverance and recount your praises in song!
The nations around me have sunk into a pit they have made;
Their own foot has been caught in the net they hid for others
The Holy One of our oppressed ancestors has made himself known; she has executed judgment.
In their own handiwork, those who do wicked things are ensnared.
Those who do evil—the nations around me who forget their divine mandate for justice—will return to Sheol:
a graveyard of their own—completely separate from God.
Because the person in need will not always be forgotten!
The person who is poor will not lose hope forever!
Rise up, God! Thou shalt not let humankind prevail!
Let the nations around me be judged in your presence!
Put them in terror, Holy One of our ancestors.
Let the nations around me know that they are, indeed, only human.
The thing about the Psalms is that they a real. They are human. They speak the truth of what we really feel when we really feel it.
Like how many of us feel this weekend after watching yet another community ripped apart tragically by the deep underpinning of violence that dehumanizes our nation in ways we can no longer choose to ignore. Surely our very humanity is at stake. Surely we can understand in this moment what kind of wrenching anguish that would cause the psalmist from our Scripture reading today to cry out in desperation for a “safe and secure place” where God’s justice and peace will prevail for all time. For those who have been victimized to be avenged by a God who will not ever forget their name. And, in the end, for God’s great mercy to prevail among us all.
In a prayer that speaks the truth of the experience of any human being who has suffered at the hand of another—of any human being who has suffered the inhumanity of the nations—the psalmist prays for vindication, for the triumph of justice, for deliverance from the gates of death that surround him on all sides.
You are a God who avenges the blood of those who have been victimized, the psalmist insists, even as we cringe at the violence of these words. You are a God who can put terror in the hearts of my enemies, the psalmist says, of the ones who do not even see me as human. You are a God who will rise up and judge the nations who have forgotten their divine mandate to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with you. You are a God who will remind the nations that they, too—that we, too, are only human.
I first came across the power of this psalm when I was serving a church in Tucson and faced the reality of our nation’s immigration crisis on a daily. It occurred to me that this must also be the prayer of the migrant who does not make it. The one who dies in the desert between the United States and Mexico. Or the one who returns to Mexico with bleeding feet, or worse. Or the one who builds a home directly across from the border wall—from the gate of death we have built as a deterrent to anyone who would dare pursue a dream of life abundant. A wall whose explicitly stated purpose at its creation was to drive the migrant into the most dangerous parts of the desert. Where every one of them is dehydrated. Traumatized. And if you are female, most likely raped.
Surely this was the prayer of Jose Mario Ocampo Rivera when he migrated from Mexico at 41 years of age. Surely he cried out for a safe and secure place where God’s justice and peace will prevail for all time as he, too, perished senselessly. Discovered in the desert on January 9, 2012. Cause of death: exposure to the elements . . .
Surely this was the prayer of Maria Martha Luna Sanchez . . . age unknown . . . discovered in the desert on February 13, 2012 . . . cause of death: organ failure . . .
Surely this was the prayer of Juan Cruz Garcia . . . age unknown . . . discovered in the desert on February 27, 2012 . . . cause of death: blunt force injuries to the head.
Surely this was the prayer of every migrant who has died crossing the desert from Mexico to the United States, beginning from the time the wall of hostility that lines the U.S. border with Mexico began to scar the landscape between Douglas, Arizona, U.S.A. and Agua Prieta, Sonora, Mexico, and continuing until that day when we can reclaim the humanity of the nations. And break down the walls that divide us, both literal and metaphorical. And proclaim finally and forever that God has made peace for those who are far off and for those who are near, as the writer of our Scripture lesson from Ephesians begs the early church to proclaim.
The names of migrants who have died crossing the desert have been called out in a vigil of prayer every Tuesday of every week of every year since the border wall was constructed. One of the sponsors of the prayer vigil is an organization called Frontera de Cristo, which is one of six official Presbyterian ministries along the U.S.-Mexico border. And just in case you didn’t know, the national coordinator for Presbyterian Border Ministries is our own Micaela Reznicek, and her office is right here at Madison Square.
I joined this prayer vigil one Tuesday several years ago with a mission group on behalf of the church I served in Tucson. We began our prayers at a street corner a quarter mile from the border wall, each one of us picking up a plain white cross with the name of a migrant who had died. We spoke out that person’s name, if we knew it. If we did not we named them, “Desconocido/a.” And then we shouted with all our might, “presente!” So that they might somehow hear from the great beyond that they are “no longer strangers and aliens but citizens with the saints . . . and members of the household of God.”
The words of judgment from the psalmist were fresh on my mind as we crossed back into Agua Prieta after our prayer vigil in Douglas. We drove along a road ironically named the “International Highway,” because it travels along the official border between Mexico and the United States. But there was no United States to be seen. All we could see was that gate of death to our left, for miles ahead, all the way up the hill to the horizon and through the rear view mirror all the way back to the horizon behind of us. Half of us were already sick with a stomach ailment. All of us were tired and full of despair. All of us felt helpless to do anything but lament our common inhumanity. And lamenting our inhumanity is, I would argue, an act of faith with deep integrity.
But it is not the end of the story. The psalmist continues: The Holy One of our oppressed ancestors lifts up those who are oppressed today! God has provided and will continue to provide a safe and secure retreat in times of distress! The nations may forget the cries of the afflicted, we may disregard the names of those who die in the desert, but God does not! God remembers!
As we drove along that border fence—still in an attitude of prayer from our vigil in Douglas—we just happened to look up through the windshield and a miracle from God appeared before our eyes just ahead: a double rainbow had formed, beginning on the U.S. side of the border wall, crossing high above, high into the heavens, leading into Mexico, where it merged into the clouds. God’s covenant promise for all the nations available to us, who are only human. All we have to do is open our eyes and capture the vision.
“This wall is coming down!” one of our group declared boldly, as we prayed through the power of that moment. “The Berlin Wall came down in Germany and Nelson Mandela came out of prison in South Africa, and this wall is going to come down!” God has willed it to be so. All we have to do is catch the vision and make it real. This is the Word of God to us today!!!
Desmond Tutu often says that the prayers of the women were the deciding factor in the end of apartheid in South Africa. That their trust in a liberating God, that their honesty with God and one another about their suffering and anger, that their hope in the midst of despair kept the movement alive in its most difficult days. And it can continue to be true today. I, for one, believe in the power of prayer to change the world. And to change you. And to change me. And maybe even to change our broken immigration system along the way . . .
And so I ask every one of us to join again in the prayers of that vigil along the U.S.-Mexico border that takes place every Tuesday. And to turn our prayers into action by joining our adult education conversation about immigration in the next five weeks. And to trust that God will always welcome us home to the joyful work of restoring the humanity of the nations. And join all of our prayers together into one beautiful cadence from one family, built together in the Spirit into a beautiful dwelling place for our God, proclaiming peace to those who are far off and to those who are near, no longer strangers and aliens, but every one of us citizens with the saints and members of the one household of God.
I pray it may be so.
Amen.
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