Memory and Hope

By Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist

 

Nehemiah 8:1-15

Matthew 22:34-40

“Este es el libro de memoria y . . ?” This is the book of memory and . . ?”

Is it esperanza/hope? Is it promesa/promise? Or is it simply memoria/memory, with nothing more to say? Those of us involved in the worship planning at Madison Square have engaged in an ongoing conversation over this question—bordering on debate—over the past year.

I think I might be winning! ;-)

I have been the one advocating esperanza/hope. Why? Because, quite frankly, I need it. A reason for hope in my life. I need that “thing with feathers,” as Emily Dickinson calls it, “that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without the words, and never stops at all.” I need that thing that keeps us going when we think we have no “going” left to “go.” I need that thing that inspires us to greatness, on the one hand, and puts us back together again when we are shattered, on the other.

I am guessing I am not the only one. I am guessing almost all of us have an experience of holding onto hope when even hope seems hopeless. The question is, do we find that thing called “hope” in the Bible?

The answer is yes. And then if we’re honest, maybe no. And then finally and emphatically . . . yes!

Take Nehemiah, for example.

As a book of memory—recounting a story that is in some mystical way also our story—Nehemiah takes place as the people of God return to the land of Judah from a long and tumultuous exile in Babylon, about five hundred years before the birth of Christ. The lives of this community have been shattered to the core. The liberating miracle of the Exodus from Egypt is an ancient memory. The glory days of King David and Solomon ring bitter and hollow for a people who can never hope to attain such greatness. Instead they know only war and deportation, their house of worship destroyed, their leaders vanquished, their children cut off from their culture. They have every reason to give up on hope.

But they don’t.

God raises up a new generation of leaders from within the exiled community, teaching them to sing the old songs in a strange land, to adapt the old rituals to a new worship home, to tell the old stories toward a new hope for a new day. And now that day has come. It is time to return and rebuild. And they do!

By the time we get to chapter 8 of the book of Nehemiah, two new leaders—Ezra the scribe and Nehemiah the governor—have stepped up to steer the community through this rebuilding. They have led the people in fierce debate over the direction they wish to go as a community of faith. Some of it has been bitter. All of it has been heartfelt. But they have finally come to a place of decision, and they have coalesced around a new vision, and they have pooled their resources together to rebuild the foundation of the temple. And they are ready to move forward together.

So what does Ezra, their new leader, do to get them started? He gathers the people to study the Bible! Or at least what exists of the Bible to-date. And he includes ALL of the people. Men and women. And children, too. As many as have the capacity to understand what they are hearing. And—get this—Ezra reads to them from early morning until midday, day after day, until the entire Bible as they know it has been read aloud. Now how’s THAT for a really long worship service?

As a new day is dawning for them, they come to this Bible for a word of memory and hope, listening for a Word of God speaking directly to them through the words of their Scripture. Just as we do every time we gather in worship to be formed and re-formed, according to the Word of God.

So what do they hear God saying through these words of ancient Scripture? The same thing we do? “Do not weep. Do not mourn. This day is holy to your God. Eat. Drink. As one community. And if you have something to share give it to those who need more than they have. And rejoice! Rejoice! Rejoice! This is the Word of our God! As Ezra and Nehemiah sum up the entire Bible as they know it in just a few sentences, this is what they come to: This is the day that our God has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. Eat. Drink. Be Merry. And SHARE!!! Period!

(That’s actually a really good Stewardship Slogan!)

Now if you are anything like me you’d like to just close the book here. Right?

But we can’t. The problem is, as much as Ezra and Nehemiah get it right in chapter eight, they get it awfully wrong if you keep on reading to chapter thirteen. In the very legitimate interest of protecting the integrity of their community’s identity in resistance to outside oppression, they give in to the temptations of xenophobia, interpreting their Scriptures as a code of purity, rather than a code of justice. They go so far as to demand that the men of Israel who have married foreign women must divorce them and leave them destitute. To the point of sending their children packing. It is one of the most shameful parts of the Bible, as far as I am concerned. It sounds an awful lot like the ways our current U.S. immigration policies separate undocumented parents from their documented children. And, in fact, there is much in the way of violence and xenophobia in both testaments that should rightly make us cringe today. And may very well have been used as a weapon of oppression against us. I know I have been on the receiving end of this.

But the truth is that any one of us can use the Bible as a proof-text for just about any position we want to hold, whether it is advocating divorce (as Nehemiah does) or prohibiting it. Whether it is demanding the oppression of women or celebrating women as the bearers of the tradition. Whether it is justifying the hatred of same-sex partners or proclaiming an ethic of fidelity and partnership, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. I had one professor in seminary who went so far as to warn us that the Bible can be hazardous to our health, pointing to the history of biblical justification for slavery as evidence.

John Calvin may be right in arguing that humanity needs Scripture to serve as a kind of “spectacles” because our inherent knowledge of God is stifled inevitably by human sin. But in light of our history as biblical people, I would add that our reading of Scripture is also stifled inevitably by human sin. It is far too easy for any one of us to take liberties with Scripture in order to justify our particular preconceived agenda. Yours truly included.

So what do we do with the Bible?

I have two words of guidance from our Reformed/Presbyterian tradition. First, we believe that Jesus Christ is the Living Word of God made flesh, full of grace and truth. And we interpret all of Scripture—every chapter and every verse—through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And lo and behold, Jesus himself, gives us the very tools for this interpretation! Coming directly from the Bible as it existed in his own time. Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18. The same words Ezra and Nehemiah were teaching the people five hundred years earlier.

“You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.” Jesus says. “And you must love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hand all the law and the prophets.” This is the key for interpreting the entire thing. To paraphrase the great 4^th century bishop St. Augustine, “if you read any part of the Bible and it teaches you to do anything other than love God and love your neighbor, then read it again; you didn’t get it right the first time.” This is the first rule of biblical interpretation, according to the Presbyterian tradition.

The second is like it. We interpret all of Scripture in community, rather than in isolation. Trusting that together we may discern God’s Living Word more faithfully than we can separately. Trusting that others will point out when our interpretations fail to live up to the command to love God and neighbor. Trusting that others will give insight into the cultural and social limitations of our own perspectives so that we may more faithfully bear witness to God’s love for the entire world. In this way, as feminist theologian Dawn DeVries argues, the Bible becomes “the means of grace through which God’s Word is ever and anew received in the Christian community.” Whether we need a memory to remind us who we really are. Or if we come desperate for a word of hope to get us through the day.

The bottom line in the Presbyterian tradition is that our hope really is ultimately in the God to whom the book points but whom the book is emphatically not. The Bible itself tells us that the Word of God has been made flesh among us. The Word of God is a person—Jesus—and everything else must be interpreted through him. And we come to know this Living Word of God through the memories recorded in the words we read and study together in the Scriptures. The memories of real people seeking a word of hope, just like us.

So we gather on yet another Sunday around this book of “memory and hope,” sharing the stories of those who came before us. Because their story is, in a very real sense, our story. And their hope is our hope. That the Living Word of God will comfort our affliction. And afflict our comfort. And shape us even today as God’s beloved community. Both now and yet to come.

I pray it may be so.

Amen.

Pre-Destined for Peace

By Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist


Jeremiah 18:1-12

Matthew 7:1-5


In the religious life of the planet this has been one long week of judgment. Judgment in the form of an online movie trailer. Judgment in the form of response to the trailer. Judgment in response to the response to the trailer. And so on. To the point of violent bloodshed. To the point that could decide we might as well give up on religion altogether, judging religion itself responsible for inciting the very violence that every religious tradition I know of—including Islam—does, at its core, deplore.

We at Madison Square don’t like to talk about judgment. It is a religious sentiment most of us have fled in favor of grace and a wide welcome to the universal and unconditional love of God. Which is why we are here instead of at any number of other Christian churches that have no problem saying “our way or the highway” or “woe to you who don’t believe like we do,” in condemnation of others to eternal damnation. With the same sentiment that gives rise to offending videos in the first place.

We come to Madison Square to get away from all of that, don’t we? I know I do.

But we do not get to wash our hands of it. Because the clear distinctions we might make here in the United States between “our” Christianity and “that other” Christianity get glossed over worldwide. The same way we gloss over the clear distinctions among vastly different practices of Islam in the Middle East. We do not get to wash our hands of “that other Christianity” as if it has nothing to do with us. Because it does.

The thing is we really are our brother’s keeper in the biblical tradition. United in faith even if we wish it was not so. And I think we can learn something about how to handle that responsibility from the peace-loving Muslims of Libya who emphatically followed today’s teaching from Matthew’s Gospel, albeit from within their own tradition. The one about the log and the speck and the withholding of judgment toward others in order to avoid that judgment in return.

Here’s how they did it:

In response to the worst their religion could arouse the people of Benghazi took to the streets to invoke the best. “This is not the Behavior of our Islam and Prophet,” they said with their signs and the sounds of their voices. “Murder is not Islam.” “No to terrorism.” “Thugs and killers do not represent Benghazi nor Islam.”

It was actually a form of “judgment.” But it was an internal one. From within the community. Critiquing the same community you come from. Which is very much like what the Prophet Jeremiah was doing in our Old Testament lesson. The one that made most of us cringe with its own harsh language of judgment. The one that called upon the people of ancient Judah to reform their own religious behavior before they explained away all that was wrong in their society in judgment of the evil from those “outside invaders.”

When the people of Judah blamed the Babylonians for all that was wrong within their midst, Jeremiah told them to take a look at themselves instead. Are we following the covenant of our own community, he demanded, or have we succumbed to greed and idolatry instead? Are we caring for the widow, the orphan, and the stranger, he asked, or are we just going through the motions of external religious practice? Are we willing to be re-formed into a new vessel of unspoiled clay, he wanted to know, or are we resting on our laurels as God’s “frozen chosen”?

Over and over again, the people of Judah pointed the finger, in the time of Jeremiah. At anyone and everyone other than themselves. But Jeremiah told them to turn inward. To amend their own ways and their own doings first. Which is what the peace-loving Muslims of Libya did. And which is what we American Christians must do, as well, if we are going to be faithful to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

In fact, I would argue that all of the world’s great religions in this global, plural, inter-continental culture we have become in the 21st century must reclaim the peacemaking, self-reflecting, community-critiquing foundations of our traditions before it is too late. Removing the remaining planks of violence and intolerance and injustice from our own eyes—which for us means standing adamantly and emphatically against the youtube video version of Christianity and Jesus that does not represent us—before we bomb the speck out of the eyes of everyone else.

If every one of us did this, if every religion in the world removed the planks from our own eyes and cultivated the core covenants that are so central to all our traditions—the justice and the fidelity and the spiritual renewal that Jeremiah cried out for—we just might finally and forever decide deep down in our bones as the people of this planet that we really are all one clay in the potter’s hand. Formed ofone earth. Dare I even suggest flowing from one font of identity that fills every single one of our bodies three quarters of the way full with the water of grace. Whether we claim Christianity as our tradition or not.

I still hold on to that hope. I still want to believe that we can find a way across our vastly different traditions to swim together through the multiple streams of God’s grace toward that great river of peace that is our final destination.

I believe this because of my faith in Christ. Not in spite of it.

But we have to do the work. It won’t “just happen” just because we want it. So let’s do the work together of removing the plank from our own eyes of Presbyterianism. Starting with the doctrine of pre-destination, which is what I would have spent the entire sermon preaching on if we hadn’t had the week we just had. But it fits because if we are going to do the work of claiming the central core of our traditions in pursuit of that river of peace we Presbyterians have to come to terms with this very “Presbyterian” doctrine.

Now I’m just going to take a wild guess that you have not—at least in recent memory—experienced a sermon at Madison Square that touched on pre-destination. Which is the idea that God has chosen from the beginning of time who will be saved for eternity. And, yes, who will be damned for eternity. It is a harsh doctrine on its face. And it can easily get twisted into condemnation of all those “other” people who didn’t get chosen by God because they aren’t Christian. Which is exactly the opposite of what it is supposed to mean!

Most modern—and post-modern—progressive Presbyterians mostly avoid talking about predestination because we don’t want to talk about judgment. We want to believe that God loves everybody and grace abounds and hell has no place in our theology of love. But I am going to argue today that reclaiming and reforming the doctrine of predestination—rather than rejecting it outright—might give us the critical tools we need to persuade our global Christian family toward greater religious tolerance in this era of interfaith collaboration. And that this greater religious tolerance can be an act of Christian faith and not just a good idea from the world of secular liberalism.

Because the doctrine of predestination teaches that God alone is the sovereign ruler of the universe, and not any religious tradition. That God alone has determined our eternal fate, and not any religious tradition. That God alone is the one who knows what that fate will be, and not any religious tradition. And that nothing we do—or do not do—has anything to do with God’s choice in the matter. Which means that not one of us has any business declaring God’s eternal damnation—or even God’s eternal salvation—on any other person, or on any other group of people, or even on our own selves. Regardless of our religious tradition.

If we really are true to the core of our Presbyterian heritage, we don’t get to judge anything for God. The only thing we get to do is gratefully welcome the grace of God, which is the true core of the doctrine of predestination. It’s about our desperate reliance on God’s grace alone for any hope of salvation, in this life or the next. It’s about confessing in every part of our being that we have no hope for humankind at all—for ourselves or for anyone else—without. God's. grace.

Which I think has been made abundantly clear this week.

In light of where we are in the world today, I would like to add a hopeful addendum to predestination, based on the work of Karl Barth and other theologians who have followed him. It is possible, in keeping with the Scriptures that proclaim God's peaceable kingdom on the other side of God’s final judgment, that we are, in the end, “pre-destined for peace.” All of us. Because the thing about pre-destination—about eternal rejection and eternal salvation—is that Jesus, himself, has already experienced both. In the agony of the cross and through the harrowing of hell and right back out again to a resurrection of joy, Jesus has experienced both damnation and salvation. Once and for all. For all time.

And if we who are Christian have really been baptized into Christ, literally and not just metaphorically, then that means we have experienced both eternal damnation and eternal salvation, too. Once and for all. From the beginning of time to the end. In the fullness of time. All of us pre-destined for both. But not for ourselves alone.

If we are baptized into the rejected AND elected Body of Christ, we have no choice but to find ourselves in solidarity with anyone else in all of creation who knows what it is to be rejected right here and right now! Including those who are rejected by “Christians.”

Because that is where Christ’s rejected Body will always be!

But we also have no choice but to believe beyond belief that the saving love that is God’s final word in Christ is in that exact same place! Where Christ's rejected body is, there, too, is God's eternal salvation. Period. Not because we choose it. But because we need it. No matter who we are or what we have done or what we have left undone. Or where we worship.

It is, I would argue, the final Word throughout the Scriptures. From the mark of Cain in protection of a wandering murderer, to the joyful return of the very lump of clay that careened off the potter’s wheel and was given up for lost in Jeremiah, to the New Testament Gentiles who are seemingly rejected but have in fact been chosen by God from the foundation of the world for inclusion in the God’s family. To you. And to me. And to all of creation.

Rejected. And chosen. At the exact same time.

Having said all of that, I will confess once again not to really know what happens to the spoiled lump of clay that falls off the potter’s wheel. Or to the lump that maybe never got on in the first place. Or to any one of us in the Christian church or out of it. The clay may very well get thrown away for eternity. Or just set aside for a season.

What I do know is this: somewhere, somehow, clay always comes back to the earth. And gets mixed back together with the rest of it. And a potter picks it back up again somewhere along the line and shapes it once again. Always working together with creation to pronounce it "very good."

And so I choose to believe that someway somehow that so-called “rejected” lump of clay will always and forever be the very one chosen by our God. Not because of anything we have done. Or not done. Not because we have been easy to work with or delightfully challenging. But because of the grace of a God who desperately wants this lump of clay we call the human race to finally figure out how to live together as one body. Pre-destined for peace. With the Spirit of God breathing through every one of us.

I pray it may be so. Amen.

Always Being Re-Formed

By Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist  


Genesis 2:4-14, 18-22



Genesis 2:4b-14, 18-22
On the day when the God of Breath

made earth and heaven,

when every shrub of the field

was not yet in the earth

and every seed of the field

had not yet sprung up—

because the God of Breath

had not caused it to rain upon the earth,

and there was not humanity to work the humus,

but a mist ascended from the earth

and would irrigate all the face of the humus—

then the God of Breath

formed the human dust

from the humus

and breathed in its nostrils

a breath of life,

and it became a human—

a living breathing body.



And the God of Breath

planted a garden in Eden in the East,

and there God put the human

which God had formed.

And the God of Breath

caused every beautiful

and fruitful tree that exists

to sprout from the soil,

as well as a tree of

the knowledge of good and evil.



Now a river flows out from Eden

for irrigating the garden

and from there it is divided,

there it becomes the head of four rivers.

The name of the first is Pishon;

It is the one circling about all the earth of the Havilah,

in which there is gold.

And this gold of the earth is good;

bdellium and onyx are there.



And the name of the second river is the Gihon;

That one is winding through all the earth of Cush.

And the name of the third river is Tigris,

which flows east of Assyria.

And the fourth river,

that is the Euphrates.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Now the God of Breath said,

“It is not good to be the only human, all alone.

I will make for the human a corresponding helper.”



And the God of Breath formed from the earth

every beast of the field and all the birds of the heavens,

and God brought them to the human

in order to see what the human would call each creature.

And every name that the human called

each living, breathing creature . . .

that was the creature’s name.



The human called forth names

for all the animals and for birds of the heavens

and for all the life of the field,

but for the human,

a corresponding help was not found.



So the God of Breath

caused deep sleep to fall on the human

and the human slept

and God took the human’s primary rib,

and then its flesh closed in.



And the God of Breath built the rib taken

from the original human

to form a new human—a woman

and God brought her to the re-formed first human—

now a man.

And the re-formed first human said,

“At last, this is the occurrence of substance from my substance and flesh from my flesh;

this one is called woman—

and I am called man—

because woman and man were re-formed—

by God—

from and for each other.”





Can you believe it has been a year? A full year this week since I came to you from Tucson to serve as your second interim pastor. Or your third, depending on how you count.



When I met with your Interim Pastor Search Committee one year ago I told them that if they hired me, I would hope to lead the session and the congregation toward a posture of embracing transition as a way of life and not just a moment in time. That every part of life is a journey of trusting the Providence of God as we travel from one place to the next. That an “interim” period is a time to practice that trust. That our own Presbyterian tradition even has built within it an explicit expectation that we are always in need of the re-forming Spirit of God. That any time we think we have arrived at the perfect church or the perfect theology or the perfect mission or even the perfect pastor, the Spirit of the Living God will emphatically knock us off our self-righteous perch and demand we start all over again! And that this can even be a good thing. Even if it is hard. Especially if it is hard.



It is one of the great slogans of the 16th Century Protestant Reformation, which is the religious heritage of our own Presbyterian denomination. That the Church is Reformed and Always Being Reformed. Or as Bill Walker’s Latin expertise argues “always in need of being reformed.”



We have learned a little something about the need of being re-formed in this long-term interim season, have we not? We have hired new staff and then turned around to realize we needed to hire different new staff. We have fixed our financial procedures and then turned around to realize we needed to re-fix our financial procedures. We have gotten serious about faithful stewardship education and rallied around the mission of the Child Development Center. And we have just plain gotten on with our lives after the enormous loss of Ilene and Kenny and Linda and Rene.



It has certainly been a year of re-formation for Madison Square. Healing and fixing, yes. But also joyful, as I hoped it could be. Gathering in focus groups and prayer groups and conversation groups and mission groups to share what we love most about this church. Re-forming our identity in the compassionate heart of the steadfast love of God that will not ever let us go. Singing and clapping and celebrating and communing. And may I dare suggest it has actually been fun!?



Yes, we are a church in need of being re-formed, as our tradition has said all along. It can be hard, it can be fun, it can be everything in between. We can resist it or we can embrace it. But I have learned as much as I have tried to teach that re-formation really is a way of life, as I told that interview team, and not just a moment in time. Just ask my car, which is definitely in the middle of a “Great Re-Formation”!



The good news for all of us, as far as I can tell from the Scriptures this morning, is that God has been up to the work of forming and re-forming, and re-forming Creation from our very origins. If you read closely in Genesis you can see that our re-formation as a new creation occurs almost immediately after our original formation! In fact, God's work of forming and re-forming and re-forming God's good creation—including humanity and the faith traditions that nurture and guide us as the people of God—is woven into the very fabric of creation.

According to this second chapter in Genesis, God made heaven and earth and a mist to irrigate the humus. And it was very good, something to be celebrated! But it was not good for God to be alone. So God re-formed creation by forming a human being, breathing God's own breath into dust from the original humus that God created. And God placed the human in a beautiful garden with trees and fruit, including the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And the human being and the beautiful garden were very good, something to be celebrated! But it was not good for the earth to exist without running water. So God re-formed creation again by forming a river to flow out from the garden (may I call it the font of our identity?) and divided it into four prominent rivers and cultivated gold and other precious metals alongside each river. And it was good, something to be celebrated!



But it was not good for the human to be alone. So God re-formed creation again by forming more creatures from the earth to live in the fields and to fly in the air. And they were very good, something to be celebrated! But it was not good for the human to be without a corresponding helper. So God re-formed the original human in order to form a corresponding helper, the male and the female both re-formed from the original human in order to provide companionship for one another. And it was very good, something to be celebrated! Finally, we had a human community for support and encouragement. Finally the re-formation seemed to be complete!



But then along came the serpent and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the need for yet another re-formation. And another. And another. This time because of our own self-inflicted-nonsense. The first re-formation of humanity because God needs a second chance. The ones that follow because we do.



But here is the promise of the ongoing re-formation, whether it is because God needs it or we do. Through every moment of formation and re-formation the God who is nearer to us than our breath, the God whose Spirit is, in fact, our breath itself, is present, is personal, is breathing life and energy and wholeness and hope throughout every part of this beautiful and good and glorious creation. And God isn’t done with us yet! Whatever re-formation you need or I need or that my 2009 Pontiac Vibe needs—the ones we know we need and the ones we pretend we don’t need—God isn’t done with us yet! And God is doing everything God can to make this very good creation just a little bit “good-er.”



Because being formed and re-formed and always being re-formed in this primal story of our creation is not about change for the sake of change. Or chaos for the sake of chaos. Or theological inquiry for the sake of theological inquiry. Being formed and re-formed and always being re-formed is about companionship, community, finding and receiving help. It is about learning to live in joyous relationship with one another over and over and over again. And it is fun!



Being formed and re-formed and always being re-formed in this primal story of our creation never forgets that we are all creatures of the earth, substance from one another's substance, flesh from one another's flesh. And that we really have no choice but to treat one another with reverence and awe and respect in every moment of re-formation, tending to the pain as well as to the joy. Because the reality is that in our moments of re-formation, we very often have wounds in our side where our ribs have been removed, just like the re-formed first human must have had. And the reality is that in our moments of re-formation, we very often lament what we have lost by being separated from our origins, just like the re-formed second human must have done. And the reality is that we are often being re-formed by our anesthetizing God deep in our sleep, completely unaware that our lives have radically changed until we finally wake up and see a whole new life in front of us.



And being formed and re-formed and always being re-formed in this primal story of our creation means that every act of re-formation returns us to the God of Breath who has been with us all along. To the breath of God, which is nearer to us than our own breath. To the breath of God, which makes us a living, breathing body of miraculous creation. To the breath of God that reminds us to breathe through the chaos and the anxiety and the pain and the exhilaration. Which is why everyone from your therapist to your pastor to your yoga instructor will remind you to breathe when the chaos of re-formation brings you to your breaking point. Because that is how the Spirit of God can re-form us the best.



The bottom line of our formation and our re-formation and our ongoing re-formation as a congregation, as a denomination, and as individuals and families with our own lives beyond these walls is that we are indeed a miracle and we should not ever forget it! We are earth and water and the lifelong breath of God, formed into glorious creatures of the earth. Not only created in the image of God but also in our very living, breathing bodies a treasure of irrigated earth formed into human dust and filled with the very breath of God. God's Spirit-filled creature of the earth—a human from the humus—an adam from the adamah, as the Hebrew says, a living breathing body of earth and water and God's divine spirit flowing through us. The very breath of God flowing through us no matter how we are being re-formed! That is always and forever who we really are!



And so we celebrate God's playful and joyous work of re-formation among us with our own attitude of play and joy. With a deep love for the beautiful gift of God's glorious creation that each one of us is in our living, breathing bodies. With a heartfelt gratitude for the companionship we provide one another and for the “corresponding help” we can be to one another in the midst of the challenges that come with change and in celebration of the many opportunities that lie before us.



Because we are still about the business of being re-formed here at Madison Square. And it can continue to be an amazing Alleluia!



I pray it may be so. Amen.

Welcome Home

By Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist

Song of Songs 2:8-13; James 1:17-27

“Bienvenidos,” we say, at the beginning of every worship service here at Madison Square. “You and I, the People of God, are ‘welcome home.’”

And for a brief moment time stands still. And whatever has come before and whatever is yet to come fades into the space that surrounds us, like carbon dioxide fades into the plants that breathe it for air. And the peace of Christ settles in right here among us, and you can almost touch it and taste it and smell it and see it growing within us and among us like a lush garden. Like the Paradise we were always meant to tend. From the very beginning. Made real in our midst for one brief moment of grace.

“Welcome HOME!” we say. And a silent stillness fills the sanctuary . . .

No matter who you are or what you have done or what you have left undone or what you have had done to you, you are welcome home here at Madison Square. And not just because we say so but because Jesus says so.

Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church puts it this way, in a posting that has gone viral on Facebook, having originated on a website called “Stuff Christians Say”:

We extend a special welcome to those who are single, married, divorced, gay, filthy rich, dirt poor, yo no habla ingles. We extend a special welcome to those who are crying new-borns, skinny as a rail or could afford to lose a few pounds.

We welcome you if you can sing like Andrea Bocelli or . . . (and this is my favorite) . . . like our pastor who can’t carry a note in a bucket. You’re welcome here if you’re “just browsing,” just woke up or just got out of jail. We don’t care if you’re more Catholic than the Pope . . . (or for us more Presbyterian than Hilary Shuford) . . . or haven’t been in church since little Joey’s Baptism.

We extend a special welcome to those who are over 60 but not grown up yet, and to teenagers who are growing up too fast. We welcome soccer moms, NASCAR dads, starving artists, tree-huggers, latte-sippers, vegetarians, junk-food eaters. We welcome those who are in recovery or still addicted. We welcome you if you’re having problems or you’re down in the dumps or if you don’t like “organized religion,” we’ve been there, too.

If you blew all your offering money at the dog track, you’re welcome here. We offer a special welcome to those who think the earth is flat, work too hard, don’t work, can’t spell, or because grandma is in town and wanted to go to church.

We welcome those who are inked, pierced, or both. We offer a special welcome to those who could use a prayer right now, had religion shoved down your throat as a kid or got lost in traffic and wound up here by mistake. We welcome tourists, seekers and doubters, bleeding hearts . . . and you!

You are welcome, says Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church. Bienvenidos, people of God, welcome home, says Madison Square. And all is somehow miraculously made right.

At least that is how we want it to be . . .

In the Presbyterian Church we call it the kingdom of God. This sense of a time beyond time when pain and suffering and sin and oppression become no more. When we feast with our God in the fullness of grace, and we have finally learned how to live in peace. With God. With our neighbor. With ourselves. This kingdom “breaks in” for one brief moment when we hear that “welcome home.”

But it is still a kingdom that is yet to come, is it not? Because, let’s face it, we really aren’t there yet. We really aren’t. Not even in the church. Especially in the church. Where we are racked with bitter disputes and deep misunderstandings and pure pettiness and just plain self-inflicted-nonsense, it seems on a daily basis. And no I don’t just mean the big, bad, denomination out there somewhere. I mean even here. Even at Madison Square. Even when we think we are getting it quite right.

We are, as our Presbyterian Book of Order says, just a “provisional demonstration of the kingdom of God.” Emphasis on provisional. And there are lessons we still need to learn. Just like the early church learning from the letter of James.

We can, the author of James says, and we should, he insists, allow ourselves to get caught up in the great generosity of the God who will always welcome us home. We can and we should know the kingdom in an instant, when we hear those bienvenidos, and we know the deep embrace of Christ. But we should also admit when we are more quick to speak than we are to listen. When we are more quick to anger than we are to compassion. When we are more quick to nurse our own wounds than to build up the beloved community. Mere “hearers” of the Word, as James says, who deceive ourselves, instead of “doers of the word” who “care for orphans and widows in their distress and keep [our]selves unstained by the world.” Which translated for our own time would mean something along the lines of “watching out for the vulnerable and also for our own vulnerability.” Pursuing social justice and our own spiritual formation. With neither more important than the other.

We who are still so provisionally demonstrating the kingdom of God need the author of James to remind us to listen. To speak slowly. To transform whatever anger and rage we still carry within us into a virtue of grace. To tend the roots of God’s Wisdom dwelling deep within that we might “become a kind of first fruits” of God’s new creation, as James tells us. Blooming forever in the Paradise we were always meant to tend with joy. Seeking justice and non-violence and love. But we have to keep working at it over and over again. Because we are surely not there yet.

Which brings us to Bob Frere, whose life we remember today in our worship. Beloved husband of Carol. Beloved father of Suzette, John, Jennifer, Lisa, Mark, Lori, Karl. Beloved grandfather of Lauren, Ethan, Holden, Molly, Helen. Beloved “pastor to pastors” in Mission Presbytery and before that in Louisville Presbytery. Beloved child of the God who created him good, and in him is well pleased.

Throughout his long ministry, Bob saw the best and the worst of who we in the church can be. But he called us over and over again to the Wisdom of God set forth in the book of James: actively supporting civil rights; ordaining women as deacons and elders and pastors; uniting churches that had split over the civil war; strengthening struggling pastors and churches; supporting programs and ministries that empower people living in poverty; promoting spiritual depth as the foundation for seeking social justice; and just plain being a decent human being.

Surely Bob has, as James says, “become a kind of first fruit of God’s new creation.” Surely Bob is blooming forever in the Paradise we were always meant to tend. With joy, with justice, non-violence, and love. He was, after all, a “Master Gardener.”

And so we celebrate Bob on this day of “bearing witness to the resurrection.” Which, I have been insisting all year, is what we do every Sunday and not just Easter Sunday. And not just at special memorial services we title “Witness to the Resurrection.” On this day, every Sunday, we come with our warts and our wounds and our crying out for wholeness to proclaim with conviction that our resurrecting God is not yet done with this provisional kingdom that is the messed up crazy world we call the church and the world beyond the church. That God is and has already and forever been about the business of transforming us into a resurrection redemption. That God’s resurrecting promise can lead us through whatever “lonesome valley” is stretched out before us and behind us. And that not one thing, not one thing in all of creation can separate us from the love of God we know in Christ. The kind of love that brings us back to the garden. Restored to its present goodness. As in the Song of Solomon. Which is our other lectionary text today.

“Arise, my love, my fair one,” our beloved says in this “most excellent song,” “and come away; for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come. The voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance.” And can’t you just hear our God saying these words to Bob?

And can’t you just hear in the fresh, fragrant, and flagrant erotic real-human-beings –desperately-in-love-with-each-other poetry of the Song of Songs the Word of God to us this morning? Allegorizing forever the love match between Carol and Bob Frere. And the lush garden we were always meant to tend. And the sacred union between God and God’s people. And between Christ and the Church. Can’t you just hear in this Song of Most Excellent Songs the voice of our beloved God, in all of our struggles, and all of our woe, and all of our hope-filled fruitless and fruitful seeking of Wisdom, “leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills, gazing in at the windows, looking through the lattice.”

Saying, “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.”

Bienvenidos, people of God.

Welcome Home.