Brooding

Sermon by Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist
Second Sunday in Lent

Genesis 1:1-3

Luke 13:31-35  

“No bird sang in the sky,” when Christ, the author and the giver of life, through whom all things were created—including you, including me—finally falls victim to Herod. That cruel ‘fox,’ as Jesus calls him in our Gospel reading from Luke. When Jesus finally falls victim to the Roman Empire with which Herod has colluded all his life, and to which the healing and liberating and life-giving non-violent Christ has been such a terrifying threat.

No bird sang in the sky, perhaps because in that moment of his death the earth returns to the formlessness of its early origin. Devoid of the life that gives it meaning. And the waters of chaos reign once more. And darkness re-covers the face of the deep. And just for a moment the violence of that chaos has won . . .

So instead of singing, the birds start cawing, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem. City of peace. Why do you keep doing this to your prophets?’

It has become an article of faith, in the two thousand years since the tragic death of Jesus on this cruel instrument of Roman torture and terror, to say it is the will of God for this particular child of God to die in this particular way. It has become an article of faith to say, in fact, that God intends the cruel torture of the cross because we are all such awful people, and we all deserve such an awful punishment.

My favorite way of phrasing this common understanding of the cross is to say. “We all deserve a big old whooping, but Jesus took the whooping for us.”

It’s what we think, isn’t it? It is what we have been taught to think. That our sins are so bad they require a violent act from a violent God to satisfy God’s violent rage.

But what if it isn’t true?

What if it just is not true?

What if this violent rage of a violent God exacting a violent vengeance is an understanding of the cross that has its roots in the eleventh century and not in the time of Jesus?

What if, as our Luke text suggest, God sent Jesus to Jerusalem not to die for us but to live for us. Like a mother hen gathering her beloved chicks back into the brood.

What if the whole point of Jesus is to give physical form to the ‘mother hen’ Spirit of God that swooped over the chaotic waters of Genesis when God was beginning to create the earth? That brooded over the chaos. And calmed it. And incubated it. And gave the chaos a generating darkness so that God could speak light into it. And so the darkness of violent death could not ever overcome it.

What if the whole point of Jesus is to show the children of God a way to waddle—without fear—right back home to God’s nest. Nestled beneath God’s wings. Resting along the cool calm waters of our baptism. With room enough for us all. Even those other “chicks” we’d really rather not have as siblings. But whom are still God’s beautiful, precious, pleasing children.

Whom God loves with all her soul.

It is, after all, the ‘mother hen’ Jesus who swoops across the countryside from one chaotic village to the next. Casting out demons and performing cures. Today, tomorrow, and the next day. Until the work is finished.

Now the language of ‘demons’ in this story may sound strange or even scary to us, but for the first century follower of Jesus it just means any kind of internal or external force of feeling or disease or social condition that rips through our bodies and spirits beyond our ability to control it with our cognition. It means something like the violent rage that can well up within any of us without warning when we feel threatened. Or the terror that gets triggered in a time of post-traumatic stress. Or the mental illness that overpowers us even when we try so hard to tamp it down. Or the racism or sexism or homophobia that ripples through our common life even when we think  we have already overcome. 

And these demons can come to define us, can they not? We can forget who we really are. Trading the font of identity for the waters of chaos. But Jesus does not. He knows our demons are more like a fox in the henhouse when the madness takes over. He knows the true font of our identity is formed by the hovering, brooding, life-giving ‘mother hen’ Spirit of God. Not the chaos. And he wants to heal us. And restore us. His brood of beloved children. Not condemn us. And so he does. With the love of a God who created us good. And in us is incredibly pleased.

It is part of our denomination-wide Lenten Journey of Peace Discernment on this Second Sunday in Lent to consider why we in the church keep on clinging to violence—even in our most treasured teachings of the tradition about the cross—when the clear witness of Jesus and the early church lead us on the path of nonviolent love instead.

And as far as I can tell, our ‘brooding’ over our love of violence must begin with this fundamental question: can we who are human fully receive the unqualified, unquenchable, unconditional, universal, ‘mother hen’ steadfast love of God deep in our soul. Literally ‘bred’ into the fabric of creation. Calling us home to an all-affirming shalom. Through the waters of our baptism. Calming the chaos?

Can we really believe God just wants to love us? And love one another? Not because of something we do. Or don’t do. But just because God loves God’s children!

Or must we instead keep insisting on our inherent sinfulness. And your inherent sinfulness. And their inherent sinfulness. Whoever “they” may be. Worthy only of a great big whooping. And thereby attacking one another over and over and over again in a constant pecking order based on that sinfulness that lands us right back where we started in the beginning. With the earth as a desert wasteland. And the waters of chaos raging. And no bird singing. Because we keep on killing the beloved children of God.

The truth is that Jesus really does show us a different way. Right here in Luke’s gospel. When the fear of Herod really could stop him in his tracks, he says no, I am still God’s beloved child and God is still very pleased with me. And I am healing the demons that rage in our midst through the steadfast love of God. And I could flee this threat, or I could fight this threat, but instead I will love this threat and lament this threat with the clucking of a mother hen. Who keeps on calling the chicks home to a loving all-affirming shalom through the waters of our baptism.

The choice Jesus makes—to love and lament the threat, instead of fighting or fleeing it—is the one available to us all in our Lenten Journey discerning God’s peace. It is literally “bred” into the fabric of creation, according to Genesis, through that hovering, swooping, brooding Spirit of God that comes upon the waters of chaos and finds a way to calm them. Slowly. Steadily. Patiently. With care.

Yes, the threats of chaos will always come to us. In ways large and small. From within our own families and from around the globe. And even—dare I say—from within our very selves. And the demons get stoked and the chaos starts to swirl and the font of our identity starts to fade. But the brooding ‘mother hen’ love of God remains. Present with us from the dawn of time. And we get to return to the shadow of its wings if we want to. And I think we really want to.

“In what ways does the church today practice—or fail to practice—Jesus’ message of nonviolence?’ the Peace Discernment question asks of us. What legacy might we reclaim in our 21^st century context?

Many of you met Janie Spahr when she stood trial here one year ago for her ministry of blessing the marriages of same-gender loving couples as a Presbyterian minister. Nowhere in the church have I seen the brooding ‘mother hen’ love of God, in the face of violent threat, more actively proclaimed in word and in deed than through Janie’s ministry, and others who follow in her footsteps.

For decades Janie has served on the front lines of the movement for lgbt equality in church and society, healing and casting out demons of hatred and despair. And for decades the great ‘foxes’ of Herods have threatened her way. And the Pharisees in their fear encouraged her to flee the wrath, urging her not to “divide the church” with her ministry.

But she never gave in. She didn’t flee, but she also didn’t fight back. At least not on their terms.

Instead she has stood firm in her identity as the Beloved Child of God, saying simply, “I am healing in God’s name. And so should you. I am gathering all of God’s beloved children into the brood. And so should you. I am blessed to come in the name of the life-giving Spirit of God. And you can be, too!”

It has taken a long time. It has taken too long. And we sometimes feel we still have too long to go. But because of the nonviolent ‘mother hen’ Jesus love of Janie—and so many like her throughout the centuries in the civil rights movement and the women’s movement and all the peace and justice movements of the tradition—we are closer to living as the beloved community of God’s children than we ever have been before.

This, my friends, is what the Jesus ministry looks like.

The brooding, ‘mother hen,’ beloved community. Facing our own demons. Loving onward and upward. Changing hearts and minds and spirits along the path. Even in the face of fox that threatens the way.

And it is what we mean at Madison Square when we say, “welcome home.” You beautiful, beloved, fabulous brood.

May every one of you live in peace.

Amen.

Resisting What Makes for War

Sermon by Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist


Luke 4:1-13


“You are God’s beloved child.

“God is very pleased with you.

“As a creature of the earth . . . you will return to the earth:

“ashes to ashes,

“dust to dust,

“but always in the light of God’s everlasting love . . .”


With these words we began our Lenten journey toward Jerusalem with Jesus last Wednesday in our service of ashes and oil.

We gathered around this table in a vigil of prayer, naming those places and people and powers that rage within us and among us. That need the peace of Christ to dwell richly in our hearts. Singing for that peace to begin on earth and to begin with us. Right here. Right now, as we begin our discernment of Christ’s peace together.

We were and we are, in a very real sense in this Season of Lent, doing what Jesus himself does when he goes to the desert to face his own demons in the lection from Luke that is our lesson for today.

“You are my beloved child,” he has heard God say in his baptism in the Jordan. “I am very pleased with you.” But you are not human forever, he must also hear. You will die. As every one of us does. And, in our own culture of avoidance of death, as every one of us too often forgets.

These bodies of ours are mortal. Of the earth, even though they breathe the spirit of God. And it is the way of the earth that our bodies will die, as does the body of Jesus. Even though he, and we, are always God’s beloved and pleasing children. The question of our baptism, then, is how we should live in the light of the full knowledge that we will also die. And how we should die in a way that will contribute to the ongoing flourishing of the life that lives on in our wake.

There is no better place to ponder these questions than the desert. Where the fragility of life and the reality of death are ever-present in body, mind, and spirit. Which is why we find Jesus there in his post-baptism self-examination and preparation for ministry on this first Sunday in our Lenten discernment of peace.

Christians often read this story of Jesus in the desert as an individual series of temptations for an individual man and his ministry and then apply the reactions of Jesus to our individual dealings with temptation. But for Jesus—and for all first century Jews who live in the land of the Roman Empire—the questions that come in the desert are far beyond one individual’s cycle of life and death as a creature of the earth. The questions that come in the desert are about living and dying as a people in the peace that passes understanding. A peace that is emphatically unlike the Pax Romana—or ‘Roman Peace’—that governs every part of their lives.

For Jesus—and for all first century Jews who live in the land of the Roman Empire—the Pax Romana that is supposed to enrich human flourishing is really about suppressing the resistance of a conquered people by military might. And co-opting their means of subsistence living for economic exploitation by a far-away king.

For Jesus—and for all first century Jews who live in the land of the Roman Empire—the question of baptism is about how to resist this crushing of life all around them through a Pax Romana that is the emphatic opposite of the peaceable kingdom of God. In Galilee, where Jesus grew up, ritual purification of water and desert self-examination were about recruiting resistance movements and fostering the simmering ferment of nationalism, much more than they were about personal piety.

And so for Jesus the desert becomes a testing ground for sorting out the best and most faithful way to resist what makes for the war of the Roman Peace. Now the Romans ironically describe their ‘peace’ as feeding the hungry, ruling the world with justice, and protecting the people from themselves. But the people know the Romans do this by commercializing the local economy for their own advantage and cultivating a dependence on Rome as the occupying power. For those resisting the Roman Peace that really makes for war, a post-baptism desert self-examination and preparation would normally go one of two ways: the way of the warrior preparing for armed revolt. Or the way of the purist creating a separatist community in the wilderness far from collusion with the empire.

But in the face of temptation to simply replace the violent peace of the Roman Empire with a power-hungry ‘violent peace’ of his own, Jesus finds a third way: engaging the powers of greed and power and idolatry through the nonviolent radical love of God for the enemy. Yes, I will feed the hungry, he says, but I will do it by blessing the gifts of God and inviting the community to share what they have and not by pretending to be a miracle worker. Yes, I will proclaim the regime change of violent Roman rule, but I will do it by living God’s kingdom of justice and peace and not by returning evil for evil. Yes, I will test God’s power to protect the righteous, he says, but I will do it by trusting this protection throughout all of eternity and not merely through this mortal body.

Yes, I will resist what makes for war, Jesus says. But not the way the Romans do. The way God does. Through steadfast, enduring, never-failing, forgiving LOVE. For enemies as well as friends. For self as well as God.

And so he does.


But by and large his disciples cannot figure out how to follow in his footsteps.

Even in his own time, Peter rushes for the sword in defense of his master when the nonviolent way gets really, really hard. Even in our own Scriptures the final book of Revelation envisions a cosmic battle between good and evil with the warrior Jesus. Even within the first few centuries of the emerging religion that rose from the resurrection, the Roman Empire claims the power of the cross of Christ to lead victory into war, rather than reshape their swords into plowshares.

And the truth is the peaceable kingdom of God still has not yet come, as much as Jesus proclaimed that it would. At least not in its final and forever form. And we who follow him two thousand years later face questions of our own in resisting what makes for war as we enter the desert of Lent. Fully claimed as the beloved and pleasing children of God. Fully conscious of the reality of our mortality. Fully convicted of the violent ‘anti-peace’ that pervades our every step. And fully convinced that the individual and the international struggle for peace are connected.

So what do we do?

The Presbyterian Church as a national denomination has made clear our conviction that the vocation of peacemaking calls to everyone who follows Christ. On the one hand, we should not retreat into our desert enclave. But on the other, we should not return evil for evil.

In the Confession of 1967 we say that “God’s reconciliation in Jesus Christ is the ground of the peace, justice, and freedom among nations which all powers of government are called to serve and defend.” That “the church, in its own life, is called to practice the forgiveness of enemies and to commend to the nations as practical politics the search for cooperation and peace” and that “this search requires that nations pursue fresh and responsible relations across every line of conflict, even at risk to national security, to reduce areas of strife and to broaden international understanding.”

We say that “reconciliation among nations becomes particularly urgent as countries develop nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, diverting their [hu]manpower and resources from constructive uses and risking the annihilation of [hu]mankind.” And we say that, while “nations may serve God’s purposes in history, the church which identifies the sovereignty of any one nation or any one way of life with the cause of God denies the Lordship of Christ and betrays its calling.”

At the same time as we say all of this, we do not say that pacifism is our universal and unequivocal response to violence. The Presbyterian Church affirms the classic teaching of the Reformed tradition that “God alone is the Lord of the conscience” and supports individual Christian conviction across the spectrum. From conscientious objectors to four-star generals and everyone in between. We may stand as a denomination in opposition to particular wars we believe are not “just,” but we will also as a general rule support humanitarian intervention and the military defense of a cause we believe to be “just.”

And that may be what we continue to do in the years to come. But the question that is before us now in this Season of Lent is whether or not we might rediscover the “third way” between pacifism and “just war” Jesus discovered for himself in the desert: the way of nonviolent active resistance to the things that make for war.

Can we, as the living Body of Christ today, hasten the day when war and violence are no longer inevitable means for resolving conflicts? Internally, interpersonally, or internationally? Are there other ways to heal ourselves and our communities? Or to provide protection and security? If so, what are those ways? For ourselves, and for the world?

These are the questions we take with us into the desert of our Lenten discernment. Without pre-meditated answers. But open to the outcome that the Spirit has to offer.

Trusting that in every step along the way of the desert discernment

We are still God’s beloved children

And God is still very pleased with us

As children of the earth we will return to the earth

Ashes to ashes

Dust to dust

But always in the light of God’s never-ending love.

Amen.

Total Trasparency

Sermon by Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist


Luke 9: 37-43a


I had just begun my second year of seminary when news of yet another mass shooting reached our community. It was an Amish School for girls this time. Do you remember? It was October 2006. Half of the girls were killed. Half of them were wounded.

One of my sister students was heartsick and none of her normal coping mechanisms were working. So a few days after the shooting she called out to anyone on campus with eyes to see and ears to hear to gather with her in the chapel for a time of prayer and supplication.

Sarah was one of the most politically active students on campus, someone you would expect to rally the rest of us for something more like gun control legislation than for a prayer vigil. But this shooting had gotten to her. So we gathered and we prayed. We lit candles, we sang songs, we cried, we held each other tight.

And our chaplain, the Rev. Kerry Maloney, said the following words that have guided my understanding of prayer ever since: “My belief about prayer,” she said, “is that it transcends time and space. In prayer,” she said, “we are totally transparent, with God and with one another and with the total transparency of all creation. In prayer we have nothing more to hide. And the truth of who we really are—the good, the bad, and the ugly—is already transformed in the light of God’s never-ending love.

“When we pray,” she said, “we step out of chronological time and connect to the entire cosmos throughout the ages. With everything and everyone that has already occurred. And with everything and everyone that will one day come to be. So in this moment, as we pray, we are standing right beside those girls. We are with them in our prayer. Bearing witness, which is what the word martyr really means. Just as God is with them, bearing witness. Even in the moment they feel most alone, most afraid, most forsaken by God and by humanity. And these candles we light in the midst of this darkness surround them in their fear with light and with love. And they are transfigured with Christ.

And they are not ever alone!”

I have been thinking of that prayer vigil for a long time now, and the prayer vigils that emerge across the world after any tragedy, including the one here at Madison Square after the Sandy Hook shooting last December. A prayer vigil is one of the few things we know how to do when there really is nothing we can do to make sense of the senseless violence swirling all around us.

But if we do it right a prayer vigil is far more than a fairly benign act of comfort. If we do it right a prayer vigil is a radical moment of transformation. Or transfiguration, to use the language that is given to this particular Sunday in our liturgical year. Because if we do it right a prayer vigil creates the space for total transparency, before God and one another. As we drop the masks we wear that pretend to keep us secure and own up to our own feelings of guilt and rage and despair and violence. And trust them to the compassionate heart of God in the hope of a resurrection redemption.

If we do it right a prayer vigil insists we are not alone in the fractures and the fragments of a violent and vindictive shattering. Because all that has ever been and ever will be surrounds us with grace and healing and wholeness and hope. With fuel for the journey of faithful action that must—without question—come next.

This is what is happening in the story of the transfiguration of Jesus we have just heard in Luke’s Gospel.

In the passage that precedes the lectionary text for today Jesus has warned his disciples of the violence that is to come when they head toward Jerusalem. Now he may have known full well exactly what was going to happen on the cross. Or he may simply have known that his way of radical justice and love would draw the wrath of the world he came to heal.

But either way the violent rage that rips through his flesh on the cross that is to come . . . most certainly requires a prayer vigil in response. Which is, if you think about it, what Christian worship is all about.

With an eye toward this cross, in total transparency about the violence in our midst (that would claim even the very flesh of God), we gather every Sunday . . . to pray. In a very real sense every act of Christian worship is a vigil of prayer in the face of violence, trusting the total transparency of who we really are into the light of God, who will transfigure our violent ways. Meaning that in our prayer vigil called worship God holds the violence of the world in healing hope and transforms it into a glimmer of gleaming grace.

If my seminary chaplain is right, then the prayer vigil that Christian worship has been about for these two thousand years is right now pulling us out of space and time and connects us to the whole of the cosmos. And we are RIGHT NOW on that mountain with Jesus, as he prays for the strength to confront the chaos that surrounds him.

And we are, like Jesus, surrounded with the wisdom of the ages: the light of Moses and Elijah and all who have come before. Gathering the strength and perseverance and trust we need to come back down off that mountain of prayer as the beloved and chosen children of God to confront the convulsing spirit of violence within our own crowd. And heal it. And restore it to life.

This is where we find the boy in Luke’s post-transfiguration story. A child who is gripped by a spirit of violence. A parent who is desperate for healing and has nowhere to turn. And have we not heard that story over and over and over again. A parent of a child with a violent spirit begging the disciples of Jesus to cast it out. But they could not. Because they . . . and we . . . are still too afraid.

The violent spirit is beyond the boy’s power to control it. And beyond the parent’s power to confront it. But Jesus, whose violence has already been transfigured into nonviolent radical love, in this vigil of prayer, is beyond fear. Jesus, who has come down from that mountain, is surrounded for all time by the light of the love of God in our prayers for him. And he can heal this poor conflicted boy and restore him to a life of peace in community because he has already known the grace of transfigured violence.

And we can, too.

Imagine if we entered this Discernment of Peace in the Season of Lent in the same attitude as the vigil of prayer that accompanied the Transfiguration of Christ and allowed him to rebuke the violent spirit in love? Imagine if we live in Lent in the light of the love that will not ever let us go, in a true vigil of prayer, in total transparency of who we really are, sorting through the fear the anger the pain the despair and the violence that grips us, like the demon that grips this young boy in Luke’s Gospel?

Imagine if we came through this prayer vigil in the Season of Lent with the courage to stand with Jesus, in the light of God’s transfiguring love, and love the boy who is gripped beyond his own control instead of condemning him out of our own fear and anger?

Imagine if we could find another way to face the fury of the violent spirit that rages in our midst. Because we have already faced the violent spirit that rages in our selves. And known it to be transfigured in the healing light of God

This is what our Lenten Process of Peace Discernment is trying to find out.

Presbyterians across the nation in this Season of Peace Discernment are invited to “meet the Prince of Peace, as if for the first time.” To discover again his life of radical, non-violent love in the face of fear. To return again and again to this vigil of prayer that surrounds the violence of the cross with light and love. Not as the will of a vengeful and violent God, but as the truest symbol of God’s suffering solidarity with the violence of humanity. A suffering that God has already transfigured into a nonviolent witness for justice and peace.

If we do it right, this Season of Lenten Discernment for Peace will require total transparency. Standing in the light of the violent deaths of our children and rebuking the convulsing spirit of rage that has made it so commonplace. We will have to take a hard, long look in the mirror of our own violent rage in response and pray for Christ to cast it out.

And we will have to journey to Jerusalem with Jesus, in our own way for this day, loving our enemies and praying for those who persecute us, in exposing the truth of the violence all around us.

But if we do it right this prayer vigil we call Christian worship in the Season of Lent can transform our violence. And heal it. And make us whole. And we will all be “astounded at the greatness of God.” Just like the ones who watched this boy being healed in Luke’s Gospel today.

And we will not be alone. And we will find what we seek.

So let the prayer vigil of our Lenten discernment for peace begin . . .

Amen.