The Gift of Love

By Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist

1 Corinthians 13:4-8

 

“Who do you love?” “Tell me who you love.” These were the words that came out of my mouth as I tried to minister with Mary in her hospital room, as she was crying out in pain in the middle of the night, when nothing else would calm her down.

“Who do you love?”

I was a seminarian, spending the summer as a hospital chaplain in an internship program called Clinical Pastoral Education. And I was terrified. It felt like “ministry training boot camp.” It was one of those situations where we  parachuted into a completely foreign land with no maps and no radios, relying on instinct and prayer and a command to go wherever we were called and to figure out whatever we were supposed to do only after we had already arrived.

On that night early on in the summer, the call came at three in the morning. “We can’t calm her down,” the nurses said when I arrived. Mary—their patient—was writhing in pain, crying out for her children, and just plain hurting. The nurses had other patients to attend. They had given her all the pain medication they could, they had soothed her wounds as best they could, they had done everything they knew how to do. So they called me. And I, of course, was blonde and clueless.

I took her hand. I asked her what had happened. She said she had been in a car accident. That her son had been with her. That he had been hurt but not killed.

And then silence and more cluelessness on my end. More writhing and crying on her end. So I asked her where she hurt, and she told me. And it occurred to me that chaplains are supposed to offer prayer, so I began to pray aloud for each of those places in Mary that hurt. Hoping the prayer would calm her down.

It did not.

Mary still writhed in pain, she still cried out in anger and agony. And I began to panic.

It was then, in my moment of despair, that the words just came out of my mouth. “Who do you love, Mary? Tell me who you love.” And there was no way these were my words because my ability to think had gone out the window. They were God’s words through me. And as I heard them reverberate through my ears I knew they were exactly the right words because they were God’s words. And I said, “tell me who you love, Mary. Tell me who you love.”

Her response was immediate. “I love my children,” she said. And you could tell by the smile that just barely graced her face that she was imagining their faces in her mind’s eye.

“Tell me about your children,” I said, with relief. And Mary spent the next twenty minutes describing their young lives in vivid detail. What they looked like, what they ate, where they would go hiking together in the West Virginia hills. What she wanted to say to them now that they were separated by her accident.

As she talked about the ones she loved her breathing slowed. Her jaw unclenched. Her eyes drooped. And I was relieved. Love had worked when nothing else had. And as I rested her hand back down on the hospital bed and prepared to leave the bedside of a woman who was clearly at peace, she whispered to me, “thank you. I love you, too.”

If salvation has anything to do with healing—which I keep on insisting that it does—you could say the love of God saved Mary in that hour of agony. And if salvation has anything to do with grace in the midst of panic—which I keep on insisting that it does—you could say the love of God saved me, as her fumbling minister. And if salvation has anything to do with a mother wanting desperately to care for her children—which I keep on insisting that it does—you could say the parental love of God that suffers right along with us is imagining every one of our faces in her mind’s eye. What we look like, what we like to eat, what he wants to say to us when he feels so very far removed from us.

If salvation has anything do to with healing and grace and parenting, we can understand why the apostle Paul, himself will insist that while faith, hope, and love are all important, “the greatest of these is love.”

Love is patient, Paul says. Love is kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. It simply wants to heal. It simply wants to love. It simply wants us “to bear witness” to that love.

It is this part of the Madison Square mission statement, “to bear witness, in both word and in deed, to the universal and unconditional love of God as made known through Jesus of Nazareth” that is before us for reflection on this second Sunday in Lent. And it is this part of the Madison Square mission statement that is, in the end, perhaps the most difficult to define. As the old adage goes, you just know it when you see it. You just know it when you experience it. You just know it when you live it. Like in that hospital room with Mary.

Because the truth is that the universal and unconditional love of God is already here, just like it was with Mary and her children. We just have to be reminded of it. We just have to open our hands to receive it . . . and extend it. And I would suggest that we are doing this very thing right now, this morning, as we bear witness to the love of God in the ministry of care and compassion extended by one of our members—Norma Gay—to another one of our members—Nelda Muelker—in the waning years of her life.

Over a decade ago, Nelda was involved in a debilitating accident that left her in a coma for three months. She was eventually transferred to a nursing home, where Norma became her number one visitor and companion these many years. Norma’s witness to the love of God in Nelda’s life became a steady stream of support in a time of suffering and loneliness. To the point that Nelda named Norma as the point of contact for the nursing home upon her death.

Norma has asked that we remember Nelda in our worship today, which I want to do now and also in a few moments in our liturgy for communion. I, of course, did not know Nelda, so I have asked those of you who did know her to share how you remember her. And the smiles on your faces told me all I needed to know. You loved her. And she loved you.

Nelda was truly a beloved child of God. She was a character! She was the church’s “character.” She was a beloved personality who touched your lives in ways you didn’t even realize until she was gone. She took massive notes during worship, and she sat where she wanted to sit, and she didn’t care if it was “your” spot because there are no “reserved” seats in this “open and welcoming” congregation! And she was just plain going to sit where God wanted her to sit! And she loved this church. And you loved her.

And she loved Christmas Eve at this church. And she loved singing “Silent Night” and lighting a candle of hope in the darkness. And she didn’t care one bit when the light shining in the darkness set her scarf on fire, she just kept right on singing “all is calm and all is (most assuredly) bright”! And you loved her. And she loved you. And Norma loved her on your behalf, bearing witness in word and in deed to the universal and unconditional love of God. Until the very end.

And if salvation has anything to do with feasting at the table of grace forevermore—which I keep on insisting that it does—you could say the love of God is saving all of us in this hour as we commune with Nelda Muelker at this table of sustenance, and with all of the saints from ages past and yet to come. And as we invite everyone who is wounded and suffering or just plain lonely to join us for a meal of grace and peace where all are finally loved with the universal and unconditional love of God and where all are finally fed forever with the bread of life and the cup of saving love.

“Who do you love?” God said—through me—to Mary, in that space of deepest pain and suffering. “Who do you love?” God said to Norma, in responding to Nelda lo these many years. “Who do you love?” we may even ask of God. And of course the answer is, “all of you . . . my children.” “And if the Lord puts someone in your path,” Norma says, “You’re derelict if you don’t take care of them.” Which is what our Madison Square mission is all about, in the end.

And we are, every one of us, just parachuting in to this foreign planet we are on. Going wherever we are called to go and help whomever God puts in our path. And the love of God is already there, just waiting to be revealed.

I pray it may be so.

Amen.

The Gift of Covenant

By Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist

Genesis 9:8-17
Galatians 3:27-29

In the early church the Season of Lent was embraced as a journey of spiritual fortitude for candidates preparing for baptism into the covenant community of Christ. It was a journey that culminated in a powerful ritual of initiation through the dark hours of Holy Saturday and into the dawn of Easter morning. It was a communal affair of celebration and hope designed to discipline its candidates through a series of spiritual practices that would quite literally transform them into a community of equals: a covenant community in Christ living in radical resurrection resistance to the powers of domination and exploitation and crucifixion swirling all around them, where Greek surely overpowered Jew, where free surely overpowered slave, where male surely overpowered female. But not for them, because they were “one in Christ Jesus.”

Adults who wanted to join this covenant community of Christ presented themselves to church leaders for a process that was, according to theologians Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Parker, “akin to applying for, attending, and graduating from college while also training for an Olympic team sport and undergoing group therapy” (Saving Paradise, 117.)  Everything from the occupation of the baptismal candidates to their knowledge of Scripture to their generosity in almsgiving was subject to intense scrutiny. And throughout the Season of Lent they were counseled to practice the spiritual disciplines of study, prayer, fasting, abstinence, voluntary poverty, and non-violence. Practices that we are today invited to continue in our own Season of Lent, even if we are among the “already baptized.”

We who are Protestant might dismiss this kind of preparation for baptism in the Season of Lent as overly legalistic or dependent on “works-righteousness.” We baptize infants, after all, who have no knowledge of what we are doing. All time is God’s time, we would say. And salvation is by God’s grace alone through faith alone. And I do believe those things are the right things to do and to proclaim.

But imagine what this ritual of spiritual endurance in preparation for baptism in the season of Lent meant for a first or second or third century Jew living as a crushed religious and ethnic minority under Greco-Roman culture. Or imagine that you have lived your days as a Gentile citizen of the Roman Empire imbibing the superiority of the Greco-Roman world in your mother’s milk without ever having to notice the heavy price that is paid by those who do not share the supremacy of your culture. Are you really going to believe “there is no longer Jew or Greek it? Are you really going to live it? How?

Or imagine what this ritual of spiritual endurance meant for first or second or third century slaves subject to the whim of their masters, with no ownership of their very bodies (which biblical scholars are beginning to concede were subject to the systematic rape and abuse and torture of those who enslaved them). Imagine what it means for the enslaver himself to give up his ownership of other human beings—an ownership he has been cultivated to expect as an entitlement—and learn to live with them as equals. Are you really going to believe “there is no longer slave or free”? Are you really going to live it? How?

Or imagine what this ritual of spiritual endurance meant for first or second or third century women, whose voices were not welcome as legitimate testimony in a court of law, whose names are barely mentioned or flat-out erased from religious history. And then imagine what this ritual meant for first or second or third century men, who have been taught from the time they were born to crush anything vulnerable within themselves. And then imagine what this ritual might mean for us in our senseless and irresponsible and flat-out Self-Inflicted-Nonsense over sexual orientation and gender identity. Are we really going to believe “there is no longer male and female”? Are we really going to live it? How?

The truth is it takes a disciplined, dedicated spiritual endurance to live as a covenant community in Christ. That is why the preparation for baptism in the Season of Lent was so rigorous in the early church. They knew that living as the covenant community of Christ required more than intellectual assent to a good idea. It required a practiced dedication to study, prayer, fasting, abstinence, voluntary poverty, nonviolence. An examination of conscience. An exorcism of anger and fear and greed. They could not “think” their way into this covenant. They had to “practice” their way into it.

By the time baptismal candidates in the first and second and third centuries who truly wanted to join this covenant community gathered in the dead of night on Holy Saturday, they really were prepared to become a new creation Christ where there was no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female. Where they really were “one” with all of creation the way God had intended it all along. They shed their old clothes before entering the baptismal pool, symbolically leaving their old life behind. They presented their naked bodies for anointing with oil, the same way we presented our foreheads for anointing on Ash Wednesday. They stepped into the pool and confessed their faith as the bishop immersed them in the cleansing, healing, renewing waters. And they rose again to new life as Easter morning dawned.

The deacons of the community wrapped the newly baptized in a white linen robe, “clothing them with Christ,” and leading them into the mysteries of the Eucharist. And that ancient baptismal formula from Galatians 3:28 was very likely spoken in the early hours of Easter Sunday—every Easter Sunday—as each newly baptized member emerged, naked, from the ritual waters of baptism and claimed a new life as a member of this covenant community . . .

Why am I sharing this with you today?

Of the six things the Madison Square mission statement proclaims you want to be and do, the very first of them is this: “to be a community that is open and welcoming to all people, without regard for nationality, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or socio-economic status.” Sound familiar? To me, it is an awful lot like Galatians 3:28, updated for 21^st century American Christianity: there is no longer American or un-American; there is no longer white or black or Hispanic or middle-eastern; there is no longer straight or gay; there is no longer rich and poor; for all of us are one in Christ Jesus. And we are supposed to live like it!

This is the covenant community of equals we claim in our baptism. It sounds an awful lot like the covenant with creation we claim in the rainbow from the book of Genesis. And I have to say, as someone who is still relatively new in your midst, I think you do it remarkably well.

But Lent is about self-examination and penitence and turning from the ways in which we fail to live up to the covenant. And my word of caution in meditating on this part of our mission is to be clear that we really are rooted in the covenant community we are called to be in Christ. The one we claim in our baptism. The one that goes back to the beginning of creation and is sealed by that rainbow as God’s promise for all creation. It is not about being “politically correct.” Or . . . even as much as I love you for it . . . about being “the little church that leans a little to the left.” It is about the covenant we proclaim for the kingdom of God. Period.

And my word of caution today is that it really does take a disciplined, dedicated spiritual endurance to live as a covenant community in Christ. As well as we do this at Madison Square, the truth is that we aren’t there yet, either. If we pat ourselves on the back thinking we have figured it out and others have not . . . well . . . we have entirely missed the point. Because the truth is that we need the community to come around us and walk beside us and challenge us when we fail our part in the Covenant.

That is why we have the Season of Lent. Not to beat ourselves up for how bad we are. But to join in a disciplined, dedicated, spirit-filled reminder of how good God has created us to be. In study, prayer, fasting, abstaining. Asking God to transform us into the community of equals we say we want to be, and trusting God to make it so . . . on that Easter Sunday morning . . . when the sun rises . . . and the resurrection dawns . . . and in Christ we really are a new creation.

This is our Lenten mission. It is our Madison Square mission. It is our Christian mission.

I pray it may it be so.

Amen.

Joy Comes in the Morning

By Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist

Staff Appreciation Sunday

 

 

Psalm 30:1-5; Mark 1:40-45

It was a Holy Communion last Sunday, was it not? Through Mark’s Gospel lesson last week, we found ourselves at the home of Simon Peter. And we found, in Simon’s mother-in-law, a resurrected minister of grace ready to serve as our mentor in the movement to “welcome home” the people of God. And we came to the table of sustenance in celebration of the joyful feast of the people of God . . .

. . . and then we left the building . . . and then we went to work.

Whether it is a paying job or a non-paying job, we get out of bed on a Monday morning—after a Sunday morning—and we get to work.

And so the question is this: is our Sunday morning communion strong enough to wake us up singing “joy comes in the morning,” in the words of Psalm 30, on the Monday after the Sunday when we are refreshed at the table of sustenance and reborn into the world as a new creation for justice and peace? Or is Monday morning more like a blaring alarm clock demanding our allegiance long before we are really ready to get out of bed? Or is it, more likely, a little of both?

Because today is the first annual “Staff Appreciation Sunday” here at Madison Square, I have been thinking a lot this week about what it means as a person of faith to get up in the morning and go to work—joyfully or begrudgingly—whether our work is explicitly for the church, or if we live out our calling in the so-called “secular sphere.” And of course I would argue that there is no separation between the secular and the sacred in the end. That all work is God’s work. That all places are God’s places. That the gifts and talents God has given us to use in God’s good creation are to the glory of God, no matter where or how we use them.

It was, after all, Jesus, himself, with his work of healing, who left the building with us at the end of our gospel lesson last week. He is on the move this Monday morning in our text this week. Moving from healing in the religious space of the synagogue, to healing in the private space of Simon’s home, to healing in the very public space of the plains of Galilee where people are going about the daily business of their lives. And where the outcast of the outcasts wanders morning after morning in search of a redemption that seems like it will never come.

This outcast of outcasts is a leper. Which in the New Testament means someone with any number of diseases that are highly contagious. Or highly disfiguring. Or just plain scary to the folks who don’t want to be sick. The leper’s disease is so scary that no one will touch him. And no one will give him a job. And no one will welcome him home. Because their tables will be contaminated, and their beds will be contaminated, and their pews will be contaminated. And so the leper wanders. Outcast. Begging. In a kind of open-air solitary confinement.

And having tried everything else, the leper hopes against hope that this man Jesus can help him. And he does. Because that is the job God has given Jesus to do.

2000 years after this 1^st century Monday morning workday for Jesus we can almost hear the healed man singing Psalm 30 to everyone he meets from here on out: God has drawn me up . . . we can hear him croon . . . as if out of the waters of baptism. I cried to God for help, and God healed me, he sings. Weeping may linger for the night. But joy comes in the morning.

And the man who was once a leper is now a preacher. And he spreads the word everywhere he goes about the healing ministry of Jesus, to the point that Jesus can no longer go into town openly but stays out in the country, where the people come to him from everywhere for the same kind of healing the leper found today and Simon’s mother found last week and every one of us found at this table of grace last Sunday, the moment we admitted we needed whatever healing Jesus could offer. The moment we said, “If you choose, you can make me well.” And God said, “I choose.” And we were made well.

Jesus, for his part, is angry. “Snorting with indignation” is how one translator describes him. Furious that the social order has devolved to the point that the walking wounded are left to suffer in silence. Cut off from human contact. Cut off from any means of providing for themselves and their families. Cut off from the work God gave them to do. Cut off in the end, even from God. Furious that his own ministry may now be at risk because he has touched this man who used to be a leper. Because it is all fine and good to raise up a hard-working woman in bed with a fever, but it is something quite different to put your hands on a leper.

Jesus has been contaminated, too, by touching this leper. Now his job is at risk. Who will want to come to him for healing now? Answer? Everyone. “People come to him from every quarter,” the gospel writer says. As soon as they hear there’s a place they can be healed, they come. From everywhere. And Jesus heals them. Because that is the job of Jesus.

It doesn’t seem to matter where Jesus goes or what he says or how he says it. The people are desperate for healing, and they will go wherever they have to go in order to find it. And it is as true for us today as it was for them back then. We want to sing with joy in the morning wherever we are: at church, at home, at work. We just do. And we should!

According to the Presbyterian tradition, the number one job of humankind—the whole point of our existence, really—is simply “to glorify God and enjoy God forever,” no matter what we do to earn a living. Glorify God. Enjoy God. Forever. Period. Now this may sound like a no-brainer, but don’t forget this job description for the human race comes from the same tradition that is linked with the myth of the “Protestant work ethic”! (As if somehow God wants us to suffer through day after day of drudgery on the job in order to garner the keys to the kingdom.)

The truth is, the bottom line is, God wants us to live in joy! God wants us to delight in the good gifts God has created within us. And God wants us to be healed from any illness or injustice that would keep us from offering those gifts to the world. God wants us to delight in our work of creation the same way God delights in the work of God’s creation. For 6 days, God works in joy. And on the 7^th day, God rests. And delights. And starts all over again the next day.

And so do we. If we are faithful.

That is, in the end, why Jesus heals the leper. That is why Jesus heals Simon’s mother-in-law. That is why Jesus heals you and me on these Sundays at the table when our communion binds us to God and one another. Because what we do here on Sunday morning is not really, in the end, about Sunday morning at all. It’s about Monday morning. With the alarm blaring. And the children screaming. And the bones creaking. And the dog barking. And the schoolbus honking. Because even then the sound of psalm 30 can rise from our lips: that God has lifted me up. God has healed me. God has restored me to life. And joy really does come with this morning.

I pray it may be so. Amen.

Proclaiming the Mission

By Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist

Isaiah 40:21-31 

Mark 1:29-39

What is it that ails us this Super Bowl Sunday morning? What fever grips us to the point of desperation for Christ’s healing touch? Is it “Patriot Fever”? Or a desperate determination to drive Eli Manning into the endzone for a go-ahead touchdown?

Or is it a somewhat more refined fire for soaring sopranos to lift our spirits on wings like eagles, as the prophet Isaiah says, higher and higher over the exhaustion of the daily grind or the anxiety of just not ever seeming to be able to make those ends meet or the true reality of our ever-present mortality, so we can remember the whole purpose of human existence. Which is, in the end, “to glorify God and enjoy God forever.” Which is what we re-member when we come here to this table of grace.

All these things and more raise us up out of our beds on a perfectly good sleep-in Sunday, and drive us from the comfort of our own homes to the greater comfort of this home, where the waters of baptismal grace flow unbounded, and the joyful feast of the people of God feeds the deepest hunger of our souls, and the Word of hope carries us forward as a new creation for justice and peace.

All these things and more have also propelled Jesus and Simon and Andrew and James and John to their first century synagogue in Capernaum in Mark’s Gospel reading for this morning. But something is not quite right on this particular Sabbath day. Someone is missing: Simon’s mother-in-law, who is bedridden, burning with “demonic force,” as her community would have interpreted her illness. “Homebound,” as we would say in the church today. She has missed out on the healing and the wholeness and the hope of that morning with Jesus in the gathering of the people. And they miss her. And she misses them.

And so “immediately” after leaving the spiritual home of the synagogue, Simon brings Jesus to the actual home of his mother-in-law and begs Jesus to help her.

Now we could get cynical here. I know the first time I read this story as a budding feminist, I thought, “Sure.” They heal the woman so she can serve them! What a victory for humankind! (A woman’s work is never done.)

But something much more profound is going on here, if we pay close attention to the story. Simon’s mother-in-law is, as far as we can tell, quite poor. Very likely a widow, living with her daughter’s family. Meaning we can assume her sons are either non-existent or no longer living. And Simon, himself—her current provider—is among the class of fishermen that does not even own a boat. He and his brother, Andrew, wade waist deep every day into the water of the Sea of Galilee to cast their nets, gathering whatever fish are swarming in the shoals along the shoreline.

It is a subsistence living. And the way things are going with the Roman commercialization of the Sea of Galilee, even this subsistence living is literally and metaphorically “drying up.” Not only that, but Simon and Andrew have just thrown it all away to join this Jesus guy from Nazareth in proclaiming the coming kingdom of God! Leaving the women of the house truly panicked about what will happen next.

Simon’s mother-in-law may, in fact, be ill. Or she may be flat-out exhausted by the weight of it all. Whatever it is, she could use those wings like eagles right about now. She has been “waiting on God” for an awfully long time. So here comes Jesus. And he could, if he wanted, just patch her up with an ice-pack and a pat on the shoulder and send her running back down the field with two minutes to go in the game. No pain, no gain. All for the good of the team.

Instead he raises her! He raises her.

And by that, I mean that the Gospel writer uses the same word here to describe the raising of Simon’s mother-in-law that is used fifteen chapters later to describe the raising of Jesus. Meaning that the raising of Simon’s mother-in-law is the first resurrection to occur in the gospels! Meaning that in “serving” Jesus and Simon and Andrew and James and John on that Sabbath day—in response to her resurrected life—Simon’s mother-in-law becomes the first “Deacon,” which is the word used here to describe her ministry with her new human family. Meaning that in breaking the bread and pouring the wine that was likely her very simple meal for the disciples of Christ on that Sabbath day, she presides over a truly “holy communion”—in grateful response to her resurrected life—making her the first “minister of Word and Sacrament.”

Simon and Andrew may have left everything to follow Jesus. But it is Simon’s mother-in-law who really “gets it” about what Jesus is trying to do. She who has served so very many for so very long—perhaps out of love, perhaps out of economic necessity—can go no further without the touch of Christ. And it is the same for us. In order to keep serving—out of love or out of necessity—we must be healed, we must be restored, we must be refreshed for new life. And so we come to the table of sustenance and find a new life of our own.

But our healing, our salvation, our resurrected lives gift us with the power of Christ to heal others in the same way. Simon’s mother-in-law, the minister, knows it. We, I hope, know it. Simon, God bless him, does not. He thinks it all depends on Jesus, himself. “Where have you been?” you can almost hear Simon demanding when Jesus has gone off by himself to pray. “We need you!” But Jesus has already ordained the minister of the first “house church” of the Jesus movement. She can keep the ministry of healing going on just fine without him.

Jesus has been called to proclaim the mission throughout the rest of Galilee. And in the preaching and the teaching and the pastoral care of Jesus throughout the neighboring towns, the home of Simon’s resurrected mother-in-law becomes the prototype for all of the house churches in which the earliest Christians would gather for over two hundred years as a new human family to claim that same resurrecting power for themselves: by serving one another, by feeding at the table of sustenance, by claiming the waters of baptism for themselves.

In fact, I would go so far as to suggest that the house church of Simon Peter’s mother-in-law is the model for how we do ministry here at Madison Square today. Because healing is, right here, right now, for all who would join in this Sabbath grace welcome home. With the mother-in-law of Simon soaring on wings like eagles, inviting us to join Jesus here at the table for a resurrection feast.

But it doesn’t end here. Because healing is—right here, right now—for all who cannot seem to find their way to this particular home in this particular place on this particular day. And our job as the resurrected people of God is to proclaim that mission as far and as wide as we can.

It just so happens that the Mission Committee of Madison Square Presbyterian Church is ready to do just that. We will meet after worship today to focus our attention on two major areas of mission outreach in the coming year: working for peace in particular by advocating for a Department of Peace at the national level; and responding to the homelessness that surrounds us as a downtown church. And of course, there are many other ways Madison Square is involved in mission, including the support of small farmers through the Presbyterian Coffee Project and our ongoing support of Haven for Hope, SAMMinistries, Christian Assistance Ministries, the SouperBowl of Caring, Habitat for Humanity, and the “Ready, Willing, and Enable” program.

If you have not yet made a commitment to one of the many missions of Madison Square, now is the time to do so. Talk to Rebecca Baker about your desire to serve . . . or talk to me, and I’ll put you in touch with her or whomever the right person may be.

In the meantime, we bring to the table of grace everything that truly does ail us on this Super Bowl Sunday morning, with a prayer for healing and a trust in the resurrecting power of God and a hand of hope held out in love, that leads us all to abundant life, so that we may proclaim the same for all we meet.

May we soar on wings like eagles.

Amen.

The Mouth of the Prophet

By Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist

Deuteronomy 18: 15-19

Luke 4: 16-30

We were riveted last Sunday, were we not? It was truly a “Healing Sabbath.”

For those of you who were not here, our guest preacher, who is a leader in the Presbyterian marriage equality movement, invited the highest court of the church to stretch out a withered and weary hand on behalf of a denomination that has been disfigured by discrimination for far too long, to soak up the healing touch of the Jesus who wants us all to be well, and to declare once and for all that church law can no longer be used to bind the conscience of pastors in performing the marriages of all couples who seek our pastoral care.

We were riveted. And we applauded. And we came together as one body of Christ to pray the deepest prayer we knew how to pray: that God will give Rev. Clark the mouth of a prophet in challenging the court to make our denomination whole. And that they will listen! And pay attention! And respond! Because God is surely holding us all accountable to “the words that the prophet shall speak” in God’s name through Scott Clark.

I don’t know about you, but I am still praying the prayer we began last week. Still riveted by the prophetic word that was preached from this pulpit. Still touched to the core by the Spirit of God who was so emphatically with us last week that we really could touch her as we touched each other in our laying on of hands. For Scott. For our elders and deacons. And if we are honest, for ourselves.

And yet . . .

As I read the New Testament Lesson from the Gospel of Luke this morning, I cannot help but compare us with that 1st century congregation in Nazareth eagerly awaiting the proclamation of Jesus. And I get a little bit afraid of what could happen next if we don’t pay careful attention to the full scope of the gospel as it is presented to us in this text. You see, the congregation gathering around Jesus in this 1st century congregation in Nazareth is just as enthusiastic about their anointed hero as we are about ours. Word has trickled home to them of the amazing healing ministry of Jesus throughout Galilee. Praise for his prophetic message in pulpits throughout the country has resounded.

They have welcomed him home as “one of their own,” and they are thrilled with his preaching and his teaching and his pastoral care. Just like we are thrilled with the preaching and teaching and pastoral care of Janie Spahr, Scott Clark, and Sara Taylor, who were our guests last weekend.

But then the other shoe drops. And the congregation that has touched the very Spirit of God in anointing Jesus ends up rising in such rage that Jesus fears for his very life when they lead him to the edge of the hill on which their town is built and threaten to hurl him off the cliff.

What in God’s name—literally—has gone wrong!?

The people of Nazareth are truly oppressed. They are, for all practical purposes, colonized by a foreign power. They still bear the deep scars of a bloody revolt they waged against Rome twenty years earlier. Rome decisively and devastatingly crushed them. And, in many ways, crushes them still. Their economic system has been co-opted by Rome. Their movements are monitored by Rome. Their physical wounds from the revolt—including forced blindness—have been inflicted by Rome. Their entire way of life is subject to the whim of Rome.

So when the 1st century congregation in Nazareth hears Jesus say that the Spirit of God has anointed him to “bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and liberty to the oppressed,” they automatically assume Jesus is speaking about them. They are the ones who are poor, are they not? They are the ones who are captive, blind, oppressed. Surely Jesus is speaking about them? And he is! And yet he is not.

Don’t forget, Jesus reminds his congregation, that the gospel is universal. It always has been and it always will be. The great prophet Elijah, himself, Jesus reminds them, left his own people high and dry in the middle of a famine to offer food and comfort to a foreign widow. And of course everyone who is listening will automatically link the foreign widow of Elijah’s day with the Roman Gentiles of their day. Is Jesus saying God cares more about them than God does about us?! That’s downright offensive!

But that’s not all.

Don’t forget, Jesus reminds his congregation, that the gospel is universal. It always has been and it always will be. The great prophet Elisha, himself, Jesus reminds them, healed a soldier of Syria—and not any of his own people—from the dreaded disease of leprosy. And of course everyone who is listening will automatically link the healing of a hated soldier from the Syria of Elisha’s day with the healing of a hated soldier from the Rome of their day. Is Jesus saying God cares more about a Roman soldier than God cares about us?! That’s not just offensive. That’s intolerable!

It is also true.

The Roman Gentile widow, Jesus is saying to the truly oppressed 1st century congregation in Nazareth, may be just as poor as you are. And perhaps poorer. Pay attention! Listen! Respond! God cares about her, too! The conscripted Roman soldier, Jesus is saying to the truly oppressed 1st century congregation in Nazareth, may be just as captive as you are. Pay attention! Listen! Respond! God cares about him, too! The good news of God, Jesus says to the truly oppressed 1st century congregation in Nazareth, is that the liberation of the whole human family is bound up together if we are truly willing to see with God’s eyes and not our own. Listen! Pay attention! Respond! The mouth of the prophet is speaking!

We who live in this 21st century congregation where we, too, have been riveted by the proclamation of good news through the prophetic witness of those who are advocating justice in marriage equality—an issue of social justice that directly affects us—that directly affects us!—encounter a crucial reminder in our gospel lesson for today. The “Healing Sabbath” that Rev. Clark proclaimed last week is—yes—emphatically about us. It is. 100%.

And yet is about far more than us. What Jesus calls “good news to the poor” is in modern Christian ethics is something like a clarion call for economic justice, and it really is for everyone and not just ourselves. What Jesus calls “release to the captives” is in modern Christian ethics something like a clarion call for civil or human rights at every level, and it really is for everyone and not just ourselves. What Jesus calls “recovery of sight to the blind” is in modern Christian ethics something like—dare I say it?—a clarion call for healthcare reform, and it really is for everyone and not just ourselves. We may disagree on the best ways to implement these clarion calls. But they are the heart of the gospel, even if they sound—horror!—“too political.”

What Jesus calls “liberty to the oppressed” is in modern Christian ethics something like a call for every one of us to take a good hard look in the mirror and repent of the ways in which we, too, have given ourselves over to the values of empire, of the ways in which we succumb to the claim God is for us and for our needs alone, of the ways in which we place our own freedom in opposition to the freedom of others. It is a call to say we want to live differently. Starting right here. Starting right now. Because “today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

The good news for Madison Square is that I think we already know this. This congregation has a long history of mission and advocacy for all of God’s children, and that history will guide this community well into the future. There is no need to rise up in rage against the prophet in our midst declaring the Healing Sabbath for one and for all. There is simply a reminder that we are one human family and that the mouth of the prophet speaks for us all.

So listen! Pay attention! And respond!

Amen.

La Fuente de Identidad

By Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist

Genesis 1:1-5
Mark 1:4-11


It all begins right here: The Font of Our Identity. A river of grace that flows from the beginning of time . . . to the end of time . . . and every time in between . . .

Because in the beginning, our Scriptures tell us, the earth was empty and had no form. But the God of Genesis did not create the heavens and the earth ‘out of nothing’ as Western Christianity has come to believe. According to the first chapter of Genesis, God birthed the new creation that culminated in humanity from the marriage of a dry and barren soul-sucking desert on the one hand and a deep dark chaotic storm system on the other. This is how the desert people of the Ancient Near East who wrote the Book of Genesis understood the cosmic origins of their existence, in a sweeping mythic narrative whose deep truth dwarfs any contemporary need to read this sacred story as literal or scientific fact.

The deep mythic truth we glean from our Ancient Near East biblical ancestors is this: in the beginning the earth was a formless void, and turbulent waters were covered by darkness, and the God of our ancestors whom we worship and serve still today birthed a new creation from out of this chaos. A creation that includes everything that came before us and everything that will come after us. All beginning right here at the Font of Identity from a river of grace that flows from the beginning of time . . . to the end of time . . . and every time in between . . .

And a ruach of God—meaning a wind or breath or Spirit! of God—was swooping over these deep chaotic turbulent waters of primordial existence. And the Word of God spoke! And the Word of God said, “Let there be!” And there was! Over and over and over again! And God saw that it was good! And it was!

And there was order out of chaos! And there was life out of desolation! And there was hope out of despair! And there was humanity out of earth and water and spirit and word. You and me and all of creation bound together in one common cosmic conception: from earth, water, spirit and word. Which is who we have always been. From the very beginning. La fuente de identidad. Which is why everything we do to the earth we are also doing to ourselves. And everything we do the waters we are also doing to ourselves. And everything we do to the image of God in everyone else we meet we are also doing to ourselves.

The foundation of our identity as God’s good creation is this: we were created to make life flourish! The same way this river of the water of life makes life flourish! It was the first commandment ever given to humankind: a co-creating task from the Creator of all right here in the first chapter of Genesis in the job description of the human race, the foundation of our identity in the image of God: we are to make life flourish, to cultivate gardens and create cities,  to celebrate abundance, to care for creation as creation has cared for us, to delight in the earth and the water and the wind and the word without which not one of us would have our existence.

Wouldn’t it have been great if we could have just closed the book right there?!

But we didn’t. We fell.

We can call it the Garden of Eden and the Tree and the Apple. Or we can call it the profound failure of the human race to rest in Sabbath delight of the glory of the creation that defines every part of our identity, in the blessed miracle of each one of our lives birthed from the divine union of water and earth and wind and word.

Whatever we call it, we have chosen to know evil, as well as good. And we have chosen to practice evil, as well as good. And by the time we get to the Gospel lesson from Mark, the people of God who are our biblical ancestors have indeed known evil of every kind and practiced evil of every kind. They have murdered and they have been murdered. They have raped, and they have been raped. They have enslaved, and they have enslaved others. They have begun wars, and they have been victims of wars. They have been thrown into exile, and they have thrown others into exile. And by the time we get to the Gospel lesson from Mark, they are crushed under Roman occupation that controls every part of their lives.

As far as they can tell the land of promise and plenty has devolved dangerously close to that formless void and chaotic turbulent deep water of chaos that God calmed in the beginning. And they want God to start over, to make things right again. So they gather at the river around a man named John, who proclaims a baptism of ritual purification in preparation for another new creation. And along comes Jesus. And the rest, as they say, is history.

But this history of the baptism of Jesus should be familiar to us. It flows from the same river of grace from the beginning of creation! With the same ruach of God—but we’re speaking Greek now, so it’s a pneuma—but it’s still the same Spirit of God swooping yet again over the face of the waters. And it’s the same Word of God speaking yet again through the chaos, saying, “This is my Beloved . . . my Son . . . in whom I am well pleased.” And God saw yet again that it was very, very good. And it was!

Which is what Jesus proclaimed throughout his ministry to anyone who would pay attention! You are all God’s Beloved children! So pay attention to what you are doing to one another! Pay attention! The new creation is at hand! I have passed through its waters and you can too! And it is GOOD NEWS! To whom? The poor! The captives! The blind! The oppressed! RIGHT HERE! RIGHT NOW!

Because this new creation springs forth from the font of an identity that has been with us all along! That we may all flourish in abundant life! That we may release our desire to know evil or experience evil or enact evil! That we may end once and for all the cycle of violence that claims our existence! And with the gift of our collectively transformed and renewed lives, we can end the cycle of violence that claims human existence! We can END it! Which is what we mean when we talk about a “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”

I used the New Century Translation for this part of our Gospel reading this morning because it gives a full meaning to the Greek word usually translated as “repentance.” So often we equate repentance with badness: I did wrong. I confess. I promise not to do it again. And this is certainly one way to understand that term. But the Greek work metanoia is about transformation! A new heart! A new mind! A new life! A new creation dawning from whatever chaos of deserted land or turbulent water would drive us to despair! And it is happening all the time!

A baptism of true repentance can be a powerful, powerful thing. A drug dealer can decide to turn his life around. An addict can seek help in recovery, and it happens right next door every day of the week! A child who has nothing can find a teacher who truly cares. And it happens right next door every day of the week! An abused spouse can leave a toxic relationship. An old cynic can learn to love. God can make a way out of no way. God can transform every part of our lives. Which is what God is doing with “all the people from Judea and Jerusalem” who are gathering at the Jordan for a baptism of repentance at the hand of John. They want God to “re-form” them as a new creation. And God does!

Of course the great debate in biblical and theological scholarship around this baptism story from the Gospel has been about why Jesus needs to be baptized. If he is truly without sin, scholars wonder, what was the point? But baptism is broader—both then and now—than the individual sins we commit and our need for forgiveness from them. Baptism is also about the sin committed against us and our need to be healed from it. And Jesus knows more than his fair share about that.  

Jesus really did, in the end, “take on” the sin of the world, and not just as a priestly sacrifice on our behalf. He was betrayed, denied, despised, rejected, beaten, oppressed by an occupying power, spat upon, tortured, killed. Experiencing in his own flesh the absolute worst of what we call “man’s inhumanity to man.” I would go so far as to say that the baptism of Jesus in the river of grace that formed the font of his identity as about sealing him in the protection of who God had always created him to be. It’s a seal of protection. It’s our font of identity that can never be destroyed! It’s about trusting God to transform the sin that would be committed against him into a resurrection of hope and a promise of everlasting victory over sin and suffering and despair. I would go so far as to say that his baptism sustained him as he encountered the sin of the world, as he stared that sin down, as he felt abandoned, as he died.

And I say that our own baptism in the river of grace the flows from the beginning of time, to the end of time, and in every time in between does the same for each one of us. That it serves as a saving grace, a healing balm, a protective seal covering whatever wounds we bear in these bodies of earth and water and wind and word. Whether those wounds are “Self-Inflicted-Nonsense,” which is the root of so much SIN. Or whether they are deep scars inflicted by a creation that has delighted far too much in knowing evil rather than glorifying good.

And when we say that we are baptized into Christ’s resurrection in the fullness of time, what we mean is that one day we will be able to touch our wounds, just like Jesus did with the so-called “doubting” Thomas. But they won’t hurt anymore because the new creation will have finally dawned and the evil we have endured will be nothing but a distant memory in light of all the goodness of God’s glorious new creation. Because this truly is the font of our identity! From the beginning of time . . . to the end of time . . . and every time in between.

And so we come home every Sunday to this baptismal oasis of healing grace, where we prepare for worship with a pitcher of water and a stream flowing in generous abundance, splashing the gift of God’s grace with delight against the marbles that form the base of this baptismal font, settling us into the peace of healing and renewal and love that is ours each Sunday as we gather to worship our Creator and unite with the common creation that is our covenant community.

This is the Font of Our Identity, beloved children of God, in whom God is so well pleased. Welcome Home.

The Beginning and the End

By Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist

Ecclesiastes 3:1-13
Revelation 21:1-6a

What time is it?

That is the question that is always before us as people of faith. Today it is easy: January 1, 2012. “Happy New Year!” Of course, if the end-of-timers are correct, the fact that the Mayan calendar concludes with the year 2012 may mean that today marks the beginning of the end of the world as we know it. So . . . “Happy New Year!?”

(In the flippant response of the 1980s band “REM,” I feel just fine about that.)

We are justified in rolling our eyes at such nonsense, even if we did shell out 20 bucks for a box office ticket and a bag of popcorn to watch the pending apocalypse unfold at a movie theater near you. And we are justified in dismissing such talk of the 2012 “end of time” as so much attention-seeking or escapism or fear-mongering. And we are justified in repudiating the glorification of death and destruction that too often coincides with the dramatization of “the last days.”

But if we take the gospel seriously we are only justified to a point. Because the truth is that the Christian hope in the coming kingdom of God, the Christian hope in that “end of time” when all of creation will come to ultimate and everlasting perfect communion with God and one another, the Christian hope in that “peaceable kingdom where the wolf shall dwell with the lamb and nation shall not rise up against nation and death and mourning and crying and pain will be no more” is, quite literally, the heart and soul of the ministry of Jesus.  

“The time is fulfilled,” Jesus says, as he begins his preaching ministry in Mark’s Gospel. “The kingdom of God has come near.” And then he proceeds to touch and teach and heal all he meets in the name of the kingdom that is at hand. And he dies for it when the coming presence of God’s kingdom threatens the current reality of Caesar’s kingdom. Which means that we who follow in the footsteps of Jesus should take this “coming kingdom” business very, very seriously.

What we in modern American culture think we know about the biblical basis for the coming kingdom of God at the end of time actually comes from getting stuck in literalism halfway through the one book of the Bible (Revelation) that is so clearly presented with symbolic—and not literal—imagery. We get so focused on which one of our current wars or natural disasters best fits the description of destruction in the middle chapters of Revelation that we never get to the culminating vision of wholeness and hope that was proclaimed in our New Testament reading this morning.

But that vision of wholeness and hope really is the entire point of the Revelation. In fact it is the entire point of biblical faith: that someway, somehow, God will find a way to dwell with us in eternal grace; that someway, somehow, God is already doing this; that someway, somehow we have a small taste of that coming presence in the witness of Christ, whose birth we just celebrated one week ago today. And that someway, somehow our preparations to celebrate the anniversary of the first coming of Christ have been a chance to prepare ourselves for what we call “The Second Coming of Christ.” Which is another way of speaking about this vision of wholeness and hope that really is the point of Revelation.

Again, I would urge us not to get caught up in a literalism that has always been intended to be symbolic. We are talking about a vision here. We are talking about a future hope that cannot be put into words and that, quite frankly, we cannot really understand. “As little as children know in their mother’s womb about their birth,” Martin Luther said, “so little do we know about life everlasting.”

And so we call it “the kingdom of God” or “the Second Coming” or “the end of times” or “the heavenly banquet.” Or, as Martin Luther called it, “the life everlasting.” Each phrase a symbolic representation of our grasping for words to describe something we can sense but cannot quite comprehend, something for which we long but cannot quite possess.

And yet it is this hope in “life-everlasting” that permeates the Scriptures and that grounds our common life together in worship throughout the year. “To everything there is a season” says the preacher in Ecclesiastes, and the seasons of the Christian calendar are no different.  We begin with Advent, preparing for the coming of Christ, and move through the season of Christmas in celebration of his coming. And yes, Christmas is a season and not just a Sunday, and we are still in it! Right here, right now. In Epiphany, we see that Christ is for the world and not just for us, but then we move into contemplative and reflective season of Lent, reminding ourselves what we who are far too human do to the coming kingdom of God. In Easter—another season and not just a Sunday—we celebrate the hope that God’s kingdom really can overcome all evil, and on Pentecost we usher in a whole new life in the Spirit that is the life of the church in these past 2000+ years.

Each season of the Christian calendar offers God an opportunity to train our hearts and minds and bodies and spirits into the new creation in Christ we are invited to become in the fullness of time. Each season has its ebb and its flow, its contemplation and its action. And each season points to that time when we shall dwell in the house of God forever.

Over the course of the recent season of Advent, for example, I spoke openly about the place of Advent in our liturgical calendar as a time of preparing for this “Second Coming,” for this “end time,” for this “heavenly banquet” that is our Christian hope. And I will say now that this 12-day period we currently celebrate between Christmas and Epiphany is, if we are living according to the seasons, a time for living as if the Second Coming has, in fact, come!

Imagine! What might it be like if, for just these few days in the beginning of 2012, we really did live as if this were the end of the world as we know it, if we really did live as if 2012 were the beginning of the new heaven and the new earth we have glimpsed in our vision from Revelation. Because this is, in fact, the “season” we are in.

Perhaps this new reality in this new year might be something like what many of us have seen in the YouTube videos of an 18-year old young man with a life-threatening heart condition chronicling his experiences of “cheating death” and then spending the short remainder of his young life using those experiences to help him dwell in the peace that passes all understanding. And sharing it with others.

With a comforting smile and a serene presence in these videos, Ben Breedlove describes the bright light and the deep sense of peace that accompanied three separate occasions in his life when he almost died: the first when he was four, the last just a few weeks ago. “I couldn’t stop smiling,” he said, of all three occasions. “I wish I never woke up,” he claimed of his most recent experience. And his wish to rest in that bright light forever came true on Christmas Day when death finally claimed him and peace finally enveloped him, and the rest of us were left to marvel at his wisdom and insight and trust.

“Do you believe in Angels or God?” Ben Breedlove writes at the end of his last YouTube video. “I do,” he says. “I do.” And how could he not, given his experience of peace in the face of his mortality? And how could he not want to share that peace with anyone who would pay attention, through a YouTube video that has spanned the globe and made national headlines. And how could we not respond with reverence and hope and trust in return?

It is truly an “apocalyptic vision” that Ben Breedlove has shared with us: apocalypse meaning “revelation,” apocalypse meaning a vision of reality that is ever-present before us but that we need help seeing and experiencing and sharing with others. Apocalypse meaning a chance to wake up and live in the light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot ever overcome it. Which is what the Book of Revelation is trying to get across. No matter what God is still with us. In this life and the next.

In the fullness of time, the beginning and the end turn out to be one and the same, and this is the final point of our lesson from Revelation. “I am the Alpha and Omega,” Christ says, “the beginning and the end.” And the point of the peace that passes understanding isn’t just about preparing us for our death, as beautiful as that is. It’s about invigorating our life! It’s about walking together on this planet with the promise that the communion of the saints is real and that everyone—and everything—we encounter lives in the light that can never be extinguished, the kind of light that leaves us smiling forever and full of a peace we don’t want to wake up from.

How would we treat each other if we really saw this reality that is ever before us? If we really knew this with every part of our being? It truly would be the end of the world as we know it, with our wars and our greed and our suffering. It would, I dare say, be an excellent thing for 2012 to usher in the “end of time” with a peace that passes understanding.

We have a chance to practice that peace when we come to the table this morning, where the “Last Supper” Christ introduced to his disciples just before his death becomes the “first fruit” of the heavenly banquet we share in the fullness of time. In fact, the whole point of the Sacrament is to give us a brief taste of the “perfect communion” that is coming, to live for one brief moment as if the kingdom really has already come. Because, in a very real sense, it has.

So come to the table with the posture of one whose life of despair and destruction and devastation is ending in 2012, whose new life is dawning with a bright light and an overwhelming peace that will guide us and protect us and strengthen us in the days to come. However they begin. And however they end. In this new year, and in every precious year that is given to us on this earth.

I pray it may be so. Amen.