Threatened With Resurrection

 By Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist

April 8, 2012 Sermon--Resurrection of Christ Sunday

Mark 16:1-8


“So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to no one, for they were afraid.”

Oh, dear.

This really was not what we were expecting. We have become so used to John’s Gospel story on Easter Sunday. An entirely enthusiastic reunion with Mary Magdalene and Jesus and Peter and a gardener to set us free in lily-white dresses and blue satin sashes. Which is what we all want in the end, is it not?

Somehow we have ended up here. Gospel of Mark version, original ending restored. Our key witnesses over-laden with unused ointment, tongue-tied in terror, an alleluia stuck in their throat, replaced with something that sounds more like a resounding, “aaaaaaaaaaa . . ?”

They are threatened with resurrection, here at the empty tomb. Where things just aren’t making a whole lot of sense . . .

It is worth remembering, of course, that these three women (Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome), they have seen it all. They have birthed and they have bled and they have fed and they have bathed their young, like good Jewish women of Galilee. They have scrubbed the scales of the fish in the Lake of Galilee until they had no more scales to scrub, working their fingers to the bone. They have figured out ways to make ends meet that they were sure were not ever going to meet. And they have buried their old, and far-too often they have buried their young. And they have seen the cross a thousand times. And yes, they were there when they crucified our Lord . . . 

And the thing is, they can handle all of that! In a way, they can handle all of that. They know all too well the fragile thread of human existence, and death is nothing new to them, and bitterness is nothing new to them, and doubt is nothing new to them, and resentment is nothing new to them. And they have figured out a way, in their own way, to handle all of that!

It’s the other side of that cross that brings them to their knees. This “nothing” that is a profound something by its very nothingness . . .

Which is that He is not here! He has been raised, as he said!

Which means that how they have been “handling all of that” is now radically undone! It doesn’t need to be “handled” at all! Jesus has gone right on back to work in Galilee! Right on back to where the ministry began in the first place! Right on back to preparing a place for them—and us!—to follow. And by God, the angel says to anyone who will listen, if you know what is good for you’ll get right on out of whatever tomb your cross has put you in and get back to work right along with him! Because God isn’t done with Jesus yet. And Jesus isn’t done with you yet. And God knows Jesus isn’t done with me yet!
Alleluia! Amen!


But can we just admit the threat of resurrection for a minute? Can we just admit that Jesus knows how we too easily entomb within the holy temple of our bodies a burning rage or despair or sadness over whatever cross we have borne. Or guilt. Or vengeance. Tell the truth! And that tomb of terror sits right here, where the compassionate heart of God is supposed to be beating with joy within us. Can we just admit we might very well be more threatened by the thought of God emptying that tomb that dwells within us than we are by the cross that put it there in the first place? Because that tomb makes sense to us. We have oil and spices to lay on those bitter wounds. We have figured out how to “handle” it.

And yet here we are on Easter Sunday morning. With two Marys and Salome. And the stone on that tomb that has encroached itself around the beating heart of God within us been rolled away, with no effort on our part. With absolutely no effort on our part! And what do we find instead . . ?

That the beating breathing boundless body of Christ bids us back to that life-giving Lake of Galilee. Wherever that lake may be in your life and in mine. To resurrect together his ministry of justice and peace and healing and wholeness. And grace, in the end. And grace . . .

Which is what the ministry of Jesus has always been about, after all. And a little thing like a crucifixion isn’t going to get in the way of that. Not now. Not ever. And that is the gospel truth.

Alleluia. Amen.

We at Madison Square know this story in our bones, do we not? We know how God can wrestle a resurrection out of a devastating despair, because God has done it right here in our midst. Can I get an Amen? We know that a trip back to Galilee to figure out how to do Christ’s ministry in a new way for a new day is worth the weary ride.

We have seen a resurrection in this congregation, have we not? And we will see it again . . . and again . . . and again . . . and again because it is the mission of Madison Square “to seek and be receptive to the Spirit of God” in all things, and that Spirit is indeed “working all things together for good for those who love God and are called to God’s purpose,” and that means us!! And that Spirit has already rolled away the stone, and has already gotten us started on this resurrection life, and we are just getting started!

Alleluia! Amen.

And so when the angel says, “Go and tell,” we really can go and tell. Because we have seen it, and we have lived it, and we know it can change the world. We know that it already has.

“There is no bad from which good cannot come,” the beautiful Spanish proverb is translated into English. No hay mal que por bien no venga. And this is the gospel truth. There is no bad from which good cannot come.

So whoever you are, from wherever you have come, whatever you have done, whatever has been done to you, whatever has been left undone . . . the tomb is empty for you! The ministry continues for you! The alleluia has been shouted for you! The new life begins with you!

So go . . . and tell!

Alleluia! Amen.

The Gift of Mission

By Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist

Sermon March 18, 2012

Fourth Sunday in Lent

Isaiah 61:1-4; Matthew 21:12-17

In the year 1999, on the cusp of a new millennium, in the Season of Lent, churches in the United Kingdom embraced an advertising campaign designed to encourage lapsed churchgoers to return to the pews for Easter Sunday. They wanted a campaign that would grab the attention of a fickle public, that would shake them out of their religious complacency and inspire them to a renewed commitment to the faith of their forebears.

Church leaders worked with an organization called the “Churches Advertising Network” to develop a marketing strategy. They settled on a poster for their outreach. An outline of Jesus was inked in black on a deep orange-red background. It was adapted from a famous photo of Che Guevara, the Argentine Marxist revolutionary who was a leading figure in the Cuban revolution and other Latin American liberation movements.

The poster was plastered over billboards and bus stops and subway stations throughout the British nation. And although we did not have Facebook or Twitter or Youtube at the time, the poster “went viral” on the internet in this country, as well.

“Meek. Mild. As If,” the poster says, under the picture. “Discover the real Jesus.”

Did it get your attention?

There was backlash, as you would imagine. It was “grossly sacrilegious,” one commentator declared. And in the Season of Lent, in the year 1999, on the cusp of a new millennium, the debate raged on throughout the UK over what was and was not an “appropriate” image for the “real” Jesus.

Church leaders and the campaign creators defended the poster. “Jesus was not crucified for being meek and mild,” they said. He challenged authority, they said. He was a revolutionary figure, they said. Even more revolutionary than Che Guevara, they said.

And the controversy raged on.

As much as they defended the poster, church leaders and the campaign creators were quick to point out that the revolution of Jesus was purely non-violent. He did not, in the end, take up arms against his oppressor, even though others in his time did. And even though others in his time wanted him to. But as non-violent as Jesus was, they insisted, the real Jesus really was anything but “meek and mild.”

Our Scriptures say the same thing.

Our Call to Worship this morning shares the message of Jesus in the first sermon he ever preached. You could, I would argue, call it his “mission statement.” “The Spirit of our God is upon me,” Jesus says, “because God has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. God has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of our God’s favor.”

And of course Jesus is preaching from the same Scripture that is our Old Testament reading. It is Isaiah’s prophetic witness from the 61^st chapter, a text in which Isaiah inspires the people of God to rebuild their Jerusalem temple and indeed their entire nation after a period of crushing exile in Babylon. But, Isaiah cautions them, as much as God is urging you to rebuild, make sure you do so in a way that honors God’s covenant with “the least of these” in your community. Make sure you comfort those who mourn. Make sure you display the glory of your God. Make sure the poor and captive and infirm and oppressed are ever before you as your barometer of social justice.

And of course this Scripture is most emphatically not fulfilled. 500 years after Isaiah’s proclamation, when Jesus comes to preach his very first sermon on Isaiah’s text, the Jerusalem temple has been restored as Isaiah has said it should be, but it has been on the backs of the poorest in the land. With human bodies literally built into its walls because Herod the Great’s timeline refused to yield to their fundamental need to rest and he ordered the workers to just keep building around those ones who had fallen behind.

500 years after Isaiah’s proclamation, when Jesus comes to preach his very first sermon on Isaiah’s text, the Jerusalem temple has indeed been restored as Isaiah said it should be, but the elite temple hierarchy is as corrupt as ever, and they are deluding themselves into believing they are keeping their people’s identity alive through their collaboration with the imperial violence of the Roman Empire. 500 years after Isaiah’s proclamation, the temple has been restored, but the very rules and regulations of that temple keep the poor and the captive and those with physical ailments and those who are oppressed from entering through the temple gates. The very people who serve as the barometer of social justice in the kingdom of God are kept from entering the temple of God. And remember that they believed God’s physical presence literally resided in that temple. And so they were literally kept from God.

500 years after Isaiah’s proclamation, Jesus is furious. “Today this Scripture from Isaiah is been fulfilled in your hearing!” he declares. Finally! And then he thrusts himself into the heart of that same temple in our Gospel lesson from Matthew, where he over-throws the tables of the money-changers and drives out the religious pilgrims who have bought into the system of economic exploitation that thrives at the Temple and condemns the collaboration between the elite religious establishment and the Roman imperial domination that controls every aspect of their lives.

What Jesus is doing in our Scripture lessons for today is what those who study social justice movements call “direct, non-violent action to disrupt a corrupt political and economic system.” And it works. And it leads directly to the crucifixion. Which is why the British advertising campaign for Easter 1999 adopted the Jesus-as-Che-Guevara-poster. Which is why Christians who take the message of the gospel as seriously as we take its messenger are still at risk when we experience the Spirit of our God upon us to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and freedom for the oppressed.

It is far easier to buy into our popular Western religious imagination that still wants to sanitize who Jesus was and what he said and how he said it. To keep Jesus “meek and mild.”

But . . .

The Madison Square mission clearly states that we are called “to serve actively and creatively as an agent of love, reconciliation, peace, and justice in the community and in the world.” And the gospel message clearly states that we must bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and freedom for the oppressed.

And so we must.

The good news for Madison Square is that, as far as I can tell, this congregation already is doing just that. Witness the forty people gathered at City Hall last Wednesday to call upon our elected officials to endorse a Department of Peace at the federal level of government and the ten or more others who told me you were gathering with us in spirit even though you were not able to gather in person. 

Our advertising campaign in the season of Lent has been the bright blue t-shirt and radiant smile adorning our collective “Body of Christ” as we rallied in the heart of our own small San Antonio temple. And no, we didn’t turn over any tables or call the City Hall a “den of robbers.” We simply collected our voices together in a communal lament of the $508 billion dollar annual price tag of violence in our society. $508 billion dollars spent on incarceration, hospitalization, draining our judicial system, and burdening our police force in response to violence. And we asked our City Council members to endorse, instead, an investment in non-violent methods of conflict resolution.

Our advertising campaign in the season of Lent has been the prayers for peace and justice that permeate our worship every Sunday and the prayerful action that carries us from this sanctuary into the world at war with itself, as we live out our mission “to serve actively and creatively as an agent of love, reconciliation, peace, and justice in the community and in the world.”

Of course this was one Wednesday night witness with one really cool bright blue t-shirt is but the tip of the iceberg. But make no mistake. Every witness matters, every act of courage strengthens the hearts of those who fear to speak, every movement toward a more just and equitable society leads us further toward the peace that passes understanding. And with God, no good effort is wasted.

We do not have any idea—yet—what the results of our peace-making, justice-seeking, Jesus-inspiring Lenten advertising campaign will be. But rest assured there will be results beyond anything we can imagine. And rest assured that the peace-making, justice-seeking, Jesus-inspiring Lenten meditation on the Madison Square mission is shaping us in ways we can are only beginning to see bear fruit.

And it will lead to resurrection joy in the end. I promise you. It will.

In the meantime we are here, a little more than midway through the Season of Lent 2012, meditating on a Madison Square mission that just might grab the attention of a fickle public. And shake them—and us!—out of our religious complacency. And inspire us to a renewed commitment to the faith of our forebears. Which includes “to serving actively and creatively as an agent of love, reconciliation, peace, and justice in the community and in the world.” With an advertising campaign in a deep blue t-shirt that says, “Ask me about a Department of Peace.” And through our witness it will be so. Amen.

The Gift of Community

By Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist

Sermon March 11, 2012

Third Sunday in Lent

Acts 4:32-35; 5:12-16

It is amazing to me what happens to the community after the crucifixion. And no I am not talking about the resurrection just yet. (Although to be fair the resurrection is truly amazing.)

I am talking about the fact that a group of people who left everything to follow a leader who captured their imagination, only to have that leader tortured before their very eyes in an effort to crush their movement, by all rights should be licking their wounds and going back to Galilee and cloistering themselves in protective shelter from the forces of crucifixion that may very well come after them next.

They are not.

Instead they keep on going. They pool their resources together to make sure everyone has what they need. They preach and they teach and they heal all who would cross their path. Right there in Solomon’s Portico in the heart of the same Jerusalem temple where Jesus overthrew the tables of the money changers just a few weeks before our Scripture lesson from Acts.

As much as we look to Jesus as the author and founder of our faith—and by all means we must look to Jesus as the author and founder of our faith—the truth is that none of us would be sitting here today in this sanctuary of hope if those first century followers of Christ had given up when it got hard. But they keep on going, ministering to the spiritual, emotional, and physical needs of their community, and any others in need of such ministry. Which is, of course our Lenten Meditation on the Madison Square mission on this third Sunday halfway through the season of reflection and renewal. Which is, of course, the part of our mission that mostly happens every day without much fanfare but with dignity and courage and strength and forbearance as we see Christ in one another and bear one another’s burdens and share one another’s joys.

We are, in this mission—as the author of Acts described the first century disciples of Christ, of Acts puts it—to be “of one mind.” Sharing everything in radical community that we trust with our vulnerable spirits, emotions, minds, and bodies. Which may sound incredibly idealistic, of course. And profoundly untrue if you consider that while I do ask you to tithe, the Apostle Peter required his community to sell all their property and give it to the church! And of course we are most emphatically not always in agreement about what we should do and how we should do it. But if you read further in the Book of Acts, neither were they, even though they say they are “of one mind.”

Their Christian community—and ours, I would argue—is something like the life of the four-year-old twin girls named Krista and Tatiana Hogan profiled in The New York Magazine last May. They are joined at the head. Literally “one mind.” Their skulls fused together, sharing what their neurosurgeon calls a “thalamic bridge” that links the sensory input of each one’s brain to the other’s.

In a very real sense Krista and Tatiana “share everything” with one another. As infants, one of the girls would receive a pacifier for her crying, and the other girl would be soothed along with her, not needing her own pacifier. When one of the girls is pricked for a blood test, the other starts to cry, as if she can feel the pain. When the more actively energetic Krista decides to power-slurp her juice, Tatiana puts her hand below her sternum and cries out, “Whoa!” as if she feels the sensation of her sister’s drinking. And Tatiana, who does not like ketchup, will try to scrape the condiment off her tongue when Krista is the one who is actually eating it. They are literally weeping when the other weeps, rejoicing when the other rejoices, anxious when the other is anxious, and calm when the other is calm. Which is what life in the community of Christ is all about.

And they look out for each other. In the middle of the night if Krista is thirsty, Tatiana will walk them both over to a sippy-cup, pick it up, and hand it to Krista, who then drinks from it before they crawl back into bed together. As if Tatiana feels Krista’s thirst as her own and responds. As if Krista’s drink is able to soothe Tatiana’s thirst, as well as her own. Which is what our table of sustenance is all about, is it not?

Okay, so that’s them. What about us?

As miraculous as it is, the union of thought and feeling between Tatiana and Krista is but the most extreme iteration of ordinary human connection. For the past twenty years scientists who study brain activity have noted some pretty extreme examples of human empathy that come close to the experience of Krista and Tatiana. Scientists knew that a brain scan of a person experiencing a physically recognizable pain or joy will fire certain neurons in that person’s brain. But what they did not know until recently is that a brain scan of a person who is simply observing the person experiencing pain or joy will often fire similar neurons!

So, for example, is someone is sticking Mark Marty with a pin while he is playing a particularly difficult piece of organ music certain neurons will fire in his brain to register the pain. And every one of us watching will have the same neurons firing in our brains. Meaning that the phrase, “I feel your pain,” is literally true in ways we are only just beginning to understand biologically. We really are of one mind and body and spirit. In ministering to the needs of one person we really are ministering to the needs of the world. Which is why Jesus goes after the one lost sheep as a way of saving the entire flock. Which is why the simple act of walking with someone through their pain—and not even, as far as you can tell, actually doing anything about it—can be the greatest ministry you can possibly offer.

This is, I believe, what is going on with the first century disciples in the Book of Acts as they figure out a way to make a way out of no way when Jesus is gone and they keep on going, ministering in his name to the spiritual, emotional, intellectual, and physical needs of their community, and any others in need of such ministry. Because they are “one” with one another and with God they have become so fully present in one another’s minds that they literally feel each other’s joys and concerns, that they literally think one another’s thoughts and perceive one another’s visions, that they literally calm one another down and heal one another just by their physical presence with one another. Even if that physical presence is no more than “Peter’s shadow.” They share a “thalamic bridge” of grace and insight into one another’s lives that borders on the miraculous, allowing them to minister to the spiritual, emotional, intellectual, and physical needs of their community, and any others in need of such ministry.

And we do, too.

We who are literally joined in one mind to our sisters and brothers in this community of faith cannot help but get up in the middle of the night to grab the sippy cup for our thirsty sister. We cannot help but soothe our crying brother simply by offering a calming companioning presence. We cannot help but lift one another out of despair with the hope and the love we feel for one another can literally. Even when we don’t like the taste of the ketchup our sister decided to indulge!

And we who are literally joined in one mind to our sisters and brothers in this community of faith cannot help but cast a wide and comforting and healing shadow across the entire city of San Antonio in our mission to minister to the spiritual, emotional, intellectual, and physical needs of anyone in need of such ministry. Because “the least of these” Christ calls us to serve are not just Christ himself. They are also our “self.” And by God’s grace we really are “Christ to our neighbor of every nation and race.” Just by being an open and welcoming community of faith bearing witness to the universal and unconditional love of God.

But you already know that. You already alleviate hunger by participating in the CROP walk. You already donate time and money and supplies to Haven for Hope and Christian Assistance Ministries and Habitat for Humanity. You already advocate for peace and pray for peace and practice peace with God and one another.

So let me just remind you of what you already know. And encourage you when it is hard and you’d rather go back to Galilee in a protective cloister that we really are already truly “one” with one another. And we already really truly are already “one” with the resurrected Christ. And there really is truly nothing that can separate any one of us from the love of God. Which is why we joyfully minister to the spiritual, emotional, intellectual, and physical needs of this community, and any others in need of such ministry.

It is already so. May it continue to be.

Amen.

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.