Saving Paradise

By Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist

Sermon April 29, 2012--Good Shepherd Sunday

Psalm 23
John 10:11-18


About ten years ago, theologians Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Parker embarked on an artistic quest through the Mediterranean. They were seeking the earliest expressions of Christian art and how those forms of art depicted Jesus. They were imagining what that art might have to say about the liturgical and ethical formation of the early Christians for whom this art was created. And, perhaps most importantly, they were exploring what the liturgical and ethical formation of early Christians might have to say to us, we who are twenty-first century American Christians celebrating “Earth Day Sunday” on this Fourth Sunday in the Season of Easter. A Sunday that has us reading Psalm 23 year after year alongside a lection from John’s Gospel describing Jesus as the Good Shepherd.

The two scholars (whose findings are compiled into a massive tome titled Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire (emphasis added)) embarked on their exploration of early Christian art with the explicit expectation of discovering the manner in which early Christians portrayed the Crucifixion. Meaning that they expected to discover early Christian renderings of a suffering, dying Jesus. On a cross.

Instead, the sanctuaries they explored revealed images of a Jesus who was very much alive. And surrounded by a lavish and vibrant natural world that was also very much alive. And it just so happens that the most popular early church portrayal of Jesus was the image we celebrate on this Good Shepherd Sunday: a glorified Christ surrounded by adoring sheep grazing in green pastures, with lushly painted gardens enveloping the entire community of faith as they gathered for worship. The image reinforced by written quotations from Psalm 23.

Imagine, if you will, how a similar scene would feel in this sanctuary. If the chancel were filled from top to bottom with a vision of Jesus as the Good Shepherd. With our stained glass windows along the sides of the sanctuary saturated in ivy. With four aisles (instead of three) flowing symbolically with living water, as if they were the four rivers flowing in the Garden of Eden described in Genesis 2. How would all this sensory imagery shape our experience of worship?

We would feel as if we were worshiping in Paradise, would we not?

This was, in fact, the conclusion of Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Parker upon viewing sanctuary after sanctuary of early Christian art. Over and over again they discovered churches drenched in a lush visual garden of grace. As they imagined what it would be like to worship in these churches, they discovered the dominant sensory experience of early Christianity was the recovery of “Paradise.” Not Lost. Not in need of a cross to cover the sin. But Found!

Of course we all, to this day, dream of “Paradise Found” as an archetypal image of the heavenly realm. We might conclude this early Christian art was an escapist attempt to deny the suffering of this world in favor of a future fulfillment. But when Brock and Parker broadened their study to include ancient liturgies and ritual practices and prayers of the early church, they realized the permeation of paradise in the liturgical life of early Christians was meant to reinforce the reality of Paradise here and now. At least as much (if not more than) as an afterlife hope.

Baptismal liturgies used in the fourth century by Bishop Cyril of Jerusalem openly describe this ritual as a “portal to Paradise” through which disciplined, dedicated catechumens renounced their greed. Their fear. Their violence. Their desire for the power to dominate others. Their rage against the powers that have dominated them. After a great season of thorough preparation, they stripped themselves of their burdens and their sins and emerged naked as a “new Adam” from the waters of re-creation, passing through the gate of the garden of the Good Shepherd.

Upon rising from the baptismal waters as a new creation in Christ they were clothed with white robes and escorted to the feast of Paradise—their first Holy Communion—chanting Psalm 23 as they processed to the table: The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. God leads me through the still water. God prepares a table before me . . . God anoints my head with oil.

As they gathered around the table for the Eucharist, they drank milk and honey to break their fast. Then the rest of the community joined them in sharing the bread and wine of paradise. And, get this, the bishop declared these new baptized members of the church to be grafted to the tree of life at the center of the garden! Firmly rooted. Forever in Paradise.

But the portal to Paradise was not just a moment in time. It was certainly a struggle to stay rooted in the Paradise to which they had been grafted. And so the ritualized practices of the community of the church developed, cultivating within the faithful a commitment to the ethical grace of learning once and for all how to live together as one humanity in the generous garden of God. They had to “practice Paradise,” as do we, every time they gathered to worship God. And that is what it meant to be the church.

Now this may sound like a highly idealized view of early Christianity. And indeed it may very well be. They clearly had their problems and conflicts, just like we do. All we have to do is re-read the lesson from the Gospel of John to notice that. Clearly Jesus—or at least the Gospel writer in the name of Jesus—warns against those who might put their own personal needs ahead of the flock. You could assume from the context he means the Pharisees. What’s more, anyone who has actually functioned as a shepherd in the real world would say it’s not exactly a high compliment for us to be compared with sheep, even if it is as Christ’s own “flock.”

But consider, if you will, how our worldview would shift, how our environmental ethics would shift, if we really did worship the God of the garden, rather than the Lord of the laptop. (And I love my laptop!)

The thing is, we really have been created by the God of this good garden we call planet earth to live in perpetual Paradise with God and with one another. We really have. And the thing is, we really do need to fundamentally shift our vision away from the assumption of Paradise Lost to the ethical imperative of Paradise Found. Because we really were created to be stewards of this earth, humans from the humus, Adam from the adamah in Hebrew.
And we really do present the practical gifts of Paradise every Sunday in our Sacramental use of water and bread and wine. I think we do this because deep down in the part of us that is not yet in complete denial that we are fundamentally creatures of the earth we know that we cannot take these things for granted! That water and bread and wine really are “sacred.” A sign and a seal of God’s grace given to us. In abundance. In Paradise.

If Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Parker are right (and I think they are), then the Sacrament of Baptism we celebrated just two weeks ago (and reaffirmed today with our newest members) really was designed to serve for us as a portal to Paradise. Not just for those individuals involved with the Sacrament, but for all of us. And if they are right, then the Sacrament of Communion we will celebrate next week really is offered to us as the feast of Paradise, training us to know the world through our senses, as a joyous experience of the gift of life.

And if they are right, then the liturgy of the gathered community in worship every Sunday really is intended to cultivate within us the ethics of Paradise. And the minute for mission we received from Mr. Norwood today about faithful stewardship of our electronic waste really is a mandate for us to practice “Saving Paradise,” as if our lives depended on it.

Because they do. Spiritually and socially.

Perhaps I am naïve, but I would like to hope that twenty-first century Christians on the brink of a possible environmental disaster just might start to live differently if we truly believed we had been grafted into the tree of life at the center of Paradise. If we truly trusted the Good Shepherd to supply our need and not just our want. If we truly embraced a disciplined life of ethical grace. I would like to hope that this Earth Sunday could be a taste of Every Sunday, celebrating the abundance of God’s good creation and vowing to practice faithful stewardship of it.

Naïve or not this really is the invitation from our Good Shepherd on this Earth Day Sunday here at Madison Square. That we celebrate the Paradise God has given us in this good creation. That we claim ourselves rooted and grounded at the center of the garden, unable to be who we really are without it. And that we commit ourselves to saving this Paradise one electronic waste donation at a time. May we respond to this invitation with an alleluia for the abundant life God asks us to share.

I pray it may be so.

Amen.

Infant Baptism, Take Two

By Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist

Sermon April 22, 2012 

Psalm 103: 15-17                   

                      

1 John 3: 1-3        

      

On Tuesday mornings at 9:15, the cheerful cacophony of small children chattering among themselves fills the fellowship hall on the second floor of our educational building next door. The 3, 4, and 5 year-olds from the Madison Square Child Development bound up the stairs with great anticipation to join me in a time of singing and story-sharing and prayer and blessing. It has become one of my very favorite times of the week. It brings everything we say we are about here at Madison Square Presbyterian Church into one pure portal of grace. I am the luckiest pastor alive in this moment!

Every week I ask the children what they want to sing. I have taught them a few of my favorites: “This Little Light of Mine.” “Rejoice in our God Always.” “This Is the Day That Our God Has Made.” But every week, without fail, they turn to that old classic: “Jesus loves me . . . this I know . . . for the Bible tells me so.”

They have it memorized! They are very proud of their memorization skills. I am proud of their memorization skills! In two languages! Because we sing “Jesus Loves Me” in sign language, as well as in English. “Little ones to him belong,” we sing together every Tuesday. “We are weak, but he is strong.” You know how it goes, right? “Yes, Jesus loves me . . . yes, Jesus loves me . . . yes, Jesus loves me . . . the Bible tells me so . . .”


The Bible really does tell us so, of course. Right here in the 19th chapter of the Gospel according to Matthew. “Then little children were being brought to him,” the gospel says, “in order that he might lay his hands on them and pray.” Which is exactly what Jesus did, once he had given his disciples a true “come to Jesus” lesson for speaking sternly against those who had brought the children to him.

Now we are enlightened twenty-first century Presbyterians. We might easily look down our noses at those clueless first century disciples who refuse to “suffer the little children,” as that passage is interpreted in the King James Version of the Bible. They just didn’t get it, we might find ourselves mockingly lamenting. We, of course, know that “Jesus loves the little children,” don’t we? “All the little children of the world.”

But if you look at this passage in context, there is a bit more to the story. The blessing of the children in Matthew’s Gospel comes right in the middle of the three chapters that describe what happens between the Transfiguration and the Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem. Meaning that Jesus is literally halfway down the road to the Passover Festival when the children come to him. Halfway down the road to the Temple where he will clash with the religious authorities who will ultimately condemn him. Halfway down the road to his Last Supper with his disciples. Halfway down the road to the worst form of betrayal we can possibly imagine.


You could forgive him, perhaps, for being a little distracted, couldn’t you? By all rights he has a lot on his mind. And the disciples do, too, even though they haven’t quite caught on to what “Holy Week” will really be all about in the week that follows this chance encounter with children. What they do know is that Jesus is on a mission, and the children are a distraction. Or so they think. (And let’s just be honest. Don’t we fall into the same trap sometimes? Don’t we? Be honest . . . )
The good news, of course, is that Jesus does not follow the lead of his disciples. Instead, he takes the lead. Right here, in the pivot point of his journey to Jerusalem, Jesus makes the children his highest priority. He lays his hands upon them, as he has been asked to do. He prays for them, as he has been asked to do. And then he takes it one step further by declaring them to be the very ones who inherit the kingdom of God.

If the experience of Jesus in this passage of Matthew’s Gospel is anything like what I experience on Tuesday mornings with the children of the Madison Square Child Development Center, you can bet that Jesus is far more blessed by them on his journey to Jerusalem than they are by him. I would go so far as to suggest that it is this blessing of the children that sustains him through the cross just as much as anything else that comes before or after. Those kids are just plain worth it. They are worth everything.

What the disciples discover at this crossroads on the journey to Jerusalem is that the children are not a distraction from the mission. The children are the mission, itself!


We at Madison Square have discovered the same thing at this “crossroads” time for discerning the ongoing mission for this congregation. In the Focus Groups that have been meeting and reporting to your Transition Team about the deepest values and commitments for Madison Square in the future, ministry with children and youth has emerged as a top priority. The children are the mission, itself.

This is good news for those who approach us now, as the twenty-first century disciples of Jesus, with children of their own wanting to know Jesus the way we know him here at Madison Square.

Laura Waldrum, for example, whose story you just heard in our Moment for Mission this morning. Her twins are some of the most enthusiastic participants in our Tuesday morning singing.

And Ben and Rebecca Baker, for example, who are always on the lookout for children who need the nurturing, embracing, empowering community that Madison Square knows uniquely how to provide.

And Gina Acree, for example, whose daughter MacKenzie is the spitting image of who I was at that age. And oh, how I pray for her to weather the teenage girl years to come better than I did . . . and for this community to be there for her when those years are hard.

And all those parents who come here with their children seeking a church where their families will be received as 100% “normal” and affirmed in the grace of God. And they are! Integrally woven into the fabric of this church . . . at “home” in every way a family can be “at home” here at Madison Square.

And of course we cannot forget the parents of Evy-Lou Bowhay-Carnes and Nathan Chapman, whom we have baptized together into the Body of Christ in the months since I joined you on the journey. We laid hands on them and prayed for them in our sacrament of infant baptism, just as Jesus did with those other children so many centuries ago. We made covenant promises to them that God’s grace and love are available to them before they even know how to ask for it. When others are asking for it on their behalf. Just like they did with Jesus.
We made a pretty big commitment to those children, as I emphasized over and over again last Sunday. And if we are going to make this commitment real, if we are going to make this emerging mission with children and youth real, we need to keep putting our money where our mouth is and our talent where our treasure is.

In the past year Doerte Weber-Seale, Gina Acree, Gin Courtney, and Susan Shaw-Meadow have worked tirelessly to stabilize and shore up this vital ministry with children and youth in the midst of what was, to put it bluntly, a time of pretty great turmoil. Jane Armstrong has been a beautiful and tender guide for our acolytes as they lead us in worship, and John Sawyer has lent his creative gifts for fun craft projects with the kids. Last year Ellie Holmes made a huge contribution, and many others have pitched in to help keep things going for our fabulous kids. We have great reason to shout “alleluia!” for this ministry here at Madison Square.

But these faithful volunteers cannot do it alone, just as the Board of the Child Development Center cannot do it alone. Our children still need your help, now more than ever. If you have one Sunday morning to spare in a month, maybe you could help out next door during Children’s Church. Or if you are only available for a limited time, Vacation Bible School is just around the corner. Or if you really just “aren’t good with kids” (and let’s face it, some of us just aren’t) ask Doerte or Susan how you can help in other ways, behind the scenes, perhaps. Because our ministry with children and youth belongs to all of us and not just some of us.

This is, after all, why Presbyterians recognize infant baptism in the first place. Because every one of us is, in the end, an infant in the arms of God. Utterly dependent on God’s grace. Desperate for a touch and a prayer no matter what stumbling blocks those other disciples might put in our way. Eager to rest in the arms of a love that will not ever let us go. Our children show us who we really are in the eyes of God. That is why they inherit the kingdom of God.

And so we say, as Jesus did, “Let the children come. Let them come! See what manner of love our God has given unto us . . . that we should all be called children of God!

“For that is who we are.”

Alleluia! Amen.

What the Wounds Would Say

By Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist

April 15, 2012 Sermon

John 20:19-30


You may have “life in this name,” the Book of Memory and Hope teaches us.

You may have life in this name! The name of the risen Christ, the one whose wounds have been healed, and we can see them, and we can touch them, and they don’t hurt anymore! Which means maybe someday our wounds won’t hurt anymore, either. Which is why we want life in this name!

Which is why the parents of Evelyn Louise Bowhay-Carnes have presented their child to us for the Sacrament of Infant Baptism. They have said, in this act, that they want life in the name of the risen Christ for their child. They want the peace of Christ, the shalom of Christ, the healing and wholeness and hope of Christ, the peace that passes all understanding of Christ, to be with her. And also with you. And I dare say, also with them, as they seek your help in raising her in the faith.

And so we made covenant promises with God and with one another to make this so in our Sacrament this morning, trusting that the risen life we claim in Christ will be made real for Evy-Lou. Her parents expressed their commitment to journey with her to discover the wonder of God’s love made manifest here this day. And we, her congregation, pledged to welcome her into the full life of this community. To open our hearts to her in her most vulnerable places. To lead her always to the table of sustenance. To offer her the wisdom of the ages as she hungers for truth.

And she will hunger for truth!

We said we would love her, that we would support her, that we would care for her as she lives and grows among us. We said, “I Do.” We said it a lot! And our “I Do’s” were as binding in this sacred covenant vow this morning as ever a marriage vow was that has been made among beloved partners throughout all time.

What God has joined together, let no one put asunder.

So we are “one body” now with Evy-Lou, much the way married partners become “one body” in their commitment to one another. She has joined us in the font of our identity. “Clothed with Christ,” with us, in the spirit of resurrection.

Which is why we come back . . . Sunday after Sunday after Sunday . . . for this new creation we become when the risen Christ holds our flesh in his hands and breathes the Holy Spirit through us, as he did with the disciples in that upper room in our Gospel of John text.


There’s just one problem.

This is the second Sunday of Easter. The afterthought Sunday. The one where the Great Alleluia already seems hung up on the shelf for next year. The one where year after year poor Thomas gets a really bad rap for his infamous “doubting,” held up for all to “anti-emulate.”

We have come back for this new life in the name of the risen Christ we have promised Evy-Lou in her baptism, only to find ourselves surrounded with a rag-tag group of scared and confused and yes, “doubting” disciples in their first century Jerusalem home. With the door locked shut. For them and maybe for some of us. Because they, and perhaps we, are still afraid.

The disciples know what “those good religious authorities” did to Jesus. They handed him over to be crucified! The disciples know it could happen to them, too. And to us, too. So we lock the door. Bolt it shut. In fear and trepidation.

And, I might add, with good reason.

We call it “church hurt,” here at Madison Square. That profound violation of body and spirit that occurs when religious law is invoked with religious fervor against some of God’s most faithful people. It happened to Jesus. It happened to Thomas. It has happened to many of us. And we will do whatever it takes to keep it from happening again, won’t we?

Hence the locked door. The fearful gathering. The refusal to trust what has not yet earned our trust, or what we have not yet let earn our trust. And so we wait . . . behind a locked door . . . and wait . . . and wait . . .

It has been a long week.

The thing is nobody knows “church hurt” better than Jesus does. Nobody. He literally bears the scars on his body, his hands, his feet, his side. These wounds that Thomas is so desperate to see.

It is, after all, not so much evidence of the resurrection that Thomas seeks as it is evidence of the crucifixion! Because the crucifixion was real, and it hurt, and you just can’t gloss it over and say everything is “okay” now, can you? Thomas is not “okay”!

Because the thing is, Thomas bears “church hurt” wounds, too. All the disciples do. Maybe their wounds as visible as the wounds of Jesus, and maybe ours aren’t either. But those wounds are still with us, whether those wounds are from “church hurt,” or just plain “regular hurt,” and they aren’t going away, and so we have to figure out how to keep going forward with them, not in spite of them . . .

And that is what the resurrection is all about.

Thomas finally trusts the resurrection is real when he can see for himself that the wounds of crucifixion really have been healed, not ignored. Transformed, not tossed aside. Transfigured, to use theological language. They just plain don’t hurt anymore!

This is the resurrection hope we cling to Sunday after Sunday as we come home for new life in the name of the risen Christ. That whatever wounds we bear, and whatever wounds we have inflicted, they just aren’t the final answer. They just aren’t. That we have been baptized into the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, and our wounds can be healed, too!

That, in our baptism, they already are.

When I met with the parents of Evy-Lou in preparation for this Sacrament, we talked about what Baptism meant to them. We talked about the kind of life they want for Evy-Lou, the kind of church they want for her, the kind of faith they want for her.

And, like every parent that ever was, they shared how much they want her to be well. How much they want to protect her from pain. And how much hope they found in this congregation that Evy-Lou would be loved and nurtured and celebrated and anointed with grace and mercy. Given all the spiritual tools she will need for a life of joy and service. The shalom she will need to live a resurrected life in Christ.

But the truth is, as hard as we try, we will not be able to keep Evy-Lou from pain in her life. There will be wounds that are hers and hers alone, just like there are for all of us. And we, even in our deepest desire to be faithful to our covenant vows to her this morning, we will make mistakes. And so will you, her parents . . .

The promise of Baptism to Evy-Lou today is not that she will be without pain in her life, as much as we wish it would be so. The promise of Baptism to Evy-Lou today is that she has been clothed with Christ for every part of her life, and even into her death, and that this clothing serves as a great seal of resurrection protection that will transfigure whatever wounds she bears into God’s promised shalom hope and grace and love.

This is, in fact, the baptismal promise for every one of us.

That we may trust our wounds to the God who knows what it is to be wounded. And our healing to the God who knows what it is to be healed. And our new life daily to the God who is desperate to give us all a second chance . . . or a third chance . . . or a three-hundredth chance. That we may, with our wounds—and not in spite of them—even learn how to trust “church” again.

Because, in the end, this is the only way we will recognize the risen Christ in our midst. When we trust our wounds to one another, and watch them heal before our eyes.

I pray it may be so for us this day.

Amen.

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.