The Rev. Lindsay Marie Hills
All Saints Church
May 6, 2012

Ever since I was a small child I was hyper vigilant when it came to safety….
I was the first 6th grader to sign up for crossing guard duty,
to ensure safe passage of all my classmates….

I always wore a helmet when I rode my by bike, or roller skated,
or participated in any other wheeled activity for that matter

and always thought wearing a seatbelt in the car was something everyone did…
regardless of it being a state law

You can never be to sure….
because-danger is around every corner

Or perhaps it’s better to be safe than sorry…

These are the timeless proverbs or wise sayings that gently nudge us
towards crossing at the crosswalks,
wearing our helmets,
or buckling our seatbelts….

And in MOST cases by doing so…
            Pedestrians are spared from getting hit by cars
            Heads are protected from traumatic brain injuries
            And people aren’t ejected from cars…
And we simply go about our daily business…

But once in awhile…our proverbs fall short at helping us understand the world around us…
 
From the sidewalk of Sanford, Florida, where a young unarmed boy walking home from the convenience store is shot…for appearing suspicious
to the unsuspecting quiet neighborhood in Greenland, New Hampshire, where officers serving a warrant were unexpectedly greeted with bullets instead of backtalk…

even our own Episcopal Church, late this week, St. Peter’s in Ellicott, Maryland....fell victim to unexpected violence when a man entered the church and shot the two people inside….killing the parish secretary…and the associate rector, a woman who had served in our very diocese.

And yet that didn’t stop Phillip, commissioned as a deacon….“went from place to place proclaiming the word….” (NRSV Acts 8:4).  When he arrived in Samaria he “proclaim[ed] the good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ” (NRSV Acts 8:12)….

and as a result they came to him in droves…
men and women they were baptized…
old and young they were baptized….
skeptic and believer they were baptized.

But that’s not all that happened….after Samaria….he was traveling, well on his way…when suddenly an angel of the lord appeared, telling Phillip to not go the way he was headed….which was perhaps the main road, with more foot traffic, and smoother trails….but the angel instead tells him to
“Get up and go toward the south, to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza” (NRSV ACTS 8:26),  the road the angel advises him to take is not just any old road….Luke tells us plainly it’s a wilderness road…..

            Just from the sounds of it….it sounds like trouble could be looming…
            What would Phillip do if he encountered thieves on the road….
What if he passed out from exhaustion….or dehydration
it may be hours or days until another traveler passed by….

On this wilderness road….Philip didn’t know what he would he would encounter…and yet propelled by the holy spirit and guided by heavenly messengers he journeyed on….

Phillip continued on his journey….and it is on that wilderness road that he encounters what Luke describes as the Ethiopian Eunuch, “a court official of …Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury.” (NRSV, Acts 8:72)…from Luke’s account we don’t know if Philip, unprovoked, would have pursued the eunuch at all….or whether he would have just continued on his way. 

There’s much debate by theologians as to whether or not the eunuch would have been an outsider because of his black-ness, his African-ness, his close connection to royalty, or his sexual castration, making him a sexual minority and a gender misfit of sorts

They may not agree on WHY he was an social outcast…but generally theologians agree that the eunuch was a social outcast.  But again, it is the stirring of the spirit, that provokes Philip to go to the Eunuch…he’s described as running to the chariot…

“At several points in the Old Testament, eunuchs are banned from entering the temple” , and as a result, the eunuch Philip encounters is unable to make sense of the scripture he is reading...
            UNTIL Philip sits with him
            UNTIL Philip journey’s with him
            UNTIL Philip …..takes …..the …..time… to share the Good News with him.
As a result the Eunuch is able to TRULY hear the good news for the first time, and with a truly thankful and joyful heart, he begs Philip….. to baptize him in the water.

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The community at St. Peter’s had a long history and commitment to feeding the homeless in Ellicott, their website full of calls for replenishment during various times of the year…. and photos of the well stocked pantry, and volunteers working to help feed the cities hungry….

They, like Philip, were doing the work demanded of discipleship….
caring for the poor, feeding the hungry….

Someone commented on the Episcopal News Service page, in response to the shooting….that working with homeless people is “dangerous” and to some extent they aren’t wrong…..
But the reality is there is danger everywhere we turn…behind every corner…..and we do not know the form it will take……..
and yet, news reports emphasizing that the shooter was a homeless person....
that he was disgruntled having been turned away from the food pantry,
or as someone put it  “he was an unbalanced homeless man”

continue to built up the walls that divide the “haves” from the “have nots”….
continue to separate us from our brothers and sisters in need…
continue to blind us from seeing the face of the risen Christ in the faces of those we encounter in our day to day lives

In the face of such unexpected violence…
Its easy to see how congregations involved in ministries working directly with the homeless could second guess their choice of ministry……

You can see comments and reactions from people around the country online…
“maybe its time to close the food pantry….”
“its just too dangerous these days…”

The media focusing on the homelessness of the gunman.....makes it easy for us to forget that the gunman could have just as easily been someone WITH a home…
The events at St. Peter’s remind us that the work of spreading the Good News…
is sometimes dangerous work.

in the case of Philip’s encounter on the wilderness road, sharing the Good News was met with great enthusiasm by the Eunuch

while in the case of St. Peter’s it was that same spirit that encountered great tragedy.

How then are we to respond in the midst of fear and threat of danger?  PAUSE
Just as the fear of getting hit by oncoming traffic, doesn’t prompt us to never cross a street again…

Or the fear of falling off a bike or roller skates doesn’t make us stop a bike or roller skating ever again….
So MUST we respond to the issue of homelessness.

While the media, sends subliminal, and sometimes not so subliminal, warnings for us to “beware of homeless”
our response as Christians should NOT be
to close down food pantries,
 end feeding programs,
 or avoid the homeless all together…

but rather our ANGER at the injustices of homelessness and poverty SHOULD be the kick in the butt we need to move us beyond …....frozen fear ....and paralyzed inaction…..into HOLY ACTION.

HOLY ACTION
            -that is authentic and holistic …..
HOLY ACTION
            -that is both of God and for God
HOLY ACTION
-that is inspired by our living into the joy of Easter
-of sharing the Good News of the risen Christ with others so that they too may be transformed by God’s unconditional love and saving grace…

Some of this HOLY ACTION is already brewing…
through our feeding ministries at the VA shelter and Jeremiah’s Inn….
our outreach through Elm Park Ministries and Worcester Interfaith…

all examples of the Holy Spirit stirring us up in different ways to impact the world and community outside these four walls.
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On May 20th you have another opportunity to take part in HOLY ACTION, you are all invited to join myself and members of our Episcopal Youth Council, as we walk a little over 4 miles in the Central Massachusetts Housing Alliance’s 27th Annual Walk for the Homeless. 

A survey conducted every January, indicated this past year that homelessness has increased in Worcester County, from 1,315 in 2011 to 1,611 this past January….and together we can do something about it…..

Information about how to DONATE and how to PARTICIPATE in the walk can be found in the announcement portion of your service leaflet, but you can also join us through prayer, supporting both the walkers and those we will be walking for. 

The proceeds from the walk, go towards making concrete, sustainable, and life changing and in some cases life giving in the lives of our homeless brothers and sisters. 

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The tragedy in Maryland, is magnified by the tragedy of homelessness that has been brought to the limelight as a result of this horrific event. 

The women whose lives were cut short, knew what it meant to “seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself” all to well....as they ministered to the hungry and the homeless

Philip on the wilderness road….he too, new what it meant to “seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself” as he ministered to the eunuch, to the outcast, to the outsider…..

How will you respond to that same call?

PAUSE

In the words of hope from the Easter Sermon of the deceased, Rev. Mary Marguerite Kohn, “we pray for a new awareness of the ‘seismic shifts’ in our lives so that we might, in God’s eternal time by God’s mighty power, move from being “demoralized and traumatized disciples” to an ‘astonishing transformation…as…the power of the resurrected Christ breaks into [our] lives, reorienting everything [we] think [we] know and believe, changing [our] life trajectory…. For Christ has been raised; and he calls all of his beloved to follow him on the [wilderness] roads of discipleship.’”

The Rev. Lindsay Marie Hills
All Saints Church, Worcester
April 20, 2012

In the Steven Spielberg classic, Hook, a grown Peter Pan, played by Robin Williams, is transported back to Never Never Land with the help of Tinkerbell, played by Julia Roberts….The stuffy, adult, lawyer, Peter Banning finds himself in the midst of the Lost Boys, his long lost brothers.  Peter doesn’t remember his childhood in Never Never Land with the Lost Boys…and the Boys greet him by taunting and teasing, the old fat man, can’t possibly be the Peter Pan they once knew and loved…after a crazy chase, the current leader of the Lost Boys, Roofio, draws a line in the sand with a stick and demands that the boys pick a side…him or the so called “Peter Pan,” this adult, perceived as a trespasser and traitor….

The boys quickly side with Roofio, the rebel rouser, sporting a black and fuchsia striped Mohawk, the boy with what appears to be a perpetual chip on his shoulder.......leaving the boring, grown, rule oriented, corporate lawyer standing alone….

Well almost alone..

One boy, the smallest, known as “pockets” remains behind….
and in a dramatic shift,
the boy pokes Robin Williams in the gut,
walks around him in circles…looking him up and down…
then pulls him down to his knees,

there the young boy,
removes the aged Peter’s glasses,
and begins to knead his face, moving it around and contorting it in different ways…

exploring the creases of his smile, the tender lines of his eye brow and jaw…

as if the boy was blind, and trying to study and commit his face to memory.
           
            After carefully exploring every inch of his face, he exclaims, “there you are peter”
           
The music dramatically shifts and the boys all surrounding Roofio, cross back over the line that had been drawn in the sand…surrounding the age-d Peter Pan, touching his face, and tugging at his clothes inquisitively…..vowing to help him rescue his kids from the evil Captain Hook…..
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The portion of the Gospel we hear today is the second part, to the more familiar account of the two disciples walking to Emmaus, discussing what they had witnessed at the tomb.  It is there that they encounter the risen Christ, but do not initially recognize him. 
The disciples extended hospitality to this stranger, inviting him to stay with them and eat with them.  That night the weary travelers gathered at the table together. 
Once Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it and gave it to them, just as he had done before his death….those gathered instantly recognized their friend Jesus. And then he vanished.
At once the disciples continued on their journey to Jerusalem, where they at once told those gathered there
what they had heard,
what they had experienced,
what they had seen with their own eyes.
And that is where our Gospel today begins….
Jesus reappears to the gathered disciples and simply says “ Peace be with you.” 
Still frightened….
Jesus invites the disciples to LOOK at his hands and feet and SEE that it is himself
            Jesus invites them to TOUCH him, and FEEL that it is himself
Like the Lost Boys, the disciples gathered are probably
excited,
scared,
nervous,
anxious,
joyful,
confused,
and skeptical….
Is this really their long lost Peter Pan???? 
Is this really their friend who they denied, their friend who was crucified, died and buried?
The Lost Boys’ and the Disciples are both
overwhelmed with mixed emotions….
reluctant to accept the return of their friend…
invited to touch and feel in order to try to make sense of what is going on…
-----
How do WE respond to the risen Christ in our lives???
When we encounter him on the road to Emmaus….

When he’s made known to us at the table…in the breaking of the bread….

When he stands before us asking for something to eat?
Probably not unlike, the Lost Boys and the disciples, our emotions probably range from joy and excitement to fear and confusion….
But how do we move past those initial emotions??
When we find ourselves suspicious of the presence of the risen Christ in our every day life….do we question it??
Or like our friend “Pockets” did so well…do we explore it….taking the time to survey each and every bump, crease and line? 
Do we meet the risen Christ, with tuned in ears, eyes peeled open, and our hands outreached?

Or do we shy away, and let others explore….
because we are too afraid of what we may find?
Of what he may teach us?
Of what we may learn about ourselves?
----
Regardless of how we react…

regardless of our initial impressions…
our initial thoughts
our hesitation or fear…

the Good News remains, that Christ is risen from the dead!  Any amount of fear or anxiety, can’t
undo the miracle that God has done….

and in so many ways that’s what living into Easter is all about….
its about that road to Emmaus….
its about the slow reveal of the risen Christ that somehow hits us like a ton of bricks
its about readjusting to the bright white of Easter linens and loud shouts/songs of Alleluias! Praise God!

Its about exploring every crease and line….of our friend, once dead…..
so that with a sense of childlike recognition….we are able to say…. “it is you…Jesus”
And live into the joy of this Easter season.

I remember my driver’s education class and especially the six hours on the road as a 16-year old student driver, maneuvering my instructor’s souped-up Camaro. It was a pretty powerful car alright! What makes it all the more memorable, I admit, was the fact that as I was pulling into the driveway of the driving school to get my certificate, I mistakenly accelerated and put a gaping hole in the side of a Lincoln Continental that just happened to be in my way! Now, I also remember one other thing that I took in during that training—memorable because it seemed to me then, and now, to be so counter-intuitive—and that’s the lesson about turning toward or into the direction of the skid. Rather than being caught in a skid and resist the direction of the skid, it is a wiser thing, albeit counter-intuitive, to turn into or towards the skid in order to regain control, come out of the skid and avoid a crash. That has been a useful lesson to me as a driver on a few occasions, not to mention an even more useful lesson for living.

In our lessons today, we encounter two stories with some strange twists that describe ways in which we people of God have long been encouraged to practice our faith by turning in the direction of the skid. The first story from the book of Numbers describes how the Hebrew people, having been liberated from slavery in Egypt, were being led by Moses in the wilderness, and had decided they were not having a good time. At this part of their journey we hear them speak out against God and Moses, saying, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food.” No matter that they had been delivered from bondage in Egypt and had been given their freedom and were close to their promised land. They complained loudly. And then there’s this bizarre turn. To deal with this complaining, as the story goes, “then the Lord sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died.” The people and Moses are quite shocked by such a raw display of God’s power, and apologizing for their outburst, they want to know how to get out of this terrifying situation. As the story goes, Moses is told, “make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.” By taking their problem and lifting it up on a pole to hold it in front of the people—in their face as it were—the story, in essence, says that the answer to their problem is to face right into it.

From this rather bizarre story we fast forward some 1,200 years to the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus recorded in the Gospel of John. Jesus had been gaining a reputation as both a wonder worker and a radical teacher, and had attracted the attention of another notable teacher, the highly respected Nicodemus, who had come to Jesus under the cover of darkness. In their nighttime conversation, Jesus first tells Nicodemus, that to understand him, you have to be born again, or from above. Nicodemus trips over a literal understanding of Jesus’ words, Jesus’ metaphor for the spiritual practice of engaging in radically fresh thinking. And the fresh thinking Jesus is sharing, he sums up in a few powerful lines, the first of which has been often reduced to signs at football games: John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” And Jesus connects this back to that bizarre story of the poisonous snakes among the Israelites in the wilderness, as Jesus tells Nicodemus, “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” And in the same spirit as the story of the snake lifted on the pole in Numbers, just after the famous John 3:16 quote, Jesus adds a not as famous, but equally important line, in the next verse, “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” Serpents on a stick connected to salvation—how does this connect? Could it be that God helps us to address our most difficult problems by putting them in our face, by having us turn towards them in order to somehow work through them, and encounter God’s grace and mercy? As my former colleague Bill Tully put it, “When the people did not understand what was happening to them, when they denied the truth that freedom entails a certain danger in living, God told Moses to take the danger and hold it up on a stick and show it to them. Many centuries later, when people were confused about how to live a whole and abundant life, Jesus was ‘lifted up’ on a stick—the Cross. The fate of that good and loving human being –his violent end—was certainly put in our face.”

Serpents on sticks and the Son of Man being lifted up—God loves us precisely this way, by having us both face our issues and by seeing God in Christ who takes on the full measure of our troubled human condition. In spiritual and existential terms, we all often find ourselves caught in a skid and, continuing out of control, at times end in a crash. God in Christ turns into the existential skid, as it were, and has us look there and discover, in the words of Pogo, "We have met the enemy and he is us.” Yet Christ lifted up on the cross is not only the foremost sign of our human sinfulness, but it is also the chief symbol of God’s grace and mercy and the full measure of God’s forgiveness. For, as William Sloane Coffin put it,
“…the cross tells us that you can kill God’s Love, but you cannot keep it dead and buried; [and] that there are more important tragedies than the tragedy of death; and [that] no victory [is] more important than the triumph of [God’s] love. The cross tells us that where sin increases, [God’s] grace [and mercy] abound all the more…The world will be saved if, by the grace of God, [people of faith] do not refuse their own crosses, but allow them to become lightening rods to ground the world’s [fear, ignorance and] hatred, and [then become as] determined as Christ himself, that where sin increases, grace [and mercy] will all the more abound.”

It is when we stare at the serpent on the stick, at Christ on the Cross, and, with God’s help, turn in the direction of the skid, that we can address our issues and meet Christ even in those dark places. The good news is that we are beloved daughters and sons of an all-Loving God who knows all about us, and who loves us anyway. And what does this Loving God do? Well, he holds up what we need to see and turns in the direction of our skid, showing us how to do the same, thus handing us responsibility of and for our own problems. Salvation in the hands of this kind of Loving God is very counter-intuitive: turn in the direction of the skid in order to gain control of the skid. How might this begin? Listen to the mystic, Rumi, as he compares human living as though we were running a guest house. He wrote,
“This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.”

Life is filled with serpents and skids. Our readings today suggest we keep an eye out for them, and before it’s too late. As Bill Tully put it, “See if you can see one or two of those moments  in the moment, and not centuries later—so you can get it before it’s too late to turn in the direction of the skid. Seeing and turning are God’s gifts of love to us.”

 

After being baptized in the Jordan River and receiving an affirmation of his identity as God’s Beloved Son, Jesus immediately spends forty days alone in the wilderness of Judea, asking what it would mean to live into his identity and his role as the Beloved Son—carrying forth God’s mission of repairing the world and restoring all into right relationship. During Lent we too are called to ask what it means to be ourselves and how we as God’s beloved daughters and sons are to join with Christ in his ongoing repairing and restoring mission. We read again the gospel lesson of Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness, temptations to substitute some illusory notion of the human best in place of, and at odds with, the Holy Good. Sometimes the desire to be affirmed as the best can be the enemy of the good, and this is what Jesus had to battle with internally in the wilderness and throughout his public ministry. To get at the attitudinal difference between the illusion of the human “best” and the reality of the Holy “Good”, I refer again to Frederick Buechner who put it something like this:

To do for yourself the [best] that you have in you to do—to grit your teeth and clench your fists in order to survive the world at its harshest and worst—is, by that very act, to be unable to let something be done for you and in you [and through you] that is [fundamentally good]. The trouble with steeling yourself against the harshness of reality is that the same steel that secures your life against being damaged or destroyed, secures your life also against being opened up and transformed by the holy power that life itself comes from. You can survive on your own. You can grow stronger on your own. You can even prevail [and be the best] on your own. But you cannot become human on your own.”

To become fully human we have to go beyond steely self-sufficiency to rediscover the grace of dependency on God, and of interdependence with others. The trouble is that one of the most popular models for humanity is that of the self-made man or woman or the lone hero, the one who has reached the top, the one who fights and wins against all odds. The danger of this model lies in denying God and distorting our true being through a combination of great moral vigor yet with little self-knowledge. Or, as Reinhold Niebuhr once commented, “Ultimately considered, evil is done not so much by evil people, but by good people who do not know themselves”—those who do not know the essence of their true humanity as being dependent on God and interdependent with all others, those who do not know or remember their beloved nature and that of others, their goodness and others’ goodness.

Mark’s account of Jesus’ time in the wilderness of Judea does not include the specific three temptations that the other gospels describe, so I’ll list them briefly. First, there’s the temptation to turn stones into bread, in other words, to be the most dazzling miracle worker out there appealing to instant gratification, to be the most immediate and relevant people pleaser in addressing, in this case, hunger (his own and others). To act like this is to please, to be willing to be defined by others and their expectations, in order to be affirmed. In short, this is the temptation to be most relevant. Secondly, there’s the temptation to have dominating power over all the kingdoms of the earth. This was built into many peoples’ expectations of the coming of the Messiah Warrior King. This temptation doesn’t necessarily mean using raw unaccountable power. It can simply be the temptation to have what could be called a “royal consciousness,” which can take the form of neglecting those on the margins, or treating them from the basis and prerogatives of your power of privilege. In short, this is the temptation to be driven by power. And thirdly, there’s Jesus’ temptation to be sensational by engineering a miraculous rescue, were he to jump off the top of the Temple. With this goes the expectation that God will intervene and save Jesus. From our perspective it would mean that God will intervene and make it right, even if we abdicate our own responsibility and do destructive or self-destructive things. In short, it is the temptation to be spectacular and irresponsible. These were the temptations to somehow be the very best—at least in the eyes of others—and by which Jesus would fulfill his calling as God’s Beloved Son, supposedly. But as the philosopher Voltaire stated, “The best is the enemy of the good.”—so Jesus worked through these temptations which would have, in fact, distorted and disconnected him from his real calling and good and true identity had he succumbed to them.

Many people give in to these temptations to distort the fundamental truth and goodness of their own belovedness, to be most relevant, power-driven, or spectacular. A few people have to wrestle with these temptations regularly, be they presidents, potentates, performers, or folk further down the pecking order. The lure of being the best in what we say or do can easily become that moral vigor that has little self-knowledge, as we become seduced by the belief that the “best” is what we have to be, even if it seems too good to be true - which it often is.

And not only those with strong egos are thus tempted. As writer and educator Parker Palmer points out, a more common temptation for many of us is to think of ourselves as never good or beloved enough, as more or less irrelevant, powerless and mundane. This temptation to feel only the poverty of spirit in ourselves, and disregard the presence and power and purpose of God who calls each of us a beloved daughter or son, is the flip-side of the temptations felt by those in our world with stronger egos. Yet both contexts of temptation—from the stronger ego or the weaker ego—are rooted in the same illusion that we need what the devil is peddling if we are to be affirmed by others and lead lives of any consequence or worth. So, whether we lust after them or whether we regard them as out of reach, these devilish temptations—to seek self-affirming relevance, to be driven by power, to be spectacular—are, at the same time, both the most common and popular images underlying our world and our lives. And yet, these are also the most misleading distractions to living a life that is true to yourself—a life lived without undue anxieties of failing or succeeding, of receiving criticism or praise, of being accepted or rejected.

Jesus’ spiritual and moral compass saw through these temptations as being too good to be true. He realized his identity and his calling required of him only that he become comfortable in his own skin; that he respond faithfully to his own inner truth and goodness—his beloved nature—and to the truth and goodness around him. And so, he renounced and resolved his temptations in the wilderness as he realized that the outcomes of his own actions would achieve whatever was possible, and that would be good enough. That inner compass of God’s Holy Good at work in him pointed him to a truer way than what relevance, power or spectacle might promise, but, in the end, could not deliver. Of course these same temptations would dog him to his dying day.

This gospel text is chiefly a story about Jesus’ identity and his calling to face and resist the temptation to substitute the illusion of the human “best” in place of the Holy Good. Insofar as we belong to Jesus, it is a story about our identity and calling too. Many voices call for our attention—voices such as the one that comes from within or without, that says, “Prove that you’re a good person—again and again,” like the voice that tempts Jesus to turn stones into bread. Another voice, from with or without, tells us, “Good isn’t good enough. Be only the best. Be sure to become successful, powerful, popular,” like the voice that tempts Jesus in those other ways. But underneath and through these distracting voices is a clear, quieter voice that says, “You are my beloved son, my beloved daughter, in whom I am well pleased. And you are good, and that’s good enough!” That voice speaks to each one of us, and to all of us, and that’s the voice we most need to hear in our lives.

 

As a former colleague of mine writes, “If you were shut out of a group or, worse, [if you were shut] out of your family, what would you be willing to do to be taken back in? Or, if you were sick, if you were enslaved to an addiction, would you be willing to undergo whatever it took to be over it, to be healed, [to be in recovery]?” Those same questions came to me as I read these Biblical stories of the healing of lepers. In our gospel story both the healed and the healer paid a price: the man for identifying himself and showing his willingness to go into a healing process—which couldn’t have been easy, given the shame associated with this disease--and Jesus who ultimately paid a price for living with, talking with, and healing those who were considered “unclean” and outcast.

It’s important to come to terms with the underlying resistance, both in the one who needs healing and in the one who would be an agent of God’s healing. Resistance. There are a number of books and articles about people who have worked through and addressed their resistance to something about them that they feel is shameful. And our society doesn’t make that easy. We conspire as a society by building up this sense of stigma, shame, so that it raises the level of risk for somebody, for example, who wants healing for, say, their addiction or depression, or trauma. Just listen to one woman’s testimony who had suffered an awful abuse as a child:

“My memory of the childhood event that created the tough, resistant little girl provided me with many lessons. For starters, I finally grasped a deep appreciation for the ingenuity of this young girl. I watched in my mind’s eye as she made a very ’grown-up’ decision to erect a wall of resistance to the otherwise overwhelming feelings of pain and abandonment. I was also led to a deeper appreciation and acceptance of all her protections. Each was created for the very same reason—to survive in the face of loneliness.”

What did she do? Through this process of healing, she was able to go beyond noticing her resistance. She was able to no longer treat it like the enemy. She stated, “I was able to embrace it as a friend. In doing so I embraced the child inside who used the resistance to protect against the feeling of fear and pain and loneliness.”

It was only after she had acknowledged and then embraced that resistance after so many years that she worked through it, and she was able to accept a degree of healing that freed her, as a person, from the awful thing that she carried around—the shame of that memory of intimate abuse—in her case, violation by her own father.

Now generalize a little bit from the particulars of this woman’s story of abuse and just imagine all of the resistances to private pain that you and I have built up over the years. For example, back in New York City I recall our efforts to engage many in our very diverse interfaith congregation-based organizing project called Manhattan Together, as well as those who came through our Career Assistance Center in conversations about how people were doing in tough economic times, dealing with unemployment and related issues. We found that those in Jewish congregations didn’t want to talk about these issues openly, that Haitians didn’t want to talk about them publicly, and we found that that mainline WASPs didn’t want to talk about them either—and why?—because situations like unemployment brought out a sense of shame! Now, it is important to remember that unemployment is a social failure far more than a personal one. It is a public scandal as well as a personal tragedy. But it is very hard to render public one’s private pain—people try so hard to tough it out on their own. And such resistance is spiritually significant. People sitting in this congregation today know full well that our illnesses, our wounds, our shame, our unemployment or whatever, can bring on a real identity crisis—which to some degree is always a spiritual crisis. The harder this hits a person, our churches need to say loud and clear that no matter what wounds you bear, or sense of shame you carry, you, me—all of us—are God's beloved and precious sons and daughters, and don't let these hard realities tell you differently.

To become fully human you have to go beyond trying to tough it out on your own—you have to go beyond steely self-sufficiency—to rediscover the grace of dependency on an all-loving God, and of interdependence with others. Some people can’t even accept the hope of a life built on God’s grace, because they are too protected against it. Something awful has happened to them. It might be ordinary awful as in a job loss or it might be unspeakably awful as with the woman who had suffered abuse as a child. But it happens. And in order to further protect themselves, many have built up that resistance. What the leper did in reaching out to Jesus, and what Jesus did when he healed the leper, was to break through that resistance, and “accept acceptance,” as Paul Tillich put it. It was a way of saying, “I’m through with this category. I’m through with living in the stigma and shame and hurt that has been assigned me in this life.” So keep reaching out.

In this context, on this Sunday which we also have come to call “Legacy Sunday.” I want to shift gears slightly to mention another form of resistance which I acknowledge in myself and see in many others, namely, the resistance to discovering ourselves as givers. Today on Legacy Sunday we acknowledge all the faithful souls who have planted generous seeds that continue to bear fruit in our time. We give special thanks for their gifts that have been bestowed upon this community of faith.  Over time many people have remembered this parish in their wills, and left bequests—small and large—in support of the ministries of this parish.  If it were not for the legacy of these faithful parishioners of the past, this parish in this place would not be able to exist today. These givers in their generations intended to ensure the life of this community for future generations. We are the spiritual descendents of all those who have given their blood, sweat, and tears, along with their resources—in good times and in bad--to worship and serve God and our neighbors in this city of Worcester, in this part of God’s world.

This space has been blessed by baptisms and confirmations, weddings and funerals.  It has held the prayers of countless Sundays and weekday services.  People have celebrated birth and life in this sanctuary, and people have grieved death and loss in this sacred space. The place where you are seated holds the spirits of all those who have sat here in generations past, and you are blessed by the prayers they have left behind. We in this parish have been blessed by our spiritual ancestors. Indeed we stand upon their shoulders.  But with that blessing also comes our responsibility to those who follow after us.

Yet ultimately, this isn’t about money; this is about our faith and what we can leave behind for those who follow us.  It’s about overcoming our resistance to discovering ourselves as givers. Simply put, we are created to give and we live in a world in which there is always something to give. In Genesis (1:27) we read that God created us, male and female, in God’s own image. We are a reflection of God. We reflect God’s creativity. We reflect God’s love. We reflect God’s generosity. It’s in our very being. We are created to be creative and loving and responsible and caring, and we are also created to be generous. It’s who we really are and were made to be. And so as we live and give of ourselves we discover fulfillment in truly being ourselves. There is a felt balance about it. We live; we give, as givers to God’s glory.  
So, today, on Legacy Recognition Sunday, may I remind us all: go ahead—act. Be generous. Let us become fully the givers we are and are meant to be. And as another preacher put it, “Remember, you are the spiritual ancestors of future generations of the faithful who will call this parish their home.”   Amen.