We seek and shelter spiritual refugees, rally health for all who come, and fortify every tender soul with the strength to follow Jesus into a life of world-changing service.
OUR MISSIONAL PRIORITIES:
1. We do justice for LGBTQ+ humans, and support the people who love them.
2. We do kindness for people with mental illness and in emotional distress, and celebrate neurodiversity.
3. We do beauty for our God-Who-Is-Beautiful.
4. We do real relationship, no bullshit, ever.
5. We do whatever it takes to share this good news with the world God still loves.
Trying to find us IRL?
Mail here: P.O. Box 668, Kennedale, TX 76060
Worship here: 5 pm CT Sundays; 5860 I-20 service road, Fort Worth 76119
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click here!
We've begun a four-week worship-n-preaching series to think about our own job descriptions as followers of Living Jesus. (If he's still working, his followers also have stuff to do.) We read Matthew 9, almost the entire chapter, and sang songs about sickness and healing. We watched a video clip from "The Normal Heart" to start things off, which you can watch here if you can stand it.
On Pentecost we were privileged to witness the vows of Ashley and Phillip, who wanted to have the wedding they didn't have when they got married the first time, twelve years and five kids ago. So how do you preach a wedding for a family of seven? Well, here's how I did it.
Acts 16:11-15
We set sail from Troas and took a straight course to Samothrace, the following day to Neapolis, and from there to Philippi, which is a leading city of the district of Macedonia and a Roman colony. We remained in this city for some days. On the sabbath day we went outside the gate by the river, where we supposed there was a place of prayer; and we sat down and spoke to the women who had gathered there.
A certain woman named Lydia, a worshiper of God, was listening to us; she was from the city of Thyatira and a dealer in purple cloth. The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul. When she and her household were baptized, she urged us, saying, “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come and stay at my home.” And she prevailed upon us.
Homily
You probably noticed that this is not a very wedding-y text. The truth is, the Bible doesn’t actually say a lot about how to have a good 21st century marriage; it’s not the Bible’s job to be an advice manual. We learn from the Bible how to be the best humans we can, and how utterly dependent on God we are for every breath we take, and beyond that, God trusts us to work out a lot of the details on our own.
Plus, Phil and Ashley, y’all have been at this marriage thing for a long time. I’m not sure what I could tell you that would be better than your own experience of commitment through the ups and downs of everyday life. You have had babies together. You’ve lived through war together, literally, in ways that most of us have not. You’ve endured long separations; economic hardship; health issues; and spiritual desolation; and you’ve done it all together. I don’t think it seems reasonable that you need advice for how to stay happily married.
So we have read this ancient story about the spread of a very local message to a globalized distribution of the news that God is God of heaven and earth, not just local, not just for some people, but for all. Like all history, it’s in the past. But like all history, it has a couple of clues for us today, clues that I thought you might find interesting given where life finds you today.
Here’s our first clue: the women who gathered by the river with their leader Lydia were spiritual, but not religious. For one thing, they weren’t Jewish, so they didn’t come from a heritage of deep faith and religious practice. Their hearts were inclined toward God, but they gathered informally by the river, not in the synagogue, not in the temple, not in any of the designated holy places. Like flowers leaning toward the sun, they leaned toward the Divine, without a great deal of clarity about what they believed – only the sense that something or someone greater than themselves is the Director of the cosmic project.
So the apostle Paul, the church’s first theologian, impressed with their searching, fills in some of the details about God’s intense love for all of humanity, and they decide to take a chance and believe it. That’s how the early conversions to Christianity always were – somebody deciding to take a crazy chance that it just might be true, that the God of the Universe might just be reaching out to them. And then acting on that chance, they took the incredible risk of faith. It was not easy for them; it was never simple. And that might be a familiar feeling to you, that Christian faith feels something like jumping off an intellectual cliff in your mind. But the story of Lydia and others like her show us that that’s the way it’s always been, even for the very first believers. Don’t trust anybody who tells you that believing in God, and believing that God is for you, is easy, or a foregone conclusion. The believers who are notable enough to make it into our sacred book are the ones who believed it against all odds.
The second clue for your marriage that we find in this text is that Lydia’s decision to take that leap of faith affects her whole family. The text says, “She and her household were baptized into Christ.” This is a pattern in the New Testament – that when one member of the family puts their trust in God as God is made known to us in the person of Jesus, the whole family often comes along. There are numerous stories like this – Cornelius the Roman centurion, the unnamed Philippian jailer, Crispus the synagogue leader, and now Lydia the textile merchant, just to name a few.
Things are a little different today – we tend to be much more inclined to let every member of the family make their own, autonomous decision about what to believe and how to orient their lives around those beliefs. But the inescapable truth, even today, is that you two, Phil and Ashley, are householders, you are the chiefs of your own little tribe, and as such, you have a great deal of influence over these children you’re raising together. Brendan, Ella, Evelyn, Barrett, and Brock are already becoming the kind of people they can see that you are.
They are already prioritizing the things you prioritize.
They are already putting their trust in whatever you put your trust in.
They are someday going to work as hard as you work, and love as deeply as you love, and practice mercy insofar as you have been merciful.
They will give generously of their lives in direct proportion to how generously they witness you giving of yours.
Not to put too fine a point on it: your kids’ lifelong engagement with God our Father, the Maker of heaven and earth, the Creator and Sustainer of the universe, is in your hands. And it won’t be enough for you to talk about it with them. They’ll have to see it in action. They’ll need to witness your own attachment to a community of disciples who are all trying as hard as we can to follow Jesus down this faithful path to the heart of God, our own hearts’ true home. I want to urge you to make that a commitment of your continued life together, for their sake, as well as for your own. Someday, when generations to come tell the story of the Hersman family, they’ll say how the Lord “opened the hearts of Phillip and Ashley,” and how all your household came to know the Lord, and how together you all lived happily ever after.
And listen: because you are here, you are off to a good re-start. Standing here in front of God and all your beloveds, you are declaring yourselves to be making a fresh start even as you continue the love you began well over a decade ago. We are so privileged to witness your new beginning, and to witness the vows you are ready to make to one another.
(And they did. They spoke very lovely vows to each other, and the gathered congregation vowed to help them.)
Pronouncement:
Phillip and Ashley, before God and in the presence of this congregation, you have made your solemn vows to each other.
You have joined hands with your children to symbolize the wholeness of your family.
Therefore, by the power vested in me as a minister of the gospel of Jesus the Christ, I now pronounce you husband and wife, father and mother, partners for a lifetime of love through whatever comes your way.
Those whom God has joined together, let no one separate!
I give you Philip and Ashley, Brendan, Ella, Evelyn, Barett, and Brock! The H-- Family!
On Pentecost Sunday, Galileo Church celebrated almost more than we could handle! A new baby born in the early hours of the morning... a rewedding for a family of 7... a Covenant of Co-Conspiracy and the commissioning of leaders... a concert by Paul Demer and his band... and a record-release party with enough BBQ to make you believe in the miraculous multiplication of loaves and fishes. To get a little taste, here's what you do:
1. Read Acts 2, most all of it, with all the excitement that story deserves. Which is a lot.
2. Listen to this five-minute sermon.
3. Have your own concert experience with Paul Demer's new release, "Canvas of Sky." You can stream it for free here.
Take a look at 1 Corinthians 12:4-31, and try to imagine the situation into which the Apostle Paul is writing. Could those folks really be fussing about who is mo' better at this kingdom of God stuff? Yeah, they could. But there is something even harder than giving everybody their due respect. Yes, even harder.
The Reflection Station for Sunday asked people to reflect on the gifts they bring to our community -- specific ways they might be shared for the overall health of our "body". You can take a look at the list here, and send it along to Katie if you like.
Our worship on 5/25 went a direction I did not anticipate. I thought we would talk about how Jesus calls and sends disciples, commissioning us to share his life with the world. But when the creative team for this series read Matthew 28:16-20, they felt torn. Surely the "Great Commission" has caused a lot of trouble for a lot of people. How can we celebrate our commission without also confessing how wrong we've gone with it?
So, a challenge. How to plan a liturgy of confession where we tell the truth about the mistakes in our heritage and the mistakes in our present form of life together? We came up with a rhythm of scripture, song, homily, and prayer that helped us give voice to our corporate confession.
We can't publish the recording of the whole thing, so we'll provide an outline here so you can follow along. "Enjoy" isn't quite right. "Endure," perhaps; and "Engage."
1. Listen to "Song for My Family" by the Michael Gungor Band.
2. Read Matthew 28:16-20 and Matthew 12:15-21.
3. Read the first homily, "Compelle Intrare (Still?)":
Living Jesus’s last instructions to his disciples before he disappeared from their sight was that they should “Go, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them and teaching them.” Though he himself had never left the tiny strip of land between Galilee and Jerusalem, he intended that his followers would become world travelers for his sake, carrying the gospel from Jerusalem to the surrounding towns of Judea, to the countryside of Galilee in the north, throughout the cities of the ancient near east and eventually into Europe.
Today, a couple of thousand years later, about one-third of the world’s population is Christian. And surely this is due in part to the wildly optimistic efforts of evangelistic missionaries who leave their homes for distant shores, so deeply invested in the good news of God’s kingdom that they are driven to share it with the furthest corners of the world. Indeed, the population center of Christianity has recently shifted away from the northern hemisphere in the west – Europe and North America – to the southern hemisphere in the west and the east – South America, Africa, and, increasingly, Asia. I recently met a man whose parents were missionaries to California from South Korea. The Living Jesus continues to call and send people to repeat his message of God’s just and merciful reign throughout the world.
But even as we appreciate the efforts of those who have traded comfort and ease for the difficult itinerant life of mission work in foreign lands, we must acknowledge that conversion of the foreigner has not always been such a merciful endeavor. The church through the ages has at times adopted the doctrine of compelle intrare – “compel them to enter” – as a way to justify forced conversion of those who have no inkling of the God revealed in Jesus Christ.
Constantine, 4th century emperor of the Roman Empire, in the earliest manifestation of compelle intrare, dreamt that his armies carried the cross of Christ into battle and soundly defeated his enemy. He had the crucifix painted on every soldier’s shield and cast his war as a holy one.
The following centuries saw the church cooperating with the ruling governmental powers so thoroughly that soldiers conducted baptisms by physical force and threat of death. In the Spanish Inquisition of the 14th century, for example, the church served the state by “converting” thousands upon thousands of Muslims and Jews, “making disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” just like Jesus said. It was conventional wisdom that conquering powers would have more control if the conquered people shared the religion of their conquerors.
So when we hear the living Jesus instruct his first disciples and, by extension, us, to “go into all the world and make disciples,” we hear those words with a pang of dis-ease. We know that God’s reign is the best news we’ve ever heard. It is saving our lives every day, this hidden truth that God is in charge, that eventually God gets everything God wants, that what God wants is us, all of us, at home in God’s heart. But we also know how often, and for how long, this good news has been twisted into something ugly, something violent, a kind of cultural superiority, a means of political dominance. We are rightly hesitant to be counted among those who have done violence to the bodies or psyches of those we sought to “save.”
We hear Matthew earlier describe Jesus’ own way of announcing God’s reign. He was quiet about it, often asking people not to advertise what he had done for them. Matthew says he fulfilled Isaiah’s prophecy in this way: he did not wrangle, which I take to mean he didn’t argue his case forcefully; he did not cry out, his voice was not heard. He was a gentle evangelist, always aware that some within his hearing were broken stalks, like tomato plants that get top-heavy, bending under the weight of their own life, and have to be gently staked, stalks tied tenderly to a lattice that will help them grow toward the sun. He knew that some among his listeners were dimly burning wicks, lanterns with little oil remaining, in danger of being extinguished by the slightest breeze. Jesus practiced a way of being that was compelling because it was attentive to exactly this quality in the people who came to him. With great care, with tender mercies, he probed their pain and offered relief.
So we, when we hear living Jesus commission us for the work of evangelism, must keep in mind that it is not for our glory or our growth that we would go to all nations, or even talk to a friend, about what we know to be true concerning God’s reign. It’s not about us, not about growing our church or being part of something big and powerful or even sustainable. It’s not about validating our own radical commitment to this radical way of life. It’s not about winning.
It’s about being attentive to the hungers all around us, the hunger for a little bit of good news, the thirst for something that relativizes and relieves the brutality of life out there. Do we have a word for those who suffer, whether from circumstances of their own making or from things that have been done to them? Do we have a gentle way of sharing the life-giving news that the living Jesus is with us, working still to scoop us up and bring us home to God’s heart?
We confess that the church in every age has confused the motives for evangelism. We confess that the church in this age has broken a lot of bruised reeds and quenched innumerable dimly burning wicks. We confess, and ask forgiveness from our God who is forgiving.
4. Listen to "Hands and Feet" by The Brilliance.
5. Read the second homily, "(Not Quite) Panta ta Ethné":
When living Jesus said, “Go make disciples of all nations,” what he actually said was “panta ta ethne,” all the nations, which means living Jesus was way ahead of us on the “all the things” meme. He really is amazing.
More importantly, when living Jesus said “all the nations,” “panta ta ethne,” ethne is the word almost always translated “Gentiles,” meaning, everybody who’s not Jewish. Meaning, everybody who was left out of the original plan of salvation. Meaning, us.
This would have hurt the ears of Matthew’s original readers, I guarantee it. They were Jewish believers who had accepted Jesus as the Jewish messiah, the one sent by God to redeem Israel, not the ethne, not the nations, not the Gentiles, not us. According to the gospels Jesus occasionally healed a Gentile, sometimes had a conversation with one, but he never ever sat down to eat a meal with a Gentile. The divide between Jewish believers and those Gentile outsiders who also hungered for the reign of God was the central conflict of the early church, the one that is addressed in every book and epistle in the New Testament.
But according to Matthew, Gentiles were among the toddler Jesus’s first admirers. The wise men from the East were decidedly not Jewish, and their weird baby gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh foreshadowed a time when, according to the prophets, the nations would stream to the sound of his voice and bow in reverence at his feet. Grown-up Jesus, then, sends his first disciples to all the nations, all the Gentiles, all the ethnic outsiders, to proclaim the good news that they are in.
If the gospel we preach, then, is inherently inclusive of all people; if the earliest conflict in the church had to do with ethnic pride and ethnic exclusion, the result of which is that we are here, we Gentiles, having been included, finally, as Jesus asked; why is it that 2,000 years later the most segregated hour of the week, as Martin Luther King Jr. pointed out, is still 11 a.m. on Sunday morning? Or, in our case, 5 p.m. on Sunday evening.
According to a Rice University sociologist in research conducted for Hartford Seminary, only about 2% of Protestant congregations in the United States are significantly multiracial, with no one ethnic group comprising more than 80% of the congregation. Knowing this to be true, one of the founding documents for Galileo Church explicitly named racial diversity as a goal for our new church, especially given that the metroplex is becoming increasingly racially diverse and Mansfield enjoys an extraordinary mix of ethnicities in its neighborhoods and Millennials are known to have multiracial friendship groups in numbers unprecedented in previous generations. But look around, y’all. We are really, really white. I’m sure that your workplaces and schools don’t look like this. My neighborhood doesn’t look like this. So what is up with the church?
I don’t have an answer for that. But it bugs. And it should. When God gets everything God wants, all the ethne, all the nations will sit down at table together. Aren’t we meant to be practicing for that now? Aren’t we trying to be formed into people who want what God wants? Well, God wants this hour, the hour we spend in communal contemplation of God’s beauty, to be desegregated. Living Jesus said so. Panta ta ethne, all the ethnicities. Everybody previously excluded is now in. And it’s our job to get that done.
We confess that the church in every age has excluded entire races of people from the celebration of God’s reign. We confess that the church in this age has settled for the uneasy peace of congregational segregation by race and ethnicity. We confess, and ask forgiveness from our God who is forgiving.
6. Listen to "Help Is Round the Corner" by Coldplay.
7. Read the third homily, "We Could Be the New Them":
A friend of mine asked his third grade class to draw pictures of the Golden Rule. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” in the King James, or “Treat others as you want to be treated,” in the vernacular of public school.
Children drew pictures of themselves sharing cookies from their lunch and taking turns on the playground. But one child, a mopey little boy who was always the victim of the bullying impulses of bigger kids, drew a beach, a long seashore by a beautiful blue ocean. On the beach were two figures, the larger one kicking sand into the face of the smaller one, who was crying. My friend the teacher said, “It’s lovely, friend, but how is this an illustration of the Golden Rule?” The little boy took his picture back and wrote a caption at the bottom: “Whatever you do, don’t do this.” Sometimes the negative example is the most helpful.
There’s almost no one here who never encountered a church before Galileo, who never took part in a community of people gathered for the stated purpose of worshiping the God who draws us together. And there’s almost no one here who doesn’t understand how wrong that can go, how dangerous it is for a church to decide that it knows how to do that. Churches have done a lot of awful things in the name of the God they worship, a lot of awful things in their declared discipleship of Jesus. They may have done awful things to you.
So it’s tempting, in light of our collective experience with the churches of our past, to draw that picture over and over again: the hard-hearted church kicking sand in the faces of the little ones, the ones who don’t fit in, the ones whose lives or beliefs or identities don't square with the mainstream. We could preach it every week: Here is the big, bullying church of our past. Whatever you do, don’t do this.
The only thing is, if we park our message there, in the negative example, it’s amazing how fast we become the heroes of our own stories. It’s amazing how argumentative we become, naming our own counter-cultural beliefs as the new orthodoxy to which all others must conform or be condemned – if not by God, at least by us, when we’re together and feeling safe and enjoying the miracle by which we have found each other.
Jesus’ own evangelistic way can sometimes be read that way – that he argued vigorously, presenting new and powerful interpretations of God’s work in the world, condemning those who didn’t see what he saw. They were blind to the beauty, he sometimes said. They were deaf to the truth. And as we discover the new ways that God is revealed in our lives, we often say the same – that the people who can’t see it are blind, that we have been given eyes to see, thanks be to God.
But here is the best reason for our liturgy of confession tonight: that we don’t want to do that, we don’t want to become another church that thinks it’s got it all figured out. We don’t want to wrangle – Jesus didn’t wrangle, Matthew said; and we don’t want to shout – Jesus didn’t shout, Matthew said. Even as we look for ways to share the gospel, the good news of God’s reign, as living Jesus called us to do, we remember how careful we must be with our own self-assessment in light of that gospel. We are not the center of the universe. We are not a perfect church. We are a broken community of broken people, drawn together for healing and celebration by the God who makes beautiful things out of dust.
We confess that the church in every age has pretended a monopoly on God. We confess that the tendency remains for the church in this age, even this church, to be smug and self-righteous in our proclamation of what we’re sure we’ve finally got right. We confess, and ask forgiveness from our God who is forgiving.
8. Listen to "Dirty Feet" by Dear Saint Isaac.
9. Pray the prayer Joel wrote, riffing on Psalm 103:
O God of forgiveness,
we rejoice in your making all things new,
which includes us, broken and undeserving as we are.
You make all things right.
You put victims of all kinds of evil back on their feet.
You make whole what was broken.
You are sheer mercy and grace.
You don’t fly into fits of rage at our every mistake,
but you’re enduringly patient, rich in love.
You don’t nag and scold us whenever we err,
and you don’t grudgingly hold our sins over our heads.
You don’t treat us for who we are,
broken, selfish people prone to sinful habits and oppressive systems
In spite of all we do, and say, and think, and feel,
You forgive us.
Though our hands are muddied and covered in blood,
You wash us clean.
Though we are injured and scarred,
You heal us.
Though we are broken,
You make us whole.
You have forgiven us;
as far as sunrise is from sunset,
so far have you separated us from our sins.
We are forgiven!
And so we rejoice in our forgiveness,
in the rich love that covers it,
and in the one who says to us, “You are forgiven.”
Amen.
So sometimes Living Jesus is comforting and gentle. And then sometimes Living Jesus knocks you to the ground, puts his resurrected foot on your neck, pokes you in both eyes, and tells you exactly what to do. Such is the story of Acts 9:1-31. If Living Jesus "chooses" you, congratulations. And watch out.
We enjoyed this movie clip at the top of the service to get us in the mood. And this song following the scripture reading.
Before you listen, please read at least a few chunks of John 14. We shared verses 1-7, 15-18, 25-26. John's Jesus is kinda' long-winded. And if you need musical accompaniment, try Gillian Welch's "Orphan Girl" or Carole King's (James Taylor's) "You've Got a Friend." They worked really well for us.
We had a little sound glitch right at the top of the sermon, which Malcolm fixed -- hence the interruption. Hang in there.
For the next six weeks we'll make the case that the Living Jesus -- the post-resurrection Jesus whose faithful life was vindicated by God's defeat of Death -- is busy, really busy, doing the same kinds of things Jesus did, you know, before. In Luke 24, Living Jesus makes one of his first post-tomb appearances and does all the things he's always done really, really well. And though they sound simple, they are actually components of the eschatological vision in Isaiah 25 and other places. And to really get that, we had to eat cake, delicious cake, and wash it down with creamy whole milk. Yummiest Sunday ever.
Today I’ve trimmed up the hedges, cleaned the bathrooms, made room in the fridge for homemade salsa and Mexican beer, and made a run to the liquor store for tequila and margarita mix. And I’ve counted it as ministry. Sure ’nuff work that I’m called to do on behalf of, and alongside, the people of God.
Because here’s the thing. You cannot swing a dead cat in the Bible without running into one of God’s parties. You know how they make that Bible with red letters wherever Jesus speaks? Or the one with green print every time earth and its ecology are mentioned? Or the really hard one with highlighting over all the parts that talk about God’s special concern for the poor? I humbly submit that some publisher should add a new one to the collection: I want a Bible with hot pink confetti sprinkled over all the parties in the Bible.
Hot pink confetti for all the times that God’s prophets predict a big banquet in God’s dining room when God finally gets everything God wants. God’s been cooking all day, and there are enough chairs for everybody – me, my friends, my neighbors, and my enemies. Check out Isaiah 25:6-9 for just one example. Rich food. Aged wines. Yum yum.
Hot pink confetti for all the times God’s people are instructed to bring their first fruits to the altar, the tithe of their herds and crops; and, when they’ve sufficiently submitted those gifts to the priest, they’re instructed to use that stuff to throw a giant party for everybody who doesn’t have stuff of their own, a party to which they themselves are also invited. Don’t believe me? Check out Deuteronomy 26:1-11. “Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord your God has given to you and your house!” Tithing = par-TAY! Who knew?
Hot pink confetti for all the times Jesus goes beyond base-level sustenance for the people he loves and feeds them till they’re full, sending them home with doggie bags; or gives them the best drink they’ve ever tasted even when the peak of the party has passed. I don’t have to give you scripture and verse for those. You know them already.
Pink confetti for all the times Jesus describes the “kingdom of God” like a feast, a banquet, a wedding reception, a party you don’t want to miss. Pink confetti for all the times Jesus is accused of eating and drinking too much, celebrating too much with all the wrong people all the dadgum time. “The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’” (Matthew 11:19). I say, who wouldn’t want to follow a messiah like that?
So here’s something we count as important kingdom work at Galileo Church: we throw parties. If there’s no reason to have one, we make one up. After Christmas we threw a “We Survived the Holidays” party, because a lot of our friends suffer through holidays with – or without – their loved ones. When it was my birthday, there were no presents (because that wasn’t the point!) but there was lots of cake, and there were lots of people, and we blew off a lot of steam. We all went roller skating one night for no good reason other than it helped us have an intergenerationally hilarious good time. I’m doing chores today to get ready for Dos de Mayo tonight – because, you know, Cinco de Mayo is on a Monday, and that’s a lousy party day.
We do this as a form of kingdom work, because we believe that in the future of God’s imagining, “the shroud that is cast over all peoples” and “the sheet that is spread over all nations” will be ripped away, and God will swallow Death as an appetizer, and all God’s people will be invited to boogie down as tears are wiped away and disgrace is erased from our existence. The table will be laden with deliciousness and no one will be turned away. (This is Isaiah 25 again.)
So we’re doing our part to puuuuullllllll God’s future into our present, one party at a time. This is good work, church. Y’all come on over.
Someone said I should post a photo of my C-section scar. I declined; aren't you glad? So this is me quoting Barbara Brown Taylor quoting Stanley Hauerwas: "Christianity is to have one's body shaped, one's habits determined, in such a way that the worship of God is unavoidable." From An Altar in the World, p.45. But mainly, this is me dealing with John dealing with Thomas dealing with Jesus. John 20:19-31.
The gospel text: Matthew 27:62–28:10. Christ is risen. He is risen indeed!
I sent the following letter to the editor of the Mansfield News-Mirror after this article appeared, under a different headline, in last week's local paper. The article described recent public demonstrations by members of Open Carry Texas, a group of gun-rights activists that lobbies legislators to relax laws for gun ownership and public carrying. They have "patrolled" Mansfield intersections lately with AR-15s and AK-47s slung over their shoulders.
April 15, 2014
Dear Editor:
Thank you for reporting on the recent appearances of Open Carry Texas on the streets of Mansfield.
The opening paragraph of the article mentioned the “thumbs up, handshakes and honks of approval” the group received as their members patrolled a busy intersection in our town. It would have been difficult to quantify, by contrast, the shock and anxiety the sight provoked in many citizens.
How many parents like myself locked the doors of the car and told our kids not to make eye contact? How many of us were stammering for an explanation for why, in the most prosperous and free country in the world, where we live among the most generous and gentle neighbors we could ask for, some people feel it is necessary to publicly display weapons that are meant only to kill human beings? I’m not usually at a loss for words. But I could not explain this to my kids.
(Reasonable answers were made even more difficult by the apparent minor status of several of the demonstrators. In what world is it okay to put guns into the hands of children? Have we not been paying attention to what frustrated and suffering children can do to each other when they have gun power at their disposal?)
Let me be clear: there is no reason under the sun for individuals to own such weapons. But if they do, in accordance with federal, state, and local laws, there is no reason that they should be carried and brandished in a populated area where every person is just trying to get through the end of the day the best they can. There is no reason to express such hostility toward (and fear of) one’s fellow human beings by using weapons of mass destruction as “fashion accessories,” as suggested by the Open Carry representative quoted in your article.
I would love to see Mansfield law enforcement and government officials deal with this issue head-on. The problem is not whether Open Carry Texas members are distributing propaganda. The problem is that they’re doing it with the potential for menace and mayhem strapped to their backs.
grace and peace,
Rev. Dr. Katie Hays, Galileo Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
To begin Holy Week, we paved the aisle in palms and read Luke's account of Jesus' suffering. Lance Pape (known to a few as Honeydog #1) preached. (He also built a cross for the sanctuary. He also sang tenor in a mostly a cappella rendition of "O Sacred Head." But it's the preaching we couldn't have done without.)
It took us a week, but we finally got Lazarus out of that tomb. Check out John 11, the whole story, before you go too much further. And if you want to experience the sermon in its context, take your earbuds to your local barbecue restaurant.
The story of the Bethany siblings is our last in the Soul Repair series: John 11. But we're telling it over two weeks, which means for a little while Lazarus is going to stay in the tomb while we think about Martha and Mary and what those days of Jesus' delay felt like to them. This is not going to be nominated for anybody's feel-good sermon of the year, but we're still telling the truth here, aren't we? (Theme song for the Bethany sisters: "You Found Me," The Fray. Just a little late. Where were you?)
"Here's mud in your eye." That's what she -- our regular contributor here -- would have called this sermon. But Joel Brown is classier than that. So he respects this story about Jesus from John 9:1-41 with a great deal of gravitas. It is, after all, about the possibility that just when Jesus is helping one blind guy see, he can strike a whole bunch more people blind -- the miracle of healing working backwards for those without eyes to see. Ouch.
At the top of the service, we listened to a piece of Anne Lamott's reading on NPR's This American Life, episode 104, in which she says she's seen "miracle enough for me." You can listen here.
Thanks, Joel, for good words and good news.
Ralph T. died this week at 91 amazing years old. He was an Air Force pilot for 20 years, flying bombers during WW2 and retiring as a Major. He and Gerry would have been married 70 years this summer. Here's the funeral sermon for later today.
John 2. On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.” So they took it. When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.” Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.
This is one of the most ordinary stories I have ever heard about the most extraordinary person who ever lived.
That’s not exactly what John hoped we would get out of it, I understand. He reports that the wine steward, a kind of fancy butler who specializes in vintages and bouquets and pairings and other things I don’t understand about wine, marveled at the quality of the drink the groom had saved for the end of the wedding buffet. He reports that this sign, only the first of many that Jesus would perform over the course of the next several years, was revelatory of Jesus’ glory – that it demonstrated nothing less than the power of God come down to bless human beings with the tangible gifts of God’s kingdom. He reports that the disciples, who until now apparently followed Jesus on the strength of his personality alone, were jolted into something more like faith when they saw what he could do. In those ways, it is certainly an extraordinary event and one worthy of a slot among the collected gospel memories of our Lord and Savior.
But even so, the most interesting thing about this story is that it is so very ordinary, if not in its conclusion, then at least in its beginning. Jesus has been invited to a wedding, along with his mother, along with some friends, and he has chosen to attend. I suppose he has checked the little box on the RSVP card that says, “With pleasure,” and has written in his name so the bride’s family will know to save him a place. He has shopped for a gift in his price range from the registry at Target or Macy’s and has, like most of us do in the end, settled on a gift card so the couple can get what they really want. Perhaps the groom is a childhood friend from school; perhaps the bride is a cousin on his mother’s side; perhaps one or the other family are old friends of the Joseph-and-Mary clan and Jesus has been pressed into attending by his mother for the sake of appearances. There are many reasons one might choose to go to a wedding, but many more, it seems to me, that Jesus might have chosen not to go.
Namely, that he has just embarked on his mission to save the world. He has already been announced by his cousin John as The One We’ve All Been Waiting For; he has already begun to recruit disciples who will be with him almost until the end; he has already begun to draw the attention of the religious authorities; he has already begun to travel the Galileean countryside in search of souls who demonstrate the spiritual hunger he came to alleviate. This wedding is inconveniently timed, at best. It’s like asking Superman to pause midflight when he’s in hot pursuit of the bad guy so you can snap a selfie and send it to all your friends. Superman doesn’t have time for that. Jesus doesn’t have time for a wedding.
But there he is, all dressed up in his cleanest, finest tunic, freshly ironed, perhaps, by his mother who has strong opinions regarding her adult son's next steps. Speaking of which, the generational interaction between mother and son is another dollop of ordinary life that fascinates me more than the miraculous chemistry of water to wine. Here is Jesus, bickering with his mom in public over whether he should stick his nose into the groom’s business – whether the drained inventory of the fruit of the vine is his problem to solve. She thinks yes; he thinks no. And so they spar a bit, loudly enough for someone to hear and pass the story down through the generations. And his mother, as mothers usually do, wins. How ordinary can you get?
Even when we consider the miraculous act itself, the transformation of water from an ordinary well into a lip-smacking vintage of the most expensive and perfectly aged Bordeaux, we might be underwhelmed. This is not like other miracles Jesus does, where somebody’s life is on the line, or somebody’s livelihood has been compromised, or somebody’s heart is destined to be broken. No one is bleeding or suffering a debilitating fever; no one is having seizures or begging on the side of the road; no one has lost the love of their life to the power of death. All that has happened here is that a party is about to be cut short before the guests are ready to go home. Turning water to wine saves face for the groom and saves a Saturday night from premature boredom, but it doesn’t save anyone’s life. Compared to what Jesus is able to do, this, the first of his signs in Cana of Galilee, doesn’t quite measure up.
But this is what I have come to love about the story of the wedding at Cana: that it is so perfectly ordinary. There are so many stories about Jesus that seem far removed from my own life as his follower. Leprosy and paralysis and even hunger are not high on my personal list of problems needing solutions. And even if they were, even when they or conditions like them will someday be pressing concerns for which I will seek relief from the Lord, I will not likely assume that a touch of his hand or a word from his mouth will spare me from the normal suffering that accompanies every human life to its earthly end. I don’t fail to thank God when my loved ones experience inexplicable turns toward good health or good fortune. But I also don’t demand that God must reverse the conditions of human suffering here and now to be worthy of my allegiance.
The wedding at Cana, though – that feels close. That feels like a scenario that is recreated countless times in the lives of people around the world. People fall in love, or their families arrange relationships in which love can flourish. People get married. Friends gather to celebrate. I’ve presided at lots of weddings; I’ve been a guest at a few more; I’ve been the bride for just one; and I love imagining that Jesus himself made time to come to every single one of them, joining his friends and family for a celebration of human life, the joining of hearts and fortunes in a commitment to ride out the future together, come what may.
More to the point for today, I love imagining that Jesus himself made time for Ralph and Gerry’s wedding, almost 70 years ago. It might have seemed, back in 1944, that there were more pressing concerns for the savior of the world. There were pilots offering minute-by-minute prayers for the safety and success of their missions. There were prisoners offering minute-by-minute prayers for liberation from the hell of their internment. There were government leaders praying minute by minute for the wisdom to somehow make global peace out of global chaos. The whole world was on fire in 1944; the whole universe clamoring, groaning, for redemption from the wreckage. I imagine Jesus was pretty busy, fielding those prayers, guiding those hearts and hands, suffering alongside the miserable and lending strength to the liberators.
But in the middle of it all, in nineteen-forty-freaking-four, two people found themselves in the most ordinary of circumstances, imagining the future they could build together out of little more than the love they felt in their hearts. Ralph and Gerry couldn’t ask the World War to pause for their nuptials, but they could send an invitation to the savior of the world with a high degree of confidence that he would take the time to attend. And so he did.
And when our Lord is invited to a wedding, he stays. He stays for the reception afterward, John says, to make sure the celebration is thorough and well stocked. And more importantly, he stays for the marriage, and for the family that grows out of that marriage, for all the generations that are born in love and raised in love and tended to and nourished and cared for in love. Having been invited to Ralph and Gerry’s wedding, he surely stayed to see the generations of kids and grandkids and great-grandkids who counted on them to open their home and their hearts time and again for almost 70 years. When the Trostels invited the Lord of Love into their life together, it is the testimony of scripture that he came, and stayed, and remains with them even today.
Because, of course, weddings are not the only events Jesus attends with his friends and his family. Jesus goes to funerals, too. He went to several during his time walking and talking with us as the Son of Man. And he never misses one now; living, breathing Spirit that he is. And it is the testimony of our ancestors in faith, it is the continued testimony of all those who believe, that when Jesus attends a funeral, the dead are raised to new life. Remember the son of the widow at Nain; the daughter of Jairus the synagogue leader; Lazarus, the brother of Martha and Mary of Bethany. Consider the countless spouses and sons and daughters and fathers and mothers who are grieved on earth even as they are received in heaven. And, yes, consider Ralph T – the one whose wedding Jesus was happy to attend all those years ago, the one whose funeral Jesus is present for today, the one whose life Jesus is even now working to put back together after the chaos and confusion of dying and death.
In the most ordinary of circumstances of our numbered days, in the familiar forms of our celebrations and our sorrows, Jesus is here. And John tells us that wherever Jesus is, the ordinary becomes extraordinary. The water turns to wine. Disappointment turns to serendipity. Death turns to life. Sorrow turns to joy. So it has been, and so it will always be, wherever Jesus is invited to stay, world without end, amen.
From John 4, the story of the (gasp!) Samaritan (gasp!) woman Jesus shouldn't have been talking to. Slut or victim? Sinner or sinned against? What would (did) Jesus say?
Four stories from John's gospel will shape our worship and contemplation for five Sundays. For this one, it was John 3, the story of Nicodemus under the cover of night. We heard The Killers' "All These Things That I've Done," imagined it as Nicodemus' theme song: "Another head aches, another heart breaks / I'm so much older than I can take... / These changes ain't changing me / the cold- (or gold-?) hearted boy I used to be. Oh, you gotta' help me out." And then we watched Nicodemus sneak back to his closet, still in the dark. Even Jesus doesn't bat a thousand.
Here's the conclusion of our contemplation of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. Matthew 7, this time, the whole nightmarish chapter. Just listen -- you'll see what I mean.