Homily 10.4.2020 (Feast of St. Francis)

Readings:

1st Reading: Praises of God by St. Francis
2nd Reading: Phil 4:6-9
Gospel: MT 21:33-43

Holy. Strong. All Good. Love. Wisdom. Humility. Patience. Joy and Gladness. Justice. Beauty. Hope. Protector. Our Great Sweetness. 

These attributes and praises of God heard in our first reading today by St. Francis, speak to a reality that is not beyond or outside of us, but that is within us as Imago Dei - the images of God - and woven into and throughout the very fabric of creation. This weekend we honor and celebrate the life and witness of St. Francis of Assisi, one of our patron saints here at Sts. Clare & Francis, and we draw on his wisdom and spirituality rooted deeply in devotion to the God present in all of creation and uniquely embodied in the life of the Christ to help guide us and accompany us in the work we are called to today.

There is power in choosing and there is power in naming. The names we choose for ourselves are incredibly significant and have consequences. To highlight this on a personal level I’d like to share a little about my own relationship with St. Francis and then look at our community’s relationship with Francis. When I was facing the choice to be confirmed into the Catholic faith and had my doubts and questions about the institution and whether I really believed or wanted to be a part of it, the saint I turned to and chose as my confirmation saint was St. Francis of Assisi, and I have been blessed by that choice and naming ever since. When I traveled to Peru as a lay missionary, the church that I attended and served at was St. Francis of Assisi. It was through this Franciscan church community that I met my now husband, Roger, and we connected and grew in love through music just like Francis was a great lover of music, composing songs like the canticle of creation which we sung at the beginning of Mass. When I returned from Peru and was searching for a faith community that would honor and welcome my gifts I found Sts. Clare & Francis, ECC. The spirit of Francis has accompanied me in working to reconnect with the greater web of life in my development as an ecofeminist theologian and spiritual leader. I draw on the spirit of St. Francis in prayer frequently and I can feel his support, love, and encouragement. 

When this community was first forming and deciding on a name for itself, it chose Sts. Clare & Francis. In choosing Clare & Francis we invited in their spirits and legacies in a special way to guide us as a community and I believe they have. For the past year and a half or so we have been going through a process of discernment and visioning as a community to refine who we are and what we are called to do in the world as a witness to our faith. We can look to the saints we chose to model ourselves after to help give us wisdom and insight in this process, into the kind of community we are called to be at this time. 

We are called to ‘Preach the Gospel always, when necessary use words.’ 

This wisdom of Francis reminds us that our actions speak louder than our words. We are incarnate, embodied, divine beings. Yes we are called to speak out with our words as Francis frequently did, but our lives and actions should match those same values and beliefs spoken out loud. Choosing how to spend our time and resources speaks to our values as a community, and the witness of Francis calls us to take seriously the Good News of Jesus and work to realize the beloved community where justice reigns here and now in our midst. Part of this Good News involves making a preferential option for the poor, a vow that Francis and his community took seriously and that is a core part of Catholic Social Teaching today. How are we complicit in economic systems that continue to increase the wealth gap between the rich and poor, and what are we doing to not only meet the needs of those who are impoverished today but transform the systems keeping them impoverished tomorrow? And as we preach the Good News with our actions and work to transform these systems of inequality we are called to do so with great joy and celebration, with song and dance, praising our God who accompanies us in this work. 

We are called to rebuild the house of God which has fallen into disrepair. 

What is the house of God? Francis I think went through a few different understandings of this call which I believe continues to be our call today. At first, he thought it was the physical church building where he first heard the message. Later he came to understand it to be the wider church community and structure. And still further I believe he understood it to mean the whole of creation as the dwelling place of our God. Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si’ - an encyclical deeply inspired by St. Francis of Assisi - reflects this understanding that this earth is our common home, the house of the living God which has not only fallen into disrepair but is being intentionally and systematically destroyed by human actions. I think we can see this call of Francis both in terms of rebuilding a new kind of Catholic community and also repairing the incredible harm happening throughout our common home. We are called to heal and repair the harm that has been committed in the name of God and Christ by welcoming and celebrating diversity and allowing each person to share their God given gifts with the church and with the world. We are called to help heal and repair our shattered relationships with the great web of life and to take bold, prophetic action in response to the worsening climate crisis. 

We are called to foster inter-religious dialogue and respect 

One famous encounter that St. Francis is known for is his meeting with the Muslim Sultan of Egypt during the Crusades, a bloody war between Christians and Muslims. Christian leaders were using fear and hatred to encourage young men to take up arms and fight against who they were told were their enemies in order to preserve their religion and way of life. Unfortunately we see a similar story playing out today. Francis however, at great personal risk, traveled and met with the Sultan of Egypt who received him and treated him warmly. It was through spending time together that Francis’ eyes and heart were opened to the beauty and deep faith of the Muslim people and he re-wrote his Order to include living peacefully among Muslims. We too today in an ever-changing world of religious diversity are called to get to know our neighbors and kin of differing faiths, to speak out against the violent actions fueled by white supremacy and Christian supremacy targeting other faith groups, and to work together to bring peace to our world. Which brings me to our final calling from Francis: 

We are called to be peacemakers. 

What does it mean to be a peacemaker in a violent world? St. Paul in his letter to the Philipians we heard today speaks of both the peace of God and the God of peace. St. Paul lived in the shadow of Roman occupation, in a violent world that saw his message as a threat to the status quo and powers that be, and imprisoned him and ultimately murdered him for his faithful witness. It is believed that this letter to the Philipians was written during one of his imprisonments. And yet he is able to speak of peace, and love, and justice even in these conditions because he knows a peace in his soul that only God can provide. 

St. Francis lived during violent times. Prior to his conversion he was a soldier and prisoner of war. After his conversion he continued to see great violence carried out in the name of God and Christ. He suffered ridicule and ostracization by family and friends, and yet he too continued to speak of good, love, justice, and peace because he knew the deep peace of God within him. 

How do we cultivate this grounding peace within us today and bring it into the world? We hear the powers that be call for peace in order to maintain their violent status quo. There is a chant we say in the streets: No justice, No peace - which recognizes that true peace cannot be separated from the reality of justice. Our call to be peacemakers in a world of violence today is a call to work for true justice so that all life can be healthy and thrive, and we do this work of justice rooted in the peace of God who hears our prayers and petitions, and who accompanies us in the struggle. 

There is a proverb: the more things change, the more they stay the same. While St. Francis lived over 800 years ago, the wisdom and witness of his life continues to be relevant to the times we are facing and our call as Christians today. I would like to end by inviting us to reflect on who we are called to be as channels of God’s peace in the world today as we listen to this beautiful prayer of St. Francis sung by Taft. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKxuixb_ki0&list=PLYVjnvP5OvXfAFFMVJBXnnCahr-s7ECuu&index=5)

Homily 7.12.20

Readings:

IS 55:10-11
ROM 8:18-23
MAT 13:1-23

We just heard three passages from Scripture, the Word of God as we say after each reading. The words in all three of these readings point us to a deeper reality about the Word of God that does not solely dwell in books or even on the lips of human beings, but is also scattered in every seed, held in every rain drop, rooted down deep into the earth, and singing out to us in the symphony of the sounds of creation. Before I share a few more words with you mediated through my human body, I invite us to listen to the words of God woven into the beautiful creation that surrounds us. What more do they have to offer, what words of wisdom still want to be spoken? If you feel comfortable, I invite you to place your bare feet on the earth, breathe with the trees who breathe out what we breathe in, quiet the noises inside your head and heart and listen with your whole body to what our more than human siblings have to share.

 

[Pause for 2-3 min]

 

Would anyone like to share something they heard?

 

We are part of an absolutely incredible and complex ecosystem. Our bodies are ecosystems unto themselves, and we are also just one tiny part of this larger ecosystem of the environment in which we live, and the wider planet of earth. We can’t live without water, without oxygen, without another life form dying so that we can be nourished by its nutrients. The Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh calls this reality interbeing. Just as the plant is made up of sunshine, rain and soil, so too are we made up of sunshine, rain, and soil when we eat the plant. If what we rely on to eat becomes sick it can make us sick. We inter-are.

 

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. understood this concept as well. He reflected in his Letter from a Birmingham jail that, “All life is inter-related. All of us are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

 

And the divine presence is woven into and throughout this incredible micro and macro system of inter-being. We are both the seed and the soil in the garden. The seed holds the full presence and potentiality of the emergent divine wisdom and incarnation. But it is also reliant on the environment that surrounds it to support this emergence and growth into what it desires to become. This is the wisdom of our Gospel tonight and of past and present prophets: the body of God is one giant living complex organism, and what impacts one part of it impacts the whole, for better or worse.

 

I would say I'm a novice gardener, I wasn’t raised in an agrarian environment like Jesus and his followers or like the ancient Jewish people of the Hebrew Scriptures, but I desire to learn what my ancestors knew about living in harmony with the land, and collaborating with the more than human world to bring forth life and sustenance. One thing I am learning is the importance of soil quality. Just like our Gospel pointed out, you need good quality soil for the seed to sprout and grow and thrive. When you don’t have good soil, the seed may never sprout, or it does but then it quickly dries out and dies, or it gets choked out by other invasive species.

 

Our bodies, are gardens unto themselves and also part of a larger garden. The lies we've been told about ourselves, about other living beings, and even about God, create poor soil conditions within this body and the collective body of the community. The same with negative thoughts and behaviors that we direct towards ourselves and others. If you haven’t heard it enough: you are good. You were born good. Your body is holy and sacred. You are loved beyond your wildest comprehension and there is nothing you can do to separate yourself from that love, except in your own mind. We have to nurture the soil of our bodies to create good health so life can grow, just like real soil and plants. 

 

Systems of oppression can’t bear fruit because they rooted in bad soil. Systems of oppression are death dealing, not life giving. White supremacy can never bear fruit, patriarchy cannot bear fruit, homophobia and transphobia cannot bear fruit, and this is why we are starving, because we are saturated in environments full of rock and sand in which only weeds can grow. The seeds that produce life and liberation are literally being choked out as they rise. We have a duty to ensure that not only our body but all bodies under attack can be nourished and healed and given the space to rise up and bear fruit a hundredfold. 

 

And because we are one living body, one living ecosystem, we can do this for each other. Plants already do this for one another! Take the example of trees. Trees are phenomenal for many reasons, but one is that when one is sick or a disease threatens their health - they will send extra strength and healing through an underground system of roots and communication to those in need!  Plants have underground railroad systems of deep root communication to take care of one another. Mycelium that make up fungi do this for many other plant species too. We have so much to learn from the words of God, the wisdom of God, woven into creation.

 

I want to end with this image from our second reading tonight of all creation groaning in labor pains. The brilliant Indian scholar and activist Arundati Roy has said "another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day I can hear her breathing." Well I can not only hear her breathing but groaning, wailing, and shouting as she both births and midwife's this new world into being.

 

We are the body of earth groaning in labor pains. I can hear her in the streets reminding us it is our duty to fight for our freedom, it is our duty to win, we must love and support one another, we have nothing to lose but our chains! I can hear her in the unapologetic proclamations that all black lives matter. I can hear her in the chorus of #metoo and #timesup. I hear her in the cries of our youth shouting Fire and sounding the alarm as the climate crisis worsens. I can hear her in the indigenous resistance to the destruction of sacred land and ecosystems. And I can hear these birth pains in the beauty being created all around me and through me in resistance to these systems of oppression and this culture rooted in lies that has spread disease throughout the body of God and poisoned the soil.

 

But if you’ve ever seen a flower sprouting up through a crack in the concrete, you know there is hope. There is a saying I learned in Spanish from the freedom fighters in El Salvador, “se puede aplastar algunas flores, pero no se puede detener la primavera.” They can crush a few flowers, but they can’t stop the spring. There is power in community. Life is strong, and resilient, and new seeds are being planted every day. May we do all we can to cultivate the conditions of good healthy soil within us and the larger ecosystem so that we too can help birth and midwife this new world into being.  

Homily 5.3.2020

Readings: 

Acts 2:14, 36-41
Psalm 23
1 Peter 2:20-25
John 10:1-10

The Divine Shepherdess

May is here, and in the Catholic tradition this is a whole month dedicated to Mary, the Divine Mother, Queen of Heaven and Earth. Perhaps in your family you have participated in special devotions to Mary this month such as building a special altar for Mary and crowing her with a wreath of flowers, or giving renewed energy to praying the rosary. Maybe you didn’t even know that May was Mary’s month and now that you do you can create new traditions or recover ancient ones.  

The connections between the divine feminine and May pre-date Christianity, with the Greeks having dedicated this time of year to Artemis, the goddess of fecundity, and the Romans dedicating this time to Flora, the goddess of blooms. Christianity picked up these ancient connections between spring time and the divine feminine, and lifted up Mary as Queen of May, in connection with the season of life and beauty.  

This weekend, due to our lectionary readings, is also known as Good Shepherd weekend. We heard these passages about the Lord as shepherd, and Jesus as shepherd probably many times, and seen many statues, paintings and artistic representations of this image of the Good Shepherd. But since this is Mary’s month, I would like us to imagine and reflect today on the image of Mary as Divine Shepherdess. 

I did not invent this idea, the devotion to Mary as Divine Shepherdess has been around since at least the 1700s as Divina Pastora (or Divine Shepherdess in Spanish). This image of Mary as a shepherdess is credited to a vision of a Spanish Capuchin friar named Fray Isidore who lived in Seville, Spain in the early 1700s. He was devoted to Our Lady from early in his life and as a religious brother built small shrines to Our Lady along the roadways and taught the people how to sing the rosary while walking along the street. During one of these street tours Christ’s words, ‘I am the Good Shepherd” flashed across the Fray Isidore’s mind. That night he had a vision of the Blessed Virgin as a young shepherdess with a crook in her hand and a large straw hat falling over her shoulders. The next morning he hurried to an artist’s shop telling of his vision and ordered a picture be painted of Our Lady as she had appeared to him.

“Our Lady,” he said, sat on a rock under a tree. Her face radiated divine and tender love. Over a red tunic she wore a jacket of white sheepskin such as shepherds wore; from her shoulders hung a blue mantle. A large straw hat, held by a ribbon, dangled over her left shoulder. Near her right hand was a shepherd’s crook, symbolic of the love and care she gives her children. In her left hand she held a rose, while the right hand rested on the head of a lamb, which had sought shelter in her lap. The flock of sheep which surrounded her carried in their mouths – the Virgin’s Flower.  

The admiration of the Spanish for Our Lady as a Divine Shepherdess quickly spread. Practically every church had set aside a corner for the Divine Shepherdess. The Franciscans and Capuchin friars spread the devotion of Divina Pastora along with their missionary activities, as did other missionaries. Devotions to the Divine Shepherdess today are present around the world most notably in the Philippines, Venezuela, and France. 

The same characteristics that make a shepherd good as we heard in our Psalm and our Gospel reading today make the shepherdess good. She is the one who truly knows her flock, and will do all she can to ensure that they are safe, that they can rest, that they are well fed, that they have abundance of life. This is in contrast to what we know of those who are false shepherds, the thieves and robbers who only look out for themselves and steal, destroy, and kill. You can probably think of examples of these two different kinds of leaders or pastors right now, in your own life and experience. Those who truly know, love, and care for the well-being of others, and those who seek to gain and maintain their own power or privilege at the expense of the flock.   

One key characteristic of the good shepherdess is that she knows her sheep by name and we know her voice and follow that voice. As I contemplate the state of the world right now, all of the suffering and division, and the ever growing climate crisis, I can’t help but think we are where we are because we have forgotten the voice of the Divine Shepherdess. And it's not surprising given all the other voices that we have been inundated with since birth, voices that seek to foster ongoing division and discord, doubt and fear, voices that feed us lies daily about who we are and what we should do with our lives.

It has been and continues to be an ongoing journey of personal healing and transformation for me to tune out all those other voices and remember the voice of my Mother, the Divine Feminine, the Good Shepherdess; to reconnect to her in my body and the surrounding body of life. She has never left, I and we have just forgotten, and now is the time for us to remember and return.     

To return to the Mother is to return to the earth, to know the presence and power of resurrection budding all around us in the trees, flowers, greening of grass, and garden seedlings poking their head above ground. To return to the divine shepherdess and trust in her care and guidance is to know the peace and freedom of the sheep who wander the land, snack, take a nap, bask in the sun, frolic and play, and take another nap, trusting that in the words of Julian of Norwich, “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.” Because to know her is to know her constant presence, love, and protection, just like a good shepherdess.  

I believe she is calling to her sheep now, inviting us to come back home through her, the very gate that incarnated the Christ presence more fully into the world. To know and follow Christ is to know and follow the mother that brought him into the world and taught him the ways of the shepherd, taught him the ways of the earth and the path of love and beauty. 

This time of great challenge and change is also filled with great opportunity to sit and listen, to sing and listen, to dance and listen, to create and listen, to rest and listen. Listen for the voice of the Divine Shepherdess calling you home to her heart. Take a minute now of quiet, of breathing, of tuning into your heart, and listen. Who is the Divine Shepherdess to you? What might her invitation be to you this month of May, this month of Mary, this month of resurrection energy and new life? What questions or petitions do you have for her? 

[time of reflection and open response] 

Homily 2.8.2020

Readings: 

Isaiah 58:7-10

1 Corinthians 2: 1-5

Matthew 5:13-16

Grief and Praise

I’d like to do something a little different in the homily tonight, there are different stories and contexts I want to share that are all woven together through this chorus of grief and praise, and so I’d like to teach you a song, that we can sing together throughout the homily, as we weave these stories together. You up for that?

You have the words on a half sheet of paper, I’ll sing a couple lines then have you repeat it back to learn the tune. This is a song by Auspry that I learned at a community song circle.

[teach Grief and Praise]

Grief and Praise, Grief and Praise

Oh it turns the world around

Grief and Praise, Grief and Praise

I was lost but now I’m found

I can feel it in my bones, yeah in my bones

Crack me open like a stone, yeah like a stone

So when you hear me say “Grief and Praise” throughout the homily, I invite you to join me in this chorus.

There are a four different but intersecting contexts to our liturgy this evening that I’d like us to focus on. The first is the context of the faith tradition passed down through the centuries revealed in our Scripture readings tonight. Jesus as a Jewish rabbi, knew well the Hebrew Scriptures, particularly the prophets as he quoted them and their teachings often. It is the passage from Isaiah tonight that gives context to Jesus’ message about salt and light. Pairing the reading from Isaiah with this Gospel prevents an individualistic interpretation and puts it into its proper context of community, and more specifically a community that ensures the most vulnerable are cared for and protected as the true path towards making God’s light and love shine forth in the world.

There’s this great series of If/Then statements - IF you remove from your midst oppression, false accusation and malicious speech; IF you bestow your bread on the hungry and satisfy the afflicted; THEN light shall rise for you in the darkness, and the gloom shall become for you like midday. We can’t just say, “I’m going to let my light shine today” and then do nothing else. Non-action, silence, and complicity in systems of oppression are the equivalent of continuing to hide our light under a bushel basket, regardless of what we profess with our lips. The light in us, this spark of the divine present in all of creation, is what impels us to take action, to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the unhoused, call out the lies and malicious speech that surround us and enter into the struggle for liberation from all interconnected systems of oppression.

And this is not easy work. It is work that calls us to enter into the suffering, to be broken open, to shed tears of grief. But it is also through these salty tears we shed that our hearts of stone are broken open so that the light of Christ, the light of divine love, can being to shine forth. As you gather around the altar tonight, you will be encouraged to symbolize the tears you shed for the world by placing a pinch of salt into the bowl of water before the altar, entrusting them to the community gathered and the mystery of transformation we celebrate in the breaking and sharing of the bread. The stories of the steadfast presence of God, accompanying us, working for liberation in the context of great oppression and suffering, stories of salt and light, these are our stories, the stories of our ancestors, stories full of Grief and Praise.   

Grief and Praise, Grief and Praise

Oh it turns the world around

Grief and Praise, Grief and Praise

I was lost but now I’m found

I can feel it in my bones, yeah in my bones

Crack me open like a stone, yeah like a stone  

We are also in February, black history month, a time to honestly acknowledge and repent for the horrors endured by the black community at the hands of white supremacy and also celebrate the incredible brilliance and triumph of their spirit and the many ways they have made a positive impact in the world. Both are needed as we seek to live out the call of the prophet, to remove from our midst all oppression, false accusation, and malicious speech.

We need to tell the whole truth about the complicity of white Christians in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the wealth accumulated on the backs of enslaved Africans, the abuse and torture of chattel slavery, and the silence and quiet complicity of all those who did nothing. We need to keep looking at how these systems of racial oppression continue to disproportionately harm the black community in the U.S. in basically every category of human rights. We can’t be salt and light, if we don’t honestly face this history and present reality. 

And we also need to tell the whole truth about the incredible brilliance, culture, and creativity of the many diverse people from the continent of Africa, who were brought to this country against their will and yet managed to keep alive that spark of the divine within them, resisting oppression and liberating their communities and continuing to foster and encourage that same spirit of brilliance, culture, and creativity of their ancestors. As we sit in the context of black history month, we sit in the reality of grief and praise.

Grief and Praise, Grief and Praise

Oh it turns the world around

Grief and Praise, Grief and Praise

I was lost but now I’m found

I can feel it in my bones, yeah in my bones

Crack me open like a stone, yeah like a stone

Today is also the feast of St. Josephine Bakhita, patron saint of survivors of human trafficking, as she herself was a survivor of slavery in the 1800s. Her feast was chosen as the World Day of Prayer and Awareness Against Human Trafficking. So we take time today to reflect on her story, an important part of black Catholic history, and connect it to our current reality that holds both grief for the millions of people in our world who are still enslaved through forced labor and sexual exploitation and also praise for the many who have been able to escape, reclaim their freedom, and pursue their dreams.

St. Bakhita was born in the Darfur region of South Sudan in 1869. At the age of seven she was kidnapped by Middle Eastern slave traders and re-sold multiple times throughout her childhood and adolescence. She was sold so many times she forgot her original name, and was given the name Bakhita by her slaver owners which meant “fortunate one.” She eventually ended up in Italy and was entrusted to the care of the Canossian Sisters while her owners were away on business. Living with the sisters she came to learn more about God and was able to put words to this Spirit that accompanied her and kept her alive during the brutal years of slavery. With the help of the Sisters and the patriarch of Venice she was granted her freedom and officially joined the order of the Canossian Sisters in 1896, choosing the name Josephine for herself. She lived and ministered with the Sisters the remainder of her life, sharing her story with all who would listen. She embodied the teachings of the prophet, caring for the poorest around her, shining the light of love brightly with all whom she encountered. 

While the legal slave trade that existed in the time of Bakhita has since been abolished, an illegal slave trade still exists in our world today in the form of human trafficking. Economic and gender based systems of oppression continue to treat people like commodities to be used, bought and sold for an individual’s profit or pleasure. St. Bakhita was targeted as a young girl, only 7 years old, and unfortunately children are still targeted today both for sexual exploitation and labor. It is estimated that one in four victims of human trafficking is a child. These aren’t just children living in foreign countries, that are our children, right here in this community who are being targeted.

I have been heart broken and inspired by the stories of survivors who were first trafficked at ages as young as 4 or 5, many by family members or trusted adults, and have since found the strength not only to heal themselves as adults but to advocate on behalf of others, and I continue to be outraged that this evil and abuse continues to persist in our communities and our world. St. Bakhita’s story like the story of so many survivors of human trafficking is one filled with deep grief and pain, but also hope and praise for the possibility of healing, restoration, and new life.  May this reality crack us open to let the light shine through and heal the broken body of Christ through Grief and Praise.

Grief and Praise, Grief and Praise

Oh it turns the world around

Grief and Praise, Grief and Praise

I was lost but now I’m found

I can feel it in my bones, yeah in my bones

Crack me open like a stone, yeah like a stone

Finally we are living in the context of our own community’s story, one of transition and visioning as we take this 2020 year to reflect on who we are, where we have been and where we are going. We are a community that over the years has experienced and shared together moments of deep grief for communal losses and transitions and also deep joy and praise for renewed life and hope. I believe this to be an important part of community, to be able to bring our whole selves just as we are, to accompany one another through the difficult moments of life as well as the celebratory ones.

To live the calling of our faith as Isaiah reminds us is to reach out beyond the boundaries of this community to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the unhoused, and remove all oppression and malicious speech from our presence.  It is by entering into these painful realities, accompanying one another as siblings in Christ, that THEN as the prophet reminds us, THEN we will make real the presence of God on this earth and our light shall shine through. And that is something to praise God for, that the spark of the divine in each of us grows and is illuminated in and through community, loving and serving one another through the good times and the bad, through both the grief and the praise.

Grief and Praise, Grief and Praise

Oh it turns the world around

Grief and Praise, Grief and Praise

I was lost but now I’m found

I can feel it in my bones, yeah in my bones

Crack me open like a stone, yeah like a stone

Homily 10.13.19

Readings: 

2 Kings 5:14-17

2 Timothy 2:8-13

Luke 17:11-19

Healing the Body of God 

Tonight I want to talk about bodies. I think sometimes we are too quick to spiritualize everything, taking it out of the fleshy realm of reality, but we are an incarnational people. We believe the Word became Flesh and dwelt among us, and we can encounter revelations of the divine mystery and presence in and through the flesh: in our bodies and all bodies that make up the larger body of God. We have a fleshy/physical Gospel story tonight that invites us to reflect on our relationship to bodies: our own body, the human bodies of others, and the larger body of God that makes up the cosmos.

This story tonight in the Gospel of Luke is actually his second story of healing lepers. These healing stories of Jesus are meant to teach us a lesson about who Jesus is and what he has come to do: Jesus consistently responds to those who on the margins, the outcasts of society, those whose bodies have been rejected rather because of a skin disease like leprosy or other physical challenges like blindness, deafness, or challenges with mobility. Jesus not only associates with but loves and touches the bodies of those who have been rejected from community, seeking to restore that sense of belovedness and connection.

I feel pretty confident that all of us, at some point or another, have had something about our bodies that we didn’t like, that we felt ashamed of or embarrassed by, or that we wished we could change. I know I certainly have, as a woman who grew up in a patriarchal church and is inundated with media messages about feminine beauty and what a woman’s body should like. There are huge industries that are making billions of dollars off of making people feel bad about their bodies. And its not just women, men and non-binary people are targeted too.

The persistence of systemic oppressions like racism, heterosexism, and ableism also target bodies that don’t fit into what the dominant power holders have deemed as “normal” or “desirable.” There are real barriers to these targeted groups in accessing what should be human rights such as excellent health care, housing, education, and employment, sometimes with life or death consequences.

There is also an emotional and psychological internalization of these harmful messages for those targeted by oppressions against different identities. We internalize these negative messages about skin color, hair, size, physical appearance, how we express our gender, or who our bodies love. And a lot of this internalization of negative messaging is happening on an unconscious level, where we don’t even realize it, and it impacts not only our relationship with our own body but how we interact with the bodies of others as well.

There was organized, systemic oppression against those with the skin disease of leprosy in the time of Jesus blocking their access to health care, housing, education, and employment, and I think they probably internalized that oppression as well, feeling dirty or unworthy. This is why they cry out to Jesus to have pity, or rather compassion for them in their suffering. And in encountering the Christ, the divine one who took on flesh, they are in fact “cleansed” of that particular barrier separating them from community.

But only one of them was “healed.” The Samaritan who upon realizing that he had be cleansed, also experienced something else, something deeper, that made him return to Jesus in deep gratitude rather than return to the community who had been oppressing him. I think it is important that these two different words were used: cleansed and healed. The root of the word for healing is the same as salvation, and some translations have Jesus saying to the Samaritan “your faith has healed you” and others “your faith has saved you.” Perhaps the healing and salvation in this story, is not only skin deep, but a profound sense of knowing oneself and one’s body as good, and holy, and whole despite what the wider society tells you. This has been a personal healing mantra for me, as I have sought to reclaim this body God has given me to do her work in the world despite the messages I receive to the contrary. "I am good, and holy, and whole," and so are you.

You see when we experience healing and reconciliation with our own bodies, we are also able to open up to a deeper love of all the bodies in which a spark of the divine dwells, and appreciate how each member of this diverse body of God reveals something unique and important about the mystery of God.

St. Francis, one of our patron saints who’s feast we celebrated last weekend, had an experience like this with a leper as well. You see even 1100 years after the life of Jesus, society was still isolating and treating people with leprosy as less than human, and Francis bought into that messaging. He despised lepers and was disgusted by them, intentionally avoiding them whenever possible. And then he encountered Christ, through a person with leprosy. He wrote: “When I was in sin, the sight of lepers nauseated me beyond measure; but then God led me into their company, and I had pity on them. When I became acquainted with them, what had previously nauseated me became the source of spiritual and physical consolation for me.” Embracing the body of the one he had harshly judged, he had a profound metanoia – a conversion – and saw that body and all bodies like it as the body of Christ himself.

We all have people who we judge or treat like lepers in our own lives, whether we want to admit it or not. Those we intentionally avoid, those we look on with contempt or judgment, those we don’t want to touch or embrace. They are not the ones who need healing in order for us to accept them, we are the ones who Christ is inviting to heal, to experience the transformation of St. Francis in seeing the very face of Christ in the body of the one we least want to engage with .

And I want to be clear here that the goal is not to stop seeing the actual, physical, unique body by appealing to some universal connection like “we’re all the same on the inside.” That’s not what I’m saying. I want us to see Christ as a person with a skin disease, as a black transgender woman, as a queer female pastor, as a successful black business man, as a nonbinary overweight teen, as a person who is differently abled, as a person living with addiction, as body covered in piercings and tattoos, and not ignore any of those details.

Because I would be so bold as to say that we can’t really love God until we can love all of the diverse bodies that make up the body of God. And this extends beyond the human family to the whole of the cosmos. Ecofeminist theologian Sallie McFague is the one who coined the term body of God, and she describes it as: “not this or that body, and certainly not a human body, but all the bodies that have ever been or ever will be, from quarks and exploding stars to microorganisms and centipedes, rocks, mountains, and water, but not forgetting tortoises, pine trees, buttercups, giraffes, and of course, human beings in all their various shapes, conditions, and colors.”

The messages we have internalized and are acting out about the more than human parts of the body of God are causing the 6th mass extinction event in the history of this planet, and the first one cause primarily by human actions. Dozens of species – precious members of the body of God, go extinct every day. Forests around the world are burning, seas levels are rising and oceans and waterways are filled with plastic and other trash. This sickness of anthropocentrism – human centeredness, and neo-liberal capitalism is destroying the body of God, and we are in need of some deep collective healing.

What would it look like to cleanse ourselves of the anthropocentric sores that keep us separated from the rest of creation and restore the blood flow, the life line, to these equally important parts of our body that we have cut ourselves off from? The body of God is not only inviting us, but crying out to us to do so, and I believe this is a core part of the salvific healing Christ is seeking to realize in the world. When we can recognize every living part of creation as a member of the body of God, and embrace our connection to this diverse, beloved body, we can transform our relationship to our own body and all the bodies of the cosmos.

I want to end with a word of thanksgiving. The word thank in our Gospel tonight is the same type of thanks Jesus gives at the last supper as he blesses the bread and wine, which is also the root of Eucharist – to give thanks. The Samaritan leper presented his healed body before Christ in thanksgiving, in Eucharist. As we present our bodies tonight around the table of Christ as beautiful and diverse temples of the holy one, may the thanksgiving we offer in recognition of the one who took on flesh to show us what love incarnate looks like, transfer into thanksgiving and healing for our own bodies, beautifully and wonderfully made to continue incarnating love and restore community.

Homily 3.24.19

Readings: 
Exodus 3:1-8, 13-15
1 Cor 10:1-6, 10-12
Luke 13:1-9 

Encountering the God Who Is 

I Am who Am

I will be who I will be 

I am the one who sees, who hears, and knows

I am the waters of life in desert spaces

I am fire and wind 

I am silence 

I am the speck of sand

And the sky filled with billions of stars 

I am the one who swims in the seas, walks on the land, and flies in the air

I am parent and child

I am comforter and liberator 

I am every color, size, and shape under the sun 

I am community and relatedness 

I am holy, embodied, mystery

I am dynamic, creative, energy

I am the ground of being

And the breath of life

I am who am 

I will be who I will be  

I want to focus our attention tonight on our first reading, this powerful account from Exodus where God reveals their chosen name to Moses: Yahweh, rooted in the verb “to be” which can be translated I am who am, or I will be who I will be, or even I cause to be, I make exist, or I make happen.  This God of the ancestors of the Hebrew people is a relational God, a dynamic God, a God who’s very identity is woven into the existence of all life, all creation, all that is.  

So what happened in the history and development of Christianity to take the God who is life itself, and transform her into a male ruler/king who sits in the sky on his throne in judgment?  It is helpful to remember that all theology and language about God is contextual. The imagination of a people and how they speak of God is often limited to their own lived experience and culture. And so it was within the context of Christianity from the 4th century on: the model of power surrounding them was empire rooted in patriarchal and hierarchical society.  And so this dynamic relational name for God “The one who is” in Hebrew, was translated into the greek “kyrios,” which means Lord. Elizabeth Johnson in her recent book Creation and the Cross puts it like this: “By translating the mysterious name YHWH into kyrios, which comes into English as Lord, it took this relational, compassionate deity whose name is a verb, who is utterly free and beyond any simple gendered categorization, and cast divine identity into the image of a ruling male person in a patriarchal society.”  The name YHWH appears over 6700 times in the Hebrew Scriptures, but the Greek translation changed most of those into Lord, which is what we see in most of our bibles today.  

Remembering this can change not only the way we read Scripture, replacing Lord with I AM, but also transform our relationship with God as the one who is all that is.  In another desert setting, beginning in the 4th century, women and men who became distressed by Christianity’s growing allegiance with empire sought an authentic encounter with God and faithful life by retreating to the desert where they lived either in small communities or as hermits.  We know this group of people today as the desert mothers and fathers, and contemporary historians believe that there were twice as many women as men living in the desert although more writings from the desert fathers were preserved. Mary Earle in her book about the desert mothers talks about how going into the desert opened up this renewed understanding of and relationship with the God who is: “They began to see themselves as part of the cosmos, as participants in a vast and beautiful universe created, sustained, and redeemed by the ever-living God.  The whole universe became a burning bush, holy ground through which the living God speaks to those who will listen.” 

We don’t have to retreat to the literal desert, this wisdom reminds us we have burning bushes all around us, revealing different aspects of this God who is, who causes to be and brings into existence.  Our imaginations and experiences like those of so many generations before us, can often be limited by our own contexts as well. I know that personally my own language and images for who God is have changed and grown as I have traveled to new places and encountered new people who are burning bushes for me, opening up a whole new experience and understanding of God. I grew up with an image of God as loving father and friend.  Through a highschool service trip to Minneapolis I encountered the God who accompanies the impoverished and the homeless, who’s love is known through something as simple as a smile and sharing a meal. Living abroad in El Salvador I encountered a liberating God who denounces exploitation, the divine feminine mother protecting and comforting her children, and the God of bloodshed and resurrection. Sitting at the feet of indigenous elders I have encountered the God whose spirit flows through all of creation and calls it sacred, a God whose wisdom is carried by the ancestors and whose hope and promise is held for future generations.  Just a few weeks ago in Alabama I had a powerful lived experience of the God who is paschal mystery, who is present in the crucified and resurrected people who continue to struggle for justice holding fast to the hope of freedom.  

God is who is, and there is so much life, so much wisdom to soak up from the incredibly diverse experiences and cultures all over this planet.  We grow in faith by sharing our stories of who God is for us with one another and by stepping out of our comfort zones to encounter who God is in other spaces for other people.  We each have a unique and important spark of the divine to share with the world. We are each a flame on this burning bush of creation, revealing who the holy one is. In order to tap into this individual and collective wisdom, I would like to end by walking you through a guided meditation.  I invite you to sit comfortably and close your eyes.  

Imagine yourself in a desert, it is dry, maybe a little windy, it is warm.  

Notice what is around you. 

You begin walking toward a mountain in the distance, feeling drawn toward it.  

You approach the base of the mountain and see a path leading up, so you follow the path.  

As you are walking, you stop as you see a great bush on fire near you.  

You contemplate this strange sight as the flames do not consume the bush that is burning.  

You decide to go closer to look at this remarkable sight and see why the bush is not being burned. 

As you approach the bush you hear a voice calling out your name.  

You answer, “Here I am.” 

The voice, who you know to be the Holy One, says to you, “Come no nearer! 

Remove the shoes and socks from your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground.” 

This voice tells you, 

“I am the God of your ancestors, 

The God of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar, 

The God of Isaac and Rebekah, 

The God of Jacob, Rachel, Leah, Bilhah, and Zilpah, 

I AM who I AM”

I have seen the affliction of my beloved creation, 

I have heard their cries for justice, peace, and survival, 

I know intimately what you and they are suffering.  

Go forth from here knowing that I am with you in our work for healing and liberation. 

Then God reveals one of their many names to you, a personal name for you to share as a revelation of God’s mystery.  

Who will you say has called you, and sends you forth from this holy ground?

Holding that name close to your heart, you put your socks and shoes back on

And head down the mountain and back into the desert to continue your journey.

When you are ready, I invite you to open your eyes, and write down 

On the flame pieces of paper the name God revealed to you.  

When you come up to altar after the gifts of bread and wine are brought up, 

Please put your flame onto the bush, as we are reminded of God’s holy presence 

And many names, revealed in this place, through this community. 

Homily 12.8.18

Readings: 

Bar 5:1-9; 

Phil 1:4-6, 8-11;

Lk 3:1-6

Caminante no hay camino, se hace camino al andar. This is a line from a famous poem by Antonio Machado, and means “traveler there is no path, the path is made by walking.”

So if there is no ready made path for us to follow, as Christians, as people of faith in this holy season of Advent, what guides our feet that make the paths that will heed John’s call to “prepare the way of the Lord?” I propose it is the dream or the vision we hold, that guides our feet which make the paths of justice, righteousness, peace, and mercy a reality.

Now there are two guiding dreams juxtaposed in our Gospel tonight and in our world today: the dream of empire and the dream of God. First half of the Gospel is a long list of names, names of those who had power at this time, these were the keepers of the dream of empire. The dream/vision of empire was to maintain consolidated power and control, to grow profits, expand territory, and assert domination.

But where does the Word of God, which we could call the Dream of God, show up? In John, son of Zachariah, in the desert. I want you to hold onto that image as we break open this Advent story together. Who is entrusted with the dream of God and where do they reside.

So let’s start with John the Baptist and then I want to reflect on three modern contexts where I see this same story playing out. The desert is not the first place that John hears or encounters the Word, the Dream of God. He first heard this dream proclaimed by Mary in utero, while his mother Elizabeth was still pregnant. John was one of the first witnesses to the Magnificat. He was also raised by Elizabeth and Zechariah, two faithful Jews who had intimately experienced God’s power and goodness and would have shared those experiences and the wisdom of their people to their son as he grew up. Part of Jewish belief at this time, particularly in some of the desert communities of which John may have lived, was a belief in the coming Messiah or a Messianic Age, this would be a time when the oppressor was cast down, when the people’s freedom and autonomy were restored, and peace and justice would reign.

So John is well prepared to receive the Word of God in the desert which inspires him to proclaim the good news of the coming Messiah and to prepare others for his arrival. John calls for a baptism of the repentance of sins because he could see that before others could nurture the dream and join him in walking the road to peace and justice there had to be a recognition of the past/current sin holding them back and a true conversion to change their ways. Perhaps inspired by the words of the prophet Amos, he invited people into the mighty stream of the river Jordan to experience a conversion that would pave the way for justice to flow like the very waters of Baptism.

There are many modern day John the Baptists, crying out from the desert places of society, treading dangerous paths, and forging new ways to bring about this same dream/vision of peace and justice. And just as John the Baptist did, they stand in opposition to the dream of empire.

I want to just highlight three:

I just spent the last two days in Washington DC at a conference on immigration, so I want to start first with what has been called the Migrant Caravan.

Most of you have probably heard by over the past month or so there have been thousands of people, traveling together primarily from the Central American countries of Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala, over thousands of miles on paths filled with violence, danger, hunger and thirst, fear and uncertainty. They are desert roads and mountain roads, exposed to the harsh natural climates. They are not just fleeing from, but also moving toward a belief that there will be a safe place they can raise their children, where they can grow and prosper. They are making the road by walking up to our front door step and crying out: see me, hear me, don’t turn away, I am here and I matter. They hold a vision of God’s dream for them and their families that has come into violent conflict with the vision of a nationalist empire.

The vision of the nationalist empire separates us and them, it says we have to secure the borders, protect our own, those “others” are to be feared, judged, locked up, even treated as less than human. The vision of a nationalist empire believes in scarcity, in limited resources and so we must protect what is ours.

But the vision of God says that I am my brother and sisters keeper, that we are one body and when one suffers all suffer. The vision of God believes in abundance, that there are actually enough resources to go around if we share with one another.

Which dream is guiding our feet in responding to these migrants and refugees at our border?

While I was in Washington D.C. I finally had a chance to visit the Museum of African American History and Culture. A popular phrase in black and womanist theology which I saw throughout the exhibits is “Making a Way Out of No Way.” Holding fast to the dream of God, African Americans have consistently been able to walk into being a path toward freedom when it seemed most impossible.

The dream they were told to believe in by the slave traders and masters was one of grateful submission, but incredibly - while a message of servitude was preached, a message of liberation was heard. And this dream of God for all God’s people to be free, guided the feet that created paths of the underground railroad, guided the feet of soldiers marching in war for liberty for all, guided the feet in the reconstruction era creating new paths for community prosperity and civic participation, guided the feet of millions during the great northern migration, guided the feet of those who knew to keep God’s dream alive they had to create their own churches as spaces to nourish and share this dream of God for their freedom with one another. This is the dream that guided the brave feet marching for freedom and justice during the civil rights campaigns, and continuing to march in the streets today for black lives to matter and the ability to exist in the world without the assumption of criminality simply for having darker skin.

Now the dream of the white supremacist empire which says God created a racial hierarchy and that what is best, what is normal, is that which is rooted in whiteness, and those closest to whiteness have a right to dominate others, was well on display at this museum as well. This is a dream that unfortunately still guides and infects many of the laws, structures, and institutions of this country.

But it isn’t the most powerful dream. That was so clear to me at this museum, the dream of God that African Americans have held on to despite unimaginable, horrific suffering and oppression, is the one that will win out in the end, the dream that calls forth black excellence and black beauty and celebrates it as good, and holy, and needed for God’s dream to be fully realized.

So which dream is guiding us in our response to the ongoing struggle for racial equity today?

The final group and path that I want to briefly mention are the Climate Pilgrims who have spent the last 65 days walking over 1,500 kilometers from the Vatican to Poland for the annual climate summit, COP 24 this year. They are seeking to walk into being the path of an integral ecology as called for by Pope Francis in his encyclical Laudato Si, a renewed spirituality and vision that sees all of God’s creation as interconnected, as precious and worthy of care and protection, and prioritizes ecological well being over a consumer and profit driven culture. They have been collecting the prayers and dreams of people throughout the world along their journey and are presenting them now to the leaders gathered at COP 24.

The dream of the anthropocentric (human centered) empire is again one of hierarchy and domination, seeing the created world as a commodity to be used and discarded as needed for individual profit and gain. It is a dream that has severed the intimate bonds that connect all life and keep us healthy, and it is a dream therefore that is killing the planet and all life that calls earth home.

These climate pilgrims by walking this new road are hoping to inspire God’s dream for healthy and flourishing life throughout creation with others, so that we can make some serious changes to our global economic systems and practices before it is too late.

Which dream is guiding our own responses to the ever worsening impacts of climate change?

With the dreams of empire getting the most air time these days, it may seem like the dream of God has been forgotten, distorted, or is even dead. But I was reminded and challenged by an e-mail newsletter that I get from a reflection by the Rev. Anna Blaedel, to ask in this season of Advent: what if the dream is not dead, just waiting to be born?

Our Scriptures and the living history of our faith witness to us that the dream of God has survived generations and millennia of war, conquests, oppression, slavery, and environmental degradation. If we have forgotten the dream, if we can’t see the vision clearly, or if we have lost our hope, perhaps we are not spending enough time with the dream keepers. By stepping outside those places of power and privilege we hold, by making ourselves vulnerable and gaining a new perspective, we water the seed of the dream implanted in our hearts at our inception as imago Dei; we can hear the voices of those crying out from desert spaces and have the courage to wade through the waters reminding us of our baptism, cleansed from sin, and called into a community of solidarity walking the path of liberation together, preparing the way for God’s peace, justice, and righteousness to take on flesh in the world.

In this season of Advent, this season of pregnant preparation for dreams gestating in darkness, let us hear once again and hold fast to this dream of our faith, this dream of God, passed down through the centuries, through the ancestors, through courageous and faithful women and the children they raised, and let it guide our path so that the roads we are creating by walking are roads that do pave the way for us to welcome Christ into the world anew.