The Divine Photo Album (or The Many Faces of God)
Rev. Dr. Durrell Watkins
1 John 4; John 15
May 6, 2012 – Sunshine Cathedral

What is God? Some people tell me they don’t believe in God, and when they explain what they mean, I usually say, “I don’t believe in the same God you don’t believe in!” But I believe in hope, and I believe in beauty, and I believe in kindness, and I believe in compassion, and I believei in joy, and I believe in courage, and I believe in love. These so-called atheists, so far to a person, always believe in these same wonderful qualities. I choose to call those qualities divine; others choose to not call them divine. But regardless of what we call them, are they any less amazing or life-sustaining?

God language trips up some people, it really does. But that may be because we’ve allowed our god-language to get too narrow and limiting. If we were more faithful to the biblical tradition, then the Substance of Life could be called many things, and if one name didn’t appeal to someone we could just offer them another name. Our spiritual ancestors seemed to possess that wisdom.

Deuteronomy 32.10-11, “…God shielded and cared for God’s people as the apple of God’s own eye, like a Mother Eagle that stirs up her nest and hovers over her young…” God, the mother eagle, watching over her chicks, teaching them to fly on their own is one of the ways that the ancient writer of that text imagined God.

Job 38.29, “From whose womb comes the ice of the world? Who gives birth to the frost in the air?” The answer is God. The only time God is ever imagined to have genitalia in the bible is in the book of Job, and the genitalia that writer imagines is female. Job may be the oldest book in the entire bible, and in that book, there is an image of God as divine mother, giving birth to nature, even the ice and the frost of winter time.

Ezekiel 1.28, “Like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day…such was the divine glory.” That prophetic writer imagines God as a rainbow, an inclusive image of many colors arching over every place that has experienced rain. The rainbow God leaving no one out is an especially appropriate image for a rainbow people.

Matthew 13.33, “The kin-dom of God [the community of God, the family of God] is like yeast that a grandmother baking bread keeps adding to the flour until it is all throughout the dough.” A grandmother lovingly baking bread, making it super delicious and making enough for the whole family, making sure there is enough yeast for the entire loaf to rise, so that there will be enough bread for the entire family to enjoy…that’s one of the ways that Matthew imagines God. Nana God working to make sure everyone gets a taste of her love.

In Luke 15, there are three parables that each imagines God in a different way. The first is the parable of the lost sheep where God is compared to a shepherd, who could be male or female, who tends to the sheep and feeds them and makes sure they get exercise and are protected from predatory animals.

The second is the parable of the lost coin where God is imagined in the form of a housewife. The housewife, in her younger days, would have been given a wedding gift from her husband, a head piece with 10 coins dangling from it. The coins would of course have some value, just as if you made a piece of jewelry from dimes or quarters it would have the value of those coins, but also the extra value from the labor put into it, plus sentimental value if it was gift. The woman who loses a coin from her precious gift tears the house a part looking for it because losing it simply is not an option.

She isn’t crazed because of the monetary value of a single coin. The coin represents her family, her husband’s love, her marriage…it is priceless and losing it simply isn’t an option. And so Big Mama God tears her house apart until she finds that coin, because none of God’s coins, just like none of God’s sheep, can ever really be lost. It just isn’t an option.

The third parable in Luke 15 is the parable a father who has two sons. In this story, God is the parent, the father who loves all of his children equally, and proves it by being generous with the one who deserves it least. But love isn’t a transaction, it isn’t quid pro quo, it is freely given and it is unconditional, or it isn’t love.

God the shepherd or shepherdess who will not lose a single lamb, God the mother who will not lose a single coin, god the father who will never give up on even the most difficult of his children, these are all images, all in the same chapter of Luke’s gospel, for God.

But of course, Jesus said wisely and simply, God is spirit (John 4.24).
Spirit is energy, wind, breath, life-force.
The Hebrew word for spirit is Ruach, which is feminine.
The Greek word for spirit is Pneuma, which is gender neutral.

The bible is so full of symbols for the divine. God is imagined as a father and a mother, a dove and an eagle, a rainbow, a castle and a rock, and yet, in spite of all these symbols pointing to what can’t be fully known, we have the commandment telling us to not limit the divine to any image, because image is not essence (“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image…” 2nd Commandment).

The God that can only be understood as one thing, one gender, one religion, one nationality, one form, one image, such a god is not very god-like after all, but is really just an idol doomed to wind up on the scrap heap of all of history’s idols.

In the bible God is he, and God is she, and God is it, and God is always more than the name or image we choose in any given moment. God of many names, mystery beyond our naming…

Why do you think the biblical editors left in all these different names and symbols of that which cannot be named or adequately symbolized? Probably so that we wouldn’t get too attached to any one of them. Probably so that we would notice that there are too many possible ways to relate to the source of all life to simply say God is this and nothing more, God must called that and nothing else. To let our experience of God be bigger, the compilers and editors of scripture presented God as a grandmother, and a mother eagle, and a loving father, and a feudal Lord, and a bright and beautiful rainbow, and the very energy of life, and even more. The bible calls us to always seek to let God be more.

So, when John imagines Jesus saying, “I am the true vine,” that isn’t an exclusive claim saying that only people who have certain opinions or understandings of Jesus get to be in communion with the spirit of life! No, that is John imagining Jesus demonstrating how we can believe in ourselves. Jesus believes that the spirit of life and love is flowing through him, expressing as him, is part of him, is the source of his very existence, and so he can make powerful I Am statements, and we aren’t meant then to turn around and make Jesus an idol because he affirmed his sacred value. Jesus was Jewish, and would have taken the Second Commandment seriously.

No, we are meant to follow Jesus’ example and affirm OUR sacred value! I am the good shepherd, I am the gate, I am the way, I am the vine, I am a child of God, I am the lamb who cannot be lost, I am the coin that will never be abandoned, I am the bread with enough yeast to rise to my full potential, I am an eagle learning to fly, I am the apple of God’s eye, I am divine love embodied. I am, you are, we are, everyone, without exception.

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “A person will worship something, have no doubt about that…That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.”

I don’t worship a tyrant lord, because I don’t want to be tyrannical I don’t worship a tribal deity that prefers my clan, class, country, or creed to everyone else because I don’t to be that kind of bigot. I don’t worship a god of war because I want to experience peace. I don’t worship a god of form, because I want to see God in every form and beyond all form. I don’t worship a male deity because I have feminine and masculine qualities, and I have women and men and gender non-compliant people in my life and I want to see and experience God in the femininity, and in the masculinity, and in the fluid gender continuum in my world. I don’t worship a god who is so petty as to not recognize love when it is shared between people of the same gender, because I want genuine love to be celebrated every time it is experienced. I don’t worship a god who cares what we call It, because I want a God that is big enough to answer every call, and I hope in time to be the kind of person that can respond more often than not with compassion to the cries that I hear.

That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshiping, we are becoming.

Can you let your God be more than she or he or it has been so far? Even if you aren’t sure if you believe in God, can you be honest with your doubts and let your courage and integrity be what boosts you higher as you continue your spiritual search? Can you imagine God as infinite compassion, as unlimited grace, as universal hope, as the ground of being, as the spark of light that indwells all life?

If we can let our understanding of the divine grow, not only will we be overcoming the limitations of idolatry, but we will also be letting ourselves grow. Oh let your God get bigger and bigger because what we are worshiping, we are becoming.

Maybe that’s why in the first letter of John, the whole matter is stated so simply, so beautifully, and so powerfully: God is LOVE, and whoever lives in love lives in God and God lives in them. We can all believe in love. We can all express love. And we can all grow in love. That is really the only kind of religion that I’m interested in, and that’s the only kind of religion that can truly be called the Good News. Amen.

© Durrell Watkins 2012

Affirmations:
My understanding of God is growing.
And so am I!
I am the lamb who cannot be lost.
I am the coin that will never be abandoned.
I am an eagle learning to fly.
I am the apple of God’s eye.
Amen.

Final Word
“Love, not religion, but one another.” Raymond John Baughan

Who Are the Other Sheep?
Rev. Dr. Robert Griffin
Sunshine Cathedral MCC
Sunday, April 29, 2012

There is a common religious icon that many have seen. As a kid growing up I was always somewhat disturbed by this picture. It is a portrait of a man identified as Jesus, carrying a sheep on his shoulders. And I remember asking my mother one day, why is Jesus carrying that sheep around his neck. She proceeded to tell me the biblical story about the lost sheep found in Luke. It is the story told about someone having 100 sheep and one gets lost, so the shepherd left the 99 and goes to find the one that is lost. And I thought, oh that is a cute story. But then she said, the answer to your question though about why is Jesus pictured as carrying the sheep is because when Jesus found the sheep, Jesus broke his legs so that the sheep would not run off again. Now of course that is nowhere in scripture, like a lot of made up things are not in scripture, but my mother’s interpretation of the story was enough to place some fear in me about not misbehaving.

As we critique today’s passage reading from John we find the use of the metaphoric phrase of “I am the good shepherd”. Well, what is meant by “good shepherd”? To be a good shepherd in antiquity meant that you watched over, working for the wealthy owner of the herds. A shepherd is a protector, an overseer who is doing good work on behalf of someone of power and wealth.

The image of Jesus as a good shepherd is borrowed from the Hebrew scriptures. We are all familiar with the 23rd Psalm where the psalmist says:

1-3 GOD, my shepherd! I don’t need a thing. You have bedded me down in lush meadows; you find me quiet pools to drink from. True to your word, you let me catch my breath and send me in the right direction. 4 Even when the way goes through Death Valley, I’m not afraid when you walk at my side. Your trusty shepherd’s crook makes me feel secure. 5 You serve me a six-course dinner right in front of my enemies. You revive my drooping head; my cup brims with blessing. 6 Your beauty and love chase after me every day of my life. I’m back home in the house of GOD for the rest of my life. (The Message)

In that imagery, God is not only the owner, or source, of all abundance, but is also the one who watches over the sheep to make sure that each one is able to experience her fair share of the divine bounty.

Certainly we will find other shepherd and sheep reference, such as the one we hear on Christmas Eve where shepherds and sheep are out in a field watching a star…in that story, shepherds are the workers living outside and considered on the margins of society but they are visited by angels, affirmed, and filled with the gift of hope; we may be familiar with the passage where Jesus asks Peter, do you love me and Peter responds by saying yes, I love you, Jesus says, feed me my sheep. In that story, Peter is called to be the shepherd who looks after someone else’s sheep to make sure they are cared for, kept safe and well.

Abel, Job, and Abraham owned lands and sheep, and had shepherds care for their flocks. David, as a child was a lowly shepherd caring for the flocks of someone else (though he would later rise to the position of king), and Rachel was a shepherdess who cared for Laban’s sheep. All the sheep belong to a wealthy owner, or perhaps to Mother Nature, and the shepherd is one trusted to care for those sheep to keep them safe, fed, and well.

Shepherds are trusted not to keep peace or protect the status quo, but to help the sheep grow, find nourishment, and experience a better quality of life. Prophets considered community leaders to be shepherds of the people, and when they failed to honor their sacred trust, the prophets would deride them. The prophet Ezekiel denounced these types of shepherd leaders by saying, “You eat the fat … you clothe yourselves with the wool … you slaughter the fatlings; but you do not feed the sheep. You have not strengthened the weak, you have not healed the sick, you have not bound up the injured, you have not brought back the strayed, you have not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled them”.

So from the prophetic era to the time that Jesus appears on the scene, we can note that the authorities, the shepherd leaders (those who are trusted to help the people grow and live lives of health and abundance), have not improved. As a matter of fact one could say that things had gotten worse. The lower had become lower and the oppressive powers of that day had become more oppressive.

So Jesus comes and announces that he is the Good Shepherd. Not like those others that were just ruling over them; using their positions for self gain, abusing those that were beneath them and exploiting those he didn’t know any better. Jesus places himself in the role of the Good Shepherd as someone God has trusted to challenge the status quo and empower the marginalized so that the people can grow in hope, joy, and fulfillment. Jesus is trusted to care for
God’s sheep, that is, God’s people, and Jesus does a GOOD job of that. He is a good shepherd.

Jesus had come to shake things lose and turn things upside down, to bring the good news to the poor and to bring hope and justice to the oppressed. He wasn’t trying to preserve his own legacy or trying to secure a place of privilege for himself; he was a good shepherd trying keep the sheep safe from the powers of greed, imperialism, and militaristic expansion. Jesus was a good shepherd who wasn’t trying to build himself up but who was trying to help those weighed down by systems of oppression rise up with dignity, hope, and a peace that circumstances could not take away.

So, what does the metaphor of the Shepherd hold for us today? For us today, the Shepherd might represent those who hold political, spiritual or religious leadership positions, those who are called to do the work of justice, those who stand up in the face of injustice and name it for what it is. To be a true Shepherd today one does not stand behind the cloak of title or position, but is rather out front leading in a new direction. Today’s Shepherd leads in a new direction that enlightens and transforms those who are living in the margins of society and lifts them up. Not only are they lifted up, but they are lifted in a manner that allows them to place their feet on a solid ground of substance. Those who lead in the ways of justice and healing are good shepherds today.

To be a true Shepherd today means one has to care more for others than just themselves. They are agents of change in a world and time when the world needs leaders to lead in such a manner that connects us all in a positive, progressive, and practical manner.

Dr. Howard Thurman said, “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” I believe we are representatives of the Other Sheep that have come alive in our gospel reading today. We have decided to follow the path of justice, the way of hope, the life of love, and those decisions have helped us live more abundantly and we therefore have the hope of abundant life to offer others. Those who work for hope and healing, equality and justice are good shepherds today.

In verse 16, the Good Shepherd says there are other sheep that are not of John’s community. A good shepherd knows that there are other sheep. Sheep aren’t just Catholic, or Protestant, or Jewish. Sheep aren’t just Christian, or Muslim, or Buddhist. Sheep aren’t just American, or Floridian, or citizens of Broward County. The sheep are from every religion and no religion, from this country and other countries, from this community and other communities, and good shepherds are concerned for the welfare of all them. Good shepherds are mindful of the Jamaican flocks, the Dominican flocks, the Ugandan flocks, the Malaysian flocks, the Nigerian flocks, the flocks in recovery, the flocks living with HIV.

The Other Sheep are those who recognize their sacred value despite how society may judge them for being a single mom, divorced, or having exercised their reproductive freedom of choice. The Other Sheep are those who came to this country looking for that blessed dream only to find themselves pushed down and pushed out. But the good shepherd will not forget them.

The Other Sheep are those who cannot afford health care, the elderly who struggle to live their final years with dignity and comfort. The Other Sheep are those who are homeless and those taken advantage of due to mortgage greed. Other sheep include people who have been released from prison who face social and economical marginalization.
The Other Sheep are those 75 million children who are excluded from education living in sub-Saharan Africa or South and West Asia. The main reasons for exclusion are poverty, gender inequity, and disability, child labor, speaking a minority language, belonging to an indigenous people, and living a nomadic or rural lifestyle.

There are the sheep of this fold who enjoy frolicking together, but there are other sheep and they are also beloved by God and we must care about them too. All life is part of the divine fold and good shepherds care about all sheep, not just the ones they tend to daily, but those beyond the local flock.

Many of us are LBGT people, and such, we know what it is like to be “other sheep.” But the good shepherd loves all sheep. And we are evolving from other sheep to good shepherds, from those who needed to be reminded that we were loved too to those who are now proclaiming to others that they are loved, just as they are, now and forever.

And despite all the marginalization that still exists in our world, in our nation, in our community, we are called to be present with those who are in need of hope, in search of a better way, in need of one more chance, and to be advocates for those who will not allow their circumstances to keep them down and locked out of the opportunities of a better tomorrow. Because as we do this, we remain alive today we can hear in the words of the Prophet Isaiah, “But they that wait on the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.”

And this is the Good News.

Affirmations:
The power of peace fills me.
The power of love lifts me.
The power of joy sustains me.
The power of hope heals me.
And so it is.
Amen.

Never Alone
Rev. Dr. Durrell Watkins
Acts 3.16; Luke 24.36b-39, 41-43
Easter 3, 2012 – Sunshine Cathedral

I was sharing with Rev. Tania the other day that the very first song I ever learned, my hand to God, was a show tune. She told me I’m the gayest person she’s ever met.

The first notes and the first words that I ever sang were from the musical Hair.

Imagine toddler Durrell, in the backwoods of Southwest Arkansas, in a place so remote the Jehovah’s Witnesses had not yet found it, entertaining his hillbilly cousins by singing:

When the moon is in the Seventh House, and Jupiter aligns with Mars
Then peace will guide the planets and love will steer the stars
This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius…

But the amazing thing is, that has stayed with me. Not just that song, which is a pretty groovy song, but great lines and great lyrics and great moments from musical theatre have honestly sustained me with a sort or religious like power throughout my life.

Some people have that experience with beautiful prayers from the Book of Common Prayer or from the Rosary, or with verses of scripture or with scenes from classic films or with lines from great poetry.

Most of us have something that we carry with us all the time. It may not be noticeable every minute of every day, but it is always present, just beneath the surface, and the moment we need encouragement or comfort or empowerment, it pops up like a spirit guide or patron saint or guardian angel to sustain us and remind us that we will smile again.

There was a song from our Good Friday Tenebrae service, “You Walk With Me.” It’s, surprise, a Broadway show tune, from the musical The Full Monty. It’s from a funeral scene where a young man is at his mother’s funeral, and he is comforting himself to think that his mother’s blessed memory will always be with him; he later learns that there is someone who is romantically interested in him who will also be with him as he faces his loss.

In multiple ways, he is comforted to learn that he never alone.

There is a line that has always meant something to me from the Jerry Herman musical Mame. After her husband dies, Mame of course is in mourning, and she passes by a full length mirror, wearing all black of course, and she says to herself,

“You look like you’ve just come from a funeral.”

Mame who had spent her life celebrating life was reminding herself that to love means that one day we will lose who we love, and that will cause pain, but life is still good and worth the living and worth the risk of loving and she wanted, even with her grief, to get back to living.

My grandmother was the person closest to me in my whole life. Before I met Robert, I didn’t know it was possible to love anyone as thoroughly as I loved her.

In an otherwise difficult, painful, even unsafe childhood, my grandmother provided me my only experience of unconditional love and unlimited positive regard.

My worst fear in life was to lose her. The day she died was the most painful day I had ever lived through. And yet, at the funeral home during the wake, I passed by a mirror, my eyes puffy and red, and stopped in front of the mirror, and I said, “You look like you’ve just come from a funeral.” And for the first time in days, I smiled.

Those memories, those sacred words, those songs that get inside us and become like marrow in our bones, those silent angelic whispers that remind us that we are never alone and that even when we are temporarily unhappy we need not be separated from our source of true joy…they are always with us. And when we summon them, they come with healing power to soothe and relieve and encourage us.

That’s what our scripture readings are today. They are stories meant to remind people facing challenges that there is reason to hope, that there is more to life than the difficulty at hand, and that even when things are completely overwhelming, as long as we have our memories, our stories, our connections to something larger than ourselves, we are never alone.

The reading we heard from the Acts of the Apostles this morning is one of those healing stories that can be simultaneously comforting and troubling, hopeful and heartbreaking.

The story of the apostles praying in Jesus’ name and that prayer miraculously curing a paraplegic is hopeful and comforting because it shows that faith, hope, and prayer can combine to have a healing influence on someone’s life.

But it can also be troubling because stories like that one have been used abusively to tell people that if their condition doesn’t go into remission or if their pain doesn’t go away or if they don’t beat their prognosis it’s because they don’t have enough faith or because God somehow wanted them to suffer to teach them a lesson or to make them stronger or holier.

I need to say right now that I believe that the infinite compassion that we call “God” is just that, pure, true, endless compassion. And such compassion would never wish us to suffer for any reason. Compassion means to suffer with. The Spirit of life wants to be expressed as joy and wholeness and when we cannot express life with joy and wholeness, then life suffers with us, wishing with us for relief, strength, and resolution.

I do not believe that to pray in Jesus’ name is to use the “word” Jesus like a magic word that will make our wishes come true.

To pray in Jesus’ name is to pray like Jesus prayed, and the way Jesus prayed was with confidence that the divine Presence was with him no matter what was happening around or even to him. He believed he was never alone.

Even during his brutal, savage execution, which I do not attribute to a divine plan, Jesus prayed the 22nd psalm which begins, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?!” But you see, the 22nd psalm concludes with hope and renewed confidence and comfort. Basically, that psalm begins with, “Why God have you abandoned me?” and ends with “Oh, yeah, that’s right, you haven’t.”

To pray in Jesus’ name is to pray like Jesus, and to pray like Jesus is to have an awareness that divine love is intimately present with us at all times and forever.

I’ve seen people experience healing in their emotions and relationships even as their bodies continued to deteriorate.
I’ve seen people outlive their prognosis by weeks, months, and even years.
I’ve seen people who were given no hope survive in ways that can only be called miraculous.
And I’ve seen people die too soon, suffer too long, and have their every attempt to recover seem to fail.

Why does prayer offer spiritual healing to one, physical recovery to another, and blessings that we can hardly discern to someone else? I don’t know.

Just like I don’t know why chemotherapy prolongs one person’s life, makes another person’s disease go into remission for a while, another’s go into remission permanently, and have almost no noticeable effect on someone else.

I don’t know why some people can drink in moderation, and other people dare not drink at all because it will honestly ruin their lives.

I don’t know why one person can smoke heavily and live to be 98, and other person can smoke half as much and have a lung removed at age 50.

We are both resilient and fragile; we are powerful individuals and yet, there remain some things beyond our understanding or control.

Life is magic that we can direct, and mystery that we cannot fathom. How can both be true? I don’t know, but experience suggests it is.

What I know is that prayer, like poetry and scripture and show tunes and great films, can help us find the strength and peace that is always within us, reminding us that we are never really alone.

I know that prayer can help us rise above our fears and regrets and that in itself is a kind of healing that very often seems to lead to other experiences of healing.

What I know is that prayer connects us to all the prayers of eternity and to all the people who have ever prayed and so the very act of prayer is a reminder that we are not alone, and if we are not facing the challenges of life alone, then hope, peace, and joy are always possible and that’s pretty miraculous.

And finally, let me speak directly to the heartache this congregation has experienced in the last few days. Last week we had two congregants pass away: Ruth Zuzek and Lain Benjamin. Like you, I will miss them. Like you, I wish they had lived longer. Like you, I hope their final moments were peaceful and comfortable.

And I will share with you that I honestly believe that in their final moments, they were not alone. The Song of Life was singing in their souls until the very last moment, the energy of life was fully present with them, expressing as them until breath left their bodies, and then the energy of their lives continued on and continues on forevermore. I believe our love can bless them still, and I believe our memories of them can bless us still. I truly believe they were never alone; I truly believe that we are never alone.

“You Walk With Me” (from the Broadway musical, The Full Monty):

Is it the wind
Over my shoulder? Is it the wind that I hear gently whispering
Are you alone there in the valley?
No, not alone for you walk, you walk with me.

Is it the wind there over my shoulder?
Is it your voice calling quietly?
Over the hilltop, down in the valley
Never alone for you walk with me.

When evening falls, and the air gets colder
When shadows cover the road I am following
Will I be alone there in the darkness?
No, not alone, not alone and I’ll never be…

Never alone, you are walking
You’re walking with me.

Is it the wind there, over my shoulder? Is it your voice calling quietly?
Over the hilltop, down in the valley Never alone for you walk with me.
Over the hilltop, down in the valley Never alone for you walk with me.

Never alone for you walk with me.

AND THIS IS THE GOOD NEWS! AMEN.

© Durrell Watkins 2012

Affirmations:
I am never alone.
Sacred energy fills the universe.
Divine love saturates every moment.
My heartbeat is Heaven’s cadence.
I am filled with the breath of eternity.
And so it is!

Final Word“
In the night of death, hope sees a star, and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing.” ~Robert Ingersoll

Thomas and Time
Rev. Dr. Lea Brown
Easter 2 (2012) – John 20.19-27

The scene is Jerusalem, and even though we are already on the first Sunday after of Easter, in the gospel of John it is still the Evening of Easter Day.

The disciples are sitting huddled in a room behind locked doors, waiting for the authorities to come for them next.
In the midst of all the terror and misery in that room, John tells us that Jesus suddenly appeared among them and said,
“Peace be with you.”

Jesus showed them the marks on his hands and side so that they would know it was really him. Unfortunately for Thomas, he was not with the others when Jesus first appeared to them. John doesn’t tell us why he wasn’t with them, but we know that it certainly wasn’t because Thomas wasn’t a loyal follower of his friend the Rabbi.

In the 11th chapter of John, when Jesus decided to return to Bethany to raise Lazarus from the dead, all of the other disciples try to stop him from going, saying, “You can’t go there Jesus! Last time you visited Bethany you were almost
stoned to death!” Only Thomas, perhaps in a moment of more brawn than brains, says “Let us also go, that we may die with Jesus.” (Apparently Thomas had quite the flair for the dramatic. No doubt he would fit right in at MCC.)

But if Thomas wasn’t with the other disciples when Jesus first appeared to them, it wasn’t for lack of loyalty. My guess is that it was this very devotion that kept him away. Perhaps isolating himself and keeping everything and everyone away that might touch his pain was Thomas’ way of coping.

Whatever the reason, Thomas’ decision to separate himself from his friends that evening meant that he did not share their joy at their experience of Jesus in their midst, and no matter what they said to him about how they had seen Jesus, nothing would make him open his heart again to hope.

Nothing, that is, except the chance to see with his own eyes, and touch with his own fingers, the marks upon Jesus’ body. And of course, as the scriptures tell us, Thomas had the opportunity to do just that a week later.

And Jesus said to him, just as he had said to the others, “Peace be with you, Thomas. Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.”

Now, if you are a bible geek like me (because you can take the girl out of the Baptist church…) and like to spend your spare time reading biblical commentaries you will discover that they all say pretty much the same thing:

That even though it seems as if these words were written right after the Resurrection, they really weren’t. These words
were written to the early Christian Church, to a generation that lived in a time when there was no one left who could
personally testify to having seen Jesus after he rose from the dead. Thomas wasn’t really doubting Thomas – he was being portrayed by John as another example of a first-hand witness to the resurrection.

Jesus and John weren’t really chastising Thomas for not believing without seeing; what they were really doing was saying to everyone who would come later, “You won’t be able to see the resurrection first-hand, but we want you to believe anyway.”

There isn’t anything wrong with this explanation found in all the biblical commentaries. It was a fact of life that early history and personal experiences with Jesus had to be recorded if the movement that was the early Church was going to survive. However, when you are someone like me, you tend to look at scripture just a little differently than your basic biblical commentary does. After all, I don’t think the Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible had Christian Fundamentalist born and raised, Ex-Southern Baptist, former Army Chaplain leather dyke MCC pastors like me in mind when they did the writing. And so, of course, I think this passage has something else to give us than an example of a sighting of Jesus.

This passage about Thomas, about his pain, is, I believe, also Very much about what Tony Kushner calls “the virus of

Time” in his play “Angels In America.” Kushner calls the virus of time “sleeping creation’s potential for change.” These words are spoken by an angel to Prior, a gay man living with HIV. Prior doesn’t want to be a part of creation that moves forward anymore, because the progress of time has brought him too much loss, too much pain, too much grief.

Like Prior, and like Thomas, you and I too are caught in Creation’s endless potential for change. We must wrestle, every day and night of our lives, with the paradox of time: if we are experiencing time, obviously we are alive, and we have the opportunity to experience all the wonder and the gifts of life. And yet, as time marches on, we cannot hold back change and all kinds of experience, and from the very moment we begin our living, we also begin our process of dying. In other words, where there is life, there is the possibility of joy and passion and connection, and there is also the reality of change and pain and sadness. And wherever there is love, there is also the inevitability of loss. Time, the very gift that gives us life, also brings changes that rob us of those we love because nothing we can do can stop its relentless journey. One of my favorite lines from the movie “Fried Green Tomatoes” (besides “Towanda – Queen of The Amazons!”) is “A heart that’s been broken deeps on beating just the same.”

Our hearts do keep on beating, and life continues its journey, sometimes taking away the bad things and bringing positive changes, giving us the chance to grow and heal and make our lives what we want them to be, and sometimes taking all that is precious to us and turning it into nothing but memories that can both comfort and torment us, sometimes in the very same moment.

This paradox of life was the very challenge facing Thomas, and 2,000 years later it is the same challenge that keeps us all treading water for our lives in an endless ocean of questions: Is it possible to embrace life and cope with loss?

How do we go on when our relationships end, when those we love die?

How do we keep our hearts open to love when wounds from our past throb with unresolved pain, and when we may have felt forced to shut down long ago just to survive?

How do we choose to keep our hearts open to hope?

How do we choose to keep our hearts open to each other when it feels as though we just can’t stand to be betrayed by our own vulnerability one more time?

Well, this is where our friend Thomas comes in. Time had come along and robbed Thomas of the one who was perhaps his best friend who showed Him what it meant to live life to its fullest. But time had passed, and for Thomas, Jesus was gone, leaving him only with his memories of this man he loved so much.

Until the day, that is, when Thomas had the chance to touch Jesus’ wounds…and in that moment, the resurrection became real for Thomas. Thomas needed to see and to touch Jesus’ wounds to believe in the miracle of new life. You and I need to see and to touch one another’s wounds to believe in the miracle of new life that has the potential to be born within us again and again. All of us carry wounds – places in ourselves where we have been hurt, betrayed, oppressed, stricken with grief, and paralyzed by fear.

Even Jesus carried scars from all that he experienced. We know that we cannot live life, and take risks, and love others, and be ourselves, without being wounded as well. And if we keep our wounds to ourselves, if we lock our hearts away in a place we think is safe, the stone will always remain in front of the entrance to the tomb, and the power of the resurrection will always be something someone else tells us, but that we never really know for ourselves.

Thomas asked for what he needed, and Jesus freely shared the evidence of his pain with him, and through this exchange between them Thomas was given hope, and new life, and the ability to love and live again.

When I think of this story about Thomas, I am often reminded, through a very unlikely source, of the potential for healing that we have in sharing our pain and needs with one another.

This is a story about someone named Dane. He lives in the Castro District, the historically Queer (gay), although rapidly changing, neighborhood in San Francisco. Dane is one of the thousands of people who are homeless in Gay Bay, and he is also one of the many who struggle daily with severe addiction and mental health issues. Dane would often come to the 7 p.m. worship service at MCC San Francisco and sit up in the balcony, while all of us on staff would fidget nervously in our seats, wondering what Dane might say or do in the service, especially during Community Prayer, when people could say their prayers out loud. (We liked to call it liturgical edge play.)

Here’s the thing about Dane: when he wasn’t using, he could and often did say some pretty profound things that would make you think. But when he was high, he was definitely a box of chocolates – we never knew what we were going to get. Over time Dane started to become verbally violent, and eventually and reluctantly, we had to ask him to no longer attend the 7 p.m. service.

Now, I don’t know all of Dane’s story. I don’t know all that happened to him that has made him the person he is today. But I would be willing to bet that sometime, somewhere, something happened to him that was too much for him to bear…something that made him choose to shut himself off mentally, emotionally and spiritually from anyone and anything that might hurt him again.

And so he roams the streets of the Castro, sometimes friendly, sometimes out of his mind…but always, always alone.

Until something happened several years ago on a regular evening in the Castro when a Buick ran a red light on Market Street, swerved into the next lane going the other direction, and slammed into a BMW. Both cars burst into flames, and as people poured out of neighborhood businesses to try and help, they saw Dane jump into the BMW that was engulfed in flames with gasoline pouring down the street, as he tried to pull the driver out to safety. Dane got the driver halfway out of the car, and then others joined him, and together, they carried the driver to a nearby alley away from the flames. On that evening, Dane saw someone threatened with death and risked his own life to try and save him.

And at least for a few days in the Castro, among the merchants and the neighbors, people who often feared and rejected Dane, treated him with kindness and warmth, I don’t live in the Castro anymore (this was before my days with Sarah-Helen), but I hope it all continues.

I hope that Dane remembers that in that moment when he tried to save another human being he was reaching out, remembering who God created him to be. And I hope others continue today to see Dane in this light, to try and touch his wounds and help him find healing and new life.

The Castro might seem like a long way from Ft. Lauderdale, from one end of the continent to another, and it might not seem like this story has much to do with you and me, but I believe it does.

We all have the potential to go down the same path as Dane…to forget completely that our one chance at life and love and wholeness lies completely in how we touch one another’s wounds, and allow our own to be touched, in how we live with one another and love one another within sleeping Creation’s potential for change.

And that is what spiritual community and Sunshine Cathedral and MCC are for; this is what Jesus came to teach us: That the way we live fully in the midst of time, is to believe in the power that love gives us to share our wounds, and to heal one another’s wounds, and to say to one another in our times of pain and fear, just as Jesus said to Thomas and all the disciples: “Peace be with you.” Amen.

Affirmations:
The power of life heals me.
The power of life gives me hope.
The power of life gives me courage.
The power of life renews my joy.
Divine Life is my life now.
And so it is!

Final Word
“Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love. They are performed by those who temporarily have more for those who temporarily have less.” A Course in Miracles

The Power of a Resurrection Story
Rev. Dr. Durrell Watkins, Sunshine Cathedral
Easter 2012

I remember hearing a story when I was a child about a little boy who lived with his grandfather. They were country folk and actually quite poor. The grandfather’s small cottage had fallen into disrepair and he wasn’t much of a housekeeper. The little house was dark and dusty and stale. But it was home.

One day, a stranger, a small woman with a sweet smile, came up to the little boy in the park and handed him a lily. And then she walked away. Not thinking much of it, the little boy took the lily home to his grandfather. The grandfather put the flower in a mason jar and placed the jar in the window. Compared to the clean jar, the window really looked filthy. So, the grandfather cleaned the window, which of course also allowed more light into the room.

The extra light in the room exposed the dirt on the floor. So, the grandfather had his grandson sweep the floor and then came behind him with a mop and mopped the floor. Well, a clean window and natural lighting and fresh mopped floor seem to require something a bit nicer than a mason jar for the flower, so the grandfather found a vase hidden away in a cupboard and put the lily in it and placed it back in the window.

That one little flower had really made such a difference to their entire living environment, the grandfather decided they should have more flowers. So, the next day, he spaded up a bed of dirt in the front yard and his grandson planted some seeds.

Within a few months, the flowers are gorgeous and grandfather and his grandson have manicured the entire lawn and it becomes so pleasant that neighbors just stop by to admire the flowers and talk to the small family. The sad, lonely two person family living in squalor had transformed their lives into an experience of beauty and celebration and they even made friends in the process.

Now, by this time, the lily that a kind stranger gave the boy is long dead. But the house is clean, the lawn has been transformed into a beautiful garden, and both grandfather and grandson now have friends in their lives. The flower died, but the difference it made in two people’s lives never did.

That’s resurrection power. Lives renewed, energized, made whole. That’s divine life being expressed. That’s spring replacing winter. That’s dawn overcoming the long night. That’s the beautiful butterfly emerging from its chrysalis. And that’s why we are here together today.

I love resurrection stories. And I love that there are so many of them.

Sleeping Beauty falls into a lifeless state until true love’s kiss revives her, restoring her to the world of the living.

Snow White is poisoned with an apple, but a prince sees her body in the glass coffin and falls in love with her. In one version of the story, as he’s carrying her to his castle, the jostling of her body makes her regurgitate the bite of poison apple and she springs back to life; in a more romantic version, he kisses her corpse (OK, maybe that really is just as gross) and she is resurrected back to life.

But of course, resurrection narratives aren’t limited to Grimm’s Fairy Tales.
We have a plethora of them in our sacred scriptures.
The prophet Elijah raises a widow’s dead son back to life (1 Kings 17).
Elijah’s disciple, Elisha, is staying with friends whose son comes down with a bad headache and falls over dead. Elisha, graciously, brings the child back to life (2 Kings 4).

There’s a story in the Hebrew scriptures about some people trying to bury their dead loved one, but as they are preparing to bury him, marauders come along and they just throw the body into the Elisha’s grave and then run away. However, when the body lands on the bones of Elisha, guess what, it is revived and lives again! (2 Kings 13).

In the New Testament, Jesus resurrects a 12 year old girl who has died (Mark 5), and he raises his dear friend Lazarus back to life after he has died (John 11), and, like Elijah & Elisha, he is said to have raised a widow’s child back to life (Luke 7).

Jesus isn’t alone in pulling off these New Testament resurrections. Peter raises Tabitha back to life (Acts 9) and later, a young man accidentally falls to his death and Paul raises him back to life (Acts 20).

And older than our New Testament stories and as old as some of the stories from the Hebrew scriptures are other Resurrection Narratives. Baal, Adonis, Odin, and Osiris are all deities from Asia Minor, Greece, Northern Europe, and Egypt who die and are brought back to life.

And Dionysus is a figure that is especially important to me, because his religious festivals actually gave rise to Greek theatre. In ancient Greece, Dionysus was believed to be the son of a god and of a human mother. He was called a god of epiphany. His symbol which was used in rituals honoring him was wine. He was one of the 12 Olympian deities. His festival was in the spring. And part of his story was that he would die to be reborn as a symbol of never ending life.

Even the name Easter is a derivative of the Anglo-Saxon spring goddess Eostre (more commonly known now as Ostara), who was celebrated with bunnies and painted eggs, both symbols of fertility and abundant life.

Old Testament, New Testament, Germanic, Norse, Egyptian, Greek mythologies, European fairy stories, even stories in the Far East of enlightened teachers who choose be reborn after each experience of death so that they can continue to help others achieve enlightenment…it’s almost as if Life is trying to tell us something.

You may or may not take the stories literally. Their value isn’t in whether or not we think we can prove that they ever happened. Their value is in how they can help us live empowered, hopeful, joyous lives today! And to that end, let’s focus on the primary Christian contribution to the universal Resurrection theme: the Resurrection of Christ.

As we’ve noted, Jesus’ story is not the only nor even the first resurrection story. So why are we so drawn to this story?

In our gospel story today, who experiences the Resurrection? Well, Jesus is missing from the tomb, but all we see is his absence. Later versions will add some post-Resurrections encounters, but in this oldest of Jesus’ resurrection stories, all we have is his absence. The young man at the tomb, and the three women who come to visit, they are the ones who are experiencing his Resurrection. They are remembering their loved one. They are realizing that his importance cannot be destroyed. They are discovering that who he really is and what he really meant to them can not finally be entombed. And so they must now take their experience of Resurrection and do something with it.

The reason that out of so many resurrection stories crossing ages and cultures that Jesus’ is so compelling to us is that his victory is really ours. The tomb is empty, now what? Now, move forward. Keep working. The young man at the tomb tells the women to return to Galilee, that Jesus is going ahead of them. He has paved the way for them, but they must continue on the path. His empty tomb means that we now must go forward and keep doing the work of empowering people, of offering hope and healing, of demanding justice for all, of celebrating the sacred value of all people.

The women were afraid. They didn’t know what to say. This version of the story doesn’t end with easy answers or even certainty, just a calling. Keep going. Keep moving. Keep doing. Keep making a difference. It is now our job to be Christ in the world.

When we confront sexism, when we challenge racism, when we resist homophobia, when we show compassion, when we affirm that all people without exception have sacred value and no one is ever beyond the reach of God’s love, we are sharing Resurrection Power; we are letting the Christ Light shine continuously in our world.

Stories of Jesus’ resurrection, unlike other resurrection stories, are not just about insisting that life is more than the sum of earthly years. If grace is true, if God is omnipresent, then life doesn’t really end at death for any of us. No, the power of Jesus’ resurrection is that others share it, experience it, and are called to action because of it. Easter is real and relevant every time we share compassion, generosity, hope, goodwill, and a commitment to justice. The facts can be debated, but the truth is our lived experience, and the truth is because we are committed to being the living, loving, justice-seeking presence of Christ on earth, we can say with total confidence today, “Alleluia! Christ is risen; Christ is risen indeed.” And this is the good news. Amen.

© Durrell Watkins 2012

Affirmations:Divine Life fills this moment.
Divine Life enlivens the world.
God is my life.
And so my life is blessed.
Alleluia!
Amen.

Final word
“There is not room for Death…Thou art Being and Breath, and what Thou art may never be destroyed.” Emily Bronte

A Story of Stories; a Story of Hope
Rev. Dr. Durrell Watkins
Sunshine Cathedral, Palm Sunday 2012

In today’s gospel story Jesus sends for a colt and rides it into Jerusalem with much fanfare.

Of course, there is rich symbolism in the account that mustn’t be overlooked if the story is to be properly understood. The story borrows from other stories and weaves together a message of hope.

The story begins Near the Mount of Olives: Olivet, or the Mount of Olives is where Zechariah (14.4) imagines the final battle of nations will be held. To place Jesus at this location suggests something of extreme importance, something that could change the way people experience the world forever, is occurring.

The parade into the city features the waving of Leafy branches: This is lifted right from the book of 1 Maccabees. “On the twenty-third day of the second month, in the year 171,there was a great celebration in the city because this terrible threat to the security of Israel had come to an end. Simon and his men entered the fort singing hymns of praise and thanksgiving, while carrying palm branches and playing harps, cymbals, and lyres.” 1 Maccabees 13.51

Mark is remembering the sacred story of Israel surviving a threat and celebrating its security with singing, instruments, and the waving of palm branches like pom-poms. This continues to the cathartic drama of imagining how things ought to be and hoping how they might one day be even if in the present moment things are very disappointing.

And of course, the people are shouting Hosanna: Hosanna is from the 118th Psalm, it means “save us.” Having lost everything in the year 70, a desperate hope that somehow they could be saved from Rome’s wrath and seeming unstoppable power is the prayer of the hearts of the oppressed.

But let us not forget, a colt: ancient coronation ceremonies for monarchs of Israel may have included the use of colts (Genesis 49.11). But to cast Jesus in the role of a king is almost comedic. He was born in a barn. His paternity was questioned. He lived in an occupied, rural territory. We have no proof he could even read well or write at all. So to stage a scene where someone like Jesus is at the site of world change, being greeted as a hero, being asked to save people from the mightiest military power on earth, riding a colt as ancient tribal kings might have done is to say that in God’s realm, there are no nobodies! Nobody is left out, nobody is without potential, nobody is without a spark of greatness. What a hopeful message for people who had been treated as if they weren’t even human.

Mark is writing circa 70 CE, as or after the Temple is destroyed. This “war” on the holy city and its temple has ended the world as Mark and his contemporaries have known it. Some five decades earlier, Jesus was executed. To now imagine Jesus riding triumphantly into the city (after both Jesus and the city have been brutalized by Rome) is a dramatic cathartic tale where one might imagine Jesus as being Lord (over against Lord Caesar) and therefore, Caesar cannot have the last word.

Will Jesus return with an angelic army to out-Caesar Caesar? We are so tempted to put Jesus on Caesar’s throne even though such systems are exactly what Jesus gave his life opposing. Or, is the drama meant to suggest that imperial domination can’t ultimately have the last word and justice must one day prevail?

The story offers a creative way to deal with the pain and disappointment with which Mark’s community is burdened.

There is also irony with the colt. We may think of a colt as being just a cute, tiny horse, but in Matthew’s gospel, the writer there makes it clearer; the colt is a donkey. There is something silly about a jack ass. Whenever you have called someone a jack ass, you were NOT complimenting them. Donkeys are useful, strong, hard working, and deserve our appreciation and respect, which is why we don’t call people “donkey” when we are angry with them, but the sillier and courser “jack ass.”

Pilate also participated in a parade, and in his parade in the heart of the city, he rode a grand war horse. For Jesus to have an impromptu, unsanctioned parade in the back of the city, not on a horse but on a jack ass shows the contrast between the ways of God’s kin-dom and the ways of Caesar’s empire.

There is also a story in the book of Numbers about a donkey. In Numbers 22 a guy named Balaam is riding his donkey to do some business that God, according to the story, did not want Balaam to do. So, God tries to disrupt Balaam’s journey by sending an angel to block Balaam’s path. Balaam doesn’t notice the angel, but the more observant donkey that Balaam is riding does notice the menacing angel.

The donkey walked off the road into a field and Balaam beat the donkey to get it back on the road. A bit later, the angel appears again, and the frightened donkey shrinks back and accidentally scrapes Balaam’s foot against a stone wall, and Balaam responds by beating his donkey again. On they go when for a third time; the donkey sees the angel and the donkey just lies down and refuses to move. Balaam gets off the donkey and starts beating her mercilessly with his staff, and then suddenly, the donkey can’t take anymore and she says, “What have I done to make you beat me these three times?” And Balaam answered…

Balaam answered?! Hello, Balaam, the donkey is talking! This is new, right?

Well, Balaam argues with the donkey and says he’s embarrassed that she keeps misbehaving. In fact, he says, if he was armed with a sword he’d kill the stubborn donkey right there on the spot!

The donkey responds by saying, “Am I not your donkey that you have ridden all this time before today? Have I ever been in the habit of refusing to move forward?” As for as I can tell, this articulate and reasonable donkey is the world’s first smart-ass.

Suddenly, Balaam saw the angel, and the angel said to him, “your donkey saved your life. If you had forced her to go past me I would have killed you but spared her.”

Well, talking animals is the sign that we are dealing with a fable, but notice in the fable that it is the beast of burden, the lowly donkey that is actually wise, that sees angels, that not only works hard but protects others facing danger. The donkey, the lowly animal is actually the noble character in that story. The nothing, the nobody is once again the agent of God! And Jesus rides a little donkey into Jerusalem.

Riding on a donkey through a back gate of town while Pilate is in a grand parade in the heart of the city, Jesus is greeted by a rag tag group of nobodies treating him as if he were a war hero or royal dignitary. Jesus is honored by the people he has spent his life affirming and uplifting. Borrowing from biblical stories, they wave palm branches and call out for salvation from Caesar’s empire – Hosanna! But to be saved from the way of empire is to focus on a better way. Did it happen just that way, or is the story being imagined by post-Temple writers. Either way, the point is that Jesus never sat on a throne nor did he aspire to; Jesus wasn’t Caesar, he was the anti-Caesar. He comes through the back gate. He rides a borrowed donkey. He greets the outcasts and the marginalized. He confronts oppression even if the oppressors strike back with brutal fury. To be saved from empire is to not be co-opted by empire. You can be killed by empire, you can be tortured by empire, you can be vilified by empire, but you can always refuse to allow empire to poison your soul, and a soul free of the poison of greed and oppression will always rise above the difficulties of the world.

Caesar’s empire has won by worldly standards. But the kin-dom of God (the anti-empire) has different values.

In the kin-dom of God, a nobody from the rural backwater can be the hope of the oppressed.
In the kin-dom of God a savior can be executed as a criminal and still be revered and honored.
In the kin-dom of God one can be slain and still somehow remain alive in people’s memories, hearts, literature and rituals.
In the kin-dom of God death doesn’t get the last word and by the power of sacred memory the dead rise again!
In the kin-dom of God, the hardworking donkey is the symbol of strength, not the royal trappings of empire and privilege!
In the kin-dom of God, Pilate can ride a war horse in parades, but the peasant on a tiny colt is who the story is really about.

One writer commented, “The entrance into Jerusalem has all the elements of the theatre of the absurd: the poor king…riding on a donkey…even parading without a permit” (David Kirk).

Jesus subverts the systems of power and privilege. In God’s realm, the so-called scum are the disciples, the prophets, the saints, the children of God! Hated tax collectors, people who fish for a living or who tend sheep, prostitutes, lepers, the poor, children, women, Samaritans, the queers, the transgender people, the leather-folk, those great heroes who can be described as straight but not narrow…God shows no partiality.

In the story of God’s realm, the star rides a borrowed donkey.

In God’s realm, not even death and destruction get to have the last word. But to hear more about that, you’ll have to come back on Friday and again next Sunday.

But for now, we simply remember, in God’s realm the last are first and the first are last, or put more simply, in God’s realm, everyone without except is a person of sacred value. And this is the good news. Amen.

© Durrell Watkins 2012

Affirmations
I’ve never been lost from divine love.
I am part of a divine kin-dom.
My sacred value is beyond measure.
God’s favor and anointing are on me.
Hosanna!
Amen.

Final Word
“Animals don’t hate, and we’re supposed to be better than them.” Elvis Presley

The Revolutionary and the Prince of this World
Rev. Tania Guzman

Today’s gospel reading is from the gospel of John, which is not one of my favorite gospels. You see, the gospel of John insists on elevating and exalting Jesus as a deity. The purpose of the gospel is stated in 20:30-31 where it says, “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”

John has a very specific view of Jesus as deity. The book’s first words about Jesus are, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.” It also has a specific view of “salvation” as only obtainable trough Jesus. It seems to lacks openness to non-believers, at least that is how it has too often been presented.

It is believed by many scholars that this gospel was written within and for a particular group of followers of Jesus known as the Johannine Community. And this particular community, not surprisingly, was thrown out of the synagogue for their strange believes.

So, you can understand why this is not one of my favorite gospels. But let me just say that when it comes to being suspicious of the books of the bible, I do not discriminate; I am suspicious of all of them. And I am suspicious of them for many reasons.

The first reason that always comes to mind is the different languages in which they were originally written and the translation from one language to the next. When different languages are involved things can be very confusing, misinterpreted, and in some cases even hilarious and embarrassing.

Point in case is something that happened to me when I first came to this country from the Dominican Republic when I was just a kid. I came to New York City, to the Bronx. And the very next morning after I got there, my mom’s friend took to the supermarket with her. And at the supermarket I saw something that I have only seen in TV before, a soda machine. I came from a very primitive place in the Dominican Republic. And when I saw this soda machine I got so excited and I went to get a soda and so I took some change from my pocket and put it in it. But I did not get a soda, instead there was just a flashing red word “dime”. I was a dime short but I did not speak English and I did not know what the English word “dime” was. But “dime” is also a Spanish word which means tell me. So I leaned forward and said Coca-Cola. See What I mean?

So besides all the other many issues, the problem of the different languages will always cause me to look at any book of the Bible with suspicion.

When I found out that I was going to preach on today’s reading, my reaction was, “oh guacala”. Guacala is the Spanish word for yuck. Today’s text has Jesus saying, “Now is the judgment of this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out. But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” And my thought was “guacala” because when I first read the text the first thing that came to my mind was the bad theology and preaching from my upbringing about judgment and Satan and salvation only trough Jesus.

But my favorite preacher, our senior pastor the Rev. Dr. Durrell Watkins, encouraged me to find a positive and liberating message in the text.

So I looked at the context of the whole chapter, and I want to point out what is going on starting with verse 20 (12:20). It was the time of the Passover celebration in Jerusalem, and verse 20 says that among those who went up to worship during the celebration were some Greeks.” And the story tells us that “these Greeks” came to some of the disciples and asked to see Jesus. Actually it tells us that they specifically spoke with Philip and Andrews, Jesus’ two disciples who happened to have Greek names. This makes me think of the tensions between the cultures and how these non-Jewish people made their request to people who they probably felt save with because of their Greek names. And when Jesus is told that these people want to see him, he goes into a discourse which includes today’s text.

Now these Greeks were not Jewish converts, but they would come to Jerusalem during the time of festivals because they were attracted to the worship of the Jewish God and wanted to worship the Jewish God, but they were not committed to the observance of all the Jewish religious laws and rituals.

The problem is that since they were not Jewish, they were not allowed to worship at the temple as the Jewish people did. And they probably had heard of what Jesus did at the temple back in chapter 2 (the cleansing of the temple) when he was so angry at what the temple had become.

The Jewish Temple consisted of a series of courts that led to the Holy Place. The first court was the court of the Gentiles, then was the court of the Women, then the court of the Israelites (only males), and then the court of the Priests. The market place at the temple was set up at the court of the Gentiles denying them any chance at any kind of worship.

Many of us believe that this was one of the things that made Jesus so angry at what was happening at the temple. That is why in the Gospel according to Mark (11:17) during this incident Jesus said, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer for all the nations?”

Knowing of this incident, these Greeks come wanting to see Jesus. They do not go to the temple where they know they will be excluded. When Jesus is told that there are some Greek people looking for him, he knew what this was about. He knew they were coming to him because he was the only one giving them any hope. So Jesus gives a discourse and among the many things he said is today’s text. And when Jesus talks about “the prince of this world” that will be driven out, he is not talking about the devil, there is no devil. “The prince of this world” is injustice and oppression. The unjust and oppressive religious, social and political system of this world. A system that needs to be driven out in order for there to be any justice and equality.

Maybe these Greeks were just intrigued that a Jewish person would come to their defense in such a risky way as Jesus did at the temple and they wanted to learn more about him. Or maybe they were deeply touched by Jesus’ actions and were becoming ready to follow him. The important thing is that they knew that they could come into this new community of Jesus regardless of who they were. And that is what the church should be today; a house of prayer for all people, LGTBQ, straight, Christian and Non-Christian.

The visit from the Greeks triggers something in Jesus that makes him talk about his death, the hour has come he said. Now, as we look at all four gospels we see that Jesus talked a lot about his death. But he predicted his death not because he had some supernatural power that allowed him to predict the future. No, Jesus could predict his death because he was a revolutionary and when you are revolutionary you know that death is at your door. He exposed and confronted the injustice and oppression of the political, social and religious powers. When you do that you get killed. I learned this as a kid in history class in the Dominican Republic where many have been killed in their courageous efforts to bring justice and end oppression.

So when the Greeks, the Gentiles, come looking for him, Jesus realized how far his revolution has reached and so he knew that death was at his door. But he believed, or at least hoped, that his death was not going to be in vane. In verse 24 he says, “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” Jesus’ hope was that his movement and revolution against the political, social and religious powers was not going to die with him, but that his followers and many others to come would continue in his foot steps, fighting against injustice and oppression. And that is how Jesus is lifted up and how people are drawn to what he stands for, when we step forward and follow his example. It is not about worshiping Christ, is about following Jesus. Jesus never meant for people to get all confused and worship him, what he hoped for was that we would continue the work that he did.

One of my favorite quotes is from St. Teresa of Avila, she says, “Christ has no body on earth but ours, no hands but ours, no feet but ours. Ours are the eyes through which the compassion of Christ looks out upon the world, ours are the feet with which he goes about doing good, ours are the hands with which he blesses his people.”

And if we are true Christians, then ours is the revolution that Jesus got started. There is still so much work to be done in social justice; to promote human diversity, to care for the poor, to end racism and discrimination, to end sexism, to end homophobia. I believe that deifying Jesus and preaching and teaching that he died for our sings is a theology of lazy Christians. It is a lot easier to say Jesus died for my sins that to step out and do the work that Jesus did. No, Jesus did not die for anybody’s sins. God would never demand such a thing. Jesus died to make changes in this world, the same changes that we are supposed to be making today, because today “the prince of this world” (injustice and oppression) still needs to be driven out.

If we are true followers of Jesus then we have a lot of work to do. To close I want to leave you with a quoted from the great prophet Dr. Seusss, “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, Nothing is going to get better. It’s not.” Amen

Affirmations:
The hour has come
To trust in God’s presence in every moment of my life,
To be a true follower of Jesus,
And do as he did.
Amen.

Rescue Me: A Fresh Look at “Salvation”
Rev. Dr. Durrell Watkins, Sunshine Cathedral (Lent 4, 2012)
John 3.17

Rescue Me (Cher video)

What is more appropriate for Lent than a little known Cher recording of Rescue Me from the 1974 Dark Lady album? Nothing says Lent like vintage Cher!

Of course that musical blast from the past is not the only history being featured in today’s service. A very rich history actually comes from our tiny gospel reading this morning.

“God did not send the son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.”

Saved. From what? From our own wretchedness? I don’t believe that. From God’s out of control wrath? I don’t believe that either. From afterlife horrors? Nope, I’m not buying that either. So what is salvation? Well, it can mean health or wholeness or liberation. Those are appropriate understandings, but there is a more literal way to understand the word. Saved means to help one feel safe. I like MCC’s old definition of “salvation” in the Christian context. Salvation means to be saved from loneliness, degradation, and despair. YES, those are the things from which we need to be saved. We need to be saved from low self-esteem, from chronic fear, from habitual pessimism. OK, from those hurtful things, I would like to be saved. Now, why are words like saved and savior used in the gospel?

In ancient Greece, city states were often at war. So, warriors were posted to guard the city. If invaders came, the guarding forces protected the city at all costs. They would risk their lives for the safety of the city. Those warriors saved the city from outside threats.

Later, Rome is the world’s dominant military power. No longer are local warriors the saviors of the people; now Caesar is the savior. Of course, Caesar’s armies actually do the fighting, but Caesar gets the credit for the military successes.

Part of Caesar getting credit for the prosperity and security of the empire is titles that he gets to claim. And so he is a called a divine son (Caesar Augustus was adopted by his uncle Julius Caesar who was deified after he died, making Augustus the son of a god…a myth also developed saying that Augustus’ mother actually conceived her son with the god Apollo which, again, would make Augustus the son of a god). Some other emperors after Caesar were also declared divine either in their lifetime or after they died. So, Caesar was a divine son.

And as Caesar’s armies kept Rome safe from those who would try to topple Roman dominance, Caesar was also called Savior. Caesar, the divine son, was the savior or the Roman world, the empire.

Against THIS backdrop and in THIS world, the writer we call “John” challenges the Roman system.

Caesar may be a son of the gods, a divine son in Roman pagan theology, but Jesus is Jewish, and the Jewish people understood themselves to be the very children of God. One didn’t need to be an emperor to be a child of divinity; all faithful Jewish people understood themselves to be children of divinity. In fact, all people are the children of God.

Jesus is a reminder that WE are God’s children, not just Caesar, the lucky or the powerful. The people the Emperor wants to rule over insist they, not just him, are divine children and Jesus is the model of what a child of God looks like…not the upper crust, elite and powerful, but a poor, sometimes homeless carpenter hanging out with commercial fishers, lepers, prostitutes, the mentally ill, Samaritans, children and other people considered to be nobodies. God is with the so-called least of these!

And Caesar’s power lies in the imperial Senate and the vast armies, but Jesus’ followers find power not in wealth or political power or social privilege, but in choosing to believe in themselves and trusting that unjust circumstances do NOT define who they really are.

In the Roman world, the gods send the divine son, Caesar, to rule over the imperial world and to condemn and annihilate all who would oppose the empire.

But those who follow Jesus’ way and message have a very different understanding of the divine. And so John says,

God as we understand God did NOT send an emperor to rule over us or condemn us, but sent one of us to demonstrate that we are all children of God. We aren’t safe because of Caesar’s might, we are safe because no matter what happens in this life, in this Roman world, we are and forever will be part of a divine life that is beyond this world and never ends.

Or, more simply, “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

We don’t have an emperor in our country in the 21st century. Do we?

There are people still needlessly dying of AIDS in Africa because pharmaceutical companies in the US and Europe will not allow medicines to be produced more cheaply. People are dying because they can’t afford a thousand or two thousand dollars per month for medications which could be produced at a fraction of those costs. But that would interfere with profits, and profits are more important to some people than human lives. Of course, one need not go all the way to another continent to hear uncomfortable stories. In this country, in this state, in this county there is a waiting list for AIDS medications for those who can’t afford them. People HERE are waiting indefinitely for life-saving medications.

And so, greed could be said to be the emperor of our day.

In our state, just five months ago, the First Lady of the United States was booed at a NASCAR race. She has a purely ceremonial role by virtue of who she married. And she came to Florida as a gesture of goodwill to support military members and their families, and at the NASCAR event she did not give a speech, but was there only to watch and to say, “Gentlemen, start your engines.” And yet, when her name was announced, people in the audience booed. Has any other first lady been treated so disrespectfully by her fellow citizens? Do we doubt for a single second that was an expression of deep rooted racism?

Of course, more ghastly and more recent is the case of 17 year old Trayvon Martin who was killed just three weeks ago here in Florida. Walking home from the 7-11 with Skittles and iced tea, a neighborhood watch captain spotted him and called 911 saying he looked “suspicious”. The dispatcher said that officers would be there to check it out and to not pursue the young man. The neighborhood watch captain, named Zimmerman, did purse him in his car and not only that but got out of his car to interrogate the 17 year old and not only that, but brought his hand gun with him. You know from the papers what happened. Some sort of altercation took place and the unarmed teenager was shot and killed by Zimmerman who was told not to pursue him in the first place. PS, Trayvon Martin was African American; Zimmerman is not. And, Zimmerman, as of yesterday, still had not been arrested, not even for man-slaughter, not even for disturbing the peace.

Racism could be said to be the emperor of our day.

I’m a gay man. I’m in a committed relationship. It is long lasting: 12 years so far. A long-term, adult, consensual, loving, relationship and yet there are only 7 places in this country where I live, work and pay taxes where I can marry the person I love. That number may increase to 9 this year. And yet, those marriages are not honored by most other states, and 41 states prohibit, not just fail to offer but prohibit same-sex marriage…12 by statute and 29 by state constitution. I am, and many of you are, constitutionally second class citizens in 29 states in our country. Oh, and as far as those 7 states (well, 6 states and the District of Columbia) that currently concede that I am fully human, there are people today who want to be president who are campaigning on the promise to overturn those 7 states’ laws granting me full and equal protection under the law.

Homophobia, no, let’s be clearer, homo-hatred could be said to be the emperor of our day.

There is no bible verse, no matter how passionately it is quoted, that can make these expressions of greed, bigotry, and hatred seem less ugly and reprehensible than they obviously are.

And we haven’t the time this morning to address other problems such as poverty, child abuse, sexual abuse, bullying, sexism, drug addiction, etc. But there is work to be done and joy to be had in the doing of it.

We don’t call anyone Caesar these days, but there are still “powers and principalities” as the Apostle Paul would say, that threaten our well-being. And we can resist those powers. Jesus did. We can vote. We can choose to spend our money in friendly communities. We can share our stories. We can attend and support this progressive and empowering church. We can sign petitions. And we can stop fighting among ourselves which distracts us from major issues of injustice. And we can comfort one another when progress is slow. But what we cannot ever do is give up hope, and that’s what the gospel tells US today.

Caesar pops up, but that isn’t God’s plan, and God’s people must hold on to the sacred, liberating vision!

God did not ordain systems of oppression, but desires that all of God’s children be free, well, and safe. If we believe that is God’s will, we can find the courage to continue to work toward letting that will be done on earth as it is in heaven. We have work to do, as followers of Jesus always have. To be Christian isn’t to venerate Jesus, it is to follow him and following him means trying to build a more fair and just world. And as we answer the call to do the work of justice, through us, God’s children, the world will become a little safer; that is, through each one of us, God’s child, the world can be saved. And this is the good news! Amen.

© Durrell Watkins 2012

Affirmations

I am safe in God’s love.
I am an instrument of healing for God’s world.
I embrace and share hope today.
And so it is.

Final Word
“There is never a time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now.” James Baldwin

Holy Trust: Building a Lasting Bond
MCC Men’s Conference (San Diego 2012)
Opening Worship Service: Rev. Dr. Durrell Watkins (Sunshine Cathedral, Fort Lauderdale)

I preach a lot; almost every week of my life in fact, and since it’s something I do so frequently, it doesn’t really make me nervous. I read the lectionary texts for the week, spend some time in the commentaries, choose which points I want to focus on, find a song or video clip or story that I want to help illustrate my point, craft the sermon and then deliver it twice on Sunday. It’s pretty routine really.

So I was surprised to discover that I felt challenged preparing a message for the opening night of this men’s conference. It’s just one more sermon, right? I must have stood in front of audiences and reflected on spiritual themes a thousand times, and will surely do so another thousand times in my career. So why should this one cause me anxiety?

The theme of the conference may actually provide the answer. We are gathering for three days to build or renew a holy trust, a lasting bond. To speak about trust requires a level of trust.

1st, I have to trust that I have something to offer.
Secondly, I have to trust that at least some people will be open to whatever it is I choose to share.
And third, I have to trust that daring to trust is worth the effort.

Did my apprehension suggest a lack of trust? And if so, should I be preaching not to the choir or to the converted, as they cliché goes, but to myself?

So, I reflected for a bit on the word “trust”. Trust is the definition of the word of faith. Trust means that we have faith in the integrity, the goodwill, the reliability of someone or something.

I drive over a bridge trusting that the bridge will not collapse underneath me. I trust the bridge’s integrity. I trust that it is reliable and any risk involved in my driving over it must be minimal. I have faith in the bridge, and by extension, in the materials and laborers and engineers that were all somehow involved in the construction of the bridge.

OK. I’m capable of trust. I have it within me to trust, and maybe I can even just choose to trust. Now what?

I decided to compare biblical stories of trust and lack of trust.
One example that came to mind of how a lack of trust can sour someone’s experience is the story of Jonah.

I believe Jonah is performance literature. Much of the bible was, I’m convinced, meant to be performed before it was canonized and therefore tamed.

The Song of Songs is a medley of songs, a song OF songs, steamy hot erotic songs that were obviously meant to be performed.

The Sci-Fi Book of Revelation was, I honestly believe, political dinner theatre meant to help people deal with their frustrations with the great beast, the Roman Empire.

The Gospel of Mark follows Aristotle’s rules for dramatic tragedy pretty closely.

And Jonah reads to me like a short story that was meant to be narrated in one sitting to an audience.

Performance demands trust…trust in one’s own skill, trust that there is an audience for it, trust that the audience will take something meaningful from the performance, trust that even if the performance goes badly something can be learned from the disaster and better performances will follow. So, performance literature seemed appropriate for the topic of trust, and the story of Jonah deals specifically with Jonah’s lack of trust.

It’s a story we know from childhood. Full grown Jonah with no back story just pops up at the beginning of the tale being called to preach in Ninevah. Of course, Ninevah is the capital of the Assyrian Empire and the Assyrians had conquered Israel, so Jonah isn’t very excited about answering that call. He wishes he had let it go to voicemail.

He doesn’t trust that anything good can come from his visit to the land of his enemies, so he books a cruise going to Spain (Tarshish), but he never reaches Tarshish because he winds up being tossed overboard to appease the angry weather gods (the way we do theology can get just that bizarre sometimes), and while he’s splashing around in the sea, as so often happens a giant fish comes along and swallows Jonah whole without otherwise harming him.

Well, from the clock and calendar hanging on a rib inside the somehow well lit fish, Jonah realizes that he has been in the belly of a fish for three days, when suddenly, the fish vomits him up onto the shores of guess where…Assyria, and in walking distance from Ninevah at that!

The literary irony is masterful, because Ninevah is named for the Assyrian fish god Ninos, so that the author imagines a fish taking Jonah to Fish City is really quite brilliant!

Forced by circumstances to comply with his initial calling, Jonah preaches to the Ninevites and they are oddly receptive to his message. Jonah had told them that God might just put the divine smack down on them, but in the end, there was no smack down. Ninevah responded favorably to Jonah’ message, God did not destroy the city, and you’d think this would be good news, but it makes Jonah miserable.

In fact, he complains to God, “I knew this would happen. I knew you were a compassionate God, abounding in love, not desiring to send calamity!”

And then Jonah sets up camp under a weed and wishes to die. While sitting under the weed, he becomes unusually fond of the weed but then the weed suddenly dies and he grieves bitterly for the loss of his weed. And God then says to him, “Really Jonah, you’re that sad about a weed? If you can care so much about something so small, why can’t you understand that I care for the people of Ninevah…and their cattle?” (The inclusion of cattle is funny to me!).

Jonah didn’t trust that “those people” were important to God.
Jonah didn’t trust that God could be part of the lives of “those people” without hurting Jonah’s experience of the divine.
Jonah didn’t trust that his enemies could become his friends and that could be a good thing.

Maybe if Jonah had trusted that life can be a bit bigger than his prejudices, a bit more fluid than his plans, and a bit more generous than his preferences, he would not have been so miserable.

Because of his lack of trust, even his success as a preacher made him cranky.

Well, I also wanted an example of someone daring to trust and that effort paying off. And Matthew 15 came to mind.

In Matthew 15, a Canaanite woman comes to Jesus and cries out, “Have mercy on me! My daughter is suffering from a mysterious malady.”

Jesus ignores her.

She continues to call out. Jesus’ disciples say to Jesus, “Can you get rid of her, she’s being a nuisance?”

Finally the woman just throws herself on her knees in front of Jesus and demands, “Help me!” And Jesus, in what seems to be uncharacteristically nasty for him, says, “It isn’t right to take the children’s food and give it to dogs.”

Ouch. But the woman will be not be so easily dismissed, She answers him, “Yes, but even dogs eat crumbs that fall from the table.” In other words, “You may think I’m just a dog, but even so, how about you treat me with at least as much compassion as you would show a dog?!” And in that moment, Jesus has a conversion experience.

Now, before we judge the great Way-Shower too harshly for his out of character ethnic slur, we need to remember that Jesus knew scripture. He had heard the Torah read word for word hundreds of times. He had committed large portions of it to memory. So, he would have known and perhaps have been influenced by Deuteronomy. In Deuteronomy 20.17 we read, “You MUST completely destroy the…Canaanites…[and various other people] just as God has commanded you.”

A literalist understanding of scripture would have suggested that this Canaanite woman didn’t even deserve to live. That Jesus was merely rude to her rather than completely destroying her as Deuteronomy demands may have been viewed as out of control liberalism!

But the woman trusted that her sacred value could not be decided nor dismissed by someone else’s reading or understanding of an ancient text. And she trusted that she had a right to not only ask Jesus for help, but to challenge him when his prejudices got in the way of providing help…even if those prejudices where disguised as religious values.

And then Jesus is transformed by his own experience of trust.

He sees this woman, not as someone that scripture condemns, but as a human being, a person with needs and feelings and hopes and dignity, and the word of God in that moment for him wasn’t words on a page that he had been told how to interpret; the word of God was the living, breathing, person in front of him who needed and even deserved the healing power of compassion. He trusted the sacredness of that moment, and he says, “My dear woman, you have great faith.” And her daughter, the story says, was immediately healed.

Why are we here this week?

Did we come by some means of coercion like Jonah, miserable at the thought that something good could come from our togetherness? That’s not a judgment, but a real question. There have been more than a few times that I have shown up in spite of myself to something, and then wound up surprised if not annoyed when miracles started to happen.

Or did we come like the Canaanite woman…ready to ask honest questions, ready to insist on our sacred value, ready to believe that miracles are still possible for us?

And whatever brought us here, can be as open as Jesus was to be challenged, transformed, and even converted to a larger sense of generosity and goodwill?

Can we celebrate the gift of male identity while still recognizing and challenging the misogyny that plagues even “our” community?

Can we dare to be politically incorrect if we feel the need, but also be open to new insights, healing, and growth?

Can we leave here a bit more hopeful or even joyous than we arrived? I trust that we can.

Together, we can name without blame…name issues, challenges, and opportunities without blaming, shaming, or demonizing anyone.

We can move from moping to hoping…that is, we can in a safe space be honest about our regrets disappointments, fears, questions, or concerns but once we have named them and faced them, let’s move beyond them by allowing hope to be renewed so that we see the good that we can accomplish together as a movement.

And we can give more, rather than give up. We can give more energy, more thought, more prayer, more enthusiasm to ministry and relationships rather than giving up on either.

And so tonight, I do trust that our time together is going to prove to be a divine appointment, a time of renewal, and an opportunity for healing and growth. I trust that our time together will be holy and that together we will continue building a lasting bond. Amen.

© Durrell Watkins 2012

Wake Up
Rev. Dr. Durrell Watkins
Lent 3 (2012) Sunshine Cathedral

Nineteenth century American poet Emily Dickinson famously said, “They say that God is everywhere, and yet we always think of God as somewhat of a recluse.”

My theology is pretty simple. Whatever the mystery of life that I choose to call God is, it must be omnipresent.

Omnipresent means everywhere, fully present. And if God is omnipresent, then, as we’ve heard so often, “there’s not a spot where God is not.”

Like air, like light, light dust, like thought, like space…God must be everywhere all the time. And if God is everywhere, we can’t be separated from God. We can’t be lost from God. The Source and Substance of All That Is cannot be removed from all that is.

God is right where we are. “Wherever we are, God is” we say every Sunday morning. That is an affirmation of divine omnipresence. “It is in God that we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17.28).

We are tempted to hold onto our childhood notions of God: God the gift giver – Santa God; God who delights in punishing us – the Marquis de God; or God who isn’t normally around but who will come to us when we call to carry our heavy burdens for us – the bellhop God. But none of those images are a universal presence in which we could live and move and have our being!

I like the psalmist’s view of God: “Where could I go from your presence? Where could I flee from your presence?” (Psalm 139). There is no such place. God is the life-force of my being, the omnipresence in which I live, the Breath of life that is my life.

A couple of weeks ago we reviewed the creation myth from Genesis 2 & 3. In that ancient tale, the earth-being is made from the elements of the earth and God breathes life, spirit, into the newly formed human. The human’s life, from the beginning, is the very breath of God. God is the creative power that forms the human, and God is the life-breath that animates the human. There is no separation. There cannot be.

Now, later in the story, the earth-being goes into a deep sleep. But the story never says that ‘adam, the earth-being, the human ever wakes up. After the human goes to sleep…what happens starts to look like a nightmare.

The human sleeps and then experiences a rib being extracted without consent. Next there’s a magic tree and a talking snake and things just get really weird really fast, as they do in dreams.

The story showed us a garden paradise where we are meant to live in unity and communion with our divine source, but somewhere along the way we fall asleep and start to have a nightmare that God is beyond us, has abandoned us, and only by extreme measures could we ever get back to God. Religion shouldn’t be part of that nightmare; it should the alarm clock that tries to wake us from it!

That is precisely what our readings this morning are trying to do. The first reading from the psalter shows us divine life being not limited to sacraments and scriptures and church buildings and creeds. No, the power of divine life is in day and night, sky and space, everywhere we are and everywhere we could look. There’s not a spot where God is not!

The stories of Jesus being born in a barn, of an exiled Moses finding God in a burning bush, of Jonah being called to minister to his enemies the Ninevites, of Jesus being discovered by Persian astrologers, of Jesus eating with Prostitutes, advocating for children, and affirming Samaritans all are stories of God being exactly where we thought (or maybe even hoped) God would not be! Surely God is not accessible to Assyrians, or Ninevites, or prostitutes, or lepers, or kids, or Samaritans…or gays, or those who call ultimate reality something other than God, or those who have different political or economic philosophies. But the witness of our sacred texts insists that there is not a spot where God is not, which means that God is with the down-trodden, and with those of other religions and no religion, and is even with those we are tempted to call our enemies.

Then the epistle reading this morning, our second reading, shows us a God that is present in the places the world finds unlikely.

When people insist that God can’t be found in the love that two people of the same gender share, or that God couldn’t operate through the ministry of women, or that God can only be experienced by Christians, or by certain sects of Christians, they are saying that God is far removed from the human condition and from the lives we actually live. Their god is not an omnipresence. However, a god in which we live and move and have our being must be omnipresent, must be fully present wherever we are, whoever we are.

Those who insisted that Jesus was Messiah or Lord were making a crazy claim. Lords have power; they don’t get crucified like a common slave. Lords associate with nobles, senators, and generals, not with hookers, tax collectors, and lepers. For people to find a divine anointing on Jesus’ life defies worldly wisdom and notions of strength.

How can a rural peasant who is executed as a rebel against Rome be called Lord or Messiah? Caesar is dominus, Lord, of course. Caesar is called savior, a divine son, word of his conquests are called good news or gospel. But to all Jesus Lord or savior and to talk of his ministry as being good news, gospel, that is clearly an ironic, even seditious use of those imperial titles. How can you find Lordly power in a peasant? How can you find wisdom and hope and life-changing power in the words and example of a nobody? How can a poor peasant who ultimately suffers the indignity of capital punishment be called a savior or a lord, which are titles people call the great and mighty Caesar?

Because there is not a spot where God is not. Of course God can be found in a burning bush, or in an unwed homeless girl giving birth in a manger, or on a hill where riff raff are being crucified. That isn’t imperial, worldly logic, but it is the divine way, the way of omnipresent divinity. It seems foolish to the upper crust, to the so-called wise, but that’s why they aren’t waking up from their own nightmares yet.

And that leads us to the gospel reading.

This story is sometimes used to say churches shouldn’t have raffles or gift shops or rummage sales. That is not what this story is about. One, this is about the Temple, not about local congregations. And secondly, ministry must be funded and no ethical form of funding good works is every condemned in scripture. And thirdly, how super hyped up on caffeine would Jesus have to be to get THAT upset over a fundraiser?

No. You see, Roman coins with “graven images” of Caesar obviously can’t be used in the Temple, so the money had to be changed. Then with the non-idolatrous currency, people who traveled too far to bring their own sacrificial livestock could purchase animals for sacrifice. And what is a sacrifice? They kill an animal, but then the priests cook the animal and eat it and sometimes they share the meat at festivals with the community…it’s basically a barbecue.

So why is Jesus so upset? Well, if the moneychangers were charging for their services, then people were paying to exchange their money, then using their new money to buy animals, and then giving the animals to the temple as lunch meat. Basically, people are paying THREE times…paying to exchange the money, using the new money to buy an animal, and then giving away the animal. So, that may have seemed a little usurious to Jesus.

But Jesus doesn’t mind sacrificial giving; didn’t he praise a poor widow for giving the last coins she had (the widow’s mite)? No, people are giving to what they believe in and are probably happy to do so. So, again, why is he is so crazed?

Even though I always heard the story presented and had always seen art work showing Jesus thrashing the money-changers themselves with the cords he picked up, but the text says he made a whip to drive out the animals. He wasn’t attacking people, he was shooing away the livestock.

And why? Well, Jesus may be appalled by the notion of sacrifice at all. After all, he would have known the words Isaiah imagined God saying, “The multitude of your sacrifices— what are they to me? [says our God]. I have had enough of burnt offerings, of rams and the fat of fattened animals; I take no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats… who has asked this of you?” (Isaiah 1.11-12). Maybe Jesus, like Isaiah, wants people to stop thinking of God as a blood-thirsty tyrant who can think of no better way to be in relationship with humanity than to require violent bloodshed.

If you want a barbeque have a barbeque, but don’t slaughter anything for God. Killing to eat is one thing; killing to appease an angry deity is unworthy of the god of love that Isaiah and Jesus knew and preached about. And anyway, if God is with us, if God is omnipresent, then there is no need to get God’s attention with a sacrifice. God takes no pleasure in bloodshed (Isaiah 1) and requires nothing special to be in relationship with us because It’s in God that we live and move and have our being (Acts 17). There is no place we can go from God’s presence (Psalm 139). There’s not a spot where God is not. Maybe Jesus is trying to wake us from the nightmare of violence, fear, guilt, shame, and unworthiness. Maybe Jesus is trying to remind us of that primordial, natural, divine state where we are by God, of God, and filled with the breath or spirit of God. That was the human’s experience before the deep sleep from which humanity has never fully awakened. Jesus isn’t mad that people who are providing a service are getting paid for it; he’s mad that people are accusing God of being a blood thirsty monster and calling that worship.

Now, there is one more important point I think. John is writing about 20 years after the temple was destroyed. There is no temple when John is writing this. So why bother telling the story of the temple to people who no longer have one? But John has Jesus say that the temple will be raised up, but the temple is a metaphor for the body. One, that shows that scripture is often meant to be taken metaphorically rather than literally, and two, it reinforces for us that we are God’s temple, our bodies, our world are the temple of God. We’ve been taught to see God in Jesus; but we forget sometimes that Jesus saw God everywhere. Jesus, in whom we see God, would also see God in us. Wherever we are, God is; there’s not a spot where God is not.

Do you feel beyond the reach of God’s love?
Do you feel as if God has abandoned you or has harshly judged or even condemned you?

It isn’t even possible. The breath of God, that is, the spirit of life is in you. You cannot be separated from God. But you can wake up from the nightmare that you ever were. And this is the good news. Amen.

© Durrell Watkins 2012

Affirmations
I am in God.
God is in me.
I can never be separated from God.
This is the good news.
And so I rejoice!
Amen.