We are continuing our series on “A New Journey: Knowing Jesus In a New Way.” We have been looking at the encounters of Jesus after his resurrection and movement from not recognizing him to knowing him and knowing his life among us. Today’s passage, not a story but a prayer, a gift to his followers and readers, John tells us of Jesus sitting at the Passover table with his chosen followers telling them good-bye and how they can go on when he is no longer with them. At the Passover table they would be retelling and remembering the story of their ancestors exodus from slavery to freedom. Jesus enacts and embodies the exodus, the journey story for his followers. He describes the shift of knowing them no longer as slaves but as friends.

As Jesus becomes the human embodiment of God’s friend; making known the love they share, Jesus shows the followers how they too become the embodiment of divine friendship when they reveal the love of friends. There is a shift that is happening, says Jesus. No longer are you servants, simply following the commands of God without understanding, now you are friends, embodying the experience of being loved as a friend chosen by God.

In John’s Gospel the noun friend (philo) occurs six times. Jesus refers to Lazarus as “our Friend” (11:11). The good shepherd “lays down his life for his friends” (10:11).  The verb to love: phileo comes from the same word. The Mother loves her Son and shares her plans and purposes with him, which is what friends do (Jn. 5:20). Jesus loves his friend Lazarus (11:36). The one who loves his life will lose it (12:25). The Father loves the disciples because they have loved Jesus (16:27). There are five references in John to the disciple whom Jesus loved. And in chapter 21:15-17 there is the conversation between Jesus and Peter on the beach.

Sallie McFague, in her book Models of God, discusses the characteristics of friendship in biblical, theological terms. Friendship does not arise from necessity. We enter into it freely. As such it represents the very essence of divine love in which God chooses to enter into relationship of friendship with Israel. Friendship is based on a disinterested love for the unique characteristics of the other. Friendship forms strong bonds and the betrayal of a friend ranks as the worst of deeds.

Today, when we describe our mission as servant ministers, that we may need to do since we think so much in terms of power in relationships, I invite us to think of this new journey of formation, knowing Jesus in a new way as friends. We know Jesus as we make our friendship known. The way I want to describe it to you is the shift that has happened over the years in my mother/daughter relationship with Temma.

I gave birth to Temma and experienced her profound brain damage at a time in my spiritual formation when I related to God as obeying God’s commands because it is the good and right and Christian thing to do. That meant that I related to my brain-damaged daughter through the lens of my lack of obedience and need to right the wrong of the damage I had done. I could not understand the purposes of God, only that this heavy burden was what God required of me. Over the years of my faith formation, through learning and becoming one with Christ, I view the privilege of being a friend and companion of Temma. I understand the purpose of God in my formation as the purpose of experiencing the friendship and giving voice to this friendship because in doing so, we are expanding the knowledge of God’s friendship in the world.

The theologian and professor at Duke University, Stanley Hauwerwas writes this about our way of showing God’s love and justice through our works of mercy: “Much good has been done in the name of disability-rights for creating new opportunities as well as institutional space for the disabled. But such an understanding of love in justice is not sufficient if we listen to the disabled. They do not seek to be tolerated or even respected because they have rights. Rather they seek to share their lives with us and they want us to want to share our lives with them. In short they want us to be claimed and to claim one another in friendship.”

If you need an image for what it means for charity to be the form of the [divine] virtues and, in particular, justice, take this scene from Jennie Weiss Block’s book, Copious Hosting: A Theology of Access for People with Disabilities.

She tells the story of Jason, a fourteen year old boy with profound intellectual disabilities who was born with spina bifida. He has an enlarged head and, because his arms and legs have often been broken due to a bone disease, his limbs are twisted. He cannot feed himself and must be carefully bathed and diapered. He is cared for by a professional caregiver Felicia Santos. Weiss Block reports on a particular visit, a visit that she says changed her life, when she witnessed Felicia

“leaning forward, talking softly to Jason. He was smiling. I stood for a few minutes before speaking and watched their interaction. What I witnessed between them was the purest love – the kind of love that asks for nothing in return.”

“That is what charity-formed justice looks like” writes Hauwerwas. “Such a view of God’s justice shaped by the works of mercy will doubtless be dismissed as “philanthropy.” But that is exactly the perspective that must be rejected if the justice that is the Church is not to be identified with the justice of the nation-state God has called into the world a people capable of transgressing the borders of the nation-state to seek the welfare of the downtrodden. Such a political vocation has been given to the church insofar as she has been joined to Israel’s Messiah, requiring her to be on pilgrimage to the ends of the world seeking reconciliation through the works of mercy. Such is the justice of God.” And, I would add, such is the love of friends.

by Sherrie Lowly

We are on a new journey, continuing our series on “Knowing Jesus in a New Way,” post-Lent; post-resurrection; post Journey Inward and Journey Outward. Our journey this past week saw new babies born, protesters and demonstrators filling the street in front of Gov. Quinn and Mayor Emmanuel’s offices bringing to light the travesty of closing down Community Mental Health Clinics in Chicago and led us through the wilderness of General Conference in the United Methodist Church. If we have anything to learn from our ancestors it is that there will be times of wilderness, when we cannot know or see the way ahead. Times when we’d like to go back to where we were because the sadness, frustration, disappointment and confusion get stuck in our throats. Times when our petitions to God and to our church for changing language of exclusion in our rules book seems to go unheard.

When Rob and I were speaking together about the events of General Conference I voiced the desire to be able to hear from Dr. Martin Luther King about where do we go from here. Later that same day someone posted this quote from him:

We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.  Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

This is where we encounter the two disciples in our story this morning, on their journey back home, confused about all that has happened in Jerusalem, how the Jesus movement they had joined up with has come to a paralyzing and murderous dead end; how the women’s vision of an empty tomb and angels who said that the prophet is alive cannot really be. Luke writes that as these two followers of the Jesus’ movement are on their journey home, Jesus walks with them but they do not recognize him. Jesus is a stranger to them just like Peter and the others last week and Mary Magdalene from a couple weeks before. Jesus spends time walking and talking with them, interpreting the Scriptures to show that the Messiah Savior must die and live again. Still not recognizing Jesus yet gaining some hope, the two practice hospitality and invite Jesus to share a meal with them and stay at their home since it is almost evening.

Jesus accepts their invitation. When they are sitting down at the table, Jesus takes bread, blesses it and breaks it. In that action, the couple recognizes Jesus’ life. These two must have seen Jesus break and bless bread in the same way before. Maybe they were part of the crowd on the hillside the day that Jesus fed all of them with five loaves of bread and two fish. Or maybe they were part of the dinners Jesus shared at the house of the Pharisee or at the tax collector’s Zaccheus’ home. In fact, all of Jesus’ ministry could be summed up in blessing and breaking bread. It is his logo, his marketing brand, if you will. It is how he is and will be recognized and it is how Jesus’ followers will be recognized when he says in Matthew’s story, “I was hungry and you gave me food,” come to life. At the point of recognition, the story tells us, Jesus vanishes from their sight leaving them to now carry on this new journey of interpreting Scripture, sharing, blessing and breaking. It is at the point of recognition, at discernment of the body of the risen Jesus in the people gathered around the common table, that these disciples realize that their hearts have been transformed from slow to believe to burning within us.

Some very wonderful paintings have been done of this scene with Jesus at the table with the Emmaus’ folks and their recognition of him in the blessing and breaking of bread. One painting in particular by the Spanish painter, Diego Velazquez pictures in the foreground an African female servant working in the kitchen and in the background are the folks gathered around the table with Jesus. On the face of the woman before us is a look of knowing, of recognition given from the margins.  She is the one shown as transformed. It is a profound painting in that it recognizes the one who is not seated at the table as holding the power of recognition. It gives me great hope.

I realize and confess that I often look for infinite hope in the places where I expect it, where I want it. This morning, the invitation is to recognize and know Jesus in a new way; with you in the people gathered around the Communion Table and especially in those excluded from the table. How far can we go in affirming that Jesus is resurrected into and among this gathered Body of Christ? Like yeast kneaded into the bread dough making it rise; this is like the Kingdom of God, says Jesus.

What Jesus did for these two confused and searching followers he now does for us. He places our journey in the context of his journey.  Jesus’ journey represents a new exodus from confusion and mistrust, from not recognizing Jesus walking our way, to joy filled recognition and freedom to practice resurrection. Christ leads us on a journey to God, a journey in which disappointed hopes are interrupted by the recognition that the Risen Lord walks by our side. And when we recognize his companionship on the way, we allow him to breathe life into our despair and frame our aimless, anxious journeys in his Way. Now we know who it is who travels with us.

“Our journey of spiritual formation is to love Jesus as friend, meaning love of other people as courage, love as risk, love as not wavering, regardless of what we are called to do.”

by Rev. Sherrie Lowly

We are on a new journey in this Easter season knowing Jesus in a new way. After journeying inward and outward in Lent, dying to old ways, we are resurrected to a new path. It is the journey of spiritual formation, growing and forming our spirits in the Jesus’ way. In the spirit of trespassing boldly, when told to sit down and be quiet, out of order, do not trespass, let us see you but not hear you, we are trespassing tightly gated beliefs and emotions to know Jesus in a new way in our lives. Last week at the Festival of Faith and Writing I had the opportunity to hear Marilynne Robinson speak. Robinson is the author and Pulitzer Prize winner of the novels, Gilead and Home and teaches creative writing at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. Robinson trespassed the norms of plenary sessions at such conferences. Rather than giving a talk about the Christian writing process or the life of a writer of faith, Robinson questioned the normalization of fear in our culture. Why do students, talented, gifted students come to me after graduation and talk of being afraid of venturing to write about what they really care about out of fear of being polarizing or rejected? Robinson asked. Who is telling us to have fear and why believe them? Why am I, why are we so hesitant to live with conviction, loving without fear even our enemies, those we are taught we are in competition with for limited resources? How deeply do I trust the religion I abide by?

Fear limits our spiritual formation. Fear is one of or even the greatest obstacle to our journey. To trespass the limitations of fear, to refuse to submit to a world of competition for scarcity, I invite you to enter John’s Gospel story with me once again this morning. The story begins with the double use of the word phaneroun–”revealed.”  It means “manifestation,” “show openly,” “make known.” The season of the church year known as Epiphany comes from this word Jesus “revealing” the ways and power of God.  Used here (twice), it means, “a concrete revelation of the heavenly upon earth.”

Peter, Thomas, and a few others are back at the seashore where Jesus had first encountered them. They went back, maybe hoping to regain that first flush of excitement in joining a movement, a revolution. Or maybe they needed to go back to their families and ear a little real money for them. Whatever the reason for going back trying to regain something, Peter throws down the questions and says, “I’m going fishing.” The others are in too. They stay out all night and catch nothing. The disciples had failed to catch fish.  That is, the current world arrangements do not work.  Business-as-usual cannot deliver.  For those of us who have tried to go back, we realize it is impossible to do so.
At daybreak, however, the situation changes.  Translated literally, “But morning was now coming to be.”  That statement is a summary of a theme that stretches all the way back to the first chapter of the fourth gospel.  “The Light shines in the darkness!” (1:5)  God said in Genesis, “Let there be light,” and the light rushed in to make it so. In the morning of a new day Jesus comes. He does not come walking upon the water, he was not to be with them as he had been, but in a new way standing upon the shore, embodying love died and resurrected in a new way, looking for some fish but most especially looking for some fisher folk. They don’t recognize him. He probably looks like one of their regular customers come to buy some fish. Our new journey of spiritual formation means practicing knowing Jesus in the every day people of our lives. Mary thought he was the gardener. Thomas needed to know.

Jesus calls out to them, “You don’t have any fish do you?” They are empty, at a loss, and that means they’re ready. No, they answer. Then comes the invitation of a lifetime, a new way, an empowerment to know abundance, fullness, joy. Weeping may endure for a night; but joy comes, with Christ, in the morning. “Cast your net to the other side of the boat and you will find some,” Jesus suggests, and thank God they tried it. Try something different. Step outside of the usual limitations. Look at something in a new way. Talk with someone you usually would not talk with. Invite someone to your home who is a newcomer. Jesus’ spirit is all around us, often nearer to us than we think he is, and so we shall find afterwards, to our comfort. It is in the abundance that they realize it is Jesus. Invited to share a meal they experience a new way of knowing him.

After the meal Jesus reveals an even greater embodiment of how to walk this new journey. Jesus takes Peter aside; Peter so in need of reconciliation; Peter who is living with the shame of having denied knowing Jesus for fear of being put on trial with him. “Do you love me Peter?” Jesus asks Peter three times. The first time John uses the “agape” form of love for Jesus’ question – the divine kind of selfless love. Peter responds each time, “Yes Lord, you know everything, you know that I love you,” the “philos” love of friends. Jesus’ last time to ask Peter he uses “philos” “Do you friend love me Peter?” “Yes, I do, Jesus.” Jesus defines relationship with us as friends rather than servants. Peter is restored, reconciled, and told to “Feed my sheep.” Follow me on this new journey that may lead you to places you never wished to go.

Our journey of spiritual formation is to love Jesus as friend, meaning love of other people as courage, love as risk, love as not wavering, regardless of what we are called to do. Christ calls Peter and us, as individuals and as communities of faith, to follow him even where we would not otherwise go, even where we might not want to go. The times in which we live are no time for “we have never done it that way before,” no time for returning to what we are used to. These times, more than ever, are times that call for friendship love without fear, trespassing lines of safety, even trespassing line of the Book of Discipline, loving the children, feeding them the Word of God. Who told you to cluster together and mistrust others? These times cry out for the love like Jesus that God will bring to life within us when we step outside our own small group of comfort. This is more than being friendly. The well of friendship upon which we draw is limitless. Give it away freely. You will then become not only a church but a movement.

Some of us wonder about belief in Jesus and what that means. This morning we get to embark on a new journey, knowing Jesus in a new way. Last week we started out on the journey digging in the ruins of Migdal to resurrect Mary Magdalene, buried beneath years of assigning her to whoredom, discrediting her witness and taking away her identity. On Easter Sunday, Mary is with Jesus in the garden and witnesses his spirit ascending from the tomb. Like the other story in our Hebrew Scriptures of student disciple watching his mentor ascend, Elisha cries out for a double portion of Elijah’s spirit. Mary receives a double portion of Jesus’ Spirit for her new journey. “Go and tell the others that I am ascending to my Father and to your father, to my God and to your God.”

Remembering the commission we ended with last week, Let us trespass. Let us trespass at once. Let us trespass freely and fearlessly and find our way forward, led by Jesus who is God with. Knowing Jesus in a new way let’s do just that, trespass, not only in Migdal where the sign today says, “No trespassing. You may die here,” but also trespass belief to our doubts and questions. Beliefs and dreams may die here too, but in the dying we may find a double portion of spirit to carry us on a new journey. So, let us trespass. This morning we trespass behind locked doors and dig under the layers of questions and doubts surrounding Thomas. We question of what belief in a resurrected Jesus looks like in our lives.

John’s Gospel ties up Resurrection, Ascension, and Pentecost all in the same day, On the evening of the same day with Mary, Jesus appears to the locked up disciples, not yet liberated from their worries and fears. That group of disciples locked away, insular, protected, facing inward is a scene of so many memories. Maybe you have memories of being there too. Earlier in the chapter we read that Peter and the other disciple see and believe that the tomb is empty, but do not yet understand the liberation of the resurrection. Mary Magdalene witnesses to them of her encounter and yet they are still locked away. For me, it is an image of a church, a group of believers that are intent on self-preservation, alarmed about the loss of numbers, not knowing what to do or what to change. Thankfully though, they gathered and they must have prayed. Maybe Mary of Migdal is with them, continuing to try and teach them.
Jesus, in his wounded, resurrected body appears among that sweaty, fearful, praying group. Jesus, on a new journey, known by his wounds teaches the church to embrace their own broken body. “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me so I send you.” Jesus invites us to a new way of being in this world, to trespass into the locked away places, finding the broken and wounded ones to be in solidarity with them. Jesus breathes life and spirit, the very breath of God, a word used only one other time in our Scriptures, in Genesis where God forms Adam from the clay of the earth and breathes life into the clay nostrils. It’s John’s Pentecost story. Receive my spirit. It is the conception of a new church.

“If you release the sins of any, they are released,” says Jesus, and “if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” The New Community is characterized by forgiveness, the “release,” of sins. If sins are not forgiven, they are “retained” within the community, threatening the community’s life.

Thomas’ story is one of the seekers among us. His quest for experience, his showing up with all of his doubts must have taken great faith. Like Peter and the other disciple, Thomas can believe, but has not understood from his own experience. We are not saved by our beliefs, but by our faith and trust in the life that can be touched. It’s why we need the children in worship with us, the physical little ones. It’s how we are made. Embodied. Hungry. Thomas validates our hunger and searching. We love the taste of bread, the feel of others around us, the hand holding and laughing and singing, the gentle comfort of sitting beside a friend, the smell of the Easter flowers.

During Holy Week two friends visited me, one of whom I had not seen in probably twenty years. I recalled a memory of her response to me when I told her so many years ago that my baby daughter’s CT head scan showed brain damage. My friend’s immediate response was, “We’ll deal with it.” Both of these friends grounded me, hoped for me when I was afraid and hopeless. I could crack open my locked door of belief and let in a new way.

John describes the humanity of Jesus throughout his earthly ministry. Dividing food, comforting the sick, traveling together. Touching the humanity of Jesus reveals the God of life. Thomas is transformed. “My Lord and my God.” The danger for us is to over-spiritualize our faith, to leave out our hunger and our physicality. The breath of Jesus that sends the church out also calls the church to the table. Take, eat, this is my body. Hold onto the physical blessings of being human. These, too, are the things of God. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to the same faith connection and confession, “My Lord and my God,” that is embodied belief, full of life and peace.

We could not see this kingdom, did not know where such a kingdom existed. So one day we simply had to ask him. “Come, and follow me, and I will show you such a kingdom movement, made up of so many yarns; chains of oppression, guns, lashes, abuse, and power over, woven into one seamless garment.” Your liberation is tied up with my liberation, your resurrection tied up with mine.

by Rev. Sherrie Lowly

Mary of Magdala, Migdal, the town of Mary Magdalene where Job’s daughters are buried. Migdal lies on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee. “Do not enter. No trespassing. You can die here,” reads the sign. Migdal now lies in ruins; Mary, buried under layers of trash, decayed, her identity ruined. “For it needs little skill and psychology to be sure that a highly gifted woman would have been so thwarted and hindered by chains, guns, the lash, the ownership of one’s body by someone else, suppression to a deforming religion.” I lost my health and my sanity for a time, but I can be resurrected, we can return back to the garden. You will begin to understand my story when you have spent some time in the dark places where hope cannot be seen; where Easter is the last thing that you are expecting; and where healing seems a long way off. Seven demons I have; the number is full and complete. I am the madwoman in Christianity’s attic, my resistance mistaken for madness. I know a little about illness and pain, about visions. I know a little about strategies of suppression. I know a little about the net that is not a safety net but a net of enmeshment; where there are no boundaries but the boundaries over.
“There once was someone who did such amazing things and said such wonderful things that people began to follow him.” So the story goes. He spoke of a kingdom, a kingdom of God and a kingdom movement of love. We could not see this kingdom, did not know where such a kingdom existed. So one day we simply had to ask him. “Come, and follow me, and I will show you such a kingdom movement, made up of so many yarns; chains of oppression, guns, lashes, abuse, and power over, woven into one seamless garment.” Your liberation is tied up with my liberation, your resurrection tied up with mine.

“Come follow me, and I will make you into a net caster, hunter of the ones who are wandering, powerful, courageous, builder of relationships, teacher of knowledge.” His challenge to all of us was not to turn away from suffering or from the body. We are here to insist on the flesh and blood, the bone and rock of our own history. Mary, Mary, Mary of Magdala. I have memories as I walk these footsteps, around and inward, to the center of the labyrinth where these ruins of lives, metaphors for absence and rejection, become places for reflection and restoration. With my healing comes further power and speech. I am a seeker, a companion of the man called Jesus, God with me. I ask questions of Jesus and receive messages for others. I find a power and strength of this kingdom made up of prophets with knowledge and perception; healers; ones who cannot be tamed. Our love will not give up. I question Jesus. I question the system. Peter wants to shut me up. “Upon this rock I will build my church.” I need to question and encourage the rock that is shaken. Our love will not give up the millions of African American boys and men imprisoned. We are the 99% occupying the streets. We will not be silenced. We will continue to preach; to express our truth with language, with art, with healing, with writing. We have the energy to change the world. My chains are interwoven with yours. I’ve been set free. I’ve been given voice to uncover systems of oppression, of female sexual slavery, abuse, classism, sexism, religious suppression, and systemic homophobia. No longer split between spirit and body, I am whole, restored, empowered to love in all ways. Yes, our love will always threaten the powers that be. Jesus dies with me, with you, with all of the world.

My love for the earthly Jesus pierces this “cloud of unknowing” that settles over us at the mockery of a trial, at his execution with the criminals, at the defacement of his identity. Yet we stand with. As he taught us we will not turn away from suffering. We stand with the “I am” into his descent into hell where there certainly is no God. As I make my way down to the tomb, memories flood my thoughts; memories of Galilee and of Migdala when he was so popular. I join my voice with the thousands of women, men, and children, parents and partners; survivors, and protesters. “Presente, presente” cry the mothers, wives, and lovers of the disappeared. We fail to anoint the body. It is gone. Giving us not even the task of washing and crossing the body over into death.

We come. We continue to search. “Please, just return to me the dead body of Jesus, I ask the gardener. “They have taken the Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” There was a lot of running back and forth, around, and in circles. This is what we disciples do when Jesus is missing, when God is thought to abandon.

They have taken away my Lord, a person
whose life I held inside me. I saw him
heal, and teach, and eat among sinners.
I saw him break the sabbath to make a higher
sabbath. I saw him lose his temper.

It was my habit to speak to him. His goodness
perfumed my life. I loved the Lord, he heard
my cry, and he loved me as his own.
(from Jane Kenyon’s “Woman, Why Are You Weeping?”)

“Mary,” he cries, and I hear the voice that is no one’s voice. There is no longer you and me; them and us, there is only we…waifs and strays—a rambling, capricious but somehow unified, resurrected whole, charged to go and tell the others. I am freed from the fear of death, clothed with his perfect humanity, ready to preach.

“Do not hold on to me,” cries the risen Jesus. And with those words we are challenged to stay with him on the new journey. We are prepared by our inward journey and mystical experience, prepared by our outward journey of struggle against oppression to receive all things new. Being with each other in our dying subverts even death. Mary, Mary, Mary of Migdal. We are together resurrected. We have emerged from the ruins together with a new identity. “Go to the others and tell them that I am ascending to my God and your God.” We are mystics, visionaries. I have witnessed like Elisha witnessing Elijah’s taken up into heaven. “Let me receive a double portion of your spirit.” Clothed with the mantle of resurrection faith, joined with the prophets of social justice able to face down even death. Let us trespass. Let us trespass at once. Let us trespass freely and fearlessly and find our way forward, led by the Savior who is with.

“If we are willing to persevere through the depths of struggle you can emerge transformed. Enduring with is the price to be paid for becoming everything we are meant to be in this world.”

by Sherrie Lowly

Have you ever been lost? Have you started out thinking you knew the way but took a wrong turn somewhere and ended up in a place you do not know; or maybe it was one of those darn Chicago diagonal streets that confused you and you couldn’t figure out whether to turn right or left. Or maybe it was hiking in a forest and you know, that tree looks like the one but then they all begin to look the same. For those of us with Garmins in our cars, she may even lead us astray; recalculating…recalculating…and your heart drops or bile ascends to your throat; whatever is your automatic response.

I think this is how Peter and some of the other followers must have felt when Jesus makes a sharp turn just when they’ve begun to figure out that Jesus is fulfilling their hopes for a Messiah, someone whom will save them from their bogged down, oppressed lives. Today Jesus begins to teach them that the Son of Man must go through great suffering, and be rejected by the ones that hold the power; that he will be arrested, receive the death sentence; be killed and be raised up again. Up until now Jesus taught the disciples in secret. This he taught openly. Peter knew that Jesus was lost. Peter knew that this was not the right way. This way was succumbing to the demons that they had only days before been rebuking and clearing out of people’s lives. Peter’s own demons rise up inside of him at Jesus’ strange teaching. He takes Jesus aside and begins to rebuke him.

The journey inward to find God within that we have taken up for Lent is not an easy one; no less for me than for you. I get lost or I begin to think someone, maybe even God has steered me wrong and I become angry and bitter. When I stop to meditate, to pray, to open my heart, I cannot for the inability to forgive. God is neither a great puppeteer pulling all of the strings of our lives, nor is God a great magic act. God is the ground of our being, the energy of life, and the goodness out of which all things are intended to grow to fullness. God is the great cloud of unknowing. So how can we possibly equate the two: a God of good with a life of struggle and long loneliness?

The path is long that winds through our own hearts. This past week I went back to one of my heroines on the journey, Dorothy Day. In an introduction to her autobiography, “The Long Loneliness,” the activist Daniel Berrigan writes this, “Her (Dorothy’s) no to war was ultimately as simple as a newborn lisp. But it came out of much travail and searching and remote but converging experience. In this, as in all serious matters, Dorothy took the long route to the center. She resolved to taste the violence of American life, dreadfully apparent in marginal and expendable people.”

I reread how lost Dorothy felt at times on her journey inward; finding the temptation to stop and quit in even the closest of friends and the comfort of angels in the most dispossessed. Mark is again clear in his brevity and attention to details; “But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” Jesus is not lost. He is determined to walk the divine way and here is the call to the crowds and to the disciples. “If you want to become my followers, take up your cross and follow me.” There have been lots of interpretations of this teaching. The crowd in Mark’s audience would understand the cross as an instrument of torture and death for notorious criminals and those who stepped out of line with Rome or dared to speak truth to power. You and I may be tempted to think of the cross as the troubles of our lives, maybe even the current economic crisis. In some traditional teachings of the church, the cross, especially for women means to take up the shame and abuse from their husband or lover.

Jesus goes on. “For those who want to save their life will lose it. And those who lose their life for my sake, and the sake of the gospel will save it.” The cross does not mean suffering or illness or losing your job or not being able to pay your bills. Those are the things we are simply called to care for each other; for our neighbor. The cross is a matter of life with. The call to take up one’s cross is our calling to remain faithful to Jesus’ way of truth telling, forgiveness and love at all costs. This is where we may take out that message given to us at our baptism, “You are my loved child. With you I am well pleased.”

If we are going to become followers of Jesus and experience God within we are going to have to face the truth. That truth may bring us to harsh and difficult realities in our families, in our communities, in our schools, in our nation, and in the world. Jesus stands with truth. To walk in the truth of life gained through loss; this will test all of your faith in the goodness of God that you have ever professed. It will require a courage you did not know you had. If we are willing to persevere through the depths of struggle you can emerge transformed. Enduring with is the price to be paid for becoming everything we are meant to be in this world.

“Going around and seeing such sights is not enough. To help the organizers, to give what you have for relief, to pledge yourself to voluntary poverty for life so that you can share with your brothers is not enough. One must live with them, share with them their sufferings too. Give up one’s privacy, and mental and spiritual comforts as well as physical…Yes, we have lived with the poor, with the workers, and we know them not just from the streets, or in mass meetings, but from years of living in the slums, in tenements, in our hospices.” Dorothy Day

In her travels she lived with, talked with, ate with, walked miles with, marched with, she became the guardian angel of the unangelic, a very angel of “with.” It was her way, as she announced, literal as ever, of not separating Jesus from his cross.” Daniel Berrigan

Living with your truth; living with the truth of your neighbor; living with the hurt, the wounds, and the anger; living with the cross; this is the way of Jesus. This will change your heart to the heart of God that is love.

“Our Lenten journey thrusts us into a wilderness where we are both tested with our fears and strengthened with our angels.”

by Sherrie Lowly

Last week we packed our lights in our big traveling suitcase to take with us on our journey. Now I know that this suitcase is definitely too big to be counted as a carry-on bag. It certainly would not fit in an overhead bin and we would be sent back to check-in if we even tried to carry it on. So rest assured, this bag with our lights will greet us at our journey’s end, no matter how much you mistrust the airline baggage system. Our light is traveling with us.
This morning we’re going to think about what we pack into our carry-on bag for this first leg of our journey in Lent. We are taking the route inward to find the God we desire yet cannot know with our minds or with our feelings. This is the path of contemplative prayer, the path of love, of wholeness or holiness, of finding God and the kin-dom of God within. It is the path of following Jesus; yet not only following Jesus but becoming one with Jesus. The ritual of baptism initiates our journey, ritually and really. But it is the process of continuing to follow Jesus Christ, that moves us from baptism into the journey of Lent to “that holiness without which no one shall see God” (Hebrews 12:14). The entire aim of our journey is “to lead us to the experience that God is your being and in God you are what you are.’” (Introduction to “Cloud of Unknowing.”)

So…what do we pack into our carry-on bag for this journey?

Mark’s Gospel is the story that we will follow for this journey. Mark’s brevity demands our attention and focus. His message is urgent. The time is now. Steeped in the words of the prophet Isaiah, God’s servant is chosen and sent by God. “In those days” of people going out to be baptized by John the Baptizer, Jesus comes out of Nazareth and is baptized into the river Jordan. This baptism is different than the baptism of repentance, as John proclaimed. At Jesus’ baptism the heavens are ripped open, the Spirit descends, and a voice from heaven says, “You are my beloved child; with you I am well pleased.” (Sonja’s story)

So we pack up our self, blessed and called by God. In a book by Elizabeth O’Connor titled “Journey Inward, Journey Outward” she writes of the question that leads us into the journey, “Am I trustworthy?” Is there within me a strength that lets me be unafraid? Can I be present to my life or have I so little trust in my own inner resources that I am fearful of hurt, fearful of loss, guarding myself—not daring to lose my life, and therefore never finding it.”
We pack the truth of our self; chosen one, holy and beloved; and we pack where it is we desire to go. We take up some disciplines meant to help name our fears, jealousy, prejudice, anxiety, and mistrusts. Along with one’s self we pack in the prayer of our heart to a God who is in every thing; the inner desire and prayer that is our life. We pack into our bag the stories of the men and women of the Old and New Covenant to hear the Word that God addresses to them because there will be no guide or signs on this journey.

Still wet from his baptism, Jesus carries the bag that is packed up within the words, “You are my Child, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” The Spirit of his baptism propels him out into the wilderness, a place of temptation like unto your own wilderness in every way. The heavens that were ripped open at baptism have not closed back up. Mark writes that Jesus is driven into the wilderness for forty days tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts and the angels waited on him.

Our Lenten journey thrusts us into a wilderness where we are both tested with our fears and strengthened with our angels. It is crucial that you take your wilderness seriously.
What are the wild beasts: He is also “with the wild beasts.” People in the first century would have likely identified the “wild beasts” with those spoken of by the prophet Daniel: “I, Daniel, saw in my vision by night the four winds of heaven stirring up the great sea, and four great beasts came up out of the sea, different from one another (7:2).”

In Daniel, the “great beasts” are the political powers of the world. Traditionally, they have been identified as Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome. Thus, Mark proposes this basic confrontation: Satan and worldly political powers on the one side versus Jesus and the angels on the other. This theme will continue throughout Mark. Mark is saying that the powers of the world; the powers of hierarchy and division, prejudice and discrimination are in league with Satan; that our own demons mirror the demons of the world; that your wilderness will also contain this spiritual battle.

So search out your own wilderness in this first leg of our journey. Take some time to face into your fears. Whatever your own wilderness is like, I am betting that it has at least three things in common with all other wildernesses: You did not choose it. It is no place you would ever have gone on your own. You are not in control. You cannot even control the pounding of your own heart. Whether it is noisy or quiet, there is one sound missing, and that is the voice of God. It can feel as if God has vanished and you have been turned over to the enemy. But according to the gospel of Mark, it was the Spirit who drove Jesus into the wilderness—not the devil or the world but the holy spirit of God. And there will be angels that may not look like your definition of angels. Where are you headed this Lent? Do you know what your wild beasts are? Can you hear the voices of your angels?

Spirit, Satan, wild beasts, angels and me. There’s a small group meeting for you! What will you pack in your bag that you will be so glad to have with you when you meet these beings in the weeks ahead?

We are yet in our January series of “Unwrapping the Gift,” although it appears that the gift-giving and gift-wrapping season is over. I like gift giving and gift-wrapping so I get to extend the season. Berry Church is good at giving gifts. We gave over $300 to our Christmas family and Krista and I had the great fun of wrapping all of the gifts we purchased. There was a moment when I wondered to myself, “Why are we putting all of this work into wrapping. Couldn’t we just go with the gift bags?” But then I remembered, “What is the fun in that?” I could imagine the three kids seeing the boxes all wrapped up and feeling special because they got to wonder what is inside their gift. And they had the thrill of untying the ribbons and tearing off the gift-wrap and opening up the box with the promise of what is inside. Do you still get that thrill? Watch the children with a gift. Or have you too often been disappointed with what is inside. Have you lost the intrigue with the ribbon and paper; with the Styrofoam “peanuts”; with the soft cotton inside the small box? For some of us the thrill, the promise, the zest is gone.

We still give gifts, but receiving gifts, especially when we start talking about the gift of Jesus, of the kingdom of heaven, and of community; we may wonder, “Why am I putting all of this work into it?” “Why do I keep coming back when I’ve been disappointed and hurt so often?” Is it still good news for you, this gift that has landed in your lap? “What do we do with this gift of incarnation; God in our flesh; with our calling; with our gift?” “That is for someone else,” we say, and like a hot potato we give it up before we’re burned once again. This morning I invite you to revel in the paper and ribbon anew; to hold this gift and hear the words of call; the good news.

The first words out of Jesus’ mouth in Mark’s Gospel; “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the good news.” John the Baptizer is arrested and shut up. Jesus picks up the message and runs with it, just as John prophesied. God’s Word is on the loose. Play with the wrapping paper, the promise, and the wonder of the gift. It is here, now, in the fullness of time, the good news God’s kingdom is come. And what is God’s kingdom? It is the world where God’s power is the only power to be reckoned with. In the market economy of Jesus’ day, the Cesar of Roman Empire had a strangle hold on all. It is the building up of a community of resistance that refuses to be held sway by fear and divisiveness. The Kingdom of God is a subversion of the oppressive power of the empire and a total transformation of the hold of such power over all of life. It is moving from the house of fear into the house of love. Play with that. Revel in that for a while.

And what is the way into the kingdom? The way into the kingdom is to repent and believe, or the way that Jesus uses the verbs: “Keep on repenting!” “Keep on believing.” Repenting is the “I can’t” experience. When we come before God confessing, “I can’t be free. I’m too caught up in having to make money. I’m too lonely. I don’t have the faith, God.” Repenting is dying to self, letting go. Then we are ready for the believing; ready for the promise that “God can”. Believing is inviting God to do what we can’t do ourselves—to raise the dead; to change and recreate us.

And then Mark shows us Jesus on his way to call people into the kingdom. “Come after me and I will make you to be fishers of people,” Jesus calls out. The Greek word genesthai means to generate, to make happen, to create, “to be.” In a fresh act of creation, Jesus will make his followers into “new people” following a new “way” in a New Community. “Fishers of people” has nothing to do with today’s popular notion of evangelism. The idea is not to go around trying to “hook” people into Christianity so they can be “saved” according to our definitions. Jesus is telling these fishermen that he is going to give them a new purpose, a new vocation rather than to be trapped in the corrupt market system.

The reference to “fishers” recalls Jeremiah 16: 16: “I am now sending for many fishermen, says the Lord, and they shall catch them…” The context of Jeremiah is to “catch” those who have been cast out–those cast out by Yahweh! In Mark’s theology, this is exactly what Jesus will do. He will redeem everything, including those who would have been rejected by God’s law.

In response to the gift and promise of Jesus’ call, Andrew and Simon “immediately” leave their nets and follow Jesus. The Greek word commonly translated here as “left” is aphentes. It means released, or let go. The Greek text then says that Jesus “went a little further” to James and John. Indeed he would. James and John would “let go” of something even more central. They “released” themselves from their family. In other words, the New Community will indeed be new. It will be a “turn” from existing social structures and time-bound traditions. People in the New Community will derive their identity not from their present economic condition or their past familial relationships, but rather be given a new identity as followers of the “way” of the “kingdom of God” as taught and lived by their leader, Jesus of Galilee. I’ll close with a piece by Walt Whitman; a gift to savor.

Darest thou now O soul,
Walk out with me toward the unknown region,
Where neither ground is for the feet nor any path to follow?
No map there, nor guide,
Nor voice sounding, nor touch of human hand,
Nor face with blooming flesh, nor lips, nor eyes, are in that land.
I know it not O soul,
Nor dost thou, all is a blank before us,
All waits undream’d of in that region, that inaccessible land.
Till when the ties loosen,
All but the ties eternal, Time and Space,
Nor darkness, gravitation, sense, nor any bounds bounding us.
Then we burst forth, we float,
In Time and Space O soul, prepared for them,
Equal, equipt at last, (O joy! O fruit of all!) them to fulfil O soul.



– Walt Whitman 1819-1892

“There are more times when this home Jesus brings does not look like what I expected or wanted. Yet that is the power of the Word made flesh in me; the power to change my expectations.”

What words can we say for the wonder of God, the all powerful, Yahweh, Lord of Lords, Justice-giver, Covenant-maker, choosing, working, making new life happen. John begins his good news with a word, but so much more than a word. This is the Word spoken from the beginning of time; the Word that speaks an emotion, a relationship, a connection, an act, when spoken, “Let there be light,” the light rushes in to make it so.

John then brings our eyes back down to earth to see a testimony to the Word, John the Baptist, with a message that the Word of Light is coming into the world. John the writer then destroys all religious thought of his day and of ours that the Creator before whom we bow in awe and wonder became a human being, a member of our sinful human family of frail, short-lived creatures. The Word of God, God’s speech, uttered from the heart of God’s self lived in remote province of the mighty Roman Empire called Galilee. “Can any good come out of Galilee?” was the wise-crack of John’s day.

John affirms just that. This divine Word at the heart of God is spoken today; sent out, “Let there be divine being among humanity, one with God’s self. It is a powerful Word, spoken down through history, encompassing all people, nations, countries, and all words; spoken into the remotest corners of our world where suffering and poverty is great; where we wonder, “Can any good come out of there?” Life, the life of all peoples, truly human, personhood, and truly divine, for the Truth is that God is supreme Person, becomes flesh and lives among us, this is grace upon grace, upon grace.

In this entire Good News of the first 14 verses of John, there is pivotal turning point that we must not miss. The great and wonderful Word that is spoken today contains a power; the power of our entire Word of God, a power that we at African Community and Berry Church struggle to live out—the power of the Word acted out in our lives—the power to become children of God. We at African Community speak about being a “home away from home.” Today these become more than just words for each one of us.

Jesus, the glory of God, like the glory and honor of a Father’s only son, comes to us today in this form of a newborn baby out of a place of questionable worth to bring us home where we belong—or better, he comes to bring home to us. Late in his ministry, Jesus says, “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them” (John 14:23). To make this home for all of us (“all of us” meaning God, Word made flesh, Holy Spirit and humanity together—no wonder we need “many rooms” [John 14:1]), Jesus takes up residence in a few different rooms of his own: rooms—or space at least—in Bethlehem (Luke 2), Egypt (Matthew 2), Nazareth and various other points between Galilee and Jerusalem, ending up (again) without any room at all, crucified on a hill outside the holy city. All of it is to give us power to become children of God.

There are times in my life that I have wanted to run away from home. There are times when I do not like the choices God makes for my brothers, sisters, aunts, and uncles. There are more times when this home Jesus brings does not look like what I expected or wanted. Yet that is the power of the Word made flesh in me; the power to change my expectations, to help me see that something good does come out of Ravenswood, Edgewater, Albany Park, and Uptown and the power to reconcile the hearts of children to their new parents, power to reconcile renters and landlords, power to become sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles, power to become children of God in the flesh.

God’s gift to us may not be the right size or color, but the present may not be returned, and we must each decide what to do with it. We could use words to say, “The peace of Jesus the Christ be between you and me; we could also say: “You are my family, my home away from home. I want to say that I love you, but time and my actions will speak its truth.” And the words were made flesh, as we try to be God’s loving presence for God’s people and God’s world today. A prayer attributed to St. Theresa of Avila says it well:

“Christ has no body now but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes through which Christ’s compassion must look out on the world. Yours are the feet with which He is to go about doing good. Yours are the hands with which He is to bless us now.”

On this Second Sunday of Advent, we experience hope fill our bodies and souls; the kind of hope that quickens your breath and lights up your heart. Today, we peel back the curtains of the stage and we see backstage what God has been waiting and hoping and working, and doing everything in God’s power to get us ready for what is coming so that we will not miss it, be caught inattentive, or worse, disbelieving and rejecting what is to come. We begin our new church year out of synch with the rest of the world’s time so that we can begin again, change our routines, be ready with hope, looking for the coming of that day and trying to hasten it.

God speaks the word in the chaos of the world, let there be light, and the light rushed in to make it so. John the Baptist, the prophet in the wilderness and chaos, speaks the word of God once again, “Let there be light,” and the light rushed in to make it so. John shines the light in the darkness, out on the fringes crying out, “Prepare the way of our God,” and the land and the seas rush in to make it so. Valleys of despair are lifted up and mountains of power are brought low. The rough patches are made smooth and the crooked paths leading nowhere are straightened out; a highway for our God to return.

God’s word is sure. God speaks and the seas obey. God is coming. God is moving to us, rushing to us in a great redemptive movement like the prodigal father rushing to meet his lost son before the villagers could get to him and shame him. Today we see backstage what God has been preparing and hoping for and waiting for so long; for the people to come home, to cross over the river Jordan, to be baptized, and to experience the hope of God. God “lifted up the iniquity” of his people and he “covered over” all their sins, cries the Psalmist. Like the priests of old performing the work of kippur, “atonement,” the lifting up and covering over of sin. It is God who did such work in the past on their behalf. It is God who lifts up our despair and pardons. “Restore us again” the people cry. “Will you not revive us again?”

Comfort them; comfort my people, says our God. Speak tenderly to their hearts, like Joseph spoke lovingly and compassionately to his brothers, forgiving them for selling him into slavery. Tell them that their despair and injustice is pardoned; their struggle is ended; their hard service . . .complete. Tell them that they can hope once again. God is going to do a new thing.

A voice tells us to cry out. “What shall we cry?” we ask. We cannot wait too long. We will despair once again. We are as consistent and watchful as cut flowers that fade in the vase. But the word of our God will stand forever. So, act like you’re going to climb a high mountain and cry out, “Let there be hope” and God is rushing in to make it so. God will feed us like a shepherd feeds her sheep. God will take us up and carry us across the Jordan, like the shepherd carries the lambs and leads the mother sheep.

I experienced hope yesterday at the Seeds of Change marketplace. I’d like to share a few of those experiences with you. I watched the Blue Nativity with Caleb and Mata and Adgate. Adgate’s (nineteen-months old) response was to laugh aloud at the Joseph, Mary, sheep, and wise men with their big camel. It was the most hope-filled time for me to hear Adgate’s laugh.

There was a table at the marketplace in support of the InTransit Empowerment Project. I went home and looked at their website and found their mission statement. InTransit Empowerment began as an idea for an organization in 2008. We recognized that there are not enough safe spaces for people who do not fit somewhere within the mainstream and are forced to hang in the margins, so we wanted to create an organization that would help create those safe spaces through artistic events and different forms of expression. It has taken some time for the idea to become something realistic and tangible and we are proud declare that we have taken our very first steps as an organization and are excited to see where the future will lead us.

Church is happening! God is rushing to us with outstretched arms. I also had the experience of seeing Berry Church members who have since moved on. One of them stopped me in the middle of the hubbub of the marketplace and asked if I had a moment. I said yes. This person needed to ask my forgiveness. It was a moment of pure grace and hope. Thanks be to God.