Freedom

Sermon Preached at St. Mark's Episcopal Church
Easter 7C: Acts 16:16-34

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This morning’s story from the Acts of the Apostles has always fascinated me.  Here we have the tale of Paul and Silas being dragged before the magistrates and accused of “advocating customs that are not lawful for us as Romans.”  They get thrown into prison, into the innermost cell with their feet fastened in the stocks.  But this is not what fascinates me.  What really gets my attention is what happens next.  “About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God”[1]

Now we are not told what songs Paul and Silas were singing nor are we given insight into the words of their prayers. We can perhaps imagine the prayers we might have been saying that night.  If you or I were in that prison, convicted for doing what we knew in our hearts to be the right thing, to be the very thing that God required of us, we might also be found offering up prayers to God.  My prayer might sound something like this, “Dear God, you got me into this mess, now please, get me out of here!”  And then, when a violent earthquake shook the foundations of my prison and threw open the doors and released my chains, I suspect I might get the heck out of their – as fast and as far as I could run. 

But that’s not the story of Paul and Silas.  No, in this story, Paul and Silas are praying and singing and, we are told, the other prisoners were listening to them.  Then the great earthquake happens and the prisoners are free. [2]  The jailer when he sees what has happened assumes that everyone in that prison has done exactly what I would have done and he is prepared to take his own life to avoid the punishment that will surely come upon him when the authorities discover that all the prisoners have escaped.  But that is not what happens in this story.  In fact, Paul shouts out to the jailer, “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.”  Are you kidding me?  They don’t take this opportunity to run?  Apparently the prayers they were praying and the songs they were singing were not the same prayers I would have offered.

Susan Bock in her book Liturgy for the Whole Church wrote a dramatic reading called “A Story of Freedom” based on this story.  I’d like to read a short bit of the dialogue:

“Paul:   Freedom, you know, is a funny thing. Because it’s possible to be locked away in the innermost cell of a prison, and yet still, somehow, your heart can sing, like a stream running free!

Jailer:  And it’s possible to believe you’re free, but you might just as well be bound hand and foot, because you can’t seem to choose for yourself what’s really right and good.

Paul:  Like the slave girl who followed Silas and me through the streets of Philippi. Talk about bondage! Even her thoughts weren’t her own!

Slave Girl:  But my owners were even less free than I, they were so bound by greed, which steals your heart and makes you treat others as things to be used . . . ”[3]

Paul and Silas and the other prisoners don’t flee.  Perhaps it is because they are already free.  They are already free. 

My brothers and sisters in Christ, are you free this day?  If not, what is holding you captive?  What prevents you from responding to Christ’s invitation?  What will it take for you to hold out your hands and let go? 

I’d like to walk you through a simple meditation. It is a meditation I have sometimes used with youth groups.  It might make you uncomfortable. It might not feel “Episcopalian.” It might make you feel a bit self-conscious.  But I invite you to be open to the experience this morning.

I invite you to close your eyes.  Clench your hands together in a fist.

What is it you are holding on to? Is there something that is knotting you up inside? Is there  something you don’t want to let go of? Is there something you are struggling with? Is there  something you don’t want anyone to see? Is there something you don’t want God to see? Whatever it is, notice that it is there. Notice what it feels like, without judgment or blame, simply observing  and allowing the knowledge of what you are holding to come to the surface. And if you are not sure what it is, that is fine. Simply notice whatever is there.

Now, if you wish, open your hands.

It may be that you don’t feel ready to do that, and that’s O.K. You can go through this whole meditation with your fist clenched. We recognize that in God’s eyes, whatever is hidden in our clenched fist is already known and seen and loved.  At the same time, we recognize that this is a gift to be received willingly.  The invitation is there for you to open your hands, whenever you are ready. When you have unclenched your fist, notice what that feels like. Does it feel freeing? Does it feel scary? Does it feel like nothing is there? What is in your hand now?

Push whatever your hands are holding toward God.

Whatever was worrying you or scaring you or tying you up in knots, whatever you were carrying with you, whatever you were afraid to let other people see, push it toward God and let God catch it. Let God take whatever it was from you. Let your hands be empty.

Now, hold your open hands in front of you again with the palm facing upwards.

Now that your hands are empty, allow God to put a gift into your hands. This may be a gift of encouragement. It may be a challenge or an instruction. It may be a new perspective. It may be a message of love. Maybe you don’t know what it is or you’re not sure anything is there, and that’s O.K. But whatever it is that God wants to give you, allow God to place it in your hand. What does it feel like?

And how does it make you feel? Take a few moments and simply notice whatever is going on for you.

See this gift entering into your body, traveling through your bloodstream. What does it feel like? Allow God’s gift to spread through you. If you don’t feel like you have received a gift, or are not sure if you want to receive the gift, you can keep standing with your hands open, or, if you wish, press your open hand to your heart. It may be that you discover something in that movement that you didn’t find in your open hand.

Finally, hold out your hands to offer your thanks to God.

Whether it is for a gift you have received this morning, or for anything else, use this gesture to offer your thanks to God for anything you wish. When you have offered whatever thanks you wish, you may open your eyes.[4]

Susan Bock’s dramatic reading continues with these words:

“Freedom, indeed, is a strange and wonderful thing, coming, as it does, from someone, or something, outside all our locked doors, . . . or from someplace deep inside, where no one can touch it, or steal it away. God wants us free! And when we are all bound up in the deepest innermost cells of our darkest prisons, . . . convinced we are hopeless, abandoned, and lost, . . . God will come find us, bringing light to our darkness, and whispering love to our hungry hearts. God will find us in our chains and break their hold, and bring us again to the light of day.”[5]

Freedom is a gift from God.  Come and take the gift.

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[1] Acts 16:25.

[2] Acts 16:26.

[3] Susan Bock, “A Story of Freedom: A Dramatic Reading for Three People,” Liturgy for the Whole Church: Multigenerational Resources for Worship (New York: Church Publishing, 2008), 128.

[4] “Hand Meditation,” Confirm not Conform Weekend Retreat, (Cincinnati: Forward Movement, 2009, 2012), 18-20.

[5] Bock, 129.

An Easter People

Sermon Preached April 21, 2013
St. Mark's Episcopal Church
Acts 9:36-43

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• Monday – the Boston Marathon ends abruptly when two explosions near the finish line take the lives of 3 and physically injure at least 170 others
• Tuesday - Americans are shocked by the news of ricin-laced letters being sent to President Obama and a Mississippi Senator and Justice Court Judge
• Wednesday – a fertilizer plant explodes in West, Texas, taking the lives of 14, injuring another 200, and displacing many residents whose homes are destroyed
• Friday – a manhunt in Boston results in more death, closes a major metropolitan area for more than 24 hours and captures the attention of a nation while every media outlet provides minute-by-minute coverage. In the end, the two suspected of Monday’s atrocities are off the streets.
• Elsewhere in the world, two major earthquakes – one in Iran on Tuesday, the other in China just yesterday – have taken the lives of nearly 200 people and injured thousands more. 

It has been a rough week.  A week of collective disbelief, anger, fear, deep sadness, and prayer. Dr. Margaret Aymer, a Presbyterian minister and professor of New Testament theology, published an essay on Tuesday of this week called, “Why I Pray that April Tragedies Bring May Justice.”  She writes that April has been an historically traumatic month for our nation.  The assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., April 4, 1968; the end of the Waco siege of the Branch Davidians, April 19, 1993; the Oklahoma City bombing, April 19, 1995; Columbine, April 20, 1999; Virginia Tech, April 16, 2007.[1]

And yet, despite these tragedies, we boldly begin our worship saying, “Alleluia, Christ is Risen! The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!”  We are an Easter people, an Easter people who celebrate the Day of Resurrection not just 1 day, but for 50 days.  An Easter people who are invited to live our lives in the hope of the resurrection not just for 50 days, but every day.  Our prayer book, in a note at the end of the burial office notes that “The liturgy for the dead is an Easter liturgy. It finds all meaning in the resurrection. Because Jesus was raised from the dead, we too, shall be raised.”[2]  And so, we boldly begin our worship saying, “Alleluia, Christ is Risen! The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!”   - because we are an Easter people.  

In the story from the Acts of the Apostles which we heard this morning, an Easter people have gathered.  A group of widows gather around Tabitha, a disciple of Jesus who has become ill and dies.  These women prepare her body for burial and then send for Peter.  It is not entirely clear what they hope to receive from Peter. But, when he arrives, the women take him upstairs where they have laid Tabitha’s body.  And they begin to tell Peter stories, showing him the tunics and other clothing she had made while she was still alive.  Earlier in the passage we have been told that Tabitha was a disciple who was devoted to good works and acts of charity; perhaps the women tell Peter about these acts, perhaps some of these tunics were to be gifts for those in the community who needed them.  After hearing these stories, Peter sends everyone out of the room, kneels down and prays.  And then says, “Tabitha, get up.”  And she does.  Peter need say nothing more than these three words relying only on “his simple claim on God’s resurrection power.”[3]

After a week like this week, we may wish we could summon up Peter to come and say to the dead, “get up!” But, even without Peter, we can do like the people of Joppa as Margaret Aymer suggests:

“Like them, we can tend to the bodies, telling the truth about the fatal toll of guns, bombs, poverty and disease. When we do so, we break death’s ability to sever our responsibility to one another. Like the church of Joppa, we can tell the stories of those who have died. When we do, we break death's ability to relegate victims to oblivion and to glorify its acolytes. Like the widows of Joppa . . . we can gather to lift up our voices in weeping. For our weeping is an act of protest, a refusal to be silent in the face of the injustice of death, death from disease and malnutrition, death from domestic terrorism, death from the increasingly unregulated possession and use of military firearms. . . . And we confess, despite all evidence to the contrary, that death will not win.”[4]

Death and terror have not and will not win.  Our prayer book note concerning the burial office goes on to say that our worship

“. . . is characterized by joy, in the certainty that ‘neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.’”[5]

We have seen this truth play out this week as well as first responders and eye-witnesses rushed into, not away from the terror; as Yankees fans sang “Sweet Caroline” – the song of their arch-rivals the Boston Red Sox; as individuals donate blood; offer shelter to strangers; and lift up their voices in prayer and in song.  My brothers and sisters in Christ, death will not have the final word.  For we are an Easter people.  Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

Let us pray:

Father of all, we pray to you for all who have died tragically in the past week and for all those whom we love but see no longer. Grant to them eternal rest. Let light perpetual shine upon them. May their souls and the souls of all the departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.

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[1] Margaret Aymer, “Why I Pray that April Tragedies Bring May Justice,” Odyssey Networks, April 16, 2013 accessed on April 20, 2013.

[2] Book of Common Prayer, p. 507.

[3] Robert W. Wall, “The Acts of the Apostles: Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible: A Commentary in Twelve Volumes, Vol. X, (Nashville: Abingdon, 2002), p .170.

[4] Aymer, Ibid.

[5] Book of Common Prayer, p. 507.

Were You There?

Sermon Preached, Good Friday, 2013
St. Mark's Episcopal Church

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When someone is diagnosed with lung cancer, one of our first responses is to wonder, “Were they a smoker”?  Beneath that question, beyond our mild curiosity, is a question about blame.  If they were a smoker, then we can understand their current affliction.  Likewise, if someone is out in the sun everyday without sunscreen, we can understand why they might have a diagnosis of skin cancer.  By our nature, we want to attribute blame.  I remember in high school, memorizing the Latin phrase, “post hoc ergo propter hoc” – “after which, therefore, because of which.”  After smoking, therefore, because of smoking, Mrs. Jones has lung cancer.  After sun bathing, therefore, because of sun bathing, Mr. Smith has skin cancer.  Simple cause and effect.  Right?  O.k., how about this one?  Roosters crow prior to sun rise.  Therefore, crowing roosters cause the sun to rise. Simple cause and effect --- it doesn’t work very well in this situation does it?

Many times cause and effect are not so clear.  This is particularly true when an innocent person becomes sick or dies.  A teenager diagnosed with leukemia.  A toddler killed by a drunk driver.  Jesus nailed to a cross.  At times such as these, all cause and effect logic crumbles into nonsense.  And yet, we continue to seek meaning, to seek explanations.

This meaning-making that we do, this attempt to create logical explanations for the illogical places in our lives is part of the human condition.  But, I would suggest it is a part of our humanity that we often use to veil the uncomfortable truth – and that truth is that there are some things of which we have little or no understanding.  And so we create explanations, we create myths.

Harold S. Kushner’s classic, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, was written in response to the author’s son’s early death from a disease that caused him to age prematurely.  Kushner writes, “The facts of life and death are neutral. We, by our responses, give suffering either a positive or a negative meaning.”[1]  When the meaning that we weave, says Kushner, “makes us bitter, jealous, against all religion, and incapable of happiness, we turn the person who died into one of the 'devil's martyrs.'”[2] 

Today we come together to recall the crucifixion of Jesus.  That Jesus’ death defies a simple cause and effect logic or any other type of logic that would place blame on the victim is emphasized by the readings we heard.  The reading from Isaiah is the fourth of four “Suffering Servant” poems written during the Babylonian exile of the 6^th century B.C.  While it is unclear if the author of these poems had an individual in mind or was speaking of the Israelites collectively as the suffering servant, it is clear that the poet rejects any explanation that blames the victim for his fate at the hands of an angry mob:[3]^{, [4]}    

“Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities. . .”[5] 

Let’s hear that again - “We accounted him stricken, struck down by God.”   Surely he did something wrong to be punished in this way by God.  Cause and Effect.  But Isaiah boldly rejects this logic when he declares,

“By a perversion of justice he was taken away . . . although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth.”[6] 

Simple cause and effect?  Isaiah says, “try again.”  The suffering servant is a scapegoat, a scapegoat in a society that believed scapegoats (often referred to euphemistically as sacrificial offerings) to appease God for the wrongs of the community.  But the poet writes to reveal the truth – God does not seek scapegoats.  God’s way is the way of love, not violence.  And yet, throughout history – even to the present day - Jews, Muslims, and Christians have ignored and continue to ignore this truth.[7]

As Jesus looks to the Hebrew Scriptures to find models for his own ministry, it is not surprising that these suffering servant poems provide such a wealth of useable materials.  Jesus does not see himself as a necessary sacrifice to appease an angry God.  Jesus is not an unwilling scapegoat chosen by the culture.  No, Jesus goes willingly into the darkness and the emptiness that the human condition offers.  There is a rubric in The Book of Common Prayer that allows the congregation to take the part of the crowd during the reading of the Passion.[8]  When this is done, each of us joins our voice with the voices of that 1^st century crowd yelling “Crucify him! Crucify him!”[9] I don’t know about you, but I would much rather take the part of Peter denying any association with Jesus whatsoever than to acknowledge that I have taken a part in sending Jesus to his death.[10]  Surely someone else is to blame for Jesus nailed to the cross – it can’t be my fault.  And yet, as soon as we look for someone else to blame –– whether it is the Pharisees or some other subset of the Jews, the Romans, the cultural milieu, or God – as soon as we point the finger, we too become complicit in this ritual of scapegoating violence and, like those first followers of Jesus, we too miss the connection between what theologian Gil Bailie calls “the cure (the crucifixion and its after effects) and the disease (the structures of scapegoating violence upon which all human arrangements have depended).”[11]  In other words, looking for someone else to blame, we implicate ourselves because “the crucifixion was demanded by those determined to find a culprit to blame . . .”[12]  This understanding of the Good Friday events, have certainly changed my experience of the old spiritual: “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?”[13]

Jesus’ manner of living and manner of dying demand that we renounce the ritual of scapegoating violence.  That we acknowledge that “the facts of life and death are neutral.”[14]  No gospel does a better job of demonstrating this than the Gospel of John where it is clear from the very beginning that Jesus, not the crowd, is responsible for his own death.  When the chief priests and Pharisees arrive in the garden, the Gospel of John tells us that Jesus “knowing all that was to happen to him” comes forward.[15]  Later, when Pilate is interrogating Jesus, Jesus tells him, “You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above.”[16]  “Jesus goes to his death willingly . . . not as a suffering victim, but as the one who remains in control” of the outcome.[17]  By embracing the darkness and emptiness of the human condition, Jesus strips death of its power. 

Harold Kushner wrote, “If suffering and death in someone close to us brings us to explore the limits of our capacity for strength and love and cheerfulness, if it leads us to discover sources of consolation we never knew before, then we make the person into a witness for the affirmation of life rather than its rejection.”[18]  Just so Jesus desired to make something good out of something that was very bad, indeed.  Jesus embraced the uncomfortable places of his life and of his death with strength.  On this Good Friday, I invite us to reflect on those places of darkness and discomfort in our own lives.  Will we allow them to become one of the devil’s martyrs or will we use them to explore our limits and to discover sources of consolation and strength we never knew before? The choice is ours to make.

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[1] Kushner, Harold S. When Bad Things Happen to Good People, (New York: Schocken Books, 1981), 138.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Rob Moore, “The Theory of René Girard and Its Theological Implications: Part I,” Kyrie, 7 accessed online at http://www.kyrie.com on March 28, 2012.

[4] For a discussion of the identity of the suffering servant see Bernhard W. Anderson, Understanding the Old Testament, 4^th edition. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1986), 488-502.

[5] Isaiah 53:4-5a.

[6] Isaiah 53: 8a, 9b.

[7] For a good discussion of cultural scapegoating see Rob Moore, “The Theory of René Girard and Its Theological Implications: Part II,” Kyrie, 3-5 accessed online at http://www.kyrie.com on March 28, 2012.

[8] BCP, 277.

[9] John 19:6.

[10] John 18:17; 25.

[11] Bailie, Gil. Violence Unveiled, p. 218 as quoted in Rob Moore, Part I, 8.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Negro Spiritual, “Were You There,” in Lift Every Voice and Sing II: An African American Hymnal, (New York: Church Publishing, Inc., 1993), 37.

[14] Kushner, 138.

[15] John 18:4.

[16] John 19:11.

[17] O’Day, Gail R. “The Gospel of John: Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections,” in Volume IX of The New Interpreter’s ®  Bible: A Commentary in Twelve Volumes, edited by Leander E. Keck, Thomas G. Long, et. Al. (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995), 799.

[18] Kushner, 138.