Reverenda Rosa

Pointing into the Wind

Sailing teaches a lot about wind. Imagine going out through the cut at Port Everglades on a sailboat—let’s call it the good sailing vessel Promise. Next to the cruise-line behemoths, you feel like you are floating along in the shell of a little robin’s egg, a toothpick for a mast. Most sailboats have motors strong enough to keep you moving but they’re no match for the big, bubba, macho man power boats that roar by, leaving you bobbing this way and that in water. The sea does its bit to remind you that you are only one six billionth of the human story, one microscopic speck in the history of creation.

So you get out past the cut, where the water is so beautifully blue it hurts your eyes, and you look for a patch a little bit away from where the action is.

When Spouseman and I sailed, my apprehension would grow as we got to that place. I wanted to keep that weak and known diesel engine going. I kept trying to postpone the inevitable—I’m too nervous, it’s too choppy here, why are you pushing me so hard, give me some space. But I could not postpone the inevitable for long. If you are going to sail, you have to raise the sail. And you cannot raise the sail unless you are steering directly into the wind. Spouseman's job was to raise the mainsail. With my heart in my mouth, I’d power down the engine to almost nothing and grab onto the wheel for dear life, trying to stay on course.

The sailors with us today can describe much better than I what that moment is like. The wind, even if it is only a breeze, roars and pops in your ears. The sail going up adds another layer of sound—snapping and crackling, while the sheet banging against the mast contributes its own clanging. The noise engulfs you and if you are a fraidy cat like me, you are sure that at any moment you are going to be swamped and die because even if the wind is only blowing at 8 or 10 knots, those are monster swells racing directly towards the vessel. That moment is the essence, the absolute manifestation of chaos.

Here is what has never stopped amazing me. A split second later, as soon as the sail is up and the sheet secured, when all you do is turn the wheel to a slightly different point of sail, there is this faint whooshing sound as the sail fills, it’s flapping stilled. The crackling in your ears stops. You turn off the motor, which really was obnoxiously loud and smelly, and all that chaotic, seemingly pointless sound and fury finds its voice and rhythm, as the boat begins to move and gains speed, powered through the water with the invisible grace of the wind.

The beginning of the story of Pentecost as told by Luke in the book of Acts captures something of the chaos of wind: “When the day of Pentecost had come, the disciples were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.”

Fifty days had passed since the crucifixion and resurrection. Even with the Risen Christ among them, the small, improbable, ragtag bunch of people who had followed Jesus struggled with grief, fear, confusion and isolation. They could see bits and pieces of this new creation represented by the Risen Christ, but what did it all mean?

After a life changing moment in our lives, it is not unusual to go through a time of great confusion, denial, numbness—all those feelings that go with being lost. As the days go by, the layers of defense we use to absorb such a moment are stripped away. And then, usually in the most unexpected way, triggered by something beyond us, the enormity of what has happened breaks through, we face directly into the depth and width of what has happened, what has changed. We can no longer avoid living in a new real. We are pointing directly into the wind. We are more stripped of artifice and defense than we normally allow ourselves to be in the face of our creator. It is chaos where risk and opportunity are inextricably bound to each other. It is a sound like the rush of a violent wind, it is a fire that consumes, it is a moment that feels like death and the beginning of life all rolled into one. It is chaos. No wonder we want to turn on that puny diesel motor again and play it safe. No wonder we stand there gripping the wheel for dear life, with our hearts in our mouth.

I believe that the passage from Acts describes that moment when those scared and disoriented friends of our Lord were finally able or were finally forced to point directly into the wind. Hiding out and waiting to see what would come next was no longer a viable alternative. I love that Luke sees the humor of it—even in this most transcendental of moments, Peter is reassuring folks that the faithful aren’t drunk. At our most vulnerable and lost—or found—we’re still worried about keeping up appearances aren’t we?

In this passage, we already see the outlines of what happens when the puny power of our own fears and expectations, our own aspirations and limitations looks upon the face of God. The possibility of overcoming estrangement and misunderstanding is breath-taking. The discovery of gifts and abilities we did not know we had exhilarates and energizes. The promise of a completely new life begins to be fulfilled.

In comparison to the Book of Acts, the Gospel passage appointed for today has more of the feel of what happens in that tiny fraction of time when you turn the wheel a few degrees, the sail fills with wind and you start moving forward. "Peace be with you… Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." Turning off that motor, accepting the strength of the wind, following a path we cannot see, leaving a wake that quickly disappears, we are in harmony with the winds of God, which means we can also find our rhythm with all creation.

Turning into the wind, Jesus friends learned something new about the love of God through Christ. They also discovered their vocation and gave birth to the Church, which for all its foibles and failures, is still the place where so many of us have learned about the absolute, eternal, all-possible love of the One who created, redeemed and sustains each and every speck of creation.

What about us? When was the last time we allowed ourselves or were forced, both as individuals and as All Saints, a small branch of the True Vine, to point into the wind? Today we haven’t just had a history lesson. We too have been called. Learn to trust something beyond that puny little diesel motor of yours. Point into the wind. Receive the Holy Spirit. Live. Love. Amen.

Famine of the Word of God: Sermon 22-07-07

Just a few weeks ago, we heard that God can be found in the gentle murmur of a soft breeze. Today, that image is turned on its head and what we hear is the agonized, the roaring, desperate voice of a lion wounded by the transgressions and iniquities of a people who trample on the needy and bring ruin to the poor. Is there a worse accusations than to say that God's chosen can’t wait for the holiest of days to be over to go back to their exploitive, callous, deceitful ways? If you have ever been close to a lion backed into a corner, wounded and in distress, you know something about that kind of hideous roar—a roar that leaves everything trembling. A cry that spreads into infinity and seems to last for all eternity.

The time is surely coming, says the Lord GOD, when I will send a famine on the land; not a famine of bread, or a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD. They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the LORD, but they shall not find it.

Amos tells us that after that final shattering roar of anguish, God has nothing left to say and all that will be left is silence. A deafening silence, worse than being conquered and vanquished from the land, worse than a flood, worse than the worst thirst or hunger imaginable. Empty silence.

Amos says these things as the reign of Jereboam, a brilliant king of the northern kingdom, the Kingdom of Israel, is reaching its zenith. Pride and plenty are everywhere to be seen. Elegance and might walk hand in hand down the cities of the land. The rich have their summer places and their winter palaces. It all dazzles. It all distracts. It all conceals another truth that too few choose to see: This privilege is gained at the expense of other children equally loved by God.

These transgressors were wandering Arameans and later slaves in Egypt, a people totally dependent on the goodness of a God who pitches a tent in their midst, to love and protect them. They are the very people whom God had once rescued from Egypt, led through the desert and brought into the promised land. And now they, who have only known God’s graciousness trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land, they buy the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals...

Can you imagine God’s despair? Can you feel the anguish? Can you understand the rage?

I am convicted by the knowledge that life in the kingdom of Jereboam is too much like our life here and now. I don’t need spout statistics about the ways in which needs are not met in our community, and ruin is brought to the poor of the land. You know the heartbreaking stories that give those numbers names and faces. This passage is a searing indictment not only of the privileged in the reign of Jereboam but of us as well.

I am also convicted by the certainty that God neither wills nor condemns either the people of Israel nor us to silence. No. God doesn’t need to. We do it ourselves and we do it so well. I look at our community, our nation and the world, and I sense that our oh so clever ways with words, the spin we’ve developed to a high art, our capacity to use words as weapons to divide and conquer are allowing a barren, black hole of silence to grow in our midst. This is a dangerous, hopeless silence of our own doing where creative new ways of doing things haves no chance, and the will for courage has been lost. It is a silence that threatens our very existence on this island home, our planet earth.

God roared through Amos’ words with all the anguish and sorrow and disappointment of the universe. But there was still a seed of hope and possibility at the heart of that anger, a hope and possibility that held back the famine.

Twenty one hundred years ago, that hope and possibility became flesh, and lived with us, and was willing to die for us. A man called Jesus walked the earth and during his ministry, he talked about God’s dream. He shook the proud lawyer out of his complacency with last weeks story about the Good Samaritan. This week, the confrontation comes a little closer to home. Martha was a faithful supporter of his, one of the first to call him Messiah. From what we know, she was a woman of some means and head a household. Jesus certainly recognized her as a leader of the community of faith.

Some say that Jesus’ gentle admonition to Martha has to do with the anxiety and concern with which she sets about offering hospitality. Others are quick to say it was simply her busy-ness that he was challenging. Either way, Martha was too preoccupied to hear the word of God. She was just like us. She was a lot like the people in the Kingdom of Israel under Jereboam. We humans are uniquely and astoundingly capable of staying busy enough, distracted enough, comfortable enough to avoid hearing the word of God. We are masters at it and because we fail to hear the Word of God, we fail to live it. The people around Jesus—even his best friends—failed to hear and the grand human experiment that was God made man, ended up on the cross, dead.

But not even that was the end of the story. God keeps faith.  God is faithful to the certainty the word of God can go forth and not come back empty. Not even the cross can silence the Word of Cross. Rather, it is the beginning of a new life in the risen Christ, a life that each of us receives at our baptism and which together we embody in the Church.

God’s audacity is breath-taking. After such a history, who but God would dare to believe that a broken vessel such as the church is capable of speaking the words that creation yearns to hear. You and I have a hard time getting our heads around that kind of hope and trust.  But to me, what's even more astounding is the glimpse we get now and then, that God is right to continue to try.

When we are faithful, when we are like Mary, sitting at the Jesus’ feet to listen, and like Martha, energetic and generous in her determination to do the work of hospitality and love, there is a rich, beautiful conversation between us and God, full of laughter, sometimes despair and frustration, and also a conversation that always opens startling new paths and possibilities for grace made real in the world.

I see that happening right now here in Broward County. A group of 30 or so churches has come together, for the first time in the history of our county, to listen to the prophetic word of God that insists that all God’s children must be cared for. It is neither partisan, nor political. But it does recognize that for meaningful systemic change to occur around issues of quality of life, many people of good will must dare to dream bold dreams for our county—and then look to those in power and ask them to join us to build a more just community.

A team of people from All Saints has become active in this ministry and many of you have been invited to a series of house meetings we are holding where you will be able to share with the team and others in the parish your concerns and your hopes for our community. All across the county, the other participating congregations are also going through this listening process. Some 4000 people are signed up right now for these house meetings...

In September, we will hold a covenant assembly, and for the first time, we will identify a very specific issue, lifted up through this listening process, that we believe can and should be addressed in our county. With the work we’ve done already we anticipate that about 850 people will attend this assembly. Then a small research team will start looking for places and ways in which this problem has been successfully addressed and start figuring out what it would take to bring that kind of success to Broward.

In late March, members of all our congregations will be invited to gather for an even bigger assembly. Leaders in our community who can make the changes we recommend will be invited to attend and in front of an some 1500 to 2000 people will be asked support our recommendation and help make Broward a better place through this small step. 

Now I want to reassure you that this is not some radical, divisive group that intends to fracture and divide our community. In Lexington Kentucky last year, our sister organization was concerned about the quality of education. They focused even more specifically on the issue of bullying. The research team found a public school system in Kansas, I believe, that had a program that was working to tackle this serious problem. Over 2000 people from different congregations, denominations, races and cultural backgrounds met in a church in Lexington. They invited the school superintendent to this meeting, explained the program and asked him to commit to supporting this program in the school system. He did. And today, for the first time the Lexington School system is not only measuring and monitoring bullying, but can actually demonstrate how they are succeeding creating a safer place where their children can learn. You see, that to me is a word of God that went out and did not return empty.

This kind of hopefulness is both a fulfillment of God’s promise to always be with us, and a reminder of how dependent that promise is on us, ordinary people like you and I. I pray daily that our young new justice network will have this kind of impact. I invite you to join with us to make it happen; if you want to know more about it, talk to me after church. But above all, I give thanks to God that the Word still dwells with us.