"Transitional Zones (Lent!) are Where Life Happens"

The intertidal zone is the area where land and sea meet. This habitat is covered with water at high tide, and exposed to air at low tide. The land in this zone can be rocky, sandy or covered in mudflats. It is a perilous place for organisms to make a go of it – at times underwater, and times drying out, continually buffeted by wave and wind, ever-changing salinity, exposed to predators from above and below. And yet it is a place of amazing biological diversity and adaptation, where life if abundant and varied.

Transitional zones are where life happens. The continental shelf has far more species, a much more vibrant habitat, than the deep ocean. The boundaries where different types of habitat meet are the places where life abounds, and where change happens.

In the same way, it is in life’s transitional times that, for all the pain and struggle, life, real life, abounds. What we all want, we say, is life to just settle down, to be stable, predictable, routine. But then something happens, and everything changes --- the job is lost, the cancer diagnosis arrives, the relationship falls through.  And there is struggle, there is pain, at times it even seems like life itself is at stake.  And who would ever want to be in those shoes? And yet…

And yet, the one facing cancer can actually say – yes, it does happen! – that they are thankful for what they are facing, because it is woken them up to appreciate the gift and joy of this day, this one special day, this gorgeous hydrangea which they really appreciated before, this sunrise that they actually stopped to watch, this love which they never fully appreciated before.

And yet, the one grieving over the lost job at times wakes up and sees the blessing in it, the opportunity to start over and do what they had always wanted to do, or the chance to re-evaluate their priorities and what all that “stuff” really means to them.

Fully one-half of the Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Mark is concerned with only one week – the last week -- of the life of a man who we suspect lived maybe some thirty years.  It is a week of suffering, trial, and death – but it is also a week of life lived to the hilt, and beyond. Maybe this is part of what we should be about in the season of Lent, a season that started yesterday, Ash Wednesday -- living life to the hilt, growing into our full humanity, using the love we have been blessed with to love ourselves, our neighbors near and far, our God....

 Transitional times are hard. But they can also be times of life, and life abundant.

"Thin Places Should Point to Full Lives"

In the Celtic spiritual tradition, a “thin place” describes the line that divides the holy from the ordinary, a place where the veil between the physical world and the eternal lifts or is so very thin that it seems that one might even step right on through. I visited the island of Iona some years ago, just off the western coast of the Scottish mainland, and immediately realized why so many people over the centuries have thought of Iona as a “thin place.” Maybe it had something to do with the location only a mile off the mainland; maybe it had something to do with the rugged, tree-less landscape; maybe it had something to do with the old abbey, now restored, or the ancient Celtic crosses; maybe it had something to do with its history, with Martyr’s Bay, the strand where the monks had been slaughtered by ravening Vikings. But it just felt that you were nearer the divine there….

            “Were you scared in Vietnam?” Jenny asked Forrest. “Yes. Well, I-I don’t know. Sometimes it would stop raining long enough for the stars to come out…and then it was nice. It was like just before the sun goes to bed down on the bayou. There was always a million sparkles on the water . . . like that mountain lake. It was so clear, Jenny, it looked like there were two skies one on top of the other. And then in the desert, when the sun comes up, I couldn’t tell where heaven stopped and the earth began. It’s so beautiful.” From Forrest Gump, the movie.

These thin place moments can be brief, but they can stay with us for a life-time. In her poem titled “That Day”, the 20th century American author Denise Levertov describes a transcendent moment in a young girl’s life that stayed with her until the day she died.

Across a lake in Switzerland, fifty years ago,

light was jousting with long lances, fencing with

broadswords

back and forth among cloudy peaks and foothills.

We watched from a small pavilion, my mother and I,

enthralled.

And then, behold, a shaft, a column,

a defined body, not of light but of silver rain,

formed and set out from the distant shore, leaving behind

the silent feints and thrusts, and advanced

unswervingly, at a steady pace,

toward us.

I knew this! I’d seen it! Not the sensation

of déjà vu: it was Blake’s inkwash vision,

‘The Spirit of God Moving Upon the Face of the Waters’!

The column steadily came on

across the lake toward us; on each side of it,

there was no rain. We rose to our feet, breathless–

and then it reached us, took us

into its veil of silver, wrapped us in finest weave of wet,

and we laughed for joy, astonished.

Those “thin place” moments can stay with you. Some of you have shared such moments with me.

There was the woman, brought up here in West Barnstable in a family who were members of the strict Finnish Apostolic Lutheran Church. No drinking, no dancing, on Sundays, no work and no play. God, she was told, was always watching, always judging. And then one day, out alone on a field, a voice came to her, and with it a warmth she had never felt before, calling out her name, and saying, “I love you and always will.” That moment changed her life, she told me, and stayed with her all her days.

There was the member here who had served in the army during the Second World War. He was an aide to a general, and one of his duties involved hand-delivering messages at times when radio communications were out. During the Battle of the Bulge he was given a dispatch to deliver, and so jumped into a jeep and headed off through the forest towards his destination. He came to a cross-roads, and the direct route entailed taking the left fork. But a voice came, he said, a voice he had never heard before, saying no, take the other way, the roundabout way. He did, and later discovered that a German Panzer unit had been laying in wait along his intended route. He believed that he had been spared by divine intervention, and said it changed his life, causing him to change his career path after the war, and so becoming one of New Jersey’s leading experts on helping mainstream into society children once warehoused under the label “retarded.”

There are those of you, particularly men, who have told me about the miracle of child-birth, about how after those months and all that struggle on the mother’s part suddenly a new life was in your arms, and more than that, how you felt surrounded by a heavenly presence in a way you had not experienced before.

And then there are those of you who have spoken at being at the bedside of a dying relative, a parent, a spouse, and how you were surprised that instead of it being the horrific, terrifying experience you had anticipated, it was instead a holy time, days and hours you will ever be grateful for having had, its own kind of thin space.

Mindie Burgoyne writes,

“Thin places are ports in the storm of life, where pilgrims can move closer to the God they seek, where one leaves that which is familiar and journeys into the Divine Presence. They are stopping places where men and women are given pause to wonder about what lies beyond the mundane rituals, the grief, trials and boredom of our day-to-day life.”

The three disciples with Jesus on the mountaintop find themselves in a “thin place” experience. Jesus is seemingly transformed, becoming dazzling white, and two of the giants of their faith, Moses and Elijah, appear next to him, and then to top it all off a voice comes from a cloud saying “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him.”

Peter does what just about anyone of us would want to do as well – he wants to capture the moment, to hold onto it, to not let it go. It is like not wanting to wake up from a wonderful dream. So he proposes that they build three tents, one for each of Moses, Elijah, and Jesus, so that they might remain there – and the few disciples with them. But Jesus will have none of that – he has work to do, and it lies ahead of him down in Jerusalem; and those who would follow him, they had work to do as well, down in the nitty-gritty of a suffering world groaning for salvation. The message is clear – there is no short-cut to glory for Jesus or for those who would follow him, and thin place visions are not ends in and of themselves, but doorways to renewed mission. More even than milestones on the journey of faith, they are instead guideposts, pointing the way ahead to a greater fullness and meaning of life.

Our challenge here is two-fold.

The first is to be present to those thin place moments that are given us. They can be anywhere, you don’t have to go to Iona or to a mountaintop – although it may help if, like those disciples long ago, we can be intentional about seeking out a sacred apart from the hustle and bustle of the everyday,  to open ourselves to the possibility of meeting God there. For example, come to worship together, hoping and maybe even expecting to encounter God in the words, music, community, silence and spirit here. But those thin place moments can be anywhere – out in nature, in the hospital room, in the embrace of a loved one, in your face reflected in a mirror. (But probably not on the golf course, at least not on Sunday morning!)

Our second challenge is to take those “aha” moments and let them change us. To understand that while these moments are to be cherished, even treasured for a lifetime, they are not given as an end in themselves, but to call us forward in new directions; to call us forward in paths that will take us not away from the world and its complexity and its needs and its suffering, but towards and through the world and our brothers and sisters which fill it.  

Thin places, my friends, should lead to full lives. Amen.  

"Is a Women's Place Really (Just) In the Kitchen?"

Today marks the start of UCC Women’s Week, the week dedicated each year by the United Church of Christ, to women and their ministries and their role in the church and the world.  It seems clear to me that the denominational officials who chose this week for such a celebration have it in for male preachers like me; in fact, it would not surprise me if they owned stock in the local tar-and-feathers emporium!

            I mean, look at what happens in today's text, Mark 1:29-31. Jesus and his four fishing buddies arrive in Simon Peter’s hometown on the Sabbath, on Saturday, and after a day of prayers at the synagogue come home hungry and ready for a good sit-down. Only to find that Peter’s mother-in-law, who apparently lives there as part of the extended family, is in bed with a debilitating fever, the kind that could lead to her demise. But no worries, Jesus walks into her bedroom, takes her hand, lifts her up, and viola! She is healed – and immediately gets to work serving them, preparing a fine meal for these big, strapping, and apparently useless around the home, men.

            Sound familiar to any of the gentler sex here with us today? Remind you of an occasion where you had to drag yourself off your sickbed and get to work taking care of others who should have been able to take care of themselves?  Already getting ready to get mad at a preacher who you are waiting to tell you that this is exactly what God expects out of you, so quit your moaning and feel good about it? Asking yourself, he did mention something about tar and feathers, didn’t he? And if not that, asking yourself, where is the good news today  for me and women like me?

            I do think there is hope for us all here, thanks in part to the insights of Rev. Kathyrn Matthews Huey. She encourages us to take another look at the account of the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law, to see if we cannot find instead a conspiracy between Jesus and this unnamed woman to show the disciples, the community, and us, what hospitality, healing and service are all about, what it really means to be a disciple.

            Later on in the gospel, we will see that Jesus is still trying to teach the disciples that he is not about “power over”, he is about “service to.” They will go on to bicker among themselves who is the greatest and who will be granted the privilege of sitting at Jesus’ right hand, missing the point of this lesson at Peter’s house, but the lesson is there for those with ears to hear. A lesson that comes in three parts.

            Part the first: healing that truly heals can often come through something as simple and yet as profound as touch.  After all the thunderous and awe-inspiring events marking the beginning of Jesus’ ministry – the sky ripping open at his baptism, the wild beasts in the wilderness, the capture of John the Baptizer, the shrieks of the possessed man – the healing comes through something as simple and intimate as a human touch. Jesus comes to her, takes her by the hand, and raises her up. The divine love is extended through something we often take for granted, until it is missed – a human touch.

            Touching is so important. Think of the kiss on the skinned knee of a child; think of the hug that greets you at the door when you come home from college or a business trip; think of the importance of a welcoming handshake at the door of the church. Think of a man held at the Suffolk County Jail up in Boston, pending trial. It is a maximum security facility, and during visits we are seated on opposing sides of a thick pane of glass. At the end of each visit, we each hold a hand up to the cold glass, and that is the closest we can come to touching. We both know that it is something, and we both know that it is not enough….

            God knows that nearness is important. That is why God came to us in Jesus, the incarnation of God’s love, to put off all that distance and come near. A sobering thought for us who bear Christ’s name, who might be the closest many people ever get to being touched by Jesus.

            Part the second: the healing by Jesus of Peter’s mother-in-law does more than cure her of a physical ailment – it restores her to her place of honor in the family and wider society. It seems that she not only lived with Peter and his family, but had a particular role within the family unit – that of being in charge of hospitality. In this honor/shame culture, there were very strict rules governing hospitality, about the obligations the host had to welcome guests into the home. Failure to live up to those rules would bring dishonor and shame on the entire extended family. When this woman is healed, she is restored to her rightful role in the family and the community – which was extending hospitality to the guests, to serving them. Her healing is more than a matter of being freed from a disease – to be fully healed, she must be restored to her rightful place in the community. So for her, going from the sick-bed to the kitchen was not something to be bemoaned – it was liberating and healing.

            Part the third: healing, salvation, new life, come to us not so that, like the winner of the lottery, we can move forward into a life of self-indulgence and personal pleasure insulated from others. No healing comes so that we might live into our full humanity, understanding that no man or woman is an island, but that instead we all dwell within a web of mutuality and inter-relationship. Jesus would later tell his disciples that he came not to be served but to serve; here, lifted up to new life by Jesus, this woman by example shows everyone what discipleship is really all about – serving others.  Mark tells us that when Jesus was in the wilderness being tempted after his baptism, “angels waited on  (served)  him”. Mark uses the same word to describe what this woman did for Jesus and his followers – she waited on, or served, them. She is doing the work of angels.

            So what Mark and Jesus are telling us in this episode is not that a woman’s place is in the kitchen, and not that women today must be limited to the identical role that women may have had in society back in the first century A.D.  The lesson taught to us by Jesus and by Peter’s mother-in-law is that the good news is that we are healed, saved, redeemed, raised up – just as she was raised up – to be partners with Jesus in service to the world. What particular form that service takes will be different for each of us, but it is not limited by shifting cultural norms about gender roles. Just as the angels ministered to Jesus in the wilderness and Peter’s mother-in-law ministered to Jesus and his followers in the home, we are called to minister to the Jesus we meet in our everyday lives – in our fellow men and women, in the sick, in the lost, in the poor, in the lonely, in the kitchen, in the boardroom, in the office, in the school.

You and I, we have been raised up to serve.