Spinning My Wheels

            Lately I have been spending a good deal of time spinning my wheels.

            Literally. Perhaps it is because I have been sensing the approach of middle age (pause here for a chuckle at my expense), or because I have been taking more seriously the groans emitted from the bathroom scale of late, or because I have finally been convinced that it is a good thing to do, but, whatever the reason, I have started up a new exercise regime. And with the weather being so brutal out of doors, and thus keeping me off my bike, I have taken to the indoor world of “spinning.”

            “Spinning” has nothing to do with Sleeping Beauty and spindles – spinning is step aerobics on wheels, it is a bunch of folk chained to stationary bikes in an overheated room for an hour, pedaling away while a perky trainer with thighs like Lance Armstrong and a voice of a Marine yells out instructions like “Pedal harder!” and “60 seconds in the standing position”, and, “Move it, you maggots!” (well, maybe not that one).  We don’t get anywhere, being on a stationary bike….

            I sometimes think that’s why God gave us Easter. In a recent comic in the Globe, there is a picture of an angel standing on a cloud looking down at earth, with the caption being, “The world and the way it would be if the master of the universe was my mother”. And then there is a voice coming from the cloud saying, “Don’t make me come down there!”

            Well, that is actually what did happen. Because we were so busy spinning our wheels, trying like the dickens to get to God but for all our efforts getting only in our way, God did come down there. And while that made a lot us mad enough to run God out of town and hang God on a tree, God was not done, and God was not going to let human sin and death stand in the way.

           

            Hence, Easter, hence, resurrection, hence a chance to get off the stationary bike and saddle up a tandem where we are all in backseats and Jesus is in the driver’s seat and together there is no mountain we cannot climb, no task we cannot take on, no “thing” to fear.

            Onward, or, as they say in the Tour de France, “Allez!”

Breath of Hope

(A sermon based on Ezekiel 37 and the vision of the valley of dry bones)

     This valley of dry bones that Ezekiel is led to in his vision seems pretty crazy to most of us, perhaps something out of the opening of a modern sci-fi film – a vast, desolate plain littered by dry and brittle bones. And yet, in our own time and experience, we know the sort of thing he is talking about, this vision is not as strange as we would like to think it is. We have seen them, in news reels and magazines and newspapers and documentaries, the countless trenches dug for mass graves in Germany, in Poland, in Russia, in Cambodia, in Rwanda, in Bosnia, silent testimony to man’s violence and inhumanity during the time of war. And time and again we have seen those photos and videos of communities beset by natural catastrophes, earthquakes in Turkey, mudslides in central America, most recently of the devastation wrought by the tsunami in northern Japan, where whole communities were wiped off the face of the earth.

            Like Ezekiel, we stand before the pit of grief and ask, Can these dry bones live? In a place where it seems like there is no future, can there be new life? In a time when the despair is overwhelming, can there be hope?

            These were our questions last April, when twenty folk drawn from this church, the Cotuit Federated Church, and North Falmouth Congregational Church, drove through the emptiness of neighborhood after neighborhood in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward and its neighboring town, St. Bernard’s Parish. In some areas, decaying, rotting houses, once submerged under nine plus feet of water, still tottered, each marked with the four-quadrant circle spray-painted by rescue teams in the aftermath of Katrina, indicating whether the utilities were still on, whether the house had been searched, whether there were any pets in the premises, whether any human remains were still inside. In other areas, including where we were put to work, the streets were lined by empty foundation slab after empty foundation slab, all that remained after their decaying, mold-infested structures had been bull-dozed away. All this, over four years after Katrina, over four years after the forced evacuations, after FEMA’s bungling, after formaldehyde-saturated trailers, after families and neighbors becoming separated and relocated to housing hundreds and even thousands of miles away, after federal and state red-tape delaying and at times preventing families from returning to rebuild. If these were not our exact words at the time, surely they could have been: “Can these dry bones live?” Can there be a future for this community? Can these displaced folk ever come together again?

            This is the meaning of Ezekiel’s vision. The dry bones, Ezekiel is told, represent the house of Israel. The valley refers to their exile in Babylon, where the dry bones of the once proud nation now lie lifeless and without hope. The question which God had asked Ezekiel at the outset of the vision, “Can these bones live?”, in reality means, “Can this community live once again? Can the exiles ever hope to go home again, be reconstituted, and prosper? If so, how in heaven can this be?”

            How in heaven, indeed. God tells Ezekiel to prophesy, and when he does, the bones come together again, sinews bind them together, flesh covers them. But still they do not live, for one thing more is required – the breath of God. And so at God’s command the wind is summoned – wind being a Hebrew equivalent to breath, to spirit, and the bones live once more, the community is resurrected to new life. In the face of death, where there is the Spirit of God, there is creation, there is new life, there is a resurrected community.

            Resurrection, God tells Ezekiel, is not a privatized, spiritual matter. It is concrete, it is historical, it concerns your existence in the here and now. “Tell the people”, Ezekiel is told, “I am going to open up your graves and bring you up from your graves . . . and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. . . I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil….”

            And all this does not just happen. The message is clear – God is the source of life, and of renewed life, and if God is about anything, it is that God is in the restoration and resurrection business.  God will move God’s people out of death to new life, and God’s spirit will live within them.

            And so the people can live in hope. Appearances are deceiving. When it looks like a death valley, beneath the surface springs of life are preparing to gush up; when all that most people see is a graveyard, those with eyes of faith can see a field getting ready to blossom into new life.

            People who live in hope, who have eyes to see the new reality which even now is almost ready to spring forth, can live differently than those who despair. The despairing might come to the valley of dry bones to lay cut flowers on the ground as a memorial; those with hope bring to the boneyard their gardening implements, getting ready to water and weed and hoe as the new life springs forth. The despairing are disempowered, weakened, sick at heart; the hopeful are filled with the Spirit, energized, emboldened for the work which lies at hand.

            And then this is what they do. They climb out of the vans, put on the work gloves and the knee pads, pick up the sledgehammer and the nail gun and the skil saw and the paint brush, and they get to work.  One day at a time, one home at a time, one small neighborhood at a time, they work to rebuild a community, to hasten the day when once again slabs will lie hidden beneath solid homes, driveways will be full, jumbalaya will be cooking for the weekend block party, and kids will laughingly play tag in back yards and run out front when they hear the ice cream truck coming. They do this work because they have eyes to see that there is a new world a’coming, and because they know that in this work they have not only each other, they also have a divine partner who breathes new life into dry bones and works tirelessly to raise the dead from their graves.

            People who live in hope, who have eyes to see the new reality which even now is almost ready to spring forth, can live differently than those who despair.  People who live in hope can take a look at declining church membership and attendance figures, at trends which tell the story of the increasing secularization of society, at the drop-off in faith among the younger generations, and not despair. And instead of sitting back and wishing for the good old days when church and the wider culture walked together hand in glove and were mutually supporting, instead they can get together, as you have done, and together seek to discern how God is at work beneath the surface of all these trends to prepare the day when new life will spring forth in our faith communities, and, particularly, here at West Parish. And then they try to figure out how we might get in step with this resurrecting God who will not let us just lie down in our graves, how we might take concrete steps in both the short and long term to make this faith community as full of life as it possibly can be. You do this, because God’s breath of hope fills your lives.

            Friends, hear this day the Good News which shall be for you and for all people: “I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act.”

             

In Lent . . . Easter!

 

Ashes

In my hands,

heavy,

like a five-pound bag of flour, or, better, 

sugar,

wrapped in brown paper, hard and somewhat crinkly,

yielding grudgingly to the pressure

of cupped fingers.

Yet

when I pulled out her favorite

Swiss Army knife,

and with gentle care slid the clean bright blade into the top,

peeling the paper back as a surgeon

must have peeled the scalp back

before boring through her skull

searching for the tumor,

And on bended knee

in the early summer dirt

knelt

and poured the ashes

of my beloved

into the grave,

pouring them

down,

down,

down

into the deep carved grave,

I discovered the lightness of ashes,

the emptiness of the tomb,

the truth of the Apostle’s words,

“O death, where is thy victory?”

as they came puffing lightly back up and out,

Uncontainable

-- RRB

A New Seating Chart

I believe that the world – or at least the good old U S of A – can be divided into two groups: those who loved their high school experience, and those who loathed it.  And I suspect that what made the difference for many of us was not academic or athletic success, or whether one made the cheerleading squad or the drama society. What made the difference was whether you were popular.

            I was one who, looking back on the high school experience, simply loathed it. I did have a small circle of very good friends, but we were most definitely not popular, and back in the day when people actually dated or went out together, I did not have a girlfriend, which I am sure contributed to my unhappiness with the whole situation.

            But then, one evening, late in the game, so late in the game that if it were actually a sporting contest you would have to call it overtime, everything flipped for me.

            Graduation was only a day or so away, and I was attending one of the many graduation parties that were held for us by our parents. It was at Mary McCracken’s house, out back on a field next to the barn – it was a working farm, which was unusual at the time when most of the farmland had been plowed under for the suburbs.  Mary was a friend, but not a good friend, and ranked up there pretty high on the popularity scale – a spunky little athlete, great smile, always a kind word for everybody. At any rate, the time comes to eat, and I wander off to the outer edge of the assembled tables to grab a seat before they are all taken.  A few minutes later there is a tap on my shoulder, and Mrs. McCracken tells me she has been looking all over for me, because Mary had reserved a place for me up at the head table.  It was not prize day, and I was not making that long walk up to the platform to be handed an award as Valedictorian or as Most Well-Rounded Student or some such, but if I were that would have paled in comparison to the joy that filled me as, with everyone watching, I made my way up to sit at the right hand of Mary McCracken.

            Little did I know, way back then, that we were acting out what Jesus advised those Pharisees at dinnertime a couple thousand years ago. (Luke 14:1, 7-14)  Jesus is passing along some sage advice about social etiquette, but Luke makes clear that Jesus is doing more than being an early version of Emily Post or Miss Manners by telling us that Jesus told this as a parable – in other words, Jesus is talking about behavior in the kingdom of God.  The last thing Jesus is interested in doing is starting some sort of new social game whereby everybody at the party rushes to the cheap seats in the hope that they will be seen as humble, and then, when selected to move on up to the table of honor, have their moment in the spotlight. What he is doing is telling us of the importance of genuine humility as we serve others in his kingdom, not mindful of ourselves, as we say in our church covenant, and serving God.

            But Jesus does not stop with telling us what to do when we are invited to the party – he also tells us what to do when we are hosts. He knows that many time people invite others to dinner to put them in the host’s debt – so that they will feel that they owe the host something, often a reciprocal invitation. There is no generosity or giving in this situation, it is all about what I, the host, can get out of it. But look at what God does – God invites us to the party, even though we are unworthy, even though we could never pay back that debt. So too, Jesus tells us, we should invite to the table those who cannot pay us back – the poor, the ill, those on the margins of society.

            The Greek word for hospitality, philoxenia, means “love of the stranger.”  We do not exercise true hospitality, Jesus tells us, when we invite family, friends and close neighbors; true hospitality is all about inviting the stranger and the outcast. This is what the kingdom of God is all about; this is what we participate in and help bring about when we practice true hospitality.

            Like when we open our facilities, at no charge, to a new Alcoholic Anonymous Chapter, which we have done recently.

Like when we make sure that the message gets out that our youth group is not just for long-time members here, but for their friends from the wider community.

Like when we live out our statement of welcome, which says that we welcome to our work and worship all persons, “regardless of race, gender, age, ethnicity, sexual orientation, ability, or economic circumstance.”

Like a friend up in the Boston area, Louise, a member of Trinity Church in Boston, recently did, taking into her home for the night a family of five, strangers to her until that afternoon, whose furnace had broken down. The overnight was capped with a big pancake breakfast enjoyed by the two families.

Like another friend of mine down in Savannah did recently. Born and raised in Guatemala by her American mother and Guatemalan father, living in the States ever since, Catherine overheard an agricultural worker speaking in Spanish outside a florist, and recognized him as Guatemalan. She struck up a conversation with him, and found out that he had been in this country for two years, and was having difficulty collecting his wages, now over three weeks past due from his employer. She agreed to call the employer on his behalf, and to make a long story short, got nothing from the employer but verbal abuse. In the end, she and her husband invited the worker to their home for dinner, and then to stay the night.  They had, she says, a marvelous evening, full of sharing of stories about life in Guatemala, but also full of learning how difficult life could be for people seeking a new and better life in a strange country.

            Jesus says, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, and you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous. Of course, what he means by that is not that you have to wait until the end of time to be “repaid.” You will be repaid as you, participating in the kingdom as you help bring it in, rise to new life; as you, like Catherine, share the warm glow of old memories with a new-found countryman on the down and out; as you, like Louise, share laughs around an impromptu pancake feast on a bleak midwinter’s morn with a family needing shelter from the storm; as you, like the youth group, find your life enriched by those with new perspectives, who don’t even know you enough about you to care whether or not your are popular; as you, like an awkward, insecure teen on the brink of leaving high school, suddenly awake as if from a bad dream, and look around, and see a new seating chart, and feel like you have graduated to another world.