So Abraham rose early in the morning, and took bread and a skin of water, and gave it to Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, along with the child, and sent her away. And she departed, and wandered about in the wilderness of Beer-sheba. When the water in the skin was gone, she cast the child under one of the bushes Then she went and sat down opposite him a good way off, about the distance of a bowshot; for she said, “Do not let me look on the death of the child.” And as she sat opposite him, she lifted up her voice and wept. Genesis 21:14-16

Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from God’s knowing. And even the hairs of your head are all counted.
So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows. Matthew 10:29-31

When Mary Ellen I were appointed to serve the Bay Ridge church in Brooklyn in 1983, we had the pleasure of meeting a remarkable retired couple, Lorraine and Roland. They were the first African Americans who joined that previously all-white church. In fact they were among the first African Americans to purchase property in Bay Ridge.

Roland had been a labor leader and Lorraine a homemaker and singer. She sang for many years with the Jeff Samaha Singers. Knowing that she had a singing background, I thought it natural to ask her to sing a solo one Sunday. Roland thanked me privately and said, “Pastor, she has never been asked to sing before in the church.” She chose to sing His Eye Is on the Sparrow. “I sing because I’m happy. I sing because I’m free. His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.”

A few years later Lorraine suffered a catastrophic stroke. She lived for a number of years completely immobilized in a nursing home. Sometimes there would be tears in her eyes, but she never regained the capacity to move any part of her body or even to speak. When I visited, I would always picture her singing, “His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.” I would remind her of that day and how beautifully she sang, never knowing whether she could hear or understand what I was saying.

In the long course of human history and in the present state of human affairs the mass of humanity has struggled for dignity and survival. Countless millions of human beings have lived and died anonymously knowing only suffering and want. When Jesus spoke of the value of every individual human life down to the hairs on his or her head, he was saying something that was audacious and apparently absurd. He was addressing himself to the masses of his own time, exploited, living at the margins of survival, and having no rights as we understand them whatsoever.

Imagine what it meant for them to hear the words: Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from God’s knowing. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.

Our gospel proclaims this audacious and seemingly absurd thing: that there is intrinsic God-given value in every human life, and that the eye of God that is upon the falling sparrow is all the more focused upon the conditions of human life, especially the condition of those who suffer. Every Christian is called to participate in the divine compassion and to live her or his life in such a way that the world may know that the eye of God is upon us all and especially upon those who suffer.

The second of our Scripture texts for today concerns a child who is thrown away – a child who literally is thrown away. The child is Ishmael, the first child born to Abraham. His mother is not Sarah, but Sarah’s maid, Hagar. Because of Sarah’s jealousy and her desire to promote the position of Isaac, her son by Abraham, she insists that Hagar and Ishmael be cast out into the wilderness. And so they were – cast out with only a piece of bread and a skin of water. When the water was gone, as it soon was, and the sun beat down upon them, Hagar – knowing that her child would die and in despair – tossed him under a bush and walked away. This harshness of this moment is highlighted by the fact that she does not set him gently under the bush – no – she cast him under the bush and walked away.

It is one of the most pathetic scenes in the entire biblical story. Abraham was grieving, because he loved this child, Ishmael. Hagar was despondent, knowing her child was to die. She threw him away, unable to bear the thought of watching him die. She cried out, “Do not let me look on the death of the child.” And she wept loudly, as she listened to the cries of her son.

Then we read beginning in the 17th verse of the 21st chapter of the book of Genesis:

21:17 And God heard the voice of the boy; and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven, and
said to her, “What troubles you, Hagar? Do not be afraid; for God has heard the voice of the boy
where he is.
21:18 Come, lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand, for I will make a great nation of him.”
21:19 Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. She went, and filled the skin with water, and gave the boy a drink.
21:20 God was with the boy, and he grew up; he lived in the wilderness, and became an expert with the bow.
21:21 He lived in the wilderness of Paran; and his mother got a wife for him from the land of Egypt.

We live in a world that throws people away. So many of those the world throws away are so young. So many childhoods lost to poverty and hunger, to child labor, to lack of medical treatment, and to exploitation in the sex trade. The Methodist Church from its earliest beginnings has emphasized the connection between the gospel of God’s love and direct action on behalf of human beings who are forgotten, exploited, or abused. The first Methodists were involved in prison reform, opposition to child labor, opposition to slavery, and other causes affecting the human condition.

In our own time we cannot separate our worship of God from our action on behalf of those who suffer deprivation and injustice. Even though the current economic crisis may affect many of us, we as a congregation need to do more, not less, to address suffering and inequality. It is wonderful that we met and went beyond our initial goal of raising approximately $3,500 for the roof of the clinic in Yipalla in Ghana. There is more that we can do, and will do, and must do.

The great crisis that has suddenly come upon the world, with fuel and food prices skyrocketing, is something that is way beyond the power of individual Christians and congregations to affect.
We need to let our elected representatives know that while we are concerned about our own mortgages and health care and the cost of gas, we as a people, we as a church, and we as a nation want concerted international action on behalf of those who are devastated by the food and fuel cost crisis and who struggle just to survive. This is a test of our basic humanity.

And closer to home, as I read the story again this week of the child Ishmael who is thrown out of his home and then thrown away under a bush, I could not help but think of how many young people even in our own country are homeless, many of them literally thrown out of their homes.

One of the reasons why I believe passionately that the church must speak out on behalf of gays is that a large percentage of our homeless youth in New York City and elsewhere are homeless because they are as gay. As gay youth they were thrown out of their homes – literally thrown out of their homes in childhood.

Some studies suggest that when gay youth come out to their parents, approximately half of the parents are supportive, and half are hostile. Of those who are hostile, half kick their child out of the house. So if these studies are correct, something like a quarter of gay youth who disclose their sexual orientation may end up homeless. These young people are at greater risk for violence, sexual exploitation, mental illness, and physical illness. Homeless gay youth are some of the most vulnerable and abused people in our entire society. Who will speak up for them?

One of the reasons why participation in the Gay Pride Parade is a real Christian ministry is that lining those streets in Manhattan will be thousands and thousands of human beings who were kicked out of their homes by their flesh and blood, because they were born with a sexual orientation that their parents found unacceptable, and usually their parents’ negative attitudes were shaped by the church. Because that is so, the church has a special responsibility to correct this wrong and to bear witness to these young people that they are not rejected by God, rather that they are loved by God, whose eye is on the sparrow and even more upon them.

I sing because I’m happy. I sing because I’m free. God’s eye is on the sparrow, and I know that God watches me, and you, and abused young people, homeless youth – gay and straight – and the hungry of this earth, and all human beings struggling for their dignity, their survival, and their right to be treated as children of God.

Grace and peace to you.

Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

9:9 As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him. 9:10 And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with him and his disciples. 9:11 When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” 9:12 But when he heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. 9:13 Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”
… 9:18 While he was saying these things to them, suddenly a leader of the synagogue came in and knelt before him, saying, “My daughter has just died; but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live.” 9:19 And Jesus got up and followed him, with his disciples. 9:20 Then suddenly a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his cloak, 9:21 for she said to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well.” 9:22 Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.” and instantly the woman was made well. 9:23 When Jesus came to the leader’s house and saw the flute players and the crowd making a commotion, 9:24 he said, “Go away; for the girl is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him. 9:25 But when the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took her by the hand, and the girl got up. 9:26 And the report of this spread throughout that district.

In 1945, as the Second World War was drawing to a close, some farmers near the Egyptian town of Nag Hamadi dug up a large earthenware jar. They had no idea that they were making one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of all time, a discovery especially exciting for biblical scholars. What they had dug up was an ancient vessel containing a small library. One of the scrolls in that jar was a complete copy of a gospel which came to be known as the Gospel of Thomas. The discovery and the interpretation of that gospel are one of the most fascinating chapters in the long history of biblical study. This gospel contained words of Jesus that were not previously known. Quite amazing!

But the most fascinating thing about the Gospel of Thomas is not what it contains; it is what it does not contain. The Gospel of Thomas is not like the Gospels that we are familiar with in our New Testament, the Gospels of Matthew Mark Luke and John. The Gospel of Thomas is a collection of sayings of Jesus.
There are no stories about his birth or his life or even his death. There are only sayings attributed to Jesus. It is a gospel without any stories.

Can you imagine what the Christian church would be today if the only gospel we had did not tell any of the stories of Jesus ministry, of his life and death? For one thing there would be no Christmas, no Easter, no Good Friday, no Pentecost. We are creatures who love stories. Look at the way we follow the political campaigns. We are fascinated by the life stories of many of the candidates and the unpredictable story of the political battle. When a preacher gives a sermon, she better have a story to tell, because people won’t listen for more than two minutes to ideas alone; ideas must be woven into stories. As interesting as the gospel of Thomas may be, it will never replace the Gospels of our New Testament, because we are wedded to the stories – stories of birth and death, the stories of healing, the sacred drama of Jesus going to Jerusalem, Cross and Resurrection. Yes, we want to know what Jesus said, but we also want to know the story.

Look with me at the gospel story for today. Matthew, chapter 7, starting with verse 9. Even though I am very familiar with this passage, I was amazed as I looked at it again and see how the gospel writer tells us a story within a story within a story within a story.

First Jesus calls a tax collector named Matthew away from his tax booth and recruits him to be one of his followers, even though tax collectors were the most despised of all people in the colonial Roman system. Along with Matthew the tax collector, Jesus goes into a house full of other disreputable people, where he proceeds to share a meal.

Nearby some of the most serious religious people of the day, members of the Pharisee party, are observing Jesus and the company he is keeping; not surprisingly, they turned to Jesus’ followers and they say: “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” A perfectly good question. Jesus overhears this question and answers it: My purpose, he says, is not to seek the righteous but the sinners; my purpose is to heal the sick, not to go to those who have no need of healing.

Then he tells them – the ones who are questioning his judgment – “Go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy not sacrifice.’ ” He is quoting the Hebrew Bible where God says, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” But he’s not just quoting the Bible to make his point, he is saying, “go and learn what this means.”

Is he telling them to go back and study their Bibles? Or is he saying to them, “Go and learn from life what this means – that God wants from you not that you do rituals that please God – that you sacrifice the right things at the altar – God wants you to live as one who practices mercy.”

Go and learn what mercy means.

Go and learn what forgiveness means.

Go and learn what it means to stop judging everyone else.

Go and learn what it means to pursue nonviolent, non-attacking solutions to problems.

I got a call from my daughter on Friday. She just got back from work at the junior high school in New Orleans where she is an assistant principal. She said, “ We had a big fight here today, and it ended up with the police coming and arresting two 15-year-old girls. Dad, how do I tell kids not to fight, when their parents are telling them never backed down, always hit back harder than you got hit, and never walk away from a fight? The parents tell me, I teach my child to fight back, and I say to the parents, You are teaching your child how to get to jail.’ ”

Go and learn what this means, “I desire mercy not sacrifice.” Go and actually practice and learn ways of dealing with other human beings that are not based upon win and lose, battling it out, hurt for hurt.

I told my daughter that when I was a boy there was a fair amount of fighting in my neighborhood; certainly the boys had to have a strategy for dealing with physical intimidation. It was very hard for me, because my parents taught me to turn the other cheek. “Go out and play, little Christian boy, and if they smack you upside-the-head, don’t hit back.” I have to tell you that turning the other cheek did not work very well. Being gentle and merciful with one’s enemies is not a complete strategy. Eventually I decided that I had to break the rules my parents set, and for a period of time I was a fighter; I had maybe three good fights, but that strategy did not work either. Fighting led to physical injury, emotional injury, rage and shame. Fighting was a terrible experience, a very scary experience.

Part of my lifelong interest in mediation and conflict resolution goes back to those boyhood days. Turning the other cheek did not work; and striking back in anger did not work. We have to go and learn what it means to be merciful; we have to go and learn what it means to resolve conflict peacefully; we need to develop skills and strategies that enable us to be loving and live faithfully as Christian people without allowing ourselves simply to be walked over or without allowing ourselves to be drawn into emotional or physical violence. It’s something we have to practice and fail and keep practicing. That’s what learning is all about: being willing to try, to experiment, and develop new skills and capacities.

So here’s our instruction from Jesus: “Go and learn what this means, I desire mercy not sacrifice.”

Back to our gospel story – our story within the story within the story within the story: While Jesus is in the give-and-take of the questioning and answering at the dinner table with all the best sinners in town, the story takes a twist. The dinner is interrupted by one of the synagogue leaders whose child is dead or dying; this poor desperate father falls at Jesus feet and begs for him to do something for his child. So now the time for talking and arguing is interrupted by human need. Jesus breaks off the conversation and follows the man to his house.

But on the way to the house to deal with this emergency, Jesus is approached by a woman with chronic illness who has suffered for twelve years. She touches the fringe of his garment. The stage is now filling up with characters: disciples and Pharisees, tax collectors and sinners, a grieving father, and now a woman desperate and bleeding; the stories of all of these lives are interacting and interwoven. On the way to minister to this family and to the child who is ill, Jesus turns to this ailing woman and says to her, “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.” And she was healed.

He then proceeds to the home of the synagogue leader. Before they arrive at the house, they hear music. (You knew there had to be some connection to music in today’s message on Choir Recognition Sunday.) The flutes are playing, and the wailing has begun. It is the wailing of the professional wailers with their high pitched piercing wails, and there is the sobbing and raw shrieks of grief coming from mother and aunts and uncles. The death of a child evokes such primal sorrow; words cannot go there – only tears and cries can express the condition of the heart, and only music can pierce the heart.

At the beginning of the story Jesus said that he had come to heal the sick, not those who are well; at that time he was not talking about physical illness; he was talking about spiritual illness, but now he is confronted with a dying child, and he becomes a healer of the body. But first he tells the musicians to go away. It is very unfortunate that on choir recognition Sunday Jesus tells the musicians to go away. It’s not that Jesus has anything against musicians. It’s just that these musicians are not needed; these musicians who have converged upon this house where death has visited; these are the musicians who play for the dead and the grieving; they are doing their thing, they are wailing away mournfully on their flutes. They are not necessary this day.

Jesus tells them, “Go away; for the girl is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him. But when the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took her by the hand, and the girl got up. He sends the musicians away, but my guess is that another group of musicians were on the scene in no time, the kind of musicians who performed at weddings and banquets with their stringed instruments and tambourines. The way I picture it: once the word gets out that the child is alive, the music will start up again, the music of ecstasy and celebration.

So we have today in just a few verses of Scripture some important teachings of Jesus:
“I have come to heal those who are sick up those are well.”
“Go and learn what this means: I desire mercy not sacrifice.”

With these teachings comes a story within a story within a story within a story within a story. The story of a little girl dying, wrapped in the story of her family’s grief, folded into the story of an older woman with chronic health problems, folded into the story of Jesus teaching at the dinner table surrounded by sinners, folded into the story of Jesus and his travels and his teaching and the calling of women and men to follow him.

At wedding ceremonies I invite the bride and groom to contemplate their stories – how the stories of their individual lives came together to form a new and evolving story of their life together, and how preceding their individual life stories are the stories of their ancestors: their parents or grandparents and the generations before them, and how that family story is set in the larger history of the peoples and the nations from whom their ancestors came, and how all this human story this human history is set within the larger story of this ancient Earth and this yet more ancient cosmos. A human being is a living story. It is an awesome thing to contemplate human history and the history of our own time, and the billions of human dramas that are woven together upon this planet earth.

I am most pleased that those Egyptian farmers dug up the gospel of Thomas. It is a fascinating book. I am grateful, though, that our ancestors preserved not only the words of Jesus, but that they remembered and passed along the story. Being a Christian means finding yourself in the story, finding yourself on the sea of Galilee and its sudden storms; finding yourself on the road looking for meaning and companionship, finding yourself in Jesus’ company, as one sinner among others, seeing yourself as one who comes to be healed, and hearing the challenge to go and learn.

Whether you are five years old or ninety-five, Jesus keeps sending us out with that message:
go and learn how to do this thing called life in a better way, with greater love, greater compassion, greater strength, and greater creativity and wisdom.

So be it.
Shalom.

What would it be like suddenly to lose your memory? It is a frightening thought, because it is hard to separate who we are from the memories that we have. In critical ways our memories makes us who we are. Many of us have gone through the experience with loved ones who have gradually lost their memory. When someone loses their memories, those around them have to support them and surround them with their memories.

Research on the human brain has advanced to the stage where scientists have been able to identify a specific spot in a specific cell in the brain that constitutes a specific memory. How the mind stores all these memories and integrates all these memories is still quite unknown.

The core of the Hebrew Bible is the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, sometimes referred to as the Books of the Law or the Books of Moses. The Torah tells of the creation of the cosmos and the beginnings of life. It tells of the origins of humanity, the origins of the Jewish people and their early history up until the time they entered the promised land, and it sets forth the laws by which the people Israel are to live.

If you could take those books of the Torah: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, those first five books of our Bible, and distill them into one word, I suggest that the one word would be, “Remember.”

Remember your Creator.

Remember your ancestors.

Remember where you have come from.

Remember that you were at one time slaves in Egypt and victims of oppression, so act with justice, and do not oppress one another.

Remember that you were once a wandering people who had no home, so welcome and honor the stranger and the homeless among you.

Remember that you were once hungry in the wilderness, so provide for the poor among you.

Remember to live by the teachings and commandments of God in all things.

It is customary in Jewish homes to have Mezuzahs at the entrances to the home. A mezuzah is a small box containing a paper on which several passages of Torah are written. This custom comes from the last book of the Torah, the book of Deuteronomy, where the Lord instructs the people to remember the teachings and commandments given to them through Moses.

We read in Deuteronomy 11:

18] “You shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul; and you shall bind them as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.
[19] And you shall teach them to your children, talking of them when you are sitting in your house, and when you are walking by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.
[20] And you shall write them upon the doorposts of your house and upon your gates,
[21] that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land which the LORD swore to your fathers to give them, as long as the heavens are above the earth.

Remember, remember, remember! Ultra-Orthodox Jews not only have a mezuzah at every doorway; the males strap a small Torah scroll to their foreheads in literal obedience to Deuteronomy 11:18. Throughout the Hebrew Bible the word rings out over and over: remember.

Later in Jewish history, when the Jews were ripped out of their homeland and hauled off in captivity to a foreign land, in the city of Babylon, they vowed to remember Jerusalem.

(Psalm 137): If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither.
Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy!

For the Jews the most important thing always is: remember, remember, remember. In the church our most important sacrament, our most important ritual, is the Lord’s Supper, the sacrament of communion. At the heart of the Lord’s Supper is the act of remembering, breaking the bread, and sharing the cup, and hearing Jesus’ words, “Do this in remembrance of me.”

At the heart of the Sabbath both for Jews and for Christians is the act of remembering. Most of us rush through the events of the week; the Sabbath is a time when we pause; we stop from all that racing of our bodies and our minds, and we remember:

We remember that life is more than the hectic events of the moment.

We remember our Creator, the One from whom we have come and the One who is the ground of our being, the source of the love and the hope that sustains our lives.

On the Sabbath we remember that the most important things in life
are not necessarily the things we’ve been thinking about and worrying about.
On the Sabbath we invite the spirit of God to shift our focus back toward the things that really matter.

Remember, remember.
This is a very spiritual word: to remember. Our capacity to remember is the source of the deepest pleasures of life. We see a child, and we are reminded of our own childhood or our own children. We meet an old friend, and there is a shared awareness of all the memories that we hold in common. We sing a hymn in church, and it brings back memories of times gone by.

Then there are things we wish we did not remember: things in our own lives and things in human history. In Germany it is against the law to deny publicly that the Holocaust took place. In this country people have a constitutional right to say just about anything they want, but in Germany they have determined that remembering what was done to the Jews and others under Hitler is so important and so necessary to prevent anything like that from happening again, that they have made it illegal to attempt to stamp out this memory. It is a deeply painful thing for the people of Germany to remember the Holocaust, but they have resolved that this is something that they must never forget.

This Memorial Day brings for all of us painful memories. For some it brings memories so painful that most of us cannot begin to imagine: memories of actual killing and death. Memories of loved ones gone. There are monuments that mark the dead of war. On these monuments the names of the dead are chiseled sharply, precisely, in orderly rows. Military cemeteries are striking for their long precise rows of identical tombstones, chalky white in graceful lines against the green grass. These monuments and cemeteries present to our eyes the image of something orderly and complete. But in fact they represent chaos and catastrophe, tragedy and irreplaceable loss.

On this Memorial Day we have a sacred duty to remember and a painful duty to remember not only those who entered the misery of war long ago and whose names are chiseled on monuments, but to remember those who in this very moment are suffering wounds to the body, to the heart, and to the mind.

On this Memorial Day we have a sacred duty to see that those who were injured in war and are returning home mentally or physically broken have all the resources they and their families need to make a new beginning. The deficiencies in the medical and psychological resources offered to our veterans is scandalous. Can you imagine doing a tour of duty in Iraq and suffering posttraumatic stress syndrome and having to wait months and months for treatment? We may disagree deeply about the wisdom of the Iraq war and its continuance, but surely we can agree that those who served and suffered should have every opportunity to mend their bodies and souls.

The gift of memory is a wonderful and mysterious thing. We experience something, and later we can return to it in our imagination. How amazing.

Memory is at the heart of love and friendship, at the heart of worship and sacrament, at the heart of what it what it means to be a family or community or a nation. There are some people in this congregation who say to me every now and then, “I remember you and Mary Ellen every morning in my prayers.” It is a beautiful thing and a sacred thing to be remembered and to remember others.

So this day, in joyful remembrance of the gifts of God, the gift of human love and divine love, and the gift of Sabbath, and in painful remembrance of all who have suffered and are now suffering the violence and devastation of war, we give praise to God and offer our prayers for peace.

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

How many of you speak the English language with an accent?

So some of you think that you do; some of you apparently think that you don’t; and some of you are confused.

Actually this is a trick question.

There is only one place in the entire world where the English language is spoken without an accent. It is a village in upstate New York north of Schenectady named East Glenville. That is where I grew up. The people there speak the English language without an accent. I learned as a child that wherever I went: Pennsylvania, Canada, even other parts of New York State, people spoke English with an accent.
I thought it was strange that I had been born in the only place on earth where people did not have accents. To this day, when people say to me, “You’re from upstate, aren’t you? I can tell by your accent.” I correct them. I tell them, “Yes, I am from upstate New York, as you can tell by the fact that I do not have any accent whatsoever.”

Why is it that we think that everyone else has some sort of accent, when the truth is that we all speak with an accent; even if some of us do not realize that we do?

Christians traditionally regard the day of Pentecost as the day that the church began. The story is told by Luke, the author of the gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts in our New Testament. Pentecost is actually an ancient Hebrew harvest festival; it was on that festival day after the Passover festival when Jesus was killed, that the church received the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit came with a an odd sign. People from different nations, speaking in different languages, were able to understand one another.

(Acts 2) 1 When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place… 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. 5 Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. … the crowd… was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each.

In spite of their different dialects accents and even languages people were able to be understood by one another; so it was on the day that gave birth to the church.

The Christian Pentecost experience is one in which the barrier of language is broken – human beings are able to speak and be understood regardless of the language they were speaking. This mysterious sign was the first sign of the presence of the Holy Spirit in the church. How strange.

Our children attended public schools where there were children of many different ethnic backgrounds; many different languages were spoken in the homes of their classmates. One afternoon when our son, Thomas, was in the third grade he came home from school and reported on the events of the day. He said, “The teacher left the room for a while, and two children at my table got into a fight. One was shouting in Russian and the other child started shouting in Spanish. I learned a few Spanish words.” Hmmm… our son’s first language lesson: cursing in Russian and Spanish. I imagine that those two children had a pretty good idea of what they were saying to one another, despite the language difference. They were having a Pentecost experience

We are a Pentecost church. We all have accents – each of our accents is different – reflecting all the places we and our ancestors have been. How many here today grew up with English NOT your parents’ first language? As you see, we are indeed a Pentecost church – we are gathered from many nations, many regions, many different life experience. We are infants and octogenarians and even nonagenarian – we are female and male – we are different in so many ways – yet by the spirit of God among us we are one family with a hundred accents.

The world has been confronted in the last week with a dreadful spectacle: a natural disaster resulting in a human disaster of unimaginable magnitude and then a government preventing aid from reaching its own devastated population. Who can fathom such suffering and such evil?

When such events unfold even when they are on the opposite side of this planet from where we live, our own hearts are touched. Devastation strikes this place where probably none of us has ever been, and the ripple goes out across planet Earth –– electrons and microwave signals transmit news, photographs, sounds, and video imagery of human loss and suffering.

Across the networks of human communication – satellite and Internet phone and television – a part of the earth – a part of humanity – is struck; the world is affected, and the human family seeks to respond. For the church, from the perspective of Pentecost, this is an entirely natural thing. Because from the very birth of the church we have declared that the Holy Spirit breaks down the divisions between human beings; the Holy Spirit creates a universal community and inspires a universal compassion.

When tens of thousands of lives are swept away, extinguished – girls, boys, women, men, infants, great-grandparents, students, teachers, fishermen and their boats, farmers in their fields, students in their classrooms, so many people in the midst of the ordinary events of daily life, and so many other creatures, wild and tame – suddenly all this life swept away. Then one considers the conditions faced by the survivors. It is something that is very difficult to grasp, and something that is very difficult to come to terms with morally and spiritually.

While we are called by our church and by our own consciences to respond by acts of giving, there is also the matter of the heart – how does the heart take in such an immense tragedy?

My friends, rabbi Harold Swiss, died last year – he was a wonderful teacher –– of course the Jewish word Rabbi means teacher. I learned much from Rabbi Swiss about Jewish tradition and Jewish spirituality. One of the things that Rabbi Swiss taught me was how to be sad. That may sound odd, the idea that someone might have to teach us how to be sad. But think about the way you were brought up. Were you taught how to be sad? Did your parents or other adults around you express sadness with tears, with prayers, with gentle touch? Did they speak of their sadness, or did they conceal their sadness?

In your childhood, in times of hurt and loss and disaster did people steel themselves and give an outward image of composure and strength? When a child does not see the adults in their world expressing sadness, they may not learn how to be sad. We may need to be taught later in life how to be sad.

Rabbi Swiss was a man who could sparkle with laughter one moment and weep the next; he had no inhibitions about expressing either joy or sadness. And when he sang the Jewish prayers or sang the Torah or the psalms, he poured all the pain of his life as well as the a sweetness of life into it; he did not hold anything back.

So I, as a 50-something white Anglo-Saxon male Christian clergyman (with no accent at all), who grew up in the grin-and-bear-it-stiff- upper-lip approach to life’s troubles, was taught by an aging Jew (with a rich lower East side accent) how to be sad.

In the USA, we are a can-do people; we are an optimistic culture. In our religion the idea has crept in that if you are spiritual, you are always happy. If you are spiritual, you are always come contented. A Christian is always positive and upbeat.

Where did we get this idea? The rabbis, the prophets, and Jesus himself – they teach us to sing with joyful hearts, and they teach us also that there are times when it is right to be sad, to lament, to acknowledge that one’s heart is breaking.

There is a time to sing alleluia! And there is and to cry out with the voice of the psalms:
“O my God, I cry by day, but thou dost not answer; and by night, but find no rest.”

A couple months ago as part of our Lenten program many of us heard Rev. Andie Raynor read from the book that she will soon have published. It was a book that started to be an autobiographical narratives weaving together two themes: Andie’s work as a hospice chaplain and her experience as a morgue chaplain at Ground Zero after 9/11. The writing project was interrupted when she got cancer. When she emerged form her treatments and was well enough to resume work on the book, the book evolved into a narrative weaving together those two strands and adding a third: her own personal journey of sickness and healing.

Andie is a wonderfully gifted speaker and writer; listening to her you can be distracted by the artistry of her words. One of the things that was so moving about listening to her, and one of the reasons I’m looking forward to this book getting into print, is the way in which she has been able to enter completely into situations of terrible pain – terrible loss and suffering – without dressing it up and making it look pretty, and at the same time finding dignity, and love, and tears, and even humor in the midst of pain.

This book will help people to take their life experience as it is; it will help people to take it as it comes, and let the sadness be truly sad, and let the happiness be truly happy, and not feel they have to force their emotions through some preset formula that says, “This is the way I should always feel.”

Pentecost is about overcoming barriers so that we can hear one another and enter into one another’s experience. Pentecost is about the compassion that we feel as human beings for one another, even for people we have never met and will never know personally. Pentecost is about people with all their differences being able to come together in a common spirit.

Pentecost is the sweetness of fellowship in Christ, the pleasure of encountering people with different accents and different life experiences and connecting deeply, loving and being loved with that love Scriptures call agape, that love of sister and brother in Christ.

Pentecost is deep sorrow at the staggering suffering of the people of Burma (and now also China), and Pentecost is the universal compassion that brings forth actions to try to ease that suffering.

Pentecost is a person standing in the sanctuary singing praise to God and offering prayers Sunday after Sunday for sixty or seventy years worshiping along side a child who is just learning to read, or beside someone who is new in the neighborhood, or someone just experiencing Christian worship and fellowship for the first time –– and being there as equals, as one body in Christ.

In a world that stresses human differences and divisions, here we celebrate the Holy Spirit that binds us together, and the Holy Spirit’s gifts of communication and reconciliation and compassion.

Blessings to all of you.
Blessings to mothers and families on this Mother’s Day.
May there be a Pentecost spirit be in your home and with you and your kin – sometimes those we are closest to we can be farthest away from.

May God bless and strengthen every bond of family and friendship on this Pentecost Mother’s Day.

Grace and peace to you.

Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you–that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.

Luke 24:44-58

As we prepare for the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper today, I wish to focus our hearts and minds on Jesus’ message of forgiveness.

On the cover of the bulletin today there is a photograph of a statue. There is quite a story to this particular statue.

On November 14, 1940, more than five hundred bombers of the Luftwaffe, the German Air Force, converged on Coventry England and unleashed a devastating attack. Among the casualties of the Coventry raid was the ancient cathedral, St. Michael’s, then some five hundred years old, and a glorious thing it was. When the flames finally subsided only a portion of the outer shell of the cathedral remained. The walls have been preserved; the space that was the great sanctuary is now open to the sky.

In 1995 at the 50th anniversary of the conclusion of the second world war a 90-year-old sculptor, Josefina de Vasconcellos, completed the statue which is named, The Statue of Reconciliation, which was installed at the ruins of Coventry Cathedral. Initially two castings were made of the statue. The second was donated to the Peace Garden at Hiroshima at the sight of the nuclear bomb blast.

Later an additional copy of the statue was placed at the site of the Berlin wall. Another copy of the statue was donated to the people of Belfast, Northern Ireland as a sign of hope for reconciliation between Protestants and Catholics. It is a statue that continues to multiply.

The statues bear the following inscription: “These sculptures remind us that human dignity and love will triumph over disaster and bring nations together in respect and peace.”

We read in the gospel of Luke that when Jesus appeared to his disciples after he was risen from the dead:

…he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.

At the heart of the gospel message – at the heart of the Easter faith of the Christian people – is the message of forgiveness. Christ tells his disciples to practice and to proclaim forgiveness. To practice and to proclaim forgiveness and to pursue reconciliation.

When there has been violence between people and nations; when there have been deep injuries to body or soul or both; when human beings in their humanness have deeply injured others, how do wounded hearts and souls overcome the chasm of hurt and pain and take steps toward forgiveness and reconciliation? Jesus does not let us slide away from this question. He puts forgiveness and reconciliation right at the center of his way of life.

In an article entitled, Forgiveness as a Gift to Yourself , Joyce and Barry Vissel, describe a woman named Betty who struggled to forgive her father for abusive treatment of her as a child. This is a passage from Betty’s story:

Betty was having a particularly hard time forgiving her father…… She had fallen into blaming her father for the ways her life was not working. True, her father had acted wrongly, yet continuing to hate him was causing much unhappiness in Betty’s life.

I asked her to find a picture of her father as a young child and put it in a place where she could see it often. She found a photo of him taken at age six. As she more and more studied the photo, she began to see the sadness and loneliness in his eyes. He himself was abused as a child. Betty was able to open her heart to her father as a little boy. She felt like reaching out and holding him in her arms.

A month later, as her next step, she found a photo of him at ten years old. His eyes were still full of sadness and loneliness, but now he was starting to try to hide his pain. Betty was again able to feel compassion for him as an older child. A photo of her father as a teen showed an unhappy youth trying to act tough to further cover up the pain inside.

Through studying these photos, Betty was able to feel compassion for her father’s childhood. This compassion did not make her father’s actions right, but Betty could now understand the pain in her father that had led him to pass the abuse to another generation. Armed with this understanding, she was able to reach out in love to the sad little boy still within her father. Through feeling compassion, Betty’s heart was freed of the bitterness and hatred she had carried for most of her adult life. Her health improved, she felt years younger and found she had more love to give to her husband and children. Forgiveness of her father was a gift she had thus given to herself.
__________

Forgiveness is a living process. It is usually not an easy process. Old photographs became the path to a great unburdening for Betty. How do you forgive? How have you learned to work through your personal injuries in ways that liberate you from the burdens of resentment and guilt?

Forgiveness is interactive; forgiveness is relational: remember the words Jesus taught us when he said, “Pray this way…. forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” How do we bring the grace of forgiveness into relationships strained by injury and misunderstanding? That’s a big question: how do we bring forgiveness into the natural flow of life? We do it when we stop burying pain and injury and resentment. It takes courage to bring things out into the open that are painful to hold. It takes guts to acknowledge to ourselves and to others where we have caused harm and where we feel we have received harm, and to seek forgiveness and reconciliation.

This takes courage. And it takes faith; faith to know that whenever human beings take steps toward reconciliation and forgiveness, they will find the blessing of God. For this is holy work.

An extraordinary thing happened this year in Australia. It was the culmination of decades of soul-searching on the part of the white people of Australia. In February Prime Minister of Australia delivered a formal proclamation of apology to the aboriginal peoples of that continent. It was part of a national campaign that went under the slogan: We Say Sorry.

In Australia they refer to the Stolen Generations. The policy of the Australian government from 1910 to 1970 was to breed out of existence the aboriginal peoples. Children were taken from their parents, literally stolen. Children were classified based upon how dark or light skinned they were. Languages and customs of the aboriginal peoples were suppressed. It was a slow genocide.
In February of this year the Prime Minister of Australia spoke an apology on behalf of the nation.
Skywriting planes spell the words, “We say sorry,” in the sky.
Thousands of people wore T-shirts with one word on it: sorry.
A national educational campaign was launched to bring to light the ugly history of what had been done to the aboriginal people.

Can you undo centuries of injustice with the slogan, a speech, a T-shirt, or even a history course? Of course not, but acknowledging the past opening up the truth of history, and making apologies; these things do matter, and they are all steps in a long process of repentance and forgiveness that open up a hope of reconciliation.

The challenge of forgiveness and reconciliation is a universal challenge. It is as near to us as our husband or wife or child – it is as near to us as our relationships one with another in the life of the church. It is present wherever human beings live and work together and inevitably experience injury and misunderstanding. Wherever there is injury and misunderstanding there is the opportunity for deeper injury and deeper misunderstanding and also the possibility for reconciliation, growth, and healing.

I believe that someday, I cannot say when – it may be ten years from now or twenty or more – but I believe that someday the United Methodist Church will issue a proclamation and say “We are sorry — we are sorry to gay and lesbian people. We say sorry for the pain, the exclusion, the harshness and the prejudice with which we have treated you.” Despite the failure of the recently concluded General Conference of the UMC to reverse its decades of active discrimination against LGBT people, I believe the day will come when the church will make an apology, and I find hope in believing that.

In our liturgy every Sunday we share signs of the peace of Christ. This is an ancient custom going back to the very beginnings of the Christian Church. When we share the peace of Christ it is not the same thing as saying, “Hello, how are you?” Exchanging the peace is a prerequisite, a condition, for worship. Exchanging signs of peace is a way we prepare ourselves for the sacrament of communion.

If I exchanged the sign of peace with my sister or brother, it means I have made a commitment to live in a spirit of peace and reconciliation with my sister or brother. Exchanging signs of peace is not a courtesy; it is a sacred commitment to live together in the spirit of peace and to do whatever is necessary to overcome barriers between us.

There is a question that we all ask ourselves.
It’s a question you may be asking yourself right now.
The question is: “Is it worth it?” Sure, forgiveness and reconciliation are fine sounding words and honorable principles, but for me, for now, in my situation, is it worth the risk? Is it worth the discomfort? Is it worth dealing with all the feelings that can arise when human beings try to work things out?

Is reconciliation worth all the trouble it takes?

We all ask ourselves that question.

Here, there can be only one answer. The answer is, “yes.” The answer is yes, yes, emphatically yes!

It is worth whatever it takes for human beings to come together and true shalom, in the peace of God.

Is it worth it: Yes!

So be it.

Shalom, salaam, grace and peace to you.

I know that you are all grouchy this morning; you are in a bad mood because you lost that hour to daylight savings time. So I have decided to give you back one half hour of your lost time . I’m going to pronounce the benediction and conclude the service right now; we will even skip the organ postlude .
“Go forth into the world in peace…”
Just kidding! You didn’t think you were going to get off that easy, did you?

The title of my message today is, “At Jesus’ feet.” Today the message is all about feet. Before we begin, wiggle your toes. Think about your feet. Are they tired? Are they sore? Think of all the places they have taken you. Feet.

If you are currently employed or have ever held a job, I ask you to imagine that you walk into your place of employment, you ring a bell; you call everybody together and you declare:
“Hey, everybody, listen up. Come on, all of you. Yes, I want the boss out here. The secretaries, the accountants, the custodial staff, the tech staff, yes – you computer guys, I want you out here, too. Everybody, come on, listen up!
I want you all to know who I am.
I want you to know what makes me tick.
I want you to know what my life feels like from the inside.
I want to share with you my deepest thoughts.
I want to tell you what scares me.
I want you to know where it hurts.
I want you to know my greatest hopes and dreams.
I want you to know me as I truly am. And I want you to love me.”

How would that be?

I suspect that in most cases you would be escorted down the hall to the human relations department for emergency counseling, and your job would be suddenly outsourced.

Where can we open our souls in utter trust, lay bare our deepest needs and hurts and wants, and bring forth all that is within us: love and fear, soaring dreams and hidden shame? In healthy and loving relationships, with people we can trust, we can experience to some extent that total opening of ourselves. In our life together in the church as we grow in trust with one another, we can find a place to let ourselves be known and to let ourselves be loved. But ultimately, it is only before God that we can be truly and nakedly open.

I’m going to lead you on a brief biblical journey today. I am going to take you through a series of gospel passages which have one thing in common: they all take place at the feet of Jesus. At the feet of Jesus, people experience a total trust, that enables them to be entirely honest and free. We are going to make for stops today on our biblical journey.

First stop:
The gospel lesson today from the 12th chapter of John. This takes us to the home of Lazarus and Mary and Martha, where we find Mary at Jesus’ feet.

What is she doing there? What she’s doing there is – for lack of a better word – gross. She is wiping his feet with her hair. And she is wasting a lot of money. She is using up a whole jar of terribly expensive ointment. She’s rubbing the ointment into his feet with her hair. Martha, her sister, is doing the right, proper, and correctly female thing: she is cooking and serving food to Jesus and the other guests.

We read:
John 12:1 Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. 12:2 There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. 12:3 Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

It is an image of total self giving, the giving of something valuable in a material sense and also the giving of herself in an extreme act of love and devotion.

Not everyone is impressed. Judas criticizes her, scolds her, says to her, “Why are you wasting this valuable ointment?” He pretends that his concern is practical and philanthropic, that he would have given the money to the poor, but this we know is only an excuse to cover his own greed. Jesus addresses the critic and defends Mary: “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial.” With these words we are reminded that what Mary is doing is an outpouring of deep feeling; she is grieving; she is anticipating Jesus’ death. Jesus reminds them of this with his concluding words in this story: “You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”

That is the first stop on our biblical journey today.
In fact that story of Mary wiping Jesus the with the ointment is the third story in a trilogy. So now we turn to parts one and two of the trilogy of the women at Jesus’ feet. If you are trying to follow along in your Bibles, we are turning now to Luke chapter 7 beginning with verse 36. Jesus enters the home of Simon the Pharisee.
While he is having a meal with Simon and Simon’s male friends – all respectable and honorable men – into the room comes “a woman in the city who was a sinner.” It does not take too much imagination to conclude what kind of career this woman has pursued.

She also has a jar of ointment, just as Mary had a jar of ointment. A precious and expensive ointment – and this time the container holding the ointment is equally valuable, for it is an alabaster flask. She falls to Jesus’ feet and like Mary, she anoints his feet with the ointment and wipes his feet with her hair. Also she is weeping, weeping so heavily that she wets his feet with her tears, and she wipes his feet with the ointment and her own tears and kisses them. As she does this, once again, we hear the voice of criticism and complaint. “If he knew what kind of woman this was, he would never allow her to touch his feet in this disgusting way.”

Do you see the pattern? A woman is that Jesus feet, and she is criticized for what she is doing. Once again Jesus defends the woman at his feet and answers her critics: “Simon, ‘Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven;
as she has shown great love.”

So you see the pattern? A woman at Jesus feet is doing something out of the ordinary, breaking some social conventions; she is criticized by men, and she is defended by Jesus.

The second story in the trilogy is found in the 10th chapter of the Gospel of Luke beginning the verse 38. Here also Jesus is in the home of Mary and Martha. Once again Mary is at Jesus feet.

Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. By now you know the pattern, so you know that someone is going to criticize Mary for being at Jesus feet. Sure enough, we read:

But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, ‘‘Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.’’ As we expect, Jesus speaks in Mary’s defense: ‘‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one.
Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.’’

Important things happen at Jesus’ feet. People pour their hearts out at Jesus feet;
they pour out their tears; they set aside their inhibitions; they get past their self-consciousness. At Jesus feet people become utterly and sometimes shockingly real.
People break the rules that Jesus’ feet. At Jesus’ feet social conventions get turned upside down. Women assert themselves at Jesus feet – they get criticized by men and by other women for not being proper women – but Jesus defends them.

Women learn at Jesus feet; they draw wisdom that Jesus feet, they claim their minds and the equality of their minds in a man’s world, at Jesus feet. At Jesus feet extravagant gifts are given without the usual mental reservations. The alabaster jar is opened at Jesus’ feet and drained to the bottom. At Jesus feet, people put their calculators aside; they to put aside their ordinary financial calculations, their tax breaks, their careful retirement planning – at Jesus feet people give joyfully and extravagantly.

Judas objects to extravagant giving. Isn’t it odd that Judas was given control of the purse for the disciples of Jesus? Why was the least trustworthy person given the cash? Keeping the cash and fretting over the financial resources of their group – was that part of the reason that Judas lost his way? Money can do that. Did he become too occupied with the purse and the problems and the responsibility of paying for things? Judas in the end was not able to be at Jesus’ feet. He could only criticize the one was.

Powerful and important things happened at Jesus’ feet. Things happen that Jesus’ feet that define a person’s life. People do strange things that Jesus’ feet. Just before his death Jesus himself did a strange thing. We read of it in the 13th chapter of the Gospel of John. There we read how Jesus rose from the table with his disciples,
removed his clothing, wrapped a towel around himself and knelt nearly naked
on the floor and washed the disciples feet.

By now we know that in the Gospels, whenever someone goes down to the floor and gets involved with feet, something very important is happening, and there is going to be an argument. Sure enough, Jesus’ disciples object almost violently to having Jesus wash their feet. Peter said, “You will never wash my feet!” Jesus answered: “Unless I wash your feet, you can have no share in me.”

When he had washed their feet, Jesus told them to do for one another as he had done for them, to wash one another’s feet. So our biblical tour at Jesus’ feet ends with Jesus now at the feet of the disciples; and in so far as we are invited to be disciples, the biblical journey ends with Jesus at our feet; Jesus who washes our feet, Jesus who invites us to wash one another’s feet.

With all these feet today, I almost feel like I’m at the New York City Marathon today. If you have ever stood up close at the Marathon, you know how amazing it is to see all the thousands and thousands of feet going by. I have talked about a lot of feet this morning. On holy Thursday there is an ancient Christian tradition of washing feet. I have found it is very difficult to get volunteers for foot washing, even though to me it is one of the most meaningful and powerful of all the rituals of the church. There is something so holy about seeing a row of bare feet:
the foot of a child, the foot of an elder,
female feet and male feet,
skinny feet and broad feet,
brand-new feet, all straight and sleek,
feet and toes twisted with arthritis.
In the washing of feet we encounter each other’s humanity.
There is also an amazing sense of comfort and healing human contact
in having someone wash your feet.
It makes you realize why increasingly even men are going for pedicures.

I do not recommend that you go into work tomorrow and say:
“Hey, everybody, listen up. Come on all of you. Yes I want the boss out here. The secretaries, the accountants, the custodial staff, the tech staff, yes you computer guys, I want you out here, too. Everybody, come on, listen up! I want you all to know who I am. I want you to know what makes me tick. I want you to know what my life feels like from the inside. I want to share with you my deepest thoughts. I want to tell you what scares me. I want you to know where it hurts. I want you to know my greatest hopes and dreams. I want you to know me as I truly am. And I want you to love me.”

But I do strongly recommend that you go to Jesus’ feet; that you allow yourself, before God, to be utterly, nakedly, transparently known. And as sisters and brothers in Christ, as we walk together, as we learn to be more authentic with one another, and as we grow in our trust of one another, we will come to share more of ourselves, our hurts and our hopes.

Together at Jesus’ feet we will learn to let go of our fears
and let God use our lives and our gifts extravagantly.
And joyfully.

Shalom, salaam, grace and peace to you.