Monday, March 25, 2024

Good Friday and The Easter Paradox

 Friends,  

This Saturday (5:00PM) and Sunday (9:00 and 10:30AM), it is guaranteed that you will hear the best sermon ever (by someone not named Jesus.) It feels immodest to put it out there like that, but it’s true. 

 

Ah, Good Friday. What an odd adjective for such a tragic day. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “The earliest known use of ‘guode Friday’ is found in The South English Legendary, a text from around 1290. There are various explanations why “good” is used for such an awful event, none of which is entirely convincing. It is certainly a matter of perspective. On that fateful day itself, it is hard to imagine anything good about it. But, from the hindsight of the resurrection, what that death accomplished ended up being salvation itself. Keep that in mind: Something tragic in itself can, in fact, be something salvific by God’s grace. I’m going to coin a term for it here: “The Easter Paradox.” 

 

“The Easter Paradox” may be the best way we have for looking at Judas and his betrayal. The motivation of Judas’ act is described in different ways among the gospels. One minute he looks like a cad from the start, dipping his hand into the treasury instead of keeping it as he should. Jesus even tells him that it would have been better if he had never been born – think about how awful that idea is. On the other hand, there is a kind of destiny to what Judas is doing, with his betrayal as one of those “it is necessary” kinds of events. One might even think that Judas was zealously trying to kick this Reign of God movement into high gear, after such a glorious entry into Jerusalem. And, by no means was he the only disciple who thought Jesus should become the king by some way other than death. They all thought that. In “The Easter Paradox,” what Judas deigned to do – out of zeal or perfidy – was what needed to happen. 

 

“The Easter Paradox” is evident in Jesus’ prayer in the garden also. Jesus prays repeatedly that, if it were possible, he be spared of what lay ahead. But, in the end, he relented his will to God’s will saying – as we are supposed to pray – “your will be done.” Karl Barth notes that in this prayer, what Jesus’ enemies want is the same as what God wants. In “The Easter Paradox,” God can use even the evil intentions of Jesus’ enemies to bring about something good. 

 

Additionally, “The Easter Paradox” is evident in the words of the High Priest Caiaphas, who accidentally prophesied when he said, “It is better for one man to die than for the whole nation to suffer.” What Caiaphas was reckoning is the kind of scapegoating mechanism that leaders have followed for centuries. The best way to keep the peace is to find a common scapegoat that we can all despise and get rid of together. It was why Native American, then African Americans, then Japanese Americans, then Muslim Americans were so easily dehumanized and mistreated legally. It’s still being done when preachers rail on and on about the destructive power of transgender children, or politicians stir up their base by blaming all our societal ills on immigrants. When Caiaphas invoked the age-old scapegoating song, that too became something that God was able to make into an Easter miracle. 

 

When all these folks were participating in the death of Jesus, they were culpable of doing evil. “The Easter Paradox” does not deny that. What “The Easter Paradox” does, however, is to ensure that denying, betraying, scapegoating, torturing, and so on do not have the last word. In a world like ours, it’s the only hope we have. 

 

That’s why you need to be in worship celebrating “The Easter Paradox” this weekend.

 

Mark of St. Mark

Friday, March 22, 2024

Our Journey with Holy Week

 Dear Friends, 

 

Four years ago, my Friday “Extra” going into Holy Week was all about how we were going to be able to observe Palm Sunday, Passion Sunday, and Maundy Thursday virtually. We invited people to come by the church and pick up palms, so they could wave them while watching worship from home. We invited people to come by the campus throughout the week, faces fully girded with masks and socially distant from others, to walk through the prayer stations that we set up in the Fellowship Hall. Oh, just reading that email makes me feel a variety of feelings – from admiring how quickly we were able to pivot from in person gatherings to virtual ways of being community, to feeling sick to my stomach over how weird and exhausting that whole process was. 

 

Three years ago, we were just starting to gather for in person worship again. We decided to start a couple of weeks before Easter, so we could figure out our process before the typical larger-than-usual Easter gatherings. That ended up being a wise move on our part because it was yet another learning curve that we figured out in conversation with other churches and with the confidence that we were all simply doing our best. So, in that year’s Friday missive I was walking us through the registration process, our masking policy, and our mantra of “respect the noodle!” as we tried to be distant and together at the same time. 

 

How lovely it is that this year we are not on those same tenterhooks. We are cautious and respectful of one another, yet we gather with very few of the precautions that were once our best attempt to love one another well. In that vein, I invite you to join us for our celebration of Palm and Passion stories this Saturday and Sunday. I invite you to join us for our Maundy Thursday service, at 6:30pm on March 28. We will remember the night Jesus shared his bread and wine with those who would betray, deny, and abandon him. And, of course, the weekend of March 30-31, join us for our Easter celebrations at 5:00pm on Saturday, then 9:00 or 10:30am on Sunday. I’ll speak more about those services in next week’s message. 

 

For now, let’s reflect on where the pandemic experience has left us. I am utterly grateful that there is not a raging pandemic ongoing that is keeping us in a mode of hyper-vigilance. Our hearts now are turned toward some of the effects of the pandemic – long COVID, people who lost loved ones and were unable to grieve or observe that loss in the ways that we ordinarily do, and the odd effects of that experience on our country politically. It seems that everyone was radicalized in some ways during the pandemic. Normal healthy questions about science and health were exaggerated into absolute dogmas and charges of conspiracy at every level. Typical political tensions were amplified into physical confrontations or family and friends who could no longer speak. I think we were as unprepared for the onslaught of social challenges as we were for the scientific and medical challenges of pandemic. And it has left many bruises on our national psyche. 

 

So, this weekend, we will see the whole gamut of communal experience in our biblical stories, from the defiant celebration of Jesus as a new king in broad daylight, to the shameful seizing of Jesus under the shadow of night. And we will look specifically at how “the crowd” is changed through this traumatic event. It is haunting. Yet it opens up some space for us to consider how even the most well-intended or zealously religious among us can be thrown into chaos when the center of our expectations breaks down. If I may, this weekend gives us a chance to celebrate the parade and grieve the charade.

 

Mark of St. Mark

 

 

Sunday, March 17, 2024

This and That

 Friends,  

I am happy to announce some upcoming Staff changes that will begin at St. Mark on April 1st. Judith Hug, our Business Manager, has been wearing two hats for quite some time, handling both the business management duties and overseeing the facility maintenance, upkeep, and replacement projects. And, as the campus has aged a bit, the facility duties have grown a lot. In addition, Judith is ready to begin the slow tread toward retirement, but neither she nor we are ready for her to take the plunge. So, starting April 1, Judith will become our Business Manager exclusively, at 75% time. This is a very happy outcome for all of us. Also starting April 1, Kathy Roberts, our Event Coordinator, will take on the additional role as our Facilities Manager. Kathy’s long experience in property management, as well as her service here as our Event Coordinator, makes this a very good hire for us. Please join me in offering thanks and congratulations to both Judith and Kathy as they embark on their newly revised roles in April. (And for anyone who is wondering, the job changes are lateral and will not add more costs to our budget. Another win!) 

 

Last weekend was full of joy. We welcomed three new members into our church family, two of whom were received by profession of faith with baptism. Also last weekend,14 of our youth and 8 adults attended a “Confirmation Retreat,” during which the youth studied and considered what it means to confirm the vows that we made on their behalf in their baptism. Eleven of them are submitting their Statements of Faith to the Session this weekend, as an indication of their desire to join the church. All in all, an extraordinary weekend. 

 

And we continue to have good things ahead. This weekend we will introduce some new musical instrumentation during our Saturday service, the handbell ensemble will play during our Sunday service, and our youth will provide a Pancake Breakfast fundraiser following Sunday worship. It is such a joy to see so much active and talented participation in our worship and community leadership. 

 

Throughout this week, we’ve been inviting you to hold this question: What challenge before me scares me the most? We might call that challenge our “cross to bear,” which raises a second question: “How would my life change if I saw that cross as an opportunity to serve God and extend God’s live to others?” Many people treat Christianity almost as an escape from life’s painful journeys and hard places. Our hope is that our Christianity provides the strength and courage to face those journeys with hope. 

 

As we continue our Lenten journey, let’s encounter those challenges together. 

 

Mark of St. Mark 

 

 

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Immigration and Learning

 Friends, 

 

You know it is electoral season when the word “immigration” is consistently followed by “crisis” and presumptive presidential candidates have competing photo opportunities on the border between the US and Mexico. 

 

Immigration is no small issue, whether it is electoral season or not, because immigrants have always been a part of the story of the US. However, it is and always has been a complex issue. In no particular order, let me name some aspects of that complexity. 

- The causes of immigration are often violent or heart-rendering. 

- Immigrants typically contribute to the US economy, as well as the economy of their home country through sending “remittances” to their families. 

- The Scriptures consistently call for the “alien” among us to be treated with dignity and justice, since the people of Israel had been immigrants once. 

- Immigration stories are often stories of injustice, mistreatment, and exploitation, whether by “coyotes” who transport them illegally across borders, or by employers who know that without proper papers an immigrant worker has little legal recourse against abuse. 

- Immigration can overwhelm some populations, especially border cities or border states. 

- The process for housing, settling, supporting, and tracking immigration is both labor- and money-intensive. 

 

This is not an exhaustive list by any means, but merely an attempt to appreciate how complex the immigration is. And it is complex long before it reaches the border itself. I’ve seen small communities in El Salvador gather around a family trying to dissuade their son from emigrating to the US because of gang violence. And I’ve seen those same communities gather around in support for a family when one of their members decided that emigrating was their only choice. At no point in the migrant journey is there simplicity.

 

That’s why I am wary of partisan political pronouncements about immigration. Campaign rhetoric always errs on the side of exaggeration, if not outright fabrication. Mario Cuomo once said that politicians campaign with poetry and govern with prose. That may be as generous of a description as one can muster. 

 

Many of us only have a small perspective of the realities of immigration and what is happening on our southern border. That’s why I encourage you to consider joining the CIEL US/Mexico Border trip that is coming up May 21-24. CIEL (Center for Experiential International Learning) is a tremendous organization that sponsors international trips with particular attention to helping us understand some of the complexities from many perspectives. I went with CIEL to North Ireland during my sabbatical and it was an amazing, educational event. Many of you are familiar with CIEL’s Executive Director, Daniel Wehrenfennig, from his work with The Olive Tree Initiative in the past. CIEL is also the organization that was going to organize our trip to Israel and Palestine, until the situation there became so catastrophic. 

 

If you are interested in joining the US/Mexico border trip, you can find more information here. While you are on the website, you may want to check out the page dedicated to honoring the work of Larry and Dulcie Kugelman in supporting CIEL here. Scroll through the photos and you will smile. 

 

I have just signed up for this trip and hope some of you will do so as well. I think it will give us some insight into the very complex matter that looms so large, in the electoral season and beyond.

 

Mark of St. Mark

Thursday, February 29, 2024

Bleep Day: An Ode of Celebration

 Today is, perhaps, one of my favorite religious holidays! (Notice the exclamation point, denoting the emotion often called "excitement." It is not an emotion that I visit often, so I wanted to point that out.) 

To repeat, today is, perhaps, one of my favorite religious holidays! (Again, exclamation, and this time a repetition. Wow. I must be stoked.) 

The reason I use the caveat "perhaps" is not because I doubt my own favoritisms of this day. It is because I am unaware of whether the PCUSA, NCC, RCC, DOC, AB, SBC, UMC, AG, PH, ECO, COE, COG, COGIC, or or any of the other acronymical religious bodies in the world have formally declared today to be a religious holiday. And, believe me, if the annual calendar we publish is any kind of witness, the Presbyterian Church (aforementioned PCUSA) seems anxious to grant every day some kind of religious significance.

Nonetheless, I think today - in its very essence - is a religious observation. Think of it, every four years, we dedicate a whole day to acknowledge that we don't really know what we're doing.

We use phrases like, "It's clear as day" and yet, what is a "day," exactly? We criticize people with the dismissive, "They don't know the time of day," and yet we can't find a way of making an annual calendar without having to add a once-in-every-four-years "day" to correct us and get us back on course. I'm convinced that the only reason we continue to arrogate the inane practice of "Daylight Savings Time" is to pretend that we are, somehow, the manufacturers of time itself, able to "change" it simply by pushing our clocks back or forth. Today is the antidote to such arrogance. For all of our pushing and pulling, for all of our so-called "Greenwich Mean Time," for all of our observatories and atomic clocks and nanosecond technologies - we have to dedicate a whole day, every four years, to correct ourselves. 

Does anyone really know what time it is? Does anyone really care? (I have long presumed that the answer to these two questions is "25 or 6 to 4" but there we go, making up numbers and pretending that they mean something again.) 

So, today, in solemn jubilation, I invite you to join me for a celebration of Bleep Day! It is a day when we correct the inadvertencies of life, the unintended consequences of our limited abilities, the 'oopsies', the 'dang its', and the 'whatevers!' Bring your slip ups, your oversights, and other raw human frailties and let's simply confess them together, laughing at how righteously we try to sally forth despite them, and and then let them slip away like the scapegoat from the village. 

Happy Bleep Day, you Bleepin' Bleepers

Friday, February 23, 2024

What's In a Name?

 Friends, 

 

This weekend we will continue our Lenten series, “Between Our Rock and Hard Places,” by focusing on two Scriptural texts where names are changed. As a way of focusing, the Community Engagement Commission put together a collection of questions that speak to our theme this week. The first few questions are, “What’s in a name? Where did my surname originate? Has it been changed over time? Where did my given name originate?” as well as, “How do my names really name me?

 

I’ll start the process by reflecting on my names, the origins of which sound biblical, but that may be as a much of an accident as anything else. The Welsh surname “Davis” is a derivative from “Davidson” which originally started out as “David’s Son.” I don’t know if there was a “David” whose son was declaimed as “Davidson” along the way, or whether it was an attempt by pietistic ancestors to locate themselves in the family of King David. Likewise, the name “Mark” has obvious biblical connotations and was one of the most popular names throughout the Roman Empire during New Testament times, since it is derived from Mars, the god of war. I was not named after either the gospel or the god. My mom told me that Mark was the name of a cute guy on a soap opera that she liked, so she gave it to me. (I missed my call to be melodramatic eye candy.) 

 

Some of my family names evolved slightly (Smythe to Smith, Adamson to Adams, etc.), but as far as I know none of them was changed because immigration officials couldn’t pronounce them, or to accommodate the prevailing WASP culture to which my families emigrated. When we ask, “What’s in a name,” we want to be sensitive to those whose names have been marred by inept officials, anglicized in order to mask ethnicity, or changed in other ways in order to “fit in.” We also want to be sensitive to those who have chosen to change their name. Some feel the need to distance themselves from a namesake, others change their name because they were assigned a gender at birth that does not fit their identity, and others change their name to reclaim a lost attachment. The question, “What’s in a name?” has many layers of stories.

 

The other questions that we developed for this week move toward the names that we receive along the way such as, “Do I have a nickname? Have I ever been called names that were unkind? Those kinds of questions can rake up pleasant or unpleasant memories, perhaps some of both. Nicknames can sometimes be endearing, but often are meant to tease someone’s physical features, abilities, or mannerisms. They may offer us a chance to live into, reject, endure, or ignore them, as far as we have a say in the matter. 

 

The final question we developed will be addressed explicitly in this week’s Scripture readings, “What is God’s name for me?” The short answer to that question is what we heard in the baptism story last week: “Beloved.” That’s your name. You are God’s beloved child. No one can take that away from you and trusting in that name can bring tremendous comfort and strength when we are tested. I hope you hear that often, if not in your own mind, at least when we speak to one another at St. Mark. In life and in death, you are God’s Beloved Child, because nothing imaginable can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. 

 

We will read two stories this week when God and Jesus give names. God renames Abram and Sarai, then Jesus renames Peter. The contrast between these two stories will show that naming not only has the capacity to lift up the lowly, it is also a powerful way of bringing down the haughty, by making something plain and bringing into words what might otherwise be hidden. In Peter’s case, it will be a moment of difficult truth. Oh, Simon Peter, bless his heart. And God be with those of us who find ourselves more like him than not. 

 

That’s a teaser, folks! See you in worship this weekend. And plan to stay for a while after worship for our Town Hall meeting featuring our Deacons! They are up to lots of good. 

 

Mark of St. Mark

Friday, February 16, 2024

The Disposition of Worship during Lent

 Friends, 

 

Last week’s worship services were, in my mind, an uplifting blend of celebration and discipleship. We sang songs of joy and we expressed our thanks for the prodigal abundance of creation. We offered ourselves in prayer and we marveled at the story of the Transfiguration. We even acknowledged the hoopla of an event that we make out of the Super Bowl, as we far surpassed our collections of goods and donations for the Souper Bowl of Sharing. What a joyous weekend it was, with costumes and masks adorning our praise and worship.  

 

Then, on Wednesday, our Ash Wednesday service was meaningful in a very different way. We approached the chancel three times. First, we remembered our baptism, after hearing the story of how the Christ stepped into the waters of baptism as a way of “fulfilling all righteousness.” Marvel about this: Jesus “fulfilled all righteousness” by being in solidarity with those of us who need repentance and transformation. Second, we experience the real presence of Christ in our collective spirits by celebrating the Lord’s Supper. We remember that grim occasion, when Jesus forthrightly says that one of the twelve would betray him, Simon would deny him, and all of them would abandon him. Even so, Jesus broke the bread and poured the cup and shared it with them saying, “This is my body, broken for you; this is my blood, shed for the forgiveness of many.” Finally, we acknowledged our mortality through receiving the imposition of ashes. From dust we have come, to dust we will go. I’ve always been struck as how I cannot see my own ashes, but when I see the ashes on my friends, when we wear those smudges together, I become more aware of my own mortality. 

 

“Celebration” is one voice of worship, but there are others. Lenten worship is often seen as “sad” or “morbid,” but I prefer to think of it as a season to be serious and reflective about the very thing we celebrate. The disciples came down from their bedazzling mountaintop experience that we celebrated last weekend, hearing about Jesus’ forthcoming death and resurrection. Likewise, we spend the season of Lent looking at what it means to follow the Christ who was celebrated but also betrayed, who was followed but also crucified, who taught and healed but was also killed and buried. The original twelve Apostles were all on board when Jesus was healing and liberating and feeding the crowds, but when Jesus began to speak about his forthcoming trial, they faltered. 

 

That’s the part of discipleship that we consider expressly during Lent. When we follow the one whose death was demanded by the crowds, who was stripped bare, and executed by the Empire, we are following one whose way of changing the world is not through popularity, wealth, or coercion. This shadow of the cross is what makes Jesus’ sermons different from a Ted Talk – it is a call to think differently, act differently, and be part of God’s Reign, based on an ethic of love and service. It can be liberating for those of us who are bound by the machinations of popularity, wealth, and coercion. But it can also be difficult to accept when we have been coopted by the machinations of popularity, wealth, and coercion. 

 

However you observe Lent – whether you shed a habit, take on a new practice, join some of our ongoing opportunities to live reflectively, or simply stop to look up with wonder each day – I pray that you will experience a deep sense of grace. Our Lenten practices do not manufacture grace, they offer us opportunities to recognize that grace that fills our lives. 

 

Mark of St. Mark