A sermon about false saviors and the election

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Grace, Mercy, and Peace to you from the Holy Trinity, Amen.

So, after a story about a widow giving all she had to the church, and a recent email from our wonderful volunteer finance director about money, you may be expecting a sermon about why it is important to give money to the church, and I’m not talking just a skimming off the top, but your whole paycheck.

Unfortunately, I am not here to do that today, in major part because I think that’s bad advice, and I can’t see Jesus advocating for unethical advice like “give us all your money, we don’t care if you die because of it.” I certainly would never walk up to someone struggling to feed their family and say to them that their lives would be blessed if they gave the church their last $20 instead of using it to buy some food. And I’m not interested in telling people who have enough money to support themselves to go ahead and put themselves in that position either.

And yet, that’s what happens lots of places every three years when the story of the Widow giving everything she has is read...a plea for giving.
Only...that discounts the first part of the story, about the scribes and their fancy robes and long prayers. And I have a suspicion about why preachers tend to ignore that part. It hits entirely too close to home...seeing as how we preachers tend to wear robes and say long prayers.

Jesus begins this story warning the disciples about spending all their time watching the people in power trying to find God in them. Which makes me think of the past two years, and specifically the past couple months, and especially Tuesday night. I was among the people glued to my TV and iPad watching numbers with such fervor that sometimes it felt like a drug addiction, and each time a state was called it was a fix...till the next one was called.

I got entirely wrapped up in who was going to become our next president that ultimately, I blacked out the rest of the things happening in my life and world for several hours on Tuesday night. I spent all my time focusing on the big wigs, who, while they were not wearing beautiful robes and saying long prayers, may just be our societies equivalent to the first century temple scribes. I think that is one of the biggest shames of this past election cycle, the night itself, and the aftermath. I was saddened as I watched facebook Tuesday night and even now, at the vitriol that was spewed out on both sides, including posts that claimed this election and its results were ordained by God.

We’ve tricked ourselves into thinking (whether we are aware of it or not) that whoever we elect is going to be our savior. And that our party is the one God likes the most. And fortunately for us, God is not a republican...or a democrat. And God isn’t particularly interested in us seeing those in power as God.

And so, Jesus gives us a different vision. Mark contrasts the images of the powerful people in the church and society and the systems in which they work, with a widow, the lowliest of women in the first century, who gives all she has.

I consider the widow’s position in this whole story to be one that makes me stop and reevaluate everything that tends to get spewed around in society. This woman in an act of piety, gives everything she has to a system that tended to be rather exclusive, and oppressive. The church then, much like today, was a system that let people down, that was part of the problem as much as it was part of the solution to problems, and existed as a broken institution. Yet, the church also helps people understand truth about their existence in the universe, and can be an intensely beautiful institution.

Which brings me back to last Tuesday. Perhaps our voting was a sign of the same story of the widow. Neither candidate was perfect. None of us is. But we choose to participate in a system where we believe the person we voted for was ultimately interested in the good of the people whom he was to serve. And regardless of who you voted for, I think it’s important to uphold in others that they made the choice that they felt was the most responsible to the most number of people. We know our elected officials will let us down, and we know that they will surprise us in all sorts of great ways too. Living in that tension is where the widow lived, being part of something that both helped, and harmed.

And whether we are talking about the church, or the political system we find ourselves in, or the corporate world where we try to do as much ethical work as possible within a capitalist society, we know that everything we do cannot compare to the ultimate healing which God brings to the picture.
God created a world that was whole, without scribes or widows, without republicans or democrats, without CEOs or occupiers. And God’s ultimate goal is reconciliation between groups opposed to each other and systems that simultaneously help and hurt the people involved in them. Through Christ’s teachings, we see a glimpse of this world. We see that there is nothing we can or cannot do that will separate us from Christ’s love. Giving all we have, or feeding ourselves will not separate us from the love of God. Voting for Romney or Obama or no one will not separate us from the love of God. Being gay and eating at Chic-fil-a will not separate us from God’s unconditional love.

See, it all begins with God and God’s unending and unconditional love for every single one of us gathered here today. It begins with God reconciling us to each other and to God through the death and resurrection of Christ who defeated death, defeated brokenness, and defeated the divides that we create in our lives. It is only through Christ that those divides can be healed, bringing together those who hurt us, and those who we hurt.

So even when we fall into our traps of superiority and brokenness, blaming the outcomes of a state election on God...or on the devil...we can still remember that if we are hurt by others or if we hurt others, that Christ brings us together into one community, gathered around one table, for the sake of the kingdom of God. The brokenness is ours...and wholeness is brought by living into that one table, that one community together, knowing that Christ is the head of the table...which is a party we can all get behind.

A sermon about Zombies and being unbound from death

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Grace, Mercy, and Peace to you from the Holy Trinity, Amen. 

I’ve been told recently that I’m foolish for considering the possibility of zombies.  I’m here to tell you, unequivocally, that they exist.  After all, isn’t that what John’s gospel is about today?  Jesus reanimating the dead?  A decomposing corpse creaking out of a darkened tomb surrounded by the stench of death.  

Yeah, Jesus recusitates a man, Lazarus, but we lose something if we are only focused on the physical reanimation of one man in the first century holy land.  Because it doesn’t really make a huge difference to us...that was 2 thousand years ago, and Jesus has not since raised anyone who has been dead for 4 days.  And the likelihood of more zombies running about is slim. 

And so, in lieu of reanimated corpses, we celebrate All Saints Day.  We remember those who have died and are resting in the grave waiting for that day when God raises all the living and dead into life int he kingdom of Heaven.  We remember, and we wait for the coming of Christ, to once again call people out of their tombs.  

 We all have experienced death in our own lives.  We all have loved ones we know who have died, and we all know how it feels to be bound up in our own bandages of death, beginning to rot:  Debt that consumes us, but we’re too afraid to let anyone know about it.  Addictions to substances, facebook, food, that control us and don’t let us live on our own.  Fear of people finding out that we’re not mentally healthy, yet knowing that we need to ask for help.  These are the types of things that feel like they are dead parts of ourselves that we have to drag around with us, weighing on our ability to fully experience life.  

And it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that if we just get one part of our life figured out and fixed...that one dead part...that then we’ll finally be able to be fully alive. 

It’s funny, though, how this form of  death works, it’s not like physical death that just happens once  At least for me, it seems like once I have that dead part brought back to life, something else has died.  When I spend time working on making my spiritual life alive, I neglect to make time for my personal life, so I begin to fix that.  When I begin to fix my personal life, I’ve not left room for my mental health. It’s like this cycle that just sort of consumes me, and holds me bound to dead parts of myself. 

 And that is why I need Jesus.   I need Jesus to, like Lazarus, call me out of the tomb I make for myself.  I need Jesus to raise those dead parts of me because I just can’t do it myself.  Jesus calls us to come out of our own tombs of self righteousness, our tombs of feeling like failures, our tombs of isolation.  Jesus calls us out, saying “hey, don’t try to make yourself alive apart from me, you are not me.”  And because we are not Jesus, we cannot ever truly raise those dead places in our lives, or our dead loved ones.  Only Jesus can do that.  Daily, Jesus calls out those dead parts of us, and at the end, Jesus will call out all those resting in the grave.  

Jesus is not afraid of us, living and dead, who “stinketh”, as the King James Version puts it.  Jesus is not afraid to come into the places of stench and decay in our lives.  Jesus comes into that, and brings us out alive, away from the deadly things we carry with us, unburdening us from the death we experience, just like Jesus brought out Lazarus. 

And that is good news to all of us, dead and alive.  Jesus barges into our stink and brings us out alive to live in newness of life and the hope of life eternal.  Which sounds pleasant, but what does that mean for us, and what did it mean for Lazarus?

the story of Lazarus doesn’t end with divine CPR, and it begs the question about what the importance of new life is, other than a prolonging of our mortality without our consent.  John tells us that after Lazarus stumbles out of the tomb, Jesus tells those gathered around him to unbind him.  

 And if we are thinking about how we are like Lazarus, dead and stinky, but living a new life thanks to Christ, wouldn’t we too want to be unbound?  Just like Lazarus cannot make himself alive again, he cannot unbind himself from the cloths he has been bound with. He is alive but still is bound up by the wrappings and trappings of death. Being alive again is nice for Lazarus, and for us, but unless the gauze that keeps our dead parts wrapped to us are removed, we can’t truly be free from death’s grasp It’s up to the community to take those off of him so he can truly live a freed life, not a life captive to the death that used to ensnare him.  

 We don’t know if the community did what Jesus told them to do, to unbind him.  Which I think is an indredible shame.  I want them to take the wrappings off of Lazarus so he can wander around as a man completely freed from the death he experienced.  I just hope they did.

God created us to be free, and wants us to be free, not to be bound by death. When we are ensnared by death, Gods desire for us is to be unbound by those who surround us.  And I think that All Saints Day is a great time to remember that.  We are surrounded by saints, living and dead, who are here to unbind us from our places of death so that we can unbind others.  

 We are called to have our shackles of death cut off and to cut off the shackles of others through the waters of baptism.  In those waters, the Holy Spirit reveals to us that we are made new and given life through Christ’s death and resurrection.  We proclaim at the beginning of the baptism that God, who is rich in mercy and love, gives us a new birth into a living hope through the sacrament of baptism.  Through water and Word God delivers us from sin and death and raises us to new life in Jesus Christ.  We are united with all the baptized in the one body of Christ, anointed with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and joined in God’s mission for the life of the world.  

God’s mission for the life of the world that we are joined to is freeing people from the things that bind them to death.  It is welcoming those who are outcast.  It is walking with those who are too poor or too rich to see anything but themselves.  It is speaking truth to power and advocating for the powerless.  These things all help unbind others to live with us in the free kingdom of God.  AND YET, we cannot do these things for others, we cannot unwrap people from the daily deaths they experience, we cannot strip away the parts of others that hold them to the grave without first experiencing being unwrapped ourselves.  

We are part of a communion of saints.  And before we can go around unbinding other saints, we need to be released from our own shrouds of death.  In baptism, Christ makes us alive with him.  And a community surrounds us, promising to do the same thing we do to others.  This community promises to support and pray for us in our new life in Christ.  They proclaim to us and to one another that they will cut off our wrappings of death so we can live with them in the body of Christ.  

God’s desire for us is to be freed from death.  God raises us to new life, and the community of saints that surrounds us, those living and those dead, those we know, and those we don’t, all unbind us from the things that keep us tied to that death.  

We then become part of the saints, the group of unbinders who are bound to Christ’s death and resurrection, and one another.  We are called to be the unbinders of isolation and lonliness on Thanksgiving with Operation Turkey Sandwich, we the unbinders of the Gospel, living out what it means to give water to the thirsty, feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, advocate for the oppressed. We unbind ourselves from idolizing a building and look for ways to bring church to people where they are. We are bound to the call of Christ to unbind each other and we are freed from death because we have been unbound.  

 This is the power of being baptized into the community of Christ.  Through Christ raising those dead parts of us, and having our graveclothes removed by others, we can freely live into our baptismal vocation as children of God.  For me, being a child of God means I no longer have to worry about carrying around the dead or ugly parts of myself that I’m ashamed of because Christ raises those things into a new creation.  For me, being a child of God means being surrounded by a community of people who daily unwrap the bandages of insecurity and instead lift me up and support me.  For me, being unwrapped gives me the joy of helping others shed the things that keep them tied to the coffin so that we can all live together, no longer captive to death.  Christ brings us to new life, and together we unbind each other and all the world to live freely with all the saints, living and dead, forever.