Y'all Ready For This?

1 Samuel 2:1-10, Luke 1:39-57 - The Feast of the Visitation
The ordination of Maureen O'Connor to the transitional diaconate.

Y’all ready for this?

If I’m lucky, that question triggered a beat in every child of the ‘90s – and most of the sports fans – in the room.  It’s a driving beat, the kind that sends teams out onto the field leaping and high-fiving, a beat that rings with anticipation.

Music that stirs us up, the kind that should be throbbing in our bones when we hear the songs of Mary and Hannah: songs about God’s action in the world that overturn every bit of the known order of things, confident and hopeful and full of anticipation.

A sense of WOW, even in moments of great uncertainty.

The Lord kills and makes alive….they sing

lifts up the poor from the garbage heap

The hungry are full and satisfied,

the rich evicted, begging for bread…

The arrogant knocked down, the humble lifted high.

The weapons of the mighty are crushed, the weak become strong.

God’s promises made good, God’s victory won!

These proclamations would be perfectly at home as rap lyrics, at least for someone with a gift of rhyme and rhythm, which I don’t claim.

The song says the underdogs are taking the field, but they’ve already won, so now anything can happen.

Really, anything.

But the one thing for sure is that it won’t be the way it’s always been.

And that should stir us up. 

Y’all ready for this?

Because stirring us up is exactly what we’re doing tonight: making a deacon, ordaining Mo,

and in the process, paying attention to God’s insistent commitment to cast down, raise up, make new, and generally upset whatever order we get comfortable with, in order to tumble us into the Kingdom of God.

Into promises fulfilled in ways we couldn’t dream, where the impossible is normal, and joy comes from things we used to fear.

Into a world where, over and over, our internal monologue runs:

Oh, hey,

 -- what?? – no, wait!

oh…WOW!

Which is, essentially, what my reaction to Mo’s ministry initiatives has been for the last 3 or 4 years, come to think of it.

We’re not ready for this,

but we’re called to hope for it, and to work to bring it about.

Mary’s song, and Hannah’s song – their lyrical, hard-driving prayer and proclamation – show us the world we are called to make real, with God.

A world where the security of hoarding resources for ourselves is upended, but every hungry person is fed, and full, and satisfied.

Where every bully and enforcer is disarmed, and every fear washed away in God’s active support.

Where no one – no one – can feel themselves to be worthless, or alone,

or untouchable and secure.

In many ways, this is what the church asks deacons to do, describing a particular call to serve those who are helpless, poor, weak, sick or lonely; to bring the needs, concerns, and hope of the world smack into the middle of the Church’s comfort zone.

These are gifts Mo has in abundance, gifts likely to thrive in this transitional period of her ministry, gifts that will inevitably be part of her priesthood, too, but this is never just the responsibility of the ordained.

We ordain people, in the church, to enable this Kingdom ministry in all of us, inside -- and especially outside -- the church’s walls.

So I’m glad that we happen to be doing this on the Feast of the Visitation, when Mary’s song and Hannah’s song remind us all so vividly of God’s dream for the world and for us.

It may seem odd to have a church holiday to commemorate a family visit of one pregnant cousin to another, but it’s appropriate to what we’re doing today, a celebration of liminal time.

Now, I’ll admit that my own fondness for the word “liminal” and its meaning are probably a symptom of having spent too much time as a church professional, but that time of in-between-ness, of threshold-ness, happens to all of us, even if we don’t call it that.

It happens between childhood and adulthood, (over and over!)

Between graduation … and recognizing that we’re suddenly in the middle of our careers.

Between the “come in to discuss your test results” call, and treatment.

Between jobs, between homes, between starting to need reading glasses and getting them….

And Mary, in that “liminal” place of an unexpected pregnancy, does what we all need to do in those times: seeks out a companion in that threshold place, another woman having the same strange anticipatory experience that she’s having, of carrying the God-touched, carrying potential for the world to change.

And in that encounter, as the women reach out to meet each other in the awkward in-between, God leaps for joy inside them, and the elation and wonder of answered prayer spills out of Mary, in a song we remember today.

Today is all about answered prayer.

The church holiday reminds us of God’s response to the prayers of generations of God’s people: God born human, to change and make holy our gritty, ordinary human lives, to transform death and life forever. Answered prayer for these two women, given children – in ways they would not have prayed for if they’d thought about it – and who are now filled with holiness in ways that will never leave them.

It’s about answered prayer in the work of ordaining this particular woman, marking out particular ministry for the church and the world.

At Calvary, after all, we’ve been praying for Mo – for healing and success and daily survival, for her family, for the flowering and flourishing of this call that the church sets a seal on today – praying with word and action for decades – so much that a week ago she stood here and gave us credit for this day.

And today is about God’s prayers answered, too:

when Mary and Elizabeth say yes to the work of carrying and birthing and nurturing those unique and uncomfortable children,

when Mo says yes to the questions that call and bind her into this particular work the church calls ordained ministry,

when any of us, all of us, say yes to God’s dream of a world where hunger and power are overturned for abundance and trust.

And it’s about the way our prayers for salvation and healing and hope and change are answered – again and again, over the centuries – by the appearance of women – and men – who stir us up, make us restless and ready to respond, to act, when God’s dream invites us in.

So, Mo, tonight is indeed answered prayer, yours and ours and God’s, and we respond with you, rejoicing that – called to be God’s priest – you are now made deacon, and working in that threshold space.

As you live into this calling, now and for months and years to come, seek out others in liminal space, on the thresholds of hope and despair, sickness and health, sorrow and joy, action or resistance. Seek them out, because you are called to be, and to have, companions in this liminal work and life of change and anticipation, and God rejoices in that.

As you answer God’s prayer, and God answers yours, be gentle with the church when we’re not ready for the disorienting abundance of God’s Kingdom,

and sometimes, not ready for you.

But in that gentleness, never let go of your gift and call to stir us up by your life and work.

Be inspired, and help us be inspired, over and over again, by the WOW, the disorienting, glorious Wow that God makes in the world with you, and invites us into – drives us into – tonight, and always.

Y’all ready for this?

Let’s do it!

What's Stopping You?

Acts 2:1-21

We tell this story every year, around this time. It might sound familiar by now: there’s fire, and the Holy Spirit, and everyone preaching in the streets; lots of different languages, astonishingly understandable - a babble with a miracle, and the people believe.

Three thousand are baptized.

It changes the world.

And two thousand years later, we celebrate this story every year as the birthday of the church.

It’s exciting, if you like evangelism.

It’s familiar, but in a way that makes it sound distant; not like us.

I can’t imagine that any of us are going to end the day out on the corner of Maple and Main (or down at Daley Plaza in the city), proclaiming God’s deeds of power in every known language.

I’m pretty sure that wasn’t in the disciples’ plans either, that day in Jerusalem. If street preaching had been obvious, if they’d wanted to do it, they would have been out doing it already.

Jesus had done it, sure. But now that Jesus was gone (again) they didn’t know what to do with themselves. He’d told them to go out in Jerusalem and the whole earth and be witnesses for him, but now they were fewer and more vulnerable than they used to be. They had more important things to do, figuring out how to survive and get back to normal, and, well, how are you supposed to witness all over when there just aren’t that many of you?

If they were anything like us, they were probably in a meeting about that, remembering things that had worked for Jesus in the past, waiting for someone to volunteer to lead that…

And then they hear noise, and start seeing things – auras, like fire around each other.

And out they go.

But what if they hadn’t?

What would have happened if they’d stayed in the room?
If they did the rational thing, played down the hallucinations of fiery auras, didn’t go out in the streets, and kept trying to get back to normal?

In fact, for all we know, some of them might not have gone out that day.

Something might have kept them in. Anything might have kept them from changing the world.

What keeps you from changing the world?

Seriously.

What keeps you from changing the world?

Fear.

Don’t know what to do. The problems are too big for me.

People will think I’m nuts. They won’t listen.

Oh, fear. It comes in so many flavors and forms.

There’s the fear of pain, of loss, of shame.  Of death, of fear itself.

Because if you screw up, it hurts.

You could scrape your knee, or break your neck.

If you’re changing the world, you could be embarrassed, laughed at.

You could lose friends.

You could lose money.

You could die.

You can even fear success, fear doing so well that you’re suddenly responsible for keeping it going, for handling things you’re unprepared to handle.

So how do you get over fear, or past it, or through it?

Companions help.

Ask the Cowardly Lion, or a child facing the first day of school, or the person who finally made it to the gym with a friend.

Buddies help.

So does love.

Ask a parent who faces down impossible odds for their child.

Prayer – that brings both companionship and love.

And for the fear of failure – for the painful, deadening knowledge that the problems are too big and we just don’t have the capacity to solve them ourselves – we have forgiveness, the unbearable lightness of repentance and release.

I’m busy. It’s someone else’s job.

Busy-ness is a disease. We can catch it from the people around us and give it to them in turn, and it’s particularly contagious through smartphones and other technology, or through child-rearing.

It keeps you from changing the world not so much because you don’t have time to act as because you can’t see the options and alternatives. Busy-ness steals your ability to focus, and your ability to explore.

God has something to say about overcoming that, and it’s called Sabbath. It’s a rule in the Bible, one of the ten that we claim to pay extra attention to:
Keep the Sabbath. STOP.

Just stop, even though you can’t stop.

Breathe. Don’t. (Do – NOT!)  Over and over again.

Because until you stop, you can’t see where you are,

much less where you could be.

And then there are the reasons we don’t even feel.

How many of you here are comfortable?
Not with the pew you’re sitting on, but generally comfortable in your life. It’s more or less working for you?

When you’re comfortable you want things to stay the same, whether you realize it or not. Because changing the world means taking the chance on becoming un-comfortable. Comfort makes it hard to hope – to have that powerful expectation of something infinitely better.

And comfort makes us easy to threaten, to trigger with anxiety, or guilt.

And guilt doesn’t make it easier to change the world. 

Worry doesn’t.

They just make it easier to look back, to wish for the way things used to be. To trust that we already know the right way for the world to be, that we don’t really have to change a lot.

Turning to what we know, or think we know, is solid for everyday life, but when it comes to changing the world, it’s a trap.

If you want to get past anxiety and guilt, you can’t do that with comfort.

And to get past comfort you can’t use worry or shame.

You need joy.

If you listen to Jesus’ Kingdom of God stories, you hear about joy. Nothing about the kingdom of God is comfortable, not even for the oppressed it will set free. Joyful, yes. Exciting, loving, abundant, exuberant – and fueled by joy.  God’s joy, and our joy.

Now, some of you are already changing lives, but it’s possible that many of us are not particularly worried about changing the world.

That the world is fine for you as it is, or that your worries seem closer to hand and more urgent: money, health, job security, family…

It’s also possible that you’d rather the world would change less, or that it would go back to the way it used to be when things were better.

That’s normal. 

But we need some change here at Calvary, because our comfort zone and familiar work is getting unsustainable.

God’s always been interested in changing the world, and our own church business is forcing us to start now.

So it’s good news that God didn’t send the Holy Spirit just to enable one day of street preaching two thousand years ago.

God opened up the Holy Spirit within you when you were baptized, wraps the Holy Spirit around you in this place. You breathe in the Holy Spirit, the breath of God, every time your lungs expand, in your ordinary body as a beloved child of God.

That’s the story of Pentecost. Not that a few dozen disciples in Jerusalem changed the world with fiery preaching, but that all of us – all – receive the Holy Spirit so that we can change the world.

There are things that hold us back, all the time, but we’ve already been equipped by the Holy Spirit with what we need to overcome that:

equipped with love, forgiveness, support, Sabbath, and joy.

The Holy Spirit is in you, and around you,

now, here,

fire or not,

and God is ready for us to act. 

What Will People Say?

Acts 9:36-43, 

How do you want people to remember you when you die?
What should people miss? What do you want them to say about you?

Writing your own obituary is an exercise used in writing workshops, career-counseling or life-planning, to help clarify insights about yourself, or change the direction you’re going with your life.

It’s said that Alfred Nobel was inspired to create and fund the Nobel Prize, to leave a profoundly humanitarian legacy, after seeing the headline for his own premature obituary, calling him “the merchant of death,” for his work inventing dynamite.

Writing your own obituary can have a lot of power for transformation. Or it can be simply practical. A way to save trouble for your loved ones, wrestle some closure out of your life, or tell the story you want to tell. In fact, some of you here may have done that.

I haven’t. I’ve never actually been very good at these exercises. So I asked Facebook.

And in that entirely unscientific survey, I discovered that we mostly want to be remembered for our creativity, our kindness and compassion, certain quirks and joys, and for love.

It seems to have worked that way for Tabitha, who was remembered by her friends and community for her needlework and generosity, for the beautiful clothing that she had made and given to others. They seem to have had a bit of a fashion show at her wake, wearing and displaying her creative, loving, unique gifts as they wept and told stories.

Tabitha’s later eulogists – biblical scholars and occasional preachers – have tried to fill in other details: what it meant that she is the one woman specifically named as a disciple in the Christian scriptures, why she was called “gazelle” in both Greek and Aramaic, whether she was wealthy and charitable, or poor and marginalized herself, but still intent on giving to others, details we don’t know, and won’t, because they weren’t how her friends remembered her.

These later eulogists also speculate about why Peter was summoned to her wake. We know he was relatively nearby, and had just healed a man paralyzed and bedridden for eight years. But did the mourners summon him to heal Tabitha, desperate in the loss of someone who was clearly gone beyond healing? Or did they summon him as a pastor, to comfort and console them in their grief, and plan a burial?

We don’t know. Can’t know, because they didn’t tell us, but I have another idea.

I wonder if they summoned Peter in desperation, not for healing or comfort, but for answers.

To ask: “Why are we dying???”

It was all going so well. People expect Jesus back any day, and with that confidence, many are being healed, the good news of Jesus is being shared, the faith is growing, good work is being done, the church is blooming. And Tabitha, such a faithful example...

She wasn't supposed to die before the Messiah came back! We weren't.  

How can it be that she died, when we have been promised transformative, abundant, eternal life,

instead of moldy, miserable, familiar death?

The trauma in this community isn’t only the sudden loss of a friend, of a good and generous and creative woman. It’s a blow to their faith, to the promise of abundant, everlasting, life they’ve given their hearts to. It’s doubt, even disaster, undercutting their trust and confidence and hope.

How can we be dying, when we are doing so much good, and keeping the faith?

It’s a question that’s become familiar in the church, these days, too.

Not quite the same way, of course.

In the nearly two thousand years since Tabitha’s death, Christians have had to get used to the idea that individuals die – extraordinary, marvelous, best-beloved individuals, as well as ordinary ones – that, in fact, it’s fairly likely that all of us here will die before Jesus comes back.

But people in the church – all over this country – are asking Peter and one another that same question: “Why are we dying???”

We’re doing everything right.

We care for others, we raise money and volunteers for important healing work, we change lives, we raise wonderful children in God’s care, we keep the faith, we work to grow in our faith, we see successes.

But all that isn’t keeping us from dying.  We lose people to soccer and coffee and work and indifference. We don’t raise enough money to sustain our buildings and our programs.

The diagnosis is in – it’s a terminal illness.  Not today, or necessarily soon, but in a predictable someday, the church we know will die.

In some ways, perhaps, the church as a whole should be working on that eulogy exercise,

writing our own obituary, to seek closure, perhaps, or to be inspired about what we need to change, to do differently.

We’re wrestling with that a bit at Calvary.  We’re imagining what, perhaps, might be different in our future, when the money doesn’t meet our basic needs. We have no cause for despair, and much cause for rejoicing, but we’re still wrestling with a puzzling diagnosis. And some are already asking, like Tabitha’s friends, “Why are we dying,

when there’s so much life in us,

so much life in God??”

Peter doesn’t answer their questions. He doesn’t soothe their fears, invite their trust in God, lead the community toward acceptance, and closure. He shuts them all out of the room, prays, and says, simply, “Get up.”

“Tabitha, get up.”

And she does.

Peter gave her his hand and helped her up. Then calling the saints and widows, he showed her to be alive. This became known throughout Joppa, and many believed in the Lord.

What matters about resurrection is never the person herself. It’s the impact on the rest of us after the story is over.

When Tabitha died, what mattered was Tabitha herself. Her artistic gifts, her generosity, her friendship, her presence, and the pain of that loss.

But when Tabitha is resurrected, it’s God who matters, not her.

It’s God who people talk about.

“Amazing!” they say. “Thanks be to God!” But what else did they say about what God had done – to one another, to friends and strangers, that made it so compelling, that so many believed?

When we die, people will talk about us: Our gifts, our quirks, our good and our bad,

and we get some choice in what people will say; how we want to be remembered.

But if we’re resurrected, people will talk about God.

And that’s what matters most.

Matters more than death, matters more than what we leave behind, matters more than the creative, generous, holy, faithful work we do or lives we live.

Tabitha’s story insists that what matters is not what people will say about us, but what people will say about God.

And that’s an exercise I’ve never heard or seen: not in life-coaching, writing workshops, senior yearbooks, or on Facebook. 

Not one I’ve ever tried, have you?

What will people say about God when you’re resurrected?
What will people say,

about what God has done?

Do we have a choice in that?
Perhaps.

Perhaps not.

But it’s an even better question to shape and direct our lives – as a church, as individuals – than how we want to be remembered at our funerals. That’s the question that should draw us forward, that demands our whole imagination, and opens unlimited possibilities if we take it seriously.

When the world sees you –– when people see us –– in the light of resurrection, what will people say about God?

Ask that one.

Keep asking.

It will matter.