November 25, 2007 - Some Kind of King - Frank Alton

Luke 23:33-43



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The other day I was having a discussion with someone about judgment; not final judgment – the kind many Christians seem obsessed with. We were talking about judging each other. This person was arguing that honesty in a relationship requires judgment. If someone does something wrong, she deserves to be judged. If the wrong is serious in my view, it is only natural that he would lose my respect. If she corrected the wrong, then she could earn back the respect of the other. There was clarity in that conversation that focused for me a major difference among people about how we view the world, our existence, and the way things change.

It was a difference apparent in the scene of Jesus hanging on the cross between 2 criminals. Most people in the scene agreed with my partner in dialogue that it was a scene of judgment and lack of respect. Jesus had been judged guilty of something – it was never quite clear what. The punishment was to die on a cross, the capital punishment du jour in the Roman Empire. The criminals hanging with him had obviously done something worthy of death rather than mere imprisonment. This was serious judgment.

The lack of respect was clearly evident as well. The leaders scoffed: “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, God’s chosen one!” Then the soldiers joined in: “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” Finally, one of the criminals in a panic throws insults at him: “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself; oh, and while you’re at it, save us!” The other criminal asked to be remembered, but still didn’t expect anything but judgment.

Only one person present demonstrated an alternative view. Jesus said, “Abba God, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” Even Jesus’ closest followers were thinking in their hearts, “Come on, Jesus; they know damn well what they are doing.” The powerful who heard Jesus offer forgiveness got distracted by theology: who has a right to forgive? They say “only God.” But that totally misses the point. Jesus was offering a new way for human beings to be in the world – a way characterized by love and forgiveness rather than power and judgment. The contrast isn’t about divine and human but about ways of being divine and ways of being human.

The mission of Jesus, crystallized into a single moment in this scene, was to usher in the Reign of God, increasing the number of people who offer forgiveness rather than judgment. In that moment, Jesus revealed in a more dramatic way than he had revealed throughout his entire ministry that God’s core identity is forgiving love.

The church hasn’t done very well over the millennia in getting that message. It actually did fairly well for the first few hundred years as the story of Jesus swept the world over which Caesar held sway because it spoke intimately to those whose throats were under Rome’s heel. The Gospel took root in the soul of powerlessness, which is why it beckons the dispossessed in ways it does no other group.

But then in the fourth century along came a Roman emperor named Constantine, who became a Christian. That sounds like really good news. It would be something akin to Osama Bin Laden becoming a Christian today. The only problem is that the conversion that happened changed Christianity more than it changed Constantine. Constantine transformed the cross from being one Christian symbol among many – a sign of suffering – into the dominant symbol of Christianity – now a sign of power in the world.

Some of the unfortunate consequences of that transformation include the backwards movement on the matter of women’s equality. The early church had made great strides against the patriarchal culture of the Roman Empire. Under Constantine the patriarchal culture was strengthened in the church. It has only been in the past fifty years that the church has begun to restore the mind of Jesus on women’s equality. We still have a long way to go. The symbol of the cross became a lightening rod that fanned the flame of enmity between Christians and Jews. It led to persecution that reached all the way to modern days. The impact on the Muslim world is famously known through the Crusades. In all of these historical stains, the hand of Constantine can be seen.

So, when we come to this Sunday to celebrate the Reign of Christ, we have to make some adjustments. We can’t allow the familiarity of a scene like Jesus on the cross between two criminals to lull us to sleep. It needs to be a wake up call & a call to conversion. What Constantine did to the cross & to Christianity still holds sway both in the church and in the way the world views the church. Jesus has been co-opted by those who understand the Reign of Christ to be not about the supremacy of Love but about obedience to orthodoxy. The king whose throne was a cross and whose dying words were “My God, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing” has been replaced with a judge whose message is “My God will not forgive you unless you are doing it the right way.”

In case that seems like a marginal issue today let me call your attention to recent history. Back in the 1980s when I was beginning to understand the political dimension of my own faith, many US Christians were supporting Central American dictators because they used anti-communist language and created favorable conditions for minority evangelicals to gain influence in the dominant Roman Catholic culture. Today those same Christians and their descendants support the right of our government to torture prisoners because our leaders use anti-terrorist language that gets their vote. They’re even willing to compromise on opposition to some of their key personal morality issues like abortion & hate crime legislation in order to make sure we are safe from terrorists. Jesus on the cross presents a very different picture from those who want to make peace by threatening violence.

It is time for others in the church to find our voices & reclaim the historic faith we’ve inherited: to PRO-claim the Good News of the Gospel of Grace whenever & wherever we can; to challenge those who preach the Jesus of Judgment by our serving instead the King of Love. Every time we try to make Christ reign into a rule of law rather than of love we crucify him again. Every time we choose the institution of the church over the inspiration of the Holy Spirit we grieve the heart of God. Every time we hold our tongues and allow the strident voices of the all-too-certain ideologues of the Religious Right to claim moral values as their sole and private preserve, we fail in our call to shepherd God’s people, to calm their fears, to gather them in. (Susan Russell, Christ the King)

Jesus embodied the best of Jewish values: not causing fear, not causing terror, not causing exclusion; practicing wisdom, practicing justice, & doing what is right. Jesus has had a liberating and healing effect on a wide variety of members of God’s family. Jesus was a king, but no an ordinary one. Jesus was a leader, but not an ordinary one. Jesus was “the king or leader of fishermen, of tax collectors, of Samaritans, of prostitutes, of blind people, of demoniacs, of cripples. Those who followed Jesus were a rag-tag bunch: women who now leaped with joy, a Samaritan leper with a heart full of gratitude, a crippled woman who had been unable to stand straight with dignity for 18 years, and a blind man who had followed Jesus all the way from Jericho” (Culpepper, R. Alan, Luke, The New Interpreters’ Bible, p. 370)

Our ultimate allegiance is to live our lives in such a way that those who otherwise have no hope can be in a new community along with us and that we can be in a new community with them and thus, all of us be healed by hope and love, for hope and love are the only things that can put fear in its place. My friends, this is the most important conversion the Gospel calls us to this day. There are so many hopeless and lonely people in this city. Some are already in this congregation. Do they – do we – experience the healing of hope and love? Or are we so full of judgment or apathy that people can’t find healing here? How do we become a healing community of forgiveness?

One good starting place is to see ourselves loved by this love, because until we do, we can’t love others with the heart of a shepherd that looks at wolves in their sheepliness. The challenge isn’t to recognize people who are wolves dressed as sheep. It is to creatively imagine wolves that are in some hidden part of their lives like sheep, and to love them as such. In order to respond like that we have to learn to be less concerned about our reputation & more concerned about love. Jesus’ love is for the persecutors, the scandalized, the depressives, the traitors, the finger pointers, and for all those they are pointing fingers at. Jesus’ love will not be party to any final settling of accounts. It seeks desperately and insatiably for good and evil to participate in a wedding banquet. (James Alison, Raising Abel, p. 187-8) Once we see ourselves loved, we must come to know what our ultimate allegiances are in the midst of fear: the values of not causing fear or terror or exclusion to keep us from practicing wisdom, justice, and what is right; to embody those values in our personal lives and find ways in our community of faith to embody them the way Jesus embodied them.

Dorothee Soelle was a German theologian who taught for a long time at Union Theological Seminary in New York. She tells a story that paints a contemporary picture of what this looks like. She was walking by a construction site in New York City one day & asked a construction worker, “Sir, excuse me, do you happen to know what time it is?” He said, in a kind of good-humored mockery back, “Am I Jesus, lady?” She said his answer was so strange that at that time she was completely speechless. But she writes that she has not been able to get his question out of her mind. “Am I Jesus, lady?”

For this worker, she reasons, Jesus is from another world. Jesus is a heavenly being who has nothing to do with you & me, who sees, hears, knows and can do everything, but is removed from us. The churchy language which has called him Messiah, Lord, Son of God, and the Christ really has had an effect to remove us from Jesus. “That’s what you get,” she says, “when you make Jesus into an unreachable, completely other superman, indeed, into God – a Sunday outing of the heavenly being who stopped by for a short visit in Bethlehem.”

She continues, “When I was a young teacher of religion, I once asked the schoolchildren whether they thought the baby Jesus also had wet diapers.” She says, “Most children rejected that decisively.” Jesus, already as the Christ child, must be different and higher & purer. “But that,” she continues to reflect, “draws Jesus away from this world and above all, it tells us that we cannot live as Jesus lived. We shouldn’t even try because it is impossible anyway. I mean, after all, how would we ever manage to feed the hungry? We don’t have more than five loaves and two fishes. How would we ever manage not to serve the industry of death? How would we manage to heal the sick?” “Are we Jesus, lady?”

Then she concludes, “Today I would answer the worker at the construction site a little more openly and I would take the initiative. I would say, ‘Yes, you are Jesus, man – what else would you want to make of your life?’ Being yourself, alone, isn’t sufficient; you know that already. You, too, are born and have come into the world to witness to the truth. So don’t make yourself smaller than you really are. Just imagine, you are Jesus and I am Jesus and your mother-in-law is Jesus and your boss is Jesus. We, together, are Jesus. And if we are Jesus, what would change? There is something in every one of us of God.” Then she closes with a poem, quoting a poem:

If Christ is born a thousand times
In Bethlehem and not in you,
You remain still eternally lost.

So to the question, “Am I Jesus, lady?” The answer can only be “Yes, shouldn’t I be?” (Dorothee Soelle, Theology For Skeptics: Reflections on God, p. 88)

25 de noviembre de 2007 - ¡Que clase de Rey! - Frank Alton

Lucas 23:33-43

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18 de noviembre de 2007 - Una espiritualidad para tiempos de crisis - Alberto Moke

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Mi primera reacción cuando Frank me confirmo que quería que predicara hoy, fue de temor. Temor a que mis emociones le ganaran a mi cerebro y quedarme atascado sin poder decir nada. Pero después sentí que tenía que hacerlo, sacar fuerzas para compartir lo mucho que ha significado para nosotros el haber servido en Immanuel. Recuerdo que lo que motivo a quedarme en Immanuel hace cinco anos, era servir a una comunidad hispana que buscaba sobrevivir en la búsqueda de una mejor vida, mas llena de esperanza. Clelia y yo hemos conversado varias veces que en más de 30 anos de ministerio, nunca habíamos conocido una comunidad tan genuina y real y por esa razón tan bella. Creo que no hace falta decirles que ustedes han marcado profundamente nuestros corazones y nos van a hacer mucha falta. Les amamos con todo nuestro corazón.

Mi otro temor era escoger un tema que fuera relevante. Escogí este pasaje porque es uno en el que he reflexionado en más de una ocasión y me ha servido para reafirmar mi convicción de que en nuestra jornada de fe Dios ha estado siempre presente, saliéndonos al encuentro, bloqueándonos y haciéndonos cambiar de rumbo, y desafiándonos a caminar en senderos nuevos que solo El conoce. También porque ante la necesidad de buscar nuevos modelos de liderazgo nos ayuda a reconocer criterios para la selección de un liderazgo centrado en la voluntad de Dios.

La historia nos suena conocida. Una comunidad multicultural luchando, como Immanuel, por atender los problemas propios de una comunidad diversa, que necesitaba crecer y descubrir nuevas fronteras en su jornada de fe.

Es la historia que leímos. En una de las sinagogas compuesta por judíos que hablaban griego, había la queja de que a sus viudas les daban menos atención que a las viudas que hablaban hebreo y arameo del grupo dominante al que pertenecían los apóstoles. Tal vez no era la intención, pero el impacto del grupo es que estaban siendo discriminados.

Los apóstoles no se pusieron a la defensiva cuestionando las motivaciones de los que expresaron sus quejas sino que buscaron una solución administrativa que daba prioridad a la inmediatez de la necesidad humana sin caer en separaciones innecesarias entre lo material y lo espiritual. Todo lo contrario la historia nos da luces para un modelo de espiritualidad integral que toma en cuenta la totalidad de la vida.

Cuando vemos la historia de manera más completa nos damos cuenta que este incidente, tal vez insignificante para algunos estaba enmarcado en una realidad mucho más amplia y era la necesidad de que el alcance de la gracia de Dios se extendiera a una familia mucho más grande que el pueblo judío.

No hay dudas de que Dios estaba en medio de su pueblo, como lo esta también hoy con nosotros. ¿Cuantos dicen amén? Dígale a su hermana o amigo que esta a su lado: Dios esta con nosotros! Dios estaba con los apóstoles, estaba con los judíos que estaban en el poder y también con los que se sentían marginados. Estaba presente y reinaba en medio de las situaciones mas tensas. Hoy nosotros somos parte de ese pueblo tan especial al que pertenecemos por la gracia de Dios, pero ese privilegio tan grande no ocurrió sin que se tuvieran que vencer obstáculos, derribar muros y sin que un grupo de lideres comprometidos estuvieran dispuestos a morir por causa de Cristo y el nuevo reino de paz que el estaba inaugurando.

Es fácil hacer teología mirando para atrás para discernir donde ha estado Dios. Hoy damos gracias porque nosotros, quienes antes estábamos al margen ahora nos podemos sentar a la mesa, antes no éramos nadie. Ahora somos linaje escogido, ahora somos hijos. Ahora somos reyes y sacerdotes. Pero tenemos que admitir que el camino ancho por el que hoy caminamos fue antes un camino angosto en el que se dieron luchas, que hubo gente que se comprometió a vivir las demandas del nuevo reino hasta las últimas consecuencias.

Menos fácil es hacer teología en el camino, como tenemos que hacerlo nosotros hoy porque no existe la referencia de la historia y el único recurso que tenemos es la guía del Espíritu Santo, que nos corrige, y nos ayuda a enderezar nuestras sendas.

Es por eso que en momentos de crisis y dificultades necesitamos de una espiritualidad que nos coloque en el centro de la voluntad de Dios, que nos ayude a examinar nuestras motivaciones mas profundas y nos aleje de la tentación del poder, la arrogancia y el triunfalismo. Es necesaria una espiritualidad de reconozca y valore la sabiduría de la comunidad. Nos dice Lucas en el verso 2: “Los doce apóstoles reunieron a todos los creyentes y les dijeron: no esta bien que nosotros dejemos de anunciar el evangelio de Dios para dedicarnos a la administración. Por eso, busquen entre ustedes siete hombres y mujeres de confianza, entendidos y llenos del Espíritu Santo, para que les encarguemos estos trabajos.”.

Necesitamos una espiritualidad que nos invite a la acción. Es hora de actuar, mi querido hermano y hermana. Es urgente atender a las viudas, a los huérfanos, a los inmigrantes indocumentados, a los que están al margen por su condición social, a los que son menospreciado por su situación económica, por su situación mental o emocional, a los que han vivido al margen de la ley, los marginados por su orientación sexual, los mas vulnerables a ser abusados, los niños, los discapacitados, las personas de la tercera edad, los que por largos anos han vivido esclavos del vicio y de todo tipo de adicción. Dios nos llama a actuar, sirviendo las mesas, atendiéndolos, dándoles nuestro tiempo y nuestra amistad, proveyéndoles cuidado pastoral. No, esa no es solamente tarea de los pastores ordenados, es tarea tuya como miembro de la comunidad que ya fuiste llamado y ordenado en el momento en que fuiste bautizado.

EN VEZ DE REACCIONAR LOS APOSTOLES DECIDIERON ACTUAR: “AYUDEN A ESCOGER LIDERES QUE ESTEN DISPUESTOS A SERVIR DIRIGIDOS POR EL ESPIRITU SANTO”

Hay una sociedad que necesita de una comunidad sanadora, una comunidad que proclame las buenas noticias de Dios esta vivo y esta en medio de los sufrimientos de su pueblo y quiere que nosotros seamos las luces que los guíen en medio de las tinieblas.

El viernes en la noche un grupo de hermanos y hermanas de Immanuel fuimos a consolar a un grupo de personas que realizaban una vigilia por un joven que fue abaleado por las pandillas. Como comento el pastor Howard Dotson, de la iglesia First Congregational, tanto la víctima como los miembros de la pandilla es muy probable que hubieran sido bautizados en una iglesia cristiana. Para muchos de ellos el barrio y la pandilla eran su iglesia. En muchos sentidos esto es cierto porque Dios y por ende la iglesia está presente donde está la pobreza y el sufrimiento humano. ¿No será que es esta uno de las grupos que desatendemos como solemos desatender a las viudas, niños y discapacitados que no se pueden valer por si mismos?

Hay muchas otras mesas que necesitan ser atendidas por líderes llenos del Espíritu Santo que estén dispuestos a ser agentes transformadores de una sociedad que ya no quiere escucharnos reflexionar sino ver modelos de vidas comprometidas, guiadas por el Espíritu Santo, marcadas por el amor incondicional que emana de sus poros, por los dones de hospitalidad, por la sabiduría que sale de sus labios y por la disposición de vivir la fe hasta las ultimas consecuencias, aun participando de los sufrimientos por causa del reino.

Ojalá que nuestros pastores continúen enfocándose, como los apóstoles, en el ministerio espiritual, la proclamación, la ensenadaza y en el infinito poder de la oración. Y ojala que las diferentes comunidades y culturas que son parte de Immanuel acepten el desafió de ser una iglesia movida por lideres de base cuya única motivación es ser agentes transformadores de una sociedad que quiere conocer a Dios en vidas ejemplares.

Por lo demás hermanos y hermanos corramos la carrera convencidos de que “ni la muerte ni la vida, ni los ángeles ni los demonios, ni lo presente ni lo por venir, ni los poderes, ni lo alto ni lo profundo, ni cosa alguna en toda la creación, podrá apartarnos del amor que Dios nos ha manifestado en Cristo Jesús nuestro Señor (Romanos 8:37-39)

November 18, 2007 - So What's New? - Samuel Chu

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11 de noviembre de 2007 - Los riesgos de la fe - Abel Lopez

Hebreos 11:1-10; 39-40; San Juan 20:1, 11-18



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Hace dos semanas atrás, el líder espiritual de ustedes, Frank Alton, me tomo por sorpresa cuando me pidió que viniera a predicar esta mañana. Yo pensé, Frank, ¿No te basta que ya te preste a Jonathan, uno de mis mejores músicos y ahora quiere llevarme a mi también? Frank se echo a reír, parece que me leyó el pensamiento. Yo le dije, esta bien, pero con una condición. Yo tengo que traer conmigo a Dan Cole, mi Director de Música. Excelente! Me dijo Frank, Ahora son dos los que me llevo! Yo no tenia ni la menor idea de que los músicos de Emmanuel y de Todos los Santos iban a guiarnos en nuestro servicio de adoración con una música tan maravillosa. Por favor, démosle un aplauso por sus talentos y su dedicación al ministerio.

Frank y yo somos amigos desde hace ya varios años. Cuando a mí me fueron a ordenar como Sacerdote Episcopal, mi Obispo estaba buscando una Iglesia bien grande para que cupiéramos todos y Frank no dudó un segundo en ofrecer esta Iglesia. Es aquí donde yo fui ordenado y es un gozo muy profundo y conmovedor el poder predicar en este lugar donde un buen día mi vida fue transformada para siempre.

Hace algunos años atrás yo fui parte de un grupo de trabajo que nos pusimos a explorar el uso de un lenguaje e imágenes de Dios más inclusive. Este grupo de trabajo se puso a buscar entre las pocas mujeres en el Nuevo Testamento, hasta que encontramos a Maria Magdalena, una líder y discípula fiel que apoyo el ministerio de Jesús y quien permaneció en la cruz después que otros huyeron. Ella también fue la primera en encontrarse con el Cristo resucitado. Y su historia tiene mucho que enseñarnos sobre la fe, y especialmente cuando como pueblo de Dios, atravesamos momentos de incertidumbre y desconfianza.

La historia de la resurrección según San Juan comienza con estas palabras: “Temprano en el primer día de la semana, mientras aún estaba oscuro, Maria Magdalena vino a la tumba.” (repetir)

Maria Magdalena era una persona poco común. La Biblia nos dice que tenia siete demonios, pero Maria conoció a alguien llamado, Jesús. Ellos fueron compañeros en el ministerio, pero algo sucedió en la vida de Maria. Algo de lo que ella nunca pudo olvidarse. Algo maravilloso y transformador, algo que la cambió por completo. Algo que la elevó y la llevó a convertirse en lo que Dios siempre había deseado para ella. Y entonces ella se acercó a ese Jesús y se quedo junto a él y le fue fiel a ese Jesús y a su mensaje y a sus enseñanzas y a su espíritu, AUN, cuando otros lo abandonaron y huyeron en otra dirección. Yo quiero hablar de Maria porque cuando otros abandonaron a Jesús, Maria Magdalena fue la única que le siguió con su fe.

Temprano en el primer día de la semana, mientras aún estaba oscuro, Maria Magdalena fue a la tumba. Maria parecía estar siempre en desacuerdo, y no al mismo paso que los otros discípulos de Jesús. Ellos iban en una dirección y ella se iba en otra dirección.

Eso me hace recordar las palabras de Henry David cuando dice: Si alguien no mantiene el mismo compás que sus compañeros, es porque quizás esa persona esta escuchando un ritmo diferente. Yo quiero sugerir que Maria estaba escuchando un ritmo diferente. Maria no marcaba los mismos pasos que los otros discípulos, pero si marcaba los mismos pasos del maestro de los discípulos. Maria es alguien que marchaba al toque de un tambor diferente.

Maria era alguien que respondió a un llamado más profundo y que respondió al llamado de Jesús de amar a sus enemigos; bendecir a quienes los maldigan, orar por los que les persiguen. Maria sabia como mantener su fe en medio de las dificultades!

Cuando examinamos cuidadosamente el texto nos damos cuenta que Juan esta tratando de decirnos algo aquí. Escuchen las palabras del texto nuevamente, Juan dice: “Temprano en el primer día de la semana, mientras aún estaba oscuro.”

Si tomamos Juan 20 y lo ponemos al lado de Mateo, Marcos y Lucas y miramos como cada uno de ellos describe lo que sucedió en la mañana de la Resurrección nos resultará muy interesante.
Marcos dice: “Muy temprano en el primer cuando había amanecido.”
Mateo dice: “ En el primer día de la semana cuando amanecía.”
Lucas dice: “ Muy temprano al amanecer.”
Pero Juan dice: Temprano en el primer día de la semana, mientras aún estaba oscuro.”
Okay, O Juan estaba medio dormido o es sonámbulo o simplemente no sabe la diferencia entre el amanecer y el oscurecer o acaso Juan está tratando de decirnos otra cosa aquí?

En el Evangelio de Juan, la luz y la oscuridad, el día y la noche son formas que Juan utiliza para hablar de las potestades de mal. La oscuridad es una palabra que usa para hablar de un tiempo de confusiones, es una forma de referirse a las adversidades y a los tiempos difíciles. Es por eso que cuando Juan describe la misión de Dios en el mundo, Juan dice: “La luz resplandece en las tinieblas y las tinieblas no pueden dominarla.” Es en el evangelio de Juan que Jesús dice: “Yo soy la luz del mundo; quien me sigue no andará en tinieblas, sino que tendrá la luz de la vida.”Oh! ya entiendo, ya entiendo!

Temprano en el primer día de la semana, cuando aún estaba oscuro, Maria vino a la tumba. En medio de la confusión y la desolación, Maria Magdalena tiene un mensaje ¡Cristo vive! Mis hermanos y mis hermanas, mantengan la fe!

Tener fe significa que cuando enfrentemos las tinieblas y las incertidumbres del futuro creamos que el amor y el poder de Dios nos acompaña hasta cruzar al otro lado de las dificultades. Cuando nos encontremos cerca de nuestra propia tumba- como todos hemos de encontrarnos algún día; cuando nos sentimos inseguros y desalentados y todo en la vida nos parece salir mal, cuando nuestra comunidad enfrenta dificultades y dudas, Maria Magdalena tiene un mensaje para ustedes: ¡Mantengan la fe! Porque ¡Jesús vive!

Mis hermanos y hermanas Maria Magdalena nos ofrece un modelo de liderazgo en medio de las dificultades. Existen dos tipos de personas en el mundo. Un tipo dice: Yo creeré cuando lo vea.” Pero el otro grupo dice: Yo lo creo porque ya lo veo.”

Yo creo que nada sucede en este mundo y en esta Iglesia sin que haya alguien que de un paso al frente y diga: Yo tengo una visión diferente a como son las cosas hoy en día, en el mundo y en mi iglesia. Yo voy a dar mi vida, mis recursos, mis energías para hacer esa visión una realidad. Yo no voy a esperar a verlo para creerlo, yo voy a crearlo porque ya lo veo. Esa es la característica distintiva que hace a un líder tener una visión. Proverbios 29:18 nos dice: “ Donde no hay una visión, la gente perece.”

Hay una historia de un trapecista que iba cruzar la cuerda floja a través de Las Cataratas del Niágara. El avisó a todos que iba a cruzar las cataratas y gente de todos lugares vino a verlo. El tomó su barra de equilibrio y mientras se preparaba para cruzar le grito a la multitud: ¿Ustedes creen que yo puedo cruzar las cataratas? ¿De veras que lo creen?
Ellos respondieron: ¡Si creemos, si creemos!
El trapecista toma la barra en sus manos y cruza las cataratas y regresa. Y ellos respondieron : Bravo, bravo, bravo!
Entonces les dijo: ¿Ustedes creen que yo pueda cruzar las cataratas empujando una carretilla?
¡Claro que si, claro que si, si creemos!
Entonces el trapecista tomó la carretilla, cruza las cataratas y regresa nuevamente.
Y ellos respondieron: Bravo, bravo, bravo!
Una ves más el trapecista les dice: ¿ Ustedes creen que yo puedo cruzar las cataratas, empujando una carretilla pero esta ves con los ojos cubiertos?
Ellos dijeron: ¡Claro que si creemos, ándele pues!
El trapecista se cubre los ojos, empuja la carretilla y cruza las cataratas y regresa nuevamente. Y ellos estaban asombrados: Bravo, bravo, bravo!
Entonces el trapecista les dice: Ahora pues, ¿Ustedes creen que yo puedo empujar la carretilla con los ojos cubiertos y con alguien sentado en la carretilla?
¡Claro que si, por supuesto que lo creemos. ¿De veras creen que yo puedo hacerlo?
¡Claro que si, claro que lo creemos ¿De veras que lo creen?
Si, si lo creemos
Entonces les dijo: ¿Quién se ofrece como voluntario?

¡Mis hermanos y mis hermanas nosotros estamos reunidos aquí hoy porque nos atrevimos a seguir a Maria Magdalena en la carretilla! Maria Magdalena fue esa voluntaria que por su tremenda fe regresó con el mensaje de que Jesús vive aun cuando otros huyeron. Y es por ella y por gente como ella de profunda fe aquí en esta congregación y que no se dan por vencidos antes las dificultades, que nosotros todos podemos gritar hoy, bravo, bravo, el Señor ha resucitado! ¡Aleluya! Mis hermanos y mis hermanas, mantengan la fe! mantengan la fe! Jesús vive! Y esta congregación vivirá! Amen.

November 11, 2007 - Elizabeth Gibbs Zehnder

Luke 20:27-38



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Airport watching
My favorite thing about traveling is the airport experience. I love watching the people - Sitting waiting at the gate, observing the stories that unfold around me. Things that when they happen to me in my life totally hook me, are just interesting when they happen at the gate – screaming kid, kicking on the floor – I give a compassionate smile to the mother, husband who didn’t pack the travel snacks, go figure. Passenger going for it with the airline representative at the counter, raising his voice, belittling the employee – its an interesting study in power dynamics. This passage is a little bit like the airport for me. Its like walking in on someone else’s argument. Sadducees, one bride, seven brothers, resurrection day….We need to know more of the back story before we can feel the impact of the Jesus’ exchange.

One bride for seven brothers. Its just a wacky idea. Even in its 1st century context it was an exaggeration, but not as strange as it sounds to us. The Levirate marriage was a way of ensuring the family line continued. It provided protection for women. We need to understand, we are talking about a male-dominated society and marriage was a crucial element in maintaining continuity. The family was the center of relational, economic and social stability. The women’s role was to bear the children to perpetuate her husband’s family. If she was widowed, without kids, the Levirate plan “B” was for her to marry her dead husband’s brother. This created the possibility that her husband’s family line would continue and that she would have economic and social shelter. So, to the ears of the crowd gathered in the temple courts that day, the concept of a widow marrying her brother-in-law was pretty neutral, and playing out that she would marry all seven brothers was mocking of Jesus.

Jesus is a hick
So Luke tells us Jesus is out teaching and preaching in the temple courts. This was the market place of theological thought. Remember his accent, his clothes, his hair all give away the fact that he’s from the backwater town of Nazareth – this a detail not lost on the sophisticated urban crowd in Jerusalem. He is interacting with the various religious leaders and groups of the day.

Pharisees – pro-resurrection
The Pharisees were one of the key forces. They believed that it was good to interpret and extrapolate meaning from the Torah. In keeping with that they believed in the resurrection of the dead.

Sadducees – urban sophisticates
The Sadducees were in reaction with the Pharisees. The Sadducees seem to have been one of the more culturally sophisticated movements of their time[1]. Their followers were often the leading priestly families and the aristocracy. The Sadducees were more conservative than the Pharisees. They argued for literal interpretations of the scripture and rejected what they saw as Pharisaic speculation on the unknowable. (Let me share a little seminary secret – you can keep them straight because they were “sad you see” because they didn’t believe in an afterlife Sadducees).

Sadducees meet Jesus – resurrection signature issue
So today’s text finds the Sadducees approaching Jesus where he is teaching in the Temple courts. Strutting their intellectual stuff and this is their signature issue. We’ve all been in on these kinds of conversations. Some one with formal education and razor sharp intellect constructs a water tight argument, then they seal the deal with a question that you’d be a fool to answer in any way other than the way they want you to – you don’t think that we should leave a child behind do you? It seems as though the Sadducees are out for sport, some theological ping pong. Certainly more eager to prove their point and underscore their influence than anything else.

Jesus’ response is interesting – at the onset it is surprisingly flat. We can imagine the crowd wondering what he would do, doesn’t he understand what is at stake? would he fold or put up a fight? Who will this woman belong to in the resurrection? – what kind of a question is that! Jesus is thinking – There is no right answer to a wrong question!

Karl Barth (a reformed theologian from Switzerland) said “the Bible gives to every person and to every era such answers to their questions as they deserve. We shall always find in it as much as we seek and no more”[2] Anytime that we “use” God or the church or a point of view to determine winners and losers or to prove that we are better than others, we become participants in deadly game, life without God. We’re just batting around a ping pong ball, keeping our own score.

Some questions belong to the people who are truly famished for an answer. The question of what lies on the other side of death is one of them. It’s the people who admit to knowing crushing defeat, whose dignity and certainty have been deconstructed – these are the people who can begin to know the landscape of a dark world which only makes sense if Christ is raised.[3]

Paul Duke shares some great insights on this question. He points out that other people we read about in the Bible get a very different answer from Jesus to the resurrection question. Jesus tells Martha in her hour of grasping for hope at her brother’s grave – I am the resurrection.

To Mary Magdalene, blinded by tears outside another grave, Jesus gave the ultimate answer of her own name spoken from the other side of death.

When we ask the question with earnest tears in the shadow of death, we may hear our name for the answer. When we inquire about resurrection as though we are counting on the response to establish us as the most insightful and progressive Christians in the room, the answer we get may fall flat on our ears and we may wonder about whether the question was heard.

Jesus, in his compassion, does give the Sadducees a response. He turns their fool-proof argument inside out and lays out how they have missed the boat.

Jesus responds that there is an age that follows this one. And in the age to come we enter into God’s presence in a profound way. He invokes Moses encountering the burning bush. After he peers over the sand dune, Moses realizes that the moment has shifted from everyday to extraordinary and he pulls off his shoes because its all that he can think to do to respond to the fact that that the ground which he is standing on is holy. His face is flushed from the heat as the bush burns brightly and refuses to be consumed.

As Michael Pasquarello points out in his blog, Moses isn’t given answers to his questions or solutions to his problems. Instead, he finds himself standing in the presence of the God of Sarah and Abraham, the God of Rebecca and Isaac, the God of Leah and Rachel and Jacob – the God of the living.

In the age to come, Jesus explains, things work out differently in terms of relationship. Its no longer about having children to added to your credit, but being God’s children. Its no longer about establishing and preserving a position or a network of security and power, but being in God’s presence.

So maybe we don’t personally run into many Sadducees when we go to the Temple courts. After reading this text, I feel prepared to put them in their place if I run in to any.

Chances are, God will catch us just like Moses, unaware, going about our business. One minute 4 year old Eva’s telling me all about the pizza they had for lunch at school and then she’s asking “Where is Fuzzy Grandpa? Nana misses him…Where did he go when he died?

So I take a breath, pushing away the distraction of trying to preserve my position of power, I kneel down on the holy ground that has opened up next to her and gently lay out my hope for the life to come. She nods her assent and requests cheese sticks for a snack. The flames recede, the bush is just a bush again.

In terms of now, this afternoon, the week that lies before us I find that God is inviting us into deeper relationship.

God is inviting us to lay down our ping pong paddles, to set aside our needs to prove our points and protect our position.

God invites us to be vulnerable and earnest in our seeking.

Because as much as we are earnest, as much as we are vulnerable in our desire to know more of God, so too will God respond with the fullest of measures.

God promises to meet us in the shadows of our grief, the valleys of our doubt, the darkness of our night.

God meets us there with the Good News of resurrection and new life.

In the age to come, for sure and now.

Amen.

[1] First thoughts on Year C Gospel Passages from the Lectionary, Pentecost 24 – www.staff.murdoch.edu.au/-loader/lkpentecost24.htm
[2] Paul D. Duke, Transfigured relations – Live by the Word – Christian Century, October 25, 1995
[3] Carlyle Marney quoted by William Willimon, Paul Duke, Transfigured Relations

November 4, 2007 - Healing relationships with the deceased - Frank Alton

MP3 File

John 11:1, 7, 11, 14-15, 17, 20-22, 28-44

We come to the final sermon in this series on healing. I have wanted to create a frame for the center for healing we will be opening next year. Friday night a group of us met in Judy’s and my home to update each other on how the center is progressing. It was very encouraging. I want to keep the center before you as we prepare to open next spring.

This morning as we celebrate All Saints Sunday I want to speak to a dimension of healing we don’t often consider – healing our relationships with those who have died. In my experience, this kind of healing incorporates all the dimensions of healing we have addressed this past month – body, soul and spirit.

This area of life doesn’t come naturally to me, both because of my personality and because of my Protestant upbringing. Protestants stopped celebrating All Saints Day because it was associated with an understanding of the doctrine of the communion of Saints that included granting a special role to certain saints and asking their intercession for us. At the end of the Apostle’s Creed we say, “I believe in the communion of saints.” The meaning of that belief has varied greatly over the centuries, but it experienced a major transformation in the Protestant Reformation. Protestants rejected the idea that believers needed an intercessor between them and God besides Christ. In order to clarify that rejection, the reformers downplayed the role of saints who had passed on. It has only been in recent decades that the Presbyterian Church even includes a liturgy for All Saints Day in its Directory of Worship.

The first time I even thought about the doctrine of the communion of Saints was about 25 years ago when I was walking with one of my spiritual mentors in Lima, Peru. Father Henri Nouwen and I were through a Cathedral in downtown Lima when I asked him why Catholics prayed to the saints. He explained it with a logic that made sense to me. Christians ask each other to pray for them, and actually do that when they gather to pray. Christian belief also claims that those who die in Christ are actually alive in the spiritual realm, and that they are worshipping God. If that is true, it makes sense to ask Christians who have died to pray for us as well. While I never actually asked one of my ancestors to pray for me, I no longer saw the practice as silly.

It was not until both my parents had died and I started a phase of my healing journey that opened me to some new approaches to healing that I actually began to converse with those who had died. A significant moment in my healing journey came when I forgave my father – 24 years after he had died. The healing work happened at the levels of body, soul and spirit. Certain forms of body work were unblocking the spiritual energies that needed to flow through me. That happened in ways that I didn’t understand at all, but took on faith. In the midst of that I wrote a twelve page letter to my father, which I put in a wine bottle and tossed off the Venice pier. Finally, I carried on some dialogues with both my father and his father, whom I had never met. It was during one of those dialogues that I started weeping uncontrollably and realized that I finally understood my father, could accept his humanness, and forgive him for not being the perfect father. It helped that I had become a very imperfect father in the meantime.

That experience opened me to see all kinds of ways that unprocessed feelings with those who have died impact every aspect of our lives, from our physical and emotional wellbeing, to our ability to carry out our life work. To hold grudges against those who have died keeps us stuck in many ways. It blocks both emotional and physical healing. When we’ve been hurt by someone who is already dead it’s challenging to find healing from the wounds inflicted. I had an emotional healing through forgiving my father.

Dennis, Matthew and Sheila Linn tell a story about someone who experienced physical healing through a form of prayer that led to forgiving one who had died. They teach what they call the “Shoe Prayer” which is based on the Sioux prayer, “Great Spirit, grant that I may never criticize my neighbor until I have walked a mile in his moccasin.” At one retreat a man named Gereon participated in a shoe prayer. It turns out that in 1944 Adolph Hitler’s soldiers killed Gereon’s entire family. Gereon was so eager to take revenge that he became involved in three different plots to kill Hitler. 35 years later, Gereon still had not been able to forgive Hitler. During the shoe prayer he traded his right shoe with his neighbor and was astonished to receive a military boot just like Adolph Hitler’s.

As he tried to walk in Hitler’s shoe, he felt the tightness of that military boot. He tried to enter more deeply into Hitler, sitting like a soldier with his back as stiff as a rod and his feet stubbornly dug into the ground. As he became aware of the terrible constriction and rigidity of Hitler’s world, he was surprised to start feeling compassion. He realized that he was able to forgive Hitler for everything except his hardness of heart. But then he broke into tears as he realized that Hitler’s hard heart felt just like his own that for 35 years had been unable to forgive. By the end of the prayer Gereon had taken in enough of God’s healing love for his own hard-ness of heart that he could offer it even to Hitler. But it was only as he bent down to remove the military boot and return it to his neighbor that he realized that for the first time in 35 years he could bend over without the ever present sharp pain in his back. He had literally taken Hitler off his back & received a physical healing.

Forgiveness isn’t the only kind of healing available to us. Last Wednesday evening we had a service in which we engaged in a series of rituals that addressed this healing work. Some wrote letters to people who have died. Others prayed and were anointed with oil. Still others simply sang meditative songs together, or sat alone looking at the candles. All kinds of healing related issues came up for people.

This healing doesn’t only happen through rituals either. I had an experience 5-6 years ago that happened in the midst of my work. I was having my weekly supervision session with one of the interns at Immanuel who was doing her Clinical Pastoral Education at a hospital. She was telling me about baptizing the dead fetus of a baby who died in the mother’s womb and had to be removed by Caesarian, and how weird that was for her as a Protestant. As she spoke I began to weep. I was remembering another fetus – the son that my first wife and I lost when she was diagnosed with cancer. At the time I was so absorbed with the impact of my wife’s cancer that I had never really grieved the death of my son. I had never even thought of him as a real person. But as the intern shared her story, I realized that my son would have been 21 years old at the time. That made him real enough to me to begin my grief work of facing some unhealed and unprocessed feelings that were coming to the surface.

Sometimes the healing affects us powerfully in our jobs. How we react to things often shows which story line we are following. Whenever we react strongly to something, it usually indicates that we are reacting out of the place of our hurt and unhealed child. The place we usually get stuck is in old scripts for our lives that are no longer working for us.

Recently, I was in a conversation with a woman who is starting a non profit agency that works for children. She is doing everything in her power to make sure that children are safe in the agency, since so many children get hurt in programs that are otherwise designed for their well being. We were exploring whether she had done enough or if she needed to take more precautions. It became obvious that there could never be enough precautions. She said that people who don’t protect children from harm are scum. Even if you have done everything possible to protect them and one gets hurt, you are still scum. We explored where that “script” came from, and learned that she had been hurt as a child, and felt that her parents had not done enough to protect her. She was not able to break through that stuck place that day, but she knew where her work needed to be.

The biblical story of Lazarus has become one of my favorites around All Saints Day and funerals. It gives permission to so many different expressions of grief, and invites both internal and relational healing around death. I was pleased to find a beautiful book entitled Simple Ways to Pray for Healing that uses the Lazarus story to help us do our healing work with those who have died. I want to invite you to visualize the story of Lazarus with me as a way to begin the process of healing a relationship in your life. I believe that doing this in the context of worship facilitates a prayerful connection for healing. Of course, you may choose to opt out of doing the visualization. Feel free to sit and do whatever meditation might be helpful. But I am going to lead the rest of us in a visualization.

Sit comfortably, close your eyes and begin to focus on your breath. Breathe deeply and slowly, breathing in the love of God that surrounds you. Continue breathing deeply and with each breathy fill yourself with Jesus’ compassion for the deceased.

With your right hand make a fist. Let it become as hard and as immovable as the stone that covered Lazarus’ tomb. Now, take a moment to visualize a deceased person in your life who is behind that stone, someone with whom you would like to dialogue.

Before you move the stone, share with God how you feel about this person’s death. Like Martha and Mary who complained to Jesus, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died,” you may wish to express your disappointment. On the other hand, perhaps you feel relief. Take a moment to express whatever feelings come up, and then listen to what Jesus most wants to say back to you. When you feel ready, push back the stone with Jesus and imagine that the deceased person is, like Lazarus, bound from head to foot. Unbind the person, beginning with the forehead. When you have uncovered the eyes, look into those eyes and share what you most want to say. When you have said everything, continue unbinding the person until you get to the heart. As you unbind the heart, look inside it and see what it is that the person most wants to say to you.

Continue to say and do with that person whatever will most fill both of you with life. Perhaps you want to travel in your imagination to a favorite spot, or introduce new members of your family, or have this person fill in some hurt place in your life. If you are praying for a miscarried, aborted or stillborn baby, perhaps you wish to name the child and baptize it with Jesus.

Finally, if it seems right, make a space for this person in your heart. Perhaps imagine putting a rocking chair or a candle there; invite her or him and Jesus to make their home in your heart. Take a moment to feel the warmth of their light filling your heart. Take deep breaths; breathe in all that they want to give you. Slowly return to this room and open your eyes.

The communion of saints takes on many forms. Whether or not that visualization worked for you, I invite you to keep working on those relationships that still need healing in your life. You might want to go home and write about this experience. You might want to talk to a trusted friend about it. However you do it, notice what gets unstuck for you – what shifts for you. If you’ve been sweeping under the rug all the unresolved issues with people who have died, let the saints come marching back into your life so that you might experience healing that can affect your whole life.