3 ½ years ago, St. Mary’s was an off-beat little church at the end of the road. (Okay that’s still what we are, stay with me).  We’d been experimenting for about a decade with doing church differently:  sharing our thoughts on Scripture during sermon time, circling up to offer one another communion, always out, actively serving in the community.  But things were changing as our leaders were retiring, facing serious health problems, moving away. 

And right into this experiment trying to figure out where it was headed next, walked Sue and Bob Savereide.  We weren’t easy to figure out, but they persisted, and so did we.  With their help, we remade ourselves once again. We found new  ways to be church, children through elders, listening, crafting, learning, praying together.  And Bob and Sue became new leaders for us–Bob working on the building, Sue sharing the Sunday joy in word and photos on social media, and just generally inspiring  every family in the faith community to join in shaping our future.

And with their leadership, St. Mary’s kept growing in God’s love.  We made our worship more inclusive. We connected even more strongly to the communities outside our walls. In the Diocese of Minnesota, St. Mary’s became an example of what a thriving small church can be. 

In many ways, the folks in this funky little small-town church remind me of  Jesus’s followers: that ragtag bunch of fishermen (I’m pretty sure just about everyone not with us today is rod in hand on a lake right now.), tax collectors,  and ordinary folks dealing with loss and pain.

For about three years, those disciples traveled with Jesus,  learning as they walked. They came to see Jesus as the Messiah, the chosen One of God. And along the way, Jesus challenged everything they thought they knew about what the Messiah really was.

For example, they would have grown up with the prophecies of  Zechariah, foretelling that other nations–like Rome–would  plunder the nation of Israel. Then one day, the Lord would descend from the heavens and stand on the Mount of Olives. On that day, the mountain would split, creating a great valley surrounding the city of Jerusalem.  The enemies of God’s people would run in fear for their lives, the Lord would reside in Jerusalem, and the wealth and the people of all nations would then serve the one true God.  We see similar language in today’s Psalm, where God “subdues the people under them and the nations under his feet.”

In that time, Zechariah says,  there would also be a great equalizing where  “every cooking pot in Jerusalem and Judah” would be as holy to the Lord as the holy altar in the Jerusalem Temple. Then there would no longer be traders in the temple courtyard because sacrifice through the temple priests would no longer be required. 

At first, to the disciples, it must seem like Zechariah’s prophecy is coming true. In the week before he dies, Jesus goes with them to the Mt. of Olives and then enters Jerusalem. People wave palms, throw their cloaks in the road and shout Hosanna, Save us!  Then Jesus goes to the temples and kicks out the traders.  It looks like the moment has come.  

And then, Jesus gathers his disciple in a room. They eat a meal together, and he tells them–I am the sacrifice. And then he dies, humiliated, on a cross. 

The disciples believed they would be sitting in glory beside their Messiah,  rulers of the new kingdom, with no more Romans or temple leadership telling them what to do.  But the kingdom they’d been hoping for has come completely undone, and they are the ones hiding in fear for their lives.

When he comes back, they are amazed and joyful but still so confused.  Jesus comes and goes. Breaking bread and suddenly disappearing.  Breathing new things into their souls and leaving more questions in his wake. 

So, Lord, is NOW the time when you restore the kingdom to Israel?  they ask him, still hoping, somehow, that this, maybe, is the time that all they had been taught would come to pass.

And Jesus says, that’s not for you to know.   But you will receive power. The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

And then, once again turning Scripture on its head, he leads them out of Jerusalem to the Mt. of Olives.  And there, instead of God descending, appearing to save the day, the son of God mysteriously disappears, ascending like Elijah into a cloud.

I imagine the disciples standing there looking into the clouds, open-mouthed, wondering: WHAT the…?  What just happened? Now what do we do?  

What happens next is what we celebrate next week on Pentecost, one of the Big Feast Days of the church year, even though most of us in Minnesota are out fishing and completely miss it.

But the disciples aren’t there yet.  And I can relate.  I imagine you can too.  Like the disciples, I feel rooted in one spot where strange, unsettling things just keep happening, wondering what to do.

The trial of the decade has just ended.  A guilty verdict is in, and most of the world breathes relief and feels, here, justice has been done.  

But brown folks still crowd our border, escaping unjust regimes.  A young black man has shot blocks from the trial.  The verdict means a man committed to solitary confinement, probably for the rest of his life.  Jesus, echoing Isaiah, taught us to set the prisoners free.  

The pandemic is ending.   We can see the end of a brutal year of isolation, loneliness, fear, and death in sight.

But so many people remain unvaccinated. Schools keep experiencing  outbreaks. People we care about are still at risk. And suddenly, two days ago, we were told–the mandate has been lifted;  if you’re vaccinated, take your masks off, inside, outside!  And so yesterday morning, Will and I found ourselves pausing outside the Piragis Outlet, masks in hand, wondering: what to do.

And here we are,  gathering today, together, some of us in-person for the first time in over a year.   We’re outside,  practicing care for one another, happy to finally be gathered in this circle.  But those two people who walked in the door 3.5 years ago?  This first day of regathering is the day we say goodbye to them.  The sun is shining brightly, but some precious folk will soon be beyond our sight.

So what do we do next?

Well, in today’s story in Acts, just like on Easter morning, it  takes some mysterious beings in white robes to come along and say,  Men (and Women) of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? Go to Jerusalem.

And so the disciples give themselves a shake, and they–not the Lord of Hosts–they, the confused, rag-tag disciples, make their way from the Mt. of Olives back to Jerusalem.  

Because the way Jesus tells the story, the presence of the Lord, the one coming to save us, is, actually…us.

We are the ones sent out to heal and unite the nations—the brown, the black, the white; the frightened and the scornful; the young and the old; the weak and the strong.  The church is the bearer of Christ in the world.  God isn’t going to save us without us.

But God is still, also, with us, breathing light and strength into our spirits.   And even when those we love must leave us–beloved family members, beloved friends,  beloved leaders of our church– the invisible string of love remains.  The vine still connects the branches.

As Eunice said last week, it might take four of us to do the work of one Sue or Bob.  Maybe it takes centuries and millions of us to do the work of Jesus, to slowly, baby step by baby step, bring in the kingdom.  But maybe that’s the point.  God isn’t going to save us without all of us.  All we need to do is give ourselves a shake and start walking.

I love this week’s weird little story about Moses raising the bronze serpent in the desert, with the people gazing on that image of the venom coursing through their own veins to live.  Those grumbling, never-happy Israelites: they are My People.  I’m right with them more often than not, lost in the desert, complaining about everyone and everything making my life a mess, right up until my venomous self bites me back.  

For example, just this week, I was ticked off at my college composition class because none of them turned in their essays on the due date. I stress deadlines because I need to get papers graded on a schedule; they’re messing with my week, I fumed.  And then, checking online one more time—just to really stew about how Not Even One—I realized that I had never opened the paper dropbox.

So we all make mistakes.  And my first thought was –shoot, I better fix that and let them know I forgot so that they can get those papers in.  But my next thought was, Well, I’m not going to apologize!  They are supposed to be responsible! One of them should have emailed me to tell me. Staying in touch with your teacher is what a good student does! They need to learn that! In the moment, that actually felt like sound teacher logic instead of what it was: self-justification, a stab at putting my embarrassment at my mistake, my own lack of responsibility, off on someone else–or in my case, a dozen someone elses.   In other words, “There’s no food! Oh wait, there’s manna.  But that food is terrible!  Your fault.” 

I usually catch myself before I inflict my venomous thoughts on my students, but there have been times when the serpent bit, and the poison went deeper.  A friend didn’t call or excluded me from an invite or hurt me in some other way, and I let that hurt fester in my veins. Eventually, I’d ask God for help, which didn’t immediately stop the poison so much as help me step out of myself to observe the serpent at work inside, to see what was really biting me—my own poisonous imagination. This didn’t always completely heal the hurt, but it kept the poison from spreading. Over the years, too, I’ve learned that the explanations I come up with for others’ actions are nearly always wrong.  That people are complicated and never what my fear and insecurity project onto them.

All of this brings me to today’s Gospel.  `Jesus tells his followers that the Son of Man will be lifted up just like Moses lifted the serpent in the desert so that they will live.  And as we who hear the story of Christ’s Passion every year know, by the end of the story, everyone—the Roman occupiers, the religious authorities, those who flocked to see him, and his closest friends — are all part of why that happens, why Jesus ends up on that cross.

Too often, we think of sin and salvation as some kind of Galactic opposition:  Darth Vader vs. Luke Skywalker; evil versus good Republican vs. Democrat; dark versus light; Christian vs. Muslim; condemned vs. saved; Pharisee versus disciple.  But it seems to me that sin, actually, is just every day choosing to see icky white sap in the sand where we could see manna, our daily bread; choosing not to acknowledge our own mistakes and put them right; taking our fears and insecurities and putting them on someone else to carry. 

This past Friday’s Virtual Prayer Tent, Healing our City, where people are praying each morning throughout Derek Chauvin’s trial, featured a young ministry student, Menzi Mkambule, from the  Kingdom of Eswatini in southern Africa.  After offering a Lament of Racism in the U.S. and the world, Menzi reflected on two words from his language:  sawubona—I see you—and ubuntu—I am, because you are. 

Menzi’s explanation of ubuntu and sawubona helps me understand how the mental gymnastics I go through blaming other people for my own stuff can, in Jesus’ words, keep me from the light.  All of that self-righteousness keeps me from seeing others as God’s beloved children, and thus from the work of the kingdom. As Paul tells us in today’s second lesson, “For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.”  In other words, we don’t do good works to be saved or to prove we are better than those sinners over there who need our help: we act justly and kindly because of ubuntu; because in God’s kingdom, I am, only because you are. 

This is the heart of the work of racial reconciliation and of all the work we are called to do as Christians.  Our work is not to condemn one another—to name some people as righteous and others as evil.  According to Menzi, ubuntu is about recognizing God’s image in everyone and then advocating for one another.  I am because you are: invited by the Spirit to see you, to hear your stories, and to choose loving relationship; invited to let all of the poisonous fears, comparisons and self-doubts that drive me to protect my own power and to put my own missteps on others’ shoulders dissolve; invited to shed that serpent’s skin and live.  

Last week, I kicked one of my students out of class.  The student had been failing because he wasn’t doing the work, wasn’t paying attention in class—for reasons that neither of us could figure out.  On that day, full of frustration, he was sitting in the back of the room before class started, holding on to a handout I had asked him to revise, loudly telling whoever was on the other end of the line that he was failing because his teacher wouldn’t take his work.  Even after he hung up, he kept repeating, loudly, that I wouldn’t accept his work, so he was failing, on and on, until in complete exasperation I said his name—also loudly and sharply—and told him to leave class.

In many ways, I was justified in doing this.  Class was about to start; he was disruptive; what he was saying was incorrect; he wasn’t in the mood to listen.  But as I curtly told him to leave for all those reasons, there were things I wasn’t thinking about.   I didn’t think about the scared, angry young man whose tangled brain was shooting all of his stress wildly out of his mouth.  I didn’t try to repair the rift.  I could have said, “I’m happy to have you in class  if you’re ready to learn, and we can talk about how to get your work in after we’re through” I could have said, “I need you to leave now, but you’re welcome to come back to class tomorrow and to talk to me later today about that work.” The heart of teaching for me comes from trying to help students–no matter how much they struggle or how they are doing in any given moment–on a path forward toward seeing themselves as writers, as learners, as as capable of success as anyone else in the classroom. That’s what gets me up every morning. Yet, in my exasperation and frustration, I forgot why I teach and, in the process, severed an already tenuous relationship.  I chose my rules, my need to feel in control, my walls, over connection.

Today’s lessons explore the gifts and the perils of rules.  Psalm 19  opens by describing the beautiful orderliness of creation.   In the translation from The Message that we read in church today, Madame Day holds classes every morning, and Professor Night lectures each evening; the unspoken truth of their words is everywhere.  The warmth and light of the sun and all creation are clear signposts showing the way to joy and life in God’s kingdom. It’s out of that unspoken created order that the spoken word of the law springs, its purpose not to constrain or limit us but to warn us of danger and direct us to hidden treasure. The law of God is a way to capture and express the gifts of God that are everywhere, giving us the eyes to see.

Reading the detailed Covenant God makes with Moses (which begins with what what we now call the Ten Commandments) through that lens is a game changer for this girl, who was brought up to memorize and obey those commandments because they were The Rules. But look how God begins the Covenant:  I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.  Logically then, what follows is not a list of rules imposed upon us by an even more powerful despot, God, so much as a description of what we are now free to do as beloved participants in His kingdom. As Godly Play puts it, they offer the Best Ways to Live in the company of YHWH, the One who created us in His image and desires nothing, really, but a loving relationship with us.  But then, the people took the story of how to live in freedom, inscribed it on tablets and locked it away in an ark, hidden in a tent for holy men to guard. And so it goes to this day as we post those rules in stone outside courthouses and framed on the walls of Sunday school classroom, periodically reciting them during the Penitential service in church as we did this morning. And sometimes, too, we use them less as guideposts for our journey and more as ways to judge and to set ourselves apart from others who are not like us.

Later, as laid out in other parts of the Mosaic Covenant, great temples were built to house the Law. Walls were built that kept people in their proper places:  a wall between the Gentiles and the Jews: between the men and the women, between the ordinary folk and the priests.  And deep in the temple was a special space for YHWH to reside, a place that no one could go except the holiest of the priests, once a year.

The people also made sacrifices to YHWH at the temple, just as their ancestors had before them, but following a different and very specific set of rules.  For example, people would sell their own animals to buy the correct sacrificial animals at the temple. To purchase those animals, they’d need to exchange their local money for the money accepted at the temple.  Then they’d present the animal to the temple priests to sacrifice to YHWH in order to atone for their sins and bring them into right relationship with God. This, too, was part of the Covenant, though over the years the Prophets also taught that the superficiality of much sacrifice was not pleasing to God, who was pleased instead by contrite hearts, kindness toward others and a love of justice.

It is within that prophetic tradition that Jesus in John’s Gospel enters the temple at the beginning of his ministry. When he drives the moneylenders, the animals, and their sellers out of the temple, overturning tables and telling them, “Stop making my father’s house a marketplace,” he’s recalling the words of the prophet Zechariah, whose book ends: And there shall no longer be traders in the house of the Lord of hosts on that day.” Jesus the Messiah is working to break down walls that the people over time have set between themselves and God; to help them see that God is not hidden in a tiny room in the temple or high in the sky savoring the scent of their sacrifice.  God is right there with them in His house.  God is, in fact, right in front of them.

The Gospel of John was written after the Romans destroyed the Second Temple, and so it also says to those who lived in those times and to us today: it’s not the temple or even the law that ties you to God. The God who has been with you from the beginning is also this Messiah in the temple, torn down and risen again and with you, wherever and whoever you are.  Present with me and with every one of you on Zoom today.  Present with those who aren’t in a house of worship this weekend. Present with the student I so abruptly kicked out of class this week. 

The question is whether I will choose to keep Jesus safely behind church doors, following rules to be reassured that at least I’m not so bad as those who don’t follow them. Or whether I’m willing to take on a risk and a far greater challenge: to walk each day with eyes open in the light of the Love that shines on everything and everyone, listening to the voice of the God who is the unspoken truth that fills the earth.

Parables are stories told to help us see in a new way, to help us get at mysteries that defy simple explanations.  In Godly Play, we describe them as gold boxes with lids that we reopen again, each time finding a new way into God’s deep, endless and unfathomable gifts.  Jesus’ parables are treasures of our faith tradition, but others tell them as well. One of my favorites is a  Zen Buddhist parable about two monks walking down a road.  This version is from the beautiful Caldecott honor picture book Zen Shorts by John Muth.

Two traveling monks reached a town where there was a young woman waiting to step out of her sedan chair. The rains had made deep puddles and she couldn’t step across without spoiling her silken robes. She stood there, looking very cross and impatient. She was scolding her attendants. They had nowhere to place the packages they held for her, so they couldn’t help her across the puddle. 

The younger monk noticed the woman, said nothing and walked by. The older monk quickly picked her up and put her on his back, transported her across the water, and put her down on the other side. She didn’t thank the older monk, she just shoved him out of the way and departed. 

As they continued on their way, the young monk was brooding and preoccupied. After several hours, unable to hold his silence, he spoke out. “That woman back there was very selfish and rude, but you picked her up on your back and carried her! Then she didn’t even thank you!” 

“I set the woman down hours ago,” the older monk replied. “Why are you still carrying her?”

This week, as I read through the lectionary readings, those two monks and that arrogant woman kept popping into my mind, making me re-see and rethink some familiar and difficult biblical texts, just as I think God and Jesus might be trying to push Abram and Peter in those passages to new ways of thinking and seeing.

In the Genesis story, God promises Abram and Sarai that they will give rise to nations.  This is the story we saw unfold this summer in Godly Play. These are the same words God said to Abram and Sarai at the very beginning of their journeys; they are the original blessing and promise that sent them on their way.  Since then, they’ve traveled from Ur to Haran to Egypt and back again, and throughout all of those years, Sarai remained childless.  Like the younger monk in the Zen parable, Sarai’s head is now filled with bitterness and fear over the injustice of the situation. Finally, she decides to take matters into their own hands; Sarai gave her slave Hagar to Abram to beget a child through her slave.  You’ll all remember what a mess that created!  It is right after that piece of the narrative that this passage begins.

What’s most striking here is what God doesn’t say.  He doesn’t get angry because they lost faith in his promise and tried their own fix.  He doesn’t point out how they’ve made things worse for both Sarai and Hagar.  True to the promise he made to Noah, he also doesn’t go back on his covenant. Instead, he repeats it:  Abram, you will be the parent of nations, and so will Sarai.  And then, strangely and without explanation, he gives two people in their late 90s new names–and with those names, new identities, new futures, new ways of seeing.  

I wonder if it’s the realization of what chaos he’s created by not trusting in the covenant that makes Abram fall on his face before the Lord in this passage.  What we know is that he rises with a new name, a new hope, and soon the birth of a new son.  And God blesses it all, creating nations of kings from both sons, the son born from their doubts, anger, and fear and the son of their new identity.

This week’s Gospel opens with Peter– like the younger monk, feeling all the injustices of power, which he expects his teacher, the one he has just named the Messiah, to correct.  Jesus rebukes this thought though far less gently than the older monk.  Their point is the same, though:  full of righteous indignation, the younger monk and Peter are losing their way .  Jesus sees the injustices around him and his disciples just as clearly as Peter does–he spends all his time healing those most hurt by it, fearlessly calling out the authorities.  But God’s way is not to seize human power.  Like the way of the elder month, who picks up the woman so full of the arrogance that comes with wealth and power–God’s way is to pick up the cross, that terrible and shameful instrument of torture used by the Roman rulers to keep conquered people in check.  Jesus carries the cross for and with all of God’s beloved who suffer under its weight.  And then, echoing and fulfilling the ancient covenants, his death death mysteriously and wonderfully transforms that pain into a symbol of rebirth and new life.

The final twist in today’s lectionary comes from the psalm.  On the surface, this excerpt from Psalm 22 is a straightforward reminder that Gold listens to the poor and to everyone who cries out to him.  But that simple, comforting message comes right at the end of the psalm that we know best because we recite it solemnly on Good Friday. It is the psalm that begins,  “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”: the words that Jesus–the Messiah, the elder monk, the steady follower of God’s way–says on the cross.  And so Jesus joins our own angry, frustrated, abandoned younger monk voices even in anguished lament. 

And so also, back and forth we go, with Abram and Sarai, with Peter and the psalmist, ricocheting from older monk to younger monk: one day, gladly following the One who loves and cares for us; the next, succumbing to those angry voices in our heads too frustrated to see the way forward. And every day, through the promises of the Covenant, through Jesus, who enters so deeply into solidarity with all of who we are, God takes it all, loves it all, transforms it all into blessing and new life.