A Sheep of Your Own Fold
Rev. Christa Fuller Burns

Faith Presbyterian Church
Psalm 23 – April 22, 2018

Psalm 23 is the most requested scripture at a funeral and I am always impressed when I look out at a congregation so diverse, a congregation that includes Christians and non-Christians, young and old, people from different nationalities and I see that they all , all of them, are saying together the 23^rd Psalm. Why, do we think, the 23^rd Psalm is so beloved? After all, its images are archaic.  Shepherds, green pastures and still waters are surely becoming things of the past. Anointing a head with oil – who does that? A rod and a staff that comfort me  – who knows what a rod and a staff are?

I find myself this week thinking about death. The poet wrote that

“April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.” (T. S. Eliot, The Wasteland)

Perhaps it is because it is April that I think about death. It should be Easter, after all. It should be about life and new life.

Sometimes, though, the world is too much with us here and now, as another poet put it and one feels overwhelmed by the front page of the paper with its pictures of fathers carrying their gassed children in their arms, like a shepherd would carry a sheep. Yes, like a shepherd would carry a sheep. Then there was the picture of the patch of burnt grass where a man had immolated himself because of what we are doing to the earth. One day there was a picture of the whale that washed up on a beach, dead, with its stomach full of plastic bags. We read this week about the sewage runoff into the Jones Falls caused by so much rain. Sometimes, the anguish over who we are is just so acute. Who are we? Who are we that human beings are sprayed with chlorine? Who are we that we treat the earth as if it were dispensable? Who are we that convenience is more valuable than a whale?

I heard on the radio this week someone talking about the German word “fernweh” which means, literally, distance sickness. For some people fernweh is the image of a beloved place, like the wide meadows of Scotland. For some, though, fernweh is a longing for a place you’ve never been, a homesickness for other places. I wonder if the allure of the 23^rd Psalm is that it summons up for us a longing for a place where there are even now still waters, and green pastures, a place where we are safe. Perhaps Psalm 23 is a fernweh.

The Lord is my shepherd. Even though, for Americans, shepherds are a quaint memory, in many parts of the world sheepherding is still practiced in the same way it always has been. In the middle of the Sahara in Morocco, I saw shepherds herding their flocks with nothing but a stick. I wondered what on earth those sheep were finding to eat in all that sand. We know that the psalmist may very well have had another image of shepherd in mind. In the ancient Middle East, kings were depicted as shepherds. Imagine that! The president of the United States depicted as a shepherd carrying a little helpless lamb! Jesus described himself as the good shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep. The earliest depictions of Jesus on catacomb walls are images of a shepherd carrying a lamb. Can we imagine, then, this place where we are safely protected by a shepherd who has only our best interests at heart? In the shepherd’s care, we will not want for anything?

He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul. We imagine, in our fernweh, a world in which the green land and the water are pure and undefiled. We won’t have to worry about chemical contamination of our water supply or what pipelines will do to the land or that our natural treasures are being sold off to oil companies or that our food comes from animals who feed on polluted land…in our fernweh.

There is a shift in the grammar of Psalm 23 in verse 4 and God is no longer referred to as other. In verse 1 we read: The Lord is my shepherd. But in verse 4 we read: I fear no evil for you are with me; your rod and your staff – they comfort me. Some have suggested that the psalmist’s true faith is communicated when God becomes close and personal: You are with me. Your rod and your staff comfort me. What is interesting is that this shift in God-language comes precisely when we move away from the idyllic fernweh garden and find ourselves in the darkest of valleys in the presence of enemies.

Perhaps, then, the reason we find Psalm 23 so important is that it does not suggest that we always live in fernweh, that pure land that is undefiled. Rather, the psalmist admits that there are dark valleys, there is abuse, and there is evil and there are enemies. It is precisely when we live in the real world, not in that mythical land of pure water and abundant green, it is precisely when we face the worst that human kind can do that God becomes “you” and is personal and close and real.

It is precisely at that moment when a loved one dies and our world is torn apart and our hearts are broken and we are in the darkest valley that God is close: You are with me. Your rod and your staff they comfort me.

I admit it. Even though the sun is out and the red bud outside my window is in bloom, I am thinking about death this week.  It is the anniversary of my husband’s death, for one thing. I had forgotten that Barbara Bush lost a child, Robin, and I am imagining what that must have been like. Former parishioners of mine lost their only child to cancer this past week. She was young, in her twenties, and engaged to be married. I don’t know what words were and will be said at their funerals. Perhaps they will read the 23^rd Psalm and they will be comforted by the imagination of a green place with pure water where there will be a shepherd that watches over them. Or perhaps they will recognize the darkest valley. Perhaps they will be comforted by the psalmist’s description of the enemies we all face. Yet even in the presence of life’s opponents, even there God prepares a table for us and feeds us and anoints us with warm oil, bestowing on us affirmation and more than affirmation. In our sorrow and pain, God will confer on us a confidence in our ability to go on. That is what the anointing with oil means.

When we read the words, those personal words, about how “you” are with us, will we recognize that, for us, God is as near as our breathing in and breathing out and will we realize how strong our faith actually is…so strong that we know surely God intends goodness for us all the days or our lives?

I’ve said the 23^rd Psalm a gazillion times and only just now thought about that change in grammar in the 4^th verse. Even though we may not have thought about it, I wonder if that is why the psalm is so beloved. It describes the kind of faith we want to have and the kind of God we want to have.

I do not know if they will recite the 23^rd Psalm at these funerals. No matter what is read at a funeral, I always end the service with the commendation in which we commend the deceased’s life to God and I always use one particular wording:

Into your hands, O merciful Savior,
we commend your servant,
a sheep of your own fold,
a lamb of your own flock,
a sinner of your own redeeming.
Receive her into the arms of your mercy,
into the blessed rest of everlasting peace,
and into the glorious company of the saints of light.

In this April time when the world seems oddly cruel and exquisitely beautiful, when we face what damage we’ve done to the earth and to ourselves and we find ourselves in dark valleys surrounded by any number of enemies, may we recognize the shepherd who calls to us across the field, who sets an abundant table no matter where we are, and who, in the end, carries us home.

Breaking and Entering
Rev. Christa Fuller Burns

Faith Presbyterian Church
John 20:19-31 – April 8, 2018

Well. Here we are. It is the Sunday after Easter. We are still waiting for Spring. It is a bit of a let down, isn’t it? After all, last Sunday the church was full, we had the sound of soaring brass, children filled the garden with their laughter as they hunted for eggs. Now we are back to reality. It is fifty years after Dr. King’s murder and we are still battling racism and war mongering. It is the Sunday after Easter and we are back to the time being. Like the poet wrote:

But for the time being, here we all are,

Back in the Aristotelian city

Of darning and the Eight-Fifteen, where Euclid’s geometry

And Newton’s mechanics would account for our experience,

And the kitchen table exists because I scrub it.

It seems to have shrunk during the holidays. The streets

Are much narrower than we remembered; we had forgotten

The office was as depressing as this. (Auden, For The Time Being).

At least we aren’t alone in our post-Easter malaise. I am thinking the disciples must have felt the same way. There they were holed up in a room with locked doors because they were afraid. John says they were afraid of the Jews but we know now that John had reason to write his version of things. He had an agenda. There was tension between Jews and Christ-followers when John wrote his gospel at the end of the first century. In the time since Jesus’ death, there was increasing friction between his followers and Jews. John wants tell a story that will bring people to faith in Jesus.  \He has an anti-Jewish bias which we need to hear for what it is when we read his gospel. \ The most important thing about this description is that the disciples were afraid. \ Perhaps they were afraid of what the Romans would do since Jesus’ body had gone missing. Perhaps they were afraid of being accused of having taken his body. Perhaps they were afraid of what the empty tomb meant. I am thinking the disciples could have been just like us: we don’t always know what to make of the resurrection. Things hadn’t turned out like they thought they would. They responded to the reports from the women who had been to the tomb with disbelief. It was an “idle tale” (Luke 24:11). They didn’t believe them. Perhaps they were expecting a different result. Perhaps they were disillusioned. The man they had expected to lead them into a triumph over Roman oppression had been brutally executed. It was over.

So. There they were – huddled together in a locked room because they were afraid. It is evening of Easter Day.

Suddenly Jesus is there. He stands among them and says “Peace be with you.” Then he shows them his wounds. The disciples jump up and rejoice…when they see his wounds. Jesus says again “Peace be with you.” Then he breathes on them. He tells them to receive the Holy Spirit. And, he tells them if they forgive someone they will be forgiven but if they do not forgive there will be no forgiveness.

The disciples had a secret room where they thought no one could find them.

I just read a mystery in which a murder takes place in a room in a small town church that no one knew about. It was a root cellar with a secret entrance that had been created during prohibition when liquor was smuggled and hid in the church. The mystery caused me to wonder if our church has a secret room some place; if our church has secrets I don’t know about. After all, the church I served in Brooklyn had a mysterious undercroft where runaway slaves were hid during the Civil War. We used to take our kids down there on Halloween, which they loved.

Don’t you remember as children wanting to have a secret room? My grandchildren have discovered the space underneath my basement stairs where they love to explore. What was your secret room?

In his book The Art of Pilgrimage, Phil Cousineau shares the story of a couple who bought an old farmhouse:

“It was a ‘warren of small rooms,’ and once they settled in and began to furnish their new home they realized that the lay of the house made little sense. ‘Peeling off some wallpaper, they found a door that they pried open to reveal a tiny room, sealed off and hidden, goodness knows why; they found no corpses nor stolen good.’ (The Painted Prayer Book, Jan Richardson Easter 2)

According to the author, every pilgrimage has a secret room. To discover that room, we must peel off the wall paper, knock on walls, jiggle the floorboards. We have to find our own secret room or we will never understand the hidden reasons why we left home for the pilgrimage in the first place.

The disciples had been on a pilgrimage. They left their homes and walked with this man they barely knew all around the country. They listened as he preached. They saw him heal people. They ate with him. They were afraid for him. They had been transformed from simple fishermen into those who had the power…to heal and to forgive in Jesus’ name. And, now they were in their secret room…afraid and confused and sad.

Somehow, Jesus gets in. Jesus breaks into even the most secret of our rooms. Once he is there, what does Jesus do? He offers us peace. He breathes his spirit on us and into us. He invites us to touch his wounds thereby touching our own. And he gives us permission to forgive.

My own personal journey is about to take a different turn and I do not know what it will be like. I do not know what to expect. I’ve had all sorts of advice. Someone just this week looked me straight in the eye and said, “Well I hope you have a plan!” Do I have a plan? Probably not in the way the inquirer thought I should. I mean it occurred to me as I mailed my taxes that I should figure out how my income tax report will change. Did Jesus have a plan? I am figuring the disciples didn’t have much of a plan or else they wouldn’t have been holed up in that secret room.

I think sometimes that Jesus showed up after the crucifixion precisely because the disciples didn’t have a plan and they were forgetting what Jesus told them should be the plan. They were paralyzed by grief and by wounds – both Jesus’ and theirs. Jesus shows up in order to get us to move on.

We know that we, too, need to move on in our pilgrimage. People like to tell us that as if it were so simple: Just move on. It seems to me that Jesus was ahead of his time. Psychologists tell us that in order to move on we first have to look at the wounds of our lives – honestly. And, don’t just look at them. Put your fingers in the holes – touch them. Own them. Secondly, forgive whatever needs to be forgiven – the one who made the wounds…ourselves, most especially ourselves.

In order to receive the peace that Jesus offers, deal with the wounds and forgive.

The poet, Ann Weems, wrote a book of poems called Psalms of Lament. Her son, Todd, died in a motorcycle accident the day after his 21^st birthday and, as she put it, and “still I weep” (p.xv). As a way of coping with her wounds, touching her wounds you might say, Weems was encouraged to write her own version of those psalms the ancestors in our faith wrote to express anguish and sorrow and anger.

Weems concludes one of those psalms this way:

Consider my weeping,

O Holy One,

be tenderhearted

when you speak to me.

Handle my bruised heart

with gentleness,

for without you,

I am nothing.

O God, you speak

and the sky is alive

with music!

Your hand reaches out

and colors the world

with a touch!

My soul is a rainbow!

My sobbing bursts

into song!

My God is here! (p.16-17)

Isn’t that what happens in that locked room? Somehow God breaks and enters in. God’s hand reaches out and colors the world with a touch. And, all our sobbing bursts into song!

The Last Laugh
Rev. Christa Fuller Burns

Faith Presbyterian Church
John 19:1-16 – Easter April 1, 2018

One of our most esteemed Protestant theologians, the German Jurgen Moltmann, believed that at Easter we should hear the “laughing of the redeemed, the dancing of the liberated. Even in the days of Protestant orthodoxy”, he said, “Easter sermons used to begin with a joke.”

I don’t know about you, but I have never imagined German sermons beginning with a joke! However, as it is April Fools Day, I am going to begin this Easter sermon with a joke…or two.

A preacher said to a farmer, “Do you belong to the Christian family?”

“No,” he said, “they live two farms down.”

“No, I mean, are you lost?”

“No, I’ve been here thirty years!”

“I mean, are you ready for Judgement Day?”

“When is it?”

“Could be today or tomorrow.”

“Well, when you find out for sure when it is, you let me know. My wife will probably want to go both days!”

A minister decided that a visual demonstration would add emphasis to his Sunday sermon. Four worms were placed in separate jars. The first worm was put into a container of whiskey.  The second worm was put into a container of cigarette smoke. The third worm was put into a container of chocolate syrup. The fourth worm was put into a container of good, clean soil. At the conclusion of the sermon, the minister reported the following results:

The first worm in whiskey – dead.

The second worm in cigarette smoke – dead.

The third worm in chocolate syrup – dead.

The fourth worm in good, clean soil – alive.

So, the minister asked the congregation: What can you learn from this demonstration?

Maxine, who was sitting in the back of the church, quickly raised her hand and said: “As long as you drink, smoke, and eat chocolate, you won’t have worms!”

That pretty much ended the service.

Finally, since it is Easter, I thought I’d throw one in about a rabbit.

A man is driving along a highway and sees a rabbit jump out across the middle of the road. He swerves to avoid hitting it, but unfortunately the rabbit jumps right in front of the car. The driver, a sensitive man as well as an animal lover, pulls over and gets out to see what has become of the rabbit. Much to his dismay, the rabbit is dead. He feels so awful; he begins to cry.

A beautiful, blonde woman just happened to be driving down the highway when she sees the man crying on the side of the road and pulls over. She gets out of her car and asks the man what’s wrong.

“I feel terrible”, he explains, “I accidentally hit this rabbit and killed it.”

The blonde says, “Don’t worry.”  She runs to her car and pulls out a spray can.

She walks over to the limp, dead rabbit, bends over, and sprays the contents of the spray can on the rabbit. The rabbit jumps up, waves its paw at the two of them and hops off down the road. Ten feet away, the rabbit stops, turns around and waves again. He hops down the road another ten feet, turns and waves and repeats this again and again and again until he hops out of sight. The man is amazed. He runs over to the woman and demands to know what was in that can. What did you spray on that rabbit? The woman turns around so that the man can read the label.

It says “Hair Spray – Restores life to dead hair, adds permanent wave.”

My first title for this sermon was simply going to be “April Fools” but when I told people about it, some of them were incredulous. You aren’t really going to do that are you? We are such a serious bunch, aren’t we? Do people really not get it that the joke is on us?  God’s joke is on us…and the whole story of our faith is full of laughable examples of God’s joke. God always has the last laugh.

Think about that for a moment. Adam and Eve…a talking serpent, walking around naked, sewing on fig leaves? Eve saying the serpent made me do it. Abraham hearing God tell him to drop everything and go – somewhere – just go. Sarah- she is eavesdropping when she hears that age 90 she is going to get pregnant? She laughs! Can you imagine Sarah going to her doctor and telling her doctor that she thinks she is pregnant! Take Noah.  God tells him to build and ark. An Ark! God says to build it because there is going to be a lot of rain. Not only that, but Noah has to collect two animals of each species and keep them on the ark. Really?

Psalm 2 tells us that He who sits in the heavens laughs…happy are those who take refuge in him.

Jesus said: Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. (6:21)

And on this April Fools Day, I am reminded of the Apostle Paul’s advice to the church in Corinth. See, the problem with the folk in Corinth is that they took themselves way too seriously. Paul tells the church that they should remember that God chooses what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. Paul urges us to be fools for Christ!

Why are we here today? We love the music. We love to get dressed up. Our mother made us come. We love the egg hunt.  Speaking of which – some of my colleagues think that an egg hunt or having the Easter bunny appear is a mockery of Easter, somehow trivializing the solemnity of the resurrection story. Well, what is the story?

Jesus has been brutally executed. Jesus was no match for all the power of the state. They made fun of him. They taunted and tortured him and there he hung for the world to see vulnerable, all too human on the cross. In John’s version, Jesus is visibly dead and there is no need to speed up his execution. Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus wrap Jesus’ body in white cloths and bury him in a garden tomb. That is it. We get that story. The story of Jesus’ death makes sense. That is, after all, how the world works, isn’t it?  Those who make claims that make people uncomfortable end up is a court, they pay the price. That is the way the world works. Might wins.

But, that is not how the story ends! Today, we tell the rest of the story. The Roman government does not get the last word. Those who were out to get Jesus do not get the last word.

Early in the morning, Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb. Someone has moved the stone! She runs and gets Simon Peter and another disciple and they run to see for themselves. Sure enough, the tomb is empty.

Meanwhile, Mary is outside crying when she turns around sees this man who she thinks is the gardener. You can almost hear her: “If you took my Jesus, you better tell me where you put him!” When Jesus says, “Mary”, she knows who the man is. Jesus tells her not to hold onto him because he hasn’t yet ascended to be with his Father. Just go and tell the others, he says. So, Mary Magdalene goes and announces to the disciples, I have seen the Lord, and she tells them that Jesus has said these things to her. Mary Magdalene, a woman, a woman from a town that no one counts as much, in John’s version, is the first Easter preacher! God has a sense of humor, don’t you think? The last laugh is God’s. God shows up the Roman Empire, God shows up all those who think they know who Jesus is, all those who think they can keep Jesus where they want him. God shows up all those who say that the dead can’t rise – it just makes no sense. It is not explainable. It is not scientific. God has the last laugh.

William Willimon tells the story about a time when he was the Dean of the Chapel at Duke University. One spring, a reporter from the student news paper called him and told him that he was doing a story about things that were going on around campus that spring. He asked, “Now, over at the chapel, what would you say is the goal of Easter?

“The goal of Easter?” Willimon asked.

“Yes. What is the point, the purpose? Why do you do it?”

Willimon said, “Well, we just do. Easter is just, well, it’s just Easter. We just celebrate it.” Whereupon Willimon said he could just see the headlines the next day: “Dean of Chapel Says Easter Is Pointless.”

If we are practical, serious, rational people…a lot of Easter may be just that…pointless. But, if we have a sense of humor, if we are willing to be fools for Christ, perhaps we will celebrate Easter for “the sheer fun of it”. Willimon argues that is perhaps the point after all. We Christians…just do it for the seer fun of it. (The Last Laugh, p.16)