Cat Goodrich
Faith Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD
February 14, 2021

 

Transformation
Mark 9:2-9

 

My mom was a high school English teacher, which means that she is a purveyor and teller of stories, and not one to hold back from offering advice.  Having learned a thing or two about human nature from life and as an avid reader of fiction, she loved to advise me with stories – fables with morals that could not be missed.  A favorite of hers goes like this:

 

A man was walking along a forest path, deep in the woods, and snow began to fall.  Looking up at the grey sky through the trees and seeing the flakes begin to settle on the branches, he picked up his pace a bit, not wanting to get stuck out in the cold.  As he hurried along the path, hopping over roots and rocks, he heard a voice call out “– excuse me, can you help me?”

 

Looking down, he saw a snake slithering beside the path.  He jumped, because he noticed the snake’s sharply angled head and the pattern on his back and knew for sure that the snake was poisonous.  Edging over to the other side of the path, the man said, “I’m sorry, did you just speak to me?”

 

The snake’s tongue darted out, tasting the air as he lifted his head and said, “why yes, I did.  See, it’s cold and getting colder.  I’ll freeze to death out here if I don’t get back to my den.  But you’ve got that coat on with those big pockets.  If you could just slip me in there and carry me a little ways down the path, you’ll save me and I’ll be forever grateful.”

 

The man hesitated, feeling torn.  He didn’t want to be bitten by the snake, for then he would surely die.  But he didn’t want to ignore the snake’s plea and leave the animal to die, either.  As he weighed his options, the snake said, “Come on, please, just carry me a little ways.”

 

So the man gingerly picked him up, and slipped him headfirst into the pocket of his coat.  They walked quickly down the trail towards the edge of the woods when the snake finally poked his head out of the man’s pocket and said, “Stop!  Here!  This is it – you saved me!”

 

And when the man, eager to be rid of the snake, stuck his hand in his pocket to pull him out, the snake bit him.

 

The man swore and tossed the snake to the ground, crying in anguish – “How could you do that?  I helped you!  Why did you bite me?”

 

The snake slithered toward a hole in the roots of a tree and shrugged his shoulders and hissed, “you knew I was a snake when you picked me up.”[1]

 

The moral of the story: When someone shows you who they are, believe them.  Believe them.

It may not surprise you that the national news has reminded me of this story lately, especially coverage of the impeachment trial this past week.  And I think my mom would tell it to me as a way of helping me navigate the twists and occasional disappointments of building friendships and relationships when I was young, learning who and how to trust.

 

This story comes to mind because this is both Transfiguration Sunday and Valentine’s Day, and I’m thinking about change, and trust, and love, and our capacity for all of them.

 

Today we remember the dramatic revelation of the divine Christ on a mountaintop.  Until this point in Mark, Jesus has been making his way through Galilee, teaching and healing and challenging the death-dealing powers and practices that shut people out of communal life.  This mountaintop encounter is a turning point.  When Jesus and the disciples head back down the mountain, they turn toward Jerusalem and begin the descent into his final conflict with Rome and the religious leaders.  Here at the edge of Lent, we, too, are turning toward Jerusalem, to make our own journey toward the agony of Gethsemane and the darkness of Calvary, the pain of Christ crucified and, eventually, the joy of the risen Christ.

 

But before that, here, on a mountaintop, God’s glory is revealed in Christ.  Seeing this transformation, Peter, James, and John should have no doubt about who he is, and what he came to do.  And yet, they seem to have a hard time believing it.  I would, wouldn’t you?  Can you imagine their utter shock and DISbelief?  The text tells us they were terrified when they saw Christ change before their very eyes, from the man they knew into a glorious shining creature – no longer quite human –

heavenly to behold

terrifying to witness,

his robes dazzling white,

accompanied by Moses and Elijah – the law and the prophets, right there with him.

All three of them, shining brightly, radiant.

 

Scripture says that’s how it was with Moses, too, after forty days atop Mt Sinai, enveloped in a cloud of mystery, working out the details of the ten commandments with the one true God – he came down glowing.  Had to wear a veil to shield his face after so much time in the presence of God.  Radiance is one of the most common descriptors of what it’s like to see God – so bright, it’s like looking at the sun.

 

When have you seen someone and thought to describe them as radiant?  People on their wedding day are often glowing with excitement and love.  Expectant or new parents.  Babies can be radiant, and so can happy children.  An old woman’s smile.  A person teaching about something they care deeply and passionately about, just shines, don’t they?  Comes alive in a new way?  Seems like love leads to radiance.

 

One of my first times out with Dary, I remember standing with him, waiting for the T at Charles Street in Boston.  It was a bright spring day, on a raised platform, open air.  There was an older woman there, waiting also, who was blind.  For whatever reason, when the train came, she seemed hesitant to get on, and Dary went over and helped guide her onto the train.  It was a small thing, really.  But it stayed with me.  When someone shows you who they are, believe them.

 

The word transfiguration itself means a complete change in form or appearance – Jesus the man, transformed into a shining deity.  It’s not clear from the text how the change happens… if the Spirit brings this change upon Jesus, or if for some reason the disciples simple are able to see Christ’s true self for the first time. The message is clear: Christ is both human and holy, divine.  But I don’t know if the disciples are able to comprehend what that means… if having been shown his true identity, they believe their friend is indeed the human manifestation of God.  I wonder, once the vision goes away and the disciples head back down the mountain, what changes for them, having seen this.  Has anything really changed at all?

 

Moments of transcendence, of radiance, are fleeting.  When we experience them, how does it change us?

 

J Phillip Newell, a peripatetic prophet of the Iona Community, says that Christ came into the world to awaken our inner memory of God.  We’re all made in the image and likeness of God, we just have to be able to recognize it: to see other people as the bearers of God’s love and light.   And when we are able to see that, nothing really changes, but everything is different.

 

I always had a tough time accepting that story that my mother told, which I know she told from a place of love, wanting to protect me.  But I want to think the best of people, to give others the benefit of the doubt, to resist painting someone with too broad a brush and writing someone off completely.  If the resurrection teaches us anything, doesn’t it teach us that we are capable of change?  I believe people change all the time.  All the time, I hope we are getting better, wiser, more kind, more loving, more creative.  Resilient.  Maybe the transfiguration shows us that just as Christ changed outwardly, we disciples can be changed inwardly –when we see the world through his eyes, our hearts expand, helping us see all people worthy of love and belonging.

 

So, when someone shows you who they are, believe them – but also trust that God is still at work in them.  We all have the capacity to change.

 

My hope is that our eyes will be opened this week, to see the radiant beauty of Christ in the people and world around us, that our hearts will be opened to love him, our hands opened to serve him.  And that in so doing, we ourselves might be transformed.

 

 

 

 

 

[1] I learned in writing this that the fable can be either traced to or inspired a song written by activist Oscar Brown in 1963, and made famous by Al Wilson in 1968.  And, I was horrified to learn that the story was also oft used to drum up anti-immigrant sentiment by a former President on the campaign trail.

Cat Goodrich
Faith Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD
February 7, 2021

 

Serve, Rest, Repeat…
Mark 1:28-39

 

How is everyone doing?  There have been a flurry of articles lately pointing to the same truth: a lot of people are worn out.  In the Guardian, a journalist writes: “Pandemic burnout on the rise…”[1] and in HuffPost: “It’s not just you: A lot of us are hitting a pandemic wall right now.”[2] My favorite, in the New York Times, “Three American Mothers, on the brink,” part of a series called the Primal Scream, about parenting in the pandemic – the picture, a mom on a conference call in a makeshift office in her closet, while her three-year-old swings like a monkey from the clothing rack behind her…[3]

 

So how are you, really?  These articles all say we’ve been operating in a state of heightened stress for almost a year now, with excess cortisol and anxiety disrupting sleep, throwing us too easily into fight or flight mode, fogging our thinking and making us “emotionally zapped.”

 

We are at a pandemic breaking point, it seems – infections are falling, but they’re still higher than at any point prior to November.  We’ve either gotten sick ourselves, or known others who have.  Many of us have had friends or loved ones die.  460,000 dead in the US, more than 2.3 million worldwide.  Impossible to comprehend, really.  New, more contagious variants are spreading rapidly, calling for more caution than ever before.  The promise of the vaccine glimmers on the horizon, even as the snarled appointment system remains shrouded in mystery and supply is painfully limited.

 

The promise of Isaiah sounds pretty incredible, doesn’t it – you will mount up with wings like eagles, you’ll walk and not get weary, run and not faint?  Long-lasting fatigue and shortness of breath continue to plague many who’ve recovered from Covid – some of our number can say that’s true.

 

Some of you, I know, have gotten your first and even your second vaccination shots!  Thanks be to God, and to science!  You may be booking flights and making plans, or just feel a deep sense of relief, gratitude, and urgency for everybody else to get theirs, too.

 

You’ve seen by now, I’m sure, the expert being interviewed on a live BBC news program when his toddler bursts into the room – heard the reporter on NPR with her children in the background.  The line between work and home has blurred more than ever before, it’s part of pandemic life.  And this craziness, weariness, stress, and sadness, this pandemic is the lens through which I read the story about Peter’s mother-in-law, sick in bed with a fever.

 

And I’ve got to be honest with you, it riles me up!  I mean, this story really makes me angry.  Really, Jesus!  He heals this woman, literally, lifts her up out of bed and puts her on her feet and what does it says?  Immediately – it’s the gospel of Mark, so everything happens immediately – Immediately she begins to serve them.

 

This poor woman.  Sick in bed.  Head aching.  Body aching.  Shivering.  Then sweating like there is a fire in her bones.  Exhausted, delirious even.  What do you do when your fever breaks?  What do you do?  You sleep!  Finally, you can get some sleep!

 

But Simon Peter’s mother-in-law, she’s got a house full of fishermen and an itinerant preacher in her bedroom, lifting her up out of bed!  And her fever breaks, it leaves her at once.  But does she get to rest?  No, immediately she begins to serve them.

 

Now, I understand that their culture was different than ours.  Women had prescribed roles, and providing hospitality was a matter of honor for her family, there was not a choice for her.  But still.

 

Historical critical and feminist reads of the gospel have helped me see this story a bit differently. There are a few things I want to lift up.

 

It’s notable that the first real healing in Mark’s gospel is not a man, not a child, but a woman.  And even though we do not know her name, we know that in Biblical times, women were at the bottom of the social hierarchy – we were the property of men, and our job was to have children and serve the house.   Yet, here, in the oldest story of the life and ministry of Jesus – a woman is the first to be healed!  Not a homeowner, not a priest or a scribe.  A woman!  That’s not by accident.

 

It tells us that Jesus, the miracle worker, the one who teaches with authority, the preacher who called fishermen to follow him – he didn’t come to the politically powerful, the wealthy, the healthy, and the strong.  Jesus befriended the poor, and sought out those who were left behind and shut out: the sick, the mentally ill, prostitutes and tax collectors, women and children.

 

It is also significant that after she is healed, this woman, Peter’s mother-in-law, responds with service.  Remember, later in this gospel Jesus says: “I came not to be served but to serve.”  The word used here, diakonia, is the same word we derive the word deacon from.  So Peter’s mother-in-law was not just pouring tea!  She was the first true disciple, who understood the proper response to the coming of God’s kingdom – was to serve others with love.  She embodies the truth that each one of us has something to contribute.  And it’s human nature, isn’t it – to want to help others, especially if we ourselves have been helped.

 

I’ve served several downtown and urban churches, churches with strong outreach ministries, night shelters, and a lot of work with hungry folks and people experiencing homelessness.  Again and again, people who have received assistance come back and want to do what they can to help others.  Like Ashley – When I met her, Ashley was wearing an oversized tie-dyed T-shirt, pushing her toddler son in a big blue stroller.  A little disheveled, and worn out.  I learned she was staying at the YWCA down the street, a shelter for people escaping domestic violence.  The only reason she came to my church is because it was close, and there weren’t any stairs to navigate with her stroller, and we offered childcare during worship.  But she kept coming back.  And she worked hard.  And moved into an apartment on her own.  And when she could, she wanted to give back.  So for a time, she became the church’s shelter volunteer coordinator, recruiting church folk to cook dinner and stay overnight.  And often, she’d cook and serve and stay herself, dinner and dessert for 70+ people, with two kids under five.  Having done it with one child on my back and another beside me, I can safely say I have no idea how she managed.  She’s studying social work now, because she wants to help other women find their way to safety, to solid ground.  She wants to give back.

 

After Jesus heals Peter’s mother-in-law, Mark tells us they brought everyone who was sick or possessed, and the whole city was crowded around the door.  Everybody came to be healed.  And Jesus healed many of them.  But then, and this is what I want to lift up, then – Jesus took time for himself, time apart, to rest, to pray, and be restored.

 

For those who have hit a pandemic wall, the idea of time apart might seem like an impossible luxury.  But it’s necessary.  You cannot fill someone else’s cup if your well is dry!  Finding space, to pray, to be quiet, to listen and rest – is how we keep going.  The life of faith to which we are called is a dialectic of work and rest, action and reflection, service and sabbath.  One enables, enriches, and informs the other.  Jesus himself shows us, in this story and others, he models this rhythm of work and rest.

 

You know, one of the things I miss most in pandemic life is singing – hearing the sanctuary fill with music, our voices layered on top of each other, joy resonating up through the rafters.  Singing in a choir taught me something about rest.  Really!  There is magic that happens when many voices join together in song – the total is greater than the sum of its parts.  If I need to take a breath, I take a breath – the note continues, because the rest of the choir is singing it.  We hold the note for each other.  And singing in the congregation a similar thing happens –  you know, there are some hymns I just can’t sing all the way through.  Here I Am Lord is one, and How Can I Keep from Singing is another – they remind me of places I’ve been and people I’ve loved and I just get overcome with emotion and the words won’t come.  But when that happens, you keep going.  The congregation keeps singing, even when I can’t. We hold each other up.

 

So how are you doing?

 

If you need rest, please, say so.  Make time to rest.

 

If you need help, please, ask for it.  Say something.  Reach out.  There is no reason to suffer alone.

 

We are almost almost through this thing.  We can hang in for a little while longer.  Hear the promise of the prophet Isaiah: We will mount up with wings like eagles – walk and not get weary, run and not faint.

 

May it be so!

[1] Marsh, Sarah, “Pandemic Burnout On the Rise As Latest Lockdowns Take Toll,” The Guardian, 2/5/21, https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/feb/05/pandemic-burnout-rise-uk-latest-covid-lockdowns-take-toll

[2] Ries, Julia, “It’s Not Just You: A Lot of Us Are Hitting A Pandemic Wall Right Now,” The Huffington Post, 2/5/21, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/coronavirus-pandemic-wall-mental-health_l_601b3c9dc5b6c0af54d09ccb

[3] Bennett, Jessica, “Three American Mothers On the Brink,” New York Times, 2/4/21, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/02/04/parenting/covid-pandemic-mothers-primal-scream.html

Cat Goodrich
Faith Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD
January 31, 2021

 

Healing in an Age of Pandemic
Mark 1:21-28

 

Humans of New York is the project of a photographer named Brandon who set out to catalogue New York City’s residents.  He stops people on the street, takes their picture, and asks them a question. Then, he posts it on his social media.  He asks questions that evoke unexpected responses: “what was your proudest moment?”  Or, “who inspires you?”  The answers paint a moving picture of the immigrants, businessmen, models, and other bizarre and wonderful characters who make up New York City.  He’s done the same all over the world, documenting people in refugee camps and people in prisons, telling stories that need to be told.

 

About 5 years ago, Brandon photographed a kid named Vidal on the streets of Brooklyn.[1]  In the photo, Vidal wears a black puffy jacket and a hoodie with the hood pulled up.  He looks skeptically at the camera, lips sucked in, like there’s no way he’s gonna smile even though he wants to.  Brandon asks, “Who has influenced you the most?”

 

“My Principal, Ms. Lopez,” said Vidal.  “When we get in trouble, she doesn’t suspend us. She calls us to her office and explains to us how society was built down around us. And she tells us that each time somebody fails out of school, a new jail cell gets built. And one time she made every student stand up, one at a time, and she told each one of us that we matter.”

 

Vidal’s neighborhood is tough; at the time it had the highest crime rate in New York.  He lives in public housing and goes to the Mott Hall Bridges Academy there.  The Academy is a public Middle School that seeks excellence, inspiring its students to succeed even though the deck is stacked against them.  Moved by Vidal’s testimony about his principal, Brandon (the photographer) went to the school to meet her and learn more of her story.

 

Ms. Lopez sets high standards for students at her school.  She calls them scholars, not students.  The school’s color is purple, the color of royalty.  She tells her teachers “these kids need you…your classrooms may be the one place they feel safe and respected. If we give up, there is nobody else. There is a system out there that is waiting for our scholars to show up in shackles and jumpsuits if we choose to give up on them.”[2]

 

A great teacher or administrator can change your life.  I’ll bet many of you have had a Ms. Lopez in your life.  Someone who taught you that you matter.  Someone whose creativity sparked your imagination, or whose passion planted seeds of interest deep within you.  Someone who challenged you to rise above expectations.  Teachers offer a chance for transformation.

 

Jesus was a teacher who changed lives. The first time people hear him teach in the gospel of Mark, they are astounded! But then his teaching gets interrupted by a man with an unclean spirit.  Now, we don’t know what Mark means when he says “an unclean spirit” – the man may have had a mental illness of some kind, what the people of that time would have attributed to demonic possession.  Whatever it was, it meant that the man was not allowed in the temple – he was considered ritually unclean, the scribes taught that he was to be kept out.

 

One of Mark’s favorite strategies is intercalation: interrupting one story, (say, Jesus teaching in the temple) with another (Jesus confronting an unclean spirit), then continuing the first story.  Put together, the two stories help interpret each other.  What does an exorcism show us about Christ teaching in the temple?

 

We don’t really know what Jesus was teaching that day.  We do know that so far in the gospel, he’s said that the time has come, and the reign of God has arrived.  By casting out the unclean spirit and healing the man, Jesus shows what the reign of God means: God has power over all the evil that would seek to possess us.  And God will cast it out.

 

The religious law said the man wasn’t worthy enough to worship; he was outside of the mercy and blessing of God.  By expelling the unclean spirit, Jesus makes the man worthy of temple worship again.  The scribes said – that man is unclean, he is not welcome here.  But Jesus shows us that in the Kingdom of God, those boundaries are banished – all will be welcomed, healed, made whole.  No one will be shut out.

 

Some of my best teachers believed in experiential education – we learn by doing.  That’s the power of a field trip, service-learning, internships, residencies.  My first ordained call was a pastoral residency program, three years of service in a big old church in downtown Atlanta, actively reflecting on the practices of ministry while doing the work.  Practical experience shaped my ministry differently, more powerfully, than time in a seminary classroom did.

 

Jesus teaches by doing, too.  He doesn’t just talk about the arrival of God’s reign.  He shows us what God’s reign means for us, for our broken institutions, and for the powers of evil and death.  By expelling the evil spirit, Christ proves he has power, too.  Holy healing power.  Boundary breaking power.  God’s power.  When the people in the temple see this, they are amazed, but they’re also afraid: afraid, because it means that the world as it is, is not how it always will be.  God is at work, transforming, healing, casting out evil, making things new.

 

Something the unclean spirit says to Jesus has stayed with me this week.  It’s the question, “what have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?”

 

What have you to do with us?

 

This question gets to the heart of the Christian life.  Remember the greatest commandment –  love God with all of your heart, mind, and strength.  And love your neighbor as yourself.

 

What has Jesus, a teacher, to do with an unclean man?  Nothing, if the scribes have anything to say about it.  The world is filled with boundaries that keep people apart.  That keep the unclean out of the temple. That value some lives more than others.

 

What does Jesus have to do with a demonized, marginalized man?

Or, for that matter, what does an ostracized, mentally ill man have to do with us?

What do we have to do with those who are outcast, or oppressed, with the person who doesn’t feel welcome in our worship?

What do we have to do with the Vidals of Baltimore, and the schools where they study?

What have they to do with us?

What have you to do with us? the man asks Jesus.  The answer is everything!

 

By the power of God, Jesus makes a broken man whole again.  Christ teaches us grace and reconciliation by enacting it, casting out the evil spirit, repudiating the evil teaching that kept the man out of the temple, welcoming him back into the fold.

 

What would it look like for us to teach like that?  Not just to say we believe in a God of justice, but to pray that God might empower us to mend and to heal the broken and the hurting, to seek reconciliation for all who have been forgotten or ostracized.   To cast out every evil spirit that would otherwise seek to possess us.

 

It is a strange time for us to say that God is a God who heals – after so many hundreds of thousands of people around the globe have died in the pandemic.  But right here in Baltimore, through the advocacy of faithful people in BUILD, more than 3,000 people in East and West Baltimore have had access to Covid tests through community based testing sites that they otherwise wouldn’t have had.  After feeling pressure from community advocates, the city has committed to fully fund programs to feed hungry people, at least 20,000 households of them.  And that is the healing Spirit of God at work.

 

After Brandon (the photographer) met Vidal and Ms. Lopez and shared their stories on his blog, he realized his readers wanted to do something to support the school.  People were sending bouquets of purple flowers to Ms. Lopez and calling offering to mentor scholars.  So Brandon and the principal started a campaign to support the school’s mission.  The campaign’s first goal was to send all sixth graders on a trip to Harvard, to expand their horizons and show students that they belong wherever they want to be.  They raised enough money in two days to make the trip a permanent part of the curriculum.  So they expanded their vision, and said that they wanted to start a program so the scholars will have a safe place to learn and grow during the summer.  And they raised enough money to support a decade of summer programs.  What they raised above that, they’ve put into the Vidal Scholarship Fund, to enable academy scholars to go to college.  Over a 1.2 million dollars have been raised for the Academy, because people were moved by Vidal’s testimony about his principal, Ms. Lopez.

 

Look, it shouldn’t have to be this way.  A kid shouldn’t have to go viral on social media to draw attention to inequity in education.  Every school deserves the resources to provide excellent education.

 

What does Vidal have to do with us?  Everything.  And I pray that no boundary that the world puts between us – not boundaries of time or space, race or culture, wealth or power – will keep us from believing that.  From living it.  From teaching it.  Jesus drew on the power and authority available to him to heal the sick, to banish the demonic forces that afflicted the unclean man, to break the boundaries that kept him down and out.  The principal, Ms. Lopez draws on the power and authority available to her as a principal to uplift her scholars, to overcome the demonic forces and unjust structures that hold kids in poverty.

 

What would it look like if we drew on the power and authority available to us to ensure that the kids at our partner school, Walter P. Carter Elementary-Middle, have mentors to support them, decent housing in which to live, healthy food to eat – a chance to flourish.  What demonic forces would we need to banish to make that happen?  We’re working on it, advocating for the blueprint, supporting family engagement nights, showing up as a community partner.  I can’t wait to see what God has in store…

 

Jesus begins his ministry by breaking down boundaries.  He came to show us another way.  A way of healing and reconciliation.  A way that values all people, not just some.  A way that says that I shouldn’t flourish if you are struggling.  I shouldn’t be included if you are excluded.  Because our lives are bound up together.  Thanks be to God.

 

 

[1] Staunton, Brandon, photographed and quoted Vidal Chastanet and Dr. Nadia Lopez for his blog “Humans of New York,” in 2015, https://www.humansofnewyork.com/post/108621363306/whos-influenced-you-the-most-in-your-life-my.

[2] https://www.humansofnewyork.com/post/108838763416/a-couple-days-back-i-posted-the-portrait-of-a

Cat Goodrich
Faith Presbyterian Church
Baltimore, MD
January 24, 2021

Hearing the Call
Mark 1:14-20

I wonder if the sun was bright that day, glinting off the water, gulls bobbing on the waves in the distance.  Can you see him squinting at the horizon, the corners of his eyes crinkled as the wind blew the hair back from his forehead?  Simon didn’t know what he was looking for, off in the distance – this was an ordinary day, like any other.  But something kept drawing his eye, first out to open water, then back to the shore, back to the path to town where they’d carry their catch later on, the path to the house he’d been born in, the hearth where he’d learned to mend nets at his father’s knee, the path that led to everyone and everything he’d ever known.

 

Simon and his brother Andrew worked hard, up long before dawn to get fish to market by morning.  It was backbreaking work: straining at the oars, doing battle with the currents and waves.  Heaving the nets into the water, and hauling them up again with calloused hands, wet and dripping. Water soaking his tunic and sandals over and over, as soon as they dried, wet again.  And the smell… he was used to it, mostly, it had been part of his life since before he could remember – the stink of the mudflats, the stink of the fish, the particular smell of the sea.

 

It was friendly work, he didn’t mind it.  The crew on his father’s boat was like family.  The women in the market were shy, smiling when they bought his tilapia, the sardines to preserve in oil.  He was lucky, really, to work alongside guys he could trust with his life, who had indeed saved his life more than once through stormy nights at sea – his brother, and their friends and fellow fishermen James and John, the sons of Zebedee.  The ones he could wait with in silence as they watched the net fall into the water, and laugh with as they pulled it up again, even when it was empty of fish.    No, he didn’t mind the work but something was missing.  Some part of him felt as empty as the nets he cast into the sea.

 

When he saw the man walking along the shore, he didn’t think much of it at first.

 

But then, he couldn’t look away.

 

As he watched the man walk on the shore, Simon began to feel as if … as if he’d come to tell them something.  To show them something.  Simon Peter was curious.  Who was he?  What did he want with them?

 

It looked like that teacher, the one who kept on talking about good news – who was saying the time had come, a new kingdom had arrived, one that might topple Roman rule, a kingdom of God.

 

Mark’s gospel is spare, a rapid re-telling of Christ’s life and ministry.  We don’t get much detail, just the bare facts.  John was arrested, and that pushed Christ into the spotlight – compelling him to start his ministry and declare the good news!  To say the time had come, God’s reign was here.

 

Maybe John’s arrest and beheading pushed Jesus over the edge, maybe that was the last straw.

Maybe Jesus’s anger and frustration with the world as it is gave him the courage to denounce Rome, to claim allegiance to a kingdom invisible to the naked eye yet real all the same.

Maybe it was just the time God intended.  Time for the world to change.  Whatever the reason, Christ set out and began to build a movement by calling people to repent, to believe the good news, and to follow him.

 

And, people did.  Just like Nathanael and Philip last week, Simon and Andrew, James and John are compelled to follow Jesus.  It’s surprising that they agreed to go with Jesus, because they haven’t seen him do anything yet.  No one’s been healed, no water turned to wine, no loaves and fishes multiplied.  There’s no persuasive speech, no chance for his charisma to shine. they don’t even know where he’s going or why.  He just calls to them and they follow – to learn to fish for people.

 

Have you ever wondered what that means, to fish for people?  I’ve often heard it as a call to evangelize – to catch disciples for Jesus.  But Ched Meyers, in his brilliant political analysis of the gospel of Mark, suggests that the invitation to fish for people evoked similar fishing imagery used in the Hebrew scriptures.  Meyers observes that Galilee’s fishing industry was growing around the time Jesus would’ve been preaching, but the fishermen didn’t see any of the profits.  They were at the bottom of a towering economic hierarchy.  Exploited.  Frustrated.  Just scraping by while others profited from their hard work.  So by calling the fishermen to fish for people, Jesus alludes to the Jewish prophets who used fishing imagery to decry the exploitation of poor workers by the powers that be.  Jesus is calling the fishermen to join a revolution.  One that they’ve wanted for a long time.  That might explain why they’re so quick to respond to his call.

 

Now, they must have known the risk they were taking.  There was the macro-risk – they surely knew about John’s arrest, and would have known how dangerous it could be to challenge Rome or the religious authorities.  And the economic risk of leaving their source of income, their livelihood behind.

 

But there was also the micro-risk: the personal risk we all face when we dare to try something new – to take a new job, to leave friends and family, everything they’ve ever known behind and strike out in a new place.  The risk of failure, the risk of change.  But these guys don’t hesitate!  Christ calls, they follow!

 

We talk a lot about call in church world.  Your calling can mean your work, your vocation.  Or, it might be a particular task at a specific time.  A calling could be just part of who you are, like some are called to be a foster parent, or to create art, or to feed hungry people.  Or a calling could consume your life.  But who calls us?  And how can we hear it?

 

I was struck this week by a conversation between the brilliant young poet Amanda Gorman and CNN’s Anderson Cooper following her stunning recitation at the inauguration on Wednesday, because Gorman talked about call.  She said, there is a mantra she tells herself before she begins to write, and before she recites her poetry in public.  She tells herself:

 

“I am the daughter of Black writers. We are descended from freedom fighters who broke their chains and changed the world. They call me.”[1]

 

Gorman hears the call of her ancestors, and it gives her courage – courage to write her truth, to speak truth to power.  Her calling empowered her to cast a vision of restoration, redemption and repair for a bruised and battered nation.  To be light for a world in desperate need of it.  If that’s not a sacred calling, I don’t know what is!

 

Maybe Simon and Andrew, James and John had been waiting for a long time for someone to call them.  Maybe those long, weary nights on the water had made them long for something different, something more.  Maybe all that time spent fishing, meditating by the water, out in the quiet of nature, opened their ears to hear the call when it came.  Maybe they were frustrated by the world as it was, and wanted to make it into what it could be.  For whatever reason, they were ready – when they heard the call of Christ, they were ready to go, to leave backbreaking work for work could be heartbreaking, but would feed their souls better than fish ever would.  Maybe the call gave them courage to step out in faith and trade calloused hands for calloused feet, following the good news into the world.

 

I believe Christ calls each one of us to follow him.  Sometimes it sounds like an inner yearning for meaning, questions that compel us to learn more, then to do more.  Sometimes it sounds like Jonah’s call to the people of Ninevah, a call to repent and to change.  Sometimes it sounds like his call to Simon and Andrew, James and John – come, follow, do this work that needs doing!  Like the call Amanda Gorman hears, we’re called to trust the wisdom within each one of us, the wisdom of our ancestors.  This call gives us courage to do hard things.  It’s a call that inspires faith – not faith as an ascription of belief, but faith in God and faith in ourselves, faith as something embodied.  Faith that leads us to go where we are needed.  To take God’s good news into the world.

 

I hope this week, we’ll try to find space to be quiet and listen to where God is calling us.

 

Maybe there is someone who is sick, for whom a phone call or a text could be a healing balm.

Maybe someone you know is hurting or in pain, who needs to hear words of kindness, or would appreciate a note of encouragement.

Maybe there is a person with whom you are in conflict, who needs to experience grace.

Maybe there is an organization or neighborhood where a few hours of our time could make a real impact.

Maybe there is an opportunity to serve right here in our church, a way for you to offer your gifts to further our mission and ministry.

Maybe there is an issue that is dear to your heart, that needs the advocacy only you can offer.

 

Maybe there is someone whose body is threatened, whose beliefs are denigrated, whose rights are denied, who needs you – who needs us – to stand with them.

Maybe there is a person who doesn’t know, who hasn’t heard the good news that they are blessed and beloved, that they are a child of God.  Could you be the one to tell them?  Could we?

I pray that we will find space to listen and trust the wisdom within, to hear the voice that is calling us, leading us on the journey.  May it be so.

 

 

 

[1] Gorman, Amanda, interview with Anderson Cooper on CNN “Overjoyed: Hear from the poet who stole the show at the inauguration,” 1/20/21, https://youtu.be/qHhut5nhI8g

Cat Goodrich
Faith Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD
January 17, 2021

 

To Be Seen and Known…
John 1:43-51, Psalm 139

 

The pictures are alarming.  They have bruises across the bridge of their noses and the skin of their cheeks is red, and irritated.  Their eyes are tired, with deep shadows underneath; exhaustion is written all over their faces.  These are the photos of nurses and doctors who care for Covid patients in the peaks of this pandemic.  Their testimonies are difficult to hear: they tell horror stories of swift declines, sons and daughters telling their parents goodbye over a plastic wrapped iPad.  These frontline workers wear PPE, masks and shields and double gloves and gowns for full shifts, with no time to stop and eat, no time to stop to rest.  The need is just so great.

Journalists have tried to tell the story.  NYTimes reporter Sherri Fink spent 24 hours in a Brooklyn hospital ICU in early April, showing us the epicenter of the first wave in New York City. This American Life tracked the audio journals of nurses in New York, trying to gain a window into the stress and struggles of health care providers on the front lines, to show the hidden reality of what this illness can do not only to those who get sick, but also to those who care for them.  And thousands upon thousands of nurses, doctors, patients, and surviving family members have taken to social media to offer their own testimonies about the terrifying ravages of Covid-19 on the human body.  Stay home, save lives they say.  Wear a mask.  If you could only see what I see, you would.

Experiencing something first-hand changes us.  It reduces our ability to doubt or deny another’s truth.  First-hand experience expands our understanding, builds empathy and compassion.  Often, it inspires us, compels us to make a change.  Think of a time when your mind was changed or heart expanded by experiencing a new reality first-hand.  There is power in proximity, in coming close to a different reality than the one we know in everyday life.

This is one reason why the work of journalists is so crucial – first-person testimony and eyewitness accounts pull back the veil, helping others see and understand what happened in the chaos of the Capitol a week and a half ago, or the hidden impact of death-dealing policies in immigrant detention centers, supermax prisons, in nursing homes, schools, and living rooms.

Human rights lawyer, author, modern day prophet Bryan Stevenson often talks about this, the power of proximity.  He wrote about it in Just Mercy, and he says it again and again when he’s talking to CEO’s or students or whoever will listen: there is power in proximity.  If we are willing to get close to people who are suffering, we will find the power to change the world.  Because when we draw near and listen, take time to hear another’s story and tend their wounds, we are able to see them more clearly… we are able to see ourselves in them.  Something awakens within us.  Something that compels us to make change.

A relationship with someone in prison changes how we see the prison-industrial complex.  A trip to disappearing swampland in South Louisiana changes how we understand the devastating impact of climate change.  Teaching in a public school opens your eyes to the struggles of kids living in poverty.  Staying in a shelter, sharing meals with people experiencing homelessness makes it much harder to pass by others in need on the street.  Life in the borderlands changes how a person sees the impact of the border wall, of evil policies like family separation.  Proximity changes us.

Philosopher Martin Buber calls this the I/Thou relationship.  Buber believes we only exist in relationship- either with others – which he calls the I/Thou- or with inanimate objects – the I/It.  When we are in relationship with others, the I/thou, we become more complete.  You make me more fully myself, and I make you more fully you.  There is something that we share that makes us more human when we are together.

It makes sense, then, that faith grows in relationship with others.  When Philip encounters Jesus and is invitated to follow, his faith is sparked and grows.  And Philip is so excited, so compelled by what and who he has found he tells another friend about it.  What does the old song say?  It only takes a spark to get a fire going…

But I think we can all identify with Nathanael, can’t we?  He’s a skeptic.  Can’t fool him.  It’s going to take more than Philip’s testimony to convince him that Jesus is someone worth knowing.  After all, Nazareth was just a little town, fewer than 500 people lived there.  It didn’t figure in any of the messianic predictions made by Old Testament prophets.  It wasn’t a thriving city like Jerusalem or Rome, Nazareth was a backwoods place.  That’s why Nathanael says, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?”  It’s like saying, as some have said, can anyone good come that country?  Can anyone good from a place like Baltimore? What good can come from a place like that?

 

Philip says.  “Come and see.”

 

Come and see.

 

Philip invites Nathanael to experience what Christ is like, so he can judge for himself if his doubts are well-founded.  Philip invites him, confident that meeting Jesus will change everything.  Throughout the gospels, people are changed by their encounters with Jesus.  Zacchaeus, Nicodemus, the woman at the well. They want to run and tell the world what happened to them.  Jesus must have had a magnetic personality, an unstoppable charisma.  But not only that.  Being in relationship changes all of us.  Because when we come into relationship with someone, especially someone we’ve seen as “other,” it’s a lot harder to keep them as an “it.” The de-humanized becomes human.  They become a thou- someone who reflects the holy image back to us, someone with hopes and fears and dreams – someone who makes us remember our common humanity, who makes us more human!  A no-good nobody from Nazareth becomes Jesus, the Son of God, the King of Israel.

 

It is remarkable to me that Nathanael doesn’t see Christ do anything.  No one is healed, no bread is broken, no water turned to wine.  Nathanael only meets him in the road and realizes that Jesus knows him.  And that’s enough.  Being known and seen for who he is convinces Nathanael that Jesus is the son of God.  And so Nathanael professes his faith, and joins Jesus on the road.

 

In the gospel of John, Jesus says he is the way, the truth, and the life.  One-way early Christians talked about their newfound faith was to say that they were “on the way.”  Discipleship involves a journey.  A movement into relationship with others, into a neighborhood, into the city, into the world with an open heart, and hands ready to heal and to serve.  It’s a journey that changes us.  Scripture tells us that wherever Christ went, the sick and suffering sought him out for healing.  To tell their stories.  To be seen and heard.  And he listened.  Felt their pain and offered healing.  Fed and taught them.  Walked beside them.  Shared good news, offered the saving grace and love of God.  As indeed, he does for us.

 

In his letter from the Birmingham City Jail, Dr. King responded to the charge of being an outside agitator by saying, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.  We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.  Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.”

 

We cannot truly be free while our siblings suffer.  If the spread of this pandemic has taught us anything, it is how interconnected we truly are –our very breath connects us, and proximity comes with risk.  But – we are called to take that risk!  Rules for physical distancing notwithstanding, we are called to follow Christ, both to the margins and to the centers of power, and into deeper relationship with one another and with God.

 

In my article for the Voice of Faith this month, I shared that my theme for this year would be Connection.  Consider this year, consider our church an experiment in proximity, one I’m inviting all of you to join.  Let’s become proximate to one another, and to our neighbors.  Because by drawing near to one another, we learn of hurts often kept hidden.  We build trust, and learn from each other.  We discover and further affirm all we have common – similar joys, similar worries and struggles.  We find new ways to support each other, to tend one another’s wounds even as we work for healing in the broader world.  There is hope to be found in proximity; we learn we are not alone.  When we have the courage to draw near, we just might encounter Christ in one another.  So let’s get going!

 

Jesus promised Philip and Nathanael that they would see greater things than in their first encounter.  And they did: by following him on the way, they saw loaves and fishes multiplied, sight restored, diseases healed, the unclean included, the broken made whole, tables turned, sins forgiven, death defeated, new life given to all – to you, and to me, to each one of us who is brave enough to go and look and be in relationship with the one who says, “come and see…”.

 

May it be so!

 

Cat Goodrich
Faith Presbyterian Church,
Baltimore, MD
January 10, 2021

Water and Spirit
Mark 1:4-11

 

The first time I can remember

thinking about baptism,

I mean, really thinking about it –

I was sitting in Anderson Auditorium in Montreat, North Carolina.

I was maybe eight years old

tagging along to a conference for high schoolers

because my parents were youth advisors,

and I didn’t have much of a choice.

The memory is a little hazy, because I was so young,

but I think we were sitting on the right hand side of the aud, about halfway back.

The room was full,

and to my young eyes, it was like we were in the middle of a vast sea of people.

Worship was like magic, electric

when it happened with so many people in such a huge space.

There were two worship leaders, a man and a woman,

wearing brightly colored dashikis

And they were preaching about baptism.

I don’t remember the message really,

but I do remember what they did:

Carrying huge bowls of water

they walked up and down the long aisles,

they dipped palm branches into the bowls and waved them over the pews,

flinging water near and far, splashing our hair and faces and those old wooden pews, while crying out:

Remember your baptism!  Remember!  Remember your baptism!

 

The next day we had a free afternoon,

And went on an adventure at sliding rock,

A big slab of granite that formed

A natural waterslide in the middle of the Davidson River.

 

It’s no wonder, looking back on that day, as we slipped and slid down the rock

into the freezing pool of river water,

we shrieked, “Remember your baptism!”

as laughing, we splashed beneath the waves

and rose again,

sputtering, gasping for breath,

squeezing the icy drops from our hair,

flinging the water from our fingertips.

Remember your baptism!

 

I don’t, of course – remember my baptism, that is.  Like many Presbyterians, I was baptized as a baby, with my parents making promises to raise me in the faith, the congregation pledging to support me, promises sealed by a sprinkle of water that grafted me into the body of Christ present at 900 Jordan Street in Shreveport, Louisiana.

 

The water on my forehead dried a long time ago; yours probably did, too.  I’ve heard a recording of it, though, standing in my mother’s kitchen, words warbly on an old cassette tape.  John Rogers, my pastor when I was a child, tells me words I’ve now said to countless others, “for you Jesus Christ came into the world, he did battle in the world, he suffered.  For you he went through the agony of Gethsemane and the darkness of Calvary.  For you he cried it is fulfilled, for you he triumphed over death.  And the though you little child do not yet understand anything about this, thus is the promise of the apostle foretold: we love God, because God first loved us.”

 

Baptism begins the life of faith, a life lived in response to the love, grace, and goodness of God.  In baptism, we are saved, named and claimed by God not because we are good, but because God is good.  When I preach baptismal texts, I usually talk about the incredible grace of being named a child of God.  Blessed and beloved.  Precious and worthy of belonging.  And we are – you are.  It’s amazing.  It’s good news.

 

But as you might guess, the events of this past Wednesday are weighing heavily on my heart this morning, and they change how I read and respond to this text.  The white nationalist insurrection and violent invasion of the US Capitol building were horrifying, but they should not surprise us.  The coals of that fire have been smoldering in this country for a long time, and the president and his colleagues have delighted in stoking it.

 

I keep turning over images from that day in my mind:

a gallows on the Capitol lawn,

confederate battle flags and guns carried by white men in animal skins and tactical gear,

their ability to infiltrate and desecrate the seat of our government, disrupting democracy, with fewer than forty people arrested in a day of destruction, death, and mayhem.  Contrast that with the more than 350 arrested this summer during Black Lives Matter demonstrations in DC.

The mob in a frenzy, protesting the results of a free and fair election in part because of the growing enfranchisement, the voice and the vote of black and brown people.

 

Maybe the events of last Wednesday have left you sick or numb, overwhelmed or hopeless, furious and outraged, and questioning what we’re doing here if they can get away with that there.  Maybe you need to hear today that you are a child of God, created in God’s image, blessed and beloved.  Precious and worthy of belonging.  So hear this: remember your baptism, and know that you are loved.

 

But what’s been on my mind this week is a promise we make as part of our baptismal vows.  The Book of Common Worship puts it like this: Trusting in the gracious mercy of God, do you turn from the ways of sin and renounce evil and its power in the world?

 

John appears in the wilderness preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sin – repentance lays the groundwork for Jesus’s ministry to begin.

 

For us too, baptism is just the beginning of the ongoing work faith: turning from the ways of sin, renouncing evil and its power in the world, taking up Christ’s ministry of healing, feeding, love, and justice.  It’s why we confess our sin each week as part of worship: we name our common brokenness, and ask for the Spirit to enter in – the baptismal waters washing us with grace, and renewing us for the work of love and justice week after week– we turn and return, back to God, away from the ways of the world, saying no to the power of empire and yes to the power of God over and over.

 

We can’t know what the day was like when Jesus met John by the Jordan.  I imagine it was hot, the sun beating down on the crowds that gathered to hear the baptizer preach, so hot that people were eager to splash down into the water when it was their turn. Can you see Jesus making his way through the crowd – politely, carefully walking down to the water’s edge?  Picture him stooping down to unlace his sandals and take them off, setting them neatly side by side in the sand before stepping into the water.

 

Plenty of ink has been spilled by scholars trying to explain why Jesus needed to be baptized.  He was without sin, after all, so why did he go to the river that day?

 

We can’t know for sure why he went.

 

If to repent means to turn around, maybe he was just reorienting himself, turning toward a new phase of public ministry.  Maybe he was washing away his own self-doubt.  Maybe he was reluctant to enter the fray of conflict with Rome and the Jewish leaders, and felt he needed to seek forgiveness.  Maybe he came because he knew how hard it is to be a faithful human in the world.  How hard it is to come up against the powers and principalities, to stand against the power of Empire, to confront the power of hate.

 

What we do know is that Jesus is there with the people:

with all the others who were going to be baptized by John.

He came to stand with sinners, to step into the same muddy waters as the rest of us.

And to show us how to swim.

 

Scripture tells us it happened like this: after he wades out to John.  After he is plunged down beneath the green water.  After he rises, gasping for breath, dripping, back into the sunlight.  Before he makes his way back to the shore, the skies are opened.  The heavens are torn apart, Mark says, and the Spirit descends like a dove upon Jesus.

 

He hears a voice… you are my son, the beloved.  With you I am well pleased.

 

Clarence Jordan’s Cotton Patch gospel says it like this: you’re my son.  I’m proud of you.

 

Words every child longs to hear.

 

According to the gospel, the spirit came into him, and God was let loose in the world.  Bringing forth his new life, new ministry.  Empowering him to work wonders and challenge power and initiate God’s reign in the world.  That same Spirit which remains with us, empowering and enabling us today.

 

There’s an old folk song called Healing River that I learned about a year ago.  It’s a song Pete Seeger sang in Meridian, Mississippi in 1964 while giving concerts as part of the “Freedom Workshops.”  These were classes to educate people about voter-registration requirements, part of the larger movement to win the vote for African Americans at that time.  He was in the middle of a concert when he learned of three civil rights workers who had been killed and had to share that news from the stage. Healing River is the song he sang.  We’ll sing it together at the end of worship.

 

In his memoir, Pete Seeger said, “The right to vote is the crucial thing.  Better schools, jobs, and housing will flow from this.  And, if we believe this is one country, the United States, then we must be concerned with a part of it which has for so long lagged behind the rest of the country.  How long will it take?”[1]

 

How long will it take?  I don’t know.  But I believe we are in a moment when the spirit of God is loose and at work in the world.  Because it was out of chaos that the world was created.  Out of the darkness of the womb that new life is born.  Out of the waters of baptism that each one of us is called forth to the work of love and justice.  So in the week ahead, try to remember your baptism.  As you wash your hands.  When you have a drink of water.  Remember your baptism, and trust that the Spirit is with us.  We are not alone.  Thanks be to God.

 

 

 

 

[1] Seeger, Pete, “Folksinger’s Field Report, August 5, 1964” in The Incompleat Folk Singer, quoted by Ken Bigger, on Sing Out! Blog, https://singout.org/2012/06/13/folksingers-field-report-august-5-1964/