Cat Goodrich
Faith Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD
December 4, 2022

How We Prepare
Matthew 3:1-12

Dary grew up in Maine, which means he has spent a lot of time downhill skiing.  He was on the ski team in high school, skied on weekends through college, and even worked as a ski instructor for a winter after he graduated.  As a result, I’ve watched a few more downhill ski races than I might ever have anticipated before he and I met.  One Olympics a few years ago, I remember watching Lindsay Vonn before a giant slalom race, utterly focused – eyes closed behind her orange goggles.  She was sitting, but bobbing and weaving on her skis as she waited her turn at the top of the mountain.  “What’s she doing?” I asked my more knowledgeable husband – “Visualizing the race,” he said.  It was her second run, and she knew the course, so she prepared by running it in her mind’s eye – seeing the turns, tensing and moving and visualizing success as she waited for a chance to actually make it down the mountain.

Visualization is a common strategy for athletes to prepare for competition.  It primes your body and mind to respond quickly.  Studies have shown that if you can envision yourself succeeding, you are more likely to actually succeed at what you’re attempting – envisioning yourself attaining a goal, you can convince yourself it’s possible.  Call it the power of positive thinking – or just smart preparation – visualizing success can help ensure it.

In one of the most watched TED talks of all time, social psychologist Amy Cuddy describes the impact of power poses: ways you can move your body that actually boost confidence and lead to a greater likelihood of success.  Take a superman pose for a minute or two before a difficult phone call or an interview, and you’ll feel more powerful, more equipped to handle what is to come.  What we do with our bodies and what we picture in our minds prepare us for the future, and lead to better outcomes. Incredible, isn’t it?

Chefs prepare for busy meal service by prepping their mise en place, chopping, shredding, slicing, peeling, measuring ingredients so they’re all close at hand, clean and ready for the mad rush to come.

Musicians and actors get ready to perform with practice – playing a piece or running a scene over and over until it’s perfect, going over the sticky tricky parts until the notes become muscle memory, imbedded somewhere deeper than conscious thought.  This is what preparation is, isn’t it?  Learning, practicing, anticipating, imagining success, and building experience so that the work feels natural, second nature – easy, even.

Last Sunday, we heard Jesus give us a wake-up call – shaking us from our slumber so we might open our eyes to the reign of God appearing all around us.

In case we hit snooze, or need another nudge, we hear the hoarse cry of John the Baptist this week – happy Advent, you brood of vipers!  He quotes the prophet Isaiah, saying: prepare!  Prepare the way of the Lord! The valleys will be lifted up, the mountains made low, and rough places made a plain!

Now Isaiah was speaking to people who were in exile in Babylon, longing to return to their homeland.  The prophet is casting a vision of a holy highway through the desert, promising the people that God would move mountains to bring them back home. He’s giving them hope for a different future.

John is another story. John cries out in the desert because the one for whom they’ve waited is coming, and people need to get ready!  We don’t know much about where John came from or why he starts preaching when he does in this gospel.  But somehow, John saw the signs and knew –the messiah was coming.  And though he is out in the wilderness, crunching cicadas in a hairshirt with sticky honey hands – or maybe because he is out there, on the margins, John knew that the advent of God would change the world forever.

So John tells the people they need to make some changes to be ready for Christ when he comes.  He calls them to repent – to turn away from the old ways, away from religion of laws and hierarchy that exploits the poor and excludes the broken, away from acquiescent faith that bows down to Rome’s military might and worships wealth, turn away from all of that – and turn back towards God: God who makes a way in the wilderness.  God who promises peace.  God who uplifts the poor and provides for the hungry.  Turn back to God, John calls, and be baptized.

Baptism was a ritual used for converts to Judaism, a symbolic washing away of the old life so that a new life in the religious community could begin.  But John is calling everyone to be baptized.  Even faithful religious folks need to change, he says – if you’re not bearing good fruit, the whole tree needs to be chopped down.

What do we make of these angry verses?  Do we write off John as a sweaty toothed madman out in the desert, a crazy relic of ancient Israel?  Or can we hear him as a herald of the reign of God, a new era that we still hope for, still look for, still long for today.  What I hear John saying is: what we do matters.  How we care for one another.  How we honor God.  How we work for the future we envision.  As the modern translation, The Message puts it:  “What counts is your life. Is it green and flourishing? Because if it’s deadwood, it goes on the fire.”

What counts is your life.  Our preparation during this Advent season often becomes domesticated, doesn’t it?  We clean up, and decorate with branches of evergreen and holly.  We hang lights, pull out the ornaments, put up the tree. We bake and buy, wrap presents, and plan.  But the preparation to which John calls us is so much bigger than that.  Bigger than a day of celebration.  Bigger than getting our homes or even our hearts ready.

We’re called to prepare for the reign of God!  To prepare for peace!  To prepare for an end to suffering, forever!  They will not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, says the Lord!  And when we envision God’s promise of peace as possible – watch out!  Because we know the power of vision and visualization!  That’s the dangerous, the incredible gift of the prophetic imagination!  Visualizing success can help ensure it!

So how do we prepare?  We prepare for the arrival of the reign of God by acting as if it’s already here.  Because we know how this story goes – we know that Christ was born not as a prince but as a pauper, and his ministry began not in the halls of power but out in the wilderness, with John, being baptized alongside everyone else.  And so out on the margins is where we meet him – and we serve him when we serve those in need.  We prepare by embodying those values that he held dear – values of love, generosity, hospitality, belonging.  By seeking the justice we know is coming.  By making a way where there seems no way is possible.  By trusting that the promise will be fulfilled, and acting as if it were so.  We prepare by envisioning and working for the future God promises is coming, the future we glimpse in the life and ministry of Christ.

I wonder – how will you prepare this Advent?

 

 

Cat Goodrich
Faith Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD
November 27, 2022

Begin at the End
Matthew 24:36-44

Maddie got a Choose Your Own Adventure book for Christmas last year – do you remember these books?  It’s a story with many different plotlines all in one book.  As you read, you decide after each page how you want the story to go: do you explore the underwater cave? Turn to page 40.  Or do you stay in your submarine and continue to move along the sea floor?  Turn to page 45.

I remember loving these books as a child, and reading with Maddie, I saw that she did exactly as I used to do – she would make a choice, but mark the page so she could return to that point in case the story went south and she needed to retrace her steps and go in a different direction.  Many of the storylines do not end well, the main character dies or something else happens to end the adventure.  So invariably, when reading together, Maddie and I will flip back to an earlier fork in the story, to see if we can get to a better ending, by making different or better choices.

How will the story turn out?  This is the motivating question for those of us who read, or watch, or listen to stories.  What’s going to happen?  The end matters!  We want things to work out in the end, for conflicts to be resolved, people to reconcile, for justice to be done; I want love to win.  This curiosity is a great motivator, it’s enabled me to push on to finish more than one book with a meandering plot line.

Today, on the first Sunday of Advent, the beginning of the church year, we begin with the end.  We start the new year by looking towards the end of time, the promised second coming of Christ and the culmination of God’s work in history.  The question of when Christ would return was a serious one for the early church, because they believed the end of the world was imminent.  This apocalyptic eschatology, a big word our children learned in Sunday school a few weeks ago – this thinking that the end of the world was near, was the dominant worldview in Biblical times.  The gospel writer’s community was growing restless – wondering, is this ever going to happen? How much more time would pass, how much more suffering would they have to endure before Jesus returned to make all things new?

We are living in what seem to be perilous times.  We know that because of climate change and industrialization, we are living through the sixth great extinction.  We know more now than ever before about the epochs of life on earth, the millions of years that our planet has existed, the rise and fall of the dinosaurs and the ice ages, we give them names like the Pleistocene and Cretaceous period and so on.  We can see that earth will likely exist far into the future.  This age of the Anthropocene is just a tiny blip in a very, very long timeline.  If we have read any books from the Left Behind series, it is likely out of cultural curiosity and not because we really believe the end is nigh.  So what do we make of the apocalypticism that we read in today’s text, and the promises of the prophets about the peaceable kingdom to come?

First, the truth: Matthew is right; Jesus is right: we cannot know when the end will come.  Not for us, nor for those we love; and not for our planet, either.  We can only live and know in the present. Right here.  Right now.  In this moment.  So this is the time for faithfulness.  Right here, right now is the time for us to act with compassion.  For us to love one another.  For us to serve our neighbors.  For us to forgive and admit our failings.  For us to seek peace.

The temptation, of course, is to wait… wait for it to be easier, wait for some unknown time in the future when we have more time, or more money, when the need is greater or the path more clear.

Mary Oliver, patron saint of wonder, wrote these brief “instructions for living a life” in her poem “Sometimes”: “Pay attention./  Be astonished./  Tell about it.”[1]

I believe she’s right.  We are called to pay attention – not to sleepwalk through our days, just to go through the motions, but to be present in the world.  Awake, and aware that life is precious.  Precious precisely because it can be precarious, fragile, and unpredictable, even as it is beautiful, and filled with moments of awe and open-mouthed joy.

Two days ago, Dary and I watched the orange of a blazing sunset fade away and a tiny sliver of a moon appear in the night sky over the Blue Ridge Mountains that ring the Roanoke Valley.  It was absolutely ordinary.  To share that moment with him, out of the happy chaotic jumble of our family, was an absolute gift.

I saw a graph the other day that mapped the average time we spend with other people in our lifetimes: how much time we spend with our parents and family of origin, with our partners, our own children, our friends and colleagues.  Time with parents and family peaks, obviously, in our early years, dramatically decreasing after age 18 for most people.  A friend of ours said he tries to hold this in mind when he’s with his family, and his in-laws – how many more dinners will we have together, all crowded around the same table?  Twenty?  He says it helps him let go of the minor annoyances, and to better appreciate what each person means to him.

The marching drumbeat of this Advent season is the words “keep awake.”  “Keep awake, therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.”  In the gospel of Mark, it’s repeated again and again – keep awake!  It is tempting to allow our daily routines to lull us into a somnolent daze.  Easier than ever, really, to be numb to the relentless deluge of news that pours from our televisions and smartphones – somewhere, someone is hungry.  Somewhere, someone is sick.  Somewhere, someone is suffering.  But the message of the gospel is to keep awake!  Pay attention!  Keep at the work of discipleship, trusting that God is at work, that Christ is coming and will come again and again and again.

See, I’m not sure that I believe in a cataclysmic, apocalyptic second coming.  I ascribe to Dorothy Day’s belief that Christ comes to us over and over in the people whom we meet – in those with whom we break bread around the table.  In those whom we serve, and in those who serve and help care for us.  And, when we wake up and pay attention, we can see God’s beauty and the sacred that shimmers right in the midst of the ordinary routine of each day, and the ritual of our traditions.  The reign of God, breaking through all around us.

We cannot know for sure how the story will end.  But we can trust in the promise of the prophet: that one day the weapons of war will be made into garden tools.  When we choose to invest in food security instead of artillery.  We can trust in God’s promise that we will know peace… if and when we wake up to Christ’s holy presence within and around us, coming to us in moments of ordinary transcendence.  Every day.  So we can make choices that lead to the end that is promised.  We can be faithful, here, and now.  We can love one another and work for peace here, and now.  We pay attention and notice the sliver of the moon, be astonished, and tell about it. Thanks be to God.

[1] Oliver, Mary, quoted by Jenna Barnett, “10 quotes from Mary Oliver, Patron Saint of Paying Attention,” Sojourners Magazine, https://sojo.net/articles/10-quotes-mary-oliver-patron-saint-paying-attention

Cat Goodrich
Faith Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD
November 13, 2022

The Promise of Renewal
Isaiah 65:17-25

When I was serving a church in Birmingham, the Equal Justice Initiative opened their National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. The Equal Justice Initiative, or EJI as it’s called, is Bryan Stevenson’s law firm that seeks to exonerate wrongfully accused people on death row, fights to free children locked up in adult prisons, and works for prison reform.  The National Memorial, and the accompanying museum, seeks to memorialize the thousands of people killed by racial terror lynching in our country, and to educate visitors about the impact and legacy of lynching in our criminal justice system, in our culture, communities, families, and more.  EJI has done this work because they believe, “America needs a deeper and broader narrative shift to move from mass incarceration into an era of truth and justice: we need to honestly confront our history.”[1]

In EJI’s offices and at the Legacy Museum, there are jars of soil collected from sites where people were lynched – each jar bearing the name, location, and the date the person was killed.  These jars, row after row of them, lined up on gently illuminated wooden shelves from wall to wall and floor to ceiling, are a collective testimony to the sheer horror of this era in American history – each jar representing a life, and another family, another community torn apart and traumatized by racial hatred and violence.  Some members of my congregation in Birmingham participated in the soil collection project, going early one Saturday morning to EJI’s offices in Montgomery, to meet with activists from across the country, to get a jar, the name of the person, and the location of their death, so they could travel to collect the soil.

Imagine their surprise, their shock, and their shame, when they, this group from First Presbyterian Church of Birmingham, discovered that the young man’s body had been found at the First Presbyterian Church of Tuscaloosa.  His name was Henry Burke.  And he was 19 years old.

They told me that they went to the church and stood awkwardly outside, not sure if they should let someone know what they were doing.  We all knew members of this congregation, knew the pastors, they are us.  And so they knocked on the doors, walking all around the building like you do trying to get into a church on a weekday.  When they finally found the weekday entrance, they told the person who answered who they were and what they were doing.  They asked about Henry Burke – did the church know that this had happened?  Was there some connection?  What was the story they told about it?  The person wasn’t sure.  There was some vague recollection, a rumor here or there – but nothing concrete in the historical memory of the congregation.  Not a story they told willingly to folks on their doorstep.

So the group thanked the woman, and went to the lawn, and dug up some earth, and filled the big glass jar.  Then they prayed, and carried it back to Montgomery, and added it to the exhibit.  Henry Burke.

This work of EJI’s is the recovery of historical memory.  Their team researches and documents the victims of lynching, and partners with community groups to put up historical markers at locations where the murders took place.  This brings the haunted history out into the open, a public commemoration and acknowledgement of the harm done; gives testament to the lives lost, and the courage of the surviving family and community.

People who research trauma tell us that giving voice to painful memories is often a necessary part of the healing process.  Traumatic experiences fracture our memory; they get imbedded in our psyche deeper than our thinking, speaking brains can go, way down in our lizard brains, our limbic systems.  This leaves us in a constant flux state of fight – flight – or freeze, and can cause painful memories to reemerge when triggered by a sound or smell connected to the trauma – what we know as PTSD.

But, when we speak about the harm we’ve survived, bring truth out of the shadows and shine a light on our wounded places, a path opens up to healing.  The past stays past – we aren’t doomed to repeat it.

This is the intention of the National Memorial of Peace and Justice, commemorative markers and soil collection project.  Their work is inspired by the truth and reconciliation commissions in South African following the end of apartheid, and in Guatemala at the conclusion of the civil war there.  We must name the truth of the past as we’ve experienced it, to honor the memory of those who died, and to ensure that we never repeat it.  This remembering enables us to heal.

All of this to say that the words of the prophet Isaiah strike a strange chord for me today.  Particularly the promise that the former things shall not be remembered, nor brought to mind.

Isaiah paints a beautiful vision of the world to come, a new heaven and a new earth!  The peaceable kingdom!  And yet, one of the things that makes us human – that enables us to form lasting relationships, to learn and grow and build community – is our memory.  One reason why dementia can be so painful, so difficult.  When we forget, it erases our memories of who we are, where we’ve been, and how we are connected.

Why is this erasing of memory part of Isaiah’s vision of the new creation?

The prophet was writing to people who had survived the trauma of exile.  He’s writing in Judah, after his people have returned to the home of which they’d dreamed for so long.  But they discovered it was not as their parents and grandparents had remembered.  Devastated by war, and generations of enslavement, they do not flourish back in their homeland.  They eke out a living, barely scraping by.  Hence the promise of the day when they will build houses for themselves and live in them – produce food that they themselves will be able to eat.  Reminds me of the bitter irony that in the rich, coffee growing regions of Guatemala and Mexico, farmers often drink Nescafe instant coffee, because they cannot afford to drink coffee from the beans they grow.

The prophet offers a vision of human flourishing – people able to build and produce for themselves, without exploitation, with enough for everyone.  Safety, health, a life to old age without fear of harm.  Peace.  Trauma theory aside, perhaps the promise of a clean slate, where the suffering of the past will not need to be remembered or come to mind, is what these families who have returned from exile need to be able to go on.

There was a Presbytery Gathering yesterday, and I had the pleasure of presenting two candidates for ministry on behalf of the CPM so that they might be certified ready to seek a call.  One of them wrote in his statement of faith that a central task of the church is that of remembering: remembering who God is, and who we are – remembering that we are loved, and remembering the promises of God; remembering that as we wait for the fullness of the kindom, we are called to the work of forgiveness and healing, justice, and reconciliation.  Remembering, after all, is part of what we do each week – remembering the promise of grace at the font. And when we gather at the table, we remember the words and the work of God in Christ; when we break bread together, we physically re-member his broken body, becoming the body of Christ in the world again.

Can you remember when you first learned to ride a bike?  All of the different directions you had to pay attention to, the balance, the speed, how to move the pedals, how to brake, how to turn, where to put your hands on the handlebars.  But once you got the hang of it, you really didn’t have to think about it anymore.  It just became second nature.  Your body remembered, so you didn’t have to – now you just hop on and go.  Maybe this is the kind of knowing, this deep, embodied knowledge, that the prophet is talking about.  We don’t have to work to remember the former things, they don’t even come to mind.  Because deep down in our bones, we know the fundamental truth – that God is the ground of our being, whose love holds us no matter what.

As far as I know, there is not yet a marker at that church in Tuscaloosa, bearing the name and story of Henry Burke.  Not yet.  But he is remembered.  And I have to think that this hard work of remembering is what sustains us and carries us forward in this in-between time, as we long for the fulfillment of God’s promises of healing, and wholeness, and peace. And the recovery of historical memory, telling the truth of what has happened to us and others, acknowledging harm done and seeking to repair it, is how we make space for healing now, as we look towards the time when we won’t have to remember anymore – we will just know the truth of God’s love, the abundance of God’s grace, the embrace of the whole holy family.

[1] Equal Justice Initiative, https://eji.org

Cat Goodrich
Faith Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD
October 30, 2022

Church Reformed, Always Reforming
2 Thessalonians 1:1-4, 11-12

First, a history lesson!  Today is Reformation Sunday, when Protestant churches around the world celebrate and remember the men and women who challenged the Catholic church and eventually broke away from it, creating a new way of following Christ and honoring God in community.  If you’ve studied this, you’ll remember that the Reformation was ignited in 1517 when Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of Wittenberg Chapel in Germany.  He was protesting the sale of indulgences, amongst other excesses and injustices wrought by the church at that time.  One would think that those days are far behind us, and they are – we get on beautifully well with our neighbors at St. Matthew’s, but there are still a few cultural flashpoints on which we differ with the Catholic community at large – who can be ordained, and a woman’s right to choose chief among them.  Our Presbyterian practice has grown distinct from the others even in our Protestant family: the Lutherans, the Congregationalists, the Methodists, the Baptists and so on.  Still, we all trace our roots back to the nail in the door at Wittenberg, back to that furious cleric courageous enough to criticize the church.

Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Knox, and the other reformers didn’t believe that people needed an intermediary between themselves and God.  Instead, they taught people to read and put Bibles into peoples’ hands, so for the first time, ordinary folks had the chance to see and interpret scripture for themselves.  Before this time, education was restricted to the clergy and aristocracy – but the Reformers saw the importance of literacy and learning for everyone, which led to greater access to education for poor people across Europe.  Part of what drove the reformation was the invention of the printing press –when people had access to Bibles printed in their native tongue and could read the Word for themselves, it changed them, opening their imagination to new ways of building faithful community, to be in relationship with God.

We still believe that Christ alone is Lord of the conscience – that we can determine what is right and wrong, discern God’s will for ourselves and our churches through prayer and reflection, discussion and debate.  We see this at all levels of the Presbyterian church, in the work of the session, the Presbytery, the General Assembly.  And we believe that we are the church reformed, always being reformed…. Thanks be to God!  That is, the reformation wasn’t a one-time event.  God is still at work: shaping, changing, pushing us to adapt to new challenges and circumstances.  We are a confessional church, which means that at critical moments in history, we stop and assess, to reaffirm what we believe about who God is, who we are, and what we are called to do.

Accordingly, we should remember that today is the 40^th anniversary of the Belhar Confession: a statement against apartheid by the Dutch Reformed Mission Church in South Africa, calling the church to stand unified together against racist division and discrimination.  Belhar was written in 1982, and was adopted in 1986. Nelson Mandela was still in prison; this was 8 years before the end of apartheid and the first free, integrated elections there in 1994.  The confession was written not only because of the political and social horrors wrought by racist separation policies in their country, but because these divisions existed within and were perpetuated by the church, too.  So Allan Boesak and the other religious leaders had the courage to say that the church belongs not to humans but to God, and therefore “must stand where the Lord stands, namely against injustice and with the wronged;…[and] must witness against all the powerful and privileged who selfishly seek their own interests and thus control and harm others.”[1]  As you might imagine, this call to unity was not universally well-received.  One of the authors of the confession was jailed and tortured, and people denounced it as a communist document.  Still, the wheels were set in motion, and the change that many longed for was coming… in both the church and in the wider society.  And, within ten years, it did.

The Belhar confession was added to our own PCUSA book of Confessions in 2016.  It is worth remembering that it took more than twelve years of study and at least one failed attempt to include this statement and its powerful call to unity against racism in our book.  As the PCUSA’s history of the confession notes, “Apartheid is the human context for the Confession of Belhar, yet it is never mentioned in the confession. Rather, Belhar lifts up the heart of the Gospel as a bringer of hope for the human condition. Belhar presents a Christian view of racism, separation, and suffering by those who had experienced the realities of these evils.”[2] It was eventually included because leaders in our church here in the US hoped it might strengthen our common witness and work to build a more just church, and a more kind, loving, and just world.

So why remember this today?

In part, because it’s important to know our history.  But also because this letter to the early church in Thessalonica is problematic!  You heard, as I read it, the part that the lectionary leaves out: the promise that God will wreak vengeance on the church’s enemies; the threat that God will repay with affliction those who cause suffering.  The writer’s belief that suffering and persecution make us worthy of the kingdom of God!

The fledgling community to which Paul is writing WAS suffering persecution at that time in the declining Roman empire; Paul himself was imprisoned because of his efforts to spread the faith.  But that is not our context!  Looking around, we can see the problems that come from equating ourselves here in the US in the 21^st century with that persecuted Christian minority – the justification of discrimination against women, LGBTQ people, people of color, other religions on the grounds of our religious beliefs.  The embrace of violence as a means to protect a particular community or belief system.  The flag of the crusaders flying over a riot on the steps of the US capitol.  A man with a hammer attacking the spouse of the Speaker of the House.  This kind of thinking leads down a dangerous road.

But Paul’s letter to the church in Thessalonica should not be dismissed outright. Paul affirms the love and peace of the community as signs of their faith and persistence despite the challenges they face.  Our love for one another and commitment to unity in the midst of struggle are gifts from God, who promises to give us grace sufficient to the work to which we are called!  This letter is a snapshot, a window into a time as the church was just beginning to discover what it looked like to seek to hold fast to faith in the midst of adversity.  It affirms that justice matters to God, that though God is merciful, our actions have consequences.  As Americans in the 21^st Century, we would do well to remember that.

And also, there is room, space for us to change: just as Zaccheus was changed by his encounter with Jesus in the road – to atone for his wrongdoing, to become a person of great generosity.

In its exploration of the Belhar Confession, the PCUSA observes that “[Ours] is a faith and tradition that must be continuously liberated from its own failures and idolatries, but also a tradition with an enormous liberating potential.”[3]  That is, we don’t always get it right.  Luther was antisemitic.  Calvin’s Geneva was not a fun place to live – he was terribly harsh, and left no room for artistic expression or play-  he himself was sent away at one point for being too exacting.  We don’t have to look far back in the PCUSA’s history to find a reluctance to embrace integration, the leadership of women and LGBTQ people, and so on.  And so I am grateful that we are a church reformed and always being reformed.  That we have the capacity to change, and that this is in fact the work of the Spirit within us and through us!  I’m grateful for the promise that the Spirit continues to be at work, breaking open our hearts and our notions of what church looks like, or sounds like, or acts like – so that we can continue to become the beloved community God intends for us to be.  MAY IT BE SO!!!

[1] The Confession of Belhar, https://www.presbyterianmission.org/resource/belhar-confession/

[2] PCUSA History of the Confession of Belhar, https://www.pcusa.org/site_media/media/uploads/theologyandworship/pdfs/the_belhar_confession-rogers.pdf

[3] Smit, D.J., “The struggle against apartheid and its significance for Reformed faith today,” Reformed World (Volume 55/4, December 2005) pp. 366-367, quoted by Eunice McGarrahan, “A Study of the Belhar Confession and its Accompanying Letter,” Office of Theology and Worship, PCUSA, 1/28/2008.

Cat Goodrich
October 23,2022
Faith Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD

It Takes a Village
Joel 2:23-32

I have a friend who, when her kids were little and still a bit squirmy and rambunctious, remembers one Sunday when she and her family just barely made it to church.  They were just a little bit late, and once they got settled in the pew there were a lot of shuffled papers and dropped toys.  She says she and her husband cringed through much of the service, hoping that they weren’t being too disruptive.  Every parent knows this feeling, right?  Wondering if your child is going to be too much for this place – will you make it to the end of this, or are you going to have to pick the child up like a football and just get out of there?  Miraculously, they were able to stay until the end of the service.  As they gathered their belongings, picking up legos and toy cars from the floor, a matriarch of the church made her way “purposefully over to them.”  My friend braced herself, ready for some passive aggressive barb about children in church.  She was surprised when the woman smiled and said, “I’m so glad you made it today!”  When my friend apologized for being so unruly, the woman laughed and surprised her again by tearing up.  She said, “Honey, I can remember a time when it was too quiet in here. You keep coming back, and don’t you worry. Y’all can bother me anytime.”[1]

They did keep coming back.  It made all the difference to know they were truly welcome.

We don’t often get to be part of communities that are truly welcoming, where we can really show up with our whole selves – mess, noise, baggage, and all.  And we don’t often get to be part of authentic communities that are truly intergenerational.  Some of us are lucky enough to be part of families who span multiple generations. Some jobs – teaching, or work in a university, or parts of health care – allow us to interact regularly with people who are much younger or much older than we are.  But for the most part, we engage with and build community with our peers: in work, in our social lives.  This makes sense: we’re often thrown together with those in our same stage of life; it’s easy to connect with those who are going through the same joy, the same stress, whether it’s parenting young children, or caring for an aging parent, or grieving the death of a spouse, or enjoying retirement.

But for me, one of the gifts of church is the chance to be part of a truly intergenerational community.  Where we can learn from and support one another in all the different stages of life we might be in.  Where my children can know and be known by amazing people like Marilyn, who makes 90 look young.  Where we can learn with and appreciate the giftedness of someone like Samuel, who has lived and taught and played music all over the world.  This is a place where our old ones can dream dreams and our young ones can see visions together.  The real magic happens when the wisdom of the past connects with clear-eyed vision in the present, to give rise to a common hope for the future.  This is part of the vision of salvation shared by the prophet Joel, isn’t it?

I can remember convening a parent circle in my church in Atlanta, where parents of college students and twenty-somethings shared their experience parenting young children and kids in elementary school.  We crowded into a Sunday school room, the room filled with people clutching paper cups of coffee and overflowing with questions: How did they prioritize church in the midst of so many competing demands for their time?  How did they make a home for Faith?  It was so reassuring, to share and learn from one another.

We have a wealth of knowledge and experience here, right?  You people have been through a lot – this congregation has been through a lot.  You know the pain of grief, the shock of sudden loss, the difficulty of long-term illness.  You know what it’s like to lose a job, to be stalked by depression, to learn to thrive despite mental illness, or to have someone you love struggle with the demon of addiction.  Many of you have made it through the early days of parenthood, you’ve survived divorce, and most know what it means to retire, or to change jobs, or move houses, or send a child off to school.  How do we sustain faith through all of these changes?  How have we made it through political crises, how do we support each other as we fight the dehumanizing forces of white supremacy and racism?  What can we learn from each other?

God calls us into community because God shows up in and through our relationships with one another.  In our hands and feet.  In our listening, in our sharing, in our learning.  In our presence with and for each other.

The prophet Joel knows this.  It’s why, in the midst of the devastation wrought by a locust plague, he paints a picture of intergenerational community, and casts a vision of abundance, of hope for the future.

You may not be very familiar with Joel, and to be honest, I’m not either.  This is one of the only times in the three-year lectionary that we hear anything from him, and we don’t actually know a lot about him.  We don’t know when he was writing, and his location is lost to the winds of time.  But his words are meant to reassure, to give hope to people who are devastated after three years of locust plague.  Vegetation and crops have been stripped bare, threatening the lives of humans and livestock.  The people don’t know if they would survive.  Desperation looms large in Joel’s world. And he has a scary apocalyptic worldview, we hear that too in this passage, believing that the end of time is near.

Cast your memory back to the summer before last, to the great cicada emergence of 2021 and you’ll have a small idea of what his people were experiencing.  The noise of the mating calls filling the hot summer air, the deafening drone rising and falling in waves.  Cicadas covering every leaf, their bodies crunching under foot.  The way the trees drooped later in fall, sickened and weak from the leaves the bugs stripped bare and the nymphs nesting under their bark, and burrowing down in their roots.  Ugh.

Here in 2022, we know something about plagues and pestilence, more than we ever imagined we might need to, far more than we ever wanted to.  Think back to the scary early days of the pandemic, to the fear, confusion, and worry of March and April 2020: the world changing in an instant, shifting to weeks of lockdown and uncertainty.  Not knowing how to stay safe, not knowing when it would end, too many people getting sick and dying too quickly.  Disinfecting groceries, isolating from friends, and family, and church.  We didn’t know if we would survive, and many did not.

Yes, we can imagine something of what Joe’s community is going through: their fear, their stress, their worry.

We know, of course, our brains feel stressed and worried by uncertainty and scarcity all the time for lessor threats.  Will we make it to the end of this interminably long lecture, or worship service?  Will we survive?  Will there be enough money to do what we want to do, or to accomplish what we feel called to do?  Will there be enough people to show up to get the work done?  Will there be enough?  Try as we might to hold on to the truth of abundance, we have a tendency to believe the myth of scarcity – and suffer the anxiety and stress that go along with it.

So in times that are challenging and in the ordinary, everyday times, it’s important to remember Joel’s vision of God’s promise: The threshing floor piled high with grain, the wine jars and the oil press overflowing.  The whole community, old and young, enslaved and free, sharing their dreams and visions for the world that is coming to be.  What hope!  This promise of enough for everyone.  This radically inclusive promise that God’s spirit will be poured out on all flesh, that everyone who calls on God will know salvation.

We are beginning a visioning process here at Faith, with a small group of leaders taking a close look at our mission, vision, and values over the next few months.  We are pretty confident we know who we are as a congregation, but our world has changed through plague and pandemic and fractured politics, and we want to listen closely to how God is calling us to respond in the years ahead.  What is our vision of abundance, the threshing floor filled with grain, the wine vats brimming, the oil overflowing, here in North Baltimore?  How do we listen to the wisdom of each generation here, to respond to the needs both within and outside our congregation?  How will we strengthen our common witness to the God of hope, and deepen and expand our experience of beloved community?  All of these questions are worth exploring.

If the prophet Joel’s words are familiar at all to us, it’s because Peter quotes him at Pentecost, saying that Joel’s prophesy is fulfilled with the presence of the Spirit like tongues of fire, bringing dreams and visions to young and old, giving rise to the community of the church.  My hope and prayer for us in the months ahead, is that we, too, young and old and in between, will dream dreams together, and begin to share a common vision: of a congregation where all find welcome, meaning, and wholeness; where together we work to make our dreams reality of a city where each person can flourish.  Of a country free from the shackles of racism, a world where all know peace.  May it be so.

[1] Goodrich, Elizabeth, “Please, Bother Me,” Macedonia Ministry, https://mministry.org/please-bother-me/

Cat Goodrich
Faith Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD
October 9, 2022

Why Does It Have to be Hard?
2 Kings 5:1-15c, Luke 17:11-19

In November of last year, Disney released a film that swept the nation…at least, every household with a child between the ages of 3 and 13 – the movie is called Encanto. A musical with incredible, fast-paced lyrics that could only come from the brilliant Lin-Manuel Miranda, Encanto is set in a remote village hidden in the mountains of Colombia. It tells the story of the magical Madrigal family: matriarch abuela Alma Madrigal, her triplets Julieta, Pepa, and Bruno, and their families – each one gifted with magical ability by the miracle that protects their family and village. All, that is, except one: Mirabel, the 15-year-old at the center of the show. As the movie unfolds, we realize that the Madrigals are faced with an identity crisis: who are they apart from their powers? What will become of them if they lose their magical gifts? What trauma, what rifts must be healed in order to restore the enchantment and save their beloved little home?

If you ask my girls what the movie is about, they might tell you it’s about a family with magical powers – and if you’re lucky, they’ll sing you a swinging rendition of “we don’t talk about Bruno.” But thinking about it this week, I realized it’s also a healing story, not unlike the two healing stories we heard this morning. All three stories involve miracles. All three stories involve social isolation and stigma. And all three stories involve crossing borders that divide us in order to find healing. Amazing!

Granted, there is no leprosy in Encanto. But the character of Bruno is ostracized, demonized, and run off because of his magical gift – Bruno is a prophet who can see the future…and he runs into trouble when people do not like what he sees, or misunderstand his predictions.[1] When the movie begins, Bruno hasn’t been seen in 10 years, and the family refuses to say his name or mention his disappearance.

People afflicted with leprosy in Biblical times were considered ritually unclean – stigmatized and socially isolated because of their disease. They were not able to worship in the temple. And they were not allowed to be part of the wider community. That is why Jesus is met by the 10 men with leprosy on the outskirts of town, why they shout to him from far off. Perhaps, even, why they are healed from a distance, too.

Namaan, however, is a bit of a different story. Namaan is wealthy, powerful – a general in the Syrian army. We can presume that his skin condition was problematic for him, why else would he go to such great lengths to seek healing? But he seems like he is not as socially isolated as a poor person with the disease might be – he retains access to power, gains an audience with the King, and still has family and servants around him. Today, we know that wealth and privilege do not inoculate a person against illness, injury, or death. But money does open doors in our privatized healthcare system. Good insurance ensures access to lifesaving preventative care, and means that problems can often be caught earlier, leading to better outcomes. Healthy food is expensive. Research and common sense have shown that people living in distressed neighborhoods have higher instances of asthma and heart disease, the impact of stress on our bodies and the reality of food deserts in urban America lead to shorter lifespans and higher instances of disease.

All of that to say, Namaan is a bit of an exceptional case – he’s powerful enough to appeal to the king for help, and wealthy enough to be able to travel across borders to seek healing. A member of Bible study observed – even in Biblical times, you had to go to great lengths to get a referral to see a specialist! But really, this raises a question. Surely there were people in Israel with leprosy. Why doesn’t Elisha heal them? The question could be asked a million times a million times over, from hospital beds in every city, in every country, on every continent – why do some people find healing, while others suffer?

The short answer is – we don’t- I don’t- know. I do know that our bodies are beautiful, and fragile, and imperfect. That life is short, and precious, so we must love and care for one another as best we can in the limited time that we have. That the world can be an unfair place. As for Namaan – this story is functioning in a couple of different ways in the larger story. It’s a healing story, yes. But it’s also a story of God’s universal power. It testifies to the truth that God’s love knows no bounds – so much so that this man, Namaan, a general in an army that until recently had been attacking Israel, is able to be healed – not on his terms but on God’s terms. When he is healed, Namaan is overcome with gratitude – so much so that he humbles himself, transformed both outside and in. He acknowledges the ultimate power and sovereignty of God, and returns to thank the prophet Elisha.

Namaan has crossed from the land he knew into unknown territory to seek healing, and he returns a changed man. The gospel story testifies to the boundary-crossing power of God, too. Jesus is in dangerous territory, somewhere in the borderlands between Galilee and Samaria, when he is approached by the men who seek healing. Jesus must be in a hurry, taking a shortcut, because there’s no other reason why he would be in this region known to be unsafe for travelers. Still, he allows his journey to be interrupted, stopping to listen to the lepers when they cry out to him. And even though they are ostracized, sick and suffering in the street, or maybe because they are…he heals them with the instruction – go and show yourselves to the priest.

It is not a coincidence that the tenth leper – the one who realizes what has happened and turns back to say “thank you” – is a Samaritan. Like Namaan, he is an unsympathetic character – feared and reviled by Jesus’ community. The one you’d least expect to be the hero of the story.  Like Mirabel Madrigal, the one without power is the one who saves the day. The Samaritan is the one who realizes that he is in the presence of the living God, the one who stops, and falls in the road in gratitude. Demonstrating to all of us the outer and inner transformation that comes when we encounter the healing power of God.

Martin Luther called worship “the 10^th leper turning back,” to offer his thanks and praise to Jesus for being healed.[2] And so we gather here, too – Each one of you has made a choice to be here, interrupting a culture that has no time for church by gathering together in this space to give thanks to God for the blessing of this life, and I am so very grateful for that!

I don’t want to completely ruin the story for you who haven’t yet seen it, but in Encanto, it isn’t a person but relationships that are healed: the rift between Bruno and the rest of the family, and the divide between Mirabel and her sister, Mirabel and her formidable grandmother. And I think this relational healing is more often the kind of healing that we all have access to, the kind of healing that God promises us, healing that leads to flourishing and fullness of life.

I think I’m a little like Namaan, I expect it to be hard. There must be some mumbo jumbo, hocus pocus that will resolve the differences between us, soften the hardness of our hearts, help us speak to those on the other side of the aisle, the other side of the city, the other end of the spectrum, or even across the dinner table.  But how else can we heal the fractures that divide us? Does not God call us to cross the borders that exist to keep us apart?

Wash in the Jordan seven times and you will be made well.

Go, and show yourselves to the priest, and you will be made well.

It’s not difficult. It just takes a willingness to be changed. To listen, to humble ourselves, to admit when we need help! My prayer for us is we might find the humility of Namaan. The gratitude of the 10^th leper. The courage and wisdom of Mirabel Madrigal to talk about Bruno, to ask hard questions, to seek healing for the trauma that we carry. Because God’s will for us healing, and wholeness, and fullness of life. May it be so!

[1] as cousin Delores sings – grew to live in fear of Bruno stuttering and stumbling, always left abuela and the family fumbling, grappling with prophesies they couldn’t understand.

[2] Lose, David, “Commentary on Luke 17:11-19,” Preaching this Week on Working Preacher.com from Luther Seminary, 10/10/10, http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=783.

Cat Goodrich
Faith Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD
October 2, 2022

You Gotta Have Faith
Luke 17:5-10

Our passage this morning needs a bit of context, because it begins in the middle of a conversation between Jesus and his disciples – and also because the text could possibly go into a narrow little file I have labeled “things I wish Jesus had not said.”

He’s teaching, expanding the idea of discipleship. What does someone need to do to be a disciple? First, they must be on guard against sin, and make sure they don’t cause anyone else to stumble. Then, they’ve got to forgive others. Not just once, but countless times. Okay…then our passage begins. Listen:

Right away, a question: How do we respond when we hear the language of enslavement in the mouth of Jesus? As far as insults go, calling someone a ‘worthless slave’ is not one I want to hear coming from my Lord and savior. I don’t know about you. And what is he doing here, putting the disciples in the role of enslavers? What?

We know that the Bible is both a living word and a culturally enmeshed document. That means, we can find new meaning and understanding in it, but we need to remember that it is a book that’s bound in part by the culture and time in which it was written, and slavery was common in the ancient world. Jesus is using a reference and example that people would understand – one he uses several times at other points in the story. Some translations soften the Greek and use the word servant – this translation, I think appropriately, uses the word slave. What do we do with it?

We must read scripture with both curiosity and a critical eye, constantly sifting through the stories to find what is relevant, meaningful, and true for us today. I don’t know about you, but I want Christ to write it on a tablet, to make it plain for all to see that slavery was wrong, and human beings deserve a fair wage for their labor. But he doesn’t. So we hold passages in tension with one another, remembering that more than anything else Christ was motivated by the call to love God and love neighbor. We can reject the example of enslavement here, even while we dig beneath it, asking what we think Christ was trying to say. The whole passage is expounding on the nature of discipleship. What does it take to be a disciple? With the examples Jesus gives here, we see that discipleship can be difficult. God calls us to lives of loving service, service that can be unglamorous and exhausting, that can feel more like a duty than a joy. Remember that the road Jesus is on leads to Jerusalem, into conflict with the authorities, and then right to Calvary, to the cross. Maybe he wants the disciples to realize that he is asking a lot of them when he calls them to pick up their cross and follow him. He’s asking for everything, their whole lives.

I don’t know about you, but the disciples hear his call to service, his commandment to forgive others relentlessly and ask – how can we do that? How do we have enough faith to follow him?

The disciples seem to be of the opinion that more is better. If a little faith is good, more must be better. But is that how faith works? I can think of plenty of examples where more isn’t better, it’s just more. A little ice cream is good, but more quickly becomes too much. Exercise is good in reasonable amounts, but we’ve probably all overdone it before, strained a muscle or ended up with an injury that put us out of commission for a while. How about time with our extended family? A little of it is wonderful. A lot of time…well, let’s just say that probably depends on the family!

Faith is like love – it’s impossible to quantify! If you have it, even a little bit, even faith just the size of a mustard seed, Jesus says – that’s enough. Enough to do something utterly unbelievable – enough to uproot a tree and throw it into the sea.

Is faith power? Is it like the force, the ability to move people and objects where we want them to go?

I heard someone pray, asking for more faith: “I don’t need faith to move mountains, God, I just need enough to move myself.” I just need enough to move myself. I like that.

We’re all familiar with a sense of inertia when starting a new project or embarking on something new. We feel anxiety that the project might fail or the work will be too hard; we fear we won’t be up for the challenge. Faith is what inspires and enables us to take the first step, and then the next and the next. Faith is trusting the future God has promised us, even when we can’t see it yet. Faith is trusting ourselves enough…trusting GOD enough…to risk trying something new. It’s the midwife of creativity and courage. It is the antidote to fear.

The images coming out of Florida this week, from Ft. Meyers and Sanibel Island and Cape Coral, are just heartbreaking. Whole communities wiped off the map, homes and businesses destroyed, neighborhoods flooded, livelihoods demolished, and human lives lost. There’s one county that has seen more deaths than others, in part because officials delayed issuing a mandatory evacuation order until it was, for some, too late. The state and local municipalities are in the process of assessing the damage and rescuing those in distress, and I’m amazed by remarkable local firefighters, police, emergency responders, public works, and the people from FEMA and the electric company who are doing that good, hard work. There’s even a ragtag group of folks that have come from Louisiana, and Mississippi, who call themselves the Cajun Navy. Have you heard of these guys?

They are not professionals. They are volunteers with boats. Their politics are probably a little different than yours and mine. But they go in after a hurricane has caused catastrophic flooding and use their boats to ferry people to safety. The first Cajun Navy was formed after Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Louisiana coast and flooded New Orleans and a zillion other little towns in the region. The work started with a group of about 30 people with 23 boats. Now there are almost 50 different groups calling themselves a Cajun navy, comprised of hundreds, thousands of volunteers who rush in when disaster strikes. To save lives. To use what little resources they have to help others. They saw a need, and realized that they had a way to help. That’s faith.

There’s a philosopher named Blaise Pascal who famously made a case for the existence of God – pascal’s wager – basically, in a universe of infinite possibility, you are better off believing there is a God, because you lose nothing if you’re wrong. He said, even if you don’t have faith, act as if you do. Do the things a faithful person would. Serve others. Forgive others. Be a part of a community of faithful people. You may find, he says, “your actions leading your heart and mind in faithful directions.”[1] And one day, you might surprise yourself, discovering just a tiny seed where there wasn’t any before.  Pascal says, “Don’t worry about what you believe! Focus on your actions and convictions will follow!”[2]

By acting as if we have faith, we just might find we have enough – maybe not enough to move mountains, but enough to move ourselves toward where God is calling us to be. Faith, then, is not a thought exercise, it’s not an ascription of belief, saying or reciting the right words to please God. Faith is an action, it’s what we do! It’s how we respond to the gift of grace, and the experience of love. We extend forgiveness to others! We show compassion to others! We build communities like this one, where we are reminded of the love God has for us, of the grace God offers us, and share those gifts with our neighbors. This, Faith, is faith.

David Lose says, “Faith is a muscle that gets stronger the more you use it.”[3] The joy and challenge of everyday life in the Anthropocene gives us plenty of opportunities to practice our faith – I’m so grateful we get to do this work of discipleship together.

[1] Pascal, Blaise, quoted in the Theologian’s Almanac for the Week of June 19, 2022, The Salt Project, https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/2022/6/13/theologians-almanac-for-week-of-june-19-2022.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Lose, David, “Everyday Faith,” Dear Working Preacher column, September 30, 2013, https://www.workingpreacher.org/dear-working-preacher/everyday-faith

Cat Goodrich
Faith Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD
September 11, 2022

Remember and Rejoice!
Luke 15:1-10

In 1944, a cartographer named Harold Fiske set out to map the Mississippi River.  Now, the Mississippi is the longest river in the continental US, 2,300 miles long and a mile wide in some places.  So this was no small task.  But Fiske made his work imminently harder, because he made what’s called a meander map – drawing not just the current route of the river, but also the various paths the river has taken over many thousands of years. Instead of showing the river as a single line, Fiske’s map shows a tangle of red, blue, and green squiggles, connoting the path of the river over time.  See, we think of rivers as having a set course, always flowing in a single direction, and predictably stable, when in fact – over time, rivers change course!  They are living, moving creatures that flood, overflow their banks, shift from one place to another, moving their silty selves over miles and years, seeking the most direct route out to sea.

Since the very beginning of a colonial presence in this country, French and then American engineers have sought to restrict the river to a particular course, building levees and locks to prevent flooding and keep the water flowing within set boundaries.  But nature, of course, has other ideas.  As you can see, the maps are beautiful… as one graphic designer put it, “[they] represent the memory of a mighty river, with thousands of years of course changes compressed into a single image by a clever mapmaker with an artistic eye.”[1]

When Jesus tells this story of the lost objects, he’s talking to Pharisees who have criticized his choice of dinner companions.  “He welcomes sinners and eats with them,” they say, grumbling.  In response, Jesus talks about a shepherd who leaves behind his flock of 99 to search for the one who has wandered off.  The woman with 10 silver coins, who sweeps the house until she finds the one that has been dropped into a dusty corner.  These are beloved parables, because who doesn’t know the frantic feeling of having lost something?  Who hasn’t turned the house upside down to find glasses, keys, or cell phone?  We once were delayed leaving my parents’ house after a holiday because I couldn’t for the life of me find my car keys.  After searching through every pocket and drawer, I discovered them half an hour later on a side table, hidden beneath a magazine.  Dary, bless him, has helped me developed strategies to keep track of my essential items – always put keys by the front door, keep wallet and phone in consistent pockets, check for all three before you leave the house.  He’ll be the first to admit that his strategies aren’t foolproof, but they help.

We can relate to these parables, because all of us know the heart pounding befuddlement of being lost – taking a wrong turn, retracing steps, trying to find our way back to the right path, back to what is known and familiar.  And while GoogleMaps and Waze have made it easier to find our way to new places, there have been times over the past few years when I’ve felt more lost than ever.  The before times, pre-2020, feel lost to me, never to be recovered again.  We can’t find our way back there, not as a culture, not as a country, not as a church – no matter how hard we try.  The pandemic feels like lost time, years in which many of us lost relationships, and lost our bearings. Some even lost our sense of obligation to one another.  In a way, it’s been a summer of loss: understaffed and overstretched airlines lost more lost luggage than ever before.  Women in almost half our fifty states lost the right to choose.

Thinking about loss on this day, September the 11th, reminds me of the horrible loss of life brought by terror and war.  Remembering 9/11 also evokes a loss of innocence – a clear demarcation of before and after, irrevocable changes in national identity, foreign policy, transportation security, world order that have come to pass in the decades since.

Yes, we know the feeling of being lost, of losing something or someone precious to us. So often life does not go as planned, things do not turn out as we hope they will.  We make mistakes, we lose our way. And so I notice a few things about this story that I want to point out.  The shepherd and the woman both search tirelessly, relentlessly, until the lost items have been found.  And when the sheep and the coin found, they rejoice.  The shepherd does not give up; the woman does not get distracted, or say, “oh, it’s just one coin, just let it go.”  No.  They search until that which was lost is found again.

It’s as if Christ is saying to his critics, you’ve written off these people as lost, these tax collectors and sinners, but every life has value to God!  These people are worth seeking, worth knowing, worth celebrating with!  These sheep outside the fold, I came for them as much as for anyone!

Also, the coin and the sheep don’t do anything to be found.  They don’t apologize, they don’t admit guilt or confess faith – they are simply sought after and found, and when they’re found, there is celebration.  These two parables are followed by a third, the story of the lost son, the prodigal.  There is a line that stays with me from that story – after he has left home and squandered his inheritance with loose women and dissolute living, when the prodigal son is so hungry he considers eating the slop he’s supposed to throw to the pigs – he comes to himself, and decides to go home.

He comes to himself.  Remembering who he is and to whom he belongs.  And returns home, and is welcomed with joy and celebration.

The author Elizabeth Guilbert says looking at a meander map is like seeing a map of the journeys of her heart.  She writes, remembering, “All the rules and boundaries that I have set for myself over the years, and how often they have failed. I think about the vows I’ve made to myself and others about where I’m going to be next year, or who I am going to be next year. Endless, expensive, stress-inducing efforts to civilize the river of my being.”

She goes on, “I often say that, after a certain age, every woman in the world could write a memoir called: NOT WHAT I PLANNED. We change. Life changes. We often feel shame, confusion and anger about about those shifts and pivots. But what if we just trusted the river? She seems to know where she wants to go…”

If you were to draw a meander map of your life, what would it looks like?  I imagine few of us would be able to draw a straight line from point A to point B, leading up to today.  Likely we all would have a tangle of lines, times when we backtracked and got turned around, and didn’t know which way to go.  Maybe some of those paths cause us confusion or even shame.  But those are the paths that have made us who we are, that lead us back to ourselves!  Think of all we’ve seen and learned along the way!  Think of all we are still becoming.

If we were to draw a meander map of our congregation, the different paths we’ve taken, all the turns and detours and adventures that have led us to this place, what would it look like?  There is much that we’ve lost along the way, it’s true.  We’re smaller than we used to be, in a building that is more than we need.  But I wonder if such a map would help us to trace and celebrate the paths that led to our beautiful diversity, and gave birth to our fierce commitment to justice. I know the map would reveal the ways and times we’ve shown up for each other, and show the many times we’ve answered the call to love and serve our neighbors; wouldn’t this map lead to our vision of an urban forest, and a property in service to our community in new and needed ways?

In our opening hymn this morning, we sang the words, come and remember who you are here.  Come and remember who God is.  Come, and remember you belong here.  All belong here.  To re-member is to put ourselves back together after being scattered, broken, scared and lost.  So today, I hope as we gather at the table we will take a minute to remember.  To look back at the many paths we’ve taken, the times we’ve felt lost, the times we’ve found our way.  And to help us remember this day as one in our journey, when you have a moment in the service – either as we sing a hymn, or when you come forward for communion – or before you leave the sanctuary – come, write your name on the tablecloth.  Because there is a place for you here.  Thanks be to God!

[1] Kottke, Jason, “The Marvelous Mississippi River Meander Maps,” written on his website, https://kottke.org/19/06/the-marvelous-mississippi-river-meander-maps, June 20, 2019

Cat Goodrich
Faith Presbyterian Church
Baltimore, MD
July 17, 2022

Faith Values: Social Justice
Amos 5:12-15, 18-24, Mark 12:13-17

The email came out of the blue one morning, from my husband, Dary: Did I know an immigration lawyer in Atlanta?  His colleague Julia’s friend had been detained, and needed representation.  Flipping through my mental rolodex, I realized that though I didn’t know anyone who did immigration law in Atlanta, I did know an attorney in Birmingham who might, so I made the connection.  Thus began many months of work and waiting, as the young man’s case wound its way through the immigration system, as it existed under the previous administration.  He was held with countless other men in a detention facility outside of Atlanta.  while his wife, who was pregnant, was released on her own recognizance to stay with an aunt in New York.

He was still detained when his daughter was born, hearing the news of her birth on a payphone, the line scratchy, handset cradled against his shoulder as he stood in a florescent lit hallway, surrounded by other detainees.  Like so many other migrants from Central America, he was seeking refugee status, awaiting the trial that would determine his fate.  It was a trial he was likely to lose, despite having fled Honduras in fear for his life after a gang threatened his family should he refuse to pay for their protection.

My lawyer friend would update me from time to time about the case – but I admit, the heartwrenching suffering of detention and family separation were not at the forefront of my mind as I went about my daily life in ministry, or day-to-day with my family.  We compartmentalize to get by, we have to.  Otherwise, we become paralyzed, overcome by the enormity of the disasters unfolding all around us.

I did not know Jose, the man who was detained.  I’d spoken to his wife Catalina only once, to introduce her to the lawyer – but still, however tenuously, our lives were connected.  As a taxpaying citizen of these United States, I was complicit in his detention, complicit in upholding the system that determined he was at risk of failing to appear for court proceedings if he were released, and so locked him away in rural Georgia for more than a year, eventually deporting him to El Salvador.

And so it is that this story from the gospel of Mark and the question it poses, from so many centuries ago, comes alive for us today.  Jesus, teaching in the temple, is approached by an unlikely alliance of religious and civic leaders – who ask: Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?  They’re really asking: Is it faithful?  To whom do we pledge our allegiance?  To Caesar, or to God?  And it’s not a fair question, because there’s no right answer, no safe answer.  Not in Israel, an occupied land, held in the tight fist of Roman rule for almost 100 years at that point.

The tax in question was a head tax, one everybody had to pay – it covered the cost of the occupation.  Nobody wanted to pay it, the community resented it, and of that there is no doubt.  But the question posed to Jesus is a double-edged sword.  See, many Zealots who resisted Roman rule refused to pay it.  If Jesus says, “pay the tax,” he will anger his supporters; if he says, “refuse to pay,” he risks outing himself as a revolutionary, giving his opponents reason to report him to the authorities and therefore risking arrest, and crucifixion.

It’s a trick question, meant to trap Jesus into saying the wrong thing, but it’s also a question worth asking ourselves even today.  Now, don’t get me wrong: I pay taxes. I believe in public schools and fire departments, garbage collection, and well-maintained roads, critical infrastructure and public safety, international diplomacy, and any number of other crucial services provided by our government.  But as people of faith, we owe our ultimate allegiance not to the state or our country but to God.  And our taxes pay for all sorts of other things, not just the glue that holds our government together but also bombs and bailouts, drones and detention centers.  This should give us pause, and why it’s worthwhile to consider this tricky exchange between the Pharisees and Jesus.  Why I’m grateful for his strategic response.  How do we faithfully navigate conflicting demands for our time, talents, and resources?  To whom do we pledge our allegiance?

This Sunday we are considering the Faith Value of Justice – a big umbrella that covers social, racial, economic, environmental, gender and LGBTQ justice, all causes dear to our heart as a congregation.  What is justice?  If we believe Cornell West, justice is what love looks like in public.  Richard Rohr describes justice and compassion ministries as the movement of the holy spirit within us for the sake of others.  He talks about three ways faithful communities respond to the needs around us by telling the story of a river that overflows its banks.  You may have heard this described in other ways – ambulances on a mountain highway, or pulling babies out of a river.  Rohr says, one way our ministries respond with love to the needs right in front of us is through charity.  We pull the people out of the water when the river floods, help them get to dry land, provide clothes, food, and shelter.  Another way we respond is through ministries of education and healing: training people to be lifeguards, paramedics, doctors and nurses, better equipped to respond when the river overruns its banks, teaching skills and helping them to make a life for themselves out of the floodplain completely.  But justice looks upstream, and says – why is this river flooding in the first place?  The work of justice then advocates and builds power through campaigns and coalitions to strengthen the levees, or build a dam, and hold the engineers and politicians accountable for keeping their people safe.   All of these are necessary for thriving and healthy communities.

We can’t do everything, but we can do some things.  It’s why some of us are called to serve as deacons, serving and caring for our community with compassion by providing meals and groceries for the guys at Harford House; visiting our sick and homebound members; praying for our congregation; supporting the CARES pantry; and building affordable housing through Habitat.  And others are called to serve on the SEJC, our social and environmental justice council, inviting our congregation to advocate for an assault weapons ban, electric vehicles for the USPS, full staffing and better service on the mobility bus for elderly and vulnerable people in our city, and an independent immigration court in Maryland to name a few issues we’ve acted on this year.

We do this work out of our conviction that God needs our hearts and our hands, our bodies and resources to share mercy, build peace, and pursue justice in the world.  And it’s a world that is organized by systems of government which we must navigate as faithfully as we can.  While Jesus’s response to the question about paying taxes was a bit oblique, give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s, his ministry and teaching is clear: he heals the sick, serves the poor, and feeds the hungry.  He challenges the rule that oppresses his people and the boundaries that shut people out.  He enacts God’s grace and liberation, and heralds the arrival of God’s reign.

The coin that Jesus asks for was a denarius, which had a picture of the emperor Tiberius and the phrase, “son of the Divine Augustus.”  It was a graven image, and a claim of divinity – two things forbidden by the 10 commandments.  Ostensibly, the coin belongs to Caesar.  But doesn’t all of creation belong to God?  Are we humans not reflections of the divine image?  How can we give to Caesar what is Caesar’s when everything belongs to God?  And so it is that the wise teacher calls us to strategic nonviolent resistance of affirming God’s image in every person that we meet.  Because when we see that, we cannot tolerate their suffering.  We must devote ourselves to their flourishing, putting ourselves on the line for the sake of the world that is becoming.

We cannot do everything.  But we must do something.  I don’t know what it is for you.  Who it is for you.  What issue breaks open your heart and keeps you up at night, what you’ve written about to your legislators and to the President and talked about with those who will listen.  Maybe you don’t know what it is yet.  But we are called into communities of care and accountability so that together we can testify to the truth that God’s will for us is to be whole, to be loved, to flourish.  And calls us to work together until justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.  May it be so.

Cat Goodrich
Faith Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD
June 23, 2022

Faith Values: Stewardship
Romans 12:1-13

 

I follow Corey Booker on Instagram, because of course I do. In addition to being a US Senator from New Jersey, Booker is on a run streak – up with the dawn every morning to run at least a mile, this is a thing that people do. I’ve never done it – but some people do. After his early run, Booker often will post a reel with an inspirational quote or thought for the day. The other morning, he observed that often, when his alarm goes off at 4:45 in the morning, all he wants to do is roll over and go back to sleep. Then he remembers a question that dogs him. Do you want to do what you want right now? Or do you want to do what you want MOST? And he gets up. And runs another day.

It’s impressive. And a good question, one that might help us make better choices about what we do with our time and how we work towards the goals we set for ourselves.

This past Monday evening, members of your session and diaconate met together. We shared lasagna and ate ice cream sandwiches at long tables under the trees out on the South lawn. We laughed and reconnected, and then we came upstairs and thought and talked about our congregation. We asked a question connected to Cory Booker’s question: what do we value? What is most important to who we are and how does that inform what we are called to do in the world?

I believe it’s important to return to these questions regularly – in part because we’re Presbyterians, which means we’re a confessional church: in times of upheaval and change, we reflect and reaffirm who we are and what we believe about God and the world. That’s reflected in our book of Confessions.

These are questions to consider also because it’s fun to envision future possibilities and make space for the Spirit to shape our collective imagination about what might we might do and be together.

And finally, it’s important to consider our core values because the world around us has changed – is changing rapidly.  Politics and pandemic continue to convulse our country.  We are bombarded with devastating news of war in Ukraine, drought in the west, an earthquake in Afghanistan, and the threat of famine; higher than ever CO2 levels in our atmosphere.  Now almost half the states in our union are not safe for women, or for people who want fewer concealed guns on our streets like police officers and Presbyterians.  The ways we form and build community are evolving – patterns of attendance and participation are shifting, too; as are the needs of the neighborhood around us.  It is a lot to hold, to carry, to try to find our way through.

In yoga, in strength training, and even in running – the teacher or coach will often tell athletes to connect to their core, or to brace their core: the muscles that wrap around our trunks to support our lower back and abs, and stabilize our pelvis.  Connecting to your core in a yoga pose helps with balance, in running it prevents injury.  And when attempting a heavy lift, your core can be a powerhouse of strength.  Breathe out, right now – and connect to your core.  Feel those muscles that protect your back and inner organs!  Brace yourself – and now relax.

Reconnecting to what is core, foundational to who we are: as Christians, and as a community of faith – is a way to maintain balance in a turbulent world, to protect ourselves against the unraveling of our sense of connectedness, efficacy and purpose as individuals and a congregation.  Shoring up and bracing our core helps us tap into our strength as God’s people.

And it’s not hard to do!  We just need to look around, and look inward – what brings us here, week after week?  What do our building and grounds say about us as a congregation?  What does our public witness say about who we are, and the world we want to be part of creating?  How do we spend our time?  What does that tell us about what matters to us?

Our Faith Value theme for this morning is stewardship.  The term stewardship conjures up pledge cards and pleas for money. But that’s not exactly what I mean – at least, that’s not all I mean when I name stewardship as a core value.  This past Monday night, after the lasagna and the ice cream sandwiches, around the tables in the Woodmont Room, we named and prioritized some of our church’s core values.  In part of our discussion, we explored what exactly it meant to name stewardship as a core value.  We landed on the definition that stewardship is how we tend to what we have: our faith, our congregation, the practices and property that we’ve inherited as a church.  Stewardship is also how we use the gifts we’ve been given: time, talents, and resources.  It’s investing ourselves in God’s work through Faith Church.

Good stewardship means showing up to support one another: by marching in Pride, like a group of us did yesterday; visiting one another in the hospital and sharing meals in hard times; standing together to proclaim that Black Lives Matter and to advocate for love and justice in the world. Good stewardship also means stepping up to lead and serve, to teach and sing, and more, because we need the gifts you, and sometimes only you, can offer.  And, good stewardship means making use of our building and the surrounding property – to support our ministry as we’re doing now in worship, to serve our neighbors, to host our partners, and to reflect our values.

I’m hard pressed to find a passage of scripture that speaks more clearly to good stewardship than this section of Paul’s letter to the church in Rome.  He writes to a church he intends to visit, but has not yet met in person; a church wrestling with conflict and working out how best to live together in community.  And he offers instructions to guide their common life, as they attempt to be church together.

Consider yourselves living sacrifices – that your whole lives might be a testament to the goodness and glory of God.  All that we have and all that we are belongs to God – so we are called to live and give accordingly.

If together we are the body of Christ in the world, and individually we are members of it – each with different gifts to bring and offer – good stewardship is knowing what we have to offer, what gifts we’ve been given, and finding a way to give back… or to receive when that is needed.  We don’t have to do everything, because we have each other: for encouragement and support, different parts with a variety of gifts to carry out God’s work in the world.

As we move forward, the session and I need your help and input to shape and inform our understanding of who we are as Faith Church: what are our core values?  How do we live them out?

Here are each of our 10 core values as discerned this past Monday.  Come forward, get one of the values that speaks to you.  And write on it one way you’ve seen it lived out in community, or a way you’d like to see it come to life.  And in the spirit of stewardship: you can also make a commitment to help carry out one of these values in the months ahead.

There’s also blank paper if you want to add another value that’s not listed here.

As the music plays, come, help us strengthen our core!