Cat Goodrich
Faith Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD
June 20, 2021

Bless this Mess: Joseph
Genesis 37:2-8, 18-36

Relationships can be complicated, can’t they?  I don’t know if we should find it encouraging or disheartening that the foundational stories of our faith are filled with families that put the fun in dysfunctional.  Right from the start, we have stories of sin: deceit, murder, envy, conflict, anger, and strife, misogyny and racism.  But it’s not all bad!  From the beginning, it’s clear that God looks at all of the tangled family systems, and the imperfect people, and she shrugs her shoulders and says, “eh, I can work with that.”

Today is Father’s Day, and what a day to revisit old Jacob – Father to 12 sons, who go on to establish the twelve tribes of Israel, and one daughter (the ill-fated Dinah).  Today’s story starts with Jacob: the son of Isaac and Rachel, grandson to Abraham and Sarah.  Jacob, who stole the birthright and wrestled an angel.  Jacob, to whom God promised presence, protection, and progeny.  Jacob, clearly not a candidate for Father of the year.  Because look at what happens with his sons.

Jacob’s favorite son is Joseph, the youngest at the time of this story- the baby.  As a sign of his love, Jacob gives Joseph a fancy robe, and not just any robe, a technicolor dreamcoat – one with long sleeves, which meant he didn’t have to do the hard labor expected of men at that time.

Those of you who grew up with brothers or sisters know that siblings tend to keep score.  We don’t necessarily need to win, but we want things to be distributed equitably.  We want life to feel fair.  Equal slices of cake.  Equal chores.  Equal love.

Except in Jacob’s house, love is lavished on the youngest one, so with the others, resentment grows.  It doesn’t help that Joseph is a tattletale, a bit of a brat, with bad dreams to boot.  Strange dreams. Dreams in which he, the youngest, rules over his family.  Dreams that flip the script on primogeniture, that age-old practice of valuing the firstborn son above all others, making the first born the one who would inherit the Father’s possessions and power. In Joseph’s dreams, the last becomes first.

I have lots of dreams: some are strange, some are mundane, most fade before I’m fully awake. Science still doesn’t completely understand why we dream. Sometimes, dreams are a way for our subconscious to make sense and sort through the day’s events.  Sometimes, dreams help us process memories.  Psychoanalysts like Freud and Jung believe dreams bring to light your hidden self; your needs, fears, or frustrations.

People have long believed dreams were a window to the spiritual realm, or another world, or even the future.  Dreams play a significant role in the Biblical narrative – think of Jacob’s dream of a ladder connecting heaven and earth, with angels ascending and descending upon it.  The prophets’ dreams of the peaceable kingdom where wolf dwells with the lamb, dreams of restoration and return, dreams of a new heaven and a new earth.  And in this story: Joseph’s dreams stoke the fires of enmity between him and his brothers.  Resentment leads the brothers to throw Joseph into an empty cistern, and as if that’s not bad enough – to sell him into slavery.  Dreams can be dangerous.  But that’s not the end of this story.  Years later, Joseph manages to land in the Pharaoh’s court and rise to prominence in Egypt because of dreams and his ability to interpret them.  That position enables Joseph to save his family, when they flee famine in Canaan and come to Egypt, begging for food and safe haven.  Dreams, it turns out, can save us.

What are your dreams?

A few days ago, Michelle Obama posted a picture of herself as a child, standing beside her father, holding his hand as he strikes a pose – her mom stands a little bit behind them, looking on.  Remembering her dad as Father’s Day approached, she wrote, “My father gave great advice, taught me the value of hard work, encouraged me to ask questions, and always gave me the space to do so. I always thought he was so cool!”[1]

In her autobiography, Becoming, she writes extensively about her upbringing, her memories of childhood, and the ways her parents supported and encouraged her over the years.[2]  Her dad was diagnosed with MS in his mid-thirties, and it would eventually kill him – much too soon, when he was 55.  She describes how he first experienced weakness in one leg, then needed to walk with a cane, then a crutch, then two, lurching and struggling to the car to get to work each day, then again up the steps to come home – never once complaining.  He gave up his dream of becoming an artist early on, working first to support his younger brother’s architectural degree, then to support his own growing family – repairing and maintaining boilers for the water company, never missing a day of work despite his advancing illness.

She writes of her dad’s dad, the grandfather she calls Dandy, who was the grandson of enslaved people and the son of a millworker.  Her grandfather was smart, and hardworking, but she remembers him being a grouch.  Early on, he’d hoped to go to college.  But coming of age as a Black man in the Great Depression, his options were limited.  He worked at a lumber mill, and even after chasing opportunity by migrating North to Chicago, he couldn’t get hired as an electrician or carpenter because he was denied a union card.  He eventually found work with the postal service, but, she writes, “he lived with the bitter residue of his own dashed dreams.”[3]

Though her parents lived primarily within a two-mile area on the South side of Chicago for most of their lives, she writes, there was no expectation that would be the case for her and her brother Craig.  Her parents sacrificed and saved so she could get out, encouraging her to reach higher, push farther, to work hard, and to dream.

It’s what most parents want for their children – a better life, freedom to learn and grow and thrive.  And in the sad, troubling tale of old Jacob and his scheming sons, who sell their youngest brother into slavery – then deceive their father by letting him think Joseph is dead – if we look hard, we can catch a glimpse of God’s dream for all of us.  At least, I think we can.  Because time and again in the Biblical story, in that culture that valued some lives way more than others – the lives of men and especially the life of the first-born son above everyone else, God flips the script and elevates the least and the last above all others.  God subverts the system, showing us that there is another way, a better way to live together – a way that leads to liberation, and reconciliation even with the ones who have harmed us the most.

When Joseph is deep in the pit, with his brothers callously lunching nearby, he doesn’t know this, of course.  That first night on the road with the Midianite traders, stripped of his coat and sold into slavery, scared and sleepless, Joseph likely couldn’t see into his future.  He had his dreams, but he had no way of knowing if they would come true.  But he held onto them, and his dreams sustained him.  And if this story teaches us anything, it’s that God was with Joseph even when he was deep in the pit, abandoned and left for dead by his family.  God was with him when the Midianites put him in shackles and sold him to the Egyptians.  And God was at work, even when it seemed like all hope was lost.

There is some irony in reading this story today, the day after Juneteenth was first observed as a federal holiday.  Themes of enslavement and liberation, injustice and freedom ring through the story of Joseph and his descendants, the children of Israel who become captives in Egypt.  There is tension for me as I try to make sense of where God is in this story, how God is at work in a world where such terrible suffering is allowed.  I hope we will let the tension between Joseph’s story and the questions it raises around God’s sovereignty and providence give us faith, and not doubt.  Because God is at work, even when we feel like we are down in the pit, even when it seems like all hope is lost – the story of Joseph teaches us that though the arc of the universe is long, it bends toward justice.

I hope we let Joseph’s dreams where the last become first shape our imaginations, fuel our continued struggle for liberation – trusting that despite the suffering that plagues us, and the structures that bind us, and the poverty that grinds us, and the hatred that still simmers just below the surface – God IS at work, playing the long game – moving us, in all our brokenness, our envy and strife, our frailty and faults – toward justice, toward freedom, toward reconciliation, and, ultimately, toward peace.

May it be so.

[1] Obama, Michelle, @michelleobama post on Instagram, Thursday, June 17, 2021.

[2] Obama, Michelle, Becoming, New York: Crown Publishing Group/Penguin Random House LLC, 2018.  I drew from pages 24-40 for this section.

[3] Ibid, p 39.

Cat Goodrich
Faith Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD
June 13, 2021

Bless This Mess: Jacob
Genesis 32:21-32

This morning we will hear part of the story of Jacob, one of the patriarchs of our faith.  Jacob was a trickster, a fraud.  Jacob was a wrestler from before his birth,[1] struggling with his twin brother Esau in the womb. We know this because he came out of the womb grasping Esau’s heel – so Jacob means heel, usurper.  The second born, who wanted to be first.

Jacob, you’ll remember, was his mother Rebekah’s favorite.  He’s the kind of guy with a million-dollar smile, but you could only trust him about as far as you could throw him.  He gets his hungry brother to trade his birthright for a dish of lentil stew… then he wraps his arms in wool to trick his father, old Isaac, into blessing him as the firstborn son.

When Esau is enraged by Jacob’s trickery, and threatens to kill him.  So Jacob flees to his uncle Laban’s family.  Uncle Laban is his mother’s brother, who turns out to be as tricky as Jacob himself.  Jacob lives there for almost 20 years, marrying two of Laban’s daughters, and growing wealthy with all manner of sheep, and goats, and livestock acquired by somewhat questionable magical means.

As time passes, his relationship with Laban becomes strained, and Jacob decides it’s time to return home.  Problem is that he must pass through Edom, the lands where his brother Esau lives, to get to Canaan.  When Jacob fled in the first place, all those years ago, Esau swore he was going to kill his brother for stealing his birthright.  So Jacob’s a bit concerned about running into Esau’s territory, but he has no choice.

So the trickster decides to be a little tricky.  He comes up with a strategy to avoid certain death, and divides his herds and his people into different groups, sending some as a gift to Esau, and others in another direction.  And in case that doesn’t work, he leads his children and wives across the river with the rest of his entourage and leaves them there, maybe hoping that Esau’s army will have pity on them because they’re defenseless.

Great guy, Jacob.

This is where our story picks up this morning.  Listen for a word from God.

(read Genesis 32:22-31)

I rarely have trouble sleeping.  I’m not a worrisome person.  I’ve learned not to drink coffee too late in the day, or else the caffeine leaves me jittery and awake – so most nights I can fall asleep and stay there without too much trouble.

I do tend to procrastinate, so long, late nights were common in college and grad school, as I would stay up till the wee hours writing or studying, doing work I shouldn’t have put off until the last minute.

When the girls were little, sleep was hard to come by, too.  Particularly the first year, when they would wake up to eat several times each night.  It was exhausting.  But I realized I love the silence, the stillness, the strange peacefulness of being awake when it feels like the rest of the world is asleep.  You can hear the clock ticking, the refrigerator kick on and off, the house breathing and settling, the birds begin to stir and sing at dawn.  Even now, my most productive time is often early in the morning, before the rest of my family has gotten up, when I can write without distractions.

Still, the dark awakens anxiety – I’m sure many of you can relate to the feeling of lying awake, trying to fall asleep, with a loop of every awkward thing you’ve ever said running through your head.  I like to remember poor choices, and relive my most embarrassing moments – or imagine worst case scenarios for what might happen in the days ahead.  Is it just me?

This year, our sleep has gotten worse.  The anxiety and stress of the pandemic has led to an epidemic of insomnia.  People have so much to worry about, and it’s keeping us up at night – which isn’t good, because we weren’t getting enough sleep to begin with.  Who got a full 8 hours last night?  My friend Dave Barnhart writes, “Most of America is walking around chronically sleep deprived. Our sleep deficit shortens our lifespans, diminishes our creativity, makes us more susceptible to disease, reduces our emotional intelligence, increases the risks of depression, anxiety, dementia, and diabetes, and causes more traffic accidents than drunk driving.”[2]

This past fall, a radio show/podcast I love set up an insomnia hotline – people called in to share what was keeping them up.  And it was everything – people couldn’t sleep because they were worried about getting sick, anxious about finding a job, or paying bills; some people were awake because they had to be for work; still others were awake for the sheer joy of living – the night was too beautiful to end.  The recurring truth, though, was that people were anxious and lonely – an aching, deep, loneliness led them to call a radio hotline in the middle of the night.

As many as half of Americans will experience insomnia at some point – which is why this story about Jacob feels particularly apt for me right now.

Because it’s night.  He’s alone, and he’s dreading what the day will bring, afraid that Esau is still angry with him for stealing his father’s blessing.  And suddenly he’s attacked by a stranger, with whom he wrestles until dawn.

There are a couple of clues that this is no ordinary bandit.  In ancient folklore, spirits often fear the daylight and are only active at night.  The stranger’s otherworldly strength, evidenced by his ability to fight all night long, and still put Jacob’s hip out of joint at the end of the bout.  His unwillingness to share his name.

Jacob seems to know this, too, because he refuses to let go – demanding a blessing from this being who attacked him in the night.  What do we make of this?

The traditional read of this story is that Jacob is wrestling with God themself – God who then rewards Jacob’s persistence and determination with a blessing of prosperity and progeny.  God who gives Jacob, the trickster, a new name: Israel, who strives and overcomes everything that stands in his way.

You’ve heard people say, “Let go and let God…” well, this is the opposite of that.  This is a story of the power of persistence – like the story Jesus told of the widow who would not stop asking the judge for what she wanted, until he was so annoyed he finally gave it to her.  This is nevertheless, she persisted story, a story of someone so determined to survive and to thrive that he wrested a blessing from the very hand of God.

Preaching professor David Lose reads this as a baptism story[3] – not a baptism by water or a baptism by fire.  More like a baptism by mud as they struggle and squish in the mud on the riverbank.  Baptism because Jacob comes away from the encounter with a blessing and a new name.  He’s struggled all night within himself and with God, remembering every wrong he’s ever done, every awkward moment, all the tricks and deceptions, all the mess and brokenness.  And he clings to God through the struggle.  And though it is painful, he finds grace in the midst of the struggle.  A blessing.  A new name, just as the water in baptism names and claims us as members of the body of Christ, beloved children of God.

The struggle changes Jacob.  Some say he walked with a limp for the rest of his life.  He is marked by this encounter with God.  And when the dawn breaks and Jacob leaves to meet his brother, he discovers that Esau is not waiting with weapons drawn, ready to attack.  His long lost twin greets him instead with open arms – Jacob, the trickster, is forgiven.  All those years lost in worry, estranged from his twin – all those sleepless nights – for nothing.  As Jacob limps his way into his brother’s embrace, he says that seeing the smiling face of Esau is like looking at the face of God.[4]  What a blessing forgiveness is.

I don’t know what’s keeping you up at night. Maybe you love the quiet productivity that early morning hours can bring.  Maybe it feels like worries jump out and grab you out of nowhere when you shut off the light, like a stranger in the night.  I can’t know the thoughts that may race through your head as the clock ticks and the darkness covers you like a blanket and sleep evades your grasp.  All I can suggest is that it might help to be a little more like Jacob:

Cling to God, wrestling with questions and struggling for faith even in the darkest of times.  Persist in pursuing your dreams of what might be, but isn’t yet.  And trust that by the waters of baptism, God’s blessing and grace are already yours – your heart has already been washed clean of every mistake, every awkward or deceitful thing forgiven.  Whatever the day might bring, God has already named and claimed us as beloved children.  My prayer is that you will feel covered by the blessing of your baptism no matter what the night brings.  And that that knowledge will give us strength to persist, to resist, to push on toward whatever dawn lies just beyond our grasp.  Thanks be to God.

[1] Willis, Amy, “Commentary on Genesis 32:22-31,” Preach This Week, August 3, 2014, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-18/commentary-on-genesis-3222-31-8

[2] Barnhart, Dave.  “Spirituality and Mental Health: The Importance of Sleep,” June 10, 2021, on his blog, https://davebarnhart.wordpress.com

[3] Lose, David, “The Power of Names,” Dear Working Preacher, 10/14/13, https://www.workingpreacher.org/dear-working-preacher/the-power-of-names

[4] Wil Gafney pointed out this connection in her “Commentary on Genesis 32:22-31,” Preach This Week, July 31, 2011, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-18/commentary-on-genesis-3222-31-2

Cat Goodrich
Faith Presbyterian Church, Baltimore
June 6, 2021

Bless This Mess: (Abraham), Hagar, and Ishmael
Genesis 21:8-20

School is not out yet, but this is the first Sunday in June. And it’s gonna be a hot one. Anyone who went outside yesterday can attest – it feels like summer is here!

The last church I served had a tradition of doing summer sermon series – a chance to delve into parts of the Bible you don’t always get to hear, if you stick with the lectionary. Series can be thematic, and fun – I heard Christa did one on Noah’s ark! And they offer something different, a change of pace during the summer.  Today I’m starting a series is called Bless This Mess: Stories of brokenness and redemption. I landed on this theme because the past year has felt a little messy.  Really, really broken at times. Messy personally, as Dary and I juggled the stress of working full time and parenting full time and trying to teach and care for our girls in the midst of the pandemic, especially at the start. I remember feeling like I was trying to do three jobs at once and doing a bad job at all of them, exhausted, worried, overwhelmed and barely holding it together.

And things have felt pretty messy and broken nationally and internationally. Our catastrophically bungled response to the pandemic. Continued violence – police violence against black and brown people, mass shootings, and a quagmire in Myanmar, Israel Palestine, and here in Baltimore, nine people shot over Memorial Day weekend.

The Bible is full of powerful stories about problematic people in messy, complicated situations. Throughout in our salvation history, God chooses to work through imperfect people in difficult, conflict-ridden realities to bring about redemption and healing. Over the next 8 weeks, we’ll revisit some of the stories of our ancestors, stories that don’t always get told because they aren’t neat and tidy, and hopefully find reassurance and good news there.

I have to admit, if I was hoping for a summer theme that would be fun and light, I may have missed the mark. Because this story of Hagar and Ishmael is a doozy. It’s awful. It’s what Phyllis Trible calls a text of terror.[1] Womanist theologian Delores Williams says Hagar’s story is a story of slavery, surrogacy, poverty, rape, exploitation, desperation, “homelessness, single parenting, and radical encounters with God.”[2]

Hagar and Ishmael are imbedded in the longer story of Abraham and Sarah, the matriarch and patriarch of our faith.  And as much as their story is about God’s promises, progeny, and unbelievable blessing, the chapters that include Hagar are painful and traumatic – they leave us wondering why God would allow such things to happen. A quick summary to refresh our memories:

Abraham and Sarah go to Egypt to escape a famine. At the border, Abraham lies to save his own neck by saying Sarah was his sister, allowing her to be taken into Pharaoh’s harem. The rabbis surmised that Hagar was a gift from the Pharoah when Sarah left to return to Israel – how else would an enslaved Egyptian woman come to be possessed by an Israelite?

God covenants with childless Abraham that his descendants will number more than the stars. As the years pass with still no bebe, old Abe and Sarah worry and doubt that God will fulfill God’s end of the deal, and decide to take matters into their own hands. Sarah gives her handmaid Hagar to Abraham, and he takes her. Look at the cycle of trauma: Sarah, who was exploited and abused in the harem of Pharoah becomes the oppressor, treating her handmaid like an object, a thing to be taken or given at will.

Sarah immediately regrets this decision, it seems, because when Hagar conceives, she treats her harshly, abusing the girl such that Hagar is forced to escape into the wilderness. But an angel meets her and sends her back – back to the abuse, back into slavery, so that Hagar’s son Ishmael is born in the house of Abraham.

But God remembers God’s promise, and when old Sarah finally learns she is pregnant the hills ring with her laughter…she names him Isaac, which means he laughs. As the children grow and play together, Sarah’s jealousy becomes too much, so worried is she that Ishmael will supplant her son as the firstborn. Sarah demands Abraham send them away, into the desert, to their deaths. So he does. As Hagar casts her babe beneath a bush and leaves him there to die, God finally intervenes, sending an angel to help her find water in the wilderness, guiding her to a well that will save their lives, promising again that Hagar’s descendants will outnumber the stars.

This is a terrible story.  My Hebrew professor says, “in this story, no one is without blame – not even God.”[3] To help us make sense of it, and to uncover a bit of good news in the midst of the mess, I want to tell you about names.

First, the name of Hagar…that was probably not her name. Sure, scripture names her Hagar, but that word means foreigner, sojourner in Hebrew – Wil Gafney says, her Egyptian mama didn’t name her that![4] Gafney points out that in Islamic tradition, she’s called Hajar, which means splendid, nourishing. A fitting name for the mother of the children of Islam!

In our tradition, Hagar is dehumanized, used and abused, and sent to die in the desert. But she is also the first and only person who names God in the Bible. It happens during her first escape into the wilderness, when she is scared, and pregnant, and running for her life, when an angel finds her to send her back to the house of Abraham. Up to this point, God is just called Elohim – a Canaanite word for God or Gods meaning strength, or might. God hasn’t shared the name YHWH yet, we don’t know God as YHWH, I am who I am, until God appears to Moses in the burning bush! But Hagar, this foreigner, this woman on the run, is met in the wilderness and gives God a new name. She names God El-roi! I know.  El-roi means God of seeing, God who sees…or as one translation says: The Living God who Sees Me.[5]

And the name Ishmael – do you know what Ishmael means? It means, God hears. God hears. God indeed hears the cries of the child in the desert, and sends angels to attend to him, to save him and his mother.

God sees, and hears. God sees the suffering of a used and abused woman, shut out and sent to die in the desert. God hears the cries of her thirsty, terrified child. And God sends angels to attend to them.

Again and again in the gospel story, Jesus sees those that others ignore. People who are blind. Children who are neglected. Sex workers. Men who are crippled. Widows offering what little they have to God. All who are marginalized. He sees them, and hears their cries, and stops whatever he is doing to respond with love, offering healing. Bringing them back into the fold. Christ, who shows us what God’s love is like. Christ, who calls us to love others as God loves us…to see and hear others as God sees and hears us.

There is a greeting used by the Zulu people in South Africa, “Sawubona.” It means, “I see you.”[6] Not just the casual, “hi, how are you?” we say each day, but “Hello – I see you.” I acknowledge you as a human being, just as you are.

The response to Sawubona is “Ngikhona,” which means, “I am here.” I’m truly here because you see me. It changes us to be seen, to be in relationship.

And there are so many people who society tries not to see, aren’t there?  Avert your gaze and keep on walking. Whatever you do, just don’t make eye contact.

Yet ours is a God who sees us for who we are and loves us – wherever we are. However we are. Whatever we have suffered and survived. And despite the messes we make, and the pain we carry. The story of Hagar teaches us that when we find ourselves in the wilderness, in the midst of the mess, when we feel most desperate – God sees. God hears. God reaches out to us – and leads us back to life.

So we who wish to serve God, we who seek to follow Christ, must seek to see God…in one another. As we gradually take off our masks and move out of the isolation of the past year, what would it mean if we allowed ourselves to be vulnerable. To be honest about the times we felt despairing, the pain we ourselves have suffered…the pain we ourselves have inflicted. The vulnerability of seeing and being seen is what allows us to admit mistakes and find forgiveness.  To connect with each other.  And maybe, just maybe, to meet God.

Let’s practice really, truly seeing each other. Let’s try it. Turn to your neighbor and look them in the eye. Go on, really look! Take a breath, and tell them, “Sawubona. I see you.”

Reply, “Ngikhona, I am here.”

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

[1] Trible, Phyllis, Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives.  Overtures to Biblical Theology, 1984.

[2] Williams, Delores, Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk.  Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1993, p. 4, qtd. By Miguel de la Torre, Genesis, Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011, p. 171.

[3] Darr, Katheryn, Far More Precious Than Jewels: Perspectives on Biblical Women, Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1991.

[4] Gafney, Wilda, Womanist Midrash, A Reintroduction to the Women of the Torah and the Throne,  Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2017, pp40-41.

[5] Boulton, Matthew Myer or Elizabeth, Salt Project lectionary blog.

[6] I first learned of this greeting and the response from Alvin Herring, now Executive Director of Faith in Action, at a Faith in Action Alabama training in 2015.

Cat Goodrich
Faith Presbyterian Church, Baltimore

May 23, 2021
Holy Fire
Acts 2:1-20

Learning a language is hard.
When most children are born, their language skills develop as their brain grows. It takes years for their vocabulary to expand, for them to get verbs right, before they’re able to say certain letters and structure their sentences just so.

For many adults, learning a new language is even more difficult.
It takes practice.
It takes patience.
It takes humility and a willingness to make mistakes.

I struggled with the languages I studied in school, partly because I wasn’t willing to put in the time and practice to learn vocabulary and various verb conjugations. I can remember tucking my Hebrew and Greek flash cards under my pillow at night, on the off chance that proximity would help, or the meanings could be gleaned through osmosis – it didn’t work.

I didn’t learn Spanish until I had to, till I was swimming in a sea of it and had to learn in order to communicate. I learned from listening, and talking – or trying to talk, on a black woven sofa in a hot adobe house, watching telenovelas together with the family I lived with in Mexico. I remember feeling like a little kid, lacking the words I needed to be able to say what I was thinking and feeling as well as I wanted to. Kids were often my best teachers, because they were not afraid to laugh at my mistakes and correct them.

Learning a language is hard, except sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes new words spring into being all at once out of nowhere and we all say—yes, that’s exactly what we’ve been trying to say.

Think of all the words we’ve learned since we last gathered in this space:
We know what a novel coronavirus is. Many of us can probably talk much more intelligently about MRNA and fomite vs. aerosol transmission. We know to celebrate frontline workers, to practice social distancing, and to wear our PPE so that we can avoid the ‘rona, superspreaders, and covidiots. The past year gave us a new pastime – doomscrolling. And a new day of the week – blursday. Zoom is a verb now, and it’s where you might meet with your quaranteam, or raise a toast with a quarantini.

Thanks to human ingenuity, we have new words to describe our new reality. They came together effortlessly, blown into our lives on the winds of change, as we adapted to life in a global pandemic. As one professor researching this phenomenon observed – Linguistic creativity helps bring us together to confront new challenges and changing contexts. Shared language brings a sense of solidarity, it facilitates human connection.

Today is Pentecost, when we remember the Spirit rushing like a mighty wind through a room full of stunned disciples – singeing their hair with tongues of fire, filling their mouths with new words, giving them the ability to speak in different languages to proclaim near and far to one and all the good news of Christ’s resurrection life.

After his resurrection, Christ told the disciples to await the coming of the Spirit, who would “clothe them with power from on high” and help them know what to do next. On Pentecost, the Spirit shows up with wind and fire. The disciples are transformed – they were a motley crew of doubters and deniers. But by the power of the Spirit, they become the pillars of the church. The flaming wind of the Spirit gives them language and the courage to use it, a vision and a voice.

In other parts of scripture, the Spirit is described as a dove descending from heaven, or the still small voice in the silence. But when the Spirit shows up at Pentecost, it is another thing entirely. This is the ruach, the wind that blew over the face of the deep and breathed the world into being! The Spirit comes at Pentecost like the pillar of smoke and fire that led the Israelites to freedom. It comes like a howling wind, with power to destroy everything that was and to create a new thing. On Pentecost, the Spirit lets loose, shaking the disciples out of hiding and pushing them out into the street to preach the good news so that all might hear and believe!

As the wind howled and the fire popped and crackled, suddenly, the disciples discovered they had new words, new language. Jerusalem was filled with pilgrims, people who had come from near and far for the harvest festival of Shavout. Somehow, all those people heard and understood the good news of Jesus Christ, for them. Willie Jennings says, this gives birth to a belonging we will call church. Language was the midwife, helping to bring the church to life. Language bridged the divides between people from different cities, different cultures, different parts of the vast Roman empire. This bridging brought people together, helped build a community that was united in Christ, connected despite their differences – Jew and Greek, male and female, enslaved and free.

And so it is with us here at Faith – through the common language of prayer and praise, of song and silence, of bread broken and shared, of juice poured and passed, of water splashed in a font – we are connected by our faith, by our love for God and one another. And though we have been separated, exiled by pandemic, for far too long, the distance between us was bridged by the common language of our worship, our care and concern for one another, our creative use of technology, and our commitment to seek, stand, and serve together.

That first Pentecost was both a convening, and a sending out: a convening, because the power of the Spirit enabled the disciples to gather people in a new way around the good news of Jesus Christ, his life and resurrection, the love and grace of God we know through him. It also was a sending: by giving the disciples words, the Spirit ignited their mission, leading them out into the streets to share their dreams and visions of a world made new, and across borders to unify God’s people against the death dealing forces that would keep them apart.

And so for us, this Pentecost is also both a convening and a sending. After fourteen months apart, and we are finally able to gather for worship in person in our beloved sanctuary. Scattered and separated by the forces of nature, we have finally returned, together, united as one community in this room, and on Zoom, beautiful and beloved in all our diversity that reflects the width and depth and breadth of the family of God.

But we’ve different than before.

We’re missing those who are not able to be with us in the pews. We can’t sit as closely as we used to or sing as loudly as we want to. We’re still masked and figuring out what it means to be back together. I’m painfully aware of those who have died since you last gathered in this sanctuary, and am feeling their absence, as I’m sure you are, too. And I’m new here – you may be missing and remembering Mary, Christa, and all those other preachers who have tended the fire here before me.

Surviving the crucible of Covid has changed us, it’s helped us realize who and what we value, it’s clarified the work we’re called to do. We’ve learned in a new way that the church is more than the walls of this sacred space. Church is community, it’s belonging to one another. It’s sharing a vision of the world made new, and the language with which to describe it. It’s caring for one another, working together to stand up for Black lives, to protest police violence, to support students. It’s seeking God’s presence, to give thanks for the gift of this life in worship through Zoom or in this room or outside in the courtyard or on the street.

I learned about a new ritual this week, one practiced by the Greek Orthodox church on their Easter. It’s called Holy Fire. They observe an annual miracle the night before Easter in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre where Christ is supposed to have been buried: A Greek patriarch of the city enters the tomb and comes out holding a torch they believe was lit by the fire of the Spirit – holy fire, the fire of resurrection life. The flame quickly gets spread to believers packed shoulder to shoulder into the nave around the chapel, many of whom are clutching fists full of forty beeswax candles – it becomes a beautiful, rapidly spreading conflagration. A journalist described the ancient ritual as exuberant, and terrifying, as the dark, cavernous old church seems to explode into open flame. The holy fire then spreads throughout Jerusalem, and out into the towns and villages, to Gaza and Bethlehem, across borders, into war zones. It lights special lanterns that can safely travel in the pressurized cabins of planes to spread the sacred flame of new life to believers around the world. As one observer described it,
“The explosion of heat, and light, and joy took my breath away.”

This is the fire the Spirit offers us. And we need it now, to guide and sustain us as we seek to be both gathered and sent, part of God’s mission in the world. I pray that by the power of the Spirit, we will have new words to describe and give voice to the new contexts in which we find ourselves, our church. That we’ll have the patience, the persistence to learn new languages. That we’ll have the Spirit-given power to hear and understand each other, to listen and love our neighbors, and the vision and voice to continue to make a difference in this strange new world.

Cat Goodrich
Faith Presbyterian Church
Baltimore, MD

April 25, 2021
Sheep
John 10:11-18; Psalm 23

It’s wonderful to hear a different translation of that beloved Psalm, isn’t it?  The varied words and phrasing help us notice different images, to hear the promise of God’s care and concern in a new way.  Your beauty and love chase after me every day of my life, isn’t that a lovely way to put it?  This Sunday is called the Sunday of the Good Shepherd – one of the many ways we characterize and understand the identity and ongoing work of the risen Christ.  It’s also the Sunday after Earth Day, and the verdant imagery and pastoral scenes of the 23 Psalm feel appropriate.

During the past year of pandemic, we humans have coped with isolation and stress by getting outside as much as we can.  Parks and other public spaces have gotten more use than ever.  Suddenly untethered from an office, many found they could work wherever there is a wi-fi signal – and so city dwellers fled to smaller towns, and some even to rural places, where they could roam, hike, climb, camp and play outside during their off-hours.  In many ways, this is great for our mental health and for the environment – more people enjoying the great outdoors hopefully means more people willing to work to protect and preserve it.

But there’s been an unfortunate and perhaps predictable phenomenon to accompany this increase in outdoor adventuring, which is – a dramatic increase in the number of calls to search and rescue groups.  When ill-prepared and unseasoned hikers get hurt, get lost, or otherwise need help getting out of wilderness places, search and rescue are often the ones who get called.  It’s problematic because these operations are largely run by volunteers, who cover huge amounts of territory on a shoestring budget to begin with.  The influx of new and reckless adventurers needing help has pushed them past their limits.  Now, don’t get me wrong: I’ve gotten lost while hiking a few times – both lost the trail for a minute lost, and really lost – like rescued by firefighters with bloodhounds lost – and it can be scary.  I’m not one to point fingers.  But reading an article about this phenomenon a few weeks ago, I had to shake my head – we humans!  We think we’re invincible!  When really, it is so easy to just ignore a blaze and step off a trail, miss a turn, trip and fall, or otherwise get into real trouble out there.

A retired pastor in my former presbytery got lost a few years ago in the Sipsey Wilderness in Bankhead National Forest in Alabama.  A faulty map led him off course, and he ended up wandering for four days and three rainy nights before he was rescued by a formidable search and rescue operation: a collaboration between county sheriffs, firefighters, worried Presbyterians, and even some Mennonites from Tennessee.  He said for the first day or two, he was mostly embarrassed for getting lost in the first place – worried about how worried his wife would be, and upset with himself for not being better prepared.  As time passed, he became exhausted and hungry; his wet pants chafed his legs and rubbed them raw.  He got stuck in a ravine, and mostly was just ready to be rescued.  He was a very good sport about the experience, which was covered breathlessly by local news – and still felt a little sheepish about it after it was over.  But the truth is, all of us have gotten a little lost at one time or another.

And I wonder if that’s why the image of the Good Shepherd is so compelling for us.  Beyond the bucolic idea of a nap in a green pasture by a clear stream, it’s reassuring to think of God as one who seeks us out, even and especially when we’ve fallen down, lost our way, and need a little help getting back up.  As one who carries a rod to fend off lurking predators and a staff to pull us out of the brush when we trip and fall.

Now it won’t surprise you that I’ve not spent a lot of time around sheep, growing up in a small city of around 300,000 people.  I knew farmers, sure, but they mostly grew cotton.  Apparently, sheep tend to get into trouble every now and then, and it’s the job of the shepherd to help them out.  The most sheep I’ve ever seen were in the Scottish Hebrides, dotting the beautiful wild countryside as I hiked around the Isle of Mull near Iona.  From a distance, they look fluffy – soft – sweet.  Closer up, though, it’s a different story.  Up close, sheep can be filthy!  Their wool holds dirt, branches, and bracken like a sponge.  They smell.  And they can be noisy.  Just a few words Biblical commentators wrote about sheep: stupid, aimless, vulnerable.  They’re passive, easily startled, and always hungry.  They tend to wander off and get lost easily.  And yet again and again in scripture, we humans, we beautiful faithful people, we children of God … are compared with sheep!

What do we make of this?  Maybe it’s not so bad.

We are a little like sheep sometimes.  In theory, people are beautiful.  Wonderful!  Brilliant!  Compassionate!  Up close and personal – we are complicated.  Messy.  Sometimes a little bit stupid.  Sometimes a little bit stinky.  Painfully vulnerable.  Aimless.  Easily startled.  Always hungry.  And some of us… do get lost easily.  And so this depiction of God who can work with that, who seeks us out despite our messy, stinky, sheepishness – it’s comforting.

Psalm 23 paints an image of God who knows us personally, and accompanies, guides, and cares for us… who finds safe space for us to rest and be restored, who sets an abundant table for us, protects us from enemies, and showers us with love and mercy… This is a psalm of thanksgiving for all the ways God is present to the psalmist.  I don’t know about you, but this is not always my experience of God.  In fact, the world in which we live, where children go hungry, and those charged with protecting us don’t always make us safer, and guns proliferate, and those on the margins suffer, and the virus threatens to undo us … It can feel like we are on our own in the darkest valley with no guide, no one to fend off evildoers, nothing but our wits to save us.

It helps me to know that though many Psalms are balanced – in that they contain both lament and praise, cries for help and thanksgiving – this one is not.  Instead, it is preceded by a psalm of deep lament, the psalm Jesus quotes from the cross – My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?  Why are you so far from me, from the sounds of my groaning?  So perhaps the intimate care and concern, the calm pastoral provision of the 23^rd Psalm is the psalmist’s answer to the powerful lament and pain of the 22^nd… which tells us that the life of faith invariably moves between both places – times of feeling God’s care and provision to times that feel like complete abandonment.  From the pit of despair to an abundant table, a cup brimming with blessing.  And the promise inherent in these ancient writings is that wherever you find yourself… it’s okay.  God is still God, the shepherd who walks with us through the darkest valley, whose goodness and grace chase after us, seeking to find us wherever we are.

The pastor who got lost in the Sipsey Wilderness spent the first few days and nights walking, constantly walking, trying to find his way back to the trail.  In retrospect, that was one of his mistakes.  He didn’t give the people who were looking for him a chance to find him, because he was always on the move.  Had he found a spot to sit tight and trust that someone was searching for him, and if he waited they would find him, he probably would have been found much earlier.

We do this, don’t we?  Struggle and struggle, trying so hard to make it on our own, walking without stopping to rest, pressing on in the face of problems without asking for help, convinced we have to save ourselves.

But God calls us into community, gives us to one another, so that we can help each other.  That requires a bit of vulnerability… to feel perhaps a little sheepish and say – I’m struggling with this.  Can you help?

For me, that’s how the shepherd shows up most often: in and through the people around us, who help us find our way, who remind us that we are welcome and loved, who help to set an abundant table, and who make space for those who might be left out.  And I believe this is the calling for we who seek to follow the one who calls himself the Good Shepherd: to give our lives for and to one another, trusting in God to lead us and guide us even through the darkest valleys, to restore our souls when we are weary, and to pursue us with goodness and mercy every step of the way.

Cat Goodrich
Faith Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD
April 18, 2021

I believe… help my unbelief!
Luke 24:36-48

There is a place that I have missed during the pandemic, somewhere I haven’t really thought about for a long time that I used to go fairly regularly… a place that probably looks pretty different these days.  That’s the arrivals lobby of an airport.  Dary used to travel frequently for work, visiting farmers and producers, so it was a place I was fairly familiar with.  The one I picture is in Atlanta, and the Hartswell-Jackson International Airport there – but I can also envision the one at Boston Logan, in Portland, and Asheville – you probably can see a few in your mind’s eye, too.  In Atlanta, there are long escalators leading up to the baggage claim area, and there always used to be a throng of people at the top, waiting for their friends and loved ones.  It’s one of my favorite things to see people greet each other there.  Almost everyone is clearly delighted – relieved, excited, overjoyed.  People wave their arms and jump up and down, shake hands, cheer, kiss, clap, hug and squinch their eyes closed, patting each other on the back, saying, “Ahhhhh!  Welcome!  I’m so glad you’re here!  I missed you!”

Waiting there, in the ATL, there were for many years USO volunteers who would staff a cheering section for arriving service members, coming home for holiday or arriving for training.  People in desert fatigues, loaded down with gear, weary and stoic, greeted by riotous applause at the top of the escalator.  It was moving.

Stand there long enough and you see the same scene replay over and over again – different families, different faces, various configurations of parents and children and friends, sometimes with animals and always awkward with luggage.  And the joy!  And the tears!  So much hugging!  There is a moment or two, after the person I’m waiting for arrives, particularly if the trip is much anticipated or the separation has been long, when I am struck with a feeling of disbelief: I can’t believe you’re finally here!  I’ve been waiting for you for so very long.  I’ve missed you.  A moment when you have to pinch yourself to make sure you’re not dreaming.

As friends and loved ones get vaccinated, maybe you’ve felt this way even outside of an airport – seeing someone, hugging them, sharing a meal for the first time in forever.  You can hardly believe it’s really happening.

That must have been how the disciples felt when Jesus came and stood among them after his death.  Imagine the initial shock of seeing him, the frisson of fear that must have run up their spines; see them rubbing their eyes and scratching their heads as he invites them to touch him, to feel that he is real, really there, somehow, despite their grief, and the fear that led them to lock the door to that upper room in the first place.  I wonder if, as the smiles broke over their faces and they stood there with him, they, too, were struck with a feeling of utter disbelief.  My favorite line of this passage – “in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, so he said to them, ‘do you have anything to eat?’”

That’s wonderful, isn’t it?  Jesus shows up, improbably having conquered death, he is hungry!  In the gospel of John the risen Christ fries fish on the beach.  He breaks bread in Emmaus.  And here, in Luke, he improbably appears to find his friends who are still gripped by grief and guilt and though they are overjoyed to see him, they are also not sure what to believe – he was dead, after all, and now he is alive again.  And so he asks them for a snack!

There is a picture that was shared recently in a mom’s group I am part of, of Beyonce at the Grammy Awards with her daughter, Blue Ivy.  Beyonce is dressed up – she’s just walked the red carpet – with a fabulous hat and superstar sunglasses and silver earrings that dangle past her shoulders.  Blue Ivy is little, about 5 or 6 years old, eating a snack.  And her mom, the Queen Bey, one of the most celebrated bestselling artists of all time, winner of 28 grammy awards, is patiently holding her snacks – a bag of goldfish and a juice box.  Did Beyonce sneak the snacks in special pockets in her ball gown?  As a mom, whose children go through each day from one snack to the next, it’s reassuring to me that even Beyonce has to travel heavily snacked.

Apparently, the disciples do, too.  They should, of course, know this by now.  They’ve learned this on the mountainside when faced with a crowd of thousands of hungry people and Jesus told them, “You give them something to eat.”  And again when he broke bread and gave it to them, saying, take, and eat – do this and remember me.  When Christ is around, hungry people get fed, and the disciples are the ones to do it.

It was vitally important to the early church that Jesus ate and drank with his followers after the resurrection.  Important because it meant that his body – his real, physical body – was alive again, resurrected by the power of God.  He wasn’t a ghost, or a spirit, some ephemeral trick of the light or a collective delusion.  In a moment, we’ll affirm our faith using the words of the Scots Confession, written as the foundational document for the church of Scotland in the mid 16^th century.  It’s a favorite of my former colleague, Shannon Webster, a scholar of the Reformation and lover of all things Scottish – including Scotch.  The confession attests that the resurrection was confirmed, “by the testimony of his angels, and by the senses and judgment of his apostles and of others, who had conversation, and did eat and drink with him after his resurrection.”  He always got a little choked up when reading that part.

What does that mean for us?  What does it matter that Christ was actually, physically present with his disciples after the resurrection?  Tradition tells us that it is a testimony to the goodness of creation.  That the universe created by God’s word and proclaimed good at the beginning, is indeed redeemed and wholly and completely good in and through Christ’s life, death, and resurrection.  And it means that bodies – our bodies – are not merely an inconvenience, they aren’t something to be ashamed of.  Bodies are not just bags of flesh and bones and blood we shouldn’t wait to shuffle off along with our mortal coil.  Our bodies are precious.  They matter to God.  We matter to God.  In all our imperfections, our wrinkly eyes and creaky knees, our strengths and weaknesses, our wounds and the scars they leave behind – all of it is precious, worthy of the new life Christ offers.  Bodies, our bodies are created good just as they are, we are worth saving.  The bodies of old people are precious and worth saving.  The bodies of transgendered kids in Arkansas and Mississippi and everywhere else are precious and worthy of belonging, the bodies of black boys in Chicago and Minnesota and everywhere else are precious and worth protecting, the bodies of men and women and nonbinary folk are precious and good and worthy of redemption in our homes and workplaces and on the street – and it is the will of God that we be safe, and protected, and fed, and valued, and allowed to flourish in every one of those places, every single one, all of us.

The risen Christ tells us that faith in the redemptive power of the resurrection is not just a thought exercise. Belief is not just a mental ascription, a box to check and be done with it.  Faith is a physical, real, lived experience.  It is embodied – the feeling of shock and joy when we realize that life after death is possible.  It is men and women terrified together in an upper room, daring to believe the impossible, seeing their friend and teacher again, eating and drinking and laughing with them again.  In their joy they are disbelieving and wondering – how could this be true?  But somehow, by the power of God, it is.

Their testimony tells us that when we eat and drink together, when we feed the hungry, he shows up among us.  The life-giving power of God becomes embodied, in and through us.  When we honor one another’s created goodness, when we stand and serve and seek to protect the bodies of those who are most vulnerable, bodies that are criminalized and dehumanized, he shows up with wounded hands and feet, offering peace, sharing the healing power of God.  We might not believe it possible.  We might be gripped by our grief and mired in doubt that the world will ever change.  But still, he appears, even to us.  Helping us have faith that with God, all things are possible.  Thanks be to God.

 

 

 

 

 

Cat Goodrich
Faith Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD
April 4, 2021

While it is still dark…
John 20:1-18

There is a pandemic image from last May that has stayed with me:

A health care worker – a nurse, I think – was hugging her mom, through a shower curtain.  Face turned to the side, still masked and gloved and wearing a protective gown.  Her mother blurred and indistinct on the other side of the plastic.  Awkward and uncomfortable but still, hugged.  Held.  It brings to mind also the number of visits that have happened through glass or at a distance, at nursing homes and retirement communities and back yards.  We’ve been desperate to see our loved ones, but we don’t want to put them at risk.

As we packed up and got ready to move to Baltimore this past June, a friend came over with rain ponchos to send us off.  As she came onto my porch she tossed one to me and said: “here, put this on, you’re not leaving town without a hug!”

One of the harder and more awkward adjustments for the pandemic has been around human proximity: the change to how close we are able to get to one another, and how dangerous it became to touch each other.

When Mary recognizes Jesus in the garden, when she sees him and he says her name and the lights turn on and she realizes it’s him – Heavens, she runs to him, arms held out wide, ready to envelop him, to cling for dear life to this friend who had been lost, broken, dead and gone, but was alive again!

But no.

Don’t hold on to me, Mary, he says.

Why not?  Was the cold stench of death and decay still clinging to his clothes?  Was it the mysterious incorporeal nature of his risen body?  Is he afraid they’ll be seen by the guards?  Or does he have somewhere to be?  Does she?

Whatever it is, she can’t hold onto him.  Can’t hug him just one last time.

We can understand the pain of that separation, it feels close to the heart of our own suffering, the mystery of what we’ve survived over the past year.  We’ve endured 14-day quarantines, suffered sickness alone. Everyone who has had to be in the hospital this year and had to do it alone, Cathy and Ann and Sandra and Andy and Doris and Mike and Maddy and whoever else – alone and apart from your people.  Everyone who got the virus or were exposed and forced to stay apart, alone, waiting to heal.  Going without hugs when you probably needed them most.

We understand why Mary, when she saw Jesus, the rabbi she loved, the man she’d left everything to follow, the friend she’d seen humiliated, his body broken and desecrated, and left for dead, when she saw through her tears that he was alive again she wanted to hug him, hold him, my God never let him go!

She hadn’t gone to the garden expecting that.  She’d gone early in the morning, while it was still dark.  Feeling her way along the road, stepping quietly and carefully through the grass wet with dew.  She’d gone expecting to find the tomb closed and cold, she’d gone wrapped in her grief, expecting death.

I can understand that, can’t you?  We know enough about the world to know not to expect anything different.  The dead stay dead.  The poor stay poor, the wheel keeps turning, the violence keeps churning, the power keeps pressing, the broken keeps breaking. And on and on.

In Myanmar, more than 550 people have been killed by the military since the coup two months ago, at least 40 of them children.[1]  One of them, a ten-year-old girl, with a slice of fresh coconut, ran down her front walk in the late afternoon sun and fell to the ground, dead, shot while her father stood by, helpless.[2]  The violence meant to intimidate.  To suppress.  To maintain power and control.

Over the past month, in Arizona and Texas, New Mexico and California, our government apprehended more than 18,000 children who crossed our southern border alone,[3] housing them in overcrowded shelters that look a lot like the ones the last administration used, with kids sleeping on cots under silver mylar blankets, separated into fenced cages.  In one facility, a nine-year-old boy helped care for his three-year-old sister, terrified and alone, while DHS and HHS try to figure out what to do with them.

If Easter is trumpets and triumph, joy and hope, it seems like the world hasn’t gotten the message.  Because near and far, no matter where we look, no matter who we ask, suffering sneaks in.  Violence and death are real and unavoidable.  Tragedy does not discriminate.  Especially after the year we’ve just had, we know to expect death!

We know what it is to walk while it is still dark.  To feel our way carefully, quietly, without making a sound.  We do that every day.

And yet, today we proclaim that there was a time when death did not win.  A heart still for 36 hours began to beat again; a body bruised and battered and seemingly defeated by Jerusalem’s finest breathed and rose up and went on with its work.  There was a time when the powers and principalities did not get what they wanted – because early in the morning, while it was still dark, Mary went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been rolled away.  She was met first by angels, and then by her risen Lord.

And though she sees him through the fog of her grief, her eyes clouded with tears, when he says her name, she recognizes him.

I imagine many of us have wondered –

is it true?  Could it possibly be true?

To be honest, I don’t know.  None of us can ever really know.  We can only hope.

I do know that I’ve seen resurrection.  I’ve felt it.  I’ve read about it.  I’ve lived it.  Maybe you have, too.

In Myanmar, there is a new kind of protest happening.  Creative, nonviolent resistance springing up amongst young people who refuse to capitulate to military control, Gen Z, the “generation of pop-up and work-around is joined also by many others” a poet describes the resistance:

“Every night is the “metal bucket protest,”

fifteen minutes of banging pots and pans.

Too short to pinpoint the homes,

and too traditional,

after all, it is

the way to drive out evil spirits.

Ten cars stop in the road, open their hoods,

tell police they’ve broken down –

traffic grinds to a halt.

A bride in a wedding dress

holds a sign telling the world

she doesn’t want her babies

to grow up under martial law.

And students cross the streets

with bags of onions,

except [the bags have] holes in them.

Cars stop,

while they pick up and bag again,

pick up and bag again –

onions, the same ones,

over and over again.”

The poet writes, “I am praying for Myanmar

in the midst of this terrible coup,

and my heart fills

with their tremendous courage –

today these onions do not make me cry.”

While it is still dark in that country, there is a powerful force at work in the hearts of ordinary people who are finding the courage to resist.  To stop traffic, and clog ports, and shut down commerce to say, “not again, not here, not on our watch.”

I wonder if Mary could not hold on to Jesus’ resurrected body because it was different somehow than it was before.  Changed by the trauma of crucifixion and death.  Transformed as new life was breathed into it while it was still dark.  Because while it was still dark,

God was at work.

And while it was still dark,

God is at work,

And while it is still dark,

God calls us to get to work, too!

After Mary recognizes him, Jesus sends her to tell the others what she has seen. We’ve heard the story now, too.  So it’s our job to go, and tell the good news of Jesus Christ, the son of God.  To show up in new and creative ways for each other.  What would it look like for 18,000 churches to open our doors and our homes to those 18,000 children, to say to our government – here, let us help house and feed and clothe them as we look for their aunties and uncles and primos y primas and seek to reunite them with their family here in the states.  If while it is still dark, we joined together to creatively resist evil, to bring forth new life.  Because the good news of Easter is that God is taking on the powers of this world, defeating death, and calling us to build the kingdom here and now.  Though it is still dark, God is calling us to rise up, to practice resurrection with unmitigated joy and unrelenting hope- Because Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed.

[1] Beech, Hannah, “She just fell down.  And she died.” The New York Times, April 4, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/04/world/asia/myanmar-coup-deaths-children.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ainsley, Julia, “A record number of unaccompanied children crossed the border in March,” NBC News,  https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/record-number-unaccompanied-children-crossed-border-march-n1262901.

Cat Goodrich
Faith Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD
March 28, 2021

The Parade
Mark 11:1-11

They are a high school student, just months away from the end of their senior year in high school.  They stand on stage alone at a podium, hair buzzed short, buttons and patches covering their green jacket, facing a sea of people: mostly other students, and teachers, and tens of thousands of others who came from across the country to fill the national mall and call for common sense gun reform.  Emma Gonzalez had already called BS on politicians and the gun lobby, just days after the horrific shooting at their school, the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.  And for six minutes and 42 seconds on a chilly Saturday in March, they stood silent, in fury, and grief, bearing witness and honoring the memory of the 17 classmates who were killed.  The world was watching.  This was the March for Our Lives, a movement organized by Marjorie Stoneman Douglas students to demand change to our nation’s gun laws after the tragedy at their school.  And across the country, people young and old took to the streets.  In Birmingham, I remember a sea of bright blue filling the park, young, hopeful voices ringing out over the crowd, shouting “never again!” students and parents and teachers standing together to call for change.

That was three years ago.  In some ways, it feels like the world is totally different now.  The Trump tsunami has crashed and we’re picking up the pieces.  We live in an alternate universe created by pandemic protocols.  Everything has changed.  And yet nothing has changed.

Because in the last 10 days, shootings in Atlanta, and Boulder, and Virginia Beach and Baltimore have torn apart more families, more communities.  Women at work, kids at the grocery store, students on spring break, the threat of violence can lurk just about anywhere.

It must have felt that way in Jerusalem, too.  Rome was ruled by an iron fist, and Herod who oversaw Israel was notoriously brutal.  People lived close to the bone, eking out a living subsistence farming, or by plying their trade.  Life was hard, and death came early and often.  The people were waiting for, longing for, crying out for someone to come to their rescue – a messiah the prophets promised would overthrow Rome and re-establish the throne of David.  Someone who would rule with justice, mercy, and peace.

That’s why they were out in the streets that day, standing tiptoed in the dust, throwing branches in the road, trying to catch a glimpse of the man making his way into the city.  The air must have crackled with hope and excitement, the city filled with people gathered for Passover, ripe for an uprising.  The Roman army had been deployed there to keep the peace during the festival, in part because Passover commemorates the liberation of Israel from slavery in Egypt, and Rome didn’t want people to get any big ideas.  Tensions must have been high, even before Jesus entered the city like a general returning from war, with people waving branches and throwing their coats on the road in front of him.  Was he the messiah that had been promised, the one who would overthrow Rome once and for all and save them from oppression?

That’s why they shouted Hosannah, an old Aramaic word that means, SAVE US!  Or, Help us, we pray!

The crowds turned on Jesus pretty quickly when they realized he was not the kind of messiah they were hoping for.  He didn’t come to overthrow Rome or toss out the religious leaders.  His work was so much bigger than that.  He came to redeem all of creation.  He saves us not through military might or by political power – but by simply being with us, entering into our suffering, enduring the worst the world can offer right alongside us.  In the week ahead, we will remember how he confronts and unmasks the powers of sin and death, and shows us how to confront them courageously, with love.

Today, we remember and celebrate a march that looked pretty different from the March for Our Lives: on a dusty road leading down from the Mt. of Olives, a humble man on a donkey and a crowd of peasants make their way to Jerusalem.  It may not seem like it at first, but the student march and the joyful procession of Christ and his disciples have a lot in common.  Both represent a confrontation between the power of love and the powers that be; both demonstrate God’s work to subvert violence of this world through the work of peace.

Jesus had to know the conflict and terror that lay ahead for them, must have seen the threat of the cross in his future, but he doesn’t seem to be afraid.  He is the power of love walking, courageously undaunted by the power of Rome and the power of the religious leaders.

Some things have changed… some laws have been enacted to narrow eligibility for gun ownership; bump stocks that turn semi-automatic weapons even more deadly have been banned.  Background checks have been expanded, training required in a few places.  It’s still harder to buy Sudafed.  The March for Our Lives was the largest single-day demonstration to end gun violence in our nation’s history.  And the leaders took a road trip across the country registering young people to vote afterwards, registering over 50,000 new voters.

We live in interesting times.  Because I think we’ve seen something like this, too.  The power of love marching onward, standing up to the power of sin and domination. It could certainly be seen in the faces of the clergy and other activists in Charlottesville who stood up to the evil of white supremacy on that day.  We’ve seen it at protest marches.  At pride parades.  And every place people peacefully confront systems that dehumanize or dominate.  But the confrontation between powers is not always so overt.  We can glimpse it, just a glimmer, each time we choose peace instead of violence.  When we step back from an argument and choose instead to let it go.  When we choose to show grace and offer forgiveness.  When we respond with love to a person in need or in pain, who is confused or struggling.  When we stand up to the permeation of guns in our culture, and decide instead to be people who choose peace.

This week, I invite you to join us as we follow Jesus. We will see his love made real around a table with friends in the meal we will share on Thursday.  We will see his love even unto death, which we will remember on Friday.  The testimony of this holy week is that Jesus does whatever it takes to heal, to save, and to free us from the powers of sin and death.  Have courage, because even though the powers that be threaten to undo us, we have our faith.  We have our songs, and our love.  And we have each other.  Today we follow him into Jerusalem, celebrating the peace he offers and the hope we find in him, praying that his kingdom will come — a kingdom governed not by the sword but by love, not by violence but by peace.  A kingdom that transcends national boundaries because it resides within each one of us, and has the potential to transform all of creation.  May it be so.

 

Cat Goodrich
Faith Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD
March 21, 2021

Flour, Water, Yeast, Salt
John 12:20-33

A few years ago, I got to go to bread camp.  At the time, there was a baker with a tiny kitchen in a little town outside of Asheville, NC hosting workshops on sourdough breads, pizza, croissants, and pies – teaching the fundamentals of baking with natural leavening in a wood-fired oven[1].  It was an awesome experience, tucked in amongst the trees in the Blue Ridge mountains, with women from across the country learning the secrets and science of turning flour, water, yeast, and salt into lofty, airy loaves of bread.  The baker, Tara Jensen, taught me how to mix and shape the dough, using time and temperature like ingredients in the recipe, making a series of folds over several hours.  The folds transform flour and water from a slack, shaggy mess into a soft, elastic, pillowy mound.  We normally think about kneading bread, but this method is different.  Gentler, over a longer time.  Turning and stretching the dough, I learned, organizes the gluten strands into a framework strong enough to hold the air created when the bacteria in the leavening eat the starch and sugars in the flour… which causes the bread to rise – clearly I can geek out about this.

But bread is amazing!  Most loaves – round boules, long baguettes, batards, miches, country loaves, are all made with just four simple ingredients: flour, water, yeast, and salt.  Combine them in the right way, with time for water to hydrate the flour, the salt to dissolve, bacteria to grow and transform sugars to develop flavor and create rise, you get incredible results – something so different from the original ingredients you have to wonder if magic was involved.

Humans have been making bread for many thousands of years, it is central to many food cultures.  When our Jewish siblings observe Passover in a few weeks, they’ll break unleavened bread as a reminder of their ancestors’ flight from Egypt – who left in such haste they didn’t have time for the bread to rise.  It should not surprise us that two thousand years ago, Jesus chose bread -ubiquitous even then- to play a crucial role in our common table: a symbol for his body, broken out of love for us.  He tells us to eat and remember.  My favorite part of communion sometimes is what happens to the elements afterwards, when kids swarm the table at share pieces of the loaf to tide them over until lunch, laughing and scattering crumbs everywhere.

This isn’t a text about communion – Jesus is talking about transformation.  Still, I have to wonder if Jesus was thinking about bread when he described a grain of wheat falling to the ground and dying to bring forth a field of waving grains and, eventually, … a loaf.

Jesus surely was worried and wondering something all of us have wondered at some point, perhaps more of us than usual after the year we’ve had: what would happen to the disciples after he died?  Maybe he knew that after his crucifixion, his disciples would die a hundred other, smaller deaths – the death of their hopes, an end to their dreams of revolution, their ambition, and for a time, maybe even their vision for community and justice would die, too.  So he was seeding hope for what was to come, telling them the Christian story of living, dying, and rising again: a cycle of birth, death, and new life/renewal.  The disciples just didn’t understand it yet.  I wonder if we do, too.

The baker was really into varieties of fresh flour, and as we waited between folds, she taught us about different grains, showing us all the parts of a grain of wheat – a wheat berry.  The covering, the husk or the bran, is what’s stripped away to make white flour.  It’s also what has to be softened and broken down in order for the wheat berry to sprout and grow.  The central part, endosperm is the starchy powerhouse that fuels the seed as it sprouts, it’s what becomes flour as we think of it.  Then, the germ is what germinates the wheat sprouts.  Think of flour as fresh produce, she told us – it’s not a shelf-stable item, it’s alive, and best when freshly milled, and incredibly healthy for most people.

As one whole grain enthusiast said, “It can be easy to forget that the cereal grains we eat are actually dormant seeds, holding the potential for whole new plants within their walls. Just like the seeds you might plant for your garden, these grains are simply waiting for the right temperature and moisture to activate the growth process – waiting for the right conditions to sprout.”[2]

We have just survived the most challenging and difficult year in recent history.  A year in which we let go of one way of being and took up something different.  And we are poised right now on the threshold, as more and more people get vaccinated, looking toward a re-opening, re-connecting, in many ways a re-birth.  The past months have stripped away the rough protective husk, leaving us raw but possibly also ready for something new to grow, to sprout and bring forth new life.  It’s easy to see what is most important.

In our text this morning, some Greeks ask to see Jesus.  They ask Philip, who asks Andrew, then together they go to find Jesus.  The gospel of John is thick with symbolism to show that Jesus is the real presence of God among the people.  Layers of meaning mean almost everything points to something else.  Commentators say that by having Greeks come ask to see Jesus, John shows the future growth of the early church beyond the Jewish community.  Christ’s statement at the end of the passage – that when he is lifted up (ascends after the resurrection) he will draw all people to himself – foreshadows the growth of Christendom also.

This is the last time Jesus teaches publicly in the gospel of John before he is executed.  In these verses, he’s explaining what’s about to happen to him. It’s not clear if the Greeks ever do see Christ face to face.  They’ve heard he raised Lazarus from the dead, so they want to see him and see if they can believe him capable of such a feat.  But I don’t think they get to see him – the text makes it seem like Christ was talking with just Philip and Andrew.  The next time the Greeks might have a chance to see Jesus, it would be under very different circumstances – he’s not in public again in this gospel until his crucifixion.  If that’s all they see, I wonder what they believe about him.

While they may never get to see Jesus alive, they certainly see Philip and Andrew, and this is significant.  Philip and Andrew are among the first disciples Jesus calls – Jesus invites them to “come and see.”  Now, nearing the end of Christ’s life, others are asking if Philip and Andrew will help them see Jesus.  I think John is not just foreshadowing that the church will grow.  I think he’s telling us how the gospel will spread: disciples will help others see Jesus. How?  By being like him.  by following him.  By serving and loving others as he did.  By being like Christ, Philip and Andrew helped the Greeks — outsiders, newcomers– see Jesus.  And so can we.

I wonder, what is the alchemy that must happen within us, in our hearts, in our lives, to transform us into disciples?  What helps prepare us, and makes us ready to follow him through the agony of Gethsemene, to the pain of Calvary, into the silence of the tomb?  How do we help others see him, see God in us?  What is the bran, the hard outer coating, that must be stripped away or softened so that faith can sprout and take root within us?

The PCUSA is part of the reformed tradition – the branch of Christianity that grew from Martin Luther’s critique of Catholicism so long ago.  We talk about the church reformed, always being reformed: being and becoming the church is a process that has unfolded over centuries and is ongoing – as we adapt to changing circumstances, seeking to faithfully bear witness to the God of love and justice in every time and place.  In the same way, our discipleship is a lifelong process. In fact, maybe we are a little like bread: folded and re-folded, shaped and re-shaped over a long time, building up the inner structure so that we are able to uplift, to grow exponentially and resist collapsing in the heat of the oven.

And the oven is hot.  The fires of racism and white supremacy took more lives this week, eight people – six of whom were Asian American women – all with families, dreams, communities that relied on them.  How do we fold and re-fold, shape and re-shape our hearts and our communities so that they are upheld by structures strong enough to withstand the heat?  Strong enough to uplift instead of oppress, include rather than exclude, to protect and preserve life?

We want to see Jesus, the Greeks say.  The Jesus they see is one who meets hatred with love, who meets violence with peace, who meets brokenness with an embrace.  The Jesus they see is one who sees the sin of the world with compassion, and responds with grace.  One who reaches into the depths of death and again and again brings forth new life.  One who teaches us how to rise.

This work is hard.  This time has been difficult.  Sometimes it may feel like we are being stretched and folded far beyond our capacity, challenged to change more than we thought possible.  But the miracle of bread is that when the conditions are right, with time and patience, simple ingredients are transformed into something incredible.  So friends, like bread – let us rise!

[1] The baker is Tara Jensen; learn more about her, her workshops, and her cookbook (A Baker’s Year and another on sourdough soon to be published), at https://www.taraejensen.com or follow her on Instagram @bakerhands.

[2] https://wholegrainscouncil.org/whole-grains-101/whats-whole-grain-refined-grain/sprouted-whole-grains

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

Turning the Tables
John 2:13-25

 

Kelly Ingram Park covers two square city blocks in downtown Birmingham.  The park is crisscrossed with paved walkways, and there are various statues and fountains shaded by sprawling live oak trees.  It’s a pretty quiet place, without much foot traffic most days.  But when George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police in late May of last year, the community gathered there in Kelly Ingram to share our pain and anger.  Not because the park is the most centrally located, but because that’s where 16^th Street Baptist Church stands, where the 4 girls were killed in 1963 by a white supremacist bomb.  And that’s the place where, 57 years ago, Birmingham police used firehoses and dogs to terrorize children who dared stand up for their civil rights.  There is history there: history of courage, tenacity.  The memory of collective outrage hangs thick in the humid air.

 

That protest was the first time since the start of the pandemic that I had been around crowds of people, still awkward in my mask.  But it felt important to go, to stand with others, to bear witness together, to call for accountability and a change in the way policing happens in our country.  Lots of people spoke, young and old, faith leaders and activists, including T Marie who led our Adult Forum this fall.  One who stood out was a guy named Jermaine Johnson, a local comedian who calls himself Funnymaine.  He drew the crowd’s attention to the Confederate monument in front of the courthouse, in the next park over, Linn Park.  The previous mayor had covered it with plywood and was fined by the state for doing so, but it still stood, a sandstone obelisk 52 feet high, a stark reminder of the city’s racist history.  “There are some things I can’t say here,” Funnymaine told the crowd that day.  “I can’t tell you to go over to Linn Park after this rally… I can’t say that’s where I’ll be.  We’ve got to protect our city.  But it would be a shame for that monument to be torn down.  But I can’t tell you that,” he said.

 

The march that afternoon was peaceful.  People from all walks of life, every age and stage stood together in the shade.  But later that night at the monument a different crowd gathered, with chains and trucks and sledgehammers and spraypaint, determined to tear the obelisk down.  The Mayor went and asked them to stop before someone got hurt, let the city remove it safely.  Give me 48 hours, he said, and it will be gone.  The crowd backed off and disbursed, but some were still seething with anger.  So they ran through downtown, smashing windows, wreaking havoc.

 

You here in Baltimore are not strangers to that kind of anger, anger that smolders until a match gets lit and it turns into a conflagration.  Anger that destroys.  We don’t condone it, but we can understand it.  After all, there is a lot to be angry about these days.  So much.

 

Look around, talk to folks about what they’re struggling with, and you’ll find something to be mad about.  Calibrate your news and newsfeed correctly and you can be fed a steady diet of bitterness, endless fuel for fury.  I have tasted more anger than I want to admit since the world shut down a year ago.  Macro anger at federal government mismanagement and denial that worsened the crisis of the pandemic.  Anger at callous disregard for human life, at the racist systems that bind us.  But I’ve also felt micro anger: ordinary, everyday, run of the mill mad – My temper flaring at tiny infractions, the stress of parenting in a pandemic.  And I’ve become more familiar with the anger of my children.  I try so hard to do as I coach them, to breathe, to step away, to be mindful and kind.  But – it’s hard.

 

Does it help to know that Jesus got angry, too?  That he turned over tables, threw people out of the temple, pilgrims and merchants, driving them and their animals out with a whip?  In his fury, he disrupts preparations for the biggest festival of the year, the Passover, which would have been a huge source of income for the temple and the market.

 

I don’t know about you, but I take some comfort in this story.  God gets angry.  Christ came, in part, to experience the fullness of life, to be human – to feel all the joy and the grief, the fun and the struggle, the love and the suffering.  Through Christ, God feels the height and depth and breadth of the human experience. Whatever we’re going through, God gets it.

 

This incident, this stunt in the temple is recorded in all four gospels, which means we’re pretty sure it happened.  And it’s a story that humanizes the miraculous healer and teacher – adds the depth of righteous indignation to our picture of Jesus.  What was he so angry about?

 

Different versions of the story emphasize different sources, different reasons for his anger.  The house of God co-opted by the forces of the market.  A system of worship that needlessly involved animal sacrifice.  People with power making money by taking advantage of people who were in need.

 

See, here’s what was going on: people travelled to Jerusalem to worship for Passover.  Worship involved sacrificing an unblemished animal – which pretty much meant the animal had to be bought on arrival.  Out of towners had to change money to the temple currency — at an unfavorable rate — then buy an animal to sacrifice — at an inflated price.  It’s like buying a meal from Doordash or some other delivery service: you don’t have much choice in the matter so they can charge you and the restaurant whatever fees they want.  Jesus was angry because the temple moneylenders and merchants were trying to make a buck off the people who came to worship.  By disrupting the lending and driving out the animals, Jesus throws the whole system into chaos.  He challenges the temple’s corruption, and by proxy, Rome.  Rome appointed the chief priest after all, and received a portion of the tithes people offered there.

 

But that’s not all that’s going on here.  The gospel writer, John, wants to expand people’s thinking about where God could be found.  In ancient Israel, God’s presence among the people was located first in the ark of the covenant, then the tabernacle, then the temple in Jerusalem.  But in the year 70, the temple was destroyed.  Without the temple, how would people worship and encounter God?  That’s what John is trying to answer.  In these verses, we hear Jesus foreshadowing his death and resurrection.  But he also calls himself the temple: “Destroy this temple, he says, and in three days I will raise it up.” God’s presence is made real in the world in him.  In Christ, God is not hidden from the people in a secret sanctuary.  God is out with the people, let loose in the world, and angry about injustice- turning over tables in the marketplace and driving out the livestock and the lenders.

 

Some interpreters think Jesus planned this event.  They believe he didn’t lose his temper, but instead pulled the stunt strategically, to provoke and disrupt a system of oppression. Think about it: he turned the market into chaos to challenge the temple leaders and the Roman authorities during the busiest time of the year, the Passover, to disrupt their system of profiting off the poor.

 

There is a lot to be angry about these days.

 

We don’t have to look hard.  Vaccine distribution that leaves some behind, especially poor communities of color.  Lines of people out of work, waiting for boxes of food.  Students who still don’t have reliable internet and are falling farther behind their peers.  Hundreds of children still separated from their families by our government.  States ending mandatory mask ordinances and reopening restaurants with no capacity restrictions – decisions that will be deadly for far too many.

 

The father of community organizing, Saul Alinsky, said good organizers find the wounds of the people and rub salt in them – anger motivates.  Anger gets us out in the street, crying out for justice, organizing for change.

 

That’s what Jermaine “Funnymaine” Johnson was doing.  Less than 24 hours after the Black Lives Matter rally, Mayor Randall Woodfin had a crane and a truck remove the monument, risking a fine of $25,000 from the state.  But you know what?  The guys who actually did the work didn’t charge the city anything for their time.  And a group called white clergy for Black Lives Matter raised more than $60,000 in a day to help the city pay the fine and to cover the cost of removal.[1]

 

Across the country, nearly 100 Confederate monuments were removed in 2020, more than the previous four years combined.  That change is the result of the public outcry and sustained anger at police brutality and racism, and the recovery of historical memory around when and why those monuments were erected in the first place.  In some ways, it’s easier to take down a monument than it is to transform the entrenched culture and structural racism of our criminal justice system.  But it’s a step forward in the larger and longer journey toward our collective liberation, love, and justice.  The work continues.  And if the past year has taught me anything, it’s that anger, stress, and anxiety are exhausting.  They can deplete us.  Anger can’t be all we have.  And thank God, it isn’t.  That’s why God calls us into community, and gives us to each other.  We have this place.  We have each other.  We have faith in the one who Rome could crucify but could not kill, whose example inspires, whose performance art provokes, who brings us into relationship with the living God.  Relationship which sustains, and transforms, and continues to move us forward toward the promised land.  Thanks be to God.

 

 

[1] https://www.gofundme.com/f/take-down-birmingham039s-confederate-monument?fbclid=IwAR0QqoKHSj5xexnYoyAEnlWNoMLJ8pP6BqKXxFrNSBMmt2xXE67Bl0BLAhs