Cat Goodrich
Faith Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD
April 9, 2023

Hope beyond Hope
Matthew 26:1-10

It started with just a little wobble.  The water in the glass on the bedside table sloshed from side to side, like someone had accidentally bumped it.  Maybe people rolled over in bed, changing positions before falling back to sleep.  Some opened their eyes wide, and sat up, adrenaline pumping.  Then, they say, there were three big shakes, windows shattering, bookshelves falling, ceiling crumbling overhead, while the earth rolled for almost a minute.  When it became still, the alarms started to wail – fire alarms, car alarms, ambulances and police – echoing through the city.  People began to make their way into the street, shivering with shock in the cold night air.  Terrified doesn’t begin to describe it.  But then, and this is the amazing thing to me, these people, these survivors – they turned to the houses and apartment buildings up and down their streets, houses and apartments that had collapsed into piles of rubble – people in the pajamas, in absolute shock, with their bare hands, they began to search for other survivors.  They dug through the rubble.  Moved concrete.  One woman who had been trapped up to her neck, buried alive in her own bedroom, was rescued by a neighbor who had nothing but a spoon for digging.[1]

Our news cycle has moved on from the devastating earthquakes that struck Syria and Turkey about 2 months ago.  But if you’ve been paying attention, you know that it was and is an incomprehensible tragedy.  More than 65,000 people were killed in the quake.  Entire towns were obliterated.  Thousands of children orphaned.  More than a million displaced.

An earthquake shakes and breaks; it takes the world as we know it and remakes it in mere minutes into something else entirely, an unrecognizable place.  Those who survive are forever changed, marked by the experience – haunted by it.

Now don’t get me wrong.  Not every quake is catastrophic.  Most aren’t, in fact – any resident of California can tell you that.  Some just unsettle us, reminding us the earth is not as stable as we like to imagine it to be.  It’s an eerie feeling, when the ground shifts under your feet.

In Matthew’s account of the crucifixion and resurrection, the earth itself shakes; first when Christ dies, and then again when the tomb is opened and found to be empty.  Total upheaval, both above and below.   An earthquake shifts the ground at Golgotha, causing the soldiers and the women gathered there to stumble.  Then, an earthquake shakes the ground again three days later, tectonic plates slipping and pushing away anything that would stand in God’s way, moving the stone from the mouth of the tomb.

Matthew tells us the earthquake on Easter is caused by an angel as bright as lightning, who lands and lounges on top of the stone.   Can you picture it?  and the guards, the men posted by Pilate to guard the tomb and protect the body, the guards are frozen with fear.  Terrified doesn’t begin to describe it.  Are they afraid of the earthquake, or the angel?  Both, maybe.  I think I would be too.  Remember that angels often greet people by telling them: Do not be afraid!  So they must be pretty terrifying.

I wonder what the women thought?  Weary and wary, they went as soon as they could to grieve at the grave of their friend.  Surely they were afraid of the soldiers, but their love for Jesus was greater than their fear.  Did they fall to the ground when the earth shook, did they shield their eyes and hide their faces as the angel settled on the stone?  And when they heard him speak, his unbelievable instructions to look in the tomb, to find it empty, and then to go and tell the others that Christ who was crucified has been raised – did they move right away?  Or were they frozen in place, blinking back tears, shivering with shock in the cold morning air?  Eventually they must have moved, screwed their courage to the sticking place and stooped to look, and found – nothing.  No body, even though they’d watched as he’d been laid there just two days prior.

Then, Matthew tells us, they left with fear and great joy, running to tell the others.  Fear and great joy!  Sounds like a description of awe to me – a sense of mystery and wonder at something that we don’t understand.  Somehow, the ground has shifted beneath their feet!  After all, an earthquake shakes and breaks; it takes the world as we know it and remakes it in mere minutes into something else entirely.  We who witness the awesome power of God are forever changed, marked by the experience.  Resurrection!  Could it be true?  Do we dare to believe it?  And if we do, what difference does it make for us?  For the world?

I listened to a conversation between Dacher Keltner and Krista Tippett recently.  Keltner is a neuroscientist at Berkeley, a pioneer in the study of human emotions, who lately has focused on the experience of awe; that is: a sense of mystery and wonder that transcends our understanding, and calms our minds and bodies –  regulating our heartbeats, decreasing cortisol, smoothing out our nervous system, boosting our immune system, and bringing us in sync with those around us.[2]  Through his research, he discovered what causes us to experience awe.  He found that more than anything else; more than being in nature, more than practicing religion, what leads people to feel awe most often is … other people.  Specifically, an experience of the moral beauty of others: kindness, courage, strength, or overcoming obstacles.  When we witness ordinary people doing amazing things, our breath catches in our throats, our eyes tear up.  We are, for a moment, overcome.

I am overcome thinking about the courage of those women, the Marys.  Terrified by the soldiers who killed their friend, shaken by an earthquake, greeted by an angel, and brave enough to run to tell the others what they’ve seen and heard.  In their awe, they meet the risen Christ along the way!  Through their courage, we, too, have witnessed resurrection!  We have seen our Lord!

I am overcome thinking about the survivors in Turkey.  Feet jammed into shoes, jackets thrown over jammies, shivering with shock, yet still digging through rubble with their bare hands to help their neighbors who have been buried alive.  We have witnessed resurrection.

I am overcome thinking about the brave legislators in Tennessee, Representatives Justin Jones, Gloria Johnson, and Justin Pearson.  Have you been paying attention to what’s happening there?  Three representatives protested the legislature’s refusal to act following the school shooting in Nashville, and their colleagues didn’t just censure them – they voted to expel two of them, the two black men, the Justins, from their body completely.  Seeking to silence their advocacy for peace, and preventing their constituents, the people of Memphis, from having representation in the statehouse.  But they will not be silenced.  If anything, their voices have been amplified by what has happened, there is hope yet that schools and neighborhoods might be made safe for children again through common sense gun reform.  Their courage, their refusal to back down has inspired awe.  They are ordinary people doing amazing things.

Ordinary people do amazing things at Faith Church.  You do it all the time.  You care for one another.  Celebrate each other, mark milestones with much rejoicing.  You speak out against violence and keep vigil through the night.  You sing and pray with each other, and for our city, our hurting world.  You share what you have so that others might have enough.  You break bread together and welcome all who are hungry to feast.  You light candles, you double and triple check to make sure they are blown out.  You come early, very early some days, you stay late.  You wash dishes, you clean up, you put out chairs, you break down tables, you carry water, you bring spices to prepare the body.  You sit with each other through grief.  And in doing these things, even if you are sometimes afraid, you are, I hope, sometimes also surprised by joy. And inspired by the courage of those around you.

The good news of this Easter day is that despite the persistence of death, the prevalence of violence, the pain and the suffering of this world, there was a time when death did not win.  When the violence of empire was undone by the tenacity of love.  When the worst thing was not the last thing.  When courageous women and men inspired awe in all who heard and believed and shared the truth of resurrection – the earth shaking power of God to bring forth life from the tomb, to resurrect, to revive, and renew, to remake the world as we know it in an instant.

The old ways of the world are dying, and new ones are being born.  It is awesome.  And I thank God that ordinary people like those women, like you and me, get to be part of it.  And so let’s go, and tell the world: Christ is risen – he is risen indeed.

[1] I read many accounts from survivors in articles from the BBC and World Vision’s coverage of the earthquakes and their aftermath to create this section.

[2] Tippett, Krista interviewing Dacher Keltner in “Dacher Keltner and the Thrilling New Science of Awe,” On Being podcast, 2/2/23, https://onbeing.org/programs/dacher-keltner-the-thrilling-new-science-of-awe/#transcript

Cat Goodrich
Faith Presbyterian Church, Baltimore
April 2, 2023

To the Streets!
Matthew 21:1-11

Hosanna!  Hosanna!  It is ringing in my ears from our joyful parade this morning.  Let’s say it again – Hosanna!  Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!  You probably know that Hosanna is an old Aramaic word that means, “Save us!” or Help us, we pray!

I usually think of parades as joyful events – community convergences, with music and street food, marching bands and kids on shoulders and dogs.  We went to the lantern parade at Patterson Park last fall, and it was happy mayhem – people were carrying lanterns of all shapes and sizes, some purchased but many handmade, interspersed with giant glowing puppets, and people fluttering beautiful lighted butterfly wings, mariachis, kids in wagons, and guys on stilts.  The parade is a celebration of twinkling lights, pushing back at the darkness as the days grew cold and short moving into winter.

But parades aren’t always festive.  Sometimes people go out to the streets to march for change, or to draw attention to a problem that needs collective action.  Sometimes they are public demonstrations of anger, or collective outpourings of grief.  Sometimes, a parade is performance art, or a protest.

Two Fridays ago, the survivors of the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School shooting went to Washington, D.C.  They weren’t there to see the cherry blossoms, or the memorials or to visit the Smithsonian.  They went to set up a display on the National Mall – 1100 body bags, black on the lawn under overcast skies.  They were protesting the impasse in Congress around gun control – the refusal of Republican legislators to even consider common sense gun laws, despite the fact that firearms are now the leading cause of death for children and youth in this country. The 1100 body bags, lined up on the grass, spell out “Thoughts and Prayers” – Each bag standing for more than 150 people killed by gun violence, so 170,000 total, in the four years since they started their work to call for national gun laws.[1]  Hosanna.

Two years ago, I preached about the March for Our Lives on Palm Sunday, remembering Emma Gonzales holding seven minutes of silence for their fallen classmates.  Hosanna.

Today, they’re on my mind and in my heart again.  Because six people, we know, were shot and killed just last Monday at a private school in Nashville: two teachers, the principal, and three students – one of them a third grader, just the same age as Maddie – 9 years old – a preacher’s kid, too. That tragedy caught national attention, but there were ten people killed on the mean streets of Baltimore in the past two weeks alone.  Hosanna.

The body bag installation calls our attention to the ongoing heartache caused by gun violence in our country.  A largely preventable massacre that demands more than just thoughts and prayers, it demands public action.  Hosanna.

Fred Craddock says that we can understand the Palm Sunday procession, with Jesus making his way into Jerusalem on a donkey, streets lined with cheering peasants, throwing their cloaks and branches into the road- we can understand it in three ways: as a parade, a protest, and a funeral procession.

When a Roman general returned from war, he would charge through the city gates in a chariot led by prancing white horses.  He would lead his garrison of soldiers through the city, directly to the temple to sacrifice to the gods – it was a victory parade that flaunted the military power of Rome in the face of the peasants who were forced to fund it.  Hosanna.

Jesus’s procession turns this tradition upside down.  He enters the city like a conquering hero, and the crowds call him their King… but he arrives on a donkey, just as the prophet Zechariah predicted the savior would come.  When he arrives in Jerusalem he goes straight to the temple – but not to make a sacrifice.  Instead, he goes to throw out the merchants and moneylenders, to protest those who were preying on poor people at the very heart and home of the Jewish community.  Hosanna.  This victory parade is a stunt that provokes the religious leaders, who are already looking for a way to have him killed.

It’s hard to say if this is what his disciples, the ones who called him king, expected him to do.  It’s hard to say if that is what the crowds expected from him, either.  Can you picture them, lining the streets, waiting in the sun to catch a glimpse of him?  I’m sure some came out of curiosity – they’d heard of his miracles and wanted to see who had raised a man from the dead.  Some came for healing, because rumor was he could cast out evil with just a word.  Some came for revolution, because he was the anointed one, who would conquer their oppressors once and for all.  Some came because they’d met him, they’d heard him preach, and they knew he was the savior they’d been waiting for.  They all looked at the man on the donkey and shouted, HOSANNA!  Save us!

This week we remember that their palms and cheers turned to taunts and jeers and a call for crucifixion by Friday.  Hosanna.

It’s not so hard to believe, given how quickly public opinion changes these days.  It’s not so hard to believe, as we live in a Good Friday world, where death is unavoidable.  Where schools aren’t safe, where life is all too fragile, where thoughts and prayers are offered instead of policy and change. Hosanna.

But friends, look around.  Take heart in all those gathered here this morning.  Our witness is important.  Because in the midst of the violence and the pain and the brokenness of our world, Christ came! Christ came with a parade, a protest, a procession, with happy mayhem.  Christ came and shared the love of God our creator; Christ came, and showed us the way out of the graves that we dig for ourselves and into new life.  This week, I invite you to join us as we follow Jesus. We will see his love made real around a table with friends and remember his love even unto death in our service on Thursday night.  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.

So I hope today, as we celebrate Bill’s 100 years of life and look back at 100 years of Faith Church’s work and witness, as we move into this holiest of weeks, we’ll ask, what do we expect?  Is our witness a parade?  A celebration of our savior?  Is it a protest, a public demonstration for love and justice in a hurting world?  I hope it’s not a funeral procession for the church that was, but rather a parade heralding the church we are becoming. Today, may we all shout Hosanna: blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.  Hosanna!

[1] https://marchforourlives.com/thoughtsandprayers/

Cat Goodrich
Faith Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD
March 26, 2023

Unbound
John 11:1-42

I read an article in the Times this week about a restaurant owner named Sal in Phoenix.  He has been in business for decades, running a successful sandwich shop – a fixture in the neighborhood, with a daily customer base.  The story tells about how he and his business are stressed because all around him, an encampment of people experiencing homelessness has grown, up and down Madison street.  There are more than 1,000 people sleeping outdoors there, some in tents, some just on the street.  Speaking with his wife one morning after opening up the shop, she asks how things are that day.  “The usual chaos and suffering,” he says.  He’s hemmed in by a man-made disaster wrought by the lack of affordable housing, inadequate mental health care, and the opioid crisis.  The article raises many questions – what is a business owner to do when the social fabric unravels around them?  What obligation do we have to care for one another?  What more could or should a city do to address human need on its streets?  Meanwhile, Sal is trapped by the encampment at his doorstep.  His shop is a narrow space of solace in the midst of suffering, and he feels as if he’s stuck in a valley of dry bones.

Ezekiel’s description of exile, of feeling shut off and cut off from God and homeland, resonates with me.  I think we can find those valleys in every city, desolate places where hope is hard to come by in every life. I’ve found myself in a valley like that before, maybe you have, too.  There was a valley like that in Bethany; Mary and Martha were there following the death of their brother Lazarus.

This story of Lazarus is powerful.  It’s a story that turns our attention toward Holy Week, toward the crowds of people who will sing Christ into Jerusalem; sing him all the way to the sham of a trial and execution.  It’s a story that turns our heads and our hearts towards Easter, toward the miracle of resurrection.

But it’s also a story about death.  Because you can’t have resurrection without there first being a death, and death is all around us.  It is in us.  Each moment we’re closer to it.  (Come to church, they said, it’ll be hopeful!)  I know.  It’s a story about death.  And not just some figurative, imagined death.  Death is real in these stories, visceral, with the dry bones rattling and the stench of the body decomposing in the tomb.  Death is as real in these stories as it is in our lives, as real as the names and the memories we carry with us, the losses big and small that have chipped away at our hearts, breaking them over and over again.

Lazarus’s story is not told from a place of triumph.  It’s laden with grief and disappointment. If we listen closely, we can hear the cries of Mary and Martha, their tears, their anger.  Can’t you hear the wails of the mourners tearing the air around the tomb?  The sharp intake of breath as Jesus himself weeps at the grave of his friend?

No, Lazarus’s story is not told from a place of triumph, it is told from the narrow place.  The place of constriction.  From the depths.  There’s a Hebrew term I learned recently, it’s meitzar.  Meitzar literally means the constricted space, a narrow blind spot.  A rabbi describes it as “our own personal Mitzrayim (the Hebrew word for Egypt). Mitzrayim is enslavement, darkness, hopelessness.”[1]  The place where we find ourselves crying out to God.

Mary and Martha are in the narrow place.  They are in a narrow gap between the life that was, and the life that will, eventually, go on.  Meeting Jesus in the road, they are shrouded in grief, empty of hope, angry with him for taking so long to arrive.  Falling to the ground, they cry out from the depths.  Mary and Martha are in the valley of dry bones.

How often have we found ourselves in that narrow place?  Alone, afraid, aggrieved.  Bad news ringing in our ears.  No answers, no clarity about why something terrible has happened, just the knowledge that it has.   What do you do in the valley of dry bones?  What do you do when you find yourself trapped in the meitzar?

I learned that term from an essay written by a mother whose oldest daughter is enduring the indignity of liver cancer.  She writes that through this illness, her family… “[has] been in what rabbis call the meitzar, the biblical narrow place — a place of compression. The meitzar is an expression of all the things that can make life impossibly hard. It appears in Psalm 118: From the narrow place I called to God, the psalm says; I was answered, it continues, from expansiveness. We are constantly seeking moments of that expansiveness, to take a deeper breath.”[2]

If the cry of hopelessness comes from the place of constriction, then God answers from expansiveness.  Hope comes with space to breathe.

It is maddening to Mary and Martha that Jesus doesn’t show up until four days after their brother has died.  Four days, Lazarus is dead in the tomb.  Maddening to me, too.  But I wonder if you have found what Mary and Martha found to be true: it is in the emptiness, in the long and lonesome valley, in the dark sliver of the narrow space – that Christ shows up.  He does.

The more I live, the more I appreciate, I think, that Christ didn’t come before.  He doesn’t stop the bad thing from happening, we all know God doesn’t often intervene that way.  Death still comes, relentlessly, for all of us, as it did for Lazarus, as it will for Jesus, too.

He doesn’t come before. He comes in the empty, hopeless, terrifying after.  He shows up when we fall to our knees in grief and anger to cry out from the depths, from the narrow space – when we ask why?  Why us?  Why this?  Why now?

He doesn’t come with answers; he only offers truth: I am the resurrection and the life, he tells Martha.  God’s work in the world is to move us toward life, to call us to life abundant with dogged persistence, again and again and again.  Yes, Lazarus is dead.  Terrible things will happen.  We will find ourselves awake in the night, with desperation lurking in the shadows.  Apathy and cowardice, greed and lust, and hatred and violence and illness and addiction will continue to stalk human hearts, threatening our lives and our livelihoods.  But still, when we are trapped in the narrow place, hemmed in and hopeless, Christ shows up.  The wind of the spirit will blow the stench of death from the tomb, and we will be able to breathe again.  God will speak a liberating word and our bones will begin to rattle.  With just a word, sinews will form and hearts will swell with something like hope, love, and possibility.  We are remade, stronger even, than before.

Come out, Lazarus, says Jesus, and he emerges.

I wonder… where do you find yourself in this powerful story?  Are you with Mary and Martha, grief stricken, in the narrow place? Are you with Lazarus, trapped in the darkness of a tomb, bound by the deathdealing powers of the world?  Maybe you are with the crowd, doubtful but curious, wanting to helpful to the grieving family, there to offer a helping hand but not sure what to do?  If that’s where you are, remember what Jesus says when Lazarus comes out.  Lazarus is still bound up in his graveclothes, wrapped and trapped by the bindings of death.  “unbind him,” Jesus says, “and let him go.”

Friends, this is the work to which we are called, this work of unbinding.  Liberating ourselves and those around us from the trappings of death, helping us make our way out of the narrow space, into a place of expansiveness.  So that we all can breathe deeply.  Live freely.  Love lavishly.  And continuing to help guide one another from death to new life over and over again.

Sal, the restaurant owner in Phoenix, has a friend down the street.  The friend owns a gallery, and lives above it.  Like Sal, he’s struggled with their new neighbors, the influx of need and increased violence on his doorstep.  But it sounds as if he’s responded as graciously as he could.  Offering care, responding to the people around him with compassion.  The two friends support one another and each day gives them a chance to try again to loosen the bindings they encounter.  Person by person, offering a little more space to breathe.  This   unbinding is the ministry to which we are called.  What might happen in this place, in us, if we offer our hands to do the work of unbinding, to set each other free?

[1] Upbin, Danielle, “Ha-meitzar: Calling to God from the Depths” from Prayer Musings on My Jewish Learning, https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/min-ha-meitzar-calling-to-god-from-the-depths/

[2] Wildman, Sarah, “My Child is in an Impossible Place, and I am There With Her,” Opinion Guest Essay, The New York Times, 2/17/23, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/17/opinion/childhood-cancer-family-conversations.html

Cat Goodrich
Faith Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD
February 24, 2023

The Adversary
Matthew 4:1-11

Just over a decade ago, I spent a week working in a garden on the Isle of Mull, off the coast of Scotland in the Hebrides.  The garden was a windswept hill overlooking the sea – on an inlet of granite rocks reaching down into the water.  The place was once an old granite quarry, but it had been turned into Camas, an outdoors center for troubled teens and pilgrims making their way to Iona, a short ferry ride away.  The garden would produce most of the food needed by the camp once it got growing, but as it was early spring, everything had to be brought in from outside – by wheelbarrow pushed over a mile and a half of track laid over beautiful Scottish bog.

Teams took turns cooking meals and washing up, and we were instructed to be careful and frugal with what we made – everything needed to be eaten, nothing wasted.  It was the director’s job to bake the bread that accompanied most dinners.  Eager to be helpful, I offered to bake a no-knead loaf I’d been perfecting that year – my entre into bread.  “No-knead?” he scoffed at me.  “no way.  It won’t be as good.  Good bread takes time – you have to show it some love.  It needs attention.  You’ve got to knead it.”

I didn’t bake the bread.  I know now that even more than kneading, he was right: good bread takes time – and, some attention is a good thing.  The bread that comes from the supermarket, sliced and bagged for sandwiches is easy enough, but it’s completely different from bread baked at home.  It has more in common with a sponge, really.  It might be called wonderbread but it’s pretty far from wonderful.

Is this what Jesus is thinking when he refuses the tempter’s invitation to turn stones into bread?  That a miracle would be too easy?  Just turn the stones to bread? Jesus scoffs.  No way.  Takes the joy out of it.  Good bread takes time, you’ve got to show it some love and really knead it if you want it to be good.  You can take a shortcut to satisfy your hunger, sure – stop at McDonald’s or pick up the Wonderbread – but it won’t be very good for you.  It won’t be delicious.  It won’t be as meaningful as a meal prepared from scratch and shared around the table.

“Stones into bread?  No way,” Jesus says.  We live by the word that gathers us round the table together to eat and celebrate in good company – meals that feed our hearts while filling our bellies, meals that help us remember who and whose we are.

Here at the beginning of Lent, each year we remember this story of Jesus in the wilderness.  These forty days without food, wrestling with temptation, prepare Jesus for ministry – just as forty years in the wilderness prepared and formed the people of Israel from disparate tribes and families enslaved in Egypt into a single nation who trusted in God.  This season gives us, too, forty days to prepare.  Forty days to wrestle with what separates us from each other and from God.  Forty days through which to journey with Christ to Jerusalem, to prepare our hearts and minds for what will happen to him there.

Scripture tells us that after he is baptized by John in the Jordan, with his robes still dripping wet, the Spirit leads Christ out into the desert, where he fasts and prays.  This is a vision quest.  A ritual of purification.  A rite of passage to prepare him for the work ahead.

In his baptism, Jesus hears God claim him as a beloved son.  When the tempter shows up, he questions that identity, saying, “if you are really the son of God, prove it.” Evil tempts Jesus to use his power selfishly by turning stone to bread; to test God by throwing himself off the temple; and to forsake God altogether by seeking earthly power instead of the keys to the kingdom of heaven.

The temptations of the adversary are pernicious.  They would make Jesus settle for small power, self-serving power, power that would satisfy his own immediate needs and ego.  These temptations would make Jesus miss the bigger, selfless, all-encompassing work God was calling him to.  Jesus and his followers were meant to feed the world, not just ourselves – and he goes on to feed five thousand with just a few loaves and fishes.  His ministry was intended to confront and challenge the forces of evil in the world, not to capitulate to them.  He goes on to proclaim that the reign of God had come near in him, to cast out demons and heal brokenness wherever he found it.   And though he would not throw himself from the spire of the temple, he will eventually go willingly to his death, to reveal the truth that violence will never save us, and love always will.

I admit have a hard time with this story, because its depiction of evil personified as the tempter, the adversary, is outside of my experience of sin in the world.  Evil is real – the devil, not so much.  Plenty of people have opened my eyes to their experience of him, though.  In my last call, I shared communion and studied the Bible with women at a shelter each month.  Many of them were survivors of abuse, who wrestled with addiction, and were dealing with the consequences.  Some of them were not that different from me, people who had been dealt a bad hand.  Most of the time, our theologies were very different, but those women taught me more about the adversary than my theology classes ever did.

Living close to the line, every day felt like a battle – the intersecting forces of poverty and racism, addiction and misogyny were not only real, they were personified.  From their perspective, it was the evil doer who was hard at work, opposing them, keeping them from getting ahead.  The adversary made it so that no bus lines ran near the only apartment they could afford, so they couldn’t have a home and make it to their job, so they wouldn’t be able to see their kids again this month.

Though I’m well acquainted with the reality of evil in the world, I’ve never felt it was personally fighting against me and my well-being – but I’ve always had the privilege of housing, and stability, mental health, and employment.  For me, the experience of evil and brokenness is expansive – The way discrimination and white supremacy have been baked into our economic, health, housing, criminal justice, and education systems.  How retributive violence and war seem like a foregone conclusion instead of forgiveness and grace and reconciliation.

But Lent is an invitation to consider evil – that is, all which opposes the will of God for love, peace, and wholeness – as intensely personal as well.  All that is within us that is complicit and complacent with the world as it is, instead of committed to creating the world as we know it should be.  The parts in us that are impatient, unkind, selfish, greedy.  Those tendencies are within us.  We know they are.  And these days of Lent are a chance to reflect on those shortcomings, that inner and outer brokenness, and to recommit ourselves to being the people God would have us be, following Christ in living lives of love and justice.

This season of Lent is an opportunity to remember who we are and to whom we belong.  A chance to deepen our commitment to God by practicing our faith – not by taking shortcuts, but by feasting on the word that truly nourishes us – baking and sharing the bread of life with one another and the world.

 

Cat Goodrich
Faith Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD
February 19, 2023

The Lighthouse
Matthew 17

A couple of summers ago, Dary, the girls and I visited the Owl’s Head lighthouse on the Maine coast, near Rockland.  We brought sandwiches and ate them on a picnic blanket in the grass, and the girls clamored around on the giant rocks that made up the shoreline on an inlet nearby.  Once we’d eaten, we climbed a long set of steps to go up to the lighthouse.  It’s not a tall building; a quaint, white brick structure situated on a high bluff overlooking Penobscot Bay.

Inside the lighthouse, a winding staircase, dark and steep, led us up into the light room at the top that held the giant lens – windows all around, of course, and a tremendous view of the sea, rocks jutting out into the water, waves crashing down below.  It must have been July when we were there, because what I remember most was the HEAT – even with a breeze through the open windows – the light reflected and refracted by the lenses was intense, heating the air and shining everywhere you looked, impossible to avoid, bright and HOT.  There is a metal walkway outside all around the room at the top of the light, and I stepped outside and leaned over the railing and breathed the fresh salt air, looking out at the brilliant blue choppy sea, and I can’t really explain it, but I just was overcome with something like awe: amazement at the beauty of the ocean, and gratitude for the devoted men and women who had kept the light burning for so long – since the lighthouse was established in 1825.  The house wasn’t electrified until 1989, so for more than 150 years, a gas flame was tended through short hot summers and long, lonely winters.  How many lives had they saved?  How many ships had they safely steered through the rough waves and treacherous waters?  How many long, impossibly hot summer days and nights had they ensured that the flame continued to shine?

I can’t help but think about that lighthouse when I read this transfiguration story.  Bright, hot, impossible to miss – a beacon shining forth for all to see.  This is the vision of Jesus.  The rational part of my brain is tempted to explain this story somehow, make it make sense, or be more palatable for us 21^st century Christians.  But I don’t really think that’s what we’re meant to do here. This story is important – all three synoptic gospels include it – and we revisit it in one form or another each year the Sunday before the season of Lent begins.  But why?  This vision is miraculous, mysterious, far outside our realm of understanding and belief.  Why is it central to the story of our faith?  What difference does it make for us?

Look around.  This Sunday we stand on the mountaintop together, looking ahead down the path into the valley.  In the weeks to come, we will travel with Jesus and the disciples down from the mountain, making our way through Lent with him along the road to Jerusalem, where danger and death await.  This vision is meant to give us a glimpse of who he really is, to reassure us that the terrible things to come will not be his undoing.

Seeing Jesus’ transformation, Peter, James, and John should have no doubt about who he is: the brilliant radiance of God in human form.  And yet, they seem to have a hard time believing it.  I would, wouldn’t you?  In fact, they’re terrified: the brothers cower on the ground and hide their faces – Peter on the other hand is awestruck – he proposes a building project, perhaps wanting to designate that mountaintop as holy ground.  As if we need an altar to do that.

The word transfiguration itself means a complete change in form or appearance – Jesus the man, transformed into a shining deity.  The message is clear: Christ is both human and holy, divine.  But I don’t know if the disciples are able to comprehend what that means… if having been shown his true identity, shining forth bright and hot, they know what to make of their friend and his teachings.  I wonder, once the vision goes away and the disciples head back down the mountain, what changes for them, having seen this – having heard the voice of God call their friend beloved, and calling them to listen to him.   How does a mountaintop experience – change us?

Mountains are places of mystical encounters – where truth is revealed and perspective is gained.  Moses met God on the mountain, and received rules for living.  The commandments for covenant community.  A mountaintop experience can change how we see the world and our place in it.  The overarching emotion of a mountaintop experience is AWE – “Awe is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your understanding of the world,” according to a UC Berkley scientist.

Buddhist teacher “Sharon Salzberg defines awe as “the absence of self-preoccupation.”  Moments of awe get us out of our own heads by right-sizing us, helping us “realize our place” in the grand scheme of things.  Awesome feelings help regulate our emotions, deepen our breathing, stimulate the vagal cells around our brainstem.  Awe is good for us! It reconnects us with what is true and gives us new energy with which to go about our work in the valley.

Seeing Jesus shining on the mountain, I can’t help but remember him saying “You are the light of the world,” and his instruction for us to shine our light for all to see.  Bright, and hot.  Impossible to miss.  I remember what one of our bible study folks said as we engaged that text a few weeks ago – her take away was that we should all just let our light shine!  By being ourselves, contributing whatever it is that WE do best.

And so maybe our takeaway from the transfiguration today could be this – 1) embrace awe as a spiritual practice.  Seek it out.  Take the unknown path, make space to encounter that which we cannot explain, beauty that takes our breath away – this is part of the preparation that strengthens us for the journey ahead.  Awe builds our emotional endurance, and it is something we can find when we slow down and take time to notice the world around us with fresh eyes.

2) Christ, who shone like a beacon, hot and bright like a lighthouse guiding ships safely to shore – calls us to shine our light, too.  To be our awesome selves, to contribute whatever it is that makes us come alive, to further his work of peace, love, and justice in our world.  Trust that when you offer what you can, the spark in you glows more brightly.  Shining forth for all to see.  God tells us to listen to him – do not be afraid!  Shine!

We can’t stay on the mountain.  Just like the disciples, we’ve got to go back down, back into the fray.  Peter, James, and John were heading with Jesus towards Jerusalem, into conflict and condemnation, suffering and death, disappointment and grief.  And we are heading out into a broken world with our own faults and frailties, our worries, shame, and doubt.  But awe quiets the voice within, puts our worries in perspective and helps us hear the voice of the one who made us, whose love is strong enough to sustain us through whatever may come – you are beloved.  Let your light shine!  Do not be afraid!

 

 

 

Cat Goodrich
Faith Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD
January 29, 2022

Good Things Come to Those Who Wait?
Micah 6:1-8, Matthew 5:1-12

About fifty years ago, a psychologist at Stanford named Dr. Walter Mischel devised an experiment to examine the relationship between self-control and success.  The results shaped research and changed teaching and parenting for decades.  The experiment involved – marshmallows.  Maybe you are familiar with it.  A young child, 4-5 years old, is seated at a table in an otherwise empty room, and the researcher places a single marshmallow on the table in front of them.  The child can choose to eat the marshmallow right away, but if they wait 15 minutes without eating it, they will be rewarded with TWO marshmallows.  Then the scientist leaves the room.  The kid stares at the marshmallow.  Do they eat it?  Can they wait?  Can they trust that the scientist was telling the truth and will return with another?

As you might imagine, some kids don’t wait.  I don’t know if I could have.  But those who did, who could distract themselves by singing or playing with their hands or turning around in their chair – those who resisted eating the marshmallow performed better on almost every marker of success years later than the kids who ate it right away.  Higher test scores.  Less likely to use drugs.  Managed stress better.  More advanced degrees.  Turns out self-control is an important ingredient for success – if a child can delay gratification, and work hard without an immediate reward, it pays off in the long run.  As the old Heinz 57 commercial goes… it appears that good things come to those who wait. 

Now, because I am almost certain I would have eaten the marshmallow immediately, I’m relieved to learn that things are not always what they seem.

This experiment laid the groundwork for more recent scholarship about the importance of grit, stick-to-itiveness, and a growth mindset for achievement.  We know that hard work and self-control are crucial skills for all of us to learn.  But we know now also that they can be learned.  Your ability to resist a treat at age 4 does not necessarily pre-determine your long-term outcomes.  In fact, Dr. Mischel’s experiment has suffered from the problem of replicability.  The initial group of kids were from affluent families who worked or taught or were enrolled at Stanford, kids from the Stanford day care.  In every way, they were set up for success.  When the experiment was run in larger, more diverse groups of children, with kids of different races and from a variety of incomes, the ability to wait is half as likely to predict success than in the original experiment.  When scientists control for variables like income, academic achievement of parents, and other factors, the impact of a child’s self-control on future outcomes decreases even more.

Think about it: kids in families that are food-insecure, where every meal is not guaranteed, know that if you see food, you eat it.  Kids in families where adults can’t always be relied on to deliver on promises for future treats know to eat the treat in front of them.  Turns out, it’s a lot easier to wait to eat if you aren’t hungry to begin with.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.

Three weeks ago, Tyre Nichols was brutally beaten by police at a routine traffic stop, and three days later he died from his injuries. There is a lot of hunger and thirst for righteousness on the streets of Memphis this weekend, on the streets of Baltimore, and across our country.  When will we be filled?  Turns out, it is a lot easier to wait if you aren’t really hungry to begin with.

Blessed are those who grieve, Jesus says, for they will be comforted.  Many, many people are grieving the death of Tyre, just as we grieve the deaths of William Brown, Jr, and Deonta Dorsey, and so many others.  When will their families be comforted?  Why must they wait?

People came to Jesus and crowded around him for healing.  Scripture tells us from across Galilee, people suffering from every malady, illness and injury, have flocked to him so that he can make them well.  They are poor, and desperate, living hand to mouth in an occupied land.  Why does Jesus offer these blessings only in the future tense?  Why must they wait?  If God is loving, and just, and powerful, why must we wait for justice to roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream?  Why can we not be filled with righteousness and find comfort in our grief right here, right now, today?

Grief does not feel like a blessing.  On Friday, I was with my family, hugging my cousins after they buried their mama.  There was nothing I could say that would lessen their pain, or to fill the void of her absence.  Words offer little comfort.  But it does help to be together.

What is Christ talking about here?  Why is this unsatisfying list of blessings so crucial to Christ’s ministry that Matthew puts it front and center, right at the beginning of this sermon that forms the core of his gospel?

This scene tells us who Christ is and what he came to accomplish.  He was a teacher, a preacher, and a healer.  He came to bring about these blessings, because in and through him, the reign of God is near.  Isn’t that what John says, Get ready, the kingdom is coming near?  Jesus is calling us to realize that when we follow his call as disciples, we find ourselves blessed.  Show mercy, and you will receive it, he says.  Share love, and it comes back tenfold.  Hunger and work for justice and righteousness, and God will bring it about through our efforts.

It might look like Rome is in charge.  It might look like violence and division and cruelty and military might rule the day … but things are not always what they seem.  Because Christ came to testify to the truth that God is in charge.  Christ calls us to open our eyes, and see that the reign of God is here, within you and me and the community we create.  And when we do that, when we work with God to create it and live it, uplifting the poor, building peace, seeking justice, acting with mercy and kindness, we don’t have to wait for these blessings.  We experience them.  Here, and now.

I love the message’s version of the gospel of John: God’s word became flesh and moved into the neighborhood.  Christ knew what it was like to be us.  He knew what it felt like to wait.  He and his people endured the brutality of militarized police.  He loved and lost.  He grieved.  He suffered.  He taught and healed wounds wrought by violence and division. He knew the pain of living in a world that is broken but loved by God and destined ultimately for wholeness, healing, and joy.  He knew that in and through him God’s work was begun, but not complete – and so it is true for us, as we exist in this in-between space, where the reign of God is here but not fully realized.  And so we trust his promise that good things will come to those who wait, and work, and seek them.

Yesterday was Holocaust remembrance day, so I want to share with you that Walter Mischel, the Stanford psychologist, is Jewish.  He was born in Austria.  He was a child, just 8 years old, when Nazi Germany annexed his country.  He remembers moving quickly from sitting in the front row of his classroom, to the back row, to standing in the back, to no longer being allowed to go to school at all.  His family survived because they were able to flee to Brooklyn, where they were able to scrape by but only through hard work, and struggle.  He talks about learning from his Yiddish grandmother the importance of sitzfleisch: continuing to work, regardless of the obstacles –today, we would call it grit.

This childhood experience of overcoming trauma shaped his research, and drove his inquiry into what builds grit in children, how self control and delayed gratification can set kids up for success.

And I can’t help but wonder if this is what Christ is seeking to instill in his disciples, too.  Grit, sitzfleisch, stick-to-itiveness.  A willingness to continue to work, to delay gratification, to keep on showing mercy, and loving kindness, and walking humbly – despite all obstacles.  Even when the fury of Rome or the Memphis police is unleashed on you.  Continuing to work for reform even when it seems that the system is so broken it needs to be scrapped completely.  Hungering and thirsting and striving for justice, and holding fast to love, and mercy, because that is how we find the blessing of God’s love, and mercy all around us.

Lucky for us, this patience, this self-control, and stick-to-itiveness doesn’t have to be something we have from the start – it’s a skill that can be learned, cultivated.  One marshmallow at a time, one day at a time.  Choosing to find the blessing each day in loving kindness.  Seeking mercy.  And trusting Christ’s promise that the reign of God is near, if only we have the courage to see it.  If only we have the courage to be it.  May it be so.

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.