Cat Goodrich
Faith Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD
September 12, 2021

God’s Green Earth: Sabbath
Genesis 1:31a, 2:1-3; Mark 2:23-28

Every day for the past week and a half has begun with absolute haste in my house.  See, Maddie started school a week ago last Tuesday, and second graders must arrive by 8 am.  Ordinarily, I imagine a family might be a bit rusty at organizing the morning routine after a few months of summer vacation.  But we are forming a new routine after a year and a half of pandemic!  Pandemic which began with lockdowns and no school, then shifted to online learning – zoom school which started around 9, when the technology was all working properly.  We could be eating breakfast at 8:56 and still make it on time.  So the mad rush to get out the door at 7:30 sharp to navigate our way to school is new… and feels a little hectic.

All that to say it is a peculiar time for me to be thinking about Sabbath, and maybe it is for you, too.  Then again, it may be the perfect time for us to think about Sabbath.  As school ramps up and fall sports begin – go Ravens (did I do that right?)!  As the city continues to cautiously move toward reopening and my fall calendar fills up – it may be the right time to ask, “what is Sabbath for us?”  What does it mean for you?  How can we practice it this fall?

The story of creation in Genesis tells us that after the work of making the universe, God rested.  Some scholars say God rested not because God needed to, but to give us an example that could be a model for our lives – God rested because we need to.  We can’t work day in and day out without stopping, without making time to sleep and eat and relax, without space for what feeds and restores us.  Not just humans, but nature needs rest and restoration, too – We see it in the cycle of the seasons: the frenzied flowering of spring and lush harvest of summer give way to the cooler, dormant months of fall and winter.  Fields must lie fallow, crops must rotate or risk sucking all of the productivity out of the land.  Rest helps creation be more productive.

In Deuteronomy, the commandment to remember the sabbath day and keep it holy is not only a commandment to rest, but a reminder of God’s work of liberation.  While enslaved in Egypt, Israelites were worked relentlessly, perpetually, with no time off for themselves, their families; once freed, God commands that they have a day to rest, be restored, and remember.  In the spirit of Deuteronomy, Sabbath frees us: frees us from exhaustion and overwork, frees us to delight in the goodness of creation, to forge community connections, and to reconnect with our creator.

In the story Patrick read from the gospel of Mark, we hear Jesus challenge and reinterpret traditional notions of Sabbath.  Jewish law strictly forbids any kind of work on the Sabbath.  The disciples plucking grains of wheat from the field, was considered harvesting – not appropriate Sabbath behavior, and so the religious leaders disapprove.  But should hungry people not gather food to eat?  Should sick people not be healed?  Should we pay attention to the letter or the spirit of the law?  Jesus says, the Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath.  I take that to mean, our practice of Sabbath should not be punitive.  Sabbath activities should be things that nourish and restore us.

My understanding of Sabbath was challenged and expanded by a couple in my church in Birmingham, Jeanne and John Plaxco.  John was a PK, his dad a minister in the Dutch reformed church.  When he was growing up, Sunday was for going to church, and spending time with family.  Likewise, when Jeanne and John’s children Jack and Margaret were young, they couldn’t go to the movies or football games on Sundays – the activities were limited to church, food, and family.  My first year in Birmingham, I helped the deacons plan a service Sunday, organizing work projects around the church and at member’s homes on a Sunday afternoon.  When I told the Plaxcos about the day and asked if they were planning to participate, Jeanne’s eyes got wide and her mouth got small.  She gave me a little smile and said, “on a Sunday?!  Service work on a Sunday?!”  Here I was, a minister, encouraging the church to plan a workday on the sabbath.  In her own, gentle way, Jeanne let me know this was highly unusual.

But is it, really?  Not anymore.  Many of you I’m sure grew up in households where Sunday activities were restricted to church and family.  But not all.  Our concept of time, and work, are completely different from ancient Israelites living in an agrarian culture thousands of years ago.  And they’ve changed significantly since the 1950’s and ‘60’s too, thanks be to God.  These days, there are a few cultural dynamics that are challenging my idea of Sabbath – the increase of people with no religious affiliation at all makes Sunday a day for brunch or soccer tournaments.

Living in a multi-faith world means Sabbath for me looks different than Sabbath for my Jewish, Muslim, or Buddhist friends and colleagues.  With the rise of the gig economy, and more and more people working multiple jobs to make ends meet, it has become an unattainable luxury to be able to actually take time off for sabbath whatever your faith or lack thereof.

One impact of pandemic pushing church online means that we can access worship from almost anywhere, watch recordings anytime.  It makes me wonder – how do we practice Sabbath here and now?

At the end of the work of creation, God pauses and notices that everything God made is good, very good.  Sabbath begins with a pause, with noticing the good that is around and within us, and acknowledging that the good comes from God.

Maybe for you, that pause comes each morning when you wake up, or over your morning coffee.  Maybe it also comes each evening, at the close of day.  Whenever we stop to remember that we are part of something more than just ourselves.  Casper ter Huile, a consultant with the Sacred Design Lab, puts it like this: making “space in our days to feel fully big and fully small.”[1] For us, clearly, this pause happens on Sundays, when we set aside time to be together, to worship, pray, and sing praise, to connect, and grow in our faith, and be challenged to live it out when we leave this place.  And we do it again and again and again.

We humans make meaning through ritual.  Ritual isn’t something we just do once and are done with it.  Ritual becomes embodied, it forms us as we do it over and over again, training our bodies to know what it feels like to be held by community. Building our muscle memory as we are fed with the bread of life at Christ’s table.  And to rest in the mystery and wonder of God.

I know a pastor who talks about breathing in and breathing out God’s love. That’s as good a definition of Sabbath as I can think of.  A time when we stop to notice the goodness of creation.  When we are nourished by the Word of God and renewed by the Spirit.  A time to remember who and whose we are.  And a place and community where we find ways to share our gifts, our love, God’s love with others.

So this fall, I hope we will make space to practice Sabbath together.  To commit to pause together.  To breathe in and breathe out God’s love… together.

One last thing… John and Jeanne came to the service Sunday.  This is what they did: they stood in the sanctuary and they vacuumed the pew cushions, all 119 of them.  It took more than two hours, as they slowly and methodically made their way up and down the aisles.  I don’t think they even took a break.  We laughed together about my call to work on the Sabbath – but a job needed to be done, and so they did it, breathing out God’s love, serving together on a Sunday because they loved the church. Thanks be to God.

[1] Ter Huile, Casper and Angie Thurston, “How We Work: Beyond” Sacred Design Lab, https://sacred.design/how-we-work

Cat Goodrich
Faith Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD
July 25, 2021

Bless This Mess: Saul of Tarsus
Acts 9:1-22

Next Sunday will be one year since I started my ministry here at Faith Church, thanks be to God!  You do not know this, but I feel like it is a small miracle that in all this time, I have resisted using the TV show The Wire as an example in a sermon here in Baltimore.  I feel like I may need a prize of some sort.  A full year!  Such a great show, but maybe a little too close to home here.  The Wire, as I’m sure you know, aired on HBO and was written by David Simon, who started out as a journalist with the Baltimore Sun.[1]  It grew out of a book he wrote after a year of shadowing the Baltimore City Police Department. One of my favorite characters in the Wire was not detective McNulty, not kingpin Stringer Bell… it was Bubbles.[2]  Bubbles was a heroin addict, convincingly played by Andre Royo, struggling toward recovery throughout the show.  We meet him initially because he’s working as an informant for the police, helping the detectives of Major Crimes keep track of dealers.  He’s a likeable guy, funny, always scheming, looking for his next fix.  The Wire ran for six seasons, and in that time Bubbles is often clearly trying to do better, but time and again he makes a mess of things, mistake after mistake – Simon calls the addicts he writes about “at war with themselves.” The question for viewers is: can he change?  Can he overcome his addiction, and become the good guy we see he can be?  This is, of course, a key question for anyone struggling with addiction, for anyone who loves someone who is.  Can people change?

This is, of course, Ananias’s question, too.  Ananias is just an ordinary disciple in Damascus, minding his own business, when God wakes him up in the middle of the night with a vision too crazy to believe – God shows Ananias that he must go lay hands on a man named Saul so that Saul can regain his sight.  Ananias thinks – “Saul of Tarsus?  That guy?  That guy hates Christians!  You want me to go find HIM?  God, you’ve gotta be kidding me.  Why would I want to do something like that?  There’s no WAY he can change.  What a mess.”

I understand Ananias’s hesitation.  I mean, this is Saul, who we know as Paul.  He was a zealot.  In Paul’s own words, he was “…a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews, as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.”[3]

Blameless, that is, according to Jewish law.  But if you were a Christ believer, watch out.  When Saul first appears earlier in Acts, he is tracking down Christians and turning them over to the authorities to be put in prison, searching house after house after house – the people he caught were as good as dead.  When a mob went to stone the apostle Stephen, Saul was the guy who stood by and watched their coats.  That guy was not cool.  A hater, if there ever was one.

So what Ananias wants to know, is can people change?  Can they?  Can you, can I?  Can Bubbles?  Can Saul?

You may know that the earliest writings in the New Testament are not the Gospels.  Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John – they were writing at least 40-50 years after the death of Jesus.  The earliest writings in the New Testament are the letters of the apostle Paul – the letters Paul wrote to the house churches all over the Mediterranean, churches that he mostly helped to start.  The bulk of the New Testament comes from Paul.  He was likely a contemporary of Jesus’s, maybe a few years younger.  And he was devoting his life to targeting and stopping Jesus’s disciples.  So what happened to turn this hater, this persecutor of the church, Saul of Tarsus, into Paul the apostle who ignited the early church and spread the good news everywhere he went?

This happened.  An mysterious encounter on the road to Damascus left Paul blinded: a flash of light, a voice from heaven, and he is struck down in the road.  For three days he cannot see, cannot eat, cannot do anything except pray and think about his life and all the people he’s hurt and the mistakes he’s made… all the evil he has done to the saints in Jerusalem. Then Ananias comes and lays hands on Saul, healing his blindness and helping him see clearly that Jesus was the messiah he’d been waiting for, the most full revelation of God on earth.

I wish God always worked like this.

I wish that every time I was on the wrong path, or at a crossroads facing a difficult decision, there would be a blinding flash of light from heaven and a booming disembodied voice would offer guidance.  A message from God doesn’t have to be complicated… it could be a holy post-it note, a phone call in the middle of the night – I’d even settle for an email.  Wouldn’t you?  I wish it could be that easy.  That clear.  But for most of us, that’s not how it works.

For most of us, discernment, choice, and change happen gradually, quietly.  When we’re on the wrong path, or at a crossroads, we figure out what to do by listening to the quiet voice inside, by talking with those we know and trust, and hearing the wisdom of our community – all of us who are trying together to love God and do better.  And change is a daily choice, the building up of muscle memory over time to create new pathways in our brains to override the old ones.  Change takes time.  It’s not something we can easily do on our own.

What would have happened to Saul if Ananias had refused to go?  Had said, “no way, God, that guy’s a hater, he can stay blind for all I care.”  Ananias’s help, his willingness to trust God and go to someone who had been his enemy, allowed Saul to see again.  Ananias’s trust in God jump started Saul’s witness to Jesus as Lord in Damascus and beyond.  It wasn’t just the two of them.  Ananias helped connect Saul to a community that would give direction and meaning to his life.  As New Testament scholar Peter Berger said, “Saul became Paul in a moment of religious ecstasy, but Paul could remain Paul only in the context of Christian community.”[4]

We all need community to be able to sustain change.  It’s one reason why groups like CrossFit and Weight Watchers and AA are popular – they create communities of support and accountability when people are trying to make real changes in their lives.  The same could be said for church – or should be.

Earlier this week, Karen Meyers and I went to a BUILD meeting – the first large, in-person gathering for BUILD – that’s Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development – since the start of the pandemic.  The meeting was held outside of a school, in a field in southwest Baltimore.  Karen, God bless her, helped me find the place.  And I was worn out when I got there, but I was so glad I went – because folks from all over the city were there, from North and South and East and West, Black, white, and Latino.  All sharing what we are most concerned about in our communities.  As the sun set and the full moon rose, one of the pastor leaders of the organization, George Hopkins of SoWeBo community church, asked, what do we believe is possible for our city?  Can Baltimore change?  Can we make that happen?

Can a city change?

BUILD’s belief, obviously, is that our city can change, and it has, and it will again, through the power of people organized to call on and stand up to our elected officials and demand it.  In the next few months, leaders said, the city will receive more than $600 million dollars in Covid relief and infrastructure funding.  The state is getting more than $3.5 billion.  A lot of people are wondering, how will that money be spent?  Will it go to our neighborhoods that are struggling, to our schools that don’t have safe water to drink or working heat and a/c?  Will it help create a city that’s safe, with affordable housing, and functioning transit, and meaningful jobs?  Will it support the kids in Woodbourne-McCabe whose families are facing eviction? What do you think?  Where would you like to see it go?

BUILD called the churches and synagogues and community groups that were there to listen more deeply, more intentionally to our people, and to talk with our neighbors- to hear what keeps them up at night, what they care enough about to take action, and where they’d like to see that money invested.  So I wonder… what keeps you up at night?  What do YOU care enough about to do something about?  Where would YOU like to see that money invested?  Let’s talk about it, and listen to each other, and see what our shared interests are.  I’d like to invite you to stay after worship one Sunday in August, August 29, to have lunch together, to talk, and to listen.  Because I believe that people can change.  The core of our faith is that by God’s grace, we find redemption, transformation, resurrection – new life.  And I believe that this city can change.  And I think you probably do, too.

Thinking back to Bubbles… he was a deeply flawed character, who witnessed again and again the tragic consequences of addiction and life on the street.  After the death of his closest friend, he renewed his efforts to overcome his addiction, joining NA and getting a sponsor.  His sponsor encouraged him to find a way to give back, to find something outside of himself to care about, so Bubbles starts volunteering at a Catholic Worker House soup kitchen – styled on Viva House here in Baltimore.  And somehow, with the support of that community, he manages to stay sober.

I’m guessing there are a lot of people who’ve found similar refuge there.  Who, with the support of a community, discover that change is possible.  Change for themselves.  Change for others.  Maybe you’ve experienced change, too.  Maybe we will.  Maybe our city will, too.  Redemption.  Renewal.  Resurrection – new life!  Thanks be to God.

 

[1] I drew from Wikipedia’s article on David Simon for this summary, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Simon

[2] I refreshed my memory about this character from Wikipedia’s article about him, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubbles_(The_Wire)

[3] Philippians 3:5-6, NRSV

[4] Berger, Peter, qtd. by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan in The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church’s Conservative Icon, HarperCollins: New York, 2009, p 18.

Cat Goodrich
Faith Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD
June 27, 2021

Bless This Mess: Shiphrah and Puah
Exodus 1:8-20

I just learned something amazing that I need to tell you about.  I heard it on the Radiolab podcast, which I love, though I should have known it already.[1]  Have you ever wondered how a baby breathes before it is born?  Its little lungs are developing, it’s floating in the amniotic fluid, it clearly can’t breathe air – so how does it get oxygen?  Through its umbilical cord!  All the oxygen a growing fetus needs comes from its mother!  Blood oxygenated in its mother’s lungs, is pushed by its mother’s heart down into the placenta, and through the cord, into what will become the baby’s belly button!  There’s a large vein that runs from the belly button to the baby’s developing heart, and the vein carries the oxygenated blood from the mom there.  And in my heart, and in yours, the two sides are separated.  Right side, left side.  The right side of the heart gets all of the blue, depleted blood from the body and pushes it into our lungs, where it absorbs oxygen and drops off carbon dioxide, so we can breathe it out.  Then the red, oxygenated blood flows to the Left side of our hearts, where it’s pushed back out to the rest of our bodies, carrying oxygen to our brains, our arms, our legs, our toes.  And it goes like that, pulsing through our bodies for as long as we live.

But a developing baby’s heart is different.  Before a baby is born, there’s a little opening in their heart, a trap door between the left and right sides.  The oxygenated blood from the mom and the depleted blood from the baby’s body mix together, and get swooshed around the baby’s body.  Some goes back out through the vein and cord and placenta to the mom’s body, to her lungs, where she breathes out the carbon dioxide from not just her body but from her baby’s body, too.  And again and again.

Isn’t that amazing?  But if that’s how it works, how does a baby go from inside, out?  What happens when the baby is born, and moves from breathing through its umbilical cord to breathing on its own?  From its lungs developing in the warm sea of amniotic fluid, to taking in the bright, dry air?

The magic happens during labor, when the mom’s body is contracting and pushing and opening to prepare to give birth.  As the baby moves down the birth canal, the contractions squish and squeeze its body, smooshing and pushing the water out of its lungs.  And as soon as the baby is born, into the world, the shock of the cold air hits its skin, and causes the baby to gasp, to take a big breath in.  That first gasp, and the cries that follow it, start a chain of events in its body.  The lungs inflate.  The brain sends a signal to its heart, and the door slams shut, closing off the two sides of its heart, so that the rich oxygenated blood coming from the baby’s lungs gets pumped to the rest of its body, and the depleted blood gets pushed back to the lungs – just like that, within the first few seconds of being born.  The umbilical cord has already started to close up, the connection through the placenta closes off, and we, each one of us, has learned to breathe.  And we keep breathing, in and out, for the rest of our lives.

When both of my girls were born, I remember laughing with relief and amazement as they took their first breaths and immediately began to wail, with such tiny intensity, as only a newborn can wail.  Tiny, ferocious cries, shocked and furious at the bright, cold world.  So beautiful, so LOUD, so full of life!

I’ve often wondered about the midwives and doulas, the obs and nurses who get to see this miracle over and over again.  Does it change them to see life emerge again and again?  Do they become inured to it?  Is it always a miracle?

Surely the experience of attending many births inspires a profound respect for the sanctity of life. I have to guess that was what motivated Shiphrah and Puah to defy the order of the Pharoah.  Because rule of the Pharoah was absolute.  He who would order the mass murder of infants would not hesitate to sacrifice two women who disobeyed him.  But they defied him anyway.  I can imagine their hands, strong hands that had caught countless babies, gently guiding new life into the world, suddenly clenched into fists as they steeled their courage and got their stories straight.  They couldn’t kill the boy babies.  They wouldn’t.  They would have to take a deep breath and lie, that’s all there was to it.  They would clasp hands and face him together, stand up to him together.  Pharoah was just a man, after all.  He might not know how unlikely it was for a woman to give birth alone.

There’s some debate about who these women were.  Were they Egyptians charged with helping the enslaved Israelites give birth?  Were they Israelites themselves, trained as midwives for their community?  It’s hard to say.  But they were women, so their power was limited.  The risk was extreme.  And still, they dared to defy the most powerful man in the country.  They did what they could, using their hands and hearts to protect the vulnerable.  And look at the ripple effect: their courage inspired others, which ultimately saved Moses, who went on to save his people.

Last year, in the desperate weeks after George Floyd was killed, a friend shared a list outlining methods of nonviolent protest and persuasion[2].  If you’d asked me to name them, I could have come up with a few: boycotts, petitions, picket lines.  Sit-ins, public art, protest marches.  Blocking traffic. Prayer vigils.  I’m sure you could name others.  But this list – it was long.  Almost 200 items, everything from strikes and walk-outs to creating alternative trade systems.  There are countless nonviolent ways to resist the dehumanizing forces that seek to shape our world.  Countless ways to say NO to Pharoah.  And some say acts of political defiance have their roots in this story – in the resistance of Shiphrah and Puah, two women, two midwives, saying NO.  We will not do it.  We will not kill the boy babies.  Our hands were made to bring forth life, to guide babies into the world, to save, not to kill.  To carefully clean the vernix and blood from noses and mouths so babies can breathe freely, to swaddle their tiny bodies and keep them safe, and warm.  Our hands were made for life, not for death.

I have to guess that they were terrified to defy Pharoah in this way.  Surely their voices shook and their palms were sweaty as they stood in his throne room to say, it’s impossible – the Hebrew women give birth too soon, before we get there.  Surely the midwives were afraid.  But they did it anyway.

That is the definition of courage, isn’t it?  To be afraid, but to do it anyway?

Tomorrow marks the 52^nd anniversary of the uprising at the Stonewall Inn[3], a gay bar in New York, that fateful night that sparked a revolution of LGBTQ rights and gave birth to gay pride.  Regular, humiliating raids on nightclubs in the late 60’s pushed the community over the edge. And so, for five nights in the Village, men, women, trans and nonbinary folk resisted the violence of billy clubs with a can-can kick line, refusing to hide who they were, refusing to back down.  Instead, they took a deep breath, and clasped hands together and proudly went out, into the streets.  And after years of organizing, and resisting discrimination again and again – six years and one day ago, the Supreme Court finally made it legal for two people who love each other to marry regardless of their gender.  And the fight continues for trans and non-binary folx.

Just over a year ago, George Floyd’s cries of “I can’t breathe” caused us to gasp with shock and desperation, to clench our fists and move out to the street, to resist state violence and advocate for change.  To say no to policies and practices that lead to death, to use our hands, our hearts, our voices to proclaim that Black Lives Matter, and to work together to reform how we keep our communities, our people safe.

So if the pressure these days feels like too much to bear…  if the news or your work or family is just pushing and squeezing and bearing down on you until you feel wrung out… or it causes you to gasp and cry out in shock.  Remember your heart was formed for this life by the shock of a world so cold it caused you to gasp.  Remember Shiphrah and Puah.  Remember that God gives us to each other, and calls us into community so that we can take a deep breath together and say, enough is enough.  Remember all the times people of courage and faith have held hands and joined together in the sacred struggle for justice in this world.  So that we might stand together and channel the courage of those midwives, to resist the hatred of Pharoah, to use our hands, and our hearts to change the world.

[1] McEwan, Annie and Matt Kielty, “Breath,” Radiolab podcast, story produced by Annie McEwan, Matt Kielty, and Molly Webster at WNYC Studios, 6/11/21, https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/breath

[2] “The Methods of Nonviolent Protest and Persuasion” post by Julia Siergiey Juarez on 6/2/20, shared by Kelsey McClure in the Faith in Action Alabama Facebook group on 6/2/20,  https://www.facebook.com/groups/210845526087728/posts/862975674208040

[3] Info largely derived from article on Stonewall Riots, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonewall_riots

 

 

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.