Revolution (a long sermon)

A sermon written for the Bethany Theological Seminary worship community February 2011
John 20 Revolution: I have seen the Lord

It has been an enlightening month at Bethany. We opened with an MA presentation on Discipleship through Eros rather than Thanatos, moved on to a peace forum with Kristy sharing her story of coming back to God as the Divine revealed itself through the Goddess. We delved into the first half of Malcolm X opening our selves up to a particular Black History in the United States, then another peace forum this time focused on research into white privilege and racism, then returned to the rest of the Malcolm X story as we looked at the racism that continues, even within us.
My body, mind and spirit are swirling into all kinds of new worlds, exploding the outer bounds of what I thought I knew. Contemplating all of this is powerful. We are fortunate beyond all imagination to be here, contemplating hard topics, uneasy topics, confronting topics, with most of us welcoming it all. One day, When you leave this place, this seminary experience, you will leave behind a community that is part of evolving understandings, led by God into a new kind of wholeness. Enjoy the variety while you can.

Enjoy it while you can because Revolutions bloody and changing are roaring through the world in Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, and Wisconsin. On Monday I was riveted to NPR as they tried to cover the latest uprising, violent in nature in Lybia ....information leaking out in spite of communication blackouts for western journalists...The norm is overturning and the dictating structures are falling.
Even in the heavens the planets Uranus, Chiron and Pluto are waging a riot of revolutionary energy...similar celestial configurations as were seen in the race tumults of the 50s, the Beatniks and Kerouac. The same cosmic alignments of the mid 1960s with Dylan and Janis, King and X.

Its all around us. Inescapable. The energy of change is moving in the church, and we feel it in this seminary. We can listen, be aware, learn and recognize that a change is coming to life....or we can run for the nearest locked room when we confront what we know to be true but cannot quite understand it.

I wonder what the planets were doing while Jesus was in the tomb! A revolution was astir as he loved and taught, then walked toward Jerusalem, as he was tortured and put on the cross, and as his body held the silence of death entombed in the waiting.
We have this day a marvelous flow of stories of encounters, surprising, unexpected, crazy making encounters between Jesus' most beloved companions and the Risen One standing with them. What a turning must have been occurring within their own bodies, minds and spirits! Fear, amazement, Love, loyalty, stunned wonder. The times, they were achangin' baby and these good people could hardly believe what they were seeing.

The story opens up with a mournful tomb watch with Mary Magdelene, Peter, and the Beloved. A visit to the dead. But the stone is moved, and the death rags were here and there....but here and there in such a way as to infer validation rather than vandalism. Validation of curious stories Jesus had told. Validation of resurrection. Validation that Jesus was God's heir, and now was the Risen Christ.
We move away quickly from the tomb with Peter and the Beloved....both close intimates with Jesus who hadn't fully gotten who Jesus was while Jesus was. But in this empty death chamber, both Peter and the beloved disciple get it, get something, they believe something.....? But what they believe about the resurrection cannot override their fear of the Jews and their own survival. they flee in the face of Divine truth, back to a locked room where others were hiding out as well. Hiding in fear. Hiding from the changes they knew were coming.

Staying at the tomb was Mary Magdalene, who rather than fleeing, stood. Rooted in place...at a loss for what to do. There was no body to care for. So, no ritual to perform. How would she mark this moment if the very things that were predictable and normal were taken away from her? That mixed with the grief of death and the shock, the SHOCK of a missing body....well I would be rooted too.
Rooted in the numbing moment of disbelief, unbelief, beyond belief. Where Jesus' body should have been Mary Magdalene saw angels. Peter and the beloved disciple saw discarded linen. Mary Magdalene saw angels......(ponder). Mary Magdalene saw angels, heard angels, spoke to angels. We read that part of the story as if its not even a little bit strange. Rooted in that moment of belief gone awry a gardener steps up and speaks. The human mind grasps for what is recognizable, normal and comforting, when everything else is out of whack.
The gardener speaks her name, and reveals the Christ. She knows her Rabouni in an instant, the very moment Jesus shows the Risen Self to her in the way she needed in order to know and believe.

Even though She is not to grasp the ineffable ascending Christ, she could believe the new, the change, the revolution of all that had been normal.

These stories within story continues and we're back to Peter, the beloved, and others. Jesus is on the heels of their fleeing and comes to a room thick with desperation and anxiety. A fortress of fear Pulsating with anticipation of the worst.
The worst doesn't come...Jesus comes to that locked room. Locked doors and solid walls are no match for the ascending Christ, the Risen One.
Jesus comes to that locked room of hearts locked by fear and says.............

“Peace”.

Not only does he say it, he breathes it. He is no longer flesh and bone, but mist and vapor and that vapor wafts over faces in that hiding place and they feel it. As on the day of creation, that cosmic revolution of newness when the Creator breathed life into humanity. Jesus comes to them just as they need him to. Jesus brings an encounter in a way for them to see. For them to see and believe.

Thomas is outside of all of this yet part of it. Thomas was somewhere else while the revolution came...Somewhere else while things were happening, and people were telling their stories.
Of course he doubted this new evidence, this new turn of events.
Wouldn't you?
Of course he didn't believe his closest friends that they had “seen Jesus”, would you?

Of course, he demanded that only his eyes, his hands, his own understanding could determine truth from fiction, sacred story from blaspheme.
Only his eyes would he believe, this latecomer, this absent doubter.
I don't really know how ascension works, however Jesus, who was likely in that moment spiraled into the great yaw of heaven's entrance..........comes back. Comes back to doors that are shut.
But Jesus' limiting-norm of flesh and blood have given way to the no-need-for-norm of the Sacred Realm, and finds Thomas and others inside. Jesus not only comes to Thomas, but he comes back to Thomas exactly as Thomas demanded. The Christ, now a heavenly ether, comes with wounds available for proof. And Thomas believes. But before this loving Lord departs there is a small rebuke. A rebuke that we all must hear today. “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

Life during seminary is one focused on stories of sacred encounters: stories of barren wombs made fertile, stories of spit and mud turned into sight. Stories of subversive dunkings in a German river, stories of a young Pennsylvania girl who saw visions, stories of God calling the unlikely...yes I'm talking about all of us in this room, and God using the limitless resources of all of creation and human imagination to make known the Grander, Amazing, Sacred Story.
The Mdiv students get to tell their spiritual autobiographies and the MA students get to choose topics for in depth research that almost always exposes part of their spiritual autobiography.
All the while you/we move through study and ideas with simultaneous purposes: the goals of the individual growth, and the preparation for a life of public ministry. We can get bound into one of either of those pretty easily....sacrificing our own personal challenges as we stay keenly focused on those we will serve....or diving too deeply into our own development that we seldom stop to consider the story of another. From the occasional class to the Masters, to Dmin or PhD work, we are engaging in significant education and reflective development on behalf of ourselves and all the people whose spiritual growth or social economic change will be impacted by our leadership. By your leadership.
And we are defining what is normative for ourselves and the church along the way. So, have you asked yourselves, “Whose norm will you preach or live by?” Be careful if you think “God's norm” is an easy answer...There are so many godly and conflicting norms present in this room, that it is amazing that we are not all at each others throats, demanding proof or vying for our standard to win.
Actually, that has been happening here, this year.... most years to some degree. ...But this year, there seems to be more proving
this over that,
authority over love,
tradition over inclusion,
my type of faithfulness over your type of faithfulness.

I want to know how we plan to unlock the doors,
how we plan to allow Christ to ascend,
when we're going to speak with angels in order to hear stories that conflict with our own. Stories of honest and earnest encounters with God. Stories from Kristy and Karen, and Malcolm X as they awaken untapped paths within me...within you.....paths that lead to unbidden encounters with the Divine ….
that make us look around to see if anyone else noticed what just happened. Encounters that we try to tell with words like “the presence of God”, “Eros”, “Ma'at”, “Christ's Peace”, “Incarnational”...with every word not quite enough.
We fear telling our deepest stories, because they may sound false, or deniable, or weird. I might not believe you. You might make light of my beliefs when I leave the room. And we stop the flow of stories within story because we fear. If fear is to be had, it should be of a bland and predictable path, born from living smack centered in the acceptable norm and never exploring outward.

It is to our advantage to listen to one another. It is to the advantage of all of creation to believe one another when we have seen the Divine in the multitude of ways that the Divine will come to us.

It is hard to trust someone else's story. We trust our own eyes. We trust our own experience. But we turn to some norm set long ago, like way back in the iconic churchly 50s or mid 1800s or early 1700s, to prove validity, when it comes to someone else's story. Testing it against tradition and text, as though current experience is an untrustworthy cousin. When confronted with something revolutionary, we are doubting Thomas all the way.

As far as revolutionary storytelling goes, we are still timidly flirting with the many storied realities of Postmoderism. A Postmodern reality allows us to critique the system of Modernity....that human structure and now uninspiring monovocal reality where those in power think they are speaking for all when they are really only speaking for themselves. The postcolonial movement and Aregentinian Enrique Dussel fuel some new ideas for me, that Modernity has been about a unified narrative, a singular world view where cultures and voices have been mowed down and squished into submissive invisibility, conquered by the western european Christian, mindset.

Postmodernism is not new. It is a revealing and validation of many stories of life, God, human triumph, refreshed understandings, stories that have been in existence for some time. It is as though the weighty stone of Modernism and the Norm God, is slowly being lifted by the shear strength of a host of voices filling their multitudinous lungs with the forgotten breath of life.. Up goes the stone and the cultures, narratives, and individuals that were squished and presumed gone, are springing back into their fullness.
Like linen turned to Angels,
Gardeners turned into the Divine.
One day, that heavy stone will be thrown off into the abyss, to reveal a beauty that will make us cry for its centuries of absence.
For it is all the glory of God.
The Beauty of the Sacred.
The encountered variety of the Creator.

Don't you want to hear someone else's stories of their encounters with God?
Our stories might blow us away, and in previous centuries might have gotten some burned at the stake.
But I, like you, know the sources of my holy encounters.
And incurious--disbelief cannot ….expunge.... the truth.... of the Divine..... from my experience. Or from yours.
When one says “I have seen God” we can respond with “Tell me more!”
When one names and metaphors the Divine in curious ways that are meaningful and life giving, we should say “Amen” with them.
Mature minds and wise hearts know when they are in the presence of narcissism, or predictable smallness, or when stories rise from growth and transforming development as God leads us onward.
Do we get to ask questions when your story does not confirm my stories? Absolutely. We better. We owe it ourselves, to a sister or a brother, we owe it to the world beyond these solid walls, so that all can learn to hear with interest, trust and awe.
When we judge, it is like Mary Magdalene's presumed impulse to hold on to Jesus, anchoring him to this known existence.
When we say “tell me more” it is like being caught up in the ascension toward a more heavenly understanding.
God is coming to us presenting life, comfort, salvation, challenges, power to forgive, revelation and revolution in just the way we need in order for us to get it. That is what our stories tell us.
And that is why when a sister says, that when she was about to walk away from God, God came to her as the Goddess, I believe.
That is why when someone shares that they felt God's direction and presence in the appearance of three blue jays...a story heard in last weeks joint chapel, I do not diminish it.

And if someone says that God comes to them in the masculine terms and images of what has always been, I will learn to honor it while praying for more encounters that blow their minds.
It is not our relational responsibility to disbelieve. It is to believe when one has said, I have seen.
I don't think I really know the best way for God to come to me. And I'm reasonably well versed in unprescribed encounters with God. My heart breaks for those whose holy encounters are not welcomed by the church or others, and they have to sit in silence. As rising and current church leaders, how will you walk with your people when the choice comes for someone to stay and disbelieve their own encounters with God, or leave in order to know God beyond the definitions of the status quo?

Without our combined experiences and trust for one anothers stories,
we will stay the same,
and nothing will change.
The norm will win,
and we'll mistake God for the Gardener.



Benediction:
The Infinite One
cannot be bound by our human limits of imagination,
but can be known in full bloom from the imagination.
The Source of Resurrection,
the Breath of Courage and Purpose,
the One who walks through solid doors
and speaks peace
is an ungraspable
yet knowable Sacred story.
Ether and mist,
air and breath,
wound and wholeness,
here and ascending.