Origin Stories and Superpowers

 Sermon 8-30-2020

Grace to you and peace from God our creator and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, amen.

Every superhero has origin story. Some of my favorite superheroes and heroines were born with their special powers, like Wonder Woman, Black Panther, and Luke Skywalker. Others - such as Captain Marvel, Spider Man, and Harry Potter - got them in all kinds of unexpected ways. And still others were simply chosen to save the world, like the Mighty Morphing Power Rangers, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

You might be surprised to hear that we are part of a very special league of super heroes, right here in real life. Part of my origin story is growing up in a group of other baptized super hero people, being nurtured and encouraged in my faith by my family and other caring adults, and working at a Bible Camp in Wisconsin. 

Your origin story is probably different. But we were all chosen in the same way: We all had our forehead splashed with water three times, surrounded by others who pledged to help us on our journey. Then we were sealed with the Holy Spirit, and marked with the cross of Christ forever. It is a cross that we all carry with us, present every moment of our lives. That is OUR shared origin story.

As we wrap up our 90 Day Bible Challenge today – congratulation! – I hope that you noticed some of the really cool “origin stories” of our favorite Bible Heroes and heroines. The devotion of Ruth. The perseverance of Esther. The dreams of Joseph. The strange call stories of the prophets. The conversion of Paul. And today… we heard how Moses got going with his mission to free his people, directly from God, via a shrub that was on fire!

You could also say, in our reading from the Gospel of Matthew, that the origin story of the Christian church began here. Jesus is with his disciples in Caesarea Philippi, a Roman town full temples to every deity under the sun. It is here that Jesus asks the hundred-thousand-dollar question – Who do YOU say that I am? The disciples take a stab at it, but only Peter got it right – “You are the Messiah, the son of the living God.” Good job. Peter!

Though we heard those words a week ago in our time… only days, hours, or even minutes elapsed before Peter … then puts his foot in his mouth. Peter, thinking he’s on a roll, says: “God forbid it, Lord!” “That’s not how it’s going to be when YOU are in charge! Suffering and death? You’ve got to be kidding!”

News flash Peter: Jesus wasn’t kidding. Jesus is NOT here to set up his own kingdom made in the image of the world, with power, glory, and might. But…. Peter is also not alone in his hasty judgement about the kind of Kingdom that Jesus is bringing. We often have trouble understanding God’s kingdom when we encounter it, too

We are surrounded by messages of the Kingdom of Might – M-I-G-H.T…where power comes from influence and affluence. Those who have it, flaunt it. Those who don’t have it, want it. And the easiest way to get it is to hang out with the powerful people – and hope you get some of it by association. This is, by the way, what Peter is trying to do with Jesus, and is also why he freaks out when Jesus reveals this is NOT the kind of kingdom he’s ushering into being. After all, who WANTS to be in the inner circle of THAT kind of King? Who wants suffering as part of their origin story?

These messages have become the water we swim in - so totally ingrained in how we live that we don’t notice. It is even built into the very fabric of this country. We are taught our origin story as a nation is one of a scrappy band of settlers who valiantly wrestled their rights and freedoms out of the clutches of the most powerful empire in the world. But is that the whole story?  

We don’t have a time machine… but we do have a show from 2004 called Colonial House (found on Amazon Prime and YouTube), an entertaining blend of historical documentary and just good, juicy reality TV. Two dozen people committed to living in the back country of coastal Maine for four months, in an approximation of how a settlement would have operated in 1628. That’s right – no electricity, running water, or privacy.

Instead of the pure and simple utopia that many of the contestants expected, these “settlers” quickly came face to face with the harsh realities that shaped our early days as a nation, besides the daily struggle to survive.

From the very start, religious intolerance, strict social classes and power struggles, homophobia, the never-ending focus on productivity and output, land-theft from native people, rigid gender roles, and racial tension were very uncomfortably present in our national identity. The realization that the “Origin Story” of our country is not simple or spotless was an eye-opening moment for many on this show – and those of us who watched to the show, too.

Some of us are waking up to threads of a story we didn’t know had been woven into our fabric since the beginning, while others have been awake this whole time, seeing our past play out again, and again, and again, the cycle of violence against the bodies of our black and brown siblings, which turn into rage, blame, and more violence, most lately in my home state of Wisconsin, which is so much part of my own origin story.

In the middle of all the memes and rhetoric, I wonder if in this moment, Jesus is saying to us: If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves, take 7 bullets in the back, and follow me. For those who want to save their life will find it looted, and those who loot their own lives, for my sake, will find life.

The source of Jesus’ power - the power of God – is found in vulnerability. It is strength found in weakness. It is might found in non-violence. It is gaining the whole world by throwing our entire lives away. It is following in the footsteps of Jesus, who was called to die for our sake, so that we may die to ourselves for the sake of others.

This is Jesus’s superpower: Resurrection. And it becomes our superpower too: The broken being made whole. Hate turning into love. Death transformed to new life.  Jesus transforming the cross as an instrument of death into a symbol of hope, the symbol that all of us baptized superheroes carry on our foreheads. Invisible, like a secret superhero identity, but still always present.

Only our secret superhero identities are supposed to be public. We are meant to follow Jesus, to carry our crosses, in a way that others can see. Sometimes, like Moses, we are called to work for the liberation of an entire oppressed people. Sometimes, like Moses, we put our bodies on the line and into harm’s way. Sometimes, like Moses, we are sent to speak truth to power.

Moses’s origin story may have involved a supernatural shrub on fire. But his origin story is similar to our own – God calls us by name. And even in the face of all the questions we have, God reveals to us God’s own name – a God who is Faithful, a god who Liberates, the God who Is and Was and ever will be with us.

In our baptisms, we have died to our old selves, and we rise up as part of a new family in Christ. And so, as God’s superheroes, we are sent into the world as a chip off the old boulder…to follow Jesus’ lead. As the affirmation of baptism (or confirmation) liturgy goes, we are called “to follow the example of Jesus, and to strive for justice and peace in all the earth.” In the face of these big tasks, we as a church respond, “We do and we will, and we ask God to help us.”

In the words of Black Panther: "It is time to show the outside world who we are."

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

 

Pastor Lydia Ruins The Bible

Sermon 6-10-18

Grace to you and peace from God our creator and from our Lord and savior Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, amen.

Families are complicated, aren’t they? And there is at least one in every family who is always stirring things up, or just rocking the boat by doing something unexpected. It’s sort of comforting to know that in HIS family, Jesus was the “black sheep” …  that even Jesus’ family was complicated.

One of the ways that we cope and explain our own families is to tell stories about where we came from… Maybe that’s why we’re suddenly obsessed with send-away genetic tests like “23 & ME” or from “Ancestry.com.” We have always tried to answer questions like: “Why is my family this way?” “Where did we come from and how does that effect who I am now?” And last but not least… “Did Adam and Eve have belly buttons or not?”

Of course, I am referring to THE Story about the whole human family that we have all heard at some point: the one from Genesis, about creation and the fall. It’s a story worth hearing again in its entirety – since we only heard a small part today - so I’m going to give you the cliff-notes/ twitter version. The story of creation, first of all, is so epic that there is not just ONE version of the story but TWO (You can look it up for yourself on Page 1 of your pew bible)… and at the end of the second one, God gave the man free reign of the Eden, but told him, “You can eat from any tree in the garden, except for one. Don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, or you will die.”

Then Eve enters stage right, and all seems great… until there is trouble in paradise. The snake convinces Eve to try the fruit from the forbidden tree. Eve eats, then Adam eats. Their eyes were opened, and they knew they were in big trouble.

Which is right where our story picks up for today, as written in your bulletin.  God goes for the usual walk in the garden with Eve and Adam, but they hide from shame, and God knows something is wrong.  They point fingers and try to pass the blame but God still lays out the results of their actions: for the snake (No more legs), for Eve (pain in childbirth), and for Adam (endless toil for survival) and eventually, death for all.

Let’s take a look at what is ACTUALLY IN this story… like in our family histories, the retelling gets a little muddied over the years. We’re going to play a short quiz game about the story, but don’t worry… I’m going to make it easy. You don’t have to write down your answers and I’ll even allow this to be “open book” if you want to open your pew Bibles to Genesis chapter 3.

(I had this little quiz on a slide show, and I'll just share the questions with answers in bold:)

1 When did this story take place?

a.     6,000 years ago

b.    More than 10,000 years ago

c.     It doesn’t say, and it isn’t all that important to the point of the story.

2

What is the serpent?

a.     Just a talking serpent

b.    Satan in a silly mustache  

c.     Santa Claus

3

What kind of fruit did Eve eat from the tree?

a.     An apple

b.    A pomegranate

c.     No one knows!

4

Where was Adam when all this happened?

a.     In backyard mowing the lawn

b.    Taking a nap with a tiger

c.     Right there next to Eve

5

Who is at fault in this story?

a.     Eve

b.    Adam

c.     The serpent

d.    Everybody (including you and me)

Did any of those answers surprise you? I hope that they did. Have any of you heart of the YouTube series “Adam ruins everything”? This show closely examines things we take for granted… and in this case, in this story, we might say this is the ORIGINAL “Adam ruins everything.” If you recall, Adam was RIGHT THERE when all this went down, and, when God questions Adam about what happened, he passes the blame onto Eve AND God, saying, “The woman WHOM YOU GAVE ME, SHE gave me the fruit.” Like a little kid. Then Eve, in turn, SHE TOO passes the blame to the snake, blaming it for tricking her…. And the snake got the short end of the stick because there was no one else to blame.

From the Museum of Biblical Art

Surely NO ONE HERE has EVER passed the blame when they’ve done something wrong… I know, me neither! Haha, just kidding. In reality, this story, originally told thousands of years ago in a distant country in an unfamiliar language… somehow THIS STORY still tells OUR STORY.  A story that tells us about who we are, where we came from, and why we are the way we are.

Going back to what this story DOES and DOES NOT say…  First, what this story DOES NOT SAY…  it does not say that Eve was a seductive temptress and therefore all women are inherently more sinful than men. This story has been used and abused as a reason to mistreat us and keep us from being taken seriously. 

This story is not a science textbook. 

And this story is NOT a primer on WHO IS ALLOWED to get married – if you will notice, no mention of vows, bridesmaids, a white dress, cake, or the chicken dance is mentioned.

So then, what DOES the story tell us? This story tells us about God, and it tells us about ourselves. Families are complicated. Life, love, and relationships are messy and problematic and broken and full of mistakes and blame. Sometimes we are passive like Adam, to stand by and watch while objectionable things happen and do nothing to stop them. Sometimes we are Eve - curious, testers of limitations and seekers of knowledge, risk takers, who sometimes make HUGE goof-ups while daring to wrestle with hard choices.

This is a story about growing up, becoming an adult by moving out from the perceived perfection and simplicity of Eden, to make choices in a thorny and chaotic world. It’s the same story we tell ourselves in just in a million different ways in almost every coming-of-age story.

In one of my favorite of these stories, Matilda by Roald Dahl, the title character finds herself – as many child protagonists do – gifted with special powers but thrust in a world where she is at the mercy of the grownups. Like Eve, Matilda longs to have control over her life, and in themusical version, she and her friends imagine with one another how awesome it will be once they are adults:

“When I grow up,” they sing, “ I will be smart enough to answer all the questions … and… I will eat sweets everyday, and …. I will go to bed late every night… and … I will be brave enough to fight the creatures that you have to fight beneath the bed each night to be a grown up.” 

But we all know, when you grow up… sometimes the creatures under the bed still gets you know matter how brave you are.  

But fortunately for us, this story also tells us about God. God, who hovered over the waters of creation at the very beginning… who created all the land, water, animals, and us… is also the God who walked in the garden with Eve and Adam, the first members of the Family of God. This is a God who created US and who walks WITH US even when we would rather hide in shame over the confusing mayhem we find ourselves in or have created for ourselves and others.

Death and brokenness and sin may be the legacy our first “parents” have passed on to us… but God does not leave us in this state. This may be the origin story of our family, but it is not the end of the story. Adam may explain why we are the way we are, but Jesus tells us a new story about who we belong to and where we are headed.

We belong to a new family because of Jesus. A new family where our siblings do not necessarily share our genes, but instead share our passion for the gospel.  A new family where our siblings might not be related by blood, but instead united through the blood of Jesus. A new family brought together not by the waters of our mother’s womb but by the waters of our baptism and the promise of an empty tomb.

And this is pretty much going to be the exact opposite of the family interactions we are familiar with – not “family” as we are used to with drama, disagreements, hurts, and grudges. This will be family as we are meant to be – God’s Family.

Jesus calls this new family – still full of imperfections –to be a new kind of kingdom, a kingdom where everyone is treated with fairness and respect, where all feel safe, welcome, and valued, both within these walls and without. Every Sunday, every day, every moment, is a “family reunion,” minus the potato salad. Only – it’s a RE-UNION as “members of the Body of Christ, part of one Family of God” as I begin the service every Sunday. “Welcome. There is a place for you here….” …Right here, in God’s Family. 

So, my siblings in Christ…. WE are the Family of God, aren’t we? …. So, let’s get out there and ACT like it! Amen!

HWJD - How Would Jesus Drive?

Sermon 1- 31-16

(I read from both last week's and this week's Gospel reading, since we had a snow day last Sunday!)

Grace and peace to you from God our father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ. Amen.

“Love is a patient driver. Love merges kindly in traffic. Love does not envy the best parking spots, or boast on getting them. Love does not drive arrogantly or rudely. It does not insist on its right of way; it is not easily irritated or resentful while driving in snow; it does not rejoice when it sees other rude drivers getting what they might deserve - like getting pulled over - but rejoices that everyone arrives safely. Love bears all traffic conditions, even snow and ice, believes in the best intentions of other drivers, hopes to get to its destination if not on time then at least safely, and endures all things, even if in the passenger seat.” (yes, I totally made that up myself.)

Now, I would bet that you have never heard the “love poem” from First Corinthians in quite that way before.

The last time you hear it, it was probably in a church, (but not this one.) And it was probably read by a nervous relative as the bride and groom gazed lovingly into each other eyes, nodding along. Thinking to themselves, yes, of course I will always be patient and kind, will never be rude or irritable or resentful AT ANY POINT in the entire course of our married life. And the rest of us think, “Gosh that is a really pretty poem about love.” And then wonder what will be in the buffet at the reception.

My brother, who got married last October, naturally wanted to include these verses from First Corinthians. And as his older sister, I naturally had to include at least one embarrassing story in my sermon at his wedding.

Remember that we’re from a dairy farm in rural WI? When we were all kids, we thought it would be a great idea for my brother to try to jump on and ride the calves we had startled as they jumped out of their calf huts. He almost always fell off, but he kept trying. At his wedding, I told him to use that stubbornness to hold on to their relationship in the midst of a world that often stacked against real love.  I told him to stubbornly hang on to love as if it is a jumping calf.

But I also reminded them that God is even more stubborn in the love department, as described in Paul’s love poem.

After all, as Paul writes this letter, he is not thinking about married couples. No, Paul wrote a poem about love that isn’t about pretty words; love that does things. Love that gets put to work, time and time again.

Love is active - love acts patiently and kindly. Love does not behave rudely or selfishly, irritably, or resentfully.  Love seeks justice and truth. Love bears, believes in, hopes in, and endures all things. 

God IS love, and God loves you. That love never gets tired of going in search of you, and then grabbing hold of you in the most stubborn grip.  And God loves us so much that God revealed that love to us as love with a body.

Just over a month ago at Christmas – wow time flies – we celebrated the coming of this love as a light in our darkness, love as the power of God in the form of a powerless infant. But of course that infant didn’t stay an adorable baby. He grew up, and he began to preach, and got started on God’s mission:

Jesus came to reveal exactly who God IS – love in the flesh. 

Jesus came to reveal exactly who God LOVES - young, old, rich, poor, gay, straight, black, white, glad, depressed, immigrant, citizen, single, married, insiders and outsiders. Sinners and slightly less bad sinners. You and me.

Jesus came to reveal exactly what that love DOES – that “Love cares more for others than for self. Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have. Love doesn’t strut, Doesn’t have a swelled head, doesn’t force itself on others, Isn’t always ‘me first,’ doesn’t fly off the handle, doesn’t keep score of the sins of others… Jesus reveals that God’s love puts up with us, always looks for the best, never looks back, and keeps going to the end.” (The Message Translation)

That day, the people in Jesus’s hometown wanted to hear that they are God’s beloved favorites. But instead, in his very first sermon, Jesus had the audacity to remind them that God has the annoying habit of showing love to people who are on the outside.  Like helping the widow of the “wrong” nationality and a general from a rival army, when there were plenty of people in need who were more “deserving” of God’s love.

And this is only Luke chapter 4, so Jesus is just getting started. Jesus heals, hangs out with, feeds, and blesses all those people who were considered to be disqualified from God’s love. For those on the outside, this is very good news indeed! But for those on the inside, this was a dangerous message, and must be hushed up.

This has not changed since Jesus time. In our human selfish brokenness, we live in a world where some of us are given preferential treatment because of gender, skin color, orientation, education, or economic standing. And too many people get left on the outside, while other people benefit.

So it’s perhaps no wonder that Jesus was nearly thrown off a cliff that day by the people of his own home town for this message of love he embodied.

It’s perhaps no wonder that Jesus was rejected, betrayed, abandoned, and then nailed to a cross for this message of love he embodied.

It’s perhaps no wonder that we don’t want to hear this message either, because that means that we too are called to share a message of love that could possibly cause us to be questioned, misunderstood, disliked, or even rejected or abandoned. At our baptisms, each of us were welcomed into the body of Christ, but we were also called to share his mission: to bear God’s redeeming word to all the world of God’s love and forgiveness. Which sounds super daunting. If it were all up to me, there is no way racism would be dismantled or wars be ended. But as Mother Teresa once said, “Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.”

Fortunately it isn’t all up to me, but there is still plenty of ways to live out this mission of love in my everyday life, to do small things with great love. But it isn’t easy. I’ll share with you one example of something that I struggle with to do lovingly: Driving.

I am not a patient driver. I easily get irritable with OTHER PEOPLE driving poorly. I secretly rejoice in the superiority in my own driving. I have a feeling that others might have this struggle too. Had Paul been writing now, probably should include “If I have the best driving skills in the world, and can parallel park on a dime, but have not love, I am just a honking car horn.”

And that’s just driving. Think about all the other interactions with have with people throughout our day – with our spouses. With our children. With our coworkers. With the people in the grocery store and at the bank and at church.

But how can we do these small things with great love? Well, for once the consumer culture might be able to help us.

In the church, we’re still in the season of Epiphany. But elsewhere, the decorations for Valentine’s Day have been up and everywhere since just after Christmas, ushering in the “season of love,” so to speak. Hearts and the color red are everywhere. In a sense, this makes our jobs of remembering to love a little easier, at least, for the time being.

So in the next few weeks, very time you see a heart, I want you to do 3 things:

-         Remember that you are loved by God.

-         Remember that God loves all the other people out there, too.

-         Remember that you are the agents of God’s love in the world.

That means that each of you, with the help of God and Jesus leading the way, can be the love of God in a body. And the world certainly needs us to show it a lot of love right now. Be love, show love, do love. And don’t forget to DRIVE love, too. And the God of Love accompany us on our way. Amen. 

Blind Bartimeaus