Earth Day - Feel Your Feet, April 22, 2012

Rev. Kathryn Ransdell
Earth Day, April 22, 2012

Have you ever heard someone say: Be careful what you ask for, because it might just happen?  Or, this one:  God laughs when you make plans.
I have to bring you into a bit of Holy Humour... on the Sunday after Easter in April 2009, I preached at First United Methodist Church, Dallas.   What were you doing in April 2009?  Ethan was just learning to walk.  We had found the little cottage of my dreams and were in the final stages of negotiating.
And I gave a sermon where I made two jokes, which is a liberal use of the word because I'm not really all that funny.
 1.  Here's the first joke I made in that sermon:  "I must admit, I have become a little lax in my kingdom-thinking.  It’s easy to let go of this part of our Christian vision, life gets complicated, hectic, illnesses set in, babies keep you up at night."  Now, I just had one baby that kept me up at night, but for some reason, I used the word "babies."  Well, be careful what you ask for, because God did give me two babies to keep me up at night.
 2.  Here's the second statement I made in that same sermon:  "I probably am the least of these to give an Earth Day sermon…I’m really bad about being green.  I tried this week to be a little greener but kept finding myself falling short.  On the day that I ordered a small tater tots from Sonic, the 8 tater tots came out in a paper boat wrapped in a paper bag included in a larger paper bag that enclosed ketchup and mustard enclosed in plastic pouches with a plastic fork enclosed in plastic wrap and a whole handful of napkins stuffed in making it look like I was digging into 80 tater tots.  There was more trash than food."

 If I asked to learn more about being green, it would be God who would say about one month later, well, I'm moving you to Vancouver, BC, where you will learn to reduce-reuse-recycle.  I have learned more about caring for the Earth in my past 3 years in Canada than I ever even knew was possible.  Really.  This is my confessional statement.  I recall my first month here in Canada.  Tim and I sponsored an after-church lunch and we had the sandwich trays from IGA.  The session was over; we were all cleaning up; and I put the trays in the trash because that's what I've done for more than a decade.  And I don't remember who it was, but one of you were quite offended by that action and took it out of the trash and said, this can be recycled.
 We all wish we were greener, which is why I want a sermon with more than this one-liner, “Brothers and sisters in Christ, let’s all try to be Greener.”  
I’m reminded of a lecture by Laura Yordy, a student of Stanley Hauerwas’ and one of the teaching assistants in my class on Christian Ethics.  Dr. Yordy has gone on to earn her PhD, teach, and recently published a book, “Green Witness: Ecology, Ethics, and the Kingdom of God.” 
Dr. Yordy began her lecture by opening a box of bugs.  She asked people to describe what they saw:
 Bug/insect/caterpillar/centipede/yukk/varmint/food
Then she went on:
 If I said this produced a component of an AIDS drug when crushed, what would you call it?  Resource, raw material, cure?
 Or, If I said there were only 25 left in the world and they all lived in the path of the new highway what would you call it?  Endangered, road kill, tragic victim?
 Or, If I said that they lived in gardens and ate root vegetables what would you call them?  Pests…
 Or, If you could buy them through the Nature Company catalog with their own plexiglass bug house, what would you call them?  Commodity, product
And then she asked us:  How did you learn the names: bug, centipede, pest, commodity?  What language are those words?  What story are you standing in to use that language?
Then she asked us to notice what language did not arise:
 Creature, Gift, Manifestation of God’s wisdom, Praise of God, Kin, Covenant partner
Then she reminded us of what Stanley Hauerwas had taught us:  “For us to be able to see the world as it is requires that we must be able to speak a very particular kind of language.”  For our language shapes our bodies, our actions and even our desires. 
Someone who calls a bug a Covenant Partner is, well, normal in BC and a little bit strange in Texas.  But someone who calls a bug a covenant partner is going to think in different ways when it comes to policies about irrigation and insecticides.

Imagine--what if what we did with our bodies and what we desired with our emotions had nothing to do with our own addictions and egos and need to stay ever-youthful, but instead, our bodies and actions and desires were formed by our words that are based on what we see…In today’s gospel, what we see is the Lord here on earth.
Our faith is not separate from this planet Earth.  Our theology and our ecology must be interconnected.  We must see this Earth for what it is--God's kingdom--which will require us to use a different language from those around us who see this same earth from a completely different perspective.
Let me say this in another way:  We live in a world that tells us to consume more, and more, and more.  And to consume more, means more than just packaging...it means for us to get more, there is some part of this world that is crucified via manufacturing. 
Being from Texas, the landscape I'm familiar with is a landscape of taking from the earth...whether it is oil rigs or natural gas rigs, I'm used to seeing machines working to extract resources. 
But it's more than just oil and gas; it's things that I have a hard-time even fathoming...From Popular Mechanics:  "Sir William Crookes, a 19th century British chemist, once wrote that, "rare earth elements perplex us in our researches, baffle us in our speculations and haunt us in our very dreams." These weren't easy elements to isolate or to understand, and so there was a very long lag time between the discovery of the rare earths, and the discovery of practical uses for them.   Rare earth elements—a set of 17 related metals, mostly shunted off to a tacked-on lower line of the periodic table—are crucial to the way we live now; responsible for miniaturizing computers and headphones, powering hybrid cars and more."

[Read more: 4 Rare Earth Elements That Will Only Get More Important - Popular Mechanics]
Going back to the world that wants us to be faithful disciples that purchase without thought and desire more and more and more...We have been very faithful...these rare earth elements...they are crucial to the kind of technology we have come to rely on...(ex. this past week, the internet wasn't working in the office for one day and I thought we might as well call it a day...)

These rare earth elements are key ingredients in apple's products, who has created a purchasing phenomenon since the first iPhone was released in 2007, and the first iPod in 2001.  It's amazing how brief a time it has been and how these things have changed our lives.
And we really don't know, or want to know, their impact on this earth because the impact on us is pleasurable.  Doesn't matter about the earth...

Oh wait...that's the issue...you see, God's kingdom teaches us not to worry about what we will eat or what we will wear, not to be anxious in anything...
It's not that iPads are "bad," it's just all about trade-offs...what we give up to get something else. 
For us to be able to see this world as it is—God’s kingdom—it will require us to speak a different kind of language from this world which looks at the earth from a completely different perspective.  
Again, I don't want this to be a "let's all be a little greener" kind of sermon; or a surface-level talk on the quality of the 17 rare earth materials; and, I don't want this to be a long sermon...so let me just get to this last part...
The part I call "feel your feet."  This has been my mantra for some time now.  The mantra first came to me when I began yoga and entered into a deep practice of cultivating awareness in my body.  For me, intutition is more than a mental reality; it's a physical reality.
Feel your feet is a mantra that calls us
 ...to be present in the moment...
 ...to gain awareness at this very moment of what it feels like to have our feet come in contact with the earth...
 ...to realize who has stepped here before us and who comes after us...
 ...to learn what it means that we are the connection between heaven and earth...
We are called to plant seeds of new life in this world.
 ...of new possibilities of ways of being together...
 ...of new ways of engaging our food needs...
 ...of reduce, reuse, recycle...
 ...of treading lightly on this earth for it's the only one we have...
 

Feel your feet

Other Possibilities (So You Want to be Moderator?) April 15, 2012

(So do we want this guy as our Moderator?)

"Other possibilities"

Rev. Kathryn Ransdell

April 15, 2012

In order to stay in touch with culture, it's important for ministers to watch what the people are watching.  Curt Allison and I do this not because we like it, but because we must.  We must watch things like GCB--Good Christian "Belles"--and, Real Housewives of Vancouver.  It's a tough price we have to pay...

Who would have thought that my beloved city of Dallas and my new beloved city Vancouver would be the focus of two quite popular tv shows?   GCB is fiction, but filmed in Dallas in and around my Methodist stompin' grounds.  Watch it with me and I can tell you exactly where they are, who their neighbor is, and probably some juicy story about them or their neighbor. 

Real Housewives of Vancouver is non-fiction, what they call reality tv.  Maybe there are people who live this way in Vancouver, but these five women seem more GCB than beautiful, natural British Columbia.  After watching one episode, I think I've decided that the fiction series is closer to reality and the reality series is complete fiction. 

Step-back from the antics, and the storyline between the two shows is similar: people trying to define and establish what living means for them.  After a marriage ended by a cheating-spouse suddenly dying (or has he only stowed away to Mexico with lots of money?), or, after pictures of you half-naked and tipsy at your good friend's birthday party are tweeted across Vancouver, they just want to understand what living means. 

And in some strange way, the people in the early story of Acts share this in common...for they too, after experiencing this surprise eruption of new life, they are trying to find what it means to live as Christian. 

How do we share this same thing in common...having had some experience of Spirit, some inkling of divine, some joy and celebration, how are we asking that question of what it means to do this life as a follower of The Way, and, walk this life together? 

It's the stuff that fuels young adults to set-out on quests...how will I live my life?  What will matter to me?  And, it's the stuff that is easy to forget as life gets more complicated, jobs get busier, illnesses set-in, babies keep you up at night...

Let's start here... Over the history of the church’s history, there’s been several different special names for this Sunday after Easter:

            1.  White Sunday

            2.  Low Sunday

            3.  Thomas Sunday

            4.  Associate Pastor Sunday

            5.  Quasi-modo Sunday – 1 Peter 2:2 “Like newborn babes, (quasi modo geniti infantes) long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation – if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.”

This second Sunday of Easter took on the name Quasimodo Sunday because the church wanted us to remember that having seen the resurrection, we have been born into a new kingdom and we are just newborn babes.  We have been born into a reality that we really don’t understand, a kingdom we cannot comprehend, a God who has mystified us by first becoming human and second defying the grave.  We don’t have a language for what we’ve experienced in seeing Jesus resurrected.  And what we have been born into is totally new.

Which means, even though we may be "mature adults" on this first Sunday after Easter, we are in this space of complete amazement at this new reality that is around us.  Perhaps we quasimodos don't even have words for it yet.  And that's okay.  It's probably better.  Because words will take us away from the heart, and our head has a hard time with things like this story from Acts.

These earliest people who had an experience and from that experience believed are described in the book of Acts behaving:

³² All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. ³³ With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all ³⁴ that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales ³⁵ and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.

It's easy to get stuck in your head reading this passage and feeling frustrated that it's just not possible in our day and age...sell all we have, give it to someone else, and trust how they will allocate it? 

Listen to the descriptions of these believers...one in heart and mind...shared everything they had...and God's grace was so powerfully at work in them all...that there were no needy persons among them.

I wonder what it would be like to be in a community where we were one in heart and mind and that it was said of us that God's grace was powerfully at work in all of us...and no one among us was in need.

I wasn't introduced to this other possibility of how to be Christian until I hit seminary.  Until then, the way you were Christian was this:  you went to church service.  The service was nice, but not exhilarating.  You attend a Bible study.  It was nice, but not challenging.  You prayed for each other, but only if the prayer had to do with being physically ill.  If it was about divorce, fear, job loss, sexuality, or doubt, keep it to yourself. 

And I think I wanted Christianity to be something else...which is probably why I went to seminary (that, and Duke basketball).

I've only been a "lead minister" twice in my life now...the first time being my first church gig...Joy, TX.  19 members.  And I was barely 19.  What I remember about this very rural congregation I didn't fully understand until later in life.  By the time I arrived at church on Sundays, there was a table in the back that was being filled with extra eggs from the chickens, extra veggies from the garden, extra loaves of bread, some canned goods that were no longer needed in someone's pantry, and sometimes there were a couple of perishable items that were close to the date. 

It was all there...for you to take what you needed that week.

That experience has shaped me in many ways in my ministry.  What if we did that?  What if it wasn't just our food we shared, but our clothes...we all have things in the closet that we could pass along to someone else among us?  What if it wasn't just our food or our clothes, but our wonderings, our doubts, our dreams, our greatest visions? 

Quasimodos, what if there really were other possibilities for how we do this thing called life together as followers of The Way?

For us to find other possibilities means we must hold open the space for God to call us. 

For us to find other possibilities means the church must hold open the space for innovation. 

For us to find other possibilities means living more on the margins of uncomfortable newness rather than settled-in mediocrity.       

For about 200 years, the church has lived in the space of a theology of Jesus being in heaven, a place somewhere other than here.  And we look forward to joining Jesus in that place at the end of this hard journey we call life.  We hope and pray we’ve been good enough so that we can be there.  It makes sense to us to have Jesus up there and us down here. 

But take Jesus out of heaven, and put him here on earth, and well, it just gets kinda outlandish, don’t you think?  We already have to make the claim that we not only believe our God became one of us, but that our God then resurrected His only Son, and now we have to claim that this same resurrected God came back to earth. 

But wait, the outlandish claims don’t stop there:  Believe it or not, as Ripley would say, the Christian claim continues:  The Kingdom is here, not something we have to wait on, but something here, right now, right here before us, waiting for us to see it and then being like a piece of leaven in a loaf of bread, through our actions, give it the ability to rise. 

As a retired Methodist bishop said about being a young adult in the 40s, “We really believed we were bringing about the kingdom of God.” 

Liberal theology was supplanted after World War 2, by modernism and then post-modernity and the era of theological deconstruction…which means, we shifted from being able to say what we want to see to a much different place…speaking more of what we don’t want to see. 

And somewhere in there we lost the ability to see the kingdom, which means we quit talking about it, we quit struggling to describe it, and in turn, the kingdom of God quit forming our bodies, our actions and our desires. 

Quasimodos, what if there were other possibilities for how we live this life as followers of The Way?  What if we spent more time looking for the kingdom of God here on earth now as it is in heaven, and speaking of it, and giving thanks that through Jesus our bodies, our actions and our desires CAN BE FORMED so that thy kingdom does come, thy will is done on earth as it is in heaven?

Where is God calling us?

It's a big question to ask, so let's not shy away from it.  Let's ask big and expect big.    

Quasimodos, let us long for the pure spiritual milk so that we may grow into salvation, so that we may see the kingdom of God, and in seeing it, struggle through finding the language to speak of it, and when we begin speaking of it--wow--who knows what might be next.

DISCERNING THE WAY
(“So you wanna be a Moderator…?)

Rev. Gary Paterson

April 15, 2012

  It is so good to be here with you; back home, my own bed, my family…. you.  I need to say how grateful I am for the time you have allowed me to be away on sabbatical… including the next two weeks, an opportunity to begin processing and integrating all that has happened for me in the past couple of months in Israel.  And thank you for your prayers… I know I wasn’t supposed to be keeping up with congregational life, but I confess that every week I clicked on  “Gleanings”… thank you, Kathryn, for including me… and I would update the list of folk that were praying for me.  It was a good feeling, to be held by all of you all in this time when I have been away, when I have been journeying as a pilgrim. 

 A pilgrim -- one who wanders to Holy Sites, and hopes for connections with the Spirit.  Which means, of course that one must travel thoughtfully, prayerfully, open to questions and moments, with no constricting preconceptions and answers.   Another word for this might be discernment, attentive to the “nudgings “of the Spirit… which were many, whether at the top of Mt. Sinai as the sun came up; or tramping the walls and streets of Jerusalem; or watching the sun set over the Sea of Galilee..
 Lots to think about.  And, as you know, there was one question in particular that claimed much of my energy…  whether or not I would let my name stand for nomination for Moderator of the United Church. 
 Now, I need you to know that this was not a new struggle; that suddenly upon arriving in the Holy Land, I had my own personal, “descent of the dove” experience.  No, over a year ago I was approached by some people, friends, who asked, “Have you ever thought about running for Moderator?”  A surprise question, totally unexpected -- to which I quickly responded, “No.”  But it stayed with me, that question; and I talked to family, to friends, colleagues, and team mates; and I prayed a lot. 

 It was easy to find reasons not to accept a nomination.  Who would want to be a Moderator, especially in challenging times like these?  Besides, I’m not the right kind of guy; too old; what do I have to offer?  And it would be too disruptive… so much time spent in Toronto, or travelling.  Anyway, it isn’t the right moment to be leaving St. Andrew’s-Wesley… we’re just getting ready for another move forward. 
 So again, I said “No.”  But in truth, it felt a bit like a “Jonah-no”; like trying to side-step an important invitation; to duck a call.  So, of course, it kept reappearing; sometimes just in passing conversation; other times, a little more pointedly… like last January.  Along with a dozen or so folk from here, I went over to Victoria to attend the educational event called “Epiphany Explorations.”  But one week before the event, there was an emergency phone call; someone was sick – would I be willing to be the guest preacher for the Sunday morning service?   Sure, I said, but bargained for an extra five minutes of preaching time!  At the end of the service, in the greeting line-up, I was suddenly accosted by… well, a United Church patriarch, someone I’ve appreciated for some thirty years.  He pointed his finger at my chest, and said, “Great sermon… now listen… you need to be Moderator; we need to hear that kind of hope.  Don’t say anything right now; just go think about it… and consider this to be a call to let your name stand.” 

So… I go to Jerusalem at the beginning of February, still carrying the question with me.  Now, you know that I have a passion for the United Church… maybe it was being at Tantur, an Ecumenical Centre, in the midst of folk from different denominations, that I recognized once again how special and important is the voice of the United Church.  We may be small in numbers… some half a million folk, and shrinking; but we are a gift to the larger church, and to the community, where so many people are spiritually hungry, but aren’t feeling fed.  Liberal Protestant Christianity at its best… and liberal is not a dirty word.  Sharp and critical in its thinking; progressive in its theological vision.  And inclusive… let me tell you how proud I was to casually point out that the United Church has been ordaining women since the mid-thirties; and gay or lesbian people for twenty years.  I was able to talk about the $25,000 grant we received from the government for the work we are doing in interfaith dialogue.  And committed to the work of peace and justice… a moment from my time in Israel:- our group was in Hebron, one of the hotspots where Jewish Settlers keep claiming and building on Palestinian land.  We  bumped into a World Council “Peace Accompanier,” who was observing and monitoring the conflicts -- Tom was his name; he just happened to be United Church, a lay person; who will probably be speaking at General Council in August.  That’s us, eh?
 I love this church of ours… and believe passionately in its vision of Christianity; I know we’re not perfect, and we have much to learn from other denominations (you just wait for the incense in May – no, just joking.)  And I am worried… like you I have seen the statistics, heard the stories…. numbers dwindling, membership aging, finances declining, churches closing.  And I keep wondering how best to serve.
 Well, you already know that eventually I said, “Yes!” -- yes to letting my name stand for nomination for the position of the Moderator of the United Church.  Maybe it was because I was in Jerusalem; the city that speaks of crucifixion and resurrection; a city that has itself been destroyed over twenty times…by invasion, conquest, fire, earthquake; and yet, sooner or later, over and over again, it rises from the ashes.  Talk about an embodiment of hope even in tough times.

Maybe it was because I heard the voice of Jeremiah, the prophet who speaks in those moments when it seems like everything is falling apart; for Jerusalem, in Jeremiah’s time, it was conquest and a time of exile into Babylon; for us… well, who knows exactly; but the times, they are going to be hard.  But Jeremiah didn’t just speak about doom and gloom, he also had a lot to say about hope; and about God; and about what comes after.  And what developed out of the exile in Babylon, strangely enough, was a new vision of what Judaism was all about; not so much about the Temple, the church buildings; more about the vision, the story, and the people.  Tough times … and change and rebirth.  A word for the United Church, perhaps.
 Maybe I said yes because of Capernaum… the town where Jesus lived for a while, as he began his ministry.  A place we visited on a rainy day, up at the north end of the Sea of Galilee.  Bob, a member of our group, shared a few thoughts, asking, “Why would Jesus ever leave Capernaum?”  His ministry was going so well… growing reputation; crowds coming; people liked him.  Probably he had a nice home… with a view of the water.  And his parents off in Nazareth…. not too close; not too far.   And then of course, Bob asked his second question, “Why do any of us leave our Capernaum, the place where we feel “at home” and secure; where people like us and the ministry is going well?  How do we hear the Spirit’s invitation to consider a new call?”  And then Bob said, “Sometimes you need to leave where you’re wanted, but perhaps not really needed; and go where you are needed, though perhaps not yet wanted.” 

Hmmmm….

I had hoped that I could have shared this news with you earlier, in person, as I’m doing now, to talk with you about this process of discernment.  However, that’s not how it happened.  The news about my willingness to be nominated had been shared with someone without the whispered addition, “This is confidential!”  Which might have been okay, except that that person was the minister of my mother’s church!  So… when I heard that two hundred some people over in Victoria had been delighted to hear, during their Sunday morning welcome and announcements, the news about Marjorie’s son being nominated for Moderator .. well … I know how news travels in the United Church.  And I didn’t want you to hear it second hand.  So… my deep thanks to my colleagues and team mates, here at the church, for their assistance in getting the message out in a helpful way.  Especially Kathryn… who called a Monday afternoon meeting of  the members of the Executive, who agreed to do as much phoning as they could; meanwhile, I was drafting an email letter to all of you, and that got sent out on Tuesday afternoon; that evening Vancouver Burrard Presbytery nominated me…. and then the news got shared again, the following Sunday.  Talk about fast.

 Kathryn emailed Tim and me on Wednesday -- “So… this IS happening! Yes!”  However, my spouse, Tim, he has a wicked sense of humour, and he emailed Kathryn a cryptic note:  “Gary just had a dream last night -- he’s changed his mind.”  And Kathryn, not at all used to Tim’s style, whipped back… “I have booked my flight and will arrive in Jerusalem tomorrow, ready to kick some serious butt!” 
 So what now, friends?  Well, there will be an election this August, when the General Council meets in Ottawa.  And guided by the Spirit the Church will choose a leader whose gifts are the best match for the demands of the present moment.  And that won’t be easy… there are fourteen nominees, more than there have ever been before.  So I might very well be phoning you in August, saying, “Guess what!?!  I’m coming back; hope you still want me.”  Who knows… but my logical side says it’s going to be difficult for the delegates to GC to get to know that many candidates; and most of my ministry has been in BC, and I’m not that well known; and… . but who knows. 
 

This will be a strange four months together, knowing that things might change radically this coming September, or maybe not… or rather, they will change in a different way.  But we’ll walk this time together.  And regardless of August decisions, I remain a minister here at St. Andrew’s-Wesley.  If I do become Moderator, then yes, I’m away a lot, and Kathryn would once again be our acting Lead Minister.  But I would also be home a lot, bringing back “news from abroad”; and preaching occasionally.  And then, at the end of three years, I would return to you, my family; full-time; and we’d all enter into yet another part of our journey together. 
 

I have a new favourite word, from my time over in Israel… Arabic…. “Inshallah!”  Meaning… “As God wills.” And that’s what this whole journey is about… from first questions to discernment to decisions…. 

 

Inshallah, as God wills … a word big enough to hold us all.

On How to Change the Ending, April 8, 2012

Rev. Kathryn Ransdell

Easter Sunday

"On how to change the ending"

Mark 16:1-8; Luke 21:1-12

You heard two versions of the same story today: in both stories, an empty tomb and a messenger.  In Mark, the oldest of the gospels, the women fled in terror and amazement; they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.  In Luke, probably 40 years later, the women go from being perplexed as to why the stone is rolled away; then to terrified; but then they remembered, and they went home and told the others.

All thought it was an idle tale, except one--Peter--who ran to the tomb and what he found amazed him.

If nothing else, the fullness of their emotions gets me every time.  Fear that leaves you speechless; being puzzled over how they will roll the stone and yet they faithfully go with the burial spices; terrified by the messengers; disciples who hear their report and think it an idle tale; and then Peter, the one who never quite got it, the one who then denied Jesus three times was amazed. 

I live in my head so much that sometimes I wish I lived more fully into my emotions, not like wearing your heart on your sleeve, but being able to fully sink into what my heart is saying to my head and having my head listen to my heart every so often. 

It's like being around children, when they are not tired or hungry...they are fully in the present moment and fully living into their emotions of joy and happiness.  In becoming grown-up, we detach from those emotions, cover them-up, learn to laugh politely, sit still and be good and decent citizens.

Our children's Christmas pageant comes from the beginning of Luke's gospel.  We place our children in the role of Joseph and Mary, shepherds and wise men and sheep and donkeys, and we always expect at least one sheep to need his mom and one shepherd might need to make a run to the washroom, and there's always one boy who would rather be Mary than Joseph, so you just go with it. 

Not only is this cute, but somehow it eases our over-holiday-stimulated selves and brings us happiness to see the kids...and somewhere in the midst of all that is holiness. 

I've always wondered why when we allow our children to teach us the beginning of Luke, we also don't allow our children to teach us the ending of Luke.  There is such a thing as Easter pageants, but we cast adults instead of children. 

What would it mean for us adults to see four young girls carrying sachets of spices...a couple of the boys tussling over who gets to wear the sparkly white robe...to hear a young voice say, "Why do you look for the living among the dead?

How might it move our hearts when this group of young girls runs to find the little boys who are the disciples, some with runny noses, some waving to their parents, one who wants to go home...and then to hear one of the girls call out "Jesus is alive." 

And then the young boy who is cast as Peter, runs to find the empty tomb, and he leaves amazed...probably skipping, jumping, cheering...

Somehow this is how it should be....there is happiness and holiness here...

And it's so different from the story of the gospel of Mark.

When I'm given the chance to plan worship, I like to include a lot of big kids and little kids, and I like to do things that haven't been tried before.  It started way back in seminary when I was the children's minister at Duke Chapel, a congregation and sanctuary that prided itself on excellent, traditional, and well-rehearsed worship services.  I had about 12 children in the class, and all I knew was that sometime by the end of my year with them, I wanted the children to have the experience of singing in Sunday morning worship.  Not possible, Not acceptable--this is not who we are...if we want children singing, we bring in a professional children's choir, not a bunch of kids led by a person who is not even a musician herself.  But I kept asking and asking, until finally, we were given our chance.  It was one Sunday...all 12 of us waiting in the wings until our cue...we walk out...and with a parent who was the pianist, we sang our song.  I can't even remember what the song was, because in that moment, the beautiful, unrehearsed, squirmy children singing their hearts out, overwhelmed my heart.

And I remembered Jesus' words: Let the little children come unto me, for theirs is the Kingdom of God. 

One lesson I learned that day...when we were waiting in the wings, and I was so nervous because I knew how much it took to even get this chance, and it felt like at the time so much was riding on this being "successful," that I gathered the children around me to have a prayer.   And I prayed that God would take away our nervousness, fear, anxiousness and let us enjoy this time.  After the prayer ended, and we were waiting a little bit longer in the hall, one of the dad's commented to me: you know that prayer you prayed?  it wasn't for them; it was for you.  The kids are happy and excited to sing; it is us adults who are nervous.   What the kids want from you is for you to be happy and excited too.

Oh.  I was living out the gospel of Mark, in complete terror, and the kids, were living in this amazement about what they were going to do. 

One story; two versions: two very different endings: one in fear, the other in amazement.

One experience; two realities; two very different places of the heart: one --fear, the other -- happiness.

The poet Mary Oliver paints a beautiful picture with her poem, "poppies."  the poppies throw into the air their bright orange flares.  Against this beautiful image of them swaying in the wind as if they are levitating, she acknowledges that the indigos of darkness will come.  For now, though, the green shines like a miracle and above everything else floats the yellow hair. 

"Of course, nothings stops the cold...of course, loss is the great lesson."

Loss is the great lesson of Easter, which is why today doesn't make sense if we don't journey first through good Friday.  We cannot refuse the lessons of loss.  We cannot ignore them.  We cannot debate the lessons of loss. 

It was the greatest lesson for those first followers.  Did he really die?  Because that's not how the ending was supposed to be.  Good guy wins; bad guy loses.  The Kingdom is to come, well, until your leader is taken, beaten, crucified and killed. 

If we do not learn the lesson of loss, then we will end the story in fear...fear of losing more, fear of losing all, fear of trying, fear of failing, fear of succeeding.

He was supposed to live....each of us in our own ways have walked to a tomb--an ending--and we have told ourselves that story, "it shouldn't have ended that way."

It wasn't the empty tomb that changed history forever.  Is the empty tomb proof of the resurrection?  No.  Even our Scriptures records the other reasons for why the tomb could have been empty:  soldiers took the body; disciples took the body; and something involving aliens and Elvis. 

Empty tombs don't prove anything except that not one of us will escape death. 

What proves the resurrection is that they found the reality of an empty tomb, they encountered a messenger who said, "Remember how he told you when he was still in Galilee..." and then, verse 8 "Then they remembered his words."

Easter happened not when they found the empty tomb--that was just data, observations; Easter erupted when they remembered his words.

"In the beginning was the Word...so do not worry about your lives, what you will eat or drink or what you will wear...for in my Father's house are many rooms and I go to prepare a place for you and if I go to prepare a place for you I will take you to me...my peace I give to you, not as the world gives for I no longer call you strangers but friends...for a light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it. 

Mary Oliver writes, "But I also say this: that light is an invitation to happiness and that happiness, when it's done right, is a kind of holiness, palpable and redemptive...I am washed and washed in the river of delight, and what are you going to do--what can you do about it--deep, blue night?

This is Easter...living in this place where you change the ending, and no longer being driven by fear of death, because instead of fear, it is a fact, and a fact is just that, an empty tomb, but it is in remembering what God says to us about who we are....resurrection happens.  You can change the ending.

If you are living in the fear, by the power of the risen Lord, you can break through that fear because you remember that God said, "This day I set before you life and death: choose life." 

There's lots of people living out their lives with a tired out ending.  On the outside, they might look angry, or bitter, or mean, or unjust.  On the inside, they are just afraid because someone or something told them right before they went out on the big grand stage of life, be afraid.  So they've worked really hard their entire life masking that fear.

And then one ordinary day comes, a simple fact like an empty tomb becomes a place where remembering can happen, and deep inside that person comes that innocent voice of the child inside us all, "Jesus is alive." 

And a happiness that done right is a kind of holiness begins to bubble in the soul, until it overcomes you, and a smile breaks out like you've never smiled before, and a laughter erupts like you've never laughed before, and a celebration begins like you've never celebrated before...

Easter is a grand celebration... Let the little child inside each one of us celebrate this good news.

Thanks be to God.

Judas' Mother, April 01, 2012

Rev. Kathryn Ransdell

"Judas' mother"

April 1, 2012

Palm Sunday

Holy Week 2012.

Because the marketplace has not really taken-up the cause of Easter, we don't feel commercially fatigued the week before the big event.  We are not tired of carols that have been playing for more than a month.  We haven't carved out a corner of our living room and filled it with plastic decorations, and if no allergies, a cut-down tree.  We don't have a shopping list that demands one more trip to the mall and five more gifts to wrap.

Because the marketplace has not really taken-up the cause of Easter, it is easy for it to be missed by society, and sometimes, by Christians themselves. 

It's the week before Easter, and because the marketplace has not taken-up the cause of Easter, we can fully sink in to this experience...and that is what this is.  Year after year, the church has lived again this week, from entry into Jerusalem, to Good Friday, to Easter Sunday morning.  And for this small portion of time that is called our life, we are invited each year to experience this week. 

Is there a Holy Week that is particularly memorable for you?  Perhaps an Easter that holds significance? 

I had a Holy Week stare me in the face the year that I moved here to Vancouver...but it was 2 months before I even had an inkling that I would  move to another country.  I had the chance to attend a presentation featuring Sister Mary Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking, and Jake Heggie, who composed an opera based on the book.

Heggie spoke of what it was like to adapt the characters to an opera, and in so doing, he brought singers to the stage to present pieces of how he captured the persona.  He brought the convicted inmate's mother to the stage, who sings the night that her son is to be executed.

I have to be honest, after the first line or two, I was in complete tears. 

The Convicts Mother mother sang about the little boy whose diapers she changed.  The kindergartner she walked to the bus and kissed his cheek and told him to be brave as he stepped on to the school bus.  The small boy whose cuts needed band-aids and bad tumbles needed her hugs.

She sang about the sparkle in his eyes, the feeling of him snuggling against her chest when he woke sick in the middle of the night.

Ethan was 11-months-old.

This was my first Holy Week and Easter as a mother.  And for some reason, it was the story of Judas' mother that jumped off the page to me.

It's not the first time I've felt a connection to Judas.  When I was a young child, our pastor sent us home on Ash Wednesday with a velvet pouch, and we carefully collected 30 quarters and returned the offering to Maundy Thursday worship...and it was such a Honor and special place.  I had no idea until I became an adult -- what was that minister thinking?  "Let's let the kids play little Judas-es?"  

We feel sorry for Mary as Mother, but she lived with a legacy of her son being a Savior.

Pity to the woman whose child grows up to commit horrible atrocities.  Because like it or not, in our day and age, when someone does something bad, we look to see what their mother or father did or did not do. 

We feel pity for Judas' mother-whoever she was, unnamed, a myth to consider--because she lived with a legacy of her son betraying the Savior of the World.

And for what reason did Judas' do this?  The money?  The power?   Jealousy?  Even the Scriptures contradict each other.  Matthew tells us he returned the money and the Sadduccees used the money to buy the field.  The Acts of the Apostles, composed by the same person of the Gospel of Luke, says Judas bought the field and committed suicide.   

Most likely, "Judas" was invented.  It's a little too convenient, don't you think.  It's a little too b-movie-ish.  And it's a little too "scape-goatish."

Maybe there is a way to explore this story of Judas and instead of memorising for accuracy, stepping back to meander through allegory. 

Imagine Judas as an archetype. The one who betrays. The Saboteur. We tend to think of the Betrayer as bad, and that's true, when it is operating in its shadow side. At the very heart of the Saboteur is this idea of sabotage. But Saboteur as archetype means we need to look inside and ask ourselves some deep questions.

Yet the purpose of this archetype is not to sabotage you, but to help you learn the many ways in which you undermine yourself. How often do you set new plans in motion, only to end up standing in your own way because of the fears that undermine those optimistic plans. Or you begin a new relationship and then destroy it because you begin to imagine a painful outcome. You begin a working relationship with another person and find yourself once again in a power struggle that could be settled peacefully -- but you fall into the same destructive pattern because you fear the other person.

The Saboteur's fears and issues are all related to low self-esteem that causes you to make choices that block your own empowerment and success. (You must face this powerful archetype.) When you do, you will find that it calls your attention to situations in which you are in danger of being sabotaged, or of sabotaging yourself. Once you are comfortable with the Saboteur, you learn to hear and heed these warnings, saving yourself untold grief from making the same mistakes over and over. Ignore it, and the shadow of the Saboteur will manifest in the form of self-destructive behaviour or the desire to undermine others.

To learn how to become aware of the action of the Saboteur within, ask yourself these questions:

• What fears have the most authority over me? List 3
• What happens when a fear overtakes me? Does it make me silent?
• Do I allow people to speak for me?
• Do I agree to some things out of fear that I otherwise would not agree to?
• Have I let creative opportunities pass me by?
• How conscious am I in the moment I am sabotaging myself?
• Am I able to recognise the Saboteur in others?
• Would I be able to offer others advice about how to challenge ones Saboteur? If so, what would it be?

But this isn't individual therapy. This is the Church. And Sunday is a-comin. And perhaps we as the church need to ask this question of ourselves: How often are we undermining ourselves? Letting our fears undermine our optimistic plans.

If Easter is about anything, it is about the fundamental belief that death no longer holds victory.

That something new can come out of something that has died.

That ultimately, in the heart of all humanity, is a desire to be in incredibly deep peace with ourselves, one another, and God.

But we get in our own way.

And Holy Week is all about staring in the face.

Not feeling pity.

But feeling a deep Love.

A Mother's Love.

Because a Mother's love is not supposed to fail. I know there are some human moms who do fail. But in the heart of the mother is a love that runs so deep that no matter what your child does, you have the capacity to look at them and remember the child who was before the brokenness began...

We are called to look at this world and remember what it was before the brokenness began.. and then we are called to do everything we can to do what mother's do:

Heal

Comfort

Make whole.

We must remember that there is a mother's love for all of us. We must know that nothing can separate us from the Love of God in Christ. Not height, nor depth, nor things present, nor things to come, nor angels, nor principalities can separate us from the Love of God in Christ.

Amen