ThisWeeksSermon, Easter Day, March 23, 2008

“Talking about something completely preposterous: Resurrection”
Sunday of the Resurrection, Easter Day, March 23, 2008

May I speak only the truth, and may only the truth be heard by you. In the name of God our Creator, our Redeemer, and our Sanctifier. Amen.

I am basically an optimistic person,
mostly looking at the brighter side, I think,
taking chances,
expecting that things are going to work out.
“Think positively.”
My mother indoctrinated me with that phrase.
She kept Norman Vincent Peale’s book,
The Power of Positive Thinking,
at her bedside.
But when she was diagnosed with lung cancer at age 62,
her optimism faded,
but she still had hope.
She chose a faith healer instead of medical doctors,
and with hope in her heart,
she drank this stinky dark herbal tea until she could drink no more.
A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN OPTIMISM AND HOPE
There’s a difference between optimism and hope.
When I look around us at what’s going on in the world,
I’m not particularly optimistic.
The never-ending killing and brutality and destruction in so many parts of the world,
our cruelty to one another,
the threat that our planet is overheating and overwhelming our natural habitat.
I’m not particularly optimistic when I think about our American Culture either,
anti-intellectual,
dismissing logic,
at odds with modern secular knowledge and science,
and all this fostered by the mass media,
religious fundamentalism,
mediocre public education,
a scarcity of fair-minded public intellectuals on the right and on the left,
and above all,
a lazy and gullible public.
When I look around us at what’s going on in the world,
I’m not particularly optimistic.
But I am hopeful.
There’s a difference.
I am hopeful not for human reasons,
I’m hopeful not from my natural optimism.
I’m hopeful because I believe that God is at work in the church and in the world.
I”m hopeful because I believe God is at work in the world even when God’s name remains unheard,
when the word “God” is never spoken.
EASTER SUNDAY MORNING
Today we celebrate the pivotal moment that sparked what became Christianity.
And it’s the preacher’s job to talk about something that’s completely unreasonable,
preposterous,
the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
Every preacher everywhere knows that she or he is not up to the task.
Every preacher is totally thankful for the other ways the resurrection is celebrated:
the hymns and music of the organ,
the anthems and the flowers,
performances by children in a crowded church,
cake and champagne at coffee hour,
even colored eggs hidden outdoors for the Sunday school.
I got some advice recently from a pro,
advice about how to preach Easter.
The advice I got was to keep it simple.
Nothing fancy.
What everyone wants is to sing the hymns and hear the story.
Don’t minimize or trivialize the resurrection by trying to explain it.
Rest assured,
I’m not going to try to explain it.
But at the same time,
I don’t want to suggest to anyone that you have to check your brain at the door before coming in for Easter.
We’re celebrating the moment we call “resurrection”,
and there’s an unavoidable question:
Was it real?
With absolute honesty and conviction,
I can say that I believe it was real.
But I have to paraphrase Bill Clinton on this one:
“It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘it’ is.”
What is the “it” that is real?
That’s the question.
The cross?
The death?
Jesus’ ghostly reappearances?
A physical resurrection?
Many if not most biblical scholars will tell you that the physical resurrection is tradition, not history.
Even St. Paul went out of his way to debunk those who believed in a physical ressurection.
In the 15th chapter of his first letter to the church in Corinth, he wrote:
, of course the resurrection was spiritual. What goes into the ground is physical. What comes out is spiritual.
THE “IT” THAT IS REAL
I don’t know what the first Easter experience was, of course.
I don’t think anyone does.
Matthew tells us that none of the disciples was there.
They all fled before Jesus was taken to Ciaiphus, the high priest.
Mark tells us that the disciples all forsook Jesus and fled from him in the Garden of Gesthemene.
In Luke’s narrative,
Jesus’ followers disappear entirely.
No mention of them.
Everyone who would have been interested enough to remember what happened on Good Friday,
and would want tell it to others,
was gone.
None of his followers turned up until the next day.
That’s when one or maybe three or maybe four women,
depending on which gospel you read,
discovered an empty tomb,
discovered a tomb with where they met one “young man”,
or two men in “dazzling apparel”,
or two angels,
depending on which gospel you read.
And you certainly won’t find any record of the first Easter in any of the secular writings of the first century.
BUT SOMETHING WONDERFUL HAPPENED! IT IS REAL!
I don’t know what the resurrection experience was, actually.
And neither does anyone else, as far as I can tell.
But it’s clear that “it” was real.
The “it” that happened transformed people’s lives.
It continues to transform people lives,
more than 2000 years later.
I expect that Christianity has survived all this time not so much because of historical fact,
but because individuals saw the face of God in Jesus’ face.
They heard the voice of God in Jesus’ voice.
They experienced and re-experienced the love of God expressed in the stories that have stood the test of time.
Those timeless lessons that Jesus left his followers,
and ultimately us,
are the basis for resurrection that is real.
the basis for the “it” that is real.
RESURRECTION IS REAL
Jesus said the Realm of God is at hand.
It’s here,
it’s now.
Anyone can experience it.
When we do,
resurrection is real.
When we have the courage to take responsibility for our actions,
make amends to those whom we have harmed,
and change what we have to change,
so it won’t happen again,
then our lives are different,
and resurrection is real,
here and now.
When we begin to trust the Universe,
a universe filled with an energy that yearns for the well being of all of creation,
that’s real resurrection,
here and now.
When we stop judging others,
and forgive others (and ourselves),
When we live with a generous heart,
Resurrection is real.
And finally,
when we treat life like a gift to be cherished,
to be celebrated,
to be appreciated,
then our lives take on new meaning.
Our death has no sting.
Resurrection is real.
JESUS DID SOMETHING THROUGH LIFE
Jesus did not necessarily do something for us through his death.
He did something for us through his life.
Jesus taught that the ultimate relationship with God and with each other is available to anyone,
here and now.
That is the Truth that we celebrate on Easter Sunday.
The ultimate relationship with God and with each other is available to every one of us,
here and now.
That’s the good news that we can celebrate every single day.
How do you know that the Easter story is true?,
that resurrection is real?
Jesus said:
You will know by the fruit that it bears.
In other words,
you will know by the peace,
by the fulfillment,
by the contentment,
and by the joy that it brings to you.
You will know it’s True by living it.
HOPE
When I look around us at what’s going on in the world,
I’m not particularly optimistic.
But like my mother,
drinking that dark smelly herbal tea, I am hopeful.
I’m hopeful because I believe that God is at work in the church and in the world.
I”m hopeful because I believe God is at work in the world even when God’s name remains unheard,
is never spoken.
Resurrection is real!
“Alleluia” (as we shout on Easter) for that.
PRAYER
Let us pray.
Eternal God, the Great Mystery that is outside everything and yet at the same time inside, keep alive in each one of us the search for a faith that is real, a faith that helps us to live happier lives, a faith that gives us a fuller meaning to life and the events of life. Bring us to know the goodness that flows from the heart of the universe and may we be expanded in heart and soul by that goodness.
This is our prayer. Amen.
Jerry Brooks

Easter Anthem

Palm Sunday and Maundy Thursday Agape photos

We had a great turnout for Palm Sunday, and then again last night for our Maundy Thursday Liturgy followed by an agapé meal and stripping of the altar. A lot of effort went into preparation for both events. Everything was beautiful!

Tonight's the Good Friday Liturgy, 7 p.m. 

ThisWeeksSermon, Palm Sunday, March 16, 2008

“Sunday, Bloody Sunday”
The Sunday of the Passion, Palm Sunday, March 16, 2008

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Jesus was similarly portrayed as the once-and-for-all Lamb of God.
It’s called “substitutionary atonement”, and it made logical sense to “Yom Kippur Jews” who were trying to figure out what Jesus’ life and death had Meant.
It made sense to them, but I have to tell you…
it doesn’t make that much sense to me.
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May I speak only the truth, and may only the truth be heard by you. In the name of God our Creator, our Redeemer, and our Sanctifier. Amen.

I was in Florida the other day.
Went down on Thursday.
Had dinner with Pam and Tom, friends who are also business clients.
The next morning Tom took off on his bicycle for a two-hour ride.
Pam took their two dogs for a long walk around the lake.
They left me sitting at their dining room table, computer at my fingertips, a sermon rattling around in my head and in my heart.
The view from that dining room table was spectacular.
The lake so close it appeared that the house itself was floating on it.
Sunlight sparkling across the ripply water.
Palm branches waving in the breeze, palm branches reminding me of this morning’s liturgy…
of Jesus’ grand entrance into Jerusalem, the beginning of a roller-coaster ride that moves us so quickly to the top of the ride…
and then plunges us at breakneck speed to the inquisition…
the betrayal, the gruesome, bloody execution, and the last breath of Jesus.
“Sunday, Bloody Sunday” is the title I’ve given this sermon, borrowing from the 1970s movie with that same title.
The narrative is gruesome.

THE CHURCH’S SCHIZOPHRENIA ON PALM SUNDAY
Churches suffer from a bit of schizophrenia about Palm Sunday.
Should the focus be on Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, and the “Hosannas!” of the shouting crowd?
Or should the emphasis be placed on the cross, and the “Crucify him! Crucify him!” chants of the people?
Is this a service of exultation and euphoria?
Or should it be a service of passion?
THE SOURCE OF THE STORY
The details we have about that first “holy week” originated in the Jewish synagogue following Jesus horrific death.
The details we have about the passion were provided by those Jews who were the first to be aware that something truly extraordinary had occurred.
They were the ones who were wanting to explain what it was, exactly, that had happened…
but more important…
what it all meant.
Who was this man was who had made such a remarkable impression on them.
They delved into THEIR scriptures, our “Old Testament”, to look for clues.
And what we have in this morning’s readings is the result of that work, and that theological thinking, that they did during that first half-century before any words were put on paper.
We probably don’t know a lot about what actually happened…
the details, that is.
But what we DO know is that Mark provided the earliest narrative.
Today’s readings, from Matthew, build on Marks’ rendition, with some modifications and notable embellishments.
The name “Barabbas” becomes “Jesus Barabbas”, making it better correspond to the expression, “Jesus the Anointed.”
Matthew also added the part about Pilate’s wife learning in a dream that Jesus was innocent.
He added the part about Pilate washing his hands as a way of declaring his own innocence in the death of Jesus.
He suggested that Jesus could be thought of as a kind of king, even though Jesus never had any aspirations in that direction.
Matthew’s description of the mockery is believed to be the product of the imagination of those first followers of Jesus.
The crucifixion description came from Mark, developed along lines suggested by Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53…
in the Jewish Bible.
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me,” from Psalm 22.
And the words written 700 years earlier from Isaiah…
words predicting a messiah who would be a suffering servant.
THE UNDERLYING EVENT DID HAPPEN
The underlying event did happen.
Scholars will agree that “Pilate sentenced Jesus to die on the cross on the charge of being ‘the king of the Jews.’”
They will agree that “Jesus was flogged and then turned over to be crucified.”
After crucifying him, an inscription that identified his crime may have been put over his head.
Many women were probably observing from a distance, those who had followed Jesus from Galilee to assist him, among whom were Mary of Magdala, and Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee.
The historical accuracy of the actual dramatizations…
however…
is open to question.
ATONEMENT
The whole idea that blood had to be shed in order for sin to be forgiven came right out of that post-Jesus synagogue, the feast of Yom Kippur, the day of atonement.
In the Yom Kippur liturgy, an innocent lamb is slain and the people are symbolically cleansed by the “saving blood” of this sacrificed Lamb of God.
Jesus was similarly portrayed as the once-and-for-all Lamb of God.
It’s called “substitutionary atonement”, and it made logical sense to “Yom Kippur Jews” who were trying to figure out what Jesus’ life and death had Meant.
It made sense to them, but I have to tell you…
it doesn’t make that much sense to me.
The theology of the Atonement brings to question our whole understanding of God, and even the morality of God.
Atonement theology assumes that God is an external Being, one who invades the world to heal the fallen creation.
It also assumes that this God enters this fallen world in the person of a son, an only son who at age 32 would pay the price for human evil by execution on a cross.
All theories of atonement are rooted in a sense of human alienation, and a sense of human powerlessness.
As we tell the story of Jesus’ dying for our sins in our doctrine, in our hymns, and in our liturgy, we unthinkingly turn God into an ogre, a deity who practices child sacrifice, and a guilt-producing figure who tells us that our sinfulness is the cause of the death of Jesus.
God did it to him instead of to us, even though we’re the ones who deserved it.
Somehow that is supposed to make it both antiseptic and worthwhile.
It doesn’t, for me.
Consciousness about the inconsistency of this atonement theology…
about a God we call “Love” yet one who requires human sacrifice…
is surfacing all over in churches these days.
It’s a good sign, I think.
WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?
The question to ask about all this is not “Is it accurate history?”
“Is it good theology?”
Instead, ask, “What does it Mean?”
And better yet, “What can it Mean for me?”
ATONEMENT THEOLOGY IN THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH
Our Presiding Bishop, The Most Rev. Katherine Jefferts Schoiri, has this to say about atonement theology.
In The Episcopal Church, she says…
there are two strands of faith.
One strand is concerned with atonement, The theology that Jesus died, that Jesus was sacrificed in a brutal execution, for our sins, and that our most important task is to repent.
The second strand of faith in The Episcopal Church, a “more gracious strand of faith,” according to our Presiding Bishop, is to talk of life, to claim the joy and blessings for good that it offers.
The second strand calls us to look forward.
WHAT IT MEANS TO ME
Joy Cowley, an author of fiction who lives in New Zealand, helped me articulate what this morning’s story of the entrance into Jerusalem means to me, what the stories of the brutal execution of the innocent Jesus mean to me, what that heroic life lived for others, not for self, means to me.
My soul sings in gratitude.
I dance in the Mystery of God.
The light of the Holy One is within me, and I am blessed, truly blessed.
This goes deeper than human thinking, deeper than history or doctrine or any kind of theology.
I am filled with awe at a Love whose only condition is to be received.
The gift is not for the proud, for they have no room for it.
The strong and self-sufficient ones don't have this awareness either.
But those who know their own emptiness can rejoice in Love's fullness.
It's the Love that we are made for.
It’s the reason for our being.
It fills our inmost heart space and brings to birth in us, the Holy One.
PRAYER
Let us pray.
Eternal God, the Great Mystery that is outside everything and yet at the same time inside, keep alive in each one of us the search for a faith that is real, a faith that helps us to live happier lives, a faith that gives us a fuller meaning to life and the events of life. Bring us to know the goodness that flows from the heart of the universe and may we be expanded in heart and soul by that goodness.
This is our prayer. Amen.
Jerry Brooks

ThisWeeksSermon, The 5th Sunday in Lent, March 9, 2008

“Which is better, beer or Jesus?”
The Fifth Sunday in Lent, March 9, 2008

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The Jesus experience is about life, it’s not about religion.
It’s about being whole, not about being correct.
It’s about an expanded consciousness, not about becoming religious.
When the Christian faith begins to become concerned about life, instead of being concerned about religion, then there will be a renaissance, a new beginning, and then, perhaps, we have a chance of seeing a Christian renewal.

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May I speak only the truth, and may only the truth be heard by you. In the name of God our Creator, our Redeemer, and our Sanctifier. Amen.
The prophecy from Ezekiel
The prophet Ezekiel said it this way:
The hand of the Lord set me down in the middle of a valley.
It was full of bones.
There were very many lying in the valley, and the bones were dry.
Then God said, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them:
O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.”
God said to the bones, “I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live.
I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord.”
The context
This haunting passage was probably written soon after the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple 500 years before Christ.
The Jews were in captivity in Babylon.
Their nation had been destroyed.
Ezekiel, the prophet, had been a priest at that temple.
He devoted a significant amount of time predicting the restoration of Israel as a nation, and the return of the nation to their God, Yahweh.
Things were looking pretty bad.
But Ezekiel was optimistic.
The state of Christianity today
To a lot of people, things are looking pretty bad for Christianity these days as well.
Mainstream church attendance is decreasing in most places…
although not so much in this diocese.
Younger adults, as well as older adults, are pursuing alternative expressions of spirituality.
The Roman Catholic church is rapidly marching backward to the past under the leadership of the latest pope.
Fundamentalists are quoting Bible verses out of context in order to judge and condemn.
The controversy about teaching the Genesis creation myths alongside scientific evolution theory has reared its ugly head, again, an issue that many thought had ended with the Scopes trial more than half a century ago.
One might look at churches today, and also see a valley of bones, dry bones everywhere.
Which is better?
Here’s a question:
Which is better?
Beer or Jesus?
Marcus Borg posed that question at the conference I attended this week.
Here’s what he said:
The top ten reasons why Beer is better than fundamentalist Christianity are:
10. No one will kill you for not drinking beer.
9. Beer doesn’t tell you how to have sex (or who to have it with).
8. Beer has never caused a major war.
7. Beer is never forced on minors, who can’t think for themselves.
6. When you have beer, you don’t knock on people’s doors trying to give it away.
5. Nobody’s ever been burned at the stake, hanged, or tortured to death over his or her brand of beer.
4. You don’t have to wait 2000 or more years for a second beer.
3. There are laws saying that beer labels can’t lie to you.
You can prove you have a beer.
And the number 1 reason for choosing beer over fundamentalist Christianity would be this:
1. If you have devoted your life to beer, there are groups to help you stop.
This is clever, and of course, silly, but it makes a point.
This is how a lot of people see Christianity.
Unlike beer,
it’s threatening, meddling, militaristic, aggressive, intolerant.
More or less a nuisance.
Meeting of the Westar Institute
But the conference I attended last week led by people who have some ideas about how reverse the trend, ideas about how to put flesh and skin and breath back on the dry bones of Christianity.
The gist of the conference was that it’s Biblical illiteracy that’s the cause of our problems.
They suggest that educating people about our holy scriptures can be our legacy for the future.
The conference was put on by the Westar Institute.
It’s a research and educational organization that’s dedicated to just that, the advancement of religious literacy.
Their mission is to foster collaborative research in religious studies, and to communicate the results of the scholarship of religion to a broad, nonspecialist public.
Until a few years ago, essential knowledge about Biblical and religious traditions was hidden inside of universities and seminaries, kept away from the general public.
The ideas and insights were considered “too controversial” or “too complicated” for people in the pews to understand!
Many scholars, fearing conflict, afraid of getting into trouble, talked only to one another.
Churches decided, and still do often, churches decided what information their members were “ready” to hear.
And this was exactly my experience coming out of seminary in the 1960s, filled with new ideas about what God wasn’t, what God was, what God could be.
Three exciting, intellectually stimulating years in seminary were followed by a slow suffocation in the parish ministry of my young adulthood.
That ministry ended quickly.
But things are different now.
There’s a new openness to new ways of looking at things.
I heard it loud and clear this week.
Marcus Borg
Marcus Borg was the keynote speaker
He is a professor of religion and Oregon State University.
He’s written many books, including the best-seller called Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time.
He also wrote The God We Never Knew, which was named one of the ten best books on religion a few years ago.
His latest book is titled Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary.
Marcus Borg suggests that a serious study of Jesus provides a rich opportunity in this time of change and conflict in the churches of North America.
A serious study of the life of Jesus, he said, can lead to a rediscovery of how to read the gospels and the Bible in a persuasive and compelling way, how to think of the character and passion of God, what it means for American Christians today to follow Jesus, to participate in the passion of Jesus.
Karen Armstrong
Karen Armstrong was another speaker.
She is author of many books, including the international best-seller, A History of God.
She’s also author of three TV documentaries.
Her latest book, The Bible: The Biography, has just been published.
Until recently, she said, religion was not about thinking things.
Instead, it was about behaving in a way that changed participants at a profound level.
Compassion and the Golden Rule were the primary religious categories.
Any form of violence, even unkind speech or impatient gestures, these things were fundamentally un-religious.
Bishop Jack Spong
Jack Spong, retired Episcopal bishop of the Diocese of Newark, was there, too.
He’s a prolific writer, and a nonstop lecturer.
He’s published books with titles such as Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, Born of a Woman, Living in Sin, and Resurrection: Myth or Reality.
His most recent book, Jesus for the Non-Religious, was published this past year.
It is clearly established, he said, that a period of 40 to 70 years stood between the life of Jesus and the writing of the four canonical gospels.
What’s not so clearly established is the context of that oral period, and how that context shaped the gospel message.
Bishop Spong’s point was that the early Christian stories developed from within the Jewish synagogue.
The Jewish scriptures themselves were directly used in the telling of the Jesus story.
Other speakers
We also heard from Ann Graham Brock, a professor of New Testament, who offered a feminist view of our New Testament scriptures.
And then there was Milton Moreland.
He’s a highly regarded archaeologist involved in Galileean excavaction.
Some of the words I heard this week
• Here are some of the words I heard this week:
• Everything is in God.
• God is a Mystery Beyond All Words.
• God is “Is-ness” without limits.
• The message of the gospel is “Life before death for everyone.”
• We can’t easily give our hearts to something our minds reject.
• The gospels contain both history and testimony (fiction).
• The critical question is not “What is the gospel story?”, but “What does a gospel story mean?”
• Being a Christian is different from believing a set of statements to be true.
• Reciting a creed is a profound distortion of the meaning of faith.
• Doctrines can be harmful. Why quarrel about something you cannot know!
• The big task of our day is to build a global community.
If our religious traditions cannot rise to this challenge, to bring peace to the world, we will have failed.
• We know what to do.
Love our enemies.
• The Jesus experience is about life, it’s not about religion.
It’s about being whole, not about being correct.
It’s about an expanded consciousness, not about becoming religious.
When the Christian faith begins to become concerned about life, instead of being concerned about religion, then there will be a renaissance, a new beginning, and then, perhaps, we have a chance of seeing a Christian renewal.
God said
One might look at churches today, and see a valley of bones, dry bones everywhere.
But God will breathe new life into those old bones.
That’s what Ezekiel said.
He was being optimistic.
I am, too.
Jerry Brooks

A fascinating interview—The Age of American Unreason

I received this podcastlast week—an interview by Bill Moyers talking with Susan Jacoby. I was so affected by her ideas, and her smarts, that I now have her book in front of me.

Moyers describes Jacoby as one of America's most prolific and provocative free-thinkers. She says we're in a headlong flight from reason. The book is The Age of American Unreason. Here's an excerpt:

"It remains to be seen as the current presidential campaign unfolds, whether Americans are willing to consider what the flight from reason has cost us as a people, and whether any candidate has the will or the courage to talk about ignorance as a political issue affecting everything from scientific research to decisions about war and peace."

The Age of American Unreason offers an unsparing description of what Susan Jacoby calls "an overarching crisis of memory and knowledge." Susan Jacoby is the program director of the Center for Inquiry in New York

The audio clip lasts 25 minutes. Once you start listening, I don't think you'll want to stop. Please comment, if you like. I'd like to hear what you think.

jb+

Copy and paste think URL:

http://www.episcopalmarlboro.org/Uploads/JacobyAgeOfAmericanUnreason.mov

Visited Amelia Jane Q-B on my way home

Got to spend two nights with Jenn and José and Amelia Jane. Yesterday Amelia, Jenn, and I had lunch at Chez Panisse, a nifty restaurant in Berkeley. Wish I'd taken pictures of lunch! I do, however, have photos here of Amelia, now three months in this world, although almost two of those months were premature. She's very alert, and interactive. I can make her laugh.

Returning from my continuing education experience in California

Spent two nights and two days in Santa Rosa this week, attending a conference on "Religious literacy, a legacy for the future." Presenters included well known scholars, including Marcus Borg, Karen Armstrong, and Jack Spong (retired Episcopal Bishop of Newark). Six hundred people registered. Most traveled at least 1000 miles to get there. My guess is that two-thirds of the attendees were older than I -- I'd like to understand why it is that so many "old" people are so concerned about the Future.

The setting was beautiful, and the presentations were stimulating. Will be summing up some of what I heard tomorrow morning in my sermon.

ThisWeeksSermon, The 4th Sunday in Lent, March 2d

"Jesus struck a hammer-blow to people’s thick skulls, over an over, and again in today’s story, breaking rigid preconceptions that we glue and wire together to support our wobbly, rigged-up ideas, of what the world should be like."

“The Bible Tells Me So. Oh, really?”
The Fourth Sunday in Lent, March 2, 2008
May I speak only the truth, and may only the truth be heard by you. In the name of God our Creator, our Redeemer, and our Sanctifier. Amen.
+++Mary Lou Wallner
Mary Lou Wallner is probably about my age.
She grew up in a fundamentalist Christian home.
It was a place where the Bible was taken literally, verse by verse, not necessarily verses in their context, but single verse by single verse.
She was taught that Catholics were going straight to hell, and then she married one.
She had two daughters by her first husband.
They lived in Missouri.
She describes her family as typically all-American.
As an adult, she also attended a conservative, “Bible-believing” church.
Her term: “Bible-believing.”
Anna, her oldest daughter
Her oldest daughter, Anna, was just two weeks old when she as first taken to that church.
Homosexuality was not “taught”, again, her word, homosexuality was not taught when she was growing up.
In other words, nobody talked about it, really.
She wasn’t tuned in to clues that her teenage daughter was giving her.
She realizes now that Anna had been trying to tell her something.
In high school Anna had done a lot of singing.
She had been involved in drama.
The drama teacher at the school was a lesbian, and Anna had been especially fond of that teacher.
Mary Lou did not want to know what she later found out.
She dismissed the clues, blocked them out completely.
Anna at college: the letter
Anna went away to college.
In her freshman year, she wrote her parents a letter, telling them that she was a lesbian.
In the letter, she said that she had never been very comfortable with men, and that she found that she was more comfortable with women.
Mary Lou said that after she read that letter from her daughter, she went into the bathroom, and she and threw up.
Then she went underground with the information.
Mary Lou was ashamed of her daughter, and embarrassed for the family.
When she wrote back to Anna, she said some things in that letter that she now knows were not very loving.
“Undoubtedly the most difficult part of your letter,” she wrote, “is the gay thing.
I will never accept that in you.
I feel it’s a terrible waste, besides being spiritually and morally wrong.
For a reason I don’t quite fathom, I have a harder time dealing with that issue than almost anything else in the world.
I do and will continue to love you, but I will always hate that.”
The church Mary Lou was going to at that time taught that “it” was a sin.
The six or seven passages in the Bible that touch on the subject were preached on from time to time, she said, and she was clearly in accord with what they were teaching, that it was a sin, and not just a “regular” sin, but a sin above all others.
Mary Lou had harsh words with Anna many times.
Mary Lou thought that it was a choice and that Anna should get her act together and simply stop it.
In early 1996, Anna began to withdraw from her mother.
There was no contact on Mother’s Day that year.
That, was very painful for Mary Lou.
In July of that year she wrote Anna a letter asking Anna to tell her what she had done.
“Whatever it is,” she wrote, “I’d like to make it right.
The letter back from Anna was more difficult than the first one had been.
This time Anna said basically that Mary Lou had done colossal damage to her daughter’s soul with her shaming words.
Anna told Mary Lou that she considered Mary Lou to be merely her biological mother, nothing more.
She did not want to forgive her mother.
She said she didn’t have to.
She wanted nothing more to do with her mother.
Mary Lou said that when the phone rang at 10 o’clock at night, eight or nine months later, there was a part of her that knew what had happened.
Anna had committed suicide by hanging herself from the bar in her closet.
She used the chain of her dog’s leash.
She wrapped it around her neck, and she stood on a chair.
Then she kicked the chair out from under her.
She hung there for about 15 hours before anyone found her.
That’s the way it ended for Anna and her mother.
Anna had taken her life before there could be any reconciliation.
But, as it turned out, there was another reconciliation of sorts.
+++A different kind of reconciliation
It took Anna’s death to make Mary Lou really research the topic of homosexuality and what the Bible really says about it.
She did her own study of the scriptures, instead of relying on what someone else was telling her.
And she prayed a lot.
She says she can remember asking God if God really wanted her to change her beliefs about all this.
The answer she always got was “yes.”
God did want her to change her beliefs.
After researching extensively, she says, she began to understand that homosexuality is not a choice.
Why would anyone choose something that would inspire hatred, and misunderstanding, alienation, and even death!
What she learned is that instead of taking the Bible literally, she would take it in the context of the culture in which it was written.
Once you’ve made that transformation, she says, there’s no turning back.
“Somehow, she said, “I don’t want Anna’s death to have been in vain.”
Mary Lou needed to do something.
“But,” she said, “I had no idea that it would look like this!”
Mary Lou now belongs to an organization called Teach Truth.
She makes speeches.
She marches, side-by-side, with young men and women of different sexual orientations.
She protests with them.
She writes letters to politicians for them.
She listens to their stories, and they listen to hers.
“God,” she says, “has changed my heart, has transformed me into a person who loves unconditionally, and I’m thankful to now have hundreds of surrogate gay and lesbian “Annas” in my life
It’s my greatest joy to love and accept them just as they are.
It just feels so good to be able to do for them what I could not do for Anna.”
+++The Sundance documentary
Mary Lou Wallner’s story has been profiled in a documentary film called “For the Bible Tells Me So.”
It premiered at the Sundance film festival last year.
Got good reviews.
Was even nominated to be nominated for an Academy Award.
It’s a film that goes to the Bible to examine the ways in which conservative Christian groups have used, and sometimes exploited, holy scripture to deny basic human rights to others, African-Americans, women, and right now, especially, persons of different sexual orientations.
Highlights of the film include interviews with Bishop Gene Robinson, the first openly gay bishop in the Anglican Communion, Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and the gay daughter of former U.S. Representative Dick Gephardt.
Thursday night I watched the film tearfully, and made the decision to scrap the sermon I’d been struggling with and talk about Mary Lou instead.
It’s a perfect fit with this morning’s gospel, a story that’s less about a magicical medical intervention, and more about seeing and not seeing, perceiving and not perceiving.
Jesus struck a hammer-blow to people’s thick skulls, over an over, and again in today’s story, breaking rigid preconceptions that we glue and wire together to support our wobbly, rigged-up ideas, of what the world should be like.
It wasn’t anybody’s “sin” that caused the blindness.
“Sin” doesn’t cause blindness or leprosy or lameness or anything else.
But that’s what people thought.
The Pharisees were not what they seemed, either.
They were the sinners.
The man in this morning’s story from John, whose sight was restored, said it this way:
“All I know is that once I couldn’t see, and now, I can see.”
Mary Lou Wallner was taught that Roman Catholics would go straight to hell.
Then she married one.
Mary Lou Wallner was also taught that homosexuality was a sin.
Not a regular sin, but a sin above all others.
Then she gave birth to a gay daughter.
All I know is that once she couldn’t see, and now, she can see.

+Prayer
Let us pray.
Eternal God, the Great Mystery that is outside everything and yet at the same time inside, keep alive in each one of us the search for a faith that is real, a faith that helps us to live happier lives, a faith that gives us a fuller meaning to life and the events of life. Bring us to know the goodness that flows from the heart of the universe and may we be expanded in heart and soul by that goodness.
This is our prayer. Amen.
Jerry Brooks

Sunday morning at The Episcopal Church....

Today was "Mothering Sunday" in Great Britain, and to some extent it was here as well. Anne Borchert provided the Simnel Cake, and I'm certain will share the recipe. It was quite popular! (Read more about Mothering Sunday by following this link: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mothering_Sunday.) Meanwhile, the Sunday school "bell choir" is rehearsing for the Easter Sunday service. Can't wait for that one!

Tonight at our Lenten family potluck, we talked about the Bible and how it can be (has been) used as a weapon to be aimed at persons who are different. Great food, incidentally, including spinach-stuffed filet of sole, cornbread-topped bean casserole, twice-baked potatoes, sweet potatoes, asparagus, ginger cake, and strawberry shortcake. Next week's our lest of this series. Topics, from 10 Things Your Minister Wants to Tell You But Can't Because He Needs the Job, will be "Death and beyond" and "How it all ends."

I'll be off to California this week for two days with some well known Biblical scholars, including Marcus Borg, Karen Armstrong, and Jack Spong. Use Google to find out more about them if you're interested. I'll be spending Friday with granddaughter Amelia (and her mom and dad). Back Saturday.

Joe and Susan Jurkovic provided flowers today. Barbara Carroll hosted coffee hour with home-baked cornbread, crumb cake, and sweet potato bread.

New members of the parish, 10-year-old Cameron and 15-year-old Felicia, have jumped in with both feet! Cameron's assisting at the altar. Felicia's doing a great job of helping with the Sunday school.

Check out a few photos from this morning:

Woke up to this today.Can it really be March 1st?

Answer: Yes.

However, Monday temps will be in the 50s. Now THAT'S more like March.