Ashes and Skin

John 8:12-30 

Listen Here.

Grace, Peace and Freedom are yours from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

I AM.  Jesus says.

I AM the light of the world.

I have been doing a lot of thinking about light and darkness and this biblical statement of Jesus, along with the claims made in John 1 that God has shown a light in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.

It is a powerful image. 

Is it one little flicker in the giant sea of darkness?  Is it a bomb of light exploding the darkness?  Is it a search beam shining into the corners where evil hides? 

I love this image, and yet I am torn… I am torn because our Western world has turned light into good and darkness into bad at the expense of people’s bodies.  What am I talking about?  The danger of saying light = good; dark = bad is that people will look around at their neighbors and begin to apply that to the skin tones of those around them. 

Of course we all know that’s ridiculous.   But it happens. To us all. There is plenty of research to confirm unconscious bias in our perceptions of the lightness or darkness of someone’s skin and our associated fear of that person. 

Fear.

The light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it.

Maybe it should say, the sun shines in the fearfulness and the fear cannot overcome it.

The thing is that the Light of the World came into the world to shine like the sun for those who are hurt most by our human systems of oppression and brokenness and separation from the God who loves us.  And the oppressed are on every point of the spectrum of sun-kissed hues.

So I yearn for a way in English to say that the ash on our faces and the dirt in our souls is a very different kind of dark or black than the rich hues of chocolatey brown that humans come in.  Because it is. 

Young children have spoken of wanting to wash off the chocolate of their skin…but chocolate is beautiful, the rich, velvety darkness of skin is named and claimed as God’s very own.  Some of us were made out of deep rich soil and others of us out of clay and sand, but each and every one received the breath of God into the earth that formed us. 

We must separate, and I don’t know how, the beautiful and God-affirmed variety of people-colors from the negative, even evil, associations we have with darkness.  And I tell you this, tonight, on Ash Wednesday, because this is the kind of holy work we enter into this season.  The kind of holy work where we become more and more conscious of the things that are holding us back.  And the things that are holding our brothers and sisters back. 

Lent is the season we stop our busy-ness, reflect on our mortal reality, and begin the hard work of repentance… and repentance begins with acknowledging there is a problem.

People of Bethlehem, we have a problem.  We live in a society where the voices of some of our brothers and sisters are not heard because of the color of their skin.  We live in a society that benefits those of us with translucent skin and holds back those who have more pigment.

Here is the thing.  Most of you already know this.  Most of you didn’t come here tonight to hear something you already know.  And most of us don’t know what the heck to do about it.  We participate every day in a society that gives people that look like me the benefit of the doubt – like when I step into a convenience store and fill up my mug with ice and no one questions or even looks askance at me wondering if I might be planning to steal some of that soda.

The first thing we do is pay attention.  We notice that we have an advantage, as small as the one I just gave or as big as what kind of loan I can get for my home. 

We pay attention. 

We remember we are all, every one of us, just simply dust.  In this together. 

We begin to take it all in, to reflect on what it all means, and we pray.  We pray hard that God might open our eyes and our hearts to know the truth of the world God has made in all its brokenness.  For who knows what God has in store? 

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.  And Light of the World who clothed himself in a dusty body with a big more pigment than me, anyway. 

We are the ones whom God loves so crazily that he would come to wear these same ashes you and I wear – whether they come from the terra preta of the Amazon basin or the ground down granite of Minnesota.  Come to die, lifted up like a lantern on a cross, shining for the whole world to see just how much God loves us.

Time to pay attention.

Will you pray with me?
In your love, compassionate God, keep us in this tension. In your severe mercy see this pain to bring action and change. We pray this through Christ our Lord, in whom the dividing wall of hostility has already been broken down. Amen.

What would you die for? #life

John 5:9b-24

#winning #engine 

Grace to you and Peace from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

[engine] What is your engine?  What drives you? What makes you get up in the morning?  What drives you to do what you are called to do?

[bus]  Do you know who this woman is?  Sister Simone Campbell.  She might be most famous for her work with the Nuns on the Bus, and she wrote a memoir by the same name.  She is a woman religious of the Roman Catholic Church, a lawyer and the Executive Director of NETWORK.  Her call is to Advocate on behalf of the poor in public policy and society in general. 

I heard a story recently, told by Sister Simone.  She was in a room with a group of top executives.  They were talking about how they were going from a 10 million dollar per year salary to 11.  And Sister Simone asked them, as probably only a nun can do, “Help me understand, are you having trouble getting by on 10 million dollars per year?” 

She wasn’t being sarcastic.  She wasn’t trying to trouble them, though I doubt she would have minded troubling them either.  She sincerely wanted to understand what the reason was for making such large amounts in salary on an annual basis, especially knowing that there are many people in the country who can’t make ends meet. 

And this is what they said: “Oh, No, Sister Simone, it isn’t about the money.  I just want to win!” 

I just want to win.

Well, that’s understandable. 

Very few of us go play a game with the intention or desire to lose.  I think it’s fair to say that we can all understand the objective of winning.  We like it when our team wins a game.  We like it when our hard work is recognized with a prize.  We enjoy knowing we got top marks.  And we can’t all win.  Winning it about being better than someone else.  It just is, that’s the definition of winning. 

In fact, it has come into use now that when someone is doing well at something we just say “winning!”  (Maybe with a hashtag on the front). [#Winning] To denote anytime someone is feeling successful from the choice to eat ice cream for dinner, to the celebration of life circumstances – we are Winners.  We are Winning!

But the question that Simone Campbell asked next was this… What if we found a measure for winning that wasn’t so toxic as to have such a small percentage of people in our society with such an enormous amount of wealth?  Could we still find a way to Win that isn’t about creating a huge disparity of wealth in this country (not to mention the world)?

That is a great question, and one I would love to help answer as a Christ-follower.  But this story isn’t about the money.  Even for the CEO’s. 

The way Sister Simone Campbell tells it, it is about finding what drives a person.  What pushes us, what motivates us to productive work – what is our engine? 

In today’s Sacred Story, Jesus says there is goodness in work – in work that glorifies God, “My Father is still working, and I also am working.”  I believe these CEO’s are doing good work. At least I want to believe the best of them.  That even if their work can’t possibly be worth their salaries, it is necessary, helpful, inspired effort for good in the world.  Possibly even God-given work!  Using their gifts of leadership, creativity and excellence.

And what the story tells us is that for the CEO’s, what drives them is not the money, it is #winning. [engine winning slide]

What about you and me?  What drives us? 

For those in the middle class we may be motivated more by just #keepingup.  [slide]

Or by #security #safety #gettingagrip #barelyhangingon… [slides]

But according to God there is another option.  According to Jesus, we can be driven by something else.  [engine – question]

As we ask ourselves what our engine is… maybe it would be helpful to ask… what’s God’s?  What is Jesus’ engine?  What drives God to act?  To involve Godself with us, mere humanity?  To continue engaging over and over again?  To continue giving more and more of Godself?

You read this a couple of weeks ago, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life.  For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him!” 

[engine - #Love] God’s engine, God’s drive, God’s motivation to keep going is LOVE, a particular kind of love, God’s engine is GRACE [engine - #GRACE].  God is fundamentally about a willingness to sacrifice for the good of all God’s people.  For all of creation!  God is driven by an attachment to the community.  We see the existence of community even within the Godhead – Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  God cares so deeply for you and for me and for US, the he died that we might have life, and came “Not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.”

God is driven by grace to give us the gift of LIFE.  That is what Jesus is doing here in this story.  He tells the man, you don’t have to race down into the pool to be healed.  I’ll heal you right now.  Jesus says, I have come to give you LIFE that you might have it abundantly.  Jesus says… “I’m here to tell you this, I only do what God does.  I am only driven by God’s drive, God’s engine of Grace.  God the Father raises people from the dead and that’s what I came to do. I came to give you LIFE.  I give life to whomever I wish!  It’s a free gift!  And it’s true!  Anyone who hears my word and believes God who has sent me… anyone who does that already HAS the eternal life I am giving. This is the life of that living water the woman received last week.  The Life of living in trusting relationship with the God who is always faithful.  And with people who are living that Life together – this is the beloved community!  This is the Life I came to bring!”

This life.

The life that matters so much more than the death you are living.  The death the CEO’s live when they “need” another million dollars to proven they have won the game.  The death of trying to be the first – for that’s what the man that Jesus healed was doing by the pool, trying to be the first in to get the miracle healing.  The death of #Winning at the expense of someone else #Losing.  Because that’s not God’s definition of #Winning.  God’s definition of a #Win is when We All might have abundant life.  In fact, he says so a few chapters later, chapter 10.  And there is a clue to it here.  When Jesus says to the man, “Do not sin” he’s talking about the man’s denial of Jesus, denial of the source of the Life he has been given.  This is how the gospel of John defines sin – as denial of God’s good gifts. 

And so Jesus says to the man, and to Us…the death you are living now… you have to give that up.  Whether it is the death of taking more than your fair share, or the death of self-preservation and security and keeping up with the neighbors, instead of loving them.  All of these are the death of sin, the death of denying that God is here, now, handing out new Life!

This is what Jesus came to do.  To get us to die to that stuff.  To redefine our understanding of #Winning.  To give us Real, True Life.  Abundant Life. 

Tell me this.  What would you die for? [wait for answers] What is more important than dying?

·  Quality of life (hospice)

·  Children’s well being

·  Peace on earth

·  Respect and honor… (Hamilton)

THAT might be the Life Jesus is giving away…That IS the Life!  The Life that is for you and me and US together!  The life that is lived only in the beloved community, where we are woven together as the body of Christ.  The life where we pick up our mats and leave behind the death we have been living. The life where we are driven by Love for our neighbor, Driven by Grace. 

…Let’s redefine #Winning. [engine - #winning]

Amen.