Announcements
- This is our offering for the food pantry this week. Did you know 1 in 5 Ohioans have filed for unemployment? And some who haven’t filed are still without income… such as many babysitters. How are we going to get through this crisis? As a community. So please, when you send your tithe to the church, remember the Baltimore Area Food Pantry too. You can drop off goods there on Saturdays or send a check to the pantry or to our church and we’ll get it there.
- Ohio is starting to open up May 1st, but we at St. Michael’s will be waiting. The Governor has said places with “at risk” populations… that is, the young or the elderly, will be among the last to open up. Schools, day cares, and churches will be some of the last places to open. So keep coming back here for sermons at this time.
- Feeling really lonely and down? Needing a hand getting groceries or paying bills? We’re here for you. Ring up myself, Lori, or consistory – again, we’re getting through by being community. By being the church – who is the body of Christ.
Would you center yourselves for worship while I pray?
Accompany God,
The Church Has Left the Building
The church is not a place; it is a people.
The church is not only a steeple above the treeline, streets, and cars.
Rather, it is a people proclaiming to the world that
we are here for the work of healing and of justice.
The church is not walls built stone upon stone, held together by mortar
but rather person, linked with person, linked with person:
all ages and genders and abilities—
a community built on the foundation of reason, faith, and love.
The church is not just a set of doors open on Sunday morning,
but the commitment day after day, and moment after moment,
of our hearts creaking open the doors of welcome
to the possibility of new experience and radical welcome.
The church is not simply a building, a steeple, a pew.
The church is the gathering together of all the people, and experiences,
and fear, and love, and hope in our resilient hearts;
gathering, however we can, to say to the world:
welcome, come in, lay down your heartache, and pick up hope and love.
For the church is us—each and every one of us—together,
a beacon of hope to this world that so sorely needs it.
((~ written by Rev. Margaret Weis))
Meet us here, God, in this church that hasn’t doors and hasn’t pews. Meet us here, God, in this church, where hearts beat together and souls are in unison for you. Meet us here, God, as across time and space we praise and worship you. Amen.
It is April 26th, 2020, and it is the season of Eastertide! With Resurrection comes the end of disappointment, right? We’re to sing alleluias and rejoice and smile and shout! We’re to proclaim on the mountains Jesus Christ Lives!
And yet, a lot of us are actually doing a bit worse than we were a few weeks ago. For 35 days we’ve been in quarantine here in Ohio. Lucky people have a paycheck in savings. Most people don’t have that much and cannot miss a single pay check. If you’re in either situation, it’s been 35 days, so you’re out of savings. You’re watching the mail with increasing anxiety for a stimulus check. You’re trying again and again to log into the unemployment website to see what the status of your application is.
If you’re not in that financial difficulty boat, then maybe you’re in the 35th day of no coffee with friends. No barber. No YMCA. 35 days of just you, and maybe your immediate family. You’re not yet clawing the walls but you’ve mowed your grass more in 35 days than you did the entire summer last week. And are running out of shows you want to watch on TV.
Unless you’re in two boats, and you’re poor and bored!
We people with school age kids? We’re in a sinking boat. If you’ve school age kids you may now be wondering how teachers do it. And why do they do it full time for only $35,000 a year? How do they keep the kids from crying every session and staying on task? How do they do it with a whole classroom at one time?!
And if you’re a parent and school teacher and working from home… That boat is gone. We’re just treading water now drying not to drown.
For we see the ones drowning – the parents who have ‘essential’ part time jobs. Poor. Full time educating. Full time parenting. And constantly exposed to the virus.
And bringing it home.
Some have been lucky and don’t know anyone who has had coronavirus. Some are still lucky and don’t know anyone who has died of it. But those degrees of separation between ourselves and the ill are reducing as more and more people get ill, and more and more recover, and more and more die.
I’m still counting: 4 recovered. 0 dead. 1 active. Do you have a count of people you know?
It’s a weird dichotomy, isn’t it? Trying to hold the joy of Easter and resurrection with the sorrow of the cross and death? The joy of spring and this new normal of lots of family time and the lament of a scary, uncertain, death-filled world? The joy of people coming together helping each other and the sorrow that we cannot physically come together.
Did you mean for lent to continue past Easter? Is that okay? Can we feel happy and sad at the same time?
Maybe if you’re out of things to watch, watch the Pixar movie “Inside Out.” This movie explores the same idea… can we feel two things at the same time?
Yes.
And it’s okay.
I feel two things about reopening Ohio on May 1st.
First, I feel lament. I feel a lot of lament. Lament means sorrow, anguish, groaning and moaning and grief.
We lament the time we’re in quarantine for all the reasons I just said. I lament empty bank accounts. Empty pockets. Empty food pantries. Empty stores. Empty bellies. I lament hugs. I miss and mourn my daughter’s school. I have no idea why! I woke up in the middle of the night and realized she’ll never see her classroom again and I cried. Oh, she’ll physically see the room some year… but it won’t be HER classroom anymore. With her cubby and her art on the walls.
But I’m also lamenting the ending of quarantine. I anguish over the thought that ending the quarantine too early will lead to a spike in deaths. I’m groaning when we see protesters not wearing masks and demanding reopening the state now. I feel anxious sorrow thinking about poor actions now will lead to longer quarantines than if we stick to it the first time around.
I haven’t sympathy for the people demanding haircuts. I’ve suffered scissors and another can too. Hair is not as important as life.
But I do have sympathy for the people choosing between having electricity or water. Homelessness or medication. I have sympathy for the people trying to do the very best for their children in some of the most trying of circumstances.
And I have sympathy for the people choosing between keeping healthy from the virus and keeping healthy from having their basic needs of food, shelter, and security met.
I have a lot of sympathy for Gov. DeWine and Dr. Acton. What a hard, thin, line they are trying to navigate us along. It’s a line of lament. A line of trying to prevent the most deaths from coronavirus… and from economic instability.
And there’s no perfect way forward. I’m of two emotions. Or rather, a lot of emotions. If you’ve already seen Inside Out, picture my emotion room being ruled by a pack of squirrels and terriers. EVERY emotion button is being pushed.
And with EVERY button pushed, it means I do really silly things like cry at sappy commercials and laugh way too hard at email forwards.
I once read an argument that scripture cannot be true because it presents God as too varied. God is shown as having wrath and sacrificial love. And people do great evil and great good in God’s name. If being “on task” and logical were a prerequisite of being true, I’d never be true. I’m much too mixed up inside.
This tells me that being mixed up, having conflicting wants and conflicting emotions, is actually way more true. Scripture is a collection of authentic snapshots of how people felt about the world, and God, and each other. It’s an album of the human heart communing with the divine heart.
And its messy. Because we have messy hearts.
And that is okay.
This is the Sunday we usually talk about the walk to Emmaus. Let me read it to you to trigger your memory. It is fully of conflicting, messy, emotions.
Luke 24:13-35 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
SO many emotions here!
Do you feel the lament in this story? The two disciples had been in Jerusalem. They followed Jesus of Nazareth, the prophet of mighty words and deeds. The man who stood before all the people and God and was strong. But instead of him redeeming Israel… he was found guilty of insurrection and betrayed. Murdered in capital punishment. Labeled a criminal. Instead of freeing the people, the people sided with their oppressors and killed their messiah. Would be messiah, anyways. We had hoped. Now we haven’t hope. Now women are saying they saw him rose up from the dead. But no one else has. What kind of awful hope is that?
The two disciples, sometimes pictured as two men, and sometimes pictured as a man and a woman, stop their walking. They stand still. Looking sad. How can this stranger not know all the awful news?
Anger. Sorrow. Lament. Frustration. Hopelessness. Disappointment. Numbness. Feeling lost.
We can read a lot of emotions into these two disciples.
I feel like how it would be really nice to meet a stranger who told me I didn’t need to be lamenting coronavirus. And instead of belittling me, and giving me false data to support their view, they showed me with my own trusted traditions how all of this turns out good. I’d like a stranger to walk with me all day long and explain how, in the end, all of this will be made right. I’d want that stranger to stay longer and keep giving me good news too.
Tell me good stories. Tell me of the silver lining. Make my heart burn! For too long its felt cold and sad and depressed and lonely. Wake me up! Feed me this bread of life! Kindle my fire!
Maybe the stranger would remind me of strange miracles. The stranger would say, do you remember when the economy and worship of money stepped aside for people. And how, for 40 days, 1 in 5 Ohioans, or 2,400,000 people, were unemployed to try to save the lives of 600,000 Ohioans. Maybe the stranger would tell me of how school teachers and cafeteria workers and bus drivers are risking their lives to prepare food and get it out to kids who depend on school lunches to not starve. Maybe he’d tell me how air pollution, noise pollution, and water pollution drastically dropped and the earth began to heal itself. Maybe the stranger would tell me that the kingdom of God has drawn near. And we have a glimpse of it.
A glimpse of a different way of living.
A way more godly. Where people go out of their way to care for one another. Where people choose to be better stewards of God’s world and creation. Where people LOVE, deeply from their hearts, strangers.
A way that is truly loving God, loving ourselves, and loving our human and non-human neighbors.
The stranger would want to walk on. But I would beg them to stay. Stay! Keep giving me hope! Keep reassuring me! Keep opening my eyes! Tell me more and more of this good news!
And maybe they would stay.
I’d intend to set for them dinner and serve them. But the stranger takes over serving. The stranger prays, and then breaks the bread with a twinkle in their eye and hands it to everyone.
– Bam! –
I know. My eyes are opened. Hebrews 13:2 “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.”
Or Jesus himself.
The Lord has risen indeed, and appeared to me in the breaking of the bread with strangers.
The Lord is risen indeed, and appears to me in giving hospitality to strangers.
The Lord is risen indeed, walked up alongside me and I never realized it until later, in hindsight, that Jesus was there on that long journey the whole way.
Snuck up beside me in the guise of a stranger. Asked me what was on my mind. Listened. Wholly listened even through he already knew. And then helped me process.
And when I begged to pay him back, gave me a blessing instead.
St. Michael’s, we’re walking in a valley shadowed by death. We are between the horror at the start – in Jerusalem – and our destination, our safe harbor. We are between the coronavirus starting and the virus having a vaccine.
But we’re not walking alone.
Jesus is risen.
And as we lament and are sorrowful, he’s listening. He’s inviting us to listen to one another. Even though we all KNOW what’s going on with each other. We KNOW we’re bored, we’re home, we’re poor, we’re frustrated, we’re scared, we’re anxious, we’re focusing on surviving… He invites us to listen anyways. Jesus knew what happened in Jerusalem. He lived — and died — and relived it! But listening to someone validates their experience. It says – yes. This is real.
And it hurts.
And it’s scary.
And we’ll get through it.
By listening, we affirm someone’s personhood. We say their emotions matter. We say THEY matter.
It’s not about new news. It’s about being heard. As Jesus listened to the two, we’re to listen to each other.
Being heard helps heal broken hearts. Helps soothe the feelings of isolation and sadness. Being heard lets us rest more securely.
I am seen.
I am heard.
My experience matters.
My experience of mixed up emotions. My rolled up fear of Golgotha and my joy of the Ressurection. My mixed up anxiety to ease economic strive, to fend off starvation and homelessness, and my anxiety to ease hospitals and give enough time for a vaccine to be developed. My experience of being insane in the insanity of the world is actually very sane.
Normal.
Anyone in such a time as ours would be feeling these ways.
They’d have squirrels and terriers lose in their emotions control room too.
Jesus walks alongside us and lets us pour it all out.
And then Jesus then offers a conversation. Let’s talk about this! The good, the bad, the funny, the sorrowful. Let’s see if we can do some theology. Doing theology is simply seeking where God is in a situation.
You do theology every day. Every time you ask God ‘why’; every time you pray; every time you consider a moral choice… you’re doing theology. “What would Jesus do?” “Now, what will I do?” “What did God do?” “Now what will I do?” The Spirit is there prodding these and helping us think them through.
On the road to Emmaus Jesus not only comes along side and accompanies his disciples, he gives them tools, theology, to think through their problems.
Jesus is alongside us now and offering tools. The tools Jesus offered the disciples are our tools : the words of the prophets and law. The words of scripture. The words of our ancestors who have been in dire straits before.
We have the book of lamentations. We have the book of Psalms. We have Jesus on the cross asking, “My Lord, why have you forsaken me?” and Jesus rising from the grave, victorious.
We have scripture as every much as mixed up emotionally as we are. And it provides us words to try to explain all the chaos going on inside of us. It provides us rituals to help sooth our anxious bodies. It provides us ways to think about our world that reassure us God is on our side, God is working with us to bring about good, and God is BY our side, experiencing the beauty and horror it is to be alive, to love, and to be loved.
St. Michael’s, it’s okay to laugh and cry. It’s okay to make macabre jokes. It’s okay to cry over spilt milk. It’s okay to laugh through tears and cry through laughter. Jesus did too. The disciples and apostles did too. And it’s totally okay to hand this mess to your companions. We’re walking with you on this same road. And among us is Jesus, perhaps not yet seen, but he’s here. Together, we’re in this together.
May God bless the space between us until we meet again. Amen.
Pastor Whitney Bruno Sermons 