Sarcastic Lutheran

House For All Sinners and Saints' website

The first stage of our website is up:

House For All Sinners and Saints

Pente-chaos

Bible Study

House's Bible Study.  1st and 3rd Thursday of the month 6pm in the basement of St. Mark's Coffee Shop on 17th between Vine and Race in Denver

Areopogus Sermon

Easter 6A

  1 Peter 3:13-22
(3:15-16) Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; ¹⁶yet do it with gentleness and reverence

Acts 17:22-31
(Acts 17:16)While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was deeply distressed to see that the city was full of idols... (Act 17:22-23)Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. ²³For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you

As a good Jewish boy, Paul has been almost hard wired to be offended at the sight of idols because the Hebrew scriptures are full of cautionary tales against idolatry. 
In my Old Testament class in seminary I remember laughing about how the Hebrew people would be going along just fine with HaShem …who would be providing them with signs, and miracles, and prophets to speak God’s word, all pretty convincing stuff, but then it seems like 20 minutes later their neighbors would show them a statue of a cow or something and inevitably they’d be like “ oooh sparkly!”, dropping Ha-Shem like a bad habit. It can be hard for us today to see the appeal of a cow statue really. 
So anyway, Paul, who’s kind of just sight seeing in Athens until his buddies can catch up with him, is a little creeped out by the idols that populate the city.   
I imagine the Athenians (as our epistle from today says)  demanding from Paul an accounting of the hope within him.
It is here that Paul, that crazy thorn in the side eccentric afflicted to the core with the dangerous beauty of the gospel, encounters the Epicureans and the Stoics. 
The epicureans – for whom pleasure is the greatest good, not easily dismissible, libertine, anything goes pleasure, but measured moderate pleasure that endures.
This is we who tend to mask self-indulgence with virtue.   Perhaps in the form of a brand new Prius, or hording away all our wealth in socially conscious investments, or maybe through believing in salvation through “self-care”. 
And then there are the stoics seeking to be dispassionate.  This is us who engage mightily in spiritual and personal disciplines as though they were a sin management program providing the avoidance of suffering through detachment.

So perhaps it is actually us before whom Paul stands saying:
People of Denver, I see how extremely religious you are in every way.  For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship: the flagship REI store to the God of outdoors based fitness, the Invesco field to the Orange and Blue horse God, and the smaller shrines dotting the landscape of the city dedicated to Starbuck the God of corporate coffee to which the devout offer small offerings daily, sometimes 2 or 3 times.  You are indeed, religious in every way.

Perhaps we are also too easily distracted by our own sparkly cow statues. 
And if this is true, how then can we ever account for the hope that is within us when we construct our own images of God?
It can feel inevitable, this impulse to construct the shapes which we feel comfortable having God fit into, but in the end, they offer little hope. There’s the red white and blue God that unexplainably blesses America and not Darfur.
There’s the dollar sign God who wants everyone to be as rich as Joel Osteen. 
And there’s the liberal academic God, sitting in heaven in his elbow-patched tweed blazer nodding his head in agreement with us. 
But here in Acts Paul doesn’t give us any of these. 
Instead Paul comes to us here in our own areapagus to bring us again to the simple elegance of a God who defies being known through these objects of false hope, and yet is never far from us.
Paul, wild and unleashed in the midst of the stoics and epicureans proclaims that God has provided our boundaries and limitations as a way for us to grope for God. 
So maybe our own inability to define the boundaries of God is just what draws us to the cross.
The very inadequacy of our own reason and imagination is perhaps just where God is to be found. 
A God found in the very self-giving folly of the cross.
If God indeed were to be found in the confines of human construction the shape we chose would never be cruciform.
Yet it is at the foot of the cross that our groping ends.
Here we find this God of whom Paul speaks.
This God who is so with us and for us that God enters into this messy life, pisses off all those who seek to exercise power over, and dies a scandalous, innocent death. 
How does Paul account for the hope that is within him?  In the resurrection.  That outrageous punchline at the end of the greatest joke in history.   
It’s the utimate plot turn at the end of the story which makes you rethink all the events that led up to it, only for you this resurrection doesn’t happen at the end of the story but at the beginning in your baptism, because as our epistle today tells us,  we are an Easter people baptised through Christ’s resurrection. 

In our baptism God calls to us - the gropers.
Even in our stoic efforts to transcend attachment and our epicurean impulse toward self-obsession we cannot contain the one who calls for us through the wild and unbidden gospel. 
Here we find the stark lushness of a God who pours out God’s self. 
A self-emptying God who shows up in cruciform ways we ourselves would never choose, or imagine, or create.
It is this God and not the ones we create who has given us life and claims us and names us in our baptism. 
And it is this new life granted daily by the One in whom you live and move and have your being in which you CAN account for the hope that is within you.  A hope more real than even the  sparkly-ist of cows could ever offer.

Our first worship in the new space

This past Sunday House for All Sinners and Saints experienced the first of our monthly worship services.  The space we get to use is absolutely perfect: a hundred year old Lutheran church building minus the pews.  The congregation disbanded over 2 decades ago and for almost as long it has been (and continues to be) the 4 Wind Cultural Survival Project - a Native American community center.  They have allowed us to use the space on Sunday nights.  We are grateful for the relationship that is forming between the two communities but are fully aware that historically when white folks have entered Indian space things haven't gone too well.  Being guests of another cultural group in our own town is not an experience many of us as people of privilege have had and as difficult as it potentially may be for us, we see it as an opportunity to be challenged in some really beautiful and important ways.

The service was curated by the entire core crew (there are 9 of us, with 2 more joining this week).  Jason put together some ambient techno for the 10 minutes before and after the service and during the stations of the resurrection.  We sat in a semi-circle facing the West wall, above the stained glass was projected the words "I am the resurrection and the life".  The service was a traditional Eucharistic liturgy including remembrance of baptism complete with aspersion (sprinkling water from the baptismal font on folks).  The music was simple Taize chant led by a cello, a guitar and an angelic voice (Andie!).  The leader's portion of the liturgy and the gospel reading was shared by 13 different people from where we sat.  Only for the remembrance of baptism (at the font) and the Eucharist liturgy (from the altar) were the leaders standing.  In place of the sermon were the stations of the resurrection; each of the core crew creating a way for folks to experience different resurrection accounts.  Here are a few examples:

* triptych board - on the left the fist half of the John 20 account where Mary Magdalene  doesn't recognize Christ until he speaks her name....middle board ... in large print "Mary" under which are empty quotes for everyone to put their own name which Christ also speaks, on the right the continuation of the passage - in front of which is an icon of Mary Magdalene.

*Another triptych only smaller with rounded tops like an icon.  On the left, the Apostles Creed, with the "I Believe" in larger type.  On the right, the Apostle's Creed, only with "I Don't Believe" in large type beginning each article.  In the middle a question inspired by Thomas - what do we both believe and not believe at the same time?  A paper was provided for people to answer this.

*Recalling the account where Christ meets his friends on the beach - friends who were depressed about having to go back to "normal life", 2 trays of sand with small rocks and shells and a forks to move the sand around offered people a tactile meditation on how Christ calls us both into and out of life as normal which changes the contours of our lives.

37 people attended including 5 children and several people over 50.  A young woman who "hates church" (raised Missouri  Synod) sat and wept.  She told her girlfriend (one of our core crew) that it was beautiful and she'll come back.

I couldn't have been more pleased and the "success" of the service proves that I am not the one making this whole thing happen.

House's Who We Are

***Before I get any more scolding comments I thought I'd clarify that the following statements are the result of a long and prayerful effort to be as honest as possible about the characteristics of the group of people who have gathered together over the last 9 months to do the initial work around developing a new worshiping community.  Rather than compiling a list of who we wish we were, or who we ideally think we are, we chose to just stick with who we and our friends and partners really are (hopefully with a modicum of humility around the fact that we can't do this perfectly).  Worshiping communities, despite what most would say are niche groups.  We are admitting we too are niche.  We are not trying to be all things to all people, but we are located in a very particular cultural context in which we seek to create a Word and Sacrament community.  My friend David put it like this: "Look at Chipotle.  They are really clear about who they are and what they do; Burritos.  They are not going to start cooking burgers, but are burger eaters welcome there? Absolutely."  We also are seriously aware of our need to be in relationship with "the other" whether that be more conservative Christians, people of color, those less fortunate, those more fortunate etc.  To that end we are guests in a space which is the 4 Winds Cultural Survival Project - A Native American community center.  In a meeting with some of the leadership of 4 Winds we told them of this document that we created saying who we are and they were impressed that we would be honest enough to admit that we are White.  We hope to be their allies and perhaps even friends.  We also are seeking out prayer partner relationships with close-by worshiping communities regardless of how similar or not we are theologically or culturally, acknowledging our need to be transformed by contact.  And yes, we get the irony of having a particular population in a House for All.

This describes who we are right now.  It does not describe who is welcome.  We wish to welcome all.

Who are we, and for whom do we do this work?

We are people who went to church once and are now Evangelical refugees.

We are people who never stopped going to church, yet are seeking a community that provides a different level of engagement.

We are youngish and adultish.

We resonate more with the mystical and contemplative than the obvious and simplistic.

We work in non-profits (and non-prophets), we are graduate students, social workers and young professionals.

We participate in virtual culture and are tech savvy enough to realize that we are not actually.

We are artists, who mediate progressive culture outside the mainstream.

We are post-modern urban dwellers who are delighted to not live close to such things as “Applebees”.

We are terminally ironic, white, and educated.

We are the injured who are striving to be self-aware; struggle is an almost constant.

Our cynicism can sometimes just be masking our confusion and vulnerability.

Our idealism is based in the trust that transformation is possible in the individual, the church and the whole world.

We are queer.

Some have children, some live alone, some are alone, some are partnered.

We tend to over-think things because we’re geeky and analytical.

Some of us are rooted here, but most are somewhat transient.

We are friends and allies of all the above.

House For All Sinners and Saints

House For All has a facebook group now...join up!

We will start our monthly worship services next week.
Sunday April 13th 4pm at 5th and Bannock (old church on corner)
Eucharist and stations of the resurrection.

God's Politics Blog Posting

I seem to be spending so much of my time writing: sermons, the TBN book, articles, stuff for hire, and the God's Politics Blog.  I'm sorry to my half a dozen faithful readers....no time to blog.  I will soon.

For now check out my God's Politics posting

Pax,
Nadia

Maundy Thursday Sermon for the House Retreat

I imagine in the room that night the friends and followers of Jesus enjoying each other’s company, glad to be away from the crowds.  They have no idea at the time that this is the night they will never forget.  When I was working as a chaplain at the hospital, I noticed that the family and friends of those who had suddenly or unexpectedly died would in a grief so thick it sucked the oxygen out of the room, they’d gaze off and say “Just this morning we were eating breakfast and talking about baseball”  or “We were just walking the dog, laughing about the kids”  The life changing seems always bracketed by the mundane.  The quotidian wrapped around the profound like plain brown paper concealing either a bar of gold or an improvised explosive devise or sometimes both.  In a slice of a moment we discover the gold beneath the paper or the bomb and then absolutly everything changes, but when we recall it in our now forever changed life, from this side of the event we start with the plain brown wrapping, it looked like every other package, every other morning every other walk.  We were just eating dinner upstairs in some guy’s house, when ...everything changed.
It had been quite a couple of weeks really. Jesus had outdone himself with that whole raising Lazarus thing.  The leaders at the temple were so pissed.  Especially with that totally cool entry into Jerusalem.  Whoever thought of that palm branch thing was genius.   Hosanna in the highest indeed. That’s our guy. 
But there they were just eating dinner upstairs in some guy’s house when …all of the sudden Jesus, the teacher, messiah, LORD is taking off his cloak and as though he completely lost his mind is wrapping around himself not the mantle of a mighty ruler, but the towel of a servant girl.

Well, you’re not getting anywhere near my nasty feet Jesus.
To have one’s feet washed, to be served by another is for them to see and to know that you are covered with grime and filth. I’ll just keep that to myself, thank you very much.  But the dirt is inevitable and not the result of anything but our journey as the broken.  To not have the dirt is to not have been on the road at all.   Dirt is simply the inevitable experience of the ambulatory.  Yes we too need to be washed of the buildup of being simply ourselves in the world.  As Jesus tells Peter, we are washed in God’s grace and yes entirely clean yet still in need of washing off that which has clung to us, the dusty daily remnant of brokenness.  But just the feet, and it comes off pretty easily, with the hearing of the word with the nurishment of Christ’s body and blood, with the proclaimation of forgiveness, with the power of reconciliation.  It comes off of us in beloved community.   This community gathered around Water, Bread, Wine.  The brown paper of human existence, yet wrapped around God’s own self. 

By this everyone will know that you are my disciples: if you have love for one another.  If you have Agape for one another. Agape, the derivative love which is only possible from the indwelling of God’s spirit.  Agape one another.  Not try and manage a deep fondness for the irritating.   Not try and create warm feelings toward the unlikable, the socially awkward, the unlovely.  Jesus knew better than to imply that if his followers could only muster up enough niceness they would be up to the task of following him.  Instead here in plain brown paper wrapping is God incarnate wrapped in the towel of a servant girl washing us from that which separates us from self, neighbor and God.  Here is Christ poured out for the sake of the world, offering God’s own self as nourishment for the journey.  God’s self-giving provides us a source for the love we share, a love of the servant God poured out for us and for the sake of the world. 
AMEN.

Lazarus and the Valley of the Dry Bones Sermon

   

Texts:  Ezekiel 47:1-14, John 11: 1-45

Just when this Lenten desert seems too much to bear, today we walk through a graveyard.  And what awaits us but a little Easter.  A foretaste of the feast to come  surrounded by corpses and a boneyard.  Here amidst the dusty remnant of a wasted humanity we see God’s spirit breath life into a valley of dry bones and raise the dead.  Ezekiel had prophesied to Israel for some time, but still the temple lay in ruin like bones bleached white in the unmerciful brightness of humiliation, conquest and exile. At the beginning of the book Ezekiel is told by God to eat the scroll and after eating it he was THEN told to go speak God’s word to them because God’s word does what it says.  We too get to delve so deeply into this word that we practically are EATING it.  God’s word made flesh.  God’s word proclaimed.  God’s word in holy text.  The word of God that raises the dead.  Maybe it looks like tasteless paper, simple wafers and wine, a boring preachers but , as Ezekiel tells us in chapter 2,  the Word is as sweet as honey. 
    God did not insist that Ezekiel agree with God’s word or that he even understand God’s word.  He was simply told to eat the word, then proclaim the word.  DO not pass go do not collect.  Just eat it and preach it.  And when he did, death was made to become valley dancing life.
     This word is life too for us today.     We need these boneyard tales of resurrection - where two sisters weep over their brother dead now for 4 days.  Exhausted by grief and anger they have no idea what will happen only that if Jesus had been there Lazarus would have lived.  They do not know what Christ’s words will do.
I am the resurrection and the life Jesus says to Martha asking  (before he raises her brother), do you believe this?  Yes, she says.  She does what I never seem to be able to pull off, she says Yes to God, Yes you are the messiah the one coming into the world.  The temptation is then to say that this, this is what God requires of us, this little yes.  But the problem is that we can’t.  Left on our own we cannot choose God, we are too turned in on self for this to happen….and from this sclerotic posture we can only choose self.  As Luther says in the Small Chatecism, I cannot by my own understanding or effort come to my Lord Jesus Christ or believe in him, but I have been called by the Holy Spirit through the Gospel.  We cannot choose God, but God chooses us.  God’s Spirit comes to get us through the word.
So we come here, to again hear the word proclaimed.  We come and hear it in the readings, and the proclaimation and it is sweet as honey.  We hear God’s word in the hymns and the liturgy and the meal and the benediction….like a spiritual special needs class we have to experience God’s word in so many learning modes, tactile, visual, oral, aural, sometime olfactory.  To be reminded that Jesus raises the dead, to have God’s own spirit breath the life giving breath that makes even the driest of bones dance.  And we, like Ezekiel’s dry boney congregation do not have to understand the word, or agree with it, or get anything perfectly right for God’s word to do what it says.  Jesus did not stand at Lazarus’ tomb issuing him an exam to test his doctrinal or liturgical purity.  Jesus did not ask his permission.  Jesus did not give him the chance to say yes or no.  You know why?  He was DEAD.  God made a choice not based on the response, potential acceptance, or worthiness of the recipient, but based on the loving nature of God.   And it is the same choice God makes about us.  To be washed and fed with the sacrament of God’s own life giving self.  Provision for the rest of this journey toward the cross and tomb and then another stone rolled away.  And lest we rely too heavily on our own ability to get it all right, there next to that rolled away stone we again see the hope of our limitedness in the presence of God  - when even sweet Mary Magdalene mistakes the risen Christ for the gardener. 
We like Lazarus need this word of God to call us out of the tomb daily to live as resurrected people, maybe still stinky from the grave, yet still raised to the new life that has already been accomplished by the one of pierced flesh whose word indeed does what it says.
He says of the one who has died unbind him, and let him go.  We too have these strips of that which bind us, our self-centeredness, our self-hatred, or self-grandiosity, and all of it unwraps at God’s word spoken.  Unbind them Jesus says, and like the bones in that dry valley flesh comes on us again, while  strips of cloth fall away like molting sinners. “I will cause my breath to enter you and you shall live” and the linen starts to unwind itself.  “This is my body given for you” unwinding further we see coils of our own bondage drop at our feet.  “You are forgiven”, and again life is restored and our freedom secured.    The Word breathed, proclaimed, the spirit calling us again through the Gospel to new life, water of life, bread of life, word of God made flesh again we daily die and rise in this perverse hope of a God who dies only to be raised, who weeps for our suffering while offering provision of God’s own self for our wholeness. This Lenten boneyard is for us, as sweet as honey.