A Love Letter to my Congregation

A sermon based on 1 Peter 2: 2-10 (Preached on the morning of my ordination)

Before I am ordained by you all today, I think you should know about few things about me.

First, I never wanted to be a pastor.  It was never something I even envisioned as a possibility.  I had no role models for this.

I never actually met a female pastor until High School when I met Kathy Weaver Wenger.  I remember being shocked by her role and by her two last names.  It was beyond my understanding that a woman would hold on to her own name and identity AND would break all the rules of the bible and become a pastor.

I had a chance to talk to Kathy a few years ago–I commented on how radical I thought it was at the time.  She shared with me the incredible difficulties she had working in the Lancaster Mennonite community as a female pastor.  I cannot even begin to imagine what she faced–it was because of the courageous women pastors like Kathy, that I can stand here today.

While she was the first female pastor I’d ever met, there was female postor in the town I grew up in.  At the Methodist church in Quinton, New Jersey.  In my family, we talked about this pastor we’d never met like she was the devil.  Well, maybe not quite the devil–there were the the really bad people, the lady pastors, then the devil.

I never wanted to be a pastor because it was never something that was an option.  But, I was always interested in the Bible.  I aspired to teach the Bible, or be a missionary, because those were appropriate roles for women.

Second, ordination is a bit about being set apart, about being singled out.  And I feel uncomfortable about that.  Because I don’t like to be singled out.  You may not know that about me, because I seem pretty pretty comfortable up here, and I don’t mind looking foolish in front of you from time to time.  But I’m really more comfortable in a group, than I am being singled out.  I’m much more of a choir singer, than a soloist.

So, I’ve been doing a bit of thinking and reading over this last year about what all this means for me to be ordained, to be singled out and called out.  And this is what I’ve come to understand:

It’s not just me that feels a little squeamish about ordination.  As a tradition, there is a strangeness to a setting apart of an individual that gives Mennonites some pause.  This tradition is about choosing to do this together–to follow Jesus, to journey in discipleship, etc..  Individualistic faith doesn’t resonate as much in this understanding of being a community of faith.

But, looking at the stories of ordination in the scripture this is what I understand about it– ordination is something that benefits the person being set apart, but it also benefits the entire church community.  Ordination is a blessing not just for me, but for all of us.  This is a covenant between all of you, me and God.  And covenants, while intensely personal, are also public.  We mark these moments with a celebration, just as we mark commitments like baptism, and marriage with a ritual and celebration.

In this covenant, I receive blessings for ministry, and I promise to serve the church to the best of my ability.  I promise to be faithful to the gospel, to serve the church and see to its well being.  And you promise to open yourself to grow in Christ, and to be guided by the Spirit.  And you promise to support my work as this congregation’s shepherd.

In our reading from I Peter, the author is writing to a struggling Christian community.  They are going through difficult times because they have a distinct way of life that is not appreciated in their wider community.

This book is a word of encouragement to a struggling community.  Peter begins by reminding the community why they gather.  They gather to be nourished spiritually.  They gather to grow and learn together.  And they gather to build a spiritual home on Jesus the cornerstone.

Peter tells them that in building a spiritual house, they are “a royal priesthood.”  In being this community of spiritual nourishment, of learning and growth, and of building the beloved community together, we are the royal priesthood.

Priests are typically understood as folks that mediate between humans and God.  And that works here.  We show the love of God in the way we treat each other.  We are the grace and mercy of God when we treat each other with love.

That is all of our responsibility.  And that is what we do here.

I feel honored to  have grown out of this community.  I was called of this community into seminary.  I was called by this congregation to be your pastor.  It was in this royal priesthood–this place of spiritual nourishment–that I realized who I have been called to be.  I have been called to be that female pastor that I used to despise.  I have been called–with both of my last names–to represent you in the wider Mennonite community.  I have been called to walk with you.

It is in this place that many of you have been formed into the people God has called you to be.  You’ve declared that here in your baptisms, or in joining yourself with this community in your spiritual journey, or in declaring your commitment to raise your child in faith, or in the vows you made here to your life partner.  Its here that you have made relationships that have carried you through journeys of joy and celebration, and times of mourning and loss.

Ordination is especially powerful today because this oldest Mennonite church in new world, the one that has often forged its own path, and understood Anabaptism particular to this urban context, is now forging its own path again.  I’m not the first to be ordained by this congregation–I’m the 3rd in my memory–but with this ordination, you have called me from within this priesthood, to be that person who will shepherd, walk alongside.  And with each ordination we do, it seems that we celebrate more joyfully, make more noise at the party, and more confidently express our call.

This is the place where I first came to be nourished spiritually.  This is where I continued to come to grow and learn about Jesus, through the scripture, through our experiences together, and through eating, laughing, crying and rejoicing with you.  This is the place where I learned about Jesus, and where I built a new foundation.

This being set apart later today is in the context of being called from within.  This is the royal priesthood, the holy people of God, calling one of their own to lead and serve among them.

I’m encouraged by this text from I Peter today.  Because, as we come here for spiritual nourishment, to grow and develop our faith together, and build this community, we have promises, from God:

See I am laying a cornerstone in Zion, an approved stone, chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.

Today we stand on the promises of God.  We believe that God calls all of us in the royal priesthood.  And we build our spiritual homes on that promise.  That promise brings forth pastors that never imagined they could or should be pastors, it brings queer folks into baptism and church leadership, and ordination, empowers the quiet to speak God’s power, and leaders to collaborate and work together in making God’s reign known.

Today we are a royal priesthood, celebrating the work of God among us.  This ordination is a recognition of God at work, a celebration of a God who can bring us all to new understandings, who can bring us to see new ways of being in the world, a God that shows us hope, gives us courage, and brings us to new life.

Once we were not a people, but now we are the people of God.  Once there was no mercy for us, but now we have found mercy.  AMEN.

Hearts Burning

Sermon based on Luke 24: 13-35

We’ve been doing a lot of celebrating here lately.  Beginning with Easter two weeks ago, we celebrated the resurrection with spectacular singing, a beautiful, handmade kite, communion and a baptism.  That was–as far as I’m concerned–one of the most amazing services I’ve been part of for a long time.  It was quite the celebration for an event that is at the center of our faith tradition.  The Resurrection.

But after the communion bread is eaten, the candles are blown out, and the plastic Easter eggs are returned to their boxes for next year’s hunt.  After the festivities are over, then what? What does all of this mean to us, to celebrate this resurrection?

In today’s gospel story, we meet two disciples.  Cleopas, and another unnamed disciple.  Cleopas is not one of the original twelve, but still a faithful follower of Jesus.  Because nothing in these texts are unintentional, the unnamed disciple is an opportunity for us to enter into the story, to fill in that blank with our own name.

These two are heading to a town that is a two or three hour walk from Jerusalem.  And they are talking–disbelievingly–about all the things they’d heard that day.  Jesus walked up to them, but they did not recognize him.  And Jesus asked them questions–What are you talking about?  What things have happened?

The disciples were stunned that this stranger had no idea what had happened in Jerusalem.  They assumed he was a resident alien, and undocumented immigrant.  So they told this stranger who Jesus was.  They told the stranger what happened to Jesus, and how disappointed they were that Jesus was not the person they thought he was going to be.

And then they shared their disbelief that the women disciples who went to the tomb claimed to have seen Jesus.  In fact, they called what the women had seen a vision.

Their interpretation was distant and had no grounding in their own experience.  Jesus was out there.  They hoped he would be the messiah, that he would be more personal to them, but he wasn’t.  Those other people claimed to have seen Jesus alive and the tomb empty, but that was out there, in the distance.  Away from their hearts.  Jesus was not distant, but right there in the midst of them, and they didn’t even recognize him.

Jesus admonished the disciples for their disbelief, but he didn’t stop there.  Instead he re-interpreted all that they’d seen and heard.  He reinterpreted the story through the lens of Jesus’ death and resurrection.

It’s a kind of funny moment, because here’s Jesus, and the disciples don’t recognize him.  And Jesus is retelling the story of the people of Israel through the lens of his own resurrection.

It’s kindof like this.  Something happens to you.  You are sad and hurt about it.  Your vision about the whole thing become myopic, and in your hurt you begin to interpret things in a certain narrow way.  But, then someone asks you how you are doing, you tell your story, and they look at you as if you are from another planet.  “What you are actually saying is…..” and they go on to reinterpret what you’ve said, in some way that you’d never thought of.  They pan back from your myopic perspective and show you all the things you are missing in your own experience.

It’s eye opening.  And it’s good to have friends like this–friends that can speak the truth to you, and help you see things differently.  Those are the kinds of friends you want to walk with.

So, when it looked like Jesus (who they hadn’t yet realized was Jesus) was going on ahead of them, they begged him to stay.  They offered him hospitality and food.  And Jesus did what he did in the upper room the night before his crucifixion.  He broke bread, blessed it and gave it to them.  Such a simple act.  And that simple act opened their eyes to see who is was that was walking and talking with them all that time.

And then, just like that, Jesus was gone.

After the death of Jesus, Luke was framing the next important question for the followers of Jesus, “Given the resurrection, how do we understand the scripture?”  In rabbinical tradition, it’s not unusual to say, “We read the text through the eyes of Moses” or someone else.  It’s a way of interpretation.

Here, Jesus does something similar for us.  The disciples are lost.  They don’t know how to interpret what’s happened.  And so Jesus interprets the scripture, from the beginning, telling the story through the lens of Jesus.

But Jesus does something more here than just tell the story through the lens of his life, death and resurrection.  Jesus brought the disciples into the story.  He brought them in when he continued to walk with them, when he accepted their hospitality, and when he turned and offered hospitality to them.  The story of God’s saving love beginning with Abraham–the wandering Aramaen–and continuing to the resurrection of Jesus and beyond.  It continues in the shared meal that they had with Jesus and into the shared meal we have together.

This story makes Jesus a lens for interpreting the story of God’s work in the world.  It is I AM interpreting I AM’s self to them all along. That alone makes this story incredibly powerful.

But there is another component to this story–This  story tells us why we worship, and what it means to worship.

We gather every week, to share our lives together.  We read scripture together, confess our doubts and failings.  We read scripture together and understand our lives through the lens of Jesus.

And then we break bread–sometimes at this table, sometimes in each other’s homes, and sometimes downstairs in fellowship hour–we break bread and our eyes are opened.

There are many times in our worship when this may feel boring, ritualistic, lacking in meaning even.  But this is not something to find perfection in.  This is a practice.  We gather together to share our lives, and to tell our story through the eyes of Jesus.  We tell the story of the great I AM, a story that includes us, a story that invites us in, that makes us part of it.  There is no distance in this story.  It is intimate, it is personal.  It is our story.

And it is brought to life, made personal, in the breaking of bread, in the sharing together.

Not every Sunday can be like Easter.  Not every Sunday involves gorgeous kites, baptisms, and breathtakingly beautiful singing.  But every Sunday, like those disciples did that first day of the week, we gather, we share our stories, and we see our lives differently.  We see our lives not in confusion, but through the lens of a God who loves us, of a God whose son was killed but returned to life–not with human vengeance, but with love.  We hear that story of love, told to us through the eyes of Jesus.  And when we gather together, around this table, giving and receiving hospitality, we see Jesus among us.

Today is not Easter proper, but it is the season of Easter, the ongoing celebration of the resurrection of Jesus.  Today we hear the testimony of Thea and Katie, and we bless their decision to be baptized and follow in the way of Jesus.  And today, we celebrate by breaking bread together, by sharing it with each other.

And because we share the story today, our hearts burn within us, for we have seen the risen Christ among us.  AMEN.

I Doubt It

Sermon based on John 20: 19-31

During the season of Lent, Germantown Mennonite has been talking about fear, and what’s on the other side of it.  We’ve identified corporately and personally those things that can stand in the way of relationship with God and each other.

But in order to get to the other side of the fear, we’ve had to wade into some difficult  spiritual and emotional territory.  We’ve had to walk through the muck of our fears to get a glimpse of  what may be on the other side.

And we learned–at Easter last Sunday–that upon hearing that Jesus was alive at dawn on the first day of the week, the women disciple were “full of fear and great joy.”  The fear was still there, but the joy was greater.  The fear was still there, but the joy overshadowed the fear.

And then we get to today’s text.  The story of Thomas, the “doubting disciple.”  I do feel bad for Thomas, every year when we come to this text the week after Easter.  The week after Easter, we’re still high from the joy of new life, and the hope of resurrection.  And we get to Thomas and he feels like a…I don’t know…a downer.

Thomas, have a little faith, man!  Jesus is alive!  Let’s all sing the Hallelujah chorus!

But by the end of the first day of the week, the day that the women saw Jesus resurrected, and the grave empty, the disciples were back to being fearful.  And with good cause.  The people of Jerusalem were angry, convinced that the disciples were playing a trick on everyone with this resurrection thing.  And they were out for blood. So, the disciples were back in the upper room, that same place where they shared their last meal with Jesus.  They were hiding out, waiting for things to cool off.  But Thomas was not there when Jesus came through the locked doors and breathed the peace of Christ on them.

So, when Thomas heard this news–that the rest of the disciples had seen and that the women saw early that morning– he couldn’t believe it.  “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hand and put my finger in the wound, I will not believe.”

Thanks for that powerfully visceral  image, Thomas.  Thanks to thomas, we have a whole bunch of classical images of Thomas putting his finger into Jesus’ fleshy wound on his side.  And every year it makes me feel–for lack of a better word–icky.

The traditionally interpretation is that Thomas didn’t have enough faith because he demanded to see Jesus in the flesh, for insisting that he must put his finger into Jesus’ fresh wounds in order to believe.  But, this is one of those very human moments in the gospel that I really relate to.  I appreciate Thomas’ honesty, his true disbelief out there in the open for all to see.

The day I turned 18 my mom was diagnosed with colon cancer.  A pretty awful entrance into adulthood, but we were all hopeful that she’d be fine.  The first cancer diagnosis didn’t shake my faith–it was the recurrence six short months later, after she’d had surgery and a lot of chemotherapy.

My mom called me at work to tell me that the cancer came back.  I was sad and angry.  I was sad that my mom had to experience cancer and it’s treatments again, and I was furious that the almighty God would allow this.

I grew up in a pretty conservative church–the kind of place where questions, particularly questions about God, were not allowed.  God is like this, and if you have questions or doubts about that, there’s the door.

So, when I expressed anger about my mom’s cancer and my doubts about God’s presence in that, it was really scary to my family.  Doubt meant no faith.  Doubt meant I was messing with the Lord of the Universe, and was just asking for it.

But, that’s not what was happening to me.  I was demanding answers of God as Job did in the Hebrew scriptures, but it didn’t mean I didn’t have faith.  It meant that we were having a conversation–an honest, angry, conversation–perhaps it was the first honest conversation God and I ever had.

My mom’s cancer didn’t kill my faith.  After my mom’s death, my faith remained.  My questions began a long conversation with God and I.  And my questions and demands of God were probably the only thing that kept me going.  In fact it was my questions that brought me .

Thomas was a faithful disciple, a disciple that understood Jesus more articulately than most of them in the story did.  In fact, if you are following the lectionary for lent, you’ll remember the story a few weeks ago of Lazarus’ resurrection by Jesus.  Thomas made an appearance in this story.  When Jesus told the disciples that Lazarus has died, Thomas said, knowing the danger of their situation, “Let us go with Jesus, that we may die with him.”

Thomas understood that Jesus’ message was putting them at danger.  He understood the risk. Thomas was a man of great faith, of great courage, a disciple that understood the risk of discipleship.

This is a disciple that had great faith in Jesus, but happened to be the only one to not see Jesus that terrifying evening after the resurrection.  And his friends claims of resurrection was pretty outlandish–would we not also say to our friends, “I doubt it!” if they told us such a thing?!  Probably!

And for Thomas, it took him a full week to come to beleive that Jesus was really alive.  And that was when Jesus appeared to the disciples again in the upper room, showed Thomas his wounds, and invited Thomas to touch him.  And all that time–in Thomas’ doubt–he remained with the disciples. Skeptical, but bound together by their love for Jesus, and their identity as disciples.

This move from Lent to Easter, from death to resurrection, fear to joy–it doesn’t happen in an instant.  It can take a while for us to figure it out.  We can have such high expectations for ourselves too–that with the resurrection, everything changed cosmically in an instant, and therefore our transformation should be instantaneous.

While Jesus changed everything in an instant, discipleship is a journey.  We don’t arrive like Dr. Who in the Tardis, magically skipping the journey to get to the right spot.  Our journey to understanding Jesus and his resurrection is a process that happens over time.  And that journey is hardly a straight line.  It is up and down hills, on smooth roads and rugged ones, in darkness and light, in sunshine, rain and snow.  (This year, more snow than usual.)

But in this circuitous journey of discipleship, we are never alone.  God is always with us.  God’s people are walking with us, and God is guiding us.

I once asked my Episcopalian friend how he could recite the apostles creed every Sunday–”You can’t possibly believe all of that, can you?”  Something any self-respecting Mennonite would say about a creed, right?

He said, “Goodness no!  I don’t believe a lot of it! But the church does.  And when I have difficult with believing in a part of it on a Sunday, I know the church believes it for me.”

And we do.  We hold the faith when others can’t.  We support each other through times of doubt, of fear and of anger–we support each other, not with judgement, but with love, because we’ve been there too.

Just a few days after Easter, where we’ve celebrated the certainty of Jesus’ resurrection, we gather today  to express our doubts, to return to a moment where the fear feels larger than the hope, where the doubt feels greater than the joy.  To wonder if things are really as we’ve been told.  This is all a part of our faith journey.

Today, we can feel free to be a little more like Thomas, honest about our doubts, sincere about our disbelief. St. Thomas, the man who had doubts until he saw Jesus come into a locked room, saw his wounds and knew–like the other disciples–that it really was Jesus.

This same apostle–who had a time of doubt–went on to start the church in India.  This apostle–who famously doubted the resurrection–declared Jesus to be his Lord and his God.  And he went on to tell others about the risen Christ.

Let us enter into this season of Easter, a time of joy and celebration, holding our faith and doubts, sharing them on this journey of discipleship.  Blessed are you, people of God, who are honest about the fear, but join with joy on this journey together.  AMEN.