Reflect and Practice: Be Witnesses Of These Things!

Read:  

Acts 3: 12-19; Psalm 4; 1 John 3:1-7; Luke 24: 36-48

Reflect:

In this week's gospel, the risen Christ appears to the disciples; they are frightened and fail to recognize him. He tells them to be at peace. He explains his resurrection by interpreting scripture. They eat together. They are enlightened, then Jesus leaves. Luke’s account here is very similar to John’s account, with one very important difference. Here in Luke’s account, Jesus commissions them with a very clear vocation saying, “You are witnesses of these things.”  We Episcopalians can get pretty uncomfortable with the word “witness.” We squirm a bit as we envision bible-thumping or people intrusively demanding to know whether we have “been saved.”  We have come to understand that Christianity is personal and private, just as our lives are largely divided between public and private.

But in the early, first-century church, being a Christian automatically meant a public confession and identity. The term “Christian” wasn’t one that followers of Christ gave to themselves. It was coined by outsiders—those who saw their thriving community and chose this word to describe them. Early Christians shared a common life that was unique and visible. Their communities were intended, not primarily to attract new members or keep the buildings in good repair, but to point to the fulfillment of God’s story in the person of Christ by the way they loved others and cared for the weakest among them.  To be “witnesses” meant to live as Christ lived, and love as Christ loved in all spheres of life. Jesus calls us out of individualism into a common life. He invites us to let our faith shape the way we think about and live our lives. He invites us to pay attention to the places where God’s love is at work in our lives and in the world, and to share that good news. We bear witness all the time to movies, accomplishments, and events that amaze us. Christ calls us to use what we love to do, what we are good at doing, and the resources we have to carry the love of Christ out into the world—to be witnesses by our lives!

Practice:

In a notebook this week, jot down moments where you noticed God's love at work in the world or in your life.  Also, Make a list of 5 things you love to do, and 5 things you’re good at. Notice where the items on your lists overlap. Then extend the love of God to someone else through one of the things on your list. Grace and Peace to you!

More Than One Way To Spell Feminism

In a recent blog post (on a progressive mommy blog!) I read a piece meant to reassure moms who work outside the home. It's central message went something like this, "You are teaching your girls that they can be equal to men and boys, and you're teaching your boys that girls and women are their equals." I'm as feminist as they come, and I certainly understand the heart of this argument. I never want working moms to feel a moment of guilt either. They are superheros, helping to support their families and hopefully fulfilling their own vocational dreams at the same time. But what I see as problematic is the statement that working outside of the home helps their children to see them as equal to men. Inherent in this reasoning is the idea that a traditional nine-to-five, working outside the home job, is the standard-bearer of what success and achievement look like. Have you ever heard anyone suggest that men who stay at home with the children are teaching children that men can be equal to women? I haven't. In fact, most men who serve in the role of stay-at-home parent often find themselves fielding unsolicited parenting advice from people on the street, shut out of group play dates, and victims of the ridiculous assumption that they can't find "real" work, or that they're less "manly." 

Let's just listen to what we're really saying here. We are saying that shaping, nurturing, guiding, and managing the lives of children is of less value then other work out in the world. This belief translates into very low pay for nannies, childcare workers, and preschool teachers--those people who are there on the front lines of those first five years of a child's life; the years which study after study confirms are the most crucial years for social, emotional, and cognitive development. Most nannies only make about $35,000 a year, which would never be enough in most States for them to support a family on only that income. Most preschool teachers don't make much more than that, and childcare workers often make barely above minimum wage. We have put our money where our beliefs are. So instead of devaluing people who do the work of raising and nurturing children, why don't we change the narrative, and teach our children that ALL work is valuable. Why don't we celebrate those who successfully teach little humans how to be adults who think of others, who know how to critically think, who know how to put themselves in other people shoes, who know how to cook and manage other life skills, and who understand the inherent value of every human being. 

This kind of work isn't what people do when they can't do other work. We don't become equal to men when we stop doing this kind of work. It is, in itself, an admirable and successful achievement.  If we change the narrative that implies that childcare is less valuable, less prestigious work, then maybe we would create policies that reward the value of ALL work. Then maybe our children would see that it's worth our time, money, and admiration to value the care and guiding of humans, and that men or women can successfully do that. Then maybe we would have more leaders who value the care of every human being, and who create a culture that translates that value into deserved pay, humane and egalitarian policies, and individual beliefs that don't force either working parents to feel guilty, or stay-at-home parents to be devalued, or considered not equally as admirable or successful as those who work outside the home. We do not need to try to place in an achievement competition. True feminism should create and support equal pay, equal opportunity, and equal respect for ALL women and ALL men, in whatever vocation they feel called to pursue.

The Uprising of Hope

The early hours of the morning have a holy silence about them, seemingly suspended in time as the rest of the world sleeps. Only a few determined birds chirp. The hum of background noise—talking, bustling, working, hammering, cooking—are all absent. The silence in these hours is almost as palpable as the presence of a person. Here, in this holy silence, Mary Magdalene attends to her own thoughts and senses in the thin place between this life and the next. In the silence and darkness even her weeping must have felt holy. This may have been what it felt like in the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void and darkness covered the face of the deep. Dark, deep, holy, silent space. There is no fanfare or festival here. Not yet. Here, in this very thin place, is where Mary goes to find the Jesus’ body.

Here, after a walk enshrouded in quiet and tears, Mary Magdalene discovers the tomb empty. Here, in today’s gospel, she is confronted with grief that the teacher and messiah, whom she loved, had been taken from her and from the whole community of disciples who followed him. In an attempt to understand how to piece life back together—how find God’s hand in the midst of all this, she goes to the tomb to look after his body, and finds only emptiness.

Tears and grief are not what we want to think about on Easter morning. As the first bulbs of Spring push up through the ground, pushing hopeful exclamation points of color and life up onto the recently snow-covered ground, we are ready to run, not walk, into hope and new life. And we are not alone. When Mary tells the disciples that Jesus’ body is no longer in the tomb, they practically trip over one another racing to get there and see it for themselves. But Mary is not so hasty. Her grief lingers for a little while as she bears on her shoulders the weight of her loss, and the loss of the hope that her teacher and Messiah embodied. Like Mary, we come to this Easter morning carrying our own grief. We weep for those victims of the nerve gas in Syria, and those on the front lines of battlefields. We weep for those we love who struggle with illness. We weep for those we love who are no longer with us. We weep for lost jobs, broken relationships, and lost opportunities.

This morning, it is appropriate that the world’s grief if concentrated into Mary’s for a holy moment. Unlike the disciples who don’t pause for grief, Mary holds vigil at the empty tomb. It is only there, through the veil of her tears, that she beholds the angels. It is there, where she is brave enough to face the emptiness and darkness, that Christ himself appears to her. Everything in us wants to run, practically tripping over one another, away from darkness and emptiness. We want to be caught up in the fanfare, and put darkness behind us. But the great good news of Mary’s encounter with the angels and with the risen Christ at the empty tomb, is that God does not wait until the darkness passes to break into our lives. The Risen Christ appears to Mary right in the midst of her grief-stricken condition, as she is engulfed in tears. He comes even as the disciples are claimed by fear. He comes even as Thomas is crippled by doubt. God, in Christ, does not wait for sunlight or fanfare to invade our lives with hope, but meets us, even in the early hours of the morning, when solitude confronts us. This is no coincidence. Christ comes to declare that even darkness is a holy sacred thing when we allow Him to enter and transform it. His absence in the tomb and at the after the resurrection points us to the place he most wants to be. He wants to be seen in our bodies, in our lives, in our service. He rose from the tomb to live in us—His new body.

The risen Christ comes in the midst of darkness because it is God’s M.O. to use darkness to create, transform, and bring new life. “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep.” The great good news of Easter is that God invades the darkness and the empty places, right in the midst of whatever condition we are in. God transforms it into a force for creativity, for new beginnings, and for new life. When our children were little we read them a book entitled, “On The Day You Were Born.” It reads, “While you waited in darkness, tiny knees curled to chin, the Earth and her creatures, with the Sun and the Moon, all moved in their places, each ready to greet you the very first moment of the very first day you arrived. On the day you were born, the round planet earth turned toward your morning sky, whirling past darkness, spinning the night into light.” This is the work and grace of God in Christ—to spin the night into light. To make something beautiful out of nothing. Out of the formless void, out of the chaos and disorder, God creates and transforms all things.

The miracle of the risen Christ—the miracle of the empty tomb—is that it changes, not only Jesus, but the whole world. It changes forever who God is with us. It changes the way we are. From now on, we know that we are never alone. As Christ sheds the wrappings of death, death loses its claim on us as well. Christ’s rising is also our liberation. Pain, suffering, fear, and hopelessness unwrap themselves from our souls and fall aside. In one holy moment, the chasm between our lives and the divine life of God is bridged.  This new relationship is clear in Jesus’ conversation with Mary. When the risen Christ is talking to Mary, the pronouns he uses in referring to God are no longer formal, as they were before his rising. When he speaks of “my Father” or “your Father,” the pronouns are intimate and familiar, not the formal, more distant ones. The space and distance is gone. In Jesus’ resurrection, God tore down all the barriers between us and the divine life of God.  Christ’s resurrection allows us to know God the way Jesus knew God. It allows to call God “Abba,” as Jesus did. The best translation of Abba is “Daddy.” Out of the darkness Christ has made all of us children of the Light. In Christ, the darkness is only a backdrop for the light. A holy space.

Christ’s resurrection is a Holy uprising. This uprising removes the stones that keep us from entering into our true identity in God. In Christ, God gives us the grace to transform our grief into mission, our fear into courage, and our doubt into faith. Violette is a survivor of the genocide in Rwanda. She lost her husband and was left to raise her children alone, when she learned about a program that was a true uprising of hope: Women for Women International. She enrolled and was matched with a sponsor in the United States - a woman named Liz Hammer, a Boston mother of two. Liz pledged to provide $30 month for one year to support Violette’s trainings, a portion of which also helped her pay for food, school fees and clothing. As the year progressed, Violette flourished. She learned marketable job skills and honed her innate leadership abilities. Despite having only a high school education, Violette has become a local businesswoman and a leader in her community.  Where Violette had been enshrouded in grief, left to wonder how she would put the pieces of her life back together, the Women for Women program gave her hope and a mission. Through the program God met her at the empty tomb, when she didn’t know who she was looking for, and offered her a new and fruitful life. Her hopelessness was transformed into hope. Her isolation was transformed into a new vocation. This is what God does. It is who God is. The hope of the resurrection is nothing less than God’s uprising. In the risen Christ God not only overcame the power of death, but gave hope a Body—that body is us. Each one of us is called to live out our baptismal vows by carrying hope out of the tomb and into the world. We are each called to participate in the uprising of Christ. As author Brian McClaren says, this is “an uprising of hope, not hate…an uprising armed with love, not weapons. This uprising shouts a joyful promise of life and peace, not angry threats of hostility and death. It is an uprising of outstretched hands, not clenched fists.”

When the Risen Christ says to Mary, “don’t touch me,” the more accurate translation is “don’t cling to me.” Christ’s command to her is his Easter command to each one of us. We are not called to remain in the tomb and behold Christ. We are not called to wait for the darkness to pass. We are called to run out from the tomb and carry the hope of Christ out into the world.  The risen Christ transformed us for a purpose—that we might transform the world by our very lives. So on this Easter Sunday, we come to the altar knowing that we don’t have to leave our pain, our weeping, or our brokenness behind. It is God’s M.O. to meet us right in the midst of it, to transform it, and make of us instruments of hope. So let us run headlong into that hope, claiming our identity as children of Light. This is what it means to be truly alive. Let’s tell others of the most hopeful uprising of all. The Lord is risen! Alleluia! Amen.

Lovingkindness Radiates

Aren't we tired yet, 

of collecting things;

of all the emptiness that greed brings?

We clench our hands and teeth. 

We hoard our stuff and hold our breath;

secure the doors and windows, 

and live afraid of death. 

Lovingkindness, set us free 

for open-mindedness, generosity. 

Sweet forgiveness, amazing Grace.

Lovingkindness radiates.

Aren't we weary yet, of cruel names

we call the "others" who do not look the same?

We name the things they wear, 

the color of their skin,

We name the ones they want to love,

and who they call their kin.

Lovingkindness, help us see,

behind the blindness, our unity.

One earth, together. One human race.

Lovingkindness radiates.

All around the world, don't you think it odd

how people pray for peace,

then wound and kill in the name of God?

Sacred truths are argued,

friends and families collide,

while those hungry, unhoused, and sick

 are glibly brushed aside.

Lovingkindness, bring us peace, 

Anoint us with courage,

 our compassion increase;

Complete forgiveness, wounded Grace.

Lovingkindness radiates.

Lovingkindness, make a way

for hope that comes in jars of clay.

Sweet, sweet forgiveness, amazing Grace,

Lovingkindness, radiates.

Oven-Poached Anytime Eggs in a Muffin Tin

So guys, if you follow me in Facebookland, you heard me whine recently about meal planning for my family. A Mama can have an occasional foodie temper tantrum, right? You know, when you spend an hour or more coming up with something "new" to feed them, an hour cooking it, and you only manage to please 50% of the crowd? I have always loved to cook and bake. I love all kinds of cuisine. But after 14 years of cooking for three people with all different "palettes," (some of which get as excited by Kraft Mac n' Cheese as I do by a pecan-crusted salmon fillet,) my inner-foodie was having a mid-life culinary crisis. So I've decided to prep some dishes to my taste, that I can eat for breakfasts and lunches. My only criteria is simple, healthy, flavorful, and enduring. Write-it-down good. So that's what I did today. I made these oven-poached eggs inspired by my love affair with Indian cuisine, and the glorious spice Turmeric. I loved them. My daughter loved them (and she's my picky one). My husband liked them, but prefers them without the feta cheese. My son, nope. But 2 out of 3 ain't bad ;-) So here's the recipe if it's something your starving but tired inner foodie might like:

12 eggs
1/4 of a zucchini, finely diced
1 red bell pepper, finely diced
2 or 3 green onions, finely diced
2 TBS evoo
1 TBS butter
turmeric, to taste ( I used about 8 shakes)
dried basil to taste ( I used about 4 shakes)
salt and black pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Grease a muffin pan. In a skillet, saute the zucchini, bell pepper, and green onions in oil/butter mixture at medium-high heat. drop in veggies, and saute until tender. Add spices. Continue to saute until lightly caramelized.

Drop one egg in each muffin space. Spoon veggie saute over each egg and gently mix them into the white of the egg, without piercing the yolk. Sprinkle feta on top of each egg. Place muffin tin on top of a 9x13 pyrex dish that is half-filled with water. Place in the oven for about 25 minutes, or until the yolks are firm, but not hard. They should remain golden, not turn yellow. You want a nice soft, poached yolk.

When cooked, run a knife around the edges and spoon out onto a plate. Serve with a side of mixed greens and a nice, light vinaigrette. Enjoy!