People of the
God of the Living
Sermon for MCC
New Haven
November 10,
2013 / 25th Sunday after Pentecost
Rev. Brian
Hutchison, M.Div.
Haggai 1:15-2:9
Luke 20:27-38
The
prophet Haggai speaks of the first temple that had been destroyed
Jerusalem. He asks, “Who is left
among you that saw this house in its former glory? How does it look to you now? Is it not in your sight as nothing?” There’s no beating around the bush for
Haggai. He gets straight to the point.
The people of Israel don’t want to face the fact that their temple has
seen its last days. They have
beautiful memories of its past.
They remember when life was comfortable, normal, and without worry. But now, now that the house of God is
gone- how on earth can the people continue to meet God?
In
the prophet Haggai’s next breath, he reminds the people, “Yet now take courage,
all you people of the land says the Lord.
Work, for I am with you, according to the promise that I made you when
you came out of Egypt.
The
still small voice in Haggai’s heart has told him wisdom of things unseen- I AM
with you. I AM- as in the Great I
AM… with you, in you, around you, beneath you, above you, and will be-
always! God reminds the people
that they used to be in slavery.
They used to be lost in a place that they could not call home. They used to follow the constant
commands of another people. To
you- both gay and straight folks, I can say, “ God is with you, according to
the promise that God made you when you came out of the closet.” When you came out of the bondage of fundamentalism,
legalism, heterosexism…. For many of us sexism and misogyny. We, the remnant of MCC New Haven, are
here having stepped beyond the rubble of the church of the past because we
remember the bondage we were once in under some other consciousness. MCC drew us in because we recognized
the presence of God here. But what
now?
The voice
of God continues speaking to Haggai, “My Spirit abides among you; do not
fear.” I’m going to shake
things up all over the earth and all the treasures of the nations will pour
into a new house. The splendor of
the house to come shall be greater than the former- and this place will be
given prosperity.
What I
believe this scripture is saying to us today is that no matter where you are,
Spirit abides with you. Whether
you are sharing Communion at this table here, or breaking bread with friends
and family this coming Thanksgiving or even on any common day, Spirit abides
with you. God shakes things up so that blessings can fall into your life!
You don’t
need anyone else to experience the love of God because it lives within
you. BUT… But, community is where
we have the wonderful opportunity of sharing together in the diversity of the
Body of Christ. In our diversity,
we bounce off of each other and shake up our stagnant existence. Community is also
where we can be encouraged for the journey and reminded through ritual and song
the story of being a people of faith who together can change the world for the
better. That is the benefit of
church, when done right.
In the
Gospel reading today, Jesus encounters some religious leaders called
Sadducees. Whenever I read about
the Sadducees, I remember the Sunday school song from my childhood that goes,
“I don’t want to be a Sadducee.
Cuz they’re too Sad-you-see.
I don’t want to be a Sadducee.”
They are sad- you see, because they don’t believe in the resurrection,
or in their understanding, life after death. Even the knit-picky Pharisees believed in life after death!
Some
Sadducees challenge Jesus with a ridiculous “what if…” question about the
law. In their understanding, if a
man dies childless, the wife is required to marry the dead man’s brother so
that a child can take on the legacy of the deceased. They ask, if there is life after this, then whose property
will the wife be of all 7 men she married? Jesus isn’t stumped by their seemingly difficult question. He simply tells them that all of this
marriage business, this business of men owning women and children having to
somehow fulfill the shortcomings of their parents- this business is not God’s
business. In other words, you have made up this game. To God, after this reality there is no
marriage. After one dies, the
controls of others over your life are released and we are free in God. Some
queer theologians such as Ronald Rolheiser have suggested that in heaven, we
are not married so that we will have the freedom to love and have pleasure with
everyone, just as God does.
And Jesus
isn’t talking about just literal life and death. Jesus is talking to about death of our former
perceptions. We remember in the
same gospel of Luke in chapter 9, verses 23-25: “The Jesus said to them all,
“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their
cross daily and follow me. For
those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life
for my sake will save it. What
does it profit them if they gain the whole world, but lose or forfeit
themselves?” Episcopal priest and
world-renowned preacher Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor speaks to this in her memoir
of faith called “Leaving Church.”
She says… “Like every believer I know, my search for real life has led
me through at least three distinct seasons of faith, not once or twice but over
and over again. Jesus called them
finding life, losing life, and finding life again, with the paradoxical promise
that finders will be losers while those who lose their lives for his sake will
wind up finding them again. In
Greek the word is psyche, meaning not only “life” but also the conscious self,
the personality… You do not have to die in order to discover the truth of this
teaching, in other words. You only
need to lose track of who you are, or who you thought you were supposed to be,
so that you end up lying flat on the dirt floor basement of your heart. Do this, Jesus says, and you will
live.”
I know that
losing the past has felt to many of you like losing yourself, or at least a
part of yourself. And with loss
always comes grief- that is as long as there was some attachment to the thing
lost. I will never stop anyone
from grieving and don’t let anyone else stop you from grieving either. It is a God-given process of healing. As
Barbara so wisely reminds us, you can only live when you have first become
lost- and when you have allowed yourself to lose that which no longer serves
you.
But when
the grieving process is over, you can’t stay in that spiritual place. You may feel sad for a while, but sad is not
what you are. Make a habit of instead of saying, “I
am sad” or “I am depressed,” saying rather, “I feel…” I AM is a powerful statement that taps into the stuff of God. Affirm what you truly are:
a beloved child of God. At the end of today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus affirms life
after death by affirming that God is not the god of the dead, but the God of
the living- and to God all are alive, even the saints of old.
God is not
concerned with the rubble of what was.
God will not bring gossip of the past into the present or the
future. God is concerned with all
those who choose to live regardless of loss. African American pastor and theologian Howard Thurman’s
words, no matter how many times I hear them, ring true: “Don’t ask the what the
world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it; because what the
world needs is people who have come alive.” Folks, don’t let your love, your joy, your peace, or your
passion die with the old temple.
Don’t confuse that temple with the true temple- the true vessel of God
which is you- where those invaluable virtues are held without harm for the
opportune time when you come alive and do what you have been longing to do all
along- God’s transformational work.
Just as the legendary phoenix is said to rise from the ashes, may we
each- and as a community be empowered to embrace New Life, vision, and
prosperity by the power of the Eternal Spirit. Amen.
