Vicar Amber will be recording her sermons from Sundays for you to be able to listen if you weren’t able to make it on Sunday! Or if you just want to hear it again.

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What is Jesus good for when everything hurts?

May 31, 2022 / Kindred Montrose

The bible text for this weeks sermon can be found at https://bible.oremus.org/?ql=521025529

What good is Jesus when the world feels so far removed from all the promises and proclamations made in their name? I’m pretty tired of having this haunting question feel so relevant time and time again. It’s exhausting in every way. These are the days when violence, abuse, loss, and uncertainty surround. And it’s not just that they exist, but the way they seem relentless. There’s so much and such profound heartache and grief, anger and frustration, hopelessness...what can even be said? Our stomachs church with bile and acid and we feel sick, body and soul. What can we even do?

This past Friday morning, as I gathered with other clergy to help host a moment of prayer for our local elementary school community, as I stood up front watching those around me weeping and holding each other, speaking their stories through shaky yet bold powerful voices, as I hoped to offer some word of comfort while I imagined my own fourth grader being named among the slaughter…I turned and said to my friend and colleague, I hate our job sometimes. And yet…if there is any consolation in Christ, if Jesus is good for anything at all, if God has anything to offer at all…it is within these depths and what still lingers and emerges among them.

In these moments we are prone to fracture, to go our own way, or to hunker down so that we might protect our hearts from this hurt. We think of all the times we’ve walked similar roads before and we are apt to go numb, to give up, or get lost in the spiral of our own wounds and worry. We forget or are blinded to the goodness that still dwells in and through creation and community, that carries us when we’re not sure how to carry ourselves. I don’t blame us at all, but I also don’t want us to get stuck in that spiral forever.

So what shape does this Christ take in such settings? What does it look like? What can counteract and overcome and endure in the face of all this? Paul speaks of it as love, sharing, compassion, sympathy, and joy made whole in community. It sounds a bit lofty, but he’s actually speaking to the gritty stuff. He uses in the gut kind of language. The word translated as compassion in verse 1, is a word that literally means guts or bowels but figuratively suggests the most deep-seated place of human emotion. The best that God has to offer is deeply a part of the most raw and most human of experiences.

Yesterday I said final words of blessing at the funeral of a man not much older than myself. His brother shared part of the old Greek myth of Sisyphus relentlessly rolling a boulder uphill and sliding back down day after day. From this story he remarked that to be human is to know mortality and failure and yet strive anyway. I find this a reflection of the image of God in the depths of our humanity that we might know sadness and yet sing anyway.

It’s down here, in the humbling and sometimes humiliating realities of being fully human that God dwells and creates us as divine mirrors. After immense tragedy, there is inevitably plenty of blustering and posturing and self-righteousness vying for the top spot in our hearts. I get sucked into it as much as anyone else. If I rally enough protesters, if I post whip-smart articles and cursing memes, if I use scathing language that will surely shame others into change, the world will have no choice but to finally love each other. Those things feel much more satisfying in the moment. But the One who would have every authority to make some grandiose pontification, the One who was in the form of God, didn’t weaponize it or lord it over others. Instead, he trudges through the muck and the pain with the rest of us so that we might know what good Jesus is… not apart from, but in the midst of heartache and bullshit.

As I stood with people of faith across from this weekend’s NRA convention downtown, with our signs calling for peace, a reporter asked me, “What do you want the people inside (the convention) to know? To hear?” A million things ran through my mind, plenty of options filled with barbs and venom. But something in me also reflected on the reality that 14 acres of condemnation won’t get heard anyway. The best I could think of was to call us toward our shared humanity. I reflected how putting profits and power over people...is killing ALL OF US, physically and spiritually. How MOST of us actually long for and are willing to work for something better than this. That I believe we can find a way to hold differing parts of ourselves AND honestly examine what it has cost us. Ultimately, if any of us are to find life and goodness, it will be by moving closer to and not farther from the messiness and the sacredness of deep humanity.

When Paul tells the Philippians to “work out your own salvation,” it doesn’t mean go save yourselves and the whole world by your own strength. I think we all know how that would go…

But work it out like you might work out a puzzle, knowing what the full picture looks like and trying this way and to bring it to fullness before you. Work and live and have your being out of, rooted from, the promise of salvation that already lives within you. It’s a sort of cosmic invitation to “lean in.” Salvation, what we might otherwise call liberation and peace doesn’t get delivered from on high, by some magic apart from ourselves and our humanness, but within and through the full frailty of humanity.

The phrase “fear and trembling” isn’t about intimidation and shame-based theology.” It’s just an old timey phrase for humility. We are a part of what God is doing to redeem the world through our humility, our fragile selves, our wonder and curiosity and willingness to be amazed and surprised by goodness. You can use your hands, your heart, your gut, the fullness of who you are in your raw and humble humanity to reveal God even now. That’s how Jesus did it. Amen.

Where have you seen or embodied love, sharing, compassion, sympathy, and joy made whole in community? Keeping in mind that love doesn’t always look like smiles, sometimes it looks like tears. It doesn’t always make headlines, but it can also be a hand placed on shaking shoulders.

Where have you seen or embodied love, sharing, compassion, sympathy, and joy made whole in community?

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Confidence through Connection

May 23, 2022 / Kindred Montrose

The bible text for this week’s sermon can be found at https://bible.oremus.org/?ql=520327158

As we prepare to say goodbye to one another, perhaps we have a closer connection to Paul’s intimate, affectionate, and bold letter. Perhaps as we look back and yet look forward (as we have been doing so much these days) we can take stock of the many things we have shared and how it shapes us for the future…

Paul and Timothy speak of gratitude, recognition, joy, and holy imagination. Perhaps we can reflect on these things together as well. I wonder…

What are we are grateful for?

and who we are grateful to?

We can reflect on what has not gone as planned…

and how was God and goodness in our midst even in those moments?

What makes this community special?

One you’ve chosen to be a part of or near or at least curious about?

What makes our connection special? The ways we share our being together?

Perhaps it inspires you to imagine where God is leading you next?

This sacred reflection of gratitude, recognition, joy, and imagination is powerful because it’s not just about what they accomplish, but who they are and how they are and where that comes from.

In the letter I shared last week as I announced my leaving +KINDRED in a few weeks, I said that I do not worry about your future as a faithful community because you know who you are deep at the center of things. It’s a knowing that remains even when the details are messy and uncertain. It remains because none of you are expected to carry it alone. In fact, it is forged by your connections, your relationships, your care for one another. It is the kind of connection that makes us bold.

People, leaders, windfalls and crises come and go, but there is something bigger that is woven in and through and beyond you. There is something palpable among you that creates such a deep experience of belonging. When people come among you, it’s not just a generic expression of belonging but a belief and an experience that you belong TO one another, AND TO God, always. When we come together we know what it is to hold and to be held - not just because we’re nice people, or are so committed to authenticity, it’s what we share…

our tables, the chores of grocery shopping and washing dishes,

the stories of that time we did something embarrassing,

the memories of the first tape cassette we bought at Soundwaves,

the hugs and high fives when you’ve made it a whole week sober

the hugs and and encouragement when you didn’t,

the invitations you extend to others to come and experience this strange life-giving community you’ve found.

The Good News mingles among you as you share of your souls…

the things that matter, your daily rhythms, your dreams and your heartaches,

the promise that we can share these truths about ourselves and still be loved,

by each other, but especially by God.

We do this all under the banner of God’s love,

going beyond situational goodness to offering sacred significance to what we share.

Certainly we’ve had our share of mistakes, false motives, and ego…but God continues to shine through. The Gospel is forwarded BY but not dependent ON people. God continues, in and through circumstances where such a claim seems absurd.

Paul and Timothy build faith communities on this wild shore. God is still doing the same thing here. Like the apostles, may this wild and liberating truth fuel us with confidence. May having a community to whom we belong and are beloved gives us even further Gospel confidence. Even as we move, closer to and farther from one another, the Gospel and Jesus remain constant. That is, they remain alive and breathing, and expanding. Somehow we experience as divine and life-giving even situations that feel like it shouldn’t be. It’s both humbling and empowering. And in that, we can rejoice.

It is this knowledge which the Spirit has given you and the holy connection that you share between one another that will help you to determine what will be best. Just as Paul and Timothy write this letter to the church and leaders at Philippi from a distance, perhaps this wisdom and possibility will be newly explored and even blossom in new ways through the space created by distance and fresh faces.

I am confident of this because I have experienced your knowledge and wisdom and full insight. That doesn’t mean I think you always know just the right answer to everything. I definitely don’t always have such answer. And I don’t think that’s what wisdom and faithfulness means. But I am confident that you know how to pay attention for God’s presence and voice and movement, even in absurd and contradictory places and people. In fact, I find that you are particularly gifted with such insight in ways that are not common elsewhere. You know how to follow that wild God to try new things, and fail, and yet still continue…knowing that God is with you and beyond you. May it be so. Amen.

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From Exploitation to Exponential Liberation: A Woman's Gospel Story

May 09, 2022 / Kindred Montrose

The bible text for this week’s sermon is available at https://bible.oremus.org/?ql=519111821

If we had any notions that following Christ and proclaiming the Easter News of resurrection would lead to a life of plenty and ease…I think we can set those aside now.

The Saul who once thought hunting down and condemning those who didn’t believe what he did was the most faithful thing to do…

who used religion as a weapon of control…

whose life was completely disrupted and upended by an encounter with a living God…

who was invited to live into his true identity as Paul the apostle…

whose eyes were opened to an expansive divine embrace…

This man’s life has both been ruined entirely and wholly refreshed.

A few years ago I got to visit the streets of ancient Phillipi where this story takes place. It’s just up the coast from the city of Delphi with its temple to Apollo, made famous by the women who were kept there as religious slaves, drugged, marketed and revered as future-telling oracles for nearly a thousand years. Touching the stones engraved with their words and walking through the ruins of marketplace stalls, it made clear that what Paul and the apostles were saying and doing…wasn’t happening in a vacuum. Their words and actions don’t take place in an abstract fantasy world, or a kind of biblical movie set. Paul was rubbing elbows with actual local business owners in the public market and speaking to the crowds on the steps of city hall. The message they carried about the Gospel, the Good News that God has saved the whole world, flies directly in the face of the empire which proclaims that Augustus Caesar (and the socio-political-economic-military system that empires create) has saved the whole world. This is the imperial power that Paul is up against. This is why followers of the Way, what we would eventually call Christians, keep ending up in jail.This is a living faith, a resurrection life that causes us to join Jesus in the work of “setting the prisoners free.” People need freedom from all kinds of things.

In today’s sacred story we see the Gospel moving this unnamed woman from a life of exploitation to liberation. Perhaps her wisdom, her voice, and the gifts of what her body can create was once a source of joy, but when she is reduced to being valued only for one particular corner of her being, it becomes a curse. Her expansive identity and her autonomy are taken away. She is no longer treated as a beautiful child of God, but only as an object to control. They don’t care about her or her message, only what her body can produce for their benefit. This way of being has no place in a world being transformed from death to life. The people of God break the rules where they stand in the way of people’s whole-hearted being and liberation. In the name of the resurrected Christ, Paul disrupts an unjust reality - not just because it’s an ethical response, but because as someone following in the way of a living Christ, it’s an inevitable expression of complete liberation. Doing so has real consequences for Paul and Silas, but even those can not ultimately hinder what Christ unfurls.

Anyone who insists the Gospel isn’t political should count the number of times Paul gets arrested. It isn’t partisan, but it will always be political and the reaction by those defending the status quo is often one of rejection and violence. I wish Christianity WAS seen as dangerous - not for the way Christians abuse divine power OVER others, but for how we would disabuse those in power of the notion that we will allow the indignity of others to persist.The first followers of Christ did not proclaim Good News by what they would restrict, but rather what restrictions must fall away in the wake of resurrection.

The very jail that would try to hold Paul and Silas and their disruptive message of liberation bound, is split open. Freedom and dignity are restored to the woman, to Paul and Silas, to all those locked up beside them, and even to the jailers. Within the system he has served, the only outcome of this “failure” must be destruction. Within that system, they are slated for death but beyond it they are blessed into life, life that extends and is shared. This liberation includes both the oppressed and the oppressor. We see salvation in body and soul.

The promise of liberation is not just for noble freedom fighters. It is also for thieves like the ones Jesus found himself hanging beside on the cross. It is for those imprisoned mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically. The gospel means that liberation is also for the jailers, those complicit in injustice. It is a grace for the jailers AND all their people – their families, their culture, their society.

Our text ends, but the story does not. The culmination of this unraveling is not a circle of kumbaya.This is still more to set aright. In the verses following, Paul does not excuse those who abused and restrained him. Rather, he insists on accountability. He uses his societal status to demand an apology, a PUBLIC apology to match the public disgrace, and ultimately a departure. The men are escorted out of town so that they may not return to the mechanisms they used to hurt others.

There are a lot of people fearful tonight that the mechanisms of this American Empire will soon restrain them and those they love, much like this woman and/or those who would defend her. I will not downplay how much this stands to truly endanger and harm all of us, and particularly those who already face so many hurdles in our society. This world needs to hear our song of ultimate body and soul soaring freedom. It has the power to shake the walls that keep us separated and trapped. It transforms those who have guarded those walls, thinking they were the best way to keep things good and safe. This Gospel song absolutely ruins us, but simultaneously restores us to a new way forward. Amen.

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"What does Easter mean for Assholes?"

May 02, 2022 / Kindred Montrose

The bible text for this week’s sermon can be found at https://bible.oremus.org/?ql=518500156

Restored (The Conversion of Saul) By Lisle Gwynn Garrity

What does Easter mean for assholes? I really wanna know, because I’m with Ananias on this one. I am not in a hurry to heal those who use their authority for evil and I’ve got questions. What does redemption even look like for those who hurt others and see no problem with it? Who even think that this harm is noble and necessary? Who do so in the name of God?

This isn’t a real stretch for me as I have real feelings about Saul turned Paul because even his words that follow this transformation have been used ad noseum to support slavery, misogyny, and homophobia. I have heard and been impacted by the words of this man and those who invoke his name to bind up and condemn others. People have literally died because of his actions. So if it were up to me, I’d say he could sit there with those scales a bit longer. Saul may be ready, God may be ready, but I’m not. No ma’am.

Not to mention this is the worst Pastoral advice ever. I would absolutely never tell the victim of abuse to go meet one on one with their abuser and pray with them for healing. Never! In fact, I would with strongest passion advise them against it and denounce any spiritual leader who advocated for such nonsense. Honestly, I struggle with a God who seemingly sends people into dangerous and traumatic situations.

What does Easter mean for that?

What does disruption, redemption, and transformation look like here?

What about when I’m the one sneering at the possible redemption of anyone I think unworthy?

The fuzzy bunnies and colorful eggs have left the building and it’s a mess.

I don’t always know how to navigate that or find the way forward or where the lines should be drawn, but I think that’s at least in part because the line is not always in the same place nor in the same place for everyone. So I am reminded of what does guide us through.

The voice of Christ, but even more so when there’s no clear voice, the heart of Christ that turns us toward one another, toward who each of us were created to be, and so toward the Creator who makes all things new.

I believe boundaries and saying “no” can be good and holy. But I’ve also watched myself walk into situations I know better than to enter because something else seems to be present. I hesitate to even say that because I know it’s shaky ground. I don’t say this lightly because I know people have been hurt - physically, emotionally, and spiritually and even killed leaning toward trust over caution. I’m pretty sure my mom really wishes that I didn’t do things like that. I sometimes wish I didn’t do things like that. It has turned around and bit me in the but more than once.

Even here, among +KINDRED, the reality is that leaning toward one another as messy people means that I can not guarantee how any of this will turn out on any given day. We begin with trust and we treat this community with care, but sometimes it breaks down and then we have to deal with it. How do we mend? How do we mend ourselves and our connection to one another when there is real justifiable fear and hurt? How do we allow the past to shape our caution but not close us off entirely to possibilities? When our church leadership has had to reflect on this, we ask…how do we pursue justice that isn’t retributive but restorative? How can we imagine a way forward that isn’t driven by a sense of punishment but by opening a pathway toward repair?

What changes Saul, (and Ananias) is not their own doing. Their mutual redemption doesn’t happen on their own or in isolation. What changes them is not a book club or a convincing argument they heard about why Jews and Christians can co-exist. Surprisingly for Saul, this restoration does not come through the temple system that has always been his bread and butter, nor is it by being made to sit in a corner and think about what he’s done. It’s not because Saul and Ananias find some way to meet in the middle.

What changes them, what resurrects and creates them anew, is an encounter with the risen God, an extension of grace, and the work of healing.They are transformed by a voice they didn’t choose to hear, but speaks to their ears and their heart anyway. That doesn’t mean instant dance party. Sure by the time the story ends, Paul is singing “I saw the light” but first he’s lost, stuck, and hungry. Even after his sight returns, his name is changed, and his community shift, there is a time of healing body and soul - sacred baptism, food, and rest - before anything else can move forward. And even then, the reaction isn’t one of complete embrace. This new Paul and this new life as someone who proclaims God’s wide and transformative embrace...is met with outright vitriol and suspicious distance. The temple authorities want him killed as a traitor of faith and the disciples want him kept at an arm’s length. I imagine a redemption road is a pretty lonely place for a while. But it’s not where the story ends.

And lonely doesn’t mean alone. This healing and resurrection continues to unfold bit by bit over time, through the continued presence of an active God and in the community God forms around us, as confounding as it may be. Easter has room for our messiness. Easter makes a way out of no way. Easter is for our shared liberation.

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Loosening "Belief"

April 27, 2022 / Kindred Montrose

The bible text for this week’s sermon can be found at https://bible.oremus.org/?ql=518080649

I’m a year older than Tim Tebow, the 2007 Heisman Trophy winner and NFL Quarterback who famously (or infamously) had John 3:16 written on his eye black and would take a knee on the field…”for God” as the story goes. He and I come from very different religious traditions, but we were steeped in the same waters of American cultural Christendom. I was raised in a church and by Christians who made room for and valued asking questions as part of faith, but he and I both came of age when “whosoever BELIEVES in Him shall have eternal life” was not only plastered on t-shirts and eye black, it became the very measure of morality. BELIEF as the primary emphasis and the ultimate crux of faith became the very lens through which the rest of Christianity was to be understood. As much as my soul squirms from such a view, it is the air we’ve all been breathing for quite some time. It has been so prevalent for the last several decades that we have to make an effort to recognize and remember that the idea of “belief” as an unwavering personal intellectual agreement is a relatively recent phenomena.

I’m going to walk backwards through this text to open it up for us. “30Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. 31But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.” These verses mark the original ending of the Gospel of join and tell us the author’s intent. These sacred stories, these signs and wonders, accompanied by relationship are shared in order to foster belief. They are not written to impress us nor make us cower before God and get in line. The Gospel does not say these words are to give us certainty so that we may lord it over others. Rather belief is something that is held in the intimacy of relationship. It is nurtured BY and a catalyst FOR something beyond itself. Belief is important, but even it is secondary to the God’s ultimate purpose of life. As much as belief shapes this text and this Gospel, it is still only a waystation and not the ultimate goal. It is simply a means to point us toward the fullness of what life can be. Having this true end in mind helps us to experience the rest of the text.

Let’s keep walking back. Jesus says to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” This right here is where the “Doubting Thomas” moniker comes from. This is often used as fuel for the fire of looking down on Thomas, even if we relate to him, because dared articulate questions, needs, anything but certainty which we’ve been convinced is the expectation. But the word “doubt” isn’t actually there. The original Greek word sometimes translated as doubt here, is actually the word “unbelieving.” Do not be unbelieving, but believe. Now, these seem like pretty similar ideas and meanings, but I wonder...does it shift our understanding even in the slightest?

Doubt and belief are often held not just as polar opposites but mutually exclusive entities. You’re either here or there and never the twain shall meet. But that doesn’t really feel true, does it? It doesn’t really seem true in this story either. It hasn’t always been the way to interpret these ideas. They seem more mixed up into each other than that.

Sixty five years ago, theologian Paul Tillich wrote that “If faith is understood as belief that something is true, doubt is incompatible with the act of faith. If faith is understood as being ultimately concerned, doubt is a necessary element in it. It is a consequence of the risk of faith.” “If doubt appears, it should not be considered as the negation of faith, but as an element which was always and will always be present in the act of faith. Existential doubt and faith are poles of the same reality, the state of ultimate concern. But serious doubt is confirmation of faith. It indicates the seriousness of the concern, its unconditional character.” Essentially, he describes faith and doubt as two sides of the same coin and doubt as evidence that someone cares enough to ask questions and seek ultimate truth, which is to implicitly suggest that we think truth may be found somewhere in here.

I’ve personally never had much of a filter and as I’ve grown I’ve only chosen to intentionally NOT filter myself for others all the more. I was always the kid who raised their hand in class to ask “too many questions” and I’ve become the adult who still asks “why” even of people in authority. I don’t do it because I don’t respect them; I ask because I genuinely care and want us all to live into the fullness of truth that is true enough to continue even in the face of questions. So I’ve always had a soft spot for Thomas. All this to say - for those who say “I don’t know what I believe”, you are in good company, holy company, resurrection company. And if you find yourself in a religious system that doesn’t allow for questions, like really allows them and not just humoring you by entertaining them, then that’s a cult and you should get out.

There’s one more layer I’m curious about in this text. Why are belief and forgiveness placed side by side here? Why is Jesus speaking about them together in the same breath? Again, I think forgiveness is a word and a concept that has been warped over time. Perhaps this sacred story can point us toward something true beyond all that.

21Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” 22When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

Just as belief doesn’t exist merely for its own sake, but is ultimately tied to the promise and experience of the fullness of life, here forgiveness is wrapped up in the experience of peace and the presence of the Holy Spirit. Without this context it can seem like immense power to hold on to someone’s sin (and we’re pretty good at that), but the irony is that if we hold onto someone’s sin…we’re the ones left holding it. Another translation of this last verse reads “if you loose the sins of any, they are loosed; if you bind the sins of any, they are bound.” Bound and loosed. This loosening is the same word used in healing stories. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus proclaims to the woman bent and crumpled by pain: “woman you are loosed of your illness.” Perhaps forgiveness then is more about release than it is resolving. It is less dependent on making up and more to do with moving forward, not being stuck and restrained. This week someone shared with me the idea that “forgiveness is letting go of the hope for a better past.”

Perhaps forgiveness is like letting loose. I don’t know if that makes it any easier, but it does feel truer. Releasing what might have been, what we wish had been. Letting go of expecting ourselves to be other than we are, someone who doesn’t ask questions and just gets on board.

What is resurrection but release? When Jesus wakes a dead and gone Lazarus, the proclamation is to unbind him, let him go. It is a liberation of unraveling. Perhaps it is the release of certainty. Perhaps it is the release of your responsibility for the weight of other’s choices, the release of their power to hold you in one place, of whatever keeps you stuck behind locked doors in fear, shame, or despair.

Where do we see the resurrected Christ, but in moments mixed with fear and peace? In the grace we know at the hand of one another? How will we experience resurrection, forgiveness, release, liberation but in practice? Perhaps by giving voice to the questions gnawing at us from the inside until we let them out? Perhaps like Jesus and Thomas, through intimacy of invitation, touch, and physical connection? By allowing the wounds and scars of our bodies and souls to be seen and shared? It can be a pretty gnarly business, but what else could going to the grave and back be?

As I was studying this text with colleagues, someone asked, “who is Thomas’s twin?” Another responded, “it’s us.” We are the ones who did not see Jesus for ourselves in ancient Jerusalem, but perhaps are curious, bold, and believing enough to poke at this story to try and understand and find its truth. The Holy Spirit, the Christ, and the Creator breathe onto, in, and through us as well. May we breathe deeply and notice how it fills and expands us. May we exhale fully and find space for fresh air.

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April 18, 2022 / Kindred Montrose

The bible text for this week’s sermon can be found at https://bible.oremus.org/?ql=517293899

Włodzimierz Kohut, *Jezus Dobry Ogrodnik*[Jesus the Good Gardener], 2015.

Easter is a time for confetti and community and joy and abundance. It is a time when the things that have been sealed up inside impossibly burst forth into an outpouring of life and love. It is a day when hearts prepared to ache are surprised to find a soft embrace. It’s often a day that we bring the good plates out of the dusty china cabinet, put on clothes that make us feel special, take pictures among the wildflowers, maybe even wear one in our hair, and crack cascarones over each other’s heads with little concern for how we’ll be sweeping up colored eggshell bits off the bathroom floor for the next week(s).

Easter and the unveiling of resurrection are both beautiful and messy. The intersection of grief and hope are messy. Haven’t we been steeped in that truth over and over in these recent years through this pandemic alongside everything else in our daily lives? Haven’t we seen, all too closely, the hollow insides of literal and proverbial tombs? We have seen kindness and cruelty, laughter and loss, despair and hope. We have seen disappointment and redemption, exhaustion and refreshment, isolation and deep connection. Easter is the place where sorrow and new life meet and dance together. The dance is clumsy and weird, often unsure and maybe a little raunchy, AND stunningly beautiful. Resurrection doesn’t erase the valley of shadows we’ve been through, but perhaps it does change how we live through and beyond them.

As we’ll hear next week in the story of Thomas, even resurrected Jesus still bears the mark of wounds and pain. It will always be part of the story, but it’s not the only part. It’s not where the story ends.

This morning, the friends and followers Jesus woke up with the same burdens they went to bed with the night before. The dewy morning air was thick with tension as they went on living in a world of broken hearts, fragile bodies, political turmoil, and the ongoing threat of danger and disaster. Yet, somewhere in the depths of her soul, there still stirred a story of hope that lingered from long ago.

Mary is going about her day, trying to carry on in the midst of all these things, when she encounters the empty tomb…linens lying thrown to the side. She is struck with the panic of coming home to the doors unlocked and your belongings scattered everywhere. It looks like someone has broken in; the grave of God has been robbed. She fears the worst. She fears what experience has taught her is most likely…that people are cruel and the powerful worst of all.

She turns to her community for help and support. Two of the men come running toward the crisis, take it in for a moment, and then head home even before fully understanding what they’ve seen and heard. The men who were so quick to rush in, who raced to get their first…have already left the scene. But Mary remains…shaking, sobbing, searching.

She turns her gaze and the angels of God appear, as they often do in moments of great fear. She turns again to find she is no longer alone. She may still be afraid, but she is also persistent in pursuit of the way, the truth, and the life.

She misidentifies the person in front of her, but then her own identity is spoken allowed. Jesus speaks her name and she feels fully known, fully loved, overflowing with relief and joy. God comes to her in the midst of her morning routine. God comes looking like a stranger, a gardener, as someone fresh off yard crew truck, a laborer, a janitor, a table busser, as someone who makes the world go round but often goes unnoticed. God is alive and revealed in relationship. God shows up in the face of someone standing right in front of us, across from us.

Easter shows us the incredible unbound extravagance of what God can do – defying violence and death with peace and a new creation, turning tears of sorrow to tears to joy, expressing a depth of relationship in a world of isolation. Easter shows us the incredible unbound extravagance of what God can do, but it’s not only about what God does… it’s about what that does in us.

Resurrection looks like new and seemingly impossible life emerging from a tomb.

Mary the Magdalene shows us that resurrection also looks a lot like noticing what’s changing, what has already changed, what is different and what that might mean. It looks like an unraveling of things we’ve held before. It also looks like confusion, and worry, reaching out to others, drawing others in to make sense of the mystery together, and tears. It looks like believing, or trusting, or leaning into curious possibility more than understanding it. It looks like being seen, and known, and loved, and called by name. It looks like holding on loosely, even to that which is most dear. And that’s just what we see on the outside. There’s no telling the swirl of experience welling up inside.

We don’t have to pin down the mystery to see that this experience of divine love and resurrection causes her to respond. This woman, Mary, is the first to preach the Good News of the Gospel, to share the story of life’s victory over death, to announce what she has seen God do. Theologian Jurgen Moltmann writes that “If the women were all the time silent, then we would have no knowledge of the resurrection of Christ.” She announces to the disciples and to all that resurrection has opened what was closed and is out in the world.

Communities like this one that boldly proclaim God’s unbound love not only in words but in the care of one another…

Each of you as you engage holy curiosity and tenderheartedness in the intimacy of your own being… Others who may never darken the door of this sanctuary but are out in the gardens and streets who dare speak of and serve goodness amidst everything else…

All this helps me see the risen and living God in the everyday moments of my day and the people of my city. When I wake up still in the shadows of Friday, I turn and everyday Easter Sunday stories arrive to announce the power of love over despair. When grief and white noise leave me in tears – feeling lost and alone, God shows up, calls me by name, puts a story of surprising joy on my tongue, and compels me to speak even in the midst of uncertainty or fear.

Christ is Risen, Christ is Risen in us. Go and tell what you have seen. Share the stories that don’t just lift our spirits but inspire others to speak and act. Alleluia. Amen.

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A Donkey is not a War Horse

April 12, 2022 / Kindred Montrose

The bible text for this week’s sermon can be found at https://bible.oremus.org/?ql=516772254

A donkey is not a war horse.

Branches and palms are not silks or gold.

Hosanna means “save us.”

This cry for liberation is not a call to conquer.

Shouting crowds are not a band of trumpets.

This is not a parade of prestige or military might.

It is not polished or particularly impressive.

This rag tag procession down the alleys outside the city

Likely would not even be noticed by anyone

whose job it was to pay attention to such things.

And that is kinda the whole point.

Oh, it is still a procession of power…

But precisely a different kind of power than expected or familiar.

The Pharisees, the religious leaders, cry out,

“Look! The world has gone after him.”

Is that a threat or a promise?

The writing is on the wall that this movement has grown beyond something easily dismissible or containable. The gospel writer notes that a crowd is on the move. Not just a crowd, a GREAT crowd. They veer off from the official religious ritual as originally planned, and get caught up in the holiness that is happening out in the street. The energy is contagious. It isn’t mere mob mentality, these people have a story that’s mobilizing them, they have a story to share. They have seen and heard wonders and signs that fly in the face of the limitations being sold to them. This Jesus has even resurrected Lazarus from the dead. They testify, they tell each other the story of what they’ve seen and heard – even if it’s still mysterious to them. Those that were there, that have seen resurrection themselves, are emboldened to let others know what’s possible even if they’re not sure how. We have seen this Jesus make possible a complete and total liberation. For the Jewish people living on the margins, always under the thumb of someone else’s far off politics,

that wasn’t even on the table before, but now….

What have you seen and heard that brings you to hope that liberation, that an abundant, whole and generous life for you and all those around you, otherwise called salvation, is possible?

I think resurrection and liberation are always things that are recognized within before they are realized without. Resurrection and liberation are always things that are recognized within before they are realized without. It is a possibility that is both exhilarating and terrifying. This is a road that is guaranteed to face intense resistance and our own wrestling. Along the way, there will certainly be heartache, loneliness, confusion, and the final prerequisite for resurrection – death. So the people call back to the word of prophets before who remind them – “Do not be afraid.” What is possible when a people have lost their fear? Or at least it’s death grip over them to dictate their every move?

The world had gone after them. The power of Jesus is one that inspires, gathers, and expands. It opens up possibilities and dreams we had forgotten or given up on. It emboldens us to imagine a different way of being, one marked by love and life and beauty and community. It brings us together and moves us toward one another, because that’s the only way we all get free. It extends from Jews to Greeks, farther and farther, always broadening our understanding of God and God’s people.

This is what the gospel of peace looks like, as opposed to the gospel of dominance.

You send a war horse when your goal is to conquer and subjugate.

You send a donkey when you hope to parley for peace.

To give a sign that the violence must come to an end.

To disrupt the ways of death that have been driving the bus until now.

And that is the parade that Jesus is leading.

We can see and hear the power of a crowd that follows, serves, and celebrates this different kind of power. It can cause even those in gilded palaces and behind fortress walls to shake in their boots. To me, I imagine it to look something like the Amazon workers of New York who successfully organized themselves as a union. It was something said to be impossible in the face of one of the most powerful organizations in the world, and they did it for the sake of dignity, care, and community.

What have you seen and heard that brings you to hope that liberation, that an abundant, whole and generous life for you and all those around you, otherwise called salvation, is possible?

A new cry is rising on the winds and making its way through town, something dangerous - hope.

It reminds me of a poem by Alice Walker and I’ll finish with her words:

Hope Is a Woman Who Has Lost Her Fear

For Sundus Shaker Saleh, Iraqi mother

In our despair that justice is slow

we sit with heads bowed

wondering

how

even whether

we will ever be healed.

Perhaps it is a question

only the ravaged

the violated

seriously ask.

And is that not now

almost all of us?

But hope is on the way.

As usual Hope is a woman

herding her children

around her

all she retains of who

she was; as usual

except for her kids

she has lost almost everything.

Hope is a woman who has lost her fear.

Along with her home, her employment, her parents,

her olive trees, her grapes. The peace of independence;

the reassuring noises of ordinary neighbors.

Hope rises, She always does,

did we fail to notice this in all the stories

they’ve tried to suppress?

Hope rises,

and she puts on her same

unfashionable threadbare cloak

and, penniless, she flings herself

against the cold, polished, protective chain mail

of the very powerful

the very rich – chain mail that mimics

suspiciously silver coins

and lizard scales –

and all she has to fight with is the reality of what was done to her;

to her country; her people; her children;

her home.

All she has as armor is what she has learned

must never be done.

Not in the name of War

and especially never in the

name of Peace.

Hope is always the teacher

with the toughest homework.

Our assignment: to grasp

what has never been breathed in our stolen

Empire

on the hill:

Without justice, we will never

be healed.

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Jesus & the Intersection of State and Spiritual Violence

April 04, 2022 / Kindred Montrose

The bible text for this week’s sermon can be found at https://bible.oremus.org/?ql=516093225

As we move further toward the fullness of the mystery of Easter…there is a grizzly reality along the way that we simply cannot skirt around. I don’t know about you, but I’ve certainly tried to ignore or quickly hustle through any unpleasantness as I hurl myself toward confetti and celebration, but it never really works or truly serves me in the end. With the cross in sight, and what’s on the other side seeming both beyond our reach and just around the corner…we must face this moment that brings us closer. Jesus is betrayed, ambushed, mocked, degraded, misrepresented, condemned and it is ultimately pronounced that the only thing left for him is death. Both state and spiritual violence are in the mix in personal and systemic ways. Somehow we’ve come from signs and wonders and healing and hope…to this.

One version of telling this story says that we should look at all that Jesus suffered and feel personally bad for their pain because it’s at least partially our fault. Heaping on the guilt and shame so that we would recognize how much we need a savior. Plenty of preachers, far too many, tell it this way. I think this is a mistake. Yes, what Jesus experienced was awful, yes we should examine the whys and the hows that produce such pain because it still continues. But, perhaps the very hurt and suffering that are often manipulated for shame and said to create distance between us and God are actually the things that reflect our closeness.

The fact that God does not exempt Godself from the very human realities of heartache, confusion, betrayal, physical, emotional, and spiritual pain…points to a God who cares about and draws close to us in our own experiences of these things. When we can scarcely find the words to respond to our life situations and look out on a horizon with no good options, God has been there and is there with us. God through Jesus knows and is intimately familiar with this kind of pain. But let’s not pretend there isn’t pain disguised under the shouts for shaming and condemning of another.

The Jewish people lived a relatively stable but tenuous existence under the Roman Empire, with clear demonstrations of their military occupier’s power all around them. They had certain levels of power, but it was always the deal that such power was contingent on that power prioritizing, protecting, and ultimately serving the Empire. Jewish Kings like Herod were set in place and had the potential to be dangerous, but only Caesar was known as the Son of God with palaces for politics but also temples for their worship. Jesus challenged such claims and is so positioned as a political and spiritual threat to the entire system. The threat is made explicit as they shout, “If you release this man, you are no friend of the emperor. Everyone who claims to be a king sets himself against the emperor.”

If this Jesus isn’t addressed it could topple the world power, but first it would destroy the fragile existence of the religious institution and its communities. This conflict with Jesus is perhaps partly from a sense of misguided righteousness, but mainly from fear in its various forms.

The tactic is a kind of CYA , a kind of twisted survivalist approach. In order to preserve their security and status, the religious institution feels is must cast Jesus out or else the wrath of Rome which won’t distinguish between them. They also have to pin it on Rome to curtail revolt.

To be clear, this isn’t the doing of the Jewish people as representative of the whole, a teaching which has been perpetuated in service to racist ideologies. This was a calculated move by those trying to preserve their flimsy structures of power, religious leaders and politicians alike. They want it done, they might even argue that they NEED it done, and they want the mess to be someone else’s fault.

This is exactly why theologian James Cone connects the cross to the lynching tree. It is the same logic and the same stakes that justified the cultural terrorism and extreme violence across this country. It’s a bizarre ethical contortion, but this thinking continues even now as an understanding that this gross control of black bodies MUST be done in order to preserve safety for “us all,” “our people”, “our neighborhoods.” It even claims to be the compassionate and moral thing to do. There’s a rationale that harming one will protect the many, when in reality we are all harmed in this process, albeit in significantly different ways.

I wonder what else we sacrifice in the name of our own survival and that of the systems we think will save us. Even those things that we believe others or circumstances forced us to do. Our relationships? Our communities? Our identities? Our dreams? Our bodies? Our souls?

Trying to get by.

I wonder is sometimes we sacrifice the very thing that was saving us all along.

But God, as God typically does, turns injustice on its head.

As a kid I watched Bugs bunny Cartoons and had my picture taken on Splash Mountain which winds through Disney’s tale of Song of the South – a movie and ride criticized for its use of anti-black racist tropes. I only fairly recently learned that Bugs and Briar Rabbit are both descendants of an African folk tale that the enslaved people brought with them. Zomo the Rabbit plays the part of the trickster who can not match the speed and strength of the fox, traps the fox and gets themselves free using the very tools of the fox’s own making. Bugs bunny is the unlikely hero and Elmer Fudd is a blundering buffoon. Briar Rabbit escape through the thorns meant to torture him. It’s a tale of the under-resourced, outsmarting the dominant character. The story appropriated by white supremacist capitalism, unknowingly passes on the tradition that satirizes itself. You love to see it.

As they place a spiny laurel on Jesus’ head, it is the same symbol of victorious authority that Caesar wears. They wrap a poor person in regalia reserved only for the rich. They pronounce and worship his cosmic power even as they try to deny him of it. They dignify what they tried to mock and perpetuate what they hoped to silence.

Through God, even our pain and fear and death are subverted for the blessing of liberation and life. I don’t believe in redemptive violence which too often justifies continued harm, but I do believe that God is trying to convince, show us, and transform us with how to let go of our systems of sacrifice, because they don’t accomplish anything anyway, not really, not in a way that can endure. Even on the way to crucifixion, Jesus declares in the simple heart of his being that nothing can ultimately keep God and the Gospel down. Amen.

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