Sermon: Dance With the Demons

Brad Sullivan

Proper 14, Year C

August 11, 2019

Emmanuel, Houston

Luke 12:32-40

Dance With the Demons

“Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”  We live with quite a lot of fear, don’t we?  Fears of all kinds and varieties. Economic insecurity, health issues.  Fear of loss. We have fears of violence, fears of natural disasters destroying what we have.  We have fears of the other political party gaining power (whichever political party that is for each of us).  We also have fears of not being good enough, worthy enough. Fears that someone might find out the truth about us.  We have fears of what the world will be like for our children and grandchildren.

These fears keep us striving against each other, trying to overcome each other, trying to make sure that if the world is not going to be ok, at least those I love and I will be ok.  In the midst of these fears, Jesus says, “Do not be afraid little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”  It seems that our fears are nothing new, but they are the same fears which have been with humanity forever, and Jesus repeats what God has said throughout scripture, “Do not be afraid.”  Rather than overcome each other, let go of your fears and live in love toward each other.  “Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Live in love with each other, and trust each other.  For economic security, trust not only in yourself but also in those your love, your community and neighbors.  Give to others in their time of need, trusting that they will give to you in your time of need.  Rather than overcoming each  other, we live for and with each other.  That is life in the kingdom of God, and it is the Father’s good pleasure to give us the kingdom.

Lutheran Pastor David Lose writes:

I think the call – or at least one of the primary calls – of the church today is to become a place where people are so rooted in the promise of God’s good pleasure, reminded of their identity as God’s beloved children, and affirmed in their inherent self-worth and dignity, that they can, indeed, see all those around them as similarly beloved and deserving of self-worth, dignity, and God’s good pleasure. The question for a Christian..[is] discovering that as we give ourselves away in relationship and service we find a deeper sense of self than we’d imagined possible. We are born for community and find a sense of self and meaning and purpose as we trust God’s promises and give ourselves away in love.”

Give ourselves away in love.  That’s not an easy thing to do when we’re afraid of ourselves and those around us.  Our inner demons often keep us from giving ourselves away in love.  A friend of mine, Steve White, recently wrote, “Perhaps it isn’t actually about overcoming all your inner demons.  Maybe it’s about learning how to dance with them.”  That speaks to me not only of the fears we have about ourselves, but also the fears we have about each other.  What if we don’t need to fight against and overcome our inner demons, but rather learn to dance with them, to accept them as a part of who we are.  What if we also don’t need to fight against and overcome each other, but rather learn to dance with each other, to give ourselves away in love, to offer ourselves daily to God and join with each other in God’s divine dance, turning even our scars into something beautiful.  That’s life in God’s kingdom, and it is the Father’s good pleasure to give us the kingdom.

Fearing each other, we end up scattered and fragmented, continually knowing that we don’t belong.  We have folks who have felt like they can’t or don’t belong to the church because of their political beliefs.  I know I’ve made people feel this way at times, as have other church leaders, church members, and congregations.  The thing about our political views is, most people I know, on both sides of the political spectrum want the same thing: a just society which brings about the best way of life for the most number of people.  Their difference is simply the ways and the roles they believe the government should have in bringing about a just society.  They both have their religious beliefs tied up into that, and folks on both sides of the aisle believe in Jesus’ teachings about the kingdom of God. 

Here’s the secret:  The government is not how Jesus calls us to bring about God’s kingdom, even though it is the tool some would use to try.  God’s kingdom is given through God in partnership with us, with our living into God’s kingdom, and there is room in God’s kingdom for all of us.  All of us belong in God’s kingdom, and so we need not overcome each other, but learn to dance with each other, to give ourselves away in love. 

Rather than fearing that the other side may win, can we at least realize the while the other side may be wrong, it is still striving for the best system for the good of the most people?  Can we accept the consequences if it turns out our fears were right?  Can we trust in each other, rather than feeling threatened by each other?  Cane felt threatened by Abel, and so he killed him.  We hear of folks and have experience feeling threatened by each other and each others’ beliefs, so we attack each other verbally, sometimes physically, deriding each other, feeling that they want to destroy all that is good in our society, our country, and our world. 

"Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit,” Jesus taught, so that he will find you not asleep, but alert and ready.  Our fears and the ways we seek to overcome each other, feeling threatened by each other, are ways that we fall asleep.  We fall asleep to God’s kingdom and are alert only to our fears, to our inner demons.  We all have inner demons.  Our families have inner demons.  The church has inner demons.  Our cities, our state, and our nation have inner demons.  Keeping alert, staying awake and being alert is about not overcoming and striving against our inner demons and each other, but rather learning to dance together. 

If we learn to dance together, we may find that we are not asleep when the master of the house or the thief comes.  Whenever Jesus shows up in our lives (and it happens all the time), how wonderful if he finds us not trying to overcome each other, but instead learning to dance with each other, giving ourselves away in love.  Over time, we learn how each other moves and thinks.  We still step on each others’ toes, but we laugh about it.

Living into God’s kingdom, us giving of our abundance when folks are in need, receiving from others’ abundance when we are in need; living in that kingdom, we can live without fear of the other.  We can offer ourselves in love, and learn to dance together.  “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

Becoming a People Loved

Brad Sullivan

Maundy Thursday

April 17, 2019

Emmanuel, Houston

Exodus 12:1-4, (5-10), 11-14

Psalm 116:1, 10-17

1 Corinthians 11:23-26

John 13:1-17, 31b-35

Video of the Sermon

Becoming a People Loved

 “I am who I am.”  That’s what God said about himself when Moses asked for God’s name.  “I am who I am,” or another way of understanding what God said, “I will be what I will be.”  God is, God was, God will be.  “I will be what I will be,” God said, or put another way, “I am becoming what I am becoming.” 

Now, we are made in God’s image, and so we are becoming as well.  We are now who we were once becoming, and we are currently becoming who we will one day be. 

The people of Israel in our Exodus reading, at the time of the Passover, were becoming a free people.  Having been enslaved by Egypt, they were becoming something new, God’s holy nation, freed from bondage, and they continue to this day to be what they were becoming during that first Passover.  Israel is a nation, a people, set free by God to live according to his ways of love, justice, and mercy. 

More’n a few years later, Jesus was with his disciples, sharing the Passover feast, remembering that they were a people freed to live God’s ways of love, justice, and mercy, and Jesus told his disciples that his commandment was for them to love one another.  This was no mere sentiment or feeling, but active, moving, doing love. 

                      

Jesus commanded his disciples to love one another because he knew they were becoming who they were going to be.  He wanted them to become a people loved, a people healed and transformed through love.  See, all that we do and say to each other forms us into who we are going to be.  We make each other into who we are going to be.

As we consider Jesus’ command to love each other, consider the question, “who are you forming other people to be?”  In daily interactions with family, friends, strangers, clerks, servers, folks on the phone.  Who are you forming those around you to be?

Then consider this.  “Who are those around you forming you to be?”  Are you surrounded by people who love you in action and deed as well as in word? 

By realizing who we are forming others to be and who we are each being formed to be, consider what changes you might get to make.  Consider what help you might need in making those changes. 

Sometimes we get stuck or trapped because of who we have become and because of who others have helped for us into.  Like Israel, we can become enslaved.  Enslaved to anger, enslaved to resentment.  Enslaved to fear or pessimism.  Enslaved to doubt and worry.  Enslaved to self-righteousness judgment of others. 

We can become enslaved to all kinds of things, but we don’t have to stay that way.  We are not simply who we are; we are also becoming who we are going to be.  We can ask God to liberate us from parts of who we are so that we can become a people loved, a people healed and transformed through love. 

Now, like Israel being transformed from a people enslaved to the people of God, our becoming a people loved may take time.  It certainly takes effort on our part working at loving others and working at surrounding ourselves with people who love us.  We put in that effort, following Jesus’ command, and then we surrender to God ask him to do within us and around us far greater things than we can ask or imagine. 

I think of people I’ve known who fostered and adopted children whose birth parents had been hopelessly addicted to drugs.  The kids had been loved, but not well cared for, and they suffered the trauma of that.  Their adoptive parents loved them into healing.  It took time; it took effort, and the kids became very different people than they originally were going to become. 

Think of being kind and understanding with someone who messed up something they were doing for you.  You take it on the chin, knowing and trusting how loved you are by God, and you show that same love to that person who messed up.  You’ve just changed who they are becoming that day. 

Making the first step or even the second step at befriending someone who drives you nuts.  Becoming truly friends and seeing that the stuff that was driving you nuts was really more of a fear/anxiety reaction, and you really don’t drive each other nuts anymore. 

Jesus tells us to love each other as he loves us, and there is the essential part of our becoming a people loved:  trusting and believing that Jesus loves us, trusting and believing in just how darn much we are loved.  Trusting first in Jesus’ love, we begin to become a people loved, a people healed and transformed through love.  Then, living out that same love, risking while still trusting and knowing how loved we are, we begin to form others (and ourselves even more deeply) as a people loved. 

As we trust in Jesus’ love and as we love other people ever more fully, we become freed from all that binds us and enslaves us.  That’s what Jesus washing his disciples’ feet was all about.  Washing their feet was an act of love, of generosity and hospitality.  Walking around dusty roads in sandals, a foot-washing was pretty darn nice, and so for Jesus, it was an act of giving love, and for the disciples, it was an act of receiving love. 

So, whether you are like me and are kinda ooked out by feet, or you think feet are the coolest thing ever, I invite you to wash each others’ feet tonight as a reminder, as a mark, as a new start in becoming who we are going to be.  A people loved.  A people healed and transformed through love.  

 

We make each other into who we are going to be. 

Love each other into healing.

 

Bottom of the Ninth, and Judas Is at the Mound

Brad Sullivan

Palm Sunday

April 14, 2019

Emmanuel, Houston

Mark 14:3-9

Mark 14:1-2, 10-16

Video of the Sermon

Bottom of the Ninth, and Judas Is at the Mound

It’s the bottom of the ninth, two outs, two strikes, one runner at first, and you’re ahead by one run.  You’re pitching, and all you have to do is get one more strike, one more out, and you win the game.  You throw the pitch, and crack!  Homerun.  Two runs score.  You lose.  Many would say, “You lost the game,” as the pitcher in the final moments.  I say, “It’s a team effort, and if the team had been further ahead at that point, the team wouldn’t have lost.

I don’t usually do sports analogies, so I hope I didn’t lose anyone there.  The basic idea is, we’re pretty good at picking out scapegoats, pointing fingers at “the one” who messed everything up, and there is probably no easier scapegoat to pick on than Judas.  He’s the one who betrayed Jesus.  He’s the one who sold out his Rabbi, his mentor, his friend.  What’s that about?  He’s the one who messed everything up for everybody, right?

Except of course, scapegoating Judas?  That doesn’t work, for a couple of reasons.  One, Jesus was supposed to be betrayed, handed over to the authorities, and killed.  That was the plan.  He was to take our life and our death upon himself so that we would be united in God even in death. 

The other reason scapegoating Judas doesn’t work is, we’re all in this human team together.  We can’t really divorce ourselves from Judas’ betrayal of Jesus.  Jesus says that he is the vine and we are the branches.  He says that humanity is so connected to each other that we are one, and what harms any one of us harms us all.  So, Judas’ betrayal is all of our betrayal.

Now, when exactly did any of us see Jesus and betray him?  Well, as Jesus points out in Matthew 25, whenever we’ve betrayed any human being, the least of human beings, we’ve betrayed Jesus. 

Whew!  Alright, dark enough for everyone as we start Holy Week?  We good? 

The nutso thing about betrayal is that there are so many ways and kinds of betrayal.  Sometimes in a conflict, folks will turn against the side they had been on and actively choose to join the other side and fight against former allies. Maybe the betrayer is angry or disillusioned, seeking revenge or lashing out.  Sometimes the betrayer isn’t trying to fight against his former allies, but is simply trying to do the right thing, realizing the fight, or the cause, or the manner of fighting wasn’t good.  The betrayer in this case isn’t angry and isn’t trying to harm his former allies, and yet they feel no less betrayed.

Sometimes, there’s no real conflict, and yet a person will be betrayed by another’s actions, even though the betrayer had no idea he was doing anything against the other.  A person does or says something seemingly innocuous or well-intentioned to a friend and steps in a landmine.  The friend feels betrayed by one who had no idea or intention of betrayal. 

Sometimes greed or need or feeling alone and crushed down by the stresses and anxieties of life leads to an act of betrayal.  There’s no intent to cause harm, only a desire for self preservation, self soothing, self centeredness, and all awareness of the harm cause to others is muted, the ability to even see beyond oneself is gone. 

I reckon there are those of us who can view the betrayer in each of these scenarios with greater and lesser degrees of compassion.  Towards some we feel sympathy and even empathy.  Towards others, our ire is so great that we would find ourselves betraying them, seeking or desiring some kind of vengeance or ill will toward them.  We’ve all got it, that anger or hurt that can lash out at the person or group of people we see as a scapegoat, as the one who blew it for everybody.

So what about Judas?  Where is he in this realm of betrayers?  Angry and vengeful?  Convinced and convicted that he was doing the right thing, that Jesus really was dangerous and needed to be stopped?  Was Judas overcome by fear at the very real threats to his own life and the lives of all Jesus’ followers?  Was he overcome by fears of Rome, that they might destroy Israel if Jesus was seen as some new revolutionary?  Was he just greedy as John would suggest?

Ultimately, we have no idea.  We have different Gospel writers giving different portrayals of Judas, each with greater and lesser degrees of compassion towards him.  Our challenge with Judas is not to scapegoat him, but to see ourselves in him and to see our acts of betrayal in his act of betrayal.

Why?

Because of what God does with betrayal.  God takes the ugliness and death of betrayal and turns it into new life, into something beautiful.  We see God’s grace and love in his response to betrayal through Jesus’ actions in Mark’s Gospel.  Immediately after Judas betrays Jesus, Jesus starts making dinner plans with his disciples.  He knows Judas betrayed him, and yet he doesn’t stop it.  He doesn’t kick Judas out.  He arranges his dinner plans like nothing has happened and has Judas join him with the rest of the disciples for dinner like nothing had happened.  Judas was part of the meal.  Judas was part of the body.  Nothing changed that.  As Paul wrote, “nothing can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ. 

We’ll see over the coming week the beauty of what God does with betrayal, the promise of new life that God sees in all of our betrayals.  We’ll see that God needs no scapegoat, and therefore neither do we.  We don’t  need to blame the pitcher for losing the game.  We take our wins and our losses together, and we find we’re not even alone on the pitcher’s mound because we’re all in this thing together.  We are one, together in each other and together in God, and God is greater than our betrayals, greater than our losses and our victories. 

Our challenge is to believe that, to believe that God is greater than our losses and our victories, to believe that God is greater than our many betrayals.  Without God, we are left scapegoating each other or left as the scapegoat; we’re left as the betrayer or the betrayed.  We know what that looks like.  It’s ugly and full of death. 

With God, there is the promise of new life, with and through betrayal, God gives grace and love, transforming betrayal into something beautiful.  We don’t always know what that’s going to look like, so we trust, and wait, and keep on returning to God and each other.  We return over and over again and see what beautiful new thing God is going to do. 

Mary Poppins is IT

For all who love Mary Poppins (and I am very much among your number), I have a rather alarming revelation to share. It came when I was watching "Mary Poppins Returns", toward the end of the movie (fear not, intrepid reader, no spoilers are coming), when Mary Poppins was holding a red balloon.

That was my first clue.

My second and third clues were that Mary Poppins is a seemingly immortal being of goodness and light who appeared in the lives of the Banks family in an approximately 30-year interval.

Approximately 30.
Perhaps closer to 27 years?
With greater certainty and and revulsion, I let the thought, the inescapable conclusion fully form in my mind.
Mary Poppins is in fact IT, the murderous shape-shifting demon thing from the town of Derry.

Both IT and Mary Poppins delight in children. Adults don't even typically remember them, at least they forget/block out the horrors/magic.

How can this be? Mary is so wonderful, loving, firm yet gentle. IT is frightening, murderous, cruel yet inviting. They are the Yin and the Yang. The light and the dark. Two sides of the same coin.

Speaking of coins, note how they both exhibit a preoccupation with the poor use of money. Pennywise the Dancing Clown, as in "penny-wise and pound-foolish." His name itself is a reminder of how not to manage one's finances. Mary Poppins (who also dances) likewise told a young boy to spend his tuppence on food for birds, making fat birds rather than a sound investment for his future.

This final connection crystallized for me with absolute certainty the dark and terrible connection between London's favorite nanny and Derry's most terrifying monster. With as much love as I and we all have for Mary Poppins, make no mistake, for every "merry pop-in" she makes in London, IT is stalking Derry with blood-lust and fear.

Life may be a jolly holiday with Mary, but no number of spoons full of sugar will stop the dreadful nightmare of IT's deadlights for the poor children of Derry.

#MaryPoppinsisIT
#MaryPoppins
#IT

Flawed Dreams and Unexpected Love

Brad Sullivan

The Epiphany, Year C

January 6, 2019

Emmanuel, Houston

Isaiah 60:1-6

Matthew 2:1-12

Flawed Dreams and Unexpected Love

Happy Epiphany y’all.  Christmas ended yesterday, and the joy of Christmas now continues on in the Epiphany, the revelation of Jesus, of the God-baby to the nations through the Magi, and if I’m being honest, I feel the joy of Christmas continued on into Epiphany, and at the same time, I’m having a hard time feeling the joy right now.  Over the first five to six days of Christmas, I really got to feel the joy of Christmas and let everything else fade into the background.  I was at Camp Allen with my family on a clergy family retreat the weekend after Christmas, and other clergy were concerned about Emmanuel after Andy’s death, and they kept asking me, “How are you?”, not just to say “hi” but actually wondering how I was, with the knowing expression in their voices, expecting a sad response. 

My answer shocked several folks because I said, “I’m doing great.”  One friend seemed a little confused by my answer and said, “I’m sorry, I thought you were working with Andy at Emmanuel.”  “No,” I told him, “I was, I am.  It’s just that for right now, I’m enjoying time with my family.  For right now, it’s a great Christmas and I get to just be with my family through New Year’s.  For right now,” I told him, “Andy hasn’t died.  When I get back, he’ll have died again, and I’ll begin mourning again.”  He got that.

So now, it’s like the regular post-Christmas blues, but magnified, and I want to acknowledge that because I’m guessing I might not be alone in that grief and struggle with joy right now.  That’s ok.  For those who are joyful, we get to be joyful.  For those struggling with joy, we get to struggle with joy.  The reality of the post-Christmas blues is, I believe, in the realization that the dream of Christmas has not fully been realized.  We celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace, the birth of Jesus, the Messiah, and then we find that as before, there isn’t yet peace on Earth. 

I heard an interview on Fresh Air with Terry Gross a few days ago with Israeli author and peace activist Amos Oz.  He had just died and they were rebroadcasting previous interviews, and in the one I heard, he was talking about one of his books, Black Box, and he said it was ultimately “a novel about great dreams, about great expectations, about bigger-than-life visions and, indeed, about the morning after and the sad realization that every dream come true is bound to be flawed by coming true.”

He went on to talk about the modern nation of Israel, about Israel itself being a flawed dream come true.  There was such hope, such Messianic hope, in the re-creation of the nation of Israel, that it would be an idyllic, egalitarian country, that nations would flock to it and they would be a light to bring peace on Earth.  With all of the good that Israel is, the reality has of course fallen short of that dream.  The same could be said of the United States, of the city on a hill and light to the nations that we strive to be, and the reality that falls short of that dream, and the same can be said of the Church and every other dream we have.  That’s life. 

“Every dream come true is bound to be flawed by coming true.”  That struck a chord with me regarding Christmas and the Epiphany.  The dream of the Messiah and of peace on Earth.  Did the Magi, after seeing Jesus, feel “the sad realization that every dream come true is bound to be flawed by coming true?”

Who were these guys and maybe galls, these Magi from the east?  Ultimately, we don’t exactly know, but from the text, we know they weren’t kings.  They were more like astrologer, pagan, mystic, tarot card-type folks who were decidedly not Jewish.  So, star guiding them or not, why were they looking for or expecting some Jewish king or messiah?  Israel had a king, and they went to Israel’s king to ask about this newborn king/messiah guy, so this obviously wasn’t a geopolitical greeting and first summit around a new world leader.  So what was going on?

Again, we don’t exactly know, but my guess is this.  These magi had heard stories from Jewish people they had lived with or encountered.  My guess is further that the stories they heard included stories from the prophets about a messianic figure, about the restoration of Israel, and about the peace on Earth of God’s kingdom fully realized that such a Messiah was thought to bring about. 

Perhaps they’d heard stories from Isaiah 2 about nations streaming to Israel and people beating “their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; [when] nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”  Maybe they had also heard stories from Isaiah 60 about the light of God coming upon Israel, of the good fortune for all through that promise, culminating with “they shall bring gold and frankincense, and shall proclaim the praise of the Lord.”  Maybe the Magi had heard that verse and therefore brought gold and frankincense to proclaim the praise of the Lord…except for poor dumb Steve who thought Myrrh would be a good idea.  Poor Steve the Magi.

We don’t know how the non-Jewish, pagan Magi came to know about a baby king born in Israel and spoken of in the prophets, but my guess is that they had heard these stories of Messiah and had heard the hopes Jewish people whom they had encountered that the Messiah would be born and bring peace on Earth. 

So, were the Magi then disappointed with “the morning after and the sad realization that every dream come true is bound to be flawed by coming true.”  Were the Magi the first to experience what we call the post-Christmas blues because, of course, there was not peace on earth after the birth of this Jewish Messiah.

Not even when God became human, even Messiah, the Christ, came into the world was there peace on Earth.  There was not perfect peace on Earth, because God still left the earth in our care.  Of course life is still going to be imperfect and flawed even with Messiah, even with the Christ.  Perfection was never the point of the Christ.  Jesus, the Christ, the Messiah, came; God became human to show us how to be human, and to join with us fully in our broken and flawed humanity.  There is love.

Love is the Epiphany.  Not perfection.  Love, with its life, its beauty, and its pain is the Epiphany that the Magi saw.  These pagan, astrologer, tarot card reading type folks who were the antithesis of Jewish devotion to God were the ones to whom God gave this Epiphany of love.  They were pagan, gentile, totally other than the people of Israel.  In the eyes of the religious elite, they would have been totally unworthy of any kind of blessing or love from God, and yet the Epiphany of God’s love was given to them.  Pagan, Gentile, they were loved by God. 

They may have had some disappointment after seeing Jesus that the messianic hopes and fervor of peace on Earth had not been realized, but I’m guessing the Epiphany of love stuck with them.  During the post Christmas blues, God’s Epiphany is love.  No matter who you are.  No matter your religious devotion or non-devotion.  No matter where you are from or what you have done.  You are loved.  You are so loved.  That is the Epiphany of Jesus.  That is how Christ heals us, how Christ helps us to become fully human, that we know, in our hearts, that we are loved.  That is God’s Epiphany of love.  You are loved.  You are so loved.