Worship

This morning the sun shines brightly into my living room. Through my window I can see all of the flowers in my garden in bloom, happy and perky after the rainy on Friday. I delight in the reds and yellows, the purples, the lush greens. I give thanks to God for the varied beauty of God’s creation, the deep pinks and reds of geraniums, the cheery crepe-paper orange of Iceland Poppies. The sun casts it’s light through my window and even though I just vacuumed, it picks up on the ever present dog hair on the couch, it shows off the dust that I missed on the bookcase. These iniquities of my housekeeping cannot be hidden from the light.

This week light shone once again on our country. And while it highlights the beauty, the hills endless green curved mounds, dotted with purple lupine and yellow fiddlenecks, the light also is cast into the shadows of who we are bringing the ugly, the unspeakable out as well. As news came in and continues to develop about the killing of eight people in Georgia across three different massage parlors, we can see clearly the places where we have neglected to care for in the absence of light. Unlike the layer of dust gathering on my copy of Jane Eyre, these housekeeping iniquities are lethal. There are layers of white supremacy and misogyny that are revealed when something occurs like what took place this week. Though we have spent a good deal of time talking and fretting over the role racism plays in our society, laws, and systems, not to mention in our own day-to-day dealings, we can see our iniquities in the harsh light. The light thrown on anti-asian violence, illuminating the constructed hierarchies that serve as a foundation to make a white man feel that Asian women are disposable enough to murder in order to cure him of his own addiction, the glaring glow of the protective nature of a society enculturated and steeped in white supremacy which means that a man who murders multiple people, with a majority of those victims being Asian and women, is not immediately shot and killed by the police, or treated roughly—and I’m not complaining about that, but in the light of the way peoples of color are treated when being arrested, it provides plenty to feel downright sick about. Instead, people came to his defense, saying he was having a bad day. Allowing his self-admission of sex addiction to justify the murder of those who might tempt him. Dehumanizing and laying blame on the victims. As we learn more and more about this tragic event that took place, we see that the light is not so flattering, and we recognize that the work of cleaning our house of this kind of sin is far from finished. And if you’re listening to this, uncomfortable because, well, maybe those places are places that might cause a man to stumble over his sexual desires, I offer you this: God loves everyone, sexy people included. Jesus famously offered this advice, “But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.” (matthew 5:28-29). We are in charge of our own lust and desire. Not the person who has a rockin’ bod, not the woman wearing short shorts and a crop top, not the person who is doing their job, even if that person’s job makes you feel some sort of way. Our impulses, our attraction, our lust is ours to control and Jesus is clear that we are not to make it the other person’s problem. Unfortunately, a lot of what purity culture teaches us is that it is on the woman, on the person who is attractive or vulnerable or just doing their damn job to cover up, to keep “a brother from stumbling” and to bear the burden of guilt if they are assaulted or worse.

This morning we heard a reading from Psalm 51. In it, we have the oft-cited “Create in me a clean hear, O God, and put a new and right spirit in me.” And this, this sounds good, right? This is a super relatable prayer. We can often be filled with feelings of iniquity, or feel unworthy in God’s presence. But here’s the background of this psalm that doesn’t show up in the text itself, but rather in the superscription—this psalm was written in regards to the incident with David and Bathsheba. To refresh our memories because it may have been some time since this story has come up—and it often gets whitewashed because we don’t like to talk about sex in church—David observed Bathsheba and decided he wanted her. Inconveniently, she had a husband, Uriah the Hittite, a soldier who was loyal and faithful to his king. David, being King, had power that could not receive a No answer, and he, in biblical terms “ had relations” with Bathsheba. It is debated whether this could be considered rape. Looking at the power differential, it is safe to assume that even if consent was sought, it would have been impossible to say no to a powerful ruler. When it became apparent that Bathsheba was with child, David had Uriah the Hittite moved to the front lines and he was killed in the line of duty. Imagine the fake shocked look on David’s face as this happens. As we know, she became mother of King Solomon, and if we look at the lineage cited in the book of Matthew, she is an ancestor, her DNA passed down to him.

All of this has implications and impact on the events that we saw in our world this week. First, as we read Psalm 51, we read in it the desire to be made new by David, but we do not find anywhere within these verses an apology. While, without context, it may seem like a confessional psalm, we do not read deep remorse because of the lives his actions affected—including Uriah the Hittite’s death—murder?—David had been exposed for his act. He didn’t seek out the prophet Nathan to make things right when no one knew. This psalm was written as a result of Nathan coming to David after the public found out about what he had done. This is the panicked confession of wrongdoing of a man whose reputation was at stake. Those who were victim to his wrongdoing were not made part of his plea for a clean heart. All he was looking for was a clear conscience and more importantly to a man in power, a clean record among his people.

It is unsurprising that now, in 2021 we have a culture that does not respond to the people who have been wronged, but instead swallows whole the assumption that a man who had a bad day and was dealing with some pretty horrible stuff himself can kill people who a white supremacist and misogynist hierarchy deems less valuable, so his actions are justified. While this psalm acts as a prayer of confession, it also masks the offense and blots out the victims, stating that “Against you, you alone, have I sinned.” What about Bathsheba, what about Uriah the Hittite? What about the families of those who worked and were customers in those massage businesses? What about the shockwave of terror that spread across the country in a time when anti-asian violence is already heightened?

What we also see in the story of Bathsheba is that the role of women—even those who have been exploited, those who have been assaulted, those who have been coerced—is one that bears important fruit. Victims are not to bear the blame, even though David seems to have gotten away with this one. Bathsheba’s genes, her very dna became part of a bloodline that would one day course through the veins of our savior Jesus Christ. Christ would come and care for the victims, the assaulted, the marginalized with his ancestor Bathsheba’s blood in his own, and he would say things that would indict David, he would call men to take ownership of their own lust rather than cast the blame and burden on the beautiful woman that was there minding her own gorgeous business. Pluck your eye out if it causes you to sin. Pluck your eye out if you see a beautiful married woman, instead of sending her husband to his death. Pluck your eye out if you cannot control your lust, don’t make it someone else’s problem. Now, the pluck your eye out bit is really gory hyperbole, we have to make the leap ourselves to understand this to mean seek help, do your own work, get a therapist, go to Sexaholics Anonymous—there is no shame in seeking help and there are so many organizations in place to help with whatever it might be that might make us feel like we cannot control our impulses, whatever they may be. And when we’ve wronged and caused harm, yes, pray psalm 51, pray it earnestly. Pray it before anyone realizes what we’ve done, and pray it hand in hand with a sincere apology and plan of repentance to those who have been wrongs as well as God.

As we begin, piece by piece to deconstruct the ways in which we have unknowingly and knowingly upheld systems and societal norms that make events like David and Bathsheba or Robert Aaron Long and the three Spas he targeted possible. God is just, our iniquities are forgiven, but it is also our uncomfortable work to uphold our part of the covenant and see that this world is a just world for all. May God sustain in you a willing spirit as the light continues to reveal the iniquities around you, and may God restore to you the joy of your salvation as you work to dismantle the ways in which you see those sins perpetuated and propped up. Amen.

Good morning!

I bring you groggy salutations on this “Spring Ahead” morning! I still feel like I’m reeling from last spring when we did this whole time change ahead, but then, last spring left us a lot to reel over. It has officially been a year. March 15^th was our last Sunday in person, and that feels like a wild ride. How are we here at the one year point? How are we still worshiping online?

But, here we are. I shared this poem by Lynn Ungar last year, and I’ll read it again now. I’m curious how it hits you, after a year in this.

Pandemic

What if you thought of it
as the Jews consider the Sabbath—
the most sacred of times?
Cease from travel.
Cease from buying and selling.
Give up, just for now,
on trying to make the world
different than it is.
Sing. Pray. Touch only those
to whom you commit your life.
Center down.
 
And when your body has become still,
reach out with your heart.
Know that we are connected
in ways that are terrifying and beautiful.
(You could hardly deny it now.)
Know that our lives
are in one another’s hands.
(Surely, that has come clear.)
Do not reach out your hands.
Reach out your heart.
Reach out your words.
Reach out all the tendrils
of compassion that move, invisibly,
where we cannot touch.
 
Promise this world your love–
for better or for worse,
in sickness and in health,
so long as we all shall live.
 
–Lynn Ungar 3/11/20

Personally, I feel like we’ve taken this advice seriously at Grace. We’ve centered down in ways we’d never dreamed of. We’ve reached out with our hearts instead of our hands. I know our deacons keep the phone lines busy checking in on everyone, a ministry which I am utterly grateful for. We’ve found ways to connect and create warmth in digital spaces that we never had considered channels for holding the sacred in the past. And, in true Lenten spirit, we have braved this wilderness together.

Speaking of wilderness…our readings this morning touch on so many fascinating visuals, poisonous snakes, “the gates of death,” love, and light. I am grateful that the lectionary puts the gospels in conversation with the Hebrew scriptures, especially on bleary mornings like this where that stolen hour of sleep might fail to make me curious about what on earth it means in the Gospel of John when he talks about Moses lifting the serpent in the wilderness. Instead, we have the beautiful context of God providing healing relief in the wilderness, life saving and life giving reprieve from deadly snake venom. But first, the Israelites were whiny.

They had been traveling out of Egypt, and the farther they got from Egypt, the more fondly the remembered it. Let’s keep in mind that these were enslaved people, but even so, hardship can be a powerful eraser of past evils, and the longer they journeyed, the farther they went, the more they longed for the “good ol’ days” in Egypt. They weren’t remembering the back breaking work, the soul-crunching days of toil, but they were remembering that they had steady food. Not like, great food, but at least they knew it was coming. Not knowing for sure when or where they would settle, they did what seems to be human nature. They got whiny. They got irritable. They quarreled with each other, they got mad at God for giving up on them, they accused moses of being a terrible leader. They weren’t actually starving, even though they complained that they were in the same way my kids do when we’ve run out of cheez-its and all we have left is carrots and apples to snack on. God had been steadily sending the Israelites manna. So much manna. Manna, manna, manna. They were basically just…impatient. Over it. Lashing out. And you know, God usually responds to lament. Not this time.

Which brings up a lot of weird feelings for me, to be honest. I love the stories where God is all love, but these ones where God is suddenly harsh and sending snakes to bite people. What’s that all about?

Last week during our time for families, I talked about covenant, and what it means to live in covenant. It’s a pretty huge give and take, and there’s a lot of trust that has to be had by everyone involved. It’s more than a simple contractual obligation in that it lives, shifts, and adapts with every bump that those in covenant encounter. But this, this was a pretty big bump. So God did what God did. People died. God then went into loving God mode, the part I am comfortable with, and told Moses what to do to keep people from dying from these painful, poisonous bites.

Whenever I am struck with discomfort by a piece of scripture, I usually linger there for a bit to figure out what the discomfort stems from. That’s why, when I’ve promised to talk about the psalms all Lent, I’ve strayed over the Numbers.

I ask myself when I don’t understand a text, what this text has to offer. Now, the simple version is to say “God will punish you if you’re a big whiney crybaby and you’re not satisfied with your manna.” And that’s certainly something we can find evidence of in the text. But why was this part of the story so essential that it survived years and years and years of oral tradition, was written, was translated, was canonized, and has been preserved for us? What function did this story serve in ancient times? How was it perceived when it was told? How has this story saved lives? How has it held lives captive through manipulation of the text?

I don’t have answers to these questions, but I do hear a striking, loud, and clear tone coming from it for our times, and this could act as a cautionary tale to us. The Israelites weren’t the only people who ever experienced a rosy retrospection. Anyone who has ever uttered a “back in my day” grumbling about today’s youth has fallen prey to this one, any time we’ve longed for a simpler time, or wanted to go back to the way things were—or maybe to just go back to life pre-covid has experienced this. But the reality is this: things weren’t nearly as good as our brains would fool us into thinking. Not only are our minds capable of filtering out bad, traumatic stuff, but we also only saw the past from our own perspective, which is not as universal as we’d like to think. When thinking about this especially in a pre-COVID light, I think about how toxic our working environments were, how harsh and unforgiving our capitalist structures are when they’re not forced to change. And yet, when I think about life pre-March 2020, I think only of going to live theatre or hugging my best friend and talking over coffee for hours. I don’t think about the ways that same pre-COVID system had me convinced that I was only worth as much as I was able to produce, which kept me even busier than I am now. And I certainly don’t consider how much harder it was for anyone else who didn’t had as many protections and privileges as me. COVID has been hard, but it has also forced a slow-down and has caused many companies who in the past would have never allowed accommodations like working from home for those whose health may have benefited from it to seriously consider it, or to have to cease operations. We’ve gotten a better view of the cracks in our society. But with rosy-retrospection, it’s harder to see and remember these things, we just want things to be good again. You notice which tagline I’ve been avoiding saying, right? Yeah. That’s a whole other “people grumbling about being starved while having a ton of manna” sermon, but I allow you to fill in the gaps this morning. It is important for us, as we encounter difficult texts to look at them from all kinds of angles and to grapple with the reasons they are hard. This morning, I’m wrestling with the times I have been the one complaining in the wilderness and wishing for the good old days, the simpler times. I am asking God to forgive me for not seeing the bigger picture, but instead wanting what I want in a petulant tone. I am grateful for all the times God didn’t send snakes my way, and I give praise for all the snake pits in my self-inflicted wildernesses I’ve encountered when God already had the bronze snake on a stick ready for me.

To circle back home, this line about Moses and holding up the serpent in the wilderness is the lesser known part to one of the most widely quoted bits of scripture out there. With this baffling serpent throwback story, we hear the lines, “for God so loved the word that he gave his only son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed God did not send the son to condemn the world, but in order that the world may be saved through him.”

When we read all of these things together, we see that god is motivated by love for a repentant people in sending the serpent that heals in the Numbers story. The writer of John uses this as a historical reference, a way of rooting what will be said next. A way for those who are reading or hearing this to already know what to expect. God is, again, acting out of love, but in order to save the whole world from venomous, painful, deadly, evil snakebites this time. It is a wider covenantal love, one that is constantly adjusting as the darkness grows or fades, and is tweaking the ways in which that love can be lived out. While this love is spread over us like a warm blanket on a chilly day, it is important that we uphold our part of the covenant by loving God, loving ourselves, and loving our neighbors in forward thinking ways that rely less on rosy retrospection and more on creating a world filled with light and truth.

Before we go, I would like to share with you this meditation that I found on Worship Ways. Please get into a comfortable position.

Settle into your seats and close your eyes.

Visualize a place of emptiness, of shadows.

What comes up for you?

(If this first image is too disturbing,

find another place of imagination that offers you comfort and peace.)

Imagine your presence there.

Now imagine that with you 

is the presence of Jesus as a glimmer of light.

What does that light look like?

Stay there a moment with Jesus, the Light.

As you focus your attention on the glimmer of light, hear this:

For God so loved the World that God gave God’s only begotten child

For God so loved the World that God gave

For God so loved the World

For God so loved

So loved

The World

God

God so loves the world!
May God your Maker
send you back into the world with creative energies refreshed.
May Christ the Light
illuminate your fearful moments.
And may the Holy Spirit of steadfast love
guide you until we worship together again.
This day and forevermore. Amen!

Let us begin with a Living Psalm. This is Psalm 22:23-31, as interpreted by rev dr. chris davies.

Who do you think you are, people of faith!?  How do you think we got here?  (Spoiler alert: it’s God.)

Our faith survived generations because we adapted and innovated. (and colonized. And killed. Let’s be real.)

But God keeps offering us redemption.  So I praise God.  (And all that is divine.)

God is with those who are most and multiply oppressed.  So: so am I.

Because God has been with me through all this crud.

So I will be attentive to how I can help God keep making this world better.

When I cried so hard my body shook, God was with me.

So I will show up, the best I can:

For the poor, the hungry, the lonely.

Those who have not had Choice to live abundantly.

There IS enough for EVERYONE in this world.

Enough Food. Love. Care. Meaningful Work.  Home. Gardens. Earth. Liberation.

All the world could engage to remember that we have all we need and more… and this is not ours, but God’s.

The creation, the communities, the creatures; and those who care for them? God’s.

To God I offer humble thanks.  And a partnership to work towards a better world, until I am but dust.

Because I want my great-great-great-great- granddaughter to survive.  And thrive.

I want that for yours, too.

Do you?

Adapted from living psalm by rev dr. chris davies

I don’t know about you, but I needed that re-interpretation this morning. I had trouble connecting to this psalm, no matter how many commentaries I read, or which Bible version I went to. I listened intently as Judy read it while we filmed on Friday, hoping that hearing the words from someone else, they would open up for me. I REWROTE the whole darned thing, and meditated on the meaning using this week’s worship aid. [Show coloring sheet] Nothing.

Sometimes it’s like that. Finally, I did what I should have done in the first place. I started at the beginning. No, not at the beginning of the Bible or of the Book of Psalms. I started at Psalm 22:1. Here’s the thing about the Revised Common Lectionary, which we follow every week. It’s excellent for thematically tying multiple parts of scripture together—and oh, how beautiful it is when can get a glimpse of the story-arc, of the through lines tying us together with ancient wisdom! But, also, sometimes it prematurely cuts off in a weird place, or it starts just after the part that gives it the wings to allow that scripture to soar. That was the case with Psalm 22. While I appreciated the “God is good, Praise God!” tone of the latter half of Psalm 22, I didn’t connect to it in a way that my own soul was needing in this moment. I woudn’t be surprised if your soul DID connect with the reading, however. We don’t all come to these readings from the same place, and we won’t ever come to the again from the same place as our lives change and our relationship to the divine Holy One matures.

What my soul needed as I was searching through Psalm 22 for wisdom, guidance, and the words to pray today comes in the two halves of this psalm meeting up. Please indulge me as I read the beginning of the psalm to you, and then follow up with the day’s lection.

Psalm 22

Plea for Deliverance from Suffering and Hostility

To the leader: according to The Deer of the Dawn. A Psalm of David.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
    Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer;
    and by night, but find no rest.

Yet you are holy,
    enthroned on the praises of Israel.
In you our ancestors trusted;
    they trusted, and you delivered them.
To you they cried, and were saved;
    in you they trusted, and were not put to shame.

But I am a worm, and not human;
    scorned by others, and despised by the people.
All who see me mock at me;
    they make mouths at me, they shake their heads;
“Commit your cause to the Lord; let him deliver—
    let him rescue the one in whom he delights!”

Yet it was you who took me from the womb;
    you kept me safe on my mother’s breast.
On you I was cast from my birth,
    and since my mother bore me you have been my God.
Do not be far from me,
    for trouble is near
    and there is no one to help.

Many bulls encircle me,
    strong bulls of Bashan surround me;
they open wide their mouths at me,
    like a ravening and roaring lion.

I am poured out like water,
    and all my bones are out of joint;
my heart is like wax;
    it is melted within my breast;
my mouth is dried up like a potsherd,
    and my tongue sticks to my jaws;
    you lay me in the dust of death.

For dogs are all around me;
    a company of evildoers encircles me.
My hands and feet have shriveled;
I can count all my bones.
They stare and gloat over me;
they divide my clothes among themselves,
    and for my clothing they cast lots.

But you, O Lord, do not be far away!
    O my help, come quickly to my aid!
Deliver my soul from the sword,
    my life from the power of the dog!
    Save me from the mouth of the lion!

From the horns of the wild oxen you have rescued me.
I will tell of your name to my brothers and sisters;
    in the midst of the congregation I will praise you:
You who fear the Lord, praise him!
    All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him;
    stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel!
For he did not despise or abhor
    the affliction of the afflicted;
he did not hide his face from me,
    but heard when I cried to him.

From you comes my praise in the great congregation;
    my vows I will pay before those who fear him.
The poor shall eat and be satisfied;
    those who seek him shall praise the Lord.
    May your hearts live forever!

All the ends of the earth shall remember
    and turn to the Lord;
and all the families of the nations
    shall worship before him.
For dominion belongs to the Lord,
    and he rules over the nations.

To him, indeed, shall all who sleep in the earth bow down;
    before him shall bow all who go down to the dust,
    and I shall live for him.
Posterity will serve him;
    future generations will be told about the Lord,
and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn,
    saying that he has done it.

There it is. As soon as I brought in the full context of the psalm, I connected to the lectionary chunk of it. As I mentioned last week, I am reading Walter Brueggemann’s Praying the Psalms as part of my Lenten journey. IN the very first chapter, he offers that the Psalms are for a time that is beyond the comfort of equilibrium. In other words, everything be nice and orderly is nice, but the psalms are best applied to those topsy-turvy moments. That’s when they truly shine. The psalms are raw and emotive, and so they almost don’t hit quite in the same way when we’re trying to hold everything together and repressing our feelings. He says,

“For the normal, conventional functioning of public life, the raw edges of disorientation and reorientation must be denied or suppressed for purposes of public equilibrium. As a result, our speech is dulled and mundane. Our passion has been stilled and is without imagination. And mostly the Holy One is not addressed—not because we dare not but because God is far away and hardly seems important. This means that the agenda and intention of the psalms is considerably at odds with the normal speech of most people, the normal speech of a stable, functioning, self-deceptive culture in which everything must be kept running young and smooth.” (page 7.)

Ouch.

Did anyone else feel that? I don’t think I connected with the lectionary selection because it jumps to the God is Good part without that initial lamentation, that plea for deliverance from suffering. It leads directly into the equilibrium part without all of the relatable hardship that one often goes through before reaching that point of balance. Often, we use the psalms in a way that doesn’t dig in deep to their dangerously raw spirit because, as Brueggemann says, we are constantly denying and suppressing those raw edges in order to keep up some self-deceptive semblance of poise, even when we are literally falling to pieces just under the surface. The psalms are not intended to help keep that veneer up, they exist to speak from a common place in human existence—suffering, and they help us to address God (or yell at God, which God is big enough to take, and gracious enough not to hold against us) in those tough times. And like, this last year has been one of those tough times. It’s okay to be upset. It’s okay to lay your fears and pain at Jesus’ feet. We know this because we can put the first half of this psalm in conversation with the second half.

In the first half, we have a line of scripture that Jesus himself uses from the cross. “My god, my god why have you forsaken me?” We have a line that anyone who has ever struggled with impostor syndrome or self esteem can identify with, “But I am a worm, and not human;
    scorned by others, and despised by the people.” We have the words for heartbreak, “I am poured out like water,
    and all my bones are out of joint;
my heart is like wax;
    it is melted within my breast;”

And it is through this lament, as the Psalmist puts all of their woes out there for God to hear, that we get to a turning point in the psalm. At verse 21, it starts with   “ Save me from the mouth of the lion!”

And then there is a break. There’s a space. The psalmist comes back for the second part of verse 21 with, “From the horns of the wild oxen you have rescued me.” One gets the sense that the psalmist has even put down their pen. I think about the diaries I wrote in as a teen, and I would stop writing because something was happening, then come back and report on whatever it was that took place. So the psalmist asks for salvation, and then comes back with “…you have rescued me.”

That’s where we come into today’s reading. All of this has taken place, and it is from a well of deep joy that the psalmist is drawing from as we read about the greatness of god. I go into all of this detail about the beginning of psalm 22 to make sure that if you’re also coming from the place before the lection starts, you don’t only see the end result. There’s a lot of talk about the way that social media makes it appear as though folks have perfect lives because what they show on their instagram or facebook feed is carefully curated to share a life that is in a state of equilibrium, and we can begin feeling as though we’re, well, worms in comparison. That’s because we’re seeing the God is Good! half. The part of their personal psalm that cut in half at the turning point and left out the lament but only showed the glorious, joyful part.

This weekend I shared photos of my trip to the coast, but what no one saw was the Wednesday mid-day ugly cry because I was overwhelmed. But you know what, the psalms are written from a place of overwhelm and were preserved in the Canon because they speak directly to people who are living in a state of overwhelm. Brueggemann also says, “For most of us, liturgical or devotional entry into the Psalms requires a real change fo pace. It asks us to depart from the closely managed world of public survival, to move into the open, frightening, healing world of speech with the Holy One.” (page 8). The Psalms can be powerful allies in bringing what is troubling us to God, but we have to strip away that curated-content, only the good parts tendency we have—the same one that instinctively says “I’m alright!” when someone asks how we’re doing, even though we have a long list of problems that are plaguing us.

This week, I invite you to pray Psalm 22. Bring your lamentations, your struggles, and your fears into it as you read those first 21 verses, and then pause for a moment. Mentally set your pen down and sit, listening for God. Don’t push God away or let your worries drown out the still-speaking voice. Then, read verses 22-31. Access the psalmist’s relief, their joy. Find that place within yourself where you are also proclaiming about the future generations who will also experience the endless, timeless mercy of our God who loves us and delivers us from torment and pain again, and again, and again. Many blessings, my dearest friends.

Amazing, bountiful creator,

Dreamer, energizer of faith,

May the words and ideas that we share today be acceptable to you, may we grow more attuned to your presence in our lives. Amen.

Friends, here we are in Lent, again. Last year, when we started out on this journey in the wilderness, we were in person. I remember those last few Sundays before we had to quickly switch tracks and worship online. I think about how the hugs and handshakes on the last Sunday in particular felt like we were doing something bad—but we weren’t aware of just how risky they were until much later. In retrospect, knowing that none of us had the virus yet, I would have hugged everyone a million times—and that’s saying something coming from an introvert at heart! I remember the prayers during our Church at Prayer time. Each week leading to our final Sunday in worship (which we didn’t know would be our last) our usual prayers for folks within our community were punctuated by the anxious prayers of an illness that was terrifying, growing in numbers, and yet was still so far away from our mountain community on the west coast. I know I was harboring doubts that it would get this far before there was a cure. I remember how we thought we would be worshipping from home for a week or two, tops. Then, it was that we’d be back by Easter. Then, maybe summer.

I think by mid-summer, the hope that we would be back in person by Christmas was gone. And I’m thankful for it, we didn’t have looming question marks above us for the immediate future, and we could focus on the ways we could stay in community, while separate. We were able to remain faithfully in our homes, keeping our neighbors and ourselves safer.

And here we are, beginning another season in Lent. It feels like it has been Lent all year, for all of the wilderness of this COVIDscape. In this wilderness, we’ve all been touched in one way or another by the effects of a long-term pandemic. When we add elements like fire and wind and snow, we can see that the COVIDscape we’ve wandered has been rocky, perilous, the terrain rough and unforgiving. It is with this in mind that I offer to you this suggestion: This Lent, if you have chosen a discipline that is one of the “giving something up” nature and it is too much, do not be too hard on yourself—you’ve already given up much in the course of the year and by your staying home and wearing personal protective masks and making your hands raw with hand sanitizer, you’ve been faithful in the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself. Do your best, but remember that the purpose of a discipline as we wander this wilderness with Jesus for 40 days is that we are seeking to eliminate the things that come between us and God. If you’re miserable for God’s sake, it might act as a further barrier.

That’s also, to lead into the real purpose of this morning’s sermon, why I have decided to go with the Psalms as the focus texts during Lent. As we prepare for the one year anniversary of our physical separation in the coming weeks, my hope is that we can build up our spiritual muscles so that we are in good shape for whatever this milestone may mark for us. The psalms are a great way to do that.

I used to think that the psalms were just some fluffy poetry, that they existed to fill out a memorial service when all other words failed or that they were nice to throw in as a prayer here and there. It wasn’t until about a year ago when I started listening to Richard Bruxvoort-Colligan of https://www.psalmimmersion.com/ that I recognized the psalms for what they truly are: revolutionary words from people—humans just like us—as they grappled with God.

Walter Brueggemann says this of the psalms, “The Psalms with a few exceptions, are not the voice of God addressing us. They are rather the voice of our own common humanity—gathered over a long period of time…a voice that continues to have amazing authenticity…It speaks about life the way it really is, for in those deeply human dimensions the same issues and possibilities persist.”

As we enter into this next phase in the church—whatever it may look like, the Psalms are a great guide for us to know how to approach God, no matter what it is we’re dealing with. The following weeks are going to be a little interactive—or a lot, depending on how you click with the material discussed here. They’ll be sort of experimental, we will be creating together—and yes I mean together. You can maybe get away with it these first few weeks, but on March 7^th we will be worshipping on Zoom and there will be some time for reflection together. The reality is, a sermon is nice, but it doesn’t include actually practicing the things we talk about. It’s so easy to listen and then…remain unchanged. My hope is that this lent, as we continue through the COVIDscape and enter another wilderness together, that we will explore practical ways of deepening our prayer life through the psalms. So pull out your Psalm 25 sheet from your Lenten Bags—if you don’t have one, email me and I’ll send you the file. 😊

If you were listening carefully, you may have noticed that you’ve heard Psalm 25 in three different ways during today’s service so far. In the gathering prayer, we had a version of it written specifically as a call to worship for Lent from Worship Ways. Our Church at Prayer time started out with a Living Psalm written by Sonny Graves (you may remember Sonny from the NCNC-UCC conference office a few years ago!) and of course, we heard Barb as she read Psalm 25.

25 is a psalm of lament, it is a prayer that comes from a psalmist in distress. In it, our psalmist asks God to let those who have tormented them to feel ashamed for their “wantonly treacherous” ways. I actually really loved that phrase. So much that I put white out over the print on my own psalm sheet and uh…wrote in my own. In psalms, we can be a little dramatic. Those who are downtright rotten to us aren’t just bad, we can call them “wantonly treacherous.” But also, with lament, comes acknowledgement of the psalmist’s own areas in need of improvement. In a supremely relatable line, the psalmist pleads that god “not remember the sins of my youth.” We’ve all had a learning curve, or character arc, even the psalmists.

What this psalm does is it allows the person praying to be completely open and self-revealing. This is not a prayer designed to make the psalmist merely look good, it is one where the psalmist is opening up to God and letting God see all of the tender, hurt, and heartbroken bits. It is written with an unshakeable understanding that God is good and loves those who look to God for guidance. Psalm 25 is also an alphabetical psalm. These psalms are akin to what we know as acrostic poems. Following the alphabet is a great way to remember the contents—remember that many of the things we have written down now were at one time passed down from memory. Having a mnemonic device would be incredibly helpful in committing a prayer like this to memory.

There are a few options for engaging with today’s psalm. You can, of course, spend time meditatively coloring in the Psalm 25 sheet. You can copy the psalm word for word into the spaces in the ribbons that don’t already have words on them. Or, you can try your hand at writing your own alphabetical acrostic prayer. Don’t worry, you can use the latin alphabet rather than the Hebrew one as was used for Psalm 25.

I’ll start one right now.

You can see that it doesn’t have to be perfect or worthy of canonization in the book of psalms. This is between you and God—but if you would like to share it, I would love to read your psalms! As we journey the Lenten wilderness, feel free to take a photo of your colored in psalm sheets or your prayers as you write them and I’ll share them in the newsletter if you give me the go-ahead.

The psalms are a place where we can locate deep hope-hope that can be hard to access in time when lament is caught in our throats. When we learn from the psalmists how to voice our lamentations, we can also see clearly how God’s righteousness and love provide a way forward for us, even when we’re re-entering a wilderness we never truly left. After all, according to the psalmist, ”  All the paths of the LORD are steadfast love and faithfulness, for those who keep his covenant and his decrees.”

Hope Hilton is a Member in Discernment in the Northern California Nevada Conference of the United Church of Christ, and is a Chaplain and Spiritual Care Counselor at Hospice East Bay. She was born and raised near Marysville, CA and studied psychology and religious studies before receiving her M.Div at Pacific School of Religion. She is “Stubbornly Methodist and UCC” and has served as Vice Moderator at First Congregational Church Berkeley, and is Moderator Elect—and is the first trans person to serve in both of those roles in her congregation.

Prioritizing. It’s a struggle—especially with so many things that are vying for our attention. I feel like it’s extra hard these days, for me at least, with notifications constantly lighting up my phone, an email inbox that is never empty, targeted advertising knowing that I really love yarn and showing me a sumptuous hand-dyed superwash merino/cashmere/nylon blend at every turn—and that’s just the digital. Then, then checklists of things to do in real life, in real time. Looking at the list sometimes is just overwhelming in itself, because it never ends. I don’t know how you tackle your to-do list, but prefer to go for the low hanging fruit first. The quick wins that I can cross off. The problem with this is that there are always gonna be more quick win tasks I can add, but the big, looming projects are still there, and usually get carried over to the next day, and then the next because my list was not made in order of priority, but instead in the order that things popped into my mind. Of course, what’s a to-do list with kids at home distance learning and my own distance learning to contend with. Add other random attention grabbers, and it’s hard to make out exactly what it is that I was sent here to do. Sent here, as in what was I created by God to do? Does any of this ring true for you? I’d imagine that the details of what steals your precious attention away are different, but do you feel that sometimes the world is pulling you in one direction and God is calling you to another?

There’s actually a theory of economics known as the “attention economy” that operates on the principle that attention is a scarce resource—and for some of us it is more so than others!—and because you can only pay attention to one thing at a time, reasonably, and our attention span is actually a new currency that tech companies are benefiting from. Psychologist and economist Herbert A Simon says, “[I]n an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.”

The ways that the attention economy is affecting us is obvious to anyone who has spent much time on social media—Facebook has this obnoxious feature where if you refresh your feed—even by accident—new information populates it, the WORST when you’re trying to find an article you’d seen earlier but you can’t remember who shared it—but this all feeds into this idea that our attention is some sort of currency. Ever time you refresh, you never know what you’ll get. What the algorithm will have curated specifically for you based on your likes, your clicks, and your conversions—or purchases. This not only contributes to an entirely different user experience between two people, which explains partly why we  can begin to think everyone agrees with us when everything we see on facebook reflects our own social and political values, but it also adds to the thrill of that next dopamine hit as your brain craves the next place to divert it’s attention.

The Netflix film “The Social Dilemma” can do a much better (and scarier) job of explaining this last phenomena than I can, but I wanted to bring up this idea of limited attention this morning because, believe it or not, it actually is relevant. This isn’t just one of my own Attention Deficit rabbit holes I tend to wander down!

In our gospel text from Mark, we have yet another healing story. Last week we talked about the man in the temple with the unclean spirit, and this week we meet Simon’s mother in law with a fever. Actually, our text is a bit disjointed as we read it. It feels like it lacks focus. There are a few things happening. Remember from last week how we were talking about this being the beginning of Jesus’ ministry? This is early on in Mark—we’re still in Chapter One. Word spread quickly after he healed the man in the synagogue, and Jesus, upon reaching the house of Andrew and Simon just after this took place, heals yet again. This is a more hands-on healing. He sits down at Simon’s mother-in-law’s side, holds her hand, and lifts her up. The fever doesn’t only break, but it is gone. When we think about being ill in Jesus’ time, this is an incredibly scary thing. And I know I don’t have to tell any of you about how serious illness is, and how a fever is just the beginning of what could be a long and terrible path, we’re all on pins and needles in our own time, questioning every sore throat, every time we get unexpected chills or feel warm due to a virus that has proven to us that we have not yet mastered life and death. So with this framework in mind, imagine this scene. Jesus comes close to Simon’s Mother in law—and we never hear of a wife, so perhaps there is an absence already felt among those gathered there, making this fever all the more scary and real. Jesus holds her hand. He doesn’t just pick her up, he lifts her up. The language used is important, because to say he lifts her up indicates more than physical carrying. It is her entire spirit and being he holds in his arms. She—a woman—A WOMAN—with a fever. We don’t know if she was contagious, but imagine an outsider coming to a COVID patient’s bedside, offering the intimate gift of touch, of holding. He goes beyond getting her on the road to recovery—she is so well healed that she resumes life in the exact way it had been before. She is renewed.

The word of this spreads. This intimate act of healing happened with only a few witnesses—those present in the home of Simon, however, just in the past few hours word has spread, Jesus’ fam had grown, and people from all over the city gathered at the house to be healed, to be exorcised. Jesus started healing and casting out as many demons as he could, forbidding the demons from talking about him—again here comes that curious thing that I brought up last week—the demons always knew who he was from the start, but people had to be convinced again and again. Jesus performed healings on many that evening. I can imagine he flopped onto the floor at bedtime and crashed out hard—but also, what if he didn’t? The next thing we know, he’s sneaking out first thing in the morning to find a secluded place. It is still dark out. Something had been gnawing at him and he needed a deserted spot away from crowds and well-intentioned but not always one the same page as him disciples to go pray.

Here’s where I’ll start bringing attention economy back into this, so keep that all in mind as we move through what happens next.

While he’s praying, alone, we hear that Simon and company hunt him. Hunt. They don’t just look around in a game of hide and seek. They’re setting out with purpose to find him and bring him back. He is pursued. The disciples don’t have the luxury of knowing what we know yet—they don’t know that his mission isn’t to cure everyone everywhere, but it is to spread the good news, to preach the gospel. They’re stoked, they’ve found someone who they can gather massive crowds around. He can gain fame, and they’re working overtime as his handlers to make sure he continues to grow in popularity. So they’re out hunting him.

But the reality, the healings are the low-hanging fruit tasks for Jesus. They appear to be easy enough, human and divine that he is. He probably could spend all of his time casting out demons and holding hands if he wanted. He could have spent his entire ministry there, opening up shop on the porch at Simon and Andrew’s place, letting the afflicted come to him. There would be no end to the lines, because there will always be illness. There will always be something that torments humans, whatever demons and spirits they may be. These are the parts of Jesus’ checklist that he could just keep checking off all day, every day without ever getting around to those bigger projects. Jesus was the son of God, but he was born human, and had a scarcity of attention, just like the rest of us.

When the disciples tell him that crowds are waiting, everyone is looking for him for a repeat performance, Jesus has to firmly stand against that human instinct to do the easy, feel-good task again and again. He says, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.”

I can’t imagine that it would have been any easier for Jesus to prioritize what he was supposed to do if he would have come to the world as it is now—his cell phone constantly pinging with twitter responses and appointment reminders. His attention being vied for at every turn. And yet, I can imagine that he, after unplugging for a bit, would have come to the same conclusion. His priority was not to just keep healing, God had sent him here with more purpose beyond the one-time shot of healing the sick. He was sent with a more long-lasting, timeless purpose of sharing the good news of God’s love, a love that extends beyond all human comprehension. A love that is, in itself, one that has the power to lift us and affirm in us wholeness as we are, because we were created by God who loves us as God’s children. Jesus healed and performed miracles, his compassion for his fellow humans compelled him to do this, but he was sent to do more than that. He had to keep moving along, continuing to proclaim the message, but he couldn’t stay in one place, because the message wouldn’t spread as quickly as the word of the healings. He couldn’t let his gift of healing get in the way of his calling to challenge systems that were unjust and to welcome more and more people into the loving kin-dom of God.

While we may have trouble prioritizing our own checklists and to-dos, we must remain ever thankful that Jesus understood the attention economy way before anyone in the tech-boom ever capitalized on it, and knew that his message was one that was life-giving and eternal. Glory be to god, and thanks be to Jesus for this little glimpse into the struggles and decisions he had to make in order to keep on task with proclaiming the good news so that we might be able to continue to be lifted up by it two millennia later and beyond.

Not gonna lie, I’m a little excited to talk about demons and unclean spirits today. Did you listen to the song we sang just before the sermon? If not, pause this and go back. No shame, no judgment, I know that having online church where you can sort of choose-your-own adventure when it comes to which parts of the service to tune into is definitely one of the perks of quarantine, and I can honestly say that I’m grateful that you chose to click the link to listen to the sermon this morning when there are so many other things that could be vying for your attention at the moment. Writing the sermon, I had other things vying for my attention—I have a preteen slumber party taking place a room away and do you know how hard it is not to want to join in on the girls’ conversations? But I digress—hit pause now and go listen. “Silence, Frenzied, Unclean Spirit”—that’s a doozy of a song title, isn’t it? It almost feels out of place among “We are Living, We Are Dwelling” and “To Us All, To Every Nation” and many other hymns that share the same tune—Ebenezer—as this one. But here it is, all “Cease your ranting! Flesh can’t bear it. Flee as night before the sun.” and it is, honestly, a song I never would have actually wanted to click on if I had the option to skip it…so good on you if you listened to it before we paused here.

Today’s gospel text in Mark is an exorcism. I grew up in a tradition where we didn’t talk a ton about spiritual warfare and exorcisms, or even demons. I grew up in this tradition—United Church of Christ. It isn’t often we hang out and stay a while on the texts that really cause us to marinate in the supernatural. That’s what makes it even more fun and interesting for me when these texts come up in the lectionary. I’m sure some of you have a similar experience to me, while others come from backgrounds where the stories of demon possession and casting out of spirits are alive beyond myth and allegory, in which case I’m sure I have a lot I can learn from what you know about these kinds of scriptures. One thing I do know—there is so much richness in a text like this one today that it simply cannot be overlooked.

There is a tendency to want to tame texts like this. To look at a story about a man with an unclean spirit and give him an armchair diagnosis based on the very limited description given to us. But what do we really have to go on? Jesus came to the temple—this is the earliest act of his ministry in the Gospel of Mark—and while there he was confronted? Or he came across? The words are “just then, there was a man with an unclean spirit” so you kind of get the idea that he came out of nowhere, popping up from behind a chair saying “boo!” but that’s really it. We don’t have much. That’s the man’s introduction. Just then, there was a man. And really, it introduces the spirit more than the man. The man is just a carrier for the unclean spirit. A prop.

I’ve heard these kinds of stories explained away as “mental illness.” Maybe you have too. To be frank and transparent, as a person whose every day is impacted by mental health, that doesn’t make me feel any better, especially in light of the fact that it took two hours with a trained professional to obtain my diagnoses and a lot of follow-up assessments to make sure the diagnosis was correct, and yet we think we can ascribe mental illness to a man with a one sentence bio. I want to push back on this tendency that some of us may have to rationalize and play super sleuth detective psychiatrist when reading texts that have things that are so beyond what we can fit neatly into what is “known” to us. In her book, A Healing Homiletic, Kathy Black also issues this caution, saying, “ When a person has a form of epilepsy that cannot be totally controlled with medication or someone has a mental illness, and we preach these texts by implying that such people are possessed by demons, we add a tremendous burden to their already difficult lives.” I know, and we thought we had cracked the code, right? But our interpretations of scripture should never be at the cost of dehumanizing anyone else in our beloved community. To cherry-pick a piece of scripture and toss it down without context from our reading from first Corinthians, “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.” But really, assuming we have the answers and have rationalized this away only serves us, but taking a broader look with love as out guiding force builds up and strengthens our community by not making anyone who is already dealing with some stuff more vulnerable.

So these unclean spirits. What do we make of them? And why—why are they the only ones who seem to fully grasp Jesus’ authority? Isn’t that fascinating? I mean, in the Gospels, as we encounter unclean spirits and demons, we see again and again that even when the people around Jesus are questioning whether he’s the real deal, the demons always know. To quote this morning’s unclean spirit, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.”

Then, just as quickly as they’re discovered, they’re rebuked and cast out. In this story, we never hear from them or the man again. Instead, this is used to show Jesus’ authority as he begins his ministry. As we read in our Hebrew Scriptures this morning from Deuteronomy, Moses is talking with the people about what to expect after he’s gone. He gives clear details for how to spot a false prophet. The issue of people proclaiming authority for person gain was a problem in Moses’ day as it was in Jesus’, and it can be argued—probably pretty successfully—that it’s a problem for us as well. As Jesus is starting out, establishing that he has clear and direct authority from God was important. Yet, even with this first miraculous casting out of a demon, people still would continue to question him. The demon saw through him though. So weird, right?

Not really. When I think about demons, I don’t really think about little guys in red with pitchforks dancing around on people’s shoulders. Maybe they’re more nuanced than that. I’ve never seen a demon—not like that anyway. And this man with an unclean spirit was already inside the synagogue. It’s not like he wandered in there with clear and obvious demons. He may not have even recognized that he had an unclean spirit. Maybe it just felt like part of him, something maybe he didn’t like about himself but it was too late not to try and change that part of who he was. Or like, a lot of work. Right? He was on the inside, though. This is important for a few reasons. This man was part of the community, and was allowed inside, impure and unclean as his spirit was. His unclean spirit didn’t bar him from spiritual life, BUT, the spirit was the one who saw Jesus for who he was, not the man. It is unclear about whether the man recognized Jesus afterward. The people in the synagogue were amazed, yes, but did this make them believe? Jesus attained fame at this point, word spread, but was it in a gawking, incredulous sort of way? As we see the challenges that Jesus encounters along the way, I don’t think that we can say that he made many believers at that moment.

That said, we who are believers and come to church weekly—nowadays in a more implied spirit than physical action—we are part of the church, we are inside. But what is keeping us from recognizing Jesus? What unclean spirits do we harbor, perhaps just below the surface, masquerading as part of our personalities or as a product of our raising? How are we unable to know Jesus because this little piece of “us” is seeing who Jesus really is and is cowering, terrified because once Jesus sees that little piece, it knows it will also have to be cast out? As I think about that reading from first Corinthians this morning, it addresses the ways which we might get in the way of others knowing God—this one in a less-than-timely illustration about eating sacrificial meat and whether that’s okay or not. We aren’t in danger often of eating food that has already been placed on the altar to someone else’s God, so it’s a little weird to try and figure this out, but what it does do is offer us advice on how to exist in a world that is not Christian as followers of Christ. Perhaps our unclean spirits that we need Christ to help us exorcise are the things that prevent others from being fully included in the family of God. Things that act as barriers to people feeling welcomed, or things that upon hearing the good news that God and Jesus love us, would be led to believe that the good news does not apply to them.

What can we do, as beloved children of God, to make sure that those unclean spirits don’t prevent us from recognizing Jesus ourselves? We must cease to assume we are the gatekeepers to God’s Kingdom, we must strive to recognize the belovedness in our fellow humans, and we must rely on Jesus’ healing power to help us through when separating ourselves from our unclean spirits proves to be too great a task on our own. To end with the last stanza of our hymn, “Clear our thought and calm our feeling, still the fractured warring soul. By the power of your healing make us faithful, true, and whole.” Amen.

Though she currently lives in Southern California, Ellie Dote is no stranger to the Central Valley, having lived in Fresno for 17 years.  In a past life, she was an associate pastor, and has worked in full time ministry positions all over California, including music minister at the United Japanese Christian Church in Clovis.  She is currently working on her soon-to-be-released memoir, “Walking Towards Cordelia,” in which she shares about her experience in coming out and experiencing church as a queer transgender woman of faith.  When not with her girlfriend, she spends her time blogging, going to the beach, and enjoying theme parks — when they’re open.