Dance with Life

Here is my message for Sunday. The text was Ezekiel 37:1-14 and Acts 2:1-21:

If you remember the first Sunday after Easter we began with the story that is recommended for that Sunday every year, which is the story of Doubting Thomas, although as I said then it really should be called the story of the doubting disciples, because they all doubt. But Jesus finds them on the evening of the first Easter holed up in a room, which is locked because they are in fear. And it appears that there are just 10 people there, because Thomas is absent and Judas is dead. There are women somewhere, although we don’t know where, or exactly how many since the accounts differ. But that is the remnant of the followers, or, to put it another way, that is the beginning of what we become first known as the group who are followers of the way, and only later will be called Christians. And while we’ve sort of jumped around in stories over the past six weeks, in Acts we are told that after Jesus’ ascension which traditionally is celebrated 40 days after Easter, we are told that Peter gathers a group together that is about 120 people. Then ten days later, which is the Jewish holiday of Pentecost, which celebrates the giving of the Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai, as well as the summer grain harvest and takes place 50 days after Passover, the disciples are still gathered together when the Holy Spirit comes upon them and they begin speaking in various languages to those in Jerusalem for the celebration. And so, we as Christians celebrate this day, the fifty days of Easter, which starts on day one with Easter, and then runs for seven weeks, or a week of weeks, concluding with the celebration of today which represents not just the gift of the Holy Spirit but also is seen to be the birth of the church, or at the very least it is the recognition that the good news is going to continue to spread and grow at a rapid rate. So, they go from a handful, to around 120 to 3000 converts on Pentecost, all in 50 days. And so, a movement that everyone thought was obliterated on the day of Christ’s crucifixion, is suddenly found to have new life, new breath, new opportunities and is being spread, as Jesus had said, in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and even to the ends of the earth.

And with that we are completing our series dancing with God, by looking at, or thinking about, what it means to dance with life, or to dance with the breath with which God has breathed into us. But before we dig in a little deeper, just a quick aside. I was at an estate sale this week and looking through the albums and they not only had an album from the Arthur Murray Dance Studio, to help you learn to dance at home, but, it also came with the footprints to put on the floor to help you learn the steps, and they were still in mint condition still attached to the full sheet. Probably still be there if you want to stop by after worship. But, the main story of today is about finding hope out of despair, life out of death, new possibilities out of endings and new challenges out of conclusions, and both the story of Pentecost found and Acts, and in Ezekiel’s vision, usually referred to as the valley of the dry bones give us this witness and the example of how we participate and dance with God in this journey, that we are co-creators in the dance of faith.

Dancing in Relationship

This is my message from Sunday. The text was John 17:6-13:

I want you to close your eyes and be still for a moment…. Now I want you to think about a time, or times, in which you were truly seen. Not in someone actually seeing you in order to walk around you, or avoid you, but when someone saw into the depths of your soul, for lack of a better term. Perhaps they saw something in you that you didn’t see in yourself, some gift or talent. Or they pushed you beyond what you ever thought possible yourself to help you achieve something. Or they were they for you when it mattered the most, doing something for you that few other people could or would do. Have you thought about that moment? Now, how did it make you feel? Not intellectually but emotionally. I’m guessing that some of those feelings might be about belonging, or valued or appreciated, perhaps honored or respected, and perhaps you felt happy or flattered or even cherished and treasured. And all of those things have some connection with love, not as the feeling per se, but as the sense of someone wanting the best for you. And all of those are connected to the sense of relationship, which is what we are tackling today. And since today is Mother’s Day, I would also be willing to bet that for a significant number of us, the people who have truly seen us have tended to be women, perhaps our mothers, but perhaps not, but maybe an aunt, grandmother, neighbor, teacher or someone at church, someone whose eyes bore into us in a special way and with whom we therefore had a deeper relationship than normal.

Now every relationship does not mean that we are seen in that sense, but when we are seen it makes a difference and connects us in a different way, and it changes us and it can even change the world. (SLIDE 2)  In his national book award winning novel, The Invisible Man, widely considered one of the best and most important novels of the last Century, Ralph Ellison begins his tale of a black man in American society by saying “I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids-- and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me…. That invisibility to which I refer occurs because of a peculiar disposition of the eyes of those with whom I come in contact. A matter of the construction of their inner eyes, those eyes with which they look through their physical eyes upon reality…. you often doubt if you really exist. You wonder whether you aren't simply a phantom in other people's minds…. You ache with the need to convince yourself that you do exist in the real world, that you're a part of all the sound and anguish, and you strike out with your fists, you curse and you swear to make them recognize you.” And that sense of invisibility, and striking out, also plays a significant role of what is happening in the world as we think about relationship.

Dancing in Praise

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Psalm 98:

During the 2019 special called general conference, which is the world-wide gathering of the United Methodist Church, where the official decisions for the church are made, when they passed the traditionalist plan by a very narrow margin, which is a terrible way to make decisions, and they made the church’s position on homosexuality even tighter, I started crying. The vote happened just before I was going to see my counselor for my regular appointment and I started crying in his office over it because I didn’t know what was going to happen, and the push at that time was that centrists and progressives would be pushed out of the denomination. How things have changed in the past five years. This past week in the final days of General Conference, which is actually the 2020 postponed conference, not only are many of the conservative churches gone but they also overwhelmingly removed what has been known as the restrictive language around homosexuality and the ban on clergy being ordained if they were members of the LGBTQ community. And I cried again for a very different reason, and I praised God that we had finally overcome. 

And I say that not only as clergy, who have seen what this has done to the church and to clergy, and I can guarantee there are lots of gay clergy, and I know them, and now they can be who they are. And I also celebrate as the father of a gay daughter, although that was not what changed my opinion on this. And I celebrate for the future of the church and what this represents for our future. And I also recognize that this does not make everyone happy, and there are many reasons for that. But I can say with some pride that when my last church became the first openly welcoming and affirming congregation in this conference around this issue that those who voted against that decision were still members when I was appointed here because as you’ve heard me say that we are better when we are at the table together. And the truth is that for this congregation nothing different will happen; we get to keep on being who we are, and loving as we do, and living into our value that we are inclusive and we love Christ. And so today I come before you in praise for the Lord has done marvelous things, as we just heard in the 98th Psalm, and that is appropriate as we think about what it means to dance with God in praise.