It was a casual conversation; some random talk about composting and Earth Day activities over the Easter Sunrise Service breakfast table. She is a person I both admire and am intrigued by. Her convictions to caring for the earth, caring for animals and love of teaching music are just a few aspects of her spirit that draws people, including me, to her.

Suddenly there was a lull in the conversation when she told me she often thinks of me. Surprised, I listened to her tell me about a sermon she heard me preach about the book entitled ‘Positivity’. She said she read the book (or listened to it on some format) and then began reading other books about positive psychology. Her life took a completely different path because of my sermon that morning two or so years ago.

It wasn’t because I had been experiencing extraordinary stressful days lately that made hearing her kind words so meaningful, or the fact that I had been anything but positive lately, it was the timing of her words and the simple fact that she could have said nothing. And it was the turn of events that followed since that reminds me how ever present God is still among us.

Having been assigned a new supervisor at work, I was having a lot of trouble navigating her managerial style and attention to detail. Although I loved the people part of my job, the paperwork was daunting and she seemed to be hyper-critical of everything I did (or rather didn’t do). The stress was coming out in ways that seemed to make me think that finding another job was the only reasonable thing to do to save my sanity – especially after spending the evening in the ER and being told my heart attack symptoms were actually stress related. In fact, I had already asked a couple of friends to let me know if they heard of any jobs that fit my skill set.

At first, I had thought that the Easter breakfast conversation was God’s way of calling me into ministry; knowing that something God had said through me had actually changed someone else’s life – wow! But what I realized was that (I believe) God was actually calling me to take a look at those words from that sermon. Was I being my most positive self lately? Not really. How was the way I was looking at my situation with my boss affecting other parts of my life? My family? My relationship with God?

Once I looked at myself through that lens, I began to rethink how I was viewing my new boss and her motives. Was she really trying to find fault with everything I was doing? Did she really want to make my life miserable, have a heart attack, or die? Once I began think that she was really trying to help me, things began to change. I began to change, and so did our working relationship. Am I the best paperwork person in the world? Probably not. But I am no longer looking for new jobs, and I am really grateful for my supervisor doing her best to help me improve.

There is one thing of which I am certain: it was one casual conversation that early Easter morning that was my very own second chance. So, I guess it’s true that God does still move stones.

Acts 16:16-34

Rev. Dr. Deborah L. Clark

May 12, 2013

We took off our watches and jewelry, emptied our pockets and gave the guard behind the bulletproof glass our driver’s licenses.  Another guard called out five names.  “You five go first—into the trap.”

The trap was aptly named.  We entered and the door slammed and latched behind us.  The door on the other side was shut and locked.  The idea was that even if you managed to force your way in through one door, you still could not escape.

The guards were pleasant and accommodating; they knew some of us were doing this for the first time.  Still, they were thorough, waving wands over our bodies and searching our shoes.  Finally the other door clicked open.  We left the trap and entered the prison.

Lucy met us and led us through a maze of locked doors and metal staircases, across a courtyard whose flowers were dwarfed by fences topped with razor wire.  Back through more locked doors and up three flights of steps.  Finally we entered a hall filled with women—all shapes and sizes, races and ages—all wearing green sweatshirts and blue jeans.

For the fifth year, a group of Framingham pastors were invited to come to MCI-Framingham to lead a Good Friday service.  After five years, I knew what to expect.  And yet, every year, I am jarred by the sound of doors slamming behind me and sobered by the stark gray walls.  Every year I am awestruck by the choir that sing with such joy.  I am humbled by women who trust us with their deepest sorrows and hopes.

When I saw that this reading from Acts was the suggested lectionary text for Mothers’ Day, I immediately thought of the women at the MCI Good Friday service.  So many of them are mothers, grieving their forced separation from their children. So many of their prayers are for their children—that their children might not make the same mistakes they did, that there might be hope for reconciliation, that their kids might know how much they love them.  I pray today that these struggling mothers might find comfort and hope.

The women at that service understand that the concrete and steel surrounding them are not the only walls that imprison them. They pray for freedom from the prison of addiction. They pray for release from chains of guilt and shame.  They pray that the walls of distrust between them and their families might be torn down.  They pray to be freed from the downward spiral of abusive relationships.  They pray for freedom from isolation and alienation.

In our reading from Acts, Paul and Silas sing and pray, and the prison walls crumble.  In our annual Good Friday service, we sing and pray.  When we are done, the prison walls—the ones made of concrete and steel—are still there.  The other walls—walls of isolation and addiction, shame and broken relationships—are also still there.  Maybe, though, just maybe, there are a few cracks in them, a little bit of erosion.  Maybe, just maybe, there’s been an earthquake that has shaken the foundation of someone’s prison.

The first year we visited, we brought the whole service, identical to the one we had led a few hours before at Edwards Church.  We’d selected appropriately somber hymns, since it was Good Friday.  The congregation at MCI politely sang along with us, but we quickly realized these were not their songs.

The next year, at Chaplain Lucy’s gentle suggestion, we left the music in the hands of her chapel choir.   A dozen women stood in the front of the chapel and led us in joyous songs of praise.  Hands clapped.  Feet stomped.

What does it mean to sing songs of joy on Good Friday?  What does it take to sing songs of joy in prison?  It takes courage.  It takes a leap of faith.  It takes trust that there is something more than the prison, something greater than shame and isolation.  Choosing to sing praise lowers those prison walls just a little bit. Suddenly we can see beyond them, to beauty and hope and joy they cannot restrain.

The choir is good.  They clearly practice regularly.  These choristers go to choir practice when they’ve had a bad day, when they doubt it matters, when they are annoyed with each other because they are stuck in such close quarters.  They learn to listen to each other and  blend their voices. They learn they have something to offer—a gift of beauty to stir other people’s souls.

The songs they sing on Good Friday are more than momentary glimpses of possibility beyond the walls.  They are expressions of community.  The music testifies to each woman’s long slow process of coming to see herself in a new way: not as a burden on society but as a beloved child of God with gifts to offer.

Then there are the prayers.  For the first couple of years, our prayers at that service were litanies, or carefully crafted pastoral prayers.  As with our initial offering of music, the MCI congregation received them politely and with gratitude.  One year, we tried something new. We invited women to come forward for anointing and laying on of hands.  We figured only a few would come; after all, they hardly knew us.  But when we extended an invitation, every single woman in that room got up and moved forward.  Now, we do that every year.

Once again, I was struck by their courage.  They dare to trust total strangers whose lives are so different from their own.  They take a risk that we will honor their stories, that we will hold their pain tenderly.  Even more courageously, they dare to trust there is hope.  No matter how high and strong and all-encompassing those prison walls may seem, they choose to believe that God is higher and stronger and greater.

In their choice to get out of their seats and come forward, walls crumble just a little bit.  When they trust us with their deepest yearnings, when they allow us to anoint their palms and put our hands on their shoulders, barriers of isolation begin to erode.  When they hear in our fumbling prayers the assurance that God loves them no matter what, prisons of guilt and shame shake.  When they ask for prayers for the people they love, they lay the first bricks for bridges over deep motes.

On Good Friday, we leave the prison the same way we came in—down the stairs, across the fenced-in courtyard, through locked doors and barren hallways, then back through the trap, finally exiting clutching our driver’s licenses as though they are gold.  We are back outside; the women with whom we worshiped are stuck inside.  Still, I trust that somehow, in our worshipping togethers, prison walls are shaken and we all come a little closer to true freedom in Christ.

***

The doors in this sanctuary, blessedly, have no dead bolts.  There are no bars on the windows.  We enter through a narthex instead of a trap.  We are free to come and go as we please.

And yet the images from our scripture story still speak to our lives.  Even without brick walls and razor wire surrounding us, we know what it is like to be in prison.  Some of our prisons are similar to the ones from which our sisters at MCI seek freedom.  Prisons of addiction, guilt, isolation.  Maybe some of us are trapped in a cloud of depression that keeps us from seeing beauty. Or held captive by old wounds and disappointments that have come to define our lives.

Fear is also a daunting prison—fear of change, fear we might lose what we have worked so hard to build, fear that we can never be good enough.  Sometime what imprisons us is an inability to dream; other times, we are trapped in a dream that keeps us from seeing other possibilities.  Our prison walls may be of our own making; they may have been there so long we don’t know who built them or how we got stuck inside.

What are the prison walls enclosing your life?  What limits your potential? What blocks your vision? What keeps you trapped inside yourself?  These prison walls might not be made of concrete and steel, but they are real. They are as real as the walls that confined Paul and Silas.  They are as real as the walls that shook when confronted by song and prayer.

The promise of our faith is that God’s love can tear down the walls that imprison us.  The story of Paul and Silas, the story of the MCI Good Friday service, assure us that we have a role to play in bringing that promise to fruition.  When we dare to sing, when we risk claiming joy we might not be feeling, we discover a spirit within and around us that cannot be contained by any prison walls. We awaken to new vision—and suddenly we can see the cracks in the walls, the weak links in the fence, the slow erosion of stone from a steady stream of hope.

When we pray, we choose to trust that there is a power greater than our own at work, a force, a spirit that yearns for our freedom.  The very act of praying pulls us out of isolation, into connection.  When we pray together, we discover that the ties that bind us are more powerful than the chain links in the fences that divide us.

***

Sometimes it happens like an earthquake.  Sometimes it is more like a drip of water wearing away stone.  Always, God is at work through our song and our prayer, shaking the foundations, stirring us to new vision, tearing down the prison walls.  Amen.

“Made Well”

Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5; John 5:1-9

Rev. Dr. Deborah L. Clark

May 5, 2013

It was the fourth event in a full, emotion-laden weekend.  On Saturday morning, many of us had attended the Mass Conference’s Memorial Service for Susan Dickerman, a beautiful tribute to her life and ministry.  As soon as the final hymn was sung, we had to duck out to get ready for another Memorial Service, this time at Edwards Church, for Wendy Champagne.  The sanctuary was packed with people celebrating her amazing spirit, grieving a life cut short, and seeking healing from too many losses.  The next morning, our teenagers led the church school in their own memorial time for Sue—with pictures drawn and candles lit and blessings offered.

After all those services, after all those opportunities to name our brokenness and pray for healing, it was fitting that the fourth event that weekend was called “Spirit and Healing in the 21^st Century.”  We had planned this Open Spirit gathering long before we ever imagined how much healing would be on our hearts and minds that weekend.

The conversation  resonated deeply with my experience of the rest of that weekend.  It has continued to resonate in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing.  So much healing needs to happen: healing for those families who lost loved ones, healing for the injured who face months of rehab, healing of our community as we struggle with a renewed sense of vulnerability.

The day after the big memorial service in Boston, one newspaper’s headline proclaimed, “Let the healing begin.” What does that mean?  How does healing happen? Where is God in the healing process? What is our role?

Our Open Spirit gathering didn’t offer simple answers to those questions, but did offer valuable insight into the nature of healing. After our two keynote speakers, we held a panel discussion featuring five local spiritual leaders.  Each one offered a glimpse into his or her faith community’s rich healing traditions.  As I think back, I find myself associating each of the speakers with a particular aspect of healing.

Rev. Dr. J. Anthony Lloyd is the pastor at Greater Framingham Community Church.  He began his reflections by clarifying that healing is not a synonym for cure.  Healing is about being well, being whole—and that can mean many different things.

One of the things it means, J. Anthony suggested, is being part of community.  He described practices in his church that parallel many of ours.  Deacons go out and visit folks who are sick or housebound.  Prayers groups meet and prayer chains spread the word.  People make casseroles.  Each Sunday, there is an opportunity to come forward and receive healing prayers.

J. Anthony’s description of the healing power of community brings to mind the words of the man lying by the pool at Beth-zatha.  “I have no one,” he began.  He had been sitting by that pool for 38 years, with no one to help him enter the waters.  Perhaps what he needed as much as the healing waters was someone who cared enough to help.

To be healed, J. Anthony reminded us, is to be brought out of isolation and restored to community.

Ingrid Peschke is a Christian Science Practitioner, a healer whose tools are prayer and conversation.  She began by debunking one of the many misconceptions about her faith.  Christian Scientists are not forbidden from seeking traditional medical care; many of her patients also go to medical doctors.

At the heart of healing in Christian Science is the conviction that we are created in the image of God, and so we are good; we are beloved; and we are already whole. Behind Jesus’ question to the man at the pool,“Do you want to be made well?”, Christian Scientists hear a deeper question.  Do you want to claim the wellness—the wholeness—that is already yours?  Are you ready to awaken to who you really are—an image of the perfect and whole God?

Every day for 38 years the man in the gospel story had waited by that pool.  Each day reinforced his self-definition as wounded, broken, invalid.  In a Christian Science approach to the story, Jesus’ words challenged him to a different self-definition.  Jesus called him to see himself as God saw him—well, whole, beloved.

Healing, Ingrid suggested, is not something that happens to us.  It is our rediscovery of something we already are: made in the image of God.  Healing is about perception, about identity, about claiming our wholeness.

Shaheen Akhtar added a new dimension to the conversation.  When the Muslim chaplain scheduled to speak was unable to attend, Shaheen jumped into the panel with no advance planning.  She spoke eloquently from her own experience as a Muslim woman.  She told about her family gathered around the bedside of a loved one, and about the healing power of his acceptance of his impending death.  It was so peaceful, she said.  Everyone there felt the presence of Allah—Allah’s compassion and grace.

The healing power of acceptance—it’s a challenging idea.  In our culture, we speak with great admiration about people who fight an illness, who fight to stay alive at all costs, who refuse to give in to limitations.  But sometimes our fighting can become just another way we end up being defined by our illness or our brokenness.  Sometimes acceptance frees us from that trap and allows us to move forward to a new phase in our lives.

Our gospel story doesn’t tell us the nature of the man’s illness.  It doesn’t actually tell us whether Jesus cured that illness.  Maybe Jesus was telling this man to accept the reality of his illness, and to stop frittering his life away sitting by the pool.  Stop defining yourself by your desire to change something that is not going to change, Jesus said.  Instead, get up and claim a new vision of wholeness.

Father Don Pachuta, from the Community of St. Luke, raised the importance of forgiveness.  When we hold on to our anger at how someone has hurt us, when we allow that anger to harden into rage or hate, we close ourselves off from the sacred healing energy that yearns to move through our lives.  We stew in our own juices; we poison ourselves, spiritually and physically.

Forgiveness is not about pretending something never happened.  It’s not about returning to the way things used to be.  Forgiveness can be a form of acceptance: accepting that something awful really did happen; accepting that we cannot make another person be who we want them to be.  Forgiveness is about refusing to be defined or controlled by what someone else has done to us.  Like Shaheen’s acceptance, forgiveness is about moving forward with a new understanding of possibility for our lives.

Community.  Claiming wholeness.  Acceptance. Forgiveness.  Four aspects of healing, or perhaps four ways of opening ourselves to God’s healing spirit.

The fifth speaker, Cantor Jodi Schechtman, spiritual leader at Temple Beth Am, talked about the revival of interest in healing rituals in the Reform Jewish community.  She described a range of attitudes and beliefs about prayer and healing that sound quite similar to the range of beliefs we might find here at Edwards.  She ended her reflections by singing the prayer for healing used at Temple Beth Am every Friday night.  This version of “Mi Shebeirach” was written by a friend of hers, the late Debbie Friedman:

Mi Shebeirach avoteinu, m’kor ha-b’racha l’imoteinu

May the Source of Strength who blessed the ones before us

Help us find the courage to make our lives a blessing. 

And let us say: Amen. 

Mi Shebeirach imoteinu m’kor ha-b’racha l’avoteinu

Bless those in need of healing with r’fuah sh’leimah

The renewal of body, the renewal of spirit

And let us say: Amen. 

May the Source of Strength, the source of all blessing, help us find the courage to make our lives a blessing.  That, for me, is the ultimate definition of healing.  Healing is so much more than fixing a problem or curing an illness, so much more than feeling good or being happy.  Healing is about finding the courage to make our lives a blessing, in spite of or even because of our brokenness and our limits.

Healing, as J. Anthony suggested, is about being pulled out of isolation and restored to community.  It’s not enough, though, to enter into community just so we aren’t alone.  To be made whole is to discover how we can then be a blessing to that community.

Healing, as Ingrid offered, is about rediscovering the truth of our lives–that we are created in the image of God.  God is the Source of all blessing, and so as we claim that truth, we claim that we are blessing for our world.

Healing, as Sheheen pointed out, may mean acceptance.  That sometimes means accepting the reality of limitations that are not going to change. It may mean letting go of the kind of blessing we thought we could offer the world.  To be healed, to be made whole, is to recognize that we still have something to offer, to open ourselves to new ways we can be a blessing.

Healing, as Don lifted up, involves forgiveness.  It involves choosing not to poison ourselves with our own rage or hate.  It involves choosing not to poison the world around us.  Instead, we offer blessing.

Community.  Claiming wholeness.  Acceptance. Forgiveness. Blessing.  Each of our five spiritual leaders offered unique insight into the nature of healing.    How do these insights speak to your experience of healing, and to your need for healing?  Which insights ring true to you?  Which challenge you to broaden your vision of healing?  Most importantly, which ones call you to open to a new pathway for healing in your life?

God’s healing spirit is at work in our lives and in our world, as surely as the leaves on the trees emerge each spring.  Whatever our struggles, whatever illnesses or wounds or limitations we face, God yearns to work through us, offering blessing to our world.

May the Source of Strength, who blessed the ones before us, help us find the courage to make our lives a blessing. And let us say Amen.

At Edwards Church worship is begun with the Passing of the Peace.  Now, I have a confession to make.  Many years ago when it was decided to begin worship with the Passing of the Peace, I was very  much against it.  I’m not sure why but I think it had to do with greeting people I might not know or might not know well.  But the Diaconate put it into the worship service and although the first Sunday it was happening, I thought about not coming to church a still small voice spoke inside me and I remember it saying “Try it, Eleanor, you just might like it.”  Fat chance, I thought.

But I was there that Sunday and reluctantly left my pew to greet people – some I knew and some I didn’t know at all.  I do remember greeting one man calling him Walter when his name was John.  But it didn’t seem to phase him. Maybe this wasn’t so bad after all.  Then suddenly I felt little arms go around me and I looked down to see a little girl I had known from the toddler class I volunteered in sometimes.  She looked up at me with her beautiful shining brown eyes and said “Mrs. Kell, I love you.”

I know that tears came into my eyes and I looked down and said, “You know what, Hannah, I love you too.”

After that the Passing of the Peace became an important part of my Sunday worship experience.  Nowadays it is even more special – not because I get to greet new people or get wonderful hugs from lots of people – young and old.  It is  because on those Sundays when my 7-year old friend, Dylan is in church, I hear him running towards me and he lunges at me giving me the most wonderful hug in the world.  That hug takes me through the week ahead no matter how hectic things might get.

I am so glad that we have Passing of the Peace to begin worship each Sunday.  And, I thank God for the opportunity to be greeted and to greet others in God’s name.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

Our Tuesday and Wednesday Bible Study groups just started our study of the book of James.  It’s a hidden treasure, a short book that focuses on practical faith. A member of the Tuesday group commented that James is all about choices.  Gathering so soon after the Marathon Day bombing, our Tuesday group naturally found ourselves talking about the choices we have for how we respond to violence and terror.

Like so many other tragic events in the last few years, the Marathon Day bombing awakens us to our vulnerability.  One minute we are at the peak of physical fitness, running a marathon; the next minute we might be struggling to stay alive.

Vulnerability is a reality of human existence.  We can’t make it go away; we can choose how we respond to it.  It is tempting to respond by retreating in fear, by closing ourselves off and approaching people and situations with suspicion.  It is equally tempting to respond with denial, fooling ourselves into thinking it cannot happen to us.  There is a third choice:  we can choose to treasure life.  We can receive each day as a gift.  We can live in gratitude for how precious every sunrise, every relationship, every moment is.

We talked, in our group, about another kind of vulnerability as well.  As we learned more about the suspect who is still alive, we found ourselves wondering how this seemingly nice kid ended up committing such a horrific act. We were reminded that each one of us is capable of losing sight of right and wrong; we named how readily our fears and desires and angers can become twisted and lead to horrible acts.

We have choices about how we respond to the troubling reality of this vulnerability as well.  We can despair at human nature.  We can deny our vulnerability, pretending we are all good and projecting evil onto other people.  Or, we can choose to cultivate our potential for good–developing habits and practices that strengthen that potential.  We can surround ourselves with people who support us in developing those habits and help us catch ourselves when we are heading into danger.  Even as we name our potential for acts of hatred and even evil, we can choose to claim our potential for good as a gift–to be treasured and nurtured.

I am grateful for a church community that helps me choose to treasure life and love as gifts.

Marathon Monday…Two bombs, 3 dead, over 175 injured and a couple of hundred thousand more people wounded in ways that will only emerge in the days and weeks and months to come…It was a day of horror and hope.

Assuming I wasn’t on the ground with a leg blown off or a nail in my knee, I wonder what I would have done that afternoon. Would I have jumped the fence to help apply the

tourniquets, provide CPR or would I have just left quickly hoping that I wouldn’t either get caught in the next blast or get in the First Responder’s way? I will never know and I hope I will never have to find out.

As the week went on I found myself in prayer, for people who were injured, with people who were in shock, beside care givers and with my friends as we struggled to make sense of that which is essentially not understandable. We all wanted answers and ways to respond if this ever happens again. What does it mean to be a person of faith in a time like this?

Perhaps the most faithful way I can respond is to keep loving my neighbors, loving the strangers I will never meet, and praying for my enemies. That’s what Jesus asks us to do, and as hard as it is, I’m going to keep trying to do it.

When the younger brother was arrested on Friday night, I was glad that he wasn’t killed and I prayed for him. I wasn’t glad so that our government could question him, I was glad because I didn’t want another life ended.

It is time for the killing to stop…in Boston and Damascus, in Baghdad and Newtown, in Aleppo and Beruit. It is time to end the drone strikes that make every tax payer complicit in the murder of women and children. It is time find new ways to end terrorism without becoming like the terrorists…It is time to be peacemakers, even it it means living with the fear of crucifixion.  Let me know what you think.

When I came to Edwards Church 17 or so years ago, it was by choice.  I wanted to find a peaceful place that honored sexuality as a gift from God.  I had been on the other side, in a feuding denomination where gay and lesbian persons were tolerated but not able to enjoy the full life of ministry if they were “living in sin”.  This meant that anybody in a committed relationship, but not married, could not be an ordained minister.  I attended an annual conference once where a friend of mine was announcing her closeted relationship in hopes of creating a meaningful dialogue for change.  Instead, there were picketers and protesters handing out literature denouncing my friend’s actions and when I refused to take a pamphlet one zealot, she spat on me.

Seventeen years ago, there were not a lot of reconciling congregations (thus denomination’s ONA) in the Framingham area, and we would have had to load our five kids up and head to the cape.  So when a colleague told me that a nearby church had called a woman pastor, who was also out as a lesbian, I knew I was done searching.  Edwards has been an extended family and the best possible open community for our 6 children (and now 2 grandchildren), too.  Best of all, it was the same minister that married my daughter and her wife this past November.

This morning I was reminded of the past that had become a distant memory when I heard the stories of the LGBT Asylum Seekers task force.  It was hard to hear about the world that has so far to go to becoming understanding, open, or even tolerant.  And instead of just a bit of spit, they endure torture, prison, and persecution.  They come to our country leaving everyone and everything they love behind.

Before I left my previous denomination, I was encouraged to stay and fight for change.  But it seemed contradictory to me; fight for peace.  I will instead stand up for what I believe; the one thing Jesus calls us to do- Love one another.

Because my son absorbs so much of what he sees and hears, it’s important for church to be a place that reinforces our values. I’m blessed to have found such a place in Edwards Church. I still wish I had all the answers for my son, but it’s comforting to know that we can search for them together as part of a caring community that is committed to living out our belief that every person is loved unconditionally by God.  —by Cari Cornish

John 20:1-18; March 31, 2013

Rev. Dr. Deborah L. Clark

I love John’s telling of the Easter story—the mistaken identity, the discovery, the tenderness, the proclamation.

I love that Mary is there.  She goes before dawn, by herself, to sit by the tomb of her beloved friend and teacher.  When she discovers the tomb is empty, she runs to tell the other disciples, but then she comes back.  When Peter and the other disciple leave, she stays.  She doesn’t try to hide from her sorrow; she doesn’t try to escape the confusion and uncertainty; she doesn’t run away from the possibility of new life.

I love the case of mistaken identity.  Mary is standing right beside her dear friend, but she doesn’t realize it is him.  Of course she doesn’t.  She watched him die a horrible death.  She cannot recognize him because she cannot imagine that he could be there.  Jesus doesn’t judge her; he doesn’t suggest that she should have known who he was.  Jesus understands what it is to be human.  He understands that sometimes we are simply not ready to discover the new life—the new hope—that is right beside us.

I love Mary’s moment of awakening.  It happens when Jesus calls her name—because that’s what Jesus did in his life.  He called people by name—acknowledging them for who they were, looking beyond categories and judgments.  He looked at a leper and saw a spirit yearning to soar.  He looked at a tax collector and recognized a lonely man who needed a chance to offer hospitality.  He looked at Mary and honored her as a whole person, a beloved child of God. So when the man she thinks is the gardener calls her by name, Mary gets it.  As she awakens to her true identity, she awakens to his identity as well.  It is Jesus. She awakens to the presence of the sacred in her midst, to hope in human form, hope that even death could not destroy.

I love what Mary does next.  She does not cling to her beloved friend.  She doesn’t try to preserve the moment for herself.  She runs to tell the others. She proclaims the good news that will soon be spread far and wide: I have seen the Lord.  Christ is risen.  Hope is alive!

This story draws us in, inviting us to put ourselves in Mary’s role.  Like Mary, we find ourselves in places of sorrow and uncertainty, in places where hope has been promised to us but we cannot imagine what hope could possibly mean.  Can we, with Mary, find the courage to stay?  Can we resist the urge to run away from our pain, to hide from uncertainty?  Even when we cannot envision hope, can we stay open to possibility?

Like Mary, we yearn to be acknowledged for the whole of who we are. We long for someone to see past the boxes we check off—past our size and age and marital status, past our race and profession and favorite sports teams.  We hope for healing of our fractured identities, our broken lives.

Like Mary, we encounter people we don’t know or understand.  We try to put them into categories so we can figure out who they are.  It must be the gardener.  A stranger.  A friend.  An enemy.   When Mary reaches out to the supposed gardener, she discovers who she is, and who he is.  Are we willing to risk reaching out?  Might we discover Christ in the gardener?

When we enter into this story from the perspective of Mary, we are challenged to take risks—to risk staying present to pain and possibility, to risk reaching out to someone who just might be Christ for us.  What happens if we enter this story from a different angle? What if we become that mysterious figure she assumes is the gardener?

This summer I am sharing a plot at the First Methodist Church Community garden.  The role of gardener suddenly feels daunting.  It involves much more than scattering a few random seeds and watching them grow.  There’s planning.  What vegetables grow best in this soil and this climate? When do we plant? What about rabbits?  Or bugs? When it comes time to weed, will I know the difference between a weed and a seedling?  What if I get really busy and forget to water?   I take comfort knowing I am not doing it alone; my gardening partner brings her ideas and expertise.

It is daunting to claim the role of gardener of a 20×20 foot plot.  It is even more daunting to claim the role of gardener in this story—to be a gardener of hope.  It’s not just about scattering random acts of kindness and then sitting back admiring their growth. To be a gardener of hope requires listening and learning–listening to what a friend really needs instead of what I want her to need, learning about a complex social issue so I can be a voice for effective public policy.  To be a gardener of hope requires consistency–single acts of caring are nice, but regular, faithful presence is more likely to bear fruit.  It requires patience, for as with seeds we plant in a garden, our acts of compassion may not germinate for a long time. It requires humility, for we are no more able to make hope grow than we are to make a gladiolus bulb sprout.  And it requires trust: trust that what we do matters, trust that we don’t do it alone.

Gardeners of hope.  It’s a metaphor, of course.  There are other metaphors for this role as well—some of them hidden away in our Easter eggs.  The teabags in some of the eggs invite us to be hosts of hope. To offer true hospitality requires some of the same qualities as gardening hope—careful listening and assiduous learning, perseverance and patience as we try to discern what someone needs to feel truly at home.  Some of the eggs have little candles—calling us to be the light of hope, taking the light others have given us and carrying it forth to show the way for someone else.  The pastels invite us to be artists of hope, offering vision to our communities.  Dog treats and bird seed challenge us to care for all God’s creatures, protecting habitat and restoring balance.  Friendship bracelets remind us that sometimes the most important thing we can do is just be there for someone.

Gardeners of hope.  Hosts of hope.  Light of hope.  Friends of hope.  Artists of hope.  There are many ways to envision our role in this resurrection story.

Mary spoke to someone she identified as the gardener, and in that encounter, she awakened to the presence of the risen Christ.  If we are faithful to our role—gardening, hosting, enlightening, befriending—perhaps someone we encounter will awaken to resurrection. Maybe we will be Christ for them.  With God’s help, we can be part of the rebirth of hope in their lives.

“Choosing Hope; Being Hope”—today, as we enter into this gospel story, our Lenten theme comes to fruition.  To choose hope is to join Mary Magdalene in the garden—choosing to be present to pain and uncertainty, choosing to be open to possibilities we cannot yet envision.  To be hope is to become the gardener– or host or friend or light–, trusting that Christ is present in our planting and hosting, our befriending and enlightening.

By the grace of God, we can choose hope.  By the grace of God, we can be hope. Christ is risen–for us and through us.  Hope is alive–for us and in us. Thanks be to God. Amen.