Branded: Doing Our Part in Communion

Branded: Doing Our Part in Communion
January 29, 2012
Franktown United Methodist Church

Jesus was sitting down at a table at the home of a leader of the Pharisees. Now there's something you don't see every day. Does it surprise you to hear that about Jesus? Jesus was sitting at a table to eat a meal with some Pharisees. That's a little disturbing, isn't it? I mean Jesus had some pretty harsh things to say about Pharisees. You remember that he's the one who said, "Woe unto you Pharisees, hypocrites! You shut up the kingdom of heaven against people. Woe unto you, Pharisees, you devour the houses of widows! Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness. (Matthew 23:27 KJV) You serpents, you generation of vipers, how can you escape the damnation of hell? (Matthew 23:33 KJV)" Other than that, I don't see any reason why this scene seems strange.

But there he is. Jesus and the Pharisees. Sitting around the table sharing a meal. And somebody gets a little too exuberant in the crowd. Somebody is overcome by the sight of these two parties together. This person thinks its a sign that bipartisanship is going to break out. Maybe he's had a little too much wine. At any rate, this guy yells out, "How happy are those who will sit down to feast at the kingdom of God!"

Jesus hears the man. Who couldn't? He yelled it out. But he doesn't say, "Yeah, it's going to be great." And he doesn't call him out by saying, "Hey, don't get your hopes up just because I'm breaking bread with these whited sepulchres." No, he responds with a parable, the point of which seems to be that the table is open, but you've got to want to come.

A man had a feast, a great feast. And he invited people to come. But everyone had an excuse for why they couldn't come. "Oh, you know I just bought some property and I've got to go look after it." Oh, you know, I just got married." "Oh, you know, I just bought some cows." They wouldn't come. So the man sends his servants out in the streets of the town to invite the poor, the lame, the outcasts. And they come, but there is still more room. So he sends them out into the countryside to gather whomever they can. But he is most disturbed with those who wouldn't come. Those who were invited initially will not taste the meal.

Today we're continuing our Branded series. We've been looking at things that mark us as Christians and we spent two weeks looking at baptism. Next week we'll begin to talk about ministry and the various forms of ministry God's people get involved in. But last week and this week we are talking about communion, the Lord's Supper, the Eucharist.

Last week I spent a lot of time interacting with John Wesley's sermon, "The Duty of Constant Communion." Wesley laid out the case for why we ought to come to the table. Why we ought not to neglect Jesus' command to 'do this to remember me." But today I want to talk about what our part in communion is. The meal is God's gift. But what we do with it is something else. And Jesus' story about the feast makes it clear that we can accept the invitation or not.

I mentioned last week that I had put out a question on Facebook asking for people to give me their reflections on communion and I shared one last week. Other people wrote about the great appreciation they have for the meal. Margaret Holland wrote to say that "It reminds me that God is the host of the party and all are invited to eat, reflect, and pray." It remind me of that guy at the feast. It's a party. Everyone is invited.

Skeeter Armstrong said, "For me it is a means of grace that allows us to put aside our differences and gather around the tables as the family of God knowing that, no matter how sinful we are or feel, that all is forgiven and we can begin again to become more Christ-like." It's a time to begin again. To confess our sins. To reconcile with one another. To become more Christ-like.

Debbie Bridges said something similar. She said, God's "grace and calming is transmitted to my body and soul telling me yet again - try to be, to do, to work harder and you will be a better Christian." Grace that leads to action.

There is an ethical side to communion. It is a party and it frees us and then it moves us be something for the world. Last week we talked about coming to the table, but today I want to talk about what it means to leave the table.

The other scripture that we have for today is from Paul's first letter to the Corinthian Christians. Some people will talk about this passage as the place where Paul lays out a 'theology' of communion. But really Paul is not doing that. Paul assumes that the Corinthians know what communion is. He's just trying to straighten out their practice of it. Because...as we mentioned last week...the Corinthians were taking communion unworthily.

Last week we talked about how some people will use this passage as an excuse not to receive communion because they are afraid they are not worthy to receive it. Wesley responded in his sermon that the problem for the Corinthians is not that they were unworthy. Wesley takes that as a given. We're all unworthy. The problem was the manner in which they received communion. The Corinthians, he said, were "taking the holy Sacrament in such a rude and disorderly way that one was 'hungry, and another drunken.'"*

But it was more than just a rowdy party. The community was neglecting its form, what it was supposed to look like. One New Testament scholar, Peter Lampe, says that the early Christian practice of communion was probably something akin to a potluck dinner. People would bring food and share what they had. But the problem was that the richer Corinthians, who had more food to bring, were not waiting for others before breaking into the food. So people were going hungry while others were getting out of hand.** What kind of community was this?

So Paul reminds them what the dinner is all about. He reminds them that the origin of the meal was in Christ's last meal with the disciples. Jesus was thinking about his death on the cross when he told them, "This is my body." He was thinking about his death when he said, "This is my blood." So now, Paul says, "This means that every time you eat this bread and drink from this cup you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes." (1 Corinthians 11:26 GNT)

You proclaim the Lord's death. Now there is an undeniable joy when we come to this table. We are tasting heaven. We are experiencing communion with the saints. We are entering the kingdom of heaven. We should be shouting, with that guy in the Pharisee's house, "Happy are those who feast in the kingdom of God!" But we are proclaiming Jesus' death. Our connection is not only with the risen Christ who will bring all things to final victory, but also with the Christ who knew the suffering of this world and who stood by the weak. As Paul says at the beginning of 1 Corinthians, "I proclaim Christ, and him crucified."

So the way that we eat this meal says something about what Christ is doing in the world. And how we live as people who share this meal says something about what Christ is doing in the world. As Lampe says:
"In the Eucharist, the death of Jesus Christ is not made present and 'proclaimed' (11:26) only by the sacramental acts of breaking bread and of drinking wine from one cup.  In the Eucharist, Christ's death is not proclaimed only by the liturgical words that accompany the sacramental acts.  No, in the Eucharist, Christ's death is also proclaimed and made present by means of our giving ourselves up to others.  Our love for others represents Christ's death to other human beings. Only by actively loving and caring for others does the participant in the Eucharist 'proclaim' Christ's death as something that happened for others."***

That's why I say that perhaps the most important part of communion is what happens when you leave this table. If we only come to this table to be reminded of what God has done for us...if I only come to be reminded of what God has done for me...then I have not gone far enough. This is where the Branded series takes a very important turn. While we receive God's claim on our lives...while we respond and accept God's claim on our lives...our journey does not end there. Unless we then turn out to the world and express with our own lives the other-directed love of God, then we have turned the gospel into a pat on the back, a massage at the spa, and a cozy spot by the fire. The gospel took Jesus to fishing boats and sick people. The gospel led him to sit at the table and to eat meals with Pharisees.

It's not wrong that its our neediness that leads us to church or to God. We all have deep needs. We may come to find that they're not needs worth having, as Will Willimon said, but we do have them and they open us up to God. But if the only reason we keep coming to church is to have our own needs cradled and cuddled, then we have not truly been broken open by God. We are not proclaiming the Lord's death until he comes. We are simply proclaiming our continuing need to be at the center.

The first step in gospel healing is to know that we are loved. That is absolutely true. For many of us, this is the greatest breakthrough we have to make. But that healing is only effective if we learn how to love ourselves. To have the opportunity to love another person and to love God is to become truly human. Communion opens us up so that we can go on to love.

Yesterday we celebrated the life of a remarkable woman in this sanctuary. Laura Dennis was a huge part of the life of this congregation. She was a giant, even though she only stood so high. She was a leader because she knew how to love. She loved her family. She loved her church. And she loved the world. As I mentioned in the service yesterday, she was pushing UNICEF boxes just a few years ago. She was making a list of needs for residents at Heritage Hall even when she was one of those residents.

Laura Dennis is at this table. She is able to shout today, "How happy are those who feast at the table in the kingdom of God!" But she can do that because she ate at this table in the not-quite kingdom of God and was nourished on the food that Jesus provides.

So come to the table. Let it remind you who you are. Let it form you into a servant of Christ. So that you can proclaim Christ's death and Christ's power and Christ's love. Thanks be to God.

*John Wesley, "The Duty of Constant Communion," in This Holy Mystery: A United Methodist Understanding of Holy Communion by Gayle Carlton Felton, [Discipleship Resources: Nashville, 2006], pp. 67-68.
**Peter Lampe, "The Eucharist: Identifying with Christ on the Cross," Interpretation magazine, Vol. XLVIII, No. 1, Jan. 1994, p. 41. I am grateful to Brooke Willson for putting me onto this investigation with his observations on 1 Corinthians 11.
***ibid., p. 45

Do This in Remembrance of Me

This year, I have been meeting with our Montessori classes on Thursdays. We have been singing songs, telling stories, preparing the sanctuary for worship - all kinds of things. This week we got out the palm branches that we used last year for Palm Sunday. They've been drying out in a closet in my office for the last year.

We talked about why we use them on Palm Sunday. You remember this? We wave them as we remember Jesus' entrance into Jerusalem on the way to his crucifixion. The people, including the children, placed branches before his donkey and shouted, "Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord." It was as if they were welcoming a king. But then, by the week's end, Jesus was standing before a crowd that yelled, "Crucify him!"

We'll get to Palm Sunday. It's not that far off. But the practice of many churches is to take the palm branches from the year before and to burn them to make ashes to be used for the Ash Wednesday service that begins Lent. Partly that's because palms make a good ash for the service, ash that doesn't tend to irritate most people's skin. But more so, it's because it is a reminder that the same people who can shout 'Hosanna' can yell 'Crucify him!' We are a sinful people. A forgetful people. And we need reminders of who we are.

That's one of the things I have enjoyed the most about my times with the Montessori children. In the older class we burned the branches and made the ash that we will use this Wednesday night. We touch the stuff. We talk about why we use the stuff. And as we do we create memories that will linger. We will remember the feel of the brittle leaves, dried after a year. We will remember the smell of the smoke as the leaves burned in a coffee can outside. We will remember the smudge of grey on our hands. And through this stuff, God can speak to our senses and to our souls.

Friday, Suzanne and I went to see her great aunt Augusta who is in hospice care in Franklin. Augusta is 98 years old and has been single her whole life. She is the last of her generation and one of the last remaining ties our family has to Southampton County.

After visiting her at the hospital, Suzanne and I went to get some barbecue at the Golden Skillet, which is a place that both of my grandparents loved to go. It's an ugly place inside - seriously in need of a makeover. The outdated furnishings. The grease of many years clings to the ceiling tiles. But the food! In the barbecue and slaw and string beans I was remembering many such meals like that one sat around the tables of family members. In the stuff, God was speaking through my senses and to my soul.

You can see where I'm going with this, can't you? Today we're on the last sermon in our series on communion. Through the last few weeks Peter and I have been talking about the themes that are part of this meal. We talked about sacrifice - the notion that this is not only a representation of Christ's sacrifice but that it also calls us to offer ourselves as a holy and living sacrifice. We talked about thanksgiving, mystery, a foretaste of heaven. And today we end with talking about communion as a memorial meal. What does it mean that we do this in remembrance of Jesus?

There are some traditions within the Christian Church for whom this is the only thing that communion is. These traditions downplay any notion of mystery or Christ's presence in the meal. It is a time to recall the events of the Last Supper that Christ shared with his disciples and to reflect on how the bread and cup represent the life Jesus offers us through his broken body and shed blood.

United Methodists don't go that far. We do believe that Christ is somehow present in the sacraments. We talk about Christ's real presence in the meal and we should expect to meet Christ when we come to the table. If we believed that communion was a memorial meal, then we would probably just do it once a year on the Thursday before Easter. John Wesley, the first Methodist, urged us to do it frequently, weekly.

Having said that, though, communion is a memorial meal. It does connect us to what Jesus did. When we hold the bread in our hands we should hear him saying, "This is my body broken for you." When we drink from the cup we should hear the echo, "Do this in remembrance of me."

How many times had Jesus sat down to eat with his disciples in the time that he was with them? Sometimes they were miraculous meals, as when the four thousand and the five thousand were fed when all that was around were a few loaves and fish. Sometimes they were in the homes of the curious - the house of a Pharisee, the home of friends like Lazarus and his sisters, Mary & Martha, in Zaccheus the tax collector's house. Most of the time, however, they were mundane meals shared on the road. But how many times had they done this and how close had they become?

Will Willimon, now the United Methodist bishop in North Alabama, wrote a book a few years back called Sunday Dinner. In it he talked about how "to be a Christian is not to think long thoughts about noble ideas. To be a Christian is to encounter a person." Specifically, it is to encounter the person of Jesus.

Therefore we must understand Christ the way we understand a person: by spending time with the person; by being respectful and attentive; and by receiving what the person wishes to share, knowing that no matter how well we get to know the person, we cannot possess or control the person. To be with a friend, Jesus or any other, is to be patient and let that friend disclose himself or herself to us in his or her own good time...You already know, in your encounters with persons, that friendship takes time. You must keep at it. You must be ready for long morning coffee breaks, leisurely lunches, times to put down your work and listen, late night telephone calls, and afternoons spent walking along the beach. Friends take time.*

Friendship is not all high, holy moments. It is mundane moments as well. It is a journey through time. But in the stuff of time and meals spent together, memories that endure are made.

That's why the memorial that the Lord's Supper is vibrates with so much meaning. We hold that bread and we remember nails through flesh, crowds shouting love and hate, scared disciples in an upper room, a savior's face weeping for the people for whom he came to die, the grace that comes so undeserved for a forgetful people. We are a forgetful people and we need this bread and this cup to remember.

The gospel lesson for today takes us to the mountaintop with Jesus and three of his disciples. Jesus is praying there with Peter, John, and James when suddenly he is changed before them. His clothes become dazzling white and his face is transfigured. And there beside him are Moses and Elijah, the law and the prophets. It's all there on the mountaintop. The past, the present and the future. In case there was any doubt about who Jesus was or what he was going to do, there is this vision given to the disciples. And a voice comes from a cloud that descends on them saying, "This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!"

We weren't on that mountain. And we may wish for a vision so clear to help us see the way in a world filled with doubts and confusion. We want to know what God is about. But we do have this meal. We take this bread in our hands and it's all there - past, present and future. Who you are, who God is, and what you will be through God's love.

There is a point of debate among preachers that I've gotten into from time to time. In the Great Thanksgiving, the prayer that we say before communion, when we get to the part that tells about Jesus and the disciples sharing this meal, why don't we break the bread at that point? Some clergy do. It seems to make sense. We're talking about the breaking of the bread at that point.

The reason we don't is because remembering is not only about calling to mind what happened two thousand years ago. It's about remembering that it's still going on - that Christ is still here. So we break the bread just before we share it to say that the Christ we meet is not a figure from history - he's present in the here and now. It's all there in your hands. The savior who loved you before you were born is with you to the end. Spend some time with him this week. Get to know him as you would a friend. It is time well spent. Thanks be to God.

*William H. Willimon, Sunday Dinner: The Lord's Supper and the Christian Life, [The Upper Room: Nashville, 1981], pp. 97-99.

Back to Basics: The Body

In the 12^th century, in the region that is now Belgium and northern France, something extraordinary was happening among the women of the region. Laywomen were forming new communities that sought to live a Jesus lifestyle. They continued to do simple work, but they also held meetings together, followed common spiritual exercises and rejected the paths that would have been chosen for them had they remained in the world they had come from.

We don’t often think about women religious leaders of the 12^th century, but there were some charismatic leaders who began to attract followers into big movements. Jacques de Vitry was unique in that he was a man who became a disciple of these women whom he felt had the potential to reform the Church of his day. He left his position at the University of Paris to go and write the life of Marie of Oignie.[i]

There are wild and wonderful tales to tell about Marie of Oignie and about other women of the time. Ask me sometime to tell you about Christina the Amazing. But one thing that is disturbing about these women is how they treated their bodies. Jacques writes of Marie that “when her sainted little body was washed after death, it was found to be so frail and shriveled from illness and fasting that her spine touched her belly and the bones in her back seemed to be lying under her stomach as if under a thin linen cloth.”[ii] Something went horribly wrong with the Christian theology of the body here if this was seen as good!

We have come a long way in our understanding of the relationship between body and soul since the Middle Ages. Or have we? Lauren Winner, in the book Mudhouse Sabbath, which we are reading in some of our small groups during Lent, talks about going into a boutique to try on dresses and the self-loathing she felt when the store didn’t carry her size because it was the sort of store that did not carry large sizes. She burst into tears as she left, saying to her friend, “I’ll never be thin again.”

What her friend helped her realize, though, was that the store had just fed into her anxieties about what a healthy body looks like. Medieval mystics and Kate Moss-size models might get into those dresses, but they are not our best models for what healthy looks like. Winner goes on to say:

“The shopping expedition was good proof that, though I believe God has something to say about bodies, I generally tune God out and listen to Cosmopolitan instead. I’m pretty sure, if God called me to chat about my body would say things like, ‘I like your body. I created your body and if you read the first chapter of Genesis lately, you might recall that I called Creation good.’ Still, when I’m staring in the dress-shop mirror, I generally wish my body – or at least a few pounds of it – would vanish.”[iii]

Men have a different relationship to their bodies. We can be just as concerned about appearance, but most of us have been socialized to think about our bodies like pick-up trucks. And not just little pint-size pick-ups that you just use to help your neighbor take a few things to the landfill – I’m talking tough, working trucks that they show on TV going through mud holes and having tons of bricks dropped in the back of them. That’s us. Our bodies are made to be Ford tough – like a rock. Most of the time we ignore them and we downplay anything that damages them. Lose an arm? We’re like the black knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail – “It’s just a flesh wound.” And that’s why it’s such a huge transition for men when our bodies really do start to break down and we have to learn to live with limitations.

The great preacher and writer Barbara Brown Taylor says:

“I think it is important to pray naked in front of a full-length mirror sometimes, especially when you are full of loathing for your body…Whether you are sick or well, lovely or irregular, there comes a time when it is vitally important for your spiritual health to drop your clothes, look in the mirror, and say, ‘Here I am. This is the body-like-no-other that my life has shaped. I live here. This is my soul’s address.”[iv]

Taylor says she scandalizes people sometimes when she says this. Maybe that sounded scandalous to you – like maybe confronting our naked bodies is not spiritual enough. But maybe we’re not spiritual enough because we’re not confronting our bodies. We’re neglecting the very thing that Paul tells us is the temple of the Holy Spirit. “You were bought with a price,” Paul tells us. “So glorify God in your body.”

All of my highest and holiest moments have come though this body. I imagine that most of yours have come through your body, too. I remember getting off the bus on a warm afternoon and running to get my bike and riding at top speed up hills and down. The feel of the sun and the wind and the smell of the air. It would be several miles before I realized I was even tired. It was like flying.

The awkwardness and yet thrill of dancing with a girl at those ballroom dance classes my mom made me take. The feel of her hand in mine and the feel of the strong muscles in her back.

The good exhaustion after a game of half-court basketball on the driveway of someone’s house. We played to a hundred so the game could go on for hours. Then we’d just collapse and it felt great.

The thrill of a kiss. The warmth of a hug. The smell of the church and the scratchy burlap of Christmas pageant costumes. Kneeling at the altar to receive bread and juice.

The messy wonder of birth, watching Suzanne’s body do this amazing thing, and then holding Joel and then Rachel in my arms. The mundane messiness of feeding and changing and rocking and hoisting a child on my shoulders.

Feeling the holy weight of hands upon me at my ordination as I knelt at an altar rail. Knowing the bishop was just a man, but knowing as well that something happened in that moment – some claim had been made on me that I would only come to understand over many years.

Standing at the bedside of my grandmother following her stroke and holding her hand. Sharing silence because she couldn’t speak, but knowing that those hands had shaped me in ways that spoke of God’s love more powerfully than any words she might have said. Watching her as she took her last breaths and went peacefully on.

Clogging. Hiking to the top of Ben Lui in Scotland and throwing up. It couldn’t get more physical than that. Singing in the choir. Kayaking through the marsh cathedrals of the seaside. And yes, that thing you’re thinking of…all of these high, holy moments are in my memory because of this body.

We are sometimes guilty as Christians of believing what the Gnostics did. Gnosticism was one of the earliest heresies in the Church and it had many forms, but at its heart it was the belief that the only part of us that God is really concerned with is our immaterial souls. The body, they felt, was a hindrance – maybe even evil.

After all, the pleasures of the body can lead us into trouble. We follow those pleasures into all sorts of trouble. We sleep with people we shouldn’t sleep with. We take substances – like drugs or deep-fried Twinkies – that we shouldn’t take. We drink to excess. We smoke. We eat too much. And it gets us into trouble. So the body must be evil, right?

The Christian Gnostics believed that Jesus came to liberate our eternal soul – the inner light – from its fleshly cage. They looked to passages like the one where Jesus says not to fear those who can kill the body but only the one who can cast your soul into hell [Luke 12:4-5] and they saw there a justification for their beliefs. They also saw how Paul often talked about the struggle between the spirit and the flesh.

Christianity rejected Gnosticism, though, because it fundamentally ignored the fact that God has loved and used bodies since the beginning of beginning. Men and women were created in the image of God and that means more than just we have a soul that is in God’s image and, O, yes, we also have this body. No, the body bears some of that image, too.

Fundamentally, Christianity rejected Gnosticism because of that great Christian word we use far too little – incarnation. God became human to show us that matter matters. God came to save us in this world, in this flesh by becoming a fully human human being. And Jesus, who was fully human and fully divine, enjoyed this world. Enjoyed being embodied. He went to wedding feasts. He ate at the table with friends, sinners and Pharisees. He healed hurt and broken bodies – like the bent-over woman in the gospel story for the day. He wept at the death of friends and he washed the feet of his disciples. Jesus loved the bodies of this world and who he is for us is inseparable from the body through which we knew him. It is through Jesus’ body on the cross that the way to salvation was opened for all people.

This is why we say, when we say the Apostle’s Creed, that we believe in “the communion of saints, the resurrection of the…body.” Because even when these worn-out bodies of ours have drawn their last breath, God promises us an embodied future. What those resurrection bodies will be like, we don’t know, but we don’t lose the body.

So what’s a body to do with the bodies we have? It’s obvious that God loves all kinds of bodies. Big bodies, small bodies, tall bodies, short bodies, disabled bodies, suffering bodies – they are all alike made by God so we should love what we’ve got. Bodies can do amazing things. They are incredibly resilient. I look at some pieces of machinery or appliances that were made in 1963 – same year I was made – and I think – “Man, I’m in a lot better shape than that!” Think of how amazing that is that these bodies can endure so much and still keep going.

Yes, love what we’ve got and realize that the world often gives us unrealistic images for what our bodies should look like. But then take care of what we’ve got. It has only been in the last five years that I have started to atone for all the years of Tex-Mex food that I ate in Texas. That wasn’t the only culprit, but it was a major contributor to my getting up to almost 275 pounds a few years ago. It has been a slow process, but I have been trying to do better by what God gave me. I will say that it is a major benefit to have someone to be accountable to in doing this. For the last eight months you’ve heard me mention several times that I have been working with a trainer – Matthew Henry – and it makes a huge difference. Care for your body is not a nice option for Christians – it is a spiritual practice like prayer – a training for offering your body to the glory of God.

What, then, do we do when our bodies don’t work like they used to? What do we do when cancer strikes or we lose abilities that we used to have? Ironically, it may be in those times that we are most aware of our bodies. Instead of taking our bodies for granted, when we are ill or sore or wounded we know that we are really more dependent than we think. And ultimately it is our limitations that bring us to others who must do for us what we can no longer do for ourselves. We hate this. We hate to be dependent on others – to feel that we are weak or needy. But it is in these times that we may discover the necessity of the other body that I want to end with – the body of Christ.

The poet Scott Cairns, in a book titled The End of Suffering: Finding Purpose in Pain, talks about friends of his who have left church because, they say, they are still spiritual, just not religious. In its own way, this is a kind of Gnosticism, too. Cairns says:

“I comprehend the unfortunate distinction being made by their parsing of terms and that distinction continues to strike me as the result of an insidious and ongoing failure – theirs, ours and mine…These beloved friends must find their way home. They must find a way to reconnect their faith to their communities and their communities to their faith. They must find a way to reconnect, as it were, the spirit with the body. Satan, our tradition tells us, looks for any vessel sailing without a fleet, and it seems to me that an individualized, isolated ‘spirituality’ is almost by definition satanic.”[v]

Who are we? Are we individuals set out on our own to navigate the world under our own strength and power? That’s surely a recipe for disaster. Aren’t we a body – the body of Christ? And it is in this body, sharing frequently of the body and blood in bread and cup, that we learn the things that will take us to the kingdom – body and soul. Thanks be to God.

1 Corinthians 6:19-20 [NRSV]

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.

---

[i] Petroff, Elizabeth Alvilda, ed., Medieval Women’s Visionary Literature, ed. by Elizabeth Alvilda Petroff, [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986], p. 173. Referred to hereafter as Petroff.

[ii] Jacques de Vitry, “The Life of Marie d’Oignies,” in Petroff, p. 183.

[iii] Lauren Winner, Mudhouse Sabbath: An Invitation to a Life of Spiritual Discipline, [Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2003], pp. 66-67.

[iv] Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in This World: A Geography of Faith, [HarperCollins ebook, 2009] location 621-630.

[v] Scott Cairns, The End of Suffering: Finding Purpose in Pain, [Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2009], p. 77.

Snowstorm Special: Moshe Rubenstein and the Blizzard of '88

A snowy, story sermon from the fictional town of Mattaponi Courthouse, Virginia for a snowy, Sunday morning:

This was a pretty rough week in Mattaponi. Leander Lovett, the town street sweeper was out trying to clear the sidewalk when a big VDOT snowplow came along and buried him and his freshly cleaned sidewalk under two feet of snow. Leander's not a real excitable fellow, but this really got to him. He had worked hard on that sidewalk, so he started running after the VDOT truck right down the middle of Main Street. People stopped and stared.

Yolanda Perkins was in town scrounging for necessities and when she saw Leander running down the street waving his shovel at the big orange VDOT truck she was so shocked she dropped a box of Little Debbie Swiss Rolls and a six-pack of Diet Coke she was carrying.

Leander never caught the truck but he gave it a piece of his mind and he livened up the atmosphere in Mattaponi. Leander hadn't caused this much of a stir since last year's St. Patrick's Day parade when he leapt in front of a little orange Shriner's car to save a Dalmatian that fell off a fire truck. But that's another story. What we're talking about is snow. And there was plenty of it in Mattaponi, too.

In fact this was the most snow in Mattaponi since the blizzard of 1888. That was the greatest snowstorm of all time. It shut down the major cities on the East Coast like Washington and New York with drifts that were 5 and 6 feet deep. Over 200 sailors lost their lives, some of them just out on the Chesapeake Bay. They called it the White Hurricane. Incredible winds - over 45 miles an hour. And over 400 people died. Those kind of storms you don't forget.

It got me to thinking and I went back to find an old diary that I've got from a Methodist circuit riding preacher who lived back in those days. He was an interesting guy. Very dedicated to the Lord and a very powerful preacher. He used to hold camp meetings down on the Po River near Mattaponi that would last for two weeks or more and people would come from as far away as Richmond to hear him. Just a dynamic preacher. And he was the one who got a small group of folks meeting together regularly for spiritual enrichment in Mattaponi and they later became the Mattaponi Methodist Episcopal Church, South, which today is the Mattaponi United Methodist Church.

His name was Moshe Rubenstein. Now I grant you that that's not a very common name for a Methodist preacher. But Moshe didn't grow up in a Methodist home. He was a Jew who owned a tailor's shop in New York City, but one day a customer invited him over to a Methodist church on the Lower East Side. He was overwhelmed by it all, had an incredible encounter with Christ and that day answered the altar call and became a Methodist.

Later he moved his tailor shop to Washington. And then he decided that the call to preaching was too great and he gave it all up to become a circuit-riding preacher.

Circuit-riding was different in those days than it is now. Ministers still had six or seven churches over a widespread area and the preacher would often have to travel every week, spending the night with church families on the road and leading services in each church at best once a month. But hard as it was it was the life Moshe knew he was called to live. He had no family and so he thought of himself as one of Jesus' original disciples, wandering from place to place with no possessions and nothing to encumber him or to keep him from God .... except the people he served.

I just want to read you some of the passages he wrote during the period of the blizzard of 1888. It was a surprising blizzard because it came in March after one of the warmest winters in twenty years. And it caught Rev. Moshe Rubenstein at one of the low points in his ministry. He was very discouraged by his flocks - particularly the one in Mattaponi - and he was beginning to feel a bit like Paul - travelling from place to place putting out fires as people squabbled and fought and struggled with one another.

This is the entry from March 10, two days before the storm hit:

I am spending the night with the Strawbottom family in Fredericksburg. God is faithful. God is good. As I left Arlington two days ago I could see the new monument to Washington rising above the Potomac. They say it will be dedicated soon. How I wish we Methodists could erect something monumental and lasting through our work in Virginia.

Tomorrow I head for Mattaponi. Oh, how I dread going there! I am scheduled to stay with Hans and Gretchen Gurlock and the two hellions they call sons. Last time I was with them the younger boy spread apple butter all over my favorite Wesley hymn, 'And Are We Yet Alive', in my pocket hymnal so that I have to sing it from memory now. The older boy couldn't quit talking about his new muzzle loader and the father kept wanting me to go slaughter the hogs with him. Lord, grant me patience. Mercifully I only have to stay with this brood for one night!

And this gathering of Christ's church in Mattaponi - it is far from perfect. Each person claims to be graced with the spiritual gifts God gives in Christ - and they are. But they argue incessantly over who is the greater leader. Brother Mossbacher is convinced that he has the gift of prophecy, but none of the others will let him speak because they accuse him of gossiping. Sister Victoria Tarback is a skilled healer, but she is shy and feels threatened by the noisy gongs and clashing cymbals of the congregation. What shall I do with my sheep?

Resolved: As a spiritual exercise this week I will end each entry with a note of thankfulness for the people God has sent me throughout the day, for Christ has told us that we shall meet him each day in the faces of our suffering brothers and sisters. And did not the Apostle Paul begin and end each letter that he wrote with words of thankfulness for the people in that congregation - even though he, too, was often cross and perturbed with them? Very well, Lord, this night I give thanks for Elijah, Elizabeth and Mephibosheth Strawbottom who have opened their home to me and who have welcomed me as Christ's own servant. God is faithful. God is good.

Sunday, March 11 - A few flakes of snow have begun to fall as I write this entry by the dwindling embers of the fire. A sudden chill has entered the air and the Gurlock children are excited by the possibility of sledding in the morrow's sun. Gretchen is finally putting the older child to bed and Hans is still talking to me as I write this. I told him that I must spend some time in reflection and journaling as the noble John Wesley did. I made a grand gesture of pulling this book from my saddlebag and stationing myself at the family table. But he is still talking to me about slaughtering the hogs if the weather stays chilled on the morrow. Lord, forgive me for ignoring him.

Today I preached twice for the saints of Mattaponi. Each time I spoke on the meaning of community. In the evening meeting I used Paul's text from 1 Corinthians 1:9 in which he reminds the divided Corinthian church that God has called them into a koinonia - a close relationship, a community, formed by God's son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. I discussed with them how sharing in this way meant bearing one another's burdens and mutually respecting one another's gifts. As soon as the meeting was over Jeremiah Colliflower loudly accused Brother Mossbacher of slighting him. A dispute broke out over the amount of money reported in the evening offering. And Sister Tarback broke down in tears which everyone ignored.

My spirit is deeply grieved for this church. I despair of binding them together. I search my soul to see if any hint of powerful preaching may be found there. Nevertheless I am grateful. It is what I am called to do. And so I close this entry with my prayers of thankfulness for the evening. Lord, thank you for your people in Mattaponi who I am called to shepherd. Thank you for Sister Victoria's gentleness, for Sister Hannah's devotion to serving the community, and for Brother Jeremiah Colliflower's [several things are written here and then scratched out] for Brother Colliflower's existence. Thank you for this family which has offered me shelter on this cold and blustery night. Thank you for young Frederick and Gunther who are teaching me patience. Thank you for Gretchen who is teaching me hospitality. And thank you for Brother Hans who is at this instant teaching me about something called chitterlings. (My mother is rolling over in her grave). God is faithful. God is good.

Monday, March 12 - A violent wind is howling outside the Gurlock home where I am staying for a second night. The snow outside is waist-deep now with some drifts approaching the roof of the outbuilding in the rear of the home. Though I had hoped to be in another place tonight (I had REALLY hoped to be in another place tonight) I am forced by the snow to endure…er…enjoy the hospitality of my brothers and sister for another night. Brother Wesley said to never stay in one place any longer than is absolutely necessary. Now I understand why - he knew about the Gurlocks.

But I am giving thanks once again. In our time together I was able to hear from Sister Gretchen about the troubles and illnesses in the families of our Methodists here. In the evening we shared in a fine meal together and by the fire after dinner we had a joyous time of worship and Bible study which was not dampened either by the weather or by Brother Hans' snoring. I only wish more of the koinonia had been able to share in it.

Hans is once again talking to me as I write this note. He seems very distraught about not being able to slaughter the hogs due to the snow. But I persist in my efforts to give thanks in all things and so I close my entry today with thankfulness for this family which has surrounded me with warmth. God is faithful. God is good.

Tuesday, March 13 - Good Lord, deliver me from Mattaponi! The snow has now blocked the door entirely. The wind continues to scream through the windows. To go outside would be to invite certain death and yet I feel I am ready to take that risk rather than spend one more hour in this chamber of horrors!

Never have I felt so trapped and alone! Young Frederick sings 'Yankee Doodle Dandy' incessantly while playing with an infernal train that boasts a clanging bell. He pretends that it is one of the new electric trolley cars which have only recently come to Richmond and he continually rolls it noisily across the wooden floor as if he were rolling down Church Hill to the Capitol yelling, "Look out Governor, here I come!" Gunther practices his fiddle in the corner with a skill that reminds one of a cat in heat. Gretchen has a pot boiling over on the stove and Hans sits at the kitchen table sharpening his 'pig-sticking' knife while muttering darkly about sausages and pickled pig's feet.

What is it that makes it so hard for me to accept the people that God has given me to lead? How can a congregation of saints be built from raw material such as this? What will hold us together in the koinonia community that the Apostle speaks of?

I look out the window tonight at the cold sky, still obscured by the clouds of snow as I continue the discipline of thankfulness. Thank you, God. Thank you even for the Gurlocks. God is faithful. God is good.

Wednesday, March 14 - Tonight I look up at stars as the snow has finally stopped. We cleared a path from the front door today and for the first time in several days saw a glimmer of sunlight strike the pristine landscape. What had been a muddy, cluttered yard is now blanketed by God's own covering. And everything looks new.

And so does my heart. For today we were visited by Sister Victoria who came through the drifts to see me. She shared with me the cause for her tears on Sunday last. She spoke of her pain at the church's divisions and struggles. But it was her gift of healing that I needed.

As she spoke she said, "I know that I need not despair. For we are not called to build the Church by relying on our own strengths and merits. It is Christ who calls us. It is Christ who strengthens us. It is Christ who will make us blameless on the day of his coming. God is faithful. God has made us one with Christ."

What a profound insight she has. In my black depression I had lost sight of the grace God gives to redeem us even when we fail to be what God wants us to be. It is a grace that comes through Jesus Christ who comes to make all things new. We are earthen vessels, destined to break and decay - but God has chosen us to bear this treasure. And we, sinful as we are, have been chosen to share with Christ in a koinonia - a sharing in his death so that we may share in his life.

I will not save this congregation in Mattaponi. I cannot do it. I cannot even save myself from the burdens of three days in the Gurlock household. But God is faithful. God will save through Christ. And God can make a house for himself even among the Methodists of Mattaponi, for they are Christ's own people.

And so tonight I give thanks to God once more. I give thanks to God for Sister Victoria who has the spiritual gift of healing. I give thanks to God for the Gurlocks and even for Hans who is telling me at this instant that he has cleared a path to the pigpen. And I give thanks to God for the grace that he has shown to me, for the strength he has given me, and for the power he has granted me to change. God is faithful. God is good.

Yes, it was a heck of a storm, that Blizzard of '88. And for Moshe Rubenstein it was a spiritual experience. It's truly amazing how your world can fall apart and be put back together again in the midst of cabin fever. But that's Christ's work - if you believe in that kind of thing. Which I do. Thanks be to God. God is faithful. God is good.

1 Corinthians 1:1-9

Paul, called as an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Sosthenes, the brother, to the Church of God which is in Corinth, to those made holy in Christ Jesus, to those called saints, together with all of those in every place who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both theirs and ours, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

I give thanks to my God for you always because of the grace of God given to you in Jesus Christ, because in every way you have been enriched in him, with every word and all knowledge, just as the witness of Christ has been made fast within you, so that you do not want for any charism as you anticipate the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will strengthen you to the fulfillment, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

God is faithful -- God, through whom you have been called into the close relationship of his son Jesus Christ, our Lord.