Every year around this time, I host a Christmas in July party. I decorate my home, put up a couple Christmas trees, cook a turkey and ham, and invite friends to bring a favorite family holiday dish and a gift for a white elephant exchange. What I love about hosting this party is the true Christmas cheer that comes with it. It’s that feeling we have around the holidays when everything feels a little cozier and a little more magical because we gather together in love and joy and hope. I am a firm believer in celebrations because they remind us of what is most important - the people with whom we choose to share special moments in our lives and highlights in our faith. The more we make time to join together in these ways, the more connected we feel to each other and the more love, joy, and hope we invite into our lives.
I believe this is why God encourages us to remember the Sabbath, the Passover, the Resurrection, the birth of Christ in celebration. Our God knows the value in stepping out of the mundane routines of our lives to come together over food and traditions. There is extraordinary power in fixing our eyes on the Divine presence that seeps into every joyous thing in our lives, if we simply attend to it with intention. I love Paul’s thoughts on this in his letter to the Philippians: “Be cheerful with joyous celebration in every season of life. Let your joy overflow! And let gentleness be seen in every relationship, for our Lord is ever near. Keep your thoughts continually fixed on all that is authentic and real, honorable and admirable, beautiful and respectful, pure and holy, merciful and kind. And fasten your thoughts on every glorious work of God, praising him always. Put into practice the example of all that you have heard from me or seen in my life and the God of peace will be with you in all things.” (v. 4-5, 8-9 TPT) This is your invitation to find something to celebrate this weekend. Perhaps you already have a Birthday or Wedding to celebrate - some big occasion. Or perhaps you are being called to celebrate a smaller, but no less important thing - waking up early with a loved one to watch the Sunrise that reminds us we are gifted another day or grabbing ice cream with a friend because she got a new job. In all these things, be cheerful and joyous, fixing your thoughts on all that is beautiful and glorious.
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Before leaving my last mental health practice, I talked with each of my clients about my departure and allowed them the space to say goodbye. Unexpectedly, one of my clients wailed in exasperation, “But you get me! You can’t leave! Every day you park your car so crooked, and it reminds me that even as imperfect as I am, I am still going to be ok like you are!” Yes, I had to go check my parking, and yes, she was right. I can never unsee how prone I am to crooked parking since the day I found out the impact that had on another human being. That same client, when I asked her to repeat back to me this absolute gem of wisdom I had bestowed upon her the day before, gave me a blank stare and said something like, “I can’t even remember what I had for breakfast this morning. How can you expect me to remember what you said yesterday?” It was then that I had to humbly accept that despite my best efforts towards intentional and profound impact, it was time I set aside my ego and acknowledge that it was God making the impact in spite of my best efforts (and I’m pretty sure God had a good laugh about it too).
In Matthew 13:1-9, we hear of the sower who was also attempting to make an impact. Despite his best efforts, as he scattered his seeds, some of them fell outside the good soil and landed on the path, the rocks, and the thorns. The seeds on the path blew away, those on the rocks grew up quickly and withered just as fast, and the ones in the thorns were choked out of their full growth. Although the parable ends here, I believe the Salvation story does not. I believe this because I have seen plants grow up in the cracks of my sidewalk. I have seen seeds blown from a path and take root in unexpected places. I have seen trees disrupt tangles of thorns and grow up tall and strong. We worship a God who works miracles despite the imperfections of our planting. As you sow the seeds of God’s Good News, scatter them far and wide. There is no limit to the seeds God has given you to share with the world. Worry less about how they will be received because you do not know the impact a little seed may have on land that initially seems barren. Sow seeds intentionally in good soil, but don’t concern yourself with preventing seeds from scattering onto less hospitable ground. We are called to be sowers, who sow with reckless abandon in our desire to spread the Love of God to as many people as possible. What God does from there in growing those little seeds in people’s hearts is going to happen in spite of whatever wisdom we think we have or mistakes we think we’re making. So Love liberally, sow generously, and nurture gracefully. God’s got it from there. I love the Old Testament because it is this beautiful collection of stories about God forging a relationship with humanity - teaching us about who He is and who we are as image-bearers of the Divine. In the beginning, God walked among humans in paradise. There was no doubt in the minds of Adam and Eve about the identity of God and the purpose God had for their lives. However, when Adam and Eve were cast from the garden, they and all humanity were cut off from this direct relationship with God, and so began the journey of humanity to remember God from the remnants of their collective memories and imaginations.
In the stories of the Old Testament and contemporary myths, we see countless failed attempts of humanity trying to understand God. Societies endeavored to create God from the image of humanity, and what resulted were Pantheons of violent gods who demanded child sacrifice, sexual enslavement under the guise of temple priestesses, and complete obliteration of other tribes and nations. Humans cast idols in gold and bronze, pursuing an anthropomorphized deity in shapes they could understand. However, when your society is edged in violence and war due to the sinful nature of a humanity that has lost contact with God, you’re going to get some gods that embody the worst of humanity, not the best. Enter Yahweh - a God who identifies simply as “I am” because there is no shape perceivable to human understanding to describe God. Yahweh - the God who formed humanity in their image, not the other way around. Yahweh - the one true God who is enough, Alpha and Omega, who did not need a plethora of other gods. This God, over and over again, set Himself apart from the man made gods of the time, continually revealing Himself to humanity as a God of love and grace. But wait a minute, wasn’t God wrathful and judgmental and terrifying in the Old Testament? To our modern sensibilities, perhaps; but in comparison to the horrors of the man made gods of the time, Yahweh is merciful and good. Through the Old Testament stories we learn of a God who created the Universe with Word and Breath, stepping back to view His Creation and calling it “good” (Genesis 1). Compare this to other creation myths of the time - the violence of the warring gods of The Enuma Elish whose slaughter of each other created the heavens and the earth, the bloodbath becoming rivers and oceans. Take the story of a God who lovingly breathed life into Adam (Genesis 2:7), creating humanity simply for the pleasure of creating out of love, juxtaposed with the gods in the Babylonian myths who created humanity to be slaves so the gods would not be subject to labors that were beneath them. When other gods like Baal were demanding child sacrifice, Yahweh provided a ram in place of Isaac for Abraham’s sacrifice (Genesis 22:13). Over and over again, humanity is introduced to a God who creates and rules selflessly, who loves compassionately, and willingly sacrifices Himself instead of demanding the blood price to be paid by His creation. Often we struggle with the images of God prior to the Gospels, but our God of Genesis through Malachi is the same God who walked the earth in the stories of Matthew through John. The Jesus who fed the 5,000 with a few loaves and fishes is the same God who provided manna in the desert to the refugees in Exodus. The Jesus who dined with sinners in Matthew is the same God who traveled as a pillar of smoke and fire with the wayward Israelites. We follow God because God is good and just and merciful, ever unchanging, and always deeply, lavishly in love with us, His creation. My best friend in the whole wide world has zero concept of directions. In spite of this, she insists on being the Navigator when we travel. But I love her stubbornness, and I love how often we find amazing places we would never have stumbled upon had we not been hopelessly lost. In turn, she thinks it’s hilarious when I manage to knock over an entire drink on both of us because I am so excited we finally found the restaurant we had been searching for for hours. She loves that I am hopelessly clumsy and that I am at my clumsiest when I am particularly joyful and excited. Our friendship is built on years upon years of grace and love, not in spite of our flaws but because of them.
Often the character traits we love most about a person become the character traits that annoy us down the line. My best friend’s lack of direction is tied closely to an aspect of her that I adore and respect - her free spirit and anxiety-free demeanor. As a Type A person, I revel in the adventures I would never allow myself to be lost in without her. Also as a Type A person, I may be tempted to become frustrated and resentful about veering off schedule because we get lost all the time. Likewise, my clumsiness is an aspect of my emotional exuberance that she adores. However, if she allowed my clumsiness to embarrass her or she refused to forgive me for ruining her outfit, we may no longer be friends. This grace and ability to see someone as a whole person, flaws and all, is the secret to healthy and long-lasting relationships. I believe this is why God commands us to love our neighbor and focus on Grace. This grace is what I pray for in our Church Community every day. The beauty of a community built on grace is our ability to recognize our own flaws so that we do not spend time pointing out the flaws of others. It is our willingness to work through our own shame so that we do not shame others. It is the way we love ourselves and our God so much that we have no other option but to overflow that love on each other. When I stand up in front of all of you on Sundays and Wednesdays, I want you to know that I SEE you. I see the beauty and creativity that God wove into each and every one of you; I see the gifts you offer humbly to the world; I see the insecurities you think you need to hide, and I wonder at the marvel of a Creator God who allows us our imperfections and adores us anyways. My dream for this Church, and the Mission I see all of you live out every day is to continue making space around The Hearth for anyone (flaws and all) who is seeking a warm, safe place to listen to stories about our God, a God who affirms the Divine in All through our intentional and welcoming community. Tomorrow, a group of Hearth Churchers will be participating in the 7th Annual CommUnity Rainbow Run to benefit onePulse Foundation. OnePulse Foundation’s Vision is beautiful - “Establishing a sanctuary of healing and a beacon of hope by memorializing the lives taken, the lives saved and all the lives affected by the Pulse nightclub tragedy of June 12, 2016 – ensuring Pulse’s legacy of love lives on forever.” Although we plan to have a lot of fun at the event tomorrow, we also remember that the reason for this event began with a deep and unnecessary tragedy fueled by hate. Though the Pulse nightclub tragedy inspired the hearts of many people to embrace members of the LGBTQIA+ Community, it also highlighted the Conservative Church’s continual failure to do the very thing Jesus called it to do - weep with those who weep, welcome the stranger who has been cast out, stand for love, and flip over tables in the name of social justice.
Hearth Council President, Lauri, and I had the privilege of attending the Kick-Off event for the CommUnity Rainbow Run last Wednesday, and we had the pleasure of meeting and speaking with Dr. Earl Mowatt, Vice President of Education for onePulse Foundation. Dr. Mowatt’s passion for equity and diversity led him to create the Faith Council in Orlando to bridge the gap between Conservative religious leaders and the LGBTQIA+ community. As we spoke, Dr. Mowatt asked me what I believe to be the greatest barrier for conservative religious institutions to accept LGBTQIA+ individuals. My response was that these institutions have a couple things in common: a limiting belief based on Biblical inerrancy; a Patriarchal hierarchy with complementarian traditions; and a message that their Church has the right answer, the only answer, and the answer that determines salvation. This is in direct juxtaposition with more progressive religious traditions like the ELCA, which welcome and honor questions, doubt, and wrestling with the Divine. These progressive religious traditions tend to also be more open and welcoming to all people, including those rejected from more conservative traditions. I added that unfortunately, the conservative churches tend to have the biggest microphone, the deepest pockets, and therefore the most influence on how Christianity is lived and perceived; and I believe that the reason people flock to these churches is because human beings inherently crave certainty. If this church says it is certain that it has the right answer and the only answer to know God and get to Heaven, people want to rest comfortably in this certainty. It is uncomfortable to deeply wrestle with God and the existential questions God represents. It is uncomfortable to doubt. It is uncomfortable to dialogue openly and maybe have our minds opened to new information that allows us to see that our previous way of thinking was wrong. When I finished, Dr. Mowatt asked a simple, yet incredibly profound, question: “But isn’t that faith?” What does it mean to be Easter People?
As we continue on this journey through the Easter Season, we reflect on the Risen Lord - who He is and who are in the presence of this reality. Being Easter People means that we embody and reflect the truth of the Easter Story: Our God, humbling Himself so He could abide with us, was betrayed and brutally executed because of the threatening Philosophy He was living and sharing, and then did the impossible - rose from the dead to continue sharing this Philosophy in spite of those who tried to silence Him. What was this Philosophy that was so threatening and which we are called to live and share as He did? Love. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind” and “love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22: 37, 39). As Easter people we are called to TWO great commandments. Love our God and love each other. We are called to be people free from the rules and restrictions of religion created by humanity, which threaten our ability to love freely as Jesus calls us. In Jesus’ time, the rules and restrictions of religion threatened His ability to freely heal people because of Sabbath laws or dine with sinners or lovingly touch someone who was deemed unclean. In our time, the rules and restrictions of religion often threaten our ability to love freely those who “Religion” deems unworthy or less worthy - people whose skin is a different shade than ours, people who form “nontraditional” relationships and families, people with differing political views, people of different nationalities or religious practices, people who identify other than their assigned gender, people who worship to the wrong music. I could go on, and I know you could also. In fact, I know with certainty that at some point in your life, you could identify within a religiously excluded category. There seems to be no end to the list of excluded persons, yet exclusion is not a practice of Easter People. Rather, as Easter people, we are called to radical inclusion. Paul, in his letter to the Galatians makes this very clear, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). In Acts, the Resurrected Jesus sends His apostles to share the Good News to the Jews, Samaritans, and the Gentiles, inviting all these people to share in the Kingdom of God. Yet, here we are, proclaiming that we are Easter people yet denying the call of the One who made us to be Easter People. Don’t think for a second that this was not extremely radical in Jesus’ time as it is in ours. The Jewish people, for generations, were under the impression that they were the only chosen people of God, and therefore the only ones deserving of being a part of God’s Kingdom. To now be told that Jesus welcomed people who had oppressed them, fought wars against them, enslaved them…this was a difficult pill to swallow. Yet, as freeing and beautiful and hope-filled as it is to be Easter People, it also comes with this challenge. We are called to love. Period. We are called to love those we find difficult to love. We are called to love those we have prejudices against. We are called to love our neighbors as ourselves. ALL our neighbors. This is what it means to be Easter People. It finally happened. I got whatever cold/flu/COVID-adjacent illness that’s been ravaging Central Florida this Spring; and I do not do well being sick, mostly because I’m stubborn and refuse to stop my life for a little cough. However, whatever I had this time stopped me in my tracks for a week, and I was reminded of the importance of rest and setting boundaries and focusing on my health. I was also reminded of some Bible stories about Jesus healing the sick, and He and I had a little talk about where He was this past week when I felt like I was DYING.
I’ll share a little secret with you, though - Jesus was absolutely working on my healing, just maybe not in the dramatic way of “Rise and go; your faith has healed you!” (Luke 17:19). Rather, He worked through the hands and feet of my community and friends. On Sunday night, two of my friends from The Hearth came over armed with a variety of teas and ingredients for a “mom’s sure cure for illness” soup. We drank tea, shared tea, and broke bread together. And although my cough still lingers, so does the healing love - both practical and intangible - of Jesus through my friends. Never underestimate the ways you show up and reflect the Divine in other people’s lives. As community, if we all do just a little something for each other, it really adds up. So, text or call up that person you haven’t seen in awhile, offer to watch a little one so a couple can go on a date night, buy that little something that reminds you of someone in your life and give it to them. There are infinite ways for us to be the Hands and Feet of Jesus. Let’s make a point of doing something today! When you envision the Divine, who (or what) do you see? Is it a grandfatherly figure sitting on a throne in the clouds? A young man in Renaissance style clothing with long hair and a beard? A dove with an olive branch tucked neatly in her beak?
Who exactly is our risen Lord? Apparently, even Jesus’ disciples had a difficult time recognizing their risen Lord. Our Gospel narratives that recount Jesus appearing to His followers all seem to have one surprising theme in common: none of them immediately knew that the man standing before them was Jesus. The Bible does not explicitly tell us why Jesus was not immediately recognizable. Surely, His followers had no expectation that they would see Jesus again, and it may be that our resurrected bodies do not exactly resemble our Earthly bodies. Jesus, indeed, was described in Isaiah 53 in quite unflattering terms, which makes me wonder if His resurrected body is a perfected version and thus unrecognizable to His closest friends. Either way, it is through a familiar action by Jesus that he becomes known, and this is what’s important. In Jesus’ death and resurrection, God's relationship with humanity is restored. The veil of the temple is torn and now anyone can come face to face with the Divine, not just the Highest Priests after the strictest rituals of ceremonial cleansing. The question is, will we know the Divine when we come face to face with Them? If we are anything like Jesus’ followers, perhaps not right away; but when we do, it will be because of the relationship. Jesus’ followers knew Jesus when He called Mary by name in the voice she knew and loved, when He broke bread with His friends as they did so often together, when He allowed Thomas to touch Him and the shared memory of physical togetherness came flooding back. We will know God because of the relationship we have with our God. We have a relationship with God because our Risen Lord is a relational God, and They invite us lovingly into Their triune relationship every moment of every day - as we are, just as we are. I LOVE Easter. It is absolutely my favorite Holiday because it is centered around unencumbered, unbridled, pure joy. As a person who has battled depression her whole life, I have an incredibly deep appreciation for a day celebrating joy after a long 40 days of sorrow.
We have a gift that Jesus’ contemporaries did not: the gift of hindsight. We know that Jesus has risen. We know that Good Friday was not the end of the story. We know that God fulfilled His promise in true, God-like fashion - unexpectedly, impossibly, and lovingly. In some ways, it’s nice to have the gift of hindsight, but I do think it deprives us of the level of joy felt by Jesus’ contemporaries on that first Easter. We were not with the disciples, hiding in the upper room, wondering what to do now that everything they believed and hoped for was dashed. We were not the Jewish people, bewildered and terrified as they walked by the temple with its torn veil, wondering what it meant for this sacred element to be destroyed. But if we were… We would know in our bones the terror and grief of these last three days. And we would know in the deepest crevices of our spirits the awe, the amazement, and the exuberance of discovering our resurrected Messiah. Today we celebrate our God who, out of the greatest love that exists, experienced humanity among us and then willingly embodied the sacrificial lamb of the New Covenant. This New Covenant is the promise in which we rest all our faith and hope. It is the promise that we are, and will always be, loved unconditionally by the Divine. Our God died as the sacrifice and rose from the dead as the promise that we, too, are not slaves to sin or victims of eternal death. May we experience the tender reunion felt by Mary Magdalene when a familiar voice calls us by name (John 20:16). May we experience the certainty that dispels doubt felt by Thomas when we encounter the risen Lord (John 20:28). May we experience the fierce reconciliation felt by Peter when our God reminds us of our worth (John 21:15-17). This is the resurrection. This is what we celebrate. This is our God. Holy Saturday…the space between.
The waiting in the darkness. The fear of shadows lurking just outside the upper room. The collective grief of being together yet so far apart… The memory fresh of Judas’ blatant betrayal and suicide, of Peter’s denial and absence at the cross, Our God, murdered. What God can die? Was he ever God at all? Were all those miracles we witnessed all a ruse? … A shuffle of feet. A stifled sob. A sideways glance. Can I trust any of them? I see Thomas looking at his hands, a vacancy in his eyes. John, who has not stopped crying, always the one carrying our emotions. It is the silence. It is crawling beneath my skin. It is the memory of chaos in the garden, the agony etched into my Teacher’s face, the rage at myself for doing nothing. The emptiness. Yahweh! Where were you? Where are you? Why would you? Silence. A footstep. We freeze. Mirroring the fear in each other’s eyes. Who’s there? Is it time? Have they found us? Will we be crucified too, complicit in the treason? Silence. A collective exhale of breath held. And we wait. And we wait. And we wait. For we know not what. Safety? Assurance? Hope? Because these seem impossible to attain. And so we remain in the dark. We remain in our grief. We remain in a state of utter hopelessness and fear. With no way out of our self-imposed prison in the upper room. |
Kaylee Vance LMFT, LMHC
Worship Leader |