Laugh!

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Church Episcopal
June 18, 2023

6 Proper A 

          When our children and grandchildren are coming for the holidays, I know well in advance and I cook for what seems like days.  Between planning menus that work for everyone, multiple trips to the grocery store, cooking the foods our family enjoys and baking the desserts we love, the process is lengthy even though my bread comes from the bakery and my meat comes from the butcher.  And when we throw a party at Christ Church, like our Celebration Sunday, the process takes even longer.  The food may have been catered, but there were decorations to plan, a configuration of tables to consider so we could seat everyone, various dietary needs to provide for, and a whole host of other logistics to figure out.  Great hospitality may be a lot of fun, but great hospitality also requires a lot of time and effort. 

          And so, when I hear the story from Genesis this morning in which Abraham greets three strangers and invites them to dinner, asking Sarah to make ready quickly three measures of flour, knead it, and make cakes, then takes a calf and gives it to his servants to prepare, I have to laugh.  Granted they are only preparing food for three people, but this is a lot of food to prepare on short notice!   The time it takes to turn three measures of flour into cake is considerable, to say nothing of their location in the desert and access to any way to bake cakes.  And I know nothing about butchering cattle, but I think it takes a while to get from the herd to the platter.  Yet this meal seems to be produced instantly.  Whatever Abraham’s motive for throwing such a feast might have been, the timeline for this meal is nothing short of comical.

          Given the absurdity of meal preparation in the story, that we next hear a repeat of the promise that Sarah shall bear a son just seems to fit right in.  Sarah is now roughly 90, having aged another 15 years since last week’s story.  So Sarah laughs at the idea that she will have a child.  Sarah had long since given up on the idea that she would bear a child, having given her maid Hagar to Abraham so that at least he could have an offspring.  Just for the record, one chapter previously, when God tells Abraham, who is now 100 years old, that Sarah, who is 90, will bear a child, Abraham falls on his face and laughs.  Literally.  But despite the absurdity of the promise, we hear that Sarah does, indeed, bear a son, to whom Abraham gives the name Isaac which means “laugher” or “he will laugh.”  In the end, Sarah laughs because God has brought her great joy and has fulfilled a most preposterous promise.

          While we hear no laughter in the gospel reading, there is plenty of outrageousness in what Jesus asks of his disciples.  Jesus has gone about proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness.  Well and good, but then Jesus expects the disciples to go and do likewise.  He gives them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness.  They are to cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, and cast out demons.  That would be a daunting job description for mature, experienced disciples and Jesus has what are basically baby disciples.   If we read further on, the situation only gets worse.  Not everyone will welcome the disciples or listen to their words.  What’s more, Jesus is sending the disciples out like sheep amidst the wolves, and they will be persecuted for their faith.  I don’t know what the disciples thought they were signing up for, but I am quite sure they had something more pleasant in mind!  I think the disciples just might have laughed at the ludicrousness of what Jesus was asking.

          Like Abraham and Sarah, the disciples are going to have to believe in what God can do.  God shows up over and over again for Abraham and Sarah through out the journey God set them on, making good on God’s promise to make of Abraham and Sarah a great nation with descendants that number the stars in the sky.  Matthew’s gospel begins with Emmanuel, God with us and ends with Jesus saying “And lo, I am with you always, to the end of the age.  While God is not likely to ask us to give birth at the age of 90, or cure every disease and every sickness, God does ask us to do all sorts of things for which we may feel like we are not equipped, or we do not have time, or are out of our comfort zone.  The request may be so far fetched that our only response is to laugh.  This weekend our nation celebrates Juneteenth, which commemorates the emancipation of enslaved African Americans.   There is still much God calls us to do in the work for racial reconciliation.  June is Pride Month.  What is God calling us to do to let the LGBTQ community know that they are welcome here and will be fully included?  In some places, June is Gun Violence Awareness month.   In a conflicted and divided time, how is God calling us to be a place that can have healthy conversations about difficult topics like gun violence?  These can all feel like overwhelming and preposterous asks on God’s part and our initial reaction may be to laugh.  Sometimes our objections are valid but most of the time God is calling us to stretch ourselves and to trust what God can do through us.  And laugh, for there is nothing is too wonderful or too far-fetched for God!

                                                                   Amen.

Blessing

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Church Episcopal
June 11, 2023

5 Proper A 

          Anita and Michael Dohn were medical missionaries from the Episcopal Diocese of Southern Ohio to the Dominican Republic for over 14 years.  They are both physicians, now in the Cincinnati area, who heard the call of God, packed up their 4 young daughters ages 4 to 14, learned Spanish, and moved from Ohio to the Dominican Republic with a lot of faith and few resources to set up health clinics and train health workers in that impoverished country.  From time to time they would come back to the U.S. to raise money to continue their ministry and to connect with their supporters.  These are not hypothetical people.  These are people, Episcopalians, who I know, whose work the church I served raised funds to support, people who heard God say “Go” and they went.  And they were a huge blessing to the people of the Dominican Republic.

          So I think of Anita and Michael and their family when I hear God say to Abram “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.”   Abram hears God say “Go” and hears the promise that God will bless Abram and make his name great, so that he will be a blessing.  And Abram goes.  But I have questions.  Where, exactly, is Abram to go?  How will he know how to get there?  What is this blessing that God will bestow?  And what does Sarai think about all of this?  When God tells Abram that God will give the land of Canaan to Abram’s offspring, of which there are none so far and Abram is 75, how does God think the Canaanites are going to feel about this property transfer?  So very many questions, and so very few answers.  Yet Abram is utterly undeterred by this lack of certainty.  He keeps putting one foot in front of the other, following where God leads.

          I also think of Anita and Michael when I hear Jesus say to Matthew “Follow me.”  Matthew is sitting in his tax booth when Jesus calls him.  Jesus is not issuing Matthew an invitation, nor was God offering Abram an invitation.  In both cases, a command is issued, “Go” in the case of Abram and “Follow me” in the case of Matthew.  In the case of Matthew, at least there is Jesus, a living breathing human being, to actually follow.  Jesus leads Matthew to a dinner party where many tax collectors and sinners joined Jesus and his disciples.  I wonder if Matthew felt more like one of the tax collectors or like one of the disciples.  Then the disciples, and presumably Matthew, followed Jesus to the home of the leader of the synagogue where the leader’s little daughter had just died.  But on the way, as the disciples followed Jesus, they witness a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for 12 years touch Jesus’ garment and be healed from her suffering.  The disciples and Matthew saw the woman’s great faith.  And when Jesus arrived at the leader’s house, he took the little girl who was thought to be dead by the hand and she got up.  Matthew has followed Jesus and in following Jesus he has experienced table fellowship with fellow tax collectors and sinners and witnessed two healings. 

          Sometimes God calls us to follow into unknown territory with nothing more than the promise of blessing to go on.  Anita and Michael Dohn are examples of such a call in our own time, following God’s call to a place where they could be a blessing but not knowing when they set out exactly how that blessing would play out.  But they, like Abram, were faithful and trusted God. 

For others of us, God calls us to follow Jesus into our own everyday lives, nothing exotic, but to follow Jesus rather than anyone or anything else. Rather than chasing selfish ambition or friends or popularity as we move through life, Jesus says “Follow me.”  The first place Matthew landed after getting up and following Jesus was at a dinner party after all!  But the guests were not friends, or influential people, or anyone Matthew might have chosen. The guests were other tax collectors and sinners.  And then Matthew and the other disciples followed Jesus as Jesus brought health and healing to those who were sick.

          Sometimes God calls us to do great and amazing things, like move to the Dominican Republic to make a difference in the lives of impoverished people there.  And sometimes God calls us to follow Jesus into our own ordinary lives so that we see what Jesus sees and respond with love to human need around us.  I think Anita and Michael would remind us that those are not mutually exclusive calls.  Wherever we are called, when we follow Jesus we are able to see as Jesus sees, and see the gay teen who thinks there is no place for him in a church, or the woman with mental illness and no place to stay, or the people in Hudson who have trouble paying the bills and putting food on the table or detergent in the washing machine, or the person who is job insecure or battling addiction.  We will witness great faithfulness, like the woman who touched Jesus and was healed, as well as great need, like the little daughter of the leader of the synagogue.  When we follow Jesus, wherever Jesus leads, whether to an impoverished country or down to the coffee shop, we are able to see as Jesus sees, be a blessing to the world, and, in my experience, receive a blessing as well.

                                                                                      Amen.

Tom Marks

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Church Episcopal
June 10, 2023

Tom Marks 

          “They will hunger no more, and thirst no more.  The sun will not strike them or any scorching heat…he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”  These are words of comfort today as we gather to celebrate the life of Tom Marks.  Those words could also include “They will no longer forget and will remember all that they are told.  They will not tremble but stand firm and move quickly.”  The writer of Revelation promises us a time when suffering and grief will be no more.  But that time is not here yet, so we gather to celebrate a life well lived and to mourn the loss of that life.

          As much as the reading from Revelation gives us hope to hold onto, the reading from Isaiah reminds me so much more of Tom Marks.  The reading from Isaiah is the same reading Jesus read in the synagogue in Nazareth to describe his own ministry, a ministry of healing, encouragement, comfort, and gladness.  Today we celebrate the life of a man whose actions followed the pattern Jesus set for us.  Tom’s courage in the face of Parkinson’s, his quiet perseverance, his friendly welcome when he served as an usher at Christ Church, and his kindness and encouragement to his family, friends, and neighbors mirrored the words of Isaiah in Tom’s own way.  There is a passage in the letter to the Ephesians that also reminds me of Tom.  “Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.”  In my experience, those are words Tom lived by.  Tom was a faithful member of Christ Church for over 70 years, longer than any of our other parishioners, and Tom remembered serving as an acolyte in the chapel before he went to high school at the Academy and during his years there.  That would have been in the early to mid 1950’s as Tom graduated from the Academy in 1956.  Throughout Tom’s life, his persistence, his courage, his kindness and his faithfulness have shown us something of the steadfast presence of God.

          So we gather today to celebrate Tom’s life, to give thanks that he has been released from his suffering, and to think about the impact his life had on us.  But we also gather to mourn his death as the time has not yet come when there will be no more grief and God will wipe the last tear from every eye.  Scripture tells us that Jesus wept at the grave of his friend Lazarus, so we have no shame in shedding our own tears when we lose our loved ones.  Tom, however, would want us to hold together in our grief, to comfort and encourage one another, and to build each other up.  We honor Tom’s life when we live with the same kindness, encouragement, and patience that Tom showed throughout his life.

          In the reading from John, Jesus says “I am the resurrection, and I am the life.”  On this day that is full of joy at having known Tom and sadness that he has left us, on this day that we gather to celebrate Tom’s life and mourn his death, as Christians we gather primarily to proclaim Jesus’ victory over death.  In his baptism so many decades ago, Tom was joined with Jesus in his death and resurrection.  In his death on April 28, Tom was joined with Jesus in eternal life, in that place where there is no pain or grief, but life eternal.  Tom does not belong to death.  Tom belongs to life and for that, we join with all the angels in the reading from Revelation who sing God’s praise “‘Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God for ever and ever!”

                                                                             Amen.

 

Image

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Church Episcopal
June 4, 2023

Trinity Sunday

          Anyone who has spent longer than a nano-second in my office knows that I am deeply in love with four small humans. My desk is filled with their photos which you see as soon as you poke your head in.  The oldest is Evelyn who just turned four and looks a lot like I did at that age. Her little sister is Sabrina, who is 8 months old and bears a strong resemblance to her mother and maternal grandmother, except for the rare occasion when she looks like our son.  Collins just turned 3 and has my mother’s round face, but her ringlet curls are a complete mystery.  Collins’ brother Banks is a new one year old and looks so much like his maternal grandfather.  And of course, whose image they bear is only part of the equation as we wait to see whose personality traits and interests they might also bear as they grow ever more fully into their own person. 

          Looking for the ways family resemblances and traits are passed down from one generation to another gives us some insight into who we are as members of a family.  This morning, in the reading from Genesis, we hear that we humans are made in the image of God.  “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”  In today’s gospel reading we hear from one of the few passages that mentions the three persons of the Trinity in one breath.  Jesus says to the disciples “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.”  On this Trinity Sunday, our readings call us to think about what it means that we humans are made in the image of one God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, or Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer and to think about how we reflect that image back to God and to the world.

          First, as we are made in the image of God who is Father or Creator, we are called to be people who are creative and who see potential.  God looked at the formless void that would become creation and God saw tremendous possibility.  God took that potential and turned it into reality.  God’s people have always been called to be creative, especially in difficult times, whether they were finding their way through the wilderness to the Promised Land, or figuring out how to be a nation, or learning to be God’s people while in exile, or figuring out how to be the church coming out of a global pandemic, or how to work for justice and peace in a conflicted world.  We don’t always get that right and sometimes the image God sees back is probably quite amusing.  But we are called to be God’s creative presence in the world.

          Secondly, being made in the image of God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit means that we bear the image of Jesus who came to redeem the world.  We promise to seek and serve Christ in all people at every baptism, but we also reflect the image of Christ to the world.  Redeem means taking something that is broken and making it whole.  Can the world understand redemption by our words and actions?  There is clearly no lack of brokenness in need of healing.

          Lastly, we are made in the image of God the Holy Spirit, the Sustainer or Comforter.  The work of creativity and making the broken whole is challenging work, and we are in this work for the long haul.  But we are not alone.  We have the very breath of God, the Holy Spirit, which was blown into us on Pentecost to sustain us.  When the work of living as one human family is hard, when the going gets tough and the temptation is to give up, the Holy Spirit sustains us to press on in the work of living as the image of God in the world. 

          I think back to a Friday night almost exactly three years ago when many of us and hundreds of others gathered for an Interfaith Vigil for justice and peace in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd.  We moved from the Clock Tower, to Christ Church, to First Congregational, then to Temple Beth Sholom stopping each time for prayer and reflection.  Finally we ended on the Green, gathered in candlelight and silence.  The mood was somber as we were called to realize the deep and dark ways we are broken as a human family, and the changes and hard work ahead in order to create something new, to bring wholeness and healing where there is pain, division, and fear, and to sustain the momentum and passion we felt in that moment. We were gathered as Christians, Jews, and Muslims, people of no faith and other faiths.  We were gathered as one human family, longing for a world in which the color of one’s skin does not make one exponentially more vulnerable to violence and death.  That event has become, for me, a parable of what can happen when we put aside all that divides us and live as people made in the image of one God.  At Christ Church, our Interfaith Thanksgiving Service, our work with First Serve as we gather with people of many faiths to make a difference in Akron’s North Hill, our efforts to figure out new ways to serve those in need, and our studies about racism are all part of living as people made in the image of our creative, redeeming, and sustaining God.  Trinity Sunday reminds us as Christians of our fundamental call to understand the human family as one, as God is one, and be people of creativity, radical and inclusive healing, sustained by the Holy Spirit to make a difference in the world. 

                                                                             Amen