Worship || Sermon November 14, 2004

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“bonne annee”
Rev. Federici, 2 january 2005

the text is genesis 1: 1-5/john 1: 1-9
for brandon

may i begin this new year by expressing my gratitude for all that you are, and all that you do.

this mid week marks the sixth anniversary of my coming to emmaus.

as we enter this seventh year together, let us be itchy.

let us be itchy to continue loving and healing and being the church of jesus christ and his gospel of radical love and radical light, held in covenant.

so, let us be itchy.
and let us pray.
most gracious and most loving god,
you are indeed with us in both the speaking and in the hearing of this, your word.

may this speaking and this hearing be of benefit and be of light to all.
amen.

bonne annee is the title of this sermon.
it means happy new year in french.

my original plan for this sermon had to do with the idea that
by wishing someone a happy new year in a language other than english, we would be invited to pause.

and perhaps enter the new year differently with a intention to experience life and the world differently.

there is no need for that, however.

the earthquake and tsunami have guaranteed that we will enter 2005 differently.

this event is almost beyond comprehension.
never mind almost.
it is beyond comprehension.

it is beyond my ability, and i would imagine your ability, to grasp what has happened in southeast asia.

the loss of life is staggering.
it is certainly beyond my ability ,and i would imagine your ability,to even begin to grasp, conceive, that most likely over 150,000 lives have been wiped out.
wiped out.
life wiped out.

how can anyone dare to speak of god’s radical love, god’s healing, god’s transforming covenant after what has happened?

i would also imagine that most preachers today feel a lot like the preacher on noah’s ark did, if noah had a preacher.
i am not sure if noah had a preacher.
but i am sure that he had a dove.

so in the spirit of sending out the dove to see what hope it might bring back to us,
my task in these minutes is indeed to invite us to enter 2005 differently-

more aware of the stakes, more aware of the preciousness and fragility and tenderness of life,

and more aware of our ability and our capacity to begin.
and to begin again and again and again.
so let us begin.

i have three points today.

the first has to do with blame and responsibility.

who can you blame for this?
no one.
it is hard to blame nature.
this is a natural event.
insurance companies call these things acts of god.
why blame god?
did god have something to do with it?

my friend nate’s brother and family are missionaries in thailand and have come back to settle in the states after being away.
there were to have come home in january.
they tried their best to get home and stay home earlier for christmas and succeeded.
if they had not been able to make arrangements for travel,
they would have been on the beach in thailand.

nate says my initial reaction is that i am grateful to god, that god was looking out for them. on the other hand, why wasn’t god looking out for the other people?

same logic with 9.11.
i have heard time and again the thought that more people would have been killed in twin towers if the planes had struck an hour later. god prevented that from happening.
why didnt god stop the two planes?
2800 people died instead of 55000.
meanwhile what if you were one of those 2800 people or one of their loved ones?

you would not be blamed for thinking god’s eye might be on the sparrow, but it sure ain’t on human beings.

but that kind of thinking is a dead end.

blaming is also a dead end.

notice that you cannot blame nature.
notice that you cannot call a grand jury to specially prosecute the earth.
it is hard to invade tectonic plates.
you would be foolish to declare the indian ocean an axis of evil.
you cannot sanction the sea.

our usual pattern is to attack, blame, create conflict and war.
strike back.
it frustrating because you cannot do the usual in this case.

you can only help.

there is always that moment in disaster movies—when the metor is hurtling to earth—when the people of the earth realize that they are one family. there is cooperation, and good will, and boundaries are changed, labels are lifted, the bitterness of politics disapears as everyone helps to save the earth.

when the meteor is destroyed, there are those shots of eveyone celebrating all over world---from africa to japan to china to finland to alaska to russia.

so here is that moment for us.
a tsunami has come and wiped away lives, villages ,towns.
all we can do is help.

in that moment when generosity is extended, when someone is fed, when someone is found, when someone is saved.
the dove comes back with the olive branch
and god is born again in the world.

in that moment, god is born again.

faith is the ability to honor life in the face of non life.

even when the tiniest, palest green shoot of something greener blooms in a desert,
god is born again.
we birth god again.

instead of attack and blame and war and spin and politics as usual,
if we hand someone even a grain of rice,
in that act, in that giving,
god is born again.
and we can go on.

we take responsbility for god.

as if god were a baby—for example, even as if god were like the infant jesus ,who we sang about in our hymn “away in a manger” today.

point two:
all week i have been reminded and thinking of tibetan sand mandalas.
monks work on an intricate, detailed design made up of grains of colored sand..
a making of a mandala takes weeks, months to complete.
after blessings, it stands perhaps for a bit for viewing.
then it is ritually destroyed as
a comb like intstrument is passed through the sand.

the sand mandala points to impermanence. points to change.

friends, the buddhists have it right.
their first noble truth---easily applied to christianity, as jesus taught this also, is that

life is change.

that is not depressing news.
that is amazing news, good news.
the first noble truth directly points to the fact that life never stops.
the life force continues despite us. despite death.
despite anything we do to control it.
the life force is out of our ability to pin it down.

the first noble trtuh directly points to the fact that each and every one of us is precious and is fragile.

precious and fragile.
you have heard these words from me often.

our preciousness and our fragility, in turn, point to that tender vulnerablity at the heart of life.

here are two stories that can help us know what that means.

my grandmother jennie is about to be 95 years old.
she lives five minutes from my brother’s house.

visitng her with my nephews at assisted living is an opportunity for many things.
the little ones are fascinated by the smells, the sounds, the very oldness of the people there.
they love going.

brandon who is nine years old is less enthusiastic.
i have actually paid him to come with me.
he was complaining about going to visit grandma jennie for the third time in a week.

i said, you know, she didn’t used to be old.
she was young and beautiful and funny and her house always smelled of basil and tomatoes. she was not strict. our parents were strict. she was not. her house was all about love.
when i was very little, i used to think that god lived in her house.
(after a time, i seriously thought maybe she was god in disquise.
that is perhaps why many of my images of god are maternal!)

i concluded my lecture to brandon by saying
someday all of us will be old—your mom will get old, your dad will get old.
i will be old,
will you come and visit me in assisted living?
brandon said ....”only if you are not this annoying!”

my same quick tongued nephew made another huge point about this preciousness, this vulnerability, this fragility, this tender heart of the life force itself.

brandon is a magnificent baseball player.
he is a breathtaking pitcher. he is a breathtaking batter.
grown women have wept; it is so beautiful to watch him on the field!
there is silence and awe when he steps up to the plate or the mound.

he called me into his room for my christmas present.
he opened his safe and
gave me the first baseball he ever signed after one of his first magnificent games.
it reads “brandon federici 7 years old”.

and there it is. you experience that feeling...that astonishing feeling of being brought to your knees in gratitude...you experience that astonishing fragility and preciousness, that tender hear of the life force itself....that astonishing heart of love.
god happens in that moment.
god is born again in that moment.

because that moment cannot be recreated, because that moment was a unique instant of unconditional love, it can only be remembered.

i thought will brandon remember that moment when i am in sunrise home?

a life is made up of those moments, those memories.

here is my third point.

last night at my birthday dinner, we ordered for the table a
apple cranberry crisp that was not crisp.
actually, it was a pear-cranberry crisp that actually could have been any fruit, ever.
everyone around the table kept tasting and criticizing it.
there was barely enough to send back to the kitchen!

the details of our complaints and critique were staggering.
it tasted too much like oatmea. it was not cooked enough. it had too much cinnnamon. it was dry.
where were the cranberrries?
on and on and on we went.
it might be safe to say that god was not born in that moment.

as we were criticizing, my friend calvert said, “you are preaching tomorrow. what is your sermon about?”

i replied, “ it is about not complaining in 2005!”

a tsunami and earthquake happen on the other side of the world. here in tyson’s corner, privileged people are eating an apple uncooked uncrisp.

don’t complain.
and if you must, then complain about oppression. complain about injustice. complain about racism. complain about bigotry. complain about prejudice.
and just dont complain, do something about what you are complaining about.

if you do complain about apple uncrisp and you very may will, you very well might,
be very very aware that you have that ability to complain about something so nonessential, so optional.
complain and be grateful. and be aware. be very, very aware.

these are my three points then...well, there might be more than three points; let’s say three areas:

one.
don’t blame.
even out of tragedy, the life force continues.
god is born in the response.

two.
we are precioius, fragile.

there is an astonishing tenderheartedness at the center of life.
that is constantly changing.
honor it. be aware of it.

three.
be grateful, be aware.

the gospel of jesus christ continually points to a world of generosity, compassion, justice and peace.
the gospel of jesus christ is about the power and the energy of radical love.

how will you birth that love into the light?
how will you birth that light?
on christmas eve, i extended an invitation to all of us to become mothers of radical light.
this season of epiphany we will be taking a deeper look at what that phrase—mothers of radical light-- means.

a way into that is this.

kim read for us the words of the beginning of genesis:
in the beginning, god.....
and then the words of the gospel of john..
in the beginnning, was the word...

with what words will you finish this sentence?
in the beginning of 2005......

think of the open ended possibilities of that.

may this be a beginning of god beginning again.
and
may i wish you a very bonne annee.
amen.

“bonne annee” Rev. Federici, 2 january 2005

“bonne annee”
Rev. Federici, 2 january 2005