Monday, January 24, 2011

Sisters and Tomato Plants

Below is the sermon I preached on Sunday. The text was Matthew 4:12-23, Jesus calling his first disciples. This is, for those of you who follow me on Facebook, the sermon that crashed my computer multiple times and killed three printers before I finally managed to print a draft of it.

This past weekend I went home to California for a few days. It was a perfect weekend in California. Highs were in the high 70s to 80s, with the temperature never dipping below 60 the whole time I was there. I must admit it was with a tinge of sadness that I dug out my coat, hat, and scarf to leave on Tuesday. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to come back to Syracuse; it was that I didn’t really want to come back to winter. Could I have found some way to return to Syracuse in, say, May, I would have been all for it.

Even nicer than the weather was the chance to be with friends and family. I caught up with some friends from high school, had lunch with my pastor, looked at pictures with my grandmother, went to church on Sunday in the place I was baptized, and played endless games of croquet with my parents and cousins. It was nice to be for a while in a place where I did not have to explain who I am and where I come from, because people already know. In California I am not Vicar Kjersten or even adult Kjersten, I am Nancy and Glen’s daughter, Ralph and Charlotte’s granddaughter. It is nice to be surrounded by people who knew me before I reached my current height, and who in some ways know me better than I know myself, having seen all my quirks and foibles before in my parents and grandparents.

In the last ten years, I have lived in five different states. The transient nature of being a young adult has stretched my understanding of what it means to be “home.” Home, I have discovered, is not so much about a place as it is about a feeling. So California for me is home, but so is my best friend’s couch in DC. Home has been an apartment in Chicago, a dorm room in Spokane, and even, for one amazing summer, a mattress in a church basement three blocks from the beach in San Diego. Home, more than a location, is a feeling. A knowledge that one is in a place that is safe and with people who love you. Home is not necessarily in one’s house then, or with one’s family. The families we create can be just as much or even more home as the one into which we were born.

Whatever expression “home” takes for us, leaving home can be hard. It is difficult and painful to let go of the places and things we love and move on to something new. Even positive changes bring stress and uncertainty. What will this new phase in my life look like, how will I settle into this new home? Whether the new home is literally a new house, or a new job, or a new life circumstance, leaving a place we are comfortable and settling into a new one is challenging.

In today’s Gospel reading, we learn that Jesus has left Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum. In the five weeks since Christmas, this is maybe the fifth home Jesus has had. First, we heard of the Word who was with God since the beginning of time. Then the Word was born in Bethlehem, and had to figure out how to make a life for himself as a human being. But before he even had a chance to settle in, the infant Jesus found himself in exile in Egypt. After a few years, Jesus and his family are able to return to Israel and they settle in the Galilee region, in Nazareth. And for the first time since his birth, Jesus is able to settle in for a while, to put down roots, to discover what it means to be home. But now Jesus is all grown up. We heard of his baptism a few weeks ago, how the spirit descended like a dove, and a voice from heaven claimed him as God’s own son. So Jesus finds himself doing what many of us do when God calls and our life circumstances change, he moved. He left Nazareth, left Mary and Joseph and the rest of his family, maybe left childhood friends, and he went in Capernaum, where he had to make a new life for himself, build a new network of relationships.

So Jesus settles into Capernaum, and as he’s walking along the beach at his new home, he comes across four fishermen, Simon and his brother Andrew, and James and John, sons of Zebedee. Jesus calls to them and says, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” And the text says that immediately, they left their nets and followed him. Jesus, who is no stranger to moving, no stranger to how hard it is to make a home for oneself, calls Simon and Andrew, James and John, to give up everything they know, everything they find familiar, and follow him. And immediately, they do it? I have to wonder if the text is leaving something out here. I don’t know if some stranger approached me on the street and said, hey, leave everything you know, if I would jump at the opportunity…

But this stranger on the seashore isn’t any ordinary stranger, this stranger who calls to the fishermen is the Word made flesh. And I think it’s important to note that Jesus does not tell the fishermen, leave everything you know and make a new life for yourselves, Jesus says, leave everything you know and follow me. Make your life with me, and I will lead you, and I will be with you, and I will guide, forever. Jesus does not call the fishermen to travel to new places alone; Jesus calls them to travel with him. To make their homes with him.

And then Jesus says, and I will make you fish for people. Fish for people, the fishermen must have thought, what does that mean? We know how to fish for fish; we are pretty good at fishing for fish. But fish for people? How does one do that? Our nets, and boats, and tools, will not work in this new occupation.

There is a phrase that gets thrown around in vocational conversation a lot, God does not call the equipped, but God equips the called. God does not call the equipped, but God equips the called. Jesus sees in the fishermen a penchant for catching things, and the potential for catching people. And Jesus sees in us skills and gifts that we did not know we had, or maybe did not know how to apply, and calls us into situations where we can use these gifts.

One of my favorite authors, Barbara Kingsolver, writes about moving as a young adult from her childhood home in rural Kentucky across the country to Tucson, Arizona. Kingsolver writes: “If someone had told me what I was headed for in that little Renault—that I was stowing away in a shell, bound to wake up to an alien life on a persistently foreign shore—I surely would not have done it.” But reflecting further, she goes on, “But I can’t be sorry I made the trip. Most of what I learned in the old place seems to suffice for the new: if the seasons like Chicago tides come at ridiculous times and I have to plant in September instead of May, and if I have to make up family from scratch, what matters is that I do have sisters and tomato plants, the essential things.”

Jesus comes into our lives and he calls us to pick up and move. Sometimes literally, to a new town or job or school, and sometimes figuratively, to a new position, a new relationship, a new place in life, a new outlook, or a new dream for the future. Jesus calls us to move, and those moves can be painful and frightening. But remember that Jesus does not call us to move alone. Rather he says, follow me. Come with me, and I will lead you. And like the fishermen, Jesus calls us to places where our skills can be used, even if we don’t recognize those skills in their current form.

Jesus, who knows what it is to be a stranger, calls us to move. But in these moves and changes, Jesus promises to be with us. Things may look different on these new shores, the skills we have may be used in different ways, but Jesus promises that we do have the skills and that we will not be alone, but that he will be with us. May we, like the disciples, put down our nets and follow him. Amen.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Placement Day

“For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the LORD, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.” – Jeremiah 29:11

A year ago today I nervously awaited the email that would tell me where I would spend the next year of my life. January 11, 2010 was placement day for the ELCA Horizon program. Representatives from all eight seminaries got together to decide which twelve lucky seminarians would get to take one of the Horizon internship sites.

I remember opening the email and scanning quickly for the indented line in the middle of the page that said the congregation and city. I found it, and my first thought was, “Syracuse, where’s that?” In the Horizon program, you list five potential sites you would be interested in going to. Atonement had made my list because of its reputation for excellent urban ministry, a diversity of worship experiences, the opportunity to work part-time with a Presbyterian congregation, and a supervisor who believed in hands-on ministry education. But the experience of listing five places you might want to move to and trying to actually imagine yourself in one of those places could not be more different. Just because I had listed Atonement on my list of potential placements did not mean I had any idea what I was getting myself into.

A year later, and I cannot imagine a place where I would have learned and grown and changed as much as I have in just four months in this place. I absolutely believe that, as arbitrary as it can feel at times, God truly does have a hand in the internship placement process. Is Atonement perfect? No. Is it difficult? Yes, absolutely, every day is a challenge. Many days I wish I was anywhere but Syracuse, NY in the middle of winter. But there is something in this place that I am meant to learn, and there is something in me that I am supposed to offer to this place. It is hard, but it is a good hard, a growing hard.

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Mud

The snow is pretty much gone now. It doesn’t seem possible, but a couple of warm days and five and a half feet of snow is just gone. It its place is not the bright, fresh grass I remember from the fall. No, in its place is mud, dirty, sticky, slimy, gray mud. The upstaters, ever the weather optimists, are fine with this change.

“All we need now,” they tell me, “is a couple of inches of fresh snow to cover up all this mud. Make everything look clean again.”

Snow is this great disguise of the winter grays. It blankets the cold dead of winter, making everything look bright. And here in upstate New York, where an inch of new snow a day is normal, it continually refreshes itself. Snow hides the winter mud until the new growths of spring are ready to burst forth from the earth.

On internship I have adopted a policy of “fake it ‘til you make it.” On any given day, at any given task, I have no idea what I am doing. Even if I know what I’m doing, I frequently lack the confidence I need to do what is asked of me. So I fake it. I walk through the doors of the hospital like I’ve been there a million times, not like I just got lost in the parking lot. I plan worship like I wrote the ELW. I preach like I have something to say. And somehow, in the mud below all of the bravado, the Holy Spirit shows up. Shows up and grows a pastor out of this seminary intern. I hide behind a mask of self-confidence, trusting that it is not my confidence that matters, but God’s confidence. That God is doing a new thing in the winter of this strange experience. And I just need to keep showing up, and bring enough mud for something to take root.

Sunday, January 2, 2011

The Word Became Flesh


Wordle image from this weekend's sermon on John 1:1-18.

Last weekend I skyped Christmas morning with my family back in California. Skype is a computer program that offers free computer-to-computer video conferencing. All you have to do is download the free software to your computer and you can see and talk in real time to anyone with skype and a web cam. My parents discovered skype while my brother was living in England last year, and my mom loved it. She likes being able to see us when we talk, to see our faces, to see where we are. It makes her feel much more connected to us, that we are less far away.

So this year for Christmas I sat in my living room in Syracuse with a cup of coffee, and my family sat in my parents’ living room in California with their cups of coffee, and we opened presents together, just like we do every year. 3,000 miles and three time zones away I still got to be part of the festivities. Granted, they frequently forgot about the computer and would leave me staring at the tree for long periods of time, but given the circumstances, pretty good.

Modern communication technology is amazing. You may not be familiar with skype, but I think email and even the telephone is pretty equally amazing. Pick up the phone and you can talk to anyone, anywhere in the world, instantly. With cell phones, you can even talk to someone now in the middle of the woods, or the grocery store, or from your car.

We have cousins in Sweden that my great grandmother used to communicate with by mail. She would write a letter in California, and it would travel by train across the United States to the east coast, and then take a boat to Stockholm, and then a truck to their apartment in the north part of the city. Now my cousin and I communicate instantaneously over email, sharing pictures, jokes, and quips in real time. A relationship that was built over a hundred years ago through bi-annual letters continues at a speed that my great-grandmother could not have even dreamed about.

The relationship continues, but it is not deep. My great-grandmother wrote careful, pages long letters, to send to this family. My cousin and I shoot back jokes, pictures, not insights into one another’s lives, we don’t really know one another. When I was a kid, we traveled to Sweden to meet these relatives. We sat on their sofa and looked at old family photos. We discussed just how it was that we were related, their plans for the future, our plans for the future, our respective lives. We drank thick Scandinavian coffee and ate ham sandwiches on rye bread and got to know one another. It was in seeing one another, in being in one another’s presence and sharing in one another’s stories that our relationship was formed, not so much in a series of emails with funny pictures of cats.

Skype, whose virtues I was extolling earlier, is really similarly limited. Skype is nice, email is nice, the phone is nice, but it does not replace being in the presence of another person. Technology is not a substitute for face-to-face community. I want more than a glimpse into someone's life. I want to sit and linger over a cup of coffee, or share a meal. I want to see them when they talk about challenges, hear the intonation in their voice, watch their facial expressions, and I want to be seen. I want to be a presence, not a voice or a phrase or an email address. We are social beings, we are relational beings, we were created to be in relationship with one another.

Today’s text from John is one of the earliest and most complete theological treatises of the Christian faith. In it we can hear Christology, theology, creationism, eschatology, ecclesiology, and a whole host of other theological doctrine. But holding together all of these various –ologies, is one of the central tenants of the Christian faith, the incarnation. The Word became flesh and lived among us. God loved us so much and wanted to be in relationship with us so much that God sent Jesus Christ to become one of us. To walk among us as fully human, to hear our stories, to know our lives, to experience our joys and our struggles. Jesus Christ did not come as a virtual human, a skyped God, looking real but not really being real. No, Jesus Christ came in the flesh, to be with us.

John’s Gospel first introduces us to Jesus Christ as “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” “The Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Entire theological libraries have been written trying to explain precisely what is meant by those little words “with” and “was.” But even after two millenniums, numerous theologians, and countless pages, our language always falls short.

Instead of trying to understand or explain what exactly this means, I think it is enough to marvel in the relationship between God and the Word. A relationship that is intimate, mutual, co-creational. One being is not greater or more powerful than the other, rather they exist together, supporting and explaining one another. The whole of creation is born out of this relationship of love and trust.

And then the Word, who was with God at creation, through whom all creation came into being, left God to take on human flesh and live among us. This word “lived” dates back to a time and culture where people were nomadic and moved from place to place, setting up tents as they traveled. Rather than simply “lived” it really means “set up a tent among us.” This isn’t a “Christ is born in our hearts” idea; it has more flesh to it than that. It is a communal experience. In the middle of our human community, Christ came to dwell with us. Not in some ethereal, spiritual, way, but in the flesh. Jesus Christ, who was in intimate relationship with God, came down to be in intimate relationship with us. Jesus Christ came to sit and share a meal at table with us. To see us when we talk about our challenges and be seen. To be in relationship with us, just as he is in relationship with God. And through that, to bring us into relationship with one another, with creation, and with the creator.

The Christ event, the incarnation, that time that we celebrate in this season of Christmas, has been described as being like dropping a stone into the pond of the timeline of history. We know it is true today not because we can see and touch Christ in the flesh, but because the event that was the Word became flesh created ripples back and forth in the pond of time, and those ripples wash up upon us still today. We see the ripples backwards in our reading from Jeremiah this morning, where God promised to gather God’s people as a shepherd gathers his flock. A people who once were scattered, will be brought together into relationship under the watchful care of a God who knows them intimately. And we see the ripples forward in the promises of baptism and in the faces of one another as we gather around the table to share the meal that is Christ’s body broken and blood shed for us.

The one who was with God at the very creation of the universe came to this earth in the flesh, still comes today in the promises of the sacraments, and promises to come once again to bring the whole creation into fulfillment. This is the promise of the incarnation, this is the miracle of Christmas, this is the dance of relationship which Christ invites us into. A relationship which John describes as the glory of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. A relationship through which we are promised grace upon grace. Amen.