Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
Lent V, Year A
March 29, 2020
The Rev. John Taliaferro Thomas
 
Why?  Why would God visit this particular illness on us, an illness that targets those who are most vulnerable and fragile?  Why?  Why would God give us the gift of one another, only to make being together the main thing we cannot do to counteract the spread of this disease?  Why God?  With all of the world problems we are already fighting, why would economies be decimated, stripping us of the wherewithal to respond?  Why God? Why?
 
I would be a lousy faith leader if I did not address that elephant in our room.  And I am not here to provide easy answers or produce trite or formulaic words in response to real and serious questions of our faith that our current circumstances raise.  That being said, the Word of God often addresses the problem of human suffering, and today we are given a story that helps us unpack where we might find God even in the middle of a hot mess.
 
Lazarus, along with his two sisters, Mary and Martha are some of Jesus’s best friends.  He stays with them whenever he is in town.  And while Jesus is elsewhere in the region, Lazarus gets sick.  They send word for Jesus to come, but he delays going to their house for several says to preach, teach, and heal where he is.  Before he can get there, Lazarus dies, and then and only then, Jesus decides to go back and see them in Bethany.  It should be noted that Bethany is close to Jerusalem and the leaders and crowds there are looking to capture Jesus, so going back there is risky at best.  Nevertheless, he goes.
 
Where is God in the midst of human suffering?  As God in humanity, Jesus goes right toward it.  And that is an important point to realize.  Far from being some random and removed sky God, the God of our faith shows up to be present for those who are hurting, suffering, and even, dying.
 
Before he even reaches the house, Lazarus’s sister, Martha, goes out to meet him.  And Jesus catches her anger immediately.  “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died…” Jesus tells her that he will live, and she gives him a little more sass.  Yeah, sure, “he will live in the resurrection on the last day…” But we get that she is no less mad at Jesus for handing out healing for others and not being there for one of his best and most faithful friends.
 
This is an important exchange and John makes sure we hear it.  In the midst of suffering, God is not only present, but God can take our anger and our rage at things we cannot control or understand.  Jesus does not tell Martha to get lost and God does not tell us to do so either.  Instead he goes with her to see her sister, Mary.
 
While Martha is the pragmatic, get things done person in the family, and most families have that character, Mary is the sensitive one in the bunch.  She is the weeper, and the mourner who wears her feelings on her sleeve.  She, too, gives Jesus a piece of her mind saying, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died…” These are the exact words Martha said, but Jesus does not even attempt to reason with her.  He goes with her to the tomb, and as Mary weeps, Jesus weeps with her.  It is important to know that the Greek term John uses is not merely shedding a tear, the word he uses connotes what I call the ugly cry: the kind that renders us a sloppy, snorting, and inconsolable puddle.  As God in person, Jesus meets her where she is and goes there with her.
 
Finally, he tells them to roll the stone away from the tomb.  Pragmatic Martha protests, telling him that Lazarus has been dead for four days and there is a stench.  The King James translation is the best.  It simply has Martha say: “He stinketh.”  If we were tempted to think of this as some mythic or symbolic tale, this little detail beings it back to reality, to the earthy messiness of death.  Here again, God in person goes there, to the real fleshy rot that befalls all of us at some point.
 
And then the tragedy turns to comedy.  Jesus commands Lazarus to rise and come out of the tomb, and as he does, he is tripping over all his mummy costume.  Even renaissance art depicts this as an awkward and funny scene.  Finally, Jesus commands them to unbind him and let him go. 
 
We never hear anything else about Lazarus.  We do not know what he did with the life he got back.  Poets have often mused that he might not have been pleased that once dead, he was brought back to the suffering and pain of the world.  We do know that he did die again at some point, and surely, he was raised to life with Jesus in new and larger way.  After all, Jesus really loved him.
 
The problem of being human is that with all of the goodness, the beauty, and the pleasure of being fully alive also comes pain, suffering, and perhaps hardest of all, uncertainty as to how it all fits together.  We tell these stories to remember and know that God cares deeply for those God loves.  We tell this story to see that our anger and grief is known, felt, and heard.  We tell this story to see deeply into Jesus as God with us, as the One who, in God’s good time, will unbind us and set us free to be and be most fully alive in God.
 
This is also part of a larger and longer story where Jesus himself will suffer and die at the hands of human folly.  But not even at that will Jesus leave us to suffer alone or forever.
 
On this third Sunday of the Covid-19 lockout, our world is suffering.  We are seeing the worst part of being human right up next to some of the most beautiful expressions of human connectedness with people are feeding others, caring for the sick and dying, and racing to put all of the best minds to work, seeking medical and logistical solutions.  The bonds of our common humanity are so much before us that we will never deny the essential nature of community.
 
And if nothing else helps, let me say this.  I love you.  I am just as scared and unsettled as many of you.  The best thing going for me and for all of us right now is the sure and certain hope of God’s deep love for us too.  This is why God comes to us in Jesus.  This is why God continues to create a world of breathtaking beauty.  This is why we will stick together to divide our sorrows and multiply our joys.  Whatever is to come, we will come out on the other side with a deeper appreciation of life and a mandate to savor the all moments of Grace that much more.
 
And now more than ever we know:
 Life is short.  And we do not have much time to gladden the hearts of those who make the journey with us.  So be swift to love and makes haste to be kind.  And may the blessing of God Almighty: Father, Son and Holy Spirit be with you and remain with you forever.

Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
Lent II, Year A
March 8, 2020
The Rev. John Taliaferro Thomas
 
He said he was “born again.”  In 1976, Jimmy Carter, the democratic nominee for president spoke about his faith in ancient, but loaded terms.  His declaration sent news people toward theological dictionaries, biblical texts, and histories of the movement.  Remember that back then, the term news media was not operative.  The news was consumed as print, morning or evening, or as a half-hour broadcast from trusted people like Walter Cronkite.
 
Carter had been Governor of the state in which I lived.  He had a buttery smooth accent, a big, toothy smile, and a great American story.  He was a Naval Academy graduate who had served on a nuclear submarine.  When his father died, he came home to Plains, Georgia, and made his family’s peanut farm successful.  His mother, Lillian, had joined the Peace Corps at the age of 68 and had worked tirelessly for desegregation in South Georgia.  He had taught Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church regularly.  He seemed to be an antidote to the Washington machine of connected cronyism and whatever unsavory webs of power and influence that Richard Nixon had spun.
 
When he was elected narrowly, the world met a different kind of American.  In the middle of the Cold War, he favored peace initiatives over parallel armament.  He established cabinet level departments of Energy and Education. The great scandal of his inauguration was that, during the parade, he and his wife, Rosalind, got out of the car on Pennsylvania Avenue, walked and (gasp), held hands!  Can you imagine?
 
By all counts, Carter’s presidency was a mixed bag.  His idealism and relatively liberal ideas, for the times, failed to take hold.  Later, Walter Cronkite dubbed him the smartest president he had known, but not all that effective.  In the end, his one term ended with the sweeping Reagan revolution, and history is still figuring it all out.
 
I once heard Carter speak in Atlanta the late 90s.  He was generous and humble.  He told us that being President was not his greatest call in life.  He said he believed God had called him to grow beyond that office and use his influence to serve causes of peace and justice.  And boy has he.  He is a well regarded international peace broker, he has helped Habitat for Humanity become a national and global force for decent housing, and he and Rosalind have leveraged their own fortune to eradicate the guinea worm in Africa: a disease that caused blindness and formerly incapacitated roughly 3.5 million sufferers.  It is now 99.9 percent gone.
 
Carter maintains that he is still a born again Christian, despite the baggage the term carries.  At the age of 95, and having confounded cancer twice, he still teaches Sunday school every other week at Maranatha Baptist.  His still speaks of his faith as the principal guiding light in his life.  While many others who call themselves born again adhere to more strict and fundamental tenets, Carter does not.  He has evolved in his acceptance of women as faith leaders and his acceptance of those who are gay as full members of the body of Christ.  Not long ago, as his congregation disaffiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, Carter held that he was born again, again, citing the call to be inclusive, welcoming and understanding in the name of Christ.
 
The whole concept and language of being born again comes to us in the story of Nicodemus, who comes to Jesus under the cover of night.  Nicodemus is a trusted religious and political leader that finds Jesus compelling, but cannot quite go all with him, at least in public.  He brings his intellectually learned mind to a conversation, trying to understand.  Jesus talks about the wind and its mysterious comings and goings.  He speaks of the mystery of himself as God’s body for the world.  He challenges Nicodemus to get out of his head and stop seeing life as a dual reality where faith and reason are mutually exclusive.
 
And here we get the football poster, most quoted of all bible verses: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”  The born agains love to quote John 3:16, but equally or more important to our born againness is John 3:17:  “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”  Therein lies the heart of the call and the challenge for us to fling open the doors or our faith.
 
Getting born is precarious business in this world.  And for anyone who has been present for birth, it is equal parts difficult and miraculous.  I remember the delivery rooms of our children as sacred spaces of being part of something and being witness to something all at once.  The idea that it can happen to us again defies logic, but also makes complete sense to anyone whose life has been changed through instances of impact, brilliance, or light.  The work of saving us has already been done.  We are reborn when we get that, accept that, and live into it with a whole and full heart.  Sometimes, we have to get born again, again.
 
We can only surmise what Nicodemus did with all Jesus gave him to ponder and practice.  While he receded into the darkness, Nicodemus appears again when Jesus is on trial and advocates for them to meet the man in person.  Perhaps he hopes they will see what he saw and cut him loose, but he could not stop the tide of recrimination. And finally, he stepped out into the light and went to the cross, witnessing the tragedy and helping Jesus get a proper and relatively extravagant burial along with Joseph of Arimathea.  Like most of us, he was a work in progress.
 
While some may have taken over the title of being born again Christians, and given that title baggage and stereotyping, it is an apt descriptor for all of us to embrace.  Rightly taken, it is not a ‘one and done’ proclamation we make about ourselves, rather a grace filled opportunity to keep our faith and practice lively.  And perhaps we can look through the Jimmy Carter kind of lens, appreciating that God is not done with us, and God is not done with the world.  Jesus Christ is born again and again and again in us, as we rise and stand for him and with him, today.  Amen. 

Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
Lent I, Year A
March 1, 2020
The Rev. John Taliaferro Thomas
 
I was not prepared for the beauty of the place.  Having spent three days in a hotel ballroom attending a conference, I was glad to get outside and see a part of California I had never visited.  I had been told about a Holy Cross Monastery that took in guests, and I planned to tack a few days onto my trip to visit and retreat.  As I followed the map, I found that I was driving up and up the hills outside of Santa Barbara.  And when I arrived at the monastery, I discovered that it had been an estate belonging to the Huntington family whose fortune was vast.  As it turned out, on of the sons of the railroad, mining, and oil baron had become a monk and procured the place for his order.  I had not done my research, only following the advice of a good friend, so what I expected to be spartan was far from it – at least at first.
 
A robed brother, Robert, met me at the door, showed me to a sparse room.  He told me that silence would be observed from evening prayer through to lunch the following day, and that there was not cost for me to be there, but I would have a work to do all morning in exchange for my room and board.  Spiritual direction was available in the afternoons when we could speak.  Other than that, we worshiped in the chapel five times a day.  My room had two books: a Bible and the Rule of Benedict.
 
Now, I am a priest of the prayer saying and Bible studying ilk, but I am also verbal and curious about people and more than a little fidgety by nature.  I was to be in silence for half the day?   I was to work with no conversation or verbal direction?  This is not exactly a hardship, but for me a neophyte to this kind of strict observance, I had no idea what I would do, or how I would do with all of this.  My normal mode was multi-tasking, working through a busy schedule, accomplishing tasks, and talking with people for most of the day.
 
After I unpacked, I met my spiritual director, Brother Clement, and told him of my anxiety, seeking a plan and goals for my retreat.  Instead, he asked me about my life, what burdens I was carrying, and how God might be speaking to me in this time of my life.  It was a great conversation.  He was a great listener.  But there was no plan, no list of readings, no spiritual exercises to work.  I had all this time.  “What do I do now,” I asked?  “Just pay attention,” he said.  And then he left the room.
 
I fidgeted for an hour and looked around.  Finally, it was time dinner: a simple buffet.  I was excited to meet the brothers and the others that were on retreat.  The food was hearty, fresh, and delicious looking.  In took my place in the middle of a table of eight.  But when I sat down, there were no introductions or conversations.  Instead, one brother began reading from a book of Benedictine devotions, something about waiting on God.  When we were done, they cleared the table, did the dishes and it was time for Evening Prayer.  They sang beautifully and slowly… and then we were in silence.  Wait, I thought, who are these people?  Why are they here?  What will I be doing in the morning? I fidgeted for an entire evening, read from the rule of Benedict, and began to understand, a little.
 
I was up early for prayers, then to breakfast, where we remained in silence.  I made some granola and fruit and when I looked up, yogurt and milk and a spoon were in front of me.  I poured some coffee from the carafe and when I finished, cream and sweetener bowl were in front of me.  I ate quickly, eager to get on with the morning, but everyone else ate slowly.  I was looking at my food, but the rest of them were looking up and around, anticipating how they would help one another.  When I was done, I sat and waited and waited while all were served and had eaten.  A bell rang, we cleaned up, and then went to sing Morning Prayer.  When that was over a brother motioned for me to follow and we went into a garden.   He took a rake, and gave me a rake, and he started cleaning a bed for spring planting.  I watched and then went to another bed and did what he was doing, for hours.
 
Finally, we broke to bathe and have noon prayers, then lunch.  Finally, I could speak.  Finally, I could find out who all of these people were and what they were doing here.  Brother Clement sat next to me. “Before you speak,” he said, “remember just to pay attention. That is the only reason you are here.  That is the only intention for your time here.  Just pay attention.”  I never did meet the others or talk much with anyone except Clement.  I guess they were all just paying attention too.
 
I never begin a season of reflection without thinking about Clement’s direction.  He explained that it came from centuries of contemplative theology and practice.  He saw right through me and cut to the simplest and most basic direction.  I did not have to know everything.  I did not have to relate to everyone.  I did not have to establish my place in their order.  Clement told me to be a human being rather than a human doing.  I still struggle with that.  I know I am not alone.
 
We embark on a Lenten season together, hearing our annual recounting of Jesus time in the wilderness.  We hear of the devil tempting him with pleasure and comfort, status and prestige, and finally with power and absolute dominion.  And Jesus passes on all of the worldly posturing and functioning in favor of being a vessel of servant leadership.  This is not a lesson on how to avoid or deny temptation.  As the old country song says “Lead me not into temptation, I can get there by myself.”  Instead this is a window into how radically different God’s priorities are than the those we might embrace. 
 
As Jesus let’s all of that go, the invitation for us is not to contort ourselves in complex disciplines or give up so much that we will win the holiness contest.  Lent is a chance for us to peel away the layers of aspiration and activity that use as a mask to project purpose or importance.  Lent is a reflective season for us to see ourselves as human beings rather than human doings, so when do what do, we act thoughtfully and with non-reactive intention.
 
The good news for us is that we are here.  We were able to make it to this space this week.  We are taking this time and this moment the stop the spinning world of confused priorities and frenetic activity to be with Jesus.  The best direction I ever got was not an action plan, a series of spiritual exercises, or a moral makeover.  It was the simple direction: “Just pay attention.”