Oppotunities to Testify

 Blessed be God who animates our lives and in the midst of chaos, offers us opportunities to testify to God’s great and good grace and in so doing save our souls.AMEN

I struggled with today’s Gospel, especially struggling to find a message consistent with the beautiful opportunity to baptize dear Caleb! Fact of the matter is after reading the first 2/3 of Luke’s account I thought about punting to the prophet Isaiah and images of new earth, new heaven….now that is consistent with new life and baptism…right? 

That, however, felt like cherry picking and ignoring context. I believe God intends for us to wrestle and be uncomfortable even on the most glorious of days. To come through the struggle; even scathed can be deeply meaningful and even liberating ultimately.

And so I tried and tried again. I let the account of destruction, persecution and insurrection sink into my bones and realized how timely  the news of death and destruction indeed might be in contemporary terms. In short I tried to listen to Jesus’ adage to let God’s word and wisdom come to me…

Then I experienced an aha moment!….the passage seemed to turn on the little word “opportunity” or more specifically the phrase opportunity to testify. Opportunity seemed to be the first positive word given to me in a sea of despair. perhaps it was also one of wisdom.

Jesus seemed to be pointing to the life-giving power of testimony to signs of eternal life to be found in the midst of despair. There might be opportunities newly created by endurance in faith.This all seemed to relate to an understanding of resurrection life.

This might be the wisdom promised /that taking this opportunity saves souls

This might be like the wisdom of the prophet Isaiah that the most unexpected creatures and most complicated of relationships is being made new. as well as whole.

And this might be the wisdom of baptism that we respond with a covenant to love honor and preserve God’s creation as we reenact the sacrament of water and the Spirit, agents of God’s transforming love.

Through endurance and witness in faith the promise of belovedness and mercy by God transcends. God is always creating, redeeming and restoring…always.

Courageous, enduring testimony not just to God’s glory but to saving grace can render moments, even lifetimes, of radiant insight and restorative justice.

I would like to share with you how I came to this interpretation:

Sitting in a prayer bowl on my desk are some small items I have used to inspire or explain sermons. As simple and seemingly random as they are, they have become very important to me. 

Small ordinary things can be extraordinary, can cause us to remember or construct extraordinary moments…especially in confusing or overwhelming situations. And these moments of new meaning and vision might be the hinges to eternity.

Goodness knows we could use some extraordinary hope, extraordinary justice, extraordinary mercy these days. We could use moments which point us to the stars as the hymn abide with me suggests.

Over time the little things in this bowl, a thimble, a thread, a prism and a compass have metaphorically guided me and pointed me not just to the stardust within but to the divine vastness beyond. And the thing about contemplating these small objects is that something new happens when we do. As Pam pointed out last week, resurrection is not resuscitation, it is not returning things to an original state, resurrection is to participate in what the prophet Isaiah suggests in all things being made new, here on earth as well as in some future domain. With this perspective or lens, little things considered differently might point toward a God who is breaking into the world to console, to build, to heal, to forgive. ..even in the midst of disaster. And that guidance is not always out there…sometimes that power resides within.

In that beautiful bowl, in itself an icon of prayer, is a tiny thimble…I am not a sewer per se but I have been known to mend!

That thimble reminds me that sometimes life, and even grace, happens in tidal wave or Niagara Falls crashing fashion and can consume if we try to capture or control it all. But if we approach the edge gently and extend a thimble holding it firmly, we do catch a drop or some spray..a drop of grace…and more often than not I have found a drop of grace is enough and expands exponentially filling a wound or expanding a joy.

I use this thimble in prayer most often on Palm Sunday, for me the most overwhelming of liturgical moments, or Good Friday when the grief threatens to shroud the hope of resurrection.

And today I retrieved this tiny receptacle and held it to the edge of Luke’s almost apocalyptic account of destruction. I say almost apocalyptic because what Luke was reciting were historical accuracies and narratives with which we have become all too familiar.

But just as stones are overturned and people are annihilated and all seems lost, my thimble catches a drop of hope: Opportunities to testify carrying us further into the mystery of eternal love and life.

We are a people who have been given this opportunity. We are a people who have and will continue to endure in the name of Love. That is who we are; that is our identity which leads me to the red thread. It reminds me to follow the word of God. When I imagine Jesus gave it to me, and offers it to all, I feel the potential of connection and the knitting together of a wonder-filled whole! It is sometimes a tether, sometimes a connector, sometimes as the poet suggests it is the truth of who I am…

I am reminded of the william stafford poem the way it is:

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among

things that change. But it doesn’t change.

People wonder about what you are pursuing.

You have to explain about the thread.

But it is hard for others to see.

While you hold it you can’t get lost.

Tragedies happen; people get hurt

or die; and you suffer and get old.

Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.

You don’t ever let go of the thread.

Following the thread of promise I imagine leads out of exile and into a tapestry of kindness and justice and mercy.

If the Gospel is always about love, somehow, someway, then that message of love seems to be refracted and differentiated through a multitude of windows. This is when I employ the prism which I lift to refract the light and am always filled with the wonder of the rainbow of grace now dispersed and differentiated into beautiful colors. When I think of the definition of sacrament I often think of this instrument which makes the invisible not just visible but uniquely creative and wondrous,

If love is veiled or even invisible, sacramental theology tells me that we humans might find an outward and visible sign of grace no matter what. 

So I imagined simply holding that prism up to the light and letting the rays of God’s love be refracted. What seemed to fall in an array of muted colors on the floor were the words opportunity and endurance. 

A multicolored array of persistent testimony to God’s saving grace…salvation history if you will.

And then the compass…It was presented to me as a gift upon my ordination by a dear friend with the simple note: Martha, this is to remind you that your job always is to point people to Christ. I have returned to the compass again and again, not just as a metaphor to offer others but to remind myself that God is my true north and activates and animates the vibrating needle of our lives, pointing thru chaos toward love.

These are little things.

They are also powerful metaphors

These items were of great assistance as I prepared to preach today.

They led me to wonder what is our opportunity to testify today? What words and wisdom is Christ offering our hearts?

Baptism might be just that opportunity. The grace of belovedness always offered. 

I find this not only life giving and hopeful but also especially consonant with all that Emmanuel stands for. Believing is not a prerequisite for belonging…

When I gaze upon the statue of pauli Murray below me in the pulpit, or should I say with me in the pulpit, I am reminded of not only her struggles and endurance in deep faith, but also her commitment to baptismal theology. She says of this watery sacrament which furthers hers and God’s mission of Oneness:

My sisters and brothers . . . doing nothing and assuming the political system will make sustained, systemic, and institutional changes to right societal injustices is not an option for us.  Our baptismal covenant calls us respect the dignity and well-being of every human being . . . of all of God’s Creation.   Our baptismal covenant calls us to non-violent direct action against all societal injustices. 

 “Whatever future ministry I might have as a priest, it was given to me that day to be a symbol of healing.  All the strands of my life had come together. Descendant of slave and of slave owner, I had already been called poet, lawyer, teacher, and friend.  Now I was empowered to minister the sacrament of One in whom there is no north or south, no black or white, no male or female – only the spirit of love and reconciliation drawing us all toward the goal of human wholeness.”

I invite us now to take our thimbles, threads, prisms and compass to the font of eternal love. May we be “conveyers of grace” and may Caleb now be baptized into the promise of Oneness and Belovedness with us!