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An Invitation to Be Real

9/24/2015

An Invitation to Be Real: A Sermon on the Occasion of the 10th Anniversary of Rev. Catherine MacLean Crooks’ Ministry at Plymouth Congregational Church

John 15: 12-15, “Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver

Sept 20, 2015

Rev. Dr. Rebecca Voelkel

My life flows on in endless song, above earth’s lamentation. I hear the real though faroff hymn that hails a new creation. Through all the tumult and the strife, I hear the music ringing. It sounds an echo in my soul. How can I keep from singing?

This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.

She was one of those people whose brilliance was obvious from the minute you met her. It took a bit longer to see the desire to create beauty and connection and love—through music, art and by acting decently and honestly. But it was all there.

She came into the warehouse that served as our sanctuary about once a week for quite a stretch of time because she was looking for a place to be safe as she battled the pain. Some times she’d just sit and pray. Some times I would hear music as she sought to claim beauty amidst too many bad memories that wouldn’t let her go.

Every so often, she’d schedule a time to talk and I learned more about the ways in which her body and soul and heart had been violated and how her mind had helped her survive.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine…

Mostly, our conversations were opportunities for me to meet the different parts of her and spend time. I could tell she allowed her “multiplicity” to be known to me because she’d had an experience of some pastor who had been worthy of her trust. In some other context, she had learned that it was ok to talk to a pastor about her multiple personalities. And because of some other minister’s gifts, I got to meet and sit with Squirt, Peter, Mark, me inside, Kelldog, Quiet, Arizona, Alex and 489. And I was privileged to hear of how they were trying to help each other heal.

I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from God.

When I was five or six, my family attended St. John’s United Church of Christ in Dayton, Ohio. As new members, our family was invited to consider the different activities of the church. Since I loved to sing, I was invited to join the children’s choir.

It was perfect for me. I got to be with other people singing, I can’t begin to articulate the joy I felt.

But it quickly became a bit complicated. The choir director was a woman named Mrs. McCash. I came to know later that order, control, precision and appearance were all very high values for her. She was not unlike some church ladies in any given number of churches around the country. For her, there was a proper way of doing things and an improper way. One of the proper ways had to do with how one dressed for church. Boys and men wore suits or at least pants, a dress shirt and a tie, and girls and women wore dresses and the shoes that matched.

Into this well-ordered, gender binary walked my little pant-wearing tomboy girl self. And let’s just say it didn’t go well. On the first Sunday the choir was to perform, Mrs. McCash came up to me and rolled up my pants so you couldn’t tell I was wearing them under my choir robe. My memory isn’t clear but somehow I went to my mom crying before church started and told her what had happened. She rolled down my pants and told me to go up there and sing my heart out. (Thank God for my mom!)

I have often reflected on that incident as a microcosm of my life’s journey in relationship with the church, particularly as I later went through the coming out process. The church is at once a place of great joy, of communion with God. It is the sanctuary in which my voice joins with those of others in praise and prayer and adulation. But the church often asks me and us to hide who we really are in order to join the song. It asks us to roll up or cover the unseemly, the improper.

It, too often, requires of us a kind of Sophie’s choice between the realness of our lives and the deep connection of community.

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

[pause]

It was after at least a year of hearing the music coming from our sanctuary and coming to know all of her parts, as she called her different personalities, that Kelly invited me to a special worship service. Her home faith community was baptizing all of her nine parts in an evening service and would I come…

[pause]

In preparation for today’s sermon, I was looking back at the bulletin from that service and I got tears anew. Gathered together in the sanctuary, rooted in the hymns of the church, communally professing our faith we, together, named out loud that violence and abuse are real, that pain and suffering touch each one of us and it is not seemly or pretty. And we invited each of us and all of us to show up in our fullness and realness to worship a God who knows us.

The opening prayer was this:

The beauty of the world is created by God.

The wonder of the world is blessed by God.

The rage of the world is heard by God.

The agony of the world is embraced by God.

Come, let us worship God—Creator, Christ, Spirit whose loving presence we cannot flee.

In the sermon that was preached that night, entitled “A Concerto of Life,” the preacher said outloud words like sexual abuse and multiplicity. And then she professed the depth of our faith, that neither death nor violence nor threat of both is more powerful than the healing, relentless love of God from which all that is beautiful comes. And then we baptized Squirt and Peter, Mark and me inside, Kelldog and Quiet, Arizona and Alex and 489.

[pause]

In our Scripture for this morning, Jesus is sharing what Biblical scholars refer to as his “Farewell Discourse.” He knows he is soon to face his own crucifixion by those who fear his invitation to put aside power and privilege and appearance of piety. And he is intent upon helping his disciples get the message.

This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you.

As you might have guessed, the presider at the baptism that night, the pastor whose impeccable gifts and skills helped remind Kelly that the church was a safe place to be herself; the pastor who challenged us all to remember that the core of our tradition is the call to love one another in real and deep ways and that life and music and healing are always God’s answer to violence and suffering. That pastor was Cath Crooks. In the thank-you section, Kelly wrote, “Thank you to Cathie, the best [freaking] minister I have ever had. You have entered so fully into our lives. You are so real. You are so accepting. Thank you for your faith in me. Thank you for your ministry. Cathie, speaking quite frankly, which I have been known to do from time to time, you rock my world.”

Today we mark the tenth anniversary of Rev. Catherine MacLean Crook’s ministry here at Plymouth Congregational Church. We are also in the 26th year of her ordained ministry (a ministry that is rooted in the soil of Cape Breton and the Maritimes and in the best of our Christian tradition.)

There are many things I could share of the ways in which I’ve learned to be a more faithful, more loving and wiser minister and person because of her. But none seems more important than her tenacious refusal to allow me or those with whom she ministers, to turn away from the invitation to be real.

It is this journey: away from whatever lies we’ve been told, away from whatever addictions we’ve been gripped by, away from whatever people we tried to be or thought the church would find proper or seemly, away from all of these…. and toward the fragile but resilient, healed and healing, seeking-to-be-real community of friends that Jesus invites us to be… that’s the invitation.

And I believe it is nothing short of our lives, as people and as church, that’s at stake with how we answer the invitation. But we don’t have to take the journey alone. It is none other than God, from whose loving presence we cannot flee, that pours out the nudges and reminders and guideposts along the way.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

So let us claim our place. Let us roll down our pant legs. Let us take up the invitation.

Amen.

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#BlackIsSacred

9/15/2015

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I grew up the only grandchild of my Scottish immigrant grandmother who took it as her role as my grammie to tell me stories about our family. She did so, as she always told me, so that I might know who I am and so that I might know better how to live in this world.

One of those stories was about my grandfather.

My grandfather was also a Scottish immigrant who came to this country to escape grinding poverty. He was one of eleven children and he started work in the coal mines of the Lowlands of Scotland when he was ten in order to help support his family. At fourteen, he was buried alive during a collapse of part of the mine. Several days later, he was one of only three who made it out alive, but not without both a deep physical scar that ran the length of his back and a profound mental one.

As my grammie told it, my grandfather immigrated shortly thereafter to escape both the poverty and the absolute disregard for his life and the lives of all the other poor coal-mining families in his small village. When he came to this country, he brought with him a deep conviction that his life was to be lived so that no one should be faced with dehumanizing disregard.

Both of my grandparents were also staunch Scottish Presbyterians. And part of their legacy to my mother and to me has been the lesson that one’s faith and one’s religious practice should be about making life more just, more equitable and closer to what God would want for all of creation.

It is precisely this kind of faith that brought me to the Mall of America last December to join with several dozen of my clergy colleagues to stand in prayer and solidarity as Black Lives Matter Minneapolis and about 3000 people of many religious traditions, many family configurations, many racial backgrounds and many political affiliations rallied to affirm that Black lives, Black bodies, Black families, Black communities matter.

I was part of that peaceful protest and witness because in our country today, Black lives are treated with the same disregard that my grandfather experienced. Too many are killed by police brutality, too many are incarcerated and terrorized, too many are caught in economic systems that oppress. My being at the Mall of America was part of my Advent practice because I understand my call as a Christian pastor to witness to the sacredness of ALL of God’s children and to speak truth to power when power abuses any of God’s children.

And then Bloomington City Attorney Sandra Johnson chose to use her great power as an officer of the Court to prop up the powerful by pressing bogus charges against the Mall of America protest organizers and the City of Bloomington and Mall of America officials infiltrated meetings and surveilled social media to determine who the organizers of the protest were. And I knew I needed to do something. But I didn’t know exactly what.

Then I was contacted by several religious colleagues—Christians, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs and Wiccans from around the country who also believe in the sacredness of Black Lives—asking that I start a petition so that people of faith could stand in solidarity with the Mall of America protest organizers. And I did. And over 3100 people of faith from around the country signed the petition.

In addition to these faith leaders, another petition was circulated by someone else who was at the Mall of America and couldn’t sit idly by as our justice system was used to persecute the less powerful in deference to those who hoard power. Their petition garnered over 42,000 signatures.

And so we are here today, holding in our hands both the names of those who stand with us and candles each representing 1000 people who are with us in solidarity. They know that that this is the day and this is the hour we are delivering them and they are holding us in their prayers as we speak. We are going to take just a moment of silence to join our energy and prayers with theirs that the power of the court is used as it ought to be and that the charges are completely dropped.

Amen. Ashe. Blessed Be.

Thank you.

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Sabbath Practice: Thank You for the Body That Loves Us

9/1/2015

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Sabbath Practice: Thank You for the Body That Loves Us
Song of Songs 2: 8-14, John 20: 19-30
August 30, 2015--Lyndale United Church of Christ
Rev. Dr. Rebecca Voelkel

The lone wild bird in lofty flight is still with Thee, nor leaves Thy sight. And I am Thine, I rest in Thee. Great Spirit, come, and rest in me. Amen.

I love talking with people about bodies. I have spent much of my life drawn toward, curious about, questioning, and exploring this notion that we are spiritual beings having a human, embodied experience. I am fascinated by our bodies and what it means to live in the world as flesh and bones.

I just got back from the Woodhull Sexual Freedom Summit that gathered sexuality educators, sex therapists, queer people, sacred intimates and other advocates for a positive understanding of sexuality and bodies. I was there with the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice to lead a three hour session on Sex and the Spirit. The whole thing was a wonderful experience and I had so many fascinating conversations with folks who are hungry to explore these connections between our spirituality and our embodiment. But I have to admit to really struggling with how to preach about Sabbath practice and bodies…. here in a sanctuary….. during church.

[pause]

Thank you for the body that loves us

8The voice of my beloved! Look, they come, leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills. 9My beloved is like a gazelle or a young deer. ..10My beloved speaks and says to me: “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; 11for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. 12The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. 13The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away. 14O my dove…. let me see your face, let me hear your voice; for your voice is sweet, and your face is lovely.

When I read these verses which were assigned to today’s lectionary, I was taken aback. I literally have never heard a portion of the Song of Songs read in church. But I love this text…. its lusciousness, its clear sensuality, its embodied delight in love.

These are all things that are central to our Christian faith. Indeed, Christianity is the only religious tradition that has the audacity to profess that God took on human form.

Somehow, God saw fit to hallow humanity by pouring all of divinity into a human body and living the life of a radically inclusive, loving, transforming person. For me, this “Incarnation” as they call it, is really important.

It is Jesus’ life—and the way he lived in his skin, the people with whom he ate and drank and made loving community, the way he wore his gender identity and his sexuality, the way he touched and resisted power, the way his body was executed by the State—it is to this life and this body that I turn to get guidance about how to life my own life, how to live my little “i” incarnation in relationship with the capitol “I” Incarnation.

And, as many of you know, I’ve spent the last year—much of it sitting at the Nokomis Beach Café—writing about these very things. Writing about how bodies—individual bodies, the body of a community, our shared Body of Christ and the planet body are all exquisite blessings from God.

Thank You for the bodies that love us.

But, for me, talking about real bodies, real people living in communities and in this world, requires us to hold the Song of Songs in conversation with the gospel of John. We are beloved in the sight of God. We are created for pleasure and beauty and joy in our physical, embodied selves. Bodies are blessed to be a blessing.

And this gift is given in the midst of the reality of oppression. The Roman Empire executed Jesus after it had infiltrated and surveilled his community in order to arrest him. Jesus’s body was taunted and tortured because he was Jewish and considered a terrorist in the context of Rome’s occupation. This is the context for our reading from John. The disciples are terrified. They’ve been betrayed by Judas who was one of their own. Their beloved Jesus, whose body they touched and were touched by, with whom they ate and reclined and worshiped and worked, is dead.

But suddenly, in our reading for this morning, that beloved body, so brutally broken, is in their midst again.

This is the other central affirmation of our faith—Jesus’ body is resurrected. He is visibly wounded but alive. He has endured oppression and all that the Empire sought to throw at him, but his body, he is alive. And Jesus invites Thomas to understand all of the implications of his resurrection by touching his wounded body.

Thank you for the body that loves us.

There are many other ways that the gift of our bodies is complicated. Our experiences of our bodies happens in a world that makes judgements about our race, our gender identity, our sexual orientation, our ability, our age. Bodies living with disability, Black and brown bodies, queer bodies… those bodies whom the world might denegrate… these are ones whose preciousness, sexiness and beauty must be especially celebrated. These are all ones in whose blessing and resurrection we especially need to rejoice. Black Lives Matter, Trans Bodies Matter—these are theological affirmations from the heart of Christianity.

But, in order to re-member the sacredness of Incarnation and incarnations; in order to re-member resurrection and revolutionary sexiness, we need the practices of Sabbath to return us to our own bodies and to the body of community. It is the intentional re-membering of rest and worship, of pause and healing, of blessing that which the world too often demonizes… these are the Sabbath practices that allow us to embody God in our midst….

[pause]

In describing one of her days last week following the car accident that killed her beloved sister and niece and left her brother-in-law fighting for his life, Lyndale member Sarah Kuhnen posted the following on Facebook:

Hitting a wall and Oak Trees rebounding

Today I hit a wall. Too many sleepless nights or just plain not enough sleep, along with draining days all caught up with me today. Fred my love and rock was flying home. And so my mind and body just had enough. It is kinda like being under water. Every time someone talked all communication went into a drawn out slow motion garble and I just could not respond appropriately.

Yesterday we started at the hospital to see Don start the process of breathing mostly on his own. When we would talk to him, he would take a deep breath. We knew he heard us. Joy and gratitude lifted us so that we could face the rest of the day….

Then we dressed to the nines (Katherine always dressed to the nines) and we headed to the funeral home. Just a private time with Ledell and Katherine’s bodies to give thanks for their beautiful bodies as we sang and danced with their spirits that felt very present among us. We listened to amazing music from Katherine, Ledell and Don as we danced and sang and cried our grieving, wailing tears.

We rebounded at the restaurant before heading to the church for a loving vigil at First Congregational Church on the Green. There were stories, and the gospel choir sang, several solos were sung and candles were lit. There were Park Slope, Brooklyn Church family, Silver Lake Church Family, and First Congregational Church family, among other friends. Plenty of hugs all around and at the end of the service our family lit candles and walked down the aisle lighting other peoples’ candles as we all head out the door to luminary splendor and sang one final song. Ledell had co-led many a protest on those front steps. This is the church of my elementary years. A place my family calls home. To call this service a blessing would be an understatement, but it was also draining in all the right ways.

Finally after a week of running to get everything in some sort of order, knowing that Don, although not out of the woods, is doing better, the reality and weight of it all settled into my bones. And I am beyond numb. Beyond knowing how to move. And so along with Devan and Lucy, we walked to the park near the hospital and laid under the oaks. The big majestic trees that reach into the sky. My hand lay on one of its sturdy roots and I prayed for it to share its strength and fill me up. And I rested. I fell asleep off and on. But more importantly, I lay in total silence. Just me and the tree.

Again, I could re-enter this massive story that is ours now forever…. For another moment. I give thanks for church community that is massive in their love of the Mulvaney-Westphal-Waterman-Kuhnen family, for the countless friends near and far sending their love. And for the grove of oaks sharing their strength.s of breathing mostly on his own. When we would talk to him he would take a deep breath. We knew he heard us. Joy and gratitude lifted us so that we could face the rest of the day...
Then we dressed to the nines (Katherine always dressed to the nines) and we headed to the funeral home. Just a private time with Ledell and Katherine's body to give thanks for there beautiful body's as we sang and danced with their spirits that felt very present among us. We listened to amazing music from Katherine, Ledell and Don, as we danced and sang and cried our grieving wailing tears.
We rebounded at the restaurant before heading to the church for a loving vigil at First Congregational Church on the Green. There we heard stories, and the gospel choir sang, several solos were sung and candles were lit. There were Park Slope, Brooklyn church family, Silver Lake Church family, and First Congregational church family, along with other friends. Plenty of hugs all around and at the end of the service our family lit candles and walked down the isle lighting other people's candles as we all head out the door to luminary spender and sang one final song. Ledell had co-led many a protest on those front steps. This is the church of my elementary years. A place my family calls home. To call this service a blessing would be a understatement, but it was also draining in all the right ways.
Finally after a week of running to get everything in some sort of order, knowing that Don, although not out of the woods, is doing better, the reality and weight of it all settled into my bones. And I am beyond numb. Beyond knowing how to move. And so along with Devan and Lucy we walked to the park near the hospital and lied under the Oaks. The big majestic trees that reach into the sky. My hand lay on one of its sturdy roots and I prayed for it to share its strength and fill me up. And I rested. I fell asleep off and on but more importantly I lay in total silence. Just me and the tree.
Again I could re-enter this massive story that is ours now forever.... for another moment. I give thanks for church community that is massive in their love of the Mulvaney -Westphal-Waterman-Kuhnen family, for the countless friends near and far sending their love. And for the grove of Oaks sharing their strength.

Thank you for the Body that loves us.

Amen.

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In(queering) Spirit: Reflections on love, justice and embodiment

An Invitation to Be Real

#BlackIsSacred

Sabbath Practice: Thank You for the Body That Loves Us

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﻿In(queering) Spirit: Reflections on love, justice and embodiment﻿

An Invitation to Be Real

#BlackIsSacred

Sabbath Practice: Thank You for the Body That Loves Us

Author

Archives

Categories

In(queering) Spirit: Reflections on love, justice and embodiment