“With the guidance of our rector, vestry, staff, and lay leadership, within the ever widening circle of compassion, we stand with those whose dignity is being denied. We locate ourselves with the poor, the powerless, and the voiceless. We are ready to open our doors to protect the demonized until the demonizing stops. May we listen to that which is deepest within us and may love and justice for all prevail in our hearts, our nation, and the world.”
Sermon by Sally Howard at All Saints Church, Pasadena, on Sunday, June 23, 2019.
After the wind, and the earthquake, and the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he went out and stood at the opening of the cave.
In the name of the Creating, Redeeming, and Sustaining God,
Amen
What do you hear in the silence? I have always been an active person. Sitting in silence for more than a few minutes was never my strong suit. In fact, the idea, particularly of meditative silence, made me uncomfortable. I remember the first time I successfully sat quietly for 15 minutes, instructed by John Phillip Newell. It was at the very beginning of an interfaith retreat in New Mexico. He encouraged us to listen to what we desired from the retreat. The word “presence” came to my mind. I was puzzled by it, because it wasn’t a word I would have consciously chosen. As the retreat unfolded I became aware that I was indeed seeking presence-God’s presence, in a way both different from what I had known before yet somehow more familiar than I could even put into words.
My moments of stillness were varied. Some were inhabited by powerful feelings of loss, turbulent and gripping. Old frenemies appeared—things that I’d taken in that put qualifications on my worth. Also random quilt from the ways my early church experiences taught me to scour my conscience before encountering an exacting and judgmental God.
Guided by two priests, a rabbi, and a Sufi woman, I began to experience the sacredness and lovliness that is within each one of us. I learned to breathe in and breathe out the Spirit that delights in our being. I encountered both the brokenness in my life, and the blessing of the deep, abiding compassionate and personal presence of God, within me and all around me. Love was and I knew I was created by it and for it, and so was everyone and everything else. That truth is probably all we ever really need to know and experience.
That foundational truth that God dwells within us and all around us, can be so hard for us to access! We’ve all been there at one time or another, when we want to give up. It might be during a a loss or an illness. It might be when a parent just doesn’t understand—or a child is lost. For some it might be the daily terror of being deported or the relentless trauma of being targeted by violence for the color of our skin or for an identity that is gender non-conforming. The endless cycle of bad news can hollow us out-with threats of war, attacks on women’s rights, the roll back of protections aimed to slow global climate change. Depression can rob us of a sense of meaning and hope. Sometimes–it’s just the pure volume of what our lives seem to require—too much to take care of and too little rest. Like Elijah, we can feel spent and discouraged.
In the first of our two readings today, the prophet Elijah is on the run from a violent ruler who has threatened his life. When we meet up with him, he is literally and figuratively in the wilderness. He has run until he can run no more. Isolated, terrified, and just plain exhausted, Elijah announces to God that he is done. Done with all of it. Nothing makes sense anymore and he wonders if it’s all been in vain. Despondent and depressed, he sinks into despair.
But thankfully for Elijah and for us, God was not done with Elijah. You see, God looks beyond our discouragements and complaints, and sees our needs. The God of tender compassion sees that Elijah needs to be fed he feeds him. God sees he needs rest and God lets him sleep and feeds him again. Later in Elijah’s journey, when resting again, he is awakened by the Eternal One who summons him to Loving Presence. God knows that’s what he needs to be restored for the long journey ahead. Elijah discovers that God is not present in the wind, or earthquake or fire, but in the quiet breeze. In that stillness, Elijah hears a gentle voice that asks, “Why are you here and what do you desire?”
Elijah desires what we all desire in the deepest places within us—to be known and loved especially at the most difficult moments of our lives. We need to know that God is the strong One who hears and sees us with unwavering compassion and is always present with us in all that life brings. As he dwells in God’s presence, Elijah expresses all that burdens him, and God listens. Elijah experiences Love that is and the truth that he is created by and for love. Sometimes resilience arrives in the moment you discover your own unshakeable goodness. God sends Elijah back into the world, to continue the work of re-ordering the world’s powers to align with justice.
The second story, our gospel story describes a human being so fractured that his name is lost even to himself. Tormented and terrified, he has been driven out of town by the illness of his mind and body, or perhaps driven out by the Not In My Back Yard community of which he was once a part. When Jesus arrives on the shores of Gerasene, the man is waiting for him, desperate for human connection and just as desperate to flee it.
The man calls himself Legion, the name given to large companies of Roman soldiers. The name links this man’s individual disorder to the disordered powers behind all systems of violent oppression. His health and well-being, like that of all people, is inextricably bound to the way that power is used corporately. The Gerasene man has been chained, broken, and possessed by the oppression of one culture on another.
The Gerasene man is also naked and he lives among the dead. Maybe it’s the only real estate available to him that is relatively safe from menace. He is a gentile—an outsider in every way. From the perspective of Jewish purity law, all these things make him unclean to God and humans alike. To touch him and walk in his home and neighborhood was to be made unclean with him. But Jesus, the Jewish mystic who spent long periods of time dwelling in the quiet of God’s healing love expressed fully God’s healing power and compassionate presence. He paid no heed to false borders that divided human beings into categories of acceptable and unacceptable.
Jesus joins the Gerasene man in the tombs and he frees him from the internal voices that degrade and demean his life, of all within him that insists he deserves to be shunned or silenced; all that convinces him of his unworthiness and says that God doesn’t care about him. In that same moment, Jesus upends the disordered systems that helped to fracture him to begin with. You see the power of God’s healing presence is like that—it heals us on the inside and it disrupts all the toxic systems of injustice and oppression that make us, and our world ill to begin with.
God calls us to do the same. On Friday, the Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore confirmed and the Los Angeles Times reported that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents will conduct sweeps targeting immigrants in 10 U.S. cities, including Los Angeles. According to Moore, about 140 individuals are targeted in Southern California. Although our president has put a “pause” on the raids for two weeks, these individuals and their families remain in the cross hairs. In the words of our rector, Mike Kinman, “This action by our government is the worst of fear-mongering and white supremacy. Beloved, productive and irreplaceable images of God, including many from our own Pasadena and All Saints community, once again have to fear that they will have their families torn apart, perhaps forever, which causes devastating harm to them and the communities of which they are a part. It is an unconscionable use of fear to continue to divide our nation for political purposes.”
In response to the threat of these raids, and with full support of the vestry and staff, Mike has declared All Saints Church as sanctuary space for any who are being targeted by ICE. This means that any person may request sanctuary in our church if they believe they are being targeted or in immediate danger of arrest or physical harm from ICE. If someone arrives at our door and asks for sanctuary, they will be let into the church immediately. Once someone has requested Sanctuary, no one is allowed to come into the church to remove them. The goal of Sanctuary is to provide safe space and the necessities of life to those living in sanctuary and to work toward a solution that allows to leave the church with their safety and freedom guaranteed.
Beloved All Saints Community, I am deeply moved but not surprised by your responses to step up and into this action. Through our partnerships with CLUE, Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice, and members of our diocesan immigration task force, the circle of compassion is widening, and we are joining other faith communities to offer shelter to those whose lives, and families, are threatened by this government action. Stay tuned for more details in the action table announcements!
According to today’s scriptures, there is absolutely nowhere God is not willing to go to reach and free and sustain and heal those who are broken and despairing. The practice of abiding in the presence of God and the practice of bringing God’s healing presence into the world are two sides of the same coin. When our hearts beat as one with the One who delights in our being, we exhale that same spirit into the world. Basking in God’s loving attention, we begin to see the world as God does. God’s heals us and empowers us to re-order all structures that harm the health and well-being of God’s creation, and every human being living within it.
The desire of God’s heart is immeasurably larger than we can imagine. With the guidance of our rector, vestry, staff, and lay leadership, within the ever-widening circle of compassion, we stand with those whose dignity is being denied. We locate ourselves with the poor, the powerless, and the voiceless. We are ready to open our doors to protect the demonized until the demonizing stops. May we listen to that which is deepest within us and may love and justice for all prevail in our hearts, our nation, and the world.
Amen
