subversivepreacher
Subversion n. overthrow, undermining, sabotage; see defeat, revolution. Preach vt. to urge as by preachingArchive for elizabeth tarbox
Looking back over our shoulder at today
Inspired by the Gospel,
today I want to do it a little differently.
In the Gospel story from Luke,
Jesus is coming home for the first time
as an adult
who has something to say
to those who used to be his elders.
Now, gathered there before him,
they are his peers
even though they may still be his elders.
Now, he is an adult
with something to say.
He is coming home
to his community,
the one that nurtured him –
the one that loved-him-forward
across the years.
We notice that the custom
in those days,
was just the opposite of our custom.
Jesus sits to speak
and those gathered
likely stood to listen.
The synagogue
would have been more like
our courtyard
than like a church building.
Furniture for common folks
was rare,
and not something that
would have filled
an open gathering space.
So, the child-turned-teacher
read that passage we heard
from Isaiah,
then sat down
to speak.
Not to suggest that I am Jesus,
but to accentuate
the intimacy of this moment
of baptism and celebration,
I am going to do the same thing.
In fact,
if she will allow me to,
I am going to hold Allison
while I read a letter
I wrote for her on this occasion.
And then,
when I am done with the letter,
I will make a very brief
observation for all of us.
The letter nods at,
and then takes off from the
Liturgical Reading by Elizabeth Tarbox.
“Dear Allison,
Will we recognize you in years to come,
looking back over our shoulders
across the beach of time,
the flotsam and jetsam
of our lives lived narrowly
and distantly apart,
will we recognize you?
Will you see us,
and will we be people who
have populated the feathery images
in your nocturnal mind?
Will that strange old lady
you only see at Church
pop up at an oddly familiar table
in the theater of your subconscious,
even as that ageless robed acolyte
carries a cross
at the edge of a dream
you have had more than once?
Will we be familiar
at your homecoming?
Will you say,
“Wow, she’s no longer a baby?”
and, “Have you seen old Mr. So-in-So?
Oh, no, really? I will miss him.”
Will some things always seem the same:
Like the way certain things look
or the old habits of rituals
that die hard and
seldom?
Will the musty smell of 19th century wood
and seldom-used books
wrap you in the warmth of memory
and hold you in comfort,
or…
will they just smell old
and empty?
When you return
all those years from now,
having grown up here
but moved on to build a new life
in some other town,
or state,
or country even,
will your first gaze upon the
brilliant blues and ruby reds
in these dated windows
shout to you, as gaudy,
or whisper, holy?
A long, long time ago,
in 2012,
we circled your precious new body
like the shepherds
at Jesus’ birth.
We wandered in
from neighborhood
and village,
suburb and street
and watched the priest
hold you,
droozle a warm waterfall
upon the silk of your hair,
and then,
with the invisible ink
of sacred oils,
mark you
as Christ’s own
forever.
Back then,
we were anxious nearly
all the time.
The nest of a world we made for you
was neither soft
nor safe.
The skirmishes of hatred
flared often
and we made war on millions,
and many of them
made war back.
The air was clear
but not clean,
and water, we were told,
was becoming dearer.
Many of us
who grew up
with pen and ink
and books of paper
were disconcerted by the
vibrancy of data
and monitors,
and something called, ‘The Web’
that you may not even remember.
But on the day you were baptized,
the old paper-readers
and the new e-readers
sang together
and prayed together
and smiled at your small bundle
loved into the world
by so many
and so well.
At the most segregated
hour of the week,
in a society that made its billions
by segregating schools
and homes
and opportunities,
we gathered across
every boundary
to declare our sisterhood
and brotherhood
and Godhood.
We came together
to eat
of God’s love
for us all,
and on that day…
we washed you
in God’s love
and promised
to love-you-forward.
Back in the day,
way, way back in 2012,
when you were a peanut
smaller than the bowl of the
baptismal font itself,
we promised to love you,
and love your mom and dad,
and love one another,
forward-into-the-future.
We were nervous about that future,
and we had no idea
that it would be what it is,
but we promised
that no matter what it was,
and no matter whom you chose to be,
we would love-you-forward
into the world
as it came
and as we tried to make it.
How did we do, sweet Allison?
Do you recognize our love
when you look back
over your shoulder,
across the beach of time
and feel the breezes of the past,
both soft and cold
sweep across your face?
How did we do, sweet Allison?”
Well, maybe she will read that letter
when she is old enough
to look back and squint,
and maybe she won’t.
But either way,
it tells us
what WE are doing here.
It is striking
that all the big promises
we make at Church
are both present-and-future tense.
“I will” and “We will”
are the strongest affirmations
in the English language,
as it is unbounded
by conditions
of the present or future.
Do you promise…
I will.
In baptism
and in marriage
and in ordination
we are asked,
“Do you…”
and our response is,
“I will.”
I will,
knowing what I know now,
and in spite of what happens then,
with God’s help,
I will.
And that is what “covenant” is –
the prototype of our relationship
with God and one another.
“Covenant”
is a relationship of promise
that cannot be contained in time
or by condition
like a contract is.
A contract is 50-50 –
we agree that you do this for me
and I will do that for you,
and then the contract
will be fulfilled.
But a covenant is 100-100 –
not promising an exchange
of goods and services,
but promising relationship;
to stay in relationship,
and to do
all that we know how to do
to sustain it as a certain
kind of a relationship.
A covenant
is the promise
to love-one another-forward,
and to which we say, “I will.”
And sometimes,
we say it to near perfect strangers.
Like today,
you may not know Allison
or Andrew or Jaime,
but you are saying, “We will”
to your relationship of promise
to this community.
We will love-forward
these people,
in this place,
who are of this covenant.
“I will and We Will”
do all that I know how to do
to love-forward
this community,
that is also Allison’s community,
and so…
I am one of Allison’s people.
I am one of Allison’s “I will” people
and she is one of mine.
The “I will” people
who love-forward
because we are God’s people.
It is not that we are God’s only people,
or God’s best people,
or God’s most faithful people.
In fact, we may be some of God’s most
peculiar people.
But we are God’s people
in this place
and at this time
and with this mission,
and being God’s people
we love-forward
those with whom we share community.
That is the promise we are about to make…again.
To be “I will and We Will” people for one another,
and for Allison,
and so be the people
who love-one another-forward.
So let’s make that promise,
and begin it here.
