Tag Archives: disciple

En Pointe, On Point: Dance Made It More Possible For Me To Live [OR Holy Trinity Sunday] John 16:12-15; Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31; and Romans 5:1-5                    

Pastor Caitlin Trussell with Augustana Lutheran Church on May 22 2016

[sermon begins after 3 Bible readings; they’re all too good]

John 16:12-15 “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. 13 When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. 14 He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. 15 All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

Romans 5:1-5 Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. 3 And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31 1 Does not wisdom call, and does not understanding raise her voice?
2 In the heights, beside the way, at the crossroads she takes her stand;
3 beside the gates in front of the town, at the entrance of the portals she cries out:
4 “To you, O people, I call, and my cry is to all that live.
22 The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago.
23 Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth.
24 When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water.
25 Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth—
26 when he had not yet made earth and fields, or the world’s first bits of soil.
27 When he established the heavens, I was there, when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,
28 when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep,
29 when he assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth,
30 then I was beside him, like a master worker; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always,
31 rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race.

[sermon begins]

 

Jesus tells his disciples that, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.”  That’s about as frustrating on the listeners’ side as it can get.  Imagine someone telling you that they’d fill you in on the main things if only you could understand them.  This happens all the time when we’re children.  The kids in the room know what I’m talking about.  In fact, Jesus starts his speech that includes the reading from John today by calling his disciples, “Little children…”[1]  Judas betrays Jesus, skulks off into the night, and Jesus starts talking using the endearment of “little children.”  There is a kindness in the endearment but there is also a limit that Jesus places on his listeners.  He knows and tells them that they cannot bear the weight of what he has to say.

When I was four, my feet found their way into a pair of ballet slippers.  There’s was a lot to learn.  A lot of strength to be gained.  But mostly, from my newly slippered perspective, there was love of the dance.  Body and music working together to make something new along with sounds of Bach and Tchaikovsky.  Classical ballet was a fairly consistent part of life even with the family relocations.  I don’t know how my mother did it through some of the family chaos.  It’s possible it made me easier to live with.  But truly, in hindsight, dance made it more possible for me to live.

Around the age of 13, my ballet teacher started talking about point shoes.  You know these shoes.  They’re part of the classic image of ballet dancers moving around on their toes.  For the dancer, point shoes are a big moment.  The joy of that moment of readiness is heady and alive.  There is much that goes into being ready.  Dancing en pointe means the strength and coordination are there to bear the weight of the body.  When the strength isn’t there – the toes can’t bear the body weight and it’s highly possible there will be pain and a lot of it.

Similarly, Jesus knows his disciples aren’t ready to bear the weight of what he has to say.  At this point in the story, Jesus is still alive.  There is no crucifixion or resurrection to give the disciples perspective.  Paul’s letter to the Romans is well after the crucifixion as the early church is making sense of what happened to Jesus.  Paul talks about the experience of suffering moving to endurance, character and, finally, hope.  Hope that comes through the love of God by the power of the Holy Spirit.  That’s a lot for him to put in one or two sentences.  Let’s slow it down a bit.

In the midst of suffering, it’s hard to have perspective and even harder when someone tries to give you their perspective.  It’s like the time-space continuum starts moving really differently.  This happens when you’re sick enough to land in the hospital or losing a loved one or lost a job or making a tough move or fighting depression.  Perspective is possible typically only after there’s been an experience and time passes.  Even then it can be a stretch to look back on the experience, realize you’ve come through it, and make any meaning out of it – framing it with other experiences.

We tend to think of this individually.  But the Proverbs reading tells us that Wisdom speaks publically.  “On the heights, beside the way, at the crossroads she takes her stand; beside the gates in front of the town, at the entrance of the portals she cries out…”  Wisdom speaks publically in the places where people are together.  Also in the Proverbs reading, Wisdom holds the perspective of time.  Before the beginning of the earth, before the heavens and the deep, Wisdom was there.  Part of wisdom is public when people are together and part of wisdom is time.  It’s difficult to gain perspective when we’re alone in the middle a mess.

Before seminary and becoming a pastor, I spent about 10 years as an adult worshiper. Listening to sermons was a highlight of worship and my week. Scripture and life come together – sometimes like a breath of fresh air and sometimes in a gnarly collision. Sometimes I agreed with the preacher and sometimes I didn’t.  Mostly I was thankful for the reminders week-after-week that the people described by scripture were often just as lost, just as forgetful, just as gifted, and just as loved by God as I am in this beautiful struggle called life.

I needed and still need the forgiveness and strength that are given freely week-after-week in confession, preaching, bread, and wine and reinforced by the worship liturgy both in words and body motion. When I worship now as a pastor, I’m still grateful for the chances to hear another preacher remind us that we’re just as lost, forgetful, gifted, and loved as everybody else.  That is a gift of perspective.  A gift of wisdom.

For ballet dancers, being ready to dance is partly about practicing coordinated movement with other dancers.  For people of faith, living this beautiful struggle called life is partly about regularly practicing the faith with other people.  Just as the disciples are together with Jesus in the Bible reading today, we are together with Jesus through scripture and worship by the power of the Holy Spirit.  So together, the Holy Spirit draws us into perspective and hope through the love of God.

This Sunday, we celebrate the Holy Trinity – God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  The Trinity is shared experience of otherness within itself – separate yet whole.  A mystery revealed to us by Jesus who suffered, died, and lives again. The Trinity integrates us into shared experience with God and with each other through worship and life in the world.

The dance between Father – Spirit – Son makes it possible for us to live.

No one says it like Paul says it to the Roman church and also to us:

“Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. 3 And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”

Amen and thanks be to God.

 

Hymn of the Day sung by everyone in response to the sermon.

Come, Join the Dance of Trinity (ELW 412)

Come, join the dance of Trinity, before all worlds begun –

The interweaving of the Three, the Father, Spirit, Son.

The universe of space and time did not arise by chance,

But as the Three, in love and hope, made room within their dance.

 

Come see the face of Trinity, newborn in Bethlehem;

Then bloodied by a crown of thorns outside Jerusalem.

The dance of Trinity is meant for human flesh and bone;

When fear confines the dance in death, God rolls away the stone.

 

Come, speak aloud of Trinity, as wind and tongues of flame

Set people free at Pentecost to tell the Savior’s name.

We know the yoke of sin and death, our necks have worn it smooth;

Go tell the world of weight and woe that we are free to move!

 

Within the dance of Trinity, before all worlds begun,

We sing the praises of the Three, the Father, Spirit, Son.

Let voices rise and interweave, by love and hope set free,

To shape in song this joy, this life: the dance of Trinity.

[1] John 13:33a [Jesus says to his disciples] “Little children, I am with you only a little longer…”

 

Called Good (Friday) for a Reason [OR Radical Inclusion is the Religious Freedom of the Cross] – John 18-19

Called Good (Friday) for a Reason – John 18-19

Caitlin Trussell with Augustana Lutheran Church for Good Friday on April 3, 2015

 

[sermon begins after the two Bible readings excerpted from John 18-19]

John 18:15-18, 25b-27   Simon Peter and another disciple followed Jesus. Since that disciple was known to the high priest, he went with Jesus into the courtyard of the high priest, 16 but Peter was standing outside at the gate. So the other disciple, who was known to the high priest, went out, spoke to the woman who guarded the gate, and brought Peter in. 17 The woman said to Peter, “You are not also one of this man’s disciples, are you?” He said, “I am not.” 18 Now the slaves and the police had made a charcoal fire because it was cold, and they were standing around it and warming themselves. Peter also was standing with them and warming himself.

25 Now Simon Peter was standing and warming himself. They asked him, “You are not also one of his disciples, are you?” He denied it and said, “I am not.” 26 One of the slaves of the high priest, a relative of the man whose ear Peter had cut off, asked, “Did I not see you in the garden with him?” 27 Again Peter denied it, and at that moment the cock crowed.

John 19:16-18, 25b-30, 40-42 Then [Pontius Pilate] handed him over to them to be crucified. So they took Jesus; 17 and carrying the cross by himself, he went out to what is called The Place of the Skull, which in Hebrew is called Golgotha. 18 There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, with Jesus between them.

25b Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. 26 When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, “Woman, here is your son.” 27 Then he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home. 28 After this, when Jesus knew that all was now finished, he said (in order to fulfill the scripture), “I am thirsty.” 29 A jar full of sour wine was standing there. So they put a sponge full of the wine on a branch of hyssop and held it to his mouth. 30 When Jesus had received the wine, he said, “It is finished.” Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

40 [Joseph of Arimathea] took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths, according to the burial custom of the Jews. 41 Now there was a garden in the place where he was crucified, and in the garden there was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid. 42 And so, because it was the Jewish day of Preparation, and the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.

 

[sermon begins]

 

We began Lent on Ash Wednesday confronted with our own mortality.  Ashes are smeared on our foreheads in the sign of the cross and we are told, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”  A glaring reminder that life on the planet, our baptismal journey, ends in death.

Death leaves us longing for the spiritual. But in the meantime, we are stunned by its lack.  There is no heartbeat, no breath.  All is quiet.  From where we sit on this side of death there is no dressing it up.  At the bedside or roadside or war-side, wherever we encounter death, it is stark, austere, and unnerving in its lack of immediate meaning.  Death is simply absence.  Gone.  On this side of death, it is nothing more.

We begin Lent faced with our own mortality and a sign of the cross.  At the end of Lent this Good Friday, we are confronted by the cross itself.  Longing for the spiritual, we are stunned by its lack.  There is no heartbeat, no breath.  All is quiet after the betrayal, denial, ridicule, and execution.  The adrenalin fades.  The frantic hype is gone.  “It is finished.”  Jesus’ last words.  Finished.  All that’s left is to put him in a tomb and leave him there.

But the quiet of death breeds disquiet. Unnerved by the immediate lack of meaning the attempts to make meaning begin immediately.  Centuries of Christian thought have produced atonement theory after atonement theory.  Some more satisfactory than others.  Regardless, Gerhard Forde argues that all of these theories hold us “in a false relation to God,” most often reducing Jesus’ death to an unsatisfactory commercial transaction.[1]

Time and again in the New Testament, Jesus’ death is explained simply as “for us”.[2]  That is all.  “For us.”  Which necessarily means that Jesus died “for you.”  Jesus died for you.

Jesus died for you for the forgiveness of sins.  Because isn’t that what Jesus did in his life here on earth?  With the authority of God, he announced forgiveness time and again, and time and again, until finally he was killed for it.  Forgiveness, already available, already announced by Jesus, was that for which Jesus was killed.  He spoke a word of forgiveness until he hung on a cross for it.  For you.

The hands of the betrayer, the hands of the denier, the hands of the ridiculer, the hands of the executioner.  Those hands are ours hands in all the ways we take things into our own hands.  Determined to put conditions on what God’s gives to us unconditionally, we cannot hear this word of forgiveness.  We can’t hear it for other people.  And we can’t hear it for ourselves.

The cross is God’s answer to the re-imagining of God that we do. That re-imagining that leaves us separate from God.  Oh, so you think you know who God is?  Well, what about a God who hangs dead on a cross and gets buried in a tomb rather than use divine power over and against the very creatures whom God loves. Jesus said, “When I am lifted up, I will draw all people to myself.”  Jesus on the cross simultaneously reveals the scope of divine power poured out to reveal the depth of divine love as we are drawn toward God.  When the self-sacrificing love of God, given fully, is made known to you, when this message of divine love gets through to you, you are drawn by God back into relationship. [3]

With great intention, Jesus hangs on the cross.  And, in one of his final acts while still breathing, does something radical.  Jesus turns to his own mother and then to the beloved disciple and redefines their relationship with the cross in between them.  “‘Woman, here is your son…then he says to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’”

Not only does Jesus draw us into relationship with God through the cross but Jesus redefines our relationship with each other at the foot of the cross – standing with the cross between us, Jesus intervenes.  Drawn back into the relationship with God our Father, Jesus the Christ turns us towards each other in a new way.  And God knows the world needs us to be with each other differently than we are at the moment.  Look as close as the cranky person next door or exclusion laws masquerading as religious freedom in several of these United States.  And look as far away as murder by plane crash in the French Alps or execution across religious differences at the Garissa University in Kenya.  We need every bit of help we can get to stand down and stand with each other.  As Anne Lamott writes, “You can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”[4]

At the cross, love is freely taken up for us and for the sake of the people next to us.  In the same moment, we have everything to do with what happened at the cross and we have nothing to do with it.  We are culpable AND we are passive spectators who are being handed a stark realization of our common powerlessness.  In this way, the cross cannot be used as a method to live life.  The cross is the way we experience life.  Longing for the spiritual, we are often stunned by its lack.  Yes, the cross is the way we experience life.  Humbled by our participation in a death on a cross, made confident through the self-sacrificing love of God.  The cross is radically inclusive of all people which necessarily includes you.

Jesus says, “It is finished.”  Can you hear the whisper?  Finished.  His final moment. All that’s left is to put him in a tomb and leave him there.[5]

 



[1] Gerhard O. Forde.  A More Radical Gospel: Essays on Eschatology, Authority, Atonement, and Ecumenism (Eerdmans Publishing: Grand Rapids, 2004), 221.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Koester, course notes, 12/1/2010.  For further study see: Craig R. Koester, The Word of Life: A Theology of John’s Gospel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008).

[4] Anne Lamott.  Traveling Mercies (New York: Pantheon Books, 1999).

[5] On Good Friday, cross and tomb are the focal point so that hope is reflected out of suffering that is real rather than as false optimism denying painful realities.