Barn Raising Or (The Unexpected Virtue of Showing Up)
Prayer
Come Creator God, to fill the hearts of
your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love. By the light of your
holy spirit instruct us and guide us in your wisdom, so that we may be about the
work of justice, of peace, and of love. Amen.
As far as church internships go, I’ve had
a pretty unique one. For those of you who don’t know me, or don’t know me well,
for the past two years I have had the immense pleasure of serving as the intern
of an emerging church in Vienna, Virginia called Church of the Common Table.
Our little community of about 30 regulars gathers at least once a week to
worship in a coffee shop and music venue called Jammin Java. And contrary to
what you might be picturing, the church does not primarily consist of V-neck
wearing-twenty-something hipsters. In fact, most of Common Table is over 30,
married with children, and decidedly against revealing chest hair.
We are a congregation of teachers, writers,
bureaucrats, gamers, Episcopalians, Agnostics, atheists, disenchanted
Evangelicals, cranky Methodists, and Kevin — who really defies
categorization.
At our gatherings I am often reminded of Lutheran
Pastor Nadia-Bolz Weber, who upon realizing her congregation consisted of
everyone from transgender runaways to suburban soccer moms, thought to herself:
“I am unclear what all these people have in common.”[1]
For us, what we have in common is as simple and profound as a table.
It’s hard to believe, but this
Sunday will be my second to last week as the intern. And while I am sad it’s
ending, I’m excited that I still have a chance to attend our monthly Barn Raising
— I should probably explain: Once a month we forgo our regular worship service
at Jammin Java, to gather at the home of someone from the community, who has
asked for help with a specific project.
The term “Barn Raising” comes from the 19th
century practice of a community coming together to build a barn for one of its
members — think the Amish, or Seven
Brides for Seven Brothers, depending on your knowledge of playfully sexist musicals…
Past projects have involved laying mulch, painting, pulling
weeds, assembling Ikea furniture, and raking leaves. Of course, there are times
when the tasks have gotten a little more intense. For instance, when we dug up
a chain link fence held in the ground by giant blocks of cement. Or, the time it
took four of us to cut a fossilized dog crate out of a giant bush that had
swallowed it whole. On the very first day of my internship, I drove 45 minutes
into Virginia to help a family I’d never met install wood laminate flooring.
Now I love these gatherings, but I confess to
you that I haven’t always felt that way. Because, basically, these events are
pretty chaotic — especially when our work is outside; clearing yards full
of trash, hacking away at overgrown bushes, mining the dirt for glass and rusty
nails before the one of the kids inevitably
pick them with their bare hands. It can be a hot, sweaty, chaotic mess. And
while I thought about writing an Earth Day sermon on something like “the revelation
of God in nature,” lately I’ve been thinking a whole lot more about the role of
chaos in creation.
In the first creation story of Genesis, the writer tells us
that when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was formless and
void and darkness covered the face of the deep. The Hebrew word for this
pre-existent dark matter is the word tehom,
and because of its connection to the Babylonian creation epic, where the
world is formed out a sea of primordial chaos, there is growing support that
the biblical authors understood Yahweh’s creation of the world in much the same
way. And, if you ask our Hebrew Bible professor, Denise Hopkins, she would say
there are still pockets of chaos
wreaking havoc in creation, a darkness that persists in spite of our best
efforts to dispel it.
In the Christian tradition, Mary
Magdalene is portrayed as a woman acquainted with darkness. We know from Luke
18 that seven demons were driven out of her, which Mark attributes to Jesus’
healing ministry. In John’s gospel, the first mention of Mary Magdalene is at the
cross and in our passage tonight the text says she goes to the tomb while it is
still dark.
John sets the scene this way: its three
days after the crucifixion, Jesus, whose followers believed was the messiah, is
dead, murdered by the Roman Empire. The disciples are hiding out in someone’s
home, mourning, afraid they might be next. But Mary, apparently by herself,
goes to the tomb. And I’ve always
wondered: why Mary? Why is she —and not one the disciples— the one who
shows up? t can’t be that she has more faith. The text says when she discovers
the empty tomb she freaks out and runs to get help. And it can’t be that she has a better grasp of
the scriptures, because even if she did, the crucifixion was an unprecedented
event. No one could have seen this coming. Which I think is good profoundly
good news for us, because if resurrection depended on our ability to figure it
all out, or muster up an unbreakable faith, its likely Jesus would be in that
tomb a long time.
In one of the icon’s we’ve set up on this
side table, taken from a 14th century Psalter, there is a picture of Mary
Magdalene telling the disciples what she’s seen. It’s a great picture, because
almost all of them are pointing at scrolls, looking confused, while Mary has her
finger up as if to say: shut up and listen!
All I can work out is that Mary Magdalene
goes to the tomb, because when she was broken, Jesus showed up and loved her
back to life. Mary doesn’t anticipate the resurrection; she just wants to be
near him; to pay her respect for the extravagant grace and friendship that
shown to her. Love draws her to the tomb. Which means even when she thinks he
is dead in grave; there is still something about love that transcends death. Mary
is the patron saint of just showing up.[2]
I actually Googled this to see if she is
already the patron saint of anything, and I’m not kidding, apparently Mary
Magdalene is the patron
saint of: sinners, converts, hairstylists, perfumeries
and perfumers, pharmacists, and women — which would make for an interesting
resume…But I digress... Mary doesn’t spilt when the you-know-what
hits the fan. She shows up.
You’ll notice in another icon she’s not
standing next to the tomb, she’s standing in it. And I
can't help but think that — in its purest form — this is what ministry
looks like: showing up for our people in their darkest hour, when the light has
been gone for weeks, or even years.
Helping each other see the dark for what it is. Announcing that there
is a love that goes before us, a God who makes a way when there is no way, and
that the light of Christ cannot, and will not, and shall not be overcome!
The first time Mary sees
the resurrected Jesus she mistakes him for the gardener — a subtle reference to
creation stories of Genesis, where God tends to the Garden of Eden. The text
also notes that Mary discovers the empty tomb on the first day of the week, a
clue that this is the first day of a new creation.
When Mary finally
recognizes Jesus, he asks her to witness to the resurrection. To announce that a whole
new world is bursting forth, right here in the midst of this one. That the cosmos are being healed and
every thing restored and renewed to the place we know it is meant to be. So we
show up:
To
pull weeds.
To
plant bulbs in Jenny’s garden.
To
catch up with each other and test run Stav’s new grill.
To
help Sarah and Chris clear the leaves out of their neighbors yard, on the
anniversary of his wife’s death.
Each
month it’s something different, but we always start with communion.
A few years ago, one of our members wrote
a liturgy just for these occasions: A Liturgy for the Metaphorical Raising of Barns.
In it he describes the paradox of creation: that our world is both beautiful
and broken, that the church is a messy place but it is — if nowhere else— a
place where we experience connection, acceptance, and love, and that the work
of showing up is a backbreaking enterprise. It is not for the faint of heart.
But there is no other way. We are compelled to respond to the love we have been
shown. And as we show up for one another, we are gradually
loved back to life. Made new again, and again, and again, and again: Our
hearts slowly shaped in such a way that we become witnesses to a new creation, made visible as we gather
around a common table.
Emptier of tombs, we stand
in awe of your resurrection. Of the way you
pull us of out the graves we dig for ourselves and turn chaos into raw material
of a new creation. Be with us now, as you were with Mary in the garden, restoring
us to the wholeness that has been ours from the very beginning. May we be filled with your light, so that as
we feel our way through this suffering world, sparks of praise will splinter in
the dark like hope.
Amen.
[1] Nadia Bolz-Weber, “Seeing the Underside and Seeing God: Tattoos,
Tradition, and Grace” OnBeing, Interview
with Krista Tippett, retried from: http://www.onbeing.org/program/nadia-bolz-weber-seeing-the-underside-and-seeing-god-tattoos-tradition-and-grace/5896
[2] Nadia Bolz-Weber, Sermon
about Mary Magdalene, the masacre in our town, and defiant alleluias
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