The Three Sisters

Second Sunday of Easter

April 15, 2012

Acts 4:32-35

In today’s reading from the fourth chapter of Acts, verses thirty-two to thirty-five we have a very specific statement of how the resurrection community organized itself to be a witness to the resurrection of the “Lord Jesus”.

“Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common.”

“With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.”

“There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold”

“They laid it at the apostles feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.’

If this is what it looks like to be resurrected, then why don’t you people look more resurrected?

William H. Willimon writes:  “The most eloquent testimony to the reality of the resurrection is not an empty tomb or a well-orchestrated pageant on Easter Sunday but rather a group of people whose life together is so radically different, completely changed from the way the world builds a community, that there can be no explanation other than that something decisive has happened in history. “

The truth is that our life does not look radically different from the life of any one else living in this culture.  Each of us drove or rode to church this morning in a vehicle privately owned, having spent the evening resting in our privately owned homes.  We ate and clothed ourselves according to our privately held means.  All of this we derived from our personal capacity to generate debt and wealth in the money economy and not from the sharing of common goods.  Each of us in various degrees of success and failure participates in the money economy of our culture, an economy and culture that thrives on the corruption of our passions and desires.

You and I participate in, and are invested in a culture that is controlled by a kind of economic determinism.  In the life of our culture it is Money that makes the world go round.  And in order to ensure that this economic determinism is sustainable and all encompassing the culture has moved from a culture of need to a culture of wants.

In our culture people are valued and classed according to their ability to gain and control personal and private wealth.  Our culture is filled with symbols that make it easy for individuals and institutions to make value judgments base on the size and quality of an individual’s private property, whether it be a business, an investment portfolio, a house, an automobile, or the clothes hanging in a closet.

In this country we have moved from an agrarian culture to a manufacturing culture and from a manufacturing culture to a consumer culture.  People making choices that are driven by wants rather than needs is the engine that drives our whole economic system and the culture that is built around it.  If people were to suddenly buy only what they needed rather than what they wanted the whole economy and the cultural base feeding it would collapse.  The companies that control this system spend millions of dollars to bombard you every way they can think of with the propaganda necessary to keep this system running.  If you watch TV, go online, drive down the road, listen to the radio, and walk into any retail shop anywhere in this country you will be confronted with testimony after testimony about what you need.

Of course this is a deception!  When corporate America speaks to your needs they are really speaking to your wants, your desires, your passions, and your addictions.  The American consumer economy is not fueled by meeting your needs but by fueling your wants.  Calling our wants needs is just another way our culture controls our lives and the profit margin of corporate America and its shareholders.  Sadly, you and I are by virtue of living in this culture deeply implicated in this process.

The tragedy of this is while those with the means buy and throw away tons of things purchased to feed their addiction of want, a growing number of people are forced into poverty where their basic needs go unmet.  And at the same time, in our grief over something lost, we turn our attention away from our neighbor's needs to licking our wounds through more and more consumption of those things that feed our passions and desires.  It is this ever-growing reality that the passage from Acts challenges today.

But I am not arguing for some Marxist form of redistribution of wealth.  I am not suggesting you sell everything you own and lay the money at the feet of your pastor or even the church finance committee. 

I believe there is something much deeper and much more radical than the redistribution of wealth taking place in this passage from Acts.

What Acts is teaching, in the words of Willimon, is that “The church is called to be an alternative community, a sign, a signal to the world that Christ had made possible a way of life together unlike anything the world had seen.”   Or in the words of Paul: 

Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

"The resurrection life makes possible true generosity and bold living."  (Willimon)  It is a life that in its very living is a powerful testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. The resurrected life is a witness to an alternative life that values needs met.

So again I ask:  “Why don’t you people look more resurrected?”

I am not talking about some supernatural or heroic act of martyrdom.  I am not even talking about sacrificial giving.  What I am talking about is a radical return to the way creation works, an economy as old as creation itself.  As Christians we are called to return to a culture, an economy, that creates life, both individually, and in community--that in its very essence is a witness to the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

What I am suggesting here is not something new to this land.  When the Pilgrims first landed on Plymouth Rock it was for the purpose of building a resurrection community that would be a “beacon on a hill”, a community that in the way it lived its life together would be a witness to those ensnared in the Anglo/European culture back home.

And they almost starved to death!  If it had not been for the community of native peoples already living on this continent they never would have survived.  The Anglo-European people built their homes in neat rows, and planted their gardens in singular monocultures of plants, building a life in the same way as they had known in their native home.  Without even realizing it they were putting in place old habits that were systematically flawed.  They were using old tools in an attempt to build something new.

I am reminded of  “Audre Lorde’s well-known declaration that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”  What the New England colonist ended up doing, in spite of their best intentions, was to continue to use the tools of the life they knew from the old world.  The consequence was that the City on a Hill, that was to be a Beacon of Hope to the old world, ended up looking in to many ways just like the world they had left behind.  And in this way they ultimately failed.

But fortunately for them, the community of native peoples came to their rescue with food and knowledge of how to farm this new land that brought salvation to the colony and what we have come to know as the iconic Thanksgiving Feast which we celebrate each November. 

One lesson they learned is known as the Three Sisters which is a radically different approach to farming than what the colonist had known in the old world.  The Three Sisters are the three main agricultural crops of various Native American groups in North America: squash, maize, and climbing beans.  In what today we call companion planting the three crops are planted close together.  Flat-topped mounds of soil are built for each community of crops.  Each mound is about 12 inches high and 20 inches wide, and several maize seeds are planted together in the center of each mound.  In parts of the Atlantic Northeast, rotten fish or eels are buried in the mound with the maize seeds, to act as additional fertilizer where the soil is poor.  When the maize is 6 inches tall, beans and squash are planted around the maize, alternating between the two kinds of seeds.

The three crops benefit from each other.  The maize provides a structure for the beans to climb, eliminating the need for poles.  The beans provide the nitrogen to the soil that the other plants utilize, and the squash spreads along the ground, blocking the sunlight, helping prevent establishment of weeds.  The squash leaves also act as a living mulch, creating a microclimate to retain moisture in the soil, and the prickly hairs of the vine deter pests.  Nutritionists now know that the combination of corn, beans, and squash create a complete protein and thereby have a superior nutrition component when eaten together providing the human body with what is needed to live.  How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity.  (Psalms 133:1)

The Three Sisters is more than a metaphor for the life as described in the passage from Acts 4.  It is a witness to the way God‘s creation works interdependently, how in nature nothing is wasted in life or death.  And, how the needs of each member of creation is met, not independent from one another, but in an interdependent relationship with one another.  In other words, we as a resurrection community are called to meet one another’s needs.

So how do we start to look resurrected?  How do we go about reordering the way we live that we might be in Willemon’s words “a group of people whose life together is so radically different, completely changed from the way the world builds a community, ….”

It is a task that is daunting, if not impossible.  It is a task that requires that we become one people, heart and soul, which is of course a big reason this task seems daunting and impossible.  Consequently, it will require great power, and great grace.  And while it may seem daunting, even impossible, we can find confidence in our faith in the Son of God, who loved us and gave himself for us, along with his ever-present Spirit that promises to nurture, guide, and sustain us.

So how do we start?  How do we extricate ourselves from this culture in which we live? How do we get off the grid-to borrow a popular phrase.  And once we are off the grid, partially or completely, how do we order our life together so that we become a living testimony of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Ultimately the answer must come from you, but let me suggest some possible starting points.

1.    Turn off the TV.  Box it up.  Get rid of it, so that it is not a temptation.  The television is the number one tool in this culture working to corrupt our passions and desires.  Remember, the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.

2.    Grow your own food.  Do so in community whenever possible, but also at home that you might be a witness to your neighbors and neighborhood.  In growing your own food become a producer and not just a consumer.  Give your excess to the needy.  In all this tend the soil with the intention to increase the health of the soil and all the life that makes their living from the soil.  These creatures too are your neighbors.

3.    Do a personal inventory of how you spend your money.   Divide this inventory into two categories making a distinction between wants and needs.  Work to make every choice one of need and not of want.  Do not beat yourself up when you fail, but do not give up.  This is a life process that takes a lifetime to accomplish.  Be constant in your endeavors to live a life of need and not want, working constantly to reduce the purchase of those things that only feed your addictions, passions and desires.  Give everything you can of what is left over to tend to the needs of others.

4.    Participate in your neighborhood and community.  This will be easier without having the TV.   Especially tend to those organizations and gatherings that work to meet the needs of your neighbors and the larger community.  Beyond that, find ways to share your life with others.  Pull a chair onto the porch so you can observe and converse with your neighbors.  If you do not know your neighbors, how will you know their need?  And, if you do not know your neighbor’s needs, how will you be available to them in their need?

5.    Finally, as a member of the resurrected community, remember to pass the peace with such words as “The peace of Christ be with you”, and to sing the doxology. 

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow;

Praise God; all creatures here below;

Praise God for all that love has done;

Creator, Christ, and Spirit, One.

Amen.

So people, are you ready to start looking more resurrected? 

With God’s help, may it be so!

The First Deacon

LESSONS ABOUT HOSPITALITY IN OLD JERUSALEM

On Pentecost Sunday in 1993 I found myself walking the streets of the Old city of Jerusalem.  I had arrived in Jerusalem by way of being selected as one of five students from Candler School of Theology to participate in a travel seminar to the Middle East exploring the historical and archeological sites of Syria, Jordan, the Sinai, and Israel.  Our group was joined by similar groups of five students selected from two other seminaries, Presbyterian and Baptist, along with a group of lay people, a business owner, a dentist, a lawyer, and the wife of a former governor of the State of Georgia.  The leader of the group was Max Miller, a specialist in biblical archaeology who taught biblical history at Emory University.  Max completed the group of twenty that lived and traveled together for three weeks in the Middle East.

We had spent the previous two weeks traveling by bus to various ruins of the numerous attempts at political, economic, and military empire in Syria and Jordan.  Crossing the Red Sea in the middle of the night we arrived early in the morning only to begin the long hike up Mt Sinai in the dark so that we could watch the sun rise over the desert from the heights where scripture tells us God came near to have a conversation with Moses.  That same morning with little or no sleep we began the two-day journey north into Israel arriving in Jerusalem the night before the Jewish Sabbath on Pentecost weekend. 

On the Jewish Sabbath, we again boarded our bus to travel south, this time to visit the Gaza Strip.  In Gaza for the first time we were not touring the ancient ruins of ancient empires but current ruins a result of the current struggle between two peoples both claiming Abraham as their ancestral father.

In Gaza we were confronted with the brutal aftermath of the first intifada where Palestinian children with slings filled with stones had taken on the military might of the Israeli Defense Force with their guns, rubber bullets, tear gas, and tanks, a modern day twist on the story of David and Goliath.  We were introduced to many of these children who showed us the scars of their wounds from broken bones, punctures, and smashed heads to amputated arms and legs.  For those who chose to look closely we could see the broken childhood in their far off gaze revealing their all too recent memories of violence and bloodshed.

The refugee camp was a tragic sight of families struggling to survive.  Families had created rectangle yards fenced with brush and debris.  At one end the brush would support salvaged sheet iron or tarps, which served as shelter for the family that lived there.  In the middle would be the part of the yard where children and farm animals played.  On the opposite end was the open latrine where the extended family relieved itself.  This open latrine drained into what was a soccer field.  On one end was the open cesspool on the other a soccer game was still being played.  We visited the destroyed homes of whole Palestinian families who had promptly moved back into the ruins of their home seeking shelter amidst the destruction and rubble.  We visited the hospital with its graffiti covered walls and its dirt floor room where amputated limbs were temporarily placed before being buried in a common grave before nightfall.

The last stop on our visit to Gaza was to visit the office of a Palestinian lawyer who had chosen to stay even though his status and passport would have allowed him to flee.  When the American lawyer in our group heard him say that he had never been successful in getting a single one of his Palestinian clients released with only a very few receiving reduced sentences, the American lawyer asked why this Palestinian lawyer continued to stay and work in a legal environment that had proven to be so futile.  The lawyer responded that God had called him as a witness.  He hoped that by taking these cases to court he was helping to document for the future the injustices taking place in his homeland.  His hope was that at some future point in time when those who sought peace both Palestinian and Israeli were able to end the conflict that these court records would be used to testify to what had happened and would in turn, bring some measure of healing and justice to those who had fallen victim to a brutal family feud.

Everyone in the group had been shaken by what we had seen.  That day the ruins were not ancient and the faces of the people who lived in them were all too real.  When we arrived back at the hotel across from the ancient walls of old Jerusalem we gathered in the courtyard café to talk about what we had seen and to try to make some kind of sense of it all.  Few of us slept soundly that night.

The next day I was still greatly troubled by what I had seen and heard, the day before in Gaza, so instead of joining the group who were headed to tour the Garden at Gethsemane I asked to have some time to enter the old city of Jerusalem to be alone, to think about what I had experienced, to try to come to grips with the confusion I was feeling.

As I was walking I found myself on the Via de la Rosa. The Via de la Rosa is the route tradition says Jesus took from his prison cell to the site of his execution on the city trash heap, Golgotha.  Along the route the modern Christian religious leaders of the city have put numbered plaques on the wall like street signs naming the Stations of the Cross for those faithful who walk the route as part of a pilgrimage or ritual devotion.  I happened to notice, as I paused to catch my breath, that I was at the sixth station.  The traditional form of the Stations of the Cross has this as the place where Veronica wipes Jesus’ face with her veil.  In the alternate form this is where Jesus falls under the weight of the cross.  In the scriptural form, station six is where Jesus is scourged and crowned with thorns.  In 1993, station six is where the Palestinian Amahd was open for business, selling ceramics to neighbors and tourists alike.

As I entered his shop, Amahd the owner greeted me and asked me my name.  Calling me by name, he asked if I would mind if his son fixed us tea.  He explained he was teaching his son the ancient ritual of hospitality.  I assured him that it would be fine but asked him to tell me about this ritual.  Amahd explained that in the old days when the land was filled with large nomadic families that the people would move from watering place to watering place as they moved their flocks in search of fresh grazing.  Whoever arrived at the water source first would set up their tents and camp life would begin to take on a semi settled routine.

Camp life consisted of the women tending to the camp, the cooking, the laundry, and the childcare.  The older boys would be tending to the flocks.  Meanwhile, the men watched over both, watching for any threat that might challenge the well being of the gathered people. 

Eventually, predictably, another nomadic group would be seen approaching, they in their own turn looking for water and grazing for their families and flocks.  With warning from the elders, the boys would gather the flocks close to camp while the women would gather the young children in the tents.  Meanwhile, the men would prepare to meet the newcomers not knowing whether they were going to be friend or foe.

It is out of this very situation that the ritual of hospitality evolved.  A strong young man would be selected to ride out to meet the newcomers.  He would invite their elders to come into camp to have tea and conversation with the elders of his camp.  It was during this time of tea that each side would be sizing the other up, trying to determine whether they were to be enemies or friends, whether they would share camp or shed blood.  If things went well the two families would share the campsite staying until the grazing sheep and goats had eaten all available grass.  Then the families would pack up camp and go their separate ways.  Perhaps leaving behind a daughter, married off to a young man from the other tribe.

This tradition has been carried over into modern times.  For those who still hold to the traditions of old, before they will do business, they first offer tea and ask the potential customer about their family and their life.  You only do business with people you know and trust.  This is the tradition that Amahd was teaching his son as his father and I talked.

Ahmad’s son brought the tea and Amahd began to reminisce about the old days and lamented the changes he had experienced in his lifetime in the New Jerusalem.  I learned that Amahd had grown up playing in the streets around the ancient western wall of the temple mount.  Before the Israelis had captured the city in the six-day war the wall had been barely visible with all of the homes built against it.  Amahd began to tell stories of his childhood playing in the streets of Jerusalem in a time when Muslims, Christians, and Jews interacted as neighbors and friends instead of mortal enemies.

Today, according to Amahd, all of the Muslim children are being taught that Jerusalem is theirs, given as a gift of God, and that the faithful must fight to get rid of the Jewish and Christian infidels.

Likewise, the Jewish children are being taught that Jerusalem is theirs, given as a gift of God, and that the faithful must fight to get rid of the Muslim and Christian infidels.

God knows what the Christian children are being taught?

As for Amahd, he was hoping that somehow by teaching his son the ancient ritual of hospitality that he might be able to pass on the memory of a very different time when all the people of Jerusalem, Muslim, Jew, and Christian, lived together as neighbor and friend.

THE FIRST DEACON (Mark 1:29–39)

It had been a long time since she had felt like going to synagogue.  In fact it had been a long time since she had felt like doing anything.  The fever seemed to drain any energy she might have gained from those precious moments when she was able to doze off and sleep.  On this morning she could hear the excited sounds coming from the streets below.  Something new, something different must have happened at synagogue that day.  Lately, synagogue had become rather sparsely attended, some might even say boring.  After all, there were now alternatives for the citizens of Capernaum since the Romans had come to the land bringing their multicultural traditions of religion and entertainment.  Now on any given Sabbath the rabbi’s and scribes would have to compete with itinerate holy men wandering in and out of town with their new teachings, their miracle cures, all claiming to have authority.  The life of the town had become chaotic and somewhat divisive as people sought to convince their neighbors that the new guy in town was the real deal.

In the old days when she was a young woman she use to love to go to synagogue.  Life seemed simpler then.  The hymns of praise and the reading from the Torah had thrilled her spirit and reminded her of how she was connected to her ancestors all the way back to father Abraham and mother Sarah.  And when the Rabbi told the stories of how they had been saved by YHWH from exile only to wanderer lost in the great wilderness she could almost imagine herself there among them.  She was filled with pride and a sense of belonging when the stories of Saul, David, and Solomon where told.  Stories about how God had favored the children of Abraham and Isaac with a Kingdom unlike all others.

But these days seemed different somehow.  Maybe she was just too tired to care anymore.  Maybe it was time for the next generation to tell a new story, to create a story that better reflected the reality in which they lived.  Yet she longed somehow to be connected, to feel that somehow her story and the story of this generation were connected.  For the most part life was just too confusing.  She felt old.  She felt the world had left her behind.  So she lay in bed suffering from the fevers that racked her body and mind.

In her fevered mind she was still, somehow aware, when the boys came home.  She recognized the sounds of her son in law Simon.  And that was definitely Andrew, James and John.  She could recognize the raucous laughter of these boys anywhere.  She could tell by the sounds of their voices that they were excited.  Something must have happened at synagogue.  She hoped they would come up and tell her all about it.  Suddenly she realized that they were talking about her.  They had brought home a guest and there was no one to greet him.  Who was going to brew the tea?  She was embarrassed and somewhat perturbed, didn’t they know she was sick in bed.  What were they thinking bringing a guest home from synagogue?

Then she heard his footsteps on the stairs and knew that he was coming to see her.  A stranger entering her room, her private space, to weak to get out of bed, sick with fever, God help her, there was nothing she could do to stop what was about to happen.  What were the neighbors going to think?  She longed to cry out, “go away, leave me alone, can’t you see I am sick?”

He gently entered the room.  She was surprised to see he was a young man, about the same age as Simon.  Unlike Simon he was rather quiet.  He smiled at her and came over and sat by her bed.  He didn’t say anything; he just reached out and patted her hand.  Well that was a relief.  At least he wasn’t like so many others in the presence of the sick and dying who think themselves of such experience and authority that they can tell the sick and the dying what it is like to be sick and dying.  No, this one was different.  He seemed to know that this was not a time for words.  He just sat with her, gently holding her hand. 

She began to realize that there was something reassuring in his presence.  The old confusions that had been troubling her all morning left her as if this man had lifted her up from all despair and anxiety that only moments before had consumed her body and mind. 

Suddenly, she knew what was needed.  She could feel the sense of purpose returning, pushing the tired old fevers right out of her.  She felt alive again.  She knew what to do.  She knew she belonged.  She knew she was connected.  She knew she was needed.  So she got up, sent the man downstairs with the rest of the boys.  She began to wash her face and to get dressed.  Then with one last glimpse at her room, she turned and went through the door, made her way down the stairs, into the kitchen, and began to prepare the tea. 

It is in this way we remember Simon’s mother-in-law as the first Deacon of the church.

PROCLAMATION

Once again we have gathered in this place to be the Church, you and I, one people, undivided by ancestry, age, gender, or station in life.  The stories have been told.  Perhaps a lesson or two have been learned.  By God’s grace, hopefully we have heard the Holy Spirit whispering the gospel in our ears.  We are now left with only these words…

The Kingdom of God has come near.

Jesus is still healing!

The whole city is outside these doors.

Does anyone remember how to prepare the tea?