Sermon: Hysterical strength

 

Sermon for September 6, 2015 / 5:30pm

Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost 

(Proper 18)

The Rev. Vicki K. Hesse

St. Philip’s In The Hills, Tucson, AZ

Lord, open our lips, that our mouth shall proclaim your praise.  Amen

We have all heard stories

of mothers who pick up a car to save their baby,

or heroes who do incredible feats

to save someone who is in an accident.

In 2006 in Tucson, Tim Boyle watched

as a Chevrolet Camaro hit an 18-year-old.

The car pinned the young adult,

still alive, underneath.

Boyle ran to the scene of the accident and

lifted the Camaro off the teenager,

while the driver of the car pulled him to safety.[1]

This is just one of dozens of stories. 

Stories of well-documented feats

of what the medical community calls

“hysterical strength” – that

-- unnatural and amazing strength

tapped during high-stress situations.

These stories jar our sense of possibility.

This “hysterical strength” might be

what happened with the woman

in the gospel reading today. 

Jesus had left Jerusalem

and went away to the region of Tyre,

a Gentile, non-Jewish region, to get away. 

He did not want anyone to know he was there. 

The Syro-Phoenician woman

heard he was in the area and

sought him out immediately. 

She felt the horror of her daughter’s affliction

and was filled with fierce motherly love.

She approached Jesus and

begged him to cast out the demon

from her daughter.

And then, she heard, “No.” 

From Jesus.  She heard, “No.”

Have you ever heard a “No” from Jesus

in your life?  Or sensed a “No”? 

It seems so out of character! It seems so unfair.

Sometimes, we seem to hear

a “no” from God when we ask for help

in the midst of our struggle while

nothing seems to soothe us.

Sometimes, we don’t even ask;

Thinking that we are not worthy

to ask for our needs –

maybe we feel we are not holy enough,

since we can’t come to church every Sunday,

or we forget to pray every day.

Sometimes, we might feel that

our struggle seems so minor

compared to the horrors we hear about:

the striking SunTran employees;

out of work on Labor Day.

the refugee crisis in Europe

(and in our own country)

… people fleeing a deadly life

in their own country and

are turned away at the borders,

the struggle of race relations in our country,

shown by high percentage

of Af Am’s in prison

compared to the general population,

the death of endangered species

threatened by climate change

We wonder –

why would God even bother with our little pain? 

So we hear “No.”

Or we think we hear “No.”

But is it possible, that it is a “not yet,”?

Is it possible that we simply have not recognized

how God is doing a new thing?

The Syro-Phoenician woman heard “not yet.”

Standing near Jesus, she came and bowed down. 

Near him, she found a hysterical strength

to respond to Jesus, who engaged in a

verbal sparring match.

And with her phrase of equal strength and power,

the woman expresses her gritty faith;

she did not take his “No.” 

She made Jesus reconsider

what “faith” looks like. 

He noticed her persistence.

He noticed her hopeful insight.

He noticed her trusting acceptance.

àHere, Jesus recognized the woman’s argument

as stronger than his own and

he granted her petition.

àHere, Jesus reframed faith as –

clinging to Jesus,

expecting him to hear, to restore, to save. 

It is demanding he do

what he says he is going to do. 

The woman,

fueled by her hysterical strength,

knew that Jesus

would never turn away

anyone who seeks help.

This encounter recalls

the story in John’s gospel

at the wedding in Cana. 

Mary, Jesus’ mother,

insists that since there is no wine,

that he is to do something. 

“Woman, what concern is that to you and to me?

My hour has not yet come.”

Yet, he does do something and

changed the jars of water into wine. 

This was the first of his signs,

revealing his glory.

In today’s story,

another women pushes him

with hysterical strength of wit

to cross boundaries

of gender, religion and ethnic origins,

to heal her daughter. 

He was just trying to get away,

but instead, he changed his mind.

He healed the woman’s child.

The miracle here is not just

the demon extraction,

but also the overcoming of

prejudices and boundaries

for his love.

Jesus knew that he could never

turn away anyone who seeks help –

even those “gentiles” –

the non-Jew population of the world.

And so it is with us.  Next to Jesus, we, too,

find in our community of faith

a tenacity, a wisdom, a wit. 

Next to Jesus, in our community of faith,

we find a hysterical strength. 

For example, from our own community,

Early on, the

“Border and Immigration” ministry team

heard a “No” from the community.

There was debate about

where the community might support

 – or not – the refugees and immigrants

from our nearby border. 

Yet as the ministry team continued

to pray and discern and be tenacious,

hearts softened and opened up

to realize our role and

the possibilities to which God is calling us. 

Our community began to find healing

through the presence of Jesus

and monthly prayer vigils, border visits and sewing efforts.

Not all the problems have been solved,

but many hearts have been transformed

and God’s redemption is making way.

In another example, our own community engaged

“After School Music (and homework) Program”

that supports children of two

nearby elementary schools. 

At these schools,

nearly all the children qualify for free lunch

due to their poverty. 

Through prayer and presence near Jesus,

our community

discerned a need to transform

hearts through serving these kids. 

Again this year,

we will have 22 children and 50 volunteers

each weekday to make a difference

in each others’ lives.

Not all the poverty problems have been solved,

but many hearts have been transformed

and God’s redemption is making way.

Coming up on October 31, you, too,

can stand in the presence of Jesus –

in this community. 

On that Saturday,

our community will engage in prayer,

dreaming of ways we can live into

our vision for St. Philip’s. 

How do we do that? 

Like the Syro-Phoenician woman, we persist.

We express hopeful insight.

We demonstrate trusting acceptance. 

We dream of bringing about

God’s redemptive powers to heal the world.

All voices matter in this discussion;

we hope you will participate.

The good news today is that

God’s hyperactive strength embues us

with courage and hope and tenacity. 

God heals and reconciles and offers wholeness

to you and to me and to our community. 

For when we are held together

by the nearness of Jesus,

here at the Eucharistic table,

we can recognize new possibilities

in a truly abundant world. 

Amen.

---

[1] Cited at http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/arts/circus-arts/adrenaline-strength.htm#.VenTkW1oXQk.mailto on September 5, 2015

Sermon: Blessed Assurance

 

Sermon for February 16, 2014

Frances Jane (Fanny) Van Alstyne Crosby (Obs)

St. Philip’s In The Hills Parish, Tucson, AZ

The Rev. Vicki K. Hesse

For online access to the readings click here.

I speak to you in the name of one God+, loving Creator,

redeeming Christ, and sustaining Spirit. Amen.

Today we recognize Frances “Fanny” Crosby.

We know Crosby as a prolific writer of hymn texts and

gospel songs in the American evangelical tradition

of late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. 

Crosby wrote more than 8,000 sacred texts,

over 1,000 secular poems, four published books of poetry

and two autobiographies.  

Crosby’s contributions to the genre of

American gospel music was unequaled.

For most hymn writing, the words come first.

Then the composer sets the text to music.

Crosby’s giftedness meant that composers

could take her their tunes and

she would immediately shape the words to fit the music. 

This is the process that led to her most well-known hymn,

Blessed Assurance. 

Born in 1820, Crosby became blind

from an illness at six weeks old. 

Her father died shortly after she was born,

so her mother and grandmother raised her. 

She attended and later taught in the NY Institute for the Blind

and married at the age of 23. 

They had one daughter who died soon after birth.

While she had many difficulties, her competence fueled her

to compose six or seven hymns a day,

working on as many as twelve at once before dictating them.

In spite of being blind,

or perhaps because of her blindness,

Fanny Crosby saw the glory of the living God

with great clarity in her mind’s eye. 

She modeled how to praise God and

to sing of God’s love, as noted in the Collect for today.

Today we also celebrate other female musicians

who in their own right have overcome great odds

to offer their gifts to us:

Hildegard of Bingen, Catherine Winkworth, Elizabeth Poston, Eleanor Daley, Dorothy Papadakos, and Pamela Decker.(p.15)

Through these musicians and their gifts, we hope to

open up expansive ways of knowing the sacred and

naming God other than “God the Father.” 

“God the Father” is a powerful image and

holds great promise and hope for many people. 

And, there are many other names of God that might be used;

for images from human experience and nature

tell of a God who is indeed beyond our naming. 

Within scripture, God is imaged as

judge, midwife, dew, gardener, bearer and protector,

rock, fortress, deliverer, comforting mother,

“I am,” good shepherd, lion, leopard”[1]

*pause*

A few years ago, we traveled to

Denali National Park in Alaska. 

On the road into the park, the driver of our tour bus remarked

how uniquely clear it was that day and said that

at the next stop we might be able to see “The Mountain.”

By this she meant, North America’s tallest peak,

Mt. McKinley, (aka Denali) at 20,000 feet. 

As we disembarked the coach, I looked and looked –

it was clear but hazy. There was no mountain in sight.

Someone offered to take our photo with the mountain

in the background,

and while it was not in view, we agreed. 

Embarrassed, I asked if they would point out where

The Mountain was. 

That person showed me what I had missed. 

I had been staring right at it;

it filled the sky from horizon to sun rays

and yet I had not seen it. 

It was gigantic –

so big that it was beyond my comprehension. 

Once I saw The Mountain I could not NOT see it. 

Perhaps, this is a bit like our experience of the Sacred. 

We need each other to point out

the hugeness of God that is standing right in front of us. 

If we always envision God as Father,

perhaps we miss, or are blind to, other aspects of God.

Jesus refers to this blindness in our Gospel reading.  

This passage allows us to “eaves drop”

on the conversation

between the one born blind and later healed by Jesus. 

And that is where grace happens –

in that intimate Love relationship between us and God,

in that experience of surrender and of transformation. 

Jesus learns that the person he had healed was expelled

from the Temple. 

Jesus finds the healed one and asks,

"Do you believe in the Chosen One?"

To which that person replies,

"Who is this One, that I may believe?"

"You're looking at him," Jesus offers.

"The Chosen One is speaking to you now."

There, right in front of that person, was Jesus. 

The Chosen One, the Divine, was right there. 

It was so gigantic –

so big that it was beyond the person’s comprehension. 

“The healed one said, "Yes, I believe,"

and then could not NOT see the Divine.

I wonder if that is what happens when we unconsciously have

God in a box and only look for the sacred in one category. 

Sight and blindness are not defined by one’s physical sight

but by one’s openness to the revelation of God. 

One of the “boxes” informing our grasp of the Divine

is the Nicene Creed. 

In her book “Gender and The Nicene Creed,”

author Elizabeth Geitz tells that

“Throughout tradition… God has been referred to…

as Father because Jesus addressed God as abba,

which literally translated means “daddy.”[2]

Through the name abba,

Jesus expressed the extremely personal and intimate nature

of his relationship with God…

And, while Jesus’ naming of God as abba is clearly important…

it does not stand alone but with other images.

For example, in Jesus’ parables,

God is a woman searching for her lost money,

a shepherd looking for his lost sheep,

a bakerwoman kneading dough,

the birth experience delivering persons into new life…

so if we take Jesus’ revelations about God seriously,

Geitz asks,

shouldn’t we take all of his revelations into account? 

Geitz invites us to be cautious about using one name

to the exclusion of others. 

Doesn’t that distort the image of the one God

who is beyond our naming…?”

The hazard of using only “Father” for God,

is that it conveys the message that God is male,

which is theologically inaccurate.

It is appropriate, then, to use female and male imagery

for God

in light of the many revelations of Jesus.

In Alice Walker’s The Color Purple,

Celie, the protagonist,

writes letters to God and to her sister.

Celie is a fourteen year old black girl living in the South

who has been abused…

One day she says to her friend, Shug Avery,

“Ain’t no way to read the bible and

not think God is white. 

When I found out I thought God was white,

I lost interest.” 

Her friend Shug responds,

“My first step from the old white man was the trees.

Then air. Then birds. Then other people. 

But one day when I was sitting quiet and

feeling like a motherless child, which I was,

it come to me:

that feeling of being part of everything and not separate at all.”

Being part of everything and not separate at all

is surely a gift of the living God!

When we say the Creed, “We believe in one God,

the Father, the Almighty,” we can be aware that

God as Father was only one revelation of Jesus

regarding the nature of God. 

God as Father does not stand alone in revelations of God

throughout scripture and the history of the church. 

God as Father is only a partial picture.

We can expand our vocabulary of prayer and

the ways in which we name the Holy One. 

When we do, we bear witness to the fact that

the mystery of God transcends all categories of knowing,

So, when you feel expelled from God’s presence,

Jesus will find you and ask,

“Do you believe in the Chosen One?”

You might reply,

"Who is this One, that I may believe?"

Don’t be surprised if Jesus responds,

"You're looking at him…the Chosen One is speaking to you now." There, right in front of you, will be Jesus, the living God.

The experience of the living God exceeds our hope and surpasses our memory. 

The experience of the living God is more than the signs that point toward the sacred,

more than the sacraments that share in it,

more than the stained glass that depicts it,

more than the music that celebrates it. 

The experience of the living God is beyond masculine or feminine. 

To paraphrase The Rev. Frank Wade,

the experience of the living God is the

“Holy-cow, what-was-that, where-did-that-come-from and how-did-that-happen experience.

It is feeling the wind of the Spirit whip around us. 

It is drawing on the invigorating results of spiritual discipline. 

It is seeing doors open where there had only been walls before.

It is finding still water in a shadowed valley

of illness or grief or loss and then

feeling the rod that comforts, the staff that guides. 

It is being drained by intercessory prayer and

rejuvenated by praise.

It is the recurring miracle of loaves and fishes

seen over and over by the generous and the vulnerable. 

It is in the unfocused eyes of the newly born and

the about to die

who know that the unknown at either end of life

is held in common cause and common embrace. ”[3]

Today, may we experience the living God,

the God that loves beyond all categories,

with great clarity in a sacred, holy, healing way that is

bigger than you can imagine...

That is blessed assurance, indeed! 

Amen

---

[1] Portions inspired by Elizabeth Rankin Geitz, Gender and The Nicene Creed, (New York, Church Publishing, 1995) p. 15-24

[2] Portions inspired by Elizabeth Rankin Geitz, Gender and The Nicene Creed, (New York, Church Publishing, 1995) p. 15-24

[3] The Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade, former interim dean of the Washington National Cathedral, offered at the 190^th Commencement at Virginia Theological Seminar, Alexandria VA, May 22, 2013. VTS Journal, p. 41-43.