Where do you smell God?

PJ asks this question of every one of our program applicants. It throws most people for a loop because no one has ever asked them that before--or never told them God had a smell, or allowed them the spiritual contemplation to consider such a possibility. In retrospect, I'm kind of bummed she didn't ask me when she interviewed me to direct the program; since this week is an interview blitz, I was thinking about it.

I smell God in a lot of places.

I smell God in the salt air of my hometown, after I've been away long enough to adjust to a salt-free place.

I smell God in the subtle mix of detergent, deodorant, and Berkeley that is Jonathan's shoulder when I hug him hello.

I smell God in the deep warmth of masala chai.

I smell God in the pine and baked goods of my mom's house, just before Christmas.

I smell God in the untouched pages of a new book.

Tell me, where do you smell God?

For He is Our Peace -- A sermon on Ephesians, mostly.

Jeremiah 23:1-6

Psalm 23

Ephesians 2:11-22

Mark 6:30-34, 50-56

I bring you greetings this morning from the Belfry, the Lutheran-Episcopal Campus Ministry at UC Davis, and LEVN, the Lutheran-Episcopal Volunteer Network. I spend my days with a gaggle of young adults—some Lutheran, some Episcopalian, a whole bunch trying to figure out just where they fit in God’s world. 

My favorite thing about this—about my job, about ministry—is that not a single one of them is going it alone. For centuries—millennia, even—people of faith have been grappling with just what that means, what that looks like, and what to do about it. Sometimes, we do really well and life is good—we love our selves, we love our neighbors, we love our God. 

Other times, we do less well, and life is less good. We doubt ourselves, we hurt our neighbors, we ignore our God. 

If we look at the texts before us this morning, there’s some of this confusion. The prophet Jeremiah is lamenting that the flocks have been scattered; Psalm 23—a crowd favorite—acknowledges that we do occasionally walk through the valley of the shadow of death; Paul’s letter to the Ephesians centers on a schism between early Christians; and Mark’s gospel recounts a story of Jesus teaching wayward people who “were like sheep without a shepherd.” These stories take place hundreds of years apart, and yet carry with them the same idea—we cannot go it alone.

I want to focus on the Ephesians passage this morning; it feels like the real gut of these stories. The Apostle Paul is writing to a group of folks who are together, in some way, as a religious community in Ephesus, but who seem to have lost the spirit of that. They’ve tried to set up barriers. They’re all Gentiles, he says, so it’s not the classic Jewish Christian versus Gentile Christian argument. It’s a bunch of people who were once excluded now using their religion to exclude others. 

“Remember,” Paul writes, “that you were at one time without Christ…strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.” How soon they have forgotten who they once were. “But now,” he continues, “now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.” How soon they have forgotten the promise. 

These texts can speak to all of us. Whether we are “in” or “out”—or whether we’re not sure if we’re “in” or “out”, or whether we’ll remain “in” or “out” for long!

Just like these ancient Ephesians, we as 21st-century Americans have forgotten the promise. We have forgotten that all of our fellow humans are created in the image of God, and we have forgotten that all of us have been created equal. We have treated our neighbor in ways unworthy of the gospel. 

We have slandered our neighbor, we have enslaved our neighbor, we have terrorized our neighbor, we have assaulted our neighbor, we have deported our neighbor, we have incarcerated our neighbor, we have subjugated our neighbor, we have murdered our neighbor. 

Some among us are bold enough to call this a Christian nation—would the Apostle Paul? He begs the Ephesians, and us, to remember that Jesus “is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.” 

We have gone and rebuilt that wall, time and time again. We have built that wall between members of our congregations—between those who prefer the hymnal and those who prefer the electric guitar; between those with small, noisy children and those without; between those who give a lot and those who give a little. 

We have built that wall between ourselves and our communities, offering our space to the AA meeting, but not inviting addicts to join our worshipping community. 

We have built that wall between ourselves and the poor—donating to the food bank but not asking why children go hungry. 

We have built that wall between ourselves and other people of faith—proclaiming the love of God through Jesus applies only through our particular set of circumstances. 

We have built that wall between ourselves and the LGBT community—proclaiming that the unconditional love of God does, in fact, have conditions. 

We have built that wall between white americans and black americans—by refusing to acknowledge the racist system that continues to oppress and enslave.

We have built that wall between ourselves and God—blaming our struggles on God’s absence, yet failing to praise God’s presence for our every blessing.

The Apostle Paul reminds the Ephesians, and us, that Jesus the Christ “has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death hostility through it.”

In Christ there is no more need for division. In Christ there is a new creation. We are made whole, new, and unified through our baptism into the body of Christ. 

“So then,” Paul writes, “you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone.” 

Here in the household of God, the challenge and the solution are the same—Jesus the Christ lived, died, and was resurrected to end divisions. To free us from the power of sin and death, to liberate us from powers and principalities. In this new, undivided world we are free to love ourselves and one another—and we must.

I know I said that the Ephesians text was the meat of this week’s lectionary selection, but it’s the last two sentences of the passage from Mark that really seal the deal. Jesus and the disciples get out of the boat, and “people at once recognized him, and rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the marketplaces, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed.”

The people who meet Jesus, who know Jesus, immediately bring all of their people that they know and love who are sick to also meet him. They rushed about the whole region, it says! They understand that what Jesus is bringing to them is life. They do not hoard that for themselves, they do not keep it quiet. They tell everyone they know, they crowd him, they are relentless in their pursuit of the opportunity to share in the love of God through Jesus. 

That, too, is what we should be doing! Since we, through our baptism, meet Jesus and know Jesus, we should prioritize bringing everyone else into the love we know and that we receive, and that we therefore reflect. The way in which we do that is by proclaiming the good news, loving our neighbors, fighting for justice, tearing down walls, seeking reconciliation—all of these are the deeply rooted challenges that come with being people who are oriented in love. 

That is a blessing. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Fill in the Blank

I listen to a lot of great podcasts. A while ago, I wanted to like, "get into" podcasts, and thought that there was like, some sort of...way that one did that. Turns out, you just click on some and listen to them and then subscribe if you want new episodes to appear on your phone. And like, I didn't want to listen to Serial or to This American Life or to Radiolab or any of the NPR and NPR-esque podcasts that everyone says "but you HAVE to listen to it!" Sometimes I am a horrific contrarian. I love NPR for life, but INTERESTINGLY ENOUGH there is more to life than NPR.

[Tangent! Once, at a Secular Student Alliance meeting at CLU, we joked for a while about what the podcast would be called that each of us would host. Grant and Evan's podcast (related to their atheism) would be called The Lack Thereof--mostly because they were always punctuating other people's descriptions of things with a jabbing "or the lack thereof!" to underscore how inauthentic everything is in American society or whatever. Hashtag undergrads. Mine, it was determined, would be called Interestingly Enough (essentially an audio version of this blog, it turns out--I just get to tell the world about things I find interesting) because I throw that phrase into a lot of sentences, usually exposing some sort of irony or bullsh or whatever, usually about church. Thanks for playing!]

If you were with me a few months ago, you know that I added some rad podcasts to my life during my white media fast during Lent. [Read all about that here.] One of those excellent podcasts, Call Your Girlfriend, recently spoke right to me.  Not literally--they didn't answer my listener question or something, but Aminatou and Ann were talking about "making it" as a writer (in an answer to a listener question, actually) and I am grateful for the care they took in answering. They noticed that the question came from a place of fear and scarcity--the woman writing in expressed the concern that there were so many great writers around her that she could never be as good as. Ann, a journalist and freelance writer extraordinaire, explained a common phase among writers that involves feeling like nothing you write is ever as good as anything you read. And then she said,

"If you're stopped in your tracks by other people's great writing instead of inspired by it, there's no future in that for you" (Episode 29).

I said, "huh" out loud. I paused the podcast for a second. I "rewound" a bit to hear her again, because I wanted to copy down the sentence so I could eventually write this about it. I do not consider myself "a writer", per se, and as such am rarely intimidated out of writing something based on reading the excellent writing of others--I so do not equate myself with them, and therefore find no problem rambling madly here with you. :)

But the reason this spoke right to me is because I often feel this way about other pastors. I sometimes allow the incredible preaching, teaching, and caring of others to stop me in my tracks and intimidate me away from being my best pastoral self. What Ann has so simply and deeply reminded me is that all those other superb pastors are part of how I am the pastor that I am. We, together, are the church. We, together, are the ELCA. We, together, are the body of Christ. Because a colleague of mine can succinctly/beautifully/boldly/radically/poetically express the Gospel does not mean that I should discontinue expressing the Gospel. So so much the opposite. I need the excellence of my peers to foster the excellence in me.

What about you? If we changed "writing" to a _______, what would it be for you? What do you do, and whose doing of that thing falsely intimidates you out of doing it the way you know to be true? Fill in that blank. And then really fill it.