Judges 4:1-7 † Psalm 123 † 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11 † Matthew 25:14-30

​Did you hear about Danica Roem? She will soon be seated as a Delegate in the Virginia House after soundly defeating 13-term incumbent Bob Marshall.
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Now, that may not strike you as especially noteworthy. Incumbents lose all the time. What does a state race all the way across the country have to do with us or with these texts? Well you may remember Bob Marshall for something that made national news not that long ago; he sponsored a statewide bill restricting access to public bathrooms for transgender people. He has been one of those loud voices calling for restrictions of LGBTQ rights and his politics have concentrated on so-called social issues, which is another way of saying Marshall has consistently sought to restrict and discredit people whose lives do not conform to the ways of so-called traditional values. In fact, Bob Marshall has proudly referred to himself as Virginia’s “chief homophobe.”[i]

Roem, Marshall’s opponent is something of a policy wonk. A journalist living in the weeds of local policy matters before running for political office. During the race, congestion on Route 28 was her most consistent talking point, along with extending commuter rail to the Innovation Park business incubator in Manassas to lure more high-paying jobs, and eliminating local taxes on business and professional licenses.

But that’s not what caught the attention of the outside world or of Bob Marshall. It was that Roem was transgender after recently completing the transition from male to the female identity she had always understood to be her true self.

Revelation 7:9-17 † Psalm 34:1-10, 22 † 1 John 3:1-3 † Matthew 5:1-12 

“We have to stop and get Gran some ice cream.”

That was the memory that pressed in most strongly as I looked down at the rough map of my family that I had drawn.  It was for a class, this map, and I wasn’t at all happy that I had to do it.  We were to draw out the relational and emotional map of our families 3 generations back so that we could examine together the dynamics and the forces that are at play; so we could see what had formed us, and what has power over us.

I looked down at my map, all colored boxes and tiny dates and squiggly lines. “We have to stop and get Gran some Ice cream”, I heard my mom say, and my dad, and my uncle Hugh, my Uncle Ralph, my cousin James, my cousin Helen.

You see, when we gathered at my Gran’s house with family, everyone knew that someone had to stop at the corner shop right below her apartment and grab a little tub of the soft serve ice cream they sold there.

Now all these years later, it is this thing that I remember, so fondly. So much more happened in my family as shown by the rough contours of my map. Rough times, and happier times. People, regular, complex people trying to do the best they could, struggling with hurt passed down over the generations.  Family gatherings could get difficult, old patterns kicked in. But she would always look forward to ice cream, and she would laugh when we brought it, and she would sit with her grandkids, while the other adults did their thing, she would sit and share a little ice cream. 

Exodus 3:1-15 † Psalm 105:1-6, 23-26, 45c † Romans 12:9-21 † Matthew 16:21-28


​“The problem is part of the solution,” Richard Rohr tells us.
Jesus was fully at home with a tragic sense of life. He lived, died, and rose inside it. Jesus’ ability to find a higher order inside constant disorder is the very heart of his message—and why true Gospel, as rare as it might be, still heals and renews all that it touches.[i]
 
There’s something hopeful here, I think, in Rohr’s insight—especially in these days when we are so attuned to political and social unease, to the distress of recent natural disasters and human suffering moving almost as if in slow motion.

Moses finds himself before the bush because God is fully at home with a tragic sense of life. God has seen the misery of the people of another time.

Paul seems to have understood this in Romans. Evil, hatred, persecution are all a part of the familiar landscape of the early church in Rome and true religion. There is no denial of it—things are rough. But there is also engagement with it, a way out, even: “Bless those who persecute you… Weep with those who weep.”[ii] The one that caught me this time around was a little farther down Paul’s list: “if your enemies are hungry, feed them…”[iii]

Readings for this Sunday:

1 Samuel 8:4-11, 16-20 | Psalm 138 | 2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1| Mark 3:20-35

I’ve preached this Mark text a number of times in the past, but I had never really noticed before that Jesus goes home. I don’t know about you. I don’t really think about Jesus as one who had a home. But that’s where he is. He’s home—apparently where he grew up. This is reinforced at the end of this section when Jesus’ mother and brothers show up. But this turn doesn’t seem to make home any homier. They think he’s gone too far, and the way Mark tells the story, their attempt to restrain Jesus is perhaps the greatest injury, personal rejection piled onto the charges made against him by the religious authorities from Jerusalem.

Maybe the question isn’t “Can you go home again?” but “Why would you want to?” What a blow this must have been!

Many of us know the complexities of family life. Our hunger for the idea of home is all the greater because those places where we would expect to find home are sometimes the places of our most infrequent encounters. Ask any therapist. We spend our lifetimes working in one way or another to make sense of our family ties, to live out from under them, to allow them to fund our strength and courage and wholeness.

The majority of my pastoral conversations have some element of family in them, and I suspect the ones that don’t are lacking that dynamic only because I’m not paying close enough attention.