00:00:11.540 - 00:00:27.240

Good morning. Today is the last day in this series. Here I stand. I don't know about you, but I have been touched and even moved by many of the sermons that we've heard in this

00:00:27.240 - 00:00:46.430

series. So I come humbled this morning and also and always quite amazed because the tradition that formed me held that women were to remain silent in the assembly . And yet here I am, yeah, God's

00:00:46.430 - 00:01:02.370

spirit has taken me on quite a journey and this morning I offer you my testimony. Will you pray with me? Please, May the words I speak . Honor you! Oh Lord! And by your

00:01:02.370 - 00:01:19.990

holy spirit, will you bless all those gathered here . Amen. My Granddaddy had to be moved to a nursing home in 1988 and when mom went to clean out his attic, she found a big shoe

00:01:19.990 - 00:01:37.450

box full of letters. These were the letters that she had written to my grandmother every Sunday afternoon for nearly 30 years. Well, I couldn't wait to look at him and I found one that she wrote

00:01:37.460 - 00:01:52.410

the summer. I was nine months old and here's part of what she said, Missy, that's me . Missy wore the yellow sun suit. I made her to church this morning. She really likes the

00:01:52.410 - 00:02:07.600

singing. Her favorite so far. Seems to be bringing in the sheaves. Do do you know that song? It's a simple melody, but it's very rousing. I'm not surprised I liked it. And

00:02:07.600 - 00:02:23.200

you would like it to if you were a baby . But this image of me as this chubby nine month old baby just gurgling and burbling and bouncing and worship signifies quite a bit. I was all in

00:02:23.370 - 00:02:40.080

from the get go. Our family went to church every sunday morning, every sunday night and to Wednesday night, midweek bible study. Both of my parents were sunday school teachers. We sang and prayed and

00:02:40.080 - 00:02:55.090

read the bible in family devotionals. We had a family memory verse Philippians 48 and if you know that verse, you will easily see that it was my mother's effort to inoculate us with moral virtue. I

00:02:55.090 - 00:03:10.460

did my bible lessons every saturday night in a little workbook. I invited my friends to vacation bible school and my my mother go pick them up and actually take them to vacation bible school. I memorized scripture

00:03:12.040 - 00:03:27.860

Psalm 121 which we heard today is one of the first ones. I remember being in a little cozy bathroom with a space heater on a cold morning early , early teaching myself this psalm as my family slept

00:03:30.640 - 00:03:44.810

now. I did wonder about a few things. I wondered about the family headed for the beach that we passed on our way to church. Did they love each other? I wondered, I mean,

00:03:44.810 - 00:03:58.770

I have been taught that God is love and that we come to know God through jesus christ that we are baptized because we know God and that were part of church and I just wasn't at all sure whether

00:03:58.770 - 00:04:15.260

people who hadn't done all these things even could love and I also wondered what since I had committed that were so bad that an innocent man had to die a criminal's death on the cross to pay for them

00:04:17.540 - 00:04:30.930

. Now these were insiders questions right. And they did not erode the foundation of my faith. My father had a book on the bookshelves in our den and the title was a place to stand by Elton

00:04:30.930 - 00:04:51.860

Trueblood and when I saw that title I felt a swell of pride because I knew where I stood, Christianity was the foundation was the ground of who I was. And then and then the church broke my

00:04:51.860 - 00:05:15.930

heart, people that I loved and trusted, who had taught me about radical grace, about abundant love about christian community. Those people send in ways that wounded me and all of us, my friends who

00:05:15.930 - 00:05:38.840

were vulnerable adolescents through sexual trespass, negligence, manipulation , deception, denial, betrayal, I learned I could not trust my experience or the words of the Church. I couldn't see how God was protecting me

00:05:38.840 - 00:05:54.760

from evil, how God's hand was providing shade over me. I couldn't see it at all because God promised good to those who followed him right? And I twisted my gut into a pretzel, trying to

00:05:54.770 - 00:06:09.730

find the good in that situation. And I twisted my mind so much as to distort reality, as I tried to find and keep faith with who I knew God, who I thought I knew God to

00:06:09.730 - 00:06:30.830

be and my heart blood numb. For some reason , I don't know why. The 3rd chapter of Colossians stayed with me. It held a promise for something beyond what I could see. My old life

00:06:30.840 - 00:06:45.790

was dead, but a new life was in me . It was a mystery. But one day my life would be revealed and I would be whole again . And in the meantime the secret was christ in

00:06:45.790 - 00:07:04.200

me the hope of glory. I was no longer all in. But I couldn't be all out either . I could not exercise the beautiful story of jesus christ, the practices of faith, the rock bottom

00:07:04.200 - 00:07:21.770

, truth bread, and my bones. I don't know why, but I couldn't. So I just let it lay. This mystery lightened dormant. I thought my way from coming of age, heartbroken Nous

00:07:21.780 - 00:07:40.890

to where I stand today was opened by a series of garment reaching touches. I was searching, not settled and I reached I reach for ideas and some of this won't mean anything to you. But I

00:07:40.890 - 00:07:59.750

reached for ideas like Matthew Fox is coming of the cosmic christ and James Fowler is becoming adult, becoming christian and Elizabeth johnson's she who is I reached for experiences for scott Peck's community building workshops for a house

00:07:59.750 - 00:08:16.790

church where we I just thought we were so crazy because we passed a talking stick, a course called Witchcraft, where I was going to find my true calling and I reached for justice. I protested the

00:08:16.790 - 00:08:37.170

building of Barton Creek Mall to protect the Edwards Aquifer . I went to prayer vigils before the invasion of the first gulf war and I went to hear a civil rights activist speak. He was a black preacher

00:08:37.180 - 00:08:54.890

who happened to be a methodist, who happens to get me into the methodist church where I happened to stay there by way of reaching for the him of a garment to save my life. Some people say

00:08:54.890 - 00:09:09.800

that the hemorrhaging woman didn't really mean to touch jesus . They say she was just in the vicinity and the crowds pushed her into them into him. What could be some say that she touched his clothes because

00:09:09.800 - 00:09:26.660

she was superstitious and believed that a person's power was transmitted through their clothing. Maybe some say she wanted to be restored to the community from which she had been ostracized because she couldn't comply with the purity codes

00:09:26.660 - 00:09:41.170

. But new testament, scholar Amy Jill Levine says no, she says that the way people lived, everyone was in violation of the holiness codes almost all the time. Plus the violation of those codes resulted

00:09:41.170 - 00:09:56.110

in not having access to the temple, which for the people in galilee was a non issue. So no motive there. The truth is we don't really really know what was going on in the mind of

00:09:56.120 - 00:10:16.350

this bleeding woman. Just as we rarely fully know our own wise. The mystery is that the healing comes anyway. And as I found my way and the bleeding of my broken heart slowed and then stopped

00:10:16.480 - 00:10:33.260

and then scabbed over, I noticed a funny thing . The young girl me was being restored. I could feel her coming back to life and when she did, she headed immediately for a school of theology

00:10:33.740 - 00:10:50.680

to answer her questions about that family on the way to the beach and about her sins that were so bad. An innocent man had to die. Do you think that the woman healed and the girl restored

00:10:50.680 - 00:11:05.820

to life ever went back to the way things were before they got sick. Now, I don't know if what I'm about to say is Aisa, jesus or constructive theology per dr tamer, but here I

00:11:05.820 - 00:11:22.570

go. Think about it. They had each had horrible things happened to them. The girl says sick , she died. And they had also each been healed in an amazing, extraordinary way. And I

00:11:22.570 - 00:11:39.740

think as they lived into this new life, things got a little complicated. I imagine that in subtle ways people treated them differently. Maybe things were a little strained at the family dinner table. Maybe people

00:11:39.750 - 00:11:56.840

abruptly quit talking when the woman ran into them at the well, Or did she just imagine that? And maybe the little girl was teased and taunted and her friends said, resurrect my dog. Perhaps her

00:11:56.840 - 00:12:13.920

parents anxiously scrutinized her to see if in fact she was normal. The woman and the girl were part of the community. Yes, sure. But they were really no longer one of them, they had

00:12:13.920 - 00:12:33.430

moved to the edge of the inside. Those two had to live with the incomprehensibility of their healing. A mystery that I imagine made some people uncomfortable, suspicious or unbelieving. And I wonder if sometimes in

00:12:33.430 - 00:12:48.620

the dark of night the woman woke up wondering who that man really was wondering. Maybe it was a coincidence that the bleeding stopped right at that moment. Maybe it was the treatment I had already taken that

00:12:48.620 - 00:13:05.220

was finally in effect. Or maybe the girl, as she walked along alone one day down the road , wondered if maybe the others were right. The ones who said that she had not died or had

00:13:05.220 - 00:13:20.590

she died? Was she asleep? Was she faking it? Maybe I don't really know what happened. I was just a little girl. How can women trust their own experience? Now, this is my

00:13:20.590 - 00:13:39.000

question. As a woman in a system where now for the very first time in my life, I have heard a man in power say I believe the women the first time a man empower in public has

00:13:39.000 - 00:13:54.340

said, I believe the women, when they speak of their experiences of their own bodies and of those who trespass against them. Okay, Maybe it's pure politics, but the words have been said and they

00:13:54.340 - 00:14:15.250

have been recorded. How can women trust their own experience? Watch what Jesus did in Mark's story, Jesus did not trespass against the female bodies. The hemorrhaging woman initiated the contact. She touched his garment

00:14:15.260 - 00:14:31.280

and he turned and he spoke to her and he believed her when she said she was healed, he did not ask for proof and he did not touch her at all. And Jesus took the hand of

00:14:31.290 - 00:14:50.100

Garrison's daughter in his own hand. He did not come from above and lay hands on her. He took hers in his. In this revelation of who God is, we see that Jesus loved is side

00:14:50.100 - 00:15:16.470

by side its power with it is not power over . Jesus reveals the mystery and in this place women's bodies are safe and this reality saves my life. This is the reality on which I stand immediately.

00:15:16.470 - 00:15:35.450

My harsh inner critic rises to speak mystery mutuality. You cannot be serious and believe me. No one will take you seriously. Those are code words for intellectual laziness, inability to take a stand, wishy

00:15:35.450 - 00:15:52.750

wash you in decision and just mushy thinking cop outs as we used to say back in the day, you will be spit out as lukewarm. My dear harsh critic is harsh, but I know differently.

00:15:52.760 - 00:16:11.820

I know I know that the mystery of love expressed not as power over, but as compassion and mutuality and wide openness. That mystery calls me to a stand, a particular place that I occupy in God's

00:16:11.820 - 00:16:29.470

realm. My gifts and wounds my education and experience have prepared me to stand here and the world needs people who stand here at the edge of the inside . You know, I picture the woman and the

00:16:29.470 - 00:16:44.720

girl standing here with me at the edge of the inside, knowing that are broken cells have been touched by healing power that is with us that can hold all of who we are. We trust in the

00:16:44.720 - 00:17:07.250

mysterious reality that is love, creator redeemer and sustainer . These women's experiences prefigured the blood shed in jesus death and the resurrection of his body. So today we participate with them in jesus, death and resurrection

00:17:07.260 - 00:17:23.970

. We come to this table where bread is shared hand to hand, where the common cut is passed from shoulder to shoulder, coming from places where we have been reaching for the Holy, not even knowing

00:17:23.980 - 00:17:41.140

fully what we are doing. We put our bodies here. This is where we stand in this place of intimacy with mystery, the mystery of a box of letters, the intimacy of a little room with

00:17:41.140 - 00:17:57.340

a space heater, the mystery of a methodist preacher , the intimacy of two people meeting on a crowded street where a woman is believed, the bedroom Where a 12 year old girl lay on a bed in

00:17:57.340 - 00:18:15.540

front of five grown men and was safe and was given food from these places. We come to stand in this place and then we go on with our lives, sent to all the places we belong on