I preached this sermon (or one much like it) at St. Lydia's on Sunday, April 28, as part of our exploration of the Gospel of Luke. The text is Luke 24:45-53; you can read the text here.
In her new book, Stuck in the MIddle With You: A Memoir of Parenting in Three Genders,
author Jennifer Boylan gives an account of parenting her two boys
while she is in the midst of a significant transition.
Born Jim Boylan,
she was “a father for ten years,
a mother for eight,
and for a time in between,
neither, or both,”
something in the middle.
“The parental version,” as she puts it,
“of the schnoodle, or the cockapoo.”
Boylan gives an account of being fundamentally in the middle of things,
as she negotiates her own gender transition
and the shifting landscape of her relationships with her sons and wife.
Her sons’ biggest question in all of this
(they seem to take the changes their father is undergoing
with surprising calm and aplomb)
is,
“What should we call you?”
After some discussion,
the family decides on “Maddy.”
Part Mom, part Dad.
It’s a name I like,
because rather then sounding like two words smushed together,
“Maddy” sounds a little bit like a whole new name.
An affectionate nickname that slips easily off the tongue
and implies individuality rather than hybrid.
*
Generally speaking,
human beings do not like it much in the middle.
We tend to dichotomize.
We want things to be one thing or the other.
We don’t like it when something refuses to be easily categorized.
We organize our world into polarized sides or put things in carefully labeled bins.
For whatever reason, gender and sexuality
seem to be an area where we do this with vigor.
Despite research that both gender and sexual orientation exist on a spectrum, not a binary,
our culture continues to brandish our categories like weapons:
boy or girl,
gay or straight.
You only have two choices.
Pick one.
It turns out that Jesus is very often Stuck in the Middle, too.
Jesus is a living, breathing, walking paradox.
He’s two things at the same time.
He is both human and divine.
Fully, human, fully divine, as they say:
an impossibility that makes our eyes cross if we think about it too long.
In the days after the resurrection,
appearing to the disciples and then vanishing suddenly,
he seems to be neither dead or alive.
He’s not a ghost -- you can touch him and see his wounds,
but he also has this tendency to suddenly disappear into thin air
and reappear out of nowhere.
It’s sort of like he’s post-alive.
He’s so not-dead he’s more than alive.
Or something.
Whatever it is that he is,
it’s in the middle.
In fact, Jesus in Stuck in the Middle
between heaven and earth.
Commentator N. T. Wright writes,
“[Jesus’] transformed body is the beginning of God’s new creation
in which heaven and earth will come together in a new way.
Jesus’ risen body is the beginning of a heavenly reality
which is fully at home on, and in,
this physical world,
and the beginning of a transformed physical world
which is fully at home in God’s sphere.”*
So Jesus,
in this time after his resurrection
is the place where heaven and earth overlap.
The place where God’s realm and our realm touch.
He’s in the middle,
and the thing is
that because we are Christ’s body,
we get to live there too.
Stuck right in the middle between heaven and earth.
*
If you’ve spent a lot of time in the middle,
maybe,
just maybe,
it’s good practice
for being a Christian.
Maybe it’s good practice
for living in this in-between place
with Christ.
I am the door,
Jesus tells us in the Gospel of John.
The final verses of this Gospel
help us just what that imagery might mean --
where the door comes from and where it might lead.
Life in the body of Christ
is an entrance to the world of God.
A threshold
that we won’t cross completely
until we go to be with God too.
*
I believe in anything
that complicates the categories that we so often are asked to live within.
Every time someone asks we “what kind of people”
come to St. Lydia’s
I begin to try and tell them,
and then think of all of you.
You all defy categories.
In fact everyone defies the categories
the world so eagerly creates.
Do not misunderstand me --
our identities are a crucial part of understanding
who we are and how the world has percieved and treated us --
we have all be extolled or dismissed
based on the indicators of identity.
Some of us have felt the weight of systemic racism, classism, sexism, homophobia.
But when these indicators come to define us,
we have been reduced to something much less than who we are.
This is one of the reasons I’ve been so excited
about the Season of Listening at St. Lydia’s --
this time we’ve been taking the last few months
getting trained to listen to people around us.
I’ve been excited to begin to hear those stories
of how each of us --
folks in this community
and folks in the neighborhood --
defies those little boxes we’re asked to check
every time we fill out a form.
About how we’re all a lot more complicated
than being one thing or another.
About we’ve all had experiences,
of being Stuck in the Middle.
Some of us have found that right there,
in the middle,
right there with us,
is Jesus.
*
Growing up as a kid,
I was a musician.
I was a girl who played the trombone
and I played it well.
Because I was a musician,
I got to feel proud --
of being artistic,
talented,
creative.
But then God turned things around on me,
and I ended up at Divinity School.
When people asked me who I was,
I didn’t know what to say.
I was no longer a musician, not really.
I didn’t know what I was heading for, either.
I wasn’t going to be a pastor, or at least I didn’t think I was.
I was Stuck in the Middle,
without a identity to be proud of
or a label to fall back on.
And I didn’t feel like I was much of anything at all.
I didn’t know who I was.
I had to let go of that image of myself,
that label I was hanging onto,
in order to find out.
*
In this last chapter of Luke,
the word, open
is used three times.
Three times in relationship to the experience
of meeting the risen Christ.
On the road, he meets the disciples and opens their eyes,
then opens the scriptures to them.
And among the disciples he opens their minds.
The experience of the resurrection is about opening, not closing.
And you will also notice that it is not about knowing.
There is a difference between being opened
and being sure.
There is a difference between being opened
and understanding.
There is a difference between being opened
and getting it exactly right.
So often we strive for the wrong thing.
We’re trying so hard to decide who we are,
we miss being opened to God.
If you are Stuck in the Middle,
do not be afraid.
For you are inhabiting a sacred place.
A threshold of in-between.
If you are Stuck in the Middle,
do not be afraid.
For you are standing with Jesus.
Right there in the middle.
*Acts for Everyone, N. T. Wright


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