You're Family

SCRIPTURE TEXT:  Luke 24:36-43, Rev. Monte Marshall, Senior Pastor

We continue today with the theme, A Place to Call Home.  Dr. Marcia McFee writes: “To feel ‘at home’ is to know a place and a family where it is safe to be vulnerable.”[1]  Finding such “a place and a family” however, is not always easy. 

Consider this example from a video entitled Super Christian II:  The alarm clock rings.  The time is ten minutes before seven on a Sunday morning.  A father awakes from sleep with a troubled looked on his face.  His brow is furrowed.  It’s as though he doesn’t want to face the day ahead.  As he swings his legs over the side of the bed and sits up, he heaves a deep sigh.  It’s clear that this is a man with much on his mind.

Meanwhile, in the kitchen, a teenaged girl is preparing breakfast.  She cracks an egg into a skillet.  She flips a pancake on the griddle. 

The girl’s mother comes in dressed for church.  They greet one another.

Back in the bedroom, the father has dressed in his suit and tie.  As he looks at himself in a full length mirror, again he sighs.

The son enters the kitchen and says “Hi” to his mom.

In comes the father.  His wife glares at him.  Neither one speaks to the other.  The father says “Good morning” to the kids.  And then, with noticeable discomfort, the father says: “I’ve been thinking.  I think it would be best if I moved out.  Larry and his wife said that I could stay with them for awhile.  I’m moving next week.  I don’t know what to say.”

The kids look stunned and angry.  The daughter walks out without saying a word.  Her mother follows her, also without saying a thing, but obviously angry and disgusted.

When next we see this family, they’re loading into the car.  They’re going to church and there’s an icy cold silence in the car.

When they arrive in the church parking lot and exit the car, we notice something different about them.  Each one of them is wearing a mask with a smile on it.  And on the back window of the car is one of those stick-on signs that reads:  Happy Family on Board.

A church member greets the dad:  “Hi, Gary.”

Gary responds:  “Hi Ron.”

 Ron says, “How are you today?”

Gary says, “Just fine, thanks.”

As the family enters the church, we notice another disturbing reality.  Many others in the church are wearing their own masks too.[2]  Quite obviously, no one is feeling “at home” in this biological family or in this church family.  Apparently, neither place is safe enough for family members to be vulnerable.

But this morning’s scripture reading from Luke’s gospel envisions a different reality.  Let’s set the stage.  Jesus has died on a Roman cross.  His body has been entombed.  The eleven remaining disciples and their companions are still in Jerusalem and they’ve heard reports of resurrection.

These disciples are the ones Jesus claimed as family.  They were like family to one another. As this morning’s text begins, the family is talking about resurrection.  And suddenly, the risen Christ is among them.  “’Peace be with you,’” he says.

The disciples panic.  They’re terrified.  They think they’re seeing a ghost.  The risen Christ responds: “’Why are you disturbed?  Why do such ideas cross your mind?  Look at my hands and my feet; it is I, really.  Touch me and see—a ghost doesn’t have flesh and bones as I do.’  After saying this, Jesus showed them his wounds.” 

Well, ghosts aren’t made of flesh and blood, and they don’t have wounds, either.  Wounds are associated with the suffering of human beings.  This means that when we wear masks to hide our wounds, we appear to be something that we’re not.  We appear as unreal apparitions.  We create false images of who we are.  And we deny the vulnerability that comes with being human. 

But in the family of Jesus, shaped by this story from Luke’s gospel, it’s simply not appropriate to hide our wounds.  In this family, we should feel “at home” enough—and safe enough—to be vulnerable with one another—to be honest with one another.  In this family, we’re encouraged not just to speak about our wounds, but to invite others to metaphorically touch our wounds so that they might also know the truth about who we really are.

And notice this:  Luke’s story not only affirms that there is peace beyond our fear, it also  proclaims that there is life beyond our woundedness.  The wounded Christ is the risen Christ. 

And how did the family respond to this good news?  Luke says, “They were still incredulous for sheer joy and wonder.”

So what do we think?  Does Luke’s vision of a different reality for family seem beyond our reach in the places we call home?  If this is so, then perhaps we should continue to hide our woundedness behind the masks that we wear.  But here’s the deal:  This different reality is not beyond our reach.  It is possible for us to remove our masks and be vulnerable to one another.     

And this is exactly what Janice Mirikatani did.  Janice is a third-generation Japanese-American woman.  She is an award-winning poet, dancer, activist, educator, and former program director of Glide Memorial United Methodist Church in San Francisco.  She is also married to Rev. Cecil Williams, the pastor emeritus of Glide.  As many of you know, Glide is home to a church family in which all are welcome.  And yes, Glide is a safe place for people to be open and vulnerable with one another.

As it turns out, from the age of five, and continuing for nearly a decade, Janice was sexually abused by her stepfather.  Janice had told Cecil about the abuse.  Shortly after they were married, Cecil asked her if she would speak to the congregation about her experience of incest.

Janice writes: “I had no idea this had been on his mind.  Opening up to him about the abuse—even though I had trusted him completely; even though he helped me save my own life—had been so excruciating that I couldn’t imagine the whole congregation knowing about it.”

But Janice remembered something that Cecil had said about recovery.  “‘For you to gain recovery,’” Cecil said, “’you’ve got to go back to the beginning of your pain and come forward again.  You’ve got to tell the truth, your whole story.’

“So I told Cecil yes,” Janice writes.  “I would talk publicly at Glide about being an incest survivor, though it took a while and a lot of soul-searching for me to reach this decision.  Finally the Sunday came when I stood before the congregation.  I announced that I had been invited to tell my story of childhood sexual abuse.  I said that the memory made me feel like a butterfly pinned on a slab of paraffin, my wings stilled, my screams silenced by shame.  I had grown up believing that my telling the truth was a potential killer of my mother and would surely destroy the people around me.  Saying out loud what actually happened would disgrace the family and all my ancestors.  What had kept me silent, I told the congregation, was believing that I had caused the abuse, that I was guilty of what my stepfather portrayed as the worst of crimes, my need for affection and acceptance.

“In the midst of this testimony, I struggled against tears…. My worst fear in coming to this podium, I said, was that I would be judged, reviled, and rejected if I told the congregation about this dark brokenness in my life—me, the minister’s wife, the director of Glide’s programs—and especially if I spoke of it in church.

“The audience, which had been silent all this time, spontaneously stood up and applauded for a long while.  I felt lighter than air because of their reaction.  A great weight was being lifted from my shoulders.

“Cecil hugged me for a long moment, then stepped to the microphone.  ‘Let me ask you now,’ he said.  ‘Are there others who experienced sexual abuse?  Would you tell your story?’  We were surprised to see more than a hundred people—mostly women, some men—stand up and raise their hands.  Many of them had tears in their eyes, and they looked up at us as if to say, Where else but in church can we finally tell the truth?”[3]

So if Travis Park United Methodist Church is a place that we call home, then why not remove our masks and risk being vulnerable within this family gathered in the presence of the wounded but risen Christ—the One who speaks to us in our fear, “Peace be with you?”   May it be so for us.  Thanks be to God!  Amen.