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Bis Thornton
December 29, 2024
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org
As 2024 enters its final few days, many of us are thinking about endings. How do we keep loving when loving is what makes saying goodbye so hard? And how can we stay focused on joy in the present when we fear the suffering the future holds? Join guest preacher Bis Thornton on a journey into the Gospel of John to see what its stories can tell us about love and loss in our lives today.
Chalice Lighting
This is the flame we hold in our hearts as we strive for justice for everyone. This is the light we shine upon systems of oppression until they are no more. This is the warmth that we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.
Call to Worship
YOU CONTAIN THE HOLY
by Gwen MatthewsWhomever you are, Wherever you are from, whomever you love, whatever it is you have done, you are welcome here. You are welcome to this time, this space, this moment that we carve out of often busy and chaotic weeks. You are welcome to this time for collective breaths, for words, for music, for lighting candles, and for us to simply exist here together.
The essence that is you, that spark of life, is in your body, is of your body, and it is you are divine. In other words, you contain the holy within you right now.
And now, I invite you to take a breath as we enter into this time of worship in body, mind, and spirit.
Affirming Our Mission
Together we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the Beloved Community.
Reading
WHILE EVERYTHING ELSE WAS FALLING APART
Ada LimónIn the Union Square subway station nearly fifteen
years ago now, the L train came clanking by
where someone had fat-Sharpied a black heart
on the yellow pillar you leaned on during a bleak day,
(brittle and no notes from anyone you crushed upon).
Above ground, the spring sun was the saddest one,
(doing work but also none). What were you wearing?
Something hopeful to show the world you hoped?
A tall man was learning from a vendor how to pronounce
churro. High in the sticky clouds of time, he kept
repeating churro while eating a churro. How to say
this made you want to live? No hand to hold
still hear it was: Someone giving someone comfort
and someone memorizing hard how to ask for it again.
Sermon
NOTE: This is an edited ai generated transcript.
Please forgive any omissions or errors.
Good morning again. And I’m still this, and it’s still wonderful to see you. We’re heading for the end of the year, and I think We’re all heading towards a lot of endings, and we are experiencing them at the same time as we’re heading towards other ones.
Here in the congregation, we just got hit pretty hard together. And we are at the end of Kinsey’s time with us. Ends are all around us in the world too. However, we may feel about it in the particularities, we are all facing the end of our current presidential administration. I also know a lot of people who are experiencing the end of their old physical capacity, the end of a loved one’s life, the end of their own. Many of us are watching our friends move out of state, maybe even out of the country. There are a lot of endings right now for many of us, all around us, and it’s true that those endings may come with some new beginnings, but they’re still endings. And that’s what I want to spend some time with today.
If you’ve heard me preach before, this probably will not surprise you, but I’m here in the pulpit today to tell you some stories. First, I’m going to start with something from one of the sacred texts that’s nearest to my heart, which is the Bible. Specifically, I want to tell you a story from the end of the Gospel of John, which is one of the four versions of the life of Jesus Christ that you can find in your typical Christian Bible.
Before I start, I want to say that I feel a little bad telling a story from this part of Jesus’ life because it was just his birthday. He’s still a baby. So glad that got a laugh. I got to be real with y ‘all. Thank you. He’s still a baby, and I’m up here like, Okay, it’s time to talk about how he died and then some other stuff happened and it sucked and it was really sad That seems crummy. I Love Christmas and I really love celebrating his birthday. So how could I do this to him? How could I jump to the end? That’s crummy of me.
I Wondered about this a lot. I chose this sermon weeks ago to preach it and it was hounding me It felt like it was calling out to me to tell it to y ‘all today. And I think the answer to that question is this, I’m worried and I’m scared and I’m sad. I think about the coming months and the coming years and I feel dread. I look at new things and I feel like I can already see the terrible end that they’re hurtling towards, or in other words, Even new things these days throw me towards an anticipatory grief. That’s the dread that I feel, and maybe you feel a little bit of that too. And if we’re stuck here together, I figure why won’t we get together in the sanctuary that we love and move towards that feeling and take off our shoes and see what holy things we might find there.
The other thing I want to say is this. This is like an unnecessary, I feel like caveat, but I’ll say it anyway. I’m not asking you to believe anything in particular about this story. I’m also not asking you to know anything in particular about this story. I just want to tell it to you as I know it, and I hope you’ll enjoy the telling.
So let’s try sitting down, inside of the story, and feeling around. Feel free to close your eyes If it helps, sometimes when I’m at church, I close my eyes throughout the entire sermon. It helps me concentrate. So please feel free to do that if it helps you.
And if you’re gonna be inside of this story, you might be wondering who you are. For now, imagine this. Jesus is your teacher and you love him very much. You are his disciple, you learn from him. He has been teaching you freedom and love. And so you follow him because he has given you this gift and you want to learn more and maybe even make the world into a place where everyone finds the freedom and the love that you did. So he travels around teaching and wherever he goes, you go and you’ve left your life as a fisherman behind to come join him.
He is not a stained glass window or an idea in a book. He is a man who lives in the world. He has eyes and a smile and hair that he keeps in a particular way. You’ve watched him eat bread. You saw him trip on a rock, one time. One time. Yes, just the one. You’ve heard his voice belting out over a crowd or speaking softly at a table. You’ve had the same sand on your legs and stood beneath the same oppressive sunbeam He’s maybe one of the strangest people you’ve ever met in your life He has a funny way of speaking that’s very distinctive and it’s so distinctive in fact that you can imitate it Sometimes before he says something really important. He says truly truly I say to you You know you imagine Being with your friends and imitating this when you’re imitating him you’re like remember that time truly truly I’d say to you You know this man You’ve built your life around him and around your friends who also follow him everywhere He goes.
And one day this man that you knew and loved died. It seemed like he knew he was gonna go You looked at him one day, and he seemed to be a sailor, standing on the deck of a ship that you couldn’t board, facing away from you and towards the sea, towards the horizon. And he didn’t pass away gently. He died by a violence so present and so unspeakable that you can hardly bear to think of it at all. It was an act of violence by the state that surrounds you at every moment, and yet somehow you always slipped out of its fingers until you didn’t. And it cut down your friend, your strange, lovely, wise, funny friend.
And then you saw him again after he died, and you thought that maybe he was visiting you to say goodbye the way that ghosts sometimes do. But then your friend saw him too, and he told you to tell each other that you had seen him. And then he appeared before one of you with all of his wounds on display. And when you reached for him, your arms didn’t swing through the air, they met his familiar frame, his warm body, that body that you know because you know him. You can’t believe what’s happening, he’s back. But he still has that look like he’s going away that you had assumed was about his death He looks at you sometimes now that he’s back and he sees you so hard. It’s like he’s holding you with his eyes and Then he turns away and there’s that look again and he becomes distant And after a while none of you see him for longer and longer periods of time and you can’t bear to lose him again but somehow you know it’s ending and he has to go.
So one day you’re out with your friends on a boat fishing like the old days. The water is sloshing up against the boat. You feel the gentle rocking and the wet nets against your palms. Your outer clothes are folded in the boat so that you don’t get them wet And so the sunbeams are hitting you directly, you feel their heat. The old familiar sensations of your life. You used to do this before you knew Jesus, but it’s different now. You’ve been changed. A hero can never go home again, and fishing doesn’t feel like it used to. But still, you have to eat. And you do love your friends. You are always good at fishing, so you might as well fish together.
Here’s a reveal. You are someone specific in this story. Maybe you wanna know who you are? I do, I feel like I’m asking it constantly. Well, you could be anyone in this story, but for now, you are a disciple whose name is Peter. You’re in the boat with six other people. You’re in the boat with six of your friends. You’re in the boat with Thomas, who demanded to see Jesus’ wounds when he returned from his death. And you’re in the boat with Nathaniel, who initially laughed when he heard where Jesus was from, saying, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” But he agreed to find out. And you’re also with the sons of Zebedee and two other disciples. And one of the disciples in the boat is a man who the gospel never names. It only calls him the beloved disciple.
So you’re Peter and you’re with your friends and you’re all throwing your nets over the side of the boat and you aren’t catching a thing. The day turns into night and there’s still no fish. Maybe fishing is too different now. Maybe everything’s too different. How do you get into the flow when you know that your dead friend is back but he’s fading like the light of this wasted day and Soon he’ll be going somewhere that you can’t go. The dark oppresses you, like those sunbeams you shared with him, but this time he isn’t here.
Dawn starts breaking over the hills. On the shore, someone shouts at you, “Children, you haven’t caught anything, have you?” One of you, maybe a little mad, shouts back, “No, we haven’t.” And the stranger on the shore says, “Try the right side of the boat.” So since nothing’s going right anyway, and you might as well listen to a stranger who is maybe making fun of you, you all throw your nets over the right side of the boat. And you can’t believe it. A flurry of splashes, the sea is boiling over in just one spot. Your net is too heavy to lift into the boat. Your day was not wasted at all. The net is full of fish. And before your heart is completely sure, you hear the beloved disciple begin to speak and his confidence lights you on fire as he says “It’s him.”
In a burst of confused energy you put all your clothes back on and you throw yourself into the sea splashing wildly as you scramble for the shore while everyone else pulls the net into the boat. You don’t care about the fish, this is the end. You know it is and in your heart you’re so happy and you’re so scared. You can’t wait for the boat to reach him. You can’t waste the time. You have to throw yourself towards him instead. And as you swim, you can see him. Each time your head comes back up into the air, something sparkles on the beach. He’s lit a fire. Scrambling onto the shore, you see him smiling at you and your ridiculous behavior and your clothes completely soaked, and he’s so radiant like the dawn, maybe more like sunset. You realize he’s already cooked some fish, and he’s already got some bread. He’s always feeding you, and you love him more than you can stand, and you hate it a little bit, because loving him is what’s going to make this next part hurt so bad.
He has always seemed to know what you were thinking, and this time it’s no different. While everyone is on shore with you. Jesus says to you, “Do you love me more than these?” And he gestures at all of your friends and without hesitation or stopping to wonder what he might have meant by that, you blurt out, “Yes, you know I love you.” And he seems to think that’s a little funny. And he says, “Feed my lamps.” He waits a while sitting quietly by the crackling fire, the crackling fire. And then he turns to you again and says, “Do you love me?” With less shock, you respond in a more measured tone. “Yes, you know that I love you.” He nods and says, “Tend to my shoe.”
You’re trying to enjoy the dawn, which has turned into the day. You’re staring at him, trying to make sure you remember for the rest of your life what he looks like right now. And then he turns to you and he says, “Do you love me?” You’re wounded. You can’t believe it. Of course, of course, you’re already mourning. You already know how this is going to go. You jumped into the sea for him. You shared everything with him and he’s still asking you this? You look him in the eye heart quaking and you say “My friend, you know everything You know that I love you.”
He seems satisfied in his mysterious way and he says “Feed my sheep” and then as you wonder how you’re going to find the strength to feed his sheep when he leaves, he says, “truly, truly, I say to you,” and your heart snaps to attention, you’re ready for this. He says, “when you were new, you would dress yourself and go where you wanted. When you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you, and you will go where you do not want to go.”
You know that he’s describing your aging and your death. And as you’ve been staring at him, trying to memorize every line of his face and movement of his hands, because you know he’s leaving, he has been holding the shape of your death close to his heart, like a child, like a lamb, carrying it to and fro until the time comes to set it down and let it walk on its own.
He has been mourning you too, you are both creatures with endings and you love him more than anything and you love your friends who love him and love you and love each other. Your death is coming behind you and one day you will die and you will love him the whole time and you will light fires on the shore and when your friends reach you, you will have already started cooking them breakfast.
You turn and see the beloved disciple. Sometimes he looks so fragile to you and you say to Jesus, “What about him? What about that guy?” The beloved disciple? He seems like the wind might take him away. He seems like sometimes he stares far away too, like he and Jesus are two travelers going the same place.
Jesus looks at the beloved disciple and then he looks back at you and he smiles at you and he says, “If it is my will that he remain until I come back, what is it to you? What do you care? You follow me.” And that’s the last thing he ever says to you. And you die before you see him again.
What does it mean to see the end before it comes and somehow withstand it. How can we see the end and stay without buckling under the grief and fleeing? How can we survive when things around us end?
I want to tell you all about my grandmothers. Just before my maternal grandmother died, I spoke to her on the phone. I knew it was the end. I hated that I was on the phone instead of beside her, but those were the cards that we were dealt. She didn’t ask me, “Do you love me?” But everything I said, I felt like I was telling her over and over again, “I love you. I love you. I love you. You know that I love you.” I was so scared I would forget to tell her something I was grateful for, but I knew that she already knew. We loved each other. It didn’t matter if I forgot to say something. We both knew.
Before my paternal grandmother died, I visited her in the hospital. There was a lot of difficulty between us, but when we saw each other, it didn’t go away, but it changed. It was the end. I remember When I came into her hospital room and stood next to her bed, and she opened her eyes and saw me for the first time in six or seven years. The first thing she said to me was, “Am I dead?” That’s how surprised she was to see me.
In life, she loved to go on adventures. And after she died, I had a dream. We were on vacation together by the sea. The water was so beautiful I begged her to come swimming with me, and eventually she did, but the waves got choppy and I got scared. As I swam back to shore she was swimming out into the sea and we passed each other, and for one moment we locked eyes. I wondered if I should tell her to come back, but I didn’t. When she swam out into the sea never to return, a traveler going somewhere I couldn’t follow. Maybe like Peter, she jumped into the sea with all her clothes on, just went towards someone she loved, someone who taught her freedom long ago.
After my maternal grandmother died, I saw her in a dream too. I was standing inside of her house and looking out the window. In life, she loved to host holiday meals, and she was an incredible cook. And in my dream, as I looked out the window, I saw a long table glowing with golden light, and all along it were seated countless people, and my grandmother was walking up and down it, serving everyone something to eat. When I think of Jesus on the shore waiting for the disciples, a fire already lit, I think of her.
Endings recur and echo into one another. They are unique and common all at once. I too am a traveler and someday I will go where my loved ones cannot follow. Before I go, I hope I too will light a fire and feed them breakfast. Because of my love for my grandmothers, I carry something of them with me into my life. And perhaps I will carry something of them too into my death. Perhaps it can’t be helped as humans living on this earth death is something we have in common. Endings are something we have in common.
Walking into this story I have searched for what is holy. I’d love to hear what you might have found there but I’ll tell you what I did. The sea. Dark and infinite. Life bubbles up in one location or another. A ship sails across it and on the shore a fire. The sea is more vast than any of us. Surrounding us, creating us, calling us up into the air into existence, calling us down into the darkness again. We emerge and we dissolve and everything that we love, ebbs and flows and the waves of the sea, but the sea never goes away.
And so the endings come and come and come. And I will try not to be hurt when the voice rises up from the depths to ask me again and again, “Do you love me?” All I have to do is tell the truth. Thank you.
Extinguishing the Chalice
We extinguish this flame, but not the light of truth, the warmth of community, or the fire of commitment. These we hold in our hearts until we are together again.
Benediction
BLESSING FOR THE BROKEN-HEARTED
by Jan Richardson“There is no remedy for love, but to love more.”
Let us agree for now that we will not say the breaking makes us stronger
or that it is better to have this pain than to have done without this love.
Let us promise we will not tell ourselves time will heal the wound
when every day our waking opens it anew.Perhaps for now it can be enough to simply marvel at the mystery
of how a heart so broken can go on beating,
as if it were made for precisely this.
As if it knows the only cure for love is more of it,
as if it sees the heart’s sole remedy for breaking is to love still,
as if it trusts that its own persistent pulse
is the rhythm of a blessing we cannot begin to fathom,
but will save us nonetheless.Amen, Thank you. Blessed be.
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