The Tomb was Empty (John Wichman)

The tomb was empty.  

Christ has risen. We sing hallelujah. The disciples ran in fear. And I wonder who’s being real.  

They’d been drawn to Jesus by his words and deeds, and perhaps as much by their own expectations and desire for some kind of redemption or liberation. They’d been drawn with him into dangerous situations enthralled and even relieved that, like the ancient prophets, he did not pander but spoke the truth to the differing factions that competed for influence among a desperate people. Some had left all they had in hopes of seeing their expectations fulfilled.  

What they ended up seeing in Jerusalem was their initial doubts fulfilled. What could a truth telling carpenter’s son from Nazareth accompanied by his fellow Galilean bumpkins accomplish against the might of Rome that well armed Zealot revolutionaries or the sophisticated well financed religious elite couldn’t? Nothing! They’d become the laughing stock of the calloused mobs and masses who’d seen every attempt at liberation brutally crushed. They’d cringed in horror and fear as their leader and teacher was executed in grotesque humiliation for all to see.  
It was over, done. Best to accept his death and lick the wounds of dashed hopes and broken dreams. Perhaps they’d even begun to look at those miraculous moments of triumph in Galilee and on the road to Jerusalem as an acceptable legacy. There had been the feeding of hungering masses, the affirmation and healing of outcasts, the gathering together of otherwise disparaging individuals and groups, moments of incredible clarity and insight in challenging situations. How naïve to think that this could last.  All good things come to an end; time to move on. It was over, done, dead.  

But, no! The tomb was empty. It was not over. They freaked out. 

There is an Avery and Marsh song, “Every Morning is Easter Morning (From Now On)” I can not stand the song. There’s a line, “Every morning is Easter morning. The past is over and gone”. That would be a great song for the Roman executioners celebrating the burying of the legacy of Jesus. In fact, it expresses a pretty significant aspect of the evolution of the institution that claims to be the “body of Christ”. Our earliest confessions, such as the Apostles Creed codifies “the past is over and gone”. We recite that Jesus “was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilot; was crucified, dead and buried…” as if the early church was insistent on putting  Jesus—who proclaimed, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, 19to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”—back in the tomb by skipping over that prickly life that comforted the afflicted and afflicted the comfortable.  

But the tomb was empty.  

The history of Christianity can almost be illustrated as a struggle among its adherents to either roll that stone away from or back over the tomb, a struggle to rebury the Christ of compassion and justice and redefine him as the founder of a judgmental, triumphalist, imperial religion, or let the compassionate embodiment of God’s justice and redeemer of the oppressed and marginalized out of the tomb.  

But the tomb was empty.  

He cannot be reburied. As hard as folks, even within our own Presbyterian USA denomination, demean Jesus by cutting departments, programs and ministries that emphasize God’s justice; as Glen Beck type talking heads amplify the trend by encouraging folks to “run as fast as they can” from churches that use phrases like “social justice”,  the tomb is empty. 

For 54 years, by the grace of God, Westminster Hills Presbyterian Church has been driven by the experience of the empty tomb. The proclamation, by word and deed, that this is “the year of the Lord’s favour” did not end on Calvary at the hands of the mightiest empire of its day. It has made it known in this gateway community where life in this country begins for immigrants from every place on the globe. It has been faithful in creating welcoming and nurturing space for the downcast and desperate even as “mission dollars” were withheld by well heeled churches in gated communities where the poor are referred to as “the less blessed”. 

For 54 years WHPC has lived on the edge financially daringly stretching itself in the endeavor of embodying Christ’s proclamation of “good news for the poor and release to the captives” be they captive to addiction, prejudice, or fearful exclusion even by those within our own denomination who would keep Jesus of Nazareth in the tomb.  

We are still here because the tomb was and is empty.

And yet have heard ourselves from time to time talking of this legacy as if it will soon end because projected budget short falls, were they to continue as they are, cannot carry this ministry beyond the next three or four years. We have even begun to hear ourselves talking of cutting back on the very kind of program resources that will assure that the next generation of disciples can freak out and proclaim the empty tomb in a community that nurtures the very understanding of the empty tomb’s power.  

It’s an option I suppose. There were those who did not believe the women who witnessed the empty tomb. It would have been hard to believe, especially if nursing disappointment and moving on to diminished life seems reasonable in the face oppressive fear.  It would be as reasonable as giving numbers on a bottom line more power than that empty tomb that asks, “Why do you seek life among the dead?” 
The tomb is empty. It’s not over. We are not done 
Hallelujah! 
 
We invite those who wish to support this expression of the empty tomb with your donations. 
John
 

Words on Lent (John Wichman)

Every year on Ash Wednesday and throughout Lent I use all or part of an old hymn that didn’t make if from the old “The Hymnal” to the newer “Presbyterian Hymnal”. “I Bow My Forehead to the Dust” by John Greenleaf Whittier, was the late David Ng’s favorite hymn. Dave was, among a lot of other things, a professor at San Francisco Theological Seminary, author of a number of breakthrough books on Christian education and the person who organized, motivated, resourced and “cat herded” the group of scholars that produced the New Revised Standard Version of the bible.  When he was director of Youth and Young Adult Ministries at Cameron House Dave lived with his wife Irene in a small apartment down the hall from my family. I was in high school. He turned me on to Miles Davis, Mad Magazine, and this hymn.  May it be a blessing to you in this Lenten season.


I bow my forehead to the dust, 
I veil mine eyes for shame, 
And urge, in trembling self distrust, 
A prayer without a claim. 
No offering of mine own I have, 
Nor works my faith to prove; 
I can but give the gifts He gave, 
And plead His love for love.
I dimly guess, from blessings known, 
Of greater out of sight; 
And, with the chastened psalmist, own 
His judgments too are right. 
And if my heart and flesh are weak 
To bear an untried pain, 
The bruised reed He will not break, 
But strengthen and sustain. 
I know not what the future hath 
Of marvel or surprise, 
Assured alone that life and death 
His mercy underlies. 
and so beside the silent sea 
I wait the muffled oar; 
No harm from Him can come to me 
On ocean or on shore.
I know not where His islands lift 
Their fronded palms in air; 
I only know I cannot drift 
Beyond His love and care; 
And Thou, O Lord, by Whom are seen 
Thy creatures as they be, 
Forgive me if too close I lean 
My human heart on Thee.

Thanks Dave. God’s Peace, Rev. John Wichman

Thoughts from Pastor John

It wasn’t planned that way, but the Christmas Eve Service began early in 2008. A small group of us joined Rebecca, Don Long’s daughter at his bedside at the Kaiser Rehab Center in San Leandro. We knew that Don was on the edge of life and had come back from near death several times in the proceeding weeks. We sang Christmas Carols together. Don joined in with gusto. It seems as though that set the tone for 2009 
Just as he had done, in defiance of doctors’ predictions that he might not make to Thanksgiving, Don made it through Christmas and New Year’s Day. He left us on January 23rd.  That mix of joy and loss, of resilience and resignation, woven together in laughter and tears reflected the coming year. 

We were overjoyed in spring that Amy Rickard stepped in to take on the position of Director of Christian Ed and Program Development. We also came to realize very quickly that the position depended on congregational commitment to change. This has been a challenge. It has meant coming to terms with moving out of the box of doing what we’ve always done, expecting folks to join US. It has meant seeing the limitations of living on a legacy and made clear the need to be driven by a vision. Most glaringly we are beginning to realize the importance of sharing with people who we are, what we stand for, and even what we believe, and realizing that our future depends on the disruption of their arrival. 

Most of the new programs are aimed at empowering the congregation to do just that. The new midweek “The Message” worship service is geared for informal and creative expressions of worship and interactive participation that sparks conversation and discovery about faith and how it impacts the issues in our lives. The Thursday evening Study Group at Betty’s house has fluctuated in numbers. A core group has evolved. DVDs and readings inspire discussions on developing understandings of the Old Testament, the development of the New Testament, the origins of monotheism and sacred texts. These discussions have been intense and enlightening..  

These study groups and discussions, including Interlog have deepened because of the inquiring minds of folks who have found their way to Westminster Hills in the last year. That they found their own way here begs the question, are we committed to supporting and promoting the change and new programming in ways that will result in the growth that we so desperately need? 

Of great significance in the past year was Karen Fokken becoming a member of the Committee on Preparation for Ministry and Karen Merris joining the Presbytery Committee on Ministry. I will be joining her on COM this year. This congregation is now represented and present in the life and workings of our Presbytery. Now the struggles within our Denomination to be a people of God’s grace, compassion, and justice has landed at our doorstep and the challenge to be more proactive in, and I’m going to use the word here, evangelizing is magnified.  

I have accepted the position of Board Secretary of the Presbyterian Health Education and Welfare Association. I write this having just returned from the annual PHEWA Board meeting and Leadership Event. I return even more convinced that a major reason for accepting the position was my growing sense of urgency that the story of  faith expressed in commitment to community and justice over the past years at Westminster Hills needs to be told.

And Westminster Hills needs to be rejuvenated, challenged and galvanized by understanding its place in mix of the larger Church, or risk becoming an isolated relic. 

The preciousness of the concept of being a part of a Family of Faith beyond the confines of a defined congregation or the walls of our church building touched us in the deepest ways when our brother Rev. Lee Williamson died in July. We lost a prophet, a teacher, an activist for God’s inclusive love and justice. It felt as if a piece of the body had died. And it did. Amy and I felt his absence and the growing newness of a deeper presence as we journeyed with two members of the South Hayward Parish to the vigil and protest at the School of the Americas in Georgia. We felt it as we began realizing how many of our annual activities had depended and been defined by his presence. Sister and brother clergy feel it every time we need a wise and compassionate elder brother. And I feel it every time I hear a good joke that begs his laughter. The congregations of the South Hayward Parish, the community, God’s Church, and people of Peace workers for justice are still recovering from the loss. I/we will, and we must regenerate with a new found strength that expresses gratitude for having grown in faith and understanding because of how God so clearly touched us through Lee. 

The urgency of rejuvenation, the growing importance of understanding the significance of being a body of people who bring a concept of resurrection out of the stifling confines of theological requirement into the reality of life clarifies. We realize that the windfall of proceeds from the sale of one of our lots a couple of years ago will run out before the end of this year. We see a graying congregation reaching out for new life and new lives. We rise from grieving the loss of significant people and look around at who has arrived among us and those who seem to have always been. And we remember Annie Dillard’s, poem introduced to us by Lee, and used often in our vigils and worship services:

Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? Or who shall stand in
this holy place? There is no one but us. There is no one to send,
nor a clean hand, nor a pure heart on the face of the earth, nor in
the earth, but only us, a generation comforting ourselves with the
notion that we have come at an awkward time, that our innocent
fathers are all dead—as if innocence had ever been—and our
children busy and troubled, and we ourselves unfit, not yet ready,
having each of us chosen wrongly, made a false start, failed,
yielded to impulse and the tangled comfort of pleasures, and
grown exhausted, unable to seek the thread, weak, and
involved. But there is no one but us. There never has been.   
(No One But Us—Annie Dillard )

We can be empowered by a faith tradition going back to a small group of women who gathered at an empty tomb, an anxious group of disciples disrupted by an unwanted trip to Jerusalem, an exiled people forced to come to terms with who they were in the absence of familiar symbols, wandering refugees becoming community of liberation in an encounter with a Just God. Now let us join them, claiming once again, crisis gives birth to renewed faith and clear vision and rejuvenated engagement in
discipleship. 
 
We are blessed...
John

HAITI and HOME (by Elder Betty DeForest, January, 2010)

HAITI and HOME
The out pouring of aid for the devastated folk in Haiti is a wonderful example of a world response to unbelievable catastrophe. The United States mobilized quickly (much quicker that for New Orleans, but let’s not go there) Food, water, and rescue teams were on the way within hours.  Our President assures the people of Haiti that they are not alone; they can count on us!  Doctors, nurses and all kinds of medical folk put their lives on hold to respond to the disaster; money continues to pour in.  The stories of aid are heartwarming and moving.  It is good to know that we live in a country that responds in the face of such destruction.  But in the back of my head, as I hear the stories and watch the Hollywood stars raise money, there is this little voice saying “But wait, what about….”
   -a migrant worker, Juan helps a lady who has a little market.  He works all day once or twice a week moving stock.  The owner gives him ten dollar each day he works and she lets him live in a shed behind the store.  The shed has no water or electricity and the roof leaks, but Juan feels lucky because at he is not living on the street.  Juan has a wife and two little girls back home.  Any money that he makes is sent home to support them.  Juan lives on bread, crackers, peanut butter, canned tuna, and whatever fresh fruit the food Pantry has to offer.  He is most grateful for an occasional shower.
   -about violence, Martha said: ‘It was so peaceful when I lived in the creek.  The deer don’t bite.  Now I live in the Green Shutter and the violence happened every night under my window.  And the bedbug bite”
   -Alisha is a single mom with a job and two children.  The company where she works keeps cutting back her hours.  Sometimes they “furlough” workers for a few days.  Alicia has not figured out how to “furlough” her children’s needs so she comes to the Pantry when she must.  The Pantry supplies the food so she can pay the rent.  She is always embarrassed.
   -Robert was looking for work.  In the meantime he volunteered in many places; at his church, at the food pantry, with community action network. Robert needed lung surgery.  He had no insurance.   No surgery was done.  Robert died.
   -Ilia is a tiny woman; under five feet, maybe 80 pounds.  She lives on an equally tiny pension.  Ilia is a smiling, healthy 89 year old.  She has with no living family.  Many years ago she was a professor at the University of Mexico.  About once a week she arrives at the Pantry to pick up groceries.  Once she wondered aloud what will happen to her when she can no longer make the walk across the park.  There was no answer.
   -In the last quarter of 2009 the South Hayward Parish Emergency Food Pantry fed 926 hungry, unduplicated folk. Most of them live in the same Zip code as our church.  Forty-one percent of them were under the age of 18.   Sixty- three of them were homeless.  Forty-one of them were over 70. “Unduplicated” is a key word here. Over half of those 926 folk come to the pantry for food every week.
   In the back of my head, there is this little voice….

Back to the Manger (December, 2009)

Back, again to the manger
Back from golden crucifixes.
I saw one on TV just this week.
A relic of conquest.
Aztec gold stolen
from religious shrines,
no doubt built
on the blood of conquered
peasants, and captured slaves,
now melted into a cross for an image of a re-crucified
peasant from another hemisphere
now re-hung as symbol
of more conquest and blood.
Enough!
Wash off and roll back
the gold of entombment
Roll back to the manger
Back from gilded institutions,
protecting doctrine,
theological positions
and righteously worded
acts of exclusion.
Back from warmed meeting rooms and manipulated
priorities
that leave growing numbers
out in the cold,
Out in the cold
where the road
leads back to the manger.
A manger! The manger!
Who would go to a manger.
Not those who have found
Insolated and momentary shelter
in the proverbial inn
of tunnel vision purpose
and comforting answers
that shut out the ageless cold
where those who
“will always be with you”
(said the crucified peasant
born in a manger,) dwell.

Those who dwell out there,
unhindered by temporary comfort,
and longing for warmth
are drawn to the manger.
Where they find, not a high priest,
nor a vaunted leader,
not the lives of the rich and famous
nor icons of paranoid blandness
hyped as religious purity.
But an infant and a family

as vulnerable to the need
of true and lasting warmth
as they.
Back to the manger where shepherds and late night taxi drivers,
street workers and sleepers
outcasts and migrant sojourners
desperate and calloused predators, and wasted warriors,
discarded fodder of useless wars,
dwell,
in that coldness,
closer to the eternal wind
and closest to the manger
where their hope would
witness it’s birth.
Back to the manger
where walls of delusional insulation
are absent.
And life is real, not virtual
Where power broker’s
revisionist history
is buried by His story.
A story that Angels greet
With anthems sweet
While today’s and yesterday’s
Shepherds watch are keeping.
Back at the manger where
Coercive power is silenced
and the salvation of liberation awakes from its sleeping .

By Rev. John Wichman

Purpose or No Purpose, that is the question...

I’ve been pondering and trippin’ on the whole idea of “purpose” lately. Is there any such thing as an ultimate “purpose” for each person’s life? Is this whole idea that everyone has a God given purpose in life that is preordained? Is that whole concept but another arrogant expression of religious faith’s evolution in societies where such luxurious pondering is seen as a “blessing”? Is a mother slowly walking through the desolation of Darfur with a dead or dying infant finding her “purpose”? Come to think of it, perhaps doing everything she can to save her child IS her purpose. And she didn’t come to that intellectual conclusion by studying “A Purpose Driven Life” in the comfort of a living room study group. These people, who want to believe that everything that happens to every individual in this unjust world where folks who have too much count it as God’s “blessings” while too many mother’s watch their babies die of starvation, where self proclaimed Presbyterian watch dog groups guarding their version of “Christian purity” send out slick publications (“The Presbyterian Layman”) theologizing that people are not entitled to health care, what do they say to the mother of the victim of a drive by shooting about the purpose of her dead child’s life?

And then, what does someone, like myself, who finds these concepts of “purpose” shallow, calloused and arrogant say to someone whose life is filled disproportionately with pain and challenge who is looking for some sense in a relatively chaotic life? She asked in the midst of our discussion, “is there such a thing as God’s purpose? How do we know if there is, and what it is?” I tried to answer, and I ended up feeling helpless and foolish, rattling on more about my anger at easy clichés than hearing her cry for hope.

Much of this began as a result of discussion coming out of the midweek “The Message” worship on Tuesday nights. Amy had begun to read Rick Warren’s best selling book, “A Purpose Driven Life”. She read it precisely because it is one of the biggest sellers in US history. We both wanted to know what the big deal was.

At the Tuesday worship she presented her first impressions. Pastor Rick seemed to have an inside scoop on the notion of God’s intended and preordained purpose for every individual long before they/we are born. Worshippers began to share how much this seemed to miss the mark in their own life experiences. One person shared how she had rejected any notion of faith when faith based clichés were thrown at her in attempts to “comfort” her in her grief at the death of her infant child.

At some point someone recalled how the phrase “Sì Dios quiere” or God willing is woven into the cultures of Latin America. It is common to have that phrase attached to the end of a thought or statement. For example, “I will see you Sunday, God willing “Sì Dios quiere.” This is much different than an assumption that it is part of God’s purpose for me to see you on Sunday. One might feel in hind sight, depending on the outcome of the Sunday encounter, that there seemed to be a sense of fulfillment of purpose in that meeting, but no claim could have been made before the event. In fact, Sì Dios quiere implies an understanding that one cannot even predict that the planned encounter would even occur before it actually does.

Something in this phrase does express an attitude that, ultimately, nature, fate, unforeseen dynamics will take their course in spite of our best laid plans. It implies a respect for life connected to things beyond our control, be it the unpredictable flow of nature or our concept of God. It occurred to us that the Latino culture as opposed to the Anglo culture of El Norte is more entwined with indigenous perspectives of being a part of and flowing with nature and environment than the conquest of nature so dominant in notions like Manifest Destiny that destroyed environments, and wiped out whole civilizations.

I recalled and shared in that conversation an experience that I’d had 20 years ago on the side of a mountain on the Big Island of Hawaii. The Island is volcanically active. Sitting as far up the side of Mauna Loa as I was it was easy to visualize the whole island chain as a conveyor belt of newly created earth upon which I sat. As I realized this I looked at the tree at my side and realized that if the explosive mechanism of volcanic creation, which the Hawaiians personify as the goddess Pele, was to go into action at that point all my thoughts about what I should be about in the next 5 years or for that matter my own thoughts about purpose for the next 5 seconds would blow away in the creative process of me and that tree becoming newly created terra firma. I recalled an overwhelming sense of freedom. I was part of a creation that, among so many other things expresses the awesome unfathomable nature of its Creator. And sì Dios quierìa I would either live long enough to realize the futility of my own 5 year planning or I would become an integral part of a new section of the Island of Hawaii.

I still trip. That night after the midweek worship discussion I wrote the following poem:

Purpose driven by whom
does he think he knows
that he claims to know
what is not his to know.
The I AM moves like
the verb that it is being
and flowing like
the hot lava of necessary
destruction of monuments
to stagnant human deficiency.
Pele’s burning flow
melting the blasphemous icons
of understanding some ultimate purpose
that expresses nothing more
and much less
the slinking serpentine slime
of arrogance that there is anything
like an ultimate when
the I AM moves as the I AM moves
escaping the species’ demand
for entitlement to what is already given.
Where is devotion and endless gratitude
in utterances of complete understanding?

Embrace the need to comfort
with presence, not answers.
Discomfort with others’ distress is the implant of oneness and gratitude
that we are a part not apart.
Dust to dust is eternal
And it blows within and beyond
on the breath of God.

For Tereza...

The thrashing in the smothering
madness of terminal political niceness subsides
As a piece of the melting icecap
she floats away from its cold grip
Resigned to an unknown melding
that melts away the icy hardness
Becoming one with the ebb and flow
of what surrounds the island sanctuary
Blowing the breath of life
off its deep blue salty cradle
She is healed.

by John