Relocation

Dear friends,

I am so grateful for the gift of life in community. Or, drawing on today’s gospel reading, I am so grateful for the gift of life on the vine. I give thanks to God for you!

Today’s worship service, in its entirety, may be viewed here:

If you’d prefer to listen only to the gospel reading and sermon, you may do so here:

The sermon is based on Psalm 22:25-31 and John 15:1-8.

Psalm 22:25-31

²⁵From you comes my praise in the great assembly;
I will perform my vows in the sight of those who fear the Lord.
²⁶The poor shall eat and be satisfied,
Let those who seek the Lord give praise! May your hearts live forever!
²⁷All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord;
all the families of nations shall bow before God.
²⁸For dominion belongs to the Lord, who rules over the nations.
²⁹Indeed, all who sleep in the earth shall bow down in worship;
all who go down to the dust, though they be dead, shall kneel before the Lord.
³⁰Their descendants shall serve the Lord, whom they shall proclaim to generations to come.
³¹They shall proclaim God’s deliverance to a people yet unborn,
saying to them, “The Lord has acted!”

John 15:1-8

[Jesus said:] ¹“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. ²He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. ³You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. ⁴Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. ⁵I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. ⁶Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. ⁷If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. ⁸My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.”

 

Beloved of God, grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus. Amen.

This is not my story. This is the story of Dihan Hossain. It takes place in New York City four months after Dihan and his family moved there from Bangladesh. I’ll do my best this morning to tell Dihan’s story, but I do encourage you to listen to it yourself on the Food, Glorious Food episode of the Moth Radio Hour.

https://themoth.org/stories/that-pizza

When I came to America everything was interesting to me and the most interesting part to me was pizza! My second day of school I was coming back home and I saw a pizza store near my house. The shopkeeper was taking out a pizza with chicken on the top, cheeses melting. It looked so delicious. I knew I had to have it. I asked the shopkeeper how much it was and he said, “$5 with beverage.”

My mom wouldn’t give me the money, so I started saving. $5 is like $400 in my country. After twenty days I had $5 in my pocket and I felt like the Bill Gates of the world.

When school was finished I went back to the shop. The shopkeeper gave me the pizza and I was so excited. It was such an amazing feeling. I’ve been waiting for this fancy food for so long.

There was a park nearby. I decide I’ll go there, because I want to eat the pizza peacefully. I don’t want to share with my sister.

I’m about to take out the pizza from my bag and I see there’s a strange guy staring at me for no reason. I waited twenty days to eat that pizza, and now it’s in my hand, and I can’t even eat it!

I was like, “OK. Let’s ignore him.”

But I can’t ignore him because he’s staring at me weirdly.

Five minutes later and he’s still staring at me.

Suddenly, he comes toward me. I was like, “No, no. please don’t come to me.”

He came to me and he said, “Excuse me, sir, do you have any food or anything that you can help me?”

I couldn’t say no because I had food in my hand. He could see it.

I’m feeling so bad. “Why you have to ask me that question? I’m the kind of person who never likes to share my food, not even with my siblings.”

I look at his condition. He has a ripped jacket, ripped shirt, ripped pants and shoes.

I give him half of the slice and he ate the pizza so fast I was like “How?”  The other slice is still on my hand. How did he eat that pizza so fast?

Suddenly I see tears coming out of his eyes.

I ask him, “What happened? Are you sick or something?”

He says, “No. I haven’t eaten for more than 2 and a half days.”

I don’t know how he got in this condition but I feel really bad for him. I give him the other slice of my pizza. He felt a kind of peace.

I know that when I go home I’m going to have something to eat, but he has no surety that he’s going to eat next time or when he’s going to eat. So I give him the other slice. And we just talked for a little while.

I look at my watch and it’s time for me to go. He asks if he can have a slight hug. I see he’s dirty, but still, that’s fine. I give him a hug. And that day I realized it doesn’t take that long to help others.

A small act of humanity can make our world beautiful.

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The poor shall eat and be satisfied, the psalmist declares.

I am the vine, Jesus says, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit. Apart from me you can do nothing.

Diana Butler Bass, in recent reflections on religion after pandemic, writes, We need to grieve what is gone, yes. But that is not the only task ahead. Lost doesn’t just refer to what is gone. It also means that which is mislaid, out of place, dislocated…We need to find ourselves again, to be relocated in the world.

She goes on to claim that in this pandemic time we’ve been dislocated in four major ways:

• Temporal dislocation: We’ve lost our sense of time as it existed before the pandemic. How often have you thought: What day is this? What time is it? That’s temporal dislocation.
• Historical dislocation: We’ve lost our sense of where we are in the larger story of both our own lives and our communal stories. History has been disrupted. Where are we? Where are we going? That’s historical dislocation.
• Physical dislocation: We’ve lost our sense of embodiment with others and geographical location. For millions, technology has moved “physicality” into cyber-space and most of us have no idea what to do with this virtual sense of location. We’ve striven to maintain some sense of embodiment even amid isolation. But the disconnection between our bodies, places, and other bodies has been profound. That’s physical dislocation.
• Relational dislocation: We’ve lost our daily habits of interactions with other humans, the expression of emotions together in community. Have you worried you won’t know how to respond when you can be with your friends without distance, with no masks? How it will feel to be in large groups again? What happens when the plexiglass comes down, the mask is off? That’s relational dislocation.

Surely, then, Diana Butler Bass writes, religious communities need to be about the work of relocation…our lost world needs finding.

https://dianabutlerbass.substack.com/p/religion-after-pandemic

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All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, the psalmist declares.

I am the vine, Jesus says, you are the branches.

This is our location in a world where so much has been lost. This is our place when we don’t even know what day it is let alone how this time in our lives fits into the larger historical narrative. This is the tenacious, binding, rooted, embodied connection that holds us together even now. We are branches on the vine. We belong to the risen Christ, the one who holds this whole world together. We exist alongside one another, not left on our own to succeed or to fail. The God to whom we belong is faithful. The vine nourishes us, feeds us, strengthens us for service and witness.

Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, share their long-awaited pizza, ask for help, ask for a hug, see not strangers but beloved branches on the vine. Those who abide in me and I in them know they are not alone.

You are not alone, beloved.  You are not lost. You have been found.

And together, loved into life by the vine that is Christ, we proclaim God’s deliverance to a people yet unborn, to the ones who will come after, to the ones who will look to see how we emerged from this incredible trial.

We will say, The Lord has acted!

We will sing, Our Father, who art in heaven, delivered us from evil.

We will offer praise from our place on the vine as we move into the future together.

We will tell the story of this world’s salvation. Amen.