This is it! This is the last Sunday in the season of Easter, and we’re still rising! Our Easter theme this year has been “When the Impossible is Possible.” Sometimes we “modern day” and post-modern intellectuals get caught up in questions of disbelief like, “How was Jesus raised from the dead?” or “Did it really happen?”

Well, if you still have any doubt about how God can raise us from death to life, you weren’t here last Sunday! We have been raised up! We have been set free. Now it’s time to fly!

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How much joy and goodness can one week contain? Tuesday the Presbytery of the Pacific dismissed our congregation and me to the United Church of Christ. While it was sad to say goodbye to some dear friends, colleagues and long-time supporters of our ministry, it was also an experience of joyous liberation! We are finally free to be 100% who we are and be part of a denomination that loves, values, respects and actually wants us and our families. And the very next morning, Barack Obama comes out with his personal support for same gender marriage. Mr. Obama is the first sitting President of the United States to take this stance. Unbelievable! Not only is Obama the President of the United States, he is also a Black / African American Christian male. No one else in the world could have opened the conversation about equal marriage rights in the manner he has.

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One of the things boys learn early on in life is that boys like to fight. I honestly don’t know if it’s genetic, hormonal or learned behavior; but I do know it’s true. In my circle of friends who have children, there seems to be an awful lot of girls and surprisingly few boys. It may well be that girls tend to hang with girls and boys with boys, but the ratio is totally disproportionate. In my family I grew up surrounded by boys. My Mom, bless her heart, had three boys. My cousins were two boys and one girl. Our neighborhood was 90% boys. Boys were everywhere.

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One of my all-time favorite books is called “Calmly Plotting the Resurrection” by Donna Schaper. It was given to me by Laurie Fox as a birthday gift in 1996! At the time, we knew Donna as a feminist spirituality writer. It wasn’t until last year that I realized she is also a minister in the United Church of Christ.

In July of last year I attended the General Synod (national gathering) of the UCC and was invited to a cocktail party to meet some of the leading social justice advocates in the UCC. This rather short woman, about my age, joined a conversation group I was with, so I introduced myself and told her about our exploration and discernment process with the UCC. She in turn introduced herself as “Donna Schaper.” I was stunned! I asked, “Are you the Donna Schaper who wrote ‘Calmly Plotting the Resurrection?’” She smiled and said, “Yes, but that was a long time ago! “I said, OMG, we’ve got to talk!” After the party we got together and talked until about 1 in the morning.

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How will you be remembered after you die? Have you ever thought about that? One of the things that always amazes me about the way we here at West Hollywood Church remember those who have died is that almost everyone leaves a Memorial Service saying, “I didn’t know that about her or him!” And they’re impressed!

And that’s not just from “general friends.” A few months ago we remembered and celebrated the life of David Muller. David’s mom, who knew him for 56 years, has said to me every time we talk, “I didn’t know [this or that] about David. His Memorial service was so beautiful to me.” And then she pauses and asks, “Is it okay to say that about a Memorial Service?” Of course it is. What made that service so beautiful for her was the honest sharing about David’s life and the way he touched so many people. Some pastors include a “eulogy” that gives “vital” information about the person. That usually includes where they were born, where they went to school. Awards, accomplishments, professional achievements, etc., etc. Years ago I learned that that kind of stuff is not what people remember or even care about. What we care about is how the person who has died touched our lives. We care about their humanness and the way they related to us.

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There is no “low or slow Sunday” after Easter at West Hollywood Church! This coming Sunday is full of Joy and the unexpected. It’s Easter 2.0. We will continue the celebration of Resurrection in our lives as we continue “Rising” with the Risen Christ.

This week we have another first! Artist and all-around creative girl, Emma B, is producing our first WH Utube video. Em has spent the last weeks interviewing some of you with the question, “What does the resurrection mean to you?” This Sunday we’ll see the edited version! Totally cool.

We also will receive New Members and Celebrate the Baptism of Hortensia Ruiz. This New Members Class is the first class in the history of our church (which is pretty wild and untraditional) in which a majority of the class is Hispanic/Latin-American. Awesome!

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When it comes to talking about spiritual experiences, I find people are terribly hesitant to share their own experiences, either out of fear that they won’t be believed or that they will be thought to be crazy. Often when I am talking with someone about their spiritual experience, they’ll begin by saying, “You’re never going to believe this, but…” I used to take such statements personally. Why wouldn’t I believe you? I’m your pastor! If anyone is going to believe you, it should be your pastor! But along this journey through life I learned this isn’t about me. This is about the way we view spirituality in “the post-modern era.” We’ve become so rationally minded in our world view that there is little space (or tolerance) for the spiritual. That’s too bad because there are many experiences in our lives that are mystical or spiritual. They’re not rational in the sense of predictable or provable, but they are very real and very meaningful.

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This Sunday we begin the holiest week in the Christian tradition. That’s why it is called “Holy Week.” This Sunday, Palm Sunday, marks “the beginning of the end” for Jesus as he faces the reality of his own death. All during Lent we have looked at various people in the Passion Story (the story of the suffering and crucifixion of Jesus). We began with Judas who betrayed Jesus, Simon of Cyrene who was conscripted to help carry Jesus’ cross, Peter who out of fear denied even knowing Jesus, and Pilate who tried to “wash his hands” of his involvement in condemning Jesus to death. As we looked at these people from the past, we learned that what “drove” them still “drives” us today.

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Are you, like me, tired of people and politicians who always seek the most politically expedient “way out?” In this age where Fox news, Tea Partiers and right-wing Talk Radio personalities talk endlessly about “personal responsibility,” how come it doesn’t apply to THEM? Why does it always apply to “OTHERS?” Why doesn’t it apply to those at the top of the social ladder, but always for those at the bottom of the ladder? That is the question this Sunday’s gospel puts before us.

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In John’s gospel, the very first miracle Jesus performs is at “a wedding” in Cana. (pronounced “cane-uh”)

Bishop John Shelby Spong of the Episcopal Church rocked the Christian world about 15 years ago when he stated “There is a high probability that this wedding in Cana was actually Jesus’ wedding feast, probably to Mary Magdalene.” How did he reach that conclusion?

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