Saturday, March 29, 2008
Resurrection: the Place of Delight & Hope
Sermon preached on Easter Day: Jeremiah 31:1-6, Acts 10:34-43, Matthew 28:1-10
The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness. Jeremiah 31:2
I truly understand that God shows no partiality. Acts 10:34
Do not be afraid…go to Galilee; there [you] will see me. Matthew 28:10
In my office on the shelf above my desk is a picture of a young boy playing a drum. His name is Dickson and he is a boy I met in Uganda when I was there several years ago.
Dickson is an AIDS orphan. He had been taken in by the family with whom I was staying, a common occurrence in that culture. He was a grim little boy and my heart went out to him. He slept at night in the same room with two young men who were roomers with the family. He had an old blanket worn thin and slept on a couple layers of cardboard for “comfort.”
I wanted to do something for him. Call it liberal guilt, but nevertheless I wanted to do some small thing to make his life better. I was somewhat taken aback when the man of the household with whom I was staying suggested I buy him a drum. It wasn’t what I had in mind, but he wasn’t taking no for an answer. So I bought Dickson a drum.
When I presented it to him there was an amazing transformation. He smiled for the first time; beamed really. And he immediately took that drum and started playing with incredible skill. He was clearly in his element. The playing went on for over an hour. When it was time for bed that evening and I stopped in to say good night to the young men, Dickson was already asleep, clutching his drum.
I later found out that what I had done was given Dickson a piece of home. His father was a drummer in his village and he had begun to pass the art on to his son before he died.
Dickson’s transformation and his “homecoming” are what I would call an experience of the resurrection. It was an experience of delight and hope in an otherwise dreary world.
The message that Jesus gives the women who have come to the tomb is not simply to tell the other disciples that he was alive. No, there are specific instructions to go to Galilee and there they will see him.
Galilee. It is an important detail. Galilee was home for the disciples and home for Jesus, and it was the place of the bulk of Jesus’ ministry. Life had not been the same since they had left there to go to Jerusalem, a journey that had resulted in Jesus’ downfall and death. Galilee was home: the place of delight and hope.
Galilee was also, as a region, mixed territory. There were significant Jewish settlements there, but also significant Gentile ones, including large, relatively new, Roman cities. It was, in many ways, “mongrel” territory, where most Jewish purists would never live because it meant constantly rubbing elbows with foreigners, which in turn meant constantly being at risk of being made ritually unclean.
It was not what had him killed per se, but it hadn’t helped Jesus’ cause in Jerusalem that he came from Galilee. It was sort of like the feeling I get from some Rochesterians when I say I grew up in Steuben County. “Oh,” or “Oh! they say. Now to be truthful, folks in Steuben County can have the same reaction to “city folk,” defined as anyone who lives north of the Thruway, that great cultural divide in our part of the world.
Nevertheless, my main point is that Jesus was telling his disciples to go back home, to the place of their delight and hope. There they would experience resurrection for themselves. Going back to Galilee also meant going back to mixed territory, from which the disciples would receive their mission to “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19), something we are about to do this morning, baptizing our sister Deb Costich.
Our other readings have different ways of describing this home. Sometimes home is in a surprising place, where you do not expect to find it. Peter experiences this reality when he finds God busily at work in a non-Jewish household, that of Cornelius, a centurion in the Roman army. It causes him to say a very non-Jewish thing, “I truly understand that God shows no partiality.” For God, Galilee is normative; home is the place of delight and hope for all people.
In the reading from the prophet Jeremiah this morning home is in a place which seems the exact opposite of home. “The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness.” Jeremiah is speaking of those who had been driven into exile from their homeland. “The wilderness” was a foreign place: Babylon. The people of Israel were being asked to find their home in a place where they were literally captives, find their place of delight and hope in a place that otherwise was a place of hardship and despair.
This says to me that home is actually wherever we find ourselves to be, sometimes in the place we naturally call “home,” sometimes in a surprising new place, sometimes in a place that seems to be the exact opposite of home. That means we can experience the resurrection anywhere and at anytime. Resurrection is the capacity to experience delight and hope—home—wherever and whenever we are.
That is the faith we are passing on to Deb Costich this morning. We are literally creating home for her, in this place and among us in particular, and in the wider Christian family in general. We are saying join us in the place of delight and hope, join us in the experience of resurrection.
That is the message we are called to proclaim in word and deed no matter where we are or “when” we are. Sometimes that proclamation is in very mundane things like a drum to tap into long smothered delight, things that are not entirely practical, yet unlock the human spirit.
Sometimes that proclamation is to those in a place that seems to be “anti-home,” the place of illness or loss or despair. Often when we are in those places we cannot find this sense of delight and hope ourselves; it is beyond our grasp. That is when we as a community are called to offer that place, the place of encouragement and acceptance in spite of everything.
Sometimes that proclamation is to be the place of return, to simply be that place of “ok-ness,” a place of grounding, where sense can be made of a nonsensical world, more traditionally what we think of as “home.”
Whatever the reality, we are to proclaim resurrection—the experience of home, of delight and hope, where no one has to be afraid, where purity doesn’t matter anymore, and grace can be found even in the wilderness.
Let this Easter Day be this proclamation; let us all hear the voice of Jesus say, “Do not be afraid. Go to Galilee; go home; go to the place of your delight and hope. There you will see me.”
And don’t forget to take your drum with you.
The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness. Jeremiah 31:2
I truly understand that God shows no partiality. Acts 10:34
Do not be afraid…go to Galilee; there [you] will see me. Matthew 28:10
In my office on the shelf above my desk is a picture of a young boy playing a drum. His name is Dickson and he is a boy I met in Uganda when I was there several years ago.
Dickson is an AIDS orphan. He had been taken in by the family with whom I was staying, a common occurrence in that culture. He was a grim little boy and my heart went out to him. He slept at night in the same room with two young men who were roomers with the family. He had an old blanket worn thin and slept on a couple layers of cardboard for “comfort.”
I wanted to do something for him. Call it liberal guilt, but nevertheless I wanted to do some small thing to make his life better. I was somewhat taken aback when the man of the household with whom I was staying suggested I buy him a drum. It wasn’t what I had in mind, but he wasn’t taking no for an answer. So I bought Dickson a drum.
When I presented it to him there was an amazing transformation. He smiled for the first time; beamed really. And he immediately took that drum and started playing with incredible skill. He was clearly in his element. The playing went on for over an hour. When it was time for bed that evening and I stopped in to say good night to the young men, Dickson was already asleep, clutching his drum.
I later found out that what I had done was given Dickson a piece of home. His father was a drummer in his village and he had begun to pass the art on to his son before he died.
Dickson’s transformation and his “homecoming” are what I would call an experience of the resurrection. It was an experience of delight and hope in an otherwise dreary world.
The message that Jesus gives the women who have come to the tomb is not simply to tell the other disciples that he was alive. No, there are specific instructions to go to Galilee and there they will see him.
Galilee. It is an important detail. Galilee was home for the disciples and home for Jesus, and it was the place of the bulk of Jesus’ ministry. Life had not been the same since they had left there to go to Jerusalem, a journey that had resulted in Jesus’ downfall and death. Galilee was home: the place of delight and hope.
Galilee was also, as a region, mixed territory. There were significant Jewish settlements there, but also significant Gentile ones, including large, relatively new, Roman cities. It was, in many ways, “mongrel” territory, where most Jewish purists would never live because it meant constantly rubbing elbows with foreigners, which in turn meant constantly being at risk of being made ritually unclean.
It was not what had him killed per se, but it hadn’t helped Jesus’ cause in Jerusalem that he came from Galilee. It was sort of like the feeling I get from some Rochesterians when I say I grew up in Steuben County. “Oh,” or “Oh! they say. Now to be truthful, folks in Steuben County can have the same reaction to “city folk,” defined as anyone who lives north of the Thruway, that great cultural divide in our part of the world.
Nevertheless, my main point is that Jesus was telling his disciples to go back home, to the place of their delight and hope. There they would experience resurrection for themselves. Going back to Galilee also meant going back to mixed territory, from which the disciples would receive their mission to “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19), something we are about to do this morning, baptizing our sister Deb Costich.
Our other readings have different ways of describing this home. Sometimes home is in a surprising place, where you do not expect to find it. Peter experiences this reality when he finds God busily at work in a non-Jewish household, that of Cornelius, a centurion in the Roman army. It causes him to say a very non-Jewish thing, “I truly understand that God shows no partiality.” For God, Galilee is normative; home is the place of delight and hope for all people.
In the reading from the prophet Jeremiah this morning home is in a place which seems the exact opposite of home. “The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness.” Jeremiah is speaking of those who had been driven into exile from their homeland. “The wilderness” was a foreign place: Babylon. The people of Israel were being asked to find their home in a place where they were literally captives, find their place of delight and hope in a place that otherwise was a place of hardship and despair.
This says to me that home is actually wherever we find ourselves to be, sometimes in the place we naturally call “home,” sometimes in a surprising new place, sometimes in a place that seems to be the exact opposite of home. That means we can experience the resurrection anywhere and at anytime. Resurrection is the capacity to experience delight and hope—home—wherever and whenever we are.
That is the faith we are passing on to Deb Costich this morning. We are literally creating home for her, in this place and among us in particular, and in the wider Christian family in general. We are saying join us in the place of delight and hope, join us in the experience of resurrection.
That is the message we are called to proclaim in word and deed no matter where we are or “when” we are. Sometimes that proclamation is in very mundane things like a drum to tap into long smothered delight, things that are not entirely practical, yet unlock the human spirit.
Sometimes that proclamation is to those in a place that seems to be “anti-home,” the place of illness or loss or despair. Often when we are in those places we cannot find this sense of delight and hope ourselves; it is beyond our grasp. That is when we as a community are called to offer that place, the place of encouragement and acceptance in spite of everything.
Sometimes that proclamation is to be the place of return, to simply be that place of “ok-ness,” a place of grounding, where sense can be made of a nonsensical world, more traditionally what we think of as “home.”
Whatever the reality, we are to proclaim resurrection—the experience of home, of delight and hope, where no one has to be afraid, where purity doesn’t matter anymore, and grace can be found even in the wilderness.
Let this Easter Day be this proclamation; let us all hear the voice of Jesus say, “Do not be afraid. Go to Galilee; go home; go to the place of your delight and hope. There you will see me.”
And don’t forget to take your drum with you.
Were You There?
Sermon preached on Good Friday at the Church of St. Luke 7 St. Simon Cyrene, ROchester, New York: John 18:1--19:42
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
LEVAS II 37
So asks the traditional Negro spiritual, and it is, of course, meant to be a rhetorical question. Yes, we were there.
But how? The hymn doesn’t pretend to answer the question and may even imply that we were there as passive observers, part of the curious crowd.
But the Gospel writers certainly want us “to be there” in the person of the characters that inhabit the story. We were there in them and through their actions.
We were there in Judas the betrayer, finally, grimly, convinced that Jesus has gone too far, that his teaching ultimately cannot lead to any good, perhaps disenchanted that Jesus was not ending up to be the political savior for which he had hoped. Perhaps he believed what the religious leaders were saying, that it was better for one man to die for the people. It had been the people and their freedom from Rome that had been his passion and he had thought it was Jesus’ passion as well. That his passion was “not of this world” was a crushing disappointment. What earthly good was this heavenly minded man?
We were there in Peter the denier, the other betrayer, scared to death, acting on the impulse to save his own skin, unwilling in the end to follow Jesus down this road, perhaps himself horrified by it. Ever since Jesus had insisted that Jesus wash Peter’s feet, it had felt like something was wrong. The risk of his own life was asking too much. How much did this Jesus really expect from him?
We were there with Caiaphus and the other religious authorities, concerned first and foremost with appeasing the empire and protecting the security of the people, willing to set aside any sense of their own values, willing to sacrifice a human life in order to feel safe. What is one life if it means our own security?
We were there with Pilate, cynical Pilate. “What is truth?” he asks, neither expecting an answer nor desiring one. And willing to use his power to assuage the masses. You can also here him say a twenty-first century, “Whatever?” Who really cares? This doesn’t actually effect me, so why bother getting worked up about it?
We were there in all four of these “villains” of the story, either actively encouraging the injustice or passively accepting it, either way out of our own fears and insecurities.
But we were also there in the beloved disciple and Jesus’ mother and the other women at the foot of the cross, being formed into the church, that family beyond biology wherein we are trusted to one another’s care. And we are in grief over this injustice, this enormous loss, the blinding pain of it all. And we cannot for a moment understand why Jesus did not save himself, why did this have to be?
And we were there in Jesus himself, courageously offering himself indeed to die for the people, willing to risk or even give our life for the sake of those we love, acting the part of a servant to the very end.
We were there. For ill or for good, we were there.
But more importantly, God was there, the servant God, not demanding our obedience and subjection, but offering himself to be our very liberation and life freeing us from all the tyrannies that hold sway over us, either from without or from within. And freeing us as well from the tyranny of our image of the angry, wrathful God, the moral bean counter in the sky. In Jesus on the cross, dying for us, we are free from that God, free instead to worship the Servant God, who values us as his children, so much to give up all his power to us and for us.
This day is only “good” because of the God whom this day is revealed to us, the God who really is love, pure and unconditional, despite the fact that “we were there.”
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
LEVAS II 37
So asks the traditional Negro spiritual, and it is, of course, meant to be a rhetorical question. Yes, we were there.
But how? The hymn doesn’t pretend to answer the question and may even imply that we were there as passive observers, part of the curious crowd.
But the Gospel writers certainly want us “to be there” in the person of the characters that inhabit the story. We were there in them and through their actions.
We were there in Judas the betrayer, finally, grimly, convinced that Jesus has gone too far, that his teaching ultimately cannot lead to any good, perhaps disenchanted that Jesus was not ending up to be the political savior for which he had hoped. Perhaps he believed what the religious leaders were saying, that it was better for one man to die for the people. It had been the people and their freedom from Rome that had been his passion and he had thought it was Jesus’ passion as well. That his passion was “not of this world” was a crushing disappointment. What earthly good was this heavenly minded man?
We were there in Peter the denier, the other betrayer, scared to death, acting on the impulse to save his own skin, unwilling in the end to follow Jesus down this road, perhaps himself horrified by it. Ever since Jesus had insisted that Jesus wash Peter’s feet, it had felt like something was wrong. The risk of his own life was asking too much. How much did this Jesus really expect from him?
We were there with Caiaphus and the other religious authorities, concerned first and foremost with appeasing the empire and protecting the security of the people, willing to set aside any sense of their own values, willing to sacrifice a human life in order to feel safe. What is one life if it means our own security?
We were there with Pilate, cynical Pilate. “What is truth?” he asks, neither expecting an answer nor desiring one. And willing to use his power to assuage the masses. You can also here him say a twenty-first century, “Whatever?” Who really cares? This doesn’t actually effect me, so why bother getting worked up about it?
We were there in all four of these “villains” of the story, either actively encouraging the injustice or passively accepting it, either way out of our own fears and insecurities.
But we were also there in the beloved disciple and Jesus’ mother and the other women at the foot of the cross, being formed into the church, that family beyond biology wherein we are trusted to one another’s care. And we are in grief over this injustice, this enormous loss, the blinding pain of it all. And we cannot for a moment understand why Jesus did not save himself, why did this have to be?
And we were there in Jesus himself, courageously offering himself indeed to die for the people, willing to risk or even give our life for the sake of those we love, acting the part of a servant to the very end.
We were there. For ill or for good, we were there.
But more importantly, God was there, the servant God, not demanding our obedience and subjection, but offering himself to be our very liberation and life freeing us from all the tyrannies that hold sway over us, either from without or from within. And freeing us as well from the tyranny of our image of the angry, wrathful God, the moral bean counter in the sky. In Jesus on the cross, dying for us, we are free from that God, free instead to worship the Servant God, who values us as his children, so much to give up all his power to us and for us.
This day is only “good” because of the God whom this day is revealed to us, the God who really is love, pure and unconditional, despite the fact that “we were there.”
Thursday, March 20, 2008
The Cup of Freedom, the Servant God
Sermon preached on Maundy Thursday: Psalm 116:1, 10-17; John 13:1-17, 31b-35
I raise the cup of freedom as I call on God’s Name. ICEL Translation, Psalm 116:11
I love the translation we just used for the psalm this evening. “Cup of salvation” in the Prayer Book translation becomes (quite legitimately from the Hebrew), “cup of freedom.” Tonight I want to reflect on this freedom cup we raise.
Freedom is always freedom from something. From what are we celebrating our freedom from this evening?
First of all one must say that it may seem a bit premature to be talking about our freedom this evening. We are only beginning these three days of celebrating what we call the paschal mystery, the dying and rising of Christ. In many ways tonight is just a preliminary to the dominant events of Friday and Sunday.
Yet not for us. For us in the sacramental tradition, who live our lives from week to week, from Eucharist to Eucharist, this night has a depth of importance and richness that rivals even Easter. This is the night we were given this greatest of gifts that sustains our faith and our life.
This is the night when we are given the lens to interpret Friday and Sunday and then to live Friday and Sunday out from day to day and week to week.
What this lens of the Eucharist tells us is that Friday and Sunday are about our freedom, acts to achieve the freedom of the people of God, the freedom of you and of me.
Yet again, freedom from what? I think the best way to explain that is through another powerful image we are given this evening, that of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples.
It was an act that was unexpected and disarming, if not a little shocking or even offensive, especially to Peter. Is this an appropriate way to act for the one who John begins his Gospel calling, “the Word made flesh.” Clearly Peter doesn’t think so.
Jesus, however, wants to leave his disciples with a contrary image to that which he knows they believe about God, that God requires them to be his servants. It is not a wrong thing to think, but for Jesus it is more important for them to understand deep within their souls this contrary notion he brings before them.
God wishes to serve them. God exists to serve them.
It still flies in the face of everything most of us believe about God. God is the one we worship and seek to obey. God is worthy to be praised and adored. Yet here the praiseworthy one takes the role of a servant and, literally, gets his hands dirty. The God of Jesus is the Servant God. The Word made flesh came not to be served but to serve, to live among us as servant and friend.
What do we celebrate our freedom from tonight? It is that predominant image we have of God as the one who requires our service, who seeks to rule over us and exact our obedience. Jesus gives us freedom from that God and offers us the freedom of the God of love and companionship and servanthood.
That means, of course, that we are to love and serve one another. Jesus makes that clear and gives his “new commandment:” “love one another.” But it is love “as I have loved you.” God’s love comes first. Elsewhere in this Gospel Jesus will say, “You did not choose me, but I chose you.”
Jesus believes, you see, that we can only adequately, honestly and even divinely serve one another if we first experience the God who serves us. God’s service, God’s love, our freedom, comes first. It is not a consequence of what we do. “From his fullness we have all received grace upon grace.” (John 1:16)
This notion of God is utterly consistent with the events that we will celebrate tomorrow and Saturday evening and Sunday. The God who is willing to die for us is the Servant God. The God who is raised from the dead and forgives those who betrayed and abandoned him is the Servant God.
For tonight let us savor this amazing image and let it overcome all our resistance and sink deep into our souls. Let us lift up and drink from the cup of our freedom, the cup that is the gift of our amazing servant God.
I raise the cup of freedom as I call on God’s Name. ICEL Translation, Psalm 116:11
I love the translation we just used for the psalm this evening. “Cup of salvation” in the Prayer Book translation becomes (quite legitimately from the Hebrew), “cup of freedom.” Tonight I want to reflect on this freedom cup we raise.
Freedom is always freedom from something. From what are we celebrating our freedom from this evening?
First of all one must say that it may seem a bit premature to be talking about our freedom this evening. We are only beginning these three days of celebrating what we call the paschal mystery, the dying and rising of Christ. In many ways tonight is just a preliminary to the dominant events of Friday and Sunday.
Yet not for us. For us in the sacramental tradition, who live our lives from week to week, from Eucharist to Eucharist, this night has a depth of importance and richness that rivals even Easter. This is the night we were given this greatest of gifts that sustains our faith and our life.
This is the night when we are given the lens to interpret Friday and Sunday and then to live Friday and Sunday out from day to day and week to week.
What this lens of the Eucharist tells us is that Friday and Sunday are about our freedom, acts to achieve the freedom of the people of God, the freedom of you and of me.
Yet again, freedom from what? I think the best way to explain that is through another powerful image we are given this evening, that of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples.
It was an act that was unexpected and disarming, if not a little shocking or even offensive, especially to Peter. Is this an appropriate way to act for the one who John begins his Gospel calling, “the Word made flesh.” Clearly Peter doesn’t think so.
Jesus, however, wants to leave his disciples with a contrary image to that which he knows they believe about God, that God requires them to be his servants. It is not a wrong thing to think, but for Jesus it is more important for them to understand deep within their souls this contrary notion he brings before them.
God wishes to serve them. God exists to serve them.
It still flies in the face of everything most of us believe about God. God is the one we worship and seek to obey. God is worthy to be praised and adored. Yet here the praiseworthy one takes the role of a servant and, literally, gets his hands dirty. The God of Jesus is the Servant God. The Word made flesh came not to be served but to serve, to live among us as servant and friend.
What do we celebrate our freedom from tonight? It is that predominant image we have of God as the one who requires our service, who seeks to rule over us and exact our obedience. Jesus gives us freedom from that God and offers us the freedom of the God of love and companionship and servanthood.
That means, of course, that we are to love and serve one another. Jesus makes that clear and gives his “new commandment:” “love one another.” But it is love “as I have loved you.” God’s love comes first. Elsewhere in this Gospel Jesus will say, “You did not choose me, but I chose you.”
Jesus believes, you see, that we can only adequately, honestly and even divinely serve one another if we first experience the God who serves us. God’s service, God’s love, our freedom, comes first. It is not a consequence of what we do. “From his fullness we have all received grace upon grace.” (John 1:16)
This notion of God is utterly consistent with the events that we will celebrate tomorrow and Saturday evening and Sunday. The God who is willing to die for us is the Servant God. The God who is raised from the dead and forgives those who betrayed and abandoned him is the Servant God.
For tonight let us savor this amazing image and let it overcome all our resistance and sink deep into our souls. Let us lift up and drink from the cup of our freedom, the cup that is the gift of our amazing servant God.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
The Same Mind
Sermon preached on Palm/Passion Sunday at the Church of St. Luke & St. Simon Cyrene, Rochester, New York: Philippians 2:5-11, Matthew 26:14--27:66
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus… (Philippians 2)
It is a terrible day after a terrible week. It isn’t any fun at all listening to that story about Jesus’ betrayal and suffering and death. Nor was it any fun living through the events of this week in our state and in our church.
I am, of course, referring, on the one hand, to the tragedy of Governor Spitzer’s downfall at his own hands, and, on the other, to the news that Bishop Gene Robinson will be totally excluded from this summer’s Lambeth Conference, the every ten year meeting of all the bishops of our Anglican Communion. These two stories relate to the story of Jesus that we have heard in two very different ways, but they also both relate to the lens with which to view Jesus’ story that St. Paul gives us this morning: “Let this same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.”
First, Eliot Spitzer.
It is easy and right to feel betrayed by Governor Spitzer. The blatant disregard for his family and his office and the sheer hypocrisy of his actions take the breath away. He certainly did the right thing in resigning as his integrity was just way too far compromised, besides the fact that he broke the law.
Yet I was troubled, and all Christians ought to be troubled, by all the talk of politicians such as the Governor being held to “a higher standard.” Do we really mean to let ourselves off the hook—that somehow if you or I were guilty of the same kind of disregard of our sacred vows and utter hypocrisy we should not be as accountable?
No. In the Christian vision there is only one standard, and it is high across the board.
We all have to bear that, not just public officials or those otherwise in the public eye. The standard is bearable, however, because of the other reality before us today—that Jesus died to save us from this unbearable standard. So we Christians can never gloat when someone like Eliot Spitzer falls; in fact, we are compelled to say that he is more like us than not. He is a fallen man, just like you and just like me, and Jesus died to save him and to save you and to save me.
Jesus loves Eliot Spitzer, and loves you and loves me. And we are called to have the same mind, to embrace suffering so that it can be redeemed. And that is true whether the suffering is deserved or not. We are called to have compassion for Eliot Spitzer as God does for him and for each one of us when we fall. There is nothing easy about such compassion, because it often goes against our gut instinct to feel betrayed and to dismiss him as having deserved what he got.
Well, he did deserve what he got, and so do we when we screw up, but thanks be to God Jesus died for him and died for us and loves him and loves us.
On to Gene Robinson, the Bishop of New Hampshire, a different kind of sufferer, one who did not bring suffering on himself (unless you believe that his accepting the office of bishop was itself a sinful act). Bishop Gene has known for a long time that he would not be fully invited to the Lambeth Conference, but he held out some hope that he could participate in a limited way in the spirit of the supposed “listening process” with gay and lesbian Anglicans to which the bishops committed themselves ten years ago. This week he learned that would not be possible in any way.
Not to put him too high on a pedestal, but Gene reacted, I believe, with “the same mind that was in Christ Jesus.” He felt alone and betrayed and had the instinct at first, he said, to find some way to run away from what was going on. So did Jesus, if you listened carefully to the story that we just heard. But he then summoned the strength within himself to walk through his suffering and to take the high road with his betrayers, urging his colleagues in our Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops to go and to carry with them his suffering, and, more importantly, the suffering of exclusion that is still the general lot of gay and lesbian people in our church.
How can he do that, not lash out with righteous anger at the hypocrisy and mean-spiritedness of the Church? Why doesn’t he call Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams at best a coward and at worst a perpetrator of evil?
Because he loves Jesus and he knows Jesus loves him and all those who stand against him. He is a living example of having the same mind that was in Christ Jesus.
Eliot Spitzer and Gene Robinson: they are two very different men with two very different stories. One brought suffering upon himself; one had it thrust upon him by others. Yet the message is the same: Jesus took both kinds of suffering, all suffering, to the cross with him and offered it to God even in the midst of his own sense of abandonment and betrayal.
The message is simple for all of us today: Jesus died to save Eliot Spitzer and Gene Robinson and Rowan Williams and you and me. We are all loved, sometimes inexplicably, sometimes obviously, by the God of the cross.
May we embrace and be embraced by this love for ever, no matter who we are, no matter what we do.
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus… (Philippians 2)
It is a terrible day after a terrible week. It isn’t any fun at all listening to that story about Jesus’ betrayal and suffering and death. Nor was it any fun living through the events of this week in our state and in our church.
I am, of course, referring, on the one hand, to the tragedy of Governor Spitzer’s downfall at his own hands, and, on the other, to the news that Bishop Gene Robinson will be totally excluded from this summer’s Lambeth Conference, the every ten year meeting of all the bishops of our Anglican Communion. These two stories relate to the story of Jesus that we have heard in two very different ways, but they also both relate to the lens with which to view Jesus’ story that St. Paul gives us this morning: “Let this same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.”
First, Eliot Spitzer.
It is easy and right to feel betrayed by Governor Spitzer. The blatant disregard for his family and his office and the sheer hypocrisy of his actions take the breath away. He certainly did the right thing in resigning as his integrity was just way too far compromised, besides the fact that he broke the law.
Yet I was troubled, and all Christians ought to be troubled, by all the talk of politicians such as the Governor being held to “a higher standard.” Do we really mean to let ourselves off the hook—that somehow if you or I were guilty of the same kind of disregard of our sacred vows and utter hypocrisy we should not be as accountable?
No. In the Christian vision there is only one standard, and it is high across the board.
We all have to bear that, not just public officials or those otherwise in the public eye. The standard is bearable, however, because of the other reality before us today—that Jesus died to save us from this unbearable standard. So we Christians can never gloat when someone like Eliot Spitzer falls; in fact, we are compelled to say that he is more like us than not. He is a fallen man, just like you and just like me, and Jesus died to save him and to save you and to save me.
Jesus loves Eliot Spitzer, and loves you and loves me. And we are called to have the same mind, to embrace suffering so that it can be redeemed. And that is true whether the suffering is deserved or not. We are called to have compassion for Eliot Spitzer as God does for him and for each one of us when we fall. There is nothing easy about such compassion, because it often goes against our gut instinct to feel betrayed and to dismiss him as having deserved what he got.
Well, he did deserve what he got, and so do we when we screw up, but thanks be to God Jesus died for him and died for us and loves him and loves us.
On to Gene Robinson, the Bishop of New Hampshire, a different kind of sufferer, one who did not bring suffering on himself (unless you believe that his accepting the office of bishop was itself a sinful act). Bishop Gene has known for a long time that he would not be fully invited to the Lambeth Conference, but he held out some hope that he could participate in a limited way in the spirit of the supposed “listening process” with gay and lesbian Anglicans to which the bishops committed themselves ten years ago. This week he learned that would not be possible in any way.
Not to put him too high on a pedestal, but Gene reacted, I believe, with “the same mind that was in Christ Jesus.” He felt alone and betrayed and had the instinct at first, he said, to find some way to run away from what was going on. So did Jesus, if you listened carefully to the story that we just heard. But he then summoned the strength within himself to walk through his suffering and to take the high road with his betrayers, urging his colleagues in our Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops to go and to carry with them his suffering, and, more importantly, the suffering of exclusion that is still the general lot of gay and lesbian people in our church.
How can he do that, not lash out with righteous anger at the hypocrisy and mean-spiritedness of the Church? Why doesn’t he call Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams at best a coward and at worst a perpetrator of evil?
Because he loves Jesus and he knows Jesus loves him and all those who stand against him. He is a living example of having the same mind that was in Christ Jesus.
Eliot Spitzer and Gene Robinson: they are two very different men with two very different stories. One brought suffering upon himself; one had it thrust upon him by others. Yet the message is the same: Jesus took both kinds of suffering, all suffering, to the cross with him and offered it to God even in the midst of his own sense of abandonment and betrayal.
The message is simple for all of us today: Jesus died to save Eliot Spitzer and Gene Robinson and Rowan Williams and you and me. We are all loved, sometimes inexplicably, sometimes obviously, by the God of the cross.
May we embrace and be embraced by this love for ever, no matter who we are, no matter what we do.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
You are in the Spirit
Sermon preached on the 5th Sunday in Lent at the Church of St. Luke & St. Simon Cyrene, Rochester, New York. Ezekiel 37:1-14; Psalm 130; Romans 8:6-11; John 11:1-45.
But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Romans 8
The thread through this rich set of readings this morning, is the Spirit of God that brings new life out of alientation, despair and death.
The Old Testament reading, the well known and delightful story of the dry bones, is clearly all about this thread. The dry bones in Ezekiel’s vision represent the disaster befallen the Jewish people and the reality of that disaster appearing to be the last word. The vision shows, however, that God has another card to play, the Spirit that can bring life out of disaster.
The thread continues in our psalm this morning. “Out of the depths have I called to you.” The writer knows deep pain, the desperate need of a word from God. That word comes as his soul, his spirit, waits and watches, and out of desperation, mercy and redemption is received.
In the piece from his letter to the Romans, Paul speaks with exuberance about the Spirit of God in contrast to human “flesh,” a code word he uses for anything in our lives that leads to death and separation from God. He encourages us, though, that even thought we live with and in the flesh, to have faith that the Spirit of God also dwells in us and, therefore, is available to heal separation and to raise us from the dead. “You are in the Spirit,” he dares to say, despite all signs to the contrary, even the flesh that is literally decaying toward death even as we live.
And finally there is the profound and awesome story of the raising of Lazarus. The Spirit is not mentioned except in Jesus own reaction of being deeply moved and troubled in spirit. Yet the Gospel writer John would not deny that it is the Spirit of God at work here, breathing new life into the dead Lazarus. The movement of Jesus’ troubled Spirit is to breathe that new life into his friend and command him to “come out.”
These are perfect readings as we come to a close in Lent. This thread of the Spirit of God that brings new life out of despair and death is precisely what we need to hear right now.
Lent has been telling us that something is wrong, ever since those words with which it began, “You are dust and to dust you shall return.” Lent has wanted to take us to the depths of our humanity, our despair, our separation, and our mortality. Lent has wanted us to have a troubled spirit. All these things are true, but the promise has been there all along as well. Psalm 51 was also a part of the Ash Wednesday liturgy closing with the words,
The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
Lent is never intended to be the last word, it is a way station on the journey, a path that is part of the journey. So our readings remind us this morning: despair, separation and death are never the end of the story for followers of Jesus. They are part of the journey, but they are not the journey’s end.
This faith all revolves around Paul’s assertion: The Spirit of God is in you. If you think about it, that is a pretty bold assertion. Remember Paul is writing in Romans to a group of people he had never even met. How did he know that this was true, that the Spirit of God dwelt in them? He knew it not because he knew them, but because he knew God. Whether or not the Spirit of God was in them was not up to them. It was up to God. And Paul knew that God was and is generous with his Spirit.
In the Church Year we do not celebrate the Holy Spirit until Pentecost at the end of the Great Fifty Days of Easter. But it turns out that the Spirit has been what this “paschal time” in the Church Year has been all about—from the beginning of Lent through Easter Day to Pentecost. If we began with a troubled spirit, we will end with a vibrant spirit, and in between the Spirit will be known to be in us, with us on the journey as hope in the midst of despair, mercy in the midst of separation, and life in the midst of death.
The Spirit is in you. I hope you can hear the good news in that and that it does, indeed, bring you hope, hope enough to celebrate Easter in a couple weeks with true joy, the joy of the Spirit of God whom we all share.
But there is something unsettling here as well. This is not good news to everyone. The raising of Lazarus was the last nail in Jesus’ coffin for the religious authorities. He had to go. His unleashing of the power of the Spirit threatened their own power, their very way of life. To say the Spirit of God is in us is a very dangerous, even blasphemous, thing to say, worse to believe it is true.
We have, I think, our own inner religious authority who is equally as terrified by all this talk, who is somehow more comfortable with the reality of our despair, separation and death than with the prospect that there is within us this uncontrollable Spirit that may turn our world upside down. We may not like our despair, our separation and our death, but they are at least ours. It is sometimes a lot more comfortable to believe that we are separated from God, for instance, than to believe we are loved, that we have been made worthy for God’s own Spirit to live in us.
Why is this so? I think largely because being loved and carrying the Spirit makes us much more responsible. Love and the Spirit cannot be held as possessions. They must always be shared, and the chief danger in that, of course, is that they might be rejected. And if they are rejected then we might be seen to have been wrong about them, that they never were really ours to begin with. Better to hold them at arm’s length then to risk being hurt by them.
So the religious authorities after this story will begin the conspiracy to have Jesus killed, the ultimate holding at arm’s length. They said, “It is better for one man to die than to risk losing the whole people.” They said this out of fear of the Romans, that if Jesus kept stirring things up something very bad would surely happen and the Romans would clamp down.
As I said, we all have this voice of fear deep within us. We all have our inner religious authority full of doubt about the actual power of God in our lives, and afraid what the world around us might think if we started actually believing it and acting on it.
The next two weeks is meant to be a full frontal assault on that voice. We are to hear again and again, despite everything, that we are in the Spirit, the Spirit is in us, and, as Paul says at the end of the eighth chapter of Romans, “nothing can separate us.”
Let us hear that good news today. We are in the Spirit, the Spirit is in us, the Spirit who has the power to bring us out of separation and despair and death. Let us be prepared to shout it from the housetops come Easter Day, for that is the consequence of the proclamation that Christ is risen. If Christ is risen than you are in the Spirit and the Spirit is in you.
But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Romans 8
The thread through this rich set of readings this morning, is the Spirit of God that brings new life out of alientation, despair and death.
The Old Testament reading, the well known and delightful story of the dry bones, is clearly all about this thread. The dry bones in Ezekiel’s vision represent the disaster befallen the Jewish people and the reality of that disaster appearing to be the last word. The vision shows, however, that God has another card to play, the Spirit that can bring life out of disaster.
The thread continues in our psalm this morning. “Out of the depths have I called to you.” The writer knows deep pain, the desperate need of a word from God. That word comes as his soul, his spirit, waits and watches, and out of desperation, mercy and redemption is received.
In the piece from his letter to the Romans, Paul speaks with exuberance about the Spirit of God in contrast to human “flesh,” a code word he uses for anything in our lives that leads to death and separation from God. He encourages us, though, that even thought we live with and in the flesh, to have faith that the Spirit of God also dwells in us and, therefore, is available to heal separation and to raise us from the dead. “You are in the Spirit,” he dares to say, despite all signs to the contrary, even the flesh that is literally decaying toward death even as we live.
And finally there is the profound and awesome story of the raising of Lazarus. The Spirit is not mentioned except in Jesus own reaction of being deeply moved and troubled in spirit. Yet the Gospel writer John would not deny that it is the Spirit of God at work here, breathing new life into the dead Lazarus. The movement of Jesus’ troubled Spirit is to breathe that new life into his friend and command him to “come out.”
These are perfect readings as we come to a close in Lent. This thread of the Spirit of God that brings new life out of despair and death is precisely what we need to hear right now.
Lent has been telling us that something is wrong, ever since those words with which it began, “You are dust and to dust you shall return.” Lent has wanted to take us to the depths of our humanity, our despair, our separation, and our mortality. Lent has wanted us to have a troubled spirit. All these things are true, but the promise has been there all along as well. Psalm 51 was also a part of the Ash Wednesday liturgy closing with the words,
The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
Lent is never intended to be the last word, it is a way station on the journey, a path that is part of the journey. So our readings remind us this morning: despair, separation and death are never the end of the story for followers of Jesus. They are part of the journey, but they are not the journey’s end.
This faith all revolves around Paul’s assertion: The Spirit of God is in you. If you think about it, that is a pretty bold assertion. Remember Paul is writing in Romans to a group of people he had never even met. How did he know that this was true, that the Spirit of God dwelt in them? He knew it not because he knew them, but because he knew God. Whether or not the Spirit of God was in them was not up to them. It was up to God. And Paul knew that God was and is generous with his Spirit.
In the Church Year we do not celebrate the Holy Spirit until Pentecost at the end of the Great Fifty Days of Easter. But it turns out that the Spirit has been what this “paschal time” in the Church Year has been all about—from the beginning of Lent through Easter Day to Pentecost. If we began with a troubled spirit, we will end with a vibrant spirit, and in between the Spirit will be known to be in us, with us on the journey as hope in the midst of despair, mercy in the midst of separation, and life in the midst of death.
The Spirit is in you. I hope you can hear the good news in that and that it does, indeed, bring you hope, hope enough to celebrate Easter in a couple weeks with true joy, the joy of the Spirit of God whom we all share.
But there is something unsettling here as well. This is not good news to everyone. The raising of Lazarus was the last nail in Jesus’ coffin for the religious authorities. He had to go. His unleashing of the power of the Spirit threatened their own power, their very way of life. To say the Spirit of God is in us is a very dangerous, even blasphemous, thing to say, worse to believe it is true.
We have, I think, our own inner religious authority who is equally as terrified by all this talk, who is somehow more comfortable with the reality of our despair, separation and death than with the prospect that there is within us this uncontrollable Spirit that may turn our world upside down. We may not like our despair, our separation and our death, but they are at least ours. It is sometimes a lot more comfortable to believe that we are separated from God, for instance, than to believe we are loved, that we have been made worthy for God’s own Spirit to live in us.
Why is this so? I think largely because being loved and carrying the Spirit makes us much more responsible. Love and the Spirit cannot be held as possessions. They must always be shared, and the chief danger in that, of course, is that they might be rejected. And if they are rejected then we might be seen to have been wrong about them, that they never were really ours to begin with. Better to hold them at arm’s length then to risk being hurt by them.
So the religious authorities after this story will begin the conspiracy to have Jesus killed, the ultimate holding at arm’s length. They said, “It is better for one man to die than to risk losing the whole people.” They said this out of fear of the Romans, that if Jesus kept stirring things up something very bad would surely happen and the Romans would clamp down.
As I said, we all have this voice of fear deep within us. We all have our inner religious authority full of doubt about the actual power of God in our lives, and afraid what the world around us might think if we started actually believing it and acting on it.
The next two weeks is meant to be a full frontal assault on that voice. We are to hear again and again, despite everything, that we are in the Spirit, the Spirit is in us, and, as Paul says at the end of the eighth chapter of Romans, “nothing can separate us.”
Let us hear that good news today. We are in the Spirit, the Spirit is in us, the Spirit who has the power to bring us out of separation and despair and death. Let us be prepared to shout it from the housetops come Easter Day, for that is the consequence of the proclamation that Christ is risen. If Christ is risen than you are in the Spirit and the Spirit is in you.
