There is a Light that Never Dies

Sermon preached on the First Sunday after Christmas at the Church of St. Luke & St. Simon Cyrene: John 1:1-18

What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. John 1:4-5

It is my intention to offer a little testimony this morning to the Light that shines in the darkness.

Let me present my credentials for testifying to the Light. I am a priest, of course, who has walked the way of darkness, the “shadow of death” as the psalmist calls it, with many people. I have been present when the light seems to have departed a person altogether. I have sat with people in the darkest of times.

I have also sat there myself as a human being. Most of you know I suffer from bipolar illness, which means I have seen my share of depression, that illness whose primary purpose seems to be to convince you that the light has gone out and the darkness has won. I have been in that place and I shudder to think about it. Thank God I have come walking out the other side.

So when the Gospel writer John says that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it, my ears prick up and I listen. This is, in fact, an expression of the very core of my faith. Without this kind of assertion I could never be a Christian. This assertion that the light is eternally steadfast is indeed life for me. I am one of the “all people” of which John speaks.

What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.

I love the old King James translation of verse five.

And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

The darkness doesn’t understand the light. It just doesn’t get it. Why not take the easy route and simply succumb to it? Why waste all that energy burning to what futile end? Just let the darkness overtake you. It will all be over. No more struggle.

Why? Because the struggle is life and because it is life it is also the light. The struggle keeps the light burning.

This reminds me of a favorite Dylan Thomas poem.

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

What does this mean about the acceptance of death? Isn’t it a good thing to go out of this world at peace, reconciled to death? I suppose so, yet I want to say that being reconciled to death and capitulating to it are two different things. I refuse to believe that death is anything but a momentary transition point. The light shines in that darkness as well and the darkness not only doesn’t overcome it, it is obliterated by it. The instant of death is followed by the ultimate triumph of the light. So, yes, I want a peaceful death but I’ll not accept it as having any kind of last word over me and I pray that I “rage, rage against the dying of the light” to my last breath. The struggle continues until the triumph of life, the triumph of the light.

What does this all have to do with Christmas? In John’s words, this light that was the light for all people was the Word that was made flesh and lived among us. And we behold his glory.

This Jesus, born for us, is our light, which means as well that we are lights for one another since we are his body.

We celebrate at Christmas the light that has come into the world, the light that the darkness neither understands nor can overcome.

As we celebrate the Word made flesh today, let us receive that light and, in turn, commit ourselves to being lights for others, for we are that Word’s body.

See What Wonderful Things Come of It

Sermon preached on Christmas Eve at the Church of St. Luke & St. Simon Cyrene with St. Stephen's Church: Luke 2:1-20

I remember vividly when my sister had her first baby—my first nephew. I mentioned it briefly a few weeks ago but now I want to go into a little more detail.

There was a great deal of excitement and anticipation in the air. This was the first of the next generation on my mother’s side of the family. There were a dozen or so pretty keyed-up people in the waiting room.

It was a long, hard labor. After ten hours or so I was allowed to see my sister. I walked in the door and stopped short. She looked awful. I had a terrible flash back to a few years before when I had visited my dying grandmother for the last time. I was struck how giving birth could take one so close to death.

After eight or so more hours of trying, the baby was finally delivered by Cesarean section, to which my sister had reluctantly but enthusiastically succumbed. The new baby came down from the operating room to the nursery looking like c-section babies do, quite perfect, and he was howling at the top of his lungs, announcing for all the world to hear that he was alive.

Before I left the hospital, my mother and I went into the recovery room to see my sister. She was still very much out of it, looking worse than she had when I had seen her before. I must have looked worried because the nurse said to me, “She’ll be just fine.”

But I was wondering again about how such new life had come out of so much pain and a walk just this side of death.

We all come into the world with a loud cry. No doubt Jesus did as well. The verse of “Away in a Manger” that speculates that Jesus didn’t cry is just nonsense.

The actual birth of Jesus is not a part of the story we just heard. Did Mary have to do it alone, with only Joseph as her helper? Was he really no help at all as most men would have been in those days (and for the next 1970 or so years)? Did someone come from the Inn, perhaps the innkeeper’s wife, to encourage Mary through her pain and with her and Joseph and the animals of the shed hear the first cry of the newborn baby? How close to that line of death did Mary have to walk to bring her baby into the world?

These questions can be a point at which the birth of Jesus can get beyond a sweet story about which much sweet music has been written to meet our own lives and the world in which we live.

Yes, we all enter the world with a loud cry, and like my nephew Robbie, and Jesus born in a Bethlehem cowshed, and you and I, that cry echoes through our lives. Life gets better, but it also gets worse. The cry never stops altogether, and often we leave this world in the same way we entered it, with a loud cry. Jesus did.

That’s the reality that bumps up against the sweetness of this night. This world that Jesus entered, and in which we live, is a mixed bag. Life gets better, but it also gets worse.

So what’s the point? Eventually we all ask that question. Why was I born? Why am I me? What is my purpose? What is the purpose of life?

Most often we ask these questions when we are up against something about life that we cannot control. That’s a corollary to the statement “Life gets better but it also gets worse:” “There are a lot of thing about life you can choose, and a lot of things you can’t.”

And we know from the rest of the story of Jesus that he had moments like this too, moments he wondered “Why?” and cried out. The man in the Garden of Gethsemane facing his own death is not so far from the babe in the manger crying out his first breaths outside the safety and warmth of his mother’s womb.

The gospel writer Luke tells his story about Jesus’ birth so that the “Why?” can be answered. Why this birth? For what purpose? And, of course, he tells the beginning of Jesus’ story knowing full well how it ends. His answer to the “Why?” of Jesus’ birth is also an answer to the death of Jesus.

The answer comes most explicitly in the message of the angels to the shepherds. What is the purpose of this birth? “Glory to God in the highest heaven and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”

Glory for God. Peace for the earth. That is the purpose of his birth. And they are not two separate purposes. The rest of Jesus’ story will bear that out. God’s glory is peace among the people of the earth. Peace among us is God’s glory.

The Greek word we translate as “glory” (doxa) also means “honor” or even “reputation.” God’s honor is peace among us. God has a stake in our peace, in our salvation.

How so? And what is this peace of which the angels sing?

The answer to that can be found in the rest of what the angels sing, which has always given translators and interpreters a very difficult time. The translation we heard this evening is “On earth peace among those whom God favors.” Other translations say “among people of goodwill” or “among those with whom God is pleased.”

All those translations seem to leave open the possibility that God might choose not to give peace at least to some people, either those with whom God is not happy or those who are not of goodwill.

The Greek words, however, don’t really contain that sense of peace being conditional. And a conditional peace also doesn’t match the angel’s earlier saying, “I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people.” No conditional expression there.

The Greek word used in this difficult phrase is eudokias, among whose possible translations is “delights.” Peace on earth among those in whom God delights.[1]

This is the message of the birth at its very core. God delights in you, O people of the earth. The angels dancing in the heavens before the shepherds are just an extension of God’s dance of delight over the creation.

Peace is knowing and living within this delight of God for us. The purpose of our life is to bring delight to God. And how do we do that? Just by being, and especially by faith that this delight is true no matter the circumstances of our life. It is an objective, unconditional delight, so much so that Jesus, God incarnate, the one who fully reveals to us what God is like, was born and died with our same loud cry.

Can we this night catch a glimpse of the angels dancing around us, singing of the glory of God and the delight of God in us? Can we believe the power of this delight to bring us both gratitude in joyful times and hopefulness in our dark ones?

How can those things about which we justifiably cry out—even death—ever be anything but a temporary state of affairs, if God himself dances over us in delight? If God so delighted in human life that he choose to enter it himself? God will not let us go. God’s honor is at stake here and God’s attachment to us is not objective in the least. God is positively head-over-heels in love with you and me.

Can we believe it? And can it make a difference day by day in our life?

There is a scene from the movie Little Women in which one of the daughters has a “crying out” moment. She has been desperately seeking a man to ask her to marry him, but to no avail. She is troubled that she will never lead an “ordinary” life.

Her mother responds, “My daughter, you have such extraordinary gifts. How can you expect to ever lead an ordinary life? Go, embrace your liberty and see what wonderful things come of it.”

That’s a mother ahead of her time.

It is also the God of Jesus Christ.

Tonight we have been reminded that we have been given an extraordinary gift. It is not the babe in the manger, although we would be much less likely to know this gift without him. We have been given the extraordinary gift of God’s delight in us.

Embrace that gift tonight and don’t let it go. Leave with it taken within yourself in this Eucharist and see what wonderful things come of it.

Just don’t let it go. God delights in us, my sisters and brother. We are loved beyond our wildest imaginings. Happy Christmas!

[1] The translation of the Revised English Bible.

To Turn, Turn Will Be Our Delight

Sermon preached at the Church of St. Luke & St. Simon Cyrene on the 3rd Sunday of Advent: Zephaniah 3:14-20, Philippians 4:4-7, Luke 3:7-18

Good morning, brood of vipers!

John the Baptist, you gotta love him. He doesn’t mince words. And Luke calls his message “good news!” How is that so, and how do we get from John to the other readings this morning where the predominant word was “rejoice?”

“Bear fruits worthy of repentance.” That’s the basic message. What is this repentance? It is more than feeling sorry. It is changing your life. Turning around. Facing a new direction. Doing a new thing. This, of course, with God as the object. Turning towards God.

The crowds were practical. “What then should we do?” John has very clear answers. All of them have to do with living justly. Share what you have with those in need. Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you. Do not extort money.

Repentance is about turning toward the ways of justice. It is about adopting the ways of the Kingdom of God. Luke in his Gospel, which we will be reading over the next year, will drive home this point again and again and again.

Justice is how repentance becomes good news, and, despite his rough edge, John knew that people were capable of it or he wouldn’t have been preaching in the first place. He did believe that people had to be serious about this change of life he felt God demanded, though, because it was a real change of life.

It still is. It is neither a light nor easy thing to choose the way of the Kingdom of God, the path of Jesus. It requires a change of heart and mind time and time again. It is a constant struggle to turn away from the ways of self-reliance and self-salvation to dependence on and trust in God. It can be wrenching to leave behind participation in the subtle and not so subtle ways our society creates a socially acceptable system of injustice and to embrace God’s way of justice.

But it is in this very turning, it is in repentance, that real joy can be found. When I know I’ve given of myself to help another, especially one I do not know. When I am able to cast off the shackles of mistrust and allow myself to be embraced by the one who loves me. When I experience that I don’t need to be stuck in a way of life or a particular behavior that is damaging to me and others. When I can say I am forgiven, loved, and free.

Then will the prophecy of Zephaniah come true in my life.

The Lord, your God, is in your midst…he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing as on a day of festival.

And too the prophecy of Isaiah.

Surely it is God who saves me; I will trust in him and not be afraid….Therefore you shall draw water with rejoicing from the springs of salvation.

And we will be capable of the seemingly impossible thing Paul asks.

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice.

And notice how this joy gets us to Christmas. Zephaniah says

The Lord, your God is in your midst…

And Isaiah

For the great one in the midst of you is the Holy One of Israel.

And Paul

The Lord is near.

When we experience the reality of what we call the Incarnation—God taking on human flesh and being present in our midst, there is joy.

My friend Ed Bacon, the Rector of All Saints’ Church, Pasadena, California says that he believes that it is the presence of joy that is the chief mark of the Christian. You would think having listened to the preaching of John the Baptist that it would be fear that predominates, a good, healthy, biblical “fear of the Lord.” But no, it is joy. John’s message is vitally important and repentance is one of the key things we must practice to live the Christian life, but it results in joy, not fear.

Barbara Brown Taylor writes,

The only condition for joy is the presence of God. Joy happens when God is present and people know it, which means that it can erupt in a depressed economy, in the middle of a war, in an intensive care waiting room.[1]

It is good to remind ourselves that Paul wrote the words “Rejoice always” from prison.

Joy is hard won, because it is the fruit of repentance, of endless conscious decisions to turn toward God, toward the Kingdom of God, toward justice.

There is a Shaker song that we don’t normally associate with Advent, but I’d like to close with it. It captures the relationship between repentance and joy (and in a much gentler spirit than John the Baptist!).

‘Tis the gift to be simple, ‘tis the gift to be free,
‘tis the gift to come down where we ought to be.
And when we find ourselves in the place just
right
‘Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gained,
To bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamed.
To turn, turn, will be our delight
‘Til be turning, turning we come ‘round right.[2]

[1][1][1] “Surprised by Joy,” The Living Pulpit (October—December 1996), p. 16.
[2]Shaker song, 18th century, The Hymnal 1982, 554

Choosing Hope in an Anxious World

Sermon preached at the Church of St. Luke & St. Simon Cyrene on the First Sunday of Advent: Luke 21:25-36

“The Doctor is IN,” says the sign over Lucy’s booth in the comic strip Peanuts. Ever forlorn and confused Charlie Brown confesses to her, “Sometimes I think I don’t know anything about life.” He pleads with her, “Tell me a great truth!”

Lucy asks a question first, “Do you ever wake up at night and want a drink of water?” “Sure,” comes the reply from Charlie. Her voice dripping with “wisdom,” Lucy pronounces, “When you’re getting a drink of water in the dark, always rinse out the glass because there might be a bug in it!”

Charlie reflects, “Great truths are even more simple than I thought they were.”[1]

Perhaps it would be best if we came at this apocalyptic text from Luke with Lucy’s simplicity. It might sound something like the t-shirt and bumper sticker that’s been around for awhile, “Jesus is coming. Look busy.”

The saying, of course, is meant to mock those Christians who are obsessed with the second coming of Christ, as Lucy meant to mock Charlie Brown’s uncertainty about life. Get over it!

This First Sunday of Advent and the Church Year is probably the most difficult Sunday for Christians in our tradition. We are not comfortable with these texts about the second coming, or, perhaps, even the notion of a second coming at all. I myself, during my first years as an Episcopalian, used to cross my fingers behind my back during the Creed at the words, “and he will come again.” It seemed to me that it was a pipe dream at best, a too-long-unfulfilled hope that had no relevance for life today, and one that, frankly, insulted my intelligence.

Of course the world will end some day, millions of years from now when the aging sun turns into a swollen red giant. It might be sooner, if a big enough meteor hits us. Of course, we might do ourselves in, too. Many say that is the more likely option as we continue to warm the planet. But how many of us live each day in anticipation of these things? Wouldn’t that be, literally, madness?

Yet over time I have stopped crossing my fingers and have even found myself from time to time (an increasing amount of time the older I get) yearning for Jesus to come again. I now proclaim in the Great Thanksgiving, “Christ will come again,” not only seriously, but longingly. Why the change?

I cannot say it has anything to do with evidence-based decision-making. It is not about “belief” in the way we usually use that word. To say, “I believe that Christ will come again,” still sounds a bit over the top to me. No, what my change of heart is about is hope and my need for it. Hope is the only way I have of responding to a world broken and battered by injustice and evil.

Don’t get me wrong. I believe in the good creation (and here I can say “believe” with no problem at all). But it may be that I so fervently believe in God’s having made a good creation, that I need hope so desperately. If you haven’t noticed, the good creation has not been fulfilled. We never quite get it right and often we fail miserably. And our version of the “good life” is so drastically far from God’s intention in the “good creation” that I am left frequently on the brink of despair, by my own actions as well as those of others.

We are now in the yearly season where the difference between the “haves” and the “have-nots” in this world are most dramatically revealed. I have no doubt that this week I will begin to get the calls and visits from desperate parents frantic to provide their children with Christmas gifts when they cannot pay the rent. In truth, they are the ones who are being “left behind,” not in some future apocalyptic moment, but in the day to day necessities of life.

I’m not so naïve to think that I or we can somehow solve all their problems, or even that the government could if it were doing its job on our behalf of providing for those who find themselves on the margins of our economic system. I’m also not so naïve to believe that they are entirely innocent victims. I’m appalled sometimes at the dumb choices they have made.

But, as the twelve-steppers say, “There but for the grace of God go I.” Truth to tell, that statement offends me theologically because it portrays a God who determines fate in too fickle a manner. I’d rather say, “There but for an incoherent mix of a few choices I have made plus a whole lot of dumb luck, go I.”

Dumb choices. Dumb luck. It’s a dumb world all the way around. A good creation. A dumb world. I’d be just as happy if Jesus would come back and get it sorted out, bring the creation as it was intended to be and the world as it too often works back into alignment!

Now I am as committed as the next person to doing what I can to help with this project. “I will strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human person.” But I have no illusions about my ability, or even our collective ability, to save the world, to re-establish the good creation on a global, if not cosmic, scale.

So I’m stuck, if you will, hoping for God’s intervention, saying, pleading, “Maranatha, Come, Lord Jesus.” I love my life, and my little world, and I don’t want it to end anytime soon, but it is simple selfishness not to long for a better world for all. This is Paul’s prayer for the Thessalonians this morning. “May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all.”

I am positively called not to isolate myself in my comfortable little world. I am called to be troubled, deeply troubled, that people starve to death in this world, that they daily come to our doors to ask for the basic necessities of life. And while I am called to do what I can to change this reality, I am also called to long for God to save us, to pray, as Jeremiah, “fulfill your promise Lord, execute justice and righteousness in the land.”

That’s Advent longing, for justice in this world. It is not longing for true believers to be raptured into heaven. That preoccupation of some Christians, besides being barely biblical, is simply ego-centered selfishness. The Second Coming of Christ is not about me being with my Jesus somewhere in the air, but our world as it is being transformed into God’s world as it should be, where there is justice for all and righteousness by all.

Advent, I think, wants not only to teach us to hope, but teach us to hope for the right things. We’re called not to hope for pie in the sky for some, but pie on the table for all.

So what does hope call us to do? We cannot live on hope alone, can we?

Back to Lucy and Charlie Brown. “When you’re getting a drink of water in the dark, always rinse out the glass because there might be a bug in it!” There’s no hope there at all. There is only a defense mechanism, which is a cheap substitute for hope that we human beings have perfected.

Charlie Brown discovers this in a subsequent strip. The first frame is entirely black with just the outline of Lucy, stumbling in the dark. Perhaps she has stubbed her toe on the bed. “Curse it all!” she cries. Next frame, still black, “Blast the blackness . . . Oh, curse, curse, curse.” Finally in the last frame stands Charlie Brown. In the midst of the dark, he stands in the glow of a candle.[2]

He not only longed for the light, he chose it. That’s the task that is set before us, to choose hope in this battered world of ours, to long for something better, not only for ourselves but for all.

It is about choosing hope instead of anxiety, because the only chance we have of living in the world differently is if we choose to see it differently. And then, by the way, we just might see Jesus come again.

[1] Quoted in Sam Portaro, Daysprings: Meditations for the Weekdays of Advent, Lent, and Easter (Boston: Cowley, 2001), p. 3.
[2] Ibid., p. 5.

Anxiety or Thanksgiving

Sermon preached at St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church, Rochester, New York at a joint celebration with the Church of St. Luke & St. Simon Cyrene, November 23, 2009: Matthew 6:25-33

I wondered if not worried would there be any different dynamic in our meeting together after the Pope’s invitation for disaffected Anglicans to come on over and bring some of your toys with you. Lunch with Kevin Mannara put me at ease about it, but as I was writing this sermon I had this sudden bout of anxiety—what if I wasn’t good enough? What if I became a living example of everything that is wrong with the Episcopal Church? You know what happens when irrational fear ceases us.

As in so many circumstances, I found myself faced with a choice. It is a choice we all face, and, one could make the case that it is one of the major choices Jesus places before us as his followers. It is a choice about reaction and attitude. It is the choice between anxiety and thanksgiving.

It is, at least for Americans, a nice twist of history that our civil Day of Thanksgiving comes at the end of our Church Year. Most years that means it sits as a kind of liturgical New Year's Eve. I think this is wonderfully appropriate--before we begin another Church Year, a day of reflection that pushes us in the direction of thanksgiving. It is a biblical bias, this attitude of thanksgiving, and a liturgical one as well, since it is the "Eucharist," the Thanksgiving, we celebrate Sunday by Sunday throughout the year.

Perhaps it is not anxiety that comes to mind as the attitudinal opposite of thanksgiving, but I think it is. It is my experience of human living, even the life of faith, that one of the most difficult things Jesus ever said is found in the Gospel reading this evening, "Do not be anxious about your life."

How hard is it? As hard as any part of life can be, to choose to be grateful rather than anxious.

Why? Well, one of the reasons is found in the vision of the prophet Joel, chapter 2. It is one of my favorite pieces of Old Testament Scripture. There is a bit of a refrain in it, "And my people shall never again be put to shame."

We are intensely, sometimes pathologically, afraid of being put to shame, of seeming to have not done our best, or to have let life get out of control, or simply look like "also-rans," if not out-and-out losers. And it makes us choose anxiety instead of thanksgiving as our attitude toward life over and over and over again.

It is so hard for us, even we professing Christian people, to get over this fear. It may actually be our biggest hypocrisy and what drives so many of our silly squabbles even among ourselves. How hard it is to grasp and accept the truth that we have nothing of which to be afraid or ashamed. Nothing. Jesus has come, lived all our fear, taken all our shame upon himself and banished it from the face of the creation. One way of looking at this choice we have to make between thanksgiving and anxiety is to simply ask ourselves, "This story that we are about to begin to tell again, of a babe in a manger, his gathering of people to table and telling their stories as stories of God, his death on the cross, and a people convinced he lived among them still, do we believe it's the Truth or not?" When we choose anxiety we say, "No, we do not believe it." When we choose thanksgiving we say, "Yes, we do."

Another way of putting this might be to remind you of another popular cultural thing this time of year, something I was raised on in the television age, "Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer." I mean the great TV special.

That story as it's told in that version is about our anxiety about fitting in, being excluded when we seem to not fit in, our fear of ending up exiled to the island of misfit toys.

The Christian message is, of course, that that whole game is just that, a game, an illusion. We are, in fact, all misfits, all sinners, in traditional terms, all in need of love and mercy that is bigger than anything we can manage to bring about ourselves. None of us measures up.

Are we willing to accept that, and, in turn, accept an outlook on life that is dominated by thanksgiving, gratitude, and, yes, faith. Or are we going to continue to reject it and choose the way of anxiety, resist with all our might our exile to the land of misfit toys, and spend our lives worrying about whether or not we are OK?

We will, of course, even with the best intentions, teeter between the two. But seeking to be a people of thanksgiving is really the only necessity. "Seek," Jesus says, "and you will find." Seek to leave the way of anxiety and you will find the way of thanksgiving. You will arrive at the land of misfit toys and find it has been your real home all along.

I leave you with the last verse of a hymn which I would have requested we sing tonight if I had written this sermon soon enough--if I hadn't wasted time being anxious about whether or not I could be good enough and you would like me or not and perhaps think those disaffected Anglicans do have a point.

For the love of God is broader
than the measure of the mind;
and the heart of the Eternal
is most wonderfully kind.
If our love were but more faithful,
we should take him at his word;
and our life would be thanksgiving
for the goodness of the Lord.

Why We Call Him King

Sermon preached at the Church of St. Luke & St. Simon Cyrene, November 22, 2009, the Last Sunday after Pentecost: Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14; Revelation 1:4b-8; John 18:33-38

“My kingdom is not from this world,” Jesus says to Pilate, putting his followers in a never-ending dilemma from that moment until the present day. If we are followers of Jesus, we are citizens of this “kingdom not from this world,” which means that, at best, we hold lightly to our affiliation with the kingdoms of this world.

The early Christians knew this well and it found them at nearly constant odds with the Roman Empire. Not that the Christians were taking up arms against the Empire. They absolutely were not. But the Romans knew their loyalties seem to be aimed in a different direction, symbolized by their calling Jesus of Nazareth kyrios, “Lord,” and not Caesar.

By the time of the emperor Constantine in the 4th century, Christians were growing weary of persecution, and when Constantine jumped at the chance to co-opt them, they jumped back and church and state became bedfellows for the first time. It has largely remained thus ever since.

Most of us grew up in the church assuming that the church supported the state, that one of the jobs of the church was to help make good citizens. This was especially true in the white church. The black church had a different enough history that caused them to be suspicious of the state.

It was the 1960’s when this dynamic began to change. The black church naturally spoke out against ongoing systemic segregation. The white church hesitated, with gradually some clergy and then some national bodies taking up the cause of civil rights. The rank and file largely opposed this and eventually many voted with their feet. Those were the days when places like old St. Luke’s shrunk dramatically.

Whole denominations were changed by this shift. In the 1950’s and early ‘60’s, the Episcopal Church was known as “the Republican Party at prayer.” Within twenty years no one would think of calling us that. But we have paid a price in much smaller numbers.

All of this history had to do with the question about just who is king and to just what kingdom do Christians belong?

On the one hand, the answers are clear. Jesus is our king, and we belong to the kingdom of God. But what does that mean in a practical sense? There are things that it does not mean as well as things that it means.

It does not mean that we are not citizens of our country. Of course we are. We can be grateful, loyal citizens of the United States. A symbol of this in the Episcopal Church is that Independence Day is a feast day on the church’s calendar.

It does mean, however, that we wear our earthly (for want of a better word to call it) citizenship lightly. We are never afraid to be critical of our country when the values we hold as believers are challenged. As it is sometimes said, we are unafraid to speak truth to power (which means, of course, that it will sometimes be spoken to us). We certainly never give in to extremist patriotism that feeds off anger and hatred and misinformation, and there’s a bunch of that going around today.

Belonging to the Kingdom of God does not mean that we are not members of a particular ethnic or cultural group. We can’t deny that in ourselves, and we shouldn’t. It’s part of our God-given createdness.

But belonging to the Kingdom of God does mean that we have a larger vision of all peoples gathered around a throne. It is the vision of Daniel we heard this morning:

To him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him.

This vision echoes through others of the prophets and is carried into the Book of Revelation. To quote from chapter 5, using some of the same language as chapter one that we just heard:

By your blood you ransomed for God saints from every tribe and language and people and nation; you have made them to be a kingdom and priests serving our God.

That is our vision: all people as equal servants of God, equally gifted to offer what we call “the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving.”

One more thing about this “kingdom not of this world” that we are called to live in. It is a non-violent kingdom. Notice how Jesus goes on when responding to Pilate.

My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.

Jesus’ followers, he points out, are not fighting back. That is not what he taught them. There was a little temptation to do so in the garden, with the flash of the sword, which Jesus rebukes. It is not his way. His way is the way of sacrificial love. He will become the king of which Pilate speaks only by offering his life as an innocent victim.

This is not the kind of king and kingdom we want. We want a king who will fight for us and inspire us to fight as well. We want a king who will react to our anxieties and do whatever it takes to keep us on top. We want a king who will prop up and feed our myths about ourselves and our country (or even our religion).

That is not the kind of king we get. We get a king on a cross, about as big a paradox as you can get. But we believe the power released from that paradox was enough to save the world, truly save it, which is why we do call him “king.”

Fellow citizens of the kingdom of God, blessings in navigating the tricky waters between your citizenship of Jesus’ not of this world kingdom and your citizenship in this earthly kingdom we call the United States of America.

One piece of advice: know where your loyalties lie ahead of time.

There is a God Who is Not Ashamed

Sermon preached at St. Stephen's Church on the 24th Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 28B): Hebrews 10:11-14, 19-25; Mark 13:1-8

Let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.

It’s been a long birth, longer than anyone ever expected. The labor of which Jesus speaks has been endless: 2,000 years, give or take. When will the reign of God finally be born? When will it stop being “near at hand” and be finally here?

Jesus promised, “The meek will inherit the earth.” Well, I say, the meek are ready. They’ve been ready, for quite some time now. The t-shirt says, “Jesus is coming back. Look busy!” But most of us have a question for him. “Where the hell have you been?”

My sister Leann’s first child—my first nephew—was born after a day’s hard and exhausting labor. She had been determined not to have a Cesarean birth, but finally she could take it no longer, and we could hear her from the hallway, “OK, get it out of me!”

Some days feel like that in this long birth of the kingdom of God, don’t they? Only, there’s no Cesarean option. You can create as many watershed moments as you want—you can win the lottery, re-elect your favorite political party, finally retire, whatever—and the birth pangs go on. Sometimes you can take a little break from them—go on vacation—but even then sometimes they have the audacity to follow you to Bermuda and, if nothing else, they’ll be guaranteed to be waiting for you when you get back.

There will be “wars and rumors of wars…nation will rise against nation…there will be earthquakes…famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.” It is not the most popular of Jesus’ promises to his followers, but perhaps the one that has turned out to be most consistently true.

What are we to do in this long, hard age of the birth pangs?

By the time whoever it was sat down to write the letter to the Hebrews, he or she (I’ll call her she—why not, since the metaphor of the day is birth?) knew that we were in this for the long haul. She writes eloquently, movingly, in the chapter that follows our passage from this morning, of the saints who glimpse the reign of God, but only get to glimpse it.

All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, he has prepared a city for them. (Hebrews 11:13-16)

Her answer is, “Keep seeking a homeland. Keep desiring a better country. And know, most of all, that, no matter what, God is not ashamed to be called your God.”

This is easier said than done when we are in hard labor. That is why previously, in the passage we heard this morning, she set the vitally important context for this seeking and desiring and clinging to the “not ashamed” God.

Let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

Provoke one another. Meet together. Encourage one another. There are some wonderful sentiments there.

Provoke one another. “Provoke” is a great English word, even though I first learned it as a negative. My paternal grandmother was frequently “provoked about something,” and I learned at an early age that I needed to not be the one who “provoked” her. The word means literally “call forth.” And here it is not something to avoid but to do, and urgently. Provoke one another; call forth from one another love and good deeds.

Meet together. The interesting word here is not in English but in Greek: episynagogein. Synagogue is a Greek word for a meeting. It became the word for meetings of Jews who lived in the diaspora, away from worship in the Temple. It is a particular kind of meeting, what I would call a “formative” meeting that is much about identity. Meet together. Maintain your identity. Don’t forget who you are and whose you are.

I think this links directly to the writer’s later exhortation to cling to the God who is not ashamed to be your God. There is the profoundly important insight here that this only happens together. The God we can supposedly meet on the golf course is a different God, at least a less robust God, than then the God who is present when we meet together.

Encourage one another. “Encourage” is one of my favorite words, one that does not even need much explanation. Give courage to one another, and courage is certainly what we need in these long days of the birth pangs. “Hang in there” is a trite response to someone who is troubled, but it is one of the most important things we can enable one another to do in this world.

Provoke one another. Meet together. Encourage one another. And all these during the birth pangs, as we “see the Day approaching.” “The Day,” the consummation of the dream of God, the day for which we Christians, even after 2,000 years, stubbornly persist in our watching and waiting, because that is what keeps us alive. And God is stubbornly and persistently giving us glimpses of it—especially the one so very important to us in our tradition, this weekly gathering around this Table, our meeting together to be provoked and encouraged to life by the One we call God, and Savior, and Friend.

It should be obvious this morning that the tone of the readings and this sermon move us toward Advent, as they always do as the church year draws to a close. Advent is that time when we remind ourselves as Christians that watching and waiting for the glimpses of God’s reign is what we do. Hope is what we are about as a people. Despair is what we struggle against most ferociously as believers in the God of Jesus Christ who taught us about the never-ending birth pangs.

Hope for Christians is never any kind of cheap optimism. It is painfully won in the midst of the birth pangs. It is provoked by one another and encouraged in one another as we meet together. It is a conscious and stubborn choice to believe that there is a God for everyone, a God who is not ashamed to be called our God.

The “holidays” we are approaching can be joyous, life-giving times, but they can also be difficult, death-dealing times, mostly because the life they try to sell us, the faith and hope and love they try to sell us, is cheap. There is no depth to them, they are throw away commodities like most everything in this world, and so it is no wonder that so many people get the impression in this “most wonderful time of the year” that they are just “throw away” people, and that things like faith and hope and love are mostly useless drivel.

Let us struggle against these things. Let us be people of Advent through these days, trained at something deeper and more lasting than tinsel and mistletoe, the real, deep faith and hope and love that we provoke and encourage in one another, the ability to see glimpses of God’s reign even in the endless pangs of birth in our lives and in the life of the world around us from our own city streets to the streets of Kabul. There is a God who is not ashamed to be called our God.

Belonging

Sermon preached on All Saints' Day at the Church of St. Luke & St. Simon Cyrene: Wisdom 3:1-9, Revelation 21:1-6a

Talk of saints and the communion of saints is a very dangerous thing. It’s no wonder that many of our Protestant brothers and sisters gave up on it. What’s dangerous about it is that when we speak of saints we can seem to be speaking of people who have earned that status by their good deeds.

The trick is that many of those who have gone before us and whom we call saints, were good deed doers. We wouldn’t remember them if they weren’t. But it’s important to get the order right. They did good deeds because they were saints not in order to become saints.

God makes people saints. He does this by bringing them in relationship with him. The definition of a saint is someone who is in relationship with God. The primary way that happens in the church is through Baptism. Baptism forges a relationship with God that the Prayer Book says is “indissoluble” (p. 298). If you are in a relationship with God that is indissoluble, then you are a saint. Hopefully you will live out that relationship by, in the words of the Baptismal Covenant, proclaiming “by word and example the Good News of God in Christ” (BCP, p. 305). Then you will be acting like a saint, although not earning your way to be one.

We get into the same trouble with the word “righteous.” The Wisdom of Solomon reading this morning begins

The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them.

Again, it is God who makes people righteous. They don’t earn it. We are made righteous by grace, which is defined as “unmerited favor.” “The righteous” is always shorthand for “those made righteous by grace.”

Thinking wrongly about “saints” and “the righteous” can then completely mess up our understanding of the communion of saints. If the saints have earned their status, then the communion of saints is kind of an exclusive club. And the Church becomes the doorkeeper, deciding who gets in and who stays out, whether it be by voting to add individuals to a calendar or through an elaborate beatification process. Someone has to decide whether a potential saint is worthy enough to merit inclusion.

But the doctrine of the communion of saints is meant to be quite the opposite. It is meant to be inclusive by nature not exclusive, using the New Testament sense of the word “saint:” all those in relationship with God. You and I are members of the communion of saints. That is one of the great things we celebrate today.

The Book of Common Prayer defines the communion of saints this way

The communion of saints is the whole family of God, the living and the dead, those whom we love and those whom we hurt, bound together in Christ by sacrament, prayer, and praise. (p. 862).

The communion of saints is about belonging. Belonging is a fundamental, powerful human need. We all need to belong. We suffer when we are made to feel like we don’t belong. All of us have stories of belonging and not belonging that define who we are as persons.

A significant part of the Good News we have to tell is about belonging. At the heart of what people of faith have discovered is that we belong to God and that belonging is both unconditional and eternal. It is this discovery that we enact Sunday by Sunday in the Eucharist at this Altar that we call “the Welcome Table.”

The vision from the Book of Revelation that we heard a few minutes ago is a vision of that belonging. Revelation was written for a people under extreme stress, the kind of stress that was no doubt testing their trust in God. It appeared to them that the strength of the Roman Empire was stronger than that “indissoluble bond” of God.

Revelation plays out this conflict, this test of trust. At several points it looks like the Empire might win, but in the end there is this vision: new heavens and a new earth, the holy city, the new Jerusalem come down from heaven. And the declaration of God that he will live among his people, and that he, not the Empire, is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. In the end the relationship of the peoples belonging to God has been sown to be indissoluble.

We celebrate this vision today. We celebrate our belonging, which is unconditional and eternal. What incredible good news! You belong! We belong! And it is all gift.

A Model Disciple

Sermon preached on October 25, 2009 at the Church of St. Luke & St. Simon Cyrene: Mark 10:46-52 (Proper 25B)

This story of Bartimaeus is rich so I want to take the time to go through it noticing things that are helpful. You might want to have the story in front of you as I do this. This is sort of sermon as Bible study.

The story begins,

Jesus and his disciples came to Jericho.

If you investigate the context, this is part of a journey story. The journey is from Galilee, the region in which most of Jesus’ ministry has taken place, to Jerusalem. What has been going on over the course of this journey is that Jesus has been spending a lot of time teaching his disciples about what is to occur in Jerusalem and they have been spending a lot of time not getting it, or getting lost in distractions like arguing about who is the greatest.

You will also note from context that this is the last story before Jerusalem. The very next story in Mark is Palm Sunday. And if you take a glance through all that is to follow, you will note that this is the last healing Jesus does in Mark’s Gospel.

As he and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside.

The first thing we should notice is that this object of Jesus’ ministry has a name. This is the only time that is the case in the whole Gospel. Why is that so? There must have been something important about this person for his name to have been remembered. What was it? We’ll see if there are any clues in the rest of the reading.

Is it important that this is a blind man? Perhaps it is. Certainly the disciples have been blind to what Jesus is up to. There has been an earlier healing of a blind man in Mark’s Gospel, back in chapter 8. It too followed an incident where the disciples were unable to see. It is followed by the story of Jesus asking “Who do people say that I am?”, which begins his time of teaching the disciples about the true nature of his mission, which has just ended before the Bartimaeus story. The two stories of healing blind men serve as book ends to the period of teaching and serve to emphasize the inability of the disciples to see.

When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”

Bartimaeus is bold and shouts out to Jesus, passing by with his entourage. One really wonders if he expects to be heard or not; he is probably frequently ignored by passers-by.

He calls Jesus a very unusual thing in Mark’s Gospel, “Son of David.” Nowhere else is Jesus called this. This shows a fairly sophisticated understanding of Jesus on the part of Bartimaeus. It may also be what pricked the ears of Jesus so that he stopped to listen.

Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, “Son of David, have mercy on me!”

Bartimaeus calls out from the edges of society. He is a powerless man in a world that is harsh to the powerless. The crowds do not consider him worthy of Jesus’ attention. He, however, is inspired and persistent.

Perhaps he has heard that Jesus has had a particular and peculiar ministry to the outsider and the powerless. Perhaps he has heard that Jesus has declared the first shall be last and the last shall be first. Whatever knowledge from which he is operating, there is tremendous faith here, faith that Jesus will recognize and name in a moment.

So often persistence is required of us. Why doesn’t God answer prayer immediately? I don’t know. I do know that persistent prayer is an antidote to discouragement.

Jesus stood still and said, “Call him here.” And they called the blind man, saying to him, “Take heart; get up, he is calling you.”

Jesus enacts the last shall be first. The use of the word “call” three times here underscores that this is not just a healing story, but a call story as well, and at the end of the story it will seem as if Bartimaeus has become a disciple.

Who is “they” as in “they called the blind man?” Are they members of the crowd who have quickly changed their tune? Are they the disciples? We don’t know. Whoever it was, they participate in the overturning of the man’s outsider status.

So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus.

It’s a wonderful little detail, this throwing off of the cloak. It was more than likely the man’s sole possession other than whatever it was keeping him from being naked. Contrast this to the rich man in the story two weeks ago, whom Jesus invited to give away all that he had, and he went away sorrowful because he couldn’t do it. Jesus had said that it would be hard for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. Here it is easy for the poor, who do not have possessions in their way.

From time to time in our lives we all have cloaks that we need to throw off in order to be in closer relationship with God. Whether we are seeking healing or deeper discipleship or something else, we are often tied down by something, and the more possessions we have the more things are likely playing this role. Like Bartimaeus, we need to throw off that cloak and go to Jesus.

Then Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?”

It is a very simple, direct question. Interestingly enough, it is the same question Jesus asked the disciples James and John in the previous passage. Their reply was to sit at his left and right hand in his kingdom. Clearly Bartimaeus is meant as a contrast to them. They ask for privilege that Jesus cannot grant them. Bartimaeus asks for sight which he can. Again, the disciples are blind even though they can see, and Bartimaeus can see even though he is blind.

The blind man said to him, “My teacher, let me see again.” Jesus said to him, “Go; your faith has made you well.”

As the question was simple and direct the response is simple and direct. “Let me see again.” The man comes to Jesus with no pretense, no guile, just honesty about his need.

He is healed with no effort on Jesus’ part at all. This contrasts to the previous healing of a blind man in Mark’s Gospel which included the rubbing of saliva on the eyes and the laying on of hands. No show is required here. The man’s faith is enough.

“Your faith has made you well” were the same words Jesus used with the woman who touched the hem of Jesus’ garment. She too had battled the crowds to get to Jesus, clearly an outsider and powerless like Bartimaeus.

Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.

Jesus says “go,” but it is a somewhat ambiguous “go.” Others he directed specific places. “Go home,” he told the other blind man earlier in the Gospel. And usually he asks that no one be told about what had happened, but that is missing here. Perhaps it’s too late in the ball game to keep the secret. The authorities he is going to confront in Jerusalem already know everything about what he has been doing.

So what happens? Unlike any other story in Mark’s Gospel, the man becomes a disciple. He follows “on the way.” Perhaps this is why he is remembered. He became a disciple, a witness to the resurrection. True, we hear nothing more about him, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything.

So what appears to be a healing story—and certainly is that—is also a discipleship story, and a “the last shall be first” story.

Bartimaeus ends up being a model disciple for us, more so than those we traditionally call disciples. We should all pray to see clearly, be ready to throw off whatever is in our way, and follow on the way. May this Eucharist continue to give us new eyes so that we can see our true calling.

What Francis Learned

Sermon for the 19th Sunday after Pentecost at the Church of St. Luke & St. Simon Cyrene: Mark 10:1-31

In the northern Italian hills there was once born a boy who his mother Pica named Giovanni. His father, Pietro Bernadone, a wealthy merchant, was away at the time in France. Upon his return he renamed the child Francesco.

Francesco grew up as most boys from wealthy families did in his day. Among other things, he was among the young soldiers from his town who would occasionally challenge another town in their region to a little local war.

It was on one of these local wars one time that Francesco was captured and imprisoned. Part of the game was for those captured to be held for ransom. It took an unusually long time for Francesco's ransom to be worked out, and he ended up in prison for a year.

Prison changed Francesco. For a year he went without any of the luxuries to which he was so accustomed. When he finally returned home, he chose not to live with his family, but as a hermit in an abandoned church in the nearby hills. He began to rebuild the church stone by stone. His family begged him to go home and tried to entice him with reminders of the comfort he had once known. Everything they gave him, he gave to the poor.

Finally one day his father Pietro became so enraged that he dragged Francesco to the local bishop and demanded the bishop order him to stop his foolish ways. The plan backfired. Francesco stripped off all his clothes, renounced his worldly life, and promised to follow Christ in the way of poverty.

As by now you may have guessed, we know Francesco as St. Francis, whose feast day was last Sunday.

Francis went on to found a religious order he called the "Little Brothers." The rule for his order began with words from today's Gospel, "Go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me."

It has been said of Francis that he is one of the most loved and least followed of all the saints. It is probably why we remember him most for his love of the creation. It is easier to follow him in his love of creation than it is in his love of poverty, although we have to admit that we don't always do that well in the love of creation department either.

The possibility that Jesus and Francis are calling us to "sell what we own and give the money to the poor" is unsettling, to say the least. Perhaps we should ask, "What did poverty mean for Francis?" Knowing this may give as an idea of what the story of Jesus and the rich man means for us as well.

Poverty for Francis meant living in complete trust in and reliance upon God. Poverty meant having no possessions, nothing to come between himself and God. It meant a radical insecurity, never knowing from where his next meal or next place to sleep was coming.

Most, probably all, of us shudder to think of such a life. It would mean living life in a perpetual crisis, being completely and utterly dependent upon others for our well-being.

It seems to me that what Jesus does is present this possibility to the rich man who approaches him. He presents him with the potential of crisis. "Sell everything you have and give it away." It was obviously not what the man was expecting. How was he to respond?

One writer has suggested that saints like Francis show us what crisis is and how we are to respond.

What exactly is the crisis here in the Gospel story? To find that out one has to go back to its beginning.

The rich man comes to Jesus and asks him a question, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" His choice of words is telling. "Do" and "inherit" are not words that really go together. An inheritance is not something one earns, after all, it is something one receives as a gift. It is one's right because of who one is, somehow in relationship with the giver.

Either the question should be, "What must I do to earn eternal life?" or "What must I be to inherit eternal life?"

I think Jesus hears the inconsistency and replies with a set up. "You know the commandments: You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother."

I think Jesus was hoping for a light to go off in the rich man's head. Jesus, after all, believes the commandments to be pretty broad in their scope. Anyone who has lusted in their heart has committed adultery. Anyone who has called his neighbor a "fool" has committed murder.

Eagerly, however, the rich man answers, "I have kept all these ever since I was born."

Wrong answer. But Jesus wants this guy to get it. The text says he "loved him." He wanted him to understand and free himself. He wanted him to know who he was and what his inheritance would be.

But the only way to get his point across was with a sledge hammer.

"Go, sell what you own, give the money to the poor, and follow me."

It doesn't work. "He was shocked," Mark says, "and went away grieving, for he had many possessions."

The crisis Jesus presented to the man was the crisis of poverty, of radical insecurity, of complete dependence upon God. He had wanted him to see it the easy way, by just seeing that he could never live up to the demands of the law. But, unfortunately, the man believed he could live up to those demands. In his mind the law and his obedience to it justified him.

The crisis Jesus wanted the man to see was the crisis of our inability to live up to the demands of the law, to be and do everything that God desires for us, to respond fully to God's love for us.

The man's response was the wrong response, both times. The first time his response was to deny that there was any crisis whatsoever. "I have kept all these ever since I was born."

The second response, after Jesus suggests he give all he had away, was the wrong one too. He was shocked, despondent, and he went away.

What would have been the right response? Perhaps it seems obvious that the right response would have been for him to do what Jesus' asked, give away everything he had. Certainly it would have been.

But would it have been the only right response? I don't think so. What if the man had simply said, "That is impossible. I can't do it."

Well, that is the response the disciples had to the whole incident. After the rich man walks away he comments, "How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!" The disciples respond, "Then who can be saved?"

Jesus replies, "For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible."

What Jesus wanted from the rich man was the response of acknowledging his dependence upon God. The real answer to the question of "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" is, "Nothing. There isn't anything you can do to inherit eternal life. You can only trust in God."

And that is what the rich man couldn't do. He couldn't trust only in God. Now Jesus observes that trust is difficult for those with wealth. The more financial security we have the more we trust in ourselves. Financial security blinds us to our true radical insecurity, our true inability to even fulfill ourselves, much less save ourselves.

Wealth and possessions, are some of the many things that can blind us to both the crisis in our lives--our inability to save ourselves--and the right response to that crisis--trust in God.

Saints like Francis put both that crisis and that response before us with the witness of their lives.

I do not want you to think of the crisis--that we can't save ourselves--in solely negative terms. Francis would not want you to either. Saying that we don't measure up, that we are unable to be and do all that God wants us to be and do, is only one way of saying it.

Another way of saying it is simply to say that there is something bigger than us, something that is able to transform our lives when we cannot. And the good news that Francis told everywhere he went was that this "thing" was on our side and welling up within us. It is the love and joy of God for the whole creation.

That is what Jesus wanted the rich man to see. He wanted him to see how much he loved him, but he couldn't just flat out tell him that because then the man would have thought that he loved him because of what he had done or what he had.

But it was exactly the opposite. He loved him for all he didn't have. He loved him in spite of all he hadn't done. He loved him simply because God had made him.

That had to have been what Francis discovered in prison those many months, stripped of his possessions and his family prestige. Somehow he found within himself the joy and love of God, bigger than himself, inviting his trust, something to cling to when there was nothing else to cling to.

That is what God wants for us, to trust in his love and joy for us, to cling only to that love, because it is the only thing that lasts, that never disappoints or goes away. Such a trust will bring peace to our lives and even to the whole world, because it is our trust in ourselves, in our own ability to save ourselves, in the things that we accumulate and think we have earned, that disappoint us, that cause us endless anxiety, that tempt us to fear and hate, that is at the root of every ounce of the world's suffering and conflict.

Jesus and Francis call us to neither deny nor walk away from the reality of our radical insecurity but rather to embrace it. Only by embracing it can we then feel the embrace of the One who made us and loves us eternally. Only then can we know true peace and fulfillment.

It's About More Than Justice

One of the caricatures of the movement for full inclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender persons in the Episcopal Church is that for us it is all about justice. It is about justice, of course, but it is also about far, far more. It is about the very nature of Gospel.

“The Gospel” can be defined in as many ways as there are Christians, of course. Jesus didn’t give us a neat definition with which to work. He did say it was about the ability to change one’s mind, one’s sense of direction (“repent and believe the good news”). But for the content of this good news he used the metaphor of the kingdom of God and told a lot of stories. In the end he acted out one great story with his life and his death. Overall, the good news is about the overcoming of estrangement, reconciliation between God and humankind and between human beings. We all have to trust in his death and resurrection for this reconciliation to be the truth that sets us free. This freedom is grace, as we call it, unmerited favor.

The inclusion of glbt people in the life of the church is a radical sign of this grace. People whom the law separates from the faithful are reconciled by it. And this happens in spite of religious and secular authorities desiring for it not to be so. They fear the breakdown of society if the inclusion goes too far too fast, but it has always been thus with the Church, which at its best has always scandalized the authorities, because Jesus Christ was and is the greatest scandal of them all.

A well-meaning bishop once said to my then Senior Warden (who was relatively new to the parish—it was a small parish, rebuilding) that it was great that she chose to be a member of the parish in spite of the fact that I was gay. My Senior Warden responded, “No, I’m a member of this parish because he is gay. Because if God can love him then God can love me.”

That’s what this is about. This is not about a group of people clamoring for their “rights.” It is about the power of the Gospel to reconcile across every divide that humankind creates.

As a Christian who happens to be gay, St. Paul’s words that we will hear the Sunday after General Convention is over (July 19) ring true and strong.

But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace… (from Ephesians 2:11-22)

To this truth, by the grace of God, the lives of glbt Christians bear witness.

The Church on the Other Side

Sermon preached at the Church of St. Luke & St. Simon Cyrene on the 3rd Sunday after Pentecost: Mark 4:35-41

Let us go across to the other side.

As we have been reading along in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus has been in Capernaum, on the northeast shore of the Sea of Galilee. It appears to have been his home base. Mark makes several references to his “home” being there.

Suddenly this morning Jesus wants to move on. “Let us go across to the other side.” His disciples probably would have raised their eyebrows. “The other side” was Gentile territory, the region of the Decapolis. It would have been highly unusual for the Jews who lived on the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee to venture across to the western side.

This journey is the first sign in Mark’s Gospel that Jesus’ message is meant to be universal, not for Jews alone. Why else go there?

The going is rough, a storm is encountered and the boat is swamped. Even the fishermen among the disciples are frightened. Jesus is non-plussed. The disciples are beside themselves.

Do you not care that we are perishing?

Then comes the awesome moment when Jesus shouts, “Peace! Be still!” and nature obeys him.

When they arrive at the other side it is the territory of the Gerasenes. There were tombs near where they landed and “immediately,” Mark says, they are accosted by a man who is stark raving mad, who lived among the tombs, unable to be restrained.

Jesus orders the unclean spirit to come out of the man in the same way he ordered the sea to be still. The demon knows who Jesus is, calls him “Son of the Most High God.” “What is your name?” Jesus asks. “My name is Legion; for we are many,” comes the reply.

Legion begs to be cast into a nearby herd of swine. (You know for certain you are in Gentile territory here if there is a herd of swine). Jesus does just that and the herd rushes into the sea and is drowned. The townspeople are terrified by all this and beg Jesus to go away.

Meanwhile the tormented man is now in his right mind. He begs to go with Jesus, but Jesus sends him on his way to tell others of his good fortune and we are told that is what he does, much to the amazement of all.

Jesus then returned back across the sea to Capernaum.

This story is deep with symbolism and meanings. Among these, I think, they are a metaphor for the Church’s calling. We are called to “cross to the other side” into unfamiliar territory. We are, in fact, called to be “the Church on the other side.”

As the story tells us, this is not an easy calling. The storms along the way are mighty and hostile forces may greet us once we come ashore. We, too, may be asked to leave as if we don’t belong there.

I think this is an especially apt metaphor for where the Episcopal Church, including this parish, finds itself these days. We have become “the Church on the other side,” much to the horror of some of our own people, not to mention other Christians.

“The other side” these days means inclusive of gay and lesbian people. But we have been here before. We have crossed to the other side before and met with different players.

We crossed to the other side when we ordained an African American man named Absalom Jones, the first denomination in the still new United States to do so. We then lost our nerve and didn’t let him or his people vote in Convention for many years, but the side had been crossed and there was no turning back.

We crossed to the other side again later in the nineteenth century when we ordained a deaf man as a priest, Henry Winter Syle. For many it was an outrageous act to ordain someone who was “imperfect” of body. Again, we were the first denomination to do this.

And we crossed to the other side in the 20th century when we began to ordain women, although it cannot be said that we were anywhere near the first to do that among our Christian brothers and sisters. But we were first in the Anglican Communion, and then pushed further to the other side in ordaining the first woman to be a Bishop, Barbara Harris.

A lot of our own people chose not to cross this other side with us. The Church lost hundreds of thousands of people over women’s ordination and the concurrent change in The Book of Common Prayer.

Now we have gone again and crossed to the other side. This Diocese was a pioneer in the inclusion of lesbian and gay people in the 1970’s and 1980’s, although it has only been recently that a significant number of gay and lesbian clergy have served in the Diocese. And, of course, we all know of the ordination of Gene Robinson as a Bishop, which rocked the Anglican world in such a way that we will never be the same.

This being the Church on the other side is a part of our heritage. It is tradition with us, costly though it has been. And there is still more ways to go. What is the next “other side?” I hope and pray it is the other side of those among us who are poor. That will shake this upper and middle class church to its very foundations.

I know some of you are sick and tired of the Church talking about sexuality. Believe me, no more sick and tired than I am. But this is among our callings in these days. If some want to identify and dismiss us as “the gay church,” then so be it. There are worse things that we could be called. For our part we should keep on doing the things that we are doing, fighting for equality for lesbian and gay people, yes, but also serving those who live in poverty and raising up children to be good people, with a great ability to tolerate and celebrate difference as a gift from God.

I also know some of you have to talk about this with friends and acquaintances, even members of your own families. How can you have him as your priest? Isn’t it embarrassing to be seen as “the gay church?”

I suggest you tell them that even Jesus crossed to the other side to include the un-includable. And we believe we are called to be the Church on the other side, doing the same thing in our own day. It makes for a messy life, but it makes us depend on Jesus all the more, because only he can say to us “Peace! Be still!” and we know some measure of calm.

As for me I’m proud to be a member of the Church on the other side and I hope we will continue to cross that sea again and again until all of God’s children are included among the followers of Jesus. That will be a great day, the day of what the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called “the beloved community.” Let us keep on inviting others to cross over with us, so we can all sing as Martin wanted us to sing, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty we are free at last!” That’s the song they sing on the other side.

The New Way of Being

Sermon preached at the Church of St. Luke & St. Simon Cyrene on the 2nd Sunday after Pentecost: Ezekiel 17:22-24, 2 Corinthians 5:6-17, Mark 4:26-34 (Proper 6B)

We have just heard two short parables that Jesus tells us are about the Kingdom of God. It was a favorite metaphor of his—a political metaphor used to describe a spiritual reality. St. Paul, from whom we also just heard, does not use this metaphor. He speaks this morning instead of a “new creation.”

I want to suggest to you that these two metaphors are basically synonymous and can be used interchangeably: the Kingdom of God and the New Creation. And it is Paul’s metaphor that may ring truer for us in our day, that we can work with more easily.

More than fifty years ago, the great 20th century Protestant theologian Paul Tillich asserted that the New Creation, or “the New Being,” as he put it, was the central message and purpose of Christianity.[1]

Christianity is the message of the New Creation, the New Being, the New Reality which has appeared with the appearance of Jesus who for this reason, and just for this reason, is called the Christ. For the Christ, the Messiah, the selected and anointed one is He who brings the new state of things.[2]

What is this New Creation, this New Way of Being?

First of all we must say that in our existence it exists alongside what could be called the Old Creation, the Old Way of Being. The Old Way of Being is characterized by division, anxiety, fear, violence, greed, any of the myriad ways we separate ourselves from God and one another, and, indeed, separate ourselves from ourselves.

We are asked to be a part of the New Creation in the midst of the Old Creation. We know all too well this old way of being in our own lives. What Christianity asks of us is that we also participate in the New Creation inaugurated by Jesus.

In this regard the New Creation is like the Kingdom of God in the parables of Jesus this morning. It is like the mysterious and hidden seed that sprouts into growth and bears great fruit. Or it is like the sprig of which the prophet Ezekiel speaks this morning that God plants on a high mountain and it grows to be a great tree.

The New Way of Being in our world can be mysterious and hidden, and we must sometimes wait patiently for its growth, but we can do so in trust that grow it will.

But again, just what is this New Creation?

An important word we can use to describe this new reality is “transformation.” Where the New Creation is, is where transformation has occurred. The transformation is not something that we do, but that God does. Our job is not to create transformation but uncover it—to see transformation where it has already occurred.

Our job, in short, is to recognize and participate in what God has already done. And by participating we are participating in God’s ongoing work of transformation. God can use us in God’s work of transformation if we allow ourselves to be used.

Some examples of what I am talking about.

First, personal. The New Creation exists in my life every time I am able to say, “I am a child of God.” I am God’s beloved and with me God is well pleased. That is what I am in this new order of things. I am not who the world says that I am, whatever label that is. Nor am I who I often say I am in my anxiety and fear.

When I can say, “I am a child of God,” no matter what the circumstance of my life, there is the New Creation.

Second, relational. Paul speaks about this aspect this morning.

From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view…

When we are living this new way of being we are able to see through the labels and judgments we make on other people. We are able to see children of God, again, no matter what the circumstance.

This is not an easy thing all the time. Sometimes, frequently, people do not act like children of God. They live in the Old Creation and act out of it. We are given eyes to see, however, through that. We are able to see with God’s eyes. Here is a child of God even if she isn’t acting like a child of God, so the way I relate to others is affected. In the words of our Baptismal Covenant, I seek and serve Christ in all people, and respect everyone’s dignity.

To do that is transformational. It transforms the Old Creation into the New Creation.

Third, corporate. I want to apply this to our life as a parish. What difference does it make to look at ourselves as a New Creation? It means we see ourselves as a community of faith rather than as a collection of individuals. As a community of faith we have a calling. God wants us to do something, has a purpose for us.

Among other things this means that even when the circumstances of our life are difficult—when we, for instance, struggle financially or fail to grow as we would like, we remain a hopeful people. We continue to act out of abundance, not scarcity. We continue to expect that God is calling us to do God’s work, and we continue to do it.

We are entering a time when it will be our opportunity yet again to act out of this New Creation. This week it is likely that both our Vestry and that of St. Stephen’s will renew the covenant for cooperative ministry that we first entered into two years ago.

In a joint conversation, the Vestries clearly felt that the covenant has been a positive thing. There are challenges, but no deal breakers. We have begun to build a relationship with one another and some trust has begun to form.

It is time, we recognize, to move deeper, to go more deeply into what the original purpose of the covenant was, to support and expand ministry on the West Side of the city of Rochester.

Now when we say that we can have two reactions: Old Creation or New Creation. The Old Creation says things like, “We are already doing all that we can. We don’t have the resources to do more.” It also says, “I’m not sure I want them playing in my sandbox.”

The New Creation says, “We can’t do any more than we are doing alone, but we can do more together. God is calling us and God will enable us.” God will provide for what God wants to be done.

And God is calling us. A ministry of some sort to the children of St. Stephen’s neighborhood is being handed to us. Children in that neighborhood are showing up to church all on their own, without their parents. They’re even stopping by during the week whenever they see that somebody is there. Something is happening.

That in itself is a New Creation way of thinking: “something is happening.” God is doing something and we need to respond.

And we are beginning to. A team of people is being put together to do some dreaming about what might be possible, including to look at what others are doing elsewhere. If you want to be part of that dreaming, let me know. Dreaming is always a New Creation activity.

The challenge our faith always puts before us, be it on a personal, relational or corporate level, is the challenge to live in the New Creation. And it is a challenge. The Old Creation is everywhere, working in subtle and not so subtle ways to hold us back and hold us down. It is a struggle to be constantly throwing it off, but that is just what we are called to do.

We are called, as Paul says, to see no one and nothing any longer from a human point of view. We are called to see with eyes that transform the old into the new.

[1] “The New Being” in The New Being (Scribners, 1955), pp. 15-24.
[2] Ibid., p. 15.

God Will Provide for What God Wants to Be Done

Sermon preached at St. Stephen's Church on Trinity Sunday: Isaiah 6:1-8, Romans 8:12-17, John 3:1-17

If you were looking for some neat explanation of the Trinity in the readings we just heard, it wasn’t there. Truth to tell, it isn’t anywhere in Scripture plainly, just hints and glimpses.

The hints and glimpses this morning are lively enough, however, to build a dynamic image. “Dynamic” is an important word here. When Christians think or speak about the Trinity it often seems like they are talking about an idea and a reality that is frozen: the unchangeable God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

In reality, however, the very notion that God is internally relational is a dynamic image. To say that God is Trinity is to say that God is alive, dynamic. I want to describe this dynamic God this morning and speak about how we are called to mirror it in living out our call as a community of faith.

I find three images from the readings this morning that are helpful in describing this dynamic Trinity: The live coal, the suffering heir and the blowing wind.

The prophet Isaiah has an awesome vision of God—would that we all would be gifted with such a vision. It is of God’s pure majesty. His reaction is to feel his own incompleteness, how little he measures up, how sinful he is. God reacts by sending a seraph with a live coal to touch Isaiah’s lips and make him clean. God then asks “Whom shall I send?” and Isaiah eagerly says, “Here am I; send me!”

God is like the live coal, able to burn through whatever separates us from God, able to make us clean, make us worthy, make us holy in spite of ourselves. And this live coal also causes a fire within us, a fire for service, a desire to be sent to do God’s work. The one’s who have the fire of God in them are the ones with the burned lips.

Paul speaks about our adoption as children of God in wonderful words: “You did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption.” We are God’s children, one with Christ, joint heirs with him, he says. But these are suffering heirs. As children of God we are called to lay our lives on the line just like Jesus did. “No one has greater love than this,” Jesus said, “to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15:13) The suffering heir God is the God who puts himself out there for us, takes the risk when the risk is called for, makes the sacrifice when the sacrifice is called for. And we, of course, are called to follow this God.

God is like the live coal. God is like the suffering heir. And God is like the blowing wind.

Nicodemus comes to Jesus, drawn to him, but at the same time cautious, symbolized by the fact that he comes under the cover of darkness. He is seeking. He wants to know more, see what this teacher has to say face to face.

What Jesus has to say to him may seem like a giant riddle, and Nicodemus does seem flummoxed by it. What is he getting at? But it is all quite simple.

Nicodemus you have to change. You have to offer your life to God. This is such a radical move that it is like being born all over again. And it is a risky move as well, because this God blows like the wind, wherever it wills. Sometimes you don’t know where it’s coming from, and you hardly ever know where it’s going; all you can do is go with the flow.

Live coal. Suffering heir. Blowing wind. If the images have anything in common it is they are all about being called and the risk of saying, “Here am I, send me!” Each one of these images calls us outside of ourselves, outside of our fears, outside of our comfort zones into the burning, sacrificial, uncontrollable will of God.

It’s enough to make you think twice about saying, “Yes.” But say it we do, every time we come to this Table as individuals and every time as a community we open the doors and let the stranger walk in. Every time we do these things we are saying yes to the burning, sacrificial, uncontrollable will of God.

This means that as a community of faith if we are doing our job, if we are following our call, being disciples, then we are pretty much constantly at risk, constantly being stretched, constantly being changed, constantly being formed and reformed into the dynamic image of God.

There can be nothing static about an individual believer or a body of believers, nothing unchangeable, no sacred cows. There can be only one constant, the pulse of the Eucharist at the heart of our life, the very life of Jesus who feeds us for this risky journey that we are constantly called to be on.

Your Vestry and the Two Saints Vestry met together last Thursday night and, after a lot of review of our relationship, decided to commit to another two years living in covenant with one another. I don’t suspect that is a very controversial move, it may seem much more like approving the status quo.

But it was clear as we were talking and the Holy Spirit was showing up in our conversation, that it is time for the relationship to go deeper, time for us to embrace more fully the original intent of the covenant—to strengthen and increase the ministry of the Episcopal Church on the west side of this city.

To do this we have to shed another layer of our natural parochialism and truly work together, trusting one another to dream together and “play in each other’s sand boxes.” Which is to say that it is time for more risk-taking.

It is risky, for instance, to talk about the prospect of doing more ministry when it seems like you are doing all you can. And yet, more is being thrust upon you with the influx of kids from the neighborhood who bring with them many needs, spiritual and otherwise.

The truth is that you cannot do it alone, so you must take the risk of inviting others in to do it with you. The problem is “others” have their own ideas and won’t always want to do things the “St. Stephen’s way.” Building these kinds of working relationships will change you.

It is always the truth, however, that we are in the position of Nicodemus. We are always in the place of allowing God to do a new thing in our life or not, a thing over which we do not have much control. That is the nature of the Christian life.

You, we, have to decide each and every day whether or not we are willing to trust God.

The bottom line as you go forward in this cooperative ministry covenant is that there is only so much that you can do alone, but there is so much we can do together.

The time is right. The presence of these children is laying before us a major opportunity for ministry in this neighborhood. I don’t know what that looks like yet, but I believe it to be true. Let us join with the burning, sacrificial, uncontrollable will of God and seize the day together. God will provide for what God wants to be done.

The Stand By Me God

Sermon preached at the Church of St. Luke & St. Simon Cyrene on the Day of Pentecost: John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15

Who or what is the Holy Spirit?

Jesus’ word for the Spirit was parakletos, “the Paraclete.” It literally means “one who stands alongside of.” Over the centuries, Bible translators have used a variety of different words to try to translate parakletos: “Comforter,” “Counselor,” and, what we heard this morning, “Advocate.”

They’re all good words, but I like to say something like “The Stand By Me God.” The gift of Jesus is the Stand By Me God, the One who never leaves my side or yours, or ours together. We are never abandoned. Never alone.

This Stand By Me God, Jesus says, is “the Spirit of truth” who will guide us “into all the truth.” That’s important! The Stand By Me God is the true God. It is not as we have feared. God is not the “my way or the highway” God, behave yourselves or suffer the consequences, the angry, judgmental God of our fears. That is not the true God, the God who is revealed by Jesus. Jesus reveals the God of Solidarity with us, Emmanuel, God with us, God for us. This is the truth.

Which means, as Jesus says, the world is wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment. He seems to speak in riddles here, but what he means is, I think, quite simple.

The popular conception is that sin is hated by God and righteousness is loved by God, because God is, above all, a God of judgment. Sinners go to hell, the righteous go to heaven in God’s great act of judgment.

Wrong, Jesus says. This is wrong about sin, Jesus says, “because they do not believe in me.” All along Jesus has been teaching not that God hates sinners, but that God loves them. Jesus is the embodiment of a God who cannot be separated from humankind, even by its own sin. If you can conceive of God and I being one, Jesus is saying, than you can conceive of God and sinners being one.

Which is not to say that Jesus was a sinner, but it is to say that Jesus was fully human, and in him humanity was fully united to God, and if Jesus unites humanity to God, then he unites sinful humanity to God, because there isn’t any other kind.

Jesus told a story (John 8:1-11) about a woman who was caught in adultery, a very bad thing, a violation of one of the Ten Commandments. Her punishment under the Law was death by stoning, and when Jesus came upon her a crowd was getting ready to do just that. Being a noted teacher, they asked him for his judgment in the case, assuming that he would agree with the Law. Instead he said, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” They all went away and the woman was spared be the Stand By Me God.

The world is wrong about righteousness, Jesus says, “because I am going to the Father and you will see me no longer.” Huh? What does he mean by that?

He means, I think, that because he is being eternally united to God, righteousness is now about relationship with him, not about your or my ability to be good. Does Jesus want us to be good? Of course he does. Is being good a qualification for being in relationship with Jesus? No, it is not.

A Pharisee named Nicodemus once came to Jesus under the cover of darkness (John 3:1-17). He was strangely drawn to him even though most of his friends were at best suspicious and at worst outright rejecting of Jesus’ teaching. Jesus sensed his fear and gave him a challenge: “you must be born from above.” Which is to say you must have a different way of relating to the world, the way of the Spirit, which blows where it wills. You must relate to the world through Jesus, who has come, he says, not to condemn the world but to save it.

And the world is wrong about judgment, Jesus says, “because the ruler of this world has [already] been condemned.” Judgment has already happened. Satan, the Accuser of humankind, has already fallen as Jesus has been lifted up and drawn all people to himself as humankind’s Advocate. Greater love has no one than this, Jesus says, but to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. And he, we are told, calls us friends. We are no longer the accused, we are the advocated for by the Stand By Me God.

This is all hugely good news. How sad it is that the world still, by and large, does not know it, certainly does not understand it. This largely lies on our shoulders. We have not testified to the truth! We have not sufficiently accepted the Stand By Me God, to allow the truth of this good news to form our words and deeds.

The church—you and I—continue to allow the world to be wrong about God, because we keep getting it wrong ourselves. We keep believing that God is primarily a God of angry judgment, the great Accuser in the sky. And if we believe that then certainly the world around us isn’t going to argue with us.

Our challenge is to believe the truth, to live into the truth, that our God is the Stand By Me God. The “ruler of this world” is already condemned and both sin and righteousness alike are drowned in the overwhelming flood of God’s love.

The truth is that God loves us. Period. Full stop. No ifs, and, ors, buts or maybes. No fine print. God is head over heals, puppy dog, drooling idiot, ga-ga in love with us. That is the message. There is no other. Any other message is a lie, and we ought not to be afraid to call it a lie whenever we hear it.

God loves you, Jesus says. Lift up that love and the world will be drawn to it. Proclaim the Stand By Me God so that the world will be proved wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment. Proclaim the Stand By Me God so that the world will know the truth and the truth will set it free.

Let us be loved people today. Let us be free people today. Let us give thanks for and lift up the Stand By Me God.