Sermon preached at St. Stephen's Church, Rochester, NY on the Fifth Sunday of Easter: Acts 7:55-60; 1 Peter 2:2-10; John 14:1-14
It is quite convenient—what one would call serendipity—for me to be here this morning and to have these particular readings. My biggest project with you currently is working with a Vision Team on a renewed sense of identity and mission for the congregation. We are asking the simple yet profound and vital questions: Who are we? Why are we here? It is “the Vision Thing.”
It happens that the readings today are all about “the Vision Thing” as well.
First off we have our patron Stephen being stoned to death. As this excruciating thing is happening to him he has a vision of heaven, of God’s glory and of Jesus’ presence at the place of honor. There are two important things to note in relation to this vision.
First of all, the stoning was being done by religious people. This tells me that the answer to “the vision thing” is not necessarily to get more religious (by that, I mean mostly “more pious”). Parish Mission Statements or Vision Statements are fairly useless when they simply exude piety. I’m talking about things like “to know Christ and to make him known.” Not that it is not a worthy thing to know Christ and to make him known, but what does it really mean in practical terms? It does not answer the question, “how?” for instance. This parish, given our patron, ought to be cautious about an overemphasis on piety. Stephen was stoned to death by it.
Second of all, Stephen’s vision leads to something very particular: his plea to God that those who are stoning him be forgiven. That may seem like simply the “right thing to do,” and it is certainly that. But in saying it, Stephen has actually changed his mind about these people. One of the reasons they are stoning him is that he has just accused them of being hypocrites since the days of Moses, ending up with murdering God’s Messiah. “You are forever opposing the Holy Spirit…” he says, “you have not kept [the law].” Stephen’s vision turns this condemnation into forgiveness.
Now we move on to the passage from the First Letter of Peter. In it the apostle piles up the images, culminating with the grand and glorious vision
You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
Notice again that the vision has consequences. We are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, God’s own people, for what? In order that we proclaim the mighty acts of God that have brought us out of darkness into light. And Peter goes on to say a bit more. These mighty acts, this journey from darkness to light, is a journey from not belonging to belonging, from not experiencing a life of mercy to receiving it.
Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
This vision is kind of the bottom line for us. Any vision we have for ourselves has to have this vision as a base. This means that any vision we have of ourselves has to come out of our own sense of who we are as God’s people as opposed to those who hold any other allegiance or are defined by their relationship to someone or something other than God.
Finally there is this morning’s Gospel reading. There are really two distinct visions in this passage. The first, God’s heavenly home where there are many rooms, where each of us has a place to dwell prepared by Jesus himself. Then there is the image of Jesus as “the way, the truth and the life,” through whom we have access to God.
They may seem like contradictory images: heaven with room for many, if not all, a very inclusive image, but then a narrow, exclusive way to that inclusiveness. But does it have to be an exclusive way? After all, it is Jesus who says he is the way, the Jesus who prepares a place for us in the home of God where there is much room. This is Jesus who hung out with the disrespected and outcast, who had compassion for all, and who, in this same Gospel, says that if he is lifted up he will draw all to himself. Perhaps this way is not a narrow, exclusive path, but a wide, inclusive “super highway.”
And the truth about Jesus is a big truth, bigger than we can ever comprehend, bigger than our way of following him. Again, it is Jesus who is this way and truth, not us, not the church.
This vision has consequences as well. We are inviting people on a path that must be deliberately chosen and the choices we must make “exclude” us from other ways of being in the world. Look at the promises of the Baptismal Covenant and you will see a commitment to particular choices that form a particular way of life.
No vision is worth the paper it is printed on if it does not call a person to make choices, which means one of the realities we face—contrary to our instincts—is that some people would choose not to take this path.
What does this passage have to say to us as we discern our vision? I think it says we have to walk the fine line between on the one hand wanting to seem embracing of the culture around us—be inclusive—and on the other hand not being afraid of what makes us distinctive—as Christians and as Episcopalians. Whether or not we know the precise way, truth and life is up for debate. But we do know a way, a truth and a life that we unashamedly offer to others.
So what have we learned about vision?
· It leads to real consequences that sometimes change us. It does not rely on religious platitudes.
· It grows out of our own clear sense that we are God’s people in this place and at this time. As such we are called to do something to proclaim the way to the light.
· It seeks both to embrace the world and define ourselves as distinctive from it, to offer people choices to make to follow a particular path.
Beyond these things I want to say a bit about why we need to do this vision work in the first place. It is really quite simple. If a community such as this wants to do more than survive it must, at the very least, be very clear about who it is and why it is—fundamental questions of identity. That identity, moreover, must be a truly communal one. It cannot come from any one person—clergy or lay—or small group.
Why this emphasis on identity? Because you cannot invite people into something that you know not what it is. It is not enough to just think of yourselves as a friendly church that any right-thinking person would belong to if they were just thinking clearly enough. Every church that exists on the face of the planet thinks that about itself.
And you cannot do mission if you do not know out of which you are doing. Who we are is the true shaper of what we do.
Now I have no doubt that part of what we discover on this “vision quest” will be things we already know, and some of the things this community already does are strong indications of its identity. We are not so much trying to create an identity but uncover it. That’s why we shouldn’t be afraid of this process—it is simply discerning who God has already made us.
And that’s why it is good news, real gospel. God has made us something together and, as the old saying goes, God don’t make junk.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Abundant Community
Sermon preached on the Fourth Sunday of Easter at the Church of St. Luke & St. Simon Cyrene, Rochester, NY: Acts 2:42-47; John 10:1-10
There seems to be much bad news for what is often referred to as “mainline Christianity.” That’s folk like us. We seem to be somewhat of an endangered species, particularly those of us in the city. By and large we are aging and shrinking congregations left with enormous monuments of past grandeur. What can we possibly do to survive much less thrive?
We just heard Jesus promise us abundant life. Are our days of abundant life over?
The reality is sobering even for those of us who seem to be holding on, attracting a few people here and there, generally feeling good about ourselves, trying to be open to a new future.
So what’s the answer?
One of the impulses is to look at those churches that are being successful these days and ask what we can do to emulate them. New research shows that would be the wrong impulse for us because those churches live in a different universe from us and we can no more make ourselves like them than the sun can make itself the moon.
So that’s the bad news of this “new research.” Is there any good news?
There is, and it resonates with the readings this morning, particularly the reading from the Acts of the Apostles.
The good news is that there are actually a significant number of old mainline, progressive churches out there who are making a comeback and beginning to thrive again. Generally speaking, they are doing so by becoming more of who they are than what someone else is. The path to thriving is something like rediscovering our roots and claiming and practicing those things that we do well, things that are largely gifts of our tradition.
Tradition had a bad name in our churches for a generation or so. It was something from which we needed to get unstuck. “Contemporary” was the word of the day, and it seems to have worked for some, but for almost all of them it has meant casting off or radically downplaying their denominational history. I remember well going to a church growth conference for Episcopalians in the early 1990’s and being told that the one thing we absolutely had to do was downplay that we were Episcopalians. Denominational affiliation just doesn’t play anymore, we were told.
Something felt wrong about that to me back then and now I’m glad I’ve got actual, solid research done by some very capable people that says my instinct was right. We don’t need to cast off who we are, we need to claim it.
Not in a “better than everybody else” kind of way. Snobbery—something we Episcopalians were especially good at in the past—will not serve us. But being unafraid to be who we are will serve us well.
A woman named Diana Butler Bass (Christianity for the Rest of Us) is the principal researcher to whom I am referring. She happens herself to be an Episcopalian, but her research crossed denominational boundaries. What she found was that old mainline progressive churches that were thriving had certain practices in common.
They are for the most part not new-fangled tricks, but old Christian practices, revived for a new day. Three of the main ones are so old that they are present in this oldest description of a Christian community that we have: the first reading this morning.
The believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers…all who believed were together and had all things in common...they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts…and day by day the Lord added to their number…
The three ancient Christian practices are hospitality that is a radical openness, generosity that is a radical act of thanksgiving, and a spirituality that is radically communal.
Just that this early community was open and growing is a sign of its hospitality, as well as its strong sense of the common good. In fact, the evidence elsewhere in Acts was that this openness was so culturally unique, so total across all the boundaries of the day that this community became known as “those people who turn the world upside down.”
I would submit that to be a true community of diversity, radical diversity, is still as unique culturally as it once was. Much can be said about the diversity of our culture which would be true, but within that culture we tend to live in sub-cultures with very clearly defined boundaries—back/white, gay/straight, Latino/Anglo, rich/poor, politically conservative/liberal. People’s natural impulse is to be with those who are like them.
Interestingly enough that same Church Growth conference that I mentioned earlier advocated giving in to this impulse. Create like-minded community was its advice. Find a niche population and be what that population needs.
That’s not what we do. Our vision is different. We want to bring disparate people together. That’s our appeal, it is something we highly value, that in order for human community to thrive it needs to be diverse. We are better off together than we are separated.
Not everyone is attracted to this way of living. It can be hard work, and it requires some sacrifice of our own agendas to build a larger one. But this is one thing we have to make clear to the world around us, confidently, boldly: we believe God calls us into community that crosses all boundaries.
And that community is above all things generous in its outlook on life. For the community described in the Acts of the Apostles, that generosity was radical: “they…had all things in common.” That sounds suspiciously like a cult to us or politically and economically something like communism. We’re probably not going to go all the way there.
But what about being a community that is known for its generosity, whose members have a deep sense of gratitude for life and give not as little to the common good as they can get away with, but as much as they can bear and then a little bit more. Stinginess is unknown in such a community. Individuals share their resources for the common life of the community. For us that sometimes means giving to very attractive things that obviously benefit either ourselves or others in need. Most of the time, however, it means giving just as generously to the mundane parts of our common life: the steam heat bill, the sexton’s salary, supplies for the Sunday School. We give generously to these things because we are convinced that we are mutually responsible for them: they are part of our “common good.”
Moreover in a community such as this one, generosity is proclaimed as a way to practice life itself, with radical gratitude for life itself, which is a deliberate turning away from the dominant cultural practices that emphasize the acquiring of more and more things, success measured by wealth, and just good old-fashioned greed. We need to proclaim confidently and boldly that these things are not our way of life. Our way of life is gratitude and generosity.
And lastly there is radical, communal spirituality, centered in the breaking of the bread. The vision is of individuals who gather together week by week because their very lives depend on it. Without the bread they are not whole people. That is why we do it. We do not do it to entertain ourselves or as some spiritual gimmick or fad. We do it because Jesus taught us to and our ancestors have been doing it for two thousand years and it is our experience that it keeps us whole and alive.
“The breaking of bread and the prayers,” the description says. That refers to the community’s commitment to daily prayer, the wisdom of at least a little time in the morning and a little time in the evening to say to God “I love you,” and to hear from God, “I love you too,” to remember those in need, including ourselves, and to feed our imaginations with the stories of our ancestors.
Our spirituality is unabashedly, unashamedly communal. And in that communalism it is both very different from the rampant individualism of the world around us and the spirituality of personal salvation practiced by many of our fellow Christians. We believe that none of us is saved as individuals; we are saved as a community. Our individual relationship with God and our participation in community are so intertwined that we cannot imagine one without the other.
I am describing a community like that first one described in Acts, which wants to know God and the love that is at the heart of God together.
Radical hospitality, gratitude-driven generosity, and communal spirituality are our primary values. Those were the practices of the community that emerged following the death and resurrection of Jesus. They are our practices as well and we need to be committed to strengthening them, being able to articulate them to a world that doesn’t really know who we are and what we stand for. In two simple words this can all be summed up using a word Jesus’ uses in the Gospel reading this morning: we are about “abundant community.”
Why do I go to Church? Or the better question, why am I part of a Christian community and this kind of Christian community in particular?
I think there are three simple answers we can give:
Because my life is abundant when I am surrounded both by people who are like me and by people who are different from me.
Because my life is abundant when I am grateful for life and give of myself generously.
Because my life is abundant when I pray in community as people have prayed for thousands of years.
Radical hospitality, gratitude-driven generosity, communal spirituality. Abundant community. Let it be, church, let it be. It’s the only way to throw off the bad news and embrace who we are and who we are called to be.
There seems to be much bad news for what is often referred to as “mainline Christianity.” That’s folk like us. We seem to be somewhat of an endangered species, particularly those of us in the city. By and large we are aging and shrinking congregations left with enormous monuments of past grandeur. What can we possibly do to survive much less thrive?
We just heard Jesus promise us abundant life. Are our days of abundant life over?
The reality is sobering even for those of us who seem to be holding on, attracting a few people here and there, generally feeling good about ourselves, trying to be open to a new future.
So what’s the answer?
One of the impulses is to look at those churches that are being successful these days and ask what we can do to emulate them. New research shows that would be the wrong impulse for us because those churches live in a different universe from us and we can no more make ourselves like them than the sun can make itself the moon.
So that’s the bad news of this “new research.” Is there any good news?
There is, and it resonates with the readings this morning, particularly the reading from the Acts of the Apostles.
The good news is that there are actually a significant number of old mainline, progressive churches out there who are making a comeback and beginning to thrive again. Generally speaking, they are doing so by becoming more of who they are than what someone else is. The path to thriving is something like rediscovering our roots and claiming and practicing those things that we do well, things that are largely gifts of our tradition.
Tradition had a bad name in our churches for a generation or so. It was something from which we needed to get unstuck. “Contemporary” was the word of the day, and it seems to have worked for some, but for almost all of them it has meant casting off or radically downplaying their denominational history. I remember well going to a church growth conference for Episcopalians in the early 1990’s and being told that the one thing we absolutely had to do was downplay that we were Episcopalians. Denominational affiliation just doesn’t play anymore, we were told.
Something felt wrong about that to me back then and now I’m glad I’ve got actual, solid research done by some very capable people that says my instinct was right. We don’t need to cast off who we are, we need to claim it.
Not in a “better than everybody else” kind of way. Snobbery—something we Episcopalians were especially good at in the past—will not serve us. But being unafraid to be who we are will serve us well.
A woman named Diana Butler Bass (Christianity for the Rest of Us) is the principal researcher to whom I am referring. She happens herself to be an Episcopalian, but her research crossed denominational boundaries. What she found was that old mainline progressive churches that were thriving had certain practices in common.
They are for the most part not new-fangled tricks, but old Christian practices, revived for a new day. Three of the main ones are so old that they are present in this oldest description of a Christian community that we have: the first reading this morning.
The believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers…all who believed were together and had all things in common...they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts…and day by day the Lord added to their number…
The three ancient Christian practices are hospitality that is a radical openness, generosity that is a radical act of thanksgiving, and a spirituality that is radically communal.
Just that this early community was open and growing is a sign of its hospitality, as well as its strong sense of the common good. In fact, the evidence elsewhere in Acts was that this openness was so culturally unique, so total across all the boundaries of the day that this community became known as “those people who turn the world upside down.”
I would submit that to be a true community of diversity, radical diversity, is still as unique culturally as it once was. Much can be said about the diversity of our culture which would be true, but within that culture we tend to live in sub-cultures with very clearly defined boundaries—back/white, gay/straight, Latino/Anglo, rich/poor, politically conservative/liberal. People’s natural impulse is to be with those who are like them.
Interestingly enough that same Church Growth conference that I mentioned earlier advocated giving in to this impulse. Create like-minded community was its advice. Find a niche population and be what that population needs.
That’s not what we do. Our vision is different. We want to bring disparate people together. That’s our appeal, it is something we highly value, that in order for human community to thrive it needs to be diverse. We are better off together than we are separated.
Not everyone is attracted to this way of living. It can be hard work, and it requires some sacrifice of our own agendas to build a larger one. But this is one thing we have to make clear to the world around us, confidently, boldly: we believe God calls us into community that crosses all boundaries.
And that community is above all things generous in its outlook on life. For the community described in the Acts of the Apostles, that generosity was radical: “they…had all things in common.” That sounds suspiciously like a cult to us or politically and economically something like communism. We’re probably not going to go all the way there.
But what about being a community that is known for its generosity, whose members have a deep sense of gratitude for life and give not as little to the common good as they can get away with, but as much as they can bear and then a little bit more. Stinginess is unknown in such a community. Individuals share their resources for the common life of the community. For us that sometimes means giving to very attractive things that obviously benefit either ourselves or others in need. Most of the time, however, it means giving just as generously to the mundane parts of our common life: the steam heat bill, the sexton’s salary, supplies for the Sunday School. We give generously to these things because we are convinced that we are mutually responsible for them: they are part of our “common good.”
Moreover in a community such as this one, generosity is proclaimed as a way to practice life itself, with radical gratitude for life itself, which is a deliberate turning away from the dominant cultural practices that emphasize the acquiring of more and more things, success measured by wealth, and just good old-fashioned greed. We need to proclaim confidently and boldly that these things are not our way of life. Our way of life is gratitude and generosity.
And lastly there is radical, communal spirituality, centered in the breaking of the bread. The vision is of individuals who gather together week by week because their very lives depend on it. Without the bread they are not whole people. That is why we do it. We do not do it to entertain ourselves or as some spiritual gimmick or fad. We do it because Jesus taught us to and our ancestors have been doing it for two thousand years and it is our experience that it keeps us whole and alive.
“The breaking of bread and the prayers,” the description says. That refers to the community’s commitment to daily prayer, the wisdom of at least a little time in the morning and a little time in the evening to say to God “I love you,” and to hear from God, “I love you too,” to remember those in need, including ourselves, and to feed our imaginations with the stories of our ancestors.
Our spirituality is unabashedly, unashamedly communal. And in that communalism it is both very different from the rampant individualism of the world around us and the spirituality of personal salvation practiced by many of our fellow Christians. We believe that none of us is saved as individuals; we are saved as a community. Our individual relationship with God and our participation in community are so intertwined that we cannot imagine one without the other.
I am describing a community like that first one described in Acts, which wants to know God and the love that is at the heart of God together.
Radical hospitality, gratitude-driven generosity, and communal spirituality are our primary values. Those were the practices of the community that emerged following the death and resurrection of Jesus. They are our practices as well and we need to be committed to strengthening them, being able to articulate them to a world that doesn’t really know who we are and what we stand for. In two simple words this can all be summed up using a word Jesus’ uses in the Gospel reading this morning: we are about “abundant community.”
Why do I go to Church? Or the better question, why am I part of a Christian community and this kind of Christian community in particular?
I think there are three simple answers we can give:
Because my life is abundant when I am surrounded both by people who are like me and by people who are different from me.
Because my life is abundant when I am grateful for life and give of myself generously.
Because my life is abundant when I pray in community as people have prayed for thousands of years.
Radical hospitality, gratitude-driven generosity, communal spirituality. Abundant community. Let it be, church, let it be. It’s the only way to throw off the bad news and embrace who we are and who we are called to be.
Saturday, April 05, 2008
Blessed are the Unseeing
Sermon preached on Easter 2: John 20:19-31
Part of why the resurrection is a dilemma for Christians is that we have to be witnesses to something that nobody saw happen. Nobody saw the actual resurrection event. Now, of course, the Gospel records do relate that the disciples and other followers of Jesus saw him after the resurrection, stories like the ones we have this morning. But even then, only followers of Jesus saw him. He did not appear to the general populace.
I’ve always found that a curious fact. Why didn’t Jesus appear to Pilate and Caiaphas, in a kind of “in your face” kind of way? Why not a general appearance, say, in the Temple? Certainly appearances like these would have lent enormously to the credibility of the resurrection. As it is, it is easy for critics to charge that the disciples simply made up these appearances out of their own wishful thinking.
I think if there is an answer it is this: Jesus did not want to depend on the miracle of resurrection for the faith of his followers. Miracles are like money, you give people some, and they always want more. Jesus knew that the future of his followers could not depend on the continued existence of miracles; that was not to be the basis for people to continue to follow his way. Faith was, hope was, and love was.
Our readings this morning bring these three things to the fore.
First, love. The first part of the Gospel reading is all about love, in the guise of forgiveness. Jesus appears to the disciples—with Thomas missing. He says to them not, “What happened?” or “Why did you betray and abandon me?” but “Peace be with you.” He does not say, “Obviously you cannot be trusted.” He says, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” Given what these disciples had done—all of them cutting and running, one of them going so far as to deny that he even knew Jesus—Jesus’ response to them is remarkable, amazing, astounding. The depth of forgives—love—is simply breathtaking.
Furthermore, their mission is to do exactly the same thing, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven,” and I take the next part as a warning, not a commandment, “if you retain the sins of any they are retained.” Jesus gives his disciples the same power of forgiveness and love that he has exercised with them.
Notice as well something he does not tell the disciples to do: tell people about the resurrection itself. The implication is that people will only believe in the resurrection if the disciples act on the message, spreading love and forgiveness to all.
Second of all there is hope. The word “hope” occurs in the first two readings and the psalm. The first reading’s mention is actually a quote from this morning’s psalm (16), “Moreover my flesh shall rest in hope.” And 1 Peter speaks about a “new birth into a living hope.”
For Peter in particular this hope is in spite of any present suffering, something the community to which he writes is experiencing much. “In this [hope] you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials.”
The resurrection itself is an act of hope; hope that suffering and even death are not the last word in our lives, that there is something beyond these realities, a reality that is unseen.
This brings us to the biggest concept related to the resurrection: faith. There is no resurrection without faith, pure and simple. This is the whole point of the Thomas story.
The writer tells the Thomas story in order, I believe, to get to his main point: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” He is speaking out of the future, as he is writing his Gospel, as the generation of those who did see the resurrected Jesus are rapidly dying off, and the community must increasingly depend upon its faith, rather than its eyewitness.
Peter makes the same point in his letter:
Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
There are two great points of faith in the biblical story, points that require pure faith, because there is no way to prove them. The first is at the very beginning, the very existence of a creator. “In the beginning God.” That is a pure faith statement.
The second is the resurrection. Jesus would be the first to say, and does so by strong implication in the Gospel reading this morning, that you cannot believe based on my appearances after the resurrection. You must have faith, and that faith includes what Peter says is the outcome of faith in the resurrection, “the salvation of our souls.”
We are used to thinking that it was the cross that effected our salvation. Jesus died to save us. That is not an untrue statement, but Jesus’ death, as noble as it was, was not enough. Without the resurrection, Jesus’ death is just the death of another hero. Heroes have their followers, but the following always fades over time. There are always new heroes to replace old ones. We call them in our tradition “saints.” Some of them keep being remembered over time; most of the don’t.
The resurrection, however, once believed in, changes everything. It means that Jesus lives in spite of death, that Jesus has conquered the last enemy, which St. Paul rightly says is death (1 Corinthians 15:26). And in that defeat of death lays our salvation, our liberation from fear.
The resurrection means we do not need to be afraid of sin; Jesus comes to us with forgiveness. That’s the first part of the Gospel reading. The resurrection means we do not need to be afraid of suffering, as Peter says in his letter. The resurrection means we do not need to be afraid of our doubt, as the story of Thomas tells us. And finally, the resurrection means we do not need to be afraid of death, because Jesus has finally and definitively conquered it.
But all this we only get by faith, not by sight. It is not always easy to have this faith, especially in the face of sin and suffering and doubt and death. But that is why we are given the church, an idea that we have to admit has its down side. Jesus, however, gives us the church precisely to keep this love, this hope and this faith together. A community can believe these things and hold on to them even when individuals within that community struggle with them. Any sight we have of the existence of God and the reality of the resurrection is in this community we call the church. And that has been true from the very beginning. Jesus did not appear to Thomas until he rejoined the other disciples, an important detail of the story.
So one definition of the Church, something we could put on a banner and hang outside is “the Unseeing who Believe.” That is who we are, and that is what Jesus means us to be.
Now we do not see. One day we shall. In the meantime we have faith, hope, and love to sustain us.
Part of why the resurrection is a dilemma for Christians is that we have to be witnesses to something that nobody saw happen. Nobody saw the actual resurrection event. Now, of course, the Gospel records do relate that the disciples and other followers of Jesus saw him after the resurrection, stories like the ones we have this morning. But even then, only followers of Jesus saw him. He did not appear to the general populace.
I’ve always found that a curious fact. Why didn’t Jesus appear to Pilate and Caiaphas, in a kind of “in your face” kind of way? Why not a general appearance, say, in the Temple? Certainly appearances like these would have lent enormously to the credibility of the resurrection. As it is, it is easy for critics to charge that the disciples simply made up these appearances out of their own wishful thinking.
I think if there is an answer it is this: Jesus did not want to depend on the miracle of resurrection for the faith of his followers. Miracles are like money, you give people some, and they always want more. Jesus knew that the future of his followers could not depend on the continued existence of miracles; that was not to be the basis for people to continue to follow his way. Faith was, hope was, and love was.
Our readings this morning bring these three things to the fore.
First, love. The first part of the Gospel reading is all about love, in the guise of forgiveness. Jesus appears to the disciples—with Thomas missing. He says to them not, “What happened?” or “Why did you betray and abandon me?” but “Peace be with you.” He does not say, “Obviously you cannot be trusted.” He says, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” Given what these disciples had done—all of them cutting and running, one of them going so far as to deny that he even knew Jesus—Jesus’ response to them is remarkable, amazing, astounding. The depth of forgives—love—is simply breathtaking.
Furthermore, their mission is to do exactly the same thing, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven,” and I take the next part as a warning, not a commandment, “if you retain the sins of any they are retained.” Jesus gives his disciples the same power of forgiveness and love that he has exercised with them.
Notice as well something he does not tell the disciples to do: tell people about the resurrection itself. The implication is that people will only believe in the resurrection if the disciples act on the message, spreading love and forgiveness to all.
Second of all there is hope. The word “hope” occurs in the first two readings and the psalm. The first reading’s mention is actually a quote from this morning’s psalm (16), “Moreover my flesh shall rest in hope.” And 1 Peter speaks about a “new birth into a living hope.”
For Peter in particular this hope is in spite of any present suffering, something the community to which he writes is experiencing much. “In this [hope] you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials.”
The resurrection itself is an act of hope; hope that suffering and even death are not the last word in our lives, that there is something beyond these realities, a reality that is unseen.
This brings us to the biggest concept related to the resurrection: faith. There is no resurrection without faith, pure and simple. This is the whole point of the Thomas story.
The writer tells the Thomas story in order, I believe, to get to his main point: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” He is speaking out of the future, as he is writing his Gospel, as the generation of those who did see the resurrected Jesus are rapidly dying off, and the community must increasingly depend upon its faith, rather than its eyewitness.
Peter makes the same point in his letter:
Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
There are two great points of faith in the biblical story, points that require pure faith, because there is no way to prove them. The first is at the very beginning, the very existence of a creator. “In the beginning God.” That is a pure faith statement.
The second is the resurrection. Jesus would be the first to say, and does so by strong implication in the Gospel reading this morning, that you cannot believe based on my appearances after the resurrection. You must have faith, and that faith includes what Peter says is the outcome of faith in the resurrection, “the salvation of our souls.”
We are used to thinking that it was the cross that effected our salvation. Jesus died to save us. That is not an untrue statement, but Jesus’ death, as noble as it was, was not enough. Without the resurrection, Jesus’ death is just the death of another hero. Heroes have their followers, but the following always fades over time. There are always new heroes to replace old ones. We call them in our tradition “saints.” Some of them keep being remembered over time; most of the don’t.
The resurrection, however, once believed in, changes everything. It means that Jesus lives in spite of death, that Jesus has conquered the last enemy, which St. Paul rightly says is death (1 Corinthians 15:26). And in that defeat of death lays our salvation, our liberation from fear.
The resurrection means we do not need to be afraid of sin; Jesus comes to us with forgiveness. That’s the first part of the Gospel reading. The resurrection means we do not need to be afraid of suffering, as Peter says in his letter. The resurrection means we do not need to be afraid of our doubt, as the story of Thomas tells us. And finally, the resurrection means we do not need to be afraid of death, because Jesus has finally and definitively conquered it.
But all this we only get by faith, not by sight. It is not always easy to have this faith, especially in the face of sin and suffering and doubt and death. But that is why we are given the church, an idea that we have to admit has its down side. Jesus, however, gives us the church precisely to keep this love, this hope and this faith together. A community can believe these things and hold on to them even when individuals within that community struggle with them. Any sight we have of the existence of God and the reality of the resurrection is in this community we call the church. And that has been true from the very beginning. Jesus did not appear to Thomas until he rejoined the other disciples, an important detail of the story.
So one definition of the Church, something we could put on a banner and hang outside is “the Unseeing who Believe.” That is who we are, and that is what Jesus means us to be.
Now we do not see. One day we shall. In the meantime we have faith, hope, and love to sustain us.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Resurrection: the Place of Delight & Hope
Sermon preached on Easter Day: Jeremiah 31:1-6, Acts 10:34-43, Matthew 28:1-10
The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness. Jeremiah 31:2
I truly understand that God shows no partiality. Acts 10:34
Do not be afraid…go to Galilee; there [you] will see me. Matthew 28:10
In my office on the shelf above my desk is a picture of a young boy playing a drum. His name is Dickson and he is a boy I met in Uganda when I was there several years ago.
Dickson is an AIDS orphan. He had been taken in by the family with whom I was staying, a common occurrence in that culture. He was a grim little boy and my heart went out to him. He slept at night in the same room with two young men who were roomers with the family. He had an old blanket worn thin and slept on a couple layers of cardboard for “comfort.”
I wanted to do something for him. Call it liberal guilt, but nevertheless I wanted to do some small thing to make his life better. I was somewhat taken aback when the man of the household with whom I was staying suggested I buy him a drum. It wasn’t what I had in mind, but he wasn’t taking no for an answer. So I bought Dickson a drum.
When I presented it to him there was an amazing transformation. He smiled for the first time; beamed really. And he immediately took that drum and started playing with incredible skill. He was clearly in his element. The playing went on for over an hour. When it was time for bed that evening and I stopped in to say good night to the young men, Dickson was already asleep, clutching his drum.
I later found out that what I had done was given Dickson a piece of home. His father was a drummer in his village and he had begun to pass the art on to his son before he died.
Dickson’s transformation and his “homecoming” are what I would call an experience of the resurrection. It was an experience of delight and hope in an otherwise dreary world.
The message that Jesus gives the women who have come to the tomb is not simply to tell the other disciples that he was alive. No, there are specific instructions to go to Galilee and there they will see him.
Galilee. It is an important detail. Galilee was home for the disciples and home for Jesus, and it was the place of the bulk of Jesus’ ministry. Life had not been the same since they had left there to go to Jerusalem, a journey that had resulted in Jesus’ downfall and death. Galilee was home: the place of delight and hope.
Galilee was also, as a region, mixed territory. There were significant Jewish settlements there, but also significant Gentile ones, including large, relatively new, Roman cities. It was, in many ways, “mongrel” territory, where most Jewish purists would never live because it meant constantly rubbing elbows with foreigners, which in turn meant constantly being at risk of being made ritually unclean.
It was not what had him killed per se, but it hadn’t helped Jesus’ cause in Jerusalem that he came from Galilee. It was sort of like the feeling I get from some Rochesterians when I say I grew up in Steuben County. “Oh,” or “Oh! they say. Now to be truthful, folks in Steuben County can have the same reaction to “city folk,” defined as anyone who lives north of the Thruway, that great cultural divide in our part of the world.
Nevertheless, my main point is that Jesus was telling his disciples to go back home, to the place of their delight and hope. There they would experience resurrection for themselves. Going back to Galilee also meant going back to mixed territory, from which the disciples would receive their mission to “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19), something we are about to do this morning, baptizing our sister Deb Costich.
Our other readings have different ways of describing this home. Sometimes home is in a surprising place, where you do not expect to find it. Peter experiences this reality when he finds God busily at work in a non-Jewish household, that of Cornelius, a centurion in the Roman army. It causes him to say a very non-Jewish thing, “I truly understand that God shows no partiality.” For God, Galilee is normative; home is the place of delight and hope for all people.
In the reading from the prophet Jeremiah this morning home is in a place which seems the exact opposite of home. “The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness.” Jeremiah is speaking of those who had been driven into exile from their homeland. “The wilderness” was a foreign place: Babylon. The people of Israel were being asked to find their home in a place where they were literally captives, find their place of delight and hope in a place that otherwise was a place of hardship and despair.
This says to me that home is actually wherever we find ourselves to be, sometimes in the place we naturally call “home,” sometimes in a surprising new place, sometimes in a place that seems to be the exact opposite of home. That means we can experience the resurrection anywhere and at anytime. Resurrection is the capacity to experience delight and hope—home—wherever and whenever we are.
That is the faith we are passing on to Deb Costich this morning. We are literally creating home for her, in this place and among us in particular, and in the wider Christian family in general. We are saying join us in the place of delight and hope, join us in the experience of resurrection.
That is the message we are called to proclaim in word and deed no matter where we are or “when” we are. Sometimes that proclamation is in very mundane things like a drum to tap into long smothered delight, things that are not entirely practical, yet unlock the human spirit.
Sometimes that proclamation is to those in a place that seems to be “anti-home,” the place of illness or loss or despair. Often when we are in those places we cannot find this sense of delight and hope ourselves; it is beyond our grasp. That is when we as a community are called to offer that place, the place of encouragement and acceptance in spite of everything.
Sometimes that proclamation is to be the place of return, to simply be that place of “ok-ness,” a place of grounding, where sense can be made of a nonsensical world, more traditionally what we think of as “home.”
Whatever the reality, we are to proclaim resurrection—the experience of home, of delight and hope, where no one has to be afraid, where purity doesn’t matter anymore, and grace can be found even in the wilderness.
Let this Easter Day be this proclamation; let us all hear the voice of Jesus say, “Do not be afraid. Go to Galilee; go home; go to the place of your delight and hope. There you will see me.”
And don’t forget to take your drum with you.
The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness. Jeremiah 31:2
I truly understand that God shows no partiality. Acts 10:34
Do not be afraid…go to Galilee; there [you] will see me. Matthew 28:10
In my office on the shelf above my desk is a picture of a young boy playing a drum. His name is Dickson and he is a boy I met in Uganda when I was there several years ago.
Dickson is an AIDS orphan. He had been taken in by the family with whom I was staying, a common occurrence in that culture. He was a grim little boy and my heart went out to him. He slept at night in the same room with two young men who were roomers with the family. He had an old blanket worn thin and slept on a couple layers of cardboard for “comfort.”
I wanted to do something for him. Call it liberal guilt, but nevertheless I wanted to do some small thing to make his life better. I was somewhat taken aback when the man of the household with whom I was staying suggested I buy him a drum. It wasn’t what I had in mind, but he wasn’t taking no for an answer. So I bought Dickson a drum.
When I presented it to him there was an amazing transformation. He smiled for the first time; beamed really. And he immediately took that drum and started playing with incredible skill. He was clearly in his element. The playing went on for over an hour. When it was time for bed that evening and I stopped in to say good night to the young men, Dickson was already asleep, clutching his drum.
I later found out that what I had done was given Dickson a piece of home. His father was a drummer in his village and he had begun to pass the art on to his son before he died.
Dickson’s transformation and his “homecoming” are what I would call an experience of the resurrection. It was an experience of delight and hope in an otherwise dreary world.
The message that Jesus gives the women who have come to the tomb is not simply to tell the other disciples that he was alive. No, there are specific instructions to go to Galilee and there they will see him.
Galilee. It is an important detail. Galilee was home for the disciples and home for Jesus, and it was the place of the bulk of Jesus’ ministry. Life had not been the same since they had left there to go to Jerusalem, a journey that had resulted in Jesus’ downfall and death. Galilee was home: the place of delight and hope.
Galilee was also, as a region, mixed territory. There were significant Jewish settlements there, but also significant Gentile ones, including large, relatively new, Roman cities. It was, in many ways, “mongrel” territory, where most Jewish purists would never live because it meant constantly rubbing elbows with foreigners, which in turn meant constantly being at risk of being made ritually unclean.
It was not what had him killed per se, but it hadn’t helped Jesus’ cause in Jerusalem that he came from Galilee. It was sort of like the feeling I get from some Rochesterians when I say I grew up in Steuben County. “Oh,” or “Oh! they say. Now to be truthful, folks in Steuben County can have the same reaction to “city folk,” defined as anyone who lives north of the Thruway, that great cultural divide in our part of the world.
Nevertheless, my main point is that Jesus was telling his disciples to go back home, to the place of their delight and hope. There they would experience resurrection for themselves. Going back to Galilee also meant going back to mixed territory, from which the disciples would receive their mission to “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19), something we are about to do this morning, baptizing our sister Deb Costich.
Our other readings have different ways of describing this home. Sometimes home is in a surprising place, where you do not expect to find it. Peter experiences this reality when he finds God busily at work in a non-Jewish household, that of Cornelius, a centurion in the Roman army. It causes him to say a very non-Jewish thing, “I truly understand that God shows no partiality.” For God, Galilee is normative; home is the place of delight and hope for all people.
In the reading from the prophet Jeremiah this morning home is in a place which seems the exact opposite of home. “The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness.” Jeremiah is speaking of those who had been driven into exile from their homeland. “The wilderness” was a foreign place: Babylon. The people of Israel were being asked to find their home in a place where they were literally captives, find their place of delight and hope in a place that otherwise was a place of hardship and despair.
This says to me that home is actually wherever we find ourselves to be, sometimes in the place we naturally call “home,” sometimes in a surprising new place, sometimes in a place that seems to be the exact opposite of home. That means we can experience the resurrection anywhere and at anytime. Resurrection is the capacity to experience delight and hope—home—wherever and whenever we are.
That is the faith we are passing on to Deb Costich this morning. We are literally creating home for her, in this place and among us in particular, and in the wider Christian family in general. We are saying join us in the place of delight and hope, join us in the experience of resurrection.
That is the message we are called to proclaim in word and deed no matter where we are or “when” we are. Sometimes that proclamation is in very mundane things like a drum to tap into long smothered delight, things that are not entirely practical, yet unlock the human spirit.
Sometimes that proclamation is to those in a place that seems to be “anti-home,” the place of illness or loss or despair. Often when we are in those places we cannot find this sense of delight and hope ourselves; it is beyond our grasp. That is when we as a community are called to offer that place, the place of encouragement and acceptance in spite of everything.
Sometimes that proclamation is to be the place of return, to simply be that place of “ok-ness,” a place of grounding, where sense can be made of a nonsensical world, more traditionally what we think of as “home.”
Whatever the reality, we are to proclaim resurrection—the experience of home, of delight and hope, where no one has to be afraid, where purity doesn’t matter anymore, and grace can be found even in the wilderness.
Let this Easter Day be this proclamation; let us all hear the voice of Jesus say, “Do not be afraid. Go to Galilee; go home; go to the place of your delight and hope. There you will see me.”
And don’t forget to take your drum with you.
Were You There?
Sermon preached on Good Friday at the Church of St. Luke 7 St. Simon Cyrene, ROchester, New York: John 18:1--19:42
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
LEVAS II 37
So asks the traditional Negro spiritual, and it is, of course, meant to be a rhetorical question. Yes, we were there.
But how? The hymn doesn’t pretend to answer the question and may even imply that we were there as passive observers, part of the curious crowd.
But the Gospel writers certainly want us “to be there” in the person of the characters that inhabit the story. We were there in them and through their actions.
We were there in Judas the betrayer, finally, grimly, convinced that Jesus has gone too far, that his teaching ultimately cannot lead to any good, perhaps disenchanted that Jesus was not ending up to be the political savior for which he had hoped. Perhaps he believed what the religious leaders were saying, that it was better for one man to die for the people. It had been the people and their freedom from Rome that had been his passion and he had thought it was Jesus’ passion as well. That his passion was “not of this world” was a crushing disappointment. What earthly good was this heavenly minded man?
We were there in Peter the denier, the other betrayer, scared to death, acting on the impulse to save his own skin, unwilling in the end to follow Jesus down this road, perhaps himself horrified by it. Ever since Jesus had insisted that Jesus wash Peter’s feet, it had felt like something was wrong. The risk of his own life was asking too much. How much did this Jesus really expect from him?
We were there with Caiaphus and the other religious authorities, concerned first and foremost with appeasing the empire and protecting the security of the people, willing to set aside any sense of their own values, willing to sacrifice a human life in order to feel safe. What is one life if it means our own security?
We were there with Pilate, cynical Pilate. “What is truth?” he asks, neither expecting an answer nor desiring one. And willing to use his power to assuage the masses. You can also here him say a twenty-first century, “Whatever?” Who really cares? This doesn’t actually effect me, so why bother getting worked up about it?
We were there in all four of these “villains” of the story, either actively encouraging the injustice or passively accepting it, either way out of our own fears and insecurities.
But we were also there in the beloved disciple and Jesus’ mother and the other women at the foot of the cross, being formed into the church, that family beyond biology wherein we are trusted to one another’s care. And we are in grief over this injustice, this enormous loss, the blinding pain of it all. And we cannot for a moment understand why Jesus did not save himself, why did this have to be?
And we were there in Jesus himself, courageously offering himself indeed to die for the people, willing to risk or even give our life for the sake of those we love, acting the part of a servant to the very end.
We were there. For ill or for good, we were there.
But more importantly, God was there, the servant God, not demanding our obedience and subjection, but offering himself to be our very liberation and life freeing us from all the tyrannies that hold sway over us, either from without or from within. And freeing us as well from the tyranny of our image of the angry, wrathful God, the moral bean counter in the sky. In Jesus on the cross, dying for us, we are free from that God, free instead to worship the Servant God, who values us as his children, so much to give up all his power to us and for us.
This day is only “good” because of the God whom this day is revealed to us, the God who really is love, pure and unconditional, despite the fact that “we were there.”
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
LEVAS II 37
So asks the traditional Negro spiritual, and it is, of course, meant to be a rhetorical question. Yes, we were there.
But how? The hymn doesn’t pretend to answer the question and may even imply that we were there as passive observers, part of the curious crowd.
But the Gospel writers certainly want us “to be there” in the person of the characters that inhabit the story. We were there in them and through their actions.
We were there in Judas the betrayer, finally, grimly, convinced that Jesus has gone too far, that his teaching ultimately cannot lead to any good, perhaps disenchanted that Jesus was not ending up to be the political savior for which he had hoped. Perhaps he believed what the religious leaders were saying, that it was better for one man to die for the people. It had been the people and their freedom from Rome that had been his passion and he had thought it was Jesus’ passion as well. That his passion was “not of this world” was a crushing disappointment. What earthly good was this heavenly minded man?
We were there in Peter the denier, the other betrayer, scared to death, acting on the impulse to save his own skin, unwilling in the end to follow Jesus down this road, perhaps himself horrified by it. Ever since Jesus had insisted that Jesus wash Peter’s feet, it had felt like something was wrong. The risk of his own life was asking too much. How much did this Jesus really expect from him?
We were there with Caiaphus and the other religious authorities, concerned first and foremost with appeasing the empire and protecting the security of the people, willing to set aside any sense of their own values, willing to sacrifice a human life in order to feel safe. What is one life if it means our own security?
We were there with Pilate, cynical Pilate. “What is truth?” he asks, neither expecting an answer nor desiring one. And willing to use his power to assuage the masses. You can also here him say a twenty-first century, “Whatever?” Who really cares? This doesn’t actually effect me, so why bother getting worked up about it?
We were there in all four of these “villains” of the story, either actively encouraging the injustice or passively accepting it, either way out of our own fears and insecurities.
But we were also there in the beloved disciple and Jesus’ mother and the other women at the foot of the cross, being formed into the church, that family beyond biology wherein we are trusted to one another’s care. And we are in grief over this injustice, this enormous loss, the blinding pain of it all. And we cannot for a moment understand why Jesus did not save himself, why did this have to be?
And we were there in Jesus himself, courageously offering himself indeed to die for the people, willing to risk or even give our life for the sake of those we love, acting the part of a servant to the very end.
We were there. For ill or for good, we were there.
But more importantly, God was there, the servant God, not demanding our obedience and subjection, but offering himself to be our very liberation and life freeing us from all the tyrannies that hold sway over us, either from without or from within. And freeing us as well from the tyranny of our image of the angry, wrathful God, the moral bean counter in the sky. In Jesus on the cross, dying for us, we are free from that God, free instead to worship the Servant God, who values us as his children, so much to give up all his power to us and for us.
This day is only “good” because of the God whom this day is revealed to us, the God who really is love, pure and unconditional, despite the fact that “we were there.”
Thursday, March 20, 2008
The Cup of Freedom, the Servant God
Sermon preached on Maundy Thursday: Psalm 116:1, 10-17; John 13:1-17, 31b-35
I raise the cup of freedom as I call on God’s Name. ICEL Translation, Psalm 116:11
I love the translation we just used for the psalm this evening. “Cup of salvation” in the Prayer Book translation becomes (quite legitimately from the Hebrew), “cup of freedom.” Tonight I want to reflect on this freedom cup we raise.
Freedom is always freedom from something. From what are we celebrating our freedom from this evening?
First of all one must say that it may seem a bit premature to be talking about our freedom this evening. We are only beginning these three days of celebrating what we call the paschal mystery, the dying and rising of Christ. In many ways tonight is just a preliminary to the dominant events of Friday and Sunday.
Yet not for us. For us in the sacramental tradition, who live our lives from week to week, from Eucharist to Eucharist, this night has a depth of importance and richness that rivals even Easter. This is the night we were given this greatest of gifts that sustains our faith and our life.
This is the night when we are given the lens to interpret Friday and Sunday and then to live Friday and Sunday out from day to day and week to week.
What this lens of the Eucharist tells us is that Friday and Sunday are about our freedom, acts to achieve the freedom of the people of God, the freedom of you and of me.
Yet again, freedom from what? I think the best way to explain that is through another powerful image we are given this evening, that of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples.
It was an act that was unexpected and disarming, if not a little shocking or even offensive, especially to Peter. Is this an appropriate way to act for the one who John begins his Gospel calling, “the Word made flesh.” Clearly Peter doesn’t think so.
Jesus, however, wants to leave his disciples with a contrary image to that which he knows they believe about God, that God requires them to be his servants. It is not a wrong thing to think, but for Jesus it is more important for them to understand deep within their souls this contrary notion he brings before them.
God wishes to serve them. God exists to serve them.
It still flies in the face of everything most of us believe about God. God is the one we worship and seek to obey. God is worthy to be praised and adored. Yet here the praiseworthy one takes the role of a servant and, literally, gets his hands dirty. The God of Jesus is the Servant God. The Word made flesh came not to be served but to serve, to live among us as servant and friend.
What do we celebrate our freedom from tonight? It is that predominant image we have of God as the one who requires our service, who seeks to rule over us and exact our obedience. Jesus gives us freedom from that God and offers us the freedom of the God of love and companionship and servanthood.
That means, of course, that we are to love and serve one another. Jesus makes that clear and gives his “new commandment:” “love one another.” But it is love “as I have loved you.” God’s love comes first. Elsewhere in this Gospel Jesus will say, “You did not choose me, but I chose you.”
Jesus believes, you see, that we can only adequately, honestly and even divinely serve one another if we first experience the God who serves us. God’s service, God’s love, our freedom, comes first. It is not a consequence of what we do. “From his fullness we have all received grace upon grace.” (John 1:16)
This notion of God is utterly consistent with the events that we will celebrate tomorrow and Saturday evening and Sunday. The God who is willing to die for us is the Servant God. The God who is raised from the dead and forgives those who betrayed and abandoned him is the Servant God.
For tonight let us savor this amazing image and let it overcome all our resistance and sink deep into our souls. Let us lift up and drink from the cup of our freedom, the cup that is the gift of our amazing servant God.
I raise the cup of freedom as I call on God’s Name. ICEL Translation, Psalm 116:11
I love the translation we just used for the psalm this evening. “Cup of salvation” in the Prayer Book translation becomes (quite legitimately from the Hebrew), “cup of freedom.” Tonight I want to reflect on this freedom cup we raise.
Freedom is always freedom from something. From what are we celebrating our freedom from this evening?
First of all one must say that it may seem a bit premature to be talking about our freedom this evening. We are only beginning these three days of celebrating what we call the paschal mystery, the dying and rising of Christ. In many ways tonight is just a preliminary to the dominant events of Friday and Sunday.
Yet not for us. For us in the sacramental tradition, who live our lives from week to week, from Eucharist to Eucharist, this night has a depth of importance and richness that rivals even Easter. This is the night we were given this greatest of gifts that sustains our faith and our life.
This is the night when we are given the lens to interpret Friday and Sunday and then to live Friday and Sunday out from day to day and week to week.
What this lens of the Eucharist tells us is that Friday and Sunday are about our freedom, acts to achieve the freedom of the people of God, the freedom of you and of me.
Yet again, freedom from what? I think the best way to explain that is through another powerful image we are given this evening, that of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples.
It was an act that was unexpected and disarming, if not a little shocking or even offensive, especially to Peter. Is this an appropriate way to act for the one who John begins his Gospel calling, “the Word made flesh.” Clearly Peter doesn’t think so.
Jesus, however, wants to leave his disciples with a contrary image to that which he knows they believe about God, that God requires them to be his servants. It is not a wrong thing to think, but for Jesus it is more important for them to understand deep within their souls this contrary notion he brings before them.
God wishes to serve them. God exists to serve them.
It still flies in the face of everything most of us believe about God. God is the one we worship and seek to obey. God is worthy to be praised and adored. Yet here the praiseworthy one takes the role of a servant and, literally, gets his hands dirty. The God of Jesus is the Servant God. The Word made flesh came not to be served but to serve, to live among us as servant and friend.
What do we celebrate our freedom from tonight? It is that predominant image we have of God as the one who requires our service, who seeks to rule over us and exact our obedience. Jesus gives us freedom from that God and offers us the freedom of the God of love and companionship and servanthood.
That means, of course, that we are to love and serve one another. Jesus makes that clear and gives his “new commandment:” “love one another.” But it is love “as I have loved you.” God’s love comes first. Elsewhere in this Gospel Jesus will say, “You did not choose me, but I chose you.”
Jesus believes, you see, that we can only adequately, honestly and even divinely serve one another if we first experience the God who serves us. God’s service, God’s love, our freedom, comes first. It is not a consequence of what we do. “From his fullness we have all received grace upon grace.” (John 1:16)
This notion of God is utterly consistent with the events that we will celebrate tomorrow and Saturday evening and Sunday. The God who is willing to die for us is the Servant God. The God who is raised from the dead and forgives those who betrayed and abandoned him is the Servant God.
For tonight let us savor this amazing image and let it overcome all our resistance and sink deep into our souls. Let us lift up and drink from the cup of our freedom, the cup that is the gift of our amazing servant God.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
The Same Mind
Sermon preached on Palm/Passion Sunday at the Church of St. Luke & St. Simon Cyrene, Rochester, New York: Philippians 2:5-11, Matthew 26:14--27:66
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus… (Philippians 2)
It is a terrible day after a terrible week. It isn’t any fun at all listening to that story about Jesus’ betrayal and suffering and death. Nor was it any fun living through the events of this week in our state and in our church.
I am, of course, referring, on the one hand, to the tragedy of Governor Spitzer’s downfall at his own hands, and, on the other, to the news that Bishop Gene Robinson will be totally excluded from this summer’s Lambeth Conference, the every ten year meeting of all the bishops of our Anglican Communion. These two stories relate to the story of Jesus that we have heard in two very different ways, but they also both relate to the lens with which to view Jesus’ story that St. Paul gives us this morning: “Let this same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.”
First, Eliot Spitzer.
It is easy and right to feel betrayed by Governor Spitzer. The blatant disregard for his family and his office and the sheer hypocrisy of his actions take the breath away. He certainly did the right thing in resigning as his integrity was just way too far compromised, besides the fact that he broke the law.
Yet I was troubled, and all Christians ought to be troubled, by all the talk of politicians such as the Governor being held to “a higher standard.” Do we really mean to let ourselves off the hook—that somehow if you or I were guilty of the same kind of disregard of our sacred vows and utter hypocrisy we should not be as accountable?
No. In the Christian vision there is only one standard, and it is high across the board.
We all have to bear that, not just public officials or those otherwise in the public eye. The standard is bearable, however, because of the other reality before us today—that Jesus died to save us from this unbearable standard. So we Christians can never gloat when someone like Eliot Spitzer falls; in fact, we are compelled to say that he is more like us than not. He is a fallen man, just like you and just like me, and Jesus died to save him and to save you and to save me.
Jesus loves Eliot Spitzer, and loves you and loves me. And we are called to have the same mind, to embrace suffering so that it can be redeemed. And that is true whether the suffering is deserved or not. We are called to have compassion for Eliot Spitzer as God does for him and for each one of us when we fall. There is nothing easy about such compassion, because it often goes against our gut instinct to feel betrayed and to dismiss him as having deserved what he got.
Well, he did deserve what he got, and so do we when we screw up, but thanks be to God Jesus died for him and died for us and loves him and loves us.
On to Gene Robinson, the Bishop of New Hampshire, a different kind of sufferer, one who did not bring suffering on himself (unless you believe that his accepting the office of bishop was itself a sinful act). Bishop Gene has known for a long time that he would not be fully invited to the Lambeth Conference, but he held out some hope that he could participate in a limited way in the spirit of the supposed “listening process” with gay and lesbian Anglicans to which the bishops committed themselves ten years ago. This week he learned that would not be possible in any way.
Not to put him too high on a pedestal, but Gene reacted, I believe, with “the same mind that was in Christ Jesus.” He felt alone and betrayed and had the instinct at first, he said, to find some way to run away from what was going on. So did Jesus, if you listened carefully to the story that we just heard. But he then summoned the strength within himself to walk through his suffering and to take the high road with his betrayers, urging his colleagues in our Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops to go and to carry with them his suffering, and, more importantly, the suffering of exclusion that is still the general lot of gay and lesbian people in our church.
How can he do that, not lash out with righteous anger at the hypocrisy and mean-spiritedness of the Church? Why doesn’t he call Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams at best a coward and at worst a perpetrator of evil?
Because he loves Jesus and he knows Jesus loves him and all those who stand against him. He is a living example of having the same mind that was in Christ Jesus.
Eliot Spitzer and Gene Robinson: they are two very different men with two very different stories. One brought suffering upon himself; one had it thrust upon him by others. Yet the message is the same: Jesus took both kinds of suffering, all suffering, to the cross with him and offered it to God even in the midst of his own sense of abandonment and betrayal.
The message is simple for all of us today: Jesus died to save Eliot Spitzer and Gene Robinson and Rowan Williams and you and me. We are all loved, sometimes inexplicably, sometimes obviously, by the God of the cross.
May we embrace and be embraced by this love for ever, no matter who we are, no matter what we do.
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus… (Philippians 2)
It is a terrible day after a terrible week. It isn’t any fun at all listening to that story about Jesus’ betrayal and suffering and death. Nor was it any fun living through the events of this week in our state and in our church.
I am, of course, referring, on the one hand, to the tragedy of Governor Spitzer’s downfall at his own hands, and, on the other, to the news that Bishop Gene Robinson will be totally excluded from this summer’s Lambeth Conference, the every ten year meeting of all the bishops of our Anglican Communion. These two stories relate to the story of Jesus that we have heard in two very different ways, but they also both relate to the lens with which to view Jesus’ story that St. Paul gives us this morning: “Let this same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.”
First, Eliot Spitzer.
It is easy and right to feel betrayed by Governor Spitzer. The blatant disregard for his family and his office and the sheer hypocrisy of his actions take the breath away. He certainly did the right thing in resigning as his integrity was just way too far compromised, besides the fact that he broke the law.
Yet I was troubled, and all Christians ought to be troubled, by all the talk of politicians such as the Governor being held to “a higher standard.” Do we really mean to let ourselves off the hook—that somehow if you or I were guilty of the same kind of disregard of our sacred vows and utter hypocrisy we should not be as accountable?
No. In the Christian vision there is only one standard, and it is high across the board.
We all have to bear that, not just public officials or those otherwise in the public eye. The standard is bearable, however, because of the other reality before us today—that Jesus died to save us from this unbearable standard. So we Christians can never gloat when someone like Eliot Spitzer falls; in fact, we are compelled to say that he is more like us than not. He is a fallen man, just like you and just like me, and Jesus died to save him and to save you and to save me.
Jesus loves Eliot Spitzer, and loves you and loves me. And we are called to have the same mind, to embrace suffering so that it can be redeemed. And that is true whether the suffering is deserved or not. We are called to have compassion for Eliot Spitzer as God does for him and for each one of us when we fall. There is nothing easy about such compassion, because it often goes against our gut instinct to feel betrayed and to dismiss him as having deserved what he got.
Well, he did deserve what he got, and so do we when we screw up, but thanks be to God Jesus died for him and died for us and loves him and loves us.
On to Gene Robinson, the Bishop of New Hampshire, a different kind of sufferer, one who did not bring suffering on himself (unless you believe that his accepting the office of bishop was itself a sinful act). Bishop Gene has known for a long time that he would not be fully invited to the Lambeth Conference, but he held out some hope that he could participate in a limited way in the spirit of the supposed “listening process” with gay and lesbian Anglicans to which the bishops committed themselves ten years ago. This week he learned that would not be possible in any way.
Not to put him too high on a pedestal, but Gene reacted, I believe, with “the same mind that was in Christ Jesus.” He felt alone and betrayed and had the instinct at first, he said, to find some way to run away from what was going on. So did Jesus, if you listened carefully to the story that we just heard. But he then summoned the strength within himself to walk through his suffering and to take the high road with his betrayers, urging his colleagues in our Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops to go and to carry with them his suffering, and, more importantly, the suffering of exclusion that is still the general lot of gay and lesbian people in our church.
How can he do that, not lash out with righteous anger at the hypocrisy and mean-spiritedness of the Church? Why doesn’t he call Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams at best a coward and at worst a perpetrator of evil?
Because he loves Jesus and he knows Jesus loves him and all those who stand against him. He is a living example of having the same mind that was in Christ Jesus.
Eliot Spitzer and Gene Robinson: they are two very different men with two very different stories. One brought suffering upon himself; one had it thrust upon him by others. Yet the message is the same: Jesus took both kinds of suffering, all suffering, to the cross with him and offered it to God even in the midst of his own sense of abandonment and betrayal.
The message is simple for all of us today: Jesus died to save Eliot Spitzer and Gene Robinson and Rowan Williams and you and me. We are all loved, sometimes inexplicably, sometimes obviously, by the God of the cross.
May we embrace and be embraced by this love for ever, no matter who we are, no matter what we do.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
You are in the Spirit
Sermon preached on the 5th Sunday in Lent at the Church of St. Luke & St. Simon Cyrene, Rochester, New York. Ezekiel 37:1-14; Psalm 130; Romans 8:6-11; John 11:1-45.
But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Romans 8
The thread through this rich set of readings this morning, is the Spirit of God that brings new life out of alientation, despair and death.
The Old Testament reading, the well known and delightful story of the dry bones, is clearly all about this thread. The dry bones in Ezekiel’s vision represent the disaster befallen the Jewish people and the reality of that disaster appearing to be the last word. The vision shows, however, that God has another card to play, the Spirit that can bring life out of disaster.
The thread continues in our psalm this morning. “Out of the depths have I called to you.” The writer knows deep pain, the desperate need of a word from God. That word comes as his soul, his spirit, waits and watches, and out of desperation, mercy and redemption is received.
In the piece from his letter to the Romans, Paul speaks with exuberance about the Spirit of God in contrast to human “flesh,” a code word he uses for anything in our lives that leads to death and separation from God. He encourages us, though, that even thought we live with and in the flesh, to have faith that the Spirit of God also dwells in us and, therefore, is available to heal separation and to raise us from the dead. “You are in the Spirit,” he dares to say, despite all signs to the contrary, even the flesh that is literally decaying toward death even as we live.
And finally there is the profound and awesome story of the raising of Lazarus. The Spirit is not mentioned except in Jesus own reaction of being deeply moved and troubled in spirit. Yet the Gospel writer John would not deny that it is the Spirit of God at work here, breathing new life into the dead Lazarus. The movement of Jesus’ troubled Spirit is to breathe that new life into his friend and command him to “come out.”
These are perfect readings as we come to a close in Lent. This thread of the Spirit of God that brings new life out of despair and death is precisely what we need to hear right now.
Lent has been telling us that something is wrong, ever since those words with which it began, “You are dust and to dust you shall return.” Lent has wanted to take us to the depths of our humanity, our despair, our separation, and our mortality. Lent has wanted us to have a troubled spirit. All these things are true, but the promise has been there all along as well. Psalm 51 was also a part of the Ash Wednesday liturgy closing with the words,
The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
Lent is never intended to be the last word, it is a way station on the journey, a path that is part of the journey. So our readings remind us this morning: despair, separation and death are never the end of the story for followers of Jesus. They are part of the journey, but they are not the journey’s end.
This faith all revolves around Paul’s assertion: The Spirit of God is in you. If you think about it, that is a pretty bold assertion. Remember Paul is writing in Romans to a group of people he had never even met. How did he know that this was true, that the Spirit of God dwelt in them? He knew it not because he knew them, but because he knew God. Whether or not the Spirit of God was in them was not up to them. It was up to God. And Paul knew that God was and is generous with his Spirit.
In the Church Year we do not celebrate the Holy Spirit until Pentecost at the end of the Great Fifty Days of Easter. But it turns out that the Spirit has been what this “paschal time” in the Church Year has been all about—from the beginning of Lent through Easter Day to Pentecost. If we began with a troubled spirit, we will end with a vibrant spirit, and in between the Spirit will be known to be in us, with us on the journey as hope in the midst of despair, mercy in the midst of separation, and life in the midst of death.
The Spirit is in you. I hope you can hear the good news in that and that it does, indeed, bring you hope, hope enough to celebrate Easter in a couple weeks with true joy, the joy of the Spirit of God whom we all share.
But there is something unsettling here as well. This is not good news to everyone. The raising of Lazarus was the last nail in Jesus’ coffin for the religious authorities. He had to go. His unleashing of the power of the Spirit threatened their own power, their very way of life. To say the Spirit of God is in us is a very dangerous, even blasphemous, thing to say, worse to believe it is true.
We have, I think, our own inner religious authority who is equally as terrified by all this talk, who is somehow more comfortable with the reality of our despair, separation and death than with the prospect that there is within us this uncontrollable Spirit that may turn our world upside down. We may not like our despair, our separation and our death, but they are at least ours. It is sometimes a lot more comfortable to believe that we are separated from God, for instance, than to believe we are loved, that we have been made worthy for God’s own Spirit to live in us.
Why is this so? I think largely because being loved and carrying the Spirit makes us much more responsible. Love and the Spirit cannot be held as possessions. They must always be shared, and the chief danger in that, of course, is that they might be rejected. And if they are rejected then we might be seen to have been wrong about them, that they never were really ours to begin with. Better to hold them at arm’s length then to risk being hurt by them.
So the religious authorities after this story will begin the conspiracy to have Jesus killed, the ultimate holding at arm’s length. They said, “It is better for one man to die than to risk losing the whole people.” They said this out of fear of the Romans, that if Jesus kept stirring things up something very bad would surely happen and the Romans would clamp down.
As I said, we all have this voice of fear deep within us. We all have our inner religious authority full of doubt about the actual power of God in our lives, and afraid what the world around us might think if we started actually believing it and acting on it.
The next two weeks is meant to be a full frontal assault on that voice. We are to hear again and again, despite everything, that we are in the Spirit, the Spirit is in us, and, as Paul says at the end of the eighth chapter of Romans, “nothing can separate us.”
Let us hear that good news today. We are in the Spirit, the Spirit is in us, the Spirit who has the power to bring us out of separation and despair and death. Let us be prepared to shout it from the housetops come Easter Day, for that is the consequence of the proclamation that Christ is risen. If Christ is risen than you are in the Spirit and the Spirit is in you.
But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Romans 8
The thread through this rich set of readings this morning, is the Spirit of God that brings new life out of alientation, despair and death.
The Old Testament reading, the well known and delightful story of the dry bones, is clearly all about this thread. The dry bones in Ezekiel’s vision represent the disaster befallen the Jewish people and the reality of that disaster appearing to be the last word. The vision shows, however, that God has another card to play, the Spirit that can bring life out of disaster.
The thread continues in our psalm this morning. “Out of the depths have I called to you.” The writer knows deep pain, the desperate need of a word from God. That word comes as his soul, his spirit, waits and watches, and out of desperation, mercy and redemption is received.
In the piece from his letter to the Romans, Paul speaks with exuberance about the Spirit of God in contrast to human “flesh,” a code word he uses for anything in our lives that leads to death and separation from God. He encourages us, though, that even thought we live with and in the flesh, to have faith that the Spirit of God also dwells in us and, therefore, is available to heal separation and to raise us from the dead. “You are in the Spirit,” he dares to say, despite all signs to the contrary, even the flesh that is literally decaying toward death even as we live.
And finally there is the profound and awesome story of the raising of Lazarus. The Spirit is not mentioned except in Jesus own reaction of being deeply moved and troubled in spirit. Yet the Gospel writer John would not deny that it is the Spirit of God at work here, breathing new life into the dead Lazarus. The movement of Jesus’ troubled Spirit is to breathe that new life into his friend and command him to “come out.”
These are perfect readings as we come to a close in Lent. This thread of the Spirit of God that brings new life out of despair and death is precisely what we need to hear right now.
Lent has been telling us that something is wrong, ever since those words with which it began, “You are dust and to dust you shall return.” Lent has wanted to take us to the depths of our humanity, our despair, our separation, and our mortality. Lent has wanted us to have a troubled spirit. All these things are true, but the promise has been there all along as well. Psalm 51 was also a part of the Ash Wednesday liturgy closing with the words,
The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
Lent is never intended to be the last word, it is a way station on the journey, a path that is part of the journey. So our readings remind us this morning: despair, separation and death are never the end of the story for followers of Jesus. They are part of the journey, but they are not the journey’s end.
This faith all revolves around Paul’s assertion: The Spirit of God is in you. If you think about it, that is a pretty bold assertion. Remember Paul is writing in Romans to a group of people he had never even met. How did he know that this was true, that the Spirit of God dwelt in them? He knew it not because he knew them, but because he knew God. Whether or not the Spirit of God was in them was not up to them. It was up to God. And Paul knew that God was and is generous with his Spirit.
In the Church Year we do not celebrate the Holy Spirit until Pentecost at the end of the Great Fifty Days of Easter. But it turns out that the Spirit has been what this “paschal time” in the Church Year has been all about—from the beginning of Lent through Easter Day to Pentecost. If we began with a troubled spirit, we will end with a vibrant spirit, and in between the Spirit will be known to be in us, with us on the journey as hope in the midst of despair, mercy in the midst of separation, and life in the midst of death.
The Spirit is in you. I hope you can hear the good news in that and that it does, indeed, bring you hope, hope enough to celebrate Easter in a couple weeks with true joy, the joy of the Spirit of God whom we all share.
But there is something unsettling here as well. This is not good news to everyone. The raising of Lazarus was the last nail in Jesus’ coffin for the religious authorities. He had to go. His unleashing of the power of the Spirit threatened their own power, their very way of life. To say the Spirit of God is in us is a very dangerous, even blasphemous, thing to say, worse to believe it is true.
We have, I think, our own inner religious authority who is equally as terrified by all this talk, who is somehow more comfortable with the reality of our despair, separation and death than with the prospect that there is within us this uncontrollable Spirit that may turn our world upside down. We may not like our despair, our separation and our death, but they are at least ours. It is sometimes a lot more comfortable to believe that we are separated from God, for instance, than to believe we are loved, that we have been made worthy for God’s own Spirit to live in us.
Why is this so? I think largely because being loved and carrying the Spirit makes us much more responsible. Love and the Spirit cannot be held as possessions. They must always be shared, and the chief danger in that, of course, is that they might be rejected. And if they are rejected then we might be seen to have been wrong about them, that they never were really ours to begin with. Better to hold them at arm’s length then to risk being hurt by them.
So the religious authorities after this story will begin the conspiracy to have Jesus killed, the ultimate holding at arm’s length. They said, “It is better for one man to die than to risk losing the whole people.” They said this out of fear of the Romans, that if Jesus kept stirring things up something very bad would surely happen and the Romans would clamp down.
As I said, we all have this voice of fear deep within us. We all have our inner religious authority full of doubt about the actual power of God in our lives, and afraid what the world around us might think if we started actually believing it and acting on it.
The next two weeks is meant to be a full frontal assault on that voice. We are to hear again and again, despite everything, that we are in the Spirit, the Spirit is in us, and, as Paul says at the end of the eighth chapter of Romans, “nothing can separate us.”
Let us hear that good news today. We are in the Spirit, the Spirit is in us, the Spirit who has the power to bring us out of separation and despair and death. Let us be prepared to shout it from the housetops come Easter Day, for that is the consequence of the proclamation that Christ is risen. If Christ is risen than you are in the Spirit and the Spirit is in you.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
The Broken Hallelujah
Sermon preached on the First Sunday of Lent at the Church of St. Luke & St. Simon Cyrene, Rochester, NY: Genesis 2:17-17, 3:1-19; Romans 5:12-19; Matthew 4:1-11
There’s a blaze of light in every word; it doesn’t matter what you heard: the holy or the broken hallelujah. (Leonard Cohen, “Hallelujah”)
Our two biblical stories are both stories of brokenness. In the first Adam and Eve manage to screw up paradise and wind up out of the garden and returning to the dust from which they came. “What is this that you have done?” is the plaintive cry of God.
Paul summarizes this story in the stark words, repeated several different ways in this morning’s reading from Romans, “One trespass led to condemnation for all.”
In the second story, we might be “tempted” to see Jesus’ temptation as a great victory, and perhaps it was, although the devil would have his day. When Luke tells the story, he ends by saying
When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.
Even Matthew reports that when the testing was finished, “Behold angels approached and ministered to him.” The testing, I submit, led to a broken Jesus, spiritually and physically spent, full of his humanity which would lead to his eventual death.
I want to call both of these stories by a paradoxical juxtaposition of words from the singer Leonard Cohen. They are stories of a “broken hallelujah.”
As we begin Lent that is the state we are in. Our hallelujah has been broken, quite literally, we are not even to speak the word.
Even our liturgy is broken. We sort of limp through Lent, much quieter than usual. It seems all the exuberance of worship has been kicked out of us. We sing mournful songs that are not among those we tend to sing in our head when we want a bolster of our faith. It is a time in the church year when we are not inclined to invite someone to Church lest they see us at our worst—broken and dull.
We don’t much like brokenness. Most of us avoid Ash Wednesday because its declaration of brokenness is just too much: ashes smeared into the head, the curse of Adam repeated—you are dust—a mournful singing of a penitential psalm and a long litany of confession. It’s just all too in your face.
We don’t much like brokenness. The world doesn’t like it and teaches us not to like it either. We must look and act like winners 24/7, as they say. Church people even get caught up in this distaste. We are supposed to say, “God is good—all the time.” Many of our brothers and sisters are committed to a prosperity gospel—follow God and all will be well with you, including more money than you need. It works—those churches are full, and ours that clings to this period of brokenness we call Lent, are not full. Yet that prosperity gospel can be described by an old fashioned church word—heresy. It has little to do with the actual Christian faith.
That’s because it has precious to do with real life. It does not take into account how far short of paradise even the most well-off of us live. It does not take into account the frequent exhaustion at the end of a time of testing, real faith-shaking testing.
And it does not get you to what I believe is the actual “holy hallelujah,” again to use Leonard Cohen’s words. It cannot see the blaze of light in every word, broken or not.
Why the need to dwell on this unpleasantness? Why drag us into the muck of brokenness? Two reasons.
First of all, it is real. We are all broken, or, as I have put it before, we are all a mess. If you’re not you really don’t need to be here. It is not a good thing that folks out there think of church as the place where people gather who’ve got life together, rather than the place where broken people gather to cling to life.
One of things I discovered in my most recent time of illness was a whole group of people who feel excluded from religion in general and the church in particular—those suffering from mental illness. They/we are probably the most obviously long-term broken people in our midst. We suffer in a way of which we are not encouraged to speak. We ourselves are plagued by our own sense of failure as human beings, and others just don’t want to deal with it—it’s too scary.
I have tried to break that taboo and it has made some uncomfortable, others have called me “courageous” for doing so. But the question haunts me: Why should it be courageous? Is it courageous for others to know that someone broke their leg?
I just cite that as an example of how we avoid our brokenness and why we must not. All of you have your own story of brokenness, and we observe this season precisely because you do. That’s real.
There’s another reason why we must live in this time of the broken hallelujah, however. It is because it is the only way to Easter.
This is obvious in the story of Jesus. No Easter without Good Friday, but that means here lays a universal truth. We don’t get to authentic faith, hope, and love without going through our brokenness. This has always been true. It is why there is such a story as that which we call “the Fall.” And the tradition of our faith has always known that in this fall lies our hope. “O happy fault,” it is called. There is a blaze of light in the broken hallelujah. Easter not only depends on Good Friday, foreshadowed by Jesus’ temptation. It also depends on this mythic story of Adam and Eve and the first separation from God, the shutting off of paradise from our human experience.
The invitation to Lent is the invitation to embrace our brokenness, not as a place to live, although live with it we must in this life, but also, as Paul says, as the means by which we can embrace our “justification and life.” Our lives will be “unbroken;” the separation will end; we will make a new home in the paradise of righteousness, that is, our justice and our vindication. And we get a glimpse of this, paradoxically, when we embrace our brokenness. We can only see the holy hallelujah when we embrace the broken one. But in the broken hallelujah is the same blaze of light as in the holy.
There’s a blaze of light in every word; it doesn’t matter what you heard: the holy or the broken hallelujah.
Let us be people of Lent—people of real life. Only then can we people of Easter—of real resurrection.
There’s a blaze of light in every word; it doesn’t matter what you heard: the holy or the broken hallelujah. (Leonard Cohen, “Hallelujah”)
Our two biblical stories are both stories of brokenness. In the first Adam and Eve manage to screw up paradise and wind up out of the garden and returning to the dust from which they came. “What is this that you have done?” is the plaintive cry of God.
Paul summarizes this story in the stark words, repeated several different ways in this morning’s reading from Romans, “One trespass led to condemnation for all.”
In the second story, we might be “tempted” to see Jesus’ temptation as a great victory, and perhaps it was, although the devil would have his day. When Luke tells the story, he ends by saying
When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.
Even Matthew reports that when the testing was finished, “Behold angels approached and ministered to him.” The testing, I submit, led to a broken Jesus, spiritually and physically spent, full of his humanity which would lead to his eventual death.
I want to call both of these stories by a paradoxical juxtaposition of words from the singer Leonard Cohen. They are stories of a “broken hallelujah.”
As we begin Lent that is the state we are in. Our hallelujah has been broken, quite literally, we are not even to speak the word.
Even our liturgy is broken. We sort of limp through Lent, much quieter than usual. It seems all the exuberance of worship has been kicked out of us. We sing mournful songs that are not among those we tend to sing in our head when we want a bolster of our faith. It is a time in the church year when we are not inclined to invite someone to Church lest they see us at our worst—broken and dull.
We don’t much like brokenness. Most of us avoid Ash Wednesday because its declaration of brokenness is just too much: ashes smeared into the head, the curse of Adam repeated—you are dust—a mournful singing of a penitential psalm and a long litany of confession. It’s just all too in your face.
We don’t much like brokenness. The world doesn’t like it and teaches us not to like it either. We must look and act like winners 24/7, as they say. Church people even get caught up in this distaste. We are supposed to say, “God is good—all the time.” Many of our brothers and sisters are committed to a prosperity gospel—follow God and all will be well with you, including more money than you need. It works—those churches are full, and ours that clings to this period of brokenness we call Lent, are not full. Yet that prosperity gospel can be described by an old fashioned church word—heresy. It has little to do with the actual Christian faith.
That’s because it has precious to do with real life. It does not take into account how far short of paradise even the most well-off of us live. It does not take into account the frequent exhaustion at the end of a time of testing, real faith-shaking testing.
And it does not get you to what I believe is the actual “holy hallelujah,” again to use Leonard Cohen’s words. It cannot see the blaze of light in every word, broken or not.
Why the need to dwell on this unpleasantness? Why drag us into the muck of brokenness? Two reasons.
First of all, it is real. We are all broken, or, as I have put it before, we are all a mess. If you’re not you really don’t need to be here. It is not a good thing that folks out there think of church as the place where people gather who’ve got life together, rather than the place where broken people gather to cling to life.
One of things I discovered in my most recent time of illness was a whole group of people who feel excluded from religion in general and the church in particular—those suffering from mental illness. They/we are probably the most obviously long-term broken people in our midst. We suffer in a way of which we are not encouraged to speak. We ourselves are plagued by our own sense of failure as human beings, and others just don’t want to deal with it—it’s too scary.
I have tried to break that taboo and it has made some uncomfortable, others have called me “courageous” for doing so. But the question haunts me: Why should it be courageous? Is it courageous for others to know that someone broke their leg?
I just cite that as an example of how we avoid our brokenness and why we must not. All of you have your own story of brokenness, and we observe this season precisely because you do. That’s real.
There’s another reason why we must live in this time of the broken hallelujah, however. It is because it is the only way to Easter.
This is obvious in the story of Jesus. No Easter without Good Friday, but that means here lays a universal truth. We don’t get to authentic faith, hope, and love without going through our brokenness. This has always been true. It is why there is such a story as that which we call “the Fall.” And the tradition of our faith has always known that in this fall lies our hope. “O happy fault,” it is called. There is a blaze of light in the broken hallelujah. Easter not only depends on Good Friday, foreshadowed by Jesus’ temptation. It also depends on this mythic story of Adam and Eve and the first separation from God, the shutting off of paradise from our human experience.
The invitation to Lent is the invitation to embrace our brokenness, not as a place to live, although live with it we must in this life, but also, as Paul says, as the means by which we can embrace our “justification and life.” Our lives will be “unbroken;” the separation will end; we will make a new home in the paradise of righteousness, that is, our justice and our vindication. And we get a glimpse of this, paradoxically, when we embrace our brokenness. We can only see the holy hallelujah when we embrace the broken one. But in the broken hallelujah is the same blaze of light as in the holy.
There’s a blaze of light in every word; it doesn’t matter what you heard: the holy or the broken hallelujah.
Let us be people of Lent—people of real life. Only then can we people of Easter—of real resurrection.
Sunday, February 03, 2008
Witnesses of These Things
Sermon preached at the Church of St. Luke & St. Simon Cyrene, Rocester, NY, the Last Sunday after the Epiphany: 2 Peter 1:16-21, Matthew 17:1-9
We did not follow cleverly devised myths…we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty.
Reading the piece from the Second Letter of Peter, I am cognizant of the fact that many people (many, many people) do in fact think that we are following “cleverly devised myths.” Sometimes we ourselves wonder about this as well.
If we do not follow cleverly devised myths, than how, like Peter, are we witnesses of transfiguration? That is my question for this morning.
The Transfiguration could have been the end of the story, and, in some ways that would have made sense. Jesus’ glory is revealed on the mountain, including the confirmation of his status as “Son of God.” Peter thought it was the end of the story, so much that he wanted to set up camp on the mountain.
Back down the mountain, however, they go, and, notice, not to tell people what had happened in an “end of the story” kind of way. Jesus actually tells them not to say anything about what they have seen “until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.” Peter, James, and John must have thought this request to be completely illogical. You can almost hear their “but.” But we just saw Moses and Elijah! We just heard the voice of God! You are God’s Son and the message is now that you are to be listened to! Why then don’t you want anyone to listen?
The truth is—and Jesus clearly knew this—that as nice a moment as the Transfiguration was, it was not the end of the story. It is such a moment in itself that could easily be discounted as one of those “cleverly devised myths.” In truth it has no meaning without what is about to take place in Jerusalem. The voice from heaven means nothing without the cross and the resurrection.
And it makes sense, if you’re going to tell the story of Jesus to a non-believer, you don’t want to start with this story of the Transfiguration. This story only means something after the whole story is told. It can only be understood in retrospect.
Yet we are witnesses of Transfiguration and we are called to make that witness known, not to keep it a secret. But how?
First of all, we are witnesses because each one of us has already had our moment of transfiguration. “What?” you say, “I must have missed it.” No, you didn’t.
The moment of transfiguration for each one of us is our baptism. It is the moment when it is said of us, you are my son, my daughter, the beloved, with you I am well pleased. “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ’s own forever.” And week by week we renew our transfiguration in the Eucharist. Why would God feed you his own life, his own self, if he were not pleased with you, if he did not think of you as a daughter or a son, his heir along with Jesus?
And yet I can hear some of you say, “How can I be sure God is actually pleased with me? I’m not even sure most weeks I am pleased with me!” The answer is you can’t, you can’t be “sure” that God is pleased with you. You can only have faith, faith in the reality of grace, God’s unconditional love and acceptance.
All of this truth about ourselves means that we, too, are witnesses of these things, our own belovedness in our lives united with the Beloved One. And we are witnesses of the belovedness of others, no matter what the world thinks of them or, sometimes, even what they think of themselves.
Yet even our own belovedness makes no sense—is itself a “cleverly devised myth” without the cross and the resurrection, the dying and rising of Christ, and our own dying and rising in union with him.
Our witness to grace—the belovedness of all—must be grounded in our own experience of Jerusalem—the reality of our real lives, which are not all transfigured hunky-dory. Our own suffering and our witness to the suffering of the world is absolutely essential to dispel the notion that we follow “cleverly devised myths.” And our experience that in spite of these things we believe God is present, loving and graceful, and that we are called to be as well.
Our witness to these things is our faith that we are God’s beloved in spite of all signs to the contrary. That’s real. It was real for Jesus. It is real for us.
Brothers and sisters, we need to be witnesses of these things, even eyewitnesses, able to say, “I have seen the love of God. I have experienced the grace of God. It’s as real as the suffering of this world, and it calls me to care and to act to relieve as much suffering as I can.”
That’s our witness. That is what will draw at least some to faith. We must be people, like Jesus, who keep it real, but who also can say with conviction, that reality is not the last word. Faith is.
We did not follow cleverly devised myths…we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty.
Reading the piece from the Second Letter of Peter, I am cognizant of the fact that many people (many, many people) do in fact think that we are following “cleverly devised myths.” Sometimes we ourselves wonder about this as well.
If we do not follow cleverly devised myths, than how, like Peter, are we witnesses of transfiguration? That is my question for this morning.
The Transfiguration could have been the end of the story, and, in some ways that would have made sense. Jesus’ glory is revealed on the mountain, including the confirmation of his status as “Son of God.” Peter thought it was the end of the story, so much that he wanted to set up camp on the mountain.
Back down the mountain, however, they go, and, notice, not to tell people what had happened in an “end of the story” kind of way. Jesus actually tells them not to say anything about what they have seen “until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.” Peter, James, and John must have thought this request to be completely illogical. You can almost hear their “but.” But we just saw Moses and Elijah! We just heard the voice of God! You are God’s Son and the message is now that you are to be listened to! Why then don’t you want anyone to listen?
The truth is—and Jesus clearly knew this—that as nice a moment as the Transfiguration was, it was not the end of the story. It is such a moment in itself that could easily be discounted as one of those “cleverly devised myths.” In truth it has no meaning without what is about to take place in Jerusalem. The voice from heaven means nothing without the cross and the resurrection.
And it makes sense, if you’re going to tell the story of Jesus to a non-believer, you don’t want to start with this story of the Transfiguration. This story only means something after the whole story is told. It can only be understood in retrospect.
Yet we are witnesses of Transfiguration and we are called to make that witness known, not to keep it a secret. But how?
First of all, we are witnesses because each one of us has already had our moment of transfiguration. “What?” you say, “I must have missed it.” No, you didn’t.
The moment of transfiguration for each one of us is our baptism. It is the moment when it is said of us, you are my son, my daughter, the beloved, with you I am well pleased. “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ’s own forever.” And week by week we renew our transfiguration in the Eucharist. Why would God feed you his own life, his own self, if he were not pleased with you, if he did not think of you as a daughter or a son, his heir along with Jesus?
And yet I can hear some of you say, “How can I be sure God is actually pleased with me? I’m not even sure most weeks I am pleased with me!” The answer is you can’t, you can’t be “sure” that God is pleased with you. You can only have faith, faith in the reality of grace, God’s unconditional love and acceptance.
All of this truth about ourselves means that we, too, are witnesses of these things, our own belovedness in our lives united with the Beloved One. And we are witnesses of the belovedness of others, no matter what the world thinks of them or, sometimes, even what they think of themselves.
Yet even our own belovedness makes no sense—is itself a “cleverly devised myth” without the cross and the resurrection, the dying and rising of Christ, and our own dying and rising in union with him.
Our witness to grace—the belovedness of all—must be grounded in our own experience of Jerusalem—the reality of our real lives, which are not all transfigured hunky-dory. Our own suffering and our witness to the suffering of the world is absolutely essential to dispel the notion that we follow “cleverly devised myths.” And our experience that in spite of these things we believe God is present, loving and graceful, and that we are called to be as well.
Our witness to these things is our faith that we are God’s beloved in spite of all signs to the contrary. That’s real. It was real for Jesus. It is real for us.
Brothers and sisters, we need to be witnesses of these things, even eyewitnesses, able to say, “I have seen the love of God. I have experienced the grace of God. It’s as real as the suffering of this world, and it calls me to care and to act to relieve as much suffering as I can.”
That’s our witness. That is what will draw at least some to faith. We must be people, like Jesus, who keep it real, but who also can say with conviction, that reality is not the last word. Faith is.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Whom then Shall We Fear? (So We Dare to Believe)
Sermon preached at the Church of St. Luke & St. Simon Cyrene, Rochester, NY on Annual Meeting Sunday, the 3rd Sunday after the Epiphany, January 27, 2008. Psalm 27, 1 Corinthians 1:10-18, Matthew 4:12-23
This sermon has a refrain, at least for awhile at the beginning and at the end. It is the first verse of Psalm 27:
The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom then shall I fear?
I want to do the perhaps unorthodox thing of beginning my sermon for this Annual Meeting by articulating our fears. Yes, I’m going to tell you of what we should be afraid.
The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom then shall I fear?
Let me say from the outset that the question the first verse of Psalm 27 asks may seem to be a rhetorical one, and perhaps the original writer did mean it that way, but I think it is a very real question, and that the answer to it is almost always both “many things” and “nothing.”
So here goes, what I perceive to be our top five fears, but let us begin:
The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom then shall I fear?
Fear number one: money. There is not enough. You as individuals don’t have enough and we as a parish don’t have enough. As a parish we are calling on households to give more, particularly through our Capital Campaign, and at the precise moment when Chicken Little seems to have taken over the economic pundits. The sky is falling or is about to fall, depending on to whom you listen.
And we as a parish continue to eat into our endowment. Our endowment dipped below—although only slightly below—a million dollars by the end of 2007, and we will use somewhere between 12% and 15% of it this year for operating expenses. That is not a prudent action by anybody’s estimation, and it means, as is obvious to everyone, that it cannot last forever without significant replenishment.
And so we sing, not being sure of the answer
The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom then shall I fear?
Fear two: growth. We are not growing fast enough, in fact, this past year our communicant numbers shrunk a bit, although average attendance was up a bit. Bottom line, we need more people, and most of us are in a quandary about where they come from and how they get here.
And so we sing, not being sure of the answer:
The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom then shall I fear?
Fear number three: we are doing so many things and there are too few of us doing them. Great God in heaven, the rector set out seven agenda items for last year in addition to ongoing programs. How far can we be stretched? How much time do we have to give to church-related stuff in a world that pulls us in so many different directions?
And so we sing, not being sure of the answer:
The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom then shall I fear?
Fear number four: is the rector OK? Am I going to be OK? You lost me for two months and now you’ve only got me half time. When does this end? It’s a question I cannot answer in any way but theoretical.
And so we sing, not being sure of the answer:
The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom then shall I fear?
Fear number five: we’re doing a good bit of work on our building but anyone who’s paying any attention at all knows that it is only a small dent in the needs of these old buildings, needs that will keep catching up with us.
And so we sing, not being sure of the answer:
The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom then shall I fear?
We have plenty to fear, and fear is real. It cannot be wished away, nor overcome by a burst of superficial optimism nor simply dismissed even if Jesus did say over and over again, “Do not be afraid.” Even he was afraid in the garden before the crucifixion.
Now I do believe that God longs for us not to be afraid, and provides us with the power to overcome our fears, but I also believe that we start to tap into that power by acknowledging of what we are afraid. Fears that are named are fears with which we can begin to deal.
And how do we deal with them? What is the power to overcome them? The power is the big three gifts we are given by God: faith, hope, and love. These three are the power to overcome our fears.
Love that enables us to hold together when fear wants to divide us.
Faith not only that God is, but that God desires us to be, and has a purpose for our being.
Hope that resurrection will have its way with us in the end in spite of everything that says it won’t.
So we meet our fears with faith, hope, and love. I’ll us the first word to address our fears,
Money: We need faith that taking the risk with our money may appear foolish, but that risk-taking has always defined the wisdom of God. The cross was, is, and always will be, God’s greatest risk taken with and for us, and, as St. Paul says, it is foolishness in the eyes of the world but wisdom and power in the eyes of God.
And so we sing, daring to believe:
The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom then shall I fear?
Growth: We need faith that we will grow in spite of our not really knowing how to do it. The one thing we need to do (and I take this from one of our bishop candidates who spoke the other night who was quoting the current Bishop of Massachusetts, Tom Shaw) is pray directly for new members. We might also pray for greater financial resources. It means something that we are somewhat shy about praying for these things. But pray we must.
And so we sing, daring to believe:
The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom then shall I fear?
Busy-ness: We need to have faith that we are enough to do what we need to do, and we are living witnesses that our fear can be overcome. I gave you seven things to do this year and we did them. And despite my tendency to over-function, I was not the only one who made them happen, and when I suddenly disappeared from the picture, you made them keep happening. Do you know what a testimony it is that you kicked off a successful Capital Campaign in the absence of a rector? It must have taken at least a year off the life of our consultant.
And so we sing, daring to believe:
The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom then shall I fear?
Me: We need to have faith that the grace of God is and will be present in my life, that healing is not only possible, it is the desire of God, and that you and I can find ways to keep in ministry together while sustaining all our well-beings.
And so we sing, daring to believe:
The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom then shall I fear?
And these buildings, well they’ve been here a long, long time, and we need the faith not to have them define who we are for good or for ill. By hook or by crook we will find a way to maintain them, and, if not, we will still be the church.
And so we sing, daring to believe:
The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom then shall I fear?
The disciples once came to Jesus in a moment of stunning honesty and said, “Increase our faith” (Luke 17:5). This after they seemed to have shown so much faith in following “immediately,” as we heard in this morning’s reading, and kept at it with a teacher who was always on the edge of things. I have no doubt that they were asking out of fear, out of a sense of being stretched too thin and the frustration of not quite getting it. It was a plaintive cry that could just as well be our own as it was theirs. “Increase our faith!”
The important thing is that they asked, and I have no doubt they received even though they were yet to have more moments of doubt and fear and despair. Yet in the end they were the people who “turned the world upside down.”
Let us pray in the face of all our fears, “Increase our faith.” Let this be our theme this year, and let it be my charge to you, church. Not seven things this year, although all of them need continuing, but mostly right now we need one thing and it’s the one thing God is good at, “Increase our faith.”
And so we sing, daring to believe:
The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom then shall I fear?
This sermon has a refrain, at least for awhile at the beginning and at the end. It is the first verse of Psalm 27:
The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom then shall I fear?
I want to do the perhaps unorthodox thing of beginning my sermon for this Annual Meeting by articulating our fears. Yes, I’m going to tell you of what we should be afraid.
The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom then shall I fear?
Let me say from the outset that the question the first verse of Psalm 27 asks may seem to be a rhetorical one, and perhaps the original writer did mean it that way, but I think it is a very real question, and that the answer to it is almost always both “many things” and “nothing.”
So here goes, what I perceive to be our top five fears, but let us begin:
The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom then shall I fear?
Fear number one: money. There is not enough. You as individuals don’t have enough and we as a parish don’t have enough. As a parish we are calling on households to give more, particularly through our Capital Campaign, and at the precise moment when Chicken Little seems to have taken over the economic pundits. The sky is falling or is about to fall, depending on to whom you listen.
And we as a parish continue to eat into our endowment. Our endowment dipped below—although only slightly below—a million dollars by the end of 2007, and we will use somewhere between 12% and 15% of it this year for operating expenses. That is not a prudent action by anybody’s estimation, and it means, as is obvious to everyone, that it cannot last forever without significant replenishment.
And so we sing, not being sure of the answer
The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom then shall I fear?
Fear two: growth. We are not growing fast enough, in fact, this past year our communicant numbers shrunk a bit, although average attendance was up a bit. Bottom line, we need more people, and most of us are in a quandary about where they come from and how they get here.
And so we sing, not being sure of the answer:
The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom then shall I fear?
Fear number three: we are doing so many things and there are too few of us doing them. Great God in heaven, the rector set out seven agenda items for last year in addition to ongoing programs. How far can we be stretched? How much time do we have to give to church-related stuff in a world that pulls us in so many different directions?
And so we sing, not being sure of the answer:
The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom then shall I fear?
Fear number four: is the rector OK? Am I going to be OK? You lost me for two months and now you’ve only got me half time. When does this end? It’s a question I cannot answer in any way but theoretical.
And so we sing, not being sure of the answer:
The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom then shall I fear?
Fear number five: we’re doing a good bit of work on our building but anyone who’s paying any attention at all knows that it is only a small dent in the needs of these old buildings, needs that will keep catching up with us.
And so we sing, not being sure of the answer:
The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom then shall I fear?
We have plenty to fear, and fear is real. It cannot be wished away, nor overcome by a burst of superficial optimism nor simply dismissed even if Jesus did say over and over again, “Do not be afraid.” Even he was afraid in the garden before the crucifixion.
Now I do believe that God longs for us not to be afraid, and provides us with the power to overcome our fears, but I also believe that we start to tap into that power by acknowledging of what we are afraid. Fears that are named are fears with which we can begin to deal.
And how do we deal with them? What is the power to overcome them? The power is the big three gifts we are given by God: faith, hope, and love. These three are the power to overcome our fears.
Love that enables us to hold together when fear wants to divide us.
Faith not only that God is, but that God desires us to be, and has a purpose for our being.
Hope that resurrection will have its way with us in the end in spite of everything that says it won’t.
So we meet our fears with faith, hope, and love. I’ll us the first word to address our fears,
Money: We need faith that taking the risk with our money may appear foolish, but that risk-taking has always defined the wisdom of God. The cross was, is, and always will be, God’s greatest risk taken with and for us, and, as St. Paul says, it is foolishness in the eyes of the world but wisdom and power in the eyes of God.
And so we sing, daring to believe:
The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom then shall I fear?
Growth: We need faith that we will grow in spite of our not really knowing how to do it. The one thing we need to do (and I take this from one of our bishop candidates who spoke the other night who was quoting the current Bishop of Massachusetts, Tom Shaw) is pray directly for new members. We might also pray for greater financial resources. It means something that we are somewhat shy about praying for these things. But pray we must.
And so we sing, daring to believe:
The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom then shall I fear?
Busy-ness: We need to have faith that we are enough to do what we need to do, and we are living witnesses that our fear can be overcome. I gave you seven things to do this year and we did them. And despite my tendency to over-function, I was not the only one who made them happen, and when I suddenly disappeared from the picture, you made them keep happening. Do you know what a testimony it is that you kicked off a successful Capital Campaign in the absence of a rector? It must have taken at least a year off the life of our consultant.
And so we sing, daring to believe:
The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom then shall I fear?
Me: We need to have faith that the grace of God is and will be present in my life, that healing is not only possible, it is the desire of God, and that you and I can find ways to keep in ministry together while sustaining all our well-beings.
And so we sing, daring to believe:
The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom then shall I fear?
And these buildings, well they’ve been here a long, long time, and we need the faith not to have them define who we are for good or for ill. By hook or by crook we will find a way to maintain them, and, if not, we will still be the church.
And so we sing, daring to believe:
The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom then shall I fear?
The disciples once came to Jesus in a moment of stunning honesty and said, “Increase our faith” (Luke 17:5). This after they seemed to have shown so much faith in following “immediately,” as we heard in this morning’s reading, and kept at it with a teacher who was always on the edge of things. I have no doubt that they were asking out of fear, out of a sense of being stretched too thin and the frustration of not quite getting it. It was a plaintive cry that could just as well be our own as it was theirs. “Increase our faith!”
The important thing is that they asked, and I have no doubt they received even though they were yet to have more moments of doubt and fear and despair. Yet in the end they were the people who “turned the world upside down.”
Let us pray in the face of all our fears, “Increase our faith.” Let this be our theme this year, and let it be my charge to you, church. Not seven things this year, although all of them need continuing, but mostly right now we need one thing and it’s the one thing God is good at, “Increase our faith.”
And so we sing, daring to believe:
The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom then shall I fear?
Monday, January 14, 2008
Behold! God's Radical Welcome & Ours
Sermon preached at the Church of St. Luke & St. Simon Cyrene, Rochester, New York on January 13, the First Sunday after the Epiphany: Isaiah 42:1-9; Acts 10:34-43; Matthew 3:12-17
I truly understand that God shows no partiality. Acts 10:34
This Sunday is about identity that leads to mission, which is focused on radical welcome. This is abotu Jesus and about us, particularly since one of the three markers of idenity in our Mission Statement is , “A Welcome Table for All.”
Let me remind you of the context of the middle reading this morning from the Acts of the Apostles. St. Peter has found himself on his missionary tour in the city of Joppa. One day he goes up on the roof of the house at which he was staying to say his prayers while lunch was being prepared for him. He falls asleep and has a dream.
In the dream a large sheet is descending out of the sky and on it are all sorts of animals with one thing in common: they were all “unclean” by Jewish standards of purity. Being unclean they were not to be eaten. But a voice says to him, “Rise up and kill and eat your fill, Peter.”
Taking this as a test he says, “No way! I don’t eat unclean things!” But the voice then says, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” Then, just for emphasis, this whole scene happens two more times.
When he awakens from the dream and descends from the roof, it happens that a man named Cornelius has come to see him. They don’t know each other. Cornelius has had his own dream telling him to go to Joppa and find a man named Peter. They ask him to go home with them. The Spirit tells Peter to go with them without reservation.
The next day they go to Caesarea to Cornelius’ home. Cornelius was a Centurion in the Roman army. Caesarea was a Roman settlement in Palestine. It is significant that Peter is told to go “without reservation” because he normally would have avoided Caesarea, as would any observant Jew, because it was a Gentile town, in which it would be almost impossible to remain ritually pure.
By the time he arrives at Cornelius’ home he has figured out that the dream and his visit are connected, and he rather haughtily announces as he arrives,
You of course know that it is against Torah for a Jew to associate with a Gentile in any way, but here I am because of this dream I have had. Can anybody tell me why I am here?
Cornelius tells Peter about his own dream, including the command he received to listen to whatever Peter has to say to him and his household. What Peter has to say is the content of this morning’s reading, beginning with the words, “I truly understand that God shows no partiality.”
The story goes on that as soon as Peter said these things, the Holy Spirit fell on Cornelius and his household, and Peter, profoundly moved by the experience, baptizes them on the spot.
He then goes back to Jerusalem and gets a tongue lashing from his colleagues for visiting Gentiles, but tells them his dream and his experience, saying
If God gave them the same gift he gave us when we believed in Jesus, who was I that I could hinder God? Acts 11:18
There is then a Council of the leadership led by James, Jesus’ brother, which decides that Gentiles should be included in the fellowship of those who follow Jesus.
This story in its entirety is the longest single story in the whole of the New Testament except for the passion stories. And I believe, after the announcement of the resurrection, the whole rest of the story of the followers of Jesus, right up until now and forever, has as its pivot point these words of Peter,
I truly understand that God shows no partiality.
and
If God gave them the same gift that he gave us, who was I to hinder God.
It is difficult for us to grasp the enormity of this story. Imagine, if you will, God in a dream tells you not to go to Church and to never ever receive Communion again. That would come close to what is happening in this story.
God tells Peter to go against his own religion, a religion based on the notion that God did show partiality to a certain people and not to others.
Peter’s experience is earth shattering and changes the nature of following Jesus radically. Now, one can rightly argue that Jesus strongly hinted at this direction, although it’s important to remember that the Gospels were written after this story would have taken place. One can also see movement in this direction in some of the Old Testament prophets, although Judaism had totally rejected their vision of an expanded people of God.
The followers of Jesus, what we call the Church, are to be radical welcomers of all people. It is such a radical concept that even the Church has struggled with it ever since, at many times in its history and in some of its manifestations deliberately not following it. It is the very struggle that right now is tearing our own tradition apart.
Twenty years ago this very month the merger between St. Luke’s and St. Simon’s was completed and celebrated. The principal question before this congregation then was, “Can this truly be a place of radical welcome for all.” No one should pretend that was an easy call with which to grapple. Both groups who came together had treasured their little havens of sameness. But God called them out of themselves to the vision of “no partiality.”
[Now I don’t mean to say that there weren’t other shenanigans going on as the merger was discussed and effected. There were. But I believe that ultimately it was God’s call that was being followed].
That struggle to fulfill the dream is not by any means over. “How radical is our welcome?” is a question we must always be asking and answering, asking and answering. To whom are we partial? To whom are we not? Who gets the message, “You are welcome here!” and who does not.
Our Capital Campaign is one more step in this process of asking and answering about the dream of radical welcome [and, by the way, if you haven’t made a pledge yet, as well as your annual pledge, I urge you to do so]. But really everything we do has to involve this asking and answering. Just how radical is our welcome?
The vision is underscored nicely by the two other readings this morning. Who are we called to be as a community of faith? Servants, not only of God, but of the world and its entire people. Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said, “The Church is only truly being the Church when it is there for others.” It is we of whom Isaiah is speaking when he says, “Here is my servant.” I like the translations better that say “Behold my servant.” There’s something stronger and earthier about that word “Behold,” like when it’s said your hat flies off and you have to grab hold of something to keep standing up. You have to take notice.
And then there is the image of Jesus’ baptism and the voice from heaven (again, a voice from heaven), “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” It is a voice meant not only for Jesus but for each one of us, and it is the same Spirit that fell on Cornelius and his household and the same Spirit that fell on each one of us in our baptism.
It is the voice that accompanies each new person who wanders in these doors, whether they are attractive to us or not, “This is my son, this is my daughter, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” And who are we to hinder God?
Today is full of big and powerful words and images: Behold my servant! Behold my Beloved! Behold no partiality! Behold the people who do not hinder God!
Let’s keep asking and answering the question, Church. Let’s live God’s radical welcome. May all who enter these doors hear it clearly: “Behold, you are welcome!”
With thanks for inspiration to Stephanie Spellers from her recent book Radical Welcome: Embracing God, the Other, and the Spirit of Transformation (Church Publishing).
I truly understand that God shows no partiality. Acts 10:34
This Sunday is about identity that leads to mission, which is focused on radical welcome. This is abotu Jesus and about us, particularly since one of the three markers of idenity in our Mission Statement is , “A Welcome Table for All.”
Let me remind you of the context of the middle reading this morning from the Acts of the Apostles. St. Peter has found himself on his missionary tour in the city of Joppa. One day he goes up on the roof of the house at which he was staying to say his prayers while lunch was being prepared for him. He falls asleep and has a dream.
In the dream a large sheet is descending out of the sky and on it are all sorts of animals with one thing in common: they were all “unclean” by Jewish standards of purity. Being unclean they were not to be eaten. But a voice says to him, “Rise up and kill and eat your fill, Peter.”
Taking this as a test he says, “No way! I don’t eat unclean things!” But the voice then says, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” Then, just for emphasis, this whole scene happens two more times.
When he awakens from the dream and descends from the roof, it happens that a man named Cornelius has come to see him. They don’t know each other. Cornelius has had his own dream telling him to go to Joppa and find a man named Peter. They ask him to go home with them. The Spirit tells Peter to go with them without reservation.
The next day they go to Caesarea to Cornelius’ home. Cornelius was a Centurion in the Roman army. Caesarea was a Roman settlement in Palestine. It is significant that Peter is told to go “without reservation” because he normally would have avoided Caesarea, as would any observant Jew, because it was a Gentile town, in which it would be almost impossible to remain ritually pure.
By the time he arrives at Cornelius’ home he has figured out that the dream and his visit are connected, and he rather haughtily announces as he arrives,
You of course know that it is against Torah for a Jew to associate with a Gentile in any way, but here I am because of this dream I have had. Can anybody tell me why I am here?
Cornelius tells Peter about his own dream, including the command he received to listen to whatever Peter has to say to him and his household. What Peter has to say is the content of this morning’s reading, beginning with the words, “I truly understand that God shows no partiality.”
The story goes on that as soon as Peter said these things, the Holy Spirit fell on Cornelius and his household, and Peter, profoundly moved by the experience, baptizes them on the spot.
He then goes back to Jerusalem and gets a tongue lashing from his colleagues for visiting Gentiles, but tells them his dream and his experience, saying
If God gave them the same gift he gave us when we believed in Jesus, who was I that I could hinder God? Acts 11:18
There is then a Council of the leadership led by James, Jesus’ brother, which decides that Gentiles should be included in the fellowship of those who follow Jesus.
This story in its entirety is the longest single story in the whole of the New Testament except for the passion stories. And I believe, after the announcement of the resurrection, the whole rest of the story of the followers of Jesus, right up until now and forever, has as its pivot point these words of Peter,
I truly understand that God shows no partiality.
and
If God gave them the same gift that he gave us, who was I to hinder God.
It is difficult for us to grasp the enormity of this story. Imagine, if you will, God in a dream tells you not to go to Church and to never ever receive Communion again. That would come close to what is happening in this story.
God tells Peter to go against his own religion, a religion based on the notion that God did show partiality to a certain people and not to others.
Peter’s experience is earth shattering and changes the nature of following Jesus radically. Now, one can rightly argue that Jesus strongly hinted at this direction, although it’s important to remember that the Gospels were written after this story would have taken place. One can also see movement in this direction in some of the Old Testament prophets, although Judaism had totally rejected their vision of an expanded people of God.
The followers of Jesus, what we call the Church, are to be radical welcomers of all people. It is such a radical concept that even the Church has struggled with it ever since, at many times in its history and in some of its manifestations deliberately not following it. It is the very struggle that right now is tearing our own tradition apart.
Twenty years ago this very month the merger between St. Luke’s and St. Simon’s was completed and celebrated. The principal question before this congregation then was, “Can this truly be a place of radical welcome for all.” No one should pretend that was an easy call with which to grapple. Both groups who came together had treasured their little havens of sameness. But God called them out of themselves to the vision of “no partiality.”
[Now I don’t mean to say that there weren’t other shenanigans going on as the merger was discussed and effected. There were. But I believe that ultimately it was God’s call that was being followed].
That struggle to fulfill the dream is not by any means over. “How radical is our welcome?” is a question we must always be asking and answering, asking and answering. To whom are we partial? To whom are we not? Who gets the message, “You are welcome here!” and who does not.
Our Capital Campaign is one more step in this process of asking and answering about the dream of radical welcome [and, by the way, if you haven’t made a pledge yet, as well as your annual pledge, I urge you to do so]. But really everything we do has to involve this asking and answering. Just how radical is our welcome?
The vision is underscored nicely by the two other readings this morning. Who are we called to be as a community of faith? Servants, not only of God, but of the world and its entire people. Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said, “The Church is only truly being the Church when it is there for others.” It is we of whom Isaiah is speaking when he says, “Here is my servant.” I like the translations better that say “Behold my servant.” There’s something stronger and earthier about that word “Behold,” like when it’s said your hat flies off and you have to grab hold of something to keep standing up. You have to take notice.
And then there is the image of Jesus’ baptism and the voice from heaven (again, a voice from heaven), “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” It is a voice meant not only for Jesus but for each one of us, and it is the same Spirit that fell on Cornelius and his household and the same Spirit that fell on each one of us in our baptism.
It is the voice that accompanies each new person who wanders in these doors, whether they are attractive to us or not, “This is my son, this is my daughter, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” And who are we to hinder God?
Today is full of big and powerful words and images: Behold my servant! Behold my Beloved! Behold no partiality! Behold the people who do not hinder God!
Let’s keep asking and answering the question, Church. Let’s live God’s radical welcome. May all who enter these doors hear it clearly: “Behold, you are welcome!”
With thanks for inspiration to Stephanie Spellers from her recent book Radical Welcome: Embracing God, the Other, and the Spirit of Transformation (Church Publishing).
Sunday, January 06, 2008
Home By Another Road
Sermon preached at the Church of St. Luke & St. Simon Cyrene, Rochester, New York, January 6, 2008, on the text Matthew 2:1-12.
Home by Another Road
And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.
Let’s notice several things about this seemingly simple little detail at the end of the Epiphany reading. The magi made a simple, clear decision, but there are several things that are true about that decision.
First of all, it was based on a dream. It was not based on hard evidence. The dream fed an intuition, perhaps, and the magi acted on it. But still, the decision was based on a dream.
Second of all, the choice was a choice not to go back to the seat of power and luxury. I have no doubt that when the magi were first in Jerusalem they were treated like visiting royalty. They had a long trip ahead of them, it would have been perfectly reasonable for them to choose to make another pit stop if, for no other reason, to get a good night sleep and a few good meals. The decision, however, was a decision not to take advantage of the available power.
And third, the decision was to take a different way home, one they hadn’t carefully planned out. They knew the way they had come, and they had made it that way, avoiding the dangers of long travel. Going home by a different road met new exposure to new dangers. The decision was for risk.
The decision was based on a dream. It was a decision that turned away from power. It was a decision that entailed some risk.
One could speak about two alternative roads here, two different ways. The Holy Family would, in the next scene of the story, choose a similar different way. The two ways are the way of Herod and the way of Jesus.
As I said before, the choices that the magi made for their different road seems to have made perfect sense when we read or hear them. But they were also that which I have also said: dreamy, vulnerable and risky. The way of Herod, of course, had its own risk, but they only knew this by a dream. In truth, especially for the magi. The way of Herod was seductive in almost every way except for that dream.
The way of Herod is seductive. Herod was a ruthless king—after he had chosen which of his four sons he wanted to succeed him, he simply had the other three killed—but he was also very, very powerful. He built grand things. I am told his fingerprints remain all over the landscape in and around Jerusalem. Despite his ruthlessness he made many proud again to be Jews. Despite Roman overlordship, the Jewish nation seemed to be thriving again. What’s a little ruthlessness if everyone feels safe and secure?
Sound familiar? It does. And it should sound familiar not only in our national life, but in our personal lives as well. We all have our Herod’s with which to deal, both outer and inner—seductive ways of power and control, the amassing of wealth and privilege and respect (even if these things are based on fear).
I have had such a seduction and now I am here today trying to go home by a different road. In this case you are my home, but in a sense you have also been my seduction, so this different way is especially tricky and fraught with peril.
In its own way my seduction has been for power and control, aided by a genuine illness, that in many ways enabled me to be even more successful. I have desired to be super priest, admired by everyone for my hard work and accomplishments, my drive and my talent.
Now I still want to be a good priest. I still want to work hard, be creative and help us accomplish things. But this is the tricky part, I also want to do so not at the detriment of my own health, my own well-being, and, as well, the well-being of this community. My two ways are that of super priest or good priest, the way of frantic, frenetic exhaustion or the way of balance and well-being.
I don’t think I have to tell you that the seduction is still great, partly because this new road I want to embark upon is, like that of the magi, based on a dream (which is to say, it doesn’t seem to be grounded in the practical reality of trying to make this parish thrive), it is a decision not to exercise so much control, and it is a risky decision, partly because it is a road so parallel to the old road that it will be so very, very easy to slip over to the old way.
The seduction is so great I cannot do this choosing alone. I need you, all of you. We need each other. I need outside support as well, because it is so easy to live in a community like this and develop blinders.
But I am here to announce that for my well-being and ours, I know I need to choose to go home by a different way.
We all do. That’s why I think it is all right to talk about this, even though I know some of you are uncomfortable with how much I am talking about it, and are perhaps fearful that I won’t be able to stop talking about it.
All that I can say is that I do not have the intention of talking about it all the time, only when it aids in the proclamation of the gospel, like today, the good news (but also hard!) that there is a different way to choose to go home.
I also hope that you can see that I can be a better pastor because of what I have been through and that in one sense you should be more comfortable coming to me with your struggles because I have walked this way. If you need a pastor who has all the answers, it’s true that you’re not going to be very happy. But if you want a pastor who can walk with you through the valley of the shadow of death, not knowing exactly where we are walking but trying to do so faithfully then most days I can do that.
This may seem to have ended up being a sermon all about me, but I do not believe that it is. I believe it is all about us as a community, and all about you as individuals. As a community and as individuals we have our temptation to walk the way of Herod and it takes a very intentional act to discern that different way.
May God be our primary companion in this journey, in yours and in mine and in ours.
Home by Another Road
And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.
Let’s notice several things about this seemingly simple little detail at the end of the Epiphany reading. The magi made a simple, clear decision, but there are several things that are true about that decision.
First of all, it was based on a dream. It was not based on hard evidence. The dream fed an intuition, perhaps, and the magi acted on it. But still, the decision was based on a dream.
Second of all, the choice was a choice not to go back to the seat of power and luxury. I have no doubt that when the magi were first in Jerusalem they were treated like visiting royalty. They had a long trip ahead of them, it would have been perfectly reasonable for them to choose to make another pit stop if, for no other reason, to get a good night sleep and a few good meals. The decision, however, was a decision not to take advantage of the available power.
And third, the decision was to take a different way home, one they hadn’t carefully planned out. They knew the way they had come, and they had made it that way, avoiding the dangers of long travel. Going home by a different road met new exposure to new dangers. The decision was for risk.
The decision was based on a dream. It was a decision that turned away from power. It was a decision that entailed some risk.
One could speak about two alternative roads here, two different ways. The Holy Family would, in the next scene of the story, choose a similar different way. The two ways are the way of Herod and the way of Jesus.
As I said before, the choices that the magi made for their different road seems to have made perfect sense when we read or hear them. But they were also that which I have also said: dreamy, vulnerable and risky. The way of Herod, of course, had its own risk, but they only knew this by a dream. In truth, especially for the magi. The way of Herod was seductive in almost every way except for that dream.
The way of Herod is seductive. Herod was a ruthless king—after he had chosen which of his four sons he wanted to succeed him, he simply had the other three killed—but he was also very, very powerful. He built grand things. I am told his fingerprints remain all over the landscape in and around Jerusalem. Despite his ruthlessness he made many proud again to be Jews. Despite Roman overlordship, the Jewish nation seemed to be thriving again. What’s a little ruthlessness if everyone feels safe and secure?
Sound familiar? It does. And it should sound familiar not only in our national life, but in our personal lives as well. We all have our Herod’s with which to deal, both outer and inner—seductive ways of power and control, the amassing of wealth and privilege and respect (even if these things are based on fear).
I have had such a seduction and now I am here today trying to go home by a different road. In this case you are my home, but in a sense you have also been my seduction, so this different way is especially tricky and fraught with peril.
In its own way my seduction has been for power and control, aided by a genuine illness, that in many ways enabled me to be even more successful. I have desired to be super priest, admired by everyone for my hard work and accomplishments, my drive and my talent.
Now I still want to be a good priest. I still want to work hard, be creative and help us accomplish things. But this is the tricky part, I also want to do so not at the detriment of my own health, my own well-being, and, as well, the well-being of this community. My two ways are that of super priest or good priest, the way of frantic, frenetic exhaustion or the way of balance and well-being.
I don’t think I have to tell you that the seduction is still great, partly because this new road I want to embark upon is, like that of the magi, based on a dream (which is to say, it doesn’t seem to be grounded in the practical reality of trying to make this parish thrive), it is a decision not to exercise so much control, and it is a risky decision, partly because it is a road so parallel to the old road that it will be so very, very easy to slip over to the old way.
The seduction is so great I cannot do this choosing alone. I need you, all of you. We need each other. I need outside support as well, because it is so easy to live in a community like this and develop blinders.
But I am here to announce that for my well-being and ours, I know I need to choose to go home by a different way.
We all do. That’s why I think it is all right to talk about this, even though I know some of you are uncomfortable with how much I am talking about it, and are perhaps fearful that I won’t be able to stop talking about it.
All that I can say is that I do not have the intention of talking about it all the time, only when it aids in the proclamation of the gospel, like today, the good news (but also hard!) that there is a different way to choose to go home.
I also hope that you can see that I can be a better pastor because of what I have been through and that in one sense you should be more comfortable coming to me with your struggles because I have walked this way. If you need a pastor who has all the answers, it’s true that you’re not going to be very happy. But if you want a pastor who can walk with you through the valley of the shadow of death, not knowing exactly where we are walking but trying to do so faithfully then most days I can do that.
This may seem to have ended up being a sermon all about me, but I do not believe that it is. I believe it is all about us as a community, and all about you as individuals. As a community and as individuals we have our temptation to walk the way of Herod and it takes a very intentional act to discern that different way.
May God be our primary companion in this journey, in yours and in mine and in ours.
Friday, January 04, 2008
The 11th Day: Great, deep longing
Today nothing from my own brain/soul but something from Phillips Brooks, one of the best preachers the Episcopal Church has ever produced. He was long-time rector of trinity Church, Boston in the 19th century and for a short while before his death, Bishop of Massachusetts. He is remembered on our calendar later this month on January 23rd.
There is one group which no one who thinks of Christmas Day forgets: “There were shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.” How familiar and how full an association these old words have grown! Try to think what their story must mean, what contribution it makes to the symphony of meaning in which all [the] attendants on the birth of Christ unite. Remember what is told us. They heard a song of angels, a voice from heaven telling them that a Savior was born in Bethlehem, and that glory had come to God and peace had come to earth. Then they can only say to one another, “Let us go to Bethlehem and see this strange thing.” Then they come and find Christ, and then they go abroad to tell others about him. There is a…certain simple, eager straightforwardness about it. They sing no psalm like Mary. They do not follow the star nor go to Herod like the wise men. They simply hear a voice from heaven telling them that there is a Savior and where he is, and they say, “Let us go there.” And they do go there and they do find him.
I am sure that I need not tell you what an eternal element in Christian life they represent….Always there will be many whose whole experience will be merely this: that, hungry, needy, empty, wanting a Savior, they just need a voice from heaven telling them that the Savior whom they needed had come, and they just went to him and found him all they wanted, and then, like the poor shepherds, “Made known abroad” to others all that had come to them….To the multitude of human souls Christ will be simply the Satisfier revealed from heaven, and they will turn to him, almost as a creature shut up in the dark turns without thought, without plan or anticipation, to any corner of its darkness where a bright light suddenly shines.
Are there not moments in the Christian life of all of us when this alone is our Christianity?...That we do need him. Our lips can shape only one question: “Where shall we find him?” Our wills are all absorbed in one string resolution: “Let us go now to him.”
It is good for us to think as richly and as deeply of Christ as we can. It is good for us to analyze in patient meditation all that he is to us and all that we can be toward him. But oh, let us beware lest any subtlety of thought or depth of meditation ever deadens or dulls in us that first great, deep longing of the soul for him who is its only Savior.
There is one group which no one who thinks of Christmas Day forgets: “There were shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.” How familiar and how full an association these old words have grown! Try to think what their story must mean, what contribution it makes to the symphony of meaning in which all [the] attendants on the birth of Christ unite. Remember what is told us. They heard a song of angels, a voice from heaven telling them that a Savior was born in Bethlehem, and that glory had come to God and peace had come to earth. Then they can only say to one another, “Let us go to Bethlehem and see this strange thing.” Then they come and find Christ, and then they go abroad to tell others about him. There is a…certain simple, eager straightforwardness about it. They sing no psalm like Mary. They do not follow the star nor go to Herod like the wise men. They simply hear a voice from heaven telling them that there is a Savior and where he is, and they say, “Let us go there.” And they do go there and they do find him.
I am sure that I need not tell you what an eternal element in Christian life they represent….Always there will be many whose whole experience will be merely this: that, hungry, needy, empty, wanting a Savior, they just need a voice from heaven telling them that the Savior whom they needed had come, and they just went to him and found him all they wanted, and then, like the poor shepherds, “Made known abroad” to others all that had come to them….To the multitude of human souls Christ will be simply the Satisfier revealed from heaven, and they will turn to him, almost as a creature shut up in the dark turns without thought, without plan or anticipation, to any corner of its darkness where a bright light suddenly shines.
Are there not moments in the Christian life of all of us when this alone is our Christianity?...That we do need him. Our lips can shape only one question: “Where shall we find him?” Our wills are all absorbed in one string resolution: “Let us go now to him.”
It is good for us to think as richly and as deeply of Christ as we can. It is good for us to analyze in patient meditation all that he is to us and all that we can be toward him. But oh, let us beware lest any subtlety of thought or depth of meditation ever deadens or dulls in us that first great, deep longing of the soul for him who is its only Savior.
Thursday, January 03, 2008
10th Day: Children of God
See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. 1 John 3:1
This was the first reading at Eucharist today (1 John 3:1-6). John in his writings loves the image of “children of God.” In the prologue to his Gospel he writes, “To all who received him who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.” (John 1:12) It is for me a moving image. To be someone’s child is a forever thing. No one can take that away from you. John seems to think as much in his wonderful little phrase “and that is what we are.”
In God’s child we are all children (co-heirs with him, as St. Paul says). That means that God cannot let go of us, even if he wants to, even if, like any parent, he is disappointed or even angry with us at times. But he can never change the fact that we are his children. He has accepted that in Jesus, that is what we believe. So we are bold enough to say in the baptismal rite, “You are marked as Christ’s own for ever.”
On the days when I am down and questioning my own worth I need these words. They are my very life. I invite you to make them yours as well.
In Eugene Peterson’s translation (The Message):
What marvelous love the Father has extended to us! Just look at it—we’re called children of God! That’s who we really are.
This was the first reading at Eucharist today (1 John 3:1-6). John in his writings loves the image of “children of God.” In the prologue to his Gospel he writes, “To all who received him who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.” (John 1:12) It is for me a moving image. To be someone’s child is a forever thing. No one can take that away from you. John seems to think as much in his wonderful little phrase “and that is what we are.”
In God’s child we are all children (co-heirs with him, as St. Paul says). That means that God cannot let go of us, even if he wants to, even if, like any parent, he is disappointed or even angry with us at times. But he can never change the fact that we are his children. He has accepted that in Jesus, that is what we believe. So we are bold enough to say in the baptismal rite, “You are marked as Christ’s own for ever.”
On the days when I am down and questioning my own worth I need these words. They are my very life. I invite you to make them yours as well.
In Eugene Peterson’s translation (The Message):
What marvelous love the Father has extended to us! Just look at it—we’re called children of God! That’s who we really are.
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
January 1: Holy Name Day
Today we celebrate Jesus’ circumcision and naming, and, because of that, it’s an important day for us to remember that Jesus was a Jew. I suppose that seems to state the obvious, but it has been a fact forgotten too frequently in the church.
We do it even in his name that we celebrate today. We use the English version of the Greek version of his name. His name was actually Joshua (the English version of Jeshua). This is the name that means “God saves.” In being given this name, he wasn’t being given a unique name at all, as Peter Peters reminded us in church two Sundays ago. He was, however, named after a long-time ancestor—Joshua, the leader of Israel after the death of Moses. And therefore (because of what the name means and his ancestor) the name is heavily symbolic.
Today was our day to have my immediate family for dinner. We ate well and played some games. My oldest niece and her boyfriend (and new baby) stayed a bit longer than the others. They wanted to play “the Game of Life” with us. It has always been one of my favorites, and I suppose it too is symbolic to play on New Year’s Day.
Of course, you win the Game of Life by amassing the most worth, as in wealth. That is far too often how we think we are to play the game of life, and indeed how we play it. Even the Church Pension Fund spends inordinate amounts of time trying to convince we clergy about how much wealth we need to amass to be able to “afford” retirement. It is good advice on the one hand and playing into the game on the other.
Today offers us a different way to play the game of life—the way of Jesus and a God who saves. In this way of playing we may amass wealth (although the more we amass the more responsible we are for sharing it) but that it never, ever the reason for living, and certainly not the measure of our worth. Only the love of God is the measure of our worth in our way of following Jesus. This was also the way followed by his ancestors, from whom he received his name. Not a bad thing to remember today and all the days ahead.
We do it even in his name that we celebrate today. We use the English version of the Greek version of his name. His name was actually Joshua (the English version of Jeshua). This is the name that means “God saves.” In being given this name, he wasn’t being given a unique name at all, as Peter Peters reminded us in church two Sundays ago. He was, however, named after a long-time ancestor—Joshua, the leader of Israel after the death of Moses. And therefore (because of what the name means and his ancestor) the name is heavily symbolic.
Today was our day to have my immediate family for dinner. We ate well and played some games. My oldest niece and her boyfriend (and new baby) stayed a bit longer than the others. They wanted to play “the Game of Life” with us. It has always been one of my favorites, and I suppose it too is symbolic to play on New Year’s Day.
Of course, you win the Game of Life by amassing the most worth, as in wealth. That is far too often how we think we are to play the game of life, and indeed how we play it. Even the Church Pension Fund spends inordinate amounts of time trying to convince we clergy about how much wealth we need to amass to be able to “afford” retirement. It is good advice on the one hand and playing into the game on the other.
Today offers us a different way to play the game of life—the way of Jesus and a God who saves. In this way of playing we may amass wealth (although the more we amass the more responsible we are for sharing it) but that it never, ever the reason for living, and certainly not the measure of our worth. Only the love of God is the measure of our worth in our way of following Jesus. This was also the way followed by his ancestors, from whom he received his name. Not a bad thing to remember today and all the days ahead.
Monday, December 31, 2007
December 31: the 7th Day of Christmas
The Church does not really know a celebration of the secular new year, although popular versions of it have arisen, including “Watch Night” services. Today is “just” the seventh day of Christmas. Our new year was Advent 1 and resolutions belong in Lent. Tomorrow is the eighth day of Christmas, the Feast of the Holy Name, the day Jesus would have been circumcised and named.
Yet here’s a bit of a reflection on the new year from John Mason Neale, a 19th century Church of England priest. It’s from a sermon on the well-known Ecclesiastes text, “There is a time to be born and a time to die…” If Neale seems pessimistic about the year that is past, and about the inner life, it should be known that his was a life full of suffering, much of it at the hands of the church:
And now look at the two years: the poor old worn-out year, that had seen so much sorrow and suffering and sickness and sin, and [will be] gathered to its fathers at midnight, and the new year, so full of hope and vigor and expectation, as yet. There [is] a time to die for the one; there is a time to be born for the other.
I cannot tell—which of us can tell?—whether it may please God that this year we [are now entering] shall be one of more rest and quietness to us than the last. It ought not to matter. In whatever situation it pleases God to place us, there we know that we are given the opportunity, if we will, of working out our own salvation. Yet, I trust God may make our enemies to be at peace with us. We have all of us enemies enough in our own hearts, I am quite sure, to take up all our time and all our thoughts, without their being thus distracted. For this I have prayed earnestly, that the Prince of Peace, at whose birth, when he came into the world, peace was sung by the angels, and who when he was going out of the world, bequeathed peace to his apostles, may give peace in our time: peace, not from strife within ourselves, for that, while we live in the flesh, we always must have, but peace from earthly enemies here, and, in the world to come, that perfect peace which can never—no not for one moment—be broken, because Jerusalem is the vision of peace.
It may sound like very bad news that we will always have strife in our own hearts. Yet I believe that is the truth. Wrestling, even struggling, with life is a large part of being human. Yet glimpses of peace and experiences of centeredness are also possible, and we should accept them and rejoice in them when they come. So let us also pray for those times amid the struggle within of the coming year.
Yet here’s a bit of a reflection on the new year from John Mason Neale, a 19th century Church of England priest. It’s from a sermon on the well-known Ecclesiastes text, “There is a time to be born and a time to die…” If Neale seems pessimistic about the year that is past, and about the inner life, it should be known that his was a life full of suffering, much of it at the hands of the church:
And now look at the two years: the poor old worn-out year, that had seen so much sorrow and suffering and sickness and sin, and [will be] gathered to its fathers at midnight, and the new year, so full of hope and vigor and expectation, as yet. There [is] a time to die for the one; there is a time to be born for the other.
I cannot tell—which of us can tell?—whether it may please God that this year we [are now entering] shall be one of more rest and quietness to us than the last. It ought not to matter. In whatever situation it pleases God to place us, there we know that we are given the opportunity, if we will, of working out our own salvation. Yet, I trust God may make our enemies to be at peace with us. We have all of us enemies enough in our own hearts, I am quite sure, to take up all our time and all our thoughts, without their being thus distracted. For this I have prayed earnestly, that the Prince of Peace, at whose birth, when he came into the world, peace was sung by the angels, and who when he was going out of the world, bequeathed peace to his apostles, may give peace in our time: peace, not from strife within ourselves, for that, while we live in the flesh, we always must have, but peace from earthly enemies here, and, in the world to come, that perfect peace which can never—no not for one moment—be broken, because Jerusalem is the vision of peace.
It may sound like very bad news that we will always have strife in our own hearts. Yet I believe that is the truth. Wrestling, even struggling, with life is a large part of being human. Yet glimpses of peace and experiences of centeredness are also possible, and we should accept them and rejoice in them when they come. So let us also pray for those times amid the struggle within of the coming year.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
December 30: The Word was Home
This morning’s Gospel was John’s magnificent poem that begins his Gospel, including those stunning words, “The Word was made flesh and dwelled among us,” or, as I like to translate, “The Word was made flesh and made a neighborhood with us.” As I said Christmas Eve, “Christmas is the Feast of God’s Homecoming.”
The Word at home today was a Christmas gathering of one half of my extended family—the Johnson’s. I remember these from as early as I can remember. They began as Christmas morning breakfast at my grandmother’s in the sixties. After her death, and really ever since, they have been the weekend after Christmas. For years presiding over the gathering was my great-grandmother Pearl. After ten years of her being gone I still miss her. Now my mother is the great grandmother with both her greats—Scotty and Teagan—there. The absence of my cousin Jeff for the first time since his death was felt deeply. His wife and kids came, which was a wonderful blessing. Besides brand new Teagan there was a cousin with a brand new baby and two more on the way. A new generation of kids were everywhere.
I would be the first to admit that family is not always all that it is cracked up to be, and mine is certainly as dysfunctional as most others I know. Yet there we were for an afternoon in our own little neighborhood and most was right with the world. And I kept thinking about the Word made flesh and coming home among these people, not just these people, obviously, but yes among these people. Flaws and struggles and sadness mingled in the room with love and laughter and caring. That’s probably the most for which any family or other manifestation of “neighborhood” could ask. And it is where came and comes to hang his hat. My, my, it can really take your breath away if you think about it.
The Word at home today was a Christmas gathering of one half of my extended family—the Johnson’s. I remember these from as early as I can remember. They began as Christmas morning breakfast at my grandmother’s in the sixties. After her death, and really ever since, they have been the weekend after Christmas. For years presiding over the gathering was my great-grandmother Pearl. After ten years of her being gone I still miss her. Now my mother is the great grandmother with both her greats—Scotty and Teagan—there. The absence of my cousin Jeff for the first time since his death was felt deeply. His wife and kids came, which was a wonderful blessing. Besides brand new Teagan there was a cousin with a brand new baby and two more on the way. A new generation of kids were everywhere.
I would be the first to admit that family is not always all that it is cracked up to be, and mine is certainly as dysfunctional as most others I know. Yet there we were for an afternoon in our own little neighborhood and most was right with the world. And I kept thinking about the Word made flesh and coming home among these people, not just these people, obviously, but yes among these people. Flaws and struggles and sadness mingled in the room with love and laughter and caring. That’s probably the most for which any family or other manifestation of “neighborhood” could ask. And it is where came and comes to hang his hat. My, my, it can really take your breath away if you think about it.
The picture is of my sister and I with the oldest of the next generation—Scotty.
Happy Sixth Day of Christmas!
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