Max the Dog Meets Satan

A sermon preached at Faith Episcopal Church, August 28, 2005

A month or so ago I maligned my poor little dog Max’s reputation in a sermon on wisdom. Max had tried to engage a bull in a game of “chase me around the pasture” which seemed like a very unwise thing to do. Poor Max, being used to teach through negative example. Well, today Max is vindicated and I must give his fleeting good behavior its proper due. One day after a large grocery shopping trip, I was industriously putting things away in the kitchen, unaware that one of the bags had been overlooked and still sat on the floor just inside the front door. Unfortunately, it was a bag with a steak in it. Of course, Max, being a dog, took this as “This is my lucky day!” and in no time had it out of the wrapper and was all set to enjoy his treat when from somewhere wisdom struck that dog. I became aware of this drama when Max entered the kitchen, with the steak in his mouth, whimpering and put it on the floor at my feet. Animal behaviorists could have a field day with this act of self-denial and an ability to anticipate unpleasant consequences. I would prefer to see Max as a canine biblical scholar who has done in depth research on today’s passage – “Get behind me, Satan!” Of course, then he ate my shoe. Oh well, he’s a work in progress.

Today’s Gospel from Matthew is a very rich text. Matthew communicates a lot, some of which are confusing. Peter’s triumph of last week when he identified Jesus as the Christ was very heady. Like little Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter movies, he’s always got his hand up in the air ready with the right answer to the question. Peter’s only problem is that he doesn’t really know what his right answer means. And then to top is off, he gets full of himself and when Jesus begins to reveal that his being “The Christ” means his eventual death in Jerusalem, Peter pulls him aside and rebukes him. These two actions are very patronizing and Jesus will have none of it. He recognized the voice of the Tempter in what Peter was offering. Peter is saying, “Be the Christ, enjoy it, it doesn’t have to be scary.” Well, Jesus knows that it does and he knows that his date with Good Friday is what we need in order to learn. Peter and the others Disciples (that means us) are not to guide or possess Jesus, we are to follow him. Peter thinks in a very human way, identifying what he thinks will make him happy. This is a good reminder to us – God’s definition of ‘happy’ and our definition of ‘happy’ are not the same thing.

It is not surprising that it has taken human awareness 2000 years to catch up with some interesting affirmation of today’s scripture. Daniel Gilbert, professor of Psychology from Harvard and three colleagues from the fields of psychology and economics have been studying emotional and behavioral prediction. Gilbert simplifies this by saying that he studies happiness. He does so by analyzing “the decision-making process that shapes our sense of well-being. How do we predict what will make us happy or unhappy – and then how do we feel after the actual experience?” His research shows that we have a clear propensity for being wrong, no matter how many times we act out the same scenario. We over-anticipate happiness and satisfaction as we want or pursue something while at the same time over-anticipating our despair if we do not get what we want. It’s not as complicated as that sounds. We continuously think that some success or material possession will make us finally happy. The reality that follows is that whatever happiness comes, it is fleeting. We adjust to having the beautiful new apartment, car or new job and soon no longer derive the eagerly anticipated fulfillment from it. Then we start to look for something new to fulfill us. The bloom is off the rose and the grass is greener somewhere else. Get behind me Satan!

A very interesting portion of this research comes from the two economists involved. While it is understandable and true that grinding poverty will make you desperately unhappy, the inverse is not true. Fabulous wealth does not make one proportionally happy. The research shows that being lifted out of poverty to a moderate level of comfort and resources will provide enduring satisfaction but beyond that point there is no difference. Affluence beyond a middle class level of comfort does not afford people greater happiness. The amount of effort that goes into the pursuit of greater wealth in actuality detracts from the things that do provide lasting pleasure like social interaction and friendships.

None of this is earth shaking and boils down to this – what we think we want is often not worth what we lose if we get it. What these brainy people have been asking is why don’t we learn this? And what would life look like if we did? Some of the answers to that last question look like “We’d be satisfied with less.” “We would put resources into lifting people out of poverty instead of insisting that more wealth at the top of the heap will somehow spread happiness.”

Jesus teachings provide the counter cultural voice to what makes us happy. He speaks of true fulfillment coming from a denial of self. The Greek word psyche is translated here as life but it doesn’t just mean life as opposed to death. It is a rich word that means life and soul and self. Focus on the self will not make us happy, it will not enhance our psyche. Only by giving of ourselves can we approach God’s definition of happiness. Jesus enjoys using paradoxical statements – “Those who want to save their life will lose it and those who lose their life for my sake will save it.” This is counter intuitive, like learning to ski. Your instinct is to keep yourself from falling by leaning back, against gravity. Then your instructor shouts at you “Push your shins into your boots and lean downhill” And you think – “Right, that will make me feel safe and keep me from becoming a human snowball!” Your first impulse takes over and you lean back, away from the sensation of falling and promptly wipe out. Eventually you try to do what you are being told et voilà! As you give into the slope and gravity and momentum, you find your balance, you stop falling – your life is saved. It works but on the surface, it doesn’t make sense.

Biblical scholar Lamar Williamson writes of these “paradoxes as attacking a fundamental assumption of human existence. A person can never possess his own life.” Our lives are not ours to possess because we all belong to God our lives are more for others than for ourselves.

But I want to be happy for myself. If I give up what I want for the sake of another how can I assure my own security and happiness. For Christians, called to know ourselves by our relatedness to Christ and therefore all others, this seeking of fulfillment by and for ourselves is the voice of the Tempter to which we are to say “I put you behind me, even if on the surface, it doesn’t make sense.” The resurrection is all the proof that we need that our reward, true happiness, peace and fulfillment comes after giving of ourselves, letting go of seeking for ourselves only.

There are so many necessary lessons for the world today in this teaching. The more we seek safety and security by use of force, the more elusive it is. If the idea of striving for self-autonomy is contrary to Jesus teachings for individuals, then it is contrary also on a collective level. What then might this paradox look like for institutions and governments? I don’t pretend to have complete answers to that but if this teaching is applied then our actions cannot be based solely on what we think we want for ourselves. If we do that, we will surely lose a great deal. The temptation of power and dominance is hard to resist, especially if you have the means to try it. But will we survive if we don’t dare to try Jesus way? We can live for others, we can lean downhill and be ok, we can even give back that juicy steak, so temptingly left by the front door.

A Rock by Any Other Name

A sermon preached at Faith Episcopal Church, August 21, 2005.

What do the Washington National Cathedral, the Empire State Building, the Pentagon, and the Biltmore, that outrageous Vanderbilt estate in Ashville, NC, all have in common? They are all made out of Indiana limestone. That’s right – that part of the country where Melanie is about to begin her graduate school studies is honeycombed with limestone quarries. The particular stone from those quarries is known as freestone – meaning that is has no grain or direction. That makes it especially suited for carving and decorative stone work – it makes good gargoyles! Every year some 2.7 million cubic feet worth of Indiana ends up somewhere else. It crops up everywhere – Chicago city hall, the Washington Holocaust Museum, the Department of Commerce along with many statehouses and mansions of other great American robber barons. When you have an important building to build, trust Indiana limestone!

“Listen to me, you that pursue righteousness, you that seek the Lord. Look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug.” Isaiah’s words go on to refer to Abraham and Sarah as the genetic quarry from which the people of Israel were dug. Abraham and Sarah’s story, found in the Book of Genesis, provides a blueprint for relating to God. Trust makes up a big part of their story. They trusted that God was truly calling them into a new life in a new place for a purpose. Their faith was deep enough to allow mystery and the power of the infinite and the implausible to become real. Abraham was also able to let go of the son he held most dear and future that had been long promised and assume that God’s will was being done. That is the faith quarry from which we come. All of those qualities rest within us and can be drawn out and drawn on when they are needed. The good thing about this quarry is that perfection was not one its qualities. Abraham proved to be fearful and dishonest; Sarah was jealous and spiteful. And yet, God didn’t let their failings define them. God built with their best qualities. And while their weaker moments give us comfort that we too are worthy of God’s favor, it is a reflection of their faith and trust in God that we hope to find in ourselves.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus also finds a rock on which to build. Many scholars believe that this is a reflection of a later, post-resurrection experience. No where else in the Gospels does Jesus refer to creating the church. He consistently sought to return the faith of Israel to its original intent. He sought to overturn and redirect what he saw as errant practices by the Jewish leaders of his day. But the truth is that by the time Matthew’s Gospel was written, the church already existed and Peter was cast as the new Abraham. What makes Peter “the rock” other than his name – Petros, Pierre. We lose that translation in English because Peter doesn’t immediately make a word image of “rock.” That is why in Clarence Jordan’s wonderful translation known as the Cotton Patch Gospels – which sets Jesus’ life in Georgia in the 1960s – has Jesus calling Peter “Rock” in good ole boy fashion. Jordan reclaimed the original meaning of Peter’s name.

When I read of this story there are always three images that come together for me. The first is Caeserea Philippi – the region mentioned in today’s reading. It’s one of the places that you visit with you do Israel. The striking feature is the sacred cave dedicated to the worship of Pan – that naughty little Roman god. In part, Peter is proclaiming Jesus supremacy over the pagan gods of the Empire, if not the Empire itself. It’s a cool place.

The next image is the charming little grey stone church built on the shores of the Sea of Gallilee – known as the Church of Peter’s Primacy. It’s the site dedicated to this idea of Peter as the quarry from which the church draws its building stones.

What makes Peter a good quarry? We don’t have the benefit of the total relationship between Jesus and Peter, we mostly have glimpses of Peter as the impetuous, somewhat dense, ultimately fallible yet intuitively right about the one he proclaimed as Lord. In the Gospel story two week ago, he excitedly jumped out of the boat and tried to walk toward Jesus on the water – when he realized what he was doing he couldn’t do it any more. Jesus called his faith little – I think Peter’s faith is enormous – it’s just trapped in a human body. He had the ability to just know something is true even if it is implausible. He runs into trouble when he tries to manifest the truth of Jesus in his own life – to live as if the kingdom has come. Later in Peter’s ministry, after assuming for some time that the message of Jesus was meant only for Jews, his mind was opened to the message that not only are all foods clean and acceptable, but all people are acceptable to God – he said “Truly I perceive that God shows no partiality.” The world still needs Peter the Rock to blurt out the truth.

The final image that comes to me from this story is St. Peter’s Square in Rome. It is an expression of the explosive spread of the Church. It is so grand and grandiose that in comparison to the little stone church on the shores of the Sea of Gallilee it boggles the mind and has often boggled the message. The church has become equal parts good and evil, brilliantly intuitive and demonically stupid. What has happened to the faith of the simple fisherman?

This week the world lost another rock, Brother Roger, the founder of the Taize community in France. In 1940, as a young Swiss priest, Roger came to this picture perfect village in Burgundy and began a lifetime of work teaching peace, reconciliation and ecumenical welcome. Last Tuesday night, the 90 year old Frere Roger was at the evening prayer service. The church was filled with young people singing the familiar Taize chants when a woman approached him and stabbed him death. Ironically, his health had precluded his joining Pope Benedict in Cologne, Germany this week. He had stayed home, too frail to make the journey and this rock, this quarry of love and peace died by the violence that grips our world. I can’t help but wonder whether Brother Roger’s spirit kept him home for this one last lesson to us – how very Jesus of him. Did his death say to us – from which quarry will you cut your rocks – the quarry of beautiful shining stones of peace or from the quarry of violence and war?

As Christians, we have all of these different expressions of quarry on which we can draw. Abraham and Sarah, Peter, Brother Roger and the peace of the Taize community, and our ultimate source – God as known to us in Jesus Christ. We are made of the stones of faithfulness, trust, compassion and love as well as the stones of fear and violence. Jesus and Brother Roger died so that we might know enough to make the choice.

The stones cut from the quarries in Indiana have no choice in how or where they are used but you do. What kind of a quarry will you be for the world beginning today? What is God building out of you?

The Canaanite Woman and Sojourner Truth

A Sermon preached at Faith Episcopal on August 14, 2005.

When I first read the readings selected for a Sunday, I like to start with the questions that come to mind when I hear them. Questions help me find the way into a text. This morning there is a question that I have to blurt right out before I can even get started. “What was going on with Jesus?” Do I believe that he would say something like that - calling that woman a dog? No, I don’t. This is not the Jesus who four chapters earlier in the Gospel of Matthew said “Come to me, all you that are weary and carry heavy burdens and I will give you rest.” Or who answers “Who is my neighbor?” with the parable of the Good Samaritan. This is not the same Jesus who challenged the scribes and Pharisees and charged them with locking people out of the kingdom of heaven.

This is the kind of story that biblical scholars interpret in many ways, they come with all kinds of justification for the exclusivity of the attitude and why Jesus would have called this woman a dog. While I don’t believe that Jesus needs me to make excuses or defend him we have to find a way to be with these words. I think we have a few choices, we can either decide that Jesus did say it and that we just don’t understand it; we can dismiss it or we can engage the text for what it will teach us knowing that the author of the Gospel may have had a particular point to make.

I am prepared to think that Jesus may have been having a bad day, but the Canaanite woman was at the top of her game. She provides a model for all people who are excluded and dismissed. It is her willingness to take a risk and challenge Jesus, one whom she has already acknowledged in fairly exalted terms. She did not allow Jesus to deny her worth as someone created in the image of God and therefore deserving of God’s attention and blessing.

The witness of the Canaanite woman mirrors the words to the eunuch in Isaiah. It is clear that even those who are culturally unwelcome and ritually impure find welcome in God’s embrace if they seek it. This radical hospitality of God is often a challenge for us. It helps me a bit that even Jesus stumbled over it. This gutsy woman refused to accept that she and her daughter were not worthy. She refused to fall into the sin of sloth – one of the seven deadlies.

Sloth is a misunderstood sin. We tend to associate it with laziness, inactivity, like the animal that bears its name. This definition is only part of the understanding of why sloth is a sin. It is spiritual laziness, not being responsible for the image of God we hold within us. It can be a rejection of that gift. I often quote Clark Williamson, my theology professor and today he comes to my rescue once again because he has a broader definition of sloth that is pertinent today. He claims that sloth is accepting your own oppression or being complicit in your own marginalization. I love the Canaanite woman because she would not be slothful.

Over the centuries between Jesus’ time and modern times, plenty of people have meekly accepted being labeled and dehumanized. There are also extraordinary examples of those who have raised their voices in objection to having their inherent worth ignored. It the true spirit of the Canaanite woman, Sojourner Truth’s voice rings proudly more than 150 years after her speech to a women’s rights convention in 1851. Marcia Riggs has edited a volume called Can I get a witness; Prophetic Religious Voices of African American Women and she says this about Sojourner Truth. “The passage of time has not eroded the relevance of her speech because her words emanated from the heart of an oppressed people. She challenged the definition of womanhood that excluded black women as she modeled the strength and resilience of black femininity.” This is a small bit from her famous speech, “Ain’t I a woman?”

“That man over there says women need to be helped into carriages and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man – when I could get it – and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen the most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?”

What a woman! I would like to have been able to meet her. Actually, I think she’s alive and well and fighting the good fight in Afghanistan teaching girls who lost years of learning to oppressors who said that they were unworthy of education and unfit to be seen in public. Sojourner Truth’s spirit speaks through women in Iraq who are working hard to keep from being denied their role in society. They are resisting being hidden behind the burkahs and walls of Islamic sharia law.

Religion, race and gender have usually been the reasons for marginalization. The Canaanite woman was considered outside of God’s grace because she was a part of a pagan culture. She was labeled and was not an individual. That is how stereotyping and prejudice works. It is uncommonly easy to accept the things that are said about us. How many children accept that they are incapable or unintelligent because they believed someone who dismissed them or told them they were stupid. How often has our youth obsessed culture claimed that human usefulness diminishes with age. Vibrant communities like the Covington are witness to the treasure trove of wisdom and experience that people over the age of 55 represent. The political and economic power of America’s older population rings with Sojourner Truth’s reasoning – “Ain’t I somebody you should listen to?”

It took people a long time to listen to Sojourner Truth. Black women were told to wait during the Civil Rights movement. The men in charge were afraid that the “women’s issue” would interfere with the greater work at hand. Somehow in the midst of great social change – the same old patterns cropped up. Women were told that it just wasn’t their time yet. Someone decided that they weren’t as important. Another group was in greater need of freedom and that was a statement of comparative worth. To determine that one group is worth more than another is to engage in the sin of arrogance or pride – to accept such judgment is sloth. The Canaanite woman and Sojourner Truth both said, “Don’t say I’m not important!”

Who’s important today? What decides importance? Is it what you do or the powerful friends you have? Is it that you are a fellow human on this mortal journey or the quantity of natural resources within your nation’s borders? Is it the color of your skin or your age or your level of education? The message of Jesus is that none of that matters. His encounter with the Canaanite woman proclaims the importance of the image of God within. He saw it when she stood in front of him with her hands on her hips proclaiming. “Ain’t I a woman-child of God?”

Don't make God send the big fish.

A sermon preached at Faith Episcopal Church, August 7, 2005

Jonah is the most reluctant prophet in the Bible. Others had been hesitant, like Moses who tried to get out of confronting Pharaoh by pointing out to God that he was “slow of speech.” God said “Not a problem.” Moses went. Jeremiah thought being a boy disqualified him for prophetic service. But he set about to do God’s work. The prophet Amos told the king – I’m not a prophet or a prophet’s son, I’m a herdsman and a dresser of sycamore trees. But the Lord told me to speak, so here it is… Then we have Jonah.

As his story opens, we know nothing about Jonah except his father’s name – and we know that God has a plan for Jonah. Right off the bat, God says, “Go to Ninevah and tell them that I know what they’ve been up to and I’m not happy.” Now very often in the Bible, when God’s begins a conversation with someone, they respond with “Here I am, Lord.” Not Jonah, he runs out the back door, down to the harbor and hops a freighter to Tarshish. He’s trying to run away from God. Silly man.

God, not easily fooled, sends a storm to remind Jonah of who’s who and what’s what. The poor sailors are getting bounced around by this storm and the boat is about break apart. So they throw their cargo overboard to lighten the boat. Jonah meanwhile is managing to sleep through the excitement until the captain wakes him up and asks him to call upon his god to help them. In desperation, the sailors take out something like a ouija board to figure out what – or who – has brought this storm down on them and low and behold, it spells out Jonah. They drag him up on deck and say “who are you?” He says, I’m a Hebrew and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land.” The sailors realize that they are the innocent bystanders caught in Jonah’s personal problem with God. Jonah at least has the good graces to suggest that they throw him overboard. The sailors consider the strength of the storm and figure that they don’t want this god mad at them so they try to row out of trouble but as you might expect, they can’t. Finally they figure that Jonah has to go but first they cry out to God saying “just know that we don’t want to do this, but we have no choice, please don’t hold it against us.” And over the side he goes.

Now every kid in Sunday School knows what happens next – cue the big fish! Jonah spends three days and three nights in the belly of the fish – praying up a storm. Eventually, God has a word with the fish and it hurls Jonah up onto the beach. I’m picturing Bill Murray in this role as God bends down and says, “Let’s try that again. Go to Ninevah.” And Jonah, who doesn’t need to be swallowed by a fish twice to figure things out goes to Ninevah. It would appear that God has an interesting take on that gift of free will.

Once in that fabled city, Jonah he begins to shares God’s plan to destroy the city within forty days unless they quit being so evil and violent. The greatest miracle of Jonah’s story is that the people of Ninevah, from the king on down, listened and did exactly what God wanted – they repented of their evil ways. Since God’s desire was for the people to change, once they had, God was satisfied and commuted their sentence. Jonah, however was furious at this turn of events and says “This is why I didn’t want to do this; I knew that you would do this. You drag me all over creation and then you don’t even obliterate them. Just kill me now!” God’s lesson of obedience and mercy falls on deaf ears and a stubborn heart. Jonah remains the only truly successful prophet in the Bible and he can’t stand it.

At some point Jonah would have done well to remember Ps. 139. “Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.” Bottom line – you can run from God but you can’t hide.

We do have free will, and God will let us exercise it. But when God wants your attention, your free will is not the last word. Free will doesn’t mean that God has to play by your rules. God’s usual tactic is to see to it that the places in which you chose to hide, become inhospitable to you. If you’re ignoring God, storms will rage around you and your surroundings might begin to resemble the insides of a big fish. The smartest thing you can do is to exercise your free will and go along with God.

This weekend marks my one year anniversary of coming to California and to Faith Episcopal. I learned to quit running from God a long time ago. It hasn’t always made my life easy, but it’s certainly never dull. How else would one get from a gothic cathedral in Paris to a store front church in Orange County and know that that’s a good thing? In some ways, the ministry at the Cathedral had become to easy for me, while there was good that I was doing, it was time to be somewhere else. I tried to ignore God, just at I had ignored God when I denied the pull in my heart to go to seminary. I remember saying, “God, you big kidder, I’ve got other things to do!” God’s next move was to see to it that all of those other things that I thought were so important, suddenly weren’t there any more. My work, my hobbies and eventually my carefully maintained illusions. As I lay there on the beach gasping for air, God said, “OK, Let’s try that again. Go to seminary.” Like Jonah, I got up and went.

Not everyone has that kind of direction changing encounter with God. There are much more subtle ways to ignore God and God’s will. There’s been much written about what attracts young people to violent ideologies. I saw an article last week about the pervasive European rejection of traditional religion – mainly Christianity and the difficultly that has created as they struggle to live with a thriving, growing Islamic population. When people no longer come together in some sort of community of faith there is no regular forum to be reminded of love of neighbor, ethics and a connection to Spirit. The void that that creates will be filled with something – whether its despair or an alternative philosophy either positive or dangerous. I witnessed it in France and know that it is also true of England. When people turn their backs on relationship with God, souls get hungry.

While God is the ultimate mystery, God is not that mysterious. God loves you and wants to have a relationship with you. God loves everybody else too and wants you to remember that and treat them as if they were God’s beloved. When you think about it, that’s pretty much the message God asked Jonah to take to Ninevah, minus the threat of annihilation.

We’ve all got a little bit of Jonah in us. Little moments in which we cover our ears so we don’t have to hear what God would have us do or be. But take heart, God is persistent and will find lots of creative ways to get you to Ninevah. Listen to God and spend some time considering what God’s will might look like, lived out in your life. Then don’t wait, don’t make God send in the big fish. Go willingly, because when God’s purpose for your life is served, the coming of the Kingdom is just that much closer.