VicarDoodle Sermons

A Mindset of Love

2010-05-02T11:22:00.000-07:00

A sermon preached at Faith Episcopal Church on May 2, 2010

We continue our skipping around in time courtesy of the Gospel of John. Today we revisit the Gospel reading heard every Maundy Thursday – Jesus has washed the feet of his disciples, much to their discomfort – it is so unseemly and humble a task for someone they look up to. I’ll bet that there were some thought along the line of – do I want to be known as a follower someone who does the menial work of a servant? The reason that Jesus did the work of a servant was, of course, to teach them something new. “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” I doubt that that helped them to feel any more comfortable – after all, he equated washing someone’s feet to love. How would they do that?

Oddly enough, it was the voice of Clint Eastwood, in one of his most iconic roles that clarified things for me. And no, Jesus didn’t say “Go ahead, make my day.” I was thinking of him as the man with no name in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. As he and Eli Wallach, who played the Ugly, reached the place where gold they were seeking had been buried Clint, in his usual sardonic style said, “There are two kinds of people in the world, those with loaded guns and those who dig. You dig.”
It’s surprising true how often things are neatly put into one of two categories. I even found a website dedicated to cataloging such pithy observations. There are two kinds of people in the world: Pessimists and Optimists; those who make things complicated, and those who make things simple.
“There are two kinds of people in the world – those who walk into a room and say, ‘There you are!’ – and those who say, ‘Here I am!’ ”
There are two types of vessels on the sea - submarines and targets.
There are three kinds of people in the world, those who are good at math and those who aren’t.

Dr. Carol Dweck, a professor of psychology at Stanford has a really important addition to these categories. In her book Mindset; The New Psychology of Success she describes the two basic mindsets that appear to be fairly universal. She came to identify these as mindsets after an experiment involving children and some challenging puzzles. Some of the kids were excited when they had to work to figure things out, and getting it wrong was just part of the learning process. Her first thought was, “What’s wrong with them?” It appeared that these kids “knew that human qualities such as intellectual skills, could be cultivated through effort. And that’s what they were doing – getting smarter. Nor only weren’t they discouraged by failure, they didn’t even think they were failing. They thought they were learning.
I (meaning Dr. Dweck), on the other hand, thought human qualities were carved in stone. You were smart or you weren’t and failure meant you weren’t. It was that simple. If you could arrange successes and avoid failures (at all costs), you could stay smart. Struggles, mistakes and perseverance were just not part of this picture.”

Dr. Dweck has taken this observation and identified it all in areas of life. She calls them the fixed mindset and the growth mindset. Children, who are constantly told that they are smart and that things come to them naturally, tend to be of the fixed mindset. Those who are praised for the effort that they put into something develop the growth mindset and the implications are huge. The naturally gifted (and so repeatedly identified as such) children tend not do well when they come up against something that they have trouble with. They often give up or cheat when they might fail at something. She gives the examples of a couple of young Pulitzer Prize winning journalists. Very early in their careers they produces their winning stories which later turned out to have been made up – they could not give themselves time to learn on the job – they had to prove that they perfect or they were nothing.
This phenomenon shows up clearly with athletes. John McEnroe was naturally gifted – he was the best because he had the best skills – he didn’t have to work at it. The problems came when he wasn’t doing well – he turned into John McEnroe – throwing tantrums, blaming everyone and everything – mostly being terrified and unhappy. He thought that his talent was a fixed thing – it was what it was and nothing could change it. Michael Jordan on the other hand – equally gifted physically rose to the top and stayed there because he believed that he could always be getting better. No one worked harder than he did. The older and slower he got, the harder he worked on other aspects of his game and remained great. Losing a game was simply something that showed him what he needed to work on.

These mindsets are present in our ideas about love. Dr. Dweck did a lot of interviewing of people about relationships and everyone had a story about having been dumped. The follow up questions gave evidence of how people approached such a painful experience. As with sports, some folks believed that love was a fixed thing and if it was real, it should never need to be work on. She said, “When people had the fixed mindset, they felt judged and labeled by the rejections. Permanently labeled. It was as though a verdict had been handed down and branded on their foreheads: UNLOBABLE! And they lashed out.” Dr. Dweck noted, however, that people with a growth mindset have little taste for vengeance. For them such experiences are about understanding, forgiving, and moving on. “Although they were often deeply hurt by what happened, they wanted to learn from it.

So what does this have to do with Jesus commandment to love one another as he loved us? We have to ask ourselves some questions here – first, do we think that love is something that is it either there or not? Do we automatically know how to do or can we learn it, can we get better at it? No surprise here, I believe that it is the latter. In fact there may be few things for which we all have to put effort in like this one. It is hard; it seems contrary to all of our survival impulses. In a culture that describes success as being better than someone or everyone else this will not be natural to most of us. It was hard for Jesus’ disciples to see nobility in a task consigned to society’s losers.

This love as Jesus described it is not an emotion it’s a mindset, it’s a decision with follow through that we can learn. To do so will take as much practice as learning any new skill. The important thing will be the mindset that we have about this Christian love. I invite you to see it as an adventure in growing spiritually that will bring you to places of unimagined peace and satisfaction. We can all become better Christians – the Kingdom of Love is certainly worth the effort.

Telling it in six words

2010-04-21T11:52:00.000-07:00

A sermon preached on April 11, 2010.

Smith Magazine is the on-line home of the ‘six word memoir’ project. A couple of years ago, I pulled an article out of the LATimes about it and stuck it in my “sermon idea” folder. The article said that legend has it Ernest Hemingway was challenged to write a novel in six words. What he came up with was, “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

Inspired, Larry Smith decided to challenge people to write their own story in six words and he was bowled over by the response. So he decided to start the online magazine and primed the pump with a couple celebrity offerings: Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love wrote “Me see world! Me write stories!”, and celebrity chef Mario Batali submitted “Brought to a boil, often!” I was hooked, so I read more of the entries from ordinary folk like you and me.

Here are a few I particularly liked. “Wasn’t born a redhead; fixed that.” “Became my mother. Please shoot me.” There were a few off beat, funny ones, too, like: “One tooth, one cavity, life’s cruel.” “Put whole self in, shoot about.” “It’s pretty high. You go first.” “Should not have eaten those mushrooms.”
Still others were more existential; “My second grade teacher was right.” “Took scenic route, got in late.” Finally, there were some that were very poignant and Hemingwayesque, “Was father, boys died, still sad.”

Of course, today we are talking about Thomas, so in the spirit of Smith Magazine, I decided to think of what his six word saga might be. Here is what I came up with: “Must see to believe. My God!”

I found myself thinking about Thomas for a couple of weeks leading up to Easter. Every preacher knows he’s coming on this Sunday and after a while, it’s hard to find anything new to say about him. But interestingly, this little Hemingway exercise did get me focused on a new thought, and I began to wonder if Thomas really doubted Jesus. Perhaps he was not responding at all to the notion that Jesus might have risen from the dead but was merely reacting to the messengers themselves, whose credibility he might have found suspect. After all, it could be argued that they all shared the same six word biography, “I’ll follow you, till it’s hard”.

That got me to thinking about the larger question of just who all Jesus’ disciples were and the roles they played in his story. First there is his mother Mary, about whom we might write, “Curtain torn made mother to all”. And Peter, who was “Impetuous and afraid, forgiven, a Rock”. But there is also Mary Magdalen, “Cured and accepted, loved and devoted.” Are these not our stories too?

Perhaps by the end of the sermon, you will have thought what your own six word biography might be, but whatever it is, I venture it will contain at least one of the aforementioned elements. I strongly suspect, for example, that each one of us has a major event wherein we struggled mightily about whether to believe something that someone important had told us. Perhaps it was a parent, whose admonition you naturally took to heart, even as a part of you was not convinced you should believe what you were being told. Or perhaps it was a priest, or a teacher, or a mentor. We are called by God to be people of great discernment, to be loving, caring, and moral, and that requires that sometimes we question what we are being told, we wonder about someone’s credibility, we search in earnest for what we believe to be the truth. And as always, I encourage you to do that with anything I say as well!!
What about Mother Mary, Peter, and Mary Magdalene? Surely, in some way, at some time, each of us has the fabric of our lives torn, as Mary did sitting at the foot of the Cross. Matthew, Mark and Luke all tell of the curtain in the Temple being torn from top to bottom at the moment of Jesus’ death. This curtain is described in the 1st Book of Kings as this mighty linen panel that closed off the Holy of Holies – the inner sanctuary that only the high priest could enter, once a year. God dwelt in the Holy of Holies. The Roman historian Josephus noted that it was four inches thick and could not be pulled apart by horses attached to each corner. Josephus also described is having the image of the heavens on it. For this curtain to be torn by the death of Jesus frames that moment as a cosmic upheaval. The heavens were torn as they were at his baptism – something new was beginning. Obi Wan would have called it a huge disturbance in the force.

These are the moments that define our lives. When the fabric of our being is ripped in two, to the point that we thought it could not be repaired, and yet, as symbolized by Christ’s resurrection, do we not all see that the curtain is restored, not only restored but remade, re-imagined in such a way as to make it more than it was. Mary the Mother and Mary the friend were both remade at Easter.

And Peter, good old Peter, I know he resides in all of us. We know we are afraid, we know we are all forgiven for the times we allow our fear to govern our behavior, but I suspect we are not all equally convinced that we are “the Rock”. Yet this is precisely what I think Jesus was trying to tell us in his response to Peter. In Peter, the prototype of the fallible human, all of us are the Rock upon which the Church, that colony of Heaven, is built. It is only when we forget that and think we are human beings that we allow fear to control us, and for that we are forgiven, even as we are forever encouraged to remember our spiritual heritage.

And last but not least, we are Mary Magdalene, cured and accepted, devoted, and loved. We don’t speak of Grace too often in the Episcopal Church, but occasionally it is good to be reminded of God’s Grace. There is nothing we can do that can separate us from God, and if we ask forgiveness for having wandered away, we are given it. Above all, we are loved unconditionally.

So back to our good friend Thomas and the good news of the day. This is not about some fallen down skeptic, another case of a disciple we hoped might have done better failing to live up to our expectations. This is about each one of us and our responsibility to live in discernment, knowing that we will encounter gut wrenching loss in our lives, knowing we will sometimes let fear get the better of us, and knowing that we have done things we are not proud of but for which we have been forgiven. This is about becoming the Rock upon which Christ builds his Church, every day, because we know we are made of the same stuff he is. This is about questioning what others tell us, or what we even think ourselves sometimes, that does not jive with who Christ calls us to be, capable of great things.

Bare feet on holy ground

2010-03-09T14:59:00.000-08:00

A sermon preached at Faith on March 7, 2010.

This morning’s reading from Exodus is one of the most thematically rich passages in the Bible. I could probably preach a different sermon from it every Sunday for about three months. When I first read it this week, the thing that jumped out at me was “take off your shoes, you’re on holy ground.” In an instant a whole tapestry images and song lyrics swirled around me. Two of my favorite women singer-song writers, Carrie Newcomer and Mary Black have songs called Holy Ground. So I hummed for a while and enjoyed their take on holy ground. But in the middle of my musical reverie I realized that the soles of my feet were tingling and I knew why the voice from the burning bush said, “remove the sandals from your feet.” When we find holy ground, we need to get everything else out of the way – anything that comes between that thin place and our skin. We are invited to step onto those places in which the divine shines through with nothing to interrupt or muffle the experience. Moses did it and his life was changed. Once his feet came into contact with that holiness he communed with God. He learned what God wanted of him, how he was to do it and apprehended, in a somewhat cryptic way, what God is. Holy ground is the place of heightened awareness and knowing.

The problem for us is that this is Moses, star of Cecil B DeMille and Disney blockbusters and his encounter with God was way beyond the normal so how can we relate to it. Well, I want to share my holy ground/burning bush experience. It’s much more mundane. Some of you have probably heard this before, but it’s a good story. It begins in November 1992. On the Sunday before Thanksgiving, a tornado ripped through northeastern Indianapolis and the neighborhood of St. Alban’s Episcopal Church where my family and I had been active members for about fifteen years. I had just rotated off of the Vestry on which I had served as the first woman Junior Warden, which meant that I had been responsible for the building and knew how it responded to storms. I had also just completed the installation of new stained glass windows. The next morning, when I couldn’t get anyone on the phone, I decided to go and see what was going on for myself. What I saw as I drove down Emerson Avenue was shocking; it looked like the disaster it was, although mercifully contained. I would learn later that 200 homes had been damaged, 50 completely destroyed and those were mostly within a three block radius of the church. I was worried until I saw the familiar A frame structure of the church I loved so well. When I went into the church I saw that St. Alban’s had indeed escaped wrath of the tornado; the power was even back on. Fr. David Musgrave was there but was heading out to drive to Illinois to bring his daughter home for Thanksgiving. He had told the church secretary not to come in so after he left, I was there by myself checking the windows and the usual places that the roof leaked. Everything was ok, although the phone was ringing off the hook. I answered a few calls and was ready to continue on with my plans for the day. I was just about to lock the door when Dave Carlson, a volunteer fireman and member of the congregation walked up and said “Sharon, if you lock this church, there are no working bathrooms in the neighborhood.” Believe it or not, that was my “take off your shoes, you’re on holy ground” moment. And that’s not something that I know in hindsight – I knew it in that instant because I felt it. I literally felt a shimmer of energy run through my body, my arms were tingling, all the way down to my hand that held the key. All I could do was say, “OK, I’ll stay and keep the church open.” Soon, there was a steady stream of workmen in muddy boots tracking across the carpeting of the narthex on the way to bathroom. The phone continued to ring off the hook. By the end of the day, the Mayor was involved and with the help of his Assistant for Public Safety, the neighborhood was invited to the church for dinner. I had mentioned in a conversational kind of way as Mayor Goldsmith and I were standing across the street in the mud looking at the mess created by Mother Nature that the neighborhood was going to need a good clean up. When he showed up at the church for dinner that night, the first thing he said to me was, “so, how are plans going for the clean up?” I looked at him and said “Great!”
The Holy Spirit is often depicted as strong wind. First we had the real tornado and then I was caught up in a spirit whirlwind. By the end of week, a massive clean up took place, and one of the people who showed up to help was Bishop Ted Jones and as he signed in to work, I realized, “Ooo, he’s knows who I am now, and I’m not sure that’s a good thing.” Sure enough, soon I had been appointed to chair the diocesan Social Concerns Commission and one thing led to another and here I am, Lord! Holy Ground is not just on a mountaintop with a burning bush; it is wherever and whenever the divine shines through the haze of daily living. It does require something of us – it requires that we stop what we are doing and pay attention. We must allow it to touch us by taking off our shoes or our blinders or how we’ve always thought of something and be ready for something different. Now what’s different doesn’t necessarily mean that you head off to Egypt to free the slaves or end up going to seminary. Once touch by holiness you might simply find yourselves less anxious, more loving, more able to forgive, more interested in what you can do for others and if you say yes to that and give it your attention holy ground will be wherever you step.

I’ve been reading one of Peter’s books – this one is about what makes our genes work and as I’m reading this book, I frequently let out an “Oh wow!” Here’s a simple yet profound finding that is such a holy ground moment; AIDS patients that believe in a loving God as opposed to an angry punishing God, have lower levels of the virus in their blood and higher T-cell counts. Apparently, encountering a loving holy ground brings you health. The electro-magnetic field of love grows healthy things in you and can even undo chronic, incurable disease.

The implications for this and what we think and do are like standing in the presence of that burning bush. In an instant we know how important teaching God’s true nature of love is, not just for us but for those in need of the good news. There is such meanness done in the name of God and some supposed morality that many people are permanently damaged by it. There are those connected to this congregation yet not fully engaged in it because of the echoes of what was drummed into them as children – you are a sinner and God will judge you harshly for any number of things and where is the good news in that.

We are the stewards of holy ground. That means first, that there is something for us to learn and to integrate as a part of us. Then, as faithful, creative stewards, we live it and teach it with our lives and set others free.

So, I guess we’re all Moses after all. So take your shoes off and let the warmth of God’s love touch you and begin works of wonder.

The wine of love

2010-03-09T14:43:00.000-08:00

A sermon preached at Faith on January 17th, 2010.

The history of Haiti is not a happy one. Western understanding of the island begins in 1492 when Columbus stumbled upon the island that he named La Isla Espanola or Hispanola. Bartolomeo Columbus, brother of Chris, was left to found a colony for Spain which led to the near extinction of the native people, through diseases for which they had no immunity and an incomplete recognition of their humanity.
Spain’s interest in the island waned as gold and other riches were discovered elsewhere in the Americas. To protect the remaining inhabitants from pirates, everyone moved close to the city of Santo Domingo on the eastern end of the island which is now the Dominican Republic. Unfortunately, that left the western side, that part which is now Haiti, available to be taken over by pirates. Not an auspicious development.

In 1664 the French West India Company took over the settlement, named it St. Dominique and began the cultivation of tobacco, indigo, cotton and cacao which was accomplished by slaves shipped in from Africa. Nearly a third of all slaves brought to the Americas were put to work in the fields of St. Dominique, eventually totaling somewhere around 780,000. The conditions were so bad that the plantations needed a constant supply of replacements, sometimes 40,000 a year.

Slave revolts were frequent. After the French Revolution, the slaves were freed, sort of. The next hundred years were filled with even more treachery and suffering for the native and black residents. An army of former slaves eventually defeated Napoleon’s forces and in 1804 independence was declared and promptly celebrated with the slaughter of the remaining 2000 French residents. There followed decades of revolts and coups but finally in 1874 a workable constitution was ratified and a period of peace and prosperity arrived. Haitian culture blossomed and thrived. But during the 20th century, coups and dictators were the norm culminating in Papa Doc Duvalier and his son Baby Doc. It seems that every time hope dares to raise its head in Haiti, it’s like a game of Whack-a-mole. Hope is beat down, if not by greedy politicians then by hurricanes and now earthquake. Recently the drug trade has taken up residence in Haiti, agriculture is no more, the people survive on foreign remittances and aid. What little progress had been made since the last coup in 2004, thanks to the focused efforts of the UN and the world’s NGOs, is now buried in the rubble.

If Haiti seems to be that place where Pandora’s box was opened and spilled all of the ills of human sin, it is also right now the place where, once again, hope is arriving on a variety of wings. The list of nations sending help is heartening, heartening in that we can put down our dukes for long enough to give a hand to a neighbor. This morning we heard the litany of the gifts of the spirit in the letter to the Corinthians. Well in Port au Prince in the last three days, we have had a different list being read. To some are given the gift of strength to lift fallen slabs of concrete, to others the keen nose of a rescue dog. To others the gift of ingenuity to overcome the obstacles of ruined roads and collapsed bridges. To others an engineer’s eye to dig in and shore up and rescue. Still to others is the skill of mending broken limbs and torn flesh. To many is given the gift of patience to sit and sing until help arrives. To many others is given the spirit of generosity by text and twitter and collection plate. And to many more is given the spirit of compassion and tears and prayer. We are all part of the body that is reaching out to help and to heal. Every American is contributing and represented by the planes and ships full of soldiers and marines and aid workers. In this moment, the world is saying to Haiti, “we are here with you and your suffering matters to us.

Port au Prince is as far from a wedding celebration as we could possibly imagine so it was hard to even contemplate today’s Gospel reading. But there are some things about this first miracle of Jesus that can help us in times like these. The wedding at Cana is a most curious story that offers as many questions as it does answers. Right before this story Jesus promises to his disciples that they are going to see great things that speak of God’s glory which is to be revealed by and in Jesus. Interestingly, this story has an undercurrent of tension. It starts with Jesus’ mother apparently expecting him to do something about the problem of no wine half way through the wedding festivities. Of course, this is not to be taken as a supply problem. It is her invitation to Jesus to do what only he can do. He’s not particularly acquiescent, in fact he somewhat rebukes her, saying that it’s not for her to determine the timing of his work. And yet he goes and does it anyway but in a very subtle way. There is nothing flashy about this miracle. He takes the water in large stone jars, the means of ritual cleanliness and purification, and turns it into the wine of celebration. Also of interest, he does not do it so that anyone except his disciples notice it. The wine is turned over to the wine steward and he is amazed at the quality and does not know from whence it came. The party goes on and the miraculous wine flows freely. We are left to wonder about the people who drank that wine. Were they changed by it? In his commentary on the Gospel of John, catholic theologian Gerard Sloyan wrote about what the author of the fourth gospel was doing as he wrote this long after Easter and the birth of the church. He says, “John knows from the experience of years now that to believe in Jesus as the Christ is to live a life within a life. Nothing is changed but everything is changed. What had been water is wine. Word has become flesh. An hour that has not yet come is here…What will be is. What seemed to be is no more.”

What Jesus brings us changes every part of human life. In the course of his public preaching, Jesus redefined every relationship. He redefined marriage from a relationship of power to one of equality; he redefined neighbor – no longer just those we know and like but now even those we despise. He redefined family, no longer just his mother and brothers and sisters but now the whole Body of Christ. He redefined the outcast as those redeemed and reborn in their communities. He redefined peace from the product of imperial might to the product of justice. He redefined the relationship between humanity and divinity. But just as no one noticed the miracle in Cana, we have been slow to live the changes he brought.

While Mother Nature is not, God is frustratingly subtle in our lives. I enjoyed greatly a conversation with some of the inquiring minds of our newest youth group. Mateo wondered why God doesn’t just spit it out for us, just talk to us and tell us what is what and what to do. Wouldn’t that be nice? I told him that I believe that the divine wisdom is just that, wise. We must come to God on our own not because we are forced or scared into it. Real faith, real spiritual growth comes from responding to the invitation so gently and persistently offered.

And then sometimes it is offered in painful, dramatic fashion. We are presented with the suffering of others and everything we have tried to learn about love suddenly becomes real. We realize in a moment that they are not strange or strangers. They are our family. They are us and we reach out because we cannot stop ourselves. Without realizing it, we have been changed from the water of duty into the wine of love.

Christmas - it's a mystery!

2010-03-09T14:31:00.000-08:00

A sermon preached at Faith on Christmas Eve, 2009.

It wasn’t a Christmas movie, but the Best Picture from 1999, Shakespeare in Love, got me through last week. In it, Geoffrey Rush played the theater owner who was attempting to put on a new play from Will Shakespeare, which turned out to be a little known piece called Romeo and Juliet. In the story, Rush’s character seemed to always be just one step away from disaster and when anyone asked him how something in the theater was going to possibly work out – he would always reply, “I don’t know – it’s a mystery!” And what made Rush’s character so compelling was that he seemed to revel in the unknown, the possibility of being surprised by the end result that he could not possibly have foreseen.

I found myself embracing this statement of faith as the planning of our Christmas week loomed. So many of our families had taken advantage of the full week off of school and gone away that we knew we were going to be a little thin casting the Christmas pageant; our annual women’s brunch had only half of the number of women signed up to come and those who had were dropping like flies due to flu, unexpected travel and assorted circumstances. Our flower guild was stressed by the loss of some ready hands at this busy time of year, the choir was struggling with the syncopated rhythms of one of the pieces for tonight and then last Friday night at the pageant rehearsal, our director called in sick. Disaster was gaining on me. Then the full impact hit when we realized that the oldest girl available for the pageant was 3 years old. She would be our Mary but every time I referred to her as Mary, she emphatically told me that her name was Raine, not Mary. The oldest cast member was six. When I finally got home, exhausted and wondering how we were going to pull this off, Geoffrey Rush popped into my head – “it’s a mystery!” In that moment, I decided that I was going to completely trust in the mysterious ways of Christmas and I’ve not been disappointed.

The Women’s Brunch was delightful – great food, the cut-throat gift exchange was its most riotous and fun. The choir is in fine form, the flowers are beautiful and the pageant was one for the ages. We began with the revolt of the angels – the boys who thought that “angel” sounded cool changed their minds when they discovered that the costumes were decidedly girly. So a quick change into shepherd garb. In the spirit of the mystery one of our girls showed up and was slapped into Angel of the Lord costume. Her sidekick angel was only two and pretty much frozen in place because she was stepping on the front hem of her dress and unable to move. Max the Churchdog made his triumphant reprise as the flock of sheep and every other bit of livestock. Mr. Vicar had to stand as Goliath to be slain by David. The shepherds were right to be afraid as the stand-in Angel of the Lord was clearly not happy; she stood there with her arms crossed and a scowl on her face refusing to share good news. And then Joseph showed up in Bethlehem alone. When I said, “Hey Cooper, you forgot Mary.” We heard from the back of the church, “She doesn’t want to come!” Our Mary finally arrived, not on a donkey, but in her mother’s arms. At any rate, it all worked out, mysteriously but it has let us all proclaim with assurance that here at Faith, Christ was born to Raine!

2009 has been a really tough year by anyone’s standards. People have been unemployed for way too long, too many have lost their homes and some have lost hope. If there were ever a time for glad tidings and great joy, it would be now. However, we look around and see that it is still a mean world but Christmas says that meanness does not triumph. In Los Angeles Mirna Gonzalez had saved her change all year to be able to have some money for Christmas for her sons. She took the jar and went to the change machine – it totaled $620. But before she could even put the money in her purse – she was robbed. She turned to an organization called MEND – Meeting Every Need with Dignity. She saw just that. People who were worse off than she was, all struggling with needing to ask for help. The staff was so kind to everyone that Mirna was determined to help them. So she made lunch; enchiladas, taquitos, beans, and a flan enough for 25 people and took it by. The staff was moved to tears. An LA Times reporter heard about the story and wrote it on her blog. The community’s response became the page two column on Tuesday. Her generosity triggered the generosity of others and we all had our hearts lifted a bit. How did it all come together? It’s a mystery.

But there is more mystery in this night than people moved to generosity. It is the mystery of the incarnation – that intersection of the human and the divine in the infant we celebrate tonight, that living idea of God. We don’t need to know exactly how those two different things fit into one, all we need to know is that love now has a face. And in the way of good mysteries, that face is revealed in each and every face. I don’t understand the incarnation to mean that God was not in the world before Jesus. But this little light of the world has helped us to see it. Because of Christmas, the divine in the world, in you and in me has been drawn out of the shadows cast by meanness and indifference. It is no wonder that so many of Jesus’ healing miracles involved restoring sight to the blind. Through him we can all see the each other clearly and recognize ourselves as family.

We have been invited into this Christ way of living for 2000 years. I don’t know if God thought we were going to catch on quickly or not. The meanness of the world has not yet been overcome and it is here that I need the voice of Geoffery Rush the most because quite honestly, I don’t see how it’s going to work out. I don’t know that is going to stop us from hurting each other. I don’t know what is going to make the suffering of others unacceptable to us. I have no idea how we are ever going to learn self-sacrifice. But it doesn’t matter if I don’t know because God does.
Christmas tells me that God is not content to let us stumble around in the dark, snarling when we bump into each other. I don’t have to know how we are all going to figure it out one day. It’s a mystery and I’m fine with that.

A Colony of Heaven

2009-10-11T11:37:00.000-07:00

A sermon for Faith on October 11, 2009

“What must I do to inherit eternal life?” That’s a pretty big question from the rich young man in today’s gospel reading from Mark. I wonder what he was really asking. Was he asking, “What must I do so that I may live forever?” or was it something else? Whatever he was asking, he didn’t like the answer that he got. Jesus got a little too personal when he started talking about his money and his stuff. And so the young man decided that eternal life, whatever that was, wasn’t worth it and he “went away sorrowful.”

But from what was he walking away? Is eternal life really about some “fountain of youth” kind of immortality? The Gospel of John says something different. In prayer, prior to his arrest, Jesus says, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” That sounds a bit different than living forever.

Here’s my take on it…eternal life is participation in the life of the eternal, taking part in the story that God is telling, a story that has a beginning and an end. The beginning of the story predates creation – God who was and is and ever shall be at some point, in some way, created something other than the divine being. Time and space were created and God, the divine, continues to exist outside of such limitations but maintains relationship within time/space with creation. Things were kind of ok until that special bit of creation, us, began acting like the willful, bratty, greedy, violent children that we are. In the Christ event – the Incarnation, something new happened; God began the redemption of the world. This is the part of that story into which we are invited and by virtue of our baptism we have RSVP’d and shown up. We understand what God is like and what God wants because of Jesus. We are invited to be made new, to forsake “willful, bratty, greedy and violent” for loving, committed and faithful, generous and peacemaking.

This work of redemption has begun; it is by no means completed. Jesus invited the rich young man to join in this work but the price was too high. Following Jesus means to love what Jesus loves, more that what the world loves. The rich you man could only understand what Jesus said as losing something; he didn’t hear it as something new gained. The work of redemption is to replace the world’s values with the values of God’s kingdom. That distant time when God’s vision has overtaken the world is the end of the story we are living and that is what gives meaning to the Christian life.

I mentioned in the newsletter that I have a new favorite book, and it’s not by Marcus Borg. It’s called Resident Aliens; Life in the Christian Colony by Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon. Hauerwas is a giant in the field of Christian ethics who has written many books and here he has teamed up with a Methodist pastor to propose that we re-imagine the church as something really quite exciting. In their words, “The church is a colony, an island of one culture in the middle of another. In baptism our citizenship is transferred from one dominion to another, and we become, in whatever culture we find ourselves, resident aliens.” But as residents aliens, we have something to offer to the world and that is a vision of what can be, a vision that is from God.

Life in this colony is informed by, indeed modeled after, what we know of God as revealed to us in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. The colony knows Jesus, believes in Jesus and follows Jesus and he makes the difference for us. In our relationship with him, we are transformed. In Jesus, we understand what God is doing, the future toward which God is drawing the world. The word church in Greek is ecclesia – and it means “those called out”. We are called out of the world and into the Kingdom of God. At the same time, we are not called to withdraw from the world, this is not some utopian experiment in Southern Indiana. The colony that is the church is to be a part of the world, just in a different way with a very clear purpose. Hauerwas says that the only job of the church is to figure out how to be in the world so that the world notices this alternate way of being and is eventually changed by it.

If we really try to live as a colony of heaven, we will find ourselves at odds with the rest of the world but that’s a good thing because it is the way that God will continue the work of redemption in our broken world. How do we do this? Well, we start with the description of the Kingdom of God, which you find all through the Bible, Genesis, Isaiah, Amos, Micah and Jesus, over and over again. It’s a place of generous hospitality, stewardship, peace, health, blessing, justice, and equality. Then we ask ourselves, what does that look like here, in Orange County, California, USA, North America, planet earth. Here’s an example; the Kingdom of God is a peaceable kingdom, a place of non-violence. The US is a country that loves its guns. The 2nd amendment is idolize and each and everyone of us can buy and own as many guns as we wish – that’s the way of the world. But in God’s world, there would be no guns, therefore, in a colony of Heaven, people would probably say, yes, I have the world’s right to own a gun, but I choose not to. We are not trying to tell the world that they can’t have their guns; we are showing them a different way to think about them. That might look like giving something up but it also might look like embracing something new.

One of the reasons that we are receiving a weekly shipment of organic fruits and vegetables here is because it’s good stewardship of the earth and of our bodies which are two attributes of a the Kingdom of Heaven. From here, I hope that we will begin to examine everything that we eat and ask the important questions, it is good for the earth, would Jesus want a little child to have a steady diet of this. We have to ask ourselves about the fish we eat, is it poisoning us with mercury and is being caught in death-dealing drift nets? As a community, we might decide to swear off the kinds of meat that lead to the destruction of the rain forest or create conditions of misery for the animals because those things would not happen in God’s kingdom.

There are lots more difficult topics to tackle, particularly the one that caused the rich young man to turn away. In a colony of Heaven, we must examine our feelings and attachment to our possessions and our money. And since the pledge campaign is coming up soon, we’ll have lots of time to ask the question, “What do you love?”
I find this idea of seeing ourselves as colonists, resident aliens in the world to be most intriguing. The church as a colony of Heaven is very different from a common understanding of the church that I heard the other day. “I don’t go to church because I don’t think I need a middle man between God and me.” We don’t need a middle man, a gatekeeper, or ticket taker and that’s not what the church is supposed to be. Imagine if people could hear about the church as a colony of heaven in which members support one another in living our love for God out loud because we all know what God is doing in the world and we want to be a part of it.

Real justification

2009-09-15T15:11:00.000-07:00

A sermon on James 2:1-5, 8-10, 14-18

Jesus asked his companions “Who do people say I am?” It’s a good question ask about many of the people in the Bible. Take the author of the letter of James, for instance. How do people say he is? Unlike Jesus, James didn’t engage in any sort of “I am” statements so we are left with tradition to help us answer the question. Church tradition proposes that this letter was written by James of Jerusalem who was the brother of Jesus. However, there is nothing in the letter to identify the author as that James or any other. We really don’t know anything about the author, except that he wrote in fairly sophisticated Greek, something that might be unlikely if it were written by a simple Palestinian laborer. Some early church writers cast doubt on the identity of the author. Every book in the Bible has some measure of mystery about it. The uncertainty surrounding the book of James became an important issue for Martin Luther.

It is a Lutheran urban legend that Luther wanted to throw James out of the Bible. He did clearly express his doubts as to its origin. Here’s what he had to say; “Though this epistle of St. James was rejected by the ancients, I praise it and consider it a good book, because it sets up no doctrines of men but vigorously promulgates the law of God. However, to state my own opinion about it, though without prejudice to anyone, I do not regard it as the writing of an apostle…”
The center of Luther’s historic disagreement with this book is found in today’s reading. “So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.” About which Luther had this to say “In the first place it is flatly against St. Paul and all the rest of Scripture in ascribing justification to works. Luther had his Road to Damascus moment – his big epiphany – during his contemplation of the Letter to the Galatians in which Paul wrote that we are “justified by faith in Jesus Christ.”

This has set up centuries of conflict about the role of faith and the role of works in our hope for salvation. But as always, context is everything. Luther’s issues with “works” came from his fight nearly to the death with the church hierarchy in Rome. He was particularly offended by the practice of indulgences. An indulgence was an action – usually a charitable one – undertaken after confession, absolution and penance in hopes of lessening one’s punishment prior to admission into heaven. I must confess that I can’t follow the logic of it. During Luther’s time, there had developed quite a lot of abuse around the selling of indulgences. It looked to Luther and others, as though the church was acting as a broker for sinners to buy their way into heaven, to buy God’s forgiveness. The church banned such practices in the 16th century but apparently under Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, indulgences have made a comeback – but that’s beside the point of this sermon, I was just shocked when I saw it the other day.

Luther fueled the Protestant Reformation with his outrage at these abuses and planted his flag firmly in “justification by faith through God’s grace.” Faith in Jesus was the only way to be saved – the only way to be justified. The idea that anyone could play a role in their own salvation was an anathema as Reformation theology developed.

Well, Luther had his epiphany in the book of Galatians; I have had mine in Marcus Borg’s new book on Paul(The First Paul). What Borg and his partner Dominic Crossan have done – what they have uncovered and reclaimed is nothing short of “knock me off my horse and strike me blind” kind of stuff.

I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night thinking about this and mostly I have been wondering whether or not anyone will really care. You see, what would you think if I told you that the entire premise on which Christianity has been packaged and passed down to us is wrong? We have been told that in some distant time, long after we have left this mortal coil, the golden moment will come when we will all be raised and dwell with saints and angels in heaven. Our goal is get there, to not mess up so badly that we find ourselves on the outside looking in at the good times in God’s Kingdom. Some time after Paul wrote to his churches, Christianity became about the next life. Marcus Borg, God bless him! has been gently leading us with his book on Jesus and now his book on Paul, to the possibly uncomfortable awareness that we’ve had it all wrong.

Jesus and Paul did not talk about the promise of a better life in the next life. They both preached and lived the kingdom realized here and now. Borg points out that the question of “justification” may be stem from a misunderstanding of the word itself. It is defined in my Handbook of Theological Terms as “that act by which God brings man back into proper relationship with him.” It involves the forgiveness of sins, supernatural grace and all sorts of things. There are all kinds of disagreement about it – mostly around faith and works. Are you justified by simply believing in Jesus or does how you live your life have anything to do with it?

Borg and Crossan smack us between the eyes with their simple observation that Paul’s use of the words “justify” and “justification” are to be understood in a much more direct way. When we believe in Jesus, which means that we commit ourselves to what he was doing, then we can no longer act the way the world acts and we become just. We create justice and we do this here and now in our families and in our communities. Go figure that “justification” means “to become just!” With this definition, we can then actually understand that we are only right with God when we are right with each other. The letter of James makes more sense when we hear it in this light. You cannot be “in Christ” and live in the old way. Unless it shows in how you live with others, it isn’t of Christ – it is dead faith. Paul built churches with the intent that they would be a new kind of community and be like the mustard seed and spread like mustard. Previously unequal, hierarchical relationships, both personal and political would be transformed into just relationships of complete equality and then we would all see the kingdom.

But it didn’t happen that way. The world was too in love with power and the violence that maintains it to let go of it. The church was not able to resist being assumed into that world. Paul’s crazy experiment was just too dangerous for the ways of the world. So it was co-opted. The church became the most hierarchical institution ever imagined and lost it voice against the powers and principalities of the world. “Justification” was taken out of this world and redefined into the afterlife. The people who were granted full participation in Paul’s communities, women and slaves, were told to get over it and behave. The message was changed and we were all told to wait for justice until that time in the unknowable future.

I have found this profoundly disturbing and liberating at the same time. It fires my imagination and gives me strength. But my question remains – are we any more ready for the real Christianity now than we were 1900 years ago? Does knowing this change anything about how you understand why you belong to a church or why you might believe? Does this help you answer Jesus question “Who do people say that I am?” We can offer several answers, “He is the one who will get us into heaven?” or “He is the one who showed us and helped us to create heaven on earth?”

What we want for our children

2009-09-15T15:01:00.000-07:00

A sermon for baptism

There is nothing more adorable than a little one, just after a bath. They jump in all sticky and sweaty from a full day of play and emerge sweet smelling, their fingers wrinkly, and too cute for words after their hair is combed and their little jammies donned. Then they climb into your lap and cuddle for a story before surrendering to sleep. I apparently am in serious need of grandchildren! But even if I were not in such a condition, the sight of a child washed free of the world’s grime would still make me go, “aaaw!” There’s something about the innocence and vulnerability that makes us want to give them everything, the perfect life, the perfect world. That’s a pretty tall order, even for the most accomplished and energetic among us. It also invites some questions….

What would a perfect life look like? Does perfect mean that the answer to every prayer is ‘yes?’ Jim Carey’s movie Bruce Almighty gave us a humorous take on that. If every prayer were answered with a yes, everyone would win the lottery, get into an Ivy League school with a full scholarship, marry the most beautiful girl or the smartest, richest man. You would get every job you applied for and be well paid. We would all be perfect physically and always healthy. This kind of life only sounds ideal for how could there be any sense of accomplishment if everything were handed to you? How could we ever develop a sense of compassion? Such a life would be the death of imagination, so I don’t think that could be what we mean when we consider what a perfect life would be like for little Sara Jane, who is, after all, about to get her holy bath. What do Scott and Amber envision in their hopes and dreams for their daughters? What do all of us want for our children?

I think that we want for our children is a world filled with the things that the apostle Paul identifies as the gifts of the spirit in his letter to the Galatians; love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. It’s hard to argue with such things but I think we also seek something more - a world that is fair, a world in which hard work and honest effort produce a satisfactory outcome; we want a world in which there is an opportunity to express and actualize what we sense is useful and fun. We want a world in which we enjoy some level of security, both physical and emotional. We want a world in which we have some level of ability to choose and make our own decisions about what we do and how we do it. I don’t think I’m wrong in saying that such desires are fairly universal—we all want this for our children. But the real question for this morning is how badly do we want this for all the children of the world?

Now let me ask you, how many of you think we live in a just world? How many of you think that we live in a world in which there is justice for some and not for others?

Let me take this a little further, do you believe that the things we want for our children could actually be jeopardized if the world continues to be an unjust place? Martin Luther King reminded us on more than one occasion that “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Continued injustice keeps the Kingdom of God unrealized.

The prescription for this condition is right in front of us – we see it in the cross, we hear it the Gospel, we taste it in the sacrament of bread and wine. It is a commitment to the Kingdom of God which is possible when we give ourselves up and become the true Body of Christ.

We know the difference between how our world operates and how God would have it operate by what we know of Jesus’ life. Jesus’ first words in the Gospel of Mark, the earliest record of his teaching, were “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” In these words, Jesus becomes the sunrise of God’s time on a broken world. And then he set about creating the Kingdom wherever he was, starting with healing all who were brought to him. In God’s Kingdom, no one is sick. He fed people who couldn’t afford to feed themselves. In God’s Kingdom, no one goes hungry. He lifted up little children as examples of how all people are within the kingdom of God. He called people on hypocrisy and gave hope and good news to people who for whom those were in short supply. The deaf man in today’s Gospel needed Jesus’ intervention to be able to hear the news of God’s love and God’s will for his life. That healing wasn’t the healing of just one man, but all of humanity that had been deafened and made voiceless by indifference and injustice.

Jesus knew that the work was not his alone. He gathered people around him who heard the message he delivered and believed in God’s Kingdom. He shared himself and his power with them. That power is the one that we become a part of when we are in Christ. Having our ears and hearts opened begins it. Baptism is our yes to God’s invitation and with every subsequent baptism, we recommit ourselves to what we want for all of the children of God. We are promising to do all that we can to give Sara Jane and every other child a just world, a peaceful world, a world that looks more like the Kingdom God today than it did yesterday.

Injustice that defiles

2009-09-15T14:54:00.000-07:00

Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus, they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.) So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, "Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?" He said to them, "Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written,
'This people honors me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
teaching human precepts as doctrines.'
You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition."
Then he called the crowd again and said to them, "Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile. For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person."
Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

It’s not easy to understand what is at stake in this morning’s Gospel reading. Is it really about washing your hands before eating? Yes and no. The reason that I go through the ritual hand washing before celebrating is an honoring of the purity and holiness laws in scripture. It’s not really about making my hands germ free – heaven knows that a little water poured over my fingers can’t do that – it’s a tradition that is an enacted metaphor. I step into a different place when I approach the altar to become a part of the mystery. The hand washing is a symbolic gesture that prepares me to do so, just as the kissing of my stole when I put it on and take it off – it sets apart as holy the time during which I wear it. It’s a good thing. So I don’t think that it’s the kind of thing that was at the bottom of the spat between Jesus and his critics.

While we will never completely understand each portion of the purity code in scripture, why meat cannot be cooked with dairy products or why certain animals are clean while others are not, what we do know is that the ideas behind the development of the dietary laws were to set the Jews apart from the culture of their captors while they were in Babylon. This code was a visible sign that clearly defined who belonged in the community and who did not. It was very important for the survival of a people in captivity. It’s no wonder that this sort of thing became an issue again during Jesus time. The influence of the Greco-Roman culture was a threat to the integrity of the Jewish way of life. You cling fiercely to your traditions when you feel threatened. So it wasn’t just the tradition of washing hand before eating, it was the larger tapestry of what it meant to be a “holy people”

Prolific Catholic author and theologian Jerome Neyrey explains the purity or holiness system this way; holiness is an attribute of God which comes from God’s power to bless which is achieved mainly through the creation of order. When order is maintained, the people prosper. The holiness codes seek to keep the categories of creation distinct. That included people as well as foods. The purity laws provided an organizing principle for Jewish society, some basic categories that determined your often determined place – pure or defiled, clean or unclean, in or out. In times of stress, people are much more likely to enforce such social traditions strictly in an attempt to feel that there is something you can count on.
Prof. Neyrey says that “While Mark presents Jesus challenging the Jewish purity system, he also describes him as reforming it in favor of other core values. He is "the Holy One of God" and agent of God's reform: he is authorized to cross lines and to blur classifications as a strategy for a bringing about the Kingdom of God about which he preached incessantly. As God's agent of holiness, Jesus makes sinners holy and the sick whole.” Jesus redefines holiness. He offered a broader understanding of who and what is acceptable to God.

What Jesus was shining a light on was the unintended consequence of the holiness laws – they became an instrument of classism. Consider the plight of the poor in Israel at Jesus’ time. They were barely surviving, many were malnourished. If you and your family are starving and the only food you can forage is the mussels that cling to the rocks in the Sea of Galilee, what are you going to do? Say, “Ach, shellfish are unclean, can’t do that!” or are you going have them for dinner? If you are a day laborer working in the hot sun clearing rocks out of a field where the only water is the precious little that you have saved for the hot afternoon ahead, are you going to use it wash your hands before eat your meager lunch? I think what Jesus is doing in today’s Gospel is showing how the traditions of his faith had succeeded in marginalizing a whole lot of people. In another passage when his friends are criticized for working on the Sabbath because they picked some grain while walking through a field he says, “the Sabbath was created to be a blessing to people not a hardship.” The Sabbath commandment could be the source of suffering if the only day that you have to gather and prepare food for your family is the day when you don’t have to work for someone else. In Jesus’ eyes the only way for the Sabbath to be available for everyone was for the world to be transformed into the Kingdom of God so that everyone could afford to take a day for rest, refreshment and prayer. The poor don’t have that luxury.

We generally have a sanitized image of Jesus, he would never say anything crude. Well, keep in mind that Jesus was a part of a very earthy culture, speaking with farmers and laborers and he understood how to communicate with them. He was not shy about using humor and satire so today we have Jesus, channeling his inner-fourth grader, and comparing the evil that is expressed by a class system to that which comes out of the human body. There was apparently no snappy comeback from his critics when he equated what they were doing to excrement. I mean, what could you say but “Oh yeah!” Mostly they went away thinking “Rats! He did it to us again!” Jesus did his bet work when he turned the tables on self-aggrandizing, moralizing bullies.

It’s important that we not be too hard on Jesus critics. They lived in their world and had the where with all to not have to consider the lives of the people that were flocking to Jesus, until they became so numerous as to be noticed. People in Orange County are shocked to learn that in this beautiful prosperous place, there are over 35,000 homeless people. I’ve had two conversations this week in which that information caused jaws to drop. These were not arrogant, mean, moralizing people, they just didn’t know.

I look at my life and frankly, it looks like Jesus’ description of the Kingdom of God. I am healthy and if I’m not, I have insurance that pays for my medical care, no one tells me I can’t go certain places or do what I want to do, I have more than enough to eat, as evidenced by those couple of pounds I’d like to shed before Melanie’s wedding, no one in my family is in debtor’s prison, I have a beautiful home that is full of love and peace, I get to decide what I want to do on my day off. The question for me is what is my response to such blessing? The only thing that makes sense to me and that allows me to sleep at night is to commit myself to work on behalf of those who are not so outrageously lucky. The Kingdom of God already here, it is just waiting for us to tear down the walls that are keeping people out. I pray that that is a compelling enough vision to be the reason that we come together as a community of faith. There is a lot of resistance to such an idea.

Gary Cummins is the Rector at St. Luke’s in Long Beach and he shared a story in a newsletter this week. He said, “ When I was in seminary, our very old, very thin, very traditional, and venerable Liturgics Professor always spoke in a very low voice. He enunciated very clearly or taking notes would have been an exercise in futility.

One day he quietly unfurled a story from the Sixties when our Book of Common Prayer was being revised. After the service one Sunday morning, a parishioner complained about a verse in the prayers in Morning Prayer service – “let not the hope of the poor be taken away.” The parishioner raised his voice in outrage, “That’s Communism!” Gary’s quiet professor, gave voice to his still evident frustration and shouted, “It’s not Communism, it’s the Psalms!”

I would add, it’s the Gospel, it is our mission, I hope it is our reason for being here together this morning.

Unearthing Paul

2009-09-15T14:47:00.000-07:00

A sermon on Ephesians 5:21-33

This week, I’ve heard from daughter Melanie about a variety of wedding details, not the least of which was her decision not to have father “give her away”. For those of you who know Melanie, this probably comes as no surprise, but it happens to be very relevant to the lessons presented to us today bringing us the words “wives” and “subject to” in the same sentence. —the last time this one came around, I dodged this one – probably substituted Winnie the Pooh.

Today, though, I felt more prepared to tackle it because Marcus Borg has a new book that he wrote with Dominic Crossan called The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church’s Conservative Icon. You just know I have to love this.
There are a number of important contextual points that apply to this one of Paul’s letters. First is that, of the thirteen letters that bear his name, only seven are thought to have actually been authored by Saul/Paul of Tarsus. Three letters, 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus are commonly knows as the “pastoral letters” and appear to have been written some time after the turn of the 2nd century. Their historical setting is quite different from that of Paul, the church planter. Somewhere in between Paul’s seven letters and the Pastorals the remaining three letters, Ephesians, Colossians, and 2 Thessalonians were written, and probably not by Paul. This has been recognized for quite a long time, primarily due to the very different voice and vocabulary used in the letters. Borg and Crossan arrive at what they call the three “Pauls.” The original voice of the seven letters they call the radical Paul. They call the voice of the pastoral letters the reactionary Paul and the other three disputed letters, including today’s challenging one from Ephesians, make up the conservative Paul. Our two scholars have done an incredible job of drawing out the differences and identifying the reasons that letters like Ephesians do not reflect the Christian vision of the real Paul. Clearly the later letters suggest that the communities Paul had been addressing were having difficulty absorbing his message, so the writers started to alter that message. It reminds us of the similar difficulty many people in Jesus’ immediate culture had with his message of non-violent, self-sacrifice for God’s kingdom of peace and justice.

The original voice of Paul was one of transformed lives and relationships. He tackles the relationship between slaves and their owners in the charming little letter to Philemon. It is an amazing example of persuasive genius. Paul leaves his friend, Philemon, with little choice but to free his slave Onesimus, because Paul demonstrates how they are equals in Christ. Fast forward several decades to the writing of the letter to the Ephesians in which we find this – “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart, as you obey Christ…masters, stop threatening them, for you know that both of you have the same master in heaven and with him there is no partiality.” It does not sound like the original Paul, though there is at least a nod to making life better for slaves. However, in another couple of decades, in the letter to Titus we hear this, “Tell slaves to be submissive to their masters and to give satisfaction in every respect; they are not to talk back, not to pilfer, but to show complete and perfect fidelity, so that in everything they do may be an ornament to the doctrine of God our Savior.” This is clearly antithetical to Paul’s vision. As Borg and Crossan point out, “there is nothing there about any mutuality of obligations for slaves and masters. And there is nothing addressed directly to slaves. There is a single verse, and it begins, ‘Tell slaves.’”

This is why it is so critical to take on the contextual meaning of all scripture. Here we not only find that Paul’s message was co-opted but that it potentially arms anyone wishing to provide Biblical support for slavery with some rather shocking ammunition. Don’t you suppose that letter was used once or twice in the plantation churches to keep slaves in line? It’s pretty good ammunition to be able to say, “see, it’s right here in the Bible!”

All of this makes our reading from Ephesians a lot less problematic than it might seem. Sure, the letter is in there, but we shouldn’t go blaming Paul for it. The voice of the radical Paul has quite a different understanding of the proper Christian relationship between men and women. In the 1st letter to the Corinthians, Paul presents a vision of equality in the family—what right for one is right for the other, and what is wrong for one is wrong for the other in matters of divorce, abstinence, and equality in the assembly and equal entry into the community of apostles.

As with Paul’s view of slavery, this prescription for equality was a shocking development for a patriarchal world and sure enough, within a couple of decades we are treated to the revisionism of today’s reading—and while the expectations established for the behavior of men is more challenging than the local culture was used to, it still falls far short of the radical equality Paul believed in and articulated in his original seven letters.

These two examples of equality incorporated into Paul’s radical vision are the means by which he taught his congregations to participate in the work of atonement. Patriarchy and slavery are endemic to cultural systems in which some segments of the population were dominated by others. For Paul, Jesus’ death on the Roman cross and his subsequent resurrection was an indictment of that system of domination. The question we have to ask ourselves is “how much has really changed?” Do we not still allow the radical vision of both Paul and Jesus to be co-opted by more recent interpretations that are designed to perpetuate some group’s domination of another? How many women have had scripture used against them in abusive relationships? How long did slavery continue, justified by Biblical references that have been improperly attributed to Paul and made authoritative?

Paul was able to grow Christianity because people were hungry for freedom from an imperial system. But we live in a democracy that survived ended slavery and drastically altered our cultural view of gender relations. Today we have a non-white president, and we have Bishop Katherine, Speaker of the House Nancy and Secretary of State Hilary. Many inequalities have been breached even though not every heart has been won.

There are things in the letter to the Ephesians that I love, some truly radical things like “universal salvation” but it’s really important that we understand what has happened here and ask, if the earliest Christians were not ready for such a radical message are we? It takes great courage to stand against the things that seek to dominate and oppress us. It means to swim against the flow of your culture, sometimes your immediate community or family. But once armed with an understanding of the transformation Jesus and then Paul offer us we stand ready to be made into more than we ever thought possible. Once we know that, the only questions that remains is, “do we really want it?”

An Assault on Truth

2009-08-09T12:20:00.000-07:00

A sermon on Ephesians 4:25-5:2.

There’s something very bad going on in our country right now. Actually there are lots of bad things going on right now, people out of work, people out of their homes, people who have had their life savings either stolen or decimated by medical bills or the crashing market. These are all dire experiences that surround us. We as a congregation have been very fortunate. I’m sure that there are difficulties about which I am unaware, but for most of these things, we have been passed over. People in this church have made it through rounds of layoffs and are still employed. That’s not to make light of the financial challenges many of us face at this time but for the most part, we are weathering this storm well.

The bad thing that I am most worried about is what is happening to truth. The opening of our reading from the letter to the Ephesians today says “let everyone speak the truth with his neighbor…” As important as it is to speak the truth, it is also important to allow others to do the same for as the letter to the Ephesians continues, “for we are members of one another.” The fabric of a culture is held together by truth telling. If you cannot trust what people say, things break down; relationships fray and people move away from each other and become isolated. The challenge for us is what to do when we are faced with a lack of or an assault on the truth.

This week the news has been filled with scenes of vitriolic and sometimes violent behavior as members of Congress have gone home on recess to have Town Meetings with their constituents about what is going on in Washington, but primarily about health care reform. Town Hall meetings are usually pretty sedate and boring things but what members of Congress have been met with are groups of people determined to shout down any attempt to talk about the proposed health care bills in committee and the process. There appears to be a thriving cottage industry right now dreaming up outrageous claims about what will happen if our insurance conglomerate run health care system is reformed. Some of the more outlandish claims go like this: under this proposed law, old people will be encouraged by their doctors to end their lives – the poster version of this is “ObamaCare = euthanasia” or “Obama want to kill your grandmother.” Another one is that under this plan, the government will pay people to have abortions. Another big scary story is that the government might take over Medicare and Medicaid. Think about that one. From there things just degenerate into signs like “Health Care Reform = Holocaust which are usually found next to the ones that say “Obama, Osama” and “Where’s the Birth Certificate?”

Now it’s one thing for crazy, wild things to spring up on the internet, it’s another for members of the media and elected official to be promoting this nonsense. There is a concerted effort to stoke peoples’ fears and not for the purpose of any helpful dialogue, but merely as a political game and the truth is a casualty. What has happened to our country?

Truth is an important concept in the Judeo-Christian tradition; from the legal aspect, the commandment against bearing false witness makes it clear that honesty is not just a personal virtue, it is a communal one. Speaking with authority is recognized as a sign of one who speaks the truth. Jesus’ critics often asked the source of his authority; they heard the truth in what he said, they just didn’t know from whence he had learned it. It is said that what got Jesus killed was that he spoke the truth to power. And then in the Gospel of John, he said, “I am the truth.” We therefore take truth seriously.

Standing before Pontius Pilate and answering his taunting statement, "You are a king, then!" Jesus answered, "You are right in saying I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. " And then Pilate asks, “what is truth?”

In the Old Testament, truth is an attribute of God and it’s actually not simple to define. There is no specific one-to-one translation for the word “truth.” Constant, permanent, faithful, reliable are all used to translate the Hebrew word. For the people of Israel, truth was a moral and relational concept, not an intellectual one. In Greek thought, truth is very intellectual; it is known as opposed to trusted or relied on. In his letters that make up much of the New Testament, Paul combines the relational and intellectual sides of truth. So we arrive at an understanding of truth as an eternal dynamic in relationship, it’s like the mortar that holds bricks together.

If an interpersonal relationship breaks down when truth has been damaged, what happens in a culture when the truth is violated? My Biblical Dictionary says that the opposite of truth is malice and evil. Using people fears by an intentional manipulation of a complicated subject comes pretty close to that for me. There is a lot of money being put into promoting some crazy ideas with little thought of how to put the genie back in the bottle if it goes too far – and it going too far. There is at least one investigation into death threats against a Congressman and more calls to “bring your guns to these Town Hall meetings” are flying around the internet. This is not about politics – this is a moral and a spiritual issue and I am concerned.

Last month, as I sat around the Communications and Media area at the recent General Convention, I heard lots of conversation about the resolutions being discussed and passed. The clearest statement about our relationship with Anglicans around the world and the church’s position on refusing to exclude people from roles in the church came out of a desire to tell the truth to our neighbors. For the last three years, the Episcopal Church, in response to outrage from elsewhere, had turned its back on some of our members. There are many who felt as though we had sold our souls, saying that “we are willing to be inauthentic, if not down-right dishonest, just to stay in communion with parts of the Anglican world who see things very differently.” It was a very uncomfortable place to be. Finally people stood up and said, “we must say to those that disagree with us that we cannot be in true communion with you if we are not true to ourselves.” The letter to the Ephesians doesn’t say, “speak the truth, only if people with agree with you.” We are trying to do this in such a way that we are also in accord with this reading when it says. “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you…and forgive..”

What’s going on at Town Hall meetings and in the churches that may now leave The Episcopal Church is the same thing. Misinformation used to stoke fear. We have to be worried about how we achieve any sort of reconciliation after this storm blows itself out. This is a head and a heart thing – be gentle with those that afraid but be armed with knowledge and the truth of God’s love and acceptance for each and every one of us.

Reconciling the worlds

2009-06-25T11:25:00.000-07:00

A sermon for June 21, 2009.

I was a bank teller in a busy downtown branch of City National Bank in Columbus Ohio in my early twenties. It was a really fun job, most of the time. We got to know the regulars, the local businesses, the State Agencies from across the street, the young lawyers in the firms upstairs in the office tower – it was really good for my social life. Most people were very professionaland pleasant. We also cashed a lot of what were known as “blood checks.” The twelve dollars that people got from the nearby lab for selling their blood, fifteen if they had a rare type. We were the nearest bank to that lab and so we were the first stop for these folks in such desperate need of cash. They were a living counter weight to the affluence of the usual clientele.

The part of the day that was the bane of my existence was the final tally - reconciling the drawer. We had to account for the cash in and out and total every check on a big hundred key adding machine all to zero out the drawer. My problem was that I was always out of balance by a factor of nine – evidence that I had transposed number somewhere. Some times it was 45 cents, $81, $720 and even more shocking amounts. I had to spend all kinds of time discovering which transaction was wrongly entered and put it right. It was what I was known for. I was reconciliation challenged.

Then, in my first year in seminary many years, Ron Allen, my professor of New Testament, assigned, as he does every year, for the biggest research paper for his New Testament survey course, today’s passage from II Corinthians – the reconciliation passage. He says that it is the most important passage of the New Testament. Imagine how I felt, reconciliation challenged person that I am! I dutifully camped out at the seminary library, researched, drafted, wrote and rewrote about reconciliation and in the process began to understand why Professor Allen assigned it. “All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them…” I grasped it intellectually and academically, earning a perfect grade for my paper. But it still didn’t have that compelling spark of an ‘aha’ moment until Richard Wilbur’s poem set to music as the Christmas hymn A stable lamp is lighted caught my attention. The last verse goes like this…”But now, as at the ending, the low is lifted high; The stars shall bend their voices, and every stone shall cry. And every stone shall cry, in praises of the child by whose descent among us the worlds are reconciled.” The poetry and the tune that first brought it to me lit the spark of understanding. But it truly wasn’t until two weeks ago when I preached about Jesus’ understanding of living in the two worlds at once, this world and the divine world, that a full understanding of II Corinthians finally broke in on me. Fixing this world so it is in balance with the priorities in God’s kingdom is the ministry of reconciliation. Understanding that the world knows us by one set of criteria, the world treats people by one set of priorities, the world chases goals that are its own and none of this matches up to the criteria, the priorities or the purpose of the kingdom of God. Jesus came and showed what a human being that lived the values of the kingdom looks like.

Jesus began his ministry of reconciliation by announcing that this kingdom is here, and then he described it in his stories and his actions. First and foremost, the kingdom is known by its compassion. The Hebrew word for what Jesus was describing is translated often as mercy but it has the heart connection of compassion which means “to suffer with.” Here we understand that God is not indifferent to human suffering. Over and over again the Gospels tell us that Jesus had compassion on those who came to him blind, lame, outcast and afraid and as he healed them he made the kingdom present. He brought the characteristics of the kingdom into this world, through them – in other words, he reconciled the worlds.

The character of the kingdom is peace. The Old Testament prophets provided the descriptions, the peaceable kingdom in which the lion and the lamb sit together, the strong do not prey on the weak, swords are turned into farming implements. So Jesus set about to teach us how to create the peaceable kingdom here. He did it by teaching non-violent resistance which is the powerful way of exposing evil and confronting it without resorting to the violence that only begets more violence. He showed his people how to bring God’s peace through justice into a world that only knew peace through armed oppression. And then he made himself a living example, he didn’t allow his followers to take up arms in his defense and in the story of his arrest in Luke when somebody cuts off a soldier’s ear, he heals it. Jesus made real the God’s compassion, giving hope to the oppressed but also trying to free the oppressors from their bondage to evil. It is God’s will that evil be overcome and those who are its instruments redeemed.

The long Gospel reading from Mark today illustrates these points. These two stories, the calming of the sea and the demons exorcised and sent into the pigs come right after last week’s parables. Many scholars assume that we are to read these as parables also, they have much more meaning if read symbolically rather than stopping at the miraculous event level. The calming of the sea is like God in creation, controlling the waters and separating them to make the earth. The water, particularly stormy water, was known as a place of chaos and in God’s kingdom, there is no chaos so Jesus made the stormy sea into still waters. The demons named Legion that occupied the unfortunate Gentile were the same ones that occupied Israel. They are the demonic power of domination, the kind that Rome and all unjust systems exert on those without power. By casting the demons into the sea, the world is rid of them and the worlds are reconciled, at least in that place for the moment.
There is a real little gem in the reconciliation passage that can flit by unnoticed and that is that when we are reconciled to God, all is forgiven. What does that mean? I don’t think it’s as simple as saying, “Yes, I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior and it’s all done for me.” It means being like him and accepting that the kingdom is real and in our midst. Once you have been opened to the kingdom of compassion and peace, you are changed, you can no longer be an instrument of indifference or oppression. God’s compassion lives through you as it did through Jesus. You become the prayer of St. Francis. The prayer evolves from “Lord, make an instrument of your peace” to “I am an instrument of your peace, where there is hatred, I sow love, where there is injury, I forgive, where there is despair I bring hope.” When you live that, nothing you have done before matters for you are reconciled to God. As in Christ, in you the worlds are reconciled.

Parables - standing in both worlds

2009-06-18T13:53:00.000-07:00

The first sermon for Ordinary Time, 2009 (June 14th)

God was perplexed. He had made such a beautiful universe and that little gem of a planet, that blue and green marble, was a particularly fine piece of work. It all said something about what and why God is. It was such a special place that it needed watching over and so God had created that human vessel to be the ones he could count on. He had even breathed something extra into them. On some days he worried that that experiment wasn’t going as well as he had intended. Humans were proving to be a head-strong lot but once having given them the freedom of their own minds, what could he do?

After much thought and a good night’s sleep, God had a plan – an Outreach Plan. He would select a group of them and make a real effort to be closer to them. Maybe when they got to know him a little bit better and see what he was trying to accomplish, they would work better together and as the word would spread, eventually others would want to join in.. But which people to pick? He sent out a memo.
The first people to present themselves to God were fierce warriors. They said, “We are the strongest and fastest people on earth. No one can withstand our might. We can win your battles for you.” God raised the divine eyebrows and said, “Thank you, I think.”

The next people to come brought drawings and said, “We are the best builders on earth. Our cities are without equal; look at these urban layout concepts. As a builder yourself, you can see that we already think alike. We’re the right choice for you.” God said, “Interesting.”

Another group came in and brought examples of their produce, grains and fruits and vegetables. “We are the best farmers on earth, we can make things grow in places even you didn’t think of. If you want to reach a big audience, we’re your best bet because, well, you know, people gotta eat!” God said, “I’ll get back to you.”

Finally, all of the peoples of the world had made their cases to God, but one, a small raggedy group of people still waited. They came in, somewhat hesitantly, for they had heard all of those before them. They said, “We are a small people, we are not warriors, we live in our tents and wander around so we’ve never built anything. We’ve never grown anything because we don’t stay long in one place so we have nothing to show you. But what we do have is our stories, lots of them, and they are good stories.” At that God sat up straight and looked over this small ratty, bare footed, band of wanderers and said, “You will be my people and I will be your God, because I love stories. Let’s get to know each other.”

What makes a good story? In his book Storytelling; Imagination and Faith, William Bauch says there are four characteristics of a good story. First, stories provoke curiosity and compel repetition. You know that when you hear a good story, you cannot help but turn around and tell it to someone else. Bauch says that a good story is like a secret, a secret that is impossible to keep to oneself.

Second, stories unite us in a holistic way to nature, our common stuff of existence. From American Indian lore to Tolkein to George Lucas, good stories connect us in some way to our elemental beginning. The stories of our faith in the book of Genesis are perfect examples.

The third characteristic of a good story is that it provides a bridge to one’s culture, one’s roots. George Washington probably didn’t fess up to cutting down a cherry tree, but it’s a good story about the ideal of honesty and integrity in leadership. Paul Bunyan probably didn’t really have a blue ox for a friend, but his story is about the strength it took to settle a wild country. These stories give us our identity as Americans.

The last characteristic of a good story is that it binds us to all of humankind, to the universal, human family. With Joshua tumbling the walls of Jericho and Red Riding Hood confronting the big bad wolf, we learn how to address the fears and limitations of our human condition. From Romeo and Juliet to Jesus, the best stories tell of love so great that we will die for it.

Jesus was a storyteller, and he particularly liked to use a special kind of story known as a parable. Our reading today is from the 4th chapter of the Gospel of Mark which introduces his use of parables as his way of teaching people about God and the Kingdom of God. Marcus Borg says in his book Jesus, “..Jesus was a teacher of wisdom. Wisdom is not about knowledge or information…(but) focuses on the most central questions of life.” He taught about the character of God and what it is like in that other world that exists in the midst of our everyday life – the unseen Kingdom of God that I talked about last week. He taught people how to see and live in that unseen world.
That’s why he used parables, because they are stories that live in both worlds at once. The word parable means to “to throw along side.” So what Jesus is doing is throwing the two worlds down together for us to see and understand how they reflect two different sets of priorities.

He begins with very real images, “the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed.” That line gives us all four characteristics of a good story, but here is the twist added by the parable—for the farming community, mustard is an anathema – it is a weed that will spread faster than wildfire, and for the primarily agrarian audience Jesus was addressing, this parable must have been a little unsettling. “You’ve got to hear what Jesus said today. What on earth is he thinking?” Well, what he was thinking was that this story centered on nature, the land, and the “weeds” of Roman control that had grown up all around them. In one simple little parable, Jesus tells a story with all the four major elements William Bauch alluded too, with its connection to nature, the culture of land, the history of Jewish enslavement in Egypt, and the issue unifying all of them – how to survive on the land after having had lost control of their farms to the Romans, who were taking most of the produce. Oh the power in the little story of the little mustard seed.

What Jesus’ parables show more than anything is that in the unseen Kingdom of God that Jesus describes, things often look upside down. The farmers in his audience would immediately have recognized the mustard seed a menace, and the analogy of the weed it grows into as the evil of Roman control of their land and lives would be straightforward. But in Jesus’ parable that lowly mustard seed and its resulting voracious weed becomes a thing of wonder and beauty. If such a weed is glorified so is every discarded and dismissed oppressed person in the world, and so the parable causes us to wonder if the other things that the world hates might also be divinity in disguise. The parable not only reminds us that the Kingdom of God has different priorities than the material world of land and weeds, but it calls us to think long and hard about the things that the world does value.

I wanted to find a modern equivalent of the mustard seed that would give you the same level of discomfort as the farmers in Jesus’ audience must have experienced, so here is what I came up with…The Kingdom of Heaven is like a computer virus. Well, I bet I fit the first criterion of a good story and got your attention. And certainly, this parable breaks into the mainstream of our culture. A computer virus will break in on you despite your carefully constructed firewalls and anti-virus software programs. It can rob you of time, even take some of your work, and perhaps even cost you some money to repair the havoc it can wreak. It can even sober you to the realities of how much you rely on a machine for your well being in the world.

One of the things we know about computer viruses is that there will always be another one trying to breach our defenses and that’s the good news of the Kingdom of Heaven, which will break in and scramble your defenses and leave you vulnerable to the power of compassion and love.

Don’t you just love a good story?

Seeing Anew

2009-06-18T13:44:00.000-07:00

A sermon for Trinity Sunday, June 7, 2009

I have never been particularly drawn to this portion of John’s Gospel (3:1-16) partly because it has been used as a kind of litmus-test, bull-horn theology that shouts “do this or don’t do that or you can’t have the goodies awaiting you in heaven”. I really dislike that kind of gospel spin and so I found myself prepared to dismiss this passage on Holy Trinity Sunday, but it just wouldn’t let me. Maybe the Holy Spirit of Pentecost was still hanging around talking to me: “Open up, it’s good for you.”

So I pulled down my commentaries on the Gospel of John and started to do my homework. Dr. D. Moody Smith from Duke University gave me a helpful piece of information on how to interpret the idea of being born again. The Greek word anothen has two meanings – being born anothen can mean either again or anew or it can mean from above. Of course, from above is a way of saying “from God.” I wish it were also translated “from within” but I’m not going to quibble because I found myself getting excited about this passage. If being born means to begin living outside of the womb and seeing beyond the small confines of your previous existence, to be reborn in spiritual terms must also be about an expanded way of living and seeing. Without this rebirth the Kingdom of Heaven in our midst remains unknown.

Jesus was trying to give people a glimpse of what it meant to see life as he saw it. Marcus Borg, as usual, has helped clarify what that might mean. In his book Jesus, Borg refers to Jesus as a Jewish mystic and he defines a mystic as someone who has “experiential knowledge of God” and he defines a mystical experience as a “nonordinary state of consciousness marked above all by a sense of union and illumination, of reconnection and seeing anew.” The pieces were coming together with Jesus’ words from today’s Gospel.

Mystics, particularly powerful ones like Jesus, understand that we are living in two different places at the same time. He lived in Palestine, he walked on the dusty roads, got rocks in his sandals, he looked for work, he ate with his friends, he was very clear about the realities of the world around him with its hunger and misery. But he also lived in the Kingdom of Heaven in which everything around him radiated with the presence of the sacred, he heard God’s voice in the events of his life, he saw evidence of God’s desire in the love between friends, in simple act of sharing a meal, in people’s hunger for hope. In such a place, everything is holy; everything has meaning and old pain is already healed.

William James was a great student and philosopher of religion. Over 100 years ago he published his classic work The Varieties of Religious Experience – it has been continuously in print ever since. His description of the kind of experiences that Jesus had is spot on for us to understand this living in two places at once. When you suddenly see this Kingdom of Heaven, as it shines through ordinary sight, you move from secondhand religion, which is based on what you hear from someone else, to firsthand religion which comes from your own experience of what James called “more,” Jesus swam in the “more” and invites us to wade in with him.

Jesus said to Nicodemus (using The Message because it’s clearer), “I give witness to only what I have seen with my own eyes. There is nothing secondhand here, no hearsay. Yet instead of facing the evidence and accepting it, you procrastinate with questions. If I tell you things that are plain as the hand before your face and you don’t believe me, what use is there telling you of the things you can’t see, the things of God?” Hence the need to be born anew, to begin living so that you can see both worlds at the same time.

Nicodemus is like the brother-in-law in the movie Field of Dreams. Ray Kinsella (played by Kevin Costner) has built the baseball field in the middle of his corn and long gone baseball players have stepped through the veil and are playing their beloved game once again. Ray and his wife Annie and daughter Karen and their friend author Terrance Mann can see them because they believe in them. Meanwhile, the brother-in-law sits right there and can’t see them. He thinks they have lost their minds and they will soon lose the farm. It’s not until one of the players steps off the field of dreams to save Karen when she chokes on a hotdog that this parallel world breaks through to the blind brother in law. He looks around in astonishment, sees the players on the field and says “Hey, where did they come from? Do not sell this farm!” Up to that point, nothing that Ray and Annie had said could convince him, he wasn’t prepared to believe in something more.

So Jesus says, “even if you don’t see it, I do; believe in me.” This brings us back around to the difference between believing that something happened, or that someone said something and the power of believing in something or someone. When we proclaim that we believe in Jesus Christ, we are not affirming the details of his birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension. We are saying that we believe in what he helps us see. We are proclaiming that we perceive trustworthiness in him and therefore we trust him to be telling Truth when he says that God’s kingdom is already here and you can see it if you let yourself.

For those who have not been blessed with mystical experiences, those moments when religion becomes first-hand, we must take on faith and trust the one who tells us of the things that we cannot yet see. But what we can also do is to assume that this parallel world is very real indeed and keep our eyes peeled for glimmers of it. We can also absorb it in the experiences of others as they describe the different ways in which such wonders become visible.

One such experience is found in the poetry of Antonio Machado, one of Spain’s most celebrated poets. This translation by Robert Bly is found in a little book called ten poems to change your life. In it, it is said that “what mattered to Machado was the deep current that joins the human soul to the world. What mattered above all was to be awake to that deeper life.” Read Machado's poem here.

Dreams that tell you something too marvelous to be true; startling moments, when the colors of the world are so vivid that you can hear them; an unexpected sensation of being in love with everything and being loved back by it – these are the glimpses of eternal life that Jesus came to reveal. Look around in wonder and see heaven and believe in it.

Stages of Faith, Part II

2009-04-26T11:54:00.000-07:00

You may have heard of Fred Phelps, he is the minister from Topeka, KS known for his picketing at anything that he determines has to do with the abomination of homosexuality – Matthew Shepherd’s funeral 10 years ago, military funerals, Episcopal Conventions, high schools named for Walt Whitman, or those presenting the musical Rent – like Corona del Mar. His extended family, including children, carries signs that declare “God hates fags” and that’s kind of the nicest one. He’s been attracting a new kind of attention lately – people aren’t taking it anymore. Friday, students in Corona del Mar met Rev. Phelps’ minions with their own pickets – in vastly greater numbers, their signs said “God doesn’t hate anyone!” “God is love.” And “Do you need a hug?” Those signs proved to be like sunlight to vampires and the Phelpsites quickly retreated. The kindest thing that I can think to say about Rev. Phelps is that he appears to suffer from a case arrested spiritual development. He has no interest in moving beyond Stage 2.

For those of you who were not here last week, I preached a sermon for Samantha’s baptism about how we would work to honor our promises to her, to support her in her journey in faith. To do so, we have to understand how her faith needs to be nurtured and encouraged. To help with this, I used James Fowler’s work Stages of Faith. This 1981 classic work identified six stages of faith development, which follow the stages of moral and psychological development in humans. To recap quickly, Stage One is the faith of childhood in which an understanding of God comes from parents and being cared for. God is everywhere. Stage Two begins to see God as a supernatural being that is ultimately in charge of handing out approval or punishment. It’s a very literal and rule oriented time. Fred Phelps is the extreme example of adults who never move on. Stage Three, which corresponds with adolescence, is the troubling time of relationship building and wrestling with authority. Symbols and their meaning are inseparable so if inconsistencies are encountered, particularly for religious symbols, there can be a wholesale rejection or a refusal to acknowledge the inconsistencies. Stage 3, is not deeply analytical. But what comes next requires critical reflection on self and what you believe.
Here at Faith, our Journey to Adulthood leaders work with our young people in ways that honor where they are and how they are most likely to perceive the world and what we do here. But they also take part in the greater task of introducing the dynamics that move people beyond Stage 3. Fowler says that Stage 3 is a place of permanent residence for many adults. The transition out of 3 and into 4 is a most difficult one because it requires the deconstruction of much of how things are understood. It’s the traditional time of leaving home, physically and emotionally, which leads to self-examination and questioning. The more I work with this material, the more convinced I am that the majority of Americans do not make this journey. It is one reason the Episcopal Church is so small, for one committed to the view of Stage 3, it is too uncomfortable to pull away from a habitual way of understanding the truth. To continue your journey, you need to decide for yourself what is true and how you find it.

The discomfort of this time begins with the necessary demythologizing of the stories and doctrines. A myth is a story that tells a deeper truth. At this point in faith development, the details of stories are peeled back and set aside in search of that truth underneath. I’ve been telling you since I came here that the way to read the stories of our faith is not to ask if they are true but what they mean. What do they teach you? You are empowered to decide that. The authority that was previously held by family, religion and culture in Stage 3 is now relocated, in you.
In many situations, this will not win you approval and you’d have to be prepared for that. Jesus acknowledged this challenge – he said that all that you know, your families and your religion will turn against you when you challenge and walk away from where you were. This is a frequent topic of conversation for our Rome to Canterbury group. It is not the Anglican way to tell people what to believe, here you are allowed and indeed, expected to question. Part of our mission statement has to do with offering the hospitality of the gospel – that’s not just making someone glad they came – it is about creating an atmosphere that is conducive to spiritual growth.

The hospitality of the gospel is an invitation to go even further. Stage 5 is best understood as the change from either/or thinking to both/and thinking. Symbols and their meaning can comfortably come back together for now you begin to suspect that everything is part of one big whole. A level of self-understanding and peace has replaced defensiveness and duality. Mystics and Buddhists speak of detachment and it is at this stage that it is possible. Fowler says about this time that it is rare before mid-life and “knows the sacrament of defeat….Alive to paradox and the truth in apparent contradictions, this stage strives to unify opposites in mind and experience.” Someone who has achieved this depth is acutely aware of the divisions within the human family because they have to come to know the true possibility of an all inclusive community.

The awareness of that gap is often what calls a few souls into the radical actualization of Stage 6. This is the domain of a disciplined, active incarnation of universal truth. This would best describe Mother Teresa, Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Thomas Merton and others. The work of true inhabitants of Stage 6 reveals an inclusive community, a radical commitment to justice and love and a selfless passion for a transformed world. These people are not perfect but they do believe that the Kingdom of Heaven can come on earth. Often we kill them because they frighten us. Chances are that the ones that do the killing see such spiritual growth as a threat to their narrowly ordered understanding of things and that’s why this is important work. Without the courage of these way-showers the world will not change.
The last two weeks I’ve spent immersing myself in understanding the stages of faith have helped me understand Fred Phelps and his followers a bit better. And it helps me admire all the more the kids from Corona del Mar High School. They chose a spiritually mature uplifting way to engage unevolved, hate-filled rhetoric. Their willingness to engage as they did was in invitation to a few angry people to consider a new way.

Everyone walks their path at their own pace. There are people who have left Faith because what we talk about here made them uncomfortable. Growth is change and it is hard. But Christianity is called the Way, not the way-station. We are to keep moving and the best way to do that is to know where you are going. On our spiritual journeys, we continue to die to old ways of knowing and being known with the promise of Easter life in ever more expanded ways of understanding the mystery of God.

Stages of Faith, Part I

2009-04-26T11:50:00.000-07:00

A sermon for April 19, 2009

Thomas the apostle must have been from Missouri, he was living in a “show me” state. Although he had been with Jesus and the others, and seen all that Jesus had done and how people responded to him and were healed and changed by him, he needed things to be concrete. Up until this story in the Gospel of John, he appears to have been a bystander, not really understanding what it meant for him. His doubt was not a sin and Jesus didn’t treat it that way. Thomas’ doubt is an indication of where he was on his spiritual journey, of what and how he was capable of understanding.

James Fowler, was Professor of Theology and Human Development at Emery University for a long time until he retired in 2005. He is best known for his 1981 book The Stages of Faith; The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning. Fowler linked cognitive and moral development to illustrate how faith changes as we grow and grow up. He provided some markers for our work here as we “seek a deeper understanding of the mystery of God.”
Today we are welcoming into the Body of Christ, Samantha Sophia Roberts. Although she has already been welcomed into the hearts of this congregation, this is her official entry into the church. It is the beginning of her journey in faith as a Christian, and as a member of Faith Episcopal Church. We are committed to her journey because her journey is our journey and she will be formed by ours. At her age, all of a year, it’s pretty uncomplicated. Her spiritual journey begins as she relates to her world.

Those who study humans and their brains and their minds know that we cannot learn what we are not ready for. My daughter Melanie, the librarian and voracious reader had a really hard time learning how to read. She struggled along, frustrated until she had broken the code between the idea of the word and the squiggles on the page. When all of her was ready, her eyes, her brain and her desire, reading happened and a new world opened up for her. In many ways, faith is like that. Our learning and thinking about God develops in stages as we are ready. In infancy, our faith is, not surprisingly, infantile. Without a concept for God, a baby learns all that it knows through physical contact and care. When hungry or frightened an infant cries out for the presence that will provide food and comfort. It’s how a child learns to trust and to hope and it will have an impact on the later development of faith. Because we can’t get a lot of good testimony from Samantha it’s hard to be sure, but Dr. Fowler tells us that in this very beginning, he calls infancy a pre-step, the idea of God is unformed, like air. Care and comfort come from out there. For our little ones here at Faith, they begin to expand their understanding of the source of comfort to Claire and the familiarity and safety of the nursery as well as the regular community that is overjoyed at their presence. Samantha learns about God through being adored.

Somewhere between age 2 and 3 she will enter the first real stage of Faith development as she begins to differentiate between herself and others. For quite a while, she will not be able to understand that others don’t see what she sees. It’s always so cute to see a little one think that they are hiding when they put their hands over their eyes. To them, if they can’t see, neither can anyone else. Brady was sure he was invisible if he put a towel over his head. Games like peek-a-boo teach about the reality of things unseen. Little ones learn that things still exist even when they slip out of sight. Stories are the main source of learning and they help birth the imagination. For years, Amy Shimizu has given our little ones the stories of gardens and floods and animals and seas that part. They trust what they are hear and in their little minds and spirits, the stories and the feelings about them are the same thing. So we don’t give them stories with graphic, frightening details. They’ll learn about crucifixion when they are ready. For them are the stories of shepherds and angels. It’s easy for them to accept that God is just everywhere.

Somewhere around age 7, a big change takes place as they begin to decide for themselves what seems to be real. For these inhabitants of Stage Two, the stories that they create begin to take the perspective of the other and God becomes the biggest Other. It is at this age that God become a being – white beard, robes, throne in the sky because language in the stories is understood very literally. Their stories usually have a fairness component because they need to trust in some sort of order. God, or something is in charge of fairness. This stage usually ends around pre-teen, puberty years but there are adults never leave it completely and what results is a pretty rigid and highly controlled understanding of how things are to be.

What brings a child out of Stage Two is an awareness of contradiction in stories that lead to a search for meaning. It is a time of disillusionment with previous teachings and teachers because they are teenagers. Reality for this group can be seen through the lens of this little verse; “I see you seeing me; I see the me I think you see.” It is a time of great conformity. Authority becomes a real issue because it is held by “them” and for the most part it feels tyrannical, whether it is parental or even a peer group. For us here at Faith, this is when the hard work begins. Nancy and Lisa, who lead our Journey to Adulthood Groups are very brave women. They are faced with skepticism and the increasingly complex relationships of their young friends. There are plenty of people who check out of religion at this point – religion is one authority that it’s apparently acceptable to reject. But in the best of circumstances, when these teenagers chose to stay open, they are ready for the transcendent experiences that many of them have. God is experienced as a divinely personal significant other. At this stage young people are best helped by honoring and working with them about relationships. Our Journey to Aduldhood program is packed with lessons about relating. As relationships become deeper and richer, so too does can the relationship with God.

Dr. Fowler says that this is the average stage at which most people stay. Religions that stress authority of doctrine and behavior organize themselves around that. In stage 3, the importance of the group is stronger than any discomfort about ideas. Teens and those who remain at this level can forsake values rather than be ostracized. To move beyond stage three, one must be in contact with people who have already done so. They represent an invitation to greater awareness. Moving out of Stage Three is probably the most difficult step on a Spiritual Journey. I hadn’t intended to make this a series, but the fact that I’m at the end of my time and we’re trying to get out of Stage 3, with three more to go, means this is that point when my kids would angrily realize they had no closure and shout at the television, “Oh no, it’s a continue!”

As we welcome Samantha into this mystery that is the Body of Christ, it is with great awareness of our responsibility to the journey that that is ahead of her. We commit ourselves to understanding as much as we can about such a journey so that we may be helpful guides and companions along the way. But we also keep an open mind and heart for the joy and blessings that she will bring and with which she will teach us.

Believing in Easter

2009-04-17T14:23:00.000-07:00

An Easter sermon, 2009

Well, Alleluia! Welcome happy morning! Good Christians all rejoice and sing! Now is the triumph of our King! This joyful Easter-tide, away with sin and sorrow! My Love, the Crucified, hath sprung to life this morrow. The words of our Easter hymns say it all. They retell and celebrate the story of the Easter miracle. Jesus who was dead is alive. The tomb is empty, he is not there. We should not look for him among the dead, but among the living. This story needs no more to be the greatest story ever told. And yet…to be merely amazed by something that happened to a Galilean preacher and healer two thousand years ago, albeit something marvelous that happened for us, is to sidestep the immense truth of this day.
I want you to consider the difference between believing that a miracle happened in a tomb outside the walls of Jerusalem and believing in Easter. That difference has been extraordinarily liberating for me because I confess that I don’t know what happened in the tomb. I know too much about how the Gospel texts were written and how the story of Jesus grew as the years passed. I don’t know that I believe, or that I need to believe, that Jesus’ corpse was resuscitated by some divine defibrillator but I know that I believe in Easter. Here’s what believing in Easter looks like…

It looks like hope. Easter means that there is no situation that is beyond God’s redeeming grace. In every broken relationship, Easter lurks as the possibility of reconciliation. Fear drove powerful people to kill Jesus. In any other story that would be the end. But the Easter story says no to fear and despair and yes to eternal possibilities. A bad ending may be the end of a chapter but it is not the end of the story. It may be frustrating for us to have to wait more than three days for God’s saving action to be seen, but Easter says that God will find a way to redeem tragedy, God will find a way to redeem injustice, and God will find a way to set right what once went wrong. It was on Easter Sunday 60 years ago that Marian Anderson sang a concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. She was already a world renowned performer – an extraordinary voice with three octaves at her command. The concert was arranged by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt because Marian Anderson had been denied the opportunity to sing at Constitution Hall. The Daughters of the American Revolution, who owned the Hall, had turned her down because she was black. This was not just an attempt to keep black performers off the stage but a move to keep black audiences out of the seats. The First Lady was outraged and she became an instrument of Easter. 75,000 people stood in the cold as Ms Anderson opened her concert with “My country ‘tis of thee, sweet land of liberty.” Before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus, Marian Anderson became a accidental evangelist for the dignity of every human being. That concert gave hope to many.

Believing in Easter looks like comfort. In the post-resurrection stories in the gospels, we see the redemption of many kinds of human pain and failings. Mary, grieving and frantic at finding the tomb empty could not consider the possibility that what Jesus had told them had actually come to be. Life had not given her much reason to be optimistic. She could not allow that kind of hope lest she be hurt again. Isn’t it sad when we carry disappointment with us and it keeps our view dark and gloomy. It is a kind of pessimism about what is possible – we don’t dare hope. But when you believe in Easter, you have a different outlook – even the deepest grief can be redeemed, defeat can become triumph, pain can become bliss.

Believing in Easter looks like compassion. During his earthly life, Jesus gave sight to the blind. As two of his disciples were walking along the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus, the resurrected Jesus walked along with them but they couldn’t recognize him. They could not see him in the face of the stranger. But then he broke bread with them and they could see. In this story, we are given the gift of Easter sight so that we might be true to the promise we make in our baptismal covenant to seek and serve Christ in all persons. When we don’t look for him in others and when we fail to serve him in the lives of others, we are as blind as the disciples walking to Emmaus. And yet, we are not left in our blindness. There is no one we meet in whom we cannot seek Christ, even if that image of Christ is greatly obscured in them, hidden by hard-heartedness, warped by arrogance, beat down by disappointment and fear, if you believe in Easter, you will find it and you will have redemption.

Believing in Easter looks like confidence. Another familiar story is that of Thomas and his doubt. And who among us cannot identify with this human condition? And it’s not just doubt, it is feeling that we have to have an answer for everything, as if we might be diminished by something that is beyond our knowing. Thomas’ doubt was standing between him and his ability to believe in Easter. He was not ready to see beyond obstacles, to love without limits. Jesus gently honored Thomas’ doubt and redeemed it. To believe in Easter is to allow doubt and the need to have all of the answers to be overcome faith.

Believing in Easter looks like forgiveness. One of the saddest things of past week was Jesus’ solitude in his suffering. His friends all ran away and Peter, his right hand man, denied that he even knew him. Peter carried the shame, assuming that he would carry it to his grave for he would not have the chance to atone for it, after all, Jesus was dead and no matter how many tears he shed, his cowardice remained. He could not forgive himself for his words of denial. But in the only post-resurrection story in which Jesus speaks to Peter – Peter’s betrayal is redeemed. It happens in Galilee, the disciples have spent the night on their boat but had caught nothing. Jesus appears on the shore and when someone shouts “It is the Lord!” Peter jumps overboard. Now it is important to remember that Galilean fishermen did not swim, they did not know how to swim. So we wonder if Peter’s shame caused him to attempt to drown himself. Apparently he does not drown because after they all share their communion breakfast of bread and fish, Jesus asks Peter, three times, “Simon Peter, do you love me?” Three times, as many times as he had denied knowing him, Peter is given the gift of redemption and the chance to say, “Yes, I love you.” By the third time, he is even ready to receive Jesus’ charge to him “If you love me, then feed my sheep.” Peter’s shame and guilt are redeemed and if Peter’s shame and guilt are then so are mine, so are yours.

I believe that Easter is God’s primary mode of being. What ever we do, God’s response is some kind of Easter. Even if what you do looks like a mistake, God will respond with a way to bring you and your choices to redemption. Imagine if people really believed that – how free we would be and how courageous. It would be the greatest step toward collective mental, emotional and spiritual health that we could imagine. If we truly accept that wounds inflicted by life and the people with whom we share it are redeemable, that we can hope and trust in the power of grace and reconciliation, and then no situation is without hope.
Christ is Risen! Alleluia! I believe in Easter!

The End of Estrangement

2009-04-17T14:20:00.000-07:00

A sermon for the Easter Vigil, 2009

This is the night of mystery and wonder. It is a night of the pure potential and newness of life. On this night, we celebrate Christ’s passage from death to eternal life. We celebrate Azita and Sara’s passage into new life – a life of thoughtful and intentional belonging. In the early church this was the only night on which people were baptized into the faith. So it has special significance for us when we welcome new members of the Body of Christ during this Great Vigil of Easter. With their presence we are made new, something has changed in us as well.
This night began with a spark – it is the symbol of creation and the symbol of resurrection. It sets things in motion. And what it sets in motion is the transformation of chaos into order, the transformation of sadness into joy, the transformation of anger into peace, the transformation of death into life,
Easter is God’s gentle, dynamic insistence that we are continually drawn more and more deeply into the divine life. God’s power is persuasive not coercive. God will not make us accept joy and love and peace. In fact, God allows our bad choices – as evidenced on the cross on Calvary. That action was humankind saying “no” to God’s invitation to live in love. Easter is the proof that no matter what we do, God will continue to offer us a new opportunity. On a daily basis, moment by moment we have the choice to accept or decline God’s invitation.
That invitation is conscious belonging. Sara told me today that for her, part of her baptism was the sense of opening her eyes and heart to a loving presence that would always be with her. In the 18th Century, German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Hegel identified the human condition as something he called estrangement or alienation. The journey on which we find ourselves is to overcome that estrangement from, as he put it, a unified reality. Not a very cuddly way of putting it but I believe it was 18th century German speak for what Sara so simply described. As creatures of this world, we perceive a distance between us and God. The way we have told the story says that the gap is because we have sinned and removed ourselves from God’s pure presence. Hegel saw it differently. He felt that the estrangement we experience is because we haven’t yet learned who we are. He saw human history working itself out through the process of dialectic, that old Socratic teaching of the tension between a thesis and its antithesis which results in something new – a synthesis. These deadly dull sounding ideas are actually the fertile soil for a helpful understanding of how God works in the world to bring us out of our estrangement. God responds to our thesis of estrangement, the idea that we are somehow isolated by prophetic messages – Isaiah’s beautiful image of the peaceable kingdom, God’s promise to guide and be with us. God even goes so far as to respond to our stubborn insistence that God is out there and we are struggling along by ourselves here with a novel gift of self – the incarnation – the living presence of the Divine in our midst. The crucifixion, however, was an emphatic refusal of God’s invitation to embrace the divinity in our midst. Easter is the antithesis of that execution. The synthesis of those two ideas is us. We are the church, that community that seeks to live the message of welcome and belonging. Throughout the two thousand year history of the church, we have lurched along, sometimes drawing near, sometimes wandering far off course. But the process, move/counter-move relationship with God continues. As the church, we try to accept God’s invitation, and the response is the joy that we find in one another. We are a part of God’s long-term plan to overcome our misguided sense of estrangement. The more we respond to God, the more God has to work with in us.
Accepting the meaning of Easter – that we are loved and that God is committed to us is ongoing work. It appears that estrangement, like other bad habits is hard to unlearn. Brain scientists tell us that bad habits are wired into the processes of our brain and it takes persistence to change them. The bad habit of estrangement or isolation was developed throughout human evolution and no doubt helped early members of the human race keep from being eaten by other residents of the neighborhood. We had to learn to take care of ourselves, look out for #1, we learned to compete for resources. We did not initially know that we need each other. But now that we have been knit together into the Body of Christ, it is time to break our old isolating, suspicious, competitive, fearful habits.
We do so regularly here – one of the miracles of being a congregation is that we are with people that we would never meet otherwise. And we do more than simply come into contact with them. We share joys and sorrows, we celebrate and we mourn together, we become a part of one another, and estrangement recedes a bit. Together we are the mystical body of Christ. We are that spark of God’s future born and reborn this night. Alleluia, Christ is risen and so are we.

His wounds, our wounds

2009-04-17T14:18:00.000-07:00

A sermon for Good Friday 2009.

This is the King of the Jews. The statement was meant to be an insult. How could a people be strong if their king was so weak? How many kings have been executed in the sight of their people so as to dispirit them, to make them pliable and obedient to some other authority? This was meant as an insult to him and to the Jews who were already oppressed enough. He was kingly in his lineage, in his love for his people and in his wisdom and in his courage. But he was not merely the King of the Jews as he hung on that cross. He was every person who has ever suffered.
His feet are the feet of every refugee who has been driven from his home. The roads are unkind and rocky as he struggles to take one more step away from misery and toward uncertainty. To sit down to rest his suffering feet is to risk dying in that place. All that drives each painful step is the challenge of the next one. Each step is a victory but one that feels as if nails have been driven through the feet of the refugee.
Jesus’ back, marked with the stripes of a whip is the back of every slave or prisoner. The slaves who had to consider whether the slim prospect of a successful escape was worth the lash. The lash would cut to the bone and take a long time to heal. The scars would cause his back to tighten and scream with every movement and yet he would have to carry on in spite of them, serving the one who had taken his freedom.
Jesus’ hands, screaming from the pain of the spikes through his wrists are the hands of everyone who has ever felt helpless as a loved one suffers. Our hands are so capable; we build, we hold our loved ones close, we comfort. Then when we can do nothing, our hands hang useless at our sides. When we cannot push away the evil, the sickness, the despair, what good are our hands? The hands of Jesus bleed our own helplessness.
Jesus’ eyes looked out from the haze of misery and saw his mother and Mary Magdalene and the other women. What they did not see were his closest companions, the ones who professed undying love and support. Those are the eyes of everyone who has ever been betrayed, abandoned, let down, and left alone. His are the eyes of children who wonder why their parents hurt them. His are the eyes of outcasts who cannot comprehend hatred and animosity directed at them. His are the eyes of Jews herded into ovens and Sudanese dying in refugee camps wondering if anyone knows or cares.
The heart of Jesus, perhaps more broken than the rest his body is the heart of the whole world. It seemed so clear, just love each other and yet they didn’t seem to understand. Maybe we don’t want to understand because it is hard work to let go of ancient ingrained hatreds. This is the heart of everyone who has ever known depression. That cloud that robs the world of color and joy and anticipation is not just a chemical imbalance that can be regulated with a pill; it is the lack of hope. Jesus’ heart draws in our despair and holds it on the cross.

O sacred head, sore wounded, defiled and put to scorn.
O kingly head surrounded with mocking crown of thorn;
What sorrow mars they grandeur? Can death thy bloom deflower?
O countenance whose splendor the hosts of heaven adore!

In thy most bitter passion my heart to share doth cry,
With thee for my salvation upon the cross to die.
Ah, keep my heart thus moved to stand thy cross beneath,
To mourn thee, well beloved, yet thank thee for they death.

Remember

2009-04-17T14:17:00.000-07:00

A sermon for Maundy Thursday, 2009

How much we owe to this night. This lovely and sad night in which Jesus gave us the way to remember him and to find him in the simplest of gestures. “Break bread and remember me.” This gift of the Eucharist is a special kind of remembering – the Greek word is anamnesis and it refers to the specific part of the Eucharistic prayer in which we proclaim the mystery of faith “We remember his death, We proclaim his resurrection, We await his coming in glory.” This anamnesis is like the tenses of verbs in Hebrew. When God tells Moses that his name is I AM THAT I AM, it’s not that simple. The Hebrews words could be translated any number of ways – I WILL BE THAT I WILL BE, I AM THAT I WILL BE. You can find any number of ways to say it; the tenses are maddeningly and richly vague. Eternity is found in God’s name. That same power is in the Eucharist. As we remember we become a part of that night at the Passover supper. Every Eucharist that has ever taken place is happening whenever we do this for the remembrance of him. That’s the mystical part of the mystical Body of Christ.
One of the members of our Altar Guild shared with me a moment that she had as she washed up the chalice after church one Sunday morning. She became acutely aware the she was repeating the same motions of every woman who had ever taken care of the altar vessels from that very first night. Somebody washed the dishes that night and here in our little sacristy, it was ancient and brand new all at once.
Jesus created this rite from within the context of the Passover Supper, the Seder. It is the central Jewish ritual of remembering – remembering when they were slaves, remembering their deliverance, remembering how God was and is present for them. A line from the Haggadah, the text for the Seder, says “In every generation, a person is obligated to feel as if he or she personally had gone forth from Egypt.” This ritual of remembering keeps this awareness current within the Jewish community. It is tradition that is often updated. Some people prepare their traditional Seder plate, with its symbolic foods, with the addition of an orange. Oranges are no where in the Passover story but as women were first being ordained as rabbis one disgruntled man opined that a woman had as much business being a rabbi as an orange had being on a Seder plate. Now an orange serves as a reminder of a time when women were enslaved to patriarchy. The orange becomes a symbol of liberation. Traditionally the seven plagues are recited as drops of wine are put on one’s plate. Now along with blood, frogs, lice, locusts and the death of the Firstborn, some Seders include war, hatred and violence, ruining the earth, injustice and corrupt government. The Seder’s traditions are maintained while they embrace the current condition. A valid tradition is elastic enough to maintain its power and integrity while being adapted to new times.
When Peter and I were in Lebanon in 2007, I had a long and surprisingly heated conversation with some of his Lebanese family. They are members of Maronite Church, a branch of Eastern Orthodox Christianity. When I told them that I gave the sacraments on occasion to people who were not baptized they were outraged. Somehow I was not protecting the sacraments of bread and wine from those who had not earned them. Try as I might, I cannot imagine Jesus denying himself to anyone who truly seeks him. He spread God’s blessing of healing to those who knew the God of Israel and to those who did not. He offered living water to a woman of questionable character at the well in Samaria. He accepted the ministrations of a woman of questionable reputation when she sought his presence. He allowed her to give of herself and he didn’t check her credentials by asking her what she believed. He allowed her offering to be sufficient. Her desire to belong to the kingdom about which he preached was enough.
As revolutionary as the new formula of “belong, behave, believe” seems to us, it is really a return to Jesus’ open table fellowship. Jesus scholar Dominic Crossan claims that Jesus announced a “brokerless kingdom” – a kingdom which has no gate keepers. Jesus freed people from the idea that paying the priests in the Temple to sacrifice an animal was necessary to be in right relationship with God. Jesus said, come and just be a part of it. All you need to belong to this kingdom is your desire to give yourself to the vision and to be changed by it.
For a long time the church has jealously guarded access to the sacrament of Holy Eucharist, the bread and wine in which Jesus said we would find him. But he said “whenever you do this, do it for the remembrance of me.” It seems to me that any meal we share then becomes a meal of communion if we remember Jesus when we do it. Why should a church doctrine stand between a seeker of God and God.
The openness with which we offer the sacrament of belonging here at Faith is done because of what Jesus said, not in an attempt to protect it. We owe so much to this night. Not only the gift and the means to have the presence of Christ alive in our midst but also the remembering that he gave his life for our good. Tonight we remember his servant leadership in the washing of one another’s feet; we remember his commandment to love one another as he loved us; we remember his gift of the Eucharist; we remember his arrest. All of this remembering prepares us for his death on the cross tomorrow. The anemnesis of the Good Friday brings his sacrificial death into our time, as it takes us to the foot of the cross. Remember.

Palm Sunday contradicitons

2009-04-09T12:04:00.000-07:00

I always find Palm Sunday to be a difficult day. It’s one of those days that no matter what you think it is, it's something else. It appears to be all about triumph and cheering. But what was it like for Jesus? Could he ignore what he knew in his heart was coming and enter into the festive moment? For Jesus this was not a ticker-tape parade after winning the Super Bowl or landing on the moon. It was a pre-funeral procession. I wonder if he didn’t have some sort of confusing disconnect between what he saw and what he felt.
Seated on that donkey people were shouting his name and reaching out their hands to him, hoping to catch a little bit of his power for themselves. Certainly he loved them but was he a little weary of their adulation and need for him. Did he know how hollow it would be in the days to come? It’s not that they were insincere. They were there for a festival. He was there to die.
So we have this day that begins in such frenzy and ends in such despair. We read the passion gospel and yet it is not quite time for it. Those days come later in this somber week. In my more cynical moments I wonder if the Passion Gospel was inserted here to accommodate those who will not come again until Easter Sunday. And that makes me sad. Can we not spare a few hours to stand in the presence of the cross at its most dangerous? It is after all more than wall decoration or jewelry. It is the statement of human brutality laid bare for all to see. In it we see every instance of cruelty, torture and violence. Do we not know that we have been saved from that? Have we not learned that violence leads to only one thing – more violence? This day violence comes into our church and it makes us appropriately uncomfortable.
How is it that Holy Week is too disturbing for us but violent movies and video games are always successful? Do we mean to be a people who enjoy violence? The entertainment industry has an ongoing competition to see who can fashion the most realistic gore in the most disturbing situations. The movies, television and video games enter our lives and desensitize us to cruelty. If you ask kids about their video games they will tell you “Oh yeah, it’s just fun, it’s not real.” The problem is that when we are faced with some examples of real violence, police caught on tape wielding their batons, the aftermath of suicide bombers or reports by the Red Cross that our country has approved and used torture; we have lost a bit of our ability to be outraged. We are used to our violence on a screen which we can turn off.
Palm Sunday – would that we might hear the tension between triumph and violence. It is important for us to understand the ordeal to which Jesus allowed himself to be led. Crucifixion is gruesome. It was meant to be – execution and example held high for all to see, a tacit warning to respect the power of the state. I imagine that if it were still the preferred method of execution, the debate on the death penalty would be short. It’s hard to wish that on your worst enemy. Oh my goodness, maybe that’s the point of it. What Jesus understood was that the only way to overcome violence is to shine a light on it and expose it for the sin that it is. If we are disturbed by what happened to Jesus, an innocent victim of powerful people and institutions, then we should be equally disturbed when it happens to anyone else around the world. He went to the cross so others might not have to.
This day gives us another contradiction – Jesus himself. This suffering and death is his most human moment. But he responds to it with superhuman grace. Who could minister to someone else when in such agony? “Take up your cross and follow me.” Darn, this Christianity stuff is hard. And there’s the contradiction for us. Most of the year we engage our faith around here as a response to God’s love and generosity. We talk about abundance and joy. Yet today’s we are face to face with the expectation that we will engage humanity’s violence with courage, compassion, and grace. If what was done to Jesus was horrible, then we should stand up for an end to violence across the board. The Quakers have managed to do so for hundreds of years. They are witnesses to harmony and a refusal to continue the cycle of violence. This sin against others, the breaking of their bodies and spirits as a tool of power in international relations, in our communities and in our lives is not necessary or healthy.
Jesus died for our sins – maybe the right way to say that is that Jesus died because we are sinful, violent and broken people. He did so willingly so that we might become otherwise. So this Palm Sunday, we hear and we sing Hosanna and we begin that long walk behind Jesus to Friday. Don’t close your eyes to it for only by facing the cross can we be healed by it.

Commandments for Lent

2009-03-19T09:48:00.000-07:00

A sermon for the 3rd Sunday of Lent.

We are certainly getting our fill of the Ten Commandments this Lent so I thought it would be a good idea to spend a little time with them. The Talmud is the central text of mainstream Judaism, the work means "instruction, learning", and it is a record of rabinnic discussions on Jewish law, ethics, customs, and history. This story is found in it; “Once there was a gentile who came before (the great) rabbi Shammai, and said to him: “Convert me on the condition that you teach me the whole Torah while I stand on one foot. Shammai pushed him aside with the measuring stick he was holding. The same fellow came before (the equally great) rabbi Hillel, and Hillel converted him, saying: That which is despicable to you, do not do to your fellow, this is the whole Torah, and the rest is commentary, go and learn it.”

If Hillel’s teaching was a sound-bite, the Ten Commandments are the bullet points of Jewish law. Allusions to the Ten Commandments are found as early as the writings of the 8th century prophet Hosea but in their present form they are most likely a later construction, from the time of the captivity in Babylon. That dark time in the history of Israel was actually a very fertile period for the development of the theology of Judaism. As the leaders of the community in exile stove to survive, they asked all the big questions, who are we and what does it mean to be a Jew?
The Ten Commandments are a clear statement of what being in covenant with God looks like and that starts with God. Allow only God to be God in your life. This is not as easy as it sounds because while we are not paying attention other things gain momentum and loom large in our hearts and minds and distract us from God in our life. Keeping God at the center of your life doesn’t mean that you have to move to a monastery or go to church every day. It is more an underlying awareness that God is and is in everything. Or to put it differently, everything is in God. When God is your context, how you comprehend your life and surroundings is different.

Once God is your context, you have something against which to measure your passions. If God’s presence is dimmed or crowded by an attachment to anything else you have created an idol. I read a posting on a blog by a young woman who was of a different political persuasion from her father. They were previously able to either overcome or avoid incendiary topics but yesterday her father hung up on her when she expressed an opinion. It was very sad to see an attachment to an ideology crowd out love. That’s what idolatry is, whether it is religion, politics, money (those two together are particularly power). It can be an obsession with how we look or don’t look, how we identify or denigrate ourselves. It’s odd that it’s so hard for us to see idolatry in our attitudes and attachments.

The commandment to refrain from using God’s name with malice reminds us not to try to use God or God’s power for our own use. When we use God’s name as a curse we have usurped something that is not ours The name of God is a powerful thing and it is not for us to use that power for our own ends – particularly to damn something. This commandment is more about maintaining a clear understanding of who is God and who is not.

Sabbath time is like tithing – we are supposed to return a portion of all that we have to God as a way of remembering God as the author of our blessings. How often to we say – I just don’t have the time to … We convince ourselves that our schedule is the prime directive for how we spend our time. This commandment reminds us to re-center on God. Being too busy for prayer and the fellowship of a church community might be construed as arrogance by a God who gave us six whole days for the things we need to do. The idea of Sabbath also brings with it a sense of justice – everyone, even the slaves, are to have a day of rest.
The first four Commandments safeguard our covenantal relationship with God. When we put God first, the rest falls into place. That becomes clear in the next six which safeguard our relations with each other. Since God created us to be in relationship with one another, God has a vested interest in how we do that. Maintaining the integrity of the community is intention behind Commandments 5-10.

The entire history of Judaism is built on the story of one family – the family of Abraham and Sarah. The honoring of father and mother, in its most immediate interpretation would be our own parents, the previous generation but it can also be understood to mean the entire faith tradition. Honor what brought you to this point. Even the worst parents are due gratitude for having brought us into the world and even the biggest scoundrels, like Jacob, deserve a place of honor in the tradition. Honoring them is a way to carry on the best of our traditions. At the same time, we can view our forbearers as products of their culture, not expect them to be perfect and sometimes use them as the negative examples that help us determine our choices. We can do this while still honoring their role.

The rest of the Ten Commandments are an outline for how we live together. God is not just concerned with how we relate to God but how we relate to one another. The small tribal communities that made up the Ancient Near East needed a very strict code of behavior to safeguard the integrity of that community. Everyone was related and interconnected and interdependent. Disputes that flared when someone’s property rights were not respected, when marriage bonds were damaged, when dishonesty threatened trust – all of these had serious ramifications in a community that was scratching out a living in a hostile environment. Today the ripples from our neighbors indiscretion barely even touch us – I don’t know most of my neighbors; our lives are so separate that anything short of their house burning down will go unnoticed in Marina Hills. But, take a community as small and interconnected as this congregation, if these last six Commandments are violated, it will affect everyone.

I was wondering the other day if there were an 11th Commandment, one more added to the 10 Biggies, what would it be? All of the community commandments are presented in negative “thou shalt not” form and while they are all important, I hope that we would elevate forgiveness to their level. Something like, “You shall learn to forgive” or “You shall be slow to anger and quick to forgive.” However it might be worded, the ability and desire to redeem broken relationships is every bit as important as not stealing your neighbors milk cow or prized azalea.

Forgiveness is one of the most difficult relationship challenges and while obeying the commandments will keep a lot of things from going wrong, there are still loads of ways that we injure each other. While trekking through the Lenten desert, I recommend some thought on the ideal community that is safeguarded by the commandments and the forgiveness that is required reconciliation. Jesus didn’t come among us to keep us from stealing and lying to each other, he came that all of our broken relationships might be healed and reconciled. So belong to that dream, behave as if it were already here and in your believing it, it will be real.

Challenging assumptions in Lent

2009-03-10T15:47:00.000-07:00

A sermon for the second Sunday of Lent, 2009.

Times have certainly changed from the days when this story of Abraham willingly taking a knife to his son’s throat could be held up as some sort of model of faith. There are a number of assumptions in this story that no longer fit with how we understand things. First is the acceptance of such an act as anything other than shocking. Blood sacrifice is abhorrent; it is repulsive to think that God would be pleased with such violence. Even the arguments that, well sacrifice was a common practice during the Biblical era still make me want to tear this story out of Genesis. If it was good enough for Thomas Jefferson to edit the Bible with scissors, then I should be able to also.
Second assumption – God is a being that speaks to us in such unambiguous terms. This is a very old, image of God and one that is less relevant all the time. However you imagine God, interpreting divine revelation is tricky business. Humility in declaring an understanding of God’s will is prudent. We are rightfully suspicious when someone puts forth a “God told me to do it” defense or “We have God on our side therefore what we do is right.” We address this often and clearly here at Faith, we are content to let God be a mystery and are reluctant to claim definitive knowledge of God’s will.
It is crucial that we understand when we are attributing cultural things to God’s will. The shocking reality of honor killings in the Muslim countries is a case in point. The culture will say, “the place of women is where men want them to be and it is God’s will; Allah be praised.” But Islamic scholars are clear that the Koran does not support such a statement or its extreme expression – it is historical, tribal and resistant to the countercultural freedoms granted to women in Islam’s founding. The idea that patriarchy is somehow God-given or God-approved is generally the position only of the men in a culture and supported by a vision of God as a guy.
Third assumption – Abraham is a good role model. I will grant him some fine moments but they must be seen along side the evidence of his cowardice, his opportunism, and his wretched parenting skills. As his story is written for us, he is incoherent and inconsistent in the application of his faith. In Genesis 18 Abraham argues with God over the fate of Sodom, a place that is a watchword for injustice and cruelty. He champions the few just people who might be living in Sodom and defends the innocent against the tyranny of God’s anger. But where is that outrage on behalf of his innocent son. In today’s reading God says “Take your beloved son and kill him because I ask you to.” Without so much as an “Excuse me, I don’t think I heard you right” Abraham methodically goes about preparing to kill his boy. Now I would think a whole lot more of Abraham if he had said “No God, I love you and if you need a death, I give you mine but this, I will not do.” This is a perfect example of the culture dictating an understanding of God. Abraham’s world was one of blood sacrifice and it was assumed that that was God’s will. The prophets tried to tell the people that it was not. Hosea said is most clearly, “I desire steadfast love, not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.”
Another assumption that floats beneath the surface of this story is how sin is understood. The whole premise of a culture of blood sacrifice is that the blood is supposed to make something better, it buys forgiveness. To the religious voices of Israel, sin was like a tear or a wound in the fabric of creation as God made it. It could only be mended by the application of the holiest substance – pure blood. It was on this premise that the Temple in Jerusalem operated, the culture of blood sacrifice was institutionalized, complete with its own economy.
It is through the lens of this culture that Jesus death was first interpreted. Paul drew on the language of his culture and could only see Jesus’ death as a sacrifice meant to mend the tear in the fabric of creation. The idea that killing a lamb or a bull or a pigeon could pay what was owed for your sin becomes “Jesus, the lamb of God, died for our sins.”
In this understanding of Jesus death, the sin that needs to be healed is as old as Adam. Adam ate the fruit offered to him by Eve, apparently without hesitation much like Abraham. The question that needs to be examined for the fingerprints of culture is, was Adam’s disobedience the mother of all sins to which we are inescapably bound and for which Jesus died as a sacrificial lamb? Or is there another way to consider the eviction from the Garden. One could just as easily understand Eden as a nursery in which all needs are met for the infantile humans. They could not survive outside of such a place until there were ready to think for themselves, ready to outgrow the limitations and restriction of the nursery. If the image of God breathed into the humans is to be fully realized they must leave the nursery and grow up. The depth of the gift is only discovered as the humans make their way in the world together. It’s hard for us when our children are no longer sweet, adoring, cuddly little ones but hormonally charged moody adults in waiting. I remember feeling something like anger at Brady and Melanie’s having dared to grow up on me. I don’t believe that the image of God in us is honored by a willingness to remain safely in the nursery, always receiving and never creating.
Now I realize that I am apparently advocating the overthrow of two thousand years of theology. I do have support in this, as old as Ireneaus, that 2nd Century Bishop from Lyon, France and voices along the way in Celtic theology and the great Christian mystics and here is the voice of a Unitarian educator Sophia Lyon Fahs, from her 1952 book, Today's Children and Yesterday's Heritage:

"It matters what we believe. Some beliefs are like walled gardens. They encourage exclusiveness, and the feeling of being especially privileged. Other beliefs are expansive and lead the way into wider and deeper sympathies… Some beliefs are divisive, separating the saved from the unsaved, friends from enemies. Other beliefs are bonds in universal brotherhood, where sincere differences beautify the pattern. Some beliefs are like blinders, shutting off the power to choose one's own direction. Other beliefs are like gateways opening wide vistas for exploration. Some beliefs weaken a person's selfhood. They blight the growth of resourcefulness. Other beliefs nurture self-confidence and enrich the feeling of personal worth. Some beliefs are rigid, like the body of death, impotent in a changing world. Other beliefs are pliable, like the young sapling, ever growing with the upward thrust of life."
In no way do I downplay the fact that we sin – that the world is bleeding from many wounds attests to the power of our refusal to live in steadfast love with one another. But I encourage you to consider how a starting place of Original Goodness might be more helpful to your journey than the weight of Original Sin. I look at our sweet children from the smallest to the tallest and they are to me, more evidence of original goodness than any of their misdeeds convince me that they are born into sin.
Lent is a good time to challenge assumptions. The time in the desert is well spent in such contemplation.

Into the desert

2009-03-10T15:37:00.000-07:00

A sermon for the first Sunday of Lent, 2009.

The desert is a close presence here in southern California. But I grew up in places like Connecticut, upstate New York and Indiana, which is its own kind of desert. I had no experience of a real desert until I saw Lawrence of Arabia when I was in junior high school. The multiple Academy Award winning movie of 1963 told the story of Thomas E. Lawrence, and his role during WWI in the Middle East. The movie won Best Picture, Best Director, Best cinematography, Best Music and nominations for Peter O’Toole and Omar Sharif. But as I watched it, for me the desert was the star. I’d always thought that deserts were flat, boring stretches of sand, I had no idea of all that one could find in the desert.
The Judean desert, referred to as the wilderness, is an awe inspiring place – you feel that it could swallow you and not even notice. Having been there, the story of Jesus out in the desert has taken on a clarity that simply reading the Gospels does not impart. Spending any amount of time out there without an air conditioned bus is nearly inconceivable to my pampered, comfort expecting self. I was there in May of 1999 so it was not nearly as hot as it was going to get later in the summer. The day we went up on Masada, the plateau fortress in the middle of the desert, the air temperature was 114. The heat from the rocks burned my skin. You realize that survival is a constant struggle out there. That kind of extreme place focuses your understanding of what is important.
That’s why Jesus went. Today’s Gospel reading says that the Spirit drove him into the wilderness. In Matthew and Luke, he is led by the Spirit, although they use different words. Apparently the writers of the gospels had different understandings of why Jesus went into the desert. The word that Mark uses is ekballai – which gives a sense of being compelled. He wasn’t cajoled or merely invited into the desert by the Holy Spirit, it was that Spirit of Wisdom within him which said, to do what you are going to do, you must go to prepare. You must go so that you may understand who you are for that is what you learn in the desert.
Mark tells us nothing about his time there except that is lasted 40 days; he was tempted by Satan, was with the wild beasts and the angels waited on him. That’s all it says so we have to drill down for deeper understanding. The cast of characters in this drama is clearly listed. There is a Divine Spirit, a tempter, wild beasts and angels, and one human. Psalm 8 asks the question “What is man that you should be mindful of him? The son of man that you should seek him out?” Perhaps the wisdom that Jesus is seeking in the desert is the answer to the question, “What does it mean to be human?” “What does it mean to be the one made in the image of God and different from all the others?”
In 2004 when Max and I drove across the country to come here to Faith and new life, it was a startling drive through the painted desert of Utah. It was a breath-taking drive, the beauty and scale of it were humbling. The rich colors of the rocks and hills were other-worldly for someone who had grown up in the green of New England. It was like being in an art gallery filled with beautiful paintings but dangerous. Driving along in a little car reading signs about how to carry on in the event of a sand storm put things in perspective. I was a speck in that desert and one that could easily be blotted out if I got in nature’s way. The thing that differentiated me from Max, the other life form in the car, was that I could anticipate and respect the wilderness and its demands. And then the most amazing thing happened – it rained. It was early August and suddenly life giving water was falling in the searing desert. It felt like blessing. At that time, I was a fairly fragile human, having been humiliated by a second divorce, hiding out at my dad’s place, needing a job, not knowing what the future might bring. And yet here I was on my way to new life and it was raining in the desert. None of the metaphors were lost on me. I had been driven into a desert yet even in my misery and uncertainty, God was there.
In the Book of Genesis, the one thing that God says is not good is for the human to be alone. We are created to be in relationship, with one another and with God. Relationship is not something that we create, it is, by virtue of our being. We can work on the quality of the relationship, but we cannot create our relatedness, it is a gift from God and it is God’s response to realizing that we should not be alone. Sadly, we bustle through life, on our busy way to success and fulfillment and often miss the wealth and blessing of being with. The desert will clarify that for you. By faith you know that even in its most desolate places you are not alone. God is in the emptiness, too. The mystery of the desert is found in its contrasts.
But beware, if you enter the desert with an agenda or a timetable, your experience may not satisfy. You cannot march out into the wilderness and announce to it your intention to achieve enlightenment, fulfillment and to know peace. The desert will observe you and say, “Is that so?” The lessons of self-understanding are curiously elusive when we pursue them with a vengeance. They wait for us to stop demanding, to still our impatience, to resist the temptation of our ego.
Allessandro Pronzato is an Italian writer with a particular affinity for the dynamics of the desert. He says:
I invite you therefore to the observance of a holy Lent. Let go of impatience to know all things, to be healed of all ills. Let us walk through this desert season respectfully, waiting in stillness for the gifts that the desert will offer. Amen.

Clean out your closet for Lent

2009-03-10T15:33:00.000-07:00

A sermon for Ash Wednesday, 2009

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to put on ashes and I’ve come to the realization that there are two ways to do it.

One is to say, I expect ashes, I deserve only ashes, so I will heap them on my head and they are what I will get. I will see the world as burnt and smell the smoke of disappointment. I will surround myself with and hold on to thoughts of that which I do not want. This is the truth behind my favorite teaching that worrying is like praying for what you don’t want.

I don’t play golf but Peter does and he tells me that when you step up and address the ball and say to yourself, “don’t slice it, don’t slice it, don’t slice it” you will perversely slice it into the trees or out of bounds where only poison ivy and rattle snakes live. For some reason, our mind overlooks the “don’t” and goes straight to the “slice it!”

This holds true with small children. How often has “don’t tease the dog” or “don’t me look that way” been followed by a snarling encounter with the family pet or some mutinous, eyes boring a hole through you glare. The child does not process the “don’t”; they hear “tease the dog”, “look at me that way.” You have just prayed for what you don’t want.

The Calvinist strand of Christian thought proclaims the “total depravity of humankind” which means that we are completely and irretrievably sinful, incapable of choosing for ourselves to do or be good. It denies the power of having been made in the image of God. While Anglican thought does not put such teaching forward, many of our lives do. We don’t like ourselves, we assume that no one else does either. We look at peace and joy and goodness and unconditional love don’t see that they are possible for us. So we clothe ourselves in the garments of fear, guilt, despair and hopelessness. We don’t really like the way we look in them, but we don’t seem to know how to buy something that looks different. We just put them on because they are familiar and we hold onto the things we don’t want.

Well, there is another way to accept the ashes of this Wednesday. And that is to see them as all that is left of something that you have released, something that you no longer wrap around you day in and day out. Ashes can be a symbol of freedom. I would encourage you, use this Lent as a time of letting go of anything that limits the most beautiful expression of the image of God within you. Go into your closet, turn on the light and examine what is there. Is there a “nothing works out for me” shirt hanging there? Throw it on the floor. Is there a resentment dress? Every time you put it you look in the mirror and say “I don’t look as good in this as my sister would? Throw it on the pile. Do you see an abandonment sweater? You’ve got one of those, too. I think it’s actually a sweater set, you pile them on and clutch them tight so they won’t leave you. How about anger shoes, the ones that hurt your toes with every step you take? Not knowing how to forgive will certainly cause blisters so throw those on the pile. Maybe you have one of those great big puffy down “I wear this so people can’t really see who I am” coats. You know what to do with it. Now, get a match – it shouldn’t take any lighter fluid because this stuff is pretty volatile. As these old clothes burn, throw anything else that limits you and says that you aren’t good enough into the flames.

If you are like me, after this little ash producing exercise, you probably have a pretty empty closet. No one else gets to choose what you put in there and there only one rule for your new wardrobe. It must all look like some form of “I’m OK. I am loved. I have something wonderful to give to the world and life is a joyous adventure.”

Turning to ashes all of the old, unnecessary stuff that gets in the way of peace and joy and abundance is a good use of the season of Lent. It’s not easy work and therefore worthy of the seriousness of the season.

Authority

2008-12-16T16:06:00.000-08:00

A sermon preached at Faith Episcopal Church on December 14, 2008.

The wolf and the lamb – such a lovely image for a new way of being. Think about it, in the hierarchy of wild things, the wolf is part of the elite power structure. They are predators, good ones, and they are very smart. Wolves live in close knit communities and they hunt in packs. We are frightened of them. Think of all of fairly tales and fables with wolves as the bad guy – Little Red Riding Hood, Peter and the Wolf, the Three Little Pigs, the Boy Who Cried Wolf. We talk of throwing someone to the wolves, in desperate times the wolf is at the door and the idea of a wolf whistle carries with it the threat of violation. Wolves frighten us because it feels as though they might have power over us. In the animal kingdom, they have authority.

The lamb on the other hand is the meekest, weakest little fluffy adorable thing you can imagine. Lambs need to be tended and cuddled and they make us smile when they frolic about in the fields of springtime. They represent all that is innocent, pure and vulnerable. Lambs are precious, as in Mary had a little one…the prophet Nathan tells King David a story about a man whose darling little lamb was taken for dinner by the mean rich neighbor, we call children “little lambs.” And yet we are afraid of them also – afraid that they are us and that we too are vulnerable, without authority.

In the new heaven and new earth, there will be no dangerous hierarchy – the symbols of inequality meet in the middle and sit down for a meal. No one will be more powerful or more innocent than anyone else. Where now is authority? It is apparently in the relationship of the opposites – freely given by both parties.
This has been quite a week in the news when it comes to power and authority. Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich gave us all a glimpse of toxic power and authority running amok. Machiavelli is looking smarter all the time. My main question all week was “why was this man entrusted with authority to begin with?” By what criteria do we assign authority? Apparently we still live in a world that is conflicted about power and how to exercise authority appropriately.

Think about the word – it comes from author – one who creates or originates something. Webster defines authority as “the power to command, determine, influence or judge.” There’s an important distinction to be made here – power can be taken or assumed and fear is one of it’s henchmen – authority must be earned and granted. One rarely has authority in the absence of respect. It was the Bishop’s authority – the authority ascribed by his office – that sent me here – I have authority only to the extent that I earn your respect and hold it in sacred trust. I only have authority if you decide that I do. I believe that the true authority here – other than God – is our commitment to a vision of that holy mountain on which peace reigns and no one is hurt or abused.

Jesus was often challenged by his adversaries about the source of his authority. His words and teaching had inherent power and the scribes and Pharisees wanted to know its source and how he came to be in possession of it. Jesus knew who he was and what he came to reveal. In my often used Dictionary of Biblical Imagery it says that “authority is legitimate power. It implies freedom as well as permission to decide and to act.” Jesus’ authority came from his inner sense of who he was, what God is and he dedicated its use to the revealing of God and the empowering of humanity.

The Episcopal Church has always had an intriguing take on authority. Richard Hooker – Anglican theologian under Elizabeth I, first identified the Three Legged Stool. We give authority to the interplay of Scripture, the Traditions of Christianity and an ever evolving understanding of Reason. We invest considerable authority in the laity of this church – we are democratic, not dogmatic. Last week I spoke of the central tenet of the Protestant Reformation – sola scriptura, scripture sola which granted to the Bible the only and ultimate authority about Jesus, God and God’s will. That worked if you were a Lutheran or a Calvinist, but we are not and have always had a broader understanding of authority. Discontented voices in the Episcopal Church have conveniently overlooked this fact as they have attempted to anchor their criticism in our refusal to put all of our authority eggs in one basket. In this time of The Great Emergence questions of authority have been tossed up in the air like so many juggling balls.

Phyllis Tickle hit one nail squarely on the head as she tries to imagine what the church will look like when this period of Great Emergence has finally revealed the new way of being Christian (The Great Emergence, Baker Books, 2008). She described a church in which people understand their relationship to a congregation based on a sense of belonging instead of belief in a particular doctrine or practice. The old model was believe, behave, belong. There was a prescribed set of ideas to which one agreed which determined conduct which led to an eventual status of belonging. What appears to be coming is some form of belong, behave, believe. One simply belongs to a gathering of Christians by virtue of a shared humanity and an affinity with the individuals involved in whatever the group as a whole is doing. Those who chose to go deeper into the community will begin to engage in the behavior of the group. Out of the active engagement in the life and mission of a congregation, a sense of what one truly believes will emerge. The best experience of this I can describe happens with our children – they belong here – mostly because their parents have brought them – but they know that they belong. They take part in communion, which to them is a symbol of belonging. As they grow up and begin to ponder that sense of welcome and freely available belonging, it might lead to open hearts and compassion, welcome and generosity, as well as a sense of holy belonging to all that is. They belong; they practice communion; eventually they believe in communion.

The church that is emerging right now is suspicious of anything that would put limits on the belonging because to limit belonging short circuits the wonders that it can lead to. The Episcopal tradition is curiously well positioned to make this transition. I say curiously because it appears that we have all of the books, and prescribed behaviors and creeds that appear to come out of the old believe, behave, belong model. But I would claim that we – particularly here at Faith – are not held back by the old model. No one here is told that they have to believe a particular set of facts, no one is told that there is a right way of joining in worship or understanding our holy meal. There is nothing that stands in the way of anyone belonging. What our liturgy does is to make available practices that open us up to belonging to each other and to God. I frankly don’t care whether you say the Nicene Creed or not. The old words do not have inherent authority, their power resides in our willingness to remember and honor a shared history, they are a memory tool. What you believe about God the Creator, Jesus the divine idea and that free radical, the Holy Spirit – is for you to contemplate and decide.

In Advent, as we await that which is not yet completely arrived, we imagine the wolf and lamb at peace, we know that there is a holy. We cannot get there alone, but together we will bring the mountain of peace into the world.
Come, o come, Emmanuel.

2008-12-04T15:22:00.000-08:00

A sermon preached at Faith Episcopal Church on November 30,2008

A professor stood before his philosophy class with some items on his
desk in front of him. When the class began, wordlessly, he picked up
a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.
The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.
The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar.
Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with a unanimous "YES." The professor then produced two glasses of wine from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar, effectively filling the empty spaces between the grains of sand. The students laughed.

"Now," said the professor, as the laughter subsided, "I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things; your family, your children, your health, your friends, and your favorite passions; things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full. The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house, and your car. The sand is everything else; the small stuff. If you put the sand into the jar first, he continued, "there is no
room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the good things that are important to you.

Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play
with your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your partner out to dinner. Play another 18 holes. Do one more run down the ski slope. There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal. Take care of the golf balls first; the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand."
One of the students raised her hand and inquired why he had used wine instead of water. The professor smiled. "Now there is a good observation and I am glad you asked. It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there's always room for a couple of glasses of wine with a friend."

There are two reasons that I like this story for this week. First, it follows very nicely the season of Thanksgiving. To be truly grateful, you must have contemplated your life and your blessings. You will quickly see the overt blessings, your family, your health, your secure existence, the many opportunities that your life affords you. On closer examination, you might also find gratitude for apparent limitations in your life, which present new opportunities for thoughtful sacrifice and discernment about what is truly important. I remember being very surprised when I found myself being thankful for the depression that I had suffered years ago. Without it I wouldn’t have learned some vital things about myself; I would not have really matured as an adult. It goes without saying that as a priest, my having experienced that dark night of the soul helps me pastor more effectively to those who are struggling, but it goes beyond that. Without that dark night of the soul, I could never have conquered fear; without having felt that depth of despair, I would never have truly been able to truly appreciate the emergence…sunshine feels warmer after a long grey spell. It was the hardest thing I ever went through in my life, and I am so grateful for it.

The other reason I like this story now, on this first Sunday of Advent, is that it leads us to a eucharistic theology—and I don’t just mean the part about sharing a glass of wine with a friend! The atmosphere of Advent is one of anticipation, waiting to end estrangement and isolation. We know that there still more to life than we have experienced. We know there is more we can fit into the jar. Like the students in the professor’s class, we have come to realize, especially here in our Faith community, that just when we thought we had filled our jars, we discovered there was room for more, and not just more stuff, but the really important stuff.
All of our lessons this morning address the issue of waiting and staying alert to what is coming. Isaiah speaks of those who wait on God, Paul refers to those who await the revealing of the Christ, and Mark’s Gospel quotes Jesus himself talking about how important it is to stay alert for what is to come. This sense of expectation leaps out of the ancient writings and lands right in our midst. Indeed, much seems to be shifting in our world.

The world out there is changing. Social and economic systems are in flux. The internet changed politics, now we wait to see if it will it change governance, community is happening in cyberspace, new social structures are emerging, and Western Christianity is best described as a whole lotta shakin’ goin on! In her new book, The Great Emergence, Phyllis Tickle, of whom you have heard me speak before, explains the historical backdrop for what is now being recognized as a new reformation a new form of Christianity emerging. This emergent church, which has manifestations within the traditions of not just the Episcopal Church but the Presbyterian, Lutheran, Methodist, and other protestant denominations, is being driven by a movement that seeks a new expression of spirituality, a new understanding of authority. As with any emerging phenomenon, we can only wait and see what and how it develops, but my guess is it will have great relevance to us in the Episcopal Church and as we learn how to take ourselves beyond our walls with new tools and new ideas.

In the upcoming weeks of Advent, we will visit this great emergence in more detail, but the message for today is that we must first adopt a certain attitude, or perspective. We must expect that even if our mayonnaise jar appears to be full, there is more that can be fit into it. We must wait, with both great awareness and anticipation, for what God continues to reveal about what is important, what we can do to make the world better, what we can do to make ourselves better. And we must be willing to open our minds, expect the unexpected, thirst for new ideas rather than remain stagnant.

Two thousand years ago, the Jews in Israel were awaiting change, hoping for change. They were hoping for more of an old idea rather than something radically new. And when something new is being born, no matter what you think it will be, it is always something else. New ideas, new ways of expressing old ideas come when we stay awake and ready for the unexpected. Our readiness is the fertile soil of new ideas. You might have the big picture, the vision of the world as it could be and be completely surprised by the road that takes you there. So stay awake, keep an open mind, keep an open heart and greet everything that comes with courage and hope.

Divine GPS

2008-12-04T15:14:00.000-08:00

A sermon preached at Faith Episcopal Church on November 23, 2008.

When Peter and I got our little Honda hybrid, it came with a GPS system. We both looked at it and thought, “we’re never going to use that!” Apparently, I underestimated my excitement over knowing where I am at all times. I am now unabashedly head-over-heels in love with GPS. The woman who lives inside my dashboard is unfailingly patient despite my intentional messing with her. When I change the route she has given me, she graciously reroutes the little map and her “If you must…” is left unspoken. I appreciate that about her. The only thing that might make her better would be if on command, she would let me know where all of you were. I take that back—it's kind of creepy.But when you think about it, the divine GPS does just that. God never actually loses track of anyone. It’s more like we wander off, intentionally leaving our cell phones at home. The calls keep coming in, but we are not there to answer them all.

The OT reading today says, “I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out.” How will God do that? If we believed in God as some supernatural being, then we might indeed think that God can find us like some celestial posse. But we are seeking a more enlightened understanding of God’s nature. We want to grasp how God’s greatness is embedded in all aspects of life, a divine spirit energy that communicates not only with but through all creation. We are that part of creation that is aware enough to decide to listen and try to comprehend – that’s spiritual journey work. Of course, we also choose to put our hands over our ears and go La, la la, I can’t hear you.

What might be happening with God when we try to hide? If God is Energy, it would obviously be even more “patient” than the woman in my dashboard, calmly adjusting the desired route to the one we have chosen, but always with the same destination in mind for us. However, like our GPS system, we arrive at our destination most efficiently when we follow the route guide has suggested.

Here is where things get a little more interesting, however. It might surprise you that I spent this week researching the Second Law of Thermodynamics for some help with this topic. After all, if divine energy is in all things and the Second Law applies to all energy, there must be something useful we can learn from it.

Frank Lambert, Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at Occidental College here in LA explains on his website that “The second law of thermodynamics says that energy of all kinds in our material world disperses or spreads out if it is not hindered from doing so.” The greater the dispersion, the higher the entropy. I had a delightful email exchange with Professor Lambert, who cautioned me, in the strongest terms, not to try to use entropy as an analogy – he was most insistent it only applies to atoms and molecules. He worried for my reputation as a preacher. It was very kind, but I’m going to ignore his advice.

One of the first things I did was send the professor’s email to my science geek husband, and sure enough, he jumped in with entropy as one of the central tenets of information theory. Of course it has applications outside atoms and molecules.” Professor Lambert not withstanding, physical laws do provide great metaphors in the search for spiritual truth.

Think of light – we know how fast it travels, we know how it behaves. And as a practical matter, we also know how it disperses. You can read by a candle right next to you but not one across the room, because of how much the light has dispersed. But think of what happens with a laser. With lasers, the light is concentrated into a powerful beam, and it is projected in just one direction—very little dispersion.

So here is our metaphor—God’s Spirit, the divine energy, is everywhere—sometimes highly dispersed, sometimes laser like in its focus. We are also being searched out by that energy, that Spirit, and sometimes we sense it focused on our lives.

The question then becomes, what is OUR role in how divine energy either diffuses and becomes highly entropic or turns into a clear expression of God’s love? Containing the forces of entropy always require work of some sort. For God’s love to become a manifest reality, we must provide some measure of that work. We do so in community and apply ourselves toward the many ministries and programs that help those in need. Without it, the energy of God, no matter how pure and divine, diffuses into the atmosphere. That is why we hear in our Gospel message today Jesus speaking of how important it is that we visit, feed, and clothe the least in God’s Kingdom.

A couple of weeks ago the collect of the day was about scripture. “Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life.” This collect is acknowledgment of the need for us to respond. If you never consider what wisdom the Bible has for you, if you avoid it by leaving the book closed you will never benefit from the word of God that lies in it as a baby lies in a cradle, to quote Martin Luther. We are only lost when we don’t want to be found.

When we don’t want to be found, we don’t want to hear God’s call to thoughtful stewardship of our lives, our time, our relationships, our planet. We keep stepping out of the way of God’s energy hoping that it will dissipate and finally stop trying to get our attention.

I want to go back to our hybrid car because I think it’s a wonderful analogy for how our “work” can combat entropy in God’s Kingdom on Earth, and the life of the church. A hybrid takes energy that would otherwise be dissipated into the environment during downhill coasts and braking and channels it back into its battery system, recharging it. We can do the same here at Faith. When we come together, we bring a great deal of energy, and naturally some of that dissipates when we leave and rejoin our weekly routines. But instead of allowing it to dissipate completely, we can stay better connected throughout the week and perhaps even occasionally mesh together some of the extra energy we have to expend and share it in a new form of “work” to ward off the effects of entropy. I have seen it happen recently in Rome to Canterbury and Anna’s Guild gatherings, and it is a special experience, for in seeking each other out, we come to understand how indeed God seeks us out.

God’s search energy is constantly seeking us. Not to chastise us or put the fear of God in us but to focus and make useful the desire to love and to create the Kingdom of Christ, the Kingdom of Peace, the Kingdom of love.

Atonement

2008-09-04T11:39:00.001-07:00

Here we are coming to the end of summer, the very lazy days of late August, things should be laid back and simple. Time for one last deep inhale before diving back into life – one more long weekend to stretch out at the beach when “Bam!” Jesus hits us right between the eyes with his ominous claim that he is going to suffer and be killed in Jerusalem. When I read the Gospel earlier in the week, I felt like “Why do we have to do this now, it’s too hard to think about!” No sooner had the thought escaped my neurons than I heard Jesus’ admonition to get out of the way. Did I think this was supposed to easy – or even fun?

It has been a lot of fun to be a Christian at Faith so far this year. We have babies and children all over the place, we rattled the roof with our Mardi Gras, we rocked on the Halleluiah Chorus on Easter, much to our own amazement, people are taking time to consider what being on a spiritual journey looks like, new people are finding us all the time…how could it not be fun around here? I’m sure that Jesus had times like that – walking between towns with his friends, meeting people who wanted to take in what he had to offer, going to weddings, making people feel better…but always lurking around the edges of the sunny days was the knowledge that if you anger the powerful long enough, they will squash you. He knew that what he was doing would end in his death on a cross.

We’ve heard Martin Luther King’s voice a lot recently – it was 45 years ago on Thursday that he spoke of his dream to the crowd on the open spaces in Washington. On April 3, 1968 he told a crowd that he had been to the mountain top but that he did not know if he would be with them by the time they got to the promised land. Martin knew that lots of people wanted him dead – and the next day it happened.

The saint of El Salvador – Archbishop Oscar Romero also knew that lots of people wanted him dead – the brutal military government and even those within the church. He just wouldn’t stop asking those questions – why are my people hungry? Why are so many people poor while you are so rich? When will liberation come? The people’s bishop refused to hide and protect himself and he refused to stop speaking the truth to power. Only the bullets that tore through him as he celebrated his beloved Eucharist could stop him from shouting – “Set my people free!”

This silencing of the voices that speak the truth to power is shockingly common. Whether it’s by locking them up or ending their lives, toxic power terrorizes the children of God. We see it over and over and we cry, what can stop it? When will it end? I would love to be able to stand here and tell you that the empty tomb on Easter morning was the end of cruel, violent power but you would know that I was not being truthful. It’s not over, the madness continues but it does so at its peril now. Jesus’ gruesome death shone a spotlight on this ancient sin – the killing of the innocent brother. And he taught us how to meet it face to face and to disarm it with love. I think that’s what Jesus meant to do.

It is strange how we have taken his courageous self-sacrifice and turned it into a theological knot. In the centuries after his death, the church tried to explain what Jesus told his disciples today – that his death had to happen. The best thinkers put their minds to developing the theory of atonement – the $5 word for why Jesus died. Jesus died to save us from our sins – what does that mean?

To atone for something meant to try to set it right. The word itself has connotations of payment and compensation. The church has come up with all sorts of ways to apply this idea of compensation to Jesus death – first there was the idea that Satan was holding us captive and so Jesus was the ransom paid to set us free. This idea was around in the first three centuries. By the Middle Ages, atonement was rethought to that of satisfaction that was necessary to restore the dishonor that God suffered by our sin. That this kind of honor killing theory was unappealing was clear from the idea that was put forward shortly after by Peter Abelard. He posited that the crucifixion was to be for us a moral example and by which we could chose to live lives that would bring us closer to God. For some reason, the idea that we might be able to play a role in our own salvation has been roundly denigrated and rejected by the Church, as was this understanding of Jesus death. By the time of Luther and Calvin in the 16^th century, the idea that God’s honor needed to be satisfied became more dire. The theory of atonement during the Reformation became one of penal substitution. Our sin was so offensive to God that it required punishment and Jesus is the one on whom the sentence was meted out.

There is scripture to support each of these ideas but I wonder if any of them resonate with how Jesus understood the inevitability of his death by the hands of Rome. Jesus insisted that God’s presence and favor – what he referred to as the Kingdom of Heaven – was to be found in within in us. His plan was to preach it, teach it and live it so that we would get it. That presence of God looks like love and justice. For some reason liberty and justice for all is a dangerous thing – maybe because what of happens when people begin to know that they are worthy and powerful, they become dangerous to the powers of the world. Hope makes people hard to keep down, hard to control. To me, what Jesus death on the cross does is to say that God’s presence in our midst is worth sacrifice – bringing that message to us was more important than life itself.

I have very mixed feelings about most of the atonement theories. I really don’t like the idea of God as a blood-thirsty supernatural being that could somehow be satisfied by someone’s death. What I am very clear about is what Jesus thought was worth dying for, and that’s you. Jesus was willing to head for Jerusalem so the downtrodden would know that they were not merely vassals of a cruel overlord but keepers of the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus died so every prisoner, whether behind bars or trapped in an emotional hell were still able to touch and be touched by God’s love. Jesus had to die so that the forces of hatred, violence and despair would be exposed and neutralized. Jesus had to march to his death so you could know how loved you are. This morning we heard Henri Nouwen’s words about compassion – compassion is the power behind Jesus death on the cross – he became us and in his death and resurrection, we become him.

Thanks be to God!

Having a human experience

2008-07-10T14:50:00.000-07:00

A sermon preached at Faith Episcopal Church on June 22, 2008.

The General Ordination Exam, or GOE, is to seminary what the bar exam is to law school. After years of preparation and study and the jumping through of hoops, some simple, some flaming, you have this one last hurdle. It lasts three days. There are questions on all areas of theological study; scripture, history, liturgy, ethics, theology, and the ever popular “coffee hour questions.” These are the questions that one might encounter at random from a member of the church or a visitor. The trick is that little did we know, even these questions are evaluated by category. For example, one question the year I took it was something about St. George, the patron saint of England. The questioner was someone who had come from a church that made a big deal about him and celebrated St. George’s Day and why didn’t we? I gave the kind of answer you might expect. I said that I wasn’t really familiar with the tradition but if she were willing to bring the idea, with some structure to a larger group, we would see if there were interest and by the way, thank you very much for the idea! To me that’s the appropriate response to that kind of question. Unfortunately the test reader wanted an historic answer and didn’t like it – said I obviously didn’t know my church history very well.

But the coffee hour question that really got me into hot water was from a recent widow who was struggling and wondering just where was her husband now?” Now I’m not sure just which category this was supposed to fall into but I took it as a very real and as it turns out, it is a very real question and so I answered it with pastoral concern for the woman asking and said that none of us knows for sure and that there are several schools of thought beginning with the traditional image of pearly gates, clouds and harps where people where people do…I’m not sure what. I said there are also people who talk about the immortal soul, that part of us that does not die continuing on in some form. That was the one that made some heads explode – heads of people who had some power over my path to ordination. They were horrified that such a Platonic idea – an immortal soul – could have so corrupted the necessary appropriate doctrine of Christianity. The answer they were looking at was that when we die we cease to exist until the resurrection when poof, we exist again and then are raised. I don’t remember how I tap danced around them but at least I didn’t get expelled but ever since I’ve wanted to go back and say a few things to them, starting with Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel that we should not “fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.” I’d also like to remind them of collect in our very own Book of Common Prayer in the prayers for the deceased in Burial service. “Grant that, increasing in knowledge and love of thee, he may go from strength to strength in the life of perfect service in thy heavenly kingdom.” And then I would put the book down with vigor and say “See!” It’s probably a good thing I won’t have that opportunity. But it is an interesting question as to why there are those in the church who are afraid of the idea of a soul that existed before birth and continues to exist after death. Frankly it’s a lot more in keeping with how we have talked about things and with a whole lot of this world’s teaching.

Last week I shared with you the exhilarating sentiment of Teilhard de Chardin that we are not human beings in search of a spiritual experience but that we are spiritual beings having a human experience. That’s spiritual journey stuff and today we are celebrating the acknowledgment of that journey and all that it entails as we baptize little Blake Herman. Now Blake is an interesting child, he is the product of a family that is half Episcopalian and half Hindu. That makes Blake a bridge between two traditions that at first glance are quite different but just below the surface they have much in common beginning with the belief in one God. That God in both religions is understood in various forms. For Christians we celebrate three persons of the one God in the Trinity. Hindus believe in one God in many forms; Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva as well as others. But the greatest opportunity for conversation is reincarnation. The soul journeys from the eternal spirit through the realm of the material world and seeks the way back. Different incarnations bring different lessons and learning. The ultimate goal is reunion with – one could easily say reconciliation with – the ultimate source.

The Episcopal Church’s relationship with the idea of reincarnation is intriguing. There are two main books written on reincarnation from the point of view of Christianity, one was written by Geddes MacGregor, an Episcopal priest and Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at USC. Other books on the subject have had back cover endorsements by The Rt. Rev. Bennett Simms, retired bishop of Atlanta so there are serious voices in our tradition that have been willing to consider out loud the possibility that church teachings may be incomplete when it comes to the idea of soul and its journey.

To my way of thinking the main difference between traditional Christian doctrine of group resurrection at some time in the future that only God knows and reincarnation is that in Christianity outside of having faith, we are passive in our journey, the return to full relationship with the divine is done for us and happens to us. Early voices in the church, particularly Origen of Alexandria in the 2^nd century, who is considered one of the most brilliant minds of the day, taught that we evolve spiritually and toward that time when “God may be all in all” to quote 1 Cor. It was that teaching that every thing would return to God, no matter how far astray one’s path might go, or great the sin that church authorities didn’t like. Salvation just wasn’t going to be any fun if God loved Judas and even Satan enough to allow them to return also. So by the year 500, Origen and other like him were sufficiently silenced that reincarnation became the “R” word and we lost the ability to talk about our soul and its journey and whether or not this life is all we get.

Well, I want to be curious about my spiritual journey; I want you to be curious about yours. I want to know who Blake is and what’s in store for him. The challenge for Rayna and Chris is that they will want to protect him from all manner of difficulty, from the very things that will help him growth, from the very things that his soul’s journey may require. The uncomfortable truth is that it is Blake’s trials and challenges that will be his greatest teachers. Sheltering him too much will be to do him a disservice. Emily Dickinson had something to say about what a spiritual journey might look like.

Far from love the Heavenly Father

Leads the chosen child;

Oftener through realms of briar

Than the meadow mild,

Oftener by the claw of dragon

Than the hand of friend,

Guides the little one predestined

To the native land.

Whatever has brought Blake to this moment and however his journey unfolds, if we help him to know that he is indeed that spiritual being having a human experience, then he will never lose hope, he will always know that he on his way to something greater and the trials along the way will not overcome him. Today he enters into a community that has faith in the one who lights the way for our pilgrim’s progress. In him we are assured of life beyond this one – how exciting!

Theology and Dancing with the Stars

2008-05-28T12:11:00.000-07:00

A sermon preached at Faith Episcopal on May 25, 2008

Do not be anxious about your life – don’t worry about what you look like or have to wear. Don’t even worry about where your next meal will come from. I wonder how this sounded to the people that followed Jesus – many of whom were poor and didn’t always know where their next meal would come from. I would imagine that there was a lot of “That’s easy for you to say – I’ve got kids to feed” kind of murmuring.

Be like the lilies and the birds and know that God provides what you need. That would be really nice if only we didn’t have to pay for our food, but we can’t just sink roots down in the soil and draw nourishment from it, or swoop around in search of seeds and bugs that are just lying there for the taking. So once again, there goes Jesus, being completely unrealistic, just to make a point. And the point is what? Know who, or what, you trust. Do you trust to God’s criteria – what God has to say about you or do you trust what the world has to say?

We all have a ready cast of characters that do us wrong when we listen to them. They are the voices that will tell you that you aren’t good enough because…because you aren’t pretty enough, or tough enough or smart enough, rich enough, because you are not white enough or not patriotic enough or not Christian enough. The lilies of the field and the birds of the air don’t have to worry about those voices, blessedly simple creatures that they are. They are unencumbered by the necessity of having to live in a complex social system in order to survive. When was the last time you heard two birds conversing cattily about another saying “Did you see the size of those tail feathers!”? Birds don’t care what other birds have to say about them, in fact, they are not aware enough to have those kinds of thoughts. Only humans, being highly social animals, must carry the awareness of what other people are doing and saying about them. After all, being on the outside can feel like death. And unfortunately, it is also this very concern about conforming in order to survive that makes us the only species so willing to harm others who don’t conform, with our prejudices, our attitudes, our thoughtlessness.

Lilies are beautiful, wherever they bloom. It doesn’t matter whether they are in a beautifully planned garden, or along a peaceful country road, or pushing up through cracks in the pavement in a rundown part of town. They are beautiful because it’s what they are and that’s the underlying lesson here—bloom where you are planted and be beautiful!!! Just go ask any of those kids running around back there with Claire. God made us beautiful – it’s the world that tells us that we are not. I think when Jesus refers to the two masters in this passage that is exactly what he is talking about—you can serve the master that loves you and sees your beauty or you can fall in behind the ones that want you to doubt yourself and your holiness. Not both. You have to choose.

Reality TV came of age when I was in seminary and thus had no time for anything except readin’, writin’ and ruminatin’, so I was never on board with any of it. What little I did hear about sounded as though it were driven by manufactured conflict and animosity, and I’ve never had any interest in that. Imagine my surprise this year when I’ve found myself completely caught up in the battle of the Davids on American Idol as well as the other blockbuster “Dancing with the Stars.” Of course, now I get to claim that it was sermon research so I can absolve myself of any guilt in the pleasure.

The two shows are completely different – American Idol gives people the chance to do what they do, in front of judges and the audience with a pretty big payoff at the end – a recording contract and great publicity to launch a career. Dancing with the Stars, on the other hand, is all about taking people who are not ballroom dancers and sending them out to “play one” on TV. The payoff is a cheesy mirror ball trophy. I’d never really watched it before this season, and the first time I even turned it on Peter’s eyes rolled so far back in his head I thought he was possessed. But in the next second he said “Oh yeah, I heard Jason Taylor’s on this show!” Jason Taylor is a stand out defensive end for the Miami Dolphins and, as it turns out, one of the most elegant 6’6” imposing lineman you have ever seen – but could he DANCE? We were hooked. The precedent had been set a couple of seasons ago when Emmett Smith – former Dallas Cowboy running back—won the competition. But Jason had formidable competition in the mighty if diminutive Kristi Yamaguchi – the Olympic Gold medalist figure skater. That Kristi won the competition last week was almost no surprise, so it might have been easy to miss some of the extraordinary things that happened during the competition. There were several competitors who were clearly fish out of water, who illustrated the axiom “you can either dance or you can’t.” Monica Seles – tennis great but not a dancer. Neither were the magician – he couldn’t pull fleetness of foot out of his hat—nor the comedian, who kept them laughing only long enough to survive a couple of rounds. Most interesting were three women contestants, Priscilla Presley, the oldest competitor ever on Dancing with the Stars, Marlee Matlin, the Oscar winning actress who is deaf and Marisa Jaret Winokur, a Tony award Broadway star who is decidedly not a size 2. These three women received such enthusiastic support from their various constituencies. Marlee Matlin was held up as “isn’t it amazing that someone who can’t even hear the music can do that!” and the deaf community said “thank you Marlee for showing that we can do anything we set our minds to.” Marlee had a lot riding on how well she did – because in some way, every deaf person in America was out there on the dance floor, vulnerable to looking awkward or foolish. It was brave and she had a ball.

Priscilla received support from women over 40 and Marisa from those over a size 12. But they also were the object of some fairly vicious comments in the media and the internet. Priscilla was lampooned for the obviousness of her cosmetic surgery, and who really wants to see an old woman doing such sultry dances anyway. But I think it was Marisa who risked the most. In our “the thinner the better culture”, did people really want to see her plump self in a sequined dance gown showing lots of leg and moving her hips to a Latin rhythm? There were lots of people on the dance floor with Marisa, too. She made it to the semi-finals.

Marisa Jaret Winokur chose to ignore the voices that had no doubt called her fat girl and every other unkind thing they could think of. It was not easy for her to say yes to such an arena that is the realm of sleek, taut, agile people doing very showy moves. But she listened to the joy that she got out of dancing, the fun of learning, competing and improving and proclaimed, the week after she was eliminated, that nothing else had ever made her feel so beautiful or so sexy – two things that are inherently human. I think her exact words of advice were “Get out and do something that’s fun and shake what your Mama gave you!”

Belief in yourself as a beautiful child of God is not always easy to maintain in the complicated and mean streets that we inhabit so there’s a good lesson in the lilies of the field and the birds of the air. Nothing that we could ever say to a lily or a bird would interfere with their ability to express the beauty and goodness that abides in them – nothing interrupts their embrace of their God-given extravagance in bloom and in flight. In their simplicity they don’t know much, but they know enough to serve the Master of Creation. May we be as wise as they are.

The Trinity by any other name

2008-05-28T12:09:00.000-07:00

A sermon preached at Faith Episcopal on May 18, 2008.

Last Sunday, Steve Lopez, regular columnist in the LA Times had a column that I enjoyed immensely. It was titled “Agnostic feels a tug after Sunday in church.” Mr. Lopez had been invited to speak to the congregation of All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena about his three year journey with Nathaniel Ayers, a musician who slept on the streets of skid row. He said, “In describing the journey, the soul-searching and the rewards of giving, I used the words “spirituality” and “grace.” As I did, I saw people nodding as if I belonged in that room with them. But wait, I’m an agnostic, and quite content. So why did I feel such a connection? Could my stubborn resistance to faith be slipping?”

Disturbed by this potential shake up to his habitual approach to belief – which by his own admission was to do nothing about it at all, he sought out the rector of All Saints for a conversation. The Rev. Ed Bacon suggested that the moment of connection came for him as he was talking about giving, which releases the divine in all of us. One of my favorite formulas for expressing the mystery of the Trinity speaks to that directly, the Giver, the Gift and the Giving. God the Father as the Giver, God the Son as the Gift and God the Holy Spirit as the Giving.

There have been many such restatements of the traditional “Father, Son and Holy Spirit” vocabulary in recent years. The Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer, The Lover, the Beloved and the Loving; the Source, the Wellspring and the Living Water, the One who was and is and is to come. My own formula which is helpful to me in how I think about who these three are is the Mind, the Thought and the Imagining. As you can see, all of these are attempts to address the three persons of the Trinity without gender and that in some way, try to escape using language and imagery that is personified. My old boss, the Dean at the American Cathedral was the only one I know who managed to mangle the genders. Of course that was because he couldn’t get the French right and so what he ended up saying, unintentionally, was “In the Name of the Father, and of the daughter and of the Holy Spirit. Not at all helpful except for a chuckle.

There was a time, long ago in a galaxy far, far away, that the doctrine of the Trinity was a hot topic. Apparently, those days are gone and it is really too bad because the Trinity, as an idea and as a model has much to recommend to how we understand the underlying purpose in our lives. The most exciting understanding of this three-fold mystery to have been elevated in the last two thousand years is that God – this three-in-one Divinity is a community. We do not believe in three Gods we believe that all that is Divine expresses itself as relationship. The Trinity gives us the image of God as community. And not only community, but a community that maintains the unity of its diversity. A triangle is the most stable shape because everything is equally related to everything else. In a triangle, each point is equally connected to the other two. In a triangle, there is no odd man out.

The image of Trinitarian community is a healthy model for the human community. Think, if you will, of our little congregation and the world outside of our doors – two points of a triangle. The third point is the relationship that exists between the two. If we have no connection to the greater world, we do not reflect the nature of the community that is God. The connection is dynamic, like the Holy Spirit, it is the charge of electricity arcing between two electrodes. It can heat things up or get them moving.

Another important aspect of triune reality is its stability. A three legged stool never rocks, it sits solidly with each leg bearing equal weight. The Trinity is described as a dance of equals. Relationships that are in balance are divine things.

This week, California joined Massachusetts in the position that marriage is for anybody that wants it. This is creating distress for many Californians, most of whom site scripture in support of their opposition to same-sex marriage. I will try to explain why I believe that the Cal. Supreme Court’s decision brings all relationships into the lens of Trinitarian thinking. This gave me the push to pull down a book I bought three years ago by Rabbi Steven Greenberg, who spoke at our clergy conference. Rabbi Greenberg is the only openly gay Orthodox rabbi and his book Wrestling with God & Men; Homosexuality in the Jewish Tradition is good Bible study on those passages that condemn men lying with men. He makes very clear that in Biblical understanding of sexual relations there is an inherent power component. One person is the actor and the other is acted upon. The actor is always the dominant one. I think that the story of the city of Sodom is one of the most erroneously used passages in the entire Bible. The sin of Sodom was not gay sex but being a gated community. Sodom was a place of great wealth and resources and the people there did not want to have to share. Jewish tradition has many stories about how evil the place was. One such story says that offering charity to an outsider was not to be tolerated and if you did it, you would be killed. Lot, the nephew of Abraham, settled in Sodom, he must have had enough money to make himself acceptable. The angels that had visited Abraham on their way Sodom to investigate the cries of distress heard in heaven by those abused in that city arrived at the gates and Lot offered them the hospitality of his home for the night. In the mind of the men of Sodom, those strangers had violated their defenses and therefore must themselves be violated. Rape as a tool of humiliation and power, the degradation of another, is what went on in Sodom and it is the text that informs Leviticus 18:22. “You shall not lie with a man, as with a woman, it is an abomination.” What this text is saying is that no man should have to be the one acted upon because that upsets the way the world was understood – the world in which men were the actors, the powerful ones. No man should have his power taken away from him.

The Greco-Roman world in which the apostle Paul lived and in which he built churches was rife with an understanding that sex was always between parties of unequal power. For an Athenian to give testimony in court they had to swear that they were “not a slave, not a woman and not a foreigner” Jewish men began their days with a prayer of thanksgiving, praising God for not having made them a slave, or a woman, or a foreigner. They were giving thanks that no one could use them as one would use a slave or a woman or a foreigner.

The California Supreme Court recognized that all relationships in which mutual concern, affection and respect are present are equal under the law. I maintain that they are also images of the Triune God – two persons and their relating in balance. Anatomy and mechanics have nothing to do with it. It is the character of our relationships that is either pleasing or displeasing to God. When it’s about love and not power, it is a dance of equals.

The good news for us on Trinity Sunday is that we exist and hopefully know ourselves to be participants in that dance of equals with God. We are loved, we are valued, we are creative, we are in important part of the divine life of all that is.

"He ascended into Heaven..."

2008-05-28T12:05:00.000-07:00

A sermon preached at Faith Episcopal Church on May 4, 2008

“On the third day, he rose again, in accordance with the Scriptures. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God.” These are three fairly fantastic statements that we proclaim every time we recite the Nicene Creed. The creeds are curious things whether one says the Nicene Creed, the Apostles Creed or the fantastically long Athanasian Creed found in the back of your BCP. They were meant to develop a shorthand version of the basic claims of Christianity. They were not, nor do they function as, great evangelism tools. Few people, if any, would hear the creeds and feel drawn to this faith. Indeed at the moment there are lots of people who refrain from reciting the creed because it seems hypocritical to stand up and say “I” or “We believe…” when one cannot in good conscience agree with the statements.

Dr. David Cunningham, who was one of my professors in seminary, wrote a most helpful book on the Apostles Creed, breaking it down into the twelve different statements and then illustrating them with literature, either a novel, a play or a short story. The book is called Reading is Believing. He claims that the creeds have three purposes; first, they are a summary of the narratives of the Christian faith; second, they are a resource for study and conversation among those who already know the stories well and finally, as a goal that encourages Christians as they try to live into the stories.” What Dr. Cunningham says is that the creeds make sense only if you are willing to dive into them.

The very first thing that we need to understand when we recite a creed is to understand the use of the word believe. Every time we say it in a creed we say we “believe in” something. We are not using the word as one might saying “I believe it’s raining” which means “I’m not sure but I think so.” Nor do we use it to mean I’ve pretty well made up my mind to do something, as in “I believe I’ll save room for dessert.” No, the use of the word believe in the creeds is about trust and relationship. There’s a great difference between telling someone that you believe them, and telling someone that you believe in them. The former says, “I think you are telling the truth.” The latter, which is the way we say “We believe in God” is that you put your trust in God. It speaks of relationship. You would never tell someone that you didn’t care about that you believe in them. Because when you believe in someone, you give something of yourself, it is language of commitment. So what we are saying when we proclaim “We believe in Jesus Christ, the only son of God.” We are proclaiming that we are putting our trust, our faith, our hearts in Jesus Christ, and not in any other prince of this world. Believing in someone or something is not a momentary thing.

Another important point is that the statement about Jesus is not an exclusive statement. It is not saying that Buddhism is not also a path to knowing the Divine nor does it say that about Judaism or Islam. It is our statement that this is the path that we have chosen.

So what does it mean when we continue on and proclaim that Jesus “ascended into Heaven and is seated at the right hand of God.” From the get-go, that’s one that we can’t take literally because God doesn’t have hands so there is no right one to be seat by. But consider if you will, the phrase that we use fairly commonly, to be someone’s right-hand man is to be the one trusted to carry out a plan or a vision. That’s a very good way to think about Jesus, indeed it is the phrase that is found in Clarence Jordan’s New Testament translation The Cotton Patch Gospels. “Jesus is God’s right-hand man.”

This whole Ascension thing is a difficult one for me. Dr. Cunningham points out pragmatically that it’s a plot device to acknowledge the fact that Jesus was no longer walking around among the believers, now here in our midst today. The story only appears in Luke and Acts which were originally all one book. The other writers didn’t touch it but it’s a very important question. So, where is Jesus now? The answer is that he is somewhere other than here…he is no longer immediately, physically present to us. As much as I’d love to be able to go to him and ask “Seriously, what do you think about gay bishops?” but we don’t have that option. His physical presence is not available to us. The most important thing that we can draw from the claim of the Ascension is that it’s up to us now to carry on without being able to run to him for advice and direction.

Luke makes another very important point about the whole purpose of the Incarnation – the Divine coming to dwell on earth as one of us. In Jesus’ resurrected state, he still bears the marks of crucifixion – he continues to carry the wounds inflicted on him, on us, by us. Now it seems to me that the power to resurrect someone is mighty enough to do so in that perfected form that Paul calls the resurrection body – so there must be a specific purpose in the presence of those wounds. They do not just prove to the disciples that it was really him. Those wounds say that all that happens to us, particularly the violent, damaging assaults on our bodies, minds and spirits, continue to be borne by one who loves us. And then on top of those wounds are taken to heaven. Our broken places are acceptable to God.

Dr. Cunningham puts it this way, “God’s willingness to “become flesh and dwell among us” is therefore not a temporary condition,now merelya short-term moment of unpleasantness that God must endure in order to set things right. On the contrary, by permanently taking on not only our intellectual and spiritual characteristics but also our fleshly existence, God redeems it and draws it up into the Trinitarian communion of the divine life.”

One of my favorites hymns is There’s a wideness in God’s mercy but I have never, until writing this sermon, really understood the second verse. “There is no place where earth’s sorrows are more felt than up in heaven; there is no place where earth’s failings have such kindly judgment given. There is plentiful redemption in the blood that has been shed, there is joy for all the members in the sorrows of the Head.” That is because “he ascended into Heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.”

Despite the departure of Jesus, however you might understand it, Christ continues to be present in a variety of ways. We will celebrate the first way next week, the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Secondly, as the church, we profess ourselves to be the Body of Christ and lastly and most elegantly in the Eucharist where we find the sacramental presence of Christ in the nourishment we receive in the bread and wine. We could only know these things in his physical absence. His not being here is our invitation to carry our wounds and the wounds of humanity so that they will continue to be redeemed It is our invitation to become him and to reveal the Kingdom that is hiding in our midst.

Known in the bread

2008-04-08T15:24:00.000-07:00

Risen Lord, be known to us in the breaking of the bread. That is one of my favorite liturgical statements and it gets to the heart of why we celebrate the Eucharist every Sunday. This story from the Gospel of Luke is such a wonderful telling of how we are blind to so many things, to so many people until we do come together with something in common. When we do that, they become known to us and in the connection we find Christ. Jesus may have instituted the Eucharist on Maundy Thursday but it is in this story that much of the theology takes shape.

I have a little book in my office that I’ve had since my class on liturgy in seminary and I forgot how good it is until working on this sermon. It is called Shaped by Images. Dr. Seth Adams talks about keeping rituals. We fall into a very particular category of church that does this. There are those churches that organize themselves around clear statements of doctrine like the Lutherans and their Augsburg Confession. Pentecostal Christians come together around common experiences of the Spirit. Then there’s us, we are identified by what we do – we worship together in a particular way, a way in which we create the postures and patterns of behavior through which we expect to encounter God. We may be known by the Book of Common Prayer but only as our guide to the precious rituals. If you look at our rituals, you will begin to glimpse what we believe. Dr. Adams says “In what we do and say, we express what we believe and what we believe is impressed back upon us.”

The ritual of Holy Communion is filled with imagery. This isn’t a magical rite in which I say abracadabra and this priests host and wine appear and disappear or turn into a dove. Although in an interesting side note to that – the magic formula hocus pocus is actually a mangled version of the Latin hoc es corpus “This is my body.” We reject our rituals being identified as magic while we resolutely encounter them as mystery. Ritual is corporate symbolic activity. It says something about what we believe and changes how we know ourselves. It transforms us from individuals into members of a body. We become linked and intertwined in a sacramental web.

We make the practice of breaking bread and sharing it in this ritualized way for several reasons. First, it is a foretaste of heaven. The more we consider this, the more nuances we will find in it. First it is not solitary activity. If none of you show up, I cannot celebrate the Eucharist. There must be someone with whom to share it. In this ritual we claim the image of heaven as a great banquet to which all are invited and no one is left out or turned away. Even the way we receive the bread which has been broken makes a statement. Episcopal practice is to come forward and put your hands out and allow them to be filled. I remember one woman who for two years at the Cathedral would grab the communion wafer out of my hand. Finally one day, as I realized that she was missing a big part of it, I stopped her by catching her hand and turning it over and then I placed the bread in her outstretched empty hand. The symbolism of how we do it is important. We come to the table trusting that we will be fed not pushing our way to the banquet table to get the tastiest things before they are gone. The Eucharist is a ritual of abundance and we practice it regularly so that hopefully, that sense of abundance will infuse all of the rest of our lives.

We practice the unity of the Eucharist. We call it the bread that makes us one. Regardless of how we differ in ideas and opinions, and even in how we understand this sacrament, it becomes a common denominator. I was given a real gift this week in an experience that was shared with me. I had made a hospital visit some months ago and brought communion into the ICU. It was as wonderful as it always is but the story got much better after I left. The nurse on duty happened to notice that after having received this sacrament all of the patient’s levels, blood pressure, heart rate and other things that had been too high, all came down following the ritual. I’d like to think that that was because having shared the bread that makes us one, that body that was struggling, drew strength from being knit into a larger, greater body. This is powerful stuff.

Ritual is faith enacted. In the doing we create physical memory which is more dependable than the memories in the mind. It’s why you never forget how to ride a bicycle. In the marriage rite, there are specific actions that involve the taking and loosing of hands. Dr. Adams claims that the marriage happens when the promise is made with the hands and that the words are merely an overlay necessitated by custom. This is tactile memory which is a means of faith so that by “the skin’s recognition….God is known in the marrow before being known in the mind.”

Thus the Eucharist, as we celebrate it, becomes a celebration of the Incarnation – the holiness that dwells in physical life. Jesus’ life – however understood as God coming to earth to dwell with us – demands that we honor our physical selves. If a human body was sufficient to hold the Lord of Life how can it not be worthy of honor and awe? Our bodies are the vehicles by which we encounter the world and all that is divine in it. We cannot take part in the ritual of the church without them.

Another reason we are a people of ritual is to remember. In the Eucharist we remember the sweep of time from creation until now, we remember Jesus’ instructions, in the broken bread we remember his broken body, we remember the prophet’s call to welcome the stranger, we remember all who have ever shared this meal and all who have kept the tradition of the church. Yet even as we remember, in the mystery of the Eucharist as a window on eternity, we anticipate those who have not yet come to join us at the table.

It makes me sad when I hear our worship dismissed as “empty ritual.” It makes me aware of the responsibility that I carry – to lead our ritual in a meaningful, creative and spirit filled way – as well as the responsibility to teach it. But I could do the most elegant celebration and write a critically acclaimed dissertation on the sacraments and it would mean nothing if those rituals did not inform the rest of my life and the life of this congregation.

Lastly ritual is stewardship of our common life. We have been given this community and the place in which to gather. In this place we come together as the church and the Eucharist is the ritual that claims the holiness of our relationship. This morning I invite you to find communion with each other and with the divine when you receive this meal. I further invite you to find the same mystery and divinity in every meal that you enjoy this week. Let the ritual impress itself on you and make you new again and again.

Adams, Seth; Shaped by Images; 1995; The Church Hymnal Corporation, New York NY

Hope in an Easter world

2008-03-28T14:14:00.000-07:00

It had been business as usual for the followers of that preacher from Galilee. They had found someone in whom to hope and he told them about a world that could be. It was a world that might be glimpsed in dreams but never was it more real than when he talked about it. He never said it would be easy and so they were all ready to do the work. The poured their faith into that dream and were ready to follow him into it. But that all ended just like every other glimmer of hope they’d ever had. Rome was too powerful, their own leaders were in cahoots with Rome; nothing was ever going to change. Life would forever be about survival and struggle with a large helping of despair. The only thing to do was to accept it.

What then to make of the news, from breathless women talking nonsense. Nonsense that they couldn’t afford to believe. To believe it would just start the game again. Why let that kind of disappointment and pain in again. But soon it was more than just those crazy women. His closest friends had seen him, talked to him, touched him and ate with him. The hope in their hearts stirred ferociously because there was something different about this – this wasn’t worldly hope – this was the hand of God reaching into their lives. This was God saying my Word cannot be killed; my Word will not be silenced. Your hope has not be taken away.

The story of Pandora’s box is not in the Bible. It is a classic myth and like all myths it seeks to explain why things are the way they are.

In this Greek myth, “Pandora was the first woman on earth. Zeus ordered Hephaestus, the god of craftsmanship, to create her and he did, using water and earth. The gods endowed her with many talents; Aphrodite gave her beauty, Apollo music, Hermes persuasion, and so forth. Hence her name: Pandora, "all-gifted".

When Prometheus stole fire from heaven, Zeus took vengeance by presenting Pandora to Epimetheus, Prometheus' brother. With her, Pandora had a jar which she was not to open under any circumstance. Impelled by her natural curiosity, Pandora opened the jar, and all evil contained escaped and spread over the earth. She hastened to close the lid, but the whole contents of the jar had escaped, except for one thing which lay at the bottom, and that was Hope.¹”

Now as regrettable as it is that once again the miseries of the world are laid at the feet of a woman, the most important thing is that Pandora let the hope out of the jar as well. Apparently, hope is all that we need to do battle with the evils of the world.

That is what this morning is about; surging, palpable hope that we have not been left to carry on as rugged individualists who battle against the trials and tribulations of life. Blessed hope that we do not exist in a purposeless universe. No indeed! We have God’s emphatic statement that there is no tragedy that God cannot transform for good.

The story of Joseph sold into slavery by his jealous brothers is the first story of how something meant for ill was turned into good. In Egypt Joseph flourished and was eventually the instrument of their salvation. He welcomed his brothers to begin a new life with him in Egypt. It could have been the end of the story, but after generations, the descendants of Jacob were enslaved in Egypt. It was not God’s plan but God acted to bring them out and their slavery was turned into good for that story has been the sustaining story for millennia for the Jewish people.

I do not believe that God desired Good Friday. How wonderful it would have been if Jesus presence and teaching could have turned the hearts of people to love their brothers and sisters and to remake the world. That would have pleased God immeasurably. But apparently humankind was not ready for the message so God acted once again. What was intended for ill was turned to good.

Therefore, we should never experience ultimate despair for God has spoken. Love lives again. Hope lives again.

Yet even as I speak these words, I wonder what they mean to you. Do you know that it is not Jesus Christ who has been raised from the dead, but you, also. So what will you do with your new life? Here are some suggestions.

Be joyous…laugh and sing for that is balm for a cynical world. Joy is infectious so hope infused with joy is weapon of mass delight.

Connect with your brothers and sisters. We all spend too much time engaged in isolating activities. Find new ways to be in community – whether that is inviting the neighbor you really don’t know over for a piece of pie or volunteering to help those who need a hand.

Respond, with a wave or blow a kiss to someone who lets you in in traffic. Respond to your phone calls and emails even if only to say “I got it, I’ll get back to” father than let someone worry that they haven’t been heard.

Go to a mirror and try to see yourself as God might. Accept that you are precious and that God is waiting to be amazed by you.

Give away more than you think you can afford all the while affirming that you will always have what you need. It’s a very liberating thing to stop being concerned about dollars and that is truer today as the economic infrastructure trembles. Do not add to the anxiety, instead assume abundance.

Thank people regularly and sometimes extravagantly. Go out of your way to lift them up. Sometimes do something that you would rather not just because it will make someone else feel good. Listen to people with whom you disagree.

Forgive someone or if you can’t at least talk to them and tell them of your struggles.

From this moment on know that you are resurrected too and live with the hope that lies within the glorious shout, Alleluia, Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed!

"Pandora." Encyclopedia Mythica from Encyclopedia Mythica Online.
<http://www.pantheon.org/articles/p/pandora.html>
[Accessed March 18, 2008].

Good Friday

2008-03-21T13:20:00.000-07:00

This is the King of the Jews. The statement was meant to be an insult. How could a people be strong if their king was so weak? How many kings have been executed in the sight of their people so as to dispirit them, to make them pliable and obedient to some other authority? This was meant as an insult to him and to the Jews who were already oppressed enough. He was kingly in his lineage, in his love for his people and in his wisdom and in his courage. But he was not merely the King of the Jews as he hung on that cross. He was every person who has ever suffered.

His feet are the feet of every refugee who has been driven from his home. The roads are unkind and rocky as he struggles to take one more step away from misery and toward uncertainty. To sit down to rest his suffering feet is to risk dying in that place. All that drives each painful step is the challenge of the next one. Each step is a victory but one that feels as if nails have been driven through the feet of the refugee.

Jesus’ back, marked with the stripes of a whip is the back of every slave or prisoner. The slaves who had to consider whether the slim prospect of a successful escape was worth the lash. The lash would cut to the bone and take a long time to heal. The scars would cause his back to tighten and scream with every movement and yet he would have to carry on in spite of them, serving the one who had taken his freedom.

Jesus’ hands, screaming from the pain of the spikes through his wrists are the hands of everyone who has ever felt helpless as a loved one suffers. Our hands are so capable; we build, we hold our loved ones close, we comfort. Then when we can do nothing, our hands hang useless at our sides. When we cannot push away the evil, the sickness, the despair, what good are our hands? The hands of Jesus bleed our own helplessness.

Jesus’ eyes looked out from the haze of misery and saw his mother and Mary Magdalene and the other women. What they did not see were his closest companions, the ones who professed undying love and support. Those are the eyes of everyone who has ever been betrayed, abandoned, let down, and left alone. His are the eyes of children who wonder why their parents hurt them. His are the eyes of outcasts who cannot comprehend hatred and animosity directed at them. His are the eyes of Jews herded into ovens and Sudanese dying in refugee camps wondering if anyone knows or cares.

The heart of Jesus, perhaps more broken than the rest his body is the heart of the whole world. It seemed so clear, just love each other and yet they didn’t seem to understand. Maybe we don’t want to understand because it is hard work to let go of ancient ingrained hatreds. This is the heart of everyone who has ever known depression. That cloud that robs the world of color and joy and anticipation is not just a chemical imbalance that can be regulated with a pill; it is the lack of hope. Jesus’ heart draws in our despair and holds it on the cross.

O sacred head, sore wounded, defiled and put to scorn.

O kingly head surrounded with mocking crown of thorn;

What sorrow mars they grandeur? Can death thy bloom deflower?

O countenance whose splendor the hosts of heaven adore!

In thy most bitter passion my heart to share doth cry,

With thee for my salvation upon the cross to die.

Ah, keep my heart thus moved to stand thy cross beneath,

To mourn thee, well beloved, yet thank thee for they death.

That Living Water

2008-02-29T11:21:00.000-08:00

Water is the theme today. It is one of the enduring images of our faith, from Genesis to the Book of Revelation. At St. Alban’s Church in Indianapolis, where I attended for more than 20 years there is a fabric mural that stretches about 28 feet that is dedicated to the theme of water. It had a rather inelegant beginning. St. Alban’s had had a fire that didn’t destroy the church but did enough damage that lots of things needed to be replaced. When we got around to the long bare walls in the nave of the church, Fr. David, sent off to Whipples, the very British liturgical vestment maker in England and they sent back possibly the most boring proposal imaginable, with a huge price tag attached. At the time, I was working with many local artists and I suggested that maybe the church would want to consider one of them. It was a fascinating process with all of the usual church project dynamics. Eventually, Jo Locker, a local woman artist was chosen on the quality of her work but we still didn’t know what we wanted. One day, in frustration, Fr. David said, “There has to be some theme to this, like, oh I don’t know, water in the Bible.” Jo took the comment and ran with it. She designed seven different panels that depicted references to water in the Bible from creation to salvation. Jo told me that working so intently on the theology of water was a profound experience for her. The result is an extraordinary work – I cringed the other day when I went to St. Alban’s website and it was referred to as a quilt.

How many of you remember the science film Hemo the Magnificent from your school days? It explains the working of the human body, and in particular, blood. When the animated Greek god type figure grows tired of the conversation and is ready to storm out saying “all this is plumbing ... you haven't learned my secrets at all" the Scientist answers him in a single word "Thalassa" -- salt water. Hemo the magnificent stays because he has found someone to appreciate his true nature – linked elementally to the waters of creation. I remember nothing else about the movie but that connection between the blood in our veins and the life giving water of this planet. Although in finding it on the web, I came across a quote from Hemo that gets to the heart of today’s gospel – “What better way to love thy neighbor, than to heal thy neighbor?"

Healing is what Jesus offers to the Samaritan woman at the well but you have to know how to get into the story. In full disclosure, I owe this bit of scholarship to Sarah Dylan Breuer and her lectionary blog. The first thing that’s important to know is how deep the enmity between Israel and Samaria was. When the Jews had returned from exile in Babylon, there was much discussion as to the cause of God’s anger that had allowed them to be enslaved. One common thought which is found in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, is that God was angry that some Jewish men had married gentile women. The prophets of the day called for them all to divorce their wives. Now, go figure, but some people told Nehemiah to go jump in a lake, particularly the Samaritans – he did not take kindly to that and he in turn put curses on them and other unpleasant things. What ever roots of the hostility between the Jews and the Samaritans, it was intense – not some friendly cross-town USC/UCLA rivalry – but more like the Ohio State/Michigan – gut level, blinding hatred. So when the Samaritan woman encountered Jesus at the well, that was what she was expecting from him because he was after all, a Jew.

The woman who came to the well had more than Judeo-Samaritan relations going on in her life. It says a lot that she came to the well at noon. We hear that and it’s no big deal but if you know anything about that kind of situation, you might know that usually women went to the community well early in the morning or late in the day when it was cooler. It was also a very social time – the well was the water cooler of the day. All was discussed. This woman chose to make her trip to the well when the other women weren’t around – just what you might expect for someone who was probably a topic of frequent local gossip. She was hoping to draw her water without drawing attention.

So this woman came to the well with her bucket and a whole lot of baggage. And there was this guy, a Jew sitting there and you can almost feel her tensing up – hoping to get her water without some sort of unpleasantness.

But instead Jesus treats her like a woman of his own family, he asks her for water. The version of the story that we have is very stylized and so we miss that Jesus would most likely have said in such a situation. “May I have some water please?” The amazement that she felt was no doubt multi layered…a Jew asking a Samaritan for help; a man speaking to a woman not of his family, a man talking to her and asking for only water. In that practical question he gave her so much. He relieved her of her shame and all that kept her isolated from her neighbors. He saw through her dishonest answer about herself – which revealed her shame and to him it did not matter. With each bit of the encounter she grew stronger; even the return of the disciples, not known for their compassionate insight, could take away what he had given her – respect, welcome and love. The transformation was so complete that she forgot her discomfort at being around her neighbors, in fact she went straight to them and shared the good news, no longer ashamed of who she was.

This is one of the stories that illustrates part of the Mission Statement of Faith Episcopal – that we strive to offer the hospitality of the Gospel. It really hurts my heart when I encounter people who have been wounded by the church – by any church. Those wounds can be wounds of invisibility, the kind that keep the church an exclusive kind of place filled with the right kind of people or the wounds can be more direct. The “you’re not welcome here” kind. “You’re not welcome here as you are.” Or they can be those of an institution more intent on holding authority and seeing sin every where they look than on prospect of love. The result of a wounding church is to cut people off from the message of joy and love. As Hemo the Magnificent said “What better way to love thy neighbor than to heal thy neighbor?” When church makes you feel bad about who you are, how you grew up, what you look like, or who you love it has forsaken it most fundamental reason for being. Church should look like Jacob’s well where people are transformed by loving welcome into a place committed to a healthy and hopeful way of being. Jesus didn’t distinguish between people; he didn’t tell the woman what she needed to change about herself – he set about dispensing the astonishing truth that God’s love is available immediately for every one. The Samaritan woman came to the well for water, she thought she was taking care of a daily chore and instead she encountered waters of creation, blessing, forgiveness, redemption, and salvation.

Rethinking penance

2008-02-29T11:19:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago when Peter and I went over to Laguna Beach to visit Baby Zoe at the hospital we were not merely welcoming the newest member of Red Sox nation. We were face to sweet little face with one of the most potent human experiences – the newness of birth. As I looked at her, all snuggy in her tightly wrapped blanket I wondered what it was like for her. Talk about a disorienting change. She went from warm comfortable dark to cold rude light. The tightly wrapped blanket was an intentional recreation of the familiar cramped quarters from which she had just emerged. The sudden freedom would have been overwhelming. Everything had changed for little Zoe. Her senses were being assailed by bright, loud, freedom, air in and out of her lungs, all sorts of new and possibly scary things. She has suddenly found herself in a world that had changed and she will now have to change because of it. Is it any wonder that birth is such a powerful metaphor in our faith?

Jesus was offering people a world that was also radically changed, if they would only choose it. It was a world in which the old ways of doing things were suddenly unimportant. Jesus said that one did not need to take part in the Temple sacrifices in order to be right with God. No amount of ritual slaughter would bring anyone closer to God. The world to which Jesus invited people did not depend on whether one could afford the Temple prices or whether one was clean by someone else’s standards. Jesus offers the kind of freedom that is so disorienting to a newborn. The walls that have previously confined you, that defined your world, are gone. Jesus introduces a world in which the breath of the Spirit whispers “you are God’s beloved.”

Now here’s the rub. When you get that Spirit – that inspiration from above that pushes you out of the womb of your old way of being, it is not enough to say “Thank you!” although that’s an important first response. The expectation is that you will begin to rearrange your life in response to the new world in which you find yourself. Imagine if a baby refused to learn to stretch its arms and legs and instead resolutely curled up in a ball because that’s what she was used to before being born. That would be strange. So would it be for any one who claims to be reborn by the inspiration of God’s whispering Spirit and yet continues to reject their own lovability or that of anyone else.

Spiritual rebirth does not make you instantly perfect. It merely gives you a new world in which to live. It’s a world in which you might long for the old comfortable restrictions and assumptions but with a little practice you can begin to stretch your arms and legs and discover wonder and blessing all around you.

What does life after spiritual rebirth look like – while it must be different for everyone, I’d like to think that there are some basic features. First your awareness will have been expanded. And then, like any newborn, there must be some kind of discernment – trying to figure out who you have suddenly become. The deeper awareness of God’s love gives way to a new awareness of yourself. “Who was I and who am I now?” “Who are all of those other people?” “How did I live with them before and how do I want live with them now?” I’d like to think that after such an experience there’s a lot more love in every direction. Love for God, love for yourself and greater love for others. Love for others will expose the sins of your past. When John Newton had his born from above moment he realized that his being a slave trader was not what God wanted. The world became new to him, the people he had previously considered a commodity suddenly became real. He didn’t just write the hymn Amazing Grace, it is the story of his acceptance, confession, absolution and most publicly – his work to end the slave trade in England.

My Lenten conversation partner, Barbara Brown Taylor writes in her book Speaking of Sin about penance, something we don’t think about much any more. And it’s not just instructions from a priest to say ten Hail Marys and five Our Fathers. Penance is not punishment for what we have done or the way we used to live but penance should be thought of as repair. It is the active work of putting things right. John Newton understood the concept of penance. If children vandalize someone’s garden, the appropriate penance would be to help replant and then weed the garden for a period of time. The garden and hopefully much more would be repaired. As responsible adults, that’s generally not the kind of sin that we have to address. Ours are more subtle and take a lot of work to repair. Barbara Taylor wrote about one of the people who took part in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings in South Africa. The confession and forgiveness happened but the victim of racial violence and economic apartheid still lives in poverty and despair as do all of his neighbors. The work of the commission to repair what was wrong in South Africa is obviously not done. It’s not enough for the country to say I’m sorry and accept forgiveness. The next step must happen and it will take a long time.

This week a disturbing story of a mass of mostly plastic trash that was found floating in the Pacific. It is the size of Texas. It represents environmental sin on a large scale that in some way we have all contributed to it. I have no idea how this can be fixed but after reading it I realized that I cannot in good conscience continue to say “sure!” when the kid who bags my groceries asks me if plastic is OK. That was my awareness moment. As I prayed about this, there is no other way to say “I’m sorry” to Mother Nature, I know that God accepts my contrition and has not ceased loving me. But it can’t stop there. There is still penance to do. The first step is to figure out how to say no to plastic bags. So Peter and I went through the closets and got out all of our canvas tote bags and put them in the cars so we will have them for our shopping. We need to get some more and it will be inconvenient. Alone, I will not solve the problem but at least I will not be adding to it. That is one step to repairing my relationship with the planet. That whole relationship requires penitential living – taking shorter showers, changing our landscaping to use less water, finding ways to drive less and make sure that the next car we buy is at least another hybrid.

In every one of the big sins, there are forms of personal penance and the need for communal penance – that’s the really hard stuff because not everyone agrees on what that might look like or if it’s even necessary. But we have to start somewhere. Next month the Habitat for Humanity Board of Directors will gather for their board retreat and I’ve been asked to create some sort of presentation on advocacy. What I plan to do is to give each of the board members, most of whom are very well off, the assignment to create a budget using the income of the people that qualify for the houses that we build. We’ll have some way to hit them with unexpected expenses so they have to make the kind of choices that are commonplace to a whole lot of people, prescriptions or groceries? I know that it will open their eyes. They will spend a few minutes as newborns in a tough world. I don’t know how it will change them, they are already generous people. What I hope is that they will become a bit more passionate about sharing the experience with other who can change things in a bigger way.

Being a newborn is to have unlimited possibilities but it’s a lot of work. In the Book of Revelation God says, “See I am making all things new.” That’s us, all the time we’re being born from above and finding new ways to stretch our arms and legs and learning how to live in the new world.

Light from light

2008-01-10T15:26:00.000-08:00

A sermon preached on the Feast of the Epiphany, January 6, 2008

Peter and I were enchanted by a bit of winter solstice magical imagery last month. It all began on our honeymoon in Sedona, we just didn’t know it. We bought two beautiful photographs by a nature photographer. One is of the red rocks some where in Utah. The other is a bright yellow tree in the middle of practically nothing with distant mountains and a cloudy sky. Over the summer we had watched the morning sun glance across the first photo and make its colors all the more intense. But in December, something amazing began happening as the sun reached its lowest point in the sky and rose later and later in the morning. We have one of those semi-circular windows and the photo of the tree is on a the opposite wall.

On the morning of December 22, a brightly lit semi-circle of light descended on the tree photo. We watched fascinated as the shadows of the trees behind out house created a second landscape, superimposed over the photographed landscape. There was a perfect moment in which the shadows became castles on either side of the flaming tree, as if two worlds had been aligned into one. Our little house in Marina Hills, unbeknownst to us, appears to be Stonehenge West. A mere two weeks later, the shadows don’t do anything nearly that interesting. But the wonder of that day, when the light returned and showed us something wonderful, is clearly etched in my memory. Is it any wonder that we celebrate the power of the one true light at this time of year?

The stories about Jesus birth are filled with wonderful symbols that say a lot about who Jesus will be for all of us. One of the greatest symbols of this time of year is the star that we sang of today. Brightest and best of the stars of the morning, dawn on our darkness and lend us thine aid. It’s not actually so much the star as it the light that it proclaims. Light overcoming the darkness is the story of this time of year. Indeed it is the central message of creation and all of Christianity. One last time I’d like to invoke the book by Marcus Borg and Dominic Crossan, The First Christmas. As the story has come to us, “Jesus is born in the deepest darkness – in the middle of the night at the winter solstice. This is not historical time, not a historical fact about the date of Jesus’ birth, but parabolic time, metaphorical time, sacred, symbolic time. The symbolism is perfect.

Nobody knows the day, the month, or the season of the year of Jesus birth. The date December 25 was not decided upon until the middle of the 300s. Before then, Christians celebrated his birth at different times, including March, April, May and November. But around the year 350 Pope Julius in Rome declared December 25 as the date, thereby integrating it with the Roman winter solstice festival celebrating the “Birthday of the Unconquered Sun.” The Roman birthday of the sun became the Christian birthday of the Son…In the middle of the night, on the longest night of the year, the time of deepest darkness, Jesus is born. He is, as John puts it, the true light that enlightens everyone, the light of the world.”

Another thing that Borg and Crossan point out is that we don’t understand darkness the way our ancestors did. When it got dark, it was truly dark. There were no switches to flip for instant light. It was not until the 1600 that the first city, London, was illuminated after dark. It would be another 100 years before the means to light streets with gas lamps came into common use. Now it’s nearly impossible to get away from light. It’s no wonder we talk about light pollution – you practically have to go far out to sea to get away from the glow of some city. Most people never see the star dust of the Milky Way for all of the excess mechanical light that out lives throw off.

Even though we don’t really experience that kind of darkness it is a powerful archetype. We fear the dark because we can’t see what’s coming. Growing up, the basement always made me nervous. As soon as I turned out the light with that pull chain, I would bound up the stairs two at a time. I have no idea what I though would materialize out of that darkness that hadn’t been there two seconds before but it just gave me the willies.

In the winter time, there is more darkness. So we put lights on trees to chase the dark back into its corner. Every religion has light in its faith vocabulary – enlightenment, visions, awakenings and epiphanies. None of us want to be the people who have walked in darkness.

This particular bit of light, on the Feast of the Epiphany, is a star that speaks volumes. It does not speak about an astronomical event – no star or asteroid or comet acts like this one. This one is a light that brings these wise men from the east to the Son, to a light that is brighter and better than any known before. Beyond that, all of the things that we say about these guys are legends. We call them kings, but they were not so identified. We say there were three, but Matthew doesn’t tell us how many. He only mentions that they gave three kinds of gifts. But we’ve even given them names; Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar. All of our attempts to make them more specific have robbed them of their true meaning.

This from the book again, “They were magi, a word from which we get magician. But they weren’t magicians in the modern sense of the word. Rather the word refers to a kind of religious figure: magi had wisdom by being in touch with another reality. Their wisdom was a ‘secret wisdom,’ a kind not known by ordinary people. No doubt some were astrologers in the sense that they paid attention to “signs in the heavens,” but to think of magi as primarily astrologers is misleading. Rather, magi were people with more than earthly wisdom.”

The Gospel does not tell what happened to them after having experienced the light at the end of the star’s journey except that they went home by another way. There are no legends about them become disciples or even being aware of Jesus adult ministry. It was enough that they came to seek this child. All of their wisdom and learning and insight compelled them to see for themselves a tiny human who would embody the ultimate wisdom – the logos, the idea of God. This idea is the wisdom that infuses all human understanding of divine wisdom. It is the light that illuminates and guides the evolution of the human spirit.

It is time for all of us to get over thinking that we have the ultimate understanding of God’s wisdom and the way to know it. The magi came in humility to kneel before a peasant child. Humility about faith is a good beginning for broader and deeper community. There’s a really cute song by folk singer Dar Williams called The Christians and the Pagans about a girl who had been with a friend celebrating the solstice and they dropped in for Christmas dinner with her very Christian uncle and his family who were decidedly ill at ease with their pagan relative. The song ends this way,
Oh the Christians and the Pagans sat together at the table
Finding faith and common ground as best as they were able
Where does magic come from? I think magic’s in the learning,
Cause now when Christians sit with Pagans, only pumpkin pies are burning.

As I think back on the image of the world made of shadows merging with this world, even if only in a photograph, it was a perfect after the longest night of the year. We didn’t try to make it happen, it was there waiting to come into view – like the light dawning as we understand the presence of the kingdom of heaven in our midst – it just took a bit of light on the darkest day of the year to help us see it. Wow!

Stirring it up

2007-12-19T10:19:00.000-08:00

A sermon preached on December 16, 2007 at Faith Episcopal Church.

This third Sunday of Advent is often referred to as stir it up Sunday because of the collect that we heard earlier. “Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us; and, because we are sorely hindered by our sins, let your bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us.” So, as the obedient little vicar that I am, let me see what I can do to stir things up.

We’re in the middle of Advent and it might be a good time to ask the question, what are we waiting for? One more performance of Handel’s Messiah? One more excellent Christmas Eve sermon? Or the most excellent holiday party? According to everything we read and proclaim, we are awaiting the birth of the Savior – again. That means that we are waiting to be saved. Christianity has organized itself around the idea that Jesus came to save us from our sins. We talk more about baptism as cleansing us from sins than about initiation.

Barbara Kingsolver’s novel The Poisonwood Bible tells the story of a Baptist preacher who moved his wife and four daughters to the Congo to save the heathens. He thundered Bible verses at them in English which of course, they couldn’t understand. The local young man who translated was at a loss to help them make sense out of being called sinners when there was nothing in their existence that supported it. The thing the preacher wanted more than anything was to baptize the village children, to save their souls. He saw that he had children that had been born into sin and there was a river. Who could refuse such an offer? Well actually, the entire community refused. He couldn’t understand how they could pass up the chance to save their children’s souls. Try as he might, they didn’t seem to be as concerned about ut sin as they were the crocodiles in the river. Nothing this crazy man said made any sense to them. How could their beautiful children have sinned any way?

Kingsolver’s book describes well the culture clash that often exists because of language in the Christian faith that comes from a time and situation that no longer exists. Our faith vocabulary is drawn from Israel’s political reality as a country occupied by a powerful nation and its Temple worship that included animal sacrifice. Sacrifice, with all of its regulations had several purposes, the primary being to please God through an offering of grain or animal. This is a tradition that predates Judaism. Among the types of sacrifices was something called a “sin offering.” A sin offering was used to cleanse the sanctuary of impurity and it involved a lot of blood. We just had this place cleaned on Thursday and I really glad they decided to use Lysol.

Within the temple system, the priestly understanding of sin was like a tear in the fabric of creation. The purity laws that were designed to maintain the integrity of that fabric were things like the dietary laws, laws against mingling crops or fibers, rules about contagion and how to be cleansed from it. The rules that governed women’s lives and those who came into contact with them all come from this priestly body of regulations. The only way to make something pure again was the application of the most holy substance – blood. Blood is the stuff of life therefore it is the only thing that can restore the order of life.

This is the language that was used by the earliest voices to explain the phenomenon of Jesus and his death and resurrection – in particular Paul, a well educated Pharisee. This was the way he would understand sin and sacrifice. Paul and the author of the Letter to the Hebrews both talk about Jesus as the sin offering for humanity. We say it in our Eucharistic prayer. “By his blood he reconciled us; by his wounds we are healed.” This theology claims that Jesus blood mended the tear in the fabric of creation that was caused by human sin.

Interestingly, it does not appear to be how Jesus spoke about himself. I’m getting a double dose of Marcus Borg and Dominic Crossan right now. Along with their The First Christmas I have recently finished their other collaboration The Last Week; What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’s Final Days in Jerusalem. Their project was to take a close look at the Gospel of Mark, as the oldest of the four Gospels, and hold up the story known as the passion story for comparison to the religion that has evolved. Their conclusion is likely to stir things up. No where in this earliest Gospel does Jesus claim to be the kind of messiah or savior that his community awaited. Never does he claim divinity. He calls God “Father” but does not call himself the Son of God. He does not talk about saving people from their sins. His message, first and foremost, is the Kingdom of God. “Jesus passion was the kingdom of God, what life would be like on earth if God were king, and the rulers, and empires of this world were not. It was the world that the prophets dreamed of – a world of distributive justice in which everybody has enough and systems are fair.”

The problem for Jesus and his followers was that to talk about the kingdom of God when you lived under the thumb of the Roman Empire was to invite trouble. Borg and Crossan reframe Jesus’ death from “Jesus died for our sins” to “Jesus passion for the Kingdom of God got him killed.”

Because we continue to encounter religious language about being saved from our sins, when it is clear that we as individuals and humanity as a whole has not overcome its ability to sin on a grand scale – we are challenged to make sense of Jesus and his role in our lives. Advent is the time to ask the question, “What are we waiting for?” Are we waiting for someone to come and make it all happen? Or are we awaiting the birth of a new community within our own hearts and within the heart of the human family?

The Voice in the wilderness

2007-12-19T10:10:00.000-08:00

A sermon preached at Faith Episcopal Church on December 9, 2007

Oh good! It’s “brood of vipers” Sunday. John the Baptizer railing at the people who supported the religious and social status quo in Israel. Ordinary people were flocking to him to be dipped in the river in hopes of cleaning off some of the dust of oppression. John was fine with them – they knew that they weren’t hearing the truth from the voices that represented their faith. John also knew that all he could give them was a bath and a warning. John didn’t mince words and as a result, he is the reason we have the phrase a “head on a platter.” But John said things that needed to be said.

The corruption of a faith is an ugly thing to witness. Violent jihad is a corruption of Islam. Zionism is a corruption of Judaism. And where to start with Christianity? I have a confession to make – I am automatically suspicious when someone identifies himself as a Christian. Talk of Christian values usually sends me screaming from the room. My understanding of Christianity has been corrupted by voices that offend me. And if they offend me – imagine what they do to people who are not schooled as I have been in how to seek the truth in our texts without stopping at the surface. To my way of thinking, the voices that have co-opted Christianity are a brood of vipers.

Fortunately, a kind of John the Baptizer has come around again. His name is Brian McLaren and he has courageously stood up to warn of the wrath to come. I’d like to read some of his statement that appeared on the Talking Points Memo – a liberal blog that is under the direction of a Jew, Josh Marshall. The fact that Brian the Baptizer was invited to be a guest blogger on this very liberal site is no less than amazing. Here is the link: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/060138.php And here’s some of what he had to say.

“There’s a lot of talk nearly everywhere these days about the dangers of radical Islam. In some settings, people express similar concerns about Christianity, especially the dangers of a right-wing theocracy here in America. Whether the warnings come from “the new atheists” like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens or from secular-political voices on the left, the prospective villains are usually described as the Religious Right, Evangelicals, Christian Fundamentalists, and so on.

“But largely under the radar, there’s something else going on in the Christian community in the US and world-wide, and it’s a change worth knowing about. Many of us who are involved with this emergence of a new thing would describe it as a deep shift, even a kind of repentance. Growing numbers of us Christians are ashamed of the ways that we Christians have behaved in recent decades – from Evangelicals backing unjust and unwise wars to Catholics covering up priestly abuse, from Prosperity Gospel televangelists getting rich by ripping off the poor to institutional religious bureaucracies fiddling around in carpet-color-committee meetings while the world is burning, or at least warming dangerously.

“We have been arguing about the origin of species while an unprecedented extinction of species occurs on our watch; we’ve been fighting endlessly (and unproductively) about unborn children while achieving precious little for the already-born children in Darfur or Congo or Malawi or downtown Cincinnati. These stale expressions of bad faith have left many of us gasping for the fresh air of good faith.

“So along with facing up to our current and historic failures and atrocities, we’re engaging in a hopeful re-imagining of what Christian faith can be, become, and do in the future. My book Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope is a kind of cry, a plea, a prayer reaching toward this kind of faithful re-imagination.

Brian McLaren, an Evangelical pastor himself, is telling us that there are voices within the conservative Christian community have done just what John the Baptizer said they should do. They have repented and are trying to bring their understanding of the faith back to the vision of the Kingdom of God that Jesus talked about. He has identified what he calls “four deep issues.”

"First, we have created an economic system that exceeds environmental limits, resulting in our growing, multifaceted environmental crisis. Second, this economic system is succeeding at making a minority increasingly wealthy, while simultaneously creating a global underclass whose standard of living falls farther and farther behind those who swim in luxury and excess. This growing gap between rich and poor exacerbates the third crisis: as the poor grow more desperate and the rich more frightened of their desperation, both sides arm themselves with more and more terrifying weapons.

"Fourth, I suggest that these first three crises, which I call the prosperity, equity, and security dysfunctions, turn like three gears, teeth in teeth with the others, and they are together driven by a central drive shaft which I call the religious dysfunction. Our world’s religions are failing to provide a story strong enough to inspire enough of us to deal effectively with the first three crises. In fact, all too often our religions provide destructive narratives…our religions can fan the flames of holy-war narratives –whether expressed in terms of terrorism or counter-terrorism, jihad or crusade. But our religions can inspire us with stories of reconciliation and peace. Our religions can foment stories of scapegoating and vilification, or they can inspire us toward compassion and understanding through stories of reconciliation and grace.

"Instead of baptizing greed and self-interest, our faith communities can teach us stories which promote the common good, inspiring us to creatively pursue sustainability both environmentally and socially. Instead of sanctifying the consumerism that reduces everything to a financial “resource,” our faith communities can teach us stories that inspire true reverence for the planet and all it contains – opening our eyes to the signature of God in the hawk soaring among the mountains, the school of minnows flashing in the shallows, the cricket singing in the back yard.

"Instead of distracting us from this-worldly injustice, our religions can embed in us a sense of stewardship and responsibility, so that we who have been given much gladly accept much responsibility for our neighbors. Instead of preoccupying us with raising our own moral score so we can consider ourselves spiritual winners at the finish line, we can live in a story of hope that turns our hearts towards our neighbor, toward the stranger, and even towards our enemies.

"Christians with this emerging sensibility seek a third option, a path beyond the bad religion of which we have a surplus, and beyond the no religion called for by the new atheists: we seek a new kind of faith that engages us with the world as it is and challenges us to become more than we have been.”

I cannot tell how long I have waited for someone from the evangelical Christian world to say this. Thank you, Brian McLaren. It makes me wonder whether John the Baptizer might say instead of “Repent” “Rejoice, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

The Peace Child

2007-12-03T13:57:00.000-08:00

A sermon preached at Faith Episcopal on December 2, 2007, First Sunday of Advent

Now that Peter and I have moved into our house in Marina Hills, I don’t have many occasions to drive all the way down Crown Valley Parkway and I miss it. So I was glad to have a reason to enjoy that nice drive the other day. As a bonus, the Christmas banners had been put up and I found their “Peace on Earth” sentiment to be thought provoking. I remember the first time I saw them, three years ago. The memory of having been confronted by someone who was angry with me for having preached about peace from this pulpit was fresh in my mind. My sermon had been perceived as an insult to those who were in Iraq fighting. It was also deemed unrealistic and very Pollyanna. War is just a fact of life and to think otherwise is to be naïve. So when I saw those banners on my way home it seemed incongruous. I wondered what my critic would think of them. Is “Peace on Earth” just something that you say at Christmas like “have a nice day?” Is it acceptable Christmas card sentiment but somehow unacceptable if you really mean to be talking about peace as opposed to war?

Other criticisms echoed in my ears as I drove under the banners hanging on lampposts on Crown Valley Parkway. Didn’t I know that this is a pretty conservative area that I was really out of touch with the mainstream? If I were going to preach about things like peace I would run the risk of alienating much of the prevailing community and stifling our growth. And yet that same community hangs banners that proclaim the same thing that I preached and it doesn’t seem to offend people. It’s kind of confusing.

I’m tired of the war in Iraq. I’m tired of reading Christmas sentiments about peace while we are in fifth year of a war with fluid justification, and no end in sight. I’m tired that our precious young people are coming home in pieces, broken in body and mind and spirit, never to be the same. I’m tired of Iraqi people having to bury women and children who were caught in a conflict that no one seems to know how to stop. I am tired of people thinking that we cannot do better.

At the Diocesan Convention this weekend we heard a very helpful dialogue between a rabbi and a Palestinian Christian priest. Everyone is pretty clear that religion has become one of the stumbling blocks to peace. Rabbi Jacobs contributed a truly important point. All religions will need to address their sacred texts and give something up. The Jews will need to give up their claim to being God’s only chosen people. The Christians will need to give up Jesus as the only way. The Muslims will need to give up the wrongness of everyone else. If that could be done, imagine what progress we could make.

Then let us consider the nations. Marcus Borg and Dominic Crossan have an extraordinary book called The First Christmas and they bring some important scholarship to the context of Jesus’ birth and life. Israel at the time that Jesus was born knew all too well how the Roman Empire considered peace. Rome wanted peace but what that meant was an absence of revolt. Peace through victory was Roman peace. Around the time that Jesus was born, Rome proved its point. When Herod the Great died in 4 BCE there were uprisings all over Israel. Rebels hoped to replace Roman rule with a ruler the likes of which the prophets described – a messiah. Rome responded to the rebellions with two legions or 18,000 elite troops, 2000 cavalry and 1500 extra infantry. The army marched into Galilee and did what the Roman army always did. They killed the men, attacked the women and stole everything they could carry. This was the context of Jesus’ youth. When he preached and taught about peace it was because his neighbors had lived the reality of Rome’s kind of peace – peace through violence. Jesus would teach a different kind of peace – Peace through justice.

Rome was an Empire and they had no design for the kind of work that justice requires. They had one strategy – war and occupation. What do strategies for peace through justice look like? I’m fairly certain that if we have any they aren’t getting a whole lot of attention. Strategies for peace through justice include things like diplomacy and negotiation and self-evaluation of our habits and preferences that have an impact on the rest of the world. This kind of peace might require us to give up things like gas guzzling cars and suburbs in the desert. Peter and I met a Lebanese physics professor on the plane on our way to Beirut. Samir observed that if the resources were committed to the creation of a middle class through out the middle east so that people had jobs, homes and vacations they would lose their will for perpetual conflict. This new kind of peace might even require the US to give up its self-image as the world’s super-power. Could Rome have done that – probably not. Would we be willing to? That remains to be seen. What will it take for us want peace more than we’re willing to tolerate war?

One thing is certain – peace through justice requires sacrifice.

In 1955, Missionary preacher Don Richardson traveled New Guinea to live with the Sawi, a fierce and violent people who ate their enemies. Here is how their children are described…

A Sawi child is trained to get his way by sheer force of violence and temper. He is goaded constantly to take revenge for every hurt or insult. Parents give examples as they carry out violent retaliation for anything that offends them.

Don Richardson and his wife hoped to bring the Gospel, helped by practical enticements like nylon fishing line, mirrors and machetes. The Sawi were curious about them but the Richardsons witnessed fourteen bloody battles within their first two months. The only Bible story that interested the Sawi men was that of Judas’ betrayal of Jesus. Judas was considered a clever warrior and therefore worthy of honor. Eventually Richardson decided that he would have to leave or feel responsible for the continued bloodshed. The leaders of the two warring villages told him that they didn’t want him to go and to prevent his leaving; they were prepared to make peace.

The next day the two villages came together and the leaders approached one another, each carrying a child. The two men exchanged their names and their children. The peace children were then all touched by the villagers who vowed to never harm a member of the child’s village as long is he lived. The giving of a peace child was a covenant. Finally Richardson was able to explain Jesus.

The story of the peace child tells us that in order to achieve peace, we have to give something of ourselves – something that is dear and precious to us. As we wait to welcome the Prince of Peace, our peace child maybe now would be a good time to start thinking about that.

** The story of the peace child is from Dr. Jack Rogers of Fuller Theological Seminary, Gospel Light Publishing.

Leaving Ordinary Time

2007-12-03T13:50:00.000-08:00

A sermon preached at Faith Episcopal on November 25, 2007

Today we leave ordinary time. That is one way of identifying the Sundays between Pentecost, last spring, and the first Sunday of advent. The color has been green – green that takes us from planting through harvest – from the first sprigs of you life through blossom and ripening to maturity. We have not been in a season, we have been in ordinary time. Ordinary time gives us routines and consistency. But we are called now into extraordinary time.

Our church year gives us the gifts of Advent and Lent to provide times of preparation. Those seasons are set aside to make us ready for Christmas, when God becomes one of us, and Easter when we are resurrected with Christ. They are meant to be times of challenge and testing. In Advent and Lent we are invited into self-reflection. Extraordinary time invites us to, dare I say, change. Change gets you to a new place.

As odd as it seems from a calendar perspective, we have a story from Good Friday as our Gospel reading. Jesus’ short conversation with the man hanging on the cross next to him refers to an ultimate change – from death to extraordinary life. That gives us a clue about what is expected of us as we leave the safety of ordinary time.

Welcoming in a new time is one of the great human challenges. Even if we don’t like where we are, it’s better than the unknown. When the extermination camps were liberated at the end of WWII, American soldiers were stunned by those who would not leave. It was a place of hell on earth but some were incapable of moving into an uncertain world. The devil we know is better than the devil we don’t.

But isn’t it just like God to call us continually into uncertainty. We don’t like it there and find all kinds of ways to avoid it. The American culture has successfully avoided Advent by moving straight from Thanksgiving to Christmas. We would skip over the period set aside for the reflection needed for growth to get right to the party.

What is the change that Christmas need from us? Christmas assures us of the fundamental goodness of creation. As Christianity developed one of its greatest struggles was with the Gnostic belief that the world and all matter were evil and the goal was to transcend it – to find a way to escape. The idea of God coming to dwell on earth – in human form – was impossible for them to accept. They missed the point of the Nativity. They stayed in their ordinary time – unable to know themselves as a place of hospitality for the Divine. Christmas says that we are the place of miracles. But we must pass through extraordinary time to get there.

Saying goodbye to ordinary time takes practice and work. That is the gift of our yearly cycle of celebrations. We are given the recurring gift of preparing ourselves for something new. Making use of the gift is like the spiritual exercise of prayer and worship – we won’t be any good at it if we don’t practice it. The blessing of being a part of a community of faith, like Faith, is that you have the support and structure to do that.

Even our Anglican liturgy encourages us to practice consciously and intentionally the transitions, the letting go and embrace of the new. Baptism is the proclamation of a congregation that a person, whether an infant or an adult, is now an integral part of the community – to be supported and in whom we live out our promises to pass on traditions and the knowledge of being related and loved. Baptism is always new life for the whole community because you can’t help but be changed when you add something new. We are being made new all of the time around here by many new people who have been drawn to our little church. The Confession of Sins and the proclamation of forgiveness are followed by the passing of the Peace. We are taken from brokenness and separation through forgiveness and then turn to our neighbor and proclaim our restored relationships by making physical contact with another. It is so important to extend that touch to those who are not your family – it’s easy to embrace your spouse or parent – a little more challenging to break through the barriers of politeness and distance to feel the flesh of another – hand in hand and know that this is your neighbor – one given by God for you to love.

In her book Amazing Grace, A Vocabulary of Faith, Kathleen Norris identifies the Sanctus – Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might – as a moment in the liturgy of great importance and a good illustration of the movement from ordinary time to extraordinary time. She says “The Sanctus feels like a door to me, opening onto eternity, where the angels and all the saints sin “Holy, Holy, Holy.” These few simple words are used to break open our world and Christ becomes present, silent in the sacrament.” In the Eucharist we suddenly find ourselves included in the group gathered around the table with Jesus – joined in community and friendship and love with him and with one another. That moment transforms us from I and mine to we and ours.

All of these are examples of moving from ordinary time to extraordinary time. They are reminders of the constant work required of us as followers of Christ. It is called the Way which to me has a sense of movement to it. We are not allowed to stay where we are – but are always called into a deeper experience of knowing ourselves as part of the Body of Christ.

I used to study voice and was blessed with a number of wonderful teachers. One woman, in particular, Mary Hagopian, was the toughest. We would work and work on a particular technique or piece of music and a breakthrough would eventually happen – usually the result of my finally giving up the way I was used to doing something and actually trying what she suggested. As soon as she was satisfied that it wasn’t a fluke and that I had actually learned something, I was not allowed any amount of time to enjoy this accomplishment. We immediately launched into all of the other parts of my voice that would benefit from growth, improvement or exorcism. It was exhausting and I felt under-appreciated – not allowed to rest in that happy place of “Hey look at me, I did it!” Mary’s response was “so what, we’ve got work to do!”

Saying goodbye to ordinary time is to embrace the call to stay on the move. As soon as we have grasped a part of our lives as Christians, Advent comes along again and we are invited to go even deeper. So check your watches and look inside. What kind of ordinary time is God challenging you to release and what glimpse of eternity is being offered to you.

Avoiding the apocalypse

2007-11-20T16:14:00.000-08:00

A sermon preached at Faith Episcopal Church on November 18, 2008

You know that the church year is coming to an end because we talking about the world coming to an end with Malachi warning that “the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble” Then Jesus says “The time is near! – there will be wars, and earthquakes and famines and plagues.” These are all signs of the end of the world as we know.

This kind of “the end is near” language has been around for a long time – Malachi’s words come to us from three thousand years ago. He and his fellow prophets, Amos, Isaiah, Micah, and others, warned the powers that be with such predictions. They saw the powerful and they saw those that the powerful were supposed to protect and help. They saw a discrepancy that they couldn’t reconcile between God’s justice and that of the world and thought that it could only be resolved by cataclysm. They were right in that it takes a whole lot to wrest power away from those that have it.

What all of the prophets and Jesus knew is that justice is God’s bottom line. Abraham Heschel says this in his most important book on the Prophets; “Justice is not an ancient custom, a human convention, a value, but a transcendent demand, freighted with divine concern. It is not only a relationship between man and man it is an act involving God, a divine need…It is not one of His ways, but in all His ways.” The prophets more than believed this, they knew it, they felt it, they lived for it. But they looked around and it wasn’t what they saw.

Again from Rabbi Abraham Heschel; “The prophets were shocked not only by acts of injustice on the part of scoundrels but also by the perversion of justice on the part of notables.” In the Torah, Israel had a blueprint for a just and righteous society but it was being ignored by those in power. There was no justice or righteousness.

The ideas of justice and righteousness are necessarily intertwined. Heschel says, “Righteousness goes beyond justice. Justice is strict and exact, giving a person his due. Righteousness implies benevolence, kindness, generosity. Justice may be legal, righteousness is associated with a burning compassion for the oppressed.” Reinhold Niebuhr, one of the 20^th century’s great theologians said “Justice was not equal justice but a bias in favor or the poor. What a concept.

Rabbi Heschel goes on “The prophet’s preoccupation with justice and righteousness has it root in a powerful awareness of injustice. That justice is a good thing, a fine goal, even a supreme ideal, is commonly accepted. What is lacking is a sense of the monstrosity of injustice…the prophets were remorseless in their unveiling of injustice and oppression, in their comprehension of social, political and religious evils.” No wonder most of the prophets ended up dead.

“Justice is scarce, injustice is exceedingly common.” That is why the prophets expected God to do something about. If you understand that God wants justice and righteousness and there is none, and if you understand that God is powerful, then you assume that eventually God will do something powerful about the injustice that you see all around you. In the eyes of the prophet – that sensitive social critic – injustice creates a need for the apocalypse. The apocalypse will bring about the reversals – the proud and haughty and powerful thrown down and the meek and lowly lifted up.

How might we avert such a catastrophe? We have tried various systems of laws, various forms of government, various religious teaching and yet we still have a world in which laws are passed to allow corporations to do business with little consequence when people suffer from their processes or products. We have a world in which Alex Rodriguez will be paid in incomprehensible amount to play a game for six months out of the year while ordinary folks can’t afford their asthma medicine. It’s enough to make a prophet’s head explode! The dire visions of the prophets will come true and not because of God throwing lightening bolts at us from above but because injustice will destroy us. Martin Luther King was absolutely right when he said “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice anywhere.” Happy contented people do not become terrorists.

Is it expecting too much of us to get it? Is it expecting too much of us demand that our common lives be ordered in such a way that the least among us are protected and cared for, that the environment is respected and worth making a few sacrifices? What is stopping us? I’ve been reading Ken Wilbur’s Up From Eden a book about human evolution and in it he talks about how we as a species have developed, from a species that was barely aware of how different we are from the other animals to one capable of profound thought and an ability for deep reflection. What makes us different from the other animals is not our opposable thumbs, but our consciousness. We are the only bit of creation that contemplates its own existence. Consciousness is more than being awake and aware, it is everything about how we perceive and process information and how we react to it. It involves our brains and our souls. The more we learn about consciousness, the more we understand what holds us back from justice and righteousness, not that we are incapable of them but they are certainly not our first response.

The prophets did not know what we know now about the human animal. We have been given the capacity of self-awareness and that consciousness has allowed us to evolve – we know the consequences of our actions and we can choose better. The ills around us are products of unevolved thinking and decisions. we will be able to evolve and the world will not need to end in cataclysm because we will learn how to make better choices. It will take time but we can and will evolve into just beings.

It takes a lot of work to make love and compassion for others your guiding principle, particularly those with whom you have historic enmity. Your brain makes connections and sets your thoughts and reactions in motion before you even know it. So to have a thought that is different from self-oriented, preconceived reactions, you must stop and reason with yourself. Funny but we don’t always do that and so the world chugs along in such a way that makes prophets rail until we stop and decide to think and do things differently. Free will – that great divine gift – is our ability to anticipate the consequence of our thoughts and actions. We have the free will to choose justice and righteousness.

We are approaching the season of Advent – the time of preparation for the miracle child. And I mean miracle child because it is the Christ mind that came into the world in a child that gives us the ability to overcome our business as usual kind of thinking. In Jesus, more of the Divine will is available to us than ever before. In him we accept our destiny as God’s means to bring about justice and righteousness. In him, we make our lives examples of thanksgiving instead of grasping, we make our hearts temples of love instead of fear. In him we can make our world one of peace and sharing. In him we can turn to the prophets and say “thank you, we’ll take it from here.”

An oak of righteousness

2007-10-16T15:52:00.000-07:00

A sermon preached at Faith Episcopal on Sunday October 7, in celebration of the life of our oldest member, Doris Martin. The readings were a combination of readings for a funeral, Isaiah 61, Psalm 121 and the lessons appointed for this day, 2nd Timothy and Luke.

We celebrate this morning the life of one of the “oaks of righteousness” of this congregation, Doris Martin. I’m fairly sure that many of you did not know her, maybe never even met her. She used to sit right up here with Pat and Leah. Getting around was a challenge for Doris for the last couple of years, not that unusual for someone who had reached 93. One of the things that made Doris an oak of righteousness for me her refusal to let me bring her communion when she was not able to get out. Every time I suggested it she’d say, “No, that all right.” And then the next Sunday she’d be here, as if to say “I can come get it myself, thank you.” I appreciate an independent spirit when I see it.

This service today – part memorial and part regular Sunday worship was the most she would let us do. She didn’t want a separate fuss. Her ashes are going to be scattered at sea – no stone any where to note her dates but the enduring energy of Doris’s spirit and life now join unpretentiously with the multitude of faithful oaks who have gone before. It is interesting to me that the epistle reading today from the 2^nd letter to Timothy, part of the regular cycle of Sunday readings for today includes the only mention of a grandmother in the entire Bible. Doris was no one’s grandmother – except ours. She was a quiet example of faith – an oak whose roots hold the soil of our faith from being eroded. Grandmothers are important in part because they have seen more than we have. They have a longer view of things and a perspective that we have not yet achieved.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the sweep of history that occurred within Doris’ years. She was born in 1914, the year that WWI began. Think of the events and changes of the last 93 years – WWI, the war to end all wars, the 19^th amendment that gave women the vote in 1920, the great stock market crash of 1929 and the depression that followed, WWII, atomic bombs, civil rights, the cold war, men on the moon, radio and television changing everything, and the first view of this fragile earth from space. It was a busy near-century. In every one of these developments there were people with a vision who led the way, led the charge, and led us to the next day. There were also those who fought every change. And then there were those who stood fast and helped to hold things together.

Doris was a committed Episcopalian and our church has had just about as many changes – the 1928 prayer book – the prayer book to end all prayer books, then the 1979 prayer book, the ordinations of all sorts of unacceptable people, black, women and gay. Did we lead the way or did we respond to cultural changes. A little bit of both. When Franklin Roosevelt created Social Security as a means of assuring that people could have some measure of security in their latter years, he did so following the model of the Episcopal Church Pension Fund. Bishop Lawrence, who just happens to be Peter’s great-grandfather, created a system of investment to provide retirement income for clergy and it has been so successful that it is the envy of every other church. During the Civil Rights struggle, Episcopal clergy and laypeople, including the wives of three New England Bishops, very proper Massachusetts matrons were arrested for non-violent resistance as they stood with people of color to end injustice. It only took us 57 years after women got the vote to grant them equality in the church. I’d say we were dragged kicking and screaming into that part of the brave new world. In the midst of all of these changes, quiet oaks of righteousness like Doris were steadfast. She didn’t let conflict chase her out of her faith home.

Sometimes it’s really hard to stand still – to not be blown off of your feet – when the winds of change blow fiercely. Ask Peter about trying to hit a golf ball at St. Andrews in 40 mph winds. He wasn’t just worried about where it would go after he hit it – if he hit it – he was trying not to fall down. I’m not sure that I can make this into a good metaphor because I don’t know if our faith is ball or the club or the golfer but the winds are real enough and I can see them all over the place.

In times of crisis – like the one in the Anglican Communions currently, the question is not how much faith we have – like the request of the apostles to Jesus in the Gospel – “Increase our faith!” but in what do we place our faith? That’s a real issue right now in our church. There are lots of voices shouting their answers at each other – I certainly have mine. Archbishops are making proclamations, bloggers are posting critiques, lawsuits drag on and yet in the midst of it, oaks of righteousness cling to the soil and remain upright. Maybe, if we can just hold still long enough, all of this shouting will wear itself out and we will find ourselves still together – a raggedy band of humans trying to live together on this little rock – guided by an image of how we might be. That is the holy calling in Paul’s letter to Timothy – knowing ourselves as called into this gospel of the kingdom that is already in our midst and within our grasp. It will not come about by insisting that someone agree with us or by stomping off in a huff when they don’t.

At the center of this debate is how we understand the Bible? For Episcopalians, historically, this was not much of an issue. I grew up during the time when all that we engaged in the Bible were the parts that made it into the prayer book and which were read on Sunday morning. Bible studies in Episcopal churches can often be put on the Endangered Species List. But now, if we want to pay attention to the important issues swirling around in our church and in the religious landscape – we would do well to be passionately interested in the Bible. Along with our tradition and reason it is the soil in which our roots take hold and keep us upright. It is important to know how you think of the Bible and the wisdom that is found therein. It should be a source of wonder and an invitation into the mystery of God. It should not be a weapon of exclusion, oppression or injustice. Recently the Episcopal Church was once again accused by someone else’s Archbishop, of having forsaken the Biblical roots of our faith. We could stomp our feet and say something mature like “Have not!” and waste lots of time stating a case for our way of interpreting scripture or we could stand very still, like an oak tree and let the winds blow themselves out as we look for ways to carry on. We have a chance every day to consider and imagine and live Jesus’ vision of the kingdom of heaven found in our midst. It is a compelling vision of justice and fairness, invitation and welcome, unity and joy. We probably can’t make it happen all at once but we can keep standing strong with our roots sunk deep in our faith.

The Lake of the Wounded

2006-07-23T11:09:00.000-07:00

A sermon preached at Faith Episcopal Church on July 16, 2006

The Lake of the Wounded

Deep within the Smokey Mountains, the people say, west of the headwaters of the river, there is a lake called Ataga’hi. No hunter has ever seen this lake, for it is the place the animals go to heal themselves when they are wounded. Some men say they have been near that place. As they walked through the mists across what seemed to be a barren flat, they began to hear the wings of water birds and the sound of water falling. But they could not find Ataga’hi.

Some of those who have lived as friends of the animals have been granted a vision of the lake. After praying and fasting all through the night, they have seen the springs flowing down from the high cliffs of the mountains into the stream that feeds Ataga’hi. Then, just at dawn, they have caught a glimpse of wide purple waters and the birds and the animals bathing in those waters and growing well again. But as soon as they have seen it, that vision has faded away, for the animals keep the lake invisible to all hunters.

It is said that there are bear tracks everywhere around Ataga’hi, for the bear is a great healer. One of those who saw Ataga’hi in the old days said that she saw a wounded bear with a great spear wound in its side plunge into the purple water and come out whole and strong on the other shore.

It is hard today to see Ataga’hi, and some think that its sacred waters have dried. But it is still there, the Cherokee say, hidden deep in the mountains and guarded by the animals. If you treat all the animals with respect, live well and pray, it may be that some day you will see the purple waters of Ataga’hi too.

The beautiful story – the Lake of the Wounded – spoke to me as I looked for something to complement the opening passages from the letter to the Ephesians. Particularly “With all wisdom and insight he has made know to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the full-ness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.” The key here is the universal nature of God’s plan. If God the Creator is the source of all that is, and continues to love and be present in all that is then it is not too great a leap to think that God will not give up on any part of creation that gets broken or for a time is rebelliously unloveable. In fact, Jesus’ parables often reflect God’s particular focus on those who are the most lost. God is certainly glad to have the well-behaved children around the table showing off good manners but it’s the ones that are not there, that have run off angrily shouting, “I won’t do it and you can’t make me!” that will become God’s prey. God’s patience with those who run from love is the winning strategy in the game of salvation.

This passage from Ephesians stands in a pretty lonely place in the Bible. As often happens in our scripture, cherished beliefs are given a counter-point. This image of all things – emphasis on the all – being gathered up into Christ stands in stark contrast to all of those passages about sheep and goats, some people being taken up while those left behind are – the Left Behinds. The letter to the Ephesians is the “yes, but…” to all of that. I believe that this is the scripture’s way of not allowing itself to be used as a weapon of exclusivity or to remind us that our understanding of God’s will is complete at best. Just when we think we can be sure of something because “the Bible says it” all you need to do is spend a little time in that book looking around and you will see your cherished expectations rattled just a bit.

In the Lake of the Wounded the purple healing water is available to all of the animals as they need it to be cured of their wounds. They do not need to be any particular animal, buffalo are not given precedence over gophers, and crows are as welcome as regal mountain lions. The story doesn’t tell us how animals know to seek out the healing of the lake. In their need, do they just know that there is a place of balm and ease for their suffering? The healing is offered because it is the Great Spirit’s nature to heal and because they are wounded. Here’s a question – would the animals come to the waters if they were not wounded? Liturgy and prayer and community are our ways of visiting such healing waters when we are not suffering from spear wounds. That makes our time together a joyous expression of wellness. Continually strengthened we are more able to make a holy response to wounds we see around us. Healing what divides us is salvation.

Considering and expectation salvation can be some of the most divisive thinking in all Christian theology. A lot of the way it is expressed in salvation passages is as if it were something to which you could buy a ticket – some event at a particular time that will be the end of every thing as we know it and the beginning of that time when only the good ones are left standing. There’s a whole lot of that kind of talk around right now. In some corners of Christendom currently there are people all in a hurry to convert as many Jews as possible because that will supposedly hasten the time we’ve all been awaiting. Well, I think it’s time for the renovation of this particular understanding of salvation.

What if “salvation” isn’t something that happens to everyone at the same time. What if it is more like the healing in the Lake of the Wounded – always happening when there is a need. Anyone who is wounded is welcomed into those purple waters and comes out on the other side whole and healthy. The whole idea of Jesus message via the gospels is this universal invitation to wholeness. My professor Clark Williamson said this in his book Guest in the House of Israel:

At the heart of the Jesus movement and the theology of Paul was a denunciation of every effort to place limits and conditions on the gracious love of God. That God justifies the ungodly, that this is true for all “others” if it is true for Christians, that it is not their place to instruct God as to the limits to be put on the divine grace, that God can and will do new things that none of us can either imagine or anticipate – all this is at the heart of Christianity’s apostolic witness.

It is not for us to decide that God has a timetable for drawing various parts of Creation into wholeness. It is as likely – in my mind – that “the fullness of time” may refer to that time when all of the presently unacceptable, the defiant ones shouting “I won’t do it and you can’t make me!” and all of those who, for whatever reason, might think that God doesn’t exist or doesn’t care, when all of their resistance has been overcome by the relentless love of God – then the time will be full.

Thought of in such a way – we all have a stake in everyone in the world understanding that God is love. Participating in God’s work by multiplying the amount of love that is in the world is the work of the people of God. It is unlikely that what is currently going on in the Middle East is a helpful step toward any kind of salvation. Bombs are not instruments of love and healing. The only way that this kind of relating is going to be transformed is if people who have already been dipped in the Lake of the Wounded step up and say there is a better way. We know that it is there. We have seen it.

Hearing the Lord's Prayer Again

2006-07-16T09:00:00.000-07:00

A sermon preached at Faith Episcopal Church on July 9, 2006.

About two weeks ago Lorelei asked me what my favorite scripture verse was. Of course this was a part of a surprise the Vicar campaign for my birthday and so I was told not to ask questions. So I obediently told her that my favorite scripture passage is Micah 6:8. “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God.” I was informed that that was currently not an option through Bangles from Heaven, so the bracelet that you gave me last week reflected a different verse from Galatians and is probably one I’m more in need of. It is a list of the fruits of the spirit which are a good reminder to me to be kind, patient, loving, nice sweet and generally agreeable. I’ll need to wear it frequently and thank you very much.

We have been challenging ourselves to pray the Lord’s Prayer in the more contemporary language which I realize is a bit jarring at first. We’ve all grown up praying the traditional language and it is a part of us. We say it automatically and usually uncritically which is not a bad thing. But I remember feeling surprise when a friend told me that her least favorite Bible verse was “Lead us not into temptation.” Why should we have to pray to God not do something bad to us? Part of the surprise was self-recrimination – that jangle of ‘yeah that has always bothered me in a vague way’ and “Darn! Why didn’t I think of that!” She had articulated that which I had never brought to the surface, I had prayed it so often that I was immune.

Ever since then, the more I think of it, the more it bothers me. For that reason I have willingly embraced the more modern language version of the prayer. Quoting from the Gospel of Luke, it says “Save us from the time of trial.” It also refers to forgiving our sins as opposed to trespasses. Trespass is a quaint expression in the midst of modern vernacular. Praying about our sins feels a little more direct and honest to me. Trespass is too nice a word for it. But back to the time of trial; Luke’s language is some of the code vocabulary from the Bible. The “time of trial” was a way of referring to the time of tribulation and trial and apocalypse – when the old order would give way to the new in an awesome and messy struggle.

Missing that is something for which we might well want to pray. But we can also find personal connection with wanting to avoid a time of trial. No one really wants to suffer and be tested. But life in this world almost guarantees that we will be tested and tried so what exactly are we asking for? A return to the time of Eden when all that we needed was provided and we had little to do and therefore no sense of accomplishment? The condition of Eden denied our identity as creative beings. Does one fall from such a state or does one begin to grow up? Is it really in our best interest to be saved from trying times? I know that my most difficult experiences have been the greatest sources of any depth that I might have.

At a Diocesan Convention in Michigan a few years ago, a courageous woman shared her story. She currently holds a Masters in social Work and is in ministry with children whose parents are in prison. She knows the situation from both sides because years ago she was convicted of the murder of her husband – a desperate act following just one more beating. Her life had been one of despair and devoid of joy and hope. All of those around her convinced her that she had no inherent worth; she could only be defined by the presence of a man in her life. She did not know that divinity had come back to earth to dwell in her. And when the man in her life beat her – the world’s response to her black eyes and bleeding lips was “Why do you keep making him do this to you?” Eventually she stopped him. Then the world’s response was a conviction on the charge of first degree murder.

Her trials and tribulations took her to unexpected places. She earned degrees while in prison and filed and won a class action lawsuit on behalf of women in prison that has had a profoundly positive effect on many lives. She cannot reverse the damage done to her own children – the eldest of which is in prison for life – the result of growing up hard and mean, defending his brother from others who mocked and spat upon them. Instead of lamenting what she cannot change she has directed her considerable energy and passion to offering a different experience to other children. The noble calling was her response to being tempted, tested and tried.

The New Zealand Prayer Book has an elegant interpretation of the Lord’s Prayer that I’d like to read to you.

Eternal Spirit,

Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver,

Source of all that is and that shall be,

Father and Mother of us all,

Loving God, in whom is heaven:

The hallowing of your name echo through the universe!

The way of your justice be followed by the peoples of the world!

Your heavenly will be done by all created beings!

Your commonwealth of peace and freedom

Sustain our hope and come on earth.

With the bread we need for today, feed us.

In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us.

In times of temptation and test, strengthen us.

From trials too great to endure, spare us.

From the grip of all that is evil, free us.

For you reign in the glory of the power that is love,

Now and for ever. Amen.

“From trials too great to endure, spare us.” For me, that is the most meaningful way to express that statement in our prayer. It allows us to live in the reality of growth through challenge while asking not to be pushed beyond our ability to make a holy response.

When we pray this prayer, we ask for many things; first that we remain aware that God exists beyond our knowing. To contemplate the holiness of God is an invitation into deeper and more thoughtful living. We ask to have what we need which also requires us to ask if we need all that we have. The work of forgiveness is central in the prayer as it well might be in our lives. The trials that we endure are a preface to the statement that God is God, powerful as only God can be and so we can have some confidence in the way that our lives unfold.

Rest assured, we will not forsake the traditional language of this prayer but when we go back to those familiar words it will hopefully be with a renewed sense of what those words mean to us. For ever and ever. Amen.

Don't expect Warren Buffett to do it all

2006-07-02T11:28:00.000-07:00

A sermon preached at Faith Episcopal Church on July 2, 2006>

In the past weeks Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have put a face on today’s lessons. The readings from Deuteronomy and 2 Corinthians make no bones about God’s expectation that we share what we have with those who do not. I want to read to you an interesting response to Warren Buffett’s bombshell announcement from a newspaper in India…

“Why do we create wealth? At the very bottom of the pyramid, it is for survival — today and tomorrow. Climb up a little and it’s a house — the right size, in the right area. The next rung is all about high-end memberships — golfing at the right club, smoking the right cigar, vacationing the right cruise. You still need to climb many more rungs, the millionaire-billionaire catalogues — before you reach the peak, the very top of all lists, aspirations, imaginations. That’s where Buffett and Gates sit.

Buffett could well have passed on his wealth to his children, Susan, Howard and Peter. But the conviction of capitalism, of equal opportunity and no more, came in the way: “The idea that you get a lifetime supply of food stamps based on coming out of the right womb strikes at my idea of fairness.”

In his giving, Buffett is completing the circle of capitalism — applying his mind to resources handed to him by society, systematically creating wealth and finally returning that wealth back to society for more Buffetts to harness. He invested with people and companies that could grow money better than he could. He’s now giving with the same idea — to people who can deliver better than he can. Showing, essentially, that creating and giving wealth are two sides of the same gold coin.”

I think that this is a generous assessment of capitalism and one that is not often lived out. But I do appreciate this reporter lifting up such an ideal. The 20^th century created enormous wealth and I’m thrilled to see the Gates/Buffett phenomenon. I would love to have been in on the thought and heart processes that brought first Bill Gates and then Warren Buffett to this point.

But In both of the readings today, the generosity that is recommended is not just personal. We should all recognize how blessed we are and be moved to share that with those who struggle. The chair of any pledge campaign will tell you that that’s a hard enough sell. But this is not just about personal generosity – it is meant to be woven through the social fabric.

The goal of giving to those in need is not to create a perpetual welfare state but to give everyone the resources and opportunities to move out of need and into self sufficiency. The closing thought of the passage from 2 Corinthians is “The one who had much did not have too much, and the one who had little did not have too little.” What a mirror this is for us right now.

I was engaged in a heated conversation with someone the other day about another topic and somehow France came into the conversation. My sparring partner made a fairly sweeping condemnation of the French because as he put, “they expect the government to pay for things” – meaning healthcare and retirement and other social securities. At some point when we have both cooled off enough, I hope to have the occasion to revisit this because I’d like to explain something. First a caveat – I recognize that the social safety net system in France is in need of readjustment if not a fairly large overhaul. But that is not the point. The French people don’t expect this sort of protection unreasonably – they have chosen a form of government specifically to provide such things. France is a socialist country and the people continue to choose that. They have said we will pay the taxes to provide universal health care and employment protections and adequate retirement. That’s their choice and that philosophy of government – the management of the public life looks an awful lot like what today’s lessons are talking about. A culture filled with too many people at one extreme who have way too much and too many people on the other extreme who have nothing is out of balance and not healthy. Can we even imagine a culture that is not like that? If we can imagine it, how might we get there? Can it be achieved voluntarily? That’s the question. It’s a question that appears to have been answered in the birth and rebirth of this nation.

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity” And then there’s this…

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

How is it possible that a nation founded on such ideals, is filled with those who have so much and yet care so little about those who have too little. It is our country and we have only our voices to lift up to say that if indeed we are this nation conceived in such hope then we expect better from ourselves. It should not be left to the fabulously wealthy who have had epiphanies of generosity to make things right.

Jim Wallis is the editor of Sojourners magazine and an important voice on the subject of faith and politics. His book God’s Politics, spent some time on thy NYT bestsellers list last year. In it he states unequivocally that “Budgets are moral documents. They clearly reveal the priorities of a family, a church, an organization, city or a nation. A budget shows what we most care about and how that compares to other things we care about.” An examination of all of our budgets, personal, here at Faith and those of our town, state and nation need to be assessed with that in mind.

Let’s have a 4^th of July birthday celebration that has some substance and not just colorful flashes. Begin with prayer and then conversation and then action. Let us challenge those who make decisions in our name to consider the values lifted up in today’s readings and seek to create that place conceived in liberty where there may be that fair balance from the abundance we share.

The Gnostics and Walt Whitman

2006-06-18T11:14:00.000-07:00

A sermon preached at Faith Episcopal Church on June 18, 2006

In December 1945, nearly 2 years before the Dead Sea scrolls were discovered, the Egyptian desert gave up a long held secret. What is now referred to as the Nag Hammadi Library is a collection of 52 texts from the early centuries of our faith. Those texts are a written witness to early Gnostic Christianity. The word Gnostic comes from the Greek word gnosis which means knowledge and describes a very different direction in Christian thought – a direction that was eventually deemed heretical. But as always, it’s good to remember that being branded a heretic sometimes simply means that you lost the argument.

The texts found at Nag Hammadi were written in the Coptic language, translations of even earlier Greek texts and include a collection of previously unknown Christian gospels, the Gospel of Philip, the Gospel of Mary, the Gospel of Truth, the Gospel of the Egyptians and the complete Gospel of Thomas. While the texts and their bindings were easily datable from between 350-400, dating the original texts is more of a challenge. Some of them will be quite early – some scholars date the Gospel of Thomas to around 140. For centuries, all that we knew about this early strand of Christian thought came from the writings of Iraneaus, the Bishop of Lyon in France in the 2^nd century. He wrote five volumes entitled The Destruction and Overthrow of Falsely So-called Knowledge. From that title, you might expect a fairly slanted presentation of Gnostic thought.

One good question about this archeological treasure is “why were they buried in the first place?” As the new religion was beginning to define itself, there was great diversity of thought and interpretation. Irenaeus and like minded churchmen looked at ideas that were different from their own and said “we are right and you are wrong.” Eventually, they also had the power to make it illegal to even be in possession of one of these texts. Many of them were burned and destroyed but someone in Upper Egypt decided to hide this collection and for 1600 years they rested safely in their clay vessel.

What was in these texts that Irenaeus found so appalling? A good Gnostic is one who understands him or herself to be a spark of the divine. The work of a Gnostic is to seek to know that spark within and by so doing, to come to know God. One Gnostic teacher said this “Abandon the search for God and the creation and other matters of a similar sort. Look for him by taking yourself as the starting point. Learn who it is within you who makes everything his own and says, “My God, my mind, my thoughts, my soul, my body, Learn the sources of sorrow, joy, love, hate…If you carefully investigate these matters you will find him in yourself.” This is the prime difference between Gnostic Christianity and orthodox Christianity according to Elaine Pagels who’s well known book The Gnostic Gospels came out in the early 80s. She said that Orthodox thought “insist(s) that a chasm separates humanity from its creator: God is wholly other. But some of the Gnostics who wrote these gospels contradict this: self-knowledge is knowledge of God, the self and the divine are identical.” This thinking is present in how they write about Jesus. The Gnostic Jesus speaks of illusion and enlightenment not of sin and repentance. Instead of coming to save us from sin, he comes as a guide who opens access to spiritual understanding. When the disciple attains enlightenment, Jesus no longer serves as his spiritual master: the two have become equal – even identical.” Some scholars see here an influence of Buddhist thought.

Gnostic thought was itself very diverse but there appears to have been some agreement around the understanding of the divine in “terms of a harmonious, dynamic relationship of opposites – a concept that may be akin to the Easter view of yin and yang but that remains alien to orthodox Judaism and Christianity. The implications here for the relationship between male and female in the divine and in the church are important – hence The DaVinci Code brouhaha. Ireneaus and his supporters who came to identify themselves as the guardians to the only “true faith” really weren’t interested in that!

It also has implications for the relationship between the body and the soul. As much as I appreciate much of the Gnostic teaching, their understanding of the physical vessel as something to be escaped in order to achieve enlightenment seems to me to fly in the face of their embrace of the harmony of opposites. Dualism is a helpful concept when both components are seen as necessary and life-giving to the other. Humanity is best expressed when male and female are equally valued. Humanity is best expressed when body and spirit are equally valued. The recently published Gospel of Judas portrays Judas as the only disciple to really get what Jesus is doing. His service to Jesus is to help him to escape the body that is so limiting.

The reading today from 2 Corinthians gives us this same kind of Gnostic, anti-body language. “While we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord;” “…we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.” I’m going stand with a very orthodox doctrine here to refute this – the doctrine of the Incarnation. We believe that God took on human form and if a human body was a suitable vessel for true divinity, then it can no longer be thought of as evil or needing to be transcended. That’s why I decided to put Paul’s language in dynamic tension with Walt Whitman, that wonderful poet of the incarnation. If we believe that body and soul are equally sacred it should call into question many of the ways that we harm our own bodies and those of others. Being a child of God is expressed in your soul and your body.

I sing the body electric,

The armies of those I love engirth me and I engrith them,
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.

Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves?
And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead?
And if the body does not do fully as much as the soul?
And if the body were not the soul, what is the soul?

I have perceiv’d that to be with those I like is enough,
To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,
To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough,

To pass among them or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly
round his or her neck for a moment, what is this then?
I do no t ask any more delight, I swim in it as in a sea.

There is something in staying close to men and women and looking on them,
and in the contact and odor of the, that please the soul well,
All things please the soul, but these please the soul well.

If we know Jesus as Emmanuel – God with us – the one who came to live this life in a human body, in loving community with us then our being in our own skin and being with one another is also holy. What joyous good news that is!

(My thanks to Elaine Pagels' The Gnostic Gospels, 1979, Vintage Books, Random House; and also to Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass.)

The Divine Genogram

2006-06-11T12:08:00.000-07:00

A sermon preached at Faith Episcopal Church on Trinity Sunday, June 11, 1006.

Dan Brown’ DaVinci Code has certainly done more for theological pondering than any mainstream theologian in recent memory. Particularly around subject of Jesus’ humanity and divinity - subjects that haven’t been given this much thought in over 1500 years. This is Trinity Sunday and the only time during the year that we are called to stop and ponder the relationships of the three-in-one God. All of the controversies about who Jesus was were and are really controversies about the nature of God.

From the 2^nd century on, theologians struggled with the implications of Jesus’ divinity. It caused all kinds of questions to be asked. “Well if Jesus is divine then which one is God?” A big problem for many answer seekers was the prevailing concept of God as unchangeable and incapable of suffering. How then could God have been fully present in Jesus as he suffered? I find that to be an intriguing and helpful question. Does God suffer? I believe that we make God suffer all the time but our treatment of one another and the rest of creation. Along these same lines, if we ask “does God suffer” shouldn’t we also ask, does God experience joy? The whole idea of the incarnation is God’s willingness to encounter humanity in the best way, to experience human suffering but also to experience human joy.

In my first year in seminary, we had to create a genogram. A genogram is a diagram of your family and relationships – kind of like a family tree but with description. Relationships are identified by connecting lines of different types that indicate strength and importance. Now in my biological family, I have my parents and their families and my sister. I also have a half sister from my mother’s second marriage, four step brothers and sisters from my father’s second marriage a half sister and brother from my father’s third marriage. My step-mother’s family provided an important grandmother figure as well as cousins and aunts and uncles. Then you add my in-laws family and their cousins that became important parts of my life and my children. We wereonly given an 8.5x14” piece of paper to do this. I worked and worked just to account for everybody and when it was done it looked like some Etch-a-Sketch gone mad. I handed it in and the teaching assistant glanced at it and did a double take. As she tried to grasp the complexity of my family, she just kept saying “Oh my!”

The doctrine of the Trinity is the kind of thing that happens when people start to try to describe God. What starts as a simple point on a piece of white paper that represents an awareness of the existence of God grows until it starts to resemble my genogram. As soon as you start to ask questions – “Who or what is God?” “What is God like?” – you get more and more dots on the paper. Sometimes, when there is more than one answer to a question, i.e. “God is merciful” or “God is just” the answers themselves complicate the picture because they appear to contradict each other. A merciful God forgives but a just God requires punishment – so which is it? Soon you have more dots and lines connecting them and arrows pointing and God starts to looked like that Etch-a-Sketch thing.

What is the point of these torturous exercises? I believe the point is why we do them. We do them because we are hungry for God. We come to God presence and table famished. C.S. Lewis said “This hunger is better than any other fullness; this poverty better than all other wealth.” We seek a knowledge and experience of God because there is nothing else that can fill us. Heaven knows that we will try all sorts of other things before we give God a shot. But eventually, the more elaborate our diversions, the more dire will be our need for that which only God can give. True love and true connection. The God genogram is really less complicated than we try to make it. The lines of connection between God and every single person are of equal depth and importance. My professor Clark used to refer to God as “the ultimately related one.” Because of God’s relation to us, we have an equal relationship with each other. We may all have different fingerprints and DNA but we all have an identical faith genogram. All of the lines that connect to us are of equal strength and there’s a lot of them – one for every person on earth. The lines between us and those people we do not know personally go through God and they are as strong as those that connect us to person we love the most.

The clearest way for me to grasp the concept of the Trinity is as relationship. The Trinity exists as a community of equal relationships – God and Christ and the relationship that exists within this divine diversity. The lines of the genogram themselves – the relationships – are also God. One formula that expresses this beautifully is the triune God as Love, Lover and the Loving.

The hunger to know God particularly in this time of change is resulting in some exciting thinking. In her book Amazing Grace; A Dictionary of Faith, Kathleen Norris said this about the Trinity which resonates strongly with the work of our upcoming General Convention and just trying to survive in this world. This is what she says:

“Tension is a creative force. But polarization, which seems an abiding sin of our age, is worse than useless. It stifles creativity, whereas a healthy dose of negative capability, the ability to hold differences in tension while both affirming and denying them, enlivens both poetry and theology. In Christian history, it has sometimes meant the difference between unity and schism, offering a synthesis that provides a third way. Mystics of many religious traditions have often spoken in terms of threes, and although I have very little grasp of how science is done, I love to read about quarks, those subatomic particles that exist in threes. There is no such thing as one quark, but only three interdependent beings; I picture them dancing together at the heart of things, part of the atomic glue that holds this world together, and to the atomic scientist, at least, makes all things on earth more alike than different….

The idea of the Trinity is increasing relevant as we seek to understand the physical structure of the universe and to live together on this troubled earth. Anything that we can do to further and to heal relationships is holy work. – God, the ultimately related One, creates the relationships and then lives the example in perfect unity. We cannot will away relationships simply because they trouble us – we can only strive to be authentic and to live with honesty and love and compassion. When we do that, even if we are not completely successful, the mysterious and mystical and miraculous ways of God will do more than we can ask or imagine. Holy! Holy! Holy!

Memorial Day Thoughts

2006-05-28T11:31:00.000-07:00

A sermon preached at Faith Episcopal Church on May 28, 2006.

A giant nearly ten feet tall stepped out from the Philistine line into the open, Goliath from Gath. He had a bronze helmet on his head and was dressed in armor—126 pounds of it! He wore bronze shin guards and carried a bronze sword. His spear was like a fence rail—the spear tip alone weighed over fifteen pounds. His shield bearer walked ahead of him.

Goliath stood there and called out to the Israelite troops, "Why bother using your whole army? Am I not Philistine enough for you? And you're all committed to Saul, aren't you? So pick your best fighter and pit him against me. If he gets the upper hand and kills me, the Philistines will all become your slaves. But if I get the upper hand and kill him, you'll all become our slaves and serve us. I challenge the troops of Israel this day. Give me a man. Let us fight it out together!"

When Saul and his troops heard the Philistine's challenge, they were terrified and lost all hope.

Then David – still a youth – came before Saul and said

"Master," said David, "don't give up hope. I'm ready to go and fight this Philistine."

Saul answered David, "You can't go and fight this Philistine. You're too young and inexperienced—and he's been at this fighting business since before you were born."

David said, "I've been a shepherd, tending sheep for my father. Whenever a lion or bear came and took a lamb from the flock, I'd go after it, knock it down, and rescue the lamb. If it turned on me, I'd grab it by the throat, wring its neck, and kill it. Lion or bear, it made no difference—I killed it. And I'll do the same to this Philistine pig who is taunting the troops of God-Alive. God, who delivered me from the teeth of the lion and the claws of the bear, will deliver me from this Philistine."

Saul said, "Go. And God help you!"

(This version of the story of David and Goliath is from The Message)

David, full of courage, seasoned with youthful bravado, put himself between his people and the threat of a menacing giant, defeat, and slavery. We all know the story; the boy triumphed over the giant with a few rocks plucked from the creek bed and eventually became the monarch of all of the tribes of Israel. His story embodies all that is noble and courageous about fighting for your country.

Memorial Day has always been a dicey preaching assignment for me. It is never any secret that I think that war is a habit that humanity needs to break. That sentiment is sometimes heard as being unsupportive of those whose feet are in the boots on the ground and whose lives are on the line. As I understand it, however, these are two completely different subjects. The people who serve in the armed forces, those who are willing to serve do deserve our respect, concern and gratitude for putting themselves in harm’s way as David did. American soldiers are buried by the thousands in the fields of Europe. Their presence under those endless rows of crosses could never be thought of as anything less than noble and self-sacrificing.

Our returning soldiers also deserve our care. That is why Memorial Day and the Veterans Administration exist. The history of honoring and supporting those who have fought for this country began before it was a country. In 1636, when the Pilgrims were at war with the Pequot Indians, a law was enacted that stated that disabled veterans would be supported by the colony. It would take the country a couple of hundred years to extend benefits to the families of those disabled or killed.

In May of 1868, a proclamation from General John Logan designated May 30^th for what became known as Decoration Day. A hundred years later, in 1971, Memorial Day became a national holiday, to be celebrated on the last Monday in May. Putting flowers on their graves seems like a small gesture.

Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address closed with a phrase that became the mission statement of the Veteran’s Administration.

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

I think it’s only slightly less difficult to be a returning veteran today than it was during the Viet Nam era. The disillusionment about the war was taken out on people who did not deserve it. They were right to be confused, hurt and angry at being scapegoats for political decisions. Today’s soldiers returning at least do not face angry crowds and accusations. It’s good that as a nation we have grown up enough to focus any disapproval we might feel on those who make the decisions to send our men and women to fight rather than on those who are ordered to go.

Israel is the only country in the world with universal compulsory service. Both men and women are drafted and 80% of those who receive their notice actually serve. Israel is a country surrounded by hostile neighbors still calling for its destruction. All Israelis accept that they may be called upon to defend their home. As Americans, we have no such expectation. We are lucky enough to have people willing to sign up. Because our soldiers are willing to step up and put on the uniform is all the more reason to be very careful in using them to settle our disputes.

While I am convinced that the best way to honor those who serve is to commit to the Prince of Peace and seek ways to learn war no more, no one’s sacrifice should be taken lightly or forgotten. This poem by Maggie DeMay is a reminder that we who do not serve have a huge responsibility to those who have.

No one remembers the soldier
once a hero
now
another old warrior
telling stories in the corridors
of the VA
waiting for their doctors

A timeline carved in flesh
generation by generation
WWI
WWII
Korea
Vietnam
Desert Storm
Bosnia
Afganistan
Iraq

Bodies and minds mangled
scars visible
or hidden deep within
missing limbs
missing lives
missing time

Days fade into dusk
the old ones pass on
flags drape coffins
of the dead going home
soldiers do
what soldiers always have done
and when it's all over
nobody mourns

Let us pray.

Almighty God, we commend to your gracious care and keeping all the men and women of our armed forces at home and abroad. Defend them day by day with your heavenly grace; strengthen them in their trials and temptations; give them courage to face the perils which beset them; and grant them a sense of your abiding presence wherever they may be; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.