Father Mark Collins' Blog

A Part To Play: A Sermon for Year B, Epiphany 5

2012-02-05T16:05:00.000-05:00

This sermon was preached on Sunday, February 5, 2012 at Christ & Saint Stephen's Church. The Bible passages this sermon is based on can be found here.

I don’t have to guess what most of you will be doing this evening. It’s a pretty important night for most of us. I can expect that, like me, you’ll be home in plenty of time to get the TV set warmed up. Maybe you’ll have some special TV watching snacks at the ready. If you’re like me, you’ll make sure you’ve got good command of the remote in case any instant replays are needed. Because, as I don’t have to tell you, tonight all across the nation, millions of us will be tuning in to see who will be the winners and who will be the losers on yet another...

... episode of Downton Abbey.

As you probably know, Downton Abbey is the PBS Masterpiece Classic series that concerns the fate of the Crawley family – and those who serve the Crawley family – all of whom reside at the said Downton Abbey, which, with all its lands and assets comprises the earldom of Grantham. In season one of the series, an heir to the earldom and the estate goes down with the Titanic. The next closest male heir is an obscure cousin, a lawyer, from a solidly middle class background – to the displeasure of some of the snootier Crawleys. Nonetheless, the young lawyer will someday be the Earl of Grantham, so plans and provisions are made to prepare him for the task. He and his mother relocate to a house near the estate, and are assigned the services of a valet and a maid.

The new heir, Matthew, is a bit put out by his new valet, Mr. Mosley. In fact he finds the idea of a valet ‘ridiculous’. Matthew is a down-to-earth sort of fellow – and vows that his elevation to the more aristocratic branch of the family is not going to change him. He insists upon continuing his work as a lawyer, including riding his bike to the Downton train station to get to his Ripon office – all the while learning the ropes of running an estate from his cousin the current Earl of Grantham. When asked how he will manage such duties, Matthew explains that there are plenty of hours in the day – and then time at the weekend. The elder Lady Grantham, the Dowager Countess then must ask, “What is a weekend?” A legitimate question for a woman who was raised in aristocratic circumstances and has never worked a day in her life.

Mr. Mosley, the valet, is most put out by his new master. He complains to the Earl’s valet that Matthew chooses his own clothes in the morning, and hangs them up when he takes them off in the evening, leaving Mosley, who should be employed in these tasks, standing there, as he puts it, ‘like a chump.’ Later when Matthew is dressing for a formal dinner, he spurns all Mosley’s help, fixing his own tie, choosing his own cufflinks, and putting them in his cuffs himself. He tells Mosley that he cannot become accustomed to being dressed like a doll. And that to him, dressing someone seems like a rather silly occupation for a grown man. Mosley is, of course, deeply wounded to hear that the gentleman he is to serve has such a dismissive opinion of the service he offers.

When Matthew raises the issue of the valet with his cousin the earl, he explains that he’d like to dismiss Mosley, not for any fault, but because his services are superfluous to his style of living. The earl asks him, “Is that really fair; to deprive a man of his livelihood when he’s done nothing wrong?” He asks Matthew if he means to deprive Mosley of the sense of satisfaction and self-worth that he gets from doing his work and doing it well? And when Matthew becomes the earl himself, will everyone at Downton be sacked? Will the butler and housemaids and footmen and all who serve the household be deprived of their work, their incomes, and their sense of satisfaction and self-worth? Lord Grantham schools his heir in the bonds shared by all who live in and work on his estate. He says, “We all have different parts to play… and we must all be allowed to play them.”

In our gospel reading today, Simon Peter’s mother-in-law is laid low with a fever. Illness is always a cause for concern. Added to that concern, Peter’s mother-in-law is unable to play the part she has been given to play in her household and in her community. In the Middle East, both in ancient times and today, customs regarding hospitality to guests were very important. There were and are serious social obligations that require that guests are treated with respect, served food and drink, made comfortable and shown honor. To fulfill one’s duty to honor one’s guest is to bring honor upon oneself and one’s household and one’s community.

Simon Peter has returned to his home with guests, including an important guest, the Rabbi Jesus, only to find his mother-in-law ill. She is unable to serve her guests, unable to play the part she has been given to play. So when Jesus heals Peter’s mother-in-law, he does more than just rid her of her bodily ailments. He also restores her to her place in her community.

Our text today reads, “(Jesus) came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.” (Mark 1:31) Notice the order of events, Jesus lifts her up, or as it’s translated elsewhere, he ‘raises her up’ – and then her fever is gone. That particular verb, egeiro in Greek, will appear again in Mark, often in context of healing, and it will be used again by the angel at the tomb who tells the women that the Jesus whom they seek has been lifted up, has been raised.

Jesus’ healing of Peter’s mother-in-law is, then, much more than an alleviation of certain symptoms. It is a lifting up, a raising up. Peter’s mother-in-law has been laid low by illness, and Jesus raises her up to her rightful place again. And she carries out the part that she has been given to play. As matriarch of a household, she serves her honored guests which will bring honor to her, her household and her community. She is again in right relation to her body, and to the community in which she lives.

We can look at it a slightly different way. Peter’s mother-in-law takes the grace shown to her by God in her healing by Jesus, and she, in turn, uses her restored health to serve others. In this regard, she is like the Apostle Paul in our reading from Corinthians this morning. Paul tell the Corinthians that he has received the gospel of Christ, but that blessing is not a cause of pride or boasting on his part. Rather it places on him an obligation. He must then proclaim that gospel to all whom he can impel to hear it. For the gift of the gospel requires Paul to pay it forward, to make sure that those who thirst for the message of God’s grace and mercy, the assurance of God’s redemption and salvation, to make sure the broken world hears the gospel message and through it, is healed.

Later in the episode of Downton Abbey that I was describing earlier, Matthew takes his cousin, the earl’s words to heart. When next he dresses, he asks Mosley to choose a less dull set of cufflinks, and to help him put them in. When he notices that Mosley has managed to clean a spot off his coat, he lets him know that he considers his valet’s work to have been very well done. In the final shot, of this scene, we see Matthew appreciating his well-turned out appearance in the mirror. Behind him stands Mosley, looking over his shoulder, with a look of concentration, staring into the mirror as well. Mosley wields a horsehair brush over Matthew’s lapel. Another tweak to the already will turned out heir. Because in the good turn-out of the heir to the earldom of Grantham, everyone can see that Mosley has done his duty and done it well. The obligation put upon him, he had discharged with expertise and with honor.

Like Peter’s mother-in-law, like the Apostle Paul, and we should note, like Jesus himself.

After Peter’s mother-in-law is healed, many more come to Jesus for healing. After he had healed them, he went apart from them all, to a deserted place to pray. When they find him, Jesus says, “ Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.” (Mark 1:38)

We all have our parts to play; and those parts involve spreading the word of God, restoring our communities, healing our broken world. Christ’s example to us in today’s gospel includes all the tasks. He restores an ailing woman to health. Thereby he restores her to her rightful place in her household and in her community. Notice too, that after more of such service, Jesus takes some time apart, some time for prayer and reflection, and when called upon, he goes out to even more of God’s children to spread the word, and to heal the broken.

And so should we. We like Paul have been gifted with the gospel of Christ, and that is a gift indeed, a message of grace and hope, a promise of redemption. And that gift puts upon us an obligation to spread that same gospel to the world. Whatever your part is to play, play it. Serve those God sends to you to serve.

And take the time, from time to time, to restore yourself too, as Jesus did. Maybe spend a Sunday night relaxing in front of the television. I can highly recommend Downton Abbey. But if you don’t like Edwardian costume dramas, do some channel surfing, there might be a football game on. And when you’ve taken the time to be restored. Get up, go out, and spread the gospel. There are many more in need of your service. There are so many more still thirsting to hear of the healing love and redemptive grace of God in Christ Jesus. +Amen

With God's Help: a sermon for Year B, Epiphany 1, the Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord

2012-01-08T20:25:00.000-05:00

Preached on Sunday, January 8, 2012 at Christ & Saint Stephen's Church. Lectionary readings that this sermon is based on can be found here.

Well, the holidays are well and truly over now, aren’t they? We’re done with Christmas. This past Friday was the Feast of the Epiphany, the 12th day of the Twelve Days of Christmas. The New Years holiday is behind us as well. Most of us are back at work and back at school. The Day School has reconvened in our Loft and Croft classroom spaces.

Many of us have New Year’s resolutions, one or two of which are still standing, I hope. That’s certainly true for our Day School students. In our Day School chapel session this past week, we talked about New Year’s resolutions. The Day Schoolers have learned that a resolution is a wish that you make for yourself. I like that, don’t you? A wish, a hope you have for yourself in the year to come.

They have many aspirations, our Day School students. One of our students said his New Year’s resolution was to learn to ride a bike. A lofty goal when you’re 4 years old, I think, and certainly an admirable one. Another of our students, in the 3-year-old group, has resolved to learn to ride a scooter – not as ambitious as learning to ride a bike, but that’s the difference between being 3 and being 4. Another of our Day School students has resolved to stop fighting with her brother in the new year. I’m not sure but I sense the influence of a harried parent there, one who’s probably glad that the sugar-rush of the holidays is over. We discussed how undertaking these great aims is hard, and that we need help to do them. We decided that our parents, our teachers, our nannies are good people to go to for help. And we learned how we can ask God for help, to make our wishes for ourselves come true. And when we do that, we call it prayer.

+++++++++++++++

As we often do on this first Sunday after Epiphany, our liturgy celebrates the Baptism of our Lord, which is appropriate for the new year. The baptism of our Lord is itself a beginning of sorts. All four gospels agree that this event marked the beginning of Jesus’s career, the public phase of his life during which his preaching, teaching and healing took place. In fact two of our gospels, Mark and John, begin not with the story of the nativity, but rather with the baptism of Jesus in the river Jordan by John the Baptist. The beginning of the story of Jesus for Mark and John is baptism, and today’s gospel reading comes from the first chapter of Mark, beginning at the 4th verse, almost the very beginning of Mark’s gospel.

Our Old Testament reading today is the very beginning as well, of the first book in the Bible. Genesis Chapter 1, verse 1. You can’t go any further back than that. Our Church School students are talking about this same text this morning. In our reading from Genesis, we hear how the earth was first formed by God as a dark and mysterious void covered by deep waters, and a wind from God sweeps over the face of the waters. Water, the medium of the sacrament of baptism, is there from the world’s very beginning. And as will happen at the river Jordan, God’s spirit hovers over it.

Many of us began our lives in baptism. It’s traditional among many, but not all, Christians to baptize newborn babies. When we do so, parents and godparents make pledges on behalf of the infant candidate for baptism. Of course, an infant cannot keep the promises made on her behalf at baptism – not without the help of parents and godparents, and indeed not without the help of God. Just like learning to ride a bike, chances are, you’ll need a little help to learn to live as a Christian.

But that’s not just true for the smallest baptismal candidates; it’s true for all of us. We all need God’s help in order to live into the promises we make in baptism – the promises that we’ll recommit ourselves to in a few minutes. As is the custom on this Sunday, the Feast of the Lord’s Baptism, we will renew our baptismal covenant today. We’ll recite in our own voices the promises and pledges that we made long ago, some of us, or that were made on our behalf when we were quite small.

And as we renew these promises, we’ll say, “I will, with God’s help.” We can’t do it alone, we don’t expect to. We need God’s help to become the people that we believe we were created to be, to become the people God calls us to be.

And it’s important to realize who it is that God calls us to be. Our reading from Acts this morning reminds us, our baptism is not an act of repentance essentially. It is the acceptance of our identity as Christ’s own. Through the waters of baptism, we are buried with Christ and also share in his resurrection. Through the waters of baptism we are reborn by the Holy Spirit, becoming one with the God who loved us enough to become one with us. Through baptism, we take on the identity that was first born in Bethlehem and was completed on the cross at Calvary.

++++++++++++++++++

We live in hope, we Christians. We who know of God’s mercy and forgiveness, we who believe in the redemptive power of God’s love, know that no matter our shortcomings, no matter our failures and faults, God’s love will never desert us. And with that love within us, we can resolve to do better, for ourselves and for our families, for those in need, for those whom we love, and for those whom no one loves.

The wishes we make for ourselves as Christians are well-founded in the hope that our God inspires in us. We are the people who have been redeemed, who have been forgiven, who have been reborn. So it is with great confidence that we reaffirm our identity as God’s beloved children, and it is with great hope that we pledge to live as Christ’s own, to love as Jesus himself did, to serve the outcast, the forgotten, the neediest as he taught us to do. +Amen.

Love Came Down At Christmas: a sermon for Year B, Christmas Day

2011-12-25T19:28:00.001-05:00

Preached on Sunday, December 25, 2011 at Christ & Saint Stephen's Church. Lectionary texts that this sermon is based on can be found here.

An interesting question arose during our Advent Adult Education forum this past month. We were discussing the Incarnation in Anglicanism. As you probably know, the Incarnation is the Latinate theological term for what we’re here to celebrate today, when God became human (in carno, the Latin word for ‘flesh’) in the person of Jesus Christ.

The Incarnation has enjoyed a particular emphasis in Anglicanism. We have given it a higher place than others of our Christian counterparts in other strains of our shared faith. Through this emphasis on the Incarnation, we tend to have a very high view of the Church.

Some Christians emphasize the individual, and his or her depth of faith and individual actions. “Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior?” If you’ve never been asked that question then you must never have ventured south of the Mason Dixon line where I grew up. For such Christians, the Church is a meeting place for individuals who share a similar, personal experience of faith.

Anglicans are more likely to see the Church as a sacred and holy institution. We often use St. Paul’s own words when we say that the Church is the body of Christ in the world and each of us members of that body. And we think that we belong together in worship and in mission. You’ll find a red book in the rack on the back of our pews called the Book of Common Prayer, not the “Book of Personal Prayer” though it contains many of those types of prayers. But for us, the prayers are prayed by in common, prayed in corporate worship, as the corpus (another of those Latin words), that is a body, prayed as a whole Church.

The question arose in our Adult Ed class, what is the place of the individual in such a corpus? Is there something to be said for a personal faith, an individual’s spiritual path in such a corporate Church? What can we say for the personal experience, the individual understanding of God?

Well, today of all days, we can say quite a bit about the individual because beyond all the red and green decorations, all the shopping and sales and gift-wrapping, beyond all the parties and good cheer, beyond the familiar songs and carols, even beyond all the family gatherings and the warm and wonderful times we share at Christmas.

Beyond all these things is something quite unique, something very particular, something singular, something individual. This day is Christmas, the feast of the Nativity, the principle day on which the Incarnation is commemorated. What this day is about, in essence, is a very individual and singular event. For on this day, we celebrate the extraordinary fact that God became human, taking on our very flesh, a body just like yours and mine, and became one of us.

The theologians call this the Scandal of Particularity – that Almighty God should deign to become human in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. And it is a bit of a scandal when you think of it. For what reason, should the Eternal and Omnipotent God become a poor Jew, born on the edge of civilization, in a backwater of the Roman Empire, born in a stable, no less.

The God who created the heavens and the earth has become a weak, vulnerable babe – mewling, whining, in frequent need of a change of swaddling clothes, no doubt. The majestic God has taken on such ignominious circumstances as our own… Such a scandalous act, such a strange thing, such a literally wonder-full event. The great and glorious God as a single individual, the carpenter’s son, born of Mary, a young girl from Nazareth, born, as it turns out, while they were out of town, born while they were on the road, poor thing. Why should such a thing as this come to pass?

For love.

St. John says it best, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son…” (John 3:16)

For love, that’s why God became a human being. For love of us, for love of you, each of you. With apologies to St. John, I’m going to put it a slightly different way. Why did God take on the person of the carpenter’s son? “For God so loved you that he gave to you his son… God loves you, and today is proof of that fact. God loves you – with your sins and shortcomings, and with the kindnesses you do toward each other.

God loves you with your 15 extra pounds, and your overdue library books, and your less than admirable feelings toward your mother-in-law. God loves you, who shed a little tear at the coffee commercials at Christmas. God loves you, when you keep going though you’re tired and your feet hurt and you want to give up. God loves you when you give up. And God loves you when you start all over again.

God loves you enough to give you his son, not a grand potentate, but a poor Jew, who taught a message of love and forgiveness and mercy and service. A carpenter by training, a traveling rabbi by trade, who was willing to undergo the most scandalous of public executions, to show you the way past death and unto eternal life.

The reason for Christmas is very simple. There is an Incarnation, there is Christmas because God loves you.

And yes, the Church of God is certainly a sacred and holy institution, and here, together, we show our thanks to God, and from here, we go forth into the world to pay it forward, this love that God has for us. Each of us, a little Church within ourselves, with a heart wherein God is praised, not with great orations, perhaps, but with quiet prayers and soft sighs. Each of us with eyes that shine, not with the glory of centuries-old stained glass, but with the light of human compassion, with a mouth to speak, not with the deep tones of mighty organs, but with a sincere plea for God’s justice for all, and with hands that can reach as wide as any cathedral doors, to welcome all who come to us for solace and succor.

Yes, it’s true. In the words of the old hymn, love came down at Christmas, God’s holy and sacred and particular love for you… Merry Christmas!

Risky Business: a sermon for Year A, Proper 28

2011-11-13T18:52:00.001-05:00

Preached on Sunday, November 13, 2011 at Christ & Saint Stephen's Church. The lectionary readings this sermon is based on can be found here.

Our gospel lesson today is a surprising one, and a hard one to take, quite frankly. It seems to contradict most of what we’ve heard from Jesus in our readings from Matthew in the last few weeks. Last week, we heard that the most blessed were the poor in spirit, the meek, the persecuted. And the week before, Jesus assured us that the exalted would be humbled and the humbled would be lifted up.

But then this week, the same Jesus tells us that those who have will be given more, the ‘haves’ will know even greater abundance; but those with nothing will wind up with less than nothing. Doesn’t sound like the same guy, does it, this Jesus who says the ‘have-nots’ are to have nothing at all; and the ‘haves’ are to have even more.

That’s certainly proves to be true for the first two slaves in our gospel reading this morning. The first slave is given 5 talents. We’ll call him our large-cap guy. He’s got a lot of assets to invest, lots of capital to play around with.

There’s been quite bit of research out there on just what a talent was equal to in ancient times. It is a measure of weight primarily, and is used to measure gold and silver. Some sources say a talent of precious metal would today be worth nearly a million dollars. Others look at it differently, and say a talent would be worth about 20 years’ wages for a manual laborer at that time. Regardless, it was a lot of money.

So our large-cap slave is given 5 talents and our mid-cap slave, let’s call him, was given 2 talents. And each of these rather shrewd and talented businessmen, was able to double their money. This is an unheard of rate of return, these guys put all the mighty barons of Wall Street to shame, don’t they? The large-cap slave comes up with nearly a 200 years’ worth of wages, the mid-cap slave nets out 80 years’ worth of salary. Not too shabby at all.

Then there’s our small-cap slave. One lousy talent is all he’s given, but remember, that’s quite a sum of money. But instead of risking his talent, he protects it, he hoards it and makes sure he’s not going to lose out if the market goes south or his business associates turn out to be swindlers. He plays it safe, he engages in no risk whatsoever.

“Saving” money by burying it was a common practice in the ancient world and one recommended by the rabbis. It was a good way to keep money safe from theft or from volatile markets. It was forbidden for Jews to profit by usury, earning interest at sometimes excessive rates, so when the master scolds the slave and says he could have at least put his one talent in the bank to earn interest, he’s not quite right. It would have been considered sinful by most people for one thing, and banks in the ancient world were highly unreliable – kind of like how they are today. Most of those hearing this parable in the ancient world would have commended our small-cap slave’s actions. His path was the safe one, the commendable one, the sure one; his methods were the most risk-free.

Then why did things come out so badly for the small-cap slave? He is stripped of all he has and cast out into the outer darkness to weep and gnash his teeth. But why? After all, he does exactly what would have been expected of him, he plays it safe, he’s above board and prudent. He doesn’t risk a thing...

And that’s his sin. God doesn’t want us to play it safe, any more than the master wants his slaves to play it safe in our parable today. We are not to rest ‘complacently on our dregs’ as our Old Testament reading puts it. We are to risk what God has given us, we are to put it out there. We are to take what God has so generously granted unto us and share it with the world.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary notes that the contemporary meaning of the word ‘talent’ comes directly from this parable. When we say someone has a talent for something – music or art, caring for children, communicating – what we mean is that they have a particular skill, they have acumen in a certain area. When we say someone has a talent for something what we mean is, they have a gift.

And that’s what Jesus means in this parable in Matthew. Each of the slaves is given a gift – some large, some small; gifts that were apportioned to them in accordance with their abilities. And it’s what they do with those gifts that matters.

We too are given gifts by God. Some of us are given what we refer to as talents, for playing the piano, for acting, for investing perhaps. Some of us have gifts for listening or for healing. Some have gifts for leadership. Others of us have gifts for what I call followership – we’re not cut out to be generals, but we make great lieutenants. Some of us have gifts for joy and happiness. Some of us know just when to call, just what to say in time of trouble, our gift is for companionship. There are many gifts God gives us, large and medium and small, gifts that have been given to us in accordance with our abilities.

And it’s not news to you, I know, that we are to share these gifts with the world. Whether it is our talent for singing or painting or cooking or listening. A good Christian uses whatever talents or gifts she has been given to serve others.

But we have been given other gifts too. Whether our talents are grand or humble, we have all of us been given some very large gifts, extraordinarily huge gifts, gifts worth more than a many lifetimes of labor. We are the recipients of God’s grace, we have been granted God’s mercy. We have been given God’s eternal, unfailing, unconditional love. And it’s what we do with these things that matters. Having received these gifts, these extraordinary, what do we do with them?

For those who have been granted God’s mercy, it seems clear – we are to be merciful to others. Quick to forgive, patiently understanding; to those of us who know so well that God is merciful, the only response we can have is to be merciful to others.

For those who know they have been given God’s grace, the way seems clear – we are to share that grace with others. If God has been generous to us, we are to be generous with others. If God has been kind to us, has shown us favor, then it is quite plain, is it not? We are to be kind to others, we are to be as favorable to others as we can manage to be.

For those of us how know what it is like to feel God’s love, then our path is quite clear. We are to love others. Love them until they know that God loves them too. There is no excuse for us to give up, or to let hate take over our hearts. God has loved us, we have no choice but to love others.

Though these responses to God’s gifts may be apparent, they are not easy. And Jesus knows that. In today’s parable, the slave with one talent says what we all believe, in one degree or another, to be true about the world around us. The slave says to the master, “I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; so I was afraid...” (Mt 25: 24-25a)

We say the same things don’t we? It’s hard out there for a Christian, isn’t it? People are harsh, often cold. The kindnesses we try to do are not returned. And the world seems to be completely controlled by people who reap and gather more than their fair share, much more than they have a right to, while the rest of us, the 99%, struggle on.

And we are often afraid, aren’t we? Afraid of what the markets may hold for our retirement portfolio, or what the next election will mean for the world, for our country, for the rights we hope someday to gain; afraid even of what the next election might mean for our diocese. We are often afraid of what some hate-filled terrorist might do next to our city or our country, afraid of what some hate-filled tough might do on a darkened Greenwich Village side street, or what some belligerent bully might do on the playground tomorrow.

But Jesus makes it clear, if it’s a tough world out there, if it’s a risky world out there, then that’s all the more reason for us to share what we have been given. The brokenness of the world is no excuse, rather that should be our motivation to do something, to try anything, to show forth God’s grace and mercy and love in just such a broken world as this.

And we have been given yet another gift from God with which to do God’s will. We have each other. We don’t face the world alone. We are members of the body of Christ, we are the church, called together in faith as we are called to be witnesses of God’s grace, mercy and love to the world. And as the Apostle Paul tells the Thessalonians, we are to “encourage one another and build up each other.” (1 Thess 5:11) We have each other and it is together that we can go forth into the world with a reflection of God’s love for us on our faces and in our hearts.

And make no mistake, this is risky business, we may not reap what we sow in our efforts. We may not see a healthy return – at least not in this life – on what we have shared with others of the many gifts granted unto us by God. It may well be true that our risks will not be matched by rewards, at least not the kind of rewards that this world tends to dole out. But risk we must. That is the only sin of the poor, small-cap slave in the parable. With the least amount to lose, he couldn’t risk even that.

So, take the risk. Dare to be merciful and full of forgiveness, if for no other reason than God has been merciful to you. Be kind; honor the lives and efforts of others, if for no other reason than God has been gracious to you. Take the risk to love, to really love, others; to love your enemies, to love those who hate you. It’s a risk, a big risk. Go for it. Risk it all. It’ll pay off, on the bright morning when we hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Now, enter into the joy of your Master.” + Amen.

Not About You: a sermon for Year A, Proper 26

2011-10-30T18:06:00.020-04:00

Preached on Sunday, October 29 at Christ & Saint Stephen's Church. The lectionary readings this sermon is based on can be found here.

My friend Melissa had a bad day yesterday. And not because of the big Snowtober Storm. She had a bad day on Saturday, because she began her Saturday with Facebook.

Melissa’s a busy freelancer, and spends most of the week dashing around town with little time to spend on Facebook and other Internet diversions. But on Saturday mornings, she likes to sit down with a cup of coffee in front of the computer and reach out to friends and family and catch up with fellow freelancers and people in her field.

It was that last bit that caused her bad day yesterday. Yesterday on Facebook, she saw some old colleagues celebrating a recent success on Facebook. Tooting their own horns and trumpeting their recent success; and predicting that the project they were all working on might actually win some awards along with the critical acclaim.

My friend Melissa was a bit chagrined that no one felt the need to mention her past contributions to her colleagues’ success on the project that she’d once worked with them on; a project that she had, in fact, initiated. There was to be no critical acclaim and no awards coming her way. Reading through the posts, Melissa was more than a bit chagrined to think that the project was in fact more successful without her help and input.

Melissa had a bad day yesterday because, along with her morning coffee and weekly Facebook check-in, she got served a big, piping hot dish of “It’s not about you.”

++++++++++++++++

Jesus has a similar dish to serve to us today in our gospel reading from Matthew. After bemoaning the undeserved accolades and approbation granted to the religious leaders of his day, and after noting their quite obvious hypocrisy, Jesus tells his followers to follow a different path; to take a different tact.

We are not to call ourselves by exalted titles like rabbi or instructor, or (ahem) even father. Today’s gospel was not the easiest to proclaim to you this morning from the center aisle if you happen to be referred to quite regularly as “Father Mark”.

Some Christian denominations assiduously avoid referring to their clergy as ‘Father’ or ‘Mother’ because of this specific passage. But that’s taking the gospel today too literally. And in this case, taking the gospel literally is taking the easy way out. Jesus’s point is not about vocabulary. You’re not off the hook if your clergy are referred to as ‘Pastor’ or ‘Minister’.

Jesus is a big picture guy, and usually what he’s saying is not about small specificities but about tremendous truths. And the tremendous truth for us is that we are to humble ourselves and to give glory to God. We are to seek to serve others, that’s where our greatness is found.

And that’s true for us all, no matter what our work is, no matter what jobs we perform. All work is service; all undertakings should be for the benefit of others. If we are butchers, bakers or candlestick makers our work is – or should be – a work of service to those who need our meat, our bread or our candlesticks. And that’s because our jobs don’t define us, they are not our identity, not primarily. Our essential identity is as children of God. Our baptism into Christ’s death and resurrection means that we are new creations in Christ Jesus and that is who we are always, no matter our skill set, our talents, our artistry, or our assigned tasks.

And that means that what we are supposed to be about, our work in this world, our vocations as Christians, should be about serving God’s people, sewing God’s justice, extending God’s welcome. It’s about bringing God’s peace to those battered by war and unrest. It’s about making sure that God’s bounty is shared fairly, and that no single one of us, and nor any corporate entity of many of us, is granted more than their fair share, nor are they allowed to contribute less than their fair share.

The Prophet Micah, in our first reading today, chastises the people of God in his day who abhor justice and pervert the equity God intends. He warns the people not to build the nation with blood, and not to build up the glorious city by means of wrongdoing. And Paul, in our Epistle reading, goes to pains to point out to the Thessalonians that he and his companions sought not to be a burden to them, but a boon. And that they most wanted the people to lead lives worthy of the God who invites them and us in to his kingdom and his glory.

And that’s what it’s all about, really. It’s about God’s glory and not our own. Our glory comes from God, and through our service to others.

My friend Melissa was able to salvage her Saturday by reflecting a bit, and realizing that one of the contributions she made to her colleagues’ success was to get out of the way, and to let others better suited to the task to carry it forward. That’s a humbling realization, but also a comforting one. Because we aren’t meant to claim all the glory, but neither are we meant to shoulder all the responsibility. We are to share our tasks and our troubles with our brothers and sisters, we are to get out of the way when others bring to bear their talents and skills, and we can ask God’s help, God’s guidance, and God’s blessing upon our endeavors.

As we were winding up our discussion of Melissa’s very bad Saturday, our other friend Kathy said, “I do better my job when I remember that no matter the task, no matter the context, no matter who my boss is, I’m ultimately working for God.”

When we remember that, we’ll find less of our own egos spoiling our Saturday mornings. And when we follow Jesus’s admonitions, I think we’ll find that our annual performance reviews will get a little better. When we remember that our vocation is to serve God and God’s people first, foremost and only, then we’re likely to get a very good performance review from God, and that performance review will say, “Well done, well done, good and faithful servant.” + Amen.

Zombies & Gore, Jesus & Glory: a sermon for Year A, Proper 23

2011-10-09T18:54:00.005-04:00

Preached on Sunday, October 9, 2011 at Christ & Saint Stephen's Church. The lectionary readings this gospel is based on can be found here.

I don’t know if you guys keep up with these sorts of things, but in case you haven’t heard, vampires are out -- and zombies are in. If you pick up today’s New York Times, on the cover of the Arts & Leisure section you’ll see a fairly gruesome zombie and you’ll find a story about the critically acclaimed ‘TV series The Walking Dead which will have its season premiere next Sunday night on AMC. This relatively new series is already one of the most watched cable TV shows with twice the audience of the networks other big hit Mad Men. And with good reason. The show is really good; it’s very well written, well-acted and its production values are up there with major motion pictures. Its story is a classic, with elements that appear in our gospel reading today.

The main story in The Walking Dead centers on a faithful remnant of humanity who are trying to survive after an end-of-the-world event. Most of civilization has been wiped out in a zombie apocalypse. Now, zombies roam all the earth, it seems; and what’s left of humanity must struggle to survive. What’s great about the sci-fi/fantasy/horror genre is that for all the fantastical story elements, and the seemingly impossible plot developments, the creators of these works must come up with a logical, plausible, unified world in which the incredible events of the narrative will seem, in fact, credible. Be it vampires, Star Wars or zombies, the more plausible must be the invented universe in which the narrative takes place. The fictional world of these sci-fi and horror works has to make a kind of interior sense if we’re to engage with it.

In which case, as you might expect, there are zombie rules and regulations, and if you’re working in the zombie genre, you need to play by them in ways that the fans of zombies will accept. As everyone knows, zombies are reanimated corpses that eat human flesh. Zombies are created when an extant zombie takes a bite – and not too much more – out of a living human being. Destroying their diseased brains is the only sure method of killing a zombie, something the human survivors in The Walking Dead do in a stomach-turning variety of ways.

So, if you missed season one of The Walking Dead, you’ll want to bone up on your zombie lore before season two begins next Sunday. You’ll need a lesson or two in Zombie 101 if you’re going to keep up the hip and happening zombie craze. See me at coffee hour.

++++++++++++++

Jesus is engaging in a bit of fantastical story telling in our gospel reading today. And has been doing so for the past two Sundays as well. Today’s parable from Matthew is the third in a series. Each is concerned with the history of salvation and the future of humanity. As with The Walking Dead, there is an apocalyptic vision being articulated, a new understanding of the past, and new ideas of how we should conduct ourselves in the strange world of the present, and the often frightening world to come. Two Sundays ago, Jesus recounted the parable of the two sons, one who refused to do his father’s will but eventually did, and one who promised to honor his father but ultimately abandoned him.

Last week, we had the parable of the Lord’s Vineyard, in which tenant farmers not only dishonor their commitment to the landlord, but actually kill those sent on his behalf to collect the rent. With the telling of each of the parables, Jesus becomes a little more fantastical as he goes along. It was not the custom for people to kill the rent-collector in ancient Israel, just as it isn’t today, much as we rent-bound New Yorkers might wish it were so. That’s a bit of hyperbole on Jesus’ part in the telling of that second parable. And that gives way to today’s parable, the third in the trilogy, where we have even more improbable twists and turns.

In this morning’s parable, a king is giving a wedding feast. He’s sent the ‘save the date’ card, gotten lots of positive replies. But when the actual invitations are sent – hand-delivered, no less – mayhem results. Guests simply ignore the invitations or they actually kill the messengers. Again, not a common occurrence in the ancient world – sometimes messengers delivering bad news were killed, but not those with wedding invitations. The story is getting a little implausible here.

The king is so enraged by the lack of respect his invitation is treated with and the murder of his servants, that he sends his army to destroy the entire city in retaliation, all while the wedding feast waits to be served. Now, here plausibility is stretched to the breaking point. No one wages a successful war while dinner is waiting on the table. As anyone who’s ever planned a wedding will tell you, no caterer is going to put up with that.

Then when the war is over, the king sends more servants out to invite in anyone they can find, just people off the street, no matter how good or bad. The rabble, the street people, the hoi polloi are brought in and served a sumptuous meal. Except for one poor, hapless fellow who happened not to have on his best going-to-the-royal-wedding suit when he was pulled in off the street. But how could he? He’s just been pulled in off the street! He’s had no chance to dress in his wedding finery. Again, this plot twist seems unbelievable too. Here the incredulous story begins to violate its own already improbable logic – or so it seems.

But there is an interior logic, a context, in which this somewhat implausible parable makes sense. It’s one that is less clear to us, here nearly two millennia later, but it would have been quite clear, overly apparent even, to the first hearers of these tales. Each of the three parables, we’ve heard recently from Matthew are concerned with a history, ancient and contemporary, that first century residents of Palestine would quickly recognize.

Last Sunday’s parable of the Lord’s Vineyard and this Sunday’s parable of the King’s Banquet in particular recount and update the history of salvation. Israel understood itself to be hard on its prophets, that was part of the national lore. The Hebrew Scriptures tell of prophets sent to Israel time and again to recall God’s people to their duties to God and to God’s law. And time and again, these prophets were poorly treated by the religious and civil authorities; they were ignored, imprisoned, threatened and even killed by those whose hold on power they challenged. That the writings and messages of those prophets have survived to come down to us today is due to the tremendous impact they had on the powerless, the poor, the downtrodden, on whose behalf the prophets so often advocated.

What Matthew does in this set of parables of the vineyard owner’s son, and the king’s son at his wedding, what Matthew does is to update that history to include the similar mistreatment of Jesus and the Christian missionaries that followed in his footsteps. As we know, Jesus and his followers received the same treatment from the religious and civil authorities, as did earlier prophets. Matthew makes a claim for Jesus and his followers as rightful heirs to that sacred history.

Often those prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and their ilk, interpreted historical events in terms of God’s wrath being visited upon his unfaithful people. In their turn, the Hebrew prophets saw the Assyrian captivity, the Babylonian captivity, the destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem by the Egyptians as God’s punishment upon the people of Israel for failing to keep faith with God, failing to honor God’s commandments to act with justice toward widows, orphans, foreigners and those in need or trouble.

Matthew makes a similar interpretation. As history tells us, the Romans took their ignominious place in this history when they sacked and destroyed the Temple at Jerusalem in the year 70 A.D. In today’s parable, Matthew uses the king’s destruction of the city as a parallel for the Roman destruction of Jerusalem. For Matthew, Jesus belongs squarely in the stream of Jewish salvation history and his rough treatment and the rough treatment meted out to Jerusalem in the years following his death more than prove his point.

But Matthew isn’t solely concerned with ancient history; he’s concerned with a dangerous present and the apocalyptic future as well. As with the survivors of the zombie apocalypse in The Walking Dead, Matthew is trying to figure out what current events mean and what lies ahead, what can the survivors of the execution of Jesus and the destruction of Jerusalem expect from the world left behind, and the world yet to come.

Matthew interprets Jesus’s message and the events surrounding his life and death to mean that the old rules have been reconfigured. New rules, new understandings are now being placed before God’s people. But ones that are consistent with the commandments of the past. Matthew understood Jesus’s preaching and teaching to mean that the invitation once made to the people of Israel was now offered to all humanity, and that all conditions of men and women, good and bad, were offered a place at the King’s table, the holy banquet of God.

But the acceptance of that invitation carried with it some responsibilities. That fellow without the proper wedding robe, he’s our key to the particular point of Matthew’s. It’s a curious detail in the parable. There was no requirement in ancient times for a special robe for guests at a wedding. One would trot out one’s best for such a feast, of course, but the failure to do so wouldn’t result in expulsion from the party. What’s the context in which we can understand the king’s rather overwrought interest in wedding fashion?

The context for this part of the story is found in previous Christian scripture. In the Pauline letters that preceded the composition of the Gospel of Matthew, in Romans, Galatians, Ephesians and Colossians, the changing of clothes was the metaphor used to describe the giving up of one’s old way of life and the putting on of a new Christian identity. That Christian identity comes with some requirements. Christians must love one another as Christ has loved us. We are to forgive 7 times 70 times. We are to seek to feed the hungry, comfort the lonely, visit the imprisoned and fight for the victims of injustice – we are to act as if whatsoever we do for the least among us, we are doing for our Lord himself.

We are to be a refuge to the poor, a refuge to the needy in their distress, as Isaiah puts it in our Old Testament reading this morning. Or to use Paul’s own words from today’s reading from the Epistle to the Philippians, “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable… Keep on doing these things… and the God of peace will be with you.”

In our parable today, the ill-dressed wedding guest is one who has heard the gospel of Jesus but has not let it change him. He has resisted becoming a new creation in the baptism that is meant to engender in us a new life of holiness and righteous living.

He has come to the King’s table come to this table for solace only and not for the strength to carry out the Christian mission, for pardon only and not for the renewal of spirit. So, he is cast out. He is expelled from the sumptuous banquet laid out for us by God, our king. The banquet we expect to await us after the destruction of all the cities and the end of this world.

+++++++++++++++

There is a logic to today’s parable and one that makes sense when we understand the context in which it was first told. It’s not in the cover story in today’s Arts & Leisure section; instead we find it in the historical and scriptural scholarship that we Episcopalians have always sought out as we make our inquiries into the meaning and wisdom to be found in God’s word. Matthew claims for Jesus a place in Jewish salvation history along with Israel’s most illustrious prophets. He shows in today’s parable how Jesus and his followers were mistreated, just as the true prophets of God were in the past, which Matthew sees as confirmation that Jesus is God’s son, and his missionaries are sent from God.

And Matthew tries to give us an indication of what we are to do to survive in the new world, the new, perhaps frightening, creation brought into being with Christ’s death and resurrection, a world that might be as hostile to us as it has always proved to be to all those who seek to preach the gospel and to call society to account on behalf of the values that our Scripture extols.

We are to accept the now expanded invitation of God to take our place at the table, a table where we will be fed with holy food, bread and wine that improbably become the very body and blood of the one who died and rose again. But in accepting the invitation, in accepting the new identity that we take on in baptism, we are to act as those who have been made new, clothed in a new set of values, a new sense of right and wrong, and new understanding of how we are to honor God by loving and respecting one another.

And watch out for those zombies – the powers of the world that seek individual gain over the good of all, those that seek to oppress rather than serve the poor, those that would have us forget our call to seek after God and God’s righteousness, those forces that would have us place ourselves first, and our brothers and sisters, and even God, last in our priorities. They are truly the walking dead, and we are not called to that path. We are called to new life in Christ Jesus, a new life of service, a life of justice, a life of love and respect for every human being, a life ultimately of glory everlasting. Amen +

Into The Midst of Conflict: a sermon for Year A, Proper 15

2011-08-18T10:54:00.008-04:00

Preached on Sunday, August 14, 2011 at Christ & Saint Stephen's Church. Lectionary readings this sermon is based on can be found here.

The Irish playwright and early advocate for women’s rights George Bernard Shaw once wrote, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

This past week an unreasonable man, who has also been an ardent advocate for the rights of women, Father Roy Bourgeois, a Roman Catholic priest, received some troubling news. Fr. Bourgeois has long pressed for the ordination of women in the Roman church; going so far as to participate in the ordinations of several women as Roman Catholic priests, ordinations that, you won’t be surprised to hear, the Vatican considers illicit and invalid. The Maryknoll order of which Father Bourgeois is a member has dismissed him from its ranks over his refusal to recant and repent his support of the ordination of women.

Fr. Roy Bourgeois watches recently ordained Roman Catholic women celebrate the Eucharist.

The cause of women’s ordination in the Roman church has gained a little traction recently. A surprising number of priests in the US – more than 150 – signed a recent statement protesting the treatment Father Bourgeois has received from the church. Just last month in Austria, more than 300 Roman Catholic priests joined in a call to disobedience and pledged to advocate for the ordination to the priesthood of women and married men. And in Australia, the National Council of Priests came to the defense of a bishop there who has advocated for women’s ordination and was forced to resign his see as a result. It’s seems to be no less than a groundswell in our sister church for the inclusion of women in the priesthood.

Last month, we celebrated the anniversary of our own groundswell. On July 29th, 1974, 37 years ago, three Episcopal bishops ordained 11 women to the priesthood in Philadelphia. These ordinations were at the time considered illicit by our church as well. And these women became known as the Philadelphia 11. Their ordinations were considered illicit because even though a majority of both houses of the General Convention of the Episcopal Church had voted for women’s ordination in 1970 and again in 1973, our canons required a supra-majority in each house for the measure to pass. But pass it did at the next General Convention in 1976 – and the ordinations of the Philadelphia 11 were recognized by the church thereafter.

One of those women, Alla Bozarth-Campbell, recalling that time, admitted that the Philadelphia 11, along with a few good men, had “defied convention and the (General) Convention ... and (deliberately) forced the issue.”

++++++++++++++++

In today’s gospel, we see another woman forcing the issue. Jesus and his followers have travelled outside of Israel and Judea into Gentile territory. But it is clear that Jesus’ fame as a healer has preceded him, and a local woman, a Canaanite, comes out to petition Jesus. “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David” she shouts. Her daughter is ill and she begs Jesus to heal her.

Neither Jesus nor the disciples are particularly pastoral in their response. Jesus, at first, ignores the woman. The disciples tell Jesus to get rid of her, give her the bum’s rush, because she’s being so annoying, following them and shouting out to them.

Then, she comes to kneel at Jesus’s feet, and plead yet again, “Lord, help me.” But Jesus’s reaction is a bit troubling to us, isn’t it? His retort to this woman is, basically, “Look, it’s not my problem. Not in my job description.” He even compares her and her people to dogs. This is un-PC by any measure. But the woman never relents. She comes right back at Jesus and says, “Yeah, well even the dogs get to lick up the crumbs that fall from the table.”

There is conflict here. There are heated words exchanged. There is real contention going on here. As we say down south, this is a lot of shoutin’ and name-callin’.

When conflict occurs, when voices are raised, when conflicted points are debated, we often feel uncomfortable. We don’t like it in our families. We don’t like it in our politics. And we really, really don’t like it in the church. Even more than that, if there is conflict in the church, many people think that, well that conflict and contention don’t have a place here, don’t belong in church. Some folks will tell you that conflict and contention are quite obviously un-Christian.

In his book, Conflict and a Christian Life, Father Sam Portaro writes, “Conflict can actually be a force for good… Conflict is not just a problem to be resolved.”(1) Conflict and contention are a necessary part of growth and change, in the church and everywhere else. In order for change to come, someone has to raise a voice. In order for change to begin, someone has to force the issue.

It takes a Canaanite woman who forces the issue, who won’t stop praying for what she wants and needs. It takes a black woman refusing to give up her seat on a segregated Montgomery bus. It takes an AIDS activist chaining himself to the gates of a pharmaceutical company headquarters. It takes a priest willing to risk dismissal and even excommunication for what he believes. It takes 11 women refusing to ignore God’s call to them, and some likeminded bishops, who flaunt convention and even the General Convention, for change to come.

Again in Conflict and a Christian Life, Sam Portaro writes, “The trouble with Jesus was -- and is -- that he stands in the midst of conflict, (and) allows that conflict” to occur. “The trouble with Jesus was -- and is -- that he invites us to follow where he has led.” (53).

That is what Jesus does in our gospel today. Rather than quieting the conflict, Jesus engages with it, and through this creative engagement, Jesus sees what is really there, what is really going on. Jesus comes to see the faith and the conviction of someone on the margins, someone from beyond the pale who might have gone unnoticed before.

Through the shouting, Jesus hears the voice of someone in need of his healing mercy and grace. He hears an outsider longing for the salvation that he has come to bring into the broken world. And when Jesus eventually hears that cry, really hears it, he heeds it.

Our collect this morning reminds us that God has given us his son to be “an example of godly life.” And we prayed that we might “follow daily in the blessed steps of his most holy life.” May it be so. And may we have the courage to follow Jesus into the midst of conflict, not to quell it, but to find what it might have to teach us. May we follow Jesus into the fray and hear there the unheard call for justice and mercy that we must hear and heed. +Amen.

That Which Satisfies: a sermon for Year A, Proper 13

2011-08-04T18:59:00.007-04:00

Preached on Sunday, July 30, 2011 at Christ & Saint Stephen's Church, Manhattan. The Bible readings this sermon is based on can be found here.

Last Sunday after church, I found myself in the Apple store just across Broadway. My financé Denton had to pick up his computer which he’d left there for repair. And while he went downstairs to meet with his designated Apple genius to pick up his laptop, I hung out on upstairs where all the latest Apple computers and gadgets are attractively arranged for perusal and purchase. Big mistake. It could have been the costliest 15 minutes of my life.

See, the problem is that the camera on my phone is broken. That was my jumping off point. Forget the fact that a camera on a phone is a convenience of less than 10 years vintage. You gotta have one, right? Mine is broken and that means, quite naturally, it’s time for a new phone. And why not go with an iPhone? Everyone loves them and they seem so fast and easy to use, with so many fun options. Denton has an app that tells him when the next train is coming on the Subway; so useful, so much more practical than say, looking down the tunnel for the train, right? So, since life just isn’t worth living without a functioning camera on one’s phone, before Denton was done with his Apple genius, I’d decided an iPhone was a good idea, a worthy purchase. And you might as well go for the top of the line when you do these things, right? I always regret it when I don’t. The new iPhone 4 is about $300, but when you gotta have a camera on your phone, you gotta have camera on your phone!

As I strolled around the Apple store, I began to think that I do, in fact, need to replace my laptop too. I bought it when I entered seminary. It’s been upgraded a few times, but it’s old and out of date. The corner of the case is duct-taped together where I dropped it. And it’s begun to make a weird, whirring sound when it comes on and goes off. Not a good sign.

And of course, Apple has just what I need. The MacBook pro with the 17” screen looked ideal to me. Big screen, lots of memory and power… The top of the line model, which you may as well get if you’re getting anything, right? The top of the line model is $2,500. Ok, well, a significant expense, but I use my computer all the time, every day. These things are essential parts of our lives now.

But, you know, it’s such a drag having to drag around a whole laptop. If you get the top of the line MacBook Pro with the 17” screen, well that’s just too big for many situations. Too big to tote around town. But that’s what’s so great about the iPad. It’s like a computer to go, more or less, isn’t it? Almost everything you need on hand when bopping around town or on trips -- it’s so portable. And it could really serve as a portable computer, especially if I went with the top of the line iPad with all the memory, which is only $830 with the Wi-Fi and 3G plan -- which you gotta have. I mean it’s no good without those, right?

And then there’s my tired, old iPod, with all my music on it. I take my iPod everywhere and listen to it when I ride my bike. And it’s so old now, I can’t find a cover for it anymore. And without a cover, it’ll get ruined soon. I have a lot of music on my iPod, so, I convinced myself, I really need the top of the line iPod classic which can store it all, safely in case my computer crashes. That’s $250 bucks. But you know, that iPod classic is so big and clunky. A much more portable iPod nano is great for clipping on to the strap of my big bag, so much more portable, and it’s only $180 for the top of the line nano. An iPod classic for storage and an iPod nano for every day use, and I would really use it, wouldn’t I?

After about 15 minutes waiting for Denton to pick up his repaired computer, I had convinced myself that, really, when you considered my situation fairly, I needed and was way, way overdue, for a complete technology make-over -- new phone, new laptop, new iPad and iPods. And it would only cost me just over $4,000. An idle 15 minutes, and my window shopping tab was in the thousands of dollars.

Denton came upstairs with his repaired computer, saw the little Apple logos glazing over my eyes, and got me out of the store and onto the M7 bus, and headed home for a Sunday afternoon nap which is what I neede much more than a Sunday afternoon shopping spree in the thousands of dollars borne of 15 minutes consideration and planning.

++++++++++++++++

“Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy,” (Is 55:2) the prophet Isaiah asks us in our Old Testament reading today. Well, because it’s cool, that’s why! Because it’s shiny and new and I don’t have one and all the new kids at school have ‘em, and…. Besides Apples and bread, they both have fiber, don’t they? One can substitute for the other, can’t it?

Yeah, not so much, with you really think of it…

But it’s that other part of Isaiah’s pointed question that really gets me. ‘Why do you labor for that which does not satisfy?’ Now, I like shiny new toys just like every other little boy, but let’s face it. I’m here with you this sunny summer morning, aren’t I? I’m not across the street at the Apple store, which, by the way, opens every day at 9:00 am, including Sundays. I’m not there though, I am here before the altar of God, and so are you...

++++++++++++++++

Our Gospel reading this morning is a rather famous one. The Feeding of the Five Thousand is the only miracle to appear in all four of the canonical gospels, not counting the resurrection. And Matthew and Mark feature an additional feeding miracle in their gospels. So we can see that for the evangelists, these miracles of feeding thousands of hungry people were central to their understanding of who Jesus was.

It’s not too hard to figure out why. To be able to feed a multitude was an impressive miracle to perform before those who live at a subsistence level. Food security was far from assured in the ancient world as it is in many parts of our world today. For many, the supply of food can be completely disrupted by flood or by drought or war. Such a severe food shortage is going on right now in East Africa as thousands of Somalis are fleeing their drought ridden country looking for food. This past week it was reported that four thousand Somalis are entering Kenya everyday in search of food. Just about the amount fed by Jesus in our gospel today. It’s no wonder the evangelists all saw this particular miracle as a compelling one.

But this particular miracle would have resonated on another level as well. For a Jewish audience the accounts of the feeding of the five thousand would have an additional resonance. For who could hear this story and not think of the Israelites who were fed with manna from heaven during their flight from slavery in Egypt. To be fed on miracle food is a sign of God come near, of God’s favor and protection coming upon the people.

And as Christians, when we hear the account of the feeding of the five thousand, we hear yet another resonance. For as Matthew tell us, when Jesus took the five loaves and two fish, “he looked up to heaven, blessed and broke and gave the five loaves to his disciples, and the disciples gave them to the people. In a few moments, you’ll hear me say very similar words as we celebrate the liturgy of the Eucharist. For us, bread that is blessed, broken and shared is something quite special, something central to our worship this morning, something central to who we understand ourselves to be as Christians.

And it’s something that we share with the five thousand gathered on the side of the lake, the multitude that followed Jesus, kept pursuing him and listening for what he had to say. They didn’t come to that lakeside for the food. They came for something else, something of much greater import. For in him, they could sense, they could feel God come near to them. The same is true for you. You’re not here because a thin, unleavened wafer and a sip of Tokay is food enough for your morning. There’s something more there, isn’t there? Something present in the bread and wine that you hunger for, that you thirst for. We draw near the altar of God this morning, rather than the Apple store or the brunch buffet because what we hunger and thirst for is the very presence of the living God. That is what we’ve come to taste and see. And much more than what we spend our money on, it is this meal, this paltry, yet holy and sanctified meal that satisfies. For like the Israelites in the desert, like the five thousand gathered on the side of the lake, we long to know that our God has come near, we long to feel our God’s favor upon us.

And that we know, that we feel when we eat the bread of heaven and we drink from the cup of salvation. That which we cannot buy, and for which we cannot labor, that is what truly satisfies. +Amen.

The Work You Have Given Us To Do : a sermon for Year A, Proper 12

2011-07-31T14:59:00.003-04:00

Preached on Sunday, July 24, 2011 at Christ & Saint Stephen's Church, Manhattan. The Bible readings this sermon is based on can be found here.

In our reading from the Gospel of Matthew this morning, Jesus comes at us a bit like a street tough or a Borscht Belt comic... “ You wanna know what the Kingdom of Heaven is like, I’ll tell you what the Kingdom of Heaven is like!” In rapid fire parabolic examples, we hear that the kingdom of heaven is a seed, yeast, treasure, a pearl and a net. Sounds like the answer on Final Jeopardy Bible Edition, doesn’t it? With the right answer being, “What is the Kingdom of Heaven according to Matthew, chapter 13?”

Matthew has collated and some parables and examples that some of the other gospels treat separately and usually more at length. So what does Matthew’s treatment of these examples, these metaphors for God’s kingdom tell us? What does Matthew’s use of these sayings of Jesus, crammed together and given a staccato rhythm have to show us that we might not otherwise see?

The mustard seed is a familiar example, one that appears elsewhere in the Gospels. And it’s another of those sayings of Jesus that tell us a lot about him and his audience. This was a rural world, a people close to the land in a time when one lived very close to the source of one’s food.

I used to help my Mama Collins plant her garden each Spring, and I can tell you, mustard seeds are very, very small. I always wanted to put more in the furrows before covering them over with the moist, brown dirt, they were so tiny they just didn’t seem like they could amount to much. But Mama Collins would scold me and tell me not to plant too many at a time, just two or three, because she knew as did Jesus’s audience, that though small, mustard seeds produce big leafy plants full of tart green leaves.

Now mustard plants do not grow into trees, in Jesus’s time or in our own. Jesus is exaggerating a bit to make his point – and his point is this, great, great outcomes can come from very small beginnings. Jesus’s culture was an agrarian culture mostly, his listeners knew what he was trying to say.

But according to Matthew, he goes on to say it in yet another way. And again, he uses a food based example, one that would be familiar to those who live close to the hearth. Every woman hearing Jesus teach on this day would understand his yeast example. And they would know that three measures of flour leavened with yeast would produce a great, great deal of bread. A small beginnings yielding a great outcome.

And yet another example comes, one that perhaps the men listening to Jesus would find more resonant than recipe-based metaphor just given. A working man, probably a plowman hired to do his day’s labor in the landlord’s field, comes across a buried treasure. He quickly finds the means to make the field and its treasure his own. Now this may sound like a morally dubious metaphor here, and it is. The treasure belongs to the landlord, fair and square, and Jewish and Roman law would have supported this understanding of property. The plowman engages in what might be called a little insider trading to make the treasure his own. But Jesus’s theme is borne out. It was yet another day of hard, sweaty labor in the field for the plowman, but from that small beginning, just another day at work, a great outcome is made manifest.

Again another example comes, but this time, it’s more related to the world of business and trade. An example for the more worldly in Jesus’s audience. Those who travel and trade around the Levant. A pearl merchant comes across a nearly perfect pearl – seemingly a rare event. He sells everything he has to own such a fine example of what his training and trading have taught him to value. I suppose it’s a bit like a jeweler in the back rooms of Tiffany’s coming across a particularly fine raw gemstone or pearl which, though he can’t afford it on his craftsman’s salary, he goes and sells all that he has just to own something of such beauty and perfection – snapping it up before the Gingriches get their hands on it with their boundless line of Tiffany’s credit.

+++++++++++++

Laid along side each other we see some things in common in these examples that Jesus gives in our gospel reading today. Yes, these are metaphors of great bounty from small sources, great outcomes from small beginnings. But we notice the diligence in the people in Jesus’s stories, don’t we? The baker, the plowman and the pearl merchant are not at all like other people Jesus has taught us about.

These are not the prodigal son, are they? Seeking to leave their duties to find their fortunes in the world. These people are simple folk, who set about the tasks a rather average life brings them. They stay close to earth and hearth, mostly or else they are simple tradesfolk, doing what they have been trained to do.Even the mustard seed just does what a mustard seed is supposed to do.

We see something else that contributes to their success. They’re smart. They know their stuff. They’re paying attention to what’s going on around them. They’re shrewd. They take advantage of what comes their way in the course of a day. The baker knows just what yeast can do and how much to use. The plowman isn’t mindlessly tilling the field but he’s watching what he does, doing his job with care, so that when he comes across something of great value he recognizes it, and he finds a way to make it his. So it goes with the pearl merchant. Training and practice, have given him a good eye. He’s able to make a bold move when he comes across something worth making bold moves for.

+++++++++++++

Our final metaphor is that of the fishing net, and through it we are taught that some things are good, some not so good, some pursuits worthwhile, some not so worthwhile.

Pay attention says out teacher. Use your training. Find out what you need to know and know it well. Do the work God gives you to do with diligence. Doesn’t matter if you’re just a housewife or a plowman. God’s bountiful grace is available to all of us, no matter our life’s work, no matter our station or calling.

Do the needful and be on the lookout for God’s kingdom to spring up like a mustard seed. Watch for the dough to rise, for the plow to uncover buried treasure. Look for the one perfect pearl among all the dross. Pray not for the riches or God’s favor, but rather pray as did Solomon for the wisdom to know what is right and wrong, to know what is of great value and what is not worth your time.

For as Saint Paul tells us in our reading from Romans, God has a plan for us. God wants us to know his mercy and to share in his glory through his son Jesus Christ. Paul tells us that all things work together for our own good, whether those things are baking over a hot stove or guiding a plough through a field. All things will work for our good if we align our efforts with what we know God calls us to do.

Great bounty, hidden treasure, perfection, these are what awaits us in the kingdom of heaven if we can heed God’s call, and discern what would be God’s will for us, for our lives. For whether we toil in the sun for our living or trade fine pearls, God is with us, and the kingdom of heaven awaits us. Nothing along the way is going to change that ultimate reality, that promise.

Not all the hard work in the world, not all the hard times, the hurt, the disappointment we may come to know. Nothing will separate us from God and the bounteous kingdom that God holds in readiness for us, neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor the troubles of the present time, nor the troubles to come. No power, high or low, nor the powerful that may seem to guide our lives and our world, nothing created can come between us and our creator and the love that creator bears for us.

+++++++++++

So pay attention, do the work God has given you to do with joy and with expectation. From the small efforts you and I can undertake, the small differences we might try to make in the lives God gives us to lead, from such as these great outcomes are manifest. For through God’s mercy, and through our belief in that mercy and through the actions borne out of that belief, we will gain nothing less than the kingdom of heaven and God’s glory. +Amen.

Come To Believe: a sermon for the second Sunday of Easter

2011-05-28T00:31:00.004-04:00

Preached on Sunday, May 1, 2011 at Christ & Saint Stephen's Church. The lectionary readings this sermon is based on can be found by clicking here.

Today is sometimes called ‘low’ Sunday. There’s that particularly Episcopal locution -- the description of church as either ‘high’ or ‘low’. As many of you know, ‘low church’ means a particularly plain style of liturgy and worship, which usually goes with a more Protestant ethos -- a church that is more likely to be called a congregation than a parish, an ordained person that might be called ‘minister’ even if ordained as a priest.

And of course, ‘high church’ is the more catholic ethos, Anglo-Catholic in our case. A more articulated form of worship and liturgy, some would say a grander, perhaps more formal service, in a parish, conducted by a priest, in vestments, redolent with the smell of, yes, you guessed it, incense!

But whether your church is a low church or high church kind of place, on Easter Day, chances are you got about as high as you ever get, which you do on Christianity’s most important feast day. And therefore, after all that liturgical exertion, chances are that for today, the second Sunday of the Easter season, no matter how high you were last week, this week, you’ll be a bit lower. A bit plainer in your worship for “Low Sunday.”

And that’s not all that will be lower. Look around you. Attendance is a bit lower today versus last week, isn’t it? And the vestry members who count the collection this Sunday… well, let’s just say they’ll spend a lot less time doing it compared with last Sunday… But there’s one other thing you can say about low church and high church… Last Sunday was a high church Sunday almost everywhere, and high church can also mean looooong church… It took us a while to get it all done last week, didn’t it??? So, it’s not so bad, I guess, if some of us take a break this Sunday. There was quite a bit of church on Easter Day, maybe it lasts a while for some of us…

Or maybe there’s something else at play. If you came to church last Sunday and chose to skip it this Sunday, you get to skip something else. You get to avoid this Sunday’s gospel. As is almost always the case, on the second Sunday of Eastertide, we meet our friend Thomas. And with him comes doubt.

Almost as soon as we have witnessed the glory of the resurrection, doubt is introduced into the story.All of our readings today center around this theme of doubt and faith. In our first reading from Acts, we hear Peter addressing the multitude. Peter is proclaiming the gospel with a fervor and conviction. We see Peter in what we know is a rare and powerful moment. For Peter, all that was predicted and promised has come to pass right before his eyes. He has seen it all come true. What more powerful experience can you have? To witness, to live through, the coming of the Messiah and his resurrection. It must have been as powerful an experience for Peter as the second coming of Christ would be for us.

Then in the gospel, we come across Thomas -- the one who will not believe, who flatly refuses to believe the word of his trusted friends. No, Thomas demands and receives his own experience of the risen Lord. Thomas is often called Doubting Thomas for obvious reasons. But Thomas is also courageous. Thomas wants to touch and feel not just the glory of the resurrection itself, but the wounds that killed Jesus in the first place. Thomas wants to know that the living man he sees is also the one who died on the cross. Thomas is willing to face the wounds, to touch them, to probe them, to look at the death of Jesus from the inside. And as a result, he comes to believe through a very intimate experience of his Lord.

But Thomas’ experience of Jesus is not ours, not exactly. Jesus tells Thomas that he believes because he has seen, but blessed are those who have not seen, but who yet have come to believe. That’s you and me. You and I were not there with Thomas to reach into the wounded side of Christ, but we are here, aren’t we? A community of faith who these 2,000 years later have also come to believe. Our experience is one a bit more in keeping with our second reading today. Sandwiched between Peter’s certainty and Thomas’ doubt is a reading from a letter attributed to Peter. In it, we hear words of comfort for those who, like us, must live at a remove from Thomas and the others in that upper room.

In the epistle, we hear some of our own story of faith acknowledged, don’t we?

“Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” (1 Peter 1:9).

Yes, that’s a bit more consistent with the life of faith that you and I know. We are not afforded the proximity that Thomas was given. We cannot place our hands into the side of the wounded Jesus to know for certain that the resurrection is real. We cannot have the certainty that Thomas did, we must have faith. Alan Jones, sometime Dean of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco has said,

“The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.”

Those of us who follow Christ these two millenia after Thomas are not granted the certainty that he was. Instead of proximity in time and place, we have been given something else. We have been given the gift of faith. And the epistle tells us, it is gift more precious than gold.

But how is one to live a life of faith? How are we do find faith, what are we to do in order to make ready our hearts and minds to receive God’s gift of faith? And what are we to do when faith falters, when doubt enters our story of faith?

I have a friend who has been in recovery in Alcoholics Anonymous for many years, and as such, he often counsels those who are new to recovery. 12 step programs like AA have a strong spiritual dimension. The second of the 12 steps states that those who are successful in recovering have done so because they -- and I’m quoting exactly AA’s second step -- because they, “Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”

As you can imagine, having to struggle with a faith in such a higher power, a faith in a God of one’s own understanding, is a tall order on a good day, much less on the first few days and weeks when you are trying to face life without your usual cocktail or two… or ten… But this step of AA’s is the second step, one that is recommended quite early in the process of recovery. My friend says that he tries to break it down for those he counsels and he tells his charges to take it a step at a time and if that’s too much, to take it even a word at a time. He tells them, “First, just come, just show up. Then you’ll find that you’ll likely ‘come to’, you’ll have a growing experience of consciousness, of clarity. Then and only then, you can ‘come to believe’.”

Come…. come to…. come to believe.

Good advice for a life of sobriety perhaps, but also good advice for the life of faith. Come… show up in a place and at a time when you might hear the word of God, when you might be fed with it, and even fed with the very body and blood of the wounded and resurrected Christ. There will be high and low Sundays, there will be high and low days and even hours. The life of faith is not filled with rock-solid certainty, there are what our epistle calls “various trials”, there are doubts… But just come and it’s very likely that you will come to, that you will begin to have a clarity and a burgeoning understanding… And then, over time, you will come to believe…

And when those doubts come again-- as they often do -- have the courage of Thomas and takes those doubts in hand -- and come. When you are faced with trials -- as you will be -- you can always go back to the beginning -- you can just come.

And in time you will come to and then come to believe yet again. You will be given something stronger, more beautiful than certainty, you will be given faith, faith in the living God. You will be given a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and a new birth into an inheritance that is kept for you in heaven, protected by the power of God, a new birth, a living hope, that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading. (1 Peter 1:3-4) +Amen.

Why?: Homily for Good Friday

2011-05-28T00:10:00.004-04:00

This homily was preached on Friday, April 23, 2011 at Christ & Saint Stephen's Church. This sermon is based on the Gospel according to John, chapter 19, verses 16-30.

Why was Jesus killed? Why did he die? Why did he have to? What purpose did it serve?

We often hear that Christ died for us, for our sins. Over the course of our journey as a pilgrim church on earth, some have said that Christ’s death was a ransom paid for our sins, and through this ransom, we have gained eternal life. But that makes the Almighty God sound like a kidnapper.

Others have said that Christ died as a substitute for us. In this configuration, we are sentenced to death for our sinfulness, and by taking on our sentence, Christ freed us from death itself. But that makes the Alimighty God sound like an executioner.

Still others have said that the message of crucifixion is directed towards us, not towards God. By the lights of this theology, everything Jesus said or did was meant to lead humans Toward that moral change and improvement -- all his teaching and example, especially the inspiring example of his martyrdom on the cross and subsequent resurrection. All these things were meant to cause us to be better, to do better.But that makes the Almighty God seem like a harsh schoolmaster, who uses deadly examples for pedagogical purposes.

Which of these scholarly theologies is the right one, which is the most true, or closest to the truth? If indeed any of them are true...

Perhaps we cannot say for sure why Christ had to die for us, but we can most definitely say that Christ died with us.

In the miraculous mystery of the incarnation, God took on our human form, this mortal coil, with all its limitations, even the limitation of human life itself. So none of us need face the grave alone, none of us need ponder a lonely death. Quite the opposite. The death that awaits us all, the death that heartbreakingly awaits those we love, is not something we or they face alone.

Because the death that Christ died proved to be significantly different that all the human deaths that preceded it. For Christ’s death was not an ending, but a beginning. And because Christ tied himself to our mortal fortunes at his human birth, we are tied to his mercy and grace through his death. And likewise, we have our share in his resurrection.

We may not be able to fully explain the sad and yet glorious mystery of why our Lord and Savior Christ had to die for us, but we can rejoice and be glad that our Brother Jesus did in fact die with us, and thereby he will raise us, and all who go down to the grave in hope, he will raise us all to eternal life.

(Re)Born This Way: a sermon for Year A, Easter Vigil

2011-05-28T00:01:00.003-04:00

Preached on Saturday, April 23, 2011 at Christ & Saint Stephen's Church. The lectionary readings this sermon is based on can be found here.

So.... what are you people doing here, at this time of night? We’re none of us usually here on a Saturday night, are we? Church on a Manhattan Saturday night? Bit odd, isn’t it?

You can bet most New Yorkers are not in church tonight. They’re out and about, tasting some of what this amazing city has to offer. There’s that new play “War Horse” across Broadway at Lincoln Center that the critics are raving about. The film adaptation of “Water for Elephants” opened this weekend just around the corner at the movie theater. Further uptown there’s a concert called “Beyond Tango” at Symphony Space which sounds interesting. The curtain goes up at 8:00 pm all over Broadway tonight just like every Saturday night. There are tables at a gazillion restaurants around town. A bit later there will be lively crowds at the various watering holes on the Upper West Side.

And if it starts to rain again, well, there’s probably something pretty good on your TiVO at home.

So, what are you people doing here this time of night? Like many before you, this service of the Great Vigil of Easter seems to have got you out of the house and into church tonight. It’s a very old Christian observance, the Vigil of Easter. A Spanish pilgrim named Egeria wrote about her late fourth century vacation, pilgrimage really,to Jerusalem and she told her friends about attending the Easter Vigil on a Saturday night in the holy city where all the events we commemorate this night actually took place. The fourth century was a long time ago, but we’re still up to it, in much the same way as Egeria witnessed.

The liturgical day is a bit different than the work day, or even the calendar day. The liturgical day begins at sundown as did the Jewish Sabbath in Christ’s day and in our own. So, the church takes advantage of this holy horology and celebrates the mysterious miracle of Easter just as soon as we can – just after sundown on the eve of Easter Day.

As you’ve already seen, this service of worship is quite different than our usual. Instead of a bright Sunday morning, we enter in the darkness of night, and sit in that darkness while a new flame is kindled and a special candle is dedicated as an evening sacrifice to Christ, our morning star.

It was at this particular liturgy each year when the early Christian church baptized adult converts to the faith. Tonight, in lieu of any baptisms, we renewed our own baptismal vows and got newly blessed baptismal water sprinkled on us.

So, this night is a night that has long been associated with the rebirth we receive at our baptism as well as the resurrection unto eternal life we proclaim in Jesus Christ. It is as the Apostle Paul tells us in our reading from Romans tonight, “All of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death... Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead... so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” (Rom 6:3-5)

Tonight, we celebrate the resurrection and we proclaim that the Lord is risen in glory, and so too shall we rise in glory on the last day. There are plenty of folks, though who believe no such thing. There are plenty of folks in this neighborhood, in this great city and in the world who find what we believe to be so much fantasy. And they likely think what we do in response to our belief – going to church on a Saturday night to sit in the dark, to be sprinkled with water and the like – they think the things we do are so much hokum, so much silliness. And they probably think there’s something strange about us.

They doubt the efficacy, the miraculous possibility of rebirth in baptism and resurrection into eternal life. They don’t believe it can be true. I’m going to call these doubters ‘rebirthers’ because they have a lot in common with those folks called ‘birthers’ – they just can’t bring themselves to accept the fact that something so unexpected, so miraculous has, in fact, taken place.

And that puts you and me on the margins a bit, doesn’t it? It puts us out there on the fringes. We’re not among the great throng crowding theaters and restaurants tonight. The new life we are born into in Christ makes us do odd things and hold strange beliefs. Things that put us at odds with others. We show up at church on, of all things, a Saturday night to celebrate an improbable resurrection.

And in believing in Jesus’ resurrection, we also believe in what he taught us. We believe that we are called to seek justice for the oppressed, to counter the material values of our culture. We feel called feed the poor, comfort the sick, welcome the stranger. Come to think of it, some of these things put us at odds with a good many if not most of our fellow Christians in this country, those Christians who seem to be more concerned with sex than justice, and more apt to seek power than to challenge it.

But like them, we are compelled to believe in the miracle of the resurrection of the dead and to hope and believe in a life to come, a life that unexpectedly begins in the tomb, but ends in glory everlasting. Strange things, miraculous things. Things that will get you out of the house on a Saturday night, and draw you near to the altar of God.

++++++++++++++++

Not too long ago a pop star released what became a big hit single. I’m talking about Lady Gaga, Nigel’s favorite singer... right, Nigel? Just the other day, I asked our organist and choirmaster Nigel Potts if he liked Lady Gaga, but he claimed he didn’t know who she was. Now, this is in spite of the fact that, just around the corner on Broadway, just a few steps north of 69th Street is a bus shelter and on that bus shelter is a huge ad, you know how big those things are, right? Like 8 feet by 5 feet or something. Anyway, this bus shelter ad is for Lady Gaga’s upcoming HBO special and it features a huge photo of one of the world’s biggest pop stars, in a blonde wig with fireworks shooting out of her... well, never mind

Anyway, Lady Gaga’s recent hit single was written with a particular purpose. Like many of us, Lady Gaga was strongly affected by the recent spate of suicides by gay teens in America, suicides that seem to have been caused by bullying from their intolerant classmates. In response and out of what I expect is a real affection for these kids, Lady Gaga put out a pop song, really an anthem of sorts, called “Born This Way.” The chorus of the song goes like this:

I’m beautiful in my way,‘cause got makes no mistakes,
I’m on the right track, baby; I was born this way.
Ooooh, there ain’t no other way,
I’m on the right track baby; I was born this way.

In addition to selling lots and lots of records, or probably I should say downloads, Lady Gaga sent a message of hope and acceptance to some kids who might otherwise feel marginalized, left out of the mainstream, unloved, unaccepted and misunderstood by the majority of their peers.

We too are out of the mainstream, we Christians. We believe strange things and do strange things as a result of those beliefs. We work for justice and peace, we help the less fortunate. We believe in a life beyond all that we can know in this life. We go to church on Saturday nights, of all things.

Well, so be it. It can be tough at times, but when you believe, you believe. There’s no getting around it. But I’d like to offer you a word or two of Easter comfort and consolation.

When you feel like the world is too much for you and what you believe puts you too much at odds with the majority of your neighbors or seemingly at odds with the majority of Christians. Remember your rebirth and the hope of the resurrection. And remember a word or two of the gospel a la Lady Gaga.

You are beautiful in a godly and holy way, and God makes no mistakes.
You’re on the right track, baby, you were reborn this way.
Oooo, there ain’t no other way, you’re on the right track baby,
you were reborn this way.”

Alleluia, Christ is risen! The Lord is Risen indeed, Alleluia!

Only One Thing: a sermon for Year A, Lent 5

2011-04-10T15:55:00.003-04:00

Preached on Sunday, April 10, 2011 at Christ & Saint Stephen's Church. Lectionary readings this sermon is based on can be found by clicking here.

My New Testament professor in seminary had a problem with nativity scenes. New Testament scholars can be a little touchy when you mix and match stories from the different gospels. Professor Good hated it when nativity scenes showed wise men and shepherds adoring the Christ child because wise men are found in the gospel of Matthew only and shepherds are in the gospel of Luke.

And Professor Good would likely say if you’re going to preach about Martha and Mary as they appear in John, best not to bring up the Martha and Mary in Luke. They appear in different contexts and do different things in the two gospels, so tell one story or the other. But I’m not going to do that this morning… Following the rules is not one of my strong suits… I’m going to mix it up a bit this morning.

Mary and her sister Martha do appear in two very significant and different scenes in the gospels and those scenes are in two different gospels: the gospel of Luke and in our reading today from the gospel of John. But Mary and Martha are a special case, I think because though Luke tells a different story about them than does John; the characters of Mary and Martha in both gospels are consistent -- you just know that Luke’s Mary and Martha could be none other than John’s Mary and Martha.

In Luke’s story, which is depicted in the stained glass window just behind me, Jesus has come to the house of the Mary and Martha for a meal. Upon his arrival, Mary joins her guests, sitting at the feet of Jesus to hear him speak and teach while her sister Martha continues rushing about to get all in readiness for the meal they are to serve.

Martha gets a bit peeved with her sister and complains to Jesus about Mary’s laziness, and her seeming indifference to the strict codes regarding hospitality in the ancient world. But Jesus takes Mary’s side, telling Martha that she is too distracted by too many things and that Mary has taken the better part in spending time with her Lord. Jesus says to the sisters, rather enigmatically, “There is need of only one thing.”

If we consider, like we’re not supposed to do, according to the Scripture scholars, that the story continues in John’s gospel, we begin to see more clearly what that one thing is. In John’s gospel which Deacon Liz just read to us, we learn a bit more about Martha and Mary – and it really must be the same Mary and Martha. And here in John we learn that they are from Bethany, a village just a mile or two from Jerusalem. John tells us also that Mary and Martha have a brother named Lazarus, whom we learn is ill and subsequently dies.

John’s gospel is the favorite gospel of many – it’s deeply spiritual and theological. In it Jesus gives long, poetic speeches and discourses that outline for us his own true nature as son of God and son of man. He tells us at length about the inextricable nature of his relationship to the father; and he preaches and teaches with the authority than can and does come from his father, the One God of Israel. But sometimes, John’s gospel can be a little wordy, and little windy. You get a lot of speechifying as we say down south, and not as much action.

But not in today’s reading. In today’s reading from John’s gospel, there is movement and action. There is sharp dialogue, there is life in all its disappointment and despair and there is death in all its grittiness. Things that we recognize and can identify with – and there is something new, there is resurrection to new life.

Notice a few things about Mary and Martha and Jesus in our gospel reading today. One of the first things we hear about Jesus in this passage is not too complimentary. When Mary and Martha send word to Jesus that their brother, whom, they point out, Jesus loves, is ill, Jesus does nothing.

He doesn’t rush to his side; he doesn’t offer some miraculous cure. Instead he stays right where he is. Jesus seems to think that this illness of Lazarus’s is not that serious, certainly not fatal, or that’s what he somewhat cryptically tells his disciples. Then we learn that Lazarus is dead and Jesus heads to Bethany to console his friends. Martha rushes out to meet Jesus. Now we know from Luke that Martha is the mouthy one. She’s not slow to complain when something bothers her, when someone doesn’t live up to her expectations, be that someone her sister or her Lord. She tells Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” You can hear the frustration and disappointment in her voice. You know Martha is thinking, “You should have come when we called. You could have prevented this. The hurt I feel is your fault, Lord.”

Now notice Mary. She doesn’t come out to meet Jesus, not initially, rather, she stays right where she is. We see the same emotion in Mary as we saw in Martha, but as siblings often do, she expresses it quite differently. Martha, the mouthy one, rushes out to tell Jesus that he could have prevented what happened to their brother. But sullen Mary, stays at home and refuses to even greet Jesus, much less speak to him of her disappointment.

But Mary is too moved by her sorrow to stay silent, and when bidden by her sister, she too goes to Jesus, and as she did in Luke’s gospel, she kneels at his feet and tenderly, sadly admonishes Jesus in her sister’s own words, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

Jesus is deeply moved by Mary’s grief and the sorrow of the other mourners and he too begins to weep as they lead him to Lazarus’s tomb. So, moved is Jesus that he cries aloud and the mourners comment, “See how he loved him!”

And then, we hear some of these same mourners say what we know everyone must haven been thinking, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” Jesus is still deeply moved when he gets to Lazarus’s tomb and he shocks the sisters by telling the assembled mourners to take away the stone that covers the mouth of cave where Lazarus lies. Martha, again the mouthy one, says to Jesus, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead for four days.” Or as the King James version puts it, “Lord, by this time he stinketh.”

There’s the reality and the grittiness of death in the ancient world, in a nearly tropical Mediterranean climate. And there’s Martha, unwilling to sugar-coat what she feels and what she sees going on about her. And then Jesus performs a miracle, greater even than the healing of the blind man, and Lazarus is restored to life. An important miracle is this raising of Lazarus. It prefigures and foreshadows the even more amazing resurrection that we know is to come.

++++++++++++++

But notice Mary and Martha and their relationship to their Lord, to our Lord. The sisters call upon their Lord when their beloved brother lies ill. And as many of us can attest, our inscrutable Lord and God does not come when called and he does not preserve the life of a loved one. As the noted preacher Barbara Brown Taylor has written, God doesn’t always come when we call, proving only that God is not our minion to be ordered about by the likes of us. But when their Lord disappoints them, Mary and Martha let him know of their disappointment and their sorrow. Martha rushes down the road to tell Jesus, “You could have showed up, you could have prevented this.”

And Mary, though initially too angry and sorrowful even to call upon the Lord, eventually comes to the same conclusion, “If only you had been here… If only…”

And then notice Jesus. He doesn’t prevent the death of Lazarus nor the suffering of his sisters, but he joins them there. He joins them in their pain and their grief and the grief of all those present. It is his grief that is so real and so moving that others are convinced, “See how he loved him.”

And though he refuses to prevent the family’s tragedy, he does not abandon them in their suffering, rather Jesus joins them in that suffering, and in the end he redeems their loss. He restores life to Lazarus and he engenders faith and hope amidst the loss and despair.

The example Martha and Mary set for us is an example of intimacy and honesty. They do not shy away from telling their Lord of their hurts and disappointments, even their disappointment in him. I wonder how often we are quite so honest, so up front, so real with God? Martha and Mary do not admonish themselves for feeling as they do. Rather they take those feelings to their Lord. They risk Jesus’ anger, perhaps his admonition, and say to him, “You let this happen. “Why didn’t you keep me from feeling this way?”

Mary and Martha are deeply disappointed in Jesus, and I think because they are so upfront and honest about it, this disappointment doesn’t cause them to lose their faith. Ironically, their emotional honesty, the depth of their despair which they do not hide but rather lay at the feet of Jesus, their emotional courage seems to bolster their faith. And Jesus doesn’t fix their feelings, he doesn’t make them go away. Instead, he joins them in their grief, he shares their sadness and hurt and disappointment – and he redeems it.

Because that’s what our God does. He does not save us from the hurt and pain and sadness that we know is part of this life, rather he redeems it and offers us not a carefree, easy, safe mortal life, but an eternal life with him. A life of intimacy and trust and faith and endless hope.

Remember back in Luke, Jesus told the sisters, “There is need of only one thing.” That one thing is not a perfect, pain free, life of ease on this earth. Such a thing doesn’t really exist anyway. The one thing we need is the redemption of Christ, the life eternal that we are given by Christ from the cross.

As Lent draws to a close, and we begin the cycle of liturgies that call us to join Jesus in his suffering and sacrifice, I offer you one final Lenten challenge.

Be honest with your God. Tell the truth about how you feel. Make your prayer an honest prayer. If Jesus who is our Lord God as well as our very human brother can take the cross, he can take what crosses you bear. If he is willing to suffer and die in such a way, not to abandon his own grisly fate, then I assure you, he will not run away from your suffering.

Rather, he is waiting to join you there; willing to go with you as far as you will let him, willing to be as close to you as you will allow. And willing to offer you the one thing you need: salvation in the world to come, redemption unto eternal life.

Dream Come True: a sermon for Year A, Lent 2

2011-03-20T14:38:00.003-04:00

Preached on Sunday, March 20, 2011 at Christ & Saint Stephen's Church. Lectionary texts this sermon is based on can be found by clicking here.

There’s a story – it’s probably apocryphal, maybe not entirely true. But you know, if they keep telling a story that’s not in every particular true, that mean’s it’s a really good story. And a good story always bears repeating, true or not.

Now this story is told about Ma Ferguson. Ma Ferguson was elected governor of Texas in the year 1925, making her the first female governor of that great state. Now you might wonder if there was a great wave of feminism in Texas just five years after women won the right to vote in the United States. The answer is no, there was not such a feminist revolution in Texas in the 1920s. What there was in Texas at that time was a crooked governor named James Ferguson, husband of Ma Ferguson, later known as, you guessed it, Pa Ferguson. Now Pa Ferguson was impeached, convicted and removed from office in his second term as governor and barred from holding state office thereafter. His wife Ma Ferguson decided to run for his office, promising to follow her husband’s advice in all things and offering the voters of Texas what she said would be ‘two governors for the price of one.’

Is this a great country, or what?

But that’s not the story I want to tell. That’s a good story, but not the whole story. The story I want to tell is about what became Ma Ferguson’s most famous statement which she may or may not have actually said. It seems that much as today, there was a debate in Texas over the education of immigrant children -- in particular whether to provide Spanish language education for the children of Mexican immigrants.

Well, Ma Ferguson was having none of that. She is quoted as saying that if English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it ought to be good enough for the children of Texas. What Ma didn’t know or maybe just found it easy to overlook is that Jesus didn’t speak English. Jesus didn’t know English, couldn’t have known English because English hadn’t even been ‘invented’ in Jesus’ Day. But for Ma Ferguson and for almost every other Christian in America at that time, Jesus not only ‘spoke’ English, he did so in the beautiful and poetic English of the King James Version of the Bible.

This year marks the 400th anniversary of the publication of the King James Bible and as you know, in commemoration, our Lenten Book Group is reading a book called In The Beginning which details the process of translating and publishing this monumental and influential and beloved work. To translate the Bible into English had been a crime in England heretofore, and the idea that the people of God should be able to read the Word of God in their own language was a radical one at the time.

But James I of England was committed to the Reformation of the Christian Faith then underway in Europe -- or we should say, committed to reformation within some limits. And he called together the leading Biblical scholars of the day and set them about translating the Bible from Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek into English to be published in an edition authorized by the government -- a process that came to fruition in 1611.

King James’s translators did such an amazing job that Ma Ferguson and very many other Christians find it easy to forget that the way Jesus sounds in the King James Bible is not really the way Jesus sounded. That has a great deal to say about the triumph of the skilled translators of the various versions of the Bible. And it has a great deal to say about us -- those who seek out God’s word.

Because when look for God and try to hear God’s voice, when we try to find God, we like it best when God looks just like us, and God sounds like us and we like it when God lives right where we live and holds all the same opinions as we do, and we really, really love it when we come to find that our God even votes the way we do! That’s a nice God to have, a God that looks like you and sounds like you and thinks like you and lives where you live.

But that God is not the God of Abraham. Abraham met God and the first thing God asked him to do was move. God said to Abraham, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.” (Genesis 12:1-3) Abraham was willing to be moved by God, quite literally. Abraham believed God and he believed in God’s promises to him -- even if he couldn’t imagine how God was going to manage to keep those promises. And Abraham followed God out of his country, away from his people, out of the life that he knew so well. Abraham was willing to venture outside his comfort zone, and to go where God led him. Abraham was willing to believe something new, something that seemed impossible. Abraham was willing to try something challenging. Abraham was willing to believe. Abraham was, quite simply, willing.

It was this willingness on Abraham’s part that Paul says is why God reckoned Abraham as righteousness. Not because Abraham followed the rules, but rather that Abraham was willing to break them. Well, maybe not break the rules specifically, but Abraham was willing to do things that others might have considered ‘breaking the rules.’ Paul’s point about Abraham is that he was willing to believe that God might be wholly other than he was, that God might call him to leave what was familiar and safe, and journey to a new, scary, foreign place. Abraham was willing to believe, to really, really believe, that what God had planned for him was better than what he himself had imagined.

++++++++++++

In our gospel reading today, we actually see someone having their ‘Abraham moment’. Nicodemus has come in search of Jesus, but he has come under the cover of darkness. Nicodemus is restless. His sets out on his night journey to find some answers to his restless questions. When he greets Jesus, it’s clear that Nicodemus has a burgeoning interest in Jesus, some small sense that Jesus is something special, someone that he should be paying attention to. But he’s a bit conflicted about it – he’s rightfully wary about what others, even his fellow Pharisees might think of his coming to Jesus. So, he comes by night and he asks Jesus for some assurances, some confirmation or explanation that what Jesus is preaching and the signs he is performing are really, officially from God, authorized by the Home Office.

Well, Jesus gives Nicodemus an answer.Jesus speaks the words that have become one of Jesus’ most famous quotes. Much more famous than anything Ma Ferguson ever said. A favorite Bible verse of many, many Christians down through the ages. A single verse of Scripture that encapsulates one of the most essential truths of the Christian faith. And, inspired by the Lenten Book Group, I’ll repeat it in the words of the King James Bible, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

Nicodemus finds that what Jesus is saying and preaching what he is really talking about is a new kind of birth into a new kind of everlasting life. This Son of God presenting himself to Nicodemus is not one that sounds anything like the God Nicodemus knows so well from his tradition and from his no doubt extensive pharisaical studies. But in spite of these incredulous, uncomfortable, even unbelievable ideas, Nicodemus, we find, accepts and comes to believe what he has heard -- and becomes a loyal follower of Jesus.

Like Abraham, Nicodemus is asked to go somewhere he’s never been before. He’s asked to step out of his comfort zone -- not literally as Abraham was, but intellectually and spiritually. Jesus didn’t sound like the God Nicodemus has known heretofore, but there was something true, if yet shockingly new, about what Jesus had to say to Nicodemus, and Nicodemus was able, like Abraham before him, to follow God in a new direction, to a new place of faith.

++++++++++++++

Abraham and Nicodemus had faith, and the courage that comes from faith, to hear a God that called them out of their comfort zones. And they accepted that call. Abraham left all he had ever known to follow God and in the end, came to a place that he and his people could call their own. And God granted to Abraham a whole nation of descendants -- we count ourselves among them. The hope of a family is one that Abraham and Sarah had given up on. But God brought to fruition the hopes and dreams that Abraham and Sarah had abandoned.

Restless Nicodemus couldn’t deny that Jesus was truly from God, though what Jesus said and taught was an alarming, unsettling challenge to all that Nicodemus was sure was true about God. But Nicodemus engaged this challenge to his faith and sought answers. And he came to a new understanding of God, he came to believe in a God whose promised more than Nicodemus could have asked or imagined.

Ma Ferguson and those like her hear God speaking in their own language and only their own language, confirming what they already believe, endorsing what it is easy for them to accept. But Abraham and Nicodemus were able to hear God challenge them. They were able to accept that God could be disconcerting, upsetting, they were able to believe that God wanted more than to endorse the status quo. And in accepting the challenges of God, they found that God’s will offered more than they could have ever dreamed.

This Lent, I invite you to listen for this strange sounding God, this challenging God. And I urge you to follow that God, wherever you are led. If you do, I guarantee you’ll get more than you bargained for. You may find that God does not always make your dreams come true, what you may find is something better.

You may find that God make’s God’s dreams for you come true -- and in the end, that is so, so much better.

Glory to God, whose power working in us can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. Glory to God from generation to generation, in the church and in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 3: 20-21) +Amen.

Diving into the Wreck: a sermon for Year A, Epiphany 6

2011-02-12T22:26:00.002-05:00

Preached on Sunday, February 13, 2011 at Christ & Saint Stephen's Church. Lectionary readings this sermon is based on can be found here.

Well. Let’s not dither about, shall we? Let’s dive right into our gospel reading for the day, and let’s do so because it seems to be saying to us, to very many if not most of us, “Hey, you! Out of the pool!” Our reading from Matthew gives us Jesus as that whistle-blowing, rule-abiding, power-abusing lifeguard we all knew as kids who with a shrill trill of his whistle would put a stop to all our summer fun, shouting, “No Horseplay! Out of the pool!” As if the best part, the whole point, of going to the swimming pool on a summer day was not in fact to engage in horseplay.

Jesus is speaking to the crowd that has gathered at the foot of the mount to hear him preach the Sermon on the Mount. He has intoned the beautiful Beatitudes to the people as we heard a couple of Sundays ago. And from this mountain he has called his listeners the salt of the earth, and a light unto the world, as we also heard on a recent Sunday.

It was in our gospel reading last Sunday that Jesus reminded us that he came into the world not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. So, this Sunday, in the passages of Matthew’s gospel that immediately follow this pronouncement, not too surprisingly we find Jesus expounding upon the law as it has been received through Scripture and tradition.

And just what does Jesus say to the crowd? What is his interpretation of the law? He starts with the sixth of the Ten Commandments, the injunction against murder. Not only does Jesus tell us that murder is wrong, but he says even anger, any enmity between ourselves and our brothers and sisters is wrong. It’s not only a literally murderous rage we should worry about, but any rage or anger that impairs our relationships is subject to God’s judgment.

Next up is the Seventh Commandment, the injunction against adultery. Adultery was a crime that was very well articulated, maybe even over-articulated, in Jewish law in Jesus’ day. Adultery was defined as a married woman’s having sexual relations with a man other than her husband. It was considered a violation of the husband’s rights to his wife as his exclusive property and his right to the assurance that any children born to his wife would be, in fact, his own.

But Jesus focuses his opprobrium not so much on the act of adultery but on what proceeds it. This is the famous ‘Jimmy Carter’ confession -- Jesus says it’s wrong even to lust for another’s wife, not just to carry that lust to its conclusion.

Next comes the divorce section of the passage. And here, Jesus goes a bit off the rails. There is no Scripture in the Old Testament, nor does any law in the tradition that Jesus inherited prohibit divorce. Divorce was legal. And the law said that any married man -- and only the man, not his wife -- could seek a divorce for almost any reason.

Though it seems that this passage deals with divorce specifically, it’s really a continuation of the pronouncement against adultery. If a man divorces his wife for no good reason, he is guilty of sin because he causes her to sin by dissolving her legal marriage, and the man who takes up such a woman as his wife is guilty of sin as well, because she has been deprived of her marriage with no say, perhaps deprived of it unwillingly so. Not only is adultery within one’s heart a sin, but Jesus calls it adultery when the legal strictures of divorce are exploited unfairly and without good reason.

This passage is steeped in the patriarchy of its time, and some of the patriarchal attitudes we find here are still with us today. And Jesus’ teaching is not essentially anti-patriarchal, much as we might wish it were. But it is worth noting that in these teachings against adultery, it is the men involved in adultery that Jesus is calling to account. The divorce and adultery laws and customs favored men, and often left women vulnerable to social and economic ruin, to punishment poverty, penury, starvation and death. The system in Jesus’ day already dealt harshly with women involved in adulterous relationships. But here, Jesus is saying that men who participate in adultery, through lust and through the male-privilege ensconced in the divorce laws, are just as guilty of sin.

Next comes the prohibition against swearing oaths, which seems somewhat curious to us today. And rather than unpack this prohibition at length, it might be time to look at just how literally Jesus meant this and his other pronouncements to be taken.

As we heard, in the section dealing with anger, Jesus says that it is a sin even to speak in anger, specifically to call someone a fool. He says that anyone calling another a fool is subject to the fires of hell. Well, just a while later in Matthew, at chapter 23, verse 17, Jesus is debating the Pharisees, and in anger he says to his adversary, “You blind fool!” Oops! Awkward….

And then a bit later in Matthew 23, in verses 19-22, we’re still involved in the same argument with some Pharisees, and the subject of swearing oaths comes up. Now, I’ll be honest with you, these legalisms about oaths are labyrinthine to say the least -- and you can get lost down that rabbit hole if you want to, perhaps never to come out again, and I want to avoid that here. But let us just note that in this later passage in Matthew, Jesus responds to a legal opinion of the Pharisees about swearing oaths by saying that any oath one swears, by heaven or by things on earth, is in fact binding -- directly contradicting the teaching on swearing oaths we have in our reading today.

So, clearly, it’s not the products of these preachings of Jesus -- not new regulations or interpretations of the law -- that are the point of our gospel reading today, but rather it is the process Jesus is engaging in that commands our attention.

What Jesus is doing in today’s reading from Matthew is reaffirming the ancient law, which he has said he comes not to abolish but to fulfill. And most importantly, Jesus is radicalizing that law. Now, when most of us hear the word radical, we think of something that is extreme, that is on the outer fringes, something that is way, way beyond the pale. But in fact, radical means not the outer edge of possibility, but rather the inner core, the root. In fact, the root of the word radical is the Latin word radix, which means literally root. In this sense, the opposite of radical is not traditional or conservative, as we might think based on how the term is often used in our political discourse. No, the opposite of the word radical, in this sense, is superficial.

Jesus is radicalizing the law by leaving behind the legalistic, superficial interpretations of the law, with all its various cases and applications and interpretations, and looking to see what lies at the heart of the law, and by doing so, he invites us to look into our own hearts when we transgress God’s law, when we sin.

Jesus isn’t saying, “Out of the pool!” He’s saying, “Dive in, dive into the deep end. Dive into the wreck of your transgressions and find what lies deepest within you and your actions. For therein lies the cause of your sin -- and your pathway to salvation.”

‘Thou shalt not murder or kill’ is not an injunction against war or bodily harm, it is at its root, at its heart, an injunction to live in love, to seek harmony and concord with everyone else everywhere else. And in the example Jesus gives, we might take his teaching about leaving the altar to make peace to mean that even more important than our duty to God is our duty to love one another. After all, we know it is our God who finds it easier to forget our callousness and disregard of him; it is our God who finds it easier to forgive us, than we do with each other.

Recently, in a speech given on Martin Luther King Day, Robert Bentley, the governor of Alabama said to those gathered to hear him, “So anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I'm telling you, you're not my brother and you're not my sister…” I think the good governor has his cart before his horse, and if I’m reading today’s gospel passage correctly, I think Jesus would concur. And I take it from our reading from 1st Corinthians today, that Paul might have a problem with the governor as well. When we treat each other as brothers and sisters, when we put to rest the anger and enmity that separates people of different faiths, of different nations and different opinions, then we can come to God’s altar as true Christians. It doesn’t matter whether our brothers and sisters are Christians; it matters whether we are, in deed as well as word.

The injunctions against lust and adultery and divorce are not so much injunctions against sexual thoughts and actions or about how ironbound the strictures of marriage are or should be, rather they are a call to love one another in a healthy way, to intimately love one another in such in a respectful way. We are called to help one another, to strengthen one another in our intimate relationships. We should not be predatory; we should not take advantage of each other. We should not make one another more vulnerable or weaker or more dependent; but rather our committed relationships should make us safer and stronger. We should build each other up, not tear each other down. We should join in true partnerships, not take hostages. And the sum of our coming together in intimate love and committed relationships should make us greater than we are individuals, greater than the sum of our parts.

And when we endeavor to make assurances, when we are called upon to tell the truth, we should do so simply and honestly, regardless of what the consequences might be. We should be believed not because we swear on the Bible or on our mother’s grave, but rather we should be believed because our “Yes, Yes” or our “No, No” comes from deep within us. When it really matters, we should go deep down, to the root, and speak from the deepest part of our selves and our hearts, and tell the truth.

As our Old Testament reading from Ecclesiasticus tells us, we can do this, we have a choice. We can keep the commandments and act faithfully, we only have to choose to do so. But choose we must. We have to choose peace over fear; we have to choose true, healthy love over selfishness and exploitation. We have to tell our truth when it matters most, from a place of faith in God, that whatever the consequences, the truth will set us free.

The poet Adrienne Rich wrote a poem about scuba diving into a shipwreck. She called the poem and the collection that contained it Diving into the Wreck. One of my favorite lines in the poem reads, "I came to see the damage that was done/and the treasures that prevail."

If we as Christians are willing to, if we choose to, we can dive deep into the wreck of our sins and transgressions to see what lies at their heart, at their root. At the root of our anger, do we find old resentments we’re unwilling to let go of? Old injuries we’re unwilling to allow to heal? Do we punish with our anger those around us for wrongs that lie elsewhere, in our past, wrongs done us by people in our past? In our committed relationships, are we true partners, or do we cling to one another out of fear of being alone? Do we hold our partners hostage, rather in hold them deep within our hearts? Are we willing to let our partners grow and change, even if that growth and change feels threatening? And what about the little lies we tell? Underneath them, are their bigger, darker lies we tell ourselves? We tell our little lies to keep from hurting someone’s feelings or to keep the peace, but do those lies really protect us, keep us from the conflict that we are so afraid of, hide the truth from one we think might disapprove of us if they knew the truth? Is our mendacity nothing more than a smokescreen we hid behind because we don’t really believe what Jesus told us, that the truth will set us free?

If we dive deep into our sins and transgressions, to the radical heart of our wrongs, we’ll learn a great deal about who we are. And if we are willing to do so, if we choose to do so, we can dive deeper into God’s law, into God’s love for us, for there we will find true treasures that prevail. We’ll find laws that seek to draw us into greater love with one another and with God. We’ll find commandments that seek to draw us down deeper, below the surface, beyond the superficial into the root of who we are, who we all are, as God’s children.

So, dive in deeper, move beyond the surface, dive into the wreck. For the wreck is none other than the cross of Christ -- and on it is found a healing grace and forgiveness, and a compelling, strengthening, unfailing love.

Heartthrobs: a sermon for Year A, Epiphany III

2011-01-22T18:03:00.018-05:00

Preached on Sunday, January 23, 2011 at Christ & Saint Stephen's Church. Lectionary readings this sermon is based on can be found here.

Last week, in our reading from the Gospel of John, we heard John the Baptist herald Jesus as the messiah, the Lamb of God. And then briefly, we heard that gospel’s version of the calling of Andrew and his brother Simon Peter as disciples. This week, we are back in the Gospel of Matthew, where we will spend most of the coming year, and we hear Matthew’s version of the calling of these two apostles, along with James and John, the sons of Zebedee.

But I want to talk to you first about another disciple of Christ. Not one of the Twelve, but rather a later disciple, a disciple that’s a bit more like you and me. This past Thursday was January 20th and on January 20th in the calendar of the church, we commemorate the life and witness of one of the more obscure saints. January 20th is the feast day of Fabian, a bishop of Rome and eventual martyr who died for the faith in the year 250.

When the calendar of the church calls us to commemorate one of the saints, here at Christ & Saint Stephen’s that’s exactly what we do. On Thursdays, we read morning and evening prayer in the chapel and on this past Thursday when we did so, we honored Fabian, by reading a bit about him and praying the collect appointed for Fabian’s feast day. There’s not a whole lot of material out there about Fabian. But we do know Fabian existed. His tomb still exists at Rome and you can still read on the tombstone the words ‘Fabian… bishop… martyr…’ to this day.

A few other facts are known of Fabian and our main resource for those is a book put out by the Episcopal Church called Lesser Feasts and Fasts which contains the collects written for feast days and the readings to be used at a Eucharist celebrating the individual saints, martyrs and others we regard as exemplars of the faith.

If not much is really known about a saint, then Lesser Feasts and Fasts will give an account of the traditional beliefs and pious legends associated with the saint. We have another resource for these lesser commemorations -- which doesn’t quite sound right, does it? Are these saints and martyrs lesser than others? Well, the author of this other resource seems to have a problem with that ‘lesser’ designation. He is the Rev. Sam Portaro, a campus minister, writer and theologian and in the way of these sorts of things in the world today, my Facebook friend as well. Father Portaro calls his book Brightest and Best: A Companion to the Lesser Feasts and Fasts. Brightest and Best is a collection of reflections and homilies on the lives of these supposedly lesser women and men.

On a given weekday in the Christ & Saint Stephen’s Chapel here to my right, we might begin the day with the short reading about the life of someone like Fabian from Lesser Feasts and Fasts just before Morning Prayer, and in the evening, we’ll precede Evening Prayer with Father Portaro’s parallel reading from Brightest and Best. And in the case of Fabian this past Thursday, Lesser Feasts and Fasts and Brightest and Best give you almost everything that can be known about this third century martyr.

If you Google Fabian, you’ll get sent to that repository of all knowledge great and small and sometimes erroneous called Wikipedia, where the default page that comes up is actually about another Fabian, Fabian Anthony Forte, who was, like the good bishop, known only as by his first name. This Fabian was a teenage heartthrob from the late 50s and early 60s. St. Fabian plays a poor second fiddle in the Wikipedia world to Fabian the heartthrob.

But it seems worth noting about this other Fabian that he was from a good Italian Catholic family in Philadelphia who knew how to hand out a proper Christian name! Pope Benedict was railing last week about the dereliction parents have fallen into of late in regard to making sure that their babies are baptized with proper Christian names, the names of saints and martyrs, great and small. Not a sin that can be laid at the door of Josephine and Dominic Forte of South Philly.

Not to disappear completely down the Wikipedia rabbit hole, which I’m prone to do, I’m afraid, no more so than when writing a sermon, but I’ll just note that Fabian himself has a son, a noted screenwriter, and Fabian’s son’s first name? Christian! Now that’s a proper Christian name that any pope could love!

++++++++++++

Though the facts may be thin on the ground, what we hope to know about saints is the miraculous wonders they were able to work and the piety of their lives and the holy sacrifices they made. St. Francis reformed the monasteries and led a life of poverty and piety. He could commune with the animals and was visited with the holy, rather gruesome and no doubt painful, stigmata. Now those are the things you want to know about a saint.

What we know of Fabian is as I’ve said, not much. No where is it recorded that he was much of a heartthrob to the swooning teenage girls of Ancient Rome. He was known for that most inspiring of holy attributes: his administrative abilities. Fabian is famous for organizing Rome into sections that could then fall under the care of this or that deacon or ecclesiastical secretary. Fabian kind of invented the parish and the system of parochial administration that is still very much a part of most church organization. Now, that’s a feat to inspire the generations, isn’t it?

He was also a bit famous for his building program. Again, who doesn’t love a saint who carries out

successful capital improvements? Fabian renovated and improved parts of the catacombs in Rome preserving the burial places of Christian martyrs and saints from times earlier even than his own. And like many of the early saints and the disciples themselves, Fabian was martyred for the faith. The emperor Decius, in what was probably the first empire-wide persecution of the church, killed Fabian along with many other Christians. Fabian was one of the first to be martyred in Decius’s persecution, and his courage in facing his death was said to be an inspiration. When the hearts of his fellow martyrs throbbed with fear, they thought of Fabian and were given courage to face their fate.

He was, then, a good and faithful disciple -- if a somewhat obscure to us today. There’s not much you can say about Fabian, but you can say that he was a good worker, got things done, very organized, dealt well with contractors and builders, no doubt. You can say that he was good at dying too, he was inspiring in accepting the martyr’s lot.

+++++++++++++++++

Obscurity was not the fate for those very first disciples of Christ, some of whom we read about in our gospel today. There aren’t many churches named St. Fabian’s, but there are boatloads of St. Andrews’s and St. James’s and St. John’s, and there are some rather famous St. Peter’s. And that’s due, of course, to the gospels which have recorded some of the exploits and histories of Andrew and Simon Peter, James and John. And particularly, what is actually the second volume of Luke’s Gospel, the Acts of the Apostles. We can know quite a bit relatively speaking about the very first disciples of Christ from the record that remains in Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Acts.

But I think it’s worth peeling away some of the fame and regard that we very rightly have for the Twelve Apostles, to see just how obscure a lot they were in the beginning -- before being called to be the Twelve Apostles. Andrew, Simon Peter, James and John in today’s gospel, are fishermen. Now there’s nothing wrong with being a fishermen. Being a fisherman is a noble profession, even heroic at times, or so we might say if the writers of the scriptures had more of a reality TV approach, and left behind something like what the Discovery Channel would call Deadliest Catch: Galilee Edition.

But really, Jesus? Fishermen? I mean, most fishermen tell a good tale, we know. So, ok, maybe if you’re going to want to spread the gospel, folks who tell a good story are a good lot to recruit. Ok, I can see that.

But if you read today’s gospel as if you’re hearing it for the first time, and if you try to free your mind of all the accrued reverence that we hold for the Twelve Apostles, you can get a bit of the sense of the randomness of the calling of Andrew, Simon Peter, James and John. You can get a sense of the obscurity in which these Galilean fishermen lived and worked prior to this guy Jesus coming along. The reference in the gospel to Isaiah which we also read today connotes this sense of obscurity and insignificance that permeates this gospel scene. “Don’t worry, Zebulon and Naphtali, and Galilee of the Gentiles. There’s not much for you to do there but sit around in darkness and the shadow of death, but someday, maybe, you’ll get to see something cool, something worth remembering and talking about might happen in your parts someday… maybe.”

In the parallel section of John’s gospel, one of the Twelve Apostles himself says it best. Just after our gospel selection from last week, John’s gospel tells us of the calling of a couple of other disciples. John tells us in chapter 1, beginning at verse 46, that Jesus ‘finds’ Philip, that’s how John puts it, kind of random, he sort just chances upon Philip and recruits him. Philip, we learn, is from Andrew and Simon Peter’s hometown, so it’s likely that he knows some of the crew that’s being gathered up. And then Philip reaches out to his buddy Nathaniel, one of the truly obscure disciples about whom very little is known. Except for this bit in John’s gospel when Philip says to Nathaniel, “We’ve found him! The one that Moses and the prophets predicted! He’s this guy Jesus from Nazareth!” And Nathaniel says, “Really… Jesus of Nazareth… Can anything good ever come out of Nazareth?”

For Nathaniel, is just too weird, too random. Some nobody from a literal backwater, populated with fishermen. Not a hotspot, not a chosen destination. No vacation brochures in the ancient world touted world-wind trips to Zebulon, Naphtali and Galilee for wild nights of sitting in darkness and the shadow of death -- with those heartthrobs, the men of Deadliest Catch: Galilee Edition.

So random, so obscure, so seemingly insignificant these people and where they come from. But friends, you and I are here this morning, due to the hard work, the faithfulness, the miraculous depths that lay within these few fishermen. The story of Jesus and his life and preaching and his sacrifice on the cross could have easily died out, or could have become known only in the obscurest of histories of the ancient world. There are such histories and they include accounts of a few Jesus wannabes -- miracle workers and would-be messiahs who gained a following and who were eliminated by the powers that be to keep the peace. But there was something about this one, this Jesus of, of all places, Nazareth that transcended his own obscurity. There was something about him that lit a fire in the hearts and minds of those who encountered him, turning fishermen into apostles.

And let us give those fishermen their due, because no matter how obscure and insignificant they once were, no matter how cowardly they proved to be when the going got tough -- Fabian can rightly thumb his nose at the Twelve Apostles on that account, because Fabian went bravely to his martyr’s death, and eleven of the Twelve Apostles, upon Jesus’ death, when fearing for their own lives, cut and run. But no matter how obscurely they began, or how cowardly they proved to be on the day of decision, these apostles and their witness and work is what has brought us us here today.

They were nobodies but yet they were called, and they heard and heeded that call, and within themselves they found the means to bring Christ to a hostile world. They weren’t without their faults, but still, they told the story with such passion and conviction, that it has come down to us today and continues to inspire us, to change lives, to make our hearts throb even now.

I wonder if they will say the same about us someday. “Oh, she was just an actress. You know, he was a lawyer, a teacher… I think she did something in finance… I’m not sure where he was from; some Podunk town… But I remember how he lived his life, I remember how inspired she was by her faith -- it made her inspiring, really! Oh, he had his faults certainly. He could be kind of dog at times. But I knew he had found something that meant a great deal to him, and it sent me searching for that something too.” Will they say such things about us someday? I hope so.

+++++++++++++

You know, there’s something else about Fabian that makes him memorable. Much like the disciples, much like you and me, Fabian was truly an obscure person when he was chosen bishop of Rome. He wasn’t even a clergy person, or for that matter a Roman. Fabian was, of all things, a tourist, a visitor to Rome, when the open-air assembly that would choose the next bishop of Rome gathered. Of course, there was noise and commotion and onlookers gathered, among them Fabian. And then in the hubbub, a dove flew overhead and lighted upon Fabian. All those gathered took this to be a sign from God, and like it or not, Fabian was elected bishop of Rome by acclamation. Now, that, my friends, is truly being plucked from obscurity, plucked quite literally by a dove.

Remember that dove, think about Fabian the next time you start to consider what you might offer to God, what role you might play in the mission of the church, in the work God calls each of us to do. You might think you’re not ‘apostle material’, but then that could be said of those Galilean fishermen. You might think that where your from or what you do isn’t going to inspire anyone. Well, time and time again, that hasn’t proven to be the case. Look at Fabian. Granted, he’s not the most famous of saints, but he did inspire others, those who had a very tough road to follow, the road to martyrdom. And his administrative and property management skills were a gift to the church, their impact is felt to this day. There was nothing to predict what Fabian would accomplish for God, who he would inspire; as with the Twelve Apostles, who could have guessed what a few fishermen might inspire, what a legacy they would leave.

Fabian’s example should always remind us that God chooses us for myriad reasons, for work that only he can see that we are capable of. As Father Portaro puts it in his Brightest and Best, God

“sometimes gives to the church its richest gifts and its most valued leaders on no stronger recommendation than the whimsy of a dove.” ~ Amen+

Sermon for Year A, Epiphany II: The Way of Heralds

2011-01-16T15:34:00.014-05:00

Preached on Sunday, January 16, 2011 at Christ & Saint Stephen's Church. The lectionary readings that this sermon is based on can be found by clicking here.

I was sitting in my therapist’s waiting room this week – as we all do here on the Upper West Side, every single one of us, you know it’s true – and I picked up a magazine to leaf through while I waited. You can tell a lot about a therapist by the publications he or she has out in the waiting room. Maybe your therapist has old copies of People or Us Weekly, or New York magazine, or even The New Yorker lying about the waiting room. But in my therapist’s waiting room, carefully -- but not too obsessively -- arranged on the coffee table for your perusal, are several copies of the Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Now that’s a proper Upper West Side therapist, if you ask me! You get to contemplate the beauties of art before you enter the therapeutic inner sanctum and go on and on about your mother yet again.

In this past fall’s Bulletin, it was noted that the Metropolitan Museum had acquired a work by Annibale Carracci, an Italian painter from the Baroque period who is considered along with Carravaggio and Rubens as one of the great Italian Baroque painters. The newly acquired work is called ‘Saint John the Baptist Bearing Witness’ and it captures perfectly our gospel reading today. In the foreground, the large and heroic figure of John has started to kneel beside the flowing River Jordan and he quite literally points to another figure in the background, in the distance, walking along on a curving mountain path, coming towards us. John is clearly speaking in the painting, saying, “Behold, the Lamb of God” as he begins to kneel and pay homage to the messiah. Chancing upon this painting helped me to realize just what a departure today’s gospel is from the usual depictions of John the Baptist.

In the accounts of John the Baptist found in the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, we see the enigmatic figure of John from a couple of perspectives. We see him as a fiery preacher, accusing the Pharisees of being a brood of vipers. In those other gospels, we see John preaching repentance to the sinful nation of Israel – with plenty of fire and a nice helping of brimstone -- and offering his baptism as a ritual cleansing from sin. Last Sunday in the account of Jesus’ baptism from Matthew’s gospel, we saw John in yet another guise, that of the humble man, unworthy to untie Jesus’ sandal, who seeks to defer from baptizing Jesus, because he says it is Jesus who should be baptizing him.

An interesting figure, this John the Baptist, in these accounts -- a bit of a paradox, sort of a humble firebrand, not a combination of attributes often found. Actually, come to think of it, there is no shortage of firebrands around today – all those pundits and commentators -- and not one of them strikes me as particularly humble.

But be that as it may, in today’s gospel, we see John the Baptist in yet another light, with a, well, not exactly a different message, but a message that comes from a different place perhaps, or maybe a message with a different focus, a message that serves another purpose, and that has something very specific to say.

In the Fourth Gospel from which we read this morning, John doesn’t say anything about repentance. The word is never used. And even more surprisingly, John the Baptist doesn’t claim that the baptisms he is conducting have anything at all to do with cleansing us of our sins. Repentance is a major concern associated with John in the other three gospels, but not here, not in the Fourth Gospel. John says, “I came baptizing with water,” not to purify the nation, but rather, he says, “that he (Jesus) might be revealed to Israel." (Jn 1:31b).

Whatever the meaning of baptism has come to be, we can see that John wanted it to point to Jesus, to lead to Jesus, to make everyone aware of the one who has come. John is almost adamant in today’s gospel. He is there to witness, he is there to be a herald of the Lamb of God.

Throughout the passage, we find the vocabulary of witness and the actions of a herald. “This is he!” John proclaims. Look, see, he says. John uses words like ‘revealed’ and proclaims, “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven (upon him.)” (Jn 1: 32) “I have seen,” he tells us; “and have testified…” (Jn 1:34).

Then, the next day, John continues, like a broken record almost, he says “Look here is the Lamb of God!” (Jn 1:36) and it is his exclamation, his insistent witness overheard by two of his own followers that captivates them, captures, even commands their attention and their actions. And Andrew and then his brother Simon Peter depart from John to become Jesus’ first disciples. Andrew and Peter heard was John had to say and they heeded it, and it changed the direction of their lives.

+++++++++++

Of course, this weekend we can’t help but to think of another of God’s heralds, The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. King spoke out against oppression and he called our nation to repentance, much like John the Baptist. And like a herald, he pointed us toward our salvation, because the evil of racism wasn’t just a wrong committed against African-Americans. It was a wrong against all Americans because it caused us to defy our better natures and our highest ideals. Dr. King saw a path to salvation for our country, and he heralded it, and he paid an awful price for speaking God’s truth. But, at least in part, our nation heeded his message, and in dismantling government sanctioned segregation, we have found a bit of our salvation, not just for the victims of racism, but for the perpetrators of it and the unwitting or unwilling beneficiaries of it. We have become a more perfect union. Like Andrew and Simon Peter, we heard the voice of truth, and it changed the direction of our nation – and caused our nation to follow what some would call, myself among them, a more Godly path.

After coming across Caracci’s painting this week, I did a little research on the ways in which John the Baptist has been portrayed in art. One of the attributes you find in stained glass and medieval images of John the Baptist is the Holly Tree. For like John the Baptist, the holly is a herald of Jesus. It blooms in bright red berries at end of the year, just as we are about to celebrate the nativity of Jesus. And the sharp spines at the tips of the holly leaf, and the blood red berries remind us that John the Baptist, like Jesus himself, was to suffer and undergo an untimely passion and a cruel death.

++++++++++++

Just over a week ago, in Tucson, Arizona, a gunman opened fire at a gathering of an elected official and the people she was duly elected to represent, wreaking terror and havoc, seriously wounding a member of the U. S. Congress, injuring nearly a score of innocent bystanders, and in the end, killing six, including a nine year old girl born on yet another day of terror, September 11, 2001. We’ve all thought a lot about that incident, and I’ll bet you, like me, have thought a lot about that little girl and her family. What a set of dates to carve into a child-sized tombstone, September 11th, 2001 and January 8th, 2011.

Many have spoken about these events in the past week. Some have said things that have deepened the wounds we feel – out of what seems to be more of a regard for their own exoneration than for concern for those of us who feel so disheartened about what happened in that Tucson grocery story last Saturday. But others have tried to help us make sense of what happened a week ago. Some have tried to help us redeem those horrible and indefensible acts.

President Obama spoke at a memorial service in Tucson, and I’d like to ask you to listen again to some of what he had to say. In particular, what he had to say about the youngest victim in Tucson. The president said,

Imagine: here was a young girl who was just becoming aware of our democracy; just beginning to understand the obligations of citizenship; just starting to glimpse the fact that someday she too might play a part in shaping her nation's future. She had been elected to her student council; she saw public service as something exciting, something hopeful. She was off to meet her congresswoman, someone she was sure was good and important and might be a role model. She saw all this through the eyes of a child, undimmed by the cynicism or vitriol that we adults all too often just take for granted.

I want us to live up to her expectations. I want our democracy to be as good as she imagined it. All of us – we should do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children's expectations…

The president concluded by urging us to “place our hands over our hearts, and commit ourselves as Americans to forging a country that is forever worthy of (Christina Taylor Green’s) gentle, happy spirit.”

Our president would like us to heed the message of Christina Taylor Green as if she were another herald, sent to us to show us a path to salvation. She didn’t proclaim a message as did John the Baptist or Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. but she certainly paid the price that our heralds often pay, and like those other heralds, her actions send a strong message. Believe in the ideals this country stands for, be enthusiastic about them, learn more about them, take part in them, have hope in them. If we heed the message of Christina Taylor Green like our president asks us to, we may find that her example could indeed lead our nation toward the salvation of our political process and our public discourse, an improvement much needed, one that I would again call a more Godly path.

+++++++++++++

Those elected to point out to us that which can save us are also those who, in the inscrutable ways of the Divine Will, must also pay a terrible price. Maybe that’s the way it is with heralds. I don’t know. It seems unfair, and even unjust. But even more unjust would be to let the messages of God’s chosen heralds go unheeded. Let’s not let the good examples of Christina Taylor Green and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and even of John the Baptist go unnoticed, nor should we let their life changing messages go unheard; and let us not let the meaning of their lives and their sacrifices go unheeded, nor let them, God’s heralds, go unheralded.

Let us pray.

Grant us, Almighty God, the ears to hear the messages you send us through your prophets and heralds, in the days of old and in our own day. May we prove that we are worthy of the price they pay in calling us to our duty to one another, and to you. May we show forth your praise and theirs, not only with our lips, but in our lives, by giving up our selves to your service and by walking before you in holiness and righteousness and grateful humility all our days, should those days be great in number, or but a precious few. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

Sermon for Year A, Advent II: The Peaceable Kingdom Come

2011-01-16T15:01:00.008-05:00

Preached on Sunday, December 5, 2010 at Christ & Saint Stephen's Church. The lectionary readings this sermon is based on can be found by clicking here.

I happen to know for a fact that a few of you are New York Times crossword puzzle fans, like me. If so, I hope you worked last Sunday’s puzzle. It was a fun one. It featured several rebus squares, single squares that might contain multiple letters, a numeral or a symbol instead of the usual single letter. In last Sunday’s puzzle, each of the rebus squares contained two letters, the letters O and N spelling the word ‘ON’. That was the toughest part to figure out. But once you got it, you being to find squares with ON in them all over the puzzle.

And as every crossword geek knows, in the Sunday Times puzzle, the longer answers usually have something to do with the theme of the puzzle, which on Sunday’s is alluded to, usually obliquely, in the title of the puzzle. Last Sunday’s puzzle was entitled “A Shining Moment”. That coupled with the repeated ONs in the puzzle seemed to be of a piece, seemed to have something to do with the theme. Sure enough, some of the longer answers in the puzzle spelled out the phrases “ROCKEFELLER CENTER,” “THE TREE LIGHTING CEREMONY” AND “THE WEDNESDAY AFTER THANKSGIVING.” And there was a little extra puzzle treat as well -- when you drew a line to connect all the squares with ON in them, you get the outline of a Christmas Tree. Cool puzzle.

Except, in what we puzzle geeks know is a rare occurrence, the puzzle was wrong. The Rockefeller Center Tree Lighting Ceremony wasn’t on the first Wednesday after Thanksgiving this year as it almost always has been in the past. It was on Tuesday after Thanksgiving. This prompted quite a back and forth on the New York Times puzzle blog and elsewhere on the web. And yeah, I’m that big a puzzle geek! I read blogs about the crossword puzzle. (Hey, don’t judge me!)

Questions were posted on the blogs about why Rockefeller Center had forsworn tradition this year. Other blog posters were quick to answer. The Wednesday after Thanksgiving this year was also the first night of Hanukkah. Perhaps Rockefeller Center moved the tree lighting up so as not to conflict with the lighting of the big Hanukkah Menorah at 5th Avenue and 59th. No one could confirm this motivation on Rockefeller Center’s part – not even Rockefeller Center when I called the press office there this week. But it seems likely and if it is, in fact, the case, I say, good for you, Rockefeller Center.

It’s nice to think that here in New York City, we’re not so hidebound by our civic and semi-religious traditions that we can’t be flexible enough to accommodate others' celebrations and traditions. The Apostle Paul would be proud of Rockefeller Center.

Our second reading this morning is from Paul’s Letter to the Romans. There was quite a bit of tension between Jews and Gentiles in Rome at the time and that tension was, of course, felt in the Christian community there -- which was comprised of both Jewish Christians and Gentile converts to Christianity. Throughout Romans, Paul stresses tolerance to both parties, and tries to make them see that while the revelation of Christ to the world is certainly the revelation of the Jewish messiah, that is certain, but that this revelation is meant to be a revelation to the whole world. Jesus is everyone’s messiah.

In our reading today, Paul is urging the Jewish Christians in Rome to remember the Scriptures, and the prophecies that foretell the coming of a messiah that would be venerated by the Gentiles as well as by the Jews. And that messiah has come in the person of Jesus Christ. It is Paul’s hope that the Romans -- and we -- might, as he puts it, “live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus, so that together (we) may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

We see a similar vein running through our reading from Isaiah. In these verses, Isaiah articulates what has been called “The Peaceable Kingdom”. And that is certainly what we see, isn’t it? In Isaiah’s Utopian vision of this Peaceable Kingdom to come, the wolf lies with the lamb, and the lion and the ox feed on straw side by side. And Isaiah says this is the kingdom that will come into being when the messiah, the shoot springing forth from the tree of Jesse, comes into the world.

+++++++++++

It was announced on Friday that biblical scholar and Emory University senior fellow Luke Timothy Johnson had won the Grawemeyer Prize in Religion, in large part for his recent book Among the Gentiles: Greco-Roman Religion and Christianity. In it, Professor Johnson writes that early Christians unfairly demonized other religions, particularly pagan sects, when in actual fact, Christians and pagans in that time had much in common. Both groups prayed for and sought divine intervention for their suffering. Both Christianity and the pagan sects promoted moral improvement. Some pagan sects and some apocalyptic Christians felt themselves to be at odds with the corruption of the world and longed for a better life hereafter.

There was common ground to be found between religious groups in the ancient world, but our ancestors in the faith refused to see it. There was a possibility then for the Peaceable Kingdom to break through into this world, but we squandered the chance -- and so soon, too, after the coming of the hoped for messiah. Johnson writes, “Christianity's failure to adequately come to grips with its first pagan neighbors inhibits any positive effort to engage present-day adherents of world religions." According to Professor Johnson, we don’t take the vision of the Prophet Isaiah nor the admonitions of the Apostle Paul much to heart – in fact, we never really have. It seems from the very beginning, we haven’t known how to bring about the Peaceable Kingdom, or maybe we haven’t really wanted to.

We thought everyone had to be like us – and very many of us still do. But that’s not what Isaiah’s prophesy says. Isaiah doesn’t say that the lion is to lie down only with other lions. Isaiah doesn’t proclaim that the lamb should spurn the wolf -- quite the opposite in fact. Nor are we to claim some sort of ascendancy over others because of who we are or where we come from. In our gospel reading today, John the Baptist tells the Pharisees not to rely upon the fact that they can claim Abraham as their ancestor, and with that assertion lay exclusive claim to salvation. It is God in Christ who decides which are wheat and which are chaff to be burned in the fire. Not the likes of you or me.

+++++++++++++++

Professor Johnson may look on the early Christians with a critical eye, and he can certainly make the case that we similarly fail to heed the words of Paul and Isaiah in our own day. But I hope we’ve gotten a little better in all that time. I hope we’ve become a little more opened hearted. Maybe a bit…

Here’s one example, I think. Not too many years ago, our bishop, Mark Sisk, led our diocese in an effort to help foster the Peaceable Kingdom in Afghanistan. Not without encountering criticism, the diocese of New York helped raise funds to rebuild a mosque in Afghanistan that had been destroyed by US-led troops in the weeks just after September 11th. At the time, the bishop was quoted in the New York Times saying ''All people are children of God… we need to respect each other and respect other religions. From the deepest level, this is a conviction on my part. God loves the villagers of Afghanistan.''

Those are words that Isaiah would commend. Advent is a time of hope, it is a time of expectation, anticipation for the kingdom to come. Well, I don’t know if Rockefeller Center moved up the tree lighting ceremony this year out of deference to our Jewish brothers and sisters and their feast of Hanukkah. But I hope that’s why. It’s not quite as profound an action as rebuilding a bombed out mosque, but it’s the right thing to do. It might not cause the Peaceable Kingdom to break through into our world, but it helps.

It takes big actions and small ones to build the Peaceable Kingdom. It takes ferocious lions and little lambs, fearsome wolfs, big bears, and a little child to lead them. And this is our hope, and our prayer: Come, Lord Jesus. Come again to find us at peace with one another, side by side, ready to greet you with joy. Amen

Sermon for Year C, Proper 26: "Out On A Limb"

2010-11-15T19:11:00.010-05:00

Preached on Sunday, October 31st at Christ & Saint Stephen's Church, New York. Bible readings this sermon is based on can be found here.

I can remember hearing the story of Zacchaeus and the sycamore tree quite often in Sunday School as a child. I think it was an oft repeated story because it was a popular one with children – climbing trees being a chief pursuit of childhood.

But for Zacchaeus, having to climb up a tree in order to see Jesus is a bit of a come down. Zacchaeus is a rich and powerful man in Jericho, but he is also the object of disdain. The text indicates this we hear that Zacchaeus is short, too short to see above the crowds. We can almost see him hopping up and down behind the parade watchers trying to see. Then scrambling up a tree like a child at play, looking not very rich and not very powerful out on the limb of the sycamore tree. And furthermore the text tells us that Zacchaeus is an object of derision among the Jews of Jericho. When Jesus tells Zacchaeus that he will be his guest, we hear them squawk. The text reads, “All who saw it began to grumble and said, "He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner."

Jesus is passing through the streets of Jericho, Zacchaesus’s hometown, swept up in an adoring throng. And Jesus spots Zacchaeus out on a limb in the sycamore tree and says to him, “Better come down from that tree, Zacchaeus, I’m coming to your house for dinner tonight.” Figure of fun or disdain or not, sinner or not, Jesus sees Zacchaeus up in his tree And Jesus singles Zacchaeus out, not for ridicule for climbing up in a tree like a child, not for condemnation as a sinner, but Jesus singles Zacchaeus out in order to honor him. For Jesus to come to Zacchaeus’s house, to accept Zacchaeus’s hospitality, is a great honor for Zacchaeus. Jesus treats Zacchaeus with respect; in fact he singles out Zacchaeus for special notice and honor.

And this respect, the regard Jesus shows for Zacchaeus, has a profound effect on Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus comes down from the tree, and stands before Jesus and he makes a pledge. He says to Jesus, ‘I will give half of all my wealth to the poor,and any whom I have cheated as chief tax collector, I will repay fourfold.’

Zacchaeus becomes righteous after Jesus comes into his life, after Jesus takes notice of him and treats him with honor and respect, and it is this that causes Zacchaeus to change his ways. Because of the loving notice and regard of Jesus, Zacchaeus becomes the person God intends him to be.

+++++++++

It is the action of God that causes the reaction and redemption of Zacchaeus. And likewise in our lives, it is through God’s grace and favor, through the gift of God’s love that we are able to become true children of God. It is because God loves us that we can in turn love what he commands and can hope to obtain the promise of salvation and eternal life.

Very often we feel as if we need to be good for God. Not so, not true at all. We don’t need to be good for God, rather we need God in order to be good. When we are not at our best, it is then we need God more than ever. And when we know we are failing, when we know we are falling short of the commandments of God, we should not hide away from God in our shame, but rather seek God out and ask for God’s help to be better, to be more what he would have us to be. At our worst, it is not the wrath of God we should fear, but the love and support of God that we should seek.

+++++++

It’s election season in our country and I am at this moment quite grateful to God for the gift of Tivo. I can just fast forward past all those vitriolic commercials. And I’ve stopped watching the news altogether, and I’m rationing my Internet news as well.

There is an ill-spirit in our electoral life these day, and we find some Americans making the most scandalous and unsupportable claims about some of the candidates running for office. It doesn’t seem to matter if what you say is true, only that it can strike enough fear in the hearts of voters to get them to the polls. As in recent elections, the threat supposedly posed by equal rights for lesbian and gay folk is being bandied about rather freely and quite viciously.

When such a poisonous atmosphere exists in the adult world, it is particularly toxic for our children. Such animosity openly expressed helps troubled teens identify a designated victim – a scapegoat – and following our example, teenage unkindness becomes much more serious, more aggressive and even deadly, as it seems to have lately.

Recently, there has been a very sad spate of suicides by gay teenagers across our country. In the month of September alone 5 American teenagers committed suicide, in part due to the bullying they experienced at school and on the Internet because they were gay. Most of us wonder how their peers and classmates could be so persistently cruel to their fellows as to drive them to suicide?

There are questions now about whether those who foment homophobia, either in their political speech or in their proselytizing , might be guilty of inciting the bullying that has led to these tragic deaths. In the wake of these recent suicides, a poll conducted by the Public Religious Research Institute found that more than 2/3s of Americans believe that religious messages about homosexuality contribute to the higher rate of suicide among gay youth.

Friends, the religious messages they’re talking about are coming from our fellow Christians.

But there’s another message out there too. In recent weeks, several Lesbian and gay Americans and many others have done just that. The “It Gets Better” campaign on You Tube is comprised of thousands of videos from many different people -- our President, celebrities like Ellen DeGeneres and Neal Patrick Harris and everyday gay folks. The very sincere and often moving messages urge gay teens to hang on, to hold on to their lives.

A few weeks ago, Mother Liles reminded us of some of the words of Teresa of Avila:

“Christ has no body but yours, No hands, no feet on earth but yours, Yours are the eyes with which he looks compassion on this world, Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good, Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.”

I would only add that yours is the voice with which Christ can offer solace to the world, yours the voice with which Christ can call for justice.

To me these messages to victims of bullying show the very face of Christ to this world. These videos find lots of teenage Zacchaeuses all along the many branches of the Internet sycamore tree -- out on a limb, hanging on and with a desperate need to hear that someone respects them, someone honors them, and that life can and does get better.

If you need an antidote to the bilious rhetoric that seems to be everywhere these days, check out the “It Gets Better” channel on You Tube. You’ll see the face of Christ, you’ll hear the voice of Christ there.

And then take some time to let your children know, and your children’s children know, your nieces and nephews; let them know that you love them no matter what -- and that God loves them even more.

Make sure they hear you over the din of those who might say otherwise.

And if you happen to see someone up a sycamore tree, out on a limb, then look with the eyes of Christ, and speak with the voice of Christ and tell them that they are loved and respected and honored by you and by very many of your Christian brothers and sisters.

If enough of us do that, then it may come to pass that the next survey finds that the religious message of Christians about homosexuality -- and every thing else -- is a message of love, honor and respect for all the children of Abraham and for every child of God.

Sermon for Year C, Proper 23: Your People Are My People

2010-10-10T14:37:00.011-04:00

Preached at Christ & Saint Stephen's Church on Sunday, October 10, 2010. lectionary readings this sermon is based on can be found here.

There was an interesting story in the New York Times on Thursday. St. Peter’s Catholic Church in lower Manhattan is celebrating its 225th anniversary. It is the oldest Roman Catholic church in New York State. Its cornerstone was laid in 1785, not long after the end of the Revolutionary War when the newly formed United States had not yet begun to write its Constitution and ensconce within that Constitution, our Bill of Rights.

There were only 200 Roman Catholics in New York at the time, just a few more than usually worship here on Sunday mornings, and most of them quite poor. But if St. Peter’s long tenure is something to celebrate today, it was certainly not seen as something worth celebrating at its inception. Protestant New Yorkers at the time viewed the new Roman Catholic presence with suspicion. As the Times put it,

“Many New Yorkers were suspicious of the newcomers’ plans to build a house of worship in Manhattan. Some feared the project was being underwritten by foreigners. Others said the strangers’ beliefs were incompatible with democratic principles. Concerned residents staged demonstrations, some of which turned bitter.”

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Even after two decades, the people of St. Peter’s were still facing the wrath of their fellow Christians. This is from the Times once again:

“On Christmas Eve 1806... the building was surrounded by Protestants incensed at a celebration going on inside — a religious observance then viewed by some in the United States as an exercise in “popish superstition,” more commonly referred to as Christmas. Protesters tried to disrupt the service.In the melee that ensued, dozens were injured, and a policeman was killed.”

I dare say, those of you who join us this Christmas Eve will be “incensed” as well, but in somewhat different manner, probably in a manner quite similar to what was going on at St. Peter’s on Christmas Eve 1806.

Strange customs from foreign lands, strange people with foreign ways, strange beliefs that may or may not be compatible with our own.

New Yorkers didn’t like such things in 1785 when St. Peter’s Catholic Church was being built -- and some Americans -- though I suspect not many of them New Yorkers -- don’t like it today when the Islamic Cultural Center planned for downtown Manhattan is discussed.

And people didn’t like foreigners in Ruth and Naomi’s time either. Our Old Testament reading today tells the familiar story. Years ago, Naomi and her family left their hometown of Bethlehem and fled to Moab in a time of famine. They settle there, raise two sons, and those sons marry two Moabite women.

The family knows hardship when Naomi’s husband and her sons die. Then famine comes to Moab, and Naomi and her daughters-in-law Orpah and Ruth must rely on their own resources to survive.

Naomi hears that in her hometown of Bethlehem, there is plenty has return, so she readies herself to go home. And as she goes, she tries to send her daughters-in-law back; she tells them to return to their mothers’ houses and to find new husbands. Naomi wants her daughters-in-law to be happy again, to know love and security and fulfillment, rather than to be shackled to her and her family’s bad luck and poor fortunes. Orpah returns to Moab, but Ruth refuses to do so. Ruth tells Naomi that she is not going back.

In verse 16, Ruth says to her mother-in-law, “Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God.” But in fact, the original Hebrew has it a bit differently. There are no verbs in that phrase in the Hebrew Bible, and the verse can be read literally as “Your people, my people; your God, my God.” It’s a statement of what is, not what will be. Ruth is telling Naomi, “I can’t turn back, and I can’t turn my back on you, because we are a family -- your people are my people, your God is my God -- and that means we stick together, no matter what.”

Later in the story, Naomi and Ruth’s fortunes take a turn for the better. Ruth the Moabite marries Boaz, Naomi’s kinsmen, and she becomes the forebear of Israel’s greatest hero, David.

But not everyone in Israel was happy about people like Ruth the Moabite. The prophets Ezra and Nehemiah in particular urged the Israelites to abandon the foreign wives they had taken up during the time of the Babylonian captivity, they wanted to purify Israel, so that the calamity of the Babylonian captivity would never come to pass again.

That sounds familiar too, doesn’t it? Purify the nation so that we aren’t visited with another calamity like September 11th.

One biblical scholar suggests that the story of Ruth is in fact a subversive parable, meant to counter the xenophobia of Ezra and Nehemiah. For Ruth the Moabite becomes the matriarch of the House of David, Israel’s greatest king, and the ancestor of our savior Jesus of Nazareth.

Perhaps the foreigner in our midst doesn’t make us weaker, more vulnerable, perhaps the foreigner makes us better, stronger, safer. Like the Samaritan in our gospel story today, it may be that the outsider, the one we see as our religious rival or our foe might have something to teach us.

Maybe there is something we can learn about faithfulness from such a one as Ruth the Moabite. Maybe there is something we can learn about how to give thanks to God from those we would treat as despised Samaritans in our own day.

+++++++++++++++++++++++

Can you imagine a time when celebrating Christmas in church was viewed as something foreign and suspicious by American Christians?

The Rev. Kevin Madigan, the pastor of St. Peter’s Catholic Church wrote to his parishioners this past summer saying,

“We were treated as second-class citizens; we were viewed with suspicion… Many of the charges being leveled at Muslim-Americans today are the same as those once leveled at our forebears.”

We may have our differences, but most of us would look upon our Roman Catholic neighbors as “our people,” and we would certainly see their God as our God.

Maybe someday, the same will be true for our Muslim brothers and sisters, and maybe someday, we’ll stop wrangling as our Epistle tells us to do and we’ll see that all the children of Abraham -- Jews, Muslims and Christians -- are one people, and that we all worship the God who is One, even if we have very different understandings of that God, and even if we worship the One God in very different ways.

Then, on that day, we can all sing the words of our psalm, in a beautiful harmony, and really mean them:

“Praised be the name of the Lord,
high over all the nations, the Lord,
over the heavens His glory.”

(Ps 113: 3-4)

Amen+

Sermon for Year C, Proper 21: Bad Karma

2010-09-26T14:12:00.000-04:00

Preached on Sunday, September 26th at Christ & Saint Stephen's Church. Lectionary readings can be found here.

I’m going to date myself a bit here, but I remember when it first became popular for Americans who wanted to be hip or to appear enlightened… I remember when such folk started bandy about the word karma. I first heard it sometime in the late 70s or early 80s. Around the time that the New Age movement began to gain some traction; around the time that ideas from Eastern religions like Buddhism and Hinduism were starting to move into a more prominent place in our culture.
For a while then and still somewhat today it was considered enlightened, aware, to toss around a few terms from non-Western religions as a critique of uptight, hind-bound spiritual morality derived in no small part from our Puritan forbearers. Karma was one of those words that got used -- probably overused -- at that time. It is a concept that comes from the religions of India and says that our actions -- good or bad -- are revisiting upon us, in this life or in our next iteration. Basically good deed and works reap good karma, and those with good karma can expect good things to come their way. Bad karma nets bad outcomes.

So, back in this particular day, if you did something wrong -- cutting off another driver say, or taking advantage of someone’s weakness -- someone might say to you, “Oooohhh. Bad Karma, man.” When it seemed like all my friends were very attracted to these new, old ideas from the East, I remember thinking “Gee, bad karma sounds like just another way to describe sin.” So, whenever I would hear someone say something like, “Watch out, man. You don’t wanna do that! That’ll be bad karma” it sounded an awful lot like my grandmother -- borrowing from St. Paul -- would say to me: “The wages of sin is death.”

So maybe the concept of karma isn’t such a non-Western, non-Christian idea at all. You don’t have to read the Upanishads or ponder Buddhist koans to understand karma. There’s another ancient, mystical sacred text from the East you can study, from which you can reap great spiritual wisdom and insight. It’s the Bible. If you want to gain an understanding of the spiritual concept of karma, you can read Luke chapter 16, verses 19-31, our gospel for today. If there is such a thing as Christian bad karma, then the rich man in our gospel today is the epitome of it.

This particular parable of Jesus is an interesting one. It is the only parable in which a character is given a name. And that character is named Lazarus. Lazarus’s name is derived from the Hebrew name Eleazar which means “God Helps”. In the case of our Larazus, we might say only God helps, because no one else seems to care a whit about him.

There are other little clues in the parable that help set the scene. There is the meaning of Lazarus’s name, and there is the description of the rich man. He dresses in purple and fine linen -- expensive clothes for the time. The wearing of purple in particular is interesting. Purple dye was very expensive and became associated with the rich and the ruling classes. The Romans even regulated who could wear purple, and how much purple, based on their status and wealth.

The rich man is, as Amos puts it in our first reading, at ease in Zion. He feasts sumptuously every day. We can know he has quite a nice house, because we are told that it was at his gate that the sick and starving Lazarus laid. A gate meant a very nice house with a courtyard and the means -- that gate -- to keep out the riff raff. The rich man never pays Lazarus any notice, and never offers to feed him or take him into his home. Bad karma, man. Bad, bad karma. Because in an instant, both Lazarus and the rich man find themselves ‘on the other side’ and in very different places over there. For there Lazarus lounges in the bosom of Abraham, and the rich man suffers the torments of hell.

The rich man begs for some comfort from Lazarus, and when he can’t get it, he asks that Lazarus be sent to warn his loved ones of their impending bad karma. Now here’s the thing about the rich man that makes you feel he deserves what he gets. Here he is in hell, for not reaching out to Lazarus, for not coming to his aid, but does he get that? Not at all. He still wants Lazarus to wait upon him with a cool drink of water, and he wants Lazarus to be his messenger. Dude, figure it out! Father Abraham tells the rich man that what he asks is impossible because there is a great chasm that separates Lazarus from the rich man in the afterlife. But not only in the afterlife -- that chasm existed in their lives as well.

The same chasm exists today. It is the chasm that separates the rich from the poor, the educated from the uneducated, the powerful from the weak. It separates those in our country with adequate health coverage from those who, like Lazarus, suffer sickness without access to the best health care system in human history. But there is a difference between the two chasms that separate Lazarus and the rich man in this life and in the next. The chasm in the next life is unbridgeable, but the chasm is this life is not. The rich man had all the resources he needed to act with charity. He had the wherewithal to make a real difference in the lives of people like Lazarus. And he cannot claim ignorance as an excuse, because the sick and starving Lazarus lay right at his front door. His opportunity for redemption was laid before him, and somehow, for some reason, he missed it.

Now here’s another New Ageism for you. I’ll bet you’ve heard this one before. “The universe puts people in our lives for a reason.” Well, yeah. There lies Lazarus, there lies a pathway to salvation, an opportunity to share the bounteous grace and loving kindness of God, on his own doorstep. But the rich man didn’t see it, he chose to ignore it. The rich man elected to forgo the good karma and failed to reach across the chasm to help one whom God had given him to care for, delivered right to his doorstep. Friends, don’t make the same mistake. Look around you. Pay attention to what and whom God has strewn in your path. Reach across the chasm when you have the chance. Do good. Be generous and ready to share. Share the bounty and grace that God has given you. You likely won’t have to go far to find an opportunity to do so. You might even find an envelope in your bulletin this morning that just might do the trick.

++++++++++++

Now, I can’t close today without making mention of someone that ‘the universe’ has brought into our common life for a very specific and glorious reason. Some time ago, the Reverend Suzanne Toro came amongst us, and in time, she left us with our blessing and our support to pursue the priesthood. She is with us again today -- as a priest, and for the first time, as presider at the Eucharist. Hereafter she will go from us again, to serve God’s people in many places, firstly at Holy Apostles Church, not too far away. Now on occasions such as this, when you’re the preacher at such a momentous event, you need to say a little something about it, I think. And we, as Suzanne’s sponsoring parish, we need to send her out into the church and the world with some warm words, some good counsel, with our blessing. And what do you know, that ancient, mystical sacred text from the East -- the Bible -- has something to offer. An early shaman of this tradition named Paul wrote something that I think we should borrow, as my grandmother used to do. If you’re going to steal, steal from the best. This may sound familiar to you if you were listening when Charles read this morning’s epistle.

We’ll call our version, the Epistle of Christ & Saint Stephen’s to Suzanne:

As for you, woman of God, pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life, to which you were called and for which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses -- yeah, we were there yesterday, some of us, we saw you do it!

In the presence of God, who gives life to all things and of Christ Jesus, we charge you to keep the commandment without spot or blame until the manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he will bring about at the right time. As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches. If they need some convincing of the uncertainty of riches, they won’t need an ancient mystical text. They can pick up, or rather, download any newspaper.

Rather have them set their hopes on God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus storing up for themselves the treasure of good karma for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life. Do that, and you’ll do us proud -- and you will ever abide in our hearts, and have our blessing. + Amen

Sermon for Year C, Proper 18: Practicing What He Preached

2010-09-05T10:10:00.009-04:00

Preached on Sunday, September 5th, 2010 at Christ & Saint Stephen's Church. Lectionary readings this sermon is based on can be found by clicking here.

“Just wait ‘til your father gets home!” I don’t know if kids hear this much anymore. Nowadays, it’s likely that mom and dad get home around the same time these. Or it’s just as likely that mom gets home later than dad, or that, if a family with children is lucky enough for one of them to be a full-time caregiver for the children, that full-time caregiver is just as likely to be dad as mom.

But when I grew up, my mom was the full-time caregiver, a true stay-at-home mom -- so most of the disciplinary tasks fell to her. And for that reason, I hope you’ll pity her and remember her in your prayers -- because my brother and I were a handful. We weren’t really bad overall, but when we put our minds to it, we were capable of being really bad; really, really bad, destructive and rebellious -- hard-headed as my mother would say. And we were well able to fully and consciously disregard whatever stricture had just been laid down by her, both as individuals and as an almost unbeatable team of two.

I won’t recount all our misdeeds as children, but let me give you one scenario from my very early childhood. I was about 4 or 5 and therefore my brother was just 3 or 4. Now, imagine walking into a room full of freaked out 3, 4 and 5 year-olds, some of them crying, a few of them bleeding from the shards of glass from the now shattered ceiling light fixture that was until a few minutes ago at least 6 feet above the heads of the tallest of us and that’ll give you some idea of what my mother was up against. I can’t even remember how we did it, but somehow we did manage to break the ceiling light fixture, raining down broken glass on a room full of playing children, though none of us could reach it. In the end, no one was seriously hurt, and stitches and therefore bragging rights were procured for a few. Punishment was meted out, I’m sure. And as my mother admitted later, a certain grudging respect was won from her by us. She later said, “I learned early on not to put anything past the two of you when you made up your minds not to mind me.”

She developed a repertoire of punishments concocted to fit the crimes. There was the ever popular ‘standing in the corner’ which could go on interminably, especially when she forgot that she’d sent us to the corner, as she admitted later she occasionally did. I can remember standing in the opposite corners of the room with my brother and, in an act of penal insubordination, turning away from the wall to whisper to him, “Is she coming back?” I can remember my brother getting bored enough and perhaps a bit indignant over the length of our sentence to start yelling, “Momma, can we come out of the corner yet???”

Occasionally, certain toys were put on lock-down or placed out of reach in the top of the closets (or so she thought). There was banishment to your room, or depending upon the crime, banishment to the back yard. There was the revocation of TV privileges, a ban on watching that evening’s broadcast of “Combat!” or “Gunsmoke.” There was going to bed early, of course, and the occasional spanking. But of all the punishments my mom pronounced upon our juvenile criminality, the worst one was the most ambiguous. The ne plus ultra of sentences was the dreaded, “Just wait until your father gets home.”

My dad, unfortunately and for the most part undeservedly, got cast in the role of ‘hanging judge’. His punishments could often be much stricter and our attempts at plea-bargains were more likely to go unheeded by him. But really, when I think about it, it was really not so bad having your case transferred to my dad’s court. Because as often as not, Dad would opt for compassion. We’d often find ourselves the beneficiaries of unwonted and unwarranted parole from my dad. He might be strict, but he might also be merciful. He could tow the line, or he could sympathize with us -- as former rambunctious little boy himself. But oh, it could be terrible waiting all afternoon for the circuit judge to come riding into town wondering how severe or how merciful would be his ruling.

My dad’s reputation as arbiter of sin and its punishment was a bit like the Apostle Paul’s. The Apostle Paul is usually thought of as a pretty harsh judge. He makes pronouncements against women, he makes pronouncements against sexuality, both hetero and homo; he tells slaves to obey their masters. He writes quite a few things that seem hard to abide by; some of them don’t jibe with our contemporary sense of what Christian should do or believe. But Paul is also the apostle of mercy and forgiveness. It’s clear from his letters that he loves the people that he, on occasion, must chastise. And his letters are full of examples of him urging us to be as forgiving and merciful to each other as God has been to him and to us.

Paul’s Epistle to his friend Philemon is one such example. We don’t read Philemon very much. In fact, this is the only Sunday in our three-year lectionary cycle that it is read. And that’s because there’s not much of it to read. You’ll notice in your bulletin that the citation for the Epistle reading today is simply Philemon 1-20. No chapter numbers, just verses. That’s because Philemon consists of only one chapter, and we read virtually all of it today. Philemon is basically a note from the Apostle Paul to his friend and fellow Christian Philemon who probably lived at Colossae. And it concerns Philemon’s slave Onesimus who is himself mentioned in Paul’s Epistle to the Colossians. Paul’s is returning Onesimus, a fugitive slave, to his master.

This issue of slavery is an important one -- and this letter of Paul to Philemon was cited by those who favored and those who opposed slavery during the 19th century in this country. Much can be said about Christian culpability in the Atlantic slave trade and the horrors of American chattel slavery. But we should at least note here that slavery in Paul’s day was by in large different from the form of slavery that, to our shame, once was legal in our country in a number of ways. Most importantly, slavery was not tied to race. There were many pathways to manumission in Paul’s day, and some estimates say that more than half of all slaves gained their freedom, if not full Roman citizenship, during their lifetime. They had some rights and gained more throughout the Roman period, including the right to go to court against a harsh master. It was not an easy life by any means, but such was the case for many, slave and free, in the ancient world.

Paul’s letter is to accompany Onesimus upon his return to his master Philemon. The letter seems to indicate that Onesimus has run away from Philemon -- which may well be the reason that he has landed in jail alongside Paul. During his time in jail, Onesimus has been converted to Christianity by Paul, and is now being released. As we’ve noted, slaves did have some rights in the ancient world, but masters, as you can imagine, had many more. In particular, masters had the right to punish slaves that ran away by death.

It’s clear that Paul doesn’t want this to happen -- throughout the short letter, Paul’s message is singular. He urges mercy and forgiveness. Paul urges Philemon to accept Onesimus back into his household without punishment or reproach. And he offers to take upon himself any debt or the consequences of any wrong that Onesimus has committed. He urges Philemon not to look upon his slave not as a slave, separated from him by social status and power and wealth, but rather to look upon him as a brother, and more than that, as a brother in Christ.

This epistle is so unusual for Paul. Look how personal it is, how focused. There aren’t the usual theological statements. There aren’t the usual pronouncements of Paul against licentiousness or greed or ego. There aren’t any deep Christological formulas. There are no grand ecclesiastical conceits or attempts to bring peace between factions in the church. This is just a simple note, urging that mercy be shown to a fugitive slave and fellow Christian.

But what I find so striking about it is that in this letter Paul really practices what he has so often preached. Paul believed that God would not forsake those who boast of God’s mercy. He truly believed that Christ came into the world to save sinners like himself, and that in Christ, all sins were forgiven and all sinners were redeemed. He believed that in Christ’s death all debts were paid, all punishments commuted, and that mercy and grace was offered to all.

And in this letter to Philemon, he offers to take on Onesimus’ transgressions just as he believed Christ had done for himself and for all who believe. And he says to Philemon that in Christ, all of us are bound together as one, whether we are Jew or Greek, male or female, slave or free. And he is urging Philemon to honor that spiritual, that heavenly reality, rather than the worldly rights he may enjoy as Onesimus’ master. This little note, this short epistle urging compassion and mercy says so much about who Paul was, and what Paul believed had been revealed in Christ and what Paul believed had been accomplished in Christ’s death and resurrection.

And in this epistle, we see Paul not just talking the talk, but walking the walk, and he is urging everyone else who, like Philemon and like us, have come to Christ as Paul himself has done, to do the same. In our gospel today, Jesus reminds us of the costs of discipleship -- and cautions us to weigh that cost carefully. And in our reading from Deuteronomy, Moses tells us that the choice is a clear one, to seek after life by walking in the ways of the Lord; or to choose death and adversity.

But of all of our readings today, it is Paul’s epistle to Philemon, this simple, short, poignant note, which shows us the gospel in action. It is Paul the friend of master and slave alike, who shows what it means to be a Christian, what it means to believe with all your heart and all your soul, and all your mind and to put those beliefs into practice.

Would that we, like Paul, might have such an awareness of God’s mercies, that with truly thankful hearts, we might show forth God’s praise, not only with our lips, but in our lives; by giving up our selves to God’s service, and by walking before him, in holiness and righteousness all our days. +Amen.

Sermon for Year C, Proper 16: Widening the Narrow Door

2010-08-22T14:31:00.006-04:00

Preached on Sunday, August 22nd at Christ & Saint Stephen's Church. Lectionary texts this sermon is based on can be found by clicking here.

As I know you know, there are different approaches to the study of the Scriptures. There are different textual approaches, historical, cultural, ethical interpretations. There are different translations of the bible to work from. And that’s something that we often forget. The words we read every Sunday in our worship are translated from the Greek and Hebrew – and translation is hard get right, especially when dealing with ancient texts written in languages that have changed significantly over the centuries.

The questions that arise out of our study of the Scripture are rich and interesting and I believe, it’s important to engage them. The questions themselves can be a boon to our spiritual lives and can deepen our understanding and can strengthen our faith.

But some folks would like us to not ask questions about the Scripture at all –- they’d like us to accept what it says, all of what it says, at face value, in its plainest sense, and believe it unequivocally and pattern our lives according to what it says.

The history of the church is full of examples of the excesses that come of this particular approach. One of my favorites has to do with the Anabaptists in the 16th century in what is now Germany. The Anabaptists are the predecessors of the Mennonites, and they were one of the more radical groups in the early days of the Reformation. One particularly radical sect of Anabaptists was seeking to follow every stricture they could find in the New Testament in ordering their common life. There is that passage in the Acts of the Apostles that describes how all the goods of the members of the early church were held in common and shared equally. Well, our radical Anabaptists friends decided that that should extend to wives as well, so they engaged in what they considered Biblically sanctioned wife-swapping! Let me be quick to add that, as far as I know, the Mennonites are not up to wife-swapping today. I’m pretty sure about that. But you get my point.

Actually, there are two points to be made here. One has to do with interpreting the scripture, and the other has to do with what happens when you leave the well-being of the church exclusively in the hands of the menfolk! Then you get all sorts of shenanigans and goings-on because, “It says it in the Bible!”

Those mislead Anabaptists made the mistake of confusing descriptive texts in the Bible with prescriptive texts. Scripture scholars often look at passages in the Bible and try to discern whether they were meant to be prescriptive or descriptive. That is to say, is a particular passage or chapter or book of the Bible meant to describe what happened or what was believed to have happened -- or is it meant to prescribe certain behavior to those it was written for? And what about the intended audience? Should the Galatians have to do all that Paul tells the Corinthians to do? After all, he wrote separate letters to both communities. Were they even supposed to be reading each other’s mail? Should we be reading their mail? And what about those of us who read Scripture now? We live thousands of years after the Scriptures were written. Is everything in it applicable to our lives?

Our gospel reading today from Luke has been seen by some as descriptive. It talks about some being allowed into the kingdom of heaven, and others being shut out. It describes foreigners welcomed at the heavenly banquet while the locals go hungry. Some who have seen this passage as descriptive have interpreted it to say that Gentiles will be welcomed into heaven and that our ancestors in the faith, the Jews, will be shut out.

That’s a particularly ignominious and nasty road to go down. That kind of biblical interpretation has led to all sorts of Christian super-secessionism and Christian anti-Semitism. By their fruits you shall know them, and what I know of that kind of interpretation and the actions it has led to tell me that such is not the real meaning, the true teaching of Jesus.

But if we look at the passage prescriptively, the meaning changes. And this is clearly a prescriptive passage. In it Jesus tells us to do something quite specific. Jesus says that we should all make an effort to ‘enter through the narrow door’. The outcome of the eschatological questions is up in the air. Those who seem to enjoy great privilege and prestige may find themselves bereft of those advantages and those with much less may find themselves with much, much more in the kingdom of God. In fact, the entire passage seems to tell us that there is a peril in thinking of ourselves or anyone else as being more favored or above others. What we should be more concerned with is striving to enter through the narrow door. But in this passage, Jesus doesn’t say specifically what it takes to get through that narrow door.

++++++++++++++++++

Denton and I recently returned from a long drive that stretched almost the entire length of our country. And during our drive, I noticed a billboard along a highway in Alabama. It was huge, and stark, a white background with very large black letters; and it said, “Where will you spend..” and then in even larger letters, all capitals, it read, “Eternity”!

Clearly, for some folks, this is a chief concern. Lots of preaching and lots of proselytizing goes into who will be in heaven and who will not, lots of Biblical interpretation -- some of it scurrilous – is built around this question, as we have seen. But it’s not just a concern of our time and place, it was a concern in Jesus’ day as well. It is the chief concern for the questioner in our gospel reading today. Jesus’ admonition to “strive to enter through the narrow door” is given in response to someone who asks, “Lord, will only a few be saved?”

But when I saw that billboard along the side of the highway, it occurred to me that for many the question is not where will they spend eternity, but rather where will they spend the night. For the homeless in our city, this is a more pressing question. For the survivors of the floods in Pakistan and the earthquake in Haiti, where will they spend tonight is a more pressing, more immediate matter, than where they will spend eternity.

Should we really be so preoccupied with whether seats are reserved for us at the heavenly banquet in eternity when so many people, some far away, and others close at

hand, will go to bed hungry tonight, that is, if they have anywhere to go to bed at all?

Maybe the narrow door is not just the door to heaven, but it is the door to our hearts, the door to our consciences. Maybe it’s the door to our churches and our institutions, the door to our country. Maybe it’s the door that leads to a new home for a homeless family, or the door to college through which the first generation of an immigrant family passes. Maybe it’s the door to the marriage license bureau, maybe it’s the door to the real estate that abuts the site of the World Trade Center.

And maybe we make the narrow door to heaven a little wider for ourselves when we make those other doors wider – when we make the narrow doors to equal opportunity, the narrow doors to justice, the narrow doors to equality, the narrow doors to healthcare, a bit wider.

Maybe we make the narrow door that leads to the heavenly banquet a bit wider when we make sure that the narrow door to our Undercroft where Mary Cooper distributes our Brown Bag lunches each day is never closed to those who so desperately need what we offer there.

Who’s on the other side of the narrow door to heaven is a mystery, one that is known only to God. It’s who is having the doors of this world slammed in their faces that should be our concern as Christians. I think when we do what we can to open and to widen those doors in our nation, in our world, in our own time, then we’ll find the door to eternity isn’t quite so narrow after all. Amen+

Sermon for Year C, Proper 15: "Keeping It Real"

2010-08-15T14:18:00.001-04:00

Preached on Sunday, August 15th at Christ & Saint Stephen's Church. Lectionary texts this sermon is based on can be found by clicking here.

“Keeping It Real”

Well if we can say anything about our readings this week, we can say that this is God “keeping it real” as we say up in my Harlem neighborhood. Lest we forget the name of the Lord, or forget who God is, lest we try to simplify God, and edit God down to an idea or image that we find more palatable, this set of readings is here to remind us that we do so at our peril.

But who God is, who God really is, is hard to understand, hard to decipher, isn’t it? There’s the mystery part to contend with first of all. We know that the awesome power and majesty and love and omnipotence of the Almighty God is more, much more than we can fathom, more than we can comprehend, more than we can describe with human words.

Last year, when I was preparing for our Adult Ed forum on the history of the feast of Christ the King, my research entailed reading papal bulls and encyclicals– not something I often do. In the introduction to one such papal encyclical, Pius XI wrote, “From the very hour when in the inscrutable designs of God, We though unworthy, were elevated to this Chair of Truth and Love…” Of course, rather than ponder the meaning of ‘inscrutable’ I simply Googled it and found that it means ‘difficult or impossible to comprehend.” The inscrutable designs of God -- the inscrutable God. Many have described the designs of God as inscrutable, and not just when they are listing the more infamous occupants of the see of St. Peter -- but God is inscrutable in many other ways too.

So, in trying to answer the question “Who is God” we have the mystery of God to contend with, and then we have our own deepest desires for God, for a particular kind of God, and our own images of what that God should be to contend with as well.

We all have our images of God. The old guy with the white beard who will be for us the most benevolent, the most grandfatherly, of fathers – that’s a popular one, isn’t it? And even if we’ve developed enough spiritually to have a more evolved image of God, chances are the old guy with the beard is where we started, what we reacted against -- and chances are he lurks around a bit no matter how we try to move past him.

But stronger than our images of God are our expectations of God. We expect God to be good, don’t’ we? God wants what is good for us and those we love, doesn’t he? God hears and heeds our prayers. God is for us, like us, on our side, right?

But as we know, these expectations, which are, in a sense, really requirements of God, are often not met, not fulfilled. God does let bad things happen. God does not give us all that we pray for. God doesn’t always come when we call. God does not keep us from all harm and every hurt. God, on occasion, lets us down.

And when God lets us down, we are likely to become disillusioned. And we think of that as a bad thing, to be disillusioned. But Episcopal priest and noted preacher Barbara Brown Taylor thinks that disillusionment might not be such a bad thing after all. In her book, “The Preaching Life”, Taylor writes, “Disillusionment is the loss of illusion -- about ourselves, about the world, about God –- and while it is almost always painful, it is not a bad thing to lose the lies we have mistaken for the truth… (If) we review our requirements of God… (we come to) recognize them as our own fictions, our own frail shelters against the vast night sky. Disillusioned, we find out what is not true and are set free to seek what is – if we dare… Every time God declines to meet my expectations, another of my idols is exposed. Another curtain is drawn back so that I can see what I have propped up in God’s place…” (p. 8-9)

But when we lose our illusions of and about God, then we are left with the same old, now almost tiresome question: Who is God? That is, of course, not a question that a single sermon can answer, but rather the question of a lifetime of study and prayer and devotion. But try to answer it we most certainly should. And sometimes it is better to try to answer this question in both positive and negative terms: What and who is God; and what and who is God not?

From our reading this morning from Jeremiah, we learn that God is omnipotent, that there is no where we can hide, and no thing we can keep from his gaze. Now Elijah found God on the mountain of Horeb, not in the fierce wind and not in the earthquake but in the ‘still small voice’. Yet Jeremiah finds that God is also one that speaks with words like fire, words like a hammer that can break a rock into pieces. No ‘still small voice’ could do that.

In our reading from Hebrews, we learn that God is a disciplinarian, one who sets for us trials and tasks and teaches us with what might appear to be – at times – quite harsh tactics, hard lessons, what might be called a kind of ‘tough love’. Contrast this Teacher God with the words of Jesus from Matthew’s chapter 11, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." It’s time to register for school here in New York City, and given a choice, I think I know which teacher I’d sign up for classes with. I think I’d sign up for the one whose ‘burden is light’; sounds like a lot less homework.

And in our gospel reading from Luke, we hear Jesus, the so-called Prince of Peace, proclaim quite boldly that he has not come to bring peace, but rather division – that he has come to bring fire to the earth and to set us against each other, to sow conflict, even heartbreak, within the bosom of our families. Now contrast this fellow with the Jesus who says in John Chapter 14, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you… Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”

+++++++++++++++

Bet they didn’t teach you this scary stuff in Sunday School, did they? I don’t think so, and that’s because this is God for grown-ups. This is God ‘keeping it real”, the real God for the real world.

Now, you might ask yourself, why on this lovely August day, when the heat has finally broken and the world seems a little kinder and more hospitable place, why, you might ask, am I standing in this pulpit with promises of disappointment and disillusionment rather prophecies of peace and prosperity; why am I warning of conflict rather than preaching comfort?

Well, these might not seem to be words of comfort, but I want them to be. I want them to be a reminder to you that disillusionment and disappointment, division and conflict, hard times and broken hearts are part of this earthly life. And they are part of the process that is the spiritual life, part of our progress through this life into the next. And the challenges and the losses and disappointments and broken hearts are not the end, they are never the end.

Across the street at Lincoln Center, they might tell you that it ain’t over till the fat lady sings. Well, here in this place, we say that it ain’t over til you hear the angels sing. Our trials and tasks are not the end. They are part of the journey, but they are not the end. As our reading from Hebrews tells us, Jesus, our example of the godly life endured the pain and shame of the cross for the sake of the joy that lay beyond it. The end is in God and the end is in glory, and peace and comfort and great joy.

Now, we’ve left a big question unanswered, haven’t we? Who is God, after all? Sometimes all we can know of God is what God is not. If God doesn’t come when we call, we can know that God is not a minion to be ordered about by the likes of us. When God doesn’t fix our problems, then we can know that God isn’t always a fixer. When God doesn’t quash our enemies, then we can know that God isn’t a partisan. And when the Yankees loose, we can know that God isn’t a pitching coach or a batting coach – much as we wish he were.

As to who God is, who God really is… well, that will take some more investigation. We’ll have to weather our storms and triumphs alike and keep seeking after God, if we dare. And if we dare, we’ll know times of peace and times of discord. We’ll learn easy lessons and hard ones. We’ll hear the harsh sound of God’s condemnation from time to time, and we’ll here the still small voice of the God of comfort. We’ll have to keep coming back to hear the word of God, and to taste and see God around this table. It’s a holy process, fraught with trials and pitfalls as well as blessings; it comes with disappointments and struggles as well as rewards, and the only aspect of it all that we can be sure of along the way is how it ends, for we know that it ends is glory -- when we hear the angels sing. Amen+

Homily for Year C, Proper 12: Teach Me To Pray

2010-07-25T10:12:00.005-04:00

Preached on Sunday, July 26th at Christ & Saint Stephen's Church. Lectionary readings this sermon is based on can be found here.

In our gospel reading today, Jesus teaches us to pray what we have come to call the Lord’s Prayer. We recite the Lord’s Prayer so often, as a matter of rote, and I don’t know that we always hear all that’s in the prayer. In a sense, familiarity has bred ignorance of what the prayer has to say. Perhaps this centuries old formula still has something to teach us about how to approach God in prayer in a truly intimate way.

“Father, hallowed be your name”: Being 21st century Christians rather than 1st century Jews, we miss some of the tension in this one statement. For Jews, the actual name of God is the holiest of names, the holiest of words, and is therefore unutterable. The common form of address in prayer was “adonai” which translates to “my lord”. But here, Jesus is telling us to call God -- to name God -- as father. In the Gospel sources, this term was probably the Aramaic “Abba” which translates as “Daddy” or “Papa”. We’re invited to address God using one of our first words. It couldn’t be more unexpected if the Prince of Wales was giving us permission to address his all-powerful parent as “Liz”. Jesus quickly adds “hallowed be your name;” the old form coupled with the new. He offers innovation while preserving tradition. He reforms while maintaining a reverence for that which is ancient practice. Obviously, Jesus was, in fact, an Anglican.

“Your kingdom come”: This would have been a powerful statement for 1st century listeners in Palestine. After years of occupation by a brutal, blasphemous foreign power, to call for ‘God’s kingdom to come’ would sound like a battle cry against the injustice heaped on by the occupiers. Those of us who believe in and profess Gospel values know that the world is not run by those values. For us to call for ‘God’s kingdom to come’ is for us to call for justice and peace, for equality of rights and resources; it is to pray for “the Word” to become our flesh, our world. The 17th century Anglican Bishop Jeremy Taylor said “Whatsoever we beg of God, let us also work for it.” ‘Your kingdom come is both a call to God, and a reminder to us that we are to help bring the kingdom to those who hunger and thirst for it.

“Give us each day our daily bread”: Jesus’s listeners would have heard the echo in his words of the miracle of the manna from heaven that the Israelites ate on the flight out of Egypt. Jesus is reminding us that “all things come of thee, oh Lord,” to quote the Prayer Book, while at the same time saying that it is our right to ask -- even demand -- of God whatever we need. There are many things that sustain us: unconditional love, companionship, security, freedom from fear, peace, acceptance. Yet, if we are to ask God for what we need, we’d best uncover what it is that we truly need. Some time in reflection before praying this petition will likely not yield requests for a new SUV or bike or ball gown. What is it that you really need? What is it that will truly sustain you? God wants to know.

“Forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us”: Jesus knows the connectedness between forgiveness of others and self-forgiveness. In the South, there’s a saying: “Be careful who you point your finger at, you’ll find more fingers pointing back at yourself.” The things we find most irritating, even unforgivable, in others are often our own, sometimes unacknowledged, shortcomings. I think the kind of forgiveness Jesus is talking about and that God offers is more than remission of guilt. It is a healing of the woundedness that sin is borne out of in ourselves and in others. To be forgiven and to forgive means that we will be brought into a deeper awareness of our true selves -- it gives us a more intimate knowledge of the humanity of others, which is none other than our own humanity, flawed yet forgiven.

“Bring us not to the time of trial”: In our reading from Genesis this morning, Abraham prays and prays and prays to God to preserve the righteous in the unrighteous city of Sodom. We learn from Abraham that our prayers matter, that our prayers are efficacious. The last time I preached on this text was in 2004, and at that time, in my office in the city, we’re updating our emergency phone list and making sure everyone has a ‘go bag’ at his or her desk, with some water, cookies, a battery powered radio, comfortable shoes. Because the anniversary of September 11th was just around the corner and the Republicans were about to hold their convention in New York. I expect another time of trial; but I will not stop praying that such trials be not visited upon any of us ever again.

I think the late 16th century French bishop Francois Fenelon understood the intimacy God is calling us to in prayer -- and the difficulty that lies in approaching that intimacy. Fenelon wrote an almost perfect restatement of the Lord’s Prayer, which seems to come more out of our perspective.

Lord, I don't know what I ought to ask of you. You alone know what I need. You love me better than I know how to love myself. O Father, give to me, your child, that which I don't know how to ask... I would have no other wish than to do your will. Teach me to pray. Pray yourself in me.

+Amen

Sermon for Year C, Proper 11: "Mary and Martha, Mattie and Rose"

2010-07-17T19:45:00.012-04:00

Preached on Sunday, July 18th, 2010 at Christ & Saint Stephen's Church. Lectionary readings this sermon is based on can by found by clicking here.

Like many young couples with small children, my parents conducted what are often very delicate intra-family negotiations regarding holidays. Where would we go and what would we do on which holidays? The end result in my family was that we spent Christmas Eve with my mother’s side of the family. And on Thanksgiving, we joined my father’s side of the family on my grandfather’s farm in Mississippi.

As you can imagine, giving thanks for all that God has blessed us with was an especially numinous experience on a farm where the hay was in, and the cotton had been picked and baled, and the brown stubble of dying cornstalks in the fields and the groaning shelves of home-canned preserves gave ample evidence of God’s bounty.

My dad was one of 9 children, six boys and three girls. I have more than 25 first cousins on that side of the family. There was always a big crowd for Thanksgiving, and since a meal is the focus of that holiday, that meant a very big meal indeed.

The meal was the purview of the women of the family: my grandmother and the nine women who were my dad’s sisters and sisters-in-law. Our cousin Ora Mae and a few others might be among their number as well. Phone calls were exchanged as November wore on. Who would make the turkeys? Did we want a ham as well? Who would make the dressing? Who would bring the sweet potatoes and the other side dishes? My mom usually baked a pecan pie or two – they were her specialty. And my brother and I were given strict instructions not to mess up those pies – not to tump them over -- as they rode between us on the back seat during the two hour drive from Memphis to my grandfather’s farm.

With so many folks in attendance – as many as 50 if everyone made it that year – the Thanksgiving meal was daunting. But the Collins women seemed to pull it off without a hitch every year. There was always plenty to eat – and enough left over to take some turkey and dressing home afterwards. I can remember times when the kitchen would be filled with the voices of those dozen women talking, coordinating the warming up of casseroles, and the slicing of the turkey, and the pouring of dozens of glasses of sweet tea.

And, of course, after everyone had eaten comes the equally daunting task of cleaning up and washing the dishes. As the women regrouped in the kitchen to get the clean-up started -- you’d hear their voices raised in cackles and snorts of laughter as the ‘carrying on’ (as we call it down South) got a little out of hand. The Collins women seemed to have as much fun cleaning up as they did putting on the big Thanksgiving meal. They were a good humored group of women and there was real affection between them. They seemed to really enjoy this annual undertaking -- or at least they enjoyed each other enough to make this yearly duty a pleasure as well.

I remember one Thanksgiving when my Aunt Rosemary didn’t join her sisters-in-law right away when they retreated to the kitchen to clean up. She remained behind in the den with the menfolk who were telling stories and ‘carrying on’ themselves over their depleted TV trays. But after just a few minutes of sloughing off her duties, Aunt Rosemary said, “I’ve got to get in there and help those women clean up or they won’t let me come back next year!” I remember my Aunt Mattie saying, “Stay in there, Rose, and talk! We’ve got this under control!” But of course, Aunt Rosemary did no such thing. Off she went to take her place at the sink or with the dry towel – to take her place alongside the other women that she loved and valued, and with whom she could be sure of a good time.

++++++++++++++

Our gospel story this morning from Luke – the story of Mary and Martha of Bethany – has been interpreted in many ways. Mary has been seen as an exemplar of the contemplative life, and Martha as a manifestation of the active life. Mary, the human being, receives Jesus’ approbation over and against Martha, the “human doing.”

The Protestant reformers in the 16th century saw this story as Scriptural license for their attacks on works righteousness and as an endorsement of their tenant of justification by faith alone.

Feminist critics have seen this passage in Scripture as a challenge to traditional gender roles. Mary sits at Jesus’ feet, in the position of the student-disciple, attentive to the Rabbi’s words. Thus, Mary takes on what is traditionally a man’s role, that of disciple, and this clearly meets with Jesus’ approval.

That interpretation fits well with other female disciples that Luke has introduced us to earlier in his gospel Luke tells us that women were among those travelling with Jesus and the Twelve “throughout the cities and villages proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God.” (Luke 8:1-3) Luke names three of these women -- Mary Magdalene, Susanna and Joanna -- and tells us that they weren’t just fellow sojourners, but they were also funders of this evangelistic undertaking, paying the band’s travel expenses out of their own pockets.

Perhaps after the encounter in our gospel reading today, Mary joined them on the road, traveling with Mary Magdalene, Susanna, Joanna and the others to proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God alongside Jesus himself. And if, in fact, Mary joined Jesus on the road, I imagine there might have come a time or two when she missed her somewhat cantankerous sister Martha. And I imagine Mary might have on occasion looked back with longing to the home and hearth she’d tended with her sister. Perhaps a sisterly bond between Mary and Susanna and Joanna had sprung up as they travelled -- and Mary didn’t miss home and hearth at all. Or maybe along the road Mary remembered less contentious times in the kitchen with Martha and missed the camaraderie and companionship they shared there.

++++++++++++++

You’ll recall in last week’s gospel, a lawyer asks Jesus, “Lord, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” (Lk 10:25). The answer is that you should love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength and with all your mind; and that you should love your neighbor as yourself. (Lk 10: 27-28) Last week, the Good Samaritan was given as the prime example of one who loves his neighbor. And just a few verses later, in our gospel for today, Mary is shown as a prime example of one who loves God. These two exemplify loving our God and our neighbor and they are the perfect illustration of an earlier passage from Luke’s gospel. In chapter 8, Jesus speaks of those who hear the word of God and do it (8:21). Certainly in Mary and the Samaritan, we see perfect paradigms of hearing God’s word and doing it.

Mary and the Samaritan may be high on Jesus’ list, but not so with everyone else. As we’ve seen, Martha is clearly miffed at her sister Mary. And we can imagine, that after years of animosity between Samaritan and Jew in ancient Palestine, if the Good Samaritan went home and told of his good deed, it’s likely that his fellow Samaritans would have been just as disapproving of him as Martha is of Mary.

++++++++++++++

Following God’s call can lead us to do things that are outside the norm, beyond our experience, outside our comfort zone, maybe outside our society’s comfort zone, maybe outside the comfort zone of our fellow Anglicans. God’s call can lead us to do things that others consider transgressive, even disloyal. Not only are we called into new places, perhaps into new roles, but sometimes we must leave behind people and places we know and are familiar with. Sometimes we’re asked to lay aside attitudes and prejudices that help us feel safe and secure and superior to others.

Sometimes I think that the best way to know if what you are doing is in fact what God would have you do, is to take stock of your level of discomfort. Does it feel a little scary? Is it going to be a challenge? Are you having to put aside some well worn behaviors and some facile opinions? Is what you’re undertaking a little anxiety provoking?

I had a friend years ago who acted as a sponsor to those who were newly sober in Alcoholics Anonymous. It was his job to field questions and offer guidance and support to newcomers in AA. He had one sponsee who would often call him feeling overwrought by the challenges of sober life. My friend would try to talk his sponsee down a bit and tell him, “It’s OK. Don’t worry. Nothing’s wrong, you’re just feeling uncomfortable being sober in your surroundings, in your day to day life. But no one ever died from uncomfortability. Just hang in there.” After hearing these wise words more than a few times, his sponsee replied, “Well, I guess if I could just get comfortable with being uncomfortable, I’d have this whole sobriety thing licked!” And of course, he was exactly right.

+++++++++++++

If we are to hear the word of God and do it, we’re going to be challenged, we going to feel uncomfortable from time to time. And as I probably don’t have to tell you, we’ll encounter a Martha or two along the way -- someone to take us to task for daring to color outside the lines. But don’t let the Marthas stop you, and don’t let a little uncomfortability stop you either. Hear God’s word, and do it. And get comfortable with feeling uncomfortable from time to time. It won’t kill you – far from it. In fact, it just might be your pathway to eternal life. Amen+