Sermon August 9, 2015

We've been talking a lot about bread lately.  This is the third passage from John in so many weeks in which Jesus says, "I am the Bread of Life."  So I thought, for variety's sake, I'd switch metaphors today and talk about light.  In particular I did some research on the incandescent light bulb.

 

"An incandescent light produces light with a wire filament heated to a high temperature by an electric current passing through it until it glows.  The hot filament is protected from oxidation with a glass bulb filled with inert gas or evacuated."  Hm. What does that mean?  Another word for it is filament evaporation. Basically the idea is to prevent the filament from burning up completely for as long a possible.  That black stuff on a bulb when it burns out are deposits from the filament, like smoke from a fire, and the gas in the bulb which is nonreactive unlike oxygen helps to slow the process down.  All the science that has gone into light bulbs over the years, using different materials for the filament, coiling the filament, different gases in the bulb, all has been about trying to figure out how to prolong the life of the bulb so that the tiny fragile filament can last as long as possible with 100 watts of electricity constantly coursing through causing it to glow white hot.

 

We too are lights to the world with an infinite energy of the Holy Spirit coursing through our fragile bodies and making us glow a bit as well.   And it is a wonder that we too don't burn out quickly ourselves.  Much of spirituality and spiritual practice actually also is about how to live in this life of the Spirit.  How do we live with this eternal flame of the Spirit in our finite bodies?  Everything of course is important to this equation, and we try to figure out how to balance work and play, get rest and recreation, eat right and get plenty of exercise.  We learn to pray and study scripture, be nurtured in the faith by one another and mentors in the faith.  We seek to put away some of those negative traits and practice the fruits of the Spirit that Paul lists, summed up in Ephesians with the word, tenderhearted.

 

But the truth is that this doesn't necessarily led to a long life on this earth.  Some of our most famous saints of the church, those shining examples have been more like shooting stars than consistently orbiting planetary lights in the heavens. There are many historical figures who died too early, whose light was extinguished far too soon, many who we say went out with a blaze of glory.

 

Joan of Arc died in 1431, at 19.  Tried for heresy and burned at the stake by the English, she was canonized as a saint 500 years later.  As a teenager she was leading the whole French army against the English convinced that God had called her to this task, in intense visions ordering her to drive out the English from France.

 

St Thérèse of Lisieux a modern saint who died in 1897 was just 15 when she asked the Pope for special permission to enter a convent early. She died at just 23, but not before writing her spiritual journey down at the direction of her superior.  This work of intensity and simplicity describing her devotion and practice in the face of a prolonged illness from which she suffered became a best-seller.  She called her way, "The Little Way."

 

Of course there are all sorts of shooting stars.  Billy the Kid, Cattle rustler, gambler, outlaw, died in 1881, at 21, shot by a sheriff.  Orphaned at 14; killed his first man at 18.   Lots of artists produced their amazing burst of work early in life and died young.   Mozart 35, Chopin 39 Schubert 31, Jimi Hendrix 27.  Anne Frank died in 1945 when she was 15 years old in a Nazi prison camp but not before writing her diary.  The profoundly simple musing of little girl under extraordinary circumstance are a lasting testament to her short life.

 

Martin Luther King Jr. was 39.  John and Robert Kennedy.  There was a song about the three of them in the 60's.  "Anybody here seen my old friend . . . can you tell me where he's gone.  He freed a lot of people but it seems The Good they Die Young." Martin Luther King Jr said,  "I like everyone want to live a long life.  Longevity has its place."  But he was taken so young.

 

Jesus of course was only 33.  Is this the only course for the faithful lights of the world?  To burn out quickly under the intensity of the Spirit within.  We are inspired by these lights, we think of them as heroes, and they are for us models of life we are called to live.  But none of us want this really for our children.  And what do we do when we get into our 50's, 60's, 70's and 80's!  What about the rest of us? What does it mean to be faithful if we are not going to just burn out quickly but last a while longer here on this earth.  Can we still be lights to the world, can we still be heroes ourselves?

 

Theologian Stanley Hauerwas explores this idea of the heroic life as a model for our Christian life.  But he sees profound heroism not just in the grand and glorious blazing light witness that makes the headlines or the history books, but rather in the steadfastness of raising a family, caring for children, holding down a job, caring for the community around us, and in being a faith community day in and day out.  In his book Community of Character and other books he talks about the Christian life as the context in which we heroically live out the classic virtues. 

 

Two virtues he emphasizes are Patience and Courage.  He talks about the patience that is learned for example in persevering a long illness, but how we model this patience, which is a central character of God, in all we do.  We face all the challenges of our lives with a courage to persevere.  We are the ones who live through the challenges of raising children and as children the long journey of becoming and adult.  We are the ones who go to work each day and deal with endless challenges in our career, but also in our attempt to be good and decent people in the face of so much that comes our way.  We are the ones who do indeed know intimately the pain of chronic illness, the loss of loved ones.  We are endlessly learning to persevere when our dreams and plans for our own lives, or for what we hope for our community are thwarted again and again.  We are the ones who do little kindness day in and day out, give of our time, talents and treasures, all the time, for the hope of a better world in the face of incredible odds.  And we are one who know the joy of being in love, of seeing our children succeed, of crossing a major milestone in our lives, and of the comfort and support we know from one another regardless of what happens.  In so living our lives, day in and day out, we burning brightly with the Love of God.

 

Joseph Campbell wrote about the motif of the hero's journey in literature.  A pattern that is repeated again and again throughout mythology, literature and is exemplified also in our own lives.  Here's how the hero's journey goes.  The hero is living out his or her life in their very Ordinary World when they receive a Call to Adventure.  At first the hero is Reluctant, makes excuses for why he can't follow this call or sees himself unworthy.  But then something happens and she Crosses the First Threshold into a Special World in which she is answering the call.  This Special world need not be anything other than the ordinary world but suddenly it is imbued with a new light, a new glow, seems completely different.  Maybe a new context or circumstance.  Maybe it is a new marriage, or becoming a parent, or going to school for the first time, or entering a new and unfamiliar community.  Here in this Special World the hero encounters Tests, all sorts of challenges.  The hero meets new Mentors who guide him, forms Alliances and discovers also new Enemies.  Then the hero reaches the Dark Moment, the Innermost Cave (as it is often depicted in stories) where she endures the Supreme Ordeal, where she faces her ultimate fear, the ultimate test of faith.  Here that the hero's courage is put to the ultimate test.  And though often it seems that the hero is about to die under the pressure of this test, he nevertheless conquers.  It may or may not be success in the way we often define, it but nevertheless she learns some critical valuable lesson.  He Seizes the Sword (like Arthur taking the sword from the stone), or some treasure, some secret potion he needs, symbolizing what he has learned and gained from this ordeal. Then she starts the journey on the Road Back to her world.  Sometimes also on this journey home he is pursued by dangers having to continually fight off doubts about what he has learned.  But nevertheless the hero is Resurrected and transformed by this experience.  He Returns to his ordinary world with a treasure, a boon, some Elixir to benefit his world.  For this journey of the hero is not just about her own transformation, but she is contributing in her own personal journey to the transformation of the world.

 

I want you to see your lives fitting into this this pattern. You are all heroes on a hero's journey for the sake of the world.  We all, in one way or another, have experienced death and resurrection, we all fight battles and learn lessons and contribute to the world around us out of what we have learned. We are all lights to the world and this is how that light burns in us.  As we are willing to encounter mystery, cross the threshold into new adventure, overcome whatever we are facing and learn lessons, and bring back rewards and treasures for the whole world to benefit.

 

Ultimately, it is not really about figuring out a way to preserve the filament in the light bulb. No matter all the science we can muster, all the ways we seek balance, all the "figuring out" we try to do - it is not about how to try to cheat death and make our lives last forever or as long as possible.  It is not about whether we burn out quickly or last into our old age.  It is about, how ever long our lives last, however big or small we think our lives are, that we know ourselves to be on this hero's journey.  That we are following in all we do our Lord Jesus Christ in the way of Love.  As Paul says, being imitators of God as beloved children.  As I say every Sunday at the offering.  Walk in Love as Christ Loved us and gave himself and offering and a sacrifice to God.

 

Terese of Liseux says it this way:

 

"I will seek out a means of getting to Heaven by a little way—very short and very straight, a little way that is wholly new. We live in an age of inventions; nowadays the rich need not trouble to climb the stairs, they have lifts instead. Well, I mean to try and find a lift by which I may be raised unto God, for I am too tiny to climb the steep stairway of perfection. [...] Thine Arms, then, O Jesus, are the lift which must raise me up even unto Heaven. To get there I need not grow (I need not get bigger or grander); on the contrary, I must remain little, I must become still less."

 

Jesus it is your arms that lift me up, you that keep my little light shining. 

 

AMEN.

First Sunday of Advent, Nov 30, 2014

Andy Goldsworthy is a British sculptor living in Scotland.  He does huge, about shoulder high, stone eggs that he places in various landscapes:  in the mountains, in pastures, by the ocean.  David and Belinda Bell used a video of Andy in their grief workshop that they did at Heritage the other day. 

During the construction of one of his eggs on a beach he is meticulously layering flat pieces of shale, creating round layers, one on top of the other in a precarious balance.  He’s reached about knee high with layers going further and further out making the base of the egg when they collapse all of the sudden.  The whole thing first caves into the center, then caves out and it is completely destroyed. 

There was a gasp in the room at the workshop as everyone felt viscerally this loss of all that work.  It collapsed four times before Andy was able to complete the work, and each time he was visibly devastated, but also he spoke of how each time he learned something about the stone, understood it more, but he said, frustrated and almost in tears, “I guess I don’t understand it well enough yet.”

Another completed statute, same egg shape, sat in a pasture with cattle grazing around it.  One cow came up alongside and began using it as a scratching pole.  It struck me how strong and sturdy the stone was even though watching it being built, it seemed so precarious, in such a delicate balance.  The many collapses, the precarious balance, the learning that took place with each moment of grief and loss - all of this was still there contained within the statute, a part of its beauty, and yet as the result of all those losses it was now a powerful fortitude, a quiet strength.  And the animals rested against it.

Today our passages for this First Sunday of Advent are about revelation.  Isaiah begins, “Oh that you would tear open the heavens and come down!”  This is the cry of all who are oppressed, who wait for justice as their patience wears thin, as their hopes are dashed again and again, as their dreams go unfulfilled.  They wait for revelation of a God who is hidden.  1^st Corinthians, a bit more optimistic, has Paul thankful for his fellow Christians who reveal to him their many gifts and graces from God, as they too wait for the revelation of Jesus Christ.  Then in our Gospel we are back to more signs in heaven and on earth that accompany the revelation of Christ, and we are told to read the signs of the times.

Revelation.  What is it that is being revealed to us?  And how are we to see this revelation?  How are we able to see with new eyes what is being revealed to us? To read the signs all around us and to catch a glimpse of what is really going on.

Isaiah speaks of a God who is hidden, who seems to have turned his back on his people.  The passage is written in the plural we, and it feels like a whole people speaking.  They see their enemies all around them and they long for the days of old to come again when God showed his mighty power.  Then God did awesome deeds and made the mountains quaked.  Then they wonder what they have done wrong to make him so angry and they can see nothing that is good in the times they face.   All have become unclean like filthy cloth, they say.  They use this word “all” several times, a pervasive darkness is all they can see now.  Whatever they once thought they were has been blown away in the wind like a leaf.  Whatever they once knew has collapsed before their eyes like so many precarious rocks piled one on top of other. 

I think now of the eruption of violence over the grand jury decision in Ferguson.   The Episcopal Church has put out an Advent study available online about this.  Whoever we thought we were as a people, whatever progress we thought we might have made seems to go up in smoke in an instant in the flames that burned that night.  There and in cities across the country.   We all look at these events in horror, those of us who are paying attention.  Some of us continue to live in denial, imaging that these are other people’s problems and we distance ourselves.  For some of us our first thought is to blame the violent protestors who have used this moment as an excuse to destroy.  And we can see no further than the fear we have of the other we cannot begin to understand. 

Others of us look deeper and see the insidious system of racism and oppression that is pervasive in our country regardless of the facts of this particular case.  Though there is no official national database of deaths by police shooting, the numbers are estimated as high as 1000 a year, based on compiled news reports.  In the flames of fire and protest we see that evil laid bare before us, and we wonder if this violence is beyond us to end, if these tensions are ultimately irreconcilable and our hearts are filled with grief and despair.

Others look even deeper.   We say with Isaiah. “Yet.”  We use that word – “Yet,” even so, despite what we see with our eyes, we nevertheless see something else, something else is revealed to us coming to us through our fear and despair.  We say, “Yet, O Lord, you are our Father, we are the clay, and you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.  Do not be exceedingly angry, O Lord, and do not remember iniquity forever.  Now consider, we are all your people.”

“We are all your people.”  Words spoken by the prophet to a God who has seemed to turn away.  But really a revelation in itself, a new way of seeing the world and all who live in it.  We are, each of us, a part of one family, under one God, we are all works of the Creator’s hand.  “We are all your people,” all of us.  This is a cry that goes up from the depth of our being that reveals to us what is at the heart of existence.   Each and every one of us is created in the image of God.  Each and every one of us individually a revelation, and together as a whole people, all of us revealing the divine.  Just as God is one so are we one. 
 
The police officer pulling the trigger again and again, the young man who loses his life in the actions that follow that split second decision, actions that cannot be reversed, that seem to be unstoppable, that go on and on and on - these two men are brothers.   “We are all your people.”    Each of these 1000 tragedies around the country that rock individuals, families and communities with horrible grief and seemingly irreconcilable conflict. Each of these tragedies has happened to members of our family, our brothers and sisters.   “We are all your people.”  This is the revelation we are waiting for, to be able to see enemies as our family.  To be able to see the face of God in the stranger, in those whom we most fear, even the most angry, the most violent.  “We are all your people.” To be able to see the Coming of the Lord in the most horrible places in the world, in the most hopeless times.  To see these times and places especially as moments of revelation in which God is revealed.  It which it is revealed to us, that “We are all your people.”

Jesus says, learn a lesson from the fig tree.  When the branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves you know the summer is near.  This is an image of God in creation.  Creation reveals to us how God works.  Creation is bringing life from death.   We see the lifeless branch in the dead of winter, but if we look closely, if we are paying attention, we can see the signs of life returning.

In the video of Andy Goldsworthy, his sculpture is placed in a field and the time lapse photography shows the grass and ferns growing up around it and sculpture disappearing into the landscape and as the seasons change it reappears again.  The egg that is placed on the beach is claimed by the rising tide, completely covered by the ocean, it too has disappeared just beneath the surface only to reappear as the tide goes back out.  And endless cycle of life and death and life again.  The egg disappears into the landscape, disappears into the ocean and becomes one with its surroundings.  Andy talks about watching the ocean take his statue and he speaks of it as gift he has given to the sea. At this moment of grief and loss, at this moment of death, of separation, he knows that there is an even greater unity that has been achieved.  In death we are united to all things in time and space, and the ultimate hope we have, what we are all waiting for is this revelation, that we shall be known even as we are known, that we shall be one.

So now the seasons come and go, suffering is at times all around, at times all seems to be death and destruction and division.  At these moments God seems precisely absent, but it is exactly in these moments that God is nearest.   Advent is a time of waiting, of expectant anticipation.  We wait in the darkness, in the darkest hour, for the light to come.  Waiting for revelation.  We are waiting not so much for the light to come, as for the ability to see in the dark.  We are waiting for new eyes to be able to see.   Hidden in the violence of Ferguson, in the violence taking place this day around the world, is this truth, “We are all your people.”  It is hard to see it.  In fact it seems impossible to see it. 

That is why it is revelation of God.  Let us pray then with the Psalmist to our God who is able to restore our sight, who is able to help us see in the darkness.  “Restore us, O God.  Show the light of your countenance and we shall be saved.”  Let us see the face of God on our brothers and sisters.  This, exactly this, is what will save us:  to be able to see the face of God on our brothers and sisters.  Just as Paul does in Corinthians, I give thanks for all of you, I see the grace of God in you.  I see the spiritual gifts that God has given you.  I see the face of God in you.   Together we are co-creators with God, sculptors, potters ourselves, and with each collapse of this work of art we are creating together, we understand one another a little better.  We catch a glimpse of the truth.  We see the new buds once again on the fig tree.  We see the Coming of our Lord in the vision of our own unity with all of creation.  May this Advent Season give you new eyes to see in the darkness.

Sermon 2.23.14

The Leviticus passage today begins with holiness and ends with 'You shall love your neighbor as your yourself."  Holiness is about loving your neighbor and in this passage we get a practical description of just what "Love Your Neighbor" means.  And it is not just an individual thing or a relationship between friends and those close to you.  This passage is all about the shaping of community, of an entire society, in which holiness and love are at the foundation.

Right after "You shall be holy," the passage talks about gleaning.  Leaving some of the harvest for the poor and the alien among you.  Now gleaning has been near and dear to my heart for a very long time.  As most of you know, I ran a Food Bank in Stockton, CA in which we gathered surplus food from the whole system and distributed it to the poor.  Much of my career has centered around food. The Hunger Action Coalition in Detroit, where we advocated for Federal Food Programs, and I helped to create the Detroit Agriculture Network of community gardeners.  A big part of the work at the Campbell Farm and Noah's Ark has been about food, growing it, cooking it and eating it, seeking to honor both those who grow our food, advocate for the workers who pick our food, and honor the culturally diverse and indigenous traditional food practices tied to this land.  Throwing lots of good parties, with lots of good food in which everyone is included.  Now we get to have another party Meet Your Farmer on April 6, in which we can build relationships with local small farmers and also raise funds for our mission partners feeding the poor.  From this scripture it is clear that central to Holiness and Love is how we do agriculture, how we eat so that the poor and the alien are on our minds.  Gleaning is a concrete practice that models holiness and love.

It is the obligation of the land owner to not reap to the very edge of the field or strip their vineyards bare.  Built into the practice of farming, into the heart of this land based economic system is a provision for the most vulnerable.  Even today, the church takes a stand on social issues: poverty alleviation, our welfare system, our federal food programs that exist in the larger context of federal farm policy, our broken immigration system.  We take a stand on these issues precisely because we have scriptures like these in Leviticus.  Our prophetic witness has it roots in scriptures like these that call us to remember the poor and the alien among us.

Gleaning is followed by more concrete practices.  Do not steal or lie or use the Lord's name in vain.  We know these things as personal immoral acts which we are to avoid, but here in this passage, once again they are all about an economic system, our business relations.  Lying is about not defrauding people, stealing is about not even keeping the wages of a laborer until the next day, but paying honestly and immediately a days wages for a days work.   We have heard the word kosher, we know that pork is not kosher.  We might now the kosher prohibition about having milk and meat on the table at the same time.  But do we know the rationale for kosher laws?  It is all about the proper care for creation, the ethical treatment of animals and the just treatment of workers.   No milk and meat together comes from the scripture that says, "Don't boil a kid (a goat) in its mother's milk."  This is a metaphor for all forms of abuse and mistreatment of animals.  And kosher is not just about the kinds of foods we eat, or the way they are killed and prepared.  Truly kosher food is also about the way the workers are treated, not hanging on to their money for example which is no longer belongs to the employers, but belongs to the employee.  You all know we are an Advocating Congregation, a part of Faith Action Network.  One of their legislative priorities this year is the continuing and pervasive problem of Wage theft.  The church's concern that workers get an honest day's pay for a day's work again has its roots in these sorts of scriptures.

Loving you neighbor is also about the just and fair treatment of the disabled, exemplified here in this passage by the deaf and the blind.  And so our laws around equal access, the Americans with Disabilities Act, also has its roots here in these passages of Leviticus.

The foundation of a whole legal system is described here and it is one that has holiness and love at its core.  Blind justice, that shows no partiality comes from this passage as well.  This passage envisions an economic, legal and political system in which people are not slandered or exploited.  It is also no longer a system that condones an us/them mentality, that condones vengeance and grudges. We would not be making a profit by the blood of our neighbor if we lived by these words.  This is what love your neighbor means.  What loving your kin, your family means.   And this vision of family is one that includes those on the margins, the poor, the immigrant, the disabled.

All of this is what it means to love your neighbor.  And why do we do this?  Because we are in relationship to God.  "I am The Lord."  And if you want to follow me you will create this kind of community, this kind of society, this kind of economic, legal and political system, this kind of food and agricultural system that cares of the earth and all of its people.

These are the statutes and commandments, the laws that the Psalmist asks God to teach him about.  It is these statutes which he is committed to carrying in his heart to the end.  And none of these particular laws in this passage of Leviticus, with its emphasis on loving your neighbor, is lost as we move into the New Testament.  It is this Law of Love that Jesus says he came to fulfill, to complete, and his call to us is that we should be even more righteous than those to whom God originally gave this law.  In fact he says we should be perfect, even as God is perfect.  The same message that God gave to the Israelites in this Leviticus passage, is given to us. I am The Lord, and if you want to be my followers this is what you will be doing.

Jesus is calling us to, even more radically, live out this Law of God.  He says, "You have heard it said, but I say to you."  This refrain in today's gospel is not a deluding or changing of this law of love, but a deepening and fulfilling of it.  Maybe some have tried to escape the rigors and expectation of this law by externalizing it, doing the letter, but not the spirit of the law, as though what was going on inside of us did not matter.  Or maybe some were circumscribing it, limiting it's application, and the definition of neighbor, imagining that we only had to love those in our own family, clan or tribe.  But at the heart of the Torah, the Jewish Law, is this same call to Love God and Love Your Neighbor that Jesus calls us to.

This one about eye for eye, for example, may sound harsh to us, but it may also be seen as a limitation on punishment or on vengeance that could be exacted.  It may actually be an evolution to a more humane way of treatment in which the punish fits the crime.  Looking at other ancient middle eastern legal texts that predate the Torah, as well as much later texts such at the Quaran, we see this moving away from a vengeance based society, of blood feuds for example, in which one person's kin takes vengeance on another kin for wrongs committed.  Jesus takes it another major step forward, away from vengeance, by radicalizing this call to turn the other cheek, give the cloak, walk the extra mile.  For the sake of this foundation of love, we are to not resist evil.  This doesn't mean being a door mat, it does not mean condoning violence, or silently living with abuse.  On the contrary, from Gandhi to Martin Luther King Jr, the non-violent resistance movement, designed to create major social justice change through a radical application of peace and love, has its roots in this scripture.  This call to turn the other cheek, is about shaping an even bigger, more inclusive vision of community in which those who wrong me, gentiles outside my community, the just and unjust alike, all people are my family and my kin,  And it is no longer right to seek vengeance on anyone.

What good is it that you love your family but hate everyone else, Jesus says.  If you greet only your family - well, most people love those who love them.  There is nothing special about that.  Jesus is calling us to love everyone, to look to a larger more radical vision of unity and reconciliation of all.  Since we are not just children of Israel or of the United State of America, but we are children of God.  All of us exist as one family of God, the just and the unjust alike.  It is this radical vision of the unity of all things that mystics from all major religious traditions speak about.

Hard perhaps to understand, but this is the vision of perfection that Jesus is talking about.  This oneness and wholeness, this vision of the fullness of creation in all of its diversity united as one in the one God.  It is of this vision Jesus wants us to get a taste.

Paul says that Jesus Christ is the foundation for this vision, this community we are building.  The image Paul uses is that we all are builders of a temple, architects, artists really, like musicians practicing.  We practice again and again this art of community, seeking to model this kind of community founded on Love, and modeled for us fully in Jesus Christ.  Always we build upon the foundation laid for us in Jesus Christ.  Paul gives us this image of the temple of God, and often we think of this an individual thing, but this "you" in "you are the temple" is also a plural you, we are the community of God.  We are the Body of Christ and individually members of it.  This image here of a holy temple, a church, is not of a building finally, but of a community of people.  And the Spirit of God dwells within us.  This is holiness.  God's temple is Holy.  We are holy people.  Filled with the Spirit of God.    This of course is not to make us proud.  Paul is quick to counter that.  If you think you are wise you will be a fool Paul says, and goes on about that for awhile in this passage.  So though the call is for us to be perfect, we are clear that we are not.  Most of know how broken and messed up we are.  But what we often forget is how loved we are and the capacity we all have, filled as we are with the Spirit of God, to love as Christ has loved us.

I just went to a conference called Winter Talk with leaders of Indigenous Ministries throughout the Episcopal Church.  We did a training on Asset Based Community Development.  The main theme to about turning inside out the way we often do social change.  We tend to focus on the needs and deficits in the community, painting ourselves actually in the worst light in order to get outside funding, people and experts to help us.  But ABCD's foundation is that communities always have more assets that anyone  knows.  They consist of hundreds and thousands of relationships that can be build upon to improve and build the capacity of their communities and that the people themselves can be the ones to define what health and wholeness looks like for them, developing their own agenda for moving toward wholeness.

One of the ABCD concepts is change the way we think of people, moving away from client to citizen, treating people not as just recipients of services but as actors shaping their own destiny.  Client is a word that actually means to lie down well, and so patients, for example, lie down well in the hospital.  A citizen on the other hand is one who stands up and takes a stand with others.   This kind of ABCD work is not about waiting for leaders or others to come and do something for us.  I think the Good News of Jesus Christ can also be seen in these same terms as moving people from clients to citizens.  For traumatized, disenfranchised communities, the fact that the meek shall inherit the earth is indeed Good News.  That the lowly are lifted up, that you too can be filled with the Holy Spirit, you too are the Body of Christ.  You are a royal priesthood, citizens of a new Kingdom of God, no longer servants but friends.  You can have this power and be connected to the power that can bring healing and wholeness to the world.  This power belongs to you in Christ Jesus who is the foundation of all of this.
I love the way Paul wraps up this passage and it is the way I will wrap up my words today, it turns it all upside down and inside out.  "The whole world," Paul says,  "belongs to you. It all belongs to you, and you belong to Christ and Christ belong to God."

Feast of the Presentation

Today we celebrate the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord in the Temple, also called the Purification of Virgin Mary, also called Candlemas, because of a procession and blessing of candles that is associated with this celebration in some places.  It is actually one of the major feasts of the church right up there with Christmas and Easter but you probably don't know much about it or rarely have been exposed it because it is always Feb 2, and unless Feb 2 falls on a Sunday we don't usually celebrate it.

But this year it falls on a Sunday so here we are.  And because it falls on a Sunday it kind of disrupts the chronology of the church calendar.  We were just last Sunday talking about the calling of the disciples and now we are back in time to when Jesus was a young child.  Jim noticed a couple of Sundays ago that we still had 2013 up on the reader board and wondered if the Episcopal Calendar was different from other calendars.  Well, the answer to that is, actually it is.

For instance when everyone else is America celebrating New Years on Jan 1, our church calendar celebrates Holy Name Day, 8 days after Christmas, when Jesus was brought to the temple the first time for his circumcision.

Now 40 days after Christmas when everyone else is celebrating Ground Hog Day, or actually today getting ready for the other Major Religious Holiday in America, the Super Bowl, we celebrate The Presentation.

Under Mosaic Law found in Leviticus 12, a mother who had given birth to a male child was considered ritually unclean for seven days, moreover she was to remain for thirty-three days "in the blood of her purification," as it says. So 7 and 33 is 40,  40 days after the birth, is this presentation in the temple of the baby, and offering of sacrifices to celebrate the end of the time.

Candles became associated with this day, a procession of candles, and blessing of candles, thus the name Candlemas, since we are in the season of Epiphany and because of the light imagery in Simeon's response to seeing the child Jesus.  Simeon words have become a regular part of our Evening Prayer service as we remember in the darkness of night:  "A light to enlighten the nations."
But not just light enabling us to see.  It is also about purification, as in our Malachi passage.  Light or fire is also about purification, cleansing, healing, the refiners fire which separates the dross, the impurities, from the pure silver and gold.

Interestingly enough Groundhog Day actually has its roots in Candlemas.   An old English saying went like this:  "If Candlemas Day is clear and bright, winter will have another bite.  If Candlemas brings cloud and rain, winter is gone and will not come again."   Though in the United States, from the German Pennsylvania Dutch tradition, we have the groundhog, in other traditions Candlemas is the day bears or wolves also emerge from hibernation to inspect the weather.  If the ground hog, bear or wolf, sees his shadow he goes back in for another six weeks nap, six more weeks of winter, but if the day is cloudy he remains out as the weather is going to be moderate.

Now this strange mixture of light and dark images as always seemed to be backwards to me.  A clear and bright day rather than being assurances of good weather means exactly the opposite.  The message seems to be don't get your hopes up, this sunny day will not last.  A warning about jumping to conclusions I guess.  Here light seems to signal dark days to come.

Simeon's foreboding words, his prophecy about Jesus, a warning actually to Mary and Joseph actually echo this.  This light that Simeon sees in Jesus will mean upheaval, the rising and falling of many.  Like the Song of Mary, things are going to be turned upside down by this baby.  The rich will be humbled, as well as the poor being exalted.   Depending on whether you are rising or falling, this might not be such good news at all.  The warning of dark days ahead, of suffering to come, takes a poignant personal turn, as Simeon tells, Mary, "A sword will pierce your heart as well."  What is going to happen to this child will break your heart.

On the other hand as the poem about Candlemas says, if it is a cloudy and rainy day, winter has gone away.  The hope is always that light shines in the darkness, that life comes from death, that joy comes in the morning, that Spring follows Winter, that the days of our pain and sorrow will come to an end, and what seems to be meaningless suffering will at least have a purifying effect, refining us as we are tested by fire, purifying us so that all the dross is burned off, and pure silver and gold at our core will be revealed.  This is the hope of a life of penance, of sanctification that we are all called to live.  Interestingly enough, our modern Ground Hog day even has some this layer of meaning that has surveyed.  Take the movie with Bill Murray.  He is forced to repeat the day, Ground Hog day, again and again and again, until he gets it right, until his transformation is complete.

We are also called to see Christ more clearly, love him more dearly, follow Christ more nearly. Seeing Christ more clearly.  Simeon and Anna saw this baby for who he was.  They devoted themselves to prayer and worship, immersed themselves in the worship of the temple.   Anna, an 84 year old woman, who never left the temple, but worshipped there fasting and praying night and day - She reminds me of Julian of Norwich, a 14th Century Mystic who was also an anchorite.  That means she lived a big chunk of her life in a little cubical attached to the church wall.  Imagine living like that.  Well, I can't imagine it really, seems way beyond what I could manage, and I really am not recommending it, but think of her perspective on life, as she was totally devoted to what happened week after week at this altar, the recitation of the story of salvation, the repetition of Jesus' last meal, again and again and again, the breaking of bread and pouring of wine, the sacrifice of this death and the hope of his resurrection was all she knew, what filled all of her days.  Julian knew nothing else but this experience.

People did come to her for prayers and wisdom.  Actually during a time of serious illness while she was still living at home, she had incredible visions which she recorded in her Showings, Revelations of Divine Love.  God lighted her whole being.  One of my favorite of her visions was her image of the whole world as a hazelnut held in the palm of God's hand.  She also had this incredible feminine image of God.  She talks about all of us, the whole world, even all the tension and discord of our diversity, struggling like Esau and Jacob, all existing in the womb of God, waiting to be born as a new creation.  She has some very graphic images of the suffering of Christ and the suffering of the whole world, but then she also has this wonderful line which TS Eliot quotes in the Four Quartets, "All shall be well and manner of thing shall be well."

This feast day of the Presentation, or Purification, actually was elevated from a minor feast to a major feast back in 6th century when the Candle light procession was credited with delivering Constantinople from a devastating plague.  It also sometimes gets merged with the Feast of St Blaise which is tomorrow, Feb 3 in which candles are used as a part of prayer of healing for throat ailments.  Lots of images of how candles are not just about shining a light, but have healing, purifying power as well.

So the story of St Blaise goes like this. Blaise was a doctor by trade and became a bishop in Armenia.  This was back in the 4th Century, and during a time of persecution he was being taken into custody, and a mother, whose only child was choking on a fishbone, threw herself at his feet and begged him to help. Touched by her grief, he prayed, and the child was cured. Consequently, Saint Blaise is invoked for protection against injuries and illnesses of the throat.  Even today some priests will pray, calling upon St Blaise, with two candles, which are crossed and held against the throats of the people being blessed.  Given the fact that so many of us have been sick lately this might be a good use of our time as well.

Lots of different superstitions, folk lore and practices get attached this day.   Candlemas is traditionally the day you bring in the cows in order to prepare the fields for planting.  It is a day to spread ashes in the fields to ensure a better harvest, or to place ashes on the roof to keep away evil spirits.  Newlyweds used to jump over a fire during Candlemas, both a purification and preparation for their life together.  I guess if they were able to risk being burned by the fire, they were able to take whatever was to come in marriage as well.

Lots and lots of images with various meanings, that lead to a multitude of traditional expressions  Some times it gets rather confusing all of the meaning that can be loaded into just one day.   Just look back into the history to see what has happened on Feb 2.   Just to name a few.  On Feb 2nd 1916 German Zeppelins dropped 400 bombs on Great Britain.  Buster Keaton was fired from MGM in 1933. Babe Ruth was elected into the baseball hall of fame in 1936.  On this day in 1943 the Germans surrendered to Russia.  GI Joe action figure was released in 1964.  1971 Idi Amin declared himself president of Uganda. On Feb 2nd 1990 South Africa lifted the ban on the African National Congress and announced that Nelson Mandela would be released.  Airplanes were highjacked, presidential campaigns launched, storms devastated the county side, epidemics raged and needed medicine arrived in Nome Alaska by sled dogs. Super Bowls are played, babies are born and people die . . .  and also on this day, a long time ago, a woman brought her baby son to the temple for a blessing.

Through all this wild cacophony of events, through all the strange and wonderful happenings here on earth, through all the joys and sorrows, risings and fallings, triumphs and sufferings, though all this messy, crazy life that seems impossible to understand, to make any sense of when taken as a whole even just on one day - through it all we catch the clear vision of Anna who has her eyes only on The Lord.  And we hear the words of Simeon who was told by God that he would not perish until he saw the coming of the Messiah.

Lord, you now have set your servant free *
    to go in peace as you have promised;
For these eyes of mine have seen the Savior, *
    whom you have prepared for all the world to see:
A Light to enlighten the nations, *
    and the glory of your people Israel.

 

May we too, see this everlasting and eternal light shining through all the cloudy and rainy days!  May we know the purifying power of this eternal flame that burns in the heart of the creation.  May we see this Christ, this Savior that God has prepared for all the world to see.  May we on this day, and day by day throughout our lives, see him more clearly, love him more dearly and follow him, wherever he leads, even to the sword that pierces our own hearts, may we follow him more nearly.  May we be guided by this light, so that either way, clear and bright, cloudy and rainy, whether winter is  going on or coming to an end, we will know that All Shall be Well and All Manner of Thing Shall be Well.

Sermon 10.27.13

Joel 2:23-32
Psalm 65
2Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18
Luke 18:9-14

I told the women at the bible study that I rarely tell a good humorous joke or anecdote to begin my sermon and that I would share this little one that Arlene shared with me.  Six year old Judy complained, "Mother I've got a stomach ache."  "That's because your stomach in empty," her mother replied. "You'd feel better if you had something in it."  That afternoon the minister came to visit, remarking in the conversation that he was suffering from a headache.  Little Judy perked up.  "That's because its empty,"  she said.  "You'd feel better if you had something in it."

The passage from Joel and Psalm 65 are wonderful descriptions of God at work in creation.  Actually, God playing with creation.  After all the years of locusts, drought, suffering and shame, there will now be abundant rains again, there will be an abundant harvest, the threshing floor full of grain, the vats overflowing with wine and oil. There will be plenty to eat for all and all will be satisfied.   It is true that Joel ends with some ominous potents in the heavens and earth, blood and fire and smoke and darkness and some terrible day coming.  But right now, between our memories of past woes and our anxiety about the future, in the here and now we are filled with the Spirit.  Right now, it is all about the Spirit of God poured out on all flesh.  This Spirit is an unstoppable, irresistible life force that moves through all things, making fast the mountains, stilling the roaring of the seas, preparing the grain, drenching the furrows, clothing valley fields with grain and the hills and meadows with flocks, and setting all of creation to music, singing with joy.  Everywhere the Spirit of God is filling all things.  Sons and daughters prophesying, old men dreaming dreams, young men seeing visions, slaves and free, male and female all filled with the Spirit of God.  Here and now, at this moment, forgetting what came before or what lies ahead, there is no getting around it, it is possible to simply embrace and be embraced by this life.

It is difficult sometimes to live in the moment.  Sometimes we are stuck in the past.  Maybe regretting some decision we have made, or unable to move beyond the pain of some past event.  On the other hand we sometimes jump ahead, imagining a future full of all sorts of scary outcomes. Maybe not the blood and fire and smoke of Joel, but we have our own imaginations that run wild about all the ways things could go wrong for us.  And sometimes the moment we are in really just isn't a good time at all.  I have been struck lately by how much pain and grief many of us are in now.  I have heard story after story lately of personal trials, many people I know are struggling with the death of loved ones, economic hard times, changing family circumstances, chronic illness and other tragedies, a son in jail, a grandson taken to the emergency room, a house broken into.  We are fragile creatures, and our lives are often precarious and sometimes it is hard to balance ourselves on the still point of the turning world that keeps us in touch with the Spirit of God.

I confess, I sometimes see all these things as getting in the way.  All sorts of things that seem to gum up the works and so on, hinder us from achieving whatever goals and outcomes we have or want to do.  Important stuff you know, all the stuff I think God is calling us to.  I might be waiting for a return phone call, or an email, or someone to do their part in a project we are working on and I find myself getting frustrated and wondering why they aren't paying attention to me!  Only to find that some personal trial and tribulation has overcome my friends.  I do, usually, shift gears, immediately step outside of myself and let go of my agenda in order to be there for them.  I do have to stop my own anxiety about accomplishing my agenda, let go of my own illusion of control over my life in order to really be there for someone else.  Sometimes it is exactly our busyness that is the thing that gets in the way and prevents us from caring for one another.  That prevents us from really being present, right here now, in the moment, for one another.

But when we do that for one another - when we truly are present, simply able to be with someone else  -  I know I am continually surprised to encounter the living God in that moment, in that relationship.  When we can truly see and hear the other who stands before us, we come face to face with the sacred, the holy.  Whether in great joy or deep sorrow or just the every day stuff of life, as we encounter people where ever they are at, we touch some deep common humanity that is connected with a universal reality.  We discover that we really are one, united in all of our diversity.  This is what I mean by Spirit.

I am constantly surprised that this stuff we preach is really real.  That all these stories we tell really do have something to do with a deep and powerful reality that is at the core of each of our individual lives, that flows in and out of all our relationships, that lies at the heart of creation.  This Spirit of God in whom we live and move and have our being.  This liturgy we do here every Sunday really does have the power to transform us and this meal we serve really is about feeding the whole world, and our life together is really about creating that beloved community in which all can share in the blessing of God's creation.  That this Good News!  We really have Good News to share!

Several of us were at diocesan convention last weekend.  During Bishop Waggoner's address he told a story about getting the internet fixed at Paulsen House.  It hadn't been working for several days and staff was anxiously trying to prepare for convention with no internet access.  When the repair man came the bishop followed him to the basement, hovering over him, making sure he was really going to fix the problem.  They came to a mess of wires on the wall in a dark corner of the basement and the repair man fiddled with stuff and the bishop was becoming more anxious and uncertain that a solution would be found.

The repair man scratched his head.  He attached his equipment, did his tests and finally said, "You know the signal is very strong, but something is stifling it, blocking it from getting through."  Finally he looked at a box in the middle of all this mess of wire.  The bishop insistent on a solution asked if he could fix the box, replace it, something! and get the thing working again!  But the man just scratched his head again.  "No," he said, "I can't fix it or replace it."  Of course the Bishop then was beside himself!  Then the man said,  "We don't even use this kind of box anymore."  We've changed all of this all up and down this neighborhood and upgraded the whole system and it works completely differently now."  So the man removed the box and took the wires that had gone in and out of the box and spliced them together directly and they tested the system again and sure enough they now had lightening speed internet at Paulsen house, better than ever.

The signal is strong, but something is blocking it, something is stifling it.  The bishop drew a parallel to the story of the Gospel.  The story is strong, he said, but, he asked, what is it about the way we do church, what boxes are we tied too, what outdated ways of thinking and doing are we stuck with that stifle and block the power of that story?  Where are we stuck?  What are we anxious about, what can't we let go of?  What are we busy with that keeps us from being able to tap into this present moment and catch a glimpse of the Spirit of God at work?  Is the way we tell our transformative story something that can tap us directly into the power of God, or does our tradition just get in the way?  Is the vision of the Kingdom of God something that gives us hope or it something that we just worry about, feel guilty about, because we can't make it happen?

Our guest speaker at Convention was Sara Miles, from St Gregory of Nyssa in San Francisco.  She says she is as a new Christian, not having grown up around religion at all, coming to the faith as something brand new, with fresh new energy and a naive enthusiasm she says.  So new, she said, she didn't realize that the purpose of the vestry was to keep people from using the church!  (That got a laugh from all the old timers!) Well, despite some folks reticence to risk and try new things, St Gregory really was founded as  a new church start intentionally designed to reach out to the unchurched, those spiritual but not religious folks, and to the poor and the diversity of the community around them and it was designed intentionally to tap into the energy latent in these people of God.  To see them actually as people of God, filled already with the Spirit.

Sara showed us a video of their very energetic spirit-filled worship really very Eastern Orthodox looking and sounding, with all sorts of pomp and pageantry and costumes and colorful celebration and also an intentional openness and inclusivity.  Surrounded in this round sanctuary by beautiful icons of an eclectic assortment of saints, the room was filled with people of all kinds, not really decently and in order at all, a visible celebration of diversity.   All gathered in a circle around the table. They served real bread. Children were chalice barers.  Everyone was welcome at the table without question.

From this vision of the Eucharistic meal came their community outreach.  Sara and her team of volunteers run a food pantry right there in the sanctuary and she showed us another video of a typical day.  Food came from the local food bank, tons of donations, lots of fresh produce.  The sanctuary is round with the altar in the middle and no pews.  Volunteers, many of them people who also come to get food, set up all around the altar what amounted to a farmers market.  Stacks of fruits and vegetables and fresh bread, a visible sign of this incredible abundance of creation and people came into this space and gathered what they needed.  An extension of the Eucharistic meal itself, a spirit filled, sacrament.  Over 800 served that particular day.

One of the biggest ways we block the Spirit is our own anxiety about failing.   And that was the Bishop's biggest advice to us.  Risk failure and then try again and fail even better the next time!  We are seeking to model an infinite reality and we are after all finite fragile creatures being filled with the infinite energy of the Spirit of God!  It simply is impossible, crazy, silly really.  And so we just have to give ourselves over to the absurdity of it all.  And really learn to play with it!  The folks at St Gregory's are really no different than any other folks, regular people doing incredible things.  They had a goal, figured out a plan, organized themselves to accomplish at task, and that is all important stuff to do, but ultimately it not about this.  It is about the synergy of regular folks coming together and creating a whole greater than the sum of all the parts, more than we could ever ask or imagine, this is the Spirit of God at work.  Sara's advice to us was not to recreate the liturgy or service of St Gregory's but to find the way God is working in and through us and unleash that Spirit that is uniquely given to us.  All around the Cathedral of St John's in Spokane where she was speaking were displays from most of the churches in our diocese, showing lots of ministry going on.   Feeding programs, community meals, mission trips, housing projects, Stephen's ministry, global projects and a display of Christ's Church's latest focus, our Faith Food and Farming Project.

I think of that scene from the movie Hook with Robin Williams.  He has forgotten that he is Peter Pan, burdened by the pain of distant memories of loss and the fears of failure in his career, driven and distracted by all the busyness of his life.  He is having trouble believing and the Lost Boys are trying to get him to remember, trying to get him to play again.  They are sitting around the table for dinner, but all Peter can see is the empty bowls and plates before them.  The boys all dig in with a veracious appetite and Peter is dumbfounded, just not seeing it. Then after actually a confrontation with his rival Rufio in which Peter and Rufio are trading more and more creative insults, Peter begins really acting like a again like boy, focuses completely on this relationship, is fully present, gets into the moment so to speak.  Then, Peter is the one who without thinking starts a food fight with imaginary food.  He suddenly sees what the other boys see. They say, "Peter, Peter, your doing it.  Your using your imagination!" Suddenly he is living in the moment, fully alive, playing once again.

And as I think about that sanctuary filled with all the activities going on in congregations throughout the diocese, small and large congregations, just regular fragile folks living precarious lives, young and old, men and women, rich and poor, dreaming dreams, seeing visions, caring for one another and their communities, I can't help but think, "Look, we are doing it!  The Spirit of God is flowing through us!"  We are directly linked, having gotten outside of our boxes.  We are alive with this irresistibly strong and powerful signal.  And the signal is stronger and faster than ever!  AMEN.

Sermon 9.15.13

Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28
Psalm 14
1 Timothy 1:12-17
Luke 15:1-10                                        

Our old testament passage today is very dark!  Jeremiah presents us with a devastating apocalyptic vision of what is to come for God's people.  A hot wind too strong for winnowing or cleansing, that will bring destruction.  A time of judgement.  The prophet has God saying, "My people are foolish, stupid children with no understanding, skilled at doing evil, but do not know how to do good."  The whole earth is of wasteland, a desolation, the cities are in ruin.  A land of darkness, earthquakes, the birds have fled and the once fruitful land turned to a desert.  All brought about by the fierce anger of God.

The Psalm continues this theme of the foolish who say in their hearts, "There is no God."  The Psalmist laments, there is none who does any good and depicts The Lord, looking down from heaven upon us all searching for just one person who might be wise, who might follow after God, but there is no one who does good, no not one.

When I hear language like this, so dark and pessimistic, when folks start talking like this, in such stark absolutes about how horrible everything is I want to say to them, "Its time to take a break!  Get some rest!  Get some perspective!"

I think immediately of burn out.  Burn out, Compassion Fatigue, these are real conditions that effect especially us who are faithful people, who really do want to help make the world a better place, who have a vision of how the world could be and yet are constantly bombarded with the reality of how we all fall so short of this vision.

It is amazing how negative we can so quickly turn, when our frustration level gets too high, when all of our efforts seem to be of no avail.  When we have just become too tired to continue on and yet we keep pushing ourselves out of sense of duty.  How quickly we begin to feel overwhelmed by all the problems we can't fix, all the ways we have no control over how things are going.   We begin to feel all alone, the only one left.  We know we can't do it on our own, yet we push on, feeling so isolated.  We begin to focus on all the things that are going wrong, on all the people who are really just in the way.  Those we started out hoping to help and comfort and heal turn into people we blame.  All those companions on the way who shared the vision with us become people we criticize and complain about.

Then we start to say things that really are just not true.  We make these sweeping negative generalizations about the whole world.  We say silly things really that we really do believe like the words of the Psalmist spoken out his own deep depression.  "No one does good.  Everyone is evil.  All are corrupt.  No one is wise.  No body has any faith."

When the reality is it is we who have lost our faith.  We who have lost hope.  We who have allowed our exhaustion to color the way we see the world.  If we are honest with ourselves we all can recall moments when we have let our own exhaustion turn our thoughts negative.  Maybe we have apologized when we snapped at our spouses or children, saying, "Forgive me, I am just really tired."  We have all watched the quality of our communities deteriorate when the pressure gets too high.  Committee meetings turn ugly, bickering increases, hurtful things are said, often because we have all just been working too hard for too long to try to solve some problem that seems to just go on and on.  And we are exhausted.  And yet we continue to try to push through!

If you are tired, what really is the only solution for this?  Rest.  Sometimes it is just sleep!  There is really nothing like a good night's sleep!  Sleep can really do wonders!  Our spiritual and emotional lives really are all wrapped up in our physical bodies.  Doing something completely different, taking a break, recreation.  The word is re-creation.  We really can rejuvenate ourselves, re-create ourselves by taking a break, letting go, quit beating our heads against a wall.  Often just by stopping doing that one thing that is killing us, we get a whole new perspective on our lives.  Peace only comes when we actually can stop.

Ultimately the spiritual peace that we seek for ourselves and the world is not something we attain for ourselves.  We know the doctrine perhaps, that we are saved by faith alone, not by works, but we really live our lives, practically speaking, like it all depends on us.  If we weren't doing what we do, the world would fall apart.

Paul's letter to Timothy says something completely different.  Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.  Paul gives the example, of himself, a saved sinner, and his story is not about his own righteousness, his own model character, which others should follow.  No, his story is an example of what the power of God can do.  Paul begins with his gratitude to Jesus who strengthens him.  He is clear that he was a blasphemer, a persecutor, a man of violence, but rather than dwelling here, he talks of the mercy he has received in his own life and relies instead upon the way that God in Christ defines him, a faithful servant.  He talks about the grace and love of Christ that has come into his life.  He talks about the utmost patience that Jesus Christ has displayed in working with him, the foremost of sinners.  This patience is that constant vision that though we may all too well know the negative about ourselves and the world, Jesus is constantly seeing us and calling us into the vision he has for us, modeling and shaping us into the Good and Faithful Servants he already knows we are.  This is the power of God working in us.

In our gospel today the righteous religious leaders of the day complain about Jesus saying, He welcomes sinners and eats with them."  They don't seem to understand why Jesus is so concerned with this unsavory bunch, these outcasts, the rabble, the unclean, those outside the pale of civilized society.  It seems in this passage, quite the opposite of the Jeremiah passage, that the perception here is that most people seem to be doing just fine.  We might say they are living in denial, in their own sense of their own righteousness perhaps.

Jesus, though, tells a parable about sheep, and the first thing to notice is that most of the sheep really are doing just fine.  In this parable 99% of the world is actually ok.  Well enough, actually, that the shepherd can leave them unattended and go off in search of that 1% of the flock that is lost.  He leaves the 99 and goes after the one that is lost.  In fact, all the attention is paid to this one lost soul, really disregarding all the rest.  Quite the opposite of the vision in Jeremiah with its focus on all the evil of everyone.  Here the emphasis is on the few that are left out of the blessing of creation, that are on the edge, lost and separated from the rest of the flock.  The concern is for the safety of these lost ones and the desire is to reunite them with the rest of the flock where they too can share in the good pasture, drink from the stream also, and be cared and tended for by the shepherd - where they too can bask in the blessing of creation.

And where they can join in on the cosmic celebration that will take place upon their return. For there will be more joy in heaven over one repentant sinner, than over ninety-nine righteous people who need no repentance.

And so we can see ourselves and the world in a couple different ways.  We can catch the glimpse that Jesus offers us of all people in heaven and on earth sharing in the blessing of God's creation and joining in together in a cosmic celebration.  In this vision it is just unthinkable that anyone should be left out, and we will do all we can to make sure that all are included, and we will rejoice when we see our own communities mirror this ultimate heavenly inclusive vision.

Or we can see the whole world as a dark and desolate and lonely place described in Jeremiah.  If you are seeing the world this way, perhaps it is you that are lost.  Perhaps you have found yourself left out of blessing, far away from the good pasture, perhaps you feel all alone and see no one who can be your companion on the way.  The lost are not just those other folks out there on the fringe, who we have to go find.  Sometimes the lost are ourselves as well. Sometimes it is we who are wondering exhausted in a wilderness and it is we who need to find rest again in the shepherds arms.  It is we who need to be laid upon his shoulders and carried for awhile while he rejoices in finding us.

One of my favorite songs is called "Jubilee" by Mary Chapin Carpenter.  It is the story of a young man, lost himself, who struggles to accept the community of people who love him.  He has a hard time seeing how much he needs the rest that is being offered to him.  Trouble seeing how much he really wants the company of his friends who love him.  Trouble grasping what a wonderful incredible joyful time he will have when he finally joins the celebration.  He is so use to the "home" he has in his isolation and depression that it is hard to see what is being offered to him.   The song ends like this:

And I can tell by the way you're standing
With your eyes filling with tears
That it's habit alone keeps you turning for home
Even though your home is right here

Where the people who love you are gathered
Under the wise wishing tree
May we all be considered then straight on delivered
Down to the jubilee

'Cause the people who love you are waiting
And they'll wait just as long as need be

The people who love you are waiting, Jesus is waiting, the whole of heaven and earth in all it goodness and beauty and splendor, all its incredible blessing, is waiting.  Take some time to rest from your weariness.  Join in the party!  Once again receive the strength and power to share the good news that all that are lost are invited to come home.

Sermon 9.9.12

Sermon 9.9.12

Proper 18, Year B

Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23

Psalm 125

James 2:1-10, (11-13), 14-17

Mark 7:24-37

With Scriptures like we have today and just after two party conventions and an election only a couple months away, I must say I am tempted to talk about politics!

Surely these scriptures have direct implications for the way our public life should be shaped.  Clearly they call us who are followers of these scriptures to have a particular faithful agenda when entering public life.  We are informed by some values and broad goals and then sometimes some very specific injunctions about how to live our individual and our corporate lives and how to be in relationship with the larger society around us.

We read in James “Faith without Works is Dead.”  And it is a particular kind of works that James is talking about.  Our previous reading from last week said that true religion is to care for the orphans and widows, the most vulnerable in our society.  This may come as a surprise to some folks who thought true religion was converting people to Christianity, telling folks that Jesus died for our sins and only through him can we get into heaven.  For James the essence of true religion is in our actions not our words.  In our attitude toward the poor, in our humble service, not in the way we lord it over people with our self-importance and self-righteousness.

Today’s scriptures give us some specific ways that we are to shape our common corporate life together, so that we can be a sign of a new way of living together, so that we can truly model this Good News of the Kingdom of God, and not just talk about it. 

He says don’t show favoritism.  He is really talking about favoritism to the wealthy.  He is condemning the special treatment we give people who wear fine clothes and gold jewelry, and he is condemning the way we ignore, discriminate and dishonor the poor among us:  making them sit on the floor or in the back while we bend over backwards to make sure the person of means has the best seat in the house.  The way we talk about helping, pray for the poor, hope they keep warm and well fed, but do nothing to provide for their physical needs.  “What good is this?” James says.  That is exactly what the scriptures say!  What good is this?  Faith without works - this kind of works - that truly serves the most vulnerable in our community, faith without that is dead!

In our society rich people are rock stars, they are the dream we all aspire to, the goal and hope for which we all strive: the American dream.  For many of us the life they lead is the heaven we seek.  I remember Hilary and Corey’s grandmother, a very wealthy woman, saying to us once, “Now don’t get mad at me,” she said, already anticipating our opposition, “But we were talking last night and you know, this is heaven, we have heaven on earth here and now.”  And many of us would agree with her.

We also honor rich people for making possible the good life that rest of us enjoy, for creating jobs.  The model wealthy person understands their role in being leaders in the larger society, being benefactors and patrons of all the arts and education and all institutions that make up the quality of life we all enjoy.  Noblesse Oblige.  This promise is held out to every American, that you too can make it and be successful.  Maybe you won’t get so incredibly wealthy, but you can live in the middle class: own a home, have a good paying job, a small business or farm, get a good education, care for your family and contribute to your community. You too can do your share of giving back to the community.  We talk about the middle class as though we are not incredibly wealthy, but compared to the rest of the world . . . We imagine that we are the envy of the whole world and we lift up this American life style as the beacon of light for the rest of the world, a little slice of heaven on earth.

It’s a subtle thing, what this position of power and privilege begins to do to us.  It is a thing we keep hidden from ourselves.  We don’t like to admit it, but we begin to think that after all, we do deserve the best seat in the house.  We pat ourselves on the back and allow others to praise us as well for just how good we are.  And we talk such a good talk, especially every four years or so, about this American dream, in rousing inspiring speeches about how this is the greatest nation on earth!  While the poor continue to live out in the cold, to go without food.  Again it is a subtle thing, but we blame them.  That is the dominant discourse.  They are somehow inferior.  We say they just don’t work hard enough, or they are criminals, not playing by the same rules as the rest of us, or they are broken in some way by some self-inflicted wound that makes them the exception to this American Dream.  It is really their fault. 

But James makes no mention of this kind of blame in today’s scripture. There are certainly scriptures about personal responsibility, but what James talks about here is the system that gets set up whether it is our small congregational gathering as was the setting in James or in the larger society as a whole, in which the wealthy of means and power and position are privileged at the expense of the poor.  Coming to terms with our own privilege, finding ways to move beyond it personally in our own individual lives and to restructure our community intentionally to model something completely different: this is the hard work of discipleship, this is what it means to take up our cross and follow Jesus.  It begins by turning our pious words and concern for the poor into real action to help, that is a good thing, but it goes further as we find the deep ways in our lives that we can give up privilege in whatever form it takes.

According to our proverbs reading this is the beginning of wisdom.  It is the No 2 saying in the Thirty sayings for the wise that are listed in Proverbs 22. 

Do not exploit the poor because they are poor
    and do not crush the needy in court,
²³ for the Lord will take up their case
    and will exact life for life.

The Lord is clearly on the side of the poor who are being exploited in this scripture.  Remember that!  That is the scriptures talking and the warning is indeed harsh for those who would seek to do harm to the least of these.  “God will exactly Life for Life!” Proverbs 22 is all about the rich and the poor.  The author of Proverbs knows that “The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender.” This is from verse 7, which is left out of our reading today.  But the lectionary which some times tends to try to soften the harshness of scripture cannot hide completely the clear preference God is calling the wise to have in these passages. 

“A good name is more desirable than great riches; to be esteemed is better than silver or gold.  Rich and poor have this in common: The Lord is the Maker of them all.”  All of this echoing the letter of James:  the admonishment against favoritism toward the wealthy and the call to a life of integrity in which our words and actions really go together to create a good name.  And there is the same call to a specific kind of action: In verse 8 and 9 from the Proverbs passage:

⁸ Whoever sows injustice reaps calamity,
    and the rod they wield in fury will be broken.

⁹ The generous will themselves be blessed,
    for they share their food with the poor.

Even Jesus had to learn this lesson about moving away from privilege in order to bring about the just and peaceable Kingdom of God in which all could be included in the blessing of healing and hope he had to offer.  A Syrophoenician woman came to him looking for an exorcism for her daughter.  She was not Jewish, not one of the chosen, not one of the privileged and amazingly Jesus’ first response to her was exactly from a position of privilege, of favoritism.  “It’s not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs!”  He just called this woman a dog, someone destined to beg at the table for crumbs and leftovers, never to be given a seat of honor at the table of blessing that is only reserved for the children of Israel.

My daughter is now in Lebanon, documenting the work of local artists painting murals in a Palestinian Refugee camps in Beirut.  These people have been living for decades discarded, forgotten, without homes in a refugee camps, in poverty, begging for scraps while the privileged position of Israel continues to be one of the cornerstones of our foreign policy.  Ok, ok, I know that that was a controversial statement!  But you see how hard the lesson is to learn!  What inclusion and justice and peace really look like and what it takes to really truly get the peace with justice that will make everyone whole, include everyone in the blessing of God’s creation.

The woman’s response to Jesus was filled with irony.  “Even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”  When Jesus heard this response he was not content to just give her crumbs!  I believe he learned something powerful from this woman.  Jesus himself was on a journey from privilege to emptying himself for the sake of all.  We believe that he was God and scriptures say that he left equality with God to become human and die on a cross, emptying himself of all the power and privilege he had.  Doing exactly that is what it takes to have his power spread out and shared and bring new life to everyone.  To empower others, you have to give it away.  That is how it works.  That is what Jesus shows us, that is how we are called to follow.  But of course this is a hard lesson, and on a human level, this very human Jesus as well, he too had to learn this lesson.  He too had to learn how to let go of his narrow point of view, of his prejudice about his own and his own people’s position in the world in order to proclaim in word and deed that everyone can be included in the phase, “People of God!”  Its not a lesson we learn once and for all; it is life time of coming up against our privilege and letting go of our power for the sake of empowering and equipping others.

But once you begin to get it, there is no stopping you!  There was no stopping Jesus once he learned this lesson!  His power was shared and given to all. The blind and lame, the deaf and dumb, could see, and walk and hear and speak again.  The most vulnerable were not just given scraps from the table of the privilege, they were given sight and hearing and they were able to walk on their own two feet, they were given a voice to speak on their own behalf.  Jesus could not keep them quiet, even though he tried!  Once you let this cat out of the bag there is no containing it!  They were filled with the power of the Holy Spirit. They found new life, healing and wholeness and they too were given a place - they claimed a place - at the table of blessing with all of the children of God.

This is the gospel message.  This is what Scriptures says.  I’m not making it up!  This is the story; these are the values that take us out into the public arena:  the basic story line from the Song of Mary that the rich might be humbled and the poor exalted.  That is the Good News.  Now I have to be careful here.  This is not a specific public policy necessarily.  There are good people on all sides of the public debate that have contributions to make to toward a more just world.  But one thing this story clearly does not do.  It does not set up a false dichotomy between private and public life, as though religion were relegated only to the private spiritual realm and had nothing to say about how we treat one another in society.  This story also does not draw some false distinguish between private charity and the stuff we do together as a whole society.  It talks as much about one person giving another person a piece of bread and a cup of water as it does about reforming the rules governing our lending practices so the rich do not exploit the poor.

At the heart of the story is the question of privilege and power and the question we must ask ourselves, especially now, as we seek to make our faithful choices in this upcoming election, “What are we doing with our own privilege and power?”  Some of us might think others have more than we do, we might feel like we are the oppressed and powerless ones.  But everyone finds themselves in a position just as Jesus was in, to withhold help or give it, to lord it over someone else or find a way to serve and empower others, to hang on to our seat or give it up for someone else, or maybe just move over a little bit to make room for everyone!

Jesus learned this lesson and there was no stopping the power to heal and bring new life that was released.  I pray that we continue each day to learn this lesson ourselves, and as we come to this table now may we too present ourselves a living sacrifice to God, which is our spiritual worship.   May we too be filled with the power of the Spirit that Christ’s sacrificial love has brought to the world:  the power to include everyone in the blessing of God’s creation!  AMEN.