Sunday Aug 28, Proper 17 After Pentecost

This is part two of the last week’s sermon.  You will remember that Jesus called Peter the Rock and I said it was because Peter had correctly identified Jesus, and I drew a parallel between this estimate of Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of the Living God, with our own estimate of ourselves as children of God, Created in the Image of God, members of the Body of Christ.

Well it didn’t take long before Jesus went from calling Peter the Rock upon which we were all to build our faith.  To calling him Satan!  And demanding that he get behind him!  That he not get in his way.  So well, it is one thing to really know who we are, and to know who Jesus is, quite another to follow the implications of Christ’s identity and our own identity and be really willing to go where such a realization leads us.

Peter was not willing to accept that Messiah, Son of the Living God, lead inevitably to death on the cross.  But this was not just what Jesus knew he must face.  Jesus says, this is the fate for all of us.  I spoke last week about how this realization of who we are gives us strength to face every trial that comes our way. Gives us strength take up our cross just as Christ did.  But in today’s scripture we go one step further.  It is not really a choice.  If you want to follow Jesus taking up your cross is a requirement, actually, an inevitability.  “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”  If we are really going to be following Jesus, that is what we are going to be doing, that is the path we are going to be on, one that leads to the cross.

None of us really want that.  We wouldn’t wish it on anyone else either.  We certainly would not readily accept it as the fate of our loved ones.   Calling someone Satan seems pretty harsh when we too would naturally say, “now wait a minute.  Think twice about this, are you really sure you want to” …  and we can fill in the blank with all the risky schemes, half baked ideas, dangerous antics from which we want to protect those we care about.   At the same time we are proud of loved ones when we know they have sacrificed so much for the good of others, when they have shown themselves to be heroes in the face of great personal risk,  when they have made that ultimate sacrifice our hearts overflow with grief and pain and loss as well as ….  Well I think of Mary as she knew what lay ahead for her own child, and scriptures says, “She pondered all these things in her heart.”

None of us want this for ourselves either, a life of sacrifice and suffering, not really what you dream about when imaging your career choices.  Is that really what we signed up for?  Some of us might fantasize about being saints. I’ll admit St Francis is my hero, but the one who sits in the beautiful field of flowers, and talks to the animals.  Nevertheless, we come face to face with the reality of our call.  Can you imagine the disciple’s first reaction to this exclamation for Jesus?  “Say what?”  There were so many other possible outcomes they could have had in mind.  The old standard:  revenge on our enemies, the Romans.  That would be good.  What about a seat at the right hand of God?  That would be nice.  What about making us all kings and queens of your new reign on earth?  What about all that peace on earth stuff and good will to men, that sounded nice, can’t we have that.  Then there is that scene in Jesus Christ Superstar, the disciple are singing as they fall asleep at the last supper, “Then when we retire we can write the gospels and they’ll all talk about us when were gone.”  That sounds nice.

For most of us it is just a nice quiet life that we long for, and at first glance that seems to be what Paul is talking about in his letter.  He is talking about loving one another and being good and living in harmony.  We can go for all of that.  He uses words like “joyful, patient, faithful, hospitable.”  All those nice value words, like the one’s up on the electronic boards of all the businesses throughout Yakima.  The word of the month is “Consideration.”  Sure we can go for that.   As much as possible live at peace with everyone, now that sounds like the nice quiet life we are after. 

But then he says stuff like bless those who persecute you, bless not curse.  Persecute, why would anyone be persecuting us, and why in the world would I be blessing such mean people?  But it turns out that hidden in this passage are some other things that begin to hint as something even more radical.  He says “associate with people of low estate,” that is hang out with poor people.  He says, don’t repay evil for evil, but repay evil with good.  “Now wait a second.”  Paul says, don’t take revenge.  We know about all that forgiveness stuff.  We can even put that word up on the reader board.  But come on.  We have to be able to draw the line somewhere, to tell the difference between us the good people and the bad people. That’s what being law abiding is all about, good people get rewarded, bad people get punished.    But Paul says, echoing Jesus, “Love your enemies.”  In fact if your enemy is hungry feed him.  What!  Come on now!   If he is thirsty give  him something to eat. 

“Love your enemies.”  I have not seen that one on one of those signs at the banks yet.  We Christians let it roll of the tongue like it one of those platitudes, all of this stuff we imagine is not controversial at all, does not call into question the way the world is set up at , is not really a radical alternative to the way the world is set up.  We imagine it is all quite reasonable,  no one would look at us like we were crazy, no one would think we were dangerously subversive.  “Love your enemies.”  Right.  Love Saddaam Hussien, Love Osama Ben Ladin. Love Adolf Hitler.  Come on folks do we really believe this!?

But we don’t really have to go that far to know that we really don’t buy into this.  How many of you have been hurt by someone, violated and victimized, who among us hasn’t had someone say something bad about you, been on the opposite side of issue from us, and who hasn’t let our anger boil, had bad thoughts about someone, and so on.   Evil people deserve what they get.  Aren’t we pretty clear about who my people are who the others are.  Don’t we have our group and know who is not in our group.  Don’t we want our team to win, and the other team to lose.  The world is set up to have good guys and bad guys, to have winners and losers, victims and abusers, oppressors and the oppressed.  It is the survival of the fittest, the whole natural world works this way, hunters and preys.  It is just the way the world is set up.

And the Bible seems to confirm this sort of thing.  Back to the story of Moses. Last week Moses was a baby in the bulrushes and his people were suffering greatly.  God hears the cries of the oppressed and brings them a deliverer.  This week we have the call of Moses at the burning bush.  God is telling Moses all about the Promised Land he is about to give to the Israelites.

“ I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites.

But this land Promised Land already belonged to someone else, other people were already living there.  It was their home!  In order for the Israelites to have a promised land they had to take it from someone else.  And remember the Song of Moses, how we are asked every Easter Vigil to gloat over the drowning of the Egyptian army.  What follows in scripture is the bloody recounting of a ruthless God who demands genocide and the complete elimination of all these others who stand in the way of what God wants for his people.

It is really hard for me to stomach.  But that is the story.  The oppressed people get to be liberating and then violently overthrow other people and kick them out of their land - with God justifying, commanding this kind of invasion.  Some biblical scholars imagine the real underlying story to be more about a peasant revolt in Palestine. But whether it is a conquest or a peasant revolt the story still is about the liberation of an oppressed people, and about overthrowing another people and the labels of oppressed and oppressor get attached to each of these respective nations in history and we then know who are the good guys and who are the bad guys.  And to this day many of us believe that Israel is always the good guy and the Palestinians are somehow just like all those ancient people Canaanites, Hittites etc they are always the bad guys.

A number of years ago we brought a Palestinian woman to the Campbell Farm.  I forget her name.  She was a member of the Presbyterian Peace Makers Delegation touring the county, a social worker, a Palestinian Christian.  But I will always remember one story she told.  Back before 1948 it was Palestinians who were living in the land, in their homes, and it was the Israelis who were the terrorists fighting for what they believed was their land actually against the British.  And when it was given to them by UN Declaration, more war erupted  with Arab nations and after the war, it was Palestinians 700,000 of them who are forcefully removed from their homes and Jewish families who moved in to take over these homes.  This Palestinian Christian told a story of coming to a meeting once in Jerusalem at a home that had now become the offices of Jewish social service organization.  It was a meeting to foster Jewish Palestinian dialogue around a particular social issue at the time.  The home to which she came to attend this meeting turned out to be her old family home.  The piano she learned how to play on as a little girl was still there in the living room.  Can you imagine the pain of entering into your former home, still seeing the things that once belonged to you, that were forcibly taken from you?  Asked to enter as a guest, to be a part of a dialogue, an attempt at civil discourse.  To be a victim of this sort of violation and still not be about perpetuating evil, seeking revenge, but being about something completely different.  Being a peace maker.  To walk another radically different path that still seeks liberation, still seeks justice, but also heeds the call of Christ to love your enemies.

Yahweh, I AM WHO I AM is the name God gave to Moses.  It can also be translated I WILL BE WHO I WILL BE.  I don’t know exactly how we get from the God of just Israel, to a God who is on the side of the poor and oppressed wherever they are to be found.  To a God who’s answer to the world is not more violence and oppression, but a boundless love, an unwavering commitment to peace, a radical hospitality that welcomes all, friend or foe into the household of God.  How do we get from My God to the One God who is God and Father of us all? 

Jesus answers this with the inevitability of the cross.  We who are call to follow Jesus are inevitably crucified on the structures of this world, just as he was.  “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor^[i] and hate your enemy.’ ⁴⁴ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.   If you love those who love you, what reward will you get?” Your love must exceed everyone else’s in order for the world to truly change.  Perhaps we are called to let go of some power we have over someone else.  Perhaps we are called to give until it hurts to provide for people who are left out.  Perhaps we are called to include in our circle someone we were sure was our enemy.  Perhaps we are called to be the first to lay down our weapons, open our homes, speak a word of peace.  In all of this we are called to lay down on the structures of this world, take up our place alongside Jesus, willing to risk all ourselves in order to destroy all that stands in the way of new community that is build on the Good News that we are all Children of God, Created in the Image of God, Members of the Body of Christ.

Sunday Aug 21, 2011 Proper 16 After Pentecost

“Our Help is in the Name of the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.”

The line from our Psalm today is from the Opening Sentences to Compline. We don’t get to say this service much unless we are closing the day’s activities say at a church retreat.  Compline is the last service before the night fully takes over and we go to sleep.  It is a service that takes place in that liminal, in between space between waking and sleeping and full of images of life and death and light and darkness.  Prayers about Jesus as the light and life of us all, in this time when from our childhood we have had to be coaxed to bed, assured that there were no monsters in the closet, that this sleep was not forever, but we  would wake again in the morning.   It is the quintessential time of transition that conjures up all sorts of images of transition in our life.  And at this time we call upon the Name of the Lord as our only help, secure in the knowledge that it is the Maker of heaven and earth who established the strong foundation upon which our lives depend.

Transitions are always times in which the stuff we have taken for granted are shaken, our identity can be called into question as our normal circumstances and the stuff we relied upon change.  We are often found in these times searching to hang on to who we are, what we believe, as all around us things are changing and we often have to begin again to redefine ourselves and bring ourselves through the transition.  We look for something solid upon which to stand, upon which to hang on to, upon which to rely.

The Israelites in the Exodus passage were in a time of transition.  The famous line “Then a new king, who knew not Joseph, came to power in Egypt,” – this speaks of a time when all that was familiar passed away and they found themselves once again in a strange land without the protections and status they had enjoyed before.  This time of transition led to oppression as the new folks in charge had no idea of the history of the Jewish people in Egypt, no longer valued them, enslaved them, saw them now as threats and moved to extinguish them.

This was a on a societal level, a whole people who’s status suddenly changed because their protectors had been forgotten.  But I can’t help think about this on a personal level.  I know that all of us go through transitions.  Work is a good example of this.  I know in my own position, one of my many jobs I have, we have just merged with another organization and suddenly the community I took for granted and the position I held in that community, the direction and purpose of that community of which I was a part, all of it has suddenly changed with the addition of new people, new visions, new structures.  And suddenly everything is up for negotiation.  Who are we?  Am I still a valued member of this community?  What is my role now?  Will we be able to unite the disparate cultures that have come together?  Will the things that I valued still be here?  Will there be a place for me in this new organization?  Who am I and what do I want to do?  All of this up for grabs again in this moment of transition. 

I know that many of us are going through the same kind of thing.  A new corporation takes over a company we have been a part of for years and suddenly everything is different.  A new principal comes to run a school and suddenly the programs that were valued before are all renegotiated.  Others of us are in between jobs and in this uncertain economic times we struggle to hang on to a sense of our worth and purpose as the weeks and months go on without a “real job.”  Some of have just retired or are considering retirement, and in this time of transition we come back to the basic questions of who am I now, and what am I going to do now?  Retirement may be good news, it also comes with all the questions that any transition brings about who we are, what we have to hang on to, what are the solid foundations of ourselves that stay the same from one transition to the next.  Who are we really?

Going back to the Israelites.  This question of “Who are we really?”  is one that oppressed and disenfranchised people ask constantly as they struggle to hang on to their humanity and dignity in the face of vilification and stereotypes and prejudice designed to keep them down, keep them enslaved.  “Who are we really?”  It reminds me of the preacher’s proclamation during the civil rights movement, “You are Somebody!”  I just watched the movie The Help about black maids in the south in the 60’s.  It was through the telling of their own story, finding their own voice that these women found themselves again, defined themselves rather than being defined by the incessant, relentless definition of who they were reinforced by the white community that attempted to keep them in their place.  I think also of the youth we are coming to know in Mending Wings, the Campbell Farm and the Yakama Christian Mission.  Self esteem is a major issue as the Native America community seeks to define themselves and know their own worth in the face of hundreds of years of domination by another culture.  We often come to these communities as though they were “so needy” and we reinforce their subordinate position by keeping them always as folks who “need our help.”  But new strategies coming from the National Episcopal Church in consultation with Native Communities are seeking to overcome centuries of oppression and deal with generational trauma by discovering new ways to heal people through story-telling, and focus on Asset Based Community Development which emphasizes strengths rather than deficits.

Paul talks about this in the epistle reading for today.  He says make a sober estimate of your selves.  He says you ought not think too highly of yourselves, but I would add you ought not think too lowly of yourselves as well.  He says, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”  I want you to imagine these words being spoken to you in those times of transition, in those times when the old bosses are gone and the new King who knew not Joseph is now in power.  I want you to imagine if you can what it might be like to hear these words after years of abuse, years of oppression, years of being dominated.  Do not conform to what the powers of this world have been saying about you, leading you to believe, but allow yourselves to be transformed by God, by a true vision of who you are, by how God sees you.  You are God’s beloved child, God’s own creation. You are a full fledged member of the Body of Christ and you have been gifted from above with just the gifts you need to contribute to the whole body in a special and unique way!

Knowing this is what Paul calls our “spiritual worship.”  That word spiritual is also translated “reasonable worship.”  I like that.  It goes with sober estimate in the following verses.  We have all sorts of things that slant our perceptions, warp our ability to see, all sorts of emotional trauma that gets in the way of us seeing ourselves for who we really are.  But the central act of worship is to present ourselves before God the way God sees us.  Scripture uses the phrase “living sacrifice” here, and to our ears sacrifice sometimes implies that we are continuing to participate in an abusive system.  But not so in this passage.  Here it is all about transformation.  To be transformed by the Spirit of God, to enter into this profound mystical relationship with God in prayer and worship that allows us to see ourselves for who we really are.  God’s own creation, Child of God.  We are the Body of Christ and individually members of that Body.  Each of us, as we come here, sometimes, alone, uncertain, not knowing our place, we discover in worship that we are one with everything, one with the Living God.  This is the foundation, the Rock, as today’s Gospel says that can keep us strong and steady through all the trials and transitions of our life.  But not just strength to continue to take the abuse, but like the women of the Help, courage to take great risks for the sake of transforming the world.

This is what is behind the proclamation that Peter makes in today’s Gospel.  We do not get to know who we are unless we can know who Jesus Christ is.  Peter’s proclamation:  “You are Christ (the Messiah), the Son of the Living God.”  This is not just a prophet before us, this person we worship is the Son of God, one with the Living God and that is why through him we can be made one with God as well. 

This is a profound statement of trust in God at a moment of profound transition and trial.  What Peter said to Jesus was as much for Jesus as for any of us.  It was Peter who defined Jesus, told the truth about who he really was and it was this that gave Jesus the strength to face the cross, his own death, a moment of ultimate transition, trial, uncertainty, doubt, in which Jesus too had to hang on to who he really was.  We know when he finally makes it to the Garden of Gethsemane, he sweated blood, he asked God to take this cup from him, he doubted and was tempted to turn away himself from who he really was and what his calling was.  But Peter knew him, knew him for who he really was, and it was this recognition of true self, that gave him strength, this Rock of Faith that he called upon in his own time of trial. 

Just as Peter said these words to Jesus, so we speak words of encouragement and hope to ourselves.  We can stand on this same Rock as we come to know ourselves and call others to be who they really are beloved children of God, created in God’s image, full fledge members of the Body of Christ, One with God.  It is this proclamation that gives us the strength to face our own trials, but more, it is this knowledge that gives us strength to take up our own cross for the sake of the world, to present ourselves as a living sacrifice, our spiritual worship, and to be united with Christ in his sacrifice for the whole world.  We offer this Good News, this word of liberation from all the ways the world defines and oppresses us.

I pray that we can like the Psalmist say to everyone facing the nighttime of difficulties, “Our Help is in the Name of the Lord, the Maker of Heaven and Earth” and we can know ourselves to be above all else children of this Living God, Created in the Image of God, members of the Body of Christ capable of overcoming all that is set before us.  AMEN.