Maundy Thursday
April 5, 2012
Trinity Church
Exodus 12:1-4, (5-10), 11-14
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
John 13:1-17, 31b-35
Psalm 116:1, 10-17
The greatest archetype, the greatest image or symbol, for conscious human life and experience is the idea of the journey.
You have heard me speak often of “the spiritual journey” precisely because I think that is the best, clearest, and most universal way of naming what our life as Christians is all about. Everyone of us has come from somewhere to be here now. Everyone of us has changed from who we once were to who we now are. If that is not true, then those for whom it is not true are the walking dead who have come from nowhere and are going nowhere. It we are conscious and if we are followers of Jesus, then we are on a journey. None of us have yet arrived at where we are ultimately going. None of us have become what we shall ultimately be. We are on the way. You cannot follow without going somewhere. We have a destination. As Christians, our journey is God-ward, that is that we are heading from where we are to the ever deepening presence and knowledge of God. Not only is the direction of our journey God-ward, but according to Paul, it is much more specifically a journey toward our becoming like Christ. He says that our journey is toward “maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. (Eph 4:13
So each of us is on a journey. As Christians we are asked to be on that journey consciously, intentionally, and in the company of others.
For some the journey of life has been hard much of the time; and for all of us it has been – or will be – hard some of the time. Each of us, when all is said and done will bear the wounds and scars of mistakes made, missteps taken, paths we have followed that left us worse off than when we began. Perhaps some of us can identify with Dante who begins his great poem by saying,
“In the middle of the journey of our life I found myself within a dark woods where the straight way was lost . . . I cannot say clearly how I entered there, So drowsy with sleep had I grown at that hour when first I wandered off from the true way.”
He has journeyed down the wrong road and isn’t even sure when he began to stray or how he wound up such a lost human being.
Maybe you too have known that moment. When did the relationship start to go bad? When did the career turn out to be such a dead end? When did your spiritual life become so dry or shallow, so “of no real use” in guiding your heart and your mind and your strength? When did the lostness begin? And -- much more importantly -- how do you find again the right path for your journey?
Tonight Jesus gives us help along our way. Tonight he gives us food to strengthen us for our travels – our trials and travails. Tonight we are given the gift of the Bread and Wine we need to refresh us from the struggle that has brought us this far, the Bread and Wine we need to feed our pilgrim spirits for the path ahead. And it is not just any Bread and Wine, but the Bread and Wine that causes us to remember him and his unshakeable, unalterable, uncompromising, unconditional love for each of us. Tonight we receive the gift of Bread and Wine that allow us to re-member him, that is to make his very human body present to us. We get to re-collect him, to collect him again, gathering him up into our arms – and then take him into our selves, so that taking him into ourselves we become what he is – God’s eternal presence in the world. God present within our own bodies so that we may be God’s presence within the body of the world.
But that is not all. Tonight Jesus strips off his robe and, in an act of breat-taking humility, he kneels before his friends and washes their feet. I am sure it made them even more uncomfortable that it clearly makes most of us since so few are likely to be courageous or trusting or perceptive enough to receive that same service at the hands of our brothers and sisters in Christ when, in just a few minutes I and others will kneel before you and offer to be your servants.
Be that as it may, the gift is given. And what it says is true: Jesus knows where your feet have been. He knows the journey you have been on. He knows the blisters and scars your travels have left on your wounded, frightened, and too often exhausted souls. And to him it is all acceptable. Tonight he kneels before you, bathes your feet with soothing water and fragrant oil, blessing the path you have taken, wherever it has taken you; blesses and honors the choices you have made that have led you here to him tonight; blesses and honors all the missteps and lost hours of your entire life. All of this is acceptable, and tonight he washes and honors and blesses it all. Making it all the source of wisdom gained through often painful experience – so that, as the 12-step tradition puts it, “We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it,” We may even “see how our experience can benefit others.” (Big Book of AA)
As we continue our journey to the cross and beyond we can now do so knowing that God knows our path, God has always been and always will be our companion. God has not ever, does not now, and never will do anything other than honor who we are and where we have been, even as he is ever ready to be our guide toward a path that is right.
I was recently stunned into inner silence by the signature phrase someone included on an e-mail message to me. Every message he sends, in fact, has these as his final words: "Always be kind. Everyone you meet is fighting a great battle." We all need to know that these words are true. “Always be kind. Everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.” Tonight we can luxuriate in the assurance that Jesus knows the battle each of us is waging. And, kneeling before us because he loves us, he will ultimately and always be kind. As you hear me say almost every Sunday, quoting Psalm 145, “The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger and of great kindness.”
Thanks be to God.
Friday, April 6, 2012
Monday, February 13, 2012
Exercise and Diet. Oh, that again!
The Sixth Sunday after Epiphany:
12 February 20121994
Trinity Church
2 Kings 5:1-14
1 Corinthians 9:24-27
Mark 1:40-45
Psalm 30
Naaman was a mighty general, The Second Book of the Kings has told us. He was not an Israelite but a gentile, and the commander of the Syrian army; He had won many victories for his king. He was successful in every way a soldier wants to be. But he had a problem. He had a disease the Hebrew Bible calls leprosy. It’s not that same thing that we know as leprosy today, but it was obviously a serious and debilitating disease that resisted cure by ordinary means.
Naaman gets some advice from an unusual place, from a slave girl who doesn’t even have a name in the story. Humble and, in the eyes of the world, as insignificant as she is, she is able to guide Naaman toward healing. She is able to guide Naaman -- through his wife, that is, in case you didn’t get it the first time: great wisdom often comes from the women in our biblical story!
She guides Naaman toward Elisha the prophet in Israel. In those days to be a prophet meant to be a wise man, a person who knew and understood great things, a person others looked to for wisdom and guidance, even for healing.
So Naaman sets off to see if this wise one of Israel can heal him. The prophet doesn’t even come down to see Naaman. He just tells Naaman to go and wash in the River Jordan. Naaman is disappointed, even angry.
He says, "I thought that for me [Elisha the prophet] would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the LORD his God, and would wave his hand and cure me." Naaman is unable to believe that any prophet worth his salt and any God worth his incense would use such simple stuff--the water of a river as insignificant as the Jordan--to heal and restore. After all, there are mightier rivers back in Damascus.
Naaman is rather like, well me, for one, and maybe like you too. I have a doctor, or should I say I have some doctors who actually say they know how I can be healed, or at least made more whole. They claim to have a way for my heart and my arteries and my mind and my mood and my memory to be stronger and healthier. Their secret will work for you too, I bet. They tell me that this miracle of healing can be accomplished if I will pay careful attention to what and how much I eat and to how much and how often I get exercise.
Oh, that again! Diet and exercise. Diet and exercise. Surely it can’t be that simple. But we all know it is. That simple combination is shown over and over and over and over again to be the key to a healthier body and mind.
So simple. And yet so hard.
We are just like Naaman. The answer is close at hand and, for me at least, it just doesn’t seem like the thing to do. There must be another way.
Naaman, unlike me, finally does what the doctor – I mean the prophet orders – and indeed he is made well.
The story of Naaman is an interesting folk tale, but like all most folk tales it has been preserved for a reason, for some lesson it teaches.
In this case, the lesson, I think is that wonderful things are often available to us if we will take the obvious, not usually very glamorous steps to help make them possible.
What is true for individual people is true also for groups of people. Like congregations.
I pray you are aware by now that the future of this congregation, like the future of the majority of congregations in this diocese, indeed in this country is going to be very different from its past. I also hope that by now you have begun to understand that in many, many ways God is behind these changes. The Church has not been abandoned. It is not disappearing. It will never cease to be, but, as it always has, it will undergo periods of adjustment and change. Phyllis Tickle, in her book The Great Emergence is right, I believe and so do many, if not most, theologians and church historians, that she is right when she says that every 500 years or so the Western Church – that’s us – has undergone a massive upheaval, redefinition and refinement. That time is upon us again. It is what we are currently living through.
So what to do?
Well, one thing, at least, is to do what Naaman finally did, pay attention to what the prophets are saying and do what they suggest even if there advice is to do the painfully obvious. The church’s future, including our parish’s future depends on you. What our parish needs is for those who are its members to develop their own spiritual lives, to attend to their growth in faith, their growth in the knowledge and aloe of the Lord. That means gathering together regularly for worship – not just when it’s merely convenient or only when it isn’t June, July or August. It means reading and studying the scriptures – not by yourself, but in the company of others who are also learning what it means to be shaped and molded into the image and likeness of Christ. It means seeking, truly seeking your own vocation – listening for what God is calling you to be and do – and to do that also in the company of others who are asking the same question. The Spirit seems to work best when there is a group gathered together seeking the Spirit’s wisdom and guidance. It means giving generously, even sacrificially, for the spread of God’s kingdom. It means all the things you already know you are encourager by your church to do.
It isn’t glamorous; it isn’t grand and spectacular.
It’s just the way it is.
This parish can be whatever you are willing to work for it to be and whatever you are willing to provide the support for it to be.
It isn’t a mystery and it isn’t a secret. It is the diet and exercise of our corporate life.
With God all things are possible. Without God nothing is.
12 February 20121994
Trinity Church
2 Kings 5:1-14
1 Corinthians 9:24-27
Mark 1:40-45
Psalm 30
Naaman was a mighty general, The Second Book of the Kings has told us. He was not an Israelite but a gentile, and the commander of the Syrian army; He had won many victories for his king. He was successful in every way a soldier wants to be. But he had a problem. He had a disease the Hebrew Bible calls leprosy. It’s not that same thing that we know as leprosy today, but it was obviously a serious and debilitating disease that resisted cure by ordinary means.
Naaman gets some advice from an unusual place, from a slave girl who doesn’t even have a name in the story. Humble and, in the eyes of the world, as insignificant as she is, she is able to guide Naaman toward healing. She is able to guide Naaman -- through his wife, that is, in case you didn’t get it the first time: great wisdom often comes from the women in our biblical story!
She guides Naaman toward Elisha the prophet in Israel. In those days to be a prophet meant to be a wise man, a person who knew and understood great things, a person others looked to for wisdom and guidance, even for healing.
So Naaman sets off to see if this wise one of Israel can heal him. The prophet doesn’t even come down to see Naaman. He just tells Naaman to go and wash in the River Jordan. Naaman is disappointed, even angry.
He says, "I thought that for me [Elisha the prophet] would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the LORD his God, and would wave his hand and cure me." Naaman is unable to believe that any prophet worth his salt and any God worth his incense would use such simple stuff--the water of a river as insignificant as the Jordan--to heal and restore. After all, there are mightier rivers back in Damascus.
Naaman is rather like, well me, for one, and maybe like you too. I have a doctor, or should I say I have some doctors who actually say they know how I can be healed, or at least made more whole. They claim to have a way for my heart and my arteries and my mind and my mood and my memory to be stronger and healthier. Their secret will work for you too, I bet. They tell me that this miracle of healing can be accomplished if I will pay careful attention to what and how much I eat and to how much and how often I get exercise.
Oh, that again! Diet and exercise. Diet and exercise. Surely it can’t be that simple. But we all know it is. That simple combination is shown over and over and over and over again to be the key to a healthier body and mind.
So simple. And yet so hard.
We are just like Naaman. The answer is close at hand and, for me at least, it just doesn’t seem like the thing to do. There must be another way.
Naaman, unlike me, finally does what the doctor – I mean the prophet orders – and indeed he is made well.
The story of Naaman is an interesting folk tale, but like all most folk tales it has been preserved for a reason, for some lesson it teaches.
In this case, the lesson, I think is that wonderful things are often available to us if we will take the obvious, not usually very glamorous steps to help make them possible.
What is true for individual people is true also for groups of people. Like congregations.
I pray you are aware by now that the future of this congregation, like the future of the majority of congregations in this diocese, indeed in this country is going to be very different from its past. I also hope that by now you have begun to understand that in many, many ways God is behind these changes. The Church has not been abandoned. It is not disappearing. It will never cease to be, but, as it always has, it will undergo periods of adjustment and change. Phyllis Tickle, in her book The Great Emergence is right, I believe and so do many, if not most, theologians and church historians, that she is right when she says that every 500 years or so the Western Church – that’s us – has undergone a massive upheaval, redefinition and refinement. That time is upon us again. It is what we are currently living through.
So what to do?
Well, one thing, at least, is to do what Naaman finally did, pay attention to what the prophets are saying and do what they suggest even if there advice is to do the painfully obvious. The church’s future, including our parish’s future depends on you. What our parish needs is for those who are its members to develop their own spiritual lives, to attend to their growth in faith, their growth in the knowledge and aloe of the Lord. That means gathering together regularly for worship – not just when it’s merely convenient or only when it isn’t June, July or August. It means reading and studying the scriptures – not by yourself, but in the company of others who are also learning what it means to be shaped and molded into the image and likeness of Christ. It means seeking, truly seeking your own vocation – listening for what God is calling you to be and do – and to do that also in the company of others who are asking the same question. The Spirit seems to work best when there is a group gathered together seeking the Spirit’s wisdom and guidance. It means giving generously, even sacrificially, for the spread of God’s kingdom. It means all the things you already know you are encourager by your church to do.
It isn’t glamorous; it isn’t grand and spectacular.
It’s just the way it is.
This parish can be whatever you are willing to work for it to be and whatever you are willing to provide the support for it to be.
It isn’t a mystery and it isn’t a secret. It is the diet and exercise of our corporate life.
With God all things are possible. Without God nothing is.
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