Sermon: The Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost
October 13, 2013
Proper 23-C
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7
Psalm 66:1-11
2 Timothy 2:8-15
Luke 17:11-19
What does it mean to be saved? If we’ve ever thought much about it, chances are that it has to do with being somehow insured against eternal torment. “Being saved,” by that definition, means being a part of the in-crowd: those whose names will be heard “when the roll is called up yonder.” That is a fairly common understanding of what it means to be saved; and, if that’s as far as it goes, then it is a pretty poor understanding of the whole idea.
What DOES it mean to be saved? It probably helps if we realize that the word used in our Scriptures that is sometimes translated as “saved” can also be translated equally well as ”healed”; and can also be translated equally well as “made whole.” Anytime you hear that word “saved” used in the Bible you can almost always, if not always, also hear it as “made well," “healed” or “made whole.”
So when someone says to Jesus, “Heal me,” that one is also saying in the Greek that our Bible uses “Make me whole” and “Save me.” And when Jesus says to someone “Be healed,” he is saying “Be made whole,” “Be saved.” All three at the same time.
So, in the understanding of the Bible, to be saved is to be made whole, here and now. If Jesus says you are healed, the healing takes place – so does the being made whole, so does the being saved.
One of my earliest mentors and priests was once asked by a zealous Biblical fundamentalist, “Have you been saved?” And his answer was, “Yes, I have. It was on a hill outside of Jerusalem about 2,000 years ago,” the point being that in the life-death-and-resurrection of Jesus we have all been saved. We have all been healed. We have all been made whole. Some people choose to live their lives as if this is so, and others choose to go through life not realizing that being saved, that salvation, is already theirs – in both senses. That is, we have all been saved from eternal damnation as it is sometimes called, and we have all ultimately been made whole, healed and safe.
So have some people we hear about this morning.
Jesus is approached by ten lepers, ten people who had some kind of disfiguring, discoloring skin disease stand at a distance from him as was required by the Law; and they cry out, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” They have heard of him. They know his reputation as a healer, and they try to get his attention – thinking that he might somehow relieve their desperate situation. As lepers, they were forbidden any contact with other human beings who were not also suffering from such a disease. They would not have been allowed into their own homes. They would not have been allowed to shop for food, or go to church, or hold their children. We can only wonder how they survived at all. Maybe they relied on the kindness of people who would set out food for them; who would leave a shirt or a tunic hanging on a tree so that they could exchange it for the rags their own clothes had turned into. They must have been hoping for some similar kindness from Jesus. They got their kindness – and a whole lot more.
In response to their crying out to them, Jesus tells them to go and show themselves to the priests. That probably sounds quite odd to you and me, but the ten lepers would have known exactly what it meant. Anyone who thinks he has been cured of a disfiguring skin condition like the leprosy of the Old Testament has to go to a priest and have the cure certified. You are not officially cured until the priest says that you are cured. These ten lepers have just been told in an indirect way that by the time they get to the closest priest, they will be free of their disease.
And so it came to pass. All ten were cured.
But only one returns to thank God, in Jesus’s presence, for what incredible good fortune has been his. We don’t know anything about what the other nine do. They may have gotten their Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval from a priest, returned to their homes and gone on the win the Nobel Peace prize. Or they may have become bandits. We simply don’t know, and there is no reason to speculate. What we do know is that one of them did return. One returned, and he was a Samaritan – a Samaritan one of those people, one of those half-breed collaborators whom Jesus’s people would not, could not have anything to do with.
This Samaritan returns, “praising God, it says, and thanking Jesus for giving him something to praise God for.
And that’s when Jesus says, “Your faith has made you well.” But remember that this also means,”Your faith has made you whole. Your faith has saved you.” Were not the other nine healed? Well, we are told that they were, but to this one, this outcast social reject, he says, “You are now saved. You are now whole. You are now well.” And it is more than worth asking is this one, the one who nobody listening to Jesus would ever have thought of as “whole and saved,” is this one “weller” than the other nine?
And I think we must say,”Yes, this one is ‘weller.’” He is weller because he has not only felt gratitude, but has acted on it. He has felt gratitude and he has recognized, without being prompted, that all good things come from God.
So, for what good thing are you grateful. What good thing has made you more than you would have been without it? What good thing helps make you whole. What good thing makes you confident that you have been saved, both from whatever is worse in this life and from anything bad that might exist in the world to come? For what are you grateful? In twelve-step programs people who are seeking to be saved from the disease of addiction are very often, very often indeed, told to make lists of the things for which they are grateful. They call it adopting an “attitude of gratitude,” and it is seen as a necessary requirement healing. That is just one of the reasons I continue to describe twelve-step programs as real church. They know they are in the business of making people whole, of making the as well as they can be – the business, that is of salvation in a way that matters here and now. Less known, perhaps, is that a person in a twelve-step program is not considered to be recovering appropriately until, being saved, that person begins to help and accompany others on the road to wellness.
AA and the other programs know what we in the Christian church have known for centuries. I invite you now to turn to page 125 in your Book of Common Prayer and pray along with me.
Almighty God, Father of all mercies,
we your unworthy servants give you humble thanks
for all your goodness and loving-kindness
to us and to all whom you have made.
We bless you for our creation, preservation,
and all the blessings of this life;
but above all for your immeasurable love
in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ;
for the means of grace, and for the hope of glory.
And, we pray, give us such an awareness of your mercies,
that with truly thankful hearts we may show forth your praise,
not only with our lips, but in our lives,
by giving up our selves to your service,
and by walking before you
in holiness and righteousness all our days;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit,
be honor and glory throughout all ages. Amen.
I hope that, among several others, the phrase we can take to heart this morning is the request that God will “give us such an awareness of [God’s] mercies, that with truly thankful hearts we may show forth [God’s] praise, not only with our lips, but in our lives.”
The tenth leper did this. He knew what he had to be grateful for; he was indeed grateful for it; and he showed it in the thing he chose to do.
For all that, he was “weller” than the others – unless they too found some way to thank God for God’s good gifts – even though they too had been cleansed of leprosy. The one who gives sincere thanks has not only been made well, that one has also been made whole as a human being. That one has in fact – and in every way the matters – been saved. And so are we.
That salvation, that wholeness, that being “well, weller and wellest,” is also yours and mine when we recognize who it is who loves us and who it is who is the source of all good things; and who it is who desires for us greater things than we can ask or imagine.
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
Sunday, September 15, 2013
Lost and knowing it. Lost and knowing it not.
The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Trinity Church, Wethersfield
September 15, 2013
Proper 19C - RCL
Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28
Psalm 14
1 Timothy 1:12-17
Luke 15:1-10
Here is Jesus, once again standing in the middle of a crowd that has gathered to hear what this captivating if often confusing preacher has to say. Confusing, yes, but for some who are in the crowd he is also somehow a source of hope and encouragement. Today he is talking about being lost and being found. Again today he is talking about sheep. Most of the crowd, who are poor people and farmers and shepherds, know something about sheep. They know that by nature sheep wander away and get lost. It happens all the time. Often with disastrous results.
Lost sheep need to be rescued. Very few ever find their way home on their own. The crowd around Jesus all know this. And what makes it more poignant and sad is that they also know that lost sheep know that they are lost. Lost sheep know that they are lost; and they can be very afraid. Those gathered around Jesus know that a “lost sheep that is able to bleat out in distress often will not do so out of fear. Instead it will curl up and lie down in the wild brush hiding from its predators. It is so fearful in its seclusion that it cannot help in its own rescue. The sheep is immobilized, so the shepherd must bear its full weight to bear it home.” (Montgomery Debevoise in Feasting on the Word, Year C, volume 4, page 70.)
These people who know about sheep and shepherds know too what it is to be lost themselves. They have gotten the message that they don’t count. They have gotten the message that they don’t measure up. They have gotten the message that somehow some others in the world have it more together than they do.
They know too what it means to be afraid. Life can be scary. Death and disease and disaster can happen at any moment. And most of these people gathered around Jesus are acquainted with loss. Loss of health. Loss of income. Loss of those they love. The majority of those who are hearing Jesus’s words about lost sheep know that the story he is telling is about them. That is why they continue to follow him around. He knows what their lives are like and what scares them and what threatens them.
They are you and me whenever we feel that we have lost our way. They are you and me whenever the safety and security of life – for ourselves and for those we love – have slipped away and we find that we are somehow more alone than we want to be. Jesus says that our God knows this and that when we are lost in those ways, God is out looking for us. Longing to bring us back into the safety of the knowledge of God’s love; back into the safety of a community that can hold us up until we can stand on our own. God is like a shepherd, never counting the cost, but always searching for us when we are lost. Not waiting until we find our way home, but searching for us. Every hour of every day until we are once again safely on his shoulders, safely in his embrace. That is good news for those listening to Jesus. It is good news for any of us who ever have ever – or who may at this very moment know or feel that somehow we have lost our way.
But along with the story about the sheep, Jesus tells a second story. He tells a story about a woman who has lost a coin and who searches for it with all the earnestness of the shepherd who searches for his sheep. The coin is very important to the woman. It is precious to her.
But a coin – unlike a lost little lamb – can’t think, can’t fear, can’t know that it is lost. The woman, however, values it; and won’t rest until she has found it.
What is Jesus up to? What is this story about. Who is this story for? This story is for those in crowd who have passed judgment on all the rest. This other, smaller group of religious and intellectual big shots has written off those whom Jesus compares to beloved sheep.
“They are poor,” say these self-important people, “they are not religious enough, they don’t live the right kind of lives.” “Sure, they are lost,” say these others, “and they are not worth looking for.” “They might or might not find their way home,” says this judgmental crowd, “but that is their problem. They are not worth searching for. They are not worth rescuing from what life has done to them,” they say.
Jesus is talking especially to these judgmental ones in the crowd – in this case the proud and the cold hearted, those who are quick to judge, quick to condemn. These sad, self-important people are like the coin: They, too, are lost; and what is worse, they don’t even know it. They don’t know, they can’t know in their current frame of mind that they, too, have lost their way. God is searching for them, too, whether or not they even know that they are lost.
Even in their unawareness, insensitivity and confusion-about-what-is really-important, God is searching for them too, though, as yet, they are unaware of it.
Which are we? Which are you? The lost sheep that knows it is in trouble? Knows that it has strayed from the path and is afraid? Take heart. Even now, this very morning God is searching for you and will rejoice to bring you home.
Or are you, are we, the judgmental ones who are wandering through life not even knowing that we are on the wrong path, and are lost even if we think we know where we are?
Part of our problem in this second case, is “we can’t know that we don’t know that we are lost.” Not knowing is not knowing. Until something or someone confronts us, brings us to greater consciousness, we run the danger of having a diminished kind of life without even knowing what we are missing, without even knowing what we are losing.
Here is a story, a story to confront us so that we might come to our senses:
“A young couple moves into a new neighborhood. The next morning while they are eating breakfast, the young woman sees her neighbor hanging the wash outside. "That laundry is not very clean; she doesn't know how to wash correctly. Perhaps she needs better laundry soap." Her husband looks on, remaining silent. Every time her neighbor hangs her wash to dry, the young woman makes the same comments. A month later, the woman is surprised to see a nice clean wash on the line and says to her husband: "Look, she's finally learned how to wash correctly. I wonder who taught her this? " The husband replies, "I got up early this morning and cleaned our windows." And so it is with life. . . . What we see when watching others depends on the clarity of the window through which we look.” (From a Facebook post, 9.14.13, by my friend Stephen Hathcock, MD, of the faculty of Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center.)
To the degree that we and those we love are lost and know it, take heart. God will never rest until we are found. To the degree that we have not yet realized how lost we are or can be, take heart. God will never rest until we are found. And there will be great rejoicing in heaven when we are finally at home, with ourselves, with our neighbors and with God.
Trinity Church, Wethersfield
September 15, 2013
Proper 19C - RCL
Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28
Psalm 14
1 Timothy 1:12-17
Luke 15:1-10
Here is Jesus, once again standing in the middle of a crowd that has gathered to hear what this captivating if often confusing preacher has to say. Confusing, yes, but for some who are in the crowd he is also somehow a source of hope and encouragement. Today he is talking about being lost and being found. Again today he is talking about sheep. Most of the crowd, who are poor people and farmers and shepherds, know something about sheep. They know that by nature sheep wander away and get lost. It happens all the time. Often with disastrous results.
Lost sheep need to be rescued. Very few ever find their way home on their own. The crowd around Jesus all know this. And what makes it more poignant and sad is that they also know that lost sheep know that they are lost. Lost sheep know that they are lost; and they can be very afraid. Those gathered around Jesus know that a “lost sheep that is able to bleat out in distress often will not do so out of fear. Instead it will curl up and lie down in the wild brush hiding from its predators. It is so fearful in its seclusion that it cannot help in its own rescue. The sheep is immobilized, so the shepherd must bear its full weight to bear it home.” (Montgomery Debevoise in Feasting on the Word, Year C, volume 4, page 70.)
These people who know about sheep and shepherds know too what it is to be lost themselves. They have gotten the message that they don’t count. They have gotten the message that they don’t measure up. They have gotten the message that somehow some others in the world have it more together than they do.
They know too what it means to be afraid. Life can be scary. Death and disease and disaster can happen at any moment. And most of these people gathered around Jesus are acquainted with loss. Loss of health. Loss of income. Loss of those they love. The majority of those who are hearing Jesus’s words about lost sheep know that the story he is telling is about them. That is why they continue to follow him around. He knows what their lives are like and what scares them and what threatens them.
They are you and me whenever we feel that we have lost our way. They are you and me whenever the safety and security of life – for ourselves and for those we love – have slipped away and we find that we are somehow more alone than we want to be. Jesus says that our God knows this and that when we are lost in those ways, God is out looking for us. Longing to bring us back into the safety of the knowledge of God’s love; back into the safety of a community that can hold us up until we can stand on our own. God is like a shepherd, never counting the cost, but always searching for us when we are lost. Not waiting until we find our way home, but searching for us. Every hour of every day until we are once again safely on his shoulders, safely in his embrace. That is good news for those listening to Jesus. It is good news for any of us who ever have ever – or who may at this very moment know or feel that somehow we have lost our way.
But along with the story about the sheep, Jesus tells a second story. He tells a story about a woman who has lost a coin and who searches for it with all the earnestness of the shepherd who searches for his sheep. The coin is very important to the woman. It is precious to her.
But a coin – unlike a lost little lamb – can’t think, can’t fear, can’t know that it is lost. The woman, however, values it; and won’t rest until she has found it.
What is Jesus up to? What is this story about. Who is this story for? This story is for those in crowd who have passed judgment on all the rest. This other, smaller group of religious and intellectual big shots has written off those whom Jesus compares to beloved sheep.
“They are poor,” say these self-important people, “they are not religious enough, they don’t live the right kind of lives.” “Sure, they are lost,” say these others, “and they are not worth looking for.” “They might or might not find their way home,” says this judgmental crowd, “but that is their problem. They are not worth searching for. They are not worth rescuing from what life has done to them,” they say.
Jesus is talking especially to these judgmental ones in the crowd – in this case the proud and the cold hearted, those who are quick to judge, quick to condemn. These sad, self-important people are like the coin: They, too, are lost; and what is worse, they don’t even know it. They don’t know, they can’t know in their current frame of mind that they, too, have lost their way. God is searching for them, too, whether or not they even know that they are lost.
Even in their unawareness, insensitivity and confusion-about-what-is really-important, God is searching for them too, though, as yet, they are unaware of it.
Which are we? Which are you? The lost sheep that knows it is in trouble? Knows that it has strayed from the path and is afraid? Take heart. Even now, this very morning God is searching for you and will rejoice to bring you home.
Or are you, are we, the judgmental ones who are wandering through life not even knowing that we are on the wrong path, and are lost even if we think we know where we are?
Part of our problem in this second case, is “we can’t know that we don’t know that we are lost.” Not knowing is not knowing. Until something or someone confronts us, brings us to greater consciousness, we run the danger of having a diminished kind of life without even knowing what we are missing, without even knowing what we are losing.
Here is a story, a story to confront us so that we might come to our senses:
“A young couple moves into a new neighborhood. The next morning while they are eating breakfast, the young woman sees her neighbor hanging the wash outside. "That laundry is not very clean; she doesn't know how to wash correctly. Perhaps she needs better laundry soap." Her husband looks on, remaining silent. Every time her neighbor hangs her wash to dry, the young woman makes the same comments. A month later, the woman is surprised to see a nice clean wash on the line and says to her husband: "Look, she's finally learned how to wash correctly. I wonder who taught her this? " The husband replies, "I got up early this morning and cleaned our windows." And so it is with life. . . . What we see when watching others depends on the clarity of the window through which we look.” (From a Facebook post, 9.14.13, by my friend Stephen Hathcock, MD, of the faculty of Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center.)
To the degree that we and those we love are lost and know it, take heart. God will never rest until we are found. To the degree that we have not yet realized how lost we are or can be, take heart. God will never rest until we are found. And there will be great rejoicing in heaven when we are finally at home, with ourselves, with our neighbors and with God.
Monday, March 11, 2013
SERMON
The Fourth Sunday in Lent
March 10, 2013
Joshua 5:9-12
Psalm 32
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
[Richard Rohr quotations are from Immortal Diamond, p. 61 ff.]
“All the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’"
– Luke 15.1-3
Because of their grumbling Jesus told them this familiar story that we know as the Parable of the Prodigal Son.
So what’s with the Pharisees and the scribes? They are the pillars of their community. They hold respectable positions and respectable opinions and they lead respectable lives, doing what their religion and their national duty require of them. They are in so many ways the average, hard-working, law-abiding, church-going citizens of Jesus’s homeland.
And they do not know what to make of Jesus. He is a smart guy. He knows the Bible; he radiates a kindness and concern for others that you can’t help but notice if you are lucky enough to get near him, lucky enough to hear him teach and tell those curious stories he likes to tell. But they do not know what to make of him. He doesn’t follow the rules they way they do. He hangs out with tax collector and sinners. Tax collectors were turncoats and collaborators with the occupying Roman enemy. No one is supposed to give them the time of day even though they are fellow citizens just like the Pharisees and the scribes. The difference is they are working for the bad guys; so they are to be avoided and looked down on. They are to be avoided because the rules say that to deal with them makes you unclean. Their nastiness will rub of on you if you get too close to them.
That’s the tax collectors. What about the sinners? Who are they? Well, that isn’t as clear. Maybe its just one category, “the tax collectors who, of course, are sinners.” Or maybe it is a separate category. We do read else where of “Gentile sinners,” that is to say non-citizens who aren’t part of Jesus’s people, not part of the Pharisees’ and scribes’ circle of acceptable folks. Whoever they are, they are people who are contaminated and to whom it is not good to give the time of day.
But Jesus does give them the time of day. He gives them his time, his attention, so the Pharisees and the scribes grumble about him. How could this otherwise good teacher spoil it all by being seen with shady financiers and dirty immigrants?
Jesus knows about their grumbling, and – when he knows that they can hear him – he tells this story, so familiar to us, of the man who had two sons, one of whom was dutiful and respectable and played by the rules, the kind of child who never gave a father any trouble. The other son we have come to call “prodigal” – a word the dictionary defines as “wastefully or recklessly extravagant.” That’s him alright, having the chutzpah to ask for his inheritance before his father dies and then spending it all wastefully, recklessly extravagantly.”
But the story is not so much about him as it is about his father. His father forgives him before he can even ask to be forgiven. His father is genuinely over-joyed that this profligate runaway has come home.
Now you can just bet that all the neighbors’s tongues are wagging, wondering what kind of cold reception this bad boy will receive, what kind of punishment and penance he must now do, what kind of humiliation he must undergo to prove he is sorry. They probably even laid bets on how stern a rebuke he will get. Oh, how surprised they are to be invited to a party where the father can show them that he has received his lost child back with great joy and total forgiveness. It is the father who is the extravagant one. He gives away what most people would have expected the runaway son should have to earn.
The father, of course, is a stand-in for us – the way the father behaves is the way Jesus behaves and the way we who are his followers are expected to behave. We are to forgive even before it is asked for. Let’s not pretend that is easy. It is not easy; but that’s the assignment.
We naturally rebel at such prodigal, profligate, some might say irresponsible handing out of forgiveness and acceptance. You and I want a little payback from those who have offended us. We want a little justice. A little fairness. A little chance to be told by the offending party they we were right all along and they were wrong. We want those things when we have been hurt or offended, don’t we?
That makes us a lot like the older brother. And the older brother is a lot like the Pharisees and scribes for whose benefit, remember, Jesus is telling this story. If we are like the older brother, and he is like the Pharisees and scribes, then we are like the Pharisees and scribes; and we, therefore, are the ones for whom Jesus first told this story and is telling it now, still and again this morning.
The trouble is: being proper and following the rules and doing what is expected will not automatically make you kind and forgiving. And here is a sad truth: being a regular church person will not necessarily make you kind and forgiving either. Churches are great places to hide and to soothe your conscience by telling yourself and others that you must be a good person because you show up in church so regularly. You may even be very active in your faith community – the Pharisees and the scribes were famous for being deeply involved in the religion of their community. It didn’t stop Jesus from calling them out when they didn’t have room in their hearts for people of dubious reputation and proven unacceptability.
Remember that religious practice, even and including all that one might do for one’s church, doesn’t guarantee a thing. Whatever you do and whatever you say you believe – is it making you kinder, less proud, less judgmental, less needy to be right all the time, less willing to criticize others and point out the speck in their eyes before taking a good, long look at the log in your own eye? Is it? Do you jump to judgment? Why do you need to judge at all? “Judgment is mine,” says the Lord. “Do not judge, lest ye be judged,” says Jesus.
Again it is Richard Rohr who helps me understand all this and who puts it so starkly and clearly”
“The True Self,” that is the person we really are meant by God to be, “never knows with absolute surety that it is right or ‘good,’ but in fact it does not even need to, which is what we mean by ‘faith.’ The True Self has knocked on the hard bottom and the high ceiling of reality and has less and less need for mere verbal certitudes or answers that always fit. It has found certainty elsewhere and now lives inside a YES that is so big that it can absorb most of the little noes. The False self,” that is the petty, judgmental, gotta-be-right self, “fears and denies all seeming contradictions, probably because it unconsciously knows that it itself is a mass of contradictions and is searching for some external order or control. You can forgive the outer world only if and when you have first forgiven you own inner world.
“The religious False Self is the is the best and most defended self of all . . . The Ego has found it cover, so be quite careful about being religious. If your religion does not transform your consciousness to one of compassion, it is more a part of the problem than [a] [book reads “any”] solution . . . anything less than the death of the False Self is useless religion.”
Perhaps this all sound dreary and difficult – and indeed, killing off the False Self is a serious and a life-long project – but it is all just difficulty and dreariness.
It can all be summed up by returning the Jesus’s story. The older brother, the Pharisees and the scribes, and, that means us if we choose to side with them, are refusing to come to a party. God is throwing a party to welcome us all home. No strings attached. No questions asked. We can accept the invitation anytime we like. Oh, yeah, the younger brother, scoundrel that he is will be there too and we will have to leave our disposition to criticize, our fondness for judging others outside by the door before we can let ourselves in.
But friends, it is the only party there is – and it is going on now and it will go on forever.
The Fourth Sunday in Lent
March 10, 2013
Joshua 5:9-12
Psalm 32
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
[Richard Rohr quotations are from Immortal Diamond, p. 61 ff.]
“All the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’"
– Luke 15.1-3
Because of their grumbling Jesus told them this familiar story that we know as the Parable of the Prodigal Son.
So what’s with the Pharisees and the scribes? They are the pillars of their community. They hold respectable positions and respectable opinions and they lead respectable lives, doing what their religion and their national duty require of them. They are in so many ways the average, hard-working, law-abiding, church-going citizens of Jesus’s homeland.
And they do not know what to make of Jesus. He is a smart guy. He knows the Bible; he radiates a kindness and concern for others that you can’t help but notice if you are lucky enough to get near him, lucky enough to hear him teach and tell those curious stories he likes to tell. But they do not know what to make of him. He doesn’t follow the rules they way they do. He hangs out with tax collector and sinners. Tax collectors were turncoats and collaborators with the occupying Roman enemy. No one is supposed to give them the time of day even though they are fellow citizens just like the Pharisees and the scribes. The difference is they are working for the bad guys; so they are to be avoided and looked down on. They are to be avoided because the rules say that to deal with them makes you unclean. Their nastiness will rub of on you if you get too close to them.
That’s the tax collectors. What about the sinners? Who are they? Well, that isn’t as clear. Maybe its just one category, “the tax collectors who, of course, are sinners.” Or maybe it is a separate category. We do read else where of “Gentile sinners,” that is to say non-citizens who aren’t part of Jesus’s people, not part of the Pharisees’ and scribes’ circle of acceptable folks. Whoever they are, they are people who are contaminated and to whom it is not good to give the time of day.
But Jesus does give them the time of day. He gives them his time, his attention, so the Pharisees and the scribes grumble about him. How could this otherwise good teacher spoil it all by being seen with shady financiers and dirty immigrants?
Jesus knows about their grumbling, and – when he knows that they can hear him – he tells this story, so familiar to us, of the man who had two sons, one of whom was dutiful and respectable and played by the rules, the kind of child who never gave a father any trouble. The other son we have come to call “prodigal” – a word the dictionary defines as “wastefully or recklessly extravagant.” That’s him alright, having the chutzpah to ask for his inheritance before his father dies and then spending it all wastefully, recklessly extravagantly.”
But the story is not so much about him as it is about his father. His father forgives him before he can even ask to be forgiven. His father is genuinely over-joyed that this profligate runaway has come home.
Now you can just bet that all the neighbors’s tongues are wagging, wondering what kind of cold reception this bad boy will receive, what kind of punishment and penance he must now do, what kind of humiliation he must undergo to prove he is sorry. They probably even laid bets on how stern a rebuke he will get. Oh, how surprised they are to be invited to a party where the father can show them that he has received his lost child back with great joy and total forgiveness. It is the father who is the extravagant one. He gives away what most people would have expected the runaway son should have to earn.
The father, of course, is a stand-in for us – the way the father behaves is the way Jesus behaves and the way we who are his followers are expected to behave. We are to forgive even before it is asked for. Let’s not pretend that is easy. It is not easy; but that’s the assignment.
We naturally rebel at such prodigal, profligate, some might say irresponsible handing out of forgiveness and acceptance. You and I want a little payback from those who have offended us. We want a little justice. A little fairness. A little chance to be told by the offending party they we were right all along and they were wrong. We want those things when we have been hurt or offended, don’t we?
That makes us a lot like the older brother. And the older brother is a lot like the Pharisees and scribes for whose benefit, remember, Jesus is telling this story. If we are like the older brother, and he is like the Pharisees and scribes, then we are like the Pharisees and scribes; and we, therefore, are the ones for whom Jesus first told this story and is telling it now, still and again this morning.
The trouble is: being proper and following the rules and doing what is expected will not automatically make you kind and forgiving. And here is a sad truth: being a regular church person will not necessarily make you kind and forgiving either. Churches are great places to hide and to soothe your conscience by telling yourself and others that you must be a good person because you show up in church so regularly. You may even be very active in your faith community – the Pharisees and the scribes were famous for being deeply involved in the religion of their community. It didn’t stop Jesus from calling them out when they didn’t have room in their hearts for people of dubious reputation and proven unacceptability.
Remember that religious practice, even and including all that one might do for one’s church, doesn’t guarantee a thing. Whatever you do and whatever you say you believe – is it making you kinder, less proud, less judgmental, less needy to be right all the time, less willing to criticize others and point out the speck in their eyes before taking a good, long look at the log in your own eye? Is it? Do you jump to judgment? Why do you need to judge at all? “Judgment is mine,” says the Lord. “Do not judge, lest ye be judged,” says Jesus.
Again it is Richard Rohr who helps me understand all this and who puts it so starkly and clearly”
“The True Self,” that is the person we really are meant by God to be, “never knows with absolute surety that it is right or ‘good,’ but in fact it does not even need to, which is what we mean by ‘faith.’ The True Self has knocked on the hard bottom and the high ceiling of reality and has less and less need for mere verbal certitudes or answers that always fit. It has found certainty elsewhere and now lives inside a YES that is so big that it can absorb most of the little noes. The False self,” that is the petty, judgmental, gotta-be-right self, “fears and denies all seeming contradictions, probably because it unconsciously knows that it itself is a mass of contradictions and is searching for some external order or control. You can forgive the outer world only if and when you have first forgiven you own inner world.
“The religious False Self is the is the best and most defended self of all . . . The Ego has found it cover, so be quite careful about being religious. If your religion does not transform your consciousness to one of compassion, it is more a part of the problem than [a] [book reads “any”] solution . . . anything less than the death of the False Self is useless religion.”
Perhaps this all sound dreary and difficult – and indeed, killing off the False Self is a serious and a life-long project – but it is all just difficulty and dreariness.
It can all be summed up by returning the Jesus’s story. The older brother, the Pharisees and the scribes, and, that means us if we choose to side with them, are refusing to come to a party. God is throwing a party to welcome us all home. No strings attached. No questions asked. We can accept the invitation anytime we like. Oh, yeah, the younger brother, scoundrel that he is will be there too and we will have to leave our disposition to criticize, our fondness for judging others outside by the door before we can let ourselves in.
But friends, it is the only party there is – and it is going on now and it will go on forever.
Sunday, February 10, 2013
Last Epiphany
February 10, 2013
Trinity Parish
Wethersfield
Exodus 34:29-35
Psalm 99
2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2
Luke 9:28-36, [37-43a]
Jesus on the mountaintop, glowing dazzlingly white, keeping company with Moses and Elijah, both of them long dead -- for centuries. His friends Peter, James and John startled, confounded, astounded, not know what to make of it all. It is confounding to us too, isn't it. What is going on? What happened? What difference does it make?
What is going on is that Jesus’s friends see him as he really is. For just a moment the veil is lifted, the curtain is turned back ever so slightly so that we can catch a glimpse of what is really real. There he is, Jesus the Child of God, radiant, glorious, splendid, so bright, so real – almost too real to look at.
The trouble is that such a moment may seem to us like a once and for all, never to be repeated happening. An event peculiar to Jesus and to him alone. As if he alone is the dazzling Child of God; as if he alone is worthy to converse with Moses, the giver of the Law and Elijah, the greatest of the prophets. If that is so, then this is just some supernatural event far from the experience and understanding of mere mortals like us. If THAT is the case, then this Transfiguration, as it is called, is only a curious event in the curious life of Jesus of Nazareth. Interesting; fascinating; demonstrating – proving, perhaps – that he is especially special; and offering us nothing more than that.
But that is not all it is, at least not according to the Apostle Paul from whom we hear this morning in a letter written to the church in Corinth.
Paul says, “And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.” Paul says that we, that you and I, if we know how to look at ourselves, if we know how to look into a mirror and see who we really are, will see that we are being transformed, that we are being transfigured into what Jesus is. If we allow ourselves, we are and are always in the process of becoming what Jesus is – the beloved Child of God, "little lower than the angels," says the Letter to the Hebrews, "little lower than God" say the psalms.
Even Joni Mitchell knows about this when she wrote in her song about Woodstock, “We are stardust, we are golden . . . “
This is the idea behind the saying of Third Century Rabbi Joshua ben Levi who said: "A procession of angels pass before each person, and the heralds go before them, saying, 'Make way, [make way, make way] for the image of God!' (Deut.Rabbah, 4:4)
All this should be familiar to the members of our congregation who studied for three or four years in the Adult Formational Curriculum called Education for Ministry. Each week we engaged in what is called theological reflection, the point of which was to become more and more aware of the presence of God in our ordinary lives (though, if God is present in them, how can the really be called ordinary after all?).
EFM leaders, mentors they are called, are required to attend a training event every 18 months. I remember once participating in such an event at which we were asked “How is theological reflection going for your group?” “Not working at all well,” said one of my fellow trainees, “not well at all.” And indeed it was not working well as her group understood the assignment. Part of the process of theological reflection is for a member of the group to bring to the group a story from their own experience about which they wanted to learn more or of which to discover the deeper meaning. In our own group we had stories of seeing a squirrel fall from a tree and look stunned and at a loss to comprehend what had happened; and a story of the panic that ensued when the oil light came on during a long drive home; a story of what happened when a rag-tag, disheveled stranger appeared offering to lend a hand – ordinary stories, remarkable only because they seemed to have deeper meaning lying behind the mere and obvious facts.
In my fellow mentor's group, they had understood the requirement to be to bring in an account of a miracle. They had the notion that the only place to look for God was in the singular and the unique, in otherwise impossible violations of the natural order, in the supernatural that defied explanation. Needless to say, trying to find one of those every week was a fool’s errand and doomed to failure from the start. Not every week holds a miracle healing, a stroll on the top of the water, water turning into wine. But that wasn’t the task. The task was to find God in the events of our regular hours and days. That other group had not yet appreciated what the poet Gerrard Manley Hopkins knew when he wrote, "The world is charged with the grandeur of God.”
You know that this is true. Do you recall looking through the eyes of love at a newborn son or daughter, of a newborn grandchild? Do you remember seeing someone you love through the eyes of all they mean to you? Do you recall a time when you looked at yourself in a mirror with kindness and forgave yourself of all that you had done amiss, accepted yourself for all the good you have done or want to do. Do you recall looking through the eyes of gratitude at someone who had come to you in a time of need and lent you a hand simply because you needed one? Do you recall a morning, an evening, a sunset, sunrise, thunderstorm or sunny day when you knew, you just knew it was true that “God is in his heaven and all is right with the world”?
The Transfiguration of Jesus on the mountaintop is an invitation for us to see Jesus as he really is – beloved, glorious, dazzling in his beauty and magnificence – and then to see ourselves as being the same in the eyes of God.
The veil is lifted, the curtain is pulled back so that we can look into the mirror of Jesus’s face and see ourselves as who we really are.
February 10, 2013
Trinity Parish
Wethersfield
Exodus 34:29-35
Psalm 99
2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2
Luke 9:28-36, [37-43a]
Jesus on the mountaintop, glowing dazzlingly white, keeping company with Moses and Elijah, both of them long dead -- for centuries. His friends Peter, James and John startled, confounded, astounded, not know what to make of it all. It is confounding to us too, isn't it. What is going on? What happened? What difference does it make?
What is going on is that Jesus’s friends see him as he really is. For just a moment the veil is lifted, the curtain is turned back ever so slightly so that we can catch a glimpse of what is really real. There he is, Jesus the Child of God, radiant, glorious, splendid, so bright, so real – almost too real to look at.
The trouble is that such a moment may seem to us like a once and for all, never to be repeated happening. An event peculiar to Jesus and to him alone. As if he alone is the dazzling Child of God; as if he alone is worthy to converse with Moses, the giver of the Law and Elijah, the greatest of the prophets. If that is so, then this is just some supernatural event far from the experience and understanding of mere mortals like us. If THAT is the case, then this Transfiguration, as it is called, is only a curious event in the curious life of Jesus of Nazareth. Interesting; fascinating; demonstrating – proving, perhaps – that he is especially special; and offering us nothing more than that.
But that is not all it is, at least not according to the Apostle Paul from whom we hear this morning in a letter written to the church in Corinth.
Paul says, “And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.” Paul says that we, that you and I, if we know how to look at ourselves, if we know how to look into a mirror and see who we really are, will see that we are being transformed, that we are being transfigured into what Jesus is. If we allow ourselves, we are and are always in the process of becoming what Jesus is – the beloved Child of God, "little lower than the angels," says the Letter to the Hebrews, "little lower than God" say the psalms.
Even Joni Mitchell knows about this when she wrote in her song about Woodstock, “We are stardust, we are golden . . . “
This is the idea behind the saying of Third Century Rabbi Joshua ben Levi who said: "A procession of angels pass before each person, and the heralds go before them, saying, 'Make way, [make way, make way] for the image of God!' (Deut.Rabbah, 4:4)
All this should be familiar to the members of our congregation who studied for three or four years in the Adult Formational Curriculum called Education for Ministry. Each week we engaged in what is called theological reflection, the point of which was to become more and more aware of the presence of God in our ordinary lives (though, if God is present in them, how can the really be called ordinary after all?).
EFM leaders, mentors they are called, are required to attend a training event every 18 months. I remember once participating in such an event at which we were asked “How is theological reflection going for your group?” “Not working at all well,” said one of my fellow trainees, “not well at all.” And indeed it was not working well as her group understood the assignment. Part of the process of theological reflection is for a member of the group to bring to the group a story from their own experience about which they wanted to learn more or of which to discover the deeper meaning. In our own group we had stories of seeing a squirrel fall from a tree and look stunned and at a loss to comprehend what had happened; and a story of the panic that ensued when the oil light came on during a long drive home; a story of what happened when a rag-tag, disheveled stranger appeared offering to lend a hand – ordinary stories, remarkable only because they seemed to have deeper meaning lying behind the mere and obvious facts.
In my fellow mentor's group, they had understood the requirement to be to bring in an account of a miracle. They had the notion that the only place to look for God was in the singular and the unique, in otherwise impossible violations of the natural order, in the supernatural that defied explanation. Needless to say, trying to find one of those every week was a fool’s errand and doomed to failure from the start. Not every week holds a miracle healing, a stroll on the top of the water, water turning into wine. But that wasn’t the task. The task was to find God in the events of our regular hours and days. That other group had not yet appreciated what the poet Gerrard Manley Hopkins knew when he wrote, "The world is charged with the grandeur of God.”
You know that this is true. Do you recall looking through the eyes of love at a newborn son or daughter, of a newborn grandchild? Do you remember seeing someone you love through the eyes of all they mean to you? Do you recall a time when you looked at yourself in a mirror with kindness and forgave yourself of all that you had done amiss, accepted yourself for all the good you have done or want to do. Do you recall looking through the eyes of gratitude at someone who had come to you in a time of need and lent you a hand simply because you needed one? Do you recall a morning, an evening, a sunset, sunrise, thunderstorm or sunny day when you knew, you just knew it was true that “God is in his heaven and all is right with the world”?
The Transfiguration of Jesus on the mountaintop is an invitation for us to see Jesus as he really is – beloved, glorious, dazzling in his beauty and magnificence – and then to see ourselves as being the same in the eyes of God.
The veil is lifted, the curtain is pulled back so that we can look into the mirror of Jesus’s face and see ourselves as who we really are.
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Sermon
Epiphany 2
January 20, 2013
Isaiah 62:1-5
Psalm 36:5-10
1 Corinthians 12:1-11
John 2:1-11
Teachers and preachers and priests are often, probably far too often, looked upon and expected to be “answer men” or “answer women.” That is, they might be looked upon to have all the answers to each and every religious, spiritual, theological question; and I must confess that sometimes I lay that expectation on myself, feeling that I should have things figured out. I catch myself reading the text of the lessons for the coming Sunday and looking out for any puzzling parts. feeling a need to zero in of at least one of them and come up with a handy answer to whatever apparent contradiction, whatever challenge to reason or whatever mystifying pronouncement the text might contain.
Well I am here this morning to come clean. I don’t have all the answers. I am wanderer and a wonderer just like you. I am a pilgrim on a journey along a way that raises far more questions than it answers and beckons us forward into an unknown that must be explored before it can be – if indeed it ever can be – understood. A journey that only covers the ground that has already been covered is not a journey, but a nostalgic indulgence. Memory and the revisiting old haunts can be useful, but only if, as T. S. Eliot put its:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
By which I mean that if revisiting old haunts and ways is to carry meaning, it must be with new eyes, expecting new revelations, expecting to deepen what was once experienced or learned.
All that is to say two things: First, that you and I are on a journey together, and any journey worthy of Jesus its pioneer, will take us to places we have never been before and the ways of thinking and doing that are new and, at first, strange and challenging. And second: that in wrestling once again with this familiar story about Jesus’s first miracle of changing water in to wine I come away with as many questions as I have answers and with as much – or more – wonder than I had before.
The best we can do on this occasion may be to enter into the story with our questions and see where our wonder and puzzlement this time lead us. Once again it is time to allow ourselves to be guests – guests of the Gospel, ready to feast upon the Word of God; and guests at a special moment in an obscure village in and obscure part of the Roman Empire of which, like it or not, we, as must imagine ourselves to be if we are to enter with our imaginations into the story.
As preacher William Hethcock puts it:
“So all of us villagers show up. Mary, the widow of Joseph, has come. And out of courtesy to her, they "also" invite her son Jesus, who is newly engaged in some kind of itinerant rabbinical teaching thing that requires his students to be invited as well. Jesus' disciples make a scruffy bunch, and at the rate they consume wine, there may not be enough. In fact, I see the waiters murmuring something to the host. My prediction is truer than I had thought. They are indeed out of wine. We'll all be home sooner and soberer than we expected or hoped." [From author’s personal copy of a sermon submitted to Homily Service. Never preached. Serving the Word, Epiphany 2C, John 2:1-11]
Or so it appeared; but not so. It isn’t going to turn out that way. Jesus will take the water in six enormous water jars, each of them probably holding thirty or so gallons, and turn it into excellent wine. You do the math – and get ready to pass the aspirin the morning after.
But there is something else happens just before the transmutation of the wine:
When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, "They have no wine." And Jesus said to her, "Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come." His mother said to the servants, "Do whatever he tells you."
Do whatever he tells you.
It is Mary who sets things in motion. It is she who perceives the shortage and appeals to Jesus. And Jesus at first appears to be reluctant to go along.
Pastor Carol Hess, who has written about this particular moment early in Jesus’s public career and I agree: there are some problems here. “Just as the mother of Jesus saw her son as one who could – and should – meet need, so do many followers of Jesus. We see a world in need, and we believe in one who claimed to bring abundant life to those in need. In a world where for so many there no clean water – let alone fine wine – where is the abundance of God? In a world where children play in bomb craters the size of thirty gallon wine jugs, why the divine reluctance? In a world where desperate mothers must say to their small children, “We have no food,” why has the hour not yet come? No matter how we rationalize divine activity, we want to tug at Jesus’ sleeve and say: “they have no wine.”[Carol Lakey Hess, Feasting on the Word, Year C, Volume 4, Westminster John Knox Press, 2009. p 262.]
I cannot unriddle that riddle. I cannot explain the ways of God in such a way that all is made plain and God’s generous, gracious abundance is reconciled with a world of deprivation and suffering. But, as W. H. Auden has said about similar questions of how it all fits together:
I can at least confine
Your vanity and mine
To stating timidly. . . [W. H. Auden, “Law like love,” lines 51-53]
. . . that there is an important clue in what happens in the face of Jesus’s apparent reluctance to help out. Mary issues a very clear command. “Do whatever he tells you.” And those to whom she speaks, do as they have been told.
It doesn’t answer all the questions this text raises; and it certainly doesn’t even begin to make all streams and wells run clean and clear; it doesn’t begin to stop all the bombs or put food on all the empty tables, but it does provide simple clear instructions for you and me.
Do whatever he tells you. Apart from all the theologizing and interpreting and questioning and doubting there is something we can do that will at least make a start. We can do whatever Jesus tells us to do. Whether or not there should be popes and prelates and archbishops and priests; whether or not there should be creeds and canons, there is that clear opportunity for us to purify at least some of the water in the world, pray and work for the peace that will stop all the bombs, work for the just distribution of the world’s resources. In short we can do what Jesus tells us: ‘“. . . you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength." And "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."’
How much wine might flow, how much laughter might there be, how much justice and mercy might flow down like a might river if we and all who claim Jesus as our Lord would do this which he has clearly told us to do?
Epiphany 2
January 20, 2013
Isaiah 62:1-5
Psalm 36:5-10
1 Corinthians 12:1-11
John 2:1-11
Teachers and preachers and priests are often, probably far too often, looked upon and expected to be “answer men” or “answer women.” That is, they might be looked upon to have all the answers to each and every religious, spiritual, theological question; and I must confess that sometimes I lay that expectation on myself, feeling that I should have things figured out. I catch myself reading the text of the lessons for the coming Sunday and looking out for any puzzling parts. feeling a need to zero in of at least one of them and come up with a handy answer to whatever apparent contradiction, whatever challenge to reason or whatever mystifying pronouncement the text might contain.
Well I am here this morning to come clean. I don’t have all the answers. I am wanderer and a wonderer just like you. I am a pilgrim on a journey along a way that raises far more questions than it answers and beckons us forward into an unknown that must be explored before it can be – if indeed it ever can be – understood. A journey that only covers the ground that has already been covered is not a journey, but a nostalgic indulgence. Memory and the revisiting old haunts can be useful, but only if, as T. S. Eliot put its:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
By which I mean that if revisiting old haunts and ways is to carry meaning, it must be with new eyes, expecting new revelations, expecting to deepen what was once experienced or learned.
All that is to say two things: First, that you and I are on a journey together, and any journey worthy of Jesus its pioneer, will take us to places we have never been before and the ways of thinking and doing that are new and, at first, strange and challenging. And second: that in wrestling once again with this familiar story about Jesus’s first miracle of changing water in to wine I come away with as many questions as I have answers and with as much – or more – wonder than I had before.
The best we can do on this occasion may be to enter into the story with our questions and see where our wonder and puzzlement this time lead us. Once again it is time to allow ourselves to be guests – guests of the Gospel, ready to feast upon the Word of God; and guests at a special moment in an obscure village in and obscure part of the Roman Empire of which, like it or not, we, as must imagine ourselves to be if we are to enter with our imaginations into the story.
As preacher William Hethcock puts it:
“So all of us villagers show up. Mary, the widow of Joseph, has come. And out of courtesy to her, they "also" invite her son Jesus, who is newly engaged in some kind of itinerant rabbinical teaching thing that requires his students to be invited as well. Jesus' disciples make a scruffy bunch, and at the rate they consume wine, there may not be enough. In fact, I see the waiters murmuring something to the host. My prediction is truer than I had thought. They are indeed out of wine. We'll all be home sooner and soberer than we expected or hoped." [From author’s personal copy of a sermon submitted to Homily Service. Never preached. Serving the Word, Epiphany 2C, John 2:1-11]
Or so it appeared; but not so. It isn’t going to turn out that way. Jesus will take the water in six enormous water jars, each of them probably holding thirty or so gallons, and turn it into excellent wine. You do the math – and get ready to pass the aspirin the morning after.
But there is something else happens just before the transmutation of the wine:
When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, "They have no wine." And Jesus said to her, "Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come." His mother said to the servants, "Do whatever he tells you."
Do whatever he tells you.
It is Mary who sets things in motion. It is she who perceives the shortage and appeals to Jesus. And Jesus at first appears to be reluctant to go along.
Pastor Carol Hess, who has written about this particular moment early in Jesus’s public career and I agree: there are some problems here. “Just as the mother of Jesus saw her son as one who could – and should – meet need, so do many followers of Jesus. We see a world in need, and we believe in one who claimed to bring abundant life to those in need. In a world where for so many there no clean water – let alone fine wine – where is the abundance of God? In a world where children play in bomb craters the size of thirty gallon wine jugs, why the divine reluctance? In a world where desperate mothers must say to their small children, “We have no food,” why has the hour not yet come? No matter how we rationalize divine activity, we want to tug at Jesus’ sleeve and say: “they have no wine.”[Carol Lakey Hess, Feasting on the Word, Year C, Volume 4, Westminster John Knox Press, 2009. p 262.]
I cannot unriddle that riddle. I cannot explain the ways of God in such a way that all is made plain and God’s generous, gracious abundance is reconciled with a world of deprivation and suffering. But, as W. H. Auden has said about similar questions of how it all fits together:
I can at least confine
Your vanity and mine
To stating timidly. . . [W. H. Auden, “Law like love,” lines 51-53]
. . . that there is an important clue in what happens in the face of Jesus’s apparent reluctance to help out. Mary issues a very clear command. “Do whatever he tells you.” And those to whom she speaks, do as they have been told.
It doesn’t answer all the questions this text raises; and it certainly doesn’t even begin to make all streams and wells run clean and clear; it doesn’t begin to stop all the bombs or put food on all the empty tables, but it does provide simple clear instructions for you and me.
Do whatever he tells you. Apart from all the theologizing and interpreting and questioning and doubting there is something we can do that will at least make a start. We can do whatever Jesus tells us to do. Whether or not there should be popes and prelates and archbishops and priests; whether or not there should be creeds and canons, there is that clear opportunity for us to purify at least some of the water in the world, pray and work for the peace that will stop all the bombs, work for the just distribution of the world’s resources. In short we can do what Jesus tells us: ‘“. . . you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength." And "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."’
How much wine might flow, how much laughter might there be, how much justice and mercy might flow down like a might river if we and all who claim Jesus as our Lord would do this which he has clearly told us to do?
Monday, January 7, 2013
There was a synchronicity about this sermonizing. Our Adult Forum had scheduled a viewing of Emilio Estavez's movie The Way, which I had never seen. As it happened the movie a cinematic version of some of this sermon's themes, particularly the notion of "the journey." The 8:00 congregation heard this sermon; but at 10:00, our young people presented a fun and lovely enactment of the arrival of the magi. I'm posting this here so the 10:00'ers, should they want to, can read what the earlier congregation heard. I also hope the twenty+ people who saw the movie together will have a look as well. Much better than the sermon, however, is the movie. It is beautiful in every way. (Near the end, there is the dramatic, to say the least, swinging of an incense pot, and as a part of the kings' arrival, incense made a RARE appearance at Trinity -- another lovely synchronicity.) As for the sermon, it was big fun for me to get to read aloud bits from two most favorite poems.
Happy Epiphany Season!
Sermon: The Epiphany
January 6, 2013
Trinity Parish
In his very long Christmas poem For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio, W. H. Auden ends with a section that includes these words:
Well, so that is that. Now we must dismantle the tree,
Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes --
Some have got broken -- and carrying them up to the attic.
The holly and the mistletoe must be taken down and burnt,
And the children got ready for school. There are enough
Left-overs to do, warmed-up, for the rest of the week --
Not that we have much appetite, having drunk such a lot,
Stayed up so late, attempted -- quite unsuccessfully --
To love all of our relatives, and in general
Grossly overestimated our powers.
After all the glow and glisten of Christmas, Auden astutely observes that despite our having once again drawn near to the stable in Bethlehem, it is entirely possible that nothing has changed. And it is sadly true, it is indeed possible.
That is why, I think, that after 12 days of Christmas, we celebrate the arrival of the magi, the wise men, the three kings (even in the Gospel doesn’t exactly call them kings or say if there were two, three or twenty!) The Church intends to help us celebrate Christmas as something much more than annual ritual, more civic and social than religious. The Church draws us into the season of Epiphany, the season after Christmas that offers to show us not just what happened, but what it means. For the next few weeks we will see the baby born in a manger now grown up and setting out on his mission to bring about the reign of God on earth. “Thy kingdom come on earth,” says the prayer; and I think he meant it. I think he still means it.
What does it mean that the first major event to which our attention is directed is the arrival of these foreigners from lands far a way and strange to Jesus’s people? What does it mean for us?
I am struck by the willingness of these magi, these astrologers, to travel so far to see something they can only have hoped might be true. They had read the signs, they had heard the accounts of others, and they set out on long, long journey. T. S. Eliot in poem The Journey of the Magi says:
A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
But they came – surly camels, winter weather and all.
And there is a model for each of us. The life of a Christian is a life of journey – journey toward Bethlehem, journey toward Jerusalem, journey toward an empty tomb on Easter morning and an upper room full of the wind and rush and fire of the Holy Spirit of the Living God.
Of course I am not talking about literal pilgrimages to those exotic places; I am talking about the inner journey, the journey of self-discovery, of discovering one’s neighbors, and the discovery of God’s own self within those two; and while that inner journey includes the exaltation of arriving at the manger and the empty tomb, it also includes the abject desolation of the cross and the tomb. This is about your life and mine, our relationship with God through Jesus is a journey. There is, if we will allow it to be so, consolation, support, encouragement and many other good things that all of us need along the way. There are those things to be found in Christian communities. I wish more of us turned to the church for them; but there is also challenge, and there is a call to repent, that is, a call to be willing continually to change more and more into the persons God made us to be. None of us is there yet. You’ve heard me before many times sum all this up by saying, “There are many resting places along the spiritual journey, but there are no stopping places.”
The Epiphany, this arrival of weary travelers, is a model for us. I picture them arriving with an entire entourage, tent setter-uppers, porters, cooks and camel drivers. Your entourage for the spiritual journey is here, it is the people here who are on the spiritual path along with you.
The second thing we learn about the meaning of this birth of a child in a manger is that he is a child for the whole world. That means he is not the property of the Church any more than he was the property of Mary and Joseph. Their job was to make him known to the world; indeed, in the case of Mary, to be the means by which he entered into the world. That is why she is a model for us all. She is the God-bearer, and we are likewise called to be the ones who continue to bear him into the world around us. Jesus does not belong to Mary and Joseph, but one can surely picture them as countless artists have already done: standing aside, presenting him, looking with wonder and love as who he is offered to the whole world – even to strange and mysterious astrologers who knew little or nothing of the beliefs, practices and customs of this child’s particular people. Just like Mary and Joseph, our job is to open the door so that the world can come and see.
We are on a journey. We are on a journey together; and insofar as we have to some degree arrived – or at least gone on ahead – our job is to clear the way, make the path open and available to all who are seeking to know the Truth, the truth about the love of God for all creation.
This child will go up to be the Way, Truth and Life – or as King Alfred of England has said, ““To see Thee is the end and the beginning; Thou carriest me and thou goest before: Thou art the journey and the journey’s end.”
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