Downtown Deacon

The Sixty Sunday after the Epiphany, Year B

2012-02-13T04:51:00.000-08:00

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6^th Sunday after the Epiphany Year B

February 12, 2012

2 Kings 5:1-14

Psalm 30

1 Corinthians 9:24-27

Mark 1:40-45

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

One Sunday last month The New York Times ran an article about the growing number of luxury suites in hospitals. One woman they interviewed said she woke up in a Manhattan hospital and for a moment, mistook it for a five-star hotel. The bed linens were clearly expensive; the en suite bathroom was decked out in marble. The views of the East River were impressive indeed. A man in a black vest and tie appeared with a menu and announced that he was her butler. The care provided apparently matched the amenities according to the woman, who said she was supposed to have been in Buenos Aires on vacation but ended up in this New York hospital instead. “I’m perfectly at home here — totally private, totally catered,” she said. “I have a primary-care physician who also acts as ringmaster for all my other doctors. And I see no people in training — only the best of the best.”

Only the best of the best will do for very important people, it seems. Naaman, the commander of the army of the king of Aram, was an important person indeed. He would certainly approve of such a fine healthcare facility; only the best would do for him. While Naaman was “a great man and in high favor with his master” and “a mighty warrior” as well, he had the misfortune to suffer from leprosy. Leprosy wasn’t a single disease but a name given in biblical times to a variety of repugnant skin conditions. Leprosy wasn’t just unpleasant and messy for the person who was unlucky enough to have it. It carried the taint of sin—which I’ll say more about shortly—and made a person ritually impure. So even a powerful person needed to do something about this condition, and he needed to do it quickly. Naaman would have done anything to be cured of this affliction, or so one would have thought.

When Naaman arrived at Elisha’s house expecting to be cured of his disease, he was greeted not by the prophet himself but by a messenger. The messenger told Naaman to wash seven times in the River Jordan in order to be healed. Naaman was incensed. He expected the personal ministrations of the prophet. He was a great man after all. Naaman was as affronted as the woman in the luxury hospital suite would have been if she had been visited by one of the medical residents instead of a renowned specialist. Fortunately Naaman’s servant persuaded him to go wash in the Jordan as he had been told. Just as Elisha had said, his flesh was made clean again.

In the first chapter of Mark we have another healing from leprosy. It contrasts sharply with the account in Second Kings. “A leper came to Jesus.” This man didn’t come with a resume like Naaman did. He didn’t even come with a name. His identity was his disease. It was as if the name of his disease told us all we needed to know about him. Specifically what the name of his disease told people was that they needed to avoid this man. As I mentioned in the story of Naaman, leprosy was more than a physical illness. It had a societal dimension. People who had leprosy weren’t considered fit for society, period. Leprosy had a moral dimension as well. People who had leprosy were believed to have sinned in some way or another. The affliction was seen as the just punishment for that sin. A person with leprosy was to be avoided at all costs. A person with leprosy ceased to be a person and became a “leper.” Leviticus 13 is quite clear that a person with leprosy is excluded. It says: “The person who has the leprous disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head be disheveled; and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean, unclean.’ He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease…He shall live alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp.” It doesn’t get much clearer than this.

We would be mistaken to think that this ancient attitude to disease is no more. A few years ago I visited a shelter resident while he was in the hospital for tuberculosis. Normally HIPPA protects a patient’s right to privacy. Not so in the case of the TB patient. Hospital personnel who previously would have told me nothing about this patient were suddenly offering information, more personal information than I felt the situation warranted. All I needed was to be told was the diagnosis and to wear a mask and gown.

Patients’ rights and even dignity seem to fall even farther if the disease happens to be HIV-AIDS. Before my husband’s cousin Mark died he suffered more than the ravages of the disease. He suffered unnecessarily cruel treatment from clinic and hospital workers. One memorably refused to touch anything Mark had touched; the man refused even to push Mark’s wheelchair. Others were openly scornful of his condition, implying that it was his fault. These people didn’t see or treat Mark as a person, the loving son, partner, brother, and uncle that he was. No matter that before his illness he’d graduated from MIT and had a successful career as an engineer. Instead of a person, they saw a disease. Instead of compassion, they felt fear and disdain.

Such is the condition of the person in today’s Gospel who is known to us only as “a leper.” He was an object of fear and scorn. He was someone respectable people in his community crossed the street to avoid. No one would touch him. Any contact with a person with leprosy would make the other person ritually impure and outcast himself. No one would risk touching him. No one except Jesus, that is.

The man with leprosy in Mark’s Gospel stands in sharp contrast to Naaman. He doesn’t come demanding to be healed or argue about the manner of his healing. He comes as a supplicant. He comes and kneels. He says to Jesus, “If you will you can make me clean.” The words “if you will” might not have any particular resonance with us. These words might even sound like a challenge to us. But a first century reader or listener would have recognized the words “if you will” as the language of prayer. By approaching Jesus in this way the man with leprosy acknowledges both Jesus’ relationship to the divine and the proper way to approach divinity.

Jesus is “moved with pity.” We might think, “Well, of course. The man was clearly suffering.” We might feel revulsion, but we know we’re supposed to feel compassion. But in Jesus’ cultural context any so-called sane person would have only been moved in the other direction, to get away from this source of impurity as quickly as possible. Jesus does the opposite. Jesus does the unthinkable. Jesus “stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, ‘I will. Be made clean!” And as the Gospel says, “Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean.”

As immediately as the leprosy left its victim, Jesus returns to the realities of his time and place. He tells the man two things. First, to go to the priest, make the required offering and get the official pronouncement that would restore him to society. Second, to tell no one. We’re not told that the man fulfilled the first part of Jesus’ instructions. Likely he did. But the Gospel clearly tells us that the man ignored the second part and spread the good news of his healing far and wide. “He went out and began to talk freely about it,” even though Jesus told him not to.

Wouldn’t you? I hope I would. How could you possibly keep such good news to yourself? What Jesus has done by curing the man with leprosy is every bit as miraculous as raising him from the dead. Jesus may just as well as have taken him out of the tomb the way he did with Lazarus. A person with leprosy in first century Palestine was worse than dead. Jesus didn’t just cure this man’s skin condition. Jesus gave him back his very life.

So it’s no small wonder this man didn’t keep silent. Thank heaven this man didn’t keep silent. Thank heaven he and others like him, down through the generations, didn’t keep silent about the great things that God in Jesus did for them. Thank heaven that someone told each and every one of us here in this place today that God in Jesus Christ did, can, and will work miracles in our lives. Thank heaven that we’ve heard the good news that there is no dark and hurt place in our lives that Jesus will not go to heal us. So when God in Jesus has done great things, share the good news. Give glory to God whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine: Glory to God from generation to generation in the Church, and in Christ Jesus forever and ever. Amen.

October 2, 2011

2011-10-02T14:54:00.000-07:00

1 Corinthians 1:21-31

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

In today’s lesson from First Corinthians Paul writes, “For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles.” Today is the first Sunday in October, the sixteen Sunday after Pentecost. We’re on the far side of the liturgical calendar from Holy Week and the crucifixion. I would suspect that many of us are happy about that. The joy of Easter is something to look back to and look forward to with gladness. The crucifixion is another matter entirely. It’s unpleasant. It’s uncomfortable. The crucifixion represents a breakdown of any system of justice—not that there was one in Pilate’s Palestine. Crucifixion was the nastiest, cruelest, most demeaning form of capital punishment that could be applied to anyone.

Because the crucified one is our Lord and Savior, we revere the cross. We bow to it as it passes us in the procession. But are we willing to acknowledge what it represents? What does it mean when Paul says we preach Christ crucified? After all, we worship Jesus, who in the eyes of the world was an abject failure. We worship the carpenter’s son who rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. We worship a God who took on the flesh of a poor man in order to participate in the most painful and humiliating experiences that being human has to offer. When we preach Christ crucified—not Christ risen and triumphant—we preach Christ nailed to a cross. We are called to stand with all those who suffer, those who hunger and thirst, those who are punished unjustly.

We are called to stand with the poor. The poor aren’t an abstraction. They are flesh and blood people like you and me. They are not a category. They are individuals. Some of them are people that I meet in the community kitchen. They are people whom you pass by on this very street day after day. You’ve passed by Felipe, a double amputee. Felipe sleeps between parked cars at night. His story is a painful one, of depression, of an attempted suicide, of family estrangement. You’ve passed by Betty, who has schizophrenia. You may not have noticed her, because when she’s taking her medication she’s hard to pick out of a crowd of passers-by. You’ll notice her when she can’t stand the side effects and goes off her medication. Then she responds to voices you and I can’t hear. You’ve passed by Reggie, who has a new spring in his step now that he’s left the shelter and living in the community. It took not months but years to reach this goal. You’ve passed by Deedee pushing her disabled child in a stroller as she heads to the food pantry. She can’t afford enough food for her family. Her wages cover her rent but not much more. Sometimes Deedee has to decide whether to eat or to pay the gas bill.

The poor are near and they are also far away. Today, as we observe our creation cycle at the Chapel of the Cross, I’m thinking of the legions of poor people who suffered during Hurricane Katrina six years ago. It’s hard to even remember the horror of what happened in New Orleans and on the Mississippi coast. People of all stations in life suffered; a hurricane is no respecter of wealth or status. But the poor suffered even more. In New Orleans the wealthy Garden District was comparatively unscathed. Not so the Ninth Ward, where mostly poor people live. Even after six years the Ninth Ward hasn’t completely recovered. It may never be fully restored.

Disasters such as Hurricane Katrina show us that our concern for social justice can’t be separated from our concern for the environment. When the earth hurts, we all hurt. And the poor hurt more than any of us. It’s easy to be complacent. Major disasters like hurricanes don’t occur every day. When they do, they grab our attention. Easier to ignore is the way the environment affects the food supply. On a smaller scale, droughts and floods decrease the amount of available food. The biofuel industry competes for grain that would otherwise be part of the food supply. Population and economic growth put pressure on the food supply as well. Who feels it first? Who feels it the hardest? The poor. Production is only one problem in providing enough food for people. We waste a LOT of food. It’s estimated that in developed countries over two hundred pounds of food per person are wasted every year. Still, many people, even right here in Chapel Hill, go hungry.

All of what I’ve said so far sounds rather gloomy. It is. But when we preach Christ crucified, we preach resurrection as well. There are signs of resurrection right here in the Triangle. You may have noticed trucks with the words “Interfaith Food Shuttle” on the sides. The Food Shuttle collects food from grocery stores and restaurants that would other wise be thrown into the trash. This food is still safe and good to eat, but is considered not quite fresh enough for retail sale. The Food Shuttle then distributes the food they’ve collected to soup kitchens and other organizations so that those who are hungry may be fed.

Food Shuttle isn’t the only reason for hope. There is an organization right here in Chapel Hill, led by one of our own parishioners, that works to better the lot of both the earth and its people. Farmer’s Foodshare helps support local farmers and sustainable growing practices. Farmer’s Foodshare buys up produce from farmer’s markets and makes it available to soup kitchens and food pantries. What is the result? Local farmers receive help to survive financially in these tough times, and those who need food assistance have access to fresh farm food, not just factory food. We all win—farmers, consumers, and the earth.

So what, you may be wondering, does supporting local farmers and the poor have to do with preaching Christ crucified? Everything, as it turns out. When we preach Christ crucified we’re not just talking about the salvation of individual souls. We’re talking about the salvation of everything. We’re talking not only about our souls but the salvation of everyone of us, of all creatures great and small, of the salvation of the very earth on which we live and move and have our being. Amen.

Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

2011-07-24T12:01:00.000-07:00

Proper 12A

1 Kings 3:5-12

Romans 8:26-39

Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

If you’re a regular, or even semi-regular church-goer, you’ve probably been asked by a skeptical friend or relative if you really “believe all that stuff about the virgin birth and the resurrection of the body.” To many folk who pride themselves on their rational and inquiring minds, these doctrines seem quite implausible. After all, the virgin birth and the resurrection of the body appear to violate what we think we know about the laws of nature.

You might be relieved to know that I’m not planning to unpack those tenets of the faith for you this morning. Among other reasons, I don’t feel equal to the task, and we don’t have the time. Instead, I’d like to talk about an aspect of our Christian faith in which I think all of us have great difficulty believing.

Whatever we might say to the contrary, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that it’s something that even the most devout Christian believer struggles with at times. What we have a hard time believing is that God loves us. More specifically, we have a hard time believing how MUCH God loves us. I’m not at all sure that this difficulty comes from any notion we have that we’re fundamentally unlovable. It’s not necessarily a problem, or not only a problem, of feeling worthy before God.

Our difficulty in believing how much God loves us is a result of OUR human finitude. Our difficulty in grasping how it’s even possible that God can love us to the extent that God does is due to our own limitations. WE have limited time, a limited attention span, and limited patience. We find ourselves stretched to our very limits by the competing demands on our own love. Our partners, our children—toddler and teenager alike, our aging parents and often our friends all ask for a part of us. Even the family pets ask for our love and attention! At the very least we may feel harried, and we may even feel overextended. It’s easy to think that God does too.

The theologian Robert Farrar Capon likes to compare our difficulty in comprehending the range of God’s abilities to the difficulty that an oyster would have in understanding how much humans are capable of. An oyster, as we know, is confined to its shell and living underwater. An oyster cannot conceive of a being that can move about freely in its less restricted environment. Similarly, we can’t really grasp the extent to which God’s capabilities far exceed our own. Our very human limitations are analogous to the oyster’s immobility. As the oyster is limited in the scope of its movement, so are we limited in our ability to love by our human constraints of time and attention.

Have you ever thought a concern was too trivial to bring before God in prayer? I know I have. It’s tempting to save the big stuff, like life or death situations, for God. It’s easy to think that seemingly trivial matters are a waste of God’s time. And we wouldn’t want to waste God’s time, because God only has so much, right? Well, NO. WE only have so much time, though even we probably have more than we think we do. God, though, being God, doesn’t share our limitations. While we’re tempted to act from a presumption of scarcity, God just doesn’t work that way.

God is all about abundance. That’s what Jesus has been telling us these past few weeks in the lessons from Matthew’s gospel and what Jesus is telling us in our reading from Matthew today. We’ve heard the words “the kingdom of heaven is like” over and over again. It’s been suggested that you could read these parables substituting the words “the love of god is like…” for “the kingdom of heaven is like…” Let’s try it and find out what we hear.

The love of God “is like a grain of mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all seeds but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.” What a lovely image! The love of God starts out as something seemingly insignificant and grows into something living, spreading, and nurturing. The love of God grows from something so small as to be barely visible into a tree that provides a place to nest and be safe, a tree in which one can be fruitful and multiply.

If that image isn’t powerful enough, the next parable provides us with another one. The love of God “is like leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till it was all leavened.” At first glance this doesn’t sound like a big deal, until you look at a commentary and learn that three measures is a huge amount of flour. Three measures of flour is equivalent to 128 cups; that’s sixteen five pound bags! The leaven—yeast, most of us would call it—will work its magic with the flour until its volume is multiplied. Once the leavened dough is baked, there will be enough bread to nurture and nourish perhaps not the entire kingdom, but certainly a rather large crowd! And notice, please, that in this parable the stand-in figure for God is a woman!

The kingdom of God, or if you prefer, the love of God, is also like a pearl or a treasure. The love of God is worth all of what one possesses. The love of God is worth EVERYTHING. That any single thing could be worth everything flies in the face of conventional wisdom. “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket,” is a well-known piece of advice, and probably good advice in some situations. You won’t find that phrase here in Matthew’s gospel, though. The kingdom of God, the love of God, IS worth everything.

The love of God is like a nesting place, a vast supply of bread for the body and the soul, a treasure in a field, and a pearl of great price. In case we haven’t gotten the message by now, Jesus gives us another one. He tells us that the kingdom of heaven, or if you prefer, the love of God, “is like a net which was thrown into the sea and gathered fish of every kind; when it was full, men drew it ashore and sat down and sorted the good into vessels but threw away the bad.” At first glance this might seem like a case of good news/bad news. Gathering every kind of fish indiscriminately is indeed good news. We might feel some concern about the sorting, though. But fear not. It’s Jesus who is speaking here, the same Jesus who eats with sinners and tax collectors, the very same Jesus who tells us that we must be willing to forgive not just seven times but SEVENTY times seven times!

If we’re still feeling uneasy about the prospect of sorting and judgment, turning to Paul’s words for today from the Letter to the Romans gives us much reassurance concerning God’s great love for us. According to Paul, God even helps us to pray when we’re not able to. “The Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.” Can you imagine a more loving action from God? With Paul, then, may we all say, “For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Amen.

Memorial Day 2011

2011-05-30T15:16:00.000-07:00

Remembering with gratitude those who made the ultimate sacrifice and praying that we will study war no more.

Gonna lay down my sword and shield
Down by the riverside
Down by the riverside
Down by the riverside
Gonna lay down my sword and shield
Down by the riverside
Ain't gonna study war no more.

refrain

I ain't gonna study war no more,
I ain't gonna study war no more,
Study war no more.
I ain't gonna study war no more,
I ain't gonna study war no more,
Study war no more.

Gonna stick my sword in the golden sand;
Down By the riverside
Down by the riverside
Down by the riverside
Gonna stick my sword in the golden sand
Down by the riverside
Gonna study war no more.

refrain

Gonna put on my long white robe;
Down By the riverside
Down by the riverside
Down by the riverside
Gonna put on my long white robe; Down by the riverside
Gonna study war no more.

refrain

Gonna put on my starry crown; Down By the riverside
Down by the riverside
Down by the riverside
Gonna put on my starry crown;
Down by the riverside
Gonna study war no more.

refrain

Gonna put on my golden shoes;
(ETC)
Gonna talk with the Prince of Peace;
(ETC)
Gonna shake hands around the world;
(ETC)

Maundy Thursday 2011

2011-04-25T15:43:00.000-07:00

John 13: 1-17, 31b-35

+In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Peter said to Jesus, “You will never wash my feet. Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no part in me.”

Peter isn’t the only one who has reservations about footwashing. Just last week I had lunch with a friend who happens to be a Presbyterian laywoman. She asked me about our Maundy Thursday service, and I explained to her that we would wash feet of any wished, celebrate the eucharist, and strip the altar in preparation for Good Friday. My friend is polite to her very core, but she still wrinkled her nose as she said, “Really? I don’t think we ever do a footwashing service on Maundy Thursday.”

I suspect that a great many of us Episcopalians might share my friend’s feeling about liturgical footwashing. I’d be surprised if anyone among us ever had a hard time finding a seat at such a service. For a people who worship God incarnate in Jesus, we are strangely uncomfortable with contact with the actual flesh of other people. I can remember a time when some folks would remain on their knees just to avoid exchanging the peace. And we’re twenty-first century Americans with on-demand hot running water; we can’t understand why we’d want to go anywhere, much less church, to have our feet washed or to wash the feet of others. We take pride in doing things by ourselves and for ourselves.

In Jesus’ time, though, footwashing was understood as an act of hospitality. Still, the disciples are puzzled by Jesus’ act of washing their feet. Peter especially has a problem with having Jesus wash his feet. To Peter, having Jesus wash the feet of a disciple seems like a violation of the proper relationship between them. As with many other things Jesus has done in his time with the Twelve, Peter just doesn’t get what Jesus is trying to do. At first he refuses Jesus’ offer to wash his feet. When Jesus tells Peter he must wash his feet, Peter wants his head and hands washed as well. Peter is so like the rest of us. When he realizes he’s said the wrong thing, he proceeds to put his foot even further into his mouth.

But I suppose we shouldn’t be too hard on Peter. Even in a cultural context where foot-washing was a common practice of hospitality, it would have been downright weird for one’s host to start washing feet in the middle of dinner. We can be pretty sure that it isn’t concern for hygiene or even comfort that’s motivating Jesus. I think we can also be sure it’s not ritual cleanliness that’s on Jesus’ mind. Jesus presents a model of servanthood, to be sure. But the lesson that Jesus teaches by washing the feet of his disciples reaches beyond even servanthood.

By washing the feet of his disciples, Jesus teaches them what it’s like to be in loving relationship with one another. By washing his disciples’ feet, Jesus teaches them about mutuality in love. Jesus turns the whole notion of the master-servant hierarchy upside down. He offers service to the very people who think it’s their job to serve him instead. By performing the service of foot-washing for his disciples, Jesus teaches them how to receive service. By this point in Jesus’ ministry, the disciples know what doing service looks like. They’ve seen Jesus touch lepers and minister to outcasts. They’ve seen him eat with people whom others consider beyond the pale. Now, as their own feet are washed by Jesus, they learn what it’s like to be the ones who are served, to be the ones who receive service.

The lesson that Jesus teaches in the foot-washing is one that we too would do well to learn. Most of us have internalized the idea that it’s more blessed to give than to receive. I’d venture to guess that most Christians believe that it’s better to serve than be served. Most of us like to think of ourselves as givers and helpers. It certainly is good to give and it’s certainly good to help. But if we are givers and helpers only, and are never receivers, we perpetuate a hierarchy in which some people are defined as being better than others. If we refuse what others offer, if we refuse the service of others, we may—without meaning to—deprive someone else of the chance to give and serve.

We may want to keep Jesus’ lesson in mind as we think about our relationships with the poor and homeless in our community. We may want to keep Jesus’ lesson in mind as we think about our relationships with those who are ill or disabled in any way. It is a very good thing indeed that we are eager to serve people who may appear to be more in need of assistance than we ourselves are. But in our enthusiasm for serving others, it may be easy for us to forget what gifts that they have to offer us. Yes, we want to emulate Jesus and be washers of feet. But Jesus, too, had his feet washed with ointment by Mary, who dried Jesus’ feet with her hair. Sometimes it is as blessed to receive as to give. Sometimes it is as blessed to be served as to serve. Mutuality is essential to truly loving relationships, like the one Jesus has with the disciples. Mutuality is essential to truly loving relationships, like the one Jesus has with his Father. “Unless I wash you,” says Jesus, “you have no part in me.” Amen.

Presentation of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Temple

2011-02-03T04:57:00.000-08:00

February 2, 2011

Luke 2:22-40

+In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The burning question for today, for some of us, is whether or not the groundhog saw his shadow. Tradition has it that if the day is sunny and the groundhog sees his shadow, there will be six more weeks of winter. If it’s a cloudy day and the groundhog doesn’t see his shadow, spring is just around the corner. As a child growing up in the New York City suburbs, I found Groundhog Day kind of annoying. No matter what the groundhog saw, you could be pretty sure there would be six more weeks of winter and then some.

It may or may not surprise you to know that there is a similar tradition around Candlemas, which is another name for the holy day that we are observing here now. The name Candlemas comes from an ancient rite for the blessing of candles to be used in the church in the coming year. There’s an old English song that says, If Candlemas be fair and bright,/ Come winter, have another flight; / If Candlemas bring clouds and rain, / Go winter, and come not again.

For the moment let’s leave aside the connection between groundhogs, church candles, and predictions for future weather. Let’s turn instead to our Gospel reading for today. This reading from Luke provides an account of the baby Jesus being brought to the temple for the traditional Jewish dedication. Because we know who Jesus is, it’s hard for us to imagine this event without a great deal of pageantry and fanfare. If we’ve seen the medieval paintings of the presentation, complete with the halo over the head of the baby Jesus, it’s doubly hard to imagine this scene as ordinary. But ordinary it was.

Mary and Joseph almost certainly weren’t the only couple bringing a baby son to the temple that day. Jewish law required that firstborn sons be brought to the temple and dedicated to the Lord. The mothers of sons were required to present themselves thirty-three days after the birth of a son that they might undergo ritual purification. So likely there would have been many sets of observant Jewish parents at the temple on that same day.

What’s striking about our Gospel reading is the things it doesn’t say. There is nothing in Luke’s account that mentions that many people in the temple took note of Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus, who we know was a very special baby indeed. There is nothing in Luke’s account that mentions that the chief priests or anyone in the temple hierarchy took any notice at all. What most people there saw was a very ordinary couple with a baby fulfilling their obligation under Jewish law. If anyone remarked about anything even slightly out of the ordinary, it might have been to remark that the mother was very young but the father much older, and that they didn’t look like prosperous people.

Apparently hardly anyone noticed the baby Jesus, with two notable exceptions. One of them was an old woman named Anna. Anna was a widow of unusual devotion. According to Luke, “she did not depart from the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day.” Anna knew that when she saw the baby Jesus she had seen something close to God.

The second person, Simeon, was a “righteous and devout man,” Luke tells us. Simeon was led by the Holy Spirit to come into the temple on that particular day. He had been also told by the Holy Spirit that “he should not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ.” When Simeon saw the baby Jesus come into the temple with his parents, he took Jesus in his arms and said the words that we have come to know as the Nunc Dimittis: “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word; for mine eyes have seen thy salvation which thou hast prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to thy people Israel.”

It wasn’t the rich or powerful who recognized the light of Christ when they saw it; it was those whose piety made their eyes and hearts and minds open to revelation. Many of us spend considerable time looking for signs. We read our horoscopes in the newspaper, we study stock market trends to look for the next hot investment, and we look at the sports pages to try to figure out if UNC will beat Duke, or vice versa. We tend to look out for the extra-ordinary things, the things that for some reason or another stand out.

But all the looking we might do is to no avail unless our eyes are open to see what is right before our eyes in the ordinary things of life. Anna and Simeon didn’t recognize Jesus for who he was because they were brilliant or because they had any kind of psychic gifts. Anna and Simeon knew Jesus as the Lord’s Christ, the Lord’s Messiah, because they were both in the holy habit of keeping their hearts and minds turned to God. I pray that you and I might learn to do the same, that our own hearts might be open to the light of Christ when it is in our midst. Amen.

THE DIGITAL STORY OF NATIVITY - ( or Christmas 2.0 )

2010-12-16T08:40:00.000-08:00

Reasons (why people don't come to church)

2010-12-08T18:11:00.000-08:00

First Sermon at the New Parish

2010-10-31T15:57:00.000-07:00

Downtown Deacon has moved to a large parish in a college town. Here is her first sermon preached today at that church.

October 31, 2010

Pentecost 23C, Proper 26

Isaiah 1:10-18

Psalm 32:1-8

2 Thessalonians 1:1-4, 11-12

Luke 19:1-10

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Most mornings I wake up to music from WXXX. If the music playing at 6:30 is a Bach cantata or something by Vivaldi, chances are I’ll wake up pretty happily. But if the music playing at 6:30 happens to be a Sousa march or something with clanging cymbals, I’ll feel like I was rudely awakened. Maybe YOU weren’t quite awake when you arrived here this morning. Maybe you were hoping for some soothing words from the readings. No such luck. I imagine the opening words of the Old Testament lesson struck you like a trumpet blast or crashing cymbals: “Hear the word of the LORD, you rulers of Sodom! Give ear to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomor'rah!”

What a way to start the day! Isaiah certainly knows how to get our attention! He doesn’t try to sugar-coat his message. Isaiah’s words would have been pretty striking in his own day. His contemporaries expected to hear sharp words from a prophet. They knew well what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah when they incurred God’s wrath. Today, we’re not used to being addressed with such force and vehemence. We’re not used to being hit between the eyes. We like to be approached just a bit more gently.

So why is Isaiah talking to us that way? We’re good people. We’re in church on this Sunday morning after all. We could be at the gym, we could be in a coffee shop, or we could be simply getting our well-earned rest. But we’re not. All of us got up this morning and came to church to hear the word of God proclaimed and preached. We came to exchange the sign of peace with each other and to eat at the Lord’s table. Like the Pharisee from last week’s Gospel, we might well be feeling mighty pleased with ourselves. If we’re honest, we might be feeling just a little superior to that neighbor of ours who says he communes with God on the golf course.

But Isaiah isn’t going to let us get away with feeling smug. He takes away any shred of self-satisfaction we might feel about our diligence in worship. After all, he’s a prophet, and shaking us up is his job. He aims to let us know just what the consequences are for ignoring God’s will for us.

The simple fact of our attendance at church doesn’t impress God one bit. Our scrupulous observation of the ritual doesn’t impress God either. Through Isaiah the Lord says, “Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates; they have become a burden to me, I am weary of bearing them. When you spread forth your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen.”

This last bit sounds quite discouraging. If God won’t listen to our prayers, what’s the point of praying then? Why are we even here, making the effort to worship according to the forms of the Prayer Book, with everything done decently and in good order?

It’s not that there’s anything BAD about our worship. Not at all. It’s just that worship isn’t enough all by itself. There’s more to our relationship with God. One of the reasons this passage has been appointed for us is to remind us that there is a danger in seeing worship as an end in itself. There’s a risk that we too, like the people of Judah, might become so focused on the details of our worship that we neglect how God has commanded us to live.

God’s concern for us extends beyond how we relate to God to how we relate to each other. Ritual without relationship is empty. So God asks that we extend our circle of concern beyond our individual soul’s relationship to God. God asks we extend our circle of concern to embrace and uplift those whom Jesus calls the least among us. Through Isaiah God commands us, “learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; defend the fatherless, plead for the widow.” This idea has lasted through the ages. About seventy or so years ago Dietrich Bonhoeffer observed that “The church is the church only when it exists for others.”

Now I realize that many if not most of us here are already on the path to reaching outside the church doors. XXXXXXX parish is well-known in [College Town] and throughout the diocese for its generosity to organizations that feed the hungry and shelter the homeless. We’re further known for volunteering in these organizations, for gathering canned goods for food pantries, for supporting Habitat for Humanity, and for preparing food for the soup kitchen, just to name a few of our many local outreach activities. These kinds of participation provide much benefit to our neighbors in need, and our neighbors are much better off for our concern.

But we could do more, and I believe that as people who’ve been richly blessed by God, we’re called to do more. I’d like to challenge us all to do two things.

First, let’s get to know our homeless neighbors right here in downtown [College Town]. Let’s give ourselves an opportunity to find out who they are and to listen to their stories. During the time I’ve served at the [College Town Agency] and [Downtown Agency], I’ve heard stories of adversity and grace that both saddened and inspired me. I’ve met people like Bill. Bill taught at a northeastern prep school until a psychotic break turned his life into a shuttle between mental hospitals and homeless shelters. I met Marty. Marty was a New York City travel executive until his alcoholism and Vietnam era demons caught up with him. Most recently, I met Lilian, a mother of seven and former [Downtown Agency] donor—yes, a donor. Lillian’s health issues and need to leave an abusive marriage sent her and her children to the shelter for refuge. I’ve changed the names but not the stories. These are real people.

I encourage anyone who is able to sit down and chat with some of the folks who eat in the soup kitchen, or who use [College Town Agency’s] other services. But there are some of us whose time and health constraints don’t permit meeting homeless people face-to-face. Fortunately, there are also online and print sources of stories by homeless people. Once we hear or read these stories by people who are more like us than not, we will never look at homeless people in quite the same way again.

The second thing I’m asking us all to do is, as a once popular bumper sticker used to say, is to question the dominant paradigm. We can ask ourselves what structures of our economy and society keep some of our sisters and brothers without adequate food, shelter, and healthcare, while others have far more than they could ever need. We can ask ourselves how we might become agents of change, however small. Jesus certainly questioned the dominant paradigm of his time. In order to follow him, we need to do so as well.

By doing these things, in addition to our already generous gifts of our time and treasure, we’ll be taking our faith through the church doors and out into the world beyond. This kind of faith in action is what I believe that Isaiah is telling us is pleasing to God. God is quite willing to work with us in the process of helping us to align ourselves with God’s will. Today’s Isaiah lesson ends infinitely more gently than it begins, with the words, “"Come now, let us reason together,

says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.” With God’s help and through God’s grace, we and our world can be transformed and redeemed.

Our Gospel today gives us a clear example of the grace of God at work through a seemingly very unlikely person. The tax collector Zaccheus climbs a tree in order to see Jesus in the crowd. Jesus asks Zaccheus to come down from the tree so that Jesus may stay at his house. The crowd around Jesus is scandalized that Jesus would accept the hospitality of a presumed sinner. Zaccheus’s next words reveal his true character. Zaccheus says, “Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have defrauded any one of anything, I restore it fourfold.” More than the self-righteous crowd, Zaccheus understands what it means to follow Jesus.

My prayer for us all today is that we too may fully understand and fully embody what it means to follow Jesus, that we may serve God as the General Thanksgiving says, “not only with our lips but with our lives.” May we come down from our trees, or whatever it is that hinders our discipleship and follow Jesus, who came to seek and to save the lost. Amen.

The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost

2010-08-29T13:55:00.000-07:00

Proper 17, Year C
Luke 14: 1, 7-14

+In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sometimes I think we Episcopalians have to put up with a lot. Some people say the Episcopal church is obsessed by sex. Others describe Episcopalians as bon vivants who are heavy on form and light on theology. We’ve been called “whiskeypalians.” We’ve been described as “Catholic lite.” We’ve even been called “The Church of the Correct Salad Fork,” as if table manners were more important for us than how we think about God. But table manners aren’t an entirely frivolous concern. Those of us who’ve heard the Gospel read and preached on week after week may have noticed that Jesus pays a great deal of attention to the dinner table. What we eat, how we eat it, and who we eat it with are not trivial matters. How we carry out this basic and essential human activity says much about our relationship with one another and with God.
In the Gospel today, Jesus begins by telling us that when we are invited by someone to a wedding banquet that we shouldn’t sit at the place of honor. It’s preferable instead to sit at the lowest place and be asked to move up rather than take the highest place and risk the disgrace of being asked to move down. At first reading, Jesus’ advice sounds to us like a clever bit of social strategy. Pretend humility for the purpose of getting the status we think we really deserve.
But this isn’t what Jesus is really telling us. Jesus isn’t in the business of teaching us to be successful in any conventional understanding of being successful. Also, there is something in what Jesus says that for us is quite literally lost in translation. Jesus’ original audience would have picked right up on his choice of one important word. The word that is translated here as “honor” is the Greek word doxa. The more usual translation of doxa is “glory,” and for Jesus’ disciples, and for us today, the word “glory” is usually associated with God. Think “doxology.” “Praise God from whom all blessings flow” is one example of a doxology that most of us are familiar with. Glory is given to God and glory must be given by God; glory can’t be given by one human being to another. Unlike honor, it’s glory that really counts in God’s kingdom, and glory is awarded by God to the humble rather than to those who try to lift themselves up.
Although most of us wouldn’t have noticed the Greek usage, Jesus has another way of letting us know his advice extends far beyond the dinner table, important though the dinner table is. Jesus’ advice concerns our salvation. He tells us “all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” Far more is at stake for us than our human power games. Jesus gives our social relationships cosmic signficance.
Just as Jesus gives advice to guests, he has some instructions for hosts as well. He tells us that when hosting a meal, we shouldn’t invite our friends, relatives, or wealthy neighbors because these people would reciprocate and we would be making an exchange rather than a gift. Jesus’ instructions require that we invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. Choosing our guests this way involves more than an act of charity, though it certainly is that too. These four groups of people—poor, crippled, lame, and blind—are specifically excluded from temple priesthood in the book of Leviticus and were also excluded from some religious communities in Jesus’ time. Here too Jesus lets us know that more than simple kindness is involved in having us follow his instructions. Just as the guest who takes the lowest seat at the table will be honored, or receive glory, the host who invites the untouchables of society will be “blessed.” Who usually blesses? God. And here too more reward is involved, for Jesus says “you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” Again, salvation is at stake.
At this point you may be getting a bit restless in the pew, thinking that however important it is, the resurrection of the righteous is a long way off. So what does today’s Gospel mean for you and me now, today, the last Sunday of August in 2010? While we don’t want to take away anything from the resurrection of the righteous, we really aren’t looking forward to that anytime soon. We have more immediate things on our minds, like how we’re going to pay our bills, make childcare arrangements, look after an ill family member, or how we’re going to cram all we have to do into that one day off and have a little relaxation besides.
Fortunately for us, there is good news in what Jesus tells us, and the good news is here and now. The good news is that living by Jesus’ words will help us enjoy abundant life right now as well as in the hereafter. Jesus gives us permission to let go of being number one all of the time. I imagine most of us like to be number one in some way or another. It starts early in life. Just watch what happens when a teacher asks a group of preschool children to form a line. There’s a mad dash for the front of that line, and probably even a bit of pushing and nudging is involved. First in line is the coveted spot. Later in life it’s the same story. We want to be on the winning team, be on the “A” honor roll, and eventually occupy the corner office. We take great delight in telling our friends how we got upgraded to first class on our last flight or how we got the best table on the busiest night of the week in the most popular restaurant in town. These are not bad things in themselves, and I have to admit that the occasional times I’ve been upgraded on an airplane I’ve enjoyed it immensely.
So then what’s bad about wanting to be number one? A couple of things. When it’s really important for us to be number one, it takes a lot of our time and energy to get there and to stay there. It’s hard work being number one, and it’s constant work, because someone else wants to be number one too and take our place. And, being number one is a mixed blessing. Yes, it feels good, but we might think that unless we’re number one we’re not worth much. What Jesus tells us to do in today’s gospel is to get out of this rat race.
Not only does Jesus say we should stop striving to be top dog, he tells us to get out of the business of bookkeeping, too. We don’t have to keep mental accounts of whom we did things for and who did things for us and make sure the two columns always balance. If we invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind to our tables, we don’t have to worry about being asked in return. When we’re planning a dinner party we can stop saying things like, “We don’t have to ask the Joneses. After all, we’ve had them over for dinner three times and we haven’t even been asked for a glass of wine at their house.” We may even be able to stop obsessing over who paid the check last time. When we stop expecting comparable returns for what we give it’s actually quite liberating. We really don’t need to worry about it, because eventually all will be settled in God’s own good time.
And what will our lives look like if we get out of the rat race and we stop our social bookkeeping? What will life be like if we value ourselves not by our position but because of the simple fact that we are children of God? What will life be like if we forget about the things other people can do for us and simply enjoy their company? I think that our priorities will change. For one thing, if we’re not worrying about being number one we will be able to love ourselves. If we can love ourselves we will be more able to love our neighbors. When all are welcome, the dinner table will become a joyful feast for all and not an anxious occasion for social one-upmanship. We will create space in our lives for joyful possibilities that we couldn’t have imagined previously.

If I and not the lectionary had been in charge of selecting the gospel reading for today, my last Sunday with you at St. Joseph’s, I could not have chosen better than our reading today. I didn’t really know what to expect when I came to St. Joseph’s two years ago. What I found was a church that knows all about table fellowship, a church made up of folks who regularly sit down and break bread with those who are seldom invited elsewhere. I feel singularly blessed to have had the chance to serve as the deacon of a church that lives out Christ’s ministry every single day of the week.
“Let mutual love continue,” says today’s Epistle. “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.” If we can open our hearts and our dinner tables, who knows who will come to share the feast? Amen.

Sixth Sunday of Easter

2010-05-09T17:23:00.000-07:00

Easter 6C

Acts 16:9-15

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

First, I’d like to quickly wish a happy Mother’s Day to all the women here who are mothers, who plan to be mothers one day, who feel in some way like mothers, or who wish they could be mothers but for some variety of circumstances it hasn’t happened as they’d hoped it would. Some churches—not this one—make a big fuss over Mother’s Day, even though it isn’t anywhere to be found in the church calendar, and it’s a day that for some can be as bitter as it is sweet.
In biblical times as well as today, the ability to become a mother can be both a source of great joy and of deep pain. We’re familiar with a few women in the Bible who miraculously conceived male children (the gender is significant!) against all odds. Sarah, Hannah, and Elizabeth are the ones that come to mind. The Bible doesn’t tell us, though, about the many other women for whom this miracle simply never happened. These women sadly lived out their lives thinking that the fact that they didn’t produce children was a sign of God’s disfavor. We can safely assume that they, their husbands, and their communities thought they were to blame in some way.
For much of human history a woman’s worth has been measured by the fruits of her womb or the absence thereof. A woman who for whatever reason didn’t produce an heir, a MALE heir, for a royal spouse could be disposed of and replaced by someone often younger and presumably more fertile. It was taken for granted that the fault was all hers. Our own branch of the Christian tree famously grew out of such a quest for an heir. If a woman wasn’t defined by her children, she was defined by her husband, because by herself she had little or no significance at all.
How remarkable then is Lydia, whom we meet in our reading today from the Acts of the Apostles. Listen to how Paul and his fellow travelers encountered her. “On the Sabbath day we went outside the gate by the river, where we supposed there was a place of prayer; and we sat down and spoke to the women who had gathered there. A certain woman named Lydia, a worshiper of God, was listening to us …” A certain woman named Lydia, a worshiper of God. We have just met a woman in first century Palestine who has been introduced without reference to a man! We’re not told that she’s the daughter, wife, or mother of anyone. Apparently this information isn’t what the author of Acts wants us to know about Lydia. He tells us what he does think is important, that she, in her own right, is a dealer in purple cloth from Thyatira. The purple cloth trade would have brought Lydia into contact with the rich and powerful, so we can safely assume she had significant stature as a businessperson. Most importantly for the story and for us today, the author tells us that Lydia was a worshiper of God.
Please notice where our author and his friends encounter Lydia, the worshiper of God. They have spent some time inside the city of Philippi, but on this day they have gone outside the gate of the city to a river, where as the text tells us, they “supposed there was a place of prayer.” This scene is far away from any center of the religious establishment of that time and place, certainly far from the local synagogue where Lydia couldn’t possibly been one of the ten MEN required to make a minyan, the minimum number of men required to hold a prayer service. In fact, we can fairly safely assume that Lydia isn’t even Jewish, since her name is Greek rather than Hebraic.
But Lydia’s outsider status as a Gentile and as a woman who goes to pray by the river rather than in an established house of prayer doesn’t matter much to the author of Acts. What DOES matter is her openness to receive the gospel. Our narrator tells us, “The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul.” Not only did Lydia listen eagerly, but apparently the Lord also opened her mouth so that she might exhort the members of her household—HER household, not a husband’s—to hear the good news and be baptized.
For Lydia and her household, baptism is not the end of the Christian life but the beginning of a new way of being and welcoming. Lydia’s heart was not the only thing that had been opened. After her baptism, she opened her home as well. She said to our narrator and Paul and their company, “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come and stay at my home.” There is something about the Gospel of Jesus Christ that causes people who believe in it to give of what God has given them. Perhaps this is part of what Paul had in mind when he said in Second Corinthians, “if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation.” The new creation bursts forth in what conventional thinking would consider an unlikely place, in the heart of Lydia, marginalized by her gender, worshipping far away from the religious establishment.
I’ve had some of my most profound experiences of this new creation in contexts that aren’t explicitly religious and that were just as unlikely as the one in our reading today. I’ll never forget the time I was serving pizza in a soup kitchen in Charlotte. When the last two men in the long line came up to the counter, there was only one piece left. Pizza was a valued food at that soup kitchen, partly because pizza was one of the few things that we served that we didn’t make ourselves from donated or surplus food. We served the pizza right out of the box from the restaurant that so generously donated it. It was the same pizza that paying customers ate. As these two men stood there before me, I fully expected an altercation. I was wrong. The first of the two men pointed to the man behind him and told me to let him have the pizza. The other man, he said, needed it more than he did. For a moment I felt as if we were all standing on holy ground. Who would have thought that a hungry man could have been so generous to another? Certainly I didn’t.
I’ve heard similar stories about our neighbors in our parking lot here at St. Joseph’s. Several weeks ago Colin mentioned in a sermon that the guys are known to turn their own pockets inside out and share what little they have with someone else who has a pressing need. One of the residents of the Hospitality House will bring over a pot of whatever he’s cooked to share with his neighbors who live on our grounds here. It seems surprising that those who seem to have so little are so willing to share what they have, and are often more willing to share than those who have much more.
Or is it really surprising? Conventional wisdom says to get what you can while you can. Conventional wisdom says to hang on to what you have, for you may need it for the proverbial rainy day. But in Christ there is a new creation, and whether that man in the Charlotte soup kitchen or our neighbors here on our grounds admit to having heard the gospel, their actions, like Lydia’s, proclaim the gospel message loud and clear.
Who knows? Maybe the work of Paul and company would have had similar results if they’d done their preaching inside the city at the synagogue instead of down by the side of the river. Maybe a group of men would have heard their message just as well as Lydia and the other women gathered there. But I wonder. It just may be that the margins provide the more fertile ground for the gospel seed to grow than does the center. It just may be that Lydia’s position outside the normal power structures and her location down by the river instead of in a conventional house of prayer helped open her heart to the gospel. But whatever made her receptive to God’s opening of her heart, Lydia surely knew what to do with the good news of Christ once she had received it.
My prayer for all of us today is that like Lydia, our hearts might be opened to receive the gospel, and that like Lydia, we will open our hearts and our homes to others. Amen.

Palm Sunday

2010-03-28T14:45:00.000-07:00

A note on comments:
Sometimes I receive comments in languages other than English. If I can't understand your comment, I'm afraid I can't publish it. I regret not being able to print your comment in another language, but I don't feel I can publish a comment when I can't be responsible for the content.

Palm Sunday
Luke 22:14-23:56

+ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today is a very busy day in the church calendar. First of all, it’s Palm Sunday, and so we’ve celebrated Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem on a donkey by waving our palm branches and singing “All Glory Laud and Honor to Thee Redeemer King.” Today is also Passion Sunday, and we’ve read the story of the passion of Jesus according to Luke. Today is also the last Sunday in Lent, a time of self-examination and repentance. These past six weeks have been a journey through sin, repentance, and forgiveness in the scriptures that the lectionary gives us during this season. We’re not quite done with that journey, though, as much as we might like to move on to something else. It would be nice if we could just march right on into Easter, but we’ve a way to go yet.
We began Lent this year with the story of the temptation of Jesus. This story set out the difficulties before us, and it tells us that the boundaries between good and evil aren’t as clear as we might wish them to be. The right choice isn’t always obvious. Evil can come to us all decked out in the veneer of good. The devil can quote scripture as effectively as any preacher, and his temptations actually appeal to our sense of reason and maybe even justice. What’s the harm in turning a stone into a loaf of bread? Well, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, my grandmother used to say. Remember, that expression doesn’t just cover the good impulses we didn’t act upon. It includes the good impulses we DID act upon with unfortunately disastrous results.
Last week in our reading from John we heard about Mary’s extravagant use of expensive perfume to anoint the feet of Jesus. Why wasn’t that perfume sold to raise funds for the poor, Judas argued. It’s worth nearly a year’s wages for a laborer. Judas’ argument isn’t unreasonable, not at all. In fact, what Judas says tells us that he’s been listening to what Jesus’ has had to say about feeding the poor. That’s a good thing, to be sure. The problem is that while Judas absorbed what Jesus had to say, he completely missed the point about who Jesus actually IS. WE would never make that mistake.
Of course not. And we’d never betray a friend, either. Or would we? Well … we just might. We might betray our friend if our friend was someone who was wanted by the local authorities. We might betray our friend if we thought it was easy to tell the bad guys from the good guys. We might betray our friend if we’re scared, if our friend were the sort of person who seems to walk with God yet maybe not seem to be quite in his right mind. We might betray our friend if we meant well, if we thought that by turning our friend in to the authorities we could save him and ourselves. After all, he’s in trouble with both our own religious hierarchy and the Roman rulers. They can’t both be wrong, can they? Or can they?
Well, you know the story. We just read it together, and we all shouted, “Crucify him!” We ALL shouted, “Crucify him!” The road to hell has been paved with our good intentions. The good things—the desire for order and certainty—have led us into what was the ultimately evil act of Jesus’ crucifixion. We didn’t mean to walk down this road, really we didn’t. But we did, and a man, Jesus, died for our moral failure. It’s easy for us to blame Judas, call him a bad guy, and pat ourselves on the back. But that’s too easy. If we condemn Judas and go on our way through Holy Week without looking inward, we’re missing the point. Who was Judas anyway? He was one of the disciples. He was one of Jesus’ inner circle, one of the family, so to speak. It’s not likely that one of Jesus’ followers would have a completely evil heart. If we’re going to claim the other disciples as our brothers, we’re going to have to claim Judas, too.
While we’re on the subject of the other disciples, it’s no surprise that they’re not perfect either. What are they doing while Jesus is praying on the Mount of Olives? The disciples are sleeping. Luke rather charitably says that they’re sleeping “because of grief.” Sounds more like avoidance to me. Easier to sleep than to hear Jesus anxiously praying, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done.” But can we honestly say we’d have done any differently had we been there?
Jesus scolds his sleeping disciples, saying, “Why are you sleeping? Get up and pray that you may not come into the time of trial.” Pray that you may not come into the time of trial. Do those words have a familiar ring? They occur in both Matthew’s and Luke’s gospels in the prayer that has become known as the Lord’s Prayer. In Matthew’s rendering it reads “do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one.” This translation—more faithful to the Greek than the translation which reads, “lead us not into temptation”—is right to the point here.
What Jesus is getting at is the very situation in which Judas, and later Peter, find themselves. The time of trial, the time of real temptation, can occur at any time that our good intentions blind us to the presence of evil. Any of us can get into one of these situations and many of us have been. There’s a good reason this petition is in the Lord’s Prayer, and there’s a very good reason why it’s the last, the ultimate petition. We need to pray this part of the prayer every bit as much as the part where we ask for our daily bread.
The saddest thing about Judas, though, isn’t that he came into the time of trial and failed. The saddest thing about Judas isn’t that his action started the final chain of events that led to Jesus’ death. The saddest thing about Judas is that as far as we know, he never repented, he never turned himself around and returned to experience God’s mercy. If that were the model we were left with it would be bad news indeed.
Fortunately for us, there is Peter. Peter, too, betrayed Jesus by denying him in an attempt to save his own scared little neck. I don’t mean to defend his actions in any sense. What Peter did was deplorable. But the good news for him and for all of us is that Peter repented. He turned around and went back to the Lord and received mercy.
We too can repent and return to the Lord. No sin, whether it belongs to the realm of things done or things left undone, is too big or too small to be outside the scope of God’s mercy. There’s a wideness in God’s mercy, as the hymn says, that is beyond human imagining. Let me read you the last verse.
For the love of God is broader
than the measure of man's mind;
and the heart of the Eternal
is most wonderfully kind.
If our love were but more faithful,
we should take him at his word;
and our life would be thanksgiving
for the goodness of the Lord.
Let us take these words to heart as we walk through Holy Week together. The love of God IS broader than the measure of our minds. We can’t imagine giving the life of our only son for the salvation of this manifestly imperfect world. But God could. Thanks be to God. Amen.

First Sunday in Lent, Year C

2010-02-21T13:21:00.001-08:00

Luke 4: 1-13

+In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

I was fortunate to have had the opportunity to know three of my four grandparents as I was growing up. The only one I didn’t know was my father’s mother. She died six years before I was born, and two years before my parents had even met. I only knew her from photographs and from what my father, my aunt, and my grandfather told me about her. She was known as Madeline, but that was not the name she was given at birth. The New York City school system changed her name from Magdalena; in the 1890s they frequently Americanized names they thought were too foreign-sounding. Madeline was the only one of my grandparents to have graduated from high school, and was known in the family as “the boss.” She had a few favorite expressions that were passed down by my father to the grandchildren she never knew. One of those expressions was, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” I have to admit that until fairly recently, I never thought too much about this expression. Let’s leave aside, for the moment, the discussion of the theological implications of hell. It seemed that my grandmother’s expression was just another way of saying “would have, could have, should have isn’t good enough.” The good intentions, so I thought, were the things that we mention in the general confession when we express our regret for “the things we have left undone.” These would be the promises we don’t keep, the helping hands offered but never given, and even the promises to pray for people that we might not follow through on.
What I’ve since come to realize, though, is that the road to hell can be paved with the good intentions that we actually DO follow through on. The problem is that evil isn’t usually entirely obvious. Take a look at our Gospel lesson for today. Shortly after Jesus’ baptism, the Spirit led him into the wilderness, where he was tempted by the devil for forty days. The devil isn’t the ugly red guy with horns and a tail who carries a pitchfork, all of which would indicate that he’s big trouble and that one ought to stay away. This devil seems eminently reasonable. He can even quote scripture to support his arguments, and he does just that in the second and third temptations that he places before Jesus.
Let’s take a look at the first temptation, because that temptation is the one that is the easiest for us to imagine that we might face. The devil said to Jesus, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” Jesus hasn’t had anything to eat for FORTY days. Most of us, maybe all of us, have never fasted for that long, but we can appreciate what it’s like to be pretty hungry. We’ve fasted on a holy day, or have had days so busy or stressful that lunch and maybe even dinner, too, just never happened. Maybe we’ve had times in our lives when we didn’t have enough money to eat regularly. If we could instantaneously produce some food, perhaps make a loaf of bread from a conveniently nearby object, we might very well be tempted to do so. What would be the harm, really? And if we were to be taunted by someone who questions our core identity, as the devil does to Jesus, we’d be doubly tempted at least, and we might very well succumb to this temptation. But Jesus, while human like us, isn’t us, and he declines to fall into the devil’s trap. Jesus answers the devil, “One does not live by bread alone.”
We might be able to resist this temptation, at least on our own behalf. But temptations don’t concern only our own needs and desires. As Diogenes Allen says in his book, which he appropriately titled Temptation, temptation also may appear in the form of concern for the welfare of others. You and I know that we can’t live by bread alone, that we have emotional and spiritual needs that food and other material goods just can’t satisfy. Most of us here today have enough to eat, at least most of the time, and our very presence here today suggests that we are meeting our need for spiritual sustenance as well.
Our presence here today suggests also that we are very concerned about the needs of our neighbors who are less able to feed and house themselves. This community of St. Joseph’s is very generous about supporting the poor plate and our other forms of ministry with our neighbors in need. It is good to care, and it is good to care in this active way. But there is risk attached to our good work. It is POSSIBLE to become so upset by poverty and human misery that we become preoccupied with meeting only the material needs. It’s not that the material needs are unimportant, because they are very important. But material needs aren’t the only needs.
Fortunately, I think in our life here at St. Joseph’s we’ve achieved a good balance of attending to both the material and spiritual needs of our neighbors. I’d like to think we’ve been able to do this because we’re both a caring AND discerning people, but if I’m being honest, we can keep appropriate balance because we’re dealing with need on a pretty small scale. Something else entirely may happen in situations where the scale is much larger and the conditions more dire.
I’m thinking, and you may be thinking too, of Haiti. The earthquake last month brought devastation, both physical and emotional, of biblical proportions to a small nation that was already struggling. Over two hundred thousand people died, and many more are hungry, homeless, and suffering from the lack of medical attention. Many children were orphaned in a country that had lots of orphans already. The plight of these children is dire, truly. Most of us, all of us, would wish better things for them. Many of us would wish to see these children find a better place where they would be well cared for.
Some people are trying to follow through on these wishes and remove some of these children from Haiti and its devastation. Certainly there are some unscrupulous people who see these children as easy prey for organ transplant sales or the sex trade. It’s not hard to see evil operating there. Evil doesn’t get much more obvious than that. It IS harder to see evil behind those who are attempting to remove children from Haiti for international adoption or other forms of care. A church group from Idaho has made headlines in recent weeks because they removed children from Haiti to the Dominican Republic next door. Not only did this group not have permission to remove these children from their home country, but some of these children turned out not to be orphans at all.
By illegally removing the children from Haiti, this group fell to a temptation not unlike the temptation that Jesus faced to make a loaf of bread from stone. Making a loaf of bread from stone violates laws of nature, and what this church group did bypassed all of the laws that apply to taking children out of a country. As Jesus said, “One does not live by bread alone.” Neither do these children live by material goods alone. While food, shelter, and medical care are very important indeed, they aren’t the only things these Haitian children need. Maybe more than they ever did, now they need connection with their communities, their churches, and whoever might remain among their blood relations. By presuming that they know best what is good for possibly orphaned Haitian children, well-intentioned people may actually do evil while believing that they are doing good.
Although we may not have fallen into this trap ourselves, while we may not have fallen into this trap YET, it’s something you and I need to keep in mind. We could find ourselves in a similar situation. It might come to us in the form of us saying to ourselves, “If I were a Christian, if I were a REAL Christian, I would fix this terrible situation.” The devil might not visit us in the flesh, but he has been known to do his work through our own inner promptings, which in themselves come out of very good intentions.
This kind of temptation will arise in us again and again throughout our lives. Our Gospel lesson ends by telling us that the devil departed from Jesus until “an opportune time.” Not forever, not at all. Just until there’s an opening for temptation again.
That’s something I want to keep in mind as I go through these forty days of Lent, and I hope you will too. I want to remind myself that I need to watch out not for the obviously bad, but for when my own good intentions go awry. Evil isn’t obvious. It’s subtle, and often cloaked insidiously in things and intentions that are, by themselves, good. We may start out thinking we are helping and end up hurting instead. “The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” my grandmother used to say. We might not agree with her that there’s an actual place called hell. But I think her words are good ones to remember as we walk that road of examination and repentance we call Lent. Amen.

Second Sunday after the Epiphany (January 17, 2010)

2010-02-08T17:25:00.000-08:00

John 2:1-11

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

“Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.”

Today is the second Sunday in the season after the Epiphany. An Epiphany is a manifestation of God, and the Epiphany season is the time when we celebrate the light of God come to the world in Jesus Christ. The Gospels provide us a view of that light in different ways. The synoptic Gospels, that is, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, contain an account of the transfiguration of Jesus. Through the transfiguration the disciples come to know Jesus for who he really is, God’s own son. But the transfiguration is missing in the Gospel of John. What is not missing, though, is a demonstration of who Jesus is. We find that demonstration in our reading from John today. When the wine runs out at a wedding Jesus remedies the situation by turning water into wine of even greater quality and quantity that what the wedding host had originally provided.
This story of the miracle at the wedding in Cana is one of those stories that is troubling for some of us. It seems unlikely at best to us today. Changing water into wine is, to our minds impossible and violates any ideas we have about how the world is ordered. This story is one that skeptics are likely to mention when they say that they doubt that the Bible is “true.” The miracle of changing water into wine can also be used to mock Jesus and his divinity. In the 1970’s musical Jesus Christ Superstar, Herod taunts Jesus by saying, “Prove to me that you’re divine; change my water into wine.” With just a few words, Herod dismisses both the miracle and the divinity of Jesus.
The miracle at Cana, and for that matter, ALL of Jesus’ miracles, bothered Thomas Jefferson, too. Thomas Jefferson—the same Thomas Jefferson who was the third President of the United States, one of the founding fathers of our country, and as my son would insist I mention, founder of the University of Virginia—couldn’t reconcile this miracle of Jesus, or for that matter, any of them, with the Enlightenment understandings of how the world works. In 1819, Jefferson began work on his own version of the Gospels, which he called “The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth.” Jefferson’s aim in presenting Jesus was, in his own words, “to rescue his character.” Jefferson’s version of the Gospels eliminated the virgin birth, the bodily resurrection, any mention of Jesus’ divinity, and the miracle accounts. Jefferson was well aware of how controversial his work would seem to others. He suppressed the work during his lifetime, and his relatives kept the work secret until 1895. The so-called Jefferson Bible was only published for the first time in 1904.
I think that a reaction like Jefferson’s to the miracle of Cana misses the point. Our Gospel story today doesn’t depend on whether or not this miracle was an actual historical occurrence. While we’re talking about what this story isn’t, I’d also like to dispel some other misconceptions about it. It’s not, as some would say, about Jesus’ own wedding. In this story, Jesus isn’t being rude to his mother, though it may sound that way to us. This story is also not about whether or not it’s morally acceptable to drink alcohol.
The point of today’s Gospel story isn’t about any of those things. What the story is about is God’s extravagance and abundance in the gift of his own son to us. Of course it IS remarkable that Jesus changes water into wine in this story. What needs to be emphasized, though, is that Jesus changes a LOT of water into a LOT of wine. We’re told that six stone water jars each holding twenty or thirty gallons were filled with water. Do the math. One hundred twenty to one hundred eighty gallons of water become one hundred twenty to one hundred eighty gallons of wine. Quality wine, not the cheap stuff, as the steward noted when he said to the bridegroom, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.”
More wine than was actually needed. Better wine than was to be expected. We’re starting to approach the heart of the matter. Jesus doesn’t only provide what is needed in a given situation. He provides what is needed in a manner that exceeds any possible expectations anyone could have. Jesus doesn’t just meet the demand, but he exceeds and overflows it. In this inaugural event of Jesus’ ministry John lets us know clearly the sheer boundlessness of what Jesus has to offer. Jesus is no ordinary Galilean, make no mistake about it. The miracle at Cana prefigures the feeding of the five thousand, where Jesus will take a seemingly inadequate supply of food and will not only have enough food to feed a large crowd but have food left over.
I’ll say it again. Jesus is no ordinary Galilean. Jesus can tap into a source of abundance that we would traditionally associate with God and not with mortals. The miracle at Cana establishes Jesus as one whose resources are as limitless as the Creator’s, who will later in John’s Gospel provide not only water but Living Water, not only bread but the Bread of Life.
What is one to do in the presence of such abundance? What is one to do in the presence of such grace? Our Gospel lesson today provides us an example of two possible responses. Let’s take a look at them.
The first response to Jesus’ miracle comes from the steward at the wedding. The steward acknowledges a wonderful act of hospitality in serving good wine throughout the wedding rather than only at the beginning of the celebration. He attributes this gesture to the bridegroom, the presumed host of the wedding feast. What the steward doesn’t understand is that the source of the plentiful and good wine isn’t the wedding bridegroom, but Jesus the true bridegroom. The steward’s response isn’t inappropriate, but it isn’t complete either.
The disciples are the ones in this story who fully appreciate what Jesus has done at this wedding at Cana. John tells us, “Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him. And his disciples believed in him. The disciples lead the way for our own response to the miracle at Cana. John’s intent in relating this story about the first even in Jesus’ ministry isn’t to impress us by sharing an extreme act of hospitality. It’s not that hospitality isn’t important, because it IS important, to be sure. John’s intent is to have us respond as the disciples respond, with belief in Jesus and the sheer abundance and extravagance of his gifts. We know that this abundance and extravagance prefigures even greater things to come because its source is God, who has no limits. NO limits. With God all things are possible, from changing water into wine to the feeding of the five thousand to the resurrection of the body. Amen.

Prayer for Haiti

2010-01-16T05:47:00.000-08:00

The following prayer comes from a friend's blog. This prayer is being prayed regularly at her Catholic church in Florida.

A Prayer After the Earthquake in Haiti

Lord, at times such as this,

when we realize that the ground beneath our feet

is not as solid as we had imagined,

we plead for your mercy.

As the things we have built crumble about us,

we know too well how small we truly are

on this ever-changing, ever-moving,

fragile planet we call home.

Yet you have promised never to forget us.

Do not forget us now.

Today, so many people are afraid.

They wait in fear of the next tremor.

They hear the cries of the injured amid the rubble.

They roam the streets in shock at what they see.

And they fill the dusty air with wails of grief

and the names of missing dead.

Comfort them, Lord, in this disaster.

Be their rock when the earth refuses to stand still,

and shelter them under your wings when homes no longer exist.

Embrace in your arms those who died so suddenly this day.

Console the hearts of those who mourn,

and ease the pain of bodies on the brink of death.

Pierce, too, our hearts with compassion,

we who watch from afar,

as the poorest on this side of the earth

find only misery upon misery.

Move us to act swiftly this day,

to give generously every day,

to work for justice always,

and to pray unceasingly for those without hope.

And once the shaking has ceased,

the images of destruction have stopped filling the news,

and our thoughts return to life’s daily rumblings,

let us not forget that we are all your children

and they, our brothers and sisters.

We are all the work of your hands.

For though the mountains leave their place

and the hills be tossed to the ground,

your love shall never leave us,

and your promise of peace will never be shaken.

Our help is in the name of the Lord,

who made heaven and earth.

Blessed be the name of the Lord,

now and forever. Amen.

Fourth Sunday of Advent

2009-12-20T12:12:00.000-08:00

Luke 1: 39-45 (46-55)

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Here we are again. Even though it comes around every year, the Fourth Sunday of Advent always seems to sneak up on us. It’s a busy time. There’s such a lot to do and seemingly not enough time in which to do it. I’m feeling a sense of urgency, and I suspect you are too.
There’s certainly a sense of urgency among our neighbors over at Urban Ministries. What’s even more noticeable is the sense of unease that pervades the place. You can almost reach out and touch it. There are more bad moods and arguments in the soup kitchen line than there are at other times. Too many people show up on the food pantry days and we have to turn several away. Earlier in the year this news might not elicit a strong reaction, but now it may result in an angry outburst, pleading, or even tears. This year is particularly difficult given the high rate of unemployment.
Some folks at Urban Ministries have a sudden sense of focus that they didn’t have just a few weeks earlier. James (all the names are changed), who normally seems perpetually distracted, is all of a sudden focused on getting a bus ticket back home to visit his grown children. Annie, who’s normally a fairly laid-back woman, goes into high gear to assemble all the trimmings of Christmas for her children. Alvin, who normally just hangs out on the corner, is suddenly looking for a way to make a little cash. Between my minimal Spanish and Maria’s halting English I learn that she will leave no stone unturned to make sure she has an extra blanket for a visiting relative.
The time leading up to Christmas is stressful for most of us, but even more so for the poor and homeless. In a season that’s so often defined by buying, how hard it is for those with no money for gifts. In a season that glorifies the concept of being home for the holidays, how devastating it is to have no home at all. In a season that celebrates families getting together, how painful it is to have blood ties strained by poverty, addiction, or abuse. In a season known for feasting, how sad it is to have little to put on the table. Even attending a church service this time of year seems daunting for those without even a coin to drop in the collection plate. For the broken in purse and spirit, Christmas is anything but merry. It’s a season of embarrassment, even shame.
This season may be painful even for those who are more prosperous. The dark secret hidden underneath that pile of presents may be a huge credit card debt. Family gatherings may expose the estrangement that lies behind the hearty greetings and forced festiveness. Christmas may well be an emotional and logistical nightmare for those who must tread carefully in the minefield of split families and step-relations. The anxieties and addictions we’ve held in check the rest of the year may get the better of us now. If we’ve lost friends and family members this past year we feel their absence sorely. In this season even those of us who are rich in worldly goods may feel poor on some level. We truly need some good news right now!
Good news is exactly what we get from today’s Gospel. The thing is, it doesn’t look like good news at first. Think about Elizabeth and Mary for a moment. Talk about embarrassment and shame! Elizabeth is pregnant at an age far past the acceptable age for childbearing. Her earlier childlessness was a problem in her world, to be sure, but this latest development could be seen as strange or even ominous. After all, to everything there is a season, and Elizabeth’s season for childbearing should be long past. And what about Mary? What do you think the neighbors were saying about this poor, unmarried teenager who claimed that an angel told her that she would become pregnant by the Holy Spirit? And if that’s not enough, consider what will happen to Elizabeth’s and Mary’s unborn sons. John the Baptist will be beheaded by Herod, and Jesus will be crucified by the Romans. Does this sound like good news to you?
At this point we may want to pause a moment and reflect. God’s ways are not our ways, and God’s values may not be the same as ours. As we’ve seen time and time again, God works through people and in situations that may appear very unpromising to us. In fact, God does some of God’s best work with powerless people whose lives most of us would consider impossible.
As first century women in Palestine, Mary and Elizabeth were certainly powerless. In their culture women had very little standing. They weren’t just women, but they were poor women as well.
But God saw these women differently than their contemporaries did. Remember that God chose Moses to deliver the Ten Commandments despite Moses’ stutter. Remember that God chose David, a younger brother and a lowly shepherd, to be be God’s anointed. In the case of David, Samuel explains that “The Lord does not see as mortals see, they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” The world’s standards of excellence and prestige don’t matter to God. What matters is what God finds in our hearts.
Luke expects us to make the connection between Mary and God’s work with the lowly. Mary’s song—known as the Magnificat—echoes the song of Hannah in First Samuel. Luke wants us to know that this choice of a low-status person isn’t an isolated incident or a novelty. Luke wants to make sure we understand that this is the way that God works. God judges and selects people not by worldly criteria but by what Martin Luther King called the content of their character.
Our lesson from Hebrews reinforces this idea. God isn’t impressed by our outward and material actions and appearance but by our inward and spiritual condition manifested in obedience to God’s will. Hebrews tells us, “Sacrifices and burn offerings you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me” and “See, I have come to do your will.” What God wants is an obedient and willing heart, not a big show. God isn’t interested in having us bow and scrape to prove our love for God. God would rather we incarnated God’s love for us and show forth God’s praise, as the Prayer Book says, “not only with our lips but in our lives.”
So God’s ways are not our ways, and if you look all over scripture you’ll find plenty of evidence. Isaiah announces God’s reversal of the so-called natural order of things by saying, “Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low.” Doesn’t that remind you of Mary’s words in today’s Gospel lesson? She says of God, “He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly.”
Mary’s next words announce that “God has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.” Where else in scripture have we heard words like these? We’ve heard them in the Beatitudes. Every one of the Beatitudes is a reversal of what we think is the usual order of things. We don’t think of the poor in spirit, or those who mourn, or the meek, or those who hunger and thirst for righteousness as blessed, yet Jesus says they are.
But Jesus in the Beatitudes and Luke in our reading today aren’t talking about how things are in their culture or in ours. They’re talking about who is blessed and who is valued in a community that looks forward to the coming of the kingdom. Here is real Gospel, good news about what the kingdom is like and good news about what and whom the kingdom values.
Jesus never said, blessed are the rich and powerful. God didn’t choose the daughter of the chief rabbi or the temple high priest to be the mother of Jesus. Instead, God chose Mary, a poor young girl from Nazareth. Jesus wasn’t born on a soft bed in a palace but on straw in a stable among the barnyard animals. The shepherds are the first to learn of Jesus’ birth in Luke’s Gospel. Remember, shepherds occupied the lowest rung of the social ladder.
Do you see the picture here? Jesus never said it was fun or lucky or enjoyable to be poor, but he said it was blessed. God is with the poor. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never run into Jesus at a country club or at the mall. I never even ran into him at Duke Divinity School. But I think I’ve met him in a soup kitchen a time or two, and I’m willing to believe he stays in the shelter from time to time.
God is with the poor, and poverty is only partly about money. There isn’t anyone among us who isn’t poor in some way. Many of us are poor in purse and many others of us are poor in health or poor in spirit. There is not a person on this planet who isn’t broken in some way or another. We all have our wounds, inside and out. This season, as we prepare to welcome God into our midst in the form of a homeless baby, let us welcome God into our brokenness so that it may be healed. Let us welcome God into our hearts and experience a transformation beyond any we could ever ask for or even imagine. Come Lord Jesus, heal us and save us. Amen.

A Story of Hospitality

2009-11-12T15:07:00.000-08:00

The Way We Get By - Trailer from The Way We Get By on Vimeo.

19th Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 23

2009-10-11T14:08:00.000-07:00

Hebrews 4:12-16

+In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

It seems like surveillance cameras are everywhere these days. They’re at the bank, at the mall, and at the airport. There are even cameras at some intersections. The purpose is to catch people running red lights even if a policeman isn’t there to see them do it. These cameras are supposed to be for our protection, or so we’re told. They’re supposed to prevent crime, or at least identify the culprit and make punishment possible. The trouble is, these cameras don’t necessarily record only crime. They record our comings and goings when we are just minding our own business, committing no crimes at all. They might record us engaging in harmless but potentially embarrassing activities like fixing our underwear when it’s riding up or talking to ourselves. Anybody might eventually see us on film, from the temp agency security guard to the head of the FBI. Security cameras give me the creeps. Maybe they give you the creeps too.
You might well have the same reaction to the beginning of today’s lesson from Hebrews. God’s word seems to be the ultimate surveillance device. God’s word “is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” Does this make you uneasy? It does me. All of a sudden the idea of being caught on film trying to deal discreetly with a lingerie issue or committing a traffic violation doesn’t seem all that bad. God doesn’t just see. God judges. And God doesn’t just see and judge what we do. God sees and judges what we think, maybe even before we think it! God knows just what we mean, good or bad. I didn’t curse aloud at the driver who cut me off on I-40 yesterday, but God knows I wished him grievous bodily harm. There’s no hiding from that God.
These verses from Hebrews tell us that God isn’t only able to see everything we do and know everything we think. They tell us that God is purposeful and energetic about doing it. The word of God is “living and active.” The word of God is “piercing.” The Collect for Purity begins, “Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid.” All hearts. All desires. No secrets. No exceptions here. God is searching us out twenty-four/seven. Hebrews doesn’t mention that God rests on the seventh day from this activity. God knows if we’ve been bad or good, and what’s at stake here is far greater than what’s going to be in our stockings on Christmas morning. It’s downright terrifying, if you think about it.
But don’t be afraid. There’s more to this story. It would be really scary if the first verses of our lesson from Hebrews were the whole story. Sad to say though, lots of folks think this is the whole story. For a long time, religion has been used as a means of social control. The message can be twisted to suggest that God won’t reward those who don’t toe the line. It’s like telling kids there won’t be any visit from Santa if they don’t behave in the weeks leading up to Christmas. For adults the message is like this. Follow the rules and you’ll go to heaven. Break the rules and there will be hell to pay. If the police don’t get you in this life, God’s hammer of judgment will get you in the next. Don’t curse or steal or commit adultery because God is watching you. Don’t even think about doing these things, because God can see inside your head and inside your heart.
When people think God is no more than a big cosmic cop, they may or they may not behave themselves. What they are likely to do is to cut themselves off from God. Think about the parable of the talents from Matthew’s gospel. The master gave talents—money—to three slaves. The first two invested the money, but the third slave just buried it. He thought that his master would punish him if he didn’t return what he’d been given. The first two slaves made more money and were rewarded, but the third slave was punished. His master was angry not only that the slave made no additional money but that the slave believed the master would react badly. Because this slave assumed his master would treat him harshly, he lost even the little bit he had been given. This is what happens to us if we live our lives in fear of God’s judgment. Like the slave in the parable, we will cut ourselves off from God’s gifts if we are so afraid of God’s judgment that we fail to see God’s mercy.
Fortunately, that doesn’t have to happen. God’s purpose for us is not to catch us messing up. God is for us, not against us. Just listen to the words of the Nicene Creed: “For us and for our salvation, he came down from heaven.” God’s purpose for us is a saving purpose. God is the giver of all good gifts. God is about giving, not about taking away. God is like a loving parent who gives us the perfect present. It may not be the one we asked for, but once we’ve opened it we know it’s the very thing we most want and need.
Can you imagine a better gift than Jesus? Jesus is God’s ultimate gift to us. Jesus is incarnate proof that God is a loving parent rather than a tyrant. God’s word in Jesus, too, is living and active. Living and active, Jesus comes to save us. Our lesson from Hebrews tells us that in Jesus we have a great high priest. In temple Judaism, the high priest was the people’s intercessor with God. The high priest was the one who entered the holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement in the name of the people. Jesus approaches God on our behalf.
Our lesson from Hebrews today reassures us that Jesus the high priest not only intercedes for us, he intercedes as one of us. He has walked more than a mile in our shoes. He has lived in our very skin, not only in good times, but in the worst of times, through his death on the cross. We don’t have a high priest “who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.” If you remember reading in the book of Isaiah, “he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed.” Does this sound to you like the son of a tyrannical God?
We’ll find more reassurance in next week’s gospel lesson, when we’ll read that “the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Our salvation is so important to God that God will hold back nothing, not even the life of God’s only son. “For us and for our salvation, he came down from heaven.” Hold onto those words. God can see into our hearts. God knows all the good and the bad in us, and still goes to enormous lengths to save us.
God has done so much for us. God continues to do so much for us. What then are we to do? First, you and I are to accept this love, believe in it, and trust it. Hebrews tells us that because we have a great high priest in Jesus we may “approach the throne of grace with boldness.” With boldness. Not in fear. Not like a child who’s been sent to the principal’s office. Since we have a great high priest in Jesus, we need not fear. We will not receive harshness, but mercy. We will find grace to help in time of need. There is no need to fear. Jesus has been sent “for us and for our salvation.”
So that said, let’s think again about God’s probing and all-seeing nature. Because Jesus is our great high priest, we’re not like Adam and Eve hiding in the garden because they were naked and ashamed. God’s purpose isn’t to shame us. God’s purpose is to save us. Since God knows us better than we know ourselves, God is able to do just that. Maybe we can come to know the same assurance as the person who wrote Psalm 139. He trusted God enough to write, “Search me out, O God, and know my heart.”
God looks into your heart and my heart all the time. God knows that what’s there isn’t always pretty. There’s at least as much sin and brokenness as there is love and wholeness. God could punish us. God could try to fix us. After all, that’s what we try to do with things that are broken. But God doesn’t do either of these things. Instead, God saves us. So when you think about God, forget about security cameras. Don’t confuse God with Santa Claus. It’s not about punishment. It’s not even about rewards. It’s about salvation, yours and mine. He came down from heaven for us and for our salvation. He was crucified under Pontius Pilate for our sake. As Saint Paul said, “If God is for us, who is against us?” Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

15 Pentecost Year B

2009-09-14T17:07:00.000-07:00

Mark 8:27-38

+In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Many years ago now my friend A. was a newly ordained priest. She was serving on the staff of a church in the New York City suburbs. On a particularly hot July Sunday morning, she was the designated celebrant at the Eucharist. The church hadn’t yet installed a central air conditioning system, and it felt even hotter in the church than it felt outside. She opted to put on her stole but not to wear the chasuble, the heavy poncho like vestment that the celebrant traditionally wears. The Prayer Book rubrics—look at them sometime if you’re interested—only stipulate that the stole must be worn. A. figured that everyone, including the other clergy who were serving with her that day, would understand. She was wrong. Right before the service began, the elderly rector emeritus asked her why she wasn’t wearing the chasuble. When A. said she was too hot, she was reprimanded with the words, “Don’t you know that it’s a good thing to suffer for Jesus? After all, he suffered for you.” The old priest didn’t speak these words with a smile on his face; he was entirely serious. In his mind, enduring physical discomfort was an appropriate, even desirable way of following in Jesus’ footsteps.
History provides a more vivid and far more extreme example of the idea that it’s desirable to suffer for Jesus. In the Middle Ages, groups of men known as Flagellants gathered and marched in procession, beating themselves and each other with leather whips with iron spikes attached. The motivation behind this apparent madness was that this self-inflicted punishment would atone for the sins that caused the deadly outbreaks of bubonic plague. They thought that by inflicting pain on themselves they were sacrificing themselves for the world’s sins. They thought they were imitating Jesus. Unfortunately, their violence extended beyond the harm they inflicted on their own bodies. According to historians, the Flagellants were known to harm clergy who objected to their practices. They were also reported to have killed Jews they encountered. The pope condemned their activities in the mid fourteenth century, but similar behavior in times of plague persisted for at least another hundred years.
While we can be more than reasonably certain that Jesus wouldn’t have approved of the practices of the Flagellants, Jesus would hardly have us shy away from suffering. On the contrary. He tells his disciples and the crowd around them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” As we all know, Jesus suffers plenty on the way to the cross and on the cross itself. But are we to understand that our suffering is a good thing? Are we to understand that Jesus actually wants us to suffer? I can’t be so sure about that.
A reasonable reading of Mark’s gospel and of the other gospels demonstrates that Jesus devotes considerable time and energy to alleviate or even eliminate the suffering of others. In last week’s gospel lesson, Jesus first cast the demon out of the Syrophoenician woman’s daughter, although as you may remember, he didn’t do it without a little persuasion. Then he cured a man of his deafness and his inability to speak. In the same chapter that contains today’s lesson, Jesus cures a blind man at Bethsaida. In the next chapter, Jesus heals a boy with a spirit. Even the prohibition against doing work on the Sabbath didn’t keep Jesus from healing a man’s withered hand. For Jesus the remedy of the man’s disability was more important than observing the letter of the law. For Jesus alleviating suffering took precedence over following the dictates of religious tradition. The healings and exorcisms that I’ve just mentioned are just a few of the many that Jesus performs throughout the gospels.
Jesus isn’t just interested in easing the suffering caused by physical illness. Many, many times he aids people who suffered from possession by demons or spirits. Today we might refer to demon possession as mental illness or addiction. Jesus has great concern for the poor and for those who are social outcasts. Poverty causes physical suffering every bit as real as that caused by illness or injury; the poor don’t get enough to eat, often don’t have adequate shelter, and frequently have little access to medical care. Poverty and exclusion from society cause spiritual suffering too, which Jesus also seeks to remedy. Jesus feeds hungry people and takes away the discomfort of their empty stomachs. He eats with sinners and tax collectors who are shunned by so-called respectable society and the local religious establishment. Jesus doesn’t shy away from associating with the untouchables of his world. He seeks to remedy the pain of exclusion by drawing them into his circle of association.
We might want to consider all of Jesus’ healings and his compassion for the poor and the outcast in the light of his question to the disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter answers this question quite correctly by replying, “You are the Messiah.” In practical terms, though, what does this answer mean for Jesus’ followers? What kind of Messiah is Jesus? What will the kingdom that Jesus will bring as the Messiah look like? What difference does it make? What difference does it make to the disciples, and what difference does it make to us what kind of Messiah we are following?
All of the healing miracles that Jesus performs suggest that the kingdom he proclaims is a kingdom where shalom will prevail. Shalom means “peace” in Hebrew, but it means more than simply peace. Shalom also means health and wholeness. Shalom in the kingdom of God means that people won’t have to deal with the pain of hunger. Shalom in the kingdom of God means that people will no longer be afflicted by physical ailments, deformities, and limitations. People will no longer be possessed by demons. In the kingdom of God shalom means that relations between people are conducted in such a manner that there is no such thing as a marginalized person; all are welcome and included.
If the disciples of Jesus—and the disciples are us as well as the original twelve—seek to follow Jesus the healer, what does it mean in terms of how we conduct our lives and our relations with our neighbor? How is this type of discipleship different from discipleship that emphasizes the suffering of Jesus? Which kind of discipleship is likely to lead to a state of shalom?
There’s a real danger in investing too much in the idea that Jesus suffers. He asks us to take up our cross, true. But there’s a very real danger that we might come to see suffering as a good thing. If we see our own suffering or the suffering of others as any kind of a good thing, we’re less likely to intervene to prevent or stop suffering when we see it. If we think the struggles of others for food, adequate housing, decent health care, or inclusion in society are redemptive, or even just character-building, we’re less likely to provide any aid. Remember the practices of the Flagellants, who I mentioned earlier. Their self-inflicted pain didn’t lead them to treat others with kindness and compassion. Instead, they tended to deal violently with civil and religious authorities who opposed them.
So, as we’ll sing in the Offertory Hymn in a little while, “Take up your cross, the savior said.” Follow Jesus. Follow him as a feeder. Follow him as a healer. Follow him as a gatherer of souls. Don’t be afraid to suffer if that suffering is necessary. But please don’t think that’s what Jesus wants for you and me. It seems to me that while he would have us carry his cross, he has no wish for us to hang on it too. Jesus hung on that cross so that you and I wouldn’t have to. Amen.

Remembering September 11, 2001

2009-09-11T08:35:00.000-07:00

Kyrie eleison.

Out of Downtown and into God's Creation

2009-09-07T14:11:00.000-07:00

2009-08-09T10:31:00.000-07:00

Pentecost 10B, Proper 14

John 6:35, 41-51

+ In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

If you look at the cover of this morning’s service bulletin, you’ll notice that today is the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost. There are lots of Sundays after Pentecost. Exactly how many there are will vary from year to year. The season after Pentecost is the longest liturgical season in the church calendar. Unlike the other seasons, it doesn’t refer specifically to events in the life of Christ. It’s no surprise then that another name for this liturgical season is Ordinary Time.
Just the name Ordinary Time might suggest that this liturgical season isn’t as important as the rest of the church year. As it happens, Ordinary Time coincides with a time of the year when many of us are first focused on taking vacations and then busy with starting the academic year. If we miss a few Sundays at church we don’t feel like we’re neglecting the observance of any major feasts. After all, it’s just Ordinary Time.
Normally, things that we consider ordinary are the things that we take for granted. Things that we consider ordinary are the things from which we have low expectations and which we hold in low esteem. It may be hard for us to conceive of the idea that it is exactly in the ordinary things of life that God does God’s work. It’s easy to think that God, who is anything but ordinary, wouldn’t choose to use ordinary things as the instruments of God’s purposes. And yet, God does exactly that.
Can you think of anything more ordinary than bread? Everyone eats bread, from the very young to the very old. Bread can be found in many different ethnic cuisines. There is bread for every budget. The person who receives a day old loaf of sliced white bread from the food pantry eats bread. So does the person who buys bread from the artisanal bakery that uses only organically grown whole grains. These breads aren’t identical to be sure, but both are easily recognizable as that staple of life, bread.
However ordinary bread may be, the person who doesn’t have enough to eat doesn’t take it for granted. And neither should we. It’s a substance that’s made by human hands, no doubt. The grain is grown, ground into flour, baked, and arrives into our hands usually via a financial transaction. When we go into the supermarket and pick our loaf off a well-stocked shelf, we might well lose sight of the fact that ultimately, bread is a gift from God. God created the earth and the fertile soil in which the grain grew. God endowed us with the capability of transforming the grain into nourishing food.
Jesus’ contemporaries, perhaps more so than we, were well aware of the value of bread. Bread was a food that was prepared daily in their own homes. Unlike most of us today, they were either immediately aware of the growing and milling of the grain or they were actively involved in its farming. But even in their time, that which was plentiful could be taken for granted, and it was. It’s easy to feel jaded about something that’s literally falling down all around you. That’s what happened when Moses led the Israelites through the wilderness and God sent down manna for them to eat. They had their bodily wants satisfied, and yet they complained anyway.
In last week’s Gospel reading the crowd came looking for Jesus. He had just fed the five thousand, performing a miracle, or what John prefers to call a sign. When the people find him, Jesus tells them that it is God who provides the true bread from heaven, the bread that gives life to the world. And Jesus tells them that he is the true bread, saying, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
In our reading today, the people around Jesus aren’t exactly pleased to hear him make this statement. John tells us that “the Jews began to complain about him because he said, ‘I am the bread that came down from heaven.’” Just for the record here, “the Jews” are the local religious establishment. Jesus and his disciples are certainly Jews too, and the usage of the term here isn’t meant to disparage the Jewish people.
And what is the nature of the people’s complaint? It’s that Jesus is “just” an ordinary person. How can it be that Jesus is the bread that came down from heaven? The people said, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, I have come down from heaven?”
This questioning has a familiar ring to it. We’ve heard it before. We heard it in the Gospel of Mark several weeks ago. “On the sabbath [Jesus] began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astounded. They said, "Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands! Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?" And they took offense at him.”
It’s an old and recurrent human story. For some reason it’s so hard for us to believe that God can not only be present in ordinary things, but that choosing the ordinary to express the extraordinary is something that God seems to do on a quite regular basis. If you think about it, you’ve probably had your own moment of seeing God’s hand in a very ordinary situation or person. You have maybe even witnessed one person being Jesus for another.
One of my most memorable experiences of this sort happened about fifteen years ago in a soup kitchen in downtown Charlotte. On that particular day we were serving pizza as well as the usual soup and sandwiches for lunch. Pizza was a special treat there, and a line quickly formed at the side counter where I was handing a slice to each person who came. I looked at the length of the line and realized that someone was likely to go away disappointed. The last two men came up to the counter; I had one piece left. I was prepared for a dispute. To my surprise, the first man said to the man behind him, “You have it.” Both that man and I were astounded, to put it mildly. It might not be a big deal for you or I to make this sacrifice, but among people who didn’t get much to eat period and who certainly didn’t get much of anything special, this gift was particularly remarkable. It was a remarkable gift from an ordinary, or some would even argue, less than ordinary person.
There’s that word ordinary again. Which brings us back to ordinary time, and time itself. Time is something we take for granted. Life is measured out in seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, and so on. The concept of time is one of the first things we learn in life. It’s always existed. Or has it?
Where did time come from? Remember back to the very first chapter of the book of Genesis. God created time along with heaven and earth: “God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.” When God finished creating heaven, the earth, and all living creatures, including the humans God made in God’s own image, God rested on the seventh day: “So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation.”
God created time, so I don’t think it’s going too far to say that no time can be truly ordinary. The Psalmist said, “This is the day that the Lord has made; let us be glad and rejoice in it.” Any day, an ordinary day, is hallowed. And one day, two thousand years ago, God who created time and who created bread, and who created us, chose to come to earth as an ordinary Palestinian baby who grew up to be the man who said, “I am the bread of life.” Amen.

what the tide brings in: Barbara Harris preaches Integrity Eucharist

2009-07-27T09:34:00.000-07:00

what the tide brings in: Barbara Harris preaches Integrity Eucharist

2009-07-05T11:49:00.000-07:00

Pentecost 5
Proper 9
Mark 6: 1-13

+In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My twenty-three year old son didn’t want to be my friend on Facebook when I first asked him. He wasn’t very pleased to learn that many of my friends and I use Facebook, the social networking site. He said he liked Facebook much better when it was restricted to college students only. But my friends and I are hardly alone as older users, as many of you who are Facebook users well know. An article published in the New York Times a few months ago noted that Facebook usage increased 276 per cent among people aged thirty-five to fifty-four in the second half of 2008. The author of the article estimates that there are about seven million users in the thirty-five to fifty-four age bracket.
But these seven million users are a small number in comparison to the twenty-five million users under the age of twenty-five. Those of us in the aforementioned older age bracket, and in even older age categories, came to Facebook in middle age or later, with our adult identities already formed. The author of the Times article raises the question of how Facebook will affect the development of adult identity for users who begin using Facebook as early as middle school. It used to be possible to disappear after high school and try out a new identity—the class overachiever might party for a while and the class slacker might find a studious side he never knew had. But how will a person try something new when her high school self is preserved on her own page and on the pages of her friends? Will Facebook make it even harder to break out of roles a person has outgrown at home and in his community? It was difficult enough to do that in the old days before Facebook and other social networking sites. Many of us have had the experience of moving away from home and acquiring new knowledge and competence. We’re shocked when we return home for a holiday feeling like we’ve achieved a lot of growth and are treated as the person we used to be instead of the person we’ve become. This treatment is infuriating, and it might actually undermine our ability to perform at our new level. We might think there’s something wrong with us, but actually we’re up against the perennial human problems of resistance to change and expectations influencing our ability to perform.
Since Jesus is fully human as well as fully divine, he isn’t exempt from these problems. In today’s gospel reading, he struggles with the contrast between who he actually is and his hometown’s ideas about him. Two weeks ago, we saw Jesus quiet a storm in response to the disciples’ distress. In last week’s gospel reading we saw Jesus as an effective and respected healer. Jesus’ reputation as a healer was strong enough that Jairus, a leader of the synagogue, approached Jesus as his last hope to cure a desperately ill daughter. While en route to Jairus’ house, a woman who’d suffered from hemorrhages for twelve years reached out and touched his cloak, believing that just touching the clothes of such a powerful healer as Jesus would make her well. The woman was indeed healed. This delay made it appear that Jesus came too late to save Jairus’ daughter; the people there said that the girl was already dead. But Jesus healing power worked again, and the girl got up and walked, much to the astonishment of those present. Jesus healing abilities have been shown to be effective. Also, Jesus’ healing abilities are highly influenced and supported by the faith of those who benefit from the healing.
But however great Jesus’ renown might be elsewhere, his family and his hometown aren’t impressed. Jesus’ own family actually doubts his sanity. Earlier in Mark’s gospel, in the third chapter, Jesus is in a house where so many are gathered around him that he and his disciples aren’t even able to eat. Those assembled there were clearly very impressed with Jesus, but Jesus’ own family was not. They weren’t interested in listening to him; rather they went to try to take charge of him because they thought that he had “gone out of his mind.” At the same time the scribes from Jerusalem accused Jesus of demonic possession.
Jesus doesn’t exactly fare much better when he returns to Nazareth and gets up to preach in the synagogue. The locals are more outraged than impressed. “Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands? Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon…?” It’s inconceivable to these Nazareans that someone from a relatively humble background could have anything to say that was worthwhile, let alone worthy of gathering crowds in other places. Rather than praise Jesus’ teaching, they would rather question how he could possibly have attained such a level of learning. Referring to Jesus as the “son of Mary” rather than as Joseph’s son constitutes a dig at the legitimacy of his parentage. The Nazareans question Jesus’ worth as an individual and also as a native of Nazareth. It’s almost as though they believe their own negative image in the region. If you recall, in John’s gospel the question is asked, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?”
By preaching as he did in the synagogue, Jesus appeared to have offended the norms of his community. People of his station from his community weren’t supposed to possess great learning and insight, much less display it. In such an atmosphere of hostility and lack of belief in Jesus’ abilities, Jesus found himself unable to perform the feats and miracles that he had been able to do quite recently. Apart from a few modest healings, Jesus “could do no deed of power there.”
Expectations are clearly important. Where there is faith, Jesus can perform miracles. Where there is little or no faith, Jesus finds his powers considerably diminished. Many of us have had the experience of flourishing under teachers or mentors who expected great things of us or of withering under those whose expectations of us were low. Clearly lack of belief in a person is damaging to individual performance. However, the potential damage goes far beyond that of hampering personal development.
When an individual, a community or a group does what the Nazareans do to Jesus, they close themselves off not only to the gifts of a particular individual. They close themselves off to the workings of God in the Holy Spirit as well. It’s pretty obvious that’s what happens when his community takes offense at Jesus exceeding the expectations of his humble origins. And fortunately for us, Jesus wasn’t deterred by his reception in his hometown. But what about other people, those of who are mere mortals and not the Messiah?
I’m thinking of Pauli Murray, whose life we celebrated this past Wednesday at a special Eucharist at St. Titus Episcopal Church. Plenty of people didn’t see the Holy Spirit working in Pauli Murray, and they put obstacles in her path towards living out God’s dream for her. The University of North Carolina didn’t think African Americans had any place in their law school, so Pauli studied law at Howard University, an African American institution. Her fellow law students at Howard didn’t think a woman had any business attending their law school, and she was actively discriminated against by her fellow students and the faculty. During the McCarthy era, Pauli was turned down for a position at Cornell University because her references, who were Eleanor Roosevelt, Thurgood Marshall, and Philip Randolph, were considered to be too radical. And finally, Pauli Murray was ordained priest in our church at a time when relatively few believed women were suitable for ordained ministry.
But fortunately for Pauli Murray, and for us too, there were people in her life who supported her pursuit of God’s dream for her, who nurtured this dream even in the face of all the naysayers. They saw that the Holy Spirit was working in someone the larger society considered an unlikely person—an African American woman from Durham, North Carolina.
So I ask you to look around at the people in your lives and notice where the Spirit is moving in them. The Spirit may be working actively through apparently unlikely people in our communities or even in our own homes. The Spirit may be working actively through people whose backgrounds and histories might suggest otherwise. Who ever thought an African American woman born in 1910 and growing up in Durham would ever become a lawyer and an Episcopal priest? And whoever thought that a poor Jewish carpenter from Nazareth would be the savior of the world? Amen.

Memorial Day

2009-05-25T09:44:00.000-07:00

"Greater love hath no man ..." Today we remember those who laid down their lives for their friends and fellow Americans.

Sixth Sunday of Easter

2009-05-17T10:22:00.000-07:00

Easter 6B
May 17, 2009

John 15:9-17

+In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

When I was a kid I had a favorite sweatshirt with a picture of the Peanuts character Linus on the front. The picture showed Linus shouting and saying, “I love mankind. It’s people I can’t stand.” I’m not sure what the context might have been for Linus’ frustration. Maybe his older sister Lucy had hidden his security blanket yet again. In any case, Linus expresses a very familiar problem. It’s relatively easy to love people in general and in the abstract. It’s relatively easy to love people in general and from a distance.
This kind of love feels good and costs us nearly nothing. But it’s harder to love particular people in specific situations and when they are close at hand. Then we have to invest our time, we have to invest our energy, and we have to invest our emotions. We take the risk that we may be inconvenienced or even hurt in the process. It’s not always easy, it’s not always convenient, and it doesn’t always feel good.
But whether or not it feels good, this is the kind of love that Jesus is talking about in today’s Gospel lesson. Jesus isn’t simply making a suggestion here. Love isn’t something we might aspire to practice someday, when the time is “right,” when it doesn’t seem like it will involve messy complications. Jesus says, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” If we’re not careful we might miss the word “commandment.” After all, we’re used to thinking of commandments as “thou shalt nots.” This commandment, though, tells us what to do.
We shouldn’t really be surprised, though. We’ve heard this commandment before. “Love one another” is at the heart of Israel’s religious tradition. In Matthew’s Gospel, when the Pharisee asks Jesus which is the greatest of the commandments, Jesus replies: “You shall love the Lord with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Jesus hasn’t only told us what makes a loving relationship with God and neighbor. He has shown us throughout his ministry on earth what these relationships are like when they are lived out. Jesus has shown us what love looks like and what love acts like. He has shown us that love is close up and personal. He has shown us that love can have complications. He has shown us that love isn’t always easy.
Jesus fed the hungry of body and spirit. He shared meals with sinners, with tax collectors, and others whom his community considered untouchable. He healed the sick, and he didn’t hesitate to do it by laying hands on them. Jesus exposed himself to contagion and risked becoming ritually unclean so that others might be free of their suffering. He even healed on the Sabbath. Jesus considered a loving act to be worth the risk of making the local religious officials angry.
Jesus never stopped to consider whether those to whom he extended love were worth it. He didn’t ask himself or anyone else if the people he helped were deserving of his assistance. On Maundy Thursday he washed the feet of all his disciples. He didn’t skip over Judas, even though he knew Judas would betray him. Jesus didn’t exclude Peter, even though he knew that Peter would soon deny him. Jesus’ inclusion of Judas and Peter tells us that the love of others for us and their loyalty towards us aren’t a prerequisite for our love of them. In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus tells us that we should love even our enemies, saying, “for if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?”
It isn’t even easy, though, to love even those who love us. It isn’t always easy to love those we think of as our nearest and dearest. Recently I came across an excerpt from a book called Children’s Letters to God. One of them went like this: Dear God, You say we are supposed to love all people. Don’t you know how hard this is? There are only four people in our family, and it’s almost impossible to love them sometimes.” Our comic strip friend Linus would agree. Once, after Lucy had annoyed him again, he said, “Big sisters are the crabgrass in the lawn of life.” The Bible offers examples of sibling relationships which are more strained than that of Linus and Lucy. Consider what the elder brother thinks about the Prodigal Son, and how Joseph’s many brothers behave toward him. Think, too, about the story of Cain and Abel.
But as difficult as family or other close relationships can be, Jesus isn’t letting us off the hook. Jesus commands the disciples and us to love one another. No loopholes, no ifs, no buts. There can’t be any real love of God without love for our fellow human beings. Verses from chapter four of the First Letter of John make this point quite clearly. “Those who say, ‘I love God,’ and hate their brothers and sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.”
Jesus shows us that this love must go beyond the level of warm feelings only. Love must be active and embodied. Love must demonstrate concern for the material well-being of others. Also in the First Letter of John its writer asks: “How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?” Take a look around you when you leave church today, and you’ll see immediate evidence that we have far to go as a society in meeting this standard of loving our neighbor as ourselves.
Assumptions of scarcity may prevent us from loving others as Jesus has commanded us to do. We may tend to think, erroneously, that there is only a finite amount of love to go around. We may see material goods as a limited resource and think that means that love, too, is limited. We may worry that giving to others of our love and of our goods means that there will be less of both for us.
But unlike us, Jesus operates from an assumption of abundance. He’s told us over and over about abundance in the Gospel lessons this Eastertide. There is no limit to the love that God the Father has for Jesus. There is no limit to the love that Jesus has for us. We can pass this love on to others freely because it comes from a source that will never dry up. This source will last until death, through death, and even beyond death.
In today’s Gospel Jesus tells us, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” This is what Jesus does for us. And not even death can put limits on the love of God in Jesus. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams explains this limitlessness in his book called Resurrection. He says, “death is normally a drastic severing of relations, death isolates, but for Jesus it is through death that a new and potentially infinite network of relations is opened up.”
We’re not all called to lay down our lives as Jesus did. But we all are called, commanded, to love one another as he loved us. Jesus never said it would be easy. Fortunately, there is more good news: we don’t have to fulfill this commandment on our own. Jesus provides us with the love to give and with active assistance in giving it. He showed us how to love throughout his earthly ministry. To help us after he has gone to be with his Father, he sends us the Holy Spirit.
Jesus has also given us help in a form that we can see, touch, and taste. God nourishes us and enables us to serve God and our neighbor by feeding our bodies and souls in the Sacrament of Holy Eucharist each Sunday. In the Eucharist, we remember Christ’s death and resurrection, we offer our own bodies and souls to God, and we receive Christ’s body and blood in the bread and the wine.
But the Eucharist isn’t finished when we leave the altar rail. The post-communion prayer tells us that now that we’ve been fed spiritually, we have a responsibility to fulfill. The second post-communion prayer in Rite II, the one we use less frequently, is especially explicit on this point. We pray, “And now, Father, send us out to do the work you have given us to do, to love and serve you as faithful witnesses of Christ our Lord.” At the dismissal, I’ll charge you to “Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.” I pray today that you and I will indeed go in peace to love and serve the Lord, that we will go and love others as we ourselves have been loved, with a love that knows no limits, because it comes from God, whose love will never end. Amen.

Maundy Thursday

2009-04-10T06:51:00.000-07:00

John 13: 1-17, 31b-35

+In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Jesus said to Peter, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” As usual, Peter just doesn’t get it. At first he refuses Jesus’ offer to wash his feet. When Jesus tells Peter he must wash his feet, Peter wants his head and hands washed as well. Peter is so like the rest of us. When he realizes he’s said the wrong thing, he proceeds to put his foot even further into his mouth.
I suppose we shouldn’t be too hard on Peter. Even in a cultural context where foot-washing was a common practice of hospitality, it would have been downright weird to do what Jesus does and start washing feet in the middle of dinner. We can be pretty sure that it isn’t concern for hygiene or even comfort that’s motivating Jesus. I think we can also be sure it’s not ritual cleanliness that’s on Jesus’ mind. Jesus presents a model of servanthood, to be sure. But the lesson Jesus teaches by washing the feet of his disciples reaches beyond even servanthood.
By washing the feet of his disciples, Jesus teaches them what it’s like to be in loving relationship with one another. By washing his disciples’ feet, Jesus teaches them about mutuality in love. Jesus turns the whole notion of the master-servant hierarchy upside down. He offers service to the very people who think it’s their job to serve him instead. By performing the service of foot-washing for his disciples, Jesus teaches them how to receive service. By this point in Jesus’ ministry, the disciples know what service looks like. They’ve seen Jesus touch lepers and minister to outcasts. They’ve seen him eat with people whom others consider beyond the pale. Now, as their own feet are washed by Jesus, they learn what it’s like to be the ones who are served.
The lesson that Jesus teaches in the foot-washing is one that we too would do well to learn. Most of us have internalized the idea that it’s more blessed to give than to receive. I’d venture to guess that most Christians believe that it’s better to serve than be served. Most of us like to think of ourselves as givers and helpers. It certainly is good to give and it’s certainly good to help. But if we are givers and helpers only, and are never receivers, we perpetuate a hierarchy in which some people are defined as being better than others. If we refuse what others offer, if we refuse the service of others, we may—without meaning to—deprive someone else of the chance to give and serve.
We may want to keep Jesus’ lesson in mind as we think about our relationships with our homeless neighbors. In our eagerness to consider how we may serve them, it may be easy to forget what it is that they may offer us. Yes, we want to emulate Jesus and be washers of feet. But Jesus, too, had his feet washed with ointment by Mary, who dried Jesus’ feet with her hair. Sometimes it is as blessed to give as to receive. Sometimes it is as blessed to be served as to serve. Mutuality is essential to truly loving relationships, like the one Jesus has with the disciples and like the one Jesus has with his Father. “Unless I wash you,” says Jesus, “you have no share with me.” Amen.

Sermon: Palm Sunday/Passion Sunday

2009-04-05T10:31:00.000-07:00

Mark 14:1-15:4

+ In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Earlier this morning we blessed and distributed palms, remembering Jesus’ ride into Jerusalem. The first part of our service resounded with triumph as we sang, “All glory, laud, and honor to thee redeemer king!” It would have been tempting at that point simply to say a few more prayers, to sing a few more hymns, and to go home. It would be equally tempting not to come back to church until next Sunday’s celebration of Jesus’ resurrection. We might wonder why we have to read the passion today and why we have to listen to what sounds like bad news when we know that the good news of the resurrection is just around the corner.
It would be tempting to skip everything that comes between the blessing of the palms and the joy of the resurrection, but that’s not what we’re going to do. We’ve just read Jesus’ passion from Mark and we’ll observe all of Holy Week, not just the Feast of the Resurrection. It’s not going to be easy. There’s no getting around it, but Holy Week is hard. It can be sad, it can seem depressing, and at times it even seems outrageous. After all, Jesus, an innocent man, has been sentenced to and undergone a horrible, shameful, death. In our reading of the passion, we’ve just acknowledged that not only did we not try to save him, we were part of the crowd that shouted, “Crucify him.”
Sentencing an innocent man to a cruel and humiliating death on a cross sounds not just like bad news. It sounds like news of the worst possible kind. Enough of shame, suffering, and death. Bring on the resurrection, bring on the power and the glory, and bring on everlasting life. Yes, but not yet.
Why not? Well, here’s why not. As hard as it seems to believe, if we skimmed over Jesus’ suffering and death on the cross, we’d actually be missing out on some very good news indeed. If we were to omit the walk with Jesus to the cross, if we were to omit staying with him as he hung there, we’d miss out on God’s saving work in Jesus in the most painful and sorrowful parts of life. By focusing only on power and glory, by focusing only on the parts of the story that look like good news to our eyes, we’d miss out on the work that God does in Jesus in the most painful and sorrowful parts of our lives.
Last year I learned exactly how important this particular work of God in Jesus can be. I was serving as a chaplain intern at the state mental hospital in Butner. The hospital was a house of pain, the pain of the patients themselves and the pain of their families and communities outside its walls. It was hard for me at first to understand how most patients managed to keep going at all, so great were the difficulties in their lives.
One patient, Tom, told me how he’d been a Latin teacher at a prep school for a few years after college. Those years were happy for him. He enjoyed his work, he made friends, and he became engaged to another teacher at the school. His future looked bright indeed. But then Tom’s life started to go horribly wrong. He began to hear voices and to believe that he’d had a recording device implanted in a dental filling. His behavior became increasingly disturbing. Tom lost his job, his friends deserted him, and his fiancée broke off their engagement. By the time I met him, Tom had had twenty years of misery—no meaningful work and no companionship save for his family. Since he’d been confined to the hospital, he felt like even his family had abandoned him.
Tom’s story was heartbreaking by itself, but his chart told the saddest and most recent chapter. The chart contained a letter from Tom’s sister to Tom’s doctors. She wrote that she’d tried her best to support Tom in independent living, but Tom had a tendency to stop taking his medication, and without medication he became unruly and even violent. She’d try to manage these episodes, but the week before he’d tried to rape and strangle her. Tom’s sister wrote that she felt that she no longer had any choice but to ask that Tom be confined in a supervised setting.
I don’t know what sustained Tom’s sister in her sadness, but I do know what kept Tom from utter despair. Tom went to the worship service in his unit faithfully every Sunday and always had his Bible close by. Tom truly had a friend in Jesus. He was so eager to share this friendship that he’d often raise his hand when I’d preach so that he could fill in something about Jesus that he thought I’d left out. Tom would talk about how Jesus felt Tom’s own pain, how Jesus knew how he, Tom, felt because Jesus too had been abandoned by friends, and at the very end Jesus had even felt abandoned by God. Tom told me that whenever he felt especially sorry for himself and his situation, he’d think about Jesus nailed to the cross for him and then he’d feel less alone. While Tom wholeheartedly believed in God’s resurrection of Jesus, Tom felt his Jesus more in darkness and sorrow than in power and glory.
If we were to omit the reading of the passion today we would miss God’s saving work in Jesus at humankind’s darkest hours. The passion narrative tells us vividly that there is no place in our lives so dark that God in Jesus has not gone with us. If we are unfairly judged, so is Jesus unfairly judged and condemned to great suffering and death. If we feel abandoned by our communities, our friends, and even our families, so Jesus too knows what is like to be deserted. Jesus is excluded from respectable society at the time of his birth, Jesus is deserted by his friends in his time of greatest need, and at the last, Jesus too even feels deserted by God. As Sam Wells has observed, “Part of what it means for Christ to be savior is that he puts himself in the position of the one who needs to be saved.” Jesus on the cross is truly Emmanuel, God with us, and God for us. Amen.

Last Epiphany, Year B, February 22, 2009

2009-03-04T15:39:00.000-08:00

Mark 9:2-9

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

One of my more vivid childhood memories is of the first time I jumped off the high diving board at our local swimming pool. I remember feeling a lot of pressure to jump off the high board. My younger brother was talking about going off the board, and to have a younger sibling do something like that before I did was simply unacceptable to me. Most, if not all of my friends had already made this rite of childhood passage. So despite my fear of heights and my lack of confidence in my swimming ability— and both of these endure to this day—I climbed the ladder and walked to the end of the board. I remember looking off the edge and thinking there was no way I could jump off. My next thought that there was really no way I could walk back to the ladder and climb down, unless I wanted to be deeply humiliated. So I jumped. Despite all my fears, all was well, and I made it back up to the surface and to the ladder, and lived to repeat this feat many more times before I got bored with it.
That standing at the end of the diving board for the first time feeling is the feeling I get at this time of the liturgical year. We’ve been through the festive season of Christmas and after that, through several weeks of Epiphany and all of its emphasis on the light of God made manifest in Jesus. Today is the Last Sunday in Epiphany, and in three more days it will be Ash Wednesday. Lent is almost upon us, and at least for me, entering into Lent can be as anxiety-provoking as jumping into a pool of cold water from a considerable height. As a child I wondered if I’d be equal to jumping off the high diving board; as an adult, and yes, as an ordained adult even, I wonder if I’ll be equal to the challenges that Lent presents this year. Those challenges, as you know, include self-examination and true repentance, truly turning around and returning to the path from which I’ve strayed like a lost sheep. Even when you’ve done, or at least tried to do these things a year before, they’re daunting.
My pre-Lenten anxiety is a pale shadow of what Jesus’ disciples experienced, but it provides a glimpse of the feeling they might have had at the point they come to in today’s Gospel lesson. At this point in their journey with Jesus they’ve had the rather heady experience of witnessing a few healings and exorcisms. They might well have been riding high. The experience was probably pretty exciting for a while. But Jesus has injected a whole other quality into their lives lately. He’s begun to talk about his suffering and death. He’s begun to talk about the cost of following him. What started out as a thrilling venture is starting to get frightening. Just before today’s reading, in the eighth chapter of Mark, Jesus teaches the disciples that the Son of Man “must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.” That sounds pretty scary to me, and Peter didn’t like it much better.
Peter’s reaction to this teaching is to argue with Jesus, and Jesus in turn rebukes Peter, saying, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” And Jesus isn’t done setting Peter and his companions straight. Jesus lets the disciples know in no uncertain terms what the cost of discipleship is. Jesus says, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”
Whatever the disciples may have thought when they first began to follow Jesus, at this place in the journey they’ve begun to realize that the road ahead is harder than they ever could have imagined. Probably they’re wondering why they ever thought going down this road was a good idea. At the very least, they’re going to need sustenance for their journey. The disciples are going to need a real reason for walking a road that they now realize is fraught with peril. In the passage we’ve read today, they get this reason in the form of a full-blown manifestation of God that leaves them with no doubt who Jesus really is.
Jesus takes Peter, James, and John to a mountaintop. Mountaintops are one of what the Celts call thin places. A thin place is a place where the boundary between the earthly and divine is less clearly defined than it is in other places on the earth. If you find that you feel closer to God on top of a mountain, it’s really not surprising. Much of what happens on this mountaintop will recall God’s manifestation in the Book of Exodus both for the disciples and for us today. The location, the cloud, and God’s voice coming from the cloud echo God’s appearance to Moses.
But Peter’s response to the scene indicates that at this moment he isn’t understanding what’s really happening. Somehow he’s missing the associations and he’s missing the point. Peter suggests making “dwellings” for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah. He’s trying to impose finitude on an encounter with the infinite. What he does is to try to capture a moment that can’t possibly be captured. It’s the same kind of response that’s made humans worship golden calves and other idols for eons. We think if we can freeze a moment in time, if we can make something we can see and touch, we think we can possess it forever. But we can’t possess it forever, and anyway, possession isn’t the point.
Fortunately for Peter and for us, God is quite used to working with creatures who just don’t get it. So God actually speaks to Peter, James, and John, telling them quite clearly who Jesus is and what the disciples are to do. Speaking from the cloud, God says, “This is my Son, the beloved; listen to him!” Nine short words are all it takes. And it’s interesting exactly what God says in those words. Listen to him. God doesn’t tell the disciples to fall down and worship him. “Listen to him,” God tells them. In other words, God tells them to open their ears, hearts, and minds to take in what Jesus has to say and to heed his words.
God’s words to Peter, James, and John point to all the teaching that Jesus will do between this time and being put to death on the cross. Jesus tells the disciples that faith and prayer are essential to the healing of the boy with an unclean spirit. Listen to him. Jesus teaches the disciples that “whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Listen to him. Jesus cautions against the temptation to sin, saying, “If any of you put a stumbling block before any of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea.” Listen to him. Jesus declared a special place for children in God’s kingdom when he said, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.” Listen to him.
One of the most disconcerting for us of Jesus’ teachings concerns his words to the Rich Man who asks Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life. It isn’t enough simply to follow the commandments. Jesus tells this man, “go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” This instruction hits the Rich Man rather hard, and I suspect it hits us hard as well. Listen to him.
All of this listening, it’s to be hoped, will lead us to some action. It’s not enough just to witness God’s appearance on the mountaintop. We can’t stay on that mountain. We can’t, we oughtn’t, make an idol of the experience. Our job as Christians, as a people and a church who aspire to follow Jesus, is to come down off of that mountaintop and try to walk in Jesus’ footsteps. These footsteps aren’t easy to walk in. They don’t lead to fame and to riches; they don’t lead to any of the things that the world prizes. Jesus’ footsteps lead us to the cross. We don’t like that idea any better than the disciples did. But if we obey God’s injunction to listen to Jesus, following in his footsteps is exactly what we’re called to do.
At this point in our liturgical year, we’re about to enter the season where we follow Jesus to the cross. It’s a hard walk, with seemingly little sustenance available for a journey that sometimes may seem too hard to make. But thanks to our reading from Mark today, we know why we’re making this journey with Jesus. We know just who it is that we’re following. The one who we’re following is not just an inspiring leader. The one we’re following is even more than an important prophet. In following Jesus we are following God’s own Son. “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” Amen.

December 21, 2008Advent 4 Year B (RCL)

2009-01-03T16:15:00.000-08:00

Fourth Sunday in Advent, Year B

Luke 1:26-38

+In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Here we are. It’s the Fourth Sunday in Advent already. Time flies in Advent—it’s not your imagination. Except for Christmas, it’s the shortest season in the church calendar. And, we’re shopping and baking and wrapping, and trying to carve out some time to prepare the way of the Lord, to welcome the Christ child, and to make room--a “mansion,” the collect says--to make room in our hearts and souls for the Christ who will return in glory. It’s a tall order for sure.
And today, finally, after some of the uncomfortable readings of the past few Sundays—the warning to keep awake, the voice crying out in the wilderness—today we hear a Gospel lesson we all know and love. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know Luke’s account of the coming of the baby Jesus. I heard it at home, and acted out some part of it every year in Sunday school. You don’t even have to ever have gone to church to know Luke’s account. You’ve seen pictures of it in museums and you’ve seen it on Christmas cards. If you’ve seen the Christmas story on television, odds are you saw Luke’s version of it. That’s the version that’s used in “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”
So it’s easy to think we can sit back and relax today. After all, we know this story. At least we think we do. But the trouble is, when we hear a story that we’ve heard before, it’s easy to stop listening to it when we hear it again. I know I’ve caught my mind wandering when I listen to a reading I think I know really well. I don’t think I really need to pay attention. It’s easy to let this happen with today’s lesson from Luke.
The other problem with this lesson can be the tendency to get so fixated on the part about Jesus’ conception that the rest of it just slides by us. Some say that Luke’s account of how Jesus is conceived is absolutely true exactly as written. They might want to say, “God said it. I believe it. That settles it.” On the other hand, there’s a whole other group of folks who totally dismiss this part of the story. “It’s never happened that way yet,” they say. As you might guess, both of these approaches don’t get close to the heart of the matter here, and end up just dividing people.
So, we need to find another way into our passage from Luke. We need to find a way that will help us hear what God is saying to us. So, let’s look at our reading a little more closely.
Let’s think for a moment about just who it is that the angel Gabriel visits. Mary is a very young woman, maybe in her mid-teens. In her world, even more than in ours, her youth and gender didn’t give her status. In fact, the exact opposite was true. It’s notable that Luke doesn’t name Mary’s parents or say anything about them. Apparently Mary’s family connections aren’t worth mentioning. The Mary we’re meeting today isn’t the richly dressed woman you’ve seen in Renaissance paintings. The Mary we’re meeting today isn’t Mary the queen of heaven. Not yet, anyway. All we know about Mary is that she’s from Nazareth, a very insignificant town indeed. When Nazareth deserves a mention in John’s Gospel, it’s in the form of the question, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” If you think of Durham’s struggle for respect among the cities of the Triangle, you’ll have a pretty good idea of what it meant to be from Nazareth.
Luke also doesn’t tell us anything about Mary’s personal qualities. He doesn’t say that Mary was particularly good or kind, and he doesn’t say that she was outstanding in any way. Her status as a virgin says more about her youth than her virtuousness. Nevertheless, it was Mary whom the angel of the Lord came to visit. It was Mary, a nobody from nowhere, whom the angel Gabriel came to tell that in due time she would become the mother of the Son of the Most High.
Though Mary’s status is soon to change, at the moment she receives the angel’s visit she is nobody from nowhere in the world’s eyes. But if we look at other figures in the Bible, we’ll see that it’s nothing new for God to choose an apparently insignificant person for an important role in salvation history. David is mentioned in our Old Testament lesson today. David started out his career as a lowly shepherd. In First Samuel, God chooses David to be king instead of David’s more impressive older brothers. At the time David is chosen, Samuel says, “the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” Apparently God saw something in David and in Mary that wasn’t obvious to most of the world.
What is special about Mary is that she’s willing to do what God asks of her. This willingness is no small thing. Mary could well have said, “Thanks anyway, but I have other plans for my life. I’m engaged to Joseph. Why don’t you ask somebody else?” Mary could have said no, but she didn’t. Instead, Mary made the faithful soul’s response to God’s call: “Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”
So Mary, the girl who’s no one in particular from a place no one thinks much of, agrees to be the mother of the Son of the Most High. She puts her own life plans at risk to obey God’s call. Matthew’s account tells us that when Joseph learns that Mary is expecting a child by the Holy Spirit, his first idea is to “dismiss her quietly,” though he doesn’t actually do so. We can only speculate what the reactions of the other members of Mary’s community might have been.
Mary is indeed the model of faithful obedience to God. In the eyes of the world what she does is pretty crazy. This is a strange story indeed. But wait—we haven’t gotten to the really amazing part yet.
Just what is God up to? It’s odd enough that God has asked a humble girl to have God’s child. It’s odd enough that this girl, Mary, said yes. What’s really astounding here, though, is that God has chosen to be humble. God certainly doesn’t have to, but God has chosen to take on flesh, to experience life as we know it, not only with its joys but with all its poverty, pain, and sorrow as well. God has chosen to take on life with all its limitations, even the ultimate limitation that is death.
God has chosen to enter this world as a baby. In first century Palestine, there could hardly have been anyone more humble than a baby. At that time, the birth of a baby would have been greeted with somewhat more reserve than we celebrate births today. Before modern medicine, infancy was a perilous time and the mortality rate was high, as it still is in some places. And God entered the world as a very poor infant indeed. There wasn’t anything charming about being born in a stable with animals. It would be as undesirable as being born in a bus station bathroom would be today.
There we have it: Jesus was born homeless. It’s a truth so uncomfortable that it often gets glossed over. I remember feeling shocked when I heard the Reverend Jesse Jackson refer to Jesus as homeless baby many years ago. Jesus’s birth wasn’t the end of his homelessness. He conducted much of his ministry as a homeless person. In Matthew’s Gospel Jesus says, “Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”
So what, then, does Jesus’ homelessness mean for us on this Fourth Sunday of Advent? In a few short days it will be Christmas, and we will welcome the Christ child whether we are ready or not. Christmas will come whether or not our shopping and baking are done. The real question is, have we made room in our hearts? It’s not easy for you and me to make room. We live in the most affluent society the world has ever known, and most of us here today share in that affluence to some extent. Our busyness and our possessions tend to fill up our hearts and minds. But just outside our door live people whom prosperity has passed by. Our neighbors are pitied and even despised by those who don’t share in their poverty. But our neighbors may be more ready and more able and more willing to receive Jesus than we are. They may well have more room in their hearts than we do. It’s hard for us, in our culture that promotes self-sufficiency, to acknowledge our need for God.
The archbishop and martyr Oscar Romero said the following:
“No one can celebrate
a genuine Christmas
without being truly poor.
The self-sufficient, the proud,
those who, because they have
everything, look down on others,
those who have no need
even of God—for them there
will be no Christmas.
Only the poor, the hungry,
those who need someone
to come on their behalf
will have that someone.
That someone is God,
Emmanuel. God-with-us.
Without poverty of spirit
there can be no abundance of God.”
If anyone experienced the abundance of God, surely it was Mary. My prayer for all of us here today is that you and I may make room in our hearts for Jesus, so that like Mary, we are able to make our answer to God’s call to us, “Here am I, a servant of the Lord.” Amen.

Christ the King Sunday Year A (RCL)

2009-01-03T16:13:00.000-08:00

Christ the King
November 23, 2008

Matthew 25: 31-46

+ In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Maybe you’ve been wondering just what it is that I do as a deacon. In church, as you may have seen, I read the gospel, make the call to confession, set the altar for communion, and dismiss the congregation at the end of the service. Outside of the church I have a ministry to the poor and homeless As part of my ministry, on most Tuesdays and Thursdays I conduct intake interviews at Urban Ministries’ food pantry and clothing closet. The purpose of these interviews is to determine eligibility for services. Everyone who comes and puts his or her name on the sign-up sheet is eligible to receive clothing. Eligibility for food is somewhat more complicated. A person must have children in the home, be over age 62, or be disabled. The person must be able to document custody of children, their own age, or official disability status. The system works, if somewhat imperfectly. Usually the truly needy get served. But I have a feeling that some hungry folks go away empty handed. Sometimes I’ll let the documentation go until next time if my gut tells me that the person is telling the truth but just doesn’t have the necessary paperwork. I find making these judgment calls unsettling at times. I feel like I’m in a position of more power than I’d like. I feel uneasy separating the sheep from the goats, in a manner of speaking.
Separating the sheep from the goats isn’t our job, if we heed today’s Gospel lesson. Separating the sheep from the goats is God’s job. And however much doing the separating may make me uneasy at the food pantry, if I’m being honest I have to admit that I fall into doing just that quite often. I certainly found myself doing it during the period leading up to the presidential election, and maybe you did, too. There’s something about dividing people into categories, such as liberal or conservative, so-called real Americans or suspect urban-dwellers, residents of red states or blue states—that can be deceptively satisfying. It’s seductive to think that we can organize the world into categories, and it’s seductive to think that we can make sure we’re on the right side of the divisions that we may deny making but that we secretly cherish.
What we learn in today’s parable from Matthew is that judging our sisters and brothers won’t get us to heaven. The righteous and the unrighteous alike in our reading ask the question, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?” The righteous and the unrighteous are alike in that neither of them is able to discern who is an ordinary poor person and who is their savior. The righteous and the unrighteous differ, though, in their actions. The righteous, that is, those who will inherit the kingdom prepared for them at the foundation of the world, those righteous folk don’t even try to discern who is who when they are helping those in need. Those who are righteous respond to people in need regardless of who that person is or whether they “deserve” to be helped.
In sharp contrast to the righteous, those who are accursed are sent to the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. What’s implied in our parable is that if the unrighteous had only known that it was their lord and savior who appeared needy before them, they would have extended a helping hand. But they didn’t. We can imagine that the unrighteous in our parable were in the business of passing judgments on those who asked for help. The unrighteous took it upon themselves to sit in God’s place and to separate the deserving from the undeserving, to separate the sheep from the goats.
But it’s so tempting to try to separate the sheep and the goats of our world, the so-called deserving and undeserving of help. The intention is completely laudable given the assumptions of conventional wisdom. Our usual assumption is that resources are scarce—there is only so much food, so much money, so much time, and maybe even so much love—to go around. Given this assumption it only makes sense to try to conserve resources so that those who truly need them get them. This kind of thinking has shaped the procedures at Urban Ministries’ food pantry, and while the procedures are slowly being revisited, the assumptions behind them can be hard to give up.
Sara Miles encountered this kind of thinking when she set up a food pantry at St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco. Sara was a new Christian. She’d been raised with no religious tradition and came to St. Gregory’s in middle age. She tells her story in her book called Take this Bread. Sara was struck to her core by the radical welcome she felt at the Eucharist. When she came to the altar she received the bread and the wine, the body and blood of Christ, without question or qualification. While none of the worshippers “deserved” communion, they still received it every week. Sara Miles wanted to extend that same welcome and hospitality at the food pantry, which she set up around the altar at St. Gregory’s. There would be no intake forms at St. Gregory’s food pantry, no assessment of need or worthiness to receive service. Sara embarked on her project filled with the Spirit and filled with enthusiasm. She expected that others would feel as she did.
Sara Miles had a great surprise in store for her. Though she eventually got the pantry going, she was told that at a parish staff meeting, the first reactions ranged from “over my dead body” to “when hell freezes over.” She was warned by the food pantry director at the San Francisco Food Bank that “very few people trust poor people enough to just give away food without conditions.” Still, Sara Miles persisted in her vision of a food pantry where all were welcome and all were served. A street-wise volunteer warned her that her system of no questions and no accounting resulted in double-dipping by some patrons. She protested, saying “[Jesus said] ‘feed my sheep.’ He didn’t say, ‘Feed my sheep after you check their ID.” Still, there were others who supported her. A former food pantry patron turned volunteer told her, “ I don’t care if we give food to folks who don’t look needy. I didn’t always look like I needed help either.”
Sara continued to meet resistance as her food pantry became established and began to have more patrons than it could handle. Some church members complained that the food pantry patrons dirtied their sanctuary and littered the church grounds with cigarette butts. Other church members insisted that the pantry didn’t make any sense because the needs would never be filled. Some church members protested against the food pantry on the grounds that its patrons might be dangerous. Early on, though, Sara Miles understood that sense, in the meaning of “common sense” or conventional wisdom didn’t apply in this situation. Right around the time she started the food pantry, Sara was baptized. She observed that by being baptized she was doing something that on the face of it didn’t make much sense either. Sara said that in some ways it was crazy. After all, in her own words, she said she was “signing up … for a religion with a tortured man at its center.”
A religion with a tortured man at its center. For us, God took on human form and suffered death on a cross, scorned and mocked as the “king of the Jews.” Today is the last Sunday after Pentecost, also called Christ the King Sunday. Today is a day when we feel the contrast between the royal imagery we’ve learned to associate with Christ and the imagery of the Jesus who talked of sheep and goats, the Jesus who was the unlikely king who reigned from a tree. Two thousand years after Jesus’ death on the cross, in our churches made of stone where worshippers sit in polished wood pews and our clergy wear expensive vestments, our vision of Christ tends to be of the “Crown him with many crowns” and “Jesus shall reign where e’er the sun” variety. It’s hard to envision the Jesus whose feet got dirty. It’s hard to imagine that Jesus didn’t always know exactly where his next meal was coming from. For us today it’s all but unthinkable that Jesus was greeted with jeers and stones and worse in some of the places he went during his ministry. Of course, if Jesus showed up here at St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church on West Main Street in Durham, we would welcome him. Of course we would. Or would we?
I hope we would. I think we would welcome Jesus here at St. Joseph’s. We do our best to welcome the homeless, the hungry, and the lost in our neighborhood. We don’t ask too many questions as we offer a meal, as we offer a place to sleep that’s at least slightly shielded from the elements, and as we offer an encouraging word. In the eyes of most of the world, our practice doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Our homeless neighbors may well be homeless because of bad choices they’ve made as well as bad luck. But we don’t minister with our homeless neighbors because it makes sense. We don’t minister with our homeless neighbors because we’re any more virtuous than other people in our neighborhood. We don’t minister to our homeless neighbors because we’ve judged them to be worthy of our help. We minister with our homeless neighbors because Jesus has told us that by feeding the least of his family when they are hungry, clothing them when they are naked, and visiting them when they are in prison, we are feeding and clothing and visiting him, too. We’re not to judge. We’re not to assume that we can figure out who’s worthy and who’s not, that we can figure out who’s a sheep and who’s a goat. Things aren’t necessarily what they seem. Remember, we’re baptized into a religion that has a tortured man at its center. Christ is an odd sort of king indeed. And what did he tell us? “Feed my sheep.” So we just feed them, and we don’t bother checking ID. Amen.

September 14, 2008 Proper 19 Year A (RCL)

2009-01-03T16:08:00.000-08:00

Proper 19, Year A, RCL
Matthew 18:21-35

+In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

It’s easy to forget when you live in the Triangle area, but we live in a state that’s sometimes referred to as the buckle of the Bible belt. In this part of Durham, it might seem that brunch trumps church as a Sunday morning activity. We’re reminded of our location, though, when we get out on the interstate and see the cars with various and assorted religious bumper stickers. “My God is an awesome God,” proclaims one. Another popular bumper sticker says “Honk if you love Jesus.” I don’t know how you feel about this one, but if I hear someone honk while I’m driving, the idea that they love Jesus isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. As a former New Yorker I associate a honking horn with the message, “Hurry up, stupid, before the light changes again.”
The bumper sticker that I find most intriguing says, “Christians aren’t perfect—they’re just forgiven.” I kind of like this one, though I think I’d like to amend it to say, “We’re all not perfect, but we’re all forgiven.” Exactly why I’d like to make that change is a topic for a whole other sermon. What I’d like to talk about today is that we’ve all received God’s free gift of forgiveness. God’s forgiveness is ours. We may accept it, or we may reject it; the choice is for you and me to make. God’s forgiveness is a done deal, from God’s point of view, at least. The question for us is what do we do with that forgiveness. This question is at the heart of our Gospel lesson for today.
Peter asks Jesus a seemingly simple question: “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” How many times should I forgive, Peter wants to know. Seven? More than seven? It’s a question we ourselves might ask. Those of us who have to deal with difficult people in our lives—and that’s all of us—have asked ourselves that question seemingly endlessly. How many? Asking “how many” means that we’re counting, wondering what the magic number is that means we have done enough and can go back to being mad.
Jesus’ answer puts Peter’s question into another perspective altogether: “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.” If you’re thinking that seventy-seven times means that you just have to keep on forgiving forever, that’s exactly the point that Jesus is making here. What he’s doing is telling Peter to forget about counting, to forget about keeping track. If we’re counting how many times we’ve forgiven, we’ve actually not forgiven at all. Counting means we’re just waiting until we can say we’ve had enough and can exact whatever penalty we’ve been planning all along. What Jesus is telling us when he says seventy-seven times rather than seven is that calculation has no place in forgiveness.
After this exchange between Peter and Jesus, Jesus tells the disciples a parable. Jesus compares the kingdom of heaven to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. The first slave in the parable owed the king ten thousand talents. How much, exactly, was ten thousand talents? A talent was the largest monetary unit in Jesus’ time, and one talent was equal to the amount a manual laborer would earn in fifteen years. Ten thousand talents was an impossibly large number to owe. The annual tax income for all of Herod the Great’s territories was 900 talents per year. There is no possible way for this slave to ever be able to repay ten thousand talents, so the slave begs for compassion. The king forgives the slave’s debt and lets him go.
No sooner is the slave released from his debt to the king than he demands that a fellow slave pay him back the hundred denarii that this slave owes him. A hundred denarii wasn’t a trifling amount of money—it was equal to about 100 days’ wages for an ordinary laborer. But a hundred denarii was a trivial sum compared to ten thousand talents. The slave who had been forgiven his enormous debt wasn’t willing to extend the same forgiveness to his fellow slave that the king had extended to him.
In the parable, the consequence for the first slave’s failure to forgive is that the king withdraws his own forgiveness. Instead of being freed, the first slave is sentenced to torture. As Matthew tells the story, Jesus seems to be saying that those who fail to forgive others as God has forgiven them will suffer a similar fate.
Now this sort of judgment may seem harsh to you. It certainly seems harsh to me. At this time we might want to remember something about the divine inspiration of scripture. I’m not questioning that scripture is divinely inspired. The vows I made at ordination involved affirming that the Holy Scripture is indeed the word of God. But unfortunately divine inspiration doesn’t mean that the word of God came directly from God’s mouth to our ears or to the printed page. The mediator of God’s word, the person who wrote down the Gospel of Matthew, was a human being much like you or me. He was earnest and he was reverent, and he was probably something of a scholar in his time, but the man we know as Matthew was human and fallible. Because he was human and fallible he couldn’t resist adding a bit of Matthew to the story Jesus told. Matthew allegorized this parable. This means that he intended us to understand “king” to mean God and “slave” to mean human. In this understanding of the parable, God is as harsh as an earthly king might be.
I’m going to suggest a somewhat different reading of this text. From my own study of the scripture and from studying the best commentaries I can find, I don’t think that God withdraws God’s gifts. The God I know, love, and worship doesn’t act vindictively; my experience of God is that God’s way of operating in the world is through love, not wrath. Our tradition tells us that God is ultimately merciful. When we recite the Nicene Creed we say, “For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven.” For us, not against us. God came down from heaven incarnate in Jesus for us and for our salvation, not to straighten us out. In the Prayer of Humble Access in Rite One, we affirm that God is “the same Lord whose property is always to have mercy.”
What I’m going to suggest to you this morning is that God won’t stop forgiving you and me if we fail to forgive our brothers and sisters. Not at all. But, and this is a major but, if our hearts are so hard that we fail to forgive, God may just as well have not forgiven us for all the difference it makes to us. If our hearts and minds aren’t in a state where we can forgive others, neither will we be able to appreciate and experience the forgiveness that God has freely offered to us.
If we don’t forgive those who’ve wronged us or those who we feel owe us something, we might think we’re hurting them. We might feel that we’re giving them what they deserve. But if that’s what we’re doing, we deceive ourselves. Forgive seventy-seven times, Jesus tells us; get out of the accounting business. And by not forgiving, we’re ultimately hurting ourselves as much or maybe more than the one we won’t forgive. I love Anne Lamott’s words on this subject. She has said that not forgiving is like eating rat poison oneself and waiting for the rat to die. Not forgiving is worse than a pointless exercise. It hurts the other, it hurts us, and worst of all, not forgiving closes our hearts and minds to the possibility of God’s forgiveness.
But what if I’ve really been wronged? What if someone owes me a huge debt? That debt, by the way, may be monetary or it may not. When we say that something is the least someone could do for us, we feel like we’re owed something every bit as real as money and maybe even more important. Forgiveness isn’t easy, and it’s important to remember that forgiveness doesn’t mean we give someone the chance to wrong us again. Forgiveness doesn’t mean that we pretend the wrong never happened. Forgiveness isn’t easy—this can’t be said too many times—and it might even seem downright unreasonable in certain circumstances.
What may help with the difficult or even seemingly impossible task of forgiving is remembering that we don’t have to do it alone. Our collect for today begins with the words, “O God, because without you we are not able to please you…” Also, do you remember what response we make to the things that are asked of us when we make and when we renew our Baptismal covenant? The answer we make is, “We will, with God’s help.” With God’s help. We don’t have to do it alone. God knows it’s not easy for us to forgive. God knows that we can’t do it alone, and God doesn’t expect us to. At times forgiveness requires a miracle, and where there is a miracle, there is God.
When I began to look at our lessons for today I was struck by the lessons that were chosen. It’s easy to connect the Epistle for today to the Gospel, but what about the Old Testament lesson? What could the parting of the waters of the Red Sea possibly have to do with forgiveness? I see a couple of connections. The first is that God was constantly with the Israelites in their journey; the Israelites were never alone at any point. Neither are we in our attempts to do anything. We are certainly not alone in our efforts to forgive.
The other connection between the Gospel lesson and the Old Testament lesson today is that the parting of the waters in Exodus is one of the great miracles that God works in the Bible. Forgiveness is another great miracle, and if you’ve ever struggled to forgive, and most of us have struggled mightily, you know what a great miracle reaching a place of forgiveness can be. Notice that in the Exodus story Moses stretched out his hand, but it was God who actually parted the waters. There is human and divine cooperation here. So too with forgiveness. We make the attempt to forgive and God makes the forgiveness possible. By God’s parting of the waters God liberated the Israelites from Pharoah’s oppression. By God’s making it possible for us to forgive, God liberates us from the tyranny of our own hardened hearts. Amen.