Tracie M's Sermons

Nathanael, Jesus, pumpkins, and the Gospel According to Randy Bachman

2012-01-15T10:00:00.000-06:00

2nd Sunday after Epiphany, Year B
Lectionary Readings: 1 Samuel 3:1-10(11-20) Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17 1 Corinthians 6:12-20
John 1:43-51

This morning I'm going to talk about Nathanael and Jesus,

and about Moses and God, the blue people from Avatar, and Bachman-Turner Overdrive.

And pumpkins.

The pumpkins are very important.

Let's start with the Gospel. Jesus decides to go to Galilee and he finds Philip and calls him to follow. Then Philip runs off to get Nathanael, who is not as enthusiastic about it. But as he's walking up, Jesus says "Here is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit" And Nathanael says "How do you know me?" Jesus says he saw Nathanael under the fig tree before Philip called him.
We don't know what that's about, but Nathanael does, and the fact that Jesus also knows convinces him that Jesus is the real deal; he knows what no one else but God would know. For him, it wasn't so much that seeing was believing - it was more being seen.

My nephew Jackson is a year and a half, and before bedtime, he likes somebody to read to him. For a while, his favorite book was God Knows All About Me by Kate Toms,

which is basically Psalm 139 for toddlers.

"From my fingers to my toes,
from my knees to my nose,
God knows all about me!"

There have been profound ways I've learned that God knows all about me, but then there are also little things that seem so insignificant that I never imagined he would care - and he knows those things too. Here's where the pumpkins come in.

I moved here from Beaumont at the very end of August; in early October, I went back to perform a wedding for one of my classmates from Lamar University. After the wedding, as I was driving back up here that Sunday night, I pulled into a gas station and suddenly noticed that there were pumpkins everywhere. I blinked a few times and then started laughing out loud. Why was that so funny? Let me give you the back story:

A couple of weeks before, I had visited St. Alban's in Arlington, where I met their deacon and their rector, who invited me to a meeting about campus ministry at UTA, inexplicably. I wasn't involved at UTA - I wasn't involved with St. Alban's - I wasn't even officially in the diocese yet - but for some reason, I was at this meeting, and they were talking about an idea for a pumpkin carving event, and for some reason, I opened my mouth and offered to bring pumpkins. As soon as I said it, I thought, "Why did I do that? Where am I going to find a bunch of pumpkins?"

The rest of the week, I was getting ready for the wedding, talking with Fr. Vernon (since I had just visited St. Stephen's for the 2nd time), and making plans to meet up with friends in Beaumont. And I would occasionally think about the pumpkins. I figured I could go to the grocery store, but I have been gradually getting more interested in trying to buy food grown locally when I can. I thought maybe I could go online and try to find someplace that sold local produce, but looking for pumpkins seemed kind of trivial. I didn't want to get sidetracked. I would worry about it after the wedding.

The wedding Saturday was great - so much fun - and Sunday I got to see a lot of good friends, had lunch with one of my deacon buddies. Then I started back. The drive was fine, but after about the fourth hour, I figured I should stop soon for gas. It was already dark. I was kind of in the middle of nowhere, but after a few miles, I could see some lights ahead, so I took the exit - the first building I came to was lit up with zig-zaggy neon lights in different colors, and I thought "this is probably not a gas station..." I was about to drive on past and get back on the highway when I looked left and saw a gas station on the other side of the highway, so I took the bridge over to it.
I was pulling in the driveway when it occurred to me that there were pumpkins stacked EVERYWHERE.

I blinked a few times and looked closely at the pumps; they said "Cooper Farms" - maybe this wasn't a gas station, either. I pulled up to a pump. Sure enough, you could get gas there.
You could also get pumpkins - LOTS of pumpkins.
Turns out, this was a creative marketing idea the farm had come up with: a gas station/point-of-sale for the produce. And the farm was just a few miles away. I laughed - I hadn't even been thinking about the pumpkins. Here they were, problem solved. I went inside and paid for my gas, along with a bunch of pumpkins. One of the guys who works on the farm helped me cram them in my trunk and on the floor of the back seat. Then I got in the car, put on my seatbelt, and started laughing - I laughed for the next few miles, and off and on the rest of the way home.

God KNEW me: he knew I wanted to buy a bunch of pumpkins, he knew I needed gas, and he knew where I could find both of those things right then, in the middle of nowhere, on a Sunday night. I hadn't asked him to help me with any of that; it wouldn't have occurred to me that such a solution even existed. And he didn't tell me; he just took me there, pulled his hands away from my eyes and said "Surprise!" and sat there with a grin on his face. Such a random thing - why would God bother helping me find pumpkins? Why would he care about that? And he seemed to smile at me and say, "Why wouldn't I?"

To God, all hearts are open, all desires known, and from him no secrets are hid

Lord, you have searched me out and known me: you know my sitting down and my rising up; you discern my thoughts from afar... my body was not hidden from you, while I was being made in secret and woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes beheld my limbs, yet unfinished in the womb...

God knows all about me

If you have seen the movie Avatar,
What do the blue people say when they greet each other?

"I see you"
And what does it mean?
It means "I know you - I see who you are at the deepest level."

This greeting comes from isiZulu:

Sawubona - I see you
Yebo sawubona - yes, I see you, too

Another response in some places is: Ngikhona - I am here

It's similar to what people say in the Bible when God starts talking to them. They say "hineyni" and what it means is "Behold me" which is sort of like saying "look at me" or "see me" and it's usually translated into English as "Here I am."

It's how Moses responds to God speaking to him from the burning bush.
It's Isaiah's response to God's question "Whom shall we send, and who will go for us?" "Here I am, send me"
It's Mary responding to the annunciation, when the angel Gabriel told her the news about Jesus "Here am I, the servant of the Lord..."
And in our Old Testament reading for today - little Samuel hears someone calling his name, and his first response, even though he didn't know who he was responding to, was "Here I am, for you called me"

Which brings us back to Nathanael.
Jesus calls Philip, and Philip calls Nathanael to "come and see" what he's found.
as Nathanael's walking up, Jesus says "Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit" and Nathanael isn't sure what to make of that. "Where did you get to know me?"
Jesus tells him "I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you."
Whatever it was Jesus was refering to about the fig tree, Nathanael knew, and that convinced him that Jesus knew him at the deepest level. Jesus said to Nathanael, "I see you," and Nathanael is suddenly able to respond to Jesus, "I see you, too."
In a 180-degree turn from his earlier attitude of "Can anything good come from Nazareth?" Nathanael says "Rabbi! You are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!"

The next time God says, "I see you..." try to respond like Moses, Isaiah, Samuel, and Mary - and say "Here I am"
Or you can respond like Nathanael and say, "Yes, I see you, too"

Which brings me finally to the Gospel according to Randy Bachman and a great interpretation of what Jesus said to Nathanael afterwards. "Do you believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these...."

In other words

Bbbaby - You ain't seen nothin' yet!

The beginning of the good news

2011-12-05T00:42:00.001-06:00

I’ve got some good news!
The beginning of some good news at least... as Mark says “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”

Starting with what we hear in 2nd Peter:
The day of the Lord will come like a thief
•the heavens will pass away with a loud noise
•the elements will be dissolved with fire
•the earth and everything in it will be disclosed

And in Isaiah
All people are grass
their constancy is like the flower of the field
the grass withers, the flower fades
when the breath of the LORD blows upon it:

The earth is fragile; all people are grass. We learn this as species become extinct, as salt water begins to inundate and swallow small islands in the Pacific, as storms change our coastlines and earthquakes level our buildings. We learn this whenever we're startled by how easy it is for people to die. John F. Kennedy, the astronauts in the Challenger, the people in the Twin Towers, people you've known personally who died. It is always a little startling how fragile life is.

I know that I am like grass. I discovered this undeniably when I went through a medical crisis. I suffered a severe and unexpected complication after a procedure to stabilize a brain aneurysm (the aneurysm procedure went fine), and I came very close to death.

Many of you know that you are like grass. You've had medical scares. You've also seen how fragile the balance of your life is economically, emotionally, relationally. Some of you have been through divorce, family turmoil. Some of you have lost jobs or are experiencing uncertainty about your finances and future employment. You've experienced how things that seemed solid and unchanging can evaporate out from under you.
Nothing is too big to fail, really.

So how is any of this good news?

By itself, the fact that we are all grass is not good news, but there's more to it than that. That’s why it’s just the BEGINNING of the good news.

Let's hear what Mark has to say.
John the Baptist comes preaching baptism for repentance of sins
Message: Repent, Make straight the way of the Lord
"Make straight the way of the Lord" implied the following:
- the king is coming to visit
- literally, you should fix the road so he'll have smooth travel (fill in the potholes, etc)
The beginning of the good news in Mark was a startling voice calling people to acknowledge their failings and go in a different direction, preparing for something better.

John’s message was some difficult news. Road work - literally or figuratively - is hard. Whether you actually fill in potholes and straighten out the road shoulders or you start filling in empty places and smoothing over estrangements and other things we've messed up in our lives, either way, it’s hard work. The types of effort it takes to repair and turn a life around are not easy - repentance, reconciliation, discipline - and a trusting openness to God. A lot of people give up on it after they’ve barely started.
As GK Chesterton said, "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it's been found difficult and left untried."

Parts of our culture really don't like difficulty, because it can result in failure, which shows up our weaknesses. We don't want to admit to anyone, least of all ourselves, that we HAVE any weaknesses. Other parts of our culture like to embrace difficulty, though in very controlled environments, for a similar purpose – to showcase strength in order to rebut any charge of weakness. Marathons, triathlons, Iron Man events, multi-day bike races, and all kinds of strenuous and challenging physical feats have become very popular.
But our strength is very relative.

I would not be much of a match for a bear or a shark, for instance, much less an asteroid. Even in relation to other people, it's still not equal. I'm five feet tall, so unless I were playing basketball with second graders, I would not be much of a force to reckon with. And it's not only in external conflicts that our weaknesses appear. Some of the most serious are inside our own bodies. Consider your brain - physiologically. Very powerful - and VERY delicate. Thinking about the aneurysm I had - the weak wall of the artery that had ballooned out was maybe a fraction of a millimeter thick - and if that unimaginably thin tissue were to tear, my brain would react so strongly to coming in contact with the slight acidity of my blood that I would most likely die or become profoundly disabled.

And it's not just our bodies that are weak. Our relationships are fragile and require constant tending and strengthening; our emotions are difficult to understand, much less control; our minds are easily confused and disturbed; our wills are fairly easy to corrupt and require consistent training and scrutiny.
The fact is we are human.
Weakness is our PRIMARY reality, in every area of our lives.

And that's the good news!

Because God's strength is made perfect in weakness.
God's strength perfectly complements our weakness.
Our weakness showcases God's strength.

It's not the type of strength you may be used to - the strength of a predator who takes from the weak to increase its own strength - a lion snatching a sheep. This is the strength of the shepherd who fights off the lion. Trust that kind of strength.

God's strength rises to the challenge of our weakness to make both of us stronger. Think of the kid in the movie The Sandlot, who summons all his skill, more than was usually asked of him, and hits the ball right into Small's glove - so he'll have some confidence and start to get better.

Not only is God good; he's so good, he makes it possible for us to get better.

So when you pray, when you open the door of your weakness to God, and when you come to receive communion and healing, don't just look for comfort; look for strength.
And then, start looking for ways you can rise to the challenge of others' weaknesses, and in God's strength, begin to strengthen them.

The beginning of the good news is that we are weak.
The rest of the good news is that he is strong.

Talents

2011-11-13T10:00:00.000-06:00

Readings for the 22nd Sunday after Pentecost, Year A

Almighty God, whose loving hand has given us all that we possess: Grant us grace that we may honor you with our substance, and, remembering the account which we must one day give, may be faithful stewards of your bounty, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

So the kingdom of heaven will be like this:

a master goes on a journey and entrusts his property to his slaves - he gives the first guy five talents, he gives the second guy two talents, and he gives the third guy one talent... to each according to his abilities

Now, when we say a talent, we mean something you're good at, like singing or playing basketball, or learning other languages, but that's not what it meant back then. Originally, a talent was an amount of money. So the master gave his slaves different amounts of money, based on what he felt they could handle, and then left to go on a trip. Two of them traded the talents and made twice as much; one of them buried the talent, so that the amount was the same when he gave it back. If you want to know basically how much he gave them (and how much they gave back), a talent is roughly 15 years’ wages for a day laborer. You can get a pencil or pull up the calculator on your phone and figure out what that might roughly be.

Assuming current minimum wage, one talent = (approximately)

$7.25/hour x 40 hours/week x 52 weeks/year x 15 years

Write it down; we’ll come back to it later.

So, in the story, the guy with the five talents and the guy with the two talents are smart - they trade for twice as much. It reminds me of this poem by Shel Silverstein...

Another story of trading up, which you may have heard about, involves a guy from Canada named Kyle MacDonald, who wanted to move into a house and started trading up towards that goal by offering one red paperclip on Craigslist. He writes

On July 12, 2005 I posted a picture of a red paperclip on my blog and in the barter section of craigslist and asked if anyone wanted to make a trade for something bigger or better. A few days later I traded the paperclip for a pen shaped like a fish. Then I traded the pen for a doorknob. And so on, each time trading for something bigger or better. Once all the dust settled, I'd made 14 trades and wound up with a house located at 503 Main Street in Kipling Saskatchewan.

And that's starting with a paperclip.

What if you started with... a talent?
Remember how much one talent is?

($7.25 x 40 x 52 x 15...)

So the guy with one talent had something like a quarter of a million dollars, and the guy with two had almost half a million, and the guy with five had over a million! That's a lot of somebody else's money to be responsible for; I sure wouldn't want to lose it.
That was the third guy's approach; he played it safe, not wanting to risk losing any of the money. But the first two guys were responsible for handling even more of their master's money, and they weren't scared at all - immediately went out and risked it in trading.

FEAR is one difference between the first two guys and the third guy. As he says when the Master returns,

Master, I knew you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed, so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.

Another difference between the guy who buried his master's money and the other two who risked it is TRUST.

The first two guys viewed the money their master gave them as an opportunity because they trusted his confidence in their ability to handle it. In taking the money and trading with it, they accepted the responsibility of sharing with their master in the household's business. And when he returned, he invited them to share in his joy.

The third guy feared and distrusted the master. When the master gave him more money than he felt qualified to manage, this guy viewed it as a setup - a test designed to trap him - so he buried the quarter million dollars in the ground. Burying the talent was not to keep the money safe for his master so much as to keep himself safe from the master's invitation into shared responsibility. As he says on returning the money "Here you have what is yours." He never accepted the master's trust in him in the first place. "Here's your stuff - I didn't mess with any of it. I don't even know why you gave it to me in the first place. It's none of my business. I just work here."

The master gets really angry with him. His no-risk = no-failure strategy misses the whole point of the exercise. And he doesn’t account for opportunity loss. It's like taking only classes that are way easy for you so your GPA doesn't go down. Or like going up to bat and never swinging at a pitch because you don't want to run the bases and maybe have to slide...and get dirty, or possibly even hurt.

From this parable, I'm beginning to get the feeling that the point of the life we've been given is to get in the game, not to finish with a clean uniform. While we're here, we should play hard, go all out, even if we get grass-stained and dirty in the process. Even if we get hurt; even if we fail. And EVEN - though this is the scariest of all I think - EVEN if we succeed... and God gives us more responsibility to share with him in the work of his kingdom.

The kingdom of heaven will be like this: a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them...

Don't be scared of how much God has entrusted you with.
Ask yourself (like Kyle MacDonald's dad asked him when he thought of giving up the red paperclip idea)...

What would you do if you weren't afraid?

As those famous theologians, The Goo Goo Dolls, wrote:

The end of fear is where we begin.

Amen

Transfiguration

2011-08-06T20:10:00.003-06:00

This sermon is posted here. It was written for the "Sermons That Work" series and also delivered in a modified form to St. John's in Silsbee.

To St. Peter's in Brenham, TX

2011-06-05T19:54:00.001-06:00

Homily

God, help us to follow Jesus' example and glorify you on earth by doing the work you give us to do.

Just before he's about to be arrested in the garden, Jesus prays to God, his Father, "I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do."

We regularly ask God for the grace to follow this example. Today, after we finish sharing communion, we will pray together, "assist us with thy grace, that we may continue in that holy fellowship, and do all such good works as thou hast prepared for us to walk in"

And after that, I'll stand at the back of the church and tell you to do exactly that. I'll say "Go in peace, to love and serve the Lord" And, like a team getting ready to run back on the field, you'll all say "Thanks be to God! Alleluia! Alleluia!"
Then you'll charge out the door to go do all those works that God has prepared for us. At least, that's the idea.

Church is where we come for rest, for encouragement and teaching, and for remembering who we belong to and what we're supposed to be about. It's like half-time - we regroup, catch our breath, take some nourishment, and get some focus and direction from our leaders. Then we go back out. That's a very crucial point. We get back in the game - doing the work God has prepared for us.

What is work is that?
Basically two things: Love God and Love your neighbor.

Priests and deacons help the church with both of those tasks, which are closely related. Though it's a huge simplification, you could say priests specialize in helping us love God, and deacons specialize in helping us love our neighbors.

Deacons often talk to the church about questions like "Who are our neighbors?" I'll warn you, if you get a deacon - and I pray that you do - he or she may start raising this question in directions you find uncomfortable. It's the deacon's job to notice people others don't want to see. Deacon's are charged, at our ordination, to "serve all people, particularly the poor, the weak, the sick, and the lonely." We're also charged to "show Christ's people that in serving the helpless they are serving Christ himself."

If God sends you a deacon - and I pray that he does - you will likely hear the Gospel focused differently through the deacon's preaching because of the deacon's call to focus on the marginalized.
I'll give you some examples from this morning's scripture readings.
In today's Psalm, we addressed God, not as "Our Father" but "Father of orphans," and "defender of widows." In the next verse, we read that "God gives the solitary a home and brings forth prisoners into freedom."
Just in two verses, already, we have orphans, widows, single people and prisoners. Notice what kinds of work God is doing for them.
God is a father to those without a father. Think about men you know who are mentors, step-fathers, foster parents or adoptive parents. Think about kids you know whose dads aren't around or can't be at home. How are you men at St. Peter's joining God in this work of being a father to the fatherless?
Have you ever thought about the fact that Joseph was essentially Jesus' step-father?

What other work is God doing for people in the Psalm? God is the defender of widows. There are always folks willing to take advantage of someone who seems defenseless - scam artists prey on elderly people and steal their money or property in all kinds of ways. Is there any way you can join God in defending someone who is vulnerable in this way?

What other work can we see God doing in these two verses? "God gives the solitary a home and brings forth prisoners into freedom." Did you know that in Zimbabwe, members of Anglican churches were illegally arrested this week and put in prison - and that other parts of our Anglican communion helped to bail them out? I learned this by reading an email newsletter from the Anglican Communion News Service. Anglicans in Zimbabwe are facing a lot right now at the hands of a vindictive deposed bishop who is friends with the despotic president. And these are folks in the church.
What about other people in prison who aren't members of the church? What do you know about the prison system in general - about issues such as retributive versus restorative justice? Crimes with unequal punishments, like the difference in penalties for possessing crack cocaine versus powder cocaine? Why does a poor kid's drug have a smaller penalty than a rich kid's drug?
Uh oh - this is starting to sound almost political - it's starting to meddle in issues...

Yep, that's what a deacon's likely to do: push the Church back out into the world where there's work to be done, back in the game, not watching from the stands.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, gave an interview that's posted on YouTube in which he said that as Christians, we should look around to see what God is doing and join in.

When God sends you a deacon - as I pray he soon will - that person will help you to see what kinds of work God's doing out in the world outside these walls - the works he's preparing for you to walk in. And I pray you'll head out these doors and join in.
Thanks be to God!

Ash Wednesday

2011-03-09T20:47:00.004-06:00

Readings:

Joel 2:1-2,12-17 or Isaiah 58:1-12

Psalm 103 or 103:8-14

2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10

Matthew 6:1-6,16-21

Today is Ash Wednesday, when we are reminded that we don’t have all the time in the world.

This is an excellent video meditation produced by Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Phoenix, AZ:

Today begins the season of Lent, when the church tries to slow itself down and take a good look around its house and do some spring cleaning. A lot of mess can accumulate over a year. When you’re in a rush, going from one crisis to another, you don’t really notice the papers piling up on the table or the beans growing fungus in the fridge. But just because you’re not paying attention to the mess doesn’t mean it isn’t there. What if company dropped by? As soon as they walked in the door, every dirty sock, every piece of string on the carpet and every smudge of peanut butter on the counter would have a neon sign pointing at it.

Lent is one time in the church year when we remind ourselves that we’re expecting company. Just like we got together before the Bishop’s visit to clean up our house physically – wash, vacuum, throw out, rearrange...., we also need to clean up our “house” spiritually. And it’s not just a one-person job. It takes all of us.

Consider these thoughts on Lent from the Very Rev. Tony Clavier, rector of St. Paul’s in LaPorte, Indiana:

"Too easily our [Lenten commitments] begin to look like holy variations on New Year’s resolutions, and we know how long they last!
Part of the problem is that we individualize Lent. We begin with me. Because we begin with me, the whole thing slides into another form of personal spirituality, perhaps somewhat ruined by our sly hints to others about just what it is we are sacrificing.
Sacrifice in Christianity, as with our Jewish ancestors, means the offering of life. Its culmination is Jesus’ offering for us on Calvary.
...
Lent’s forty days prepare us for the Cross and the Resurrection, and no good intentions about giving up something gets us to that “Green Hill far away.” True, once our goal for Lent is established, fasting and abstinence is a way to keep us on track, but the goal comes first. The goal is simple but profound. It begins with our parish church. How does our community of the faithful intend to spend Lent together? What extra acts of worship or study will be added to the calendar? In what ways will the parish reach out to the world? We begin there. These extras on the calendar are not for the holy few. They determine how each of us may spend Lent, and guide us to choose individual acts of love that fit into that wider program.
At the same time, we remember that what we do doesn’t earn us God’s love. The question rather is how may I, and we, as a parish, become worthy of Christ’s death and passion? How do we deserve His conquering death for us and giving us eternal life?
On the one hand, we can’t earn and can never deserve God’s love for us in Christ. But we can open ourselves to the gift and seek to rid ourselves of those things that get in the way of God’s redeeming grace. We used to call these impediments the Seven Deadly Sins. Obviously gluttony was among them. Those old sins – do look them up or Google them – were neat ways of reminding us just how “self” gets in the way of service. Now, of course, you may feel you do pretty well in avoiding these failings and fallings. But just ask your partner, your children, your parents, or your best friends. With a little nudging they will come up with examples of bad temper, feeling sorry for yourself, being envious, or angry.
The point isn’t that we dwell on these things, but that we offer them daily to God in our devotions, certain that God forgives and strengthens us.
The gospel today reminds us that the smudge of ashes on our foreheads may either be a boast, or it may be a sign to us and to others that this Lent will be about more than giving up chocolate; it will be a time when God’s redeeming work transforms each of us and our parishes.
So may it be."

Here at St. John’s, we’ve been given an opportunity to slow down and take a close look at what we’ve been doing as a parish and consider what we want to do next. During Lent, we need to take that task seriously and clean up around here.

We need to fix things that are broken – relationships, models for doing ministry, whatever isn’t working right.

We need to throw some things out – old grievances, rotten attitudes – whatever is cluttering up the place and making it stink.

We may even need to let go of some successes and things that were good at one time if they’re not relevant to what God’s calling us to do now.

Some of the things you’ll come across, you won’t want to throw out because you have fond memories of them, and you hope you can use them again. This will really be a challenge for St. John’s especially. I hear y’all talking a lot about your past. But I think God is envisioning for us a future. We’ll have to let some things go to have an open hand to receive something new. Another thing that can happen when we begin a deep cleaning is that we may find treasures we forgot or didn't know we had, and that's something to look forward to.

Some of the dirt and gunk you’ll come across, you won’t know who put it there – it doesn’t matter; if you see a mess, clean it up. God is constantly having to clean up after us, so one way to express gratitude for that is to graciously clean up after each other when we have an opportunity.

We did a good job cleaning up the building for Bishop Doyle's visit. Now let’s work on cleaning up the rest of our church – inside as well as out - to be a functional home for Christ to live in and work from.

Amen.

Go on, Go back, or Sit still?

2011-02-13T19:24:00.007-06:00

God, like Moses and Abraham, may we follow you, even not knowing the way. Amen.

You’ve heard it said... you shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not swear falsely

But I say... don’t even stay angry with your brother or sister. If you don’t reconcile with each other, the part of your heart that harbors resentment and animosity will start to abscess and become necrotic, and it will poison you from inside. Cut it out.

Jesus is making a distinction between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law.

The letter of the law tries to define the spirit of the law, which can be helpful up to a point, but after that point, the more specific the letter of the law gets, the more it sucks the life out of the spirit. Living your life strictly in accordance with rules (even the Ten Commandments) with no reference to what the law is for is like teaching to the TAKS – it makes the whole system a farce.

Not that basic skills are unnecessary or irrelevant. They’re absolutely foundational. For your spiritual development, keeping the Ten Commandments is like learning plus, minus, times and "guzinta," or like learning nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, and prepositions – its good to learn them, but knowing those things is not an end in itself. The goal is that we take those materials and start to create new things no one’s ever seen before. You teach kids grammar so the ones who are poets will be able to somewhat translate for us the songs they hear the angels singing. You teach them multiplication so they can chase infinity.

If the letter of the law hands you a paint-by-number kit,

then the spirit of the law walks you into a sunlit studio and simply says....
Create something beautiful.

Yesterday at Council, Bishop Doyle told us that, not only in individual parishes like St. John’s, but all across the Diocese, we’re going to have to rethink our direction and our way of being Church, because we’re realizing that the map we’ve been looking at doesn’t match the terrain we’re moving toward anymore.

We may as well unplug the turn-by-turn GPS. We maybe should even stop the car and open the door and start walking through the grass. As the poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote in the Book of Hours, “Now you must go out into your heart, as onto a vast plain.”

The Bishop has invited us to start a process of inventing and imagining new things, but his invitation yesterday did not to me sound like a theoretical pathway-- more like a life and death kind of turning point.

He said:

Continuing this church economy, doing the things we have been doing for the last three decades leads only to greater conflict and loss. Continuing to be church, simply tinkering with efficiency and symptoms leads unequivocally to closure. However, at this very same moment we stand on the pass with a second thought not yet fully formed but forming. That thought is that you and I stand on the edge of a new missionary age – a new geography of hope.

His words sound like what Moses told the people of Israel as they were standing just outside the Promised Land, ready to cross over. After wandering in the desert 40 years, circling around and around in the same tracks, they were about to walk into a place they’d never seen, trusting God. Moses knew there was still hesitation, so he laid out for them what was at stake.

“See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity... Choose life that you and your descendents may live.”

The Egyptian people today are standing at a similar kind of gate. They’ve got the door down and a path open in front of them. Will they walk through it toward a different kind of future? Or will they get cold feet and revert back to the way things were before? It’s up to them.

It seems to me St. John’s is on that kind of a course right now; we’ve got some choices to make about our future and how we’re going to shape it. When the Bishop was here two weeks ago, he set some hopeful, life-giving options in front of us. Some of them are new things that we’ve not previously imagined – that even the diocese has only recently begun imagining. He told us we’ll have the freedom to choose how we’d like to do ministry in this place, even to create new ways of doing it.

We’re at a point where we can walk into a new territory or go back the way we came – or we can stand still and try not to move, waiting for someone who knows more, someone who has more authority, to come and tell us what to do. That would be ridiculous - and also not necessary. The Bishop is the head of this diocese and of this congregation as part of it; Fr. John, as the rector, is acting as the Bishop by extension, filling his shoes in this place when he’s not here. But when the Bishop is here, wearing his own shoes, that’s the most authoritative voice you’re going to get – nobody knows more about where he wants the Church in the Diocese of Texas to be headed than him. And he’s already told us... and given us a project to work on. The scary thing is, it’s not a paint-by-number; it’s a blank canvas. From what I’m coming to learn, this is a different kind of relationship than you’re accustomed to having with your bishop. It’s new for everybody – him too – start enjoying it.

If we choose, we can stop walking around in circles and set off toward a new land that God will show us. It’s not going to be easy to discern this; we have no map for where we may be going. But think of it this way: if we’re willing, we’ll get to help make the map of this new territory the Church is being called to inhabit.

Map of America - 1730 by Guillaume Delisle

Amen.

Being vs. Becoming

2010-12-26T18:35:00.003-06:00

What's the difference in being and becoming? For instance, what's the difference in being an electrician and becoming an electrician? With 'being,' you're already there; you already are. With 'becoming,' you're headed that way, and when you get there, you will be something new.
Being is static, unchanging; becoming is moving toward something.
Jesus was God, and he became a person.
We are people, and Jesus has given us the ability to become children of God.
Jesus moved toward us and reached us; once he got here, he began helping us move toward God.

Popeye

Let's consider Popeye for a minute. You know, Popeye the Sailorman... What is his philosophy of existence?

I yam what I yam

Popeye and God think of themselves in a similar way. Moses once asked God what his name was, and God said,

I AM WHO I AM.

Verbs in Hebrew are different than in English. In English, we're very concerned with when something happened (past, present, future); Hebrew is more interested in whether the action is finished or not. So "I am who I am" could be translated "I will be who I will be" or some other combination of tenses that imply continuing action. God's name may also mean "I am who I have been" "I am who I will be" "I will be who I have been" "I will be who I am"
In the Middle Ages, philosophers and theologians got very interested in the idea of perfection and whether God changes. For the most part, they decided that, if God is perfect, God can't change. So, they figured that God always has been who God always will be. You can't improve on perfection.
But we're not God, although it's unclear whether we know that, from the way people talk about themselves. "It's hard to improve on perfection" – I've seen that on T-shirts and truck windows. Actually, such a statement is ridiculous. Really? You're just like God? For us to wave off a call to change, for us to say 'Hey, I am what I am' is not even close to a valid comparison.
We can change; we need to change.
Instead of "I am what I am," it's much more appropriate for us to say
"I'm not who I wanna be and
I'm not who I'm gonna be,
but, thank God, I'm not who I was."

Hamlet

Let's change characters. When you hear 'Hamlet' what's the first thing you think of? Give me a line.

To be or not to be: that is the question...

This is another angle from which to consider being.
Hamlet is definitely emo; but he's the star of a tragedy, so... And this is his darkly-shining moment – wrestling internally to figure his way forward in an exquisite, impossible situation. He only sees two options – to be or not to be. Both bad choices – to continue as he is and suffer or to end his life, not knowing what waits on the other side of death.
But just because he only sees two options doesn't mean there only ARE two options. His problem is a lack of imagination. He can imagine only being like he is (which doesn't take any imagination at all, since he is like he is) or not being. And actually, he can't imagine not being, which scares him, so he decides to stick being as he is, even though he doesn't like it.
One of the many angles he doesn't consider is whether he or his situation, or anyone else in it, might change.
God is in the business of transformation. You are what you are, but this doesn't have to determine who you become. You have already changed in countless ways to become someone neither you nor anyone else could imagine when you first began to be.

Human 'Beans'

When your parents discovered they were going to have a baby, you were probably about the size of a bean.

Who were you then?

Who have you become?

Who was Jesus when he was the size of a bean, growing in Mary's womb?
Who did he become?

Remember the difference in being and becoming?
'Being,' you are. 'Becoming,' you're getting there, and when you get there, you will be something new. Because of Jesus, who we are doesn't have to determine who we become. With his help, we can become something new.

Amen.

Judgment Day: Christmas, Part 2

2010-11-28T18:55:00.000-06:00

When he shall come again in power and great triumph to judge the world, [may we] without shame or fear rejoice to behold his appearing. Amen.
"one will be taken and one will be left"
Taken… When we hear it relating to people, it has scary associations. Like Elizabeth Smart taken from her home at knifepoint… the movie Taken with Liam Neeson where his daughter is kidnapped by human traffickers. Sometimes we talk about people being 'taken from us' by disease, drugs, accidents, mental illness....
When we hear that two will be in a field and one will be taken and the other left – what does being taken mean? What do you imagine?
Two folks standing out there in the garden, pulling radishes, and suddenly one shoots up into the stratosphere, and the other left standing, staring at the sky?
One interpretation of this passage, made famous in the Left Behind series, imagines it somewhat like this – just on a larger scale, like a cosmic evacuation on the eve of a military strike. God, with a handful of rescue ropes tied to his most valuable assets, yanks them up and out of there right before he pushes the big red button.
In this view, to be taken is to be rescued out of the world by God while others are abandoned, left to die with the enemy.
What kind of Good News is that? Not very. It offers salvation only to folks who are on the right side and important enough to rescue. It's a cosmic Halo mission, and you may or may not make it to the chopper to get out before the bombs start falling. It's a gospel that believes the world is doomed to destruction. A gospel that sees God as a powerful and highly unstable leader who may at any moment decide to nuke the whole planet. It's a gospel driven by fear: fear of the enemy, however you would like to define them, but mostly fear of God, because he may go postal and blow you up with everybody else if you don't figure out how to become necessary.
In our culture, everything is charged with fear these days. Everything around us is telling us how to prepare for hurricanes, for floods, for being charged by a bear, for surviving a broken elevator chain, for escaping from a psychopathic serial killer. Buy a security system, a gun, a rocket-propelled grenade launcher – I mean, you never know. Try to secure your position at work so you don't get axed, watch what you say. In relationships, you can't trust anyone; never let down your guard. It's not paranoia if they really are after you. The Left Behind gospel plays right into those fears.
But is this the kind of message Matthew's intends when he says keep awake - you don't know when the Lord is coming… he'll be like a burglar? Should we sit up all night on the couch with a .45? What if he opens the door – shoot him?
That's one of the problems with bad theology. It leads you to conclusions that don't make any sense with the rest of the story.
Let's try another way to read this passage, especially the part about some being taken and others left. What about that word left? Does it mean rejected/abandoned? As in one will be accepted and the other rejected? Just because we have a word pair doesn't mean they're opposites, like good/bad, yes/no, hot/cold; some word pairs are simply related things: parent/child, today/tomorrow, call/response.
Here's one way we use taken/left that doesn't mean accept/reject. We were picking some radishes out of the garden a couple weeks ago. Some we took; others we left. We didn't reject them; they weren't bad. They just weren't ready yet, so we left them a while longer. I don't know if that's a justifiable interpretation here, but I think it's worth considering. At least it makes more sense to me with the rest of the gospel.
And what about taken. What are some other ways we can use it – other than to mean stolen, kidnapped or killed, as in 'he took my wallet' 'that lunatic took our daughter,' 'leukemia took my mom.' What about "receive" or "accept" as in 'take a compliment' 'take a call' 'take help that's offered.'
If you offer someone a compliment, don't you want them to accept it? If you give someone a call, don't you want them to answer? If you give someone a gift, don't you want them to take it? What if that's an accurate way to understand "one will be taken"? One will be accepted, received by God; one person's life as a gift, which God takes. "Take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to Thee..."
Christmas will be coming up a few weeks from now; this period of Advent is preparing for it. We're not waiting for Jesus to come, though. We're waiting for him to come back. We say it all the time: "Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again" "We remember his death; we proclaim his resurrection; we await his coming in glory." Advent is actually preparation for Judgment Day – Christmas, part 2. We're not primarily reenacting a period of waiting for Jesus to be born, to pretend like it's happening again. We're preparing for what happens next.
Think of Christmas morning as a day of judgment – it's a moment of truth… All the things that have been hidden under wrapping paper are finally opened and everybody sees what was given.
Now think of Judgment Day like Christmas morning, when God takes and opens the gifts we've offered. That's what Advent is about, working on the gift you're preparing for God. Your life - or what you trade it for - will be your gift, the reciprocal part of the exchange. At Christmas, we opened the gift God gave us. On Judgment Day, he'll open the ones we give him.
When he shall come again in power and great triumph to judge the world, [may we] without shame or fear rejoice to behold his appearing.
Amen

Seeds

2010-10-03T13:48:00.000-06:00

Lectionary Readings: Lamentations 1:1-6; Lam. 3:19-26; 2 Timothy 1:1-14; Luke 17:5-10

How great is your faithfulness, O God! Amen.
Lord, increase our faith!
We don't know what we're doing. We need more people. We can't start yet - we're not ready. We need more information. We need more training, more experience, more money, more time... Enough already!

That's what Jesus tells his disciples – you have enough already.
They say, "Give us more faith" – he says, "You've got all the faith you need – if you have this much, you've got more than enough" How much? The size of a mustard seed.

They're not very big, are they? Seeds themselves are not much to look at – small, nondescript, kind of dead-looking. You can't tell what a seed is going to grow into until you've had some experience. So unless you've seen that kind of seed before, you can't tell by looking at the outside what kind of plant it will become – and you can't tell by cutting it in half to look at the inside, either.

You have to put it in the ground and see what grows.

A lot of things are like seeds.

A baby is like a seed – I got to hold my little cousin Wyatt last week when he was only a few hours old. There's no way to know who he's going to grow up to be – you can't tell by looking; we'll have to wait till he starts growing to even begin to guess.

Faith is like a seed, too – in today's epistle, faith gets passed down in Timothy's family almost like DNA, from his grandmother to his mother to him. Faith gets planted in us at baptism and confirmation and all the sacraments – it's ready to germinate and grow when the conditions are right. Like it says in Timothy, "rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of… hands."

The words of scripture are like seed – sometimes called logos spermatikos – the implanted word. Every time somebody stands up here to read the Word of the Lord, you're peppered with little seeds. When and how they take root depends on lots of factors. If nothing is growing at all, you may need to condition your soil. The seed itself is good; when you create an environment conducive for it to take root, it will.

Experiences are seeds – even hard ones like pain and death. When the church was under so much persecution in the 300s and people were being killed left and right, Augustine wrote that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church – because that's what grew out of the deaths. The gospel also says that when a seed dies and falls to the ground, it grows up to produce 30, 60, a hundred fold return. What looks like the end of something is many times more of a beginning.So I think grief is closely connected to the growth of new and unexpected things. Grief sometimes involves digging up things that haven't been touched in a long while, pulling things out and turning the ground over and over and over, until it looks chewed up and bare – with bits of what used to be growing there poking out all over. This is what it sounds like in Lamentations – things look nothing like they used to

"How lonely sits the city that once was full of people! How like a widow she has become!"

I don't think grief itself is the seed; I think memories and experiences are. Relationships grow like flowers or trees, and when a person in your life dies, the blooms drop off, and you're left with stickers that poke you when you touch them or velcro things that grab onto you when you walk by, or delicate fluffy things that float away when you breathe on them. Your memories and experiences are like seeds. They're not what they were – but also, you have no idea what they might become.

A lot of things are like seeds.
On the outside, a seed looks dead. And basically, it is until it's put in the ground, but when conditions are right - the ground begins to warm, it receives water, suddenly the skin splits open, a root snakes out and a stem pushes up, unfolding a couple of green leaves

– and it turns out the inside of the seed is hundreds, thousands, millions of times bigger than the outside.

Even after all these centuries, it's still a process we can only describe, not really explain. You probably don't know what kinds of seeds you're carrying around – you can't tell by looking at them. And anyway, as seeds, they probably don't look very impressive, but what's inside is way more than you can guess. You need to put them in the ground. Ecclesiastes (11:6) says,Who plants a seed trusts God – maybe not even very much, but it doesn't take much. Do you still have the seed in your hand? Look at it. That's more than enough faith for God to work in you. Don't ask for more of this, more of that – the faith you have is enough; put something in the ground. You don't have to know what will grow from it, just start planting.

"in the morning sow your seed and at evening do not let your hands be idle; for you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good."

I love the story of Gideon; God asks him to save Israel and he says 'Oh I can't, my tribe is the smallest, and my family is the most insignificant of the clan, and I'm the youngest… blah blah blah… I can't do it!' and God says to him, "Go in the strength you have… Am I not sending you?"(Judges 6:14-16) In other words – do you think I'm asking you to do this by yourself? I'm right here.

The writer of Lamentations says to God,

"You are my portion…therefore I hope in you. You are good to those who wait with patience, to every soul that seeks you."

God is with us, he is more than enough for all we need; he is our portion. He feeds us with his own life. The Eucharist is also like a seed; when you come to receive it today, think of it this way: you are planting the life of Christ in yourself; now wait patiently for it to grow.

And while you're waiting, go in the strength you have, with the faith you have – it's already enough, and plant your own seeds in the world around you.

Amen.

Homework...

2010-08-29T20:53:00.003-06:00

Gospel Reading: Luke 14:1,7-14

Not for a place of honor did your Son come among us, O god of the lowly, but to invite to the wedding feast the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame. Let such humility grace our table and lead us to renounce the quest for power and privilege. … Amen.

(From Prayers for Sunday and Seasons, Year C, Peter J. Scagnelli, LTP, 1992.)

It seems there is a common theme lately in sermons to this community. A lot of them seem to be focusing on breaking attachments to money and power and other things that serve as pseudo-security in place of God.

Here is the same topic again today – in Jeremiah, the prophet talks about the people forgetting and turning their back on all God did for them, his continual provision and faithfulness: rescuing them from Egypt, leading them through the wilderness – through a land no one survives in – and bringing them into a land where there is plenty. Instead of remembering that they owe all their current prosperity to God, they start attributing it to themselves and to other gods. Through Jeremiah, God laments, “My people have changed their glory for something that does not profit… they have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and dug out cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that can hold no water.”

In the Psalm, we hear again God’s promise to take care of his people’s needs, as he has continually done in the past, and his wish that they would accept what he wants to give them.

I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and said,
"Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it." … O that my people would listen to me.

Hebrews is very straightforward in its advice.

Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have.

I’m not sure why this keeps being the theme of sermons here. Maybe it’s something this community particularly needs to hear – or maybe it’s just a topic everybody needs to have reiterated. Probably both. Are you aware if it’s sinking in for you?

Money is not security; God is security.
Money is not ultimately of any value; God is of ultimate value.
Money may or may not even get you daily bread; God provides for your every need.

Money is only useful if you can trade it for what you need or want, but if what you need isn’t available, money won’t get it for you, and if the person who has what you need doesn’t want money for it, there again, money is not use. We’ve seen also that money can very easily and very quickly lose value and even become completely worthless. And it’s of no use at all in obtaining things of really great value.

“Will you be my friend? I’ll give you a hundred dollars…”
“Will you drop the charges against me? I’ll give you a hundred dollars…”
“Will you marry me? I’ll give you a hundred dollars…”
“I want to be a senator. I’ll give you a hundred dollars…”
“Can I have an indulgence to erase my sins? I’ll give you a hundred dollars…”

When people try to trade money for these things, it becomes a scandal – money, in these situations, actually reduces the value of what it’s traded for. Inappropriate use of money in these areas fosters disillusionment: with the political system, with the church, with relationships… it cheapens them, it makes them seem untrustworthy. Why? Because these things are based on a higher value than money.

For some things that have really ultimate value, money is not even a scandal, it’s just a joke.

“God, will you let me in? I’ll give you a hundred dollars…”

What does God have to do with money? Does God buy things? He owns the cattle on a thousand hills – he doesn’t need anything from us. It’s the other way around, he gives us everything. What do we have that we have not been given?

But still, it’s habit to hang onto our things, our abilities, our relationships, even our lives, as though they are ours and not God’s. And we try to get more by taking from each other. An outward representation of that is what Jesus saw at a party: people schmoosing and trying to network and make connections to power and wealth to get up the ladder, trying to sit closest to the host of the party, to be seen as more important. Parties are often still like this – you’ve got some folks trying to sit with or talk to certain other folks – the kids who are more popular, the bosses who are more powerful, the stars who are bigger celebrities. At the same time, people are trying to avoid and get away from those they feel are lower than themselves or might somehow pull them down.

But Jesus says we’re not to be like that – from either side. Neither the brown-nosers nor the snobs.

As one commentator, David Lose, noted, Jesus is not just being Miss Manners when he talks to people about how to act at parties – and who to invite. This business about who sits closest to the host is about pecking order, but Jesus says forget the pecking order – it’s the other way around. Don’t try to sit in the highest seat; sit in the lowest. Don’t try to be the king; be everyone’s servant.

And if you’re the one who’s throwing the party, don’t invite people you want to impress, people you think can help you advance your career, your station in life. You scratch their back and they’ll scratch yours. No, don’t do that – that doesn’t earn you any favor with God, because there’s nothing hospitable or generous about it; it’s a calculated investment, but whatever you get back is all the benefit there is to that kind of transaction. It doesn’t win you any points in heaven.

No, if you want to invest in something truly valuable, try to do something to win God’s favor – as Jesus advises. Do something good for someone who can’t do anything for you. Invite people to your party who can’t even bring the bean dip.

Since this money and economy and giving topic seems to keep coming up, possibly it’s something we need to learn better. In school, when a concept is difficult to grasp with just a lecture, the teacher gives you some homework to practice…

I think that’s a good idea to implement in church. Lots of times, people just come to church and listen to the lecture, and I don’t know how much application of the learning takes place afterwards. I guess that’s fine if you’re just auditing, but really, why even audit a course unless you actually want to learn the material?

So, I’m giving a homework assignment. Now, I’m not the teacher; you won’t turn it in to me. Jesus is the teacher; I’m just subbing today. But this is some of the material he left for us to work on.

God, the loving father

2010-08-02T08:42:00.001-06:00

10th Sunday after Pentecost
Readings: Hosea 11:1-11, Psalm 107:1-9,43, Colossians 3:1-11, Luke 12:13-21

First of all, regarding today’s Gospel, the point is - our security rests in God – nothing else: not jobs, not retirement accounts, not, as in this passage, barns. Somebody else will get all your stuff when you die anyway, so it’s a waste to spend your whole life collecting it. God is our security, so invest your energy and resources how God directs.

Moving right along, now we’ll take a look at the passage from Hosea. Last week, Fr. John discussed praying to God as our Father. In Hosea, the prophet shows some of God’s view of that relationship – how he responds to his children when they’re giving him grief. He gets angry at them for acting like idiots, but at the same time, he loves them.
Does this dynamic sound familiar to you? Now listen to what Deuteronomy recommends for parents dealing with unruly kids:

If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey his father and mother, who does not heed them when they discipline him….

sound like anything you’ve said about your kids? or your parents or teachers said about you?
Here’s the course of action prescribed:

then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his town at the gate of that place. They shall say to the elders of his town, ‘This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.’

So what happens?

Then all the men of the town shall stone him to death. (Dt 21:18-21)

Wow.

That seems a little severe. It’s hard to imagine a parent demanding the death penalty for their own child. Folks do demand the death penalty for other people’s children, but somehow that seems different…

Saying, “I’d like to wring his little neck!” is one thing, but we don’t condone actually doing it. We’re horrified at news stories reporting that a parent beat or shook a child to death. Sometimes anger can boil up to the point it’s not wise to punish your kid right then – you have to reason with yourself and talk yourself down to deal with the situation more calmly.

This seems to be part of what’s going on in God’s internal conversation. “How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel?...My heart recoils within me…” He’s angry, but really, he doesn’t want to destroy his people. He starts mentally re-playing memories – bending over them as they took their first lurching steps, hanging onto his fingers – “…it was I who taught Ephraim to walk...”
He thinks about how he took care of them, though they wouldn’t remember it. “I took them up in my arms; but they did not know that I healed them… I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks. I bent down to them and fed them.” You probably don’t remember much about when you were a baby – or even when you were two or three years old, but your parents probably do. If you’re a parent, you probably remember a lot of little details about your children when they were small. They were totally helpless, so you had to do everything for them – which they don’t remember at all. But this bonded you to your children in a very powerful way; when you invest so much in a person, when you love them so completely, it’s hard uproot that love, no matter what happens later.

Sometimes, you really have to rely on the strength of that bond to remind yourself that you DO love your kids, because they can do things that may make you doubt it at times. You also have to remind yourself what you believe is right and not simply react according to how you feel at any given moment.

God is in some sense the same way, as Hosea portrays him – his children can make him so furious at times, he wants to beat the snot out of them, but he reminds himself that that’s not the kind of father he is. He thinks about when they were little - scooping them up in his arms and cuddling them to his cheek, and he reminds himself – that is who I am. I am a loving father. I'm not going to destroy them.

So even though his kids are rebellious and stubborn and don’t listen – even though they are “bent on turning away” he doesn’t take hold of them and drag them off to be executed. His choice in this is not based on the actions or behavior of the kids – but based on who HE is as the parent. It’s a difficult thing, I imagine, to not let your kids’ behavior drive your reaction to them. They can probably push your buttons better than anyone else, and it must take a huge effort at times to keep your cool and be deliberate in how you respond. I’ve heard several parents repeat the principle of trying never to discipline their children while they are angry, and this seems like a very wise rule.

There’s a saying attributed to Macarius the Great, one of the desert fathers of early monasticism

If you reprove someone, you yourself get carried away by anger and you are satisfying your own passion; do not lose yourself, therefore, in order to save another. (The Sayings of the Desert Fathers p. 131)

God does not lose himself in his anger at his children. He won’t allow our behavior to dictate his. Who God is as a father is not dependent on how his children are acting at any given moment – and this is a good thing, because we can be sweet one minute and vicious the next. Regardless of the kind of children we are, God has decided the kind of father he will be.

I will not execute my fierce anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and not mortal, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath.

As God’s children, we can rest secure in his decision to love us. This is not to say he won’t get angry and will never punish anyone. He may get mad, but his love is what’s essential, what’s central to any response he makes – that’s who he is, who he chooses to be, and you are not powerful enough to make him forget that, no matter what you do. Keep this in mind when confessing your sins and asking God’s forgiveness. He’s been working to redeem your mistakes even when you were ignoring him – so he’ll certainly be willing to get you back on the right track as soon as you want to go that way.

In the service of Reconciliation, the person seeking forgiveness says, “I have wandered far in a land that is waste.” and then talks about detours and wrong turns they’ve made.

Today’s Psalm talks about people’s similar experience.

Some wandered in desert wastes, finding no way to an inhabited town; hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted within them. Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress; he led them by a straight way, until they reached an inhabited town.

And at the end, the Psalmist says,

Let those who are wise give heed to these things, and consider the steadfast love of the Lord.

Steadfast love is love that stands fast, not moved or changed. God’s love for us is steadfast. So, the point is not perfect children; the point is a loving father.

Amen.

What is freedom for?

2010-06-29T15:13:00.000-06:00

Proper 8, Year C - Readings

God, to know you is eternal life and to serve you is perfect freedom. Amen

“It was for freedom that Christ has set us free.” We’re about to celebrate our Independence Day. Freedom is central to American cultural identity and one of the highest – if not the highest – value of our nation’s ideology. Freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom to assemble… free speech, free market economy – we say this is the “land of the free.”

But what is freedom for?

A popular conception of freedom is the idea I should be able to do whatever I want - sometimes with the qualifying idea ‘so long as it doesn’t violate others’ freedom.’
This sometimes degenerates into a bid for freedom from all responsibility…
nobody telling me what I can and can’t do,
nobody hounding me to take care of them,
nobody getting anything out of me
I do what I want and I keep what’s mine.
This is sometimes a major motivating factor for people who become homeless– It’s a form of freedom. This isn’t true so much for the people who become homeless because of crisis events – but it can definitely be true for some people who choose homelessness as a lifestyle.

Is that freedom? Sort of…

The desire to be free from responsibility and free to indulge yourself can lead to big trouble. When you keep indulging your appetites and desires – for food, alcohol, adrenaline rush, love… and you never tell them no, it’s kind of like always indulging your kids – they become more and more demanding and the dynamic of who’s in control starts to shift. At some point, you begin to realize you’re not in control of your appetites anymore; they’re in control of you. When they call, you answer, sometimes without even thinking. You become a slave to your own body, your own mind - and its sicknesses.

This is not freedom. This is not what freedom is for.

Paul says, “You were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence…”

This is an important verse for us. Self-indulgence may be about as central to the American ethos these days as freedom. According to Paul, that shows we’re missing the point. Freedom is a gift, and it’s a gift to be used for the benefit of others, not to indulge our own appetites. Currently, our culture is largely centered around consuming things. We eat more, we buy more junk, we do more drugs than anybody else in the world. We’ve sort of started to decide this is not how we want to live, but we’re discovering it’s hard to stop. The genre of sometimes heart-breaking reality TV shows like “The Biggest Loser,” “Hoarders,” and “Intervention” shows how difficult it is for people to start telling themselves ‘No.’

How do you do it? Paul says, “Live by the Spirit… and do not gratify the desires of the flesh…” Then he gives a whole list of things to stop doing and a whole other list of things to start cultivating in your life: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

One of the most effective ways to re-orient your exercise of freedom away from self-indulgence is to focus on others. Paul takes this to a pretty shocking level when he says, “do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another.” That’s pretty extreme-sounding. “become slaves to one another” Isn’t being a slave the opposite of being free?

It depends. Being enslaved against your will is one thing – an evil thing. But electing to serve is different. In the Old Testament, laws allowed for a Hebrew slave who earned his freedom to choose what he wanted to do with it. One option was to continue serving in the same household. If that’s what he decided, somebody would take an awl and pierce his ear against the doorpost. (Ex21:6) Then, he was identified as a slave who had the option to be free and chose, rather, to stay in service to that household. This is the kind of life Jesus chose for himself. He was free and elected to put himself in our service. He willingly sought the lowest position, becoming a servant to everyone, and he taught us we should do the same.

What is freedom for?

It’s so you can choose who you will serve.

You’re a free person. Free to serve anywhere and anyone you choose – BUT you’re not free not to serve... because even if you serve no one else, you’ll be serving yourself. My recommendation – turn right back around to the one who bought your freedom for you, and serve him. As our prayer book says, in his service is perfect freedom. (BCP p. 57 or 99, Morning Prayer... Collect for Peace)

Being a deacon is teaching me some surprising things about service and obedience. Obedience is a type of freedom. I’m free from a lot of responsibilities. Being a deacon is kind of like being a duke instead of being the king – you get a lot of the benefits without the heavy responsibility. It’s not my responsibility, for instance, to lead St. John’s or to decide things about funding or to answer to the Diocese for our parish’s activities. In a way, this limits my freedom, but in another way, it frees me up to be more effective in the responsibilities I do have.

Before I had accepted this specific role, I was free to worry about a wider range of things in the church – it seemed at the time like a conscientious thing to do. I worried about small local things at St. Mark’s and about things in the Episcopal Church as a whole and in the Anglican communion; I worried about things going on in other denominations and about trends in church attendance across all denominations – in the United States and in Europe. I was quite diligent and far-reaching in my concerns. At one point, I was very concerned to decide which church tradition was most correct, among the Episcopal, Catholic and Orthodox traditions – I was having a particularly tough time with that question and read some books and sought out various people to talk it over with. It seemed it might be impossible to determine conclusively. It was hard to know how to weigh different strong points and failings, and there were bound to be at least a few factors I was unaware of. At some point, though, it suddenly occurred to me… no one had asked me to make that decision. I was, in fact, completely unqualified to do so. It was such a helpful realization – it wasn’t my job! Wow, what a relief! That really freed up my time and mental energy to consider questions much more relevant to me – where am I called to serve?

This is always a good question – if you’ve not asked it, today is a good day. As fair warning, though, the most likely task he’ll set you to is serving others. You were called to freedom… don’t use your freedom as an opportunity for self indulgence but through love become slaves to one another… Love your neighbor as yourself

Our freedom is a gift from God; like all the gifts God has given this community, we shouldn’t just keep them to ourselves. Each of us should use our gifts, and our freedom as Henry Ward Beecher suggested (regarding the gift of one’s intellect) …

not as he uses a lamp in the study, only for his own seeing, but as the lighthouse uses its lamp, that those afar off on the sea may see the shining, and learn their way.

---------

Our father’s God, to thee, author of liberty, to thee we sing;

long may our land be bright with freedom’s holy light;

protect us by thy might, great God our king.

Amen.

Trinity

2010-05-31T18:52:00.006-06:00

Readings for Trinity Sunday, Year C Illustrated bulletin insert

God, you yourself are a community: Father, Son and Holy Spirit; help us to model our life together after your love in the Trinity.

Today is Trinity Sunday – and tomorrow is Memorial Day.
Do you remember what we’re remembering on Memorial Day? Got an email this week from several people with a cartoon by Joe Heller showing a guy in a baseball hat, sunglasses and an apron leaning over his barbecue grill - “Hotdogs, Hamburgers, Bratwurst… Is there anything I forgot?” while in the smoke above the grill, you can see the faces of soldiers who sacrificed their lives, part of a bigger picture that’s obscured when we forget our history.

When we don’t understand or remember the bigger story and what others have given for our sake, we may treat what we’ve received lightly or even throw it away. When we don’t realize our part in the bigger story, the only story that matters is our own, and by itself, it’s very small.

As part of St. John’s, we are part of the Episcopal Church, and the Anglican Communion, and the Church universal from the past and into the future. It’s important to remember the bigger story we’re part of.
For Christians, every Sunday is a Memorial Day – “we remember his death; we proclaim his resurrection…” Everything we do in a Sunday service - every part of the liturgy, every action, every word, every piece of art on the walls, every sound, every taste - is designed to help us remember, to ingrain the story of who we are and who God is into the fabric of our being. Our language resonates with the different tones of Father, Son and Holy Spirit and our understanding of those relationships.

Glory to you, Lord Christ...
Our Father, who art in heaven…thy kingdom come...
Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit…
We believe in one God…

The Trinity forms the basis and model for the community of the Church and for every relationship we participate in: family, church, school, work, city, nation… We learn best from the Trinity how to be part of a community, part of God’s bigger picture.

What is the Trinity? There are many doctrinal formulations and descriptions, many symbols and analogies to try and help people remember this central understanding of our faith in God. Take a look at the insert in your bulletin. The historical documents of our church say that the Trinity is “one God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit” (BCP - Catechism, p. 852)“Three Persons, of one substance…” (Articles of Religion, Article I, BCP p. 867)
If you take a look sometime at the Athanasian creed, it gets very involved.

(More info on the history, etc. of the Athanasian Creed.)

But words don’t really capture the relationship of the members of the Trinity. People have tried with images also. The inside of your insert explains some of this visual symbolic vocabulary.
St. Patrick’s famous shamrock,
the Celtic triquetra knot,
various combinations of circles and triangles, conveying that the Trinity has both “one-ness” and “three-ness.”
You can also combine symbols of the Father, the Son and the Spirit with these to show distinctions among the members.

More complex designs combine words and images show that while the three Persons of the Trinity are all God, they have distinct identities; they are not the same as each other. The Shield of the Trinity is based on the Athanasian Creed - The Trinity window in Trinity Episcopal Church in Galveston is a circular version of the shield diagram.

But symbols can’t capture the identities of the members of the Trinity either. As Sandra Schneiders, a Roman Catholic nun, observed, “God is more than two men and a bird.” The Trinity is more than words or symbols can convey, but symbols can help us focus on important aspects of God’s character. These interlocking circles here on the front of the pulpit, for instance, show that the members of the Trinity are equal, each whole, and each inextricably joined to the others. How could it inform our life together if we understood and lived the truth that we are all equal, whole and inextricably joined to each other and to God?

On the back of your insert is a much more complex and nuanced representation of the Trinity – Rublev’s icon. Here, three people are presented, not just shapes or symbols or words, and we can read from their expressions and gestures something about their relationships.

One thing to notice is all the faces are the same, because all are God. As Jesus said to Philip in last week's Gospel when Philip asked to see the Father… “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” (Jn 14:8-9)

The angels are all looking at each other, and their wings overlap each other, showing their close relationship, and their attentiveness to each other. To be in relationship, then, means not only that our lives intersect and overlap at points, but we need to consciously pay attention to each other, to see and hear one another.

The three are seated around a table, with food; their relationship isn’t only talk, but includes hospitality and enjoyment. And there are four sides to the table but only three guests; the open seat is closest to us, and we are invited to join in. So while we love each other and consciously work to sustain our relationships, we should also always look to welcome new members into our community through hospitality.

(Here is one in-depth analysis of the imagery, and here is a reflection on the icon, and another reflection)

Bishop Ian Douglas of Connecticut said,

The Trinitarian God is a God whose very nature is one of relationality, whose very essence is defined by relationship. Our Trinitarian God is thus a God of community, a divine community of love.

The Rev. Joyce Wilkinson commented on this thought that

We can’t be a Christian alone; even our God is a community.

In a different analogy, the relationship of the Trinity was described by St. John of Damascus in the 8th century as a three-person dance (his word was perichoresis), requiring each one to pay close attention to the others in order to move together gracefully. Let’s see them try that in Dancing with the Stars!
Even when you’re paying attention and trying to move together, it can be tricky; imagine if you were to try dancing without paying attention to who you’re dancing with, or even ignoring them… You’re going to step on each other and trip or go opposite ways and maybe yank each other over – any of which will look very un-graceful.

Sometimes, the church is very ungraceful in the way it dances together. But God is not.

The Rev. Joyce and I were talking about the Trinity at Starbucks Thursday night, and afterwards she sent me an email – she had been thinking more about this metaphor of the dance, and she sent me something she read from the Rev. Charles Hoffacker:

The Trinity is unending, joyous dance, yet the wonder is that the circle breaks open,… inviting us in…

Amazingly, God wants us as dance partners, and he doesn’t seem to mind that we are ungraceful, because he loves us. I’m a terrible dancer, though ironically, I love the idea of dancing and would like to learn to do it well, but I always feel nervous about agreeing to dance with someone because I’m worried about being so bad at it and getting embarrassed. But if I trust the person, I can relax and try to follow them, and I end up enjoying the dance. I think it’s like that with God; once we start to trust him and pay attention to where he’s going and try to go with him, we begin to enjoy the dance and worry less whether every step is perfect.

There are different kinds of fear that keep us away from things. One is fear of actual danger. Fr. John talked last week about Pentecost, and how the Holy Spirit is like wind and fire – dangerous and unpredictable. So it’s reasonable to be afraid of allowing the Spirit free reign in your life. It could be dangerous. But then again, there’s courage, and courage is a response to fear when you’re trusting something more certain – and it’s more certain that God loves us. Not that it’s a guarantee nothing scary will happen. It might - God might dip you nearly to the floor – or swing you up over his head – in fact, we ought probably to expect something like that, because he’s kind of crazy sometimes. But the thing is, he won’t drop you.

If the dance metaphor doesn’t work for you, you might also think of this life with the Trinity as cultivating a garden, like in The Shack, where the Holy Spirit is planting and pruning and moving things around in your life. The next 24 weeks, in the long, green growing season after Pentecost, something ought to start sprouting and producing some fruit in you. Don’t be surprised. The Church does its best to make sure the Word gets planted every week (and every day, too).
Then, sometimes when people or events in your life poke holes in your heart, God takes that opportunity to push the seeds further down – and often some manure gets thrown in, too. Take heart...
This is a prime growing environment!
So actually, if something doesn’t grow in you these next few months, that should be the more surprising and concerning thing – and maybe you will want to think about how to rehabilitate your soil...

During this long, green growing season, tend your garden and see what God’s been planting as it starts to come up and bloom.

Amen.

Unity, Constancy and Peace

2010-04-18T20:52:00.004-06:00

Readings (3rd Sunday after Easter, Year C)

Lord, remembering the collaboration and the martyrdoms of Peter and Paul, may we also serve you in unity and constancy and peace. Amen.

Paul’s conversion

on the road to Damascus

after having persecuted

Jesus’ followers…

Peter’s restoration

after having denied Jesus…

(Peter, do you love me? by ShouYume)

Two major events in the lives of two major figures in the early Church – one was trying to get the likes of the other one killed – and God brought them together to work side by side. What a crazy idea! Inviting a malicious opposition leader into the Church as a teacher, or putting the responsibility of shepherding the vulnerable new Church in the hands of a coward. But that’s what Jesus did – forgive them; they didn’t know what they were doing. But Jesus knew what he was doing.

One way to get rid of an enemy (other than blowing him to smithereens) is to make him a friend. It sounds idiotic and naïve, but that’s basically what Jesus did with Paul. And so the relentless persecutor of Christians became the Church’s most effective missionary. And what about Peter? 'With friends like that, who needs enemies?' But Jesus used Peter, too – the one who bailed and ran became part of the foundation of the Church. I suppose one way to teach people responsibility is to give it to them.

The story of Peter and Paul is also our story - Confrontation, judgment, forgiveness, restoration – and a new life together. In the Eucharist, we pray “Sanctify us…that we may serve you in unity, constancy and peace.” Peter and Paul neither one started out being constant, and they were the farthest thing from unified at first.

Peter and Paul were on opposite teams; Paul was jailing Peter’s friends and colleagues and having them killed, methodically and with the consent of the religious authorities. When people were stoning Stephen to death, Paul (the man on the right -->) was holding their coats for them.
Later, he got more proactive about it. He obtained letters authorizing him to round up anyone following what they called ‘the Way.’ That’s where he was headed, letter in hand, when Jesus struck him blind, asking “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”

Paul was full of himself with authority. Jesus had to knock him off his high horse – literally – before he would be quiet enough to listen to the story he’d been shouting down, and hear the truth of the Gospel message. Blinded, helpless, he had to let his victims lead him by the hand, and he learned about faith from them: people he thought were destroying the faith - people like Peter.

Peter’s issue was a bit the opposite. He didn’t need to be knocked down; he was already 'lower than a snake’s belly' with shame, ever since he denied even knowing Jesus – after he had sworn to die for him. He'd thought he was brave but found out he wasn’t. Jesus had to get him to lift his head again and take responsibility for leading the others, even though he didn’t feel able or worthy to, even though he was still scared to die, because people were still trying to kill them – people like Paul.

The persecutor and the deserter... the faithless friend and the outright enemy: both would prove constant in the end.

From the beginning, Peter had left his fishing nets and his home, left everything to follow Jesus. He was the first of the disciples to correctly apprehend who Jesus was.
“Who do you say that I am?”

“You are the Messiah of God”

At the Last Supper, when Jesus began talking about his imminent betrayal and murder, Peter vowed

"Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death!"

But a few hours later, a girl pointed at him in the firelight and said he had been with Jesus, and Peter said,

“I don’t know him.”

Peter, the rock, was not so strong and constant then, and when he heard the rooster crow, he broke down crying and ran.

But encountering the risen Christ can make a difference – can change a person. Jesus rose again and came back to see them, and one of the things he did was restore Peter to dignity and to responsibility –
“Do you love me?”

“You know everything; you know I love you.”

“Feed my sheep.”
And he told him something else – he told him that it would cost him his life. And standing there by the lake, just as they had three years before, Jesus once more said to Peter,
“Follow me.”

And again, Peter did – this time, knowing all that it might mean, he didn’t shrink back; he didn’t run; he didn’t deny Jesus. He followed him to prison, to trial, and to death, crucified upside down at the hands of the Romans under Nero.

Constancy: Peter, who had denied Jesus, turned out to be as strong as a rock.

Jesus can change people in ways that don’t seem possible. We see this in the unlikely collaboration of Peter and Paul. Paul was a well-educated and sophisticated Jew and a Roman citizen. Peter was an uneducated fisherman from Galilee. Peter believed Jesus was the Messiah; Paul wanted to kill people like him. 2000 years later, we remember them together on June 29, the Feast of St. Peter and St. Paul.

Our national cathedral is the Cathedral Church of St. Peter and St. Paul. How did they end up together, these two who started out so diametrically opposed to each other?

Paul had thrown people in prison and approved of executing followers of Jesus, trying to protect his faith from those he felt were trying to destroy it - until Jesus met him on the road and turned him around. Paul then became a wholehearted follower of Jesus and studied under those he had tried to have killed, including Peter, submitting to their leadership. Amazingly, they let him in and taught him – and then sent him out with their blessing to preach to others.

It ended up mostly being Gentiles who listened to him, and this created another complicated issue for the Church. Lots of people weren’t sure Gentiles should be included, or if they were, perhaps they should submit to the Jewish customs also. In Acts, Peter has a vision, followed by an encounter with the family of Cornelius, a centurion, that leads him to accept the idea of Gentiles being part of the Church, but it wasn’t easy for him. Paul tells about confronting Peter for not being consistent in his acceptance of Gentile Christians. They had a very public argument about it. But when the church leaders gather for a council in Jerusalem, it’s Peter who stands up first to speak on behalf of the Gentiles.

For his part, Paul was also putting his neck out there in support of the Gospel being for everyone. During his travels, he was arrested, beaten, put in prison, stoned, and exiled – several times – before being beheaded, for preaching that Jesus was the Savior of the whole world: Jew and Gentile alike. According to tradition, Paul was also executed in Rome under Nero, the same year as Peter. Being a Roman citizen, he was granted the right to have his head cut off rather than be crucified. The Jew who had approved killing to protect the Jewish faith from the Gospel in the end died proclaiming it to people who weren’t even Jews.

Peter and Paul had different backgrounds, different gifts and failings, and different missions in the Church. Both worked, in different contexts, to spread the good news that Jesus had saved everyone in the world from sin. When you have a message like that, it’s ridiculous to fight over logistics.

We have the same message to share. We have different backgrounds, different gifts and failings, and different missions in the Church. We live and work in different contexts. Peter and Paul’s collaboration is an example for us of the unity we pray for and work towards.

Jesus’ words to Peter and to Paul - and to us - are clear.
“Why are you persecuting me?”
“Do you love me? …Feed my sheep.”
Our prayer and our response should mirror theirs: Lord, open our eyes to ways we injure you in our conflicts; give us strength and courage to follow you despite our fears… “that we may serve you in unity, constancy and peace.” (BCP 363, Eucharistic Prayer A)

Amen

----------------
Extra! Extra!

"Stained glass bluegrass" group Daily & Vincent singing "Don't you want to go to heaven when you die?" - partly coming from today's gospel text:

Here's another one: "Peter, Do you love me?" by The Primitives

John 21:15-19 in American Sign Language.

Seventh Word

2010-04-05T12:37:00.001-06:00

It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, while the sun's light failed; and the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit." Having said this, he breathed his last. (Luke 23:44-46)

When it comes time for me to die, will I have the time, the opportunity, to choose to let go?

In the Great Litany (BCP p. 149), we pray:

"From dying suddenly and unprepared, Good Lord, deliver us."

But it's not dying that we pray to be delivered from; we all die - Jesus died. And if you had to choose the amount of time it took, some may prefer suddenly.
It's this idea of dying unprepared that's terrible.
- - But this is the thing you do have a choice about. There is no choice about whether you will die, and how you'll die is not really in your control either.
But preparing, you can do - and you can do it now, at any time. That's the point of Ash Wednesday (BCP p. 265):

"Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return."

Jesus taught us everything we need to know about being human. He showed us how to love, how to serve, how to pray, how to suffer - even how to die:
"Father, into your hands I commend my spirit."

Most of our lives, we're learning to let go: of people we love, of places we leave, of things we don't need - and anyway can't keep, even of ourselves - who and what we have been.
When we die, it will be letting go of the last of what we're holding onto here and putting ourselves in God's hands.
When it comes time for you to die, will you be able to say this, to do it?

Do you realize that you already have?

As Paul said to the folks in Rome (Romans 6:3)

"Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?"

Remember our baptismal covenant (BCP p. 302) :

"Do you turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as your Savior ... Do you put your whole trust in his grace and love?" I do.

And remember our prayer at the Eucharist (Prayer B - BCP p. 369):

"Unite us to your Son is his sacrifice, that we may be acceptable through him..."

From dying suddenly and unprepared, he has already delivered us.
At your baptism, you already commended your spirit into the Father's hands; His hands are already holding you.
Let go of everything else.

Fifth Word

2010-04-05T11:47:00.000-06:00

After this, when Jesus knew that all was now finished, he said (in order to fulfill scripture), "I am thirsty." A jar full of sour wine was standing there. So they put a sponge full of the wine on a branch of hyssop and held it to his mouth. (John 19:28-29)

It's a genuine human need - the need for water.
We like to think we're complicated, but our basic needs are very simple; our bodies are mostly made of water, and without it, we die.
Jesus was no superhuman, no demi-god or phantom. He was human, like us, and when his body became dehydrated from exposure and loss of blood, he was thirsty.

What do you thirst for?
Listen to your body:
What makes you shaky and sweaty when you don't have it? alcohol? coffee? pills?
Observe your emotions and behavior:
When do you snap at people close to you? When you need rest? need food?

What makes you ignore even food and rest, driving yourself into the ground after it, obsessed...
Insatiable thirsts: for success, for recognition, approval? for power, love? for money?
If these are what you want, you will never be satisfied with life - you'll never get enough.

Morgan Dix addressed the congregation at Trinity Church, New York on this same day, on this same topic in 1894 - more than a hundred years ago, but he could be talking to us:

"O poor, dissatisfied, harassed and troubled race! O scene of eager and hopeless longing and desire, on which this Cross looks down, telling that everlasting truth, which men everlastingly decline to believe! There is no relief from it, excepting in the Cross."

You can drink enough water for the next couple of hours, but pretty soon, you'll be thirsty again, and tomorrow, and tomorrow - like the Samaritan woman drawing water from the well.
There is no relief from even the concrete and basic things our bodies crave, much less the abstract and indefinable things our minds desire.

How much approval is enough?

How much money is enough?

If you thirst for things that you can never get enough of, your thirst will be a torture, a continual reminder of what you don't have. You will go "wretched and tormented, from loss to loss, all the days of your life." (M. Dix)

We thirst for God... In him we live and move and have our being. (Acts 17)
As a deer pants for water, so my soul longs for God...(Psalm 42)

But the world around is offering me vinegar.

I am thirsty.

Third Word

2010-04-05T11:15:00.001-06:00

Standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, "Woman, here is your son." Then he said to the disciple, "Here is your mother." And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home. (John 19:26-27)

“Who is my mother?”

Once, earlier, Jesus’ mother and brothers came to where he was teaching and wanted to talk to him, and he had looked around and said, ‘Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?’ (Mt 12:48) … ‘My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.’ (Lk 8:21)
That’s what we’re supposed to be about: hearing God’s word and doing it. So, when we’re doing what we’re supposed to, we’re living as part of the household of God, and we should treat each other as family… or preferably, as family should be treated.

Nobody can replace your mother; nobody can replace your father, your sister, your son.

But the respect and honor you give your parents, the unconditional but also unrelenting love and concern you have for your children - can inform how you relate to people here and in the Church as a whole.

Almighty God, we pray you graciously to behold this your
family, for whom our Lord Jesus Christ was willing to be
betrayed, and given into the hands of sinners, and to suffer
death upon the cross; who now lives and reigns with you and
the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (BCP p. 276 - Good Friday liturgy)

Blood is thicker than water –
and we are bound by Christ’s blood to each other.

As he was dying, Jesus connected the one who loved him
with the one he loved.

He still does:

- he gives you people who love him and asks you to honor and respect them as you would your own parents … Here is your mother

- he gives you people he loves and asks you to love and care for them as you would your own children … Here is your son

First Word

2010-04-05T11:13:00.000-06:00

When they came to the place called the Skull, there they crucified him, along with the criminals--one on his right, the other on his left. Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." And they divided up his clothes by casting lots. (Lk 23:33-34)

Who have you crucified?
Nobody? Come on…

What’s the maddest you’ve ever been?
– so mad it scared you and you try to forget about it?
Who did you turn on?
What did you do to them?
Have you ever talked about it since?

Who has most deeply offended and disappointed you?A teacher? Public official? Sports figure? The president? A priest?
What did they do? Or at least… what was the accusation? (In public opinion court, it’s the same thing…) Did they molest a child, embezzle money, have an affair? … or in some other way not live up to expectations?
What was the response of the community? of the news?
And where were you in the mix? Did you shoot your arrows with the rest – or were you out front yelling ‘fire!’, doing “a dirty job that somebody’s gotta do.”

What about the time you were accused…
when they needed the blame to fit somebody, and you were called in to answer.
“So, who was responsible for this?”
Even if it wasn’t you, who did you throw under the bus?

If not any of these, there are always sins of omission...
failing to render aid…
Whose trouble have you so successfully looked past, ignored so that it’s just annoying background noise?

Not our finest hour – any of these.

And from up there, he has seen it all.

But we can join his gracious prayer: Father, forgive me… I didn't know what I was doing.

Bless the dying

2010-03-21T20:16:00.003-06:00

5th Sunday in Lent, Year C - Readings

Mary anoints Jesus' feet with aromatic oil and wipes them with her hair; the house fills with the fragrance of the perfume. What is she doing? Jesus explains that she is anointing him for burial.

Not long before, Mary had rubbed the same kind of oil on her brother Lazarus's feet and helped wrap his body with spices in long strips of cloth before they buried him. Earlier, when Lazarus was sick, they had sent word to Jesus, but he hadn't come, and her brother died. She cried for days. Then finally Jesus came, and he raised her brother from the dead.

Now, they are all here together again, in Bethany, a small town outside Jerusalem, where Jesus knows his death is waiting. This evening, about a week before Passover, he has come to his friends' home for dinner. Lazarus is sitting at the table; Martha is serving the food. Judas is glaring at his weirdo little sister, who has now untied her hair, and perfume is filling the house.
Before we go further, I want to clarify some mix-ups that you may have about Mary and about this situation.
You are not alone (but you are also not correct) if you think this is Mary Magdalene. You're also wrong if you assume she is or ever was a prostitute. But this is not completely your fault; it used to be an official interpretation, articulated by Pope Gregory in a sermon in 591. Now, however, people officially agree this interpretation was wrong, but it's hard to change a story people have become so committed to. ("Mary Magdalene: Saint or Sinner?")

Why did the Pope say these women (Mary of Bethany, Mary Magdalene and another woman in Luke's gospel) were all the same? One actual theory is that there were just too many Marys and it was confusing, so the church combined them to clean up the story.
There are a lot of Marys in the Bible: there's Mary, the mother of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, Mary the wife of Clopas, Mary the mother of Joses and Salome, and "the other Mary" as well as this Mary – Mary of Bethany. But you can't just amalgamate them.
Imagine if we decided: It's too confusing to have three Carols in our congregation. From now on, let's just say they are all the same Carol. Won't that make things clearer?
We also have several Johns: we even have several Father Johns in our history. Why not, for the sake of economy, just combine them all into one conglomerate priest we could name "Fr. John William Bedingfield Sonnen" – "Fr. John" for short. And if there are priests whose names we don't remember, they can also be included as part of "Fr. John."

This is basically what happened to Mary of Bethany. But she is her own person, and who she is and what she does in this story are important in the Gospel, which is also part of our story.
We are Christians; Jesus is the Christ, and Mary of Bethany is someone who acted toward Jesus in a way that was exactly appropriate. As Episcopalians, we also strive to act in ways that are exactly appropriate in each situation – so it would be good for us to pay attention to Mary of Bethany.

Who was Mary of Bethany, and what allows her to respond to Jesus in a way that is so fitting?
Mary of Bethany is that same Mary of Mary & Martha fame – she sat a Jesus' feet while her sister was busy in the kitchen, and when Martha complained to Jesus that he should make her help with the work, Jesus said, Leave her alone; she's doing the right thing.

One thing I learned from Bishop Doyle's scripture reflections this week was that some scholars say Mary is also Judas Iscariot's sister. Imagine that! What a family group: Mary & Martha, Lazarus, and Judas. And their dad is Simon the Leper.
In this story, Judas is complaining about his sister's behavior. She has basically just poured a year's salary down the drain as far as he's concerned, so he complains to Jesus about the waste. Like he'd said to Martha, Jesus tells Judas, Leave her alone - she's doing exactly the right thing.

A lot of commentaries make what I consider to be a patronizing and idiotic assumption that when Mary poured the perfumed oil on Jesus feet, she had really no understanding of what she was doing or why.
I think she knew what she was doing. There is a long tradition of people, particularly the prophets, acting out messages: Jeremiah wearing a yoke to illustrate Israel's enslavement, Hosea marrying a prostitute to show how God is faithful to his unfaithful people, Ezekiel making a tiny model of Jerusalem and besieging it, and on and on – and they all did these things intentionally, putting the meaning into words later.
In the same way, Jesus put into words the meaning of Mary's actions, to clarify what she was doing and why. Every week, we do something similar when we participate in the Eucharist to remember Jesus' sacrifice for us and the new life we have in his new life: "We remember his death. We proclaim his resurrection…" Actions help us remember, and the words explain the meaning.

When it comes to memory, the senses are the best triggers - and the most powerful is the sense of smell. Nothing can pull you so powerfully or so quickly back into a particular time or place as a familiar smell. In this story, it's clear that people remembered the smell of the perfume filling the hosue, because they specifically wrote that into the story. The smell was a powerful part of their memory of what happened there. What might it have triggered for them on that night?

If people at that time were familiar with preparing bodies for burial, those smells would already be associated for them pretty powerfully, but especially for that particular family. Remember, it was not long ago that Lazarus had been raised from the dead – but before that, he died and had to be anointed for burial.

Lazarus himself was at the table that night; what would the smell have triggered for him? He was the one who had been embalmed in those oils and spices. As he sat there, maybe he smelled their sharp scent stinging his nostrils and was back in the dark of the tomb again, waking up bound head to toe, trying to suck air through layers of linen cloth around his face, struggling upright and pulling at the shroud, lurching forward and suddenly blinking in the sunlight. And now, with that same smell filling the air, Lazarus watches his sister anoint with embalming perfume the feet of the man who brought him back from death.
Martha stands nearby, the smell taking her even a few days further back, to the day of her brother's death: no time to grieve, too much to do, but then working together with her sister to prepare his body for burial, closing his beautiful eyes and then finally binding his face in white linen cloth. When Lazarus came out of the tomb four days later, restored – it was like a dream. After Jesus brought her brother back, it seemed impossible to imagine that smell ever coming into their home again – but here it was, filling her with fresh grief, even though her brother was sitting at the table in front of her, alive. How is it possible to equate that smell with Jesus? How could it be possible that he would die?

This is a family very recently acquainted with death, so it may be that not everybody needed to have it explained. Except Judas – all he could smell was money. But possibly for the others, a much deeper realization was settling in. Just because Lazarus had been raised, that didn't mean death would never touch them again. It would – very soon.
Mary paid attention and knew Jesus well enough to realize that this man, whom they loved and who had done so much for them, was preparing to die. As impossible as that seemed to be to imagine or accept, she had already accepted it and she had made preparations. Now, though she didn't want it to be, the time was right, and the house began to fill with the fragrance as she poured out her offering of love and grief.

Some of the most beautiful and mysterious works we perform as a Church are our prayers and service for those who are dying. Many of you have experience of offering this kind of service to those you love.
Mary of Bethany blessed Jesus in this way. May we take her as a model for how to "bless the dying, soothe the suffering and pity the afflicted." (BCP p.134 from the service of Compline in the Daily Office)
Amen.
Given to St. John's, Silsbee on March 21, 2010

Shine in our hearts

2010-02-14T20:06:00.006-06:00

Shine in our hearts, Lord Jesus, and light us up so that you shine out of us as well. Amen

Readings
Let's reflect a bit today on theophany – that's a word for things like what we just read, Moses seeing God face to face and the disciples seeing Jesus transfigured into light and talking to Moses and Elijah, and God's voice coming out of a cloud.
Theophany is when God reveals himself in ways that we can't deny, when God shows up in ways that freak us out because they are so real, when something happens that moves us so deeply, we either say or do idiotic things trying to make some kind of response - or we don't' talk about it at all because we can't find any words that will work to really convey what happened.
You may not often talk about those experiences, or maybe you only tell one other person or a couple of people you really trust, but there is no way you can ever forget what you saw or what you heard or what you felt in that moment. And there's no way you can go back to how it was not knowing that things like that are real. Even though later, you may question whether you dreamed it or imagined it, deep down you know you didn't make it up.
And I think we hope that what we experience in moments like that is the true reality. We hope that what we see around us in mundane daily life is just a pale reflection of the way things really are, what life really is at the core. The difficulty in hope, though is it's a (seemingly) very fragile thing, and you hesitate to lay it out completely because you're not sure it could survive disappointment. Or maybe you know somehow deeply that if you completely hope for all you desire, there's no way you could stay in control – you'd be at the mercy of how God responds. And if you laid out your deepest hope to God, you couldn't stay aloof from him and safe from what you fear would happen if you found that God either doesn't want or isn't able to fulfill what you hope for – that your hope may in fact be foundationless. You think your hope is what keeps you alive, and you couldn't survive losing it.
So you hedge your prayers, you pray for what seems reasonable, for what God couldn't refuse; you pray in ways that give God an "out" in case he doesn't answer or doesn't want to or maybe isn't actually able to – because maybe he doesn't actually exist …
But why do you think we have hopes if there isn't actually a reality they're based on? Thomas Aquinas hashed this question out from both the theological and philosophical point of view, and he says we're right to hope - because God does exist and God is good – and he hasn't made a desire without its object. We have hope because there is such a thing as its fulfillment. Aquinas says that if we have a desire, not only does its object exist, but it's attainable and it's also good – in fact, it's intended. God isn't cruel – he hasn't made us so that we hope for things that don't exist or are bad for us or that he has no intention of giving us – so that we'll eternally be frustrated in our deepest desires.
No, God is good, and he's given us good desires, and he's also put in us a desire for himself as the greatest good, so when moments of theophany happen, we are getting a glimpse, a taste of what is most deeply true about God's relationship to us and his love for us.
So, if what we hope for is predicated on a real object, then its fulfillment is possible, and if in fact, this fulfillment was designed and intended by God and is in God's power to grant, then we should have no fear in asking for it – because it's already what God also wants: our wholeness, our integration. What you most deeply desire… already is – and is in God's power to give you.
Are you willing to risk asking for it?
And I mean hopes – those things you most deeply ache for, that you don't think are even reasonable, that you don't think you have any business asking God for because there's no way they could be accomplished. It would take a miracle…
That's what I'm talking about –what kind of church is this if it's not about miraculous expectation? So I'll tell you what I've started doing as a result of this thought process: I've started asking God for what I hope for St. John's: for you as a community and you as individuals. I invite you to do the same… Hope everything you can imagine for us and ask God to do it. And don't hedge or make qualifications to "let God off the hook" in case it doesn't happen – that is your fear and attempt to control the situation so that you can't be disappointed. Instead, try risking disappointment on God.
I'm praying that God starts to breathe on your hearts so that the little embers of hope in there start heating you up inside and even starting to hurt – some of the prophets have said God's word can feel like a fire in your bones. I'm hoping that what he desires for us begins to burn inside us also, until it starts to shine out in our faces and in what we say and what we do. What are y'all waiting for anyway? "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you'll return."

An interesting thing about fire, which I've learned from the firefighters in Vidor, is that it doesn't even have to touch its fuel to ignite it. A fire in one spot can gradually heat an entire area, and anything that can be fuel, when it reaches its ignition temperature, will spontaneously combust at that point. So, in a room where there's a fire in one corner, when the entire room reaches a certain temperature, will completely erupt in flame everywhere.

It's called flashover. Here is another video showing fire behavior leading up to a rollover (burning across the ceiling) and then a flashover (everything erupting in flame).

You know somebody's been burning churches in east Texas, and the interesting thing about that, I think, is they're confusing a symbol of God's power with the thing itself, as though a fire in a church building would destroy the Church. It's the same mistake people make when they try to kill Christians – when they tried to kill Christ. In our worship, fire represents to us God's presence with us in the Holy Spirit, and at Jayde's baptism last week, we lit a candle to symbolize the light of Christ in her heart. Fire is a symbol of God's presence because, like fire, God is not safe, not predictable.
Talking about flashover, maybe Pentecost was something like that. My prayer is that during Lent, God will breathe on you and start a little fire in a corner of your heart, and we'll see what happens by Pentecost.
Amen.

Given to St. John's, Silsbee

February 14, 2010

What is that to you and me?

2010-01-17T10:31:00.007-06:00

2nd Sunday after the Epiphany, Year C

Readings

Jesus, you turned huge vats of water into wine for a wedding feast – and you gave your own blood as wine for us to drink: May we not limit how you choose to answer our needs. Amen.

"They have no wine."

Jesus and his mother have been invited to a wedding in Cana, a few miles from where they live – maybe like from Silsbee to Lumberton. His disciples are there, too. Everybody's talking, dancing, celebrating - doing whatever people do at wedding parties in Galilee in the first century. They're drinking, we know that – because at some point, the wine runs out. And this is not a good thing.

In five or ten, maybe fifteen minutes, however long it takes for a few people to ask for refills and notice that they're not getting any - the guests are going to realize the problem. And when that happens, word will start to circulate; people will start complaining, making snide remarks, and then they'll start to leave early...
At some point, the groom will figure out what's happening, but by then, he's already toast. Later, or maybe right then, he'll yell at the steward for not ordering enough wine, and the steward will smack the servants for not making it last longer. But that won't change the fact that the groom has been totally humiliated in front of his new wife and all of her family and her family's friends and all of his family and their friends: in short, everybody they both know and some people they don't… On the day of his wedding! When his family is trying to IMPRESS everyone, not give them a reason to laugh at him.
Maybe his wife will forgive him… Maybe. But do you think his in-laws will let him forget? Ever?

But all of that is five or ten, maybe fifteen minutes in the future...
Right now, at this moment, only the servants know – and Mary.
How does Mary know? Maybe she's one of those people who pays attention to things other people don't notice, like an expression of concern on a servant's face when he pours her what seems to be the last of the wine in his jug. Who knows, but anyway, she notices the problem before the rest of the guests know. And what does she do? She goes over to her son and taps him on the shoulder, "They have no wine."

The implication seems to be "so do something."
But how does Jesus respond?
"Woman, what is that to you and me?"

It's true, Jesus is God's son, but there may be a lot he hasn't learned yet about being human – at least not from personal experience. The word is, he emptied himself completely to become completely one of us, which may have meant he had to learn how to see out of our eyes. Becoming like us in every way except sin may have meant he had to learn, like anyone else, how to read people and interpret situations. So, at 30 years old, sitting at a wedding a few miles from his home, maybe Jesus wasn't looking far enough into that statement "They have no wine" to see what it could mean in terms of someone else's humiliation – and maybe his experience at that point in his life hadn't led him to fully understand yet what kind of suffering humiliation might be, such that it would be worth stopping, even if it wasn't directly his concern.

He will certainly learn... Give him a few years, and he'll learn all about human nature's capacity to brutalize and humiliate and tear each other to pieces. And he'll also learn how people can wash their hands of another's suffering when it seems not to be their concern.

But now, eating with his friends at a party, before his ministry has become public, before he's become anybody's hero – or anybody's villian, it may be that his mother knows a bit more than he does about the experience of human suffering and humiliation. It's one more thing – maybe one last thing, she teaches him.
Who more than Mary would know about humiliation – and the powerless anger that comes with it - to be talked about all over the place, to have the conversation stop when you walk up, to know people are saying and assuming all kinds of things about you that you have no chance to refute. Certainly it was a blessing that the angel explained the plan to Joseph, but I doubt the rest of the town was informed.

Humiliation is so awful, a lot of people would prefer death. "I wish I could just curl up and die!" Really, if you think about it, you only have to die once, and it's over with. But humiliation can go on and on... Nine months must have been an eternity for Mary. What she went through must have made her sensitive to others' humiliation – and perhaps here at the wedding, she taught her son to see it too.

"Woman, what is that to you and to me?" It was nothing to him; why should it be anything to her? But for some reason it was something to her. She didn't say another word to him, just turned to the servants; "Do whatever he tells you." And why should anyone have listened to her? – except sometimes, you can just feel that something serious is at stake, something you don't understand but you know you'd better respect. So he says, "Fill the jars with water" - and they fill them.

Maybe Jesus didn't completely know where his mom was coming from, but he loved her and respected her well enough to listen and do something, if only because it was a concern to her. And maybe this was about more than just wine.

Nowhere in the text does it say this, but I imagine Mary taking Jesus aside later and saying, "Son, there's a lot you don't know about what we went through with you..."

I don't know if that's a conversation that ever took place, but somehow he learned to recognize and show compassion for people who were being humiliated. Think about how he treated the Samaritan woman he met at the well, or the woman caught in adultery who officials pushed in front of him in the temple. Remember how he responded to Nicodemus, who crept in at night to see Jesus for fear of what his colleagues might say. To all of these people, Jesus explained that God's not out to punish and shame us; we've all been hurt and made mistakes, and God loves us and wants to make us well. That's the point. This is a hospital for sick people, not Survivor Island. "Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him." (John 3:17)

Making wine out of water - that's impressive, and no doubt the groom WAS impressed. But I imagine what he appreciated more was being saved from humiliation and being given the chance to start his marriage on a high note. This first of Jesus' miraculous signs not only shows God's abundant, extravagant provision for our needs, even seemingly insignificant ones – it also shows God's compassion, pointing to the nature of God's love – which is often characterized as 'loving-kindness."

This miraculous sign happened at a wedding, and I think there's something to notice about that, too. More important that wine, in long-term relationships, is kindness. Loving feelings fade out at times; what makes relationships last and grow stronger are loving actions – and love often takes the form of kindness. It's difficult to be kind when you're irritated, but at those times it's more important than ever. Kindness is one of the fruits of the spirit, like love. But love can be hard to grasp at times. Kindness is more concrete. Like outreach. It's not directly love, but it's certainly moving in that direction.

After his resurrection, when Jesus and his disciples were having breakfast on the beach, Jesus asked Peter, "Do you love me?" And Peter said "Yes."
Jesus told him, "Feed my sheep."
Then Jesus asked him again, and a third time, "Do you love me?"
"Lord, you know I love you."
"Feed my sheep."

Peter had gotten past the first major obstacle, learning not to just love himself, but to love God, and Jesus was trying to move him from there to also love his neighbor, and he was teaching Peter in the same way his mother had taught him.
"Peter, maybe you don't love them – you don't have concern for them, but you love me – and I have concern for them. So for my sake, look after them, feed them."

In other words, folks, be kind to each other here.
In other words, when you see someone else's need or suffering, don't ask, "What concern is that to you and me?" Instead, remember your love for Jesus, and "Whatever he tells you, do."

Amen
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Given to St. John's, Silsbee - Jan 17, 2010

Feast of St. John the Evangelist

2009-12-31T12:44:00.004-06:00

Shed upon your Church, O Lord, the brightness of your light, that we, being illumined by the teaching of your apostle and evangelist John, may so walk in the light of your truth, that at length we may attain to the fullness of eternal life; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (BCP - Collect for the Feast of St.. John, Dec. 27)

Who is St. John? By tradition, St. John was one of Jesus’ closest disciples, the one to whom he entrusted his mother as he was dying on the cross; the one sitting next to him at the Last Supper, leaning his head against the Lord’s chest; one of only three disciples to be with him in his agony in the garden of Gethsemane and in the same intimate group present at his transfiguration.

St. John, by tradition, was the youngest of the disciples; you can pick him out from the other disciples in paintings because he’s the one without a beard.

"The Last Supper" by Jacopo Bassano, 1542

He was the younger brother of James; the two of them had been fishermen before Jesus called them as disciples, and Jesus gave the two of them a nickname: “Sons of Thunder” because apparently they were a lot of trouble.

After Jesus’ death and resurrection, John and the other disciples became leaders of the church in Jerusalem and suffered persecution. John’s older brother James was the first of the twelve to be killed. As the believers fled the persecutions in Jerusalem, John is said to have gone to [what is now] Turkey, where he started several churches, including the church in Ephesus.

As persecutions continued, tradition says John was tortured by being put in a vat of boiling oil. Another story says he was given a cup of poisoned wine to drink, but when he blessed the wine, the poison rose out of it in the form of a snake. This story is the source of one of John’s more unusual symbols – a chalice with a snake in it. John was later exiled to the Island of Patmos, where tradition has it that he saw the visions recorded in the Book of Revelation. After the death of the emperor Domitian, John returned from exile to the church in Ephesus, where he continued to teach and lead that congregation and also visit other churches and bishops in the area. By this time, John was in his 90s.

Irenaeus, in some of his writings, recalls as a young boy listening to Polycarp, the Bishop of Smyrna, recount stories of his memories of the apostle and evangelist John when he was at the church in Ephesus.

One of the stories passed down about him (recorded by St. Jerome) says that when the apostle John was very old, his messages became shorter and shorter, until all he would say when he preached was, “Little children, love one another,” and this he would say to them over and over. One story has a congregant ask him, “Master, why do you always say this?” He answered, “It is the Lord’s command, and if this alone be done, it is enough.” Near the end of his life, John’s disciples carried him into the church, so he could speak to his congregation. When they had brought him in and the people were quiet, he raised himself up on one elbow and said to them, “Little children, love one another” and lay back down.

John, the youngest of all the disciples, was the last to die, and the only one to die a natural death of old age. He was a leader in the early church for probably 70 or more years. His life was one dedicated to the Gospel, to proclaiming God’s love for us in the person of Christ and requiring from us the appropriate response of love.

The writings attributed to John and his community are among the most poetic, beautiful, and striking in all the Bible. St. John is called “the Evangelist” because an evangelist is someone who tells the Gospel, the “good news.” John’s Gospel stands apart from the other three. It has a different way of looking at things. Where Mark starts telling the story of Jesus’ life at baptism and Matthew and Luke begin with his birth, John goes back to before the beginning of time and finds Jesus there, with God his Father, creating the world.

Reading the prologue to John’s gospel, especially, is like looking down on the whole of Christian theology from far above it. When you look out the window of an airplane, you can see entire cities, even whole states or countries, laid out below you. The Rocky Mountains look like scrunched paper bags, the Pacific Ocean like a piece of textured glass. It’s totally different from the view at ground level. That’s how John writes – he gives us a bird’s eye view of how everything fits together. This is why John’s symbol is the eagle.

But John’s symbol is the eagle for another reason as well…

Have you ever watched an eagle hunt – or a hawk? We have a hawk that lives near the church; you can hear him sometimes. When he’s hunting, he’ll perch high up in a tree or on a power line, sitting very still, looking down at the grass for mice - or he’ll circle slowly in the air. And what happens when he spots what he’s looking for? He folds in his wings and dives, like a missile.

This is another attribute of St. John’s writing: he zeros in on what is most central in Jesus’ life and teaching and drives all his efforts toward getting that one point across. Just like the eagle - that’s the whole point of going up in the air in the first place, not just to admire the view, but to get enough perspective that it’s possible to see what’s most important.

Our lectionary sees this quality in John’s writings also. Matthew, Mark, and Luke each have priority as the primary source for the Gospel readings for one year in our three-year cycle, but John’s Gospel doesn’t have a year to itself. Instead central passages in John’s Gospel are read every year at important points. Those who put together the lectionary cycle realized that what John focused on was key, and if people heard nothing else all year long – if they never came except during Advent and Holy Week, Christmas and Easter – they would hear the whole message of the Gospel in John.

And what does John’s Gospel say? From the heights of his expansive theological vision, the Evangelist zeros-in on a single command: love one another.

Beginning with the Prologue now, at Christmas, we start from before time, to understand what it means that Jesus was born as a baby – John tells us that the Word, in the beginning with God, through whom all things were made – the Word, Jesus, became flesh and lived among us, and by his becoming one of us, he gave us the right to become children of God. And what does that mean?

It means God loves us; he loves his Son, and his Son loves us. And our appropriate response is love – love God; love Jesus; love each other.

By the time we come through Lent, this message is distilled in the Maundy Thursday liturgy, whose content comes from John’s Gospel – the word “Maundy” is from the word “mandate” or “command.” What was Jesus’ command to his disciples at the Last Supper? He told them “I give you a new commandment… Love one another as I have loved you”

In the letters attributed to St. John later in the NT, we hear this message repeated again and again, and we can well believe that this was, in fact, the message he drove home to his congregation. After all his writings and all his years of teaching and leading the church, he had centered on this one thing: love one another. Listen to what 1 John says in various places.

Ch 4: 7-11

7 Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God, ...

8 He who does not love does not know God; for God is love.

9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.

10 In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins.

11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

Ch 3

11 For this is the message which you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another,

18 Little children, let us not love in word or speech but in deed and in truth.

23 And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. (1Jn 3: 11,18,23)

Dec. 27, 2009

Given to St. John's, Silsbee -

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This is St. John’s Episcopal Church, so if we’re taking his name, we ought to resemble him. We ought to be recognizable as relations to him. Let’s work to continually cultivate love for each other – and express love in action, as well as in words. Today, as we celebrate the feast of our patron, hear the Beloved Disciple’s constant message: “Little children, love one another.”

Happy St. John's Day! Today is the Feast of St. John the Evangelist, and we are St. John’s church, so this is a special day for us. It’s an opportunity to remember who we’re named for. It’s a chance to reflect on what our name means for us, because names are not arbitrary, especially names that are chosen.

Is it lawful...to divorce?

2009-10-16T14:41:00.004-06:00

18th Sunday after Pentecost - Year B

Readings: OT, Psalms - Job 1:1; 2:1-10 Psalm 26 or Genesis 2:18-24 Psalm 8 NT- Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12 Gospel- Mark 10:2-16

O gracious and everliving God, you have created us male and female in your image: Look mercifully upon [all married people], and assist them with your grace, that with true fidelity and steadfast love they may honor and keep the promises and vows they make; through Jesus Christ our Savior, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Amen. (BCP p. 425)

“Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”

Wow, let’s just tackle that question, shall we? Because I’m super-well qualified to do so. And I’m sure it’s what you were hoping I’d pick to talk about.

But, it is an issue that affects probably most of us in some way or another, and it’s something Jesus addressed. That in itself is reason enough, but in addition, I think we can see, in the forcefulness of Jesus’ words, what God’s hopes for us are relationally and what we’re meant to be to each other.

When you’re listening to this passage, did you notice who Jesus was speaking to when he got all upset about this? The questioner is not someone in the middle of a painful crisis, sincerely needing and seeking guidance and help. No, who we have here are the Pharisees coming up “to test Jesus” and this is where they’re coming from when they ask “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”

Now, these men spend most of their day every day studying the law; they know what the law says about divorce.

So Jesus answers their question with another question: “What did Moses command you?”

By tradition, Moses was the one who gave

Israel

the Torah – the Law – one passage in the Torah related to the issue of divorce is in Deuteronomy.

Here’s what it says:

“Suppose a man enters into marriage with a woman, but she does not please him because he finds something objectionable about her, and so he writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house; she then leaves his house and goes off to become another man’s wife. Then suppose the second man dislikes her, writes her a bill of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house (or the second man who married her dies); her first husband, who sent her away, is not permitted to take her again to be his wife...” (Deut 24:1-4)

So the Pharisees answered, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.”

Jesus comes back at them – “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

Strong words.

Later, when they were back at the house, the disciples asked Jesus about it again, and he framed the situation from both sides – if the husband divorces his wife and remarries, it’s adultery; if the wife divorces her husband and remarries, it’s adultery. Even stronger words.

Now, I don’t know this, but I’m imagining that possibly some walls are going up right now if they weren’t already up just at the reading of this Gospel. Please try to keep listening.

For one thing, remember the point at the beginning: who is he talking to? People who are asking for a generic ruling on a generic subject, looking for loopholes, justifications. And he gets mad.

Contrast that with the way he treated the woman who was caught in adultery, when everybody wanted to stone her. Here’s a specific situation, with specific people. If the question was about the law, the law was clearly broken. But what did Jesus do? He pointed out that no one was without sin, so no one can rely on the law to justify themselves. We all depend on God’s mercy to forgive us and restore us to right relationships with God and with each other.

I think one point Jesus was making with the Pharisees and with the disciples in speaking so forcefully about divorce is that divorce destroys relationships and creates distance, not only between people (those directly and indirectly affected), but also between us and God. It’s not about what’s lawful, what people are allowed or permitted to do; it’s not primarily about he law at all. It’s about people. It’s about what God intended for us and wants for us in our relationships with each other and with God.

The Pharisees’ question was framed from the perspective of someone looking at divorce from outside of it. The question is generic, hypothetical: “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”

You want a rule? You already have a rule – what does it say? “It says we can divorce.” Okay, so there’s your rule. But the rule is because you’re hard-hearted; when you use it for your own convenience or to hurt the other person, you’ve missed the point of what this relationship of marriage was created to be. Marriage is a relationship between people, specific, individual people, not generic/hypothetical people. Don’t reduce the relationship to rules and loopholes. Marriage was meant to put people together to make them something new, in themselves and in relation to the community.

Marriage is sacramental: it’s a vehicle through which Christ offers grace to both people, and to others around them, including children – what is the gift of life itself if not a supreme grace from God? If you’re married, you yourself are one manifestation of God’s grace to your spouse. In the covenant of marriage, you love and serve your husband, your wife, as Christ loves and serves the church. You are an image of Christ, potentially the clearest image your spouse sees of who Christ is. If your wife had only you to judge from, what would she think Christ is like? If your husband had only you to judge from, what would he think Christ is like?

One of the most powerful witnesses of our Christian belief in Christ’s incarnation, for those who are married, is that, when Christ’s grace is at work in your marriage, you can see him in each other. This is the point, at least part of the point of Jesus getting so upset with the Pharisees for trying to find justification and permission for divorce. The point is not what’s permissible under the law – what can we legally get away with in our dealings with each other. The point is that, in our relationships with each other we can come to know God in ways that we can’t know him on our own. Our relationships, particularly the bond of marriage, are avenues of God’s grace – that’s why marriage is a sacrament – that’s why the community of the church itself, as a body, is a sacramental thing and why just being here together for the purpose of worshipping God is beneficial to us - it’s a way God is tangibly at work in us, visible to us. God is present to us through each other. Those of you who are married not only offer God’s grace to your spouse in your relationship, but you also spread it to your family and everyone who knows you, including your church family. Marriage is a gift to the church, and the church has a responsibility to support people in their marriages; when people are married in the church, in fact, we all promise to “do all in our power to uphold these two persons in their marriage.”

Sometimes things in a marriage go haywire and become destructive. God created marriage, and marriage is a good thing, but it can be warped into something awful to the point that, in comparison, divorce is better. If one or the other or both people don’t want to change their destructive relationship, divorce might be necessary to save the people. This doesn’t mean that divorce is good. I have never heard anyone say, “I love getting divorced – I hope it will always be this way!”

No matter what the precipitating situations were, divorce is a terrible loss. It’s a loss of relationship, and also a loss of identity, because of what we heard Jesus quote from Genesis – when two people marry, they aren’t two separate individuals anymore; they’re one.

Have you ever super-glued your thumb and finger together? What happens if you pull them apart?

I’ve been told that divorce is like that.

Divorce laws exist because individual people are of infinite value and shouldn’t be destroyed, even by marriage. But divorce was never anybody’s plan or goal, least of all God’s. The plan for a sacramental relationship between two people is marriage. So the point is not to find legal justifications for divorce but to understand what the intent of marriage is.

What does God want to do in you that he can best do through your marriage? Many things, probably. This would be a good question to take up with him – you can also take it up with your wife or with your husband, because, if you will recall what I said a minute ago, your marriage is an avenue of God’s grace – it’s one of the ways God speaks to you.

Amen.

Come Eat Supper

2009-05-24T18:38:00.003-06:00

Easter 7 - Year B

Readings: Acts 1:15-17, 21-26 Psalm 1 1 John 5:9-13 John 17:6-19

Lord Jesus, thank you for reuniting us with God, our Father. Amen

There’s a podcast I subscribe to called “This American Life” from NPR in Chicago. Each broadcast, they have a theme, and they tell three or four different kinds of stories based around the theme. The last one I listened to, the theme was “Reunited, and it feels so good…”

Jesus is reuniting God, the Father, with his children. The first step was when he became one of us, when he was born as a baby and became our brother, growing up in a family and seeing from the inside what our lives are like. Then, he started talking to us about God, his Father – our Father - what he’s like, what he wants to say to us and how he wants to relate to us.

Finally, he started telling us he was going to leave, but that we wouldn’t be alone – we wouldn’t be left comfortless, as we prayed in the collect – because we would be able to talk to God, to Our Father, directly now.

Earlier on, people had become afraid to talk to God. When Moses went up on Mt. Sinai to receive the law, there was fire and thunder, and the mountain smoked, and everyone was terrified. They told Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen, but do not let God speak to us or we will die.” (Ex 20:1819)

After that, God communicated to his people through the law and then through the words of the prophets, priests and kings, but it was not a perfect system because a good many of those folks were not dependable and garbled up the message or ignored it or said whatever they felt like. So, finally, God sent his own Son to bring the message – to communicate with us, and the way he chose to do that was by becoming one of us.

While that is hard to comprehend in itself: that God’s Son would become a human being – the even more astonishing thing – which is also the more important thing about Jesus coming to live with us, is that in doing so, he brought us back into a relationship with God – and a closer relationship than we had before.

The Exsultet – the hymn at the beginning of the Great Vigil of Easter, says “How blessed is this night/ when earth and heaven are joined/ and man is reconciled to God”

Being reunited to God was a difficult process, certainly not without pain. First, there was the pain of the initial separation – and then a prolonged period of estrangement that was also painful for both us and God. Then, God had to be separated from his Son in order for his Son to enter our lives. That separation was painful for both of them, even though it brought Jesus into a closer connection with us.

Then, once Jesus had reestablished a connection with us, in the bonds he formed with his disciples and followers, he had to leave to go back to God, “And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you.”

And that meant a separation of one type of closeness with us, even though it began to bring us all back to a closer connection with God.

“The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures but will tell you plainly of the Father. On that day, you will ask in my name. I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf, for the Father himself loves you…” (Jn 16:25b-27a)

Jesus has been telling them he’s going to have to leave, and that things are going to get pretty hairy when he leaves, but that, through him, they have the same access as he does to seek help from God – his Father and their Father.

Then, while they’re sitting there, he begins to pray for them. It’s like he’s bringing God in the room and introducing Him to his disciples and introducing them to Him.

“I have told these folks about you; I told them what you said, and they’ve received it and know you’re the one who sent me. Now, I’m asking you – protect them, and unify them, just like we are. While I’ve been here, I’ve looked out for them, but now I’m coming back, and so I’m asking you to look out for them now.”

And pretty soon after this prayer, he gets arrested and killed, and things do get pretty hairy for the disciples, and they don’t understand what’s going on at first, but gradually they realize that Jesus has reunited them with God, his Father and their Father – Our Father.

When you’ve been separated or estranged from someone, even just briefly, reuniting is difficult – and sometimes it takes some help.

Imagine you and your dad having a fight, and you get really mad and go lock yourself in your room. He tries to talk to you through the door, but you won’t say anything.

After a while, here comes your brother… “Dad says come eat supper.”

“No!”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing!”

“Can I come in?”

A brother is different than a dad. Your brother can talk to you in a different way than your dad can – and there are things your brother can tell you that you won’t hear from your dad.

That’s kind of the situation between God and his people. There had been a lot of fighting between us and God, and we’d become estranged and weren’t talking to each other. We had locked ourselves in our room, kind of. So Jesus came into the situation from our side. At first, he ferried messages back and forth like a mediator. He would tell us what God said and explain what he meant by it and he would also listen to our grievances and see what we were upset about and then go out to the kitchen and talk to God for us.

So you’re in your room, feeling a bit better and thinking maybe you’ll come out in a while - and your brother says, “Okay, I’m going – it’s time for supper and I’m supposed to set the table; you should talk to Dad.”

And maybe you feel ready for that and maybe you don’t, but he opens the door, and there’s God, standing in the hall. “I told her that you’re not mad and that you just want her to come eat, and she said she believes you and she’ll come out.”

Then he goes down to the table – and God’s there in the hall, and you’re looking at each other for a while, not knowing what to say – and he says, “Why don’t you come eat with us…”

Amen.

Sixth Word

2009-04-14T15:28:00.001-06:00

The Sixth Word

“It is finished”

It is finished. The accounts are satisfied. The debt is covered - Paid in full.

It is finished. Your ransom has been negotiated. The deal is sealed. Payment made.

It is finished. The cycle of retribution stops with me.

What is the debt? Why are we held for ransom? What’s the retribution for?

Sin.

Sin is separation, distance, estrangement. It’s emptiness, nothingness – a great blankness from which we can’t escape, like a black hole.

Jesus, who knew no sin, became sin for us. He became empty, became nothing, became separated, distant, estranged, heavy with the weight of the sins of the world. He became sin for us, like a black hole.

Here’s one description of how a black hole is formed.

“As a body is crushed into a smaller and smaller volume, the gravitational attraction increases…. Eventually a point is reached when even light, which travels at 186 thousand miles a second, is not traveling fast enough to escape. (Cambridge relativity site)

Jesus poured himself out into the world completely, to displace all of its emptiness. And making himself a void, he took in all our emptiness. The weight of it began to crush him, and still he took in more and more, like an imploding star, pulling into himself all the pain and sin of the whole world, drawing it all together like a massive source of gravity until he contained it all within himself and nothing could escape.

NASA describes black hole formation this way:

“The star eventually collapses to the point of zero volume and infinite density, creating what is known as a " singularity ".

It’s that single point; that single moment of death on the cross; that single person of Jesus Christ, who drew in all sin, pain and sorrow, taking all our emptiness into himself.

It is finished.

Fourth Word

2009-04-14T15:06:00.008-06:00

When it was noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. At three o’clock, Jesus cried out with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which is “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

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Where are there cries of misery around us in our world today? What do they say?

God, "Let the cry of those in misery and need come to you, that they may find your mercy present with them in their afflictions… and give us the strength to serve them…” (BCP - Good Friday Liturgy, Solemn Collects)

“Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?”

It’s Aramaic. Remember, Jesus didn’t speak English.

In a minute I’m going to act out a modern parallel of what Jesus experienced at the hands of the Roman soldiers. The Roman soldiers utilized the cross as an instrument of shameful death.

Here, on Good Friday, the cross is no beautiful ornament.
It’s a torture device. So, what I’ll show you is a modern image of torture, which may be disturbing to you. It’s disturbing to me.

But what are we talking about here? A man who has been beaten, physically and psychologically degraded and humiliated, and at the time he gives this cry of misery - is undergoing horrific torture, not only at the hands of his enemies, but with the approval and even the insistence of his own people. That’s disturbing.

We’re talking about how a society can justify a means to an end. The religious authorities who had Jesus killed considered it necessary – and people who were squeamish about it were just naïve. That’s disturbing.

Caiaphas told the council “You know nothing at all! You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed.” That’s disturbing.

Here in our nation today, people argue about the justification of torture in these same terms. If, by torturing and/or killing a bad person, we can protect good people, then it’s okay – it’s worth it – it’s necessary even. That’s disturbing.

Here’s the situation:

A volatile time, an unstable area, a strange culture, a fanatical religion...

An ineffective officer relegated to an undesirable post, with insufficient support and high demands...

Soldiers stationed in a post none of them want, surrounded by religious fanatics they can’t understand, told to keep order...

So what happens?

Where is your God? Where is your God now?

Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison…?

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References and related information

The Rev. George Pitcher (CoE) – blog entry "When we torture terror suspects, we torture Christ"

New Yorker article on Abu Ghraib abuses

Newsweek article– Abu Ghraib: many prisoners common criminals, not terrorists

Second Word

2009-04-14T15:00:00.003-06:00

The Second Word

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“Save us!”

On Sunday, people were saying it with joy and excitement, like they maybe thought it was true. Because that’s what “Hosannah!” means – “Save us!”

On Friday, the tone is much different, both from the people, and the one thief.

Now, it’s bitter sarcasm; it’s despair that becomes mockery.

- amazing how hope can make you so fragile, teetering so precariously over love and hatred, joy and bitterness.

In a way, their hatred and bitter sarcasm shows the hope underneath, the hope that is cracking under the strain of waiting so long and feeling it will never be realized.

What keeps hope alive? What is the food of hope?

It’s memory.

We have hope that God will be merciful to us, because we remember that he has been merciful to us.

How do we remember? We tell the stories – over and over and over. We make monuments, and write books. We act the stories out, we put them into poems and songs and art and liturgy. Every week, we meet together and remind each other.

Like the Seder meal, we have hope God’s promises will be fulfilled, because we remember how they have been fulfilled. And that memory works both ways. We ask Jesus to remember us, and he asks us to remember him.

Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.

Do this in remembrance of me.

“Today you will be with me in paradise.”

I am with you now in your suffering. You will be with me in paradise.

Remember this.

One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” He replied, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

I don't need your cow

2009-03-16T15:11:00.005-06:00

Readings: Exodus 20:1-17 Psalm 19 1 Corinthians 1:18-25

John 2:13-22

Lord, help us to cleanse our hearts so we can prepare with joy for the Paschal feast.

Yelling at people, turning the furniture over, throwing money on the floor, telling people to get out, and chasing cows and sheep with a whip…

Jesus was kind of upset, it seems like.

Why? What’s he so upset about, exactly?

Is it money? Does he not like the idea of people bringing money into the temple? I don’t think so. Remember the story of “the widow’s mite?” When the widow brought her money put in the offering in the temple, he didn’t run over and slap the two little coins out of her hand and yell at her… So, it’s not money he objects to, per se…And not even money in the temple.

Is it the animals? Does he think it’s inappropriate to have animals running around in the temple? We don’t bring animals to church with us, usually (except maybe for the Feast of St. Francis and the Blessing of the Animals). But at the temple, the animals were regularly part of the service. They were for sacrifice, to make payment to God for sins – or for thanksgiving. If your worship requires animal sacrifice, you have to have animals there. Jesus’ own parents brought doves to the temple to sacrifice when he was a baby. So, he’s not upset that there are animals around.

Was it the fact that people were selling the animals maybe?

Or that they were selling them in the temple?

I think that’s more the issue – but why was he upset about that? It seems like it would just be a convenience for people needing to get animals for the offerings and sacrifices.

Let’s imagine a contemporary parallel.

How could we make it more convenient for people to make offerings at church? You know, sometimes I forget my checkbook, and so I’m not prepared when I get here on first Sundays.

Maybe we could put an ATM in the narthex. Just for convenience.

That way, people could easily get money to put in the offering if they forget and come unprepared.

What do you think? Wouldn’t that be helpful?

If the goal of the offering is convenience, then, sure - why not?

Well, it would be tacky, for one thing. And generally, Episcopalians are on board with Jesus 100% on this – we don’t do tacky. (Thanks be to God!)

But the ATM and convenience store of ready-to-order animal sacrifices at the temple was not just tacky. It also showed that people were lazy and not taking the point of the sacrifice seriously. They were coming to offer sacrifice to God, and they were unprepared. It’s not that they didn’t know what was being asked of them; they just figured a way to accomplish it in the easiest way possible. And in that, they were totally missing the point.

“God wants a cow for a sin offering – okay – I’ll buy one when I get there. That way, I don’t have to haul it all the way to Jerusalem. I’ll just pick one up at the gate on the way in – less hassle.”

God gets pretty frustrated with this attitude and we hear this repeatedly in the Psalms and in the prophets. Here’s one example.

“Hear, O my people and I will speak, O Israel, I will testify against you.

I am God, your God. Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you; your burnt offerings are continually before me. I will not accept a bull from your house, or goats from your folds. For every wild animal of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. …

If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and all that is in it is mine.

Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats?

Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and pay your vows to the Most High”

(Ps 50:7-14)

I don’t need your cow! – it’s my cow anyway! I don’t need your money. I don’t buy things. I made everything. Do you seriously think this is about you giving me something I need?

David gets the point of this in Psalm 51.

“O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise.

For you have no delight in sacrifice; if I were to give a burnt offering, you would not be pleased.

The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”

(51: 15-17)

Maybe we would never put an ATM in the narthex – but being lazy about what we offer to God, coming to church with our hearts unprepared …

Ever do that? And it’s not because we don’t know it’s coming – it happens every week at the same time.

Right now, we’re in the season of Lent – which, incidentally, happens every year at the same time. We’re supposed to be preparing for Easter, which also (to be clear) happens every year at the same time. If you are concerned about not knowing the exact date, let me show you something. Take a look the Book of Common Prayer that you have there in your seat. Find page 883. Here, you can see when Easter will be for the next 80 years. There’s absolutely no excuse to be unprepared.

Don’t be lazy and wait to the last minute to try and spiff up that morning –

God is not interested in whether we can take a nice picture wearing clean, new clothes. God is interested in giving us a clean, new life.

How do we prepare for that? We have to give our lives to God to let him clean them up. And how do we do that? By giving up things we are attached to that aren’t God – and trying to put God in place of that other stuff.

It’s really his place to begin with – like the cows people gave him that he already owned – when we bring offerings and make sacrifices, we’re really only giving God what belongs to him in the first place. God doesn’t need your cow – he doesn’t need your money. He doesn’t need the chocolate you’re not eating or whatever. God wants your life. In making your sacrifices, then, bring offerings that represents you – your life. God wants to come with you on the journey – he doesn’t want some souvenir you picked up in the airport.

So, prepare now for Easter. During Lent, give yourself as an offering and a sacrifice to God.

Amen

One thing I know...

2008-10-05T23:34:00.003-06:00

EP - Year 2
Readings: Psalm 35; John 9:18-41

"One thing I know…"
That’s what the blind man says when he’s being interrogated by the Jewish religious leaders.
"One thing I know … I was blind, and now I see."
At the beginning of the story, before the part we just heard, Jesus and his disciples walked by the blind man, and they started talking about him, about why he was blind, whether it was his own fault or his parents.’ Jesus said it wasn’t anybody’s fault; it was so God’s work would be shown in him. Then Jesus spit in the dirt and put the mud in the man’s eyes and told him to go wash it out, and when the man came back, he could see.
He was blind - now he can see. What more is there to know in this story?

Well, apparently there was some explanation needed. Before you know it, the Jewish religious leaders have got the blind man standing in the witness box, peppering him with questions – but it’s really Jesus they want to put on trial. Maybe Jesus has got this guy in on the scam, pretending he used to be blind to lure people into following Jesus.
The Jews call the blind man’s parents in, but the parents are no fools. ‘Yes, that’s our son, and he was blind, but we don’t know how it happened - ask him.’
They call the blind man back. ‘Admit it – you’re lying! We know this man’s a sinner.’
Except that he’s not lying, and he’s beginning to get adamant about it. ‘I don’t know whether he’s a sinner or not – one thing I do know… I was blind, and now I see.’
The Jews start repeating their questions and harping on Jesus as a charlatan, ‘We know God spoke to Moses, but this guy? We don’t even know where he comes from!’
From the one thing he knows, the blind man starts seeing a lot of things more clearly. ‘Amazing! You don’t know where he comes from, but he opened my eyes… if this man were not from God, he couldn’t do anything.’
"Are you going to teach us?! " the Pharisees shout back at him, "Get out!"
Sometimes what we know can get in the way of our seeing. That’s what happened to the Pharisees. They knew a lot about the Messiah; they’d been waiting for the Messiah for hundreds of years, and they knew what to look for.
In the film Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Richard Dreyfuss’ character, the head of an acting troupe, comments that in the theater, ‘audiences know what to expect, and that is all they are prepared to believe in.’
And Jesus –Jesus was not what the Jewish religious leaders expected in a Messiah. So they didn’t see what was really happening. The blind man was starting to see, though – even though he didn’t know as much. He basically knew one thing – he was blind, and now he could see. And from knowing that one thing, by the time the Pharisees kicked him out, he was prepared to believe in Jesus, the Messiah - the whole shebang.
Interestingly enough, it was his blindness that set the stage - to prepare him for believing in Jesus, to prepare him for giving up everything to trust someone he never saw who had put mud in his eyes and healed him and changed his life forever.

Were you expecting the call you got? I wasn’t.
What was it that set the stage for you to be willing to answer it? When you answered all the many doubts and questions saying, ‘but one thing I do know….’ What was the one thing that prepared you to believe and to follow?
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, throughout the film, try to figure out what they’re supposed to be accomplishing on their mission, which seems vaguely but very urgently defined. The nearest they can come is remembering someone sent them.
‘There was a messenger – we were sent for.’
‘Yes, I remember…’
‘A man standing in his saddle to bang on the shutters… But then he called our names! You remember - that man woke us up. We were sent for. That’s why we’re here, traveling. A royal summons – off at a gallop, fearful lest we come too late…’
‘Too late for what?’
‘How would I know? We haven’t got there yet.’
That’s how it feels to me sometimes. My purpose sometimes seems vague at best, but one thing I know – I was called and, for whatever reason, sent here. We all were. The exact purpose? How would I know? We haven’t got there yet.

In the Four Quartets, TS Eliot writes:
‘what you thought you came for
Is only a shell, a husk of meaning
From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled
If at all. Either you had no purpose
Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured
And is altered in fulfillment….’

If we don’t know what to expect, then we might not limit as much what we’re prepared to believe in – and even so, God can still do infinitely more.
Amen.

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Given to the Iona School for Ministry
September 5, 2008

You are a promise

2008-05-26T21:28:00.003-06:00

Year A, Proper 3
Readings: Isaiah 49:8-16a 1 Corinthians 4:1-5 Matthew 6:24-34 Psalm 131

Thus says the Lord, “I have kept you and given you as a covenant to the people…” (Is 49:8)
A covenant is a promise. God says, “I have… given you as a promise to the people…”
God has given you as a promise to this town and this place. God has given you like a promise to the people of Silsbee and Hardin County. You are part of God’s promise to the people you live around and come to know and care about.
What kind of promise? – for one, a promise of justiceWhat kind of promise? Isaiah talks about things like helping people establish themselves and get back their lost, wasted or stolen heritage. Those are promises of justice.
We are part of God’s promise to this community – and that includes working for justice for people who are being mistreated and hurt and taken advantage of.
Examples
For many years, Gary Monday served as a police officer and saw all kinds of abuse and violence and exploitation – and part of his job was to serve justice by catching the offenders and sometimes by restoring some of what was lost in the damage. Gary was part of God’s promise of justice to the people he served. He was also part of God’s promise of justice to the offenders themselves – because as Paul would argue, being shown that you’ve broken the law gives you a clear call to turn around and change.
But Gary couldn’t possibly keep the whole of God’s promise of justice to all those people by himself (though sometimes, people seem to expect that of the police). There are lots of pieces to our justice system, and lots of people involved in each of those pieces.Betty See worked for many years with victim’s services, and part of her job was to help the victims re-establish themselves – to gain back some sense of security and dignity and self-confidence.
Diane Bebee is now extending her previous work as a social worker and therapist. She’s working to establish The Roosevelt House here in Silsbee. It’s going to be a place of refuge for girls who have been temporarily taken out of their homes because of abuse or neglect.
Right in the back of the church here, sharing space with us, is the Samaritan Counseling Center. You can see the sign when you go out the kitchen door. It serves some of these same children by offering counseling to cope with the abuse they have suffered.
Earl Stover works as a judge, and his job is also part of God’s promise of justice to the people of this community. Our laws serve as guides to set down what we understand justice to be – what kinds of interactions between people reflect justice and what kinds of interactions reflect injustice… It’s the job of judges to interpret those questions in individual situations. When a judge administers justice well, it can give people the opportunity to make things right.
Justice and Grace
This is similar in some ways to the function of the service of reconciliation in our prayer book – just as our justice system doesn’t assume people are perfect, the church also doesn’t assume people are perfect, that we will never mess up, that we will never hurt each other. Of course we will – of course we do. Both the church and our legal system assume that we will mess up. They provide ways to deal with the wrong things we do and also give opportunities for us to turn around and do things differently and re-join the work and service going on.
Fr. John used to be a lawyer, serving as part of God’s promise of justice in that capacity, and now he is a priest and offers us in an even more obvious way God’s promise of justice – which includes grace and forgiveness.
All these things: making just laws, justly enforcing laws, justly interpreting laws, helping victims, helping offenders, offering avenues for reconciliation and grace and forgiveness – these are all part of the same promise of justice that God makes – and that God has given us some responsibility for upholding.
That’s a really big responsibility – to uphold God’s promise of justice - Justice is a tall order. That’s why it takes so many people doing different parts – and each doing them conscientiously. None of those parts are dispensable. Each one of us individually is not so strong or powerful, but together, and with God, we can stand up against injustices and defend people who are being hurt and taken advantage of, especially those who can’t stand up for themselves. And we can work to reconcile and restore people who are doing the hurting as well. God’s justice covers a lot of things.

Don't forget
An important part of justice is not forgetting things that are unresolved, not forgetting people who are still suffering, but making sure we remember until things are made right.
There are lots of people still stuck in bad circumstances, and they are wondering if anybody knows or cares – or if they have been forgotten by everyone, if even God has forgotten them…

But God doesn’t forget. God doesn’t forget any of the people he has made. ‘Can a woman forget [her own baby]? Even these may forget, but I will not forget you,’ God says, ‘See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands.’ (Is 49:15-16)God doesn’t forget any of us. He has our names written on his hands.
What can we do to remember the people and situations we should not forget?
One big way is prayer.
With her prayer beads, Bette Cheek holds in her hands the people God’s given her to remember – including everybody here at St. John’s – and everyday, she prays for us. And she makes prayer beads so other people can do the same. I’m sure many of you have some. Glenda Gray’s pictorial directory can be a similar tool. You can look at the pictures and pray for people and pray for the church. The prayer list in the bulletin is another tool - we pray aloud for these needs Sunday and Wednesday of each week. The Daughters of the King have studied and made vows to pray regularly, and they meet together to stay accountable to that calling. They also wear their crosses everyday to help them remember they have committed themselves to prayer.
Our prayer book includes prayers about every kind of situation the church feels must be remembered – and they’re laid out in a regular rotation so we cover them all. The prayers of the people we do each week also remind us of all the areas God’s hand covers – and for which we also share some responsibility. Justice is only one of them. Our worship is intentionally structured so we will be reminded on a regular basis of all the things God is concerned for – all the things God promises – for us and for everyone.
But being reminded is just the catalyst, just the first part to get things started – if I remember and then forget again, remember, forget, remember again.. without anything ever actually happening as a result, what good is that? The reason we remember is that remembering God’s promises should change the way we live.

God has given us as a promise to the people around us – and God does not forget his promises.

You are a promise.
We are a promise.

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Given to St. John's, Silsbee
May 25, 2008

Seeing and Knowing God

2008-04-28T22:07:00.002-06:00

Easter 6, Year A
Readings: Acts 17:22-31 Psalm 66:7-18 1 Peter 3:13-22 John 14:15-21

Do you know God?
Have you ever seen God? How do you know God is real?

Bob and Joyce are driving to Houston. As they come into the city, traffic starts to pick up. Just as they enter a construction zone, Bob spots a car stalled, partly in their lane because of the construction barricade. He looks in the mirror to move over, and there’s a semi in the other lane – there’s not enough space for all three vehicles – and nowhere for Bob and Joyce to go.
They both flinch, expecting impact – and then, somehow, they’re on the other side.
“How did you do that?” Joyce asks, amazed.
“I don’t know,” Bob says. “It wasn’t me.”

How do you know God is real? Have you ever seen God?
Lots of you have children and grandchildren. Think back to holding that brand new little baby for the first time – those perfect, delicate ears, beautiful eyelashes and tiny fingernails.
Look at your own hand and the lines on your knuckles, the roadmap of purple veins just under your skin.
“The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things.” (Acts 17:24-25)
It feels like this is true – that there must be somebody responsible - It feels like there must be a God, but how do we know God is real if we can’t see God?
Can you see your eyelashes? Why not? Because they’re too close to your eyes.
Maybe we can’t see God because God is too close. Paul tells the people in Athens, “indeed he is not far from each one of us.”
Can you see your heart? Why not? Because it’s inside of you.
Maybe we can’t see God because God is inside of us. Jesus tells his disciples, “You know [the Holy Spirit], because he abides with you, and he will be in you.”

Just because you can’t see something, doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
Sometimes you can feel what you can’t see
You can’t see your eyelashes because they are too close to your eyes. But, you can move the tip of your finger near your eye and feel the tiny hairs brushing against your skin, so you know they are there.
You can’t see your heart, because your heart is inside you - but you can put your thumb in the little space between your collar bones and feel bom-bom as it pumps blood through the arteries in your neck.
I can’t see God, but there are times when I feel that God is with me. I remember once in early spring, taking a walk in the middle of the afternoon, and suddenly, I felt that God was walking with me. I didn’t see him, but I knew he was there. It seemed that if I leaned my head over, it would be resting on his shoulder.
I remember how familiar and simple it felt to be walking together like that with God, and I remember feeling surprised that it was so familiar and so simple – as though we already knew each other very well.
You don’t have to see God to know him. And you already do know God, and he knows you. “Indeed he is not far from each one of us.”

Jesus told his disciples, "I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth …. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.”
Jesus, the Father and the Spirit are all connected with each other and with us, so when we encounter God, it will probably feel familiar rather than strange and frightening.
In a way, this can make God’s presence hard to recognize. If we are expecting God to be completely different from anything we know, we may be surprised to encounter God in a way that feels close and familiar.
Philip, one of Jesus’ disciples, asked him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.”
And Jesus said, “Have I been with you so long, and yet you do not know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father.”Don’t make it more difficult than it is – you know this already
Sometimes, we can make things more difficult than they are.
Some things are difficult and complicated; that’s true. But some things are simple, and we make them complicated when they don’t need to be.
For example, how do you feel about Algebra?
x + 2 = 5 Solve for x. If you’re like me, just hearing ‘ x’, you feel a mild panic. But relax and think about it – slow down. You already know this. It’s actually familiar. If you start with 2, how do you get to 5?
You have to let yourself recognize the familiar parts and realize that you know them so that you don’t panic or give up. Don’t make it more difficult than it is.
For some people, reading and spelling cause the panic.
How do you spell ‘Episcopalian’?
It’s so long and has all those syllables! I can’t do it.
Yes, you can – slow down – listen to the sounds. What are the letters that make those sounds? Just do one at a time. You already know this. It’s actually familiar. Don’t make it more difficult than it is.
Learning to read is similar – for someone learning to read, looking at all those words can be intimidating. They’ll just start guessing. You have to tell them, “Slow down, look at what’s there; don’t guess.“
When it connects – that those letters represent familiar words – it’s like epiphany – like revelation.
Knowing God is similar. It may seem intimidating or even impossible to think about trying to know God.
How can I know God? I’ve never seen God. God is totally ‘other’ – completely beyond human comprehension.
Except that Jesus and Paul both say it’s not like that.
We’re God’s children, Paul explains, so we know God already, because God made us and takes care of us. In him we live and move and have our being, and He is not far from each one of us. We know the Spirit, Jesus says, because he is with us and will be in us.
God is familiar, even if we can’t put words to it or explain it. So don’t worry about what you can’t see, what you don’t know; look at what’s there. We’ve seen God reflected to us in thousands of ways. We’ve seen God reflected through people and events; we’ve seen God reflected through the beauty of the world around us; we’ve seen God reflected in scripture, in the liturgy, and we’ve seen God reflected in our own hearts.
CS Lewis says we each have a ‘God-shaped hole’ in our hearts, so even before we recognize what’s missing in our lives, the shape of the emptiness traces an outline of what God must be like to fill it.
Don’t make knowing God more difficult than it is – you already know God. And He knows you.
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Given to St. John's, Silsbee
April 27, 2008

Thomas - not falling for that again

2008-04-11T21:09:00.006-06:00

Year A, Easter 2
Readings: Acts 2:14a,22-32 1 Peter 1:3-9 John 20:19-31 Psalm 16

A lot of times, people refer to this story as being about 'Doubting Thomas,' because Thomas didn't believe the disciples when they told him they'd seen Jesus. He said he'd have to see it for himself. He'd have to put his finger in the nail holes in Jesus' hands before he'd believe that Jesus was really alive.
Fr. John has talked before about doubt, saying that the opposite of doubt is not faith; the opposite of doubt is certainty. Just because you sometimes doubt, doesn't mean you don't believe or you don't have faith. You can be in both of those places at once; it's actually a pretty common thing to be partly believing and partly doubting at the same time - or mostly believing with a little prickle of doubt - or mostly doubting with just a tiny piece of hope that would even just like to believe.

It's hard sometimes to figure out what's true and what's real and so what to believe.
All four of the gospels describe situations where various people encountered Jesus after he rose from the dead - and all four gospels talk about people not believing it at first when they heard about it - some of them even had a hard time believing it when he was standing right in front of them.
Thomas wasn't the only one who doubted - he's just the one who got stuck with the label.
Listen to some of the other stories about what happened after the resurrection.

Here's part of the story from Luke ..on the first day of the week, at early dawn, [several of the women] went to the tomb, taking the spices which they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel; and as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, "Why do you seek the living among the dead? Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and on the third day rise." And they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Mag'dalene and Jo-an'na and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them who told this to the apostles; but these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.
-That had to have been really frustrating for those women. They saw two men in shining clothes, who told them Jesus was alive. So they went and told the apostles and all the rest - but the apostles thought it was 'an idle tale' - some ridiculous story they all - collectively, the whole group of them - made up or imagined... you know how we women can be so hysterical sometimes...

Here's how the story goes in Mark -

Now when [Jesus] rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons. She went and told those who had been with him, as they mourned and wept. But when they heard that he was alive and had been seen by her, they would not believe it. After this he appeared in another form to two of them, as they were walking into the country. And they went back and told the rest, but they did not believe them. Afterward he appeared to the eleven themselves as they sat at table; and he upbraided them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who saw him after he had risen. (Mk 16:9-14)

So, here, it's not just Thomas - it's everybody who has a hard time believing that Jesus is really alive. I don't blame them. It's been their experience - mine too - that people who die...stay dead. But with Jesus, suddenly that doesn't seem to hold true. It had to be very shocking and hard to believe, even if he was standing right in front of them - maybe especially so because he was standing right in front of them.
Hearing the story as we do after the fact, and after many centuries of getting used to the idea, it doesn't seem so shocking. We can think about it abstractly - I believe in Jesus, that he died and rose again, that he is here with us today... And I do - But it's not like I can see him physically standing here saying, like he did to Thomas, "Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side..."
I believe that Jesus died and rose again, but it's pretty much impossible for me to really know that. I didn't see him die; I didn't go to the tomb and see the angels; I didn't touch his feet. I wasn't there...

Some of the philosophers, when they talk about knowledge, say that we can only know what we experience. The rest, we have to believe - or not. It's a choice we make, based on a lot of factors. One of the biggest is trust - trust in the person giving the information
Once a few decades ago, when people were less skeptical than they are now, a radio broadcaster began giving a fake newscast about an alien attack, and people became very panicked because they believed it was real - the joke really backfired, because people took it seriously. Then, after that, they were uncertain whether to believe the news or not.
Trust is much easier to break than to rebuild.

What's the rest? ......... "Fool me twice, shame on me."

This is what I'm hearing when Thomas says,
"Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and place my finger in the mark of the nails, and place my hand in his side, I will not believe."Thomas had put everything into the belief that Jesus was the Messiah, the one his people had been waiting for. He trusted Jesus. He believed him. Totally. Hook, line and sinker. Gave up his whole life to follow.
But then Jesus got arrested and killed. And what is a dead Messiah? A dead Messiah had to have been, as CS Lewis framed it, either a liar or a lunatic. Only a live Messiah could be the Lord, but this one was clearly dead.
That had to be a hard pill to swallow, especially on that 'long Saturday' when no one knew what was going on and all they could do was wait to see what would happen next. Nobody had any idea. The hope that Jesus' followers had for a Messiah had been crucified with him. They had put everything into that hope, and it was gone. He was gone. What now?

Nothing - nothing to do but wait.

In TS Eliot's The Four Quartets, he writes
"I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope of the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting." (East Coker, III)

Then, suddenly, people are all over the place saying that Jesus was alive again. He had risen from the dead.

It's hard enough to bury the beautiful dream that you had to watch die so painfully. It's unbearable to have people teasing you with the hope that it's not really dead. Because that's what you wish so much could be true that you can hardly bear even to let yourself think it, much less say it out loud. And when other people are saying it, it's hard not to at least want to believe. But he was not going to fall for that again.
Some people hold their hope close to the surface, and it blooms at the first hint of spring. Others push it down deep where maybe it will survive a freeze. But I think God's the one who planted it in all of us.
This is why I think that, even though Jesus gets on Thomas a little for making it so hard for himself to believe, he still walks through that wall of doubt, past the locked door, to reach him inside.

Whatever it takes, Thomas... Whatever you need to believe it's true - because it is true...

"Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side; do not be faithless, but believing."

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Given to St. John's, Silsbee
March 30, 2008
In our society, we've had a lot of broken trusts - in the family and in the larger culture - divorce rates and spousal abuse, child abuse and elder abuse are pretty high; political scandal is commonplace now; we can't keep track of all the professional sports, music and movie stars who are on drugs; not only stockbrokers but even economists are gambling with the finance markets; leaders in corporations and non-profit groups embezzle money frequently - and the church is not immune to any of these things, certainly. The preacher's wife murdering her husband, TV evangelists confessing to everything imaginable, priests molesting children.
Belief in anything truly good has become kind of a quaint notion. People in my generation grew up in a very commercial culture. There's not a lot people my age believe in - although it seems there's a lot they would like to believe. It's just that we've learned by experience that most things are a lie - to sell you something or get something from you. Exploitation, not charity is the normal motivation for a lot of interactions in our culture.
Why do people from various companies, organizations, or colleges call at 6 pm on a weeknight? Because they want you to give them money, obviously.
Why is public school attendance encouraged and rewarded and non-attendance punished? Because education will make children's lives better or because attendance figures determine state funding? What about all those tests? Hard to say sometimes.
What about the health care system - who determines your treatment?

Many people by now expect to be used and mistreated - it comes as a suprise when someone seems genuinely honest - and the key word there is 'seems.' Because even our desire for authenticity has been caught up in marketing strategy - I encourage you to notice this week how many ads use words like 'real' 'genuine' and 'authentic.' Some are beginning to pick up on that also, and we're even more suspicious when we meet someone making claims of truth or authenticity - because we're waiting for the real truth to come out - it almost always does - what is it you want from me?

Mainly, the goal is not to be taken in, not to be hoodwinked, taken for a ride or taken advantage of.
Do you know these?
"Once bitten, twice shy"
"Fool me once, shame on you...."

Seventh Word

2008-03-01T20:30:00.000-06:00

"Father, into your hands I commend my spirit."

Henri Nouwen wrote, "Dying is trusting in the catcher. To care for the dying is to say, 'Do not be afraid. Remember that you are the beloved child of God. He will be there when you make your long jump. Don't try to grab him. He will grab you."

It's the image of a small child at the edge of the swimming pool, and Dad's in the water, holding his arms out, saying, "Come on, I'll catch you. Don't worry. I'll catch you."
You look at the water, you look at your dad, and you open your eyes wide and jump.

We don't have to try to jump far enough. He's going to catch us, even if we just lean over and fall in. And that moment doesn't have to be just when we die. It's whenever we make a trusting movement towards Him, and the moment we do that, his hands reach out and catch us.
I don't think distance is an issue, because I think there's never a moment when he's not paying attention, when he's not right there.

It might be, too, like learning to float on your back. Your dad's telling you he's got you, that he's not going to let you sink, just take a deep breath and lean back...
It's hard to let go and let your feet up, not touching anything solid, but you try to trust him, even if you're afraid.

I think dying is a little like that - I think there is a moment when we let go of everything else. A moment when I realize God's with me - when I feared he wouldn't be, and I know that He has me, and He's not going to drop me, and whatever else happens, it doesn't depend on me. He's got it under control. So finally, I trust Him, lean back, and let go.

Fifth Word

2008-03-01T20:21:00.000-06:00

"I thirst."

I'm hungry.
I'm tired.
I'm sad.
I'm angry.
........... I'm human.

In Hebrews, we read "We do not 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. Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need." (Heb 4:15-16)

Sometimes, in my time of need, I can't even say what it is I want - sometimes, I don't even know.
I can only say what's happening. Here's how it is with me - I'm upset. I'm scared. I don't understand. I don't want to do this. It hurts.
I'm thirsty.

To make these kinds of statements is to make ourselves more vulnerable. To say something like this, I'm telling about my weakness - and whoever hears it has the opportunity to use it - either to help - or to ignore - or to hurt.

And this is something Jesus understands about what it is to be human - what it is to be weak, to ask others for help... to be disappointed by their response.
As he was dying, Jesus said, "I thirst," and the people who heard him gave him vinegar to drink...

The night before, he told his friends he was very distressed and asked them to stay up and watch with him - But they fell asleep.

He asked his Father, if it were possible, not to have to go through all this, but his Father didn't change the plan.

Jesus knows what it is to be scared, to be sad, to be in pain, to die.

Again, Hebrews says, "Since, therefore, the children share flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death. ... Because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested." (HEb 2:14-18)

Third Word

2008-03-01T20:10:00.001-06:00

"Woman, behold your son." ... "Behold your mother."

Did you ever try to comfort a child who's upset because their pet died? Parents sometimes try this:
"We'll get you another fish..." "I don't want another fish! I want my fish!"
Similar is not the same.

'Better' is also not the same. 'Better' even if it is better, mainly just feels 'different' at first, and 'different' feels about the same as 'bad.'
People sometimes tell parents who are marrying off their daughter and watching her leave home and move away, "Don't think of it as losing a daughter; think of it as gaining a son."
Maybe in the future, they'll have a great relationship with the son-in-law also and maybe grandkids who bring a lot of joy to their lives, and that will even be better, but there's no way to know at the time how it will be in the future.

What about a mother sending her son off for military service?
You can see the group of them walking through the airport - him, his mom, his younger sister and his good friend from school.
He's in his uniform, has a bag, really short hair. They come up to the line for security. He sets his bag on the floor. They're all looking at him. He leans down and hugs his mom; her eyes are starting to well up. She shakes her head; she can't say anything.
He looks over at his friend and back at her.
"Mom, Jake's your son now, till I get back. Take care of her, man."
He picks up his bag and walks over to the line, shows his ticket and ID, puts his bag on the conveyor belt and walks through. On the other side, he picks it up, looks back, waves, and goes through the revolving door. They're standing there watching him. She's really crying now. The friend steps up and puts his hand on her shoulder.

What do you say to her?
"Don't think of it as putting your son in danger; think of it as protecting our nation."
It doesn't matter whether or not that's true. It doesn't change the grief and fear of letting him go.

Mary stood, looking up at her son. He says to her, 'Woman, behold your son," and to his friend and disciple, "Behold your mother."
Mary doesn't speak. But what may her heart have been saying?

YOU are my son; I don't want another son.

Don't think of it as losing your son, Mary;
think of it as gaining the whole world...

I don't want the whole world -

I want my son.

First Word

2008-03-01T20:03:00.001-06:00

"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."

Can you think of a time when you did something to someone that had unintended bad effects?
Playing a joke, it hit somebody the wrong way...
Or, being mad, saying something that seemed totally warranted - but then watching the other person's face crumple, and you really had no idea it would hurt them like that...
Or worse, knowing it would hurt them like that, and saying it anyway - because it would hurt - and then, seeing how much it hurt, a lot of regret...

"I'm sorry! I didn't mean to..."

Some of the answers can be pretty harsh:
"Well, you didn't mean to to!" I'm sorry...
"Sorry's not good enough!"

But here, there's a different response.
"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."

Even before people could realize what they had done, Jesus was understanding them and accepting them, and wanting God to be gentle with them. He didn't ask for justice; he didn't want to be vindicated, for God to get them back - to make them suffer like he was suffering, so they'd know what it felt like - so they'd know what they had done.
How could they know, really, what they had done? How could they have any idea?

When they did start to realize it and came to God with their apologies and their grief and their sorrow, God listened - and he didn't say, "Sorry's not good enough!"

In confession, we come to God and say, "I'm sorry! I didn't mean to... I didn't realize..."

and God looks at Jesus and then back at us and says, "I know."

Nicodemus - faith and reason

2008-02-21T23:45:00.005-06:00

Year A, Lent 2
Readings: Genesis 12:1-4a Romans 4:1-5, 13-17 John 3:1-17 Psalm 121

The story of Nicodemus is fascinating to me. I think it describes what often happens when a logical, analytical mind encounters spiritual truth.
Nicodemus is trying to understand who Jesus is and where his power is coming from - because he figures it has to be from God, but how does that work, exactly?
He's sincere - he really wants to understand, "What is this relationship between body and soul? - between God and man?" but when Jesus answers him, Nicodemus finds the reply very confusing.
Jesus had said that, to see the kingdom of God, everyone needed to be 'born from above,' but that didn't make sense to Nicodemus. "How can anyone be born after having grown old?"
Jesus tells him. "What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit..."
That still didn't clarify it totally for Nicodemus, because his next comment is, "How can these things be?"
I find this conversation encouraging, because I think Nicodemus is an intelligent person, so if he's confused, I feel reassured that, when I'm confused about faith questions, it's not that I'm not smart enough, it's just that the answers really are hard to understand.
I also find it encouraging that, when Nicodemus says he's confused, Jesus works harder at explaining it. I'm grateful for people who have the courage and honesty to say when they don't understand something, even if it makes the teacher irritated, because usually then the teacher will say it again more clearly and maybe use some examples, and the result is that everybody understands better. Think how many people have come to understand God's purpose in sending Jesus to save humanity - which is what our faith hangs on - from the single verse of John 3:16 - part of Jesus' further clarification to Nicodemus. It's such a clear explanation. When I was little, we memorized it in Sunday school. You probably know it, too.
"For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life."
We can partly thank Nicodemus for that excellent summary because he asked the question.
Asking questions is, I think, an important foundation of scientific inquiry, and we've come up in a scientific, questioning age. Everything is being and has been questioned and examined, turned inside out, defined and re-defined - like we were trying to chart and re-map in specific details all the vagueness of the past, to take away the element of mystery that wrapped around everything in the medieval period. We don't want 'hocus pocus'; we want reality - something solid and definite to believe in.
Here's an interesting little piece of linguistic information about that word 'hocus pocus,' the way we talk about words or rituals that seem silly and pointless. "Hocus pocus...abbra cadabra, and Viola! Here's a bunny!"
But it's fake; it's a trick to make you think the magician has powers, but really he doesn't. He just knows how to make you look the other way at the right time.
During the Protestant Reformation, people were beginning to question what the rituals in church were all about, really. The service was all in Latin, and so people didn't know what was being said and mostly didn't understand what was being done, but at some point, the priest would say a particular thing, a bell would ring, and everyone was supposed to look, because the priest would hold up the bread, and that was how you received communion - that's how you received grace. The people who attended the service didn't actually take communion by eating the bread or drinking the wine; they received it by seeing it. So, if you weren't paying attention then, you could miss the main part of the service and seemingly it wouldn't do you any good. But some people started to wonder whether any of those things, which they didn't understand, were actually doing them any good anyway.
People had lost track of what all those things meant that the priest was doing and saying, and they started to question whether those things had any meaning at all. The words sounded like gibberish. When the priest held up the bread, he said (in Latin) "Hoc est corpus meum" - "This is my body." But most people didn't know Latin. So it's not suprising, really that when the priest said "Hoc est corpus meum" - and maybe the bells would drown out the 'meum' part, leaving just "Hoc est corpus..", it's understandible that what people heard was 'Hocus pocus,' - - and that came to have a meaning of its own related to how they felt about what they saw and heard in church. Maybe all these rituals and unintelligible words don't really have a meaning. It's just 'hocus pocus...'
People became dissatisfied with accepting things they didn't understand; they wanted reasons and answers.
Religion has reacted in different ways to this cultural shift of wanting to question everything - in many instances defensively, making it wrong to question issues of faith, which put a lot of people in the predicament of feeling they had to choose between thinking or believing. Some people were executed because of dilemmas like this. And some fought back, carrying out executions of their own and breaking all the things that smacked of mystery and 'hocus pocus' to get back to a 'true religion' based on reason and not meaningless movements and unintelligible words. But just because someone doesn't know the meaning or understand the words doesn't mean they don't have meaning - we have to be careful to balance our capacity for reason and desire for explanations with respect for what we don't understand.
As Fr. John and Fr. Jack discussed in the Lenten series class Wednesday night, "faith vs. reason" is a false dichotomy - that's just not how it is - God made us with the ability to reason. It's only right that we should use it - and the faithful use of gifts God gave us will not lead us away from God but toward God, even if the path seems to wind around.
And it has wound around quite a bit - even in the past 10-20 years, not to mention the past 100. Our culture has changed a lot in this questioning and exploration. One thing I think we're learning from this process is that we're not likely to ever understand it all. For every new thing we've learned this century, we've discovered whole areas of things we never dreamed about before - and each new thing is more beautiful, and complicated and amazing than we imagined. Remember what whole new worlds, literally, were opened up to our imaginations by the invention of the telescope and the microscope, for example, and more recently with quantum physics, genetics, and multi-dimensional math.
As we look for answers to our questions about life and the world, as we try to understand, God shows us new things, and each thing we understand is more amazing than we had imagined before... until I think eventually, more than answers to our questions about life and the world, we begin to want to know the God who made this world and gave us life.
In our class Wednesday night, talking about how the world began and why we're here, we had a big discussion about this relationship between faith and science. George Kondos made a comment about Einstein saying that science was trying to understand the mind of God. Einstein represents to many people the pinnacle of modern scientific thought - one of the most brilliant minds of all time - and his conclusion is that science is essentially a search to know God.
Isn't that really theology?
I love theology, and I think it's the highest of all fields to study, but I think even that is not where the journey of faith is leading. One of the most brilliant theologians of all time - St. Thomas Aquinas - after he had written tomes of material constituting a complex and beautiful systematic theology, one day completely stopped writing. Because, he said, something had happened while he was celebrating the Eucharist one day, and whatever that experience was, it made everything he ever wrote seem like 'so much straw.' Compared to what he'd been trying to describe in his theological writings, the reality was so much more amazing - so the thing to do then was worship, not write about it.
Our ability to reason and our desire to understand may be things God created in us, but they're tools, things to help us get to where we understand enough to worship, and at that point, the rest of it, as amazing and complicated and beautiful as it is, won't even be able to hold a candle to the one who made it. This may partly explain the stories why some people who meet Jesus just stop whatever they were doing to follow Him - even though not everybody does it immediately when they meet him, like some of the disciples did.
As I mentioned at the beginning, I love the story of Nicodemus, because it took him a while to work it out. Today's gospel reading is not the only place he shows up. Here, in this passage, we see the beginning of his journey - questioning, trying to understand who Jesus is and how he has access to God's power. Later, he comes up at Jesus' trial, trying to offer a voice of reason in Jesus' defense. Then, still later, he is one of those who come to take Jesus' body down from the cross, "bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes.." - kind of like those wise men from the East, whose scientific inquiries led them to follow a star.
Nicodemus, a Pharisee who was diligently trying to observe and follow the law, started from a different place. While the magi started from science, Nicodemus started from religion, but they all found themselves on a journey of faith that ultimately led them to worship the God who made it all, who created the star, and who gave the law, and who sent his Son to show us how much God wants us to know him and be with him, because he made us and loves us, brains, questions, and all.

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Given to St. John's, Silsbee
Feb. 17, 2008

Taking away sin

2008-01-21T10:57:00.000-06:00

Year A - Epiphany 2
Readings: Isaiah 49:1-7 1 Corinthians 1:1-9 John 1:29-42 Psalm 40:1-12

John the Baptist points to Jesus and says 'Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.'
This is a really central part of how we understand who Jesus is and what he does for us.
Jesus is the Lamb of God
and he takes away the sin of the world.
But it's kind of a complicated idea, and it requires some background to get a grasp on what it means and how it works.
I want to look at three things mainly:
What does 'Lamb of God' mean?
What is sin?
How does Jesus take it away?
First, what does it mean to say Jesus is the Lamb of God?
It's an image that takes a lot from the context of the society in which Jesus and John the Baptist lived. For many thousands of years, people have made their living raising animals for food and other benefits. In the area where John and Jesus lived, many people raised sheep, which were a key component in that society's economy. It might be like the buffalo for the Plains Indians or whales for people groups living around the Arctic. Or it might be like oil or timber for this area.
Many people during the time of the Hebrew scriptures raised sheep, so there are a lot of stories relating to shepherds and sheep. Back in Genesis, Abel, one of Adam and Eve's sons, brought a lamb to offer God. It represented the return on his work, and he was giving it to God. We still do that; it just looks a little different. We don't bring live animals up here and put them on the altar, but we do bring offerings to God from the return on our work - and in a money-based economy, what we usually bring is some form of money. It's even still called an 'offering'.
This idea of an offering of thanksgiving was one association John's disciples could make when John pointed at Jesus and said, 'Here is the Lamb of God...'
Depending on the kind of offering, sometimes the priests and the people who brought it would eat part of it. Today, a lot of people brought food also to celebrate another year at St. John's and hear what the church has been able to do with its resources and time, so if someone brought deer sausage, that would maybe in some way be similar.
Another association is that of a sin offering. Later Jewish laws for worship included an elaborate system of sacrifices to pay for sins. For one kind of sin, if you were the king, you'd have to bring a cow; if you were a prince, you might have to bring a male goat. If it was for a sin you did on purpose, intentionally, you'd probably have to pay extra for it, along with a sin offering. If it was a sin you did unintentionally or just by being careless, the penalty would be less. Under this system, a lamb was one type of offering made to pay for sin.
So, when John pointed at Jesus and said, 'Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world,' this was part of the meaning.
Another very important story relating to Jesus as the Lamb of God is the Passover story in Exodus. The people of Israel became slaves in Egypt for a long time until God sent Moses to lead them out of slavery. The only problem was that the Pharaoh didn't want to let them go. God send 10 plagues on Egypt to diminish Pharaoh's attachment to the Israelites. Part of the story of the plagues is the story of the Passover, when God sent the final plague, which caused the first-born of every household to die.
God instructed Moses to tell each family to sacrifice a lamb and put its blood on the door of their house, and they were protected from the destruction of the plague. On that night, Pharaoh let them go, so they were protected from death and also freed from slavery. For more than three thousand years now, since about the 13th century BC, the Jews have celebrated Passover each year, re-enacting and remembering God's deliverance. This story is also part of our story as Christians.
When John pointed at Jesus and said, 'Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!' his students who heard him could relate it to many things: an offering to God, a sacrifice to pay for sins, and a reminder of God's deliverance from slavery and death.
So, on to the second question - What is sin?
Sin is a kind of slavery and also a kind of death, and Christ's sacrifice delivers us from these. But thankfully few, if any of us have any direct experience of slavery, and though we have experience with death, it's still very hard to understand on this side of it.
Sin has also been described as a separation - separation from God. It's a broken connection, a missing relationship that ought to be there, an estrangement.
Sin can be defined in many ways.
One way to think of it is that sin is a kind of debt.
What is a debt?
A debt is when you owe something, like when you borrow money or finance something, or when somebody buys you something and you promise to pay them back.
Now, I should clarify that I'm not saying that debt is a sin. I'm saying that sin can be thought of as a kind of debt. Debt is one metaphor to understand what sin is.
So, if you're in debt, I'm not saying that makes you a sinner. A lot of people are in debt, including me. Probably almost everybody either currently is in debt or has been at some point. That's partly what makes it a good metaphor, because people can relate to what being in debt means. We know what causes it, what results from it, what it feels like to be in debt and hopefully also what it feels like to get out of debt.
So, sin can be thought of as a kind of debt. And a debt is when you owe something.
On a ledger, it's a negative number. It's negative both in the sense that nobody likes it and also in the sense that it's the opposite of a positive number. To cancel it out, you have to put an equal or bigger positive number in there.
Because what is a negative?
It's a lack - an absence - something is missing - it's like a hole.
Here's another way to think of it.
This glass is empty.
How do you get it not to be empty? Do you remove the emptiness? Take away the emptiness?
No, but you can put something in, and when you put something in, it's not empty anymore.
A few weeks ago in Sunday school, we were talking about evil, and there's one idea that says maybe evil is a kind of lack - a kind of emptiness or a kind of nothing - where there ought to be good, there's not. It's similar to the way darkness isn't exactly a thing itself - it's just how we describe where there isn't any light.
How do you get rid of darkness? You bring in a light.
So to get rid of evil, you don't exactly take it away; instead, you put something good there.
How does Jesus take away sin?
He puts himself in the place of the sin - and even after all that the payment of sin takes out of him, Jesus is still infinitely good.
Infinite good minus the sins of the whole world is still infinite good.
What is happening when Jesus 'takes away' the things where we're lacking?
Something positive happens.
How does he remove a separation? By making a connection.
How does he take away emptiness? By filling it.
How does he subtract a debt? By paying it.
Sin is a debt, and Jesus pays the debt of the whole world by becoming a sacrifice. He takes away what's lacking in us by filling it with his Spirit. He dispells our darkness by making himself a light that shines inside us.
Like the Psalmist, who was lifted out of the desolate pit - pulled out of a depressing hole - and God put a new song in his mouth. 'Great things are they that you have done, O LORD my God!...Oh, that I could make them known and tell them! But they are more than I can count.'
And also similar is the way Paul describes God's grace given to the members of the church in Corinth.
'I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus, for in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind -- just as the testimony of Christ has been strengthened among you -- so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift..'
In a minute, we're going to re-enact a lot of this story by telling it again. We do this all the time - every week, because it's important and we need to learn it and remember it. So pay attention.
It's a good story.
Jesus is the Lamb of God and he takes away the sin of the world.
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Given to St. John's, Silsbee
Jan. 20, 2008

Joseph was a good man

2007-12-23T01:35:00.000-06:00

Year A - Advent 4
Readings: Isaiah 7:10-17 Romans 1:1-7 Matthew 1:18-25 Psalm 24 or 24:1-7

Today's gospel reading, from Matthew, talks about the birth of Jesus - from the perspective of Joseph.
Joseph is the lesser known of the 'Mary and Joseph' pair. We don't hear as much about him, usually, but today, I'm going to focus on Joseph and his role in this story of Jesus' birth - and Jesus' life - and what kind of model that can give us as we prepare for Christmas.
So who is Joseph?
In a nativity scene, Joseph is the guy standing next to Mary and the baby Jesus. How do you know it's Joseph? Well, because he's standing next to Mary and the baby Jesus.
But how do you know if the figures are not already set up?
When you take the figures out of the box, you can find Joseph by a process of elimination:
This is Mary, obviously. Here's Jesus, obviously. This one's carrying a lamb; he must be one of the shepherds. This is a king; he's wearing fancy clothes, and he's got a gift. This one's got wings, obviously an angel. Okay, that leaves - this guy - must be Joseph.
He's not carrying a lamb or leading a camel or bringing gifts. He's not singing. Usually, he's just standing there. So why does he get to be right in the middle of the scene - in the middle of the biggest event in history?
It would look like Mary and Joseph, with the baby, are mom and dad, so if that was the case, that's why he's important. But as the angel in today's reading explained, the child conceived in Mary was "from the Holy Spirit," so God is Jesus' "real" father.
Joseph married Jesus' mother, so in a sense, Joseph was Jesus' step-dad.
Probably that wasn't something they tried to explain to the neighbors, though.
"Joseph, your son broke my window!" "Well, actually, he's not my son..."
What else do we know about Joseph? How can we imagine what he was like as a person?
Well, he was a carpenter. So, I suppose if he lived in Silsbee, he might work for Westvaco - or at the pallet factory - or maybe he'd have his own cabinet shop behind his house.
If he was a member here at St. John's, he'd probably get drafted into being the Junior Warden at least once. The first time I came to St. John's, I pulled into the back parking lot, looking for the door to come in at, and there were three guys standing outside looking up at the roof. I'm pretty sure one of them was Bill Phillips, and Lloyd Boone may have been out there, too. I don't know what they were doing exactly – I guess they were fixing something - but probably Joseph would have been in that group.
I also bet he'd have been one of those folks helping people fix their houses after Rita. He and Vernon Gray would talk shop. Probably he'd have a long honey-do list, so he and John Derkits could commiserate about that, and Mary would probably complain to Bonnie that Joseph still hadn't fixed the back door to shut all the way, and Bonnie would nod sympathetically.
Anyway, that's how I imagine it. But it's a fair enough guess, because this is a real man we're talking about, and why would he be that much different from any of the men here?
Joseph was a regular person. He did normal things, dealt with normal problems with job, house, kids - except that his oldest was the son of God... Imagine that as a step-dad - even if God did give him the job and presumably backed him up, it can't have been easy raising Jesus.
We hear a few more things about Joseph up to the point when Jesus was about 12, and then the story skips ahead to Jesus at about 30 and then we don't hear any more about Joseph. So, it's possible he died before Jesus started his ministry.Joseph was a central figure in Jesus' young life, and he can be a good model for how we relate to Jesus, just as Mary is a good model.
What do we learn about him from today's reading?
Mainly, we learn two things: he was a good man, and he obeyed God.
We heard first that Joseph was engaged to Mary when he found out she was pregnant.
The next thing said about him is that, "being a righteous man," he didn't want Mary exposed to public disgrace. He was going to treat his fiancée kindly even if she'd done wrong by him.
But then, an angel appears and tells him not to be afraid to marry her - the child is from the Holy Spirit, and he should name the baby Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.
This really is an odd message, delivered in an alarming way. I can't imagine what I would think to receive a message like that. It's hard to see how it would clarify the situation.
Joseph's response, though, when he woke up, was to do what the angel told him. We don't know whether any of this business about the Holy Spirit and God saving his people through this child made sense to Joseph; the text doesn't say what he thought about it - just that he did what God told him to do.
One thing I noticed about the way this passage tells the story is that, in this account, Joseph never says anything. He plans and decides to do something, he listens to the angel, and he does what the angel tells him. But he doesn't talk about it.
That struck me as similar to several men I know. Although quietness isn't confined to men, and there are many men who aren't quiet, there are a lot of guys who operate like this - they think about something and make plans, they may listen to advice, and when they decide what they're going to do, they do it. But there may not be a lot of talking in the process.
Maybe you know one of these guys. Maybe you're sitting next to him.
Maybe the person next to you is digging you in the ribs.
When I got to thinking about Joseph and what he may have been like, in relation to this doing-more-than-talking aspect, I thought of my Uncle Jim - not a big talker, but definitely a good man. He does right by his family, more so than we deserve sometimes, helps people who need help, supports his wife in her activities, and deals honestly with people.
That's how I imagine Joseph. Not much of a talker, necessarily, and not all that complicated, but someone who's honorable. He was kind to Mary, and he was obedient to God.
It's hard to represent that visually, unless you put a halo or something over his head, so that's why in nativity scenes, it looks like Joseph is just standing there, doing nothing special. But there's a lot more to it - he's standing there with Mary and Jesus, claiming them as his, looking out for them and providing for them. He's just a good man - and he's obeying God. That's all. And that puts him front and center in the middle of God's biggest plan for human history.
And good men, obeying God, are always right in the middle of whatever God's doing, wherever they are. It's like that for good men today - you can't tell just by looking at them, but watching how they live, it's obvious and powerful, even though it's not complicated.
Who do you know like this?
Think of these men when you look at Joseph in the nativity scene. Think how their example tells us something about how to make room and provide for Christ in our lives.
How does Joseph provide a pattern for us in preparing for Jesus' coming at Christmas?
Joseph claimed Jesus, worked to make a home for him, providing for him and for the people who nurtured him. Joseph made space for Jesus to grow and protected him while he was vulnerable and weak.
That's what we can do, individually and as a community: acknowledge Christ's place in our households, make space for him, and allow for his role in our lives to grow by providing for things that nurture our communion with Christ. Also, we can protect this process of growth, especially when it's new or weak or in other ways vulnerable.

In one of our Christmas hymns, we sing, 'O holy child of Bethlehem, descend to us we pray. Cast out our sin and enter in; be born in us today.'
But that sounds more like how Mary received him, and maybe you can't relate to the way Mary made space for Jesus. Maybe you're more like Joseph. In that case, here's a verse from a different hymn, with substantially the same meaning but a different image. 'let each heart prepare a home where such a mighty guest may come.'

There's a much more modern country and western song by Emerson Drive called 'A Good Man,' and the chorus goes like this:
I wanna be the one, when all is said and done,
who lived a good life, loved a good wife,
and always helped someone in trouble.
On the day they lay me down, I want everyone to gather ‘round
and say, 'He was a father, brother, neighbor and a friend. He was a good man!'
I was thinking that, if Joseph did die while Jesus was still a teenager or a young man, this would be the kind of thing Jesus might have said about his step-dad, the man who claimed him, made a place for him, and provided for him and his mother... "He lived a good life, loved a good wife, and always helped someone in trouble...he was a father, brother, neighbor and a friend - he was a good man."What more than that would you need?
Would it matter whether he was a pipe-fitter, a police officer, a professor or a priest?
He was a good man, and he obeyed God.
That's an excellent pattern to follow.

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Given to St. John's, Silsbee
Dec. 23, 2007

The end of the world

2007-11-18T01:23:00.002-06:00

Year C - Pentecost, Proper 28
Readings: Malachi 3:13-4:2a,5-6 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13 Luke 21:5-19 Psalm 98 or 98:5-10

Lord, thank you that your steadfast love never ends, and your mercy is new every morning. Amen.A main theme of today's lectionary readings is 'the end.'Often, people interpret these and similar passages as giving predictions for ‘The End of the World…’ But is it necessary to destroy the entire world for it to 'count' as the end of something significant?
From a historical perspective, this particular passage is talking about the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, and later, the fall of Jerusalem itself, which took place in 70 AD. This did not constitute global annihilation, but it was enough to be 'the end' for them, and it's that aspect we can apply to today.
This passage isn't a prophecy of hidden clues to predict OUR future; it's a specific story of past devastation and destruction, through which we can learn to recognize the same kinds of endings in the present.
Around the world, there is plenty of upheaval bringing destruction to other communities and peoples. In some parts of Africa, the AIDS epidemic has brought about an end to the family structure of an entire generation by killing off the parents and infecting their children. I think for these kids, it's enough to count as the end of the world.
Genocide and civil war in Chechnya, Darfur, Rwanda and other places has brought an end to social order, destroyed entire communities and devastated people groups. I think it's enough to count as the end of the world to them.
The story after this gospel reading, after the destruction of the temple and the sacking of Jerusalem - the rest of the story after 'the end' - isn't recorded here, but we know that it has included restoration. After exile and dispersion, some of the story has included coming back and rebuilding; even after 'the end', the story continued and continues still. The end was also a beginning because of the people's hope and endurance.
To interpret this story for today, we need to look at lots of endings - not get caught up in the idea of one big final ending and spend energy worrying about it and trying to avoid it. This attitude leads to the situation Paul was addressing in 2 Thessalonians, where, instead of working and contributing to the community's life, some people were just waiting around for 'the day of the Lord.' They got so caught up in worrying about 'the end' that they were completely missing 'now'.
Instead, if we stay engaged in the story, we can recognize endings and work them toward new beginnings. One of the deacons in our diocese, for example, Linda Shelton, is involved in refugee resettlement. Some of these refugees, whose former lives have ended, are in the same situation as the 1st century Jews who were sent into exile.
People trying to begin again are all around us. A recent article in the Texas Episcopalian featured a parishioner from the church in Pflugerville, who fled Sudan to seek asylum here when his life was threatened because of reporting on the tragedies there. My mentor in the Iona school, Fr. Johannes George, fled Sierra Leone and devastation in that country and now serves the church in Alief.
What if this Gospel is not about predicting the end of the world so we can try and save ourselves, but instead is about recognizing and responding to the devastations of people around us - devastations which are smaller than global annihilation but are large enough to be the end of the world to those experiencing them?
This could mean a lot of work - but it makes our Epistle reading fit in very well - "do not be weary in doing what is right."
Who do you know whose world is ending - through divorce or a devastating illness, or the loss of a child? What has ended your world?
Let me tell you my experience of the end of the world. When I was 13, my mom suffered a ruptured brain aneurysm. I remember standing in a hallway during one of her surgeries, looking out an upper floor window of Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas. Traffic was going by on all the streets below, just as if this was any other day - as though the entire world was not falling apart. I was so angry at all of those people! Didn't they have any idea what was happening?!
Of course not, and I see it very differently now. But for several years, I stayed stuck in that ending. I couldn't imagine the world beginning again.
Interestingly, one of the things that enabled me to begin again was facing the same condition myself. In the process of getting it treated, I had to face some fears - including fears of 'the end' - and I discovered that God was with me there, and that true peace exists, and it is extremely solid.
I also realized that, because of a lot of people doing their work faithfully for years and years, my world was not going to end the way I feared. Some of these people may even have been the same ones driving to and from work the day I looked out that hospital window, mad at everyone whose world wasn't ending.
The collective efforts of biomechanical engineers, metallurgists, business people, ethicists, administrators, interventional radiologists, surgeons, nurses, and countless others I will never meet - all their work created a treatment option that hadn't existed before. So, while 50 years ago, my 2 aunts died of this condition, today, I'm fine.
Because of all those people, what could have been my end became a new beginning, and it has influenced my understanding of all kinds of work as service and vocation. It has also influenced my understanding of work as prayer - my prayers for healing, and those of my family and friends - were answered by God through the faithful use of talents given to numerous people, all doing different jobs well and working together.
I hope this encourages you in your work to view all of it as ministry and service to God - who through your faithfulness and obedience will answer the prayers of people you may never meet.
The point of discussing 'the end' is not to try and predict or avoid it, but rather to not become distracted or paralyzed by worrying about it. Our response when 'the end is near' - in any context - is to keep doing what's right - to be faithful and obedient - and to trust God to take care of the world and us.
After all, ‘He's got the whole world in his hands...’Julian of Norwich, writing in the middle ages, said this about a vision she saw concerning God's care for creation:

"And in this he showed me a little thing, the quantity of a hazel nut , lying in the palm of my hand, as it seemed. And it was as round as any ball. I looked upon it with the eye of my understanding, and thought, 'What may this be?' And it was answered generally thus, 'It is all that is made.' I marveled how it might last, for I thought it might suddenly have fallen to nought for littleness. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and ever shall, for God loves it. And so have all things their beginning by the love of God.
In this little thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it. The second, that he loves it. And the third, that God keeps it. "

As the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote:

And though the last lights off the black West went Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs -- Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

and e.e. cummings continues...

i thank You God for most this amazing

day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of all nothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

To this I would add - I thank you, God

for the end of the world,

because you make it into a new beginning.

Amen.

Lord God, almighty and everlasting Father, you have brought us in safety to this new day: Preserve us with your mighty power, that we may not fall into temptation, nor be overcome by adversity; and in all we do, direct us to the fulfilling of your purpose; through Jesus Christ our Lord. (BCP)

About fighting

2007-10-21T01:11:00.000-06:00

Year C - Pentecost, Proper 24
Readings: Genesis 32:3-8,22-30 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5 Luke 18:1-8a Psalm 121

A common theme in today's texts is that of persistence in struggle and difficulty - hanging in there. Fighting and prevailing.
In struggling with the man he believes to be God, Jacob literally hangs on until he receives a blessing. In the epistle, Timothy is urged to "continue in what you have learned and firmly believed" and to "be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable..." And in the gospel, Jesus tells a parable "about the need to pray always and not lose heart." The widow in his story "kept coming" and asking for justice, and eventually the unjust judge decided to grant it "so that she will not wear me out by continually coming."
Another aspect of this theme of struggle and persistence seems to be the presence of opposition. In the Gospel, the widow seeks justice against an unnamed opponent - we don't know the problem there - but then she has a further struggle with the judge, who doesn't really care about justice and so in that sense forms some more opposition.
In the OT reading, the opponent seems to be God. The text just says 'a man,' but Jacob clearly believes afterward that he has seen God and even fought with him, and he's amazed God didn't kill him. Jacob wrestles with the man, and the man dislocates his hip, but Jacob still won't let him go without a blessing, so the man gives Jacob a new name. "You shall no longer be called Jacob but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed." The word translated as 'prevail' doesn't necessarily mean that he conquered his opponent - that he beat God; it can also mean that he showed endurance, strength and courage in the fight. I think that's very important to notice - you don't have to beat your opponent to prevail.
I think struggle and fighting are things most of us can relate to. We fight with people, with circumstances, with God, with ourselves. What does it mean to prevail in these?
When we fight with people, it's just as often, if not more often, that we fight with people we love. In this situation, beating your opponent is not really a good way to 'win.' In a fight with family or friends, this kind of winning isn't very satisfactory.
When we fight circumstances, whether it's a health issue, a job situation, a policy or a law, people usually get drawn into it, too - even if you know what's to blame, it's hard to fight something you can't see or touch.
Sometimes, we fight God, and a similar thing can happen there - think Cain and Abel. But really, if anybody can handle our fight, it's God. Writers of the Psalms often got really angry with God; so did Job, and so did Jonah, and so did countless other people in the Scriptures. God's big enough to take it, and if God's the one you're mad at, God's the one to take it up with. I think it's also true that when you fight with God, you know God better.
Then there's fighting within ourselves: fighting our fears, our demons, and all the gunk we internalize from the problems and dysfunction in our lives. In the book The Imitation of Christ, I ran across this: "Who has a greater struggle than those who labor to overcome themselves?" Anyone who's faced addiction or even observed someone in that struggle can agree this is true.
In all of these struggles, what does it look like to prevail? I think part of the answer relates to peace. Sometimes, just to endure is to prevail - if you've made it this far, regardless of how much damage you've sustained - the fact that you're here is prevailing. Your scars show what you've been through - like Jacob limping as he walked away from wrestling with God. But you've lived to tell about it - you struggled with God and the world and yourself, and you've prevailed.
What if you lose? It depends on what you think losing is. I think to make peace with an opponent is to prevail, even if they win. For example, to face death and make peace with that opponent, whether you then live or die - is to prevail in that struggle - to show courage and endurance. I heard a saying once: 'Courage is fear that has said its prayers.' I like that, and I think it's true.
When I was facing a medical procedure to repair a brain aneurysm a couple of years ago, I also had to face the fear of dying. There came a point, after six months of delays, when all my distractions were gone, and there was no avoiding it anymore.
I wouldn't say I won that battle; I didn't beat the fear. I tried every argument I could think of to reason myself into peace, and I couldn't. Fear is more primal than reason. So finally, I prayed and asked God to give me peace about death, and it came.
It was so simple, I didn't believe it could be true at first and tried to make myself afraid again, but I couldn't. So I prevailed, but it wasn't because I defeated the fear; it was because God fought for me when I couldn't fight anymore.
Another thing about fighting is that it reveals a lot about the character of the contenders. When you fight someone, you know them. This idea was expressed in the sequel to the Matrix, when Neo is summoned to a meeting, and as soon as he walks in the door, the doorkeeper immediately engages him in a ferocious battle. Afterwards, the guy says he had to fight Neo in order to know for sure who he was.
I've started arguments with people before for no apparent reason, I suppose to see how they would respond, to flush them out into the open, I guess, to figure them out. And I've had people do that to me, too - to see how far they could push me before I pushed back.
There's something about competition that brings out things you don't see in casual interaction. People are more raw when they're fighting or competing. If you play any sport, or ever have, you know this. I played soccer from the time I was four until just a few years ago, and now I fence. In either place, I've found I learn a lot about people by facing them in competition. I learn their strength, their speed, their stamina, their habits and their style, how rough or skillful they are, whether they play clean or dirty.
The other side to this is, I learn a lot about myself, too. Some of it's good - some not.
When I played soccer, I learned that I'm persistent and I'm tough, but I'm not always realistic about the laws of physics. I frequently got knocked down trying to challenge people much bigger than me, but I'd get up and keep going. When I played goalkeeper, I wasn't afraid to dive or charge a forward one-on-one.
I also learned, though, that when I played forward, I had a tendency under pressure to sabotage my own plays and then make excuses about why I lost the ball, even though I had enough skill, technically, to keep it. If I had a fullback bearing down on me, for example, sometimes I'd cross the ball early from the wing just to get rid of it. But the center forwards weren't in place yet, so all that work to get the ball up was wasted.
The thing is, probably nobody would blame me. Except that I knew I was doing it. And actually, you can't have that many 'unlucky' breaks without someone seeing a pattern. When I played on my cousin's team, he commented 'Good Lord, I've never seen a more skittish forward!'
He had me sorted. I didn't have myself sorted, though. I didn't know WHY I was doing it. But at that point, I decided I better figure it out and try to fix it.
I think the same concept is true in many types of competition: the quest for grades, the desire to climb a ladder or achieve some status, even political debates.
The reason this is useful - what we see in the microcosm of a game or a debate or an argument, we can work on in that context and in other areas. And more broadly, what we see when fighting under any circumstances, can be an indicator of strengths or weaknesses.
In spite of our desire for peace, we do a fair amount of fighting. I think it's somewhat a part of the way we are as people. Maybe this is why God fights with Jacob and doesn't kill him - because God knows Jacob and knows that's the way he is.
Some people just come out swinging, and Jacob's whole life was like that - Jacob wasn't the ideal man like Abraham - calmly accepting all kinds of difficulties and waiting patiently for their seemingly impossible fulfillment. No, Jacob was going to grab what he could - he was grabbing his brother's heel when he was born - and since that moment was always fighting or scheming with somebody.
One of the most notable examples was when he tricked his brother Esau out of a blessing, and it was after this that he fled his home, afraid of the revenge his brother would taken when he discovered this.
Sometimes, people just kind of have to fight, I think. We wish for peace and harmony and unity with no divisions, but the reality is far from these ideals. In our culture, we don't have a lot of acceptable circumstances for fighting, but I think in some sense, people need to contend with something. Sports are one example, but also things like Survivor and a lot of those reality TV shows, where all kinds of normal activities, like dating, doing a job interview, and designing clothes are turned into competition events. Yesterday, I was watching Iron Chef America - they were having 'Battle Eggplant'...Now you tell me we don't have a need for competition!
The movie Fight Club is a very clear example - these young guys started a club just to fight each other - hand to hand, no gloves, no weapons, and very few rules. The story is somewhat more complicated than this, but essentially, the appeal seemed to be that by fighting, and sustaining injury, they were doing something that felt real - more real than pushing papers in an office. This movie was really popular, which means people respond to it for some reason. I think there's something to notice there.
If you're fighting, especially one-on-one, your goal is clearly defined by beating your opponent. But if you're a small part of a big goal, and especially if you don't know what that goal is, your part can feel pointless. This is somewhat our situation as members of the Church - we're each small parts of a larger body, involved in doing a work that we don't see the end of because it's so much bigger than any of us.
I think part of the implication of the letter to Timothy is - Hang in there. Don't lose sight of the goal you're part of. Know what that goal is. Learn what your part is and do it. And don't let other people's impatience or lack of interest make you forget what you're about.
AND - Fight the good fight.

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Given to St. John's, Silsbee
Oct. 21, 2007

About cheating

2007-09-23T01:02:00.000-06:00

Year C - Pentecost, Proper 20
Readings: Amos 8:4-7(8-12); 1 Timothy 2:1-8; Luke 16:1-13; Psalm 138

Lord, may we know your word, speak your word, and love your word. Amen.Today’s OT and Gospel readings both talk about cheating.
Basically, if you’re cheating anyone, stop it - especially if you’re cheating poor people or anyone at a disadvantage to you.
The message in Amos is very harsh toward people cheating the poor.
‘Hear this, you who trample the needy… The Lord has sworn… "I will never forget…"’Amos describes some methods people were using in his day to increase their profits by tricking or cheating their customers.
"Skimping the measure, boosting the price, and cheating with dishonest scales…selling even the sweepings with the wheat."Methods are the same today – for example, next time you get gas, notice the sticker on the pump that certifies the pump has been checked to ensure it pumps a gallon of gas for a gallon of gas.
And when I pay $.75 for a bag of chips from the vending machine, and 2/3 of it is air, with 5 chips in the bottom, I feel like someone is skimping the measure.
Now, a popular method of ‘boosting the price’ seems to be tacking on lots of little fees and surcharges for things you didn’t request but didn’t know you had to exclude.
Then there’s the whole area of financing, which invariably ends up making people with less money pay a lot more. Currently, the issue of sub-prime mortgages has been in the news a lot. From what I gather, these are high-risk, high-interest loans made to people who probably really can’t afford to buy a home – and sure enough, most of them couldn’t pay, especially with the high interest. Now, their houses are being foreclosed on, and that whole area of the market has collapsed, sending other sectors of the economy into a tailspin.
Who’s most affected by this? People who can least afford it.
By way of contrast, last year’s Nobel Peace Prize went to an economist who developed a system of micro-lending to help very poor people start businesses. These loans have been so successful that whole sectors of the economies in many developing nations have been strengthened.
It’s not a matter of money – it’s a matter of the lender’s motives.
It’s a matter of justice.
What about credit cards? How are credit cards marketed?
They’re often presented as sources of cash flow – offered to people who have very little cash… like college students. When I was in college, credit card companies would set up tables in the SUB and give away ‘free’ stuff to people filling out applications. Talk about ‘buying…the needy for a pair of sandals"…
So, in addition to tuition, room and board (which we took out loans for), students were encouraged to rack up additional expenses on credit cards with high interest rates. Pretty much every college student I know is at least up to their eyeballs in debt, and even if they find a good job, they’ll spend a substantial chunk of their lives paying it back.
In the meantime, what if they need to buy a house? …. Remember, the housing market has basically collapsed.
And these are college graduates – what’s the situation for people without a degree?
And there’s no time to talk about who doesn’t have health insurance or what you learned about the insurance on your house after Rita…Many things in our society are unbalanced – usually in the favor of whoever has the money, power, or influence. Think Jack Abramoff… and the influence of lobbies on the laws that get made.
If you’re going to oppress or neglect someone, it’s easiest to oppress or ignore the people who are without representation – the poor, the weak, the uneducated, the powerless – because they don’t fight back as much.
BUT, they do have a key advocate. God seems to have a particular concern and care for these folks. And as the Church, we’d better be looking out for them, too. We’d certainly better NOT be contributing to injustice against them.Many times, particularly in the prophets, God’s word is that he doesn’t care about sacrifices and ceremonies – not if the rest of the week is full of injustice. Earlier in Amos, the prophet delivers this message from the Lord:
I hate, I despise your festivals, / and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies…
Take away from me the noise of your songs; / I will not listen to the noise of your harps.
But let justice roll down like waters, / and righteousness like an ever-rolling stream.Over and over again, God’s theme is Justice:
"And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice…." (Micah 6:8)But cheating perverts justice, turns it upside down, makes it meaningless.
And if we, as Christians, representing Christ (because we do) – if we cheat people, especially disadvantaged people, not only does it destroy their trust in us personally, but they can associate our behavior with the Church, and with Christ – and they can decide that, if that’s what Christianity is, they want nothing of it.
They’re chased away from hope because they don’t hear, don’t see evidence in us of God’s particular care for the poor, the sick, the weak, and the lonely.
If we, who profess to know and follow God, commit injustice, this puts a barrier in front of people who need hope in God more than anything else - and that’s inexcusable.
This may sound like overkill if all the injustice you did this week was cheat on your math homework.
But part of the message from Luke’s gospel is that, unless they stop – and turn around – little cheaters grow to be big cheaters.
It’s only a matter of time and degree from cheating on tests to cheating on taxes.
The mindset that justifies it and the basic pattern are the same.
As a person gains more responsibility, cheating has wider ramifications.
Think about Enron. How many people lost their jobs? How many lost their retirement?
So if you’re cheating at anything, stop now.
If you’re not – don’t start.In light of all this, the gospel reading from Luke sounds pretty odd.
Here’s a story of a guy who gets fired for cheating his boss, and then his boss compliments him for how clever his cheating was.
What was Jesus trying to say by telling this story?
And why did he pick a cheater as the main character?I don’t know, but my theory is maybe he wanted to show that he knows what kinds of things people get into, and he’s not shocked that people cheat.
When we cheat, God’s not shocked; God knows us already better than we know ourselves. He knows, and he’s not shocked. God can even appreciate the ingenuity and talents we used to do it, since God’s the one who gave us those gifts, but it’s a shame for us to use them on schemes instead of doing something good with them.
It’s also a shame if we don’t use our gifts for anything at all – maybe thinking the only thing we can offer to the church is the gift of being ‘nice’ while we’re here. But there are a lot of attributes natural to each one of you that really contribute to the life and health of the church.
What if you’re not necessarily that nice, but you’re strong? Great! We have heavy stuff.
What if you’re funny? Excellent – there are people here who could use a laugh.
What if you’re good at soccer? What if you know all about horses? What if you can explain complicated things? What if you think about things in simple terms? What if you plan things? What if you read, write, paint – draw, sing, or dance?
Fantastic! Obviously God thinks the church needs it, because he gave it to you and brought you here.Part of Luke’s commentary on the story of the dishonest manager is to say basically that ‘it’s a shame the world is more creative than the church is…’
It’s true –
How much time and money and artistic talent – genius even – go into making a Super Bowl commercial to get people to drink beer or change their car insurance?
How much goes into trying to get people to come to church?People are capable of amazing feats of ingenuity and persistence. Think of anybody who’s dating. Guys and girls both will do all kinds of clever, creative, crazy things to impress a date. Did you see the movie 50 First Dates ? - perfect example.
What if that kind of creativity were given toward honoring God? If we think about how we’re spending our time and creativity now, then cut out the worthless and bad things (which God’s not shocked about because He already knows)
What would we do differently?
Think about it – Make some changes
And let’s see what God will do with us.

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Given to St. John's, Silsbee
Sept. 23, 2007

Be patient

2007-09-08T00:21:00.000-06:00

MP - Daily Office Year 1
Readings: Ps 30,32; OT- 1Kings 12:1-20; Epistle- Jas 5:7-12,19-20

Almighty and everlasting God, by whose Spirit the wholebody of your faithful people is governed and sanctified:Receive our supplications and prayers which we offer beforeyour for all members of you holy Church, that in their vocation and ministry they may truly and devoutly serve you;through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
This prayer, that in our vocation and ministry, we may truly and devoutly serve God, seems particularly relevant as we start this year.
Probably most of us have at least a few questions about how this will work out.
Looking around, we might be thinking…
Can I relate to these people? Should I really even be here?
What if the teachers have some crazy theologies or weird ideas about liturgy?
What if these students have some crazy theologies or weird ideas about liturgy…
We all likely have uncertainties: some small, some enormous, some hanging right overhead, and some foggy, off in the distance.
What about field work and church assignments – What if people don’t receive me? What if I’m supposed to be leading and nobody wants to follow?In the epistle, James urges, "Be patient, beloved…"
But what about the future? What happens at the end of this process? What will this be like long-term? What will when Bishop Wimberly retires? Will we get shuffled off in a corner somewhere and ‘set aside?’
How can I make promises to serve here without knowing what I’m getting into exactly?
What’s going to happen to the National Church – what’s going to happen to the Anglican Communion? Am I really in the right place?
"Be patient …"
That could sound dismissive, like I’m trivializing what it’s like to make a commitment, not knowing what it may cost. But in today’s epistle, patience and endurance are not trivial.
I want to examine ‘patience’ and ‘endurance’ here, trying to get a handle on what they may have implied to their early hearers.
It’s always a challenge to convey the meaning of one person’s words using someone else’s words, especially if they’re several hundred years apart in different languages. Images can be more direct, so along with explaining, I want to show you some things.
Ed and Cynthia have very gamely agreed to help.
I’d like you to see, so please move up if you need to.

The first word for patience we’ll show you, hupomone, is translated in this passage as ‘endurance.’
[Cynthia lies down on the floor, and Ed puts his foot on her neck]
According to Strong, this word has a literal meaning of something like ‘stay under’ and it has the sense of living under some oppressive situation, or undergoing suffering….
Look for a moment and notice what reactions you have to this image.
How do you feel about it?
Does it make you think of anything? Is there any situation you relate it to?
…
How does this image track with the passage?
"You have heard of the endurance of Job…"
Job seemed to feel God had a heavy hand on him, causing him all manner of suffering. At one point, he says to God,
"Does it seem good to you to oppress? … Remember that you fashioned me like clay; and will you turn me to dust again?" (Job 10:3, 8-9)
And he complains, "If it is a contest of strength, he is the strong one!" (Job 9:19)
By ‘staying under’ a difficult situation, the word also means not giving up – and not giving in to despair. Job is neither resigned nor stoicly silent. He bears the suffering, and refuses to curse God, though he doesn’t refuse to question or challenge."Be patient, beloved…"
"Have you considered my servant Job?"
Who else is noted in this passage for patience?"As an example of suffering and patience, beloved, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord."Looking at this image, it’s not an unlikely parallel to recall Jeremiah– wearing a yoke on his neck, telling the people and the king to submit to Babylonian rule.
Becoming a prophet was not something he ever wanted to do in the first place. And even though he was doing it as service to his people, at God’s command, no one listened to him, and more often than not, they wanted to kill him.
We talked some last night with Mary about the risks inherent in acting on a call – and the way people may respond. It’s not always supportive.
The word translated ‘patience’ here is makrothumia. It means being ‘long-tempered.’ It’s sometimes translated ‘long-suffering’ or ‘forbearance.’ We describe some patient people as having ‘a long fuse,’ and this is part of the meaning here also. Earlier in James, we read, "Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry…"(Jas 1:19)
Patience can mean sticking with something or someone regardless of what happens to provoke or discourage you. It can have a lot to do with forgiveness, with keeping anger in check to allow fellowship to continue.
This is patience as a willingness to trust, even to suffer at each other’s hands and forgive.
There are some weighty examples of this kind of patience in the scripture.
Looking at this image, can you see Isaac submitting to his father? Can you see Christ?
One further aspect of ‘patience’ in the Greek turns this image of long-suffering and endurance around, adding another dimension.
If Cynthia and Ed were to change places - [they change places]
if the guard were to suddenly be at the mercy of the prisoner, -
how would that change the dynamic?
What would it mean now for Cynthia to show patience?
"… you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful."
This kind of patience is rooted in God’s patience.
God is so faithful to us, so patient with us, choosing to suffer because of us rather than break fellowship. We’re called to be patient with each other and with all whom we serve, to forgive as we’re forgiven, to love as God loves us
[Ed and Cynthia sit down]
What would it take to develop patience like this – to put yourself here?
Do you have the feeling that it’s what we’re doing here now in this formation process - laying our lives on the altar, for God to change us however he plans, re-forming us to give his life and his promises - in us - to the church and to the world?
"Be patient, beloved…"

Another part of James’ message about patience has to do with what we’re waiting for. In the OT reading, we heard about King Solomon’s son refusing to lighten his father’s oppressive forced labor policy, threatening to be even more oppressive. So all Israel deserted him. All but Judah. Judah stayed; it doesn’t say how they felt about it but just that they stayed – Judah was committed to the promise of a Messiah who would come from the house of David. So they stayed even under this arrogant, oppressive king and served him, waiting for the promise.
The prophets – those patient prophets - repeatedly asked, "How long…?"
Perhaps we should think about the same questions; we’re right at the beginning of some new works here. It may take a while to see where it’s going exactly. How long can we live with difficulty, with uncertainty, with each other? How long can we wait for promises we may never see?"Be patient…"
"Be patient, beloved, until the coming of the Lord. …Don’t grumble against one another… Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near."

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Given to the Iona School for Ministry

Sept. 8, 2007