August 29, 2010

Luke 14:1,7-14

On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the sabbath, they were watching him closely. When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. "When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, 'Give this person your place,' and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, 'Friend, move up higher'; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted." He said also to the one who had invited him, "When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous."

Several years ago, a Bloom County comic strip appeared in the newspaper just before Thanksgiving Day. In that strip, Milo, the precocious, politically active youngster, has been asked to offer the blessing for the Thanksgiving meal. The family is ceremoniously and soberly seated around the table, which is laden with food. “Dear God,” Milo begins, “we thank you for this meal, and for this turkey, which was once a living, breathing creature, brave and free, capable of nurturing its young with almost human affection. Anyway, it’s dead, and we’re going to eat it now. Amen.” Of course, he gets booted to the back porch in no time flat; this isn’t exactly what his family had in mind to begin a warm, festive holiday meal. He’s spoiled the mood, not to mention their appetites. (quoted by The Rev. Dr. Anna Carter Florence in Lectionary Homiletics, 1998)

What Milo did is not that far from what Jesus does at the Pharisee’s dinner table in our Gospel. Jesus’ words were a social offense of a similar magnitude, and, strangely, they carried a somewhat similar meaning. For Milo – unwittingly, perhaps – points out the stubborn nature of sin, so pervasive that it permeates even that essential activity which sustains our lives: eating. In order just to live, we must kill; such is the state of Fallen creation. We have not yet attained to the Kingdom of God, where the wolf will lie down with the lamb, and the lion eat straw like the ox (Isaiah 11). We are dependent on other lives to sustain our lives, and this very fact of nature should keep us from any lofty and prideful sense of our independence, keep us from arrogance and conceit, keep us humble, and make us profoundly grateful. Our very lives depend on the lowly turkey – and no less, therefore, do they depend on God, and on one another. We say grace at a meal in humble gratitude for the turkey or the cow or the carrot or the potato which gave its life that we might live, and for the God who sustains us both with food and with divine Spirit. We say grace with a profound sense of the grace we receive.

At least, that is the way Jesus believes it should be. But that is not what he sees at the meal in the Pharisee’s home. Instead of a profound sense of grace received, he sees people jockeying for places of honor. And instead of a guest list which reflects gratitude to God and dependence upon each other, Jesus sees a guest list designed to bring honor to the host.

Now it is important to recognize that the people invited to the banquet are not bad people! They are typical, upstanding citizens of the day, whom we would respect if we had lived in that day and age. Indeed, we would probably have felt very at home at this dinner party. The guests are cordial and interesting, the meal is delicious, the conversation stimulating. We might well have been among the first to raise our glass to toast a wonderful party, a courteous host! Indeed, if we don’t see how at home we would be at this Pharisee’s meal, we are likely to miss the message of Jesus’ teaching.

“They were watching him closely,” our first verse states. Jesus was being thoroughly scrutinized – like some of us might scrutinize a member of our bridge club, or our church, or of another church, or the pastor of another church, scoping them out to see if they pass muster, ready to cast a black ball if they make one mistake. For you see, we are members of the in-group! The Lutheran in-group, the Episcopal in-group. We have paid our dues over the years, earned the right to sit at table in the company of our exclusive group.

And so we sit in judgment.

And it is not only in judgment of the newcomer, or of the person who has once upon a time offended us: we also discriminate among our friends, playing an interior game of one-upsmanship. “I’m glad I’m not like good ol’ Sam!” we might say to ourself. “Why, the poor guy (bless his heart!) is such a lousy father, his kids are always misbehaving; while my kids, on the other hand, are straight-A students!” “I’m glad I’m not like Suzy!” we might think. “I mean, I know I have my faults, but they’re nothing compared to hers!” We would never say these things out loud, of course, or even admit to ourselves that we have these thoughts. But let us not kid ourselves that we would be too enlightened and virtuous to be concerned about “who is greater”.

Our value system is simply different from that of the 1^st Century Mediterranean world. We are not so concerned with honor; quite the opposite! Our society places high value on humility – or at least outward displays of humility. Yet the dynamics are the same: we can be equally as prideful of our own humility as people of the 1^st Century were of their honor. Instead of jockeying for seats of honor at a dinner party, we might want to impress people with our knowledge, or our wit. Or we might want to appear to be the quiet, detached, wise observer. We might even take pride in our own lowliness, our own humility! How many times have we looked down our noses at those “rich people” who live in mansions and drive luxury cars? Is that not really putting ourselves and our own “lowliness” above those rich people? How often do we hear Jesus say, “those who humble themselves will be exalted”, and think to ourselves, “That’s me, by Jove! I’m humble!”

Jesus sees it all, our text tells us. The guests may be “watching Jesus closely”, but Jesus is watching them even more closely. The difference is that, unlike the Pharisees, who were watching for Jesus to slip up in regard to the law or traditions, Jesus’ x-ray eyes watch the heart. Jesus sees that the meal is not at all about gratefully partaking of the food God has so graciously provided – the meat which some animal has forfeited its life to supply, the gift of each other’s company (not to mention the gift of Jesus’ own presence among them). Rather, he discerns, the meal is about trying to get a leg up on someone else.

It shall not be so, Jesus sternly states, at the heavenly banquet, of which every meal should be a foretaste. The place of honor cannot be earned or grasped at; it is given by God.

John Brodie, the former quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, was once asked why a multi-million-dollar player like him should have to hold the ball for field goals and points after touchdown. “Well,” replied Brodie, “if I didn’t, it would fall over.” That’s Kingdom thinking! Kingdom thinking realizes that my life is not about me.

My life is not about me; your life is not about you. Rather, we are each caught up in the incredible gift of God’s Life, the blessing of participating in the ongoing creation and redemption of this wonderful, awesome, yet fallen world. We are caught up in the grace of God’s ceaseless outpouring of love and forgiveness.

AMEN

Sermon on El Hogar

August 22, 2010

I want to play a little guessing game with you. I’m going to play a sound, and I want you to tell me what it is. If you know, raise your hand, but don’t say it out loud. Can you tell me what this sound is?

No, it is not the sound of a ray gun from a Star Trek movie; that, my friends is a túngara frog, and nights at El Hogar’s Agricultural School are filled with those sounds.

As you know, I returned late Friday night from a week-long trip to El Hogar, part of a 12-member work team led by Debi Blackwell and including Jocie Rohde and Rachel Alexander. I saw first-hand what I had only seen in pictures and on a video, and had heard about from John and Jocie. While I could never adequately convey to you what it is like on the farm, I will nonetheless speak briefly about it this morning, for that is one of the main reasons I went: to bring back to you my experience of this ministry which we support. I’m sure Debi, Jocie, and Rachel will want to share their experiences also, when they get back.

I will only speak today about the Agricultural School, since that is where we stayed and did our work.

The Agricultural School, which John and Jocie started, comprises some 55 boys, ages 14-19, who come from impoverished families. Some of them I talked with had 5-8 siblings, and yet they were the only one in their family to have an education. With an illiteracy rate of 25%, an unemployment rate hovering at 30%, and more than half the population living below the poverty line – less than $2/day -- Honduras is the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, after Haiti. The boys at the Agricultural School know that the school is probably the one chance they have to change that situation for themselves – and that knowledge has a powerful effect on their sense of purpose and their appreciation of, and their motivation toward, learning. When you walk about the farm acreage on a weekday morning, you see one boy working hard in a small garden plot by himself, another three working together in another field – perhaps amongst the corn, or banana, mango, pineapple or papaya plants -- and others cutting hay by hand, with machetes, and filling up gunny sacks with the hay, to bring back to feed the cows. This they do with no adults standing over them or supervising them. They know what they’re supposed to do, and they simply do it. In another place, an adult is supervising boys to cut boards and pound them into place to make a floor for a wagon, which we use the very next day. Some of the older boys get up to milk the cows at 4:00am, and then go back at 3:00pm to do it again. They gave us the chance to milk a cow (which I’d never done before).

The day for the other boys (and for us volunteers) begins with the wake-up bell at 5:00am, and a quick, cold shower (there’s no hot water) followed by breakfast in the dining hall at 5:30. Each person has his own plastic bowl, about the size of a cereal bowl, which he brings with him to the dining hall, along with a spoon and/or fork and a plastic glass or mug. The boys form a circle around the perimeter of the dining hall, and a teacher – who rarely steps into the room – calls for someone to pray. There are many boys eager to say the prayer, and they pray for everything: the school, their families, their teachers and fellow students, us volunteers. Most of the boys and teachers know no English at all, and those who do know very little. Therefore, we had to communicate in Spanish. The boys were incredibly patient with our bumbling attempts to speak their language – incredibly patient, and very polite. (And often a bit amused. One of the women in our group was trying to ask a boy what he liked, and what she actually said meant “I’m in love with you”.) When somebody finishes eating, he knocks on the table as a way of asking permission to be excused, and the others at the table knock back, as a way of giving permission.

After eating, each boy will clean his bowl, mug, and silverware in one of two sinks in the corners of the dining room, and take them back to his room. Breakfast, most days, consists of kidney beans, corn tortillas, and rice, or beans, tortillas, and perhaps some shredded white cheese. The breakfast beverage is highly sweetened, warm coffee. After breakfast, about 6-6:15am, some of the boys are assigned to wipe the tables, sweep and mop the floors, and sweep and mop the tile walkway in front of the dorms. Others go to their assigned work for the morning. Never a word of complaint or a grumble, or any attitude of being put-upon. After a morning of work, where there is no nonsense but steady, consistent work, the boys come in at 11:00am to wash up, change into their blue button-down shirts (which is the school “uniform”) and clean jeans, and get ready for lunch at 11:30. At lunch, the same procedure is followed. Lunch, also, is more often than not beans, rice, and tortillas, with perhaps a dollop of sour cream. The beverage is usually a sweet, hot spiced tea. The boys then have classes in the afternoons: Math, Spanish, general science, and agriculture. A couple times a week they have computer classes, which they all seem to love.

Supper is at 5:30. Often, again, it is beans, rice, and tortillas. A few times, at lunch or supper, we had a break from this menu: a stew, an “enchilada” (which is more like a hard taco), bean soup, eggs (which the boys gather from the chickens on the farm), an apple, orange, or fried plantain. One morning we actually had pancakes – no syrup, but with a delicious cream/butter sauce spread on the top. Desserts were never a part of the menu.

After supper, the boys do homework until 8:00, and then they are free to play games with us until bedtime. Scrabble (a Spanish edition), chess (I got roundly beaten by one of the really smart boys), Chinese Checkers, various card games, etc. They loved playing with us – as we did with them.

Our work as volunteers was the construction of brick feeding troughs for the dairy cows. Lots of shoveling sand into gunny sacks at one side of the farm, loading the sacks into a pickup truck, and taking them to the cow pen, where the sacks were emptied out onto the ground to be sifted, just like we did in Juarez. Every member of our group, no matter what age, worked very hard. We worked in the mornings from about 7 until 11, when we went back to volunteer’s house and changed into clean clothes for lunch. After lunch, it was back to work.

Each night, after playing games with the boys, we volunteers would go back to our “cabin” and sit in a circle of chairs; and one of the group would lead a devotional. We would then read one of the “letters from home” which some of you wrote, which were touching and deeply appreciated. After a day of hard work, most of us slept well, to get up at 5:00am the next morning (farm life!)

Twice I got to celebrate Eucharist in Spanish – on Sunday, and on Wednesday. Quite humbling, and quite wonderful. My fellow volunteers gave me this stole, which Rachel and Jocie found in one of the towns we visited.

Of course, we couldn’t drink the water from the tap, but had to use bottled water. We couldn’t put toilet paper into the toilet. The electricity would go out at a moment’s notice. We had several downpours of rain, one which washed out part of the main road into Tegucigalpa, keeping us from seeing El Hogar’s Technical Institute, as we had planned. The boys wash their own clothes by hand (as did we). The humidity is so high, our clothes never quite dried when we hung them on the line. (I took home a suitcase of wet clothes.) Mercifully, the insects were not that bad (they work hard to spray for mosquitoes), but we faithfully applied DEET and sunscreen every day, aware that the Director of the Agricultural School himself had come down with dengue fever, which had damaged his heart. I cannot tell you how much more I appreciate what John and Jocie lived with and accomplished in their 9 years at El Hogar! A recently retired couple on our team, both younger and stronger than I, had been looking for a place to do some long-term mission work, and they decided that life there was too hard.

But as John and Jocie will tell you, the reward is knowing that it is all for the boys. Giving them a chance at a better life, as productive members of society.

Seeing the boys, their intelligence, their self-motivation, their work and study ethic, their smiles, their patience with us (did I mention their patience with us?), their willingness to engage us, the ease with which they prayed long prayers from their hearts (and their eagerness to volunteer to do so, unlike most of us adults), their total lack of complaining (sometimes it is like pulling teeth to get members of our youth group to vacuum the parish hall after a youth group meeting), their willingness and joy in singing (unlike many of us), is moving, inspiring, and can be an example to each of us.

I know there are many wonderful, wonderful charities to think about when you are considering giving charitable contributions. Local, state, national, international; within the church, outside the church. I ask that you at least consider helping, in whatever way you can, this marvelous ministry of El Hogar.

Proper 14, Year C

August 8, 2010

Hebrews 11:1-16; Luke 12: 32-40 [Jesus said:] "Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks. Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them. If he comes during the middle of the night, or near dawn, and finds them so, blessed are those slaves. "But know this: if the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour."

“What did you expect?”

It’s a rhetorical phrase that we use in our everyday speech. Every Spring, Chicago Cubs fans get their hopes up. They think, “Maybe this is our year!” But then, Cub fans have said that since 1908, when they last won the World Series. And each time they start a swoon, cynical sports writers write: “Well, what did you expect?” It’s a rhetorical question, for every Cub fan knows the answer: “Not much.”

A promising bill is brought before Congress. It makes a lot of sense, we think; but it is killed in committee by partisan bickering. Well, what did you expect of Congress? A major corporation is found to have been illegally polluting the river by dumping waste. An investigation shows that equipment to treat the waste would have cost the company millions of dollars, and so they decided to illegally dump it instead. Well, what did you expect?

The implied answer, of course, is, “Not much.” We don’t expect much.

Michael Josephson, founder of the Character Counts Coalition, says that one of the major roadblocks to improving character among us – be it in our schools, in our corporations, or in Congress – is the pervasive cynicism in our land. We don’t expect much from our institutions, or from each other; we don’t believe there is much hope that our better angels will win out. We look for ulterior motives from businesses, politicians, or even our friends and acquaintances. When disappointments come, our suspicions are confirmed: “Well, what do you expect?”

We don’t expect much of our politicians or our corporations. We don’t expect much of each other. We don’t expect much of ourselves, and – I’m afraid – we don’t expect much of God.

Yes, we believe, we have faith; but we’re going to leave all the lights on and lock the doors nevertheless. We’re going to keep building treasures here on earth, where thief comes near and moth destroys and purses wear out. It’s not a lack of faith, we tell ourselves; it’s just being prudent! And we can convince ourselves of that because there is an element of truth in it. We should plan for the future! The problem is that we can all too easily put our ultimate trust in such earthly safeguards, and not in God. Where our treasure is, there will our heart be also.

Jesuit priest and psychologist John Powell tells of his experience with his aging mother. “I used to carry my aged mother up and down the stairs of our home,” Powell writes. “And she would grab onto the banister while I was carrying her up or down the stairs and hold on to it so tightly we couldn’t move. I’d say, ‘Momma, you have to let go of the banister or we can’t move.’ And she looked at me with her plaintive little eyes and said, ‘I’m afraid you’ll drop me.’ I said, ‘Momma, I’m going to drop you right now. When I count to three, I’m going to drop you!’ And then she would let go, and we’d go two more steps, when she would grab on again.

“That is in microcosm my interaction with God,” Powell explains. “I’m hanging on to the banisters of life. I’m hanging on to these little things that make me feel secure. But God loves me more than I love my little mother, and God would never let me come to any harm. God knows where we’re going.” (“Prayer as Surrender,” Preaching Today, Tape No. 108.)

I don’t know about you, but I seem to hang onto the banisters all the time. I leave claw marks in them. “It’s not that I don’t trust God,” I tell myself. “It’s just that – well, God wants us to do things on our own, right? ‘God helps him who helps himself’ – that’s in the Bible somewhere, isn’t it?” [No, it isn’t…] But again, the danger is that there is an element of truth in such thought: God DOES want us to apply ourselves – but when we start putting our ultimate trust in our own efforts, when we expect that God WON’T help, won’t get involved because God wants us to do it on our own – we have forfeited trust in God, made God into a powerless figurehead, Someone from whom we don’t expect much. We begin to worry that if we don’t do all the heavy lifting, it won’t get done. We get overwhelmed with the illusion that it all depends on us, and that, if we make one false step, we will drop those we are carrying, who depend on us. This is nothing but a lack of trust in God, God’s promises, God’s Word, God’s presence. It is the sin of low expectation.

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for,” our Epistle tells us, “the conviction of things NOT seen.” Therein lies some of the difficulty of our scientific and technological culture, which has taught us to believe only what can be seen – if not with the human eye, then with an electron microscope or with the Hubble telescope. “By faith,” our Epistle continues, “Abraham obeyed when he was called to go… not knowing where he was to go… By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised… These all died in faith, not having received what was promised, but having seen it and greeted it from afar…”

Not having received what was promised, but having seen it and greeted it from afar. And so it is that, if we are to live by faith, we must live be something OTHER than the evidence of fallible humanity all around us: partisan Congresses, greedy corporations, fallible friends, imperfect priests and fellow church members. Our Scripture readings call us to live in hope, expectation, and trust, rather than clinging to the uncertain banisters of this world. “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out… For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also…”

So DON’T put your ultimate trust in your bank account or annuities. Congress may pass some bad laws, but God can still work through it all. Corporations may cheat. Your friends may do some things that hurt you and betray your trust. But none of these are the ones carrying you up the stairs; God is! You don’t have to cling for dear life to the banister.

Preacher Benjamin Reaves tells the wonderful story of a young boy whose trust and expectation we could all do well to model. You’ve heard me tell the story before:

He was just a little fellow. His mother died when he was just a child. His father, in trying to be both mommy and daddy, had planned a picnic. The little boy had never been on a picnic, so they made their plans, fixed the lunch, and packed the car. Then it was time to go to bed, for the picnic was the next day.

[But the boy] just couldn’t sleep. He tossed and he turned; … the excitement got to him. Finally, he got out of bed, ran into the room where his father had already fallen asleep, and shook him. His father woke up and saw his son. He said to him, “What are you doing up? What’s the matter?”

The boy said, “I can’t sleep… I’m [too] excited about tomorrow.”

His father replied, “Well, Son, I’m sure you are, and it’s going to be a great day, but it won’t be great if we don’t get some sleep. So why don’t you just get back in bed, and get a good night’s rest.”

So the boy trudged off to his room and got in bed. Before long, sleep came -- to the father, that is. It wasn’t long thereafter that … the little boy [was back in his father’s room]. He was pushing and shoving his father, and his father opened his eyes…

“What’s the matter now?”

The boy said, “Daddy, I just want to thank you for tomorrow.” (Benjamin Reaves, “Living Expectantly,” Preaching Today, Tape No. 65.)

“Do not be afraid little flock, for it is your father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

We may not experience God’s kingdom each day of our lives. We may undergo many disappointments. We may not even receive the fulfillment of God’s promises. But we can nevertheless live, like Abraham and Sarah, “having seen and greeted them from afar.” We can live in the full joy of expectation and readiness, loins girded and lamps lit, and say, “Thank you, Father, for tomorrow.”

AMEN

Proper 13, Year C

August 1, 2010

Luke 12:13-21 Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” But he said to him, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” And he said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” Then he told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

“The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

Jesus does not criticize the rich man for harvesting a bumper crop; it is the man’s attitude and what he does with his abundance that earns him Jesus’ disapproval. The overflowing abundance of his crop hints of a miracle – a miracle! – a grace of God; and yet the man seems to claim the whole harvest as his own doing! The rich farmer does not mention giving to God the required Biblical tithe; he does not mention God; he does not mention anyone else at all. In fact, the whole parable is a monologue of the rich farmer. He talks to himself, answers himself, plans for himself, congratulates himself. He has managed everything very well by himself, thank you very much. Only at the very end of the story do we hear another voice, unsolicited – the voice of God. God says, “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?”

Jesus concludes: “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

Now it would be easy for us to think that this parable is only meant for the Bill Gateses and Warren Buffets of this world, and not for you and me. But Jesus does not say what treasure we need to be wary of amassing: it may not be monetary, or even material, at all. In fact, the original Greek text doesn’t even have the word “treasure”; it simply says, “So it is with those who store up for themselves”. In introducing this parable, Jesus says, “Be on your guard against all kinds of greed,” and indeed, the parable has implications beyond simply amassing material goods.

Author Parker Palmer once found himself in a similar situation to the rich farmer, although in Palmer’s case it was not an abundance of crops that he coveted, but an abundance of knowledge: “I can do whatever I want with my storehouse of knowledge,” Palmer thought to himself. But Palmer, a university professor for 20 years, finally realized that his singular trust in his abundance of knowledge was like the farmer’s trust in his barns full of crops. “We are well-educated people,” Palmer writes of himself and others like him, “who have been schooled in a way of knowing that treats the world as an object to be dissected and manipulated, a way of knowing that gives us power over the world… But another way of knowledge is available to us,” he realizes. “This is a knowledge that originates not in curiosity or control, but in compassion, or love…

“Curiosity and control create a knowledge that distances us from each other and the world,” Palmer continues, “allowing us to use what we know as a plaything and to play the game by our own self-serving rules. But a knowledge that springs from love will implicate us in the web of life; it will wrap the knower and the known in compassion, in a bond of awesome responsibility as well as transforming joy; it will call us to involvement, mutuality, accountability.” (Lectionary Homiletics, 1998)

In a world characterized by instant communication and a global economy, we can no longer talk only to ourselves, like the farmer in our parable does. The very notion of an isolated, objective “me” is called into question -- not only by romantics or preachers, but by scientists such as Fritjof Capra, who notes the scientific fact that simply observing the electron of an atom changes it: “The electron,” he writes, “does not have properties independent of my mind. In atomic physics, the sharp split between mind and matter, between I [sic] and the world, is no longer valid. We can never speak of nature without, at the same time, speaking about ourselves.

“This sense of connectedness changes us, and it changes the way we think about knowledge itself. We cannot acquire knowledge -- or possessions -- as solitary enterprises. We are connected within a larger, more intricate web of life in which both our knowledge and our possessions involve us with the lives of others. I can no longer say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample [goods and] information stored up for many years to come.’ We can no longer talk only to ourselves.” (Ibid.)

Our lives are not about us, or about storing up things: possessions, knowledge, skills, comfort, security, or good images of ourselves. All of these may in reality be efforts to buffer ourselves from discovering our true self in relation to God – buffer ourselves from our uncomfortableness with our own souls, buffer ourselves from the ache of meaninglessness or loneliness, the fear of our own mortality, the dread of losing control.

Richard Rohr uses a metaphor from baseball (I love it!) as he writes:

[Carl Jung said,] “If you get rid of the pain before you have answered its questions, you get rid of the self along with it.” Our Christian way of talking about this is the cross. The pain is the way through. We must face our compulsions, our lies. Each of us has a false image of God [and a false image of ourself]...

Faith… is letting go of the images…[letting go of the false images]… Faith is so rare -- and religion so common -- because no one wants to live between first base and second base [known in baseball as “no man’s land”]. Faith is the in-between space where you’re not sure you’ll make it to second base. You’ve let go of one thing and haven’t yet latched onto another. Most of us choose the security of first base.

Yet faith happens in the in-betweens, the interruptions, the thresholds. It happens when I’ve left this [place] where I was in control, where I had my self-explanation, where I had my ego boundaries, where I had my moral sense of my own rightness and superiority. (Radical Grace, p.190)

I am fascinated by “contronyms” – words that are their own opposites. One of those words is “cleave”: it can either mean “to cling to” – as when the King James Version says, “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh”; or it can mean “to cut in two”, “to divide, or separate” – as in a meat cleaver. “To cling to”, or “to separate”. Our Gospel parable might well be thought of as an issue of cleaving: What do you cleave to that God wants you to cleave from in your life?

AMEN

Proper 12, Year C

July 25, 2010

Luke 11:1-13 He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” He said to them, “When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial.” And he said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.’ And he answers from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.’ I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs. “So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.”

“Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.”

I don’t know about you, but that seems to contradict most of my real-life experience! No matter how sincere I may be, no matter how fervently I may desire a particular thing or a particular outcome in my life, praying or asking does not always bring the desired result, seeking does not always open the door to my wishes.

“Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you” does sound, to some extent at least, more like childhood fantasy than real-life reality; like a promise out of Mary Poppins.

Now some Christians may hold that the reason we do not receive when we ask, or find when we search, is that we haven’t enough faith. Some would even go so far as to say that all sickness and disease could be cured if we had enough faith, with the implied accusation that those who are sick are simply sinful or lacking in faith. Now I believe that faith does allow God to heal; but even St. Paul, with all his faith, was not healed of his “thorn in the flesh”, as much as he prayed that it be removed. (2 Corinthians 12:7)

C.S. Lewis wrestled with the question of whether God answers all our prayers. He wrote: “If an infinitely wise Being listens to the requests of finite and foolish creatures, of course He will sometimes grant and sometimes refuse them. Invariable ‘success’ in prayer would not prove the Christian doctrine at all. It would prove something much more like magic—a power in certain human beings to control, or compel, the course of nature.” (The Joyful Christian, pp.97-98)

In other words, God is infinitely wise, and we are finite, bound by time and space, not always able to know or to see what is best. Will not, then, our heavenly Father, who does see and know what is best, and loves us infinitely, say “no” to some of our destructive requests? One wise person (Jean Ingelow) wrote, “I have lived to thank God that all my prayers have not been answered.”

As to the idea that our prayers are not answered because we are not pious or faithful enough, C.S. Lewis writes: “In Gethsemane the holiest of all petitioners prayed three times that a certain cup might pass from him. It did not. After that, the idea that prayer is recommended to us as a sort of infallible gimmick may be dismissed.” (Joyful, p.98)

Prayer, then, is not a vending machine, into which we place our desires like coins, push the button and receive in return the requested prize.

I think it interesting that there is, in each of these phrases, something missing: the specific object of the verbs. “Ask and it will be given you.” But what is “it”? “Seek, and you will find…” But we are not told what we will find. “Knock, and the door will be opened for you…”, but we are not told what will be behind the door. Similarly, we are told that no parent would give a child a scorpion if the child asked for an egg; but we are not told that the parent would necessarily give the child the egg which was asked for. We are only told that human parents know how to give “good things” to their children. A child asking for an egg may get a piece of bread instead, or an egg salad sandwich – something good, to be sure, but not necessarily the exact thing for which the child asked.

I believe that the promises of Jesus in this passage are graciously open-ended. Jesus is saying, “God will give to those who ask, to those who come to God with open hands and open hearts, receptive to receiving. Our heavenly Father will never turn away anyone who comes to him truly seeking, knocking, asking.” That does not mean that God always gives exactly what we ask for.

Medieval mystic Julian of Norwich wrote, “This is our Lord’s will… that our prayer and our trust be, alike, large…” (Revelations of Divine Love) Prayer that demands only a certain answer is likely to be both small prayer and small trust. That doesn’t mean that we should never pray for specific things, but rather that in our prayer, our hearts and trust are open to receiving other than what we pray for. “Think of the last thing you prayed about --” wrote Oswald Chambers, “were you devoted to your desire or to God?... ‘Your Father knows what you need before you ask him,’ [Jesus said]. (Matthew 6:8) The point of asking is that you may get to know God better.” (My Utmost for His Highest, March 20)

In today’s Gospel, Jesus is not so much telling his disciples what to pray for; he is not even telling his disciples so much how to pray. Rather, Jesus is telling his disciples about the God to whom they pray. He is saying that our God is a loving Father who will supply all of our needs, all that is best for us. We may not receive the answers we desire to our petitions; we may not find the solutions we seek; a different door may be opened when we knock. But Jesus assures us that the God to whom we pray is a Heavenly Father who loves us without bound, and who is always there for us, with us, within us.

“If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give – the Holy Spirit! – to those who ask him!” Note again the absence of a direct object: the heavenly Father will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask – but ask for what? Ask for the Holy Spirit? Ask for an egg? For a fish? Maybe so! Theologian John Shea says that the Holy Spirit is really the only gift God has to give, for it is the gift of God’s Self! And so whatever we might specifically ask for in prayer, we will get in response the same thing: the Holy Spirit. God is not a means to an end; God is the end. There is a difference between prayer and wishes: wishes are simply expressions of our wants, but prayer, by its very nature, moves us into relationship with God.

We may not find exactly what we are looking for. Instead, we may find the greatest gift God has to offer: the Holy Spirit, God’s very self.

AMEN

Proper 11 Year C July 17-18, 2010 The Rev. Merle M. Harrison

Luke 10:38-42 Mary and Martha Luke 10:38 (NRSV) Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. 39 She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to what he was saying. 40 But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me." 41 But the Lord answered her, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; 42 there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her."

I want to focus on our Gospel reading today, because it applies so directly to our lives, as much in our day as in Jesus’ time. A lot of people, maybe including many of us, tend to have a kneejerk reaction to this reading, depending partly on which one of the sisters we identify with.

Both are good, and both their ways of serving are good. We can’t really judge between them because both are needed, When I was in the Navy some years ago, at dinner the officers were seated at tables of six, in the order in which we arrived in the wardroom; if we went there with friends we were seated together but the table was filled out with those we probably didn’t know. We were required to dress for dinner, but most of us chose to go in civvies, with the guys in sport coats and slacks and the gals in dresses. But even without the identification of a uniform, we could tell within a very few minutes who was Navy and who was a Marine there for flight training (the Marine Corps is part of the Navy). Naturally, we gave each other a hard time about which was the better service, but we all knew without question that the skills and abilities of both were equally necessary to protect our country.

Both the contemplative life centered on prayer and the active life focused on translating prayer into action are good, and we need both in our church and in our community – and in our lives. We are each Mary and Martha at different times. We may lean toward one or the other but we need to do both. Anglican Bishop N.T. Wright states that “Action and contemplation are of course both important. Without the first you wouldn’t eat, without the second you wouldn’t worship.”

There are many kinds of spiritual gifts, and what matters most is that we use them in service to God and to one another. We’re not to be envious of someone else’s gift, wishing we had that one instead of what we were given. No gift is better than another – it’s what we do with it that matters! – and no, we can’t trade it in on another one we think we might like better; we are called to use the gifts which God has chosen for us – being wonderful cooks, sewing beautiful hangings for the altar, teaching Sunday school, providing praiseful music, welcoming others with Christian hospitality, organizing groups for specific tasks, caring pastorally for those in need....The list of the gifts possessed and used by this congregation could go on and on. Paul tells us that the Fruit of the Spirit is love, and these are just some of the many ways of expressing that love. Many clergy, especially priests, are adept at preaching, teaching, celebrating the sacraments, and they are rightly honored for these gifts – but it also takes the gifts of a great many people working behind the scenes to make the worship service go smoothly: altar guild, ushers, acolytes, lectors, musicians, chalice ministers – all are equally important, both in the worship service and in the eyes of God..

As we go through the seasons of life, our focus changes as our circumstances change, as our lives change. There are times when we concentrate on doing what we need to do; for instance earning a living and taking care of our family. These responsibilities may bring us a lot of joy, and often do, but they’re necessities in any case. The time and energy they require may preclude our doing many other things that we postpone till a later time. At other times, perhaps when our children are older or we’ve retired from full-time work, we can spend more time doing what we most like to do. We’re not given just one gift – but we might focus on one at a particular time and on a different one at another time in our life. And it’s quite likely that we will use a particular gift or talent in different ways during our lifetime, depending on our age and our circumstances at the time, or on the opportunities to use that gift.

If you grew up with a sister or brother, or have more than one child, you know about sibling rivalry; it crops up pretty early in life. And it’s about a lot more than who got the bigger piece of cake for dessert. The younger child wants to do what the older one can do, to have the privileges that come with being older, and the older one thinks the younger one gets away with things he wasn’t allowed to do at that age.

We’re not told which woman in our Gospel was the older, Mary or Martha. I tend to think that Martha is older, the one dutifully doing the chores that need to be done, and Mary is the younger, following her own wishes and doing more what she feels like doing. But my bias is showing – I was the older one in my family with more rules and expectations and my younger sister was the one who got away with everything. Of course that’s not what she’d tell you.

Sometimes it takes courage to use a particular gift in the way we feel called to use it; we may have to buck society’s ideas of what is appropriate for a person to do, depending on whether they’re young, old, or in-between, on whether they’re male or female, on the particular culture of which they’re a part. Mary is a good example of this, upsetting those in her culture who felt that her actions were quite inappropriate for a woman, even as Jesus put his seal of approval on what she was doing and the choices she made. The restrictions that many of these past boundaries caused have been greatly loosened in the last several decades – we seldom hear any more, “Oh, that’s a man’s job,” or “That’s woman’s work,” for instance. Not too long ago Wendie and I could not have been ordained, and our hospitals and nursing homes would not have male nurses, as they often do now. At the same time we need to be cognizant of the fact that men and women are different, psychologically and emotionally as well as physically, thus they may have different ways of using the same gift. And that’s all right. People in need are then served in a greater variety of ways, some of which may be more appropriate for them, when we are allowed to serve in the way which is most meaningful to us, in the way we feel called to use our particular gift. Father Michael and I are co-chaplains at PCC, but we don’t necessarily interact with our residents in the same ways. Both our styles seem to work, though, which is what matters.

Sometimes we lose sight of why we do what we do. We get lost in the details instead of looking at the bigger picture. That was Martha's problem, she focused on the details, failing to seize the unique opportunity to sit at Jesus' feet and learn from him. There is nothing wrong with working hard, it’s good and it’s necessary, but there are times when we have to sit and rest and spend some quiet time with the Lord. Jesus knows this, and he calls us to have balance in our spiritual lives.

Since this story doesn’t fit here either geographically or chronologically, Luke may have placed it where it is in his Gospel to help illustrate part of the double Great Commandment – Love of God and love of our neighbor. Last week we heard the story of the Good Samaritan, demonstrating the love of neighbor, and our Gospel this week is the story of Mary and Martha, in which Jesus stresses the importance of taking time to focus fully on God and our relationship with him as we put our love for him above all else in our lives.

There are at least two other important lessons for us packed into this short reading: that we live fully in the moment, not letting ourselves be distracted by details or worry about things other than what we’re doing at the time; and as we serve, honoring the spiritual gifts we have, not to do so out of duty and obligation, but to use the gifts God has given us, with joy and delight.

Amen.

Proper 10, Year C The Rev. Mark D. Meyer

July 11, 2010

Luke 10:25-37 Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.” But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.’ Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

In our Gospel reading today, it is interesting to note that the first question the lawyer asks Jesus is a question to which the lawyer already has the answer. “Teacher”, he asks, “what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus responds, “You’re the expert in the Jewish Law. What does the Law of Moses say?” The lawyer answers, “The Law says you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus says, “You have answered rightly; do this, and you shall live.”

So often in our lives, we already have the answers – we just don’t put them into practice; we don’t live them. Mark Twain said that it wasn’t the parts of the Bible he didn’t understand that bothered him; it was the parts he did understand. He understood them; he just didn’t follow them.

The lawyer asks Jesus a second question: “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus answers by saying, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead.” Half dead. An interesting choice of words! The image that comes to my mind is that of the proverbial water glass: is it half full, or half empty? It all depends on how you look at it. This man in the parable: which half of him do we see -- the dead half, or the living half?

The priest and the Levite pass him by; we can assume that what they saw was the dead half of the man. According to Jewish Law, anybody touching a dead body would defile himself, becoming ritually unclean for 7 days (Numbers 19:11). The priest and the Levite might have feared becoming ritually unclean. They might also have been afraid that the robbers who beat this man were still lurking around, so they better not stop. They might have been afraid that if they stopped they would be late for an important appointment. And so they choose to see the man as dead. Whatever their reasons, the priest and Levite see someone who is half dead, while the Samaritan sees someone who is half alive, and he identifies himself with that life. The Samaritan looks at the half-dead man and sees someone who is like himself – and the Law says you should love your neighbor who is as yourself.

In a powerful documentary on the life of Mother Theresa of Calcutta, British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge tells of a time when Mother Theresa found a baby who had been abandoned in a garbage pile. Weak and dying from exposure, the child lies limp and motionless in Mother Theresa’s hands, barely breathing. “Do you see the Life in this child?!” Mother Theresa beams. Muggeridge admits that before she had pointed it out, he could not. All he could see was death. It was only by seeing through Mother Theresa’s eyes that he could see life in that dying baby.

Mother Theresa and the Samaritan both see someone half alive, not half dead.

What about you and me? We look out onto a world where selfishness, greed, lust, violence, and sickness abound. When we look at others, what do we see? Do we see God’s image, God’s life – which we know is there? Or do we see only the sinful part, the violent part, the sick part, the dead part (which we all have)?

As most of you know, I have been visiting an inmate in prison for the past 3 years. I must admit that when this man’s mother first called me and asked me to visit her son, and told me the crime he was accused of, all I could envision in my mind was the crime – and I drew a mental picture of the kind of malicious criminal who would commit such a crime. What I discovered instead was an intelligent, gifted, scared human being who had his internal demons, yes; but then, so do you and I. Our justice system is, by design, an adversarial system. The district attorney, representing “the people” (us), focuses on the sinful side of the accused person – the “half-dead” side, trying to portray the accused in as negative a light as possible, as an irredeemable threat to society, not as a human being with whom any of us could identify. “The People vs. John Smith” is the way the case is presented. Is John Smith not one of “the People”, not a person, like any of us?

That is a key question posed by our Gospel. The lawyer has just stated that one must love one’s neighbor who is as oneself; but then he asks Jesus “Who is my neighbor?” The lawyer wants to know whom he has to love, and whom he doesn’t have to love. Who is “the People”, and who is not?

What do we see in people – the half-dead, or the half-alive? The sinful part, or the part created in the image of God?

The Samaritans were hated enemies of the Jews. If Jesus were retelling this parable to 21^st-Century Americans, perhaps he would substitute the term “radical Muslim”. Hear the parable again, and make that substitution: it is the “radical Muslim” who has compassion on the man who is half-dead.

And perhaps that half-dead man is you. You are the man robbed, stripped, and left half-dead in the ditch. It is a matter of life or death. Is the radical Muslim your neighbor – is he a person, a human being like any of us, a child of God like any of us – half-alive, like any of us? Or perhaps for you there is a different group of people whom you want nothing to do with. Republicans? Democrats? Any of the thousands of prisoners behind bars in our county? If you were left half-dead in a ditch, and it were a matter of life or death, would you accept help from any one of these? Would such a person be your neighbor?

It is a question to which we already know the answer.

AMEN

Proper 8, Year C

Jun 27, 2010

Luke 9:51-62 When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. And he sent messengers ahead of him. On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him; but they did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem. When his disciples James and John saw it, they said, “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” But he turned and rebuked them. Then they went on to another village. As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” But Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

In our Gospel reading for today, we hear of three would-be disciples whom Jesus challenges regarding their priorities and the depth and strength of their conviction. They are not named; they could easily be any one of us.

We don’t know what motivates the first man to come forward and say to Jesus, “I will follow you wherever you go.” The man’s pronouncement may reflect the kind of impetuous passion which often follows when someone has just heard a stirring speech, or attended a tent-meeting revival. He is excited by what Jesus has said, or by the miracles Jesus has performed, and so he pledges to Jesus, “I will follow you wherever you go!”

But he doesn’t get much encouragement from Jesus. Perhaps Jesus sees through the emotion of the moment and tries to make very clear to the man the hard reality of truly following him: “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” Discipleship is costly, Jesus explains, and he throws the cold water of reality onto the burning fervor of the moment. Better to face the truth from the start: discipleship is not a bed of roses.

The second man offers an excellent-sounding reason for not immediately accepting Jesus’ invitation to follow him. “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” But Jesus replies, in what sounds like a terribly uncompassionate response, “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the Kingdom of God.” Many commentators on this passage believe that Jesus’ response is not as harsh as it first sounds. It is likely the man’s father is not yet dead, for if he were, the son would be at home tending to the funeral arrangements, not out on the road listening to an itinerant preacher. What the man is possibly saying is, “My father is aging. Let me go home and take care of him, and in a few years, when he dies, then I’ll become your follower.”

Now, to care for one’s aging father is a good thing, is it not? Yet Jesus understands that there are infinite “good” things which can keep us from following him. If I am biding my time until the circumstances are just right before committing my life to God and to discipleship -- waiting until I have more time, ‘til the kids are off to college, or I finish this major project, or my life is more settled -- then what I am really doing is deferring or postponing the most important thing in life: my growing relationship with God.

The third man says to Jesus: “I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus responds, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Theologian John Shea puts an interesting interpretation on this speaker’s request. He writes:

(The man) does not propose to go back to his family for a final farewell party. He wants to return to his family for their blessing on what he has decided to do. If they do not bless his traipsing after Jesus and he follows Jesus anyway, he will be caught looking over his shoulder. The kingdom is about steadfastly moving into a future that people must desire more than anything else. Seeking permission avoids the question of personal decision. However, it is only sheer individual resolve that will overturn the [hard soil] significantly enough for the seed of the gospel to be planted. A determined hand on the plough is Jesus’ concern.*

How many of us give inordinate weight to the approval of others, which can easily cause us to waver in our Christian path? I know I do.

Canon Fletcher Lowe says this about our tendency to make excuses for not living out our Christian faith: “Sometimes we are seduced into a ‘convenience store’ brand of Christianity,” he writes.

In we go, picking and choosing what we want our discipleship to be like, what our relationship to the Lord is to be about -- on our terms, following our agenda. Or we sometimes play the “Yes, but...” brand of discipleship...

“Yes, Jesus, I want to be a follower of yours, but, you know, my job is pretty demanding… You know that I need my job to support my family, and you know how important that is. Don’t make me subordinate my job to you”.... “Yes, Jesus, I want to be your follower, but -- I really can’t tithe. After all, you know I’ve got these obligations and I need to be responsible to them. And besides, I’m not really sure the church knows how to use my money”... “Yes, Jesus, I really want to be your follower, but make it on my terms. I want to set the conditions, so that in reality, you are serving me and not me serving you.” (from Sunday Sermons)

A major part of the problem is that there are countless “good” things in the world which can keep us from a life of devotion to God. There are endless opportunities for self-improvement, good deeds, and hard work. Oswald Chambers put it this way:

Very few of us debate with the sordid and evil and wrong, but we do debate with the good. It is the good that hates the best, and the higher up you get in the scale of natural virtues, the more intense the opposition to Jesus Christ. (My Utmost, for His Highest, p. 344)

We are experts at giving excuses for not answering God’s highest call on our lives. We give lip service to making Jesus Lord of our lives, but in reality, we ask him to take a number and wait his turn while we are busy with more pressing obligations.

Living a Christian life means holding nothing back, giving our best and first to God. We at times need to be shocked out of our own prideful satisfaction with living good and virtuous lives, rather than surrendered and obedient lives. In our Gospel reading, Jesus shocks three would-be followers. What would he say to you and me?

We all have a world of excuses why we don’t yield our lives to God’s sovereign love and forgiveness; yet the wonderful paradox of Christianity is that in surrendering control of our lives to God, we receive more of ourselves back in return. Freed from the tyranny of self-centeredness, we are able to bring more life and meaning to our jobs, our families, our interests.

We will never know what happened to those three potential followers of Jesus in our Gospel; but we do know that the call which Jesus made to them is the same that he makes to us: to follow with singleness of heart him whose service is perfect freedom, through whose death we find the fullness of Life.

AMEN

*John Shea, The Relentless Widow, Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2006, p. 182

The Power of Promises

A sermon by Lewis Smedes* [shortened]

God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” --Exodus 3:14

He said. . . “I will be with you.” --Exodus 3:12

Somewhere today a woman is saying, “I would like to chuck this marriage and start over with somebody who knows how to love me; God knows the clod I married has not given me the love I need.” But then she remembers a promise that she made and decides to stick with her marriage and try to make it work.

Somewhere today, on this Father’s Day weekend, a father is saying to himself, “I want my impossible daughter to get out of the house and never come back; God knows she has driven me out of my mind.” But he remembers a promise he made to her when she was born, and he decides to hang in with her in hurting love.

Somewhere today a minister is thinking, “I am going to give up my calling and find a line of work that pays off in a little more appreciation; God knows this congregation has given me third-degree burnout.” But he remembers a promise he made to God when he was ordained, and he decides to renew his spirit and stick with his vocation.

Yes, somewhere people still make and still keep promises. They choose not to quit when the going gets rough because they promised once to see it through. They stick to lost causes. They hold on to a love grown cold. They stay with people who have become pains in the neck. They still dare to make promises and care enough to keep the promises they make. I want to say to you that if you have a ship you will not desert, if you have people you will not forsake, if you have causes you will not abandon, then you are like God.

What a marvelous thing a promise is! When a person makes a promise, she reaches out into an unpredictable future and makes one thing predictable: she will be there even when being there costs her more than she wants to pay. When a person makes a promise, he stretches himself out into circumstances that no one can control and controls at least one thing: he will be there no matter what the circumstances turn out to be. With one simple word of promise, a person creates an island of certainty in a sea of uncertainty.

When you make a promise, you take a hand in creating your own future... When I make a promise I refuse to surrender my relationships with people I love to the wayward drives of my subconscious. When I make a promise I act in freedom. I am not a hunk of clay waiting to be shaped by my culture. I am free to create a future of my own.

And an identity of my own. I create my identity as this woman’s husband and that child’s father and that man’s friend. Our culture tries to tell us we can be real selves only if we claim our right to self-satisfaction and self-fulfillment. A free self knows he becomes a genuine self by making commitments to other people — promises that he intends to keep even when keeping them exacts a price.

Some people ask, “Who am I?” and expect an answer to come from their feelings. Some people ask, “Who am I?” and expect the answer to come from their accomplishments. Other people ask, “Who am I?” and expect the answer to come from what other people think about them. A person who dares to make and keep promises discovers who she is by the promises she has made and kept to other people.

What you feel is not what you are. Feelings are flickering flames that fade with every fitful breeze. What you desire is not what you are. Desires rise and fall and change so fast that they can only tell you what you want at any trembling moment; knowing what you want is not the same as knowing what you are.

…We are our promises, and we lose hold of ourselves when we take no pains to keep them.

There is a paradox here. The freedom we demonstrate in making commitments is the freedom to limit our freedom. When you make a promise you limit your freedom so that you can be there with the person who trusts you to keep your promise. “The person who makes a vow,” said Chesterton, “makes an appointment with himself at some distant time and place, and he gives up his freedom in order to keep the appointment.” You freely tie yourself down so that other persons can be free to trust that you will keep your promise to them.

On this sort of trust, the whole human family depends.

The future of the human race hangs on a promise. Is there a happy ending to the human romance? It depends completely on a word spoken, a promise made. One thing can assure us that the story of mankind will not end in global disaster. One thing can assure us that this shining globe will not turn into a global garbage heap. One thing gives us hope that one day the world will finally work right for everyone and that the human family will discover peace and love and justice and freedom together. That one thing is a promise made and a promise kept.

Stopped in his tracks by a flaming bush that did not want to stop burning, Moses came to attention at the voice of an invisible, ineffable Someone calling him to lead his neglected people out of slavery.

Moses was skeptical. “What is your name?” he asked the invisible Stranger. “The people will need some identification.” The name came from behind the flame; it came in a word of our cryptic Hebrew consonants that have defied confident translation. “I am who I am,” the metaphysically – bent scholars have rendered it. But Moses was not a metaphysician. He was a level-headed Hebrew who knew that everything depended on whether this Stranger God could be trusted.

And what the Stranger God wanted to tell Moses was that he was a God who made promises and kept the promises he made. So the most likely translation of his name goes something like this: “I Am the One Who Will Be There With You.” This is God’s identity, this is who and what God is: a promise-maker and a promise-keeper.

No one on earth at that moment could have predicted the rises and falls of the people who heard and believed the promise. Moses led them out of Egypt, but once in the land of promise, they acted like a people with a national death wish.

One thing kept them going — the promise of the Stranger in the wilderness, the “One who will be there with you.” And one day, in a most unpromising time, when it seemed as if the Stranger had surely forgotten who he was and what he promised, a man came out of Judea saying strange and wonderful things about being Immanuel. In the end he let his blood flow over God’s good earth, and with that shedding of blood sealed again the ancient promise: “I am the One who will be there with you.”

Will he be? This is the peg on which the future hangs. What will come of it all in the end? A global garbage heap? Or a new earth that finally works right?

...And what comes of our own communities, too, is settled by the power of our own all-too-human promises. Our friendships. Our marriages. Our families. Our neighborhoods. These are the communities that matter to us now. And every community we live in is born and bred by promises made and promises kept.

What else keeps a marriage together? When two people get married, they take on two new identities. Each of them says to the other what God said to Moses: “I am the one who will be there for you.”

This sort of promise is countercultural these days. We have, in our culture, decided to make contracts instead of promises. What passes as a promise reads like a deal: “I will be there for you – as long as you provide me with all the satisfaction I have coming.” This is not a promise; it is a contract. The difference is this: we keep promises even when we are not getting what we have coming.

Take the family for another instance. What is a family but a community of promises made and promises kept — no matter what? A family is not just two or more people related by blood who happen to live under one roof. A family is not a management device by which two adults shuffle children around to the various experts who do the real rearing. A family is a community of people who dare to make a promise and care enough to keep it — no matter what. A real parent has the same name as God does: “the one who will be there with you.”

A family is held together by promises: where promises fail, families fail. The rebirth of the family can begin only in the rebirth of promise keeping.

When you get right down to it, everything we do together, from a nation conceived and born in liberty to a family reunion — everything hangs on the thin thread of promises made and promises kept.

…

If we do not keep our promises, what once was a human community turns into a combat zone of competitive self-maximizers. We are at sea, loose-jointed, uncertain, leery of each other, untrusting. Nobody can trust her neighbors. And without trust, no law, no police force, no legal contracts can keep a community human. The fact is that we are a people who can join together in a permanently free society only if we are a people who can keep promises together.

Let me conclude by repeating what I have been trying to say.

Our human destiny hangs totally on whether God will retain his identity as the One who will be there with us.

You and I can create an identity for ourselves in the promises we keep to each other.

You and I will experience genuine human community only if we keep our promises to each other.

In short, life begins and ends with those who dare to make a promise and care enough to keep the promise they make.

AMEN

* Lewis Smedes, “The Power of Promises”, from A Chorus of Witnesses, Thomas G. Long & Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., eds., Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1994, p. 156

Proper 6, Year C

June 13, 2010

Luke 7:36-50 One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee’s house and took his place at the table. And a woman in the city, who was a sinner, having learned that he was eating in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster jar of ointment. She stood behind him at his feet, weeping, and began to bathe his feet with her tears and to dry them with her hair. Then she continued kissing his feet and anointing them with the ointment. Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw it, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him--that she is a sinner.” Jesus spoke up and said to him, “Simon, I have something to say to you.” “Teacher,” he replied, “Speak.” ‘A certain creditor had two debtors; one owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they could not pay, he canceled the debts for both of them. Now which of them will love him more?” Simon answered, “I suppose the one for whom he canceled the greater debt.” And Jesus said to him, “You have judged rightly.” Then turning toward the woman, he said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.” Then he said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.” But those who were at the table with him began to say among themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?” And he said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

Simon is a good man. He tries his best to do what the Law of God requires, and he does a good job. He goes to church each week; he tithes his income. He gives to the poor; he says his prayers. He is widely respected in the community for being a model citizen, and a devout believer in God. If you asked Simon what it is that he most wants, he would answer that he wants to be a righteous man.

And so when word comes that the teacher Jesus of Nazareth is in town, and that reportedly he has performed a miracle in bringing a widow’s dead son back to life, Simon wants to meet this man. Perhaps he is a true prophet; and if so, Simon could learn much from him, could grow in his quest for righteousness. And so Simon issues Jesus an invitation to a banquet at his home.

The day arrives, and as is the custom in that time and place, the guests at the banquet recline on cushions around a low table, with their feet toward the wall. According with tradition, the door to the courtyard is left open, and passersby are allowed to enter and sit along the wall, as long as they do not approach the table or disturb the invited guests. After the guests leave, these uninvited folk -- many of them poor -- will be allowed to eat the scraps off the table. The devout Jew can thus fulfill his duty to care for the poor.

All is going well until a woman, infamous in that town for her immorality, enters the door. Simon watches in horror as this woman approaches his guest of honor, sobbing heavily, and lets down her hair -- an unspeakable social impropriety for any respectable woman of that time. She takes perfume and pours it on the feet of Simon’s guest of honor. As Simon looks on, she kisses Jesus’ feet, and wipes her tears from them with her hair.

Her scandalous behavior is exceeded only by Jesus’ apparent permission for her to touch and kiss him while he eats. It is an offense to all the invited guests. Simon’s opinion of Jesus plummets. Certainly if this man were a prophet, he would know this woman’s sinfulness, and never let her touch him!

Jesus knows what Simon is thinking, and confronts his host. “Simon, do you see this woman?”

Of course he doesn’t.

All he sees is a representation of everything he has patterned his life against: immorality, lack of responsibility, the dark side of his own soul which he is working so hard to escape. He doesn’t see the woman at all. He sees only an archetypal sinner, someone who is far from the path of God which he, Simon, has worked so hard to travel.

How does Jesus see the woman? Jesus sees someone who has heard his message of divine love and forgiveness, and has accepted that message for herself. And out of profound gratitude for that forgiveness, she has emptied all her past sins, all her gratefulness, all her emotions at Jesus feet. That’s how Jesus sees the woman.

And to teach Simon how to see her, Jesus uses a parable. “Simon”, he says. “A certain creditor had two debtors -- one owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they could not pay, he canceled the debts for both of them. Now which of them will love him more?” Simon answered, “I suppose the one for whom he canceled the greater debt.” “You have judged rightly,” Jesus replied.

Jesus is confronting Simon with his lack of gratitude for his own forgiveness. For Simon, too, is a sinner, “just a higher class, more respectable, not so obvious [sinner] — and a lot harder to reach.” (Lectionary Homiletics, 1995, p. 27) Jesus is convicting Simon of a lack of love. Simon believes that righteousness is something one earns by doing the right things, following the Law, living a moral life, working hard. Jesus says that that is not what righteousness is about.

Righteousness is not so much a matter of goodness as it is a matter of humility before God. Righteousness is more a relational term than a juridical or moral term. Paul states it clearly in our epistle: “a person is justified not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ”, or as some translators have it, “through the faith of Jesus Christ.” One commentator brings the lesson of this passage home to roost, saying: “The passage speaks to the legalistic churchgoing person... We, too, try to erase our sins through [good] deeds, or excuses, or technicalities. We, too, judge others... [P]ride, stubbornness and willpower can impact us all.” (Ibid., p. 24)

We would like to identify with the woman, for she receives the greater sympathy from Jesus. And a part of us is that woman, to the extent that we recognize our sins, accept God’s gift of forgiveness, and respond in grateful release and joy. But a part of us is also Simon the Pharisee, working hard to achieve our own righteousness, and so focused on our task that we fail not only to acknowledge and respect others who are not so upright as ourselves, but also fail to accept with gratitude the forgiveness and love showered so freely and undeservedly upon us.

And so we see another perspective on this story: not only does it contrast how Simon views the woman and how Jesus views the woman; it also contrasts how Simon views Jesus and how the woman views Jesus. From this perspective, the story is not about righteousness at all: it is about hospitality, kindness, and generosity of spirit.

Simon is focused on his own path of “rightness”. He invites Jesus to dine at his home hoping that Jesus can give him some hints on being more right. To be honest, isn’t that why many of us come to church – to get hints on being more virtuous, or on how to get to heaven, or to reassure ourselves (and others) that we are upright and honorable and pious? But in his preoccupation with his own uprightness, Simon has neglected the common courtesies of hospitality normally afforded an honored guest in that culture. An honored guest in a home might have his feet washed by a servant; at the very least, a basin of water would be provided for the guest to wash his own feet, soiled from the road. An honored guest would be greeted with a kiss, and anointed on his head with oil. So focused is Simon on his own agenda regarding what he could receive from Jesus, that he neglects to receive Jesus himself, Jesus the person, rather than Jesus the dispenser of wisdom and holiness. 13^th Century mystic Meister Eckhart once wrote: “Some people want to see God with their eyes as they see a cow, and to love him as they love their cow – they love their cow for the milk and cheese and profit it makes them… They do not rightly love God when they love him for their own advantage.”

“I entered your house,” Jesus tells Simon; “you gave me no water for my feet, but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment.” Jesus cares enough about Simon to confront him with his own sin: that of not receiving Jesus with the love and deep gratitude which the woman so lavishly displayed.

Simon is a good man. Like many of us, he tries hard to do what is right. But all the rightness, all the morality, all the family values in the world will not save us, will not heal us, will not bring us into right relationship with God. We are justified as we love.

AMEN

(NOTE: I showed video clip segments during this sermon. If you would like me to email you the video file – which is about 19 Mb – let me know.)

Proper 5C, 2010

For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. -- 1 Corinthians 15:9-10a

Sometimes a sermon develops in a strange way. This past week I was drawn to that sentence in our Epistle where Paul states, “I was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it.” Paul readily admits to his previous, egregious error. He does so in many instances. He tells the Corinthians, “I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. (1 Corinthians 15:9-10a) He had been convicted of his sin, confessed it openly, and then went on with his calling, letting the sin go, because he knew God had forgiven it. It is an example to all of us who struggle with admitting our sins, asking for forgiveness, then letting the sin no longer have control over us, because we know we have been forgiven.

A remarkable example of someone who went through this process happened this past week. I want to speak of – and show you – that example this morning. A tragedy, which turned one person, then two, then a national audience, into more godly folk.

This past week, something almost happened in the world of baseball: a young pitcher for the Detroit Tigers, Venezuelan-born Armando Galarraga, ALMOST threw a perfect game against the Cleveland Indians. Now for those of you who may not know, a perfect game is when a pitcher is so dominating that no hitter from the other team reaches base. No hits. No walks. 27 batters come up to the plate, 27 batters are out. A perfect game is A BIG DEAL. This past Wednesday, young Armando Galarraga was one out from throwing a perfect game. With two out in the ninth inning, the Cleveland Indians’ shortstop hit a ground ball to the right side of the infield. Detroit’s first baseman Miguel Cabrera went far to his right to snag the grounder, and threw to Galarraga, who was covering first. As replays showed from every angle, the ball was in Galarraga’s mitt while the runner was still half a step from the bag.

But veteran umpire Jim Joyce called him safe. And that perfect game, that impossible dream of every pitcher, which has been achieved only 20 times in the 134-year history of baseball, vanished like a dream.

…Video Clip #1…

Now for those of you who don’t know, baseball only allows video replay appeals in the case of home runs; not for balls and strikes, not for calling a ball fair or foul, not for calling a runner safe or out. The umpire’s call stands. Unfair, you might say? Perhaps. Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm, perhaps thinking “There’s something we have to do, and I’m the authority to do it”, issued a state proclamation declaring that Galarraga had pitched a perfect game. Not only was that a bit silly, it missed the greater point: we all get some bad calls in life. Sometimes they’re in our advantage. We’re called safe, when we were really out. We get by with bending the rules, or get a break when we really didn’t deserve it. But sometimes, like Armando Galarraga, we get a bad call, a bad break. Life throws us a curve, or hits us smack in the ribs. We’d like to be able to say, “I want that play reversed!”; but life is seldom like that. Good or bad, we don’t get to play it over again. The only question is: How do we handle it, the fair and the unfair? the good and the bad? the just and the unjust?

At the game in Detroit on Wednesday, reactions to the bad call at first base were, for the most part, predictable and understandable. Fans booed. First baseman Cabrera was livid. None of that was surprising. What was truly remarkable (and what made the game sermon material) was the reactions of the two actors who played the lead roles in the drama: Pitcher Armando Galarraga, who had just pitched what should have been the 21^st perfect game in baseball history; and umpire Jim Joyce, whose bad call took it away from him.

Now most of us would say, “Baseball is just a game. It’s no big deal. This is not life and death.” And of course, that’s true. But think for a moment how identified we are with our careers. What’s one of the first things you ask someone when you meet them? “What do you do?” Rightly or wrongly, we Americans of working age are perhaps most strongly identified by our jobs. We don’t escape that identification even when we retire. Now, we all have bad days at work; Jim Joyce had an umpire’s worst nightmare. It wasn’t just that he had blown a call; he’d deprived a young pitcher of a chance to join that elite group of 20 pitchers in baseball history. Nolan Ryan, Whitey Ford, Early Wynn, Tom Seaver, Bob Feller – all Hall of Fame pitchers; but none of them ever threw a perfect game.

What did umpire Jim Joyce do? After the game, when he saw the video replay, he immediately went and apologized to Armando Galarraga. Over and again. In tears. It’s what we in the church call “asking for forgiveness” – something which umpires never do, as Armando Galarraga states. (I will stop this clip periodically to repeat more clearly what Galarraga, in his broken and accented English, saysJ

…2…

To both Galarraga and Tiger manager Jim Leyland, Joyce’s apology was one of the most heartfelt and genuine displays they had ever seen.

Leyland remarked, “The guy had every bit of integrity. He faced the music. He stood there and took it. If he would have been there and been defiant, and said ‘No, I got it right,’ and all this and that, and looked at it afterward and said, ‘Well, yeah, I missed it,’ well that’s one thing. But this guy was a mess, I mean a freaking mess. I’m talking about sincere. There was nothing phony about it… My heart goes out to him.” Again, it must be emphasized that one of the codes of baseball is that umpires NEVER apologize for bad calls.

The following day, the Tigers and Indians were scheduled to play again, and this time Jim Joyce was scheduled to umpire behind the plate. Now, before a game, the managers or coaches of the two teams always meet with the home plate umpire to give the ump their starting lineups. Tiger manager Jim Leyland, wanting to support Jim Joyce, sent Galarraga out with the starting lineup in his stead.

So remarkably unusual was the grace with which the veteran umpire and the young pitcher handled a very bad situation, that it garnered national attention. Galarraga was interviewed on CBS’s The Early Show, and Joyce was interviewed on NBC’s Today Show.

…3…

What is especially interesting to me is that both Harry Smith and Matt Lauer both use the theological word “grace” to describe the words and actions of Galarraga and Joyce. And rightly so, for this is more than simply a feel-good human interest story. I think it shows that when we choose to accept that we have done wrong, when we choose to admit it, and to ask forgiveness, the ramifications can be amazing. In asking Galarraga for forgiveness, Jim Joyce was freeing not only himself, but Galarraga, Leyland, and the Tiger fans, who could so easily have reacted with sustained anger and bitterness. What Jim Joyce did not know when he asked forgiveness from Armando Galarraga was that he was planting seeds of forgiveness which would turn back toward him. Galarraga and Leyland forgave him, and even most of the Tiger fans in that sports-crazed city applauded him as he took the field Thursday:

…4…

By acting with grace, Jim Joyce freed others to act with grace, to act out of their better angels.

How hard would it be for us to do the same?

AMEN

Trinity Sunday, Year C

May 30, 2010

Psalm 8

John 16:12-15 [Jesus said to his disciples on the night before his crucifixion:] "I have many more things to say to you, but they are too much for you now. But when the Spirit of truth comes, he will lead you into all truth. He will not speak his own words, but he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is to come. The Spirit of truth will bring glory to me, because he will take what I have to say and tell it to you. All that the Father has is mine. That is why I said that the Spirit will take what I have to say and tell it to you.

Today we celebrate Trinity Sunday. The doctrine of the Trinity is our feeble human attempt to explain the nature of God. On Trinity Sunday we look to understand, however inadequately, this God whom we love, and who loves us more than we can ever imagine.

The author of our psalm today speaks with awe and praise of the transcendent majesty of God: “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars you have set in their courses, What is man that you should be mindful of him?” That is one of the messages of Trinity Sunday: that God is transcendent. God is God, and we are not; and in the presence of God’s perfect love, we become aware of our own imperfection. It is appropriate then that today, the Easter season being over, we return to the confession in our liturgy, for in the face of the majesty of the Trinity, we become aware of how small and broken we are, apart from God.

Making us aware of our need of God is one of the purposes of the Holy Spirit, of which Jesus speaks a few verses before our Gospel today, saying: “And when [the Holy Spirit] comes, he will prove to the people of the world that they are wrong about sin.... He will expose their sin because they do not believe...” Our unbelief, our distrust of God, is our chief sin, our principal alienation. The Holy Spirit comes to us to remind us that we are not independent, self-sufficient beings, though we often live as though we were. We are mortal, fallible, dependent creatures who have no Life apart from God. And so when we, in our arrogance, put our own egos on the thrones of our lives, the Holy Spirit comes to convict us of our arrogance, to expose our pretense, and to reveal the truth of who we actually are in God – sinners, who nevertheless are created in the image of God.

For the Holy Spirit plays both sides of the courtroom: not only does the Spirit serve as our chief accuser, convicting us of our conceit and exposing our self-centeredness; but the Holy Spirit also serves as our chief Advocate (Paraclete), to lead us into all truth, to be the interior presence of Christ in us, and to speak Jesus’ voice daily to our hearts. “[The Holy Spirit] will glorify me,” Jesus says in our Gospel, “because he will take what is mine and declare it to you.”

Many of you have seen that wonderful movie, Forrest Gump. One of the things that strikes me about Forrest Gump is that although he is a very simple person and not very bright, he gets by and succeeds in large part because he remembers what his mother told him. “My Mama always said life is like a box of chocolates: you never know what you’re going to get.” “My Mama always said... My Mama always said...” The words of Forrest Gump’s mother keep coming back to him to guide him and direct him. Jesus says this is another of the roles of the Holy Spirit for us: to remind us of all that Jesus said, to be the Word of God to us and within us. Earlier in this same discourse, Jesus told his disciples “the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.” (John 14:26) And again in today’s reading: “the Spirit of truth... will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own...”

“He will not speak on his own...”

The Holy Spirit will not speak on his own because the Holy Spirit is one with the Son and with the Father. Again, earlier in this same discourse in John’s Gospel Jesus says, “The words that I speak to you I do not speak on my own... believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me...” (John 14:10b, 11a) The Son will not speak on his own because he is one with the Father. The Spirit will not speak on her, his own (the Spirit is variously described in Scripture as feminine or masculine) because she is one with the Father and the Son. They are distinct persons, and yet they do not speak or act on their own, because they are one. The Son is always pointing to the Father rather than to Himself, the Spirit is always pointing to the Son rather than to Herself. That’s the way it is in Trinitarian life: no one points to herself or himself, but rather to the other.

So what does all of this have to do with you and me? What difference does it make if we believe God to be three-persons-in-one, as we Trinitarians believe, or whether God is simply a single being, like the Unitarians or Jehovah’s Witnesses believe? I would offer that it makes a great deal of difference, because we are created in the image of God, and if relationship among Persons is at the heart of the Godhead, then relationship among persons is at the heart of humanity, also. If one of the Persons of the Godhead does not speak or act on his or her own, then we who are in the image of God do not speak or act on our own, either. All that we say and do affects others – either positively or negatively. Whether we praise or whether we gossip, what we say and do affects others. We are all in this together, by the simple fact that we are created in the image of God. “Let us create humankind in our image,” God said in the Book of Genesis. In OUR image—the image of the Trinity, the Three Persons so lovingly related that they are One. In the words of Alan Jones, Dean emeritus of Grace Cathedral (San Francisco): “God is not solitary; God is friendship, and if we are to be truly human, we have to exist in relation one with another... [T]he mystery of God is the mystery of... relationship, how you can be you, and I can be I, and how we can be one and yet not absorbed into each other. That’s what love is about... The doctrine of the Trinity is a doctrine about a community of persons so in love with one another… that they are completely one.” (quoted from a sermon on Trinity Sunday, 1991 at Grace Cathedral, San Francisco)

This Memorial Day weekend, I would like to call to mind that compelling story of the American F-16 pilot who, on June 2, 1995, when the war in Bosnia was extremely tense, was shot down over Bosnian territory. After many days, during which it was uncertain whether Captain Scott O’Grady would ever come out alive, his comrades successfully located him and daringly flew under enemy fire to bring him out. Shortly after the rescue was completed, President Clinton called Captain O’Grady “a true American hero.” I must admit that I was a bit skeptical at first, thinking that it was weakening the word “hero” to use it to describe someone who was simply, after all, saving his own life.

But I was wrong. The day after President Clinton proclaimed him a hero, the news stations broadcast Scott O’Grady speaking publicly at the U.S. Air Force base in Aviano, Italy. His first words were words of thanks to God, Who—Captain O’Grady was certain—was behind his rescue. The second words out of his mouth were thanks to his fellow service men and women who had risked their lives to bring him out. “They are the real heroes”, Scott O’Grady proclaimed. And then he went on to say that there was never one moment in those six days behind enemy lines that he doubted that his fellow service men and women were doing all in their power to rescue him.

And by those words, the young pilot showed the character of the Trinity: giving thanks to God above all; pointing to others and not himself; and never forgetting that he was not one person alone, but rather a member of a much larger body of people who cared for him and would not forsake him. Scott O’Grady is a true hero, in my book: not because of his courage in the face of danger to his own life, though I admire him greatly for that courage; but rather because he shows the essence of the Trinity. He points to God and to others instead of to himself; and he knows that he is not simply one individual in a world of individuals, but rather a member of a unity of persons organically linked together by our common relationship to one loving, Trinitarian God.

To even attempt to speak about the nature of God, St. Augustine said, is like trying to pour the ocean into a hole in the sand on a beach. But God has revealed to us some truths about the Divine: that God is God, and we are not; but that nevertheless we are made in the image of the Trinity, created for relationship, created to be united with God – individual parts of one Whole joined together by divine love.

AMEN

Proper 19, Year B

September 13, 2009

James 3: 1 - 12 Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. 2 For all of us make many mistakes. Anyone who makes no mistakes in speaking is perfect, able to keep the whole body in check with a bridle. 3 If we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we guide their whole bodies. 4 Or look at ships: though they are so large that it takes strong winds to drive them, yet they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. 5 So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great exploits.

How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! 6 And the tongue is a fire. The tongue is placed among our members as a world of iniquity; it stains the whole body, sets on fire the cycle of nature, and is itself set on fire by hell. 7 For every species of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by the human species, 8 but no one can tame the tongue--a restless evil, full of deadly poison. 9 With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. 10 From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so. 11 Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and brackish water? 12 Can a fig tree, my brothers and sisters, yield olives, or a grapevine figs? No more can salt water yield fresh.

Sometimes it happens that God seems to impress upon me a certain spiritual theme all week long – a theme which is then “coincidentally” hammered home in our Sunday Scripture readings. Rarely has that been as true as it has been this past week.

Some of you have already heard me speak about this; please bear with me. I think that it is important enough for all of us to hear, over and over again.

God started in on me this past Tuesday. I met with the family of Bill Kramer, whom I had been visiting as he was dying of pancreatic cancer. Now Bill was raised in the Episcopal Church, but had not attended church most of his adult life. When I first met Bill, he expressed deep regret and remorse at this. He told me, “You would think I could have given one hour to God each week.”

Bill died last Sunday, and on Tuesday, I met with the family to plan the funeral. As I always do when meeting with bereaved families, I asked them to tell me a little about their loved one who had died. Three family members were there, and each one of them said, “I never heard him say a bad word about anybody.”

It was as if God had hit me with a sledge hammer. “With whom is God more pleased?”, I thought: with all us regular churchgoers, who time and again gossip about others, subtly or not-so-subtly disparaging or backbiting our fellow church members – or is God more pleased with Bill Kramer, who didn’t darken the door of a church, and yet never spoke an ill word about anybody?

In last week’s Epistle, we heard St. James say: “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? ... faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.” (James 2: 14, 17) What we profess and what we do must be in harmony, or our faith is, in reality, dead.

“He never said a bad word about anybody.” Can we say the same about ourselves? Bill Kramer, this non-church-goer, was fulfilling St. Paul’s instruction to Titus to “speak evil of no one.” (3:2)

My friends, let me be honest with you: some weeks it seems that all I hear, all I deal with, are parishioners saying bad words about other parishioners. Nothing drains me more; and it draws me away from positive ministry. Listen again to what James says in TODAY’S epistle reading, in a different translation:

The tongue is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, and sets a person’s entire life on fire with flames that come from hell itself. (v. 6, NIV and CEV)

The tongue sets a person’s entire life on fire with flames that come from hell itself.

We like to think that we are good people because we obey the laws, attend church, give of our time, talent, and treasure, have never been arrested for driving while intoxicated and running down someone crossing the street. But if James is right, and “The tongue sets a person’s entire life on fire with flames that come from hell itself,” then running down a person with our tongue is equally as evil as running down a person with our car. The claim to true religion without control of the tongue is a worthless claim. One commentator on our Epistle reading writes:

When the same tongue is used to bless God and to curse a human person who is created in the likeness of God (3:9), the allegiance by which one claims to live is betrayed in a fundamental way... The [evil] power at work in the tongue is not simply one of human vice, but of a system of values that is positively at enmity with God (4:4), and can be called “demonic” (3:15). There is a larger battle here than that of an individual’s struggle for self-control; it is a battle involving spiritual allegiances... Surely no one could deny the truth that a fig tree does not yield olives (3:12). But then how could anyone endure the unnaturalness of a mouth that blesses God yet also curses a neighbor? (Luke Timothy Johnson, “James”, The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. XII, pp. 204-205)

Jesus said, “Inasmuch as you did it to the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.” (Matt. 25:40) When we speak ill of our brothers and sisters, we are speaking ill of Jesus, the One we claim to be Lord of our lives.

St. Bonaventure, in his biography of St. Francis of Assisi (written just 40 years after Francis’ death), stated:

Saint Francis put backbiting in a category with snakebite... He felt strongly that it was an abomination like a devastating plague. This is because the [backbiter] feeds on the blood of others who have been killed with the sword of the [backbiter’s] tongue.

And another St. Francis, St. Francis de Sales, wrote:

With a single stroke of the tongue you can commit three murders. You kill your own soul, the soul of anyone who hears your slanderous comments, and the social life of your victim. It is spiritual homicide. Saint Bernard says that the slanderer has the devil on the tongue, and the one who listens to slander has the devil in the ear. A snake tongue is forked with two points. So also is the slanderer’s tongue: it poisons the listener as well as the one being spoken against.

It seems that we never learned the instruction our mothers taught us when we were little: “If you don’t have anything good to say about someone, don’t say it.” Half the lawsuits which have ever been filed, and half the wars which have ever been fought, have been brought about by malicious speech. The greatest test of a person’s character is his or her tongue. Every time you open your mouth, you show what is in your heart. Unkind speech reflects an unkind heart. A few rash words can poison a family, a friendship, a congregation. I have seen it; I have experienced it. My friends, we are all members together of the Body of Christ; we are all in the same boat. You cannot sink someone else’s end of the boat and still keep your own afloat.

The Book of Ecclesiasticus notes:

Those who pay heed to slander will not find rest, nor will they settle down in peace. The blow of a whip raises a welt, but a blow of the tongue crushes the bones. (28:16-17) Never repeat a conversation, and you will lose nothing at all. With friend or foe do not report it... Have you heard something? Let it die with you. (19:7-8a, 10a)

And in The Message Bible translation, Jesus, in his Sermon on the Mount, says this:

...anyone who is so much as angry with a brother or sister is guilty of murder. Carelessly call a brother ‘idiot!’ and you just might find yourself hauled into court. Thoughtlessly yell ‘stupid!’ at a sister and you are on the brink of hellfire. The simple moral fact is that words kill. (Matthew 5:22)

The great French mathematician, physicist, and philosopher Pascal once noted that “if all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world.” British novelist George Meredith called gossip “social sewage”. And Henry Van Dyke, the American author who wrote the words to our hymn “Joyful, joyful we adore Thee”, admonished: “Never believe anything bad about anybody unless you positively know it to be true; never tell even that unless you feel that it is absolutely necessary – and remember that God is listening while you tell it.”

My friends, I know that taming the tongue is hard – I know, for I am as sinful as the next person. And James knew how hard it is. In utter frustration, he wrote in our passage: “no one can tame the tongue -- a restless evil, full of deadly poison.” And yet Bill Kramer’s wife and two daughters each said emphatically that they had never heard him speak a bad word about anyone. It can be done; but it requires a heart at one with God’s heart.

Years ago I suggested a spiritual discipline to our parish which had to do with taming the tongue. It comes from a British pastor, Alan Redpath, who stated that before we say a word about another person, we should THINK: T-H-I-N-K. It is an acronym for 5 questions we should ask ourselves before speaking:

“T”: is it True?

“H”: is it Helpful:

“I”: is it Inspiring?

“N”: is it Necessary? and

“K”: is it Kind?

If we could mentally go through that test before we opened our mouths to say something about another person, I promise you that you, your family, friends, and acquaintances, our parish, our community, and this world would be closer to the image of God in which we were created.

AMEN

Praying and Serving

Trinity Sunday, Year C