Baum Sermons

2012 YEAR B ash wednesday

2012-02-21T21:18:00.001-05:00

Year B, 2012
Ash Wednesday
Joel 2:1-2, 12-17
Psalm 103
2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

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

So, about a month ago, our daughter Eleanor became a vegan. A vegan, generally, is a person who does not eat any animal products at all. So, no meat, fish, or dairy . . . Which means, a bacon egg and cheese sandwich is totally out of the question. And this is why I am not a vegan. People become vegans for a variety of reasons, but it is generally about lifestyle more than it is about diet. At the risk of sounding judgmental, vegans are often about as judgmental as ex-smokers. There’s often a moral superiority at play once one becomes a vegan. They feel good about themselves for not consuming animal products, and if you still do . . . . well, that means . . . . You get the picture. And I tell you all that so I can tell you this . . .

A couple weeks into her new vegan life, one of Eleanor’s friends told her this joke: How do you know there’s a vegan at your table? Don’t worry, they’ll let you know.

But now I’ve just walked us all into a subtle trap. Because now I could ask this question: How can you tell when there’s a meat-eater at the table? Because they’ll make fun of the vegans. And then we could follow that with asking, How can you tell if there’s a priest in the room? Because he’ll make you feel bad for making fun of the vegans.

This chain could go on forever. Someone claims moral superiority for not eating animals, and someone else makes fun of them for claiming to be morally superior, and along comes a priest who takes them to task for claiming to be better than the first person, and--believe me--there’s someone standing behind the priest to call him a hypocrite. You can’t even call it a vicious circle, because it never comes full circle. It’s just a long chain of judging people until the only solution is to have someone come along who claims to be a complete hedonist, or totally immoral, or outside the law.

The temporary fix to all this is to cling to the saying attributed to Philo: Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. That’s about the best we can hope for in this never-ending chain of Better Than Thou. Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. That’ll preach, as they say.

But that’s really just sort of a moratorium on nastiness, isn’t it? I mean, that’s just some duct tape to hold the thing together so we can at least sit down to a meal without openly judging each other. That’s the kind of statement that will put the brakes on saying something aloud at least. Because then, in a basic way, we can all default into pity. You know, everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle, so lighten up, Francis. We all got our problems. We all got our struggles. We’re all suffering in some way. And that rationale can get us through the meal peaceably. But inside? In our heart of hearts? We’re still snickering that someone across the table could actually think not eating meat makes them better than us. Or that voting for that political party makes them better than us. Or living in that neighborhood, or driving that car, or having that job, and on and on and on.

Acknowledging that everyone is fighting a hard battle might allow us to get through the meal without making things worse. But it doesn’t do anything to solve the underlying tension. It doesn’t help us change how we truly feel inside. It’s a temporary fix, which allows for an uncomfortable peace, provided nobody at dinner is a mind reader.

And there’s the problem. Being kind, because everyone is fighting a hard battle, gets us through dinner, but it does nothing to fix the real problem. It does nothing to change anything. We all sneer through our smiling faces, quietly shaking our heads at the fools we’re forced to eat with. And as I said, that chain goes on for eternity, until you find someone who steps outside the system. Someone who is outside the law. Someone who can say, “I know you are all fighting a hard battle, and now I want you to turn that judgment to me, instead of your neighbor.”

And we turn to the head of the table, and we see that it is Jesus speaking. Speaking to each one of us, and saying, “I know you are fighting a hard battle, so be kind to others.” Jesus turns this on its head you see? We are not supposed to pity our neighbor because of their struggles. We are instead called to be kind because of our own struggles. If we turn our judgmental laser beam away from our neighbor and shine it on ourselves . . . Well, yeah, you are fighting a hard battle. And so am I. And that’s what scares us, isn’t it? I mean, isn’t it true that the last thing we want to face is the hardest battle we know? The battle of our daily lives, knowing it will all end in death? The pointless day in and day out of having to be one step ahead of everyone else? The constant sense that we could have done better? Should have tried harder? Might’ve loved more fully?

And that, my friends, is the deep dark abyss. Knowing that the reason we judge others is because we cannot bear to judge ourselves. Knowing how absurd it is that we dare to begin a sentence with the words, “Well at least I’m not . . . “ And knowing that we do it every day, all day, and we cannot stop ourselves. We sin against God and our neighbor, in thought, word, and deed.

And Jesus says to us, “I know.” He says, “I know what you are trapped in. I know what you are living through. And I know that this constant angry fighting leads to the cross. For me to die there, and for you to cling to.” Jesus came that we might have life. That we might be set free from the pointless and endless comparing ourselves to one another. And we prepare for his rising by hearing where we are going: You are dust, and to dust you shall return. And when you find yourself saying, “Well, at least I’m not . . . “ try to stop yourself and then say “dust.” And then remember these ashes on your forehead. And then, remember the one who came to wash them off through the waters of baptism. The one who knows you are fighting a hard battle, no matter what anyone else thinks they know.

And if you’re really good at memorization, remind yourself of these words from Paul that we heard tonight: We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see--we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.

And so here’s one: How do you know that there’s a Savior sitting at your table? Because he offers himself as the host, offers himself as the meal, and offers himself as the Way--the only way that dust will be turned back into flesh and blood when he comes to call you from the grave.

2012 YEAR B transfiguration

2012-02-18T11:19:00.000-05:00

Year B, 2012
Transfiguration
2 Kings 2:1-12
Psalm 50:1-6
2 Corinthians 4:3-6
Mark 9:2-9

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

Have you ever found yourself listening to a story from someone and then, when they’re done, the first words out of your mouth are, “So, was anyone else there? You know, someone who maybe has a different perspective?”

Because sometimes, a story just doesn’t make sense. The details don’t go together. And you’re left thinking, there simply must be a different version this one.
That’s the feeling I get when we read this story of the Transfiguration of Jesus. No matter how many times I hear it, I’m always left wondering why we have this collection of details, without some more information, or conversation, or something. Why Moses and Elijah? Why the cloud? And why on earth is Peter suddenly offering to start building houses for everybody?

And it doesn’t help to go to the other gospels, because the story is almost exactly the same in all three of the ones that record it. Jesus, Peter, James, and John climb up a mountain. Jesus glows in some glorious state, Elijah and Moses appear, a cloud covers them, Peter asks if he should build some little cabins, Elijah and Moses disappear, they all climb down the mountain, and Jesus tells them not to say anything until he has been raised from the dead. Cool story bro’ . . . right?

And so I want to turn to James and John and ask, “What did you guys see?” Because this does not sound like a story. This sounds like a bunch of random facts put together, from one person’s perspective, and--to be honest--doesn’t seem to have any kind of point to it. That’s what I want to say, but that’s not really an option, is it? No, we’re going to have to dig in and figure out the point on our own. And there is always a point to a story like this, believe me.

The first thing we need to do is make the right connections. Because this is one of those times where the people listening to Mark’s gospel at the time would recognize connections that we can’t see. It’s one of those times where the vast distance of years between us and the story gets in the way of our hearing what is actually going on. So, here come some seemingly random things that would be familiar then, and which may be new to us today . . .

First, let’s start with Moses and Elijah. As we heard from the first reading today, when Elijah reached the end of his life, he was taken up into heaven, as Elisha watched him go. Elijah, because of this departure, is one who did not die . . . Or, at least, not in the way that you and I think of dying. And Moses? Well, according to Deuteronomy, Moses climbed up a mountain at the end of his life, and God buried him in a place that was secret and has remained secret. These two giants of the faith departed in mystery, at the hand of God. And, this means they’re both sort of “available” to be sent back by God in the fullness of time. Especially Elijah. There’s a prophecy in the book of Malachi that Elijah will return to usher in the day of the Lord.

Elijah is thought to attend every circumcision, so that he can keep track of who is fulfilling the Law. Like God’s circumcision bookkeeper. In fact, at a Seder meal, there is a place left for Elijah, a cup left for him, a door opened for him. There is an expectation among the Jewish people that Elijah will return to announce the Messiah’s coming. Elijah will be the one who proclaims the redemption of humanity. The point being, to the disciples with Jesus on the mountain, and to those hearing the story, it would be expected that the Messiah would appear, because Elijah himself is standing there.

In addition, the prophet Zechariah declares that the Day of the Lord would be accompanied by a celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles, or Feast of Booths, which is an annual festival, when faithful Jews build small dwellings and sleep in them to commemorate the Exodus from Egypt. So, though it seems absolutely bizarre to you and me that Peter offers to build three houses, it totally makes sense if Peter is making this connection: Jesus, Moses, and Elijah would need to have booths if this is indeed the moment when all Israel will be redeemed, because everyone needs a booth in order to fulfill the prophecy. It’s like if I suddenly ask my wife if I should turn on the oven. If she is standing there with a frozen pizza in her hand, the question makes sense. Without the pizza, I seem a little crazy. Knowing the connection to the Feast of Booths sheds light on Peter’s offer to start building things. That prophecy is the frozen pizza to Peter.

And there are other connections to this story as well. For instance, Moses climbs a mountain and encounters God. When he comes back down, his face is glowing so brightly that he has to wear a veil around people. The 7th chapter of the book of Daniel refers to the Son of Man, glowing and white, descending from the clouds. He approaches the Ancient of Days, who sits on a throne of fire, with burning wheels, which sounds a lot like the chariot of fire that took Elijah into heaven.

All these connections would be the backstory that listeners to Mark’s gospel bring with them to this story. They would know about Moses and Elijah; they would hear the triggers of the Son of Man and the dazzling glory and the cloud. Those hearing this gospel in it’s earliest days would know all the imagery, and they would make the connections. It’s not a story of unconnected facts; it is a story that is part of the long narrative of God and God’s people. And the disciples see all this taking place, and then they hear something for the first time . . .

Remember how Mark’s gospel started? Remember that Baptism of Jesus, when the dove descended from heaven, and there was a voice saying, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” The disciples weren’t present at Jesus’ baptism, and even if they were, it’s not clear anyone else heard it besides Jesus. But now, here on this mountain, they hear the voice from heaven talking to them. Directly to them. And the voice says, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to Him.”

Moses and Elijah and Jesus, dazzlingly white, standing on a mountain, assumedly during the Festival of Booths, covered in a cloud, a voice from heaven. To anyone who knows the connections, this can only mean one thing: Jesus is the Messiah! This is the one they have been waiting for! At last, the disciples understand!

Well, okay, not really. They still don’t get it, not totally. But here’s the important point: Anyone standing around the marketplace hearing this story, anyone hearing this story read aloud at home, or walking down the street, anyone else would get it. This is the turning point of Mark’s gospel, because there can be no doubt that this Jesus is God’s Messiah. And now, they would expect, Jesus will jump on a white horse, pick up a flaming sword, and restore the fortunes of Israel, God’s chosen people. The wait is over! And Jesus will rule forever on this mountain!

But the story doesn’t go there. The journey takes Jesus and the disciples back down the mountain. And this is the most important point. Sure, Jesus is now stamped in our minds as God’s Son, the Messiah, but now he comes down from heaven, you might say. Now he descends into the dirty streets, the messy lives, the dark places of the world. Jesus’ real mission is about to start, yes. But it is not going to happen the way anyone is expecting it to happen.

You and I know where this story is going, and it is heading straight for the cross. Jesus is descending from the mountain, to where you and I live. He is coming down out of glory to redeem what would seem beyond redemption: you and me, and the brokenness and struggles of daily life. Jesus willingly descends from the mountain, knowing full well what that means for himself, and does so because he knows what that will mean for us. Jesus comes down from the mountain precisely because you and I cannot climb up the mountain. Jesus does not stand on the mountain and call us to an impossible task of becoming like him in glory. No, Jesus leaves his glory and comes down to get us.

This Wednesday, with ashes on our foreheads, we will begin the 40 day journey through Lent. We will follow Jesus to the cross. We will remember the fragility of life for ourselves and our loved ones. And we will proclaim the hope of redemption that comes at the end of it all.

And so, what do we do now? What is our part to play in this? I’m glad you asked, because the answer comes from the voice back up there on the mountain: This is my beloved Son; listen to him. Listen to him. Listen to him tell you that he is coming for you. Listen to him saying he is coming to redeem you. Stretch out your hands to receive him, because the Messiah is here, and he has come for you.

YEAR B 2012 epiphany 5

2012-02-03T22:43:00.002-05:00

Epiphany 5
Isaiah 40:21-31
Psalm 147:1-12, 21c
1 Corinthians 9:16-23
Mark 1:29-39

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

About 10 years ago, I found myself with an awful combination of pneumonia and my back being all out of alignment, and I spent about a week on the floor, lying on my back. Throwing out your back, coupled with pneumonia is kind of a perfect storm . . . except for the perfect part. From there, it was an painful, slow recovery, but I don’t remember much about the whole thing. Or at least not the pain part of it. (If we could actually remember pain, no woman would ever have a second child.) But the one thing that does stick in my mind, the most horrible part of it all, was when my daughters would come running past where I lay on the floor and then slow down so as not to disturb me. It honestly broke my heart, and felt horribly isolating. I should’ve been up and running around the house, tormenting their mother right along with them. Instead, I was covered in blankets, coughing and in pain, cut-off from all the joys of being with my family.

Obviously, I did recover, since I’m standing up right now. But there’s a strong similarity between my story and today’s gospel story, about Simon’s mother in law.
To remind you of the setup, it is the Sabbath day. Jesus has just finished teaching in the synagogue, and walks next door to the house where Simon’s mother-in-law is lying sick with a fever. We’re not told whose house it is, but it is likely that Simon and his wife (and possibly his brother Andrew) would all have been living in the house with Simon’s mother-in-law, and other relatives as well. That arrangement was quite common in those days, and it would’ve meant that Simon’s mother-in-law, the Matriarch lying sick with a fever, would be in charge of hospitality. It would be her place in the household community to welcome visitors, to arrange for food, and so on.

But she is sick in bed. She is unable to welcome Jesus and the others. She is unable to do much of anything except be sick and in bed. It is not only the case that she is ill; she is also cut-off from the family, and her special place within it. The Sabbath meal would be a big event in any Jewish home, and to be excluded from it is no small thing. For the one in charge to be excluded is just unthinkable! Simon’s mother-in-law is not only sick, but probably heartbroken and distressed as well.

And as we heard, the four disciples told Jesus about the sick woman, and Jesus goes immediately to her. He grasps her hand, raises her up, the fever leaves her, and she serves them.

Now we have to deal for a moment with this idea that “she serves them.” I grew up in a house of four boys. I know that my own mother’s read on this would be that Jesus had to heal Simon’s mother-in-law because he was hungry, and these five men would be incapable of making a sandwich for themselves. Maybe true. Or, maybe by the time Simon’s mother answers all the questions about where everything is in the kitchen, she would just end up going to the kitchen and cooking, despite being sick.

But this cynical read overlooks the word that is used in the text. The word in Greek is diaconei, which gets translated as “she served them.” You can probably guess that this word, diaconei is related to our word, deacon. And, though our Deacons may feed people, they’re certainly more than fry cooks at Denny’s. Simon’s mother-in-law does not rise up to make a sandwich for the guests. She begins to serve them, to minister to them. Which might include making food, sure, but surely means much more than that. She rises up to perform her ministry in the house.

She is taken by the hand and healed, and is restored to her place in the community. She is raised to join in the celebration. Jesus comes to this woman in a physical and tangible way. Not with magic words, spoken from across the room, but with a healing touch. Where she had been excluded from the Sabbath meal, restoration to the household means restoration to the meal.

She is not healed so that she might once again be a highly functioning individual, seeking out her personal destiny. She is not healed to cook up some food for five hungry men who don’t know their way around a kitchen. She is healed in order to retake her place in the community. And her response to that healing takes the form of service, to Jesus and the other guests in the house.

We can contrast this healing with the healing of the nameless crowd that happens later that night. Here, we are told, the whole city gathers at the door of the house, and Jesus heals many and casts out demons, and then all the healed people just go on home. Flashy, but all about individuals getting healed. At the end of this long day, Jesus rises early and goes off by himself to pray. Can he a get a moment’s rest? No, here come the disciples, telling him that “everyone is looking for you.” The disciples seem to miss the point of the healing of Simon’s mother-in-law. There’s the suggestion here of Jesus being some side-show miracle healer, rather than the one who brings life.

There’s a hint that the disciples want the rock star Jesus to come back and bask in the glow of his awesome accomplishments. They say, everyone is looking for you. And Jesus responds, then let’s go somewhere else. He has no intention of setting up Jesus’ Magical Healing Shop in the house next to the synagogue. Jesus seems to be trying to tell them that there is more to all this than “fixing” people. Jesus wants to go into the neighboring towns so that he “may proclaim the message there also.”

What message? The message of the good news. That God has come near. That healing and rejoining the community are possible. The mighty and fearsome God of Isaiah 40 has come to heal people face to face. God raises up by the touch of Jesus’ hand, and people might then minister to those around them. The kingdom of heaven has come near. To stand around the door of the house and get a dose of healing misses the point. To be brought to physical wholeness is only half the story. The message to be proclaimed throughout the surrounding cities is seen in the healing of Simon’s mother-in-law, not in the clamoring crowd. Jesus reaches out, raises up, to restore community.

God reaches out to us in this same way, takes our hand, raises us up, and restores us. In Jesus, we are brought back to health--to life in fact--and can take up our unique place, fulfilling our own roles, living out our own parts to play in the Sabbath celebration.

There are times when each of us is debilitated by suffering and isolation. Jesus meets us where we are: lying on the floor, or sitting in these chairs; suffering in our beds at night, or worrying behind a desk at work. Jesus offers himself by stretching out his hand to raise us to new life. But it’s important to note, we are not raised back to life so that we can continue to live in our little isolated worlds. The point of being healed is to rejoin the community, because that is where we are nourished and comforted and carried.

When we are too weak to stand, Jesus raises us up. When we are isolated in our pain, Jesus brings us back into the fold. And when we feel we cannot carry on, we are carried by those around us. There are days when any one of us walks in that door and can barely stand. Days when our personal suffering is overwhelming. Days when the last thing you want to do is sing. And on those days, the household sings for you. You are carried on a song because you don’t have one of your own. The song of those around you is the song you cannot sing yourself, and the congregation is singing for you. The community of Jesus carries you through.

And on those days, and on this day, Jesus feeds a meal, ministers to us in a body broken and in blood poured out. This God who knows the names of the stars and puts them in their place, meets us here in this small place, in the most personal way: in food and drink. We are raised up, and restored to health together, so that we might go out and minister to those around us in our daily lives.

YEAR B 2012 epiphany 3

2012-01-21T15:46:00.001-05:00

Year B, 2012
Epiphany III
Jonah 3:1-5, 10
Psalm 62:6-14
1 Corinthians 7:29-31
Mark 1:14-20

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

I don’t know if you’ve seen or heard of the movie, Moneyball, so I’ll give you a brief idea of the main point of the movie. In 2002, a young Yale grad named Peter Brand develops a new method of assessing baseball players based on their On-Base-Percentage. It’s not all that radical, when you think about it: if a player can get on a base, there’s a chance he can score. If a player does not get on base, he cannot possibly score. And, it goes without saying, the team that scores the most wins the game.

What is radical about his approach is that it flies in the face of assessing players based on their supposed talents and occasional dramatic plays. One walk-off grand slam in a year is what coaches and fans remember, as opposed to a consistent record of reaching first base. Or, before Brand’s method changed all the rules, anyway. Now everyone accepts this idea that On-Base-Percentage is what matters . . . Though, of course, we’ll still pay ridiculous amounts for a third baseman who sometimes has a streak of dramatic homeruns, whether or not he produces in the post season, but that’s a cross that Yankees fans must bear.

And, you know, deep down, we don’t want for Brand’s method to be true. We want our teams to pick players based on drama, and showmanship, and clutch plays. We want to see walk-off grand slams, even if it means the team never makes the playoffs. The honest truth is, we’d take three losses for one memorable game-winning homerun. We want to see the drama, the heart-stopping come-from-behind victory. That’s what we remember, not the long slow steady drip of games won by 1 or 2 runs. Brand’s method may get you into the post season, sure, but who can remember any of those daily tiny wins along the way?

We have this tendency in everything, when you think about it. We want our political candidate to win by a landslide, rather than simply getting enough votes. We remember the story of the firefighters who dramatically rescue the family from their burning house, but somebody changing the batteries in their smoke detector isn’t exactly front-page news. We remember the big splashy meals at Thanksgiving or Anniversaries out, but it is the daily meals of pasta and grilled cheese that sustain us the other 363 days of the year. What we remember is not the steady drip of sustenance; what we remember is the giant supposedly life-changing moments that are a flash in the pan.

In today’s first reading from the book of Jonah, God sends Jonah to the city of Ninevah, a huge place--”an exceedingly large city, a three days' walk across,” we are told. Jonah walks through proclaiming a dramatic end in forty days. Jonah, one man, walking through the city telling people to repent. Imagine the insurmountable task here. With no media, no public broadcasting system, no possible way to talk anyone into changing their ways.

But then we hear, “the people of Ninevah proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth. When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.” Hooray!!!! Just in the nick of time! And their story gets written into the Bible because it is so dramatic, like a walk-off grand slam in the playoffs! We love this kind of story, don’t we? A huge city saved from the brink of disaster. People slapping each other on the back, saying “Well THAT was a close one,” and heading off to the pub to celebrate.

We. Love. Drama. I know, we all say that we prefer a steady stable world where things happen in small predictable ways, but come on. Nobody really enjoys life-insurance actuary tables. Even someone who works as an actuary-table analyst. We need stability and predictability in order to have peace in our lives, it’s true. But we also need a little splashy drama to keep life interesting. All of which leads me to today’s Gospel reading, from the book of Mark.

As you may recall from a couple weeks ago, Mark’s Gospel jumps right in with Jesus’ being baptized. No shepherds, no angels, no wisemen. Jesus gets baptized, is pushed off into the desert, and then suddenly is walking by the Sea of Galilee calling his first disciples, as we heard in today’s reading. We’re not even out of the first chapter yet, and Jesus has already been baptized, tempted by Satan, and called four out of 12 disciples. In Mark’s gospel, things happen fast, that’s for sure. And that makes for a good story. A dramatic story. A walk-off grand slam kind of story.

But let’s stop for a moment to consider things from the disciples’ perspective here. Simon, Andrew, James, and John are all fishermen. Though we like to imagine them as entrepreneurs, out there cathing fish and selling them for what the market will bear, it didn’t work that way in those days. First off, the Emperor owned the lake, and if you wanted to get fish out of it, you had to sign a lease, which meant agreeing to give the majority of what you caught to the syndicate who would then pass it up the chain in the form of taxes. A fisherman in Jesus’ time was more like a peasant farmer than like a tuna-boat operator. So, the first thing to remember is, these guys were not businessmen.

Secondly, these four have no idea who Jesus is. You and I know the story, and we read back into it wearing our Resurrection Goggles. But these fishermen are working along, catching fish and mending nets, and this guy walks by and says “follow me,” and they follow him. I hate to sound cynical, but this is ridiculous! Again, we tend to imagine the disciples carefully considering whether or not they should follow God in the flesh, and then reasonably conclude that they should give up their business and follow the Savior of the world. But, we need to remember, they have no idea how the story ends. They have not seen one miracle, one healing, one anything. And yet they drop their nets and follow him. They walk away from the predictable drudgery of their lives to follow someone they just met. They leave their families behind and start following a stranger passing along the shore.

And. We. Love. This! We love it so much that we want to have a story like this for ourselves. We want to hear the testimony of friends who have big dramatic conversions. We want to hear stories from people who once were lost, but now are found, were blind but now they see.

And, I imagine, many preachers this morning will be using this text to make people uncertain whether their conversion to Jesus was dramatic enough. How can you know if you are saved if you haven’t given up everything to follow Jesus? How can you know you’re truly following Jesus if you haven’t dropped your net and walked away from your friends and family to begin a new life following Jesus? If you don’t have a dramatic story to tell, how can you be sure? . . . Which leads us back to baseball.

We remember the big dramatic grand slam that wins the game. But what wins the season is the slow steady drip of getting on base, one inning at a time. We remember the big splashy once-a-year meals by candlelight or in fancy restaurants, but what sustains us is the regular, predictable nightly meals of home-made soups and boring casseroles. We remember the exciting stories of firefighters saving families from near-death disasters, but what keeps us safe is changing the batteries in our smoke detectors. And, though we love to hear a story about some former drug-addict criminal who is now a missionary in Tonga, what keeps the gospel alive is the steady day-to-day conviction of people who believe just a little bit more than they disbelieve.

The mark of faith is not how dramatic your conversion was. The mark of faith is the slow steady drip of one day at a time, one decision at a time, one daily choice to remember your baptism, and to know that Jesus has called you to follow him on the path that leads to life. We are suckers for a big conversion story, sure. But you do not need to have a big conversion of faith in order to know that you are loved. You simply need to reach out your hands and receive the one who gives us his body in blood, the slow steady drip of bread and wine, which sustain you over the course of your life, and which are the reassurance that you are loved and accepted in the most dramatic way imaginable.

YEAR B 2012 baptism of our lord

2012-01-08T08:19:00.000-05:00

Year B, 2012
The Baptism of Jesus
Genesis 1:1-5
Psalm 29
Acts 19:1-7
Mark 1:4-11

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

If I were to say to you, “This morning I am going to deliver a homily on the topic of Mark’s use of the Cosmic Inclusio as a means of maintaining listeners’ attention . . .” you would all be reaching for something to draw with. The careful language of research papers is a surefire way to lose people’s attention. And, beyond that, if you understand that kind of talk, it gives away the point in the title, so you lose people before you even begin. If the story of Cinderella were called, “The unwanted child who was granted access to the ball, only to leave behind a slipper, which the prince used as a way to find her so that they both lived happily ever after,” well . . . You don’t really need to hear the story now, do you?

A good storyteller knows that the way to get people to keep listening is to drop a large elephant in the room at the start, and then ignore it until the end. That way, people keep listening to every word, thinking, “I hope he finally gets around to explaining why there’s a large elephant in the room.” Riddles work this way. As do some jokes. You start off with something unusual, or surprising, and then people will listen until you give them the answer. If I ask, “What’s red and smells like blue paint,” and you don’t know the answer, you’re going to stick around until I tell you. It’s just the way we’re wired.

So, as I’ve been telling you lately, this year we are in the gospel of Mark. And that means most readings--or, I guess about half of the readings--will come from Mark’s gospel. There are some very unusual things about Mark’s version of Jesus’ life. And I don’t want to give away any clues that will spoil the Bible study group’s exploration of Mark, but I want to tell you a few things about this book . . .

Most importantly, for today’s reading, you need to know that Mark was spoken by people long before it was ever written down. This entire book was told as a story to listeners. Sort of like a one-person play. Though we don’t know the specifics of how and when, I always imagine someone standing on a corner in a bustling market and dramatically telling the story to people standing around listening. As people come by, they need to be drawn into the story. They need to think to themselves, “I hope he finally gets around to explaining why there’s a large elephant in the room.”

And as another technique, the word that gets translated as “immediately” comes up 41 times in Mark. Which is kind of like saying, “All of a sudden . . .” Somebody walking by might hear that and stop . . . Go on . . . All of a sudden, what?!? If you think of Mark’s gospel as a story, it helps us understand the urgency of the whole thing, combined with the little phrases to catch your attention. Right off the bat in today’s reading we hear that bizarre description of John the Baptizer. Clothed in camel hair? Combined with a leather belt? Where does this guy shop for clothes? Eating locusts and honey? That would get your attention, right? Walking by you’d say, “tell me more about this elephant in the room named John!”

And now the speaker has the people’s attention, and it’s time to lay out the Cosmic Inclusio! Okay, okay, I’ll tell you what that fancy phrase means. Eventually. In the gospel of Mark, there’s this Greek word, schitzo that only appears twice. You can kind of tell what this word means by our related words, “schism,” and “schizophrenic.” It means, to split something. But it means to split something violently, with great force. So, in our translation it becomes “torn apart,” and in the King James it is “rent.” So this word comes up just twice in Mark’s gospel, and the first time is right here, at the baptism of Jesus.

Jesus comes up out of the water, and the heavens are torn apart. (The narrator has dropped an elephant into the room, and will now ignore it until the very end of the story.) The word comes up twice, and it’s an image that gets your attention! The heavens being torn apart? You expect the next sentence to be, “and fire rained down upon the people,” or “and then all the oxygen was sucked up into the outer atmosphere.” The heavens are torn apart, we’re thinking, “something huge is about to happen!” And something does . . .

The Spirit descends upon Jesus like a dove. And a voice comes from heaven saying to him, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” This is dramatic, for sure. Heavens torn apart, Spirit descending, voice from heaven speaking . . . Okay, you got us narrator of Mark’s gospel. Then what? Immediately, Jesus is driven into the desert, but that’s another story, for another week. But we’re listening, aren’t we? We want to know what happens next. This is a very big opening to the story, for sure. We want to know what happens next. And we want to know what happens to John the Baptizer. And we want to know when that schitzo word is going to come up again.

Ah, not yet. We have to let these elephants sit in the room. First we need to look at why this event is so important. Why all the drama at the moment Jesus comes up out of the water? I mean, this story doesn’t start with “One slow day, yet another guy saw the heavens open and the Spirit come down . . . “ The main drama of this story for the people hearing it would be how crazy it all sounds. And by that I mean beyond all the bells and whistles of the schitzo and the dove and the voice . . . It’s crazy because the “barrier” between heaven and earth has been shattered. Suddenly, the separation between God and people has been shattered. Suddenly God is close. Scary close. And that doesn’t feel comforting, when you consider it. God is breaking through into the world in this moment, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is a first. A Very Big First.

Here we have God in all three Persons. Here we have the Trinity. Here we have a completely new revelation of God, at it happens at the Baptism of Jesus. God is breaking into our world in a completely new way, and it is through baptism. Everything is different from this point, because God is present as Father, Son, and Spirit at the baptism of Jesus. More importantly, in the person of Jesus, God walks among us in Jesus. God has broken through, you see. The heavens were torn apart, and God has entered into our world in a whole new way!

And then, if you look for it, all through the gospel of Mark, you can see echoes of this breaking through. Seeds breaking through the ground, ears being open to listening, eyes open to seeing, hearts receptive to Jesus, friends being lowered through the roof to be healed. Immediately, things break through, are torn apart, and God enters creation. Which leaves us with one big question . . . Where’s the other schitzo, right?

Back to the scene in the market . . . You’ve heard the opening of Mark’s gospel, when the heavens are torn apart. And you’re standing there listening to the speaker telling all these amazing stories about this man named Jesus, and it all leads up to his arrest and crucifixion at the hands of the Romans. And, as he is hanging on the cross, at the moment of death, we hear that Jesus uttered a loud cry, and breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The curtain of the temple was schitzo, torn in two, from top to bottom. The story ends by reminding you of how it began . . .

At Jesus’ baptism, the heavens are torn apart; at Jesus’ death, the temple curtain is torn apart. This is what the theologians call, Mark’s Cosmic Inclusio. And the thing is, those listening to this story would know that the massive piece of fabric in the temple is what separates God from those who come to worship. No one was allowed behind this curtain, because it blocked the Holy of Holies. The place where God was thought to dwell. Jesus leaves the water of baptism and the heavens are torn apart. Jesus leaves his earthly life, and the temple curtain is torn apart.

What does it mean? Well, it could mean a lot of things, and it does. But what it means for you is this: the things that separate you from God are torn apart because of the death and resurrection of Jesus. There is now nothing that can separate you from God. At your own baptism, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, God was present just as God was present at the baptism of Jesus. The heavens were torn open, the Spirit descended, and God claimed you as a beloved child, in whom God is well pleased. And when you come forward today to receive the sacrament, I ask you to remember that nothing separates you from the love of God. Nothing prevents you from receiving this blessed gift, because the heavens have been torn apart . . . for you.

YEAR B 2012 feast of the holy name

2011-12-30T23:00:00.000-05:00

Year B, 2012
The Name of Jesus
Numbers 6:22-27
Psalm 8
Phillipians 2:5-11
Luke 2:15-21

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

When our elder daughter was born, Cris and I were excited to answer the nurse’s question, “Do you have a name picked out for her?” Oh, we had a name alright. And it was a girl’s name too. And it wasn’t just any name. We had put a lot of thought into this name. Her middle name would be Jean, which was the middle name of both Cris’ grandmothers. And her first name came from my grandmother’s middle name: Emily. Being the chivalrous man that I am (and needing some time to collect myself after what I’d just seen) I let Cris make the first phone call to her parents. Then I dialed up my 90 year old grandmother to tell her how we had used her name, to name the first girl born in the family since the 1800’s. When she too asked if we had picked out a name, I said, “Yep, Emily.” I waited proudly. After a brief pause, she asked, “That’s nice. And is that a special name for any reason?” I said, “Well, yeah, Gram, it’s your middle name!” She said, “My middle name’s not Emily; it’s Elenora!” And that is how we ended up with a daughter named Eleanor.

Last night in Europe, while you and I were just sitting down to dinner, they were already claiming it was 2012. Here in the Eastern Time Zone, where the real change actually happens over in Times Square, we made the 2012 name change six hours later. No matter what they were calling it in Europe, it was still 2011 here. And, even though you know that it’s now 2012, on the first few checks you write, and the first few cards you send, and the first few things you sign in some office, you know you’ll write 2011 and then sheepishly change it to 2012. It doesn’t matter how much you try to guard against it; this is going to happen to you, so you might as well accept it now. The name of the year has changed, no matter what your brain and hand tell you. And no matter what you call it, the new year has a name: 2012.

When God first appeared to Moses on the mountain, he wanted to know God’s name. Moses said to God, "If I come to the Israelites and say to them, 'The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' what shall I say to them?" God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM . . . say to the Israelites, 'I AM has sent me to you.'" Which makes me wonder, how do you work that name into a proper sentence? Of course, the answer is, you don’t. In the Hebrew scriptures, the name of God is written using four letters, and pointed so that when the reader comes to the name he or she reads “Adonai,” or “LORD,” instead of God’s name The name of God is sacred, set apart, not to be uttered by unclean human lips. God’s name has power, and must not be abused. So to guard against this abuse, God’s name was not to be used at all. Period.

Maybe God is avoiding the claiming-power-by-naming in this prohibition against speaking God’s name. Throughout human history, we claim power over something by naming it. Think of Adam in the Garden, naming animals. Or God changing Abraham’s name. Or Saul’s name into Paul. Think of how we use names: Name dropping, name calling, taking names; these are all examples of getting or using another person’s name as a way of increasing our own power. If I know your name, you become a person instead of some nameless force. Imagine standing around at coffee hour and being introduced to someone who says her name is I AM WHO I AM. Much better all around if she says, “Harriet Jones.”

Or, for example, having a meeting scheduled with Fr. George is just a name in your daily schedule. Whereas, meeting with The One Who Is, seems a little more, I don’t know, off-putting? Knowing the name puts you at ease. As the Daughter Formerly Known As Emily can tell you, in the Harry Potter stories everyone is afraid to say the name of the Dark Lord. The ones who are willing to say his name, the brave people who are willing to speak the name “Voldemort,” are the ones who do not cower in fear of him. Speaking his name empowers those who do not fear him. Voldemort becomes a person as opposed to “The Dark Lord.” That which we fear becomes less frightening when we can give it a name—even if that name is “fear itself,” as when Franklin Roosevelt rallied the nation. To give something a name that we can speak allows us to begin to understand that thing. When we contract a serious illness, like cancer, knowing what is attacking us allows us (and the doctors) to know what we’re fighting against, and how best to fight it. In good medicine, the first step is always to diagnose--to get the thing’s name.

In previous versions of our church’s prayer book, the Rite for Baptism included the priest’s charge to the parents to “name this child.” This is a long-standing tradition across denominational lines, and that’s why a person’s first name is still referred to as his or her “Christian name.” At baptism, it seemed important to mark one’s identity in this new birth. Children had no name until sealed with the cross of Christ. I am curious why we don’t continue this practice . . . there’s something wonderful to me about waiting to name a child until that particular moment . . . But I guess that’s what you expect me to say.

In today’s Gospel reading, we see Mary’s son being taken to the temple on the 8th day to be circumcised and given a name. There he is “called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.” There was no doubt as to the name Mary and Joseph were to give this child. You may recall from a few weeks back, when the angel came to Mary and told her she would conceive a child, she was to call the child Jesus, though in Luke’s account we get no explanation of the name. Elsewhere—by which I mean, in Matthew’s Gospel—we see the connection that he is to be called Jesus “because he will save the people from their sins.” Mary was obedient to God in bearing the child, and she was obedient in naming the child. She gives the child the name Jesus, which means “God saves,” or “God is my salvation.”

Of course, knowing what we know, it is not surprising that Jesus’ name means “God saves.” It only seems natural to those of us who know how the story ends. We know Jesus saves; we know Jesus is God; so the connection seems almost too obvious. Jesus means God saves. And it’s worth reminding ourselves that the name Jesus does not mean God condemns, or God judges, or God hates. Jesus means God saves, no matter what you might have heard Jesus means . . . from yourself or from someone else.

But what is truly new and surprising, when you think about it, is that Jesus has a name at all. To this day, our Jewish brothers and sisters will not speak the name of God. The name Jesus doesn’t mean “The one who must not be named,” or “the one who is from the one who is.” In Jesus, God now has a name we can speak, AND that name points to the most important thing about God: God saves.

And here’s a strange thought: Consider that in giving Jesus a name, the people now have power, in a way. Because God is now a person who can be categorized, or at least known. The child has been named, and we now have the power to speak his name. In knowing the name of Jesus, we now know something about God. And what do we know? God saves. Whenever we say the name Jesus, we are proclaiming that God saves. If that is not significant, I don’t know what is.

But consider where we can go from there. Jesus says, “whatever you ask in my name,” and “whenever two or more are gathered in my name.” Asking and gathering in Jesus’ name means something because God saves. Or, consider what we just heard from Phillipians, “God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth.” And, again, what is that name? Jesus: God saves. Every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth at the name Jesus . . . The most powerful name imaginable.

Of course, the power of Jesus’ name is not the five letters arranged just so in some magical pattern. The word itself is not the point; the origin of the name is the point. It is the person of Jesus, the Christ, in whom God saves. Whether our daughter is named Emily or Eleanor is not the point; the origin of her name is the point. Eleanor is so named because of the importance of my Grandmother in our lives. The power we have in the name of Jesus is the power to rely on the promises of God. How do we know that God saves? Because of the name of Jesus, the one who went to the cross. The one who rose from the grave. The one into whose death we are baptized, and the one into whose resurrection we shall rise again.

We have power because we know the name of Jesus. And the power we have is knowing that God saves. Each time we gather at this table, we are reminded that God saves: that God has saved, God is saving, and God will save. You are redeemed; you are forgiven; you are loved. In the name of Jesus, God saves.

YEAR B 2011 christmas day

2011-12-22T15:04:00.001-05:00

Year B, 2011
Christmas Day
Isaiah 52-7-10
Psalm 98
Hebrews 1:1-4
John 1:1-14

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

There’s a famous scene at the end of the movie Thelma and Louise. Perhaps you’ve seen it, or at least the clip of the final scene. In a tribute to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Thelma and Louise sit in a car, poised to be captured. They point the car at a cliff, and drive off into the air. . . The movie ends. People are moved. But the original ending of the movie showed the car actually falling, bouncing off the cliff, and exploding at the bottom. You know why they changed it? Because it was too sad, of course. Too final. Too hopeless. As ridiculous as it seems, just showing the car driving off into the air left some glimmer of hope, however tiny, that something miraculous might happen, once the characters left the certainty of the camera lens. Always a chance, you know . . .

There are many books that, when translated onto the screen, get a completely different ending. I am Legend, and Bladerunner, and the Time Traveler’s Wife all got massive remakes of their ending, because . . . well, we do not want a hopeless ending in our movies. Han Solo was supposed to die in the sixth Star Wars, and instead everyone goes to an Ewok party. Of course, that particular choice was based less on hope, and more on the sales of plastic figurines. But the principle remains.

We want hope. We want there to be a glimmer of possibility that things might just turn out all right in the end. Every time I get an e-mail from Toni, I always smile at her signature: "Everything will be all right in the end. If it isn't all right, then it isn't the end." Exactly so. Or, at least, that’s what we want to be exactly so. We want to know that some day, some how, it really will be alright in the end. As Julian of Norwich wrote, All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well. That’s the kind of assurance we want before we close our eyes at night. The confirmation from somewhere that this deep longing we have to trust in the future is not misplaced. We want somebody outside ourselves to tell us that it really is going to be alright.

And I’m not just talking about times when we are suffering. Because, oddly, that kind of reassurance doesn’t always help. If you’re in an accident and lose a limb, hearing your friend say, “It’s going to be okay,” doesn’t necessarily make you feel better. Because, come on, how do they know? How do they know your medical bills will get paid? Or that your job will still be there? Or that you will be able to feed yourself, or do anything? They don’t know that, and deep down, we know that they don’t know. Sometimes, hearing “It’ll be okay” is not the least bit helpful. In fact, sometimes--in the very worst times--it makes things worse.

Because the person saying, “It will be okay” isn’t there to look at the empty chair on Thanksgiving. They aren’t there the first Christmas morning when our loved one isn’t sitting next to us by the tree. Though our friends are trying to be helpful, hearing “it will be okay” can actually make things worse, because there’s no glimmer of “okay” on the horizon for us. And that’s because our friends don’t have a plan for making it “okay.” Our friends do not have a solution that is going to make “all manner of thing” well.

In the reading we just heard, there is a promise. It’s a subtle promise, to be sure, but there it is: The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

This may be the most powerful statement in the whole of scripture. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. That is the message of Christmas. And even if we’re not aware of it, that is why we put lights on our houses, and bring pine trees into our living rooms. To remind ourselves that light shines in the darkness, and that something stays green through the winter.

And, in some way, that is why we so resonate with this Christmas story we observe each year . . . Because it’s a story about a baby. Babies bring hope, and a new beginning, and a chance to start over. It wouldn’t be the same if Jesus showed up as an old man, would it? Old guy with a beard and a cane . . . Cute, but not necessarily going to inspire us to have hope for the future. Jesus’ arrival as a baby is a reminder that things might be different this time. Maybe you’ve heard that saying, attributed to Mother Theresa, “Every time a child is born, it is a sign that God hasn't given up on the world.” And I would add to it this, from Martin Luther, “Even if I knew that the world would end tomorrow I would still plant an apple tree today."

Or, to put it another way, even the most cynical people I know still love babies. People may think the world is all screwed up and hopeless and beyond redemption . . . And they set all that aside when you hand them a baby. And the reason for that is hope. Babies bring us hope.

Jesus comes to us as a baby not a warrior, because babies bring hope. Jesus comes to us as an infant instead of giant because babies offer hope. And, in the end, it is hope that drives us to face a new day, and a new year. And I think that’s because deep down, we all have a sense of the truth of the gospel: What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

Merry Christmas!

2011 YEAR B christmas eve

2011-12-20T20:55:00.001-05:00

Year B, 2011
Christmas Eve
Isaiah 9:2-7
Psalm 96
Titus 2:11-14
Luke 2:1-20

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

Okay, I have to be honest. You know what word stands out to me in this Christmas story? Angel. The Savior of the world has just been born, and I can’t get past thinking about angels. And I want to ask you to think about angels for a few minutes too. But, do not be afraid, as the angels might say . . .

First, has anyone ever called you an angel? I mean, you know, for being nice to them or whatever? You help someone fix a flat on the highway, you’re an angel, right? You pick someone’s kids up after school for them, and you’re an angel, right? In our day-to-day life, we call someone an angel when they do something nice for us . . . Something above and beyond the call of friendship or neighborliness. I don’t know when that started, but it’s generally accepted that you call someone an angel when they help you out in a big way.

Of course, that’s not like the angel in the story we just heard. When you show up to help someone fix a flat you don’t have to announce, “Do not be afraid” when they see you. Apparently, the shepherds’ reaction to the angel was fear and trembling. In fact, the text even says, “they were terrified.” Apparently this angel didn’t strike them as just showing up to do them a favor, right? There was something very scary here.

Which leads me to my next question for you to ponder in your hearts, as Mary might. When you hear the word, “angel,” what do you picture? What image forms in your head? Big or small? Male or female? Wings or no wings? What does an angel look like for you? Does it seem scary? Sweet? Translucent? Solid? The image you have in your mind when you hear the word sets you up for the question I really want to ask: If that angel showed up when you were out in a field, would it have to say, “Do not be afraid?” If you’re picturing a chubby baby with tiny wings, and a little bow in its hands, then probably not.

We get the word “angel” from the Greek word angelos, which means simply, “messenger.” And, in the Gospels, anyway, that’s all you get. Sure, sometimes it also says, “clothed in white,” or something like that. But there are no wings; there are no descriptions of any kind. An angel is a messenger from God. An angel is some kind of creature that is sent from God to tell somebody something that God wants them to know. That’s it. Maybe they have wings, or maybe they drive cars, or maybe they fix flats on the side of the road. Hard to say, based on what the Bible tells us.

So, an angel is a messenger sent by God. The angel in today’s text has THE most important message to deliver since the beginning of time. I mean, we can’t underestimate the importance of this message: God has been born in the flesh as an actual complete human being. God is lying in a manger behind a hotel in Bethlehem and will physically walk among people for 33 years or so. This is THE most important thing that has ever happened, and the task of announcing it falls to one angel. One messenger is sent by God to start the announcement ball rolling here on earth.

Step outside the story for a moment now and put yourself in that angel’s place. Just imagine you have never heard the story we just heard . . . You’ve got one chance to make the announcement that everything is about to be different. Where do you go? Think about it: whom do you tell? The President? The Pope? Fox news? Where would you go to make this one announcement? The mall? The state capitol? Mexico City? It’s important to try to answer that question for yourself, so that you can see how absurd it is that the angel in the Gospel story goes and tells some shepherds sitting in a field.

I mean, really? This is where you take this message? To a bunch of dirty, uneducated, nobody shepherds? What . . . didn’t this angel get the memo: this message is IMPORTANT? The angel scans the world, and picks out . . . shepherds? Shepherds. Well done, Clarence. No wings for you!

At the time of Jesus’ birth, there were about 300 million people living on the planet. And the angel sent by God to deliver this message goes to shepherds in the fields. Ah, but the important point I’m skipping is that this angel was sent by God to make the announcement. The angel didn’t pick the shepherds as the people to deliver this message to. The angel was sent by God, just like the angel was sent to Mary to announce that she would be the one to give birth to this baby. God sent that angel to those shepherds. They were the chosen ones, to be the first to receive this message. And that brings us to the obvious question tonight . . . Why?

Why would God send the angel to these shepherds, sitting in a field? People with no connections, no public platform, no influence? If spreading the gospel is so important, why would God choose the least important people imaginable to be the first to receive that message? Why would God entrust this most important announcement to people who could not read or write, who could not gain entrance to the Governor’s mansion, who couldn’t vote, or give interviews, or take out newspapers ads, or build a cathedral? Why . . . shepherds?

Well, at the risk of being fired, I don’t know.

But here’s my guess . . .
God sends the messenger to the shepherds for the same reason that Jesus arrives as a baby. Despite how we might like to imagine God as an all-powerful, earth-shattering, lightning-throwing, Zeus-god of destruction, the message of the birth of Christ is the very opposite of that: a helpless baby--as fragile as any newborn--whose birth is announced to lowly shepherds--as simple as any people have ever been. God is taking a chance that things could be different. That the system could be overthrown from within. God is jumping into the world with no safety net, no escape plan, no Plan B.

The Savior of the world comes as a baby, and his birth is announced to shepherds. This makes absolutely no sense to us, and that is exactly why it works! The messenger goes where God says to go, which is the last place we would think to look, like the palm of your hand. And that’s where you and I come in . . .

Because if the best news ever is entrusted to a bunch of shepherds, then maybe we can accept that it’s entrusted to us too. If it starts with them, then it can continue with us. If they can head out from the manger glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, then maybe we can go in peace to love and serve the Lord. But first things first . . . Let’s go back to angels . . .

There are things going on in this story that parallel what we do every time we gather. If an angel is a messenger of God, then in some ways the bread and wine of communion are not only the body and blood of Christ, but are also angels sent by God. They’re sent to the least likely people, you and me, and they come with the angel’s proclamation: “Do not be afraid; for see--I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people.” And the message of salvation appears once more in the place we’re least likely to look for it: in the palm of our hands.

We open our hands to receive this message, and we thank God for the gift of salvation. The shepherds returned to their fields, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them. And, as the modern-day messengers of God, you and I return to our own fields, saying the same thing, in our own language: Christ is born . . . Merry Christmas!

2011 YEAR B advent 4

2011-12-16T15:12:00.000-05:00

Year B, 2011
Advent 4
2 Sammuel 7:1-11, 16
Psalm 89:1-4, 29-26
Romans 16:25-27
Luke 1:26-38

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

When my family and I lived in New York City, our daughters attended a Catholic school across town, on the lower east side of Manhattan. Our first Christmas in New York meant our first exposure to the Catholic grade-school Christmas pageant. Cris and I, as dutiful parents, went to the grand event along with all the other parents, which was held in the parish hall basement. As the 1st grade narrators clomped out to begin the presentation, it could have been any parish hall, in any church, in any city, in any state . . . even any country, come to think of it. But then they threw back their heads and quoted today’s gospel text:

The ayngel Gaybriel was sent by Gawd, to Mahry and Joseph in a town cahled Nahzareth . . . .

That unmistakable New York accent! Suddenly, everything was localized. Suddenly, we could be in only one place: The lower east side of Manhattan!

Once the narrators began speaking, it was clear where we were. This age-old story, which can often seem remote and distant and impersonal . . . a fairy tale, even, on some days . . . was once again very real and very near. The story of Gabriel’s visit, retold in that church basement on the lower east side, became more real for me than it ever had before. Because now, it was local. Now it was personal. God had come near in a very specific place. And that is the whole point, isn’t it? That God comes to us locally, personally, flesh and blood, and everything that that phrase means.

There is a certain danger in the specific. And there is a risk in general blandness and vagueness. And Christianity has always fought the battle between the two poles of--on the one hand--being specific, and dangerous, and--on the other hand--being vague and socially acceptable. In the first case, you get the extreme of belief that says, “Christianity or death.” And on the other hand, you get a vague sort of God as an invisible force that floats through the cosmos and encourages us to do good deeds. Neither of those two extremes is the real message of Christianity. Jesus never says, “Believe or die!” And Jesus never says, “You know, whatever.”

What makes Christianity different from all other religions is one thing: Christianity is localized. Not in the sense of localized in the community, but in the sense of localized in a person. This is most true in the case of Jesus. I mean, we call it Christianity for a reason, right? Centered on the person of Jesus Christ. But Christianity is also localized in the followers of Jesus . . . you and I are each a little version of Jesus in some way, through our baptism into his Church. We seek and serve Christ in all people with God’s help . . . which means, we’re also looking for Jesus in the people we meet.

But that’s all just backstory. Here’s the point I really want to get to with this idea of being as absolutely local as anything has ever been: The “yes” of Mary. When Gabriel says all this to Mary, the ticking before her response is the loudest sound in all creation. Everything hangs in the balance. She could have said, “As if!” and stormed off. She could have said, “Let me think about it,” and walked away. Mary could have said anything, and I imagine Gabriel standing there with the most hopeful look in his eyes, not knowing how Mary will react. As St. Augustine said, “All of creation held its breath awaiting the yes of Mary.”

Mary could have said anything; and what she says is, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

The importance of this moment is hard to grasp, because everything is about to change . . . and I do mean everything. Up to this point, God has been dealing with people from afar: in dreams, through the prophets, occasionally in the combustible bush or what have you, but God does not walk among the people. God is sort of everywhere and anywhere, dwelling in tents, talking on mountains, being somehow present in Israel’s escape from Egypt, and Noah’s boatbuilding. Up to this point, God is here, but in an ambiguous sort of way. In what we Christians call the “Old Testament,” all sorts of things are attributed to God, both good things and bad things. People have interaction with God, but nobody invites God over for dinner. In these stories of the Hebrew people, God is present in a vague and mystical way . . . the Jews were God’s chosen people, whether they liked it or not.

With the angel Gabriel’s announcement to Mary, everything is about to change. Or not. As St. Augustine said, “All of creation held its breath awaiting the yes of Mary.”

And there it is again. God did not go to the vagueness of “all humanity” to see if we were up to this challenge. God did not go to a committee to see if it was the consensus of the group. No, God sends Gabriel to one specific person, living at one specific time, and bets the house on the chance that she might say yes.

There are those who will say, “Well God knew that Mary would say yes.” I am not willing to say this. I think that it is an important part of this story . . . no, THE most important part of this story, that it could have gone either way. I think it is important that Mary is not just a mindless robot. I think it is important that Mary had the option to say no. I think it is important that Mary is offered the honor to be the one to carry the Redeemer of the world, and it starts with this sentence: "Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word." And until that moment, all of creation held its breath awaiting the yes of Mary.

The somewhat unpredictable God of the Hebrew scriptures, the one who might save the people of Ninevah, or who might wipe out everybody with a flood, the one who might offer the promised land, but have you wander in the desert for forty years before you can see it, that same God is going to make a radically particular move . . . from the general to the specific . . . from the could-be-anywhere to the local. From all of humanity, to one young woman, living in Palestine, 2,000 years ago. All of creation held its breath awaiting the yes of Mary.

But behind all this is one very big question: Is it true that before that moment God was distant, remote, and just sort of vaguely there? Does the birth of Jesus mean that God becomes present in some way that God was not before? It’s a tricky and thought-provoking question, to be sure. John’s gospel starts with the phrase, “In the beginning was the Word.” And Jesus says, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last.” Jesus was, and is, and will be. So, it’s not like the birth of Jesus was the start of Jesus. The Son of God was there from before the beginning.

What changes with the birth of Jesus is this: God becomes flesh. God moves among us in a specific, local, eating-and-drinking way in the person of Jesus. Gabriel comes to the specific person of Mary, who answers with a specific “yes,” and God moves from the general could be any basement in any school in any state or country to a very specific place and time . . . a barn out behind a sold-out hotel. Everything is different because God is present in a local way in Jesus.

And part of the life of that specific person named Jesus was when he gathered with his friends to share the Passover meal. And we remember that meal every time we celebrate Communion together. That meal happened at a very specific time and place. But that meal also happens throughout all time and space. This is the reverse of the process . . .

The specific local meal of Jesus and his disciples moves to the general anywhere and everywhere. The feast that goes on through all eternity. Distant, remote, and for everyone. But then something happens . . .

As you come to the altar, you reach out your own personal hands. And you make something like a manger as you stretch them out. And as the bread is placed in your hands, you hear the words, “The body of Christ, the bread of heaven.”

And all of creation holds its breath awaiting the yes of your “Amen.”

2011 YEAR B advent 3

2011-12-10T23:28:00.000-05:00

Year B, 2011
Advent 3
Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11
Canticle 15
1 Thessalonians 5:16-24
John 1:6-8, 19-28

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

Who am I? Why am I here? Maybe you remember who famously asked those questions. It was Admiral Stockdale, Ross Perot’s running mate in the 1992 general election. The press had a field day with this unusual start, because it seemed like a ridiculous way to begin your opening statement at a debate of this magnitude. (But just wait until the Donald Trump debate later this month!) Anyway, Stockdale’s opening statement was actually a question . . . or, actually actually two questions. Who am I? Why am I here? They’re honestly very good questions to ask yourself. Because if you can answer them for yourself, then you can answer them when someone else asks them: Who are you? Why are you here?

This is what happens to John the Baptizer in today’s Gospel reading. But before we get into that, the first thing we have to do is sort out who’s who around here. These days, Aiden and Sophia are the most popular names—much to my surprise, I must say. But back in Jesus’ day, the most popular names seem to have been Mary and John . . . or, at least based on the names in the Bible. So, any time you hear the name Mary or John in a reading, you need to figure out which one we’re talking about.

The Gospel reading today was from John’s Gospel, and it’s the general understanding that this is John, the disciple of Jesus, “the one whom Jesus loved,” and the one who is said to have written the book of Revelations. This is John the author and companion of Jesus. John the Baptizer is a completely other John. He’s the one out in the wilderness, eating locusts and honey, pouring water on people, and telling them to repent. It’s particularly confusing today because this story about John the Baptizer comes from the Gospel of John. So, just to be clear, the John in today’s Gospel story is not the same guy who wrote the book called John, which contains the story about John. And I can see I’ve made this clear as mud. We press on . . .

So John is out there in the wilderness, baptizing people, and these religious leaders come and ask him, Who are you? And why are you here? And our question to them would be, What’s it to you, right? Well the answer is, things were different in those days. This thing called baptism, for the Jews of Jesus’ day, was a ritual washing that a person did for one of two reasons. The first would be if you’ve become ritually unclean, like for touching a dead body or something. And the second would be for Gentiles (that is, non-Jews) who wanted to convert to the Jewish faith. The last step of the conversion was to be baptized.

So, the Jewish religious leaders are paying John the Baptizer a little visit to find out where he gets off adding a third religious rite without checking in with the main office. But that’s the second question, the Why are you here question. Before they get to that, they have to ask the first question: Who are you? And before he can answer, they offer him some options: Are you the Messiah? No. Are you Elijah, the one who was supposed to come back before the Messiah? No. Okay, are you a prophet? No.

And now they’ve exhausted the list of people who could legitimately invent a new reason for baptism. And they’re like, so . . . then who are you, exactly? And he still doesn’t say. He starts talking about someone else. He starts talking about his identity as being one who prepares the way, who makes the paths straight. They ask, Who are you? And he starts talking about some man of mystery. This interrogation is not going well from the religious leaders’ perspective. They want to know about John, and he is talking about someone else. Plus, he’s talking about someone who is right there with them, but someone they don’t recognize. Just the kind of crazy talk you’d expect from a guy who eats grasshoppers. John says, “Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.”

Translation: You think I’m a radical arrival in the world? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet! John’s baptism with water seems like it’s going to topple the apple cart of the religious system, and John is saying this is just the beginning. He’s the opening act! And not just that, he’s saying he’s more like the guy who unlocks the stage door for the main act. Not even in the same league. Not one of the same kind. Just another guy named John, doing what God has called him to do.

Before our family moved to New York to go to seminary, we had a huge black lab named Lula . . . she was the world’s best dog. Sorry to all of you who thought the world’s best dog was living at your house. You actually have the world’s second best dog. Anyway, Lula always wanted me to throw things so she could go get them for me. The technical term is “fetch.” But Lula, being a black lab, wasn’t necessarily the world’s smartest dog . . . just the world’s best. So, sometimes I would throw something for her, and she would stand there looking at me, with her head crouched down, waiting for me to throw it. And, of course, I would tell her I already threw it, and she always seemed to take that to mean I’m about to throw it.

In frustration, I would point at the thing I threw, saying “Go get it.” And without fail, Lula would look at my finger. So I’d point harder toward the ball, and she would stare more intently at my finger. Eventually, I’d have to pretend to throw the ball again, and then she would run off toward the ball that had been sitting there for the past few minutes. Not the world’s smartest dog; just the best.

These accusers who come to visit John today are kind of like my dog. They’re looking at John, and John is trying to say, “It’s not about me, silly! Look where I’m pointing!” And they all stare at his finger. They want to know about John, and John is telling them to look for Jesus. They want to know about John’s authority, and John says my authority is just to open the door for the one who is coming later on. They’re staring at the hand that is pointing, rather than the point of the pointing.

A friend of mine bought a painting of Martin Luther when he was in Germany a few years ago. Well, I mean, it’s a print of a painting of Martin Luther. I don’t know when the original was painted, but it’s inspired by Luther’s idea of the perfect sermon. On a cross in the middle of the painting, is Jesus. Luther is on the right side, way up in the pulpit, preaching to the people who are sitting directly across from him. He is looking at them, and with his right arm, he is pointing at Jesus, on the cross. The people sitting across from him are looking at Jesus, not at Luther. The preacher is proclaiming the gospel by pointing at Jesus. And it is a perfect sermon because the people are looking at Jesus, not at the preacher.

Today’s Gospel reading started off being about John: This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, "Who are you?" Sounds like it’s going to be a story about John, doesn’t it? But the story is not about John, even though that’s why the interrogators are coming to talk to John. They say, “So, John, tell me a little bit about yourself. You’re doing quite a radical thing here, and that must make you pretty important, huh?” And what does John do? He points to Jesus. God among us. The one “standing in your midst.” He’s talking to them, but he’s pointing to Jesus . . . the perfect sermon!

They ask John, Who are you? Why are you here? And he says, I baptize people and tell them that Jesus is coming. John is doing what Jesus tells his disciples to do at the end of Matthew’s Gospel: Baptize people, and tell them that Jesus is coming. And that answer should sound familiar to us, because it’s what we as the Church have been doing ever since. We gather together, baptizing people, in anticipation of Jesus’ coming into the world. Baptize, and point to Jesus.

So now if I were to ask you, are you Elijah? You would say no. Are you a prophet? You would say no. Are you the Messiah? You would say no. And then in frustration I would finally ask, Who are you? Why are you here?

And you could point to the one who is coming into the world. You could point to Jesus. Because that’s who you are: the ones who point to Jesus.

YEAR B 2011 advent 1

2011-11-26T21:36:00.000-05:00

Year B, 2011
Advent I
Isaiah 64:1-9
Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18
1 Corinthians 1:3-9
Mark 13:24-37

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

Well, welcome to Advent, huh? And so where’s the singing children, and shepherds, and peace on earth, and ho ho ho and all that stuff? I mean, talk about a wet blanket, huh Jesus? We just got started with the shopping and decorating and stuff, and suddenly Jesus is talking about the sun and moon going dark, and the stars falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens being shaken. What’s the deal, right?

Well, it’s appropriate that this reading ends with Jesus’ concluding, “And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake." That’s the key to this entire reading. A whole bunch of scary stuff is coming, so keep awake. Okay, the sun and moon go dark, I think we’re going to notice, and I doubt any of us is going to be nodding off at that moment. And then the Son of Man will send out his angels to gather the faithful from the ends of the earth. And then some authors will use this passage to write the Left Behind series and make a whole lot of money because Jesus has just scared the Christmas right out of us!

The reason this reading is so scary is because, quite frankly, we don’t get it. And part of the reason we don’t get it is because it operates on a bunch of different levels. I’ll give you a quick rundown . . .

First, Jesus is, assumedly, saying these words to people who will shortly see him being handed over to his enemies. They will watch him go to the cross, after being brutally beaten and tormented. For them the sun will go dark. The moon will lose its light. The stars will fall from the skies, and the powers of heaven will be shaken! The people hearing Jesus say these words will in a very short time see the Messiah suffer and be killed. The one in whom they have put their trust will be taken away. And, just to let you in on the progression of things, in the very next chapter of Mark’s gospel, Jesus is praying in the garden and when he comes back, what are the disciples doing? Sleeping! By the next night, Jesus will be on the cross, and they are sleeping! What did Jesus tell them? Keep awake!

So, that’s the first level for this story. The next thing to think about is the point in history when this gospel of Mark is written down. Even though Mark’s gospel is the earliest written version of Jesus’ life in the Bible, it’s written a good 30 or 40 years after Jesus is killed, around 70AD, as most scholars have it. This was a time of insane turmoil in the Roman world, with a massive Jewish revolt starting in the mid 60’s. The response to this revolt from Rome was to completely destroy Jerusalem, including the Temple . . . the center of Jewish religious life. For people living in Jerusalem at the time this gospel was written, the sun and moon have stopped shining, and the powers of heaven have been shaken.

And just to let you in on another progression of things again, just before Jesus says all that stuff about the coming destruction, he is walking with his disciples out of the Temple, and one of them says, “Teacher, look at these magnificent buildings! Such impressive stones!” Jesus tells them that they will all be thrown down, with not one stone left upon another. You think these walls are immortal? You think things will just continue right along as they have been, and the world is all hunky dory, right? Well, Keep Awake!

So, that’s the second level on which this story is operating. And then we come to us . . . the people who have just had Thanksgiving dinner, and perhaps started some Christmas shopping, and maybe even started digging out the decorations, and maybe (though your priest hopes not), maybe you’ve already got a pine tree sitting in your living room. You’re zipping right along in your plans for what food to get, and what presents to buy, and whether or not you’re going to talk to that one relative who drives you crazy every year . . . and, just kind of day-dreaming your way into Advent, when suddenly the Reason for the Season says to you: Wake Up! Keep awake, because you do not know the hour or the day when the Son of Man will return.

Every Sunday since June we have been saying this particular phrase: Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again. That’s called the Mystery of Faith. And it’s the last part we tend to forget about. We celebrate Christmas each year, remembering the incarnation of God among us, when Jesus was born. And we go through Holy week to join in the Holy Mysteries of his death and resurrection. But the part we tend to skip over is that third part: Christ will come again. Keep awake! Christ will come again.

And then what? Well, Jesus tells us, “Then they will see `the Son of Man coming in clouds' with great power and glory. Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.” And who are these elect? Let’s go back to Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, that section we heard this morning: He will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful; by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

“These elect” are the ones called into fellowship with God’s Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. The ones who have been baptized with Christ into the mystery of his death, and into the promise of the resurrection. Christ has died; Christ is risen. In baptism you also have died and been raised again to new life in Christ. You are among those whom the angels will go and gather when Jesus comes again. So keep awake!

Christ has died, and Christ is risen, but what now? What about this long stretch of waiting for the Christ-will-come-again part? Are we just killing time, waiting for Jesus to return? Some Christians certainly take that view. For some people, Jesus can’t come soon enough, and they couldn’t care less about the suffering of this world because it isn’t “real.” You know, it’s all going to burn, and this present suffering is nothing compared to the glories of heaven.

Well, I don’t know about you, but that approach doesn’t work for me. A far-away pie-in-the-sky answer doesn’t work because I do not want a replacement for this world. I want redemption of this world. In the Apostles Creed we say that we believe in the resurrection of the body. And a physical resurrection means that something more than a spirit will be raised on the last day. It means there will be some continuity . . . something of this world will exist in the next. I am convinced that there will be backyard football games, and great meals, and healthy pets, and people that we have loved and lost who are raised again. That is not destruction and replacement; that is redemption. And there’s a big difference between the two. Jesus did not come into the world to condemn the world, but to redeem it. And part of “it” is us.

So back to the first question again: What’s with all the scary language this first Sunday of Advent? Why the need for all the doom and gloom just to tell us to stay awake? We are quite aware that things are not right. We’ve seen the empty chair at the Thanksgiving table. We know that someone in our family won’t be calling us on Christmas Day. We see the state of our economy, and we know people who are out of work, and we have felt the sting of death in losing the ones we love.

The sun has been darkened, and the moon has lost its light, and the stars have fallen from heaven, and the powers in the heavens have been shaken.

Christ has died; Christ is risen . . . now what? What difference does that really make in the here and now of our lives? Things still hurt. A lot, sometimes. And this kind of suffering is enough to make you go shopping, to cling to the joy of Christmas, to throw yourself headlong into the preparation of Advent because, quite frankly, it’s hard to keep your chin up sometimes. Maybe that’s why we want to start the Christmas season even earlier each year. Because we’re hoping that some of the joy and peace of Christmas will seep backwards into autumn, and then further back into summer, and maybe even all the way back into spring.

But the real joy of Christmas, the true hope of Christmas, is the thing we tend to forget: and it’s that third part of the Mystery of Faith. It is the promise we can cling to, in order to make some sense of our lives. The first two parts of the Mystery are just a set-up for the third one . . . the part when everything really will be different.

Christ has died. Yes. And . . . Christ is risen. Yes. And . . . Christ will come again. Yes! . . . So, keep awake, and trust in the fullness of the Mystery of Faith.

YEAR A 2011 christ the king

2011-11-19T19:47:00.001-05:00

Year A, 2011
Christ the King
Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24
Psalm 100
Ephesians 1:15-23
Matthew 25:31-46

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

So, as you probably have heard me say, I grew up in the Lutheran Church. Technically, in the Missouri Synod, Lutheran Church. And Lutherans have a certain way of viewing the world. For some Lutherans, the Reformation was the high point of Church history. On the other hand, one of my professors in seminary always called the Reformation “The Great Mistake.” As with everything, the truth lies somewhere in between.

But for my money, the most important result of the Reformation was the realization that salvation is the work of God in Jesus, and not the result of our actions, whether good or bad. This means, nothing we do can earn us a place in the kingdom, AND, nothing we do can get us kept out of the kingdom. Salvation is in God’s hands, not ours. Although that makes us uncomfortable on the days when we feel like we’re doing good things, it is the best news possible on most days, if we’re honest.

This Gospel reading we just heard, about the sheep and the goats, is one that needs to be read wearing our Reformation glasses, in order for it to still be good news. The easy reading of this text goes like this: if we are nice to poor people, Jesus will welcome us into the kingdom. And if we’re mean to poor people, Jesus will send us off to burn in hell. So, we open a soup kitchen, and the end result is, poor people get food, and we end up spending eternity with God. The Gospel of the Lord. That’s what it seems to say to us, if we’re not careful. Thankfully, the Great Mistake declares that to be bad theology, and requires us to take a closer look at what Jesus is really saying in this passage. Because that reading of this parable—that good people go to heaven, and bad people go to hell—contradicts everything Jesus says in the other parables.

In fact, when we look at how Jesus lived his life, it also contradicts everything he did. Jesus hung out with the bad people. Jesus sought out the bad sheep. He looked for the rule-breakers, and outcasts, and rejects, and outlaws. Tax collectors, prostitutes, and Gentiles are certainly not earning their way into heaven in Jesus’ day. They are the refuse of Jewish society, and good people did not hang around with “those kind of people.”

But Jesus did. Not only did he “hang out” with them, he sought out these people. They were just living along their God-forsaken lives, and here comes Jesus—to Nicodemus, to the woman caught in adultery, to the thief on the cross. Over and over Jesus sends the message that bad behavior does not keep you out of the Kingdom.

AND, as Martin Luther and others realized, he also sends the message from the other side of the coin: being good does not get you into the Kingdom. Nothing you can do can make you worthy of God’s love and forgiveness. (That’s the bad news.) And nothing you do can ever stop God from loving you. (That’s the good news.) We confess that we have sinned against God, in thought word and deed. (Bad news.) Almighty God forgives you all your sins through our Lord Jesus Christ. (Good news.) While we were yet sinners (bad news), Christ died for us (good news). Though our sins be as scarlet (bad news), God has made them white as snow (good news).

So, now let’s talk to the animals . . . the sheep and the goats. The first thing to notice about this story is that the sheep and the goats are both there. This is not a case where only the sheep are standing before the King, and the goats are off in . . . wherever goats go. Everybody is there, whether sheep or goat. (You may remember a few weeks ago when the vineyard owner says let the wheat and weeds grow together. Or the week before that, when the fisher’s net brought in every kind of fish.) Sheep and goats stand together before the King. All are welcome, regardless, we might say. So far so good.

So, Jesus is sitting on the throne, with all the nations gathered before him. So far so better. Then he separates the sheep and the goats. (Bad news.) Then he says to the sheep, come and inherit the Kingdom. (Good news.) For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat . . .

This is where the Reformation Red Flag comes out. Hold on Jesus, we say . . . are you about to say that BECAUSE we gave you food when you were hungry that we can now enter the Kingdom? Martin Luther will be very disappointed to hear this . . . maybe it really was the Great Mistake! That sounds like the sheep are about to be rewarded for feeding the poor. It sounds like they have earned salvation. It sounds like the good people will be saved, and that makes us very concerned for the tax collectors and prostitutes and, well, those of us who have sinned in thought word and deed. You know, what about the people who haven’t been giving you food and drink and clothing, Jesus? When have we ever given you these things, Lord?

You know what’s interesting here? This passage we just heard from Matthew’s Gospel? It’s interesting that the sheep have no idea what they’re doing. This is because, well, sheep are stupid. These particular sheep have been in a long-lasting relationship with Jesus, and they don’t even know it! They have been feeding and clothing him, giving him water and a place to sleep, and they have no idea they’re doing it. I mean, come on . . . that’s pretty oblivious, don’t you think? It’s like taking in a foster child and not noticing, even after someone points out the child to you.

The sheep have a relationship with Jesus, but they don’t know they have a relationship with Jesus. Strange, wouldn’t you say? They don’t go out looking for Jesus so they can serve him. They’re just going through their lives, feeding the poor and so on, never even suspecting that they are feeding Jesus.

It turns out, what saves them is something they are totally unaware of. What saves them happens in spite of not knowing what they are doing. What saves them, it turns out, is the presence my Jesus! They could have been doing something totally different . . . driving a bus, turning a wrench, teaching a class . . . what matters is that Jesus was there with them.

They are just doing what they do. And, as it turns out, they were serving Jesus. They were just going along with their lives, when suddenly Jesus shows up and saves them. They are not saved because of WHAT they are doing. They are saved because Jesus is with them. This is not a lesson about feeding the poor so that Jesus will love you. Because you cannot make Jesus love you anymore than he already does. You cannot earn God’s forgiveness. You cannot work your way into the Kingdom. The sheep do not know the importance of what they are doing. But the presence of Jesus in their actions makes everything different, everything new, everything forgiven.

So, now you’re thinking, “But what about the goats?” Well, what about them? It sounds like something really scary is in store for them, doesn’t it? It sounds like being a goat is going to lead to everlasting suffering and torment with Satan and his angels, doesn’t it? It sounds like there is no worse fate possible than being a goat, right? It’s enough to scare you into getting out and feeding the poor, and visiting the sick, and clothing the naked, isn’t it?

But here’s what I find to be an odd thing about this reading: When you heard the reading from Matthew, how many sheep do you picture? And how many goats do you picture? Do you imagine them as being equal in number? More goats? More sheep?

Just play along with me for a moment and picture an endless procession of sheep on the right, and absolutely no goats on the left. What if when the king talks to the goats he’s talking to an empty room? What if there’s nobody there? It’s possible, isn’t it? And why is it our natural urge to make that left side of the room so crowded, anyway? Why do we need for there to be any goats at all? It says something about how we view God, if you ask me. For some reason, we naturally resist accepting that Jesus came to save the world. We can’t believe that Jesus draws all people to himself, or that the Lamb of God takes away the sin of the world.

So what’s the point of all this rambling about sheep and goats? Well, first off, let’s forget about the goats, because there might not be any at all. And, if you concentrate on the sheep, you’ll find what you need to know: Jesus is present where we least expect him. In your baptism, God established an unbreakable bond with you. You may not see Jesus in your daily life, but he is there. You might not know why you do good things like feed the poor, or help your neighbor, but God is working in you when you do. The thing that matters is that you can trust Jesus to show up where you least expect him: in a piece of bread and a sip of wine for instance. And anywhere that Jesus is, salvation surely follows.

YEAR A 2011 feast of all saints

2011-11-05T17:00:00.000-04:00

Year A, 2011
The Feast of All Saints
Revelation 7:9-17
Psalm 34:1-10, 22
1 John 3:1-3
Matthew 5:1-12

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

Has anyone ever told you that you were blessed? You know, like, “You are blessed to have such a great family.” Or, “You are blessed to have such good health.” Maybe you’ve said that kind of thing yourself. “We are blessed to live in a good neighborhood.” Or, “I am blessed to have such good parents.”

Why do we say that? What do we mean by that? Well, for one thing, it always seems to happen after the fact, right? It’s an observation—and often an obvious observation. Instead of saying, “Hey, lady, nice house,” we might substitute “You are certainly blessed with a comfortable home.” You know, it’s really just a religious spin on an obvious compliment. And it would feel really awkward to use the kind of phrasing that Jesus uses in today’s gospel lesson. If I said, “Blessed are you who drive a car that gets good gas mileage and is still under warrantee,” you’d think I was a bit crazy. If someone says, “Blessed are you because you got a raise at work,” you’d probably hope that was the end of the conversation, right? I mean, we just don’t talk that way.

Basically, though, we would say people are blessed when they are rich, and popular, and successful, and employed. The times we would say people are blessed seem to be the opposite of what Jesus is saying in today’s gospel. What we would normally call blessed does not enter into the list Jesus goes through.

But before we look at what Jesus is saying, let’s look at what he’s not saying. He isn’t saying, the rich in spirit are blessed, or people who are happy are blessed. That fits with how we view the world, sure, but Jesus is saying the opposite We would say the rich and happy are blessed, just like we’d say Bill Gates is blessed. And then it gets really strange to look at the opposing traits: Blessed are the proud; blessed are those with impure hearts; blessed are those who make war. And then the last one, the last opposite is strangest of all: blessed are those who are not persecuted for the sake of righteousness.

It’s a weird collection of statements, these opposites, and I know that just because Jesus says one thing, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the reverse is the opposite. I mean, there are many other options of course. But the point is, it’s a list of things that seem unrelated when you look at these opposites. The rich in spirit, the happy, the proud, the impure, the warmongers . . . it’s a very strange list. But that list is not what Jesus is saying, right? I mean, it’s the opposite of what Jesus is saying. So, let’s look at the list of Jesus . . . and you’ve heard these before . . .

Blessed are the poor in spirit; Blessed are those who mourn; Blessed are the meek; Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness; Blessed are the merciful; Blessed are the pure in heart; Blessed are the peacemakers; Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake; Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

That’s nice, yes. But it’s not our list, is it? I mean, come on, those people are definitely not blessed! Jesus is calling them blessed. But . . . What’s going on here? You hate to think Jesus is out of touch, right? I mean, most of those people are by no means what we would call “blessed.” Quite the opposite in fact. So, how do we explain this?

One possible answer is simply this: Jesus is blessing them.
Think about that for a minute. What if Jesus isn’t looking around the room making obvious comments about who’s already blessed, like we would? What if, instead, Jesus is looking out at people who need a blessing, and delivering one? What if Jesus is blessing them . . . blessing us? It changes things doesn’t it? In fact, it changes everything about what it means to be blessed.

We spend our lives thinking, if I could just get that great house down the street I would be blessed. If I could just find the right partner, get my kids (or parents) to understand me, get my boss to appreciate me, ah . . . THEN I would be truly blessed. If I could be rich and popular and healthy and happy, then I would be blessed. We see blessing as a result of other things. We see blessing as the end goal. If we could only get that thing or trait that we identify with being blessed, well . . . THEN we’d be blessed. In our minds, blessed are the rich, and happy, and strong, and well-adjusted people with good teeth. You work hard, play by the rules, and one day you will end up blessed . . . God willing. That is how life works.

But that doesn’t sound like what Jesus is saying today, does it? Jesus is putting the cart before the horse, to say the least. Jesus is saying, blessed are the very people that we would call cursed, or—you know--uncompetitive. Not blessing them because of who and what they are. He is not observing their blessedness: he is blessing them.

Are you poor in spirit? Jesus is blessing you. Are you mourning? Jesus is blessing you. Those are the compensating ones. It makes sense, because the poor in spirit, and those who are mourning are people who need a little blessing today. But then Jesus expands the blessing outward, and the list becomes ever more surprising. The merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers . . . they don’t really seem like they need blessing, do they? Or, at least not in the same way as the poor in spirit and those who mourn. The merciful don’t need a blessing like those who mourn do, right? And then, finally, here’s the strangest way to finish the list . . .
Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

It’s a very strange way to wrap up, and it kind of takes us back to the beginning again . . . you know, people needing a blessing. And, here’s the strange thing about that finish, with the ones being persecuted: it doesn’t so much apply to us, does it? I mean, how often do people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on Jesus’ account? I mean, honestly? Probably not very often . . . You and I don’t really need to know that we are blessed when we are being persecuted for righteousness sake because . . . well, it doesn’t really happen to us.

But you know who does need to hear that message? The people Jesus is actually talking to, that’s who. The people who are standing there in that field on that day, this is the primary blessing they need to hear. That in spite of all that persecution they would soon be facing for being followers of Jesus, in spite of torture and really horrible deaths for the sake of their faith, Jesus is blessing them. This was a blessing for their future, a reminder that God would be with them. They didn’t need it that moment maybe, but they would need it soon enough.

And we hear John’s vision of maybe those same people in the reading from Revelation today: These are the ones who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. This “great ordeal” . . . despite what you may have heard from Hal Lindsey and Tim LaHaye . . . this great ordeal has already happened. John was not writing about some event that we are waiting on, based on some overarching secret world economy and all that. No, John was writing about a persecution in Rome that has already come and gone. Those who have come out of the great ordeal are the earliest saints of Christianity. Those are people who lived and died for their faith. They are some of the ones we mean when we say, the saints who have gone before.

But they are not the only saints who have gone before. They’re a small—and rightly honored—group of the whole company of saints, in heaven and on earth. Some of the blessed were persecuted for righteousness sake, yes. But ALL of the saints mourned at one time or another. ALL of the saints were poor in spirit, more than once, to be sure. All of the saints were pure in heart sometimes, and merciful sometimes, and peacemakers sometimes, and meek sometimes too. And in case it’s not obvious, that means that they’re just like you. Sometimes one thing, and sometimes another. But here’s the really good news about that: Jesus tied promises to all those blessings, and that means there’s a part two for you and me . . .

Blessed are you, the people of St. Patrick: for yours is the kingdom of heaven, and you will be comforted., and you will inherit the earth, and you will be filled, and you will receive mercy, and you will see God, and you will be called children of God.

And the best news of all is that this puts you in very good company. Because when you come to this table today, you will celebrate with the saints of every time and every place, the saints we have known, and the saints we have only heard about. And beyond that, Jesus blesses every peasant farmer and factory worker whose names will never be known by us, and they join us here as well . . . the poor, the meek, the peaceful, the persecuted, the living, and the dead. All blessed by Jesus, all redeemed through his resurrection, and all our robes washed and made clean, for we have come out of the great ordeal, from death into life.

YEAR A 2011 pentecost 19

2011-10-22T23:28:00.001-04:00

Year A, 2011
Pentecost XIX
Leviticus 19:1-2, 15-18
Psalm 1
1 Thessalonians 2:1-8
Matthew 22:34-46

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

We use the word “love” a lot in our culture. We say we love all sorts of things. I love my new shoes; I love my cat; I love my family; I love my wife; I love my country; I love God. One word covering everything from my shoes to God.

Now, of course, these are not all the same kind of love. But we don’t have multiple kinds of love in English, do we? We have to add modifiers about size or amount or something in order to make the distinction. I love my new shoes, sure. But I love my wife a whole lot more than my shoes. (I know, hopeless romantic, right?) And I love God more than I love my country. And, if I had to choose, I would definitely pick my family over my cat, because I love them way more than I love my cat.

And we also don’t have ways of distinguishing between different kinds of love. I definitely love my wife in a completely different way than I love my country. In fact, those two kinds of love have very little to do with each other. But we’re stuck with just one word having to fill in for all these different kinds of love.

And what’s interesting is that you can see the difference between these loves based on how much they are rooted in emotion and effort. On the one end, my love for my shoes is purely an emotional reaction; and on the other end, my love for God has very little to do with emotion. And then if you follow through on that, the more my love is emotional (like my shoes), the less lasting it is. I don’t make any kind of effort to love my shoes, and when it comes down to it, I could do without them. And, if I’m honest, it takes some effort to love my country sometimes. My love for my country isn’t based on emotions; it’s something deeper. And, if I’m really honest, my love for God takes the most effort of all.

Because lots of times, I spend entire days being angry with God. If I got angry with my shoes, I’d just get rid of them. When I’m angry with my children, or with God, getting rid of them is not an option. I have to “work” at those relationships. My love for my family isn’t based on how I feel. Same thing with my love for God. Because my family and God are too important to me to be based on simple emotions. Too important to love based on how I’m feeling on a given day. Emotions are real, of course, but they come and go. They change over time. And thank God for that!

So why all this talk about the different notions of love? I mean, you know I don’t love my shoes the same way I love my family, right? Well, our English language is limited when we have a gospel text like this one today. Jesus is talking about love, and we need to know what kind of love he’s talking about. Does he want us to love God and our neighbor the way we love our new car? Or the way we love watching the Browns win? Or some other kind of love?

The Gospels were written in Greek. And fortunately for us, the Greek language has many different words for “love.” Four of them, in fact. And the four kinds of love are very different. There is philia, eros, agape, and then a fourth one that wasn’t around in Jesus’ day, so we’ll ignore it. Philadelphia is called the city of brotherly love because that’s what the name means. Philia is the kind of love you have for your friends and family. Eros is passionate love, the kind of love you have for someone you’re dating, or hoping to. And, most importantly to us, agape’ is unconditional love.

Agape love is the kind of love God has for the world. Remember that familiar John 3:16 verse? You know, like the guy with the sign at the football games? For God so loved the world? That’s the agape love. God’s love for the world is unconditional agape love. A love that does not rely on emotion, or good behavior, or anything else. Unconditional means unconditional.

So . . . the point of all that explanation is so that we can look again at how Jesus answers the lawyer who is assigned to trap him. The lawyer asks Jesus to name the most important of all the commandments. The question is not about the 10 commandments; it’s about the Law of Moses, which is really plural, because there are 613 of those laws. 613 rules to guide one’s life at every single moment, and he asks Jesus to pick the most important one. It’s yet another test designed to trap him, because he can’t possibly pick the right one out of 613, right? I mean what are the odds of that? Well, I guess 1 in 613. But nevermind.

Jesus, however, knows the most important command. It even has a name for faithful Jews. It’s called, “the shema,” which is the first word of the sentence in Hebrew, meaning “Hear,” as in listen. Hear, oh Israel, the Lord your God is one. The shema is used at morning and evening prayer for the Jewish faithful, and the second verse is, “you shall love the lord your God with all your heart and soul and strength.” Jesus picks that as most important, which also subtly connects his answer to the act of worship, since this verse is used at least twice a day in worship. But then Jesus makes an astonishing further move . . .

He says, “And a second is like it: `You shall love your neighbor as yourself’.” A second one is like it. Huh? Loving God with all your heart and soul and strength has nothing to do with people whatsoever. God is one thing, and people are another thing. Sure, these might be the greatest two commandments in the Law of Moses. But where does he get off saying “And a second is like it?”

Let’s just let that question sit for a second and go back to love. The word used here, as I mentioned is agape: unconditional love. And, as you may remember, unconditional love is an act, not an emotion. Unconditional love does not change because circumstances change, or because people do things we do not like. As a matter of fact, you can have agape love for people you don’t even like. People who drive you nuts, your enemies if you will, those are people you can still love. Those are people that you can still wish the best for. Your enemies can still be loved with agape love, even if you would sooner move out of state than talk to them.

This agape love is the love that is commanded in the shema. You are to love God unconditionally, with all your heart and soul and strength. Some days you may be very angry with God, or disappointed in God, or disconnected from God; and that may make you feel like you don’t love God . . . if you make the mistake of thinking love is an emotion. But agape love is not an emotion. It is an action; it requires effort, or at least intentionality. Loving God is a decision you make, not an emotion you feel. And that is why it is a command: You SHALL love the Lord your God. Hear, oh Brunswick: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength.”

And now you’re saying, but uh . . . how do I possibly do that? How will I know when I am doing that? How can I decide to love God with all my heart and soul and strength? I don’t even know where to begin, let alone know that I am doing it . . . What if I don’t feel anything for God? What if I’m angry at God? What if I feel like I am just going through the motions? How do I love God in this way?

Jesus said, “And a second is like it: `You shall love your neighbor as yourself’.”
I don’t want to overemphasize the word “like” there, but for a moment let’s give it a shot. What if loving your neighbor was like loving God? What if loving your neighbor with all your heart and soul and strength was like loving God with all your heart and soul and strength? Remember that John 3:16 verse I mentioned? For God so loved the world?

Maybe this is all just a perfect circle . . . If God so loves the world that God is willing to die to redeem the world, and if God commands us to love God with all our heart and soul and strength, then maybe loving people like God loves people is how we know we are loving God? If God loves people that much, maybe trying to love people gets us on the path to loving God.

Have you ever noticed that pray for other people is more satisfying than praying for yourself? Like praying for someone else sometimes puts my own problems in perspective. Or, sometimes, praying for someone else reminds me that God loves them, even when I may not necessarily even like that person. The power of prayer isn’t in what it accomplishes elsewhere; the power of prayer is that it changes us, and molds us into the kind of people who are the hands and feet of God in this world.

Loving your neighbor IS loving God. And loving God IS loving your neighbor. A second command is like it . . .

But before you get concerned that you will be heading home with an insurmountable task of loving God and your neighbor, let me remind you of this . . .

Every time we make a promise to do what God says we should do, we always promise “with God’s help.” Please take out your Prayer Books and turn to page 305, where you'll find the Baptismal Covenant. Look at the second question: Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself? And you answer . . . I will with God’s help. I will with God’s help is the key to it. God guides and directs us . . . we only need to be willing to be guided and directed. And in making the promise (and adding, “with God’s help”), we have put things in the right order. God says, love your neighbor, and we can say with confidence, I will with God’s help. And I ask you, what could be better than that?

YEAR A 2011 pentecost 18

2011-10-14T22:22:00.000-04:00

Year A, 2011
Pentecost XVIII
Isaiah 45:1-7
Psalm 96:1-13
1 Thessalonians 1:1-10
Matthew 22:15-22

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

So, as you all know, we rent this space from First Christian Church. There are good things and bad things about renting, rather than owning, and sharing space that is also rented out for auctions and other things can lead to some frustration for all of us. It’s no secret in our congregation that if a better rental space became available, we would move in a heartbeat.

Now, just imagine that the members of First Christian were sitting in on this worship service with us today. And imagine someone were to stand up during the announcements and ask me, “Does St. Patrick Church intend to stay here, renting from First Christian for years to come?” If I said, “yes,” you would all call me a liar. But if I say, “no,” the people of First Christian would be shocked. So, of course, I would offer some political answer like, “Well, we’d certainly LIKE to.” Or, maybe a total dodge like, “You just never know the future, do you?” It’s not a difficult question to answer sitting in the church office. But it is an impossible question to answer because of who is in the room with us.

That’s kind of like what is happening to Jesus in today’s gospel lesson. But it’s even worse than that, for a bunch of reasons. First of all, there’s the issue of who is in the room with him . . . “the room” meaning wherever they are standing. There are the people called “the crowds.” These would be basic people of the city. All walks of life and so on, but for the most part they would be Jews, living under the brutal occupation of the Romans. If the crowds turn against Jesus, he can be executed without causing a big uprising. If the crowds are with him, on his side, then it is too risky to have him taken away. At this point in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus has attracted quite a crowd wherever he goes.

And then there are the people who come to trick him in this scenario. The Pharisees have cooked up the plan, and they send their disciples to do their dirty work for them. But, what’s really shocking is that they send the Herodians with them. We only hear about the Herodians a few times in scripture, and we don’t know much about them. What we do know is that they were strong supporters of Herod, and Herod was the puppet governor for the Romans, so . . . sending them along is like sending spies for Rome. The Pharisees hated the Romans, and Herod, even though he was their ruler. But on top of all that, the Herodians were followers of the Sadducees, and the Pharisees and the Sadducees hated each other. So the Pharisees are sending their disciples to meet with their own enemies in order to trap Jesus. Which probably means, they hate Jesus even more than they hate their enemies.

Okay, so that’s who’s there when all this takes place. And then they begin. They start off by complimenting Jesus, saying what a fine teacher he is. A man of God. One who treats everyone equally. And then they ask him the question: “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” Clever, clever fellows. But in a sense, their own ignorance is what gets them into trouble here. If they’re just talking about money, then they totally have him trapped. Because if Jesus says, “Yes, pay taxes,” the crowd will turn against him, since no one wanted to support the occupying Roman forces. If Jesus says, “No, don’t pay taxes,” then the Herodians can easily have him arrested for treason against the Emperor. It’s a good little trap they’ve set, and either answer gets Jesus executed.

But as I say, their own ignorance gets them into trouble here. And we’re liable to get into the same trouble if we don’t look at Jesus’ actual response. Because it’s tempting to think that this is a lesson in the separation of Church and State. In fact, for many people, that’s the whole point of this text: That Jesus wants us to maintain the separation of Church and State. The first problem with that interpretation is that it’s off by about 1800 years. There is no such thing as separation of Church and State until the U.S. Constitution talks about no establishment of religion. And even after that, it took a couple hundred years more for us to start thinking of using that phrase. To the group of people standing around Jesus, probably all Jews, the separation of Church and State is unthinkable. Their ultimate goal is the UNION of Church and State, into a theocracy ruled over by The Messiah . . . which they are certain is not Jesus.

Point being, this is NOT place in the Bible where Jesus teaches the crowd the importance of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. So if Jesus isn’t giving an American civics lesson, what IS Jesus saying? Well, as they say, follow the money . . .

The coins used to pay the tax to Rome were called denarii. A single coin was called a denarius. So, Jesus says, “Show me the coin used for the tax.” And they bring him a denarius. Then he says to them, "Whose head is this, and whose title?" And they say, “the Emperor’s.” Now, two things about this: First, the word we get translated as “image” is the Greek word, eikon. (You’ve probably heard that around.) Second, the Emperor was always called, “son of God,” and it is likely the case that the coin Jesus held in his hand would bear the eikon of the Emperor, with the inscription “Son of God.” For this reason, observant Jews of that time would not be carrying coins of the Roman Empire, because to carry these coins was blasphemy.

And you’ll notice that when Jesus wants to show them one of these coins, he does not simply reach into his robe and pull out some change. And why not? Because Jesus was an observant Jew, right? He is not carrying around idolatrous images of the occupying Roman force.

And when he asks for a coin, they bring him one. I’m not going to judge anybody here, but it sure sounds like the Pharisees’ disciples ARE carrying around blasphemous images of the Emperor. You know, just saying.

So Jesus holds up the eikon of the Emperor, son of God, and says, “Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's.”

And here’s where we really need to put on our thinking caps. If Jesus is saying, “Give the government all your material goods, and give God all your spiritual offerings,” well . . . first of all, that would make for a very difficult Stewardship Drive, wouldn’t it? Jesus is not suggesting that God and money should be separated, any more than he was saying Church and State should be separated. Plus, even a socialist government doesn’t ask for ALL your money. He doesn’t say give to the government your entire paycheck and give your prayers to God, right?

It’s not about the VALUE of the coins—-which, by the way, steadily decreased over time until the Empire fell. It’s about the eikon. Whose image is on the money? The money is identified by the eikon that is stamped on it. The one in whose image it is made dictates where and what happens to it. You cannot spend a coin that bears the image of the Emperor outside of his realm. The coin bearing his image BELONGS in his realm.

Now I would like you to humor me for a moment and pick up your Prayer Books. Turn to page 845. This is way back in the section called, “Parts of the Prayer Book I’ve never seen before.” Actually, this is a subsection called, “An Outline of the Faith.” It’s laid out in question-and-answer format, which is why it’s also called “the Catechism.” Now look at the very first question: What are we by nature? And you say, “We are part of God’s creation, made in the image of God.” Made in the what? The image of God.

You are an eikon of God. Let’s imagine the challengers of Jesus ask a different question. What if they ask, is it lawful for me to use and abuse another human being? Is it lawful for me to mistreat my neighbor, or belittle them, or treat them as though they are worthless? And Jesus says, "Whose image is this, and whose title?" A denarius is made in the image of Caesar. And you are made in the image of God. Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's.

This is not a story about paying taxes, or the separation of Church and State. Those are paltry, insignificant arguments. No, this is a story about you and me, being made in the image of God. Your worth is not based on what society thinks, or how you are treated, or how much money you make. Your worth is based on bearing the eikon of God, the creator of all that is, seen and unseen. And the title you bear was given to you in baptism: claimed as God’s own, and living members of the Body of Christ, and heirs of God’s eternal kingdom. Whose image and whose title? The image of God, and the title of redeemed child of God, claimed for all time, living in the hope of the resurrection.

So, sure, give to the emperor the things that are the emperor's. But, give to God the things that belong to God: your self, your time, and your possessions. And, please, come to the altar with confidence as God’s eikon, where with the saints of every time and every place we receive a foretaste of the feast to come.

YEAR A 2011 pentecost 17

2011-10-05T23:57:00.000-04:00

Year A, 2011
Pentecost XVII
Isaiah 25:1-9
Psalm 23
Philippians 4:1-9
Matthew 22:1-14

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

So, I want you to imagine the ideal President of the United States. Not the current one, and not a previous one. Not a President you agree with or disagree with. Just some sort of President you respect and admire, and hold up as an example to your friends and family of the kind of person you wish you could be.

Now, if that President of the United States had a son, and he were getting married to a woman from northeast Ohio, you could expect a pretty big party around here, couldn’t you? This would be a celebration on the level that you and I have never seen. Food we’ve never heard of, made by Michael Symon, and the best chefs in the country, if not the world. Desserts that would make our children’s heads spin. Wine from California, and seafood from Alaska, and candy from Malley’s chocolates. You could expect all the local sports stars to be there (and, don’t worry, Lebron is no longer local, right?). You know the local Mayors would be there, the U.S. Senators, the Governor, along with anybody who’s anybody from across the country. Every movie star, and scientist, and rock musician from across the globe is going to be there. It would be the event of the year, and in fact the event of the lifetime.

And now just imagine that you received an invitation. Sitting in your mailbox in Brunswick, or Strongsville, or wherever, you find the invitation on the most beautiful paper, the best ink, with extra postage to make sure it arrived. You have been invited to the party of the century! Your first thought is, “What would I wear?” Then you see the invitation clearly says, wedding clothes provided. Hmmmm . . . . And your second thought is, “What kind of gift could I possibly bring?” Then you see at the bottom that the invitation says, “Please do not bring any gifts. The only present we want is your presence.”

So, now you’re at a crucial juncture in your thinking on whether you should attend. Do you trust that invitation and just show up empty-handed in your work clothes and expect the hosts to make it all turn out fine in the end? Do you wear the best clothes you have and hope that’s good enough? And what about the gift? Can you possibly trust the claim that no gifts are expected? I mean, people say that all the time and we still bring something, right? When we go to someone’s house for dinner and ask, “What can we bring?” and they say “nothing.” Well, you at least bring a bottle of wine, or some soda for the kids, or a dog biscuit for their greyhound, or a photo of your grandkids. You don’t show up completely empty-handed.

So, now you’re thinking, if I do accept the invitation, and I go to the party, what could I bring? And, on the money I make these days, what could I possibly bring that would be a fitting gift for the biggest party of my lifetime? I’ve got to bring something, and it can’t be cheap. And that means I’ve got to put in some overtime to make enough to afford something to show my appreciation. That means I’d better get busy earning some extra cash so I can hold my head up high when I meet the living stars of the age.

The invitation clearly says do not worry about affording any kind of gift . . . “But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business.” The President sends out his secret servants and says, “Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.” But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business.

And then, because this is a parable, and parables are stories on hyper-drive, the rest seized his servants, mistreated them, and killed them. The mail carrier brings you the invitation to the wedding banquet. You think your options are to say yes or no, but it seems there are more possibilities in this case. You could also say, “Yes I’ll come, but first I need to make a little extra money at my business or farm so that I don’t show up empty-handed because . . . well, I really don’t trust you when you say not to bring anything.” But then, though it probably didn’t cross your mind, you could also react like this: The mail carrier shows up at your house with the invitation, you swear at them as loudly as you can, you slap them around, pull out a gun and shoot them.” (Remind me not to invite you to my daughter’s wedding.)

Understandably, the President is enraged at your actions. He sends his troops into your town, destroys the murderers and burns down the city. (Remember, a parable is a story on hyper-drive.) So, since all the people who were supposed to be the guests are either working overtime or are dead, you’d think there would be no party right? You’d think they’d just call off the wedding and have it somewhere else, wouldn’t you? I mean how embarrassing for the President’s son to get married and have an empty reception hall afterwards. Better to just donate the food to the poor and have a private wedding down at city hall or something.

And now, a change of scene. Let’s say you weren’t on that first list of guests. Let’s say that you’re not even aware the President had a son, let alone that he was getting married right in your neck of the woods. Let’s say you’re just struggling along trying to make ends meet, minding your own business, and only mistreating the mail carrier by avoiding her, because you know she’s bringing more bills that you can’t pay.

“Then he said to his slaves, `The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy. Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.' Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests.” Gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests.

One day you were struggling along, wondering how you could stretch those leftovers for a third night’s dinner, and the next thing you know you’re standing around with your friends at the most lavish party you will ever see in your life! You didn’t have to bring anything. You didn’t have to buy anything. You didn’t even have to get that suit or dress dry-cleaned because the host provided all the clothes you need. You did nothing to deserve being here, and you couldn’t have afforded the cost by any stretch of the imagination. The only thing that merits your being in the party is the fact that you didn’t say “no.” You’re there, not because you said yes; you’re there because you didn’t say no. And this is a very strange way to throw a party, don’t you think? A guest list consisting of all the people who didn’t say “no?” It’s ridiculous!

So there we all are, standing around in our beautiful expensive provided clothing, enjoying the food and the company and the string quartet and chocolate when all of a sudden, the music stops, and everyone turns toward the door to see the host saying “`Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?' And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, `Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.' For many are called, but few are chosen."

What just happened? Last we knew everyone was happy and chatty. That one guy really put a damper on things, didn’t he? But what happened? He was obviously on the guest list, because he didn’t say no. (Remember, that’s the qualification for being at the party: not saying no.) So he wasn’t a party crasher, since being there constitutes your invitation. What was different about him? And, more importantly, is there a chance we might get treated like that? You know, bound hand and foot, and thrown into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth? What would ensure that we are not thrown out like that?

The answer is, what you are wearing. If you’ll recall, when the servants came to round us all up for the party, we didn’t have clothes that were good enough for a party like this. But we trusted that the host would provide everything we needed. When we arrived, we put on the wedding garments, and partied on! This poor fellow, the one who gets thrown out, he’s not wearing the wedding garment, you see? No, he showed up at the party wearing his own clothes, thinking they would be good enough. He came to the party dressed in his own righteousness. He thought the clothes he had worked so hard to get would make him worthy of the party. He didn’t say no to the invitation, but he did say no to the gift of the wedding garment.

The man who is thrown out does not trust that being there is enough. He does not trust that God will do for him what he cannot do for himself. He does not believe in God; he believes in himself. A self-made man, who relies on his own efforts to make himself worthy of the heavenly banquet. And, thus, a fool who is bound to be thrown into utter darkness.

There is a banquet for you today. You are invited to it because you didn’t say no. The clothing that is required is the baptismal gown, which was provided for you when God claimed you forever in Baptism. You are called and chosen by God, and that is what makes you a guest at the banquet.

The servants went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests. You are on the guest list for this meal, which is a foretaste of the Feast to come.

YEAR A 2011 pentecost 16

2011-09-28T23:09:00.000-04:00

Year A, 2011
Pentecost XVI
Isaiah 5:1-7
Psalm 80:7-14
Philippians 3:4b-14
Matthew 21:33-46

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

Well, can you even believe how stupid those tenants in the vineyard are? Do they really think they can avoid punishment by killing the servants? Do they really think they can inherit the vineyard by killing the son? What is wrong with these guys? It’s like, they refuse to pay their rent, then commit three murders—including the son of the owner—and then expect to live happily ever after! High fives all around guys!

Of course, I know it’s a parable. And parables are stories in order to make a point, not make a business plan. So expecting these fools to think rationally is like calling Barney Rubble a great actor, right? But, still, their thinking seems so ridiculous that it’s hard to even play along, because nobody would be that stupid right?

Enter the Chief Priests and Elders, stage right.

Jesus tells this story about the wicked tenants, and then asks them the question: Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants? And they answer, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.” Can I get a rim shot on the snare drum please? Or maybe we just need scary music in this spot. You see what happens here? Jesus lays out a scenario where the tenants are clearly guilty, and then really asks, “What would you do if you were the landowner?” The Chief Priests and Elders jump right in and say what they’d do: “Kill the tenants horribly, and then lease the vineyard to people who will pay the rent.”

In psychology terms, we could think of this as one of those Rorschach tests. You know the ink-blot ones? You look at it and then you tell the psychologist what you see. The truth is not in what is actually there; the truth is in what you see. See? So Jesus asks the question, and the Chief Priests and Elders tell Jesus what kind of people they are. They are the kind of people who respond to injustice by putting those wretches to a miserable death and leasing out the vineyard to someone who will give the produce to the vineyard owner as agreed. It’s like the end of an episode of Columbo, if you ask me. Give these guys enough rope and they will hang themselves.

And that’s a crucial point to notice here. Jesus is not the one who says that the landowner will kill people and give the land to someone else. Jesus does not judge the Chief Priests and the Elders. Jesus doesn’t judge anyone here. Here lays out the facts of the story, and he asks a question. And the answer to the question tells everyone what they need to know. And, according to the Chief Priests and Elders, the vineyard should be taken away from the bad tenants and given to someone else who will give him the produce at harvest time.

And here is where we need to slam on the brakes and step outside the Gospel story for a moment. Before we do, I want you to notice the actual people having the conversation here. This is Jesus, an observant Jew, talking to the Chief Priests and Elders, observant Jews, who will very shortly have Jesus killed. There is a very old and very wrong way of viewing this story as something like this:

God will take away the vineyard from the Jews and give it to the Christians. This is completely wrong, and utterly dangerous. That view of this story is the interpretation that the Nazi’s used to justify atrocity. Nowhere in here does it suggest God will take the kingdom from the Jews and give it to the Christians. If anything, God will take the vineyard from the unfaithful and give it to the faithful ones, whether they are Jewish or Christian. This is not a story about all the Jews because, come on, Jesus was Jewish. This is a story where the Chief Priests and Elders condemn themselves, plain and simple. Okay, so with that point out of the way, now we can step on the gas again . . .

So, by the end of this passage, the Chief Priests and Elders have finally caught on that Jesus is talking about them! Duh, right? But—to be fair—this is understandable that it takes them so long. They do not recognize Jesus as God’s son. This is not how they expect the Messiah to be acting, since he does not seem to be following their lead. They are, after all, the religious leaders. The Messiah should show up acting just like them, only more so! The Messiah should appear and, in their words, “put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.” The Chief Priests and Elders expect a Messiah who kicks butt and asks questions later. They would not expect one born in a manger, who allows himself to be killed. They expect the Messiah to be the vineyard owner, not the son who is killed.

So then, what about you and me? If Jesus were talking to us, and telling us this parable, and then ask: Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants? Think about how to answer that question, because it reveals a lot about how we view the world, and how we view justice, and how we view . . . well, God.

Because here’s the sneaky thing about this parable: Jesus never gives the answer. He quotes a Psalm, and then he talks about himself as the cornerstone. But he never says what the vineyard owner would do. Or should do. Or might do. Or does do.

So, what would the landowner do? What would you do? What would God do?
And that’s, finally, where we DO know the answer. We know what God would do, and it isn’t pretty to us, if we’re honest. We like to think that the Chief Priests and Elders killed Jesus. Or we like to think that the Romans killed Jesus. It’s easy for us to see this parable and imagine that we are the people who produce the fruits of the kingdom. You know, God takes the vineyard away from the ones who kill the Son, and then gives the vineyard to us.

But I want you to open your Hymnals to hymn #158, because we’re going to read the words to this hymn together.

Ah, holy Jesus, how hast thou offended,
that man to judge thee hath in hate pretended?
By foes derided, by thine own rejected,
O most afflicted.

Who was the guilty? Who brought this upon thee?
Alas, my treason, Jesus, hath undone thee.
'Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied thee:
I crucified thee.

Lo, the Good Shepherd for the sheep is offered;
the slave hath sinned, and the Son hath suffered;
for our atonement, while we nothing heedeth,
God intercedeth.

For me, kind Jesus, was thy incarnation,
thy mortal sorrow, and thy life's oblation;
thy death of anguish and thy bitter passion,
for my salvation.

Therefore, kind Jesus, since I cannot pay thee,
I do adore thee, and will ever pray thee,
think on thy pity and thy love unswerving,
not my deserving.

Now I ask you again, in the words of Jesus, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants? You and I would answer the same as the Chief Priests and Elders, wouldn’t we? We’d say, He will put those wretches—us—to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.

And what does God actually do? Here’s the crazy thing: God raises the Son back to life. The one he sends to collect what is due, the one we kill, God raises him back to life! And in doing so, pardons us of every offense. Every offense. It’s a completely new beginning! And you did nothing to deserve this fresh start. If that is not good news, I sure don’t know what is!

And now there is only one thing left to do: Set aside your concern about vineyards and walls and winepresses. Accept that the vineyard owner is not coming to sentence you to a miserable death. The vineyard has yielded a wonderful harvest. The winepress is producing the most wonderful vintage imaginable: And this wine is the very blood of the risen Lord, coming to you and me in the blood of Christ, the cup of salvation. Come to the table, because all is forgiven. The Son who was dead is now alive, and it is time for celebration!

YEAR A 2011 pentecost 15

2011-09-26T19:58:00.000-04:00

Year A, 2011
Pentecost XV
Exodus 17:1-7
Psalm 78:1-4, 12-16
Philippians 2:1-13
Matthew 21:23-32
Christ Church

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

Have you ever tried to explain something to someone, and you think they’re following you, but then they come up with the exact wrong meaning? For example, you say, “You know, it’s like two plus two, right?” And the other person says, “Yeah, I know exactly what you mean! Zero, right?” As Jesus might’ve said, “Oy vey!”

That’s kind of what’s happening in today’s Gospel reading, except not for the people in the story. No, the people who get it wrong are, well, you and me. Because the first step to understanding this story is clearing away our American Folk Religion understanding of it. You remember the basic gist of the parable, right? One son says he will NOT go into the vineyard, and then he goes. The other son says he WILL go into the vineyard and does not go. Simple right?

And now Jesus says to us: NOW do you understand where my authority comes from? And we say, “Yeah, I know exactly what you mean! Actions speak louder than words, right?” And Jesus says, “Oy vey!” You see how that happens to us? We take a story like this and we filter it through all our clichés and pithy sayings, and we just kind of mistranslate it. But it’s not a story about actions and words. It’s about the authority of Jesus.

As we heard in the set-up, when the Chief Priests and the elders are trying to trap Jesus, they’re asking about his authority. And so we know that “Actions speak louder than words” can’t be the point of the parable, because that doesn’t answer the question about Jesus’ authority, right?

So, if this parable doesn’t mean, “Actions speak louder than words,” then what does it mean? I have no idea. Okay, I’m kidding. Kind of. Let’s go back to the set-up for the parable, before Jesus starts talking about sons and vineyards. As the reading opens, the Chief Priests and elders are working on a way to trap Jesus. They’re guessing he does not have a good answer to the source of his authority without blaspheming God in some way. So they ask, “with which kind of authority are you doing these miracles and wonders?” (They understand that there are many sources of authority, and they’re hoping he’ll pick one of the wrong ones.)

And, of course, Jesus taunts them with a question in return: Was John’s Baptism from heaven or from earth? They cannot answer this question without offending the people, or condemning themselves, so they pass. Jesus says, then I’m going to pass too. (Clever Jesus.) But he doesn’t let it rest there; he goes on to tell the parable about the two sons.

And before we even look at the two sons and the vineyard, we need to back up to last week, with the laborers in the vineyard. (September is Vineyard month it seems.) Remember that story? Everyone gets the same pay, whether they worked one hour or ten hours. And then they get paid in reverse, so that the first shall be last and the last shall be first. Point being: the amount of time you spend in the vineyard has nothing to do with God’s reward. God’s reward for you is the salvation of Jesus, same as for me, and it is not based on what we do between now and then. It is based on the love of God and the resurrection of Jesus. And believe me, that’s a GOOD thing!

So, back to today’s parable. The first son says he will NOT go into the vineyard. He refuses to go. The other son says he WILL go into the vineyard. He claims he is going. And the son who says he WON’T go ends up going, and the son who says he WILL go ends up not going. Kids today. Can’t make up their minds, right? Hey, maybe THAT’s what this story’s about? Indecisive youth? No, afraid not. This is not really a story about the sons of a vineyard owner. Turns out, this is a story about prostitutes and tax collectors! Who knew?

Well, it’s also a story about the people standing in front of Jesus: The Chief Priests and the elders. Because remember what Jesus says after the parable? The first son, the one who said he would NOT go into the vineyard, is like the prostitutes and the tax collectors. And the second son, the one who said he WOULD go but does not, he is like the Chief Priests and elders. And now, if you’re paying attention at all, you’re saying, “Can’t we just go back to actions speak louder than words?”

Here’s what Jesus is saying to us: The so-called “good people” will enter the kingdom last, and the so-called “bad people” will enter the kingdom first. And that is scandalous to us, isn’t it? And why is that? Because the good people, the ones who have it all together, who come to church every week, who follow the rules, and help old ladies across the street, these “good people” might just be relying on their good deeds to earn them a place in the kingdom. The scandal of the Gospel is that the undeserving get rewarded; but that’s only a scandal if you think YOU are among the deserving.

You probably have heard someone say, “I’ve lived a pretty good life, so when I die I think God is going to take me to heaven.” Wrong. And you’ve probably heard other people say, “I have lived a horrible life, and God is never going to accept me into the kingdom.” Wrong again. It is not about what we say or do; it’s about who we are, because of WHOSE we are. God has claimed us in the waters of baptism, and THAT is what makes everything different.

If you think your good behavior is going to make everything alright, well . . . you are like the second son: You’re saying you’ll go into the vineyard, but you do not go. As Paul writes, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Our good deeds are certainly commendable and important, but they are not enough to restore the brokenness between us and God, and between us and our neighbor, no matter how hard we try. That sounds like bad news, I know.

But in truth, accepting that we are broken is GOOD news! Because we have admitted that our valuable good deeds are never going to make everything alright. Once we see that we cannot earn our way into heaven, once we see that we have no right to expect God’s mercy . . . well, then we are the ones who say no . . . I will not go into the vineyard today. When I truly admit that I am who I know myself to be, I am not worthy of going into this vineyard. I am the one who says no to God. I will not go into the vineyard.

Jesus said, “What do you think? A man had two sons . . . which of the two did the will of the father?” Which indeed . . .
One says, “I will surely go,” and does not.
One says, “I cannot possibly go,” and does.
One trusts in himself; the other trusts the father.

This story today is about authority and—more importantly—trust. The authority of Jesus is certainly central, yes. But you and I are probably not questioning the authority of Jesus. The authority of Jesus is the part of the story we get, I’m guessing. But the part of the story we need to hear clearly today is the trusting part. Where this story speaks to you and me is in trust. Trusting that Jesus is enough to reconcile us to God and to one another.

Let me put it another way: There is nothing you can do to make God love you. And there is nothing you can do to make God stop loving you. Your relationship with God is not dependent on you. Not dependent on whether you say yes, or no. That should come as a relief.

Going back to the parable we heard, saying yes or no does not matter. The will of the father is that you go into the vineyard. The will of the father is that you rise from the grave when your name is called, and go into the vineyard. Whether or not you SAY you are going is not the point. You notice that didn’t seem to matter in the parable. What mattered was that the one son went into the vineyard. And that son is compared to the tax collectors and prostitutes, NOT the people Jesus was talking to: the Chief priests and the elders.

So, how is that about trust? It is trusting that Jesus has the authority to do the things that only Jesus can do. We trust in Jesus’ authority, and that trust leads us to a most crucial spot:

The empty tomb on Easter morning.

When you and I are no longer walking around, taking up space and saying yes or no, we will be waiting for Jesus to call us up out of death. We will be waiting to go into the vineyard, whether we spent our lives saying yes, or saying no. We trust that Jesus will meet us in that most crucial place, and raise each of us to new life. We know he has the authority; we just need to trust.

And in the meantime, we all will share a meal at this altar. A foretaste of the feast to come, as we sometimes say. Whether you’ve spent this week saying yes or saying no, does not matter now. What matters now is that you come into the vineyard, stretch out your hands, and say yes to the one who comes to you in bread and wine, body and blood. Jesus is calling you to this table. Come and see that the Lord is good.

YEAR A 2011 pentecost 14

2011-09-17T12:54:00.001-04:00

Year A, 2011
Pentecost XIV
Jonah 3:10-4:11
Psalm 145:1-8
Philippians 1:21-30
Matthew 20:1-16

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

So, two explorers are walking through the jungle one afternoon, when they suddenly notice that a man-eating tiger is stalking them. The one explorer turns to the other and says, “We’re going to die! What can we do?” As he is saying this, he notices that the other man is calmly putting on his running shoes in the face of certain death. Shocked in disbelief he asks, “What are you doing? You can’t possibly outrun a Bengal tiger!” The second man continues calmly tying up his laces and responds, “I don’t have to outrun the tiger; I only have to outrun you.”

And now you’re asking yourself, “What does this possibly have to do with the laborers in the vineyard?” I’m glad you asked that, because the answer is “everything.” To recap the story Jesus tells, the Kingdom is like this: a vineyard owner hires some workers for a fair wage and they start in the morning, assumedly content with what they are earning. In a little while, they are joined by others, and later in the day some more workers arrive, and eventually—right about quitting time—even more workers arrive. The owner pays the last to arrive first, working up to those who’ve been at it all day. They all get the same amount . . . an honest day’s wage for an honest day’s work.

However, as you no doubt noticed, only the first half of that maxim holds true. Everyone receives an honest day’s wage, sure. But only the first group has performed an honest day’s work. To which we all say, What is up with that? This is a heck of a way to run a railroad, right? This landowner’s actions go against everything we believe about making a living in this world. Obviously, if this keeps up, everyone is going to be showing up for work at 4:55pm, to collect their checks and head off to the grocery store. So, first of all, it seems like the vineyard owner is a very bad business person. Before you know it, the grapes are going to be rotting in the fields, and the price of wine is going to skyrocket!

But let’s set aside our Protestant Work Ethic for a moment and look at the emotional side of this story. As far as we can tell, the workers who are first to arrive are completely content with their honest day’s wage for an honest day’s work. They’re looking for work, and the vineyard owner has hired them. They do not envy the vineyard owner, even though they surely have less than the boss. They go out and work as agreed. Similarly, those who show up later in the day seem satisfied to have some employment opportunity, and they enter the fields and work along-side the early risers. Everything is fine until it’s time to get paid, and the boss seems to intentionally stir things up by starting with those who just got there and giving them a full day’s pay for a full hour’s work.

For those who’ve been there all day, seeing the late arrivals get full pay must have seemed too good to be true! If those people are getting $100 for an hour’s work, a quick calculation would mean that the all-day workers are going to be getting something like $1,000 for the day! You can just picture them rocking back and forth, dreaming of how they’re going to spend their hard-earned cash. And, of course, when the vineyard owner gets to the back of the line, they find their pay envelopes have the same as everyone else: 100 bucks.

And this is when they begin to grumble. They say, “These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us.” And what is their complaint there? They are not angry because someone else has worked less. They are not angry because the lawyer down the street makes more than they do. No, they are grumbling because these Johnny Come Latelies have been counted on the same level as the faithful workers. They are mad because the vineyard owner “made them equal to us.” They are upset because someone who SHOULD have less is getting the same thing they are. They’re not mad because someone else has more; they’re mad because someone inferior has the same. It’s one thing to be counted less than somebody else—we can’t all be equal, after all. But it sends us around the bend to know that some who SHOULD have less are getting the same thing we are.

We don’t care if there a hundred people ahead of us outrunning the tiger, as long as SOMEBODY is behind us. As long as we can throw SOMEBODY under the bus, then we don’t care if the other 6 and half billion people get off scott free. It’s a slippery slope that we just can’t help but start down. It is our natural response to be angry when the undeserving get what they don’t deserve. And if you think about it, we’re even okay if the undeserving people are fabulously rich. We don’t get angry when some third baseman makes $32 million a year for hitting homeruns—even when he doesn’t hit them. But if you start telling me that the person in the next cubicle is getting a raise when I know darn well he takes 2-hour lunch breaks, shows up late, and leaves early . . . oh them’s fightin’ words my friend!

And this is nothing new. Did you hear that first reading today? The one from Jonah? We always think of the story of Jonah with having to do with a whale (or big fish), and that’s about it. But, of course, there’s much more to his story. In today’s little segment, God has decided to have mercy on the people of Nineveh, not to smite them from the face of the earth, a cause for celebration for anyone to witness. And what is Jonah’s reaction?

“This was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry.” He asks God, “Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing.”

Jonah is saying, see, God? I knew you were merciful to me. What makes me mad is to see that you are merciful to OTHERS! And I hope you can see how ridiculous this is. But Jonah is so upset he wishes God would just kill him now, rather than live to see these sinners receive mercy. So, God works up something of a children’s sermon for Jonah. He provides a bush for shade, then lets the bush die, which makes Jonah even angrier. And God asks, “Are you angry about the bush dying?” Jonah says, “YES!” And God says, isn’t it ridiculous that you would mourn the death of the bush, but not all those people in Nineveh, had I not shown mercy to them?” And I imagine Jonah saying, “But God, I’ve done the hard work just as you told me. I’ve got my running shoes on; the people of Nineveh can’t be saved just because you decide to save them!”

The sinful, poor, and lazy do not deserve God’s bountiful rewards of mercy, compassion, and salvation. The sinful, rich, and lazy don’t deserve them either, but it seems like we’re okay with that. Remember the complaint from the all-day workers? “These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us.” They don’t deserve to receive what I have received. My hard work in the kingdom means that I should receive more than somebody else. Am I not your favorite, oh Lord? Am I not the apple of your eye? Am I not the one who is sinless in your sight? You see the problem don’t you? What this is really all about?

We want to be loved, respected, rewarded. We want to know that God is pleased by the good things we do. We desperately want to believe that we are not in bondage to sin. We secretly doubt that we have sinned against God and our neighbor in thought, word, and deed. We want to be equal with all people . . . as long as those people are ahead of us, in our internal scale of deserving. When someone we consider less than us receives mercy, or when someone who doesn’t work as hard gets rewarded equally, well . . . it exposes our secret assumption about ourselves: namely, that we can outrun the tiger only by sacrificing someone else.

And when the God of mercy appears and announces, “Nobody has to die today; this day everyone lives,” rather than celebrate, we grumble at the vineyard owner. As St. Paul writes, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. But, Paul continues, “we are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” We would love to think that it is by our own effort and strength that God reaches down and rescues us from the power of death. And when someone that we look down on is ALSO lifted up, well, it exposes us to the truth: None of us is worthy of God’s grace, and yet we all freely receive it with open hands.

On his deathbed, Martin Luther said, “We are all beggars; that’s the truth!” And it is as beggars that we approach this altar with outstretched hands, to receive the gift of reassurance that God’s love is more powerful, and God’s redemption is more certain, than any threat we face in this life. We cling to this hope, as do the saints who have gone before us.

YEAR A 2011 pentecost 10

2011-08-20T20:50:00.000-04:00

Year A, 2011
Pentecost X
Isaiah 51:1-6
Psalm 138
Romans 12:1-8
Matthew 16:13-20

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

I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of The Jefferson Bible, and I hope I’m not about to disillusion anyone when I explain it. You see, Thomas Jefferson liked the things Jesus said, but not the miracles attributed to him. So, Jefferson sat down with a razor and cut out all the words of Jesus, which he then reassembled as a separate book, called “The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth.” No miracles, no angels, no supernatural anything. Who does Thomas Jefferson say Jesus is? A teacher.

As those of you familiar with the actual faith of Islam know, Muslims consider Jesus to be a prophet. Born of the Virgin Mary, sent by God to proclaim truth to Israel. In fact, Muslims believe that Jesus was the final prophet sent by God, and that he will return to defeat the Anti-Christ. But was Jesus actually God incarnate? No. Who do Muslims say Jesus is? A prophet.

To his fellow Jews, Jesus was seen as a Jewish man. One who seemed devoted to his faith, perhaps, but hardly observant enough to be the Messiah! And, of course, the fact that he did not rescue Israel from oppression simply proved the point. Jesus was a Jewish man who was killed by the Romans. Who do Jewish people say that Jesus is? An ordinary man, cut down in the prime of his life.

What about you? Who do you say Jesus is?

Wait. Don’t answer that yet. Because first I want to help set the scene from today’s Gospel reading. Well, not even the scene. I just want to point out something in particular. Jesus asks his disciples, "Who do people say that the Son of Man is?" And they answer, "Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets." Teacher, prophet, fellow Jew. You see? The answers that a rational person would come up with. You look at the facts, discount the miracles, filter it through your own faith understanding, and that’s what comes out. Teacher, prophet, decent guy.

I like to think of Jesus nodding in response, as if to say, yes, yes of course. That’s what one would expect people to say. Same as it ever was. Then I picture him looking sideways at them, pretending to be busy doing something else, as he’s about to kind of poke them to see if the experiment worked, almost doubting that there would be a difference. And he asks, “But you . . . the ones who matter in this first-ever,world-changing test case . . . who do YOU say that I am?” Poke, poke. Raised eyebrows. Hopeful expression on his face . . . And all creation holds its breath, waiting on this one reply . . .

Simon Peter answers, well, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God." YES! Jesus jumps up in the air and kicks his heels together and knocks over the coffee pot when he comes back down! It worked! It really worked! “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.” In other words, the lines of communication are open. Simon Peter has seen with the eyes of faith. Has seen beyond physical appearances. Flesh and blood did not reveal this to Simon Peter. God did! It . . . really . . . worked!

And Jesus continues . . . “And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.” Okay, stop the celebration for a moment as we digress into the underworld of the word Hades. In the Greek, it is HAH-dace, which sounds an awful lot like Hades, so we’ll just go with the regular pronunciation. But this place, this Hades, is not rivers of burning lava and devils with pitchforks. Hades is the place of the unseen, in Greek mythology. In Hebrew it is sheol. To you and me, it is simply the grave. Death. The place where everyone goes while awaiting the resurrection.

Now let’s look at those words from Jesus again: And on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of death will not prevail against it. And you may be wondering, “Since when have gates attacked anybody?” Gates are designed for defense, not offense. Jesus is setting a pretty low bar if he’s saying gates won’t prevail against it. Do gates ever prevail? Well, the gates of death seem to prevail, don’t they? The coffin is closed; the priest brushes the dirt from her robes; and then it’s all memories. Five months out, 5 years out, 50 years out . . . as far as we can see, the gates of death have prevailed. Who do others say that I am when I die? A teacher? A prophet? A decent person? But you . . . with the eyes of faith . . . who do YOU say that I am? And all creation holds its breath, waiting on this one reply . . .

On this rock I will build my church, and the gates of death will not prevail against it.

On this rock I will build my Church. That mention of the Church is what makes this version of the story special. You see, this question and answer (what we call the Confession of St. Peter) appears in all four Gospel books. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, all have some version of this story in them. That’s a clue to us that it’s important. But it’s also a cue for us to look at what is different in Matthew’s account—the one we heard today—what sets it apart from the other three times we hear this story?

The answer is the connection to the Church. The Confession of Peter (or Peter the Confessor, depending on your view of the Church) is what Jesus will build the Church on. This confession can be though of as the identifier of the Church. The marker. The thing that lets you know it is the Church of Jesus, and not Thomas Jefferson. Peter shows Jesus that he can answer the question, Who do you say that I am? Even if Peter has no idea what he himself is saying!

So, what about you? Who do you believe Jesus is? Wait. Don’t answer that yet, because it’s a trick question. I asked you who you believe Jesus is. I want to point out something that probably seems obvious . . . at least to Episcopalians. If I ask 50 different people who they believe Jesus is, I will get 51 different answers. Same thing if I were to ask you who you think Jesus is. And, what’s more, if I ask just one person on 50 different days who they think Jesus is, I’ll get 52 different answers. What we think and believe about Jesus changes all the time. Or, at least if we’re honestly trying to answer that question. We think and see and feel with our worldly God-given senses, and in case you haven’t noticed, they can lead us astray.

But Jesus doesn’t ask the disciples who they think he is. Jesus doesn’t ask them who they believe he is. He doesn’t ask for an opinion, or a current best guess, or anything we might use to sum something up. Jesus asks, "But who do you say that I am?”

And so now for you: Who do you say Jesus is? Wait. Don’t answer that. You don’t have to answer that. Because, I actually know the answer to that question, for each and every person in this room. Who do you say Jesus is? You say that Jesus is the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light; true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father. Through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.

That’s who you say Jesus is. Who you believe Jesus is might be radically different from that. And you know what? That’s okay. Because the particulars of your individual faith will change over the course of your lifetime. As a little child you might believe in the Virgin Birth; 20 years later you might think it’s preposterous. Ten years later you might think it doesn’t matter either way; and 20 years after that you might find that the Virgin Birth is the most important aspect of your entire faith system. What you personally believe about Jesus is subject to change. Local terms and conditions may apply. Void where prohibited, or something like that.

But what you say about Jesus has been what the Church has said about Jesus for 1700 years. These words are not your words. And you may not understand them, or believe them, or agree with them . . . today. But like it or not, you keep saying them, because this is who the Church says Jesus is, and you are part of that Church, along with the saints of every time and every place, who meet us at the altar of God, and together we meet the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, or as Peter says, the Messiah, the Son of the living God.

YEAR A 2011 pentecost 7

2011-07-30T17:54:00.000-04:00

Year A, 2011
Pentecost VII
Isaiah 55:1-5
Psalm 145:8-9, 15-22
Romans 9:1-5
Matthew 14:13-21

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

You’ve probably heard it said, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” Which is another way of stating the First Law of Thermodynamics, which explains the conservation of matter and energy. Or, to put it another way, then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being. Or, in today’s example, Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds.

What do these four examples have in common? They all say the same thing: You can’t create something out of nothing.

There’s no such thing as a free lunch, because somebody somewhere has to pay for it—even if it’s not the person eating the food. And that obscure Thermodynamic science thing about the conservation of matter and energy is a basic law of the universe: you can turn matter into energy, and you can turn energy into matter, but you can’t create either one of those out of nothing. An atomic bomb turns matter into energy, and interrupting your household chores by sitting down to watch a good tv show turns energy into matter. But, as I say, it is a basic law of the universe—-the first one, in fact-—that neither energy nor matter can be created or destroyed; they just get converted from one form into the other. (And, as I learned by reading a very confusing book one time, this is why Stephen Hawking was wrong when he claimed black holes leak radiation . . . but that’s a story for another time.)

And in the account from Genesis that I quoted, God takes dust from the ground, and with a breath from God’s lips Adam exists. (And to bring in an Ash Wednesday reminder, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”) When you die, your body isn’t going anywhere until the resurrection, because matter can never be destroyed. The dust of which you and I are made is the dust to which we shall one day return. But, on a happier note, we have today’s Gospel lesson from Matthew. A story you have heard under the name, “The Feeding of the 5,000.” Though we should always add, plus women and children to that name.

And I am going to tip my hand early this time and tell you the point I’m trying to make today: in the feeding of the 5,000 plus women and children, Jesus is taking what is already there and bringing it to its fullest potential-—what it was always meant to be. The so-called miracles of Jesus are not magic tricks. Jesus does not create things out of thin air. He doesn’t go against the natural order of things by, say, turning a bicycle into a loaf of bread, or turning sand into wine. At the Wedding in Cana, when Jesus turns water into wine, he’s following the flow of events as you expect them to be. What is the main ingredient in wine? Water, right? He’s moving the water into a beverage that is fitting for a wedding party, of the highest quality, and with plenty for everybody, plus leftovers.

Or, perhaps on the creepy side, in John’s Gospel when Jesus raises Lazarus from the tomb, he’s raising Lazarus from the tomb. Jesus doesn’t show up on the scene and call out a totally new human being to emerge from the crypt. He uses what’s there-—Lazarus’ dead body—-and brings it to the fullest possible state it can be: which is a human being, raised from the dead by Jesus. When Jesus shows up, ordinary things move to their full extraordinary potential . . . in this case, a living breathing human being. Talk about your conservation of matter!

And, perhaps closer to home, I probably don’t have to tell you that storks do not deliver babies. New human beings don’t just appear on our doorsteps—-I mean, other than in a case like Harry Potter. No, God takes what is there, male and female, and brings them to their full potential: parents charged with molding what the future of our planet will look like. Everyone in this room was conceived this way, and so were all the pets we have back at home. People and animals do not appear by magic.

We see this pattern over and over in these miracles of Jesus, including today’s feeding of the 5,000 plus women and children. Jesus takes bread, blesses it, breaks it, and the disciples feed 5,000 plus women and children! Takes what’s there (bread and fish) and brings them to their full potential: enough for everyone with 12 baskets left over! But he also takes what’s there (his disciples) and brings them to their full potential: a small group who can feed every single hungry person they saw that day. And he also takes what’s there (5,000 plus women and children) and brings them to their full potential: people who do not go home hungry, wondering where their next meal will come from. As we said in today’s Psalm, “The eyes of all wait upon you oh LORD, and you give them their food in due season. You open wide your hand and satisfy the needs of every living creature.”

And there’s another pattern we see in these miracles of Jesus. It’s never a case of just enough. Jesus doesn’t just make things adequate, for the moment. There’s always a sense of too much, of overflowing, of more than you could possibly need. We saw it in last week’s gospel with the parables: a mustard seed turns into a tree instead of a shrub; a woman makes 100 pounds of bread dough; the treasure seeker sells everything to buy the land; and the net of the kingdom catches all the fish, of every kind. And after 5,000 plus women and children have eaten their fill, 12 baskets extra in today’s gospel. Never a case of good enough; always a case of we need to-go containers.

And that is really the nature of everything, when you think about it. I mean, what’s with all that ocean water out there? And do we really need that many colors? And, really, three planets would have been plenty. I mean, we get the point without the 12 extra baskets right? So why even mention that? Maybe it’s to make that point of extravagance over and over and over. God does not rest at “that’ll do.” God keeps on going because it seems to be in God’s nature to just keep it coming.

All these “normal” things that surround us seem to be more than we need. And when Jesus pops into the picture, “more than we need” gets turned up to 11. Jesus takes the ordinary abundance and turns it into a sacrament: a place where the outward and visible mixes with the inward grace we receive. This miracle of the feeding of 5,000 plus women and children ought to remind you of something. Let’s hear the description again:

Taking the loaves, Jesus blessed and broke them, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. Sounds a lot like something we hear every week doesn’t it? Took, blessed, broke, shared.

At the offertory in our worship service, the greeters bring up bread and wine. We might say that Deb or someone “made the bread,” and that some winery out in California “made the wine,” but that’s not really true, is it? Sure, they do some important things to help the process along, like gathering the ingredients and putting them next to each other in a suitable container. But when it comes down to it, they’re not making anything. The end result, bread and wine, seem kind of miraculous in a way. But what is really astonishing is that this bread and wine reach their full potential in the presence of Jesus, by actually becoming the presence of Jesus in our midst!

And as we partake in this sacrament, we can see that that scientific law of the universe remains constant: the matter of bread and wine are transformed into the energy of disciples, unleashed on a hungry world. As we leave this place, we leave fortified by the overflowing abundance of God’s grace, and we step out into a world that is desperate to hear the good news of God’s love and presence. And this very morning, you are invited to come and partake of a true miracle.

YEAR A 2011 pentecost 6

2011-07-22T21:51:00.001-04:00

Year A, 2011
Pentecost VI
I Kings 3:5-12
Psalm 119:129-136
Romans 8:26-39
Matthew 13:31-33, 45-52

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

So have you ever wondered what you did with your sunglasses? Looked in all the usual places. Looked in all the unusual places. Yelled up the stairs to ask the kids. Went back over every place you can think of. And then decided to leave without them, get in your car, look in the review mirror and . . . yes, of course, they’re on your head, right where you left them. Someplace where you couldn’t forget them when you needed them. On your head. Of course, you aren’t aware that they’re right there where you need them, when you need them, because you’re just completely used to them being there. The top of your head is a reasonable place to store sunglasses, but how embarrassing, right?

And you probably have this with all sorts of things. Car keys in your pocket. Cell phone in your hand. Coffee sitting on the table in front of you. And on and on. In a way, it’s just that things are hiding right in plain sight. Can’t find your car in the parking lot because you walked right past it. We don’t notice things when we’re looking for them because they’re so familiar to us. You hope that doesn’t happen with family members, but it may be what’s going on in my mother’s head when she runs through all my brother’s names before she gets to mine. You know, we just get used to things and it’s hard to notice them.

But then there’s this part of your brain called the Reticular Activating System. It does a lot of things for you, even if you’ve never even said thank you to it. Sometimes the Reticular Activating System replaces something real with something that makes more sense. A good example of that was at a chapel service when I was in college. During a sermon, one of my professors meant to say one word, but said something totally inappropriate and similar sounding instead. Nobody even flinched. We didn’t notice the bizarre substitution (and neither did the woman preaching). Our psychology professor noticed though, and after chapel asked lots of us what the preacher had said, and every single person substituted the similar-sounding appropriate word for the completely inappropriate word she had actually spoken. The psychology professor was overjoyed at this accidental example, because that very day we were going to discuss the Reticular Activating System. Perfect timing! The word spoken was replaced in our minds by the word intended, and nobody even noticed until someone pointed it out to us.

Another thing the Reticular Activating System does is block out useless information while keeping us alert to useful information. So, for example, with a little practice, you can fall asleep quite easily living in New York City, but can still notice if your infant daughter cries out. You can sleep in moving vehicles racing along, but wake up with the slightest decrease in speed. You can block out a ton of chatter and chaos while walking through an airport, but immediately notice if your name is called over the PA system. The Reticular Activating System blocks out the clutter, allowing you to focus on what’s important, or even necessary for survival. (It might also be how my children can’t seem to hear me calling them from the kitchen, but can definitely hear me opening a package of cookies from a hundred yards away.)

So we often don’t see something even when we’re looking for it, because it’s so familiar (like the sunglasses), and we often block out things that distract us from what we really think is important. And then there’s also the kind of situation where we don’t recognize something that’s all around us, because . . . well, we’re soaking in it, and we’re too close to it. This is kind of like if you were to ask a fish, “How’s the water today?” And the fish would respond, “Water? What water?” I mean, that’s if the fish could speak English. But, the point is, if you can’t step outside the world you know, you can’t recognize it for what it is. A fish does not know it is swimming in water, because . . . well . . . the fish is swimming in the water.

The Kingdom of heaven is like this, see? It’s hidden and it’s in plain sight; it’s everywhere all around you; and it’s the biggest thing you’d trip over and not even notice it. Back in Jesus’ day, they didn’t wear sunglasses, or know what a Reticular Activating System is, or spend any time thinking about what a fish might say about water. But they did know about plants and bread and farming and treasure.

So Jesus says, the Kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed. Everyone listening would know that a mustard seed is very small. And they would also know that it grows into a big shrub, and that it’s kind of a weed, really. But Jesus upgrades it into a tree, and says birds come and build nests in it! It’s like saying a raspberry bush grows into some big strong oak tree. The point is not that big things grow out of tiny things. The point is that Jesus is upgrading a scrubby mustard shrub into a glorious tree of life. That’s what the Kingdom is like. What we call scraggly, God calls beautiful. What we would dismiss as a weed, Jesus compares to the most beautiful thing in all creation. Strange, isn’t it?

And then there’s that yeast and dough thing. We tend to miss something because we buy yeast in cute little sanitized packets. The woman in this example of what the Kingdom is like takes a lump of rotting moldy stuff and hides it in the dough, which was the way they kept the yeast going then. It’s a gross disgusting thing that gets mixed in to make the dough rise. And she’s not making a single loaf of bread. The measurements in Jesus’ example come out to like a hundred pounds of dough! Enough to feed . . . well, a lot of people. But what else about the dough?

I don’t know if you’ve ever baked bread, but there’s one thing about yeast mixed in with dough: once it is there, it is there for good. There’s no taking it out. Ask the dough what it’s like to have yeast working in it, and the dough will say, “Yeast? What yeast?” Because before there is such a thing as dough, there is only flour and water and some other things that bakers know about. The yeast is mixed in with the whole creation. You can’t take it back out. The Kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman mixed in until all of it was leavened. So, the question is, when will the yeast be mixed in? . . . . Yeast? What yeast?

And then the example of the pearl, and the treasure hidden in the field. They sound awfully deceptive don’t they? Like someone is pulling a fast one in order to get what they want, and tough luck for everyone else. The Kingdom of heaven is like this: our system of right and wrong do not enter into it. Think about that for a moment. The suggestion here is that God is willing to go against our rules of fair play in order to bring about the Kingdom. To go against what we think is the “right” thing; to go against our system of justice and judgment and human decency. God is not beyond doing questionable things in order to bring into reality the Kingdom of God. It makes you wonder, doesn’t it? When we make claims about the righteousness of God, or say that some people are not good enough. Not good enough for a God who finds something that belongs to someone else, and then buries it in a field, buys the WHOLE field, and then claims it as personal property? What kind of God is that? Maybe it’s a God we weren’t really looking for, because we walked right past that God looking for some god we expected, huh?

And then we come to the example of the net. Now you might have to re-think your vision of what a fishing net looks like. This is not a net for landing a fish you have already hooked. The net that fishermen in Jesus’ day used is what we call a dragnet. (And don’t go getting distracted by Sergeant Joe Friday now.) This is the way people fished back then. They did no sorting in the boat; they simply hauled in everything that the net could catch and then sorted it out on shore. Everything. Fish they wanted to eat, and license plates, and old tires, and fish they didn’t want to eat, and empty wine bottles, and fish they might want to eat. This is a style of capturing things that makes no distinction between good and bad, useful and worthless, edible and defiled. The net goes in, scoops up every single possible thing, and it is ALL hauled into the boat, with not one second of thought to sorting or choosing. The Kingdom of heaven is like this: “a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. So it will be at the end of the age.”

A-ha! You may be saying. You see? The good ones are kept and the bad ones are thrown away into a furnace of fire where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth! Exactly right, careful listener. But don’t miss that little phrase, “at the end of the age.” Because here’s the thing: We do not know what the end of the age will look like, or when it will come, or who is going to be there. We don’t know what defines good and bad fish. In fact, we don’t even know what is meant by “the fish.” The end of the age will come, and there will be some sorting once the boat reaches the shore. But in the meantime, there is just one big net. And one of these days, someone might happen to ask you, “Hey, how’s the net today?” And, of course, you will naturally respond, “Net? What net?”

YEAR A 2011 pentecost 5

2011-07-16T16:29:00.000-04:00

Year A, 2011
Pentecost V
Isaiah 44:6-8
Psalm 86:11-17
Romans 8:12-25
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

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

I’m going to start this morning by blazing through some early Church history. But fear not: I’m only going to cover the violent and controversial parts, okay? Well, not all of them . . . we haven’t got all day, right? Basically, though, what I want to do is take a quick look back at a few key events in the life of the Church that might help us understand a little better what Jesus is saying in today’s Gospel lesson.

So, back in the days of the early Church—we’re talking, about the year 200 or so—Christians were persecuted mercilessly. Put to death in the most horrible ways imaginable. The only way to avoid persecution was to offer sacrifice to the Roman gods, for which you would be given a receipt, called a libellus. Christians who took the “easy way out” were typically excommunicated. You might escape the Romans, but you were also thrown out of the Church.

As the violence spread to Carthage, Cyprian, the bishop there, fled to another country. Oddly, Cyprian was also one of the bishops insisting that Christians who gave in to the Romans be forced to undergo severe steps before being readmitted to the Church. Fourteen months later, Cyprian returned when things had quieted down, but would only admit back into the Church those who had sacrificed to Roman gods at the point of death—the extreme cases. For Cyprian, and many other leaders of the time, the only way the Church would survive was if it remained pure, free from cowards and the uncommitted. The weeds must be kept out of the wheat field.

Skipping over the Reformation, and jumping ahead to the 1600’s, the Puritans of England (notice the name) had decided they could not live within an Anglican Church that allowed Catholics and Reformists to worship in the same room. For the Pilgrims (who insisted on total separation), this meant sailing to America and setting up the Plymouth Colony. Other Puritans, who were willing to remain in the Anglican Church, but needed some breathing space, set up the Massachusetts Bay Colony. As you may know, a big part of their faith understanding was that good deeds showed you were part of God’s people. Those who differed in belief or behavior were banished to such far-flung places as Rhode Island or Pennsylvania. Bad behavior meant you were a non-believer, which meant you did not belong in the Shining City on a Hill, the New Jerusalem. And, in the case of Salem itself, sometimes they’d just burn you rather than banish you. The colony must remain pure . . . free from weeds.

Around that same time, a pastor in Germany named Philip Spener began preaching that faithful followers of Jesus must be perfectly holy, living active lives of faith. People flocked to hear him, but that meant some unholy people were flocking to hear him as well. He came up with the idea of the ecclesiola in ecclesia . . . that is, the church within the church. He started a group he called Collegia pietatis, which is where we get “pietists.” The basic idea was that small groups of the truly faithful would meet in homes for pious Bible reading and mutual faithful living. This way, everyone would be welcome to the Sunday morning services, but the truly “saved” could meet separately from the rabble of sinners and live out the true call to be disciples. This way, the wheat could grow in quiet without those pesky weeds being mixed in.

Along comes John Wesley, an Anglican who came to the same conclusions as Philip Spener. The church seemed to contain a whole lot of unconverted sinners, which held back true religion. But Wesley wanted to stay within the Anglican Church, and under its authority. He began meeting in people’s homes on Wednesday nights, for pious fellowship and Godly conversation. Wesley called this church within the church, “Methodism,” and had no intention of separating from the Anglican Church. Obviously it didn’t work out that way, since you may have seen a Methodist Church or two in your day. For those who caught onto Wesley’s vision, there were just too many lukewarm Christians in the Anglican Church, and the wheat must be free to grow without being held back by the weeds.

In the late 1800’s, a newly unified German government also encouraged the unification of the different church bodies. Suddenly, Lutherans were about to be merged with Calvinists, which to purists on both sides was absurd. My Lutheran great grandfather came to the United States during this period, though I don’t know that it was because of religious purity. But many German Lutheran congregations in the United States trace their roots back to a great migration during this time, often out of a desire to maintain pure doctrine and a unified confession. And some branches of Lutheranism spend a great deal of energy keeping out the weeds of syncretism and unionism . . . which are technical terms that mean, People Who Don’t Believe What We Believe. Sometimes the wheat has to abandon the field entirely and get replanted if it wants to grow free of weeds.

And that then puts the Church pretty firmly on American soil. Anglican, and Methodist, and Lutheran, and countless other denominations, not to mention the variety of Catholics, both Roman and otherwise. Many of these groups came to America to purify the Church, or to set up fields where there would be no weeds. And then we can skip the history of the Church in the United States and bring ourselves to the present day. Does the Church still separate and try to remain pure? Obviously, the answer is yes. And some church bodies tolerate weeds a little more successfully than others, but there will always be a church within the church—a self-selecting group that tries its best to be something other than simply Christ’s One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, with one body, one Spirit, one faith, one baptism, and one God.

There is an old saying: Baptists will tolerate any amount of schism to avoid heresy; and Episcopalians will tolerate and amount of heresy to avoid schism. But that’s not as true as it once was. For example, in 2008, the Anglican Church in North America was founded, claiming to have about 100,000 members. This denomination consists mostly of former Episcopalians who found that the Church no longer has a place for them. In their case, schism was preferable to heresy, and they formed a new church body rather than remain a church within the church. And these folks who left the Episcopal Church will tell you that it’s all about the authority of scripture. But when it comes down to it, well it’s not that simple. Because there’s a reason they’re clinging to the authority of scripture in this particular instance, and it is this:

All are welcome: regardless.

Let’s go back to the parable Jesus tells in today’s gospel lesson . . . .
"The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, `Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?' He answered, `An enemy has done this.' The slaves said to him, `Then do you want us to go and gather them?' But he replied, `No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.'"

That’s the parable. And that’s a message of inclusion, and welcome, and tolerance . . . whether a weed or wheat. All are welcome, regardless. And then, of course, the disciples want him to define “regardless.” And then Jesus explains the parable, and it sounds super scary and unwelcoming. And, you know, that makes sense. Because the review of the play shouldn’t be as good as the play. The parable is the thing, to paraphrase Shakespeare. Explaining the sacraments never comes close to doing them. And explaining a parable will never be as good as the parable.

And the point of the parable is, let them stay. All are welcome, regardless. And that is good news for you and for me. Because whether we are conservative or liberal, gay or straight, rich or poor, young or old, we are someone else’s “regardless.” No matter how nice you are, someone thinks you’re a weed. No matter how well you follow the rules, somebody will say you are not good enough. No matter how much God may love you, some of God’s followers will be willing to stand with picket signs at your funeral. We are all wheat, and we are all weeds. Thank God that Jesus does not weed the garden! Let them grow together, and let God decide what’s what.

In the kingdom of God, you are welcome, regardless of what you have done or will do in the future. You are welcome in the kingdom, and you are welcome at this table. Come and share in the body and blood of Christ, and be strengthened for your continued growth in the field that is the kingdom of God.

YEAR A 2011 pentecost 3

2011-07-02T18:27:00.000-04:00

Year A, 2011
Pentecost III
Zechariah 9:9-12
Psalm 145:8-15
Romans 7:15-25a
Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

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

So, I’m going to let you in on a basic fact of life that you might not know. This is simply the way things are, even if I’m the only one who knows this fact about life. And here it is:
Anyone who drives faster than I do is a maniac. And anyone who drives slower than I do is an idiot.

This is a very basic law of the universe, but I may be the only one who feels this way. Right? Oh . . . maybe I’m not. Maybe you have the same understanding of driving. Anyone who drives faster than you is a maniac, and anyone who drives slower than you is an idiot. Maybe this is one of those universal laws that govern the universe . . . well, as long as the universe consists of just each one of us. And it does, doesn’t it?

Okay, okay. None of us usually says this kind of thing aloud because it’s immediately obvious to everyone else that to think this way suggests you think the universe revolves around you. And though we each secretly think that fast drivers are maniacs and slow drivers are idiots, we would be a little embarrassed to admit that we truly do think this way, because—-as I say—-it shows that we think we alone have the correct answer. And, if we alone truly did have the right answer to the secret of the universe, that would be an incredibly heavy burden to bear, wouldn’t it? To be the standard by which everything and everyone is judged? To be the one who is the final judge of whether someone else is right or wrong. Who would want THAT responsibility?

Well, the answer is, all of us. The driving example is just one little instance of how we think as we go through our daily lives. Anyone whose lawn looks better than ours is a fanatic. Anyone whose lawn looks worse is a lazy slob. Someone who eats more is a glutton, and someone who eats less is anorexic. Or, people are either workaholics or good for nothings. Essentially, we all secretly want to be Goldylocks! We each decide what is the right amount of everything; and anything outside the right amount is . . . well, wrong.

But, like I said, we don’t admit this to anyone, do we? We just go along in life, pretending we’re simply amused, or maybe just a little bit annoyed. But deep down, we are judging other people all day long. Everyone does it, without even thinking about it. And if we’re really honest, we have to admit it’s a lot of hard work to live like this. Plus, day in and day out this grinds down your soul a bit maybe. Makes you less the person you could be if you didn’t have to spend all your time and energy judging others perhaps. But this way of seeing the world is nothing new.

In today’s Gospel reading we just heard, Jesus says,
For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, `He has a demon'; the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, `Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’

You see? Anyone who eats or drinks less than I do has a demon; anyone who eats and drinks more that I do is a glutton and a drunkard. Jesus has no self-discipline, and John the Baptist is a weirdo. Jesus asks, “To what will I compare this generation?” Which is like saying, “What do you people want from me?” We played the flute and you did not dance; we wailed and you did not mourn. Well, you know why? Because we were too busy judging you, that’s why. How do you expect us to dance or weep when we’re constantly sizing up whether you have the right amount of everything? We’re very busy over here, Jesus!

And here’s something else. We consider it a sign of maturity to be able to judge right from wrong, and that seems reasonable. As we grow up we learn to tell what things are helpful and good, and which things are harmful and bad. It’s an important part of life to be able to make good decisions that will benefit those around us. The trouble is, we use those skills to judge other people as well. We use our maturity to act immature when it comes to our neighbors. It’s like an unfortunate consequence of the gift of discernment is that we apply it to everyone else . . . maybe more than we apply it to ourselves. Sure, growing up means judging right from wrong; but what a drag life becomes when we spend all day judging what’s right and wrong for everybody else. I mean, there are almost 7 billion people walking around; if we’re going to judge them all based on our personal standards we’re going to be very busy . . . heavy laden in fact . . . weary and carrying heavy burdens.

It’s an interesting thing to consider that this constant judgment of how other people act is part of growing up. Because you know what that means? It means that at some point, we forget how to dance; we forgot how to mourn. We stopped laughing and crying with our neighbors because we’ve got all this judging to do. It means that, on some level, infants are ahead of the rest of us, because they watch and they sometimes join in, but they do not judge. As we heard Jesus say, in today’s Gospel, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants.”

Now the very last part of today’s Gospel you have heard many times. We use this passage every time we have Compline together: "Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."

It sounds nice, doesn’t it? But what does it even mean? With all due respect Jesus, people who work with their hands are carrying heavy burdens every day. And with the pace of life these days, we are all terribly weary. We have come to you, and we are not getting very much rest, quite frankly. Taking your yoke upon us sounds like more work, no matter how easy it is; and taking your burden might just be the thing that breaks our backs. The last thing we need is more work, even if it’s for you, Jesus.

But let’s back up a minute and ask the obvious questions that pop up from these statements. Burdened by what? And whose burden is not light? And, come to think of it, What exactly is a yoke? Good questions. Glad you asked them.

So, Jesus’ disciples called him their Rabbi. I’m sure you all have at least some idea of what a Rabbi is. Essentially, a Jewish teacher, right? And you know that the Torah is the first five books of the Old Testament; and you know that the Torah is the most sacred thing on earth for the Jewish people. A Rabbi in Jesus’ time would interpret the Torah for his disciples. Usually this interpretation meant adding things on, or carefully explaining to their disciples exactly what God meant by a particular rule or law. Different Rabbi’s had different interpretations of the finer points of the Torah, sort of a like what we would call “schools of thought.” You might prefer the teachings of one Rabbi over another, and so you would approach that Rabbi and ask to become his disciple. And if the Rabbi said yes, you would then be expected to adhere to the Rabbi’s interpretation of the Torah. And—here’s the important thing—a Rabbi’s interpretation of the Torah, his school of thought was called his yoke. If you followed a particular Rabbi, you took his yoke upon you.

There were plenty of Rabbi’s around in Jesus’ day. And any Jew who was serious about becoming a disciple would choose a Rabbi and take his yoke upon themselves. Jesus says, "My yoke is easy, and my burden is light." The implication is, the easy yoke of Jesus is different than the alternatives, right? In order for that statement to have any impact on those listening, it would mean that the yoke of the other Rabbi’s is difficult, and their burden is heavy. "Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."

I am not going to go on and on about all the implications of this, but I do want to be sure to tell you one thing: over the course of your life, many people will come to you claiming to be disciples of Jesus, but also trying to burden you with a heavy yoke. A yoke with all sorts of preconditions, and legalisms, and laws, and rules, and on and on. If the yoke someone is trying to present to you is heavy and burdensome, then it is not the yoke of Jesus. They are trying to get you to take on someone else’s yoke, and you should follow Jesus, not their Rabbi.

To follow Jesus means to rely on him. To trust that God has done for you what you cannot do for yourself. Jesus offers us a break from having to judge the world because—-as we say in the Creed each week—-he is the judge of the living and the dead. You don’t need to carry the heavy burden of deciding whether your neighbor is better or worse than you are. You don’t need to take on a whole bunch of rules about behavior and good conduct. You do not need another yoke; you only need the yoke of Jesus: learn from him. You will find rest for your soul, because his yoke is easy and his burden is light. Trust him to meet you in the breaking of the bread, to carry your burdens, and to give you the strength you need to face tomorrow.

YEAR A 2011 easter 6

2011-05-28T20:30:00.000-04:00

Year A
Easter 6, 2011
Acts 17:22-31
Psalm 66:7-18
1 Peter 3:13-22
John 14:15-21

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

So today’s gospel text picks up where we left off last week, and that means we’re still on the night before Jesus dies for us. And to make sense of this passage, we really need to keep one foot on each side of Easter, in a sense. Because, in the timeline of Jesus’ life, he has not yet died, but in the Church year, he has already died and is already risen. So, as I say, we need to keep both of those times in mind when we hear these words from Jesus to his disciples. And then, just to complicate things a little more, I’ll remind you that this text was written at least 70 years after Jesus’ death, and that we are here today, trying to understand it 1900 years after that. In a sense, we’re all over the map as far as timelines, and that fits perfectly with the reading from Acts, and I admit, it fits with my own personal understanding that time is a big ball of wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff.

Okay, but back to the text . . . At this point in John’s gospel, Jesus is giving something of a pep talk to the disciples. He is trying to encourage them in advance of his departure, and part of his reassurance is that he will be sending the Holy Spirit (or paraklete) to guide them into truth. Now paraklete is a Greek word meaning small colorful bird. Oh, wait, that’s not right. Paraklete has something to do with the bottom of an athlete’s shoes? No, still not it. Ah! I remember now. Paraklete is a Greek word that means something like counselor, or comforter, or advocate. Literally it means, a person called to your side. Counselor, comforter, advocate. And that usually gets interpreted as having something to do with a court of law.

Many people will tell you that the Spirit is our advocate and counselor before the judgment seat of God. That is, that the Spirit will argue on our behalf so that God will not smite us into everlasting damnation. Essentially, this view would tell us two things:
1. God is going to judge us, and judge us harshly.
2. The Holy Spirit is like the ultimate lawyer, defending each one of us against the punishments of this harsh judge.

In the first case, I will just point out that we believe—as we say in the Creed each Sunday—that Jesus will come to judge the living and the dead. The God of popular imagination (you know, with the beard and the lightning bolt) is Zeus, not the God of Abraham. Jesus will judge us, and in case you’ve never heard it before, Jesus loves you. Enough to give up his life for you. You do not need a defense attorney when you appear before the one who loves you.

And, in the second case, God is united, not divided. We do not need for one person of the Trinity to defend us against the other. As we discussed in last week’s Adult Forum, it is just plain wrong to think that Jesus saves you from the wrath of God. It is wrong to think that deep down God really wants to kill you and throw you into everlasting fire, and is only thwarted by that pesky Jesus fellow. Or that God decides not to punish you because that cracker jack lawyer the Holy Spirit has built an amazing case that will get you sprung from the gallows.

But, just to be clear, the Episcopal Church is not a “confessional church.” And that means, the Episcopal Church doesn’t spend much energy telling you what to believe. And that also means, you are certainly welcome and encouraged to disagree with me on any given Sunday. I will not often tell you exactly what you should believe about God; but I will often tell you what not to believe about God. And this is one of those days: I am telling you as clearly as I can . . . Do not believe that God’s true nature is one of punishment and damnation. Do not believe that Jesus saves you from God. Do not believe that God is out to kill you, or that you need the Holy Spirit as your advocate in the court of the vengeful god Zeus.

So, with that out of the way, what do we do with this idea of the Spirit being an Advocate, or Counselor? Well, let’s try looking at it from a different perspective. What if Jesus is sending the Advocate to make his case to us? What if the Paraklete comes to us to make God’s case against our judging hearts? What if, as Jesus says, “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever.” And notice he says, “another Advocate?” Seems that maybe Jesus is the first Advocate, doesn’t it? As if Jesus came to make the case, to show us the love of God in his words and deeds, and now another Advocate will come to continue to make the case to us. But, “the case” seems the wrong term, really.

Have you ever read the play, Cyrano de Bergerac? Or, seen the movie? Or the Steve Martin version, Roxanne? Even if you haven’t, you kind of know the plot, I’m sure. Cyrano loves Roxanne, but ends up putting words into the mouth of Christian, and captures Roxanne’s heart through a messenger, or advocate . . . and it’s hard to tell which one is the advocate for the other, in this play. Now, you never want to press an analogy like this too far, but since we’re dealing with John’s gospel (where Jesus is called the Word), maybe it’s more apt than it seems at first. The great lengths that Christian and Cyrano go to in order to win Roxanne’s heart are perhaps a good glimpse at the effort that God goes through to win our hearts. It’s not a court of law, you see? It’s a romance!

What if the Advocate (or Advocates) is not coming to be our helper in the courtroom? What if instead the Advocate is sent by God in order to win our hearts? What if God so loved the world that he sent his only son? Doesn’t Jesus show the ultimate depths of God’s love for you, in that he is willing to lay down his life proclaiming the love of God? Jesus walks us among us, preaches the Good News to us, and then . . . well, we have to kill him. We don’t want to hear it.

But God does not give up. Here comes the Advocate to deliver the same message. And, in an odd way, the Holy Spirit becomes like the Heavenly Mail-Carrier. The Spirit has a word for you—the Word for you—and will make repeated delivery attempts until you have lived out all your earthly days. Neither rain nor snow nor dark of night nor failed rapture date will prevent this Counselor from the appointed rounds. The Spirit knocks on your heart’s door with the message of God’s love, and will continue to do so forever, because forever is how long God’s love for you lasts. Well beyond the grave, I might add.

And do you want to know the contents of the letter the Spirit is trying to deliver? Of course you do! And I will tell you the most important part of the letter. Jesus says it himself in today’s Gospel: Because I live, you also will live.
There’s a lot more to the message, of course, but it all grows out of that main point: Because I live, you also will live.

And that message only increases because of the time confusion that I mentioned in the beginning. Jesus is talking to the disciples in that room before his death. But Jesus is also talking to the community in which the words were written 70 years after his death. And Jesus is also talking to us, gathered here in Brunswick 1900 years after his death. Plus, he’s talking to people who are alive—meaning because he lives we can live full lives here and now—but he is also making a promise when our lives are over . . . in all these cases, because he lives, we also will live. All people, of every wibbly wobbly timey wimey space will live. Both in the here and now, and when our lives are over. Because Jesus lives, we also will live. In fact, because Jesus lives, we live . . . right here, right now.

The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, comes to each one of us, constantly and continuously delivering the most important message in the universe: Because Jesus lives, you will live. Everything else in life grows out of that message. It is a message of love, a message of forgiveness, a message to live your life without fear and trembling. You don’t need an advocate to plead your case in the judgment court of Zeus and his thunderbolts. But you do need an Advocate to plead God’s case before the judgment of your heart.

I don’t know if I’ve told you this before, but I am a closet Lutheran. And, as such, I learned certain things in my catechism class, which often guide me to this day. One of those things is Luther’s explanation of the third part of the Creed, which starts with this: “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him; but the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith.” In other words, this Advocate we’ve been talking about today is the one who calls us to faith, pleads God’s case in our hearts, and leads us to hear that crucial message: Because Jesus lives, you also shall live.

We cannot come to Jesus unless the Father draws us. And the Father draws us by sending the Advocate to plead with our hearts. And the Father and the Spirit together draw us to this altar today, where with the saints of every time and every place (every wibbly wobbly timey wimey space), with all of them, we meet the risen Lord in the breaking of the bread.
Amen.