Proclaiming By Word And Example

Fulfilling the Law - Epiphany 6A

noreply@blogger.com (Snarky Anglican) — Mon, 17 Feb 2020 22:31:00 +0000

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill it.”

I’ve been having some interesting conversations with #JTwitter lately. For those of you not on Twitter, #JTwitter is short for “Jewish Twitter” and is a loose community of folks who are Jewish according to the Law but who span a wide range of religious praxis. Some are atheists but who are “halakhic” Jews – halakhic meaning “according to the Law of Moses.” Others are very observant religiously and most are somewhere in between. It’s both a birthright and a faith tradition. This separates Judaism from Christianity as Christians have no birthright definition but rather a mystical definition of being “in Christ.” While I’ve had many Jewish friends and rabbis as clergy colleagues, I’ve gained an insight as to how difficult it is to be Jewish in a dominantly Christian culture here in America. Anti-Semitism is on the rise in our country and acts of violence, from vandalism of synagogues to the Tree of Life massacre, are tragically becoming common place; but there is also a more subtle and insidious form of anti-Semitism done when Christians appropriate Jewish symbols and rites for their own purposes. This is an act of supersessionism – the idea that what comes after supersedes what came before.

In the history of Christianity, there has always been a vein of supersessionist belief that Jesus came as the “new and improved” form of Judaism to supplant or supersede it. These ideas rise from our very own scriptures. Consider the way John’s gospel repeatedly speaks disparagingly of “the Jews” and how he sets up “the Jews” as those who killed Christ. In truth, when you read John with a discerning understanding of history and context, his use of “the Jews” (capital “J”) references only the religious authorities, it doesn’t mean the Jewish people as Jesus and his disciples were all Jewish. Misreading our texts has led to those who consider themselves Christians justifying pogroms, banishment and even the Holocaust. There is much of which we need to repent and repair.

That said, there is also some mutual misunderstanding regarding repentance and forgiveness. I had an interaction with a JTwitter member who said they studied with the Jesuits and came to an understanding that Christians “forgive by proxy.” Their understanding was that because we ask Jesus for forgiveness, he provides forgiveness and we Christians are let off the hook for making personal amends when we sin against another person. They offered how the Jewish faith differed because the Law commands personal moral accountability and that amends must be made directly not by proxy. I found this both a fascinating and deeply troubling insight! I shared how Jesus didn’t come to abolish the Law, but I could see how there is a strain (especially in more Protestant corners of Christianity) to believe that asking God’s forgiveness is enough and we can ignore the moral precepts of Torah. I also offered that Jesus taught against ignoring the Law and gave us clear instruction about making personal amends. Today’s readings underscore this message.

In the Apocryphal book Sirach (also known as Ecclesiasticus), we hear “If you choose, you can keep the commandments, and to act faithfully is a matter of your own choice.” This underscores the deep understanding of the Jewish tradition which comes to us through Jesus, that we are moral people with moral agency. We have choices to make. We can listen to God’s ways and choose them or not. As Christians, we do modify this somewhat in that we understand the power of Sin is a power outside our control which leads us away from God’s intentions. However, just because this is true does not utterly strip you and me of our moral agency and your obligation to make choices in keeping with God’s ways rather than follow human ways. We still maintain moral and ethical obligations to do God’s will and not our own.

Jesus even said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.” We heard that sentence as the conclusion to last week’s Gospel reading but I think it really should be the opening to this week’s because it leads into Jesus’ teaching. Jesus constructs his teaching on the law with a contrast: “you have heard that it was said … but I say to you …” In each case he takes a point of the Law: murder, adultery, divorce, and swearing falsely. He quotes the conventional teaching but then pushes his hearers to go deeper. Let’s just consider one of these teachings: the one on murder. Jesus says we need to go deeper because it’s not just about overt, premeditated, bodily killing – it’s about carrying anger and resentments which murder relationships. He urges us to make direct, not proxy, amends with those with whom we are at odds. He flat out says we are not to approach the altar of God with our gift unless we’ve made peace with others. Consider this observation from author Michael Hardin, in “The Jesus Driven Life,” on this teaching:

…the way of the Kingdom of God means that the way we relate to everyone changes. Not just our friends, but also those we despise and those who can’t stand us. It is not easy to love the unlovely. When we are attacked, we attack back, when we are threatened, we threaten. Our natural posture is defensiveness. This is true not only on a personal level but also on a political one. Have you ever noticed that when someone attacks you it is always unjust but when you ‘attack’ another it is always just?... Jesus says that to be angry is the same as murder. When you get angry the first thing you do is to have this sort of inane conversation in your head. They said this, I will say that, they will respond thus, I will have that response, etc. Notice how you always win this battle!

Jesus says that the Christian life does not consist of these mental battles. Instead we are to make peace in every way for “Blessed are the peacemakers.” More than that, retaliation is not an aspect of Christian existence. When Christians (not people in general) are hassled or persecuted, it is not part of their calling to "get them back." Christianity is not a gang where if one member is suffering at the hands of rivals, it sends out its members to get the other gang. Instead we are called to "love our enemies." How different would the world be today, if so-called Christian America had, instead of announcing war after 9/11, offered forgiveness?

How different would it be? Jesus’ teaching reinforces our obligation to make hard, moral choices and live the Law at a whole new level. We dare not presume to shirk our responsibility to the Law by presuming God’s grace will automatically absolve us of wrongdoing. The twin cosmic powers of Sin and Death which doom us to annihilation have been broken through Christ’s saving work on the cross, but this does not give a Christian a “free pass” to do whatever they want and ignore the Law’s call to live reconciled lives. You and I are called to be more, to go deeper, and to do the hard work of laying aside our easily bruised egos and make peace with each other. This is our moral and ethical responsibility and call which comes to each of us through our baptism. Will we have the courage to “strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being”?

The Games God Doesn't Play - Epiphany 5A

noreply@blogger.com (Snarky Anglican) — Mon, 10 Feb 2020 13:12:00 +0000

Epiphany 5A - Isaiah 58:1-9a, Matthew 5:13-2

Oh the games people play now
Every night and every day now
Never meaning what they say now
Never saying what they mean.

And they wile away the hours
In their ivory towers
Till they're covered up with flowers

In the back of a black limousine
La-da da da da da da da
La-da da da da da de
Talking 'bout you and me
And the games people play.

Some of us are old enough to remember this top of the pops 1969 song from Joe South, "Games People Play". It’s been my ear worm this week as I returned from the Gathering of Leaders conference in Albuquerque. Our theme this year was “Stewardship: Money in the Missionary Church” and we had a number of presentations about money following mission and the challenges of the 21st century. One of our members, the Rev. Paul Fromberg – rector of St. Gregory of Nyssa in San Francisco, gave a presentation that caused me to remember this song. In that presentation he talked about the human games God doesn’t play. What does that mean?

In an intersection between sociology and the Gospel, he talked about our assumptions as humans that how we live is how things have always been believing our current reality is eternal instead of recognizing how much is made up human stuff. We even confuse how we think it’s always been with God’s blessing – especially when the systems we invent are working in our favor. That got me thinking about Walter Brueggmann's work on the common good and how our belief in our human made up systems become closed ideologies. When we carry closed ideologies about how things are based on our experiences, members of a society can be very defensive when you challenge those ideologies. Brueggemann defines the work of a prophet as speaking truth to closed ideologies so their lies can be exposed, and the Holy Spirit can enter and remake us anew. One of the major human games we play is the money game. In America, our closed ideology is that our money game of capitalism has always been the way economic things are and it is the best economic system – even blessed by God.

The reality is capitalism is not “how it’s always been” – as an economic model humans made up! It’s only about 450 years old. Prior to that and overlapping its development was the system of barter and trade which was highly relational. The growth of capitalism as a dominant economic engine came in the early 16th century on the heels of Pope Alexander VI issuing the Papal bull “Inter Caetera” which initiated the Doctrine of Discovery. This doctrine provided the spiritual, political, and legal justification for colonization of lands not inhabited by Christians. As European countries colonized the world, they claimed land for exploitation and enslaved native populations all in the name of wealth and fueling a nascent capitalistic economy. Capitalism worked very well for the European conquerors, but it relied on the enslavement of Black and brown bodies for labor – and it still does. Even here in the United States, human labor trafficking is big business and the continued legal system of slavery of incarcerated persons allowed by the 13th Amendment in the Constitution has continued the disproportionate enslavement of African Americans and Hispanics.

Many of us are beginning to hear the term “late stage capitalism” as what we are experiencing now. It describes a form of capitalism where large, multi-national corporations are dominating the economic systems around the world and controlling more and more of the resources, to the neglect of people and the environment. Paul shared how this impacts his context in San Francisco where there is a huge homeless population while simultaneously the city has 30,000 vacant housing units. Those 30,000 vacant housing units are owned by corporations and absent owners who are disconnected from the community and don’t care about the neighborhood. In truth, capitalism is a human money game which one day will collapse. This money game is one God doesn’t play.

Now, some of you may be thinking I’ve gone from preachin’ to meddlin’ but I’m going to take a risk of going just a bit farther on the matter of our closed ideologies and talk about another game God doesn’t play: God doesn’t play our governance game of representative democracy. Right now, we are experiencing a period of deep anxiety about the future of our republic and whether our democracy will remain intact. We’ve all be raised with “God Bless America” and the belief that our democratic form of government is the best way of guaranteeing freedom. Well, I’m not so sure we are as free as we like to think we are. When I look around and see active, blatant voter suppression robbing people of their agency, that doesn’t look like freedom. When I see young people saddled with student loan debt that’s the size of a home mortgage and even with a good paying job, there’s no way they can pay off their student loans, that looks like economic oppression not freedom. When unarmed Black men are gunned down by police, that doesn’t look like freedom. When our elections are subject to foreign interference and their integrity not secured, that doesn’t look like freedom. When corporations are considered “persons” who can make huge donations and buy the candidate of their choice, that doesn’t look like freedom, or democracy for that matter. Democracy is a human made construct – it’s a game God doesn’t play.

Here’s one more: God doesn’t play the game of religious rituals that don’t change and transform us into doers of God’s will. Doing whatever we want and then engaging in religious rituals hoping God will bless us is exactly what Isaiah is talking about in today’s lesson from the 58th chapter of his prophecy. In relaying God’s voice, Isaiah tells the people:

“Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers. Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high.”

God is not playing human games. Fasting and the wearing of sackcloth don’t mean anything if we continue to follow our ways and ignore God’s priorities. It’s as true for us as it was for the Israelites. God doesn’t care if you go to church and take Communion if that isn’t changing you.

So what is God’s game? Isaiah lays it out quite clearly:

“to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?”

The righteousness of God has everything to do with relationship, regardless of the human money, political or religious games in play. Breaking down injustice, releasing the oppressed (no matter what the form of oppression is), feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless poor, clothing the naked, building relationships across our divisions – this is God’s game.

It’s the work we are called to when Jesus speaks of us being salt and light for the world. When Jesus speaks of the salt losing its saltiness, we have trouble understanding what he’s talking about. But in his day, salt was used as a catalyst in the community cooking ovens to keep the fires burning. When that salt’s catalyzing capacity wore out, it was taken out of the oven and thrown out. Jesus’ point is we are to be the catalyst to keep the vision of the kingdom burning and alive. Isaiah names the signs of the kingdom and God’s priorities, Jesus tells us we are to be the catalyst that ignites the work of the kingdom on earth no matter what human games surround us.

In Baptism, you and I were claimed and marked as Christ’s own forever. Each week in the Eucharist we are reoriented to offer our lives as living sacrifices to embody the signs and work of God’s game and not our own. God’s call to a different kind of fast in Isaiah is a call to fast from the human games that hurt, oppress and exploit God’s beloved. It is a call to trust we are beloved of God and that we have been given everything to be the catalyzing salt to bring the light of Christ to the world in real tangible ways for the healing of the world.

New Year, New Call, New Blog...

noreply@blogger.com (Snarky Anglican) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 18:33:00 +0000

The wardens and vestry of Grace Episcopal Church in Brunswick, MD have called me to be their Priest-in-Charge ... effective December 1, 2011. Yes, beginning a new call right before Christmas was a bit like dropping into a perfect tube on Hawaii's north shore ... and hoping you don't get slammed into the coral below! BUT, all is well, Christmas is behind us and now in Epiphany-tide we celebrate the Light of the World coming into our lives.

My sermons from Grace are now being posted on their site - hence the new tab at the top! Come by and visit and see what we are up to ... and read some sermons while you're there.

I will keep this blog going with occasional postings but the weekly ones will be on Grace's site.

Pointing to Jesus - Advent II 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Snarky Anglican) — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 20:47:00 +0000

Is there a teacher you vividly remember? Was it the one who could keep you awake during those after lunch lectures? How about the one who believed in you when you didn’t really think you could master solving for x in algebra? I remember one … because he worked us like a dog! It was my freshman English teacher – Mr. Kurth at Edison High in Huntington Beach. I hated that class – I really did! I came to appreciate that hard work later, but in the moment it was no fun at all! He has us write what are now called “BCRs” or “brief constructed responses” every … single … night. And the BCRs were about the short stories of … Ernest Hemingway. Maybe it’s a chick thing, but I did not like Ernest Hemingway. I know his novels are different, but I just couldn't stand his short stories! They drove me nuts. He’d drop you into a scene like a commando landing behind enemy lines – no introduction, no back story, just PLOP! you fall into a boat fishing or in a duck blind or something like that. And I didn’t know diddly about fishing or hunting or running with bulls or any of that Hemingway stuff. I just didn’t get it! And you’d read these stories and just about the time you think you know what’s going on … POOF … it was done. No ending, no resolution … just as abruptly as you fell into the fishing boat, you were done … outta there … kind of like being raptured out of the story! And I’d be left thinking, “Whoooaaa! Wait a minute … what just happened?”

So in light of my history of reading Hemingway it may not be much of a surprise to you that Mark has never really been my favorite gospel. I gained an appreciation for it in seminary, but it always reminded me of Poppa Hemingway. Maybe Poppa learned his trademark abruptness from Mark. Mark throws you into the action right away … PLOP! … right into the wilderness with John the Baptizer – a “man’s man” who lives in the wilderness, wears animal skins, eats bugs and honey, and calls people to repentance. Just the kind of guy you’d invite to your next shee shee cocktail party, right? … yeah … sure …

John is a truth teller who paves the way for Jesus. But he’s the kind of guy that makes you uncomfortable. He asks hard questions. He condemned Herodias for divorcing Philip to marry Harod … and he lost his head for that one. But for some reason, Mark tells us that people from the big city, Jerusalem, and all the Judean countryside were going out to the wilderness to confess their sins and be baptized by John. In some ways this is a repurposing of the traditional Jewish mikvah bath – a ritual cleansing done before going to the Temple (and most often done by women who were routinely considered “ritually unclean”).

John’s baptism is about confession and repentance; but Jesus, the greater one who comes after John, does not talk about confession at all. In fact, this is the only time Mark uses the word “confessing.” Perhaps this is because John’s mission was to bring about confession and repentance in order to prepare the way. Our Orthodox sisters and brothers call John the "Forerunner" ("the Baptist" isn't his last name). As a forerunner, his role is to get people prepared for the coming of the Christ. Confession and repentance open the heart to hear the message of the one who is greater.

John’s role and ministry, according to Mark, were to prepare the way for Jesus. While John clearly has a strong following of all these folks coming from miles around to be baptized, he realizes the message isn’t about him – it’s about preparing for Jesus. He clearly points to Jesus when he says, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals.” John may be a rough character, but his heart is open and he knows his message is about something much bigger than himself. He knows it’s not about him!

Many years ago, my father warned me about believing my own "press." He told me there would be people who think I'm terrific and want to put me on a pedestal and others who would think I'm lower than dirt - neither are true - the truth is somewhere in the middle. John was clear - he didn't let the "press" about his ministry make him into an egomaniac. He didn't move off the message of pointing to Jesus.

John serves as an example to us in our ministry – and no, I’m not talking about a need to adopt the bugs and honey diet. Our ministry is not about us either … it’s about the one more powerful than us. We can lose sight of that because of our egos. Our need to be right, to have our egos affirmed, believing our own "press" or even going to the other extreme of believing ourselves unworthy or unqualified to minister on behalf of Christ – all of these point to ourselves and not to Jesus. John knows himself, his message, and his place – and all of his being is pointing to Jesus.

As we continue to prepare for Christ’s coming in our hearts, ask yourself – to what, or to whom, does your life point? Does it point to the one more powerful than you? In this season of preparation, we are invited to open our hearts through confession and repentance so that we might better be able to point to Jesus.

Advent 1 - 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Snarky Anglican) — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 20:29:00 +0000

Well, we’ve made it through Thanksgiving and survived the insanity of Black Friday. The world outside is now preaching a message of deep discounts on wide screen TVs, the “perfect gift” for Christmas, “every kiss begins with Kay,” buy this or buy that and life will be complete … and then you come to church and hear about stars falling from heaven, the sun and moon darkened … essentially the End of All Things. Sounds like “Captain BuzzKill” just reported for duty with a message of doom and gloom for all! Either Christians are the most dour and depressing people on the face of the earth, or perhaps … just perhaps … something else is going on – and I’m putting my money on the second option.

The first Sunday in Advent always … ALWAYS … begins with the end – the END of all things. This is a reminder that God is Alpha and Omega, the beginning and end, and it points to the paradox of our faith where the first is last and the last is first. Our Lectionary Year B which features the Gospel of Mark is no exception to this pattern. I think it’s unfortunate that narratives about the end of all things have been co-opted by elements of the religious right best known for rapture theology and the “Left Behind” series of books. They seem to have hijacked the whole message about the apocalypse to the point where it makes most Episcopalians shudder to think about it. Let me put it on the record that the rapture, also known as dispensational theology, is a creative and selective reworking of Scripture. It essentially teaches that the second coming of Christ will snatch up and take to heaven all the true believers and all children under 12, because evidently your twelfth birthday is when you start on the Road to Perdition. Then Christ will leave and there will be a 1,000 year reign of the anti-Christ – a time of terrible tribulation for those left behind. Then, after 1,000 years, Christ will come again and take up the survivors of the ordeal who now believe in Jesus – and for those who don’t … well there’s always eternal damnation. Now if you pick up your Bibles, I dare you to find anything in them which indicates there will be a “third coming” of Christ – it’s not there. We declare in our Eucharistic Prayer A that “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again” – not “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again … and then leave and then come again.” Rapture theology sounds like some kind of celestial escape plan which frankly is pure, unadulterated heresy. There … I’m on the record ... it's heresy.

We do need to take apocalyptic literature like Daniel, Isaiah, and Revelation seriously but we need to put it into some perspective. First, the word apocalypse is one that carries a sense of foreboding – and for those of us old enough to remember the movie, you’re probably envisioning helicopters and hearing the strains of Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries in your heads right now. It’s a scary word … right? But is it really? Apocalypse comes from the Greek word apocalypsos – which means “revelation.” Hmmm … yes, the name of the last book in the Bible is Apocalypsos tou Ioannou – the “Revelation of John.” It means that which is hidden is revealed. In fact, we could say that Jesus himself is an apocalypsos – a revelation of God’s self to a hurting human world. When we think of its real meaning, apocalypse loses some of its frightening connotations.

The second thing which can be troubling about apocalyptic literature is the certainty of those who adhere to rapture/dispensationalism that the images contained in these books are 100% speaking to our place, time and culture. As if these writers were somehow clairvoyant in their ability to predict the future and speak to it. I remember being in a youth group with a young man who attended a conservative evangelical college and he had the whole Book of Revelation figured out! All of the allusions and images were totally explainable in terms of current geopolitical realities … and the number of the Beast – “666” – was, in fact, representing ... the Soviet Union. I always wanted to ask him how that works now that the Soviet Union is no more.

You see, the writers of apocalyptic literature, and even Jesus, were not magically able to predict the future. These writers were not writing for us sitting here in the 21st century. They didn’t predict the European debt crisis, the Arab Spring, or the Green Bay Packers being 11 and 0 for the season (who could have predicted that?). These writers were writing for their own people, place and time – and addressing their current social situation. So what was going on when Mark wrote his gospel?

From its structure and word usage, it is very likely this gospel was written between 66 and 70 AD – during the time of the Jewish-Roman War. During this conflict, the Jewish rebels tried very hard to get the Jewish Christians to take up arms with them and fight the Romans – but the Jewish Christians refused. This refusal became a wedge between the early Christians and Jews. The Romans were expelled from Jerusalem and Galilee by the rebel forces until Emperor Tiberius ordered General Vespasian to put the rebellion down and put Jerusalem to the torch. Tiberius ordered the Temple destroyed – except for one wall for the Jews to grieve over (this is the Western Wall – or Wailing Wall – still standing today). Estimates are that up to a half-million people living in Jerusalem were killed by the Roman army and when the army was finished, Jerusalem lay in ashes and would be uninhabited for 40 years thereafter.

Why did the Christians not take up arms and fight alongside the Jewish rebels? Perhaps it was because the teachings of Jesus had warned them of false messiahs, false messages, and the danger of misplaced trust which we call Sin. Early Jewish Christians were not centering their worship in a place - they centered it in a person, Jesus Christ. And this serves as a warning to us today.

We humans have a tendency to project God’s favor or wrath into our own earthly causes quite liberally. And yet Jesus' life and ministry show that the divisions cause by earthly causes are not sign of the kingdom of God. We live in an increasingly polarized culture where people want to believe they are doing “God’s will” even when their very actions spread division, discord, and even hatred of anyone opposing their beliefs. Jesus’ ominous message tells us that war and division are not where we are to look for God among us.

Rather than viewing this Scripture as “doom and gloom,” I think we can view its message as one of hope – hope because it reminds us that the powers of this world do not have the final word. Jesus’ admonitions to “be alert” and “keep awake” are a call for us to be more keenly aware of the presence of God among us right now – often in places and people we don’t expect and certainly not in human conflicts. My daughters have spent the last few summers going on mission trips with Group Workcamps and the kids are advised to be alert for “God sightings” – those places where we see God’s presence or even those times where we’ve been Christ for another. As we prepare this Advent for the coming of Christ – Emmanuel, God with us, let us keep awake and be alert to where Christ is showing up right now, right here, right in our midst – and especially where we least expect it.

2011 - Feast of Christ the King

noreply@blogger.com (Snarky Anglican) — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 13:03:00 +0000

The end is here! No, not the “capital E - end of all things End.” Today is the end of the church year – the Feast of Christ the King – and we hear about sheep and goats. The bulletin cover today shows the icon known as Christos Pantokrator – Christ the All Powerful. This icon has been copied many times and the oldest known version of it is found in St. Catherine’s Monastery, Mount Sinai in Egypt which dates from the early 8th century. I chose this for the cover because it connects with our gospel reading today. Cover up the left side of Jesus’ face (his left, your right). Take a good long look – how would you describe the expression on Jesus’ face? Gentle? Peaceful? Kind? Now switch and cover the right side of Jesus’ face. Different, isn’t it? How would you describe the expression on his face now? Harsh? Angry? Notice which side evokes which expression – kind and peaceful on the right (where the sheep are) and harsh and angry on the left (where those goats are). This icon, in part, represents the separation of the sheep and the goats in today’s gospel text.

Now, what is up with the sheep and goats? Why favor the sheep? A friend of mine sent me this reflection from Rev. Fr. Victor Spencer who lives in South Africa:

One thing has always puzzled me about this gospel: why do goats get such a bad press from Jesus? I’ve lived in rural Africa for most of my life and know both sheep and goats well. A couple of comments in sermons suggest that sheep and goats are difficult to tell apart. I can only suppose that such comments are made by urban people who have never seen either in real life.

In fact, goats are superior to sheep: more intelligent, less suicidal, better milk, more self-sufficient, less diet-conscious. Sheep are silly creatures: run on the road in front of traffic, straying blindly and unable to find their own way home, starving while standing in long grass. So, in Jesus’ parable, why are the goats consigned to perdition and the sheep to paradise?

So, the silly sheep who are stupid and fumbling along without a clue are favored and the goats who are intelligent, self-sufficient and seem to have their act together are rejected. Where does this leave us?

From what Fr. Spencer has shared about goats and what our culture in America values (things like self-sufficiency and intelligence), it seems to me that most of us fall into the “goat” category, don’t we? The goats seem to represent the values of this world and the needs of our egos for self-sufficiency and achievement. This is the realm of believing that we can “make it on our own” and when we retrofit that belief onto our spiritual life, religion turns into some sort of “merit system” of doing the right things so we can earn “brownie points for Jesus.” The goat in each of us hears this teaching about “doing for the least of these” as a checklist of things we need to do (“Feed the hungry. Well I donated to the food bank. Check! Cloth the naked – yep, got that one too! I gave some gently used cloths to Goodwill.”). When we do that, we miss the whole point of this story!

Jesus doesn’t give us a checklist of “to dos” in this teaching. Instead, he wants us to set aside our own ego needs and humble ourselves to be with the hungry, naked, imprisoned, homeless, infirmed and dying. This is what the sheep do – remember they have little to nothing to bring into a relationship. They aren’t smart, they aren’t self-sufficient, their suicidal tendencies leave them in peril – they bring empty selves into relationships. It’s the sheep who have the humility to companion the last, lost, little, least and lifeless. The clever goats are so full of themselves there isn’t any room for the other … certainly not the other who is broken and hurting.

It’s taken me a long time to get this. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not bashing achievement and hard work – we need to work hard but perhaps we need to hold achievement a bit more lightly. That’s hard for me – I’m an eldest child and a one on the enneagram – which means I tend to be an insufferable perfectionist (and my husband can tell you I can beat myself up pretty well). What I am saying is that achievement, self-sufficiency and hard work are not the “be all and end all” of life. That’s idolatry and we’re really good at that in our culture.

My work in hospice really taught me a great deal about journeying with people and bringing nothing for that journey. What could I possibly do for a dying person? What could I possibly say? Nothing … at least initially. My patients taught me that just being with them was enough. I didn’t have to be smart or self-sufficient or have credentials and degrees … I just had to show up, hang out, and listen.

Dying people have the healthiest egos of anyone on the planet precisely because they’ve let go of them. They are out of the achievement rat race. They are no longer self-sufficient. That really hit home for me the first time I had to help our nurse change a patient’s diaper – yes, a diaper. We all recoil and think “Oh Lord, don’t let that happen to me” but I have news for you – unless you die suddenly, it will happen to you. We think it would be embarrassing or shame filled … but that patient (and many others thereafter) accepted my help with grace – even saying “thank you” when we finished our work. Achievement and self-sufficiency will pass away – grace filled relationships grounded in humility will not.

Jesus invites us into relationships grounded in humility. So don’t be tempted to think this teaching is another merit system of spiritual achievement or even a condemnation that you haven’t done “enough” for the least among us. Instead, see it as an invitation to go beyond achievement, leave self-sufficiency behind, and learn to be with the last, lost, little, least and lifeless. They have much to give you … but you can’t receive their gifts if you are already full of yourself.

Proper 26 - Year A - October 30, 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Snarky Anglican) — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 16:34:00 +0000

"...do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach."

What in God’s Name is the Son of God thinking? In his teaching to the disciples and the crowds, Jesus tells them to listen to the scribes and the Pharisees and do as they teach but not as they do. This sounds like the old “do as I say, not as I do” admonition which, as any parent knows, is a recipe for leadership disaster. In fact, the phrase “do as I say, not as I do” was coined by 17th century English jurist John Selden in a work published after his death entitled Table Talk. In it, Selden is quoted as saying: “Preachers say: Do as I say, not as I do. But if the physician had the same disease upon him that I have, and he should bid me do one thing, and himself do quite another, could I believe him?” Selden’s question speaks to the importance of the congruity between words and actions.

Jesus seems to say that the Pharisees are not congruent in their words and actions – they do not do what they teach. However, the inference in scripture is that the Pharisees generally do follow their teaching – remember Paul reciting his credentials to the Philippians a few weeks ago? “As to the Law, I was blameless.” Scripture witness seems to show the Pharisees following the Law quite meticulously and in light of Jesus’ other accusations it is likely Jesus is talking about something else.

Jesus’ critique of the religious professionals of his day continues as he speaks of their practices which are being done to “be seen by others.” Actions such as making a big deal out of their religious garb (the phylacteries worn on the head and arms which contained the Shema within them and the fringes on their prayer shawls), taking the seat of honor at public events, and to have others treat them with respect. In essence, Jesus says they are doing this for the wrong reasons – they are self-serving and in it for their egos.

The ritual clothing and distinctive practices of the Pharisees were not inherently wrong. Phylacteries and fringes were intended to draw the mind and heart of an observant Jew back to God. In Roman occupied territory, not only were other religions present but the Romans encouraged a tolerant syncretism which would seek to incorporate the worship of the local deity or deities along side of worshiping the emperor and Roman gods. This syncretism shows up in our culture when people say things like “it really doesn’t matter what you believe because we all worship the same god.” The Jewish answer to that was “No, we don’t all worship the same god” and I would say this is true for Christians today too. So distinctiveness is not a mark of exaltation as being better than as much as it is a mark to help us understand who we are and whose we are – and to respect the very real differences between faiths and cultures.

Unfortunately, distinctiveness can be twisted into being a sign of “better than” whether we want it to be so or not. In the early days of the English Reformation, there was a huge debate about the use of vestments. Known as the “Vestments Controversy,” it pitted bishops who were against the “wearing of popish rags” against those who sought to preserve the traditions of the Church. Bishops who were against the use of vestments argued that the wearing of vestments caused clergy to inappropriately elevate themselves over the laity – an accusation which for some may be true. Bishops who supported the use of vestments argued that clergy were set apart for distinct service – no better than laity, but different than laity – and vestments were a sign of one’s service.

Jesus is teaching his disciples and the crowds about the issue of authenticity. His issue isn’t with the words, or distinctive practices per se – it is about the motivation behind them. If distinctiveness becomes a vehicle for exaltation, then our motivation is not of God. If titles become a means of exercising power over people instead of empowering others, then our motivation is not of God. If we are seeking the justification of our egos instead of setting them aside to serve others, then our motivation is not of God.

Our catholic tradition upholds the importance of self-examination. We do it every week when we confess our sins in worship. We also have the sacrament of reconciliation – also known as confession. Jesus’ teaching today is grounded in honest self-examination and repentance. This rite is important because it calls us to examine our words and actions but more importantly to examine our motivations behind our words and actions. Are my words incongruent with my actions? Are my words or actions based on what’s best for me and my ego or are they seeking the best for the community? Are my words or actions self-serving or God seeking? These are questions each of us must revisit over and over.

Jesus teaches us the paradox that those who are greatest are servants – or as Fr. Richard Rohr says in his latest book Falling Upward, “The way down is the way up.” Only when we let go of our ego need to be special and exalted by others will we be truly free to live for God and for each other.

Faith or Certainty? Which will it be? Proper 14 - Year A

noreply@blogger.com (Snarky Anglican) — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 20:13:00 +0000

As a hospice chaplain, I am called to be present with people whose spiritual journeys are many and varied. My patients run across the spectrum from people who have a deep and abiding faith tradition all the way to atheists. Regardless of their belief systems, everyone seeks meaning in the end of life journey and my role is to journey with them to find that meaning. And every patient has a unique journey and life story.

One of the patients with whom I journeyed was named John. John was an atheist, but not one of the angry “new atheist” types. John was extremely intelligent and had studied cosmology intently and felt that this all could happen without a God. He was tolerant of those who believed in God and expressed his understanding that some people need to believe in God and lean on that belief to find answers or meaning in life. He just didn’t need that. I assured him at my first meeting with him (as I was wearing my black clericals) that I was not there to change his mind or demand conversion – I said, “That’s now how I roll. My function on the team is to accompany him, help him put his affairs in order, support his family and to reflect with him on what brings meaning to his life’s journey.” John was cool with that.

Ironically, my pastoral visits with John were the longest of any of my other patients. I’d arrive at his house around 1:00PM and the next thing you know it would be 5:00 o’clock! John once said, “You know, I always think we’ll have a short visit but it never turns out that way.” John loved to talk about his music collection, his love of science (especially physics and string theory) and his family. At times, John would poke at my faith but I didn’t let it get to me – in fact, we laughed about it quite a bit. He shared with me how he was raised in a strict Calvinistic upbringing that imaged God as a punishing judge. He just couldn’t believe in a God who would predestine some people to be damned regardless of what they did or didn’t do.

John also had a hard time with the whole “God thing” because he was a concrete thinker. He wanted proof and certainty of God’s existence and he could not accept the punishing God of his childhood. At our last visit, we discussed the concept of a God beyond human projections – a God who is, if you will, bigger than any one religion and who embraces all of creation. John said to me, “You know … I could believe in that God. Maybe we need to rescue God from religion.”

We all live in the tension between living by faith and the desire for certainty. This is the tension we find in today’s Gospel reading. Now one of the conventional ways of reading this story of Jesus walking on the water and Peter’s attempt to walk on the water is to focus on Jesus’ words to Peter after being snatched up from a sure drowning – “You of little faith. Why did you doubt?” This could lead us to believe that if only Peter had more faith, he would have surely been able to walk on water too and if he’d only kept his eyes on Jesus, he would have been ok. Now if you walk away from hearing this passage with the message of keeping your focus on Jesus, that’s a good message – nothing wrong with that at all. But today, I want to approach this story from a different angle as a story about the tension between living by faith and the desire for proof.

The story of Jesus walking on the water appears in all four gospels, but only in Matthew do we have Peter stepping out of the boat. Matthew is writing his gospel for Jews who believe Jesus to be the Messiah and so he uses imagery in this story which had deep meaning in the Jewish community. First, Jesus tells the disciples to get into the boat and go to “the other side.” The “other side” of the Sea of Galilee is gentile territory. This would have raised some concerns for the Jewish hearers of Matthew’s gospel – “Wait a minute. The Scriptures say we are not to mix with those bacon-eating gentiles. Why would Jesus do that?” Additionally, the disciples get into the boat at evening and row into this headwind all night long. Night was considered a time when evil spirits came out – a dangerous time to be traveling and most folks would avoid night travel whenever possible. And one more element of danger – the disciples are on the water. Water is indicative of chaos: it cannot be controlled and it can kill you. So Matthew’s audience is feeling the anxiety of the danger of night, going into the unknown on the “other side” and being on the water. And now, Jesus comes out in the fourth watch of the night – sometime between 3 and 6AM – and he’s walking on the water.

This idea of walking on water, or moving on water, is a common image in ancient near east literature. From the Genesis story where the Spirit of God moves on the face of the water (a walking on water image) to the Epic of Gilgamesh from the ancient Sumerians to our gospel stories of Jesus walking on water, the common image of walking on water is that this is something God does but humans cannot do. So when Jesus walks on the water, he is revealing himself as divine – but the disciples think he is a ghost and they are terrified.

In response to the disciples’ collective fear, Jesus responds with what translates literally from Greek into six words: “Have courage! I AM. Fear not!” It’s important to remember that up until the disciples see Jesus walking on the water, there is no mention of fear in this story. These are fishermen in a boat being battered by a headwind - something they had likely experienced before. They were likely tired from rowing against the wind, but they were not afraid until they saw Jesus and mistook him for a ghost.

Jesus’ words are a call not just to courage but to faith. “Have courage! I AM. Fear Not!” calls the disciples not just to be strong and not fear, but again Jesus reveals himself as divine with the words “I AM.” The way it is phrased in Greek would have jogged the memory of Matthew’s community – “I AM” is the same phrase Moses heard from the burning bush on Sinai. Jesus reveals himself as the incarnation of the great I AM. He is Emmanuel – God with us – and his words to the disciples were a call for them to believe that God is with them even in their struggle against the forces of chaos and uncertainty.

But … that’s not quite enough for Peter. He replies, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” Instead of believing Jesus’ words, Peter wants proof: “if it is you.” A similar phrase is used by Satan against Jesus in the wilderness: “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to be turned to bread.” It will also be echoed in the words of the crowd at the cross: “If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.” All of these are demands for proof: “Prove yourself Jesus.” So Jesus tells Peter, “Come.”

Peter sets out of the boat but when he feels the wind he becomes fearful – he’s doing something only God can do – and he begins to sink. When Peter cries out “Lord save me!” he has learned that Jesus is God and Peter is not. When Jesus tells him he has “little faith” perhaps this is a statement about Peter’s demand for proof instead of believing Jesus’ statement: “Have courage! I AM. Fear not!”

Admittedly, there are times when all of us would like some certainty, some proof of God’s existence. There are times I wish God would just write in the sky what Anjel is supposed to do. But certainty and proof are the opposite of faith. If we are certain, there is no need for faith. All of us struggle with storms in our lives and times of chaos and uncertainty: losing a job, an illness, moving to a new town, death of a loved one, tensions in our families. It is in these hard times where we might have trouble trusting Jesus’ words, “Have courage! I AM. Fear not!” I think the image of the disciples who stayed in the boat, continuing the struggle of rowing in the storm is important for us. The disciples continued to struggle together in community. As we face difficulties in our lives, it is important to remember we do not struggle alone – we have community as the Body of Christ. Rather than going it alone as Peter did in his quest for certainty, we can rely on our community to hold us up and help us hear and trust when Jesus says, “Have courage! I AM. Fear not!”

Are you the real thing?

noreply@blogger.com (Snarky Anglican) — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 01:28:00 +0000

One of my favorite Christmas movies is A Christmas Story. Set in the years of WWII, it is about a boy named Ralph Parker and his hope of getting an Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle for Christmas (with the compass in the stock … and this thing which tells time). While this desire for the Red Ryder BB gun occupies the main story line along with the protestation refrain of “You’ll shoot your eye out,” there are a number of subplots in the overall story. One subplot involves Ralphie awaiting the arrival of his Little Orphan Annie Secret Society Decoder Ring for which he had consumed “gallons of Ovaltine” to get. After sending in those Ovaltine labels and checking the mail every day, Ralphie’s decoder ring finally arrives. That evening, he and his brother Randy tune in the family’s radio to listen to the Little Orphan Annie show. At the end of each show, Pierre Andre (the announcer) would give out the secret message for the members of Annie’s Secret Society to decode. Finally Ralphie would get to be in on the message. He writes down the code and takes it to “the only place an eight year old boy could get any privacy” – namely the bathroom – so that he could decode the message. After feverishly working to crack the code (all the while having his little brother pounding on the door to use the only bathroom in the house), Ralphie uncovers the secret message: “Be sure to drink your Ovaltine.” “A crummy commercial?! Son of …” well … never mind (those of you who've seen the movie know how that quote ends!). What makes us laugh about this vignette is that we’ve all had a Ralphie moment just like this. We've all had a time when we set our expectations of a situation or a person very high only to have it come crashing down around us.

In today’s Gospel reading, John the Baptist is having a “Ralphie moment.” Last week's reading was "John the Baptist - the Early Years" where we heard John preaching a very fiery message of repentance and casting an image of the one to come as a Messiah who would come with power and judge the world. He would gather the wheat into the granary and burn the chaff with unquenchable fire! John’s image of this powerful figure who would destroy the wicked and reward the righteous is disquieting on one hand but on the other it’s a rather attractive idea. Let’s be honest with ourselves, we can all look around us and see that the world isn’t right. We see bad things happening – downright evil things happening – all around us. There is something comforting in an image of a Messiah who’s going to come down here, clean up this mess and set things right. This is what John had preached. But now John is in prison and he hears about Jesus’ ministry … and it doesn’t square up with the Messiah image he had been touting.

This Jesus of Nazareth was not acting like the Messiah John expected. He didn't come bursting onto the scene to stick it to the man by confronting the leaders John condemned – the Pharisees and Sadducees. Instead, Jesus was paying attention to the last, lost, little, least, and lifeless – all the marginalized people who in the eyes of the world were “nobodies.” Children, widows, the poor, the sick, the disabled, the dying and dead – all of these people were getting Jesus’ attention and he was giving them hope and a future where before they had none. This wasn’t what John wanted to see. And so John sends his disciples to question Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” In Greek, the statement is a bit more harsh because the word for "another" implies an opposite as in "Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for someone totally different from you?" John wants to know if Jesus is the real thing or an empty promise.

Jesus’ response was to quote the signs of the Messiah from Isaiah: “the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.” Jesus doesn’t give them a neat “yes” or “no” answer. Instead, Jesus puts the ball back in John’s court and tells his disciples to test the authenticity of his ministry by what had been foretold in Hebrew prophecy and what they see and hear about Jesus. Decide for yourselves whether the man and the message are congruent.

The congruency of the promise and the person meet a deep spiritual longing in all of us. We live in a world full of “crummy commercials” of empty promises and hype over substance. We are now living in a time of transition which sociologists call “post-modern” and ecclesiologists (those who study the Church) label as “post-Christendom.” The post-modern/post-Christendom world view stands in contrast to the modern/Christendom one. There is debate about the definition of post-modernism but there are two characteristics which are emerging. First, the post-modern world view carries a deep distrust of institutions as opposed to a modern view which generally trusts institutions. Institutions have a tendency to fail us; however, the modern person will tend to cut the institution some slack where the post-modern won't be as quick to let the institution off the hook.

The second characteristic is the post-modern experiences truth in this world as conditional rather than absolute as the modern does. A modern person would say truth doesn't change - truth is just that ... truth. The post-modern would argue that truth changes over time. Where the modern would quote the Declaration of Independence saying "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal" as an absolute truth, the post-modern would argue that when this was written it only meant white, property owning males and the definition of "all men" has been modified to include more people during our history (a changing face of truth).

I believe much of the polarizing “culture wars” playing out in our country today are a clash between these two fundamental views of modernity and post-modernity: whether one trusts or distrusts institutions and whether one sees truth in this world as absolute or conditional. It's not about liberals versus conservatives as much as it is about moderns and post-moderns. In light of this changing world view between modernity and post-modernity, how does Christianity fit? What does it have to offer? I suggest what Christianity has to offer is something which bridges these two world views by going deeper into the spiritual longing they both have: the longing for something authentic.

Christianity is not about being an institutional religion; it is about a lived relational authenticity: a real relationship with God and with each other. This is precisely the authenticity Jesus offers John and his disciples. It is the authenticity we are to offer the world as the Church – the Body of Christ.

People coming into our church today, this congregation right here, are seeking authenticity and asking a question of us similar to that which John asked of Jesus: “Are you the one or should we wait for another?” or perhaps, “Are you the real thing or should I keep my 7AM tee time on Sundays at Hollow Creek Golf Course?” People want to know if this Church is the one they can count on to be real: the Church which walks the talk of faith, the Church which lives the teachings of Jesus and doesn’t just give them lip service, the Church which cares about the same “nobodies” Jesus cared about … the last, the lost, the little, the least, and the lifeless, a Church which believes eternal life starts now and not just when you die.

Authenticity has always been our spiritual hunger. Christ embodied the realness and fullness of God for our sake and we are called to do the same for the world as the Body of Christ. In a hurting world full of empty hype, broken promises and “crummy commercials” do we have the courage to be the real thing for Christ’s sake?

Advent 2 / St. Nicholas Day 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Snarky Anglican) — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 01:29:00 +0000

“… the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins …”

Two days of observance in the Church calendar have come together this year. It doesn’t happen very often, but today we are observing both the Second Sunday of Advent and the Feast of St. Nicholas. Normally, if a saint’s commemoration falls on a Sunday, the day is moved on the calendar; however, I felt it was particularly appropriate to observe St. Nicholas Day and keep it on December 6th. I did, however, retain the readings for the second Sunday in Advent. At first glance, it might seem a strange contrast to have John the Baptist preaching a “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” and talk about St. Nicholas too. However, the Greek word for repentance is metanoia meaning to change one’s thinking or change your mind. If our observance of St. Nicholas Day today can bring about a change of mind about who Nicholas really is, then I believe we will have a clearer understanding of both the saint we honor and the significance of the coming of Christ at Christmas.

At this time of year, we hear much about St. Nicholas. “Jolly old St. Nicholas, lean your ear this way. Don’t you tell a single soul what I’m going to say. Christmas Eve is coming soon, now you dear old man, whisper what you’ll bring to me, tell me if you can.” “His eyes - how they twinkled! His dimples how merry! His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry! His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow, and the beard of his chin was as white as the snow;” “He had a broad face and a little round belly, that shook, when he laughed like a bowlful of jelly.” Our culture has plenty of images of St. Nicholas but what do they have to do with the real person? Well … absolutely nothing! Popular culture has woven an image and embellished the story of St. Nicholas to the point where he’s barely recognizable – in essence, St. Nicholas has been hijacked and I think it’s time the Church takes him back!

The true story of St. Nicholas begins in the village of Pantara on the southern coast of what is now Turkey in the late third century. His wealthy parents, who raised him to be a devout Christian, died in an epidemic while Nicholas was still young. Obeying Jesus’ words to “sell what you own and give the money to the poor,” Nicholas used his whole inheritance to assist the needy, the sick, and the suffering. He dedicated his life to serving God and was made Bishop of Myra while still a young man. Myra is mentioned once in the Bible in the 27th chapter of Acts where Luke tells of Paul’s journey to Rome and says, “After we had sailed across the open sea off Cilicia and Pamphylia, we put in at Myra in Lycia.” Bishop Nicholas became known throughout region of Lycia for his generosity to those in need, his love for children, and as Myra was a safe harbor along a rocky coastline he is also known for his concern for sailors and ships.

Under the Roman Emperor Diocletian, who ruthlessly persecuted Christians, Bishop Nicholas suffered for his faith, was exiled and imprisoned. When the Emperor Constantine came to power and halted the persecution of Christians in 313, Nicholas was released from prison.

Being a bishop in Myra in the early part of the fourth century, he no doubt encountered the Arian controversy – a view which was eventually deemed heretical that Jesus was not divine, but was only human. There is evidence he attended the Council of Nicaea in 325 which would take up the Arian controversy and led to the writing of the Nicene Creed. There is a source which tells of Nicholas losing his temper at the Council of Nicaea. Nicholas was so angry at an advocate of Arianism that, overcome by apostolic zeal, he struck his opponent (there is a fresco of this incident at the Soumela Monastery in Turkey). Not everyone appreciated this blow for Arianism, and the presidency of the Council decided that Nicholas was no longer allowed to wear the ornaments of a bishop. Therefore, Nicholas is shown without mitre on Greek icons. The fact that this embarrassing anecdote survives lends it some credibility and causes us to remember that Nicholas was very human. After all, how would you like to remembered: for being generous or smacking your opposition?
Nicholas died December 6, 343 in Myra and was buried in his cathedral church. In 1087, after the village of Myra fell under the control of the Muslim Saracens, his remains were transported to Bari, Italy where he was buried in the Basilica of St. Nicholas.

Many of the legends surrounding St. Nicholas come to us through oral tradition. One enduring story tells of a poor man with three daughters. In those days a young woman’s father had to offer her prospective husband something of value—a dowry. The larger the dowry, the better the chance that a young woman would find a good husband. Without a dowry, a woman was unlikely to marry. This poor man’s daughters had no dowries and were therefore destined to be sold into slavery. Mysteriously, on three different occasions, a bag of gold appeared in their home-providing the needed dowries. The bags of gold were said to have been tossed through an open window. As the story of Nicholas moved into northern climates, where windows would be covered by December 6th, the story was modified to say that Nicholas tossed the bags of gold down the … chimney.

The story of Nicholas’ generosity and the other legends which grew up around him captured the imagination of the Church to the point that by the middle ages, he was as well known as Jesus and the Virgin Mary. In England, over 400 churches bore his name and while the Reformation attempted to remove the veneration of saints from the church, it couldn’t quite get rid of St. Nicholas. As our ancestors came to America, they brought stories of him under the name of Pere Noel, San Nicola, and Sinter Klaas … the latter of which would be morphed into the name Santa Claus.

The true story of St. Nicholas tells of a devout man whose aim in life was not to point to himself, but rather to Jesus Christ. He would be shocked and dismayed to see how our popular culture turned him into the focus of Christmas rather than the Christ child. One definition of Sin is to “miss the mark.” We miss the mark if we make Santa Claus and gift giving the sole focus of Christmas. From this we are called to repent – to change our minds. St. Nicholas, beloved and revered for centuries by the Church, lived a life marked by compassion and generosity which reflected the Light of Jesus Christ. To reclaim St. Nicholas for the Church and celebrate his feast day today, rightly changes our hearts and minds so that we may prepare ourselves for the real gift of Christmas – the gift of God’s only Son, Jesus Christ. Amen.

"It's all in how you ask the question" - The Feast of Christ the King 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Snarky Anglican) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 21:15:00 +0000

Allow me to be the first one to say, “Happy New Year!” and no, this isn’t some sort of Episcopal oddity. Today is the last day of the Church year, the Feast of Christ the King. So for the Church, this is like New Year’s Eve and next Sunday we will begin a new year with the season of Advent. Christ the King Sunday is a day where we pause to ponder endings and beginnings.

I don’t know how many of you noticed, but since All Saints Day, our Sunday readings have taken us back to Holy Week but instead of focusing on what happened to Jesus, our gospel readings are about what Jesus said and did during Holy Week. Today, we are back at Good Friday with Jesus being interrogated by Pontius Pilate, the Roman procurator appointed by Caesar to govern Judea. If we read this passage from John’s Gospel slowly, we see that while Pilate asks Jesus several questions, Jesus does not answer them. Pilate’s first interrogatory is, “Are you the king of the Jews?” Jesus answers his question with a question, “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” … in other words, “Are you thinking for yourself or merely repeating what others told you?” – a rather cheeky response for a man whose life hangs in the balance! Then Pilate asks, “What have you done?” and Jesus again does not answer the question – he answers a different question: “From where does your authority come?” Pilate asks, “So you are a king?” Jesus answers without answering again: “You say that I am.” Finally, Pilate asks, “What is truth?” and Jesus is silent.

Pilate’s philosophical question “What is truth?” has been asked down through the ages. The word “truth,” in both the English and Greek languages is a noun. Now I won’t launch into Grammar Rock, but we all remember that a noun is a person, place or thing and “truth” would fall into the category of “thing.” Because it is a noun, a thing, we tend to believe that truth is a thing that we can somehow get our arms around … or at least get our minds around … a thing to be grasped … something we can hold onto. This is the image we have when we ask “What is truth?”

There’s a problem with this image of truth as a thing and indeed with Pilate’s question. When we see truth as a “what,” a thing, we can tend to fall into two main ways of understanding truth. On the one hand, we can fall into fundamentalism. We are familiar with this term from a religious perspective but I want to address fundamentalism in all its forms: political fundamentalism, nationalistic fundamentalism, cultural fundamentalism, and so on. Fundamentalism is the belief that we possess the truth and anyone else who has a differing interpretation or idea is just plain wrong. We see this in the Church when one interpretation of Scripture is held up as being the “truth” and anyone else who sees it differently is labeled apostate or heretic. We see it in the political arena when the left labels the right as “wing nuts” and the right labels the left as “socialists.” Fundamentalists make no space for others to express differing ideas because the fundamentalist knows that truth is a thing they possess, and those who don’t agree obviously don’t know the truth.

We can fall into another kind of flawed understanding when we image truth as a “what,” a thing. It goes something like this: “I have worked out the truth of my life. You might have a different truth and I respect your right to have that, but you have no right to impose your truth on me.” While on the surface it appears more tolerant than fundamentalism, this privatized type of truth is actually intolerant of anyone who challenges my understanding of truth … because it’s mine and I know what truth is … for me! There is an illustration of this kind of privatized possession of truth in a book entitled Resident Aliens which I have been revisiting this past week. The book is written by United Methodist Bishop William Willimon and my favorite cantankerous theological curmudgeon Stanley Hauerwas (I consider Hauerwas the grain of sand in the oyster of my faith). Bishop Willimon tells the story of a confirmation class he was teaching where he paired up the confirmands with mentors and he put together a 14 year old young man named Max with a 30-something fellow named Joe. Joe was a young professional who had a girlfriend but really hadn’t “settled down.” Pastor Willimon thought this would be a good opportunity for Joe to step up to a new level of responsibility and that the relationship would be mutually beneficial. Joe took on his new responsibility eagerly and gave Max his phone number and the address to his apartment. He told Max to feel free to call or stop by sometime and they could go out and get something to eat. Well, Max took Joe up on his offer and went over to his apartment one Saturday afternoon. Joe answered the door and was a bit annoyed at Max’s timing. Max quickly figured out why when he saw Joe’s girlfriend was there and, well let’s just say it was obvious they weren’t watching television! At 14, Max knew what was going on and he told Joe that he had a girlfriend too and maybe it was time he and his girlfriend did the same thing Joe and his girlfriend were doing. Joe blew up and told Max that he couldn’t do that! Max said, “Why not? If it’s good enough for you, it should be good enough for me.” Joe shot back with, “You’re only 14! Things are different when you get to be my age.” Max replied, “Oh yeah? Well the church says you’re not supposed to do this until you are married!” Hmm … imagine that! Joe, who was holding on to his private truth about what was ok for him but not for Max, was not prepared to be held accountable to the gospel truth … especially coming out of the mouth of a 14 year old.

Whether one tries to possess truth as a thing and either privatizes it or slips into fundamentalism, both images are wrong and bound in Sin. While their approaches differ, what they hold in common is that truth becomes something centered in my own ego: “I have the truth and you are don’t” or “I have my truth and I don’t want to hear yours.” Both break relationship by centering the truth on our own egotistical understanding and shutting everyone else out.

I am persuaded that Pilate’s question, our question, “What is truth?” frames truth as a “what,” a thing to be possessed and defended and sends us down a path that does not lead to God … because it’s the wrong question. So what is the question? Interestingly, it’s found in Pilate’s question … as found in the original Greek text. The question Pilate asks, “Ti estin alathea” is rightly translated “What is truth?” which works linguistically. But the word ti can also be translated as “who” … “Who is truth?” I believe THIS IS THE QUESTION! Who is truth? Jesus Christ is truth! The man standing right in front of Pilate, the King of the Jews, is truth! John even tells us this at the very beginning of his gospel:

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God … And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.

When we ask “Who is truth?” and are able to see the incarnate truth of Jesus Christ, we can let go of the false image that we can ever really possess truth. It is less a thing to be grasped and more of a mystery into which we live. But where do we start? We begin with Jesus’ command in the 13th chapter of John:

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.

Jesus’ command to love one another as I have loved you is the bedrock of Christian community. When we love one another as Christ loved us God gives us grace to be completely honest with ourselves, each other and God. Bit by bit, living in a loving Christian community allows us to peel away the layers of the false self – the self that likes to think it can possess “truth.” As this false self diminishes we become more willing to hear others when their interpretations and experiences differ from ours. We become less defensive when our friends in the Church lovingly hold us accountable to the greater truth of Jesus Christ. The Christian community of love empowers us to be more honest, more authentic … more real. I truly believe the life’s journey of each Christian is not to become more spiritual, but rather more human. French Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin once said, “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.” Our aim is to become authentic, honest, and fully human – to be who we really are in God. This is the journey we are on as Christians and into which we welcome four new companions as they are baptized today and those who are making their commitment to enter this community we know as Calvary.

Changing our focus from “What is truth?” to embrace the real question “Who is truth?” and answer “Jesus Christ is truth” is not a one-time event. It is a process … a journey … the journey of a lifetime to follow Christ the King whose power working in us transforms us into who we really are in God. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Proper 24 - Year B - James and John ... or The Office?

noreply@blogger.com (Snarky Anglican) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 18:13:00 +0000

In a recent episode of “The Office,” long time sales representative Jim Halpert gets promoted to be the co-manager of the fictional Dunder Mifflin Paper Company in Scranton, PA. Now for those of you unfamiliar with the program, Michael Scott (played by Steve Carell) is the perennially clueless yet narcissistic boss and Jim Halpert is more of the quiet and thoughtful type. When Jim gets promoted to be the co-manager in charge of day to day operations and Michael is given charge of the “big picture,” there is immediate squabbling about what constitutes day to day versus big picture. This gets especially complicated when the CEO tells them they only have a small amount of money for raises this year and as co-managers they have to decide who gets raises and who doesn’t. Interspersed with their difficulties in cooperating and their bumbling process of deciding who will get a raise and who won’t is the egomaniacal sales rep Dwight Schute who is out to destroy Jim for getting the promotion he felt he deserved.

While this show is a satirical look at the foolishness of inter-office relationships and politics, it seemingly echoes today’s gospel reading about James and John’s request to sit at Jesus’ right and left when he comes in glory … and the response of the other disciples when this request for a “promotion” is discovered.

In the past few weeks, we’ve been hearing about what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. Beginning with our reading on September 13th (Proper 19) where Jesus tells the disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” After this, we hear of the disciples bickering about who would be greatest in the kingdom after Jesus tells them about his impending persecution, death and resurrection. Jesus tells them in response, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Jesus tells the rich young man to sell everything he has, give the money to the poor and then come follow him and ends that teaching with, “But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.” And today’s reading follows Jesus’ third prediction of his being handed over to the authorities, condemned to death, killed and on the third day rise again. Clearly, Jesus is painting a picture of discipleship characterized by giving and serving others rather than acquiring and lording power over others.

But, Mark consistently portrays the disciples … well … as clueless as Michael Scott! In spite of what Jesus is telling them about the real meaning of discipleship, today we hear about James and John taking Jesus aside to ask for a place of honor at his right and left hand when he comes in glory. Jesus immediately tells them they don’t have a CLUE what they are asking! They are seeking traditional positions of honor and power while Jesus’ mission and ministry are the opposite of their cultural understanding of these terms. Jesus in essence asks them if they are able to step up to the plate and go through what he is experiencing and will experience. They reply that they are ready … but we are left wondering if they really know what they are getting themselves into! Jesus promises that they will receive the same cup and baptism, but he is unable to promise them the positions at his right or left – evidently there are even some things that are out of Jesus’ “pay grade.” Interestingly, the only other place where Mark uses the terms “on his right” and “on his left” is when he refers to the position of the two thieves who were crucified with Jesus. Perhaps even glory looks very different from what James and John envision.

When the disciples hear about what James and John have requested, they get angry. I’m not convinced this was some sort of righteous anger as much as it may have been jealousy – “Who do they think they are asking for a promotion?” I can imagine they were kind of annoyed that they hadn’t thought of asking for this first. Jesus responds to this indignation with a definition of divine greatness: “… whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.” Life is not about the acquisition of power to rule over others – it’s about right use of power to serve others.
One of the things that make this story so uncomfortable is that we can see ourselves in it. The desire to get ahead, to get the promotion, to climb the ladder of success, to acquire possessions and fame and glory are as much the values of our secular world today as they were in the first century. It’s the stuff of the rat race and, as someone once said to me, “No matter how long you run the rat race in the end … you’re still a rat.” Jesus, in his teaching about true divine greatness, offers a way out of the rat race – give it up and serve others. But how do we even begin to give it up?

I believe the answer begins in one word: love. Our service to others needs to begin and end in love. As you seek to answer God’s call to serve in the days and weeks ahead, check your motivation. Is it love, or something else? Divine servanthood is always motivated by love.

When we ground ourselves in God’s love we can be intentional in noticing God’s call to serve through even the most ordinary of tasks. Whether it is fixing a meal for your family, raking the leaves in the yard, or doing laundry – all can be acts of loving service to others and so can be divine service blessed by God. Seventeenth century Carmelite monk Brother Lawrence captured this ideal in his treatise The Practice of the Presence of God. He found that the shortest way to go straight to God was by a continual exercise of love and doing all things for God’s sake – whether that was peeling potatoes or caring for the 100 pairs of sandals worn by the brothers. Every task, no matter how great or small, is to be done for the love of God.

Finally, individual acts of loving service need to be brought to the Church in order for it to become a servant community. Karl Barth spoke of the Church as a “herald of the gospel” – a servant community which proclaims by word and deed the saving acts of Jesus Christ throughout the world. A servant community goes out into the world and serves others for the sake of God’s love for the world, not for the sake of itself. Being a servant church can only happen when we commit our time, our talent and our treasure to being a herald of the gospel.

This all may seem a bit overwhelming to us; after all, if James and John who were with Jesus and heard his teachings firsthand didn’t get it, how can we possibly live up to the measure of divine greatness through servanthood? Fortunately, Jesus’ message ends with hope: “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Jesus came to give his live as a ransom and free us from our captivity to the secular world’s values of selfishness, greed, and abusive power. In Christ, we are freed from this rat race for a life of loving service to others and although we may fall short in our efforts, Jesus’ death on the cross redeems us all. Amen.

Rogation Sunday - 6 Easter - May 17, 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Snarky Anglican) — Fri, 22 May 2009 17:25:00 +0000

A voice was crying in the wilderness … ok actually it was from the back seat of my Scion xB as we were driving home.

“Mom? I have a question for you.” It was my oldest daughter Claire, who at the time was 10 years old. She sounded a little hesitant, so I said, “Sure honey, what is it?”

“Well … is everything in the Bible true?” ...

Oh boy! One minute you're driving home and the next minute you're on the road to a profound moment in parenting! Kids never seem to give you a "heads up" that something like this is coming, do they? Whether or not I was ready was irrelevant, her question was a good one, an important one … and a courageous one. It took a lot of chutzpah for her to ask her seminarian mother if everything in the Bible is true. But I knew there was something behind it, so I said, “That’s an excellent and important question that deserves more than just a quick answer. But I’m wondering what prompted you to ask me this. Can you tell me more?”

“Well, you know I went to camp last week and when I was there, one of my counselors said that everything in the Bible was true. So I raised my hand and asked him, ‘So do you believe that the universe was created in six twenty-four hour days and Adam and Eve were real people?’ And he said, ‘Yes. The Bible is God’s word and God doesn’t lie. If the Bible says it happened that way, it happened that way.’”

Now I must let you know that this young man was a graduate student at an evangelical Christian institution, so his more literalistic approach didn’t completely surprise me. But his answer wasn’t really sufficient for my 10 year old. Her hand went up again and she said, “Well, if that’s true, how you account for dinosaurs? The fossil evidence says they were around for millions of years before people and that doesn’t make sense if the world was created in six days.”

I thought, “Way to go Claire! Play that dinosaur card!” but I asked, “So what did he say to that?”

“He said if I didn’t sit down and be quiet, he’d send me to the camp director to talk this over with her.”

“So what did you do?”

“I sat down and shut up ‘cause I didn’t want to talk it over with her.”

“Smart move. There’s an old saying, ‘You gotta know when to hold ‘em and know when to fold ‘em’ and you knew when to let it go.”

But this encounter left her with the question: Is everything in the Bible true?

It may seem odd for me to talk about what the truth of Biblical witness means on Rogation Sunday where we traditionally focus on our relationship with creation; however, given the impact of global climate change on God’s creation, I believe it is more important than ever to find a way forward which integrates the truth of scientific discovery with the truth of Biblical witness. But to do this, we must first ask the same question Pilate asked of Jesus, “What is truth?”

It has only been in relatively recent history that our cultural definition of truth has been tightly bound to factuality. In this paradigm, if something is “true” it must be “fact.” It further develops to say if something is fact it also must be true. This view of truth largely comes from science, a discipline built on what is factual, observable, replicable, and measurable in our world. We are the product of a scientific age which has blessed us in countless ways, but its interpretive lens has narrowed our definition of truth so as to seemingly be at odds with the Bible.

The problem with defining truth as only what is factual is that it fails to give us the full spectrum of what truth encompasses. It’s as if we could picture truth as a rainbow, but then we decide to ignore all the colors except red … and then we say red becomes the definition of what a rainbow is. Pretty silly, right? It is this narrow definition of truth which on the one hand can make hard scientists want to throw out the Scriptures as irrelevant and on the other hand make Biblical literalists want to ignore science as “Godless.” Both are falling into the same trap of narrowly defining truth.

Our pre-scientific ancestors who wrote the Biblical accounts did not approach the holy story with this narrow bandwidth description of truth. In their world, truth was not limited to “just the facts ma’am” but instead included story, metaphor, image, symbol and even sacrament. They saw the whole spectrum, the rainbow, of what truth is. I am persuaded that recapturing this broader definition of truth as something more than mere fact is at the heart of reconciling the truth of scientific discovery and our faith in the truth of the Bible. But how was I going to make sense of that to my 10 year old in the back seat?

I told Claire, “Truth is a pretty deep concept. Truth is more than just facts, but sometimes we fall into the trap of thinking that truth is only facts.” At this point, I thought I’d use an illustration that made more sense to her. “You read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Remember what happened towards the end when Professor Quarles (who was overcome with evil) touched Harry? What happened to him?”

“He disintegrated, Mom.”

“Right! And then Harry wakes up in the infirmary at Hogwart’s School and Dumbledore is sitting on his bed explaining what happened: What did Dumbledore tell Harry about why Professor Quarles disintegrated?”

“He disintegrated because Harry had love in him.”

“Right! So … is it true that love conquers evil?”

“Yeah!”

“Right … but … Professor Quarles isn’t a real person … and Dumbledore and Harry aren’t real people either. But was the story true?”

“Yes!”

“So yes, the Bible too is true, but it is more than just facts. I believe the creation story of Genesis says a lot of true things about God creating everything and how it was good, but Adam and Eve don’t have to be real historic people to make it true. And maybe God’s first words weren’t, ‘Let there be light.’ Maybe God just said, ‘BANG!’”

“So my counselor was right – everything in the Bible is true.”

“Yes honey, he was right.”

“And I was right about the dinosaurs too, huh Mom?”

“Yes you were … and the Lord God made them all.”

Amen.

Epiphany 6 - February 15, 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Snarky Anglican) — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 14:52:00 +0000

If you had told me back in 2001 when I started my journey towards ordination that I would be where I am today, I wouldn’t have believed you. See I had it all planned out, yessirree! I was going to attend a good Episcopal seminary, probably VTS. After that, I would likely be called to be an assistant at a program sized parish for a few years and later I would seek a call to be the rector of a large pastoral to program sized congregation. Yep, that’s how it would all happen, right?

Well, not exactly. Instead of going to VTS, I ended up going to a Lutheran seminary (and I received an excellent education there!). And instead of a full-time call to be an assistant rector somewhere, my first call out of seminary was to close a congregation. That sure wasn’t in the plan. It also wasn’t part of the plan to face unemployment before the first anniversary of my ordination. And it wasn’t in the plan that I would end up serving a Methodist church part-time because there are no full-time calls open in the diocese. No, that wasn’t going to happen! I had it all planned out, you see?

It’s said that we make plans, and God laughs. I guess I’ve made God ROFLOL (that’s “rolling on the floor laughing out loud” for those of you not familiar with texting lingo). Things don’t always work out the way we think they will, but that doesn’t mean we don’t think about outcomes or get emotionally invested in how we think things should be.

Naaman had that problem. He was a powerful man, very important general to the King of Aram, but he had leprosy. Now leprosy was a catch all term for a lot of skin diseases and we really don’t know what Naaman had, but leprosy was feared and if you could find a cure, you’d definitely want to get it. Naaman’s wife has a Hebrew servant girl who tells her it’s too bad Naaman isn’t in Israel because there’s a prophet there who would cure him of his leprosy. Eventually, Naaman makes his way to Elisha’s house and gets pretty annoyed when the prophet merely sends word through his messenger to go wash seven times in the Jordan and he’d be clean. Elisha also knows that the healing of leprosy isn’t about him having special powers, but is about the power of God alone to heal. But Naaman doesn’t quite get it, so he blows up. “I thought that for me he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy!” Whoa, wait a minute … hold the phone. His wife’s servant said there is a prophet who could cure him of his leprosy. She didn’t say anything about some elaborate ritual he would do to bring about this cure! But somewhere between hearing about this cure and his arrival at Elisha’s doorstep, Naaman has developed this elaborate liturgy about how Elisha would cure him. The prophet would come out? Stand and call on the name of the Lord his God? Wave his hand over the spot? Wow! That’s an elaborate liturgy worthy of an Episcopalian! Naaman is not only invested in a definite outcome of receiving a cure, but he has also concocted the exact process by which it would happen!

Now the leper in Mark’s story has a very different approach. This healing story begins a series of vignettes in Mark portraying Jesus as a crosser of social and legal boundaries. But we must recognize that the leper actually violates the boundary first. In the Levitical codes, a leper was not supposed to engage anyone. They were to walk with their hand over their upper lip and cry out “unclean, unclean” as they came near anyone so that people could avoid them. Instead, this leper approaches Jesus, not with a cry of “unclean, unclean,” but with a cry bidding Jesus to come to him. The verb parakaleo means to “come along side.” It’s the word from which we get the term Paraclete. This leper invites Jesus to come along side him … and Jesus does. He then says, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” Or, in the AAV (that’s “Anjel’s Authorized Version … not available in stores), “You can cleanse me, if you want to.”

The key to his statement is in the “if.” We only have one word for “if” in English, but the Greeks had two different ones: ei and ean. Ei was the “if of certainty” as in, “If I touch a hot stove, I will burn my hand.” We know the outcome, it’s a no brainer. Ean, on the other hand, is called the “if of uncertainty” as in “If I win the lottery, what would I do with the money?” That’s a very uncertain if! It is this latter type of “if” we find in the leper’s words and it is followed by a form of the verb to choose, wish, will or desire which also suggests an uncertain outcome. What we can make of this is that the leper is not invested in a specific outcome; he isn’t taking this healing for granted as a done deal at all. Unlike Naaman who is highly invested in how it should all turn out and exactly how it will go down, this leper is actually making a faith statement. He says he knows Jesus has the power to cleanse him regardless of whether Jesus chooses to exercise that power or not. If the AAV ever gets published, I’d probably render it as, “You have the power to make me clean. Regardless of whether you want to or not, you have the power to make me clean.” Jesus responds by being moved with compassion, accepting the boundary crossing first proposed by the leper, and heals him.

In the season of Epiphany, the focus is on the question, “Who is Jesus?” In the case of the leper in Mark, Jesus is the one with the power to cleanse, regardless of whether he desires to exercise his power or not. Unlike Naaman, this leper doesn’t get invested in the outcome or a specific process. This is the tension we live in: how do we have a vision of what or how things should be and yet holding it lightly enough to let God do what needs to be done even if it does not match how we think it should happen.

The Christian life is an adventure and there are no guaranteed outcomes short of the fullness of a resurrected life in God. What that will look like and how it will go down is mystery. Letting go of prescribed outcomes and preconceived ideas of how things should happen is what it means to grow in our faith.

Who is Jesus? He is the one with the power to cleanse, the power to make us whole and who promises and abundant life. Our faith challenge is to trust this power and let go of our assumptions of how it will all work out. Amen.

Funeral Sermon for The Hon. Herb Rollins - 1/23/09

noreply@blogger.com (Snarky Anglican) — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 21:58:00 +0000

I was honored to deliver the sermon at the funeral of the Honorable Herbert Rollins who died on January 20, 2008. He was a beloved member of our Frederick community and devoted member of Calvary United Methodist.

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.”

Poet and Anglican priest John Donne penned these famous words in his Meditation 17 almost 400 years ago while he battled a chronic illness which eventually claimed his life. He is right in saying “any man’s death” anyone’s death diminishes us. And how much more true it is when the man is Herb Rollins. When we consider the depth and breadth of his impact on us and our community, I think it’s fair to say his death diminishes all of us because he was involved with all of us. And yet, the converse of this is also true – we are all tremendously blessed to have known Herb as a friend and companion on our earthly journey.

Herb was a child of God; loving husband, father and grandfather; active church member; veteran; lawyer; judge; hunting buddy; chorale member; mentor; friend … I could go on, but Herb would have been uncomfortable with that. He wasn’t one to “toot” his own horn or over polish the apple. Even in his obituary (which he wrote) he didn’t want it all to be about himself, so he took the time to praise his colleagues and say how proud he was of your accomplishments. Over the past several days, his family, friends and colleagues have shared so many wonderful remembrances that I frankly wondered how a preacher like me could provide an appropriate summation to a life so richly lived. Fortunately I didn’t have to because Judge Theresa Adams provided one to me on Tuesday during my visit with the family. When she came to express her condolences on hearing the news about Herb, Judge Adams said, “What a lovely, lovely man.” That said it all – he was a lovely, lovely man.

While I had heard much about Herb (who around here hadn’t?), I only had the privilege of meeting him a month ago. When I visited him at the hospital, he was already hosting a guest! I told him I didn’t want to intrude, but he reached out to shake my hand and welcomed me with a warm smile and bright eyes. Even on the day when he received the hard news that his cancer was back, he was still able to welcome me. The same was true last Friday when I visited him at home and brought him Holy Communion. He welcomed me with grace and hospitality. He was so quick to express his gratitude for all the visitors he had and how much everyone was doing for him that I was reminded of the 14th century German theologian and mystic Meister Eckhart who said, “If the only prayer you ever uttered was ‘thank you,’ it would be enough.” Herb prayed that prayer often. He was truly thankful for all of you and for everything God had given him.

This lovely life of grace, hospitality and thanksgiving was a testimony to the fact that Herb knew both who he was and, more importantly, whose he was. His public vocation to serve as an attorney and judge as well as his more private vocations as husband, father and friend were all built on the foundation of his faith in the God who created him and his Lord Jesus Christ who redeemed him. That faith infused him with the Holy Spirit and gave him a sense of purpose, guided his ethics, and gave him that innate sense of fairness he tried to apply in his life and his courtroom. As Scott Rolle said in the newspaper interview this week, you may not have always agreed with Herb but, “You knew if you went before him, you were going to get a fair shake.”

In the words of Psalm 84 which Judge Adams just read, “No good thing will the LORD withhold from those who walk with integrity.” By God’s grace and his faith, Herb walked with integrity and there is no doubt that he heard the words of his Lord and Savior saying, “Well done good and faithful servant! Enter into the joy of your Master.”

In his 2nd letter to the Corinthians, Paul says, “For we know that if our earthly house, the tent we live in, is dismantled, we have a building from God, a house not built by human hands that is eternal in the heavens.” Paul compares our earthly bodies to tents – temporary and fragile dwellings which are easily destroyed. But he also speaks the promise of Christ, “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?” God has prepared for each of us that permanent dwelling, not built by human hands, eternal in the heavens which will never die. This is the resurrected life Herb now enjoys in full communion with the Lord.

We too are entering a resurrected life with Herb because our relationship with him is not over. It is forever changed, but it is not ended. In the days and weeks to come, each of us will enter into a new relationship with Herb. Whether it’s being outside in the garden and seeing a beautiful flower that reminds you of him, or watching a sunset in Florida where he loved to visit, or seeing something absurdly funny and laughing to yourself about what Herb would have said about the situation, or struggling over a difficult case and without warning coming to an insight that would have made Herb proud – all of these will happen as you come to know him in a new way in his resurrected life.

In the same Meditation 17, John Donne describes resurrection in a way that I think a judge or attorney would understand and appreciate. He uses the metaphor of books and if there’s one thing that pastors and lawyers have in common, it’s a passion for books. Donne wrote:

“… all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God’s hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another.”

Amen.

Epiphany 2 - January 18, 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Snarky Anglican) — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 02:40:00 +0000

“I know how God talks to you Mommy.” Erin was all of 4 years old when she decided to explain this to me. “Really? Tell me about how God talks to you.” “Well, God talks to your heart. It’s like when you are talking to your friend on the phone and your friend says something in your ear, and then your ear takes that to your brain and your brain takes it to your heart and your heart takes it to God.” So far, so good. “And then, God talks to your heart and your heart takes that to your brain and then your brain takes it to your mouth so you can say something to your friend.” At that point, I was wondering why I was in seminary and not her!

In truth, I think she had it right, but I’ve found as I get older, things get more complicated. Hearing God’s voice can be hard in the midst of competing and conflicting messages. As I’ve aged, I’ve found that God also talks to us through other people – especially through our faith community.

Two of our readings, the Hebrew text and the New Testament, are about ways God calls us. In the first reading, the boy Samuel gets a direct call from God – God is speaking to his heart and his heart took it to his brain and his brain thought that the voice came from Eli the Temple priest. Samuel didn’t know God’s voice and didn’t realize God would call him directly. Samuel needed the assistance of the older priest to help him understand what was happening. This is true for us too – it takes the input of others to help you make sense out of God’s call.
In the reading from John, Jesus calls Philip directly; however, it is Philip who calls Nathaniel. Philip tells him we’ve found the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth. Nathaniel’s response was less than enthusiastic in fact it was downright snarky: “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” But Philip doesn’t try to argue or get snarky in return … he merely says, “Come and see.” Jesus greets Nathaniel as “the Israelite in whom there is no deceit.” What he means is, Nathaniel is honest and transparent. He may be wrong, but he’s going to call it like it is. Once Nathaniel hears this from Jesus, he realizes he is fully known by the Lord and this leads to his proclamation that Jesus is the “Son of God, the King of Israel.”

We all have a call from God to a particular vocation. Theologian Frederich Buechner calls vocation that place where your deepest desire meets the world’s greatest needs. But our calls come both from God directly and through the voices of the community and our friends. When we are living fully into our calls - our vocations - we are more fully the people God created us to be. We become more real. And as we become more real, we are more able to reach out to others who do not know God.

This weekend we commemorate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. King was a powerful pastor, teacher and preacher. He was a scholar who wrote his doctoral dissertation on the works of theologian Paul Tillich. Dr. King could have stayed at the Ebenezer Baptist Church and had a successful career. He could have taught theology as a professor with his doctorate. But we all know that his deepest desire was to work for social justice. His work for social justice began with fighting segregation and working for civil rights. But many forget that he also was a peace activist who vociferously protested the Vietnam War and fought the issue of poverty. The former action put him at odds with the leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference who felt he was taking his eyes off the prize. But Dr. King saw the issues of poverty, war, violence and segregation as all interrelated social evils which could not be fought piecemeal. He heard God’s call, not just from God through the Scriptures, but also through his friends like Rosa Parks, Ralph Abernathy, and Jesse Jackson.

On Tuesday, we will witness an historic event when Barack Obama is inaugurated as president. Barack went to Harvard law school. He was the first African American editor of the Harvard Law Review. He could have taken his degree and credentials and gone to work for a prestigious law firm or corporation. But his call – his vocation – was to return to Chicago and fight for the rights of those who had been oppressed through community organizing. He listened to God’s call which came both directly through his faith community and through the voices of those who needed the help he could give them.

God’s call comes through our faith, our community and our friends. That call can come at any time – as Samuel showed us, God’s call isn’t just for grown ups! Where is God calling you? Where does your greatest desire connect with the world’s deepest needs?

Christmas Eve 2007

noreply@blogger.com (Snarky Anglican) — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 14:54:00 +0000

Christmas Eve 2007
Gathered by Christ Episcopal Mission
Buckeystown, MD

I’ve been listening to some tracks from a band called Over the Rhine. I’d never heard of this band until I read about them on the blogger site RevGalBlogPals. Evidently, this duet has quite a local following in their native town of Cincinnati, Ohio (“Over the Rhine” is a reference to a downtown neighborhood in Cincinnati founded by German immigrants). OTR, as the band is known by their fans, has a new Christmas CD out called Snow Angels, which you can hear through their web site. In it, they reinterpret the classic carol, O Little Town of Bethlehem. Their version opens with the familiar first verse of the carol, but continues on in a very different tone:

The lamp lit streets of Bethlehem,
we walk now through the night.
There is no peace in Bethlehem,
there is no peace in sight.
The wounds of generations
are most too deep to heal
a scarlet timeworn miracle
and make it seem surreal.

This is the stark reality of Bethlehem, isn’t it? “How still we see thee lie” seems to be more of a wish for this town than the reality it ever has known. Bethlehem, and Palestine for that matter, has always been caught at a cross road. In the ancient world, it was bound on the north by the great empires of Greece and Rome, to the south by Egypt, and to the east by the empires of Assyria, Babylon and Persia. At one time or another, Palestine and Bethlehem were overrun by the occupying forces of these major world powers. Bethlehem has always known conflict.

That was certainly the case 2,000 years ago when a dirt poor, unwed teenage mother and her fiancé entered the town on the order of an occupying force’s unfunded government mandate to be counted in a census … no doubt so the government could raise their taxes. They arrive in Bethlehem only to find they can’t get a decent room. Obviously they didn’t have the shekels to grease the palm of the local innkeeper for better digs, so they end up in the barn loft with the animals and the other poor people who couldn’t get into the inn either. Oh sure, they might have been able to stay with relatives, but the shame of sticking by his pregnant girlfriend likely put some stress between Joseph and his extended family – would you want to have to explain the situation to your relatives?

Yet, as the prophet Isaiah had predicted, God was going to do a new thing. Oh sure, God was … well … God. This God who formed the foundations of the world could have come in great glory and light and power and special effects which would make Hollywood seem pale in comparison. But instead of doing the predictable thing, God came in a new way – as a helpless, powerless, poor, marginalized baby. And over 2,000 years later, we are still trying to understand what this means.

What does it mean that Christ was born 2,000 years ago? What relevance does this have for us, right here, in Adamstown, Buckeystown, Urbana, and all the other little towns where we live? If we freeze this story in time, we can be tempted to turn it into something that seems surreal and disconnected from us. So what does it mean for us?

Ironically, one of the best responses to this question comes to us from our past too. From the 13th century to be exact, in the words of a German Christian mystic named Johannes Eckhart – Meister Eckhart. I was introduced to Meister Eckhart by the priest at the church I attended in college. Eckhart was a contemporary of St. Francis of Assisi and St. Boneventure. But Eckhart was not exactly a “party line” kind of guy. He dared to speak of God in terms which rocked the establishment and even caused him to be tried by the Inquisition as a heretic (he died before receiving the results of the judgment which acquitted him of the charges). He dared to image God as a woman, a fertile woman – a woman giving birth to all creation! Those terms might even shock some people in our own day who cling to a uniquely masculine image of God.

Meister Eckhart addressed the relevance of Jesus’ birth in his own day. He said to the congregation in Erfurt, Germany one Christmas:

“We are celebrating the feast of the Eternal Birth which God the Father has borne and never ceases to bear in all eternity.... But if it takes not place in me, what avails it? Everything lies in this, that it should take place in me.”

And to paraphrase another quote:

“What does it matter that the Virgin Mary gave birth to Jesus Christ 2,000 years ago if I do not give birth to Christ in my own day?”

This is the essence of Christmas. It was not just the birth of one child 2,000 years ago far away and removed from us. It is the ongoing birth of Jesus in each and every one of us which is the continuation of the Christmas story here and now. Giving birth to Christ in our own time, in our own hearts, in our own lives, is the essence of why Christmas is still relevant today. Giving birth to Jesus in our hearts means living lives grounded in Christ’s teachings, giving to others, reaching out to the last, lost, little, least and lifeless among us, and being the people of God even as we live in an imperfect and wounded world.

The baby in the manger
grew to a man one day,
and still we try to listen now
to what he had to say:
“Put up your swords forever,”
“Forgive your enemies,”
“Love your neighbor as yourself,”
“Let your little children come to me.”

This is our call at Christmas: to make Christ born anew in our lives and in our world through our faith and deeds.

O holy Child of Bethlehem
descend to us, we pray;
cast out our sin and enter in
be born in us today.

Amen.

Good Friday

noreply@blogger.com (Snarky Anglican) — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 01:18:00 +0000

Good Friday 2006
St. Thomas' Episcopal Church, Hanock Maryland

Attachment. A word to ponder on the day our Lord was nailed to the cross. Attachment. It comes from the French attache which means, “to be nailed to.” Jesus was attached, nailed to, the cross. We know attachment. It is a part of the human condition.

I’m revisiting a book my spiritual director gave me last year. It’s called Addiction and Grace by Dr. Gerald May, the late spiritual director and physician. Dr. May spent his career working to treat addicted people. Through this work, he concludes that addiction stems from our human nature of attachment. He says there are two forces which enslave our wills: repression, which stifles our desires, and addiction which attaches, bonds and enslaves our desires to certain specific behaviors, things, or people. Attachment nails our desire for God to these other specific objects and creates addictions. Now he’s not being flippant when he says we all suffer from addiction. His point is that the same biological, psychological and spiritual processes which are responsible for additions to drugs and alcohol are also responsible for addictions to work, ideas, relationships, power, moods, fantasies, success, achievement, money, power, intimacy, the approval of others, even our own self-image. Addictions are part of what it means to be human. When we nail our desires to objects instead of God’s love, we have misplaced our trust. Misplacing our trust is a classic definition of Sin. Martin Luther says we are in bondage to Sin and cannot free ourselves. Yet, I find it easier to understand the bondage to addiction better than the abstraction of the “bondage to Sin.”

Let me give you an example. As many of you know, I am the mother of two daughters. I love my daughters dearly and they are gifts from God, but as a parent, I constantly struggle with the process of letting go. I want to do the right things to protect them from harm without being so overprotective that I stifle their development. There was a time I obsessed with making sure everything was safe and I worried about them constantly. When my concern became an obsession which caused anxiety in me, that’s the point where I had attached myself to cross of sorts – the cross of being the “perfect mother” who could always protect her children from all danger and harm. This distorted image was an addiction which gripped me and I could not free myself from its grasp. This is but one of many psychological / spiritual addictions I have battled in my lifetime.

Addictions, like the cross, are paradoxical. Addictions make us willingly nail ourselves to the objects of our desires – they become crosses on which we crucify ourselves and we have no power within ourselves to come down from them. Addictions make us idolaters because they force us to worship these objects of attachment, thereby preventing us from truly and freely loving God and one another. Addictions breed willfulness in us yet paradoxically they also erode our will and rob us of our dignity. Addiction is both an inherent part of our nature and the antagonist of it as well. It is the absolute enemy of love yet, in another paradox, it is addiction which can lead us to a deep appreciation of grace. It is our addictions which can bring us to our knees. Dr. May describes the point he faced his own addictions head on:

“It occurred to me that my original ‘professional depression’ had happened because I had been addicted to success and control. It was, in fact, a withdrawal; it happened when I couldn’t get my fix of professional success. I can honestly say, then, that it was my work with addicted people, and the consequent realization of my own addictive behavior, that brought me to my knees. I am glad. Grace was there. To state it quite simply, I had tried to run my life on the basis of my own willpower alone. When my supply of success at this egotistic autonomy ran out, I became depressed. And with the depression, by means of grace, came a chance for spiritual openness. To be alive is to be addicted, and to be alive and addicted is to stand in need of grace.”

Cappadocian father Gregory Nazianzus said, “That which is not assumed is not redeemed” which means Christ assumed the totality of our human nature. Did Christ assume our addicted nature to redeem it? From what Scripture tells us, the object of Christ’s attachment was God’s will and that he was human in every way yet did not sin. Ideally, we would all attach ourselves to God’s will and this is not addiction because it is a properly placed trust. But I do think that Jesus did experience something of our addicted selves on the cross on Good Friday. On that day, his friends were not there – they had abandoned him to his fate. Addictions isolate us from friends and loved ones. Our loved ones and friends feel powerless to do anything to help our addictions just as the disciples felt powerless to do anything for Jesus in the face of the cross. Jesus felt the separation and isolation we experience with our addictions. And on that day, God was silent. Jesus heard no words of affirmation from God about being beloved – instead, he heard nothing. Jesus experienced what seemed like complete abandonment by God in that moment he cried out, “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?” It is the same cry from our souls when the despair of addiction drives us to our knees. Through the cross, Jesus was detached from his very physical life and taken to the Throne of Grace. In the despair of our addictions, we fall to our knees at the foot of the cross where we too find grace. Through grace, God removes the nails which hold us to the crosses of our addictions. We cannot save ourselves, but the grace outside ourselves is the means by which God saves us and redeems us. Today we look to the crucified Christ and see through the cross … and we find the grace which will heal us.

Amen.

All Saints Day 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Snarky Anglican) — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 00:55:00 +0000

I gave this sermon on All Saint's Day 2008 at St. John's Episcopal Church in Hagerstown where I was invited to preach and preside at the renewal of my parent's wedding vows on the occasion of their 50th wedding anniversary. I sang the stanzas of the hymn I Sing a Song of the Saints of God as a part of the sermon. You'll have to imagine the singing bit, but I do have a pretty decent singing voice.

I sing a song of the saints of God,
patient and brave and true,
who toiled and fought and lived and died
for the Lord they loved and knew.
And one was a doctor, and one was a queen,
and one was a shepherdess on the green:
they were all of them saints of God and I mean,
God helping, to be one too.

I love this hymn! It’s not just because it is so quintessentially British and not because it is a flashback from my teen years (I first learned it when we joined the Episcopal Church in 1975). The reason I love it is because it captures what the Communion of Saints is all about.

I’ve just spent my first month as the quarter-time interim rector at St. Luke’s Carey Street in southwest Baltimore. As I worked with our organist and senior warden to plan out the music and worship for All Saints Sunday, we chose this hymn and had quite a discussion about how it typifies the Anglican view of the saints. Our Senior Warden, Andre, shared the story about how St. Luke’s and the local Roman Catholic Church once did a “Stations of the Saints” for All Saints Day. He went on to say that the Roman Catholics were ok with him including Martin Luther King, Jr., but … well … they drew the line at John Coltrane! I said, “Geez … what do they have against Coltrane?”

But Andre’s experience was running into the Roman Catholic tradition regarding how one officially becomes a “saint.” It’s an arduous process. Once a person professing the Roman Catholic faith and who lived a saintly life has died, the cause of making this person a saint is taken up and their life is examined for evidence of general holiness by no less than three different groups of Roman Catholic theologians. If there is agreement at that point, they are deemed “venerable” by the pope. The second stage of becoming a saint differs based on whether or not the person was a martyr. If they were not martyred, then two miracles must be directly attributed to this saint’s intercessions on behalf of the living (if you are a martyr, you get to “pass go” on this step). After this stage, the person is considered “beatified.” Finally, a third miracle (or first if you’re a martyr) must be documented and then the person is canonized as a saint by the pope. Saying the process is involved is an understatement.

The tradition of the saints in Catholicism had some unintended consequences. The emphasis on only recognizing dead people disconnected the saints in heaven from the saints here on earth who continue to do God’s work. The idea that saints are dead people is a persistent notion. I recall a seminary intern we had at St. Michael and All Angels church running into this issue as he tutored my younger sister to prepare her for confirmation. He gave her an essay question on this subject: “Could you be a saint? Why or why not?” I’m sure he thought it an age appropriate and yet profound question; however, seminary profundity is often dashed on the rocks of 13 year old coolness. My sister’s responded in one sentence: “No, because you have to be dead to be a saint and I am not ready to die yet.” … full stop.

The other major unintended consequence to this process was the practice of saintly adoration which reached its peak in the medieval Church. The medieval Church downright deified the saints. Relics of saints (usually bones or petrified body parts) were enshrined in churches all over Europe and the Near East and collected by royalty. Local legends grew up around the saints’ abilities to affect miraculous healings, raise people from the dead, apparitions, and other supernatural events. Pilgrimages to saints’ shrines were enormously important to the local economy. Adoration of the saints was elevated to the point of being as important as worshiping God and this was the practice against which the leaders of the Reformation rebelled.

Martin Luther wrote stinging condemnations of the “cult of saints” in his collected works. Luther felt the “cult of saints” had taken the focus off of the saving work of Christ on the cross and therefore it had no place in the church. Having attended a Lutheran seminary, I witnessed the effects of Luther’s desire to purge the church of the cult of saints. It’s best enshrined in the continental protestant tradition of celebrating Reformation Day … which is the day before All Saints Day (Coincidence? I think not!). Our Lutheran brothers and sisters have conflicting feelings about the whole issue of All Saints Day. If we say we believe in the “communion of saints” in the Nicene Creed, then shouldn’t we celebrate All Saints Day? How do we define saints? Are they only the living saints, or can we include the dead ones? If we recognize the dead ones, are we betraying the premises of Luther’s Reformation?

They loved their Lord so dear, so dear,
and his love made them strong;
and they followed the right, for Jesus’ sake,
the whole of their good lives long.
And one was a soldier, and one was a priest,
and one was slain by a fierce wild beast;
and there’s not any reason no, not the least,
why I shouldn’t be one too.

The Anglican tradition steps into the divide between the rigid rules regarding sainthood in the Roman tradition and the desire to scrap the whole thing from Protestantism. We believe the Church does have a vested interest in recognizing and raising up those people who have embodied the Gospel in their life and work. We do have a process. Every three years, our General Convention adds new names to the Lesser Feasts and Fasts of those saints who have gone before us (and we don’t require supernatural phenomenon or miracles).

In addition to the official recognition of our saints who have gone before us, we also believe in the saints on earth. The essence of being a saint is living a life of devotion to God. In that broad definition, we are all saints. Being a saint does not mean you are perfect, even the saints in heaven were not perfect. Do any of you know why Saint Augustine, the patron of the Anglican Church, ended up in Canterbury? It’s because he was such a cantankerous pill that they threw him out of London and told him to go away and not come back! He wasn’t perfect, but he lived a life devoted to God.

Today we come together as the saints on earth to remember the saints in heaven who have preceded us. We come together each week to hear the Word and receive the Sacrament to be strengthened to live our lives for God … so we might be the saints on earth and continue the reconciling work of Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit.

In a few moments, we saints on earth will renew our baptismal vows and recommit our lives to God. We will also witness another renewal of vows, that of my parents, Bob and Earlene Ayrer, who celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary just a few weeks ago. Without them I wouldn’t be here today … and I don’t mean just as your guest preacher. It is fitting to do this on All Saints Sunday surrounded by all of you here at St. John’s. Mom and Dad are saints in our family … remember, that doesn’t mean perfect … but it does mean they live lives dedicated to God and, for 50 years, each other. My sister and I have witnessed them integrate their faith and life seamlessly. Their devotion to Christ is just who they are and it permeates their daily life and work. This is the essence of what it means to be a saint.

They lived not only in ages past,
there are hundreds of thousands still,
the world is bright with the joyous saints
who love to do Jesus’ will.
You can meet them in school, or in lanes, or at sea,
in church, or in trains, or in shops, or at tea,
for the saints of God are just folk like me,
and I mean to be one too.

Amen.