Category: Sermons (Page 38 of 40)

The Three-Act Drama of Redemption: Act One – Sermon for Maundy Thursday 2012

April 5, 2012 / eric / 0 Comments

Revised Common Lectionary for Maundy Thursday, Year B: Exodus 12:1-14; Psalm 116:1,10-17; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; John 13:1-17, 31b-35

Redemption is a drama in three acts – three acts and a brief intermission – tonight we take part in Act One.

Act One, Scene One: The curtain rises. We see a group of people gathered in an upper room somewhere in Jerusalem.

A meal is in progress… Is it a seder, the ritual meal of remembrance of the Passover? We don’t really know; the playwrights have not made this clear; the theater critics, the scholars debate this issue. Three of the story-tellers suggest that it is but the fourth, John, tells the tale very differently. (The synoptic gospels tell the story in a similar way and, if truth be told, in the same way – Luke and Matthew based their stories on Mark’s, so to be honest there aren’t three stories, there’s only one that would make us think that this supper is a seder, but John doesn’t. In fact, John doesn’t even care about that – he spends no time at all describing the meal, for him the important thing is what happened afterward, and that comes in a later scene. So as we begin this three-day, three-act drama of redemption, since we have heard Luke’s voice narrating the story, let’s just assume that what we see in this first scene of the first act is, indeed, a seder.)

Those present are prepared to do all that is laid out in the instructions in the book of Exodus; they have worn their sandals; they carry their staffs; they expect to eat of roasted lamb and unleavened bread and bitter herbs. They anticipate spending the night in remembrance of that which happened generations before in Egypt. If we can imagine that they celebrate as modern Jews celebrate, they expect the youngest among them to ask the questions, beginning with “Why is this night different from all other nights?” They know that the head of the household, their rabbi Jesus, will answer those questions in the prescribed way and tell the story of the Passover.

And when the youngest asks “Why do we eat the broken matzah?” they expect Jesus to answer “This is the bread of our affliction; the unleavened bread of poverty, baked and eaten in haste,” but instead he takes the bread, brakes it and says, “This bread is my body, given for you.”

Can’t you just see them in this scene, reclining in that upper room, those serving the meal coming and going, a breeze blowing through the open windows, following along in their prayer books, the Haggadah … They look up startled, glancing at one another, murmuring to each other, “What is he talking about? That’s not here! That’s not the right answer. Where is he? What page is he on?” But the moment passes, the meal moves on, until at the end he takes up the fourth and final cup of wine, the kiddush cup, which recalls God’s promise, “I will acquire you as a nation; you will be my people and I will be your God.” They expect Jesus to say, “Blessed are you, O Lord our God, sovereign of the universe, creator of the fruit of the vine,” but instead they hear, “This cup is my blood!” “What?! What is he saying???”

It is for Jesus and his disciples one of those fleeting opportunities when, because of the pupils’ confusion or frustration or grasping for understanding, the teacher can pass on to the students new information, new values, new moral understanding, a new behavior, a new skill, a new way of seeing and coping with reality; it is what we have come to call “the teachable moment” and so he teaches, yet again, “Remember! Remember,” he says, “Love one another as I have loved you.”

The curtain falls as Jesus continues to teach; the disciples look mystified.

Act One, Scene Two: The curtain rises again. We see the same group of people gathered in the same upper room somewhere in Jerusalem.

Jesus Washing the Feet of His Disciples by Michal Splho The meal is over, the dishes have been cleared. The disciples are arguing among themselves about who is the greater among them. Jesus looks frustrated and troubled; the teachable moment has passed and they clearly have not understood! They just haven’t gotten it.

“Look,” he says, “the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like one who serves. For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one at the table? But I am among you as one who serves. Here, let me show you what I mean.” Getting up from the table, he takes off his robe, ties a towel around himself, pours water into a basin, and begins to wash and dry the others’ feet. Peter protests, “You will never wash my feet.” Jesus answers, “Peter, if I don’t wash you, you can’t be part of what I’m doing.” So Peter relents, “Well then, not only my feet! Wash my hands and my head, too!”

Peter speaks for us. We don’t get this foot-washing thing, do we? Washing our hands makes more sense to us, as it does to Anglican nun and poet Lucy Nanson who wrote:

Wash my hands on Maundy Thursday
not my feet
My hands peel potatoes, wipe messes from the floor
change dirty nappies, clean the grease from pots and pans
have pointed in anger and pushed away in tears
in years past they’ve smacked a child and raised a fist
fumbled with nervousness, shaken with fear
I’ve wrung them when waiting for news to come
crushed a letter I’d rather forget
covered my mouth when I’ve been caught out
touched forbidden things, childhood memories do not grow dim
These hands have dug gardens, planted seeds
picked fruit and berries, weeded out and pruned trees
found bleeding from the rose’s thorns
dirt and blood mix together
when washed before a cup of tea
Love expressed by them
asks for your respect
in the hand-shake of warm greeting,
the gentle rubbing of a child’s bump
the caressing of a lover, the softness of a baby’s cheek
sounds of music played by them in tunes upon a flute
they’ve held a frightened teenager,
touched a father in his death
where cold skin tells the end of life has come
but not the end of love,
comforted a mother losing agility and health.
With my hands outstretched before you
I stand humbled and in awe
your gentle washing in water, the softness of the towel
symbolizing a cleansing
the servant-hood of Christ.
Wash my hands on Maundy Thursday
and not my feet.

Yes, Peter speaks for us; we would rather our hands be washed. But Jesus insists, he must wash his disciples feet for only in this way does one truly honor and serve another in love, only in this way does one recall whose servant one is. He says to them, “If I, your master and teacher, have washed your feet, you must now wash each other’s feet.” Only in this way can his disciples remember his teaching that what is done for us is also to be done for others.

They don’t get the opportunity, however, for the second scene ends as Jesus becomes visibly agitated and declares, “One of you is going to betray me.”

As the curtain goes down, the disciples are looking puzzled and Judas Iscariot is leaving.

Act One, Scene Three: The curtain rises again. We see a garden and an olive grove just outside of Jerusalem. Jesus is there, accompanied by Peter, James, and John.

Praying at Gethsemane by He Qi “Stay here,” he tells them, “Stay awake while I go over there to pray.” As they settle themselves, he moves away from them, and collapses in a heap, sobbing: “O God … Father, let this pass!”

Three times he returns to find them asleep; three times they rise looking sheepish and embarrassed; twice he tells them again to try to stay awake as he goes away still pleading with God for a way out. “Enough,” he says the third time, “Enough! We’re leaving.”

When they look back on that night, how must they feel? When we look back, how should we feel?

Poet Mary Oliver offers a glimpse in her poem Gethsemane:

The grass never sleeps.
Or the roses.
Nor does the lily have a secret eye that shuts until morning.
Jesus said, wait with me. But the disciples slept.

The cricket has such splendid fringe on its feet,
and it sings, have you noticed, with its whole body,
and heaven knows if it ever sleeps.

Jesus said, wait with me. And maybe the stars did,
maybe the wind wound itself into a silver tree,
and didn’t move, maybe the lake far away,
where once he walked as on a blue pavement,
lay still and waited, wild awake.

Oh the dear bodies, slumped and eye-shut, that could not
keep that vigil, how they must have wept,
so utterly human, knowing this too
must be part of the story.

Yes, this too, our utterly human inability to fully keep company with our Lord, this too must be part of the story when it is told, as we see it unfold in the church’s memory tonight, but for now the stage fills, the garden becomes crowded … Judas returns accompanied by temple guards, and Roman soldiers, and servants of the priests … and are those some of the disciples showing up? The orchard of olives suddenly is filled with angry activity, with scuffling, with fighting, with confusion. Peter calls out, “Lord, should we fight back?” and, without waiting for an answer, draws his sword and cuts off a servant’s ear.

“Stop!” cries Jesus. He reaches out and tenderly touches the servant’s head, healing his wound. He seems sadly confused, “Why have you come to arrest me with swords drawn?” he asks, “I’ve been teaching in the temple all week! You could have taken me any time.” It all seems too much for him. Certainly, it’s too much for us! Again, a poet, Ted Loder, speaks for us:

Sometimes, Lord,
it just seems to be too much:
too much violence, too much fear;
too much of demands and problems;
too much of broken dreams and broken lives;
too much of wars and slums and dying:
too much of greed and squishy fatness
and the sounds of people
devouring each other
and the earth;
too much of stale routines and quarrels,
unpaid bills and dead ends;
too much of words lobbed in to explode
leaving shredded hearts and lacerated souls;
too much of turned-away backs and yellow silence,
red rage and the bitter taste of ashes in my mouth.

Sometimes the very air seems scorched
by threats and rejection and decay
until there is nothing
but to inhale pain
and exhale confusion.

Too much of darkness, Lord,
too much of cruelty
and selfishness
and indifference.

Too much, Lord
too much,
too bloody,
bruising,
brain-washing much.

Or is it too little,
too little of compassion,
too little of courage,
of daring,
of persistence,
[too little] of sacrifice?

Jesus and his captors exit; the disciples, confused and frightened, sneak out behind them. The curtain falls. We are left in darkness….

Let us pray:

Heavenly Father, as we enter again into the mystery of these three most holy days, as we participate once again in this three-act drama of redemption, we ask you to illumine our minds and hearts with the hope and promise of Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection; satisfy our hunger and thirst not for bread and drink alone, but for love, and truth, and justice, and peace; as we share your Son’s Body and Blood, renew us and energize us to be a true community of light amid the darkness of sin and injustice in our world; as Jesus invites us to share at his Table, let us in turn invite our brothers and sisters to the table where all can share the resources of your abundance, where justice and peace reign, and where love transforms souls and societies; as the drama of redemption continues, may life conquer death, may light shine in the darkness, and may courage and compassion grow from sacrifice; in Christ’s holy Name we pray. Amen.

Palm Sunday in Poetry – Sermon for April 1, 2012

April 1, 2012 / eric / 4 Comments

Revised Common Lectionary for Palm Sunday, Year B: John 12:12-16; Isaiah 50:4-9a; Psalm 31:9-16; Philippians 2:5-11; and Mark 14:1-15:47

We have just read the simple, yet dramatic story of our Lord’s Passion as related in Mark’s Gospel. But we began our worship this morning with John’s story of Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem. In the span of a few minutes we covered an entire week at the end of Jesus’ earthly life. Logic and reason cannot really make sense of this, and no ten-minute homiletic exegesis of these texts can help us comprehend the enormity of those events.

Perhaps, instead, some poetry.

Hark! how the children shrill and high
Hosanna cry,
Their joys provoke the distant sky,
Where thrones and seraphims reply,
And their own angels shine and sing
In a bright ring:
Such young, sweet mirth
Makes heaven and earth
Join in a joyful symphony.

And thus Holy Week begins on Palm Sunday. In this little poem entitled Palm Sunday by Henry Vaughan (1622-1695), the Welsh metaphysical poet, we get a glimpse of what was at the beginning, the joy that was supposed to be, the glory that was lost.

G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936), who has been called “the apostle of common sense” but was also known for his humor, gives us a glimpse into the mind of one of the lesser-considered characters in the drama of Jesus’ entering Jerusalem:

When fishes flew and forests walked,
And figs grew upon thorn,
Some moment when the moon was blood,
Then surely I was born.

With monstrous head and sickening cry,
And ears like errant wings,
The devil’s walking parody
Of all four-footed things.

The tattered outlaw of the earth,
Of ancient, crooked will;
Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,
I keep my secret still.

Fools! For I also had my hour;
One far fierce hour and sweet:
There was a shout about my ears,
And palms before my feet.

Chesterton’s little poem is entitled The Donkey.

Marie J. Post (1919-1990), a 20th Century poet and hymn writer whose poems often appeared in The Banner, the denominational magazine of the Christian Reformed Church, in her poem, also entitled simply Palm Sunday, suggests parallels between that Palm Sunday ride and the Way of Tears Jesus would walk later in the week:

Astride the colt and claimed as King
that Sunday morning in the spring,
he passed a thornbush flowering red
that one would plait to crown his head.

He passed a vineyard where the wine
was grown for men of royal line
and where the dregs were also brewed
into a gall for Calvary’s rood.

A purple robe was cast his way,
then caught and kept until that day
when, with its use, a trial would be
profaned into a mockery.

His entourage was forced to wait
to let a timber through the gate,
a shaft that all there might have known
would be an altar and a throne.

A poem by a 17th Century Dutch theologian and poet, Jacobus Revius (1586-1658), whose poems have been translated into English by Dr. Henrietta ten Harmsel, helps us face the hard fact that it was our guilt, our sins for which Christ suffered; we are the villains in the tragedy that is Good Friday. His poem is entitled He Bore Our Griefs.

No, it was not the Jews who crucified,
Nor who betrayed You in judgment place,
Nor who, Lord Jesus, spat into Your face,
Nor who with buffets struck You as You died.
No, it was not the soldiers fisted bold
Who lifted up the hammer and nail,
Or raised the cursed cross on Calvary’s hill,
Or, gambling, tossed the dice to win Your robe.
I am the one, O Lord, who brought You there,
I am the heavy cross You had to bear,
I am the rope that bound You to the tree,
The whip, the nail, the hammer, and the spear,
The blood-stained crown of thorns You had to wear:
It was my sin, alas, it was for me.

Finally contemporary Canadian poet Carol Penner, who is also a Mennonite pastor, reminds us that the events of Palm Sunday and Holy Week are not simply historical events; they are present realities. Her poem is entitled Coming to the City Nearest You.

Jesus comes to Jerusalem, the city nearest you.
Jesus comes to the gate, to the synagogue,
to houses prepared for wedding parties,
to the pools where people wait to be healed,
to the temple where lambs are sold,
to gardens, beautiful in the moonlight.
He comes to the governor’s palace.

Jesus comes to Jerusalem, the city nearest you,
to new subdivisions and trailer parks,
to penthouses and basement apartments,
to the factory, the hospital and the Cineplex,
to the big box outlet centre and to churches,
with the same old same old message,
unchanged from the beginning of time.

Jesus comes to Jerusalem, the city nearest you
with his Good News and…
Hope erupts! Joy springs forth!
The very stones cry out,
“Hosanna in the highest,
blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”
The crowds jostle and push,
they can’t get close enough!
People running alongside flinging down their coats before him!
Jesus, the parade marshal, waving, smiling.
The paparazzi elbow for room,
looking for that perfect picture for the headline,
“The Man Who Would Be King”.

Jesus comes to Jerusalem, the city nearest you
and gets the red carpet treatment.
Children waving real palm branches from the florist,
silk palm branches from Wal-mart,
palms made from green construction paper.
Hosannas ringing in churches, chapels, cathedrals,
in monasteries, basilicas and tent-meetings.
King Jesus, honored in a thousand hymns
in Canada, Cameroon, Calcutta and Canberra.
We LOVE this great big powerful capital K King Jesus
coming in glory and splendor and majesty
and awe and power and might.

Jesus comes to Jerusalem, the city nearest you.
Kingly, he takes a towel and washes feet.
With majesty, he serves bread and wine.
With honour, he prays all night.
With power, he puts on chains.
Jesus, King of all creation, appears in state
in the eyes of the prisoner, the AIDS orphan, the crack addict,
asking for one cup of cold water,
one coat shared with someone who has none,
one heart, yours,
and a second mile.
Jesus comes to Jerusalem, the city nearest you.
Can you see him?

The Catholic Church – Sermon for Lent 5B

March 25, 2012 / eric / 0 Comments

Revised Common Lectionary for the Fifth Sunday in Lent, Year B: Jeremiah 31:31-34; Psalm 51:1-13 or Psalm 119:9-16; Hebrews 5:5-10; and John 12:20-33

Icon of Melchizedek This is the fifth and last Lenten sermon addressing a question posed by a parishioner and, in fact, I will try to answer succinctly two related questions that two parishioners asked. One was “What does the word catholic mean when we say it in the Nicene Creed?” and the other was “What do you (meaning me, Father Funston) mean when you describe the Episcopal Church as being ‘in the Catholic tradition’?” (If you could see the way I have typeset these sermon notes, you would see that I have capitalized the “C” in catholic in the second question, but not in the first. That’s an important point which I will address shortly. But let me start with a basic definition in answer to the first inquiry.

These questions arise, of course, because there is one church denomination in this country and throughout the world which has arrogated to itself this word catholic and, of course, I refer to the Church of Rome. In everyday speech if you say the word catholic nearly everybody will think you are referring to the Roman Catholic Church, but, in truth, the word has much broader meaning and application than one denomination, however large and powerful it may be or think itself.

Catholic comes from the Greek katholikos, a compound word made up of kata meaning “about” or “concerning” and holos meaning “whole” (from the latter we get a word familiar many, holistic, which means to look at something in its entirety). Thus, the word catholic means “regarding the whole” or, more simply put, “universal” or “general.” In the context of the Creed, the word does not have anything to do with any denomination which calls itself “Catholic” such as the Church of Rome. In the worship book of the rather evangelical Methodist church which my paternal grandparents attended there was an asterisk next to the word catholic in the Creed and a footnote which read “meaning universal” just to be sure no one misunderstood and thought the Methodists had reunited with the Bishop of Rome.

As used in the Creed, the word catholic describes one of what are called the “four marks of the church”; these are that the church is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. These are set out in the Outline of the Faith we find in The Book of Common Prayer. If you would turn to page 854 in the BCP, you can follow along in Catechism:

Q. Why is the Church described as one?
A. The Church is one, because it is one Body, under one Head, our Lord Jesus Christ.
Q. Why is the Church described as holy?
A. The Church is holy, because the Holy Spirit dwells in it, consecrates its members, and guides them to do God’s work.
Q. Why is the Church described as catholic?
A. The Church is catholic, because it proclaims the whole Faith to all people, to the end of time.
Q. Why is the Church described as apostolic?
A. The Church is apostolic, because it continues in the teaching and fellowship of the apostles and is sent to carry out Christ’s mission to all people.

In the words of the Gospel according to Matthew, we are sent out by Christ [there’s the apostolicity] to “make disciples of all nations [there’s the catholicity], baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit [there’s the holiness], and teaching them to obey everything that [Jesus, our one Lord] commanded” the apostles (Matthew 28:19-20a).

So in the Creed we express our faith in the point that Jesus makes in today’s gospel lesson. This confrontation by the curious Greeks reiterates something Jesus said to Nicodemus not too long before: “When I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” The Church is catholic because its mission is to draw all people to Christ.

This is what we mean by catholic with a lower-case “c” and applies to all Christian churches without regard to their polity, their style of worship, their understanding of the sacraments, their theology, or their manner of choosing, training, and addressing their clergy and leadership. When we capitalize the word and apply it to a subset of Christian traditions or to one in particular, we removing it slightly from its original meaning, and giving it a different twist. We start with an old “canon” or rule attributed to St. Vincent of Lerins: “What everywhere, what always, and what by all has been believed, that is truly and properly Catholic.”

Thus, instead of looking to the writings and doctrines of any Medieval or Reformation theologian, a church in the Catholic tradition looks to the earliest, universally accept teachings of the church, in addition to Holy Scripture this means primarily the first seven Ecumenical Councils: the First Council of Nicaea (325), the First Council of Constantinople (381), the Council of Ephesus (431), the Council of Chalcedon (451), the Second Council of Constantinople (553), the Third Council of Constantinople (680), and the Second Council of Nicaea (787). While the writings and doctrines of the Medieval theologians (Aquinas, Abelard, Duns Scotus, and others) or the reformers (Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Knox, and so forth) are of interest, they are not definitive. Only Holy Scripture is definitive, and only these councils of the undivided church and certain early theologians, especially the universally acknowledged “doctors of the church”, are given authoritative weight in the development of theological doctrine. (Those doctors of the church, by the way, are Saints Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, Gregory the Great, John Chrysostom, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Athanasius of Alexandria.)

So here is one refinement on the concept of catholicity: In the Catholic tradition, our theology and doctrine are drawn primarily from that which has been universally accepted and taught since the earliest days of the church, not from the teachings of a Medieval or Reformation theologian (no matter how wise and scholarly that theologian may have been). Thus, the Catholic churches (including both the Roman and the Anglican Traditions) preserve an understanding of the sacramental nature of the priesthood, the oblationary nature of Holy Communion, and the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

Another refinement of the concept of catholicity is in the polity (or organization) of the church and a reliance upon an historic, ordered ministry. As our Catechism in The Book of Common Prayer defines it:

Q. Who are the ministers of the Church?
A. The ministers of the Church are lay persons, bishops, priests, and deacons.

A Catholic understanding of the ministry, then, is that there is one basic order of ministers encompassing all the baptized, the laos or people of God, some of whom are set apart for special ministries in the orders of deacon, priest, and bishop. In particular, Catholic polity reveres the office of the bishop. One of those early theologians we like to look to for guidance, in this case St. Ignatius of Antioch, who wrote: “Wherever the Bishop appears, there let the multitude of the people be; just as where Christ Jesus is, there is the catholic church.” In Ignatius’s view, the Eucharist is Christ-centered and both the bishop and the priest, through their ministry, enable Christ to be present when each presides at a Eucharist. The priest presides only because he or she is ordained by the bishop and the college of presbyters, and serves with the consent of the bishop. The bishop, in turn, was ordained by other bishops in historic succession. Thus, the ordered polity of the churches ministry preserves its Catholicity through time.

Finally, I would note that the high regard of churches in the Catholic tradition for the sacraments encourages a certain liturgical style. The Catholic revival in the Church of England in the mid-19th Century promoted the use of Eucharistic vestments, the priest standing at the center of the altar (not standing at the north end which had been the practice encouraged by the Puritans in the Anglican church), the use of unleavened bread for the Eucharist, the mixing of water with the wine, the use of candles and of incense, and the chanting of Psalms and other parts of the service; all of these are now standard practices in the Episcopal Church. Our worship at its best cultivates a sense of reverence, awe, and mystery in the presence of the Holy One before whom even the angels in heaven veil their faces.

This is what I mean when I describe the Episcopal Church as being within the “Catholic tradition.” And I believe this tradition to be soundly biblical.

In the Epistle Lesson today, the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews looks back to one of the obscure characters of the Old Testament, the priest Melchizedek, in making his theological argument for the divinity of Christ. He quotes from Psalm 110:4 in which the Psalmist quotes God speaking to some unnamed prince of the people, “The Lord has sworn and he will not recant: ‘You are a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.'” This, argues the writer of Hebrews, was said to Christ.

Melchizedek is mentioned only one other place. In the Book of Genesis, Abram (whom God had not yet renamed Abraham) does battle with and defeats King Chedorlaomer of Elam and three other kings. When he does so, Melchizedek, who is described as King of Salem and priest of God Most High, approaches him, gives him bread and wine, and blesses him saying, “Blessed be Abram by God Most High, maker of heaven and earth; and blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand!”

A high, Catholic understanding of ministry, especially of priestly ministry and worship, is fully in keeping with Scripture’s reverent depiction of Melchizedek. His name means, “My king is righteousness.” In his offering of bread and wine to Abram, St. Cyprian of Carthage (d. 258) saw “the Sacrament of the Sacrifice of the Lord prefigured,” and in one of the church’s earliest Eucharistic prayers we find a petition that the bread and wine offered in our worship be accepted by God like “the bread and wine offered by your priest Melchisedech.” An early Christian document from the Nag Hammadi library even suggests that Melchizedek may have been Christ himself. Melchizedek is therefore a type or exemplar of the universal priesthood, what Scripture calls “the priesthood of all believers,” of which the sacerdotal priesthood is merely a subset.

Catholic spirituality also is profoundly incarnational. Through Jesus, the Word made flesh, we see, hear and touch God. Similarly today, through the Holy Spirit, God uses his creation (bread, wine, holy oil, holy water etc.) as ways we can know and experience him. The Catholic tradition, recalling that God has written his covenant in our hearts (to use an image from today’s Jeremiah reading), encourages us to use our whole selves and all of our senses in worship so that the whole self, both body and soul, is lifted up in prayer and praise of God.

So the simple answer to the question “What does catholic mean?” is that it means “universal” or “general”, that it means that the church offers a message of salvation that is for all people, in all places, at all times. And that is also what it means to describe our church as holding to a “Catholic tradition;” that we teach, organize ourselves, and worship in a manner consistent with “what everywhere, what always, and what by all has been believed” in an unbroken line of continuity stretching even as far back as Melchizedek, the king of righteousness and priest of God Most High. It means that we seek to exemplify and to proclaim to the world a faith that is incarnational, vibrant and inviting, rooted in the traditions of the past but living in the present and embracing of the future, a faith in the One who was lifted up from the earth, that he might draw all people to himself.

Let us pray:

O God of unchangeable power and eternal light: Look favorably on your whole Church, that wonderful and sacred mystery; by the effectual working of your providence, carry out in tranquillity the plan of salvation; let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Fasting Is a Given – Sermon for Lent 4B – March 18, 2012

March 18, 2012 / eric / 0 Comments

Revised Common Lectionary for the Fourth Sunday in Lent, Year B: Numbers 21:4-9; Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22; Ephesians 2:1-10; and John 3:14-21

Continuing our series of sermons in answer to parishioner questions, today we will explore fasting. A member of the congregation asked, “What is fasting and why do we do it?”

The simple answer is that fasting is going without some or all food or drink or both for a defined period of time. An absolute fast is abstinence from all food and liquid for a period of at least one day, sometimes for several days. Other fasts may be only partially restrictive, limiting particular foods or substance. The fast may also be intermittent in nature; for example, Muslims fast during the daylight hours of the month of Ramadan which is intended to teach Muslims patience, spirituality, humility, and submissiveness to God. Fasting as a spiritual practice is common to all major religions. Mahatma Gandhi once noted:

Every … religion of any importance appreciates the spiritual value of fasting … For one thing, identification with the starving poor is a meaningless term without the experience behind it. But … even an eighty-day fast may fail to rid a person of pride, selfishness, ambition, and the like. Fasting is merely a prop. But as a prop to a tottering structure is of essential value, so is the prop of fasting of inestimable value for a struggling soul.

In the Bible, the people of God in both the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures fasted for a variety of reasons:

They were facing a crisis. For example, the prophet Joel called for a fast to avert the judgment of God. (Joel 1:14, 2:12-15), and the people of Nineveh, in response to Jonah’s prophecy, fasted to forestall God’s judgment (Jonah 3:7).
They were seeking God’s protection and deliverance. For example, King Jehoshaphat in the Second Book of Chronicles proclaimed a fast seeking victory for Judah over the attaching Moabites and Ammonites (2 Chron. 20:3).
They had been called to repentance and renewal. The Psalmist, for example, in Psalm 109 cries:
O Lord my God,
oh, deal with me according to your Name; *
for your tender mercy’s sake, deliver me.
My knees are weak through fasting, *
and my flesh is wasted and gaunt. (vv. 20,23)
They were asking God for guidance. Moses fasted for forty days and forty nights on Mount Sinai before he received the tablets on the mountain with God. (Deut. 9) St. Paul did not eat or drink anything for three days after he converted on the road to Damascus. (Acts 9:9)
They were humbling themselves in worship. The Book of Acts reports that it was with “fasting and praying” that the members of the church in Antioch “laid their hands on [Barnabas and Saul] and sent them off.” (Acts 13:3)

So fasting has a long and venerable history in all religions including our own. Indeed, Jesus assumed that his followers would fast. You may remember the lesson from Matthew’s Gospel which is always read on Ash Wednesday in which Jesus admonishes the disciples:

Whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. (Matthew 6:16-18)

In this passage Jesus doesn’t say, “If you pray … if you give … if you fast” but rather “when you pray … when you give … when you fast.” He simply expected his followers to do so. Did you know that fasting is mentioned more than 30 times in the New Testament? For a Christian, then, fasting is not an option. It should not be an oddity. Fasting, according to Jesus, is just a given.

During this season of Lent when we “give something up,” we are engaging in the spiritual discipline of the fast. We do so in remembrance of and in solidarity with Jesus during his forty days in the desert. We do so in remembrance of and in solidarity with our spiritual ancestors, the Hebrews, who spent forty years in the desert, often without food or sustenance. In today’s reading from the Book of Numbers, for example, “The people spoke against God and against Moses, ‘Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food.’” God’s wrath, of course, was kindled against them because of their complaining, but they were humbled by their privation. When we “give up something” (whether it be food or drink or some other thing that we enjoy), we are fasting and our fasting is a reminder of our own humility and own hunger for God. By refusing to feed our physical appetites, what St. Paul in today’s epistle lesson calls “the passions of our flesh” or “the desires of flesh and senses,” we become aware of our spiritual hunger.

The Baptist preacher and author John Piper, in his book A Hunger for God: Desiring God through Fasting and Prayer, encourages fasting with these words:

If you don’t feel strong desires for the manifestation of the glory of God, it is not because you have drunk deeply and are satisfied. It is because you have nibbled so long at the table of the world. Your soul is stuffed with small things, and there is no room for the great. God did not create you for this. There is an appetite for God. And it can be awakened. I invite you to turn from the dulling effects of food and the dangers of idolatry, and to say with some simple fast, “This much, O God, I want you.” (Pg 23)

Fasting is a way to bring into view those things we may need most to set aside but of which we are often unaware. In today’s lesson from John’s Gospel, Jesus tells Nicodemus that in the coming of the Son, “light has come into the world” and then says:

All who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God. (John 3:20-21)

In his book Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth, Quaker theologian Richard Foster commends fasting as a way of bringing things to light:

More than any other single discipline, fasting reveals the things that control us. This is a wonderful benefit to the true disciple who longs to be transformed into the image of Jesus Christ. We cover up what is inside us with food and other good things, but in fasting these things surface. If pride controls us, it will be revealed almost immediately. David said, “I humbled myself with fasting” (Ps. 69:10). Anger, bitterness, jealousy, strife, fear – if they are within us, they will surface during fasting. At first we will rationalize that our anger is due to our hunger; then we know that we are angry because the spirit of anger is within us. We can rejoice in this knowledge because we know that healing is available through the power of Christ. (Pg. 48)

But when we fast, we must not delude ourselves into believing that the fasting itself is earning us any “brownie points” – it is not through our good deeds, including our fasting, that we earn salvation. Indeed, we cannot earn salvation. St. Paul reminds us of that forcefully in today’s epistle: “By grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God – not the result of works, so that no one may boast.” (Eph. 2:8-9)

Thinking that the act of fasting itself could earn God’s reward was condemned by God speaking through the Prophet Isaiah:

[You say,] “Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?” 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. Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush, and to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord? Is not this the fast that I choose: 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? Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. (Isa. 58:3-8)

So fasting is a spiritual discipline, but only when done with the proper prayerful attitude, the proper religious understanding – when done “in secret” as Jesus said in the Ash Wednesday reading from Matthew’s Gospel. Fasting is not so much about food, as it is about focus. It is not so much about saying “No” to the body, as it is about saying “Yes” to the Spirit. It is not about doing without; it is about looking within. It is an outward manifestation to an inward cry of the soul, a surfacing of those things that need to be brought to light, not to be condemned, but to be saved.

Let us pray:

Support us, O Lord, with your gracious favor through our Lenten fast; that as we observe it by bodily self-denial, so we may fulfill it with inner sincerity of heart; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Adapted from Holy Women, Holy Men, Collect for Friday after Ash Wednesday, pg. 34)

Social Justice Ministry – Sermon for Lent 3B – March 11, 2012

March 11, 2012 / eric / 0 Comments

Revised Common Lectionary for the Third Sunday in Lent, Year B: Exodus 20:1-17; Psalm 19; 1 Corinthians 1:18-25; and John 2:13-22

The third of the questions asked by a parishioner that I would like to tackle is “What does ‘social justice’ mean in the Episcopal Church?” Social justice generally refers to the idea of creating a society or institution that is based on the principles of equality and solidarity, that understands and values human rights, and that “strive[s] for justice and peace among all people, and respect[s] the dignity of every human being.” (The Book of Common Prayer, 1979, page 305)

In the Episcopal Church, we believe that our Christian faith has both a personal (or individual) dimension and a corporate (or social) dimension; we believe our call to the Christian life has both a contemplative (or prayerful) dimension and a public (or active) dimension. We refer to this as a “cruciform” (or cross-shaped) understanding of the faith, for as St. Paul said, “We proclaim Christ crucified.” In the one dimension, the cross of Christ has a vertical member which symbolizes our personal, individual, contemplative, and prayerful relationship with our God and creator. But the cross also has a horizontal member illustrating the corporate, social, public, and active ministry to which we are all called. A lovely prayer mission in the Daily Office of Morning Prayer recalls this horizontal dimension as we pray to our Savior:

Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of your saving embrace: So clothe us in your Spirit that we, reaching forth our hands in love, may bring those who do not know you to the knowledge and love of you; for the honor of your Name. Amen.

And today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus cleansing the Temple, exemplifies the active, social justice ministry to which he calls his church. Throughout his ministry on earth, the Son of God did not simply call individuals to be good persons: he insisted that the systems and institutions of society were to be reformed so that they would reflect the values inherent in the Law of Moses (from which come the Ten Commandments we read in today’s lesson from the Hebrew Scriptures) and the word of God spoken through the Prophets.

Jesus began his public ministry by reading these words from the Prophet Isaiah:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. (Luke 4:18-19)

To bring good news to the poor, to release captives, to let the oppressed go free … these words herald and describe systemic and institutional changes in society, not simply a change for some individuals but for all of God’s children.

Jesus’ ministry and the Christian call to social justice are informed by the word of God spoken through Moses who ordered the Hebrews:

You shall not abuse any widow or orphan. If you do abuse them, when they cry out to me, I will surely heed their cry. (Exodus 22:22-23)

Jesus recognized and we recognize that widows and orphans have been and are still abused in many places around the world, and as the people of God we must heed their cries and reform the systems and institutions which permit, and often even inflict, that abuse. This is Christian social justice.

Jesus’ ministry and the Christian call to social justice are informed by the word of God spoken to the leaders of God’s people:

You shall take no bribe, for a bribe blinds the officials, and subverts the cause of those who are in the right. You shall not oppress a resident alien; you know the heart of an alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt. (Exodus 23:8-9)

Jesus knew and we know that the leaders of nations do take bribes (and “kickbacks” and “earmarks” and “political contributions”), that political influence is peddled in many ways, that resident aliens are oppressed in this and many countries, and that the causes of those in the right are often subverted. As the people of God, we must stand for changes in power structures to prevent these abuses. This is Christian social justice.

The Christian call to social justice is informed by Jesus’ own words promised to those who are faithful:

I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me. (Matthew 25:35-36)

We see in these words a call not only to feed those who are now hungry, but to prevent others from going without food. We are called not only to give drink to those who are now parched, but to prevent others from becoming thirsty. We are called not only to cover those who are now unclothed, but to prevent others from becoming naked. We know all too well that despite Christ’s mother’s song, the powerful have not yet been brought down from their thrones; the lowly have not yet been lifted up; the hungry have not yet been filled with good things; and the rich have yet to be sent away empty. We, the people of God, are called to accomplish these things. This is Christian social justice.

Our catechism (beginning on page 845 of The Book of Common Prayer) informs us that the mission of the church “is to restore all people to unity with God and each other” and that the church “pursues its mission as it prays and worships, proclaims the Gospel, and promotes justice, peace, and love.” Furthermore, “The church carries out its mission through the ministry of all its members.” You will recall from the baptismal covenant that our ministry, individually and collectively, is to “seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving [our] neighbor as [our]self” and to “strive for justice and peace among all people, … respect[ing] the dignity of every human being.” (BCP, page 305) This is Christian social justice.

For nearly the past half-century, the Episcopal Church, together with our brothers and sisters throughout the Anglican Communion, has recommended that all our members and parishes measure themselves from time to time against certain core Christian priorities, which are called the Five Marks of Mission:

To proclaim the good news of the Kingdom of God;
To teach, baptize and nurture new believers;
To respond to human need by loving service;
To seek to transform the unjust structures of society; and
To strive to safe-guard the integrity of creation and to sustain and renew the life of the earth.

In pursuit of the last two of those “marks” (which summarize social justice ministry), the Episcopal Church in 2006 committed itself to work with others in the Anglican Communion, with other churches and religious bodies in ecumenical and interfaith cooperation, with secular non-governmental organizations, and with our government and those of other nations to accomplish as quickly as possible eight “Millenium Development Goals” set out by the United Nations:

Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
Achieve universal primary education
Promote gender equality and empower women
Reduce child mortality rates
Improve maternal health
Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
Ensure environmental sustainability
Develop a global partnership for development

In pursuit of the gospel mandate, the Episcopal Church has dedicated itself to these goals. This is Christian social justice.

The Anglican Marks of Mission and the Episcopal Church’s commitment to the UN’s Millennium Development Goals are our church’s way of putting into positive action the last seven of the Ten Commandments. We understand these to form a sort of basic contract listing some fairly fundamental expectations of God with regard to social justice in the global human community. Ultimately, Jesus would summarize them in the two great commandments, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength …. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Mark 12:30-31) In today’s epistle lesson, St. Paul reminds us that this contract is beyond the wisdom of the world, and that it is our responsibility to fulfill these divine expectations without sacrificing the spirit of the Law which, as foolish as it may sound to the wise of this world, is to build up the whole human community. This is the goal of Christian social justice.

In Jesus’ time, the religious, political, and social institutions had forgotten this. In place of the fair and equitable financial system anticipated in the laws set out in Exodus and Leviticus, Jesus found the bankers sitting in the Temple courtyard taking advantage of the poor, exchanging Roman drachmas for temple sheckles at outrageous conversion rates and pocketing unacceptably high profits. He exercised an active social justice ministry and threw them out. Instead of priests and Levites aiding the people in their relationship to God, he found the sellers of sacrificial animals preying on their sorrows, cheapening their thanksgivings, and profiting from their earnest effort to be faithful. He exercised an active social justice ministry and drove them away.

Jesus cleansing the Temple exemplifies the active, social justice ministry to which God calls the church. Throughout his ministry on earth, the Son of God did not simply call individuals to be good persons: he insisted that the systems and institutions of society were to be reformed so that they would reflect the values inherent in the Law and the word of God. Because of human frailty, because of human greed, because of human failure, the systems and institutions of society are always in need of reform and, thus, the church is always called to an active ministry of social justice.

Let us pray:

Almighty God, who created us in your image: Grant us grace fearlessly to contend against evil and to make no peace with oppression; and, that we may reverently use our freedom, help us to employ it in the maintenance of justice in our communities and among the nations, to the glory of your holy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (BCP, page 246)

Balancing the Details & the Bigger Picture – Sermon for Lent 2B

March 4, 2012 / eric / 0 Comments

Revised Common Lectionary for the Second Sunday in Lent, Year B: Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16; Psalm 22:22-30; Romans 4:13-25; and Mark 8:31-38

This is the second Sunday on which I will answer some of the questions put to me by members of the congregation. We had several detailed questions asked about the liturgy so I deal with those as a group today.

One question was, “Why are different colors used throughout the church year and what do they mean?” We use colors in our worship because color is expressive and reflective of mood and meaning. William Temple, former Archbishop of Canterbury whom I quoted last week, is frequently quoted as having said, “Christianity is the most materialistic religion in the world.” What he means, of course, is that Christians acknowledge that God made the world of matter, the world of things, and that the world of matter is essentially good, as God pronounced it in the creation story in Genesis 1. “All things bright and beautiful…The Lord God made them all” the children’s hymn declares. Since God made them and declared them good, we are to receive all that God has made with thanksgiving. We are to enjoy it all for as long as we have breath. Part of that enjoyment is using and appreciating the many colors of the rainbow in our worship.

At the present time, the most commonly found color sequence used in churches of all denominations is that of the Roman Catholic Church, with white, red, green, and purple as the principal colors. Lutherans and Anglicans often add blue to this list, and some congregations make use of scarlet or “blood red” during Holy Week. Blue is used in the Advent as symbolic of hope. White is used at Christmas and Easter, at other Feasts of the Lord, and on the feasts of saints who were not martyred as symbolic of light, joy and purity; sometimes gold is used as an alternative to white. Red is used at Pentecost to symbolize the flames of the Holy Spirit and on the feasts of martyrs to symbolize the blood they shed for their faith. Purple is used in Lent as symbolic of mourning and repentance. Purple may also be used in Holy Week, or scarlet or the blood red Lenten array, a reminder of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, may be used. The “neutral color” used during the Sundays of Ordinary Time following the Epiphany and following Pentecost is green, which symbolizes growth. This general color scheme has been followed in most English churches since the 16th Century and, thus, in most Episcopal parishes since the founding of our province of Anglicanism after the Revolutionary War.

Another parishioner asked why I raise my hands at certain points, or bow at others, or genuflect, or make the sign of the cross; in other words, why do we Episcopalians, and in particular the clergy, make so much use of our bodies in worship? My mother, who was reared in a tradition where one entered the church and sat down and didn’t move until the service was over, often asked this question. Rather than answer with regard to each specific movement, and there are detailed reasons for each, let me answer in general that we worship with our bodies, not just with our minds or our hearts. Just as Jesus was God “embodied” in human flesh, so we are both spirit and flesh. The guiding principle behind all ritual gestures and movements is the idea of the incarnation. In the incarnation we believe that God took a human body in Jesus of Nazareth and lived a human life among us in that body, so what we do with our bodies is important.

The old rule in the Episcopal Church used to be “Stand to sing, sit to listen, kneel to pray.” But liturgical scholars tell us that until the late Middle Ages and even into the Reformation, people stood to pray, often raising their hands to heaven. So now The Book of Common Prayer (1979) generally lists standing before kneeling as the preferred option for prayer. Standing, it has been said, is more a corporate posture; kneeling, a private one.

The most specific question I got was from someone who drew a picture (of a host with a wedge-shaped piece broken out) and asked, “Why do you hold up the Host like this?” This is an ancient tradition in the church going back into the early Middle Ages, if not to the very origins of the eucharistic liturgy. In our eucharist, the large host is broken (the breaking of the bread symbolizes the death of Jesus) and what is called the “fraction anthem” is said, usually “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.” After the People’s response, as all present are invited to receive Communion, the Bread and the Chalice are displayed, the two halves of the Host rejoined symbolizing the Resurrection; they are shown by the missing “wedge” to have been broken as a memorial of Christ’s wounds shown to St. Thomas to prove that our Lord had been crucified and raised from the dead.

None of these things, in and of itself, is terribly important. Whether the presiding clergy wears green or blue or some other color really doesn’t matter. Whether he or she bows or not at a particular moment or makes the sign of the cross at a specific time really doesn’t matter. Whether we chant a part of the service or not really doesn’t matter. How the presider invites the People to receive the Sacrament really doesn’t matter. At least, taken individually they don’t really matter … but taken as a whole they are very important … the whole is greater than the some of its parts, and if we change or abandon any of the parts, we should do so carefully and with understanding of what we are doing.

A friend of mine recently told me about a problem she has with her sister-in-law. “When my sister-in-law cooks,” she said, “she likes to substitute ingredients for those in the recipe. One time I gave her the recipe for a chicken-and-walnut dish that her husband, my brother, likes, and she served it one night when I was over. In place of walnuts, she had used raw peanuts. And for chicken, she had substituted beef. In fact, every major ingredient had been replaced. ‘This is terrible!’ my brother said after one bite. My sister-in-law glared at me across the table and said, ‘Don’t blame me! It’s your sister’s recipe!’”

Replacing even one ingredient in a recipe can have significant effect on the whole dish. As the Hindu philosopher Sivananda once said,

A mountain is composed of tiny grains of earth. The ocean is made up of tiny drops of water. Even so, life is but an endless series of little details, actions, speeches, and thoughts. And the consequences whether good or bad of even the least of them are far-reaching.

Details are not simply picky details; they are important. The award-winning furniture designer Charles Eames once remarked, “The details are details. They make the product. It will in the end be the details that give a product its life.”

Doing liturgical worship is like following a recipe. Liturgy invites participants to worship God holistically, with body, mind, and spirit. Sometimes worship is reduced to the intellect, but God invites us to worship more fully. Participants in liturgical worship with all its colors, gestures and movement are more than an audience, more than mere spectators; they are celebrants. While our intellects may be engaged by a sermon, our bodies usually are not, but in liturgical worship, our bodies and senses are fully engaged. Our bodies participate along with our minds and spirits through physical acts of bowing and genuflecting, crossing ourselves, rising and coming forward to receive Communion. Like the individual ingredients in a recipe, none of these elements alone is terribly important; working together, they combine into something of great beauty.

The senses are engaged through visual means in art, candles, colors, symbols, and ritual gestures, through the smell and smoke of incense, through the hearing and singing of music and bells, through taste and touch of Communion and the Sacraments. All of these invite us to lift up our hearts, minds, and bodies to God in praise, adoration, and worship. A part of worshiping God liturgically includes our obedience to St. Paul’s mandate to “offer yourselves as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to the Lord” (Romans 12:1). When we worship God in a liturgical setting, we are honor this admonition; we see and take part in the bigger picture. In this way, liturgy is symbolic of everyday life; not content to be mere audience, simply spectators, liturgical worshipers are participants and celebrants.

Which brings me to today’s story from the Gospel according Mark. Jesus has taken Peter, James, and John up the Holy Mountain and they have seen him transfigured. As they proceed from there to Jerusalem, he has asked them who people think he is and, more pointedly, who they think he is; Peter has exclaimed, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God!” (Matthew 16:16; Mark 8:29) Now, continuing their journey, he is teaching them what that means, giving them the big picture, as it were, but Peter gets hung up on the details and protests. “Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him,” but Jesus (perhaps anticipating the modern notion that “the Devil is in the details”) replies, “Get behind me, Satan.” He will not let Peter’s temptation to focus on and amend a detail derail the bigger plan. “You are setting your mind on human things (the minor details), not on divine things (the big picture).” (Mark 8:32-33)

Jesus then calls all the disciples and others in the crowd to join them and says, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” (Mark 8:34) What, he asks them, will if profit anyone to gain the world (mere details) at the cost of their life (the big picture). Australian theologian Bill Loader says of this story:

These verses have caused considerable confusion in Christian spirituality. Who is doing what? Which self am I denying? With which self am I doing the denying? Is it a matter of not doing what I want to do – for a while, perhaps during Lent – only then to return to myself? Is it saying I need to hate myself or, at least, constantly put myself down – or, if I want to make a good impression, keep doing so when others are listening. It is little wonder that many people have been confused by the rules of the game. (First Thoughts on Year B Gospel Passages from the Lectionary)

People get confused because we are all often like Peter, focusing on details and failing to see the big picture. And yet, if we look only at the larger vision paying no attention to its parts, we can fail to reach the goal. Major league catcher Rick Dempsey, who played for a lot of teams but mostly for the Baltimore Orioles, once said that good baseball players can’t think about the big questions like winning the World Series or winning a long string of games. He said that a good catcher has to break the game down to its smallest parts: one game, one inning, one pitch at a time. “If you’ll play it one pitch at a time, you’ll eventually look up and see that you won the game.” (Story related by Kyle Childress in Following Jesus One Step at a Time)

So it’s something of a balancing act – details balanced with the big picture – seeing the larger vision without losing track of each step necessary to get there. It’s like doing liturgy – we pay appropriate attention to the parts while taking part in the whole, neither focusing too closely on the details nor forgetting about them. And this is the way to make sense of what Jesus says to the crowd in this Gospel lesson.

Jesus calls each of us to take up our cross and follow him; he doesn’t in any way offer to carry our cross for us. Now, please be aware that Jesus is not saying simply, “Deal with the annoying details of your personal life.” Those burdens of our everyday lives are not our “crosses” – if anything they are those thorns in the flesh of which St. Paul complained in the Second Letter to the Corinthians (2 Cor. 12:7). Listen again to Christ’s full statement: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” It’s not about the little details of our own lives; it is about our service to others. Just as Jesus took up his cross and struggled and suffered for the benefit of others, taking up our cross is about working for the benefit of others.

If Jesus took away our struggles and hard work and suffering on behalf of those around us, he would be taking away the meaning and purpose of our lives, as mysterious and inscrutable as it may all be to us most of the time. He does not call us to take up his cross, but to take up our own, and Jesus’ cross does not take away our crosses. That wasn’t and isn’t what he is about, for that would leave us with nothing meaningful to do.

By calling us into the hard work of a life of purpose, sacrifice, and love for others, Jesus gives us back our lives; he redeems the details of our lives in the context of his larger vision. He saves us from meaningless days and years of having nothing to do but deal with our own petty details. He opens us up to see the needs of the world around us and to respond to them saying, “I’ll do something, because if I don’t no one else will.” He gives us back hard lives that are not merely about our small selves, but about God’s bigger picture.

In our Epistle lesson today (Romans 4:13-25), St. Paul reminds the Roman church and us that we are called to faith in this larger vision, to “being fully convinced that God [is] able to do what [God has] promised.” The great Disciples of Christ preacher Fred Craddock says that St. Paul’s retelling of the story of Abraham “reminds us that God is both the subject and the object of faith. As the subject of faith, God initiates faith. …. And the one who believes is responding to and trusting in the God who calls and [who] promises.” Thus, he says, the example of Abraham provides us a roadmap for the Lenten journey:

For the one who believes in the God who gives life to the dead, the Lenten journey is … a revisiting of one’s own experience. [This] makes the traveler through Lent a pilgrim. Without this faith one is simply a tourist. (Craddock, Lenten Roadmap, The Christian Century, March 8, 2003, p. 18.)

Living the Christian faith is a balancing act – details balanced with the big picture – seeing the larger vision without losing track of each step necessary to get there. In liturgical worship, it calls you to be not merely an audience, but celebrants. In the Lenten journey and throughout life, it calls you to be not merely tourists, but pilgrims; not merely spectators, but participants. So take up your cross and follow Jesus into God’s bigger picture. Amen.

“Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?” – Sermon for Lent 1B

February 26, 2012 / eric / 5 Comments

I solicited from you, the members of St. Paul’s worshiping community, your questions about religion, the Christian Faith, the Anglican Tradition, the Episcopal Church, or St. Paul’s Parish as the fodder for a series of Lenten sermons. As I expected, I got some easy to answer questions like, “Why do we use colored vestments?” (which I’ll deal with in a later sermon), but I also got some really tough ones, like the one which I hope to discuss today. I use the term discuss advisedly because it is not a question that I can answer in the course of one short sermon. In fact, it’s not a question I’m sure can actually be answered! It is this, “Why do bad things happen to good people?”

That, succinctly stated, is the issue behind what theologians and philosophers call the “logical problem of evil”. It arises from three core beliefs of Judaism and Christianity and one undeniable observed fact. The three core propositions are found in religion’s fundamental understanding of the attributes of God: all-powerful (omnipotent), all-knowing (ominiscient), and all-loving (omnibenevolent). The undeniable observed fact is that there is bad stuff in the world that causes human suffering, both moral evil (murder, corruption, sexual exploitation, greed, etc.) and disordered nature (earthquakes, hurricanes, pathogens, cancer, etc.)

The logical problem of evil is this: An all-powerful (omnipotent) God could prevent evil from existing in the world. An all-knowing (omniscient) God would know that there was evil in the world. An all-loving (omnibenevolent) God ought to wish to prevent evil from existing in the world. Since there is evil in the world these propositions cannot all be true; therefore, argues the skeptical philosopher, either the Christian God does not exist, or God must lack at least one of these fundamental attributes. God may be all-powerful and all-knowing, but cannot be all-benevolent; or God may be all-good and all-knowing, but cannot be all-powerful; and so forth. This problem, or some variation of it including non-Christian versions, has been debated by philosophers since at least the time of Epicurus in the Fourth Century BC. So, as I said, I don’t think I’m going to adequately solve the conundrum of evil in the span of a short sermon, but I do want to acknowledge its seriousness and suggest an avenue of understanding.

The parishioner who asked question explained that it is one that gets asked of him when he tries to evangelize others, to discuss faith or church with his friends or co-workers, or to invite them to join him at church. So I want to thank and praise him for that effort, and to acknowledge that it is fear of being unable to answer this question that keeps so many others from undertaking the work of an evangelist themselves. “What if someone asks me a question (like this one) that I can’t answer?” is the stumbling block that stops so many of us from talking about church with our unchurched friends and neighbors. So kudos to the person who asked this question.

I suppose I could have let that stumbling block stop me from undertaking this sort of Lenten sermon series. “What if someone asks me a question (like this one) that I can’t answer?” is something that I considered. And sure enough, someone did … because I have to tell you all, very honestly, I cannot answer this question! I do not know why bad stuff happens to good people. But I do know that most people who ask that question are not asking it out of hostility to religion! I do know that most people who ask that question are not asking it to be argumentative or contrary. They are not, by asking it, rejecting the idea of God. The theologian William Temple, who was Archbishop of Canterbury at the end of the Second World War, once said, “This problem is not the creation of an alien criticism, but arises out of the heart of religious faith itself.” It is a fundamentally religious question, so while I cannot give you an answer, I can suggest a Christian response.

The first part of that response, I would suggest, is to acknowledge that bad stuff happens to everyone. I think we might all agree that being driven into the barren desert to wander for forty days with no food or water is a bad thing … but it is what happened to Jesus immediately after his baptism. (Today’s gospel lesson, Mark 1:9-15.) I think we might all agree that being condemned by your own family members and neighbors as a lunatic, and being threatened, by them, with being thrown off a cliff is a bad thing … but that is what happened to Jesus immediately after he preached in his home town. (Mark 3:21; Luke 4:29) I think we might all agree that being unjustly condemned as a political rebel and condemned to a painful death is a bad thing … but that is what happened to Jesus. So, yes, bad things can and do happen to good people, but God in Christ is there in that wilderness of pain and suffering with us. He’s been there before; he knows what it’s like and he supports and sustains us as we go through it.

One reason these bad things happen is that God, the all-knowing, all-loving, all-powerful God, made his creation free. Human beings have been given freedom of will, and the natural world has been made free, as well, precisely because of God’s love for his creatures. Although it is possible for an omnipotent God to create a world in which creatures are not free, a loving God would not do so. Our loving God has so created a world that all his creatures have the opportunity to genuinely act in freedom, and moral beings such as humans have the opportunity to make genuinely free decisions among all the various options available to them. Sometimes, exercising freedom poorly, we make choices that result in suffering. Sometimes, acting freely, nature causes harm.

That an omnipotent God could have prevented such suffering and harm, we must admit, but God has given up some of God’s power, has limited his own power, in order for his creatures to possess the power for freedom. This is partly the witness of our reading from the Hebrew Scriptures today in which God makes covenant with Noah, giving up the power to destroy the earth again by flood and placing the rainbow in the sky as a reminder of that self-limitation. God imposes this self-limitation because God lovingly desires others with whom to relate, others to be God’s partners in creation. God’s loving nature is such that God desires his creatures to express freedom, even when the expression of creaturely freedom occasionally results in something bad, when creaturely freedom takes us into the wilderness of pain and suffering.

Another element of both the Jewish and the Christian response to bad things happening to good people is that, unlike God, we are not all-knowing. What seems to be a bad thing, or what seems to be a good thing, is not always clear to us. There is a rabbinic story which illustrates this:

There once was a farmer who owned a horse. And one day the horse ran away. All the people in the town came to console him because of the loss. “Oh, I don’t know,” said the farmer, “maybe it’s a bad thing and maybe it’s not.”

A few days later, the horse returned to the farm accompanied by twenty other horses. (Apparently he had found some wild horses and made friends!) All the townspeople came to congratulate him: “Now you have a stable full of horses!” “Oh, I don’t know,” said the farmer, “maybe it’s a good thing and maybe it’s not.”

A few days later, the farmer’s son was out riding one of the new horses. The horse got wild and threw him off, breaking the son’s leg. So all the people in town came to console the farmer because of the accident. “Oh, I don’t know,” said the farmer, “maybe it’s a bad thing and maybe it’s not.”

A few days later, the government declared war and instituted a draft of all able-bodied young men. They came to the town and carted off hundreds of young men, except for the farmer’s son who had a broken leg. “Now I know,” said the farmer, “that it was a good thing my horse ran away.”

The point of this story is obvious. Life is a series of events, and it’s hard to know what’s good and what’s bad, to know exactly how something fits into the story of one’s life. The rabbis say that that is one reason the Torah commands respect for the elderly – because through the course of life experience they have begun to see how the pieces, the good and the bad, fall into place in the puzzle of life.

Why do bad things happen to good people? I can say, “Because creation is free.” I can say, “There’s no purely bad thing because good can come of everything.” In the end, I have to admit that these are only partial and incomplete responses; they are not really answers to the question. But in the end, also, I know beyond any doubt that whatever life may bring me, good or bad, God is with me in the good and the bad of life; this, among other things, is what the story Jesus’ forty days in the desert means. This is what the whole story of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah means. As theologian Jurgen Moltmann writes:

God showed himself in the man whose last words were: “My God, why have you forsaken me?” God emptied himself in the pain of love and died voluntarily a death of desperation. …. In the suffering and dying of Jesus, God bridged the distance between us, so that no one can any longer say: “See – God doesn’t care!” (The Language of Liberation, Baarn 1972, p.32)

Concentration camp survivor Ellie Weisel tells this story of his experience at Auschwitz:

One day when we came back from work, we saw three gallows rearing up in the assembly place, three black crows. Roll call. SS all around us, machine guns trained: the traditional ceremony. Three victims in chains – and one of them, the little servant, the sad-eyed angel.

The SS seemed more preoccupied, more disturbed than usual. To hang a young boy in front of thousands of spectators was no light matter. The head of the camp read the verdict. All eyes were on the child. He was lividly pale, almost calm, biting his lips. The gallows threw its shadow over him.

This time the Lagerkapo refused to act as executioner. Three SS replaced him.

The three victims mounted together onto the chairs.

The three necks were placed at the same moment within the nooses.

“Long live liberty!” cried the two adults.

But the child was silent.

“Where is God? Where is He?” someone behind me asked.

At a sign from the head of the camp, the three chairs tipped over.

Total silence throughout the camp. On the horizon, the sun was setting.

“Bare your heads!” yelled the head of the camp. His voice was raucous. We were weeping.

“Cover your heads!”

Then the march past began. The two adults were no longer alive. Their tongues hung swollen, blue-tinged. But the third rope was still moving; being so light, the child was still alive…

For more than half an hour he stayed there, struggling between life and death, dying in slow agony under our eyes. And we had to look him full in the face. He was still alive when I passed in front of him. His tongue was red, his eyes were not yet glazed.

Behind me, I heard the same man asking:

“Where is God now?”

And I heard a voice within me answer him:

“Where is He? Here He is – He is hanging here on this gallows…” (Jon Pahl, Shopping Malls and Other Sacred Spaces: Putting God in Place, p. 36, quoting Wiesel, Night)

Why do bad things happen to good people? I don’t know. I can’t answer that question. But I know that when, in the middle of those bad things, in the very midst the pain and suffering, we cry out “Where is God now?” he is there in the wilderness with us.

Let us pray:

Lord, we do not know what any day may bring forth, whether good or ill, but make us ready, we pray, for whatever it may be. If we are to stand up, help us to stand bravely. If we are to sit still, help us to sit quietly. If we are to lie low, help us to do it patiently. And if we are to do nothing, let us do it gallantly. Make these words more than words, and give us the Spirit of Jesus that we may keep your covenant and your testimonies and walk in your paths of love and faithfulness. Amen.

The Story of Naaman of Syria

February 12, 2012 / eric / 0 Comments

On Sunday, February 12, 2012, the reading from the Hebrew Scriptures for Christian churches which use the Revised Common Lectionary (the Episcopal Church being one of them) was the story of Naaman, a general from the country of Aram (modern day Syria). Naaman is a leper who comes to Israel and is cured when, following instructions of Elisha the prophet, he bathes in the River Jordan. Here is how the story is related in the first half of the fifth chapter of the Second Book of Kings:

Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Aram, was a great man and in high favor with his master, because by him the LORD had given victory to Aram. The man, though a mighty warrior, suffered from leprosy. Now the Arameans on one of their raids had taken a young girl captive from the land of Israel, and she served Naaman’s wife. She said to her mistress, “If only my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.” So Naaman went in and told his lord just what the girl from the land of Israel had said. And the king of Aram said, “Go then, and I will send along a letter to the king of Israel.”

He went, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten sets of garments. He brought the letter to the king of Israel, which read, “When this letter reaches you, know that I have sent to you my servant Naaman, that you may cure him of his leprosy.” When the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, “Am I God, to give death or life, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy? Just look and see how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me.”

But when Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent a message to the king, “Why have you torn your clothes? Let him come to me, that he may learn that there is a prophet in Israel.” So Naaman came with his horses and chariots, and halted at the entrance of Elisha’s house. Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, “Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean.” But Naaman became angry and went away, saying, “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! Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them, and be clean?” He turned and went away in a rage. But his servants approached and said to him, “Father, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was, `Wash, and be clean’?” So he went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean. (2 Kings 5:1-14 [NRSV])

That’s where the RCL leaves the story, with Naaman cleansed by the mighty power of God. Great story! Wonderful story! A miracle healing that proves the power of God. It fits well with the gospel lesson appointed for the day from Mark’s Gospel:

A leper came to Jesus begging him, and kneeling he said to him, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, “I do choose. Be made clean!” Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, saying to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.” But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter. (Mark 1:40-45 [NRSV])

Another wonderful story of the healing power of God.

But … I’m troubled by the fact that the reading from the Hebrew Scriptures ends where it does. As the story continues in the rest of 2 Kings 5, we find that Naaman, inspired by his healing, has become a follower of Yahweh. Here’s the rest of Naaman’s interaction with Elisha in 2 Kings 5:

Then he returned to the man of God, he and all his company; he came and stood before him and said, “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel; please accept a present from your servant.” But he said, “As the Lord lives, whom I serve, I will accept nothing!” He urged him to accept, but he refused. Then Naaman said, “If not, please let two mule-loads of earth be given to your servant; for your servant will no longer offer burnt offering or sacrifice to any god except the Lord. But may the Lord pardon your servant on one count: when my master goes into the house of Rimmon to worship there, leaning on my arm, and I bow down in the house of Rimmon, when I do bow down in the house of Rimmon, may the Lord pardon your servant on this one count.” He said to him, “Go in peace.” (2 Kings 5:15-19a [NRSV])

Naaman is presented with the moral and religious dilemma of doing something his king will demand (joining him in worship of Rimmon) which he knows is abhorrent to his new allegiance, Yahweh. He basically asks Elisha if God will forgive this, to which Elisha merely responds, “Go in peace.” I assume that means not to worry, that Yahweh is a forgiving god and will not find fault in Naaman, but one must admit that it is ambiguous. This is a dilemma that we face on a daily basis – demands of employers, schools, sports teams, friends, governments, family, etc. which are at odds with the dictates of religion. – The reading as it stands leaves us with Naaman fully cleansed by God, but the rest of the fifth chapter of 2 Kings leaves us with a very different Naaman, a Naaman troubled by the conflict between the requirements of faith and the demands of the world.

Now what I find fascinating is not the first similarity between Naaman and the unnamed leper in Mark’s story, i.e., that they are cured, but rather the second similarity, that they are both confronted with religious proscriptions! Naaman somehow knows that he is not to worship other gods; someone somewhere at sometime has told him of Yahweh’s first commandment to his people, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them.” (Exodus 20:2-5a [NRSV]) Naaman knows that his king will demand that he do something which will violate this command and he wants to be assured that in breaking it he will not be punished (perhaps by loss of his cure?). The leper in the gospel story also knows of a command; he’s given one point-blank by Jesus, “See that you say nothing to anyone…” (Mark 1:44 [NRSV]) But he goes right out and breaks it! “He went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter.” (Mark 1:45)

Two responses to religious proscription. What are we to make of these? How are we to form some sort of understanding of our response to the demands of faith, the demands of religion when scripture gives us two such widely varying examples … and, in truth, there are three. We’ve not yet finished the fifth chapter of the Second Book of Kings, for the story of Elisha and Naaman is not finished until Elisha’s servant Gehazi is dealt with. What an interesting contrast there is between the servants of Naaman, who are not followers of Yahweh, and Gehazi, who allegedly is!

The chapter concludes with this vignette:

But when Naaman had gone from him a short distance, Gehazi, the servant of Elisha the man of God, thought, “My master has let that Aramean Naaman off too lightly by not accepting from him what he offered. As the Lord lives, I will run after him and get something out of him.” So Gehazi went after Naaman. When Naaman saw someone running after him, he jumped down from the chariot to meet him and said, “Is everything all right?” He replied, “Yes, but my master has sent me to say, ‘Two members of a company of prophets have just come to me from the hill country of Ephraim; please give them a talent of silver and two changes of clothing.'” Naaman said, “Please accept two talents.” He urged him, and tied up two talents of silver in two bags, with two changes of clothing, and gave them to two of his servants, who carried them in front of Gehazi. When he came to the citadel, he took the bags from them, and stored them inside; he dismissed the men, and they left. He went in and stood before his master; and Elisha said to him, “Where have you been, Gehazi?” He answered, “Your servant has not gone anywhere at all.” But he said to him, “Did I not go with you in spirit when someone left his chariot to meet you? Is this a time to accept money and to accept clothing, olive orchards and vineyards, sheep and oxen, and male and female slaves? Therefore the leprosy of Naaman shall cling to you, and to your descendants forever.” So he left his presence leprous, as white as snow. (2 Kings 19b-27 [NRSV])

So we have three responses to the demands of religion when set at odds with the demands of the world:

Naaman’s response which is to seek forgiveness (even before being placed in the position of disobeying the religious command);
The leper’s response which is to freely and openly disobey the command (here in obedience to a perhaps over-riding sense of duty to spread the Good News);
Gehazi’s response to furtively disobey (and then lie when caught).

So what are we to do? What are we to make of these? How are we to form some sort of understanding of how we are to make religious decisions, ethical decisions when scripture gives us such widely varying examples? Well, clearly, we are not to do what Gehazi the servant did, but that still leaves us with little guidance.

The truth is that Scripture is not a rule book and does not give us clear guidance; we have to use our minds or, as our Anglican theological convention would put it, we have to turn to tradition (the discernment of the church throughout the ages) and reason (our own rational faculties informed by experience and inspired by the guidance of the Holy Spirit).

A framework for ethical or religious decision-making might include these steps. First, recognize whether it is an ethical issue: Is it a situation in which your decision could be damaging to some individual (including yourself) or to some group? Is it a decision which involves a choice between a good and bad alternative, or between two goods or maybe even between two bads? Is it an issue about more than what is legal or what is most efficient? Is it a question about balancing the demands of religion against the demands of the world?

Second, get the facts. What are the relevant facts of the case? What do you not known? Is there more to learn about the situation? Do you know enough to make a decision? What individuals and groups have an important stake in the outcome? Should they be consulted? Are some concerns more important? Why? What are your options for action? Have you identified creative options?

The third step is to evaluate your options by considering them in light of one or more of the following questions which represent the five different philosophical approaches to ethical decision-making:

The utilitarian approach asks which the outcome will provide the most good or do the least harm, or, to put it differently, which option will produces the greatest balance of good over harm.
According to a second approach, the most ethical action is the one that best protects the moral rights of those affected, so the question to ask is, “Which option best respects the rights of all who have a stake?”
The third approach, based on the philosophy of Aristotle and other Greek, argues that all equals should be treated equally, or at least fairly based on some defensible standard. So the evaluative question is, “Which action will treat those involved equally or proportionately?”
Greek philosophers also contrived the notion that life in community is a good unto itself and our actions should contribute to that life, so the “common good” approach asks which option would best serve the community as a whole, not just some of its members?
The fifth method of making an ethical or religious decision has been called “the virtue approach”. According to this approach, the ethical decision is the one which will accomplish the highest potential of our character and accord with the classic virtues: truth, beauty, honesty, courage, compassion, generosity, tolerance, love, fidelity, integrity, fairness, self-control, and prudence. The evaluative question is, “Which option leads me to act as the sort of person I want to be?”

It is this fifth method of making a decision that most accords with our faith. But Christian morality is more than a commitment to some general, universal good, and it is about more than making decisions. The virtues are God-given qualities which we learn in the community of faith; they are the fruits of the Spirit given to the church. These virtues do not come about simply by making right decisions. They are learned skills developed in the process of character formation, in the process of learning to live in accordance with God’s will. It is the cultivation and exercise of these virtues within the community of faith that makes one a moral person; it is more than mere decision-making.

To be a follower of Yahweh and, specifically for us, to be a Christian is not principally about making ethical decisions; it is not about deciding to obey certain commandments or rules. It is about becoming a disciple, someone for whom the center of creation is the Creator. Our decisions will then reflect who we really are. The basic moral or ethical question for a follower of Yahweh, for a Christian is not, “What am I to do?” but “Who am I to be?” It is what theologian and ethicist Stanley Hauerwas calls “narrative ethics” as opposed to “decisionist ethics”. It is, he says, about entering into God’s story. As another theologian has said, it is about giving up being the star of one’s life’s story and allowing God to take center stage. God has invited us into God’s story, but God is always the star of that story. By learning to be his disciples, by finding our life in God’s narrative, we find our way into the moral life; we find that the decisions become less important because doing the right thing simply becomes a natural thing, part of the narrative. This is why Jesus, when challenged about the priority of the commandments, was able to say that there are only two important ones: Love God and love your neighbor. Enter into this narrative of love and everything else falls into place.

Deciding and doing are important, but the first ethic question for a follower of Yahweh is not “What ought we to do?” It is “What ought we to be?” And this brings us back to the two lepers in today’s lessons. The leper whom Jesus healed acted on the wrong question. Instead of entering into Jesus’ story and carrying forward the narrative Jesus was living out, he decided to do what called attention to himself, to remain the star of his story, to tell his own self-centered narrative of healing and, as a result, “Jesus could no longer go into a town openly.”

Naaman, on the other hand, entered into the story of the God of Israel and, becoming part of that story, recognized his need to conform to it. He moved from a self-centered narrative of which he was the star and entered into God’s narrative, the story which would create in him the character God would call him to be, and so the prophet bids him, “Go in peace.”

Stories of miracle cures are wonderful! They prove the mighty power of God. But the last half of the fifth chapter of 2 Kings is much more challenging than the first and much more instructive as we struggle to live into our parts in God’s story!

Sermon for Epiphany 4B: The Truth Speaks

January 30, 2012 / eric / 0 Comments

Well, here we are, all ready to hear what it is the preacher said. Mark has told us that this preacher taught with authority and not like other teachers the people may have heard, so we have taken our bulletins and used them to mark our place in the Prayer Book; we have settled comfortably into our pews; we are ready to hear the wisdom this Jesus had to offer.

Mark has told us that Jesus “taught as one having authority, and not as the scribes.” At first this may seem to us a bit strange; we ask, “Don’t the scribes have authority? Aren’t they the scholars of the law? Licensed by the priests in the temple to teach the people? Don’t they have authority to speak for the religious establishment? What does Mark mean by this distinction between Jesus as one with ‘authority’ and the scribes as something else?”

It helps, I think, to look briefly as the Greek word Mark uses, the word translated as “authority.” It is exousian. This is a compound word made up of the prefix ex, which means “out of” or “from”, and the word ousian which, among other things, means “being” or “substance”. This compound word (Strong’s Lexicon tells us) refers to “the ability or strength with which one is endued.” In other words, this is not delegated authority, such as the scribes possessed; Jesus’ authority comes from the core of his being – it comes from Who he is!

So Mark has us all prepared to listen: this Jesus really knows his stuff – he teaches with authority – we’d best pay attention to what he said!

And then Mark doesn’t tell us! He changes the subject and tells us about this crazy, demon-possessed interrupter.

Mark is very cagey; this author knows exactly what he is doing. He knows all too well that when a writer reports what someone else has said, the focus of the reader’s attention shifts away from the speaker to the words which were spoken. We human beings almost immediately cease to pay attention to the speaker and, instead, to try to parse out the meaning of the words spoken, to lock them down and bind them up, to cast the words (especially the words of someone like Jesus) in stone or to interpret them into a rule that we can apply for all time.

Some of you know that I’m a fan of the now-disbanded English comedy group Monty Python’s Flying Circus. They make this very point in their movie Life of Brian. For those of you who don’t know the movie, it’s the life story of another baby born in another stable laid in another manger, a baby named “Brian” who grows up sort of just a step behind Jesus. At one point in the movie, Brian is at the edge of the crowd at the Sermon on the Mount; he is so far away from Jesus that those around him can hardly hear what Jesus is saying. When Jesus says, “Blessed are the peacemakers,” someone asks what he said and a discussion ensues:

Man #1: I think it was “Blessed are the cheesemakers.”
Woman: Ahh, what’s so special about the cheesemakers?
Man #2: Well, obviously, this is not meant to be taken literally. It refers to any manufacturers of dairy products.

Mark knows that exactly this would happen if he were to report what Jesus said in the synagogue in Capernaum that long-ago sabbath. He knows that if he were to tell us whatever it was that Jesus taught to that congregation, whatever it may have been that Jesus said to the demon-possessed man or to the demon, we would tie it up in a hard-bound book and preserve it and make it last and eventually twist it around someway so that it became both more and less than what it originally was, so that it became more important than the Person who said it. But the important thing, the true thing, the Truth is not what was said but Who said it; not the message, but the Messenger; not the proposition, but the Person. Mark wants us to focus on the Word, not his words.

I pretty regularly read a blog by a Presbyterian pastor named Mark Sandlin. His blog is called The God Article. Recently he published this graphic:

Mark the evangelist doesn’t tell us what Jesus said because he knows that someone (probably a lot of us) knowing what Jesus said would claim to know “the truth”, try to force someone else to follow that “truth”, and thereby demonstrate that we really hadn’t found the Truth at all!

And that’s really what Paul is writing to the Corinthians about in today’s epistle reading. At first reading it seems to be about dietary rules. After all, Paul is answering the question, “Is it OK to eat meat which has been sacrificed to pagan gods?”

Here’s the deal … the Corinthian church was in an uproar, just going crazy because some people were doing just that. Corinth was a crossroads city, a major commercial center. People from all over the known world, people with all sorts of religions, gathered there. Some of those religions involved (as Judaism did in the Jerusalem temple) the sacrifice of animals on the altars of their idols. The clergy who conducted those sacrifices supported themselves by later selling the meat from those sacrificed animals. Some in the Corinthian church believed that the meat was “tainted” spiritually by having been so used and that eating it “tainted” the soul of the consumer; other church members thought that was nonsense – they knew better! they knew “the truth”! And they were going to act on that “truth”, on that knowledge and, in a sense, force the rest of the church to go along with them. But “knowledge puffs up,” as Paul put it so bluntly; it does not build up (love does that).

So let me ask you this … Well, first let me ask you something else?

What’s the opposite of black? (The congregation suggests “white”.) Is it? What about charcoal grey, or pearl grey, or chartreuse, or puce….? What’s the opposite of up? (The congregation suggests “down”.) Well…. what about diagonal? or sideways? or circular?

So what I was going to ask is this … What’s the opposite of truth? (Someone in the congregation suggests “lies”.) That’s what we think, isn’t it? That the opposite of truth is falsehood? But what these bits of Scripture today show us is that the opposite of truth is craziness!

While I was preparing for today I read a sermon on this gospel passage by the dean of the cathedral in Atlanta, Georgia, the Very Rev. Samuel Candler. In that sermon, Dean Candler wrote:

I have served five churches in my ordained life, and it never fails. In every place I have ever ministered, just when things are beginning to go right, the crazies show up. Just when I am having a delightful conversation, some crazy person interrupts. Just when the committee has reached a spectacular decision, the crazy one jumps up to speak. Just when it looks like the entire congregation is happy, the crazies show up angry and upset.

It’s the same way in other institutions besides churches. We ask ourselves, “How in the world did that crazy person get into this group?” We even find usually reasonable people suddenly acting crazy. It happens in our families. We ask our lover, “Where did that crazy comment come from?” (Day 1 Sermon: January 29, 2006)

Whenever the Truth begins to really hold sway, the craziness comes. That’s what happened in Corinth, all that craziness around what to eat and whether it’s OK to eat something. That’s what the lesson from Deuteronomy warns about. What God said to Moses there can be paraphrased, “I’ll be sending someone to speak truth, but in the meantime a lot of other people will show up talking crazy! They’ll claim to represent other gods, or they’ll claim to represent me but say things I couldn’t possibly have anything to do with; they’ll just be talking crazy!” And that’s what happened in the Capernaum synagogue that sabbath. Truth began to hold sway, and craziness walked in and interrupted.

We all have craziness in our lives. As Dean Candler said, it happens all the time. Some craziness is easy to identify: addiction to drugs or alcohol, medical problems, worries about money. Some isn’t so easy to peg: an over-weaning attachment to the past perhaps, or an excessive concern about the future, or an over-acquisitiveness of money and possessions. Whatever … there are all sorts of idols to which we can become attached, all sorts of craziness that can infect our lives. If Mark had told us what Jesus said to the demon-possessed man, someone might try to tell us that that is the answer to our craziness … which, of course, it wouldn’t be: it was the answer to his craziness, not to ours. But someone would try to tell us that if we just believe what Jesus taught or said that day in the synagogue ….

There was a Lutheran seminary professor named Gerhard Frost who died in 1988. Dr. Frost, in addition to being a theologian, was also a poet. I thought of his work and one poem in particular as I contemplated today’s lessons. The poem is entitled Loose-Leaf:

When your options are either
to revise your beliefs
or to reject a person,
look again.

Any formula for living
that is too cramped
for the human situation
cries for rethinking.

Hardcover catechisms
are a contradiction
to our loose-leaf lives.

(Gerhard E. Frost, Seasons of a Lifetime, p. 57, Augsburg Fortress: Minneapolis 1987)

That’s the genius of Mark, that “hardcover catechisms are a contradiction to our loose-leaf lives.” If Mark had written down what Jesus taught that congregation or what Jesus said to the demon-possessed man or to the demon, human beings would have tightly bound those words; they would have become “hardcover catechisms”. They would have become a message more important than the Messenger; the what would have overshadowed the Who; the proposition of belief would have obscured the Person before us. But as Paul wrote to the Corinthians, it is not knowledge that overcomes craziness; it is Love – Love in the Person of Jesus Christ who is the Truth. In a way never meant by those who usually say it, it’s not what you know, it’s Who you know!

We live loose-leaf lives into which craziness comes in all sorts of ways. Open the binder of your loose-leaf life and make room for Truth. We may not know what Truth spoke to the craziness in the synagogue, but we can be sure that Truth will always speak to the craziness in our lives. Open the binder of your loose-leaf life and let Truth speak to you. Amen.

Change Is Inevitable: Annual Parish Meeting Sermon 2012

January 16, 2012 / eric / 0 Comments

Texts: 1 Samuel 3:1-10(11-20)
Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17
1 Corinthians 6:12-20
St. John 1:43-51

Sequence Hymn: I Have Decided to Follow Jesus

I spend a portion of each day in private prayer. Sometimes that happens at home in the early morning hours before Evelyn rises. Sometimes it happens late at night after she has gone to bed. Sometimes it happens in during the day when I am here in the church building. On those occasions I often come into this space, which some of you know is a very different place in the quiet of a weekday afternoon when it is empty. It is at those times that I come here alone to pray and often I find myself contemplating the stained glass windows.

Window of Hannah, Samuel, and Eli

This one, for example, depicts the two characters in today’s story from the Hebrew Scriptures. What is depicted in the window comes a little earlier in the story of Eli and Samuel; this is their first meeting, when Hannah (Samuel’s mother) hands him over to Eli to be dedicated as a server in God’s temple. I think the story we heard today happens just a few days after the event depicted in our window. Both are parts of a story of change.

Eli was an hereditary priest and a professional prophet at the shrine of the Lord at Shiloh. The priesthood in ancient Judaism was a family affair belonging to the descendants of Moses’ brother Aaron. Eli is one of these as are, obviously, his sons. But in the time of Eli’s priesthood, God decides it is time for things to change. Not because of anything Eli has done, in particular, but because of what his sons Hophni and Phinehas are doing.

The Jewish religion at the time was one which practiced animal sacrifice. Devotees, those wishing to obtain the Lord’s favor and those wishing to atone for sins, would bring animals from their flocks and herds to the shrine and Eli and his sons would sacrifice them on their behalf. The choicest cuts of meat were to be burned on the altar to God; the priests and their families were permitted to feed themselves, and those in need, with the less good parts. The inedible bits were also to be burnt so that nothing of the consecrated animal could be desecrated.

Eli’s sons, however, were not following the rules – they were taking the best parts of the meat for themselves – and although Eli was not doing so, he was not preventing his sons from doing so. God was not pleased, and God decided it was time for a change.

We are told right at the beginning of this story that “the word of the LORD was rare in those days” and that “visions were not widespread.” As if to underscore this point, the author tells us that Eli’s “eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see.” But then Eli does “see” perfectly well what is happening when Samuel, hearing the voice of God in the nighttime, comes running to him: Eli knows very well what God is up to. God is making a change.

In the lesson from John’s Gospel we heard the story of the calling of Phillip and, through Philip, the calling of Nathanael (who is elsewhere identified as Bartholomew, son of Talemai). Nathanael is initially not terribly taken with Philip’s new-found messiah, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” he asks, but he soon changes his tune. After what seems to us, I’m sure, a brief and rather puzzling conversation, Nathanael exclaims, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” Jesus seems to be amused by this, but in his answer makes a statement that some would probably find very disconcerting: “You will see greater things than these,” he tells Nathanael the reluctant disciple, “Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” In a word, Jesus promises Nathanael nothing less than significant and constant change.

The past two or three years for St. Paul’s Parish have been a time of change. The vestry of three years ago was approached by the owners of the two properties to the east of the church and asked if we would like to buy them. With what I believe to have been forward thinking wisdom, the vestry did so. I know that not everyone agrees with that decision; there are some who seem to agree with the feelings of a mythical late 19th Century Duke of Cambridge who is reputed to have said, “Any change, at any time, for any reason, is to be deplored.” Perhaps there are some who look back to and would hope to return to the church heydays of the 1950s. But as the hymn we just sang says, “No turning back, no turning back!” It’s not the 1950s any longer and never will be again. And the day of single-purpose church buildings is gone. That vestry three years ago knew that, eventually, this building would need to expand beyond the needs of the then-current congregation.

The vestry of two years ago in 2010 began a process of “visioning”. Seeing that we are approaching the end of the congregation’s second century of existence and looking forward to beginning a third century of ministering in Christ’s Name to the people and community of Medina, Ohio, that vestry on retreat with the Rev. Brian Suntken, rector of Christ Church, Hudson, developed action plans for changes in programs and in administrative practices, including setting in motion the process which culminated in the Parish Vision Statement. That process included inviting several members of congregation to gather for an all day retreat in July 2010 and to participate in follow up sessions leading to adoption of a statement which clearly lays out mission: “Our reason for being is to set hearts on fire for Jesus Christ.” It describes our vision of a parish which is dedicated to “advancing the Kingdom of God through vibrant and exciting liturgy and worship, social justice ministries, promotion of the arts, and support of education.” This mission and vision have been articulated in our Sunday prayers ever since.

This understand of our mission and vision are quite a bit more dynamic than the parish’s previous mission statement, a statement which said merely that we would welcome those who came to join us and which know one could remember ever having actually been adopted by the congregation! At some point in the past, it simply appeared on the bulletin. Nonetheless, there were some who expressed unhappiness with the change. After all, “Any change, at any time, for any reason, is to be deplored.”

Living into that mission and vision, the leadership of the parish realized that this building complex, as lovely and as loved as it is, needed to be changed and over the past six months the vestry and a committee appointed by them, the Inviting the Future Committee, have sought to make the case and solicit your support, including your financial support, for that change. We have listened carefully to your feedback, as we hope you have listened with equal care to reasons for this effort.

The change at Shiloh could not have been easy for Eli. He nonetheless embraced it: he said, “It is the LORD; let him do what seems good to him.” By no stretch of the imagination does your parish leadership pretend to be God. But like Eli we believe that change is inevitable, that change is constant, and that when embraced in the right spirit change can be positive and productive. It is our hope and prayer that the changes we are seeing at St. Paul’s Parish will be positive and productive.

As much as some of us might wish there were no changes being made, the truth is that change is inevitable and it is always in one direction. Time moves forward into the future; it never stands still and it certainly never runs backward to the past. “No turning back, no turning back!” Times change. Fashions changes. Prices change. Technology changes. People change. Change happens. It’s part of life — a biologist would say that change is life; for a living entity — and rest assured, the church IS a living entity — for a living entity to cease to change is to die.

As I said before, the day of the single-purpose church buildings is gone. All around us we see the evidence of that and we see what happens to communities who have tried to hang on to that model. I have been in the Diocese of Ohio for 8-1/2 years and during that time we have declared fifteen parishes extinct; as our convention delegates know, we declared three parishes extinct this year! I have served on the board of trustees of the diocese for nearly three years and in that time we have sold five church buildings at bargain basement prices. I do not want to see that happen at St. Paul’s, Medina, and I’m sure no one here does either!

And so today, here at St. Paul’s Church, we are going through, as in fact we always have, a time of change. If most of us could have our way, even those of us most involved in these changes, we would have to admit that we would be most comfortable if things would just stay the way they have always seemed to have been. We have been comfortable with the way things were. We have felt secure with the way things have been. But change, no matter how much it may be deplored, is inevitable and irreversible. “No turning back, no turning back!” The question is not if change will happen; it is how it will happen. Change is inevitable, but we have a choice to either be proactive, manage change, and make it positive and productive, or to be reactive, have no say in it, and suffer from it.

The early 20th Century philosopher of change, Henri Louis Bergson, suggested the illustration of a summer day.

We are stretched on the grass, [he said] we look around us — everything is at rest — there is absolute immobility — no change. But the grass is growing, the leaves of the trees are developing or decaying — we ourselves are growing older all the time. That which seems at rest, simplicity itself, is but a composite of our ageing with the changes which takes place in the grass, in the leaves, in all that is around us. [The Nature of the Soul, four lectures delivered at the University of London, October, 1911, lecture 2]

Change happens everywhere and at all times. Everything is changing. Nothing in this world ever stays the same.

The annual journal which will be given to you at the business session this morning includes spreadsheets reporting changes in parish statistics, the budget and performance financial statements for the past year, the budget for the coming year, and the changes in our financial position from the beginning of 2011 to its end. Yes, there are deficits and yes, those deficits are large. We had not quite $60,000 less in the bank on December 31 than we did the preceding January 1. About 29% of that decrease was planned in the budget for last year; we knew we would have to spend from savings as we have done for many years. About 8% of that decrease is a result of market forces; our investments are simply worth less now than they were before. The remaining 53% was spent on the Inviting the Future process and will be paid back to our operating savings out of the proceeds of the capital campaign. Some will, I know, view that deficit simply as a loss (and certainly those market value changes are that for the parish as I know they have been for all of us who have investments), but I would encourage you to view most of it as an investment in the future, an investment I believe will pay dividends of growth and vitality.

Our anticipated pledged income for the coming year is nearly identical to that which was pledged in 2011, around $220,000. But keep in mind that in addition to that, our membership has also pledged gifts to the Inviting the Future Capital Campaign which now exceed $300,000 over the next five years. That, I believe, demonstrates great commitment to the future of St. Paul’s and the directions we are moving.

Our parish statistics already show in 2011 that we are beginning to grow. Although you will see that our average Sunday attendance appears to be smaller than in 2010 by about 5%, I would ask you to remember that we held three services each Sunday in 2010 and only two each Sunday during most of 2011; in truth our Sunday morning attendance has increased on average. Our Easter Sunday attendance was slightly higher and our Christmas attendance was larger by nearly 14%. Private eucharists, which are primarily our lay eucharistic visits, increased by 72%.

In our registered membership (which I hasten to admit is a far different thing from active membership) we experienced a net increase in 2011 of about 3%. That’s not huge, I admit, but it is growth. There were six confirmations in 2011 compared to four the year before, and there were ten baptisms compared to only three in 2010. Three of those baptisms were of adults. If you took part in studying one of the Unbinding Series books (either Unbinding the Gospel or Unbinding Your Heart) you may recall that the author’s definition of an exceptionally vibrant parish was one in which there were at least five adult baptisms. With three in one year, I suggest to you, that we are moving in the direction of great vibrancy. All of these figures show change that is positive and productive.

“Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree?” Jesus asked Nathanael in our Gospel lesson this morning. Then he told him, “You will see greater things than these.” These words of promise are only spoken to and meant only for Nathanael; the “you” in this declaration is the Greek singular. But the final verse brings to completion the invitation and promise of the first words of Jesus in the Gospel of John. Those first words are a question not only to Jesus’ first followers, but to every reader or hearer of the Gospel of John: “What are you looking for?”

Now, after his private conversation with Nathanael, Jesus opens the discourse to include all those around them, and you and me and all readers of this Gospel: regardless of what we may have come looking for, “Very truly, I tell you [plural], you [plural] will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” Jesus is recalling to us Jacob’s vision of a ladder stretching from earth to Heaven on which a constant parade of angels climbed up and down. The Jewish Biblical philosopher Philo said the angels in Jacob’s vision represent the continually changing affairs of men. The 4th Century Christian saint, Gregory Nazianzan, believed the angels of Christ’s promise are meant to signify that we will all take steps towards improvement and excellence, that we are always changing, always moving forward following Jesus. Regardless of what we may have come looking for, what we have found and will continue to find is change, change in the world around us and change in ourselves. “No turning back!”

This is the promise of the Gospel of John for all! This is the promise of Christ for all! This is the promise of God for God’s people here at St. Paul’s Parish. Change, inevitable change, positive and productive change, leading to improvement and excellence, advancing the kingdom of God, and setting hearts on fire for Jesus Christ.

Let us pray:

O God of unchangeable power and eternal light: Look favorably on St. Paul’s Parish and on your whole Church, that wonderful and sacred mystery; by the effectual working of your providence, carry out your plan of salvation; let the whole world see and know that all things are constantly changing, that things which were being cast down are being raised up, that things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Adapted from a prayer in the Episcopal Ordination service, BCP 1979, page 528)

Category: Sermons (Page 38 of 40)

The Three-Act Drama of Redemption: Act One – Sermon for Maundy Thursday 2012

Palm Sunday in Poetry – Sermon for April 1, 2012

The Catholic Church – Sermon for Lent 5B

Fasting Is a Given – Sermon for Lent 4B – March 18, 2012

Social Justice Ministry – Sermon for Lent 3B – March 11, 2012

Balancing the Details & the Bigger Picture – Sermon for Lent 2B

“Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?” – Sermon for Lent 1B

The Story of Naaman of Syria

Sermon for Epiphany 4B: The Truth Speaks

Change Is Inevitable: Annual Parish Meeting Sermon 2012

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