Welcome to our Sermon Page. Whenever possible, we will post our latest sermons here for you to read at your leisure. Not as good as participating in worship service, of course, but hopefully a small charge of spiritual energy to enrichen your week.
Sunday of Pentecost 2008
“…and the doors were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.”
It isn’t a difficult scene to picture in one’s mind’s eye: the closest associates of Jesus in the days following immediately upon his execution were undoubtedly in fear of their own lives. They were keeping off the streets, out of view, even locked away, in hopes of the situation quieting, of their being forgotten. Still, they had every reason to fear being arrested and tried as co-conspirators of Jesus and the prospect of also being put to death in the authorities efforts to once and for all stamp out the Jesus phenomenon.
We can imagine how they were talking among themselves: “how can it be that it turned out this way?” “Did we let Him down?” “We should never have let him come to Jerusalem —we knew there would be trouble.” “What are we going to do now?”
All of us are faced with situations in life, of one sort or another, where we are brought to the experience of being afraid. Situations that we have lost complete control of and that leave us feeling numb, perplexed, frightened, and maybe even despairing. Do we not sometimes feel inclined to shut ourselves away, off from everyone and everything around us in an attempt to stave off the trouble which besets us? We try to think of something, some means of changing the odds, or at least of avoiding—escaping from an uncertain fate. I have been in that situation, in connection with the sequence of events that led to my decision to end the professional and personal relationship I had with my former mentor, confrere, and monastic brother which, in turn, also necessitated my departure from the monastery I, with him, had founded thirteen years earlier. There was another earlier time when I had to wait for nearly a week for test results which would reveal whether or not I had developed leukemia. Time seems to just stop. Nothing that once mattered any longer matters in quite the same way. Some things matter far more while others matter far less. Do not uncertainty and fear force a very different perspective upon one’s consciousness in the sorts of circumstances where we feel we are being carried in a stream, the currents of which we feel powerless to resist?
It is precisely into those sorts of situations where God can break through our walls, or perhaps just slip through the cracks of our defensive armor, and speak the words voiced by Jesus to the terrified disciples: “Peace be with you.”
Pentecost could be approached through many different angles. It is an ancient Hebrew agricultural festival of dedicating the first fruits of the early harvest. It gradually evolved into the Jewish celebration of the reception of the Torah, the Law of Moses and the establishment of Covenant between God and the people of Israel . In Christian understanding, it came to be seen as the fulfillment of Jesus’ promise that while he himself must depart, the Spirit of God, Advocate and Comforter, would be sent to guide, uphold, and gather from among the nations of the earth a new people according to a new Covenant. Thus, Pentecost is often spoken of as the birth of the Church of Christ .
The Holy Spirit could be talked about, particularly from the Christian perspective of the Trinity and the role of this Spirit in the lives of the Church and of Christians and even of the world as a whole. A divine force that moves over the face of the earth, within the hearts and minds of human persons, at times inspiring us but also shaking, rattling, upending our plans and illusions and delusions, delivering from troubles and temptations, withering our arrogance and pride. It is that Spirit which becomes a fountain of courage to face what comes at us and, as in the words of a well-known prayer, “to change the things I can, to accept the things I cannot change, and the wisdom to know the difference.” It is that inner Spirit of creativity and artistry. It is the energizing impetus for the unity of people and peoples. The Spirit fosters repentance and nurtures forgiveness. It is the very essence of love itself.
What is going on in your life today that scares you, frustrates or vexes you? What relationships are sources of pain? What goals in life unmet? Disappointments that discourage you? Anger or resentments untended? Grief in want of healing?
In this very room we are all frightened pups in one or another way. There is the temptation to shut down, close ourselves off, to quit an engagement with people and the world around us maybe because we give in to self-pity.
Well, we’re Christians, and for a reason. Jesus has other plans for us. Whatever the circumstances of life for us He says to us today: “Peace be with you!” There is a whole world out there that needs your attention! “As the Father has sent me, so I send you!”
May the people of this church sow the seed of right intentions and earnest effort, thereby harvesting the wheat of interior joy that cannot be overcome. May the people of this church prize the works of mercy, reconciliation, and harmony as the signs of our Covenant with God and each other. Let this church be church, far from locking ourselves into mindsets and cliques, inviting in fervent welcome new persons, new blood, new ideas, and NEW LIFE! Come upon us Holy Spirit! Thanks be to God and the reign of God established.
Amen. So be it.
Sunday of Easter VII 2008
May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts, be always acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, our strength and our Redeemer. Amen
One of the difficulties—as well as the profound poetic beauty—of the Gospel of Saint John is exemplified in such language as we find in today’s text.
For one, it is the stuff of a high theological agenda that John has, of the mind that he was, to establish the identity of Jesus as having had being even before his human incarnation, that his existence “pre-existed” his humanity, that He was with God from before eternity.
John’s gospel is the base material for much of the theology of the Holy Trinity that was to be developed in time to come within the Christian church. But consideration of the Trinity itself is for another day and I leave that to a far brighter mind to tackle on the Sunday after Pentecost!
What I would like to emphasize today is the startling intimacy with the Holy One that John asserts was revealed and opened to humanity in the Person of Jesus. The Hebrew people of whom Jesus was part had such a highly exalted sense of God that they wouldn’t even utter a name for God. And this turns out to be part of the problem that erupted between the Jewish authorities and the infant Jesus movement: it was intolerable to a persistent school of thought within the old faith that God should be brought so near.
In this gospel, John, one of the preachers of the early Jesus movement, seeks to make very plain that in Jesus God has bridged the chasm that was thought to exist between Creator and created. Jesus is held up as being totally at one with God Whom He names as Father. Jesus, it is asserted, was sent into the world by His Father to do the “work” of making known the Name of God to those whom God designated. To those who believe that Jesus was sent by God, to speak the truth of the one and only God, would be opened the way to eternal life.
None of us can have any real knowledge of what that eternal life might be in any concrete sense. All of our language about it is highly symbolic and, I might add, speculative. We know that we pass from this life, the spirit of life taking leave of our physical form and measurable time, and to where or what realm is simply beyond anything but what the collective human imagination throughout history has creatively contrived. Because much of the human problem is the fear of death, of passing from this familiar existence into something completely unknowable. Sometimes we suspect that what we don’t know is so utterly fearsome that we attempt to quell fear by conceiving of alternative hypotheses, as for example an oft-repeated mantra, that death isn’t the end of life but only a transition from one experience of it to another. Do we in fact really know this to be true or is it that we desire it to be true as a much pleasanter resolution of the fact of death than to have to accept that perhaps death really does bring about the decisive end to our being? Of course the opposite is also true: we likewise cannot suppose with absolute certainty that there is not a continued existence in one or another manner.
The early church met this problem head on with the death of Jesus Whom they had accepted as the Christ, the Son of God. And it cost many of them just about everything. Those who had been Jews were no longer accepted as Jews by Jews. For within Judaism Jesus was no more than a scandalous heretic, a prophet gone bad. Citizens of Rome who accepted Christ of course fared no better, were treated as traitors and liable to punishment.
The story of Jesus’ bodily resurrection from the tomb and His physical ascension up into the heavens is a splendid vehicle for expressing the hope that the world and all that is in it has ultimate purpose and that in Jesus Christ that purpose is revealed. Jesus is one with God and always has been. God came to earth in Jesus and by what He taught, through those He healed, and finally by freely offering His life, people are enabled to detect our union with the Divine Source of all. The path to that union is love– simple love. Authentic love of self, of others, of the world from which we derive our very form, and for that internal, unseen Essence of Life that courses through everything that is within this realm and beyond it. I say beyond this earthly realm because I speculate that it is highly unlikely that our world is the only locus of life in the eternal unknown of inter-galactic space. Still, love in itself, is enough. When a human person loves freely and with more interest in the good of the other than one’s own, that is as close to divinity as we might possibly reach. It is heroic, albeit by degrees. To die for the sake of another is heroic to be sure, but it can be every bit as heroic to live day in day out for the sake of others. To keep at it. Lord knows how hard it is to accomplish this.
In Jesus, through Jesus, the God of all Who was once so very much to be feared, is now brought near as an object of our love. We are moved to venture loving an invisible God because in Jesus we are taught that it is in loving and serving each other that we touch God and reach God and that we cannot in fact suppose ourselves to love God Whom we cannot see if we do not love those whom with our eyes we can see. Daily life presents each of us with any number of opportunities to show what we are made of and, if this faith, by which we name ourselves, has any practical bearing in our thoughts, attitudes, and deeds.
Easter IV 2008
Sunday of Easter IV Shepherd Theme – John 10:1-10
May the words of my mouth, and the meditation of our hearts, be always acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, our strength and our Redeemer. Amen
Today’s gospel has a shepherd theme and that is significant for a church that has placed itself under the patronage of Christ, Gentle Shepherd. I have discussed with Father Tom my idea of establishing a parish patronal feast day at some time during the year, a Sunday dedicated to our celebration of being called together to be church in this time and place as well as a focused reflection on what our sense of mission is. But that specific idea is for another day’s consideration.
Speaking of ideas, my guess is that not a one of us has any real idea at all of what it is like to be a shepherd of sheep. Most of us have images in mind from holy cards or typical church art. Perhaps my clearest image is what is likely the very first such image I ever saw, as a boy, high up on the chancel wall of Christ Congregational Church, one half of a large and very richly colored stained glass window. There was that oh-so-gentle figure of Jesus, long brown wavy hair, pointed slightly curly beard, holding a lamb in one arm and a crook in the other hand, several tame and meek sheep milling about His feet. But I shouldn’t forget to mention that He was also dressed in an immaculate white, finely embroidered tunic with an overlay of rich crimson! What a serene pastoral scene is conjured by such images.
The truth is something far different, judging from an account I found while poking about on the net. A young man in Wales whose family are sheep farmers gives quite a sobering account of what it is really like to work with them.
“Real sheep are nothing like the cute, white fluffy animals you so often see in Christian bookshops. In fact the only thing they have in common is the name. Real sheep are dirty and greasy and their wool has all sorts of bits in it. Real sheep need everything done for them. Firstly, when they’re born they are vulnerable to birds pecking their eyes out. Also they need to have their tails cut off, otherwise excrement gets all over the tails and they get infections. Obviously they need to be shorn on a yearly basis. They will often put their heads through the square fence holes or alternatively in some brambles and get stuck and need help to get out again. They are also prone to other diseases: foot rot—which must be treated, maggots—which again they can do nothing about and must be treated. They also have to have their toenails cut regularly. And, as if that’s not enough, they run away when you come to help (or hobble away if they have feet problems). The ewes occasionally also require help when lambing, and if the mother dies, the lamb must be bottle-fed in order to survive.” ( Peninsula Bible Church Cupertino 3/12/06 )
I recall some years ago, during my monastic days, when several of us went to visit a parishioner’s sheep pen. While they were kind of cute, they were also extremely filthy and surprisingly aggressive. Our Father Joachim, a generally fastidious Greek-American, was having a delightful time until the cutest lamb of all spewed a shot of –excrement—all over the front of his monastic habit. I will never forget either the sight of it or the sound of his reaction. Certainly, no shepherd in his right mind would attire himself in white embroidered tunics and crimson cloaks!
So anyway, there is obviously a huge amount of back-breaking labor that also requires a steadfast commitment to keep at it even when tired or the weather is miserable or one might oneself be sick. Simply, if the animals are not faithfully and diligently tended, they will become diseased and die or else they will be preyed upon by fiercer beasts.
Jesus, in today’s text talks about the shepherd as the keeper of the pen’s gate. He says that the sheep know His voice and follow Him at its sound. Apparently, it is actually true that so-called “dumb” sheep come to know the voice of their keeper distinctly from other voices so that, even from a mixed herd of sheep, only those sheep bound to a particular shepherd will break from the herd to follow him.
Well, churches are said to have pastors and incidentally I just happen to have become pastor of this one. This pen of sheep has become my responsibility to tend. No, I won’t clip your toe nails or trim your tails! Yet, while I have a certain shepherding role—and Thomas Michael too along with me—we also remain ourselves among the flock for ultimately there is but one Shepherd and His name is Jesus. Therein is found some of the gravity of the link: the undertakings of a pastor are boldly understood to be made in the Name of Jesus Whose church it is. And every pastor too stands in need of pastoring.
While our Christian tradition asserts that Jesus the Son of God was incapable of error, it is obvious that Christian pastors acting in His Name are all too capable of it. But he or she must not, out of fear of erring, hesitate to undertake new initiatives, make difficult decisions, or exercise prudential judgment. There is a difference between disagreement and dissension. While people might have differing opinions, situations do not proceed to the level of dissension unless and until one or more parties shifts into a position of hardened opposition. That is where real harm begins to be visited upon a flock. The shepherd acting in the Name of Jesus must seek to know the Ways of Jesus and to be vigilant that his own ego not impose itself. The gathered church—the flock if you will—must have confidence enough in their shepherd so that they will move as one body, within the sheepfold of the camp itself, and secure enough to together step outside the gate into the world at large, the pastures where we are all called to act according to patterns consistent with the Ways of Jesus our Mystical Shepherd.
Let us all listen for His voice speaking to each of us this morning, not only according to our own individual hearts, but as a people—a tiny one albeit—gathered and sent out.
There is a work for us to do. Let us clean ourselves up, and pick out from the wool of our minds and hearts the “bits” of cruddish self-interest. Let us protect our eyes of faith and hope from being pecked out by the razored beaks of unkind criticisms and belittling. Let us not allow ourselves to become entangled in the briars of confusion and disunity. Jesus, the resurrected Lord and Shepherd lives and calls us to live “through Him, with Him, and in Him.” Let us then embrace that life in the Christ and do the work!
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Sunday of Pentecost VI 2008 – Galatians 3:23-29; Luke 9:18-24
“He asked them, ‘who do the crowds say that I am?’…and He went on to ask them, “But who do you say that I am?”
“Who do you say that I am?” This question requires, even demands an answer of us, each one. There can be many reasons why people will go to church. For some it is on account of feeling the obligation to do so, stemming from having had church law drummed in to one when young, some do so for social reasons, others because they will tell you that, “I really don’t know why, except that for some reason it makes me feel better.” Such reasons really don’t provide a stable foundation for a religious life. They remind me of the high cliffs along the shores of Lake Michigan in my native state: the relentless wash of the waves against their foundations little by little eats away the base leaving a precipitous overhang of land that is sure to collapse with time. People whose houses were built there watch their yards gradually disappear, falling away into the lake. Trees topple over the edge, the swimming pool cracks, and sometimes houses themselves have been rendered uninhabitable.
This question Jesus asked of his closest disciples is likewise posed to us and any person in any time who would claim to stand with Him. And there is, I think, a related question: why would one wish to associate oneself with this man whose very identity is otherwise shrouded by the fog of two thousand years passage of time? What we think we can know of him after all, depends upon layer on layer of story and lore, all of which was composed by parties who sought to exploit the commanding power of His image. The mighty Roman empire itself was baptized, “Christianized,” and Jesus Himself named the “King of Kings.” Crusading armies have marched in His Name to claim and “reclaim” places deemed “holy.” Never mind the wholesale butchery, rape, and pillaging engaged in the pursuit of that aim, and, at that, not only of so-called “infidels” but even of Christian folk whose doctrine and worship differed. So too the endless wars of religion that plagued Europe for hundreds of years. Still it goes on, one religious body warring upon another, all of them justifying it in the name of their god. How could anyone really think that Jesus of Nazareth would approve and bless this kind of behavior on the part of disciples and followers? Does not the entire world appear to be poised on the verge of yet another cataclysmic contest between adherents of what are called the “Three religions of the Book,” Judaism, Christianity, and Islam? Can anyone ever really win such a war? What sort of “victory” would this be?
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Sunday of Pentecost IV 2008 – Matthew 9:9-13;18-26
Some things truly never change: people in every time and place loathe a tax collector. One of my co-workers just this week was lamenting over his newly arrived property tax bill. I am quite certain that the city tax assessor will never receive an invitation to dinner at his house!
In the Gospel passage of today, tax collectors were in fact held in the same regard as notorious public sinners, persons who by way of their social offenses were thereby deemed impure for temple and synagogue services or even day to day interaction. The tax collector, for his part, was seen as an agent of the detested political occupation of Palestine by Imperial Rome. Any Jew who would collect from his own people the funds the emperor used to keep them in subjugation could hardly have expected to be the toast of the town. Yet here, Jesus, Himself a Jew, is observed dining—engaging in table fellowship—with people “good Jews” would have nothing to do with. Some of these “good Jews” take it upon themselves to confront his disciples: “just what does He think He is doing consorting with these lowlifes?”
But then, astoundingly, a synagogue official goes in where Jesus is eating and instead of reproaching Him kneels down and requests of Jesus the restoration to life of his newly deceased daughter! As He made His way to the official’s home a woman who had been long suffering from a debilitating illness merely reaches out to touch the edge of his cloak as he passed. “If only I touch his cloak, I will be made well.” Jesus, sensing her touch—and another gospel actually uses the words “sensing that power had gone forth from Him”– tells her that it really wasn’t anything that He Himself had done, rather it was her faith in Him that effected her healing. Once arrived at the house of the dead girl, he only took her by the hand whereupon she stood up.
On another day at work this week one of the women associates came in for her shift and various of us gathered round her to find out how she was doing. Her best friend was virtually paralyzed by a stroke in January. Her own elderly mother has been in rapid decline requiring all the attention—and more—that a loving care-giver could possibly provide. Then, just last week her sister was in a serious car crash suffering numerous injuries requiring hospitalization. Upon her arrival at work, I told her that I was almost afraid to ask her how things were going. With good reason as it turned out: This week her brother was rushed to the emergency room by ambulance and is presently hospitalized with a dangerous case of pancreatitis. All of this going on at the same time her marriage is in divorce proceedings. Linda’s tears began to flow copiously as several more of us closed in around her. She was so glad to come to work, to be with people she knows care about her and with whom she could release some of her pain. As we listened, one of the male associates, a devout Christian and in fact a wonderful, wonderful human being, put his arm around her and told her to pray, pray, pray, and don’t worry about a thing. Everything, he said, was going to turn out fine. They were the sort of words I’ve often heard zealous Christian folk utter in time of distress. In this instance I found myself taken aback by them. I felt myself recoiling at the quick certainty with which he intended to hush her distress. How, I asked myself, could he dare to assert that everything was going to be just fine?
Interestingly, the elderly mother who has been reduced to creeping about, in need of an oxygen tank she is too proud to use and fearful of just about everything real and imagined, while in the hospital room of her son, was seen to stand tall and rally strength nobody had any idea was still there. Her boy was gravely ill and this frail woman simply, instinctively switched back into the role of the comforting, nurturing mother.
Human beings, particularly those of the western world, are geared to pursuing every effort to master every possible natural adversity, those which pertain to the body per se as well as the terrestrial phenomena such as the weather, quakes, even asteroids. Most assuredly, all of us are mightily glad for the scientific achievements that have rendered much of life far more secure, comfortable, not to mention of significantly longer duration than our ancestors could have imagined. Nevertheless, we are still soberingly subject to unavoidable catastrophes. The matter at hand in this gospel is the question of how we might respond to them.
First of all there is despair. Nobody enjoys the feeling so what sort of option is this? Drink and drugs can temporarily take the edge off the pain, at least by quelling the symptoms, but root causes will still remain in need of attention. Attempts to run away usually are in vain. Anger, while real and healthy and even therapeutic to a degree, if it doesn’t subside will eventually begin to overpower every other impulse and fuel desperate, even violent action. And then there is hope. Hope which arises from the inmost workings of the human heart. When I wonder what fuels hope I immediately think of love. Firstly, the healthy love of one’s self, of one’s own being. Authentic self love is not closed in upon the self however but directs outwards to others—and, I might add, to the Other. I firmly believe that one can never authentically love another without first being capable of loving oneself. Hope, I think is distinct from faith. Hope an impetus of the heart, faith a working of the intellect. The ideas of faith seek to give explanation to the instinct of hopefulness. Hope, itself defined as a fundamental openness to trusting expectation of an ultimate good, finds its expression in the beliefs to which one will subscribe. Beliefs shared by others have given rise to faith systems and creeds, the many religions of our race. This is how we have come to be here together right now.
Jesus of Nazareth is one of the pre-eminent figures of all human history. Millions have admired Him—or at least the image of Him that the filters of historical testimony have provided. Millions also revere and worship Him as the human incarnation of God’s intimate presence to our race. We ourselves have gathered here once again this morning and are invoking His Name in our prayers, and in breaking bread and pouring a cup doing what He commanded His friends to do. Because each of us, in his and her own way, see in Him our knowable link with the unseen Source and destiny of our being. And we believe that there is power in this Name of His to get us through the troubles of the day, and Life in this Bread and Wine of His to nourish the human spirit and inspire greatness of goodness, depth of patience, and sufficiency of hope.
Hope that all of the tragedies in life can be met with courage and grace. That the instinct to comfort and heal must be cherished and promoted. That every form of human injustice and evil can be overtaken and vanquished. No more enemies, the collapse of barriers between tribes, nations and peoples. Wouldn’t this be paradise? But didn’t Jesus say that the “ Kingdom of God ”—paradise, is within us?
The act of praying and of communicating of the Holy Mysteries of the Eucharist is akin to reaching out to touch but the fringes of Jesus’ cloak. So also are works of mercy, compassion, and justice. What is of utmost importance is that we reach. None of us are completely well, all of us are in need of the Spiritual Physician. Ron is right: everything can turn out “fine” for there is healing in the reaching.
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Sunday after Pentecost II, 25 May 2008 – Matthew 6:24-34
“…I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear…”
Hey! I make my living by selling clothing! My company incessantly entices our customers to consider ever more purchases of the latest season’s fashions “essentials.” “Wardrobe classics” that the well-dressed gentleman should not be without!
Hey! Rick earns his living selling food! Where would he be if people didn’t spend some of their hard-earned dollars buying his sandwiches and fountain drinks—not to mention chips or cookies! Just where would we be after all if people didn’t concern themselves with what they were going to wear or eat?? After all, our own eating and wearing, not to mention housing and health care relies upon a steady commerce in our respective businesses.
What is more, in these days when people are living longer than ever, we are constantly reminded of the need to think ahead to the years when we will no longer be working. Will we have enough money to last for the number of years we might, according to actuarial tables, be reasonably expected to live? Just this week I received in the mail a sales pitch from AARP to consider my need for Long term Care insurance: “Imagine,” it read, “what could happen to your retirement assets if you or your loved one required an extended stay in a nursing home facility.”
So what are we to make of this Jesus teaching? The people he knew and spoke to, most of them belonging to the poorer classes of his society, had far shorter spans of life than we. People subsisted from day to day. Were one to become ill, disabled, or too aged to engage in the heavy physical labor most occupations required, had no social security program to rely upon. No health insurance. No retirement pensions. Yet, Jesus instructed his contemporaries to steer clear of worry about their material needs. Indeed, “today’s trouble [can be] quite enough for today.”
What is really puzzling to me though is His example of the “birds of the air.” “They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns,” He said, “yet your heavenly Father feeds them.” Well, I’ve watched birds looking for food. What a life! Imagine having to peck the ground, bite by bite, for your sustenance! I think of the day I sat outdoors taking my lunch at the center I work in. I tossed crumbs to the ground to a little bird looking up at me. Soon he was joined by numerous other birds. I favored the first little bird and tried to ensure that he—or she got the crumbs. What happened? Soon enough, others of the birds became totally infuriated and started to attack my little bird, pecking viciously at him, totally enraged that he was getting all the food! I thought of this gospel in that moment. None of those birds exhibited much confidence in their heavenly Father.
People really aren’t all that much different from birds though are they? Faced with a shortage of anything we want or need, our species can be all too willing to go to the mat with anyone else staking a claim upon whatever it is that we have to have. Not only with respect to vital necessities of life either: remember the major brawl on the day the free laptop computers were handed out in one of our adjoining counties two summers ago? It wasn’t pretty. And as for those lilies of the field, is this a fair comparison? Since when did a lily have to think about clothing its naked form or feeding itself? “Will God not much more clothe you—you of little faith?”
Truth is, we do worry about tomorrow, and everything in our culture tells us that we ought to exercise diligent effort towards ensuring our financial security, which in turn should be expected to provide us with the level of comfortable living we all desire. AARP doesn’t counsel its members to trust in God after all!
Truth also is that, while we shouldn’t live so recklessly in the present moment as to leave us in a state of penury later on, we likewise can become so absorbed by worry and stress over the future that we forget to live the present. We can become blind to the wealth of love, friendship, and beauty around us right now. I myself have fretted so much over our now long vacant house in Baltimore . How many times have I awakened in the middle of the night in alarm over whether or not the pipes had burst and the ceiling collapsed? Or not being able to keep up the mortgage and other payments for as long as it takes to sell it? Honestly, I’m not in a very credible position to preach about not worrying about tomorrow!
I think the key to this message is to try and make sense out of what Jesus means when he says that we should “strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness.” First off, I think the message is that if one is going to worry, spend less worry on oneself and focus more of it upon others. And that the treasure of life is to be found in other than what we eat, wear, drive, or live in.
God does wish to clothe us. The garments however are not constituted of fiber, buttons, and zippers that can be purchased from a merchant. Rather, it is the apparel we don realizing and assuming our dignity as persons, our human nobility and purpose. As a human family of inter-dependent persons. Called to live in unity with each other. The food we are offered by the Divine One cannot be picked in a field or from a grocery shelf. When we stop gorging ourselves on the junk food of possessions and “financial security” we will find ourselves psychically and spiritually healthier so as to place the bread of compassion and the cup of mercy in our neighbor’s hands, helping persons with little reason for hope of a happy life to dare to believe in it again.
Let us strive to see the world around us with the eyes of Jesus the Christ, not as birds willing to peck out the eyes of someone who gets more than we do of the world’s fortunes. Let us be eager for the kind of vision that sees through the false divisions this world’s power structures set up between races and genders, creeds, orientations, and political interests. All the world and everything of it and in it, whirling about in our assigned place among all the worlds and all the stars and galaxies, is charged through with the same roots of existence and, indeed, the same destiny.
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Easter 2008 – Deacon Tom Michael
I know that you will all find this difficult to believe, given my calm and accepting nature, but as a child, attending Religious Instruction classes, I was often confused by some of the information that the enlightened Nuns insisted on forcing into our skulls. I can particularly remember wondering how there could be two versions of what actually occurred at Jesus’ Tomb, one with Peter and the unnamed “beloved disciple” (who I always pictured as my cute cousin Zvei from the Jewish side of the family), and the equally exciting but totally different electric-luminescent angel who, with Broadway style flair and drama (and dressed in basic white), shook the earth, pushed aside the stone and then sat upon it. Wow…What an entrance!
I can also remember the answer given to me by the rotund bullish nun who hovered around our young receptive group…. “Because it’s one of the mysteries of faith and we never never doubt or disbelieve one of the mysteries of faith, do we?” That statement, punctuated of course with a well aimed harsh and painful poke of the yard stick that Nuns always seemed to carry, lived on for many years, emblazoned in my mind like some sort of neon – embroidered logo.
Years later, long after I had left the brain washing and propaganda agenda behind, and when I actually to read scripture on my own, I was astonished to learn that there are as many versions of this story as there are gospels, even more!
Today’ gospel was of course that of Matthew, and it’s John’s Gospel that gives us the story of the Beloved Disciple that I mentioned previously. He tells us that Mary Magdelene went to the tomb shortly before dawn and found it open, whereupon she ran and told him and Peter. It was only after they left that she looked into the tomb again and saw two angels, who asked her why she was weeping. She told them that someone had moved Jesus’ body, and that she didn’t know where it was. Then suddenly she turned and saw Jesus himself.
In Luke’s version, the stone had already been moved when a group of women arrived, but there is no mention of an earthquake. Two men in shining garments, apparently angels, appeared to the women. Later, Jesus appeared to two men, Cleopas and (presumably) Peter, but strangely they don’t recognize him, even though they did speak with him, invite him home, and eat dinner with him. They only assumed that he was Jesus based on his words and behavior, but then he vanished out of their sight.
In Mark’s Gospel, which by the way is normally considered the first, written around the year 70 CE, the earliest versions do not even have a resurrection narrative, beyond the young man telling the women that Jesus had risen. Some of the earliest copies of Mark actually have large blank spaces at the end, implying that the scribes knew there was something left out, but weren’t aware of what it was.
In Marks’s last two verses Mary Magdalene and two other women are told that Jesus has risen and is on his way to Galilee, and that his followers can see him there. If there originally was an ending, it most likely lost, and it is believed by many that several new endings were eventually invented to take its place. The most current of these, known as the “longer ending,” says that the risen Christ made his first appearance to Mary Magdalene. But this almost certainly wasn’t part of the original gospel, and was probably copied from John’s account.
In First Corinthians, there is also an important passage about the resurrection. Paul says that the risen Jesus appeared first to Peter, and then to the twelve, and then finally to others. Now Paul doesn’t tell us where he got this information, but we know that he did meet Peter and some of the other original followers of Jesus. Many theologians think that because this was in fact written at least 15 years before any of the gospels, that it may be the most reliable source of information on the subject.
To further muddy the waters, some of the early Christian believers that we today call “Gnostics” thought that Christ never came back as a resurrected human, but as an ethereal “being,” something akin to the hologram type thing what we see in Science Fiction films. Of course the early church didn’t like this concept much, and they alleviated the problem by simply killing the Gnostics off.
Some students of the Holy Koran, the Islamic scripture, don’t believe that Christ was ever crucified at all, but that he escaped the cross and was taken up directly by God as a live human being. Interesting!
Now I don’t know about y’all, to use the Southern vernacular, but to tell you the truth it seems to me that if something as magnificent, as wondrous and as awe inspiring as a man coming back from the dead actually happened, and if it happened in exact fulfillment of countless centuries of prophecies and scrupulous religious anticipation and hope, that all of the stories would at least jive. But they don’t! And so, unless we go back to Sister Mary Immaculate’s yard stick and “mysteries of faith” justification, how do we explain it?
It’s this sort of confusion and discrepancy that many non-believers pounce upon to justify their atheism; it’s fuel for their argument that Christianity is just a big scam, a fabricated charade. Obviously, if we thought that we wouldn’t be here today, dressed in our finery and anxiously waiting for this sermon to be over so we can stroll down the avenue and poke fun at everybody’s Easter outfit. Besides, let’s be honest about it. Most of the original disciples of Christ were eventually murdered, martyred in a variety of ghastly manners. If they were perpetrators of a scam, do you really think that they would die for their lie? And of course even Jesus’ detractors didn’t deny his powers and miracles, they just hated the fact that he always seemed to do them at the wrong place, the wrong time, and with the wrong people.Wadda guy! No wonder we love Him!
Do you remember as a child, back in the days before x-box and remote controls, we used to amuse ourselves with a game that we called “telephone?” You got a bunch of people together and whispered to one of them, something simple like: “there’s going to be a full moon tonight, so let’s go for a walk!” The person to whom you whispered then whispered to the next person, and so on and so forth until the last person blurted out what he or she had heard, which probably ended up like “Aunt Glady’s goiter is acting up again!”
Seriously, even given the more serious essence of the folk tradition, the more precise word of mouth type of passing on information, chances are slim, decades later when the gospels were finally written down, that total recall was possible… or that total recall was even preferred. The discrepancies may simply have arisen because the gospel accounts were handed down from mouth to mouth, and probably weren’t written until at least 35 years after the events. This is further complicated by the fact that there do not seem to be any written actual witness accounts. If odds are, and they would seem to be, that Mary Magdalene was there in some way or another, it might have showed up in the Gospel of Mary, but most of that document is still missing. If the “beloved disciple” was in fact the Mark of the Gospel of Mark, which many believe is the case…..then remember back to my early words that the original ending of his Gospel seems to be lost.
Many people tend to find these different accounts confusing and inconsistent, embarrassing in some cases to those who still persist in the theory of word for word scriptural veracity. Although attempts have been made to reconcile them, they involve loose interpretations and highly questionable arguments.
Common elements suggest that there were originally two basic stories about what happened on that first Easter morning. In one story Jesus makes an appearance to Mary Magdalene near the tomb. And in the other story he appears to Peter at an unspecified place and time. But the accounts differ as to which appearance took place first. Also, Luke and Paul seem to ignore, or even deny, the story about an appearance to any women.
But why would Paul and Luke intentionally minimize the women’s participation? Some say that it was because of women’s low position in society, that they weren’t thought to be reliable witnesses. Many also feel that that Peter himself wanted the story suppressed so he would find it easier to get other people to believe that Jesus’ first appearance was to him. This could magnify his status and validate his leadership among early followers.
As a side point, by the way, if this action is true, than certainly it wasn’t a successful maneuver. Judged by the amount of surviving detail, there is far more evidence for the appearance to the women then to Peter.
And in saying that, please allow me now to come to the point of this sermon before the Easter Lamb becomes overcooked, the ham dries out, or the veggie burgers become even more unpalatable. And my point today is twofold.
First, and I hate to beat a dead horse because it’s the basis of many of my sermons, don’t be afraid to question the scriptures and to get out of them what you need, because those who wrote the gospels in many cases used them to get what they needed. There is simply no reason to believe that situations were not embellished to prove a point or to provoke a more profound reaction from the people reading them.
Secondly, in the long run….. who cares? Why should it make a difference exactly How Jesus came back from the dead, only that he did come back from the dead. Why haggle over the details, as interesting as they might be, when we know that our chances of proving one particular version correct are slim to none? In the general scheme of things, it’s irrelevant! Whatever the wrapping, whatever the presentation, whatever the mechanism of its delivery, Jesus’ phenomenal gift to us, the gift we celebrate today, still remains exactly the same.
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Trinity Sunday 2008 Sermon
Well, guys, we’ve survived Pentecost Sunday, with its images of flames dancing on the heads of Christ’s disciples and stories of people understanding and speaking in languages they didn’t know. I really love the flame stories….they’re always exciting considering the really limited number of special effects in the repertoires of those times. Fire, bright lights, voices booming from the skies. Simple stuff but really effective. And anyone who has been in a convenience store lately will surely recognize how handy it would be to understand foreign tongues.
Well today the “stuff” that we’re talking about is void of special effects but nonetheless pretty dramatic in terms of what we practice, or really what we routinely do without knowing all the background details. Today is Trinity Sunday, and with his typical foresightedness Father Tom David has flown the coop and left me to speak about one of the most difficult premises of Christianity. It is of course something we do almost sub consciously, invoking the name of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but would we all be surprised to know that it’s a concept full of misunderstanding? And would we be all surprised to know that this misunderstanding is a mixture of linguistic accident and purposeful manipulation? And would we all be surprised if I wasn’t going to bring all this to your attention?
Let’s drop the bombs right from the beginning, so you can properly savor the moment along with the other tidbits of information I have for you today. The Holy Spirit is a lady!
Well, actually that sort of over generalizes the whole situation. But there’s more…. Let’s for a moment go back to the Old Testament and drop the second zinger. God had a wife! Asherah, was originally worshipped right alongside her lover/husband/spouse Yahweh, or El, as He is also called in ancient writings. Think about it! In Genesis, God the Father turns to a companion, and says, “Let us make man after our own image.” He wasn’t alone! Jewish mystics have pointed out the obvious: Yahweh is talking to His wife.
In fact, some say that She is actually speaking to Him. The word used for “God” in Genesis is Elohim, a feminine title for the Goddess, the female “half” of El. So it would appear that it’s Asherah, Lady, speaking with Her mate and agreeing to create “us.” Wouldn’t it be a good feeling to know that there was a bit of intimate physical relations used in their grand creation project? It would be logical, wouldn’t it? We should never feel ashamed of, nor try to suppress, our sexual natures.
We can also refer to the Old Testament, and consider the Goddess Sophia, whom I have spoken about before. Her name means “Wisdom.” She is the Goddess of Wisdom referred to repeatedly in scripture as the wife of God-the-Father, an evolutionary step from Asherah, and she is my personal bet in terms of who the Holy Spirit may have originally been.
But, to be fair, in the New Testament, there are several females that can be associated with the Holy Spirit Mary, the Mother of Jesus/Yeshua, first comes to mind, as well as Mary Magdalene, whom the Church refused to acknowledge as the wife of Jesus. As a side note “Mary” is a Greek pronunciation of the Hebrew name Miriam or Miriamne, Some that believe . that Mary might not even be a name, but actually a title meaning Priestess of the Goddess.
Now a lot of conjecture and mystery has surrounded the Holy Spirit for centuries. Perhaps this is partly because of the early church’s resistance to attributing a feminine face to God. possibly because of the competition from Gnosticism (and their inability to track down and kill the Gnostics off). They did however manage to suppress most biblical images of God in the feminine gender. Sophia, the feminine word in Greek, became “Logos” and was reattributed to the “son” part of the trinity. “Ruah,” a feminine noun in Hebrew meaning “Holy Spirit” became “Pneuma,” a masculine word in Greek, and then was subsequently translated into the latin word “Spritus.” In English, of course, there are no masculine or feminine gender forms to words, so the whole concept becomes even more vague.
There are many who believe that the feminine has been left out of the Trinity, in spite of the reality of the caring, consoling, healing aspects. The dominant patriarchal tradition of “God the Father” has won out, diminishing the female to the more passive role of recipient of God’s creation. This means that symbol of “God the mother” is eclipsed almost exclusively and literally by that of “God the Father.” Many feel that because images of God as female have been officially suppressed, that these aspects have been shifted to Mary.
Now when we give the Holy Spirit back Her gender, the concept of Holy Trinity starts to take on a different image. It’s much easier to see “Her” in the role of the Great Comforter, the purveyor of consolation and inspiration. It’s more comfortable asking her to intervene for us in much the same way a good mother might run interference for her child. She is the matronly soother, holding the memory of who we truly are; she knows our highest potential. In her vast remembrance is contained all we have been and can become. From her unsurpassed compassion and understanding of what has been and can be, all intuitive powers flow. She is the vessel from which great things are conceived.
Feeling comfortable with the mother image of the Holy Spirit also sort of clarifies to me the position of the “Son.” He represents that which has been created, the product of God born from the union of the other two. By illustrating the cycle of birth, death and rebirth, He is the bridge between the now and the future, between our higher and lower selves. He is the sacrificial Lamb of God. He shows us the way.
The “Father” imagery reflects to many the origin of all the thoughts in the universe, the source of life and creation. He is just and strong, the Great Overseer of all mankind. He holds the sword of truth and righteousness and govern with sound reason over His earthly domain. He is the active and rational principle of the cosmos. He is the Law and denotes the right use of power. He is the Builder and the source of all activity.
So here we have it, the three elements of the Holy Trinity. In black and white we are taught that the Holy Trinity represents the three personalities of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Each symbolizing different divine attributes with different functions and different purposes and different principles. Pretty straightforward, isn’t it? Multiple personalities, huh…?? In the world of psychiatry that last statement is usually followed by liberal doses of lithium.
Personally, I don’t think we can just jam these elements together like some sort of Ronco Three in One Veg-a-Matic that can slice, dice and chop. My belief is that the combined essence of the Holy Trinity is quite truthfully far beyond the earthly scheme of male and female, and that our comprehension of it here the mortal plane is severely limited by what we can viably explain. But, if that’s the case, why bother to explain it at all? Isn’t that what faith is all about? As is the rationale in so much of our earlier religious training, it’s sometimes far easier to follow what has been imposed upon us than it is to give some serious thought to what we may actually believe. Doing that, as modern Christians, is doing ourselves an injustice.
It’s when we allow ourselves to think outside the envelope of conventional thought that we can enormously broaden our faith horizons.. It should make no difference if we each of us consider the Trinity as any combination of Creator, Father, Mother, Son, Holy Spirit, Sustainer, Redeemer, Messiah, Rabbi or Priest, or for that matter, if we even think of it as a “Trinity” at all. I am not saying that it’s not important to follow and respect the traditions and history and poetry of our religion in terms of community and corporate worship, but what is paramount is finding within ourselves that precise spiritual formula that we are comfortable with.
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15 June 2008 – Matthew 9:35-10.8
Today’s gospel gives us two images to consider, sheep without a shepherd and a harvest in need of laborers. At first look, the images are relatively easy to understand, of course, but I think that if we pay them some particular thought, there is an awful lot here to say about us here at Gentle Shepherd and what we need to do to spread the word and to build our church community.
We see the Christ here at the end of a series of healings, miraculous deeds that surely were impressive, astounding even, to the people the time. They were ready, receptive to hear the word of God, eager even to participate in this new and exciting phenomenon. They were a harvest, sown by the actions, words, and deeds of Jesus, and ripe for the picking. So who better to send out to do the task of harvesting than His disciples?
Now the word “disciple” basically means “student” or “learner,” but “apostle” means a “messenger.” Matthew gives us a list of names, but this same list varies in other gospels, as does the number… …and really it’s not important to the lesson. What’s important is that they were sent out in a really basic kit and told to “live off the land,” as it were, relying on the generosity and goodwill of the people they met along the way.
They were given a target audience, and told, in so many words, to not waste time on those that weren’t receptive to what they were proclaiming. And what they were doing was proclaiming gospel, the “good news,” by the way, because the instruction to actually teach didn’t really happen until after the resurrection. If they were successful, a quick blessing and they went on to the next gig. If not, they would, in the words of an song that I am probably the only one old enough to remember, “pick yourself up, brush themselves off, and start all over again.” The Old Testament God of revenge and judgment rears His head here and is assigned the clean up job for those that the Apostles are unable to …um.. “convince and persuade.”
So just how does this lesson apply to those of us here at church this morning? How can we use it to better our effectiveness as the “disciples” of Christ that we all strive to be? How can we relate it in modern context to whom and what we are both as a church and as the individuals that make up its component parts? How can we proclaim the word of Christ and help with the harvest?
I don’t think anyone here doubts the fact that there are vast numbers of people in our area in need of spiritual awakening. I get a big kick out of churches that send teams of missionaries to..I don’t know.. lower Zimbabwe or downtown Bengladesh… to save souls and proclaim the word of God. Hello…. Look around us.. there’s enough work around here to keep a thousand churches busy for a thousand years. The harvest, as it were, is right here in our back yards.
It is so great, and there is so much need, that we have to be careful and thoughtful about becoming too naïve in our evangelism. If we ask ourselves who we are trying, as a church, to reach for Christ.. and our response is “we’re trying to reach the entire world,” then we have taken too big a bite out of the apple, and our efforts will be so diluted that we could never succeed. There is quite simply no local church that can reach everybody.
And so, for Gentle Shepherd to be the most effective we must decide on a target group, we must recognize and concentrate upon those groups and individuals that we are best equipped to reach. Even more importantly, we have to decide which style of evangelism works best for us within that group, and the style of evangelism that works best with our own personalities
It’s not an easy task, considering our laid back personalities and our introspective and individualistic view of religion. It’s certainly made more difficult by the fact that our policy and practice of complete acceptance is directly contrary to what many are used to. It’s also not easy to explain a church that relies on self-responsibility and love when many have been programmed for rules, regulations and judgment.
Just how do we do that? How do we put ourselves in a position where we can effectively communicate what and who we are to those that might be receptive? Certainly the methodology of quiet and dedicated proclaiming has changed since the day of Christ, and I would think that the guidelines are quite a bit different as far as we are concerned. Firstly, the rule that Christ laid down about simple no frills travel would never work here. Could you imagine Worth with just one frock, or John with just two pairs of sandals?
Could you just see Randi and Me, faces freshly scrubbed and dressed in neatly pressed white shirts with name tags presenting ourselves at a door in some posh Woodlake development with a handful of brochures? I don’t think so…. they would probably slam the door, hide the kids and call the cops.
I believe that what Jesus was saying is that the most effective strategy is still to first try to reach those with whom we already have something in common, those we are most likely to reach. And I’m not necessarily talking lifestyle or orientation here either. I am speaking of those people who have felt so disenfranchised by their religious experiences that they have fallen away from worship. I am speaking of those individuals who have problems compromising their beliefs with the inflexible rules and regulations of main-line religions. The list is long, the variations many, and the possibilities are infinite even when we limit ourselves to a particular group.
I think we all know people that would greatly benefit from knowing us and becoming part of our community, but how do we get to them, how do we proclaim to them, without getting up on a soapbox and beating a tambourine? We can’t just mosey up to them and tell them that if they don’t come to church they’re gonna be doomed to the eternal fires of hell, because we don’t believe that. We can’t look them square in the eye and say that The Catholic Apostolic Church of Antioch is the only safe road to travel, because we validate all religions, we respect all journeys.
But there’s nothing stopping us from going to a friend, colleague, or family member and saying “You know, I think that a person like you would feel really comfortable at our little church, perhaps would you like to visit it with me one day?” A simple statement like that, with no commitment, no threats and requiring no promises can often provoke a wonderful conversation, allowing you to introduce us and talk about us on a level with which you are personally familiar. And, even if you have been wondering what type of barbeque sauce you want on your brisket sandwich instead of paying attention to our highly instructive and motivational sermons each Sunday, the words will come to you, just as Christ promised they would come to his apostles.
The words will come because you will be sharing with them that portion of your own spirituality that is probably the reason that you feel at home here among us. Remember that in today’s gospel Christ has sent the apostles to proclaim, not necessarily to teach. And that’s a good start. Remember, if a person has been hurt by religion, that love, true acceptance, and the ability to use their intellect will often trump theology. And that might be a good start, too!
And lastly, don’t give up! Don’t be offended or put off if your best friend promises to visit and doesn’t. For some reason people have a problem saying “no” when it comes to church invitations, so they make a commitment that they have no intention of keeping. If we had a dollar for each person that has visited us and not felt that we could meet his or her spiritual needs; or if we had a dollar for each person that we spent time with talking energetically about our church that promised to visit and never showed up; we would have long ago been able to put in that clergy hot tub, wide screen theater, and juice bar that we want so much.
Nonetheless we should keep trying, as much for ourselves as for those we speak to, even though we realize that some may come and most won’t. It’s a wonderful feeling to know that you’ve brought someone closer to God and helped find them acceptance in a loving church community. Why not give it a try? If it doesn’t work, you can always “pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again.”
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Outliving Our Lives. Feb 3,2008 – Deacon Tom Michael
Well we’ve done it. We’ve successfully maneuvered through that beautiful time of the year when we celebrate with joy the birth of the Christ child. And, before we know it, the mirth and warmth of the Christmas season fades away as we move closer to our participation in Christ’s inevitable death on the Cross. This coming Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, when we mark our foreheads with black ashes, in the shape of a cross, echoing the ancient Near Eastern tradition of throwing ash over one’s head to repent before God.
In many traditions, this is done with the instruction: “Remember that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.” It’s a harsh reminder of the fact that death is actually a part of our lives.
The Prophet Mani reminds us today of the cycle of life. In today’s reading, he says: “There is nothing at all that is free from suffering that will rest in the end; even the very seed that is sown finds no way to live unless it dies, but through its death it lives and gives life also. “
In the words of the folk song it’s “A time to be born, and a time to die, a time for every purpose under heaven.” Death is the one thing that believers, agnostics, and atheists all are forced to confront equally. There’s just no getting around it. We all handle it differently of course, assuming that we are in a position to know that it’s around the corner. I’ve often wondered what I, given my druthers, would prefer when my time comes, a quick unexpected flick of the scythe or the time to get my thoughts together and end things serenely (and yet dramatically of course) in a satin sheeted bed with fluffed up pillows like in some old Gloria Swanson film.
I’ve also asked myself why it is that some people are remarkably resilient when it comes to dying. I’ve often wondered just how much of an influence our spiritual and personal histories play in determining just how quickly we will “shuffle off this mortal coil.”
Now let’s be brutally frank about this from the onset. Very few people, I think, really and truly want to meet the grim reaper, or slip through the veil as many in our denomination say. Even with the deepest of faith there is always that degree of trepidation, doubt and uncertainty, the fear of the great unknown. It’s only natural when we have no real palpable evidence that there really is a place on the other side where we can find that all night calorie free pizzeria or pastry shop, or where we can finally slip on that tiny Speedo and look into the celestial mirror without throwing up!
But when the time does come when we have to seriously consider the fact that our days are severely limited, either to illness or just the general wearing out process of old age, I often wonder if we can consciously or sub consciously effect the time of the inevitable. Can we fight it, actually stave off death for a while, stretching out our mortal existence to the very last micro-second, often despite severe pain and discomfort? Or for that matter can we just “give up,” surrendering ourselves quietly and voluntarily to the light and peace?
There is a lot of mythology about death and how people approach it. My mother, in her declining years, spoke often about death, often bemoaning the fact that God had let her live so long, begging to be taken to join my dad, and yet at the same time feverishly and scrupulously following her Doctor’s life sustaining regimens until she finally just plumb wore out, convinced I think until almost the very end that there was yet another episode or two of the “Wheel of Fortune” to be savored.
A good friend of mine in Europe, besieged by cancer for many years, swore that she would live as long as possible just to extract the last possible trace of revenge on her greedy children, fighting pain and reveling in their frustration, surprise and disappointment every morning when she awoke to yet another day screaming for a cup of coffee. I can remember the glee and twinkle in her eyes as they ran around in circles, obeying her every command with their eyes fixed on the final prize, her considerable estate.
Many years ago, I knew a guy with a rapidly failing heart, horrified by the thought of his impending death. He felt that his past had not been meritorious enough to earn eternal life and the rewards of heaven. He was convinced that by staying alive as long as he could and atoning for his past imperfections he could eventually make the final cut. Like the repentant Ebenezer Scrooge in Dickens’ Christmas Carol his final months were a hectic flurry of “good deeds,” but they were fueled more by guilt and fear than by sincerity. He drove the people around him crazy, and I think sorely diminished his memory in their eyes. But I am not really sure that his intentions and resolve actually prolonged his earthly presence.
And I think that we all have known someone that was just so totally ticked off at their impending doom that they decided to make life excruciatingly unpleasant for all those around them. You know, misery loves company, so they say. I don’t think this type of person can affect their life-span either, but it can sure as heck seem like it.
Now I don’t know about you guys, but personally I am not a great believer in the mythology of the three fates, Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, who spun, measured out and finally cut the thread of life. I really sort of have trouble with the concept of destiny. The great equalizer, death is called. When you come right down to it, for every perfect and innocent child, snapped away in the prime of his or her youth to go home to Jesus, there’s an obnoxious bastard killed off young as a “punishment” from God. Things like this make no sense to me at all.
I tend to be much more pragmatic about death. I would rather believe that God, having many better and much more important things to do, designed into each of our lives a certain degree of randomness and flexibility, and that things like prayer, stubbornness and perhaps a really good health plan can possibly slide the final outcome to the upper or lower boundaries of the scale.
But in reality the key word here is still “FINAL,” and whether we hang tight until cousin Elmer’s wedding or tick off our family by spending that last cent on a posh rest home or even get that fancy new liver transplant the end is in fact still natural and inescapable.
Ok, so how does this relate to what Mani is speaking about today? Well, as Christians most of us tend to have at least some belief in what is to come after death. It’s what Christianity is all about, isn’t it? We give thanks to Christ, the anointed one, who atoned for our sins and gave His life that we might live forever. Now depending on our own particular flavor of Christianity there are various rules and regulations that one must follow in order to attain this everlasting existence. If you happen to be a bible thumping fundamentalist, you may be asked to simply give up all the joy of living and learn how to meddle in the lives of your fellow man. If you’re an Adventist, you have learn how to scowl and to not eat pork. We, in the Church of Antioch, are charged with the heady task of living a life of love, respect and compassion for others. Different rules for everyone perhaps, but in fact however we play the game we all pretty much win the same trophy.
Mani’s message is simplicity itself. Regardless of the journey we undertake, we all have to die in order to live forever. He tells us to play by the rules, to strengthen ourselves spiritually, that its part of the natural progression of our universe and the God that created it. We have to fully understand that it’s going to come whether we want it to or not, and so we best be prepared for it if we want to enjoy the eventual reward.
And so, this coming Wednesday when ashes are imposed on our foreheads to remind us of our mortality, perhaps we should pay a little more heed than usual to our hopefully distant demise. I’m not saying we should look forward to death, just that we should give some thought to how we might eventually handle it. We should be grateful that our faith gives us more to look forward to than empty oblivion, and prepare ourselves to accept with dignity and integrity the wonderful gift that Christ has given us.
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Luke 20:27-38
Someone once calculated that if we put all of the materials in the Gospels that tell us about the life of Jesus together we would end up with 80 pages. But we know that most of the Gospel writers borrowed from others, and so if we eliminate this duplication, it would leave only 20 pages that tell us about Jesus life and teachings.
Of those 20 pages, 13 of them deal specifically with the last week of his life. Break it down a bit further, and we can calculate that one-third of those 13 pages occur on Tuesday of Holy Week. Obviously we know far more about this day in his life than any other day.
Monday had been a busy day for Jesus, when he took whip in hand and radically ran the moneychangers from the temple. We know he spent Monday evening in Bethany, probably in the home of Mary, Martha and Lazarus, since that is where he spent Sunday evening. He arose early on Tuesday and he returned with and his disciples to Jerusalem.
It was also then that the palace of Caiaphas, the high priest, hosted a evening meeting of one of the strangest combinations of political and religious factions that anyone could possibly imagine. We know that even today politics makes strange bedfellows. Groups that would normally not even speak to each other bond together for a temporary goal. Just look at Pat Robertson and Rudy Guilliani. That is what happened that night in Jerusalem.
Three groups conspired together that evening: the Herodians, the Sadducees, and the Pharisees, and they had gathered together to discredit Jesus of Nazareth in front of his constituency, the common people.
It was probably not their intent to assassinate Jesus, which is of course what eventually happened, but rather to discredit him. They did not want a martyr on their hands… they preferred to make a fool of him…. To give him enough rope to hang himself.
So it was decided that each group would in turn ask him a question that was dear to their cause, not because they thought that they could learn from him, but because they wished to trick him. They were hoping for that one slip of the tongue.
Today’s gospel concerns the second question, asked by the Sadducees. Now we don’t see much about the Sadducees in the stories of Jesus, but here they are today. Unlike the Pharasees, they don’t believe in afterlife , because it’s not mentioned in the first five books of the Bible.
So to try and trip up Jesus they ask this question about the woman whose first husband dies and then she is married to each of his brothers and none of them have any children. Hebrew law is pretty clear on this, if a man dies childless, then his wife is to be married to his next of kin, usually a brother so they can raise up a son for the one who died. Remember here that Hebrew law was all about procreation and population.
The Sadducees want to know who will have her as wife in the afterlife. Jesus retorts that there will be no marriage in the afterlife since no one will die, and therefore there is no need to produce offspring.
As Christians, we talk a lot about the afterlife, about the wonders of heaven. But do we ever give any thought as to what it would be like? There’s a cute German story by Ludwig Tomas call “Ein Munchener Geht in Himmel” about Alois, the Baggage handler from the Munich Central Train station that goes to heaven and is assigned a cloud to play the harp and sing hosannas. He looks Saint Peter straight in the eye and says: “by the holy cross, I don’t play the harp, and I don’t sing either…. When do I get something to drink?”
I think so many people naturally assume that eternity will be a continuation of life as we know it today, but many of us really pay it no heed. Others tend to think of heaven in terms of a specific benefit that is unattainable in our everyday lives…like that extra cheesy mouth watering thick crust pepperoni pizza that you can eat all day without putting on any extra weight… or that old fashioned deep fried jelly doughnut so filled with raspberry jam that it squirts out all over your face when you bite into it.
But who says that heaven should be a continuation of life as we know it today? For eternity? Wow… I mean I suppose that there would be certain heavenly changes… maybe credit cards would automatically be paid off at the end of each month, maybe the grass would grow plush and green only to a certain height without ever having to be cut, maybe Sears would actually show up on time to fix our fridge, maybe politicians would actually make some sense, oh duh. Politicians.. there wouldn’t be any of those in heaven. Nice thoughts.. all well and good…..but for eternity….. boooriiingggg.
And of course there is the classical timeless image of heaven, wafting through the clouds to the accompaniment of soft music serenely nodding and smiling at the occasional passing angel. Come on… let’s get real here….. first of all there was no high definition TV in those days, no perky little musical comedies, no Gucci catalogs, and let’s be brutally frank about it… not everyone looks good in long flowing white robes.
Instead, I think that Jesus wants us to understand, what the gospel is trying to teach us here, is that the afterlife will be completely different from what we know today, well beyond what we can even begin to comprehend now. “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away”… so says Revelations. Heading to heaven??? I don’t know if there are any frequent traveler miles involved, but I’m pretty sure it’s a trip worth taking.
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Palm Sunday 2008 – Philippians 2:5-11; Mt 26:14-27:66
I have experienced great difficulty all week– since last Sunday afternoon actually, when I first reviewed the scriptural texts for today– taking in the import of the lengthy passage from Matthew’s gospel appointed for this day. Encompassing as it does the entire sequence of events surrounding the last days of the Lord Jesus on earth, this story is so, so familiar to us all. It contains the very heart of the Christian message. That God has acted within human history in the Person of Jesus of Nazareth to save humanity from the despair of death—death that awesome reality which we all face, the apparent enemy of life. It seems that human beings have, from the dawn of conscious awareness of death, found the idea of coming to an absolute end simply too appalling. Indeed, Jesus Himself, apparently anticipated his own imminent death with some measure of horror: There is that “agony in the Garden” of Gethsemane , “might not this bitter cup be bypassed”? The woeful cry to heaven, “My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Cultures throughout history have devised their own sacred mythologies whereby death is usually viewed as a mere passage into some other state of existence. Christianity is no exception. Today begins a week we call “Holy Week” wherein will be played out our story, reaching its apogee next Sunday with its celebration of the resurrection of Jesus.
For my part I cannot believe that death was the willful penalty imposed by a Creator-God upon humankind and indeed all the natural order on account of what is termed “sin.” If one grants that our species is the product of millions of years of gradual evolution, as I do, death itself must be seen as an essential part of this entire magnificent process. What is must give way to what will be. Present form recedes and there will be new form to take its place. I believe that, in the light of scientific discovery as to the origins of life and its possible eventualities, we as Christians have some work to do in the way of overhauling our theology and reshaping our written and spoken expressions of it for the sake of modern intelligibility. Our story need not thereby lose anything of its compelling power. As a literary body comprised of some factual history, as for example regarding the existence and activities of some of the renowned personages in the scriptural texts, Jesus Himself, His chosen Twelve, the Apostle Paul and so forth; permeated by parables and metaphors and symbology, the Christian story, itself a gradual evolution from the Hebrew and other ancient Near-Eastern mythologies, contains a message which, insofar as it can inspire a grasping of life as a fully meaningful enterprise, remains ever worthy of faith and a unique claim upon belief.
The fact is there is little fairness within our existence. While unspeakably beautiful in its form and movements, the earth and its heavens is also an undeniably violent mechanism which often enough and uncontrollably imperils safety and life itself. We as a species are capable of the most amazing original creativity, producing art and music and architecture, scientific and technological marvels, not to mention profoundly deep philosophical formulations which enable us to speak about our human situation. Most significantly, we have the capacity to love. At the same time, we remain stubbornly primitive in our inclination to inflict suffering and death upon our own kind and perhaps even the entirety of this planet, now even junking up outer space. There is natural death and there is inflicted death. Jesus’ end was not owing to natural cause but to execution at the instance of some who hated Him and wanted to silence His voice, His message of hope, of the reversal of human injustices, and of liberation from self-serving political and religious authorities. He wanted people to understand that our world and our lives are a gift to us out of eternity itself and that the Paradise we suppose it once was can once again be. Open your eyes to see and ears to hear! Change your ways! “Love, even as I have loved you.”
Indeed. Charles Wesley wrote a hymn, the first line of which is “Love’s redeeming work is done, fought the fight, the battle won. Death in vain forbids Him rise; Christ has opened Paradise .” Everything Jesus did in His life, that which He taught, that which He healed, was about opening us to the possibility of Paradise . Just what is a Paradise but a place or condition of sublime beauty, perfection, and supreme happiness? Who doesn’t wish to dwell in such a state?
Redemption is an exchange. It is a getting back of what is rightly one’s own, a recovery. It can sometimes require the making of amends and can produce the restoration of worth.
Jesus, we understand, entered Jerusalem fully knowing that his life would there be demanded of Him. He gathered His friends together to celebrate in Passover His people’s own ancient story of redemption from slavery. He left them with a new celebration of the redemption which He would accomplish by way of His self-sacrificing death “for as many as would believe in Him.” This very Eucharist we are presently offering, “the memorial of our redemption in this sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving”
teaches us that the cross of death has been transformed into the throne of Jesus’ glory. Jesus did not escape death. He embraced it and transformed it. By submitting to it He verily conquered it. Death no longer held Him bound. Neither shall it hold us.
The following words attributed to Saint Paul succinctly set forth who we are, and what we are called to, indeed that which draws us to gather at this Table week after week: “No one lives for oneself. No one dies for oneself. We live and we die for Christ the Lord. To Him…to Him we belong.” (Romans 14:7-8)
We eat His Body and drink His Blood. We embrace and venerate His Cross. Our nature is buried with His. As He is risen, we with Him rise up from all that is death to all that is Life. That is our story.
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Sunday in Lent V 2008 – Father Tom David – Ezekiel 37:1-14; John11:1-45
I have for a long time felt intrigued with the story in the Book of Ezekiel where all those dead bones in the middle of a valley were commanded back to life: “So I prophesied as I had been commanded; and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone…the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.”
Much of the book of Ezekiel is a grim complaint, put in the mouth of God, of how His covenant people Israel have been unfaithful to Him and how He will punish them, exacting retribution, until such time as the people repent and He will restore them. The dry bones of the dead symbolize Israel , lifeless, bodies scattered about, exposed to being picked over by wild beasts. God leads His prophet Ezekiel out to that valley and asks him if he believes these bones can live again. Ezekiel answers ever so well and truthfully: “O Lord God, you know.”
It is hoped that Lent will be a time of renewal of life and its quality. We have been asked to ponder over the extent of our own spiritual dryness, and perhaps, even deadness. There is so much going on in our everyday lives and there can be so very many stresses and causes for worry. Everyday seems to bring new news of an economy convulsing under the pressures of bad loans, excessive credit debt, runaway prices, stagnant wages, the sinking value of our currency and increasing fear that the future looks to be bleak if not dire. Toss in the problems we may be experiencing in relationships with family members or friends, or frustrations or anxieties with our work and we realize what a powerful brew of toxic adversities daily life forces upon us. And then there can be the reluctance of our very bodies to cooperate with our plans, imposing upon us any manner of affliction ranging from physical pain to depression that can turn the most ordinary functions of daily life into arduous coping. Paradoxically, at such times when there seems to be little time or energy left to expend upon prayer, meditation, or spiritual reflection, it is just such times that we most need it and can most profitably benefit from it. Maybe it would be enough, at the end of an exhausting day when we wonder if we have the wherewithal to start all over again tomorrow, to say “Ah Lord God, You know– how these dry bones of my life can feel alive again.”
Lazarus was dead in his tomb for four days when Jesus finally showed up. Lazarus’ family was upset with Jesus because they believed that, had He come in time, Lazarus would not have died. But still Jesus had purposely kept away from Lazarus’ deathbed.
It seems that Jesus had something far more compelling in mind than a simple healing of illness. The time had come for Him to reveal His lordship over death itself. In short, to act in the place of God, thereby identifying Himself as the unique revelation of God to the world. Remember how at Christmas we name Him “Emmanuel, which literally means God-with-us”? In this scene with Lazarus, God is no longer acting from afar. He entered into the pain and pathos of all human suffering, encountering death, the apogee of human powerlessness. And God Himself wept for the loss of His friend.
Here is a story, of a tomb sealed with a stone, weeping women come to grieve and tend it. An instruction to roll the stone away is given and then a command: “Lazarus, come out!”
A man from whom life had departed emerged from the shadows and dark recesses of the grave. A second command is given: “Unbind him and let him go!” What is it that the writer of this gospel story wants for us to understand? Just what was the experience of those contemporaries of Jesus as they listened to Him and observed His actions?
Now we in our own time are familiar with the fact that people argue over the Scriptures. What is to be taken at literal value and what is of symbolic or mythological truth? We have no way to really know if a dead man was brought back to life again. One could speculate that he hadn’t really died and, as has happened, had been actually alive when given up for dead and buried. But such speculations are really beside the point and ultimately in vain. What we do know is that the community in Bethany experienced the power of God that day in a way they had never before heard of. They sensed an intimacy with God hitherto unimaginable in the Hebrew or any consciousness. In the Person of Jesus they knew they had, in His action, witnessed divine authority. And, what they experienced became a report that spread quickly to Jerusalem , inciting the fear and anger of the religious authorities, as Jesus’ fame and popular appeal continued its dramatic ascent.
“Lazarus, come out!” Jesus commands the human race to come out from the tomb of all that renders us listless and lifeless. Open your eyes! Sharpen your senses! Seize the moments of your lives and do not settle for merely slogging through! Embrace your dreams! Engage your natural gifts! Do not permit yourselves to remain imprisoned within the shadows and darkness of your anxieties and fears, angers and resentments, losing your very lives to the death of despair!
“Unbind him, and let him go!” Every human person has been created with a divine power and authority to work healing even as did Jesus and, in fact, in His Name. Notice! Draw near to the one you know to be suffering the dryness of bone and spirit! Assume your baptismal role to prophetically speak the Word of God’s mighty healing the power of which is inherently within us! Do what ever you can to loosen the bonds that impair the free thinking and imagination and dreams of your sister! Untie the cords of doubt and discouragement which hamper your brother’s joyful trek through the time of his life!
Yes, Lord, You know that these bones can once again live! And we, like the Jews who had come with Mary to the tomb of Lazarus and had seen what Jesus did, too believe in Him. And are commissioned in our baptism to act in His Name and claim the very power of God to work healing and call the dead back to life. At home, at work, in the marketplace and in the streets. In hospitals and hospices and jailhouses. All the places where people live can be for them valleys of dry bones and tombs. This is no way for any of us to live and we need not. And “Jesus said, take away the stone…[and] you will see the glory of God!”
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Sunday in Lent III – 24 February 2008 – Father Tom David -John 4:5-42
“Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty.’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”
According to the dictates of his official religion, Jesus should not have engaged in conversation with this woman from the Samaritan sect, let alone ask her for refreshment. She herself recognized this, and fairly asks him where he gets the nerve to be so bold as to violate the norm.
The story suggests that this woman, unmarried, had a reputation for carrying on sexually with multiple partners. Being a woman of “bad repute” and “unclean” according to Jewish ritual prescriptions, Jesus is truly going way out on a limb by risking even being seen with her. But then, Jesus had been developing his own reputation of sorts for associating with folks that “good Jews” avoided and kept themselves cut off from. Under the guise of not offending God of course. In our own society we continue to practice much the same practice. No where is this seen more clearly than in the case of the men and women who are either alleged or actually guilty of sexual improprieties with children or teenagers. The names of these people are placed on public sinner’s lists disseminated on web sites and available for ready inspection at your local police precinct. People of a neighborhood are notified when someone with a such a past attempts to buy or rent a lodging in the vicinity. Such sinners must under no circumstance whatsoever get within a specified proximity to schools or other public places where young people would be expected to gather. Needless to say, options for adequate employment shrink away to almost nothing. Such people are truly the modern day lepers.
And, as in Jesus’ own time, religion and religious folk often play the starring roles in enforcing this code. Indeed, the Roman Catholic Church in particular, beset as it has been with a highly media-publicized incidence of misconduct among its officials, has lately undertaken efforts to create an image of concern, not to mention the protection of its assets. Dioceses now publish their own lists of disgraced clergy to the extent that even men long dead, against whom an allegation has been raised, are included thereon. Many of these men, often advanced in age by the time allegations surface, will find themselves not only suspended from active ministry. The usual practice is to cut off their healthcare, deny their pensions, and cast them off. They are now fortunate if their bishop will even talk to them, let alone be known to be seen with them. I have in mind one unfortunate soul, whose name appeared on a nightly television “Siegfried watch.” This man was so hounded, attempting as he was to start life anew in a place far removed from home, that he ended his life by jumping from the balcony of a high-rise building. There was simply no place in this big country of ours where he was ever going to have the chance for redemption. And his church let it all happen. And still has the nerve to celebrate the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. So it goes with official religions to which will belong our politicians and public officials who seek election by way of promoting themselves as tough and the defenders of our children. By extension, such people often participate in loudly trumpeted denial of full civil rights to gay and lesbian people posturing themselves as defenders of “traditional marriage.”
I am led to wonder by all this, as the little saying goes, “just what would Jesus do?”
We know from the gospel today that in his encounter with the woman whom his religion considered impure and notoriously sinful, he engaged with her in a truly gentle manner. No condemnations or shrill self-righteous smugness with him. Rather a gentle invitation to look at her life in a deeper way—to drop the bucket of self reflection into the deeps of her life—and perhaps decide to seek some other way of living. I think we must bear in mind the real possibility that this woman may well have been compelled by economic desperation into trading her sexual services for money. To change her ways could well put her at risk of literally going hungry and homeless. But Jesus nonetheless offers her the hope of seeing herself in a completely new light, a woman of worth and dignity, no matter what the society around her made her out to be. He invites her to stake everything upon her innate value as a person, and, per force simply of his dangerous association with her, restores to her a sense of value and higher purpose.
Churches and churchmen and women are presently busy about the rites and tokens of a penitential season of renewal. We would do well, I believe, to reflect upon our own personal complicities in the modern-day practice of condemnation of whole classes of people—our public sinners and miscreants. The whole lot of an increasingly huge population of incarcerated or otherwise despised convicts whom we lock away and cut off, oftentimes from any real hope of redemption, renewal, and restoration to a fulfilling role in society. We Americans in particular seem to have a mean streak in us, a vengeful quality, at the very same time we decry the inclination to violence of the terrorist set. Perhaps we are gradually becoming that very sort of culture we fear and loathe. All in the name of upholding the law of God of course.
Well, Jesus is here this morning, in this very gospel lesson telling us that we need to take a hard look at ourselves and our ways. We might be deceiving ourselves with feel-good devotional practices and our complicity with a society that increasingly engages in a public policy of dehumanizing those we declare to be enemies so as to legalize torture, and caging, and hounding someone to the point where in desperation they will fling themselves to their deaths. We can be sure that at the news, there are plenty to say, “good, he deserved it. It was too easy of a death for him.”
The well of self-reflection is in fact very deep, for us as individual persons and for our society as a whole. I believe that the message of Jesus is as potentially life-giving for us as it must have been for the Samaritan woman. Enough of the shallow ways of vengeance and perpetual condemnation of our offenders. We ourselves and our culture will always come up thirsty for still more exacting vengeance unless we draw deeper from the well of personal and cultural self-examination of our tendency to quick and easy– not to mention the cheapest– ways of dealing with the broken people in our midst. Now, Lord knows that there certainly are people who are so deranged that they look for opportunities to wreak destruction and harm. There are many more who simply have never sensed any better options in life than to resort to illicit and violent ways. There are those from whom society must shield itself and there are sometimes those we as individuals best steer clear of so as to avoid trouble. So it is with a species that is as perfectly capable of evil and ugliness as it is with goodness and beauty.
This man Jesus stands ready to tell us everything we have ever done if we will only have the courage to face him and listen to him, dare I say truly, authentically associate ourselves with him and his Way? “Many more believed because of his word…we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.” I know that I have to ponder ever more deeply, let down into the deeps of my own psyche and assumptions the bucket of self-examination and perhaps self-confrontation and I suspect you do too. We seem, as self-styled Christians, to proclaim that we believe in Jesus and his word and way, and that he is the source of a living water of a wholesome, authentically human and humane approach to getting through the time of our life.
We should be able to hear this morning the voice of Jesus in the sad desperation of the broken, tired, and hope-starved people in our midst: “give me a drink.” If we really know who asks it of us, Jesus, in the person of even the meanest, most despised, then we might actually recognize the gift of God appearing when and where we would last expect to find it.
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Sunday in Lent IV – 2 March 2008 – Father Tom David – John 9:1-41
“His disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”
How often, particularly in the wake of some tragic death, do we hear such statements as these: “It must have been God’s mysterious plan.” “God knows what He is doing.” God took this innocent child because He must have needed a new angel.” Or, more darkly, “Death is on account of God’s wrath against sinful people.” Just think for a moment about these sorts of statements in relation to the by now all too many campus shootings.
According to typical belief of Jewish people in Jesus’ time, prosperity or poverty, health or sickness, and life or death, were often seen as the result of a direct intervention by God in the life of a person or even an entire nation. It was assumed that God personally exacts punishment or bestows reward according to the deeds of people. Such a view, it seems to me, is tantamount to effectively making God ultimately answerable for the whole problem of evil. Nevertheless, it is clear that even today such a view still holds sway with some Christians. Need it be pointed out for example that in our own time some Christians very seriously believe and have taught that AIDS is God’s punishment upon gay men? Or that God destroys cities on account of their wickedness? Well, what about the Kentucky Baptist church shredded by the tornado? Can this sort of thinking really make sense?
I believe that what Jesus says in this gospel absolutely demolishes any premise for this sort of thinking. Nothing this man nor his parents has done is the reason for the blindness, from birth, of the young man.
Yet what can Jesus mean when He goes on to say that the fellow was born blind “so that God’s works might be revealed in him?” On the face of it, without benefit of deeper reflection, one might assume that God had specifically allowed this fellow to be blind from birth—that is to suffer all the trials that such an affliction imposed especially in pre-modern times—so as to provide an opportunity for Him, God, to show off His power at a time of His own choosing. Until then the poor fellow simply had to bear up. But I think something else is meant here.
The fact is that extremely unfortunate things do happen to people, even those most clearly innocent of wrong doing. And people are still born with heart-rending maladies and even to the most virtuous of parents. But it is just as true that people with the most horrific of afflictions can manifest the most amazing patience and spiritual wisdom, indeed becoming amazing inspirations to everyone. People who have worked through debilitating illness or injury, or some other sort of terrible trial, will often say that those moments taught them an appreciation of life and its true values which most likely would never have been known otherwise. Often enough, it is a child who is the exemplar. I’m not so sure that such qualities are the result of anything God does. What I do believe is that people can be compelled by the most desperate circumstances to reach to the deepest parts of their beings where they discover, within themselves, powers that can only be described as godlike.
It is one thing to pray, for instance, that someone be healed of the affliction that has taken hold of one. It is another thing to ask God to act to change the situation. The problem with the latter approach is what do we make of the result? When things go as we would have them, then we say that God “heard our prayers.” When they don’t, then it must be because He didn’t “hear” them. Or, worse, that He opts not to give us what we desire. Then, the question becomes, why not? Do we really believe that God will answer the same cry for healing from two ICU’s, working healing for one but denying the other? Because “He must have some hidden plan.”
In the gospel today though, clearly Jesus is connected with a stupendous healing. Something happened to that young man that transformed him from physical blindness to sightedness. He himself relates, under intense pressure from his tormentors, that he doesn’t really know how to explain it. Jesus touched him and he went and washed in the pool as he was instructed. The end result was his ability to see for the first time in his life. Contrast this with what takes place among the Pharisees, the arbiters in Jewish society of what is right and what is wrong.
They smugly assume that they see and know everything there is to know about God and His ways. Even as they enjoyed physical sight they were in fact perfectly blind. One would think they would rejoice with the fortunate fellow. But as it happened, they saw nothing of worth in the young man, in his healing, nor in Jesus. They were in fact blinded by their self-righteous pride and jealous, fearful determination to maintain domination over the peoples spiritual sensibilities. Jesus was a threat to their power.
The man born blind not only was enabled to view his surroundings and the people in his life for the first time, but he saw something of far greater significance. That whomever this Jesus was, and wherever He came from, what He was able to do is the sort of thing that is of God. The Pharisees reject Jesus’ word about sin having nothing to do with his having been born blind: “You were born entirely in sins, and you are trying to teach us?”
Jesus, addressing them tells them that if they themselves had been born physically blind, it would not be attributable to sin. However, the willful rejection of Him and His teaching constitutes a far more devastating blindness that furthermore, on account of their arrogant pride and abusive conduct, is most decidedly sinful.
The situation of the Pharisees in this gospel is that of the practice of religion gone bad. In fact, it is an abuse of religion for purposes of justifying the preservation of self-centered interests. Such people don’t really mean to serve God so much as they intend on invoking God’s authority as a cover for working what in fact is their own will.
Indeed, all of us can sometimes feel ourselves so certain of our judgments and opinions
that we can become blinded to the possibility that things aren’t really as we suppose they are, with respect to ourselves or other people. I wonder if Jesus knew that tending the blind man’s need would never have garnered the same level of attention if he had told him to come back tomorrow, after the Sabbath was over? As it was, he poked the religious judges right in the eye.
Much of Jesus’ ministry involved shaking up the status quo in his society and religious establishment. Today, we ourselves, as Christians are part of the religious establishment in our own culture. It could well be that God is working wonders right before our eyes in the person of someone who does not seem in the least bit “religious” but yet acts out of the purest love, generously and selflessly seeking to care for others. I have known such people. You’d never catch them any where near a church but they far outpace me, church junky that I’ve been all of my life, in the philanthropic department.
Let us endeavor in these days of Lent to really open our eyes, so as to move beyond all our assumptions and supposed knowledge about God. When the Messiah lived and moved here on earth, it usually wasn’t the church crowd that recognized him and paid heed. Most often it was people who lived on the margins of the religious culture of the day, often enough who had been put out from or would not be welcome in the temple.
Most of us are part of this independent Catholic church because we’ve at some point, in some manner wrangled with a church authority that we found inhospitable. We are probably prime examples of the recent Pew foundation’s findings as regards the high incidence of Americans who leave the faith of their upbringing to choose one that suits them. All the more reason for us to be wary of the dangers of, ourselves, crafting God after our own image, in comfortable support of what might be our own opinions, bias, or even bigotry.
I hope that we will always strive to do as the Lord instructed: go wash in the pool of self-examination and open your eyes to things not as they are but as they might be.
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Third Sunday after Epiphany – 27 January 2008 – Father Tom David – Matthew 4:12-23
On Thursday afternoon, on my way home from the funeral of an old friend, I stopped in to the Catholic Religious Shop on Belmont Avenue in order to purchase a new supply of Altar breads for our church. As I drove home, turning my thoughts to the homily for today it occurred to me that this little shop on a side street of Richmond Virginia on the American continent owes its very existence to the life of just one man. A fellow who lived more than two thousand years before who managed to attract a band of devotees perfectly willing to forsake jobs, family, and homes in order to follow him about as he went hither and yon across the Galilean countryside preaching and teaching and doing things that came to be called miraculous interventions. And of course, he is the reason you and I are together in this very room right now.
The beginnings of all the present-day major religions of the world can be tracked back in time to people who in their own time were considered peculiar. Buddhism has its Gautama, Judaism its Abraham and Moses, Islam its Mohammed, Christianity its Jesus. How improbable it would seem that thousands of years later, millions upon millions of people still organize their lives around an identification with one of these guys. And while each of these religions most certainly accomplish much positive good, their adherents have throughout recorded history also proved themselves quite adept at fomenting religious wars and wreaking devastation in the name of God.
The gospel today marked the passing of the torch from a man named John, known by his contemporaries for his fiery preaching—not in the establishment religious house but out in the wilderness and countryside—to Jesus. It had been John’s message to “repent” and now we hear Jesus taking up that very message. Whereas John, by the accounts, is portrayed to have always said that he was preparing for the arrival of someone greater, Jesus comes along saying things such as to indicate that he is Himself that very one: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Or, as he spoke in the temple of his hometown, “Today the Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” stirring up in his Jewish community no small degree of scandal and religious outrage so much so that some wanted to expel him from the synagogue and even from the town. But people followed after him nonetheless and even all the more. We here apparently consider ourselves to also be followers of His. We come here week after week and, hopefully to the best of our abilities, endeavor to conduct all the goings-on of our lives in a manner consistent with a basic fidelity to principles attributed to His teachings.
It is one of the most fantastic evolutions in history, the development of a new faith, what came to be called Christianity. One man, born and lived out his days in an obscure province of a vast empire, considered a dangerous threat to the established political and religious order, put to death at the behest of the religious leaders, gave rise to a movement that over time swept through that empire turning it inside out and got carried to the farthest known reaches of the earth. Twenty centuries later we are gathered in this little building, you in these pews, Fred and Gene at their keyboards, Tom and I in pulpit and at an altar. Could any of Jesus’ own contemporaries ever imagined what was to come?
Being a Christian in many ways seems no big deal anymore however. There are but a few places on earth where its practice will invite persecution. The only people who really seem to care today would be those of some other religion determined that it and it alone represents the one and only legitimate Truth and the Christian faith a false path. Christians, it must be remembered, have themselves excelled at such an attitude, among themselves waging numberless wars of religion as well as the persecution of Jews and Crusades against Islam. There is no such entity as “Christendom” any longer in either West or East. However, the re-establishment of the Russian Orthodox Church as the mistress of the civil government in its pursuit of ethnic and political cohesion in Putin’s Russia, as part of a grand design to make Russia “respected” and feared, and the efforts of John Paul II and Benedict XVI to revitalize a “Christian Europe”—of course under a Vatican supremacy–not to mention brash attempts by fundamentalist sorts to highjack the government of our own country and enforce their own cultural code, all these movements would seem to signal that the Jesus movement is still at risk of being far from what we can imagine Jesus Himself would have intended. There is still far more to come in the unfolding story of the clash between western secularism, institutionalized Christianity, and radical Islam.
What all of these religions actually need to fear most is that they will be so busy picking each other apart that they will overlook the greatest challenge to traditional religious outlooks: the inroads of science. As human exploration of space advances, unlocking hitherto unimagined mysteries as to the origins of our planet and universe and the life forms that exist there; as medical and molecular research discovers more and more of the genetic code that explains what makes the human organism tick, the traditional religious answers must be adapted or else they will become fundamentally irrelevant. Still, in the name of religion the human race might still manage to destroy the earth and its life forms. After all, Pakistan and India are the result of a national partition along religious lines and now, Pakistan is to be feared as a nuclear power that is in danger of being seized by radical Islamic elements who are in a self-declared war to the death with the non-Islamic world. How this will all turn out is anyone’s guess.
What can it possibly mean then to suggest that someone who wishes to follow after Jesus must be willing to value nothing more highly? What would you make of your son or husband or partner leaving you so as to run after the likes of a Jesus? Would you be able to give up your job and house and family, and perhaps even sacrifice your life were you put to trial for being Christian? Are any of us so very Christian for that matter that we are even remotely at risk of being persecuted for it? Have you ever heard that query, “if you were to be arrested for being Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?” I often wonder just what I’m going to believe when I lie upon my own deathbed.
We are invited today to probe into the depths of ourselves, ask questions, pose challenges. How does Jesus really factor into my life?
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Second Sunday after Epiphany – 20 January 2008 -John 1:29-42; I Cor. 1:1-9
Liturgy is the formal activity by which a religious assembly expresses what it believes and what constitutes its hope and expectation. It is a formal expression of the community’s celebration of its corporate identity. Over the centuries since the apostolic age, Christians of many cultures have devised and revised their liturgical rites. Liturgy as an aspect of living religious culture evolves and adapts with time and need. Liturgical texts are composed with great care so as to clearly convey what is held to be the community’s theological wisdom as well as what needs the faithful in their time and place wish to accentuate.
The Collect, the short prayer at the beginning of the Liturgy, has the function of succinctly expressing the primary theological gist of the celebration. We are still in the Christmas cycle, which ends with the Feast of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple on February 2nd, sometimes also called Candlemas Day. Today’s Collect, as a prayer of supplication or asking, has some things to say that relate to the Gospel of the day and bear further consideration. Now that we have celebrated the birth of Jesus, the Church has begun to reflect more deeply upon His identity and the purpose for His coming into the world out of the Pre-eternal existence we maintain He always had with the Father and the Holy Spirit. We have called Him “Savior.” We said that He is the “light of the world.” We went on to ask that His teaching and the sacramental activities we employ, as Church, would serve to shed light upon us, presumably that we might see a clear path through life. We further have asked that we ourselves might reflect, I suppose as the moon reflects the light of the sun enabling it to be seen, the Light of Christ, showing forth the glory that is His own. This “glory” then is to further inspire awe and worship of Him and the desire to hear and adhere to what our sacred oral and written tradition relates about what He taught as values to live by.
Today’s Gospel relates a story of the moment when Jesus began to attract His first followers. A man by the name of John who has been actively preaching the dawn of a new age and the coming of one who will bring it about is depicted as recognizing Jesus to be that one: Here is the “Lamb of God”! John is clearly proclaiming that the principal mission of Jesus, as “The Lamb”, is to serve as a sacrificial offering. Now, sacrificial offerings have always been made to appease and make peace between humans and their gods. This was true in Jewish faith and still holds true in Christian sacramental theology as well.
The Epiphany story tells us of the light of a brilliant star, noticed by professional sky-watchers. We are told that several of them set out to “follow” that star to the location where they expected to find something wondrous. Never mind of course that literally following a star would involve lifting off from the earth and catapulting into the heavens! But give poetic license its due please! We might think of those wise men as the Carl Sagans of that era. Professional stargazers who looked to the starry vault of the heavens for clues into the mysteries of existence. And of course we still do this and our science has evolved to a point where we are in fact deriving real knowledge into those magnificent mysteries. And this very enterprise of scientific exploration and the successes of it in fact changes the playing field for the religious enterprise. No longer is it possible for us to simply suppose that beyond the skies lies a heavenly location where stands a throne and upon it seated our god and at its right His Son with saints and angels literally gathered round endlessly singing hymns of praise while this god pulls the levers by which everything that occurs on earth is made to happen. We have to think and ponder ever so much more deeply about what our sacred religious mythology can still teach us about what we’re about as constituents of a cosmic world, in the unspeakably unimaginable vastness of Space.
And so, who is this Jesus for us? Why should we call Him the “light of the world?” When so much of our time and energy is spent simply pursuing the means to shelter, food, and health care, and some pleasures of life along the way, does not what specifically “religious” activity we engage in reveal our need to satisfy needs of the human spirit as well? That life must somehow amount to more than merely scraping out surviving for as long as we might possibly stretch it out, the span of our years?
We were all glad to open our eyes this morning to the light of yet another day. “How brightly shines the morning star” of the epiphany—the realization that perhaps the best we can do is gather together to celebrate our bewonderment that we are, that we have what span of years we do, the while looking for clues as to how together the human race might make this cosmic world we inhabit a Garden of Edenic joy rather than the cauldron of conflicts humans raise one against the other?
This liturgy is a ceremony of thankfully accepting the mystery of being alive, of having an existence to begin with, and all that this good earth supplies us with to sustain us and delight us. Also for coming to terms with the suffering that inevitably comes our way too. For giving voice to what we need and hope for. The Bread, the Wine, are elements we symbolically employ to express that we give ourselves over to the Sacred Mystery and bow before it in awe. We have Communion with What we cannot fathom.
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Lent I 2008 10 February – Father Tom David
Isaiah 29:13-24; Psalm 32; Romans 12:1-21; Luke 6:27-38
There is a tradition in the Byzantine Melkite Church that very actively engages the congregation in the liturgical proclamation of the Gospel. The bishop, priest, or deacon, as is the standard practice of most of the Eastern churches chants the text, in this case in the highly melodic, fairly lilting middle-eastern tonality. By the way, this tonality is so endemic to the region that it is fully shared by Christians and Moslems so you would recognize it equally in a church or emanating from a minaret. As the cleric ends a phrase on a sustained note, the entire assembly chimes in with a humming of the same pitch for a few moments, whereupon the cleric takes up with the next line. The effect is such that there is a seamless interplay between the proclaimer and the hearers. The hearers don’t just listen passively, they actually become very engaged with the proclamation itself. It also very much attunes the hearers to what is being said as they are fully poised to add their own resonance. I recall that my dear old spiritual father at whose hands I was tonsured a cleric, Melkite Archbishop Joseph Raya, would ask the people to gather in as close around him as space permitted. I ask all of you to do just that right now, here!
(People gather in– including the musicians– instruction of how the humming is done is given. Proclamation of the Gospel after which people return to their seats and homily continues)
Archbishop Raya was a spell-binding preacher, teacher, and a prolific writer. He used to speak of the “breath of the Gospel.” That is to say, that the Gospel is a living entity. It has a pulse, insofar as the Christian disciple takes the Word into his or her heart, inviting it into one’s depths, and endeavors to have its meaning as much a part of one’s living as is the very breathing process itself. To be a Christian means that one chooses and re-chooses time and again to take on the role of Christ in one’s life; nothing short of this! No bit part is it to be a Christian! It is the starring role of a lifetime! To live one’s life out as if it were Christ living it out Himself through one. Now, just to consider for a moment our discipleship within the context of our small and familiar assembly here: Many of us know each other fairly well. That which we admire, and respect, and delight in. But, also, one another’s wrinkles and warts, faults, and perhaps, even our sins. Maybe it seems, on the face of it, to be completely farcical to think in terms of the people of this little congregation as being more than what we think we know them to be. We make our judgments about one another and perhaps close ourselves off from them and pretend that we can go about our way never really looking into our own hearts for the smug self-righteous demons that lurk there. In fact, we befriend these demons and, insomuch as we self-justify our behavior, give them ever more comfortable lodging. In such a condition as this, the breath of the Gospel of Jesus cannot but be smothered.
I would like to suggest that in the few moments when we were all of us gathered round about, hearing and humming the Good News of today, that any and everything which might seem otherwise so divisive fell away into nothingness before the power of Jesus’ Word. We are not a mere happenstance of isolated individuals. We are an assembly. We are an assembly that feels called to gather here in this place. And we do so, with one another. Before we might be of any Christ-like service to anyone beyond the walls of this little building, we within them need to be servants of one another.
I have been giving a great deal of thought to what this Lent can mean for us as a little church and how we might celebrate it. I am a person who simply loves liturgy. Even as I sometimes find myself wrestling with the very idea of believing and practicing a religious faith, the next liturgy, and it’s preparation, can’t come soon enough for me. I have come to love gathering here, with you, and doing what we do here. Each week I ponder the Scriptural texts, what they will be, and what they are speaking at this time. I page through the hymnals, seeking out verse and even the melodic temperament, that seems to amplify the theme I feel drawn to set forth. Music plays a vital role in liturgy and I hope that you make the effort to really pay attention to what you are saying as you sing. And feel the mood of the melody as it is offered by the composer as a voice through which that mood is conveyed, appropriate to the season and the text itself. We are extremely fortunate to have two dedicated musicians who each week work hard to rehearse, giving of themselves, of their love for God and this church, and, often enough having cause to grit their teeth as they are time and again faced with the challenge of yet another new piece that I request of them. I take this opportunity Gene and Fred, and Michael too, to thank you for your steadfast faithfulness in giving musical character to the Gospel’s breath in our hymnody. You make my tasks, as the liturgical leader of this community easier and the joy I experience far richer.
Lent is upon us. No! Not as a burden! Not as a shallow contrivance. Rather, it embraces us, as the gift of twenty centuries of Christian tradition—that is, twenty centuries of men and women who have sought to know Christ and to live Christ and to make Christ the definitive hallmark of their very lives and existence. It is not meant to crush us. It does us no good whatsoever as some “season”– with a definite ending date at that– of petty self-denials of candy bars, cigarettes, or other of our little personal vices and indulgent inclinations. Even abstinence and fasting, or other increased “spiritual activities” avail us nothing in and of themselves. Take it from me. As a monk of the Orthodox church I passed hours upon hours in many and lengthy Services, kept very strict fasts—I strove to do all the “stuff” that can be done in the pursuit of a “holy life.” I don’t believe for a moment that I was or am any the holier for having done any of it. I am convinced however, that the only thing needful is the willingness to day by day, sometimes moment by moment, look into one’s depths and confront the presence of false pride, self-righteousness, envy, hatred of others, hatred of oneself, unreasonable fear, an appetite for vengeance, refusal to let go of grudges and resentments, threatening to withhold one’s gifts and service to others out of spite. On and on we could go.
The Holy Gospel instructs us that before we would offer our gift at the altar—let alone receive what is given us there—we are bound to ask forgiveness of our offenses against our brother and our sister. It follows that we are also bound to extend like forgiveness, without reservation or condition. To do less makes a mockery of Jesus’ total gift of Himself for the life of the world. This is what I hope we will venture as we exchange the Kiss of Christian Peace with each other this morning.
The one thing needful, is to offer all the garbage in our lives to Jesus in His Christedness, firmly believing that by the power of the Holy Spirit, what is broken can be healed, what is ugly can be transformed, and that which is not whole can be restored. What is of this blessed earth, our very fleshly frames and form, can be shown forth as being possessed of the dignity and nobility of the sons and daughters of God, the brothers and sisters of He Who became incarnate as Emmanu-El, God-with-us, and seeks to lead us into the fullness of our very human existence. As the plate and cup pass by you on their way to the altar, place yourself upon it and within it. Unite your being to the form and substance of the bread and the wine. By the All-Holy Spirit it becomes the Bread of Heaven and the Cup of Salvation. Partaking of it together, as a family of faith, we are en-fleshed as the very Body of Christ and His life’s blood in our world.
“This is our accepted Time”! We long for that “Mercy past all measure.” “On [our] journey to the kingdom, [we] will find the strength [we] need.” “Blest are we who hear the word of God and keep it…Let us then receive what we now hear, believe what we receive, and become what we believe.” So we have sung or will be singing today.
Bread and wine, those primal elements which do more than symbolize, they signify—they are the signage-which demonstrate to God and to one another our loving commitment to live lives of service and honest goodness. They are given back to us by God in Jesus as His Food to sustain us and which embodies Christ in us.
(Last verse of Gospel chanted and hummed🙂
“Give and you will receive. Your gift will return to you in full—pressed down, shaken together to make room for more, running over, and poured into your lap. The amount you give will determine the amount you get back.”
Hymns of the day referred to herein: Opening: “These forty days of Lent”, John Day ’s Psalter, 1562; Gradual: “Blest are we,” Vince Ambrosetti 1992; Post Communion: “This is my Body,” Chas. Frischmann 1968; Closing: “This is our accepted Time,” Melchior Vulpius, c. 1560-1615
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Epiphany – January 8, 2008 – Matthew 2:1-12
Today is Epiphany (or Theophany Sunday). Some people call it “little Christmas.” It’s actually the last of the 12 days of Christmas. Here in the USA it tends to get lost in our minds as the tree comes down, all the bling disappears into the boxes until next year, and the staggering reality finally hits us that all those pretty Christmas cards in our mail boxes will soon be replaced with lots of not-so pretty credit card bills. The observance of Epiphany began in the Eastern Churches, and was originally an all in one celebration of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. It included the commemoration of his birth; the visit of the Magi, or “Wise Men”, who arrived in Bethlehem; all of Jesus’ childhood events, up to and including his baptism in the Jordan by John the Baptist; and even the miracle at the Wedding of Cana in Galilee.
In today’s gospel reading, Matthew tells us about the three wise men. It’s only in this particular gospel that this story appears, although many stories and traditions have grown from this reading, surrounding the day and the event it commemorates. There is a beautiful old story about the star in the East that claims that when it had successfully guided the Magi it fell from the sky and into a well in Bethlehem. According to some legend, that star is there to this day, and can sometimes still be seen, but only by those of pure heart.
Now there’s a lot of beautiful tradition associated with this story, with the glorious imagery of the infant Christ, swaddled in a stable and surrounded by animals and simple shepherds and then so vividly contrasted by the stunning and sumptuous richness of these visitors, bearing gifts of unimaginable splendor and wealth. Many nations and cultures throughout the world have evolved and still celebrate beautiful feasts and observances for this day. It’s a beautiful story indeed, but it’s rife with historical inconsistency.
To begin with, we don’t know if these men were kings. In fact, we really don’t know if they were wise. We don’t even know if there were three of them. That number was assumed because of the three gifts they presented the Christ child and some early Christians had no problem with the number 12. Somewhere in the 8th century, the Western church named them Melchior, Balthasar and Casper. Not to be outdone, the Ethopian Church named them Hor, Karsudan, and Basanater, and the Armenians call them Kagbha, Badadakharida and Badadilma. An early Irish text tells us that they were from Persia, and this seems possible given the fact that frankincense and myrrh came from this area, and so maybe the Syrian Christian names of Larvandad, Gushnasaph, and Hormisdas are correct.
The story is revered enough that even the Chinese Christian Church gets into the act here, believing that at least one of the Magi came from China. They cite anecdotal evidence about Liu Shang, the chief astrologer during the Han dynasty in China at the time that Jesus was born. He discovered a new star the Chinese called the “king star” – which was associated with the birth of a new king and then he promptly and conveniently disappeared from China’s imperial court for two years shortly thereafter. They interpret this absence as his participation on the trip to Bethlehem.
All that scripture really tells us is that the Child Jesus is visited by three gentiles (non-Jews), not just any old gentiles mind you, but star gazers. It is only thru what you have often heard me say is “selective translation,” that they are called “kings,” but in fact Matthew simply calls them magoi — or Magi. The same word magoi is also found in Acts, but there it is translated as magician or sorcerer (go figure). We think of them as astrologers because they are observing stars, and astrology was considered a learned or “wise” occupation. Magoi looked to the stars for answers that legitimately come only from God, and by the way they also exercised demonic powers and magic.
It gets better…. The Romans, who kept scrupulous and meticulous records, show no census during this period of time and, if they did, that census would have probably counted only Roman citizens, which of course Mary and Joseph were not. And, even if they would have been counted, it would have been, according to Roman tradition, more than likely where they actually lived and therefore where they were taxed. Many theologians believe that the story of the census was just a convenient way to displace Mary to Bethlehem so that the Old Testament prophecies could be fulfilled.
And then, on top of it all, it would have taken the Wise men an awesome period of time to get from wherever they were coming and go to wherever the Christ Child might be. If we consider historical information and superimpose all the data on the timeline for Herod’s rule, it makes sense that if the visit did in fact happen then Jesus was already a year or two old, which is probably why Matthew says “house” instead of stable in his gospel, and also why Herod targeted one and two year olds in his slaughter of the innocents.
So here we are faced with a moving, wonderful and heartwarming story which, although historically flawed, continues to spiritually motivate and intrigue us. But now the time has come to be honest with each other. If we were sitting here together in the Bedrock Falls Full Gospel Fundamental Church of Christ, our senses deadened by hours of pulpit pounding and our ears numbed by thousands of trilly tinkling tambourines, then wondering why would certainly be at the total bottom of our priorities because the Bible says it and I believe it… can I get an Amen and a Glory be please???
But we are the Church of Antioch, and as such we’re not part of the brainwashed masses, we are reasonably clever human beings confronted with a need , a hunger for rational understanding of our spirituality and all the factors that comprise it. If we take at face value and do not try to comprehend these little things that grate on and indeed sometimes insult our intelligence, then sooner or later it will detrimentally affect our faith. And so we are allowed, even encouraged, to ask ourselves why Matthew would ever include a story in his gospel that was wrong, or embellished, or even fictional. And, when we see the underlying reason behind the saga of the Magi and its symbolism within Christianity, then to be truthful the veracity of the story is almost secondary.
Because whatever the origin of these eastern sages, the story of their visit was of great significance for later Christianity. You see, these Wise Men were pagans, not Hebrews, and the fact that they adored the Christ Child in the same manner as the Jews symbolized and forecasted for readers of Matthew’s gospel the universal outreach for future Christianity. They represented, at the adoration, all those who did not follow the laws of Jehovah. The light they saw in the Christ Child symbolically pierced the darkness of their paganism, just as God’s Light can illuminate the darkness of ignorance, fanaticism, intolerance and terrorism that surrounds us today.
Now this isn’t the first time that we have seen in scripture something that is just not meant to be construed as basic infallible truth, something that was never meant to be considered as anything but abstract and educational. Just think of what a wonderful world we would have if people would take the time and the thought necessary to understand this. The histories and legends that the ancients have imparted to us are for the most part priceless, and for the best part beautiful, but what they have unfortunately failed to give us is their perspective on how these gifts should be effectively interpreted in today’s world. For even a hint at this perspective, we can today only rely on common sense, historical research, judgment calls and most of all an open mind. However, if we persist in approaching these gifts in ignorance, greed and impertinence we can only remain blind to the majesty of the love and glory that I feel is our right as modern Christians.
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Baptism of the Lord
13 January 2008
This day is a notable day for our community. We have the pleasure of celebrating the Sacred Mystery of Baptism with our sister Randi.
When I recently asked Randi why she wished to be baptized she replied that it meant for her a “new beginning in life.” A way to move past and beyond what was, to what is, and what will be. Now of course baptism isn’t a repeatable sacrament and there must be serious question as to whether or not someone has already been baptized or not before there can be a consideration of the appropriateness of the ritual. Today we welcome Randi, by way of this sacrament, into the family of baptized Christians.
It is lovely for us as a community to have this experience. First of all, today the churches catholic the world over are commemorating the baptism by John of Jesus in the Jordan river . So it is obvious that this liturgical feast is well observed with a celebration of baptism. It is also appropriate for all of us to reflect upon our own baptismal commitment. For many of us perhaps, this step was taken without our express consent during our infancy. There are others of us who were baptized later in life. In either case, from time to time the liturgical year offers us the opportunity to reflect upon the significance of our baptism and, if we so choose, to willfully recommit to the responsibilities of living the Christian life.
It should be clear that there are many, many Ways of believing and living within the human family. Christianity, as a religious faith, is a relative newcomer, even at age two thousand some odd years. While many people, the world over, have come to faith according to the Christian pattern, there are as many or more who have not, but nonetheless are spiritual persons too and are engaged upon their own equally valid search for truth. But here we are, in this room, calling ourselves after the name of Christ Jesus. And we come back Sunday after Sunday and do this thing we call Liturgy or Mass or some such and, hopefully, we try to carry on our lives, in the days between, according to some style which is in accord with what Jesus asked of those who choose to follow after Him and the example and teachings He set forth. Does that mean that Christians will then live lives morally and ethically superior to those of non-Christians? Who could honestly believe this? Are we by virtue of our faith even happier or feel more fulfilled in life? There are millions of Christians on psycho-tropic drugs managing depression, so I think not. The walk through one’s life can indeed present one with many difficulties, and some of those difficulties can at times seem so overwhelming that one experiences an onset of panic and fear. Life also necessitates the making of choices: what course to follow, what is the right thing to do in a given instance?
Today Randi binds unto herself the “strong Name of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” She, continuing in the words of the hymn, The Breastplate of Saint Patrick, binds to herself the “power of God to hold and lead her, the very eye of God to watch over her, by His might to protect her. The ear of God is poised to hear her every need, the wisdom of God is hers to draw from. God’s hand is there to guide her as she goes along her path, a divine shield against the blows that come her way. God’s Word will inform and enliven her thoughts and the words of her mouth. The angelic hosts of heaven stand guard round about her. For Christ now shall dwell ever within, behind, before, beside her. Christ wins, comforts and restores her. Christ is her foundation, In quiet, in tempest, Christ is with her. It is Christ’s own love infusing the love others extend to her. Christ: in every way upholding her.
This community of Christian faith stands round Randi too, even as the unseen throng of the bodiless powers of heaven, the martyrs, prophets, patriarchs and matriarchs, and the millions of souls who have lived and gone on before us are mystically present. We do not walk alone. We belong to Christ. We also belong to one another. We must be there for others to rely on us for support and strength. I read an interesting article in The Advocate magazine this week concerned with overcoming addictions and getting hold of one’s life in order that goals might be set and actually met. The author states that “the most dramatic and enduring life changes often occur through community-based initiatives, in which a group of people is invested in your success and you feel accountable to them. It’s called obligatory interdependence.” I find this an apt description of what being church is all about.
We are church for each other. We are part of something that extends across centuries and generations, cultures and races. Christian history, our history is a mix of often rising to heroic accomplishment but includes also shameful failures and dark deeds. Each of us adds to that collective history as we live out our days and do what we do. Sometimes we do well and sometimes not so well. But we keep on, making a new beginning day after day, overcoming our personal obstacles or knowing when to just move around past them. We seek to become the best human beings we can possible be. This life does of course come to its end. The composition of our bodies returns to the elements out of which they were formed. Our spirits, once created always remain.
Today as Randi places herself in the streaming waters of the Christ’s Jordan River , she recognizes that her body has been formed from our earth’s elements, and her spirit received from the Giver of Life Whom Christians call by the Trinitarian Names of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We as her community likewise renew our own identities in Christ. Together we celebrate our faith and hope and inter-dependence. In the words of a lovely folk hymn, “we are pilgrims on a journey, we are travelers on the road, we are here to help each other go the mile and bear the load.”
Christ before us, behind us, beneath us, beside us.
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Sunday after Christmas 2007
John 1:1-18
The origin of the human species is a mystery, perhaps the mother of all questions, that seemingly every civilization from the dawn of human consciousness has sought to address. The Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are no exception. And, indeed the question is one that has re-emerged as a hot-button issue now in the early twenty-first century, inserting itself even into our political discourse. Presidential candidates are queried as to their views on Darwin’s theories vis a vis the Genesis—and that word itself means “beginning”—story of the Hebrews. Who’da thunk it? The renewed controversy, one among many points in the so-called “cultural wars” that are currently raging, would often seem to denominate persons as partisans of a theistic religious view or a secular, non-theistic scientism. The time will come, and not soon enough, that people will tire of this distraction from the real, pressing issues that should be the proper topic of political debate in this land and the question can once again occupy its natural place as a vital spiritual pre-occupation of private persons. It cannot be otherwise within a system where civil affairs are distinct from religious affairs.
In church as we are at this moment, the matter is appropriate for our consideration, for we are all assumedly here because we share a common interest in spiritual questions.
The passage from John’s gospel appointed for this, the first Sunday after the Nativity of Jesus Christ, is so totally about this most fundamental of human questions: why are we here? This is the stuff of a science of a very distinct sort. Science—and the word, in its Latin root scire means to know is a process that can assume many forms. The work of laboratory researchers is one such process. But no less so is the work of theology. Both sorts of process involve the search for knowledge and, ultimately, human meaning. Indeed theology understands itself to be the school of sacred sciences. I believe that theological work can be considered an authentic science only when it seeks to take an open-ended approach to the quest for knowledge as opposed to being the slave to particular suppositions, placing limitations upon what the questions can be, what sort of answers are allowed, and who is entitled to ask them.
You have all heard the phrase “words take on a life of their own.” It is no accident that Saint John has employed the term word to reference Jesus. What is a word after all? The dictionary says that it is, among many other applications, a speech-sound whereby meaning is communicated. I can’t think of any other reason for the whole Jesus saga but for the need of people to develop deeper conscious awareness of some sense of ultimate meaning for our very existing. After all, Jesus is viewed by many people, according to the Christian theology, as the pre-eminent bridge-man between the visible world and an unseen God. Jesus then, is completely about the communication of meaning—the very significance of being human.
I’m afraid that I have to leave off right here with the pursuit of this line of thought. I simply don’t yet know where I’m going with it. The business of preaching sometimes implies that the preacher is capable of a perfect beginning, middle and an end to his or her preachment. By the end of it, supplying some satisfying resolution either by proposing the challenge of the day or some sort of neat synthesis. In the midst of Christmas the best I can do is to encourage wonder.
We are presented with the birth of a child, a baby born into the poorest and humblest of circumstance. There is the looking to the stars—even a particular star—for guidance, that supposedly leads right to this particular baby. Wise men discover the meaning of life in this child. Well, don’t we all stand in wonder before a new-born child, in complete awe of the manifestation of a completely new life before our eyes, with all its potential?
God is to be found, not in any doctrines or religious practices in and of themselves. These contrivances can only help us to express our primal awe and wonder before a vastness that we cannot begin to comprehend but are ever yet drawn to track down. So we gather, we sing poetry, we eat of simple elements—a bit of bread and a swallow of wine—and we celebrate the birth of a person named Jesus Who exemplifies the best that we can be and the imperative of striving to become.
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Feast of the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ 2007
“Comfort, Comfort you my people, prepare for God a way, Make straight what long was crooked, Make the rougher places plain, Let the valleys rise to meet Him and the hills bow down to greet Him, For the glory of the Lord, now o’er the earth is shed abroad. All flesh shall see the token, that God’s word is never broken.”
Christmas is come! Advent-tide, at least liturgically speaking, has drawn to its close finding its fulfillment in the Feast we begin to celebrate this night.
But in a larger sense, Advent is never over for the Christian. While the liturgical year runs its course through its various seasons and significant days, still Advent permeates everything. I say Advent—but I ought to also say Parousia and this word, Parousia is a word that I hope you might strive to remember. It is a word which can mean “coming,” “arrival,” or “being present.”
Christmas is, of course, the celebration of the birth of Jesus. Now, obviously, many, many people celebrate Christmas but not all of these celebrators, by any means, any longer think of the “holiday” in specifically Christian religious terms. Indeed, the primitive winter celebrations of the Solstice and the ancient Roman festival of Saturnalia are celebrations of the triumphant ascendancy of light—the return of it—after it’s annual autumnal diminishment. The Christian church only baptized these primitive celebrations and reinterpreted their meaning around its faith that this Jesus, born in humble circumstance in a specific time and place, is also the Christ—the expected Messiah—Who is also God of very God.
For those who are “in Christ” this day is not a mere “holiday” but it is a “holy” day. It is “holy”—which is to say “set apart” from other days because it is the day of the calendar year dedicated to the memory of the moment in our earthly time when the One Who has neither beginning nor end, from Whom everything that is has come to be, appeared as fully one of us. Jesus, in His own Person, fully and most perfectly makes visible what every human person is called to emulate: to live, to be alive, to find our life’s purpose and meaning not in accumulated wealth or power over others—or any thing which is subject to perishing—but rather to grasp, by faith, that life is truly discovered and lived in loving. In the words of an ancient hymn, Jesus is “of the Father’s love begotten.”
If there is any cure for the evils and ills within this world, it is love. Too few of us really believe or trust in love however. Perhaps, for some, it is because trust has too often been abused. Love can be frightfully costly. Still, it is not something that can be earned or even won. It either just is or it isn’t. God-Love just is. For human persons, we either purpose to “abide in love” or we don’t, and, therein is all the difference as to what sort of life we will live and if we are or are not persons possessed of the ultimate treasure: hope.
Until hope achieves its ultimate realization—and we can only speak in various images to describe this—God’s reign fully established on the earth, the “Kingdom come,” the attainment of paradise, and so on—it only remains for us to live in hope filled expectation. That is why I say that Advent can in no way be over for us ever, until that moment when the One Whose coming into the world as Jesus of Nazareth comes again, as He asserted He would. Those who are “in Christ” as Saint Paul is fond of saying are thus able to celebrate—as we are trying to do—Christmas, but we are also living in a state of waiting, of what should be an eager anticipation that something far beyond our imagining is yet to take place. The Christ will appear among us once again in His own Person. And everything will be changed from the way we have known it.
In the meantime, it remains for us to live, in relation to Christ Jesus, according to the third sense of the word Parousia that I earlier referred to: being present. Jesus the Christ is already present amongst us, acting among us, transforming people and their situations. If Christmas can have any lasting value or power once the lights and trees and baubles have come down and been stored away, it will be found in our commitment to live as “other Christs.” To show forth Christ Jesus, alive, acting, and transforming the world around us through what we do and how we live, for others. Christ, living in and through us, as fleshly tokens of that promise that God’s word is never broken: “Behold, I come and make all things new!”
Merry Christmas!
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Advent IV
Today, being the fourth and last Sunday of Advent, signals that we are nearing the end of the season of preparation for the celebration of the nativity of Jesus.
For me, to be able to look pat all the glitz, the canned Christmas music, the consumer frenzy, is essential if I am to find it possible to ever keep Christmas. No doubt, six seasons of holiday shopping binges in my secular employment in the retail industry have had a significant impact upon my attitudes with respect to this annual ordeal. The nearer Christmas gets the more desperate people become to “get something” so that so and so will have something under the tree to open. After all, if they don’t like it they can always return it. Returns: the bane of any retail sales person’s professional life, an occupational hazard in its own way. True, we may well make some of our best money as a result of this annual binge. Yet, at the same time, I do look forward to the ordinary days that will resume in January. Truth be told, my work in the retail clothing business has harmed my emotional feelings about Christmas. I can’t help but wonder what many people are really celebrating as the “reason for the season.” I fear that many people are caught up in something they themselves don’t quite understand and feel powerless to alter. And captive of the expectations of the people around them to decorate houses, cook and bake, get together with family and, above all, find an acceptable gift to satisfy each recipient.
For my part, I’ve become something of a Christmas drop out as far as much of all that stuff goes. I’d just as soon give a gift on some ordinary day, just because. Not because it is what one is expected to do at a time of year but just for the sheer pleasure of surprising someone I care about.
Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad thing for Christians to altogether separate the religious celebration of the birth of Jesus from this annual winter event we call Christmas. Have a winter festival if you will, but not pretend that it has much to do with Jesus. But that isn’t going to happen probably so we must strive to attain our focus.
The question we might ask is why should I find reason to actually celebrate the birth of this man some 2000 plus years ago? Does the fact of this birth really affect who I am and how I live out my days?
It is clear that the figure of Jesus is one that has altered history and continues to do so even in our own time. Suffice it to say that the religious views of some who claim to be devoted to His Word or example have serious consequences in our society, affecting some of the touchstone issues of our time, the right to die/euthanasia controversies, medical ethics, abortion immigration policy, or whether gay people should be allowed to marry or adopt children.
People do stake their lives upon their personal faith convictions in His regard. And over the millennia, scores have willingly died, ostensibly on account of their faith in Him. That in the end he will sort everything out to what it should be.
It seems I arrive back at the question I posed several weeks ago when I cited what is recorded in the Gospel to have been asked by Jesus of His disciples: “who do you day; that I am?” That really remains the question of questions—certainly for me.
At this point in my life I find I am having to really thoughtfully ponder that very question as I am no longer quite able to embrace the Jesus of the orthodox variety so uncritically as I for so long did. And what about you? Has your religious thinking undergone any significant development or alteration as you have matured? Or is your faith virtually the same as it was as a result of the formation you received in childhood?
How might we believe in this figure in this time of our lives? Is it possible that believing in Him can be the ultimate defining focus of our lives and everything we do with them? Is it possible for twenty-first century humans to actually worship Him as the definitive revelation of God? How do we justify any faith whatsoever in God, in the very existence of God—our God?
What is it we are doing here in this little space each week, singing, praying, breaking bread, pouring a cup, partaking of them in common?
If Advent is the beginning of a new yearly liturgical journey through the life and ministry of Jesus and by extension that of the community that claims to follow Him—then it is the dawn of a new opportunity, indeed responsibility to embrace a confrontation of these questions and others.
If Jesus the Christ lives, lives in and through the communities of faith—this community—then what makes that evident to us, or more importantly, to some onlooker?
Does it really matter to you that He was or was not born?
Who do you say that He is?
What say you of Christmas?
Why keep it?
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Sunday of Advent II 2007 – 9 December
Matthew 3:1-12
“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make His paths straight.”
So often when I read these words I think of them set to the musical arrangement of the rock-opera Godspell that debuted in 1970 and was wildly popular in my college-age generation. The music sounds almost quaint to the ear of a twenty-first century listener—it is certainly time-bound—in a way that a much earlier rock-opera by the name of Messiah by G. F. Handel has never seemed to me to be. Nevertheless, when I read over the lyrics of Godspell, I was struck by the fact that a Broadway lyricist and composer had discovered within the Hebrew Scriptures a powerful vehicle by which to challenge the society of his time. I don’t believe there has been anything quite like it since.
The passage from St. Matthew’s gospel heard today on the Second Sunday of Advent replays the piercing lyric of John the Forerunner and Baptist’s admonition to the society of his time: “Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven has come near!” Heard within the serene environment of our churches these words perhaps don’t bear the kind of power that they apparently did in John’s own time. Recall that this is a man who very successfully upset the status quo, even to the very highest levels of authority in the Temple and the government. He was shut up in prison for it and eventually executed.
His message is one which is still very much in need of hearing. One wonders if one day there might appear a modern musical voicing that will arrest the attention of the current generation in the manner of Godspell over thirty years ago?
John was a man who, as the saying goes, “Spoke truth to power.” He blasted his contemporaries for their hypocrisies. They wanted to think of themselves as the chosen people of God, faithful to the Law of the Covenant, a light to the nations. John stood to accuse them of hiding behind an outward show of practicing their faith, as a cover for the misdeeds they were also purposefully engaging in. As we know from all of history, no matter the brand of religion, there is always this pitfall to beware.
Each of us must not only do the work to figure out what we believe and by what values we will live, but also, once having subscribed to principles, strive to live true to them. We all falter along this course time and again, in little ways mostly but sometimes in larger ways too. Thus the challenge to grow as human beings into the most authentic selfhood that we are not only capable of, but moreover, to which we, as professing Christians, believe ourselves to be called by the voice of the Spirit of God.
We in our own time, particularly as a nation, are much accustomed to seeing ourselves as paragons of righteousness. Politicians have much employed biblical images to characterize our nation as a “shining city on a hill,” and a “light to the nations.” Indeed this is a marvelous country, having in many ways been the envy of the world, a place that more people want to get in then get out from. There is a rule of law, and a fundamental fairness and equity that is unequalled anywhere and not to be taken for granted. We have an unparalled wealth and freedom for self-determination. We have accomplished much good in world affairs. But not always. We have no right to any false piety. We must always remain vigilant that our national doings not be covered over with some thin veil of sanctimonious national religiosity. In the same way, as religious communities, be they Christian, Jewish, Islamic, or whatever, people must strive that their profession of faith not be a club used against others. And, as individuals, that we not hide behind the practice of spiritualities and religion at the same time we give ourselves passes to use or manipulate others, to be simply nasty , to cheat, to gain advantage or more money by dishonest means.
The message of the Forerunner and Baptist John today to us is to prepare a way for the coming of the Lord into our own lives. To make the crooked ways straight. That means simply, to provide the Lord an E-Z Pass into the depths of our beings. There to reign, there to lead, there to guide. And also there to admonish and set right what is not in accord with what we profess to believe, bearing in mind the words of Saint Paul: “Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope.”
Prepare a way for the Lord! Make straight a highway for our God!
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Luke 16:1-13
This week, Luke continues on with the recurring story of what it takes to be a disciple. Now we have to remember that common sense dictates that the best story is one that people can understand on their own level, a story based on something people can relate to. Given that most people at that time were poor, it’s no wonder then that Jesus would use a “rich man” as his vehicle for making a point. He speaks of a man, probably a hated absentee landlord, who hired a manager to negotiate contracts on his behalf.
Now there are a couple of things that have to be made clear here in order to explain what is really going on. Firstly, Jesus speaks of money here as “dishonest wealth,” implying that the whole operation wasn’t exactly above board. Jewish law forbade charging interest on a loan, but people could get around that simply by writing contracts for larger amounts. So if you owed 50 sheep, the contract was written for 100. Secondly, in those times and in that part of the world, there was, and to an extent still is, an implicit understanding that managers have an unofficial right to “skim” a bit off the top for themselves. A good manager, if you wish, was one that just stole “an honest amount.” This is the historical and social context in which this gospel is written, and these are the sort of people that Christ was talking about in this parable.
Now when the manager, let’s call him ‘Augie,’ gets called on the carpet and fired for mishandling his master’s wealth, and then is further asked to come up with the account books, he is unmistakingly distressed about his future. Let’s understand that there were no “monster dot coms” in those days where he could post his resume, and all that good living made it highly probable that he wasn’t buff enough to do menial labor, so he embarked upon a plan to, as we say in theological terms, “covereth his butt.”
And so Augie calls in a couple of big debtors and encourages them to rewrite their contracts, significantly lowering the amounts owed to the boss, the “Don” if you will. Sort of the equivalent of you being called into the bank that holds your mortgage and being told, “just take 50 or 60 grand off the top… it’ll be fine!!” He made them, if you will, “a deal they couldn’t refuse.”
We don’t really know if these diminished amounts represented overages to compensate for illegal interest or were perhaps destined for Augie’s comfortable retirement years on the sunny coast of the Mediterranean. It really makes no difference. Nor do we know if any of the debtors objected to having their obligations halved, but that makes no difference either. But what we do know is that clever old Augie has now put himself in a position where he has totally ingratiated himself in the eyes of the debtors and, by having them rewrite their own contracts, has actually implicated them in his chicanery.
This, he feels, will make them warmly welcome him into their lives, and possible provide him with suitable employment. Augie is one smart cookie. He has developed a scheme to provide for his future before his termination is mad final. The boss, for his part had grudging respect for his crafty accountant and commended him for his clever scheme before giving him the boot. The actual word used in scripture means more “pragmatically” than “shrewdly.” Sort of the equivalent of today’s… “I gotta hand it to you.”
And here is where the parable takes a strange and confusing twist — at least on the surface it does. Jesus continues with “For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light. I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.”
Why is Jesus telling his disciples such a story? The values of both the rich man and his manager are deeply similar. Both are focused on how to get and keep lots of money and, as a rule, rich men don’t fare well in Luke’s gospel. In three different stories where Luke uses the phrase, “rich man”, the riches cause much turmoil and sadness in their lives. A concern for riches, Luke said, can choke out spiritual life.
In fact, I think that the most profound interpretation of what Jesus is to realize that he is not recommending the ways of the rich man or his dishonest manager at all. He is telling us that the rich man commended his dishonest manager because “it takes one to know one,” and that People of this kind are more sophisticated with the scheming of this world than are people who have a spiritual view of life.
He was telling us that if this is what we want life to be all about, then go ahead and make friends like the dishonest manager did – and we will be welcomed into their eventual destiny!”
Most theologians feel that the rest of today’s readings were likely spoken on another occasion by Christ and added here by Luke. They deal with faithfulness and the need to focus on our relationship with God. If we are able to have faith in the little things, then we can also have faith in larger things, and if we are dishonest in little things it can lead to dishonesty in larger things as well. The gospel lesson concludes with Jesus saying, “You cannot serve God and wealth.”
Jesus is differentiating here, as he has done many times, between the values of this world and those of the kingdom he has come to proclaim. We are essentially spiritual beings, “children of the light” who were created in God’s image for a relationship Him/Her. The dishonest manager and his embezzling accountant are both totally given to this world and to things that can not last.
Jesus again tells us we cannot serve or worship both God and material things. Literally, what he said is, “You cannot be in bondage to God and worldly wealth.” To have faith is a character issue, not a quality we can turn on and off at will. It is not something we “have”, it is who we are.
The word translated as “faithful” here, by the way, also means “trustworthy.” Jesus makes it clear that we cannot be “somewhat” trustworthy or a “little bit” faithful. He teaches us that faithfulness and dishonesty are at the same end of the spectrum, and that we are not “sometimes” faithful and “sometimes” dishonest.
And so, we can say that today’s lesson simply says that our faith can accumulate heavenly capital, and even if we do this in a small way God will see us as trustworthy and worthy of the kingdom. If we don’t, he won’t. If we don’t share now, we won’t be entrusted with “true riches” later on. Jesus asks us: if you have not managed your finances prudently, will God give you eternal life? We one cannot make a god out of money and serve God at the same time. If we are to be true disciples must serve exclusively, using material resources for God’s purposes. The alternative is enslavement to materialism.
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Luke 16:19-31
Today’s gospel continues two trends that we have seen in the last weeks with Luke. The first trend is that the story appears in no other gospel, and the second is that a “rich man” is once again the villain.
There is a lot of imagery in this story tho, and although it may seem pretty straightforward, it’s important to understand it to evaluate what Luke is trying to teach us.
Today’s rich man was dressed in purple and fine linen. While we can appreciate even today the feeling of fine linen next to our skin, it becomes more of a contrast when we remember that most people at the time wore clothing of “home-spun” fabrics, rough to the touch and probably simplistic in style and cut.
That the “rich man” wore purple is also a fact of some importance. Rome, Egypt, Palistine, and Persia all used purple as the imperial standard. Purple dyes were rare and expensive; only the rich had access to them. The purple colorants used came from different sources, most from the dye extraction from fish, mollusks or insects. Purple was also used for textile furnishings of the Tabernacle and for the sacred vestments for High Priests. This “rich man” was no mere commoner, he was a man of importance, and Luke wants us to see that with no difficulty.
And he ate well, too. Every day. In a time where the poor existed on grain, breads and fish this man really lived it up. Plus he lives in a house with a gate, which tells us that it was probably a walled compound, an imposing estate far more spacious and far better decorated than the vast majority of folks around him.
Lazarus, on the other hand, is dirt poor, hungry, sick and crusty, the object of pity even by the dogs that lick his sores. Now that in itself is repugnant enough to set the contrast of Luke’s tale and get our attention, but couple that to the extra information that Lazarus means “the one that God has helped” and you can immediately see where Luke is heading with this.
They both die, and Lazarus makes it to heaven, the rich man…..well… he doesn’t. He ends up in the torment of hell. Now l need to make it clear here that this concept of hell as a place of fiery and eternal torment doesn’t really mesh with my own beliefs, but again it’s important as a medium of contrast for Luke in making his point with the story. Evidently, the damned in hell can see heaven at a distance, for the rich man, under full torment, can actually see Lazarus and Abraham together there.
Now one would have thought that the eternal fires of Luke’s hell would be an equalizer of all souls, but did we all catch the fact that even as the rich man called for mercy he continued to treat Lazerus as an object? He’s a nervy bugger. He actually asked Abraham to send the poor man down to him to cool his tongue. Now the mood of today’s gospel has been set, the poor and oppressed audience is hopping mad at the disdain of the rich man, frothing at the mouth as it were and incredulous at the rich man’s audacity, and Luke is now ready to apply the lesson.
And what we learn is exactly what we learned before, that what we do during our earthly lives will reflect on what may come afterward. And it’s that concept, basic to all religions from the ancient Egyptians to modern day Buddhists that is being reiterated here. It’s another version of “what you sow so shall you reap.” That there is a wide divide, a “chasm,” between doing what is right and just with our lives, and what is wrong and improper.
This gospel is not necessarily about the rich, it is however about the abuse and disdain that can accompany wealth and power. There were many prosperous and wealthy people that were and followers of the Christ, and Luke has been very careful in setting up the rich man as an abuser of his wealth and station to differentiate him from these followers..
There also seems, at least to me, to be a hidden message in this Gospel, a subliminal criticism of the old religion’s principles and practices, with the “rich man” in his fine purple being a symbol of the corruption and exploitation of the temple high priests. This is the sort of criticism that could have been easily understood by the average people of the times, implied rather that implicit.
There’s some “stuff” in today’s message that ruffles my feathers, as well. I tend to see heaven and hell as a dynamic rather than static, very much in concert with how we live our lives, and certainly a part of us while we are living. I completely disagree with Luke’s “you can’t get there from here” message. As we grow spiritually there is no reason to think that we are beyond attaining our own heaven, and conversely once we have earned it, there’s no reason to think that we don’t have to work constantly at keeping it.
Luke also puts a unique twist on telling us to have faith, when he writes “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.” Now I don’t know about you, but if my long dead grandpappy showed up at my door one morning with a box of fresh Danish pastry and the message that there was in fact a heaven and a hell, I would have nooooo trouble believing him. But that wouldn’t be faith, would it, that would be fact. Faith is the mystery, fact is the science.
Our world is so much more complex than when the scriptures were first written, and I think it would be impossible to describe who and what we are today in terms of what was available then to those who wrote them. Conversely, we should try to consider the social confines that limited the scripture writers when we try to understand them, expanding them as it were to fit into our modern dimension.
When we do that in an intelligent manner, the truth becomes obvious and simple. In our modern world there are many ways to be rich. There are many ways to be powerful. There are also so many ways to abuse and exploit. If we are to win our battle for spiritual enrichment and perfection, then we must recognize and control our actions to the better good of ourselves and those around us.
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A Memorial for Vicki
We’re gathered here today to pay homage to Vicki, and to bid her goodbye, but how exactly do we do that? How exactly do we confront the realization that we shall, in this life at least, never see her again? We won’t experience her acerbic wit, we won’t feel her cheer and laugh with her at a party. We won’t hear her complain about losing money on the horses. All that is gone.
But in fact, when all is said and done, just how do we say goodbye to ANYONE that we lose to death. What are the feelings and emotions that we experience, and how can we deal with them?
It’s generally accepted in a world that has to qualify everything on paper in black and white that there are seven stages of grief. Acceptance, anger, denial, depression, fear, guilt and shock. To an extent, there is a certain truth to this, but when you get right down to it it’s a clinical and cold rationalization that is about as comforting to us as an ice bath in a snow storm.
Overcoming grief is a healing process, and so many of us turn to our God for this healing. Notice here that I specifically didn’t say “Church,” because a person doesn’t need church to experience God. It falls to each of us to call upon our internal spiritual resources to assuage our grief. Each of us must handle it, must manipulate it, must conquer it in a manner that suits our personal spiritual journey. And no doubt about it, our individual journeys are as diverse as the stars in the sky.
And so, when a good friend or loved family member like Vicky has lived her life and, regardless of the circumstances, is removed from our midst, we gather together in respect, in love, and in remembrance of our interactions with her, but also we gather as a group bonded albeit temporarily by this great loss, in common sorrow. We sit together in this humble place made holy by our presence, reciting the prayers that for thousands of years have comforted us, given us solace, uniting us in what might be called a common consciousness, a singleness of purpose.
We renew old acquaintances, and poignantly remember the good times, the bad times, the little episodes in our lives that meant so much at the time but have been long ago eroded by the pressures, frustrations and turmoil of our everyday lives.
But now, the absolute finality of Vicki’s passing stamps some of these memories as indelible impressions onto our souls. For some, it may be her fascination with Peyton Manning and Mat Kennseth. For others, perhaps it was her encyclopedic memory about the people she met, or her fierce protection of young people, especially her grandchildren. Many will remember her as at the same time, tough, frank, and straight forward. She lived her life on her own terms, and never held grudges. Who of her family has not heard her say, “That’s the way it is – deal with it!” Let’s close our eyes for a second or two…and listen to her speak to us!
It’s these ingrained memories, called up with love and devotion, that are the essence for dealing with our grief regardless of what “stage” of grief the textbooks say we are in. And it’s these memories that will keep Vicky alive in our souls and in our hearts. And, if Vicky is alive in our souls and in our hearts, we don’t ever have to say goodbye! Amen
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The Ordination of Father Ted Feldman, Baltimore, MD.
Here he stands before us all, minutes away from being newly ordained a priest, with the spiritual power of thousands of years surging trough his very being, consecrated with the same hands that have themselves been consecrated by successive generations all the way back to Christ’s original apostles. It’s the culmination of years, decades even, of study; a long, circuitous and often arduous road that many would have quite honestly abandoned. And we, as Ted’s witnesses, his friends, family and colleagues, get to experience just the slightest glimpse of this incredible journey with today’s readings, selections from Ted’s heart unified by their very diversity.
In our first reading we’re treated to the sublime poetry of the book of wisdom, invoking the elegance of Sophia, the divine feminine personification of wisdom who was so very important to the people of the Old Testament. In fact, to many the identification of Jesus with Sophia, and the adaptation of Sophia characteristics into the Messiah definition, lies at the heart of many New Testament Christologies, although the divine feminine aspect of her essence has been callously pushed aside by Patristic church fathers in order to avoid gender confusion.
But Sophia is with us here today, made graceful and willowy and radiant by the very words that Ted has chosen to describe her. She entreats us to seek her, and tells us that if we do she will be anxious to reward us. She reminds us that our beliefs can be rendered impotent if they are not backed up by wisdom.
And then we hear from Master Johannes Eckhart, that great German theologian, philosopher and mystic of the late 13th and early 14th century who valiantly speaks to us of that spark of Godly light born in each of us, amplified by baptism, and further magnified by our individual spiritual journeys. This birth of God in each of us is one of the stepping stones of our evolution of faith today as modern Christians, understanding the dynamism of social mores in the development and sustaining of belief structures. “What good is it to me,” he calls out to us “for the creator to give birth to the Son if I do not also give birth to him in my time and in my culture.”
Like so many progressives that were born before their time, much of Eckhart’s theology and instruction were not viewed with overwhelming favor by a church that was already narrow-minded and insular. But despite the accusations of heresy his work lives on, respected and studied today by those of us who feel that there is indeed something of spiritual value to be gleaned from insight to anyone’s soul.
The Gospel of Luke that Ted has chosen is in fact a particular favorite of mine… although I always have this nagging image of Luke pounding on a Caribbean steel drum and singing the Hebrew equivalent of “Don’t Worry Be Happy.” It’s the sort of verse that I think is generically always applicable to whatever doubts we happen to be experiencing, with an impetus that changes according the situation. In Ted’s case, I think the synopsis is probably: “Well, now that I have the priesthood, now that I finally have done this, now that I have met my goal and fulfilled a lifelong ambition…. Now what in blazes do I do with it?”
Now when we think of that it’s an extremely valid question. This isn’t like that pretty certificate for a perfect bowling game that can be framed and mounted on the den wall next to that glorious black velvet print of doggies playing billiards. It’s not like finally finishing that hideous course in differential equations knowing that it can immediately be forgotten forever. But rather it’s an accomplishment of staggering personal importance that begins life-long responsibility, dedication, and yes even burden.
Last month, at the annual convocation of the Church of Antioch in California, one of the guest speakers who is writing a book on Independent Catholicism called us “Amateur” clergy, and it took me a moment to realize that this was not a reference to our callings, but in fact an explanation that we have taken on this vocation in addition to our normal “pay the rent and put food on the table” lives. And Ted is certainly no exception to that. But I think to assume that being a priest can ever be “part-time” is certainly not valid.
Now I admit that our Ted probably won’t be the kindly and benevolent padre of a small local parish overseeing bake sales, Christmas pageants and Sunday soft ball games followed by a greasy fried chicken dinner at the home of one of his congregants. That’s just not what it’s all about.
And we probably won’t see ever him turning on his heels in front of 2000 fervent believers, barking salvation and punishment while clad in an Armani Suit and Gucci Loafers… (well… come to think of it… maybe the shoes.. but that’s another story).
But for every one of those traditional and stereotypical ministry roles that may not be in the cards for Ted, there are unlimited possibilities for him to spread the word of God and to use the indelible imprint on his soul that is the priesthood. The teachings of Master Eckhart and many like him are dear to the hearts of most of us in Independent Catholicism. We understand the importance of clergy not for control and the administration of dogma, but in teaching and guiding others along their individual spiritual journeys, journeys themselves as diverse as the image in which our God created us.
If Ted, as a priest, manages to direct even one soul on his or her quest for spiritual fulfillment; If he manages to make even the tiniest ripple in the wave of hostility and hatred that we are experiencing in today’s world, if he manages to provoke even the minutest crack in the wave of religious intolerance and ignorance that surrounds us……………. Then all of this hard work, this energy, this devotion that has led up to this day will not have been in vain. And with the winds of Sophia’s wisdom at his back, he certainly can not fail.
Amen
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2 December 2007 – Sunday of Advent I – Matthew 24:36-44; Romans 13:11-14
Advent is upon us once again.
Yet Advent is a season that has no bearing outside of churches, and at that, for most people, probably only on Sundays.
This past week the “Grand Illumination” downtown was inaugurated, the tree on the Capitol portico was lit, and night by night more houses on more streets are awash with lights strung about. The Christmas music went on at work the day after Thanksgiving as did the mandatory telephone greeting “Happy Holidays, Brooks Brothers at Stony Point , this is Tom, may I help you?”
You yourselves have undoubtedly been thinking about your holiday entertaining calendars, menus, gift lists, and when your tree will go up. We just decided last night where the tree will go this year. It is that time of year when people are full of the expectation of Christmas’ nearing and busy with the tasks of making ready.
Advent, as a liturgical season, is kind of misunderstood actually in addition to being swamped by Christmas itself, and that is I think unfortunate as it has such an important message. Most often, people, when they even think about what Advent is all about, assume that it is simply the period of anticipation of the celebration of Jesus’ birth. Strictly speaking, this is not the case. This becomes clear when we consider the scripture readings that are heard during these four weeks. The Gospel for today is about the coming of Jesus to be sure, but not that at Bethlehem . Rather it is a clarion call for the Church to look to the Day of His coming in glory “at the end of the age.” That proverbial “Second Coming” when this world will end, as we know it, and the reign of God will be made clearly evident.
What we are to be reminded of during this time is that the Church, the people of God, is in a season of existence, as it were, spanning two moments, the first coming of the Lord Jesus at His birth in Bethlehem of Judea, and the final coming on the “Last Day.” The Church looks back but also looks ahead. Jesus has come but Jesus is also coming. And, whereas His first coming into the world was a quiet, local event, His second is portrayed as an entrance signaled by cataclysmic events that no one can fail to miss. More than that we simply do not know and it is useless to speculate as to the when of it. The point is that we live now in a state of yet/not yet. The reign of God has been announced by John the Forerunner and Baptist, Jesus was born and grew into manhood and went about preaching the Kingdom of His Father and was put to death. His triumph over death and the sending of the Holy Spirit establish His people in that circumstance of expecting the final fulfillment of what He was sent into the world to accomplish: to restore the harmony between mankind and God that we ourselves have disrupted.
No one should think to celebrate the first coming of Jesus—warm and festive of a holiday season we have made of it—without also being poised in an attitude of expectation of His next appearance. Indeed, the cry of the early Church was Maranatha! Come Lord, quickly!
The pressing matter however is what practical difference both our celebration of His birth and expectation of His second coming will make in our lives here and now. The Gospel narrators and Saint Paul , together with various others of the apostolic age, have borne witness to Jesus’ incessant message: what you do now has eternal consequences, what one sows in this life is that which will be reaped in the life to come. If we really desire to live in communion with God, as suggested by our coming forward in a Communion line at liturgy, then nothing less than a constant attention to our thoughts and behavior is due, in such wise that we take care not to do harm to others or ourselves. But more than this. We should have a sense of hunger and thirst for God and the things and ways of God. God is not to be incidental in our lives, tucked away most of the time, kept separate from our “real everyday life” and trotted out on Sundays, for a wedding or a funeral.
Is it really possible to live this way? I believe it is and Christian history bears witness to it in the lives of scores of its saints. Now, we can’t be expected to pass each day literally panting in expectation. But we can nurture a God-mindedness that is fed by way of time devoted to meditation or prayer, in time set aside by us, even seized out of our hectically paced days and nights. Time to pause and reflect upon the day at hand, either just beginning or about to be closed in sleep. With what joy do I greet each new day, as an opportunity to do some good for others, to scatter about some deeds of compassion or simple patience, to cause someone to smile in happiness? With what gratitude do I meet the end of each day, for the gift of life, of shelter, food, employment, loving companionship, and not least of which, for the gift of faith and seeking?
In all that we do by the light of day, let us therefore keep watch over ourselves, that we comport ourselves as disciples of Jesus the Christ, and by night, let us slip into sleep mindful of that eternal sleep which awaits each of us. We do not know the moment when we shall be taken from this life. We do not know the moment when Christ will appear again. All that is required is that we look to both events with faith-filled expectation of discovering the fullness of our potential being .
In the ancient words of the Church’s night prayer: “Protect us, Lord, as we stay awake; watch over us as we sleep, that awake, we may keep watch with Christ, and asleep rest in His peace.”
May your Advent be a season of blessed expectation! Make ready! May the presence of Christ fill your days and your nights until He comes. Let the cry of the Church be your own: Maranatha! Come Lord, even quickly!
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25 November 2007 – Last Sunday of the Liturgical Year/Christ the King – Luke 23:33-43
Today is the last Sunday of the Liturgical Year. According to the Western, Latin arrangement, a new liturgical year begins with the first Sunday of Advent, which this year falls next Sunday.
The passage from the Gospel of Saint Luke appointed for today relates an account of the crucifixion of Jesus. The charismatic man who had been the last three years attracting large crowds and a devoted following of disciples, is seen to be brought to destruction by way of a gruesome execution. Hanging upon the cross, Jesus is derided and scoffed at by various of the soldiers and onlookers and even by a man crucified at his side: “He saved others, cannot He save Himself? If He be the King of the Jews, why does He not act to save Himself from this ignominious death?” A mocking inscription was nailed over His head titling Him “King of the Jews.”
Now, most of us have trouble with even thinking about kings in a serious manner. For most people, kings are a thing of the past and, where they do exist, often seem as rather quaint tokens, of questionable practical use, and expensive to maintain at that. The dictators and tyrants of the present age don’t any longer claim kingly titles or thrones. President or General seem to suffice just fine for them. Some, in modern times have even thought to distance Jesus from notions of His being a king, owing to the cultural divide which separates many people from a time in earlier history when the rule of kings was the norm, and not always to the detriment of their people. One need only consider that the sufferings of peoples hasn’t diminished in the least for fact of their rulers substituting titles such as Secretary General of the Party, Fuehrer, Generalissimo, or President-for-life. Indeed some of the very worst atrocities in human history have occurred at the hands of twentieth century tyrants, though uncrowned, wielding power and in such wise as to make the likes of Tsar Ivan the Terrible of Russia to blush.
The Christian faith, however, continues to revere the Kingship of Christ and we would do well, rather than to recklessly discard a concept that perhaps is not so readily grasped on account of our political indoctrinations, to think more deeply about what it might mean to relate to Jesus as our King. Indeed, the more noble conceptions of what a king—or reignant queen is to be over his or her people, embodies the understanding that the role is in fact one of servanthood. The sovereign rules over the civil state in the capacity of serving God’s own intent that the people flourish and prosper, in good order. It is also the responsibility of the sovereign to provide for the needs of the widow, the orphan, and the poor, as attested even in the Old Testament itself. The administration of law is not for purposes of abusing the populace, but should provide a just application of power in order to provide for the common welfare. Indeed, the person of Jesus, the Christ, is looked to as the perfect image of sovereign rule.
How is it that Jesus came to be called king? At the first, there were those of his own contemporaries who had hoped that he would restore the Davidic line of kingship and Israel would once again become the master of her own affairs, no longer the subject of occupying powers. But, in worldly eyes, His was seen to be a failed bid for kingship. Zealot advocates for Israel’s political independence had looked to Him, what with all His public celebrity and acclaim, as their best figurehead, around whom the people might rally and rise up against their oppressors. What in fact happened is that Jesus resolutely refused any such role: “My kingdom is not of this world.”
I don’t think that He meant, in saying this, that His kingdom was otherwise located in some celestial abode. I do believe that He was teaching his hearers, of his own time and ever after, that human beings are utterly capable of rising to unimagined heights of awareness of the unity of all being in that ultimate font of Life He referred to as His Father. He Himself was the ultimate manifestation of that potential, living in the midst of his own society, but forever after as well. He constantly pointed beyond the surface, where most of us tend to spend most of our time and fix our consciousness, to that limitless Reality which exists, in total mystery, in and of itself, dependent upon nothing, unspeakable in its essence. This which—Whom— we call God. God from Whom emanates every manifestation of evolving forms of universes and galaxies, stars, and planets, and what specific forms of life, conscious and otherwise, that inhabits those bodies. Jesus is rightly looked to as the summit of human perfectibility, according to his own, authentic human nature, linked as He is in manner beyond clear comprehension, with the Divine One and thereby fully divine Himself as well. Jesus: true God and true man. God, in complete and essential oneness with “His Father” from eternity, becoming man in time, losing nothing of His divinity thereby, being at once nonetheless fully human. Jesus of Nazareth embodies the Divine Sophia, the Holy Wisdom, Which—Who—sources all that is or can be and to Which—Whom all returns in an endless stream of inter-movement.
The glory of this king, Jesus, was not that of earthly, political power. The seat of His throne no mere gilded chair. The hope and trust placed in Him not delimited by the parameters of our present physical form and existence. Rather, His power commands the minds and hearts of all humanity to follow Him, in discipleship, into perfect submission to the rule of Goodness, Truth, Oneness, and Beauty. That in so doing, the realm of this world might be revealed in all its innate harmoniousness, a far cry from the tempests of international rivalries. The nature of His wealth cannot be bagged and locked up in the manner of gold bullion. The splendor of His riches is to be found rather in the limitless self-offering of love whereby He opted not to “save Himself and come down from that cross” but to spend Himself entirely for the sake of repairing a broken world, holding back nothing on account of that love. A King like no other, before or since.
This King, Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, the Wisdom, is a King of Glory because He embraced Servant-hood. He is a King of Glory, precisely because He did not allow that His enemies be resisted or overcome by force of military arms, but because He gave Himself into their hands and willingly succumbed to the death they meted Him. He turned conventional sensibilities inside out and taught that there is a higher plane on which humans can live. Unfortunately, we just don’t seem to have gotten His point. Christians have sharpened their swords and cast artillery with which to vanquish people with no less frequency than others. Christians and churches can be as cruel as anyone not pretending to live by His teaching.
If the glory of the Christ-King is to be found in His Self-emptying, what of the glory of Christians? Surely not in magnificent temples, basilicas, and mega-church complexes. Not in position or honors. Neither in political influence wielded like a bludgeon to straitjacket a society in blind, uncritical comformity to either civil or ecclesiastical authority. Surely not in any self-righteous condemnation of those who see things differently, experience truth differently, love differently.
The glory of the Rule of Christ in our lives will be experienced insofar as we take hold of the liberation He brought into the world whereby all that would hold us back from living for the good of others would no longer have power over us. If I am willing to take His name, to be called “Christian,” does that mean that I am willing to emulate His self-emptying by casting off my arrogances and self-serving ways? Will I give up my hatreds and angers and bitternesses that destroy other people? Will I stop with the nasty comments and criticisms that eat at the self-esteem of others and, in turn, often provoke vengeance? Can I strive to look for the true meaning of life in service to others, especially those most in need of the comfort of discovering that someone really does care after all?
In his recent book The Transcended Christian, Daniel Helminiak writes of human liberation as the in-breaking of the reign of God. He says, “If the thrust of a movement is positive, it is an expression of the reign of God because the movement in question is life giving. It is a matter of people’s basic civil, human, and moral rights; a matter of justice, mutual responsibility, equal opportunity, and social contribution. It is a matter of people’s finding themselves and being happy to be alive, of bonding deeply with others and entering into rich and supportive relationships, of finding a worthwhile reason for living and creating a wholesome life that benefits everyone.” (pp.98-99)
Christianity ought be such a royal movement as to bring about these ends. Gentle Shepherd parish community should be a Kingdom-place where all of these values are experienced and promoted. Only then might we credibly make the claim that Christ is our King. Only then dare we to sing it in our hymns. Or look one another and the surrounding society in the face.
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Let’s talk today about Faith
Just where are we with all this?? Where have our individual spiritual journeys taken us to date, and how has it changed our lives? Intellectually we all know enough to not have problems with believing that certain things actually happened in history, but how do we take it from there, and apply it to how we, as modern intelligent men and women, confront our existence in a world some 20 centuries from when these events occurred?
Just what is belief? Just what is faith? How do we know and tell the difference?
No religious faith, regardless of the denomination, can be based purely on evidence, but it can, to a greater or lesser extent be supported by evidence. To have faith is not ignoring the workings of your mind in order to rely on your heart. It’s not about suppressing reason and intellect in favor of emotion.
Indeed, I think that faith is about seeking and knowing God with all facets of our human character. It’s not “blind faith” as many of us have undoubtedly and mistakenly thought…rather It’s a “premeditated, a deliberate faith” based on our personal interpretation of the evidence.
And there’s plenty of evidence around, not only in what we can glean from the scriptures and other writings but in our every day world. We have to each of us collecte this and analyze it to serve us in our individual belief system, realizing that like snowflakes, each of our belief mechanisms can and will be different.
OK, now what…? If we intellectually believe, by a preponderance of evidence that works for us personally, that there is a God.. then how do we define faith, as far as it concerns us?
Think of sky diving and selecting a parachute. Look at it closely. Examine its design. Is it structurally sound? Is it sufficiently engineered? Will the materials chosen by the manufacturer support your weight? Is it well packed?
Most likely, you studied the situation really really well, and you selected a parachute that you think will support you, open properly, and not turn your fat butt into a large ugly splatter on the ground. That’s belief. You applied logic, knowledge and experience to make an informed intellectual decision. You truly believe that by jumping with this parachute you will be safe. Again… that’s belief.
Now strap that sucker to your back and JUMP….. That’s faith! Your intellect can only take you so far, and eventually we have to put our beliefs into action. Intellectual belief without actionable faith is hollow and meaningless…
Have you ever heard about the guy who walked a tight rope across Niagra Falls? Many people watched him do it. To them he asked, “Do you believe I can walk a tight rope across the Falls?” They all replied, “Yes.” They had already seen him do it. They believed.
Then he pushed a wheel barrow on a tight rope across Niagra Falls. When he completed the feat, he asked the onlookers, “Do you believe I can walk a tight rope across the Falls pushing a wheel barrow?” To that they replied unanimously, “Yes.” Because they saw him do that too. They believed.
Finally, a buddy of the tight rope walker climbs into the wheel barrow and the tight rope walker pushes him across the Falls. Wow, what a daring feat! When they finished, the tight rope walker asked the crowd, “Do you believe I can walk a tight rope across the Falls pushing a wheel barrow with a person in it?” To that they exclaimed, “Yes!” For they were now believers in this guy’s awesome abilities.
Then he looked at the crowd and asked, “Who’s next?”
There you have it… Belief vs. Faith…!
Our beliefs are mental constructs, they are our conclusions about reality. Our perceptions are continuously filtered and shaped by our view of the world and our experience is a product of these interpretations. Our experiences therefore cannot “prove” our beliefs.
The faculty of formulating beliefs, or working hypotheses, was meant to serve as a frame of reference to help us navigate through life with integrity and purpose. As we gain ever more practical knowledge validated in the manifested world, our beliefs can come closer to describing reality. Unfortunately, we mistakenly accept beliefs as reality, fearfully clinging to them as we would a life preserver.
So what, then, is Faith? Our limited, finite minds cannot directly confirm God. However, we can perceive “evidence of things unseen”. We can use our minds to be aware of the Presence of the Eternal Creative Power.
Just as we “know” Love by experiencing it — even though it is impossible to pick it up, or to perceive it with the physical senses — so we can “know” God. Since God must be the Essence of Every-thing, God is also our individual Essence. We can feel our own personal relation to God, and sense that relationship to the universe as a whole, sort of like a microcosm within the Macrocosm.
Most of us are driven to search for our source……….We persist in grappling with questions that are beyond our ability to comprehend? These pursuits are evidence of Faith: the upwelling of an internal non-rational “knowing” that there is far more to Life than meets the eye!
Unfortunately there is all too often the conviction in organized religion that we all must be programmed with the “right” set of beliefs in order to “produce” Faith. What this brainwashing produces is a sort of “group-think”, a most formidable force capable of controlling fearful people and disempowering them by cultivating distrust in their own perceptions.
In such a state people accept beliefs just because others share them – after all, how could so many people be wrong? We however, in the church of Antioch, understand the importance of each of us having our own individual belief structure and faith, regardless of the sometimes hypocritical imposition of the great majority of those around us.
We should pride ourselves on being evolving, growing beings, realizing that there is no need for fear, guilt or shame if we have to let go of beliefs that no longer intellectually serve us, of ideas that defy our maturing Common Sense, our deepening Understanding, our constantly developing Faith. We should not be afraid of proclaiming to the world that the emperor is not wearing clothes.
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Those of you who have managed to stay awake during my previous sermons may remember that I have been concentrating on the Holy Scriptures and how their essential and original messages to us may be open to interpretation. We learned how translators have made some unfortunate decisions, either in ignorance of historical context or perhaps even in an attempt to slant specific passages towards conventional thought. And then we saw how the writers of the various gospels may have “embellished” or even fabricated the words and deeds of the Christ to make the new religion competitive and appealing to their peers.
Well now it’s time throw still another log on the fire. Assuming that Jesus said what he said, how do we even begin to know what he actually meant? Welcome, my brothers and sisters to the wonderful world of Semitic hyperbole. Hyperbole, by the way, is an exaggeration or overstatement used to heighten effect, to catalyze recognition, or even to create a humorous perception. Example: I’m so hungry I could eat a horse. He’s as big as a house.” Now the term Semitic hyperbole is sometimes used to explain Scripture texts that are not really meant to be taken literally. So, for instance, the lesson that if your hand causes you to sin you should cut it off does not really call for anything quite that drastic. And the idea that if you have enough faith you can move mountains is really just meant to make a point.
So knowing that now let’s take another look at today’s gospel. According to Luke, Jesus says: “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” Pretty strong language there. But let’s remember what I said about politicizing and embellishing by gospel writers and check out the Gospel of Thomas. You will all recall that this is a plain talk gospel that just records the actual words of Jesus as he allegedly spoke them.
Ok then, according to Thomas, Jesus said: “Whoever does not hate his father and his mother cannot become a disciple to Me. And whoever does not hate his brothers and sisters and take up his cross in My way will not be worthy of Me.”
Oops, Luke actually got it completely right. But this can’t be… my Jesus couldn’t possibly speak like that. Let’s read a bit further in the gospel of Thomas, and further down, sure enough, Jesus says:
“Whoever does not hate his father and his mother as I do cannot become a disciple to Me. And whoever does not love his father and his mother as I do cannot become a disciple to Me. Wnoooooooooo, now I am sure that you are as totally confused as I was.
Actually, there are several forces at play here. Firstly, the old dumb translator rears his ugly head with the word “hate.” But the word actually used in scripture is far better translated as “loves less.” I don’t “hate” pepperoni at all, I just “love it less” then Italian sausage on my pizza. Hate in English is such a nasty word, implying an almost evil level of emotion when we hear it… and its use in this passage really sets the wrong tone for what is happening here.
Secondly, we have to remember that Jesus was a rabbi, a teacher, and that hyperbole was a common, valid and effective teaching mechanism. It still is! I use it often in my classroom to set a vivid example for my students. When we realize that something is being exaggerated, even preposterously so, it makes it easier for us to picture it and attach our own personal limits to it. “Be good, or I will give you a ton of homework!”
So then, when Jesus said to “hate your family,” He was in fact talking about spiritual detachment, the ability to put God before our other relationships and self-interests. In my personal belief system, that translates as an understanding that I should prioritize things and react to situations in a manner that I think God would be pleased with. Or, conversely, not doing something that I know will really tick off the big guy! Simply said: Look before you leap.
And that’s just what I think this gospel is all about. Jesus is telling his peers that they should look before leaping into the rigors of being his disciple, of becoming what would soon be called “Christian.” And that it wasn’t going to be all that easy.
Now he could have easily glossed it over like one of those glitzy Army Recruiting ads. You know, join the Army, wear a sexy uniform, and see the world (ever notice that there’s no mention ever in these ads of getting your butt blown up in a ditch in Iraq?). But he didn’t. Christ instead told the complete truth, that the road to following him to his Kingdom was rife with difficulty and could not be taken half heartedly.
Did Jesus use hyperbole to accomplish this? You bet He did! He gives us the intense image of a prisoner carrying a cross for execution, a graphic representation to people of his times of willingness to suffer persecution and humiliation. We should remember here that following Christ was the exception rather than the norm for hundreds of years after his death. We who today suffer persecution and humiliation know the sting of such an image.
Then Jesus tells us to know the cost of our tower before we build it, and to have the necessary resources at hand, or we will be laughed at and derided for our failure. These days we say quite simply “don’t start what you can’t finish.” This is all about dedication, commitment and stability in our lives. We have to invest our spiritual resources in developing what we want people see in us. Remember here that we are each of us Christ to the world. A caveat here is that we are each of us also what we are, intrinsically different and as diverse as snowflakes. It is these differences and this diversity that impart to each of us our own particular personality and charisma. If in our minds we feel that we have to subvert this personality, put on a different face, to expose our internal Christ to those around us, then this is a sure sign that we need to re-inventory and re-evaluate our spiritual resources. After all, nobody likes a hypocrite, just ask Jimmy Swaggert or Ted Haggert. If we can not be who we are with who we are with, then perhaps we shouldn’t be who we are.
So then, still want to follow Christ, or are you ready to throw up your hands in despair and become a Unitarian? Well, before you do there’s always the next bit in today’s gospel to consider. Jesus asks what ruler in his right mind would risk his armies under overwhelmingly bad conditions? (hmm… maybe I send our beloved president a note on a bit of scripture that he has obviously overlooked).. but I digress. I think that Jesus is saying that just as diplomacy and negotiation can potentially mitigate military catastrophe, so can self examination, introspection, repentance, and prayer put us back on the course of true discipleship.
And last but certainly not least, Jesus tells us to give up all our possessions to follow him. Hmm… In researching this sermon I came across one written by a fundamentalist minister that said that Jesus “demands that we give up the very best and most important things in our lives in order to follow him. That divided priorities drain the ability of a person to be a disciple.” Now I personally don’t understand what a “divided” priority might be. I think it’s one of those oxy-moronic terms like “partial equality” or “light black” or “partially empty,” and certainly the picture of him in that Armani suit looked super cool, but I don’t think that divesting one’s self of all personal possessions is what Christ is really talking about here.
I fondly remember that one of Uly’s favorite catch phrases was: “If you want to keep it forever, then give it away.”
And even though it never seemed to apply to anything I ever asked him for, especially sterling silver, there’s a certain homey logic to it that I think Jesus would have been pleased with, and it’s all about these same priorities I mentioned about 400 words ago. It’s nice to have pretty things, we work hard and honestly for them and certainly we enjoy them. They bring joy to our lives. But it’s when we become slaves to them, when acquiring and maintaining them takes precedence over our beings, than we have lost track of our spirituality, of our bond with the Christ.
This is what I think Jesus was trying to impart to us, and so Worth can now wipe that look of horror off his face at the thought of taking that duffel bag of new and expensive clothing to donate to Diversity Thrift.
I tend to think that we see Christ so much as our Teacher, Savior, and Redeemer; so much as a divine being that we tend to forget his humanity. He was sent to us as a simple man, interacting with those around him on a common human level. We should consider that when we try to make personal sense out his teachings. Lately, I see a lot of those funny little bracelets and pins that ask: “What would Jesus Say?” … but I often wonder if they should add, “and just how would He have said it?”
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Sunday, 14 October 2007 Homily – Luke 17:11-19
Jesus is walking on His way to some place. Ten people, presumably male, suffering from leprosy, call out to Him: “Master, have mercy on us!” He merely tells them to go “show” themselves to the priests. As they proceed to do so, at least one of them notices that he has been healed and goes after Jesus, throws himself at His feet, and thanks Him.
Jesus asks about the nine others, tells the man before Him to go on his way, that it was his faith that had “made him well.’’
This gospel first of all is about identifying Jesus with the power of God over nature. That the authority proper to God, to change the course of natural phenomena, is possessed by Jesus. It is part of the progression of ideas linking Jesus’ personal identity with God’s own identity. That Jesus is the pre-eminent manifestation of God’s presence in the world.
This is an idea that has been hotly debated and fought from Jesus’ own time until now.
Secondly, the story is about gratitude, the expression of it, and the expectation of it. While ten persons were said to have been the recipients of Jesus’ largesse, but one of them undertook the effort to personally offer thanks to Him. The narrative suggests that perhaps Jesus was a bit put out by the seeming lack of gratitude on the part of the nine others. Is it possible to imagine that they were not in fact full of gratitude and awe?
Thirdly, there is the issue of what exactly happened in this encounter between Jesus and a small group of sick men to cause their ailment to disappear? Unlike some other gospel healing narratives, in this one Jesus doesn’t directly command the affliction to depart, He not only doesn’t even touch them but isn’t particularly proximate to them—they “kept their distance” from Him as they most certainly were accustomed to doing relative to anyone, considered unclean by society as they were. The only thing Jesus does is instruct them to pay a visit to the priests, the Jewish religious authorities who, to be sure, had been carefully keeping track of the doings of this particular Jesus, this charismatic itinerant preacher who had been causing quite a stir the countryside over. By this time they were already undoubtedly suspicious of him, even fearful, and increasingly hostile. What did Jesus intend by sending them to visit the priests? On the face of it we might suppose that it was to offer, through the priestly ministrations, a sacrifice of thanksgiving to God for having been made well. But might we also wonder if Jesus were not engaging in a bit of in-your-facemanship? That is to say, look here you men blinded by your jealousy of your position and power, so that you are incapable of seeing the power of God at work in your midst. Well, we can’t know about that of course but it is a bit of a tantalizing thought: Jesus could be downright cheeky!
Should the nine be blamed for not doing as the one did? Were they not simply following the instructions they were given? Were they not “made clean” precisely as they set off on their way to the priests as Jesus had directed them to do? Did they not notice as they went off to wherever the priests were to be found, as did the one, that they also had been “made clean?” Are we to suppose that they were any less jubilant to have been restored to good health and any less thankful? Did the nine not also demonstrate their “faith” in Jesus by crying out to Him in the first place and then doing exactly as he instructed them? What is the difference between them and the one in the final analysis? If there is a difference, it is lost on me, to be honest. I cannot believe that the nine were any the less thankful to God for their healing than was the one who broke ranks to offer a personal word of thanks to Jesus. I feel that the recognition of Jesus’ authority to help them is found in their first impulse to entreat Him to help them. Why would they ask if they didn’t think Him capable of delivering the goods so to speak?
Well, isn’t this all about what we ourselves do, either in corporate action such as we are presently engaged in liturgically, or in private, when we set petitions for various needs, desires, and intentions before Jesus, asking Him to hear our prayers and act? Is it that God, in Jesus, or Jesus in God actually hears, listens, and decides? Yea or nea to this or that request? Personally, I don’t think so. I once did but I no longer do. Not because I have become a-theist. But certainly because my old, “traditional” assumptions about God, the mechanics of prayer and the outcome of them no longer serve me. Yet, by sheer instinct, I continue to pray nevertheless. I can’t say that I any longer have the faintest idea how it “works” but I do experience value and benefit in doing so, alone or with you. I do lose myself in the wonder of experiencing some kind of comfort, some sort of serenity per force of having emptied myself somewhat of my concerns and anxieties, and extended my hopefulness beyond myself.
And you, what do you think and feel about prayer? About praying to Jesus? Every man and woman who considers him or herself to be Christian must contend with this question: “Who do you say that Jesus is?” Did God act through Him, in some unique manner, this man who once lived in historical time on this same earth in the same sort of body as we ourselves? Does He continue to do so? Why do you believe whatever it is that you believe about Him? Is it because you were told to?
It is an awesome thing for humans to personally contend with the most fundamental questions about our place in the vast scheme of the mysteries of existence, isn’t it? It is these questions that constitute the very essence of faith in divinities and give rise to it. Does not prayer itself arise from our perceived need to reach beyond our own human powers and abilities to control our destinies and environs, to seek a connection with the ultimate source of all such power so as to amplify our natural abilities to fix what is broken and fill what is lacking? Indeed, to quell our primitive vulnerability to fearfulness in the face of all that is unknown to us, all that can potentially harm us, and render us meaningless?
Then and now. The ten lepers looking to Jesus, that man locally famous for seeming to be capable of putting things right. They asked. He heard. They got. We, this morning, are about to express our own aspirations for things that are broken in life to be fixed, emptinesses to be filled up, lackings supplied for. Moreover, we utter words of thankfulness and praise and even put them to song: Thank you. In Greek, Evcharisto. Eucharist. We as it were prostrate ourselves before the Mysteries of Jesus the Christ and tender deep sentiments of gratitude for life and its provisions and for finding meaning in it. We don’t have to intellectually comprehend how it all works. We have only to nurture the capability for awe and wonder and innate trust in the goodness of our being, suspended in the vastness of the truly incomprehensible is-ness of all that is or can be. Only then are we capable of what we term “worship.”
Let us consciously embrace into our present presence all that has been, all that is, all that can and will be and lift our hearts and hands in offering, in spirit of thankfulness and praise, and reception. For the well-being of ourselves, all of humanity, the entire cosmos, and the infinite galaxies. Time– tick-tock– collapses and is subsumed into the eternal now when we do so and there is Jesus the Christ before us to meet us, hear us, succour us.
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Sunday of Memorial of the Repose of the Priestly Servant of God +Uly Harrison Gooch – 21 October 2007
I Peter 1:3-9; Psalm 26; John 6:4-15
Do you recall the photograph of Uly that Worth selected for the cover of his funerary Memorial card? It shows him walking on a path bordered by what appear to be newly leafed shrubs. His alb is billowing in the breeze and he is wearing the emblem of his priestly office, the stole. It is clear that he is on the move.
I have often looked at that photograph when using my old Bible, in which it is kept, along with the various other Memorial cards from my family and friends. Thinking about today’s Service, which is dedicated to the commemoration of the first anniversary of his untimely death, I found myself focusing on that photograph once again, moved by it, simple, innocuous thing that it is. It conveys to me the strong aspect of a man making his way towards a destination. He is, it is clear, in a liturgical procession of some kind, but the larger sense of it for me is the reminder that this man, who was a priest of Jesus Christ, spent his life as a journey directed towards the Christ and gently drawing others towards Him as well. Most of you in this room knew Uly far better than I, newcomer to his acquaintance that I was, indeed in the very last year of his life. But I can nevertheless speak to my own experience of him from the perspective of the priestly call that we shared and provided an immediate bond between us. I have been so conscious of him and of that bond, now for more than a year standing in the place that he, over four years, so happily occupied at the Holy Table of this Church of the Gentle Shepherd.
Evoking his memory I welcome you all into this place today as he would, inviting you to share in the bountiful Feast of the Lord’s own table, which cuts through time and space and death itself and unites us with the Lord, with Uly, and all those who have gone before us into the mystery of eternity.
It is fitting that Uly’s memory be celebrated at a Eucharistic Liturgy, a table fellowship. So much of his life seemed to center around laying a table of food and drink for his friends and the friends of his friends. And didn’t he love to entertain? I chose the passage from Saint John’s Gospel for this day because it just seemed to fit with Uly’s love for feeding and entertaining people, and he did both well whether at his domestic table or in church! In the gospel, Jesus is heard to ask Philip: “how are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?” How many times, can you imagine, that Uly found himself in a similar situation where an impromptu meal was of a sudden called for by the arrival of friends to Bellmont? We must find what we have in the larder and prepare something to eat! And soon enough he’d have something savory on the table with which to ever so satisfyingly feed his guests. (After all, one only needed some sugar and a good fat on hand and then perhaps a chunk of meat and some vegetables to throw in from which a tasty meal might be prepared!)
But above all, Uly, the priest Uly, loved to celebrate the Eucharist and to teach what he knew about his Lord, Jesus. Over the course of a long and luminous ministry, Uly countless times prepared and presided over the hospitality of the Lord’s own Table, always, always seeking the spiritual nourishment of one and all. This he accomplished by means of the savory Mystery of the Holy Eucharist and also by way of an engaging manner of preaching the Word of God’s love, inclusiveness, invitation, and sometimes, challenge to grow and to change, and to be excitedly open to the wonderful potential for fully becoming the persons we are capable of becoming.
While Uly could most certainly easily hold his own in the most elegant of southern salons, chatting up the bluest blooded matron of society, he was equally adept at connecting with a homeless drug addict. He saw the Christ within each with no distinction as to social class or standing. He understood the social power he held as a clergyman of the Episcopal church and surely knew how to use it to accomplish his aims for his many ministerial projects, but he never struck me as someone vainly impressed with himself. In fact, in one of the books Worth gave me from Uly’s library, I found a short sermon note he wrote for the Feast of Saint Bartholomew, and I quote: “What is certain is that Bartholomew left everything to follow Jesus, becoming His disciple, his intimate friend and an apostle entrusted with the continuation of Christ’s mission. May we imitate his desire to be with Jesus and continue the mission of Jesus without seeking notoriety.” Perhaps those words very neatly capture Uly’s understanding of his pastoral ministry.
We would serve Uly’s memory poorly I feel were we to observe this day merely citing examples from the mélange of charming and hilarious reminiscences of him without an appeal to summoning forth from ourselves some deeper purpose. Christian remembering of our departed kin and folk is not only about looking back at the past after all. Rather, it involves recalling the sacred stories of those who came before us– who they were and what they were about– to the end of inspiring us to take up where they left off. We remember so as to be moved in our own present, to learn from their mistakes and to build upon their successes, with an eye to supplying the needs of the day and also looking to the future and what we ourselves will leave behind to those who come after us. Uly’s life’s work was all about building church, that is, the community of fellowship in Jesus the Christ. The capstone of his ecclesiastical career was the work of helping sustain and develop this little congregation and its unique contribution to Richmond ’s religious scene.
I know that he loved this community and he cherished its provision for him of a welcoming altar and pulpit in his retiring years. He returned that welcome in kind to each one of us who most certainly benefited from his earnest efforts. And, I also know, with all his heart he hoped for its continuation in what he understood to be its vital mission of offering a spiritual home for all comers, especially those made to feel unwelcome elsewhere. For me personally, that hope of his was brought home to me in very clear fashion one day during his illness while conversing of all places in the hot tub at Bellmont. I told him that we needed him to get well so that he’d be strong enough to look after his little flock of this church of the Gentle Shepherd for a long time to come. To which he pointedly –and in that voice of his, so artfully lilted– replied “you mean our flock.” In the very thick of my own trials with my previous church as I was at that time, I ascertained that he was calling me out, summoning me to embark upon something new and rally the courage to embrace and get on with it. Today, I accept and in turn extend that challenge to those of you who like me make this your spiritual home: Let us together build up this church!
To all of us, be we members of this congregation or some other, let us heed Uly’s own homiletic call to act, to make present the reality of Jesus’ ministry to gather all things unto Himself, and as the gospel for today directs, “gathering up the fragments left over so that nothing may be lost.” No one should ever be made to feel excluded from the Table of the Lord! Indeed no one in a church proclaiming the Name of Jesus the Christ should ever be made to feel “left over!” It is the Lord’s supper, not ours! Be sure to be agents of welcoming presence in your own particular community, extending yourselves in hospitality. And see to it that your community looks for ways by which it can enrich people’s quality of life. For that is what Jesus did. That is what His disciples did because that is why He sent them out as apostles into the world. He was a gentle shepherd, gathering together his flock, endeavoring to keep them together, and to grow it.
Let us strive to purify ourselves of all the negative forces which bind us and would hold us back, inhibiting our ability to be true to ourselves and God, however we understand God to be, as in the depths of our hearts we perceive we are called. So that in the words of today’s Psalm “we may [today and any day] go about Thy altar O LORD, singing aloud a song of thanksgiving, and telling of all Thy wondrous deeds, [for] O LORD, I love the habitation of Thy house, and the place where Thy glory dwells…as for me, I walk in my integrity; redeem me, and be gracious to me” (Psalm 26)
Uly has gone from us, still on the move, processing on his way, off into the eternal mystery, and we shall know no other quite like him in our times. While we miss him, he is still so very much alive to us and we can still hear the echoes of his voice, strong and fetching as it was. May he rest in the peace of the Saints and in the Presence of the Most High God Whom he loved and faithfully served.
Let us while not yet seeing God as it were “face to face,” love God and live lives “anew to that living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead…by God’s power guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” (I Peter: 3,5)
It is precisely in the power of that faith that Uly is experienced as present with us in this liturgy and by which we, in Christ, partake in that cosmic Divine Communion the mystical perfection of which he now tastes.
Amen.
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Sunday after Pentecost XIV – 2 September 2007 – Luke 14:1, 7-14
Last Sunday, when you came into the church most of you immediately noticed that there was a different arrangement of much of the furniture. By far the most charming reaction was Michael’s: “Oh my, some queen has been busy redecorating!” Today I stand before you and formally make my confession: guilty as charged. Actually, I have a long history of this. My family would attest to it. Periodically my brother would enter the room we shared as boys to find that I had moved everything around into a new configuration. In addition, he would have to put up with the seasonal decorations that would engulf our bulletin board, dresser, windows and the door to the room. Then there were the times when, as I got a bit older, perhaps twelve or thirteen years of age, I made bolder as to completely rearrange the living room furniture and, as regards holiday decorations, my efforts now extended to the front of the house. I fondly remember the Christmas where, a day or two after New Years, it was my job to take down the Christmas tree. I cheerfully undertook this task—as I was much fussier than Danny or Linda about ensuring that all the lights and ornaments were carefully wrapped and stowed—and on this particular occasion had the help of my friend Joe. Together we got the tree down and out of the house and cleaned up all the needles. Only we didn’t put the decorations away. No, rather we betook ourselves to the defunct Christmas tree lot and carted home one of the orphan trees. We earnestly and proudly erected the new tree in the living room, bedecking it in full splendor, as it were, with the belongings of the recently deceased tree. I can never forget the astonishment of my mother when she came home. I seem to have a mental block as to the reactions of my father and siblings. Now I have another family within which to act out my idiosyncratic eccentricities. But perhaps you can more instinctively make sense of me than could my parents and siblings who were “different” from me. I still don’t quite know where these impulses come from and I wouldn’t dare change everything around on Rick without his cooperation. I trust your understanding that I felt we just had to try something new! To stir things up a bit.
Now in liturgical terms, the present arrangement of our temple furniture is according to what can be called a choir formation. Two sections of an assembly which can see each other, and as it were, speak to each other as it goes about the work of singing hymns, reciting psalms, and uttering prayers. Moreover, there is the intent of less of a sense of your being an audience to what the clergy are doing up on a stage. What I have hoped to facilitate is more freedom of movement. That you can and will turn yourselves, orienting yourselves to wherever action is taking place. That is to say, facing processions as they move, and turning to face the altar during those moments when the action is taking place there. In other words, not remaining glued down to one stance no matter where something is taking place. It isn’t really about the furniture per se. It is about utilizing the furniture to more readily facilitate a full range of liturgical movement and active participation. Theater has its choreography and so does liturgy.
So it is still new for us but I have the confidence to try something different and feel certain that after a time it will feel very familiar and natural.
Obviously, in Jesus’ time they hadn’t yet devised assigned banquet table places, indicated by little cards. Seems that folks just went in and took what place they fancied, and if they got there early enough had a shot at getting a place at what for us would be called the head table or, at least, those situated most closely to it—where closest family members or second tier dignitaries would be seated. You know what I mean. You can tell where you stand in the pecking order according to how far from the dais you are seated.
At first glance Jesus seems to be teaching some simple manners to his audience. Don’t be presumptuous or vain by plopping down in the best seats. However, on the face of it I can’t help but feeling that it seems a bit calculating. There is a not so subtle suggestion of affecting a pretense of humility while all the while hoping that one will be honored in the sight of all by being called up to the head table. “Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you.” That is, in the sight of the other glitterati. If you can only be patient and settle for taking a seat in tourist you better your chances of being bumped up to business.
Jesus then goes on to lecture his host about whom he invites to his home for dinner parties. Now Jesus and his band of followers were certainly not among the poorest of the poor, neither lame nor blind. No doubt the reason he and they were invited in the first place was on account of his increasing celebrity status. He was making quite a name for himself after all, rattling the establishment and exciting the masses. Having him into dinner might have been quite an attention getter for the host among his own set. Jesus tells him that instead of having family and friends in to dinner he ought to run a meal program for the poor. And there will be a reward. Not the mere reciprocation of hospitality from other well-to-do folk but something later on in a sweet by and by—the resurrection of the righteous.
I can’t help but wonder why Jesus felt it necessary to induce his audience to develop habits of personal modesty and generosity out of hope for some kind of eventual reward. Might he not have instructed them that there is far more dignity in comporting oneself in a simple, modest manner and that the doing of good to the benefit of others, particularly the sick or economically distressed is of the highest value in and of itself and its own reward? In the epistle for today Paul says that one should share what one has because such “sacrifices are pleasing to God.” A sacrifice keep in mind is something offered to appease and satisfy a divinity. I would like to think that humans can more effectively be called to acts of philanthropy not out of some sense of needing to please God but because it is right to do what one is capable of doing to advance the welfare of one’s fellow human beings. And if God be pleased to witness human kindness at work well then that is just fine. After all, are we not taught that God “created” the world and humankind in a sheer burst of intentional generosity? Have we missed the point of this by mucking up this simple idea with notions of God demanding praise and thanks and sacrifice as some kind of debt? Must love be rewarded?
I would argue for an ethic that is of an essentially higher moral plane than doing good in hopes of reward. One ought not live a virtuous life merely in the hope of attaining a mansion in one of the best neighborhoods of “heaven.” The desire to refrain from doing harm to other persons or engaging in the wanton destruction of our planet and now even outer space should not depend upon differing religious doctrines about how divine egos need be mollified. Can we not conceive that our Divine Beings would derive far more joy from observing a “creation” in harmony with itself, respecting itself, propagating itself and nurturing its natural bounties? Would not the Divine Wisdom take far more delight in seeing the handiwork of the universes humming along in a syncopation of mutual support and fruition?
The Collect of today had us praying for “the increase of true religion.” If religions are to survive and thrive and be actual forces not of destruction as they so often are in this world but rather for a continuing propagation of life and the natural systems which support life, if religions will forsake forever the old battles for supremacy and who has the rightest Truth which result in so many genocides and horrors and focus on building up our humankind, might not all the collective divinities worshipped by peoples celebrate together our finally getting it?
Religions need to grow up or, with the means now in hand to destroy all life, they will in fact do it.
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Sunday 19 August 2007 – Pentecost XII (Substituted Readings) – Wisdom from the Book of Solomon; John 7:16-18
My leaping off words for my thoughts today are some of those from the Collect, the Opening Prayer for today’s Liturgy: “Grant to us Lord, we pray, the spirit to think and do always those things that are right, that we, who cannot exist without you, may by you be enabled to live according to Your Will…” These, in connection with the theme of Wisdom and Truth which we heard in our Readings .
Well, what is this thing Wisdom anyway? How is it come by? From whence is it obtained? Does it have an existence of its own? What is the source and origin of Wisdom? Does Wisdom change with time and circumstance?
Philosophers, theologians, and men and women of letters have been pondering these and like questions since the dawn of human consciousness.
Dictionaries are obvious, sensible repositories of information as to the definition of terms. In the present instance, the entry for the word “wisdom” in Webster’s defines it alternately as “the quality of being wise; (the) power of judging rightly and following the soundest course of action, based on knowledge, experience, understanding.” Sometimes I find myself drawn to check the definitions of words that have been themselves used as definitions. So I went on to look up the word sagacity and its variant, sagaciousness. I like its application to the word wisdom: “Having or showing keen perception or discernment and sound judgment, foresight.” Well, isn’t that just what we prayed for?
Religion has always assumed the role of supplying the wisdom by which people might—or ought discern their choices and govern their conduct. However, the authority of religious wisdoms rises and falls upon whether or not one subscribes to the particular religion or, for that matter, any religion. And religions mostly have a tendency to define their particular take on what is true, what is right and what is wrong, in superior if not exclusive terms. Roman Catholicism, for instance, proudly insists that it possesses the complete fullness of truth and salvation while allowing that other religious persuasions might have bits of it. Eastern Orthodoxy is no less hesitant about its own claim to having the complete package. A staunch Baptist is just as sure. As will be a devout Muslim. The trouble with all this can really be seen once one group begins to clobber someone else over the head because they don’t/won’t/can’t agree and submit.
So we have Northern Ireland where Catholics and Protestants battle it out, Islamic countries where Shia and Sunni and Sufi murder one another, Indian Hindus and Pakistani Moslems who are poised to employ nuclear weapons to annihilate each other, and the United States, where the Christian “right” seeks to “take back this country for God” and subject everyone to one or another version of theocracy. A lot of these sorts of people operate under the assumption that wisdom comes from a book, written by a divine personage, and interpreted by the group’s authorities. Bible, Quran, or Baghavad Ghita, depending on which group you belong to, yours is superior to theirs.
From Sunday to Sunday, month after month, year after year, people gather in Christian assembly to hear, interpret, and ponder the texts of this Faith, looking to them for inspiration so as to arouse desire to act aright in the doings of their lives. Most of them surely hope to hear wisdom as a guide for living a happy life and building a more peaceable world now. Some, further, as a key to entering into some dimension of eternal blessedness hereafter. Who can really even begin to fathom what form or state such might take?
What seems to me to be of utmost interest, worthy of our attentions and efforts, is the very process of engaging ourselves in the endeavor to open ourselves to the ever-expanding realm of human knowledge and consciousness. We utilize words, arranged into concepts, to express our aspiration that our very lives might be true, of purpose and filled with meaning now, and boldly, extending on into eternity itself, in the Christ, with the Christ, the One Who unites all of human history with its very Potentiality for being. That Potentiality can be named “God”. Some of those concepts are set to musical tunes that we sing as hymnody in our liturgical celebrations, some with a lusty exuberance, others with a more reflective stance, but which move our emotions, and stir our hearts and set our minds into a flight of wonder and imagination.
I have recently been reading a book entitled “God is not great” by Christopher Hitchens in which he quotes an eighteenth century German philosopher and dramatist by the name of Gotthold Lessing. The gentleman says: “The true value of a man is not determined by his possession, supposed or real, of Truth, but rather by his sincere exertion to get to the Truth. It is not possession of the Truth, but rather the pursuit of Truth by which he extends his powers and in which his ever-growing perfectibility is to be found. Possession makes one passive, indolent, and proud. If God were to hold all Truth concealed in his right hand, and in his left only the steady and diligent drive for Truth, albeit with the proviso that I would always and forever err in the process, and to offer me the choice, I would with all humility take the left hand.” (Anti-Goeze 1778)
A journey towards Truth and Wisdom is like one towards the horizon. One never completely reaches the destination. Just when one might like to think that he or she has reached that horizon, one need only look ahead to see it, off still in the distance. But there is joy in the journey itself.
Our celebration here this morning is that we delight in that journey, and in the company of friends.
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June 10, 2007 – Deacon Tom -The Centurion and His Boy
Let me read to you one of the basic, foundational tenets of Christian Fundamentalism.
We believe that the Bible is the written and revealed Will of God. Man’s position to God, the way to obtain salvation…….. woe and destruction await sinners that refuse to repent, and everlasting joy is kept for the born again souls. All the Bible teachings are holy, what the Bible reveals as the will of God are such that we should accept, and whatever God writes in the Bible and His Law are to remain unchangeable; for the Heavens and Earth may pass away but the Word of God stands forever. Deut. 4:22; Rev. 22:18, 19; Matt. 24:34-38.
You may have even seen the bumper stickers which say “The Bible says it, and I believe every word of it!” Not much for negotiation there, is there? This isn’t to say that legions of preachers haven’t expounded at great length about their personal interpretation of the scriptures. I won’t name any names here because my last sermon, about Jerry Falwell, evidently caught the attention of God, who must have said to himself… whew–eee what have I been missing here???… let me call that brother home and get him out of circulation.
The general consensus among rigid fundamentalists, however, is that the word of the Lord, the actual written scriptures themselves, is divinely inspired and therefore infallibly correct to the minutest detail. That those well worn leather covered volumes, duly embossed by sweat and pressure marks from being carried in the armpits of ardent believers like a flag of glory are the historical equivalent of the IPOD, word for word exact textual recordings and right from the mouths of the apostles. Can I get an AMEN here?
The simple fact is that the gospels were written in antique tongues totally unrelated to many of the modern languages that they have been translated into, and consider social context that is totally different to the times in which the translators lived. And that many of the translations reflect a combination of ignorance of this context or were ..… can we say diplomatically here … politically and socially motivated.
We all know the story of the centurion that was read in today’s gospel, and the same story also is recorded in Matthew. But is it in fact the simple story of just another of Christ’s miracles, or is there an underlying truth behind it that has been suppressed, either intentionally or thru the ignorance of the translators.
The mystery is centered on the word “servant” that appears in the English translations of the gospels. It refers to the word “pais” that is actually used in biblical Greek in this gospel, and “pais is” a word that had several possible meanings, depending on the context of the writing or conversation.
It could mean “boy” or “son,” it could in fact mean a servant, or it could mean a particular type of servant…. one who was a master’s young male lover.
Whooo you may say.. this is getting strange… but remember that in ancient times commercial transactions were the predominant means of forming relationships. Teenagers were considered sexually mature at 14 or 15 years old, and it was not considered unusual for an older man to take a much younger wife. All wives were quite simply the property of their husbands and their status was hardly more than that of slaves. These were the cultural norms in Jesus’ day.
Taking it a bit further, if you were a man who wanted a male spouse, you achieved this, like your heterosexual counterparts, through a commercial transaction, you bought him. A servant purchased for this purpose was often called a “pais.”
Think of the English word “boy.” Like pais, it can refer to a male child. But “boy” was also often used to refer to male slaves in the Deep South. “Boy” is also used to this very day in the gay community to refer to the younger of a Daddy/Son relationship. In ancient Greek, “pais” had a similar range of meanings, and when it was used the listener or reader had to consider the statement in order to determine which meaning was intended.
So is it really possible then that either ignorance or purpose yielded to prejudice, and the “word” of God was sanitized by translators because it led to an uncomfortable destination? There is both textual and circumstantial evidence that points to the “pais” in the Centurions story as being a male lover.
In Lukes version, several additional Greek words, “entimos doulos,” are used to describe the lad. Doulos is a generic term that clearly means slave, and it would have never been used to describe a son. The word “entimos “means “honored” and indicates that this was no ordinary slave. This was an “honored slave” (entimos doulos) who was his master’s pais. Taken together, the three words preclude most possibilities, and leave only one viable option… that the lad was his master’s young male lover.
We also see the word “doulos” being used by the centurion himself in Matthews account and while speaking of his slaves in general. But when speaking of the sick boy, he uses only the word “pais”. Again, the clear implication is that the sick boy was no ordinary slave. And when “pais’ was used to describe a servant who was not an ordinary slave, it meant only one thing — a slave who was his master’s young male lover.
The Gospels are full of stories about people who beg or pray for healing, but this is the only example of someone seeking healing for a slave. What’s even more astounding is that the centurion was a conqueror who was humbling himself in front of his oppressed, a simple Jewish rabbi. The extraordinary lengths to which this man went to seek healing for his slave are much more understandable, from a psychological perspective, if the slave was in fact his beloved companion.
Everything points in one direction, with one inexorable conclusion. In this story Jesus healed a man’s male lover. And when we understand this, the story takes on a whole new dimension. Because now we realize that by his words the centurion was completely open to Jesus about his relationship with the boy, and that Jesus’ words, “then I will come and heal him,” show no iota of hesitation, judgment, displeasure, disgust, intolerance or opinion.
Later, Jesus holds up this gay centurion as an example of the type of faith others should aspire to. Jesus didn’t just tolerate this gay centurion. He said he was an example of faith — someone we all should strive to be like. Now there’s a deviation from what those of us that are gay ever heard before from the Holy Scriptures. This is something that we can be proud of….and yet we never seem to hear about it despite the fact that the information has always been readily available. Doesn’t it make you ask why?
And all this due to a bit of insight into one single word as it appears in the bible incorrectly or inadequately translated for whatever reason. If we take The King James Version alone, this leave us 791,327 more words to contend with that might have meanings not totally consistent with modern translations.
Remember that the next time you personally struggle with scripture, or knock your head against a wall in speaking with someone who thinks that the writers of the bible did so in perfectly fluent English. Amen
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Sunday after Pentecost III – 17 June 2007 – Luke 7:36-8:3 Galatians 2:15-21
When I was a boy, attending Christ Congregational Church in my hometown, it was the custom to have the Sunday School children memorize verses from the Bible that could be relied upon throughout life to provide just the right bit of wisdom for any one of the types of situations a person might find himself in. In one instance a word of comfort, in another a cautionary antidote to some temptation, verses to ponder in time of perplexity or vexation. A “biggie” was always John 3:16 that I, true to the intent of my Sunday School teachers, can readily recite to this day: (“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”)
Later in life, it was either my junior or senior year of college seminary, a new “biggie” imposed itself upon my consciousness, focused as I was at the time upon what we called “spiritual formation” as an all-important component of training for the priesthood. It was during one of the Community Masses that I heard it and for some reason it embedded deeply into my mind. “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” A passage from Paul’s Letter to the Galatians appointed for this Sunday.
Finding this text as one of those appointed for today’s Liturgy presented me with something of a conundrum: could I just ignore it or would I be forced to deal with it, living as I now am after having once taken my leave of the priestly and monastic life? All through the week I have been poked at by this text which for so long had provided me a sort of charter which I styled as the foundation and aim of my entire existence. As I went about my tasks in my workaday job at Brooks Brothers, particularly the endless dusting and refolding a clothing store requires, I endeavored to think about what this text can possibly mean to me and how it could at all be descriptive of what my existence now is. It became plain to me that identifying with such words from within the controlled, comparatively sheltered everyday life of a full-time clergyman– not to mention that of a monk– seems to me to have been far easier than it is in the midst of the commissioned retail environment, where earning a living can too often feel like a struggle between the associates to stake out and protect one’s customers on what is a very competitive sales floor.
There are moments and whole days where I can scarcely say that I am feeling at all Christ-like or that Christ is living in and through me. I will sometimes find myself resenting this one or another of my co-workers who rack up sales while doing nothing of the necessary on-going tasks of keeping the store neat and tables and shelves replenished, or even cleaning out the fitting rooms of clothing their customers have taken apart and tried on. While such a one is all smiles and friendly-poo with the customers, meanwhile I know what a blankety-blank he or she really is to the other associates. I feel the dispiritedness that arises from observing that while more and more is expected of us by the company, that same company is endlessly devising ways to cut it’s costs by paying us less. By the end of the work day yesterday I was thinking that I needed both to go to Confession and have a serious swallow of scotch whiskey! My secular job provides me with ever new opportunities to discover that to live one’s life patterned upon the teachings of Jesus doesn’t just happen. It requires constant self-assessment and regrooving. And protecting the commitment to strive to live according to a wisdom far superior to much of market driven corporate culture.
It is clear that Paul is not talking about a superficial observance of rules, customs, and traditions. He speaks about being aware of having taken on an entirely new existence in Jesus Christ. Now he never knew Jesus in time, in the flesh. And he had all his life zealously practiced his Jewish faith which had even led him to promote the persecution of the followers of Jesus. But at a climactic moment in his life he had some extraordinary experience of encountering the Risen Jesus within his consciousness that so deeply changed him that he spent the rest of his life preaching that the fullness of life’s meaning and destiny is met in Christ.
Christianity, unlike some others of major religious traditions, is first and foremost not about the keeping of laws or rituals. It is about the relationship between persons. Jesus came into the world and showed himself to be the definitive revelation of the Presence of the pre-eternal source of Life—that which we call “God.” He came to be recognized as the very Person of God Who took on human personhood and reconnected that humanity with God via the intimacy of uniting in Himself the nature of divinity with the nature of humanity. God had become human so that humans could become god. We need to be clear about what we mean when we say this however. There is always a distinction of natures. God, as God is so in and of Him/Herself. Humanity is such by nature and can never become other than creaturely human. In taking on human nature and form God lost nothing of divinity. But humans, losing nothing of humanness, gained the possibility of achieving god-like-ness by way of God’s own gift to us—that which we call “grace.”
What we do here in the space of a Service of Christian Eucharist is all about living in oneness with God. One with God and one with each other in God. Our very identities become suffused thereby with God’s and, as an interrelation of persons, we are become as one Person. This is what we mean when we say we are in “communion.” We don’t merely “go” to Communion. We are to live Comm-union. Literally, to live in one-ness with each other as we together live in one-ness with God, the Source and destiny of Being.
When Paul speaks of having been “crucified with Christ” he refers to his awareness of having died to any and everything that would prevent him from achieving this sort of communion with God. He knew that nothing else mattered in comparison of this aim. Life’s entire significance could be understood only when one grasps that it is a participation in Reality that belongs exclusively to God. The entire range of our activities—raising children, earning our livings, seeking out of love and companionship, governing our societies, providing for the vital needs of those who can’t provide for themselves—is motivated by and oriented towards the recognition that we are indeed nothing apart from God and we cannot authentically live our humanity in alienation from one another.
So, where to go with the sort of resentments and angers of which I earlier spoke? Why do humans persist in their efforts to harm and destroy others so as to seize power or riches? Must one climb to the top of the heap by way of trampling down one’s fellow human person? Are we “Christians” in “church” but beasts at home and at work?
The crux of this lesson from Saint Paul is precisely that if we self-identify as “Christian” we are self-identifying with the Person of Christ Jesus. We believe that by way of our baptism we have “put on Christ” and our very being has been conjoined to His. This new being we have in Him we live out, striving after god-like-ness in all we do, throughout the course of our time in this world. Saintliness, holiness, being in love with God and loving one another because of who we all are in respect of God. And, the wonder of all mysteries: that the relationship of persons in Christ is neither diminished nor broken by death itself. Death is merely a mystery of passage from a visible realm of existence to an invisible one. I already do not any longer have life apart from Christ, therefore, even when I shut my eyes to this world nothing is lost of me as I live on in Him. This is what we are all called to realize and live by.
So it really is a “biggie,” this wisdom from Saint Paul . For me, and I hope for you. I hope to strive to let this wisdom continue to poke at me and disturb me and confront me whenever I would tend to behave in some self-degrading manner, unworthy of the dignity to which we are all called in Christ.
“It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ Who lives in me.”
Amen. So be it.
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Sunday of Pentecost – 27 May 2007 – Genesis 11:1-9; John 14:8-17 (25-27)
“Lord, send forth Your Spirit and they shall live, and they shall renew the face of the earth!”
I remember so well this short prayer from my seminary days. It was often employed, particularly by the older professors at Saint Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore , as a prayerful invocation at the start of class sessions. It became so commonplace to us that one really didn’t give it much thought then, but now, many years later and in the present context of thinking about the meaning of the Feast of Pentecost, it suddenly sprang to mind when I hadn’t thought of it in years. I think it sums up in a very efficient manner what I might suggest is the whole essence of this particular feast. Additionally, I also think that it concisely and aptly illustrates the nature of the relationship between the human creature and the Divine Creative Force Whom Hebrew and Christian tradition, in their respective manners, identify as the Spirit of God.
The Hebrew word for spirit is ruach. The early Christians, in the Greek that came to be the dominant tongue of the Church, used the term pneuma. In both instances the terms signify a creative or life-giving force proper to divinity. The action of this force was often symbolized by a movement of the wind or the waters. While Hebrews would pray to God to act, effectually as spirit, Christians with time came to associate this life-creating force more specifically with one of three Persons in a Trinity. This theology developed gradually as the Church found itself in need of linguistic tools by which it could effectively preach about the Christ and propagate the new faith. We are not so much concerned with Trinitarian theology today however as there is a Sunday dedicated to that topic.
I see three elements constituting this prayer. The first points to God’s own action of sending out His/Her Spirit, while the second is the immediate causal effect of life for those upon whom this Spirit has been sent, and the third is what the recipients of that life do with it in the context of the earth in which they live.
This little prayer arises out of the religious recognition of people that we are dependent creatures, reliant upon the free Will of God to, first of all, bestow organic life upon us, then to sustain us in it, and from Whom its entire meaning and purpose is derived. It is founded upon our presumption of faith that we are not mere random evolutionary developments devoid of connectedness with an ultimate Source Point of Life. While the processes by which we have attained to our present form are unclear to us —and the subject of vehement disagreement still today—much of humanity, according to a rich variety of religious traditions, meditates upon the mysteries of our very existence.
Within the Church of Antioch , the mother ship of this congregation, there is not so much emphasis upon ancient dogmatic formulae. While respectful of them and in many ways drawing from their wisdom, it is not the desire of this particular manifestation of the church catholic, to be rigidly confined by them. Words are, after all, but symbolic representations of ideas that themselves result from intuitive reasoning. Reasoning, it must be remembered, will always fall short of grasping the entire reality. While we may love the words we employ to express what we are feeling about God and our trust in His/Her love for us—as for instance in the texts for worship and prayer that may well move our hearts and foster a sense of reverence and piety—we must always take care not to make idols of them or suppose “ours” to be superior to someone else’s. Conversely, we are always at liberty to resist any who would impose their religious concepts upon us.
I am inclined to think that the notion of the “Spirit” as a representation of the Source of life is one that most readily adapts itself to the religious sensibilities of people of very different cultural backgrounds. For instance, if my understanding is at all correct, many native American faith traditions name this Source the “Great Spirit” and, as such, suffices as a complete and all-inclusive identity for what others call “God.”
Christians are those who recognize in Jesus of Nazareth the fullness of divine essence or being. We all generally believe that in His Person, the unseen God has been made visible in time, in human being-ness, as Emmanu-el, God-with-us. We believe that He has asked His Father and ours to send out upon us, his disciples in every age, the gift of their own Divine Spirit and in His Name. To what purpose we ought ask?
He Himself, according to the testimony of John’s gospel, as heard today, instructs us that having been sent the gift of that same Divine Spirit, we are thereby empowered to do the sort of works He did during His earthly walk. In short, to renew the face of the earth. To do so by promoting justice wherever it is wanting. To resist the forces of hatred with the raw power of love. To demand that political and corporate entities not rob and oppress the citizenry. To feed hungry folk. To give those in misery reason to believe that their life can and will be lifted up. But something more, something deeper still: to call ourselves, each and every one, to holiness—that is to say to live for God. Moreover, to live in God by way of the God-Man, the Christ. Furthermore, to live as God because we are called to share in God’s own life per force of grace. Jesus told Philip that the Father Who dwells in Him does His works through Him. He goes on to say that we must do still greater works in His Name and that He will do whatever we ask of Him.
The Spirit of God ought be seen, not in the movement of wind or waters, but in the deeds of men and women who, loving God and the whole creation of God, seek to offer it back to God, not scarred by selfishness destructiveness, but ever renewed and renewing. As we render our worship to God this morning, it is necessary for us to consider what needs renewing in our own lives, even changing, per force of our own will and efforts. How can we engage with the small slice of the world in which we carry out our everyday activities so that by this time next Sunday we will have made some positive impact and offer it back to God at this Holy Table a bit better than it is today? I’ve assigned myself the specific task of repairing a tense relationship with one of my co-workers. What can you do?
“Lord, send forth that Spirit of Yours, and we shall live, and we shall, by Your Grace, renew the face of the earth.”
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SEVENTH SUNDAY OF EASTER/ASCENSION – 20 MAY 2007 – Father Tom David -JOHN 17:20-26
This past Thursday was the Feast of the Ascension. The feast derives from the gospel account where Jesus, in the presence of His disciples and in their sight, is taken up to heaven. Physically, in His body, He takes leave of earth, and, as it were, is carried up into the heavens—read the sky—and disappears from view. As with other sites associated with events in the life and ministry of Jesus, a church has stood for centuries at the location just outside the village of Bethany which tradition identifies as the place of this occurrence. I have visited this place several times and twice led pilgrim groups there. I can recall the feeling of puzzlement I felt, imagining the sight of Jesus’ body being seen rising up from the ground, ascending higher and higher, until He was no longer visible, having vanished into the far reaches of the skies, and assumedly, on and on until He reached the place, where as the Scriptures have it, He assumed His throne at the right hand of the Father.
I recalled then as I do now the faith-taunting message from space of the Soviet cosmonaut, in what I think was the first manned mission into outer space—was it Yuri Gagarin?—who radioed back, that up there in a place no human being had ever before gone or observed, beyond the clouds, he saw no sign of heaven nor the presence of God. On the face of it, for anyone who had assumed that heaven, as an actual physical place, must be somewhere “up there,” the report that there was nothing visible might have been a bit disconcerting. If heaven is in fact not “up there” after all, then where is it? Before this first venture by a human being to the realm beyond the skies, Christians had no reason to suspect that “heaven” would not be found there. Ancient cosmologies, philosophical and scientific theories about the nature of the world and the universe, had just assumed a kind of layered structure to the earth and what lay beyond. There was the underworld, then the observable terrestrial surface with its dome of sky, clouds, and the heavenly bodies of sun, moon, stars, planets and comets and so forth, and finally the home of the gods or God beyond the observable heavens in a place called Heaven. The place to which Jesus is said to have gone, or “ascended” following His death and resurrection. Modern science has revealed that either we have had the wrong address for heaven all along or we must rethink our conceptual thinking about that nature of it.
Since the witness of the disciples was that they had “seen” the Lord and even ate with Him after His resurrection, it is clear that they meant to convey their experience that the same Jesus Who died upon the cross, had returned in His body, the wounds of his execution plainly evident. Having “come back” from the dead, what now would happen with Him? Would He then someday die again? Would He walk the earth eternally? The ascension tableau very neatly resolves the issue of the future of the resurrected Jesus: He would return to the immediate Presence of His Father from whence He came at the time of His earthly incarnation.
The Scriptures relate that the disciples were deeply affected by the resurrection-ascension experience and in fact were transformed by it. They were now possessed of strong purpose and what proved to be tenacious perseverance and courage in the face of continued hostility, persecution, and the threat of imprisonment, torture, and death. Nothing could make them quit teaching about and in the Name of Jesus. And people really began to listen and take notice in a big way. What had been, in the lifetime of Jesus, a popular wave of excited response to his novel teachings and charismatic appeal that the authorities had assumed would be snuffed out by his execution, was steadily evolving into a whole way of life, requiring commitment and change. People were now responding to the powerful message of the disciples themselves, teaching “in the Name” of Jesus. They came to be called “Christians,” first in the city of Antioch . And we are here this morning on this Richmond street corner as direct descendents of them. Jesus had died. But Jesus lives. We, together with every Christian from then till now, the world over, are the evidence of it. The very presence of Him. His visible Body. Ascended and ascending.
I have come to believe that worrying about follows this life is really pointless. We can wonder. We can even have hope that somehow, in a way that we cannot begin to fathom, we have continued existence. In the gospel today we heard Jesus pray, “as You, Father, are in me and I am in You, may they also be in us.” Saint Paul speaks of being “with Christ” and “in Christ.” The surest way to be—to have existence “in Christ” is to hear His Word and strive to do it. To be “with Christ” we ought be like Christ. Jesus, in his lifetime, came to be identified as the “Son of God” because he did things and said things that people understood were works thought to be the prerogative of God. In baptism we were called to be sons and daughters of God, “in Christ.” We can show ourselves so to be if we likewise do and say things in the manner He set forth by teaching and example. Jesus gave sight to the blind: the ways of vengeance, and selfishness, oppression and war, the degradation of people and all manner of cruelty are as being lost in the darkness of sightlessness and Jesus gave reason to hope that mankind could live differently. Christians have often said they intend to but don’t. Christians cheat, pursue power at any cost, start wars, torture folks they hate, and often do these things out of a sense of superiority to others. When we do we do not give truthful testimony of our profession that we live in the resurrected and ascended Christ.
Church buildings built with commercial gutters often are built with towers and steeples and pointed arches. This is no accident. They are meant to point upwards, signifying the quest to break loose from the bounds of earth and ascend to the heavenly realm of God. But others, typically those of Eastern, Byzantine tradition employ a domed structure which is meant to express the sense that the earth, rather than something to be escaped, is completely enwrapped—embraced by the heavenly realm of God. That the earth we presently live in is filled with the Presence of God if we can only open our eyes to see it and hearts to receive it.
We shouldn’t be so concerned to ascend as an individual from the earth to some place called heaven after our deaths. If Jesus’ teaching is to be believed and put into practice, then we should be causing the world around us—and the lives of everyone with whom we share it—to be a place where everyone has something to eat, a decent place to live, a productive livelihood, security in their old age. Where no one’s political system or religious belief are thought so true and superior as to be used to justify invasions and forced conversions and the subjugation of other peoples.
If anything is in need of ascension, it is the pressing need for humanity to ascend to ever higher degrees of goodness, justice, lovingness, and peaceableness. By being Jesus. To live in Christ is to be Jesus in the living out of our own lives.
No one should be looking for heaven “up there.” We should be striving to make this world a place of heavenly quality, trusting that if there is some other vaster dimension to existence post-mortem, God will reveal it to us in Her own good time. What is heaven’s address? It is here. It is now. The “life of the world to come” is within our powers of making if we, as human persons, would only love one another and our earth as God does and after the self-sacrificing example of Jesus. If Jesus has vanished from our sight, it is our own tragedy and it is our own doing.
When we leave this corner and return to our homes and workplaces, let us endeavor to be Jesus in how we see the world around us, how we think, what we do. The resurrection of Christ means nothing if we do not show forth His living, caring presence in our world now. May the entire world be raised up to newness of life. May it in wholeness ascend to the Presence of God.
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Sunday of Easter V – 6 May 2007 – John 10:22-30 – Deacon Tom John 13:31-35 Love
I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
Last week just after Mass, Father Tom David turned to me and in that sweet low key innocent voice of his said: “Would you like to do the sermon next week?” “What’s it about?” said I. “Oh, it’s something about glorifying something.” I should have known then and there by his noncommittal and vague answer that I was being set up.
How should I, Mr. angry and easily incensed activist personality himself… or rather now … or Deacon… angry and easily incensed activist personality… preach about Love…. About Christ’s instruction to love one another.
Now sure, loving a person that you like and get along with is a piece of cake. It’s real easy to feel good about that. But how about loving those who don’t meet those criteria? How about those against whom you really harbor ill feelings, rancor, even hatred? You know, the people who make the hair on the back of your neck stand up. Just how do you love them?
I said to myself that this was one heavy load that the Christ has put upon us, but contemplating for a minute or two, I remembered an old Hebrew adage that says: Aid an enemy before you aid a friend, to subdue hatred. Now certainly there is a lot of hatred in this world today, much of it directed against our community and much of that in the name of the same God that told us to avoid it.
I decided to give some serious thought about love and how I could love my enemies. How I might be able to live this Gospel. I always tend to learn better by example rather than by concept, so I set about finding a suitable target for my ire that I could love, and started by making a list of those against whom I had … shall we say… developed significant resentment. Then, I made a short list of those names, cut it down as it were to a mere 50 or 60 pages. Who to pick… who to pick.. who to pick….
And then whammo, God gave me the answer. Right there on the TV screen in living high definition color was a story of a meeting between George Bush and Jerry Falwell. A gift from on high, manna from heaven. My neck bristled… I could actually feel the bile rising…My choice had been narrowed and all I had to do was to select the one I resented most.
I flipped a coin. Jerry won! Lucky me!
So now all I had to do was to take this particular individual, who I had once described in a newspaper article several years ago as an “Armani clad pompous and porcine purveyor of hatred, intolerance and mistruth” and find it in my heart and soul to love him. Quite a task!
The next step was equally complicated, because now I had to work out in my mind what loving an enemy really entailed, and that centered on what the word “love” really means. Unfortunately, the English language bats up against a wall with this word. The word ‘love’, in case you are interested, is derived from Germanic forms of the Sanskrit lubh, which means “desire”, and is broadly defined and therefore imprecise, and that generates big problems of definition and meaning.
In fact, in biblical and classical language there are several types of love, different words which are far more precise and which we must evaluate and understand if we are to comprehend the emotions which we read and learn about in scripture.
Philia , which has now evolved to mean friendship, is a dispassionate virtuous love. In ancient texts, philia denoted a general type of love, used for love between family, between friends, a desire or enjoyment of an activity. Nah.. I didn’t see Falwell and I falling into this category.
Next is Eros… passionate love, with sensual desire and longing and usually considered to be sexual in nature. Jerry and Me!.. EUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUWWWWW
And then we have Agape, which means “love” in modern day Greek. In biblical times, however, it often refers to a general affection rather than the sexual attraction often suggested by “eros”; agape is used in ancient texts to denote feelings for a good meal, one’s children, and the feelings for a spouse. And it’s this.. this word Agape.. that appears in the New Testament describing, amongst other things, the relationship between Jesus and the beloved disciple. Throughout biblical literature, its meaning and usage is illustrated by self-sacrificing, giving love to all–both friend and enemy. It refers to a total commitment or self-sacrificial love for the object loved.
Agape love seeks the good of the other person. It strives, to the very utmost of its power, to avoid anything which is harmful, injurious, offensive, abusive, or demeaning to the other person. Such things as physical, mental, emotional, or sexual abuse are totally contrary to agape love.
Agape love turns the heart towards the other and away from ourselves. Agape love keeps on loving even when the other person doesn’t respond; without asking for anything in return. Like the Gospels Agape teaches us to always consider the happiness and feelings of others.
Today’s world is not really conducive to self-giving love. We live a world of self gratification, self-fulfillment, self-glory. Finally, we all lead such busy, busy lives. We rush around all week long with work, play, church. Sometimes we are too busy to find time for love.
But I digress…. it’s easier to talk about generalities than specifics…. and I’m sure you all want to know how I resolved my quandary about loving the Reverend Mr. Falwell. The Koran tells us that “It may be that God will ordain love between you and those whom you hold as enemies. For God has power over all things; and God is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful.” When I thought about it, who was I to put myself above God, who loves so expansively and without limits. Hating someone is the complete opposite of what our teacher, savior and redeemer would do.
And, from the practical viewpoint, hatred takes up a lot of time and energy that can be spent on much better things. If I hate old Jerry, and my mind and soul is reacting to this hatred and I have debased myself, I am no better than he is…. I have sunk to his level. And my rage and resentment distorts my logical evaluation of his hatred. It minimizes any chance I might have of dealing with the problem in an intelligent and effective manner.
So then, if my logic follows thru, the soul of the good reverend must, like was mine, be so totally distorted and convoluted by hatred that he knows not what he does, nor is he capable of acting in a Godly manner due to these circumstances. Thus, it’s not my hatred that he needs, it’s my compassion and prayer, it’s my agape love.
I don’t have to agree with old Jer to give him my love. I don’t even have to like him. I can disagree with him without hating him. If I offer him my love it’s as much for my benefit as his, it will make me a better person in Christ’s eyes. And while I don’t foresee greeting him with a big old bear hug and sharing a pint with him at a local Hooter’s, at least I am not wasting my time conjuring up vivid images of me ripping his heart out and feeding it to the crows.
Here at Gentle Shepherd, we like to speak about internal spirituality, about developing that “spark” that the Gnostics said resides in each and every one of us. It’s love that nourishes that spark, that helps sustain it and develop it into an ever growing flame of belief and faith. Why then, should we smother it with hatred? AME
Sunday of Easter IV – 29 April 2007 – John 10:22-30 – Father Tom
Leaders of established religions are usually suspicious at best and condemning at worst of the charismatic sort of teacher-preacher who would seem to be operating without their explicit blessing and often outside their immediate control. So it was with Jesus of Nazareth.
Time and again in the Gospel of John, as well as in the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, we observe religious fundamentalists of his time diligently looking for any opportunity to level charges of heresy and/or violation of the religious laws against Jesus. Were Jesus engaging in the works of his ministry today, I dare say that he would find himself in trouble with any number of mega-church leaders, bishops, and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of the Vatican itself. Religious authorities do not have affection for those who challenge their teachings and edicts. But lest we think all the blame should be cast upon the officials, we need consider that neither do many rank and file—that is to say, the folks in the pews—like to have the cozy comfort of their Sunday morning feel-good experience disturbed by messages that are confronting of their own apathies and social status. I have to wonder how I myself would feel and react were one of you to jump up in the middle of one of my homilies and object or outright challenge something I’ve just said. In truth, we all like to feel that we are keepers of true faith and good people. And now, I wonder how long it will be before one of you puts me to the test!
“Tell us plainly, are you the Messiah or not?” If Jesus had told them outright that he was in fact the Messiah, long expected by the Jews, that couldn’t have outraged them half as much as what he did tell them. While not identifying himself with the Messiah as such, he, in their view, did far worse. He identified himself with God the Father Himself, the most horrific of religious crimes in the Jewish faith. Further, he went on to accuse them of blindness and lack of knowledge of the Scriptures, which he asserted, testified clearly as to his identity. They should have recognized in what he was saying and doing that he was thereby doing what God the Father Himself would be doing. He even went so far as to tell them that Moses himself had written of him. If they couldn’t then believe what Moses had written of him, how could they believe what he was saying? Jesus excelled at turning their faith inside out and upside down and using it against his accusers. His hearers didn’t like it one bit. How does anyone for that matter feel when their own faith is used as a reproach to them? Perhaps you yourself have had this experience. I have.
When I read such Gospel accounts as these, where Jesus is confronted with the inability—or unwillingness—of some of his contemporaries to accept what he said, especially about himself in relation to the God whom endless generations of their ancestors had revered, I can’t but feel some sympathy for their position. After all, this man Jesus was known by many of them to have grown up alongside themselves or their own children, the son of Joseph and Mary, rather ordinary inhabitants of the town, For him to be now claiming that he was the “Bread of heaven” and the “Light of the world” and that no one could come to God his father except through him must have been very shocking indeed. Perhaps we can best fathom what it must have been like for them if we think of what we would make of someone today claiming to be the second coming of Jesus, someone native to Richmond, perhaps a homeless beggar, completely unlike the spectacular portrait of the second coming that tradition has painted for us.
It seems that it was much easier for people to come to belief in Jesus as Son of God, Messiah, the awaited Savior, who lived in times removed from his own. With the passage of time, the incredulity of his own contemporaries would have given way to the admiration and even hero worship of later generations whose image of him had been formed by a steadily developing cult of lore. Do not people often become icons of causes and political visions and ideologies after their deaths, even when, in life and active service, they might well have been thought mediocrities? Certainly this is true of numerous of our presidents—even so-called “Fathers of our country.” With respect to Jesus, for us it is not so much what Jesus has said about himself or anything else for that matter that we have to rely upon. Rather, it is what others have said about him and what they have constructed as the account of his ministry, his death, and the meaning and significance of it all. The fact is, that any faith whatsoever that we have in him as Lord, Savior, Redeemer, King, etc., follows from an oral tradition that developed about him, that in turn came to be written down, some of which accounts gained an official stamp of approval from leaders of the religious cult that evolved over time. Our Christianity, in its multitudinous manifestations.
Catholics putting Protestants to the fiery stake, Calvinists condemning Anglicans, Puritans persecuting Catholics, civil rights denied those judged not Orthodox. All in the name of ideas about who Jesus was, is, and shall be.
Each of us must come to our own truth about what we understand and believe about this Jesus. Each of us must do the hard work of determining whether or not what we can believe about this Jesus merits arranging our entire lives around. This must be reckoned within the innermost chamber of the heart, drawing upon the powers of enlightened reasoning and reverent meditation. Here again is that question that I constantly hearken back to, supposedly from the lips of Jesus himself: “Who do you say that I am?” Perhaps Jesus knew that people needed to figure it out for themselves. There would be little point in plainly telling them who he was. Insofar as he ever did speak plainly to his audience, most often they couldn’t bear it.
Jesus can be a good shepherd for us, gathering up and keeping together a flock of folk who look to find reasons in this life for hopefulness, and evidence that authentic human compassion and love can overcome the worst in us and indeed render life a sweet and joyous sojourn in this temporal mode. Let the forms of worship and poetic, songful articulations of our awe and wonderment unite us in a common bond which nonetheless allows for others to implement their own. Little though we be as a community, let us do the mighty thing of truly respecting the religious expressions of others, even be they incomprehensible to us. I don’t think a religious faith is ever something to be proud of as sometimes people will say. A true faith will humble one and uplift others. If you’re feeling really, really comfortable in your faith life, make then ready for the living Word of God to turn it inside out and upside down. Don’t so much as trust this so-called faith of yours as if it will supply every answer to every question. Rather let your questions themselves be in the service of your human quest for spiritual enlightenment.
The eternal mystery of God is to be approached more in the question than in the answer. Those intellectual entities we conceive of as answers are, after all, every bit as much the stuff of human conjecture as the questions themselves.
