Choose Joy

St. Alban's Episcopal Church, Monroe, La., 16 December 2012

Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us; and, because we are sorely hindered by our sins, let your bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us.

That’s the collect we prayed just a few minutes ago, the one we pray every third Sunday of Advent. It goes with the lighting of the third candle of the Advent wreath, the pink candle of joy.               

And that makes perfect sense, because what could bring greater joy to the hearts and minds of God’s people than the expectation that God will once again be stirred by our plea and with great might come among us?

The early part of this week—after turning in my grades in the nick of time Monday—I spent many of my spare moments thinking about what I might say about that today.

I thought of the great joys of this season, the anticipation of children of all ages, the eagerness with which we look forward to not only gifts under a tree and a feast with our families, but the moments sharing familiar carols and kneeling at a manager gazing in wide-eyed wonder at God become flesh to dwell among us.

And then came Friday, and the cruel and senseless deaths of 20 mere babes and a number of adults in Newtown, Connecticut.

How can we light the candle of joy when our hearts are broken?

How can we sing—at all, much less “Joy to the World”—when the worlds of so many have been dealt a blow that will color every remaining moment of their lives?

How can we pray and believe that God has and does and will always come among us with great might when we continue to be so sorely hindered by the evil and tragedy that is so a part of the human condition?

I have just two responses that make sense to me this sad morning.

The first is that joy is something we choose, even when we do not feel joyful.

In other words, we tend to think of joy as only an emotion, something we must feel. And we do feel joyful when things in our lives go well, when our children make good grades or graduate from college. When our work is appreciated. When sick people get well. When the love we feel toward another is returned in kind. When the world makes sense.

But when things do not go our way, when our love is rejected, when good people suffer… and most of all when those we love are snatched from us and this life in the most senseless ways, then frustration, sadness, and deep grief drive the joy from our lives. We are bereft. We cannot imagine ever feeling joyful again.

Yet even then, we can choose joy. Especially then, joy is a choice we make in faith. As children of the living, Incarnate God, we go to the graves of our dreams and plans and exalted expectations, even to the graves of family and friends, and ultimately to our own grave, saying, Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

The second response that makes sense to me this morning is to claim for our own what John the Baptizer offers to those who had gathered to hear him preach so long ago (Luke 3:7-18, NRSV). What should we do? they ask.

Now the context of today’s Gospel story is somewhat different from our own. John has been doing what John did so well, namely preaching hellfire and brimstone. Indeed, he has just called at least some of his listener’s a brood of vipers!

Those remarks were most likely directed at the religious leadership of the day, who did not take kindly to crudely dressed prophets drawing ordinary folks away from official religion, telling them the good news of salvation at hand and baptizing them in a river on the edge of the wilderness. John was clearly a threat to their power and influence.

But as is often the case, the ordinary folk, the ones with the least power and influence, are the ones who take John’s message most to heart. To them, calamity was at hand. And so they ask John, What should we do?

And John gives them simple, gentle instructions about how to live as those who have accepted God’s love and mercy, as those who have chosen joy in faith that God is with us.

Give your second coat to one who has none, says John. Share your food with those who are hungry. Don’t cheat. Don’t bully. Care for one another as God cares for you.

These are the same instructions Jesus the Christ gave us over and over: Welcome the stranger, visit the prisoner, love your enemy. And today, especially in light of Friday’s calamity, find someone who grieves and be with them in their grief.

We cannot all rush off to Connecticut, or to the many places worldwide where violence and suffering abound. But we can reach out in love and kindness to those who suffer in our very own community. It is how we express the joy we have chosen in faith, even when our hearts are heavy.

Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us.

AMEN

    

Who am I in this story?

Christ Church, St. Joseph, La., 9 September 2012                      
                                                                 

Who are you in this story?                                   

I mean the one about Jesus and the Syrophenician woman, the one he calls a dog.

Of course, it would be easier to skip right over that and go to the much lovelier story of healing a deaf-mute and being very modest about it. We admire that. But… we’re not going there just yet. Jesus’ obnoxious behavior has something to teach us.

You see, I don’t think there’s any way to gloss over what Jesus does in this story. In fact, in the context of his time, what he said was even harsher than it would be today.

Today we love our pets. Our dogs are part of the family. We pamper them with treats and toys. We are, perhaps, more willing to spend money on pet health care than in taxes to provide health care to poor people.

The American Pets Products Association estimates that U.S. Americans will spend $52.87 billion on their pets this year!

Source: Supply and Demand

 But in Jesus’ time, dogs were not pets. They were scavengers, as the woman in our story well knows and rightly states. Even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs, she says (Mark 7:24-37, NRSV).

While in the Dominican Republic in the spring of 2010, I and several other deacons from our group went for a walk to the seashore one evening. And while standing there enjoying an evening breeze, we watched a scrawny, mangy dog root through an overturned trashcan and hungrily consume every scrap of garbage that turned up.

It was sickening. But in a subsistence economy, as in Jesus’ time and in poor countries today, it is not uncommon.

Jesus calls the woman a dog and it was more scandalous then than it is now.

We are followers of Jesus. We seek to emulate him. We try to live our lives after his model. When we have a difficult decision to make, we might well ask ourselves, What would Jesus do?

Of course we know that Jesus understood his ministry to be to the Jews. But if you identify with Jesus in this story, you have to own his narrow-mindedness. His lack of empathy. His self-righteousness. His rather contemptuous treatment of the Gentile woman.

Or, perhaps you identify with the woman in the story? She was desperate! She certainly would have known the social class system of her day. She had no business pursuing a Jewish man into a Jewish home seeking his help. She had absolutely no rights in that situation and no reasonable expectation that this Jewish rabbi with healing powers, whom she had heard about, would give her the time of day, much less help her.

But she was desperate… not for something for herself, but for healing for her tormented child. If you identify with the woman in the story, you must own her desperation, her willingness to throw herself on the mercy of a stranger, and even her immediate acceptance of his humiliating treatment of her.

She does not resist. She claims no rights and expresses no anger. She says not a word about unfairness. Rather, devoid of ego and with humility she accepts her lowly state and asks again for mercy.

So… who are you in this story? The teacher and healer so sought after by the crowds that his popularity has gone to his head? Or the powerless woman under the table groveling for the scraps of his favor? Not a pretty choice, if you ask me!

But then something quite miraculous happens. The proud young man actually hears, sees and learns something… from precisely the poor, low-class woman he has been looking down on.

See, Jesus was not born knowing all he needed to know about God’s plan for the world. He was, after all, fully human. A wise, deeply spiritual human, our Scriptures tell us, but nevertheless, fully human. Therefore, he had things to learn, as all human do.

He knew he had been called to bring the Good News of God’s liberating love and grace to the Jewish people. This is not the only passage in the Gospels that reveals his awareness of that.

As a devout Jew, which Jesus was his entire life, the rules regarding his interaction with this woman were very strict. He could not touch her. He should not even be interacting with her. She was an obstacle preventing him from being about the work he knew he was called to do.

Yet, he was Jesus, who taught and modeled God’s love, compassion and mercy. Thus when the Gentile woman humbly accepts the lowly status he has conferred upon her but with a touch of chutzpah asks for the very scraps he has said is all she deserves, Jesus himself is touched and transformed.

It is as if Jesus himself sees the wideness of God’s grace and mercy for the first time.

As if Jesus realizes that the Good News is not only for the Jews, but for all people.

As if he understands that God loved the world, as his disciple John would write after his death, not merely the Jewish people.

Author Heidi Husted wrote about Jesus’ encounter with the Syrophoenician woman in an article published in Christian Century. She said this:

The day the gospel went to the dogs was the day it came to us. We are some of the “dogs” who have received the good news of the gospel! When Jesus opened himself up to mission to the whole world, he opened his church to the world. Now we are to open ourselves to the whole world in mission.

When was the last time you allowed yourself to be transformed by one of the people of the world to whom you are called to minister?

What have you learned about the width and depth of God’s grace and mercy from one who is poor? Lower class? An immigrant? Someone who does not live the way we good Christian folks live and think others should live?

May God bless us all—as He did Jesus—with the gift of a transforming encounter with precisely the person we are most likely to view with disdain.

AMEN

 

Bread

Christ Church, St. Joseph, La., 12 August 2012

A couple of years ago, I spent 10 days traveling about Europe. Since returning home, I have more than once stood in the bread section of the supermarket thinking, “We U.S. Americans have a great deal to learn from the Europeans about the production of bread!”

Bread in my Spanish Mother's cupboard.*

In Europe, bread is fresh each and every morning, and often still warm when it gets to your table. It comes in a variety of rolls and buns and small loaves, crusty on the outside, soft on the inside, brimming with aroma and flavor. I hardly noticed that, in Europe, bread is often served without butter. It’s so good it doesn’t need butter.

It is no coincidence that bread figures prominently throughout the Bible whenever God has a lesson for humankind. Thus when Jesus taught us to pray for “our daily bread,” he was also teaching us to ask for messages and lessons from God.

The prophet Elijah has had to flee from the death threats of Jezebel ( I Kings 19:4-8, 9-15, NRSV), wife of Ahab, King of Israel. He is discouraged; he believes himself to be a failure. And so he sits under a tree and asks to die.

But God has other plans. He provides food for Elijah, food so nutritious that it sustains Elijah on his long trek back into the wilderness to Horeb, the mountain of God. There was something special about that food, which is called “cake” in this passage, but must have been rather bread-like to have been baked on hot stones.

From the continuation of Elijah’s story, we know that he encounters God on Mount Horeb, just as Moses had before him. It is no coincidence that Elijah’s story reminds us of “manna,” the bread from heaven God provided to the Israelites on their original trek through the wilderness.

Bread from God seems always to have more than one purpose. It is first, of course, to ensure the physical survival of God’s people—the Israelites on their exodus journey, Elijah on his pilgrimage back to the mountain of God.

But bread from God also has spiritual purposes. It reminds us of our dependence on the bounty of the earth for our human existence. Although we indeed must cultivate and plant and reap, we had nothing to do with creating this fertile planet and we cannot control the weather that makes harvest possible and fruitful. Surely I’m not the only one awestruck by the differences between our planet home and the barren surface of Mars, as revealed to us this past week by Curiosity.

Elijah had apparently lost faith in God’s purpose for his life, so he sulked under the tree and—rather melodramatically—wished to die because his prophetic word had indeed raised the ire of those at whom it was directed.

You have heard, “No good deed will go unpunished!” but apparently Elijah had not heard it!

Today’s psalmist seems to have understood that the connection between God and daily bread has meaning beyond physical survival. Taste and see that the Lord is good, he writes, happy are they who trust in him (Psalm 34:8, NRSV). We and Elijah are reminded that bread from God has larger meaning.

What, then, should we make of today’s Gospel reading? In the context of a long history of bread given, received and celebrated as a sign of God’s grace and faithful care, what are we to make of the complaining that breaks out when Jesus claims to be living bread from heaven (John 6:35, 41-51, NRSV)?

And not only do the good church people of that day complain, but they also attempt to discredit Jesus! Notice that they do not complain that he claims to be bread. That metaphor apparently does not give them a moment’s pause.

Rather, they complain because he claims to have come down from heaven. Here’s where the story begins to sound like a family reunion to me, with all the aunts and uncles sitting around gossiping and weighing the merits of people not present by identifying what family they come from.

You have heard these kinds of conversations! “Oh, well, you know, she’s from the Such & Such family,” or “His father is so and so,” “his brother did thus and such,” as if that’s all you need to know about a person to judge him or her.

So here’s my question: Had we been among those listening to Jesus proclaim he was the Bread of Life come down from heaven, how might we have responded?

Complaining is certainly alive and well. When someone else’s version of reality does not line up with our own, we assume it cannot be true. When we do not like something we hear, we belittle it and attempt to discredit the speaker.

We hear this from talk show hosts, as well as from people who call in to voice their opinions, often on things about which they know little and often in ways that label all other points of view as unworthy before they have even been expressed. We hear it at parties and family reunions, in offices and at church.

Jesus said lots of things that did not sit well with the good church people of his day.., and still don’t. Complaining and discrediting are alive and well, in our churches as well as in our politics and throughout everyday life.

Try to tell those who operate on a “teach them a lesson” mentality about turning the other cheek and see how far you get. Bring up what Jesus said about violence in a discussion of, say, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and you might be accused of being un-American.

Dare to mention what Jesus said about taking care of the poor when the discussion turns to welfare, or point out that he healed everyone who asked without question in a discussion of health care, and you will be tagged a socialist.

What Jesus taught 2000 years ago is as unpopular today as it was then, even among those who claim to follow him.

Anyone who participates in social media knows that posting pithy quotes is a really popular way to fill up all of that online space and appear to have a lot to say to all of your friends and followers. I scroll over most of them pretty quickly, but recently I saw one that seemed sadly right on. It went something like this: “People will be mean, but nobody’s meaner than the person being mean for Jesus.”

We are about to share in the Eucharistic bread, and we are quite clear that we do it not to satisfy physical hunger but because of its larger meaning. But what do we think it means?

Mother Teresa of Calcutta said, In Holy Communion we have Christ under the appearance of bread. In our work we find him under the appearance of flesh and blood. It is the same Christ.

Jesus said he was living bread, given for the life of the world. And if we look at his ministry along with his teachings, we know that the bread of life lives, not only within us, but within the least desired and least loved of humanity. This is Christ’s true presence.

AMEN

*I took this photo in the summer of 1979 when I was an exchange student in Spain and lived with a Spanish woman. My more recent travel in Central Europe was in the summer of 2009.

Plumb Line of Love

 Christ Church, St. Joseph, La., 15 July 2012

When I was a kid, family vacations consisted of the occasional drive from Iowa to Ohio to visit my father’s family. That was before Interstate 80 had been built, and so the journey included passing through Chicago.

My father was always looking for educational opportunities for his children, and so we typically spent a day on the way to Ohio at one or more of Chicago’s amazing museums. It was at the Museum of Science & Industry that we encountered the giant Foucault pendulum, swinging ever so softly and silently, from a domed ceiling high over our heads.

A Foucault pendulum is, of course, a plumb line. It's a weight on a string that obeys the law of gravity by hanging straight down—regardless of what you hang it from. The one in Chicago, as I recall, is a huge brass plumb bob shaped like a child’s top, suspended from the center of the dome on a cable. And it moves because the earth moves!

Foucault's pendulum at the Panthéon, Paris.

In other words, the plumb line must obey the laws of gravity and always hang straight down. But because the earth is not a perfect sphere, and because it moves—rotating on its axis as it traces its trajectory around the sun—the ceiling of that building is also moving, and the plumb bob must constantly adjust it’s position in order to obey the law of gravity and hang straight down.

And so the pendulum gently swings, translating the earth’s movement into a highly regular, beautifully precise pattern of movement—on a scale that the human eye can actually see.

In other words, we know this planet we call home is, in fact, spinning and hurtling through space at an alarming speed. Yet we detect none of that. It is beyond the capacity of our human senses, our human perspective, our human experience.

But the giant plumb line brings it down to earth. A Foucault pendulum scales it down, transforms it, so that we mere mortals can in fact experience, perceive, see… the very rotation of the earth itself. 

How much of that did I understand as a child, standing in that museum looking at a Foucault pendulum? I don’t know. Probably not much. But I do remember awe and wonderment.

And, in striking contrast to today’s story from the Hebrew Scripture, I remember it as a reassuring experience rather than a threatening one, a peak at the music of the universe, if you will.

Of course, a plumb line is a builder’s tool for keeping walls vertical, such that the outcome of building is beautiful and functional. But a plumb line is also a kind of discipline that reveals quickly anything with a tendency to be crooked. And discipline appears to be on God’s mind in this conversation with Amos (7:7-17, NRSV).

Building a wall with a plumb line.

 ‘Look, I am not going to continue to look the other way,’ God says. ‘In fact, I’m going to put myself right there in the midst of my people Israel. I’m going to be a plumb line showing how crooked they really are. And, by the way, their crookedness is going to get them into all kinds of trouble. Those who live by the sword will die by the sword.’

So.., how do we reconcile these contrasting images of a plumb line? Is it an eloquent translation of God’s creation into terms humans can comprehend, or a harsh discipline that ensures moral and mortal failure? Is it a reminder of the order of the universe, or a measure of the chaos humans inevitably create?

I would say it is “both and”—both eloquent and harsh, both about order and about chaos, both reassuring—for it is evidence that God is among us, and frightening—for it shows how utterly unworthy of God’s presence we are.

And if that sounds a bit like Jesus.., well, you’re with me all the way!

But, of course, Jesus was the ultimate plumb line God set amongst the people, but not the first. This conversation from the book of the prophet Amos is God calling Amos to be a plumb line among the Israelites.

We don’t know much about Amos’ life as a prophet. We know in general that the Israelites were not exactly fond of.. and did not necessarily respond to.. the prophets God sent to point out the many ways they failed to love God and their neighbors as themselves.

Today’s Gospel story (Mark 6:14-29, NRSV) is a graphic account of precisely what can happen to prophets. John the Baptizer was the last of the solely human plumb lines God placed among the people. His job was to prepare the way for Jesus the Christ by calling the people to their inheritance as God’s people.

King Herod was a conniver. He connived his way into a marriage with his brother’s wife, and ultimately into a dilemma that required him to murder John the Baptist in order to save face.

Answering God’s call to be a plumb line among the people can mean speaking unpopular points of view. It can mean standing up for the marginalized and calling for justice for the poor and oppressed. It can require speaking truth to power. And very little is more dangerous than people and nations who have gotten themselves into situations that seem to require “saving face.”

But Paul’s letter to the Ephesians (1:3-14, NRSV) reminds us today that regardless of the risks, at the heart of God’s call to be a plumb line among the people is love—God’s love for us as personified and perfected in Jesus the Christ.

God “has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing,” says Paul. God “chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. [God] destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ… [and] …in [Jesus Christ] we have redemption… forgiveness… the riches of God’s grace... lavished on us.”

And who is us? And what is the proper response to this outpouring of love?

Can you include in us the people you fear the most or like the least? An illegal immigrant, perhaps? A smelly street person? Someone who deviates from sex or gender norms? A Muslim?

Can you welcome into that passage the last person in the world you love and think capable of loving you? Are we willing to see such people as our neighbors and our equals in the eyes of God?

Because that’s the kind of plumb line Jesus is: God among us, saying over and over again, in every possible way: We are all God’s children. We are all in this together. Not one of you is any better than anyone else. Not one of you is loved by me any more or any less than anyone else. Stand by me. Walk with me. Dine with me. And you will know and be God’s love in the world.

AMEN.

Touch of Faith

Christ Church, St. Joseph, 1 July 2012

This is really not the sermon I wanted to write and preach today!

And that’s because I have to begin with suffering—acute suffering. Human anguish of body and spirit.

We in this room are all old enough to have been there. We’ve been through deaths and some of us divorces, jobs that ended, businesses that failed, economic crises.

A couple who are friends of mine both used to have their own businesses, and they made decent money for many years. They own a nice, middle class home. Then suddenly a few years ago, both businesses failed at the same time. They discovered that their pockets weren’t as deep as they had thought.

The older we get, the more suffering we have seen and survived. Like David, we have lost and grieved beloved family and friends (2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27, NRSV). Having suffered is one of the defining differences between “young” and “old.” 
                                  

King David mourning Saul and Jonathan.

Of course, sometimes children suffer too. And those who care for critically ill children often comment on how wise beyond their years those children become.

Suffering is part of the human condition, in our day just as in Jesus’ day, and every day in between. One of my spiritual mentors, a Franciscan monk, priest and writer by the name of Fr. Richard Rohr, defines human suffering as loss of control.

We humans strive to control our lives. We in this individualistic society especially take seriously the cultural value that each and every one of us is responsible for our own lives and those of our families.

But we lose control a lot.

We lose control when people we love change in ways that fundamentally change their relationship to us, and sometimes take them out of our lives.

We might be able to influence the aging process by making healthy choices, but we ultimately cannot control it.

We lose control when illness takes over our bodies at any age.

We lose control when a huge, complex economic system, dependent on activities of many people with many motives, some good, some not so good, deals a blow to our own economic security.

And we suffer. And then comes the question, what do we do with our suffering? And the answer to that is the measure of us as people of faith.

If we do not deal with our suffering creatively.., if we do not embrace it and seek the lessons it has to teach us, we will merely pass it on to others.

Suffering is isolating. We feel alone in our suffering! Like no one else really, fully understands. Why me? we ask—and it’s God we are asking!

But you know what? God can handle that question. God can handle our crying out. God can handle our lamentations. Our anger. Our accusations. Go ahead! The Psalms model exactly how to do it!!

But know that God is not necessarily going to give us an explanation. I believe explanations and “reasons” for things are human needs and behaviors. WE are accountable to each other. God is not required to give an account to us.

But God is with us. That’s what we were given in the person of Jesus the Christ! God with us. That’s what we are continuously given in the Holy Spirit! A bit of God within us.

And somehow knowing that, and even in the midst of desperation and despair and feelings of utter alone-ness, reaching for God’s healing—like the woman in today’s Gospel story—is the very definition of faith.

How do we do that? How do we reach for God when Jesus is not walking among us? Maybe just by being still and open, both to our suffering and God’s response to our suffering.

Episcopal priest Suzanne Guthrie wrote this about it:

When despair has obliterated ordinary prayer; when the psalms fail and all words are stupid and meaningless, the mantle of loneliness surrounding me becomes a mantle of dark and wordless love. This darkness reveals the paradox of prayer: in the absence of God, all there is.. is God. (from Grace's Window: Entering the Seasons of Prayer)

The great value of suffering is that it strips us of all illusions of self-sufficiency. And for some of us who really, really believe we are self-made people, it can take a lot of suffering to get our ego out of the way. It feels like dying.

It IS dying. That lesson is in the Biblical account over and over again. Saul had to die for David to become king. A seed must die for a new plant to grow. Jesus had to die so that we may live. Our own Gospel story (Mark 5:21-43, NRSV).

I wonder how you imagine this story? How do you see it in your mind’s eye? 

If you do a Google images search using a phrase like "woman touching hem of Jesus," you'll find lots of artistic interpretations of the scene. Virtually every one features a woman on her hands and knees--no pride, no self-sufficiency, no ego—arm outstretched, fingers splayed. I urge you to try on that posture!

A woman touches the hem of Jesus' garment.

 The central story and mystery of our faith is that something must die in order for something new to be born. And when, in our desperation and despair, we reach for God’s healing, it will be there. Some how, some way.

It might come to us in a private moment of utter stillness before God. It might come to us through the beauty of the sky or a leaf or a rock or the smell of rain or the sound of kids playing. It might come to us through the touch of another person.

It might NOT take the form we hoped for—like physical healing, restored wealth, reconciliation and renewed relationship. But God’s healing will come, some how, some way, in some form.

And then the greatest miracle of all happens: We become God’s healing touch in a hurting world. We become what the Native Americans called the wounded healer, the one who can heal precisely because of our own wounds and the grace of God we know because of them.

Mother Teresa said, Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work.  

AMEN

Of One Heart and Soul

St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, 15 April 2012

“Oh, how good and pleasant it is,” the psalmist says (Psalm 133:1, NRSV), “when brethren live together in unity!”

Today we are not so likely to follow that proclamation with a metaphor of oil on our heads and running down onto the collars of our robes! I’m not sure what our equivalent image of well-being and contentment might be. Perhaps merely an easily tapped supply of clean water for our morning shower—a blessing much of the world does not, in fact, enjoy.

Moving from the Psalm to this morning’s scene from the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 4:32-35, NRSV), we find another image of peace and harmony. The Lukan playwright describes the community of early Christians as being “of one heart and soul.”

What is interesting to me about this story is what the author focuses on as evidence and illustration of the early church’s unity. Notice that it has little to do with doctrine or beliefs—other than that the apostles were testifying to the resurrection.

We know, historically speaking, that many great controversies about doctrine were yet to come. We know that the councils of the church that resolved those controversies did not happen until many years after this scene from Acts.

Rather, the evidence and illustration of unity among early believers laid out in this story is that they had eliminated economic inequality—at least within the Christian community—by sharing everything they had.

This is surely a more startling image for us today than oil running down our chin onto our shirt collar!

The online publication “Business Insider” recently published charts illustrating what they label “15 mind-blowing facts” about economic inequality in the U.S. But the data that stuck with me comes from a couple of economists, one at Harvard Business School and the other at Duke University, who studied what people think the wealth gap in the U.S. is, what they think it should be, and what it actually is.

I was not surprised to learn that we think the gap should be smaller than it actually is. What was rather surprising is that people in general apparently are pretty ignorant of how big the wealth gap in the U.S. is.

In other words, a large random sample of people from a wide spectrum of demographic groups estimated the wealth gap in the U.S. to be 25% narrower than it actually is. That’s a hugely significant error in perception according to all statistical measures of significance.

And the gap between what people hold as ideal versus what actually is? A little over 50%. In other words, to achieve the wealth distribution we say we hold ideal according to this study, a bit more than half of the wealth of our society needs to shift from the top 20% of people to the bottom 60% of people.

Stunning indeed. But I don’t think this story from the Acts of the Apostles is meant to endorse any one economic system over another. I don’t think Holy Scripture in general should be taken as endorsing particular political or economic systems.

Rather, I believe the stories of Jesus and his early followers teach us what to value. They teach us how we ought to relate to God and each other. They teach us what our priorities ought to be. And they leave the details of how up to us.

Maybe that’s where the expression, “the devil is in the details” comes from, because we humans sure know how to fight and fuss over the details of how to get something done!

But you know what? I’m okay with that. I’m okay that we humans must debate and disagree and question politicians and question each other and accept some plans and reject others and change our minds… and all of that.  I’m okay with it because it is how we learn and grow and overcome our own inherent self-centeredness.

Show me a person who cannot change his mind, a person who cannot modify her position in light of new data, a person who cannot even hear and consider an alternative point of view, and I’ll show you a small, anxious mind trapped in its own fears and limitations.

I have a friend who decided a few years ago that her inherited religion was not serving her contemporary needs. And so she did what so many do today, she went “church shopping.”

One of the first churches she visited piqued her interest and so she joined the adult Christian education class. The third or fourth Sunday she attended the class she was becoming comfortable enough to ask a question. The topic was something that she had often wondered about and so she posed her question. Without missing a beat, the Sunday School teacher turned to her and said, “We’re not here to argue.”

My friend shut her mouth, sat respectfully through the remainder of the class, then got up and walked out, never to return. Today she’s an Episcopalian!

Today’s Gospel lesson is offered to us as evidence of the resurrection of Jesus the Christ. The author himself is explicit about his purpose: “These [things] are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah” (John 20:19-31, NRSV).

We could talk about many aspects of this passage. Indeed, we could debate a number of things, like what kind of body Jesus had post resurrection, such that it still bore the wounds of crucifixion yet he could pass through locked doors.

Instead, let us simply observe that Thomas the questioner, Thomas who rejects the perception of the other disciples, is present the second time Jesus appears. That means he was not thrown out of the group for questioning and challenging and rejecting what had quickly become the dominant view among the disciples. 

Moreover, Jesus himself does not rebuke Thomas, but patiently invites him to check out the evidence. And not just to check it out visually.., but to touch it!

The Increduility of St. Thomas, by Caravaggio

What a totally loving and accepting invitation! We humans tend to protect our wounds, to “nurse our wounds” we say, even to hide them from each other. Yet here is Jesus saying to Thomas the doubter, “Put your finger here.. Reach out your hand and put it in my side.”

How will we define Christian unity today? Is the resurrection of Jesus the Christ still powerful enough to overcome disagreements about doctrine, and to enable us to lovingly engage each other’s questions and challenges? Will future generations see evidence of our testimony to the resurrection in our ministry to a broken society and world?

AMEN

The Shape of Light: A Homily for 3 April 2012

 St. Alban's Episcopal Church, Monroe, La.

Jesus said, The light is with you for a little longer. Walk while you have the light, so that the darkness may not overtake you. If you walk in the darkness, you do not know where you are going. While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become children of light. (John 20:36, NRSV)

Light is a very big deal in our culture. When we have a bright idea, we think of a light bulb going on in our head. When we are puzzled or confused, we want someone to “shed light on the subject.” We refer to a person we love as “the light of my life.”

Humans need light to thrive. Some of us, like one of my graduate school friends, actually get depressed when the days grow shorter and the shadows of evening come earlier.
   

iPhone Diary: 4 April 2012 (The Shape of Light)

Many of you know that I’m a photographer. Light is one of our creative tools. Recently, I have gotten connected with an international network of photographers through the online social network called Google+. One of my new friends is Joel Tjintjelaar of The Netherlands. He is a landscape and architecture photographer, but his subject really is light itself. In fact, he has an album of photographs online called “The Shape of Light.” Joel shows the shape of light by photographing how it interacts in various ways with buildings, bridges and other structures. (You can see his work at http://www.bwvision.com/. The image above is one of my interpretations of the shape of light.)
   
The shape of our light is Jesus the Christ. In the passage from John above, Jesus invites us to become children of the light. We do this by walking with him. Of course, we cannot walk with him exactly like the disciples to whom he was speaking. We must seek the shape of Jesus the Light in the world around us.
   
Sometimes that is easy. We have no trouble seeing Jesus the Light in a beautiful sunrise or sunset, flowers, trees and other wonders of creation. We have no trouble seeing Jesus the Light in the faces of those we love.
   
But it can be hard to see the Light of Christ in some of the faces God puts in our path. Not all of the people we are called to interact with and to minister to are equally lovely and loveable. 
   
And at times of loss and disappointment, The Light seems to elude us or even to have gone out completely in our lives. We walk in darkness and cannot catch even a glimmer of light, much less see the shape of Jesus the Christ.
   
Faith is knowing that The Light is there, even when we cannot see it. Believing in The Light is knowing that God is with us in the darkest times. Holy Week is a week of growing darkness, and what sustains us is knowing that the blinding light of Easter is just around the corner.
   
As we continuously seek to walk with Jesus the Light, as we strive to be aware of his presence in our lives, we become bearers of The Light. We take on the shape of the Light of Jesus the Christ! And then we will see his face in those human faces God puts in our way to minister to. We will see the Christ-Light we bear reflected back to us!

Love Hurts: A Sermon for 4 March 2012

Christ Church, St. Joseph, La.
                                              
So… what’s good about this news?

I mean, “gospel” is supposed to mean “good news.” Yet today’s Gospel lesson (Mark 8:31-38, NRSV) seems to be anything BUT good news.

In fact, the question—“What’s good about this news?”—is the title of a book written about Mark’s Gospel. New Testament scholars widely agree that Mark is the “gloomiest” of the Gospel writers. He often sounds less than convinced that news of Jesus the Christ is entirely good.

Indeed, it is Mark who reports three occasions of Jesus attempting to prepare his disciples for the agony ahead. Today’s lesson is the first of those attempts, and Jesus words must have shocked his listeners:

[T]he Son of Man must undergo great suffering, he says, and be rejected…, and be killed… No euphemisms, no glossing over, just rejection, suffering, death. (Mark 8:31, NRSV)

Of course, Jesus also mentions resurrection after three days, but…. the disciples don’t seem to hear that. It doesn’t take rocket science to figure out why. I’m guessing the human tendency to resist, reject and deny that which we really do not want to hear.. kicked in early in Jesus’ account.

By the time he got to the phrase, “be killed,” all they could hear was the silent scream of their own hearts and minds: No, no, NO, this cannot be. I’m sure “resurrection” didn’t even register. But even if they had heard it, would they have understood or believed it?

You are thinking not as God does...

Now comes Peter—fierce, impetuous Peter, among the first disciples to be called. He takes Jesus aside and begins to “rebuke” him.

This is not a minor scolding. Peter is going to speak so bluntly to Jesus that he doesn’t even want the others to hear! The Greek verb we translate as “rebuke” is a strong verb, used elsewhere in the New Testament used for casting out demons and disciplining sinners.  

In other words, Peter loses his cool and takes Jesus “to the woodpile,” so to speak, not for a spanking but certainly to chew him out and shut him up on the subject of what must surely have sounded like giving up and failure to Peter!

And Jesus? Jesus responds in kind: “Get thee behind me, Satan!”

Wow! Would any of us ever say that in seriousness to a friend? We do say it, but only in jest. Like when friends put sweets we don’t need in front of us!

We are witnessing a serious conflict, a hurtful exchange between close friends. They have traveled the length and breadth of Palestine together on foot, sharing everything. And in this scene, they hurt each other as only those who are close can.

You are familiar with this phenomenon. You have heard the saying: “You always hurt the ones you love.” You have done it and had it done to you.
                     

Love Hurts, by Bette J. Kauffman

Why? Because love makes us vulnerable. Only when we care, can we be hurt. Love and hurt are two sides of the same coin—indeed, they are practically the same thing. If you dare to love, you WILL be hurt!

But the idea of a vulnerable, suffering God is, well… unacceptable—to us today just as it was to Peter.

Peter, all of the disciples, indeed, all the Jews, believed the Messiah was to be different – a superhero who would lead the Jewish people to freedom and redeem them from their vulnerability.

And aren’t we a lot like Peter in our own way? We want a powerful, triumphant Messiah who will not only save himself, but all of us, from a harsh world! A Messiah who will come when we call, deliver goodies and keep bad things at bay!

We cannot imagine a freedom that involves willing submission to cruelty. We cannot imagine redemption that involves accepting humiliation and death.

In exchange for our good behavior, we hope and expect God to give us a good life, to save us from suffering and death. And we want a fair fight, our best defense to be a good offense, led by a triumphant savior on a white horse.

But today’s lesson conveys a harder truth. Peter tries to cling to an illusion. Jesus' harsh rebuke is devastating – meant not only for Peter, but all of us.

“Get behind me, Satan!” Jesus commands.

Baptism is a joyous occasion…  but even as we accept God’s gifts of love and forgiveness and membership in the corporate body of Christ, we also are called to follow Jesus—NOT worship… NOT believe in… but FOLLOW Jesus.

And when we get behind Jesus, we cannot long avoid or deny the sight of him struggling on ahead toward the cross. Thus we also are confronted with a clear view of our own mortality. Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.

But remember also that the other side of that coin is… love, forgiveness, freedom. In other words, resurrection can only happen on the other side of suffering and death. Something must always die before something new can be born.

And the harder, tighter, longer we cling to the old reality…

* to our illusions of control…
* to our conviction that we can keep ourselves and our families and our nation safe and secure
* to our fears of an evil world full of people who are dangerous by virtue of being not us
* to our guilt for never living up to the ideals and standards we hold dear…

The harder, tighter, longer we cling to this reality, the more we defer the deeper, truer reality of God’s unconditional, unchanging, irrational love, forgiveness and freedom.
 
Our hardest sacrifice is giving up illusions. It feels like dying. Not once, but over and over again.

Our deepest human desire is for freedom and connection, freedom from fear and oppression, connection to each other and to God. Yet we are bound by these habits and compulsions, this focus on earthly things. We mistake this fearful, controlling, guilty self for our true self, this small, fragile, fleeting life as the only life available to us.

But the way of Jesus the Christ is the way of true freedom, freedom to draw near to God, to love and accept one another and ourselves without restraint. Jesus shows us how. In following him lies suffering, but also the possibility of becoming the humans God created us to be.

AMEN

Rise and Serve: A Sermon for 4 February 2012

Christ Church, St. Joseph, La.

A few evenings ago, I spent a couple of hours visiting with a friend who recently returned from spending about six week over the holidays visiting her French cousin who lives in a village not too far from Paris.

While she was there, my friend got a bad case of stomach virus. Her host family decided that she needed medical attention. They called the family doctor, who came to the house to tend to my friend.

What a novel concept that is for us here in the U.S., where I strongly suspect no doctor has made a house call in some 25 years!

In today’s Gospel lesson (Mark 1:29-39, NRSV) Jesus makes a house call. That actually is not what he set out to do. If you can recall for a moment last Sunday’s Gospel, you’ll know that Jesus came to the home of Simon and Andrew straight from “teaching with authority” and casting out a demon in the local synagogue.

So he’s going to Simon and Andrew’s home to spend the remainder of the Sabbath eating and resting. But when he arrives and is immediately told of the mother-in-law’s illness, Jesus does what Jesus does: He heals her—without even asking about her medical insurance or ability to pay!

John Bridges, Christ Healing the Mother-in-Law of Simon Peter

Today’s lessons are rather perfect for a Deacon preacher! First, deacons are charged with being the prophetic voice of the church. That is, like the prophets of old, we contemporary deacons are called to remind the church of how it is to serve God in the world. Care for the sick is one of those ways, as modeled for us by Jesus the Christ, the only Son of God.

                                    
When a healing story is part of our Gospel lesson, I am reminded to look critically at our contemporary society and how we manage health care, and to ask people of faith to do the same. I stay out of the politics of saying exactly HOW we should do it. But Jesus offers us a model of healing for all that should be our ideal and goal.

Second, this story is ideal for deacon preachers because the healed woman immediately gets up to serve. Likewise, deacons model servant ministry by being servants themselves, and encourage and enable the servant ministry of everyone, not only lay people specifically but the church in general. We are to bring the real needs of the world to the church and facilitate the church’s response to those needs.

I’m a member of the Association for Episcopal Deacons, and one of the things we do at our triennial assemblies is share ideas and strategies for enabling the ministries of the congregations we serve. The association itself also engages in ministry. Most recently the AED began a national initiative to address poverty and the causes of poverty in this country.

But in another way, these texts are a challenge to deacons, and not only to deacons but to all Christians. They are a challenge because they make demands on us and they call us to examine critically some of our most cherished values.

Paul’s message to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 9:15-23, NRSV) really hits us over the head with that, and I'll return to that lesson in a minute. But first, we have more to learn from Jesus.

He goes to the home of friends to eat and rest, but upon arrival is immediately confronted with need. And he sets aside his own needs to respond to that need.

Moreover, no sooner does the sun go down, but that he is confronted by the world at his doorstep—a world of sick people. And he tends to their needs.

I don’t know about you but I think caller ID is the greatest invention since sliced bread! And once I have ended a day of work and gone home to eat and rest, I would much rather ignore those calls that are likely to demand more of me.

More than one Gospel story reminds us that Jesus responded to the needs of people, even when he himself was tired and needed rest.

But the remainder of this story is also a very important lesson for us. Early the next morning, Jesus got up and slipped away by himself to a place of prayer and meditation. Jesus needed to recharge his batteries, so to speak, and so.. do.. we.

Lent is fast approaching. We think of it as a time we “give up” something: chocolate, beer, whatever. And that is fine and good. Fasting is a Lenten discipline. But this year, think about also using Lent to recharge your spiritual batteries. If Jesus needed to get away to a place of prayer and meditation, so do we. Serving a hurting world is hard enough, and impossible to do unless we are connected to the source of all healing.

Indeed, the mother-in-law in this story is worthy of our attention as well. Healing is not only about the body, but about the spirit as well.

Note that this story offers not a single hint of “let’s make a deal.” Jesus doesn’t extract any promise from the woman that she will serve if he heals her, and she does not attempt to “earn” her healing with any promised service.

Simply put, Jesus heals because that’s what he does; she gets up and serves as a natural response to that healing. We express our connection with Divine love and forgiveness by sharing that Divine love and forgiveness in service to the world.

Now back to Paul. What in the world can we make of this notion that we can or should be “all things to all people”? What a strange idea!

We are way more inclined to believe things like, “to thine own self be true.” We are devotees of Individualism with a capital I—the notion that each of us is unique and different and entitled to live out our uniqueness and individuality in every possible way. And along with individualism comes “personal responsibility,” the idea that each of us is responsible for ourselves and our own well-being.

Personal responsibility and respect for individual differences are useful concepts. We need to learn those things and practice them in our relationships with others.

But all too often they spill over into much less flattering things, things like needing to always be right—at the expense of all who disagree with me, needing to feel safe—at the expense of the civil liberties of others, needing to exercise my right to choose or to do—without regard for how my choices or deeds might hurt others.

Paul offers us an alternative vision, an alternative devoid of damaging ego claims. Indeed, he sounds devoid of ego. But he offers this vision from a position of great emotional and spiritual maturity and strength. Only the truly strong can become weak in order to reach out to the weak. Only the free can give up freedom in order to become one with those who are not free.

And only those who know themselves to be beloved children of God can rise and serve, like Simon’s mother-in-law, and strive to be “all things to all people” for the sake of the gospel, like Paul.

 AMEN

                      

The Mystery of Both-And: A Sermon for 25 December 2011

St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, Monroe, La.

Babies are soooo concrete. They must be kept wrapped in some variation on bands of cloth to ease their transition to the harsher reality outside the womb. They sleep, cry, eat and need their diaper changed in a rather relentless cycle that demands our attention and action. 

"the word was made flesh" by Chris Shreve

Infants are utterly helpless, and caring for them rules the lives of their caretakers.

Nothing more dramatically transforms the lives of adults of all ages, then a baby’s birth into a family. For parents, the first baby is surely the most definitive and irrevocable element of passage into adulthood. ‘Children’ grow up when they have children.

But babies also help keep grandparents and great grandparents connected to this world. And they help survivors of inevitable human losses to carry on.

I clearly recall my family gathered in my parents’ living room, about to depart for the funeral of my youngest sibling, snatched from life at the tender age of 21. My nephew Clint, now married with children of his own, was a toddler at the time.

Clint knew at some level that we were gathered because Uncle Roger had died. But he also got that we were a captive audience. And he made it his responsibility to lighten our somber mood. We laughed in spite of ourselves at his bright-eyed, endlessly energetic 2-year-old antics.

One of us, I don’t remember who, commented that in such a moment of great loss and human tragedy, the living presence of the next generation in the form of a babe made it not only possible—but necessary—to go on.

Babies are concrete. They anchor us in reality.

In contrast, words are abstract. Virtually every one in most languages has more than one meaning. Their relationship to what they signify is typically arbitrary. We can trace the history of words, but ultimately learning a language is mostly an exercise in memorization.

Just last night, we gazed in wonder at a babe in a manger-cradle. Now this morning along comes the Gospel according to St. John (John 1:1-14, NRSV). Every year we make this rather abrupt transition from a concrete, recognizably human scene, to this poetic.. and compelling, yet mysterious account of the Word…made flesh…to dwell among us.

Where, we might be tempted to ask, is the baby? Where is Mary, the blessed mother, Joseph, the faithful father? The awestruck shepherds? Indeed, not one human populates this account!

Here’s a Gospel trivia question for you: Where and how does Jesus the human first appear in the Gospel according to John? Not until verse 29 of Chapter 1, and then as a 30-year-old man, when he comes to the river Jordan to be baptized!

John’s account of Jesus the Christ begins with God, and with the unity of “the Word” with God. It echoes the creation story, and tells us again that God exists outside of time, and that even light and life itself are from God. And in so doing, it provides us with a healthy reminder of God’s difference… from humankind.

In John’s interpretation of Christmas, the babe in the manger is “the Word” that not only was with God, but was God, “the Word” spoken in an act of self-communication. It reminds us that we can know God only as God comes to us in self-revelation. Nothing we can do—not our most noble aspirations or our most dedicated acts of service—can earn or precipitate such an event.

From the prologue to John’s Gospel, we learn first and foremost that in Jesus Christ we meet nothing less than the revelation of God. Christmas is, first of all, the celebration of a gracious decision on God’s part to become human in the Baby of Bethlehem.

I myself have often wondered why the author of John chose to tell this story in quite such abstract words and concepts. Why didn’t he just come right out and say, in plain Greek, “Oh, and by the way, Jesus was God!”

I suspect it had to do with the fact that “plain Greek” is no better than “plain English” for talking about such things. How could any human language be up to the challenge of declaring and explaining something so utterly unbelievable, so preposterous, as God becoming human?

And yet again, there’s the babe in the manger. The boy who scares his parents when he goes to the temple... Jesus the man ministers to poor people and sick people. He is tempted; he walks the dusty roads of Galilee and grows weary of the crowds. He becomes frustrated with the religious leaders of his day, their attempts to trap him and their abuse of power.

And then, of course, there’s suffering. The horror of crucifixion. The grief of his mother. Death on the cross.

The events of Jesus’ life are so concrete. We see ourselves and the people we know in those stories. We don’t even like all of them because at times they are too real and they tell us things about our human world we don’t particularly want to know.

At times, they even make Jesus more human than we prefer him to be. And so we go back and forth between the concrete and the abstract, between Jesus the man and God Incarnate.

The Good News today is that we don’t have to choose between one and the other. We don’t have to choose between the babe in the manger and the Word made flesh. We don’t have to choose between concrete and abstract understandings of the One and Only God.

We are fond of saying that we can’t eat our cake and have it to. But that’s classic—and human—dualistic thinking. In the case of God we can. It’s the mystery and miracle of both-and: both God and human, both baby and the Word. Like death and resurrection, each is both question and answer to the other.

When I try really hard to wrap my mind around Incarnation, and all that comes with it, I am convinced it is utterly preposterous. Why would God do such a thing?

And at one and the same time comes the utter conviction that God Incarnate is the only thing that makes any sense at all. Otherwise, who are we? Why are we here? How can any of this be real, if not for God Incarnate? 

The Good News today is we don't have to choose or decide. If we accept the mystery and miracle of both-and, then we live in a universe of possibility we can scarcely imagine. For if the difference and distance between Creator and creature can be reconciled, even for a fleeting moment, whether at one of the mangers of our lives when God is revealed to us through other people or in an internal moment of awareness of the Spirit known only to you, then all of humankind, and all of creation can be reconciled as well.

AMEN