The Right Fight

Homily for Northern & Central Louisiana Interfaith's accountabilty session, "The Right Fight," 7 November 2013

Reading from the Hebrew Scripture, Nehemiah, Chapter 2, verses 17 & 18 (NRSV):

Then I, Nehemiah, said to them, "You see the trouble we are in, how Jerusalem lies in ruins with its gates burned. Come, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, so that we may no longer suffer disgrace." I told them that the hand of my God had been gracious upon me, and also the words that the king had spoken to me. Then they said, "Let us start building!" So they committed themselves to the common good. 

Rebuilding the Walls of Jerusalem by C.F. Vos

Ladies and Gentlemen, member institutions of Northern & Central Louisiana Interfaith and guest institutions, elected officials and citizen leaders in our communities… 

Today you see the trouble we are in! Unlike Jerusalem of Nehemiah’s time, the trouble we are in.. is not wild animals entering the city through burned gates. It is NOT a lack of walls to protect us from marauding enemy tribes.

Rather, today the trouble we are in.. is threats to the availability of affordable health care for all.

Today the trouble we are in is public education that does not prepare too many of our children for college or the workforce—even when they finish high school.

Today the trouble we are in is rising college tuition rates, even as our institutions of higher education struggle to survive deep and devastating budget cuts by cutting middle class jobs, and courses and programs our city and state need to produce the workforce of the future.

Today, the trouble we are in is more and more of our youth stagnating in jail instead of contributing to the common good.

But, my friends, TODAY Northern and Central Louisiana Interfaith says, Let us start building!

And let us do it in much the same way Nehemiah did. Do you remember how that went?

Nehemiah did not go off and hire or enslave a huge labor force to do the job for the Israelites. He didn’t use the power and wealth of the king to force a solution or throw money at the problems.

Rather, Nehemiah organized. He understood the Interfaith ironclad rule: Never do for others what those others are able to do themselves. He knew that the people and the clergy and the elected officials were able—and therefore needed—to do it themselves.

And so he showed them that the self-interest of each of them was interconnected to the self-interest of everyone else. That’s what he meant by “the common good.”

“The common good” happens when people recognize that whatever their differences in background and style of worship and vocations and interests, some things are too big for individuals and families to accomplish on their own.

Things like building walls and educating children, making sure that none of them fall through the cracks and that all of them get what they need to achieve their potential—that’s a job that requires everyone working together.

So Nehemiah set the Isrealites to building the wall, each person and group contributing as able. Chapter 3 begins with the high priest and his fellow priests rebuilding the Sheep Gate. And next to them, the men of Jericho. And next to them a family….

And on and on it goes for 30+ verses—Nehemiah naming the groups of clergy and the elected officials and the tradesmen and families and ethnic groups—all working together to rebuild the wall, “each opposite his own house” Nehemiah tells us in Chapter 3 verse 29.

And they had to have been talking and listening to each other all the while they were building because—lo and behold—they didn’t end up a bunch of wall fragments, a tower here and a gate over there, scattered across the landscape.

No! They ended up with a perfectly interconnected, seamless wall, each piece joining with the next piece. And in celebration, the Israelites broke into two groups, walked in opposite directions along the top of the wall—all the way around the city, until they met again over the sheep gate, and there they sang and worshiped and dedicated their wall.

Friends, tonight let us set ourselves to the common good. Let us suspend judgment about the past and the things that have divided us—from race and social class to political party—and turn our attention to those objectives we share and must work together to accomplish.

Let us get our kids out of jail and off the street and into a classroom or a living wage job so they can become citizens and tax payers!

Healthy children do better in school. Let us make sure that families—all of our families—can get the health care they need without financial ruin.

This city and region needs nurses, accountants, teachers, communicators, artists, musicians, entrepreneurs. Let us make sure our institutions of higher learning have the resources they need to educate our people for the jobs and the economy of the 21^st Century!

And the people all said… AMEN!

What's good about this news?

Christ Church, St. Joseph, La.

Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! (Luke 12:49, NRSV)

Whoa, Jesus! Aren’t you the great peacemaker!

And what’s all this stuff about fathers against sons and daughters against mothers? Where are your “family values,” Jesus? Shouldn’t we stick with our families, regardless?

A few years ago I attended a workshop at Columbia Theological Seminary. One of our speakers that weekend was David Barnett who has written a book about the Gospel according to Mark. The title of the book is “What’s good about this news?” His point is that Mark’s Gospel has a kind of dark foreboding about it. It often seems that Mark is writing about bad news, not good news.

In other words, “Gospel” means “good news.” And we are fond of saying, “the good news of Jesus the Christ.” But if we read carefully what Jesus said—and did—throughout his earthly ministry, and don’t leave out the uncomfortable parts, and are completely honest with ourselves… we must acknowledge that the news he taught and acted… is often not so good… at least not by normal human standards.

Here’s the punch line of this sermon: The Gospel of Jesus the Christ is not an endorsement of nice, moral, upstanding middle class, family values.

In contrast, the Gospel of Jesus the Christ is the way of the cross. And the cross takes us, by necessity, through places we would rather not go.

The peace offered by Jesus the Christ through the cross is NOT the peace of “no conflict.” It’s not the peace of “aren’t we all one big happy family.” It’s not the peace of agreement on the hot-button issues of the day. It’s not the peace of military might! It’s not the peace of financial security.

Indeed, the peace offered by Jesus the Christ through the cross is pretty much the opposite of all those things. The peace of Jesus the Christ by way of the cross is the peace of having lost—or given up!—all of those things. It’s the peace... of having nothing left to lose.

I have heard preachers and teachers of the Christian faith say, “Jesus died so that we don’t have to.” Or, a variation, “Jesus died so that we can live.”

I completely disagree with the first. Consider the possibility that Jesus died to show us how! And that we too must die, not just once—the big kahuna at the end of physical life—but many times over throughout life.

The way of the cross is not just about physical death. It’s about how we live our lives. It’s about relaxing our death grip on our tidy middle class comforts and securities and following Jesus where he leads.

The second of those, “Jesus died so we can live,” indeed holds a kernel of truth… as long as we are clear about what it means to live in Christ. Too many Christians have fallen for the notion that “to live in Christ” means they are entitled to a comfortable, secure middle class lifestyle. That they have somehow “earned” it with their own cleverness, labor, morality and piety.

And along with that sense of having earned a lifestyle often comes a tendency to judge others. I earned my middle class lifestyle, therefore those who are poor must be less clever, less hard-working, less moral and pious than I. That’s a pretty common line of thinking.

Rather, to live in Christ is to let go of all that. It’s to recognize, as the Apostle Paul did, that all of that is rubbish.

The true “life in Christ” is knowing and accepting God’s unearned mercy, forgiveness and love for us just as we are. To live in Christ is to quit putting on airs, and to stand before God naked, vulnerable, stripped bare of pride and pretense. It’s to let go of being right, and being better than someone else. And it feels like dying.

To live in Christ is to recognize that we humans are all on equal footing in God’s eyes—equally sinners, equally loved.

You have heard me mention Fr. Richard Rohr, one of my favorite writers about the Christian faith. He recommends one humiliation a day. He says it takes on average one humiliation a day, one experience of being wrong, of discovering that you don’t have it all together, to keep a human being living in Christ.

At this point I want to be really clear that I am not against middle class lifestyles and values.  I love being middle class and I’ll fight to remain middle class!  Indeed, I am in the business of helping people into the middle class.

See, deacons in the Episcopal Church are expected to have a ministry in the world. Many choose ministries of mercy. They feed the hungry, give blankets and coats to the homeless, help deliver medical care to those who can’t afford it, visit the sick and dying, and so forth.

Those are good ministries and we need people to do them, both deacons and lay people. Deacons also should be the catalysts or agents who help lay people find their ministries in the world.

But a few deacons and lay people choose ministries of change. Mine is an organization called Northern & Central Louisiana Interfaith, and we don’t feed the poor. Rather, we ask questions like this: Why are there so many poor people? How can we help people who are poor move into the middle class and become self-sufficient? How do our systems need to change so that poverty levels in this country and state and community actually go down for a change? Where and how can we apply leverage to level the playing field?

And you know what? Those are controversial questions! Many people, many good Christians don’t want to discuss those questions. They don’t even want Interfaith, or anyone else, to ask those questions.

Many good people of all faiths are perfectly willing to do charity. They are quite okay with helping to feed the poor. But they are not much interested in change.

But the way of the cross is not just change, it’s transformation. Jesus became a peacemaker by first ripping the status quo to pieces. The Kingdom of God he preached and modeled is a reversal of everyday, dare I say middle class, human values and expectations.

Here’s the real punch line: The peace of the cross is the peace of letting go, of loosening our death grip on the people and things and ideologies that we think are what make life worthwhile. It's the peace of a thousand little deaths along the way, knowing that God is in the midst of it and with us every step of the way, and that ultimately, God-With-Us is quite enough. 

AMEN

Stuff & Treasure

St. Alban's & St. Thomas', Monroe, La.

On the window sill over the sink in my kitchen is a treasure. It’s a little brown rock, about the size of a meatball—you know, the kind you see in chafing dishes at receptions. It’s a pretty ordinary looking rock, except…  It has a heart! 

Rock with a Heart

I don’t know how it came to be, but this plain brown rock has one kind of flat side and there on the flat side, if you tilt it at just the perfect angle, is a perfectly heart-shaped opening. A friend who knows that I collect treasures gave me “Rock with a Heart.” She found it lying on the ground, “in plain sight,” she said.

But… on the window sill, right next to Rock with a Heart, is… well, a bunch of stuff: A pill bottle with one or two expired pills in it. One of those joke half-mugs that cleverly declares, “You asked for half a cup of coffee.” That was a treasure—briefly. Now it’s a dust collector.

On a shelf above the TV is a couple of inches of armadillo tail, picked clean of tissue such that its intricate bony architecture is clearly revealed. Why so homely a critter requires such an extraordinary tail structure I don’t know. To me it’s an exuberant, over-the-top expression of its Creator—here just for the glory of it. A treasure.

But right next to it? More dust collectors: Things you thought you couldn’t live without.. for some brief moment in the distant past. Today? Meh.

We could continue. My house is strewn with treasures. Among the rocks, bones and shells, you will also find human-made treasures, like the glass ibis figurine my sister gave me when I admired it in her home.

But for every treasure... an equal or larger portion of stuff. How did I come to have… All. This. Stuff? Lately, my house full of stuff has come to feel burdensome, stifling, a huge distraction from the things that really matter. I took a stab at getting rid of stuff this summer, but, alas, I have far to go….

One of the things that struck me about the many people from New Orleans I spoke with post-Katrina is how losing everything made them leery of collecting stuff. One woman I interviewed told me that before the storm she had every kitchen device you could imagine. She loved to cook, and she had all the equipment and gadgets the world had to offer.

But she lived in the Upper 9^th Ward, and it allll ended up in a huge, smelly pile at the curb. Now, she said, I have one saucepan and one skillet and I don’t want any more. Now, she takes pleasure in figuring out to cook whatever she wants with one skillet and one saucepan.

Many people take today’s Gospel lesson to be about long-term planning. There’s that reference to “laying up treasures in heaven,” and so we want to make this teaching an evacuation plan for that next place we’ll go to someday after we die. ‘Be good now—moral, pious—and go to heaven later.’

I beg to disagree. Jesus tells us over and over throughout his ministry on earth: The kingdom is at hand. The kingdom is within and among you.

And today’s lesson: Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give alms. (Luke 12:32-40, NRSV) 

That’s all present tense! I’m reminded of how my sister gave me that figurine. I was visiting her and noticed it sitting on her windowsill. And I told her the story of waking up one morning to a flock of ibises in my back yard feasting on crawfish brought up by a heavy rain.

The Glass Ibis

And my sister insisted on giving me the figurine. Right then. On the spot. She didn’t put it in her will, she picked it up and put it in my hands. And when I protested she said much the same thing Jesus says on this occasion: It is my pleasure to give it to you.

But here’s the tricky part. Yes, the glass ibis is a sort of treasure. But it’s not.. the real.. treasure. The glass ibis could get knocked off my windowsill to shatter on the floor today, and I’d still have the real treasure—my relationship with my sister and an act of solidarity between us that carried that relationship forward.

We humans easily confuse things, mementos, STUFF… with the real treasure—namely our relationships with each other, and with the natural world, and thereby.. with God.

That’s what I think today’s lesson is all about: Recognizing and cultivating the real treasure, our relationship with God manifested in the here and now in our relationships with people and God’s creation.

How, indeed, would we treat people if, at every moment, we were awake to the presence of God in them and viewed them as the Master coming to fasten his belt and have [us] sit down to eat? And, indeed, to serve us?

How’s that for a reversal! Let me say it again in a slightly different way. Our relationships with people are the real treasures. Our relationships are the Kingdom here and now, the gift of our God who is dying… well, already died! …to give it to us. Relationships with each other are the purses that will last. They are the medium of our relationship with God!

Now that is somewhat easy to see when it comes to family, as the story about the glass ibis and my sister illustrates. But we don’t need to be admonished to be ready and awake to accept the gift of family relationships. That kind of comes naturally.

Other folks, not so much. Other folks often appear to us as one more burdensome issue or problem we must deal with. And the more different from us they are, in terms of skin color, religion, social class, work ethic, values, ways of being in the world… the less likely we are to be ready and open to the fact that a relationship with them just might be a feast served by the Master himself.

But Jesus told us, you might have to leave your family behind. Jesus modeled for us a different way, a way contrary to our instincts, a reversal of our “natural attitude,” by inviting relationships with everyone he encountered.

And that is why Northern & Central Louisiana Interfaith organizes around relationships—not issues, not “problems,” not ideologies, and especially not political parties! We organize around relationships. Building relationships across the boundaries that historically divide—like race, class, geography, religion—that is the most radical thing we do.

Amongst all the stuff I have to do this coming week, the faculty meetings I must go to, the state-mandated ethics training (Go figure!), the hobnobbing with other Episcopal clergy at our monthly clericus…

Amongst all that stuff is a treasure: I have an appointment with a young man who came to his first Interfaith meeting Friday. He found us and we him through Interfaith’s relationship with the Southside Community Involvement Association. He and I will talk one on one about what drives us and compels us to this work. We’ll develop a relationship.

And I already know, we’re going to do some Kingdom work together in this community. It’s going to be a feast served by the Master himself, because he and I were awake and ready when the opportunity came knocking.

So... what’s in your house this morning? Can you sort the treasure from the “stuff”? What’s on your calendar for the coming week? Of all the stuff you must do, which matters? Who will you encounter this week? Which person will be your opportunity for a life- and world-changing relationship? Are you open to the possibility that it might be the one who looks the least likely…?

My friends, God wants to give you the Kingdom. Here. Now. Are you ready?

AMEN

Practice Resurrection

St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, Mer Rouge, La., 9 June 2013

It appears that we are to speak of death and resurrection today, given the stories we have just heard (1 Kings 17:17-24; Luke 7:11-17, NSV). On a glorious June morning like this one, the death part seems rather incongruous. It is very tempting to speed ahead to focus on resurrection—an altogether more pleasing subject!

These are indeed stories that inspire hope. Nevertheless, I think we must give death its due. I think we would cheat ourselves of the power of these lessons by fast-forwarding to the good part.

I suspect we here this morning have all been around long enough to have experienced sharp, deep, painful loss in our lives: parents, friends, perhaps a spouse, maybe even—horror of all horrors—a child or grandchild, like the women in these stories.

I’m not big on ranking human suffering. It all hurts, big time. But blogger Lisa Belkin has observed that there is no word in the English language for a parent who loses a child. Belkin says, When our parents die we are orphans. When our spouse dies, we are widowed. When a child dies, we are speechless.

She’s on to something here. It is just so…. inappropriate.

The Widow of Nain, by Corinne Peters

The plight of these women in the Bible was dire indeed. I take it as not a coincidence that both were widows. The loss of their only sons was, therefore, not merely the loss of a parent-child bond. It was a loss of economic security, the almost certain facing of hunger and survival at the mercy of others.

But… first Elijah and then Jesus come along to save the day for these grief stricken widows.

And that’s why, in fact, these are not the stories we turn to for comfort when tragedy strikes our own lives. Did any of us think of these stories when 20 children were slaughtered in Newtown, CT? I doubt it. Or, how about when tornadoes slammed through Moore, OK, and took 10 more, including two infants? Again, I doubt it. And I cannot see how these stories could be much comfort to the parents of those children.

Suzanne Guthrie is an Episcopal priest and writer of online meditations keyed to the lectionary. About today’s Gospel story, she writes,

The story offers scant comfort to the parents of children Jesus doesn't bring back from the dead. I certainly did not call the widow's son to mind when my two little grandchildren died on the day they were born last summer. My son and daughter-in-law cradled their son and daughter, comforting the children and each other during the hours the babies lived. And after they died, I didn't expect Jesus to arrive at the hospital and raise them from the dead. The surprising thing is that Christians take hope in the raising of [these widows’ sons] in spite of the deaths of our own children.

So…. are we hopeless dreamers? Crazy? Why DO we have hope even in times of death, loss and despair?

We have all been there, one way or another. Human existence is a series of tornadoes, large and small. Some are beyond our control. I have never experienced a tornado or any other of the catastrophic natural disasters: earthquake, tsunami, hurricane. But I am terrified by the thought of it. It is the ultimate loss of control.

And then there’s Newtown, and the failure of our political will to do the hard, bipartisan work of developing more sensible and sane approaches to balancing individual rights with reasonable efforts to keep lethal weapons out of the wrong hands. We can do better. I know we can.

It often seems to me that it is precisely when we think we finally have it together, that we are finally on top of our game, that life hands us the most deadly, life-destroying blows. And we suffer.

Maybe like in today’s epistle lesson, we must die to one career in order to be born to another. Saul the persecutor had to die for Paul the Apostle to be born.

Or, someone we love dies. A spouse or lover leaves us. A friend betrays us. We are downsized by our employer. An economic downturn takes most of our nest egg. Our politics turn nasty. Our children and grandchildren are sent half way around the world to fight a war that we are just not sure is worth the sacrifice of young, beautiful lives.

We aren’t in control. And much of the time it looks like God isn’t either.

But God become human to suffer and die on a cross in order to rise again in power over death. How do we understand that? As a one-time event? An economic transaction in which Jesus paid a “price” to God.. or was it to the devil? ..so that we can live happily ever after.. some day in some glorious future?

That kind of thinking certainly creeps into our religion, but it is wrong-headed. It diminishes the meaning of resurrection by making it a mechanical transaction trapped in history, and our lives something to be “gotten through” for some period of time while we await the coming of Glory.

As Fr. Richard Rohr observes, it makes our religion a mere “evacuation plan for the next world.”

The foundational story of our faith is that death makes way for resurrection. Something dies, but something new awaits birth.

The human condition at its most hopeless… is pregnant with a new thing that lies just beneath the surface. When we are thrown completely off our feet and have fallen as far as we can fall, we have a better chance than ever of landing on the breast of God.

For me the most compelling line in the widow of Nain’s story is this one in verse 14: And the bearers stood still.

Have you been there? Deep in the darkness before dawn with Mary Magdalene outside the tomb that holds your most cherished hopes and dreams? So deep in darkness and silence that even your heart stands still?

Can you pause there? Wait there? Embrace the darkness and silence, listen intently, because the new thing will most likely come softly, quietly…

I don’t know what that will look like, neither the many small deaths and resurrections each of us will experience in our lifetimes nor the big kahuna of death and resurrection each of us will experience only once.

I only know that death and resurrection go together. You can’t have one without the other. And since they are an inevitable part of life, better to practice! Practice letting go of things--the job that didn’t work out, the ideology we thought was the answer to everything, the relationship we thought would always be… Practice letting go, so that we can practice letting new things be born in our lives.

And the bearers show us how. We stand still in prayer, making room for the Holy to pass through the midst of death and lead us back into the light.

Weeping may spend the night, but joy comes in the morning. (Psalm 30:6)

AMEN

Prodigal God

Christ Church, St. Joseph, La., 10 March 2013 

“This fellow welcomes sinners and he even eats with them.”

The “fellow” is, of course, Jesus, who is once again in today’s Gospel (Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32, NRSV) demon­strating his refusal to conform to the norms and standards of polite society.

In the time of Jesus, the rules for meals, food and what is called “table fellowship” were detailed and complex. They had to do with “purity” as the Jews understood God to have demanded it. But they also had to do with social identity, social boundaries and social conflict.

The Pharisees were scandalized by Jesus’ behavior because he rejected those rules over and over again. Whenever Jesus was at the table, regardless of whose house he was in, all who had come to hear him preach and teach—tax collectors and sinners, truly immoral people—ALL were welcome.

Moreover, Jesus not only modeled radically inclusive behavior, he taught it. The parable of the prodigal son is one such teaching, and I daresay its message is difficult for us to swallow.

We certainly like parts of it: The father’s compassion warms our hearts, and we pray that we might be similarly compassionate. Most likely each of us has gone astray at some point in our lives, in a way that helps us identify with the wayward son, and we repent and pray for forgiveness.

And if the story stopped there, we’d most likely be fine with it. After all, it’s a pretty familiar and reassuring picture of the Christian faith. We have a loving and compassionate father who gives us good things, and even though we fall short and go astray, again and again, we’re pretty good at repentance. We confess our sins most every Sunday, with confidence that we will be forgiven once again. And we go to sleep at night trusting that we will be welcomed to that grand and glorious feast our father has prepared for us—the feast we call “the Kingdom of God.”

But the story doesn’t end there. Jesus just couldn’t leave well enough alone. He had to introduce the troubling matter of the elder son, the one who was faithful, who tended the flocks and worked the fields and did all he was supposed to do… while the younger son squandered his inheritance.

Here’s the picture: We are standing outside a huge tent in the ancient Middle East. A fabulous party is going on inside. We can hear musicians playing and people laughing. The smell of roasted calf wafts on the evening breeze. A steady stream of servants carrying trays piled with fruit, baskets of bread and jars of wine enter the tent.

The elder son stands outside, refusing to go in. He is indignant, and who can blame him? Even though he has been faithful, good and hard working, the father has never thrown a feast in his honor! He feels cheated, disgraced, angry, resentful.

The father comes out and pleads with the son. I really do love you, he says. In fact, everything I have is yours. But that’s your brother in there! He was dead and now he’s alive again. Come, celebrate with us!

Who does each of us identify with in this picture? Or, perhaps the better question is when has each of us been in each of those positions?

I doubt any of us has any trouble remembering when we have been the younger son who has sinned and needs forgiveness. I’m sure each of us has also been the one to forgive and to invite someone who has sinned against us back into fellowship.

But the position of the older son is a good bit harder for us to deal with. After all, he is in the right! He earned his self-righteousness! He shouldn’t even be expected to share the same tent with his unworthy brother, much less a feast celebrating that brother’s return.

In fact, it’s not the older son and his behavior that makes us uncomfortable. What makes us uncomfortable is that Jesus didn’t make him the hero of the story!

In truth, even though our rules for sharing food have relaxed, we have invented all kinds of ways of separating ourselves from those we deem less worthy, and of drawing a wall of exclusivity around our precious righteousness. That’s self-righteousness. We take righteousness, a gift from God to be expressed in our love for each other, and turn it into self-righteousness, a thing of our own ego created by our uncanny ability to divide the world into us vs. them, good people vs. bad people, saved vs. sinner, right vs. wrong.

And we, dog gone it, are right! So.., we’re not going to give our money to that organization because it serves people who make irresponsible decisions. We’re not going to support that legislation because, no matter how many people it might help, it just might help someone whose manner of life we deem wrong. Or, we’re going to go over there and form our own church or order or club or whatever, because this church or order or club just insists on admitting unworthy people or just won’t behave the way we think it should.

A Presbyterian pastor by the name of Timothy Heller has written a wonderful little book about this parable. It’s an easy read and I highly recommend it to you.
 

Heller first points out that, in fact, it is God the Father in this story who is truly prodigal. “Prodigal” means “to spend recklessly.” Yes, the younger son does that, but what the younger son spends is little compared to what the father spends to celebrate the son’s return. Our God is “prodigal” in the love and mercy lavished on us.

 Second, Heller shows that this story is about two lost sons. Not one, but two. We have long focused on the wayward younger son and almost completely ignored the self-righteous older son. Yet WE—the good church people—are more likely to be lost like the older son.. than like the younger son.

Very few of us have gone out and spent the family inheritance on loose living, drunkenness and prostitution. But we have stood at the gateways to our communities and churches, our comfortably middle-class way of life.. and passed judgment on the poor, the immigrant, the prisoner. 

It seems to me that the main agenda of most Christians most of the time has been, and is, to tame the Gospel message. I think we really, really, really want Jesus to be middle class. We really, really wish we knew if he was Democrat or Republican! We are sure he is “on our side” in international conflicts.

And then we are confronted with teachings like this one, which portray the Kingdom of God as radically non-hierarchical and radically inclusive.

Will we stand outside the tent, pouting and petulant, reassuring ourselves that we stand on principal and that we have earned our right to be offended? Or will we accept the forgiving love of the father, lay down our self-righteousness, and enter into the feast with all of the other sinners?

AMEN

Close Encounters of the Holy Kind

St. Andrew's Church, Mer Rouge, La., 10 February 2013

Each time I read or hear the account of the transfiguration in Luke’s Gospel (9:28-43a, NRSV), I wish I could ask the writer a question. “Well,” I would say, “which was it? Were the disciples awake or asleep when Jesus had his chat with Moses and Elijah?”

It sounds like the writer was not sure. He says they were awake, but immediately that they were heavy with sleep. But they do see Jesus blazing with light and conversing with the two most prominent prophets of the Hebrew tradition: Moses and Elijah.

By the way, I totally identify with the plight of the disciples in this story. There they are, so tired from trekking around after Jesus that they can hardly keep their eyes open for a most glorious event to transpire in front of them!

As one who falls asleep at her computer with some regularity, I am completely sympathetic! But I wonder: How often do we miss one of God’s very special moments because of weariness or everyday distractions?

The disciples, being practicing Jews, certainly knew the story of Moses’ own transfiguration experience, as told in today’s Old Testament lesson (Exodus 34:29-35, NSV). But that account too gets a bit confusing, with all the veiling and unveiling of Moses face. I lose track. When was his face veiled and when not? How did the Israelites know that Moses’ face was shining if he put a veil over it?

And why—given that the glow from his face signaled that he had been speaking with God… why did he hide it from the people anyway? Seems to me if I had that kind of visible proof that I spoke God’s true word, I would want everyone to see it!

The world of dreams and visions and mountaintop transfigurations is strange and mysterious. It seems to be poised somewhere between sound asleep and wide awake, somewhere between hard-nosed reality and pure hallucination. It’s probably not surprising that the Biblical accounts seem fuzzy on the details.

I imagine most of us have had at least one experience something like those described in today’s lessons—a mountaintop experience, a vision or dream that changed our life.  And we’re not sure afterward whether we were awake or asleep, whether it happened or we imagined it.

Of course, there are those among us who scoff at such things. Those who take pride in being realists. Those who believe that dreams are just dreams and visions always frauds, and nothing is real save what we apprehend with our human senses and rational minds.

The human intellect is a wonderful thing and a great gift from God that we should use to its fullest capacity. But in comparison to the mind of God, human intellect is profoundly limited.

I am sorry for those who live so thoroughly inside their own cranium that they cannot find meaning in dreams, visions and mountaintop experiences. Their world is small. They are not available to be transformed by a close encounter of the holy kind!

In his second letter to the Corinthians (3:12 - 4:2, NRSV), Paul certainly does not hesitate to find meaning in Moses’ transfiguration. In fact, he makes it almost entirely metaphoric. He says the veiling of Moses’ face stands for the closed minds of the Israelites, who could not enter into the mystery of Christ precisely because of their closed minds.

I actually think that’s a bit of a cheap shot on the part of Paul, who perhaps got a bit carried away with making his case for the greater glory of Jesus. Moses clearly was transformed in visible ways by his encounter with God. Veiling his face can be readily understood as an act of humility, not to mention a practical move to avoid frightening the folks.

We are about to enter Lent, a time of reflection and listening for the voice of God. That requires an open mind. It requires letting go. It requires loosening our grip on the comfort and security of reality as we think we know it.

And that takes courage. If we enter into the presence of God with an open mind, we indeed put ourselves in the way of transformation, God’s transformation. Who knows what shifting of the tectonic plates of our world that might produce!

The disciples were so rattled by the experience that they couldn’t think straight. Luke says Peter didn’t even know what he was saying when he suggested they build shelters and stay inside the vision forever. I can identify with that, too. Who wants so glorious an experience to end? Don’t we all want to stay on the mountain top!

But moments later, there they are: The cloud lifts, the prophets have disappeared, Jesus isn't glowing anymore. Welcome back to reality. 

And here’s perhaps the most important part of this story: Reality has not changed. The world has not changed.

Now they must head for Jerusalem, and we all know what happens there. Jesus still must die. The world is still hurting. Still full of sick people, desperate people. Indeed, a sick child and a desperate father are waiting for Jesus at the foot of the mountain.

And what does Jesus do when he comes down off the mountain fresh from his transfiguration experience? He goes right back to work. The first thing he does is heal a sick child.

See, close encounters with God are not for the purpose of making the world a rosy place for us. They are not designed to transform the world. They are designed to transform us.

Not long ago, I was perusing the stream of photos I access daily through the online social network called Google+. I happened across an image someone had found online and re-shared. It was a photograph of a small, dark-skinned boy on his hands and knees drinking water from a muddy, foul-looking drainage ditch. Lack of clean drinking water is a major problem in much of the world.

Someone had posed a question below the photo: Why does God allow this? I was quick to respond: God doesn’t allow this, I wrote. We do.

Why do we keep expecting God to take care of what we’ve been put in charge of? How much of our prayer life do we spend asking God to fix the world, rather than inviting and being open to God transforming us?

Ruth Burrows is a Carmelite nun who has written several books about encounters with God through prayer and contemplation. In one of them called Before the Living God she says this:

If I let God take hold of me more and more; possess me, as fire possesses the burning log, then I give off light and heat to the whole world even though the influence be completely hidden. ( from Edge of the Enclosure, online 2/10/13)

May we be transformed by our own encounters of the holy kind this Lenten season.

AMEN

Isn't this Joseph's Son?

St. Andrew's Church, Mer Rouge & Church of the Redeemer, Oak Ridge, La., 3 February 2013

Today’s Gospel story (Luke 4:21-20) sounds to me like nothing so much as overheard gossip at a family reunion.. perhaps especially a family reunion here in the deep south, where family pedigree matters so much!

“Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” the great aunts and uncles cluck. “I mean, the son of the carpenter? Who’d ever have thought he’d turn out like this!”

This lesson is a continuation of last Sunday’s lesson, so we know the context. Jesus has returned home to Nazareth from being baptized by John in the Jordan River and spending 40 days in the wilderness in a meet up with both the devil and God.

In Nazareth, he goes to the synagogue in keeping with custom, stands up to read from the prophet Isaiah—a passage we today categorize as one of “the servant passages”—then proceeds to claim for himself the identity of The Servant as laid out in Isaiah.

Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing,” he says. And the hometown community beams with pride. Everyone is amazed that the carpenter’s son speaks so well.

View from "The Precipice" at Nazareth

But… how quickly the clucks of surprised approval from the small-town “family” turn into murderous rage! What in the world does Jesus say in those few intervening verses that his own people go from adoring family to angry mob?

Interestingly enough, all he does is tell them a couple of stories from their very own scriptures!

Who among us has never encountered people who want our Holy Scriptures to say particular things and not others? These are often the same folks who can quote the Bible chapter and verse to support their own preferred points of view—and often prejudices. And they typically are not happy when someone responds with a verse that counters that prejudice.

But, of course, we all have that tendency. We all focus on and know best those parts of the Bible that support our preferred beliefs and points of view, and we all tend to ignore or resist those passages that challenge our biases and favorite traditions.

The stories Jesus tells the locals in the synagogue at Nazareth don’t sound all that shocking or contentious to us. What, after all, is so problematic about Elijah helping the Widow of Zarephath with the miracle of oil and flour that would not run out while her country was in famine?  Or Elisha healing Naaman the Syrian of his leprosy?

Shouldn’t all humankind rejoice when one life is saved? Shouldn’t we be thankful when God’s grace and mercy is extended to another?

But, of course, the fact is, we aren’t! We do not always rejoice in another’s blessing. We are not always thankful for another’s gift from God.

See, the locals to whom Jesus was speaking in the synagogue at Nazareth were all, of course, Jews. And the Jews were God’s chosen people. And they had a deal with God. The Old Testament or Old Covenant we call it.

And that’s all fine and good. But then they made a very human, very understandable in many ways, but deeply flawed move. They got jealous of God! They concluded that because they were chosen and had a deal with God, therefore God could not possibly have chosen anyone else and could not have a deal with any other people.

That is, after all, how human minds work. We love “family values.” We love the concept of “community.” We want to be close to our families. We want to live in tight-knit, supportive communities.

And we like nothing more than being in charge of establishing the criteria for who counts as “family” and who “belongs” in our community!

And that’s precisely where we are most likely to part company with God! We are never quite ready for the expansiveness and inclusiveness of God’s love and grace and mercy.

We want to be God’s chosen, and dang it, we don’t want God to choose those Arabs or Palestinians or Africans or Asians as well.  We want a deal with God—blessings in exchange for good behavior. And we sure don’t want God showering blessings on the illegals, the jailbird, the poor—whom we are certain are mostly lazy and immoral or they wouldn’t be in their sorry circumstances.

Here’s an interesting side-note on today’s Gospel story. Some Biblical scholars think we should not include it in the contemporary lectionary. In other words, they prefer that this story NOT be read in our churches today.

And they have good reason. They point to the fact that a thread of anti-Semitism runs through the Gospels, and this story is part of that thread.

Jesus was a Jew preaching to Jews in their own synagogue in his hometown. And no sooner has he impressed them with his knowledge and skill than he insults them.

You think I’ve come here to be your servant, he says, and you will quote scripture to me to get me to heal those whom you deem worthy of being healed: your families, your community, your fellow Jews.

But I’ve got news for you that you won’t like, Jesus continues, and it comes from your very same scriptures. And the news is, God heals Gentiles too, even when Jews are left starving and dying.

Today we the Gentiles know that we’re chosen too! We’re God’s people too! We have a deal with God as well. We call it the New Covenant or New Testament.

So I think this is a valuable story for us to read today. It challenges us to recognize that we too do not get to turn our chosenness back on God and get angry that God chooses others as well. The challenge for us is accepting that having a deal with us does not limit or prevent God having deals with others.

And perhaps the greatest challenge of all is figuring out who are our “Gentiles.” In other words, who are the peoples we most want God to NOT choose and NOT have a deal with? Who are the people we are quite certain have not earned a place in God’s kingdom?

When we can face and come to terms with our own tendency to construct God in our image and to expect God to use our criteria for entrance into the kingdom, then we can begin to follow—not just believe in, but follow—Jesus into the servant ministry he chose for himself... and calls us to, every time he says, "Follow me."                                                                          

AMEN

Word

Christ Church, St. Joseph, 27 January 2013

One of the advantages of having a teenager in the house is that they help you stay up on what’s current in slang. (Maybe that’s an advantage. Maybe not, depending on what new words you get to learn!)

A few years ago, my son, who is now 22, took to answering certain questions by saying, simply, “Word.”

For example, I might say, “Son, would you empty the garbage can in the kitchen?” And he would answer, “Word.”

Some times that would result in the garbage can getting emptied… and sometimes not! So one day I asked him what it meant, and he explained that in today’s slang, “word” means “yes.”

I rather like that. As a person who cares about words and thinks words matter a great deal, I like that “word” means “yes.” It implies a connection between words and action.

Of course, the connection between my son saying he’ll take out the garbage and my son actually taking out the garbage could never be taken for granted! But that’s about teenagers, not about words and action.

Jesus shows us the proper relationship between words and action. But I’m getting ahead of the story. 

Ezra Reads the Book of the Law, by Julius Schnoor von Carolsfeld

Let’s begin with today’s lesson from the Hebrew Scripture. Two things move me every time I hear this story from Nehemiah (8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10, NRSV).

The first is that the Israelites were moved to tears when they were reunited with God’s Holy Word. For all the people wept when they heard the words of the law, Nehemiah tells us.

It is not clear historically whether the scrolls actually got lost for a time, or if they were simply neglected for a time. We do know that when Nehemiah became governor, he led the people back to God. The scrolls were brought out to be read publicly by the chief priest from a stage built for that purpose.

And the people were so moved they wept. Nehemiah and the priest and the teachers had to tell the people: Do not weep! Go, eat, drink and share with the poor, for this is a day of joy.

Today’s Psalm is a continuation of that theme: Being in touch with God’s word, knowing and hearing and sharing God’s word revives the soul, gives wisdom to the innocent and light to the eyes, and is cause for rejoicing, the psalmist says.

The second thing I love about this story is that it makes clear that Holy Scripture must be interpreted. So they read from the book, says Nehemiah, with interpretation. They gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading. 

Now, I fully realize that this business of interpretation is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, knowing that making sense of scripture is an act of interpretation is liberating.

It is liberating because it enables us to learn and grow and listen to the Holy Spirit and change our minds about what it means. For example, we all know that at one time, Holy Scripture was used to justify slavery!

We all know that at one time Holy Scripture was used to silence women and to prohibit them from exercising spiritual leadership in the church! Thank goodness, we have left those interpretations far behind!

On the other hand, we also know that nothing has caused more dissension within the church, nothing has been more likely to divide God’s one, holy, catholic and apostolic church into warring factions than different interpretations of Holy Scripture. At their worst, disagreements over the meaning of God’s word have caused blood to be shed.

But at their best, disagreements in interpretation also cause us to engage each other in dialogue and to seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, arguing over the meaning of God’s word is a fine, long tradition of the church, going all the way back to Peter and Paul, who seriously disagreed on what Gentiles had to do to become followers of Christ!

It took several hundred years after the death and resurrection of Christ for the church to hash out differences and disagreements, and draft the creeds that we take for granted today. And the process continues because the world continuously hands us new problems and issue and situations, and we must decide how to anchor our responses in our growing and sometimes changing understanding of God’s Holy Word.

Here’s where Paul’s “one body” metaphor is so very helpful. The parts of the body are profoundly different in appearance and function, yet each belongs equally to the body.

If we can but remember that we are all part of one body, then contending interpretations need not pull us apart. They become part of our ongoing conversation with God and each other through God’s Word and the Holy Spirit.

Now comes today’s Gospel story (Luke 4:14-21, NRSV). Jesus has been baptized, and he has been in the wilderness 40 days. He returns to Galilee, Luke tells us, filled with the power of the Spirit and begins to teach in the synagogues.

Jesus Reading from the Prophet Isaiah, by Greg Olson

When he gets to his hometown Nazareth, he goes to the synagogue as usual. And what does he do there? He stands to read Holy Scripture and is handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah.

Then, Luke tells us, Jesus unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written… That suggests to me that Jesus wasn’t just following a lectionary as we do today. Rather, he was choosing the passage he wanted to teach on that very special day in his hometown near the beginning of his ministry.

And what is the passage? It is one of several passages in Isaiah we identify as “the servant passages.” So Jesus reads it, and then he interprets it. He makes himself the interpretation of it! 

Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing, he says. And we know from the remainder of the Gospel according to Luke, he not only teaches it, he lives it.

In that moment, Jesus embraces servant ministry. He takes the identity of The Servant from Holy Scripture and declares it to be his own. And he lives out the calling of servanthood: ministry to the poor, the sick, the prisoner, the stranger. In Jesus, word and action are one. 

So... how will this scripture be fulfilled in our time? By Christ’s body in the world—those who not only claim him in words but follow him in servant ministry.

And that would be us.

AMEN

Show Forth!

Christ Church, St. Joseph, 6 January 2013

 

Here’s a startling thought: If it weren’t for today, Christmas might mean nothing to us!

  

Today is The Epiphany. We have all heard many times that “epiphany” means “to show forth” or “to bring to light” or “to manifest.”

Being a visual thinker myself, I just imagine what we all have seen in hundreds of cartoons: a light bulb going on over someone’s head!

As a teacher, I frequently scan the faces of the students in my classes, looking for that telltale dawning, the expression that says, “Aha, I get that!”

I can assure you it does not happen nearly often enough! But every so often—just often enough to keep a teacher going—the light dawns on a heretofore blank face, and the teacher silently rejoices.

Today, the light bulb going on over our heads is an important step in our journey from the manger to a more grown-up understanding of Incarnation.

The Wise Men from the East by James McConnell

In Matthew’s Gospel (2:1-12, NRSV), that more grown-up understanding is represented by the wise men from the east who show up in Nazareth to worship the baby Jesus and give him gifts.

Tradition has it.., and this is important because we actually know very little about this event from an historical point of view! So, tradition has it that one of these gentlemen was Asian, one African and one Caucasian, and that is how they are depicted in countless artistic representations of the story.

All Matthew tells us is that they were gentiles from “the East,” a general reference to all those mysterious, far off lands and peoples known primarily to Jews like Matthew as “not Jews.”  And that of course is central to their importance to us.

Those of you who follow the Daily Office know that just three days ago was the Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus. That’s the day, eight days after birth, that Jesus was taken to the temple to be circumcised and named… according to Jewish faith and custom.

In other words, the Feast of the Holy Name is a celebration of Jesus’ Jewishness. We Christians have a strong tendency to want to forget that Jesus was born, lived and died a devout Jew, never once giving any indication he intended to or thought he was starting a new religion.

Thankfully, Matthew, and only Matthew, for this story does not appear in the other Gospels. Thankfully Matthew tells us with this story that Jesus is for us, too. And not just for us, but for all the peoples of the world, and equally so.

We tend to think the concept of “diversity” was invented in the 20^th Century as a tool of “political correctness.” We would be wrong. Matthew and early Christians who interpreted these stories about Jesus were there way ahead of us.

Here’s another slightly shocking thing about this story. These guys probably weren’t kings at all. Matthew calls them “wise men,” which might translate better to “nerd” than “king”!We also call them "Magi," and that word comes from "magician."

We know they were people who believed that the positions and alignments of stars and planets at the moment of a person’s birth were important indicators of who that person was and how they mattered. Today we call such people astrologers and they write horoscopes for mass media!

Of course, today we also have astronomers—the academic and scientific descendents of the wise men. But the distinction between astrology and astronomy is pretty much a modern invention. Two thousand years ago, they were largely indistinguishable.

My point is that the meaning of this story, as with many of the Biblical stories is..., well, it’s the meanings given them by humans struggling to express and explain the experience of God and the miracle that God cares for us and came to live and die among us.

And so we have the wise men bringing gifts to the Christ child, the very gifts we receive from God in the first place: the gold of love, the incense of adoration, the myrrh of pain and suffering. That’s Incarnation.

Here’s how one 13^th Century poet explained it, speaking from God’s point of view:

 

Behold, I give thee gold, that is to say My Divine Love;

frankincense, that is all My holiness and devotion;
finally myrrh, which is the bitterness of My Passion.
I give them to thee to such an extent
that thou mayest offer them as gifts to Me,
as if they were thine own property.

(Mechthild von Hackeborn, 1241-1299; The Book of Special Grace, Part 1 Chapter 8)
(From Edge of the Enclosure, online, 5 January 2013)

So… how do we today “show forth” what was first shown to us in a humble dwelling in Nazareth so long ago?

We are given the same gifts today: God’s love, God’s steadfast devotion and righteousness, indeed God’s suffering for our sake. We are given these gifts so that we have something to give--both back to God and, as Jesus put it, to our neighbors as ourselves.

AMEN