Who am I?

Christ Episcopal Church, St. Joseph, La.

One of the many prayers attributed to St. Francis of Assisi is a simple, two sentence prayer: Who are you, God? And who am I?

Legend has it that St. Francis spent entire nights on his knees praying those same two sentences over and over again: Who are you, God? And who am I?

 

St. Francis in Ecstasy, by de Ribera

This prayer addresses two crises rather common among humans. The first sentence—“Who are you, God?”—is about our sometimes frantic search for some evidence of the Divine in this seemingly God-forsaken world.

We often look for God in all the wrong places. Like our deist founding fathers, we think God is way up there hovering overhead, instead of right down here, within and among us. You can find a sermon on my blog preached a few weeks ago at St. Andrew’s in Mer Rouge that explores that theme.

The second sentence of St. Francis’ prayer—“And who am I?”—is about that human rite of passage known as “an identity crisis.”  In the 1960s—which I trust most everyone here present remembers—having an identity crisis was all the rage!

But whether you had yours in college or much later in mid-life, all of us had to figure out who we are, or who we would be in this world. For many, especially older generations, the identity crisis came disguised as merely a choice of career, or how we would earn a living.

We did not necessarily—indeed, I would say we most likely did not—connect that decision with our religious or spiritual identity. We grew up in a world of dualistic thinking: the sacred vs. the secular, good vs. bad, right vs. wrong, us vs. them.

But in putting these two things together in one simple, short prayer, St. Francis smashes dualistic thinking. Who I am and who God is are deeply interconnected, perhaps even.. the same thing.

Now… what if Jesus had to go through the same rite of passage? What if Jesus had to undergo a bit of an identity crisis? He was, after all, fully human.

You see, I don’t think the hipppies of the 60s invented the identity crisis. I think it has been going on for a very long time.

Let us briefly consider Moses. Talk about a man with an identity crisis! Born Hebrew, stowed in a papyrus basket to be found by Pharoah’s daughter, to be raised as her son but nursed by his own mother, who was hired by the Egyptian for that purpose. Moses the Hebrew grew into a position of privilege in Egyptian society, only to find himself irrevocably drawn to the plight of the Hebrews.

In fact, drawn to the plight of the Hebrews to the extent that he kills an Egyptian who is abusing a Hebrew, thereby becoming a fugitive in the wilderness, where he comes face to face with God once again.., to become a savior of his people, confronting Pharoah and leading the Hebrews out of bondage.

Who are you, God? And who am I?

So Jesus was hardly the first to wonder who he was and what his role on earth was to be. And like many, he turned to those around him: Who do people say that I am? he asks his disciples.

And they give a reasonable and feasible answer, one that satisfies the secular approach to identity: People say you’re another in a long line of prophets. Your predecessors in this career were John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah and the like.

The disciples did not need to provide the job description. They and Jesus knew what prophets do: They preach, they call us to account, they do signs and wonders.

But Jesus is not satisfied. Jesus already has a relationship with God, an awareness of God in his heart, an inkling that there’s more to it. And so he probes with another question of these, the ones who know him best: Who do you say that I am?

St. Peter

Now comes Peter. Good old Peter. What a saint! What a sinner! I mean, he dares to step out of the boat and walk on the water. And then he gets wet feet and has to be rescued.

On the one hand, he drops his fishing net and follows Jesus everywhere. On the other hand, Jesus must, at one point, say to him, Get behind me Satan.

On the one hand, here he is proclaiming boldly: You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God. On the other, he will soon deny that he knows Jesus of Nazareth.

Peter was a saint and a sinner, rolled into one, a living challenge to dualistic thinking. And a lot like us. Or, more accurately, we’re a lot like him.

But, of course, Jesus himself is the best answer possible to dualistic thinking. Fully God and fully human; divine and earthly; eternal and mortal. What more could you ask for as proof of God’s determination to eradicate all divisions and reconcile all things!

And we have a role to play in that because Jesus is our brother. Through him we can know ourselves as beloved children of God. It is essential to see the connection between who God is and who we are.

Today’s generation does not have the same set of dueling categories we grew up with. They probably have some of their own! But most of them don’t have the same ones we grew up with.

The traditional divisions of race, religion, social class, gender and sexuality by and large make little sense to them. The strict moral code we grew up with makes little sense to them. They tend to not see the world in terms of categories of right vs. wrong, black & white, us vs. them.

And that has led to a bit of a church identity crisis! The church is supposed to be Christ’s body in the world, as Paul explains to the Romans.

But what young people see when they look at the church is that we say all the right stuff, but we don’t follow Jesus. In fact, we reconstruct Jesus and try to make him the originator—or at least endorser—of our dualistic categories of right vs. wrong, us vs. them, “our church” vs. God’s church.

But that’s not what Jesus taught and it’s not what Jesus did.

Our Bishop has asked us to read this book, “People of the Way: Renewing Episcopal Identity,” by Dwight J. Zscheile. The titles of the chapters are revealing.  

Who are Episcopalians? How about “A People… Sharing Communion.” Sure! No shock there. We love our Holy Eucharist! But that’s followed by “A People… Reconciled in Difference.” Not “reconciled in sameness.” “Sameness” does not need reconciliation! Reconciled in difference.

How about “A People… Seeking the World’s Hospitality”? That’s about the church becoming homeless. Fr. Whit Stodghill and I are working on starting a worship service with the homeless of Monroe in an empty lot next to the Desiard Street shelter. One of my Canterbury kids has already requested that we have an open-air Eucharist in Bayou Park on campus this fall.

What if the church gave up its addiction to buildings and became homeless like Jesus was? What would that do to our us-vs.-them categories?

Who are you, God? And who are we?

To know that we are God’s beloved, that we are in Christ and Christ is in us, is to be people of the way. And to be people of the way is to be saints and sinners every one, but to be living as disciples and organized for mission—God’s mission that we the church carry out as Christ’ one body in the world.

AMEN

The Art & Power of Conversation

St. Luke's Chapel, Grambling, La.

So today we talk about talk. Each one of today’s lessons tells us something about the art and power of talk.

And it’s timely. Today’s society seems addicted to talk. We tweet. We post status updates on Facebook and other social media. Our news media provide talking heads 24/7.

Talk, talk, talk. And so often, it seems that, rather than talking with each other, conversing, if you will, we are screaming past each other.

I no longer try to have serious discussion of important topics on Facebook. Too often have I witnessed such talk turn into ugly, personal attacks. These exchanges are more like drive by shootings than conversations, or even arguments—which can be totally civil and useful when done well.

So what does each of our lessons tell us today about the art and power of talk?

First, the story of Joseph and his brothers from Genesis tells us about a relationship between talk and reconciliation. Look again at two key sentences in this passage.

Verse 3b: But his brothers could not answer him, so dismayed were they at his presence. And the last verse: And he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them; and after that his brothers talked with him.

What happens between these verses? What makes it possible for Joseph’s brothers to talk with him?  Love and forgiveness! Specifically, the one who is wronged reaches out to the wrong-doers. The betrayed reaches out in love and forgiveness to the betrayers.

It is noteworthy that Joseph’s brothers do not ask for love or forgiveness. At Joseph’s self-revelation, they huddle in embarrassment and fear. Joseph tells them how God has redeemed what began as a betrayal. Joseph beckons them closer. Joseph falls upon their necks and kisses them.

And then they talk. Conversation and reconciliation go hand in hand.

Turning to Romans, Paul is drawing attention to cultural and social difference. He clearly identifies himself as an Israelite, and then says, ‘But here I am talking with you Gentiles.’

Now, our immediate response might be, ‘Don’t keep talking about difference. Why do you draw attention to difference? That just exacerbates the problems!’

Indeed, I have heard people say this. These are the folks whose answer to racism is to pretend that race doesn’t exist or matter, and whose answer to socio-economic divisions in our society is to insist that everyone is middle class.

Nonsense, says Paul. In fact, he says, I’m willing to brag a bit about my ministry of reconciliation with you, the Gentiles, because through it I show that God’s reconciling love is available, not only to my own people but to the entire world.

In other words, it matters who we talk to, and when we talk across the social and cultural boundaries that typically divide, we are enacting God’s reconciliation in an especially powerful way.

I have probably mentioned to you before that I participate in a broad-based coalition of institutions called Northern & Central Louisiana Interfaith. For the past year to two years, Interfaith has met with elected officials, both locally and during the legislative session in Baton Rouge, and has conducted meetings and civic academies around the issues of how low income people fall into the debt trap through payday lending practices; how sentencing policies have led Louisiana to have the highest incarceration rate in the world; and how declining state support for higher education has decimated our schools and contributes to incarceration and economic decline statewide.

Those are the issues we have been working on, but even more important is our method, which is to purposefully and systematically cross the boundaries of difference that typically divide. I was at a meeting Friday afternoon in which the first item on our agenda was to find a black male leader to co-chair an upcoming meeting with a white woman.

We NEVER have one person chair a meeting, and the co-chairs of our meetings ALWAYS cross the boundary of race: one black, one white, and whenever possible, one male and one female. And we carry that principle throughout everything we do. 

Interfaith takes this message from Paul very seriously. We talk with each other across boundaries of race, religion, social class, and politics in order to demonstrate the reconciling power of the love of God and make our communities better places for everyone to live.

And now, finally, the Gospel passage. What do we make of the very un-Jesusy behavior of Jesus himself when approached by the Canaanite woman? I mean, first he ignores her. When she persists, he tells her she is no better than a dog! And that he is not going to stoop to minister to her! 

Holy smokes, Jesus! What are we supposed to do with this?

Some biblical scholars interpret this story as Jesus just testing her and pushing her to become bold in demanding his attention. I disagree. I think that neutralizes the power of the story.

We say we believe that Jesus was fully human, as well as divine. And if Jesus was fully human, than perhaps this is a very powerful story of Jesus learning and discovering who he fully is as the reconciling love of God incarnate through the art and power of conversation over boundaries of difference. 

Consider this: He was male and she was female, and the two were definitely not equal in Jesus’ day. He was Jew, she was Gentile, a Canaanite, despised by the Jews of Jesus’ day. They were enemies.

Nothing about who he was and nothing about who she was would lead anyone then or now to think that they should, or even could, converse with one another. But they did.

And humility is the ingredient that made conversation possible. She could have stormed off in fury, called him names. But she persisted--with humility. He could have gotten angry at challenge to his view of the world. But he listened--with humility. 

Humility makes it possible to consider that one is wrong. Or not yet fully right. Or simply uninformed about another's point of view. How different would our politics, our policy debates, our talk-talk-talk be... if we spoke with humility?

Humility, my friends, is key to the art and power of conversation, through which the reconciling love of God can heal us, our communities and the nations of the world.

AMEN

Not a Show-Off God

St. Alban's & St. Thomas' Episcopal Churches, Monroe

Last spring I attended the triennial assembly of the Association for Episcopal Deacons. Our keynote speaker and workshop leader was Eric Law, an Episcopal priest and author of several book, including “Holy Currencies: 6 Blessings for Sustainable Missional Ministries.”

Law has gone from writing books to founding a center for congregational development and stewardship called the Kaleidoscope Institute. Our Bishop has just decided that some of Law’s work needs to be in the curriculum of our Diocesan school of ministry for lay people. So, the St. Thomas’ chapter of the Daughters of the King is a step ahead of everyone else on that because they studied this book together last spring!

To kick off his workshop at the deacon’s conference last year, Law had the assembled deacons—as I recall, around a hundred of us—play a silly little game that ended up making a big point. With the help of the organizers of the conference, a bunch of these bookmarks were handed out. Some people got none, some got 2 or 3 and a few got 5 or 6.

Then, Law said, this game has just two rules. 1) If someone gives you a bookmark, you must take it, and 2) the person who ends up with none.. wins. When I give the signal, Law said, you will have 10 minutes to give away all of your bookmarks.

Well, I don’t remember if anyone won that game. And I don’t remember how many bookmarks I ended up with, but I’m pretty sure it was more than I started with. I got down to zero a couple times, but no sooner had I done so than someone would come along and thrust a bunch into my hand.

Now, you might be thinking, “Well, duh! The rules of the game were set up to make sure that happens!” And, indeed, they were. The value of the game was not that it was a “fair” or “objective” test of anything. The value of the game.. was in what it revealed about how humans think!

The first few minutes of the game, I was being totally rational and measured. My plan was to give one bookmark to each of however many people I needed to, to get rid of them all. That way I could spread my generosity over the maximum number of people. And if anyone gave me a bookmark—“a” bookmark; I was assuming everyone else would be as rational as I—I would find one more person to give it to.

And isn’t that how we do our charity?

But Jesus said, “Get rid of it all. Give it all away. Sell all you have and give it to the poor.”

There was a moment in Eric Law’s silly little game when I was flooded with two things: 1) The enormity of what Jesus asks of us: give it all away; and 2) the powerful human tendency to gather, to collect, to keep, to secure our future, indeed, to hoard. 

Today’s Gospel lesson is about exactly that. It is my favorite miracle in the Bible, and not just because I love to eat.

Perhaps today’s miracle of the feeding of the 5,000 is the greatest miracle Jesus performs! Greater than bringing dead things to life because that happens all the time. That’s a pattern of the universe. We see it happen before our eyes every spring.

I imagine many people think the feeding of the 5,000 is about Jesus multiplying molecules of bread and wine such that 5 loves and 2 fishes magically turned into hundreds of loaves and fishes. That’s what I was raised to think it was about.

But.. how’s that even a miracle? That wouldn’t be a miracle. That would be God showing off! Surely the creator of the universe can multiply molecules of bread and fish without breaking a sweat!

It is certainly an appealing idea. God has superhero powers; God made the rules of the universe, therefore can break them any time God wants to!

The problem with that, of course, is we’re left to struggle with the question: Since God can do that without breaking a sweat, why doesn’t God do it more often?

Why do people go hungry in a world of plenty? If God is good and loves us all, why doesn’t God fix the Middle East? Why must children in Gaza die horrific deaths? Why must children on the southside of Monroe play in dirty, trash-littered streets among burned out and boarded up houses?

Why do the children of St. Joseph, Louisiana, come to Vacation Bible School so hungry that they must be fed before they can concentrate on the lesson?

The answer is pretty clear: Our God is not a show-off God. Our God chooses to work through humans—US—in all of our misbegotten glory. We are beautifully and wondrously made…, and yet stiff-necked, insecure, self-centered.

You see, I think the real appeal of the notion of God as multiplier of molecules of bread and fish is that it leaves humans completely off the hook. Oh, that we had a show-off God! Would that not make life a whole lot easier for us!

I mean, we could sit around and wait for God to fix it, whatever “it” is: the violent Middle East, the children collecting on our southern border fleeing violence and starvation in their own countries, the escalating gap between the rich and the poor in the U.S. economy.

And if God doesn’t choose to fix whatever it is that needs fixing, well then, it must not be meant to be. Too bad for those dying in Gaza. Too bad for the poor. Too bad for those kids… and I really do looooove them, but… I’m a mere human. All I can do is pray for God to work a miracle.

But our God is not a show-off god. It IS up to us. And the problem almost never is an absolute shortage of molecules of anything. The problem is maldistribution. Whether we’re talking food or cash or relative freedom from violence, the problem is not shortage, it’s maldistribution: some have and keep, others don’t and suffer.

Here's a little story that helps make the point. A member of Christ Church in St. Joseph, La., started a Shepherd Center in that little town to make available good used items to poor folks for a minimal price. One day, two volunteers had locked the door for the day and were about to leave when comes a knock on the door.

"I'll go tell her (the woman at the door) we're closed for the day," said one volunteer to the other.

"Oh, no, you go on home," said the other volunteer, "I'll see what she needs."

So one volunteer left and the other went to the door. The woman needed shoes. She had lost everything, she said, and most of all she needed shoes to replace the tattered flip-flops on her feet.

"Come in," said the volunteer, "I'm sure we've got something your size here somewhere."

And so the hunt began. They  searched through the shoes on display. Nothing. They searched through shoes ready to go on display. Nothing. They go through piles of unsorted stuff. Nothing.

By now the woman is apologizing and telling the volunteer to go on home and not worry about it. But the volunteer persists. Finally, she spies a box of items in the corner that has not yet been opened. She picks it up, turns it upside down and out falls a pair of brand new sneakers in the woman's size.

I don’t believe for one moment that God created sneaker molecules out of nothing and hid them inside that box of stuff for the woman to find. What God did is transform the heart of the woman, such that when she was confronted with another human being in need, she saw Jesus. And Jesus needed shoes.

Shoes for Jesus, Here I Am

She did not need to know if the woman was deserving or not, had lost her stuff through bad decision-making or not, was in need because she was lazy… or not. She saw Jesus, and Jesus needed shoes.

Brothers and sisters, the world does not need more molecules of anything. The world needs human hearts that have fallen into the hands of God and been transformed. That’s the miracle looking for a place to happen… Every. Single. Time.                                                                                      AMEN