God-Saturated

Grace Episcopal Church, Trinity Sunday, 27 May 2018

She Walks in Beauty, by Bette J. Kauffman

Picture this: Early morning light streams through the loblolly pines bordering a wide path inviting us into the forest. The tall, straight trunks of the trees channel and focus the light, such that the very rays of the sun become part of the landscape.

Ahead on the left, a small stand of long-leaf pines raises its white-candle growing tips to the sky. The long, graceful needles shimmer and glisten, touched by a light morning breeze.

Suddenly, a white-tailed deer pops up out of the thick brush on our left, and bounds across the path in front of us, all rimmed in early morning light.

Do you see it? Of course, you do!

My camera hung uselessly at my side, but at that moment, I raised it and made a picture anyway. I call it, “She Walks in Beauty,” and it is part of my Creation Considered project.

Today is Trinity Sunday. That means I have the completely impossible task of trying to made some kind of sense of our theology of the Trinity—God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, three in one, one in three. And words fail me!

Of course, exactly what I have on these sheets of paper in front of me are some 1300 words! But if I had my druthers, this sermon today would be a walk in the Kisatchie National Forest. Or around the lake at Camp Hardtner. Or at Black Bayou National Wildlife Refuge.

I can’t explain the Triune God to you. But I can share some thoughts about the God-saturated universe in which we live and move and have our being. I can tell a couple stories about encountering God in and through creation, as well as every human being.

So… another story: Last week Fr. Michael and I got to spend some time at a clergy retreat at Camp Hardtner. When I arrived and greeted the Bishop, he said to me, “We’re going to have a deep encounter with the Holy.”

Little Blue Dragonlet (Erythrodiplax minuscula), by Bette J. Kauffman

And we did. Among the tools we used to do that were silence.., yes, silence. A bunch of priests and deacons got together and didn’t speak to each other for about 10 hours!

We read scripture and reflected upon it, both individually and as a group, using a method called lectio (“lexio”) divina—a relatively easy 4-step process for getting our own wishful thinking out of the way and letting God speak to us through the Holy Word.

We used prayer, contemplative prayer—a favorite of our Bishop—audible prayer, sung and chanted prayer—indeed, the prayer our Lord taught us to say.

I was the only one who did it with a camera—and I am completely serious in saying this: I go out into Creation to encounter God. That I do it with a camera makes it no less prayer.

In the few hours I had to walk around Camp Hardtner with my camera, I encountered 5 species of dragonfly—the enameled jewels of the insect world. I caught one fleeting glimpse of the thread-like body of a damselfly.. before it darted off. I fluttered around the pale lavender blooms of narrowleaf mountainmint with a pipevine swallowtail butterfly.

I buried my face in the citrusy sweetness of a magnolia blossom the size of a dinner plate. I smiled back at the sunshine faces of Coreopsis, with their energetic jazz-hand petals.

Passion Flower (Passiflora incarnata), by Bette J. Kauffman

Did you know that passion flower vine, with its 3-lobed leaves and its equally trinitarian arrangement of stamens above purple ray flowers, grows profusely along the top edge of the dike that forms the lake? The Latin name is Passiflora incarnata—referring literally to God who loves the world enough to come and dwell among us, to live and move and participate in our being through the life-giving breath of the indwelling Holy Spirit, as we participate in God through kinship with the Risen Christ.

Brothers and sisters, we live in a God-saturated universe. Humankind has struggled over the centuries to put into words and images our understanding and recognition of the God we simply cannot fully wrap our human minds and human powers of expression around. The scientist who named that plant did better than most!

Here are some less successful attempts. You have seen a zillion pictures. It stands at the end of the Mall in our nation’s capital. It is 555 feet of gleaming marble—itself a marvel of Creation. It is capped with a 4-sided pyramid, which is topped by a 9-inch aluminum tip.

Do you know what is inscribed on the top of the Washington Monument? On the eastern face of the pyramid at the top, projecting a message toward Jerusalem, the rising sun, interstellar space… are the words Laus Deo, which translate “Praise be to God.”

I find it totally endearing that our ancestors did that! But it’s poor theology. It was their deist tendencies coming through. The deist notion is that God is out there somewhere. The Creator ignited the big bang, but then sits back at a remote, safe distance and watches us hapless mortals duke it out here on Earth.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Of course, God is out there. But God is in here, too (indicating self). God is in the person sitting next to you. God is in this church, but God is just as present outside the door and down the street as well.

Wrong Way, by Bette J. Kauffman

Did you know we have our own, homely little example of Washington Monument theology right here in Louisiana? Next time you drive to Alexandria, pay attention to the blond brick church on the west side of the highway going through Pollock. Notice: On top of the steeple, a hand points skyward.

Amusing! Endearing! But bad theology. You want to point at God, point at yourself, point at each other, point at the homeless, mentally ill guy standing on a street corner saying, “I’m Jesus…” because he’s right! He is! Jesus told us that in plain language! 

God comes to us disguised as our life. That was said by author Paula D’Arcy. I remind myself of that often, especially when circumstances or tragedy or senseless violence or… whatever, tempt me to believe that God has run off and left us to struggle alone.

God does leave stuff up to us. Sometimes I hear people say, “Why does God allow that…  awful thing—poverty, sickness, loneliness, violence—why does God allow that to happen?

The answer is not very comforting. God doesn’t. We do. WE are in charge of that. The Triune God would never be happy with being loved by mindless creatures who have no reason, no heart, no soul, no ability to get things done, no agency and no autonomy to choose to do what is right.

We are wonderfully made in the image and likeness of God, which means we have all those things. And God expects us to use them. God calls us to be co-creators of God’s Kingdom here on Earth, and endows us—ongoingly—with the life force to do it!

And now I really need to run out of words. So I leave you with two things: 1) We really MUST take better care of this planet. It is the dwelling place of God. God put us in charge and we are doing a pretty abysmal job of it! I have dozens of suggestions, but here’s one easy one: Swear off plastic straws. They are the bane of the Earth. They end up in the gills of fish and the gullets of birds. They KILL. And we dump billions of them into the environment on a daily basis.

2) We must take better care of the human family. We are all bearers of God within us. And the ones the Bible tells us over and over again must be our top priority in caring for the human family are poor folks and immigrants, for by so doing, some… have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it. That’s Hebrews 13:2.

Last word: if you ever want that “let’s go for a walk in Creation” sermon, it can be arranged. Probably not on a Sunday morning, but… I’m game. It can be arranged.

In the name of the Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, AMEN.

The Panic Zone

Grace Episcopal Church, Monroe, Good Shepherd Sunday, 22 April 2018

Jesus said, I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.

Some evening in the past 12 months, I don’t remember exactly when, I participated in a meeting of Northern & Central Louisiana Interfaith at Bethel Church of God in Christ.

We began the meeting as we often do with an opportunity to spend 20 minutes in conversation with a person whom we did not know. Anticipating this process, I had chosen to sit next to a woman I did not know. When the time came, we turned to each other, made introductions and began to chat.

Interfaith uses these short, one-on-one encounters to initiate relationships among people. They are often guided by a question, something like “What brought you here tonight?” or maybe “What do you hope to gain from being here tonight?”

I don’t remember the specific question we used that night. I do remember that part of our agenda was to talk about United Way’s analysis of financial hardship in Louisiana. That study was published under the acronym ALICE, which stands for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed.

Whatever the specific question, it did not take long for my conversation partner to get to the point. I call it “the panic zone,” she said.

It’s that moment, she explained, when you realize that this week the paycheck is not going to reach, that for a wide variety of reasons—ranging from a car repair to the growing kid having outgrown his sneakers to some family member’s medication—whatever—once again, for some rather mundane reason, income will not cover basic expenses. The electric bill or the water bill or the rent is due, and there isn’t enough money to go around.

United Way’s analysis says that across Louisiana, 723,077 working households — 42 percent of the state’s total — are living from paycheck to paycheck, unable to save, must spend every penny they earn to pay basic costs of living and still fall short with regularity. These families are one major car repair or medical bill away from poverty, perhaps homelessness, very likely the clutches of the payday lenders.

Jesus said, I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also.

A sheepfold is a shelter, a refuge. It is a place where there’s food and water to go around. A place where everyone lies down together to rest, secure in the care of the shepherd, who vigilantly guards the entrance to the sheepfold.

It’s a place where the grotesque disparities of our world are unthinkable.

Today is Good Shepherd Sunday, and I wonder what thoughts, feelings and images each of us associates with the Good Shepherd.

I subscribe to an online series called “Soulwork Toward Sunday.” As the title suggests, each edition of the series (published along about Wednesday) begins with the lections for the upcoming Sunday and offers thoughts, meditations, quotes from related literature that invite the reader to reflect on and engage the lessons at a deeper, indeed, a soul-searching way.

A chief architect of Soulwork Toward Sunday is Episcopal priest Suzanne Guthrie, and she began her reflections for today by stating this:

Good Shepherd Sunday promises sentimental loveliness and nostalgia but instead delivers overwhelming challenges.

I venture to guess that the symbolism of the Good Shepherd is pretty comforting and heart-warming to most of us most of the time. We might not want to be anyone else’s sheep, but we don’t mind being Jesus’ sheep!

And that is because Jesus as Good Shepherd is about love. The Good Shepherd is not good due to moral rectitude; he is Good because he loves—enough to lay down his life for the sheep.f

And the sheep in the Good Shepherd’s fold are not there because somehow they have measured up or have managed to get through life thus far without making dumb decisions or wandering into blind canyons. They did not earn their way into this place of love and plenty and security.

But Jesus said, I have other sheep… I must bring them also…

Notice that even as we find ourselves resting in the comfort and warmth of God’s love, Jesus the Good Shepherd is focused on the ones still out in the cold, the sheep out there in the panic zone, the ones who live the risky lives of choosing between medicine and food, rent and electricity, payday lenders and homelessness.

Please be reminded that today I am talking about working families, not welfare families, working families. In some cases the wage-earners in these families work multiple jobs trying to make ends meet.

And they do necessary work. They are the nursing assistants who take care of our elderly in nursing homes. They work in restaurants. Their labor makes it possible for you and me to dine out at an affordable price, to buy fresh produce they cannot afford in the grocery store. Literally, the working poor subsidize our relatively comfortable middle class lifestyles.

Brothers and sisters, I believe that the plight of the working poor in U.S. America today is nothing short of a scandal of massive proportions. In comparison, the moral failings of people in high places—the kind of scandal that rocks Washington D.C. on a regular basis—is, in my view, much less significant.

Don’t get me wrong, I do believe that our elected leaders ought to be paragons of virtue.., but I don’t enjoy privileges as a result of them behaving badly in their personal lives. I do enjoy privileges at the expense of the working poor.

I thoroughly appreciate our Epistle reading today:

We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us-- and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How does God's love abide in anyone who has the world's goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?

Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.

Great! Love that. Spoken like a true Deacon!

But I do not think charity is the answer to the plight of the working poor. I believe this can only be fixed with fundamental change, a fundamental overhaul of a system that is okay with producing vast disparities in quality of life, valuing some labor with salaries beyond what any person can possibly spend and valuing other labor not even enough to keep body and soul together, not even enough to feed a family and keep a roof over its head.

To me, those statistics generated by United Way, those 723,000+ families, they have faces and names—like Pat, the woman I met at Bethel Church of God in Christ, and her family.

I don’t have all the answers about how to overhaul the system, but I can tell you how NOT to do it. In the current legislative session, a bill to establish an extremely modest minimum wage in Louisiana died in committee. But just last week, a bill to fully fund TOPS, a program that is a huge boon to the middle class and up, passed in the House Appropriations Committee with flying colors—and by definition, given the state of Louisiana’s revenue stream, simultaneously threw the charity hospital system, higher education in general and families who care for elderly and disabled members under the bus.

That’s how to make it worse.

Here’s the bottom line: Jesus is THE Good Shepherd, capital G, capital S. But we who follow him, who bask in the warmth of his love and who shelter with him inside the sheepfold… we are the good shepherds, small g, small s. We must overcome our natural selfishness and focus—as he does—on those still out in the cold, still out there in the panic zone.

We have other sheep not yet in the fold. We must bring them also. That’s what following him means.

In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, AMEN.

Feast to Serve

Grace Episcopal Church, Maundy Thursday, 2018

In the spring of 1995, I encountered a Nigerian writer through the newsletter of the Paul Robeson Cultural Center at Penn State University where I was teaching at the time. Her name is Buchi (“Butchie”) Emecheta.

She made a statement that I copied out of that newsletter, and have used many times since. She said this:

In Nigeria, you are simply not allowed to commit suicide in peace because everyone is responsible for the other person… An individual’s life belongs to the community and not just to him or her.

In contrast, individualism permeates U.S. American culture. We are all about individual rights and individual responsibilities, personal style and personal freedom, property and territory. 

We are suspicious of people who have too strong a sense of community. We really don’t think it takes a village to raise a child. We are quite certain that any nuclear family worth its salt really ought to be able to do it on its own.

We love stories of people who pull themselves up by the bootstraps, and succeed against the odds. We love the idea so much we have turned the noun, “bootstrap,” into the verb, “bootstrapping.” Google it and you will find a veritable invasion of bootstrapping verbs into various fields, ranging from computer programming to physics to corporate finance.

But we are called by God to community. Very soon, Fr. Michael will consecrate bread and wine, and we will share, once again, our communal feast of Christ’s body and blood.

On this holy Maundy Thursday night, we celebrate that event depicted so beautifully in the carving over Grace’s altar: Jesus calls Eucharistic community into being by blessing and sharing bread and wine with his disciples in his last meal with them on this Earth.

But what do we think it means?

Preparing for this homily, I googled the phrase “Eucharistic community.” How many websites would you guess contain the phrase, “Eucharistic community”?

Google is very good at counting things, including how long a search took. So I can report to you tonight that it took exactly .41 seconds for Google to locate 37,700 results for the phrase “Eucharistic community.”

But I ask again, what do we think it means?

I glanced through the first few pages of results, and some of them were mission statements of Christian churches. They said things like this example from a church in Wisconsin:

“We are a diverse and inclusive Spirit-based Eucharist community committed to the message of unconditional love given us by Jesus and to our call to imitate and reflect that love in our lives..,” and so on.

Sounds good, right? But if so many of us believe this, and come together so often to participate in this radical act of community… And that is what I think the Eucharist is: a radical act of community.

And if so, and if there are so many believers, how is it that our world continues to suffer so terribly from lack of community? Right here in northeast Louisiana we are divided by race and ethnicity; by profession and status; by railroad tracks, highways and a river; by politics, by age group, by fear and distrust; indeed, by righteousness itself.

I invite us to consider this evening that perhaps it is because we focus on half of the story. In preparing this sermon, I also googled “foot-washing community.” And what do you suppose I found?

It took Google exactly .26 seconds to find….. (drumroll please) 53 results. 

Jesus initiated two things on this holy evening: Holy Eucharist and love-drenched service to humankind. And please note, he does not make one more important than the other.

To the contrary, according to St. John… during supper… Jesus…got up from the table…and began to wash the disciples’ feet.

Fr. Michael, help me. We serve Holy Eucharist here at Grace how many times a week? Twice most Sundays and twice on Wednesdays—at least when school is in session… that’s four times most weeks.

But we wash each other’s feet once a year.

How did Holy Eucharist become a sacrament and not foot washing? I would be hard pressed to pin that difference to anything in the Gospel message.

Of course, actually washing each other’s feet on Maundy Thursday is symbolic of all of our service to each other and the world. Jesus himself said, I do this as an example of what you are to do.

But given our perhaps disproportionate emphasis on enacting Holy Eucharist vs. enacting foot washing, do we fully understand and embrace the depth of the interconnection between feasting at the Holy Table and love-drenched service to each other and the world?

Holy Eucharist Rite II Prayer C begins to get at the point. It’s at the top of page 372 in the prayer book, if you want to see for yourself. (BTW, a good reason for everyone to come to a Grace School chapel on a Wednesday at 8 a.m. every so often is that we use Prayer C.)

Reading in the middle of the first paragraph on p. 372: Deliver us from the presumption of coming to this Table for solace only, and not for strength; for pardon only, and not for renewal.

We feast at the Table for strength and renewal to do the work as Christ’s body in the world.

But not even that fully expresses what happens in tonight’s Gospel story, so let’s go back there for a moment. It seems we can always count on Peter to model the hubris of humankind in a way that enables Jesus to teach us a profound lesson.

He says to Jesus, in what is really a kind of pride cloaked in humility: Lord.., you will never wash my feet.

And Jesus says to Peter: Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.

Please… and I know this has become a catch phrase on social media, but please… let that sink in for a moment.

Outside of love-drenched service, we have no share with Jesus.

I began this evening by quoting Buchi Emecheta on the radically communal nature of Nigerian culture. I want to go back to her now to say something about what we as a Eucharistic, foot-washing community face in our struggle to make community real in the world.

It is this: Emecheta understands the nature of the enemy. Nigerian society, like U.S. society, is divided into “haves” and “have-nots.” She herself is from the class of have-nots, and her books are about the yawning and seemingly insurmountable chasm between the haves and the have-nots. In her stories, poverty is the most divisive factor in society.

In short, Emecheta understands that poverty, in its many interconnections with race, culture, politics, even religion, is a wall, tall and thick, down the middle of the human community.

I suspect that much of the time some of us, and some of the time all of us, have a lot in common with the rich young man in that other Gospel story. We really want to negotiate with God about what the new commandment—love God and your neighbor as yourself—really means.

“Who’s my neighbor?” we ask. What do you mean, “love”? But I suspect the Nigerians have it about right: Everyone is responsible for everyone else. Our lives belong to God’s community.

In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, AMEN.