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

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

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

"the word was made flesh" by Chris Shreve

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

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

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

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

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

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

Babies are concrete. They anchor us in reality.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AMEN

Tents of God: A Sermon for 18 December 2011

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

A number of years ago—quite a number—my four living siblings and I gathered at the home of our parents in Kalona, IA. And not only the four of us, but our spouses and grown children, some of whom also had spouses and children of their own.

Needless to say, the modest parental home we had once shared would no longer hold us all. My late husband and I decided to camp in a nearby state park. We had one of those tents made of light-weight but extremely tough, rain-resistant fabrics that popped up in minutes with flexible, fiberglass poles and shock cords. We staked it down and were good to go.

Our second night in Iowa, we got classic Iowa summer weather. Of course, we heard the storm warnings, but it didn’t sound that bad. I’m not sure whether vanity or just plain stubbornness ruled the day, but… Oh, no, we said. Of course we’re going to sleep in our tent. We’ll be fine.

The wind blew and the rain came. That little tent with its flexible poles shook and bent in the wind. At times, it laid over so completely that the walls of the tent were right down on top of us. We were too scared to try to leave!

Past midnight, the wind laid down, we slept a bit, and morning came. That little tent had taken a beating. The fiberglass poles were limp from stress fractures, some of its seams were pulled a part, and some of the shock cords had torn loose from the fabric. It had gotten us through the night, but it was done for.

So… why… would God… prefer a tent… to a house?

Because that’s what happens in today’s Old Testament lesson (2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16, NRSV). There’s David, enjoying a respite from fighting for the security and safety of God’s people. And as king, he lives in a fine house.

As sometimes happens when humans have a little peace and quiet to think, David has an idea. It really is a fine idea. And I’m sure it came from David’s heart.

See now, David says to the prophet Nathan, I am living in a house of cedar, but the ark of God stays in a tent. Nathan gets the picture right away and supports the plan. Go, do, he says, for the LORD is with you.

But God immediately nips the scheme in the bud. ‘Who told you to build me a house?’ he asks David, through Nathan. ‘I’ve been traveling with my people in a tent since the day I brought you out of bondage,’ says God, ‘and have you heard me complain?’

We recognize rhetorical questions, questions that are posed for effect, not because they need answers. And we get the feeling that a bit of a scolding is going on here!

Then comes the clincher. ‘In fact, David,’ says God, ‘I brought you in out of the fields, I have traveled with you every step of the way, and I have protected you from your enemies. And one more thing, David. I'm not finished with you yet. I the Lord will make you a house, a house of people, generations of people, a kingdom of people who will be my people forever.’

Now we know, because we’ve read the next story, that David’s son Solomon got to build the temple. And we know that God cooperated. Indeed, God put on his architect’s hat and gave Solomon detailed instructions—not only for the temple itself, but all of the appointments that were to go in the temple and down to the vestments to be worn by the priests.

So I’m not suggesting that God dislikes temples or churches, won’t live in them and doesn’t want us to build them and make them beautiful. Far from it.

But on this occasion, the first occasion in the Biblical account that a human offers to build The One God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, a fine house to reside in, God says, ‘No, I’ll stick with the tent, thank you very much!’

So.. why would God.. prefer a tent to a fine house?

I think it not a coincidence that God turns right around and promises David a house of people, many generations of people. In fact, maybe tents and people have some characteristics in common that particularly appeal to God.

For starters, both tents and people shelter life. I am amazed by the photographs of mountain climbers camped on snow pack in what appear to be handkerchief-size tents that weigh ounces. But those tents are the difference between life and death.

Everest Base Camp, by Mathias Schar

                            
Tents and people are both resilient. Both can take quite a bit of being buffeted about by the winds of change and challenge in life.

But ultimately, both people and tents are mortal. Only God is immortal, and it is one of the great mysteries of faith that The Immortal One chooses mere mortals to love and live within and among.

Then there’s mobility. People and tents, and especially people with tents, can go most anywhere. And where the people of God go, they take the Kingdom of God with them.

You see, I think WE are the tents of God. God chooses us and dwells within us and goes with us. We call it Incarnation.

Yes, of course, God is here in this church as well, and in churches and synagogues and temples and mosques, grand and humble, around the world. But God is not here because of the beauty of the rose window or the fineness of the wood or the plush red carpet. God is here because we’re here.

So, why, when David wanted to build a fancy house for God, did God choose tents instead? Maybe because David needed a bit of a comeuppance for getting ahead of the plan.

Maybe because God was afraid David and the people would get confused, as humans so easily do, and think they could keep God in the house they had built for him, where he could be consulted as needed but otherwise ignored!

Or maybe for the same reason God chose a stable for the only Son of God to be born in. God seems to like showing up in places that seem least likely to humans.

Maybe because God needs arms and feet, mobile human tents to do the work of extending God’s kingdom here on this earth.

But my favorite “maybe” of all, isn’t a “maybe” at all. It’s the one I’m most certain of. God chooses to live in the human heart, imperfect and mortal tent that it is, because it is the only dwelling place… that can love God back.

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

The Last Speech: A Sermon for 27 November 2011

Christ Episcopal Church, St. Joseph, LA

                                                                
Every fall semester, I teach an advanced writing class at ULM. The first day of class I require students to complete a diagnostic writing exercise. I give them several topics to choose from and a time and word limit, and set them to work. One of the topics is “The Last Speech.”

For “The Last Speech,” they must imagine they have six months to live and write the farewell speech they would give in the waning days of their lives. Young people write some interesting things when presented with that particular challenge. I’ll share a few examples with you in a moment.

But first let’s turn to today’s lessons and the church calendar for how my students and their essays are relevant today.
                          

Detail, the Pontifical Irish College Chapel

                       
I might also have begun this sermon by saying “Happy New Year”! Today is, of course, the first Sunday of Advent, the first day of the church year. Today we begin again the familiar cycle: Advent; Christmas—all 12 days of it; Epiphany, followed by a short bit of “ordinary time”; then Lent—all 40 days of it, with Sundays being in, but not of, Lent.
 
Then comes the peak of the church’s year, the terrifying and glorious events of Holy Week and Easter. Forty days into Eastertide, our Lord ascends into heaven, and just 10 days later comes Pentecost—the birthday of the church, which again introduces the looong season of what we call ordinary time.

So “Happy New Year” it is, but… just what does Advent call our attention to? Christmas, the coming of our Lord in human form, for sure.

But why then the color purple? Wouldn’t the red of Christmas be more appropriate? Why then greenery on the altar, rather than festive poinsettias?

When we Christians here the words of the prophet Isaiah and the psalmist calling for the coming of God Almighty, we know the answer. God came!

But that answer is easy to forget, given the challenges of life. We too have mountains to climb. We cry out with Isaiah (64:1-9, NRSV), O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence…

Indeed, God seems to have forgotten us in the most difficult passages of life. Our strength is drained by the winds of change and the roller-coaster of life. And so we cry out with the psalmist (Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18, NRSV) , …stir up your strength and come to help us.

Advent focuses our attention on God’s answer to the human cry for God’s presence in the world. But at the same time, Advent reminds us that the ultimate answer, the final moment of reconciliation and end to human suffering is yet to come.

As Paul writes to the Corinthians (I Corinthians 1:3-9, NRSV), we wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will strengthen us so that we will make it to that great day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

But leave it to the always cautious if not downright gloomy Mark to remind us of the stresses and uncertainties of being between the babe in the manger and our Lord in triumph (13:24-37, NRSV): [A]bout that day or hour no one knows, writes Mark, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come. ...Therefore, keep awake-- for you do not know when the master…will come... And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.

Living in between is the nature of our lives. Living between Incarnation and Resurrection defines our days. And this in-between time is fraught with beginnings and endings and uncertainties about them.

A dear friend of mine buried his 90+-year-old father about a month and a half ago. Then two and a half weeks ago the wife of his best friend, who was also his friend and his own age—that being mid-50s—died a not so timely death after a battle with cancer. Then, most shocking of all, on the eve of Thanksgiving, just four days ago, his 33-year-old son-in-law also lost a valiant battle to that dread disease.

He said to me on the phone yesterday, I hope I am done with death for a while. I hope and pray he is, too. But we never know.

Earlier I promised to return to my students and their assignment. This year three young men took up the challenge of writing their last speech. Their approaches were quite different and each one instructive in its one way.

One imagines himself at the age of 46 with many regrets but determined to not waste his remaining time. No more passing up opportunities, he wrote, I’m embracing everything from here on out. And he imagines a trip to Australia, one that he didn’t take last year, but now he’s pricing some plane tickets for himself and the family.

Another of the three has clearly felt some real pain is his short years. He thanks his parents, reminds them that he had to wear the ill-fitting hand-me-down clothes of his older brother, their “golden child,” but also that they were also always there for him. And I love you, he says. After noting a couple of other great disappointments —one at the hands of his best friend, who stole his girlfriend their freshman year, and another in his country. But he ends with one word: Peace. He has come to terms.

The third young man lives his life in a wheelchair, and his last speech is a statement of courage and defiance. My disability does not define me. I define it, he wrote. That is what I want to talk to you about tonight. Doing the best with what you have and never looking back.

I will close with the words of Mary W. Anderson in an article published by Christian Century.

What if you knew you had only one month left in your life? she asks. Would you finish up important matters at work? Would you travel to a place you always wanted to go? Would you pray more, go to church more, do that generous act you always wanted to do for others? Would you find ways to leave a mark on the world? Would you reconcile a fractured friendship?

By answering yes to one or more of these possibilities, she continues, we indicate that in our last days we would be better stewards of all the things God has given us in this life... In the intensity of last days, we would live better, be better. We would be more generous, more focused on the most important things in life. The question is: Why do we need to be under threat of death to be better stewards?

In this Advent season, as we focus on the gift to come, let us also awaken to our stewardship of all that is in this uncertain in-between time of our life on earth. Come, Lord Jesus.                                                          

AMEN

Buried in Plain Sight: A Sermon for 24 July 2011

Christ Episcopal Church, St. Joseph, LA

This is my first time ever to worship with you here at Christ Church, St. Joseph. So I thought I might begin by sharing who I am by way of taking you on a “buried treasure” tour of my home.

Imagine a nice brick, 1-story home. We’ll enter through this doorway from the carport. Just a few steps inside and we’re standing in the kitchen. Right here, on the window sill over the sink is the first treasure I want to show you.

It’s a little brown rock, about the size of a meatball—you know, the kind you see in chafing dishes at parties and receptions. It’s a pretty ordinary looking rock, except… Look! It has a heart!

From My Window Sill

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, tilted 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.

On the window sill, right next to Rock with a Heart, is another smaller rock. This one I picked up on the bank of a stream. It is whitish gray in color, but what makes it treasure is that it has been polished to a lovely sheen by its rough and tumble existence at the hands of moving water.

If you’ll step into the living room, here on a shelf above the TV is a couple of inches of armadillo tail. Happily, it has been picked clean of tissue by the industrious insects that do the important clean-up work in our environment. So what we have left is the bony architecture of the armadillo tail in all its intricate, complex beauty. 

Armadillo Tail Architecture

What in the world about an armadillo’s life requires such an extraordinary tail structure? Or, might the armadillo tail be merely an exuberant, over-the-top expression of its Creator—here just for the glory of it?

We could continue. My house is strewn with treasures buried in plain sight. Among the rocks, bones and shells, you will also find human-made treasures, like a little pink satin-glass swan that I just picked up at an auction about a week ago.

But let’s turn, for a moment, to today’s Gospel lesson (Matthew 13:31-33,44-52; NRSV). Jesus has taken aside his closest disciples to teach them about finding the Kingdom of God. He does so with a series of parables. To be more precise, he does so with a pair of twin parables. Then he wraps up the lesson with one more parable that goes beyond finding and recognizing the Kingdom, to suggesting that the Kingdom is also actually looking for us.

The first set of twin parables compares the Kingdom of God to a tiny mustard seed that grows into a tree, and to a measure of yeast that leavens three measures of flour to make multiple loaves of bread. These parables tell us that the Kingdom is a living, growing thing.

They say that although the Kingdom can be found in the tiny and seemingly insignificant—a seed, a measure of yeast—it cannot be contained by such things. The Kingdom is dynamic; it has already burst its bounds, sent out its limbs, spread its life-giving influence. It is as ubiquitous as trees and birds that nest in them.

The second set of twin parables compares the Kingdom to a treasure found lying out in an apparently ordinary field, and a pearl, which we know is formed around a fragment of grit inside that ugliest of all shells, the oyster. In this part of Louisiana, we don’t have to go far to see lots of ordinary fields and ordinary broken oyster shells being used as landscaping material!

When was the last time you looked at all that ordinariness and saw the Kingdom of God lurking there, just waiting to be discovered?

I’m currently reading a book by Barbara Brown Taylor, an Episcopal priest who teaches at Columbia Theological Seminary. It’s called An Altar in the World.

Taylor’s point is that if we take incarnation seriously, if we open our eyes and hearts to the world we live in, if we live fully in the present, slow down, pay attention, leave the beaten paths of our everyday routine, strike out across that open field…. we will find evidence.. of God’s presence.. everywhere.

And not just in the physical environment. Taylor takes her seminary students in search of altars in Jewish synagogues and Islamic mosques, as well as Christian churches of all denominations. She writes also about getting lost in strange neighborhoods, other countries and other cultures as another way to stumble upon altars in the world.

In today’s parables from Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus teaches us that the kingdom of heaven is indeed "at hand." He speaks in vivid word pictures to illustrate that the Kingdom is indeed among us. Referring to the ordinary and familiar, he shows us that the Kingdom is here and now, waiting for us to seek and to find.

Better yet, God does not sit passively waiting for us. Surely the fisherman casting the net is the Lord of the Kingdom looking for us.

Moreover, we don’t need a “buried treasure” map to find the Kingdom of God. Not only is the Kingdom of God out in plain sight, but incarnation also means that we have already been given what we need to see it!

Another of my favorite spiritual teachers is a Franciscan monk by the name of Richard Rohr, who publishes a daily online meditation. He says that each of us has a homing device within, a homing device that seeks its Author and Creator. Think of it as the God-shaped opening in the side of your heart.

Or, think of it as the eyes of God within us, through which we see God in the world.., in the natural environment, in other people, both stranger and friend. The eyes of God within us enable us to see the Kingdom of God everywhere, at every turn.

So watch your step! Treasure is all around you, if you will but see it. Don’t trip over that little altar, right there next to your foot! The Kingdom of God is within you and among you.

Amen.

Already Here: A Sermon for 24 December 2010

One of the great pleasures of traveling in Europe, as I did in the summer of 2009, is visiting the many churches and cathedrals built in the gothic style. Walking through those spaces created by high pointed arches and soaring, intricately ribbed vaults is a lesson in human creativity and skill put to the task of reaching for God.

Of course, we too reach for God in the design of our own churches, with naves several stories high, like this one here at St. Alban’s, and steeples that reach toward the heavens.

Those of you who have traveled to Alexandria with any regularity probably know the church along Highway 165 in Pollock that has a steeple topped by a hand with finger extended, pointing skyward. Perhaps the builders simply gave up on reaching—and settled for pointing at—God.

Amusing, but kind of sad when you think about it. How could those builders have been through so many Christmases and not know that God is already here?

One of my favorite photographs from my trip to Europe was taken in St. Sebald’s Lutheran Church in Nuremberg, Germany. This church is particularly interesting because it was heavily damaged by Allied bombing near the end of World War II, then meticulously restored to its medieval grandeur and re-dedicated as a monument to peace.

High on one of St. Sebald’s majestic columns I spied a small retablo painting of the Holy Family. I took a picture of it, with pointed arches and tall, slender stained glass windows receding into the background.

I like to put titles or captions on some of my photographs, and so at home, weeks after returning from Europe, I struggled to come up with words to go with that particular picture. Everything about that church—the columns and arches, the artworks and crucifixes, the soaring spaces—had spoken to me of human striving to reach God.

And not just St. Sebald’s but Canterbury Cathedral and all of the magnificent churches I visited had spoken to me of the human desire for God, and of our constant striving for God.. and to build a space big enough and grand enough that God might come to dwell therein.

You Were Already Here                                                  B.J. Kauffman, 2009

And finally I wrote beneath the picture, “You were already here.”

As in, “You—God—were already here,” long before this church, and every other church, not only in Europe but also in the United States of America and around the world.

You—God—were—and are—already here. Before human desiring and before human striving to reach you and to draw you to us, you—God—were and are already here.

In a burning bush in the wilderness eons ago, you were already here. In the utter silence at the mouth of Elijah’s cave, you were already here.

Before the sea was contained and earth formed. Before animals and plants and humankind, before light and dark—you, God—Father, Son and Holy Ghost—were already here.

Why then Christmas? Why a virgin mother, a chaste father, an inn already full? Why a babe in a manger, heralded by angels and worshiped by shepherds? If God was already here, then why Incarnation at all?

Perhaps the answer that springs first to your mind is the one provided by John in chapter 3 verse 16, perhaps the most memorized Bible verse of all time: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.”

And that’s a good answer. But… perhaps its very familiarity works against it. Perhaps the ease with which it rolls from our tongue limits its impact, for knowing it and saying it is no substitute for Christmas!

Or, maybe in answer to the question, why Christmas? your mind goes immediately to Easter and the holy mystery of God’s plan for our Salvation. Perhaps you ponder and seek to comprehend the uniquely Christian theology of God come to earth for the specific purpose of dying on a cross in order to redeem and reconcile the world.

And that too is a good answer. But… that takes us past the manger and back into the bleakness of human need for redemption with scarcely a pause! Moreover, all the theological explanations in the world, and all the time we might spend studying and seeking to comprehend them.. are also.. no substitute for Christmas.

We need Christmas. We need this annual pilgrimage to kneel in awe at the manger, and to gaze in open-mouthed wonder at God—who was indeed already here—but now come to us—NOT “in human form” as I’ve heard many a preacher say—but fully human—one of us in every way.

We need Christmas to make real for us, to help us to recognize and embrace and experience, the God who was already here. That’s why we humans spend weeks in excited anticipation and preparation, year after year… for an event that has already taken place!

You are familiar with the concept of the “reality check.” You are accustomed to hearing it as an admonition to stay in touch with the grittier and more difficult aspects of life. When someone seems to be viewing the world through rose-colored glasses, we say, “He, or she, needs a reality check.” Or, I might mention that my very own beloved son got a reality check in the form of his fall semester grades!

Tonight, this holy night, consider the possibility that, as usual, we have it backwards. Entertain the possibility, if you will, that Christmas is the ultimate reality check.

As we kneel at this manger gazing at the infant who is the perfect expression of God already here, yet come to dwell among us and within us, may we experience this as the true and lasting reality.

I do not mean to make light of the grittier and more challenging aspects of life on earth in the 21st Century: the losses we have suffered; our estrangements at times from family, friends, each other; our economic woes. This world too is real. But it is a secondary reality. It is temporary, passing away as we speak.

In the quietness of this night, may we pause from our hustle and bustle, may we let go of our hurts and failures, may we be still enough to hear the voice that spoke the universe into being: “I am already here. Yet tonight I come.”

Amen.

Practice Resurrection: A sermon for Easter, 2010

Just three months ago, we gazed in awe at God come to earth some 2000 years ago in the form of a babe in a manger. The Incarnation isn’t a stretch for Christians. We’ve believed that for a very long time. Not quite 2000 years, but getting there.

A bit more of a stretch was considering the possibility that incarnation happens on a daily basis. That God has been in the business of coming to earth for a very long time, and comes again, every time people of God rise up and go out to do God’s work in the world.

Today, we consider a similar thing: Resurrection did indeed happen some 2000 years ago, in a burial garden near a place of death in the ancient Middle East. Again, believing that is not much of a stretch for Christians. We are pretty comfortable with understanding our faith in historical terms.

The challenge is to know our faith as a living thing. It is to get over the notion that Christianity is about a promise of future glory… based on events that happened centuries ago. It is to see that the Kingdom of God permeates “now” and that we along with Christ our brother are it. The challenge is to live our faith, rather than to merely believe in it.

Like incarnation, resurrection happens on a daily basis. God has also been in the business of breathing new life into mere mortals throughout human history. Indeed, it would be fair to say that human history is a history of God breathing life into mortal flesh, from Adam forward.

Look at the disciples in the Gospel accounts of the hours after Jesus died on the cross! They aren’t physically dead, but they just about as well be. The eleven and others huddle together behind locked doors. Some have scattered, heading home to Emmaus and, no doubt, other communities surrounding Jerusalem to try to disappear into the woodwork.

They are a classic example of troops in full retreat after the death of their leader. Clearly, they had understood little of what Jesus had told them. It was over.

The women go to the tomb to do the last thing they can do for their Master: Prepare his body for eternal death. When they come back with the story of the empty tomb, the reaction of the disciples is disbelief. They thought it “an idle tale.”

Then comes this comical Keystone Cops routine of men running to the tomb. First they run together. Then one surges ahead, but loses heart at the last moment and stops at the entrance. He who lags behind rushes in with last-minute bravado.

But, John says, the empty tomb is not enough. At least one of the disciples “saw and believed,” John says, but “as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.” I imagine them shaking their heads as they walk away.

What an odd contradiction. They saw but did not understand. They believed but headed back to the safety and security and comfort of home.

It is only later on, when Jesus appears in their midst and breathes on them, that they are resurrected.

And, as we are fond of saying, the rest is history! That little band of folks—eleven and a handful of others, we know not exactly how many—goes out and changes the world. Forever.

Resurrected people do amazing things.

Nora Gallagher is a journalist who has also written several books about her own spiritual journey. One of them is called Practicing Resurrection. It is an account of how the loss of a beloved brother throws her life into a tailspin, and of her return from walking straight down a wrong vocational path, dragging a failing marriage.

Gallagher’s struggle back requires her to re-examine everything: her call, her work, her marriage. It leads her finally to an exploration of nothing less than life after death. She concludes that “experiences of resurrection" really aren't about "believing six impossible things before breakfast.” Rather, she proposes, “Maybe resurrection, like everything else, needs to be practiced.”

We have all been there, in some way or another. Human existence is a process of marching resolutely into dead ends and struggling to find a way back out again.

We don’t have to be “control freaks” to long for some control, some ability to maintain our balance as we face big challenges and small ones of daily life. But we have so very little. Fr. Richard Rohr defines human suffering precisely in these terms. “When are humans suffering?” he asks. “When they have no control.”

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.

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

Evil abounds. We aren’t in control, and much of the time it looks like God isn’t either.

But God chose to 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 through the words of hymns, sermons, meditation guides, and so forth. But it is wrong-headed. It makes this glorious gift of life in the midst of this glorious creation something to merely “get through” for whatever period of time.

We cannot control all of our circumstances or other people. We can choose how we respond. And we can choose, not merely to believe and huddle together in the safety and security of church, but to live our faith in the world.

Fr. Richard says to follow Christ, we must practice dying. The thing that must die is our own beloved ego, because it is human ego that leads us to destroy others in myriad ways, in order to preserve our own illusions, pretenses and sense of control.

And if we practice dying, if we let go of our prideful clinging to being right, being in control, being safe and secure… If we can empty ourselves of all the false selves the world presses upon us, then we can hear God speak our name, as Mary did in the garden.

Like Mary in the garden, and like Mary the mother of the babe in the manger, we will be filled with new life. We will rise up from the ashes of our hurts and losses and failures. We will run to tell the world, “I have seen the Lord!” We will practice resurrection.

AMEN.

Feasting: A sermon for January 10, 2010

Christmas, Epiphany, the Baptism of our Lord. What an extraordinary sequence of events. It’s like eating not one, but three rich desserts, one right after the other.

And just as our taste buds and digestive systems have a little trouble handling so much richness all at once, so our hearts and minds struggle to remain receptive, attentive and comprehending of this series of feasts in the church year.

We’ll be back in what we call “ordinary time” for the next five Sundays. But today, we have the undeniably delicious but daunting task—not only of celebrating the baptism of our Lord—but also sort of tying up loose ends by looking at the relationships among these events.

Christmas we also know as The Incarnation: God’s gracious decision to become human and live among us. We celebrate the baby Jesus in the manger.

Epiphany we might also call “the showing forth.” The wise men have made it to the manger. They who came from afar to worship are stand-ins for all the peoples of the world. God’s showing forth in the person of Jesus is recognized by humankind.

And now, rather suddenly, Jesus the grown man is being baptized. Of course, we love the story of Jesus baptized, because we too are baptized. It’s another thing we share with him and another way we follow him.

Barbara Crafton is an Episcopal priest who writes an online meditation. She connects these three feasts in a particularly valuable emphasis. “This is what the Incarnation means,” she writes. “Even the most secular of our moments is soaked with holiness. Every last moment of our moments. There's no getting away from it -- God is with us.”

What an interesting emphasis! We so often think of God as elusive. We often plead and even beg for God to be with us. But the Incarnation is irrevocable. God is here, plain and simple, in every moment of our moments, regardless of how remote God seems to us at times.

Crafton continues: “And here is what the Epiphany means: Anyone who wishes to see this can see it. Absolutely anyone. God is not hiding from us, nor is God closed to any of us. We can all walk a path that will reveal the divine presence to us. For most of us, this happens gradually throughout a life.”

In other words, God is here for everyone. The three wise kings are truly stand-ins. Their path to the divine presence was to follow a star over some great distance, we know not how far.

Our paths to the divine presence among us are as varied as we are. For each of us, it is the people, the events, the opportunities and obstacles of everyday life. When we walk those paths faithfully, we will come to see God in all of those places, moments and situations of our lives.

We all have moments of great clarity, when we see or comprehend something in a particularly fresh, compelling or unmistakable way. And it is no surprise or mystery that we call such moments “epiphanies.”

But I think Crafton is correct when she says that, by and large, our awareness of and ability to see God in the every day, more typically happens gradually throughout a lifetime. Indeed, I often am able to see God’s presence in my life, and more importantly to discern between things from God and my own willfulness and imagination, only in retrospect.

“And here is what the Baptism of Christ means,” says Barbara Crafton. “[It means] the inmost heart and utter wisdom of God is participant in our process of beginning to learn. The very same stumbling journey we make, a journey in which most of the learning that takes place happens through the challenge of learning from our mistakes, is undertaken by the Son of God...”

In other words, Crafton invites us to think of baptism—both our Lord’s and our own—as the beginning of a process of discovery and learning and living into our identities and ministries as people of God.

One aspect of Luke’s account of the baptism of our Lord merits special consideration but often does not get mentioned. Notice how Luke emphasizes that Jesus was baptized as one of many.

“Now when all the people were baptized,” says Luke, “and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying…” (NRSV: Luke 3:21) then the Holy Spirit descends in the form of a dove.

When all the people were baptized… and Jesus also, only then is Jesus revealed as the Son, the Beloved.

Two points I would make of this. The first is that Jesus’ baptism is a continuation of the “showing forth,” the revealing of God among us, that began at the manger to the angels and shepherds, and was made available to everyone with the epiphany of the wise men from afar.

And so our baptism is a showing forth, "the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace" (BCP, p 857*). It proclaims that God is among us and within us. Think of it: your baptism, my baptism, each and every baptism... a mini-Epiphany.

The second point is this: God showing forth among us and within us in the form of baptism is never earned, and it is never ours alone. Baptism is a communal event. It is a communal gift and a communal responsibility.

Now, we can all hear the words “community” and “communal” and be quite comfortable. We might even get warm fuzzes from hearing those words, for “community” like “family” is a good, solid middle class value.

But I venture to suggest that we are comfortable with these terms because we have in mind a pretty small and relatively homogeneous community—a good, solid middle class community a lot like the one in hundreds of Episcopal churches across the country on a given Sunday morning.

But that is not what God has in mind. God claims all. God’s vision as revealed to us through, for example, today's lesson from Isaiah, blows my limited human imagination of the scope and richness of God’s people right out of the water.

Each time I walk mentally through this sequence of events—God become human in the Incarnation, God revealed to absolutely anyone who elects to see in the Epiphany, God entering into human community and the process of human spiritual growth and learning through the baptism of our Lord—every time I walk through these events, then go back to Isaiah and read again the magnificent scope of God’s claim of that human community, I am stunned into silence.

Read it with me again:
"Do not fear, for I am with you;
I will bring your offspring from the east,
and from the west I will gather you;
I will say to the north, ‘Give them up’,
and to the south, ‘Do not withhold;
bring my sons from far away
and my daughters from the end of the earth—
everyone who is called by my name,
whom I created for my glory,
whom I formed and made.'" (NRSV: Isaiah 43:5-7)

It’s an epiphany. A moment of clarity in which I grasp the utterly vast sweep of God's view of human community. And then it's gone. I can only hold on to it for a moment, then my human brain gets stuck in the details of our human differences and hostilities and simple disagreements. And the struggle to comprehend God's vision and desire for humankind begins again.

So be it. Amen.

Epilogue: Recently I came to the same place this homily ends by a drastically different route. I visited Edward Steichen's "Family of Man" exhibit in Clervaux, Luxembourg. See Who are we in relationship to each other? on my main blog, Coming to Terms.