Already Here

Grace Episcopal Church, Monroe, La., 19 August 2018

What can possibly be left to say about bread? 

I mean, three weeks ago, I preached about how Jesus fed 5,000 people with two loaves by transforming the hearts of people. And we have been talking about bread ever since.

You might recall that two weeks ago, Mthr Petrula helped us see that Jesus’ miracle was not just about physical bread for physical bodies, but also about spiritual bread for our spiritual lives. 

Last week, the Bishop urged us to not get so bogged down in the mundane that we miss the mystery of God incarnate in ordinary things—like a morsel of bread. 

If I might be so bold as to put myself in the company of such excellent preachers.., three fine sermons on the meaning of bread.

And yet here I am, tasked with preaching about bread! I console myself with this thought: I’m preaching about bread yet again for a very good reason. And that’s because Jesus did a miraculous thing.., and then apparently spent days and multiple encounters explaining it, and making the connection—and the distinction—between bread for the belly and the bread of life.

Notice also the language in today’s Gospel. It is the most extreme yet! “Eat my flesh and drink my blood and if you don’t, you have no life in you. My flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats me will live…."

Is it any wonder the early Christians were accused of cannibalism? More to the point, why is Jesus so adamant about this? Why does he use such… visceral language to talk about something that surely is not to be taken literally?!

So here’s what I think is going on in this extraordinary passage: Jesus is teaching incarnation. Jesus is trying to tell us that the world we experience as so separate from God isn’t at all. Jesus is trying to tell us that the life we experience as so mundane and... profane isn’t at all.  
 

Here’s what I think can be said yet again about bread. And wine. And everything else. Jesus is in it. Always has been, always will be. Just take a bight. He’s here. He’s all around. He’s already as much “in you” as the last meal you ate. That’s incarnation.

A few years ago—in 2009, to be exact—I spent a couple weeks traveling in Europe. One of the places I went was Nuremberg, Germany, the attraction there being the rise to power of Hitler and the Nazi Party at events in Nuremberg. I spent a day there at a most amazing museum trying to absorb not only the horrors of the Holocaust and World Wart II, but also the unflinching, exhausting and redemptive efforts of Germans to come to terms with that ugly, evil chapter of their history.

By  my analysis, the Germans learned a very valuable lesson from that experience, namely that the only way to deal with the sins of the parents is to face them honestly, know them fully, claim them publicly and teach all of it to the next generation. I’m sure there’s a sermon in there somewhere!

But for the moment, I turn to St. Sebald’s, an awesomely beautiful church in the heart of Nuremberg. St. Sebald’s was bombed nearly into oblivion by the Allies near the end of World War II. It has been partially restored, but evidence of the devastation of the bombs was retained and built into the structure as an ongoing reminder and teacher of the lessons of the past.

Wandering through St. Sebald’s, absorbing beauty, reading placards explaining the past, making photos with my iPhone…, I came to a stop at a corner where the transept met the nave. Looking up at the majestically arching columns and ceiling vaults, I saw a painting hanging on one of the columns rather high over my head.

It was one of those paintings common in European churches: A nativity triptych featuring the Holy Family in the middle, the Magi on one side panel and the shepherds on the other.

How odd, I thought. What is that painting doing up there? It’s almost as if it’s not meant for human eyes!

And as I stood there gazing up, I was struck by the pleading quality of all of it: the architecture, the painting, as if to say “Here God, we’ve built this space for you, and every inch of it reaches for you, yearns for you. We’ve even hung a picture here to show you this is your home. Please, please come and be with us!”

Already Here, by Bette J. Kauffman

 

Much later, at home, I’m on my computer looking at my photos from the trip. And as I go through them, I pause at the picture of that painting high on a column and re-live that moment at St. Sebald’s. This time, the words that come to mind are these: “But you were already here.” You, God, were already here. Before the war, through the bombing, in the very stones and glass… you, God, were already here. 

Do you know where I got that? Do you know who first said something like that?

Let me remind you. The story is in Genesis Chapter 28. Jacob is on the road. He stops for the night, uses a stone for a pillow, and dreams of angels ascending and descending on a ladder reaching from earth to heaven. And God comes to him and makes him promises, the last of which is the most important: “Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go…”

Then comes Genesis 28:16: Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, ‘Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!’ 

And Jacob builds an altar, anoints it, names the place BethEL, eats bread, and goes on his way.

Jacob, the ancestor of Jesus, was discovering incarnation! And Jesus, in the radical language of today’s Gospel, is making himself part and parcel of it. Here’s how Richard Rohr, Franciscan priest and author, explains it: 

What was personified in the body of Jesus was a manifestation of this one universal truth: Matter is, and has always been, the hiding place for Spirit, forever offering itself to be discovered anew. 

I have since had many of what I have come to call “You, God, are already here” moments. It’s like the Bishop said last week: I can only hold on to the acute awareness of God’s presence in and around me for about a nanosecond.

Then it’s gone. Then I have to discover it anew.

Why is that? Why is it so hard for humans to hold on to the knowledge that God lives in and among us?

I think there’s a couple reasons. One is that acute awareness of the presence of God overwhelms our senses. It’s like the psalmist says, more than once: Your precepts are too wonderful for me. The knowledge of you is more than my mind can bear.

Another is that we’re kind of not always sure we want that level of intimacy with God! I mean, we put some pretty awful stuff in our mouths! And some pretty awful stuff comes out of our mouths!

Intimacy with God should be kneeling in a church receiving the Eucharist, not stuffing myself with beer and boudin and bad-mouthing my neighbor, right?

We want God to be in places WE find godly. We really don’t want God to be in that which we find ugly or simply mundane. We especially don’t want God to be in people who hurt us, or who don’t think and behave the way we think they should.

Fortunately, we don’t get to choose. God is already here, within and among us. Or, as a meme I found and shared on Facebook last week says, “God loves everyone whether you like it or not.”

Our choice in the matter of incarnation is to ignore, deny, cover up and try to build a wall separating ourselves from God within and around us and in our neighbors. Or we can seek God in ourselves and each other and all of Creation, and thereby, slowly, over time, become what we receive.

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

 

A God Thing

Grace Epsicopal Church, Monroe, La.

A few weeks ago, I introduced you to Eric Law, an Episcopal priest and author of several books, including “Holy Currencies: 6 Blessings for Sustainable Missional Ministries.” A few years ago, Fr. Law was the keynote speaker and workshop leader for the triennial assembly of the Association for Episcopal Deacons, which I attended.

To kick off his workshop, Law had the assembled deacons—as I recall, approximately a hundred of us—play a silly little game that ended up making a big point. We were handed bookmarks printed with the Holy Currencies logo. 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.. is the winner. 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.

There was a moment in Eric Law’s silly little game when I was flooded with two thoughts: 1) The enormity of what Jesus asks of us, namely that we be ready to give it all away—to sell all we have and give to the poor; 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. 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 fish such that 5 loaves 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 God 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, or the refugee crisis? For that matter, why must children on the south side of Monroe play in dirty, trash-littered streets among burned out and boarded up houses?

The answer is pretty clear: Our God chooses to work through humans—US—in all of our misbegotten glory. We are beautifully and wondrously made…, and yet fearful. We see scarcity instead of God's abundance. We are insecure; we worry. And, yes, sometimes we are judgmental, afraid of helping the "wrong person," someone we deem unworthy of our help.

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?

We could use our prayers to direct God to where a miracle is needed, then wait for God to fix whatever needs fixing: the violent Middle East, the children collecting on our southern border fleeing violence and starvation in their own countries, the  gap between the rich and the poor in the U.S. economy, sick people who have neither money nor medical insurance.

But that's not how God works. 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 health care or relative freedom from violence, the problem is not shortage, it’s maldistribution: some have and protect, others don’t and suffer.

Here’s a story that was told to me by a woman who volunteers at the Shepherd’s Center, a joint outreach ministry of the churches in St. Joseph, La. The Shepherd’s Center is a store that offers used clothing, household goods and so forth at very low prices—nickels, quarters, dollars—to the many residents of St. Joseph who live in poverty.

One evening two volunteers had just closed shop after a long day, but just as they were about to slip out the back door and home to their families, they heard a knock on the front door. One of the volunteers said to the other, “You go on. I’ll go tell them we’re closed for the day and to come back tomorrow.”

The other volunteer said, “Oh, no, you go ahead. I’ll go find out what they want.” So she did, and at the front door she found a woman standing there wearing the most tattered, broken down, worn out shoes she had ever seen.

The woman explained that she had no other shoes; this was her only footwear and they were so worn she could barely keep them on her feet. Could the Shepherd Center help her?

The volunteer said, “I’m sure we have something here that will fit you,” and the search commenced. Some time later, the volunteer had gone through all of the shoes on display in the store, and then had gone back to the staging area and was in the process of going through boxes of donated stuff that had not yet been unpacked… but had come up empty-handed.

By this time the woman who needed shoes was apologizing and saying, “Don’t worry about it. I’ll be okay.” But the volunteer looked around and spied one more box in the corner that had not yet been searched. “Hold on,” she said. “Let me check that one.”

She grabbed the box and dumped its contents onto the floor, and lo and behold, out tumbled a brand new pair of sneakers. And they fit!

In telling me this story, the volunteer concluded, “It was a God thing.” And I agree. It was a God thing.

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

And so she set aside her own tiredness, family time and convenience, and persisted.

She did not need to know if the other woman was deserving or not, had no money 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. 

 In the name of God, father, son and holy spirit, AMEN.

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Rock with a Heart

Grace Episcopal Church, Monroe, La.

My house is full of treasure. NOT the kind of treasure any treasure hunter worth his or her salt would want! But treasure, nonetheless.

For example, on the window sill in my bedroom is a reddish, grayish rock from Georgia O’Keefe’s Ghost Ranch in New Mexico. That rock was lugged all the way home to me by Joe and Cathi Roberts… just because I asked for it when I learned they were going there a few years ago. A treasure for sure.

Another treasure in my house is a section of armadillo tail from a road kill, picked clean by an army of ants and other tiny critters… such that the extraordinary underlying boney architecture is fully revealed. What in the world is up with that?! Treasure!

I picked up one of my treasures and brought it with me this morning. I know it is too small for you to see, but I’ll have it in my pocket at the back of the church should you want a close look. 

 

It’s a small, lumpy, rather modest looking little rock.. about the size of a meatball. What makes this rock treasure—as if being small, brown and lumpy weren’t enough… What makes this rock treasure is that it has a heart-shaped hole in the side. It’s a rock with a heart*. 

This little treasure has appeared in more than one sermon over the years. And that is because I have come to see it as an apt metaphor for the relationship between we humans and God.

We too are small—in comparison to God. We’re kind of lumpy, each having our own annoying bad habits and character flaws that irritate the dickens out of our family and friends. And we can be pretty hard hearted! Or, as God was inclined to say throughout the Hebrew Scriptures whenever the Israelites got on his last nerve: You are a stiff-necked people!

We are. But not because we are evil, or a mistake of creation, or—as my late husband used to say—a “waste of skin.” Far from it. God made us and we are good.

But we are also often painfully aware of our smallness and ultimate powerlessness. We cannot stop bad things from happening, and we know it. We are wounded by the inevitable challenges and suffering of human life. We are hurt by others who betray our friendship, who hurt us with their words that seem to deny our point of view or what we hold dear. And we harden our hearts.

But like this rock, we have a God-shaped hole in the side of our tiny, frightened, lumpy human hearts. Nothing can fill that hole except God… because God put it there with great love and tenderness as a homing device, to help us remember to whom we belong.

Oh, we do try to fill it with other things! Possessions. Money. That ideal job, the perfect spouse—who always turns out to be not quite perfect, just like us. A magnificent house, a political party or ideology, loyalty to our nation, even our beautiful church building or our liturgy—all of these can become idolatries, which is to say things we try to use to make life meaningful, satisfying, less frightening, more predictable, safe and secure.

And none of them will ever work for very long. Because the hole in our heart is God-shaped and can never be filled with anything other than God.

Emily Dickinson is one of my favorite poets--a woman of few but perfectly chosen words. Here’s her poem titled “To Fill a Gap”:

To fill a Gap
Insert the Thing that caused it—
Block it up
With Other—and 'twill yawn the more—
You cannot solder an Abyss
With Air.

Human life separate from God is an abyss, and no matter how hard and fast we seek to stuff that abyss with all those things other than God, the more hollow and empty we will be. And I do believe idolatry—putting nation or political party or social status or financial security—at the center of our lives and priorities and aspirations is The Major Sickness of our society today. It is surely a large part of the hurtful divisions that afflict us.., the difficulty we have finding common ground with those with whom we disagree.

Estranged from God, we are sheep without a shepherd. That’s why we are driven to seek God. That’s why the people in today’s Gospel story hounded Jesus, chased after him such that he couldn’t even stop and enjoy a mean. They literally ran around the Sea to meet his boat on the other side.

And he had compassion on them. We—the people within the fold of the Episcopal Branch of God’s Church—WE are among the truly blessed because we know that in searching for and seeking God, we will find unconditional love and mercy and forgiveness.

Not everyone knows that! Not even all Christians know that! Some branches of the Christian faith teach a God of wrath, a judgmental God who is just waiting for us to do something wrong in order to smite us.

A few years ago when we consecrated Jake Owensby to be the 4^th Bishop of Western Louisiana, I had the exquisite privilege of serving Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori as her chaplain for the several days she was in Louisiana. Imagine that! Hanging out with the PB for two and a half days!

And she told me this story: She was walking through an airport one day, making a short connection between flights on one of the many trips a presiding bishop must make around the country. And a man, a complete stranger to her, came alongside as she was walking and asked if she was a “pastor.”

She said, “yes,” but explained that she really had to keep walking or she would miss her flight. So the man walked alongside her and she did pastoral counseling as they strode through the airport.

The man’s problem was that he had cheated on his wife. And he wanted to know, “Will God ever forgive me?”

I didn’t ask Bishop Katherine what she said to him. It would not have been appropriate to ask. But I think I know.

I’m pretty sure she said something along the lines of this: “God has already forgiven you. Our God of compassion is waiting with open arms for you to turn and accept.. love, mercy and forgiveness.

Your wife, on the other hand, might need some persuasion.” Or words to that effect!

The whole point of Jesus’ life and death is to teach us compassion, and not just for our own families, friends, neighbors who look and think like us. That’s the easy part. That’s practice for the hard stuff.

 

We followers of Jesus are called specifically to love our enemies and pray for those who hurt us. We are called to welcome the stranger, to treat those from other lands as if they are one of us, to care for the poor, the sick, and the prisoner.

We have a God-shaped hole in the side of our heart that compels us to seek the compassion and healing love of God for ourselves. But then a mysterious and wonderful thing happens. When we allow God to fill that hole, our hard little hearts soften, expand, open up.. to people of all sorts and Creation—all of it.

Jesus said, “Love one another as I have loved you.” And then he added, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses …to the ends of the earth.”

Imagine that: Love to the ends of the earth! Love from our God-filled hearts to the world. So be it. Come Lord Jesus.

AMEN

(The video above is from the website of Doctors without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres, a charity I support as often as I can. It needs no translation so far as I can tell.)

*My book of sermons published in 2016 is titled "A Rock with a Heart: Finding Heaven on Earth." I have copies available for $20, of which $3 goes to my ministry fund.

Lifeline

Grace Episcopal Church, Monroe, La.

I don’t turn on the television much at my house. In fact, I do it so rarely that it usually has to spend up to 30 minutes cycling through the universe of channels to re-establish connection to the ones I can watch if I want to!

But for a time not so long ago, a teenager lived with me, and that was a whole different story. The television was on ALL THE TIME. I’m sure many of you share that parental experience!

The consequence is that I have fragments of dozens of television shows cluttering up my brain! In many cases, I know very little about the show they came from because I rarely sat down and watched television. Rather, I gathered the fragments moving about the house doing my own thing while my son watched.

The fragment that is coming in handy this morning has to do with “lifelines.” My recollection is that there was a game show where people answered questions to win prizes, and they were allowed a couple of “lifelines,” that is people they could call when they needed help.*

And I think that is a great concept for approaching today’s Gospel stories. The leader of the synagogue named Jairus and the woman suffering from hemorrhage needed lifelines.

Clearly, Jairus was desperate. His daughter was near death. He hunts down Jesus, who has just crossed the Sea of Galilee, and falls at his feet begging for healing for his daughter. Parents of children everywhere surely can identify.

Jesus turns to go with him, but is interrupted by a woman who is at the end of her rope dealing with chronic illness. She had “endured much,” had “spent all she had,” yet grew worse. I can hear her exhaustion and desperation in those few but eloquent words.

The author of Mark does not say this, but artists throughout the centuries have depicted her on her knees, crouched on the floor, reaching with her last ounce of strength to touch—not Jesus himself—but merely his cloak, believing fervently that doing so will make her well.

Jairus and the woman need a lifeline.., and they do whatever it takes to find Jesus and put themselves in his hands.

I am always struck by the imagery used to describe what happens when the woman with hemorrhage touches Jesus’ cloak.

Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my clothes?”

Now, electricity as we know it—a stream of colliding molecules—was unknown in the time of Jesus. But that is always what I think of when I read this story. “Current,” we call it, and it powers our world.

And, of course, it is not a coincidence that we use a related term­—“currency”—for money, that other powerful mover of our world. OR that we speak of water moving between the banks of a river as “current.”

And we know that if, in the case of water, something happens to stop the flow, if a pool of water gets separated from the flow, what can happen is stagnation. Nasty stuff, like disease-bearing mosquitos, can multiply.

Or if, in the case of electricity, something disrupts the chain of colliding molecules; we’re left sitting in the dark, sweating or shivering, with food rotting in the frig.

Current requires a source or origin, a conduit and somewhere to go. Jesus could be a lifeline to Jairus and the woman because his source was God and he responded to the needs of those around him. The love of God flowed through him into the world.

Brothers and sisters, we here at Grace Church are in a bit of a difficult time. We went from two priests to no priests in a matter of weeks. We feel a bit abandoned and forlorn.

Certainly I do not need to point out that we are nowhere near as desperate as the people in today’s Gospel stories. Yet our tendency to turn inward, to sort of curl up and hope the storm passes quickly, or to huddle inside our beautiful stained glass fortress.. is real and natural.

But we must not succumb. We must not do it. Because that is the path of stagnation and death.

Priests are not our lifeline. Bishops and Deacons are not our lifeline. Jesus is our lifeline.

Don’t get me wrong. Priests are vital. They gather us around the holy table where we connect with our true lifeline, Jesus, by feasting on “spiritual food in the Sacrament of his Body and Blood,” as our prayer book puts it.

That is as essential to my well-being as it is to yours! But at this moment, let us remember that we have many ways to connect with our Lifeline. The Holy Eucharist is one.

The daily office, this Morning Prayer we are doing right now, is another. Our own personal devotions are another. Living our lives as an ongoing and constant prayer of service to others is yet another.

Last week, Fr. Michael preached his farewell sermon and one of the many wonderful things he said was, “You don’t need a priest to share God’s love in the world.” I wanted to shout “AMEN!”

Unlike Jairus, we cannot chase Jesus himself across the sea and fall at his feet. Unlike the woman with hemorrhage, we cannot use our last ounce of strength to crawl across the floor and grab the hem of his cloak.

But friends, we have something that much of the world is literally dying for. Our Bishop has famously said, “People turn to the church looking for Jesus, and all they get is us.”

There’s proper humility in that statement. We aren’t Jesus. BUT… we do have connections—to Jesus, to God the source of all life, through the indwelling Holy Spirit.

More. As Christ’s body in the world, WE are part of the Lifeline. The current of God’s love, and healing, and peace, and joy, must flow through us into the world. How else can it flow?

Eric Law is an Episcopal priest who has dedicated his career to helping churches live out their baptismal covenant. In his book, Holy Currencies: 6 Blessings for Sustainable Missional Ministries, he talks about the fact that in times of travail, churches tend to turn inward, and to think that their life depends on conserving and focusing on themselves and not trying anything new.

And, Law argues, that kind of response to travail is deadly. It shuts off the flow. It doesn’t change God. God remains the gracious, indeed eager, source of all life and hope.

But it does change us. When we turn inward, when we start telling ourselves negative stories about how we can’t do ministry because we’re too small or too poor or don’t have a priest or whatever, we stagnate.

BTW, of Law’s six sustainable missional ministries, exactly one involves money.

However tempting it might be for us to just hunker down, now is the time to be bold, to turn outward, to become more purposeful than ever before in living into our role as part of the lifeline between God and the world.

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

*The show was "Who wants to be a millionaire?"

 

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.