Plumb Line of Love

 Christ Church, St. Joseph, La., 15 July 2012

When I was a kid, family vacations consisted of the occasional drive from Iowa to Ohio to visit my father’s family. That was before Interstate 80 had been built, and so the journey included passing through Chicago.

My father was always looking for educational opportunities for his children, and so we typically spent a day on the way to Ohio at one or more of Chicago’s amazing museums. It was at the Museum of Science & Industry that we encountered the giant Foucault pendulum, swinging ever so softly and silently, from a domed ceiling high over our heads.

A Foucault pendulum is, of course, a plumb line. It's a weight on a string that obeys the law of gravity by hanging straight down—regardless of what you hang it from. The one in Chicago, as I recall, is a huge brass plumb bob shaped like a child’s top, suspended from the center of the dome on a cable. And it moves because the earth moves!

Foucault's pendulum at the Panthéon, Paris.

In other words, the plumb line must obey the laws of gravity and always hang straight down. But because the earth is not a perfect sphere, and because it moves—rotating on its axis as it traces its trajectory around the sun—the ceiling of that building is also moving, and the plumb bob must constantly adjust it’s position in order to obey the law of gravity and hang straight down.

And so the pendulum gently swings, translating the earth’s movement into a highly regular, beautifully precise pattern of movement—on a scale that the human eye can actually see.

In other words, we know this planet we call home is, in fact, spinning and hurtling through space at an alarming speed. Yet we detect none of that. It is beyond the capacity of our human senses, our human perspective, our human experience.

But the giant plumb line brings it down to earth. A Foucault pendulum scales it down, transforms it, so that we mere mortals can in fact experience, perceive, see… the very rotation of the earth itself. 

How much of that did I understand as a child, standing in that museum looking at a Foucault pendulum? I don’t know. Probably not much. But I do remember awe and wonderment.

And, in striking contrast to today’s story from the Hebrew Scripture, I remember it as a reassuring experience rather than a threatening one, a peak at the music of the universe, if you will.

Of course, a plumb line is a builder’s tool for keeping walls vertical, such that the outcome of building is beautiful and functional. But a plumb line is also a kind of discipline that reveals quickly anything with a tendency to be crooked. And discipline appears to be on God’s mind in this conversation with Amos (7:7-17, NRSV).

Building a wall with a plumb line.

 ‘Look, I am not going to continue to look the other way,’ God says. ‘In fact, I’m going to put myself right there in the midst of my people Israel. I’m going to be a plumb line showing how crooked they really are. And, by the way, their crookedness is going to get them into all kinds of trouble. Those who live by the sword will die by the sword.’

So.., how do we reconcile these contrasting images of a plumb line? Is it an eloquent translation of God’s creation into terms humans can comprehend, or a harsh discipline that ensures moral and mortal failure? Is it a reminder of the order of the universe, or a measure of the chaos humans inevitably create?

I would say it is “both and”—both eloquent and harsh, both about order and about chaos, both reassuring—for it is evidence that God is among us, and frightening—for it shows how utterly unworthy of God’s presence we are.

And if that sounds a bit like Jesus.., well, you’re with me all the way!

But, of course, Jesus was the ultimate plumb line God set amongst the people, but not the first. This conversation from the book of the prophet Amos is God calling Amos to be a plumb line among the Israelites.

We don’t know much about Amos’ life as a prophet. We know in general that the Israelites were not exactly fond of.. and did not necessarily respond to.. the prophets God sent to point out the many ways they failed to love God and their neighbors as themselves.

Today’s Gospel story (Mark 6:14-29, NRSV) is a graphic account of precisely what can happen to prophets. John the Baptizer was the last of the solely human plumb lines God placed among the people. His job was to prepare the way for Jesus the Christ by calling the people to their inheritance as God’s people.

King Herod was a conniver. He connived his way into a marriage with his brother’s wife, and ultimately into a dilemma that required him to murder John the Baptist in order to save face.

Answering God’s call to be a plumb line among the people can mean speaking unpopular points of view. It can mean standing up for the marginalized and calling for justice for the poor and oppressed. It can require speaking truth to power. And very little is more dangerous than people and nations who have gotten themselves into situations that seem to require “saving face.”

But Paul’s letter to the Ephesians (1:3-14, NRSV) reminds us today that regardless of the risks, at the heart of God’s call to be a plumb line among the people is love—God’s love for us as personified and perfected in Jesus the Christ.

God “has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing,” says Paul. God “chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. [God] destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ… [and] …in [Jesus Christ] we have redemption… forgiveness… the riches of God’s grace... lavished on us.”

And who is us? And what is the proper response to this outpouring of love?

Can you include in us the people you fear the most or like the least? An illegal immigrant, perhaps? A smelly street person? Someone who deviates from sex or gender norms? A Muslim?

Can you welcome into that passage the last person in the world you love and think capable of loving you? Are we willing to see such people as our neighbors and our equals in the eyes of God?

Because that’s the kind of plumb line Jesus is: God among us, saying over and over again, in every possible way: We are all God’s children. We are all in this together. Not one of you is any better than anyone else. Not one of you is loved by me any more or any less than anyone else. Stand by me. Walk with me. Dine with me. And you will know and be God’s love in the world.

AMEN.

Does God's Mission Have You? A Sermon for 21 August 2011

St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, Mer Rouge, La.

It is not that God’s Church has a Mission, but that God’s Mission has a Church.

I wish I could put that statement out there and just let you all think that I came up with it. But, in fact, I didn’t. As usual, I began sermon preparation by casting about on the Internet to see what others were saying about today’s lessons.

The Rev. Kirk Alan Kubicek of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Maryland made that statement, and you can find his sermon based on it on the Web at a site called “Sermons That Work.”

I think it is a brilliant insight, but plan to have my own way with it. So allow me to repeat:

It is not that God’s Church has a Mission, but that God’s Mission has a Church.

We church folks have a tendency to get such things reversed. We tend to talk about “the church’s mission” in and to the world.

And, yes, of course, it is in part just an easier way to talk about things. After all, the church is structured and organized to do certain things: to serve the spiritual needs of people, to spread the Gospel, to do various kinds of outreach, like disaster relief, soup kitchens, and so forth.

One could even argue that talking about these things as “the church’s mission” is a healthy way of taking responsibility and claiming ownership of the things we are called to do as the body of Jesus Christ in the world.

I would not deny or reject any of that. At the same time, it is also the case that the church has, throughout history, tended to get confused on this point. And when the church loses sight of its subordination to God’s Mission, when the church starts thinking it is pursuing its own mission, bad things tend to happen.

I am currently taking a course at the Diocesan School on Anglican Theology, and we began yesterday with a lecture on things that led up to the Protestant Reformation, things like the Roman church’s shake-down of believers by putting a price on forgiveness.

That was the practice known as the selling of indulgences, and it was the impetus and inspiration for the 95 theses Luther probably did NOT nail to a church door, but did present to his Bishop along with a letter of calling for open debate on the matter, and thereby kicked off the Protestant Reformation.

But we needn’t go so deep into history to find examples of churches acting arrogantly, and taking over the role of God in sorting the good sheep from the bad. In recent months we have seen religious fanatics, Muslim and Christian alike, blowing up, gunning down, burning holy books, sabotaging the construction of worship spaces… from the Middle East to Tennessee and Florida, and from New York City to Norway, of all places.

And then there’s the Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas spreading its anti-gay hatred across the country. The churches behind the “pray away the gay” movement. Even our own church’s civil war over doctrine and the interpretation of Scripture.

These are surely examples of religious institutions—churches, mosques, synagogues—pursuing their own mission in the world rather than God’s.

But let us bring the point closer to home. If indeed we agree that God’s Mission has a Church, in general, then it’s not a huge step to recognize that the same is true for all of the church’s constituent parts: God’s Mission has a St. Andrew’s, and a St. Thomas’ and a St. Alban’s. God’s Mission has a Diocese of Western Louisiana, an Episcopal Church… and on and on.

How does it re-orient our thinking to say that these units of church do not have a mission, rather God’s Mission has them? Indeed, perhaps we should pose it as a question: Does God’s Mission have them?

This might be an especially useful and important question for St. Andrew’s to consider as you embark upon the task of preparing a parish profile as part of your search for a new rector!

Likewise, it is an extremely important question for this Diocese as we prepare a profile in search of our next Bishop.

Saint Teresa church window, Convento de Sta Teresa,
Ávila de los Caballeros, Spain.

                                
Do we think WE have a mission in the world? Or do we understand, accept and practice our faith in ways that make perfectly clear that God’s Mission in the world has us?

Our Bishop has been known to pose the question this way: “If Christianity were illegal,” he asks, “would there be enough evidence to convict us?”

And now, one more step, even closer to home. Consider this: It is not that Bette Kauffman has a mission, but that God’s Mission has a Bette Kauffman.

I was going to stand here and name names, but.. you can put your own name in the sentence. Now how does that distill your thinking? How might it adjust priorities for each of us?

We have lots of practice and experience in seeking to carry out our own mission in the world. Indeed, that is the primary job, for each of us, of our own precious ego.

But what can we do with and in response to this moment of profound humility? For as we recognize that the Mission is God’s, and that we are called to belong to God’s Mission, we must also recognize—in gratitude and with fear and trembling—that we are, at one and the same time, wholly inadequate but selected and formed by God precisely for that purpose.

The 16th Century nun, Teresa of Avila, said it like this:

Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes through which to look out Christ's compassion to the world. Yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good; yours are the hands with which he is to bless...

AMEN.

How should we respond to evil?

Forgiveness can be a very, very difficult thing, and it is made much more difficult by a number of grave misconceptions our culture teaches us about what it means to forgive.

Many think, for example, that forgiveness is a feeling. They believe that to forgive means that feelings of anger and hate toward those who have done evil against us should be immediately replaced with feelings of warmth and love for that person.

Not so. Forgiveness is a decision we make. Relationship with the person who has wronged us might or might not come, in time. But that depends a lot on the other person. Can he/she accept your forgiveness? Can he/she forgive him/herself?

What if the person we need to forgive has already died? Forgiveness is a decision we make, and might very well have to make more than once. Restoration of relationship is a possible benefit, but neither required nor always possible.

Likewise, relationship with God is a benefit—but neither a condition nor a necessary outcome of—God’s forgiveness of us. God does not force anyone into relationship. God seeks to love us into relationship.

Forgiveness also does not change what happened. It is not saying, “Oh, well, that’s okay, I really didn’t mind,” or, “It really didn’t matter.” If it didn’t matter, what is there to forgive? If it really didn’t matter, then I got upset about nothing, and what is needed is not forgiveness but an adjustment of my own attitude!

On Sept. 11, 2001, several thousand people died needlessly and wantonly. It happened. It mattered, and it still matters.
                                                                                              
 Forgiveness is precisely NOT about tolerating evil, not about indifference to evil, not about mere “inclusivity.” It is about confronting evil and naming it.
                                                                                       

Forgiveness is giving up all hope of a better past.

Most of all, forgiving is not about forgetting. That popular little notion, “forgive and forget,” is perhaps the most wrong-headed of all. Forgiveness is precisely about remembering. We cannot learn from the past if we forget.

I have an index card I keep on my desk. I don’t remember where I got this quote, but it says, “Forgiveness is giving up all hope of a better past.” In other words, we can’t change the past, we can only come to terms with it… in a way that enables us to move forward.

Bishop Desmond Tutu has written a book about forgiveness that recognizes this important aspect of forgiveness in its title alone. Tutu’s homeland, South African, has long been torn by apartheid and racial strife. Atrocities have been exchanged, revenge taken by both sides. If any place in the world needs the healing power of forgiveness, it is South Africa. Tute aptly titled his book, No Future Without Forgiveness.

In other words, forgiveness is about the past, the present, and the future. In each and every present, we must come to terms with the past because we cannot change it, in order to move toward the future.

So, how do we do that? How do we remember and honor the past, come to terms with it, transform NOT the past but our response to the past, so that we can go about the business of enacting God’s kingdom here and now and into the future?

We have no better example than how God, in the person of Jesus Christ, did it. In the second meditation I spoke of God embracing the evil and suffering of the cross, and that might not be how you are accustomed to thinking of the passion of Jesus Christ.

But I base that understanding on how Jesus himself taught us to remember and honor those events. He instituted the Eucharist, a feast of the bread and wine of daily life made holy... transformed into the real presence of God. And each time we partake, we transform the evil and suffering of the cross into a celebration of relationship among us... and with God.

Likewise, our ways of remembering events like September 11, 2001 can be outward signs of an inner grace, the grace of forgiveness.

A few weeks ago I heard a story on NPR that featured the mother of a young man who was killed in the fall of the Twin Towers. She vehemently opposed the plans to build an Islamic Center near Ground Zero, saying, “Every time I hear the bells calling Muslims to prayer five times a day, I will feel the pain of my son’s death all over again.”

I am deeply sorry for her pain and I pray people in her life will find a way to reach out to her and help her move on. But it is incomprehensible to me that a call to prayer in any language could be a source of pain to any believer. Her words are the words of one stuck in unforgiveness.

And, by the way, we Christians are also called to prayer five times a day. It is called “the Daily Office.” We just don’t ring bells… but perhaps we should! I wonder how Lower Manhattan might be transformed, how the whole country might be transformed, if all Christians stopped what they were doing for a moment of prayer each time the mosque bells ring!

I will close with another exchange between God and Mack in The Shack. God has just told Mack that he needs to forgive the man who killed his daughter.

How can I ever forgive that son of a bitch who killed my Missy, Mack cried. If he were here today, I don’t know what I would do. I know it isn’t right, but I want him to hurt like he hurt me…if I can’t get justice, I still want revenge.
    [God] simply let the torrent rush out of Mack, waiting for the wave to pass.
    Mack, for you to forgive this man is for you to release him to me and allow me to redeem him.
    Redeem him? Again Mack felt the fire of anger and hurt. I don’t want you to redeem him! I want you to hurt him, to punish him, to put him in hell…
    [God] waited patiently for the emotions to ease.
    I’m stuck, [God]. I just can’t forget what he did, can I? Mack implored.
    Forgiveness is not about forgetting, Mack. It is about letting go of another person’s throat.

AMEN

Jesus the Plumb Line: A Sermon for 11 July 2010

When I was a kid, family vacations consisted of the occasional drive to Ohio to visit my father’s family. That was before Interstate 80 had been built, and so the journey included passing through Chicago.

My father was always looking for educational opportunities for his children, and so we typically spent a day on the way to Ohio at one or more of Chicago’s amazing museums. It was at the Museum of Science & Industry that we encountered the giant Foucault pendulum, swinging ever so softly and silently, from a domed ceiling high over our heads.

Foucault pendulum, Pantheon, Paris.

A Foucault pendulum is, of course, a plumb line. It is a weight on a string that obeys the law of gravity by hanging straight down— regardless of what you hang it from. Or, in the case of the one in Chicago, it is—as I recall—a huge brass plumb bob shaped like a child’s top, suspended from the center of the dome on a cable.

And it moves because the earth moves! In other words, the plumb line must obey the laws of gravity and always hang straight down. But because the earth is not a perfect sphere, and because it moves—rotating on its axis as it traces its trajectory around the sun—the ceiling of that building is also moving, and the plumb bob must constantly adjust it’s position in order to obey the law of gravity and hang straight down.

And so it gently swings, translating the earth’s movement into a highly regular, beautifully precise pattern of movement—on a scale that the human eye can actually see. (Click on the link below the picture to see an animated drawing of the pendulum's movement.)

In other words, we know this planet we call home is, in fact, spinning and hurtling through space at an alarming speed. Yet we detect none of that. It is beyond the capacity of our human senses, our human perspective, our human experience.

But the giant plumb line brings it down to earth. A Foucault pendulum scales it down, transforms it, so that we mere mortals can in fact experience, perceive, see… the very rotation of the earth itself.

How much of that did I understand as a child, standing in that museum looking at a Foucault pendulum? I don’t know. Probably not much. But I do remember awe and wonderment.

And, in striking contrast to today’s Old Testament story, I remember it as a reassuring experience rather than a threatening one. Of course, plumb lines have more than one use. They are a builder’s tool for keeping things straight and upright, and a similar kind of discipline appears to be on God’s mind in this conversation with Amos.

“Look, I am not going to continue to look the other way,” God says. “In fact, I’m going to put myself right there in the midst of my people Israel. I’m going to be a plumb line showing how crooked they really are. And, by the way, their crookedness is going to get them into all kinds of trouble. Those who live by the sword will die by the sword.”

So.., how do we reconcile these contrasting images of a plumb line? Is it an eloquent translation of God’s creation into terms humans can comprehend, or a harsh discipline that ensures mortal failure? Is it a reminder of the order of the universe, or a measure of the chaos humans inevitably create?

I would say it is “both and”—both eloquent and harsh, both about order and about chaos, both reassuring—for it is evidence that God is among us, and frightening—for it shows how utterly unworthy of God’s presence we are.

And if that sounds a bit like Jesus.., well, you’re with me all the way! And today’s lesson from Luke is a perfect example of Jesus being a plumb line.

It begins with the interaction between Jesus and the lawyer, and the lawyer is up to nothing less than entrapment. He knows perfectly well that some of Jesus’ teachings and practices have been rather unorthodox, and so he asks a question to which everyone present knows the “right” answer, the Scriptural answer.

It is a question designed to make the asker look pious, even as he is hoping that Jesus will go out on a limb that he can then chop off. “What must I do to be certain I’ll go to heaven,” he asks.

But Jesus doesn’t rise to the bait, nor does he strike back. Rather, he invites the lawyer to share the Scriptural answer everyone knows, and the lawyer obliges: “Love the Lord your God.., and your neighbor as yourself.”

Ask a simple question, and get a simple answer! Standing there with egg on his face, the lawyer tries again. Surely he can engage Jesus in a face-saving debate if he asks him a truly legal question! “Who is my neighbor?” he says.

And so Jesus tells the story that is probably the most familiar one of the whole Bible, the story that we can’t hear anymore because we’ve heard it so often. So let me try to make it a bit strange so that you can hear it again for the first time.

I’m guessing you are already thinking about the guy in the ditch, the victim of the beating. And maybe you’re wondering if you would “measure up” in the sense of being the one to help the victim as the Samaritan did.

And that’s fine. That’s part of the point. But now shift your attention from the guy in the ditch… to the Samaritan. Notice that Luke does not say he’s a “good” Samaritan. Luke just says he’s a Samaritan. WE added the “good,” and I suspect it has the same meaning as when someone tells a demeaning joke and then follows it quickly with, “I’m really not a bigot. One of my best friends is…” black or Asian or gay or whatever the particular category of people was slurred by the joke.

In other words, we’re quite willing to recognize “good” examples, exceptions to the rule, of categories of people we look down on. So get rid of the Samaritan because Samaritans don’t mean anything to us today, and put in his place a representative of the group of people you fear the most, like the least, resent the most, whatever: An illegal immigrant, perhaps? A smelly street person? Someone who deviates from sex or gender norms? A Muslim?

Put in the story the last person in the world you would expect mercy from, the last person in the world you would think capable of the act of mercy at the center of the story.., and now ask yourself, Am I willing to see that person as my neighbor and my equal in the eyes of God?

That’s the kind of plumb line Jesus is: God among us, saying over and over again, in every possible way: We are all God’s children. We are all in this together. Not one of you is any better than anyone else. Not one of you is loved by me any more or any less than anyone else. Stand by me. Walk with me. Dine with me. And all will be well. And you will never again have to ask, “Who is my neighbor?”

AMEN.