God-Saturated II

 Trinity Sunday, Grace Episcopal Church, Monroe, 6-12-22

A few years ago driving home from St. Joseph, La., on a Sunday afternoon I stopped at the edge of a swamp just over the Mississippi River levee that runs along the east side of Hwy 65. It was a favorite place to photograph dragonflies, and that particular day I went out on a rocky point that extended about 20 yards into an open water area of the swamp. 

 

I was crouched near the edge of the water stalking dragonflies when something compelled me to look up. There about 40 yards out from me in the water were ‘gator eye bumps, focused on me. I assessed my situation, looking back to my car to make sure my route was clear should I need to hastily depart. 

 

The 'gator did not move but lay in the water, eyes on me. Should I leave? I decided to stay. The 'gator appeared to just be curious. At that moment, a tiny dragonfly--one of our tiniest called eastern amberwing, that has wings like gold filagree--perched on an eye bump. I laughed out loud at the incongruity of it. 

 

I have since seen that happen many times. What’s the attraction? Why do dragonflies perch on 'gator heads? And what does it have to do with Trinity? I'll try to make a connection later!

 

Today is Trinity Sunday, which means I have the impossible task of trying to make sense of our theology of Trinity—God as three in one, one in three.

 

Well, I can’t! But I’m also not content to just say, “it’s a mystery,” and sit down.., although you will be forgiven for wishing that I would!

 

I don’t remember who said it or where I read it, but a favorite quote goes like this: “If you think you have God all figured out, whatever you have figured out is no longer God. By definition, it is no longer God.”

 

I can’t explain Trinity, but I can share some thoughts about the God-saturated universe in which we live and move and have our being, a universe that points constantly and consistently to Divine Trinity.

 

One of the influences on my thinking about Trinity is Richard Rohr, the Franciscan friar, who has written a book about Trinity I’m reading right now. It’s called “The Divine Dance.”

 

You might have noticed that I just said “Trinity” several times without putting “the” in front of it. That was quite deliberate and I got it from Rohr’s book. Trinity, he says, is how God is being God.

 

When you put “the” in front of any word, that word becomes a noun: the book, the desk, put the book on the desk, etc. When you take the “the” away, the noun begins to move. Even “the book” can become a verb, as in “Book him, Dano.”

 

So remove the “the” and liberate “Trinity.” Think dynamic relationships, a circle dance of relationships, God being God—rather than a ”thing.”

 

How we talk... matters. If this doesn’t make complete sense right now, or if you think I’m nuts, just try it. Try creating a few sentences that refer to “Trinity” without putting “the” in front of it and watch what happens. It just might begin to expand your thinking about God being Trinity.

 

Another influence on my thinking about Trinity is the many hours I have spent studying the natural world and exploring it with my camera. I kid you not, I consider many of those hours to be prayer.

 

So here’s two ideas I have about God that are deeply rooted in and continuously reinforced by the hours I spend interacting with creation. The first is that God loves diversity and the second is that God loves relationship.

 

Here’s one little story that begins to illustrate the point. Restoration Park over in West Monroe on the south side of I-20 is exactly what its name says: a park created by restoring 70 acres that had been used for various industrial purposes over many years—a gravel pit and a dump being two of them, as I recall—and returning those acres to their original, natural forest and wetland state.

 

In restoring it they preserved human access in the form of well-maintained trails and a boardwalk over the wetland part. It’s lovely and indeed a testimony to the fact that nature is quite resilient and given a little help from humankind, the environment will heal itself.

 

So... a funny/not-so-funny thing happened. The wetland portion of the park consists of two small, shallow lakes—formed by the activity of resident beavers that dammed up the streams running through the park. These small, shallow lakes have real value—a significant value being that the park serves nicely to capture run-off from the surrounding West Monroe community, slowing down the water, reducing erosion and reducing flash-flooding downstream. That’s how wetlands function and why the loss of wetlands can be so devastating.

 

But sometime last winter, the beavers started to chew the balustrades of the boardwalk. We don’t know why. Pressure-treated lumber is not their natural food. But they did.

 

And so the city of West Monroe decided to do something about the beavers so they wouldn’t have to keep repairing the boardwalk. I’m happy to report they did not kill them. They live-trapped them and moved them.

 

Do I need to describe what happened next? The beaver dams fell apart, the water drained out of the little lakes, and invasive plant species quickly made their move to take over. The boardwalk was safe, but who wants to walk a boardwalk over a field of dry, cracked mud and a monoculture of weeds?

 

The good news is that a couple members of the local chapter of Master Naturalists who live in West Monroe spotted the problem. With some advice from the restoration ecologist on the ULM biology faculty, they spent some time making like beavers, and until the beaver population recovers, we Master Naturalists will do our best to keep the park alive.

 

We humans have such a limited understanding of the absolute interconnectedness of nature, the myriad ways every single thing is in relationship to everything else, that we make damaging mistakes all the time. It really is true that a butterfly flaps its wings in Louisiana and the weather changes in Beijing. Tug a spider web and something moves halfway around the world.

As for diversity, it too is the norm. All you have to do is look at a drop of pond water under a microscope, or count the critters that live in your back yard—bugs included, or try to identify all of the plant species in a half mile of road ditch.., or walk into a grocery store and look at the people there, for that matter.

 

So… what does that have to do with Trinity? It certainly does not explain it. But maybe it gives us a toehold. Maybe thinking about diversity and relationship helps us to grasp for just a moment that diversity can be unified in relationship and unity through relationship can be expressed as diversity.

 

Maybe Trinity is the very epitome of diversity in relationship. Maybe the unity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit is the model for relationship in diversity for the whole planet.

 

The very best news is that this Trinitarian circle dance of diversity in relationship and relationship in diversity is open. Not closed, but open. And we are invited to participate.

 

God is love. Love keeps the dance going, but love by its very nature cannot be contained. You have heard it said that love is the one thing we can have… only by giving it away. Better yet, love is less a thing than an action verb.

 

I began this sermon with a story about an encounter between me, a ‘gator and a dragonfly. It had no direct bearing on Trinity. Rather, it was one of many, many moments that shows me that we live in a God-saturated universe.

 

The outpouring of love from God in the persons of Father, Son and Holy

Spirit meets us at every turn and draws us in. We can and do resist, always to our own detriment. But love wins and will win all in the end.

 

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

Abandoned

 7 Easter, Grace Episcopal Church, Monroe, La.

I am a teacher. I have earned my living primarily with words. Then I became a deacon and my diaconal ministry consisted of more talk, working together with other folks across the social, economic, and religious spectrum to shape public decision-making to benefit the common good.

 

Being a deacon includes preaching. But today, because of the confluence of events and the church year, I stand before you charged with the task of filling this space in our worship with words… and I have none. I feel abandoned. Quite utterly abandoned.

 

 

And not just by words. Jesus the Christ has left us. We have spent the last several weeks reading about and contemplating his resurrection appearances. Last Sunday he told us clearly that he was going and that we could not go with him. He ascended into heaven several days ago, according to the church calendar, and the Holy Spirit has not yet come.

 

Before he left us, Jesus prayed for us. We call it the High Priestly prayer. It is a wonderful, multilayered expression of his love for his followers.

 

Only the Gospel according to John records this prayer. It is a long prayer, the longest prayer Jesus prays in his time on earth, at least according to the written record. Thus our lectionary divides it into 3 parts: Year A gets the first part, Year B the second part and Year C—the year we are currently in—gets the 3^rd part, which I just read to you.

 

And it is in the 3^rd part that Jesus prays specifically for US. He prays not only on behalf of those with him at that moment, but, he says, also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word. That, friends, would be us.

 

So reading this tender, loving prayer, in which Jesus invites us into communion with himself and the Father, and invites us to experience his glory, and offers to fill us with his love… Reading this prayer for us should be comforting.., should it not?

 

Usually, for me, it is. “Comforting” is exactly how I have experienced it many times in the past.

 

But not this year. This year reading this prayer floods me with grief, and helpless anger, and most of all.. an overwhelming conviction of unworthiness. Utter unworthiness. Hopeless unworthiness. For we have failed. Again. And yet again.

 

I mentioned a confluence of events with the church year, and to that I must turn our attention… dragging my feet every step of the way.

 

Some of you will recall that just over 4 years ago, I was on the docket to preach here at Grace Episcopal just days after the murder of 17—teenagers and teachers—at a high school in Florida.

 

I’m not going to preach that sermon again today. Should anyone want to review it, it is still available on my sermon blog here.

 

But, sadly, that sermon is as relevant now as it was the day I preached it. So today it seems, simply, futile. Futile, because the same empty excuses about why we can’t do anything about gun violence began to flood our airways and social media almost before the sounds of the shots in Buffalo, NY, and Uvalde, TX, had died out.

 

Here's one thing that’s changed. Today I’m a grandmother. My precious grandbabies turned 5 months old just a few days ago. In a couple of weeks, they will be baptized and made Christ’s own forever.

 

And I know just as surely as I stand here this morning that even though they are infants now, I will blink my eyes and they will be going off to school. I am terrified at the thought.

 

Yesterday, writing this sermon, I got to exactly this point, and stopped. I didn’t know what to say next. So I went outside and pulled weeds, and hosed down the carport, and dug up a couple of oak saplings that had taken root in a flower bed. And after several hours of intense yardwork, I came back to my computer and… I still didn’t know what to say next.

 

And so I turn to prayer, the only kind of words I know of that have much chance of changing us, because I believe changing us is the first necessary thing.

 

These words come from a group of Episcopal bishops who responded to a mass shooting by writing a litany to commemorate the dead, to comfort their loved ones, and to honor survivors and first responders. It has been updated many times and is very long. I have arbitrarily edited it down to include only mass shootings in schools.

 

If you share in my heartbreak and rage and despair, feel free to join in the response, “Let light perpetual shine upon them.”

 

Let us pray.

 

God of peace, we remember all those who have died in incidents of mass gun violence in this nation’s public and private spaces.

 

Thirteen dead at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado.

Give to the departed eternal rest.
Let light perpetual shine upon them.

 

Twenty-eight dead at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
Give to the departed eternal rest.
Let light perpetual shine upon them.

 

Six dead at Santa Monica College, California.
Give to the departed eternal rest.
Let light perpetual shine upon them.

 

Five dead at Marysville Pilchuck High School in Washington.
Give to the departed eternal rest.
Let light perpetual shine upon them.

 

Ten dead at Umpqua Community College, Oregon.
Give to the departed eternal rest.
Let light perpetual shine upon them.

 

Seventeen dead at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
Give to the departed eternal rest.
Let light perpetual shine upon them.

 

Ten dead at Santa Fe High School, Texas.
Give to the departed eternal rest.
Let light perpetual shine upon them.

 

Four dead at Oxford High School in Oxford Township, Michigan.
Give to the departed eternal rest
Let light perpetual shine upon them.

 

Twenty-one dead at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.
Give to the departed eternal rest
Let light perpetual shine upon them.

 

All those who have died in any incident of gun violence.
Give to the departed eternal rest.
Let light perpetual shine upon them.

 

To survivors of gun violence, grant comfort and healing.
To those who have lost loved ones to gun violence, grant peace.

Protect and strengthen first responders who care for victims of gun violence.

Move us all to act in whatever way we can to end the evil of gun violence in our society.

Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.

 

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

Material Guy

 Grace Episcopal Church, Monroe, La.

I think St. Thomas the Apostle gets a bad rap when he is called “Doubting Thomas.” I think he was just “a material guy,” albeit not in the sense Madonna intended when she sang about a “material girl.” Here’s what I mean.

 

Our Biblical stories of Christ’s passion and resurrection are vivid and full of details that engage all of our senses. I’m sure I’m not the only one who shudders as Jesus is whipped, who cringes at the sound of nails through flesh into wood, who shrinks from the sight of the bloody man on the cross.

 

On Easter morning, I crumple to the ground with grief-stricken Mary. I feel the earthquake one of the Gospel writers describes. I am blinded by the light of the angels seated inside. I run with the disciples and always wonder: Would I be the one who gets there first but hesitates at the entrance? Or would I bring up the rear but dash headlong into that cold, dark space?

 

 

Our Easter story is tactile, visible and audible. Those firsthand witnesses send it down to us through the generations using words that enable us to experience it again and again.

 

But let’s back up a bit further and recall that this whole story of our faith, from beginning to end, is about incarnation—that is, God becoming a material being—the same God’s breathe-enlivened matter... of which we are made.

 

I love how Fr. Richard Rohr sums up the meaning of incarnation. “Matter matters,” he says.

 

I think it interesting and relevant that Thomas doesn’t ask just to see Jesus. No, he says ‘I must touch him, I must put my hand in his side…” And sure enough, artistic renditions of this scene show Thomas not merely peering at Jesus’ wounds, but putting his finger in them.

 

Thomas was a material guy and he had known Jesus as a material being. And seeing, in fact, is not always believing!

 

Witness, for example, the many stories of Jesus appearing to his disciples post resurrection, and not being recognized by them. I have always tended to think that was because Jesus’ appearance had been rather dramatically changed by death and resurrection.

 

Well, it probably was changed somewhat, but… remember the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus, who did not recognize Jesus, even though he walked along with them and taught them the scriptures for an entire day. In that story there’s a line that clearly states, their eyes were kept from recognizing him.

 

Now what would keep eyes from recognizing a person they knew well? I can think of several things. First, there’s fear. Fear clouds our vision. And our judgement. Nations have gone to war, people do hurtful things to each other.. out of fear.

 

Jesus’ followers had good reason to be fearful. We know that thousands died at the hands of the Roman state because they would not denounce God and worship the emperor. Their fear was legitimate and it could have clouded their vision.

 

 

Second, I think of grief. Grief clouds our vision. One moment the world is bright and sunny and full of promise, and the next it is dark. The future is grim; we despair. Been there, done that.

 

Last night I read a tweet from a woman I scarcely know but see occasionally on Twitter. It was a simple, desolate, 2-line tweet. She said, My husband died today. I will never be the same. Social media creates some issues for sure, but one of the great things about it is that we can reach out to people in their times of trouble.

 

But the third thing I thought of that clouds our vision is probably the hardest of all to overcome. And that thing is.. having our minds already made up and our expectations set. Sometimes what we already think, believe and know about how the world works is our worst enemy.

 

Speaking as a teacher, nothing is harder than teaching something to someone who is sure they already know!

 

So… what we know gets in the way of seeing something new. And Jesus was something new. Resurrection was new. Yes, Jesus had told them, more than once, but the Gospel writers tell us over and over again that even his disciples just didn’t get it. They couldn’t hear it, and now they couldn’t see it. It was just too contrary to reality as they knew it.

 

Moreover, it wasn’t just the resurrected Jesus that was new. Consider that this Jesus—the material being they had followed and loved—was NOT what they expected. The Messiah of the Hebrew Scripture they expected was to be a conquering king who would liberate Israel from the cruel reign of the Roman Empire.

 

How could this carpenter’s son, this man of humble origin who taught love and peace and would not even act in self-defense, nor allow anyone else to act in his defense.., how could this material man… be the one?

 

Jesus the Christ was a new creation in every possible way. Add on the layer of newness of being a resurrected body—not merely spirit, not merely disembodied eternal soul, but resurrected body… and it’s absolutely no mystery that his followers did not recognize him by sight alone. Jesus the Christ challenged everything they thought, believed and knew… about both God and reality.

 

And so today, we have St. Thomas the Material Guy to thank for reaching out and touching that resurrected material body. Otherwise, how would we know? I wonder.., after Thomas, did any of the others have the courage to touch as well?

 

 

Of course, the New Testament does give us a few other ways for us to know the Risen One. The disciples on the road to Emmaus knew him in the breaking of the bread. And that is surely what keeps us coming to Holy Eucharist again and again.

 

Mary Magdalene knew him when he said her name. I think God says our name many times and in many ways, for example, by putting people in front of us who need our loving touch. I would even count my happening to read the tweet of a woman who had just lost her husband as God saying my name.

 

How is God saying your name? What is the material situation right in front of you that needs your touch? What do you already think, believe and know that might be clouding your vision and your understanding? These are the questions I urge us to reflect on today.

 

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

An Opportune Time

Christ Episcopal Church, St. Joseph – Lent 1

An opportune time. An opportune time for what? Obviously, the devil—whose thoughts we are hearing at the end of today’s Gospel lesson (Luke 4:1-13)—was looking for an opportune time to resume his temptation of Jesus. But—thanks be to God—we know the devil never succeeded in getting Jesus to sin.

 

WE are quite another story. It seems no time is other than an opportune time for us to be tempted to sin! And we, indeed, fall for all the things Jesus resisted at the end of his stay in the wilderness.

 

We do live by bread alone. That is, our own earthly cravings, our tendency to see our every desire as a need, our insatiable collecting of worldly things do dominate our time and attention and energy. The struggle for power is real and we get swept up in refusing to see the shortcomings of “our side” and demonizing the “other side”—as if there were only two sides to everything.

 

Today’s world is pretty much the epitome of the world the devil was trying to seduce Jesus into embracing. Our politics are bitterly divisive. The art of debate, negotiation, and compromise in the name of the common good seems lost forever. The “rugged individualism” that served U. S. America well in our early developing phase has turned into an ugly “my way or the highway” mentality.

 

The yawning gap between the wealthiest in our society and the middle and working classes continues widening. It is entirely possible today to work not just one but two jobs and still have trouble feeding your children—this at a time of corporate profits through the roof.

 

Several of us here this morning just returned from Diocesan Convention, where we heard, first, a stirring sermon by Fr. Michael Bordelon from St. Barnabas, Lafayette, and an equally inspiring convention address by Bishop Jake Owensby. I want to borrow from both of them this morning.

 

First, the Bishop asked us to consider three questions. These are not questions we can necessarily answer off the top of our head, so Lent 1 is a good time to begin reflecting on them.

 

His first question was, “Who am I, really?” He talked about the toxic individualism I mentioned above that our society has devolved into, and he contrasted that with creatures made in God’s image. That’s us, and all humankind. And as creatures made in God’s image we are the very manifestation of God’s love in the world.

 

His second questions was, “How am I my true self in the church?” As Christians, we believe we are the body of Christ in the world, and at least a couple of times a year, we read in church the Apostle Paul’s exposition of what that means. But perhaps our hearing has grown dull with familiarity.

 

Indeed, the first question, “Who am I, really?” can only be answered by the second question. In other words, although each of us is a unique, distinctive being, our very being is also shaped by the communities we are members of and relationships we have entered into. Or, in the African philosophy called “Ubuntu,” “I am because we are.”

 

That is especially true of Christian community, which professes to be the body of Christ doing the work of Christ in the world. Each person brings something to the table, each has a gift to put into the mix, and “the mix” comes together best for the common good when every part of the body is present, contributing and valued.

 

Finally, the Bishop posed his third question: Who should the church be in this dramatically changed and changing world? And this question is what Fr. Michael Bordelon’s entire sermon was about.

 

See, our church has changed more and faster over the past couple of years that anyone thought possible. Yes, change has always been “the norm,” but not the kind of change we have just come through.

 

Well! Let me hasten to say, we think we’ve come through it. We hope we’ve come through it. The truth is, we don’t know if we’re through it or if this is a short-term reprieve.

 

We speak longingly of “getting back to normal” or cautiously of a “new normal,” preferably one as much like the old normal as possible. But I think we know deep down that Covid is now part of the landscape and we must learn to live with it because it is not going away. Moreover, all the experts are telling us we better prepare for the next pandemic.

 

Not only has the pandemic devastated our health and social lives, but the economic consequences are still ravaging our church budgets and personal pocketbooks. Add to that the devastation—physical and economic—caused by extreme weather events—hurricanes, especially. To top it off, we witness today the horror of one sovereign nation invading another sovereign nation, thereby dragging the entire world toward cataclysmic violence—perhaps even self-annihilation by nuclear war.

 

Brothers and sisters, we are in a situation. We are worn out and burned out by pandemic and loss, by political animosity, by fear for our democracy, not to mention the very future of our planet home.       

 

So, I propose that now is an opportune time. What it is an opportune time for is up to us, because, you see, God also waits for opportune times in which to stretch us and move us out of our comfort zone into a world that needs us now more than ever.

 

So let us ask, What should church be and do in this situation? Going backward has never really been an option. We can engage in bouts of nostalgia but we cannot roll back the clock.

 

To make matters more challenging, at this very moment that the church must think outside the box, those of us still inside the box are, shall we say, a little long in the tooth and gray of the head. The church is aging and we want most of all the comfort of familiarity and stability.

 

 

 And here we are instead, as Fr. Michael preached, called to innovate and to move out of our comfort zone.

 

All of the Canterbury kids and a few adults associated with Canterbury had lunch together at convention. The conversation turned to music in church, and one of the things I learned is that I, myself, must be a bit more open to contemporary Christian music. I love the old hymns! But I myself am also  aware that the theology expressed in many of those old hymns just is not what we believe today and does not up speak to today’s young adults facing and dealing with the challenges of today’s world. What do we do about that?

 

I don’t have an answer to that question, but I do have another idea. We also heard a report from Camp Hardtner at convention and it was a powerful reminder that summer camp is the first and best way for our diocese to minister to kids from primary school through high school. And we were urged to think of that ministry as—not just to the kids of our church family—but to all the kids of Louisiana. I wonder how Christ Church might offer a potentially life-saving experience at Camp Hardtner to some kids from St. Joseph, La?

 

Brothers and sisters, we are in a situation, a challenging, daunting situation. We face our own mortality this Lenten season, not only as individual people but as a church.

 

But a situation is also an opportune time. We can yield to the temptation to look backward and yearn nostalgically for the past, or we can face it head on, step out in faith and follow Jesus to and through the cross. After Lent comes Easter. After death comes resurrection. And we are resurrection people.

 

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

Forgive & Remember

 St. Luke's Episcopal Chapel, Grambling, La.

A few weeks ago, I had a conversation with a friend who was going through a hard time. She has an adult daughter who suffers from bipolar disorder.

 

I have experienced mental illness in the family and it is a tough road to walk—a very tough road. Every member of the family is affected by it. You might say, accurately, in my view, that when one member of the family suffers from mental illness the entire family suffers.

 

 

 

My friend described some of her conversations with her daughter and some of the terribly hurtful things her daughter has said to her. Apparently the daughter views her mother as the source of all her problems, and she berates her mother in ways that break her mother’s heart.

 

So I said two things to my friend. First, and I know this doesn’t help very much, but first remember that it is the mental illness speaking, not your daughter per se. Expecting a mentally ill person to interact normally is like expecting a person with a broken leg to run a marathon.

 

Second, I said to my friend, get some help from a professional yourself who will help you set some healthy boundaries with your daughter. I went on to explain that her daughter was saying abusive things to her and nothing in the concept of parental love and nothing in the concept of Christian love requires us to accept abuse at the hands of family, friends or anyone else.

 

I sometimes think we are a bit simplistic in our approach to Jesus’ mandate that we love even our enemies and people who seek to do us harm. That particular friend is not the first or only person to interpret today’s Gospel lesson in ultimately self-destructive ways. 

 

 

 Of course the call to not judge or condemn others and to love our enemies is real and serious; Jesus was not joking when he said this. So our challenge is to find ways to love, on both individual and societal levels, that do not involve acquiescing to evil or to oppressive social systems and cultural norms, or to being a doormat to every abusive person in our social circles.

 

One such way—the best way I know—to love those who do us wrong is by being quick to forgive, unconditionally, and even when the other has not asked forgiveness. This is God’s way, and besides being God’s way, it is also good for us. We forgive for our own sake as much as or more than we forgive for the other’s sake.

 

Being stuck in unforgiveness will eat a person alive. It takes mental and emotional energy to hold on to and nurse our wounds, mental and emotional energy that is therefore unavailable for joy and wonder and gratitude.

 

Forgiveness is not an emotion we feel so much as a choice we make—a choice that liberates us from a shrunken, dreary world of bitterness and anger and fear.

 

Forgiveness also is NOT saying that the evil or hurt or abuse that happened is now suddenly “okay.” We have all heard, and probably have been admonished by someone, to “forgive and forget.” To which I say, “Nonsense.”

 

Back when I was in graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania, one of our sociology professors wrote a book titled “Forgive and Remember: Managing Medical Failure.” I never read the book because I always felt that the title said it all.

 

Forgive, and remember.., because only by remembering can we establish and maintain healthy boundaries in our interpersonal relationships.

 

Forgive and remember because only by remembering can we learn from and overcome the evils of the past. 

 

Post World War II Germany is the best example I know of a society seeking to do that. Nazi concentration camps and the site of Hitler’s rise to power in Nuremburg have been converted into teaching museums that confront the evil that was the Holocaust with gut-wrenching honesty and lay out details of how and why it happened—all to the cause of making sure it never happens again.

 

These not-so-United States of America need to do the same. We need to confront and own the evils of our own past—the genocide of Native American peoples and the building of our country and economy on the backs of enslaved Africans.

 

We as a society have not done that. Far too many are still engaged in denial and in rejecting responsibility because the actual perpetrators are long dead. But we as a society will never heal from the divisions rooted in those evils until we have named them and claimed them, fully and with brutal honesty.

 

 

Archbishop Desmond Tutu and his priest daughter Mpho turned their own experience of and struggle against the evil of apartheid into a book called “The Book of Forgiving.” In it they write:

 

Forgiving does not require that we carry our suffering in silence or be martyrs on a cross of lies. Forgiveness does not mean that we pretend things are anything other than they are. Forgiving requires giving voice to the violations and naming the pains we have suffered.

 

So we love our enemies and those who hurt us by forgiving them because it is good for us and frees us from tending our pile of hurts. We forgive and love for our own sake.

 

We also love and forgive because mercy and forgiveness are God’s way, which we are committed to following. We forgive for God’s sake.

 

But finally we also forgive for the sake of those very enemies, the sake of those who have hurt us, for it is through forgiveness that we acknowledge their humanity. By forgiving, we set free those we are forgiving to change, to grow, to become more fully human.

 

Only in the context of forgiveness can transformation happen. It might be a long time coming. We might never live to see the transformation our forgiveness makes possible. But only in the context of forgiveness can transformation happen.

 

I will give the last word today again to Desmond and Mpho Tutu, who wrote:

 

Just as we take a leap of faith when we make a commitment to love someone and get married, we also take a leap of faith when we commit ourselves to a practice of forgiveness.

 

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

Go Deep

 5 Epiphany, Christ Church, St. Joseph, La.

I must begin with a bit of a confession that I think you folks here in proximity to a lovely lake might appreciate. My confession is that I’m not wild about “fishing” as a metaphor for evangelism. 

 

Of course, the soon-to-be disciples of Jesus were fishing with nets in the story we just heard. Nevertheless, I have done plenty of fishing in my life, and I associate fishing with a giant hook in the jaw and being rudely reeled in against the hapless critter’s will! 

 

 

 

Somehow, that’s not an imagine of evangelism that works today.  Nevertheless, this story has a lot to offer.  

 

The first thing I take from it is, don’t be scared off by failure. Simon Peter and his crew and partners had been fishing all night and had not caught a thing. So when Jesus says to put down the net, they were understandably reluctant. What’s the point? they were very probably thinking. And I can hardly blame them.

 

I’m reminded of my dear, deceased father. When it came to fishing, he had more patience, more persistence, than I thought humanly possible. He always loved it when I agreed to go fishing with him. And—another confession—I didn’t do it very often! Why? Because I knew that I would be stuck in that boat the entire day, sun up to sun set, whether the fish were biting or not.

 

My dad was undeterred. Me? After a few hours of fishing without a hit, I was more than ready to go home. My dad? No way. He was absolutely convinced that in spite of 5 hours without a bight, the very next cast would produce the big one—the fish of a lifetime. Maybe, actually it is entirely possible, my father was influenced by this story!

 

In any case, Simon Peter is reluctant to expend more energy on fishing that morning. You can hear it in his voice: Well, Jesus, if you say so… And he lets down the net and, indeed, hauls in the catch of a lifetime. Don’t be scared off by failure. Success really could be just around the corner.

 

Of course, the corner you must turn might not be the one you expect. This is the second thing I take from this story: Dare to think outside the box. Jesus doesn’t just say, put down the net. He says, put down the net into the deep water.

 

Again, I know from experience that deep water is not where you usually find the fish. If you’re fishing for bass, you put your boat over the deep water and cast back toward the shore, into the shallower water. If you’re bream fishing, you’re typically putting your bait into relatively shallow water.

 

But Jesus instructs them to think outside of the box. Go deep, he says. Try something different. Put your net into the deep water. 

 

This is a harder lesson. We humans really don’t like change, by and large. We are devoted to the comfort zone of doing things the way we have always done them. Even after those ways no longer produce the results they once did because of changing circumstances, we tend to keep doing them. We might even double down and do them with even greater energy and commitment—hoping against hope that we will get a different result.

 

And here, brothers and sisters, is where we encounter probably the hardest part of all: Of all the institutions of our society that need to think outside the box, try something different, cast our net into deeper waters… the church might well need to do it the most. Yes, the church.                                         

 

Our Presiding Bishop Michael Curry has written several books. I think it is in Crazy Christians that he talks frankly about the church and how desperately the church needs to change. See, the pews in our churches are not thinly populated today because people no longer need or want the church. More importantly, they are not thinly populated today because people no longer want or need Jesus!

 

Michael Curry says, and I agree, our churches are thinly populated today because people are no longer sure they will find Jesus here! Or, maybe it’s that the “Jesus” they will find here has been turned into a stay-in-my-own-lane, middle class rule follower!

 

That’s just not the Jesus of Holy Scripture. The Jesus of Holy Scripture argued with the religious leaders of his day about their devotion to rules, especially rules for “doing church,” rules for being devout followers of God, and he argued with them more about that than about anything else.

 

You’ve got it all wrong, he said to them. You follow the rules and totally miss the point. Love God and your neighbor as yourself,  he said; that’s what matters. Love even your enemies, he said, do good to those who persecute you. How much more subversive can you get than that?

 

 

See, I will accept that the death of a church is inevitable when there are no people left within walking or driving distance of that church who need Jesus. Because if they need Jesus, they should be able to find Jesus—the true, think-outside-of-the-box, go deep, rule-breaker Jesus—who defined the Kingdom of God over and over as the absolute subversion of the norms of religion and society... they should be welcome and able to find that Jesus here.

 

Our Bishop has said, “People come to church looking for Jesus and all they find is us.” I have also heard him say many, many times: “Go ahead and try stuff. Risk failure. I’d rather you step out of your comfort zone, take a risk, try something… and fail, than do nothing and die comfortable.”

 

Sadly, too many of our churches will not risk thinking outside the box, will not risk casting their net into the deep water. They would rather die comfortable than change. And, BTW, a church does not have to literally vote to die. But they do vote to die figuratively by declining to think outside the box, refusing to take risks, rejecting change.

 

Of course, one of the risks of casting your net into the deep water is that you can’t necessarily predict what all kinds of fish you might bring up! Your catch might not be limited to the fish you are accustomed to seeing in church. Some might be rather exotic looking, some might look dangerous to our eyes that are so comfortable with seeing other people in church who mostly look just like us!

 

So be it. That’s the kind of company Jesus kept, so he will be right at home in the midst of the mess.

 

Indeed, there’s a bottom line to what I’m saying, and it’s this: Ultimately, we cannot tame Jesus, no matter how hard we try. We can die trying, but Jesus cannot be contained inside our comfort zone. He cannot be contained inside our churches. He is already out there, in the world. To follow him, we must go out there. To know him, we must learn to see him in the face of every other human we meet.

 

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

The Jesus Method

3 Epiphany, Christ Episcopal Church, St. Joseph, La.

Every Sunday in Episcopal churches across the country and around the world, people—ordinary people like you and me—stand and read Holy Scripture.

Typically a passage from the Old Testament is read first. The Christian Old Testament is, of course, one and the same as Hebrew Scripture, the bible of the Jewish people.

The second reading is called “the Epistle” because it is taken from one of the many “epistles” or “letters” written by Paul or one of the other apostles that make up the bulk of the New Testament.

Then finally, and just before the sermon, we hear a passage from one of the four Gospels—that is, from the “good news” of the story of Jesus the Christ—each one written with a slightly different emphasis by a person who knew Jesus on his earthly journey.

I mention what might seem obvious to you in these Episcopal pews this morning—especially you cradle Episcopalians—that the history of the scripture-reading portion of our worship—the “liturgy of the Word,” we call it—goes way, way back. We are participating in a centuries-old pattern every time we do it.

Ezra reads God's law.

 

Look at the story we have this morning in Nehemiah. It’s one of my favorites of the Old Testament. Why? Because the people are so moved and so captivated by hearing Holy Scripture read out loud that they stand for hours listening, heads bowed. Indeed, they are ultimately moved to tears by it—so much so that a few verses farther on from the ending of today’s lesson Nehemiah instructs them to not be sad but go celebrate and rejoice.

The context of the story is that the Israelites have fallen away from the teachings of the law. Nehemiah was leading them in the process of restoring Jerusalem, fending off Israel’s enemies all the while. The Torah scrolls were found in a forgotten recess of temple rubble.

Nehemiah had them dusted off and a platform built. The people assembled. The scribe Ezra was called to read—and not just to read but with interpretation. He gave the sense, so that the people understood.

And the people stood with heads bowed and listened, from early morning until midday, we are told. Wow! Could you do that?

In fact, today’s lectionary passage consists of excerpts.., because we have to keep it short…! But in one of the verses missing from what we just read, the people are so moved by hearing again the words of their Holy Scriptures that they begin to weep. That is why, at the close of our passage today, Nehemiah is instructing the Israelites to not mourn what is past, but eat, drink, share with those who have nothing and celebrate being reunited with their Holy Scripture.

So, when we read and interpret holy scripture as an act of worship, we stand in the midst of an ancient and ongoing lineage of people of faith. Jesus was part of that lineage as well.

In today’s Gospel story, Jesus is reading and interpreting Holy Scripture as part of temple worship. And I think we can learn some things about how to read and interpret Holy Scripture by paying attention to how Jesus did it.

So let’s look at it again. Jesus stands to read and is handed the Isaiah scroll. I’ve always been curious: Did Jesus ask for that scroll specifically? Or was the temple using some kind of schedule or rotation like our lectionary? Or did the scribe who handed it to him choose it, maybe because Isaiah is so full of hell fire and brimstone preaching and prophecies? We don’t know.

  

Whatever the case, Jesus knows what he wants to read. He knows his Holy Scripture and he turns straight to Isaiah 61 and reads…

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
   because the Lord has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
   to bind up the broken-hearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
   and release to the prisoners;
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,

And he rolls up the scroll and sits down. Now, do you know what the very next line in Isaiah chapter 61 says? I didn’t either until Fr. Richard Rohr directed my attention to this.

It says this: and the day of vengeance of our God. Hear both lines again. The last one Jesus reads is to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the next line is, and the day of vengeance of our God.

Kind of changes the tone, doesn’t it? Right away, I’m thinking, am I going to be one of the ones who receive good news, be liberated in the year of the Lord’s favor? Or am I going to feel the fire of God’s vengeful wrath?

See, here’s what you’ll see if you put together all of Jesus’ quotes from Hebrew Scripture: He never quotes the many passages that appear to legitimate violence or that paint God as vengeful and judgmental. Never.

Rather he quotes passages that paint God as loving and merciful. Here’s another interesting tidbit from Fr. Rohr’s analysis: The book of Leviticus is a book of rules. I believe the official count is 603—603 rules, most of which are negative. Don’t do this, don’t do that, don’t eat whatever, the punishment for such and such is thus.., and on and on it goes.

Jesus quotes the book of Leviticus exactly once. And on that one occasion, what did he choose to quote?

He quoted the one clearly, unequivocally positive law in the book: Leviticus 19:18b, …you shall love your neighbor as yourself, I am the Lord.

In other words, in stark contrast to so many Christians today who love to pick a verse, especially from the Hebrew Scripture, to tell people how wrong or sinful or unworthy they are, Jesus.. never.. does that! Jesus always picked and quoted biblical passages that comforted people, that turned people in a merciful and loving direction.

 

That’s “The Jesus Method.” And it’s a bit of a struggle because it is pretty human to want to make the world behave according to our standards and morality. How convenient it is when we can find a passage in the Bible we can use to beat up on people. Make them behave. Justify our judgment of them.

But that’s not what Jesus did. Jesus used Holy Scripture to build people up, to heal them, to show God’s love in the world. Let us follow Jesus. Let's use The Jesus Method to love people through our use of Holy Scripture.

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