Rise and Serve: A Sermon for 4 February 2012

Christ Church, St. Joseph, La.

A few evenings ago, I spent a couple of hours visiting with a friend who recently returned from spending about six week over the holidays visiting her French cousin who lives in a village not too far from Paris.

While she was there, my friend got a bad case of stomach virus. Her host family decided that she needed medical attention. They called the family doctor, who came to the house to tend to my friend.

What a novel concept that is for us here in the U.S., where I strongly suspect no doctor has made a house call in some 25 years!

In today’s Gospel lesson (Mark 1:29-39, NRSV) Jesus makes a house call. That actually is not what he set out to do. If you can recall for a moment last Sunday’s Gospel, you’ll know that Jesus came to the home of Simon and Andrew straight from “teaching with authority” and casting out a demon in the local synagogue.

So he’s going to Simon and Andrew’s home to spend the remainder of the Sabbath eating and resting. But when he arrives and is immediately told of the mother-in-law’s illness, Jesus does what Jesus does: He heals her—without even asking about her medical insurance or ability to pay!

John Bridges, Christ Healing the Mother-in-Law of Simon Peter

Today’s lessons are rather perfect for a Deacon preacher! First, deacons are charged with being the prophetic voice of the church. That is, like the prophets of old, we contemporary deacons are called to remind the church of how it is to serve God in the world. Care for the sick is one of those ways, as modeled for us by Jesus the Christ, the only Son of God.

                                    
When a healing story is part of our Gospel lesson, I am reminded to look critically at our contemporary society and how we manage health care, and to ask people of faith to do the same. I stay out of the politics of saying exactly HOW we should do it. But Jesus offers us a model of healing for all that should be our ideal and goal.

Second, this story is ideal for deacon preachers because the healed woman immediately gets up to serve. Likewise, deacons model servant ministry by being servants themselves, and encourage and enable the servant ministry of everyone, not only lay people specifically but the church in general. We are to bring the real needs of the world to the church and facilitate the church’s response to those needs.

I’m a member of the Association for Episcopal Deacons, and one of the things we do at our triennial assemblies is share ideas and strategies for enabling the ministries of the congregations we serve. The association itself also engages in ministry. Most recently the AED began a national initiative to address poverty and the causes of poverty in this country.

But in another way, these texts are a challenge to deacons, and not only to deacons but to all Christians. They are a challenge because they make demands on us and they call us to examine critically some of our most cherished values.

Paul’s message to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 9:15-23, NRSV) really hits us over the head with that, and I'll return to that lesson in a minute. But first, we have more to learn from Jesus.

He goes to the home of friends to eat and rest, but upon arrival is immediately confronted with need. And he sets aside his own needs to respond to that need.

Moreover, no sooner does the sun go down, but that he is confronted by the world at his doorstep—a world of sick people. And he tends to their needs.

I don’t know about you but I think caller ID is the greatest invention since sliced bread! And once I have ended a day of work and gone home to eat and rest, I would much rather ignore those calls that are likely to demand more of me.

More than one Gospel story reminds us that Jesus responded to the needs of people, even when he himself was tired and needed rest.

But the remainder of this story is also a very important lesson for us. Early the next morning, Jesus got up and slipped away by himself to a place of prayer and meditation. Jesus needed to recharge his batteries, so to speak, and so.. do.. we.

Lent is fast approaching. We think of it as a time we “give up” something: chocolate, beer, whatever. And that is fine and good. Fasting is a Lenten discipline. But this year, think about also using Lent to recharge your spiritual batteries. If Jesus needed to get away to a place of prayer and meditation, so do we. Serving a hurting world is hard enough, and impossible to do unless we are connected to the source of all healing.

Indeed, the mother-in-law in this story is worthy of our attention as well. Healing is not only about the body, but about the spirit as well.

Note that this story offers not a single hint of “let’s make a deal.” Jesus doesn’t extract any promise from the woman that she will serve if he heals her, and she does not attempt to “earn” her healing with any promised service.

Simply put, Jesus heals because that’s what he does; she gets up and serves as a natural response to that healing. We express our connection with Divine love and forgiveness by sharing that Divine love and forgiveness in service to the world.

Now back to Paul. What in the world can we make of this notion that we can or should be “all things to all people”? What a strange idea!

We are way more inclined to believe things like, “to thine own self be true.” We are devotees of Individualism with a capital I—the notion that each of us is unique and different and entitled to live out our uniqueness and individuality in every possible way. And along with individualism comes “personal responsibility,” the idea that each of us is responsible for ourselves and our own well-being.

Personal responsibility and respect for individual differences are useful concepts. We need to learn those things and practice them in our relationships with others.

But all too often they spill over into much less flattering things, things like needing to always be right—at the expense of all who disagree with me, needing to feel safe—at the expense of the civil liberties of others, needing to exercise my right to choose or to do—without regard for how my choices or deeds might hurt others.

Paul offers us an alternative vision, an alternative devoid of damaging ego claims. Indeed, he sounds devoid of ego. But he offers this vision from a position of great emotional and spiritual maturity and strength. Only the truly strong can become weak in order to reach out to the weak. Only the free can give up freedom in order to become one with those who are not free.

And only those who know themselves to be beloved children of God can rise and serve, like Simon’s mother-in-law, and strive to be “all things to all people” for the sake of the gospel, like Paul.

 AMEN

                      

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

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

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

"the word was made flesh" by Chris Shreve

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

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

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

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

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

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

Babies are concrete. They anchor us in reality.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AMEN

Tents of God: A Sermon for 18 December 2011

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Everest Base Camp, by Mathias Schar

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

The Last Speech: A Sermon for 27 November 2011

Christ Episcopal Church, St. Joseph, LA

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

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

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

Detail, the Pontifical Irish College Chapel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AMEN

Energy of Love: A Sermon for All Saints' Day, 6 November 2011

St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Mer Rouge, La. & Church of the Redeemer, Oak Ridge, La.

As many of you know, I’m a relative newcomer to the Episcopal Church and I came from a radically different “non-liturgical” tradition. I was raised Mennonite, a Protestant denomination descended directly from the original Anabaptists. It was a tradition in which the concept of “saints” was akin to idol worship.

Of course, I now understand that the hostility of the Mennonite Church toward “saints” was really about the Medieval church’s abuses of Saints with a capital S, such things as encouraging magical thinking about the Saints in order to extract money from the devout through the selling of relics—relics often of highly questionable authenticity.

Today All Saints’ is among my favorite church feast days, and I’ll say more about that in a moment. But first a word of explanation. It kind of doesn’t seem like All Saints’ Sunday because Halloween was almost a week ago and we know there’s connection, even if we get hazy about what that connection is!

All Saints’ was established as a major feast day of the church to honor all of those saints with a capital S. It was set to be celebrated November 1st. A lesser feast called “All Souls,’” for the purpose of celebrating ALL of the faithful departed, was set for November 2nd. These dates were most likely chosen because late October was already a time of annual celebrations of the harvest, which in some cultures included honoring the dead.

Revelation 7:9-12

                                   
The Saints with a capital S were also called “Hallows,” short for “the hallowed ones,” and so the evening before All Saints’ was called “All Hallows Eve,” later shortened to “Halloween.” The Halloween costume began as a way to mock evil by dressing up and partying in scary outfits.

Over time, All Saints’ and All Souls’ kind of merged, at least in the Western Church, and today we celebrate both on a single day. And here’s the final bit of historical trivia: Since November 1st doesn’t usually fall on a Sunday, we transfer the celebration to a Sunday, but according to the quaint traditions of the Anglicans, we can only transfer it to the Sunday following November 1.

So here we are, nearly a week after the fact, celebrating All Saints’ Day! And it is a day on which we honor not only the official saints of the church, the saints with a capital S, but all of the faithful departed.

Many of us—perhaps most of us—are here in these pews this morning because of the examples of faith, hope and charity lived out in front of us by those who have gone before us to their heavenly reward. When I hear those words from John’s Revelation (7:9-17, NRSV), I see faces in that multitude of witnesses: my parents and grandparents, pastors and teachers over the years.

Even those with whom I no longer agree, like my Mennonite preachers and teachers who were anti-saint. There they are among the multitude, robed in white, waving palm branches and saying, Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!

But if we listen carefully to John, we see in that multitude not only the faces of our own dear departed, but strange faces in all hues. And we hear their rejoicing not only in our own comforting language but in many languages at once.

On that glorious day when we stand within the multitude, I believe we will hear many names for God, names like Yahweh and Allah.

This picture painted by John is comforting, but surely it’s also an antidote for all religious exceptionalism. Whenever we are tempted to think we’ve got the right answers, the right doctrine, the right religious practice, we would do well to remember this image. Who knows with whom we will be rubbing elbows when we ourselves stand among the multitude?

Turning to today’s Gospel lesson, we learn more about that multitude. It is Jesus’ beloved Beatitudes, a part of the sermon on the mount (Matthew 5:1-12, NRSV).

These too are comforting words: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

Who among us has never felt “poor in spirit”? Who has never mourned? Who has never felt powerless in the face of the challenges of our political system? Our economic system?

The meek shall inherit the earth? Not likely! At least not by earthly standards.

Life is often hard. We are comforted by these words because they promise that in spite of the very real difficulties of everyday life, a better day will come.

They promise that we will ultimately be measured by other standards, God’s generous, loving and merciful standards. And we will not be found wanting.

These words give us hope for that future glory so vividly shown through John’s vision.

But these comforting words might also serve as a warning and cautionary tale. I cannot read the Beatitudes without being reminded of those old Burma Shave advertising signs. Remember those?

Burma Shave Signs

 Kind of like the Beatitudes, the Burma Shave signs set up a situation, then come back with a resolution—one that is kind of unexpected. And many of them were cautionary tales as well. Here’s one I found on the Internet yesterday: Big mistake, Many make, Rely on horn, Instead of brake. Burma Shave.

The Beatitudes make us smile. But they also remind us of our responsibilities as saints as long as we are here on this earth.

WE are to comfort those who mourn. WE are to fill the hungry and thirsty. WE are to be merciful. WE are to be peacemakers.

WE are to seek God above all else and love our neighbors as ourselves. And we can rejoice when that gets us into trouble with those systems and forces that oppress humankind.

In his book Beautiful Losers, Leonard Cohen wrote: What is a saint? A saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility. ...I think it has something to do with the energy of love. Contact with this energy results in the exercise of a kind of balance in the chaos of existence. …Something in him so loves the world that he gives himself to the laws of gravity and chance. Far from flying with the angels, he traces with the fidelity of a seismograph needle the state of the solid bloody landscape. His house is dangerous and finite, but he is at home in the world. He can love the shapes of human beings, the fine and twisted shapes of the heart. It is good to have among us such men, such balancing monsters of love. (Thanks to the Website Edge of the Enclosure for this quote.)

The “energy of love” is God. When we connect with it, we become saints—agents of God’s love on earth.

AMEN

Humble Yourself: A Sermon for 30 October 2011

Christ Church, St. Joseph, La.                                         

We just can’t seem to get away from those darn Pharisees and their sinful ways, can we?

At this point in our march through the lectionary for Year A, which obviously features the Gospel according to Matthew, it seems that Jesus has nothing better to do than to argue with and criticize the Pharisees.

In fact, this game of one-upmanship that Jesus always wins, gets even nastier. Soon we will hear Jesus say, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!

So maybe it’s time to step back a bit and look at the larger picture. Maybe it is time to look at all of the agendas coming together in these stories.

There’s the agenda of the Pharisees, for sure, and it is to discredit Jesus. Then there’s Jesus’ agenda, which is to reform Judaism—often by turning upside down the most cherished tenets of the orthodox faith.

But then there’s the agenda of the Gospel writers, in this case Matthew. That’s the agenda we have the hardest time focusing on—and for good reason. We believe God inspired the Gospel writers. We believe what they wrote contains everything necessary to our own salvation.

And since our eternal lives depend on Holy Scripture, we sometimes have trouble scrutinizing it and considering the social and political contexts in which it was written. We especially have trouble when it seems to mesh so nicely with our own human contexts, our own cultural and political perspectives and, yes, prejudices.

But every so often we need to step back and look at the larger picture, not only of the agendas coming together in Biblical stories, but how those agendas intersect with our own.

Let’s begin with Jesus. He was not a Christian. He was a Jew and a devout adherent to the Jewish faith. When he answered his Father’s call to begin his ministry, he went to a synagogue. Throughout his life he preached and taught in synagogues.

Yes, Jesus was very critical of the religious leadership of his day. He was critical of the Sadduccees, who were the temple priests. He was critical of the scribes and Pharisees, who were learned and devout lay people who studied the Hebrew Scriptures and practiced the Hebrew laws contained therein. The Pharisees especially were known for their strict and diligent observance of Torah, which they understood to be God’s law.

But Jesus’ critique of Judaism and its leadership should first of all be understood as internal criticism, not criticism from without. He never left the Jewish faith. He was crucified as a Jew by the Roman state, with the consent and encouragement of the most powerful religious leaders of his day.

Moreover, Jesus’ criticism was part of a long tradition of internal criticism practiced by Judaism. That’s why so many saw him as the latest in a long string of prophets who had called the Israelites back to the faith over the centuries.

Little wonder then that the Pharisees mistrusted and questioned Jesus! They were the defenders of the traditional faith. He was the radical seeking to reform the faith.

Our Holy Gospels were written some 50 to 70 years later. That is, 50 to 70 years after Jesus spoke out against the hypocrisy and arrogance of some of the leaders of his faith.

And why then, you might ask? Because that is when the followers of Jesus were busy separating themselves from Judaism and forming a new religion, namely Christianity.

Little wonder then that the Gospel writers, carrying out the crucial work of creating a new faith identity and a new religious structure, tend to cast the Pharisees in a negative light and to show Jesus handily defeating them at every turn. And because the Gospel writers disliked the Pharisees, we think we should too. 

But external criticism is very different from internal criticism, and we know that Christian dislike for Jews has produced centuries of anti-Semitic prejudice and even violence. The words of Jesus, criticizing some of the religious leaders of his time, have been put to a use Jesus himself abhorred.

And that brings us full circle. In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus teaches not only that hypocrisy and self-righteousness are wrong, but that we need look no further than within our own ranks for examples (Matthew 23:1-12, NRSV).

I am reminded once again of contemporary politics, and specifically of recent episodes of hate-filled behavior at political rallies and forums. Things like shouts of “Let him die” when discussion turned to the problem of people who need major medical care but have no insurance.

Things like booing a gay soldier serving in Iraq when he asked a question about his own government’s policy toward him. Things like cheering at a prideful claim by a candidate that he has presided over more than 200 executions.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of these incidents is that the candidates, many of whom openly stand on their Christian credentials as a campaign strategy, did not speak out against or even seek to distance themselves from the hate-filled outbursts.

Love God, and your neighbor as yourself, Jesus said, just last Sunday.
   

Jesus Washing the Feet of His Disciples, by Michal Splho

But of course, we needn’t leave our own homes and communities to find examples of the problem Jesus addresses in today’s lesson. Most of us at least some of the time fall for the illusion of self-reliance and indulge in feelings of moral superiority.

We have been at least somewhat successful in making the social and economic system work for us. We go to church on Sunday, put our offering in the plate and thank God for our many blessings, even though we are quite sure we earned that new car or lovely home or promotion or rise in stock prices or… whatever.

And that becomes a burden we tie up and lay on the shoulders of others, sure that if we did it, they can too. We don’t have to leave our own churches to find contempt for the poor, even though Jesus calls us to love and serve them as we would Jesus himself.

Humble yourself, Jesus says. The greatest among you will be your servant. He will soon demonstrate the point by getting down on his own knees and washing the feet of his disciples as they share their last meal together. And finally, he will go to the cross, in humility and for love of us, his neighbor.

AMEN

Love in a Time of Partisanship: A Sermon for 23 October 2011

St. Luke's Chapel, Grambling, La.

In last Sunday’s Gospel lesson, the Pharisees had sent their disciples to try to trap Jesus in what he said. They asked him a question about taxes, a contentious issue then as it is now. Surely a question about taxes would get Jesus into trouble with somebody, no matter how he answered it!

Today seems to be “pop quiz day.” The Pharisees seek to “test” Jesus, and, again, they pick an ideal topic: The Law (Matthew 22:34-44 NRSV). We can almost hear the wheels turning in their minds. A question about the law will surely trip up this peasant from Galilee!

Now when I announce a pop quiz in one of my classes, I am typically met with widespread moaning and groaning. But Jesus—ever on top of the situation—has a ready answer. It is succinct and clear, and reduces the complexity of the law to two truly memorable mandates. We’ll come back to those mandates shortly, but for a moment I want to consider further the Pharisees and what they are up to.

Barbara Crafton is an Episcopal priest who writes an online meditation (The Almost Daily eMo). Writing on today’s lesson, she suggests that we modern Christians tend to forget that the Gospels were written at a time of partisanship within Judaism.

That is, followers of Jesus were a “party” within Judaism and what they believed was deemed heresy by mainstream Jews. The Pharisees were leaders of the orthodox party. They studied Torah, God’s Law and covenant with the Jewish people. (The Sadducees were temple priests and a third party within Judaism, but I’m not going to say more about them this morning, lest we need a score card to keep track of things.)
                               

Simchat Torah

These parties within Judaism thoroughly mistrusted each other. Little wonder then that the Pharisees questioned Jesus! Likewise, little wonder that the Gospel writers, left to carry on the work of the followers-of-Jesus party after his death and resurrection, tend to cast the Pharisees in a negative light, and to show Jesus handily defeating them at every turn.

And because the Gospel writers disliked the Pharisees, we think we should too. 
 
But we are misguided in our dislike of the Pharisees. They are the forerunners, not only of rabbinic Judaism as we know it today, but of those men and women we call Biblical scholars who contribute so much to our understanding of Holy Scripture.

Moreover, Jesus was not the first to reduce the complexity of the law to a clear, concise statement of concern for one’s neighbor. A few decades before Jesus’ time of teaching and preaching, a rabbi by the name of Hillel was challenged by a would-be convert to Judaism to explain the law while standing on one foot.

It’s hard to say what the challenger’s motive might have been. Perhaps he hoped Rabbi Hillel would not be able to meet the challenge and he would then be justified in giving up on the project of becoming a believer. Or, perhaps he was genuinely tired of long, complicated explications and really needed a simple understanding of the faith he was interested in—one that could be given while standing on one foot!

Either way, Rabbi Hillel met the challenge. He immediately raised one foot off the ground and said, That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary. Go and study it.

So when the Pharisees test Jesus, he too is prepared with a standing-on-one-foot summary of the law. First he says, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. 

And we recognize that as a theme of Hebrew Scripture. Many places in what we call the Old Testament, the people of Israel are commanded to love and commit themselves fully and only to the one and only God, the God of their ancestors, the God who brought them out of bondage in Egypt.

But then Jesus ups the ante over Rabbi Hillel. He says, And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

In other words, where Rabbi Hillel says don’t be hateful toward your neighbor, Jesus says LOVE your neighbor, and not a little bit but just as much as you love yourself. Care as much about the wellbeing of your neighbor as you care about your own.

Now Jesus is, in fact, quoting a passage from Leviticus when he says love your neighbor as yourself, but the bulk of Torah is devoted to other things: Property laws to ensure fairness in society, holiness laws for keeping oneself pure, laws about how and where to worship God, and so forth.

So when Jesus makes “love your neighbor as yourself” the second most important commandment, he is taking a radical stand. And he is upping the ante over the standard teaching and practice of mainstream religion in his day.

Many people—not just the Jews of old but many people today—want to turn Holy Scripture into a rulebook that covers all sorts of things: Taxes, who can marry whom, what kind of government a country should have, what kind of economic system a society should have, which countries are justified in forcing their political and economic systems on others, and on and on, ad nauseum.

But Jesus gave us just two mandates in his 1-minute, standing-on-one-foot interpretation of all of Holy Scripture: Love God with all your heart, soul and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.

Pretty simple, huh? Straightforward, direct, no conditions to remember, no complicated formulas to memorize. Just… love God and your neighbor as yourself.

So… how is that working for us? How are we doing with this command to love unconditionally in our own time of partisanship, both within the church and in the larger society?
                 

My Team vs. Your Team

With a presidential election just around the corner, we hear daily from politicians who are quite certain, on the one hand, that God is behind their candidacy, their platform, their agenda. Yet in the next breath they are equally certain we can’t afford to provide health care to all, that educating all of our children equally well is too costly, that the Mexicans who pick our fruit and pluck our chickens ought to be summarily kicked out, if not shot dead on the spot. And they have a following—a wildly enthusiastic following—people who applaud when they say these things and boo when a gay soldier ready to die for their freedom says he’s tired of living in a closet.

Turns out this mandate to love—completely, unconditionally, in our own time of partisanship—is much easier to say and to preach than to live.

But remember that Jesus ultimately and finally upped the ante on his own words. Ultimately and finally, with his own death on the cross, he says loving God and your neighbor is not enough. Be willing to die for them as well.              

  AMEN