6 Easter A 2008 RCL
(Acts 17: 22-31; Ps 66: 7-18; 1 Peter 3: 13-2; John 14: 15-21)
“Oh, you’re an orphan.”
I had never heard those words addressed to me before that day. My youngest Helen was about 4 years old. As our one native-born Oregonian, she had never seen other members of my side of the family “way out here” in the Northwest.
That summer evening at dinner she asked me, “Is your mommy dead?” Yes. “Is your daddy dead?” Yes. “Both your mommy AND your daddy are dead?” Yes, Helen.
Her little face filled with concern. “Oh, you’re an orphan!” she cried. She leapt to her feet and came around the table to wrap her arms around my neck.
I was surprised to feel something melt inside me, and tears sprang to my eyes. For a moment I felt like an orphan, alone in the world. And yet, with my preschooler’s arms around my neck, I felt understood and, strangely enough, I felt safe.
Something in us understands orphans. Think of all the characters in movies and books who are orphans. Harry Potter, the Beaudelaire children in “A Series Of Unfortunate Events.” Huck Finn. Frodo Baggins. Luke Skywalker. Oliver Twist. Peter Pan and the Lost Boys. The list goes on and on. Why do we need the stories of orphans? Why do we want to hear their stories over and over again?
Perhaps we understand what it is to be alone. Perhaps we understand what it is to be vulnerable. Perhaps we understand what it is to have no roots and no permanent home. Perhaps there is an orphan within each of us, and orphans who are always in our midst.
Jesus said, “I will not leave you orphaned.”
These words are spoken right before Jesus does leave his children, right before his friends and followers are orphaned. Jesus does abandon them, not by walking away like many children are abandoned today, but by disappearing into the horror of his trial and execution. I wonder if the Gospel preserves the word because the disciples of Jesus used it among themselves after Good Friday’s horrors. “Now we’re orphans. He’s left us alone.”
But he promises that we will never be alone. He will come again, he will come home to his children. And he will ask God for someone else to be with us.
Our translation calls this one who will stay with us the “Advocate.” The Advocate’s the one who will go with us to trial and will argue our case for us before anyone who judge us. The Greek word can also be translated “Comforter”, “comfort” in the old sense of “giving strength”. The Old Testament word is very strong—“blood-avenger”, the one who’s got our back in the alley when everyone else runs away. One translation simply says, “Friend.”
If we follow the Way of Jesus, then there is One who will always stand up for us in court. There is One who will always have our back. There is One will always give us strength. There is One will always be there as our Friend.
The mystery of God-in-the-world is a mystery of presence and absence, comfort even when we feel most abandoned. We as individuals, we as a church community, we as a people understand what it is to be orphans. But today we also understand that we are never alone, we never face our troubles alone. One is always with us, to comfort and guard, to challenge and to transform, to heal and to save.
archived musings and preachments
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Sunday, April 20, 2008
The sun may dance
5 Easter A 2008 (RCL)
Earth Day Weekend
(Acts 7: 55-60; Ps 31: 1-5, 15-16; 1 Peter 2: 2-10; John 14: 1-14)
In ancient Christian Ireland, they believed that the sun would dance in the sky on Easter morning.
Beneath this lovely romantic tale lies deep wisdom. Believe or don’t believe that the sun can dance at the Easter dawn. This story proclaims the truth that the God of the Bible is not concerned solely with the well-being of human beings. The Celts loved to call God the King of the Elements, God of water and fire and earth and air. God inhabits creation, participates in it, loves it and delights in it. God endows creation with dignity and its own reasons. Grand space nebulas, hulking gentle manatees, majestic whales and fierce tigers, towering trees and harshly beautiful deserts—all does not exist just for us to use and then discard. This too is an Easter message.
The sacred creation does not exist outside of us. Many of us are attracted to the ancient Celtic Christian way of seeing. We want a faith that brings us closer to the earth, healing the strange imaginary wedge driven between us and the earth, the sea, the sky. The Celts did not view the sacred creation as an anxious problem, as something apart from themselves. They did not have the option to sit in a comfortable room with food processed so it no longer looks like the animals and plants from which it came, with an array of buttons at hand that gives us the illusion of easy control over life. They loved the rising of the sun and the coming of the rains, the phases of the moon and the run of the salmon, the lambing and the shearing and the harvesting. They knew they were part of the sacred cycle, the divine dance filled with the fierce, endless energy of the Holy Trinity. Just as the vigorous endless knot-work filled their manuscripts, so they believed the endless energy of God took form again and again in the rhythms of life.
They often chose to live on the edge of harsh, wild beauty, lovely lonely valleys like Glendalough or mad fierce islands like Iona or Skellig Michael, so they could know God and know themselves. Know God—the grand glory of the Lord of the Elements. Know themselves—grace-filled but small, frail, gently caressed by a summer breeze or dashed to death in an instant by a towering Atlantic wave. That’s why we Oregonians head to the coast or up the gorge or up on the mountain. No matter what our heads think about God, we long to know God and to know ourselves by walking and breathing in the dance of creation.
But times have changed. Columba and his monks did not face their responsibility in killing the salmon and poisoning the air, stripping the heavens of the protective ozone layer, filling Iona and the sea with the discarded trash of their community. But we do. Only today the headlines are filled with the collapse of the salmon run and the abuse of the Sacramento River far away that may be one thing to blame. But we as a people all have our share of the responsibility and the result.
We have also a gift that Columba did not have. We may repent and learn again how to love the earth and sea and sky made and indwelt by the Holy Three. We may change our hearts and mind and habit. It is not by listing facts but by changing hearts that we shall love and preserve the sacred earth.
We may do so this Eastertide, as the nation observes Earth Day. We may ask the good God to help as we seek a new way to love the ancient creation. If we do this, we love the Lord Jesus himself who dwells at the heart of creation as true God and truly human. The risen Lord dwells in God, and we dwell in him. The Risen One dwells at the heart of creation, and we with him. To love and cherish the sacred creation is to love the risen Lord and the Holy Three who inhabit the created world. And in that love, the sun may dance, and we may see it.
Earth Day Weekend
(Acts 7: 55-60; Ps 31: 1-5, 15-16; 1 Peter 2: 2-10; John 14: 1-14)
In ancient Christian Ireland, they believed that the sun would dance in the sky on Easter morning.
Beneath this lovely romantic tale lies deep wisdom. Believe or don’t believe that the sun can dance at the Easter dawn. This story proclaims the truth that the God of the Bible is not concerned solely with the well-being of human beings. The Celts loved to call God the King of the Elements, God of water and fire and earth and air. God inhabits creation, participates in it, loves it and delights in it. God endows creation with dignity and its own reasons. Grand space nebulas, hulking gentle manatees, majestic whales and fierce tigers, towering trees and harshly beautiful deserts—all does not exist just for us to use and then discard. This too is an Easter message.
The sacred creation does not exist outside of us. Many of us are attracted to the ancient Celtic Christian way of seeing. We want a faith that brings us closer to the earth, healing the strange imaginary wedge driven between us and the earth, the sea, the sky. The Celts did not view the sacred creation as an anxious problem, as something apart from themselves. They did not have the option to sit in a comfortable room with food processed so it no longer looks like the animals and plants from which it came, with an array of buttons at hand that gives us the illusion of easy control over life. They loved the rising of the sun and the coming of the rains, the phases of the moon and the run of the salmon, the lambing and the shearing and the harvesting. They knew they were part of the sacred cycle, the divine dance filled with the fierce, endless energy of the Holy Trinity. Just as the vigorous endless knot-work filled their manuscripts, so they believed the endless energy of God took form again and again in the rhythms of life.
They often chose to live on the edge of harsh, wild beauty, lovely lonely valleys like Glendalough or mad fierce islands like Iona or Skellig Michael, so they could know God and know themselves. Know God—the grand glory of the Lord of the Elements. Know themselves—grace-filled but small, frail, gently caressed by a summer breeze or dashed to death in an instant by a towering Atlantic wave. That’s why we Oregonians head to the coast or up the gorge or up on the mountain. No matter what our heads think about God, we long to know God and to know ourselves by walking and breathing in the dance of creation.
But times have changed. Columba and his monks did not face their responsibility in killing the salmon and poisoning the air, stripping the heavens of the protective ozone layer, filling Iona and the sea with the discarded trash of their community. But we do. Only today the headlines are filled with the collapse of the salmon run and the abuse of the Sacramento River far away that may be one thing to blame. But we as a people all have our share of the responsibility and the result.
We have also a gift that Columba did not have. We may repent and learn again how to love the earth and sea and sky made and indwelt by the Holy Three. We may change our hearts and mind and habit. It is not by listing facts but by changing hearts that we shall love and preserve the sacred earth.
We may do so this Eastertide, as the nation observes Earth Day. We may ask the good God to help as we seek a new way to love the ancient creation. If we do this, we love the Lord Jesus himself who dwells at the heart of creation as true God and truly human. The risen Lord dwells in God, and we dwell in him. The Risen One dwells at the heart of creation, and we with him. To love and cherish the sacred creation is to love the risen Lord and the Holy Three who inhabit the created world. And in that love, the sun may dance, and we may see it.
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Easter 3: walking to Emmaus (Fr. Phil)
THIRD SUNDAY OF EASTER
Year A
Ss. Peter & Paul –
+++++
Why, we might ask, were the two travelers in today’s Gospel “headed for the hills”?
If they had been anything like the rest of the disciples—and there is no evidence to think that they were not—then these Emmaus walkers had given up. They, too, had left Jesus in the lurch. When the chips were down—and they were down as low as they could go—these individuals were interested primarily in saving their own skins. Although Luke never gives any reasons why these particular followers of Jesus were headed to this obscure, little-known village, it is a safe guess that Emmaus was as good a place as any to “get out of Dodge.” To wimp out.
Frederick Buechner wrote eloquently about “Emmaus” in his book The Magnificent Defeat: “’Emmaus’ is where we go when life gets to be too much for us: … the place we go in order to escape—a bar, a movie, wherever it is we throw up our hands and say, ‘Let the whole damned thing go hang. It makes no difference anyway.’ … Emmaus may be buying a new suit or a new car or smoking more cigarettes than you really want, or reading a second-rate novel or even writing one. Emmaus may be going to church on Sunday. Emmaus is whatever we do or wherever we go to make ourselves forget that the world holds nothing sacred: that even the wisest and bravest and loveliest decay and die; that even the noblest ideas that men have had—ideas about love and freedom and justice—have always in time been twisted out of shape by selfish men for selfish ends.”
2
A large part of the Exhilarating News of the Resurrection is that the Risen Lord comes to us anyway. In the midst of our wimpishness. In the hour of our faithlessness. Under the spell of thrown-up hands and drained resolve. Under the pall of disillusionment and despair. On our way to our favorite “Emmaus” to escape reality. Jesus comes to us—even though “unrecognizable” at first , and even though believed to be a “stranger” (Lk. 24:18).
Albert Schweitzer said that Jesus was “the man who fit no formula.” And indeed his coming to Cleopas and the other disciples walking toward Emmaus fits no formula. The Resurrected One will be who he will be. Whereas he speaks immediately to Mary, calling her by name (Jn. 20:16); whereas he makes himself immediately recognizable to the disciples squirreled away behind locked doors, showing them his wounds (Jn. 20:19-20)—on the road to Emmaus, Jesus remains “incognito” until he reveals himself to them in blessed and broken bread at table (Lk. 24:30-31). It seems that Jesus kept his identity secret so that a key post-Resurrection truth could be imparted.
It is a truth that in most religions (or distortions thereof) there is no Divine welcome for the sinner until he or she has “gotten right” with God. The message is: “Get right with God and God will get right with you.” Get acceptable, and God will accept you. But here we see just the opposite: Jesus comes among the sinful apart from any sign of repentance whatsoever. Jesus comes among them as a gift. God remains faithful even if we do not. Emmaus demonstrates that Jesus does not appear among us demanding newness of life; he confers newness of life.
3
Amendment of life is a consequence of grace, not its precursor, something required beforehand.
Another truth Jesus makes known to them when he asks the question: “Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” (v. 26). The implication here is that people in their waywardness and sinfulness still remain instruments of God: Pilate and Caiaphas; the Sanhedrin; Judas; Peter, James, and John; the Emmaus disciples themselves—all, in their own way, despite their twistedness—still remained instruments of God in the Paschal Mystery. That God is able to use us, not just in our fleeting moments of righteousness, but in the depths of our waywardness, is a profound truth of the Resurrection faith. As Peter would declare to the crowd at Pentecost: “… this man, handed over to you according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law. But God raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power” (Acts
Yet another truth is that the only way we can make sense of Easter—as these disciples struggle to do on the road to Emmaus—is to encounter the Risen Christ ourselves. To have our eyes “opened” so that we may recognize the Lord in our midst. Returning to Frederick Buechner’s The Magnificent Defeat, he says: “It is not the objective proof of God’s existence that we want, but, whether we use religious language for it or not, the experience of God’s presence. That is the miracle we are really after. And that is also, I think, the miracle that we really get.”
4
How do we experience the miracle of Resurrection Presence?
As the canticle Benedictus expresses it:
Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel,
He has come to his people and set them free;
He has raised up for us a mighty Savior
Born of the house of his servant David.
Barry Vaughn has written about Emmaus:
We may not go again to walk with Cleopas and his companion from
How often have we said, “But we had hoped …”?
“But we had hoped … that we would be successful in getting work …
5
but we had hoped … that this relationship would last and bring love and contentment to our lives … but we had hoped … that the doctors would find a cure…”
And perhaps as we wondered if we had hoped in vain, did someone draw near and speak a word of comfort and hope to us? Did someone remind us that God has entered into human life in all its joy and sorrow? Did someone remind you that on the Cross God took and blessed and broke God’s own life and offered it to us in the midst of suffering so that all human sadness and pain might become vehicles of God’s presence?
Are you saying even now, “But we had hoped …”? Then draw near to this table, where Jesus invites us to take again the bread that he blessed and broke and gave. And open your eyes and your hearts and be hopeful. The women who went to the tomb were right: he is risen.
Alleluia! He is risen indeed!
[Things consulted: H.K. Synthesis
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Toward God Ch. 9 "Short Prayers" and coming to a close
I share in this post some thoughts about this chapter"Short Prayers", and also share some thoughts about 'blogging on Casey's book and bringing this experiment to a probable close for now.
"Short prayers" is how I grew up. One prayer-gift of traditional Catholicism is that of both teaching and encouraging short prayers. One cannot escape a traditional RC upbringing without running head-on into standard prayers for memorization such as the "Hail Mary", the "Gloria" or "Glory be", what I grew up calling the "Our Father" only to learn later that Protestant folk called it the "Lord's Prayer" and added the "for Thine is the Kingdom..." portion. And these prayers, along with the Apostles' Creed and a few others, were all systemitized in the Latin or RC form of the Rosary. The drone of the "Hail Mary" over and over was what church-before-Mass sounded like, what the funeral home sounded like, sometimes what the home at prayer sounded like.
Sometimes the drone sounded jaded and mechanical, and later such prayer-practices were mocked and disparaged from the inside, by a post-Vatican II RC Church (now famous were the priests who would tear a Rosary into shreds from the pulpit and scatter the beads while exhorting people to "pray the liturgy"), and from outside, from Protestant folk who insisted that we "just pray, don't 'say prayers'". Funny how things came full-circle, and now Protestant folks are exploring prayer-beads and the Rosary traditions and I have been asked more than once by newcomers if we have a Rosary group they can join.
Beyond the Rosary itself was even shorter prayers, verses, a practice somewhat more ecumenical as I think Evangelical folk did the same sort of thing with memorized Bible verses. One traditional RC school referred to short one-line prayers as "ejaculations", giving rise to a lot of squirmy humor on the adolescent church-school level of things. But we were encouraged to place the desire of our hearts, spiritually speaking, into one phrase, a sort of "cry of the heart" to God. I can remember several--"Jesus I adore you", "Mary pray for us" leap out.
Anthony Bloom in his classic book "Beginning To Pray" calls these "walking-stick prayers", and in that context speaks of the Eastern Orthodox "Jesus Prayer" ("Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy upon me") and the rich tradition that has grown up with its practice. We need to have a few words that accompany us throughout the day, supporting us when we're weary, focusing our restless thoughts and hearts.
I've come to the conclusion for my part that the actual words do not matter, or that no one formula is objectively better than another. What matters is that we pray, in season and out of season. In preparation for my sabbatical, one focus of which will hopefully be primitive monasticism, I have been reading John Cassian. "O God, make speed to save me" works just fine and is already familiar from its use in the Daily Office. And I agree wholly with Cassian when he says, and Casey quotes, that "prayer is only a faint whisper within us", and that to whisper once is far better than not to whisper at all.
I am interested to hear of anyone's experience with placing our prayers into a whisper of words, the ancient tradition of short prayers which Augustine said "the brethren in Egypt aim like arrows", short as to avoid wandering attention.
I want to share as well that I think my desire to finish reflecting on Casey's book before sabbatical is not realistic, and I will bring this experiment to a close for now. It has been on the one hand a good discipline for me to try to systematically reflect on a rich book and invite others to do so. On the other hand I had hoped for a stronger sense of conversation between readers. For my part I think I tried too hard to completely summarize each chapter, and so perhaps I unintentionally precluded conversation. And often enough I became distracted and so 'blog entries fell off of the weekly rhythm I had hoped to sustain. One of my personal secrets is that I am not a fast reader, and I know that a number of us finished Casey long ago and had moved on; hence these reflections might have felt like afterthoughts. Of late making 'blog entries began to feel like producing one more piece for consumption, and at this juncture, right before sabbatical, I am feeling my inner well to be quite dry and the bucket is clattering upon the stones at the bottom. I hope to find some filling-time, but have learned that laying that expectation upon God and upon a time of renewal is too utilitarian. I'll be filled in the way and in the time that God wills. Let me know any thoughts you may have about how we may sustain cyber-conversation in the future. And thanks for the reading, and for the reflecting.
"Short prayers" is how I grew up. One prayer-gift of traditional Catholicism is that of both teaching and encouraging short prayers. One cannot escape a traditional RC upbringing without running head-on into standard prayers for memorization such as the "Hail Mary", the "Gloria" or "Glory be", what I grew up calling the "Our Father" only to learn later that Protestant folk called it the "Lord's Prayer" and added the "for Thine is the Kingdom..." portion. And these prayers, along with the Apostles' Creed and a few others, were all systemitized in the Latin or RC form of the Rosary. The drone of the "Hail Mary" over and over was what church-before-Mass sounded like, what the funeral home sounded like, sometimes what the home at prayer sounded like.
Sometimes the drone sounded jaded and mechanical, and later such prayer-practices were mocked and disparaged from the inside, by a post-Vatican II RC Church (now famous were the priests who would tear a Rosary into shreds from the pulpit and scatter the beads while exhorting people to "pray the liturgy"), and from outside, from Protestant folk who insisted that we "just pray, don't 'say prayers'". Funny how things came full-circle, and now Protestant folks are exploring prayer-beads and the Rosary traditions and I have been asked more than once by newcomers if we have a Rosary group they can join.
Beyond the Rosary itself was even shorter prayers, verses, a practice somewhat more ecumenical as I think Evangelical folk did the same sort of thing with memorized Bible verses. One traditional RC school referred to short one-line prayers as "ejaculations", giving rise to a lot of squirmy humor on the adolescent church-school level of things. But we were encouraged to place the desire of our hearts, spiritually speaking, into one phrase, a sort of "cry of the heart" to God. I can remember several--"Jesus I adore you", "Mary pray for us" leap out.
Anthony Bloom in his classic book "Beginning To Pray" calls these "walking-stick prayers", and in that context speaks of the Eastern Orthodox "Jesus Prayer" ("Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy upon me") and the rich tradition that has grown up with its practice. We need to have a few words that accompany us throughout the day, supporting us when we're weary, focusing our restless thoughts and hearts.
I've come to the conclusion for my part that the actual words do not matter, or that no one formula is objectively better than another. What matters is that we pray, in season and out of season. In preparation for my sabbatical, one focus of which will hopefully be primitive monasticism, I have been reading John Cassian. "O God, make speed to save me" works just fine and is already familiar from its use in the Daily Office. And I agree wholly with Cassian when he says, and Casey quotes, that "prayer is only a faint whisper within us", and that to whisper once is far better than not to whisper at all.
I am interested to hear of anyone's experience with placing our prayers into a whisper of words, the ancient tradition of short prayers which Augustine said "the brethren in Egypt aim like arrows", short as to avoid wandering attention.
I want to share as well that I think my desire to finish reflecting on Casey's book before sabbatical is not realistic, and I will bring this experiment to a close for now. It has been on the one hand a good discipline for me to try to systematically reflect on a rich book and invite others to do so. On the other hand I had hoped for a stronger sense of conversation between readers. For my part I think I tried too hard to completely summarize each chapter, and so perhaps I unintentionally precluded conversation. And often enough I became distracted and so 'blog entries fell off of the weekly rhythm I had hoped to sustain. One of my personal secrets is that I am not a fast reader, and I know that a number of us finished Casey long ago and had moved on; hence these reflections might have felt like afterthoughts. Of late making 'blog entries began to feel like producing one more piece for consumption, and at this juncture, right before sabbatical, I am feeling my inner well to be quite dry and the bucket is clattering upon the stones at the bottom. I hope to find some filling-time, but have learned that laying that expectation upon God and upon a time of renewal is too utilitarian. I'll be filled in the way and in the time that God wills. Let me know any thoughts you may have about how we may sustain cyber-conversation in the future. And thanks for the reading, and for the reflecting.
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