The Train

Proper 16 B 2009
1 Kings 8: 22-30, 41-43; Ps 84; Eph 6: 10-20; John 6: 56-69


Going through my files, I found this story—it still speaks.

There was a train running through lovely rolling countryside. The train was well-kept, efficiently run, with confident staff, good food in the dining car, and comfortable seating. The passengers were used to how good was the train, and so assumed that the train had always run this way and always would. The train’s name, oddly enough, was “the church.”

But as time went on, things seem to change—at first so gradually that it was easy to ignore or explain away. The train began to run a little late sometimes, and once in awhile it ran very late. The interior of the cars seemed to become a little more worn, and little problems like a small tear in the upholstery was not fixed right away, then was not fixed at all. The food was not the same—new recipes, and the old selections did not seem as good. The conductors and other staff seemed to be hiding anxiety behind their professional smiles, and could be seen to gather in small groups discussing things in quiet urgent tones. And the scenery outside the windows was different than people remembered—an unfamiliar route, through country with different trees and animals, becoming slowly more desert-like.

Some passengers seemed oblivious to the changes. Others noted the changes but kept their thoughts to themselves. Still others began to speak with each other—a few seemed glad of some change, but most were anxious or even angry that life on the train was different than before. Those who were angry blamed new passengers, or blamed the staff, or blamed those who owned the railroad.

One day, to everyone’s shock, the train slowed abruptly, then came to a sudden, lurching halt! The staff almost ran through the cars in near-panic and got off without giving any explanation or instruction. The passengers arose and most but not all climbed down the steps of the cars and gathered outside.

The train was in a barren desert landscape. Those who walked to the front of the train saw the reason why the train had stopped. The tracks actually seemed to slowly disappear in the sand in front of the engine, and were invisible as far as the eye could see.

The staff had no explanations and seemed as shocked as the passengers. Some, passengers and staff, walked apart from the larger group and stared into the distance in silence. Some were seen to cry. The rest all talked at once in disbelief. Those who were angry before were angry again, and blamed the staff and the railroad. Others said that some sort of conspiracy must have buried the tracks. A few people abandoned the train and the group and wandered off in various directions. People proposed first one solution, then another. A very vocal group advocated putting the train in reverse and backing down the way they had come—after all, they reasoned, at least those tracks were known to exist.

But then a couple of sharp-eyed people called the others to the front of the train. Wordlessly they pointed to the sands ahead. There the astonished people saw that the sand was without train tracks, but was not without tracks of any kind. Staring, the people saw one track leading into the heart of the desert. It was footprints, and those who bent over to examine the prints reported that it looked as though the person who made the prints was wearing sandals.

After a long time of staring, the passengers and the staff of the train walked into the desert, following the footprints.

That tale was written by a Roman Catholic in the Catechumenate movement, sometime back in the 1970’s. The storyteller had some clear sense of things to come.

The story can apply to a larger church on the whole—Episcopal certainly, but I hear from my friends in other polities that everyone has a version of the train. The story can apply to a congregation such as ours. Or it can apply to our own individual lives of faith.

Together or alone, we are all led to the desert, where what we expected and how we were used to live no longer applies. Usually this comes about through forces and realities larger than ourselves. Transitions good or painful put us in the desert. And once we’ve worked through all our emotions and fears and anger and wonder, we’re left gazing into the desert. Faith says that the desert is not just a waste of sand. Eyes of faith can see the path that has been made by the One who always goes before us.

The Gospel speaks of this. All the Gospels were composed when the early Jesus movement was fragile and there was no train, no routine, no long-established way to do things or run the railroad. Today we hear Jesus saying just how outrageous his path is. Share my life fully, be in me and let me be in you, flesh as food and blood as drink. It was a desert track way too stark and shocking for many who were following him up until then, who probably wanted their new faith presented in well-established Jewish categories. But that train had come to a stop in the sand, at least for those who had taken a chance on the strange compelling new rabbi who called them to follow him into the desert of faith and a new life.

It’s OK to love the train, it’s OK to love where the train has been. It’s OK to tell stories of how wonderful the journey has been up until now. It’s even OK to want to back the train up along the track we know.

But there is more ahead. There is a journey to walk. There is new life in what seems to be bleak and desert. And there is one who walks that path already, who asks us to follow him into what waits for us—food in the desert, unexpected water, a new journey to be blazed.

God-bearers

Mary the God-Bearer 2009
Isaiah 61: 10-11; Ps 34: 1-9; Galatians 4: 4-7; Luke 1: 46-55)


God can take flesh in our lives.

A medieval abbot shocked his monks. He taught that we are supposed to be so radically open to the presence and action of God that the Word can take flesh in us just as the Word took flesh in Mary of Nazareth long ago. Within the last year a “supportive spouse” who does not come to church heard of our name for today’s feast—Mary the God-bearer—and said “But we’re ALL God-bearers!”

Ironic, don’t you think, that a medieval monk and a post-modern de-churched Portlander would be on the same page?

But maybe it’s not so ironic. Maybe the hunger of Saint Bernard in the 11th century and an intelligent, well-educated Northwesterner is the same—deep, universal, and always new. Every searching heart wants to know that we are not alone, that there is a loving will that threads its way gently yet powerfully through our lives, that we simply do not live, breathe, love, suffer, and die with no one to mark our coming and our going. We want to know, we want to trust that in our lives, in our searching, in the cries of the suffering and the poor especially, there is an echo in the divine heart. And the answer of the divine heart to these questions and these cries is not to manufacture answers for the head, but to birth new and astounding life in our bodies and in our souls.

It’s a tender and audacious faith. Tender and audacious hearts are the favorite dwelling place of God.

Mary of Nazareth was such a tender and audacious heart. I was taught a sweet piety about Mary that got pretty sticky at times. “Gentle lady, meek and mild…”, and the old Church held her up as a role model for obedient children and submissive women.

It’s a good thing we read the Bible with clearer eyes today. Mary was one in a line of outrageous women who let themselves be changed by the divine fire. Miriam prophet-sister of Aaron, Deborah the Judge, Judith the warrior, Hannah who never lost faith or hope—all were powerful and all were chosen by God to make a radical change for the better. One of my first Bible teachers said, “When the God of the Bible wants to flip things upside-down, God looks for a woman.” Taking on the frightening news of the Incarnation, and facing the scorn and possible violence of an outraged religious population, was not the act of a weak or passive person. Gentle yes, but the gentleness is of someone who is empowered to be gentle from a deep place of peace and trust. Think Desmond Tutu gentle…

She wears so many faces, does Mary the God-bearer. All those who are in deep need take her as their own. Medieval peasants made her their great Lady, more beautiful and powerful and kind than whoever was Queen reigning on the local throne. On the image hanging in our kitchen at home her skin is a deep black, as is the skin of her holy Child. Our Hispanic fellow-parishioners see her with rich brown skin and glossy black hair like an Aztec princess.

We all see her as our own, because she is our own. She is one of us and among us, and the “yes” she said to God is the “yes” she assures us we can all say to the transforming power of God in our lives. The “yes” we say together with her as the Church is the “yes” to God’s tender care for all those poor, all those abused, all those ignored or most forgotten.

Mary’s “yes” to God is always fresh and always new. Fresh and new is her invitation to us to join her in saying “yes” to God.

He's changed, we're changed

Transfiguration 2009
Exodus 34: 29-35; Ps 99: 5=9; 2 Peter 1: 13-21; Luke 9: 28-36


A tired, discouraged people gathered at the foot of the mountain. They had been abused, demeaned, and hunted. They had run from their enemies into the desert, the one place where their enemies would not want to follow.

They had almost died from starvation and thirst. They had to trust that their survival was not due to luck, but was a gift from an unseen, nameless God. This God spoke through the mouth of a man with a speech impediment. This man led them to an isolated mountain, told them to wait for him, and disappeared on the mountain for days at a time.

What passed through their heads, what words passed their lips, while they were waiting? Did they speak about how crazy this whole trip was? Did they talk about the absent leader as a religious fanatic, a dreamer? Did the practical ones among them say that they should return to where they had come from, where there was food and shelter and where they knew their place? Did they want to trade uncertainty for certitude, return to a world that was small and safe?

But they were given a gift. They were shown the deep truth about who they were and who was speaking to them. When he returned the man’s face shown with dazzling divine light. As they saw the light and heard his words, they too were changed—changed from frightened individuals into a people-- a just people, a people bonded to one another and to their God. They knew who they really were and who they were empowered to be. And they could take the next step on their pilgrimage, the next step with their pilgrim God.

Who are we as we hear this story today? Are we also tired, hungry, thirsty, looking? Do we wish we could turn back the clock and go back to what we knew or thought we knew?

The brilliance of God shines forth today as it shone from the face of Moses. Today we too know that we are chosen, loved, and are never alone. We know that God is glory and that we too are filled with glory. The curtain is pushed aside, and we know that we are called and empowered to be a glorious people, to be a people bonded to one another and to God.

Tired men stressed out from constant contact with needy people, weary from travel, filled with wonder and questions, climbed another mountain. Their teacher was with them, the teacher who fascinated them—they did not know why. Their wonder and their questions did not vanish that day of mountain glory—they deepened and were changed. Glory, light and transformation, long-dead prophets alive. And the voice—“My son, I love him, listen to him.”

They lifted their eyes and they saw Jesus alone. But he had been changed, and so had they. Their questions—who is this? Who are we called to be? How does God give us hope?—were all changed. The question was not “will God free us?” Instead, it was “how will God free us, and how shall we follow?” Peter and John and James had been changed as their Master had been changed.

We are them—Peter and John and James. We climb the mountain today and see God’s glory in the face of Jesus. We have heard the story and the story brings us to the light. And today, the questions do not go away, but they too are different. Not “where is God?” but “where do I find this God most deeply?” Not “does anything mean anything?” but “what do I do with Meaning itself—how does it make my own life shine with meaning?” Not “do I have any power?” but “how does God’s power shine forth in me?”

We are bonded as a people and we are changed.