Proper 16 C 2010
Jeremiah 1:4-10;
Psalm 71:1-6;
Hebrews 12:18-29;
Luke 13:10-17
My favorite Desert Fathers story, the tales of those hermit monks who would go to one another for advice, speaks of Abba Joseph going to visit Abba Lot. Abba Joseph asks Abba Lot, “Tell me what to do? I keep my daily rule of prayer, I work with my hands. I keep my fast, I keep silence and only speak when necessary. Is that all there is? Is there anything else I can do?” Abba Lot stands, and extends his hands with fingers outspread. Abba Joseph sees Abba Lot’s fingers each turn into a flame. Abba Lot asks, “Why not be totally turned into fire?”
I have told this tale often because it is very important to me. Like Abbot Joseph, through the years I have kept my own modest way of life, even if imperfectly. I am no desert hermit, but I live a fairly structured life of church duties and of family. This church is my chapel, my home is my monastery, my own body is my cell of solitude. I have found joy. But as the years spin out, I confront weariness and even boredom in the midst of worship and prayer. Is that all there is? Am I just going through the motions?
I feel Abba Lot asks me, “Why not be totally turned into fire?” God asks all of that in the Word today. As I wrote these words, I realized that my eyeglasses are out of date, that it is literally time to get my sight adjusted. If we find that boredom is corroding our souls, perhaps it is time to get our own sight adjusted.
In our culture, boredom is regarded as a symptom of an external problem. If we’re bored, we are not being given the right kind of entertainment, we are not being given the right sort of stimulation by our partner or our friends, we are not buying the right kind of entertainment. Sometimes people can give up relationships or jobs or churches out of boredom. Kathleen Norris in her book Acedia And Me speaks of boredom as a disease of the soul, a problem inside rather than outside. We despair of the richness of the divine life, of the meaning trembling beneath the surface of reality, and we flee from our fear that there might actually be no meaning and no divine Presence filling our lives. There’s nothing wrong with some entertainment, with some fun—every full life needs balance. But that restlessness of soul—isn’t the source of that within ourselves?
Because our God, says Hebrews, is a consuming fire. Because, says Jeremiah, we have been made and known in intimacy and wonder from the beginning of time, and have been given the very words of God. Because, says today’s Gospel, the mercy and love of God strains to be released in our midst, in spite of all the ways that we try to minimize God and make God small and controllable. Jesus healed in spite of narrow restrictions of religion and custom, overwhelming the woman who lived in pain and overwhelming those who were present with the wonder of God’s love.
For our God is a consuming fire. So, why not be totally changed into fire?
Years ago, an older couple attended here until one of the partners told the other, “But it’s the same thing every week!” Sunday Mass does follow a predictable pattern. Our worship is not designed to fix boredom by entertaining. Our worship confronts head-on the basic questions of our lives—who is God, who are we, and what does that mean? We place ourselves week by week in the presence of Christ because of who Jesus Christ is and because, as Hebrews says, we do not refuse his invitation. We keep this most basic rule of New Testament life—to gather together for worship—in order to keep our eyes properly focused. When our eyes see clearly, we see God’s overwhelming fiery love, our nature as beloved and in need. And we are asked Abba Lot’s most basic question:
“Why not be totally changed into fire?”
archived musings and preachments
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Gaga
Mary the God-Bearer 2010
Isaiah 61:10-11 Galatians 4:4-7 Luke 1:46-55 Psalm 34:1-9
Lady Gaga is in town. The feature article in the newspaper had a picture of her in one of her trademark outlandish costumes. The caption read, “The Fame Monster.”
I actually have respect for that young woman whose real name very few people know, even people who consider themselves her fans. Lady Gaga has chosen to become rich and, above all, famous, and she has achieved those goals. To be fair, that news article title “The Fame Monster” was taken from a body of her own work in which she reflects on the reality of fame. Lady Gaga can sing, she can dance, she works very hard to give her fans what they want. Some of her songs touch people deeply. She puts a lot of effort into being Lady Gaga, and it shows.
But growing up Catholic on Long Island, there was another famous Lady whose image I saw everywhere.
That Lady we called by her given name, Mary. Pictures, statues, even those bathtub shrines that many homes sported in the front yards—she was everywhere. Miriam Bat Joachim as she was probably called was probably much darker and more Semitic-looking than the Caucasian faces gazing from walls or lawn shrines. But people tend to make Mary look like one of them, as much or more than they do Jesus.
No music videos, no MP3s, no concert tours, no paparazzi—why does Mary’s fame endure, far longer than Lady Gaga’s will?
Lady Gaga for the most part points to herself. Mary points to a deep and personal reality who speaks through her.
God does not speak from on high, commanding that we gaze up straining to see the divine presence. God speaks from among us, from within us, from the very ground beneath our feet and the very voices that we hear each day. In the Gospel, Mary is that ground.
Isaiah speaks of gardens and plants and new shoots—God lies beneath our feet and brings new life to birth right beneath us. A Catholic poet whom I knew in the Midwest wrote once of a “warm, moist, salty God.” That image jars us, until we gaze at Mary and remember that the eternal, creative, vibrant Word of God grew in a woman’s body and swam in amniotic fluid and tasted her milk as his first food. “Taste and see that the LORD is good” sang the Psalm. That taste was milky on the tiny divine lips and little trembling divine chin, just like on Rose or the newly-baptized twins or any other baby among us.
The one who bore God in her body through her openness, her “yes” to God, held him while he and she gazed on a wounded world.
Brutal occupation by Rome and violent insurgency tore the bodies of the people, while rigid religion and purity codes tore their souls and their community. Imagine what Mary and young Jesus saw walking by their own doorstep—Roman soldiers, pilgrims, beggars, rich merchants, revolutionary Zealots in disguise, Pharisees, lepers maybe, and just plain folk. Mary’s eyes guided her Son’s first steps amidst a world as violent and uncertain as our own. Every poor woman who gazes in pain and anguish from Pakistani floodwaters or Haitian rubble, from midnight emergency rooms and crime-ridden streets, gaze with Mary’s eyes. She is one with them, and so her ancient song-which-is-always-new, “my soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord”, is the song of hope for Israel and for all the world’s poor.
For God chooses the cause of the poor, and God came as one of the poor. So long as Mary sings “Magnificat, with tune surpassing sweet”, the powerful will know fear in their hearts, and the poor will lift up their eyes and know hope.
When we honor Mary, we honor the hope of the poor and know, with relief and joy, that we are God’s poor.
When we long for God, when we pray, when we look with love and wonder and grief on a beautiful, wounded world, we find Mary. She does not point to herself. She points to her Son, the life and hope of the world. Funny how real fame comes from not trying to be famous.
Isaiah 61:10-11 Galatians 4:4-7 Luke 1:46-55 Psalm 34:1-9
Lady Gaga is in town. The feature article in the newspaper had a picture of her in one of her trademark outlandish costumes. The caption read, “The Fame Monster.”
I actually have respect for that young woman whose real name very few people know, even people who consider themselves her fans. Lady Gaga has chosen to become rich and, above all, famous, and she has achieved those goals. To be fair, that news article title “The Fame Monster” was taken from a body of her own work in which she reflects on the reality of fame. Lady Gaga can sing, she can dance, she works very hard to give her fans what they want. Some of her songs touch people deeply. She puts a lot of effort into being Lady Gaga, and it shows.
But growing up Catholic on Long Island, there was another famous Lady whose image I saw everywhere.
That Lady we called by her given name, Mary. Pictures, statues, even those bathtub shrines that many homes sported in the front yards—she was everywhere. Miriam Bat Joachim as she was probably called was probably much darker and more Semitic-looking than the Caucasian faces gazing from walls or lawn shrines. But people tend to make Mary look like one of them, as much or more than they do Jesus.
No music videos, no MP3s, no concert tours, no paparazzi—why does Mary’s fame endure, far longer than Lady Gaga’s will?
Lady Gaga for the most part points to herself. Mary points to a deep and personal reality who speaks through her.
God does not speak from on high, commanding that we gaze up straining to see the divine presence. God speaks from among us, from within us, from the very ground beneath our feet and the very voices that we hear each day. In the Gospel, Mary is that ground.
Isaiah speaks of gardens and plants and new shoots—God lies beneath our feet and brings new life to birth right beneath us. A Catholic poet whom I knew in the Midwest wrote once of a “warm, moist, salty God.” That image jars us, until we gaze at Mary and remember that the eternal, creative, vibrant Word of God grew in a woman’s body and swam in amniotic fluid and tasted her milk as his first food. “Taste and see that the LORD is good” sang the Psalm. That taste was milky on the tiny divine lips and little trembling divine chin, just like on Rose or the newly-baptized twins or any other baby among us.
The one who bore God in her body through her openness, her “yes” to God, held him while he and she gazed on a wounded world.
Brutal occupation by Rome and violent insurgency tore the bodies of the people, while rigid religion and purity codes tore their souls and their community. Imagine what Mary and young Jesus saw walking by their own doorstep—Roman soldiers, pilgrims, beggars, rich merchants, revolutionary Zealots in disguise, Pharisees, lepers maybe, and just plain folk. Mary’s eyes guided her Son’s first steps amidst a world as violent and uncertain as our own. Every poor woman who gazes in pain and anguish from Pakistani floodwaters or Haitian rubble, from midnight emergency rooms and crime-ridden streets, gaze with Mary’s eyes. She is one with them, and so her ancient song-which-is-always-new, “my soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord”, is the song of hope for Israel and for all the world’s poor.
For God chooses the cause of the poor, and God came as one of the poor. So long as Mary sings “Magnificat, with tune surpassing sweet”, the powerful will know fear in their hearts, and the poor will lift up their eyes and know hope.
When we honor Mary, we honor the hope of the poor and know, with relief and joy, that we are God’s poor.
When we long for God, when we pray, when we look with love and wonder and grief on a beautiful, wounded world, we find Mary. She does not point to herself. She points to her Son, the life and hope of the world. Funny how real fame comes from not trying to be famous.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Rich
Proper 13 C 2010
(Hosea 11: 1-11; Ps 107: 1-9, 43; Col 3: 1-11; Luke 12: 13-21)
I think of it as the Monday of the road-rage Grandma.
My kids and I were driving along 76th Street on a Monday in July. 76th is residential with speed bumps, and one can barely manage even the 25 mph speed limit.
In my rear-view mirror I saw a car and a face, way too close. By the tail-gating and the agitated, angry look on the driver’s face I knew that their staying behind me was not going to relieve me of harassment, so I pulled over and waved the car on. She passed be, she, because I could make out an aged face and grey hair. She raised one hand in a traditional gesture involving the deliberate use of one chosen finger. The car seemed to proclaim that the driver was a veteran of a former era in which “harmony and understanding, sympathy and love” was supposed to abound—it was an old Japanese make with peeling bumper stickers from the ‘60’s, including a quaint and hopeful “Impeach Nixon.”
We thought it was pretty funny really, as the poor dear never got far ahead of us on that speed-bumped road. My understanding side tried to reason that perhaps she had some good reason to be hurrying and harassing and flipping off people. People are angry and agitated today—the easygoing NW Portland driving style we found here in the 1990’s seems a relic of the past and the local roads feel a lot more like I remember Chicago and NY. It is an anxious age, and you probably do not need my recitation of stalled economy, bitter divisive politics, fouled Gulf beaches, and tense racial and immigration confrontations in Arizona to remember that.
But the question that troubles me about road-rage Grandma and other incidents since then is this—how much of this rage and anxiety are within me? I feel it too, I am not immune to any of it. If our graying refugee from the Age of Aquarius is participating in the pettiness and helpless rage of the era at her point in life, what hope is there for me? The life we profess and live here at Saints Peter and Paul, at any church, is supposed to make us look and act and be different than any of this sort of “spirit of the age.” What can we do?
I acknowledge at this season of my life that I feel my need for God more than ever. I feel the need for God’s cleansing the way I felt the need for a shower after tearing apart our aging kitchen and putting up drywall. At each stage I run into all over again my own rage, my own pettiness, my own disillusionment and temptation to surrender to what is around me, to drug myself with distractions so I do not listen to the wind blowing through the emptiness of my own heart.
“Let your continual mercy, O Lord, cleanse and defend your Church…” That cleansing which we prayed for is not a quaint notion. It is an ongoing felt need, an experience of our own poverty and at the same time a cry of hope in the faithful mercy of God. There is a new chance for transformation, cleansing, and renewal, each and every day.
Hosea shouts this aloud. God’s voice in Hosea screams in pain and longing, pain for the people’s infidelity and yet longing for their companionship and their walking with God in simplicity and faith. Hosea married a woman who cheated on him time and time again, and it is his own cries of betrayal and rage yet longing and hope that echo through his words. God hopes in us, longs for us, will bring us back if we even take one step forward in God’s direction. God will do the rest.
For we are an Easter people. Today the breath of Easter blows through the church and our hearts as we hear one of the Easter Sunday texts. “If you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above…” Our lives are hid with Christ in God. Because of this promise and this reality, we have infinite hope. There is room for abundant hope in that place where we are hid with Christ. There is no room for anger, envy, messed-up desire, and greed. Live each day in that place where we are hid with Christ, and we shall know hope and renewal, there in the heart of God.
But it takes wisdom. The wisdom of God is not the wisdom of the world.
Our man in today’s Gospel is wise in how a future is built according to the wisdom of the world. He has worked hard, he brought in a great harvest. Now it is time to be sensible, to protect what he has earned by “building bigger barns.” Once he has, he can kick back, not set the alarm in the morning, golf 9 holes on a Monday if he wants, do some touring with the wife.
God’s words land like a brick in this happy peaceful pond: “You fool.”
Why a fool? The poor guy is just taking care of his stock portfolio. Is it wrong to save and plan? I do, as much as our lifestyle has allowed. The parish tries to. No doubt many of us try to.
But a fool according to the Bible “says in his heart there is no God.” One can profess with one’s mouth belief in God and think thoughts of faith, but the heart is what determines what one really does and what one’s life really means. It is an open question for us today—how can we, in Jesus’ words, be “rich toward God”? As Christian folk, as a parish community?
Perhaps that question leads back to road-rage Grandma—how can our lives look and feel and be different in a world that is shot through with anger and anxiety and answers to questions we did not even know we had—how can I get more, look like more, own more, be more, get ahead of others, if even on 76th Street on a Monday?
Instead, here is one question only, “How can I be rich toward God”?
(Hosea 11: 1-11; Ps 107: 1-9, 43; Col 3: 1-11; Luke 12: 13-21)
I think of it as the Monday of the road-rage Grandma.
My kids and I were driving along 76th Street on a Monday in July. 76th is residential with speed bumps, and one can barely manage even the 25 mph speed limit.
In my rear-view mirror I saw a car and a face, way too close. By the tail-gating and the agitated, angry look on the driver’s face I knew that their staying behind me was not going to relieve me of harassment, so I pulled over and waved the car on. She passed be, she, because I could make out an aged face and grey hair. She raised one hand in a traditional gesture involving the deliberate use of one chosen finger. The car seemed to proclaim that the driver was a veteran of a former era in which “harmony and understanding, sympathy and love” was supposed to abound—it was an old Japanese make with peeling bumper stickers from the ‘60’s, including a quaint and hopeful “Impeach Nixon.”
We thought it was pretty funny really, as the poor dear never got far ahead of us on that speed-bumped road. My understanding side tried to reason that perhaps she had some good reason to be hurrying and harassing and flipping off people. People are angry and agitated today—the easygoing NW Portland driving style we found here in the 1990’s seems a relic of the past and the local roads feel a lot more like I remember Chicago and NY. It is an anxious age, and you probably do not need my recitation of stalled economy, bitter divisive politics, fouled Gulf beaches, and tense racial and immigration confrontations in Arizona to remember that.
But the question that troubles me about road-rage Grandma and other incidents since then is this—how much of this rage and anxiety are within me? I feel it too, I am not immune to any of it. If our graying refugee from the Age of Aquarius is participating in the pettiness and helpless rage of the era at her point in life, what hope is there for me? The life we profess and live here at Saints Peter and Paul, at any church, is supposed to make us look and act and be different than any of this sort of “spirit of the age.” What can we do?
I acknowledge at this season of my life that I feel my need for God more than ever. I feel the need for God’s cleansing the way I felt the need for a shower after tearing apart our aging kitchen and putting up drywall. At each stage I run into all over again my own rage, my own pettiness, my own disillusionment and temptation to surrender to what is around me, to drug myself with distractions so I do not listen to the wind blowing through the emptiness of my own heart.
“Let your continual mercy, O Lord, cleanse and defend your Church…” That cleansing which we prayed for is not a quaint notion. It is an ongoing felt need, an experience of our own poverty and at the same time a cry of hope in the faithful mercy of God. There is a new chance for transformation, cleansing, and renewal, each and every day.
Hosea shouts this aloud. God’s voice in Hosea screams in pain and longing, pain for the people’s infidelity and yet longing for their companionship and their walking with God in simplicity and faith. Hosea married a woman who cheated on him time and time again, and it is his own cries of betrayal and rage yet longing and hope that echo through his words. God hopes in us, longs for us, will bring us back if we even take one step forward in God’s direction. God will do the rest.
For we are an Easter people. Today the breath of Easter blows through the church and our hearts as we hear one of the Easter Sunday texts. “If you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above…” Our lives are hid with Christ in God. Because of this promise and this reality, we have infinite hope. There is room for abundant hope in that place where we are hid with Christ. There is no room for anger, envy, messed-up desire, and greed. Live each day in that place where we are hid with Christ, and we shall know hope and renewal, there in the heart of God.
But it takes wisdom. The wisdom of God is not the wisdom of the world.
Our man in today’s Gospel is wise in how a future is built according to the wisdom of the world. He has worked hard, he brought in a great harvest. Now it is time to be sensible, to protect what he has earned by “building bigger barns.” Once he has, he can kick back, not set the alarm in the morning, golf 9 holes on a Monday if he wants, do some touring with the wife.
God’s words land like a brick in this happy peaceful pond: “You fool.”
Why a fool? The poor guy is just taking care of his stock portfolio. Is it wrong to save and plan? I do, as much as our lifestyle has allowed. The parish tries to. No doubt many of us try to.
But a fool according to the Bible “says in his heart there is no God.” One can profess with one’s mouth belief in God and think thoughts of faith, but the heart is what determines what one really does and what one’s life really means. It is an open question for us today—how can we, in Jesus’ words, be “rich toward God”? As Christian folk, as a parish community?
Perhaps that question leads back to road-rage Grandma—how can our lives look and feel and be different in a world that is shot through with anger and anxiety and answers to questions we did not even know we had—how can I get more, look like more, own more, be more, get ahead of others, if even on 76th Street on a Monday?
Instead, here is one question only, “How can I be rich toward God”?
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