Fifth Sunday of Easter – May 22nd, 2011
Acts 7:55-60
Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16
1 Peter 2:2-10
John 14:1-14
First off, it’s lovely to see everyone here. Being scheduled to
preach the day after the rapture is predicted to happen isn’t exactly
the prime slot.
When I was preparing for today, I found I was trying to unify a lot of
different things, in a likely misguided attempt to make sense of
scripture. There’s quite a lot going on in today’s lection. Ways,
truth, life, houses, stones, milk.
In some ways, in trying to make sense of all that, I was attempting to
do the exact same thing as Harold Camping has been trying to do –
understand scripture, and understand what we, as Christians, are
supposed to do.
And that’s hard work. For 500 years now, we, as individual believers,
have had the opportunity and the responsibility to try to understand
the scriptures. For another 1200 years before that, the learned
clerics of our faith tried to understand them on our behalf. And
we’re connected to another couple of millennia of disputation and
argument of the rabbis and sages of the Jewish tradition.
So perhaps it not surprising that we haven’t figured it out yet, at
least not to the point of exact dates.
Part of the problem, of course, is that scripture speaks of things
that aren’t so easy to understand. Scripture’s natural language is
symbolism, metaphor, parable. And I was wondering why that is. It
seems like it would be a lot easier if scripture was clearer. If it
just said things straight.
And, I think that’s what some folks really, really want. They want it
so much that they make these texts into something that at least seems
straightforward. Simple. Direct.
I sympathize with them, I really do. That would make things a lot easier.
But I have to think that perhaps the authors of the scriptures could
have been a bit clearer if they had wanted to. And apparently, they
did not want to be. And usually, when that sort of choice is made,
it’s because there isn’t any other way to say it.
Which means, I think, that it’s not the words that we should be so
concerned with. It’s what the words point to.
Stones can be a lot of things. Today, we find them at least 4 ways.
They can be a rock, a shield, a wall for defense. They can be weapons,
instruments of murder. They can be something to trip over, an
obstacle.
And they can be something that is chosen to build with, a component of
a whole.
And in that later sense, Jesus is described as a living stone, the
first of many, and we are told we should be stones too.
I don’t know about you, but I’m getting a bit confused. I’m supposed
to be a stone?
I think that the Gospel message maybe sheds some light on this.
Jesus’ disciples are confused too. “How can we know where you’re
going?” asks Thomas. Jesus responds not with a path, or with
directions, but by saying “you have to know ME, and if you know ME,
you’ll know the Father”
Philip says “OK great! Show us the father!”
Somehow I’m imagining Jesus shaking his head. Could it be any harder
to explain? Could these disciples be any more blind?
So, we’re left with his response: “Believe in me. And if you can’t
do that, believe in what I’ve done.”
And I think that’s the trick. Scripture alone, is difficult to
understand. Understanding requires not only study, but living.
Understanding requires not only words, but action.
And ultimately, we don’t believe in scripture. We believe in a man.
We believe in each other, and in the actions we take. By doing so,
and I believe ONLY by doing so, can we find the way, together. It
will be hard. We're going to get it wrong, a lot. But it's the
process, the taking of one stone, and placing it on another, that will
eventually get us where the words are pointing.
by Malcolm Heath
archived musings and preachments
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
A gate in the fence
My heart is still very full from the amazing Sunday we shared with so many here in the small corner of God's realm which is Saints Peter and Paul.
Bishop Michael made his first Sunday visit to us. As we have done for some time, we planned a bi-lingual Mass gathering all of us together at 11 AM.
15 Latino youth, 3 English-speaking youth and two adults were presented for Confirmation, one adult to re-affirm her faith. Families and friends turned out in droves to share this moment with the person they treasure. The church teemed with happy people, kids everywhere, a palpable sense of Spirit and of sheer life.
All we did back in 2007 was make a sandwich board saying that at 12 Noon on Sunday we would offer Mass in Spanish, then we showed up week after week, clergy and lay leadership. These lay leaders worked at developing a music ministry. We had small groups of acolytes who came and went as the years spooled out. Members of the slowly-gathering congregation also assumed roles in the service, and with time initiated projects of their own.
We are given bright moments of "harvest", not that people are plants but the only image that occurs to me when seeing a filled church is that living image of abundance and of gift. "Paul plants, Apollos waters, but God gives the increase."
+Michael's homily spoke of fences and gates--how life here is filled with fences, some helpful, others harmful as the separate people from opportunity and inclusion and access to full life. Jesus, on the other hand, is the gate in the fence.
Bishop Michael was quietly determined to pronounce each lovely name correctly. As each youth and adult came forward and shyly bowed their heads, he gently lifted their faces and, without exception, each smiled into his eyes. +Michael anoints when he Confirms, so as at Baptism "You are marked as Christ's own forever."
Lots of photo-ops, and +Michael stood while family after family took their photos with him. One father, whom I remember when celebrating his daughter's Quinceanera, took my arm and placed me in one of the photos. Turning, he looked over his shoulder and said in Spanish, "Thank you; thank you for holding open a gate. No fences, only the Gate."
I said "You're welcome" for something that was not my doing. When fences are opened it is the work of God. When a gate is found, Christ is there. No fences in the reign of God; only the Gate.
Bishop Michael made his first Sunday visit to us. As we have done for some time, we planned a bi-lingual Mass gathering all of us together at 11 AM.
15 Latino youth, 3 English-speaking youth and two adults were presented for Confirmation, one adult to re-affirm her faith. Families and friends turned out in droves to share this moment with the person they treasure. The church teemed with happy people, kids everywhere, a palpable sense of Spirit and of sheer life.
All we did back in 2007 was make a sandwich board saying that at 12 Noon on Sunday we would offer Mass in Spanish, then we showed up week after week, clergy and lay leadership. These lay leaders worked at developing a music ministry. We had small groups of acolytes who came and went as the years spooled out. Members of the slowly-gathering congregation also assumed roles in the service, and with time initiated projects of their own.
We are given bright moments of "harvest", not that people are plants but the only image that occurs to me when seeing a filled church is that living image of abundance and of gift. "Paul plants, Apollos waters, but God gives the increase."
+Michael's homily spoke of fences and gates--how life here is filled with fences, some helpful, others harmful as the separate people from opportunity and inclusion and access to full life. Jesus, on the other hand, is the gate in the fence.
Bishop Michael was quietly determined to pronounce each lovely name correctly. As each youth and adult came forward and shyly bowed their heads, he gently lifted their faces and, without exception, each smiled into his eyes. +Michael anoints when he Confirms, so as at Baptism "You are marked as Christ's own forever."
Lots of photo-ops, and +Michael stood while family after family took their photos with him. One father, whom I remember when celebrating his daughter's Quinceanera, took my arm and placed me in one of the photos. Turning, he looked over his shoulder and said in Spanish, "Thank you; thank you for holding open a gate. No fences, only the Gate."
I said "You're welcome" for something that was not my doing. When fences are opened it is the work of God. When a gate is found, Christ is there. No fences in the reign of God; only the Gate.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Good enough for peace
2ND SUNDAY OF EASTER – Year A
May 1, 2011
Ss. Peter & Paul
+++++
Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon, two Methodist divines, wrote a book that took the ecumenical community by storm a few years back. Its title is Resident aliens. Hauerwas said that there was a good deal of “atheism” in much of our church life. Too many of our churches, they thought, were a-theistic: that is, they kept cranking along, offering ceramics classes for older adults, yoga classes for busy homemakers, trips to Disney World for youth so that God really didn’t matter. They were successful at being an uplifting moral improvement society for the youth, or a place for retirees to hang out during the week, but they had failed at “being church.”
If you want to see the church stripped of our sacred trappings, our pretenses peeled away, then look here in this 20th chapter of John—a pitiful huddle of timid souls hanging on to one another behind our locked doors. Without he presence, the presence which makes our human gatherings the church of God, this is about all we are.
2
And the good news is that it was to this church, which was hardly church, that the living, risen Christ came, saying “Peace be with you” (John 20:19). Into this busy, buzzing void, there was a voice, a presence, a peace not of our devising.
The Risen Christ comes and he says, “Peace be with you,” showing them his pierced hands and his feet. He says again (in case we failed to get the point) “Peace be with you,” telling them that he is sending them out into the world. Then he breathes on them, giving them the Holy Spirit, bestowing upon them the awesome power to forgive sins.
It is what is said at The Peace at Mass. Laurel Dykstra says that she says this before the Peace:
When Jesus appeared to his disciples, they were hiding upstairs in a locked room—the friends who knew him best, who had betrayed him, who had pretended they didn’t know him, who had run away when he was dying, who hid when he was arrested, who were frightened and ashamed. He appeared among them and greeted them. He didn’t say, “What happened?” “Where were you?” “You screwed up.” He greeted them, saying, “Peace.”
3
No matter who you are, no matter what you’ve done or think you’ve done, whoever you have betrayed or let down, no matter how far you have gone from God, from Jesus, Jesus doesn’t say to you, “:Where were you? You screwed up.” Jesus greets you, saying, “Peace.”
The first time I used these words, a tiny woman who is addicted to heroin and an occasional prostitute whispered, “That was the first time in so many years that I felt like I was good enough to be part of this.” Over and over again, people shyly approach and let me know that I must keep saying this.
Whatever it is that churches are saying, what poor people and people who are marginalized hear from us is: “You are not good enough, you are not welcome, the food bank entrance is around back.”
“Peace be with you. You are not accused, you are invited.”
Church is a gift of a God who refuses to leave us be. He comes to us. His presence makes this Church. To the Church that had nothing, Christ gives everything. Spirit. Mission. Forgiveness.
4
We are Church, not because of the building we have here, not because of any program we have here, nor the preaching, nor the teaching, nor the care with which we do the liturgy, nor the sensitive and loving pastoral care rendered by our Rector and our Deacon, nor all our various activities. We are Church because to us, even to us, Christ has come and given us his gifts of Spirit, mission, and forgiveness, commissioning us to gife them to the whole world in his name.
That’s why we’re called Church.
William Willimon, now a United Methodist Bishop, tells of us first church in rural Georgia. He was fresh out of his seminary, eager to be a good pastor. He was in graduate school at the time, commuting out to the hinterland on weekends. Most Sunday mornings at dawn, it was a tough trip out there from Atlanta. He used to say, “This trip only takes 30 minutes, but takes us back 30 centuries.” It was a long way from Atlanta to Suwanee, Georgia.
On Willimon’s first visit, he found a large chain and padlock on the front door, put there, he was told, by the local sheriff. “The sheriff, why?” he asked.
5
“Well, things got out of hand at the board meeting last month, folks started ripping up carpet, dragging out the pews they had given in memory of their mothers. It got bad. The Sheriff come out here and put that there lock on the door until our new preacher could come and settle things down.”
That rather typified Willimon’s time at that church. He would drive out there each Sunday, praying for a miraculous snowstorm in October which would save him from another Sunday at that so-called “church.”
He spent a year there that lasted a lifetime. He tried everything. He worked, he planned, he taught, he pled, but the response was always disappointing. The arguments, the pettiness, the fights in the parking lot after the board meeting were more than he could take. It was touch and he was glad to be leaving them behind.
“You call yourself a Church!” he muttered as his tires kicked gravel up in the parking lot on his last Sunday among them.
6
A couple of years later, while visiting at Emory University in Atlanta, Willimon ran into a young man who told him that he was now serving that church. Willimon’s heart went out to him. Such a dear young man, and only 23!
“They still remember you out there,” the young man said.
“Yeah,” Willimon said glumly, “I remember them too.”
“Remarkable bunch of people,” the young cleric said.
“Remarkable,” Willimon replied.
“Their ministry to the community has been a wonder,” the younger minister continued. “That little church is now supporting, in one way or another, more than a dozen of the troubled families around the church. The free day care center is going great. Not too many interracial congregations like them in North Georgia.”
Willimon could hardly believe what he was hearing. “What happened?” he asked.
“I don’t know. One Sunday, things just sort of came together. It wasn’t anything in particular. It’s just that, when the service was done,
7
and we were on our way out, we knew that Jesus loved us and had plans for us. Things fairly much took off after that.”
Willimon says that he thinks he knows what happened. He thinks that church got intruded upon. He thinks someone greater than he knocked the lock off that door, kicked it open and offered them peace, the Holy Spirit, mission and forgiveness. And now, they are called “church.”
Church isn’t my hard work, your earnest effort, our long-range planning or heavy-duty giving. Church is a gift, a visitation, an intrusion of the Living Christ, standing among us and showing us his hands and his side, and saying “Peace be with you!” and bidding us to find power in Him.
[original homily given by W.W. at Duke Chapel, April 7, 1997 and used in his Pulpit Resource, April-June, 1999; I used it April 11, 1999 at Ascension Parish, Portland. Again the sermon was in Synthesis for April 3, 2005, and was used at Christ Church, Southgate, on that Sunday, with some additional notes about Pope John Paul II’s death the day before. The Laurel Dykstra story is in Synthesis for May 1,2011.]
Phil Ayers+
May 1, 2011
Ss. Peter & Paul
+++++
Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon, two Methodist divines, wrote a book that took the ecumenical community by storm a few years back. Its title is Resident aliens. Hauerwas said that there was a good deal of “atheism” in much of our church life. Too many of our churches, they thought, were a-theistic: that is, they kept cranking along, offering ceramics classes for older adults, yoga classes for busy homemakers, trips to Disney World for youth so that God really didn’t matter. They were successful at being an uplifting moral improvement society for the youth, or a place for retirees to hang out during the week, but they had failed at “being church.”
If you want to see the church stripped of our sacred trappings, our pretenses peeled away, then look here in this 20th chapter of John—a pitiful huddle of timid souls hanging on to one another behind our locked doors. Without he presence, the presence which makes our human gatherings the church of God, this is about all we are.
2
And the good news is that it was to this church, which was hardly church, that the living, risen Christ came, saying “Peace be with you” (John 20:19). Into this busy, buzzing void, there was a voice, a presence, a peace not of our devising.
The Risen Christ comes and he says, “Peace be with you,” showing them his pierced hands and his feet. He says again (in case we failed to get the point) “Peace be with you,” telling them that he is sending them out into the world. Then he breathes on them, giving them the Holy Spirit, bestowing upon them the awesome power to forgive sins.
It is what is said at The Peace at Mass. Laurel Dykstra says that she says this before the Peace:
When Jesus appeared to his disciples, they were hiding upstairs in a locked room—the friends who knew him best, who had betrayed him, who had pretended they didn’t know him, who had run away when he was dying, who hid when he was arrested, who were frightened and ashamed. He appeared among them and greeted them. He didn’t say, “What happened?” “Where were you?” “You screwed up.” He greeted them, saying, “Peace.”
3
No matter who you are, no matter what you’ve done or think you’ve done, whoever you have betrayed or let down, no matter how far you have gone from God, from Jesus, Jesus doesn’t say to you, “:Where were you? You screwed up.” Jesus greets you, saying, “Peace.”
The first time I used these words, a tiny woman who is addicted to heroin and an occasional prostitute whispered, “That was the first time in so many years that I felt like I was good enough to be part of this.” Over and over again, people shyly approach and let me know that I must keep saying this.
Whatever it is that churches are saying, what poor people and people who are marginalized hear from us is: “You are not good enough, you are not welcome, the food bank entrance is around back.”
“Peace be with you. You are not accused, you are invited.”
Church is a gift of a God who refuses to leave us be. He comes to us. His presence makes this Church. To the Church that had nothing, Christ gives everything. Spirit. Mission. Forgiveness.
4
We are Church, not because of the building we have here, not because of any program we have here, nor the preaching, nor the teaching, nor the care with which we do the liturgy, nor the sensitive and loving pastoral care rendered by our Rector and our Deacon, nor all our various activities. We are Church because to us, even to us, Christ has come and given us his gifts of Spirit, mission, and forgiveness, commissioning us to gife them to the whole world in his name.
That’s why we’re called Church.
William Willimon, now a United Methodist Bishop, tells of us first church in rural Georgia. He was fresh out of his seminary, eager to be a good pastor. He was in graduate school at the time, commuting out to the hinterland on weekends. Most Sunday mornings at dawn, it was a tough trip out there from Atlanta. He used to say, “This trip only takes 30 minutes, but takes us back 30 centuries.” It was a long way from Atlanta to Suwanee, Georgia.
On Willimon’s first visit, he found a large chain and padlock on the front door, put there, he was told, by the local sheriff. “The sheriff, why?” he asked.
5
“Well, things got out of hand at the board meeting last month, folks started ripping up carpet, dragging out the pews they had given in memory of their mothers. It got bad. The Sheriff come out here and put that there lock on the door until our new preacher could come and settle things down.”
That rather typified Willimon’s time at that church. He would drive out there each Sunday, praying for a miraculous snowstorm in October which would save him from another Sunday at that so-called “church.”
He spent a year there that lasted a lifetime. He tried everything. He worked, he planned, he taught, he pled, but the response was always disappointing. The arguments, the pettiness, the fights in the parking lot after the board meeting were more than he could take. It was touch and he was glad to be leaving them behind.
“You call yourself a Church!” he muttered as his tires kicked gravel up in the parking lot on his last Sunday among them.
6
A couple of years later, while visiting at Emory University in Atlanta, Willimon ran into a young man who told him that he was now serving that church. Willimon’s heart went out to him. Such a dear young man, and only 23!
“They still remember you out there,” the young man said.
“Yeah,” Willimon said glumly, “I remember them too.”
“Remarkable bunch of people,” the young cleric said.
“Remarkable,” Willimon replied.
“Their ministry to the community has been a wonder,” the younger minister continued. “That little church is now supporting, in one way or another, more than a dozen of the troubled families around the church. The free day care center is going great. Not too many interracial congregations like them in North Georgia.”
Willimon could hardly believe what he was hearing. “What happened?” he asked.
“I don’t know. One Sunday, things just sort of came together. It wasn’t anything in particular. It’s just that, when the service was done,
7
and we were on our way out, we knew that Jesus loved us and had plans for us. Things fairly much took off after that.”
Willimon says that he thinks he knows what happened. He thinks that church got intruded upon. He thinks someone greater than he knocked the lock off that door, kicked it open and offered them peace, the Holy Spirit, mission and forgiveness. And now, they are called “church.”
Church isn’t my hard work, your earnest effort, our long-range planning or heavy-duty giving. Church is a gift, a visitation, an intrusion of the Living Christ, standing among us and showing us his hands and his side, and saying “Peace be with you!” and bidding us to find power in Him.
[original homily given by W.W. at Duke Chapel, April 7, 1997 and used in his Pulpit Resource, April-June, 1999; I used it April 11, 1999 at Ascension Parish, Portland. Again the sermon was in Synthesis for April 3, 2005, and was used at Christ Church, Southgate, on that Sunday, with some additional notes about Pope John Paul II’s death the day before. The Laurel Dykstra story is in Synthesis for May 1,2011.]
Phil Ayers+
Monday, May 2, 2011
Suddenly
Easter 2011
Gen 1:1-2:1; Exodus 14: 10-21, 15: 1-2; Zeph 3: 14-20; Rom 6: 3-11; Matthew 28: 1-10
“Suddenly Jesus met them.”
What brings us together tonight is a God beyond our words and images who does something surprising in Jesus. No symbol or idea is up to it. The ongoing event, the dawning reality of resurrection and risen life, is always new, beyond our imagination, and a surprise when it breaks upon our minds and souls.
Tonight we read the long text of creation from Genesis. The text is so familiar it threatens to lull us to sleep with its rhythm likes waves on the sand. “In the beginning God made the heavens and the earth…” We miss how surprising, how new, is this poetic account of the astounding ongoing dynamism of creation. Science is completely in accord with the poetry of Genesis, as science describes a process of breathtaking complexity and elegant diversity that is completely unlikely. Creation is always fresh and new and astounding.
Surprising too is the tale of a God who cared enough for the freedom of a ragged bunch of Hebrew slaves that he went to war with the powers of the greatest empire of the ancient world. The world was full of slaves and masters and is so today. Why intervene, why care, why risk freeing this group of rude people and asking them to live in a new way, in justice and gratitude? Surprise from God, surprise when people follow through with justice and gratitude!
Surprising too it is when that same God, who has been cheated on and rejected time and time again, still cares and still reaches out to a fickle people who constantly try to return to slavery, serving new masters or acting like the masters who abused them. I will remember, I will act, I will not forget, I will free you and bring you back to the land, I will give you another shot, says this God, the God of surprise.
Dead to that old life, dead to slavery, dead to an endless round of desire and frustration and abuse and regret, that is our life in Christ says Paul. Dead to that old life with its endless slaveries, alive to God with Jesus who sprung from the tomb like a new plant springs from a buried forgotten seed.
And the Gospel tale is a tale of complete surprise.
Thos who looked for the body of Jesus expected to find nothing find Jesus just where they left him, dead in a hole in the rock. Instead they find nothing, an empty tomb. The tomb is exactly where Jesus is not. He has left the building. No one actually sees the resurrection, no one is there, and Jesus is not waiting for them on his slab. His appearances are a surprise. And he never says, “Now let’s go back to Jerusalem and have a little talk with Pilate and Herod and the high priest, pick things up where we left off.” No, instead there is a new mission, and new direction, and Jesus goes to meet them in that new future.
One priest said recently, “(Resurrection)is not a message of tolerating misery or of having less death…The way of resurrection requires death, not just a winter of dormancy. Resurrection requires a radical surrender or letting go of that which is not working…Rather than let go of our understanding and see things the way God sees them we struggle to get God to bless our understanding…What we need is resurrection not reincarnation and that requires that we as a people have courage to let our old ways die rather than getting our way.”
“Suddenly Jesus met them.” How new a life do you want? How much do you wish resurrection, the new life of God, and not just re-incarnation, fixing the life you already have? How much surprise from the surprising God are you ready to embrace?
Gen 1:1-2:1; Exodus 14: 10-21, 15: 1-2; Zeph 3: 14-20; Rom 6: 3-11; Matthew 28: 1-10
“Suddenly Jesus met them.”
What brings us together tonight is a God beyond our words and images who does something surprising in Jesus. No symbol or idea is up to it. The ongoing event, the dawning reality of resurrection and risen life, is always new, beyond our imagination, and a surprise when it breaks upon our minds and souls.
Tonight we read the long text of creation from Genesis. The text is so familiar it threatens to lull us to sleep with its rhythm likes waves on the sand. “In the beginning God made the heavens and the earth…” We miss how surprising, how new, is this poetic account of the astounding ongoing dynamism of creation. Science is completely in accord with the poetry of Genesis, as science describes a process of breathtaking complexity and elegant diversity that is completely unlikely. Creation is always fresh and new and astounding.
Surprising too is the tale of a God who cared enough for the freedom of a ragged bunch of Hebrew slaves that he went to war with the powers of the greatest empire of the ancient world. The world was full of slaves and masters and is so today. Why intervene, why care, why risk freeing this group of rude people and asking them to live in a new way, in justice and gratitude? Surprise from God, surprise when people follow through with justice and gratitude!
Surprising too it is when that same God, who has been cheated on and rejected time and time again, still cares and still reaches out to a fickle people who constantly try to return to slavery, serving new masters or acting like the masters who abused them. I will remember, I will act, I will not forget, I will free you and bring you back to the land, I will give you another shot, says this God, the God of surprise.
Dead to that old life, dead to slavery, dead to an endless round of desire and frustration and abuse and regret, that is our life in Christ says Paul. Dead to that old life with its endless slaveries, alive to God with Jesus who sprung from the tomb like a new plant springs from a buried forgotten seed.
And the Gospel tale is a tale of complete surprise.
Thos who looked for the body of Jesus expected to find nothing find Jesus just where they left him, dead in a hole in the rock. Instead they find nothing, an empty tomb. The tomb is exactly where Jesus is not. He has left the building. No one actually sees the resurrection, no one is there, and Jesus is not waiting for them on his slab. His appearances are a surprise. And he never says, “Now let’s go back to Jerusalem and have a little talk with Pilate and Herod and the high priest, pick things up where we left off.” No, instead there is a new mission, and new direction, and Jesus goes to meet them in that new future.
One priest said recently, “(Resurrection)is not a message of tolerating misery or of having less death…The way of resurrection requires death, not just a winter of dormancy. Resurrection requires a radical surrender or letting go of that which is not working…Rather than let go of our understanding and see things the way God sees them we struggle to get God to bless our understanding…What we need is resurrection not reincarnation and that requires that we as a people have courage to let our old ways die rather than getting our way.”
“Suddenly Jesus met them.” How new a life do you want? How much do you wish resurrection, the new life of God, and not just re-incarnation, fixing the life you already have? How much surprise from the surprising God are you ready to embrace?
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