Christ the King 2008
(Ezek 34: 11-16, 20-24; Ps 100; Eph 1: 15-23; Mt 25: 31-46)
Butch the Lutheran is pastor of a church seven blocks from here. I asked him once, before entering his church to celebrate another great feast, what that feast meant. Butch the Lutheran gave me a long level look. He said, “To seek out the lost.”
Today is Christ the King, a different feast. But seeking out the lost is on the agenda again. Today we hear in the Hebrew Scripture that God will search for the lost, will seek them out, will find them wherever they have gone. I’m glad, because I get lost a lot. I get lost in my own fears, my own anger and impatience, my own lack of faith and trust. What should be most precious to me gets lost too—my call as a baptized Christian, my call as a priest, my flock, my family and friends. Above all my God gets lost. I get lost in my false self and lose sight of the God who is always before me, about me, within me.
Today, on the feast of Christ the King, we are all invited to approach the altar because we’re glad we’ve been found. We’re glad that there is a patient and passionate God who seeks us out in whatever blind alley we’ve run into, who reaches into every corner and dead-end we’re wandered into. We are the scattered who are gathered together. We are the lost who are found.
Ironically, we’re found first by the one for whom we were searching. Ephesians says “I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ…may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you…what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe…”
We have been found by God, not just to stay quietly at home, but so we may exult, we may search further, we may grow and deepen. Another wise young friend of mine says that her call, and the call of her church, is “to love and explore Christ.”
We are those who have been found by God. We are those whose desire has been kindled to “love and explore Christ.” And I pray that we become more deeply just this sort of community—grateful that we have been found, eager to love and explore Jesus Christ, Christ whose feast proclaims him King.
But will we know this King when we meet him?
Today’s Gospel tells us that all people have one thing in common. None of us recognize the King when we meet him. This story tells of radical incarnation—the King whom we proclaim is truly within the poor, the hungry, the oppressed, the imprisoned, those on the edge. The King of the Gospel is the hidden King—hidden within the flesh of those wounded and in greatest need.
Thank the hidden King that we have been found. Thank the hidden King that our desire and longing has been kindled to seek his face. And thank God that the hidden King has given us this clue, this tale of where he may be found. Know him who has first known us. Seek him who has searched for us in every corner in which we have hidden. See and welcome him within people whose pain and struggle are his throne and his crown.
Welcome today, as our pledges and offerings commit ourselves to seek and serve the hidden King who has first found us and gathered us here. Welcome, as each of us brings the unique gift of our lives to help us all, all Saints Peter and Paul, become more deeply who we truly are.
archived musings and preachments
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Rat's Savings Plan
Proper 28 A 2008
(Judges 4: 1-7; Ps 123; 1 Thess 5: 1-11; Mt 25: 14-30)
I turned to the Truth section of the Oregonian yesterday for some financial news.
The Truth section is commonly called the comics. In one of my favorite strips, “Pearls Before Swine”, the Goat character, a bit of a yuppie who keeps his affairs neat and tidy, looks distressed. The Goat says to cynical Rat, “I put all my retirement money into an IRA five years ago and today I have less money than I started with.” Rat tells him he should have put his cash into a UTM like him. “A UTM?” “Yes, Under The Mattress” Goat looks even worse while Rat shouts, “I’m a financial guru!”
Rat’s UTM plan looks pretty smart these days. But the UTM plan doesn’t sit well with today’s Gospel. Or does it?
“A man” entrusts his property to his servants and leaves town. The story does not say that he left any instruction. Two of the servants do some trading, and when the man comes back they give him what they’ve managed to make. The third uses Rat’s UTM scheme and buries the cash. Maybe olive oil markets were tanking that year, who knows? The servant gives all the money back, no skimming off the top. This is another story that always struck me as uncomfortable and unfair. The guy didn’t LOSE anything, so why is he so upset? And I wonder what the owner would have said if the servants had made some bad investments, put the money in the sub-prime mortgage market, and lost it all? The story doesn’t say.
But I suggest that this story is about God’s economy. In times of fear and stress is makes more clear who different the economy of the reign of God is from the beast that the news and our hopes and fears call “the economy.”
In the world’s eyes, “the economy” is a faceless force that we may manipulate to our personal good like the “indolent rich” of today’s Psalm. O it is a force before which we feel powerless, as if it were a train coming down a tunnel. It may make us feel secure and powerful, perhaps even Godlike, or it scares us no end. In hard times it makes the Rat’s savings plan of UTM look wise.
But here, I suggest, is the economy of God according to this tale.
In the realm of God, nothing is impersonal. Anything we are given, money as well as our very lives and the time in which to live them, is given not by a What but by a Whom. All that we think of as “ours” is given in trust, without step-by-step instructions, by the owner.
We may do what we will. But fear and anxiety is not a good game plan. The UTM plan imprints our own fear and perhaps our own anger upon the good world and the good God who gives it. We may even find ourselves telling God by our actions who we think God is—“a hard man.”
Everything we have been given expresses who the owner is and who we are as a result. Our money as well as our very lives is meant to express the growth and increase, what one saint called the “greening power of God.” I don’t think she meant the green of a $20 dollar bill. I think she meant the green of new life for the world, for the community of God, for the poor, and for the greening power of God in our own souls.
Who gives us all that we have? What is that person like? Who do we wish to be in this world that is given in generous trust? The owner, after all, does come back to ask us how things have gone.
Maybe Rat and his UTM plan are not so wise after all.
(Judges 4: 1-7; Ps 123; 1 Thess 5: 1-11; Mt 25: 14-30)
I turned to the Truth section of the Oregonian yesterday for some financial news.
The Truth section is commonly called the comics. In one of my favorite strips, “Pearls Before Swine”, the Goat character, a bit of a yuppie who keeps his affairs neat and tidy, looks distressed. The Goat says to cynical Rat, “I put all my retirement money into an IRA five years ago and today I have less money than I started with.” Rat tells him he should have put his cash into a UTM like him. “A UTM?” “Yes, Under The Mattress” Goat looks even worse while Rat shouts, “I’m a financial guru!”
Rat’s UTM plan looks pretty smart these days. But the UTM plan doesn’t sit well with today’s Gospel. Or does it?
“A man” entrusts his property to his servants and leaves town. The story does not say that he left any instruction. Two of the servants do some trading, and when the man comes back they give him what they’ve managed to make. The third uses Rat’s UTM scheme and buries the cash. Maybe olive oil markets were tanking that year, who knows? The servant gives all the money back, no skimming off the top. This is another story that always struck me as uncomfortable and unfair. The guy didn’t LOSE anything, so why is he so upset? And I wonder what the owner would have said if the servants had made some bad investments, put the money in the sub-prime mortgage market, and lost it all? The story doesn’t say.
But I suggest that this story is about God’s economy. In times of fear and stress is makes more clear who different the economy of the reign of God is from the beast that the news and our hopes and fears call “the economy.”
In the world’s eyes, “the economy” is a faceless force that we may manipulate to our personal good like the “indolent rich” of today’s Psalm. O it is a force before which we feel powerless, as if it were a train coming down a tunnel. It may make us feel secure and powerful, perhaps even Godlike, or it scares us no end. In hard times it makes the Rat’s savings plan of UTM look wise.
But here, I suggest, is the economy of God according to this tale.
In the realm of God, nothing is impersonal. Anything we are given, money as well as our very lives and the time in which to live them, is given not by a What but by a Whom. All that we think of as “ours” is given in trust, without step-by-step instructions, by the owner.
We may do what we will. But fear and anxiety is not a good game plan. The UTM plan imprints our own fear and perhaps our own anger upon the good world and the good God who gives it. We may even find ourselves telling God by our actions who we think God is—“a hard man.”
Everything we have been given expresses who the owner is and who we are as a result. Our money as well as our very lives is meant to express the growth and increase, what one saint called the “greening power of God.” I don’t think she meant the green of a $20 dollar bill. I think she meant the green of new life for the world, for the community of God, for the poor, and for the greening power of God in our own souls.
Who gives us all that we have? What is that person like? Who do we wish to be in this world that is given in generous trust? The owner, after all, does come back to ask us how things have gone.
Maybe Rat and his UTM plan are not so wise after all.
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Wake up!
Proper 27 A 2008
(Wisdom 6: 17-20; Ps 70; 1 Thess 4: 13-18; Mt 25: 1-13)
“Breaking up is hard to do.” Waking up is even harder.
There used to be Tom Peterson furniture commercials, on TV about 11 PM. Tom literally knocked on the inside of your TV screen. “Wake up!” he’d shout. You may not have bought the furniture, but you remembered the commercials.
Today the church is the glass screen and the Bible is Tom Peterson. We hear Jesus repeating one of the most common “Biblical values,” far more common than anything the mega-culture shouts to us as it uses and misuses that term. The value is simply this: “Wake up!”
Today ten young women are part of a wedding party. Their job is to wait for the bridegroom, and then bring him into the celebration. They carry oil lamps, part of the ritual and also needed since the bridegroom may come after dark. They wait. They fall asleep.
When we wait, we fall asleep, in many ways. Yesterday I drove back from Salem after two days straight of church meetings. That alone would make a monkey on caffeine drowsy. On top of that, I stayed out til the wee hours with a group of younger people, church leaders who had a lot to say about their lives, the church, and the problems and hope they see. That was worth staying awake for. God is doing new things among us, and I hope I have the trust and courage to see God at work and support those in whom God is working. But the whole ordeal was too much for my middle-aged constitution, and I crashed when I came home.
We fall asleep when we are weary. We fall asleep when we are discouraged. No one can stay on the mountaintop for ever, no one can stay in the giddy rush of spiritual or emotional elation. We come down, into the reality of our lives, the seeming ordinariness or even boredom of our days. We fall asleep spiritually when faced with too much challenge or too much tension or too much disillusion. It’s human to fall asleep. Jesus seems to know that.
But he also tells us that the time will come to wake up. Hope will dawn, joy will dawn. Suddenly change and fulfillment and healing will seem possible, within grasp. “Wake up!”
But when we wake up, we’d better have enough oil for our lamps.
Today’s Gospel story always bothered me a little. I was raised to always share. Break the cookie in half, share the sandwich, share a lick of your ice cream. The young women who wouldn’t share their oil always struck me as selfish.
But I think the world of this Gospel says that our light is our own responsibility. We cannot carry someone else’s spiritual life. No one can seek God for us, no one can drink in wisdom and light for us. Our search is our own. It may seem cruel, but it is what it is.
Where can we look for fuel and light? The first reading holds the key. Ask for Wisdom—she is generous and always on hand. But we must ask and we must seek. Seek Scripture and prayer, worship and sacrament, service and a healthy spiritual discipline, and just listening, listening for the still small voice of God. Live as a partner of God’s, generous and open. In Gospel-life, we only get to keep what we give. Live closed and asleep both, and nothing but a cold dry wick on the lamp will remain. Holy Wisdom wants to flow into us and through us to the world. Ask Lady Wisdom for light and illumination, ask her now, and she will come, she will meet us, and when we do wake up we’ll have enough oil to light our way. We’ll even have enough oil to light the way for Christ.
When I wake up, will God find enough oil in me to strike a light?
(Wisdom 6: 17-20; Ps 70; 1 Thess 4: 13-18; Mt 25: 1-13)
“Breaking up is hard to do.” Waking up is even harder.
There used to be Tom Peterson furniture commercials, on TV about 11 PM. Tom literally knocked on the inside of your TV screen. “Wake up!” he’d shout. You may not have bought the furniture, but you remembered the commercials.
Today the church is the glass screen and the Bible is Tom Peterson. We hear Jesus repeating one of the most common “Biblical values,” far more common than anything the mega-culture shouts to us as it uses and misuses that term. The value is simply this: “Wake up!”
Today ten young women are part of a wedding party. Their job is to wait for the bridegroom, and then bring him into the celebration. They carry oil lamps, part of the ritual and also needed since the bridegroom may come after dark. They wait. They fall asleep.
When we wait, we fall asleep, in many ways. Yesterday I drove back from Salem after two days straight of church meetings. That alone would make a monkey on caffeine drowsy. On top of that, I stayed out til the wee hours with a group of younger people, church leaders who had a lot to say about their lives, the church, and the problems and hope they see. That was worth staying awake for. God is doing new things among us, and I hope I have the trust and courage to see God at work and support those in whom God is working. But the whole ordeal was too much for my middle-aged constitution, and I crashed when I came home.
We fall asleep when we are weary. We fall asleep when we are discouraged. No one can stay on the mountaintop for ever, no one can stay in the giddy rush of spiritual or emotional elation. We come down, into the reality of our lives, the seeming ordinariness or even boredom of our days. We fall asleep spiritually when faced with too much challenge or too much tension or too much disillusion. It’s human to fall asleep. Jesus seems to know that.
But he also tells us that the time will come to wake up. Hope will dawn, joy will dawn. Suddenly change and fulfillment and healing will seem possible, within grasp. “Wake up!”
But when we wake up, we’d better have enough oil for our lamps.
Today’s Gospel story always bothered me a little. I was raised to always share. Break the cookie in half, share the sandwich, share a lick of your ice cream. The young women who wouldn’t share their oil always struck me as selfish.
But I think the world of this Gospel says that our light is our own responsibility. We cannot carry someone else’s spiritual life. No one can seek God for us, no one can drink in wisdom and light for us. Our search is our own. It may seem cruel, but it is what it is.
Where can we look for fuel and light? The first reading holds the key. Ask for Wisdom—she is generous and always on hand. But we must ask and we must seek. Seek Scripture and prayer, worship and sacrament, service and a healthy spiritual discipline, and just listening, listening for the still small voice of God. Live as a partner of God’s, generous and open. In Gospel-life, we only get to keep what we give. Live closed and asleep both, and nothing but a cold dry wick on the lamp will remain. Holy Wisdom wants to flow into us and through us to the world. Ask Lady Wisdom for light and illumination, ask her now, and she will come, she will meet us, and when we do wake up we’ll have enough oil to light our way. We’ll even have enough oil to light the way for Christ.
When I wake up, will God find enough oil in me to strike a light?
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Go much higher
All Saints A 2008
(Rev 7: 9-17; Ps 34: 1-10, 22; 1 John 3: 1-3; Mt 5: 1-12)
“Did the rabbi go up to heaven?” The question wasn’t even nice.
A Jewish congregation in old Europe had a very humble rabbi. Every Sabbath after the evening prayers, the rabbi would disappear and not re-emerge until the next day. The village was small and everyone knew everyone else’s business. So rumors flew. “He breaks the Sabbath and works for the Gentiles.” “He has a mistress and he goes to her.” “He drinks until he is drunk.” “Maybe he goes up to heaven,” whispered one innocent soul. The others howled with laughter. “Right, to heaven!” Finally they sent one young man to follow the rabbi after the Sabbath prayers. “See if he goes up to heaven.”
The young man followed the rabbi that Friday night as he left the synagogue and walked quickly down the darkened street. Once out of the village, the rabbi took one of the paths up the mountain. After a long climb, they came to a small clearing. The young man watched as the rabbi entered a tiny shabby shack. He crept close to the window and watched with wonder as the rabbi bent over an old Gentile woman, lying sick and alone on a straw mattress. The young man saw the rabbi stack wood for her fire, boil some soup, and feed her from a bowl he held close to her lips. When the rabbi began to clean up the shack, he crept away.
Back in the village a bunch of men were drinking wine and waiting. When they saw the young man, they shouted, “Hey! Did the rabbi go to heaven?”
The young man stood and thought in silence. Finally he said, “No, the rabbi did not go to heaven. The rabbi went much higher than that.”*
Today we know that we too are called to go much higher than heaven.
Today we heard the text that we call the Beatitudes. We hear who is to be called blessed in the reign of God. It’s an intimidating list: the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, the merciful. Some people call Christianity the great untried idea, and today we hear why people may not even try. “Beatitude” is a churchy word. We could also translate it “happy.” Here is what will make you truly happy: to be poor in spirit, to mourn, to hunger and thirst for justice in an unjust world…Try turning them upside down and see if they work. Happy are the rich, happy are those who never know sorrow, happy are those who pay no attention to the suffering of others? The choice between the reign of God and the dark thoughts of this world are more obvious when we do that.
We are called to this strange, intoxicating happiness, the joy of God which flips the world’s pleasure upside down. We are meant to find our joy where the world does not look.
But is it possible to live this life?
On All Saints a great crowd gathers that says “yes.” On Thursday night I asked, “Have you ever stood in this church by yourself and felt like you weren’t alone.” Benjamin LeBlanc answered, “Yes, and it feels a little weird.” Today’s weird, wonderful news is we are part of a multitude that has gone before, that is scattered over the wide earth now, and is yet to come. They are not all “people like us”: only a few are Episcopalians, or white, or North American. All colors and languages, all cultures and customs are represented. We are blessed that we are invited to join them.
And the best news of All Saints is that we can join them. We cannot follow Jesus with our own strength alone. To follow Jesus is a gift. That gift is freely given today.
John says that we are the children of God, through the Father’s love. We are part of the mystery, part of the multitude. There is a place for us. All we need to do is accept the gift, and in one another’s company start our own climb up the mountain. We may climb up our own ideals, or up our own weakness and frailty. It may be a path we choose, but it’s more likely a path that’s given to us. The climb may be seen by others, but it will probably be silent and secret, as secret as a hidden shack in a forest on a mountainside.
But we too may go much higher than heaven.
One writer said it all: “There is only one tragedy in life: not to be a saint.”
*taken from Welcome To The Wisdom Of The World by Joan Chittister
(Rev 7: 9-17; Ps 34: 1-10, 22; 1 John 3: 1-3; Mt 5: 1-12)
“Did the rabbi go up to heaven?” The question wasn’t even nice.
A Jewish congregation in old Europe had a very humble rabbi. Every Sabbath after the evening prayers, the rabbi would disappear and not re-emerge until the next day. The village was small and everyone knew everyone else’s business. So rumors flew. “He breaks the Sabbath and works for the Gentiles.” “He has a mistress and he goes to her.” “He drinks until he is drunk.” “Maybe he goes up to heaven,” whispered one innocent soul. The others howled with laughter. “Right, to heaven!” Finally they sent one young man to follow the rabbi after the Sabbath prayers. “See if he goes up to heaven.”
The young man followed the rabbi that Friday night as he left the synagogue and walked quickly down the darkened street. Once out of the village, the rabbi took one of the paths up the mountain. After a long climb, they came to a small clearing. The young man watched as the rabbi entered a tiny shabby shack. He crept close to the window and watched with wonder as the rabbi bent over an old Gentile woman, lying sick and alone on a straw mattress. The young man saw the rabbi stack wood for her fire, boil some soup, and feed her from a bowl he held close to her lips. When the rabbi began to clean up the shack, he crept away.
Back in the village a bunch of men were drinking wine and waiting. When they saw the young man, they shouted, “Hey! Did the rabbi go to heaven?”
The young man stood and thought in silence. Finally he said, “No, the rabbi did not go to heaven. The rabbi went much higher than that.”*
Today we know that we too are called to go much higher than heaven.
Today we heard the text that we call the Beatitudes. We hear who is to be called blessed in the reign of God. It’s an intimidating list: the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, the merciful. Some people call Christianity the great untried idea, and today we hear why people may not even try. “Beatitude” is a churchy word. We could also translate it “happy.” Here is what will make you truly happy: to be poor in spirit, to mourn, to hunger and thirst for justice in an unjust world…Try turning them upside down and see if they work. Happy are the rich, happy are those who never know sorrow, happy are those who pay no attention to the suffering of others? The choice between the reign of God and the dark thoughts of this world are more obvious when we do that.
We are called to this strange, intoxicating happiness, the joy of God which flips the world’s pleasure upside down. We are meant to find our joy where the world does not look.
But is it possible to live this life?
On All Saints a great crowd gathers that says “yes.” On Thursday night I asked, “Have you ever stood in this church by yourself and felt like you weren’t alone.” Benjamin LeBlanc answered, “Yes, and it feels a little weird.” Today’s weird, wonderful news is we are part of a multitude that has gone before, that is scattered over the wide earth now, and is yet to come. They are not all “people like us”: only a few are Episcopalians, or white, or North American. All colors and languages, all cultures and customs are represented. We are blessed that we are invited to join them.
And the best news of All Saints is that we can join them. We cannot follow Jesus with our own strength alone. To follow Jesus is a gift. That gift is freely given today.
John says that we are the children of God, through the Father’s love. We are part of the mystery, part of the multitude. There is a place for us. All we need to do is accept the gift, and in one another’s company start our own climb up the mountain. We may climb up our own ideals, or up our own weakness and frailty. It may be a path we choose, but it’s more likely a path that’s given to us. The climb may be seen by others, but it will probably be silent and secret, as secret as a hidden shack in a forest on a mountainside.
But we too may go much higher than heaven.
One writer said it all: “There is only one tragedy in life: not to be a saint.”
*taken from Welcome To The Wisdom Of The World by Joan Chittister
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Not the plan
Proper 25 A 2008
(Deut 34: 1-12; Ps 90; 1 Thess 2: 1-8; Mt 22: 34-46)
Where is God when things don’t go according to plan?
I knew a good man, a hardworking man, who did his imperfect best to do the right thing. He loved his family, he showed up to work on time. When he fell on his face he picked himself up and kept going. After all his hard work, all he wanted was to leave the daily grind and retire, buy a little bit of a boat and go fishing when he wanted. Instead he died at age 61, four years short of retirement. When he died he was worried about his family and worried about being laid off. That man was my father.
At age 50, amidst soaring prices and a shifting economy, I understand Dad in a way I did not when I was 16.
Today, in this season of change, the fading of the seasons and the waning of the church’s year, God in the Bible asks us to stand within the mystery of incompletion. Who are we and who is God when the plan doesn’t work out, when our deepest desires don’t come true, or they don’t come true in the way we wanted and expected?
No one deserved seeing the Promised Land more than Moses. My God, the risks he took, the miles he walked, the faith he had to call upon or to ask of God! The text says that “never since has there arisen a prophet like Moses, whom the Lord knew face-to-face.” And yet Moses does not get to cross over, does not get to the land to which he led those people. What’s with that? Isn’t there any justice in God’s realm?
And the Gospels have told of the ugly public arguments Jesus had with religious folk who agree on one thing—they are threatened and angry with Jesus. Today there seems to be some base-line agreement between Jesus and a Pharisee: “Love the LORD your God…love your neighbor as yourself.” But it’s not enough and it’s not the last word. Jesus challenges them about the identity and authority of the Messiah. And I am chilled by that last line—they did not “dare to ask him any more questions.” This is not the end of a friendly debate. The time for talk is over, the time for betrayal and violence is near.
Who are we, and who is God, in the midst of disappointment and struggle, and when things do not go according to plan?
I struggle with this. I am comforted that the Bible struggles with this too. I am also comforted that we all, gathered together today, struggle with this as well.
I think that one response is to ask “who have we become?” in our journey to where we are now. And who is God, the God of the journey, the God who has revealed the divine Face and the divine Presence to us along the long road we’ve walked?
Moses had walked a long road with the people God had chosen. The people and Moses were not the people of God from the very outset. They were chosen yes, but they had not been forged, they had not been molded, they had not been broken and re-made over and over again into the people prepared for the newness of a new land. And Moses had not become Moses, had not become that prophet who knew God face-to-face. He had not yet been shaped by those conversations. He had not risked. He had not yet failed and picked himself back up again.
And they had come to know a God who walks the road with them, who thirsted for them just as they thirsted for water, hungered for them as they hungered for bread, longed to be their God just as they longed to be a people belonging to God.
And the Gospel today? It is the tale of an incomplete journey, one that we know will lead to terrible loss, and beyond that loss to new life that no one at the time could imagine. But the road needed to be walked. And when the disciples were called upon the bear their own witness in the face of hostility, did they remember Jesus’ own lonely stand before angry religious folk and take strength?
My brothers and I gathered this past May for the first time in many years. In the midst of our incomplete journeys, our victories and defeats, we remembered a man whom we called Dad whose life and story shapes us still—shapes us and empowers us to take the next step, to not lose heart, to take the adventure even if our own journeys are incomplete.
The God of the journey calls us to be together and shapes us in the same way. Even now we are being forged and shaped into the people of God, the people of the crucified and risen Lord who is still on the road. We may walk lightly on that road and walk with faith, in God’s companionship and with one another. We may trust the end of the journey to the One who began the journey in the first place.
(Deut 34: 1-12; Ps 90; 1 Thess 2: 1-8; Mt 22: 34-46)
Where is God when things don’t go according to plan?
I knew a good man, a hardworking man, who did his imperfect best to do the right thing. He loved his family, he showed up to work on time. When he fell on his face he picked himself up and kept going. After all his hard work, all he wanted was to leave the daily grind and retire, buy a little bit of a boat and go fishing when he wanted. Instead he died at age 61, four years short of retirement. When he died he was worried about his family and worried about being laid off. That man was my father.
At age 50, amidst soaring prices and a shifting economy, I understand Dad in a way I did not when I was 16.
Today, in this season of change, the fading of the seasons and the waning of the church’s year, God in the Bible asks us to stand within the mystery of incompletion. Who are we and who is God when the plan doesn’t work out, when our deepest desires don’t come true, or they don’t come true in the way we wanted and expected?
No one deserved seeing the Promised Land more than Moses. My God, the risks he took, the miles he walked, the faith he had to call upon or to ask of God! The text says that “never since has there arisen a prophet like Moses, whom the Lord knew face-to-face.” And yet Moses does not get to cross over, does not get to the land to which he led those people. What’s with that? Isn’t there any justice in God’s realm?
And the Gospels have told of the ugly public arguments Jesus had with religious folk who agree on one thing—they are threatened and angry with Jesus. Today there seems to be some base-line agreement between Jesus and a Pharisee: “Love the LORD your God…love your neighbor as yourself.” But it’s not enough and it’s not the last word. Jesus challenges them about the identity and authority of the Messiah. And I am chilled by that last line—they did not “dare to ask him any more questions.” This is not the end of a friendly debate. The time for talk is over, the time for betrayal and violence is near.
Who are we, and who is God, in the midst of disappointment and struggle, and when things do not go according to plan?
I struggle with this. I am comforted that the Bible struggles with this too. I am also comforted that we all, gathered together today, struggle with this as well.
I think that one response is to ask “who have we become?” in our journey to where we are now. And who is God, the God of the journey, the God who has revealed the divine Face and the divine Presence to us along the long road we’ve walked?
Moses had walked a long road with the people God had chosen. The people and Moses were not the people of God from the very outset. They were chosen yes, but they had not been forged, they had not been molded, they had not been broken and re-made over and over again into the people prepared for the newness of a new land. And Moses had not become Moses, had not become that prophet who knew God face-to-face. He had not yet been shaped by those conversations. He had not risked. He had not yet failed and picked himself back up again.
And they had come to know a God who walks the road with them, who thirsted for them just as they thirsted for water, hungered for them as they hungered for bread, longed to be their God just as they longed to be a people belonging to God.
And the Gospel today? It is the tale of an incomplete journey, one that we know will lead to terrible loss, and beyond that loss to new life that no one at the time could imagine. But the road needed to be walked. And when the disciples were called upon the bear their own witness in the face of hostility, did they remember Jesus’ own lonely stand before angry religious folk and take strength?
My brothers and I gathered this past May for the first time in many years. In the midst of our incomplete journeys, our victories and defeats, we remembered a man whom we called Dad whose life and story shapes us still—shapes us and empowers us to take the next step, to not lose heart, to take the adventure even if our own journeys are incomplete.
The God of the journey calls us to be together and shapes us in the same way. Even now we are being forged and shaped into the people of God, the people of the crucified and risen Lord who is still on the road. We may walk lightly on that road and walk with faith, in God’s companionship and with one another. We may trust the end of the journey to the One who began the journey in the first place.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Participate
Proper 23 A 2008 (RCL)
(Exodus 32: 1-14; Ps 106: 1-6, 19-23; Phil 4: 1-9; Mt 22: 1-14)
I miss Long Island weddings: ethnic Catholic, Irish or Italian or Polish or, in an incredible mix of energy and procreation and noise and food and alcohol, all three at the same time. It felt like everyone you ever knew was there. Everyone ended up on the dance floor, or laughing and watching from the side.
We’re invited to a wedding party in today’s Gospel. A generous king pitches a huge shindig for his son’s wedding. He invites the usual suspects, but those invited literally kill the messengers. That ends badly for everyone. There’s still a ton of rigatoni and peirogis and beer, so the king invites everyone possible, off the streets, out of the bars and the shopping malls and the car washes. The most outrageous wedding of the year is on its way.
We’d probably like it better if the story ended here. But there’s still one last squirmy bit about the guest and the wedding robe. That guy who doesn’t meet the dress code gets hog-tied and thrown out into the cold and dark.
There’s a real risk attached to this story. One may hear it as an unpleasant symbolic tale that confirms either our darkest hope or our worst fear. Our darkest hope is that in the end God is going to nail those people who don’t do right and don’t think right, those who don’t do or think like us. Our darkest fear is that we ourselves are in the end unacceptable, and that God really will reject us for what we’ve done or who we are. So we either hear this story with a sense of unpleasant satisfaction, or we dump it into that bin of nasty Bible material that we leave out or tune out when it’s read.
Either way, we risk missing what God may have to say.
Parables are not morality-plays in which God is clearly either the king or the landlord. We cannot say for certain who we are in a parable either—perhaps we’re everyone at different times. The world of the parables of Jesus is a world where God is not a character but rather God is the plot. By that I mean we are teased into entering the parable’s world and challenged to go where the story leads us. And notice that Jesus rarely short-changes the journey into the parable by handing us an interpretation.
At risk of seeming to hand out the Authorized Kurt Version of the parable, here’s what I personally heard in this story this past week: A wedding feast is joy. To be invited is an honor. The king wants guests. We are invited, whether we were on the first or the second list of guests.
Who in their right mind wouldn’t want to go to that wedding feast? Free food, free hooch, good company, a good time. The big news is not what happens when we refuse the invitation. The big news is that we are invited. And it’s wonderful. And it’s the king who invites. Is there really a choice?
What about that dress code?
When my second brother got married, there was great drama afoot the day of the wedding. His wife’s mother was divorced and had married a clock-maker named Clarence. There was no love lost between Clarence and her ex. Her ex had not been invited, but had announced on the grapevine that he was coming anyway and was going to clean clock-maker Clarence’s clock for him, if you get my drift.
The ex-husband and bride’s father showed up at the reception and stashed himself in the corner. He stayed alone and silent, likkering up and glowering at Clarence who died many a death beneath his hate-filled stare.
My brother was a submarine sailor at the time and several strapping young sailors had been told off to keep a weather eye out for dad-in-law and handle things if he decided to do more than stare.
Halfway through the evening, the Navy decided to act. They grabbed me, six years old at the time, and gave me my orders. I probably saluted, and walked across the dance floor to where the menacing father-in-law stood, bourbon in hand. I grabbed his suspenders, leaned back with all my weight, and let them go. You could hear the snap of the elastic everywhere in the hall.
Father-in-law stared in surprise, looked across at the sailors watching over the proceedings, then put his head back and laughed. When last seen, he was drinking and chatting with a couple of the young sailors in the corner.
It may not matter that you put on the right robe at the wedding. It matters that you wrap yourself in the right vibe, the right attitude, the right stance. A man wrapped in rage and violence has wrapped himself in something wholly different before the night was through.
The intoxicating joy of the kingdom is an invitation that resounds to the depth of our souls. To be invited to the feast of God’s reign really is no choice—why would we decide not to go? Or once there, why would we decide not to celebrate, to wrap ourselves with the same mad generous love which wraps the king who pitches the party? But we can choose. We can choose the cold and the darkness of our fears and our agendas of distrust and anger. At my point in life, the choices between hope and despair seem very clear.
A couple of weeks ago, our Senior Warden opened our fall Stewardship conversation with the theme “Participate in God’s work.” Today’s Gospel feast invites us to participate, and tells us what it’s like when we do. It’s mad love and freedom, it’s being honored guests at the best party in the cosmos, it’s sharing royal joy. Participate in the wedding bash? Oh yeah! Compared to that, everything else feels like fear and darkness, frustration and hands bound by the lack of hope of a cold world.
(Exodus 32: 1-14; Ps 106: 1-6, 19-23; Phil 4: 1-9; Mt 22: 1-14)
I miss Long Island weddings: ethnic Catholic, Irish or Italian or Polish or, in an incredible mix of energy and procreation and noise and food and alcohol, all three at the same time. It felt like everyone you ever knew was there. Everyone ended up on the dance floor, or laughing and watching from the side.
We’re invited to a wedding party in today’s Gospel. A generous king pitches a huge shindig for his son’s wedding. He invites the usual suspects, but those invited literally kill the messengers. That ends badly for everyone. There’s still a ton of rigatoni and peirogis and beer, so the king invites everyone possible, off the streets, out of the bars and the shopping malls and the car washes. The most outrageous wedding of the year is on its way.
We’d probably like it better if the story ended here. But there’s still one last squirmy bit about the guest and the wedding robe. That guy who doesn’t meet the dress code gets hog-tied and thrown out into the cold and dark.
There’s a real risk attached to this story. One may hear it as an unpleasant symbolic tale that confirms either our darkest hope or our worst fear. Our darkest hope is that in the end God is going to nail those people who don’t do right and don’t think right, those who don’t do or think like us. Our darkest fear is that we ourselves are in the end unacceptable, and that God really will reject us for what we’ve done or who we are. So we either hear this story with a sense of unpleasant satisfaction, or we dump it into that bin of nasty Bible material that we leave out or tune out when it’s read.
Either way, we risk missing what God may have to say.
Parables are not morality-plays in which God is clearly either the king or the landlord. We cannot say for certain who we are in a parable either—perhaps we’re everyone at different times. The world of the parables of Jesus is a world where God is not a character but rather God is the plot. By that I mean we are teased into entering the parable’s world and challenged to go where the story leads us. And notice that Jesus rarely short-changes the journey into the parable by handing us an interpretation.
At risk of seeming to hand out the Authorized Kurt Version of the parable, here’s what I personally heard in this story this past week: A wedding feast is joy. To be invited is an honor. The king wants guests. We are invited, whether we were on the first or the second list of guests.
Who in their right mind wouldn’t want to go to that wedding feast? Free food, free hooch, good company, a good time. The big news is not what happens when we refuse the invitation. The big news is that we are invited. And it’s wonderful. And it’s the king who invites. Is there really a choice?
What about that dress code?
When my second brother got married, there was great drama afoot the day of the wedding. His wife’s mother was divorced and had married a clock-maker named Clarence. There was no love lost between Clarence and her ex. Her ex had not been invited, but had announced on the grapevine that he was coming anyway and was going to clean clock-maker Clarence’s clock for him, if you get my drift.
The ex-husband and bride’s father showed up at the reception and stashed himself in the corner. He stayed alone and silent, likkering up and glowering at Clarence who died many a death beneath his hate-filled stare.
My brother was a submarine sailor at the time and several strapping young sailors had been told off to keep a weather eye out for dad-in-law and handle things if he decided to do more than stare.
Halfway through the evening, the Navy decided to act. They grabbed me, six years old at the time, and gave me my orders. I probably saluted, and walked across the dance floor to where the menacing father-in-law stood, bourbon in hand. I grabbed his suspenders, leaned back with all my weight, and let them go. You could hear the snap of the elastic everywhere in the hall.
Father-in-law stared in surprise, looked across at the sailors watching over the proceedings, then put his head back and laughed. When last seen, he was drinking and chatting with a couple of the young sailors in the corner.
It may not matter that you put on the right robe at the wedding. It matters that you wrap yourself in the right vibe, the right attitude, the right stance. A man wrapped in rage and violence has wrapped himself in something wholly different before the night was through.
The intoxicating joy of the kingdom is an invitation that resounds to the depth of our souls. To be invited to the feast of God’s reign really is no choice—why would we decide not to go? Or once there, why would we decide not to celebrate, to wrap ourselves with the same mad generous love which wraps the king who pitches the party? But we can choose. We can choose the cold and the darkness of our fears and our agendas of distrust and anger. At my point in life, the choices between hope and despair seem very clear.
A couple of weeks ago, our Senior Warden opened our fall Stewardship conversation with the theme “Participate in God’s work.” Today’s Gospel feast invites us to participate, and tells us what it’s like when we do. It’s mad love and freedom, it’s being honored guests at the best party in the cosmos, it’s sharing royal joy. Participate in the wedding bash? Oh yeah! Compared to that, everything else feels like fear and darkness, frustration and hands bound by the lack of hope of a cold world.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
On the edge
Michaelmas 2008
(Genesis 28: 10-17; Ps 103: 19-22; Rev 12: 7-12; John 1: 47-51)
If you’re “on the edge”, you have an angel close at hand.
Jacob was on the edge. Jacob was on the run from his brother, who wanted to kill him. Jacob may have figured he had it coming—Jake had just scammed his brother and fooled his blind, dying father into giving Jake the whole inheritance. Jake was scared, alone, and on the run, feeling bad about himself if he had any conscience left at all. He’s alone in the desert, heading towards family he hadn’t even met. Bandits or wolves could have easily finished him off. On the borderland between broken past and hopeless future, Jacob’s a man on the edge.
But on the edge is where you can meet angels.
God is on the edge. The God of the Bible often can’t be heard when things are secure and settled. On the edge is where you may meet God.
On the edge, God speaks and nothing is the same again.
When God speaks, we learn that the nameless piece of ground on which we stand—desert sand, a lonely house, a car in traffic, a bus gazing out the window, the eyes of a stranger, the deafening silence of our heart—is the house of God. And there God gives a promise where there was no hope—we are heard, we are seen, and in ways we cannot imagine the promise of God is working in our lives. God is with us, God will not leave us, until every astounding promise has been fulfilled.
Jake wakes up, wakes from his hopeless sleep. Awe, and wonder, and even fear—his hopeless little life is not so little. His life is part of something grand in the heart and mind of a grant God. When we learn that, we have truly woken up.
That’s where we see the angels. The angels wake us from our hopeless, visionless sleep, and teach us about the holy ground which is our lives, which is our world. They see and they hear. They live with God and for God. They share our road as we seek to live with God and for God.
This is the season of the angels. This is the feast and this the season where we remember, with awe and wonder and gratitude, that we are not alone, that our lives are not little and pointless, that we are known and heard and seen and loved and that those wonderful promises—power from on high, participation in God’s own life, transformation, eternal life, dying and rising—are all ours, ours for the taking. They see, they listen, and they even struggle with us and for us in our struggle, as stupendous Michael went hand-to-hand with Lucifer the Morning Star before the dawn of time. And they wake us up, they open our eyes to the truth of our lives.
Nathaniel in the Gospel was on the edge, and he didn’t even know it. He was a seeker who didn’t think he’d find anything worthwhile. When have we given up seeking the deepest desire of our hearts? But the day that started so ordinary ends in wonders. Cynically Nathaniel agrees to see the rabbi who can’t be anyone worth seeing. But he finds more than he could have imagined. He finds one who sees and hears him even before Nathaniel knew he was even searching. He finds one in who’s eyes and presence are somehow all wonders. He finds one who speaks of the angels. Here I am. I’m the holy ground. I’m the voice and the promise. See me, hear me, share my life, and your life will be holy ground as well.
Have you ever been on the edge? Are you on the edge now? Is anyone you know on the edge? It may not be a dead end or a jump into nothing. It may be holy ground. You may see angels. You may see God. And you will learn that you are seen, you are heard, and you were never alone. You may want peace. But you may be given far more—new hope, new and transformed life.
(Genesis 28: 10-17; Ps 103: 19-22; Rev 12: 7-12; John 1: 47-51)
If you’re “on the edge”, you have an angel close at hand.
Jacob was on the edge. Jacob was on the run from his brother, who wanted to kill him. Jacob may have figured he had it coming—Jake had just scammed his brother and fooled his blind, dying father into giving Jake the whole inheritance. Jake was scared, alone, and on the run, feeling bad about himself if he had any conscience left at all. He’s alone in the desert, heading towards family he hadn’t even met. Bandits or wolves could have easily finished him off. On the borderland between broken past and hopeless future, Jacob’s a man on the edge.
But on the edge is where you can meet angels.
God is on the edge. The God of the Bible often can’t be heard when things are secure and settled. On the edge is where you may meet God.
On the edge, God speaks and nothing is the same again.
When God speaks, we learn that the nameless piece of ground on which we stand—desert sand, a lonely house, a car in traffic, a bus gazing out the window, the eyes of a stranger, the deafening silence of our heart—is the house of God. And there God gives a promise where there was no hope—we are heard, we are seen, and in ways we cannot imagine the promise of God is working in our lives. God is with us, God will not leave us, until every astounding promise has been fulfilled.
Jake wakes up, wakes from his hopeless sleep. Awe, and wonder, and even fear—his hopeless little life is not so little. His life is part of something grand in the heart and mind of a grant God. When we learn that, we have truly woken up.
That’s where we see the angels. The angels wake us from our hopeless, visionless sleep, and teach us about the holy ground which is our lives, which is our world. They see and they hear. They live with God and for God. They share our road as we seek to live with God and for God.
This is the season of the angels. This is the feast and this the season where we remember, with awe and wonder and gratitude, that we are not alone, that our lives are not little and pointless, that we are known and heard and seen and loved and that those wonderful promises—power from on high, participation in God’s own life, transformation, eternal life, dying and rising—are all ours, ours for the taking. They see, they listen, and they even struggle with us and for us in our struggle, as stupendous Michael went hand-to-hand with Lucifer the Morning Star before the dawn of time. And they wake us up, they open our eyes to the truth of our lives.
Nathaniel in the Gospel was on the edge, and he didn’t even know it. He was a seeker who didn’t think he’d find anything worthwhile. When have we given up seeking the deepest desire of our hearts? But the day that started so ordinary ends in wonders. Cynically Nathaniel agrees to see the rabbi who can’t be anyone worth seeing. But he finds more than he could have imagined. He finds one who sees and hears him even before Nathaniel knew he was even searching. He finds one in who’s eyes and presence are somehow all wonders. He finds one who speaks of the angels. Here I am. I’m the holy ground. I’m the voice and the promise. See me, hear me, share my life, and your life will be holy ground as well.
Have you ever been on the edge? Are you on the edge now? Is anyone you know on the edge? It may not be a dead end or a jump into nothing. It may be holy ground. You may see angels. You may see God. And you will learn that you are seen, you are heard, and you were never alone. You may want peace. But you may be given far more—new hope, new and transformed life.
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