Let us pray - May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer. Amen.
On this, my last Sunday with you (can you believe that it has been nine months already), I cannot miss the opportunity to start with some words of thanks. First, I must say thank you to Fr. Kurt, Fr. John and Deacon Tracy for their patience and graciousness in leading and mentoring me. Their willingness to include me in the liturgies of the church has been a key factor in my professional development and I am extremely grateful to all three of them. I also must thank the lectors and sub-deacons, all of whom generously shared their duties with me; your kindness has been much appreciated. Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t thank the entire congregation on behalf of the whole Wall family your hospitality made us feel like members of the parish family from our first Sunday here and the six of us will miss being with you very much. Thank you to all of you for making us feel so at home. Here endeth the thank-yous.
The French Creole of Louisiana introduced the idea of lagniappe to American culture, a word that Wikipedia defines as “something given or obtained gratuitously or by way of good measure” or in other words, a little something extra. I bring this up only because that is how I will always remember my time at Saints Peter and Paul. When the diocese directed me here for my field education, I expected to learn about the art and science of being an Episcopal priest; I expected that my time here would be a valuable but routine step in my journey towards ordination. What I didn’t expect was the lagniappe that awaited me here. What was that little something extra, you ask? Well, it was the complete transformation of my understanding of the love of Christ in the Episcopal Church and in the world. I have been an Episcopalian my whole life and attended more churches than I can count. In all that experience, I have seen congregations that volunteer to help at soup kitchens and homeless shelters, who raise money for far-flung causes and send parishioners on mission trips to exotic places, all of which are honorable and Godly Christian pursuits. But, here at Saints Peter and Paul, we are not insulated from human suffering in the way that many other parishes are, we are enmeshed in the kingdom of God, warts and all and it is a gift that we joyfully embrace. This congregation’s authentic, tangible and intentional witness to the Gospel is that little something extra that has transformed my understanding of the real meaning of the love of Christ in the world.
We have heard a great deal about love lately. The compilers of the lectionary were single minded when selecting the readings for these middle three weeks of the Easter season and so we have heard a lot about love – a whole lot. Mother Karen gave her spin on the topic two weeks ago, Father Kurt took his shot last week and now here I am, the least qualified of the group, looking to tie up the loose ends. The word love is mentioned 75 times in the Gospels and 148 times in the epistles, by comparison the concept of forgiveness shows up only 56 times in the whole New Testament. Make no mistake, Christ intended love to be the defining characteristic of his followers.
The 1 John passage tells us that to love God is to obey the commandments. In the Gospel reading, Jesus tells us that his commandment is to love each other as he loved us. The Synoptic Gospels further elaborate on the importance of love saying that “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. ’This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (Matt 22:36-40). So what does all this love talk mean?
Whereas the English language uses the word love to express a broad range of affectionate feelings, in biblical Greek there were four different words for love. There was storge love, or the affection between family members. There was eros, the passionate love shared by a couple, philia the dispassionate, sisterly and brotherly love of friends and, finally, agape, the unconditional love of the Christian family. All the talk of love that we have heard over the last several weeks is of the agape variety and it is not as warm and fuzzy as you might imagine.
Joseph Fletcher, a 20th century Christian ethicist wrote, “We can say properly that Christian love is a matter of loving the unlovable, the unlikable. Indeed, it is even more radical than that in its nonreciprocity and non-congeniality…. there is nothing sentimental about Christian love…. The radical obligation of the Christian ethic to love even the enemy implies unmistakably that every neighbor is not a friend and that some are just the opposite. But Christian love (which is not a matter of reciprocity at all) is agapeic – not erotic or philic. Love wills the neighbor’s good whether we like him or not” (Moral Responsibility, pg 20-21).
This is tough stuff. The ramifications of this kind of love are paradoxical, even mind-boggling. Each of us can likely conjure up the image of a person that disturbs us, or makes us feel angry and ungenerous. Go ahead, picture that person in your mind’s eye. You may be thinking of someone you know well or maybe someone generic and anonymous. Regardless of whom you see in your imagination, that is the neighbor that you are called by Jesus to love. I am not suggesting that you must forgive those who have harmed you physically or emotionally. Nor do I claim that reconciliation is always an appropriate response to a broken relationship, but I can tell you unequivocally that Christ has commanded us to love one another and we must seek agape love for even those people who challenge our ability to love at all. If you are nursing an old wound, now is the time to start the path to healing, not necessarily by forgiving or reconciling but by opening yourself to the possibility of the transformative power of Christian love.
The nurturing of such love is vital to the renewal of Saints Peter and Paul. If we are going to grow and flourish through this kindling process, it will be because agape love is the defining characteristic of this congregation. I know that many of you are physically and mentally tired, keeping this church vibrant is exhausting work, but it is also valuable work, and I entreat all of you to dig for that last full measure of energy to revitalize this place. Montavilla needs Saints Peter and Paul as a bastion of refuge in a cold and lonely world and the Christian community needs Saints Peter and Paul as an example of Christ’s love to his people.
The theologian Charles Marsh notes that, “our sojourn into a violent and hurting world is shaped by the memory of the Christ who was born in a stable because there was no room for him in the inn” (Anglican Theological review, Fall 2009, 552). He then ironically points out that many Christians worship this homeless man on Sunday and then ignore one on Monday. Not here, you have made caring for the most vulnerable among us a cornerstone of your ministry and you are to be commended for your commitment, but this is no time to rest on your laurels. It’s time to follow Father Kurt as he leads the way to renewal. It’s time to embrace Mother Karen’s invitation to kindle the fire here. Take a few minutes to share your five favorite hymns (the forms are still in the back) and then sing them loud and proud, even if your voice is as bad as mine. For those of you with the time and the energy (and I know that some of you are preciously low on both), pick one new ministry to support. We can use more hands in the sacristy working with the Altar Guild, and a few more people on the hospitality committee would go a long way in ensuring that all the great eating that goes on around here will continue. Someone needs to mow lawn and there is always room for more sub-deacons, lectors and ushers. Of course, Brigid’s Coffee Hour and Rahab’s Sisters, the face of Saints Peter and Paul in the community, can always use more hands at the oars. Now is the time for dedicated prayer by each of you to discern how you are going to help revitalize this congregation. Saints Peter and Paul is lagniappe in Montavilla, this church provides a little something extra in the neighborhood, an extra dose of agape love that sets you apart as a haven of refuge in a cruel world – this is your calling, pursue it with vigor and joy in both your worship and your outreach.
In closing, I pray that you will see yourselves as I see you, as a community dedicated to living out Christ’s mission in the world. God has blessed you with the opportunity to be the face of his love in the community, the beauty of your witness has been transformative for me, and you will continue to transform lives as long you remain a beacon of love in the neighborhood. And remain you must. Amen
(by seminarian Sean Wall, May 13, 2012)
archived musings and preachments
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Heavenquake
EASTER DAY, April 8, 2012 Ss. Peter & Paul, 10:00 a.m. High Mass
+++++
“O who shall roll away the stone,” The faithful women said; “The heavy stone that seals the tomb, And shuts from us our dead?”
But looking up, at dawn, they saw The great stone rolled away, And from the empty tomb a light More dazzling than the day.
Look up, O doubting soul, look up! Eyes fixed upon the earth Can never see the life that finds In death its glorious birth.
Look up! and ever looking up, Thine eyes shall clearly see The tombs of earth filled with the light Of immortality.
(Marion Franklin Ham, No. 84 in Hymnal 1940) +++++
The time is after the Sabbath has ended. A Jewish day begins at sundown, a more theological time, rather than chronological. But this time appears not as we would usually reckon it—it begins with the dawning of a new day, a new week that signifies the beginning of a new day in human history.
Women come to a tomb to be morticians, really, to anoint the dead and mutilated body of their friend and relative, to do that lovingly and carefully. Now they see an obstacle they thought would prevent their doing this task. But we’re told in Mark’s stark gospel of the resurrection that these women “look up.” That is what Jesus did in taking bread in the feeding of a multitude. [Mk. 6:41] That is what he did again in preparation for healing the deaf man. [Mk. 7:34]
So, we are assembled here this Easter morning, long after dawn, and one thing we might do together now is heed the invitation to consider rolling a stone away. Some of us have travelled to this moment from a procession of palms a week ago, and have been with Jesus, as much as we could be, through depths of betrayal and suffering—now we have come to the astonishing joy of an Easter moment. Some others of us may have come directly from the parade to the party. Some of us are seekers, wanderers, or have been dragged here to this rare moment, without expectation that we could be made any different by this journey. The stone at Jesus’ borrowed tomb: tracing that stone and its meaning is one way to bring all of us in the same point of understanding.
The women at the tomb are concerned about who will shift what is impossible for them to manage. The stone is an obstacle to their hope. They are focused on what has happened—it is a shared past of hope and love and loss. They are coming to pay respect to what they remember and the stone is the barrier in this act of care that symbolizes their grief and loss. They hope to pay homage through their care of what is dead.
The authorities see the immovable stone as a seal on their power, insuring their position. They have handled a dangerous situation and the stone cements their mark for the present moment. The collusion of Roman and religious authorities supports a lie that remains in place: Pax Romana; social political, economic privileges for a ruling elite. Jesus was a threat to their cozy arrangements. Their power is an uneasy lodging in the present. Empire always believes itself permanent while fearing every questioning or alternative reality to their story. The stone is their statement that all challengers to their rule face being squashed like a fly, swatted down.
What of Jesus? What is the stone for Jesus who is at the center of the story? Those who have seen the Palm Sunday procession see Jesus where God and humanity are met in perfect harmony. Jesus on a donkey, symbol of a new reign and alternate reality.
The week unravels and he dies utterly alone, betrayed and abandoned. “Disowned by humanity and deserted by divinity.” Sam Wells, a theologian, says that this is what the stone meant for Jesus. But the stone is also a symbol of God’s good creation. The stone for Jesus speaks of a future revealing. A symbol of contradiction—of separation, a symbol of what has been from the beginning of time, something that can show a greater force than gravity in the story of resurrection. Jesus’ stone will come to mean that nothing can separate us form the love of God. It is an opening future for us.
What about your stone? What do you see in the stone? A remembered experience, a present, fearful reality, a future beyond our strength or imagining? Are you paralyzed in aching loss, in fear, crushed under the weight of cynicism, suffering, sadness? What is standing, heavy, unshakeable, immovable for you? What is between you and life, between you and love, between you and healing, between you and God? Who will roll this stone away? Are we full of compromises, lies which promise secure control? Can we have the courage, faith, imagination to see it can really be different? “It is the will of God that we should love,” says J. Philip Newell.
There just may be a heavenquake, more than an earthquake at Easter. Habitual grief, false control, rolled away with a whisper of wonder. Our past and present have rolled with that stone, and our future is open in a way we could not imagine.
It is amazing and perhaps more than a little terrifying.
Like this quiet servant of us all,
Easter divides time
Easter hallows space
Easter brings life and light.
Blessed Easter to all God’s creation ...
May you fare well!
(William B. Spofford)
Most of the ideas herein are from Sam Wells, in Journal for Preachers, courtesy of my colleague Linda Stewart- Kalen, Minister of Colonial Heights Presbyterian Church, Portland, and a stalwart member of my weekly lectionary study group. The Newell quotation came from Eileen Parfrey, another member of the group. The opening poem is, as noted, from Hymnal 1940 by an author who was a Unitarian minister. And the concluding poem is by Bishop Bill Spofford, honored and venerable colleague, friend and teacher, from his book on his pilgrimage to Jerusalem and experiencing Easter Day there. By +Phil Ayers
+++++
“O who shall roll away the stone,” The faithful women said; “The heavy stone that seals the tomb, And shuts from us our dead?”
But looking up, at dawn, they saw The great stone rolled away, And from the empty tomb a light More dazzling than the day.
Look up, O doubting soul, look up! Eyes fixed upon the earth Can never see the life that finds In death its glorious birth.
Look up! and ever looking up, Thine eyes shall clearly see The tombs of earth filled with the light Of immortality.
(Marion Franklin Ham, No. 84 in Hymnal 1940) +++++
The time is after the Sabbath has ended. A Jewish day begins at sundown, a more theological time, rather than chronological. But this time appears not as we would usually reckon it—it begins with the dawning of a new day, a new week that signifies the beginning of a new day in human history.
Women come to a tomb to be morticians, really, to anoint the dead and mutilated body of their friend and relative, to do that lovingly and carefully. Now they see an obstacle they thought would prevent their doing this task. But we’re told in Mark’s stark gospel of the resurrection that these women “look up.” That is what Jesus did in taking bread in the feeding of a multitude. [Mk. 6:41] That is what he did again in preparation for healing the deaf man. [Mk. 7:34]
So, we are assembled here this Easter morning, long after dawn, and one thing we might do together now is heed the invitation to consider rolling a stone away. Some of us have travelled to this moment from a procession of palms a week ago, and have been with Jesus, as much as we could be, through depths of betrayal and suffering—now we have come to the astonishing joy of an Easter moment. Some others of us may have come directly from the parade to the party. Some of us are seekers, wanderers, or have been dragged here to this rare moment, without expectation that we could be made any different by this journey. The stone at Jesus’ borrowed tomb: tracing that stone and its meaning is one way to bring all of us in the same point of understanding.
The women at the tomb are concerned about who will shift what is impossible for them to manage. The stone is an obstacle to their hope. They are focused on what has happened—it is a shared past of hope and love and loss. They are coming to pay respect to what they remember and the stone is the barrier in this act of care that symbolizes their grief and loss. They hope to pay homage through their care of what is dead.
The authorities see the immovable stone as a seal on their power, insuring their position. They have handled a dangerous situation and the stone cements their mark for the present moment. The collusion of Roman and religious authorities supports a lie that remains in place: Pax Romana; social political, economic privileges for a ruling elite. Jesus was a threat to their cozy arrangements. Their power is an uneasy lodging in the present. Empire always believes itself permanent while fearing every questioning or alternative reality to their story. The stone is their statement that all challengers to their rule face being squashed like a fly, swatted down.
What of Jesus? What is the stone for Jesus who is at the center of the story? Those who have seen the Palm Sunday procession see Jesus where God and humanity are met in perfect harmony. Jesus on a donkey, symbol of a new reign and alternate reality.
The week unravels and he dies utterly alone, betrayed and abandoned. “Disowned by humanity and deserted by divinity.” Sam Wells, a theologian, says that this is what the stone meant for Jesus. But the stone is also a symbol of God’s good creation. The stone for Jesus speaks of a future revealing. A symbol of contradiction—of separation, a symbol of what has been from the beginning of time, something that can show a greater force than gravity in the story of resurrection. Jesus’ stone will come to mean that nothing can separate us form the love of God. It is an opening future for us.
What about your stone? What do you see in the stone? A remembered experience, a present, fearful reality, a future beyond our strength or imagining? Are you paralyzed in aching loss, in fear, crushed under the weight of cynicism, suffering, sadness? What is standing, heavy, unshakeable, immovable for you? What is between you and life, between you and love, between you and healing, between you and God? Who will roll this stone away? Are we full of compromises, lies which promise secure control? Can we have the courage, faith, imagination to see it can really be different? “It is the will of God that we should love,” says J. Philip Newell.
There just may be a heavenquake, more than an earthquake at Easter. Habitual grief, false control, rolled away with a whisper of wonder. Our past and present have rolled with that stone, and our future is open in a way we could not imagine.
It is amazing and perhaps more than a little terrifying.
Like this quiet servant of us all,
Easter divides time
Easter hallows space
Easter brings life and light.
Blessed Easter to all God’s creation ...
May you fare well!
(William B. Spofford)
Most of the ideas herein are from Sam Wells, in Journal for Preachers, courtesy of my colleague Linda Stewart- Kalen, Minister of Colonial Heights Presbyterian Church, Portland, and a stalwart member of my weekly lectionary study group. The Newell quotation came from Eileen Parfrey, another member of the group. The opening poem is, as noted, from Hymnal 1940 by an author who was a Unitarian minister. And the concluding poem is by Bishop Bill Spofford, honored and venerable colleague, friend and teacher, from his book on his pilgrimage to Jerusalem and experiencing Easter Day there. By +Phil Ayers
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Not here!
Great Vigil 2012
Exodus 14: 10-31; Baruch 3: 9-15; Zephaniah 3: 14-20; Romans 6: 3-11; Mark 16: 1-8
The cops pulled their car over when they found a guy peering all over the ground under a street lamp.
They asked him what he was doing. The guy answered, “I’m looking for my wallet.”
“Do you think you lost it here?”
“No, I think I dropped it three blocks away.”
“Then why are you looking there?”
“The light’s better over here.’
OK, it’s an old joke. I thought of it because it’s an Easter joke, because it’s about looking in the wrong place just because it’s easier.
Here at Saints Peter and Paul we gather and celebrate Easter pretty much the same as we’ve celebrated for years. The Great Vigil liturgy is majestic and beautiful. The hymns are familiar. We’ve even been feasting for years. Easter tends to have an air of tradition and old custom. We go to church with Mom or grandma. We go back to the old church where we were raised. Our eyes, our ears, even our noses tell us that here it is Easter—organ music and candle wax and incense and lilies and even some faint mustiness all say it is another Easter and we are in church and the year has finally turned to Spring.
All that is rich and very comforting. On an average day I am very much in favor of comfort in an uncomfortable world. But here’s the joke—are we looking in the right place? Is it in our comfort and in the familiar that we find the Easter Gospel? Is that where we find the risen Jesus?
Or has Jesus left the building?
The Bible says so. The readings do not tell about coming back to the familiar. Instead they speak of walking off to someplace we do not know.
Moses and the Hebrews are right besides the sea, about to be butchered by the Egyptian army. The people shout at Moses that they were better off as slaves. At least they were alive, at least they knew who was in charge, at least they knew they would eat. But a different kind of God is at work, a God who chooses freedom and newness over order and predictability. The chariots are too much for the people to handle themselves. So God intervenes, but the people need to move. “Tell the Israelites to go forward!” They move from what they knew, where they knew who they were and how life was, through the waters to a new place. They do not know this new place, they do not even know what kind of people they themselves will be once they are there. They do not know what will happen once they arrive. I like The Simpsons version of the Exodus where Milhous as Aaron says to Lisa, who is Moses, “So everything is going to be OK, right? Smooth sailing for the Jews from now on!” Lisa laughs uncomfortably and says, “Hey look, is that manna over there?”
There must be death if there is to be new life. Christ put to death the old way of life, our old fearful and comfort-oriented and predictable way of life in his own death. Jesus was killed by people who did not want him to upset the orderly business of empire and temple, of politics and religion. “Don’t you know that when you were baptized into Christ, you were baptized into his death?” asks Paul. We were buried with him, along with our old life and the life that the world tells us to value. To be a baptized people is to live this deep reality of death and resurrection every day. To live a Baptized life, an Easter life, we must be ready to ask ourselves, “What needs to die in order for me to live a new life?”
That strange, new life is what Mark’s Easter story speaks of.
The women who went to the tomb knew what to expect. Death they could handle. Death, even violent death, was easy to come by in 1st Century Palestine and there were predictable things to do in response—bathe and anoint the body, gather the mourners, observe the rites. But the good and the customary and the proper things to do were not on the agenda that day! The women knew they could not roll away the stone, just like the Israelites knew they could not defeat the Egyptian chariots. But the stone was rolled away for them. The tomb was empty. Jesus had left the building. And that strange young man said that Jesus was not there, that he has “gone before you” to Galilee.
Easter is the message that Jesus is not here where we left him. Easter is not the story of a beloved man who has been resuscitated and been found, but a story of absence. Jesus is not where we have been accustomed to see him. He has gone on ahead. He is in our future. Some scholars say that the “young man” in the tomb is not an angel, but he is a baptized young man wrapped in a baptismal robe, representing the new community. The new community knows that Jesus has gone on before us.
Thomas Merton, in one of his last works entitled “He Is Risen”, said that the practice of our faith-tradition “can be valid only on one condition: that we are willing to move on, to follow him to where we are not yet, to seek him where he goes before us—‘to Galilee.’”
Recently a member of the congregation initiated a conversation—just what is meant when Christian people say that something—a thought, an action—is “in Christ.” On Easter, I suggest that here is something of what is meant by “in Christ”:
Something is “in Christ” if it proclaims the Easter truth—that the dynamic God of history leads us through death and the devolving, despairing fatalism of the world to new and unexpected life. Something is “in Christ” if it points to a reality greater than anything that can be encompassed by words, that through the conditional and incomplete limits of what is seen and heard there is deep, life-giving energy and dynamism bringing forth new life from hopelessness and the predictable and from death itself. When we enter this reality, when we are radically open to the pattern of death and resurrection, we experience that this energy is in fact Love Itself.
Someone is “in Christ” if they do not understand the meaning of their life in terms of success or failure, in terms of achievement and possession, but in terms of a constant, dynamic process of death and resurrection to new and unpredictable life in company with Christ. The story is never over, the ending has never been given away, the plot is never predictable. Within the life of a baptized person there is a constant roil and tumble of divine dynamism, leading always from death to life. The temptation is to duck, cover, and roll when we feel the divine flames on our skin. We are not meant to duck and cover and roll. We are meant to burn.
A church-community is in Christ if it sees the dynamic action of the risen Christ in its own dying and rising. A church-community in Christ never wants to return to its past no matter how glorious and comforting and safe some may think that to be. Jesus has already left the building. A church in love with its past is the same as disciples who would have refused to leave the cave where the dead Jesus was laid. Perhaps some did just that, and that is why the Gospel stories all insist “He is not here.” A church that is in Christ knows that in its own dying and rising, even when things seem dead-end and without apparent hope, the dynamic of Christ’s own dying and rising is at work. A church in Christ does not seek to control the dying. A church in Christ gets up and moves ahead to where the risen Christ awaits us—“in Galilee”, in the new place where strangers and outsiders will become friends.
Today, when we re-affirm our Baptismal Covenant, let’s keep in mind just what we are committing ourselves to. Do we truly wish to be “in Christ”?
Here’s a poem about being “in Christ” although the poet never uses those words…
Shake out your qualms.
Shake up your dreams.
Deepen your roots.
Extend your branches.
Trust deep water
and head for the open,
even if your vision
shipwrecks you.
Quit your addiction
to sneer and complain.
Open a lookout.
Dance on a brink.
Run with your wildfire.
You are closer to glory
leaping an abyss
than upholstering a rut.
Not dawdling.
Not doubting.
Intrepid all the way
Walk toward clarity.
At every crossroad
Be prepared to bump into wonder.
Only love prevails.
En route to disaster
insist on canticles.
Lift your ineffable
out of the mundane.
Nothing perishes;
nothing survives;
everything transforms!
Honeymoon with Big Joy!
James Broughton “Easter Exsultet”
With thanks to the Rev. Susan Church
Exodus 14: 10-31; Baruch 3: 9-15; Zephaniah 3: 14-20; Romans 6: 3-11; Mark 16: 1-8
The cops pulled their car over when they found a guy peering all over the ground under a street lamp.
They asked him what he was doing. The guy answered, “I’m looking for my wallet.”
“Do you think you lost it here?”
“No, I think I dropped it three blocks away.”
“Then why are you looking there?”
“The light’s better over here.’
OK, it’s an old joke. I thought of it because it’s an Easter joke, because it’s about looking in the wrong place just because it’s easier.
Here at Saints Peter and Paul we gather and celebrate Easter pretty much the same as we’ve celebrated for years. The Great Vigil liturgy is majestic and beautiful. The hymns are familiar. We’ve even been feasting for years. Easter tends to have an air of tradition and old custom. We go to church with Mom or grandma. We go back to the old church where we were raised. Our eyes, our ears, even our noses tell us that here it is Easter—organ music and candle wax and incense and lilies and even some faint mustiness all say it is another Easter and we are in church and the year has finally turned to Spring.
All that is rich and very comforting. On an average day I am very much in favor of comfort in an uncomfortable world. But here’s the joke—are we looking in the right place? Is it in our comfort and in the familiar that we find the Easter Gospel? Is that where we find the risen Jesus?
Or has Jesus left the building?
The Bible says so. The readings do not tell about coming back to the familiar. Instead they speak of walking off to someplace we do not know.
Moses and the Hebrews are right besides the sea, about to be butchered by the Egyptian army. The people shout at Moses that they were better off as slaves. At least they were alive, at least they knew who was in charge, at least they knew they would eat. But a different kind of God is at work, a God who chooses freedom and newness over order and predictability. The chariots are too much for the people to handle themselves. So God intervenes, but the people need to move. “Tell the Israelites to go forward!” They move from what they knew, where they knew who they were and how life was, through the waters to a new place. They do not know this new place, they do not even know what kind of people they themselves will be once they are there. They do not know what will happen once they arrive. I like The Simpsons version of the Exodus where Milhous as Aaron says to Lisa, who is Moses, “So everything is going to be OK, right? Smooth sailing for the Jews from now on!” Lisa laughs uncomfortably and says, “Hey look, is that manna over there?”
There must be death if there is to be new life. Christ put to death the old way of life, our old fearful and comfort-oriented and predictable way of life in his own death. Jesus was killed by people who did not want him to upset the orderly business of empire and temple, of politics and religion. “Don’t you know that when you were baptized into Christ, you were baptized into his death?” asks Paul. We were buried with him, along with our old life and the life that the world tells us to value. To be a baptized people is to live this deep reality of death and resurrection every day. To live a Baptized life, an Easter life, we must be ready to ask ourselves, “What needs to die in order for me to live a new life?”
That strange, new life is what Mark’s Easter story speaks of.
The women who went to the tomb knew what to expect. Death they could handle. Death, even violent death, was easy to come by in 1st Century Palestine and there were predictable things to do in response—bathe and anoint the body, gather the mourners, observe the rites. But the good and the customary and the proper things to do were not on the agenda that day! The women knew they could not roll away the stone, just like the Israelites knew they could not defeat the Egyptian chariots. But the stone was rolled away for them. The tomb was empty. Jesus had left the building. And that strange young man said that Jesus was not there, that he has “gone before you” to Galilee.
Easter is the message that Jesus is not here where we left him. Easter is not the story of a beloved man who has been resuscitated and been found, but a story of absence. Jesus is not where we have been accustomed to see him. He has gone on ahead. He is in our future. Some scholars say that the “young man” in the tomb is not an angel, but he is a baptized young man wrapped in a baptismal robe, representing the new community. The new community knows that Jesus has gone on before us.
Thomas Merton, in one of his last works entitled “He Is Risen”, said that the practice of our faith-tradition “can be valid only on one condition: that we are willing to move on, to follow him to where we are not yet, to seek him where he goes before us—‘to Galilee.’”
Recently a member of the congregation initiated a conversation—just what is meant when Christian people say that something—a thought, an action—is “in Christ.” On Easter, I suggest that here is something of what is meant by “in Christ”:
Something is “in Christ” if it proclaims the Easter truth—that the dynamic God of history leads us through death and the devolving, despairing fatalism of the world to new and unexpected life. Something is “in Christ” if it points to a reality greater than anything that can be encompassed by words, that through the conditional and incomplete limits of what is seen and heard there is deep, life-giving energy and dynamism bringing forth new life from hopelessness and the predictable and from death itself. When we enter this reality, when we are radically open to the pattern of death and resurrection, we experience that this energy is in fact Love Itself.
Someone is “in Christ” if they do not understand the meaning of their life in terms of success or failure, in terms of achievement and possession, but in terms of a constant, dynamic process of death and resurrection to new and unpredictable life in company with Christ. The story is never over, the ending has never been given away, the plot is never predictable. Within the life of a baptized person there is a constant roil and tumble of divine dynamism, leading always from death to life. The temptation is to duck, cover, and roll when we feel the divine flames on our skin. We are not meant to duck and cover and roll. We are meant to burn.
A church-community is in Christ if it sees the dynamic action of the risen Christ in its own dying and rising. A church-community in Christ never wants to return to its past no matter how glorious and comforting and safe some may think that to be. Jesus has already left the building. A church in love with its past is the same as disciples who would have refused to leave the cave where the dead Jesus was laid. Perhaps some did just that, and that is why the Gospel stories all insist “He is not here.” A church that is in Christ knows that in its own dying and rising, even when things seem dead-end and without apparent hope, the dynamic of Christ’s own dying and rising is at work. A church in Christ does not seek to control the dying. A church in Christ gets up and moves ahead to where the risen Christ awaits us—“in Galilee”, in the new place where strangers and outsiders will become friends.
Today, when we re-affirm our Baptismal Covenant, let’s keep in mind just what we are committing ourselves to. Do we truly wish to be “in Christ”?
Here’s a poem about being “in Christ” although the poet never uses those words…
Shake out your qualms.
Shake up your dreams.
Deepen your roots.
Extend your branches.
Trust deep water
and head for the open,
even if your vision
shipwrecks you.
Quit your addiction
to sneer and complain.
Open a lookout.
Dance on a brink.
Run with your wildfire.
You are closer to glory
leaping an abyss
than upholstering a rut.
Not dawdling.
Not doubting.
Intrepid all the way
Walk toward clarity.
At every crossroad
Be prepared to bump into wonder.
Only love prevails.
En route to disaster
insist on canticles.
Lift your ineffable
out of the mundane.
Nothing perishes;
nothing survives;
everything transforms!
Honeymoon with Big Joy!
James Broughton “Easter Exsultet”
With thanks to the Rev. Susan Church
Saturday, April 7, 2012
"All this you did for me..."--Good Friday
GOOD FRIDAY April 6, 2012 Ss. Peter & Paul, 12:00 noon
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There is much that we do not know about Jesus. The gospels are hardly helpful in reconstructing a full life of the historical Jesus. There are conflicts regarding the date and place of birth. We know nothing of his early, formative years. Various gospels place him in various places in Judaea. Few external sources, only Josephus, give us a record of him and his work.
There is only one fact about Jesus that is undisputed, historically certain, without doubt. He was crucified. In his early thirties, after a brief career around Galilee, the Romans arrested him, tried him, then nailed him to a cross to die. Jesus was crucified.
In June of 1968, a skeleton was found in northeastern Jerusalem, the skeleton of a young man who had been crucified. Why, out of all the thousands to suffer crucifixion, was this the only body found? Probably, says John Dominic Crossan, because it was rare that a corpse was buried after crucifixion. It was more typical to leave the body hanging there as food for birds and wild dogs—the final insult among a people for whom burial of the body was important. And leaving crucified bodies served as an example to passersby that they could not mess with Rome.
The Syrian governor, Publius Quinctilius Varus, had to quell three major peasant uprisings in Judaea after the death of Herod the Great, four years after the beginning of our era. When he arrived at Jerusalem, according to Josephus, he crucified two thousand rebels. Here is an account of another mass crucifixion:
Many of the peaceable citizens were arrested and brought before Florus, who had them first scourged and then crucified. The total number of that days’ victims, including women and children, for even infancy received no quarter, amounted to about three thousand six hundred.
Four years later, in the early summer of 70 AD, Titus’ army encircled Jerusalem.
When caught, they were ... scourged and subjected to torture of every description, before being killed, and then crucified opposite the walls ... five hundred or sometimes more being captured daily. ... The soldiers out of rage and hatred amused themselves by nailing their prisoners in different postures on their crosses; and so great was their number, that space could not be found for the crosses. (J.D. Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography)
Thousands were crucified during Jesus’ day, particularly Jews; it is staggering. In our day, the number is into the millions. Remember the Holocaust, Rwanda in 1994, South Africa during apartheid, Kosovo, and present-day Sudan.
Yet it is a Christian claim, not only that Jesus was crucified, but that he was crucified for us. Crucifixion itself is tragedy enough. But crucified for me? As St. Paul says, “Why, you might be willing to die for a good person, but he shows his love for us in that, at the right time, Jesus died for the ungodly” (Rom. 5:6). US!
An Archbishop of Paris stood in the pulpit of Notre Dame Cathedral. He was there to preach the sermon, and his whole sermon was built around a story. Thirty years before, he said, three young students had come into this cathedral. They were rough, rude, cynical men who thought all religion was a racket.
Two of them dared a third to go into the confessional and make a bogus confession to the priest. But to win the bet, he did. He tried to fool the old priest, but the priest knew that what he was saying was a lie.
The old priest listened to the fake confession, sensed the arrogance in the man’s attitude, and said, “Very well, my son. Every confession requires a penance, and this will be yours. I ask you to go into the chapel, stand before the crucifix look into the face of the crucified Christ and say, ‘all this you did for me, and I don’t give a damn.’”
The young man swaggered out of the confessional to his friends to claim the bet, but they insisted that before they paid him he would have to finish the performance by completing penance. He went into the chapel, looked into the face of Christ, and began, “All this you did for me, and I ...” “All this you did for me, and I ...” He couldn’t say it. He never finished the sentence. It began for him a painful experience that changed his life and finally brought him into the priesthood.
The Archbishop telling the story leaned over the pulpit and said, “That young man is standing before you today, preaching.”
It takes a hard heart to be unmoved by this.
As the mystery-writer and theologian Dorothy L. Sayers once wrote: “[Christ] was executed by people painfully like us, in a society very similar to our own ... by a corrupt church, a timid politician, and a fickle proletariat led by professional agitators.”
All the Scriptures agree, whatever else there is to be said about Jesus: he was crucified, one of the millions of Jewish martyrs. He was crucified.
This day, remember: he was crucified by us, because of us, for us. For us. And we continue the journey as Fr. William Tully, Rector of St. Bartholomew’s Church in New York City, reminded his parish: “Holy Week gives you something the world cannot give you. Yes, we know the story. We can talk it—maybe we can even recite it. But walking it gives us something we can get nowhere else.”
Gracious God, on this holiest of days, we marvel at your love for us. You did not forsake us, even in the worst of our sin. Forgive us and work with us, even in our unspeakable evil. Restore us to yourself. For us, there is no other way except the way of your total, complete, infinitely forbearing love.
Adapted from homily given at Ascension Parish on Good Friday, April 2, 1999 and again at Ss. Peter & Paul, April 10, 2009; ideas from William Willimon in Pulpit Resource, Vol. 27, No. 2. Quotation from D.L. Sayers online from Ekklesia and from W. Tully via Geranium Farm and Barbara Crafton. By Phil Ayers+
+++++
There is much that we do not know about Jesus. The gospels are hardly helpful in reconstructing a full life of the historical Jesus. There are conflicts regarding the date and place of birth. We know nothing of his early, formative years. Various gospels place him in various places in Judaea. Few external sources, only Josephus, give us a record of him and his work.
There is only one fact about Jesus that is undisputed, historically certain, without doubt. He was crucified. In his early thirties, after a brief career around Galilee, the Romans arrested him, tried him, then nailed him to a cross to die. Jesus was crucified.
In June of 1968, a skeleton was found in northeastern Jerusalem, the skeleton of a young man who had been crucified. Why, out of all the thousands to suffer crucifixion, was this the only body found? Probably, says John Dominic Crossan, because it was rare that a corpse was buried after crucifixion. It was more typical to leave the body hanging there as food for birds and wild dogs—the final insult among a people for whom burial of the body was important. And leaving crucified bodies served as an example to passersby that they could not mess with Rome.
The Syrian governor, Publius Quinctilius Varus, had to quell three major peasant uprisings in Judaea after the death of Herod the Great, four years after the beginning of our era. When he arrived at Jerusalem, according to Josephus, he crucified two thousand rebels. Here is an account of another mass crucifixion:
Many of the peaceable citizens were arrested and brought before Florus, who had them first scourged and then crucified. The total number of that days’ victims, including women and children, for even infancy received no quarter, amounted to about three thousand six hundred.
Four years later, in the early summer of 70 AD, Titus’ army encircled Jerusalem.
When caught, they were ... scourged and subjected to torture of every description, before being killed, and then crucified opposite the walls ... five hundred or sometimes more being captured daily. ... The soldiers out of rage and hatred amused themselves by nailing their prisoners in different postures on their crosses; and so great was their number, that space could not be found for the crosses. (J.D. Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography)
Thousands were crucified during Jesus’ day, particularly Jews; it is staggering. In our day, the number is into the millions. Remember the Holocaust, Rwanda in 1994, South Africa during apartheid, Kosovo, and present-day Sudan.
Yet it is a Christian claim, not only that Jesus was crucified, but that he was crucified for us. Crucifixion itself is tragedy enough. But crucified for me? As St. Paul says, “Why, you might be willing to die for a good person, but he shows his love for us in that, at the right time, Jesus died for the ungodly” (Rom. 5:6). US!
An Archbishop of Paris stood in the pulpit of Notre Dame Cathedral. He was there to preach the sermon, and his whole sermon was built around a story. Thirty years before, he said, three young students had come into this cathedral. They were rough, rude, cynical men who thought all religion was a racket.
Two of them dared a third to go into the confessional and make a bogus confession to the priest. But to win the bet, he did. He tried to fool the old priest, but the priest knew that what he was saying was a lie.
The old priest listened to the fake confession, sensed the arrogance in the man’s attitude, and said, “Very well, my son. Every confession requires a penance, and this will be yours. I ask you to go into the chapel, stand before the crucifix look into the face of the crucified Christ and say, ‘all this you did for me, and I don’t give a damn.’”
The young man swaggered out of the confessional to his friends to claim the bet, but they insisted that before they paid him he would have to finish the performance by completing penance. He went into the chapel, looked into the face of Christ, and began, “All this you did for me, and I ...” “All this you did for me, and I ...” He couldn’t say it. He never finished the sentence. It began for him a painful experience that changed his life and finally brought him into the priesthood.
The Archbishop telling the story leaned over the pulpit and said, “That young man is standing before you today, preaching.”
It takes a hard heart to be unmoved by this.
As the mystery-writer and theologian Dorothy L. Sayers once wrote: “[Christ] was executed by people painfully like us, in a society very similar to our own ... by a corrupt church, a timid politician, and a fickle proletariat led by professional agitators.”
All the Scriptures agree, whatever else there is to be said about Jesus: he was crucified, one of the millions of Jewish martyrs. He was crucified.
This day, remember: he was crucified by us, because of us, for us. For us. And we continue the journey as Fr. William Tully, Rector of St. Bartholomew’s Church in New York City, reminded his parish: “Holy Week gives you something the world cannot give you. Yes, we know the story. We can talk it—maybe we can even recite it. But walking it gives us something we can get nowhere else.”
Gracious God, on this holiest of days, we marvel at your love for us. You did not forsake us, even in the worst of our sin. Forgive us and work with us, even in our unspeakable evil. Restore us to yourself. For us, there is no other way except the way of your total, complete, infinitely forbearing love.
Adapted from homily given at Ascension Parish on Good Friday, April 2, 1999 and again at Ss. Peter & Paul, April 10, 2009; ideas from William Willimon in Pulpit Resource, Vol. 27, No. 2. Quotation from D.L. Sayers online from Ekklesia and from W. Tully via Geranium Farm and Barbara Crafton. By Phil Ayers+
Friday, March 30, 2012
"We would see Jesus"
FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT Year B Ss. Peter & Paul Portland March 25, 2012
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Jesus, crucified, despised and suffering, you made yourself one with us. Help us to follow you and bear the shame. Amen.
[from a sermon 3/16/97] +++++
Phillips Brooks, author of “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” and briefly Bishop of Massachusetts, was also responsible for one of the masterpieces of American 19th century church architecture: Trinity Church in Boston’s Copley Square. Brooks played a very direct role in Trinity’s design. However, there is one feature of Brooks’ design that is visible only to those who preach in Trinity Church. Brooks had these words carved on the inside of Trinity’s pulpit: “Sir, we would see Jesus.”
This quotation from today’s Gospel was also used as the text for a sermon given at a new Rector’s Induction that I once heard – also in Massachusetts! * They are, of course, the words that “some Greeks” spoke to Philip when both they and Jesus and his disciples were on their way to Jerusalem.
The Greeks were more than likely non-Jews who were fascinated by Judaism’s antiquity and its profound ethical teaching. They were known as “God-fearers,” and they were numerous in the first century. Many of these “God-fearers” would have converted to Judaism had it not been for the requirement of circumcision. Along with Jesus and his disciples, the “God- fearers” were on their way to celebrate Passover in Jerusalem. But Jesus was also on his way to suffer, die on the cross, and be raised again.
When Philip reported to Jesus that the Greeks had asked to see him, Jesus exclaimed, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” Often, I’ve thought that Jesus is evading the questions and inquiry made by the Greeks, but this is a major turning point in John’s gospel. Scholars tell us that John is divided into the “Book of Signs” and the “Book of Glory.” In the “Book of Signs” – the first part of John – Jesus performs seven miracles that John refers to as signs. They begin when Jesus turns water into wine at the wedding feast at Cana and culminate with Jesus’ greatest miracle: raising Lazarus from the dead. Throughout the “Book of Signs” Jesus makes enigmatic references to his “hour” or “time” and says that it has not yet come. When his mother tells him that the revelers at the wedding feast have run out of wine, he says, “My hour has not yet come.” In John 7:8,
Jesus tells his disciples that he will not go to Jerusalem for the Feast of Booths because his “time has not yet fully come.”
But when the Greeks asked to see Jesus, he knew that the hour had come for him to be glorified. As Jesus amplifies his strange comment about the hour of his glorification having come, we realize that Jesus’ idea of glory and our idea of glory are radically different. For Jesus, to be glorified was to embrace the cross, the epitome of suffering:
“Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. ... Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say – ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. ... And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”
Because non-Jews such as the Greeks were seeking to meet Jesus, he knew that his mission was no longer restricted to Israel but had become universal. It was time for him to be lifted up – that is, crucified – so that all people could be drawn to him.
For us, glory is about having more: more money, more prestige, more power.
For Jesus, glory was about giving more, and he demonstrates this throughout John’s gospel, but nowhere more vividly than in the final chapters. Jesus gives himself to his friends by washing their feet. Then he gives himself to the world by dying on the cross.
It is the completion of the great arc of self-emptying that began with the opening verses of John. The cosmic Word by which God spoke creation into being descends from on high and is clothed with flesh, “and we beheld his glory.” The Word Incarnate heals the sick, feeds the multitude, raises the dead, and finally completes his task by dying on the cross, and only then resumes the glory that is rightfully his. As Mother Karen has said, “The whole ministry of Jesus, and thus the whole ministry of the church, is cruciform in shape.” **
“Sir, we would see Jesus.” Phillips Brooks knew that everyone who steps into a pulpit and presumes to preach the gospel needs to think about those words, because the great temptation of preaching is to give our hearers something other than Jesus. “We would see Jesus,” our listeners plead, and we give them our learning, comments on the day’s news, a witty joke or two, but too often there is little of Jesus in our preaching.
But it is not only preachers who do this. All around us are people who want to see Jesus. Do they see him in us? Do they see the Servant- Lord who washed the feet of his friends? Do they see the prophet who cleansed the Temple? Do they see the healer who made the blind to see? If we are to let people see Jesus in us, then we must go ourselves and sit at his feet, let him heal us, feed upon his body broken for us, and above all stand at the cross and wonder as the Word that spoke out of the void lapses into silence and death.
A few years ago, a rabbi at a large Reform synagogue published an editorial in the local newspaper on Christmas Day. He said, “I like Christmas, and I like Christians. My only problem with both is that they need more Jesus.”
Precisely. Sometimes those who are outside the circle of the church can see and name our problems far better than we can. We all need a lot more Jesus. It’s not only a problem for preachers; it’s a problem for every one of us who are called by the name of Christian.
“Sir, we would see Jesus,” the Greeks said to Philip. We, too, need to see Jesus, so that when others want to see Jesus, they can see him in us.
As the old spiritual puts it:
iii In the morning when I rise, iii Give me Jesus. iii Oh, when I am alone, iii Give me Jesus. iii Oh, when I come to die, iii Give me Jesus. Refrain: You can have all the world, But give me Jesus. [In Key of C, starts on A]
J. Barry Vaughn in Sermons That Work, for Lent 5B, 3/29/09, adapted * At the Induction of Tom Schulze as Rector of Trinity, Stoughton, MA, October __, 1976 by Andy Mead, then Curate at All Ss, Ashmont, Boston ** Quoted in Synthesis for 3/25/12.
+++++
Jesus, crucified, despised and suffering, you made yourself one with us. Help us to follow you and bear the shame. Amen.
[from a sermon 3/16/97] +++++
Phillips Brooks, author of “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” and briefly Bishop of Massachusetts, was also responsible for one of the masterpieces of American 19th century church architecture: Trinity Church in Boston’s Copley Square. Brooks played a very direct role in Trinity’s design. However, there is one feature of Brooks’ design that is visible only to those who preach in Trinity Church. Brooks had these words carved on the inside of Trinity’s pulpit: “Sir, we would see Jesus.”
This quotation from today’s Gospel was also used as the text for a sermon given at a new Rector’s Induction that I once heard – also in Massachusetts! * They are, of course, the words that “some Greeks” spoke to Philip when both they and Jesus and his disciples were on their way to Jerusalem.
The Greeks were more than likely non-Jews who were fascinated by Judaism’s antiquity and its profound ethical teaching. They were known as “God-fearers,” and they were numerous in the first century. Many of these “God-fearers” would have converted to Judaism had it not been for the requirement of circumcision. Along with Jesus and his disciples, the “God- fearers” were on their way to celebrate Passover in Jerusalem. But Jesus was also on his way to suffer, die on the cross, and be raised again.
When Philip reported to Jesus that the Greeks had asked to see him, Jesus exclaimed, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” Often, I’ve thought that Jesus is evading the questions and inquiry made by the Greeks, but this is a major turning point in John’s gospel. Scholars tell us that John is divided into the “Book of Signs” and the “Book of Glory.” In the “Book of Signs” – the first part of John – Jesus performs seven miracles that John refers to as signs. They begin when Jesus turns water into wine at the wedding feast at Cana and culminate with Jesus’ greatest miracle: raising Lazarus from the dead. Throughout the “Book of Signs” Jesus makes enigmatic references to his “hour” or “time” and says that it has not yet come. When his mother tells him that the revelers at the wedding feast have run out of wine, he says, “My hour has not yet come.” In John 7:8,
Jesus tells his disciples that he will not go to Jerusalem for the Feast of Booths because his “time has not yet fully come.”
But when the Greeks asked to see Jesus, he knew that the hour had come for him to be glorified. As Jesus amplifies his strange comment about the hour of his glorification having come, we realize that Jesus’ idea of glory and our idea of glory are radically different. For Jesus, to be glorified was to embrace the cross, the epitome of suffering:
“Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. ... Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say – ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. ... And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”
Because non-Jews such as the Greeks were seeking to meet Jesus, he knew that his mission was no longer restricted to Israel but had become universal. It was time for him to be lifted up – that is, crucified – so that all people could be drawn to him.
For us, glory is about having more: more money, more prestige, more power.
For Jesus, glory was about giving more, and he demonstrates this throughout John’s gospel, but nowhere more vividly than in the final chapters. Jesus gives himself to his friends by washing their feet. Then he gives himself to the world by dying on the cross.
It is the completion of the great arc of self-emptying that began with the opening verses of John. The cosmic Word by which God spoke creation into being descends from on high and is clothed with flesh, “and we beheld his glory.” The Word Incarnate heals the sick, feeds the multitude, raises the dead, and finally completes his task by dying on the cross, and only then resumes the glory that is rightfully his. As Mother Karen has said, “The whole ministry of Jesus, and thus the whole ministry of the church, is cruciform in shape.” **
“Sir, we would see Jesus.” Phillips Brooks knew that everyone who steps into a pulpit and presumes to preach the gospel needs to think about those words, because the great temptation of preaching is to give our hearers something other than Jesus. “We would see Jesus,” our listeners plead, and we give them our learning, comments on the day’s news, a witty joke or two, but too often there is little of Jesus in our preaching.
But it is not only preachers who do this. All around us are people who want to see Jesus. Do they see him in us? Do they see the Servant- Lord who washed the feet of his friends? Do they see the prophet who cleansed the Temple? Do they see the healer who made the blind to see? If we are to let people see Jesus in us, then we must go ourselves and sit at his feet, let him heal us, feed upon his body broken for us, and above all stand at the cross and wonder as the Word that spoke out of the void lapses into silence and death.
A few years ago, a rabbi at a large Reform synagogue published an editorial in the local newspaper on Christmas Day. He said, “I like Christmas, and I like Christians. My only problem with both is that they need more Jesus.”
Precisely. Sometimes those who are outside the circle of the church can see and name our problems far better than we can. We all need a lot more Jesus. It’s not only a problem for preachers; it’s a problem for every one of us who are called by the name of Christian.
“Sir, we would see Jesus,” the Greeks said to Philip. We, too, need to see Jesus, so that when others want to see Jesus, they can see him in us.
As the old spiritual puts it:
iii In the morning when I rise, iii Give me Jesus. iii Oh, when I am alone, iii Give me Jesus. iii Oh, when I come to die, iii Give me Jesus. Refrain: You can have all the world, But give me Jesus. [In Key of C, starts on A]
J. Barry Vaughn in Sermons That Work, for Lent 5B, 3/29/09, adapted * At the Induction of Tom Schulze as Rector of Trinity, Stoughton, MA, October __, 1976 by Andy Mead, then Curate at All Ss, Ashmont, Boston ** Quoted in Synthesis for 3/25/12.
Sunday, March 11, 2012
breaking the rules
3 Lent B 2012
Exodus 20: 1-17; Ps 19; 1 Cor 1: 18-25; John 2: 13-22
It is said that, at some Buddhist temples, a new candidate is presented with the document containing the Rule of the temple. “Here are the temple rules” says the abbot. “Know when to keep them, and know when to break them.”
Learning this kind of wisdom is the task of a lifetime. It is not simply a matter of picking and choosing to suite our own tastes. Most of us break rules when it would be best if we did not. And most of us keep rules when we should be breaking them.
Today’s Hebrew scripture is very familiar to us! The Decalogue, the so-called “Ten Commandments”, used to be read each Sunday at Episcopal Eucharist, used to be posted on every church school classroom wall, and even today traditionalist people fight to have them posted in public places.
I think the Commandments as symbol of a law-based approach to life bears more power than the words themselves. The actual text of the Commandments is pretty baseline for most people I know. Don’t kill people, don’t take stuff that does not belong to you—even in an age which feels detached from some portions of basic decent behavior, the Commandments are entry-level rules. Do we break them in our imaginations or our desires? Yes probably, and Jesus himself tells us to be honest about those desires. Do most of us more or less keep them in waking life? Yes, for the most part.
That’s a good thing really. It’s good that we hold to basic standards of behavior. Al kids need to learn this, even if today the language of what they learn is a little different from the stately cadences of King James English. Be decent, be compassionate, place yourself in the shoes of another, do not fall into greed or violence. The very basic behavior outlined in the Commandments gets re-stated in many places today, and the results are pretty much the same. Do not let your reptilian brain, your base desires, run over other people or rule yourself.
But, is that all there is? Is our life in the end only about acting decently and behaving morally?
I hope not. The Bible itself hopes not. The text of the Commandments holds a stark clue that simply doing right is not what it is about. “I am the Lord your God—no gods besides me—I am jealous.”
Ancient Jewish practice did not believe that doing good things would make God love us. It was God who acted first, by having pity on slaves and rescuing them from captivity. He took them away to the desert so he could romance them, so he could knit them to the divine self and make them his own people. The Commandments and the rest of the text that follows is a marriage contract, a free gift and a way of life that marries God to people and people to God. The mystery and the awe of this life lived together can be sensed in what is not said, in the wind that passes through the empty space between the stark words.
That mystery comes to fuller flower in St. Paul’s words.
God was not done when he chose one people and romanced them, binding them to himself. God wanted more, more love and more people to live the divine heart and revel in the divine compassion. And so the divine passion burst forth like floodwater from a broken dam. Neither religious signs nor accumulated wisdom is enough to express the divine love. Only in the crucified Christ is the fullness of the divine love and the divine mystery made visible and poured out. Live in this Christ, a foolish path without sign or proof. But here, Christian who hungers for truth and meaning and God, here your search and your hunger will be filled.
And once you have been filled with God, God’s love and inspiration will break the rules.
Jesus did nothing but break the rules big-time in today’s Gospel. Jesus interrupted the business of religion at the Temple, interfered with authorized arrangements that let people make donations and offer sacrifices. He violently overthrew the tables, the places where religious business was contracted and where people arranged for rituals that made them feel as if all was safe and secure and right with God. Religion-as-usual becomes chaos and is named as unclean, and the very body and life of the one who tossed out business-as-usual will be the new Temple, rising to life as the Temple is destroyed.
Know when to keep the rules, and when to break them.
Richard Rohr in Falling Upward speaks of how rules and procedures are very necessary to the first half of life. We are disciplining ourselves and building a future, and so clear guidelines and ways to keep us in check are vital.
But in the second half of life, we leave behind the tightly defined world that we have constructed and lived by and enter into one which is larger and more unpredictable. We let go of our anxiety to do things right, and by walking other paths we discover a deeper and hidden wisdom of God. For when we give ourselves, abandon ourselves, to the divine will and the divine passion, then we ourselves are freed to do and say things that seem outrageous, but are born of a deeper wisdom. To lead is to serve. To die is to live. Love your enemies.
So love the commandments of God, those words and ways and codes by which God first taught us that the world is larger than our petty and selfish desires. Through the discipline of law and canon and rule, we learn to live not for ourselves alone, but for God and for the community around us. But love even more the mad, outrageous foolishness of God, who calls us in Christ to be more and bigger than just the rule-obeyer, the one who always does things right.
When we are freed to inhabit the mad, overwhelming mercy and passion of God, then we find a different way, a way of the deepest self-gift and the most profound abandonment to God’s upside-down, rule-breaking mercy. We walk willingly into the foolish wisdom and the rule-breaking passion for justice that marks out the children of God.
Exodus 20: 1-17; Ps 19; 1 Cor 1: 18-25; John 2: 13-22
It is said that, at some Buddhist temples, a new candidate is presented with the document containing the Rule of the temple. “Here are the temple rules” says the abbot. “Know when to keep them, and know when to break them.”
Learning this kind of wisdom is the task of a lifetime. It is not simply a matter of picking and choosing to suite our own tastes. Most of us break rules when it would be best if we did not. And most of us keep rules when we should be breaking them.
Today’s Hebrew scripture is very familiar to us! The Decalogue, the so-called “Ten Commandments”, used to be read each Sunday at Episcopal Eucharist, used to be posted on every church school classroom wall, and even today traditionalist people fight to have them posted in public places.
I think the Commandments as symbol of a law-based approach to life bears more power than the words themselves. The actual text of the Commandments is pretty baseline for most people I know. Don’t kill people, don’t take stuff that does not belong to you—even in an age which feels detached from some portions of basic decent behavior, the Commandments are entry-level rules. Do we break them in our imaginations or our desires? Yes probably, and Jesus himself tells us to be honest about those desires. Do most of us more or less keep them in waking life? Yes, for the most part.
That’s a good thing really. It’s good that we hold to basic standards of behavior. Al kids need to learn this, even if today the language of what they learn is a little different from the stately cadences of King James English. Be decent, be compassionate, place yourself in the shoes of another, do not fall into greed or violence. The very basic behavior outlined in the Commandments gets re-stated in many places today, and the results are pretty much the same. Do not let your reptilian brain, your base desires, run over other people or rule yourself.
But, is that all there is? Is our life in the end only about acting decently and behaving morally?
I hope not. The Bible itself hopes not. The text of the Commandments holds a stark clue that simply doing right is not what it is about. “I am the Lord your God—no gods besides me—I am jealous.”
Ancient Jewish practice did not believe that doing good things would make God love us. It was God who acted first, by having pity on slaves and rescuing them from captivity. He took them away to the desert so he could romance them, so he could knit them to the divine self and make them his own people. The Commandments and the rest of the text that follows is a marriage contract, a free gift and a way of life that marries God to people and people to God. The mystery and the awe of this life lived together can be sensed in what is not said, in the wind that passes through the empty space between the stark words.
That mystery comes to fuller flower in St. Paul’s words.
God was not done when he chose one people and romanced them, binding them to himself. God wanted more, more love and more people to live the divine heart and revel in the divine compassion. And so the divine passion burst forth like floodwater from a broken dam. Neither religious signs nor accumulated wisdom is enough to express the divine love. Only in the crucified Christ is the fullness of the divine love and the divine mystery made visible and poured out. Live in this Christ, a foolish path without sign or proof. But here, Christian who hungers for truth and meaning and God, here your search and your hunger will be filled.
And once you have been filled with God, God’s love and inspiration will break the rules.
Jesus did nothing but break the rules big-time in today’s Gospel. Jesus interrupted the business of religion at the Temple, interfered with authorized arrangements that let people make donations and offer sacrifices. He violently overthrew the tables, the places where religious business was contracted and where people arranged for rituals that made them feel as if all was safe and secure and right with God. Religion-as-usual becomes chaos and is named as unclean, and the very body and life of the one who tossed out business-as-usual will be the new Temple, rising to life as the Temple is destroyed.
Know when to keep the rules, and when to break them.
Richard Rohr in Falling Upward speaks of how rules and procedures are very necessary to the first half of life. We are disciplining ourselves and building a future, and so clear guidelines and ways to keep us in check are vital.
But in the second half of life, we leave behind the tightly defined world that we have constructed and lived by and enter into one which is larger and more unpredictable. We let go of our anxiety to do things right, and by walking other paths we discover a deeper and hidden wisdom of God. For when we give ourselves, abandon ourselves, to the divine will and the divine passion, then we ourselves are freed to do and say things that seem outrageous, but are born of a deeper wisdom. To lead is to serve. To die is to live. Love your enemies.
So love the commandments of God, those words and ways and codes by which God first taught us that the world is larger than our petty and selfish desires. Through the discipline of law and canon and rule, we learn to live not for ourselves alone, but for God and for the community around us. But love even more the mad, outrageous foolishness of God, who calls us in Christ to be more and bigger than just the rule-obeyer, the one who always does things right.
When we are freed to inhabit the mad, overwhelming mercy and passion of God, then we find a different way, a way of the deepest self-gift and the most profound abandonment to God’s upside-down, rule-breaking mercy. We walk willingly into the foolish wisdom and the rule-breaking passion for justice that marks out the children of God.
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Wild thing
1 Lent B 2012
Gen 9:8-17; Ps 25:1-9; 1 Peter 3:18-22; Mark 1:9-15
Before Jesus could go forth, he had to go wild.
As we begin our own walk through Lent, we hear how Jesus, at the start of his own journey, is shattered first by love, then by wildness, then by loss.
Jesus walks to the riverbank seeking his kinsman John. John himself is a wild man living on the fringe of society and on the edge of the wilderness. The wild man John plunges the young man Jesus into the flowing, living water of the river.
The Jordan River, which marks the border between God’s land of promise and the wild, unmarked land where Israel once wandered. The water—the same water welling out of the earth which once burst forth in a flood at God’s command—a wild rush of water whose chaos snuffed out one creation to make ready for another creation.
This water was so wild that, long ago, God himself regretted his own wild choice and swore never to destroy the earth with a flood. But the wild water was still near, beneath one’s very feet, cruising above one’s head in the clouds, welling out in springs and streams, an ever-present reminder of God’s presence and God’s otherness, God’s own wildness.
From out of that primal water Jesus rose dripping. Did he feel the weight and power of the water and of the God who was drenching him with a new and mysterious life?
The heavens were torn apart. Up there where the wild waters of the ancient flood were kept, a voice, a dove. Noah’s dove brought news of new land and a second chance. This Spirit-dove brings news of a new reign and a second chance for us all.
Still dripping, Jesus runs—that dove “drives” him out into the wilderness, into exile, into the wild.
Why the wild? Why not a nice school where Jesus could learn his Scriptures in peace? What was there for Jesus to learn that he could not find at the feet of wise old rabbis?
In the wild, one faces life uncontrolled, unmanaged. In the wild, one realizes how small one really is. In the wild, one realizes that it is a big world after all, and it does not spin around us—in fact it can do just fine without us and one day soon it will. In the wild, one either faces oneself with withering honesty, in our earthy humanity, without illusions, or we go mad with delusion.
In the wild, it is not safe. There are angels, and there is God. There are wild animals. There are demons. And there is we ourselves. I am not sure which of these is the most dangerous.
In the wild, God can actually make something of us.
In the wild, we are tempted. Jesus was. Temptations arise from our own hearts. They entice us or frighten us with delusions of all kinds. Temptations either suggest that we are superhuman, with control over the wildness of the world and of God, or that we are insignificant and without meaning and value. Temptations address our greatest strengths or our profoundest weakness. They draw us into patterns that, once embraced, leave little or no room for God.
When we’re tempted, we learn that our greatest weaknesses are actually our deepest strengths.
At home with the wild things, where the wild things are, at home with his own wild self, the part that burns only for God, Jesus is even now not ready. His heart had to be broken.
John and Jesus shared a communion of blood kinship and of vision and purpose. They shared a passion for God and God’s justice that can burn hotly in the souls of fine, idealistic young people. They had even shared the strangeness of that baptism experience.
Perhaps John hoped that he and Jesus would be allies, that Jesus would support John in his ministry. Perhaps Jesus hoped the same of John.
But John’s tale was cut short by his imprisonment and eventual execution by a corrupt and violent king. What could this mean, that a righteous man and a living prophet could be arrested and killed by a tyrant? Where was God? What was the sense?
But after John’s arrest, Jesus began to proclaim the good news of the reign of God.
Wild water, wild animals in the wilderness, and a broken heart and broken hopes: that is the way of our Master. And so that is our way.
The New Testament and the ancient church taught that the path of a believer is the path of Jesus the Master himself. He is the teacher and his life is the pattern. And so we too are plunged into the wild waters of baptism, where we learn that we are beloved but that God is wild and the realm of God is not predictable or safe. We are flung into the wilderness of Lent, away from the predictability of life-as-we see it in order to meet God, the tempter, and ourselves. We are asked “what do we believe?” and “whom do we follow?” And our hearts are broken, again and again, by loss or life itself or betrayal or, worst of all, by our own selves and the disappointment caused by our lack of faithfulness and courage.
When all this happens, when we enter deeply the wilderness of our lives and the devastating things we learn in the wild, when we drink deeply of sorrow and our hearts are broken open, then we can begin. We can begin to understand the heart of the Son of God. We can begin to walk in the ways that his feet have also trod. Our lives and our words can begin to proclaim the wild, astounding vision of the Reign of God.
Gen 9:8-17; Ps 25:1-9; 1 Peter 3:18-22; Mark 1:9-15
Before Jesus could go forth, he had to go wild.
As we begin our own walk through Lent, we hear how Jesus, at the start of his own journey, is shattered first by love, then by wildness, then by loss.
Jesus walks to the riverbank seeking his kinsman John. John himself is a wild man living on the fringe of society and on the edge of the wilderness. The wild man John plunges the young man Jesus into the flowing, living water of the river.
The Jordan River, which marks the border between God’s land of promise and the wild, unmarked land where Israel once wandered. The water—the same water welling out of the earth which once burst forth in a flood at God’s command—a wild rush of water whose chaos snuffed out one creation to make ready for another creation.
This water was so wild that, long ago, God himself regretted his own wild choice and swore never to destroy the earth with a flood. But the wild water was still near, beneath one’s very feet, cruising above one’s head in the clouds, welling out in springs and streams, an ever-present reminder of God’s presence and God’s otherness, God’s own wildness.
From out of that primal water Jesus rose dripping. Did he feel the weight and power of the water and of the God who was drenching him with a new and mysterious life?
The heavens were torn apart. Up there where the wild waters of the ancient flood were kept, a voice, a dove. Noah’s dove brought news of new land and a second chance. This Spirit-dove brings news of a new reign and a second chance for us all.
Still dripping, Jesus runs—that dove “drives” him out into the wilderness, into exile, into the wild.
Why the wild? Why not a nice school where Jesus could learn his Scriptures in peace? What was there for Jesus to learn that he could not find at the feet of wise old rabbis?
In the wild, one faces life uncontrolled, unmanaged. In the wild, one realizes how small one really is. In the wild, one realizes that it is a big world after all, and it does not spin around us—in fact it can do just fine without us and one day soon it will. In the wild, one either faces oneself with withering honesty, in our earthy humanity, without illusions, or we go mad with delusion.
In the wild, it is not safe. There are angels, and there is God. There are wild animals. There are demons. And there is we ourselves. I am not sure which of these is the most dangerous.
In the wild, God can actually make something of us.
In the wild, we are tempted. Jesus was. Temptations arise from our own hearts. They entice us or frighten us with delusions of all kinds. Temptations either suggest that we are superhuman, with control over the wildness of the world and of God, or that we are insignificant and without meaning and value. Temptations address our greatest strengths or our profoundest weakness. They draw us into patterns that, once embraced, leave little or no room for God.
When we’re tempted, we learn that our greatest weaknesses are actually our deepest strengths.
At home with the wild things, where the wild things are, at home with his own wild self, the part that burns only for God, Jesus is even now not ready. His heart had to be broken.
John and Jesus shared a communion of blood kinship and of vision and purpose. They shared a passion for God and God’s justice that can burn hotly in the souls of fine, idealistic young people. They had even shared the strangeness of that baptism experience.
Perhaps John hoped that he and Jesus would be allies, that Jesus would support John in his ministry. Perhaps Jesus hoped the same of John.
But John’s tale was cut short by his imprisonment and eventual execution by a corrupt and violent king. What could this mean, that a righteous man and a living prophet could be arrested and killed by a tyrant? Where was God? What was the sense?
But after John’s arrest, Jesus began to proclaim the good news of the reign of God.
Wild water, wild animals in the wilderness, and a broken heart and broken hopes: that is the way of our Master. And so that is our way.
The New Testament and the ancient church taught that the path of a believer is the path of Jesus the Master himself. He is the teacher and his life is the pattern. And so we too are plunged into the wild waters of baptism, where we learn that we are beloved but that God is wild and the realm of God is not predictable or safe. We are flung into the wilderness of Lent, away from the predictability of life-as-we see it in order to meet God, the tempter, and ourselves. We are asked “what do we believe?” and “whom do we follow?” And our hearts are broken, again and again, by loss or life itself or betrayal or, worst of all, by our own selves and the disappointment caused by our lack of faithfulness and courage.
When all this happens, when we enter deeply the wilderness of our lives and the devastating things we learn in the wild, when we drink deeply of sorrow and our hearts are broken open, then we can begin. We can begin to understand the heart of the Son of God. We can begin to walk in the ways that his feet have also trod. Our lives and our words can begin to proclaim the wild, astounding vision of the Reign of God.
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