Paul's Place in Perry

Pater Noster

2010-07-25T19:32:00.002-04:00

[Our lessons were Genesis 18:20-32; Psalm 138; Colossians 2:6-19; and Luke 11:1-13.]

“Lord, teach us to pray.”

One thing we get from the Gospels is that Jesus prayed. A LOT. Over and over, we hear of him going off to pray. Sometimes he would withdraw from the crowds to pray. His disciples recognized that Jesus knew how to pray, so they asked them to teach them the “secret.”

What Jesus taught them is recorded in both Luke and Matthew and is called either the “Lord’s Prayer” or the Pater Noster—“Our Father” in Latin. The version we use in our liturgy actually comes from Matthew’s Gospel, so the version we just heard and will talk about today sounds a little different.

This prayer is so familiar, so much a part of our routine, that we need to take care to actually think about what we are praying and not let the well-remembered words slide by as we say them.

Another problem is that of translation. Jesus may or may not have known Greek, but he almost certainly spoke these words in Aramaic, which is what most people would have understood. The Gospel writers translated them into Greek after some period of time, probably 30 to 40 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection. And then some 1,500 years later scholars translated them into English. All this sounds very straight forward and scientific, but it isn’t. Greek to English translations are fraught with opportunities for ambiguity and confusion as the two languages are very dissimilar.

We have one of these possible ambiguities from the start. Our English translation says, “When you pray, say…” Some scholars believe that the Greek words could be translated as, “When you pray, you are saying…” This is an entirely different meaning. What we call “the Lord’s Prayer” isn’t specifically a Christian prayer. Any devout Jew could have already been praying these prayers. In this interpretation, Jesus was reminding the disciples that they already knew how to pray, because they’d been doing it all their lives. What he was doing was spelling out the meanings beyond words which were perhaps too familiar.

We begin by addressing God as “Father”. English loses some of the intensity of this address because English lacks a separate vocative case. The “Father” in this case is an urgent call: “Father, listen to us!” This isn’t a distant, far-off God. This is a God to whom we can relate intimately, whom we are to approach as “Father” or “Abba”, even as Jesus did.

The next two petitions call on God to be God. We honor God’s name as being holy. God’s Name is holy because God is holy. God is definitively good, definitively righteous, and definitively holy.

We then pray for the Kingdom of God to come. Luke’s version doesn’t contain Matthew’s clear placement of the Kingdom on earth, but that’s where it’s supposed to be. Right here, right now. The Kingdom of God is where God’s will is done, God’s justice is maintained, no one weeps or is in need, and death has been destroyed. We pray for God to take charge of life and the world, to bring justice and peace to the world, not to help us escape from the world in a “Rapture”, but to transform it so we can live in it as God intends for us to do!

We then follow with three requests for special needs.

Whether the bread in question is “daily” is questionable. The world in the Greek text that we say translated as “daily” is epiousios (ἐπιούσιος), which could mean “daily,” “tomorrow’s, or “necessary.” The word is unknown in Greek outside of this context. If the meaning is “daily”, then it probably is a reference to the manna provided to Israel in the Exodus. If it’s “tomorrow’s” bread, then it’s thought to refer to the Second Coming. If it’s “necessary” to our existence to survive, it means we are asking God to provide what is needed for our existence. Like more in the Bible than we like to admit, it’s not quite clear.

We ask God to forgive our sins for we forgive those indebted to us. This is quite different from the parallel language in the prayer from Matthew that we’re used to and the meaning is quite different. Some scholars believe that the Greek text is a request to God to treat our sins as we treat monetary debts. And the forgiveness we’re called upon to provide isn’t a “feel-good” personal well-wishing, it is actually changing the material circumstances of the poor. We ask God to extend mercy to us to the exact degree that we extend mercy toward others with our wealth and power. (I guess a certain news commentator missed this part of Luke when he said that there isn’t a concept of “social justice” in the Bible!)

Finally, we ask God not to bring us to the time of trial. Now, we’re used to the traditional language of the Lord’s Prayer asking God not to lead us into temptation. The word in Greek is peirasmos and not all scholars think “temptation” is the best English word. Does God ever lead us in temptation? Why would he? Remember in Mark’s Gospel, it was the Holy Spirit that drove Jesus into the wilderness; it was Satan who tempted Jesus, not God.

The more modern language, which you can see in the Prayer Book, has us ask God to “save us from the time of trial”. One writer I consulted says that she believes that the meaning lies in spiritual temptations—of thinking that we have the spiritual answers to ultimate questions and that those who disagree with our interpretation are wrong—and that these may be just the kind of temptation that only God can save us from. “Do not let the Spirit lead us into the wilderness where such temptations can occur!” In the parables that Jesus tells later to expound on the prayer, it is evident that seeking justice is much more important that being right.

So, we call on God as our Father. We ask that God’s holy name remain holy (I suspect we need to work on that one at times). We are to ask that God’s kingdom (and all that it means) come here and now. We ask for sustenance. We must have a forgiving heart in order to be forgiven. We ask God to help keep us from times of trial.

And then Jesus gives us an example of how this prayer should affect us. This little story of the neighbor and the bread isn’t best thought of as an allegory where God is the neighbor and we’re the one needing bread in the night. The point is that, if we are in right relationships with others, if we really treat them as if we are all members of the family of God, we will act in a certain way.

We sometimes seem to think that it’s God’s job to take care of the poor and that we are free from any responsibility. But we have to be a part of this prayer. If we’re part of this glorious family then we need to be the ones who are asked for bread, and we must be the ones who are sought out by the needy, and we are the ones who must open our doors. What would it be like if we really opened our hearts and our doors to people in need?

So this Gospel may be reminding you that this is how we pray. We don’t need to be doing anything outlandish or extraordinary. But we do need to keep our prayer in front of our eyes. We need to remember that God is the holy One. We need to remember that, while God does provide for us, we need to reach out to others and mirror God to them. We need to forgive and be forgiven. We need to remember that, however good we are, we are still sinners, all of us, but that God forgives us. If God forgives us and we claim to be God’s people, then shouldn’t we forgive each other? When we are open to the unconditional forgiveness of God, then we will come to be truly known as the Body of Christ—a group of people who welcome the stranger and the sinner as if they were ourselves. For so they are.

Independence Day!

2010-07-04T17:57:00.007-04:00

Almighty God, whose wisdom and whose love are over all, accept the prayers we offer for our nation. Give integrity to its citizens and wisdom to those in authority, that harmony and justice may be secured in obedience to your will; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

In the Episcopal Church, when July 4th falls on a Sunday (as it does this year), there can be a bit of confusion. While we have a collect and assigned readings for Independence Day, the Calendar in the Book of Common Prayer make it clear that only certain dates take precedence over the lessons for a Sunday and Independence Day isn't one of them. So a church is faced with some choices:

Ignore the rules and drop the Sunday lessons.
Use the Sunday lessons, but bring in references to Independence Day in other aspects of worship, like prayers, hymnns, and flowers.
Ignore Independence Day until tomorrow--the normal rule when Sunday trumps another date.

At St. Christopher's today, we chose the middle way--a typically Anglican response! We kept with the standard Sunday readings for a couple of reasons. First, the rules require it. Second, the readings for this Sunday in the Revised Common Lectionary are being used today in many other countries who probably aren't real excited about commemorating the Independence Day of the United States. This way we are worshipping in much the same way with the same readings from Scripture as many Christians around the world.

We processed into the church to the "National Hymn":

God of our fathers, Whose almighty hand
Leads forth in beauty all the starry band
Of shining worlds in splendor through the skies
Our grateful songs before Thy throne arise.

Thy love divine hath led us in the past,
In this free land by Thee our lot is cast,
Be Thou our Ruler, Guardian, Guide and Stay,
Thy Word our law, Thy paths our chosen way.

From war’s alarms, from deadly pestilence,
Be Thy strong arm our ever sure defense;
Thy true religion in our hearts increase,
Thy bounteous goodness nourish us in peace.

Refresh Thy people on their toilsome way,
Lead us from night to never ending day;
Fill all our lives with love and grace divine,
And glory, laud, and praise be ever Thine.

You can listen to an .mp3 file of this hymn here.

At the end of the service, we processed out into the world to America the Beautiful.

While we didn't go as far as some churches and drape the flag on the altar--a practice that I think approaches if not reaches idolatry--we did have red, white and blue flowers and small flags attached to alternating pews.

I couldn't help but be reminded of an earlier Independence Day that also fell on a Sunday--July 4, 1976, America's Bicentennial. I was between my junior and senior years of college and spent the summer at home with my parents in Springfield, Illinois, working part-time at the old Sears store on South Grand Avenue.

That morning, I first went to church at St. Paul's Cathedral. To commemorate the Bicentennial, the Cathedral put on a Eucharist using the Church of England Book of Common Prayer of 1662--the one that would have been used in the colonies on July 4, 1776. They tried to be generally faithful to the way that service would have been held: no "Romish" eucharistic vestments, for example, but they did say that the sermon would be kept under an hour! While the service was interesting as a one-off thing, the service was too dry and sparse for a "High Church" Episcopalian like me!

Then I had to rush home for a quick lunch, before heading to work at Sears. Sears was going to be open its normal Sunday hours at the time--12 to 5--and closed the next day on Monday, July 5th! I thought that was fairly stupid to be open on July 4 but not on July 5, but I don't remember anyone asking my opinion, as amazing as that sounds. I was also a little irritated to have to miss some of the July 4 festivities on TV, which were a lot more than normal because this wasn't any ordinary Fourth of July. Most people in Springfield found something else to do that day rather than come shop at Sears, because the customers were few and far between.

In these days with hundreds of channels on DirecTV, its hard to recall that in 1976, we had four stations to choose from: the NBC station in Springfield, the CBS station from Champaign, the ABC station from Decatur, and the PBS station from the University of Illinois. The first 24-hour news channel, CNN, was still four years in the future. So it was something pretty special when the networks ran hours of live coverage of the Bicentennial festivities.

One of the most picturesque events was Operation Sail's parade of 16 sailing ships from many countries to New York harbor--three of which, the Amerigo Vespucci from Italy, the Eagle from the United States and the Kruzenshtern (or Крузенштерн) from the Soviet Union are shown here.

Healing and Inclusion

2010-06-21T09:51:00.001-04:00

[Our readings were Isaiah 65:1-9; Psalm 22:18-27; Galatians 3:23-29; and Luke 8:26-39.]

The story of the Gerasene demoniac we hear today in the Gospel of Luke probably seemed pretty humorous to the Christians of the First Century—who had a Jewish background—who first heard it.

You have to admit that the story is rather strange. You have a naked crazy man, talking demons, pigs charging off cliffs, tombs, chains, unhappy townspeople. All this on the wrong side of the Sea of Galilee in Gentile territory!

This made a good story: how un-kosher, unlucky and just plain strange those gentiles were and best of all, those unclean pigs came to a well-deserved end, unless you were a pig.

But this story has layers upon layers to it, rich with meaning. And the greatest meaning is that Jesus has power. He has just calmed the sea to get to where this story takes place and we will see even more.

First, the man. We never learn his name. All we know is that he lives naked in the tombs, chained, shunned by family, friends and neighbors. He is tormented by a host of demons.

(In fact the demons are called “Legion.” The hearers of this Gospel would instantly catch the reference to the Roman legions that occupied their land—the most powerful force of oppression of their day. But they are no match for the power of Jesus. At his command, they jump into the pigs and head to a watery death.)

We don’t really do demons very well in the 21st Century. What the people of the First Century attributed to demons, we now see as a form of illness. We have clearly progressed over the past 2,000 years. Or have we?

Instead of being possessed by demons, we might well say that this man was manic-depressive, or bipolar and possibly schizophrenic. He was excluded from his society. Thankfully, we don’t do that today. Or do we?

Today, if you visit mental health facilities or the streets of many of our cities where people live in cardboard boxes you might wonder if we have advanced that far after all. In many ways, we still exclude those who suffer from diseases of the mind, even when people successfully manage their conditions. Maybe we haven’t changed that much after all.

The ultimate point of the story is that Jesus has power to heal and restore those who have been excluded, like this man. When the townspeople arrive, the man who had been a naked, tormented outcast is now clothed and in his right mind.

We don’t know how well he was welcomed back into his community. We do know that Jesus told him to remain in his community and “declare how much God has done for you.” And he did.

We humans are very good at drawing lines and excluding. We do that all the time and it may be that the churches in Galatia to whom St. Paul wrote did that, too. So when we hear the powerful words of St. Paul: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus,” they suggest that the Galatians were separating and excluding Jew from Gentile, slave from free, men from women.

Those were hard words to First Century Jews steeped in a worldview that drew lines between themselves and outsiders—Gentiles. A common Jewish prayer of the day was: “Thank you, Lord, for not making me a foreigner, a slave, or a woman.” I suggest that was a prayer for Jewish men only and Paul plays off against that in his words.

While we are not all the same, no group must claim superiority over another, nor must we exclude one another. Our human distinctions are irrelevant to God: male or female; rich or poor; young or old; married or single; educated or unschooled; black, white, brown, red, or yellow; white-collar or blue collar worker; gay or straight. None of these things which often are so crucial to us matter in the slightest to God. These differences, so profound to us, are nothing compared to the power of Christ to reconcile all things.

Where is the church that truly lives out this vision? Do we truly treat everyone as one, not just in this building, but in all our lives? G.K. Chesterton wrote that Christianity “has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.” When will we try it?

The familiar words of the old African American spiritual are “We shall overcome someday.” Why not today? Why can’t we bring the Kingdom of God into being today? In the midst of the battles about immigration: “There is neither native born nor illegal immigrant.” In the midst of our bad economic times, where income inequality is greater than ever: “There is neither monied nor working class nor power.” In the midst of our society still often polarized by race: “There are neither people of color nor people of no color.”

For we are all one in Christ! Christ alone matters. Christ is our unity; Christ is our focus; Christ is the beginning and the end; Christ is the cause for which we live; and Christ is whom nothing can separate us, not even death!

Never forget that Jesus’ ministry was mainly to the poor and excluded, like the Gerasene demoniac, not to the wealthy and comfortable. May we never forget that!

Repent!

2010-06-07T15:35:00.003-04:00

Remember the first words spoken by Jesus in Mark's Gospel:

"The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news." [Mark 1:15].

What does that say to us about the man-made disaster in the Gulf?

These days we think "repent" means feeling bad about things, but in the Gospel sense it rather means "change your path" or "turn aside from the failed road you are on". How better to describe our stewardship of God's creation?

We need to choose paths which are sustainable. I don't know anyone with even a smattering of scientific knowledge who believes that fossil fuel resources are infinite. Whether the date on which we use them up is 25, 50, 100, or 500 years from now, the day will come. Also, most uses of fossil fuels have negative environmental impacts, primarily through creation of greenhouse gases. Fossil fuels have done great things for us, but we have let them take us down the wrong road (pun intended).

Does that mean Christians must call for the immediate cessation of the use of fossil fuels? No. Without regard to whether it would really happen (and it won't), there aren't today sufficient alternatives to allow for it without huge economic devastation that would, as always, be most heavily inflicted on the poor.

Does that mean we do nothing? Again, no. There are things we can do, both personally and as members of a community, that reduce our reliance on non-renewable fuels. Where we can, take mass transit. When we purchase vehicles, factor fuel efficiency into our decisions. Do things in our homes that reduce the power and water that we use, as well as the impact generally on the environment. Support actions by all levels of government which reduce our use of these non-sustainable energy sources.

How does all this play into the unfolding disaster in the Gulf of Mexico? In a recent article, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Katharine Jefferts-Schori, wrote

The still-unfolding disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is good evidence of the interconnectedness of the whole. It has its origins in this nation's addiction to oil, uninhibited growth, and consumerism, as well as old-fashioned greed and what my tradition calls hubris and idolatry. Our collective sins are being visited on those who have had little or no part in them: birds, marine mammals, the tiny plants and animals that constitute the base of the vast food chain in the Gulf, and on which a major part of the seafood production of the United States depends. Our sins are being visited on the fishers of southern Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, who seek to feed their families with the proceeds of what they catch each day. Our sins will expose New Orleans and other coastal cities to the increased likelihood of devastating floods, as the marshes that constitute the shrinking margin of storm protection continue to disappear, fouled and killed by oil.

***

There is no place to go "away" from these consequences; there is no ultimate escape on this planet. The effects at a distance may seem minor or tolerable, but the cumulative effect is not. We are all connected, we will all suffer the consequences of this tragic disaster in the Gulf, and we must wake up and put a stop to the kind of robber baron behavior we supposedly regulated out of existence a hundred years ago. Our lives, and the liveliness of the entire planet, depend on it.

It's easy to point fingers at BP and they deserve some of the blame. It's easy to point fingers at the Federal Government for allowing BP to drill in deep water without a clear method to deal with disasterous consequences. While we're pointing fingers, let's examine our own complicity through our insatiable thirst for cheap oil, large cars, trucks and SUVs. While we're demanding that BP and the Government repent and change their paths, what about us?

A prayer for the Gulf:

Creator God, author of life, source of all meaning, you made a universe of infinite complexity and beauty and entrusted us humans with the care of a tiny jewel called Earth.

With the passing of time we came to believe we were owners, not fellow creature dwellers, of this bountiful planet and its extravagant web of life. We have used God’s creation without regard for the impact our rapacity had on the other creatures with whom we share our earthly home. We have acted with craven disregard for complex ecosystems we barely understand. Our self-deception has led us to assume we have the capacity to manage environments we exploit to sustain lifestyles that defy the intrinsic interdependence of all life. Now we face the consequences of our idolatry. We thought we were gods; but our recklessness has brought us to our knees, to ask for your mercy and forgiveness for the chaos we have brought about. We pray for the oceans and all the creatures that dwell in it. We pray for the forests and the abundance of life they nurture. We pray for the very air we breathe, now laden with the toxic gases we produce. We pray for our children whose earthly home we have so imperiled. Loving God, have mercy on us, grant us forgiveness and the strength to make amends.

[Photograph by Mathew Hinton, New Orleans Times-Picayune]

Prepare the Way of the Lord!

2009-12-07T07:21:00.002-05:00

[Our readings were Baruch 5:1-9; Canticle 16; Philippians 1:3-11; and Luke 3:1-6.]

As we know, Advent is a season of preparation. We are busily cleaning our homes, getting out decorations, making travel plans, deciding what gifts to give, attending parties, and so on. Of course, that’s really not the “preparation” that the Church calls for in Advent, but it seems that this is what we are all doing—and all we are doing—these days. It’s little wonder that we often are tired of Christmas before Christmas gets here.

But into our Advent “busy-ness” comes John the Baptist. He interrupts our cluttered schedules to demand that we make preparations of a different kind. Although he appears in the New Testament, he is more in the style of an Old Testament prophet, challenging us to examine ourselves, both as individuals and as a society. Advent is a time to prepare to welcome Jesus and not just our Christmas guests.

When I was a child, whenever my parents were expecting guests, my mother would work extra hard to make sure the house was “just so.” Everything had to be perfect; no detail was too small. Another way to say it was that the expected arrival of guests called for self-examination of our house—cleaning and fixing up.

John the Baptist calls us to a different type of self-examination. I don’t think he’d have had much time for straightening up our houses—after all, he was a locusts and wild honey type of guy. What he did go in for was repentance and preparation.

We tend to think that “repentance” involves feeling bad about what we have done. When public figures get caught out having committed various misdeeds, either public or private, their usual, carefully massaged response (normally vetted by lawyers and PR consultants) expresses their heartfelt sorrow and normally deflects responsibility for their actions onto someone or something else, so that they seem to be kind of apologizing for something that they say wasn’t really their fault to begin with.

That isn’t repentance as John the Baptist meant it. Repentance is quite literally changing your mind, turning around, reorienting yourself.

In the Gospel today, we heard a famous quotation from Isaiah, “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight… the crooked shall be made straight and the rough ways made smooth.” I want to tell you of a different kind of trip.

What MapQuest had indicated was a real road was, in fact, a road under construction. The father said to himself that he should have known better. When he had turned onto the road and left the main highway, there had been a warning: “Proceed at Your Own Risk. Construction Ahead.”

Just past the turn-off, the surface was paved, but there were no markings, just blacktop. But, after a few miles, the asphalt gave way to gravel and a thin layer of tar. The smell of the tar and the sound of gravel bouncing up against the bottom of the car woke up the children. “Are we there yet?” “How much farther?”

“We have a ways to go,” said the father as he wondered whether he still had an old-fashioned map in the car.

When the gravel ended and they hit dirt, he started to worry. It didn’t help that they seemed to be the only ones on this road, and they had seen no one else coming from the other direction. Even worse, what at first seemed to be dirt was actually mud. He decided to keep driving and hope that this was just a bad patch–that the “real” road, the good road, was just ahead.

Soon, however, the noise of gravel against the car’s undercarriage had given way to a slurping sound as the tires kicked up mud and then sank into it.

He thought, “I have to keep going, If I can just keep moving forward, we’ll be all right. We’re behind schedule, but we’ll be all right if we can just keep moving.”

But the car became mired in the mud, sunk right up to the axles, tires half submerged. He turned the engine off. “What’s happening, Dad?” the children asked from the back seat. “Are we there?”

Help came in the form of a tow truck that traveled that stretch of road a couple times a day in case things like this happened. The car was towed back to the main road, and directions were given for a much longer, but passable, route.

The family would call that part of the vacation “the repentance trip” because it embodied so well the definition of repentance–an active turning around, going a new direction, a change of heart, a change of mind, rather than continuing down the same path, moving in the same direction that is leading nowhere or somewhere dangerous, fast.

Repentance isn’t an emotion; it isn’t feeling remorse or regret or guilty or ashamed. It’s not simply wishing that you were a better person or that bad things didn’t keep happening to you. Repentance is change, movement. Repentance is turning aside from your current path and when you do, you will find God waiting there for you.

We need to put as much effort and attention into our preparation to receive Christ at Christmas as we do in selecting the perfect holiday gift, putting the most dazzling light display on our house, and putting on the most glittering party. We have a serious disjuncture between the secular calendar and the church calendar right now. Outside the church, we are partying, shopping, and decorating. But here in our liturgy, we hear John calling for a different kind of preparation. We hear it every Advent. “Prepare the way of the Lord!”

John makes us uncomfortable, just as he made the powerful of his day uncomfortable. May he make us uncomfortable enough to truly repent and prepare for the coming of Jesus.

Is the world safe for the coming of Jesus! Have the paths be made straight? Have we made them straight? We soon will hear of a young woman, eight months pregnant, who will make a journey over hills and through valleys to Bethlehem. There is still time, a little bit of time.

May we use that time to hear the warnings of Baruch, Isaiah, and John, to forsake our sins, to put on the robe of righteousness and prepare to greet with joy the coming of our Savior.

[My thanks to the Rev. Amy E. Richter, St. Anne's Episcopal Church, Annapolis, Md., for the parable of the repentance trip.]

Throwbacks

2009-10-24T11:22:00.021-04:00

For some reason (my children would probably say it's age longing for lost youth!), I enjoying watching football games between teams who are wearing throwback uniforms. This year, the original AFL teams are celebrating their 50th season by wearing uniforms from 1960 and using their team cities and names from that year (Tennessee Titans = Houston Oilers, New England = Boston, and so on). Some of the old uniforms are pretty cool and others show why the team changed them.
For example, here are the "Houston Oilers" playing the "Boston Patriots" last week in Massachusetts. The snow adds an extra touch. I like snow games--as long as I'm watching them on TV! Seeing the "Oilers" again reminds me of when I was a kid and we moved to Houston.

On the other hand, here are the Patriots the week before against the Denver Broncos. I can see why the Broncos ditched those uniforms quickly! Those socks are supposed to have vertical stripes, but apparently Jabar Gaffney thought it would be cute to twist them.

Here's what the Broncos changed to in 1963. I'm not sure this was an improvement (Especially the helmet!)

My favorite is the 1960 "Los Angeles" Chargers. I think its a big improvement over the current uniform.

The New York Titans had a rather non-descript uniform. It's easy to understand why they completely changed it when they became the Jets. (Note the red stripes on the referee's shirt! They really wore those in the 60's in the AFL!)

The Dallas Texans became the Kansas City Chiefs after a few years and it looks like the only thing they changed was the helmet.

Here are some other examples, not all good. Here are the Pittsburgh Steelers recreating their uniform from the early 1960s.

Here's an older version of the Steelers.

And here are the Los Angeles Rams of the 1950's. Don't you just love those yellow jerseys?

And college teams aren't immune. In 2006, the Florida Gators came out against Alabama in replicas of their 1966 uniforms. I liked the uniforms a lot better than I did the result of the game--a Florida victory in what would be Mike Shula's last year as Alabama's coach. Maybe Alabama's approach to uniforms is the right one. It's hard to do a throwback uniform when you almost never change what your team wears!

Come and Rest

2009-07-20T05:54:00.003-04:00

[Our lessons were Jeremiah 23:1-6; Psalm 23; Ephesians 2:11-22; and Mark 6:30-34, 53-56.]

I read the other day about a speech given recently by Jack Welch, the former CEO of General Electric. He said that women who take time off for a family do so at the risk of their careers. “There’s no such thing as work-life balance. There are work-life choices, and you make them, and they have consequences.” Mr. Welch said women who take time off can still “have a nice career,” but their chances of reaching the top are smaller. “We’d love to have more women moving up faster. But they’ve got to make the tough choices and know the consequences of each one.”

I read a lot of comments about Mr. Welch’s speech with many agreeing and many disagreeing that this is the way it should be. Only a few comments questioned whether this is, in fact, the way it actually is in 21st Century America.

Unfortunately, I do think that in many cases for women and men, survival, not just advancement, in the work force comes at the expense of the family. When times are hard (and for many of us, these are the hardest times we’ve seen) and jobs are scarce, we see employers often taking advantage of their leverage over their employees to work longer hours, often for less pay. After layoffs, fewer employees are left to do the work which never seems to diminish. Working parents are forced to leave sick children in schools because they either fear or actually have been told that their jobs are in jeopardy if they miss work to care for them. As Mr. Welch says, if you’re “not there in the clutch,” there are consequences. But what does it say about our culture if it forces people to choose between their families or their jobs?

The Church does have something to say on this. It rejects the idea that each person has no value but his or her ability to contribute to a company’s or economy’s bottom line. Instead it calls for a solidarity in which there is a unity that binds us together and works to help the most vulnerable in society, whether they are refugees or orphans or widows. Even when language, culture, or distance separates us, we are still our brother’s (and sister’s) keepers. As Pope Benedict recently pointed out in his encyclical Caritas in Veritate (or “Charity in Truth”), “the primary capital to be safeguarded and valued is man, the human person in his or her integrity: ‘Man is the source, the focus and the aim of all economic and social life’.” If there is no true “work-life balance” as Mr. Welch asserts, that is something to be deplored, not celebrated.

We are a busy people who often don’t feel we can take time for rest, especially now. I read a story not long ago that employees are increasingly feeling that they can’t take their authorized vacation time, because they may be absent “in the clutch” in Mr. Welch’s term. We don’t have the freedom to rest from our labors.

It is against this context that we hear today’s Gospel lesson. Jesus has sent the disciples out for the first time to call people to repentance, cast out demons and anoint the sick. As they return, they are clearly exhausted. That sounds increasingly like us today.

“Many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat.” Does this sound familiar at work or even at home? It does to many.

After they report what they did to Jesus, does he urge them to do even more with a greater effort? No, he asks them (and us) to “Come away and rest for a while.”

Many of us are not permitted by our cut-throat economic culture to rest. Many more of us make that choice for ourselves. After all, if we are resting, we aren’t producing. But when we ask people how they are doing, the reply is often things like “I’m exhausted.” “I’m running myself ragged.” “I’m wiped out.” “I’m spent.” “I’m running on empty.” “I just need a nap.” (I myself often identify with the last one.) We are over-worked, over-extended, stretched-thin, stressed-out, and burnt-out.

We are wearied by many things in our lives. Modern life’s pace is faster than ever before, computers and cell phones sending their instantaneous messages around the globe. These technological marvels have not led to more leisure time for us. Instead, most people are busier than ever.

I have read that the Germans have a word for how we often feel: weltschmerz or “world weariness”. As one writer puts it,

We are wearied by many things in our lives. In our work lives, people speak of being tired of the rat race, the daily grind, or climbing the corporate ladder. In our political lives, people are tired of broken promises, empty rhetoric, and partisan bickering. In our personal lives, we are tired of being alone, tired of the bar scene, tired of the routine. We are tired of feeling angry all the time, or feeling afraid all the time, or feeling worthless all the time.

But Jesus tells the weary disciples “Come and rest for a while.” And he tells us that too. While work does have value, it is not the measure of our existence. When we gather around Jesus, we may tell him all the things we have done and all the things we have taught. We hold up before him our busyness and our weariness as objects worthy of praise and reward. We tell him that we have been so busy that we haven’t even had time to eat. Surely all these things will prove how important and valuable we are.

And our Jesus looks past all of this to remind us that all that we are and all that we do are gifts from God in the first place. Rather, he looks into our hearts and sees what we truly desire, what we truly need. In the words of Psalm 23 which we heard today, Jesus makes us lie down in green pastures and leads us beside the still waters and restores our souls. And he says to us, “Come away to a place all by yourselves and rest a little while with me.”

It's Not About Glory ... [Proper 10, Year B]

2009-07-14T19:14:00.002-04:00

[Note: I managed to fall behind on posting these the last few weeks. In a clear sign that the world does go on anyway, I don't think anyone noticed!]

[Our lessons were Amos 7:7-15; Psalm 85:8-13; Ephesians 1:3-14; and Mark 6:14-29.]

Not too long ago, a Lutheran pastor of a small church was asked if her church would grow and become really big. Her reply was, “No, there’s just not a huge market for the message ‘Jesus bids you come and die.’ Instead, people want to hear, ‘Jesus wants to make you rich!’”

That’s the message we want to hear. At some level, we all want to be victorious, successful, and wealthy, so if someone says that Jesus wants that for us too, great!

Or, maybe not. In Mark’s Gospel Jesus keeps telling people not to tell anyone about his healings and miracles. That’s because Jesus knew how tempting it would be for people to jump on the Jesus Christ Superstar bandwagon (to borrow the title of a 1960’s era rock opera), not realizing that the miracles alone were not enough to show what Jesus was really about. Jesus knew that we would only see who he is when we see the cross. Unfortunately, we choose the healings and miracles as our focus every time. So, this week, we get a warning.

If you focus on the details in the story of the murder of John the Baptist—and there are enough colorful, gory details to make a good TV news story—you may miss its true meaning. The real theme of this story is not the drama of life and death that captures our imaginations so well; it is the confrontation between political power and religious faith.

If faith is to be true to itself, its prophets must be willing at need to speak truth to power, even when that comes with a cost that sometimes can be fatal. In his work The Prophets, Abraham Heschel says that a significant aspect of the office of prophet in Israel was to remind the king that “his sovereignty was not unlimited, that over the king’s mishpat [justice] stood the mishpat of the Lord.” This idea frequently clashes with what governments see as their needs. So, it is with Amos.

In 21st century terms, Amos was a threat to homeland security and he might well wind up on a “no-fly list” today. When he prophesies of the fall of Israel, Amaziah, the priest of Bethal says that Israel can not bear all of Amos’ words.

But they are not Amos’ words, they are God’s. The prophet is not guided by his own desires and conviction, but instead is under the compulsion of the Spirit to speak God’s words instead of his own. And in this case, Amos is speaking words of God’s anger against a society which stands on its religion while neglecting common humanity and which has reduced the meaning of sin to cultic, religious, and narrow moral scruples.

John the Baptist is in prison for his prophecy. He has told King Herod that his marriage to his sister-in-law Herodias was unlawful; words which Herod and certainly Herodias did not want to hear. So she works out a scheme which will silence this prophet forever.

This puts Herod in a difficult position. It is clear that he recognizes John’s holiness. But he also wants to please his wife and his daughter Salome and he now feels bound to his rash oath, “Whatever you ask me, I will give you.” We can understand something of what Herod is thinking. We sometimes have to make ethical decisions in our own lives when different pressures conflict within us. While our decisions may not have the impact of Herod’s, we are just as capable of making them for the same reasons Herod gave in and ordered John’s death—pride and security at the expense of the truth. Our challenge is to examine our own decisions as individuals and as a society and ask ourselves whether we are making the right choices to further the establishment of God’s Kingdom in the world.

It may seem that this story is oddly placed in Mark’s Gospel, dropped in after Jesus’ sending the disciples out into the world. But perhaps not. Jesus warned the disciples to do their work in poverty and expect rejection. Just in case, like the disciples, we haven’t gotten the idea that this isn’t about our own glorification, we hear about the end of John the Baptist. Just in case we think following Jesus in the way of the Cross is about glory and not the Cross, we hear John’s story.

It isn’t about wealth and power, glory and prizes. It’s about a crucified God who offers us life and salvation and who bids us come and die. Has the line to sign up started yet?

Going Home [Proper 9, Year b]

2009-07-14T19:10:00.001-04:00

[Our lessons were Ezekiel 2:1-5; Psalm 123; 2 Corinthians 12:2-10; and Mark 6:1-13.]

Going home can be the cause of mixed emotions. It can be pleasant to see people and places that once were familiar, but now are parts of our past. But it is important for us to remember that we aren’t the same people we were then and that the places and people we knew have changed as well. I remember as a teenager returning after only a year to Cocoa Beach, Florida, where I had spent the previous seven years. We stopped by to visit with the people who had bought our house. I was shocked to see unfamiliar furniture in the familiar rooms and that even the kitchen counters seemed lower than I remembered them! The house had changed with its new owners and I had changed as well—after all, I was a growing teenager. I’m sure you can recall examples of your own.

But we have trouble accepting change and growth. Just like us, the people of Nazareth in today’s Gospel had trouble seeing beyond their memories of the youthful Jesus to recognize the power in him. “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?”

The people of Nazareth were unable to see beyond the familiar person to understand what they were hearing and seeing. (What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands!) As Jesus said, prophets were without honor in the home towns.

It’s actually hard to truly honor a prophet. In the Jewish tradition (and thus ours), a prophet’s role was to speak for God, to speak God’s words. Often, those are words that people don’t want to hear. We don’t want to really hear them because God’s truth is hard for us to accept. It requires sacrifices of self and a radical obedience to God that can be costly, unpleasant, and unpopular.

Today’s reading calls on us to listen for the true prophets of God, even when they are familiar to us or when they are not who we would think of as “prophets” or when their message isn’t what we want to hear. May we be courageous enough and open enough to listen to the prophets among us and to heed the word of God that they reveal.

Our Gospel readings the last three Sundays have given us insights into the nature of Jesus’ kingship. He has sovereignty over the created order, so he is co-equal with the Creator. He has authority over life and law; he is one with the giver of life, the source of healing, and the author of law. He has power over evil spirits, so he shares equally in authority with the God of heaven.
Jesus’ authority derives from his absolute obedience and ultimate openness to the will of God.

His authority is exercised by being in relationship with those who come to him in faith, unlike earthly rulers who impose remoteness from those over whom they rule. His rule looks first to the powerless and those on the margins, the celebrated and privileged have no special status with him. Finally, Jesus exercises his kingly power by sharing it freely with those who come to him in faith.

Don't Tell Anyone! [Proper 8, Year B]

2009-07-14T19:07:00.001-04:00

[Our lessons were Wisdom 1:13-15, 2:23-24; Psalm 30; 2 Corinthians 8:7-15; and Mark 5:21-43.]

In our Gospel reading today, after Jesus’ raises Jairus’ daughter—we never learn her name—from the dead, he said something rather odd. “He strictly ordered them that no one should know this…” In fact, that was a frequent instruction of Jesus—that the things he did should not be reported. Why did Jesus say this? Why didn’t he want his deeds trumpeted throughout the countryside?

I think it might be for this reason: At this point, before his death and resurrection, the miracles of Jesus lacked context. To the people of Galilee and its surrounding areas, the acts of Jesus must have seemed only isolated displays of power. But, the real meaning of Jesus’ authority over death was not that he could do miracles or that, with enough faith, the worst things of life would pass us by. (We particularly know that to untrue.)

Jesus’ death and resurrection show us what it really means for Jesus to be greater than death. Jesus wasn’t spared suffering and death. He wasn’t resuscitated merely so he could die again. Instead, God took the life that Jesus had led—a life like ours—and the death he had died—even as we die—and transformed them into something new and better, revealing a new meaning and purpose to human life.

God doesn’t promise us a freedom from the pain and loss and grief and death that is a part of the human existence. Neither does He promise us freedom from the joy and pleasure and passion and excitement that are a part of life.

Instead of removing or protecting us from these things, God does two things. First, God knows all of our human experiences and lives all of them. He sanctifies us and our lives by His experience of them. God shares every aspect of our lives.

Also, God promises us a resurrection like that of Jesus. This means that nothing will be truly lost. God will make something new and renewed of our lives and of our deaths, and of the lives and the deaths of every one for whom he died—which is truly everyone. God promises that there is meaning and hope in each of our lives and in each of our deaths. God promises that His word of love will be the strongest word, and the best word, and the last word. God promises us that He will make all creation new, and that we will indeed be a part of that.

And we can take comfort that our parting from the dead is only temporary. We pray for the dead, not because they need it, but because we do—it helps us keep them close in our hearts. It helps us remember, that as they are with God and God is with us, so they are with us always. As we said in our Psalm:

Weeping may spend the night,
but joy comes in the morning.

God Answers

2009-06-20T21:36:00.002-04:00

[Our lessons were Job 38:1-11; Psalm 107:1-3, 23-32; 2 Corinthians 6:1-13; and Mark 4:35-41.]

When we think of Job, we usually think of the cliché, “the patience of Job.” This is from a reference in the Letter of James that was translated that way, but the Greek word used is actually better translated as “endurance” or “persistent.” And, in fact, if you read the Book of Job, you don’t see much patience, but you do see that Job is persistent in his claims that he is suffering undeservedly.

To understand God’s answer to Job, which we hear today, we need to know what the question was. Job’s question emerged from a particular view of the world that was shared by ancient Israel and its neighbors and which sounds very familiar to us today. According to this concept, those who live a good life obedient to God’s commands will be rewarded with good fortune—long life, health, wealth, and other blessings. Conversely, those who sin and disobey God’s commandments will receive misfortune—illness, poverty, and other woes. This legalistic concept, which focused on right and wrong, was thought to be the essence of justice. You got what you deserved; you reaped what you sowed, and so on. When inevitable tragedy struck, people would console themselves in the belief that the outcome is just and that the victims must have deserved the “punishment” in some way.

Before we get too pleased with ourselves for being far more advanced than that, we would do well to recall some comments after recent disasters. After the September 11 terrorist attacks, the late Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson said that the attacks were God’s punishment for what they perceived as our nation’s failings. Similarly, after hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast four years ago, some said that the devastation was punishment for the decadence of New Orleans. One anti-abortion activist even claimed to have seen the image of an 8-week-old fetus in the satellite picture of the hurricane!

To Job, the suffering he endures—his flocks stolen, his servants murdered, his children killed, his health ruined, his home destroyed—makes no sense. Job knows that he has not sinned or disobeyed God—and still he suffers. His framework of the world—a world of clearly-defined right and wrong—has failed him, but he holds on to it the more tightly as the only thing left standing between him and the chaos of the world.

We are a lot like Job. When tragedy strikes, we often seek to discover what the victim did that might have caused it. Sometimes there are benefits to that approach, but frequently we seem to be seeking for something the victim did wrong, as if to be able to say, “See, he deserved it!” If you look at the stories of traffic accidents or shootings on the web sites of our local TV stations or newspaper and scroll down to the comments people post, you’ll see what I mean.

To a large degree, this is understandable. We like to believe that we are in control of our destiny. If we do good, good will be done to us. While we know, at least at an intellectual level, that it doesn’t always work out that way, we—as did Job—instinctively hold this up as a shield against chaos.

Job even sought a legal solution to the failing of his legal framework. He challenged God to a legal hearing, certain that if he can just get his day in court, he will be vindicated, justice will prevail and chaos tamed. Job demands to know why he, an innocent man, must suffer: “Let the Almighty answer me!” Job’s question is of course our own.

God’s response is to describe the greatness of creation. God doesn’t answer as a lawyer or a judge, but as a poet. God doesn’t correct Job or teach him a lesson, but instead shows him the Divine glory. The chaos which Job wants to hold off is a part of God’s creation, too. But God never really tells Job why he has suffered. As Barbara Brown Taylor has written

Job’s question was about justice. God’s answer is about omnipotence, and, as far as I know, that is the only answer human beings have ever gotten about why things happen the way they do. God only knows. And none of us is God.

Job comes to understand that despite the existence of chaos, the world does rest on a secure foundation. God will support and sustain his people in times of pain and loss. Job may not have gotten an answer to his question, but he has received a revelation—he has seen the Divine and lived.

Like Job, we long for answers. But for us, the content of God’s answer to Job is not nearly as important as this simple fact: God answers. The chaos is still there, as it was for the storm-tossed disciples in our Gospel reading today, but so is God. And that is enough. In the tempest of life, God comes to us to speak of peace. He is the Crucified and Risen Lord who is with us in storm and calm, when we have all the answers and when all we have are unanswered questions.

A Choice of Hope

2009-06-14T15:36:00.003-04:00

[Our lessons were Ezekiel 17:22-24; Psalm 92:1-4, 11-14; 2 Corinthians 5:6-10, (11-13), 14-17; and Mark 4:26-34.]

Churches have and need lots of helpers—even small ones like St. Christopher’s! When you multiply all of the St. Christophers’ and Christ Churches across the whole Episcopal Church, that becomes a lot of people. And that doesn’t even take into account all of the other faith groups across our country and the world.

Sometimes we get to worrying that this task or that job won’t get done if we don’t do it ourselves. I think it’s an occupational (or vocational?) hazard that sometimes we confuse the invitation to participate in God’s mission with an invitation to take over for God.

The first of Jesus’ mustard seed parables addresses this. The farmer may sow seeds and the seeds may grow—or not. Whichever result comes is not the farmer’s doing. No farmer can make seeds grow. Creation comes from God, not us. We can (and should) participate in the process by influencing things which can help growth—working the soil, watering, and so on, but we don’t have the power of creation. Only God has that power.

And He has used that to create an earth which is fruitful—sometimes despite our best efforts!—where the rain falls without our deserving it. Remember that God saw that his creation was good.

We do well to remember the basic goodness of creation. We sometimes tend to talk and act as if the world is an irredeemably evil place. That way is the path of despair. The Truth (with a “capital T”) is that this world yearns for the Kingdom of Heaven; it is irresistibly drawn toward it and every day contains opportunities to experience God’s power and love. We can make a choice of hope. We can have confidence, as St. Paul told the early church in Corinth, that our new creation in Christ is eternal and indestructible and, as in the second parable we hear today, the smallest mustard seed will grow to a great plant.

With that confidence in our new creation comes a sense of life in abundance, of opportunities, of joy and hope. While God does call us to labor in the vineyards, that is not a call only to soul-crushing, unceasing toil. That was the original meaning of the Sabbath: a day to rest from work and be thankful for God’s creation. (The connection to a a six-day creation was added later.)

In the Kingdom of Heaven there will be no need to pray “that God’s will be done” because it will be done! In the Kingdom of Heaven, no one will feel a need to have power over others and instead will act out of compassion. In the Kingdom of Heaven, violence will cease and all will have life in its fullest.

We know that people don’t always make the choice of hope. They instead make the choice of fear. We choose the safe and familiar instead of the new and challenging. We willingly remain in ignorance instead of taking the risks that can come from learning. We follow our instincts and “feelings” even though they don’t lead us to the Kingdom of Heaven.

Fortunately, we don’t have that choice presented to us only once in our lifetimes or even just on special occasions. The choice to live in the Kingdom of Heaven comes to each of us every hour of every day of our lives.

As St. Paul says, “we walk by faith, not by sight…. For the love of Christ urges us on, [and] there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!”

The Four Marks of the Church

2009-05-31T07:46:00.002-04:00

[Our readings were Acts 2:1-21; Psalm 104:25-35, 37; Romans 8:22-27; and John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15.]

Of the three major holidays of the church year— Easter, Christmas, and Pentecost—Pentecost is the one that has no secular tradition. There is no Pentecost equivalent of Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, and perhaps that’s a good thing. Because we don’t have the distractions of candy canes or egg hunts, we can focus on the meaning of Pentecost to the Church. For, on Pentecost, we recall how, through the power of the Holy Spirit, the Church is given an identity and authority grounded in the proclamation of the Gospel.

This Easter, we have been hearing the stories from Acts of how the Spirit acted in the earliest days of the Church. We heard about Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch and how the Spirit wouldn’t even wait for Peter to finish preaching to alight on the members of Cornelius’ household. All this action back then can make us feel somewhat depressed today, when we compare what we read about with what we see today. We read about division and controversy and everything we do seems pale and weak compared to what we hear happened back on that first Pentecost. It’s no wonder that a French theologian, Alfred Loisy, said about 100 years ago, “Jesus proclaimed the Kingdom, and what came was the Church!” (Of course, he said it in French: “Jésus annonçait le Royaume et c’est l’Église qui est venue!”) How can reading an extract from John’s Gospel in several languages compete with the story of strangers from many languages speaking together with understanding on that first Pentecost?

Obviously, it can’t and it doesn’t need to. The story of Pentecost isn’t intended to show us what the church should look like every Sunday. Instead, the message of Pentecost is about the importance of the Church and how it is inseparable from Christ. Each year on Pentecost, we are reminded of who we are as a church, what message we proclaim, and the source of that proclamation.

Through the power of the Holy Spirit, the Church receives the power to proclaim the Gospel of the risen Christ. Even Peter, who publically denied Jesus, received the power to preach boldly.

The Church, whose “birthday” we celebrate on the Feast of Pentecost, has four major aspects which we sometimes refer to as the four “marks” of the Church and which we confess in the Nicene Creed when we say that we believe in “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.” We believe that the Church—the body of Christ—has these four distinctive characteristics.

The Spirit calls us to be one Church throughout the world. As we say in the Baptismal liturgy: “One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all.” On several occasions Jesus prayed that we may all be one as he and the Father are one.

The Church is holy because it is the Church of Christ. It has been set apart for a special purpose by and for God. Thankfully, this holiness doesn’t depend on the sanctity of individual members.

The Church is catholic—small “c”—because it is intended to be universal. “Catholic” comes from the Greek καθολικός (katholikos), or “universal”. The Church is intended to be open to everyone: all classes, all races and nationalities, both genders. It is for all times and places and isn’t limited to a particular time or place.

The church is apostolic in that it is connected to the faith of the apostles who were taught directly by Jesus. Some parts of the Church—such as the Roman Church, the Orthodox churches and the churches of the Anglican Communion—believe that we maintain apostolicity in the apostolic succession in which today’s bishops are connected by a chain of consecration back to the original Apostles. Other groups believe that they maintain the links through following the teachings of the Apostles.

Of course, it isn’t that simple. We say the Church is “one” and yet it clearly isn’t. Even in our small town we have a multitude of Christian churches—Episcopal, Baptist, Methodist, Roman Catholic, and Lutheran, among others—all of whom maintain distinctions between each other. But, the impulse for unity is still there as the Spirit calls us to be “One”. The churches work together at all levels to find common ground, even when they aren’t together organically.

We say the church is “holy”, but we have to admit that the Church as an institution and individual Christians have done some clearly “non-holy” things. Again, the holiness of the Church isn’t necessarily expressed in the individual holiness of its members. But, the Church is drawn to act in a more “holy” way and it often responds. And, as individual members, we are called to greater holiness in our lives.

The claim of catholicity is based on our willingness to welcome everyone. If everyone, regardless of race or gender or wealth, isn’t completely welcome in the church, how do we claim that we are truly catholic? In most churches, even where we don’t have formal restrictions, do we have informal customs that discourage people from joining or attending?

Even where we have an apostolic succession, it isn’t perfect. But all Christians believe that it is important that the Church today is linked in some ways to the Church of the Apostles, whether by organizational structures or by common beliefs.

The four marks or aspects reinforce each other. Oneness supports holiness which supports catholicity which supports apostolicity. To truly be a Christian community and part of the Church, all four of them must be present to some degree, even if they are impaired.

On Pentecost particularly, but actually throughout the year, the Holy Spirit allows us to speak boldly to the Church and the world about how things are and how God calls them to be. The message of Pentecost is that Jesus Christ offers salvation to all and the Church exists to proclaim that salvation.

Thoughts on Ethics and Integrity

2009-05-25T16:52:00.005-04:00

I once read that integrity can be defined as "doing the right thing even though no one is watching." When you do the right thing only because you are afraid to be caught breaking the rules, your claim of integrity seems shallow.

I have enjoyed following British politics for many years. I began as a college freshman in the winter of 1974 walking to the Gorgas Library at the University of Alabama to read copies of The Times of London which were mailed to Tuscaloosa, obviously a few days after the publishing date. The British were embroiled in a sudden general election which would turn out to be a dead heat. I would have been astonished to know that 35 years later, I could read The Times immediately from the comfort of my home.

For some years, members of the House of Commons have been able to receive a second home allowance to help cover the cost of maintaing two homes, one in London and one elsewhere, usually in their constituencies. Not an unreasonable idea, but as people are wont to do, many MPs took advantage of this to get all kinds of work done on their homes at taxpayers' expense and some even redesignated or "flipped" what was their second home between London and elsewhere to get work paid for on both! One even got a fancy duck island in their pond (pictured) paid for! Not a bad deal, unless the public found out.

Well of course they have, and there is an absolute firestorm of rage against the offending MPs and against some who didn't offend much (or at all). A new election is required within a year, and this isn't the time to have to face your constituents who themselves are in the midst of hard times.

One of the defenses that some MPs have raised was that "it was within the rules" or that "no rules were broken". If the question is "What can I get away with without violating the letter of the regulations?", the questioner has missed the point of ethical rules entirely.

If we focus solely on whether we have crossed the line between fair or foul under the rules and ignore whether what we are doing is truly right or wrong, we may be safe from punishment, but we are a long way from acting ethically. If that is our focus, what in fact does it say about us?

We should follow ethical principles because we know they are right. If we are ethically people, we instinctively recoil from taking advantage of situations for our personal benefit, simply because either "it's within the letter of the law" wholly ignoring its spirit, or, even worse, because "they can't prove it."

In the Federal government, we have a lot of ethical rules and regulations. Because it is a part of my job to advise people on them, I have a binder thick with them. I can advise people where I think the boundary line between fair and foul is, but I can't make them want to do the right thing all the time. That has to come from within.

A recent column by the Archbishop of Canterbury on the subject in The Times said:

Religion-based morality is often castigated for imposing irrational and arbitrary rules on people. But the truth is that its primary concern is with how to encourage us to act in such a way that we can be glad of what we have done--and can also recognise that bad actions diminish us. Of course there is a debased religious morality that is all about the fear of punishment. But the major faiths all see our task as becoming what we are made to be and called to be--as growing in integrity, in fact, and responding to a vocation. God sees the heart, so there is absolutely no possibility of hiding what is really going on in us.

Have these MPs truly been "glad for what they have done", even before this came out? Have our government officials who have taken advantage of their jobs for private gain been "glad for what they have done"? If we believe, as I do, that most of us has an inner sense of morality--a conscience, if you wish--don't we die a little inside every time we do something we know is ethically wrong and excuse ourselves with "it was technically within the rules"?

Memorial Day 2009

2009-05-25T16:47:00.002-04:00

[Here's a prayer I used last year. It seems appropriate still after another year of war and loss.]

Almighty God, we give you thanks for the service of the men and women of our armed forces through the years and we especially remember those men and women who have laid down their lives in the service of our country; grant to those who are commemorated on our memorials and those who are written in our hearts your mercy and the light of your presence; also give, Lord, to the people of our country a zeal for justice and the strength of forbearance, that we may use our liberty in accordance with your gracious will; these things we ask in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Archbishop Tutu in Carolina

2009-05-24T19:40:00.003-04:00

I was watching the CBS Evening News tonight and they showed a medley of commencement speeches from President Obama, President Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, and several others. For me the highlight was a clip from Archbishop Desmond Tutu's speech at the University of North Carolina. Archbishop Tutu is to me one of the heroes of the Faith of our time and I have no doubt that he will someday be recognized in Lesser Feasts and Fasts or its successor Holy Men, Holy Women. I went to the University web site to see if the entire speech was available and it was. The whole speech is a joy to read and a video of it is also available. Here are some excerpts:

Sometimes they say to you when you come to gatherings such as this, “Oh this man or woman is well known and doesn’t need to be introduced.” Well, one day I was in San Francisco, and a lady came up and she was quite effusive and warm, and she said “Hello, Archbishop Mandela!” (Laughter.) Sort of getting two for the price of one.

***

When there is injustice and oppression, God doesn’t normally send a lightning bolt. We might wish that’s what God did, but God does not normally send a lightning bolt to zap the perpetrator of injustice and oppression. God waits! God waits on all of us who are prepared to become God’s fellow workers, God’s partners.

***

God has a dream. God has a dream. And we say, “Hey, God, that was really Martin Luther King Jr. who said that.” And God says, "I know, Martin had a dream, I have a dream, too. I have a dream that my children everywhere will know that they belong in one family, a family that has no outsiders." You know, Jesus said “I, if I be lifted up, I will draw–he didn’t say I will draw some–he said I will draw all, all, all! I will draw all! Rich, poor; clever, not so clever; beautiful, not so beautiful; yellow, red, black, gay, lesbian, so-called straight.” (laughter)

God said “All. All. All. All. All. All.” And you know this is radical. All, all, all all men. Palestinians. Israelis. (cheering) All, all. Bin Laden … you know … George Bush … all, all, all, all belong in this family, and God says, “Help me, help me to realize my dream. Help me, help me, help me."

***

God says, “Go on dreaming. Go on being the idealistic people you are. Go on being the ones who believe that poverty can indeed be made history. Go on believing that it is possible to eradicate hunger. How can we live and sleep comfortably, knowing that millions of our sisters and brothers go to bed hungry? God says “Please, please, help me; help me to make this world a little more compassionate. Help me, please, help me to make this world a little more gentle.”

Sanctify Us in Truth

2009-05-23T18:43:00.002-04:00

[Our lessons were Acts 1:15-17, 21-26; Psalm 1; 1 John 5:9-13; and John 17:6-19.]

In our Gospel reading from Jesus’ farewell discourse in John, we are reminded of the role of the Church and Christians in the world.

It is often tempting for Christians to want to retreat from the world—sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively by trying to confine the Church to the four corners of a building. The idea of escaping from the world is tempting for nearly everyone; the advertisements of the travel industry should make that clear.

But for Christians, while a luxury resort may not seem like the best thing, we may at times long for a community and a way of life that avoid the clamor and conflict of the world. The hope is that we can create a space, unencumbered by the world that would allow for a fuller realization of a faithful, holy life. For the community that was the audience for John’s Gospel toward the end of the First Century, this might have been even more compelling, as their world was a very dangerous place, filled with persecution by the Roman Empire.

But that is not the path that Jesus sets out. Our Lord sets out an alternative to retreating from the world without surrendering to the values of the world. Jesus says several times that his followers do not “belong to the world”. The claims and values of the world do not shape our essential identity, faith, and values. But, even so, there is no escape from the reality of the world: “I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete” among themselves. We can be a community of faith, but that community is not to abandon the world. “I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them.” We are to live in the world under God’s protection.

“As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.” Jesus’ own life was a life of involvement in the world of his time. His ministry was not one of contemplation, but one of healing and feeding, of action.

The holiness we might seek in escape is instead to be found in action in love and truth. “Sanctify them in truth.” We are to be consecrated by truth, living in truth, acting in truth. We are to do things that lead to truth. We are to be witnesses to truth. Only in truth lies the path of true reconciliation.

This can be a daunting task, because this search for truth can lead to naming corruption and unmasking idolatries where we worship other things like money or national security instead of God. When we do things as a society which are evil, like torture or emphasizing individual financial gain at the expense of the community, we turn good ideals to evil purposes. As a Church, we can not be apathetic, complacent or indifferent to these issues. How do we as a society remain true to the Gospel and God’s values?

We begin with truth. Only with truth can healing begin. Only with truth can reconciliation begin.

All You Need is Love?

2009-05-18T06:34:00.003-04:00

[Our readings were Acts 10:44-48; Psalm 98; 1 John 5:1-6; and John 15:9-17.]

We have heard a lot about love the last few weeks. I’m old enough that they’ve made an old Beatles song from the ‘60s run through my head: “All you need is love.” I don’t know what type of love the Beatles were singing about. I suspect it might not have been the agapē—love that gives without expecting a reward—that we normally talk about. But, is that really true? Is “love all you need”?

Most of us know that the English word “love” is used to translate several Greek words that mean quite different things. The Beatles may well have been singing about eros more than agapē, but fundamentally all love comes from God. The love of man and woman, the love of parent and child, the love of one Christian for his or her neighbor, all of these come from God.

In fact, the first encyclical by Pope Benedict—Deus Caritas Est or “God is Love”—was about love.

“God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him” (1 Jn 4:16). These words from the First Letter of John express with remarkable clarity the heart of the Christian faith: the Christian image of God and the resulting image of mankind and its destiny. In the same verse, Saint John also offers a kind of summary of the Christian life: “We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us”.

In our readings from Acts this Easter, we have seen the unpredictable power of the Holy Spirit, moving in front of us, breaking down barriers. In today’s selection, Peter is preaching to Cornelius’ household. Peter has been sent to Cornelius by the Spirit—those who are being saved are not to stand still and wait for the lost to come to them.

Before Peter has even finished preaching, the Holy Spirit comes upon “all who heard the word.” (I suspect that brought a sudden end to his sermon.) The circumcised Jews who accompanied Peter were astounded that the Holy Spirit “had been poured out onto the Gentiles.” “Astounding” or “astonishing” events in Scripture are signs of God acting in our lives as God wishes, not necessarily how we want God to act.

Peter finishes his sermon by asking the Jews who came with him “Can we refuse to baptize these people who have already received the Holy Spirit?” Of course, the answer is no. The church is not ours, but God’s. We are not the hosts here, we are God’s guests just as much as anyone else. We aren’t called to welcome as much as to remember that we are all welcomed into God’s grace and love.

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”

This commandment of Jesus, stated shortly before his betrayal and crucifixion is simple—we must love each other—but not easy. It isn’t easy because of the part “as I have loved you.” After all, how far did Jesus love mankind?

Jesus’ love for mankind wasn’t expressed as some warm, mushy sentimental feeling. Jesus acted that love—healing the sick, feeding the hungry and eventually accepting his death and resurrection for all mankind by “laying down his life for his friends.”

We are called to live out that love, not merely believe it; to live out the Resurrection in our lives. According to Kierkegaard, “Christianity is not a doctrine to be taught, but a life to be lived.”

We are called not just to worship the Risen Lord, but to follow him. Loving one another means to act, not just talk. To paraphrase that familiar hymn, “They will know we are Christians by our love.” Not so much our love for each other gathered here, but our love for those who are not here. We have to go out to them, not in arrogance claiming that we have the Golden Ticket, but in humility, with a love that shows the Resurrection to be a life-giving event today, not just something that happened nearly two millennia ago.

We can’t be Christians without each other, all of us. We are not Christians as individuals, but instead in a communion of faith, the Body of Christ. We can easily be tempted to take our life together for granted. In Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote from his prison cell

It is true that what is an unspeakable gift of God for the lonely individual is easily disregarded by those who have the gift every day. It is easily forgotten that the fellowship of Christian brothers and sisters is a gift of grace, a gift of the Kingdom of God that any day may be taken from us, that the time that still separates us from utter loneliness may be brief indeed. Therefore, let the one who until now has had the privilege of living a common Christian life with other Christians praise God's grace from the bottom of his heart. Let us thank God on our knees and declare: it is grace, nothing but grace that we are allowed to live in community with Christian brothers and sisters.

I began by speaking of one type of love. So similar to agapē is the love of a parent for a child. Parents don’t love their children because they expect the children to love them back, they just do it. I learned this week that a good friend of mine has begun that marvelous, terrifying journey of parenthood by adopting a young child from Russia. She and her husband went through a lot of effort to become parents, an effort upon which many people—probably including me—would not have followed through. To me this is a clear example of how the Holy Spirit can strengthen us in hard times. Let us give thanks to God for bringing little Kelly Maria into the lives of her parents and pray that they will be guided by love in all the challenges and joys of the years ahead.

What is Love?

2009-05-09T17:29:00.002-04:00

[Our readings were Acts 8:26-40; Psalm 22:24-30; 1 John 4:7-21; and John 15:1-8.]

One of the things we see in our readings from Acts every Easter is that the Holy Spirit is unpredictable. Today we hear the story of Philip being sent on the wilderness road to Gaza where he encounters the Ethiopian eunuch.

We never learn the name of the Ethiopian eunuch. We learn that he is a court official—the treasurer—of the Queen of the Ethiopians. He appears to be a “God-fearer”, a person who had been exposed to the Hebrew Scriptures, but who was not a full member of the people of Israel. He was barred from full membership by his nationality and his being a eunuch, since Deuteronomy barred eunuchs from “the assembly of the Lord.”

So this powerful court official has been to Jerusalem to worship, where he would have been barred from the Temple. He clearly has wealth, because he has a copy of Isaiah, and wealth was a requirement for that in those pre-printing days. He has education, because he can read it, probably in Greek. So he is an exceptional man of those times, yet he has been barred from the Temple.

This story has a sense of urgency about it. The angel tells Philip to “get up and go” and he does: “he got up and went.” The Spirit tells Philip to go over to the chariot and Philip runs. When the eunuch has been baptized and, presumably Philip’s work there is done, the Spirit snatches Philip away, and “the eunuch saw him no more.”

The part of Isaiah which the eunuch was reading was what we often refer to as the words of the second Isaiah, an unnamed prophet who came several centuries after Isaiah, but whose words have been included with his. It’s probably no coincidence that the second Isaiah also promises that eunuchs who keep the Sabbath will be welcome in the house of God.

This excerpt is one of the “suffering servant” passages which moves the eunuch to ask if the prophet was referring to himself or to someone else. It’s as if he is asking, “Is this only about Isaiah and his time or is it about me as well? Is this God’s word to someone else, back then, or does it speak to me, today?”

God’s Word is never merely about “back then.” It always speaks to us, this day, in this place and these circumstances. When Philip shows the eunuch how, to use Jesus’ words from Luke, “this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing,” it is better news than the eunuch could have imagined. Not only did God understand the humiliation and outcast status of the eunuch, God had experienced humiliation and ostracism as Jesus! And in Jesus—the “sheep led to the slaughter”—shame and suffering is transformed into a story of redemption and hope.

“What is to prevent me from being baptized?” What would bar the eunuch from full membership in the Body of Christ? We can think of many things that could have been raised—his nationality, his sexual status are only starters. Perhaps his race might have been an issue. If someone were to ask us that question today, what would be our answer? The Spirit’s answer obviously was “Nothing! Absolutely nothing!” Another human who has felt lost and humiliated is found and restored and goes on his way rejoicing.

Philip’s actions show God’s love. Our reading from John’s letter is a paean to Christian love. One problem we have is that we use the English word “love” for concepts which other languages have different words. John uses the Greek word agapē—love that gives without expecting a return. He addresses those to whom he writes as agapētoi, or “Beloved.” God is agapē; Jesus died for us as an act of agapē and we ought to agapē one another.

This love is not a warm feeling, it exists in action or it doesn’t exist at all. If we love God, we must love each other, or, as John says, we are liars. If we do not love—if we do not act in love!—to our brothers and sisters in this world, how can we claim to love our “God whom we have not seen”?

"But not Christ, I think"

2009-05-02T17:34:00.004-04:00

[Our readings were Acts 4:5-12; Psalm 23; 1 John 3:16-24; and John 10:11-18.]

Our Gospel reading gives us the familiar metaphorical image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd. (It's a metaphor because there is absolutely no Biblical language that indicates that Jesus was ever really a shepherd of sheep.) There is art going back as the Fifth Century of Jesus as a shepherd, and we have all seen at one time or another a painting of Jesus as a shepherd carrying a lamb—all very cute, cuddly, clean, and unrealistic. Being a shepherd was dirty work and claiming to be a “good shepherd” was not an entrée into polite society. It would be about the social equivalent of being a migrant worker today.

If we carry the allegory into today’s world, where many of us have never seen sheep (except, perhaps, in a zoo), and even more of us have never seen a shepherd, who is the shepherd and who is the flock? While it might be tempting to thinking of the clergy as the shepherds, it is still Jesus who is the shepherd. And who is the flock? Who are the “other sheep that do not belong to this fold?” In our world, there are many “others”—from other races, other lands, other faith traditions to whom God has revealed Himself differently. Anyone who has been pushed to the margins is an “other” sheep. They also are Jesus’ sheep and they hear Jesus’ voice and he must bring them also, just as much as us.

In the allegory of the Good Shepherd we see that we are connected to the other “sheep” in the world as well as the shepherd. That connection is described in the passage from John’s letter as one of love.

“We ought to lay down our lives for one another.” Christian love is not just a warm, mushy feeling, it expresses itself in action. For Christians, self-sacrifice should not be extraordinary. John’s challenge isn’t a grand challenge for heroic action, but is rather a statement of how we should live every day of our lives. “Laying down our Lives” doesn’t necessarily mean death, but it can, as the martyrs of the faith attest, even to our day. We lay down our lives when we put others first, when we live for the good of others. How do we claim to receive God’s love and yet withhold our love from others?

I read a story this week that said that a survey said that, in the United States, the support of torturing suspected terrorists for information was higher among more frequent churchgoers than among those who rarely attend church! I would love to ask the respondents to that survey how they align their answers with our duty to love our neighbors as ourselves and the fact the all are our neighbors. In the Episcopal Church, we promise in our Baptismal Covenant to “respect the dignity of every human being.” Are our fingers crossed when we say that?

Some people ask whether torture works. That is the wrong question. Even if torture produced reliable information about terrorist activity, we should reject it. We are people of principle. Our faith and values should now motivate us to lead the world in rejecting torture of any human being, for any reason.

In the movie Kingdom of Heaven, the lead character, Balien of Ibelin asks whether knights being hanged for murdering Muslims are being punished for doing what the Pope would command them to do. The reply he receives is, “But not Christ, I think.”

Would Jesus torture? “Not Christ, I think.”

[For more thoughts on torture, you can go to the National Religious Campaign against Torture.

See also this story from Christianity Today, "5 Reasons Torture is Always Wrong."]

"How Bad it is Out Here"

2009-04-25T19:01:00.005-04:00

One of the blogs I like to look at (you even see it listed on the right) is "Telling Secrets" by the Rev. Elizabeth Kaeton, an Episcopal priest from New Jersey. But a post I read there today brought me to a dead halt.

Its at least bad manners to reproduce a post on someone else's blog, so if you want to see the complete post (and I encourage it), click here. But here's some selected quotes, hopefully fair use.

She received a call from someone in financial distress:

"'... All of a sudden, we were getting these calls and letters from a lawyer who told us that if we didn't have the money by the end of the week, he was going to foreclose on our house.'

"'For $700?' I asked incredulously. 'He's going to leave a family homeless for $700 in medical bills?' ...

The attorney told them that he had just foreclosed on two other families just that week but he knew a place where they could get a loan that day and save their house. "We went down the street to a place called 'The Cash Store'. They seemed to know that we'd be coming. Within 15 minutes, the papers were all signed and we walked out of the place feeling relieved that we wouldn't lose our home."

When he got home and read over the paper work, he realized the mistake he'd made. The APR was 403%! They would have to make nine weekly payments of $108.50, followed by a payment of $805.50 for total payments of $1,785 on a $700 debt!

By the way, how did they get in trouble? They must have been "irresponsible spendthrifts", right?

His wife has a genetic disorder which their children now have. They lost one son to rectal cancer at 21, their 22-year-old daughter has rectal and brain cancer, and their 12-year-old son has colon cancer. And this is with health insurance! Any other questions?

She then called "The Cash Store" and found out that the loan information was true. The person she talked to said that, yes she did sleep well at night.

She talked to the drug store that was suing the man. They've had so many outstanding debts that he, in his words, "had to resort to a lawyer who has been a godsend to me. He's helping me save my business." When she tried to tell him what the attorney was doing, he said, "I don't want to hear it. I can't hear it. I have to provide for my family, too. You just don't understand how bad it is out here."

The attorney told her to "turn your goody-two-shoes in the opposite direction and mind your own damn business. You just don't understand how bad it is out here."

She worked with some fellow priests to come up with enough money for The Cash Store to let the family off the hook (after browbeating them a bit). Good news, right?

Yes, it is. But it left me with two thoughts:

1. I don't know which hurts the most: what these people were doing to their neighbors or the coldness in the hearts as they did it.

2. If it is "that bad out here", how in the name of God does anyone justify the Government not trying to do everything it can to get people working again?

The First Sermon?

2009-04-25T18:57:00.001-04:00

[Our readings were Acts 3:12-19; Psalm 4; 1 John 3:1-7; and Luke 24:36b-48.]

It’s an ancient tradition that, during the Great Fifty Days of Easter, we hear from Luke’s account of the earliest days of the Church in the book of Acts. Today, we hear what Peter says to a crowd that has gathered around him and John in Solomon’s Portico of the Temple after the healing of the crippled beggar at the Beautiful Gate.

What did the crowd want? Healing for themselves? More miracles? An explanation? Perhaps they didn’t know themselves. What they got was a sermon, which is likely not what they expected. (In other words, you’re hearing a sermon about a sermon!) In fact, Peter’s sermon, not the miracle, is the center of the reading.

This sermon is probably the first where Jesus’ resurrection is preached. And, as Archbishop Rowan William has written, the crowd is not ignorant of Jesus and is neither neutral nor wholly innocent. The audience for this sermon is itself part of the story. So, when Peter said “you rejected” and “you killed”, there was some literal truth there.

Some of these words have been the excuse for hideous acts of anti-Semitism over the centuries. Jews as late as our time have been forced to pay the penalty for an act that occurred almost two millennia ago. But Peter’s purpose is not punishment but reconciliation, in fact, he excuses them and, I believe, would have been horrified to see how those who called themselves Christians used his words to persecute Peter’s own people.

The first point Peter makes is that the people misunderstood the source of the healing and thought it came from Peter and John. It seems to be human nature to assume that some person has healing powers and they can make them available to us. We desperately want to believe that they can bring healing and wholeness to our lives. So we order that CD, go to the tent rally, or watch the TV program. As Peter tells the crowd, “Why do you think it was our power that healed? This is about God’s power.”

Peter’s second point is that the crowd wrongly thinks that brokenness is the rule and healing the exception in life with God. We often tend to think this way—that life is apart from God, only punctuated with astonishing acts by God. That’s why the crowd rushed to the Temple; Peter and John’s ministry of healing seemed to be an astonishing exception to life as usual. But Peter asks “Why do you wonder?” and teaches of the Kingdom of God, where God’s healing and forgiveness are as commonplace as sunshine and rain.

Finally, the crowd (as often we do) thinks that healing only calls for astonishment. When we see a sign of God at work in the world—someone is healed, a broken relationship is restored, a hungry child is fed, despair yields to hope—people are filled with wonder and joy. But Peter calls for more. God’s healing reveals a different place, a different kingdom that we can glimpse amidst the ruins of this one. These glimpses summon us to repent—to change our path to God’s path—so that we can claim our citizenship in the Kingdom of God and truly become a part of God’s work in the world.

Heart Attack + 1 [Year, that is]

2009-04-20T19:15:00.007-04:00

Today makes the first anniversary of a rather important event in my life. I had a heart attack. Here is how I described it a few days later.

Why do I want to remember having a heart attack? Because I know I was lucky to go in to get help as quickly as I did (thanks to a wise and wonderful wife!), even more, I was lucky to come home at all, lucky to have a job with a large sick leave balance so I could recuperate at home without fearing for my paycheck, lucky to have excellent health insurance, and lucky to have caring friends.

I've made diet changes, some exercise changes (somewhat hindered by arthritis) and lots of medication changes. I'm 35 pounds lighter than a year ago and I'm told I look several years younger.

I want to remember my heart attack to remind myself not to do anything to increase my chances of going back there. There are no guarantees of getting to go back home.

I like stories about alternate histories--where the Civil War turned out differently, for example. As Data said in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, "For any event there is an infinite number of possible outcomes. Our choices determine which outcome will follow. According to a theory, everything that can happen does happen in some other quantum reality." (In the picture, the infinite number of versions of a character get together.)

An unhappy alternate history: somewhere maybe I didn't listen to my wife or just things turned out a little differently. And I didn't come home. My wife would have been a widow for the last year, I wouldn't have gotten to see my son accepted to Georgia Tech (yay!), and I wouldn't have seen our absolutely darling little rat terrier, Hayley. The line between outcomes can be very thin. I don't want to test them again.

And, while I've been back to Red Lobster, I haven't had the fried seafood platter again. The broiled platter tastes just fine, thank you!

Doubt and Thomas

2009-04-20T19:05:00.002-04:00

[Our lessons were Acts 4:32-35; Psalm 133; 1 John 1:1-2:2; and John 20:19-31.]

During one of the tax protests this week, a woman was seen holding a sign which read, “My God, My Money, My Guns”. I suspect she is certain that our country is departing from the true path of capitalism and that capitalism of course is God’s will.

I wonder how she would square that with the words we just heard from Acts: “... no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common.” The believers sold their homes and land and gave the proceeds to the apostles who distributed the funds so that there “was not a needy person among them.”

Compare that practice of the early Church to the assertions that those who are in dire straits are “losers” who are in trouble solely because of their own irresponsibility with the clear implication that those who have do not have any obligation towards those who do not have. We obviously can’t say that there is not a needy person among us in this country!

While we want certainty in our lives, we must be careful not to confuse doubt—the lack of certainty—with disbelief. And that brings us to the familiar story of St. Thomas.

We really don’t know that much about St. Thomas. What most of us think we know is from this familiar story in St. John’s Gospel. But, on other occasions, Thomas showed that he was committed to Jesus. He was been willing to face death for Jesus when the other disciples were afraid. But the events of Good Friday were too much for him. Can we blame him?

We don’t know where Thomas went, but we know he was not with the other disciples on the evening of the first Easter, when the risen Lord first appeared to them. He missed it! So, when the disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord,” it was too much for him to believe and he demanded proof. This resurrection story was too good to be true.

Thomas had separated himself from the other disciples and missed Jesus’ appearance. Christ appears to us most within the community of believers—the Church—and when we separate ourselves from the Church, we risk missing him.

We can all identify with Thomas. Thomas is a lot like us—wanting to believe, but not able to make that leap of faith without help.

Jesus did not blame Thomas for his doubt. Jesus again appears to the disciples, including Thomas, and gently said, “Do not doubt but believe,” and Thomas responded, “My Lord and my God!” This was the first time Jesus was named as God, not exactly a minor event!

Faith is not the absence of doubt; it is the overcoming of doubt. We all doubt at times—when the pain of loss is too deep, when evil seems to triumph for a day—and we will do so again. To err may be human, but to doubt certainly is.

This reading speaks directly to us. Jesus said, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” Scholars believe that John’s Gospel was written later than the other Gospels, possibly as late as 90 or 100. By that time, everyone was one of “those who have not seen.” They needed to be told that those who had not physically seen Jesus are blessed as well.

We often call Thomas “Doubting Thomas” and we don’t mean it in a good way. We seem to believe that it is wrong to doubt. But doubting is a natural part of the human nature that God gave us and it is nothing to be ashamed of.

One of my favorite literary characters, Anthony Trollope’s Duke of Omnium, put it this way when consoling a friend who had been wrongly charged with murder. He said, “I no more believed you could have done that than could I. But I am human and fallible and I could not eliminate doubt.” Even when we say we are “sure”, we can’t escape doubt. And when we doubt, we can look to Thomas’ example. He can give us the courage to face our doubts.

God does not require or expect or even want us to be free of doubt. He calls us to face our doubts, honestly and openly. We need to have courage and wisdom to deal with our doubts, not accept a false idea that doubting itself is wrong. We need this inner-directed kind of doubt that makes us aware of our own limitations and keeps us on the path of discovery—on our journey of faith in Christ.

When we have doubts and we struggle to believe, we should think of Thomas. He shows us that doubt need not destroy faith. “Love can survive in darkness, unveiling in the gloom the presence of the risen Lord.” And when that happens, we can only hope to respond as he did, “My Lord and My God.”

Those of us in our time as ones who haven’t had the opportunity to be eyewitnesses to the Resurrection have the testimony of the eyewitnesses, which was passed on to other believers and to the next generation, until it is here with us today. It is our faith now that believes because of their testimony and the lives of the faithful over the centuries.

[My thanks to the Rev. Canon Daniel J. Webster of New York and the Daily Episcopalian web site for the story on the tax protests.]

Hearing the Cock Crow

2009-04-05T15:24:00.003-04:00

Our priest this morning told us a very moving story that I wanted to post (in paraphrase as I wasn't taking notes):

A priest was hungry at lunch time and stopped at this hamburger joint. It was fairly crowded and while he waited his turn to order, he noticed an elderly black man standing alone at another counter, waiting patiently for someone to take his order, but he was being ignored. The priest was in a hurry, so he didn't say anything.

The priest waited his turn and ordered a cheeseburger and french fries. He saw that the elderly black man was still being ignored. The priest was in a hurry, so he didn't say anything.

When they brought him his food--a cheeseburger with all the trimmings, french fries and a drink, they still were ignoring the elderly black man, who patiently waited, shifting his weight from one leg to another, as someone may do when they're tired from too much standing. The priest was in a hurry, so he didn't say anything.

They charged him $1.95 (obviously this wasn't a new story). While he waited for his change, he saw that a clearly uninterested employee finally took the black man's order--a hamburger. They brought out a shrivelled, overcooked pattie on a stale dried-up bun, no trimmings, no fries, and nothing to drink. When the black man paid for it, he gave the employee three $1 bills. The employee turned his back on the man and walked away, not giving any change in return. The priest was in a hurry, so he didn't say anything.

And, as he left the restaurant, he heard a cock crow...

We can deny Jesus in all kinds of ways, from what we say to what we do. Sometimes it's what we don't do, as when we are silently complicit in wrongdoing.

Hosanna!

2009-04-04T22:10:00.001-04:00

[Our lessons were Mark 11:1-11; Isaiah 50:4-9a; Psalm 31:9-16; Philippians 2:5-11; and Mark 14:1-15:47.]

Holy Week is a time of contrasts. We begin Palm Sunday in seeming triumph, which quickly turns to what seems to be final, utter defeat, which in three days itself turns into the victory of Easter Day. One of the things that makes Holy Week difficult for us is these sudden mood swings back and forth.

Around the year 380, a Spanish nun named Egeria visited the Holy Land and described the Bishop and people going in procession from the Mount of Olives into Jerusalem, carrying palm fronds and olive branches, re-enacting Jesus’ triumphal procession into Jerusalem.

In his method of entry, Jesus carried out a bit of street theatre, parodying the triumphal entry of a victorious Roman emperor. Instead of the emperor’s war horse, he rode on a donkey, signifying that he came in peace. Much of the symbolism no doubt went over the head of the crowd and probably a part of the crowd was simply attracted by all the commotion. As much as any of them saw that Palm Sunday, Jesus was preparing to chase the Romans out and re-establish David’s Kingdom.

Is it any wonder that these events upset the powers of the time—the Romans and the Priests? When you’re on top, change is not a good thing because you can only go down. A claim that Jesus would re-establish the Kingdom of Israel would be seen as sedition and treason by the Empire. And while the Jewish authorities had no real love for the Romans, it didn’t take much wisdom on their parts to see that the type of Kingdom of God that Jesus was proclaiming didn’t have a place for them. Both groups had a vested interest in bringing about Jesus’ death.

And there’s little doubt that Jesus knew this. He knew that the end of this procession led not to a throne but to the Cross. (No Jew of that time could have any doubt about how the Empire punished treason and sedition—a cross.) He knew that this “triumphal” procession was in truth a funeral procession, as we do when we sing

Ride on! Ride on in majesty!
In Lowly pomp ride on to die;
Bow thy meek head to mortal pain,
Then take, O God, thy power and rein.

Unlike the people of Jerusalem and the Apostles, we know where this is leading. As much as we wish for Jesus to stay away from Gethsemane, for Judas to not betray him, for Peter to not deny Jesus, we know that the Cross is the destination that Holy Week leads us to. Jesus would not avoid it and we cannot avoid it either. It is the Passion that gives the entry into Jerusalem context.

Jesus did not want the Cross; he did not want to die. He could have turned aside from that path and he asked God to let “this Cup” pass from him. But he accepted death and remained obedient to God, knowing the price he would pay. And because he did so, death could be defeated.

Without Good Friday, Easter can’t have meaning. Without death, there can be no resurrection.

Palm Sunday is the beginning of a week-long journey from seeming triumph to utter despair to endless hope that Christians must take, no matter how much we would avoid it. To get past the Cross to an empty tomb on Easter day, we have to go to the Cross first. We must walk the way of the Cross this week so we can reach Easter next weekend.

We Would See Jesus

2009-03-29T14:37:00.003-04:00

[Our lessons were Jeremiah 31:31-34; Psalm 51:1-13; Hebrews 5:5-10; and John 12:20-33.]

When Philip told Jesus that some Greeks wanted to see him, Jesus’ response was, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” Until this point in John’s Gospel, Jesus has said several times that the time or hour “has not come.”

But, when the Greeks wanted to see him, Jesus knew that the time had come for him to be glorified. Because Gentiles—non-Jews—were now seeking him, Jesus knew that his mission had become universal. It was time for him to be lifted up, so all people could be drawn to him. And, of course, the “lifting up” would be on the Cross.

Often, Jesus’ idea of glory doesn’t match ours. To us, “glory” often means having more: more money, more prestige, more power. In many ways, the pursuit of this type of glory has had a lot to do with the economic situation we are in today. To Jesus, glory is about giving more, not having more. Glory, in Jesus’ context, involved accepting the Cross and suffering.

Earlier in John’s Gospel, Jesus says that he came so we could have life and have it abundantly. He also says that he will show God’s love by laying down his life for his friends—us, all those who have gone before us and all those who come after us. This loving purpose is the focus of John’s Gospel. God’s love for us is so great that Jesus will fulfill it by willingly suffering pain and death.

And by his doing that, we know that Jesus stands with us when we face any danger. This doesn’t mean that we won’t undergo hardship, suffer or face bodily death. It does mean that we won’t face them alone and that the real death that we should fear—separation from God—will never happen to us.

“Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” We can see him in others if we only look. But, can they see him in us? If we are to let them see Jesus in us, we have to be ready to stand at the foot of the Cross on Good Friday when the Son of God is silenced by death.

For God So Loved the World...

2009-03-22T07:42:00.002-04:00

[Our lessons were Numbers 21:4-9; Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22; Ephesians 2:1-10; and John 3:14-21.]

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have everlasting life.”

These are some of the most famous words in the New Testament. In fact, I remember a few years ago it would seem that no sporting event on TV was complete without a shot of a man in the stands with a rainbow Afro haircut holding up a sign which said, “John 3:16”, the verse number of this sentence.

The familiarity of these words should not lead us to conclude that everyone interprets them exactly the same way. Some people would say that they proclaim that “God so loved the world that he sent his Son in order that those who don’t have faith in him will perish.” When we read the Gospel in this way, seeking to draw lines where none might otherwise be seen, we try to put God in a small box of our own making.

Our worst misreading of Scripture come when we try to pull one sentence out of its context. When we place this familiar sentence back into the context of the sentences which surround it and the rest of John’s Gospel, we learn that Jesus was lifted up so that all might see him and that Jesus was not sent to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved.

It’s apparently human nature to say that the particular way we believe and worship is the “right” way and that we can define who “has faith in Jesus” and are thus saved. Of course, our definition includes us and excludes everyone who doesn’t agree with us! Those “other people” who have differences in their beliefs, or have misplaced their belief, or are different from us in some way, clearly they must be going to hell, because we have the magic ticket and they don’t.

We love to judge other people. But, when we do, we do well to remember Jesus’ words in Matthew’s Gospel: “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgement you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get.” In fact, Jesus tells us later in John’s Gospel that “I do not judge anyone who hears my words and does not keep them, for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.”

It is wrong when we say that we are “saved” and others are not; that we are “holy” and others are not. Whenever we seek to exclude others from God’s presence, we had better take care that we aren’t the ones excluded.

Just as Jesus came into the world to save it, not condemn or judge it, the Church is called to express God’s love to all the world, of every race, gender, color or creed. As we examine ourselves this Lent, how do we as a church, we as a parish, and we as individuals express that love to the world? De we act out that love? Do we truly welcome all when we say on our signs, “The Episcopal Church welcomes you”? Do we give the appearance of a Jesus who judges and condemns or the Jesus who seeks to make all one?

The Fourth Sunday in Lent has often been called Laetare Sunday. This comes from the Latin word meaning “rejoice”, because in older days, parts of the liturgy set for this Sunday began with the single word “Rejoice!” This was a reminder that we are more than halfway through our Lenten journey and well on our way to the glory of the Resurrection on Easter Day.

When we are on a journey, it can be all too easy to focus completely on our immediate situation and lose sight of where we have been and where we are going. Our reading from Numbers was an example of that. The Israelites have become anxious and impatient in their long journey from Egypt to the Promised Land. Although their needs have been provided for by God, they still grumble about “this miserable food”. Apparently the wilderness lacked a McDonald’s. The Israelites had lost sight of their purpose, their perspective, and their hope.

Every week for us this year, we hear new examples of people losing the jobs or homes or both. Banks are failing, with another Georgia bank being closed Friday. We are anxious and impatient. Many are losing hope in a future that they believe is now out of reach.

As the bishops of the Episcopal Church wrote this week:

As we go through our own wilderness, these spiritual ancestors also point the way to a deep and abiding hope. We can rediscover our uniqueness–which emerges from the conviction that our wealth is determined by what we give rather than what we own. We can re-discover manna–God’s extraordinary expression of abundance. Week by week, in congregations and communities around the world, our common manna is placed before us in the Eucharist. Ordinary gifts of bread and wine are placed on the altar, and become for us the Body and Blood of Christ, which, when we receive them, draw us ever more deeply into the Paschal mystery of Christ's death and resurrection.

As our risen Lord broke through the isolation of the disciples huddled in fear for their lives following his suffering and death, so too are we, the Body of Christ, called to break through the loneliness and anxiety of this time, drawing people from their fears and isolation into the comforting embrace of God’s gathered community of hope. As disciples of the risen Christ we are given gifts for showing forth God's gracious generosity and for finding blessing and abundance in what is hard and difficult. In this time the Holy Spirit is moving among us, sharing with us the vision of what is real and valued in God's world. In a time such as this, Christ draws us deeper into our faith revealing to us that generosity breaks through distrust, paralysis and misinformation. Like our risen Lord, we, as his disciples are called to listen to the world's pain and offer comfort and peace.

As we continue our Lenten journey together we place our hearts in the power of the Trinity. The God who created us is creating still and will not abandon us. The Incarnate Word, our Savior Jesus Christ, who in suffering, dying and rising for our sake, stands in solidarity with us, has promised to be with us to the end of the age. God the Holy Spirit, the very breath of God for us and in us, is our comforter, companion, inspiration and guide. In this is our hope, our joy and our peace.

[Note: you can read the entire pastoral letter here.]

Do we have a reason to rejoice this Laetare Sunday? Of course we do. We have God’s promise of salvation: “For God so loved the world…”

The Ten Commandments

2009-03-14T20:07:00.002-04:00

[Our lessons were Exodus 20:1-17; Psalm 19; 1 Corinthians 1:18-25; and John 2:13-22.]

When I read the various parts of Exodus that figured prominently in Cecil B. DeMille’s movie The Ten Commandments, it’s hard not visualize scenes from the film, such as Charlton Heston holding stone tablets. Such, I guess, is the power of Hollywood.

What we refer to as the Ten Commandments were in fact only a part of the rules God established for his people, but they were the only ones that God wrote onto stone tablets. The Commandments are seen in context as a part of God’s covenant with God’s people. They also are the part of the Law that we consider also applying to us, even though we aren’t Israelites, and they’ve been included in Anglican liturgies since the 1549 English Book of Common Prayer.

The Commandments establish boundaries in our relationship with God and with our neighbors. When we say that we are to have no other gods before God, that doesn’t just mean we don’t worship Baal or Astarte or Zeus. When we say we shall not make an idol to worship, that doesn’t just refer to a golden calf.

In our world, we have worshipped at other altars and idolized many things in recent years. In many ways, our economic troubles are the result of our worshipping at the altar of greed and idolizing money. I don’t know what (if any) faith Bernard Madoff professes, but clearly he worshipped a different God. When we exalt Wall Street traders and executives with ludicrous bonuses, are those not our real “American Idols”?

The Commandments that deal with our neighbors call on us to have a proper relationship with our neighbors and, of course, Jesus said that everyone is our neighbor. When we oppress the poor and deny them equal access to education and health care, so as to gather those resources to ourselves, aren’t we stealing from them and coveting what should be theirs?

Our secular society often treats the Ten Commandments as a historical document, placing them on walls with other ancient legal documents. People urge us to post them everywhere, believing that the problems that afflict our society are the result of people not following the Commandments.

While that may be true, when we treat the Ten Commandments merely as a decorative artifact to be placed on a wall or on a yard sign, we aren’t following them; we aren’t living them! There is a story that a Boston business man famous for his tough business dealings told Mark Twain, “Before I die I mean to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land; climb Mount Sinai and read the Ten Commandments aloud at the top.” Twain replied, “Why not stay in Boston and keep them.”

Our problem is that keeping then Ten Commandments isn’t always easy. It’s easier to erect a monument to the Ten Commandments than to work toward a society that lives them; it’s easier to say the Decalogue than to live it ourselves.

When we truly live the Commandments, we don’t put anything in God’s place, we set aside a special time to reflect on God’s ways, and we put our neighbor in the place we would wish to be. We respect every aspect of God’s creation. We remain faithful in relationships, deal with others honestly and fairly, and work for justice. We take joy in what others have instead of trying to have what isn’t truly ours.

Saint Paul knew that this is hard. As he said in his letter to the church in Rome, “I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do!” On our own, apart from God, we just can’t do it; it’s beyond our power.

However, if we live by our covenant relationship with God, God gives us the strength to succeed. The giving of the Commandments and Jesus’ attack on the sellers and money changers at the Temple are both efforts to remove barriers between God and his people.

By the time of Jesus, a “market opportunity” had grown up, supplying the proper type of sacrificial animals so that the people could offer the proper sacrifice at the Temple and be restored to a right relationship with God. The money changers would change the Roman money into Temple money for a fee and the sellers sold the animals for a profit. Jesus wanted to eliminate a doubly unjust and corrupt system that placed barriers between the people and God and enriched some at the expense of the poor.

When we come between God and another person, aren’t we under judgment ourselves? When we let pride, arrogance, spite, or hurt feelings prevent another person from coming to God, aren’t we like those who Jesus chased out of the Temple? When we support those who exploit those in need or support systems and economies that oppress the “least of these”, aren’t we like the sellers and the money changers?

If, with God’s help, we live the Ten Commandments, rather than just sticking them on the wall, we can give the right answers to these questions.

Take up Your Cross

2009-03-07T20:46:00.003-05:00

[Our lessons were Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16; Psalm 22:22-30; Romans 4:13-25; and Mark 8:31-38.]

Sometimes it is tough being Peter. One moment, Jesus is calling you the rock upon which he will build his church, and in seemingly the next, he calls you Satan. Talk about moving from the heights to the depths! It says something about Peter’s faith that he persevered and stayed, in his own stumbling, human way with Jesus.

What had gotten into Peter? Human misconceptions. He had his own idea of what the Messiah would do, based upon tradition and scripture, and it sure didn’t include suffering, rejection, and death! By this point, talk of a resurrection probably went right over his head. Peter couldn’t accept that Jesus was saying that the Messiah must suffer and die instead of Peter’s more traditional expectations of Kingship, might, and victory. What Jesus was saying was that to reject suffering for the Messiah was to reject God’s plan in favor of human priorities.

Often don’t we do the exact same thing Peter did—let our own preconceptions, our prejudices, blind us to God’s will? We might not rebuke Jesus, of course; but we might not be willing to follow Jesus, if he is not heading in the way we choose.

Jesus then tells the crowd that his followers would have to take up their crosses and follow him. Just what did Jesus mean? We often speak of someone having “their own cross to bear”, usually meaning some problem or challenge they have to face. Is that what Jesus had in mind?

To a Jew in the Roman occupation, a cross meant one thing. It wasn’t an item of jewelry that you wore. It wasn’t an object that you put on the wall of a church. A cross was the way the Empire executed criminals. It was an object lesson to anyone who dared to oppose the might of Rome: you would die publically, shamefully over several days. Crosses were placed in large numbers at the crossroads to provide an object lesson to anyone who would dare challenge Caesar. In 6 CE, the young Jesus could see 2,000 Galilean insurrectionists crucified by the Romans. When Jesus was talking about picking up a cross, he meant the real thing! And for many of his disciples and many early Christians, following Jesus did lead to their own deaths, sometimes on actual crosses.

While picking up our own cross is no trivial thing, it usually will not lead in our executions. But there are no guarantees, even in our time. In our own lifetimes, we learn of martyrs who have knowingly accepted their own deaths in carrying the Cross. Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Maximilian Kolbe from the Nazis, Jonathan Myrick Daniels in Alabama, and Archbishops Jawani Luwum in Uganda and Óscar Romero in El Salvador show us that martyrdom is not only a feature of history.

Taking up our Cross is not automatically a call to martyrdom. God does not want or need another drop of blood shed in His name. God calls us to be the Body of Christ, praying that His Kingdom will come and His will be done here as in heaven. Jesus taught us to seek the Kingdom of God—a place where God’s justice is done, the hungry are fed, and death itself has no more dominion. Jesus doesn't so much want us to die as he did as to live as he did.

Jesus also tells the crowd that followers of Jesus must deny their selves and lose their lives. That was hard to take then, but I suspect it’s even harder in 21st Century America with our near idolatry of individuality and self-realization. When cable commentators are cheered for their unwillingness to help others in need with words like “Why should I help losers?” it’s clear that “self” reigns, not God.

Here in America our relative wealth and education comes with privilege and give us power. Jesus calls us to use that which we have, not for ourselves, but for those who have less than we do. If we are serious about denying our selves, can we do any less?

Lent

2009-02-28T21:43:00.002-05:00

[Our lessons were Genesis 9:8-17; Psalm 25:1-9; 1 Peter 3:18-22; and Mark 1:9-15.]

We start our Lenten journey with water. First, we hear God’s promise to Noah after the Flood: Never again would God use water to destroy all life on earth. The rainbow, which we now know is merely, but beautifully, the result of light shining through water in the sky after a storm, would be a sign of God’s promise. Water would be a symbol of rebirth and renewal, not death.

Then we hear again, for the second time in a few short weeks, Mark’s brief description of the baptism of Jesus. (Some writers think Mark’s tighter, sparser language was because his Gospel may have been the first written. I wonder whether he was auditioning for a writer on “Headline News.”) Back on the First Sunday after Epiphany, our reading ended with God’s proclamation that Jesus was God’s beloved son, with whom God was well pleased. Today, we begin there.

After Jesus was baptized, the Holy Spirit “immediately drove him into the wilderness.” We often speak of the Holy Spirit in roles of comforter and strengthener, but here is another one: a driving force that pushes us forward in a direction we hadn’t planned and might not have wanted to go. The Holy Spirit is unpredictable; in Acts we read that the Apostles might be suddenly sent in unplanned directions and that, when Peter was preaching to the Gentiles in Caesarea, before he had even finished, the Spirit apparently decided, “That’s good enough; I’ll take these!” and “fell upon all who heard the word.”

Jesus was in the wilderness for forty days, bringing back to mind the forty-year wandering of the people of God after fleeing from Egypt. Lent is intended to symbolize that time in the wilderness for us to help us prepare for Good Friday and Easter. Even as Jesus had the opportunity in the wilderness to reflect on his journey, we are called, as we heard on Ash Wednesday, to “self-examination and repentance; … prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and … reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.”

We often speak of what we are going to give up for Lent. Some intend to give up things that are bad for them, sweets, alcohol, smoking, for example. Actually, we shouldn’t wait until Lent to give them up, if they’re bad for us. Perhaps we should think instead of giving up something that is good for us for a time, so we can appreciate it more. It can be also be a good time to take on an additional discipline, such as a Lenten study program or saying the Daily Office. Lent is when we do things differently, so they can have more meaning when we resume them.

In his message for Lent this year, the Archbishop of Canterbury says

It’s important to remember that the word ‘Lent’ itself comes from the old English word for ‘spring’. It’s not about feeling gloomy for forty days; it’s not about making yourself miserable for forty days; it’s not even about giving things up for forty days. Lent is springtime. It’s preparing for that great climax of springtime which is Easter–new life bursting through death. And as we prepare ourselves for Easter during these days, by prayer and by self-denial, what motivates us and what fills the horizon is not self-denial as an end in itself but trying to sweep and clean the room of our own minds and hearts so that the new life really may have room to come in and take over and transform us at Easter.

As we prepare for Easter, we mustn’t focus so thoroughly on our personal growth that we overlook the world outside our doors. As part of our acts of repentance and self-discipline, why don’t we contact our elected officials and encourage them to ensure that, especially in these times of economic hardship, our state and national budgets reflect the importance of God’s justice.

Lent isn’t supposed to be a comfortable season. We take on things and give up things. Our churches lack some of the trappings of the rest of the year and our liturgy gives up “Alleluias.” Lent reminds us that we are pilgrims on a road, not settlers. If we find this Lent difficult, inconvenient, uncomfortable, maybe it will be a sign that we are getting the right idea.

Transfiguration

2009-02-21T18:58:00.002-05:00

[Our readings were 2 Kings 2:1-12; Psalm 50:16; 2 Corinthians 4:3-6; and Mark 9:2-9.]

The Transfiguration of our Lord, of which we hear today, marks a turning point in Jesus’ earthly ministry. From this point, Jesus turns himself towards Jerusalem and the almost certain end of the Cross. There may be some debate as to how precisely Jesus knew what was to come, but there is little doubt that he knew that the religious and civil authorities would put him to death very soon. This, then begins the culmination of his earthly ministry.

“Transfiguration” can happen in various ways, some of which are familiar. When we sometimes speak of how a pregnant woman can seem to have a “glow” about her, we see a form of transfiguration. After the dark of a rain storm, when we see either a rainbow or a shaft of light which transforms the sky, we see a form of transfiguration. In a transfiguration, some aspect of reality which is normally veiled from sight shines forth for a time. Transfiguration does not add something which isn’t there; we are allowed to see something which was there which we hadn’t seen before.

In the story of the Transfiguration we hear today, Jesus took Peter, John and James up on a high mountain. Jesus is transformed with a brilliant light and his garments become a dazzling white, such as no earthly bleach could make. And there appear with him the two greatest prophets of God that had been seen before, Moses and Elijah. After Peter in his usual way interrupts the spectacle by speaking, a cloud overshadows them and a voice from the cloud proclaims, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” And it is over, and they and we are back in the everyday world. What do we make of this?

One thing we learn is that, even at this late date, the disciples aren’t exactly certain just who Jesus is. Peter’s talk of creating three tabernacles or dwellings for them puts Jesus on an equal standing with Moses and Elijah. High ranking indeed, but we know it isn’t high enough. After Peter says this, they are told that Jesus is much more, the Son of God, the Beloved who is to be listened to.

Then Jesus and the disciples are back in the world, walking the road toward Jerusalem and the cross. Transfiguration may change understandings and confirm faith and even confuse us, but it doesn’t remove us from the world in which Jesus lived and in which we live today.

We ourselves have, in some ways, seen Jesus transfigured. We have met him and been fed or healed by him and so we have some experience of that “light”. We have seen his majesty at some point in our lives and we shall never be the same. We have “seen the light,” if only for a moment and we are changed. We still, like Jesus, have the way of the cross to walk in our own lives, but having with the grace of the light we walk in its presence, and our lives, too, will be transfigured if we let Jesus’ light shine through us.

Have you heard a child’s definition of a saint? “They are people the light shines through.” While the child was thinking of the saints in stained glass windows, this is a wonderful definition of a saint, one through whom God’s light shines in the world. We are called to let our own lives be transfigured so that the light will shine through.

This will happen in the middle of the real world, in the middle of our lives, and like with Jesus’ transfiguration, the light isn’t going to be seen all the time. His transfiguration was a single event. We are called to let the light shine through as often as possible and as much as possible. That means constantly seeking to be in his light, so that his light can shine through us into the real world of our way of the cross. None of us is the source of the light. Instead, we are those to whom the light has come. We are those who have to some degree and in our own way been given the light and it is in our day-to-day lives that the light must shine through so that others may receive the light as we did. Here, in Perry, in our lives. Not only on a mountain top, but somewhere along our own ways of the cross.

As we begin Lent this week, we seek to look at ourselves and our service to God and our neighbors. Let us work on letting the light shine through us rather than on the darkness that is in all of us. While we need to be honest about our sins, our failures, our doubts, and our need for God’s grace, the real story and the real meaning of Lent will come as the light returns in the Easter Vigil. The ashes of this coming Wednesday are real, but they will disappear very quickly if we go about our work in the world. And the darkness in our lives can also disappear if we set about letting His light shine through.

We know that the light calls us to us to justice, to honesty, to humility, to the service of his children wherever and whoever they are. The question for each of us is whether we are willing to let his light shine through us. We are called to walk our own personal way of the cross here in this world, in our daily lives, just as Jesus did. The light of the Transfiguration gives us the direction and the strength to follow Jesus. This is what we are called to. Not a negative, self-focused, concern with our sins and failures, but to the task of allowing God’s light, which we received in our Baptism, and which is constantly replenished in the Eucharist, to shine through in the way we live every day, here and now, in our world, in our time.

Look back at what Peter, James and John—and we—are told to do: Listen! Not preserve Jesus like a painting or a statue, but to listen and act.

We are called to seek out the transfigured Christ in the world, and as we do so, we are called to “listen” and to respond with a servant’s heart and in humility. We are called to listen when God’s children are suffering, when they are in need, when they are disenfranchised and subject to injustices.
We are called to listen not only as individuals but also as a community, as a part of the body of Christ. As a part of the body of Christ, we raise up people on our behalf to be in relationship with and to listen to Christ alongside our neighbors in other parts of the world. These people we call missionaries are our ambassadors to be in an active relationship with those who see the transfigured Christ through different lenses than do we.

As we celebrate World Mission Sunday, we especially remember the missionaries of the Episcopal Church; those pilgrims who have been called by God and our communities to leave their homes and to encounter God in other parts of the world, to be in relationship with and to listen to people from a culture and a land that is different from their own.

O God, you have made of one blood all the peoples of the earth, and sent your blessed Son to preach peace to those who are far off and to those who are near: Grant that people everywhere may seek after you and find you, bring the nations into your fold, pour out your Spirit upon all flesh, and hasten the coming of your kingdom; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, on God, now and for ever. Amen.

Have You Not Known?

2009-02-07T17:29:00.001-05:00

[Our lessons were Isaiah 40:21-31; Psalm 147:1-12, 21c; 1 Corinthians 9:16-23; and Mark 1:29-39.]

“Have You Not Known? Have You Not Heard?”

Our reading from Isaiah is addressed to a broken people long in exile in Babylon. It has been many years since they heard the prophet Ezekiel and they feel forgotten by God. Their Temple is destroyed, Jerusalem has been laid waste, and they are forced to live far from home, serving pagan masters. They must feel about as far from God as it is possible to feel.

We have our times of exile, our times of pain and suffering, when we may feel far from God. A year ago this week, my own father’s two years of illness was ended by his death. Nine years ago, my father-in-law’s brief but painful illness ended in the same way. We all have examples of loved ones, friends, or perhaps even ourselves who have suffered painful, debilitating illnesses. We ask why these good people have been forced to suffer as they did.

In these hard economic times, we have other examples of suffering. To the breadwinner whose job is disappeared, to the family who has lost their home to foreclosure, God may seem very far away indeed. We cry, even as Israel did from Babylon, “My way is hidden from the LORD, and my right is disregarded by my God!”

We say that God “sits above the circles of the earth” and he “stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to live in.” He “brings princes to naught and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing.” How can such a mighty God care or even notice our suffering and pain?

He can care because who suffered pain himself. He notices because he had friends die and wept for them. He understands our hunger and thirst because he felt them himself. He knows about death because he died himself and rose to overcome death.

It may be that it is during times of suffering, when our need is greatest, that we are closest to God. We tend when things are going well to think that it is our doing that has gotten us there and we normally fail to give God much credit. But, when things don’t go well, we attribute events to God—I’ve never heard the term “Act of God” used to describe a good thing. We may even say, wrongly, that some suffering is God’s will.

Sometimes the greatest spiritual growth comes through suffering. Like the Exiles, we may need to lose what we have to find strength in the very elements that exile brings into focus: frailty, vulnerability, the potential for sacrificial servanthood. In exile, we can discover the power that a focus on God can bring when we no longer calculate our own self-interest.

In his book, Lament for a Son, Nicholas Wolterstorff claims that human fragility and suffering are central to our being made in the image of God and that, through them, we become God’s temple on earth.

In what respects do we mirror God? … One answer that rarely finds its way onto the list: in our suffering. Perhaps the thought is too appalling. … Are we to mirror [God] ever more closely in suffering? Was it meant that we should be icons in suffering? Is it our glory to suffer?

But, as the Psalmist says, God “heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” He “lifts up the lowly” and, in the words of Isaiah, he “gives power to the faint and strengthens the powerless.” God gives power preferentially to the faint and helpless. The Exiles’ suffering, and ours, is the gateway to God. Human frailty in many ways is its own reward and God will reward it. “Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”

God is working things out so that our humility and selflessness will blossom in extravagantly new life.

“Have you not known? Have you not heard?”

Tony Blair and Barack Obama on Faith

2009-02-06T21:19:00.005-05:00

Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President Barack Obama spoke to the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington DC on faith yesterday.

Tony Blair:

For billions of people, Faith motivates, galvanises, compels and inspires, not to exclude but to embrace; not to provoke conflict but to try to do good. This is Faith in action. You can see it in countless local communities where those from churches, mosques, synagogues and temples, tend the sick, care for the afflicted, work long hours in bad conditions to bring hope to the despairing and salvation to the lost. You can see it in the arousing of the world's conscience to the plight of Africa.

There are a million good deeds done every day by people of Faith. These are those for whom, in the parable of the sower, the seed fell on good soil and yielded sixty or a hundredfold.

What inspires such people? ... That is what inspires: the unconditional nature of God's love. A promise perpetually kept. A covenant never broken.

And in surrendering to God, we become instruments of that love.

...

I only say that there are limits to humanism and beyond those limits God and only God can work. The phrase "fear of God" conjures up the vengeful God of parts of the Old Testament. But "fear of God" means really obedience to God; humility before God; acceptance through God that there is something bigger, better and more important than you. It is that humbling of man's vanity, that stirring of conscience through God's prompting, that recognition of our limitations, that faith alone can bestow.

We can perform acts of mercy, but only God can lend them dignity. We can forgive, but only God forgives completely in the full knowledge of our sin.

And only through God comes grace; and it is God's grace that is unique.

...

Courage in leadership is not simply about having the nerve to take difficult decisions or even in doing the right thing since oftentimes God alone knows what the right thing is.

It is to be in our natural state-which is one of nagging doubt, imperfect knowledge, and uncertain prediction-and to be prepared nonetheless to put on the mantle of responsibility and to stand up in full view of the world, to step out when others step back, to assume the loneliness of the final decision-maker, not sure of success but unsure of it.

And it is in that "not knowing" that the courage lies.

And when in that state, our courage fails, our faith can support it, lift it up, keep it from stumbling.

...

It is fitting at this extraordinary moment in your country's history that we hear that call to action; and we pray that in acting we do God's work and follow God's will.

And by the way, God bless you all.

President Obama:

... [F]ar too often, we have seen faith wielded as a tool to divide us from one another–as an excuse for prejudice and intolerance. Wars have been waged. Innocents have been slaughtered. For centuries, entire religions have been persecuted, all in the name of perceived righteousness.

There is no doubt that the very nature of faith means that some of our beliefs will never be the same. We read from different texts. We follow different edicts. We subscribe to different accounts of how we came to be here and where we’re going next–and some subscribe to no faith at all.

But no matter what we choose to believe, let us remember that there is no religion whose central tenet is hate. There is no God who condones taking the life of an innocent human being. This much we know.

We know too that whatever our differences, there is one law that binds all great religions together. Jesus told us to "love thy neighbor as thyself." The Torah commands, "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow." In Islam, there is a hadith that reads "None of you truly believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself." And the same is true for Buddhists and Hindus; for followers of Confucius and for humanists. It is, of course, the Golden Rule–the call to love one another; to understand one another; to treat with dignity and respect those with whom we share a brief moment on this Earth.

It is an ancient rule; a simple rule; but also one of the most challenging. For it asks each of us to take some measure of responsibility for the well-being of people we may not know or worship with or agree with on every issue. Sometimes, it asks us to reconcile with bitter enemies or resolve ancient hatreds. And that requires a living, breathing, active faith. It requires us not only to believe, but to do–to give something of ourselves for the benefit of others and the betterment of our world.

...

We come to break bread and give thanks and seek guidance, but also to rededicate ourselves to the mission of love and service that lies at the heart of all humanity. As St. Augustine once said, "Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you."

So let us pray together on this February morning, but let us also work together in all the days and months ahead. For it is only through common struggle and common effort, as brothers and sisters, that we fulfill our highest purpose as beloved children of God. I ask you to join me in that effort, and I also ask that you pray for me, for my family, and for the continued perfection of our union. Thank you.

Ralph S. Davison, February 8, 1921-February 5, 2008

2009-02-05T20:16:00.002-05:00

It was a year ago today that my father died. We miss him.

God of the living, you are the Way, the Truth and the Life: we have lived a year without Ralph. Throughout that time of the turning earth, sun and moon, you have shown us signs of your wonders: the Christmas star of Bethlehem, Easter’s empty tomb, and the tongues of Pentecost fire, which speak of your glory and goodness to all creation. We have counted days of sorrow, laughter and endurance in our journey through grief’s stages. Now we can declare that even though we still feel bruised by the pain of our loss, life continues. You give us yourself in moments of grace, transforming us through your love. We thank you for the distance you have brought us during our year of healing, and ask you to help us become ever more whole in years to come. Keep Ralph present in our hearts, and may we honor his memory, embracing each new day with courage and faith; through Christ, in the Spirit, we pray. Amen.

Called to the Kingdom

2009-01-24T16:02:00.002-05:00

[Our lessons were Jonah 3:1-5, 10; Psalm 62:6-14; 1 Corinthians 7:29-31; and Mark 1:14-20.]

We often tend to use the term “call” and “calling” in the context of ordained ministry. We talk of people attempting to discern a calling to ordained ministry and, here at St. Christopher’s, the vestry recently called a priest to be our new rector. But “calling” has a much broader meaning than that.

In fact, one of the Greek words that is used for the church, ekklesia, refers to an assembly of those who are called together or called out of ordinary life to worship. And that is us. We are called together, we are called out of the world to worship God.

God calls to us all the time and in many ways. And, as Jonah, found out, God can be pretty persistent.

The book of Jonah, of which we heard a portion, is an interesting book, and not just because of the story of the fish. God called Jonah to go to Nineveh to tell them that if they repent, they will be spared. Jonah didn’t want Nineveh to be spared, so he ran away. He got on a boat and fled to the other end of the world. But up came a storm and, to save themselves, the sailors tossed Jonah overboard, since he said he was running from God. Along came a great fish to swallow him and, after three days of prayer by Jonah, God has the fish spit Jonah up on dry land. God repeats the call, Jonah goes reluctantly and preached only grudgingly, but the king and people repent! God changed his mind and didn’t destroy Nineveh and Jonah sulked.

“O Lord! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.”

We often feel the same way. We often feel that there are people, normally those who are different from us, who really don’t deserve to be saved. Fortunately for Jonah, God doesn’t always answer prayers. And there are other calls by God, even today.

An American anthropologist and doctor, Paul Farmer, responded to a conviction that everyone deserves medical care. With four other doctors he founded Partners in Health, and is changing the lives of the poorest of the poor in Haiti, Peru, and Rwanda. This remarkable man is a shining light in the midst of a hurting people. All because he answered a call to heal the poor.

Dr. Muhammad Yunus responded to an inner conviction that poor women deserve to receive loans with the lowest interest possible so that their lives could be changed. He knew that changing the lives of women for the better could help improve the lives of their whole families. On that conviction—that call—he founded the Grameen Bank, and the practice of giving microloans to women and the poor in general is now flourishing.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu heard God’s call, which filled him with the conviction that all human beings, regardless of the color of their skin, are created in the image of God. That call led him to work with another great human being, Nelson Mandela, to bring an end to the evil of apartheid.

In our reading from Mark’s Gospel, Jesus begins to call his disciples. He called two sets of brothers: Simon and Andrew and James and John. There is an urgency to Jesus’ call and to their response, as symbolized by saying they immediately followed Jesus. Some years later, Paul would tell the church in Corinth that time is short. The time to answer God’s call is now, there is no time to waste.

Jesus said, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” The Kingdom of God is not the afterlife and it is not intended to be some distant time in the future. The Kingdom of God is that time and place when God’s will is done and God’s justice prevails: the hungry are fed, the sick are made whole, and the poor are well treated.

When we answer God’s call to help those in need, we are acting to bring the Kingdom of God that much closer.

When we answer God’s call, we don’t know where it will lead us. Neither did Samuel last week or Jonah or the disciples. Answering God’s call is sometimes painful. Sometimes, it can be fatal, as Jonathan Daniels found out in the 1960s when he was martyred while protecting a black child in Alabama in the 1960s. It can make you seem out of step with the wisdom of the world, which tells you to maximize personal gain at the expense of all else. But when we do answer God’s call to bring the Kingdom into being, we know we are answering the deepest wishes of our own hearts.

In these dark times, the light of Epiphany shines upon all who respond to God’s call, wherever they are from. When what they say and do brings light, they are all blessed by God. May the light of Epiphany shine upon us so that we hear and respond to God when He calls us by name.

Campaign Against Torture--Succeeds!

2009-01-22T16:38:00.002-05:00

Last summer, I received an e-mail from the National Religious Committee Against Torture asking for support in an effort to urge then-President Bush to issue an executive order forbidding the use of torture by the U.S. Government. I was moved to write a letter to the editor of the Macon Telegraph and somewhat to my surprise, it was printed. (I know at least one person read it on the paper's web site because they complained that I hadn't said anything about abortion!)

Since then, NRCAT has sent periodic e-mails asking me to sign online petitions to then-President Bush and President Obama asking them to act. I was proud to sign. And today, came the result...

President Barack Obama today signed several executive orders relating to how we carry on the war on terrorism. One them requires the U.S. Government to follow the Army Field Manual on interrogations. The field manual expressly prohibits threats, coercion, physical abuse and waterboarding.

Statement from National Religious Campaign Against Torture President, Linda Gustitus:

President Obama asked this country during his campaign to join him in changing the world. By requiring the CIA to abide by the restrictions in the Army Field Manual in conducting interrogations of detainees, by closing the CIA’s secret prisons, and by providing the International Committee of the Red Cross access to all US-held detainees, he has already changed the world with respect to America’s use of torture. He has rejected the use of torture as an interrogation technique and allowed the United States to again find its moral bearing.

The establishment of a task force to study whether the CIA should be able to use additional interrogation techniques beyond those approved in the Army Field Manual is a cause for concern. We call on the President to ensure that any additional techniques are humane, effective, and available for public scrutiny. We cannot afford to risk a return to the secret abuses of the past. Specifically, the President should publicly affirm that any additional interrogation techniques comply with the “golden rule”–that they would be both moral and legal if used upon a captured American.

The religious community has labored faithfully for three years to end U.S.-sponsored torture. We are grateful today for this important step. The dark, dark days of the past are behind us, and we all must work to make sure they never return again.

Inaugural Prayer

2009-01-18T21:36:00.002-05:00

I'm sure this is showing up in a lot of places, but here was the prayer given today at the concert at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington today by the Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson, Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire:

O God of our many understandings, we pray that you will…

Bless us with tears–for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women from many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS.

Bless us with anger–at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

Bless us with discomfort–at the easy, simplistic “answers” we’ve preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of the truth, about ourselves and the world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.

Bless us with patience–and the knowledge that none of what ails us will be “fixed” anytime soon, and the understanding that our new president is a human being, not a messiah.

Bless us with humility–open to understanding that our own needs must always be balanced with those of the world.

Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance–replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences, and an understanding that in our diversity, we are stronger.

Bless us with compassion and generosity–remembering that every religion’s God judges us by the way we care for the most vulnerable in the human community, whether across town or across the world.

And God, we give you thanks for your child Barack, as he assumes the office of President of the United States.

Give him wisdom beyond his years, and inspire him with Lincoln’s reconciling leadership style, President Kennedy’s ability to enlist our best efforts, and Dr. King’s dream of a nation for ALL the people.

Give him a quiet heart, for our Ship of State needs a steady, calm captain in these times.

Give him stirring words, for we will need to be inspired and motivated to make the personal and common sacrifices necessary to facing the challenges ahead.

Make him color-blind, reminding him of his own words that under his leadership, there will be neither red nor blue states, but the United States.

Help him remember his own oppression as a minority, drawing on that experience of discrimination, that he might seek to change the lives of those who are still its victims.

Give him the strength to find family time and privacy, and help him remember that even though he is president, a father only gets one shot at his daughters’ childhoods.

And please, God, keep him safe. We know we ask too much of our presidents, and we’re asking FAR too much of this one. We know the risk he and his wife are taking for all of us, and we implore you, O good and great God, to keep him safe. Hold him in the palm of your hand–that he might do the work we have called him to do, that he might find joy in this impossible calling, and that in the end, he might lead us as a nation to a place of integrity, prosperity and peace.
AMEN.

Connections

2009-01-18T21:23:00.004-05:00

[Our lessons were 1 Samuel 3:1-10 (11-20); Psalm 129:1-5, 12-17; 1 Corinthians 6:12-20; and John 1:43-51.]

Our reading from Samuel is set in dark times for the people of Israel: the word of the Lord was rare in those days and visions were rare. It’s not hard to feel that we are living in times like that today. Every day brings a new dose of bad news: fighting in Gaza, more businesses fail and jobs are lost, record cold weather in many parts of the country can bring us close to despair.

But, the lamp of God had not yet gone out. And God remained connected with his people, calling out to Samuel by name. Even in times of fear and sorrow, God remains connected to us, calling us by name. Our challenge is to hear that call amidst the noise and bustle of daily life. And when we hear that call, we answer, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”

We don’t tend to listen very well—to people or to God. God has a habit of challenging our preconceptions and prejudices, just as he did with Nathaniel’s prejudice—“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”—in our reading from John’s Gospel. We tend to see what we expect to see and hear what we expect to hear and we filter out what doesn’t match up. These perceptual filters can be strong and can keep us from seeing new things.

Fortunately, Nathaniel was willing to discard his prejudice against country bumpkins from Nazareth and accepted Philip’s invitation to “Come and see!” What he heard and saw was enough to cause him to proclaim to Jesus, “You are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!”

Jesus responded in two ways, first, by saying “You will see greater things than these” (or as we might say today, “You ain’t seen nothing yet!”) and by saying that Nathaniel would see heaven opened—again, language of unveiling as we heard last week at Jesus’ baptism—and that the angels of God would be ascending and descending upon the Son of Man. This is the language of the revelation to Jacob at Bethel, where the angels are ascending and descending a ladder to heaven. The difference is that Jesus is the ladder; Jesus is what connects heaven and earth.

This connection—this ladder—has always been there. The means for us to connect to God has always been there. It’s we who have failed to see it or ignored it. As Verna Dozier writes in her book The Dream of God, “Both the people of the Torah and the people of the resurrection were escaping from God’s awesome invitation to be something new in the world.”

“To be something new in the world!” To be new by being always open to the needs of God’s people, to be new by being open to the new directions our lives will take if we are willing to become that ladder ourselves. For that is what God offered Jacob and Jesus offered Nathaniel and offers us today. Not just to be connected, but to be the connection between God and the world.

In his letter to the church in Corinth, Paul talks of another kind of connection—our connection with each other. In our culture, we revere individualism. The one clearly American form of fiction is the western, whose hero is normally the strong, silent loner. In the United States, we often think of religion in the same way. We often focus on an individual relationship with God and tend to overlook our membership in the common Body of Christ. Each one of us is a part of that One Body. What is important is that we not become so focused on ourselves and our individual lifestyles to do things that are not beneficial to the community.

This week we begin the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. We are called to be one “so that the world may believe.” Like Nathaniel, we are called to overcome our long-held prejudices and re-examine our assumptions. We are called to respond as Samuel did, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”

We are invited by Jesus to “Follow me.” Not to a calm and static life but to a journey of risk and discovery, sometimes sacrifice.

And we are invited in the words of Philip to Nathaniel to “Come and see.”

“Speak, Lord, for your servants are listening.”
Give us ears to hear Jesus calling, “Follow me.”
Help us find ways to “Come and see.”
That the world may believe!

Beginnings

2009-01-10T18:14:00.004-05:00

[Our readings were Genesis 1:1-5; Psalm 29; Acts 19: 1-7; and Mark 1:4-11.]

In the beginning…

On this first Sunday after the Epiphany, when we remember the Baptism of our Lord, we focus on beginnings.

The sacrament of Baptism is itself a beginning, where new members of the Church are born again. Certain days in the church year—the Easter Vigil, Pentecost, All Saints’ Day and this First Sunday after Epiphany—are especially appropriate days for baptisms. This day has particular meaning for me, as it was 21 years ago on the First Sunday after Epiphany that my wife and I stood before the members of St. Andrew’s Church in San Antonio as our son was baptized.

In our liturgy, baptism is expected to take place in front of the whole congregation as a part of the chief service on a Sunday or other feast day. This is because the entire church is involved; while there are sponsors or godparents, everyone attending promises to “do all in [our] power to support these persons in their life in Christ.” In a few minutes, we will renew our baptismal vows and make a new set of promises to God.

We will state again our renunciation of evil and renew our commitment to Jesus Christ and promise, with God’s help

to continue in the Church’s teaching, community, sacraments, and prayers
to never give in to evil, and, when we inevitably stray, to change our paths and return to God’s path
to proclaim the Gospel not just with our lips but with our lives
to look for Christ in every person, following his commandment to love all of our neighbors as ourselves
to work for the justice and peace of the Kingdom of God throughout the world, and to remember that every human being has been created in God’s image

There is a common thread in our readings today: each of them refers to beginnings and in each of them the Holy Spirit is seen to act.

We have the beautiful Priestly creation story from Genesis—the ultimate beginning. Before there was Light, there was a “wind from God” sweeping over the waters. The Hebrew word here is ruach which can be translated alternatively as “wind,” “breath”, or “spirit”. The Holy Spirit—the “wind from God”—was present and acting in the Creation.

In our reading from Acts, we hear of some problems in the infant Church in the town of Ephesus. Paul learns that the people there who had been baptized were baptized after the manner of John the Baptist, not in the name of Jesus. The problem with this is that the Holy Spirit was missing from the process, indeed they had not even heard of a Holy Spirit. Paul baptized them again in the name of Jesus and this time, the Holy Spirit came upon them. The Holy Spirit is a part of every Christian baptism. And so, as Jesus commanded the disciples at the end of Matthew’s Gospel to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” the Church has done and this Trinitarian formula is still honored, even in Churches who don’t have a strong liturgical tradition.

We have Mark’s description of Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist in the Jordan River. As Acts notes, John’s baptism is a baptism of repentance of sin. “Repentance” is more than feeling bad at having sinned; it is a turning from the path that led to that sin so that it will not be repeated.

Jesus joined in the crowds of humanity being baptized, not because he had sinned, but both to show our common human nature and so that God may be revealed.

The details vary a bit between the Gospel about what, if anything, John and Jesus said and who heard the voice from heaven. But clearly the Holy Spirit appeared in this baptism and here in Mark, the heavens are torn apart, the boundary between heaven and earth is breached. Jesus’ baptism is thus connected with the two other times when the boundaries are “torn apart”—in the Transfiguration and at Jesus’ death, when the veil of the Temple, the boundary of the Holy of Holies, was torn from top to bottom.

Karl Barth wrote that God’s claiming of Jesus as his son in this reading summarizes the essence of the Gospel: God does not remain hidden in the heights of heaven but descends to the depths of earthly life so that we might see and hear him.

This naming of Jesus as the Son of God will be repeated at the Transfiguration; it is that title which convicts Jesus of blasphemy at his trial; and it is that title which the soldier repeats at the foot of the cross. Golgotha confirmed the title Jesus received at the River Jordan. God’s hailing of Jesus as “Son” was Jesus’ entrance onto the path that led inevitably to the Cross. And, just as with Jesus, our baptism starts us on a road where we bear our own cross and saving our own life only by losing it.

Exile and Return (Second Sunday after Christmas--January 4, 2009)

2009-01-07T22:34:00.001-05:00

[Our lessons are Jeremiah 31:7-14; Psalm 84; Ephesians 1:3-6, 15-19a; and Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23.]

Our Gospel reading today, unusually, focuses on Joseph, and hints at horror. Joseph, in response to an angel’s warning in a dream to flee to Egypt, acts without hesitation and takes Mary and the infant Jesus to safety.

What the Holy Family was fleeing was a hideous evil. Herod “the Great” did not hold on to power by being merciful and gentle. If you were seen as a threat, you were eliminated, ruthlessly, without mercy, and without concern as to your guilt or innocence.

So when Herod learned that people were saying that a newborn boy in Bethlehem was being called the King of the Jews, he decided to take no chances. No one could tell him which child was the King? No problem at all, just kill all the children!

This evil, this violence and fear, is as much a part of the Christmas story as the manger and the shepherds and the wise men. Palestine was a violent place where the poor were systematically brutalized and this simple peasant family was vulnerable enough that they had to go into exile to save their infant son’s life. We don’t know how many children were less fortunate and were killed.

Jesus’ family knew the experience of exile, of the need to flee their country because someone wanted them dead. While most of us here in America haven’t known that experience, unfortunately, it’s far too familiar to many people in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and we don’t have to go back more than a few years to see it in Europe. Some have been in exile for many years and have little hope of returning home. The story of the Holy Family’s exile in Egypt should help us identify with the plight of all refugees.

In our Collect for this day, we praise God for creating and restoring the “dignity of human nature” and, in our Baptismal Covenant, we promise to “strive for justice and peace… and respect the dignity of every human being.” Anything we do, from contributing to the feeding and clothing of the homeless to advocating humane care and repatriation of refugees, is a mandate of our covenant with Jesus in Baptism.

We hear the theme of exile and return in our reading from Jeremiah. Jeremiah is writing about the return of the remnant of Israel from many years’ exile in Babylon. God will turn the mourning of the exiles into joy. The Church proclaims hope to the exiled—a hope of returning to their homes one day.

For we too are exiles, exiled in a world that promises great material wealth while it fails to satisfy our deepest desire to be in our spiritual home with God. We have not yet reached our true home and the refugee experience of the Holy Family reminds us that even Jesus, who began life as a homeless person in a stable, could lack a true home on earth.

"Here Am I"

2008-12-21T16:56:00.003-05:00

[Our readings were 2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16; Canticle 15; Romans 16: 25-27; and Luke 1:26-38.]

Can you imagine how this all sounded to Mary?

She is a young woman of an obscure, but presumably respectable family. Her family has made a good marriage for her with a respectable carpenter which will put her in the tiny middle class of her country. She is probably expecting a quiet life, some children, a degree of security. While she plans to follow God’s will for her life, she assumes it’s the usual stuff—keep the Commandments, obey the Law, that sort of thing.

Then, here comes the angel Gabriel telling her that God has other plans for her life. These plans are unexpected, dangerous, painful, and scandalous. They can change everything.

A Presbyterian minister, Frederick Buechner, wrote in his book Peculiar Treasures that

“She struck the angel Gabriel as hardly old enough to have a child at all, let alone this child, but he’d been entrusted with a message to give her and he gave it. He told her what the child was to be named, and who he was to be, and something about the mystery that was to come upon her. ‘You mustn’t be afraid, Mary,’ he said. And as he said it, he only hoped she wouldn’t notice that beneath the great, golden wings, he himself was trembling with fear to think that the whole future of creation hung now on the answer of a girl.”

What would Mary say? Would she do it? Gabriel and all the angels knew that God acts by freely allowing people to answer “yes” when He asks.

God is like that. God allows us to make our own choices, good or bad. God respects our freedom. He lets us do the wrong things, make the wrong choices, always waiting for the answer to be “Yes!”

We know what Mary answered: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word.”

During Advent, we hear about Advent’s gifts to us. Advent is a time for self-examination, a time for repentance, for turning away from things and people and ways of life and behavior that keep us from drawing close to the God who is always looking to meet us, whether we acknowledge Him or not. Today’s Advent gift is the gift of commitment, the gift of turning toward God and making the commitment to offer ourselves as the servants of God, saying, along with Mary, our own “yes”: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord.” These words will change everything.

Others have said “Yes” to God—Noah, Abram, Samuel, and Jesus himself, in the Garden of Gethsemane. That doesn’t mean that the road became smooth and straight for them, nor will it be so for us when we say, “Here I am.”

God calls us constantly, always seeking us, waiting to hear those words from us that Mary spoke and changed all of creation: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord.” When we say them, the effect on human history probably won’t be so profound as when Mary said them. But the effect on us will be.

Saying “Yes” frees us from asking, “What’s in it for me?” and “What do I get out of it?”

Saying “Yes” to God frees us from trying to be self-important and self-serving, and frees us for service, for purpose, for meaning in our lives.

Like Mary, we have plans for our families and for our lives. As Advent ends, we need to remember that God has plans for us. We need to remember that it has been those times in our lives when things did not go as we had planned, when we thought things had gone wrong, that God was the most present.

When we say “Here I am” to God, we give up the absolute authority of our own plans. We agree to listen, and to let God say “No”, even to our best plans for ourselves, even to our best plans for God. That’s what happened to David when he planned a house for God.

Planning for the future is very important. We are expected to use the freedom God gave us responsibly. That includes making plans and decisions and carrying them out. There was nothing wrong with David’s plans, or with Mary’s. Christmas reminds us that God’s plans quite often are different from ours.

When, like Mary, we are open to hearing what it is God asks of us, we will find ourselves free to perform acts of caring and love, both small and large. We will make ourselves available for what God has in store for us, for what God needs us to do, and for what God has created us to do. And God needs you and me and every one of us to do it.

Don’t think the angels aren’t all holding their breath to hear your answer when God approaches you with a task. Don’t think that all the heavenly hosts don’t sing, “Alleluia!” when you say, freely, “yes.”

You don’t need to find new words. These words of Mary will do just fine: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word.”

Tidings of Comfort and Joy

2008-12-07T07:21:00.002-05:00

[Our lessons were Isaiah 40:1-11, Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13, 2 Peter 3:8-15a, and Mark 1:1-8.]

Comfort, O comfort my people,
says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and cry to her
that she has served her term,
that her penalty is paid,
that she has received from the LORD’s hand
double for all her sins.

With these words, the “second Isaiah” brings good news to the people of Israel of God’s comfort and God’s redemption from their exile of 150 years. There is an end to God’s judgment and wrath because the God who punishes is also like a shepherd who leads his flock down the highway through the desert which leads to Jerusalem and home.

Now the word “comfort” here has a very specific meaning. “Comfort” doesn’t mean to put at ease or make comfortable. “Comfort” here means to “make strong” or to fortify. Take Heart! Be encouraged! Be prepared for the better days to come.

A voice tells us to be ready, to “prepare the way of the Lord”, to “make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” To this abandoned community who supposed that God had left them, Second Isaiah announces the God is approaching on this highway they are preparing.

People may wither and fade, like the grass and the flowers, but the word of God stands forever. God will come with might and gentleness as a shepherd cares for his flock.

Our Epistle reading was probably written in Peter’s name sometime after his death, probably about the end of the first century, but perhaps as late as the middle of the second century. Like 2 Timothy, this letter was written by a follower of the apostle, using the apostle’s name to give the letter greater weight.

The letter deals with a theme of Advent: waiting. Why has Christ taken so long to return? It’s probably a good thing that the writer didn’t know we could ask the same question in the twenty-first century. Waiting is based on two concerns: expectation (“will it be worth the wait?”) and response (“What shall I do in the meantime?”).

First, we are reminded that God’s time is not our time, that “one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day.” What is “soon” to God may not seem “soon” to us. (This sounds something like the way “Christmas is coming soon” doesn’t seem to mean the same thing to a parent and a child.)

God isn’t being slow about his promise for “slowness’ sake”. What looks like tardiness is really mercy. God is wanting everyone to have a chance to repent and be redeemed. God doesn’t want anyone to be damned. But, since we won’t know when that day will finally come—it will come without warning “like a thief”—don’t wait to repent, because you might not count time as God does and you might get it wrong!

Finally, we begin the Gospel of Mark by proclaiming “the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” But, we don’t talk about Jesus in this reading.

In our culture, people seem to have to take lead, to be seen as the person in charge. Our political and business leaders don’t say, “It wasn’t all about me. There was a messenger who came before me, and in fact prepared the way.” But that is how the story of Jesus begins.

Even as the Jews of the time of Second Isaiah were in foreign exile in Babylon, the Jews of the First Century were under foreign occupation by Rome. So Mark looks back to the words of Second Isaiah to “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” He also quotes from the prophet Malachi, who warned Israel of God’s judgment. If we look for God to deliver us from our enemies, we must first examine ourselves to see whether we are fit to stand before God.

Our lessons today thus tell us to be strong, because God will redeem his people. We should not lose heart because the day of redemption seems delayed, because God wants everyone to be redeemed. And we prepare for that redemption by joining with John in confessing our sins and looking to the mightier one who is to come. In the words of the Christmas carol, “tidings of comfort and joy”, indeed!

Waiting

2008-11-30T18:46:00.002-05:00

[Our lessons were Isaiah 64:1-9, Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18, 1 Corinthians 1:3-9 and Mark 13:24-37.]

Advent is a season of waiting as we prepare to look back, recalling Jesus’ birth two thousand years ago and look forward to the time Jesus returns in glory. But we are not just concerned with the past and future; Advent also calls for us to be watching for Christ’s presence among us today.

As a culture, we don’t like waiting. We all have horror stories of waiting at airports or in line at the license tag office—a recent experience of mine! But we must recall that waiting is sometimes essential. The best food sometimes isn’t fast food; waiting is required. A couple waiting for the birth of their child—either in Palestine 2,000 years ago or in Georgia today—must wait about nine months for the baby to be born.

When we have to wait for something, we realize that we are not in control. Having to wait reminds us that we can’t make everything happen at our command. Waiting helps us watch for the needs of others rather than our own.

During Advent, we are called to be attentive and watchful for Jesus’ presence and for the chance to serve him. During Advent, our song is, “Maranatha, Come Lord Jesus.”

Outside, in the world, it is Christmas time already, in fact it has been for some time now. But the Church calls us instead to a season of preparation, taking stock, and being ready for the coming of the Christ child. Our focus isn’t on buying presents and parties and stuffing turkeys. Advent is God’s time, when we get ready for the return of the Light. It is time to listen to the Prophets reminding God’s people that they have strayed from God’s plan, and it is time for sincere and prayerful change. They are calling us back from the darkness of winter.

Let us make time in this Advent season for reading the prophecies and praying for the birth of the child again, making ready in our hearts and homes a place for that child who comes again in power and great glory. Look clearly into the darkness and the cold out there and pray and work for a decent and warm and orderly place for the baby to come into. Make ready in our hearts and minds a place for the Christ Child to come once again. The prophets are right: we must be ready, and time is short!

In the Gospel reading today, Jesus tells us of a man who leaves his home in the care of his servants, each with a task to perform. And there is a warning: don’t be asleep when the master returns. Be watchful, be ready, because you don’t know when the master will return.

We are called to be awake in this middle time, the time between his first coming as a child and his second coming in power and great glory. The reason Jesus told his disciples to be alert, to stay awake, was because he couldn’t tell them exactly when he was going to come again—that secret was known only by the Father alone. If he’d known, why tell them to stay awake and be on the watch? He could have said, “I’ll return on November 30, 2008. So just relax until then.” But Jesus tells us that he didn’t know when he was going to come again to judge the world, only that he was going to come again. Be alert, keep awake.

There is a story that John Wesley—who was a founder of the Church here in Georgia—was once asked, “What would you do if you knew the Lord was going to return tomorrow afternoon?” He said, “I would tonight sleep soundly, and rise at my accustomed hour to greet the day with prayer; then I should visit any of my congregation who are sick, and spend the rest of my time at my desk composing my sermon for next Sunday: for I would want the Lord to find me at the work he has given me to do, and not in idleness. He has given me many days to serve him; and I would serve him as well on the last as on the first.”

Jesus may come tomorrow. He may come next month; he may come a million years from now. When he will come isn’t for us to know. That he will come is the core of our faith. We can be prepared for his return by recognizing that he is still among us in every person we serve and honor in his name. Because we have faith, not only that he will come, but to do the work he gives us to do, we are called to be awake and at work in this long middle night of the world. We are to keep awake, be alert, do God’s will, because we do not know when the king will return in glory. May we be awake and doing his will when that day comes.

"The Least of These"

2008-11-22T18:00:00.002-05:00

[Our lessons today were Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24, Psalm 100, Ephesians 1:15-23, and Matthew 25:31-46.]

We end the Pentecost season and the church year this weekend with the Feast of Christ the King. We remind ourselves that while we are citizens of an earthly country, Jesus, the King of kings and Lord of lords, is the one, as St. Paul says, under whose feet all things are put in subjection.

As was true the last two weeks, our Gospel reading looks toward the Second Coming. Immediately after Jesus tells the parable of the talents that we heard last week, he continues with a story of God’s judgment. But those who are rewarded are not the heroes and martyrs. The reward goes to people who did the ordinary things: they fed the hungry, gave the thirsty something to drink, welcomed the stranger, clothed the naked, cared for the sick and visited the prisoners.

And those whom God judges as guilty are those who failed to do those things. They gave no food to the hungry nor drink to the thirsty, they shunned the stranger, gave the naked nothing to wear, didn’t care for the sick or visit the prisoner.

Why are these things so important? It’s because when we choose to serve or reject people—all of whom are created in God’s image—we are choosing to serve or reject Jesus himself! As he warns us, “Just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”

Usually when we think of Jesus, we have a particular mental picture. When we think of a king, we have our own thought of what a king should look like. The story is told that some years ago, an American soldier on a bus in Sweden told the man sitting next to him, “America is the most democratic country in the world. Ordinary citizens may go to the White House to see the President and discuss things with him.” The man said, “That's nothing. In Sweden, the King and the people travel on the same bus.” When the man got off the bus at the next stop, the American was told by other passengers that he had been sitting next to King Gustav Adolf VI. Sometimes, appearances are deceiving.

When we think of what our King should look like, do we get it all wrong? When we see (and pass on by) a hungry person who is homeless, do we say, “That isn’t the king; a king would wear a crown.” When we see someone cold and shivering from wearing inadequate clothing, do we say, “That isn’t the king; a king would have warm robes.” When we hear of someone who is sick and alone, do we say, “That isn’t the king; a king would have his court to serve him.” When we see a stranger, a person different from us, do we say, “That isn’t the king; a king would look like us.” When we hear of a prisoner, do we say, “That isn’t the king; a king would never be a criminal who is sent to prison.”

What does our King really look like? He look likes a man—hungry and thirsty; a woman—who has no home; a child—sick and abandoned. What can we do for him, for the “least of these”?

At St. Christopher’s, some of the things we do at the end of the year are for the “least of these.” When we, in our shoebox ministry, create Christmas presents for battered women and children who have been forced to flee their homes, we are doing that to Jesus. When, through Perry Volunteer Outreach, we collect cans of green beans for the hungry, we are feeding Jesus. When we support the Appleton Family Ministries as they provide an after-school program for at-risk children and a mentoring program for their parents, we are doing that to Jesus.

A few years ago, I read a book, The Least of These: Fair Taxes and the Moral Duty of Christians, by Susan Pace Hamill, a law professor at my alma mater, Alabama, who looked at the tax system in Alabama from the perspective of how it serve the “least of these.” Her conclusion was that a tax structure was unjust if either the burden for paying taxes oppressively falls on the poor or if it fails to raise adequate revenues to provide everyone in the community, especially the poor, minimum safety nets and a minimum opportunity to improve their lives.

Our responsibility toward the “least of these” isn’t satisfied only in our church. We are called upon to support these values in our public life as well. If we, through our church, make shoeboxes to bring light to the lives of a few women and children, but oppose policies which help protect women and children in our state and nation, are we doing enough? If we, through our church, provide green beans to feed the poor in Perry, but oppose policies designed to reduce extreme poverty worldwide, are we doing enough? If we, through our church, support at risk children in middle Georgia, but oppose policies designed to improve educational opportunities for all, are we doing enough?

God doesn’t call us to do more than He has equipped us to do. But He does require us to do as much as He has equipped us to do.

Using Our Talents

2008-11-15T19:07:00.003-05:00

[Our lessons were Zephaniah 1:7, 12-18, Psalm 90, 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11, and Matthew 25:14-30.]

Even as we are coming to the end of the Church’s Year—the Feast of Christ the King next week is the last Sunday of the year—we are considering the End of All Things, just as we did last week.

In his letter to the church in Thessalonica, Paul answers the question the Christians have asked for nearly two thousand years: When will Jesus come again? As Jesus himself said, that day will come like a thief in the night. When everything seems peaceful and secure, then the judgment will come suddenly and woe to anyone who hasn’t prepared. Zephaniah warns us of a bitter day where the warrior cries aloud, a day of wrath, distress and anguish, ruin and devastation, darkness and gloom, clouds and thick darkness. The wicked shall be in such distress that they will walk like the blind.

While this is doom for the wicked and the apathetic—those who say the Lord will not do good, nor will he do harm—those who are prepared won’t be surprised and will not be in darkness. For them, the Day of Judgment will be a day of acquittal, not condemnation, a day of redemption and release, not a day of wrath.

Jesus has given us all that we need to be ready for him. Lamps (from last week) trimmed and filled with the oil of hope. As Paul says this week, we also have a breastplate of faith and love and a helmet of the hope of salvation.

The theme of this week’s parable is that the master has given each servant something and the good and trustworthy servant puts it to use and makes something out of it.

But the third servant has done nothing for his master. Out of fear, he has buried his talent in the ground and failed to put it to work. That fear is the opposite of hope, and those who live their lives in fear will find that their fears will be realized. But those who live their lives in hope will find their hope is rewarded.

We all have talents. We all have the ability to advance the coming of the Kingdom of God. Some have more, some have less, but all have enough. As Paul says, we are children of light who need not fear the darkness. We are called to use the talents God has given us, not just be content to hold them or to bury them. God wants us to act to do his work; that is why we have those talents.

As one of my favorite writers, Tobias Haller writes

our faith is not meant to lull us into the sleep of complacency; our hope is not meant to be treated like an insurance policy tucked away in a drawer; and our love—if we do not express it to our neighbors as to ourselves—if it bears no fruit, it will convict and condemn us on the last day. God gives us these things to put them to use: our faith, our hope, and above all, our love. He gives us these things on loan to be used for his purposes, not ours. God gives us talents and skills, all of us differently, but each of us valued in the sight of God for what we can do for him and for his kingdom, and for our brothers and sisters. The Lord has given us all of this, and he wants a return on his investment. … Let us not, like the lazy servant, be found only able to give back what he gave with nothing more to show. Let us rather use what God has given us—our faith, our hope, and our love—to increase his kingdom here on earth, that when he comes again in power and great glory, we may be with him forever in heaven.

Happy Birthday to Me!

2008-11-14T05:00:00.002-05:00

On November 14, 1955, at the Base Hospital at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, outside Dayton, Ohio, I made my entry into the world. Over the next 53 years, I moved from Ohio to Florida to Texas to Illinois to Alabama to Oklahoma to Alabama (again!) to Texas (again!) and finally to Georgia. (Whew!) I grew up (for the most part), married, raised two children (who have turned out pretty well so far) and worked as a government attorney.

All in all, my 53rd year has been a tough one.

In February, my father died, just three days short of his 87th birthday. Although he had been quite ill and in and out of the hospital for about two years, his death was sudden and unexpected and a shock. In fact, when I got there, on the desk was the birthday card I had mailed to him the day before he died. It was a painful trip to Springfield, Illinois, for his funeral and occasionally I can still hear him chuckle if I mutter something to myself about the mild escapades my children get into ("I knew your turn would come.")

I am very glad that I had decided to go to Springfield for a few days in July, 2007. I hadn't been there for many years and it was strange seeing the neighborhood with mature trees--it was a new subdivision when we moved there in 1970. My sister had warned me that Dad had lost a lot of weight and I was shocked at his appearance. He was frail but his mind was clear, which it remained until the end. I remember thinking that the next trip would likely be for his funeral, but I expected that would be a few years away, not seven months.

From a few months' perspective, I don't think my thoughts and feelings have changed too much. I recognized then and still do, that his death was a release from two years of illness that had drained his strength, ended his ability to do a job he enjoyed, prevented him from traveling with my stepmother, and virtually confined him to his house. That's not to say he wanted to die; I don't think he did. But it helped me realize that sometimes healing from illness isn't curing, it can be release. I miss Dad and I always will, but I am comforted by the knowledge that we had no unresolved issues between us and the faith that this wasn't truly the end.

Two months later, in April, I had my own health crisis when I suffered a mild heart attack and, through angioplasty, had two stents inserted in my right coronary artery. I was touched by the kindness of co-workers and members of my church. I was grateful for modern medicine and health insurance. I didn't have a real chance to worry about death while this was going on, because it didn't realize what exactly was happening to me and by the time I knew I had suffered a heart attack, it was over and I was out of danger. (But, a few months, later, the sudden death of Tim Russert from a heart attack reminded me the borderline between my result and his was not so large. If you believe in the science fiction concept of alternate universes, perhaps somewhere I didn't survive and my wife became a widow at 52. A sobering thought.)

But I got a second chance. I changed my diet, took (and still take) lots of meds and have dropped about 35 pounds. There are a few foods I miss, but there are some I've picked up--broccoli isn't that bad! I guess in some ways, it was a positive experience.

Other things have happened: we've elected a new President, the rector of my church retired, the Crimson Tide are undefeated and #1 as of now. The economy has gone south (as far as Antarctica, I think!). But I'm still here. My beloved wife is still here, too. We added a puppy, not long after I got out of the hospital.

All in all, not a bad year, I guess.

Veterans' Day

2008-11-11T05:00:00.002-05:00

"A Veterans Day Reflection”by the Rev. Dr. George Clifford, U.S. Navy Chaplain, Captain (Retired)

Veterans Day is quickly becoming simply another public holiday, an opportunity for people to sleep late, stay home from school, or get a head start on Christmas shopping. Today, many see joining the military as a way out of rural communities or urban poverty; military recruiters emphasize educational opportunities and career bonuses. These perceptions, per se, are not bad. However, when the draft ended in 1973 and the U.S. military became an all volunteer force, any remaining sense of military service as an obligation that citizens owed to their nation disappeared. Similarly, aspiring politicians no longer consider military service an essential, if unofficial, prerequisite to elective office. Many U.S. citizens do not know anyone in the military and have little awareness of what military life is like.

In the last four decades, the U.S. has increasingly frequently turned to the military as the instrument of choice for implementing foreign policy. The U.S. conducted military operations in Grenada, Panama, Haiti, Somalia, Ethiopia, Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and numerous, less well know places. Regardless of whether one regards an operation as morally right, each operation took a toll on our military personnel. They repeatedly went into harm’s way, sometimes were killed or wounded, sometimes sacrificing important time and relationships at home, and always answering duty’s call to serve their country.

In other words, while reliance on the military to execute foreign policy has increased the American public feels less connected and less of a debt to its men and women in uniform. Veterans Day is an opportunity to change that. We need to remember that the military only implements policies formulated and adopted by our nation’s elected officials. Because we live in a democracy in which government is of and by the people, if we do not like our nation’s policies, then we have only ourselves to blame. Blaming military personnel for policies one believes immoral or failed, as happened during the Vietnam War, is wrong. Active political participation, seeking to influence public policy to match more closely our Christian convictions, is the most important way in which citizens can support their troops. Other significant ways to support our troops include regularly praying for their safety, communicating our support to them through correspondence, caring for families and loved ones during separations, and helping returned warriors transition back to civilian life.

The time has come to make Veterans Day more than parades, wreath laying, flags in cemeteries, and patriotic slogans. This Veterans Day, support our troops.

Be Ready!

2008-11-09T21:06:00.003-05:00

[Our lessons today were Amos 5:18-24, Wisdom 6:17-20, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 and Matthew 25:1-13.]

As we approach the end of our church year and the season of Advent, our readings take on a new emphasis. We are beginning to focus on the parousia, the time when God’s purpose will be fulfilled.

Our reading this time from Matthew is about a wedding in which five bridesmaids are ready and five are not. Since the unready bridesmaids are away when the delayed bridegroom arrives, the party starts without them.

I’ve noticed that, usually, when we talk about this party, we seem to make it something to be feared. We have had a series of books (and movies and games) of the Left Behind genre. They have a fairly brutal Jesus (one writer calls this version the “Christ-inator” after the robot Terminator) who seems to glory in bloody battles and lack any trace of human compassion.

That isn’t the Jesus of the Gospels. The Jesus we know is compassionate, a teacher and a healer. Why should we think it will be any different when he returns?

And, by the way, when will that be? Over the nearly two thousand years of the Christian church, one of the greatest wastes of time and energy has been the trying to decode Biblical clues and fix the date. People then go into caves and onto mountain tops and wait… and then sheepishly come out and come down and go back to their calculations to try again. People try to line up events in the Middle East against words in Revelation which were actually meant to refer to events of that time. They all forget Jesus’ words from Matthew, just a little ahead of today’s reading: “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” If Jesus doesn’t know, how presumptuous is it for us to try to figure it out?

Also, in our reading from the letter to the church in Thessalonica are some words that have led some people to imagine that a Rapture will occur with people disappearing.

For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever.

I suggest that what this describes is the “reception committee” when Jesus arrives for the equivalent of the Roman triumph. Jesus’ believers will meet him and escort him in triumph, not leave earth behind.

How do we make ourselves ready as the five bridesmaids clearly failed to do? Our reading from the prophet Amos gives us a clue: “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream.” Amos saw wealthy merchants trampling over the poor and defenseless. He saw public leaders living in luxury, unconcerned over the plight of their people. Their religious ceremonies were meaningless, trying to appease God rather than please Him. In their new-found prosperity they had forgotten their past. But, Amos reminded them, called to be God’s chosen people, they were also called to greater responsibility, not special privilege. Amos’ main purpose was to call these people back to God, to urge their repentance and restoration as a people of God, so that on the day when Israel was to be crowned with glory and honor, it would truly be a day of light and not a day of darkness and gloom, as Amos predicted would happen if they persisted in their current ways. God was not interested in their empty rituals and offerings; the only offering he sought was the offering of themselves. Then, truly, justice and righteousness would rain down upon them. With a real sense of urgency, he called his people to change because tomorrow might be too late.

Even as Amos was trying to warn the people of Israel to do what was needed to return them to the Lord’s favor, we can prepare for the parousia by working to bring God’s kingdom into being. How do we do that? We can see one way when we consider the Millennium Development Goals:

Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
Achieve universal primary education
Promote gender equality and empower women
Reduce child mortality
Improve maternal health
Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
Care for God’s Creation
Bring people together around the world to do justice

When we do these things we are getting ready and making sure that our lamps have oil for when the bridegroom comes.

[The picture with the words that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., took from Amos is the Civil Rights Memorial at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama.]

Election Aftermath

2008-11-06T22:33:00.002-05:00

I voted for Senator McCain (and not against Senator Obama), but it was impossible not to be deeply moved by the transcendent joy felt by so many African-Americans at an election they understandably thought would never come.

My hope is that the Republican party can transform itself into a responsible opposition party which doesn't seem to hate large parts of the electorate--never a strategy for success.

My daughter was excited to vote for Obama and was understandably upset when people who knew her choice said cruel things to her, like she had stabbed the military in the back. (I told her that her father, a retired officer, didn't think that way. Besides, I bet most of the people who said that never were in the military themselves.) For my part, I've told her I know she voted different from me, but I raised her to think for herself.

I don't understand that way of thinking. I think we were fortunate at this time to have two decent, intelligent men from which to choose. I chose John McCain because I thought he would be better, but I don't fear Barack Obama. I know I won't agree with everything he says and does, but he was able to persuade a majority of the voters to give him the chance and he won fair and square. Good luck to him and to us all.

She and her husband are going to DC on Jan 20th. I have told her to dress warmly.

Remembrance: All Saints' Day

2008-11-02T22:14:00.001-05:00

On this day, we gather to remember all those who have gone before us, all those who in some way contributed to the life we live and the world we live in. All those who know, better than we can ever know, the meaning of St. Paul’s words: “If we live we live to the Lord, and if we die we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.”

We pray for the saints or martyrs because they lived as lives already in God’s eternal presence. “Martyr” means witness. Their lives are a witness to us of the nature of eternity itself, and how knowing the nature and shape of eternity can shape the way we live our lives as a witness to the power of Christ in our lives here and now! So it is that Jesus offers a glimpse of what eternal life is like in the Beatitudes. Notice the present tense, for the poor—the kingdom IS theirs. It is theirs now—not later. Christianity is not a religion about the “ever after.”

We also remember today those who are not known in the wider fellowship of the faithful, but are remembered in the more intimate circles of family and friends. These parents, siblings, spouses, children, friends are the ones we remember today.

Our Gospel today is the Beatitudes, which proclaim the great reversal destined for all who hunger while others rejoice. These passages are troubling reminders that we live in an unjust world where those who cry out for justice are often mocked and dismissed as unrealistic or trouble makers. Sainthood is not just for “nice” people, it is for those who have labored for justice and peace for all people, often with ridicule being their only earthly reward. The saints seek to serve their God who demands justice and righteousness between all people of the world.

Saints are courageous because they insist on not letting hatred and evil gain control of them. Saints are faithful because they know without trust in God they are weak and subject to whatever befalls them. Today the Church exists because they persevered, and the Church invites each of us to join their joyful company.

Today is a day to recall people who have gone before us, patriarchs, prophets, and pilgrims, who were disciples in their own times. Some we know by name, others remain known only to God. Even so, as the author of Ecclesiasticus reminds us, “Their posterity will continue forever, and their glory will not be blotted out”.

Saints are people who know something profound about love, that suffering is connected with it. They learn the path of sainthood is not one of accolades but accusations. They demand change because they want people to know more about God than others can stand to have revealed. They challenge governments and leaders who exploit others. They work to bring justice to those who are ground down by injustice. And in their dedicated work, they are jailed, beaten, maligned, and sometimes murdered.

On this day we celebrate them all, knowing that God adds to their number all the time.

This is why we pray for the dead—all the dead. They all know the truth of eternity. They knew it in this life and lived accordingly. They are those people who lived and cried for eternity before the grave. They did this for themselves and, most importantly, on behalf of others.

And as we pray for the dead, may we remember that they are living still. And that our prayers for the dead are, at the end of the day, prayers for ourselves as well. Prayers that we will remember who we are and whose we are and live our lives accordingly.

So today, as we join in the celebration of the saints, give thanks to God who calls them throughout the world. Rejoice in naming them and honoring those whom we know not by name. Most of all, pray that God may instill in each of us a measure of their glory and goodness and ask that, God helping, we might be one too.

Priests are frequently asked the question, “Why do we pray for the dead? They’re dead, so why do they need our prayers?”

Of course the most direct and simple answer to that question is that they are not dead. We are the people who believe in the truth of the resurrection and that life is changed not ended. Those who go on before us are even now living a life in the total presence of the God who sends us here and one day will call us home to gather us with all our ancestors who have gone before us. So we continue to pray for those for whom life has not ended, but has been changed. They are living still and we pray for their ongoing witness in a life lived in God’s eternal presence.

We also pray for them because praying for the dead is another way of praying for ourselves. Today we pray for the dead so that we can remember what it means to be baptized: to live our lives in God’s eternal presence, and like Jesus who calls us to walk in God’s eternal presence, we are to bring this eternal life to others.

Today, as we remember those who have gone on before us to meet with Jesus, may we also remember who it is God calls us to be: unique witnesses for the Lord in this place. For whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. The One from whom we come and the One to whom we shall return. Amen.

To Love Your Neighbor as Yourself

2008-10-27T21:19:00.002-04:00

[Our lessons were Leviticus 19:1-2,15-18, Psalm 1, 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8, and Matthew 22:34-46.]

In the Gospel today, we hear Jesus say what we often call the Great Commandment. In Mark’s version, which scholars now believe was written first, the question is posed by a scribe who seems to really want to know the answer. Here in Matthew’s version, the question by the Pharisees is intended to test Jesus and is asked by a lawyer—imagine that! [Remember, as a lawyer, I get to make remarks about lawyers.]

This is an important question: What matters most to God? This apparently was not an unusual question in Judaism of that time. The Talmud reports that a Gentile asked two of the best-known teachers to teach him the whole of Torah—the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures—while standing on one foot. One of the teachers, Hillel told him, “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah, while the rest is commentary thereon; go and learn it.”

In answering, Jesus quotes two passages from the Torah. From Deuteronomy, he cites the classic Jewish affirmation of faith and loyalty to God: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is the only Lord. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.” He then quotes from Leviticus: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” and adds “There is no other commandment greater than these.”

Jesus basically says that we must treat everyone around us as if they were members of our own family, deserving of equal honor and special care.

In our culture, we normally think of “love” as a description of how we feel. But in the culture of Israel two thousand years ago, “love” wasn’t just a vague warm, mushy, feeling towards someone. “Love” meant attachment to a person backed up with action.

As James wrote in his letter, using “faith” and “love” synonymously:

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill’, and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. But someone will say, ‘You have faith and I have works.’ Show me your faith without works, and I by my works will show you my faith.

Faith and love both are matters of relationship backed up with consistent action, of acting compassionately, not just feeling that way.

These two commandments call on us to use all of our abilities, all of our selves, to help our neighbors. And remember from the parable of the Good Samaritan that everyone, even—perhaps especially—our enemies, is our neighbor.

And, as Paul’s letter to the church in Rome tells us, “‘if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.’ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” There is no better way to overcome the agenda of those who hate us. And in serving our neighbors around the world as we would ourselves, we will act that love, not just feel it.

Some words from my day job...

2008-10-21T21:54:00.002-04:00

In real life (or sort of real life), I'm a civilian attorney for the Air Force who advises people on ethics rules and fiscal law. Part of the ethics rules are the standards, found mainly in the Hatch Act, dealing with government employees and political activities. Last week, a reporter for the Macon Telegraph, the main local newspaper, interviewed me and this story ran last Saturday:

Robins workers walk fine line during elections
By Gene Rector - grector@macon.com

ROBINS AIR FORCE BASE -- As you cruise down the main thoroughfares, back roads and housing areas of Robins Air Force Base, you will see nothing that reminds you of the hotly contested political races on the outside.

No Barack Obama or John McCain posters. No signs pushing Saxby Chambliss or Jim Martin [U.S. Senate candidates]. No reminders for Jim Marshall or Rick Goddard {U.S. House candidates]. No workers wearing politically oriented T-shirts or hats or campaign buttons. No one standing on a street corner waving a placard and encouraging you to vote for their candidate.

That's the way Robins and Defense Department officials want it. It's also what the law demands.

Military members fall under Defense Department directives. Civilian employees must comply with the Hatch Act. Both require federal workers-military and civilian-to walk a very narrow course as the elections unfold.

The rules are most restrictive for the military. "We want the military to be above politics," said Paul Davison, a lawyer in the base legal office at Robins. "However, for the most part, the civilian employee restrictions apply only when they're doing their jobs."

In general, military and civilian workers may do nothing that supports or opposes a political candidate while on duty, while wearing a government uniform or operating a government vehicle.

Supervisors are additionally restricted from using their position to influence an election. Neither may federal workers solicit or receive political contributions either on or off duty or run for office in partisan elections.

Desks, offices or work cubicles must be free of political references. E-mails supporting or opposing candidates may not be sent while on duty or at any time using government systems.

Although the rules are exacting, they also are protective, Davison said. "No administration-Democrat or Republican-can push us to contribute or work on campaigns," he said. "One of the reasons the Hatch Act was passed years ago was to prevent things like that. There is also the effect of letting the taxpayer know that political activity is not what we're spending our time doing."

Military and civilian workers may express their private opinions about candidates and issues, attach bumper stickers to their vehicles and post signs at their off-base homes. They may also contribute money to political candidates and attend fundraising events when not in uniform.

Civilians may attend political rallies and meetings. Military members also may attend, but only as an observer and in civilian clothing. All may join a political party or club but the military cannot serve in any official capacity.

Only civilian employees may campaign for or against candidates in partisan elections-but not on base, not on duty and without identifying themselves as government employees.

Both military and civilian workers may sign nominating petitions and campaign for or against referendum questions and constitutional amendments.

Civilian employees and military enlisted members may run in nonpartisan elections.

"They can run," Davison noted, "but they cannot campaign while they're on the job."

The prohibition against military officers is a historic one. "A military officer is considered to already hold an office of the United States," he said. "There is an old statute that says a person holding an office under the U.S. cannot hold a second government office."

There is one political activity the Defense Department encourages, the Robins attorney emphasized. "We certainly want everyone to vote," he said. "For a long time, military officers felt it was somewhat inappropriate to vote, but we try to discourage people from thinking that way. It's very important for people to vote."

Give to God the Things That Are God’s

2008-10-19T08:30:00.003-04:00

[Our readings this week are Isaiah 45:1-7, Psalm 96:1-9, (10-13), 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10, and Matthew 22:15-22.]

Our Gospel reading today continues Matthew’s description of Jesus’ activities during Holy Week. Today, we hear one of the most misunderstood statements Jesus made.

This is on Tuesday of Holy Week. Remember that Jesus has already disrupted the money changers in the Temple. Now the Pharisees and the Herodians approach him together in the Temple. The Pharisees are devout Jews, scrupulous in their observance of the Law. The Herodians, as their name indicates, supported the family of Herod, the puppet king appointed by Rome. It appears they were seen by most people, including the Pharisees, as Roman collaborators. That they appear to be working together is ominous.

Jesus was probably already on his guard as they approached, but, if he hadn’t been, their attempt to butter him up—“we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality”—would certainly have made him suspicious. In modern day language, this is when you check to make sure your wallet is still there.

Of course, this is a trap. When the Pharisees ask him, “Is it lawful”—does it comply with Torah—“to pay taxes to the emperor?” they think they have caught Jesus no matter how he answers. If, in front of the crowd, he says that it is lawful, then he will be seen as siding with the collaborators. If, on the other hand, he says that Jews shouldn’t pay taxes, then he can be arrested for treason and sedition.

Jesus’ response is simple but brilliant. He never answers the question (a frequent habit of Jesus). He asks them to show the coin used for the tax. They produce a denarius, a coin worth about a day’s wages for a laborer which had the image of the emperor, probably Tiberius, and a Latin inscription which translates “Tiberius Caesar, Son of the Divine Augustus.” To a good Jew, this description of the emperor as divine was scandalous.

And here we have the people who are trying to trap Jesus, themselves carrying a coin with this “graven image” into the Temple! You can be sure that the crowd would have noticed that.

It is here that Jesus says the famous words: “Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s and give to God, the things that are God’s.”

It is important to understand that Jesus was not trying to set up a separation of church and state, but avoiding a trap. Unfortunately, this is how this sentence has often been interpreted—that there is this compartment for the church over here and a compartment for the government over there and particularly, that the church should stay in its own box. Clearly, Jesus must be telling bishops and preachers to mind their own business.

This idea has been used to support some pretty awful concepts of loyalty to the state, including the loyalty of many German Christians to Hitler, although of course there were exceptions whose light will shine forever. Whenever someone tries to justify that obedience to the state overrides our obedience to God, you can be sure that this interpretation is at the bottom of it.

Instead of focusing on what is the emperor’s, let’s focus on what belongs to God. To an observant Jew like Jesus, the answer is simple—Everything!

As we hear in Isaiah today: “I am the LORD, and there is no other. I form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe: I the LORD do all these things.”

Everything comes from God and God has a claim on all of life and we are made in His image. Remember that when Jesus asked whose image was on the coin? The emperor’s image is only on a coin; God’s image is on every human life.

Even though the state—even a relatively gentle state as ours—seems to have a claim on much of our life, nothing belongs to the state. Everything belongs to God.

We are citizens of a kingdom, the Kingdom of Heaven, even while we are citizens of an earthly country. When the obligations of our two citizenships conflict, which do we honor first?

Jesus calls us to our true, ultimate and permanent citizenship. Our true citizenship will be at the heavenly banquet. As one writer has noted, the seating arrangements should be interesting. It is quite possible that a French Huguenot murdered in the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre will be seated next to a Roman Catholic who may have been the murderer. It is quite possible that a Roman Catholic who was executed in England may be seated across the table from one of our Anglican forebears responsible for the execution. Most of the soldiers who slaughtered each other in our Civil War were Christians. Most of the Russians, Germans, Austrian, Serbs, Italians, French, English, and North Americans who slaughtered each other in World Wars I and II were Christian and undoubtedly will be gathered at the heavenly banquet. We are all citizens of that kingdom.

And if we really take seriously the claim that God is rightful Lord of the earth and all that is in it, over what is the emperor lord? Nothing.

When we say “Jesus is Lord”, we make a radical, liberating claim that nobody and nothing else gets to make. So when it comes to all worldly powers who would be Lord, whether it’s the flag of a nation, a cause, respectability and achievement, or a person who wants to take God’s place as Lord of our lives, understand that they have no rightful claim at all.

Dressing for the Wedding

2008-10-12T15:54:00.002-04:00

[Our Lessons today were Isaiah 25:1-9, Psalm 23, Philippians 4:1-9 and Matthew 22:1-14.]

We continue today with the series of parables in Matthew’s Gospel where Jesus is responding to the questions of the Chief Priests and Pharisees at the beginning of Holy Week. We heard first of the parable of the two sons where Jesus identified the Jewish authorities as those who spoke the right words but did not really do what God wants. Then came the parable of the vineyard where Jesus said the kingdom of God would be taken from the religious authorities who oppressed the people and given to a people who produce the fruits of the kingdom. Today’s parable throws us a curve.

For his parables, Jesus used common images which would be instantly familiar to his audiences. Now he specifically identifies the kingdom of Heaven as being as a wedding feast. Wedding feasts were big deals in that culture. Here the king—clearly God the Father—is holding a wedding feast for his son—just as clearly Jesus. Just as in last week’s vineyard parable, the king’s messengers—the prophets—are mistreated by those invited guests. Many of the invited guests don’t bother to show up, even though the feast has “the rich food filled with marrow” and “well-aged wines strained clear” in the words from Isaiah describing the heavenly banquet. So the king tells his servants to invite “everyone you find” to the feast—not just those originally invited. This sounds like the Gentiles.

Now comes the curve: the king finds a guest not wearing a wedding robe! He asks the guest how he got in without a wedding robe and receives no reply. (Our translation says that the guest was “speechless” but some translators believe the better sense of the Greek text is that the guest chose not to reply.) In an act that seems totally bizarre to us, the king tells his servants to bind the guest hand and foot and to “throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” When you hear about “weeping and gnashing” in the Scriptures, you can be pretty sure you are seeing a reference to God’s judgment.

And this is a story of God’s judgment and Jesus will return to that theme later in Holy Week when he speaks of God’s judgment as the separating of the sheep and the goats. We'll here this reading next month at the feast of Christ the King. Those who took care of the least will be placed on one side and those who didn’t feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, and so forth, will go on the other. Judgment will fall on them.

In our story today of the wedding feast, no one has to earn an invitation. God invites everyone—the Jew and the Gentile, the good and the bad, the rich and the poor.

As for the unfortunate guest without a wedding robe, guests did not provide their own robes; they received them on entering the hall. If a guest is willing to put on the wedding robe—perhaps the white robe the newly baptized put on to symbolize their being washed clean—they can enter. They have faced God’s judgment.

And it is God’s judgment, not ours. We should not enjoy the idea that anyone will not be chosen and we absolutely must never hope that someone—anyone—won’t be chosen. I commentator I read says that we should hope that no one is in hell and leave to God the decision as to whether anyone is. I think one of the most important concepts that we often forget is that we will be judged by God by the measure which we use to judge others. Our problem is that, like Jonah last week, we don’t trust God’s judgment to be as rigorous as our own.

We mustn’t be smug or self-righteous at the wedding feast because we haven’t earned a place there. No one has. We should be humble in that knowledge, but we in this country sometimes feel we are better than those who are less well off.

Right now, the entire world is going through difficult economic times. Businesses are failing, jobs are being lost. I read that $2 trillion—two thousand billion—in retirement savings have evaporated. I read about obscene—there is no other word for it—displays of wealth and arrogance by leaders of financial institutions. In many cases, peoples’ lives have been drastically altered. People are afraid.

I don’t have gentle platitudes to offer. I can’t say that if you come to church, you won’t have problems or that if you don’t you will. That might help attendance, but it wouldn’t be true. I can offer this promise: God wants to help you get through. If you let Him, you will find that you are given strength necessary to endure these times and come through them.

The Archbishop of Canterbury said recently that “the causes of poverty are many. Setting aside the lazy but persistent mythology that blames all poor people for their poverty, the majority of people … who experience deprivation and disadvantage are caught in events beyond their control—and this is manifestly true of children.”

We are all linked to each other and we are all affected by the pain these times bring to our fellow children of God around the world.

Father, we pray for your Church, that we may be a compassionate community, ready to stand alongside those who suffer the burden of debt. We pray for those who work in government, finance and the law, that they may work towards practical solutions for the problems caused by debt. We pray for those individuals who, because of their debts, feel they have nowhere to turn: that they may know your presence, guidance and peace. We pray for those countries affected by the enormous burden of international debt: for a just and lasting solution to the problems they face. We pray for ourselves, that through our choices, actions and words we may daily live out our faith, and bear witness to you, the source of all good things, through your Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Vineyard

2008-10-05T15:03:00.002-04:00

[Our lessons were Isaiah 5:1-7, Psalm 80:7-14, Philippians 3:4b-14, and Matthew 21:33-46.]

We hear first today this beautiful story of God’s vineyard from Isaiah. The vision of a terraced vineyard built into a hillside would have been familiar to the people of Israel. The best location, a fertile hill, was chosen. It has been dug out and the stones cleared. A watchtower is raised and all is in readiness for the grapes. There’s even a vat in the center for winemaking.

Imagine the landowner’s disappointment when instead, all that comes are wild grapes, sour to the taste and perhaps with large seeds. In the words of Isaiah, “he expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry!” What will God do? Remove the walls and let it be trampled. The judgment of the Lord that Isaiah foretold did come when the Babylonians and Assyrians conquered Israel.

In our reading from Matthew, we are continuing the events of Holy Week. On Tuesday of Holy Week, immediately after challenging the Temple authorities with the parable of the two sons, Jesus tells a new parable of a vineyard, re-presenting the vineyard of Isaiah.

It’s pretty obvious that God is the landowner and Jesus is the heir that the tenants kill. It’s very tempting to assume that the tenants are the Jews and for centuries this has been the accepted view by many. This has been used to claim that Christianity is the completion of Judaism or the replacement of the people of Israel as God’s chosen people.

But, I want to suggest a different meaning. Remember the context—the week in Jerusalem before Jesus is crucified. Jesus has already had a stormy encounter with the Pharisees and the chief priests. Remember about the words at the end of our reading: “When the chief priests and Pharisees heard his parables”—this one and the parable of the two sons we heard last week—“they realized that he was speaking against them.” The chief priests and the Pharisees were the greedy tenants who killed the prophets sent by God and who would, in three days’ time, kill the son. The vineyard belongs to God, not the powerful and wealthy at the top of the domination system that Jesus spoke out against.

But this isn’t how the story ends, of course. The death of the Son is not the end. But Jesus expresses this death through a new image: “The stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone...” From the Son’s death springs life, a new vineyard. Christ himself became the vine, and this vine always bears good fruit: the presence of his love for us which is indestructible.

In fact, the stories—God’s story and our own—never end. There is always time to change. While it isn’t a fairy tale with an ending of “they lived happily ever after”, there are always future chapters to be written, and that can be comforting.

Comforting, because our current chapter isn’t a happy one. The financial news of the last week and the predictions of the future are dire. People’s jobs and retirement savings are at risk, prices are rising, and homes are being lost. There are clearly tough times ahead.

That is why we are grateful that this isn’t the final chapter. There is still time for the Kingdom of God to come. As the Body of Christ here, we are called to do what we can to lift up the lowly, feed the sick, and show justice, mercy and love to all.

In our version of the parable, when the landowner returns, let Him find us working for the welfare of all people and not, like the chief priests and the Pharisees of our Gospel reading, working for our own welfare at the expense of others.

The Financial Crisis

2008-09-30T21:16:00.002-04:00

I am not a Roman Catholic and I certainly don't agree with all the positions of the Roman Catholic Church. But when they get one right, I'll be happy to say it, and I think this letter from Bishop William Murphy, chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development to the Treasury Secretary and the Congressional leadership says the right things. My thanks to the Daily Episcopalian for posting it!

September 26, 2008

Dear Secretary Paulson, Majority Leader Reid, Minority Leader McConnell, Speaker Pelosi and Minority Leader Boehner:

The economic crisis facing our nation is both terribly disturbing and enormously complicated. I write to offer the prayers of the U.S. Catholic Bishops and express the concerns of our Conference as you face difficult choices on how to limit the damage and move forward with prudence and justice. As pastors and teachers, my brother bishops and I do not bring technical expertise to these complicated matters. However, we believe our faith and moral principles can help guide the search for just and effective responses to the economic turmoil threatening our people.

Human and Moral Dimensions: This crisis involves far more than just economic or technical matters, but has enormous human impact and clear ethical dimensions which should be at the center of debate and decisions on how to move forward. Families are losing their homes. Retirement savings are at risk. People are losing jobs and benefits. Economic arrangements, structures and remedies should have as a fundamental purpose safeguarding human life and dignity. The scandalous search for excessive economic rewards even to the point of dangerous speculation that exacerbates the pain and losses of the more vulnerable are egregious examples of an economic ethic that places economic gain above all other values. This ignores the impact of economic decisions on the lives of real people as well as the ethical dimension of the choices we make and the moral responsibility we have for their effect on people.
Responsibility and Accountability: Clearly, effective measures are required which address and alter the behaviors, practices and misjudgments that led to this crisis. Sadly, greed, speculation, exploitation of vulnerable people and dishonest practices helped to bring about this serious situation. Many blameless and vulnerable people have been and will be harmed. Those who directly contributed to this crisis or profited from it should not be rewarded or escape accountability for the harm they have done. Any response of government ought to seek greater responsibility, accountability and transparency in both economic and public life.
Advantages and Limitations of the Market: Pope John Paul II pointed out that "the free market is the most efficient instrument for utilizing resources and effectively responding to needs." But there are many human needs which find no place on the market. It is a strict duty of justice and truth not to allow fundamental human needs to remain unsatisfied. Both public and private institutions have failed in responding to fundamental human needs. A new sense of responsibility on the part of all should include a renewal of instruments of monitoring and correction within economic institutions and the financial industry as well as effective public regulation and protection to the extent this may be clearly necessary.
Solidarity and the Common Good: The principle of solidarity reminds us that we are in this together and warns us that concern for narrow interests alone can make things worse. The principle of solidarity commits us to the pursuit of the common good, not the search for partisan gain or economic advantage. Protection of the vulnerable “workers, business owners, homeowners, renters, and stockholders" must be included in the commitment to protect economic institutions. As Church leaders we ask that you give proper priority to the poor and the most vulnerable.
Subsidiarity: Subsidiarity places a responsibility on the private actors and institutions to accept their own obligations. If they do not do so, then the larger entities, including the government, will have to step in to do what private institutions will have failed to do.

This is a challenging time for our nation. Everyone who carries responsibility should exercise it according to their respective roles and with a great sensitivity to reforming practices and setting forth new guidelines that will serve all people, all institutions of the economy and the common good of the people as a nation. This includes not just the leaders of the economic life of our country. It means the political leaders and all those whose own expertise can contribute to a resolution of the current situation.

Our Catholic tradition calls for a "society of work, enterprise and participation" which "is not directed against the market, but demands that the market be appropriately controlled by the forces of society and by the state to assure that the basic needs of the whole society are satisfied" (Centesimus Annus). These words of John Paul II should be adopted as a standard for all those who carry this responsibility for our nation, the world and the common good of all.

Sincerely,
Most Reverend William F. Murphy
Bishop of Rockville Centre
Chairman, Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development

I have heard some conservative commentators talking in the last few days about the "market" and how "the market must be allowed to work its will". I suggest that such worship of the market system is idolatry. We should leave God as our only object of worship.

"A New Heart and a New Spirit"

2008-09-28T21:04:00.002-04:00

[Our lessons today were Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32, Psalm 25:1-8, Philippians 2:1-13, and Matthew 21:23-32.]

Ezekiel was a prophet of the Babylonian exile in the Sixth Century B.C.E., and he speaks in a time of change for the people of Israel. The Temple in Jerusalem—where God lived—has been destroyed and the people scattered, with some of the elite taken away to Babylon. When they are forced to worship without having the Temple and in a place far from God’s Promised Land, major changes in their thinking result.

Until now, Israel, like other Middle Eastern cultures of the time, believed in tribal responsibility for wrongdoing. This concept of holding all members of the tribe personally responsible for the acts of its members is exemplified by the proverb quoted here: “The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.”

Ezekiel, speaking for God, establishes a new principle: because all life belongs to God, it is unfair to punish others for one person’s wrongdoing. This principle of personal responsibility for one’s actions leads to a statement of the importance of repentance. If you are being held responsible for the sins of others, your personal repentance of sin isn’t too useful. However, God says through Ezekiel that if you turn from your transgressions and get “a new heart and a new spirit”, you will live.

We aren’t very big on personal responsibility these days. “It’s not my fault; it’s because of where I was born or my social status or something that takes the responsibility for my actions off my hands.” I read a column this week about the proposed bailout of the financial system, where the author said that he wanted the bankers and others who lost this money to simply say “I’m sorry” and mean it, because their recklessness has had a horrible cost. They were horrified at the very idea—one even said to him, “I guess you want us to grovel”—of accepting any degree of responsibility for their actions.

Our Gospel lesson from Matthew could stand some context. This takes place during Holy Week. Jesus has already attacked the moneychangers and sellers of animals in the courtyard of the Temple, not, by the way, because the moneychangers and sellers were bad per se. The moneychangers were necessary to convert the Roman coins with the emperor’s likeness on them to more acceptable Jewish coins. The animals needed to be sold to serve as sacrifices in the Temple worship. Jesus wanted to stop the moneychangers and sellers to stop the Temple worship as a protest against the way that the Temple authorities had become a part of the domination system and had become a “den of thieves.” When the chief priests and the elders ask by what authority Jesus is doing “these things,” they are referring to his actions in Holy Week.

Jesus tells this parable of two sons (which is found only in Matthew’s Gospel). The father asks his two sons to go work in the vineyard. One says he won’t, but then changes his mind and goes to work. The other says he will, but doesn’t. The Pharisees correctly say that the first son is doing his father’s will, but they obviously missed how the parable applies to them.

When Jesus says that the tax collectors and prostitutes will go to heaven before them, it isn’t because their answer to Jesus’ question is wrong. It is because they are saying the right things, but not doing them. When God, speaking through John the Baptist, asked the Pharisees to do His work, they might have said they were, but they clearly didn’t do it. They were like the second son. The tax collectors and the prostitutes, like the first son, changed and got themselves “a new heart and a new spirit”. The Pharisees instead remained focused on the laws that secured their own power.

What about us? Are we giving God the right answers with our mouths, but not living up to what we say? Do we say one thing here in Church on Sunday and live some other way outside? A critical point to take away from this parable is that truly being a follower of Christ is not about we say, it is about what we do and how we live. As Paul tells us in his letter to the church in Philippi, we are called to be of the same mind as Jesus—a mind of love, humility, and reconciliation.

We often hear that if we posted the Ten Commandments in public places or had public prayer in schools, things would be better and people would change because of it. But, isn’t that relying on what we say to cause change? Rather than saying prayers in schools or seeing the Commandments on the wall, let’s try living the Greatest Commandment—to love our neighbor as we do ourselves.

Fairness

2008-09-21T22:11:00.001-04:00

[Our readings today are Jonah 3:10-4:11, Psalm 145:1-8, Philippians 1:21-30, and Matthew 20:1-16.]

Anyone who has more than one child or anyone who wasn’t an only child has more than a passing relationship with “fairness.” My mother used to tell a story of how, after my younger sister was born, my sister and I didn’t always see eye-to-eye, to say the least. At her wits’ end, my mother went to our pediatrician and asked what was wrong with us. His reply surprised her: “Mrs. Davison, you were an only child, weren’t you?” And, of course, she was!

We are very concerned with “fairness” and “justice” in life, especially when we feel that we have gotten the short end of the stick. Most people don’t raise issues of fairness when they are favored. I heard a story about a poster that had three fish on it—a large fish, a medium fish and a small fish. The large fish is thinking, “There is justice in the world!” as it’s about to eat the medium fish. The medium fish is thinking, “There is some justice in the world!” as it’s about to eat the small fish. The small fish is thinking, “There is no justice in the world!” I guess it’s all a matter of perspective.

In the parable we read today, the landowner pays the same daily wage to everyone whether they came at the beginning and worked all day or came at the end of the day. How outrageous! How unfair! Shouldn’t the ones who work longest and hardest get more as they clearly deserve? Don’t we say “the early bird gets the worm” and “God helps those who help themselves”?

But God isn’t “fair,” at least not by our standards. As a priest said about this text, “I am so glad that God isn’t fair. If God were fair and gave me what I truly deserve, I would be tortured slowly before being consigned to hell forever.”

In Charles Dickens’ wonderful story, A Christmas Carol, the Ghost of Christmas Past takes Scrooge back to a Christmas party thrown by his employer in his younger days, Mr. Fezziwig. The Ghost notes Scrooge’s pleasure at the festivity, and comments, “A small matter to make these silly folks so full of gratitude.” When Scrooge protests that it isn’t small, the Ghost reminds him, “Why! Is it not! He has spent but a few pounds of your mortal money: three or four perhaps. Is that so much that he deserves this praise?” Scrooge responds, more like his former self than the cold mean thing he has become, “The happiness he gives is quite as great as if it cost a fortune.” And even as he says the words, he realizes how much he has changed since those happy days, before money became an idol to worship.

Our landowner is a man very much like Mr. Fezziwig—eager to employ people, but also generous even to those employed only for a fraction of the day. He never claimed to be fair; he says he is generous. Generosity isn’t about giving someone what he or she deserves; it’s about the freedom of the giver to give out of his abundance to whomever he chooses—not because he is paying a debt, but because he wishes to freely give.

God’s generosity was also shown in the reading from Jonah. Jonah is angry with God because God didn’t act “fairly” towards the wicked people of Nineveh. God has forgiven them, when Jonah wants God to be tough and judgmental—towards them, of course, like the early workers want the landowner to be towards the latecomers.

God is fair; he doesn’t give us what we deserve. None of us deserve salvation; God doesn’t owe it to us. But He gives it to us anyway. He treats us infinitely better than we deserve. God is like the landowner who pays the daily wage to all the workers and like Mr. Fezziwig who brings joy without counting the cost.

And what is that daily wage? Entry into the Kingdom of Heaven.

Once there was a man who died and came to the pearly gates where Saint Peter greeted him. Peter, in addition in to carrying the keys, had a clipboard in hand. He said to the man, “Before we let you into heaven there are a few questions you have to answer and I have to fill out this form. We work on a point system here in heaven—maybe you’ve heard something about it. You tell me all the good things you’ve done and I’ll score your points—and when you reach a hundred points I’ll let you into heaven. OK?” The man thought for minute and then began to recite all his good deeds. “Well, I was married for over 50 years and I never cheated on my wife all that time; I never even looked at another woman with lust in my heart.” Saint Peter said, “Very good; better than most, in fact; that’s worth three points.” The man was a little surprised at the score, but continued, “I was very active in my church—I went every Sunday and I was a longtime member of the men’s group.” Peter said, “Excellent; that’s another point!” Exasperated, the man said, “My goodness, at this rate I’ll never get into heaven based on what I’ve done. I can only throw myself on God’s mercy.” And Peter said, “Oh, that’s a hundred points right there. Welcome to heaven.”

We get there on God’s mercy; not what we have done ourselves.

God’s economy doesn’t work as we seem to wish it would, rewarding those who work harder. Instead, God’s economy values us far more than our worth. Shouldn’t we try to follow His example?

Forgiveness

2008-09-13T19:50:00.003-04:00

[Our readings today are Genesis 50:15-21, Psalm 103, Romans 14:1-12, and Matthew 18:21-35.]

We often have the wrong idea about forgiveness.

In our Gospel lesson, Jesus tells a parable of forgiveness. The parable is set in the Kingdom of Heaven, which is not the afterlife, but it is a time and place, here on earth, where God’s justice is truly done. When the King’s servant, who owed 10,000 talents—a huge sum, like millions of dollars, could not pay his debt and asked for more time, the King forgave the debt completely! But then, the servant was himself owed a hundred denarii—just a few dollars in today’s money—and refused to forgive the debt! The King, learning of this, handed the servant over to be tortured until the entire debt was paid!

Such are the consequences of failing to forgive. When asked by Peter how many times we should forgive, Jesus says seventy-seven times. This is an idiomatic way of saying as many times as we need to. We are always called upon to forgive.

We often act as if we can only forgive someone who has wronged us if they have repented in some way. Forgiveness isn’t easy, because we have been truly wronged and it hurts. Isn’t our hurt, our pain, righteous and just?

This week, we remembered the seventh anniversary of a great wrong—the evil attacks of September 11, 2001. We remembered the victims: those who died, those who were maimed in body or spirit or both, and those whose lives were changed forever by the loss of loved ones.

But we need to remember September 11, 2001, as an event that challenges us to forgive. We aren’t called to forgive for the benefit of the perpetrators of those awful deeds, but for our own.
We pray for this in every service of our church in the Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.” Our sins, our debts, are forgiven, only to the extent that we forgive others. Remember the servant, who was forgiven his great debt only as he was willing to forgive a small one.

While it is a good thing when someone who hurts us asks our forgiveness, what if they don’t? Do we hold on to our anger, our pain and say we can’t forgive unless they apologize?

There are many stories of people who will not let anger go, especially when their cause is just. What have they gained with their anger? Sorrow, bitterness, loneliness, physical and mental pain. We believe that when we are hurt we must be compensated. We say, “Don’t get mad, get even!” Sometimes we claim the role of God, who said “Vengeance is mine”—that is God’s—“I will repay.”

After September 11, some felt that we need to take action in reprisal and, to some extent we did, when we invaded Afghanistan. In many ways, that could be justified as removing from power an evil regime that supported the perpetrators. But many of us saw our role as avengers, that we were punishing evil, forgetting that vengeance is God’s role. But, some of bitterness and pain we felt over 9/11 caused us to do things which we can not justify. How do we square some of the things we have done as a nation over the last seven years with the promise in our Baptismal Covenant to “respect the dignity of every person”? Might not some of these misdeeds of our own been avoided had we been willing to forgive?

Does forgiveness mean forgetting what has happened? No. Even when we forgive, we may not forget and perhaps should not forget. But when we begin the healing process—the process of reconciliation—by forgiving, we are reminded that we have already been forgiven ourselves. We need to remember the importance of forgiveness in our lives and not the least, here in St. Christopher’s.

Many years ago, I had the opportunity to see a concrete example of forgiveness that should inspire us. On November 14, 1940, the medieval cathedral in Coventry, England, was destroyed by the German Air Force in a raid that did horrible damage to the city and took many lives. When a new cathedral was built, part of the shell of the old cathedral was left standing. Behind the altar, on the ruined wall was placed the words: “Father Forgive”. If out of the pain and grief of that war, those people could forgive that debt of 10,000 talents, how can we do less and not forgive that debt of a hundred denarii?

9/11

2008-09-11T06:24:00.002-04:00

The events of seven years ago today are still very strong in my mind. I remember how that Tuesday morning was beautiful bright and clear here in Georgia, as it would be in New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington. I was walking down the hallway of the Headquarters building at Robins Air Force Base (where I worked and still do) when one of the young captains said that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center in New York. Several of us watched on a small portable TV with bad reception as the horrors of that morning unfolded.

Its hard to understate the fear that many felt that morning. Rumors spread of additional bombs and dangers. Our base was put on lockdown status with buildings locked up and workers confined to offices, even though at the time, I rather doubted Al Quida was much concerned with a base in rural central Georgia.

I truly can't imagine what the victims of 9/11 felt as they realized that this was no adventure movie and only death awaited them. The stories we would learn of fortitude and sacrifice enoble us all, yet I can't help wondering whether I would react well in such a time. I am grateful that, so far, this cup has not been presented to me. Nor can I imagine the grief and emptiness that faced the victim's families, who simply said goodbye to their loved ones as they did every day, not knowing that this would be goodbye for this lifetime. I have tried every morning to make my last words to my wife as I leave for work assurances of my love, so that if something awful happened, she might at least have that consolation.

We need to remember that the acts of 9/11 were the evil of men, not God, and that on that morning, God's will was emphatically not done.

Cost

2008-09-01T22:27:00.003-04:00

[Our lessons were Exodus 3:1-15, Psalm 105:1-6, 23-26, 45c, Romans 12:9-21, and Matthew 16:21-28.]

Last week, we got to hear about the Confession of Peter that Jesus is the Messiah and Jesus’ statement that Peter was the rock upon which he would build the church. Today, we continue the story and Jesus tells the disciples just what being the Messiah and following the Messiah would cost.

And Peter, in his usual way, follows up his great revelation with a tremendous clanger: “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you!”

There are several problems with Peter’s exclamation. First, it is based upon a serious misunderstanding of what Jesus being the Messiah really meant. To Jews of that time, the Messiah was to be a warrior king who would free the people of Israel from foreign domination. For the Messiah instead to suffer and be killed was unthinkable. Impossible! God simply would not allow that to happen!

Also, Peter’s objection overlooks the sacrifice that Jesus would have to make and the sacrifices that we ourselves are called to make. If Jesus’ sacrifices—suffering and death on the cross—are not made, there would be no resurrection!

Peter, like us, wants to avoid the cost—the pain, the unpleasantness, the rejection, the suffering, and ultimately, the death he himself would suffer in Rome. We ourselves want to remember Christmas and Easter and not think of Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. We are sort of like the story of the young man, eager to make it to the top, who went to a well-known millionaire businessman and asked him the first reason for his success. The businessman answered without hesitation, “Hard work.” After a lengthy pause the young man asked, “What is the SECOND reason?”

When Jesus delivers his crushing rebuke to Peter, “You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things,” he is saying that is putting human ways of thinking—about the role of the Messiah, not wanting to pay the cost of discipleship—in the way of what God wanted.

We cannot do what Peter wanted, which was to take the cross out of Jesus’ life and death, because the cross is where God endured the greatest pain and suffering a human can endure. And because He did, he understands and shares in the pain of our mortal lives.

In his book, The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonheoffer asserted that there is a cost to following Jesus. We hope that we will not be called upon to pay the same cost that Bonheoffer did—a slow, gruesome hanging by the Nazis. There can be other kinds of costs, some petty, some large. We take up our crosses and we must be ready to endure what we must so that God’s work can be done. But we know that with God’s help, the cost will not be unendurable. [Note: in Westminster Abbey's Gallery of 20th Century Martyrs, Bonheoffer is on the right.]

But what we gain for that cost is beyond belief! If we are willing to give up our lives to save them, if we are willing to not hoard ourselves, we can have everything that truly matters. But, if on the other hand, we give up our eternal lives to gain worldly things, we will gain nothing of value.

In one of my favorite plays, A Man for All Seasons, the title character, Sir Thomas More has just heard Richard Rich give obviously false testimony which will condemn More to the block. When he is told that Rich has been appointed Attorney-General for Wales, he says, sadly, “For Wales? Why, Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world . . . But for Wales!”

While Sir Thomas was executed by Henry VIII’s government, he has been honored for his integrity and courage and has been canonized by the Roman Catholic Church. On the other hand, Richard Rich, who eventually became Lord Chancellor as Lord Rich and was a Protestant under the Protestant King Edward VI and a Catholic under the Catholic Queen Mary, may have died in his bed, but he became infamous.

Like Richard Rich, we can sacrifice honor and integrity for personal gain. But, Jesus makes it clear that the little we gain will be dwarfed by what we will lose—our opportunity to be with God in his Kingdom.

Change

2008-08-24T14:57:00.005-04:00

[Earlier this month, our rector at St. Christopher's, Father Bill Anderson, announced his retirement at the end of the month. Our lessons were Exodus 1:8-20, Psalm 124, Romans 12:1-8, and Matthew 16:13-20.]

I’ve always liked St. Peter. He could come up with the most incredible revelation one moment and follow it up with the most off-the-wall comment in the next. A couple of weeks ago, we read how he impetuously got out of the boat to follow Jesus across the water. I remember cartoons from my childhood, like the Roadrunner, where the Coyote can walk off a cliff and stay up until he realizes he’s not on solid ground and down he falls. Peter was like that; when he saw that he was on the water, his fears overcame him and he started to sink. It was Peter who impulsively wished to build three tabernacles on the mountain of the Transfiguration; it was Peter who, just before the crucifixion, three times denied knowing Jesus.

But it was also Peter who, after Pentecost, risked his life to do the Lord’s work, speaking boldly of his belief in Jesus. It was also Peter, the Rock, whose strength and courage helped the young Church in its questioning about the mission beyond the Jewish community. He was first opposed to the baptism of Gentiles. But he had the grace to change, and to baptize the Roman centurion Cornelius and his household. Finally, tradition holds that Peter fled from Rome during Nero’s persecution. On the Appian Way, he is supposed to have met Christ who was heading toward Rome. Jesus told Peter, “I am coming to be crucified again.” Peter thereupon returned to Rome, and was shortly thereafter crucified, head downwards at his insistence. He said, “I am not worthy to be crucified as my Lord was.”

With his stumbling and his failures, Peter reminds us that even the chief of the Apostles was just as human, just as fallible as you and I. Jesus did not come among us to save the strong and godly, but the weak and the sinful—us.

This statement of Peter: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God!” is called the Confession of Peter. It even has its own date on our calendar—January 18. He is the first person to name Jesus as the hope of Israel. Before this, other than God, only demons had known who Jesus was.

Jesus’ response is famous: “I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”

This raises all sorts of questions of authority and our Roman cousins cite this as the basis for the authority of Peter’s successor as the Bishop of Rome—the Pope. I remember in 1978 finding it a curious coincidence that the day after Cardinal Albino Luciani was elected Pope John Paul I, I went to my Episcopal church and heard this passage read.

Of course, as Anglicans, we don’t accept the Roman interpretation that this reading gives a universal authority to the Pope. But it is important to us even so.

First, Peter—Simon up to now—is given a new name. Until this point, there is no record of the word for “rock”—“Cephas” in Aramaic or etros” in Greek—being used as a person’s name. Throughout Scripture, the changing of a person’s name is significant—Abram to Abraham, Jacob to Israel, Saul to Paul—because in that culture, when your name changed, you were changed.

Peter is the rock upon which the Church is built by the Lord. The other Apostles, the Fathers of the Church (and the Mothers), and all the saints of God have built and are still building up the Church in love and faith. One commentator said that Peter is “Rocky I” and so, you are “Rocky 5 Billion” with the same director, the same plot and a larger cast. Even as Peter was called, so are we. Through us, Christ continues to be present to his world.

This Church is more than buildings, more than organizational structures like Dioceses and Provinces. It is more than a group of people sitting and worshipping with us today. It is a divine mystery greater than we can imagine reaching throughout space and time joining us all together—a Jewish fisherman in the First Century in Palestine and a lay preacher in Georgia in the 21st Century—in a continuity of faith, tradition, of doctrine, and of people.

That continuity is what we will refer to momentarily in the Creed when we say we belong to “one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church”. We claim a connection to the Apostles, most notably through our bishops, whose consecrations are traceable back in a nearly unbroken line to the Apostles. With each baptism, each new birth into the Church, Jesus makes us a new “Peter”, a new rock upon which the Church is built.

Fr. Herbert O’Driscoll uses a wonderful image for this. His idea is to look at all of the last 20 centuries as concentric circles of time. We are in the very outermost circle, farthest away from the center—and at the center is the Cross. We are brought into the circle, into the faith, in large part because somewhere, somehow, someone in the circle just before ours took us by the hand and said, “come,” and so drew us in. That is one very important reason why we are here. That person was able to do this for us because someone had taken him or her by the hand and had drawn that person in. And so on, through all the centuries, hands are held through all of those circles. Until we reach the place where a very few of those hands were held by hands touched by the mark of nails. So we hold hands touched by nails. In this way, Christ builds his church; such is the gift we have been given.

Remember what else Jesus says about His Church: “The Gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.” No matter what happens, for good or for evil, God’s Church will prevail; we have that promise. This doesn’t necessarily mean that a particular parish or denomination will survive and prevail, but that at its most fundamental level, the Church will never fail. I find that very comforting when I think of all the things we men and women do and have done on a daily basis to destroy it.

I spoke a few minutes ago about a change; a change in Simon’s name to Peter, a change of great importance in that culture. We at St. Christopher’s are about to begin a process of change ourselves. Next week, we will say goodbye to Bill and Jane Anderson as they end their ministries among us—but not as our friends—and begin the exciting and terrifying process of examining ourselves and finding the right man or woman to join us as we move this parish into its second 50 years. This is Change with a capital C!

We generally don’t like change. We have our comfort zones—our boats, as it were. Father Bill is a known commodity to us. I can assure you, from the position of someone who serves at the Altar, it’s a lot easier to serve a familiar friend. We don’t like change.

On a summer day in 1995, I listened to the radio in my office in San Antonio, Texas, as the Base Closure Commission voted to close the Air Force base I worked at. The place where I worked was going away! Change with a capital C! I could have moaned about how I hated change and what would we do and felt sorry for myself. I didn’t do that. Instead, I accepted that change would come and opened myself up to new possibilities, including a move to middle Georgia. My family and I have found a home that we love far more than our home in Texas; a community of which we feel so much more a part of than we did in San Antonio; a parish which has over the last nine years opened itself to us in good times and hard times, and which has given me opportunities to grow in new directions in ways I could never have imagined! All this because, when change was inevitable (and, by the way, it always is), I was open to the opportunities to grow that change presents.

Change is coming to St. Christopher’s. It always is, to be honest, but it’s more obvious today. It is critical that we look for ways to make that change positive. We will then find new opportunities to grow in faith that we cannot imagine today. And you know what? So will Bill and Jane Anderson!

On the wall of one of the classrooms in my Illinois high school so many years ago was a quote from the former UN Secretary General, Dag Hammarskjöld,

For all that has been — Thanks. For all that shall be — Yes.

Always say “Yes” to that which will come. For our Christian faith is a faith of change, not a conservative one. When we pray, “Your kingdom come,” we are praying for incredible, monumental change, so that we will be in a place where God’s redistributive justice is always done, the poor are raised up, the hungry are fed, and the captives are freed. The Resurrection is change, change to the previous finality of death. As Christians, we should welcome change; we should embrace change; we must work to bring change about.

Let us pray:

Almighty Father, who inspired Simon Peter, first among the apostles, to confess Jesus as Messiah and Son of the living God: Keep your Church steadfast upon the rock of this faith, so that in unity and peace we may proclaim the one truth and follow the one Lord, our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Crumbs for the Dogs?

2008-08-17T20:05:00.003-04:00

[Our lessons were Genesis 45:1-15, Psalm 133, Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32, and Matthew 15: 10-28.]

Today’s Gospel can be for challenging for us. In many ways, we have been brought up in a tradition of a meek and mild Jesus who isn’t that involved in the world but instead focuses on the afterlife. He’s also in our art a bit too fair skinned for an inhabitant of that part of the world. Sometimes instead of striving to make ourselves more like Jesus, we try to make Jesus more like us.

Jesus has left Palestine and has gone into what we now call Lebanon. There was a long-standing feud between the people of the Holy Land and the people of Lebanon. Some things haven’t changed much, it seems.

The district of Tyre and Sidon that Jesus has entered was Canaanite territory on the Mediterranean coast to the north and west of Galilee. The residents were a greatly mixed people who may still have had some Canaanite blood, but also well diluted by infusions of Syrian and Phoenician elements. They were Gentiles, of course. The designation of a Canaanite woman was a typically Jewish term of reproach and disparagement, as is the troubling reference by Jesus to dogs. While it may trouble us to hear such words coming from Jesus’ mouth, Jews did speak of their neighbors that way. And remember that in their culture, dogs weren’t given the privileged position that they have in our culture.

This woman is in dire need. For her daughter’s sake, she is willing to ask an ordinarily despised Jew for help and even calls him “Lord”. She has no reason to expect him to help her.

And at first, he doesn’t. He says he was only sent to God’s chosen people. And when she persists, Jesus uses the common racial slur the people of Israel used about Gentiles—“We don’t give human food to dogs.” He is trying to see if the woman can step beyond the customary boundaries of her race. And she does. In her words, she shows that she understands.

All throughout the Gospel, we see Jesus’ message being misunderstood. The disciples frequently don’t get it. The Pharisees can’t see past the Law. But this Canaanite woman, in her statement that even the dogs get the crumbs that fall from the master’s table, shows that she understands that God’s grace as available to all people—Jew and Gentile, male and female. She is claiming her place in the Kingdom of God, even if that place is small. And Jesus hears her!

This story is not about getting what we deserve. It is about faith in God’s grace providing what we need. But to receive this, we must be willing to step outside our comfort zones into places where we are needed, or as we heard last week, to step out of the boat. We are called to help the “dogs”—the “others”—of our day. Dare we show less courage and trust than this Canaanite woman whose daughter was healed?

Evil Comes to Our Small Town

2008-08-04T19:06:00.007-04:00

One of the things I've enjoyed about living just outside the small town of Perry, Georgia, for the last nine years is its relative peacefulness. Yes, there is some crime, but it's usually been small-time, not terribly violent stuff.

That changed on Saturday, when evil came to Perry. Michael Lee Hill came to Perry from Atlanta to pick up his sons Richard, age 10, and Michael, age 7, at the home of his parents. They had separated and she had told him she wanted a divorce. He got a plastic bag out of the bed of his pickup truck. When the boys kept asking what was in the bag, he pulled out ear muffs, the headphone-like things you wear at a firing range. He said that was so the boys wouldn't hear their parents fighting. He asked them to look at their mother so they wouldn't see him crying. Then, shortly before 2:30 p.m., on Saturday, August 2, Michael Lee Hill pulled a 9 mm handgun and put the gun to the back of Richard's head and killed him. He then put the gun to the back of Michael's head and killed him. He then shot his stepfather in the chest. He chased his wife into a neighbor's yard and shot her in the back and leg. He then went back into his parents' house and shot and killed himself.

Richard died at the scene, as did their father. Young Michael died at the emergency room. Their grandfather, Andrew Hill, is in critical condition at the Medical Center of Central Georgia in Macon. Their mother, Bonnie Jean Hill, was released from the hospital to return to an empty house.

We will probably never know for certain what drove Michael Lee Hill to do these unspeakable things. He apparently left no note. We can only hope that the boys didn't have the chance to realize that their father was taking their lives. And I can't imagine the agony Bonnie Jean Hill's life has become.

On Sunday morning, at St. Christopher's Episcopal Church, we prayed for the souls of Richard and young Michael, and for the soul of their father, Michael Lee Hill. We also prayed for the healing of Andrew Hill and Bonnie Jean Hill. They don't attend our church and no one there on Sunday recognized their names. That didn't matter.

I ask your prayers for the souls of Richard Laurence Hill, age 7, and Michael Anthony Hill, age 10, and the troubled soul of their father, Michael Lee Hill. Pray also for the healing in body and spirit of Andrew Hill and Bonnie Lee Hill. Also, pray for the boys' friends and classmates at Tucker Elementary School. Richard was to begin first grade and Michael fifth grade today.

Lord of Life, you trampled death under your feet so we might come alive in your eternal light. We remember before you Richard, Michael, and Michael. In our anger and confusion, we need your help to find our way. When your own child, Jesus, suffered violent death, you acted through it to redeem the world. Help us live into that knowledge as we remember that they now live because of that great gift of your love. Help us release them to you. Show us that your hand has dried their tears and let us glimpse their joy in your face. Grant us strength and the spirit of healing and peace so that we may labor for your just and peaceable kingdom where all your children live in safety and fulfillment, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Pray for us all as we are reminded that no place on earth is completely safe.

Neighbors leave flowers Sunday afternoon at the mailbox at 640 Pine Ridge Street in Perry where Michael Anthony Hill, 7, and Richard Lawrence Hill, 10, were shot and killed by their father, Michael Lee Hill, Saturday. (Grant Blankenship, The [Macon] Telegraph)

Loaves and Fishes

2008-08-02T22:08:00.002-04:00

[Our lessons this week were Isaiah 55:1-5, Psalm 145:8-9, 15-22, Romans 9:1-5, and Matthew 14:13-21.]

There were three mice who died and went to heaven. After a couple of days, St. Peter stopped by and asked them how they liked being in heaven. The mice said that it was OK, but since they had such short legs, it was hard for them to get around because heaven was so big. So St. Peter told them that he thought he would be able to help them. After a little while, an angel came to the mice and gave each of them a set of roller skates. Right away, the mice put the roller skates on, and they could zip around heaven, really enjoying themselves.

A little later, a cat died and went to heaven. After a couple of days, St. Peter stopped by and asked the cat how he liked being in heaven. The cat answered by saying, “Oh, boy, do I like being in heaven! I’m having a great time and I’m really enjoying myself. And most of all, I love those meals on wheels.”

Jesus has just learned of the execution of John the Baptist. He has just taught in his home town and been rebuffed: “Is this not the carpenter’s son?” Quite understandably, he has tried to withdraw from the crowds to “a deserted place by himself.”

But the crowds follow him. When Jesus sees this great crowd, bringing their sick people for Jesus to heal, his compassion does not let him turn them away. As evening came on, the disciples advise Jesus to send the crowd away so the could buy their suppers in the nearby villages. (That assumes that these mostly poor people could buy their suppers. I rather doubt the rich of Palestine were well represented in the crowd.)

Instead Jesus tells the disciples, “No, you feed them!” Can you imagine what runs through the disciples’ heads at that? Feed five thousand men and the unreported number of women and children with five loaves and two fish? But after Jesus blesses the bread and broke it (and where have we heard of that before?), they do just that and have twelve baskets of broken pieces left over! How can this be?

I have heard many explanations, ranging from the supernatural where the food magically multiplies to the story of the first church potluck lunch, where the crowd produced the food that they were carrying themselves. But I think these all miss the point. Focusing too much on the mechanics of how can cause us to miss what it means: God provides for his people! He has acted to feed the hungry!

The disciples’ reaction to the crowd, like ours would be, was one of anxiety (“that’s not in the budget!”). Henry Ward Beecher wrote, “Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith.” While we reach for the handle of anxiety, Jesus approached the problem with the handle of faith. When we take the handle of faith, the results can seem miraculous, even when no supernatural forces seem involved.

Father Bill [Bill Anderson, our rector] often tells Hurricane Hugo stories, so here’s one in his honor:

After months of hard work and years of saving, the day came for Reb and Jackay to open their own restaurant. All that was needed was the final health inspection and the issuing of their business permit. That was scheduled for first thing that morning; then “Our Place,” as they called their restaurant would be in business.

But that morning the winds and rains of Hurricane Hugo hit, unexpectedly making its way 200 miles inland to their North Carolina town. Trees were uprooted, power lines were down, homes and stores were destroyed. Reb and Jackay hurried to their restaurant. Everything was intact.

A deputy sheriff pulled up and told them that their restaurant, the fire station next door and a service station down the road were the only ones that had electricity. Reb and Jackay called the health inspector to come immediately so they could open, but because of the power outage, he couldn’t get into his office to issue the permit. No permit, no business opening. With a refrigerator stocked with 300 pounds of bacon and beef and bushels of tomatoes, lettuce and bread, there was only one thing to do: give the food away.

They told the deputy, “Tell your coworkers and other emergency people you see that we’ll have free BLT’s and coffee for anybody who wants to drop by.” Soon firemen, policemen, linemen and other workers were filing into Our Place. When the couple heard that another restaurant was scalping people by charging ten dollars for two eggs, toast and bacon, they placed a sign in their window: FREE BLT’S—FREE COFFEE. Families, travelers and street people were welcomed.

Then something began to happen. People started to clean counters and sweep floors. Volunteers took over the dish washing from Jackay and helped Reb at the grill. Hearing about what was going on at Our Place from the local radio station, people from a neighboring town that had not been too badly hit by the storm brought food from their freezers. Stores and dairies sent over chicken, milk and foodstuffs of all kinds.

And so the long day went. Those first cups of coffee and BLT’s somehow stretched to 16,000 meals. The restaurant’s small stock increased by 500 loaves of bread, cases of mayonnaise, 350 pots of coffee and bushels of produce.

And this is the real meaning of the story: Out of scarcity can come God’s abundance. Whenever Jesus is with us, there is enough. There is enough to eat and drink, enough to heal and care for, and enough to teach. And whenever Jesus asks us to act, all we need will be provided.

Death of the Nicest Alabama Fan

2008-08-02T20:59:00.003-04:00

From Tuscaloosa came the news today of the death of John Mark Stallings, son of former Alabama football coach Gene Stallings at the age of 46. The news is indeed sad for the stilling of the heart of a man that by all accounts never had an unkind thought in his life, but who stayed with us on earth far longer than anyone expected.

John Mark Stallings had Down Syndrome. When he was born in the early 1960s, his father was an assistant coach at Alabama. His mother, Ruth Ann Stallings, discussed what it was like to raise a child with Down Syndrome then in Gene Stallings' book, "Another Season: A Coach's Story or Raising an Exceptional Son":

“Things were different back then. People didn’t know how to react to the news,” Ruth Ann Stallings said. “Some didn’t acknowledge his existence; others would look away in his presence. I’d dress him so cute, his blonde hair shining, blue eyes so excited when he’d meet someone. Often, they’d compliment the girls, never looking his way.” She sighs. “You remember the people who stepped forward and those who didn’t.”

His father told a reporter earlier this year: "I had a whole lot less tolerance for the gifted and a whole lot more tolerance for the guy that wasn't quite as gifted. With Johnny, I saw him struggle to walk, struggle to kick a ball, struggle to do everything that he did. So, I had a little tolerance for the guys that had to struggle. If you had talent and didn't lay it on the line, I didn't have much tolerance for you. The less talented guy can't play on Saturdays. But he can get you ready to play on Saturdays. I wanted the guys who played on Saturday to have an appreciation for that guy who got them there."

During his father's tenure as head coach at Alabama from 1990-96, John Mark was a constant presence, accompanying his father to every practice and game. After an Alabama touchdown, the TV cameras would cut to John Mark and his mother in the skybox and the joy on John Mark's face could light up the stadium. The football equipment room at Alabama is named in his honor.

The Alabama athletic director said today: "For someone who never played or coached a game, I think John Mark may have touched more Alabama fans than any other person ever did. I would like to thank the Stallings family for sharing their love for John Mark with all of us."

A Note of Sadness

2008-08-01T19:38:00.002-04:00

I have never met the Rev. Elizabeth Kaeton, whose blog "Telling Secrets" is listed to the right, and whose recent story "Which Way Africa?" was the basis for my last posting. As she is in New Jersey and I am in Georgia, the odds are we may not ever actually meet face-to-face. But, as is so often the case, life (and death) can form the basis of shared experiences.

Elizabeth was in Canterbury, England, for the 2008 Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops from around the world. She has posted several excellent stories, many of which at least made me feel like I was actually there beside her, seeing what she saw. A rare gift of poetry, indeed!

Late Tuesday night, while she was in England, her mother died back here in the States. She had some time previously mentioned her mother's illness, but she said in "Goodnight, Mother" that her actual death was a surprise.

If you are one of the two or three charter readers of my blog, you may see the parallels with the death of my father almost six months ago ("Ralph S. Davison (Feb. 8, 1921-Feb 5, 2008)"). The ages weren't that different; the suddenness of death; and the distance from our loved ones, although I wasn't nearly as far away.

I try never to claim that I truly know how someone feels or will feel, but I think I may have some idea in this case. My initial reaction was shock, because, although my father had been ill for two years, there was no obvious decline before he died. Mixed with that was the sadness that someone who had been a part of my life for all of my life was gone and I could never again tell him how things were in my life. Relief came for two reasons, because I knew he had been terribly unhappy in his body's weakness and that had now been healed and because I had made the time the previous summer to go to Illinois to see him. I really didn't have any regrets that I hadn't done this or that sooner and I knew that he loved me and he knew that I loved him.

Six months on, the shock has lessened and I am reminded of the lesson I learned when my mother died 23 years ago. You don't actually "get over it" in the sense that it quits hurting. You become more accustomed to the point of sadness now in your life and you learn to live with it as time goes by; it becomes a part of you. The sharpness of the pain lessens, but now and again, a memory, a word, a random thought, brings it back with surprising suddenness and tears come again. (In fact, they're not far off as I write this.) And that is as it should be. I would not want to forget Dad and his life and his love, because how could I do that without forgetting a part of myself? If the tears are the price we pay for love, they're a bargain!

As I said then:

I feel relief that his suffering and sickness are over and I am reminded that healing can mean release and not always curing. He now can be reunited with those who went before him, his parents, his sisters, my mother, and many more... and he now waits patiently for my stepmother and eventually my sister and me.

Elizabeth, a fellow pilgrim on the road, I pray that with God's you find strength and comfort as you walk down this part of the road, about six months behind me.

O God, who brought us to birth, and in whose arms we die, in our grief and shock contain and comfort us; embrace us with your love, give us hope in our confusion and grace to let go into new life; through Jesus Christ. Amen.

And for all of us

Support us, O Lord, all the day long of this troublous life, until the shadows lengthen and the evening comes, the busy world is hushed, the fever of life is over and our work is done. Then, Lord, in your mercy grant us a safe lodging, a holy rest, and peace at the last; through Christ our Lord. Amen.

"Which Way" All of Us?

2008-07-28T13:57:00.006-04:00

I don't speak that much about the human sexuality issue that some might think is THE issue for the Anglican Communion these days. I think this is for two basic reason--one good and one less good. The "good" one is that homosexuality deep down doesn't bother me. I have no problem with an openly homosexual bishop in New Hampshire; in fact, some of the things he says and some of his responses to the meanness dealt out by others to him is a model we should all seek to follow. I have no issues with same sex marriages and I certainly don't feel that my marriage is threatened because of it.

The "less good" reason is that, while I see no reason to treat gay and lesbian people any differently, when I hear or read of it happening, I don't get outraged as I should, probably because at a superficial level part of me says, "It doesn't affect me." And there I am wrong. As the English poet (and Anglican priest!) John Donne wrote (I knew English Lit in 74-75 would be useful),

No man is an island, entire of itself;
every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less,
as well as if a promontory were,
as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were:
any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind,
and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
it tolls for thee.

Any mistreatment of my fellow men and women diminishes me, to put Donne's words into a modern context, "because I am involved in mankind." To put it in a more directly religious context, when I renew my Baptismal Covenant, I promise to "strive for justice and peace among all people, and [to] respect the dignity of every human being." Obviously, I still have some work to do with myself.

This is a long introduction to a post I am copying from "Telling Secrets", a blog you can see listed on the right by Elizabeth Keaton, an Episcopal priest from New Jersey, who is currently in England observing the Lambeth Conference. The post speaks for itself and perhaps you can see why it pierced the comfortable haze that can blind me sometimes on this issue.

Which Way Africa?

I love this picture because I have come to love the women in it.

Queen is the woman sitting on the left and Rose is the woman sitting on the right. Both women are from Nigeria, here with Davis Mac-Iylla.

I'm asking for prayers, right now, for Rose Ngeri. As I write this, she is up on the Campus of the University of Kent, trying to meet as many African bishops and their wives as she possibly can.

I passed her this morning, standing in front of the wall in the Church yard, praying. There was no denying that she was in prayer. There was no ignoring the power of that moment of her prayer.

I had no idea that it would lead to her feeling called to an act that can only be described as prophetic, if not something that may place her in danger when she returns home to Nigeria.

A few hours later, I was asked to proof read a leaflet she had prepared. Her intention is to put this in the hands of every African bishop she meets today.

When I first read this, it brought me to tears. As I just typed them into my computer, I found my hands trembling. I knew I had to share them with you.

One other preface: When Michael, who acted as her scribe, asked her if she was not putting herself in no small amount of danger, she said, with no discernible alarm in her voice, that we must understand that when the sexual orientation of gay men becomes known, they are tortured and/or killed.

What becomes of lesbian women, she was asked.

Oh, she said, they just send men to rape us. But, she added, deeply distressed, gay men are tortured and killed.

Here are her own words to her bishops and their wives:

"The Lambeth Conference, to me, is a place where you meet Bishops and people from all walks of life to share different views about lots of things we see and hear.

I gather that LGBT are welcome in the House of God by some people . . yet, denied the right of place in the same house of God by others.

Please, our African spiritual fathers, let us have a place in our churches. REMEMBER, WE WERE BORN OF YOUR FATHERS, MOTHERS, SISTERS, AUNTIES, COUSINS AND NEICES.

Our mothers did not ask for this group of children. Rather it is the content of the man deposited in the woman that came out the same way it is made by God.

African leaders keep passing laws against LGBT. Please, if I may ask, what crime have we committed?

Mothers, will you fold your arms and let your children die through torture? Why can't you ask them what crime your children have committed before they kill more of your children?

How long should we keep quiet about issues like this?

Which way Africa?"

Please take a moment from whatever it is you are doing and pray, right now, for Rose Ngeri.

Thank you.

Posted by Elizabeth Kaeton

Which way, indeed, for all of us?

Wheat or Weeds?

2008-07-19T18:19:00.004-04:00

[Our readings were Genesis 28:10-19a, Psalm 86:11-17, Romans 8: 12-25, and Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43.]

“Let anyone with ears Listen!” What wonderful words to hear right before a sermon!

In our reading from Genesis, we have the story of Jacob going to sleep and using a stone for a pillow. I recently heard a recording of a sermon by our Presiding Bishop where she said that it was not only amazing that Jacob could sleep on a stone, but that he could sleep at all, considering the evil things he had done! But there, despite all this, Jacob does sleep and he has a dream in which God promises that land for Jacob and his offspring, who “shall be like the dust of the earth.”

While God is making this promise, Jacob sees a ladder stretching from the earth up to heaven with angels ascending and descending on it. Over 30 years ago, I had the chance to see this visualized on the West Front of the Abbey Church of St. Peter in Bath, England. There, carved in the stone walls, are two ladders with the figures of angels on them. Some of the angels are upside-down, with their heads closest to the ground. As our guide explained to us, how else could you show in stone that angels are descending?

Jacob’s ladder has an important meaning to him and to us. That ladder which connects heaven and earth is there for us. It connects humanity with heaven. When we say we want to be part of the Kingdom of God or heaven, we are claiming the role of the angels in Jacob’s dream as we connect the world in which we live with heaven at the other end.

Climbing is hard work. In this case, it involves doing things to bring God’s love to the world. When we do things which support the Millennium Development Goals, we climb that ladder. This Thursday, the bishops of the Anglican Communion and their spouses, along with other religious, will march through the heart of London to urge our governments to live up to our promises to fulfill these goals. But they do not march alone. We will be with them in spirit, and even more, as God told Jacob in his dream, “Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”

God’s choice of Jacob has another meaning to us. We sometimes think of those whom God calls as being different, more holy perhaps, than the vast majority of humanity. God’s choosing Jacob shows that this is not so. If God were looking for a perfect person, He probably would not have chosen Jacob, who did some pretty despicable things to his brother Esau. Most of us would have probably decided that Jacob wasn’t good enough.

That leads us to Jesus’ parable of the weeds. I have never planted wheat, but I can visualize the problem. In the early stages of growth, the wheat and weeds are indistinguishable to the human eye and their roots are intertwined. If we do what the householder’s slaves suggested and try to pull the weeds up now, we’ll pull up the wheat and the weeds. The thing to do is wait for the harvest, when the harvester will be able to separate safely the weeds from the wheat and only the weeds will be destroyed.

There are a lot of people these days who are willing to do the sorting now. In the Anglican Communion, we have people, some of them in high places who claim the ability to tell the wheat from the weeds right now based on gender or orientation or many other characteristics. But we aren’t called to be weeders. That’s God’s job. If we try, and some are willing, we’ll pull up a lot of wheat. If God can wait until the harvest, why can’t we wait?

Churches aren’t called to be museums for saints, but hospitals for sinners. If we try to purge every sinner out of the Church, we’ll be like the congregation that purged itself down to the last couple. “Only John and I are left,” said Alice, “and I don’t know about him.” Instead, let us trust in God’s ability to choose, not ours.

Christians in Government

2008-07-13T16:28:00.002-04:00

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.

An exchange of e-mails yesterday with Bruce Garner, a member of the Episcopal Church's Executive Council along with several others posted on the House of Bishops-Deputies mail list got me thinking on this subject.

The immediate incident which brought this up was the case of Lillian Ledele, a registrar in the Borough of Islington, whose job is to perform marriage ceremonies (I assume among other duties), as well as now same sex partnership ceremonies which are now legal under English law. She asked to be excused from performing same sex ceremonies because she said her "orthodox Christian beliefs" caused her to conclude such ceremonies were wrong. There are other registers who can perform the services. The Islington Borough Council began disciplinary procedures and she appealed to the Central London Employment Tribunal. The Tribunal concluded that the Council discriminated against her on the basis of religion.

A couple of things are unclear in the story on her case in The Independent. First, did she actually refuse to perform the services or did she just ask if other registers could do them? I see nothing wrong with her asking and, if an accommodation can be made without impeding the efficiency of the Register's Office, for example, by keeping each register's workload at about the same level, allowing it. But the article sounds as if she has an actual right to refuse, no matter the impact.

This bothers me as a lawyer and as a civil servant, which I have been for over 22 years. At the beginning of this story is the oath of office all Federal officers and employees take (except for the President, whose oath is in the Constitution). Nowhere does it say I am to support the doctrine of the Episcopal Church or any other church.

My job is to implement the policies of the Administration in office at the time as long as they are consistent with the law. Whether or not I agree with them or like them isn't the point. Whether or not I think they are consistent with my religious beliefs is also besides the point. No one elected me to push my personal positions.

Similarly, Ms. Ledele wasn't elected to make subjective calls on whether people of the same sex should be able to enter into civil partnerships; that decision was made by the Government backed by a majority of the House of Commons who was elected to make those decisions.

For example, I am opposed for several reasons, some religious in nature, to capital punishment. However, the U.S. Supreme Court has said repeatedly that under the right circumstances, the death penalty is constitutional. If they said it, it is constitutional. If my job required me to argue in favor of capital punishment (thank God it doesn't!), I would have these choices:

1. Argue for capital punishment, recognising that my job is not to put forward my own opinions, but to advocate the position of the United States.
2. Ask to be excused from the case because I could not faithfully represent that position.
3. Resign my position.

Obviously, if I got turned down on #2, I'd have to choose between 1 and 3. Ugh. But nowhere do I see a right to use my Government position to advance my position in opposition to capital punishment. It may be that English law grants Ms. Ledele a right I lack. I suggest that isn't a good thing.

Assume my job allowed me to perform marriages in the State of Georgia. My role is to see that the people coming before me meet the requirements of law, not my own requirements. What if my beliefs said people of different races must not be married? What about a restriction to having only one spouse at a time? What if I don't believe there should be a minimum age?

This isn't new. A few years ago, Roy Moore, then the Chief Justice of Alabama, argued that his religious beliefs allowed him to post the Ten Commandments (actually one version of the Commandments, but that's another story) on State property. He lost, and when he refused to comply with the law, the Alabama Court of the Judiciary removed him from office. And they were right. What if instead of the Ten Commandments, it was a religious document of Islam? In our system, the Government can't make that distinction.

Campaign Against Torture

2008-07-07T19:17:00.003-04:00

As a retired Air Force reserve lawyer, our breaking the rules on torture are particularly irksome to me. Here's a letter of mine published in today's Macon Telegraph:

Seven basic reasons to ban torture

Your recent series on the abuses at Guantanamo was disappointing, not because you reported it, but because of what you had to report. The unquestioned abusive tactics our government used there and in other places did not make us safer, damaged our standing in the world, and may even someday contribute to abuses of captured U.S. service members.

Policies that permit torture do not reflect the values of the America I am proud to call home and which I served as an Air Force Reserve officer for 28 years. Moreover, security experts and military leaders agree that the use of torture does not result in actionable intelligence. It is time for those of us who reject policies that degrade our values to make our voices heard.

The National Religious Campaign against Torture, Evangelicals for Human Rights and the Center for Victims of Torture have crafted a Declaration of Principles that calls for a Presidential Executive Order banning torture and cruelty. The Declaration offers a blueprint for executive action by delineating core principles of humane treatment which can serve as a basis for a new standard for U.S. interrogation policy that is sensible and humane - a standard that allows us to effectively defend our homeland from terrorists while preserving America's values. With public support, the president can move towards restoring America's moral standing in the world.

There are seven basic reasons to ban torture: To preserve our character and values, to ensure reliable, actionable intelligence, to protect U.S. soldiers serving overseas, to strengthen U.S. standing in the world, to encourage military and intelligence cooperation from key allies, to allow prosecution of terror suspects, and to preserve the universal condemnation of torture.

These organizations are made up of many faith groups, including The Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, The Presbyterian Church (USA), the United Church of Christ, the United Methodist General Board, and numerous Roman Catholic organizations. Please visit www.campaigntoban torture.org and join the call to end to torture.

Religion Can Be Good for Your Health!

2008-07-06T14:26:00.002-04:00

A story on the Science Daily web site reports that a community's religious environment has an impact on mortality rates in the community.

Troy Blanchard, an associate professor of sociology at LSU, said that the type of church seems to make a difference and that people live longer in areas with a large number of Catholic and Mainline Protestant churches.

"First, these types of churches have what's known as a 'worldly perspective.' Instead of solely focusing on the afterlife, they place a significant emphasis on the current needs of their communities," he said. These religions commonly organize outreach efforts for the needy and homeless, invest in the health infrastructures of their town and participate in other forms of public charity.

"Secondly, these congregations tend to create bridging ties in communities that lead to greater social cohesion among citizens," said Blanchard. This enhanced sense of connection between people provides collective encouragement for healthy behavior.

"In contrast to Catholics and Mainline Protestant congregations, Conservative Protestant churches have a mixed effect on community health. The 'otherworldly' character of Conservative Protestantism leads congregations in this tradition to focus on the afterlife. Conservative Protestantism is also a more individualistic faith, one in which the believer's personal relationship with God is paramount. These types of churches are thought to downplay the importance of using collective action, including human institutions, to improve the world. Communities dominated by Conservative Protestant churches tend to have higher mortality rates."

As summed up by co-author John Bartkowski from the University of Texas at San Antonio, "The religious environment in communities throughout America really is a matter of life and death."

It really does matter where you go!

America

2008-07-06T13:42:00.000-04:00

[This Sunday, we commemorated our nation's independence. The lessons were Deuteronomy 10:17-21, Hebrews 11:8-16, and Matthew 5:43-48.]

As we commemorate the 232nd anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we should recall a unique aspect of that new Government.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

These words from the Declaration of Independence had a new idea—that all men (and women) are created equal and that their rights come from God, not an earthly King. We know, of course, that our ancestors did not always live up to these ideals. Nor do we today. Being human, they sinned and fell short. Women were not considered “equal” to men. Some men and women were so unequal that we treated them as mere property. We fell short and still fall short today. But the ideals remain, calling us to be better than ourselves, speaking to what President Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature.”

Some people question whether a commemoration of Independence Day is appropriate in the context of our liturgy. In fact prayers and readings for that day were not provided in the Book of Common Prayer until 1928! Some are concerned that many of the hymns may sound as if we claim that God is on our side. (I am reminded, though, of Lincoln’s statement that he was less concerned whether God was on our side than with whether we were on God’s side!) Others express concerns whether prayers which celebrate freedom and liberty are appropriate when they seem to overlook the imperfections in our society.

These concerns have some validity, but I believe that we can and should properly celebrate those early faltering steps on the road to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” while also recalling that we have not even approached the end of that journey and that we must not forget that we must at times go back to make sure no one has been left behind on the journey.

We can be proud of many things our country represents. We have worked through these two-plus centuries to extend freedom to all our people and we have worked—again, imperfectly—to support the cause of freedom throughout the world. Our country has truly been a beacon of liberty to the world, drawing millions of people—my ancestors and yours—over the years to our shores.

But there is so much still to do. This year, we seem to be afraid of so much. We are afraid of those who are different from us, so we seek to build walls around our country and our communities and we have people seeking large scale roundups of immigrants, especially Hispanics, to ship them somewhere else out of fear that we will otherwise suffer culturally and economically.

We are rightly called a nation of immigrants. I’m reminded of the story of a woman who was proud of her heritage and at a dinner party told a man, “My ancestors came over on the Mayflower!” He smiled and said, “How wonderful! Mine met the boat.”

Unless you are pure native American, you are here because people made decisions to leave their homes and make often dangerous journeys to this land. (For some, unfortunately, the decision was made for them and against their will.) Their welcome was uncertain, often depending on where they came from and when they came. But, we are here because of them.

Immigrants have served this country well, even when it may not have deserved that service. Some of the fiercest fighters on our side in World War II were the Japanese-American units whose families were in internment camps back home. Acts of valor were committed by the descendents of slaves who returned home to find it was the color of their skin—not the color of the uniform they wore—that was important. Arlington National Cemetery contains the remains of some of these “strangers” who gave that “last full measure of devotion” for a country that had yet to fully accept them.

Remember, as our Presiding Bishop has said,

As Christians, we are called to embrace the stranger, to render hospitality to those who are most vulnerable, and to find Christ in all who come to us in need. We are commanded to love our neighbors as God loves us. We have promised at baptism to seek and serve Christ in all persons. Therefore we share the pain of those workers being rounded up by our government for lack of legal status. Their families are experiencing the pain of separation and uncertainty, and untold hardship is being inflicted upon those struggling to support themselves and their families in a land which often wants their labor but denies them basic human dignity. As their brothers and sisters, we are diminished by their suffering.

Out of fear of terrorism, we act as a nation in ways that stand in stark contrast to the values we profess to honor. You may have seen the recent series in the Macon newspaper on how those imprisoned at Guantanamo have been treated. Setting aside for a moment whether "enhanced interrogation procedures"—otherwise known as torture—are effective (and most professionals say they aren’t), there is little doubt that that they violate the “dignity of every human being” which we promise to respect in our Baptismal Covenant.

But, not all is dark. Even with its flaws, our nation is still a beacon to the world. (In fact, that is why many in the world are so upset with how we have in their eyes betrayed their ideal image of America!) But, I can say what I am saying today without any fear of punishment. In November, I can vote as I choose without fear of beatings, starvation, or death, unlike the unhappy people of Zimbabwe. I can worship as I choose (or not!), without fear of a religious police!

Everywhere you turn there are examples of men and women doing what they can to bring the Kingdom of God into being. Faith groups, including our own Episcopal Relief and Development, are helping victims of natural disasters in our Midwestern states as well as the victims of Katrina three years ago. The One Vote campaign, which is supported by The Episcopal Church, works to unite Americans of all parties in the effort to eliminate extreme poverty, one of the Millennium Development Goals. We are called to do these things and more.

To conclude, I want to quote some more words of Abraham Lincoln, from his second inaugural address. With some slight changes of wording to reflect our times, they are a pretty good statement of where we should go:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Go Nowhere Among the Gentiles..

2008-06-16T13:14:00.000-04:00

[Our lessons this Sunday were Exodus 19:2-8a, Psalm 100, Romans 5:1-8, and Matthew 9:35-10:23.]

Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’

These words of Jesus from our Gospel reading today sound strange to us today, especially in light of what Jesus says at the end of Matthew’s Gospel:

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.

Why did Jesus at first limit his ministry to the people of Israel? There is a clue in our reading from Exodus: “You shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.” The people of Israel had a special relationship with God, and despite their failings and their sufferings, the relationship remained. So God’s people, the people of Israel, would be the first to hear Jesus’ message.

There was probably a practical reason. The apostles, especially before receiving the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, weren’t the most dynamic men around—at some times they were pretty thick! The area of Palestine shares a distinctive characteristic of areas between larger neighbors: that got conquered from all directions! (Poland has historically had the same problem.) The Egyptians, the Philistines, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Greeks and now the Romans had consistently overrun the area. The conquerors weren’t likely to be too interested in the message of some Galilean bumpkins (and even to many of the Jews, “Galilean Bumpkin” was sort of redundant).

Better to start off with the people who in many ways have been hearing this message for centuries, because, throughout his earthly ministry, Jesus uses language that his listeners would immediately recognize as being taken from their Scripture. When Jesus is calling for the “Kingdom of God” or the “Kingdom of Heaven”, this is familiar territory.

There’s a lesson here for us. World-wide mission is important, but we need to remember the people close to us as well. We have room here in this place for so many more to hear the good news that the Kingdom of Heaven is near. And the people around us speak the same language, have familiar customs—it should be pretty easy to do! We are called out to go to our own people, the people of our own households and neighborhoods, and to share with them the great good news that the kingdom of heaven has come near and that there are seats available for the great banquet. After all, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few!”

Fathers' Day

2008-06-16T13:10:00.000-04:00

This Fathers' Day has a particular poignancy as it is the first since the death of my father. It felt odd not getting a card to send. (I did hear from my children, not to mention my wife and my mother-in-law. After my April heart attack, I'm actually grateful to be here for Fathers' Day!)

Here's an extra prayer we said in church for Fathers' Day:

Loving God, whom we also call Father, we pray for our own Fathers and all those who are father figures to us. We thank you for their wisdom and care for us. We bless you for their strength and patience. Bless them with peace and joy as we honour them all the days of their life. May they, like the men in the scriptures and Joseph, the foster father of Jesus, be just and true. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

“I Never Knew You”

2008-05-31T19:29:00.000-04:00

[Our lessons today were Deuteronomy 11:18-21, 26-28; Psalm 31:1-5, 19-24; Romans 3:21-25a, 28; and Matthew 7:21-27.]

This is a short Gospel reading today, but it carries a very strong message. Jesus tells us that if you prophesy in his name, and cast out demons in his name, and do deeds of power in his name, that isn’t enough! If you call out to him, it isn’t enough!

“I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers!”

First, Jesus talks about this as a requirement for entry into the Kingdom of Heaven. Remember, when Jesus talks about the Kingdom of Heaven, he isn’t talking about the afterlife. The Kingdom of Heaven he proclaims is here and now. It is the place where, as we pray in the Lord’s Prayer, “Your will be done.” It is the place where God’s justice will be carried out, where the poor and the hungry and the ill are taken care of. So, when Jesus talks about what is needed, this is what he refers to.

Who gets in? “Only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.” We might think, “Isn’t doing the will of God all of these things we speak of?” Obviously it isn’t, or it isn’t sufficient. Something else is needed, something more than the acknowledgment of God as Lord, something more than just doing what you think God wants; something more than just allegiance, more even than obedience, more than hard work, diligence and following all the rules.

Go back to the reading from Deuteronomy:

“You shall put these words of mine in your heart and soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and fix them as an emblem on your forehead.” And what words were these? From earlier in Deuteronomy we hear: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and strength.” This is the missing ingredient: love!

All of these things we do must come from love. Love is that foundation of rock on which we must build. It must be there from the beginning and without it, nothing we do is doing what God wants.

If we obey Jesus only out of duty, doing things because we are proud of our ability to get things done, we will have left undone the greatest duty of all, the duty to love one another. If we obey only out of fear of punishment, we will be acting without that perfect love which casts out fear. If we obey only because we seek a reward—a reserved seat in the kingdom of God, we will be merely seekers of a prize; not lovers of a beloved.

God gave himself to us in his great love for us, through the redemption that is in Jesus. This is how, and how much, God loves us. And God wants nothing from us but our love in return. He wants us—ourselves, as we are, with our offerings of love, that mean more to God than anything—all treasure, all the prophecies, all of the casting out of demons and all the deeds of power. Those are the words to be put in our hearts and souls, bound as signs on our hands and fixed as emblems on our foreheads. Then all that we say and do and feel and think will be for the love of God.

Memorial Day

2008-05-26T08:48:00.001-04:00

[Here is a prayer we said in church yesterday. It was a combination of thoughts I had after reviewing several prayers on Memorial Day.]

"The Gift of Peace"

2008-05-22T16:35:00.000-04:00

[On Wednesday night, I filled in at our weekly Prayers for Healing service. Here's my short sermon ("sermonette"?).]

I recently finished reading a remarkable and moving book by the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, who was the Archbishop of Chicago from 1982 until his death from cancer in 1996. Two weeks before his death, he finished “The Gift of Peace,” in which he described the last three years of his ministry and of his life, and he opened it with a handwritten letter to his readers:

“To paraphrase Charles Dickens in A Tale of Two Cities, ‘it has been the best of times, it has been the worst of times.’ The worst because of the humiliation, physical pain, anxiety and fear. The best because of the reconciliation, love, pastoral sensitivity and peace that have resulted from God’s grace and the support and prayers of so many people. While not denying the former, this reflection focuses on the latter, showing how, if we let him, God can write straight with crooked lines. To put it another way, this reflection is intended to help others understand how the good and the bad are always present in our human condition and, that if we ‘let go’, if we place ourselves totally in the hand of the Lord, the good will prevail.”

Cardinal Bernardin wrote about things that we should do when faced with a serious illness or difficulty. First, we must put ourselves completely in God’s hands. Never doubt that God loves us, embraces us, never abandons us. This is our source of hope in the midst of suffering and chaos. Remember

“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

The yoke of Jesus is “easy” because it will be kind and gentle to our shoulders, allowing us to carry our load more easily—thus his burden is light. It is as if Jesus tells us, “Walk with me; if you let me help you the heavy burdens will seem lighter.” Jesus doesn’t promise to take our burdens away. He promises to help us carry them.

The Trinity

2008-05-17T20:33:00.000-04:00

[Our lessons were Genesis 1:1-2:4a, 2 Corinthians 13:11-13, and Matthew 28:16-20.]

Trinity Sunday is unusual on our calendar because it doesn’t commemorate an event, as do Christmas and Easter, rather it is dedicated to a doctrine. In fact, our readings today don’t directly address the doctrine of the Trinity, although two do describe the three natures of God.

We first hear the beautiful, poetic creation story from Genesis. This story was not intended to be a literal description of the creation process or as definitive science and in fact it bears a very strong resemblance to creation stories of other early civilizations. What it does do is take us beyond the limits of science.

Science has been able to tell us what the universe looked like a few seconds after the Big Bang and it’s been able to move closer to the moment of creation until we have gotten just a fraction of a second afterwards. But we can’t quite get to the moment of creation through science because science is part of the created universe. We can only get to that point by God.

The creation story is in fact the story of divine victory over chaos and establishment of God as creator of all. “And God saw that it was good.” That is a critically important point. God took pleasure in His creation and that includes us.

Paul’s conclusion of his second letter to the church in Corinth perhaps tells us what that church was not. “Put things in order, listen to my appeal, agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you. Greet one another with a holy kiss.”

From elsewhere in both letters we learn how disordered the life of the Corinthian community was. Conflicts existed between different factions caused by interpersonal rivalries, spiritual arrogance, a lack of sensitivity toward less experienced members, sexual immorality, and possibly some theological differences. That doesn’t sound all that unusual today.

Paul’s final, familiar Trinitarian benediction in fact may have been a later addition. It goes farther than most of his writings, but it shows that a concept of a Trinity was beginning to develop.

We also hear the conclusion of Matthew’s Gospel with the familiar commission to baptize in the name of the Father and Son and of the Holy Spirit. Most Christian churches use this formula and in fact, if it is absent, there is some question as to whether a sacramental baptism has occurred. The command to baptize and teach is how the Church to this day witnesses to and continues in its faith relationship with the risen Christ, who will be with us “always, to the end of the age.”

And so, the Trinity. The doctrine of the Trinity evolved over time, not because it was planned out that way, but because the natures of God and the experiences of the Church compelled the Church to work out how to deal with a God with three natures without diverting from the absolute monotheism we inherited from Judaism. No self-respecting Church would ever want to start out with this complicated idea of one God in three persons.

The early Church, raised in the Hebrew Scriptures, accepted the concept of God as their creator and, even more, as a God who was in an intimate relationship with His people, as would a Father or a Mother. God heard their cries and cared for them as a hen cares for her chicks. (You can’t really visualize this until you’ve seen it.) This is not a distant God on Olympus or in a far-off, remote heaven, but a loving, caring parent who continues with His people through all adversities.

Another understanding of God came from the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. God became flesh and dwelt among us. God was made incarnate in Jesus to make sure that the Church understood that God wasn’t remote from us, rather that God lived as one of us as Jesus. God was not only the creator; God was also the savior and redeemer.

And, last week, on Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came to the Church. Not just to the disciples, but to the whole community. The Spirit acts in unpredictable ways to give power and courage and enlightenment, often in ways we cannot expect.

The Church did not set out to create a doctrine of the Trinity. The doctrine of the Trinity is a response to the experience of the Church over the ages as we try to understand how God acts and as we try to figure out how we should respond to God’s acts. The doctrine of the Trinity attempts to speak of the mystery of God as God has been revealed to us. It invites us into the life of God, giving us a place at the Table. And finally, it returns us to revelation: God’s calling of us, the unveiling of God, the witness of the Spirit to the Father and the Son and to worship.

Zimbabwe

2008-05-08T22:20:00.000-04:00

We get so caught in our elections here (and they are important!), that we may not stop to think about places where elections aren't really free and fair and the results aren't respected. Such is the case in Zimbabwe, where President Robert Mugabe has wrecked what was a fairly prosperous country at independence in 1980.

Now it appears he has lost the presidential election. I say "appears" because the vote count was withheld for a long time, presumably until it could be manipulated so that the opposition candidate could be said to have failed to achieve a majority, thus requiring a runoff. Since the election, government security forces have been carrying on a campaign of intimidation which will make a runoff less likely to be free and fair. And by the way, a government source said that the current instability (caused by the government) may force the runoff to be delayed by a year.

The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church has issued a statement of support of the people of Zimbabwe.

Together with millions of people around the world, my heart has been drawn in recent months to the political and humanitarian crisis unfolding in Zimbabwe. The tragedy of that nation's descent into internal chaos is magnified by the high sense of purpose and prosperity that a newly independent Zimbabwe brought to Africa and the world nearly three decades ago. Sadly, Robert Mugabe's government has undermined that promise beyond recognition with its systematic repression of human rights, democracy, and economic opportunity for the people of Zimbabwe. The turmoil in the wake of Zimbabwe's recent elections signals an urgent need for governments and other leaders in the international community to stand in solidarity with the people of Zimbabwe, and call for an end to this long hour of human suffering and the beginning of a new era of promise and opportunity.

In listening to the voices of bishops and other leaders in Zimbabwe and the region, I urge all Episcopalians to advocate for an international response with three components:

First, the international community must act to ensure a fair resolution of Zimbabwe's March 29 elections. According to nearly all independent observers, those elections--if reported accurately--would reveal a strong majority in favor of removing the present government. Unfortunately, the electoral process has been so marred by government tampering, intimidation, and violence that the results reported last week--a narrow edge for the opposition that requires a run-off election--appear to be wholly without credibility. Moreover, unless neighboring governments and multinational institutions intervene to ensure electoral fairness, any run-off election would threaten even greater upheaval. Institutions with clout in the region--the government of South Africa, the Southern African Development Community, and the African Union--thus far have not mounted the massive pressure needed to ensure a fair electoral process for Zimbabwe's people, and I join my brother bishops in the region in calling for urgent and creative action from these parties.

Second, all in the international community have a moral obligation to stand for an end to the political violence, torture, intimidation, and other human-rights abuses unleashed by the Mugabe government in the weeks since the elections. Government riot police raiding a meeting of the Anglican Mothers' Union in Mbare is but one example of a pattern whose greatest abuses are far more shocking. Such repression is an affront to the dignity of every human being, and if left unchecked by Zimbabwe's neighbors, threatens to plunge Zimbabwe into violence much more severe and widespread.

Finally, I join with the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, and the Archbishop of Cape Town, in calling for an international arms embargo against the government of Zimbabwe. The prospect of a more-heavily armed Zimbabwe not only further threatens the security and well-being of Zimbabweans, but would also deeply undermine the peace and stability of the whole region. I am deeply thankful for the recent and successful efforts of Bishop Rubin Phillip of Natal in South Africa to prevent the offloading in Durban of a Chinese ship carrying arms for Zimbabwe. This much-publicized incident reveals, however, the urgent need for the United Nations Security Council to impose an internationally enforced embargo that would prevent arms from reaching the Zimbabwean government and sanction any who try to provide such arms.

In seeking these responses from government leaders, I urge all Episcopalians to continue to pray, in the name of the Prince of Peace, for the people of Zimbabwe. In a land that has suffered so greatly in recent years as a result of 165,000 percent inflation, 80 percent unemployment, and poverty so drastic that life expectancy is now only in the mid-30s, the need for healing and transformation could not be more urgent. May God, "in whose perfect kingdom no sword is drawn but the sword of righteousness, and no strength known but the strength of love," grant wisdom, courage, and strength to the people of Zimbabwe and to all who work for an end to that great land's current strife.

The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori
Presiding Bishop and Primate
The Episcopal Church