Prepare the Way of the Lord!

[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

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

[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]

[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]

[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]

[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

[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

[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

[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

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

[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

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

[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?

[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?

[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"

[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"

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?

[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]

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

[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

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!

[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

[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...

[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…”