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Sermons - Easter Season 2011


Easter Sunday – April 24, 2011
Year A – Revised Common Lectionary

    Acts 10:34-43
    Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
    Colossians 3:1-4
    John 20:1-18

OK, let’s pretend for a moment that Mary Magdalene is a modern woman at a modern tomb. Her friend is quite obviously dead. She witnessed his death. She knows he was put in this tomb. But now the tomb is empty. Then suddenly he appears to her. When she finally realizes it is Jesus, is she, like the biblical Mary, overcome with joy?

No, my guess is she would be terrified that he had become a zombie.

Yup, a zombie.

Because like any average young adult, Mary would be steeped in zombie lore.

Now, in case you haven’t been paying attention to popular culture, despite the fact that they don’t actually exist, zombies are all over the place: in films, on television, in video games and books. There are entire websites devoted to survival strategies in case of a zombie attack, with helpful tips on how to detect the coming zombie apocalypse.

So why all the obsession with the undead? First and foremost it is fun. Just plain old fun.

For example, a two-minute search on Amazon.com gave me these amusing items you can purchase today:

    A Zombie Survival Poster, with numerous helpful tips.

    The Zombie Survival Guide 2011 Desk Calendar—Complete Protection from the Living Dead.

    A ZOMBIE ATTACK SURVIVAL KIT issued by the Homeland Ministry of Undead Safety.

And of course the oh-so-necessary self-help books such as:

    So Now You're a Zombie: A Handbook for the Newly Undead

And finally,

    The Zen of Zombie: Better Living Through the Undead

So clearly, it is a lot of fun. But I also think there are deeper and perhaps more disturbing reasons for the zombie craze.

I think maybe much it is driven by death fears and the even more profound fear that we are all living pointless, meaningless, zombie-like lives.

When I went Internet surfing for answers I came across a book by a neurobiologist entitled: Man, Beast, and Zombie: What Science Can and Cannot Tell Us about Human Nature.

Author Kenan Malik argues that many modern theories of the human brain and mind reduce us to automatons at the mercy of brain chemicals and pre-printed wiring that we have no control over, making us either animals or zombies, and thus absent any real free will, He writes, “It has become commonplace to think of humans as simply beasts or zombies…The understanding of humans as simply animals or machines . . . is an illusion fostered by a culture that is deeply pessimistic in its view of human beings."

Zombies then tap into powerful feelings of helplessness, hopelessness and meaninglessness, to say nothing of our fear of death, a fear unmitigated by contemporary cultural atheism and agnosticism.

What does all this have to do with Easter?

It is this: the mind-blowing miracle of the Resurrection of Jesus is a powerful antidote for the fears and existential angst that underpin modern zombie lore.

But today people often find it easier to believe in obvious myths like zombies than in the resurrection of Christ.

I admit I was one of those for many years. But today I can tell you why I do believe, believe it intensely and literally, not symbolically or metaphorically.

Why?

Because of the empty tomb.

Almost all Biblical scholars agree that there really was an empty tomb.

Some debunkers have argued that the empty tomb was an elaborate hoax instigated by the disciples.

Jeffrey Sheler, US News & World Reporter religion writer and correspondent for PBS’s ``Religion & Ethics Newsweekly”  slays that idea with this:

“If the Gospel writers were hoping to concoct the strongest possible story, they undermined their own cause – as they would have known – by depicting women as the discoverers of the empty tomb. In the heavily patriarchal Jewish culture of the first century, …`the testimony of women generally counted for nothing. Indeed, in most cases they were not even allowed to testify in court.’ The only logical reason for including them, then, is to relate what really happened: the women discovered the empty tomb.’’

And in fact, despite the witnesses being women, NO ONE DENIED THAT THERE WAS AN EMPTY TOMB.

Early anti-Christian writings don’t deny the empty tomb. They usually just suggest the disciples stole the body.

But would the disciples have risked their lives for a hoax? I don’t think so. These guys were known wimps. When their friend and teacher was arrested, they ran and hid. They pretended they didn’t even know him.

Yet within weeks of the death of Jesus they were boldly preaching the Good News in public. They went on preaching `till all but the disciple John, died horrible martyrs’ deaths. Something happened and their story is made convincing by their conviction

So let’s say we too suspect this might all be true. That we truly begin to believe.

What then does life look like? How does the reality of Easter change us?

Well for one thing, our fear of death can drop a few notches. This is major and is life changing in many ways. For example, less fear of death might help us to reject the horror of excessive medical interventions to extend life for only a few miserable months.

It might also mean getting out of the rat race to get the most toys, the most stuff. We don’t win with toys since we can’t take them with us. When we lose the fear of death, we stop pretending it won’t happen to us and thus stop engaging in hopeless strategies for filling up an empty and pointless life.

The Resurrection instead tells us that our lives are not pointless; they have meaning. God raised a human from the dead and will raise us in some way.

This is not just a senseless universe where what we do is simply random. What we do matters. How we treat people matters. How we treat the earth matters.

Finally, the Resurection reveals that in the end, evil will be defeated.

Jesus, a seemingly weak and broken person on the Cross, is shown to be all powerful in the Resurrection. Evil and death and the devil lost. The dark powers of Jesus’ world, the corrupt rulers and religious leaders in league with them lost to a far greater power.

The power of God’s love.

Jesus’ self-sacrificing death and Resurrection also means that self-sacrifice for others is the model for our lives, not just Jesus’ life, but our lives. The disciples were martyred. The least we can do is share our stuff with others.

Because our stuff is pointless in light of Easter. Instead the only things that count are relationships, relationships of love, not just romantic love, but expansive, Jesus-like, sacrificial, love.

Instead of being some sort of sacrifice to an angry God, an appeasement for our sins, I believe Jesus was the emissary of God, actually God himself, who would battle the forces of evil through the Cross and Resurrection. His message, his healings, his death and his new life are all signs of God’s eventual victory over the chaos, over evil, over demons, over sin, over death.

And yes, over zombies.

Our salvation is in the hope that love, not evil, will win.

So how do we survive a zombie apocalypse? Or worse, a pointless, senseless, meaningless zombie life of undeath?

Might I suggest one way: trust in the reality of Easter, the reality of Gods’ love.



2^nd Sunday of Easter ("Thomas Sunday") – May 1, 2011
Year A – Revised Common Lectionary

    Acts 2:14a, 22-32
    Psalm 118:19-24
    1 Peter 1:3-9
    John 20:19-31

Many years ago a bunch of very dear friends and I were sitting around a campfire just talking and making each other laugh. Most were “lapsed” Roman Catholics from the South (an interesting group to be sure), except for my husband and me, and my sister at that time who was on hiatus from Jesus.

Anyway, we got started talking about Jesus and I don’t remember why but my friend Rick began speculating that Jesus might have worn glasses. His cousin, Roy Lee, retorted sarcastically, “Yeah, I can just see Jesus coming out of PearlVision!.

Another friend, Keith, who wears glasses, said huffily, “Hey! Wait a minute, I wear glasses!”

This whole conversation was amazing to me.

It was amazing 1) How my near-sighted friend wanted Jesus to be physically like him 2) How much everyone else in the group resisted the idea the Jesus could have a less than perfect body. They really fought it even though they claimed to no longer be Christians.

Interestingly, in the midst of this, my sister began pontificating that it was perfectly reasonable that Jesus might have needed glasses since after all he was fully human as well as God.

Even though she hadn’t darkened the door of a church in decades, my little sister had not forgotten her Sunday School lessons.

Jesus had a body, a real human body that for all we know, might have been nearsighted.

In this week’s Gospel passage, Jesus’ body is very much in action.

It is a strange story. After he is resurrected, Jesus pops in, without opening the door, on the frightened and grieving disciples. But though he is clearly different, he isn’t some sort of disembodied, ethereal ghost. Or a zombie, for those of you who heard my Easter sermon.

He breathes real breath on them, offers his wounds to be touched.

In the process they receive the Holy Spirit and come to great faith.

This was instruction not so much with Jesus’ words as with his body.

It is all about Jesus’ body. Which may seem weird, but really, when you think about it, isn’t. Remember how physical the Jesus story is.

At the very foundation is God who came to be with us in the human flesh of Jesus of Nazareth. A man, a man who was born like all of us, from the body of a woman. We call this miracle the Incarnation, which comes from the Latin word caro, which means flesh.

As I have pointed out before, but feel sure it bears repeating: God in Jesus had a physical body that as far as we know felt heat, cold, sexual desire, hunger, probably got the flu, laughed and had to use the latrine.

It is his life, in his body, doing what he did with his body together with his words, and then the death of his body and finally the resurrection of his body that make up our salvation.

It makes sense that God would do things like this. After all, God created us to be physical beings for at least part of our eternal lives. God breathed and created us and all of the material world and saw it as good.

This is incredibly different from the Greek and Gnostic views which have often intruded into Christianity ever since the beginning.

The Greek philosopher Plato held a dim view of the body. He wrote “...what is purification  but the separation of the soul from the body?”

Neoplatonists were a loud force in the early church and injected much of this distrust of the body into their theology, leading ultimately to many Christians’ disgust with their sexuality. excessive fasting, self-flagellation and so forth.

Gnosticism was and is a term used for a variety of spiritualities that all generally believe that humans are divine souls trapped in material bodies, in an evil material world, by a imperfect God. In the Gnostic belief, only some people have been given the spark that will give them knowledge (gnosis) for salvation, which is the escape of the soul from this corrupt, material world.

For Christian Gnostics, Christ is only divine, not fully human and fully divine. They deny the Incarnation, the belief that Jesus is God come to be with us as a human being.

Over the centuries this view of Jesus as being far more divine than human has often prevailed, leading to more than one film portrayal of him as insipid, pretty, perfect, barely a person, who never dances or laughs. Many of you know how much it drive me crazy that the “Divine-only” Jesus, always speaks only in King James Bible English.

But the people of the Bible, especially Jesus, saw mind and body as one. It is for this reason that he believed in, and then literally enacted, the resurrection of the body. And we too, will be resurrected some how, some time, in the same way. That is what the Nicene Creed means by the “resurrection of the body.”

Basic Christian belief includes the idea that we will be somehow physical in our eternal lives. We will not be ethereal bodiless spirits playing harps in heaven, though I am hoping my various aches and pains will be gone!

But that is all, to some extent, speculation. None of us knows exactly what life after death will be like.

What we do know is this: In this world, we are both physical and spiritual. We know this at a very instinctual level.

As I was writing this sermon, I was listening on my IPOD to the soundtrack from the film Pride and Prejudice. One of the really great romantic moments of the film is when the hero, Mr. Darcy, tells the heroine, Elizabeth, that he loves her, that she has “bewitched him, body and soul.”

I think the moment is so intense because we know in our hearts that we are both body and soul, that we live and love with both.

Many modern expressions of spirituality, such as New Age religions have strong Gnostic and Platonic streaks in their theology. The emphasis is often more on mental spiritual practices and less on physical actions such as helping the poor.

This is why I question whether simply meditating on a mountaintop as a way to connect with Jesus. That is one excellent way, but I think we should go further.

Why?

Because Jesus had a body, and with that body he showed us, far more than told us, how to live.

Thus I believe the way to best express our Christian faith is through our bodies, together with other bodies, other people, as part of a church community, not just as solo believers.

In fact, we the church are called The Body Of Christ.

So much of our Christian faith is expressed in physical terms.

All of the Sacraments have a physical component, that is what makes them sacraments. They are the outward and physical sign of an inward and spiritual grace.

In Baptism our bodies are washed with water and anointed with oil.

In Communion, the Eucharist, we eat and drink food that is Jesus’ body and blood.

The first Eucharist happened during a meal. Jesus actually identifies himself with material things: bread and wine.

One of my favorite old dead theologians from the 19^th century is Scotsman George MacDonald.

He wrote, “It is by the body that we come into contact with Nature, with our fellow-men, with all their revelations to us. It is through the body that we receive all the lessons of passion, suffering, of love, of beauty, of science. It is through the body that we are both trained outwards from ourselves, and driven into our deeper selves to find God.”

Christianity not a navel-gazing religion. As much as I think contemplation and quiet prayer are important for our spiritual growth, as much as they ground us and nourish us, it is in action with our bodies that we come closest to doing what Jesus would want us to do, or not to do. We do our greatest good, and our greatest harm with our bodies.

We are souls, it is true, and our souls guide our bodies, our feet and our hands. But it is our hands that help, that heal, that reassure, that defend, that feed.

It is our body that can be God’s hands in a broken and suffering world.

AMEN



3^rd Sunday of Easter – May 8, 2011
Year A – Revised Common Lectionary

    Acts 2:14a, 36-41
    Psalm 116:1-3, 10-17
    1 Peter 1:17-23
    Luke 24:13-35

What would you do if Jesus walked into this chapel, sat down with us, showed us how to interpret the Bible and then afterwards came on over to the Faculty Staff Dining Room to eat and chat at coffee hour?

Besides being concerned you were hallucinating, what would be your reaction?

I must confess to having fantasies about this. I hope it happens. I really hope it happens.

But I also know that if Jesus appeared to us, to me, in that way, not unlike the way Jesus appeared to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, I would be, like them, forever changed.

I would venture to guess that most of you would also like to have some kind of Emmaus-like visit from Jesus. But be careful what you wish for.

Now I actually know several people who have had intense, blatantly visual or auditory visions of Jesus that were Emmaus-like moments. And, by the way, they are ALL extremely sane and sensible people, more so than most, in fact.

They all report an extraordinary experience of God and Christ and they are certain that they have glimpsed a spiritual reality that is far more “real” than our daily existence.

They also report, and I can attest to this, being completely changed by these profound encounters with the Living God.

Nevertheless, wonderful as those experiences are for those who have them, and as instructive as they are for the rest of us, most of us will never have this type of mystical vision.

Does this mean then that Jesus has abandoned the rest of us, the mystically-challenged, like myself? Are we without his presence?

No; the answer is NO.

Why?

Because Jesus gave us a gift before he died. An extraordinary gift. A gift that gives any one of us a way to be very, very close to Him.

That way is the Eucharist, Holy Communion, The Lord’s Supper. And we get to be with Jesus in this way every Sunday.

Really? Yes really. And this is how.

In our Anglican-Episcopal tradition we believe in the real presence of Christ in the bread and wine.

And although most Episcopalians do not believe in what is known as Transubstantiation, the belief that the bread and wine are changed literally, physically, into Christ’s body and blood, we do believe that Jesus is completely present in this meal and especially in the people gathered to share in it.

I think sometimes we forget just how awesome this is.

Jesus will REALLY be with us in the meal we will soon share here in this holy place.

It is a mystical meal, a mystical moment. The Eucharist pierces the veil between this world and the spiritual world. It is a glimpse of the Holy. This is not simply a symbolic memorial but a true and real experience of Jesus incarnate among us.

So here we are, about to receive a most holy guest.

So if this is true then what will Jesus ask of us? How do we respond to this profound contact with God?

Our Gospel lesson makes is pretty clear that he ask for response from those to whom he appears.

And I am not speaking simply about personal choices to follow Jesus, not simply about our personal relationship with Christ.

Instead I believe Jesus is far more demanding. I believe when Jesus appears, when we have this profound experience of the Holy One, then we must share the fruits of that experience with the world.

This amazing gift, this Amazing Grace, is to be shared by telling others about how Christ changes our lives for the better.

Yes, the “E” word, evangelism.

I know that is a word that freaks out many of you. And with good reason. Many of you have been subjected to some pretty scary, exclusionary, and sometimes just plain self-righteous evangelism strategies by rather alarming evangelists.

So we hide our faith from others, in an effort to not offend or hurt. That is good; it is good not to hurt people. But sometimes we throw the baby out with the bathwater. We end up not sharing something that is important to us, which can change lives, save lives. Not lives in some future Heaven, but lives now.

Contact with God changes people. It should change us. It should inspire us to express that change, both in words and deeds.

One of the ways I believe we should be changed is in our capacity to love our enemies.

Last Sunday the President reported that our forces had killed our long-time enemy Osama Bin Laden. While I am no pacifist and would have made the same call as President Obama and the Navy Seal who shot him, I was appalled at the cheering in the streets. Instead I wanted at least the Christians among us to say a prayer. A prayer like this one from our own Book of Common Prayer:

    O God, the Father of all, whose Son commanded us to love our enemies:
    Lead them and us from prejudice to truth;
    deliver them and us from hatred, cruelty, and revenge;
    and in your good time enable us to stand reconciled before you;
    through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Like a mother’s love, which we celebrate today, God’s love is for everyone, even our enemies.

That is, I think, a critical way in which we are to be changed by contact with the Living God. By practicing, to the best of our flawed human ability, radical love and forgiveness.

The gathered people, we, are blessed by the amazing reality of the Eucharist and that blessing cannot be hoarded for our personal benefit. The two disciples on the road to Emmaus didn’t just bask in the glory of God after sharing the meal with Jesus. Instead they ran all the way back to Jerusalem to share the Good News, to share their blessings.

In Holy Communion we are called by Christ to share all of our blessings.

This is what I hope will happen when the veil is pierced and Jesus comes to visit us. Today. Here. In this church. Now.



4^th Sunday of Easter (“Good Shepherd Sunday”) – May 15, 2011
Year A – Revised Common Lectionary

    Acts 2:42-47
    Psalm 23
    1 Peter 2:19-25
    John 10:1-10

Green pastures, cool, still water, God’s love.

Sounds good to me!

So I want to know, how do we go through the gate to green pastures? How can we have a life full of the goodness of God? How do we gain life, abundant life?

We do it by listening to a good shepherd.

Who then is the Good Shepherd? According to the 23^rd Psalm, he is God.

And according to the Gospel of St. John, the Good Shepherd is Jesus Christ. In this Gospel passage Jesus implies that he himself is the shepherd. Then in a later passage he makes is completely clear saying, “I am the Good Shepherd.”

Jesus is also the gate. He says in the "Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.”

Jesus is a gate to salvation, a doorway to the life lived in abundance. As our Good Shepherd, he guides us, draws us, towards a life of spiritual abundance, of peace, of depth. We call it eternal life and it is lived now and later.

How does a good shepherd guide?  We can look to the 23^rd Psalm for clues.

The primary job of a good shepherd is caring for the sheep, especially those that are weak, sick or lost. He cares for the whole flock.

How often have we been weak or sick or lost.?

In many churches there are stained glass windows depicting Jesus as a good shepherd, carrying a tiny lamb on his shoulders, a lamb too tired or hurt to walk.

How often have we felt too tired to go on?

The 23^rd Psalm also tells us that a good shepherd helps us find water and food. The Psalmist writes, “He makes me lie down in green pastures and leads me beside still waters.” And “You spread a table before me.” This is real food, as well a spiritual food. All food comes from God, all spiritual moments are communion with him.

A good shepherd also carries us through when life is intensely difficult, full of suffering or even flat out frightening. This is why the 23^rd Psalm is so beloved: “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”

A good shepherd also guides us towards good life choices: The Psalmist knows this and declares the Good Shepherd, the Lord, guides him “along right pathways for his Name's sake.”

So what do shepherds use to guide sheep? Cattle prods? Screaming and yelling? Threats?

No, good shepherds use a shepherds crook, a staff or a rod. That staff or rod is used only to gently guide, never to hit with force to guide the animals. Note that the rod in Psalm 23 is a comfort, not a bludgeon.

You probably all know the saying from the biblical book of Proverbs that is usually translated from the original Hebrew as, “spare the rod, spoil the child.” The complete verse as translated by the Bible we use in the Episcopal Church is, “those who spare the rod hate their children, but those who love them are diligent to discipline them.” (Proverbs 13:24)

This verse is often used to justify beating children.

But those who use it this way completely misunderstand its meaning. The rod, as I said above, is a guiding tool, a comforting tool, not a hitting tool.

A better translation of that verse which would be more understandable to our culture is, “Those who fail to correct their children, do not love them.” To correct is to discipline with love. And correction does not mean hitting, it means guiding. That is what a good shepherd does. Only the most incompetent shepherd needs to use violence to guide his flock, and when he does that the sheep despise him and run from him.

It is the same way with God. God does not punish, instead he guides.

The 23 Psalm assures us that the good shepherd is full of mercy and is the giver of life. He declares, “Surly goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

So the good shepherd guides us and never uses violence; he brings us to good pastures full of life abundant.

In this Gospel passage, Jesus also warns us about bad shepherds. He says they are thieves, who come “only to steal and kill and destroy.”

Now that we know how God, in Jesus Christ, is the good shepherd, and how a good shepherd behaves, and we have been warned about the thieving bad shepherds we might want to ask ourselves, “who are the bad and good shepherds in our own lives?”

Who are we listening to? The Good Shepherd, Jesus? Or the thieves? And is our selective deafness keeping us from passing through the gate into green pastures and quiet waters?

I don’t have the answer for you, in your life, in your family, or in your world. I only have mine. So I simply leave you with a question to ponder.

Who are you listening to?

I would also like to leave you with the collect of the day which we heard at the beginning of the service, I think it bears repeating:

“O God, whose Son Jesus is the good shepherd of your people: Grant that when we hear his voice we may know him who calls us each by name, and follow where he leads; who, with you and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.”



5^th Sunday of Easter –May 22, 2011
Year A – Revised Common Lectionary

    Acts 17:1-15
    Psalm 66:1-8
    1 Peter 2:1-10
    John 14:1-14

I hate the Gospel lesson for today and I love it.

Like many of you, I love this passage when it is used for funerals. It gives us such hope for eternal life.

But I also think this passage is one of the most crazy-making parts of the Gospels. It has been used to frighten children, bludgeon adults and persecute non-Christians, even to the point of extreme violence.

In short, it’s a doozy.

But because it is a doozy it is also deep, far deeper than it may appear on the surface, and even more demanding.

Now there is no doubt that these words are profoundly comforting to mourners.

"Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?”

Jesus is saying a number of things here. But one is this: there are many places for the soul to dwell, not only in our bodies, on this earth. He is telling the disciples that by his coming death and resurrection he is opening a door for them into a spiritual realm that they will eventually enter.

For some this spiritual realm can be glimpsed here on earth through mystical experiences; which is wonderful for mystics but sort leaves the rest of us out.

In addition, even for mystics, God is essentially unknowable, beyond our human comprehension. Jesus, however, gives us the great Good News that we can all know something about the world to come and something about God by knowing him.

“If you know me,” Jesus explains, “you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him." And later in the same passage, “No one comes to the Father except through me.”

Because Jesus is a human being, as well as God, he is the lens through which we come to the Father. In other words, he translates God for us, in a way we can understand.

This is comforting because the Gospels reveal that Jesus, and therefore God, is not irrational, or violent or frightening. Instead he is the essence of inclusive, forgiving love.

Unfortunately that same sentence “No one comes to the Father except through me” is often used to argue the exact opposite. It has been used to exclude non-Christians. It is offered as proof they will not go to heaven and further, that they are despised by God. Those words have often been used throughout the last 2000 years to justify terrible Christian sins such as the Crusades and anti-Semitism.

That they will be left behind either individually as they die one at a time, or in some massive, horrifying, earth-burning apocalypse.

Which, incredible as it may seem, brings me to a joke:

Two adventurous guys, George and John, determined to see the world, signed onto a freighter as deckhands. They were being trained as helmsmen, and John's first lesson was given by the first mate, a seasoned but gentle white-haired seafarer. John was at the wheel, holding the heading he had been given, when the first mate ordered, "Come starboard. "Pleased at knowing immediately which way starboard was, John left the helm and walked over to his instructor. The first mate had an incredulous look on his face as the helm swung freely, but he merely asked politely, "Could you bring the ship with you?"

Jesus brings the whole ship with him, as well as the passengers. He leaves no one behind

I believe this is the inclusive Way of Jesus. That is the Way with a capital W.

"I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” does not give us license to bang on and on about who is barred from heaven, or permission to slaughter Jews or Muslims, or anyone else for that matter.

Instead it calls us to follow the Way of Jesus.

For Jesus is not just speaking about opening a door into a spiritual afterlife, but also about opening a door into a spiritual life now, a vision of how we should participate with God in bringing about the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth.

Not through violence, not through exclusion, but through love.

One biblical scholar put it this way: “Jesus’ words and deeds in this Gospel speak love at every turn. He demonstrates absolute, total, and universal love in his varied responses to those who approach him. Jesus’ life, teaching, and behavior do indeed present people with ‘an authentic vision of human existence,’ that is, a model of the way human life ought to be lived. If one lives like this, one will definitely encounter God, who is Love.” (John Pilch, The Cultural World of Jesus)

No one encounters God without love. We can reject God’s love, to be sure. But God is always offering. Now, later, and I believe, throughout eternity.

The Way to the Father is the way of love, love exemplified by the sacrificial, and ultimately victorious love of Jesus Christ.

In fact, the earliest Christians called the church “The Way.”

“The way, the truth and the life” is a journey of love, not a journey of correct belief or correct religious doctrine.

The Way is a process, a voyage, a totally new type of living. A complete turnaround that has huge implications for how we then live our lives.

Listen again to Jesus: “Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves.”

Again, he is drawing us out of simplistic gatekeeping and into his world of unconditional love, a world that is full of wondrous works.

What kinds of amazing works might Jesus imagine we should be doing if we follow him?

What does this mean for us?

For starters, as I discussed last week, I believe it means wondrous works of radical forgiveness, a forgiveness that extends mercy even to enemies, that refuses to demonize them, that refuses to forget they are loved by God as well as we, a forgiveness that never stops hoping that repentance is possible.

And, although I am not a pacifist, I believe following the Way means radical peacemaking, peacemaking that goes beyond the imaginable, where all recourse has been tried before war is even considered.

I believe it means the wondrous and radical understanding of each others’ limitations and possibilities, never putting people on pedestals too high or in pits too low.

I understand the Way of Jesus as calling for a radical willingness to sacrifice ourselves for our fellow human beings. To put the well-being of others before our own.

I understand the Way as a radical willingness to share our material blessings without judgment as to whether the person we share with deserves our charity.

I believe, too, the Way of Jesus calls us to harbor a radical desire for all persons to be saved and all to live a good and abundant life.

And finally, and most difficult, I believe Jesus’ Way demands the hard work of a radical willingness to put God first, above country, family and self.

This is of course, basically impossible for us to do perfectly. But we can at least understand it as the goal. A goal we deeply need God’s help in meeting.

Perhaps then, so needing God’s help, a good way to end is to end in prayer. Hear again the collect for the day

Almighty God, whom truly to know is everlasting life: Grant us so perfectly to know your Son Jesus Christ to be the way, the truth, and the life, that we may steadfastly follow his steps in the way that leads to eternal life; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.



6^th Sunday of Easter - May 29, 2011
Year A – Revised Common Lectionary

    Acts 17:22-31
    Psalm 66: 7-18
    1 Peter 3:13-22
    John 14:15-21

When I was in middle school, several eons ago, my horse got me into deep trouble with the school principal.

We lived in Orinda off St. Stephen’s Drive. In those days Orinda Woods didn’t exist. Instead it was all empty land between St. Stephen’s Drive and Pine Grove Intermediate School in Orinda Village. The owner of the land had allowed several of us kids to pasture our horses there for free.

“What a deal!!”-- until the day of the “Great Escape.”

That day, for some unknown reason, our little herd of horses managed to break through the fence that boarded the school. I guess the lush, well-watered green lawns of the baseball diamond looked mighty appetizing.

Anyway, somewhere around noon the principal, looked out and saw the herd enjoying a stolen snack in the outfield.

Because I was the only kid there in school who the principal knew had a horse in that pasture, I was called down to the dreaded Principal’s Office. I was good and scared.

But miracles upon miracles, there was my Mom. The principal had called her as well. Thank God, because my normally shy and timid Mom stood by me and defended me as the accusation was launched. She pointed out that my horse was not the only offender and that a child of 12 could not possibly be responsible for the upkeep and repair of a 10 mile fence line.

My Mom was an Advocate. My Mom was acting in a way that is reminiscent of the Holy Spirit as Jesus describes in today’s Gospel lesson.

Jesus tells his anxious disciples “I will ask the Father and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of Truth.”

Jesus was seen by the community of John as having been an advocate, literally “one who stands by the side of a defendant or witness.” Now the Holy Spirit would be such an advocate: one who stands by our side.

The Holy Spirit would also be our teacher of Truth and a constant reminder, if only a whisper of conscience, of what Jesus would want us to do and say.

A bit later in John’s gospel Jesus says ²⁵ “I have said these things to you while I am still with you. ²⁶ But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.”

Jesus will not leave his disciples orphaned. Like my Mom that the day of the Great Escape, Jesus does not leave us orphaned.

How does this work? Who is the Holy Spirit?

Let’s look at the ways the Holy Spirit, one of the expressions, outpourings, persons of God, is described both in scripture and in the Christian tradition.

One way is the image of the breath of God. As the Bible begins: “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind swept over the face of the waters.” That wind, ruach in Hebrew, is the very breath of God. God breathes life into the formless void.

The Holy Spirit then is the Creative Force. We also hear the Holy Spirit in the word inspiration. Art is an outpouring of the Holy Spirit that brings us joy or tells of our sorrows.

Creativity, inspiration, flexibility all help us to meet challenges head on. Inspiration from God also helps us motivate with compassion to help others, to go the extra mile, give the extra buck.

As Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff writes:

“The Spirit appears as resistance, rising above all hatred, hoping against all hope. The Spirit is that little flicker of fire burning at the bottom of the woodpile. More rubbish is piled on, rain puts out the flame, wind blows the smoke away. But underneath everything a brand still burns on, unquenchable…The Spirit sustains the feeble breath of life in the empire of death.”

The Holy Spirit is also what I might call our conscience. The Holy Spirit is often called Wisdom or Sophia in Greek.

The Holy Spirit is that small voice inside us that says No or Yes. The Holy Spirit drove Jesus into the desert to be tempted by the devil. Given the choice to have great power if he would be the devil’s right hand guy.

Our choices are usually not that dramatic. But we do have choices. I don’t want to overdo the guilt thing, because as I have said A MILLION TIMES, God is forgiveness.

But God does whisper to us constantly about what we should or shouldn’t be doing. Sometimes it is difficult to sort out the voice of the Holy Spirit from society’s voice or your mother’s, but I think we know it when we hear it.

We hear the voice of the Holy Spirit every time we walk past the homeless, obviously mentally ill guy and give nothing, look the other way.

When hear it when we engage in adulterous love affairs, take pencils from the office, cheat on a test, or dump our girlfriend via a text message.

As our conscience the Holy Spirit desperately tries to stop us from hurting each other, from lacking compassion.

The Holy Spirit also give us compassion by reminding us that we are all loved by God. We can see this in the image of the Holy Spirit as a dove.

The dove, the Holy Spirit, was there when God made his covenant with Noah after the flood.

God made his promise to all people in the presence of the dove after the flood and I believe this universal promise to the whole world is present in the dove that descended at Jesus’ baptism.

God does not renege on his promises. He does not break covenants. God is still in covenant with all the peoples of the world.

We are all God’s children. We are united in this. This should help us help others, walk with others in this vale of tears.

As spiritual writer Fr. Henri Nowen once wrote “Living the spiritual life means living life as one unified reality. The forces of darkness are the forces that split, divide, and set in opposition. The forces of light unite. Literally, the word “diabolic” means dividing. The demon divides; the Spirit unites.”

The Holy Spirit then is like a parent who tries to guide us, instruct us and nurtures us, who is our Advocate who stands at our side.

This holy family member will not leave us orphaned.

We need that. We need the Holy Spirit to walk at our side through this difficult, challenging, wonderful, beautiful, astounding, surprising, and very strange thing we experience as life.

The Holy Spirit is God’s gift that makes it possible.


7^th Sunday of Easter (Sunday after the Ascension) – June 5, 2011
Year A – Revised Common Lectionary

    Acts 1:6-14
    Psalm 68:1-10, 33-36
    1 Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11
    John 17:1-11

A couple of weeks ago we experienced what a young person might describe as the “epic fail” of an apocalyptic prediction by an Oakland-based preacher.

The preacher had predicted a series of earthquakes on May 21st that would then be followed by “The Rapture”, a somewhat dubious, at least to my mind, Christian doctrine that says true believers will be physically lifted up into heaven, with the rest of us left behind to suffer the violent wrath of God.

Obviously, this did not happen. A billboard that popped up two days later summed it up quite clearly saying, “That was awkward.”

This whole incident reminded me of the Y2K predictions that swirled about during the change of the millennium in the year 2000. If you remember, these predictions in their more dramatic form described a total societal meltdown because of computer dating glitches. The predictions sometimes even took on a religious component with people predicting the end of the world and the coming wrath of God.

However, many others predicted that the coming millennium would instead initiate a new era of love and world peace.

At that time I was a religion columnist for a small newspaper in Vacaville. This is an excerpt from the column I wrote right after Jan 1, 2000.

Tibetan Buddhist Lama Surya Das saw the millennium as a special, holy moment in time.

“Tibetan masters say that spiritual practices done at the time of any large cosmic conjunction -- a full or new moon, an equinox or solstice, or the turning of a new year -- are multiplied a thousandfold. . .Thus, the cusp of the new millennium is an extremely propitious moment for prayers and spiritual practice,” he wrote in an essay on beliefnet.com.

Lama Das's prayer for this millennial moment is “to dedicate this life and all my lifetimes to the selfless service of spiritual enlightenment. My aspiration for the new millennium is that I become the greatest me I can and that, collectively, we become the greatest we that we can possibly be.”

Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey saw the turn of the century as an instant of “kairos” time. In a November, 1999 lecture he explained that the New Testament writers used the word kairos to point to “time interrupted.” He quoted another theologian saying “Kairos moments are turning points in history which demand specific existential decisions.”

The kairos moment we celebrated was what Archbishop Carey calls “Bethlehem Time,” the birth of Jesus Christ.

“‘Bethlehem time,’ as I have called it, defies the bleak secularist verdict that this life is all; that our time must be given up to making life as pleasurable, as profitable and as easy as possible -- before the oblivion of death swallow us all up.”

He called on Christians “to go out from our churches and into our communities...By espousing the Christian faith we unite with a God who loves his creation and who wants all to join him in the task of regeneration.”

And the bishops of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) asked “Let us seek reconciliation of the races in order to heal the perennial wound in our body politic and the world.”

Well, we all know what happened Jan 1, 2000. Nothing.

Instead a year and a half later, September 11th happened. Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq happened. The economy collapsed.

No new millennium of love & peace.

Another “epic fail” prediction.

Instead of either apocalyptic destruction or the beginning of a positive New Age of love, we got war, ugly political battles and spectacular expressions of greed.

In other words, the usual human foibles.

Why? Well obviously the answers are complex and multilayered, but I would like to suggest today that our Bible readings may offer a couple of clues and a couple of helpful spiritual lessons for addressing the messes we seem to be in.

The first comes from the lesson in Acts wherein the two angels ask the disciples why they are standing around looking up at where Jesus had gone, instead of moving on with their lives and mission.

The disciples had been told that they would be sent the Holy Spirit to help them move forward, that Jesus would no longer be there to help and advise them directly.

They had also been told to not obsess on when Jesus would return, with Jesus saying before he left, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

We often have a tendency to worry about the future, or attempt to control it, losing focus on what we should be doing right now. Much of the apocalyptic prediction behavior I think comes from anxiety, with its concomitant desire to know and control the future.

Obviously this doesn’t work real well. In getting wound up trying to control the future we can go into fearful, reactive behaviors that get us in deeper trouble. In trying to protect ourselves, we lose sight of what joy is to be had in the moment.

I’m not saying to never make reasonable plans for the future. I have a retirement plan after all.

But we can overdo it. Whenever fear drives us we have the potential to overdo it.

Instead of concentrating on prayer as Lama Surya Das suggested, or spreading the Good News of Jesus in a loving way as Archbishop Carey advised, or seeking “reconciliation of the races in order to heal the perennial wound in our body politic and the world,” as the Lutheran Bishops pleaded, most of us got stuck worrying about our selves and our personal fortunes and futures.

We missed out on opportunities to help God bring about his Kingdom.

Why? Why do we keep doing this? Might I suggest the wisdom of the author of the passage from 1Peter. He writes, “Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour.”

The devil prowls around. Not necessarily literally, but certainly figuratively. The forces of evil tempt us, keeping us either stuck waiting for Jesus’ imminent return to solve all problems with a wave of his hand, or a lightening bolt. Or we are tempted to stay stuck in the hell of self-absorbed worry about personal comfort or a hellish series of fights over trivial issues.

The political sphere is rife with this sort of behavior, and it seems to be getting worse. There seems to be little concern for the welfare of the nation as a whole, only for each individual’s backside.

But closer to home, certainly the Church has a long history of getting stuck either in heaven-gazing or worse, in trivial and pointless fights that only serve to distract us from life-giving ministry to those desperate for real help, both spiritual and material.

In the Anglican Church we have fought over whether there should or should not be candles on the altar, whether stain glass windows depicting saints constitute idolatry, whether we should kneel or not during Holy Communion. We have had pitched battles, sometimes actually violent, over what sort of clothing priests should wear, the language in the Prayer Book and musical styles. The list of silly, distracting fights is endless.

Again, the devil stalks around and our eyes remain stuck heavenward waiting for Jesus to fix things or down in the worldly hell of trivial self-absorption, instead of on what needs to be done right now to fulfill Jesus’ new commandment that we love one another as he has loved us.

We can, as the author of 1Peter says, “Cast all your anxiety on him, “ on Jesus, instead of expressing it by trying to predict the future or protect ourselves to the point of hurting others.

As the Church, we are called to set a better example.

And if we actually did what Jesus asked us to do then perhaps those optimistic predictions for this new millennium might actually come true and be an epic success.