Site Links

Related
Links

Sermons - Epiphany Season 2011


January 2, 2011 – The Second Sunday after Christmas
Year A – Revised Common Lectionary
    Jeremiah 31:7-14
    Psalm 84:1-8
    Ephesians 1:3-6, 15-19a
    Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23

When I first came back from Guatemala to live in America I was almost 8 years old. My sister was close to 3.  I spoke both English and Spanish fluently.  She spoke only Spanish. Because this was 1960, times were different; attitudes towards people from other countries were different, even less tolerant than now.

And because we looked like your average white Americans, the kids in our neighborhood couldn’t understand why my sister didn’t speak English. It seemed strange and perhaps even a little scary. And you know what happens in those situations.

Bullying.

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately if you are not too much of a pacifist, I was pretty tough. I got in a lot of fistfights defending her “honor.”

I was a stranger in a strange land and I have never really felt any other way. I always feel a bit on the margins, always a bit foreign, no matter where I am.

It was this feeling of being a perpetual outsider, a stranger, that caused me to get very excited about Jesus. When I discovered that Jesus was not only an advocate for the outsider, but an actual outsider, an actual stranger in a strange land, I was hooked. I became a follower of Jesus, the stranger.

In one respect, the one I noticed at first, since it spoke to my story (and let’s be clear- of course this is all about ME!!) Jesus is a stranger in a strange land in the same way I was—he lived as a child in a country that was not his own. In modern terms, he lived outside of his passport country, his country of citizenship for the first few years of his life.

Our Gospel story today tells us “Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod.”

I can attest to the weirdness of that kind of experience—it changes one. It makes the child that experiences it forever sensitive to those who are outsiders for any reason at all.

Jesus was an outsider for reasons beyond having been a foreigner in a foreign land. He was also an outsider, a marginalized person, by having been born poor, to an unwed mother who was from a tiny, crappy little town called Nazareth, a town so lowly that a common saying at the time was “what good can come from Nazareth.” In addition, he was born in a stable with animals, and visited by outcast shepherds. To top it off, he was a descendant of scandalous outsiders such as Tamar, Rahab, Bathsheba and Ruth. Tamar and Rahab were prostitutes, Ruth a foreigner and Bathsheba an adulteress. Matthew makes a huge point of this by listing Jesus’ descendants before he begins his story.

All of the above made him in his society a person without honor, the most important social capital, which was practically like monetary currency.

But the story of his birth makes it clear that despite the externals of Jesus’ life and ancestry, he is actually a person of honor of the highest sort—an honorable person sent from God.

A star heralds his birth, in a time when astronomical events were taken very seriously as heavenly signs. He is visited by some VIP’s, the Magi, the Wise Men, who bring kingly gifts. A choir of angels announces his birth to the shepherds and he is born in the City of David, Bethlehem. In fact, along with the scandalous ladies, Jesus is also a descendant of King David, of whom it was said a Messiah would be born.

And finally, Jesus’ story has strong parallels with the story of Moses. Both Moses and Jesus are born into a situation where they barely escape death as infants at the hand of a ruler—King Herod in the case of Jesus and Pharaoh in the case of Moses. Both King Herod and Pharaoh decree the death of infants in order to attempt to prevent the birth of someone who might threaten their power, Jesus by being the Messiah and Moses by leading the Hebrew slaves to revolt and escape Egypt.

Jesus, this person of great honor, nevertheless, consistently shows that he is all for the outsider, those without honor or status or privilege. He even acts like an outsider himself. He travels around the countryside, in a time when travel was considered socially aberrant behavior. He never marries, in a society that expected all men to marry. He associates and speaks with sinners and women. He touches sick people—a religious no-no at the time. In fact he is so over-the-top in this outsider behavior his mother and siblings at one point, concerned that he has lost his mind, try to get him to come back home with them.

As one writer I found on the internet puts it, “Regardless of illness, poverty, social status or occupation, Jesus assisted outsiders to discover for themselves personal values that transcended the accepted standards of worth set by the guardian insiders. Perhaps the most profound aspect of his life was his identification with the outsiders…”  (http://www.jesuits.ca/orientations/marginal.html)

It is important to be aware that none of this was actually new for the people of Israel. The prophets constantly railed at the people to live up to God’s expectations that they should care for the poor, the outcast, and even the foreigner. One of God’s first commandments was this: “You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

What makes Jesus new and different for Christians is this: We believe that God, in a unique way, validated Jesus’ outsider status as honorable, as more than honorable, as first-born Son of God. By resurrecting Jesus from the dead, God gives a giant stamp of approval on all Jesus was and did.

Personally, I believe that is the main way we, as Christians, we are saved. We are saved not because we say the right word formula, nor because we are part of the right religion or church, nor because we subscribe to the correct doctrine.

No, instead we are saved when we understand and believe it deep in our hearts, that God loves us. In Jesus’ message of inclusion and love, and God’s validation of that message, we are offered the kind of inner love and support that no human, no parent, no spouse, no loved one, no amount of money, or power, or prestige or fame can possibly give us.

And that sure sense of being loved no matter what then inspires us to, in turn, offer that love to all others.

This is Good News! God accepts us. Insider or outsider, friend or stranger. And every one of us, as I have said so often before, feels like an outsider in some way, at some time in our lives.

Just cast your mind back to middle school for example.

It is amazing how many people, especially those put off by Christianity, don’t have the slightest clue that inclusion of the outsider is the whole deal in Jesus.

I remember once a young woman whom I worked with who told me that Christians always make her feel like an outsider. When I told her that I believed quite the opposite she was stunned!

I also have a dear friend who is probably the best Christian I know, in that he follows Jesus in the ways I have been describing almost without thinking. But he rarely goes to church because, he says, “I’m just a tacky Christian.” By this he means he is not the perfect, upstanding pillar of the community and therefore should not be there.

Hey my tacky friend, all Christians are tacky. We are supposed to be tacky. By definition we are tacky because we are supposed to be caring for and including tacky people, loser people.

The outsiders.

You know, us.

As one of my favorite spiritual writers, Henri Nouwen, says, “Jesus shows us that true love, the love that comes from God, makes no distinction between friends and foes, between people who are for us and people who are against us, people who do us a favor and people who do us ill. God makes no such distinction. (God) loves all human beings, good or bad, with the same unconditional love. This all-embracing love Jesus offers to us, and he invites us to make this love visible in our lives.  (Henri Nouwen, Letters to Marc about Jesus, 1988)



January 16, 2011 – Second Sunday after the Epiphany
Year A – Revised Common Lectionary
    Isaiah 49:1-7
    Psalm 40:1-12
    1 Corinthians 1:1-9
    John 1:29-42

“As I look out the window, I see a very beautiful planet that seems very inviting and peaceful …Unfortunately, it is not…"We're better than this… We must do better."

Those words were spoken by Astronaut Scott Kelly, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ brother-in-law, after last weekend’s horrific shootings in Tucson that gravely wounded the representative and killed six others.

From his window in the International Space Station, Commander Kelly could see, quite literally, the big picture, the entire planet, a vision of what Earth should be. A place of peace and light, not violence and darkness.

Since last weekend there has been an avalanche of analysis about the source of the violence and darkness.

Many have zeroed in on the hideous, divisive, vitriolic political climate we have created in recent years. They say that hate speak inspired young Jared Loughner to lash out as an act of political violence.

It is important to take a good hard look at how dark we have become in  demonizing each other in the public arena. But it turns out, however, that Mr. Loughner wasn’t all that political—he didn’t even vote last time. Instead he appears to have had a deeply disturbed obsession that revolved around a perceived insult made towards him on the part of Rep. Giffords over a year ago at a political rally.

Other analysts have pointed to the need for more gun control. I happen to agree there, but again, I think the picture is bigger and darker than that.

A few have peered a bit deeper into the darkness, discovering that there are simply not enough services for the mentally ill and that those services are being cut further all the time.

One guy, David Ignatius of the Washington Post, however, moved closer to the real problem, when he convicted us all writing, “We leave people alone in America, to a fault. We walk past rambling, dazed homeless people every day, if we live in big cities, avoiding their gaze rather than seeking to intervene…There's a coarsening, uncivil effect when we watch homeless people ranting and mumbling, freezing in the cold - and cross the street, assuming that it's somebody else's business. It takes something out of us, individually and as a country.” [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/12/AR2011011204006.html]

How often have we in this room done that? I know I have.

And another Washington Post writer explored a related issue when he wrote about the neighborhood in Tucson where the shooter grew up- a typical middle class suburb that, like most American suburbs, was a place of isolation. As one neighborhood resident describes it, “Socially, everyone keeps to themselves, …I know the fella right here and over there, but that's about it." [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2011/01/11/AR2011011102838.html?wpisrc=nl_politics]

Abandonment, isolation, loneliness—we are moving closer to the bigger picture, the larger darkness, the darkness that Jesus came to dispel with his light.

Fundamentally, that darkness is the illusion that we are all somehow separate, that what I do doesn’t really concern anyone else. That I and you are alone. That the other person is just that: OTHER. And so not quite as human as I am. Therefore if you disagree with me you are an idiot, stupid, crazy or worse, a manifestation of Satan. And because you are OTHER, I can walk right by you, even if you are in pain.

Jesus tried to teach us about this. He told us over and over that this was the path to hell on Earth. He told us the parable of the sheep and goats [Matthew 25], which teaches that every time we pass by those in need we are assaulting Christ.

And the reverse is true as well, Jesus says, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?” And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”

The Good New is Jesus gave us a simple way to get out of the dark: “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” Treat others as if they were you.

Which in a somewhat roundabout way brings me to today’s lessons. Today the focus is on evangelism, that is, telling others about the Good News of Jesus. In the Gospel story Andrew, Peter’s brother, is touched by Jesus’ message and is so excited he tells him that they have found the Messiah and then drags his brother to see him.

The key here is excited. The most powerful form of evangelism happens the way it did with Andrew: One person is changed by Jesus and his message and is so excited about it they want to tell people, invite people to be a part of it.

So how excited are you about Jesus? How has Jesus touched you? How has Jesus shone light into your dark places?

And how does St. Giles embody that exciting message?

What is our exciting message?

For many churches, generally those of a more fundamentalist stripe, the fervent excitement is about becoming a Christian in order to avoid hell. But this really isn’t generally the belief of all of you out there, so again, why are you excited about Jesus? Why are you excited about St. Giles?

For me, the exciting Christian message is this: That the life, death and resurrection of Jesus offer us a way out of the mess that made the Tucson shootings: And this is the core of the mess--the illusion that everyone else is separate from me, that I am alone, that you don’t really matter.

Last week’s parish meeting meeting focused quite a bit on St. Giles’ identity as open, friendly, inclusive. But there is more, some of you have said privately to me that St. Giles is a refuge, a refuge for you in a harsh world. This building and much, much more: these people. All of you. All of you are the refuge. You, as the living Body of Christ are the refuge from the darkness, the isolation, the lie that we are alone.

I am constantly impressed that in this church there are no factions, which was obvious last Sunday. There was no ugliness in a discussion that was difficult. And trust me, in some churches such a discussion could have gone south very quickly.

What a contrast St. Giles is to the world, to the darkness that lurks below the beautiful view from outer space.

So for me, the message I am excited to spread about St. Giles is that we can be the light in the darkness, that we are trying the best we are able to carry Jesus’ light into the world.

I think this is what we can offer the community of Moraga and others within driving distance: a place to do things differently, a better, kinder, gentler, less lonely way.

The way of light, not dark.

Like the neighborhood where Jared Loughner grew up, the suburbs here in West Contra Costa can be lonely places. Moms and Dads struggle to take care of small children with no helpful grandmothers or aunts or uncles or even friends nearby. People go to work, often far from home, not returning until well after dark. Children struggle to make and retain friends in a highly competitive atmosphere that still allows bullying, exclusion and excessive expectations of success. Few people really know their neighbors. And few know about the dark places in which those neighbors might be lost, looking for the light.

Like astronaut Kelly said: …"We're better than this…We must do better."

This could be what God is calling St. Giles to do, what St. Giles can offer as light to this community in this time: a refuge, a place to do things better. This is an exciting message, one we can all shout to the rooftops, or, being Episcopalians, quietly and persistently with our friends and neighbors.

We can follow the example of Andrew inviting his brother to come and see Jesus.

We can follow the example of whoever wrote the psalm for today:

I waited patiently upon the LORD;
he stooped to me and heard my cry.

He lifted me out of the desolate pit, out of the mire and clay; he set my feet upon a high cliff and made my footing sure.

He put a new song in my mouth,
a song of praise to our God;
many shall see, and stand in awe,
and put their trust in the LORD.



January 30, 2011 – Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany
Year A – Revised Common Lectionary
    Micah 6:1-8
    Psalm 15
    1 Corinthians 1:18-31
    Matthew 5:1-12

Blessed are the Cheesemakers!

Remember that from Monty Python’s irreverent film The Life of Brian?

Life of Brian fans may remember this amusing exchange between people listening to the words we heard Jesus say today, what is often referred to as the Sermon on the Mount or the Beatitudes.

So here is how is goes in Life of Brian:

        Jesus: They shall have the earth...

        Gregory: What was that?

        Jesus: ...for their possession. How blest are those...

        Mr. Cheeky: I don't know. I was too busy talking to Big Nose.

        Jesus: ...who hunger and thirst to see...

        Man #1: I think it was 'Blessed are the cheesemakers.'

        Mrs. Gregory: Ahh, what's so special about the cheesemakers?

        Gregory: Well, obviously, this is not meant to be taken literally. It refers to any manufacturers of dairy products.

        Mr. Cheeky: See? If you hadn't been going on, we'd have heard that, Big Nose.

Very funny. But further in the sketch is this:

        Man #2: You hear that? Blessed are the Greek.

        Gregory: The Greek?

        Man #2: Mmm. Well, apparently, he's going to inherit the earth.

        Gregory: Did anyone catch his name?

        Mrs. Big Nose: Oh, it's the meek! Blessed are the meek! Oh, that's nice, isn't it? I'm glad they're getting something, 'cause they have a hell of a time.

That is how we think of the meek, as getting pushed around, stepped on, having a hell of a time.

Not only do we think of the meek as pathetic, we sometimes see them as getting in the way of real change.

A bit further on in the sketch the members of The People’s Front of Judea, or is it the Judean People’s Front? I can never remember and neither can they. Anyway, their leader, Reg, and two others have this to say about the meek:

        Francis: Well, blessed is just about everyone with a vested interest in the status quo, as far as I can tell, Reg.

        Reg: Yeah. Well, what Jesus blatantly fails to appreciate is that it's the meek who are the problem.

        Judith: Yes, yes. Absolutely, Reg. Yes, I see.

So who on earth would want to be meek, even if you do get blessed? Reg obviously think the meek are the problem, submissive wimps who will never stand up to the Romans.

And how do the meek, even if one consents to be a member of that pathetic crowd, get blessed, get to inherit the earth? Because it sure isn’t obvious to me!

First let’s look at who the “meek” are, Biblically speaking.

One biblical scholar says, “The meek are those who “have had their inherited lands stolen and protest the fact.”

OK, I don’t want to have my house stolen but I like the idea that if it is stolen, I get to protest and not just, so to speak “meekly” say, “Oh well, that’s a bummer and walk away.” [Malina]

According to New Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible the Greek word we translate as meek is Praus, which “encompasses being considerate, humble, gentle, and not having an inflated sense of self. That word is used to describe “Jesus’ entrance as king, [on Palm Sunday] without violence.” [New Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible: article on ‘Meekness’]

A meek king, hmmm.

Ok, that’s nice, a lovely peaceful image, but how does that lead to the meek inheriting the earth?

When I was researching this I found this amazing article written way back in 1958, which offers an answer to that perplexing question. It is entitled: The meek shall inherit the earth: a study in Shakespearean tragedy.

“IN his four principal tragedies, Shakespeare closes the violent action in each with the emergence of a more or less meek character to restore harmony and order. After the majestic heroes and cunning villains have contended with one another in their individual ways throughout the different problems of these tragedies, an unspectacular person appears to fill the vacated place of power.” [Dunkel, Wilbur Dwight, Theology Today 15 no 3 O 1958, p 359-365.]

The author gives examples from several Shakespearean tragedies including King Lear. In that play he points out that, “the contenders for power [are] destroyed. Goneril and Regan, Lear's evil daughters, and Edmund, Gloucester's evil son, scheme and fight for the power given up by King Lear. But their conflict ends with their destruction, and the distinctly meek Duke of Albany, husband of Goneril, and the distinctly meek Edgar, mistreated son of Gloucester, remain with Kent to inherit the power no one of them wants.”

These men are “meek” in the way the word was understood in Shakespearean times, “mild, courteous, kindly, slow to anger. Hence Shakespeare himself may have thought of the persons who closed these tumultuous struggles as meek men.”

And the reason these meek men inherit the power is they never sought it. They avoided the drama and poor choices that result from blind ambition. “And that's the point; Shakespeare's inheritors of power do not seek it.”

Another writer from 1953, makes also makes a good argument for the blessedness of meekness and a good argument for how the meek will inherit the earth.

He says, like the above author, that we are misunderstanding the word meek. Not only did Shakespeare define meekness in a way differing from us, so apparently did the people of the Bible.

The author explains that the Greek word we translate as meek “describes a colt broken to harness. So it pictures strength brought under purposed control.” He goes on to say,

“Jesus never thought of the meek as persons whose fiery passions must be quenched. Rather… the meek are the disciplined people who have integrated their talents with the redemptive purposes of God.” “The constant meek.” [Baker, Gordon P. Interpretation 7 no 1 Ja 1953, p 34-41]

The author goes on to show how Jesus was meek in this way: Jesus rejected the temptation to power and violence. He could have incited his followers to attempt a violent uprising, not a terribly difficult thing in the tinderbox situation that was Judea at that time—a people horribly weighed down by an oppressive foreign power and its local collaborators.  But he didn’t. Why?

The above author argues that it is because this is not the way to bring about the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. He writes: “Jesus was convinced that there could be no other basis for the universal kingdom which the Messiah was to establish. Military authority can command. But it cannot inspire... At its best, it can merely subjugate or compromise. Only spiritual forces can re-create…because there is no redemptive power apart from the reconciling goodness innate in all men.”

This answers my second question, “How will the meek inherit the Earth?” By not seeking power, but by using whatever power we have to work for God.

I believe that the Kingdom will not simply come about because God decides at some point to intervene willy nilly, when He just gets the urge, or gets fed up with us, resulting in some sort of violent, apocalyptic end of the world.

Instead I think we work with God to build the Kingdom together. The Kingdom of Heaven will not come until we all choose to be the people who belong there.

And one of the attributes that Kingdom people have apparently is meekness.

Not weakness, but meekness in the way I have been suggesting today: as disciplined people who do not seek power or glory but instead inherit it because they are “gentle, courteous, kind, merciful, and free from self-will.”

The revolutionary fighter Reg in Life of Brian is wrong. The meek are not pathetic folk who are getting in the way of real change. Instead the meek are the only ones who can effect ultimate change-- holy, liberating change.

The meek are the kind of people we should hold up as our heroes, that we should teach our children to imitate, that we should elect to political office, that we should promote in the workplace, not the power-seekers, not the aggressively competitive, out for their own personal, narcissistic glory.

That is why I think we can be proud to be meek and thus ultimately inherit the earth, an earth transformed from darkness and violence into light and peace.

Transformed into the Kingdom of Heaven, where we can join Reg, and Brian and Mrs. Big Nose and yes, even the Cheesemakers.



February 6, 2011 – Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany
Year A – Revised Common Lectionary
    Isaiah 58:1-9a, (9b-12)
    Psalm 112:1-9, (10)
    1 Corinthians 2:1-12, (13-16)
    Matthew 5:13-20

A couple of weeks ago I was browsing in a children’s bookstore when I happened upon one of my favorite books: A Fine White Dust by Cynthia Rylant.

It is an exquisite little novel about teenage boy named Pete, who has been searching for a deep, safe, relationship with God and Jesus. He meets a traveling evangelist, who is never named, we just know him as “The Preacher Man.” This charismatic, mesmerizing person invites Pete to leave with him to be part of his missionary travels. Pete is willing to abandon his family and friends to go with “The Preacher Man.” But when it comes time for them to leave, Pete waits at the meeting place in vain. The Preacher Man has left town instead with a young woman.

Pete is devastated, having learned a hard lesson about Christian hypocrisy.

Today’s readings focus in with precision on religious hypocrisy.

In the Old Testament lesson Isaiah takes direct aim, pointing out that the people are great at the religious trappings and rituals such as fasting but fail to follow the spirit of God’s law.

"Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers. Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist.”

The real fasting that God wants to see, says Isaiah is for us to share our “bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into [our] house.”

Right.

I think I’m a pretty good Christian but I can tell you with all honesty that I would think twice about inviting a homeless person into my house.

Lovely. Hypocrisy.

Moving on to the Epistle we hear from St. Paul, writing to the church in Corinth. Here we see yet another prophet struggling with hypocrisy in the religious. In this case there is a group of Christians in this church who believe they have special knowledge or wisdom about God and thus are more important. Paul reminds them that their wisdom is only that of human beings and does not even come close to the wisdom of God.

Here I think I do a little better, but ooooooh, I am so aware how easy it is to fall into that “I am the wise” trap as a preacher.

It’s amazing how often religious people get themselves or their rituals or their scriptures or their doctrines or their clergy confused with God.

So what does the Gospel lesson have to teach us today? Here we are faced with Jesus, the master at spotting hypocrisy. In this passage he is calling attention to a far subtler sort of hypocrisy. It it’s the hypocrisy of receiving the love and forgiveness of God, the reassurance of God’s love, and then refusing to share that Good News with the world.

"You are the light of the world,’ he says. “A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”

One group Jesus consistently went after for hypocrisy was the Pharisees, a growing sub-group of religious people within Judean culture at that time.

“The Greek word hypokrites means ‘actor.’” In the Gospel of Matthew Jesus uses it thirteen times, often in connection with the Pharisees.

My favorite biblical cultural scholar says, “Jesus’ frequent use of this word reveals two things. He seems to know a lot about the theater; and he views the Pharisees as nothing more than actors…By calling the Pharisee ‘actors,’ Jesus charges that Scripture may provide the lines they quote, but it is hardly the script by which they live. ‘Do whatever they teach you and follow it, but do not do as they do,” [Pilch]

Now this is all very instructive. However, I need explain something about the Pharisees before, in our ignorance, we do Christian hypocrisy big time.

The Pharisees were actually the early rabbis, who founded the Judaism we know today, the Judaism that developed after the destruction of the Temple by the Romans soon after the death of Jesus.

It is very, very important to not slip into the potentially anti-Jewish stance that says Jesus is about love and the Pharisees were about law. Here Jesus makes it clear that he, like the Pharisees, had no intention of abolishing the law. "Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill,“ he proclaims.

Instead, Jesus simply had a different interpretation than some of the Pharisees. In addition, it was not so much the legalism of the Pharisees that he was seeing as hypocritical, instead it was the hypocrisy of those Pharisees who followed the law technically, but didn’t then also follow the spirit of that same law. For example, like Isaiah before him, he didn’t object to fasting per se, just fasting without then attending to the needs of the poor. [Matthew 23:23-25]

In fact some scholars believe he was so hard on the Pharisees because he was a Pharisee himself.

I will never forget the first sermon preached to us in Seminary. The great preaching professor, the Rev. Dr. Linda Clader, opened with this: “Welcome to seminary. You are now one of the Pharisees.” She then, if I remember correctly, cautioned us against the hypocrisy that so often infects those with “Rev” before their names.

Christian hypocrisy is a major reason many people who are searching for God refuse to give us a second look.

And who can blame them, at least based on the bigger stories both in history and in the news today.

The classic example is the Crusades. If you think Islamic fundamentalists are the only ones who have ever justified violence in the name of God, think again. Listen to the words of St Bernard of Clairvaux, a big supporter of the Crusades in the 12^th century:

'The knight of Christ may strike with confidence and die yet more confidently; for he serves Christ when he strikes, and saves himself when he falls.... When he inflicts death, it is to Christ's profit, and when he suffers death, it is his own gain.'

Instant salvation from killing the infidels. Wonderful. How Jesus-like. It is reassuring, however, to know that even in the 12 century there were clergy who less than thrilled with the idea. [http://freespace.virgin.net/nigel.nicholson/SSCLE/holywarF.html]

Other less than savory examples of religious hypocrisy are the justifications for slavery used by Christians in the American South, the support on the part of many Christians for apartheid in South Africa, and, closer to home, the behavior of many Christians during the Civil Rights era.

How do we get past this? How do we even manage to stay in church knowing we are so flawed? Are we not held to a higher standard?

Yes, we are. But we are also humans, humans tempted by our own fears, our own greed, our own weakness.

I also believe what one priest said to me once about why church members so often act in very un-Jesus ways. She said, “The Devil stalks around.” Evil, she said, and she is not some wild-eyed biblical literalist, looks to mess up things when people are trying to do good. It happens in churches, synagogues, mosques, non-profit organizations, political causes, you name it.

“The Devil stalks around” and we get seduced.

The church, as I said is filled with human beings, not God, not even angels, and very few saints. But at least we know we are not perfect. We at least are concerned, no, more like freaked out, when hypocrisy raises its ugly head. At least we are called to task for it.

And despite all the scheming of the Devil, the Church also has Christ. As one person wrote, “You're right—the Church is not perfect. But Christ is. Fasten your eyes on Him.”

That is what Pete, the boy in A Fine White Dust does. Although he has had his heart broken by a Christian, even though he is now wary about church, his faith in Jesus has grown.

At he end Pete says, “…even though I don’t go to church as much—I’m still trying to figure church out – even though I don’t seem to need church as much, I know I need God.”

I pray we all, all Christians in the world, can be the kind of Christians, seeking to build the kind of church that doesn’t break hearts, that ignores the Devil, that truly gives the gift of Christ’s love.



February 13, 2011 – Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany
Year A – Revised Common Lectionary
    Ecclesiasticus 15:15-20
    Psalm 119:1-8
    1 Corinthians 3:1-9
    Matthew 5:21-37

The Bible is weird. Holy, but weird. Full of deep wisdom, yet frequently misunderstood and misused.

The sad result is that people get harmed. Deeply wounded, with damaged spiritual lives.

What is supposed to be Good News, seems terrifyingly bad.

I remember one such person, a patient I ministered to as a hospital chaplain. This woman was a patient with multiple drug addictions, which I believe had a spiritual origin.

I’m going to reproduce a part of one of our conversations, obviously making her completely anonymous, with all of her identifying details changed.

This patient was terrified by parts of the Bible that are often used to argue that God will eventually destroy the earth in order to cleanse it of sinners.

Here we go, I will call her Penny. We come in to the middle of the conversation.

Me: When you read the Gospels please notice: Does Jesus ever zap anyone?

Penny: Well he turns over some tables in the Temple.

Me: Just a little temper tantrum.  But think of what he could have done. He is God after all.

Penny: Well that's true. He doesn't, does he?

Me: No. Never. You know, there is another verse I really love that tells me that God isn't going to destroy us. It is in Genesis, after the flood. Let me read it to you. "Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, ‘I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.’ …I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth."

Penny: Keep reading the rest of it. Please.

Me: "When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.’

Penny: That's it? No fire?

Me: No fire.

Penny: But in our church they said that in that passage it also says, "Next time I will come with fire." Is yours a different version?

Me: It must be. But every version I have ever read has no fire in that passage. No fire.

Penny: Really?

Me: Really. I'm going to do something. I'm going to call a friend who reads Hebrew. She is a Hebrew scholar. Let's see what she says it says in the Hebrew.

Penny: OK. Yes. That's the original language right?

Me: Yes. (I then called my chaplain pal. She read the passage in Hebrew. I put my phone on speaker and she very carefully went through the passage and said "there is no word here for fire".)

Penny: Oh Chaplain, you don’t know what a relief this is. I was so scared I was sweating. I’m so relieved. I've been scared my whole life by that. THANK YOU!!

Me: I am so glad we could help.

Penny:  But why would people do that, lie about what is in the Bible to scare children?

Me:  I don't know. Maybe they had a translation that had notes under the bible verses that made that interpretation. Maybe they thought it would keep kids from going wrong. I don't agree with that but maybe they had the best of intentions.

Penny:  Chaplain you are a kinder person than I am. I think it's abuse. I think it just runs young people out of church.

YUP!! Penny was right. I’m not as kind as she thinks. I do think it is child abuse. People misuse the Bible all of the time. Sometimes, like in her case, passages are twisted and wildly mistranslated. Other times scary passages are picked and used out of context to hammer people. But often people just don’t understand how Scripture really tells us about God.

The result is people get hurt. Sometimes deeply, in ways that lead to real problems, like my drug-addicted patient Penny.

Misused, misquoted and misunderstood scripture can become a huge barrier for folks who actually yearn for a spiritual life.

We have been talking about how to reach people in the Lamorinda area, to bring them to check out St. Giles.

But unfortunately one huge hurdle is that the un-churched are often people who have only heard the “Bad News” version of the Bible. Sometimes in a terrible way like Penny, but mostly in a kind of hearsay sort of way, kind of in passing, on TV or wherever, they hear that the God of the Bible is violent and scary. And very sensibly, they choose to stay away.

As famous atheist Richard Dawson says:

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” [http://www.woopidoo.com/business_quotes/authors/richard-dawkins/index.htm]

Actually, read without guidance and read literally the Bible really is weird! Read literally, God does seem as awful as Richard Dawson claims.

For instance, a literal understanding of the Book of Joshua says God told Joshua to kill everyone in the city of Jericho.

And the Book of Leviticus has a rule that says you must kill all people who commit adultery.

And my personal favorite: the completely weird situation in Sodom where the men of this depraved city want to rape a couple of Lot’s guests. Lot says, “no way,” but to get this angry mob to leave he instead offers them his two virgin daughters and says, "do to them whatever you like."

Christians argue that, “well that is just Old Testament stuff, the New Testament, the Christian Scriptures, is all about love.”

REALLY? Nothing weird in the New Testament?

How about in the book of Acts in the fifth chapter where it describes the alarming end to the stewardship campaign in the new Christian community? A stewardship campaign where, by the way, you were expected to turn over all of your personal property to the church, which then distributed it back out to each member according to need.

Let me quote:

“But a man named Ananias, with the consent of his wife Sapphira, sold a piece of property; with his wife’s knowledge, he kept back some of the proceeds, and brought only a part and laid it at the apostles’ feet. ‘Ananias,’ Peter asked, ‘why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back part of the proceeds of the land? While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, were not the proceeds at your disposal? How is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You did not lie to us but to God!’ Now when Ananias heard these words, he fell down and died." [Acts 5]

Good thing God seems to be overlooking the pledging habits of the Episcopal Church.

“But,” you might protest, “That isn’t Jesus stuff.”

I told Penny, the patient, the truth. Jesus never zaps any one. But can you really say, on the face of it, that in the Gospels, the stories about Jesus, there is nothing but sweetness and light? REALLY?

Did you pay attention to today’s Gospel readings?

Let’s revisit and paraphrase: Jesus says,

If you call your brother or sister a fool you will go to hell. Boy am I in trouble.

If you simply look at anyone with lust you have committed adultery. That pretty much wipes out every woman here who has watched a Viggo Mortensen or Johnny Depp film.

If you are married after divorce you are also committing adultery.

And remember the Old Testament penalty for adultery? Death.

But wait, let’s add some confusion. In the Gospel of John, Jesus stops people from stoning to death an adulterous woman. So it looks there as though he is changing the religious law, the Old Testament law. So we are ok, right? New Testament, new rules.

But, hey, in last week’s Gospel passage Jesus said he didn’t want to change anything at all about Jewish law!

WHAT IS GOING ON HERE????

What is going on is this: You can’t read this Holy Book the way we read other books. We can’t read it in the way you read a science textbook, or a recipe, or a newspaper article.

The crux of the problem lies here: We post-Enlightenment people are reading Scripture through the lens of the scientific method. Ever since we came to believe that all things must be proved with studies, scientific experiments and laboratories we have had trouble understanding the Bible.

But the Bible was created long before the rule of science.

This has made for a huge spiritual mess. The result is both fundamentalism and atheism.

As one scholar says, “A literalist imagination -- or lack of imagination -- pervades contemporary culture. One of the more dubious successes of modern science -- and of its attendant spirits of technology, historiography and mathematics -- is the suffusion of intellectual life with a prosaic and pedantic mind-set. One may observe this feature in almost any college classroom… Students have difficulty in thinking, feeling and expressing themselves symbolically.” [Biblical Literalism: Constricting the Cosmic Dance by Conrad Hyers]

So we believe that the Bible must be entirely, factually true, from the science to the violence.

But this is not how the original writers of the Bible understood their own works.

The fundamentalist idea that the Bible must be absolutely without error and must be read literally is actually quite new, no more than a hundred years old.

Seriously, it’s not some centuries-old concept.

“One of the ironies of biblical literalism,” writes a biblical scholar, “is that it shares so largely in the reductionist and literalist spirit of the age. It is not nearly as conservative as it supposes. It is modernistic, and it sells its symbolic birthright for a mess of tangible pottage.” [Conrad Hyers]

The ancient way of reading and understanding scripture was quite different.  As another scholar points out, “Early Christian interpretations of scriptures used techniques similar to those used by Jewish interpreters… Both groups understood the Scriptures as containing timeless truths that could be made relevant to their contemporary communities through new interpretations.” [http://gbgm-umc.org/umw/bible/jci.stm]

If there is anything I hate hearing it is this: “The Bible clearly says.” In fact, hard as it may be for us literal-minded moderns to accept, the Bible says nothing clearly, in the modern techno-scientific sense of clarity.

Instead, it touches us with Divine clarity, Divine truth. The original stories came from people’s direct experiences with God. Mystical experiences that are difficult to convey, which need sign and symbol to tell the deeper truth.

Each reading, each hearing, can become a different message, a different encounter with the Holy.

So what can we count on? Where is our firm foothold in what feels to us moderns like shifting sands?

Remember, the word Gospel literally means “Good News.” A good rule of thumb is: if it is about God’s love and care and mercy, if it is Good News, it’s probably true. If it sounds like “Bad News,” we must dig deeper to find the love below the weirdness.

Otherwise we just simply refuse to engage with Scripture, becoming atheists out of fear, or we retreat into fundamentalism, also out of fear.

The patient I spoke of earlier was terrorized by the Bible.

No, that’s wrong. Not by the Bible, but instead actually by people who deeply misunderstood the Bible and inadvertently damaged their child.

I believe those of us who do not want to see this happen have a mission to let people know there is another way to understand the God-filled book that is the Holy Bible, a way that can open up a loving, safe relationship with God that transforms lives and offers a journey of salvation in this world, right now, today.

Not the terrifying violence that births atheists and abuses children.



February 20, 2011 – Seventh Sunday after the Epiphany
Year A – Revised Common Lectionary
    Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18
    Psalm 119:33-40
    1 Corinthians 3:10-11, 16-23
    Matthew 5:38-48

Is war ever right? Is there such a thing as a moral and justifiable war?

My personal answer is yes. But it is a VERY qualified “yes.”

Why?

Because ringing in my ears, whenever sabers are rattled, are the words of Jesus we heard today: “I say to you, Love your enemies…”

That is one of Jesus’ most difficult teachings, and one that has been interpreted in various ways by different Christian down through the centuries.

I actually don’t believe there is a definitive interpretation here but I believe it is important for us to look at the morality of war through the lens of our faith. As Christians we cannot simply react without thought, react without prayer, react without love.

Therefore, I would like to offer to you today a short history of Christian thought on the morality of war, so you may make a faith-based, rather than a fear-based or politically-based decision on the issue.

Despite the fact that I not a pacifist, I know the tradition of pacifism is deeply embedded in Christianity. Scriptural evidence to support pacifism is strong. For instance, like we heard today, Jesus also said in another Gospel: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.  If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also…Do to others as you would have them do to you. (Luke 6:27-31). He also said, “Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.” (Matt. 26:53).

In the very early church, not long after the death of Jesus, Christian soldiers, upon baptism, were required to abandon their professions. Christians at that time were almost universally pacifist. [Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/war/#2]

However, despite its pacifist beginnings, Christianity soon began to justify the use of war. St. Augustine in the 4^th century and later St. Thomas Aquinas in the 13^th century developed the theory of the “Just War.”

Over time a family of theories has developed from these beginnings but they are “united by the belief that the resort to war is sometimes morally permissible, indeed, may sometimes be required, but differing slightly over the details on how and when the resort to war is permitted.” [From Christ to the World: Introductory readings in Christian Ethics. Ed. By Wayne G. Boulton, et. al. Grand Rapids, Mich. : William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1994., p. 436. ]

These theories are the basis of codified rules in international law regarding war such as the Geneva Convention. [Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/war/#2]

It is quite easy to find scriptural arguments for the idea of a  “Just War”. The Old Testament is full of examples where God appears to even support the use of war—not only in defense but in aggression: In Exodus, God says, “I am going to send an angel in front of you, to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place that I have prepared… if you listen attentively to his voice and do all that I say, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and a foe to your foes… I will hand over to you the inhabitants of the land, and you shall drive them out before you. [1] (Exodus 23: 20-22 and 31)

And looking at the New Testament, it was St. Thomas Aquinas, quoting St. Augustine, who pointed out that, “If the Christian Religion forbade war altogether,” soldiers in the Gospels would “have been counseled to cast aside their arms, and to give up soldiering altogether. On the contrary, they were told: 'Do violence to no man . . . and be content with your pay' [*Lk. 3:14]. If he commanded them to be content with their pay, he did not forbid soldiering." [St. Thomas Aquinas The Summa Theologica Part II, Question 40. http://ethics.acusd.edu/Books/Texts/Aquinas/JustWar.html]

Working from the arguments of St. Augustine and St. Thomas, the basic outlines of the modern theory of the “Just War” are as follows: [from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]

1. Just cause. A state may launch a war only for the right reason. The just causes most frequently mentioned include: self-defense from external attack; the protection of innocents; and punishment for wrongdoing.

2. Right intention. A state must intend to fight the war only for the sake of a just cause. Having the right reason for launching a war is not enough: the actual motivation behind the resort to war must also be morally appropriate. Ulterior motives, such as a power or land grab, or irrational motives, such as revenge or ethnic hatred, are ruled out.

3. Proper authority and public declaration. A state may go to war only if the decision
has been made by the appropriate authorities, according to the proper process, and made public, notably to its own citizens and to the enemy state(s).

4. Last Resort. A state may resort to war only if it has exhausted all plausible, peaceful alternatives to resolving the conflict in question, in particular diplomatic negotiation.

5. Probability of Success. A state may not resort to war if it can foresee that doing so will have no measurable impact on the situation. The aim here is to block mass violence which is going to be futile.

6. Proportionality. A state must, prior to initiating a war, weigh the universal goods expected to result from it, such as securing the just cause, against the universal evils expected to result, notably casualties. Only if the benefits are proportional to, or "worth", the costs may the war action proceed. [Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/war/#2]

So there you have it. The basic scriptural evidence on both sides of the issue and a bit of the history of Christian response to war based on the Gospel teachings and later Church tradition.

You now have the tools to make your own decisions.

Still, you may be wondering why I said I am not a complete pacifist.

I came to my belief that there are times when war is justifiable based on the life and words of one of my personal heroes. This man not only struggled with these questions on an intellectual level but also lost his life in the process of acting upon his beliefs.

He is Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Rev. Bonhoeffer was an early 20^th Century German theologian originally deeply committed to pacifism. However, as he watched the rise of Hitler he came to believe that total pacifism was not viable in that case. Hitler had to be stopped.

Rev. Bonhoeffer and several high-ranking military officers plotted to kill Hitler. Their plot was discovered and Bonhoeffer was arrested and then executed in April 1945 by the Nazis.

What makes Bonhoeffer a hero in my eyes is that he never, ever said that violence was moral. In fact, he believed his violent acts would be judged by God, that killing was a sin, but that God was merciful. “We must endure this judgment as Christians,” he wrote. “We do not want to escape repentance.”

Although I believe that war in very rare cases can be justified, I also I believe we are treading on thin ice to think that our war-making is part of God’s plan, that we are on a mission from God, that God is on our side, that God blesses our cause. That is how fanatics are bred.

No, God never supports war. Instead, God weeps.

Bonhoeffer knew this. But he also believed that great evil must be stopped, that paradoxically following Jesus might mean doing an evil act.

"If,” wrote Bonhoeffer, “I see a madman driving a car into a group of innocent bystanders, then I can't, as a Christian, simply wait for the catastrophe and then comfort the wounded and bury the dead. I must try to wrestle the steering wheel out of the hands of the driver."
[http://www.christianhistorytimeline.com/GLIMPSEF/Glimpses/glmps063.shtml]

He said, “Ultimately, it is better to do evil than to be evil." Paradoxically, he saw his participation in the plot as "guilty but responsible" action. [http://www.rps.psu.edu/0005/bonhoeffer.html]

Paradox is one of the realities following the Way of Jesus. Being willing to enter paradox is part of being Christian.

It is not easy, it is not simple, and as both Jesus and Dietrich Bonhoeffer show us, it is not safe.

I don’t care where you land on the question of Justifiable War. But I do deeply care that you will come to where you stand thoughtfully and faithfully, not fearfully. So in closing, I offer this prayer:

    Loving God, we ask you for the strength and wisdom to resist the option of war.
    Remind us that Jesus told us to love our enemies.
    Help us to discern when, if ever, it is right to respond with violence in order to pursue justice.
    Help us to ever know that war is a sin, even if we find it necessary to commit that sin to prevent a greater one.
    Help us to resist the urge to dismiss non-violence as idealistic and utopian
    and give us the strength to make that choice and to make it effective. AMEN.



February 27 - Eighth Sunday after the Epiphany
Year A - Revised Common Lectionary
    Isaiah 49:8-16a
    Psalm 131
    1 Corinthians 4:1-5
    Matthew 6:24-34

Ok, I have a joke, but it needs one little setup. You need to know that the Holy Spirit is also called “the Comforter.”

Sunday after church, a mother asked her very young daughter what the lesson was about.

The daughter answered, "Don't be scared, you'll get your quilt."

Needless to say, the mother was perplexed.

Later in the day, the priest stopped by for tea and the mother asked him what that morning's Sunday school lesson was about.

He said "Be not afraid, thy comforter is coming."

We all want a comforter. Especially when it is really cold and rainy, or we don’t feel well or when things are really scary. We just want to feel cozy and safe.

Comforters are a sort of barrier to protect us from worry or even worry’s deadly first cousin, despair.

The temptation to despair is one of the major themes of my second favorite Christian story, The Lord of the Rings. In that story there is much to despair.

The evil Lord Sauron is almost certainly going to succeed in conquering all of the good peoples. The only hope lies in the hands of a tiny, weak person, a hobbit named Frodo. The lords and men of great power see that their armies can do only so much to avert the coming darkness.

One of these powerful men, Lord Denethor, has taken to seeking to know the future by staring into one of the ancient seeing stones called the Palantir. He believes the Seeing Stone will give him secret knowledge about the future, and present, that he can use to defeat the Dark Lord.

What he does not know is that the Dark Lord himself is controlling the Seeing Stone and feeding false visions of disaster to the increasingly despairing Denethor. As the author J.R.R. Tolkien writes: It “fed the despair of his heart until it overthrew his mind.” In this state of despair he refuses to seek help from his allies, descends into madness and finally commits suicide, attempting to kill his own son in the process.

Denethor suffered from the mythical equivalent of what psychologists call “awfulizing.” You know how that works: you have a problem and you worry that this and that horrible thing will happen. You assume the worst. You spend hours with “what if?”

Ninty-nine percent of the time what we worry about never happens. And so we drive ourselves into despair over false future-casting. We spend too much time with the Seeing Stone. What a waste of time and energy!

I HATE it when I do that!

We only have so much control. That is the truth. After that it is up to God. And the wonderful hope we have is that God is good. That God sends us the Comforter, the Holy Quilt.

Jesus asks us not to “awfulize”, he wants us to avoid staring into the seeing stones. Over and over he tells us not to worry. Instead of worrying about the future, he asks us to love one another.

In today’s Gospel Jesus says, "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?”

Jesus is sure that in some way, it is all good, that the Comforter is always there to help us, even when we are sure we have been abandoned.

The problem is that when we lack trust in God, we do terrible things. We look for the physical “Comforters” like money and stuff and endless activities. We even get into hoarding those things and fail to share our blessings.

On the world stage this kind of “awfulizing” can lead to wars of aggression, land grabs, power grabs, ethnic cleansing, terrorism, you name it.

In times of financial stress, such as now, we get even more frightened, more worried and then even more grasping. The problem is, this behavior doesn’t make us feel any safer, not in the long run. Instead we become suspicious that others are trying to take our stuff. This divides us, makes us fight and hate, which then in turn, increases our anxiety, or despair.

Today Jesus advises that instead of worrying about our personal, individual safety, we might instead put our energy into sharing our blessings, sharing our stuff, helping each other, sticking together. In other words, living into what Jesus called the Kingdom of God.

“But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

Jesus says that paradoxically, by sharing instead of worrying and hoarding, we will actually feel safer.

Perhaps we need to stop staring into the Seeing Stone, stop worrying so much about things we cannot control, and obey Jesus’ command that we strive for the Kingdom of God, that we love one another, share our blessings with one another. In that way there will always be enough for all. We can be a united front against the Dark One, the Dark Lords of this world.

There are literally zillions of ways we can share our blessings, can fight the Dark Lord.

We can volunteer for charity organizations, we can take political action that we feel will help the poor, we can offer beautiful worship experiences that open people’s hearts and minds to the reality of God, we can do the best we can to care for children, the elderly, the mentally ill, all who are not always able to defend themselves.

And as anyone knows who had done serious hands-on charity work, it gets your mind off your own worries faster than two pounds of chocolate or the best bottle of wine.

Really.

Jesus promised his disciples that he would send them help in the form of the Comforter, the Holy Spirit. And that he did on Pentecost. Ever since, we have had the Holy Comforter, the Holy Cozy Quilt, protecting us, making us safe even when we don’t feel safe.

Those of you who know me well know that I can be a champion worrier. I often forget that the Holy Quilt is around me.

But I’m actually making progress! I have in the last ten years or so, and especially through my work as a hospital chaplain, begun to see how the Holy Spirit, the Holy Quilt is really present at all times.

I have begun to see how things have this strange way of working out, that good always seems to follow the bad and terrible in my life, and in the lives of others.

I have found the strength and occasional wisdom, to keep sessions with the Palantir, the Seeing Stone, the Stone of Worry and Despair, to more of a minimum. And I think this helps me to be more present to others, more generous, a better citizen of the Kingdom of God.

When I am at my best I remember the beautiful words of Isaiah we heard today, the image of God as a perfect, caring mother:

“Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? … I will not forget you. See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands.”

It’s hard to imagine a cozier comforter than that.



March 6, 2011 - The Last Sunday after the Epiphany
Year A - Revised Common Lectionary
    Exodus 24:12-18
    2 Peter 1:16-21
    Matthew 17:1-9
    Psalm 99

There is an amusing little Israeli commercial that I once saw. It shows the Israelites in the wilderness. Everyone is obviously depressed. Several men walk up a hill where Moses is standing looking to the heavens. They ask, “What is it Moses?” and he says, with a bit of strong language I won’t quote here, “We are lost!” Suddenly a thunderbolt comes down from heaven and blasts a small hole in the ground. They go over, peer in and there is a GPS with a map to the Promised Land.

God did provide in the Wilderness.

And it’s a good thing too, since life can certainly seem like the Wilderness at times.

In the Bible the Wilderness is generally quite a scary place, where people go hungry and thirsty and are pursued by wild beasts, both literal and spiritual. It is where demons live.

But the Wilderness, the Desert is also a place of great spiritual growth. The Prophet Elijah flees from the Princess Jezebel, who seeks his death, into the Wilderness. There he is cared for by an angel, who builds up his strength so that he can continue his mission from God.

Jesus, too, finds the Wilderness a place of spiritual growth. After his baptism by John, the Holy Spirit drives him into the desert, where he confronts his own personal temptations to power.

And in today’s Old Testament reading we find ourselves right in the middle of the Israelites’ forty-year sojourn in the Wilderness.

During that time they learn how to be God’s Chosen People. They agree to The Covenant with their God, that they will be his people, who follow his guidance through the Torah or religious law, and in turn he will guide them to the Promised Land. The Wilderness is where God gives Moses the Ten Commandments.

The Wilderness, then, is a place where our spiritual growth is accelerated. But it is not easy. When we wander in the Wilderness, when we are following the spiritual path, we confront many demons, many temptations that can derail our journey.

One of the temptations is to decide the journey is just too scary, too difficult, that wherever we were before was somehow better or safer. It is the seductive trap of nostalgia for the past.

Church people do this a lot when we talk about the good old days when there were zillions of people in the pews, money spilling out of the collections plates and everyone showed up every Sunday without fail.

For their part, the Israelites struggled with the temptation to run back to the supposed safety of Egypt, where they were slaves no less!

Two months into the journey they complained to Moses saying, “If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”

So often, we choose slavery over freedom because it is easier than the process, the journey of change.

At other times we get diverted and distracted by pretty, shiny objects. We forget who God is, confuse God with the Church or the clergy or the Bible or the way we do worship or our music.

At one point the Israelites lose it so bad they decide to ditch the God who rescued them from slavery and instead construct an idol- the Golden Calf, a false God to worship.

I guess they got sick of waiting for forty days for Moses to come back down from the mountain. But I also wonder if they knew somehow that Moses would come with fresh spiritual challenges from God. Which indeed he does, in the form of the Ten Commandments.

Quite a demanding set of teachings those Big Ten.

The idol, the shiny, diverting, Golden Calf, though, is not demanding.

But neither is it life-giving either. It just sits there being pretty.

God, on the other hand sustains us in the wilderness. He sends us help, even a GPS it seems.

For instance, God sent the Israelites special life-sustaining food, manna. “Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘I am going to rain bread from heaven for you, and each day the people shall go out and gather enough for that day.” This strange food nourishes them for the rest of their long sojourn in the Wilderness.

God also sends them a new way to live with each other, by rules that kept them from harming and hurting each other.

If we just followed the Ten Commandments everyone would be better off. The Ten are meant to be life giving, not fun-destroyers.

Refraining from killing, stealing or sleeping with your brother’s wife are pretty basic ways to care for each other, to maintain a civilized, safe society.

So throughout the Wilderness trip God sends us help, all kinds of help, even help we don’t recognize as help.

The interim period in a church can be a bit like the Wilderness journey. Here is how: First, during the Interim I believe God intends to shape us. Like the Wilderness, the Interim period between priests is a good time for change and growth. It is a time to try new things, to examine what is important, to see how God might be calling us to serve our neighbors, to help bring about his Kingdom.

Unfortunately, the Interim time also has the same temptations as those of the Wilderness. For instance, there is the temptation of nostalgia that I mentioned before.

We panic and want to go back to slavery.

We build Golden Calves. One of which can be labeled: “We’ve always done it this way.”

It is not an easy trip.

But through it we can hold onto this hope: God never abandons us, he sends us manna and GPS’s.

Interestingly, the Gospel lesson for today, which describes what is known as Jesus’ Transfiguration also can be linked to the experience of the interim period in the life of a parish.

For example, Peter is so enthralled with this vision of Jesus, this foretelling of the Resurrection, that they want to stay there, not move forward.

Peter says excitedly, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah."

I understand his desire, to stay where it is safe. But God has other plans. While Peter is still running around designing their new housing project, God booms out, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!"

In other words, PAY ATTENTION TO THIS GUY. Go where he goes.

Keep your eye on Jesus, on God, on the Kingdom of Heaven, and you will get to the Promised Land.

That is true for this interim period, and for your entire spiritual journeys through this life.

I believe that is the meaning of life. It is the only meaning. It is all that life is, one long spiritual journey of learning and growth.

IF we choose to do it, to go into the Wilderness, to allow ourselves to be sustained by God, and learn the lessons, to keep our eye on Jesus and not on the shiny diversions or the longings for Egypt, for the past, we will arrive where our souls desire to go.

If we instead choose the slavery or the idols, we will stay lost forever.

And that is not God’s plan, not for us as individuals, nor for the Church, nor for all of Creation.

So let’s buck up, grab our God-sent GPS’s and journey on.

Who’s with me?